Sundance Institute announced today the first five grant recipients of the STORIES OF CHANGE: SOCIALENTREPRENEURSHIP IN FOCUS THROUGH DOCUMENTARY initiative, a $3 million, three-year partnership with the Skoll Foundation designed to explore the role of film in advancing knowledge about social entrepreneurship. This partnership creates new opportunities for leading social entrepreneurs and outstanding documentary filmmakers to collaborate and to create new projects about the innovative approaches found in both fields. The development and production grant awards announced today support the creation of feature-length independent documentary films that examine social entrepreneurship as an innovative approach to the central challenges of our time.

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OSLO, Norway, March 6, 2008 (ENS) – Solving four major environmental problems – climate change, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, and the health impacts of pollution and toxics – is both achievable and affordable, finds a new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, which includes 30 countries committed to democracy and the market economy.

The 2008 OECD Environmental Outlook marries economic and environmental projections through 2030 and offers specific policies to address these challenges.

Angel Gurria of Mexico is
Secretary General of
the OECD. (Photo
courtesy OECD)

“Solutions to the key environmental challenges are available, achievable and affordable, especially when compared to the expected economic growth and the costs and consequences of inaction,” OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said at the worldwide launch of the report in Oslo, hosted by Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

“The Outlook is an impressive body of work. It combines hope for the future with an urgent call for action today. It offers important guidance for decision-makers and integrates economic and environmental analysis,” said Prime Minister Stoltenberg.

Economic-environmental projections show that global greenhouse gas emissions are expected to grow by 37 percent to 2030 and by 52 percent to 2050 if no new policy action is introduced.

To meet increasing demands for food and biofuels, world agricultural land use will need to expand by an estimated 10 percent to 2030, the report projects.

Water scarcity will worsen due to unsustainable use and management of the resource as well as climate change until one billion more people will be living in areas of severe water stress by 2030 than today, the OECD warns.

Premature deaths caused by ground-level ozone worldwide would quadruple by 2030, and in addition the report says, chemical production volumes in non-OECD countries are rapidly increasing, and there is insufficient information to fully assess the risks of chemicals in the environment and in products.

Drought has ruined this corn crop
(Photo courtesy Fullerton College)

A considerable number of today’s known animal and plant species are likely to be extinct, largely due to expanding infrastructure and agriculture, as well as climate change, the report warns, saying, “Continued loss of biodiversity is likely to limit the Earth’s capacity to provide the valuable ecosystem services that support economic growth and human well-being.”

“Countries will need to shift the structure of their economies in order to move towards a low carbon, greener and more sustainable future. The costs of this restructuring are affordable, but the transition will need to be managed carefully to address social and competitiveness impacts, and to take advantage of new opportunities,” said Secretary-General Gurría.

The 2008 OECD Environmental Outlook projects that world GDP will almost double by 2030.

The OECD policy simulation shows that it would cost just over one percent of that growth to implement policies that can cut key air pollutants by about a third, and contain greenhouse gas emissions to about 12 percent instead of 37 percent growth under the scenario without new policies.

To keep the costs of action low, the OECD recommends using economic and market-based instruments such as green taxes, efficient water pricing, emissions trading, polluter pay systems, and waste charges.

The elimination of environmentally harmful subsidies for fossil fuels and agriculture is also recommended.

In addition, more stringent regulations and standards for transport and building construction, investment in research and development, sectoral and voluntary approaches, as well as eco-labelling and information are also needed, the OECD advises.

Meltwater stream flowing off the Greenland ice sheet (Photo by Roger Braithwaite, University of Manchester courtesy NASA)

Technological developments will contribute to the solutions but Gurría said the generalized application of breakthrough technologies poses important challenges in the area of intellectual property rights which will have to be confronted.

The Outlook identifies ways to share the cost of policy action globally.

Developed nations have been responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions to date, but rapid economic growth in emerging economies – particularly Brazil, Russia, India and China – means that by 2030 the annual emissions of these four countries together will exceed those of the 30 OECD countries combined.

“Fair burden-sharing and distributional aspects will be as important as technological progress and the choice of policy instruments,” the OECD says in its report.

“While OECD countries should take the lead, further co-operation with a wider group of emerging economies, the “BRIICS” countries (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa) in particular, can achieve common environmental goals at lower costs,” the report states.

“We must be aware that getting it right in the field of the environment is not only about what to do and how to do it. We also need to address the question of who will pay for what,” Gurría said. “The global cost of action will be much lower if all countries work together.”

Highlights of the report are online at: www.oecd.org/environment/outlookto2030.

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ALGIERS, Algeria, February 25, 2008 (ENS) – One of the largest seawater desalination plants in the world was officially opened in Algiers on Sunday by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and a senior executive of the U.S.-based General Electric Company, which built and will operate the plant.

The new $250 million facility will supply the drought-stricken, thirsty millions of residents of this capital city by the sea.

Constructed on a brownfield site just east of the Port of Algiers, the Hamma Seawater Desalination Plant purifies seawater with GE’s proprietary reverse osmosis membranes, and the company says it can handle up to 53 million gallons of seawater a day.

This location was not chosen for the purity of its water, but for its infrastructure.

“Although the water quality in this part of the bay can be affected by ship traffic and port activities, the site is ideal for its

Seawater is purified into drinking water
at the Hamma Seawater
Desalination Plant. (Photo
courtesy GE)

The plant will provide as many as two million residents of Algiers with a reliable supply of potable water, an increasingly scarce commodity to come by as rural residents have moved to the city in rising numbers over the past 50 years.

Water scarcity caused by demand, drought, and an aging, leaky distribution system has meant frequent water rationing. Sometimes the water has been running only one of every three days.

With few surface water sources, the Algerian government has invested in new dams to improve its rain catchment and storage capacity, but they have not been enough to meet demand, due to persistant drought.

Repairs to the city’s water distribution system have cut water losses from 40 percent to less than 25 percent, but still water scarcity has been a daily trial for residents.

Completed on time and on budget in 24 months, the Hamma Seawater Desalination Plant is North Africa’s first large-scale reverse osmosis desalination plant to be funded by a joint venture that combines public and private equity investment.

The special project company, Hamma Water Desalination SpA, combines 70 percent funding from General Electric and 30 percent from the state-owned Algerian Energy Company, AEC.

“We are proud to be a partner in the Hamma Seawater Desalination Plant. It is a great example of how private and public partnerships can help solve urgent water needs,” said Jeff Garwood president and chief executive of GE Water and Process Technologies, a unit of General Electric.

At the opening ceremony on Sunday, Garwood said, “Partnerships like this one, with the Algerian Government and AEC, combined with our global scale, financing capabilities, and broad portfolio of equipment, chemicals and services put GE in a unique position to provide solutions for the world’s growing water challenges. “

GE holds a 25 year contract to operate and maintain the plant and is responsible for daily operations.

The facility will draw in seawater through two 550-meter direct intake pipes to a pre-treatment system, where it will enter a clarifier and have coagulants added to help remove suspended solids and reduce biological challenges of the raw water.

“Seawater is affected by seasonal dynamics, biological blooms and turbidity affects from a working port,” GE explains in a paper on the Hamma desalination project.

But the company says the process at the Hamma plant is designed to handle “the potential variability in raw water quality.”

So, following flocculation and settling, the water will pass through a dual media filter and enter a clearwell.

Water from the clearwell will be pumped through five-micron cartridge filters before being distributed among nine trains of single-pass reverse osmosis membranes.

Remineralization and disinfection will be the final steps in the process before the water can enter the city’s distribution system.

GE says the Hamma’s advanced membrane process needs less energy and uses lower chemical concentrations than alternatives such as thermal desalination.

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Nobel Peace Prize laureate Al Gore addresses delegates at Bali. (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

NUSA DUA, Bali Indonesia, December 13, 2007 (ENS) – “The Earth has a rising fever,” Nobel Peace Prize laureate Al Gore told delegates at the United Nations climate change conference today. The former U.S. vice president said that the need to address climate change is urgent because its impacts already are affecting the present generation.

Melting glaciers, water scarcity, floods, and greater frequency and intensity of storms and droughts are occurring now, Gore said at a side event parallel to the official conference. He stressed that the changes in the climate are far beyond those caused by natural variation.

Heads of state, politicians, nongovernmental organizations and scientists are in Bali discussing plans to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases that have been linked to increasing global temperatures. The goal of the conference is to decide how to negotiate a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012.

The Bali negotiators should not wait for the United States before moving forward with aggressive action to combat climate change, said Gore, referring to the current administration’s resistance to accepting legally binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

U.S. negotiators at Bali have blocked a proposal that called on industrialized nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020. This target was agreed by European nations and others during pre-Bali talks earlier this year.

On the recurring question of whether emission reduction ranges would be included in the text of the Bali roadmap that will emerge from this conference, the top UN climate official Yvo de Boer acknowledged today while the European Union and a number of developing countries are in favor of including the specific 25 to 40 percent range in the text, others such as the United States had made clear their opposition to this idea.

“Any inclusion of numbers in the text,” he said, “would exceed his expectations for this conference.”

At a news conference Wednesday, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky said the United States is not alone in resisting future emissions targets. Canada and Russia have joined with the Bush administration in this position.

Gore indicated that the United States could be in a different political situation next year, after the November 2008 election which term limits do not permit President George W. Bush to contest.

Gore called for the implementation of the successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol in 2010, two years before the current commitment period under the protocol expires, as he said in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture in Norway on Tuesday.

Gore encouraged participants to draw upon what India’s Mahatma Gandhi referred to as “truth force” to help the climate change action movement gather momentum.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Photo courtesy ENB)

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told delegates that he supports carbon capture and storage under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, which allows industrialized countries with legally binding emissions limits to gather credits by supporting projects in developing countries.

Stoltenberg announced that Norway would spend more than US$500 million annually to support efforts to reduce deforestation in developing countries.

Also today British scientists released a report showing that the top 11 warmest years on record all occurred within the past 13 years.

The data comes from UK government’s Met Office and the University of East Anglia, which together maintain a global temperature record which is used in the reports of the Nobel Peace Prize winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The scientists released preliminary global temperature figures for 2007, which show this year is likely to be the seventh warmest on records dating back to 1850.

In January, meteorologists at the two research centers predicted that 2007 could register a global temperature well above the long term average. There was also a 60 percent probability that 2007 could be the warmest year on record and the expected temperature for 2007 is within the range predicted.

The announcement comes as the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization Michel Jarraud addressed the United Nations climate change conference.

World Meteorological Organization head Michel Jarraud (Photo courtesy ENB)

“Many developing countries already have considerable difficulties in maintaining their observational networks,” Jarraud told the delegates today.

“Therefore, collaborative mechanisms should urgently be developed or strengthened, as most appropriate, to meet developing countries’ observational requirements and to upgrade the quality and efficiency of their climate risk management practices,” he said.

Dr. Vicky Pope from the Met Office Hadley Centre has been attending the conference and says, “The last few days have provided an important platform for debate and confirms the need for swift action to combat further rises in global temperatures because of human behavior.”

The last time annual mean global temperatures were below the 1961-1990 long term average was in 1985. Since then, mean surface air temperatures have continued to demonstrate a warming trend around the world.

2007 has been no exception to this, even though there has been a La Niña event of cooling sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean which usually reduces global temperatures.

Professor Phil Jones, director of UEA’s Climatic Research Unit, said, “The year began with a weak El Niño – the warmer relation of La Niña – and global temperatures well above the long-term average. However, since the end of April the La Niña event has taken some of the heat out of what could have been an even warmer year.”

Met Office climate scientist David Parker said, “This year has also seen sea-ice extent in the Northern Hemisphere below average in each month of 2007, with record minima sea-ice reported in July, August and September.

In the Southern Hemisphere, sea-ice coverage has remained close to average,” he said.

Across the UK, 2007 is on course to become one of the warmest years on record. Even if the mean temperature for December is 1 °Celsius below the 1971-2000 long term average, the year will still be the third warmest since UK-wide records began in 1914.

The full report on the climate of 2007 is available on the WMO website. As well as information and graphics on land and sea surface temperature, it includes details on the extent of sea-ice in both hemispheres and rainfall.

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