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Friday, February 25, 2011

Event also announces the release of the groundbreaking report State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet

Copenhagen, Denmark—The Worldwatch Institute today announces the opening of its first European office in Copenhagen. The opening will be celebrated at a major event starting today at 14:00 in downtown Copenhagen. More than 120 guests, including prominent researchers, policy makers, business leaders and press, have registered for the event.

The opening coincides with the release of the 27th annual edition of Worldwatch’s flagship publication, State of the World. The event features a policy debate on Europe’s role in developing and establishing sustainable agriculture practices, with the goal of creating a healthier global food system.

Worldwatch Europe will represent the formal extension of the Institute’s research and project activities into the European policy sphere. Bo Normander, Director of Worldwatch Europe says: “By expanding our research base into Europe, we aim to deliver these types of insights and to inform more environmentally sustainable decision-making across the European Union.”

Release of State of the World 2011

This year’s State of the World 2011 report:Innovations that Nourish the Planet, spotlights successful agricultural innovations and unearths major successes in preventing food waste, building resilience to climate change, and strengthening farming in cities. The report provides a roadmap for increased agricultural investment and more-efficient ways to alleviate global hunger and poverty.

“The progress showcased through this report will inform governments, policymakers, NGOs, and donors that seek to curb hunger and poverty, providing a clear roadmap for expanding or replicating these successes elsewhere,”says Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin.

Drawing from the world’s leading agricultural experts and from hundreds of innovations that are already working on the ground, State of the World 2011 outlines proven, environmentally sustainable prescriptions for decreasing malnutrition, improving yields, and increasing farmers’ incomes.

Worldwatch's Director of the Nourishing the Planet program Danielle Nierenberg, who recently spent 15 months conducting on-the-ground research in over 25 countries across Africa, will also speak at the launch. She will present key findings from the report, including a roadmap for agricultural investment for top donor countries in successful projects that can prevent food waste, build resilience to climate change, and strengthen farming in cities.

Global food security initiatives

State of the World 2011comes at a time when many global hunger and food security initiatives—such as the Obama administration’s Feed the Future program, the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP)—can benefit from new insight into environmentally sustainable projects that are already working.

Investment in agricultural development by governments, international lenders, and foundations has risen in recent years but is still nowhere near what is needed to help the 925 million people worldwide who remain undernourished. In 2008, $1.7 billion in official development assistance was provided to support agricultural projects in Africa, a miniscule amount given the vital return on investment. Under current global economic conditions, investments are not likely to increase in the coming year. Much of the more recently pledged funding has yet to be raised, and existing funding is not being targeted efficiently to reach the poor farmers of Africa.

“The international community has been neglecting entire segments of the food system in its efforts to reduce hunger and poverty,”said Nierenberg, co-director of Worldwatch’s Nourishing the Planet project (www.NourishingthePlanet.org). “The solutions won’t necessarily come from producing more food, but from changing what children eat in schools, how foods are processed and marketed, and what sorts of food businesses we are investing in.”

Serving locally raised crops to school children, for example, has proven to be an effective hunger- and poverty-reducing strategy in many African nations, and has strong parallels to successful farm-to-cafeteria programs in the United States and Europe. Moreover, “roughly 40 percent of the food currently produced worldwide is wasted before it is consumed, creating large opportunities for farmers and households to save both money and resources by reducing this waste,” according to Brian Halweil, Nourishing the Planet co-director.

European tour

Beginning with a 16-country European tour, the project’s findings are being disseminated in over 20 languages to a wide range of agricultural stakeholders, including government ministries, agricultural policymakers, farmer and community networks, and the increasingly influential non-governmental environmental and development communities. The Copenhagen launch event kicked off both the European tour and Worldwatch’s official entry into the European sphere. 

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Notes to Editors: 

The full programme for the Copenhagen launch event is attached to this document.

About the Worldwatch Institute:

Worldwatch is an independent research organization based in Washington, D.C. that works on energy, resource, and environmental issues. The Institute’s State of the World report is published annually in more than 20 languages. For more information, visit www.worldwatch.org.

For review copies of State of the World 2011:

Contact Amanda Stone at astone@worldwatch.org.

Press contacts:
Ann Sophie Friis and Xenia Trier, europe@worldwatch.org or Tel. (+45) 3336 7187 (in Europe)

Amanda Stone, astone@worldwatch.org or(+1) 202-452-1999 x514 (in U.S.)

Purchasing information:

State of the World 2011sells for $19.95 + shipping & handling / £14.99 + P&P.

• It can be purchased via the Worldwatch website at http://www.worldwatch.org/sow11, by e-mailing wwpub@worldwatch.org, by calling toll-free (+1) 877-539-9946 (in the U.S.) or (+1) 301-747-2340 (from overseas), or by faxing (+1) 301-567-9553 with ISBN number 9780393338805.

• See www.worldwatch.org for information about editions in other languages.

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

New Worldwatch Institute report discusses the future of carbon capture and storage technology.

Washington, D.C.—Funding for carbon capture and storage technology, a tool for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, remained unchanged at US$23.5 billion in 2011 in comparison to the previous year, according to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute. Although there are currently 75 large-scale, fully-integrated carbon capture and storage projects in 17 countries at various stages of development, only eight are currently operational—a figure that has not changed since 2009

Carbon capture and storage, more commonly known as CCS, refers to the technology that attempts to capture carbon dioxide from its anthropogenic source—often industry and power generation systems—and then store it in permanent geologic reservoirs so that it never enters the atmosphere. The United States is the leading funder of large-scale CCS projects, followed by the European Union and Canada. The new Worldwatch report, part of the Institute’s Vital Signs Online series of analyses of environmentally related trends and data, discusses a number of new CCS projects and facilities throughout the world. Among these is the Century Plant in the United States, which began operating in 2010.

“Although CCS technology has the potential to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions—particularly when used in greenhouse gas intensive coal plants—developing the CCS sector to the point that it can make a serious contribution to emissions reduction will require large-scale investment,” said report author and Worldwatch Sustainable Energy Fellow, Matthew Lucky.

Today, the total storage capacity of all active and planned large-scale CCS projects is equivalent to only about 0.5 percent of the emissions from energy production in 2010. “Capacity will have to be increased several times over before CCS can begin to make a serious dent in global emissions,” said Lucky.

The prospects for future development and application of CCS technology will likely be influenced by a number of factors, the report explains. Last March the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency imposed regulations on CO₂ emissions from power plants. As a result, U.S. power producers will soon be unable to build traditional coal plants without carbon control capabilities (including CCS). The technology will therefore likely become increasingly important as power producers adjust to the new regulations.

Globally, an international regulatory framework for CCS is developing slowly and the technology has been addressed in international climate negotiations. Its classification as a Clean Development Mechanism—a mechanism created through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change to allow industrialized countries to gain credit for emissions reductions they achieve through funding development projects in developing countries—has raised objections, however, from those who argue that it risks prolonging the use carbon-intensive industries.

“CCS technology is worth exploring as one of a large array of potential strategies for slowing the buildup of CO₂ in the atmosphere,” said Worldwatch president Robert Engelman. “But as this report demonstrates, right now there’s little progress in realizing this potential. A technology capable of permanently sequestering large amounts of carbon will be expensive, and so far the world’s markets and governments haven’t assigned much value to carbon or to the prevention of human-caused climate change. Ultimately, that will be needed for progress in CCS development and implementation.”

Further highlights:

• There are now 7 large-scale CCS plants currently under construction, bringing the total annual storage capacity of operating and under constructions plants to 34.97 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.
• According to the International Energy Agency, an additional $2.5–3 trillion will need to be invested in CCS between 2010 and 2050 to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by mid-century.
• On average, $5–6.5 billion a year will need to be invested in CCS globally until 2020 for the development of this technology.
• About 76 percent of global government funding for large-scale CCS has been allocated to power generation projects.

Purchase the full report here. 

Notes to Editors:

For a complimentary copy of this report, please contact Supriya Kumar at skumar@worldwatch.org.

April 27, 2012

New Worldwatch Institute report stresses the urgent need for cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Washington, D.C.—Although global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) declined slightly in 2009, the beginnings of economic recovery led to an unprecedented emissions increase of 5.8 percent in 2010. In 2011, global atmospheric levels of CO₂ reached a high of 391.3 parts per million (ppm), up from 388.6 ppm in 2010 and 280 ppm in pre-industrial times. According to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org) for its Vital Signs Online project, energy use represents the largest source of global CO₂ emissions.

More than 70 percent of CO₂ emissions result from the burning of fossil fuels for energy use, such as electricity generation, transportation, manufacturing, and construction. In 2009, electricity generation and heating alone accounted for 41 percent of all energy related CO₂ emissions.

 “Unfortunately for the future of climate, the global economy remains tightly coupled to fossil fuel combustion and carbon dioxide emissions,” said Worldwatch President Robert Engelman. “We gained a short respite from increases in CO₂ emissions—but only at the cost of an economic downturn. Now we are rebounding economically—at the cost of once again accelerating the approach of a high-risk warming that the world’s nations have so far been unable to address.”

The report highlights emissions increases in both industrialized and developing economies. Member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of industrialized countries, increased their emissions by 3.4 percent in 2010, while countries outside the OECD saw an increase of 7.6 percent. Although China was the world’s largest overall emitter in 2010 (followed by the United States, India, and Russia), an examination of emissions per capita tells a different story. China ranks only 61st in terms of the CO₂ emitted per person. In India—the world’s third largest emitter—emissions per capita rank far below the world average. The United States, in contrast, ranks second overall and 10th in per capita emissions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has long stressed the urgent need for cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, according to the Worldwatch report, national governments have largely failed to bring about the needed reductions.

“The Kyoto Protocol is an important achievement because it is the only international instrument that sets legally binding targets, yet it is increasingly becoming symbolic as it now only regulates around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions,” says author and Worldwatch’s Climate and Energy Research Associate, Xing Fu-Bertaux. Global CO₂ levels are now 45 percent above the 1990 level, which serves as the reference base year for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Several Annex I countries—including the United States, which signed but never ratified the Kyoto Protocol—will be unable to meet their original reductions targets. Since December 2011, Canada, Japan, and Russia, have chosen not to take on additional emissions targets within the second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol in the coming decade.

Further highlights:

• In 2010, coal combustion accounted for 40 percent of energy-related CO₂ emissions, while oil and natural gas represented 37 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Coal generates roughly twice as much CO₂ as gas and oil.
• Carbon intensity—or the CO₂ emissions released per unit of gross domestic product—varies significantly worldwide, reflecting disparities in economic reliance on fossil fuels in various countries. The highest carbon intensities occur in the Middle East, but low-carbon economies such as Japan highlight the possibility of achieving high living standards with lower CO₂ emissions.
• In 2009, more than 70 percent of global CO₂ emissions resulted from burning fossil fuels for electricity generation, transportation, manufacturing, and construction.

April 21, 2012

Published in collaboration with the Worldwatch Institute, the book will be available for free on Earth Day, Sunday April 22^nd. Visit the Barilla think tank website at www.barillacfn.com.

Washington, D.C.—Worldwide, 30 percent of food is wasted, 1 billion people go to bed hungry each night while another 1 billion suffer from health problems related to obesity. Meanwhile, young people are increasingly disconnected from how their food is grown, making solutions to the global agricultural system – which contributes one third of global greenhouse gas emissions – seem even further out of reach.

In response to these problems, the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) is releasing a book, Eating Planet, highlighting the challenges facing today’s food and agricultural system, as well as the myriad of benefits that reform could bring. As Earth Day approaches, it is important to appreciate the links between technology, culture, and agriculture, and how they can help alleviate hunger and poverty. Eating Planet will be downloadable for free on Earth Day, April 22, 2012 from the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition’s website (http://www.barillacfn.com).

“Access to food is one of the first and most fundamental of all human rights,” says Guido Barilla, Chairman of the Barilla Group. “Where food is lacking, it becomes impossible to live with dignity, and the rights to a healthy life and peaceful coexistence are undermined.”

The Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project, an evaluation of environmentally sustainable solutions to alleviate hunger and poverty, collaborated with the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition to produce the report. “The study’s conclusions represent a major step toward ensuring that agriculture contributes to health, environmental sustainability, income generation, and food security,” said Nourishing the Planet project director Danielle Nierenberg. “The ingredients will vary by country and region, but there are some key components that will lead to healthier food systems everywhere.”

The report is divided into four sections: Food for All, Food for Sustainable Growth, Food for Health, and Food for Culture. Each of these sections ends with concrete recommendations, proposals, and actions that need to be taken to solve the global food crisis.

The book features contributions from leading international experts, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres, world renowned economist and Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, philosopher and environmental activist Vandana Shiva and Carlo Petrini, founder of the International “Slow Food” Movement.  It suggests specific reforms to the food and agricultural systems. These include:

• Healthy eating and lifestyles: In developing countries, where rising average incomes are affecting dietary choices, it is important to provide access to and education about healthy foods like fruits and vegetables before bad eating habits develop into deep-rooted cultural practices. Ensuring proper nutrition among infants and children can greatly improve overall health later in life. Among both children and adults, a balanced diet, coupled with an active lifestyle, can minimize the risks of overweight, obesity, tumors, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. The Mediterranean diet may represent the right path here. The Double Pyramid model developed by the Barilla Center links food to its environmental impact: those food items that nutritionists believe should be eaten more often (fruit, vegetables, bread, rice, pasta and legumes) are also those that have a lower impact on the environment. While the nutritional value of the Mediterranean diet has been recognized by the international scientific community for some time, the Double Pyramid now demonstrates that this model also contributes to protecting the environment.

• Fair food prices: To ensure that agriculture remains a viable and sustainable source of livelihood, farmers must be able to ask realistic prices for their products. In many countries, food prices are kept artificially low because they do not take into account the environmental impacts of producing food, the high medical costs associated with long-term unhealthy eating habits, the costs required to pay farmers and farmworkers a decent living wage plus benefits, and the billions of dollars in government subsidies that farmers receive to grow certain commodities. If farmers could charge real prices for the food they grow, consumers, especially in wealthy countries, would reconsider the impacts of their various food choices.

• Transparent and responsible food trade. To improve universal access to food, policymakers must address the lack of transparency and responsibility in the commercial exchange of food around the world. This means, for instance, ensuring that production of crops to be used as biofuels does not interfere with the cultivation of crops for food. The food system must encourage “sustainable well-being,” or the idea that people’s current well-being should not be achieved at the expense of the happiness or prosperity of future generations.

Eating Planet is a collaboration between BCFN and the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project, an evaluation of environmentally sustainable solutions to alleviate hunger and poverty. Worldwatch commends initiatives like these that are working to improve nutrition and draw awareness to the importance of food in everyday life. These and other efforts need more attention, more research, and more investment to help build a more just and sustainable food system. Eating Planet will be available for purchase on Amazon and iTunes starting April 26^th. For more details and updates, please visit www.barillacfn.com/en. 

Notes to Editors:

For more information and for a complimentary copy of this book, please contact Adelaide Feuer at Adelaide.Feuer@edelman.com.

Friday, April 20, 2012

This Earth Day, Worldwatch’s Nourishing the Planet project highlights 15 sustainable agricultural practices that are protecting the environment while also improving people’s livelihoods.

Washington, D.C.—For the last 40 years, Earth Day has been celebrated around the world to call attention to some of our most pressing environmental and social problems, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and dwindling natural resources. This year, the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet (www.NourishingthePlanet.org) highlights 15 agricultural innovations that are already working on the ground to address some of those problems.

“Agriculture provides food for all of us and income for more than 1 billion people around the world,” said Danielle Nierenberg, director of Worldwatch’s Nourishing the Planet project. “Relatively simple innovations to reduce the amount of food we waste, or to help the urban poor become more self-sufficient, can help agriculture feed the world without destroying the planet. The progress we have witnessed in these areas over the last year is definitely encouraging.”

The 15 innovations are used by farmers, scientists, activists, politicians, and businesses and promote a healthier environment and a more food-secure future.

1.  Guaranteeing the Right to Food. Some 1 billion people worldwide experience chronic hunger, and 98 percent of these people live in developing countries. To combat hunger in rural or remote communities, the Brazilian government operates the Food Acquisition Program, which funds local organizations, including community kitchens, hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and schools, to buy and distribute fruits, vegetables, and animal products from smallholder farmers in their region.

2.  Harnessing the Nutritional and Economic Potential of Vegetables. Micronutrient deficiencies, including lack of vitamin A, iodine, and iron, affect 1 billion people worldwide and stem partly from a lack of variety in people’s diets. Slow Food International works to broaden diets, and preserve biodiversity, by helping farmers grow local and indigenous varieties of fruits and vegetables, organizing cooking workshops, and helping producers get access to traditional seeds.

3.  Reducing Food Waste. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that roughly a third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year. In New York City, City Harvest collects nearly 28 million pounds of excess food each year from restaurants, grocers, corporate cafeterias, manufacturers, and farms and delivers it to some 600 local food programs.

4.  Feeding Cities. Poor urban households spend from 60 to 80 percent of their income on food, putting them at risk of hunger or malnutrition when food prices rise or their incomes fall. The French non-governmental organization Solidarités has provided women in Kibera, an urban slum in Nairobi, Kenya, with training, seeds, and sacks to grow vegetables in “vertical farms,” a space-efficient way to increase food security in cities.

5.  Getting More Crop per Drop.  Millions of farmers, including the majority of farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, depend on rainfall to water their crops—which climate scientists predict will decline in coming decades. The company International Development Enterprises sells simple and inexpensive irrigation systems to farmers in Zambia, India, and other countries. Their systems include a treadle pump that draws water from underground without the use of fossil fuels, and a drip irrigation kit that costs just US$5 can efficiently water 20 square meters.

6.  Using Farmers’ Knowledge in Research and Development. Many agricultural research and development programs exclude smallholder farmers. But in Kenya, the Muyafwa Development Program, with help from the U.S.-based nonprofit World Neighbors, involves local farmers in comparing a newly introduced sweet potato variety with the existing indigenous one—ensuring detailed and accurate feedback on the productivity, taste, storability, and hardiness of each variety. 

7.  Improving Soil Fertility. Each year, more than 29 million acres, or enough land to grow 20 million tons of grain, turn into deserts. To combat desertification and land degradation, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics is training farmers in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger to apply small and targeted quantities of fertilizer to crops at planting time or soon after. This has increased yields of the staple crops sorghum and millet by between 44 and 120 percent.

8.  Safeguarding Local Food Biodiversity. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a quarter of the world’s known plant species—some 60,000 to 100,000 species—are threatened with extinction, while soy, wheat, and maize become more and more prevalent in people’s everyday diets. In Norway, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault protects thousands of seed varieties that farmers in developing countries can use to help re-harvest crops that have been affected by disease, climate,or conflict.

9.  Coping with Climate Change and Building Resilience. Global climate change will negatively affect agriculture by reducing soil fertility and decreasing crop yields. In preparation for these impacts, and in response to the land degradation that has already occurred, farmers in Niger have planted nearly 5 million hectares of trees that conserve water, prevent soil erosion, and sequester carbon, making their farms more productive and drought-resistant without the use of chemicals.

10.  Harnessing the Knowledge and Skills of Women Farmers. Women farmers face a variety of obstacles, including a lack of access to information technology, agricultural training, financial services, and support networks like co-operatives or trade unions.The Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a female trade union in India that began in 1992, helps poor, self-employed women achieve full employment and self-reliance by linking them to markets, banks, co-operatives, and self-help groups.

11.  Investing in Africa’s Land. Governments and private investors are acquiring large swathes of agricultural land around the world at very low or no cost, particularly in Africa and Asia—often displacing indigenous peoples. In Ethiopia’s Rift Valley, African farmers and foreign investing companies have reached a compromise: farmers grow green beans for the Dutch market during the European winter months, but cultivate corn and other crops for local consumption during the remaining months.  

12.  Charting a New Path to Eliminating Hunger. Reactive measures to famines and natural disasters, including sending shipments of vitamin-fortified, pre-packaged food, too often replace preventative measures like investing in sustainable agricultural systems or building infrastructure to transport food to remote communities in developing countries. The UN World Food Programme has developed the Purchase for Progress program, which buys fresh produce directly from local farmers and distributes it as food aid both within the farmers’ country and abroad.

13.  Improving Food Production from Livestock. The FAO estimates that 21 percent of the world’s livestock breeds are at risk of extinction. But in India, farmers in the state of Andhra Pradesh are improving the quality of their feed by using grass, sorghum, stover, and brans to produce more milk from fewer animals, demonstrating that animal husbandry can provide an income without harming the environment.

14. Going beyond Production. Although scarcity and famine dominate the discussion of food security in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, many countries are unequipped to deal with the crop surpluses that lead to low commodity prices and food waste. In Uganda, the organization TechnoServe has helped to improve market conditions for banana farmers by forming business groups through which they can buy inputs, receive technical advice, and sell their crops collectively.

15.  Moving Ecoagriculture into the Mainstream. Agricultural practices that emphasize increased production have contributed to the degradation of land, soil, wildlife, and local ecosystems, and ultimately hurt the livelihoods of the farmers who depend on these natural resources. Ranchers and farmers in Dimbangombe, in western Zimbabwe, have committed 20,000 acres of degraded grassland to be communally owned, grazed, and maintained, with the aim of restoring the area’s plants and wildlife while sustainably raising livestock on the land.

These and other efforts to make agriculture a healthy and stable source of income and nourishment will need to continue to be scaled up in the coming years and be passed on to the next generation to ensure that the march toward sustainability continues.

Notes to Editors:

For a complimentary copy of this report, please contact Supriya Kumar at skumar@worldwatch.org.