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Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, commonly known as LEED, has become the standard for green building design since the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a nongovernmental organization, crafted the rating system eight years ago. Architecture that voluntarily improves energy efficiency, water conservation, and indoor air quality has surged in popularity in the past two years, especially in Europe and major U.S. cities.

According to USGBC's August statistics, more than 2,400 commercial and residential buildings worldwide are LEED certified, and nearly 14,000 are under way. The green building movement has the potential to significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States, about 40 percent of all energy is used to heat, light, and cool residential and commercial buildings, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration.

Minimum LEED certification, however, does not necessarily guarantee environmental improvements. Developers who purchase environmentally related products off a LEED-supplied checklist may produce a LEED-certified building, but the building's future impact on energy and resource use is unknown. The proposed revisions are the beginning of a transition toward buildings that earn their green marks based on performance rather than eco-marketing.

The current LEED system allocates a maximum of 69 points for various environmental quality improvements. A building that receives 26 points is certified, and more points are necessary to receive the higher rankings of silver, gold, and platinum. While costly improvements such as solar panels are likely to boost a building's rankings, all categories are given equal weight, making some improvements less effective than others.

The new model emphasizes designs that the USGBC considers most beneficial for today's global environment. Improvements that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and burn fewer fossil fuels account for 34 of the 100 points. While a building requires only 40 points to receive certification, factors including access to transportation and energy efficiency can no longer be avoided, said Scot Horst, chair of the LEED steering committee. "We are saying climate change is the most important thing, so we put the most points to credits that deal with climate change," said Horst, president of the architecture consultancy 7Group. "If you want to get certified, you have to focus on those areas."

The new criteria place greater focus on the environmental impact of a building's entire life cycle. Contributions to eutrophication - the creation of oxygen-free dead zones in polluted water bodies - and "ecotoxicity" are now emphasized. Eventually, the USGBC envisions a system that assesses lifecycle impacts by measuring a building's pollutants, rather than being based solely on the attributes of building materials.

The 2009 LEED standards also plan to include more mandatory designs - most notably water efficiency. Building requirements, however, are not the same in all climates, and the stricter rules may further complicate efforts to streamline the process. Green developers in arid regions, for instance, struggle to balance air ventilation with energy conservation: if more hot air enters a building, more air conditioning is demanded.

To compensate for regional differences, the proposed standards grant local chapters "bonus points" that can be allocated toward design issues that would aid certification in that area. "This is the best way possible to give responsibility to chapters - they're the ones who know the local issues - without jeopardizing the consistency of LEED overall," Horst said.

But several architects still consider the system lacking. "There is a tension between having a national system... and yet still allowing a lot of regional differences," said Yudelson, who chairs the USGBC's annual conference committee. "[A solution] is for LEED 2012... We're not ready to make that big of a leap."

The number of green buildings constructed remains relatively small - about 2 percent, according to a 2006 Green Building SmartMarket Report - due to higher building costs and the often stressful complexity of the certification system. To simplify the process, independent certifiers [PDF] have been hired to handle the growing number of certification requests. The costs are also beginning to fall as energy prices climb and green designs become mainstream.

"The changes in LEED are definite improvements, I think everyone is behind them, but we also need to improve the system," Yudelson said. "We need results, not just a certification on a building."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

For permission to reprint this article, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org.

A cup of coffee has a hidden cost.

If the full water requirements of a morning roast are calculated - farm irrigation, bean transportation, and the serving of the coffee - one cup requires 140 liters of water.

This notion of a product's "water footprint" is gaining traction. Defined as the total volume of freshwater required to produce a nation's goods and services, the tool tracks domestic water demand and the impact of consumption on water resources across the globe.

As world water availability begins to decline as the result of population growth, overconsumption, and climate change, more water advocates are encouraging governments and consumers to internalize the true cost of water through an account of their water footprint.

The global water footprint is about 7.5 trillion cubic meters per year, not including irrigation losses, according to estimates [PDF] by Dutch researchers and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). India, with 17 percent of the global population, has the largest water footprint in absolute terms. But its footprint represents only 13 percent of the world total. The United States, in comparison, comprises 4.5 percent of the world population and consumes 9 percent of the world's water.

Agriculture has the greatest impact on a water footprint. Global crop production requires more than 6 trillion cubic meters of water each year, with nearly a quarter of supplies flowing to rice paddies. Livestock production requires the most water resources in the food chain. One hamburger, for instance, needs 2,400 liters of water on average.

During World Water Week, which runs through Sunday, the water footprint concept is benefiting from a spike in attention. This year's Stockholm Water Prize was awarded to professor John Anthony Allan of King's College London for introducing the predecessor to water footprints: the term "virtual water" - the volume of water required to produce a commodity or service.

The conservation group WWF-UK estimated that the 4,645 average liters of water that Britons consume daily leads the country to import 62 percent of its water sources - making it the sixth largest net importer worldwide behind Brazil, Mexico, Japan, China, and Italy, according to a report released Wednesday. "Only 38 percent of the UK's total water use comes from its own rivers, lakes and groundwater reserves," said WWF's Stuart Orr in a press statement. "The rest is taken from...water resources [often] stressed or very likely to become so in the near future."

Plastic manufacturer Borealis and plumbing supplier Uponor revealed a joint plan to include water footprints in the future planning of plastic products on Wednesday. "Understanding our footprint can be a key tool to further guide the development of more water-saving products," said Tarmo Anttlla, Uponor's communication vice president, in a prepared statement.

Roughly one-third of the world population is estimated to be living in areas of water scarcity. Unless water footprints recede, fierce conflicts over water resources are likely unavoidable, experts warn.

"Feeding everyone - including the undernourished and additional 3 billion people expected in 2050 - will require 50 percent more water than is needed today," said Anders Berntell, executive director of Stockholm International Water Institute at the World Water Week opening ceremony. "We are not prepared to deal with the implications this has for our planet."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be contacted at bblock@worldwatch.org

For permission to reprint this article, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org.

The $8 million seizure was the largest ivory catch in Hong Kong since a 1989 agreement banned the international ivory trade. Ivory seizures are on the rise, particularly in Southeast Asia; the Hong Kong catch was only about half the size of the largest in recent years. At least 68 tons of ivory have been confiscated over the past decade. The cause: illegal ivory has quadrupled in value since 2004, and anti-poaching resources are typically stretched thin.

Law enforcement officials investigating the source of the Hong Kong ivory had no clue where the stash originated before leaving Douala, a port city in the west African nation of Cameroon. DNA technology, however, was able to verify that many of the tusks once belonged to forest elephants that lived in southern Gabon, near the Republic of Congo border.

Extracting elephant DNA from confiscated ivory could be an important tool to take wildlife investigations a step farther and to stop poaching at its source. Such expensive forensic work may become necessary to protect dwindling elephant populations and curb the illegal ivory market before it grows completely out of control.

"In big seizures, there's a very strong tendency to ship ivory out of a different country than where it's poached... It's a bit of a red herring," said Samuel Wasser, director of the University of Washington's Center for Conservation Biology and the lead author of the study, published in this month's issue of Conservation Biology [PDF]. "The methods we developed are very important in that regard because it focuses where the poaching is ongoing."

Wasser's team tested ivory from the Hong Kong sting and from a 6.5 ton ivory seizure in Singapore in 2002. After analyzing the samples' genes and comparing them against a complex elephant DNA map that covers much of Africa, the researchers were able to trace the Hong Kong samples to elephant populations in Gabon. The Singapore samples were linked to populations in southern Africa, mostly in Zambia.

Although some DNA source locations were scattered, the findings point to much more specific origins of illegal poaching than were previously available. The findings also contradict previous assumptions that ivory dealers would purchase tusks from throughout Africa as they become available. Instead, Wasser's paper suggests that "crime syndicates were targeting specific populations for intense exploitation, hitting them hard and fast to satisfy the demands of a particular consignment."

After it was revealed that most of the ivory seized in Singapore came from elephants in Zambia, that country's director of wildlife was replaced and its courts began to impose harsher sentences for ivory smugglers. "At the time of the analyses, authorities thought the ivory came from Tanzania and/or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Our analyses refocused the investigation, allowed authorities to point the finger at Zambia and get them to do something," Wasser said.

Despite the benefits of forensic testing for future investigations, funding for wildlife enforcement is limited. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the international body that oversees the ivory ban, received $7.5 million in support this year. This is about $2.5 million more than a decade ago, but it is not enough to support DNA investigations in developing nations.

The international police organization INTERPOL has developed an agency to facilitate global wildlife crime investigations, but it too lacks sufficient funding. "We're not in a position, given we have 186 countries [to oversee], to start to pay for their evidence handling on a case-by-case basis. We're certainly not a bank," said Peter Younger, the INTERPOL wildlife crime program manager.

A few laboratories across the world - the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's forensic lab in Oregon and Wasser's Center for Conservation Biology, for instance - have agreed to pay for DNA testing of stolen ivory and other wildlife evidence, such as illegally shipped old-growth trees. Wasser's lab paid $300 per sample to analyze the seized African ivory and construct its DNA map. In the 10 years it took to create the map, the lab processed more than 1,000 samples.

"Even though the number of elephants left is a third of what it was prior to the ban, and a higher proportion are being killed than before, you'd think the alarm bell should be going off," Wasser said. "As long as the public is so clueless about the situation, there is no incentive for governments with money to pay for it."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

For permission to reprint this article, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org.

Many vulnerable species are facing reduced numbers because the adaptations that have served them for thousands of years make them unable to survive small changes in temperature or precipitation. When faced with climate change and other threats to their habitat, some species may not be able to relocate quickly enough to save them from extinction. A new technique called assisted colonization may prove to be an innovative solution.

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We are looking for a highly motivated and innovative person to play a significant role in the ongoing development and management of EarthTrends. The successful applicant will help to fulfill WRI's mission of guaranteeing public access to information and analysis related to sustainable development and the environment.

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On May 1, 2008, the Regulations on Government Disclosure of Information officially took effect, making China one of 70 countries worldwide that has enacted comprehensive freedom of information (FOI) legislation. The objective of the Chinese regulation specifically is "to ensure that citizens, legal persons and other organizations can obtain government information by lawful means and increase government transparency."

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Speaking before an enthusiastic crowd at a sold-out DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., former Vice President Al Gore issued a challenge to "repower America." Gore's challenge is undoubtedly ambitious: he wants the entire U.S. electricity sector to shift to zero-carbon sources like wind, solar, and geothermal in the next 10 years.

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The impacts of climate change are already being felt, especially in the most fragile and marginal ecosystems around the world. In particular, coral reefs, which are extremely sensitive to changes in the temperature and acidity of the water in which they form, are being destabilized by a changing ocean environment. Several scientific studies have demonstrated that many of the world's coral reefs are precariously close to total failure. A new study, while confirming this conclusion, does offer some hope.

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