news20090818bil

[Biography of the Day] from [Britannica]
August 18
Virginia Dare
On this day in 1587, Virginia Dare was born on Roanoke Island, Virginia—the site of the first attempted English settlement in North America—becoming the first child born of English parents in the New World.

[On This Day] from [Britannica]
August 18
1227: Death of Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan—a warrior and ruler of genius who, starting from obscure and insignificant beginnings, brought all the nomadic tribes of Mongolia into a rigidly disciplined military state—died this day in 1227.

1900: Indian political leader Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, one of the world's leading women in public life in the 20th century, was born in Allahabad.

1896: According to lore, more than 200 outlaws from regional gangs gathered at Brown's Hole in the American West, where Butch Cassidy proposed to organize a Train Robbers' Syndicate, which became familiarly known as the Wild Bunch.

1786: The city of Reykjavík was designated the administrative capital of Iceland.

1572: Henry, prince of Béarn (later Henry IV of France), married Margaret of Valois of the French royal house.

1477: Mary of Burgundy married Archduke Maximilian, son of the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand III.


[Today's Word] from [Dr. Kazuo Iwata
[英語・一日一言] [岩田 一男 元一橋大学教授]
August 18
Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other.
When a woman gets too old to be attractive to man she turns to Gof.
    Honoré de Balzac (died this day in 1850)

友人同士、自分が相手より少しすぐれていると思っている限り、友情は続く。
Yuji-doshi, jibun-ga aite-yori sukoshi sugureteiru-to omotteiru-kagiri, yujo-wa tsuduku.
女性が年とって、男性の注意をひかなくなると、神様の方へ向きを変える。
Josei-ga toshi totte, dansei-no chui-wo hikanaku-naru-to, kamisama-no ho-he muki-wo kaeru.

[日英混文稿]

news20090818lat

[Today's Newspaper] from [Los Angeles Times]

[Ntional News]
Obama's healthcare trade-off
By backing away from a public option, he increases the chances for his reform proposal overall.
By Peter Nicholas and Janet Hook
August 18, 2009

Reporting from Washington - By dropping his insistence on a public insurance option, President Obama angered some of his most loyal supporters but sharply improved the odds of passing a far-reaching healthcare overhaul.

Moderate Democratic lawmakers are now more likely to back other parts of the evolving legislation, such as prohibiting insurers from denying coverage because of preexisting conditions or cutting off benefits to ill policy-holders, as well as making it easier for small businesses to cover workers.

At the same time, the White House appeared to be making a calculation that liberals would go along with the legislation even if it lacked a provision they deemed indispensable.

The White House expressed Obama's position in calibrated language, making clear that though he preferred to include a government-run healthcare plan in legislation, its absence would not be a deal-breaker.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said there had been no change in White House policy with respect to a government-run plan. Obama wants an insurance market that does a better job of serving consumers, he said, and doesn't consider a public option the only means of accomplishing that.

"The goals are choice and competition," Gibbs said. "His preference is a public option. If there are other ideas, he's happy to look at them. I think this is true not only for the issue of healthcare, but for virtually every other issue that he'll ever deal with in public life."

Many congressional analysts expect the House to approve some form of public plan and the Senate to reject it, setting up a showdown in the final round of negotiations -- probably late this fall.

But the political gain for Obama was clear Monday in the reaction of Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia, one of five Democrats who opposed the bill when it cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee in July.

Boucher said Obama's willingness to compromise on the public option had strengthened the president's hand among conservative Democrats and other skeptics without harming the basic goal of lowering healthcare costs and insuring more people.

Dropping that option, Boucher said, "creates the opportunity to pass the healthcare bill. . . . A government- operated healthcare plan is not essential" to reform.

Throughout the healthcare debate, there has been a push for a more competitive insurance marketplace -- either through the creation of cooperatives or a government plan -- that would drive prices down.

Polls have shown that a large majority of Americans favor a public option. But a vocal group of opponents, who fear an expanded federal influence in people's healthcare, have taken their case to town halls around the country during the August congressional recess. They have argued that a government-run plan would have an unfair advantage and ultimately drive private insurers out of business.

The opposition reached such a pitch, dominating news reports, that the president held three town halls of his own in recent days to rebut what he has called misinformation about his healthcare plan.

And in making clear that the public option was merely a "means to an end" -- in the words of a senior Obama official who requested anonymity when discussing administration thinking -- the president may be able to blunt some of the criticism.

Centrist Democrats on Monday said they welcomed the new White House flexibility.

Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.), a second-term lawmaker from a swing district, said: "It's going to bring votes." Altmire, who was one of three Democrats to vote against the bill in the House Education and Labor Committee, said that the government plan had "become a flash point."

Families USA Executive Director Ron Pollack, a leading consumer advocate who has been pushing a healthcare overhaul for decades, said his group had been distributing a memo touting the "10 Reasons to Support the Health Care Reform Bills." A government plan was only one of them.

"The health reform bills have many critical factors designed to make healthcare more accessible and more affordable," Pollack said in an interview. He and others noted that the bills working their way through the House and Senate included provisions that would transform the way Americans get health insurance -- even without a government plan.

"The public plan is not the essential element of reform," said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank in Washington.

When it comes to strategy, many lawmakers long have seen a concession on the government-run plan as essential to getting any healthcare bill through the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to ensure passage.

All 40 Senate Republicans oppose the public option, as do some Democrats. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has been working to overcome political obstacles in the Senate, where a small bipartisan group of lawmakers has been trying to reach a compromise.

"While Sen. Reid supports a public option, he also supports bipartisan compromise healthcare reform that cuts cost and provides coverage for all Americans," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley. "There are different proposals on the table that can accomplish that goal."

Obama's willingness to jettison the public option if necessary risks alienating some in his liberal base.

Jed Lewison, a liberal blogger, said that if a healthcare bill passed without a government-run program, grass-roots support for future Obama objectives may be more tepid.

"People's intensity will definitely diminish," Lewison said. "People have been listening to strong arguments for the public option coming from the administration. And they believe those arguments. If it comes down to where people feel like in the last few yards of the field, the rug was pulled out from underneath them, they may not be as willing to work hard the next time around."

news20090818nyt

[Today's Newspaper] from [The New York Times]

[Health]
Mental Stress Training Is Planned for U.S. Soldiers
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: August 17, 2009

PHILADELPHIA — The Army plans to require that all 1.1 million of its soldiers take intensive training in emotional resiliency, military officials say.

The training, the first of its kind in the military, is meant to improve performance in combat and head off the mental health problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide, that plague about one-fifth of troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Active-duty soldiers, reservists and members of the National Guard will receive the training, which will also be available to their family members and to civilian employees.

The new program is to be introduced at two bases in October and phased in gradually throughout the service, starting in basic training. It is modeled on techniques that have been tested mainly in middle schools.

Usually taught in weekly 90-minute classes, the methods seek to defuse or expose common habits of thinking and flawed beliefs that can lead to anger and frustration — for example, the tendency to assume the worst. (“My wife didn’t answer the phone; she must be with someone else.”)

The Army wants to train 1,500 sergeants by next summer to teach the techniques.

In an interview, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army’s chief of staff, said the $117 million program was an effort to transform a military culture that has generally considered talk of emotions to be so much hand-holding, a sign of weakness.

“I’m still not sure that our culture is ready to accept this,” General Casey said. “That’s what I worry about most.”

In an open exchange at an early training session here last week, General Casey asked a group of sergeants what they thought of the new training. Did it seem too touchy-feely?

“I believe so, sir,” said one, standing to address the general. He said a formal class would be a hard sell to a young private “who all he wants to do is hang out with his buddies and drink beer.”

But others disagreed, saying the program was desperately needed. And in the interview, General Casey said the mental effects of repeated deployments — rising suicide rates in the Army, mild traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress — had convinced commanders “that we need a program that gives soldiers and their families better ways to cope.”

The general agreed to the interview after The New York Times learned of the program from Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman, chairman of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center, who has been consulting with the Pentagon.

In recent studies, psychologists at Penn and elsewhere have found that the techniques can reduce mental distress in some children and teenagers. But outside experts cautioned that the Army program was more an experiment than a proven solution.

“It’s important to be clear that there’s no evidence that any program makes soldiers more resilient,” said George A. Bonanno, a psychologist at Columbia University. But he and others said the program could settle one of the most important questions in psychology: whether mental toughness can be taught in the classroom.

“These are skills that apply broadly, they’re things people use throughout life, and what we’ve done is adapt them for soldiers,” said Karen Reivich, a psychologist at Penn, who is helping the Army carry out the program.

At the training session, given at a hotel near the university, 48 sergeants in full fatigues and boots sat at desks, took notes, play-acted, and wisecracked as psychologists taught them about mental fitness. In one role-playing exercise, Sgt. First Class James Cole of Fort Riley, Kan., and a classmate acted out Sergeant Cole’s thinking in response to an order late in the day to have his exhausted men do one last difficult assignment.

“Why is he tasking us again for this job?” the classmate asked. “It’s not fair.”

“Well, maybe,” Sergeant Cole responded. “Or maybe he’s hitting us because he knows we’re more reliable.”

In another session, Dr. Reivich asked the sergeants to think of situations when such internal debates were useful.

One, a veteran of several deployments to Iraq, said he was out at dinner the night before when a customer at a nearby table said he and his friends were being obnoxious.

“At one time maybe I would have thrown the guy out the window and gone for the jugular,” the sergeant said. But guided by the new techniques, he fought the temptation and decided to buy the man a beer instead. “The guy came over and apologized,” he said.

The training is based in part on the ideas of Dr. Aaron Beck and the late Albert Ellis, who found that mentally disputing unexamined thoughts and assumptions often defuses them. It also draws on recent research suggesting that people can manage stress by thinking in terms of their psychological strengths.

“Psychology has given us this whole language of pathology, so that a soldier in tears after seeing someone killed thinks, ‘Something’s wrong with me; I have post-traumatic stress,’ ” or P.T.S.D., Dr. Seligman said. “The idea here is to give people a new vocabulary, to speak in terms of resilience. Most people who experience trauma don’t end up with P.T.S.D.; many experience post-traumatic growth.”

Many of the sergeants were at first leery of the techniques. “But I think maybe it becomes like muscle memory — with practice you start to use them automatically,” said Sgt. First Class Darlene Sanders of Fort Jackson, S.C.

To track the effects of the program, the Army will require troops at all levels, from new recruits to officers, to regularly fill out a 170-item questionnaire to evaluate their mental health, along with the strength of their social support, among other things.

The program is not intended to diagnose mental health problems. The results will be kept private, General Casey said.

The Army will track average scores in units to see whether the training has any impact on mental symptoms and performance, said Gen. Rhonda Cornum, the director of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, who is overseeing the carrying out of the new resilience program. General Cornum said that the Army had contracted with researchers at the University of Michigan to determine whether the training was working, and added that corrections could be made along the way “if the program is not having the intended effect.”

This being the Army, the sergeants at the training session last week had questions about logistics. How would teachers be evaluated? How and when would Reserve and Guard units get the training?

Perhaps the biggest question — can an organization that has long suppressed talk of emotions now open up? — is unlikely to have an answer until next year at the earliest. But the Army’s leaders are determined to ask.

“For years, the military has been saying, ‘Oh, my God, a suicide, what do we do now?’ ” said Col. Darryl Williams, the program’s deputy director. “It was reactive. It’s time to change that.”

news20090818wp

[Today's Newspaper] fom [The Washington Post]

[Iraq]
Iraq May Hold Vote On U.S. Withdrawal
As American Focus Turns to North, Troops Could Be Forced to Leave Early
By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 18, 2009

BAGHDAD, Aug. 17 -- U.S. troops could be forced by Iraqi voters to withdraw a year ahead of schedule under a referendum the Iraqi government backed Monday, creating a potential complication for American commanders concerned about rising violence in the country's north.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's move appeared to disregard the wishes of the U.S. government, which has quietly lobbied against the plebiscite. American officials fear it could lead to the annulment of an agreement allowing U.S. troops to stay until the end of 2011, and instead force them out by the start of that year.

The Maliki government's announcement came on the day that the top U.S. general in Iraq proposed a plan to deploy troops to disputed areas in the restive north, a clear indication that the military sees a continuing need for U.S. forces even if Iraqis no longer want them here.

Gen. Ray Odierno said American troops would partner with contingents of the Iraqi army and the Kurdish regional government's paramilitary force, marking the first organized effort to pair U.S. forces with the militia, known as the pesh merga. Iraqi army and Kurdish forces nearly came to blows recently, and there is deep-seated animosity between them, owing to a decades-long fight over ancestry, land and oil.

If Iraqi lawmakers sign off on Maliki's initiative to hold a referendum in January on the withdrawal timeline, a majority of voters could annul a standing U.S.-Iraqi security agreement, forcing the military to pull out completely by January 2011 under the terms of a previous law.

It is unclear whether parliament, which is in recess until next month, would approve the referendum. Lawmakers have yet to pass a measure laying the basic ground rules for the Jan. 16 national election, their top legislative priority for the remainder of 2009.

Before signing off on the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement last year, Iraqi lawmakers demanded that voters get to weigh in on the pact in a referendum that was to take place no later than last month. Because it did not happen, American officials assumed the plebiscite was a dead issue.

U.S. officials say they have no way to know how the referendum would turn out, but they worry that many Iraqis are likely to vote against the pact. Maliki billed the withdrawal of U.S. forces from urban areas at the end of June as a "great victory" for Iraqis, and his government has since markedly curbed the authority and mobility of U.S. forces.

Senior Pentagon officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Odierno probably will make an announcement later this week or early next week the accelerating the withdrawal of U.S. forces, which now stand at 130,000, by one or two brigades between now and the end of the year. Each brigade consists of about 5,000 troops. Odierno said Monday that he has not decided whether to speed up the plan, which he said remains on schedule.

The acceleration would still be much slower than if the referendum nullified the agreement.

Still, senior Pentagon officials played down Maliki's announcement, saying it was an expected part of Iraq's political process. Senior Iraqi officials did not raise the possibility of the referendum with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates when he visited the country earlier this month, Pentagon officials said.

Bahaa Hassan, who owns a mobile phone store in Najaf, south of Baghdad, said he would vote for a speedier withdrawal.

"We want to get rid of the American influence in Iraq, because we suffer from it politically and economically," he said. "We will vote against it so Iraq will be in the hands of Iraqis again."

But many Iraqis, particularly Sunnis and Kurds, consider the presence of the U.S. military a key deterrent to abuses of power by the Shiite-led government.

"After six years of Shiite rule and struggle, we still have no electricity, so what will happen if Americans leave?" said Dhirgham Talib, a government employee in Najaf. "The field will be left to the Shiite parties to do whatever they want with no fear from anybody."

A poll commissioned by the U.S. military earlier this year found that Iraqis expressed far less confidence in American troops than in the Iraqi government or any of its security forces. Twenty-seven percent of Iraqis polled said they had confidence in U.S. forces, according to a Pentagon report presented to Congress last month. By contrast, 72 percent expressed confidence in the national government.

Zainab Karim, a Shiite lawmaker from the Sadrist movement, the most ardently anti-American faction, said she was pleasantly surprised that the government is backing the referendum.

"I consider this a good thing," she said. "But we have to wait and see whether the government is honest about this or whether it is electoral propaganda."

As the Iraqi government took steps to force U.S. troops out earlier than planned, Odierno said Monday that he would like to deploy American forces to villages along disputed areas in northern Iraq to defuse tension between Kurdish troops and forces controlled by the Shiite Arab-led government in Baghdad.

"We're working very hard to come up with a security architecture in the disputed territories that would reduce tension," Odierno told reporters. "They just all feel more comfortable if we're there."

Scores of Iraqis have been killed in recent weeks in villages along the 300-mile frontier south of the Kurdish region. U.S. military officials say the attacks bear the hallmarks of Sunni extremists, but local leaders have traded accusations to bolster their positions on whether specific areas should be under the control of Baghdad or the autonomous government of Kurdistan.

The pesh merga currently controls some villages that are nominally outside the three-province Kurdish region. The expansion of Kurdish influence in northern Iraq has prompted Maliki to deploy more troops loyal to Baghdad to northern provinces south of Kurdistan. The new provincial leadership in Nineveh province, the most restive among them, has made curbing Kurdish expansion its top priority and has called for the expulsion of pesh merga forces.

The tension, Odierno said, has created a security vacuum that has emboldened al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni insurgent group that he said was almost certainly responsible for recent sensational bombings in the province. The number of civilian casualties in Iraq has increased since the urban pullout, Odierno said, largely as a result of attacks in the disputed territories.

"What we have is al-Qaeda exploiting this fissure between the Arabs and the Kurds," he said. "What we're trying to do is close that fissure."

news200918slt1

[Today's Paper: A summary of what's in the major U.S. newspapers] from [Slate Magazine]

The Army Gets Sensitive
By Daniel Politi
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009, at 6:43 AM ET

The Washington Post leads (PW) with news that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki endorsed a referendum that could force U.S. troops to withdraw a year ahead of schedule at a time when American commanders are proposing sending troops to the country's north to deal with the rising violence. U.S. officials had been lobbying against the referendum that would force American troops to leave the country at the beginning of 2011, rather than the end, which is what the current agreement allows. The New York Times (NYT) leads with word that the Army is planning to require all of its soldiers to open up about their feelings as part of a training program that is supposed to improve performance and prevent mental health problems, such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Los Angeles Times (LAT) leads with a look at how by making it clear that the overhaul efforts do not have to include a government-run insurance option, President Obama may have angered some supporters but also increased the likelihood that some type of legislation will pass. Conservative and centrist Democrats praised the president for his flexibility and the White House seems convinced it will ultimately get the support of liberals, despite their insistence on a public option. The Wall Street Journal leads its wordwide newsbox with prosecutors announcing that they have indicted a 28-year-old American and two of his Russian accomplices on charges that they carried out the the largest case of computer crime and identity theft ever prosecuted. USA Today leads with an analysis that found the number of unemployed who opt to continue receiving their former employer's health insurance has doubled since the federal government passed a subsidy to motivate laid-off workers to continue coverage, known as COBRA. Without the subsidy, the average COBRA family premium takes up 84 percent of the average unemployment benefits. Some employers are afraid that higher enrollment in COBRA will increase their health care costs.

The Iraqi parliament still has to approve the referendum that was endorsed by Maliki yesterday. But if it does, then that means that Iraqi citizens could effectively make invalid a standing security agreement between the United States and Iraq and force American troops to leave earlier than scheduled. Yesterday, the top American general in Iraq proposed a plan to send troops to the north of the country, which has seen lots of violence lately.


The WP calls the move "a clear indication that the military sees a continuing need for U.S. forces even if Iraqis no longer want them here." As the WSJ highlights, American commanders think much of the violence in the country's north has to do with the continuing tensions between Arabs and Kurds, which has created a security vacuum that has made it easier for al-Qaida in Iraq to operate. Under the plans proposed yesterday, American troops would work alongside the Iraqi army and the Krudish regional government's paramilitary force, known as the pesh merga. It would mark the first time that U.S. forces join forces with the militia.

The NYT notes that the new Army program to prevent mental health problems has mostly been tested in middle schools and some experts caution that it's hardly a guarantee that soldiers will become more resilient as a result of the training. The Army's chief of staff candidly tells the paper that he's not sure a military culture that often shuns talk of emotions and sees it as a sign of weakness is really ready for this type of training program, but the rising suicide rates, not to mention a myriad of other mental health problems, has convinced commanders to at least give it a shot.

Authorities say 28-year-old Albert Gonzalez, described as a "rising star in the cyber underground" by the WSJ, and his two accomplices hacked into the computer systems of five major companies and stole more than 130 million debit and credit cards numbers from late 2006 to May 2008. If the Gonzalez name sounds familiar it's because he has already been indicted in other cases of identity theft, including the 2005 data breach of TJ Maxx that cost the company around $200 million. He had also been arrested in 2003, but avoided being charged by agreeing to become an informant for the Secret Service. That didn't last long however as he went back to the life of crime and launched what he referred to as "operation get rich or die tryin" that would target Fortune 500 companies.

Analysts largely expect that the House will ultimately pass health care legislation that includes a public option, while the Senate's version won't include it. That means there could be some intense negotiating sessions, "probably late this fall," says the LAT. The White House once again continued to insist the president hasn't changed his position regarding a public option because he never said it was the only way to create a better insurance market. Still, several key Democrats sensed the shift in tone and stated that the public option should not be abandoned. The differences of opinion could end up creating a big rift in the party. One lawmaker predicted that legislation without a public option could lose as many as 100 Democratic votes in the House.

The WP's Eugene Robinson notes that so many aspects of health care reform "have been taken off the table … that expectations are ratcheted down almost daily." A failure to pass anything would surely be devastating to Obama so perhaps the White House has decided to signal it is ready to give up on the public option because something is better than nothing. But it is way too early for such huge concessions. "Giving up on the public option might be expedient," writes Robinson. "But we didn't elect Obama to be an expedient president. We elected him to be a great one."

As it tries to take some of the focus away from the public option, the White House has made clear it is ready to look into nonprofit health cooperatives as an alternative. But the NYT notes in a front-page piece that no one really knows what the health cooperatives would look like and whether they could really be effective competition against private insurers. While Republicans and insurers generally find the co-op idea more palatable than the public option, they're hardly ecstatic about it. Some insist that as long as the government is ready to offer a good chunk of start-up money, member-owned co-ops could be effective. But setting up co-ops certainly wouldn't be easy. Private insurers already have a stranglehold of much of the market and there's no reason to think people would switch unless the co-op offers better services, which, of course, it wouldn't be able to do until it has enough members to negotiate effectively with health care providers. And the WP points out that there's no reason why existing insurers won't try to convert themselves into co-ops, as well as a risk that the co-ops could then attempt to become for-profit corporations if they get a large share of the market.

The NYT notes that many are dumbfounded that even as Obama spends much of his waking hours talking about health care he still hasn't appointed anyone to lead the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid. As the largest buyer of health care in the country, the leader of the agency would certainly play a role in the discussions about health care. But for now, the position remains vacant. "Trying to remake the health care system without a Medicare administrator is like fighting a war without a general," writes the NYT.

Administration officials announced yesterday that they discovered 10 previously unreported deaths in immigration detention. The 10 names were added to the official list, and there was an 11th death that occurred late last week. The list that is known as "the death roster" now includes the names of 104 people who died in immigration detention since October 2003. When the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency gave the list to Congress in March it only had 90 names.

The LAT takes a front-page look at how Vice President Joe Biden appears to be improving his relationship with Obama and is winning some choice assignments despite his well-known tendency to speak his mind at inappropriate moments. Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama, goes as far as to say that his gaffes are "part of what makes the vice president so endearing" because apparently people can relate to misspeaking about Russia's position in the world. He has been working hard to build a friendship with Obama, which one aide described as "courtship after the marriage." Biden worried endlessly about what to get Obama for his 48th birthday. He was set on getting the president a Nintendo Wii and was disappointed when he learned Obama's daughters already have one. So he got him a golf range-finder instead. And, for whatever it's worth, aides say he hasn't discounted running for president in 2016.

CONTINUED ON newsslt2

news20090818gc1

[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate Change]
China to debate 2030 emission cuts deadline
Emissions of carbon dioxide will start to slow by 2020 and peak by 2030 if China implements cuts on the absolute amount of its emissions, report says
Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 August 2009 10.09 BST Article history

Chinese legislators will debate a new resolution on climate change next week, the state media reported today as a high-powered research institute called for the country to reduce carbon emissions by 2030.

The moves indicate possible flexibility in the negotiating stance of the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases ahead of climate change talks in Copenhagen at the end of this year, but, even if adopted, are far from sufficient to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.

A new climate change resolution and amendment to the renewable energy law are on the agenda of the next bimonthly session of the standing committee of the National People's Congress, according to the Xinhua news agency.

It revealed few details, but hopes for a set of more ambitious targets were raised by state media reports that a high-powered thinktank has called for emissions to fall by 2030.

China has refused to set a cap on emissions because it wants to expand its economy to catch up with richer nations that historically pumped more carbon into the atmosphere during the process of development.

That official position has not changed, but several government-linked institutes have projected possible pathways for the emissions to peak.

The most authoritative of them, the nearly 900-page 2050 China Energy and CO2 emissions report sets out several scenarios for change.

The most optimistic of them sees a fall by 2030, but this would require huge investments in renewable energy as well as financial and technical support from overseas.

"I think it is realistic, but the cost will be relatively high, and there are also certain requirements on technology and policy that must be reached," Jiang Kejun, of the Energy Research Institute at the National Development and Reform Commission and one of the authors of the study, told The Associated Press.

The panel advised the government to invest 1 trillion yuan into low-carbon technology development each year until 2050.

"The money would be mainly used to introduce technologies that would raise the energy efficiency of end-users in industry, construction and transportation," Bai Quan, another panel member, was quoted as saying by The China Daily.

Even if these recommendations were adopted and achieved, it is extremely unlikely they would be sufficient to prevent carbon levels in the atmosphere from reaching levels that scientists warn would result in devastating climate change.

The study forecasts China to account for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, by which time its economy will be bigger than that of the United States.

Amid mounting international approbrium, China has signalled that it may be willing to adopt carbon intensity targets relative to economic growth and to make a huge investment in "new energy", including nuclear, solar and more efficient coal plants.

China's top climate envoy, Yu Qingtai, said last month that Beijing would like to see a peak in carbon emissions as soon as possible, but suggested no timetable for when this might happen.


[Environment > Wildlife]
Wildlife crimes pushed to the back of the queue, say conservationists
More than 100 organisations led by RSPB call for review of how police protect Britain's rare animals and plants
Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 August 2009 10.12 BST Article history

Conservationists accused police chiefs of pushing crimes against wildlife "to the back of the queue" today.

More than 100 organisations, led by the RSPB, called for a review of how police protect the nation's rare animals and plants.

They said a lack of agreed standards across forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has led to an inconsistent approach.

A shortage of specialist officers and the low priority given to wildlife crimes means criminals can break the law with little fear of getting caught. Ian West, head of investigations at the RSPB, said the review should be led by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

He said: "Strong laws to protect our wildlife are a sign of a civilised society, but they are only of value if properly enforced."

Wildlife crime was targeted in October 2006 with the formation of the National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU). It gathers information about wildlife crime and supports police forces and customs officers across Britain. .

"The NWCU has listed priorities for wildlife crime enforcement in the UK, including the killing and persecution of birds of prey. Yet, in parts of the English uplands and on the edges of some towns and cities, bird of prey persecution continues at unacceptably high levels.

"There are many competing demands on our police, but wildlife crime is all too often pushed to the back of the queue," he added.

Based in East Lothian, the NWCU's most high-profile priority is protecting rare and endangered species such as birds of prey. Members also work to safeguard badgers, fish and hares from baiting, poaching and hunting.

Lesser known priorities include protecting roosting bats and identifying people who steal and damage fresh water pearl mussels.

In June, an annual report revealed just nine people are manning the unit after bosses were unable to secure permanent funding. They have been swamped with tip-offs and other information from police forces, local authorities and charities.

The number of offenders monitored by the unit continued to grow with 1,503 recorded in the last financial year, an increase of 161 on the previous 12 months.

Senior members said they are struggling to counter the surge in sales of endangered species on the internet.

Paul Wilkinson, of The Wildlife Trusts, said: "It is important that we achieve much greater clarity and rigour in our approach to wildlife crime. The current uncertainty around what constitutes a wildlife crime is surely unacceptable. This grey area helps those who commit wildlife crimes and puts the enforcement agencies, and wildlife itself, at a disadvantage."

news20090818gc2

[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Flooding]
Season of dread returns as Haiti awaits devastating hurricane season
Decades of deforestation left the Carribean island defenceless against last year's catastrophic hurricanes. But Haiti hopes attempts to save it from the storms will save lives this year
Suzanne Goldenberg
guardian.co.uk, Monday 17 August 2009 14.20 BST Arti

The flood waters were washing cows out to sea and spitting up boulders as if they were corks. Garvins Novembre realised he and his infant daughter could easily die in their hut on the beach, so as the water poured down from the hills, the fisherman entrusted his life to a boat made from a hollowed-out tree trunk. He set off paddling along what had been – before the storm hit – the main road of the provincial Haitian town of Petite Rivière des Nippes.

He passed submerged shanties, tin roofs invisible beneath the water line, waterborne cars and trucks. Behind him a freshly built church, seemingly sturdy, was left a disembowelled shell, pews and rear wall sucked out by the sea. "It was terrifying. I thought we would die," Novembre said.

That was 26 August last year when hurricane Gustav made landfall on Haiti. Barely a week later, Haiti was hit again, by hurricane Hanna, and then hurricane Ike a week after that. Watching the mainstream news during last year's Atlantic hurricane season, it would be easy to form the impression that Gustav posed most danger to the Louisiana coastline. Certainly memories of hurricane Katrina are still fresh in Louisiana but Caribbean states like Haiti have far less capacity to deal with the storms when they come. By the time the tropical storm season had ended, Haiti – already one of the poorest nations on Earth – was a billion dollars poorer. More than 1,100 people were dead or missing. Thousands had lost their homes, and there were scattered reports of hunger.

Now the season of dread has returned and already tropical depression Ana looks set to make a direct hit on the island tomorrow morning. Novembre is convinced, as are Haiti's business and government leaders and the international organisations who have helped the country survive, that this season could be the most devastating in living memory.

"Unfortunately I do think that we are going to have a lot of deaths. That is my reading of the situation," said Ronald Joseph Toussaint, the environment ministry official who drafted the Haitian government's policy on climate change and natural disaster. A direct hit on the capital Port-au-Prince, where overcrowded slums cling to the slopes above the town, would be pure catastrophe.

He said: "All the conditions are met to have a worst case scenario in Port au Prince in case we have been hit by a hurricane."

A constellation of factors – crushing poverty and environmental degradation, political instability and bad governance, ill-conceived international aid efforts and sheer geographical bad luck – have crippled Haiti's ability to withstand and recover from tropical storms. "Haiti is a mosaic of vulnerabilities," said Toussaint.

Now the prospect of another calamitous storm season has galvanised the international community, with Bill Clinton, who became the United Nations' envoy to the country in May, joining a new effort to make sure that this year, at least, does not bring Haiti to the tipping point.

There is however a bigger question: does Haiti offer a cautionary tale of what can happen to a country that does not adapt to climate change? The Guardian has made the first of a number of visits to Haiti over the course of this year's Atlantic storm season to report on the country's efforts to adapt.

In its updated hurricane forecast earlier this month, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted seven to 11 named storms would rise up out of the Atlantic before the end of November, with three to six developing into full-blown hurricanes.

Haiti could well be on their route; the names of hurricanes past slip easily into conversation here. Jeanne, in 2004, was the deadliest in recent memory, killing more than 3,000. Last year's quartet – Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike – killed 500 in Gonaives, and caused widespread destruction in Nippes and southern Haiti. For the old timers, there was Flora in 1963, which killed about 5,000 people in Haiti, blowing the roofs off villages and levelling entire banana plantations.

But, the hurricane veterans say, even far lesser storms are bringing huge devastation, with intense flooding and storm surges. For grandmother Swazilliya Pierre Louis, 52, the 2008 storm season destroyed a lifetime of hard work, building up a small business selling snacks to working men in the provincial market town of Miragoâne. When Gustav hit, flooding her tin-roofed wooden shack, Louis had just enough time to grab her purse and her bible. Her savings, which were under the bed, were lost to the rising waters.

She got $125 (£75) in compensation to try to rebuild her life, but it wasn't enough to rebuild her shack. "This last storm I saw was the worst. Even with Flora, the water wasn't so high. A child could stand up in it," she said. "Now I've got nothing left. These aren't my clothes. I even had to borrow bedding."

The Haitian government readily admits that even middling storms are wreaking widespread and severe destruction. The country's natural defences are now destroyed. More than 98% of Haiti's forests have been cut down – mainly by peasants desperate to turn the trees into charcoal they can sell as cooking fuel – leaving barren hills, and soil that is easily washed away. Twenty-five of the 30 water basins, natural systems that once directed rain and flood water safely out to sea, have been clogged or otherwise damaged. The mangroves that once protected coastal areas have vanished.

In Google map images of Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the western, Haitian half is bare.

In truth, the loss was visible long before satellite imagery became widespread. In 1985, the conservationist Jacques Cousteau spent several months off the island on his vessel Calypso, and produced a documentary warning that Haiti was losing a dangerous amount of tree cover. The country's steep hillsides, which already made farming difficult, were at increased risk of erosion. Debris from successive storms was being washed into the sea, driving the fish further offshore, where Haitian fishermen in their dug-outs struggled to compete against modern trawlers from other countries.

Early efforts to save Haiti's forests were misguided, or defeated by political turmoil. One scheme by the US Agency for International Development encouraged peasants to grow fast-growing eucalyptus – only to see them swiftly cut down for fuel. Other efforts collapsed in 1990, when the international community blocked fuel and other shipments to Haiti after the overthrow of the elected leader, Father Aristide. More than 40% of forests were lost in that decade alone.

It took until last year for the country's elite to begin to see a connection between the devastation of the landscape, and natural disaster. "I have to admit that for the majority of the business society, managing water, managing soil, climate change, these are all things that they talk about on CNN and BBC, or that you hear Al Gore going on about," said Gregory Brandt, a prominent businessman. "It's not for us. I'd say the majority was aware but not concerned."

The international community was also slow to grasp the connection, said Anita Swarup, who has worked as a consultant on climate change for Oxfam, Unicef and other organisations. "As far as I can see, little or nothing has been done in terms of dealing with climate change," she said. "The international community is not sufficiently focused on the impacts of climate change on a poor country like Haiti and considerably more needs to be done."

Now that reality is inescapable because of the increasing severity and frequency of storms. The Haitian government and the international community are now fully engaged, but those on the front line of efforts to repair the environmental degradation that has left Haiti so exposed to climate change now admit they feel overwhelmed.

In the last few years Oxfam and other international organisations have been working with farmers to build up the hillsides to prevent the massive rush of water towards the sea. Farmers are being encouraged to plant avocado and mango trees, that could help the soil cling to the slopes, and that could bring income over time. They are also being asked to try to shore up ravines with hedges or even sandbags.

But it often feels like too little too late, said Alexandre Pierre Claudel, an agronomist working with Oxfam in Petite Riviere des Nippes. "It's like we have to keep starting over and over. Nothing lasts for more than a year, and then I am always afraid a hurricane will come," he said. "The farmers are not ready at all. They are relying on God and praying that nothing will happen."

A year on from 2008's hurricane quartet, Haitian government officials have launched an intense push to avoid the worst of the coming season of storms. Town and village councils in the southern Nippes region have drawn up evacuation plans and alarm systems. But most of the town defence teams do not even have radios, let alone cars, to move people to higher ground.

CONTINUED ON newsgc3

news20090818gc3

[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Flooding]
Season of dread returns as Haiti awaits devastating hurricane season
Decades of deforestation left the Carribean island defenceless against last year's catastrophic hurricanes. But Haiti hopes attempts to save it from the storms will save lives this year
Suzanne Goldenberg
guardian.co.uk, Monday 17 August 2009 14.20 BST Arti

CONTINUED FROM newsgc2


And if they did, the main road to Port-au-Prince remains completely submerged by an inland lake that burst its banks in last year's flooding. Fisherman now row travellers across the break.

Even in Gonaives – the focus of international relief for Haiti, with visits from Clinton and celebrities including Wyclef Jean – a third of the town remains in ruins. Dozens of people are still living in plastic tents on a scrap of waste-ground on the edge of town. Gary Dupiton, the town engineer, thinks it will take five years to restore the town completely, provided it does not flood again.

Dupiton has spent the last few months overseeing an ambitious project to widen the La Quinte river, the biggest of several that empty at the town, so that it does not burst its banks once again. In Dupiton's best-case scenario a quarter of the city, Haiti's third largest, will be flooded in the event of a heavy tropical storm.

And in the worst-case scenario? Duputin does not want to dwell on that prospect. He holds up his hands with fingers crossed. "We are going to have to wait and see," he said. "Everyone is crossing their fingers and hoping there will be no hurricanes this year."

Haiti's hurricanes: Trail of destruction

1963 - Hurricane Flora – Over 8,000 people were killed in the 6th most deadly tropical hurricane in the Atlantic ever.

1994 – Hurricane Gordon – Nearly 1,000 Haitians were buried in mudslides due to widespread deforestation.

1998 – Hurricane Georges – 400 victims and 80% of crops destroyed.

2004 – Hurricane Jeanne – Floods caused by over 13 inches of rain killed
over 3,000 people, mainly in the seaside city of Gonaives.

2008 – Hurricanes and storms Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike – 793 people died, 310 went missing and 593 were injured. Nearly 23,000 homes were destroyed. The hurricanes affected 800,000 Haitians, 70% of the country's crops were wiped out. Damage was estimated at $1bn, 5% of Haiti's GDP.

Haiti: an 'ill-fated society'

It is perhaps a testament to the scale of Haiti's ecological devastation that the oceanographer, Jacques Cousteau, spent as much time filming on land as on sea during the four months he spent in the country in 1985.

At the time, Haiti had 7% of its forests left – compared with the 80% cover when Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola in 1492. Great tracts of land were cut down by the French and Spanish colonisers to grow coffee and sugar cane.

An account of Cousteau's expedition in the October 1985 edition of his Calypso Log fanzine draws the link between the deforestation, declining agricultural yields and dwindling fish stocks. The publication takes its name from the vessel Cousteau used for his expeditions.

"Rainfall has lessened and when rain does fall, it pulls away topsoil, causing severe erosion. Two-thirds of all the country's watersheds are partially or totally deforested, and if present trends continue, Haiti will have no watersheds at all by the year 2008," the article says. "All around the island the land has become exhausted."

An article in the December 1985 edition noted: "Haiti's own minister of agriculture told Captain Cousteau his country is at a 'crisis point', a crisis of environment."

The conservationist, who travelled the world for more than 60 years, used his visit to Haiti as a primary example of what he called an "ill-fated society" during his speech to the Earth Summit in Rio seven years later in 1992.

Cousteau also used the occasion to vent his less well-known – and by modern standards utterly reprehensible – views on population control for poor countries.

Haiti in numbers

• Population: 9.8 million

• Poorest country in the Western hemisphere. In 2008, GDP per capita was roughly £800 ($1,300), which places Haiti among the world's 20 poorest nations.

• Nearly 80% of the population lives on less than $2 per day and 56% on less than US$1 per day

• Average life expectancy - men 56, women 59

• Forty percent of Haiti's schools have no actual buildings
• 25 doctors per 100,000 people

• Infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births - 84

• Economic outlook - Instability and violence, especially since the 1980s, have put the economy into a tailspin. Riots in 2008 were sparked by food price rises.

Sources: World Bank, UNDP


[[Environment > Food]
Tesco becomes UK's first retailer to display carbon footprint on milkMethane from cows accounts for biggest proportion of greenhouse gases, as supermarket aims to 'footprint' 500 products by the end of the year
Rebecca Smithers, consumer affairs correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 17 August 2009 15.59 BST Article history

Supermarket giant Tesco has become the first UK retailer to display the full carbon footprint of milk — one of the top-selling products in its stores.

From today, all Tesco own-label full-fat, semi-skimmed and skimmed milk ranges will display the carbon footprint label as part of an on-going drive to help shoppers make "green" purchasing decisions. It has pledged to "footprint" 500 products by the end of the year. The new labelling will not apply to organic milk, where greenhouse gas emissions are generally much lower than for conventional milk.

The move comes alongside new research which found that 50% of customers surveyed now understand the correct meaning of the term "carbon footprint", compared with only 32% of people surveyed in 2008. The research also revealed that customers increasingly want to be green. Over half said they that would seek lower carbon footprint products as part of their weekly shop, compared with only 35% last year.

Tesco community and government director David North said: "We're using [milk] to play an important new role in helping our customers understand climate change, the carbon footprints of products, and what steps they can take to help. Milk is not only one of the biggest sellers in store; it's also prominent on breakfast tables day in day out across the country. So we think carbon labels on milk can play a great part in raising awareness and helping customers navigate the new carbon currency."

Tesco said that with milk it is the agricultural stage that accounts for by far the biggest portion of the carbon footprint — in this case the most significant factor being methane emissions from the cows themselves. Tesco is already working to reduce these emissions alongside the dairy industry and farmers through the Tesco Sustainable Dairy Group and Dairy Centre of Excellence at the University of Liverpool.

North added: "We are currently embarking on a number of research projects to reduce the carbon emissions from milk production. For example, we're working on using different feeds that might help reduce methane emissions from cows, and encouraging the use of renewable energy on farms."

Cutting the greenhouse gas emissions of conventional fresh milk has been a major challenge because of the methane emitted by cows, relative to other animals used for food such as pigs and chickens.

Euan Murray, Carbon Footprinting General Manager of the Carbon Trust said: "Milk is found in almost every UK home and it is taking small actions in our daily lives that will help us really make a difference in tackling climate change. The Carbon Trust have been consistently impressed by the scale and ambition of Tesco's carbon footprinting work, which will make a real difference in building consumer understanding and de-carbonising our daily shopping."

The Carbon Trust is working with Dairy UK to help the milk industry understand more about its carbon footprints as a route to greater emission reductions, he added.

news20090818gc4

[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Travel anf Transport]
World's first mass-produced electric car will hit roads by 2011Renault developing three models for sale in Denmark and Israel
Gwladys Fouché in Copenhagen
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 August 2009 13.50 BST Article history

The company behind plans to roll out the first generation of mass-produced electric cars in the world has announced that it will roll out tens of thousands of vehicles by 2011.

Better Place which will run the scheme with Renault are planning to market around 160,000 cars annually by 2011 in Denmark and Israel.

The car maker is developing three models: a sedan, a compact city car and a panel van. In Denmark, a car will cost up to 200,000 kroner (£23,080) to buy.

"Around 160,000 electric cars will be made available every year. I believe the [annual] sales will be in the tens of thousands," said Jens Moberg, the chief executive of Better Place Denmark, the Danish subsidiary of the transport company developing the lithium batteries fitted in the vehicles.

Electric car drivers will need to sign up for a monthly subscription with Better Place to get access to the batteries. "It will be like signing up for a mobile phone contract," said Moberg.

He declined to say how much a subscription would cost, but said that the 250-watt battery would cost €8,000 (£6,870) to manufacture in 2011-2012. "I expect the cost to come down afterwards as production expands," he said.

Drivers can recharge the batteries at home, which would take several hours, or switch batteries at a swap station, taking three to five minutes — less time than it takes to fill a petrol tank.

In Denmark, close to 100 battery swap stations will be available around the country, progressively expanding in the following years. "Over time there will be less than 1,000 stations," said Moberg.

Drivers will also be able to top up their batteries at charge spots installed at car parks and on the streets. The city of Copenhagen is working on plans to install such spots, with between 50 and 60 charge spots to be made available by the time of the UN's climate change summit in December, when world leaders will attempt to broker a worldwide deal to reduce carbon emissions.

A number of electric Renault cars will also be available to drive during the conference. Those trying out the cars won't have to worry about parking, as it is already free to park an electric car anywhere in Copenhagen.

Moberg said Better Place was in discussion with a number of European countries, including France, about expanding the scheme further from Israel and Denmark.


[Environment > Vestas]
Vestas expands wind turbine manufacturing in China and US as British demand collapses
Vestas chief says wind power industry is showing signs of recovery, and blames nimbyism for blocking projects in Britain
Tim Webb
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 August 2009 13.16 BST Article history

Vestas, which laid off 425 workers when it closed its Isle of Wight factory last month, has hired almost 4,000 extra workers for its new factories in China and the US in the past year, the wind turbine manufacturer has said.

The Danish-based company also said that the wind power industry is showing signs of recovery after being paralysed by the effects of the credit crunch.

The chief executive, Ditlev Engel, said that banks had begun lending to windfarm developers again and that the firm had seen an increase in orders in the past month.

Profits for the three months to the end of the June were still down by 15%, in large part because of redundancy payments it made to the 425 workers in the UK and the 1,142 workers it laid off in Denmark.

Vestas has said that it closed factories in the UK and Denmark because of excess manufacturing capacity in northern Europe as the credit crunch and economic slowdown cut growth in new windfarm projects. It said that not enough windfarms were being built in the UK to justify basing a plant there, blaming local politicians and nimbyism for blocking projects.

Vestas made a pre-tax profit of €78m (£67m) in the three months to June, a fall of 15% on the previous year.

news20090818nn

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 17 August 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.826
News
Irrigation reform needed in Asia
Farms must feed a growing population with a minimal impact on the environment.
Mico Tatalovic

International experts have called for urgent changes to the way water is used in farming throughout Asia.

The report — jointly produced by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) based in Battaramulla, Sri Lanka, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Asia-Pacific Water Forum — warns that Asian countries must modernize their ageing irrigation systems if they are to produce enough food to feed their growing populations in the future.

Asia contains 70% of the world's 277 million hectares of irrigated land. Most of the irrigation infrastructure was built in the 1960s and 1970s during the Green Revolution that allowed Asian agriculture to flourish. For example, from 1970 to 2007, cereal production in South Asia increased by 137% but used only 3% more land. Today, 73% of the water consumed globally for agriculture is used in Asia.

The report notes that the large-scale, state-funded irrigation systems that powered the Green Revolution helped Asian countries to become self-sufficient in food production, and reduced poverty by creating jobs in rural areas. But these systems had many negative consequences for the environment, such as water pollution and reduction of biodiversity. By lowering food prices, they also discouraged further investment in irrigation systems.

Groundwater drought

The report was motivated by the spike in food prices in 2007–08, says Aditi Mukherji, one of the lead authors. That food crisis reminded people of the "imminent threat in the 1960s and 1970s that Asia wouldn't be able to feed its population", says Mukherji. "But the face of Asia has changed a lot since then." More people now live in cities and expect a more diverse diet, so demand for meat and fruit has risen, yet the irrigation systems were designed principally for cereal production.

{“The region is clearly on a dangerous path.”
James Famiglietti
UC Irvine}

"A lot of 1970s irrigation had to do with canals — surface irrigation," says Colin Chartres, director-general of the IWMI. These surface-irrigation systems have fallen into disrepair since the 1990s for a variety of reasons, including poor maintenance by governments. Many were not set up to properly cater to farmer's needs and are failing to provide sufficient water for crops. The main alternative to these old irrigation systems is allowing farmers to tap directly into groundwater themselves — known as atomistic irrigation. The report backs this form of irrigation, as long as it is tightly regulated.

The unregulated use of groundwater means that although surface irrigation has been shrinking in Asia, the total area of irrigated land has been expanding. As demands for water in agriculture have increased, the limited supplies are becoming scarcer, says the report.

"This report aims to increase the productivity of irrigation, not by using more water but by making irrigation systems more efficient," says Chartres.

Cautious optimism

Two recent papers show that groundwater supplies in Asia have been decreasing much faster than was previously thought^1,2. James Famiglietti of the University of California, Irvine, a co-author of one of these studies¹, says: "The region is clearly on a dangerous path. The severity of the problem is equal to that of climate change, maybe more so, and may well be exacerbated by it. Inaction is not an option."

But, he adds, "Groundwater resources are under stress on most of the continents." In the United States for example, irrigation demand is putting tremendous pressure on groundwater both in California's Central Valley and in the Ogallala aquifer in the High Plains in the centre of the country.

The report calls for more education for farmers and others working in the irrigation sector, and for investment in programmes to cut the overall need for water — such as building better roads so that more crops get to market. The authors also suggest involving the private sector in managing the irrigation systems to take some of the burden off governments.

"We're optimistic," adds Chartres. "The 2007–08 food crisis caught us by surprise and it was a wake-up call. If the countries implement policies to help farmers along the lines suggested in the report, it should be possible to provide more food [for Asia] in the next 30–40 years."

References
1. Rodell, M., Velicogna, I. & Famiglietti, J. S. Nature advance online publication doi:10.1038/nature08238 (2009).
2. Tiwari, V. M., Wahr, J. & Swenson, S. Geophys. Res. Lett. advance online publication doi:10.1029/2009GL039401 (2009).


[naturenews]
Published online 17 August 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.825
News: Q&A
India upgrades its disease surveillance network
Microbiologist Udaiveer Rana talks about the country's revamped disease institute.
K. S. Jayaraman

On 30 July, India allocated 5.1 billion rupees (US$110 million) over three years to convert its 100-year-old communicable diseases institute in New Delhi into the Indian equivalent of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.

Microbiologist and veterinary scientist Udaiveer Rana, joint director of the zoonoses division at the new centre, has been a troubleshooter at the institute ever since he joined it 28 years ago. He has rushed to the sites of many diseases outbreaks in India — pneumonic plague in Surat in 1994, leptospirosis in Kerala in 2002, SARS in Goa in 2003, anthrax in Mysore in 2004 and bird flu in West Bengal in 2008. Nature talks to him about the institute's new responsibilities.

Why has the government decided to revamp it's communicable diseases institute into the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC)?

The 1994 outbreak of pneumonic plague was a wake-up call. It caught the country unprepared. Reagents and antisera for diagnosis were not in stock and India had stopped making anti-plague vaccines five years earlier. A government committee found that the epidemic was due to failure of the surveillance system and called for it to be strengthened. The NCDC is the result of this.

So it has taken 15 years to do this?

Not really. A $100-million World Bank project launched in 2004 created the backbone for a disease surveillance system, which now covers all 600 districts with a disease surveillance officer and rapid response team in place in each district and 24-7 satellite communication links with Delhi. The NCDC will build on this existing infrastructure using the fresh funding to modernize equipment and augment manpower. A network of public-health institutions will be created to improve diagnostic capabilities for emerging and re-emerging infections.

What is the agenda of the NCDC?

As health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad says, India has to deal with unsolved problems such as malaria and tuberculosis at the same time as new and re-emerging infectious diseases. Over two dozen new disease-causing agents have emerged during the last 30 years. While the CDC caters to global needs, the NCDC will concentrate on southern and south-east Asia as well as our country. But it will be a long process.

What challenges will the NCDC face?

The main problem is a shortage of manpower at a time when new outbreaks of diseases such as leptospirosis are coming in. It is hard to find epidemiologists. Most of those who nurtured our institute are about to retire. There were 20 officers in microbiology and zoonosis divisions in 1994 but now only 10 remain.

How do you plan to tackle this?

One way is to forge large-scale collaborations with leading national laboratories and universities that have research programmes related to our work. Because 70% of new diseases appearing in India originate in animals [called zoonoses], tie-ups with veterinary institutes scattered across the country will help.

Remember we do not know what new animal diseases will strike, or when. The government has also taken care of some manpower problems. The rules have been amended to allow the recruitment of scientists as consultants. There is not only much better coordination among officials, from ministers all the way down, than there was before, but every report generated in the field now goes to cabinet, which means prompter action by the government.

How about international collaboration?

Scientists from the CDC have been coming periodically to advise us. The first batch of scientists from our institute would have gone to the CDC last month, but for the swine-flu epidemic in India. The NCDC expects to have closer interactions with health systems in south and south-east Asian countries and the World Health Organization is promoting such collaborations. Over the coming year, faculty from the NCDC will conduct a workshop on zoonoses in Thailand, which is working on creating its own CDC. We hope in the years to come NCDC can take a bigger role in this region with the WHO's help.