If the above embedded video does not display, click here to view it.

Blue Venture’s Rare Pride campaign on the Andavadoaka Coast in Madagascar is helping to ensure the health of the world’s third largest coral reef by working with local fishers and communities to protect juvenile fish species by eliminating the use of beach seine nets and the practice of poison fishing.

Rare Conservation Fellow Gildas Andriamalala runs this campaign and is working to reduce the threat of overfishing in his native Madagascar by using social marketing to engage local communities. Gildas finds creative channels to share the message of sustainable fishing, in ways that give that message more impact with the community members.

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Will jellyfish inherit the Earth, or at least the oceans? (let’s hope not) (MSNBC)

• “A study released Thursday found that the spineless creatures are becoming the dominant predator in areas where fish species are being reduced by overfishing and habitat destruction. It’s not just that reduced competition is giving the jellyfish more room. The jellyfish themselves are evolving into bigger specimens by increasing the water content in their gels, the study concluded.”

“Communities on some islands in the Maldives have been forced to relocate because of rising sea levels” (The Telegraph)

• Climate change will increase migration in Asia.
• “Maldives would be among the earliest victims of rising seas as glaciers melt due to global warming, and its officials have become vocal advocates of climate change policy.”

Cleared tropical forests never fully regenerate (Radio Australia)

• A study/interview stating that no matter the disturbance amount or time period, forests are never the same once they are disturbed.

4,600 sea turtles killed yearly by fishing (Conservation International)

• “This study showed that up to 98% of all turtle bycatch — and 80% of all turtle deaths due to bycatch — occurred in shrimp trawls, mostly in the Gulf.”
• “Fortunately, there is a solution. Turtle Excluder Devices, or TEDs, are trapdoors installed in trawl nets that let big animals like turtles escape. Little animals, like shrimp, go to the back of the net. When installed and used properly, these devices are nearly 100% effective in purging turtles from trawls.”
• Solution Search has $20k on the line if you can help sustainable fishing.

Save India’s coasts: For miles on end the waters of the Tamil Nadu coast are blood red from pollution

If the above embedded video does not display, click here to view it.

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2. Notes from a rare planet: Oceans need oxygen. Life needs oxygen. But a warming world means less oxygen in the oceans. A looking oxygen crisis and its impact on world’s oceans...
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More than half a billion households around the world cook with inefficient stoves that are unhealthy to cook with and bad for the environment.

Countries such as Haiti and Uganda have been devastated by deforestation, partly due to fuelwood consumption for open pit stoves. More fuel efficient stoves can make a big difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of people, allowing for better health, better lives, more education and more free time.

Cooking can change the world.

Alexandra Garcia is an independent, non-profit consultant working with organizations whose missions are to promote women, education and the green economy. She is an expert on fuel efficient stoves and answered several questions for us about them.

Her clients include The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and other organizations dedicated to the manufacture and global distribution of clean and efficient cookstoves. She can be reached at agarcia@wedgeresources.net.

What are the health effects of using an open pit stove?

Long-term, daily exposure to open pit fires causes a devastating array of health impacts.

Annually, millions of cases of upper respiratory infections, lung cancer, eye infections, cataracts, low birth weight, burns and other illnesses in the developing world result directly from traditional cooking practices with inefficient, unclean fires and sources of fuel. Estimates of premature deaths resulting from the worst of these conditions range up to 1.9 million per year, more than either malaria or TB. Not surprisingly, women and children are the individuals most affected as they spend far more time tending the fires, cooking the meals and being in the home.

In addition, because of the difficulty or expense in securing sufficient amounts of biomass fuel, the poorest families will often prepare just one cooked meal a day, usually in the evening. Hence, malnutrition results with children suffering the greatest burden. Specifically in the day to day, where their learning is impaired as they attend school hungry and in the long run, where their physical growth and cognitive development are permanently stunted.

What are the environmental costs of these inefficient stoves? Haiti, Uganda and other nations have been greatly affected by deforestation, partly because of using fuelwood.

As with health, the environmental impacts of cooking with traditional fires are multiple. The term inefficient, when related to cooking fires and stoves, refers to the fact that they use relatively high amounts of biomass fuel to cook a meal. Therefore, the gathering of wood to feed such inefficient cooking systems can cause excessive deforestation and the resulting impacts of diminished animal habitats, loss of arable land due to increased erosion and higher risks of landslides. A growing number of countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, are facing these challenges. Within the next 10 to 20 years more states are likely to face serious shortages of suitable woodfuel, such that even if people do have food to eat, they may not be able to prepare it.

Open fires are also described as unclean because of the high amounts of ash and CO2 emitted. In the case of the former, ash will rise into the atmosphere and carried by wind currents, can travel for thousands of miles to land highly ecologically sensitive areas. For example, black soot from the Indian sub-continent has been linked to loss of glacier ice in the Himalayas and in the polar regions of the northern hemisphere.

Last but not least, a traditional open fire supporting a family of four will over the course of a year emit up to 2 tons of carbon dioxide. When multiplied by the more than 500 million households around the world that cook in this way, inefficient cooking can be counted as direct contributor to climate change and global warming.

What are the human capital costs of these stoves? How many hours a week do mothers and children spend gathering firewood? What could that time be better spent on?

Depending on the topography and amount of vegetation, families in the developing world will spend between five to 20 hours a week gathering wood for fuel. Often this job falls to the women and children as in many cultures it is deemed an unsuitable task for men. The time spent gathering fuel carries a real and potentially significant opportunity cost for these families.

For women, the time could rather be spent on economically productive activities (increased farming for sale of produce, starting a micro business, seeking employment) or personal priorities (increased time with friends and family, more time spent helping children with schoolwork, greater involvement in community affairs). For children, this daytime activity takes away from other necessary actions that could benefit them in the future. Fuel collection often takes place during school hours so for those that would otherwise be devoted to homework cannot have the opportunity (since most of these homes do not have lighting, homework can only take place during daylight hours). As a result, helping their families with this subsistence chore can directly affect children’s educational prospects and outcomes.

There have been many fuel efficient stove projects around the world. Many of them have failed. Why do they fail?

Improved stoves have been around for decades, yet the long-term success of dissemination programs has traditionally been fairly low. The reasons for failure are too many to list here and often relate to the specific project designs. However, two factors seem to be consistently present. First, cooking is a deeply cultural activity. Women in Peru cook very differently than women in Guatemala, and certainly very differently than women in Thailand. More to the point, even within country borders as in India – cooking traditions and habits vary from state to state and sometimes even within very small geographic areas. The issue here then is that improved stoves must suit the cultural expectations and habits of the women who are going to use them.

Too often in the past, stoves were designed in a lab by well-intentioned scientists (usually men) who aimed to bring stoves that met all the highest standards of efficiency and cleanliness to the poor in the developing world. Unfortunately, these stoves usually did not suit the cooking and cultural reality of the women. A realization has finally come that some efficiency or cleanliness may need to be traded off for affordability and design considerations. It is a classic example of the tensions between theory and practice, the ideal and the doable. The conclusion is that the actual cooks, i.e. local women, must be included in the design and conceptualization of improved stoves. Without their input, long-term adoption of the stoves as cooking implements, rather than as door stops or footstools, is highly unlikely.

The second factor that seems consistent in failed projects of the past is that stove programs were given away rather than sold or earned through market based mechanisms. People are often wary of items that are just given to them. They will question the quality of the product and the motivation behind the gift. Together, these natural human responses do not encourage long-term and sustained adoption. Furthermore, these programs are often unsustainable because stoves, no matter how well designed will break down, require maintenance, and eventually replacement. In give-away programs, these long term issues are often not addressed and unless the donating organization can ensure a lifetime supply of maintenance or new stoves, it will be impossible to keep the families from reverting back to their traditional three stone fires.

Therefore, programs that include some portion of buy-in by the end users tend to yield greater long-term adoption rates. Such buy-in can take the form of in-kind participation in the building of a fixed stove or actual payment towards the full or subsidized cost of a portable stove. In addition, programs that include the maintenance and service to support extended stove usage are more likely to enjoy long term viability. It should be noted that there is a strong push in the industry for the sales and maintenance capacities to be developed locally.

In other words, there can be added benefits of a well-conceived stove dissemination effort, over and above the health, climate and environmental impacts discussed earlier. Whether undertaken by the public, NGO or private sectors, or a combination of the three, such programs can be the root for new economic opportunities in a community through the establishment of distribution and maintenance enterprises and by offering both men and women the chance to sell stoves as agents or entrepreneurs.

How are men and women motivated differently when it comes to fuel efficient stoves?

Like cooking styles, gender linked motivators are highly dependent on cultural norms. Useful generalizations are hard to come by as for any one we may come up with, there is going to be somewhere in the world where it is absolutely not true. Nevertheless…
In most societies affected by this issue, men control the purse strings and are the ones to make the final decision on a substantial purchase such as stoves tend to be. For them, the notion that an efficient stove will pay for itself in a matter of months through savings from the decreased need for fuel is highly appealing.

The increase in household disposable income could then support the purchase of other items prized by male consumers. However, this argument is often very valid with women as well, as they will appreciate the same long-term benefits of increased purchase power (though in many cases they may view it as additional income to support better diets for their children or other basic necessities).

Factors that may appeal to women especially are rooted in a self-pride and pride in the home. With lessened smoke, they and their clothes smell better, the walls and ceilings in their homes will be cleaner, and less ash will land in the food they prepare. Also, a “pretty” stove can enhance the décor of the home and make it more appealing to host guests and visitors.

Last, peer influence is highly important in both gender groups. Women trust other women in their networks and the successful adoption by one can lead to the same action by her sister, mother, aunt and neighbor. It presents a classic case of “keeping up with the Jones’s” and as stoves develop a certain cachet for the benefits they can bring, the perception of elevated social status of the family in the community can be a strong motivator for both men and women alike.

The list of potential motivators is virtually endless. However, any concept that may be used needs to be analyzed in depth and researched so as not to result in rejection rather than adoption due to unforeseen responses by either men or women.

Could social marketing help increase uptake of these fuel efficient stoves?

For the very reasons mentioned above, social marketing campaigns have a very important role to play in any successful stove effort and could be considered the critical piece that may encourage widespread use beyond a project’s original scope of implementation or target market. At the very least, social marketing is needed to help foster awareness of the negative impacts of three stone fire cooking and the multiple benefits of using improved stoves.

More importantly though, and as suggested above, social marketing that is geared to specific local and cultural practices and habits can be highly influential in helping to modify traditional norms and behavior by addressing and targeting the social values that are of greatest interest to a particular demographic. Whichever the most effective motivator might be, social marketing is the vehicle that will have the greatest chance of getting these new ideas out to the largest number of potential stove users.

What are some of the bright spots with fuel efficient stoves?

There are a number of positive developments in the fuel efficient stove industry. Firstly, implementers of stove programs, whether governmental, NGO or private enterprises are increasingly looking at the traditional barriers to adoption and as a result are 1) including women in their design and distribution plans, 2) working with partners specialized in social marketing strategies to develop effective campaigns, and 3) considering at the outset how to establish the building blocks for local market based enterprises that can support and benefit from the distribution of stoves and their long term maintenance.
Another bright spot for fuel efficient stoves is the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves which was launched in 2010. The Alliance is the first organization to focus on the issue of unsafe and unclean cooking at a global level. By increasing awareness of this topic with the public at large and bringing together governments, donors, and implementing partners from around the world to address this issue in a comprehensive and cohesive manner, the Alliance is able to leverage resources that may otherwise never have been available to the sector.

The organization’s signature goal is to encourage the adoption of 100 million stoves by 2020 through the establishment of a thriving global market for clean cookstoves and fuels. With better conceived efforts by implementers and the new resources that the Global Alliance brings to the table, it appears that wide scale, long term uptake of clean and efficient cookstoves is finally possible. Furthermore, the relevance of this topic in the sphere of international development is starting to reach the prominence it deserves after years of little mention or attention. This can only serve to raise further resources to tackle the problems that unclean and fuel inefficient cooking present to people and the environment around the world.

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If the above embedded video does not display, click here to view it.

Alan Hesse, Pride program manager for Rare, shares with us this video about the care and conservation of the Yellow-eared Parrot, an Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) species in the area of Roncesvalles, Colombia. The Yellow-eared Parrot is unique and very scarce, with about 600 in Roncesvalles.

The Yellow-eared Parrot is the flagship species of the Heidy Valle’s Rare Pride campaign. Heidy’s Rare Pride Campaign aims to conserve the forest and wetlands of the Roncesvalles Watershed in Colombia. This campaign will also help protect the habitat of 300 bird species.

This campaign is part of Rare’s Program forAlliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) habitat and watershed protection in the Andes. The framework for the cohort is straightforward: Lowland farmers, who depend on stewardship of highland watershed habitats, contribute to a conservation fund. The fund provides “payments” to the highland landowners as an incentive to maintain healthy forests. The most popular payments are barbed wire, fruit trees, and bee keeping equipment. Pride campaigns accelerate and deepen community support for this approach.

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Governor Jerry Brown is a pen stroke away from banning the shark fin trade in California (Mongabay)

• The Senate passed the bill 25-9 to ban the sale and trade of shark fins.
• “Conservationists say a ban on the shark fin trade in California will help reduce pressure on declining shark populations and could help spur similar legislation in other states. Already Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands have adopted such bans.”

The U.S. and European Union unite against illegal fishing (The New York Times)

• The U.S. and European Union say illegal fishing ” deprives legitimate fishermen and coastal communities of billions of dollars of revenue each year.”
• “Policymakers argue that illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing — known as “I.U.U.” fishing or pirate fishing — makes a mockery of national and international laws meant to ensure fish stocks are managed in a sustainable manner.”

Sept. 19-20th, a UNU symposium in Malaysia will analyze the costs and benefits of REDD+ (United Nations University)

• “Over recent decades, numerous global, national and local measures have attempted to stem the loss of natural resources and to ensure sustained wellbeing across generations. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. “REDD plus” goes beyond deforestation and forest degradation and includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.”

Human ancestors made stone tools in Africa nearly 1.8 million years ago, some 400,000 years earlier than thought (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory)

• “A new study suggests that Homo erectus, a precursor to modern humans, was using advanced tool-making methods in East Africa 1.8 million years ago, at least 300,000 years earlier than previously thought. The study, published this week in Nature, raises new questions about where these tall and slender early humans originated and how they developed sophisticated tool-making technology.”

Estimates place the loss of Madagascar’s forest cover at almost 90 percent, imperiling the silky sifaka lemur (The New York Times)

If the above embedded video does not display, click here to view it.

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LED vs. CFL — Which light bulb is more efficient? (Clean Technica)

• It depends. CFLs are unquestionable cheaper, but LEDs last much, much longer. They have about the same energy efficiency, however.
• Depending on the bulb and what you’re using the bulb for one bulb may make more sense than the other.

Watch out Ireland, Germany is getting very green: Green energy use in Germany passes 20 percent of total power mix (Yale Environment 360)

• Germany is aiming to produce 35 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

China, US and India add the most wind power in 2011 (Treehugger)

• “In total for the first half of 2011 all nations added an additional 18.4 GW of new wind power, with the year expected to end with there being 43.9 GW completed. The world’s total installed wind power capacity by mid-year was 215 GW.As a point of comparison, by the end of 2010 there was 196.68 GW of wind power; by the end of 2009 there was 159.77 GW.”

Geothermal plant supplies about 20 percent of Hawaii’s electricity (Clean Tchnica)

• This amount of geothermal power has eliminated the need to buy and burn about 144,000 barrels of oil a year.

124,000 fish suffocate to death in single Texas lake due to extreme heat (Treehugger)

• “As Texas continues to suffer from the worst one-year drought on record along with scorchingly high temperatures, area lakes might seem like the best places to find refuge from the heat, but apparently not for fish. According to state wildlife officials, in one lake alone some 124,000 fish perished last week in the extreme weather conditions, not from a lack of water, but from a lack of oxygen — an oft overlooked consequence of rising temperatures which may become more common as heat-spells grow more intense and prolonged.”

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Green energy use in Germany passes 20 percent of total power mix (Yale Environment 360)

• Germany is aiming to produce 35 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020.

Expedition to unexplored areas of Amazon uncovers new species (Blue Channel 24)

• “The discovery of a new primate species and suspected new fish and plant species and the presence of other animals in endangered categories highlight an urgent need for management plans for some of the last unexplored areas in the Amazon.”

Endangered hawksbill turtles make a surprise appearance (The Los Angeles Times)

“Scientists have made the surprise discovery that a population of critically endangered hawksbill turtles, thought to have been wiped out in the eastern Pacific from Mexico to Peru, has survived by occupying a novel habitat — mangrove estuaries — rather than coral reefs where they have been slaughtered for their exquisite shells.”

Renewables enlisting in the U.S. military (Sierra Club Compass)

• Navy Secretary Ray Mabus: The Navy “is getting close to a tipping point on energy” and the military will lead on this issue. “For 235 years, the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps led this country. By using alternative energy, by changing the way we use and produce energy, we’re going to continue to be the most formidable, expeditionary force the world has ever known. And we’re going to continue to do what the Navy and Marine Corps have always done: innovate, adapt and come out on the other side victorious.”

GPS goes green by figuring out the most fuel efficient route (ACE)

• GPSs focus on finding the shortest route, whereas the Green GPS system finds the most fuel-efficient route.

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• White roofs reflect the sun, while black roofs absorb the sun’s rays, making buildings hotter and raising cooling costs.
• It’s a simple change that can make the roofs up to 25 percent more efficient.

Scientists discover new monkey species in Amazon (World Wildlife Fund)

• “The monkey belonging to the Callicebus genus was found in the northwest of Mato Grosso State and is one of the great results from the studies undertaken during an expedition in December 2010 to the Guariba-Roosevelt Extractive Reserve.”

Do you know a young conservation hero? Have them apply for the Future for Nature Award (Future for Nature Foundation

• “The candidate has achieved substantial and long term benefit to the conservation status of one or more animal and/or plant species or that of a specific population of one or more animal and/or plant species.”

Indonesia invites the public to give input on REDD+ national strategy draft (Forests blog)

• “REDD+ is a key instrument to help Indonesia achieve its commitment to reduce greenhouse gases emissions by 26% from business-as-usual levels by 2020 as the most of the country’s emissions come from forestry and land use change. The public consultation process illustrates the government’s efforts to form policies transparently and by involving all stakeholders.”

This is what Hurricane Irene looks like from space

Photo courtesy of Ron Garan/NASA.

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• “According to the Weather Underground blog, the hottest undisputed temperatures ever recorded in Asia have occurred during the last two summers, including temperatures of 127.9 degrees F (53.3 degrees C) in Mitrabah, Kuwait on Aug. 3; 127.4 F in Tallil, Iraq, on Aug. 3; and 127.4 F in Dehloran, Iran on July 28. The hottest undisputed temperature ever recorded in Asia occurred on May 26, 2010, when the mercury hit 128.3 F in Moenjodaro, Pakistan.”

Brazil: Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest decreased by 53.6 percent in July (Blue Channel 24)

• This decline reveres an upward trend in deforestation that was seen in previous months.

Maryland to study reintroduction of Elk (The Baltimore Sum)

• Maryland hasn’t seen elk since the 1700s, but elk were once found from New York to Georgia. They were hunted out more than a century ago.

Disease from human sewage is killing Caribbean corals (Discover Magazine
)

• The highly contagious white pox disease is killing off corals. White lesions erupt all over the coral’s branches
• And the cause? Human feces.

Zoologist capture elephant’s ‘Eureka!’ moment (Wired Science)

• “They decided to create a new task for which a branch baited with food was hung out of “trunk reach” but a box strong enough to the elephant to stand on was placed within the enclosure. Each elephant was individually tested over a couple of days and the video below shows the moment that Kandula, having already used the cube once to reach the food, did it again — this time dragging the cube from out of frame to set it beneath the branch.”

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Sing along to the chorus:

“Get with it! Come lend a hand, let’s all act today. Together we can do it and the A.R.A. will make it work! If we save the Cucuana we’ll have water for tomorrow.”

Heidy’s Rare Pride Campaign aims to conserve the forest and wetlands of the Roncesvalles Watershed in Colombia. This will also help protect the habitat of 300 bird species.

This campaign is part of Rare’s Program forAlliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) habitat and watershed protection in the Andes. The framework for the cohort is straightforward: Lowland farmers, who depend on stewardship of highland watershed habitats, contribute to a conservation fund. The fund provides “payments” to the highland landowners as an incentive to maintain healthy forests. The most popular payments are barbed wire, fruit trees, and bee keeping equipment. Pride campaigns accelerate and deepen community support for this approach.

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