Environmental degradation kills 62 million people each year

Do you think the headline figure sounds a little bit too high? Perhaps you are right because the year 2007 study I just read includes such causes of death as AIDS and second hand smoking. But rather than being just a look at the body count it's actually an assessment of the relationship between population growth and escalating degradation of the environment and how both factors kill people.

This blog usually deals with typical conflict caused or inspired by natural resources. Population growth is essentially only a problem because of the limited space available hence I think it's fair to say the problems it causes are also 'environment problems'. The closer we live the more we expose each other to our diseases and the various toxins we produce, consume and waste. The more people we are the more food we need - the more biosphere we consume and industrialize, the closer we keep our livestock and the more of us go hungry. And the more hazardous the environment we live in, the more likely we are to kill our neighbor and run off with his.

The top three killers

#3: Tuberculosis
Blowing soil can contain many different pathogens - tuberculosis (TB), anthrax et cetera. Industrialized agriculture and deforestation are the main reasons for erosion by wind of contaminated soil. Just an example of how the various issues are intrinsically linked. Right now about 2 billion people (absurd) are infected with TB and 3 million people will die each year.

#2: Diarrhea
Hastily erected housing and slum suffer from bad sanitation. Bad sanitation - or none at all - will cause various health issues. But 2.5 billion people lack adequate sanitation. Proper sanitation could have hindered most of the 4 billion annual diarrhea infections as well as most of the 2.1 million deaths. Totally, lack of sanitation is estimated to kill more than 5 million people each year by various means.

#1: Malnutrition
People who don't eat right or just not enough are more susceptible to many other problems. The soil erosion mentioned, caused by industrialized agriculture, is not only spreading diseases and diminishing our arable land area - crop productivity per area is drastically reduced. Causing more malnutrition. 6 million children die from malnutrition issues each year. 2.5 million die from vitamin A deficiency and 9 million from iron deficiency. A staggering total of about 18 million people dies from malnutrition each year.

Honorable mention is deserved in the case of air pollution problems (3 million), asthma (2.1 million), malaria (1.2-2.7 million) and measles (1.1 million).

But we're getting better, right?

On the Bjørn Lomborg show, perhaps. In the real world, no. From 1970 to 2002 the number of cancer cases climbed from 331,000 to 563,000 in the USA alone; mostly caused by chemical pollutants. From 1940 to 2007 women's risk of breast cancer went from 1/22 to 1/7. From 1971 to 1986 malaria increased by 76% in Brazil; mostly caused by deforestation. From 1950 to 2007 the number of malnourished people went from about 500 million or 20% to 3.7 billion or 60%. Iron intake is going down along with the rest of the measures of food quality. Antibiotics go useless as pathogens evolve resistance do to our overuse. I could go on and on...

New problems in a new environment

SARS evolved because people and livestock crowded in China. Almost the same story with avian flu. Neither has killed that many people yet, but they are new problems with high mortality rates.

Construction of dams has increased the number of snails that host schistosomiasis [Wikipedia] and climate change is creating an environment more suitable for them. Schistosomiasis has now spread to areas where it was never seen before, infecting more than 200 million people, killing as many as 200,000 annually. Global warming also helps spread malaria and many other diseases. Our massive consumption of fossilized fuels seems to be at the root of so many of our problems. (And what do we do? Use more of it waging wars over the remaining sources of it.)

Salmonella, E. coli and Campylobacter microbes infect our increasingly crowded livestock while new diseases evolve in unsanitary industrialized slaughterhouses.

While I think I insist HIV isn't an environmental issue, infected people help spread numerous other diseases. Wars and urbanization undoubtedly help spread both. Our biosphere is a complex system. Any change in a complex system will produce numerous other changes and will always cause crisis somewhere. I wrote it already: I could go on and on...




Pimentel, D., Cooperstein, S., Randell, H., Filiberto, D., Sorrentino, S., Kaye, B., Nicklin, C., Yagi, J., Brian, J., O'Hern, J., Habas, A., Weinstein, C. (2007). Ecology of Increasing Diseases: Population Growth and Environmental Degradation. Human Ecology, 35(6), 653-668. DOI: 10.1007/s10745-007-9128-3

Natural resources and civil war

My third research blogging post takes a real quick look at What Do We Know about Natural Resources and Civil War? by Michael Ross, year 2004. It is a review of several other studies; work by Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler and James Fearon seems to have been among the most influential and the work of Le Billon - which I blogged about this March - is reviewed too.

The studies vary widely in scope and methodology: Covering from 27 to 262 civil wars, spanning various intervals from 1945 to 2000 and approaching issues such as missing data in entirely different ways. But a set of common issues and conclusions are identified.

Issues

Ross discusses causality issues that any investigation on environment-conflict links should pay attention to. I.e. "reverse causality": Years of unrest could drive off manufacturing businesses in turn leading to a higher dependence on exporting natural resources. Which then in turn could fuel outright conflict. Also, we are reminded how both resource dependence and war can be caused by a third variable. Or several variables. Many states dependent on the export of some local commodity have several other issues: poverty, corruption, harsh government etc. All of which could inspire conflict.

Some of the studies reviewed are criticized for using a very broad variable; "primary commodities". Other studies produce more significant correlations using finer definitions; oil, gems etc.

Common conclusions

One conclusion from a Collier & Hoeffler study seems a bit math-naive (which may be why I tend to pay attention):

[...] data suggest that resource dependence has a non-linear effect: it increases the likelihood of conflict until the resource exports-to-GDP ratio is 32%; beyond this point it diminishes the likelihood of conflict.

• Oil increases the likelihood of conflict, particularly separatist.


• Lootable commodities such as gems and drugs tend to lengthen existing conflicts.


• There is no link between legal agriculture and civil war. (Despite most wars being fought in countries with large agricultural sectors.)

In some cases though, it appears diamonds have shortened wars by facilitating military victories.

Ross, M.L. (2004). What Do We Know about Natural Resources and Civil War?. Journal of Peace Research, 41(3), 337-356. DOI: 10.1177/0022343304043773

(pause) by kevindooley

Climatology Wars

Australian Professor Barry Brook has had enough of the attacks on climate science:

"Some people will attempt to hijack science for political or ideological reasons and in doing so besmirch science's public image [...] They are good at doing this and they often exert a disproportionate influence on policy. Groups with vested interests in business-as-usual will attempt to push so-called scientific evidence to support their claims. In fact they are at best drawing selectively on a small part of the evidence, or at worst relying on junk science - that is, outdated, discredited or fabricated data and ideas."

Climate change deniers 'smear science'
I myself has been about to snap out of it several times. How is it the complex issue of climate change is something everyone seems to feel a right to claim to be experts in? Skeptics? All scientists are skeptics!

For a lot more about my approach to science (judging from the search words leading people here I judge some readers are interested...) and the absurd attacks from "climate change deniers", creationists and others, please read my piece at Newsvine: Let's get smarter here: Reason not faith, please. I'm considering a follow-up on the difference between truth and significance some time.

New Scientist: Is this the beginning of water wars?

Barcelona and the surrounding region are suffering the worst drought in decades. There are several possible solutions, including diverting a river, and desalinating water. But the city looks like it will ship water from the French port of Marseilles.

The Tigris and Euphrates rivers start in Turkey and supply Syria and Iraq. The Turkish government is building dams on those rivers, reducing the flow downstream and stoking long-standing tensions with its neighbours.

Somewhat sensationalist headline perhaps. But none the less... here we go. This situation is expected to worsen and spread. Trade solutions are still possible but as soon as neighboring countries start both thirsting more radical approaches will be attempted.

Biofuel dilemmas

People are realizing biofuels are no magic wand to our global carbon issues. What is quite obvious to anyone with a bit of training in systems ecology was confirmed this February by a study published in Science. I may or may not do a ResearchBlogging entry on it some time, but for now I do with these popularized versions:

• Clearing Land for Biofuels Makes Global Warming Worse


• Biofuels Are Bad for Feeding People and Combating Climate Change


• Biofuels make climate change worse, scientific study concludes

In short, sure biofuels draw energy from carbon produced in this cycle as opposed to a fossilized one, hence doesn't contribute directly to the greenhouse effect. But if used as an excuse to keep consuming and clearing forest it's a disaster - corn fields hold just a fraction of the carbon (and numerous other ecosystem services) a forest does, and if it competes with food production in a starving world, well... it's no rocket science.

March saw a number of warnings from people and organizations perhaps having read the above mentioned Science paper: Nestle in minding their (food not fuel) business (Biofuel boom threatens food supplies: Nestle), Professor Bob Watson a.o. (Top scientists warn against rush to biofuel, Biofuels threaten 'billions of lives'), Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram (Indian minister attacks biofuels), US Army veteran and rancher John Carter (The Clean Energy Scam) and many others. The last article is a quite lengthy TIME piece I can only recommend; it portrays the grotesque contrast between Brazil's long standing and relatively sensible and successful biofuel practice and how the US rapidly messes things up globally by their (not so capitalist) biofuel subsidies. I now know 20% of carbon emissions are due to deforestation and that the benefit of biofuel will only level the deforestation emissions in on average 400 years.

"There are real problems with the unsustainability of biofuels, [...cutting down rainforest to grow the crops is...] profoundly stupid". - John Beddington, UK government chief scientific adviser.

MSN Finance did an article on the market situation (Could we really run out of food?) - advising their readers to invest in agriculture and noting poor rice producing countries have begun imposing limitations to exports. None other than the world bank is in the choir (World Bank Expects More High Food Prices) warning us this is a situation we'll have to deal with in many years ahead and informs they almost doubled their agricultural loans.

"[...] you can now add "peak wheat" to your political and investment lexicon. And it's a lot worse [than peak oil.]" - Jon Markman, MSN Finance.

The number of ways that this situation can lead to conflicts are more than I can count. But don't give up your hybrid yet. Although biofuels are clearly part of the problem, they could be part of the solution as well. I'm thinking the science fiction like news of engineered bacteria and algae producing biofuel or making the existing processes more efficient (Breeding the Oil Bug and many others).

The article that kicked me off putting together this post was The Biggest Green Mistake. It's using hypertext the way hypertext was meant to be used (contrary to most media) meaning it links to tons of sources in the text. It's arguing we need more genetic engineering and radical technical solutions - I'm confident I don't fully agree but they are definitely onto something.