The New Nation - Internet Edition

How to green the global economy

A super-small pacemaker modeled on the wiring of the humpback whale's heart and pigment-free colour coatings from the light-splitting structures of a peacock's feather are among a range of extraordinary new eco-breakthroughs emerging from mimicking nature.

Other commercially-promising advances, inspired by natural world and its close to four billion year-old history of "research and development" include:

- Vaccines that survive without refrigeration based on Africa's 'resurrection' plant.

- Friction-free surfaces suitable for modern electrical devices gleaned from the slippery skin of the Arabian Peninsula's sandfish lizard.

- New antibacterial substances inspired by marine algae found off Australia's coast that promise a new way of defeating health hazardous bugs without contributing to the threat of increasing bacterial resistance.

- Toxic-free fire retardants, based on waste citrus and grape crops inspired by the way animal cells turn food into energy without producing flames - the so called citric acid or Krebs cycle.

- A pioneering water harvesting system to recycle steam from cooling towers and allowing buildings to collect their own water supplies from the air inspired by the way the Namib Desert Beetle of Namibia harvests water from desert fogs.

- Biodegradable, water-tight packaging and water-repellant linings for pipes to tents that mimic the Australian water-holding frog.

These are just some of inventions, innovations and ideas at the centre of a new collaborative initiative called Nature's 100 Best.

The initiative is the brainchild of the Biomimicry Guild and the Zero Emission Research and Initiatives (ZERI) in partnership with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and IUCN-the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

It is aimed at showcasing how tomorrow's economy can be realized today by learning, copying and mimicking the way nature has already solved many of the technological and sustainability problems confronting humankind. According to Janine Benyus and Gunter Pauli, co-creators of the Nature's 100 Best project, "Life solves its problems with well-adapted designs, life-friendly chemistry, and smart material and energy use. What better models could there be?"

The Nature's 100 Best List, a mixture of innovations at various stages of commercialization from the drawing board to imminent arrival in the marketplace, is set to be completed by October 2008 in time for the IUCN Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The Nature's 100 Best book will be published in May 2009.

Today the collaborators and partners unveiled some of the preliminary projects and products being included on Nature's 100 Best from an original list over 2,000.

It coincides with the ministerial part of the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting taking place in Bonn, Germany where up to 6,000 delegates and over 190 governments are meeting to slow the rate of loss of biodiversity.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, said: "Biomimicry is a field whose time has come. Anyone doubting the economic and development value of the natural world need only sift through the extraordinary number of commercially promising inventions now emerging-inventions that are as a result of understanding and copying nature's designs and the superior way in which living organisms successfully manage challenges from clean energy generation to re-using and recycling wastes".

"There are countless reasons why we must accelerate the international response and the flow of funds to counter rapidly eroding biodiversity and rapidly degrading ecosystems: Nature's 100 Best gives us 100 extra reasons to act and 100 extra reasons why better managing biodiversity is not a question of aid or an economic burden but an issue of investing in the non-polluting businesses, industries and jobs of the near future," he said.

Janine Benyus, head of the Biomimicry Guild added, "Biomimicry is science at the cutting edge of the 21st century economy and based on 3.8 billion years of evolution. Indeed the way nature makes novel substances; generates energy and synthesizes unique structures are the secrets to how humans can survive and thrive on this planet."

Gunter Pauli, head of the Zeri Foundation based in Geneva, added: "Steam and coal transformed the 19th century; telecommunications and electronics, the 20th. We are now on the edge of a biologically-based revolution and in some of the inventions showcased under this new initiative will undoubtedly be the business models for the new Googles, Welcomes, Unilevers and General Electrics of the modern age. With over one billion Euros already invested in the most important technologies this is a trend in innovation for industry to follow" he said.

Humpback Heart Pacemakers

Over 350,000 people in the United States alone are fitted with new or replacement pacemakers annually. The cost of fitting a new device is up to $50,000 per patient.

Enter Jorge Reynolds, Director of the Whale Heart Satellite Tracking Program in Colombia, whose research is unraveling the mysteries of how the Humpack's 2,000-pound heart pumps the equivalent of six bath tubs of oxygenated blood through a circulatory system 4,500 times as extensive as a human's.

The work is also pinpointing how this is achieved even at very low rates of three to four beats a minute and how the electrical stimulation is achieved through a mass of blubber that shields the whale's heart from the cold.

The researchers have, through listening devices called echocardiographs and via autopsies on dead whales, discovered nano-sized 'wires' that allow electrical signals to stimulate heart beats even through masses of non-conductive blubber.

The scientists believe the findings could be the key to allowing the human heart to work without a battery-powered pacemaker and to stimulate optimal heart beats by by-passing or 'bridging' dead heart muscle via special whale-like wiring.

The world-wide market for pacemakers is expected to reach $3.7 billion by 2010. The new invention could cost just a few cents to make; reduce the number of follow-up operations because it avoids the need to install new batteries and thus supplant the traditional pacemaker.

"Resurrection Plant"

Two million children die from vaccine-preventable diseases like measles, rubella and whooping cough each year. By some estimates, breakdowns in the refrigeration chain from laboratory to village means half of all vaccines never get to patients.

Enter Myrothamnus flabellifolia - a plant found in Central and Southern Africa whose tissues can be dried to a crisp and then revived without damage, courtesy of a sugary substance produced in its cells during drought.

And enter Bruce Roser, a biomedical researcher who along with colleagues recently founded Cambridge Biostability Ltd to develop fridge-free vaccines based on the plant's remarkable sugars called trehaloses.

The product involves spraying a vaccine with the trehalose coating to form inert spheres or sugary beads that can be packaged in an injectable form and can sit in a doctor's bag for months or even years.

Trials are underway with the Indian company Panacea Biotech and agreements have also been signed with Danish and German companies.

The development, based on mimicking nature, could lead to savings of up to $300 million a year in the developing world while cutting the need for kerosene and photovoltaic powered fridges.

Other possibilities include new kinds of food preservation up to the storage of animal and human tissues that by-pass storage in super cold liquid nitrogen.

Slippery Lizard

The two main ways of reducing friction in mechanical and electrical devices are ball bearings and silicon carbide or ultra nano-crystalline diamond.

One of the shortcomings of silicon carbide is that it is manufactured at temperatures of between 1,600 and 2,500 degrees F - in other words it is energy intensive involving the burning of fossil fuels.

The synthetic diamond product can be made at lower temperatures and coated at temperatures of 400 degrees F for a range of low friction applications. But it has drawbacks too.

Enter the shiny Sandfish lizard that lives in the sands of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula and enter a team from the Technical University of Berlin.

Studies indicate that the lizard achieves its remarkable, friction-free life by making a skin of keratin stiffened by sugar molecules and sulphur.

The lizard's skin also has nano-sized spikes. It means a grain of Sahara sand rides atop 20,000 of these spikes spreading the load and providing negligible levels of friction.

Further tests indicate that the ridges on the lizard skin may also be negatively charged, effectively repelling the sand grains so they float over the surface rather like a hovercraft over water.

The researchers have teamed up with colleagues at the Science University of Berlin and a consortium of three German companies to commercialize the lizard skin findings.

The market is potentially huge, including in micro-electronic-mechanical systems where a biodegradable film made from the relatively cheap materials of kerotene and sugar and manufactured at room temperature offers an environmentally-friendly "unique selling proposition."

Superbugs and Bacterial Resistance - Australian Red Algae to the Rescue?

Seventy per cent of all human infections are a result of biofilms.

These are big congregations of bacteria that require 1,000 times more antibiotic to kill them and are leading to an 'arms race' between the bugs and the pharmaceutical companies.

It is also increasing antibiotic resistance and the rise of 'super bugs' like methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus that now kills more people than die of AIDS each year.

Enter Delisea pulchra, a feathery red alga or seaweed found off the Australian coast and a team including researchers at the University of New South Wales.

During a marine field trip, scientists noticed that the algae's surface was free from biofilms despite living in waters laden with bacteria.

Tests pinpointed a compound - known as halogenated furanone - that blocks the way bacteria signal to each other in order to form dense biofilm groups.

A company called Biosignal has been set up to develop the idea which promises a new way of controlling bacteria like golden staph, cholera, and legionella without aggravating bacterial resistance.

Products include contact lenses, catheters, and pipes treated with algae-inspired furanones alongside mouthwashes and new therapies for vulnerable patients with diseases like cystic fibrosis and urinary tract infections.

The bacterial signal-blocking substance may also reduce pollution to the environment by reducing or ending the need for homeowners and companies to pour tons of caustic chemicals down pipes, ducts and tanks and onto kitchen surfaces to keep them bug-free.

Beetle-Based Water Harvesting

By 2025, the United Nations forecasts that 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with water scarcity and two thirds of the world's population could be under conditions of water stress.

Climate change is expected to aggravate water problems via more extreme weather events. Many intelligent and improved management options can overcome these challenges and one may rest on the extraordinary ability of the Namib Desert beetle.

The beetle lives in a location that receives a mere half an inch of rain a year yet can harvest water from fogs that blow in gales across the land several mornings each month.

Enter a team from the University of Oxford and the UK defense research firm QinetiQ. They have designed a surface that mimics the water-attracting bumps and water-shedding valleys on the beetle's wing scales that allows the insect to collect and funnel droplets thinner than a human hair.

The patchwork surface hinges on small, poppy-seed sized glass spheres in a layer of warm wax that tests show work like the beetle's wing scales.

Trials have now been carried out to use the beetle film to capture water vapour from cooling towers. Initial tests have shown that the invention can return 10 per cent of lost water and lead to cuts in energy bills for nearby buildings by reducing a city's heat sink effect.

An estimated 50,000 new water-cooling towers are erected annually and each large system evaporates and loses over 500 million litres.

Other researchers, some with funding from the US Defense Advanced Research Agency, are mimicking the beetle water collection system to develop tents that collect their own water up to surfaces that will 'mix' reagents for 'lab-on-a-chip' applications.

(Source: Unep)

Science drowns at land's end

Sunita Narain

My colleague Pradip Saha has been filming in Ghoramara, an island in the Sunderban delta, to understand why, in this zone suspended between land and water, people talk of nothing but subsidence. Savita's narration captures the mood. Two years ago, rising water tore into this housewife's life, taking away her land, source of livelihood and her dignity. She wasn't compensated. She then moved further landward, paying a landowner to build another home. But now the water's grasping at her tiny house again: she shows the camera deep gashes in the ground just outside. Every high tide, Savita stays awake, for the water might just pull her under. The land records at the local panchayat office tell it all: the island has shrunk to a handkerchief-from 13,800 ha to 4,290 ha in the last 20 years.

This is not unusual, or new. These are islands located in the river's mouth as it flows into the Bay of Bengal. Erosion is natural and inevitable. Complete islands have disappeared. Sheikh Lalmohan takes the film crew to a vast stretch of water a little south of Ghoramara. From the boat he points to a corner; his home used to be there. Poignantly, he shows his farm, the school, the temple, a few relatives' houses-all gone today. Lohachara island, where Lalmohan's house used to be, went completely under water in the 1980s. Lalmohan now lives in a refugee colony in Sagar island.

Villagers here, well versed with the realities of living in a delta, are more worried today. They sense a change is on them. Till now, when the waters took over, they could move inland or to lands beyond. Now, even the biggest island in the Sunderbans-Sagar-is showing signs of weathering. It is losing land, so much that finding refuge is no longer easy. They can see the pace of erosion is increasing. They cannot measure it in metres; they cannot explain what is happening, but they know they can no longer cope or adapt. They build embankments; they reinforce their mud walls with bamboo barriers. But all is too little and all too late.

The point is to understand this change: is the sea level rising so that land is going under? Has the river's ecology changed in a way that provokes more erosion? Is the land-sea balance out of kilter? Are all these happening and more?

Even as this reality show was being filmed, off the Bay of Bengal, I happened to be in Goa where the country's premier oceanography institute is located. The dots needed to be joined. I wanted some answers.

The scientists I met are knowledgeable, but also open about the fact that we are beginning to learn about sea level rise trends along our coast. One way to measure the possible rise of sea level, they explain, is to study the tide gauge records that ports and maritime authorities maintain and analyse trends. Ideally, records of over 60 years are needed. In India, Mumbai port tide gauge data is for 100 years and the rest vary. When scientists A S Unnikrishnan and D Shankar put together all data above 40 years, they got these from 10 ports along the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea-from Aden in Yemen to Ko Taphao Noi in Thailand. After correction for data inconsistency, they were left with five ports-Aden (where, interestingly, data goes back to the 19th century but ends in 1960), Karachi, Mumbai and Kochi in the Arabian Sea and Visakhapatnam in the Bay of Bengal.

They then plotted this data to look for trends. Firstly, they found there was huge variation in mean sea level-annual and decadal-across the north Indian Ocean. They believed this was primarily due to high intensity wind action as well as growing salinity in the water. Overall, the data revealed sea level rise trends close to the globally observed averages-between 1.06 mm/year to 1.75 mm/year with an average of 1.29 mm/year.

But these averages exclude data from Diamond Harbour in Kolkata and Sagar in Sunderbans because of inconsistency. Here, mean tidal gauge data shows massive changes-5.74 mm/year. Scientists ascribe this increase to the depression of the land around. They cite studies showing land subsidence rates-for tectonic and geological reasons, possibly combined with groundwater extraction-of up to 4 mm/year. In other words, it isn't only the sea's level going up but the land level going down.

These are unexplored questions, admits the institute's director S R Shetye, a leading scientist in the field. The fact is that we have a serious and debilitating lack of human capacity to even understand these Earth changes. The problem, he explains, lies partly in how earth sciences and oceanography are taught. These old professions are the key to the future. But teaching remains out-dated and out of touch. Worse, he says, in India the pedagogy is not connected to the research questions of the day, let alone facilities enabling research. This disjoint has weakened the profession, making the country's research poor. It needs urgent fixing.

In all this, what does Savita do? She cannot worry about whether the sea is rising or the land is subsiding. It is also clear that climate change is that double whammy (coming on top of all that is already happening) tipping her over. The end result is more erosion; her land will go under again. She has once lost her livelihood and there is no way to 'adapt', no way to survive but to move far, very far. Where will she go now?

Is this a glimpse of what the future holds, when the sea does rise at a higher rate, not just in the Sunderbans, but across the populated coasts and islands of the world?

(The writer is the editor, Down To Earth, New Delhi, India)

Great ape conservation in Congo gets a boost

The Spanish government has contributed USD 368,000 to a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) led initiative to help protect gorillas, chimpanzees and their habitats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The news comes as the country continues to face one of the greatest environmental challenge in Africa today. The last few years have seen a rise in the killing of rare wildlife and environmental destruction as the region is caught in the crossfire of conflict.

As serious instability continues to plague eastern Congo, 500,000 Internally Displaced People (IDPs) have spread across the region and rebel groups have occupied large swaths of the national parks and important forest ecosystems.

The Spanish funds will be channeled through the Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP) as part of UNEP's programme to help improve the conservation of endangered and economically important animals and ecosystems there as requested by the DRC government.

UNEP is assisting the national authorities in drafting and developing national environmental laws, facilitating dialogue in the region and helping boost cooperation to tackle the country's environmental challenges.

Meanwhile the first international agreement for the conservation of gorillas enters into force on 1st June, offering hope for a new era of stronger protection for the apes. The agreement was concluded among the ten gorilla range states in Paris in October 2007, under the auspices of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS).

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: "The funding by the Government of Spain is a welcome development in this troubled country and region. At risk are the nature-based assets upon which many of the people of the DRC rely for livelihoods".

"Meanwhile comprehensive environmental laws are urgently needed to ensure that these natural resources are harvested by international companies in ways that will guarantee their integrity and productivity for years and decades to come. The German government is also stepping up funding to the DRC under its new Life Web initiative. I would urge other countries to also join hands with the people and biodiversity of this key African country," he said.

The announcement of the new Spanish funding comes as 191 countries gather in Bonn for a key meeting on biodiversity this week in a bid to agree on ways to significantly reduce biodiversity loss by 2010.

The forests of DRC, which cover one million square kilometers, are a treasure trove for biodiversity. They house some of the world's rarest and most remarkable species, including the bonobo (the closest living relative of the human species) and the okapi (a unique forest giraffe) as well as the rare mountain gorilla. More than half of the 720 mountain gorillas left in the world live in Eastern DRC.

But this biodiversity is under threat as a result of the decades of instability which has racked the country. The instability has taken a severe toll on the region's natural resources and wildlife, and the situation has been exacerbated by factors including poor capacity to enforce existing wildlife laws; widespread poaching; and rapidly increasing mining activities and opening up of forests which are facilitating access to previously remote forest areas.

In 2007, seven of the highly endangered mountain gorillas were killed in eastern DRC. Virunga National Park, which is at the heart of the current tensions and conflicts, has also seen its hippo population drop from an estimated 29,000 to a herd of just a few hundred.

Elephants are also under threat: new figures from the Convention on International Trade in endangered Species of wild fauna and flora (CITES) show alarming levels of poaching in Central Africa - in and around eastern DRC.

CITES has found that Central Africa has much higher levels of illegal killings of elephants than any other part of the continent: 73% of dead elephants in the region have been found to have been killed illegally, compared to 17% in Southern Africa, 31% in West Africa and 44% in Eastern Africa. In April 2008 alone, fourteen elephants were killed in Virunga National Park.

UNEP is carrying out a wide-ranging strategy to help DRC's government to tackle this enormous challenge. UNEP is assisting the government with the environmental framework law and is facilitating stakeholder dialogue in the transboundary Virunga region.

The organization is also assessing possibilities for boosting cooperation between the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda to stem illegal flows of natural resources such as charcoal and transboundary exploitation of oil and methane gas. In addition, UNEP is addressing the issue of the IDP camps which are heavily dependent on forests in the Virunga National Park for fuelwood and charcoal.

Once the security situation improves in eastern DRC, UNEP also plans to undertake a post-conflict environmental assessment in the area. In addition, UNEP and UNESCO have secured a commitment from the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) to carry out joint patrols with park rangers of the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) when the situation is more stable.

Other international partners are also working with UNEP and the DRC government to help boost protection for eastern DRC's critically-important ecosystem and endangered species. UNESCO's World Heritage Centre, with the assistance of MONUC, is currently facilitating a dialogue between ICCN and representatives of the armed groups present in Virunga National Park. One of the objectives is to convince the armed groups to allow ICCN to resume patrolling of the park, in particular the sector inhabited by the endangered mountain gorilla which is currently controlled by armed groups.

CITES is also collaborating with the World Heritage Convention in addressing poaching problems and illegal wildlife trade affecting DRC's five World Heritage Sites, including Virunga. This involves coordination with neighboring countries, training for enforcement personnel and distribution of intelligence information.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and UNESCO have also sent missions to DRC to investigate the gorilla killings and help devise solutions. Many other civil society groups are active at the field level.

Notes to editors

As well as many rare and highly endangered species, the Democratic Republic of Congo is home to a wealth of natural resources including large areas of arable land, water, forest products and minerals. DRC's million square kilometer forest are considered to be one of the largest and most important carbon sinks on the continent and the world. DRC is unique in being host to three taxa: gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. The latter are found nowhere else.

UNEP launched the Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP) in 2001 to address the decline in all taxa of great apes, including gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans. The GRASP partnership includes UNEP, UNESCO, CMS, CITES, WHC, great ape range states, donor countries and NGOs.

In 1979, UNESCO placed five of the country's national parks on the World Heritage List: Virunga National Park, Garamba, Kahuzi-Biega, Salong and the Okapi Wildlife Reserve. All five now feature on the World Heritage in Danger List.

With a wave of gorilla and elephant killings in 2007, the environmental situation in the eastern part of the country became so critical that the DRC government called for the help of international organizations in handling the crisis.

Within the framework of the 3rd World Biosphere Reserves Congress (Madrid, 4-9 February 2008) and under Spanish and UNESCO auspices, DRC and Uganda have signed the 'Tripartite Ministerial Declaration on the Central Albertine Rift Transboundary Biosphere Initiative'. UNESCO is now striving to obtain Rwanda's signature to the agreement, which aims to promote the 'Environmental Peace Building' concept in the Great Lakes Region.

UNEP's Programme in the Congo mirrors similar assessments undertaken by UNEP in the Balkans; Afghanistan; the Occupied Palestinian Territories; Iraq; Liberia, Lebanon and the Sudan aimed at assisting countries to set priorities during reconstruction and rehabilitation phases.

(Source: Unep)