Darfur Darfur Darfur

Editorial, Unkept Promises in Darfur, NYT January 27, 2008, Source.
November 23, 2007, UN MISSION TO SUDAN - Failure Looms for Darfur Peacekeepers, Alexander Schwabe, Source.


Editorial, Unkept Promises in Darfur, NYT January 27, 2008, (Back).

The new United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur is not off to an encouraging start. The five-year-long genocide has already killed some 200,000 people and driven two and a half million more from their homes. What is urgently needed to save those who remain are more peacekeepers, better equipment and a lot less obstruction from Sudan.

The joint force took over this month from an earlier African Union force of 7,000 that was too small and too poorly equipped. The new one was supposed to be the largest international peacekeeping force ever authorized, with nearly 20,000 more soldiers and police officers, modern helicopters and other advanced equipment.

By the start of this year, barely a tenth of those additional forces were in place, and much of the needed new equipment had not arrived. When the peacekeepers were quickly attacked by Sudanese forces, they had to withdraw without returning fire.

While claiming that it will cooperate, Khartoum has repeatedly tried to hobble the force: refusing to accept some non-African peacekeepers, trying to limit the peacekeepers’ use of helicopters and demanding other untenable restrictions. Last week, Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, chose a notorious leader of the janjaweed, the militias that have carried out most of the killing, to be a senior government adviser.

Nobody pretends that bringing a stable peace to Darfur will be easy. The conflict involves not just the janjaweed and the Sudanese Army but also rival Darfur rebels and militias. Underlying it all is a desperate competition between nomads and farmers for land and water in a parched region. There is no hope at all until a credible and credibly armed peacekeeping force is deployed.

The world’s leaders say they care desperately about Darfur’s suffering. But caring is not enough. What is needed is troops, equipment and a lot more diplomatic pressure on Sudan. The word of the United Nations is on the line, and so are the lives of Darfur’s people.


November 23, 2007, UN MISSION TO SUDAN - Failure Looms for Darfur Peacekeepers, Alexander Schwabe, (Back).

The combined United Nations/African Union mission to Darfur is slowly taking shape. But with Khartoum stubbornly refusing to allow Western troops into the country, the peacekeeping force may fail before it even begins.

Almost two months later, the Haskanita massacre still clouds the mission. Rebels drove into the African Union base in eastern Darfur at the end of September and stole technical equipment and weapons. At the same time, they killed 10 Nigerian soldiers and seriously injured several more.

Poorly equipped and outfitted with a weak mandate, the AU soldiers didn't have a chance. They couldn't adequately defend themselves nor could they hunt down their attackers. The 7,000 soldiers currently in Sudan with the African Union mission -- known as AMIS -- don't even have a single military helicopter at their disposal.

The disaster finally brought to light what had long been clear: The peacekeepers from Africa are hopelessly overmatched. They have been charged with patrolling an area that is as large as France -- an area where, despite the peace treaty of January 2005, violence is almost a daily occurrence. One day rebels might attack a government position, the next, government-affiliated paramilitaries from the Janjaweed might attack a defenseless village. Criminal groups murder and plunder almost at will.

Failed Before It's Even Begun

It was a situation that couldn't continue, and at the end of July, the United Nations Security Council decided to boost the AU mission with 12,500 soldiers, 6,400 police and a mandate with teeth. UNAMID, the hybrid UN-African Union mission in Darfur, came into being; at $3.5 billion for the first year alone, the most expensive UN mission ever. Germany, too, wants to participate, and the parliament in Berlin decided to send 250 Bundeswehr soldiers to Darfur. Even the Sudanese government agreed to the mission, with the condition that the overwhelming majority of the international troops in Darfur had to come from Africa.

But since then, Khartoum has done everything in its power to hinder the mission. It has gotten so bad that Jean-Marie Guéhenno, UN Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, warned last week in New York that the UN mission to Darfur may be facing failure before it has even begun.

The Islamist government of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has shown extreme reluctance to allow non-African soldiers into his country. The UN, though, is insisting. There are no African units, it points out, that can do the jobs assigned to those soldiers waiting to enter Sudan: special forces from Nepal, engineers from Norway and infantry from Thailand.

Sudan's calculation is clear: Only a streamlined, efficient fighting force could earn enough respect in the region to put a halt to the fighting and disarm the Janjaweed. But Khartoum has no interest in seeing the war end. The African countries attached to UNAMID have already shown that they have little interest in confronting Sudan directly. The first soldiers sent -- a 22-person unit -- weren't even able to get enough fuel for their reconnaissance airplane. The mini-force hardly left Fashir, the capital of northern Darfur, and operated out of an office that suffered from frequent power outages.

Upping the Pressure

Khartoum, though, has other reasons for wanting to keep the peacekeeping force an all-African affair. As long as UNAMID casualties are limited to African soldiers, the slow burn in Darfur will continue to be ignored by the outside world. Should European or American soldiers lose their lives in Sudan, however, pressure on Bashir's government to bring hostilities to an end would increase exponentially.

His calculation is a shrewd, if cynical, one. For years, the West has been half-heartedly trying to make Bashir's position untenable. The US and Britain showed their cards by insisting on UN Resolution 1769 upbraiding Sudan. Both countries likewise used the word genocide in referring to the ongoing violence in Darfur. Their long-term goal is that of regime change in "rogue state" Sudan. Indeed, some have said that UNAMID is little more than a Western strategy to focus more of the world's attention on the goings on in Darfur.

Indeed, even if the UN/Africa force gets the green light from Khartoum, it is not clear that it could ever be effective. The logistical hurdles are immense. Most of the equipment for the force -- including weapons, materiel and food -- is to be shipped in to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. From there, it is a 10 day journey to Darfur, in the western part of Sudan, Africa's biggest country by area. But the biggest problem is that of supplying the troops with water. The donkey carts that deliver water to households in Fashir would be hopelessly inadequate to meet UNAMID needs.

UN soldiers are allotted 85 liters of water per day, not including drinking water. Each Darfuri has access to about the same amount -- for an entire year. A vast underground lake in the region -- pinpointed by scientists in July -- has often been cited as a potential solution to the supply problem. Otherwise, a fleet of some 1,000 tanker trucks would have to be brought in to import enough water from the White Nile.

'Peacekeeping Will Fail'

Reliance on such a delivery system would likely mean reliance on the government in Khartoum, and the Sudanese government would likely be capable of shutting off the water supply whenever they wanted.

Other UN agencies already operating in Sudan, like the World Food Program, are wary of the military mission. "Peace keeping will fail," is a refrain one hears among UN workers currently posted in Khartoum. "It will only create more problems." In addition to the 20,000 soldiers and 6,000 police, UNAMID would also include some 60,000 additional support personnel. Johann van der Kamp, who leads the Sudanese chapter of German Agro Action (Deutsche Welthungerhilfe), a food aid group, says that many NGOs will likely lose valuable workers to the UN, which is able to pay much more.

And there won't just be a personnel shortage. The military mission will also make the humanitarian presence more expensive. Already, trucking companies in Sudan are charging higher prices and there is a shortage of vehicles. Five thousand trucks recently brought in to Sudan are in the hands of just three logistics firms.

Van der Kamp likewise says that the peacekeepers could even result in making the security situation worse. He says that the African soldiers have become a favorite target for rebels and criminal groups, meaning that convoys escorted by African Union soldiers are also coming under fire more often. "The main problem is the gangs, the locally organized criminals, whose only interest is enriching themselves," says Van der Kamp. He says that no army in Darfur is capable of neutralizing such groups because of their hit-and-run attacks.

The skepticism, in short, is everywhere. Few are willing to put much faith in a group of 26,000 soldiers asked to control a vast area full of rebels, government-sponsored troops and common criminals. The underlying causes seem equally difficult to address: A shortage of water, the ongoing expansion of the Sahara Desert, and the resulting increase in pressure on the little land available for agriculture and grazing.

UNAMID is set to begin implementing its mandated tasks no later than the end of this year. Ongoing resistance by Khartoum, however, make that timeline unlikely. But even if the full allotment of UN and African troops are allowed to take up their positions, it is unclear that the conflict in Darfur will come to an end anytime soon.

TTTT, (Back).

Vladimir Kudrjawzew, Reciclagem de PET no Brasil

Vladimir Kudrjawzew é Engenheiro Mecânico Aeronáutico, sócio da UNNAFIBRAS e diretor da empresa de reciclagem REPET - Reciclagem de Termoplásticos Ltda.

A introdução da embalagem de PET no Brasil, em 08.08.1988, além de trazer as indiscutíveis vantagens ao consumidor, trouxe também o desafio de sua reciclagem, que nos fez despertar para a questão do tratamento das 200 mil toneladas de lixo descartadas diariamente em todo Brasil. O polímero de PET é um poliéster, um dos plásticos mais reciclados em todo o mundo devido a sua extensa gama de aplicações: Fibras têxteis, tapetes, carpetes, não-tecidos, embalagens, filmes, fitas, cordas, compostos, etc.

A embalagem de PET quando reciclada tem inúmeras vantagens sobre outras embalagens do ponto vista da energia consumida, consumo de água, impacto ambiental, benefícios sociais, entre outros. Porque a taxa de reciclagem de PET no Brasil ainda é da ordem de 20%?

A reciclagem de qualquer material pode ser dividida em: Coleta/Seleção, Revalorização e Transformação. A etapa de transformação utiliza o material revalorizado e o transforma em outro produto vendável, o produto reciclado. A etapa de revalorização realiza a descontaminação e adequação do material coletado e selecionado para que possa ser utilizado como matéria prima na indústria de transformação.

A etapa de Coleta/Seleção é que representa o grande desafio da reciclagem do PET pós-consumo. Milhões de dólares são gastos em logística, distribuição e marketing para que no final das contas, nós consumidores compremos produtos embalados em PET e levemos até nossas casas. Nós fazemos a última etapa da distribuição levando-os dos supermercados e lojas até nossas casas. Somente nas regiões metropolitanas do Brasil são 15 milhões de domicílios, 50 milhões de pessoas e 6 bilhões de embalagens de PET todo ano.

O correto equacionamento da logística reversa das embalagens pós-consumo é que vai viabilizar a reciclagem de diversos materiais inclusive o PET. A logística reversa é o processo pelo qual o material reciclável será coletado, selecionado e entregue na indústria de revalorização. Estas discussões acabam num empasse de quem é que paga a conta de logística reversa? A indústria de embalagens, a indústria dos produtos embalados, a prefeitura?

Somos nós, eu, você e toda a sociedade seja como contribuinte ou seja como consumidor. Hoje pagamos uma conta maior por não termos uma logística reversa adequada, como é provado nos países como EUA, Austrália, Japão e toda Europa. Conforme estudos realizados na USP o Brasil deixa de economizar 6 Bilhões de dólares/ano por não reciclar os materiais presentes nas 200 mil toneladas de lixo gerados todos os dias. Ainda não estão contabilizados os custos de danos ambientais e sociais. Urgente é a elaboração de uma política nacional de resíduos sólidos, as ações estaduais e municipais para viabilização da logística reversa e o fortalecimento da indústria de reciclagem no Brasil.

A REPET Reciclagem de Termoplásticos , com duas unidade em Mauá-SP e João Pessoa - PA revalorizam 1200 ton/mês de garrafas de PET ou 24 milhões de garrafas de PET/mês que deixam de ser lançadas no meio ambiente. O polímero revalorizado produzido nas unidades da REPET, na forma de flakes e granulados são transformados em fibras têxteis pela UNNAFIBRAS TÊXTIL localizada em Santo André - SP.

25/01/2008, Fábrica de madeira plástica chega ao mercado brasileiro com capacidade para produzir 900 toneladas/mês, Mônica Pinto / AmbienteBrasil

Um produto tido como ecologicamente correto ganha impulso agora no Brasil, a partir do início das operações, em dezembro passado, da Wisewood, fábrica de madeira plástica instalada no município paulista de Itatiba.

Resultado de um investimento de R$ 20 milhões, a empresa tem capacidade de produção de 900 toneladas por mês, inicialmente disponibilizando dormentes, cruzetas para postes de transmissão de energia, pallets e tapumes de madeira plástica.

Ao despejar no mercado esse volume de produção, na prática, são cerca de mil toneladas de madeira natural que deixam de ser subtraídas da natureza. “Quando você corta árvores, não utiliza os galhos”, explica a AmbienteBrasil Vladimir Kudrjawzew, presidente executivo da Wisewood.

Mas outro ganho ambiental expressivo reside no fato da madeira plástica ser fabricada a partir de resíduos de plásticos e de borracha. Com isso, a empresa montou uma extensa rede de agentes para coleta, gerando só nesse processo, conforme divulga, 3,5 mil empregos indiretos em sua cadeia produtiva.

São utilizados recipientes descartados de produtos de limpeza, de higiene e brinquedos, por exemplo, além de pneus, um vilão poluente, como se sabe, em função de seu longo tempo para degradação no ambiente natural.

“Estamos tentando desenvolver o uso de carcaças de computador como aditivo”, antecipa Vladimir que, com o sócio, Rogério Igel, também compra resíduos de pós-produção de outras indústrias e promove coletas direcionadas, por exemplo, em postos de combustíveis, para adquirir embalagens de óleos lubrificantes.

A Wisewood está também estabelecendo parceria com o Instituto Nacional de Processamento de Embalagens Vazias (Inpev) para fazer a coleta e destinação de embalagens de agrotóxicos. “Vamos procurar sempre os plásticos que hoje são mais difíceis de reciclar”, diz Vladimir.

Mercado

Os melhores clientes da madeira plástica são aqueles cujas aplicações requeiram grande durabilidade, já que o produto sintético tem resistência muito superior ao natural. Na construção civil, por exemplo, muitas vezes o tapume se acaba antes da obra e, no caso de formas para concreto, a construtora pode depois revendê-las para a própria Wisewood, onde passarão por reciclagem.

Mas o que parece colocar a empresa num patamar de mercado confortável esbarra, na prática, em disputas desleais e questionáveis sob todos os pontos de vista. “Tem muita madeira ilegal na construção civil e, aí, nós não temos como competir”, diz Vladimir.

Segundo ele, a área ferroviária é mercado promissor. “A Companhia Vale do Rio Doce demanda grande quantidade de dormentes somente para reposição em suas ferrovias. Se esta necessidade for atendida com dormentes de madeira plástica, a estrada terá sua vida útil ampliada e não será preciso desmatar".

Para desenvolver o produto, a Wisewood contou com a colaboração da equipe da professora doutora Eloísa Mano, coordenada por Elen Vasques Pacheco, professora adjunta do Instituto de Macromoléculas Professora Eloísa Mano (IMA), da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

A Dying Breed, Andrew Rice, NYT 27/01/08

Herd Extinct: The Ankole cow could disappear within 50 years.

Gershom Mugira comes from a long line of cattle-keepers. His people, the Bahima, are thought to have migrated into the hilly grasslands of western Uganda more than a thousand years ago, alongside a hardy breed of longhorns known as the Ankole. For centuries, man and beast subsisted there in a tight symbiotic embrace. Mugira’s nomadic ancestors wandered in search of fresh pasture for their cattle, which in turn provided them with milk. It is only within the last few generations that most Bahima have accepted the concept of private property. Mugira’s family lives on a 500-acre ranch, and one sunny day in November, the wiry 26-year-old showed me around, explaining, with some sadness but more pragmatism, why the Ankole breed that sustained his forebears for so many generations is now being driven to extinction.

As we walked down the sloped valley path that led to a watering hole, we found a few cows lolling beneath a flat-topped acacia. They looked like the kind of cattle you might encounter in Wisconsin: plump and hornless creatures with dappled black-and-white coats. Mugira, a high-school graduate, was wearing a pair of fashionably baggy jeans and spiffy white sneakers. To a modern African like himself, he said, the most desirable cattle were the American type: the Holsteins.

In recent decades, global trade, sophisticated marketing, artificial insemination and the demands of agricultural economics have transformed the Holstein into the world’s predominant dairy breed. Indigenous animals like East Africa’s sinewy Ankole, the product of centuries of selection for traits adapted to harsh conditions, are struggling to compete with foreign imports bred for maximal production. This worries some scientists. The world’s food supply is increasingly dependent on a small and narrowing list of highly engineered breeds: the Holstein, the Large White pig and the Rhode Island Red and Leghorn chickens. There’s a risk that future diseases could ravage these homogeneous animal populations. Poor countries, which possess much of the world’s vanishing biodiversity, may also be discarding breeds that possess undiscovered genetic advantages. But farmers like Mugira say they can’t afford to wait for science. And so, on the African savanna, a competition for survival is underway.

Mugira was just about to tell me what made the Holsteins so valuable when suddenly, Dr. Grace Asiimwe, a veterinarian and my guide through western Uganda’s ranchlands, shouted, “The Ankoles are coming!”

In the distance, I glimpsed a bobbing line of white horns swooping down the hillside. Without a word, Mugira dashed down the dirt path, hopped over a fallen tree branch and disappeared around the side of a huge weed-covered anthill. “He has to keep them separated,” Asiimwe told me, lest the Ankoles gore the Holsteins. We found Mugira by the watering hole, whistling and waving a wooden switch called an enkoni, frantically trying to keep his Ankoles away. His herdsmen were supposed to bring the two contingents to the water at different times, but someone made a mistake.

“You know, in Uganda, we have to look for survival of the fittest,” Mugira said once he finished sorting out the confusion. “These ones, they are the fittest,” he went on to say, gesturing toward his Holsteins. In physical terms, there was really no contest between the tough Ankoles and the fussy foreign cattle, which were always hungry and often sick. But the foreigners possessed arguably the single most important adaptive trait for livestock: they made money. Holsteins are lactating behemoths. In an African setting, a good one can produce 20 or 30 times as much milk as an Ankole.

Mugira explained that, unlike most of his peers, he was holding onto some longhorns, mostly for sentimental reasons. His father, who died in 2003, loved his Ankoles. One of them wandered over and nuzzled Mugira, who placed his hand gently on its forehead. In the days before Christianity arrived in this part of Africa, the Bahima made offerings of milk to herdsman gods. Their language contains a vast catalog of cattle names, which refer to characteristics like color and hide pattern. This cow was called Kiroko, indicating it had some white patches on its face. The ideal Ankole, Mugira told me, has a lustrous brown coat and gleaming horns that curve out and then inward, forming a shape like a lyre. “They are naturally good,” Mugira said. “They are beautiful. In our culture we preferred these. But then we developed another culture, from Western culture.”

The Food and Agriculture Organization, an agency of the United Nations, recently reported that at least 20 percent of the world’s estimated 7,600 livestock breeds are in danger of extinction. Experts are warning of a potential “meltdown” in global genetic diversity. Yet the plight of the Ankole illustrates the difficulty of balancing the conflicting goals of animal conservation and human prosperity. An estimated 70 percent of the world’s rural poor, some 630 million people, derive a substantial percentage of their income from livestock. Increase the productivity of these animals, development specialists say, and you improve dire living standards. The World Bank recently published a report saying it was time to place farming “afresh at the center of the development agenda.” Highly productive livestock breeds, the World Bank asserts, are playing an important role in alleviating poverty.

“You do have local animals with various kinds of disease resistance and whatever other kinds of things you don’t want to do away with,” said Chris Delgado, an agriculture policy adviser at the World Bank. “But there’s a problem: They are kept by very poor people, and they don’t want to stay poor.”

Every cow in the world is the product of some human agency. The extinct feral ancestor of all cattle, the auroch, was a fearsome horned creature that could grow to be six feet tall. There are two theories about the taming of wild aurochs. The traditional view holds that it happened around 6000 B.C. in the Fertile Crescent. But recent archaeological and genetic evidence suggests that domestication may have first occurred in Africa 2,000 years earlier, in the then-lush plains of the eastern Sahara. Then, beginning around 2,000 years ago, Arab merchants introduced humped cattle of Indian origin to East Africa, which were crossed with the indigenous longhorns to produce breeds like the Ankole.

For millennia, changing a breed’s genetics through husbandry required a long trial-and-error process. But today it can happen in an evolutionary eye blink. Multinational breeding companies, many of them based in the United States, collect semen from prime bulls, freeze it and export it to the developing world. Official estimates say there are about three million Ankole cattle in Uganda and smaller populations in bordering nations. An unknown — though by all accounts large — percentage of them are in the process of being turned into something else. After one cross with a Holstein, the brown Ankole cow will produce a black calf with darkened horns. After two, the horns will shrink and a dappled coat will appear. The third generation will basically look like American dairy cattle. With each cross, the offspring will produce more milk. The World Bank estimates that 1.8 million small-scale farmers in East Africa are benefiting from such genetic changes to their cattle and that some 100 million cows and pigs are created through artificial insemination in poor countries each year. Those numbers substantially understate the extent of genetic interchange, because half the offspring produced by artificial insemination are male and spread their genes the old-fashioned way.

To see the evolution in Ugandan dairy cattle, I visited a farmer named Jackson Sezibwa, who lives down a reddish dirt path outside the central Ugandan town of Mukono. A weather-beaten man of 46, Sezibwa greeted me in a torn, muddy shirt. He showed me to the metal-roofed stall where he keeps his Holstein, Kevina.

Before he received the cow, Sezibwa said, he was hungry and destitute. All he owned were some banana trees and a one-room house roofed with thatch. Then he and his wife were given Kevina by a charity called Heifer International. Founded in 1944 by Dan West, an Indiana farmer, Heifer’s mission is to take quality livestock to impoverished places. In Uganda, the cattle breed Heifer prefers is the Holstein. “The American cow,” said Dr. Margaret Makuru, Heifer’s deputy country director, “once you feed it, it is a factory.”

Like any factory owner, Jackson Sezibwa had to think about inputs and outputs. Making milk requires energy, which means eating grass. Holsteins require much more grass than Ankole cattle, but unlike Ankoles, which need to roam, Holsteins can be kept in pens. Sezibwa owned just a small plot of land, so the Holstein was perfect for him. All day long, Sezibwa refilled Kevina’s trough with feed, a mixture of elephant grass and protein-rich leaves and legumes that he grew in his field. Each time he milked the cow, he fed her a store-bought meal full of nutrients. Otherwise, his largest expense was medicine. Holsteins originated in Northern Europe and were taken to America in the 19th century. They don’t have any resistance to tropical diseases like trypanosomiasis — colloquially known as sleeping sickness — and East Coast Fever, which is spread by ticks.

With intense maintenance, Sezibwa’s cow functioned marvelously. Kevina churned out around six and a half gallons of milk a day. (A typical Ankole would have given him between a quarter and a half gallon.) His family drank some of the milk, and he sold the rest, netting around $100 a month after expenses. In a country where an estimated 85 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day, that’s substantial income. The money finances school for Sezibwa’s six children. There were ancillary benefits too. Kevina was impregnated four times via artificial insemination. Sezibwa gave away her first calf to a neighbor, in keeping with Heifer’s philosophy of “passing the gift.” The next two — both males — he sold to farmers eager to acquire Holstein genetics, making enough profit to build himself a nice brick house. He kept the fourth calf, another female, for the future. Heifer also paid to install an underground system that harnessed methane from the cows’ manure to power gas burners and a light inside his house.

Jackson Sezibwa is just one man, but Uganda’s economy is made up of millions like him. Agriculture accounts for 30 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, and 10 percent of that comes from the livestock sector. The World Bank’s October report claimed that “G.D.P. growth originating in agriculture is at least twice as effective in reducing poverty” as other types of growth. The report pointed out that the industrialization of Europe and North America that began in the late 18th century was preceded by a period of farming innovation, and that the Green Revolution that took place between the 1940s and 1960s catalyzed Asia’s fantastic economic growth.

During the Green Revolution, scientists invented high-yielding strains of corn, wheat and rice and planted them around the third world, and they also promoted the introduction of better livestock. But then, broadly speaking, foreign-aid donors moved away from such interventions, which were viewed as meddling with the free market, and shifted financing priorities to areas like education and AIDS. Today, even after recent increases, the World Bank devotes less than 10 percent of its development assistance to agriculture, down from 30 percent a quarter-century ago. Recently, the notion of helping poor farmers by making farming more lucrative has been dusted off by a new generation of economists. And Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation have promised to finance a second Green Revolution. But governmental aid agencies have been slower to rediscover the importance of agriculture. Farming initiatives now account for just 4 percent of the assistance distributed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of the world’s most developed nations.

The U.S. Agency for International Development budgeted $392 million for agricultural programs last year, including a significant proportion to promote milk production. Crossbreeding is an important component of its strategy. In Uganda, where the agency recently completed a five-year, $8 million dairy-modernization project, about half the money went toward artificial insemination. One partner in the program was Land O’Lakes International Development, the aid arm of the Minnesota butter company. “We should be able to do farming as a business, not sentimentally,” said Dr. Paul Kimbugwe, the Land O’Lakes country manager. “Making money means you have to crossbreed. And crossbreeding means that you are doing away with the genetics of that cow,” meaning the Ankole, “which I also encourage.”

Not everyone in Uganda, however, agrees that the foreign breeds are an upgrade. President Yoweri Museveni once imposed a ban on imported semen. Museveni belongs to the Bahima ethnic group. When he was a baby, in a sort of Bahima baptism ritual, his parents placed him on the back of an Ankole cow with a mock bow and arrow, as if to commit him symbolically to the defense of the family’s herd. Museveni, now in his 60s, still owns the descendants of that very cow, and he retains a strong bond to the Ankole breed. Two years ago, I accompanied a group of Ugandan journalists on a daylong trip to one of the president’s private ranches, where he proudly showed us his 4,000-strong herd of Ankole cattle. At one point, a reporter asked if the ranch had any Holsteins. “No, those are pollution,” Museveni replied. “These,” he said, referring to his Ankoles, “the genetic material is superior.”

If the Ankole cattle are able to mount a comeback, it will be because circumstances have endowed them with a unique set of defenses, both evolutionary and political. Members of President Museveni’s ethnic group populate the upper ranks of Uganda’s government. Some prominent Bahima have started an organization devoted to preserving Ankoles, under the patronage of a one-eyed army general who spends his free time painting rapturous portraits of cows. One afternoon, at a pricey restaurant in Kampala, I had lunch with the organization’s chairman, Samuel Mugasi. Dressed in a dapper gray suit and a French-cuffed pale blue shirt, he told me he was a civil servant and part-time rancher.

“They have tasted the money,” Mugasi said of the farmers who switched to Holsteins. “They are excited about having these big earnings, and they are forgetting the cultural aspect.”

Kimbugwe, the Land O’Lakes representative, has a ready reply to such arguments. “Culture — fine, it’s good to have,” he said. “But first, the stomachs.” He views the Ankole as an atavistic indulgence for the country’s elite. Once, cattle were like currency, and the wealthy displayed their status by maintaining huge free-ranging herds. Competition for land is forcing cows onto smaller pastures. Uganda has one of the highest birth rates in the world, and despite its poverty and diseases like AIDS, the population has more than doubled since 1980. There’s a long history of tension between the Bahima and an agriculturalist ethnic group, the Bairu, which coexist in western Uganda, at times less than happily.

This is a common dynamic across Africa. In Rwanda, a similar ethnic conflict between cattle-keeping Tutsis and farming Hutus culminated in genocide in 1994. A number of experts say the “ethnic” war in Darfur is really a fight over grass. Uganda has not experienced that level of conflict, but the local newspapers are filled with stories of violent skirmishes between farmers and encroaching pastoralists. This is one reason that some say Holsteins represent the future. Rwanda, now ruled by longhorn-loving Tutsis but trying to address the causes of the genocide, is enthusiastically encouraging the breed’s introduction, with assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

One of the biggest dairy farmers in western Uganda, Kezekia Rwabuhenda, told me he was the first person in his area to adopt Holsteins, back in the 1970s. At the time, he said, many traditionalists maligned him, saying he was conspiring to “slaughter” the cattle they loved. “Afterwards, when they realized what the cross was producing, they started visiting me, asking for a bull,” he said through a translator. The elderly rancher still kept a hundred Ankoles, but they were for his wife, who was attached to them. He was sure that when he died, his children would dispatch them all to the butcher shop.

No one knows how many Ankole cattle exist. “We’ve been saying the Ankoles are 50 percent of the national herd, but I don’t think that’s true anymore,” said Dr. Denis Mpairwe, an animal scientist at Uganda’s Makerere University. “The crossbreeding the last five years has been so intense.” The International Livestock Research Institute predicts that if present trends continue, the Ankoles could go extinct within 50 years. But Mpairwe says he believes it could happen much sooner.

I went with Mpairwe to visit Uganda’s cattle country earlier this fall, along with Dr. Okeyo Mwai, a Kenyan biotechnology specialist who works for the livestock institute. I lived in Uganda between 2002 and 2004, and I couldn’t believe the change. Hillsides where graceful brown Ankoles once grazed by the hundreds were now dotted black and white. “Look at the calves,” Mwai said, as our pickup truck passed a herd. “Almost 100 percent are crosses.” He pointed up toward the hilltops, normally gently rounded and green, but now sandy in large patches from overgrazing. The two scientists are studying how high-producing cattle interact with the African ecosystem. If cows are like factories, you could say an Ankole is powered by a water wheel, while the Holstein requires a nuclear reactor.

The principle of the “tragedy of the commons,” perhaps the most famous metaphor in ecology, is a cattle parable. It was first described by a 19th-century British economist and popularized by the biologist Garrett Hardin in a 1968 Science magazine essay about human overpopulation. Hardin was trying to refute the view that an unregulated free market invariably produces beneficial outcomes. “Picture a pasture open to all,” Hardin wrote. The benefit of adding a single calf went to each individual farmer, while the cost of adding that calf (the grass it would consume) would be distributed to all pasture users. “Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited,” he wrote. The commons, he predicted, would inevitably be picked clean.

With the introduction of the Holsteins, something similar seems to be happening in Uganda. Farmers aren’t literally increasing the sizes of their herds, but they are creating herds that consume unsustainable amounts of dwindling resources. And something else is being obliterated: genes. Each time a farmer crossbreeds his Ankoles, a little of the country’s stockpile of adaptive traits disappears. It isn’t easy to measure genetic “dilution.” What is evident, however, is that the Ankoles possess much worth saving. For instance, their horns, often seen as ornaments, actually disperse excess body heat.

Holsteins don’t like heat. While a poorly adapted animal can survive for years in a harsh ecosystem, even a slight worsening of their conditions can have devastating effects. One rancher I met, John Kamiisi, told me that he’d lost his herd of Holsteins in a 1999 drought. He only avoided ruin because he kept some Ankoles, which could live on less water. Kamiisi told me he loved his sturdy Ankole bull “like my own life” but said he was starting to crossbreed again for financial reasons. Another elderly rancher said his whole Holstein herd died during Idi Amin’s dictatorship, when chaos and inflation made it difficult to buy the imported medicines the cattle needed. He started again with a few Ankoles his neighbors gave him out of pity.

“For countries on the equator, I think in almost all cases the Holstein is very poorly suited — maybe the least-suited breed,” says Dr. Les Hansen, a professor at the University of Minnesota and a leading expert in cattle genetics. Often farmers are making decisions that are informed not by science, he said, but by sales pitches devised by multinational breeding concerns. “As I travel the world,” Hansen adds, “my biggest challenge is countering all of the misleading marketing propaganda.”

The world market in cattle breeding is controlled by a handful of companies, several of them based in the United States. The companies maintain facilities where they extract semen from bulls, keep genetic databases, publish rankings and cultivate a sort of bovine star system. Two legendary Holsteins, Chief, born in California in 1962, and Elevation, born in Virginia in 1965, fathered tens of thousands of offspring in their lifetimes — and beyond, since their sperm was cryogenically frozen for future use.

Hansen’s research suggests that every Holstein is descended from Chief and Elevation, and that 30 percent of all the Holstein genes in the world are traceable to those two bulls. That has created a serious problem with inbreeding, which has adverse effects on fertility and mortality. But overseas markets like Africa are, so to speak, virgin territory. According to industry figures, American companies exported 10 million “doses” of cattle semen in 2006. In Uganda, a company called World-Wide Sires, the international marketing arm of two American breeding cooperatives, is working with aid agencies to increase dairy production.

“The proof is in the bucket,” said George Nuwagira, a dairy farmer who is also the World-Wide Sires sales representative for western Uganda. I met him one morning in the market town of Kabwohe. A stout, garrulous fellow, he was wearing a yellow baseball cap with a smiling cartoon cow on it. He ushered me into his insemination center, a narrow tumbledown storefront that also sold sodas. At one end stood a wooden counter that was decorated with a flier advertising a bull named Earl, “the Dairyman’s Dream,” which pictured Earl’s daughters posed in such a way as to accentuate their enormous milk-swollen udders. Behind the counter sat a metal tank filled with liquid nitrogen. Nuwagira unscrewed its cap, and a thick cloud of white vapor billowed out. He retrieved a cluster of brightly colored plastic straws filled with premium semen.

We were at the far end of the global semen supply chain. Nuwagira handed me an empty green straw. It was marked with the name “Theseus” and a long serial number, which indicated that the semen it had contained was collected at a facility near Plain City, Ohio, on Dec. 30, 2004. Three weeks before, he used Theseus’ semen to impregnate one of his own Holsteins.

Nuwagira took me to see the expectant mother. On the bumpy ride to his farmland in a breathtaking green valley, he told me that he was from the west’s agriculturalist ethnic group, not the Bahima. He didn’t care about the Ankole. “To me as a modern farmer, the horns don’t mean anything,” Nuwagira said. He didn’t name his cows like the Bahima but instead referred to them by numbers. He told me he owned just 35. “You know, it was used as a status symbol in the past, to have so many head of cattle,” he said. “Those who had hundreds wouldn’t sit with those who had less than 30. But these days, things have changed. When you talk of animals they don’t ask you the numbers. They ask you the production.”

Nuwagira’s biggest problem was getting his product to market. “You feed them, they will give you the volumes, but there are times when we find we are stuck having nowhere to sell it,” he explained. Milk is perishable, and Uganda is a country where roads are bad and refrigeration is rare. The dairy trade in rural areas is largely controlled by bicycle vendors who sell raw milk from aluminum jugs. There used to be a more sophisticated network of government-affiliated dairy cooperatives, but most of these were dismantled in the 1990s, during a World Bank push for market liberalization. The private sector was supposed to fill the gap but never did. Anyway, some Ugandan tribes don’t drink milk. They’re lactose-intolerant.

Crossbreeding follows the logic of the arms race. All the ranchers I met complained that Holsteins required expensive upkeep, and many didn’t want to abandon tradition. But they’ve had to change because their neighbors are changing. The volume of milk produced in Uganda doubled between 1993 and 2003, but in the absence of a surge in demand or improved delivery systems, the product has literally flooded the market. As the price per liter has fallen, dairy farmers have had to rearm with Holsteins just to maintain their usual profit margins. International organizations realize that increased productivity means little if it’s not accompanied by market growth. That’s why the U.S. Agency for International Development is spending millions across Africa to promote dairy cooperatives and pay for advertisements inspired by America’s famous “Got Milk?” campaign. But changing distribution and diets isn’t as easy as changing breeds. “A lot of consumers don’t understand how important milk is,” says Jim Yazman, a livestock specialist with the agency.

Economic forces can push a breed to extinction with frightening swiftness. In Vietnam, where pigs are the most important livestock species and the government has encouraged leaner foreign breeds, the percentage of indigenous sows has fallen to 28 percent from 72 percent since 1994, and 13 of the 15 local breeds are classified as either extinct or in danger. There were several million Red Maasai sheep in Kenya until the 1970s. Then, in just 15 years, indiscriminate crossbreeding with woollier imported sheep nearly drove them out of existence. But the wool sheep fared poorly in the Kenyan environment, in part because of intestinal parasites to which the Red Maasai were resistant. By the time that was discovered, though, purebred Red Maasai were almost impossible to find.

Many tropical breeds may possess unique adaptive traits. The problem is, we don’t know what is being lost. Earlier this year, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization released its first-ever global assessment of biodiversity in livestock. While data on many breeds are scant, the report found that over the last six years, an average of one breed a month has gone extinct. “The threat is imminent,” says Danielle Nierenberg, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental group. “Just getting milk and meat into people’s mouths is not the answer.”

As the world’s climate warms, and the environment becomes more inhospitable to the major breeds, humanity might need the genes that allow animals like the Ankoles to flourish in the African heat. The challenge is to safeguard the resource. There are two possible approaches: putting the animals in cold storage, or changing the economic equation. Proponents of the first option desire something like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a doomsday depository for plant species that an international consortium is building in the Arctic Circle. But storing sperm and embryos is far more expensive and technically difficult. Biodiversity advocates say that it would be preferable, anyway, for breeds like the Ankole to go on living in their pastures. The most obvious way to do that would be to create incentives to entice farmers to keep them. But even those who want to save endangered breeds recognize that subsidizing unproductive livestock in hungry countries is problematic. In November, at a conference sponsored by the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, Dr. Edward Rege, the organization’s biotechnology director, gave a speech listing several “inconvenient facts” about conventional wisdom in the field, adding that conservation approaches can effectively amount to “saying that farmers should remain poor.”

The best hope for the Ankoles may reside at a modest, terraced complex on a breezy hillside in Uganda overlooking Lake Victoria in the old colonial town of Entebbe. It was constructed by the British in 1960, at the height of the Green Revolution, as an artificial-insemination center and a staging ground for introducing new breeds — animals that mostly died off during the subsequent wars and dictatorships. Now called the National Animal Genetic Resources Center and Databank, the facility’s new mission is to save indigenous animals like the Ankoles by giving them better care and selectively breeding them to compete in production. The center keeps a dozen bulls of different breeds, including two immense Ankoles that once belonged to President Museveni. Twice a week, technicians collect semen, which is used to inseminate cows at government farms or else packaged and sold directly to farmers. If it’s successful, the program could offer a model to other developing nations. If, on the other hand, the Ankole cattle can’t be saved even with such government support, it’s difficult to imagine how any threatened breed will survive.

“They can produce milk and they put on meat,” said Dr. Dan Semambo, the center’s executive director. “People don’t know what they have.”

Ugandans rave about the fresh milk out west, and every rancher I visited there served me a cup. It has a delicious sweet thickness. No matter how well nourished they are, though, the Ankoles probably can’t produce as much milk as the Holsteins. Instead, the breed’s salvation could lie in the slaughterhouse. President Museveni says he believes that Ankoles make exceptional beef cattle and wants to export their meat. Some studies suggest that Ankole beef is unusually lean and low in cholesterol. Mpairwe and his colleagues at Makerere University are completing a study in which Ankoles and crossbreeds were kept on nutrient-rich diets. In early December, the cattle were slaughtered and an “expert panel” of faculty and students conducted a taste test, with encouraging results.

Shortly before I left Uganda, I convened an expert panel of my own. We met one evening at Le Petit Bistro, a European-owned restaurant that serves Kampala’s best steak. While we waited for our orders, I went back to the kitchen to meet the cook, Everest Neretse, who was wearing a white chef’s jacket and flip-flops. He told me he came from the west. “Ankole cattle, they are the best,” he said. “I can tell in the tenderness.” I had my filet with a little garlic butter. When I cut into it, rich reddish juices spilled out, and the texture was so soft that I hardly needed to chew. It was almost as if you could taste the contentment of an unbounded life on the open range. The panel agreed: it was extraordinary, it was beautiful and in no time every trace of the Ankole was gone.

Closing the Barn Door After the Cows Have Gotten Out

Verlyn Klinkenborg, NYT January 23, 2008

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration cleared the way for the eventual sale of meat and dairy products from cloned animals, saying, in effect, that consumers face no health risks from them. The next day, the Department of Agriculture asked farmers to keep their cloned animals off the market until consumers have time to get over their anticloning prejudice. That is one prejudice I plan to hold on to. I will not be eating cloned meat.

The reason has nothing to do with my personal health or safety. I think the clearest way to understand the problem with cloning is to consider a broader question: Who benefits from it? Proponents will say that the consumer does, because we will get higher quality, more consistent foods from cloned animals. But the real beneficiaries are the nation’s large meatpacking companies — the kind that would like it best if chickens grew in the shape of nuggets. Anyone who really cares about food — its different tastes, textures and delights — is more interested in diversity than uniformity.

As it happens, the same is true for anyone who cares about farmers and their animals. An agricultural system that favors cloned animals has no room for farmers who farm in different ways. Cloning, you will hear advocates say, is just another way of making cows. But every other way — even using embryo transplants and artificial insemination — allows nature to shuffle the genetic deck. A clone does not.

To me, this striving for uniformity is the driving and destructive force of modern agriculture. You begin with a wide array of breeds, a truly diverse pool of genes. As time passes, you impose stricter and stricter economic constraints upon those breeds and on the men and women who raise them. One by one, the breeds that don’t meet the prevailing economic model are weeded out. By the beginning of the 21st century, you’ve moved from the broad base of a genetic pyramid to its nearly vanishing peak, which is to say that the genetic diversity present in the economically acceptable breeds of modern livestock is minute. Then comes cloning, and we leave behind all variation.

Cloning is not unnatural. It is natural for humans to experiment, to try anything and everything. Nor is cloning that different from anything else we’ve seen in modern agriculture. It is another way of shifting genetic ownership from farmers to corporations. It is another way of creating still greater economic and genetic concentration in an industry that has already pushed concentration past the limits of ethical and environmental acceptability.

It always bears repeating that humans are only as rich as the diversity that surrounds them, whether we mean cultural or economic diversity. The same is true of genetic diversity, which is an essential bulwark against disease. These days there is less and less genetic diversity in the animals found on farms, and farmers themselves become less and less diverse because fewer and fewer of them actually own the animals they raise. They become contract laborers instead.

It is possible to preserve plant and crop diversity in seed banks. But there are no animal banks. Breeds of animals that are not raised die away, and the invaluable genetic archive they represent vanishes. This may look like a simple test of economic efficiency. It is really a colossal waste, of genes and of truly lovely, productive animals that are the result of years of human attention and effort. From one perspective, a cloned animal looks like a miracle of science. But from another, it looks like what it is: a dead end.

Estado: Parque Eólico de Osório

Estado: Parque Eólico de Osório tem produção diária de 10 MW

Relatório de Acompanhamento Diário da Operação do Sistema Elétrico divulgado ontem, mostra que o Parque Eólico de Osório, que entrou em operação comercial no dia 5 de julho, já gerou um total de 88 megawatts (MW) até o dia 12 de julho. A média diária de produção é de 10 MW. “O parque chegou a participar com 3,6% da produção estadual no dia 11 de julho”, revelou o secretário de Energia, Minas e Comunicações, José Carlos Elmer Brack, ao receber o relatório dos técnicos da sua pasta.
O Parque Eólico de Osório está subdivido em três parques - Osório, Sangradouro e Índios - e terá um total de 75 aerogeradores (25 por parque) e uma potência instalada de 150 MW, que irá quintuplicar a energia eólica produzida atualmente no país. A mesma irá gerar quantidade suficiente para abastecer anualmente o consumo residencial de cerca de 650 mil pessoas em Porto Alegre e será adquirida pela Eletrobrás por um prazo de 20 anos. Os parques eólicos, instalados com a mais avançada tecnologia do século XXI em energia eólica, que é a energia alternativa que mais cresce no mundo (cerca de 20% ao ano), colocam o Brasil e o Rio Grande do Sul no mapa mundial do desenvolvimento sustentável e em sintonia com as nações mais desenvolvidas do planeta.

RELATÓRIO
O relatório apresentado ontem mostra também que a capacidade máxima de armazenamento de energia na Região Sul tem permanecido ao redor de 30%. Isso significa que os volumes úteis dos reservatórios da Região Sul têm se mantido estáveis. Segundo o relatório, a Usina de Passo Real, principal reservatório do rio Jacuí, está com 55,6% do volume útil. Já a Usina Hidrelétrica Campos Novos está parada em razão de um vazamento. O esvaziamento do reservatório encheu o de Machadinho, que teve o volume útil aumentado de 23% no dia 19 de junho para 87% no dia 12 de julho. Atualmente, estão sendo transferidos da região Sudeste do Brasil para a Região Sul 5.550 MW médios.

Refúgio bagunçado, Aldem Bourscheit, Eco 09.01.2008

Todos os anos, temperaturas em queda e hábitos reprodutivos empurram milhares de aves em jornadas épicas entre o norte e o sul do Planeta. Um dos heróis da resistência é o maçarico-de-papo-vermelho. Pequenino, voa até 36 mil quilômetros por ano, quase a circunferência da Terra. Chega a permanecer cinco dias no ar, gastando gordura acumulada. Mas ninguém é de ferro. Em suas cruzadas aéreas, tanto aves turbinadas como os maçaricos quanto emplumados de menor autonomia de vôo fazem paradas em locais estratégicos para alimentação, repouso e reprodução.

Uma dessas áreas é o Parque Nacional da Lagoa do Peixe, no litoral sul gaúcho. Debruçado em uma faixa com mais de cem quilômetros de areia, alagados e matas, entre o Oceano Atlântico e a gigante Laguna dos Patos, a área protegida federal é um dos melhores pontos nacionais para a observação de aves. O rosado flamingo aparece por lá durante quase todo o ano. Além desse migrante do Chile e da Argentina, as águas salobras e cheias de comida atraem dezenas de outras espécies.

Camarões, vermes, caranguejos e peixes povoam a lâmina d´água, que não passa dos 60 centímetros, e servem de banquete a batuíras, maçaricos, trinta-réis, colhereiros, coscorobas, cisnes-do-pescoço-preto, garças-mouras e tantos outros. Lá já foram catalogadas 190 aves diferentes, entre visitantes e residentes. Também há capivaras, lontras, pequenos roedores como o tuco-tuco e jacarés no parque, criado em 1986. Sua riqueza natural é reabastecida por uma “barra”, espécie de cordão umbilical por onde fluem nutrientes do mar às águas do continente.

Turismo, pinus e falta de dinheiro

As belezas da região também atraem milhares de visitantes para um festival de aves migratórias realizado há sete anos. Na temporada de migrações aladas, a região recebe turistas ansiosos para ver de perto as cores da passarada. Aí começam os problemas do parque, que avançam para pesca irregular de camarão-rosa e tainha, caça, drenagens para plantio de arroz, especulação imobiliária, avanço do pinus, tráfego de veículos e acúmulo de lixo.

Os municípios de Mostardas e Tavares dividem os 344 Km2 do parque e abrigam hotéis e pousadas que organizam por conta própria visitas guiadas à unidade de conservação. O Instituto Chico Mendes (ICMBio) não sente nem o cheiro de recompensas pela exploração comercial da área protegida. Além disso, o parque é pouco sinalizado, não tem guaritas ou postos de fiscalização, não está demarcado e ainda não cobra ingressos. É um queijo-suíço, onde pessoas entram e saem quando bem entendem.

Antes povoada por índios Tupi-Guarani, a região foi colonizada por açorianos que apostaram no gado, milho e arroz. Pouco antes da criação da área protegida, chegou o pinus, que se alastra a passos largos e cobre cinco mil hectares - cerca de 15% do parque. A situação é preocupante e o Ministério Público Federal move ação civil contra o governo, pedindo a remoção dos pinheirais. Por enquanto, empresas removem seus cultivos cruzando por dentro do parque e o Ibama/ICMBio retira árvores “no braço”, enquanto não fica pronto um plano de erradicação.

Mas para cumprir a legislação federal e o plano de manejo elaborado em 1999 e aprovado em abril de 2004, o governo também precisa jogar para fora do parque 331 propriedades (70% com até 50 ha) com gado, arroz e agrotóxicos. Entre as centenas de moradores, há 173 pescadores autorizados pela Secretaria Especial de Aqüicultura e Pesca. Os aglomerados humanos estão na barra, no Farol de Mostardas e no Balneário Mostardense. Construções e reformas são proibidas nesses pontos. Por isso, casas apinhadas de gente são comuns no Verão.

“Menos de 10% da área está regularizada em termos fundiários”, diz Agenor Antônio Gedoz, único analista no Ibama local.

Ao menos, parte do problema fundiário começa a ser resolvido com dinheiro de compensação ambiental, a partir do asfaltamento de trechos da RST-101. Os recursos serão usados para levantamento de documentação e medição de propriedades dentro do parque. Em seguida, devem ocorrer desapropriações e demarcação dos 180 quilômetros de perímetro da área protegida. Muitas propriedades não têm qualquer documento.

“Há uma quantidade razoável de recursos para desapropriação, mas a documentação das propriedades precisa estar em dia. Essa é uma questão crucial para o parque”, avisa a chefe da unidade de conservação Maria Teresa Queiroz. O parque também está ameaçado de perder 11 servidores terceirizados, caso não seja renovado o contrato com a ong Pró-Aves. “Essas pessoas são fundamentais para gestão do parque. Refazer o contrato é uma prioridade”, ressalta Teresa.

Para complicar o quadro, apenas R$ 40 mil dos R$ 3,2 milhões que o Ibama/RS recebeu em 2007 chegaram à Lagoa do Peixe, para aluguel de prédio, diárias e compra de materiais de trabalho. Dos R$ 839 mil do Centro de Estudo de Migração de Aves (Cemave/ICMBio), nenhum centavo foi aplicado no parque. Com cortes na CPMF e divisão atabalhoada do Ibama, as perspectivas não são animadoras para 2008.

Pescarias no parque

Além dos pescadores com carteirinha oficial para atuar na área protegida, com linhas e redes fixas, barcos de pesca costumam invadir a região em busca de cardumes. Muitos pesqueiros vêm de Santa Catarina. “Terminaram os peixes lá e agora atacam por aqui”, diz Gedoz, do Ibama. A área protegida avança um quilômetro mar adentro, a partir do farol de Mostardas.

Apesar do pouco controle e deslizes de pescadores tradicionais, alguns atuam fora dos períodos e cotas de pesca definidas pelo Ibama, principalmente na captura do camarão-rosa, um foco maior de problema são embarcações comerciais com redes de arrasto. Muitos barcos escondem nome e registro e seguem cardumes até onde for possível. O Ibama local não tem embarcações, possui três veículos 4x4 em estado regular e há apenas um helicóptero para as regiões Sul e Sudeste. “Barcos são avistados freqüentemente e alguns são autuados”, diz a chefe do parque, Maria Teresa.

Uma esperança para controlar a pesca ilegal é o monitoramento por satélite de pesqueiros com mais de 15 metros de comprimento. O centro de operações do sistema foi inaugurado em novembro passado, na Marinha do Rio de Janeiro. Até agora há 900 barcos rastreados no País, mas faltam cerca de 400 para completar a primeira etapa de implantação. Depois, chegarão a 3 mil embarcações, de vários portes. O rastreamento é semelhante a um GPS, exibindo posição e rota traçada pelas embarcações.

Até o início do programa, apenas barcos estrangeiros arrendados por brasileiros eram rastreadas. O monitoramento por satélite existe há quase uma década em países como Chile, Peru, Argentina e Uruguai. Agora, segundo o governo, embarcações nacionais não conseguirão renovar licenças de pesca, não receberão sinal verde da Marinha para avançarem no mar, além de perderem subsídios ao óleo diesel. A fiscalização e autuações, no entanto, seguirá com o Ibama.

Segundo a Seap, é possível elevar o volume de pesca de peixes como o atum e outras espécies. O órgão federal vem incentivando aumento e renovação da frota pesqueira em toda a costa nacional. Mas segundo ambientalistas, a sobrevivência de outras espécies marinhas pode ser comprometida se os esforços econômicos não forem controlados. De acordo com estimativas da SEAP existem Estimativas da Seap no Rio Grande do Sul 4 mil embarcações artesanais e 200 industriais. Em Santa Catarina são 3,6 mil embarcações artesanais e 900 industriais

Segundo Paulo Henrique Ott, presidente da ong Gemars (Grupo de Estudos de MamÍferos Aquáticos do RS), nos anos 1990 as redes se estendiam por até dois quilômetros, mas hoje os redames alcançam até 10 quilômetros para se pescar a mesma quantidade de peixes. “Os estoques vêm diminuindo. Enquanto isso, o governo estimula aumento e renovação de frotas pesqueiras. Deveria haver mais investimento na piscicultura”, diz o ambientalista.

Bichos ameaçados

No litoral sulista, é comum a captura acidental de lobos-marinhos e toninhas em redes de arrasto e fixas, essas autorizadas pelo ICMBio. Tartarugas sofrem mais com linhas e espinhéis. Pequeno golfinho que só existe no litoral brasileiro, do Espírito Santo ao Rio Grande do Sul, além de Uruguai e Argentina, a toninha está ameaçada de extinção. Presa em redes, morre afogada.

Em novembro passado, o servidor da Secretaria Estadual da Agricultura Edmilson dos Santos, percorreu 110 quilômetros entre Quintão e a Lagoa do Peixe. No trajeto, contou 59 toninhas, três leões-marinhos, nove tartarugas e dois pingüins mortos.

Com população estimada em 17 mil indivíduos no estado, cerca de mil desses cetáceos perderiam a vida a cada ano, inclusive por causas naturais. Não há informações precisas se a espécie está repondo suas perdas ou se caminha para a extinção.

Entre as soluções testadas pelo planeta para reduzir a mortandade, está a sinalização sonora ou mudança do material das redes, para que sejam detectadas pelo sonar dos cetáceos. Mas as medidas não são 100% eficazes e podem acabar atraindo golfinhos para a morte. “Também se poderiam criar zonas livres de pesca, mas isso depende de boa fiscalização e recursos. Qualquer solução envolverá alterações na pesca”, diz Ott, que também é professor da Universidade Estadual do RS.

Recentemente, o governo lançou programa de estudo e conservação da toninha. Pelo menos R$ 130 mil serão usados em pesquisas sobre população e compra de equipamentos. O dinheiro vem de multas aplicadas em empresas que buscam bancos de petróleo no subsolo marinho.

Lixo para dar e vender

Nos cerca de 50 quilômetros percorridos pela reportagem de O Eco, entre Mostardas e a barra da Lagoa do Peixe, avistamos vários animais mortos ou repousando e lixo, muito lixo. O visual é tão feio quanto a página na Internet do parque nacional.

Além de fazer mal aos olhos, o lixo pode matar aves, tartarugas e mamíferos que passam pela costa e areias em suas viagens migratórias. Quando um bicho come plástico, por exemplo, sente-se permanentemente saciado e não se alimenta. Morre de inanição.

Monitorando mortes de animais desde 1991, em 270 quilômetros entre Torres e a Lagoa do Peixe, o Gemars avisa que as toneladas de resíduos nas areias gaúchas vêm dos municípios vizinhos, das comunidades de pescadores, turistas e de embarcações. Os itens mais encontrados são pontas de cigarro e garrafas PET, mas também há sacos inteiros de lixo.

Segundo o Ibama, há uma “briga” com as prefeituras da região para que recolham os resíduos. Elas alegam não ter recurso para a empreitada. Sem coleta, o vento generoso espalha a falta de educação e cuidado com o meio ambiente por dezenas de quilômetros. “Se há gente morando, é obrigação das prefeituras recolher o lixo. A situação se complica com o verão”, diz Maria Teresa, chefe do parque nacional.

Mesmo reconhecido como posto avançado da Reserva da Biosfera da Mata Atlântica, integrar a Rede Hemisférica de Reservas para Aves Limnícolas e ter carimbo de Sítio Ramsar (área alagada importante para a vida natural), o Parque Nacional da Lagoa do Peixe precisa de muita atenção do governo e da sociedade brasileira para seguir encantando como rota anual de milhares de aves migratórias.

Como chegar à Lagoa do Peixe

A partir de Porto Alegre (RS) segue-se pela RS-040 até o entroncamento de Capivari do Sul, de onde se avança à direita pela completamente esburacada RST-101, chamada em alguns trechos mais ao sul de Estrada do Inferno. Até Mostardas, onde está a sede do parque nacional, são quase 400 quilômetros desde a capital gaúcha. Para alcançar a barra da Lagoa do Peixe, são necessários cerca de 50 quilômetros a partir de Mostardas, sobre as areais do litoral.

Encontrando animais marinhos

No Inverno, o litoral gaúcho é visitado por lobos, pingüins, focas, leões e até elefantes-marinhos, se as correntes geladas das Ilhas Malvinas forem realmente fortes. As espécies mais freqüentes na região são o leão-marinho-do-sul (Otaria flavescens) e o lobo-marinho-do-sul (Arctocephlus australis), mas todos percorrem enormes distâncias até toparem em nossas praias, onde podem estar descansando ou se recuperando de ferimentos e doenças.

Quando encontrar um desses bichos, a dica é manter distância, não oferecer comida e não tentar retirá-lo do local ou jogá-lo de volta no mar. Além de perturbar o bicho, alguns podem transmitir doenças como tuberculose e pneumonia.

Se um animal apresentar ferimentos graves ou inanição e você quiser realmente ajudar, afaste curiosos e chatos de plantão e avise instituições como:

Ceclimar / UFRGS - (51) 3627-1309 / 3627-5384
Ibama / Lagoa do Peixe - (51) 3673-1464
Batalhão Ambiental da Brigada Militar
Osório - (51) 3663-1040
Tramandai - (51) 3661-4620

In Europe, New Life for Nuclear, Mark Scott, Spiegel

ATOMIC ALTERNATIVES
In Europe, New Life for Nuclear
By Mark Scott

Britain leads the EU's bid to reconsider an energy source that can reduce oil dependence and emissions -- but comes with baggage of its own.

In its search for ways of reducing carbon emissions, Britain is leaving no stone unturned. For the heavily polluting energy sector, that means taking another look at nuclear power, which will get a boost on Jan. 10 when the government is expected to greenlight the construction of Britain's first nuclear power plants in almost 15 years.

London isn't the only capital rethinking nuclear power. With its low carbon dioxide output and resistance to rising oil and gas prices, nuclear power generation meets many requirements of European countries looking to meet stringent European Union targets for greenhouse gas reductions and to reduce energy dependence on oil and gas imports from Russia and the Middle East.

According to a report by consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers, European utilities, including France's EDF and Germany's E.ON, rank nuclear as the most likely technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the sector by 2017. At present, more than 30 percent of power generation companies are actively considering investment in nuclear generation to meet their commitments under the EU's Emission Trading Scheme, which charges companies for emitting carbon dioxide.

"Nuclear deals both with the climate change question and the issue of security of supply," says Mark Hughes, PricewaterhouseCoopers' European utilities leader. "On the global stage, nuclear is really finding its feet."

It's no surprise, then, that Britain is poised to return to nuclear as a core component of its future energy mix. Currently 16 reactors produce just over 18 percent of the country's electricity, although a quarter of the plants are set for decommissioning by 2010, according to the World Nuclear Assn., an industry body. Across Europe, nuclear constitutes 30 percent of total energy generation.

If, as is expected, the British government approves a new round of nuclear plant construction, industry analysts believe two facilities -- costing into the billions of dollars each -- could be under construction within the next five years. A further three to five plants could get the go-ahead by 2015. Each plant can take up to 10 years to complete. "For energy companies, nuclear generation is certainly an attractive prospect if they have government backing," says Michael Tamvakis, professor of commodities, economics, and finance at City University's Cass Business School in London.

European utilities and construction firms are chomping at the bit to exploit the expected change in British regulation. British Energy, Spain's Iberdrola, and Germany's E.ON and RWE all have expressed interest in operating nuclear facilities in Britain. Companies that build nuclear plants, such as France's Areva and Japan's Hitachi, already have filed for construction permits.

Uranium Pricey, Engineers Scarce

This scenario is being repeated across the continent, particularly in Central Europe and Scandinavia where 13 plants are under construction, according to the Brussels-based European Nuclear Society. Finland got the ball rolling in 2005 when construction on a 1600-megawatt plant -- the first new facility in Western Europe for 15 years -- began. France broke ground on a new 1650 mw plant in September, 2007, while Bulgaria and the Ukraine are each working on two new plants.

Such demand has put a strain on the nuclear industry, which had spent several decades in slow decline as governments, utilities, and the public turned to other sources of energy. With nuclear power now back in vogue around the world, the price of uranium -- the main ingredient needed for nuclear generation -- has risen four-fold since 2004. Similarly, the need for nuclear engineers has never been higher, with many analysts predicting a shortage of highly trained staff if new employees aren't recruited into the industry.

Despite these problems, Luís Echávarri, director of the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris, is unconcerned. "In spite of the rise in uranium costs, it still remains small, representing only five percent of the total cost of energy production," he says.

The Question of Hazardous Waste Echávarri also reckons there's time to attract new nuclear engineers before projects start to suffer. "Any new plant will take up to 10 years to complete, so governments and companies have sufficient time [to recruit staff], but they must start to act now," he says.

Another concern for the nuclear industry is the decommissioning of plants and disposal of hazardous waste. Critics say these costs likely will be born by national governments because nuclear waste, which is typically buried deep underground, remains poisonous for thousands of years. To combat the burdensome environmental issues, the British government says it will require firms to pay the full cost of decommissioning and waste storage. Most European energy companies already pay for disposal of the toxic nuclear substances.

Despite moves by Britain and other countries back into the nuclear energy camp, some European countries, particularly Germany and Spain, have pledged to phase out nuclear energy because of ecological concerns. Yet as the clamor to reduce carbon emissions and increase energy independence grows, it may not be long before hold-outs have to reconsider their positions.

Pandemic politics, Margaret Wente, 23/11/07

For the past decade, United Nations scientist Peter Piot has been sounding the alarm about the growing scourge of AIDS. “The pandemic and its toll are outstripping the worst predictions,” he warned last year. “[It] is now one of the make-or-break forces of this century.” The Western world has responded, with AIDS funding that has swelled to $10-billion a year.

But this week brought some surprising news about the epidemic. It's shrinking. Annual new HIV infections have plunged by 40 per cent, to 2.5 million. And the total number of people infected with HIV has also fallen – down to 33 million from 40 million.

What happened? Are prevention programs finally working? Has someone found a cure?

Not exactly. What happened was that the UN's top AIDS scientists were finally forced to admit that their numbers had been wildly overstated. “They had clearly been using inflated numbers for some years,” charged Stephen Lewis, the former special UN envoy for HIV-AIDS in Africa. He even accused UNAIDS of being “irresponsible.”

Dr. James Chin of UC Berkeley has been tracking the disease since it first emerged. He is among the many epidemiologists who say the UN agency has cooked the numbers in order to get political and economic support. “I call them glorious lies and myths, because they're for a good cause,” he told me.

Both Mr. Lewis and Dr. Chin are quick to stress that AIDS is still a huge challenge and a monumental human tragedy. But the distortion of information has caused scarce public health resources to be wasted on programs aimed at people who simply aren't at risk. Meantime, the UN's relentless fear-mongering has spread abundant misconceptions about the disease. Here are a few of the more startling facts I learned from a conversation with Dr. Chin.

The AIDS epidemic is past its peak. Even UNAIDS has admitted that global HIV incidence had peaked by the late 1990s. This doesn't mean people will stop getting AIDS any time soon. But the infection rates are on the decline. The impact of prevention programs pales beside what's known as the saturation effect – meaning that people at the most risk have already been infected. Although prevention programs get the credit, one scientist has called this phenomenon “riding to glory on the down slope of the epidemic curve.”

AIDS is not a big problem outside Africa. (The continent still accounts for three-quarters of the world's AIDS deaths.) Despite widespread warnings that AIDS was about to explode across India, China and Southeast Asia, it hasn't. The UN has slashed its estimate of the HIV-infected population of India by almost two-thirds, back to 2.5 million. China has only a few hundred thousand infected people, not the millions that were predicted. Indonesia and the Philippines, where male circumcision is the norm, have escaped relatively unscathed, because circumcision is a major barrier to infection. The global infection rate outside of Africa is 0.2 per cent, says Dr. Chin. He thinks the UN numbers are still too high, and that the total number of infected might be as low as 22 million.

Outside Africa, people in the general population are unlikely to become infected. In the rest of the world, HIV is almost entirely confined to men who have sex with other men, intravenous drug users and female sex workers. That's an inconvenient truth for activists and fundraisers. “When you're trying to get the public and policy makers to take note, they're not going to be too keen on pouring money into men having sex with men and junkies and sex workers,” says Dr. Chin. He says a lot of effort and money have been wasted on programs directed at the general population.

The main driver of infection is not poverty, but high-risk sexual behaviour. In Africa, the richest countries have the highest infection rates, and richer people have much higher rates than poor ones. HIV hits hardest at Africa's teachers and professionals. In the West, where the biggest at-risk group is men who have sex with men, income isn't a factor either. “No matter how you look at it, poverty isn't driving it,” says Dr. Chin.

The riskiest behaviour is having multiple concurrent sexual partners. People with several overlapping sexual partners – a common practice in Africa – are at much higher risk. Westerners may have more sexual partners over a lifetime, but what matters is the pattern of behaviour. The single most effective way to reduce the spread of AIDS is partner reduction, or “mutual faithfulness.”

Even in sub-Saharan Africa, the news isn't all bad. The HIV infection rate has levelled off at about 3 per cent (Dr. Chin's estimate), which means that 97 per cent of the population is not infected. In Rwanda, for example, the infection rate is now thought to be 3 per cent, down from 14 per cent or even more. This is not to minimize the devastation: Africa has more than 11 million AIDS orphans, and in some countries, the death rates among the most educated and productive people are 20 or 30 per cent. In some places, the adult prevalence rate will be at least 5 to 10 per cent for decades to come. “On the ground, the situation in Africa is still appalling,” says Stephen Lewis.

AIDS is a terrible pandemic, but it's not the worst. Tuberculosis wiped out up to a billion people over the 18th and 19th centuries. Malaria kills a million people every year, mostly children under 5. Nor is AIDS a general killer. Unlike an influenza epidemic, which can infect up to half the population, it only hits selected subgroups.

And yet, a lot of people don't want to hear the (relatively) good news about AIDS. Dr. Chin and others who challenge the official line tend to be denounced for being callous and cold-hearted. After all, the global competition for dollars is fierce, and the stakes are huge. But Dr. Chin points out that in the end, fudging the facts doesn't help anyone – least of all the victims of this tragic, dreadful plague.

Globe Editorial, 24/08/07, Blown cover

In years past, it would have been dismissed as the sort of conspiracy theory that professional protesters are fond of. But this is the YouTube era. And courtesy of a video posted on that website this week, claims that police sent agents provocateurs into protests at the North American summit at Montebello, Que., turned out not to be so fanciful after all.

In the video, three young men are seen conversing with unionists in front of a police line. While most of the demonstrators are casually dressed, the three interlopers are clad as "Black Bloc" anarchists, complete with black bandanas serving as masks. One is carrying a rock.

When union leader Dave Coles implores them to drop the rock and take off their masks, they refuse; when accused of being police officers, they don't deny it. As the other demonstrators grow irate, the three men sheepishly amble into a police line and are handcuffed.

Curiously, there was no record of their arrests. No other protesters knew who they were. And the three men were wearing the same boots as the police officers.

Having initially brushed off questions about the incident, the Sûreté du Québec finally acknowledged yesterday evening that the three men were officers. But it denied they were there to provoke, insisting they had "the mandate to spot and identify violent demonstrators to avoid the situation from getting out of hand."

If the Sûreté is telling the truth, its ineptness was staggering. Sending agents posing as violent anarchists into a crowd of middle-aged unionists seems straight out of a film parody of police tactics.

But could the force really have been so comically inept? Or were the infiltrators there, as Mr. Coles has alleged, to stir up trouble so police could move in?

Neither scenario is appealing. But if it is the latter, this is a scandal on the level of the Mounties' pepper-spraying of protesters at the 1997 APEC summit. And given that the RCMP was working alongside the Sûreté at Montebello, it must also be asked whether it was complicit in this plan.

Whatever the strategy, the summit will be remembered for police behaving badly while demonstrators remained peaceful. Now, a full investigation is needed to determine just how bad this really was.