SOUTH AMERICA ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND HEALTH NEWSLETTER

205 t h issue, August 22, 2012 The Ocean Health Index Gives the World’s Ocean a “60” out of “100”

Researchers hope that the Ocean Health Index builds awareness of the state of the world’s ocean, and works as a catalyst and guide for business and government decision-makers to develop effective policies promoting ocean health. Human life depends on the seas in countless ways—food, jobs, biodiversity, carbon storage, protection of shores. But until now, we had no methodology to calculate the trade-offs between these needs; policy-makers had no way to get a comprehensive picture of their country’s marine activities. For the first time ever, the Index identifies ten vital needs, tracks the impact of human activities on these needs, and creates a baseline of data that can be used to measure progress or decline. Every country with a coastline can adapt it to analyze their marine use and help to focus on priorities. The Ocean Health Index defines a healthy ocean as one that sustainably delivers a range of benefits to people both now and in the future. A healthy ocean is one that can maintain or increase benefits (food and services) in the long term, without jeopardizing the health or function of the web of life that underlies the ocean. The ocean is our most valuable asset. It holds more than 98% of the space where life exists, 97% of the planet’s water, produce more than half of the oxygen in the atmosphere, and regulate the earth’s climate. As of today, more than one billion people depend on fish for their basic protein. By 2050, the ocean may need to produce 70% more to be able to meet the growing food demands of 9 billion people. An Unusual Degree of Collaboration. More comprehensive and ambitious than any single previous marine survey, building the Index was a complicated task involving over 60 experts working in different parts of the world. All were driven by the urgent need to know in quantitative terms where we stand with one of earth’s most precious resources. Researchers ranged widely over existing marine data, measuring everything from the percentage of live coral covering tropical coral reefs to the percentage of coastal people served by adequate sanitary facilities and the kilograms of shrimp grown on aquaculture farms. They crunched over 200 sets of marine data, and measured each country’s score against reference points that set standards of maximum sustainable use. A goal score of 100 would mean that the evaluated system reached its defined target, sustainably delivering all of the benefits that it can in the present and likely near future. A low goal score means that the maximum benefit is not being obtained and/or is not being obtained in a sustainable way. The lead scientific partners of the Ocean Health Index are the University of Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Synthesis and Analysis in collaboration with the University of British Columbia’s Sea Around Us. The founding partners are Conservation International, New England Aquarium, and National Geographic Society. Pacific Life Foundation is the Founding Presenting Sponsor. Darden Foundation was a founding donor. How the Ocean Health Index Will Be Used. The Index can be used globally, regionally or for an individual bay. It allows for direct comparison across different aspects of ocean health and different locations in a way that is not possible with current assessment tools. A goal score of 100 would mean that the evaluated system reached its defined target, sustainably delivering

all of the benefits that it can in the present and likely near future. A low goal score means that the maximum benefit is not being obtained and/or is not being obtained in a sustainable way. Conservation International has been working around the world to help countries improve their marine health—whether supporting communities in establishing marine protected areas in Indonesia, creating a cross-border sanctuary for baby turtles around Turtle Islands in the Philippines and Malaysia, or collaborating with governments to protect large, inter-connected swaths of ocean called seascapes. With the arrival of the Ocean Health Index, scientists and communities will have a baseline of data to measure progress or trends away from sustainable use.

Read more at: http://www.conservation.org/global/marine/initiatives/ocean_health_index/pages/ocean_health_index.aspx

The information contained herein was gathered from news sources from across the region, and the views expressed below do not necessarily reflect those of the Regional Environmental HUB Office or of our constituent posts.

Addressees interested in sharing any ESTH-related events of USG interest are welcome to do so.

For questions or comments, please contact us at quevedoa@state.gov.

* Free translation prepared by REO staff.

Oceans: The Ocean Health

Index Gives the World’s Ocean a “60” out of “100”.

Science: Genome-Wide

Association Study Indicates Two Novel Resistance Loci for Severe Malaria.

Environment: The Cardboard

Bike, The Latest in Green Transportation.

Science: The Unprecedented

Phoenix Galaxy Cluster: How Many Stars Does it Form?

Energy: May an Ancient

Recipe Help to Create a Biofuel?

Climate Change: How Climate

Change Got Caught in the Culture Wars

PERU: Pantanos de Villa

Received A Blue Wetland Globe Award.

October 15, 2012

Global Handwashing Day

October 31-November3, 2012,

Maryland-U.S. Summit on the Science of

Eliminating Health Disparities, U.S.A. http://bit.ly/KWIuT0

October, 2012

COBER

November 12-15, 2012, Israel

Fourth International Conference on Drylands, Deserts and Desertification: Implementing Rio+20 for Drylands and

Desertification http://www.desertification.bgu.ac.il/

November 12-16, 2012,

Switzerland Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (MOP 24) http://ozone.unep.org/new_site/en/historical_meetings.php?in...

Next events:

In this issue:

Photo by Paulo Brandao (flickr user). Under Creative Commons License.

CLIMATE CHANGE: World Bank Unveils 10-Year Environmental Strategy By Lisa Friedman

Malaria causes approximately one million fatalities per year all over the world. Although highlighted by the strong protective effect of the sickle-cell trait, the full impact of hu-man genetics on resistance to the disease remains largely unexplored. Genome-wide association (GWA) studies are designed to unravel relevant genetic variants comprehen-sively; however, in malaria, as in other infectious diseases, these studies have been only partly successful. Here we identify two previously unknown loci associated with severe falciparum malaria in patients and controls from Ghana, West Africa. We applied the GWA approach to the diverse clinical syndromes of severe falciparum malaria, thereby targeting human genetic variants influencing any step in the complex pathogenesis of the disease. One of the loci was identified on chromosome 1q32 within the ATP2B4 gene, which encodes the main calcium pump of erythrocytes, the host cells of the pathogenic stage of malaria parasites. The second was indicated by an intergenic single nucleotide polymorphism on chromo-some 16q22.2, possibly linked to a neighbouring gene encoding the tight-junction pro-tein MARVELD3. The protein is expressed on endothelial cells and might therefore have a

role in microvascular damage caused by endothelial adherence of parasitized erythrocytes. We also confirmed previous reports on protective effects of the sickle-cell trait and blood group O. Our findings underline the potential of the GWA approach to provide candidates for the development of control measures against infectious diseases in humans. Read full article at: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11334.html

Izhar Gafni, an entrepreneur Israel has built a sturdy cardboard bike it hopes will revolutionize the field of the green transport par excellence, with production costs around 10 dollars. Cheap addition, the bike is light, strong, waterproof and moisture impervious to rust and can withstand up to 140 kilos. Its chassis is made entirely of cardboard covered with waterproof material with brown and white, so get the finish that looks like a plastic car. “This is a city bike, the simplest imaginable, but strong enough to become a good means of transportation, “Gafni told Efe. Living in the moshav (cooperative rural Israel) Emek Hefer, in northern Israel, this self-taught mechanic was inspired by another invention: a canoe made of cardboard with water resistant materials. “When I worked in California I learned of the canoe. several months I’ve been mulling over the issue until I returned to Israel and said to myself, why not?, no cardboard bike “she says. Perhaps the fact that you have decided to go for the bike is not accidental, and is that Gafni was born and raised in Kibbutz Bror Jail (south), within a Brazilian family emigrated to Israel. Bicycles are the most common means of trans-port between the members of these Israelis and centuries-old rural communities, although he is simply defined as the bike enthusiast. Dubbed BV6, the invention has taken four years of construction and six prototypes, then spent the early years to experience the limits and possibilities of cardboard, a material which hardly existed a corrupt background. “I consulted with several engineers and initially built a small bike that looked like a box on wheels,” he says before acknowledging that “the most was hard to develop the technology to achieve anything resembling a bicycle. “ In his research applied the principles of Japanese origami and was able to increase up to three times the capacity of resistance of the ma-terial simply by folding and superimposing several times. The device can be doubly green as can be made also with cardboard recycling. Another advantage is that it does not require pre-assembly, but is a piece, including wheels, so it will not experience the dreaded punc-tures, becoming a medium that requires little maintenance.

Read full article at: http://1hnews.com/the-cardboard-bike-the-latest-in-green-transportation/4684/

ENVIRONMENT: The Cardboard Bike, The Latest in Green Transportation

SCIENCE: Genome-Wide Association Study Indicates Two Novel Resistance Loci for Severe Malaria

Photo by Marco Gomes (Flicker). Under Creative Commons License .

CALLAO, Peru (Jan. 17, 2012) Lt. Kimberly Edgel, left, and Christian Baldeviano examine a positive malaria blood smear at U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit (NAMRU) 6. NAMRU-6 is studying the interplay between malaria and the human immune system to identify new malaria vaccine targets. A U.S. Navy Photo.

SCIENCE: The Unprecedented Phoenix Galaxy Cluster: How Many Stars Does it Form? By Mike Wall

The faraway Phoenix galaxy cluster may be the biggest and brightest such structure ever discovered, and it's forming stars at an unprecedented rate, scientists announced Here's a by-the-numbers look at the Phoenix cluster — for-mally known as SPT-CLJ2344-4243 — which researchers say could yield key insights into how galaxies and colossal clus-ters evolve: 2.5 quadrillion: How many times more massive the Phoenix cluster is than our own sun. This may be an all-time record for galaxy clusters — the most massive structures in the universe, composed of hundreds or thousands of individual galaxies bound together by gravity — researchers said. "I would say it's in a dead heat for the most massive galaxy cluster," Michael McDonald of MIT, lead author of the study describing Phoenix's remarkable properties, told SPACE.com contributor Charles Choi. "The record-holder, 'El Gordo,' is

slightly more massive, but the uncertainty in this estimate is high — it could turn out that with more careful measurements, Phoe-nix is more massive." 3 trillion: The number of stars that reside in the Phoenix cluster's central galaxy, compared to 200 billion or so in our own Milky Way.

10 billion: The low-end estimate of the mass of the huge black hole at the heart of Phoenix's central galaxy, in solar masses. That's about as massive as the biggest black hole ever discovered. For comparison, the Milky Way's central black hole weighs in at about 4 million solar masses. 5.7 billion: The approximate distance of Phoenix from Earth, in light-years. The cluster is found in the Phoenix constellation, partly explaining its informal name. However, researchers also chose the moniker as a nod to the mythological bird that rises from its own ashes, since Phoenix's cen-tral galaxy has seemingly come back to life with a huge burst of star formation. 2010: The year in which astronomers discovered Phoenix, using the U.S. National Science Foundation-funded South Pole Telescope. But it took the team a little while to learn just what they had found."We really didn't realize how remarkable it was until late last year and early this year, when we got follow-up X-ray and optical and ultraviolet and infrared measurements that constrained the star-formation rate," McDonald told reporters today. 740: The approximate number of stars generated per year by the galaxy in Phoenix's center, a new high for the middle of a cluster. "This extreme rate of star formation was really unexpected," McDon-ald said. "It's nearly five times higher than the next most star-forming central-cluster galaxy, in Abell 1835. So it's really crushing the re-cord." Our own Milky Way galaxy produces just one to two new stars every year on average, McDonald added. Read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0816/The-unprecedented-Phoenix-Galaxy-Cluster-How-many-stars-does-it-form-video

The South Pole Telescope (SPT) was used to study the Phoenix Cluster.Photo Credit: Daniel Luong-Van, National Science Foundation.

Galaxy at Center of Phoenix ClusterCredit: NASA/CXC/M.WeissArtist's impression of the galaxy at the center of the Phoenix Cluster, which is forming about 740 new stars per year. Image released August 15, 2012.

ENERGY: Can an Ancient Recipe From the Past Help to Create the Biofuel of the Future?*

A million years-old formula appears to offer the opportunity to generate ecological fuels by lignin decomposition. The carboniferous period that lasted approximately 60 million years left huge amounts of this agent in sedimentary rocks, due to organic material decomposition from prehistoric forests. Car-bon is made up of a carbon molecule called lignin, which is a basic structural component of vege-table tissues. Few microorganisms are able to decompose it. One theory asserts that coastal swamp ecosystems and anoxic conditions (without oxygen) throughout that period favored organic vegetal material fossilization into carbon. Yet, it might not be the only reason. A study published in “Science” points out to an old ingredient that, interest-ingly enough, could help us produce more biofuels in the future. Researchers compared genomes from 31 different species of fungi capable of decomposing their own vegetal matter. Among these are several from the kind known as “white rot”, which are the only ones capable of decomposing lignin. According to researchers, the development of these “white rot” fungi could have contributed –or might have even been fundamental – to end the Carboniferous, as it was the starting point, after which dead plants started to get fully decomposed. The article, published by Brazilian newspaper “Estadão de Brasil”, states that the relationship between the fungi research and biofuels is the following: bioethanol (fuel alcohol) is produced by sugar fermentation from sugarcane juice. The sugarcane bagasse by-product is also sugar rich and can also be fermented and turned into fuel. The problem is that, in order to obtain these sugars, lignin molecules inside this bagasse need to decompose; and this is not yet an eco-nomically viable alternative. Many people in Brazil and the rest of the world have been looking for decades for a way to decompose the molecules without much suc-cess. “White rot” fungi now offer a promising alternative to develop second-generation bioethanol from sugarcane bagasse. This genetic recipe from millions of years ago could have helped to finish the formation of fossil fuels in the past, and now, it can help to reduce the use of fossil fuels in the future. Read more: http://elcomercio.pe/actualidad/1446539/noticia-receta-pasado-puede-ayudar-crear-biocombustible-futuro

Climate change is arguably the biggest challenge the nation and the world face right now. There’s a solid scientific consensus that anthro-pogenic global warming is underway. But in America – to put it gently – there’s a range of beliefs about it, and what if anything to do about it. This lack of social consensus has paralyzed the political system. Nothing much is happening, or likely to happen for a while. Why? What in other circumstances would be a question of scientific policy (which is difficult enough) has become wrapped up in the broader, unsettled cultural struggle that divides our politics today, University of Michigan professor Andrew J. Hoffman argues in this piece in Stanford Social Innovation Review:

Climate change has become enmeshed in the so-called culture wars. Acceptance of the scientific consensus is now seen as an alignment with liberal views consistent with other “cultural” issues that divide the country (abortion, gun control, health care, and evolution). This partisan divide on climate change was not the case in the 1990s. It is a recent phenomenon, fol-lowing in the wake of the 1997 Kyoto Treaty that threatened the material interests of powerful economic and political in-terests, particularly members of the fossil fuel industry.3 The great danger of a protracted partisan divide is that the debate will take the form of what I call a “logic schism,” a breakdown in debate in which opposing sides are talking about com-pletely different cultural issues.

There are several features of climate change that help create this divide. The first is the difficulty in seeing carbon dioxide as a threat. The traditional view of “pollution” is noxious stuff that shouldn’t be there. But CO2 falls into a different category: it is a natural part of the atmosphere and integral to the processes of life. The problem is not the presence of CO2 but the fact that there’s too much of it being produced by man-made processes.

Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmcquaid/2012/08/21/how-climate-change-got-caught-in-the-culture-wars/

CLIMATE CHANGE: How Climate Change Got Caught in the Culture Wars By John McQuaid

Photo by EMSL (flickr). Under Creative Commons License.

This year, parties to the Ramsar Convention met in Bucharest, Rumania, from July 6 to 13. One of the purposes was to assess progress achieved by the Convention in rational use of wetlands, as well as to award Wetland Globes. Blue Wetland Globes recognise best practices in wetland man-agement; Grey Globes highlight wetlands that are being actively degraded, neglected or are un-der threat. Wetland Globes aim to show that without national protection, short term economic gain and pollution seriously degrade many wetland sites. In celebrating good restoration and management Wetland Globes also demonstrate that with the right incentives, it is possible to slow biodiversity and habitat loss, by encouraging private sector interests to work with nature rather than against it. Wetland Globes give a voice to small non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working on conservation. They are non-remunerative awards given to wetlands them-selves. This year there were some 2,000 votes from grass-roots NGOs for 270 wetlands around the world. Peruvian wetland administration of “Pantanos de Villa” received one of the six BLUE Globes awarded this year. The others were awarded to wetlands in Madagascar, Japan, Bulgaria, the United States, and New Zealand. GREY awards went to wetlands in Australia, Colombia, Croatia /Danube, South Korea and Benin, West Africa.

“Pantanos de Villa” is a highly biodiverse wetland fed by the main river system of Lima. It was recognized as a Ramsar Site in 1997. It benefits directly more than 10,000 local people and indirectly about 8 million Lima citizens through its recreational activities and environmental education programmes. There are many different species of resident and mi-gratory birds including gulls, terns, ibis, osprey and egret. There were specific potential threats to the wetlands from urban activities. Through creating partnerships and task groups with public organisations; companies, factories, local people and other interested parties, the Municipal Au-thority has managed to dramatically improve the management of this fragile ecosystem. The resulting involvement of local people in the management of the wetland has led to an increase in environmental awareness and faster response to illegal threats. Future plans include the investment of $1.5m for tourism and to improve facilities and education for

the 35,000 annual visitors to the area. “Pantanos de Villa” Director Daniel Valle stated that, thanks to the commitment of the Municipality of Lima and the National Service for Protected Natural Areas (SERNANP), they have successfully established a shared man-agement program. At present, Pantanos de Villa is the only protected natural area being managed by a municipality, which demon-strates that this shared-management experi-ence can provide good results.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5OUE9sMXnM&feature=youtu.be http://www.tvperu.gob.pe/noticias/locales/otros/35974-premian-a-pantanos-de-villa-en-cumbre-mundial-de-humedales.html

PERU: Pantanos de Villa Received A Blue Wetland Globe Award

Peruvian “Pantanos de Villa” was awarded a Blue Globe in recognition to the best practice in wetland management.

The Ramsar Convention refers to wetlands of international importance as habitats of species such as aquatic and migratory birds. This Convention was signed in Ramsar, Iran, on February 2, 1971. Peru subscribed to this convention in 1975. Pantanos de Villa was recognized as a “Wetland of International Importance or Ramsar Site”, on February 20, 1997. Photo by Christian Quispe. Courtesy of Wust Ediciones. https://www.facebook.com/#!/RamsarConventionOnWetlands