Breaking Waves: Ocean News

The increasing tensions with Egypt over the proposed dam reveal how fundamental the river is to both nations' identity

Tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia have grown at an alarming rate since Addis Ababa announced its plans to construct the Grand Renaissance dam across part of the Nile. The project will divert the flow of the river and give Ethiopia greater access.

Egypt claims the dam could lower the river's level in a country that is mainly desert, and reduce cultivated farmland. President Mohamed Morsi has called the river "God's gift to Egypt", and the country's politicians claim the reduced water flow could prove catastrophic. An Ethiopian government spokesman, Getachew Reda, says none of Egypt's worries are scientifically based, and that "some of them border on … fortune-telling".

As the debate continues, I am reminded of an encounter between my mother and an Egyptian man one afternoon in New York. My mother was visiting from Addis Ababa and we decided to go to a pizzeria. One customer, an Egyptian, recognised us as Ethiopians. After brief introductions, he made a passing comment about the age-old conflict between our countries over the Nile. My mother calmly stated there was no conflict: the Nile was ours. The man was not amused. What followed degenerated into verbal sparring that ricocheted between "historic right", ancient civilisations and colonial-era treaties. Finally, my mother, frustrated, claimed full ownership of the river – and he did the same. It wouldn't have ended if the pizza hadn't arrived.

The Nile, at 6,700km, is the longest river in the world. It begins in Ethiopia and ends in Egypt. It moves counter to what one might expect, flowing upwards on the map. This, as much as anything, reflects the river's mythological dimensions. It defies logic, its identity is as much a product of poetry as politics. Homer, in The Odyssey, called the body of water "Aegyptus, the heaven-fed river". The name alone gave Egypt symbolic rights, and bestowed religious qualities upon the water. Despite the fact that 85% of the Nile originates in Ethiopia, we still associate the river with Cleopatra and King Tut, with pyramids and the sphinx, with sophisticated belief systems and advanced scientific knowledge. The Nile is a metaphor for Egypt. It is a geographic location as much as it is shorthand for one of the most innovative moments in world history. In popular imagination, it is as far removed from poverty as one can get. It is the opposite of devastation and privation.

Perhaps what my mother and the Egyptian man were arguing for was an exclusive cultural identity that was synonymous with the Nile's rich past. Perhaps he didn't realise he was fighting for something he already had, or maybe he was trying to defend what he knew wasn't entirely his. Despite being the source for much of the Nile's water, Ethiopia uses very little of it. By asserting Ethiopia's ownership of the river in such a sweeping and unequivocal manner, maybe my mother was trying her best to redefine what the country had become to westerners: the barren land of begging children and dying cattle. This was not the life she had known – nor had it been mine. Maybe she wasn't decrying a historic wrong as much as trying to co-opt it. Both of them were too mired in pride and nationalism to find a way towards common ground.

Tourists like to speak of Ethiopia as a country of contrasts, as a place where time has stood still. They point to quaint hillside villages and farmers ploughing with oxen, they wave at children in ragged clothes, and photograph women bent beneath bundles of firewood. Somehow this represents a kind of existence free of the hassles of modernity. It feels old, in the way of our oldest stories, and somehow more authentic. But tucked behind those sentimentalised visions of an unfettered life are harsh realities. For as much progress as Ethiopia has made economically in recent years, an overwhelming majority of the population, particularly in the rural areas, still has no access to electricity.

Ethiopia is vulnerable to drought and climate change. It has unpredictable distribution of water. The country's "timelessness" has something to do with the lack of access to basic necessities. There is nothing romantic about this. The dam would generate electricity. It could produce surplus energy for export to neighbouring countries. And controlling water flow in the Nile could bring improved irrigation and water distribution.

Last week Morsi promised to "defend each drop of Nile water with our blood". The language emerging from the two nations evokes epic poetry; the clash of gods in the guise of men.

On a recent trip to Ethiopia, I travelled to Bahir Dar, a picturesque city close to the Blue Nile. I was eager to see this great river, to come as close to its point of origin as I could. As I crossed a bridge, a companion pointed eagerly to a group of young boys playing in a trickling stream of water. "There," he said, almost shouting. "That's our Nile!"

I looked out of the window, surprised. Not by the boys, but by the ordinariness of it all. There was nothing grand or mythic in this snapshot of daily life, but it contained everything that was most important about the debate. Regardless of our poetic allusions and historic references, when we talk about the Nile, we are talking about water: a fundamental right for all people, regardless of geography.

• Water
• Ethiopia
• Egypt
• Africa

Maaza Mengiste
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

New York is the latest to join the composting trend that doesn't take much time and has great benefits for the environment

New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced plans to introduce composting into the city's garbage mix with the goal of making it mandatory in a couple of years. The scheme has barely gotten off the ground and already some New Yorkers are fretting about the prospect of a future where they will be required to throw a banana peel in one bin and the non biodegradable sticker that was once attached to it in another.

Terrifying as such a prospect may be to composting virgins, however, one can only hope that such resistance will be overcome, as the benefits of diverting food waste from landfills far outweigh any (perceived) inconvenience.

Every year Americans throw out around 40% of the food they buy (pdf) and nearly all of that food waste (96%) ends up in landfills or incinerators. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more food reaches landfills than any other single material where it rots and becomes a significant source of methane a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. We shouldn't be throwing out this much food in the first place, of course, but as we are, it makes environmental and economic sense to convert this waste stream into a revenue stream. Composting it and turning it into a resource is an obvious way to do that, but still only a handful of American cities – most notably Seattle, San Francisco and Portland – have embraced this route. Despite their experience being a mostly positive one, composting is still the exception rather than than the norm.

This makes it all the more exciting (for composting enthusiasts like me anyway) that New York, a wasteful city by any standards, is going to be joining that elite group. If composting can work here, and there's no reason it shouldn't, then surely it can work anywhere. For it to do so, however, the public has to be on board and so far they have tended to be rather skeptical.

Much of the resistance to composting seems to stem from concerns about having extra bins in small spaces and a whole new range of smells to contend with. Writing in the New York Observer this week, Rebecca Hiscott summed up these objections as follows:

"We're all for eco-friendly initiatives, but we're really not enthused about the stench of day-old meals wafting through our shoebox-sized, un-air-conditioned apartment, thanks."

I get the bit about the shoe boxed size apartment, but news flash: we're already contending with the stench of day-old meals, the only difference now is that they are mixed in with our regular trash. It's interesting to note also that no one ever seems to object to having a huge (and stinky) garbage bin in their small apartments but the prospect of having three smaller bins (for trash, recycling and compost) is somehow daunting.

Let me shed some light on how it's all going to work: the city plans to provide single family homes with a special organics container with wheels and a lid that locks. Apartment buildings that choose to participate will have to buy their own bins that meet the Department of Sanitation (DSNY) specifications. Apartment dwellers will be provided with a small kitchen top container free of charge that they can then empty into the organics container at the same collection point where they dispose of their trash and recycling. So no mind blowing changes, people will still be carrying the same amount of waste to the same place, they'll just be carrying it in one additional container.

Giving people free bins is one thing, getting them to use them, and to use them properly, is quite another, however. The directive from the DSNY is simple enough: "if it comes from something that grows it goes into the compost". But seeing what ends up in the recycling bins in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, I shudder to think what will end up in the compost.

According to Brett Stav, a spokesperson for Seattle Public Utilities (SPU), which has been collecting food waste since 2005 and yard waste since 1989, putting the wrong stuff in the compost bin can lead to contamination that is very difficult to deal with after the fact:

"People use plastic bags to carry their food scraps to the compost bin and then throw the bag in as well. It only takes one plastic bag to contaminate a container."

Through aggressive education efforts, that range from distributing free compostable bags to paying visits on repeat offenders, the SPU has managed to keep contamination to about 10%.

Fee based incentives are also useful for getting people to put the right stuff in the right bin. San Francisco has been composting yard and food waste since 1996 and made it mandatory in 2009. Through its recycling and composting efforts the city has achieved an impressive 80% landfill diversion rate, compared to 34% nationwide and a measly 15% in New York. To encourage even more recycling and composting the city is introducing a new fee structure that will allow residents to lower their monthly collection rates if they opt for smaller black (trash only) bins and bigger blue and green bins for recycling and composting respectively.

So far New York has no plans to offer fee based incentives, but I hope the city does whatever it takes to get the public on board with composting, and I hope other cities in America follow suit.

Our current "out of sight out of mind" approach to waste disposal is unsustainable on every level. We should be well beyond the point where recycling and composting are viewed as annoyances rather than the necessary landfill diversion schemes that they are. We're not at that point yet, but with a bit of luck, New Yorkers might lead us there.

• Compost
• Recycling
• Climate change
• New York
• United States
• Michael Bloomberg

Sadhbh Walshe
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

(Click to enlarge) Less oxygen dissolved in the water is often referred to as a “dead zone” (in red above) because most marine life either dies, or, if they are mobile such as fish, leave the area. Habitats that would normally be teeming with life become, essentially, biological deserts. (Credit: NOAA)

Scientists are expecting a very large “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico and a smaller than average hypoxic level in the Chesapeake Bay this year, based on several NOAA-supported forecast models.

(From ScienceDaily) -- NOAA-supported modelers at the University of Michigan, Louisiana State University, and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium are forecasting that this year’s Gulf of Mexico hypoxic “dead” zone will be between 7,286 and 8,561 square miles which could place it among the ten largest recorded. That would range from an area the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia combined on the low end to the New Jersey on the upper end. The high estimate would exceed the largest ever reported 8,481 square miles in 2002.

Hypoxic (very low oxygen) and anoxic (no oxygen) zones are caused by excessive nutrient pollution, often from human activities such as agriculture, which results in insufficient oxygen to support most marine life in near-bottom waters. Aspects of weather, including wind speed, wind direction, precipitation and temperature, also impact the size of dead zones.

The Gulf estimate is based on the assumption of no significant tropical storms in the two weeks preceding or during the official measurement survey cruise scheduled from July 25-August 3 2013. If a storm does occur the size estimate could drop to a low of 5344 square miles, slightly smaller than the size of Connecticut.

This year’s prediction for the Gulf reflect flood conditions in the Midwest that caused large amounts of nutrients to be transported from the Mississippi watershed to the Gulf. Last year’s dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico was the fourth smallest on record due to drought conditions, covering an area of approximately 2,889 square miles, an area slightly larger than the state of Delaware. The overall average between 1995-2012 is 5,960 square miles, an area about the size of Connecticut.

A second NOAA-funded forecast, for the Chesapeake Bay, calls for a smaller than average dead zone in the nation’s largest estuary. The forecasts from researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the University of Michigan has three parts: a prediction for the mid-summer volume of the low-oxygen hypoxic zone, one for the mid-summer oxygen-free anoxic zone, and a third that is an average value for the entire summer season.

The forecasts call for a mid-summer hypoxic zone of 1.46 cubic miles, a mid-summer anoxic zone of 0.26 to 0.38 cubic miles, and a summer average hypoxia of 1.108 cubic miles, all at the low end of previously recorded zones. Last year the final mid-summer hypoxic zone was 1.45 cubic miles.

This is the seventh year for the Bay outlook which, because of the shallow nature of large areas of the estuary, focuses on water volume or cubic miles, instead of square mileage as used in the Gulf. The history of hypoxia in the Chesapeake Bay since 1985 can be found at the EcoCheck website.

Both forecasts are based on nutrient run-off and river stream data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), with the Chesapeake data funded with a cooperative agreement between USGS and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Those numbers are then inserted into models developed by funding from the National Ocean Service’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS).

“Monitoring the health and vitality of our nation’s oceans, waterways, and watersheds is critical as we work to preserve and protect coastal ecosystems,” said Kathryn D. Sullivan, Ph.D., acting under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and acting NOAA administrator. “These ecological forecasts are good examples of the critical environmental intelligence products and tools that help shape a healthier coast, one that is so inextricably linked to the vitality of our communities and our livelihoods.”

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico affects nationally important commercial and recreational fisheries, and threatens the region’s economy. The Chesapeake dead zones, which have been highly variable in recent years, threaten a multi-year effort to restore the Bay’s water quality and enhance its production of crabs, oysters, and other important fisheries.

During May 2013, stream flows in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers were above normal resulting in more nutrients flowing into the Gulf. According to USGS estimates, 153,000 metric tons of nutrients flowed down the rivers to the northern Gulf of Mexico in May, an increase of 94,900 metric tons over last year’s 58,100 metric tons, when the region was suffering through drought. The 2013 input is an increase of 16 percent above the average nutrient load estimated over the past 34 years.

For the Chesapeake Bay, USGS estimates 36,600 metric tons of nutrients entered the estuary from the Susquehanna and Potomac rivers between January and May, which is 30 percent below the average loads estimated from1990 to 2013.

“Long-term nutrient monitoring and modeling is key to tracking how nutrient conditions are changing in response to floods and droughts and nutrient management actions,” said Lori Caramanian, deputy assistant secretary of the interior for water and science. “Understanding the sources and transport of nutrients is key to developing effective nutrient management strategies needed to reduce the size of hypoxia zones in the Gulf, Bay and other U.S. waters where hypoxia is an on-going problem.”

“Coastal hypoxia is proliferating around the world,” said Donald Boesch, Ph.D., president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “It is important that we have excellent abilities to predict and control the largest dead zones in the United States. The whole world is watching.”

The confirmed size of the 2013 Gulf hypoxic zone will be released in August, following a monitoring survey led by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium beginning in late July,and the result will be used to improve future forecasts. The final measurement in the Chesapeake will come in October following surveys by the Chesapeake Bay Program’s partners from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

Despite the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Nutrient Task Force’s goal to reduce the dead zone to less than 2,000 square miles, it has averaged 5,600 square miles over the last five years. Demonstrating the link between the dead zone and nutrients from the Mississippi River, this annual forecast continues to provide guidance to federal and state agencies as they work on the 11 implementation actions outlined by the Task Force in 2008 for mitigating nutrient pollution.

Sacramento, California –Invitation for nominations and applications for a fish ecology vacancy California Delta Independent Science Board of the Delta Stewardship Council.

The Delta Stewardship Council is filling one vacancy on the Delta Independent Science Board (Delta ISB). The role of the Delta ISB is to provide oversight of the scientific research, monitoring, and assessment programs that support adaptive management of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Click here for more information. (Adobe PDF)