WORLD WATCH

Volume 22, Number 6

•
Vision for a Sustainable World November/December 2009

Digital Edition
Here are the features you don’t get in the print edition:

With a single click, you can…

 go directly to any URL printed in the magazine

 go to selected “Sources and Resources” for each

feature article (look for the mouse symbol)

 jump from any Table of Contents entry to the appropriate page

 send a message to any e-mail address in the magazine

 go directly to the original issue referenced in each Update entry

To subscribe to World Watch, click here,

or go to www.worldwatch.org/ww

w w w. w o r l d w a t c h . o r g
WORLD WATCH
Volume 22, Number 6
•
Vision for a Sustainable World November/December 2009

Are Livestock Emissions

Killing the Climate?
PLUS
 The Struggle for
the Amazon Basin
 LIFE-CYCLE STUDIES

Beer
Overview
Enkidu, a man raised by wild animals in the classic Sumerian poem Epic of Gilgamesh, knew nothing of beer until a
prostitute guided him to a shepherd’s camp. Upon finishing seven full cups, “his soul became free and cheerful, his
heart rejoiced, his face glowed…. He became human.” Beer was so popular throughout ancient Mesopotamia that
some historians argue it inspired the earliest farmers to domesticate grain.
Rich in carbohydrates, protein, and, of course, alcohol, beer became a dietary staple for many cultures through-
out history. In Elizabethan England, mothers safeguarded their adolescents from foul water by serving them “beer
stew”—stale bread mixed with beer and spices.
Beer is the third most popular drink in the world, after water and tea. Per-capita annual consumption is highest
in the Czech Republic, at 157 liters per person, followed by Ireland (131) and Germany (116). World beer consumption
has risen almost every year for the past two decades. The world average in 2005 was 23 liters per person.
© Ermin Gutenberger
Closing the Loop
Some breweries, such as Coors in the
United States and Fourex in Australia,
have begun to reduce their water footprint
through wastewater recycling methods,
such as steam recapture. In 2007, Fourex
reduced its water consumption to 2.2
liters for each liter of beer. Other innova- Sprig of hops.
tive practices include capturing the brew-
ery’s carbon dioxide emissions, reusing Production
the gas during the carbonation process, Conventional beer is made with malted
and using more efficient heating and grains (often barley or wheat), hops,
cooling systems to save energy. U.S. yeast, and water. The hops act as
breweries, large and small, often sell left- preservatives and add to some beers’
over grain, still highly nutritious, to farm- characteristic bitter flavor. Yeast is
ers and food companies as agricultural added after the grains are cooked from a
feed and processed food additives. few days to several months. The yeast
Beers brewed and bottled in one country combines with the mashed grains’ sugary
and shipped to another for consumption are compounds to form alcohol. The brew is
costly both to consumers and to the environ- then fermented again, filtered, and cooled.
ment. “Imported” beers brewed locally under One liter of beer traditionally requires
license according to a parent company’s recipe, between four and six liters of water and four
and other locally and regionally brewed beers, or five kilograms of grain. Energy
eliminate the need for long-distance transpor- consumption—mostly from refrigeration and
tation. Truly concerned connoisseurs can use transportation—is also significant. But the
their own regional or organic ingredients with greatest environmental impact is created by
home beermaking kits and reusable containers. beer containers, overwhelmingly single-serving
Choosing beer on tap and in kegs reduces the glass bottles or aluminum cans. One ton of
solid waste and energy use from bottles and cans. glass embodies as much energy as is contained
And while recycling can keep beer bottles out of in 135 liters of oil and creates 845 kilograms of
landfills, returning bottles to the manufacturers mining waste.
for refilling and reuse is more efficient by 75 per-
omski
cent. In the United States, Michigan, California, Griszka Niewiad

and New York place a surcharge on each bottle’s

price, which the states refund to those who
deposit bottles at collection points. In Denmark
and Estonia, container deposit laws have led to
a 98-percent return rate for glass bottles. In
many Latin American countries, the high price
of glass has encouraged high recycling rates
and the social norm of leaving all glass bot-
tles at the bar. brew kettles.
—Jane Zhou and Ben Gonin Cla ssic copper
© Roman Shyshak
WORLD WATCH Volume 22, Number 6
•
Vision for a Sustainable World November/December 2009

FEATURES D E PA R T M E N T S
10 LIVESTOCK AND CLIMATE 2 Editorial
Copenhagen: the Road to Success
CHANGE
Animals raised for food might be a far bigger factor 3 From Readers
in warming the planet than generally thought. Local-food fight, building natural economies,
BY ROBERT GOODLAND AND JEFF ANHANG dissing Pittsburgh.

6 Eye on Earth
22 VISION QUEST: WHO WILL Chinese cities becoming more environmentally
CONTROL THE FUTURE OF transparent; World Bank to measure project carbon
THE AMAZON? footprints; India approves higher solar energy
target; population planning funds decline; wind
A policy tool for stemming deforestation could
energy could power China; Asian water supply
jeopardize forest dwellers’ claims to their lands.
faces crisis; study finds agroforestry to be extensive;
BY DAVID DUDENHOEFER per-capita carbon emissions standard endorsed.

9 Updates
20 Talking Pictures
Plastic Toys Not Required

30 Worldwatch First Person

Ben Block: Seeking a Low-Carbon Future

31 Vital Signs
Growth in Protected Areas Continues

32 Matters of Scale
Blogging Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

COMING UP...
 Hydropower’s False Promise
 Climate Change and Security
 Recarbonizing the Earth
 Urban Agriculture Potential

José Cruz/Agência Brasil

Ghana’s Oil
 Geoengineering the Climate

Front cover photograph: Dairy cows on a farm in Stein, Germany.

© 2008 Reuters/Michaela Rehle
Indigenous Amazonian leaders demonstrate in Brasilia during the
Acampamento Terra Livre 2009, an annual gathering in the Brazilian
capital to lobby officials and raise awareness of indigenous issues. WORLD WATCH is printed on an alkaline, recycled paper
made from 100% post-consumer fiber certified by the
Forest Stewardship Council, processed chlorine-free,
Contents copyright 2009 Worldwatch Institute. All rights reserved. and manufactured using biogas energy.
 EDITORIAL

World•Watch®
Editor Thomas Prugh
Senior Editor Lisa Mastny
Art Director Lyle Rosbotham
Copenhagen: the Road to Success Staff Writer Ben Block
Director of Publications and Marketing
Christopher Flavin Patricia S. Shyne
Communications Associate Julia Tier
Research Department
Erik Assadourian
Amanda Chiu
Robert Engelman
Christopher Flavin

W
ith the Copenhagen Climate Conference now approaching, there are plenty of Gary Gardner
reasons to be discouraged about the prospect of humanity’s surmounting its Brian Halweil
greatest challenge. Yingling Liu
Alice McKeown
While scientists report accelerated Arctic melting and warn that we are already per- Danielle Nierenberg
ilously close to overshooting the maximum safe level of greenhouse gases in the atmos- Michael Renner
phere, climate negotiations are proceeding at a glacial pace. U.S. discussions with China Janet L. Sawin
Molly Theobald
and India have not yet moved beyond bland generalities, and even across the Atlantic,
Senior Fellows
most of the deep sores opened with Europe during the Bush era have not yet been Zoë Chafe Sandra Postel
closed. Meanwhile, the odds of the U.S. Congress approving climate change legislation Mia MacDonald Payal Sampat
this fall are growing long. Eric Martinot Molly O’Meara Sheehan
But this is not the time for despair—much less to give up on tackling the greatest Worldwatch Institute
Board of Directors
threat of our generation. Around the globe, new policies are beginning to reverse the
Tom Crain, Chairman
surge in greenhouse gas emissions that marked the early years of this century. Robert Charles Friese, Vice-Chairman
Data for the first few months of the year suggest that in the United States, carbon Geeta B. Aiyer, Treasurer
dioxide emissions in 2009 will be 8 percent lower than they were in 2005, marking the Nancy Hitz, Secretary
Ray Anderson Satu Hassi
sharpest decline in decades (and making it quite possible that 2005 marked the all-time L.Russell Bennett,Esq. Jerre Hitz
peak). Other industrial countries are seeing similar declines. Marcel Brenninkmeijer Jeffrey Lipton
While this shift reflects the severe recession now under way, it is not the only factor. The Cathy Crain Akio Morishima
James Dehlsen Sam Myers,MD, MPH
era of higher energy prices that began in 2004 is discouraging profligate energy use, while Christopher Flavin Ajit Nazre
new policies to promote renewable energy, mandate fuel economy, and retrofit buildings Ed Groark Izaak van Melle
have begun to have an impact—one that will grow in the years ahead. Meanwhile, a new Wren Wirth
wave of super-efficient buildings and vehicles is coming into the global marketplace. World Watch and Worldwatch Institute
trademarks are registered in the U.S. Patent
Construction of coal-fired power plants has recently slowed in the United States and and Trademark Office.
even in China, with much of the difference being made up by natural gas, wind, solar,
Opinions expressed in World Watch are those
and bio-energy plants, which for the first time ever are being added at significant of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the
scale—dwarfing new coal capacity in Europe and North America. positions of the Worldwatch Institute.

China and India have recently announced ambitious new efforts to expand the use World Watch (ISSN 0896-0615) is published six
times a year by the Worldwatch Institute, 1776
of solar power, and are well on the way to becoming world leaders in this burgeoning Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20036.
new industry. In Africa, Kenya has also announced a groundbreaking plan for the devel- Copyright 2008, Worldwatch Institute. One-year
opment of renewable energy. subscriptions within the U.S., Canada, and Mex-
ico are $33 for individuals, $50 for institutions,
These developments should give government officials the courage to enact tougher and $25 for students. For all other countries: $51
emission targets. The goals recently endorsed by the European Parliament and the U.S. for individuals, $63 for institutions, and $40
for students.
House of Representatives do not look as robust as they would have just a year ago. In fact,
they are not only too weak to protect the climate, they are barely ahead of the “business- Address changes, orders, and correspondence should
be sent toWorldWatch, P.O. Box 879, Oxon Hill, MD
as-usual” path the world economy is now on. Even in fast-growing developing countries, 20750-0910. Canada Post Agreement Number
policies that advance energy efficiency could slow the growth in energy demand (and 40023881. Canadian returns should be
sent to P.O. Box 1051, Fort Erie, ON L2A 6C7.
emissions) without economic sacrifice, according to a 2008 McKinsey study. Advertisers, please send queries to ads@world
A strong new Copenhagen climate agreement will build on the positive momentum watch.org.
now under way—and accelerate the transition to low-carbon economies around the
globe. Failure, on the other hand, would be a monumental setback.
Worldwatch Institute website:
www.worldwatch.org
Christopher Flavin is President of the Worldwatch Institute.

2 World Watch | November/December 2009 www.worldwatch.org

 F ROM READERS
Local Food Debate
Sarah DeWeerdt makes some important
and often-overlooked points in the cover
story of your May/June 2009 issue, “Is
Local Food Better?” It is increasingly
clear that many factors besides travel dis-
tance affect the environmental impact of
our food choices. Farming methods and
Curtis Palmer
inputs, climate suitability, scale, process-
ing, packaging, and mode of transport
all matter.
However, DeWeerdt glosses over the
critical hole in this debate about whether
local food is a better environmental
choice. As she correctly points out, all
other things being equal, it is better to
purchase something grown locally than
the same thing grown far away. But all
other things are not equal. I have yet to
see a life-cycle analysis (LCA) comparing
the same foods that one might eat (an
apple, a head of lettuce, a pound of
ground beef) from local and industrial
sources. Without such comparisons, the
true environmental costs of our industrial
food system, and the true environmental
benefits of rebuilding local food systems,
cannot be accurately measured.
The problem with the Weber and
Matthews study that DeWeerdt discusses
is that it is based on the assumption
that the only difference between locally
sourced and conventionally sourced food
is the distance it travels. This is clearly a
flawed assumption, as the authors of the
study concede. I think DeWeerdt failed to
see that this renders the paper’s conclu-
sions unsupported.
Weber and Matthews conclude that
dietary choices (vegetarianism vs. meat
eating) are extremely important to food’s
carbon footprint, but food miles are not.
www.worldwatch.org
Chickens hit the road.
But the greenhouse gas emissions figures
used in their LCA come from industrial
agriculture. Locally sourced foods are not
part of this industrial-food chain. Pro-
duction methods, processing, and packag-
ing, as well as food miles, are different,
so greenhouse gas emissions will differ
as well. The farms where I buy local food
are organic, diversified, low-input farms.
How much greenhouse gases they pro-
duce was not assessed in this study.
Although I have not seen the LCA of the
U.K. food system by Tara Garnett, I’m
guessing it has this same flaw.
The important lessons from the
Weber and Matthews study are not about
local food, and were unfortunately over-
shadowed by their efforts to question the
benefits of local food. They are, first, that
industrial agriculture is a major contribu-
tor to climate change, and addressing this
will be necessary to prevent a major cli-
mate crisis. Second, a very large propor-
tion of agriculture’s contribution to
climate change stems from industrial
meat and dairy operations.
DeWeerdt is right that direct relation-
ships with farmers are at the heart of the
local foods movement. Being able to ask a
farmer about her/his farming practices is
November/December 2009
the best way to know about the food you
are buying. She is also correct that local
food is not inherently more environ-
mentally friendly than conventional
food. But perhaps the question should
not be, is local food better, but is the
food I am eating better? The only way to
answer that is to know where your food
comes from, and the easiest way to know
is to eat locally.
Carla A. Wise
Corvallis, Oregon, U.S.A.
Sarah DeWeerdt responds: Carla Wise
suggests that in evaluating the environmen-
tal benefits of local food, “perhaps the ques-
tion should not be, is local food better, but is
the food I am eating better?” The question
that I think we need to ask is, “How can we
build a better, more sustainable food sys-
tem?” And to do this, it’s clear that pursuing
localism as an end in itself isn’t sufficient.
That’s precisely because, as Wise em-
phasizes, “all other things are not equal.”
She notes that the food she purchases
locally differs from conventionally sourced
food in “production methods, processing,
and packaging, as well as food miles.”
Her approach is a perfect illustration of
my argument that the benefits of local food
are not entirely, or perhaps even mainly,
intrinsic to their local-ness.
Wise focuses much of her critique on
the paper by Weber and Matthews that I
discussed in my article, and correctly points
out that this study did not compare food
from small, organic, diversified local farms
with conventionally sourced food. But this
hardly negates the study’s finding that final
transport—food miles—is a relatively small
part of the emissions picture in the food sys-
tem as a whole. After all, as Wise herself
| World Watch 3
 FROM READERS
R EADERS
acknowledges, fewer food miles are only a
part of what makes the food that she pur-
chases better.
As I pointed out in my article, the local
food system is currently a great place to find
food from close by that is organic, mini-
mally processed, seasonal, and field-grown
on small, diversified farms. All of these
characteristics contribute to the environ-
mental benefits of such food, but it’s impor-
tant to remember that not all local food is
organic, not all local farms are small and
diversified, and so on. We shouldn’t use dis-
tance as a stand-in for sustainability, and
collapse the various elements of sustainable
production methods, processing, and trans-
port under the term “local.”
If we do, we risk ending up with a lot
of “local food” that differs merely in food
miles, and doesn’t have much environmen-
tal benefit over conventional food—“indus-
trial local,” if you will. I can already see this problem of capitalism: the conflict between
happening at a chain supermarket in my
area, which labels some items as “North-
west Products.” Some of these products are
highly processed and in many ways indis-
tinguishable from other outputs of the
industrial food system—they’re marketed
as local, but they’re a far cry from the kind
of food that Wise is talking about.
Instead, if we focus attention on each
individual element of food system sustain-
ability, then we stand a better chance of
maintaining the integrity of alternatives to
the industrial food system, and of creating
a more sustainable food system as a whole.
True, a more sustainable food system
would probably be less centralized—more
local—than our current one. But also con-
sidering better methods of production,
processing, and transport would help us
overcome some of the limitations posed by
climate and the built environment, and
make better food more accessible to more
people. In other words, we need to ask not
just “is the food I am eating better?” but
also “why is it better, how much better,
and how can these lessons be applied to
the broader food system?”
Correction: In “Local Food: The Eco-
nomics,” we misidentified the Crossroads
Resource Center as the Crossroads
Research Center.
4 World Watch | November/December 2009
Economies in Nature
There are always big gaps in human
designs for things nature makes appear
easy, but are not. The “economic democ-
racy” idea proposed by David Schweickart
[“A New Capitalism—or a New World?”,
September/October] is interesting for the
ideals expressed, but retains one of the
central flaws of capitalism that has to be
dealt with for human economies to ever
become part of nature. Schweickart is in
very good company, as the same flaw
mars nearly all the popular alternate eco-
nomic models.
What’s missing is a correction for how
private, institutional, and government
money management is used to drive an
endless, growing search for new ways to
use up the Earth. I think they all did in
fact consider it, but apparently didn’t see
the natural way to solve it. It’s the central
stability and the rules that let owners of
money continually multiply their money,
even in a non-growing economy. If people
agree there’s a need to limit the growth
of wealth, can you still have unlimited
growth of ownership and money?
There’s an elegant certainty that
points to a true solution. It was first dis-
covered by J.M. Keynes, studied further
by Kenneth Boulding, and then used by
me to point to the riddle of how natural-
system economies take good care of them-
selves. Perhaps those who read Chapter 16
in Keynes’ General Theory or Boulding’s
last chapter in A Reconstruction of Eco-
nomics, or my papers, were embarrassed
to not understand the issue or hesitant to
confront the intriguing moral quandaries
it raises. The financial problem of eco-
nomic climax comes down to a simple
choice: either a) investment stops growing
because conditions get so bad that returns
on investments don’t materialize, or b)
healthy returns earned by investments are
recycled as spending, instead of being used
to accumulate until (a) occurs.
Natural-system economies have parts
that exchange complementary goods and
services, creating their own organization
as they develop by growth. They some-
times switch off their systematic growth
mechanisms and stabilize at their peak of
About World •Watch
World Watch is a bimonthly, nonprofit
magazine, written by Worldwatch Institute
analysts and guest authors, that tracks key
indicators of the Earth’s well-being. We mon-
itor and evaluate changes in climate, forest
cover, population, food production, water
resources, biological diversity, and other key
trends, and identify and analyze the most
effective strategies for achieving a sustainable
society—including those that come from
the advances of science and technology, the
rethinking of traditional economics, and the
neglected wisdom of now-vanishing indige-
nous peoples. We are beholden only to our
readers, from whom we welcome comments.
World Watch is also published in Japan-
ese and Spanish, and selections from World
Watch are incorporated into the online
French-language magazine, L’Etat de la
Planete (www.delaplanete.org/).
Correspondence and Inquiries
Address editorial comments to the Editor
(tprugh@worldwatch.org), and all other cor-
respondence to the Director of Publications
and Marketing (pshyne@worldwatch.org).
General correspondence can be sent to
worldwatch@worldwatch.org.
Reprints and Excerpts
For permission to excerpt and reprint
World Watch articles fill out our on-
line reprint form at www.worldwatch.org/
pubs/copyright.
Financial Support
Worldwatch Institute is a nonprofit, tax-
exempt 501(c)(3) research organization that
welcomes private donations and bequests.
Support for the Institute is provided by the
Heinrich Boell Foundation, the Casten Fam-
ily Foundation, the Compton Foundation,
Inc., the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, the
Good Energies Foundation, Steven C.
Leuthold Family Foundation, the Marianists
of the USA Sharing Fund, the Netherlands
Environment Ministry, the Norwegian Royal
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Renewable
Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership,
the Shared Earth Foundation, The Shenan-
doah Foundation, Stonyfield Farm, the
TAUPO Fund, the United Nations Popula-
tion Fund, the United Nations Environment
Programme, the Wallace Genetic Founda-
tion, Inc., the Wallace Global Fund, the
Johanette Wallerstein Institute, the Winslow
Foundation, and the World Wildlife Fund –
Europe. The Institute also receives financial
support from the many individual donors
who share our commitment to a more sus-
tainable society.
To renew online visit
www.worldwatch.org/ww/.
www.worldwatch.org

Peak of vitality, or peak of exhaustion?
vitality instead of taking it to some peak
of exhaustion. We could study that to
help understand our problem with the
same issue.
Our own bodies are collectively run
market organizations of cells, exchanging
complementary services through the
blood stream and nerve system networks.
A freshwater pond ecology links various
populations of organisms that create their
own niches and exchange complementary
services. Businesses also form around
groups of individuals exchanging comple-
mentary services to create an organization
that works as a whole and respects its own
limits too.
Scientists often say “there are no sys-
tems, just pressures” and dismiss the idea.
That view could come from representing
natural-system economies with equations
of pressure rules, and so hiding what
makes them different. Their parts tend
to be clearly self-animating, for example,
and actively doing environmental learn-
ing. As their parts learn from each other
in groups, local rules develop inside the
groups. That is hidden from view by rep-
resenting them as following fixed rules,
as if they were centrally controlled.
Tracing how natural-system econo-
mies work is challenging, but you can see
the principles at work. They start growing
by “auto-catalytic” self-investment, using
their own products to build up their
process. If they’re going to mature, they
www.worldwatch.org
finish their designs before exhausting
themselves, and that way climax their
own investment cycle and become part
of nature at the peak of their vitality.
There are some simple ways to define
the requirements for imitating that. We
don’t yet appear to have the language for
even discussing how natural systems take
care of themselves, though. We represent
them as being controlled by rules rather
than learning as they go. Maybe the idea
that covers it is that no matter
how good our plans, we always
rely on nature filling in the
gaps, and need to allow her
to do that. Natural-system
economies that take care of
themselves are internally
opportunistic, and so create
local rules that alter global
ones, trusting in their curiosity
and not in control. You could
even say that’s the whole prob-
lem: that people have spent so
much time trying to figure out how to
control nature we just haven’t looked at
how the uncontrolled parts of nature suc-
cessfully take care of themselves.
Now we urgently need to know, and
seem to have a lot of learning to do. That’s
one task ahead, anyway, if we want to find
how to make economies that can become
part of nature.
Philip F. Henshaw
New York, New York, U.S.A.
November/December 2009
Dissing Pittsburgh
While I applaud your informative article
on renewable energy in the September/
October issue [“A Bridge to the Renew-
able Energy Future”), I was very frus-
trated to see the smoky steel mill picture
from Pittsburgh, which didn’t indicate the
vintage of the picture. The picture had
to be at least 25 years old, since that steel
mill closed in the early 1980s. The perpet-
uation of the stereotype of Pittsburgh as a
smoky city does a great disservice to this
transformed region. Pittsburgh has come
a long way in cleaning up from its indus-
trial past and has become a leader in the
development and implementation of green
technology. I hope that you will make an
effort to learn and report about the reg-
ion’s transformation, made all that much
easier now with the media attention asso-
ciated with the upcoming G-20 summit.
Reed McManigle
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Art Director Lyle Rosbotham responds:
Apologies to Pittsburgh. That photo was in
fact taken around 1970, and had I known
that at press time I would certainly have
acknowledged it, or, more likely, replaced
it with a more contemporary image.
Downtown Pittsburgh on September 6, 2009.
TALK TO US!
Please include your home town, country,
and phone number (not for publication).
Letters may be edited for clarity or brevity.
Send them to: tprugh@ worldwatch.org
— or —
Editor, World Watch
1776 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20036, U.S.A.
| World Watch 5
 EYE ON EARTH
by Ben Block
(unless otherwise credited)
China Slowly Improving
Environmental Transparency
Under a new public disclosure law, cities
across China are slowly becoming more
forthright with environmental informa-
tion, according to a study by U.S. and
Chinese environmental groups. The
“Measures on Open Environmental Infor-
mation” ruling, which took effect last
year, requires municipalities to disclose
which companies violated pollution regu-
lations and caused large pollution inci-
dents, and how much contamination
these polluters released.
To measure the law’s success, the Bei-
jing-based Institute of Public & Environ-
mental Affairs and the U.S. Natural
Resources Defense Council launched
China’s first Pollution Information Trans-
parency Index (PITI), filing information
World Bank Initiates Carbon Footprint Analysis
The World Bank, in collaboration with
the world’s leading multilateral develop-
ment banks, is creating a common method
for estimating the greenhouse gas emissions
associated with development projects.
Aschwin Prein
Carbon- and labor-intensive: Transfering coal to a
barge on the Yangtze River, China.
6 World Watch | November/December 2009
requests with 113 cities
in September 2008.
The PITI rated the
cities on a 100-point
scale based on their
compliance with the
requests, responses to Not so transparent: Shanghai smog in 2005, from the Oriental Pearl Tower.
citizen petitions, and
public records of environmental violations.
Of the surveyed cities, only four ranked
higher than 60, and neither of China’s two
largest cities, Beijing and Shanghai, ranked
well overall. However, Shanghai came in
first in disclosure of environmental viola-
tions due to its daily monitoring and
supervision system, and Beijing ranked
first in disclosure of environmental com-
plaints. Among smaller cities, Weihai was
the first in China to publish pollution lev-
els on its Web site, and Changzhou pub-
The assessments are expected to bring
greater transparency to lender investment
portfolios and to encourage developing-
country clients to follow low-carbon
development paths, analysts said in July.
The Bank’s decision to measure proj-
ect-level emissions comes after decades of
pressure from nongovernmental groups
to shift multilateral lending away from
carbon-intensive projects such as coal-
fired power plants and toward renewable
energy and energy efficiency. According to
former Environmental Defense Fund sen-
ior counsel Bruce Rich, the World Bank
Group, Asian Development Bank, and
European Investment Bank are among the
top five public international financiers of
coal-fired power since 1994. Their collec-
tive investments total more than US$23.3
woggle
lishes environmental violations in the
local government-owned media.
Even so, three out of four cities
surveyed did not fulfill the disclosure
requests. Some cities said disclosure
would reveal corporate secrets or com-
promise economic growth, the study said.
Cities with poorer air quality were less
likely to disclose pollution information,
whereas cities that were more developed
economically generally performed better
on the PITI.
billion in 96 fossil fuel-related projects
across the developing world.
The World Bank already analyzes
the greenhouse gases associated with its
Carbon Finance Unit investments, which
include projects in the areas of renewable
energy and energy efficiency. And the
International Finance Corporation, the
World Bank Group’s private sector arm,
began developing an emissions account-
ing system in 1997.
Some Bank officials and their devel-
oping-country clients worry, however,
that certain projects may be dispropor-
tionately affected by a greenhouse gas
accounting system. An investment such
as a highway, for instance, will unavoid-
ably lead to emissions through the clear-
ing of land and encouragement of greater
vehicle use.
www.worldwatch.org
 India Announces Groundbreaking Solar Plan
With a new solar mega-project, India
aims to expand its solar power generation
capacity from the current 3 megawatts to
a reported 20 gigawatts (GW) by 2020
and 200 GW by 2050. The project, which
was approved “in principle” in August,
will form the centerpiece of India’s efforts
to address climate change and will cost an
estimated US$20 billion to implement.
Global installed solar generation
capacity is only 16.5 GW and India’s total
Joerg Boethling/Peter Arnold, Inc.
Solar panels get a cleaning at the Brahma Kumaris Ashram, India.
Family Planning Aid Drops in Priority
Funding for population and reproductive
healthcare programs as a share of global
health aid declined from 30 percent in
1994 to 12 percent last year, according to a
World Bank analysis. The Bank attributes
the decline to greater attention to other
global healthcare crises, particularly
HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
“Even before [the economic] crisis
began, family planning and reproductive
health had fallen off the radar,” said Joy
Phumaphi, the Bank’s vice president for
human development. “We’ve lost pre-
cious time in helping women get access
to these vital health services, and help-
ing countries get on a faster track to
reducing poverty.”
Although donor governments and aid
agencies are allocating less of their budg-
ets to family planning, overall assistance
for population and reproductive health
increased from US$901 million in 1995 to
$1.9 billion in 2007, the World Bank said.
But this increase was small compared to
the jump in overall health aid from $2.9
www.worldwatch.org
ciation, said the Solar Mission’s success
power-generation capacity is 150 GW, so will depend on changes to domestic energy
the so-called Solar Mission is notable for laws and to “the appropriate institutional
its scale and ambition. It is one of the structures to facilitate implementation at
largest national renewable energy plans to the state level.” Such changes would allow
date and promises to establish India as a the solar industry to thrive in India as it
global solar leader. has in Germany and Japan—countries
Several international studies have with far fewer solar resources, he said.
pointed to the potential benefits of solar Among other elements, the plan will
energy for India, including lower long- rely on a portfolio of policy measures to
term energy costs, greater energy security, support local industry and innovation
rapid scalability, and industry and job through the establishment of dedicated
creation, in addition solar and technology parks. The goal is to
to multiple environ- make solar “very cost competitive with
mental benefits. respect to other fossil fuel-based power”
But the studies by 2020, according to an early plan draft.
observed that It is not yet clear whether domestic
India had not funds could finance a significant share
yet demonstrated of the plan’s budget or whether India
the political com- will seek full funding from international
mitment needed sources. “We have kept several options
to jumpstart its open—budgetary support, taxes on fossil
solar industry. fuels, and international funding, or a
V. Subramanian, combination thereof,” said Shyam Saran,
CEO of the Indian India’s special envoy on climate change.
Wind Energy Asso- —Anna da Costa
agency. In May, an Institute of Medicine
billion to $14.1 billion during this period. committee recommended that an addi-
The trend is attributed to shifting pri- tional $3.4 billion be allocated to children
orities in the United States, the world’s and women’s health, nutrition, and family
largest donor. Between 2001 and 2008, planning and reproductive health, “all of
U.S. State Department spending for glo- which have been severely under-resourced
bal health increased nearly 350 percent, during the past decade.”
with much of the
funding going
to HIV/AIDS,
tuberculosis, and
malaria, not popu-
lation programs.
The situation
may be changing.
Following seven
years of the Bush
administration
denying financial
support to the
Melesse Desalgn/USAID
United Nations
Population Fund,
U.S. President
Barack Obama
in March allotted
$50 million to the Mothers wait in line for family planning services at a clinic in rural Ethiopia.
November/December 2009 | World Watch 7
 EYE ON EARTH
Wind Energy Could Power All of China, Study Finds
Wind energy could supply all of China’s
2030 electricity demand if the country
overhauls its grids and raises the subsidy
for wind energy, according to researchers
Rob Thomson/www.14degrees.org
During Rob Thomson’s epic 12,000-kilometer solo, unsupported skate-
board trip across North America, Europe, and China, he visited the
Dabancheng Wind Farm in Xinjiang, China.
Asia Urgently Needs to Improve Water Efficiency, Report Says
Asian countries urgently need to boost
farmland productivity and improve irri-
gation efficiency or the continent may not
have enough water to support its growing
populations, a recent study found.
Dwindling groundwater supplies are
already threatening drinking water and
crop production across Asia. Meanwhile,
undeveloped arable land is in short sup-
ply. As a result, Asian countries will have
to import more food or improve irriga-
tion methods, the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization and Inter-
national Water Management Institute
(IWMI) concluded in an August report.
“Relying on trade to meet a large
part of this demand will impose a huge
and politically untenable burden on the
economies of many developing coun-
tries,” said Colin Chartres, director gen-
eral of IWMI. “The best bet for Asia lies
in revitalizing its vast irrigation systems,
which account for 70 percent of the
world’s total irrigated land.”
About 5 billion people are projected
to live in Asia by 2050. With the demand
for meat products on the rise, experts
estimate that the region must double its
supplies of food and animal feed crops
8 World Watch | November/December 2009
power. The switch would cut emissions by
from Harvard and Tsinghua Universities. 30 percent and require an investment of
Their analysis, published in the journal some $900 billion.
Science in September, said that achieving Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Gansu, and
this goal would require increasing Tibet provinces hold large potential for
wind contract prices wind energy. But high-voltage transmis-
from the current sion lines are needed to connect these
US$0.059 per kilo- sparsely populated regions in the north
watthour to $0.076 and west with consumers in China’s
per kilowatthour. more-developed east. Meanwhile, a lack
Coal still supplies of grid capacity has limited wind energy’s
most of China’s electric- ability to reach customers, according to
ity. Rather than increase the Global Wind Energy Council.
carbon dioxide emis- China currently ranks fourth world-
sions by 3.5 gigatons wide in installed wind generation capac-
each year through ity. In 2007, the country surpassed its
2030, as current poli- wind energy target of 5 GW for 2010.
cies would allow, the In 2008, wind energy supplied 12.2 GW,
study determined that or 0.4 percent of domestic electricity.
wind energy could Officials announced in May that more
replace 640 gigawatts than 100 GW of wind energy capacity
(GW) of coal-fired will be installed nationwide by 2020.
change adaptation could potentially be
during the next 50 years to feed an addi- tapped to improve irrigation methods.
tional 1.5 billion people. The study did not factor in the effects
Meeting the increased demand for of climate change, even though irrigation
food in 2050 would require South Asia to demands in arid and semi-arid parts of
irrigate 30 percent more harvested land— Asia are expected to rise as temperatures
a move that would increase regional water increase. Noting the absence of climate
demand by 57 percent unless water effi- modeling in their projections, the report
ciency improves. In East Asia, farmers authors said, “The study’s pessimistic
would need to increase irrigated farmland assumptions may prove overly optimistic.”
by 47 percent, at
the cost of a 70-
percent increase
in water use, the
study said.
Solutions
include public-
private part-
nerships that
improve irriga-
tion infrastruc-
ture, the use of
Kaukab Jhumra Smith/USAID
groundwater
aquifers for stor-
ing water, and
more efficient
use of rainwater
on farmland. Villagers and farmers work together to clear this 3.5-kilometer-long irrigation
International canal in the village of Sir Ajmaira, in Pakistan’s northern Battagram District.
funds for climate Once cleared, it will irrigate 150 hectares of wheat, rice, and vegetables.
www.worldwatch.org
 U P D AT E S

Agroforestry Practiced on See “Less Stuff, or More Blood,”

Nearly Half World’s Farms September/October 2009

While farmers have long placed trees Wasted Chance In September, experts
among their crops to enhance soil health, with the U.K. Food Ethics Council con-
raise marketable fruits or nuts, and protect cluded that eliminating the millions of tons
row crops from damaging winds, more of food thrown away annually in the United
States and U.K. could lift more than a
farmers practice agroforestry than was
billion people out of hunger worldwide.
previously appreciated, new data suggest.
Wasting food reduces the overall supply

USDA NRCS
According to a study from the and pushes up food prices in developing
Nairobi-based World Agroforestry countries, the study said.
Centre, nearly half of the world’s farm-
Multiple rows of trees and shrubs create a ripar- See “Portraits of Climate Change:
lands have at least 10 percent tree cover,
ian buffer along Bear Creek on a farm in Iowa. The Rocky Mountains,” July/August 2009, p. 8
spanning more than 10 million square
kilometers in total. Large areas of agro- The report comes as many Dry Future Colorado River reservoirs may
forestry exist in South America, sub- researchers and farmers are lobbying dry up by mid-century as the U.S. West
warms, according to an August study in
Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia. climate change negotiators to include
Water Resources Research. The reservoirs
Previous efforts to quantify the agroforestry as a tool to offset green-
have dropped from 95 percent of capacity
extent of agroforestry struggled to dif- house gas emissions under a new succes- in 2000 to 59 percent today. The probability
ferentiate between trees and crops in sor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. of severe shortage is as high as one in two
mixed stands. The recent study was In addition to absorbing carbon dioxide unless current water-management prac-
unique, its authors said, because it used from the atmosphere, some trees also tices change, the researchers found.
advanced satellite imagery to identify capture nitrogen, reducing the need for
See “Life-Cycle Studies: Golf,”
populated regions with arable land. The energy-intensive fertilizers. Some ana- January/February 2008
authors assumed that existing tree cover lysts argue, however, that agroforestry is
Above Par? U.S. golf courses are
in these areas represented a viable agro- not the most cost-effective method of
increasingly being consulted on their
forestry system. lowering emissions.
water-saving strategies as they plant
native grasses, irrigate with graywater, and
audit sprinkler patterns. Still, the average
German Scientists Endorse a Global Climate Bank U.S. course consumes some 189 million
German government advisers have pro- The most important measurement liters of water a year—equivalent to the
posed a new approach to pay for global of a climate agreement’s success, the yearly usage of 1,400 people.
reductions in greenhouse gas emissions: German Advisory Council on Global
See “ChevronTexaco on Trial,” January/February
a global climate bank. Under the proposal, Change said, is whether global emissions 2004, p. 10, and “Vision Quest: Who Will Control
the bank would regulate each country’s can be limited to 750 billion tons of car- the Future of the Amazon?, this issue, p. 22
allowable emissions quota and a global bon dioxide total by 2050, the maximum Crude Awakening The new film
emissions trading system. Countries that allowable if warming is not to exceed 2 “Crude,” which opened in September,
exceed their “carbon budgets,” based on degrees C. The goal could be achieved by documents the progress of the 16-year-old
2010 populations, would be required to limiting industrialized countries’ average class-action lawsuit against ChevronTex-
buy excess allowances from the world’s annual per-capita emissions to 2.7 tons aco on behalf of 30,000 rainforest dwellers
least-developed countries via the bank. of carbon dioxide over the period, with fighting oil extraction in Ecuador.
annual per-capita emissions declining to See “Crimes of (A) Global Nature,”
Top Seven CO2 Emitting Countries 1 ton of carbon dioxide by 2050, assum- September/October 2002, p. 12
in 2006 ing that the 95 least-developed nations Fishy Business An estimated one-fifth of
avoided substantial emissions increases all fish landed in Asian and African waters
Total C02 C02 Emissions
Country Emissions Per Capita during the next 40 years. is caught illegally, according to the Pew
The most energy-intensive nations Environment Group. The lack of global
(million metric tons) (tons)
China 6,018 4.58 would need to purchase emission cooperation and local enforcement is
United States 5,903 19.78 allowances to remain within their car- undermining efforts to track the illicit ves-
Russia 1,704 12.00 bon budgets. Currently, the average U.S. sels, resulting in depleted fish stocks, the
India 1,293 1.16 citizen emits about 20 tons of carbon study said.
Japan 1,247 9.78
Germany 858 10.40 dioxide annually and the average Chi-
Canada 614 18.81 nese releases 4 tons. Most countries in Visit www.worldwatch.org/ww/
to access these and other archived
Source: EIA. sub-Saharan Africa emit less than 1 ton
editions of World Watch.
per person per year.

www.worldwatch.org November/December 2009 | World Watch 9

 Livestock and Climate Change
© Lyle Rosbotham

What if the key actors in climate change are…

Duncan Rawlinson

cows, pigs, and chickens?

Philip MacKenzie

10 World Watch | November/December 2009 www.worldwatch.org

 by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang undercounted or overlooked; of that subtotal, 3,000 million
tons are misallocated and 22,048 million tons are entirely
Whenever the causes of climate change are discussed, fossil uncounted. When uncounted tons are added to the global
inventory of atmospheric GHGs, that inventory rises from
fuels top the list. Oil, natural gas, and especially coal are indeed
major sources of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide 41,755 million tons to 63,803 million tons. FAO’s 7,516 mil-
(CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs). But we believe that lion tons of CO2e attributable to livestock then decline from
the life cycle and supply chain of domesticated animals raised 18 percent of worldwide GHGs to 11.8 percent. Let’s look at
for food have been vastly underestimated as a source of GHGs, each category of uncounted or misallocated GHGs:
and in fact account for at least half of all human-caused Breathing. The FAO excludes livestock respiration from
GHGs. If this argument is right, it implies that replacing live- its estimate, per the following argument:
stock products with better alternatives would be the best strat- Respiration by livestock is not a net source of CO2 ….
egy for reversing climate change. In fact, this approach would Emissions from livestock respiration are part of a rap-
have far more rapid effects on GHG emissions and their idly cycling biological system, where the plant matter
atmospheric concentrations—and thus on the rate the cli- consumed was itself created through the conversion of
mate is warming—than actions to replace fossil fuels with atmospheric CO2 into organic compounds. Since the
renewable energy. emitted and absorbed quantities are considered to be
Livestock are already well-known to contribute to GHG equivalent, livestock respiration is not considered to be
emissions. Livestock’s Long Shadow, the widely-cited 2006 a net source under the Kyoto Protocol. Indeed, since
report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organi- part of the carbon consumed is stored in the live tis-
zation (FAO), estimates that 7,516 million metric tons per sue of the growing animal, a growing global herd could
year of CO2 equivalents (CO2e), or 18 percent of annual even be considered a carbon sink. The standing stock
worldwide GHG emissions, are attributable to cattle, buffalo, livestock biomass increased significantly over the last
sheep, goats, camels, horses, pigs, and poultry. That amount decades…. This continuing growth…could be con-
would easily qualify livestock for a hard look indeed in the sidered as a carbon sequestration process (roughly esti-
search for ways to address climate change. But our analysis mated at 1 or 2 million tons carbon per year).
shows that livestock and their byproducts actually account But this is a flawed way to look at the matter. Examining
for at least 32,564 million tons of CO2e per year, or 51 percent the sequestration claim first: Sequestration properly refers to
of annual worldwide GHG emissions. extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere and its burial in a vault
This is a strong claim that requires strong evidence, so or a stable compound from which it cannot escape over a
we will thoroughly review the direct and indirect sources of long period of time. Even if one considers the standing mass
GHG emissions from livestock. Some of these are obvious of livestock as a carbon sink, by the FAO’s own estimate the
but underestimated, some are simply overlooked, and some amount of carbon stored in livestock is trivial compared to the
are emissions sources that are already
counted but have been assigned to the
Uncounted, Overlooked, and Misallocated
wrong sectors. Data on livestock vary from
Livestock-related GHG Emissions
place to place and are affected by unavoid-
able imprecision; where it was impossible to
avoid imprecision in estimating any sum of Annual GHG Percentage of
GHGs, we strove to minimize the sum so emissions (CO2e) worldwide total
our overall estimate could be understood million tons
as conservative. FAO estimate 7,516 11.8
The Big Picture Uncounted in current GHG inventories:
The table to the right summarizes the cat- 1. Overlooked respiration by livestock 8,769 13.7
egories of livestock-based emissions and 2. Overlooked land use ≥2,672 ≥4.2
our estimates of their size. We begin with the 3. Undercounted methane 5,047 7.9
FAO’s 7,516 million tons of CO2e per year 4. Other four categories (see text) ≥5,560 ≥8.7
attributable to livestock, an amount estab- Subtotal ≥22,048 ≥34.5
lished by adding up GHG emissions Misallocated in current GHG inventories:
involved in clearing land to graze livestock
5. Three categories (see text) ≥3,000 ≥4.7
and grow feed, keeping livestock alive, and
processing and transporting the end prod- Total GHGs attributable to
ucts. We show that 25,048 million tons of livestock products ≥32,564 ≥51.0
CO2e attributable to livestock have been

www.worldwatch.org November/December 2009 | World Watch 11


amount stored in forest cleared to create space for growing feed
and grazing livestock.
More to the point, livestock (like automobiles) are a
human invention and convenience, not part of pre-human
times, and a molecule of CO2 exhaled by livestock is no
more natural than one from an auto tailpipe. Moreover,
while over time an equilibrium of CO2 may exist between the
amount respired by animals and the amount photosynthe-
sized by plants, that equilibrium has never been static. Today,
tens of billions more livestock are exhaling CO2 than in pre-
industrial days, while Earth’s photosynthetic capacity (its
capacity to keep carbon out of the atmosphere by absorbing
it in plant mass) has declined sharply as forest has been
cleared. (Meanwhile, of course, we add more carbon to the
air by burning fossil fuels, further overwhelming the carbon-
absorption system.)
The FAO asserts that livestock respiration is not listed as a
recognized source of GHGs under the Kyoto Protocol, although
in fact the Protocol does list CO2 with no exception, and “other”
is included as a catchall category. For clarity, it should be listed
separately in whatever protocol replaces Kyoto.
It is tempting to exclude one or another anthropogenic
source of emissions from carbon accounting—according to
one’s own interests—on the grounds that it is offset by pho-
tosynthesis. But if it is legitimate to count as GHG sources
fossil-fuel-driven automobiles, which hundreds of millions of
12 World Watch | November/December 2009
Beatrice Murch
Cows respire on a cold morning at a cattle market in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
people do not drive, then it is equally legitimate to count live-
stock respiration. Little or no livestock product is consumed by
hundreds of millions of humans, and no livestock respiration
(unlike human respiration) is needed for human survival. By
keeping GHGs attributable to livestock respiration off GHG
balance sheets, it is predictable that they will not be managed
and their amount will increase—as in fact is happening.
Carbon dioxide from livestock respiration accounts for 21
percent of anthropogenic GHGs worldwide, according to a
2005 estimate by British physicist Alan Calverd. He did not
provide the weight of this CO2, but it works out to about
8,769 million tons. Calverd’s estimate is the only original esti-
mate of its type, but because it involves only one variable (the
total mass of all livestock, as all but cold-blooded farmed fish
exhale roughly the same amount of CO2 per kilogram), all cal-
culations of CO2 from the respiration of a given weight of
livestock would be about the same.
Calverd’s estimate did not account for the fact that CO2
from livestock respiration is excluded from global GHG inven-
tories. It also did not account for the GHGs newly attributed
to livestock in our analysis. After adding all relevant GHGs to
global GHG inventories, the percentage of GHGs attributable
to livestock respiration drops from 21 percent to 13.7 percent.
Land. As there is now a global shortage of grassland, prac-
tically the only way more livestock and feed can be produced
www.worldwatch.org

USDA/NRCS, Jeff Vanuga
A Kansas feedlot operation with waste management lagoon in the foreground.
is by destroying natural forest. Growth in markets for livestock
products is greatest in developing countries, where rainforest
normally stores at least 200 tons of carbon per hectare. Where
forest is replaced by moderately degraded grassland, the ton-
nage of carbon stored per hectare is reduced to 8.
On average, each hectare of grazing land supports no
more than one head of cattle, whose carbon content is a frac-
tion of a ton. In comparison, over 200 tons of carbon per
hectare may be released within a short time after forest and
other vegetation are cut, burned, or chewed. From the soil
beneath, another 200 tons per hectare may be released, with
yet more GHGs from livestock respiration and excretions.
Thus, livestock of all types provide minuscule carbon “pig-
gybanks” to replace huge carbon stores in soils and forests. But
if the production of livestock or crops is ended, then forest will
often regenerate. The main focus in efforts to mitigate GHGs
has been on reducing emissions, while—despite its ability to
mitigate GHGs quickly and cheaply—vast amounts of poten-
tial carbon absorption by trees has been foregone.
The FAO counts emissions attributable to changes in land
use due to the introduction of livestock, but only the relatively
small amount of GHGs from changes each year. Strangely, it
does not count the much larger amount of annual GHG reduc-
tions from photosynthesis that are foregone by using 26 per-
cent of land worldwide for grazing livestock and 33 percent of
arable land for growing feed, rather than allowing it to regen-
erate forest. By itself, leaving a significant amount of tropical
land used for grazing livestock and growing feed to regenerate
as forest could potentially mitigate as much as half (or even
more) of all anthropogenic GHGs. A key reason why this is not
happening is that reclaiming land used for grazing livestock and
growing feed is not yet a priority; on the contrary, feed pro-
duction and grazing have been fast expanding into forest.
www.worldwatch.org
Or suppose that land used for
grazing livestock and growing feed
were used instead for growing
crops to be converted more
directly to food for humans and to
biofuels. Those fuels could replace
one-half of the coal used world-
wide, which is responsible for
about 3,340 million tons of CO2e
emissions every year. That ton-
nage represents 8 percent of
GHGs in worldwide GHG inven-
tories that omit the additional
GHGs assessed by this article, or
5.6 percent of GHGs worldwide
when the GHGs assessed in this
article are included. If biomass
feedstocks are chosen and
processed carefully, then biofuels
can yield 80 percent less GHGs
per unit of energy than coal. Therefore, the extra emissions
resulting from using land for livestock and feed can be esti-
mated to be 2,672 million tons of CO2e, or 4.2 percent of
annual GHG emissions worldwide.
Considering these two plausible scenarios, at least 4.2 per-
cent of worldwide GHGs should be counted as emissions
attributable to GHG reductions foregone by using land to
graze livestock and grow feed.
Methane. According to the FAO, 37 percent of human-
induced methane comes from livestock. Although methane
warms the atmosphere much more strongly than does CO2,
its half-life in the atmosphere is only about 8 years, versus at
least 100 years for CO2. As a result, a significant reduction in
livestock raised worldwide would reduce GHGs relatively
quickly compared with measures involving renewable energy
and energy efficiency.
The capacity of greenhouse gases to trap heat in the atmos-
phere is described in terms of their global warming potential
(GWP), which compares their warming potency to that of
CO2 (with a GWP set at 1). The new widely accepted figure
for the GWP of methane is 25 using a 100-year timeframe—
but it is 72 using a 20-year timeframe, which is more appro-
priate because of both the large effect that methane reductions
can have within 20 years and the serious climate disruption
expected within 20 years if no significant reduction of GHGs
is achieved. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
supports using a 20-year timeframe for methane.
The FAO estimates that livestock accounted for 103 mil-
lion tons of methane emissions in 2004 through enteric fer-
mentation and manure management, equivalent to 2,369
million tons of CO2e. This is 3.7 percent of worldwide GHGs
using, as FAO does, the outdated GWP of 23. Using a GWP
of 72, livestock methane is responsible for 7,416 million
tons of CO2e or 11.6 percent of worldwide GHGs. So using
November/December 2009 | World Watch 13
the appropriate timeframe of 20
years instead of 100 years for
methane raises the total amount
of GHGs attributable to livestock
products by 5,047 million tons of
CO2e or 7.9 percentage points.
(Further work is needed to recal-
ibrate methane emissions other
than those attributable to live-
stock products using a 20-year
timeframe.)
Other sources. Four additional
categories of GHGs adding up to
at least 5,560 million tons of CO2e
(8.7 percent of GHGs emissions)
have been overlooked or under-
counted by the FAO and
uncounted in the existing inven-
tory of worldwide GHGs:
First, Livestock’s Long Shadow
cites 2002 FAO statistics as the key
source for its 18-percent estimate.
From 2002 to 2009, the tonnage of livestock products world-
wide increased by 12 percent, which must yield a propor-
tional increase in GHG emissions. Through extrapolation
from the FAO’s estimate as well as our own, we calculate that
the increase in livestock products worldwide from 2002 to
2009 accounts for about 2,560 million tons of CO2e, or 4.0 per-
cent of GHG emissions.
Second, the FAO and others have documented frequent
undercounting in official statistics of both pastoral and indus-
trial livestock. Livestock’s Long Shadow not only uses no cor-
rection factor for such undercounting, but in some sections
actually uses lower numbers than appear in FAO statistics
and elsewhere. For example, Livestock’s Long Shadow reports
that 33.0 million tons of poultry were produced worldwide in
2002, while FAO’s Food Outlook of April 2003 reports that
72.9 million tons of poultry were produced worldwide in
2002. The report also states that 21.7 billion head of livestock
were raised worldwide in 2002, while many nongovernmen-
tal organizations report that about 50 billion head of live-
stock were raised each year in the early 2000s. If the true
number is closer to 50 billion than to 21.7 billion, then the per-
centage of GHGs worldwide attributable to undercounting in
official livestock statistics would likely be over 10 percent.
Third, the FAO uses citations for various aspects of GHGs
attributable to livestock dating back to such years as 1964, 1982,
1993, 1999, and 2001. Emissions today would be much higher.
Fourth, the FAO cites Minnesota as a rich source of data.
But if these data are generalized to the world then they under-
state true values, as operations in Minnesota are more efficient
than operations in most developing countries where the live-
stock sector is growing fastest.
Finally, we believe that FAO has overlooked some emis-
14 World Watch | November/December 2009
USDA/NRCS, Bob Nichols
Adding more to the carbon footprint: large fans keep pigs cool in North Carolina.
sions that have been counted under sectors other than live-
stock. These emissions add up to at least 3,000 million tons of
CO2e, or 4.7 percent of GHG emissions worldwide.
First, the FAO states that “livestock-related deforestation
as reported from, for example, Argentina is excluded” from its
GHG accounting. Second, the FAO omits farmed fish from its
definition of livestock and so fails to count GHGs from their
life cycle and supply chain. It also omits GHG emissions from
portions of the construction and operation of marine and
land-based industries dedicated to handling marine organisms
destined to feed livestock (up to half the annual catch of
marine organisms).
Lastly, the FAO leaves uncounted the substantially higher
amount of GHGs attributable to each of the following aspects
of livestock products versus alternatives to livestock products:
• Fluorocarbons (needed for cooling livestock products much
more than alternatives), which have a global warming poten-
tial up to several thousand times higher than that of CO2.
• Cooking, which typically entails higher temperatures and
longer periods for meat than alternatives, and in developing
countries entails large amounts of charcoal (which reduces
carbon absorption by consuming trees) and kerosene, each
of which emits high levels of GHGs.
• Disposal of inevitably large amounts of liquid waste from live-
stock, and waste livestock products in the form of bone, fat,
and spoiled products, all of which emit high amounts of
GHGs when disposed in landfills, incinerators, and waterways.
• Production, distribution, and disposal of byproducts, such
as leather, feathers, skin, and fur, and their packaging.
• Production, distribution, and disposal of packaging used
for livestock products, which for sanitary reasons is much
www.worldwatch.org
Photo courtesy Farm Sanctuary
Scene on the factory floor: pigs in production.
more extensive than for alternatives to livestock products.
• Carbon-intensive medical treatment of millions of cases
worldwide of zoonotic illnesses (such as swine flu) and
chronic degenerative illnesses (such as coronary heart disease,
cancers, diabetes, and hypertension leading to strokes) linked
to the consumption of livestock products. Full accounting of
GHGs attributable to livestock products would cover portions
of the construction and operation of pharmaceutical and
medical industries used to treat these illnesses.
Mitigation
A key risk factor for climate change is the growth of the human
population, projected to be roughly 35 percent between 2006
and 2050. In the same period, the FAO projects that the num-
ber of livestock worldwide will double, so livestock-related
GHG emissions would also approximately double (or rise
slightly less if all the FAO’s recommendations were fully imple-
mented), while it is widely expected that GHGs from other
industries will drop. This would make the amount of live-
stock-related emissions even more unacceptable than today’s
perilous levels. It also means that an effective strategy must
involve replacing livestock products with better alternatives,
rather than substituting one meat product with another that
has a somewhat lower carbon footprint.
A substantial body of theory, beliefs, and even vested inter-
www.worldwatch.org
est has been built up around the idea of slowing climate
change through renewable energy and energy efficiency. How-
ever, after many years of international climate talks and prac-
tical efforts, only relatively modest amounts of renewable
energy and energy efficiency have been developed (along with
more nuclear- and fossil-energy infrastructure). GHG emis-
sions have increased since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in
1992 and climate change has accelerated. However desirable,
even major progress in displacing nonrenewable energy would
not obviate substantial action to reduce the huge amounts of
livestock-related GHGs emissions.
Action to replace livestock products not only can achieve
quick reductions in atmospheric GHGs, but can also reverse
the ongoing world food and water crises. Were the recom-
mendations described below followed, at least a 25-percent
reduction in livestock products worldwide could be achieved
between now and 2017, the end of the commitment period to
be discussed at the United Nations’ climate conference in
Copenhagen in December 2009. This would yield at mini-
mum a 12.5-percent reduction in global anthropogenic GHGs
emissions, which by itself would be almost as much reduction
as is generally expected to be negotiated in Copenhagen.
Because of the urgency of slowing climate change, we
believe that recommending change directly to industry will be
more effective than recommending policy changes to gov-
ernments, which may or may not eventually lead to change in
November/December 2009 | World Watch 15
Lyle Rosbotham
industry. This is true even though industry and investors nor-
mally thrive when they are responsive to customers and share-
holders in the short term, while climate seems to pose
longterm risks.
Livestock-related GHGs could be managed by govern-
ments through the imposition of carbon taxes (despite oppo-
sition from the livestock industry), in which case leaders in the
food industry and investors would search for opportunities that
such carbon taxes would help create. In fact, they might seek
to benefit from such opportunities even in the absence of car-
bon taxes because livestock-related GHG emissions are a grave
risk to the food industry itself. Disruptive climate events are
forecast to threaten developed markets increasingly, and to
result in even more harm to emerging markets, where the food
industry is otherwise forecast to achieve its greatest growth.
Opportunity
An individual food company has at least three incentives to
respond to the risks and opportunities applicable to the food
industry at large. The first incentive is that individual food
companies already suffer from disruptive climate events, so a
company’s self-interest might well be served by acting to slow
climate change. In affected areas, disruptive climate events can
be expected to degrade not only the food industry’s markets,
but also its infrastructure and its ability to operate. For exam-
ple, all these risks played out in the New Orleans area in 2005
following Hurricane Katrina, when Whole Foods Market, Inc.
reported US$16.5 million in losses that year due to the closure
of its damaged stores in the New Orleans area, loss of sales, and
16 World Watch | November/December 2009
Non-meat meat. Alternative ingredients include textured soy protein, soy lecithin,
brown rice, ground sunflower seeds, mycoprotein, and wheat gluten.
renovations at the damaged stores. Such risks will be aggravated
by extreme climate events in the future, which are expected to
occur with increasing frequency and intensity worldwide.
A second incentive stems from the likelihood, once the cur-
rent economic crisis is resolved, that demand for oil will rise
to levels impossible to meet because of a terminal decline in
production (the “peak oil” phenomenon). Petroleum’s price
will spike so high as to bring about the collapse of many parts
of today’s economy. Livestock products would take an extra
hit because every gram of biofuel from crops that can possi-
bly be produced to replace conventional fuel likely will be
produced—and thereby diverted from livestock—in efforts to
stave off disaster. It has been predicted from within both the
livestock and financial sectors that peak oil could bring about
the collapse of the livestock sector within a few years. To be
ahead of the competition in that scenario is another reason for
leaders in the food industry to begin replacing livestock prod-
ucts with better alternatives immediately.
A third incentive is that a food company can produce
and market alternatives to livestock products that taste sim-
ilar, but are easier to cook, less expensive, and healthier, and
so are better than livestock products. These alternatives are
analogs to livestock products such as soy- and seitan (wheat
gluten) beef, chicken, and pork; and soy- and rice milk,
cheese, and ice cream.
Sales in the United States alone of soy analogs totaled $1.9
billion in 2007, up from $1.7 billion in 2005, according to the
www.worldwatch.org
Soyfoods Association of North America. In comparison, sales
in the United States of meat products (including poultry)
topped $100 billion in 2007. This 1.9 to 100 ratio suggests
much room for growth in sales of meat and dairy analogs.
Meat and dairy analogs are already sold throughout the devel-
oping world, and as in the United States sales have increased
in recent years. So efforts to increase sales of these products
in developing countries do not have to wait for similar efforts
to succeed in the developed world first. Worldwide, the mar-
ket for meat and dairy analogs is potentially almost as big as
the market for livestock products.
Large organic-food companies might
find these opportunities especially appeal-
ing. Such companies could establish sub-
sidiaries to sell meat and dairy analogs,
possibly exclusive of meat or dairy prod-
ucts. They could significantly scale up pro-
duction and sales of analogs within a few
years at a reasonable capital cost and with
an attractive return on investment. And
because meat and dairy analogs are pro-
duced without the GHG-intensive
processes used in raising livestock—such
as animals’ CO2 and methane emissions,
and usage of land for growing feed and grazing livestock—the
analogs clearly generate a small fraction of the GHGs attrib-
utable to livestock products. So additional revenues might be
captured from the sale of carbon credits for the reduction in
GHG emissions achieved by analogs versus livestock products.
Analogs are most indistinguishable from meat and dairy
products when they are chopped, breaded, sauced, spiced, or
otherwise processed, so among the least risky strategies might
be for a company subsidiary to build a chain of fast-food out-
lets featuring soy burgers, soy chicken products, sandwiches
made with various meat analog products, and/or soy ice
cream. If the chain’s growth were rapid, then other food com-
panies would be tempted to copy from the first mover.
If production of meat and dairy analogs is significantly
increased, then their costs will decline—a key advantage for
at least as long as the present economic recession in many
countries persists. Cost reductions will follow from economies
of scale and increased competition among analog producers,
as well as because the primary feedstock for biodiesel is soy oil.
Meeting the significantly higher forecast demand for biodiesel
will yield surpluses of soy meal, which is not only a byprod-
uct of soy oil but a raw material for many meat and dairy
analogs. Surpluses in stocks of soy meal may drive down its
price significantly.
For consumers who do not like meat and dairy analogs,
protein-rich legumes and grains are readily available alter-
natives. Another option might be artificial meat cultivated in
laboratories from cells originating from livestock, sometimes
called “in vitro” meat. Some experiments have been done and
patents registered, but production and possible commercial-
www.worldwatch.org
ization are several years off and it will be awhile before it is
known whether in vitro meat might compete with analogs in
cost and taste as well as health and environmental impacts.
Marketing
To achieve the growth discussed above will require a signifi-
cant investment in marketing, especially since meat and dairy
analogs will be new to many consumers. A successful campaign
would avoid negative themes and stress positive ones. For
instance, recommending that meat not be eaten one day per
week suggests deprivation. Instead, the campaign should pitch
the theme of eating all week long a line of food products that
is tasty, easy to prepare, and includes a “superfood,” such as soy,
that will enrich their lives. When people hear appealing mes-
sages about food, they are listening particularly for words
that evoke comfort, familiarity, happiness, ease, speed, low
price, and popularity. Consequently, several other themes
should be tapped to build an effective marketing campaign:
By replacing livestock products with analogs, consumers
can take a single powerful action collectively to mitigate most
GHGs worldwide. Labeling analogs with certified claims of the
amount of GHGs averted can give them a significant edge.
Analogs are less expensive, less wasteful, easier to cook, and
healthier than livestock products.
Meat and dairy analogs can be positioned as clearly supe-
rior to livestock products, thus appealing to the same con-
sumer urges that drive purchases of other analog products,
such as Rolex knockoffs.
In developing countries, where per-capita meat and dairy
consumption is lower than in developed countries, consumers
often see meat and dairy products as part of a better diet and
a better life, and have not yet been informed about their adverse
impacts. Yet meat and dairy analogs can yield even better out-
comes, particularly if they are marketed with such intent.
As shown by the track record of green businesses, the
most appropriate target of the campaign would be environ-
mentalists, on the basis that eating meat and dairy analogs is
the best way to combat climate change. They can be expected
to spread such messages to other people, and may press for
analogs to be served at meetings they attend and for the GHGs
thereby avoided to be well publicized.
Probably most susceptible to messages about new foods
and fast foods are children, who are prone to act on adver-
tising, having less-ingrained habits than adults, and often
seek to catch the wave of a new trend. Parents often join in
eating a fast food meal or other food product that their chil-
dren insist be bought for them. At the same time, children are
being increasingly educated on climate change in school, and
are searching for activities that allow them to experiment
with what they have learned. Yet they are major targets when
it comes to marketing livestock products, despite the griev-
ously high climate risk of those products. To correct this,
consideration should be given to changing applicable stan-
dards for marketing to children. In any event, marketing
November/December 2009 | World Watch 17

meat and dairy analogs to children should be a priority.
In addition, food companies can market meat and dairy
analogs through strategic alliances with other companies. They
can engage with schools, governments, and nongovernmental
organizations. Environmentalists with relevant skills can be
called upon to conduct ongoing, comprehensive tracking of
GHGs attributable to livestock products and analogs. Politicians
and celebrities can be enlisted to make public pitches for con-
sumers to choose alternatives to livestock products.
We recommend that when grocers plan displays and set
slotting fees (for favorable shelf placement), they consider
the benefits of displaying analogs side by side with meat and
dairy products. This would expose analogs to many con-
sumers who may not otherwise be exposed to them, and
thereby facilitate an increase in their sales. It would permit the
achievement of good sales results that normally occur when
consumers are shown multiple forms of a product on the
same shelf. Where analogs cost less than meat products, dis-
playing one beside the other may have an enhanced benefit for
grocers. That is, if consumers find in a side-by-side compar-
ison that analogs are cheaper than livestock products, then
side-by-side placement may help grocers keep up their over-
all sales volumes in an economic downturn.
Sources of Investment
A company with a sound plan for increasing sales of meat or
dairy analogs is likely to find sufficient commercial financing
available from investors seeking investment opportunities
18 World Watch | November/December 2009
Courtesy WhiteWave
Non-dairy dairy: an array of soy milk options.
that promise to help slow climate change. It may also find
concessional financing through development finance insti-
tutions and “climate funds.” But it may need to raise aware-
ness among investors unfamiliar with meat and dairy analogs.
Investors can be shown that it is in their self-interest to
avoid new investments in the production of meat and dairy
products and to seek investments in analogs instead. Com-
pared with power and transportation projects, analog proj-
ects can be implemented quickly, with relatively low levels
of incremental investment, larger amounts of GHGs miti-
gated for the same amount of investment, and faster returns
on investment.
Investments in minimizing and mitigating GHGs most
often focus on renewable energy in the transportation and
power sectors. However, renewable-energy infrastructure has
both long and complex product-development cycles and cap-
ital-intensive requirements. Converting vehicle fleets and
power plants is forecast to cost trillions of dollars, and to
require political will and consensus that do not appear close
at hand. Even if money and politics were up to the task, such
solutions are expected to take more than a decade to imple-
ment fully, by which time the tipping point may long since
have been passed for irreversible climate disruption.
Most commercial banks, some export-credit agencies, and
even some equity funds have adopted the Equator Principles,
by which they commit to complying with a set of rigorous
environmental and social performance standards for invest-
www.worldwatch.org

Scott Robinson
The mighty analog: soybeans await harvest on a Maryland farm.
ment projects in developing countries. If those standards were
to frown upon investments in large-scale livestock projects,
then a company with a meat or dairy analog project would be
well positioned to attract investments.
Benefit Package
Meat and dairy analog projects will not only slow climate
change but also help ease the global food crisis, as it takes a
much smaller quantity of crops to produce any given number
of calories in the form of an analog than a livestock product.
Analogs would also alleviate the global water crisis, as the
huge amounts of water necessary for livestock production
would be freed up. Health and nutritional outcomes among
consumers would be better than from livestock products.
Analog projects would be more labor intensive than livestock
projects, so would create both more jobs and more skilled
jobs. They would also avert the harmful labor practices found
in the livestock sector (but not in analog production), includ-
ing slave labor in some areas such as the Amazon forest region.
Workers producing livestock products can easily be retrained
to produce analogs.
Of course, some livestock will continue to be raised, espe-
cially where they are important in mixed farming systems.
They may also be important where raising livestock is one of
the few ways for poor rural populations to create assets and
earn income. However, that is increasingly less common, as the
dramatic growth in recent years in the use of computers,
www.worldwatch.org
mobile communications, mobile banking,
microfinance, and off-grid electricity has cre-
ated a multitude of new opportunities for
poor rural communities.
For many years, advocacy of alternatives
to livestock products has been based on argu-
ments about nutrition and health, compas-
sion for animals, and environmental issues
other than carbon intensity. These arguments
have mostly been ignored and the consump-
tion of livestock products worldwide has
increased, leading some to believe that such
advocacy may never succeed. Even urging
governments to mandate reductions in live-
stock production on grounds of climate
change may prove ineffective because of the
food industry’s own large lobbying capacity.
But if the business case for meat and dairy
analogs is clear, then those who normally
would lobby governments can appeal directly
to leaders in the food industry, who may wel-
come them as champions. The business risks
of analog projects would be similar to those
in most other food manufacturing projects,
but the risks would be mitigated by the fact
that much of the necessary infrastructure
(such as for growing and processing grains) already exists.
The key change would be a significant reduction in live-
stock products. Industry-led or supply-led growth has been
successful in other industries, such as the computer and
mobile-phone industries, which suggests that it can be suc-
cessful with meat and dairy analogs. Generally, the food indus-
try worldwide has a very sophisticated marketing capacity,
making high growth from marketing new food products prac-
tically a norm —even before one considers the extra lift that
might be achieved from interest in slowing climate change.
The risks of business as usual outweigh the risks of change.
The case for change is no longer only a public policy or an eth-
ical case, but is now also a business case. We believe it is the
best available business case among all industries to reverse
climate change quickly.
Robert Goodland retired as lead environmental adviser at
the World Bank Group after serving there for 23 years. In
2008 he was awarded the first Coolidge Memorial Medal by
the IUCN for outstanding contributions to environmental
conservation. Jeff Anhang is a research officer and environ-
mental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International
Finance Corporation, which provides private-sector financing
and advice in developing countries.
For more information about issues raised in this story, visit
www.worldwatch.org/ww/livestock.
November/December 2009 | World Watch 19
 T A L K I N G

PLASTIC TOYS
NOT REQUIRED
Jorgen Schytte/Peter Arnold, Inc.

Peter Arnold, Inc.

Above: A creative gameboard for
playing kalaha (a version of mancala)
in Malawi.
Above right: High on homemade
stilts in Sri Lanka.
Right: Gettin’ rolling in Bangladesh.

© 2006 Rezaul Haque, courtesy Photoshare

20 World Watch | November/December 2009 www.worldwatch.org

 P I C T U R E S
© 2006 Javahar, courtesy Photoshare

Above: A torn soccer net

makes a game in India.
Left: Sailor in training,
Madagascar.
Edgar Cleijne/Peter Arnold, Inc.

www.worldwatch.org November/December 2009 | World Watch 21

VISION QUEST:
Who Will Control the Future of the Amazon?
A complex and high-stakes struggle over the
Amazon forests and their resources heats up.
by David Dudenhoefer
A
t dawn last June 5, some 650 police and soldiers began
clearing a two-week-old blockade set by roughly 3,000
Awajun and Wampis Indians on the main east-west high-
way in northern Peru, at a spot called the Devil’s Curve,
in Bagua Province. The blockade was part of an Ama-
zonian indigenous mobilization coordinated by the Peru-
vian Rainforest Inter-Ethnic Development Association
(AIDESEP, for its name in Spanish) to demand the repeal of
nine legislative decrees that threatened Indian land rights and
natural resources. The context of the protest, however, was a
30-year struggle by native communities to gain title to their
ancestral lands and an unprecedented increase in oil explo-
ration in Peru’s Amazon region in recent years.
The police were equipped with assault rifles, armored
vehicles, and helicopters. The protesters had only wooden
spears, but when the police started shooting, some protesters
wrested rifles from them and returned the fire. By the time the
teargas cleared, at least 11 protesters and 13 police officers
were dead (some investigators claim that more Indians died,
but police removed their bodies from the scene) and nearly 200
protesters were injured. The tragedy continued at an oil
pipeline pumping station to the north of Bagua, where a
group of Awajun Indians responded to radio reports of the
violence by taking 36 police officers hostage. The next morn-
ing, as government troops launched a rescue operation, the
Awajun killed 10 hostages in an act of revenge.
The brutality of the government crackdown and the Indian
response resulted in condemnation around the world. Inter-
national pressure and continued protests led the Peruvian
congress to repeal two of the nine offending decrees two weeks
later, upon which AIDESEP ended the mobilization. But most
of the issues that led approximately 20,000 indigenous pro-
testers to blockade roads and rivers, occupy airstrips and oil
company boats, and shut down Peru’s northern pipeline
22 World Watch | November/December 2009
remained unresolved. Peru’s 333,000 Amazonian Indians con-
tinue to struggle for recognition of communal lands and their
right to prior consent as the government facilitates the
exploitation of oil, gas, minerals, and hardwoods in their
region, which accounts for 61 percent of the national territory
and hosts 13 percent of Peru’s population.
In a televised interview following the Bagua clash, Peru-
vian President Alan Garcia said, “These people are not first
class citizens, if 400,000 [sic] natives can say to 28 million
Peruvians ‘you can’t come here.’ That is a very grave error,
and anyone who thinks that way wants to take us on an irra-
tional and primitive retreat into the past.”
Among the injured in Bagua was Santiago Manuin, a 52-
year-old Awajun leader who won the Spanish government’s
Reina Sofia Prize for his environmental activism. Police shot
Manuin repeatedly and left him for dead, but he was later res-
cued by ambulance attendants. After two operations and
days in intensive care, Manuin spoke to a journalist from the
Peruvian magazine Somos. “Look at history, how indigenous
people have been treated, the deforestation, the contami-
nated rivers,” he said. “Is that development? We don’t want
that kind of development, and Peru shouldn’t want that kind
of development.”
Though the scale of the confrontation was exceptional, the
violence in Bagua was hardly unique. According to Jecinaldo
Barbosa, a Satere-Mawe Indian who heads the Coordinator of
Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB
for its name in Portuguese), 34 Indian leaders were killed in
Brazil in 2008 alone. Various Indian activists were murdered
in the Bolivian Amazon last year, and in Colombia, armed
groups have killed hundreds of Indians during the past decade.
Indigenous leaders from across the Amazon Basin say
Bagua reflects their own struggle. One of them is Diego Esco-
bar, a Piratapuyo Indian from Colombia who oversees envi-
www.worldwatch.org

ronmental policy for the Coordinator of Indigenous Organ-
izations of the Amazon Basin (COICA): “The message we get
from Peru is that we need to fight for our natural resources,
we need to fight for our territories, we need to fight for our
culture. If we aren’t united and prepared, they’ll do what they
want with us.”
David Dudenhoefer
Above: Awajun and Wampis Indians at a highway blockade in Bagua
Province one week before Peruvian police stormed the area.
Below: The violence of the police crackdown and native response in Bagua
left nearly 200 injured and 24 dead.

E Pluribus…?
Indigenous territories account for 25–30 percent of the Ama-
zon Basin, and many of the national parks and protected areas
that cover 25 percent of that region overlap native lands. Var-
ious studies have shown that native peoples do a better job of
conserving forests than their non-native compatriots. A recent
satellite-image study led by Woods Hole forest ecologist Daniel
Thomas Quirynen/www.catapa.be

Nepstad, for example, showed that the creation of indigenous

territories in the Amazon Basin often prevented deforesta-
tion completely, despite severe deforestation along their
boundaries. A comparable study led by Manuel Ruiz-Pérez of
the Autonomous University of Madrid in 2005 found that
indigenous territories in the Brazilian state of Acre suffered less
deforestation than a nearby national park. “We don’t want to
cut down the forest,” said Celin Cushi, an Ashanika Indian
from the central Peruvian Amazon, “because the forest is our
pharmacy; the forest is our market; the forest is our hard-
ware store. For us, the forest is a perfect factory made by God.”
This utilitarian approach to wilderness has sometimes
put conservationists at odds with Indians. Government agen-
cies have forced Indians to move out of national parks, or
have restricted the activities of native communities in pro-
tected areas. Indians clearly have an impact on natural
resources, such as by overharvesting fish, game, and certain for-
est plants, yet on a regional level they are defending Amazon
forests from an array of threats. Because they protect vast
expanses of wilderness that provide environmental services for
the entire world, the usurpation or degradation of native
lands is as much an environmental issue as it is a social and
political issue.
It might thus seem odd that during the 10 weeks of
protests in Peru, as Catholic bishops, unions, farmer organi-
zations, and other groups issued statements supporting
AIDESEP, the major conservation groups were conspicuously
silent. This may be due to their reluctance to anger President
Garcia, who claimed the protests were part of a left-wing con-
spiracy, or it may be a reflection of the historic neglect of
indigenous people by conservationists (see, for example, “A
Challenge to Conservationists,” World Watch, Novem-
ber/December 2004).

www.worldwatch.org November/December 2009 | World Watch 23

 Though they are outnumbered—with about 1.6 million
people, Indians represent a mere 5 percent of the Amazon
Basin’s population—and monetarily poor, the region’s native
peoples are better prepared to defend their natural and cul-
tural heritage than ever before. Over the past 45 years, Ama-
zonian indigenous peoples have created more than 300 local
organizations, which are represented by regional and national
umbrella groups that lobby state and national governments,
cooperate with NGOs and international agencies, and coor-
dinate protests when all else fails.
With the help of non-native allies, those organizations
have obtained computers, video equipment, Internet access,
and other empowering technology while their leaders have
gained knowledge and skills to help them take on multi-bil-
David Dudenhoefer
Organizers and dancers at the Confederation of Indigenous Nations of the
Ecuadorian Amazon (COFENIAE) inauguration ceremony last June.
lion-dollar industries, short-sighted government initiatives,
and the non-indigenous people who covet their land and
resources. Several decades of organizing and mobilizing have
resulted in significant, though not total, legal recognition of
indigenous territories and rights. Even the violence in Peru and
Brazil is a reflection of those organizations’ success, since it has
resulted from the fact that indigenous people are standing
their ground and defending their land. “On a political level,
there has been enormous progress,” noted Richard Smith, an
anthropologist who has worked with Amazonian indigenous
organizations for more than 40 years. “These are incredibly
autonomous people, but when they are confronted by a com-
mon enemy, they have a capacity to come together.”
The current level of cooperation and political organization
is remarkable considering how remote most communities are,
the region’s vastness, and historic divisions. Recent decades
have seen an indigenous renaissance after the four centuries of
decline that followed the first European incursion into the
region in 1542, when Francisco de Orellana and a few dozen
conquistadores floated the length of the Amazon River. Sub-
24 World Watch | November/December 2009
sequent colonization brought slavery and Old World diseases,
which decimated native communities. It is estimated that Brazil
was home to between 2 and 6 million people and more than
1,000 ethnic groups in Orellana’s day. Today, that country has
fewer than 600,000 Amazonian Indians in 170 ethnic groups.
In the second half of the twentieth century, national gov-
ernments facilitated non-Indian colonization of the Amazon
Basin that left its native inhabitants minorities in the lands of
their ancestors. In the 1960s and 1970s, the region’s Indians
began forming political organizations with the help of anthro-
pologists, priests, and other outsiders. The national umbrella
groups AIDESEP and the Confederation of Indigenous
Nations of the Ecuadorian Amazon (COFENIAE) were
founded in 1980, followed by the Confederation of Indigenous
Peoples of Bolivia (CIDOB) and the National Indigenous
Organization of Colombia (ONIC) in 1982. In 1984, these
groups founded the Coordinator of Indigenous Organiza-
tions of the Amazon Basin (COICA), which works with
national organizations in the nine Amazonian countries. Over
the years, some of those organizations have suffered crises of
leadership, and their communication with communities
remains limited, but on the whole they play an important
role in defending indigenous interests on national and inter-
national levels.
Years of lobbying and protests have led to the inclusion of
native rights in a number of national constitutions and inter-
national agreements. Brazil’s 1998 constitution and Colom-
bia’s 1991 constitution broke ground in their recognition of
indigenous rights (although Peru’s 1993 constitution limited
some previous guarantees). Venezuela, where the previous
constitution failed to even mention Indians, approved a con-
stitution in 1999 with a chapter dedicated to native rights. In
Ecuador and Bolivia, where more than one-third and one-half
of the populations respectively are indigenous, constitutions
drafted in recent years redefine those countries as “pluri-
national states.”
The International Labour Organization’s Convention 169,
adopted in 1989, mandates that indigenous people be con-
sulted about initiatives that could impact them. The United
Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
which the UN General Assembly adopted in 2007, requires
their free, prior, and informed consent (an important improve-
ment over “consultation”). Native organizations have pushed
their governments to comply with those agreements, though
with mixed results.
The Colombian and Brazilian governments have taken
steps to facilitate consultation, such as the creation of mesas
de dialogo—committees of government and native repre-
sentatives—that meet periodically. Colombia’s high court
declared a 1997 forestry law unconstitutional based on Con-
vention 169 because indigenous organizations weren’t con-
sulted about it. The Peruvian congress’s constitutional
commission similarly declared a 2008 forestry law—one of
the nine legislative decrees that AIDESEP opposed—uncon-
www.worldwatch.org
 Caribbean
Sea Caracas
V E N E Z U E L A
GUYANA
Bogota
C O L O M B I A
Map adapted from one courtesy of Red Amazónica de Información Socioambiental Georreferenciada (RAISG)
Quito
ECUADOR
Amazon
B R A Z I L
P E R U
Lima
La Paz
B O L I V I A
P A C I F I C
O C E A N Sucre
PARAGUAY
stitutional two weeks before the Bagua clash, yet the major-
ity parties resisted repealing the law until President Garcia
asked them to, two weeks after Bagua.
Grounds of Contention
President Garcia virtually ignored the AIDESEP mobiliza-
tion during its first month. Not until the protest entered its
fifth week did he declare a state of emergency in the Amazon
region and mention the protest at a public event, when he
reminded the audience that “the Amazonian lands belong to
the entire nation, not to a small group that lives there.”
Under Peruvian law, the Amazon forests and subsoil belong
to the state. Indigenous communities there have gained title to
ancestral lands under a “native communities law” passed in
1974. Richard Smith heads a Peruvian NGO, the Instituto del
Bien Comun, which helps indigenous communities gain legal
recognition of their lands. He explained that the bureaucratic
obstacles to getting native lands titled in Peru are daunting, cit-
ing cases of communities that worked for more than a decade
to get a title. “The state has never wanted to title the lands of
indigenous communities,” Smith said. “The stalling tactics,
the loss of paperwork, the inexplicable stopping of processes
www.worldwatch.org
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
Georgetown
Paramaribo
Amazonia
Cayenne
SURINAME FRENCH Indigenous
GUIANA Territories
0 500 miles
0 500 km
on
Amaz
Brasilia
Officially recognized indigenous territories in Amazonia, with the exception of
Venezuela, where most native lands have yet to be titled.
results in a sense of desperation among indigenous people.”
Nevertheless, 1,235 indigenous communities in the Peru-
vian Amazon have gotten communal land titled over the past
three decades, while 277 communities are still awaiting title.
The result is a patchwork of native lands totaling 105,643
square kilometers that are surrounded by national forests,
much of which has been leased to logging companies. Includ-
ing five large reserves created for un-contacted peoples, indige-
nous territories cover 17 percent of the Peruvian Amazon,
while Indians represent 9 percent of that region’s population.
But compared to indigenous communities in neighboring
nations, Peru’s Amazonian Indians are land-poor. In the 1980s
and 1990s, Ecuador created indigenous territories that cover
about 65 percent of its Amazon region. Bolivia has turned
almost 26 percent of its Amazon region into indigenous ter-
ritories, most of which were created by the administration of
Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first native (Aymara) president.
Venezuela has been slow to legalize proposed native lands
that would cover one-third of the national territory. Colom-
bia has divided 51 percent of its Amazon lowlands into 186
November/December 2009 | World Watch 25
Marcello Casal Jr./Agência Brasil
Native leaders packed Brazil’s Senate for a meeting with various senators
during COIAB’s annual Terra Livre gathering in Brasilia.
indigenous territories that are home to approximately 120,000
people—who constitute less than 3 percent of the national
population but control 21 percent of the national territory.
Brazil has declared almost 22 percent of its Amazon region
native territory—more than one million square kilometers for
approximately 600,000 people, or almost 13 percent of the
national territory for 0.3 percent of the population.
Together, the Amazonian indigenous territories of Bolivia,
Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru cover almost 1.7 mil-
lion square kilometers, about the size of Iran but home to
just 1.6 million people. It is hardly surprising that ranchers,
farmers, and politicians across the Amazon region claim that
Indians have too much land. But as Colombian ethnologist
Martin von Hildebrand, director of Fundación Gaia Ama-
zonas, noted,“They say that indigenous people have too much
land, but those communities are actually doing the country a
favor by protecting all that forest.”
In fact, however, many native communities are having a
hard time protecting their forests, which are threatened by log-
gers, ranchers, farmers, and extractive industries. The major-
ity of South Americans would seem to support native land
tenancy, as a 2000 survey of Brazilians by the Instituto
Socioambiental indicates: 68 percent of respondents said that
indigenous people either had adequate territories or deserved
more land, whereas 22 percent said they had too much. Nev-
ertheless, violent minorities continue to threaten native lands
26 World Watch | November/December 2009
and lives. Last September, mobs sacked the offices of Bolivia’s
Amazonian Indian groups and various NGOs in Santa Cruz
in response to government policies to create native territories,
among other issues. A subsequent attack on a march of natives
and campesinos left 20 dead and more than 100 injured. In
2008 alone, 53 Brazilian Indians were murdered as a result of
land and resource conflicts. Illegal logging and mining and an
advancing agricultural frontier threaten dozens of Brazil’s
indigenous territories, and booms in biofuels and grain and
beef exports have intensified that pressure in recent years.
Alberto Ricardo, director of the Instituto Socioambiental,
cited the Guaja, a tribe of just 300 hunter-gatherers, as one of
Brazil’s most threatened peoples; their territory in Maranhão
state has been invaded by ranchers and loggers. Ranchers and
farmers are also encroaching on the lands of the Enawene-
Nawe, a tribe with just 500 members in Mato Grosso state,
while the Juruena River, which they depend on for fish, is slated
for hydroelectric projects. And the Yanomami—whose territory
in northern Brazil was overrun by gold miners in the 1980s,
when disease killed 15 percent of their population—are suffering
a malaria epidemic due to a recent surge in illegal mining.
Jecinaldo Barbosa said that COIAB demands that the
Brazilian government intervene in such cases, but the institu-
tion responsible for indigenous affairs, FUNAI, lacks the capac-
ity to deal with most threats and local officials often resist
federal intervention. He explained that hundreds of indigenous
leaders travel to Brasilia, the Brazilian capital, each year for
several days of demonstrations and lobbying that has raised
www.worldwatch.org
awareness and resulted in several meetings with President Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva, popularly known as Lula.
Barbosa cited Raposa Serra do Sol, an indigenous terri-
tory in northern Brazil, as an example of progress. Indigenous
leaders in that region, which is home for about 20,000 Indians
from various tribes, struggled for more than a decade to get legal
recognition of their ancestral lands while miners, loggers, farm-
ers, and ranchers invaded them. In 2005, Lula signed a law cre-
ating a vast indigenous territory, but it provoked violent reprisals
against native communities there. It wasn’t until July of this year
that the government evicted the last non-indigenous squat-
ters from the territory, after almost 20 Indians had been killed
and scores injured during a decade of conflict.
Subsoil Challenges
While the advancing agricultural frontier threatens indigenous
forests throughout the Amazon Basin, its western region holds
major oil, gas, and mineral reserves. A 2008 study published
in the online journal PLoS ONE identified 180 oil and gas
blocks in western Amazonia, most of which are under explo-
ration. And while clandestine mining has long been a prob-
lem, larger mining companies are now openly active there.
David Dudenhoefer
Colombia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy has received a
surge in requests for mining concessions in the Amazon region
this year. Last year Ecuador’s constitutional assembly identi-
fied 12 mining concessions in Amazonian Kichwa territory and
22 concessions in Shuar territory. Two controversial gold min-
ing concessions have been awarded by the governments of
Ecuador and Peru in the Cordillera del Condor, along their
common border, which holds the headwaters of rivers that
Awajun and Shuar communities depend on.
Peru, a net importer of oil, has prioritized oil and gas
exploitation in recent years. In 2004, there were eight oil and
gas concessions covering less than 15 percent of the Peruvian
Amazon. By mid-2009, 81 concessions covered 72 percent of
that region and overlapped 95 percent of its indigenous ter-
ritories. Though few indigenous leaders completely oppose oil
exploitation there, they demand that their people be con-
sulted, compensated, and protected from contamination.
Richard Smith noted that many companies that have won
concessions in Peru are relatively small, may lack the resources
or motivation to employ the technology needed to limit their
environmental impacts, and have not been forced to do so by
the Peruvian government. A case in point is Block 1AB in
northeast Peru, where Occidental Petroleum and later Plus-
petrol dumped contaminated formation waters (waters found
naturally in oil and gas deposit formations) into the Corrientes
River for years despite complaints by the area’s Achuar, Kichwa,
and Urarina Indians. It wasn’t until native protesters shut
down that oil field for two weeks in October 2006 that Plus-
petrol officials agreed to re-inject formation waters and build
potable water systems for nearby communities.
The Amazon region most affected by the oil industry is
northeast Ecuador, where Texaco drilled hundreds of wells and
www.worldwatch.org
built access roads that non-Indians used to colonize the area in
the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, the Cofan, Siona, and Secoya
peoples lost most of their land and were reduced to populations
of less than 1,000 each; the Tetete tribe simply disappeared.
According to Ecuador’s Frente de Defensa de la Amazonia, Tex-
aco poured 70 billion liters of formation waters into Amazon
tributaries and left 916 pits of oil sludge scattered across the
region, whereas pipeline ruptures spilled an estimated 64 mil-
Ashanika Indians seized oil company boats and shut down the airstrip in
Atalaya, Peru, last May as part of the national indigenous mobilization.
lion liters of oil. Texaco sold its Ecuador operations to the state
oil company Petroecuador in 1992, but Chevron, which now
owns Texaco, faces a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit for damages
caused there between 1964 and 1990 (see “ChevronTexaco on
Trial,” January/February 2004 World Watch).
In 2007, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa launched an
innovative effort to find an economic alternative to exploit-
ing a massive oil reserve (the ITT block) beneath the Yasuni
Biosphere Reserve and Yanomami Indian territory through
international donations, or carbon markets, which would
compensate Ecuador for leaving the oil in the ground. Yet
Correa has since awarded concessions in other parts of the
Ecuadorian Amazon. Now approximately 65 percent of that
region is covered by oil concessions, some of which overlap
Kichwa, Shuar, and Achuar territories.
“There are plenty of reasons to say no to oil exploitation
here,” said Shuar leader Domingo Ankuash, though he admit-
ted that it could be difficult to keep the industry out of Shuar
territory, in southeast Ecuador. “If we do say yes, it will be
because we reach an agreement on a way of exploiting oil
that benefits the indigenous people here, not because it has
been imposed on us from above.”
Global Stakes
International law requires governments to consult native peo-
ples about initiatives that might affect them, but most remain
November/December 2009 | World Watch 27

© 2003 Caryl Feldacker, courtesy Photoshare
In the middle of the Brazilian Amazon, three days from the nearest town by boat, young
boys play while a man returns home from an afternoon of fishing.
reluctant to do so. Given that negligence and the growing
pressure on Amazonian land and resources, the region’s Indi-
ans need international support. Numerous organizations,
foundations, and government agencies provide them with
vital assistance, and groups such as Amazon Watch, Cultural
Survival, and Survival International publicize major threats
they face, yet most indigenous communities confront those
threats with little or no outside help. Unfortunately, the gov-
ernment agencies and conservation groups that should be
helping native peoples to defend their land often ignore their
plight, or exclude them from major projects that could help
them. Indigenous organizations have also lost important sup-
port over the years due to poor leadership, administrative
deficiencies, and infighting. After each internal crisis, however,
new leaders have rebuilt those organizations, and despite the
errors of individuals, the indigenous movement has played a
vital role in helping native communities to conserve more
than 1.5 million square kilometers of tropical forest.
Funding for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
Forest Degradation (REDD), a new program likely to be
28 World Watch | November/December 2009
adopted by the United Nations Framework Con-
vention on Climate Change in Copenhagen this
December, could help Amazonian Indians protect
their forests and adapt their traditional natural
resource use to sustain growing populations. Yet
REDD is fraught with uncertainty for indigenous
peoples (see sidebar, opposite). Some organizations
oppose REDD schemes for fear that they could result
in the government or investors taking control of
indigenous lands, or because the organizations have
been excluded from REDD negotiations. The recog-
nition of all native territories and respect for native
peoples’ right to free, prior, and informed consent
should be essential prerequisites for REDD initiatives
in the Amazon Basin.
However, even if indigenous communities secure
payment through REDD schemes, Martin von
Hildebrand of Fundación Gaia Amazonas warns
that such funds could be detrimental unless admin-
istered with cultural sensitivity and close monitor-
ing. REDD systems designed for non-Indians could
create divisions in indigenous communities, which
are based on reciprocity and equality. An example of
that danger is the impact of Venezuela’s “missions”—
government programs that provide scholarships
and other payments as catalysts for social improve-
ment—on indigenous communities, where they
have corrupted traditional hierarchies. REDD funds
might best be invested in helping indigenous com-
munities improve their capacities to protect their
territories or develop community enterprises—
handicraft production, sustainable logging, forest
product harvesting, ecotourism, etc.—that could
fund development and conservation in the future.
Considering that they have title or ancestral claims to
more than a quarter of the Amazon Basin, it is in the world’s
best interest to help Amazonian native peoples to defend and
manage their forests. They have proven themselves to be bet-
ter stewards of the region’s natural resources than their non-
native compatriots, and their historic and spiritual connections
to their territories make them unparalleled advocates for their
protection. While government officials and conservationists
are busy with reports and logic frames, Indians are often
defending their forests against imminent threats, sometimes
with their lives. Ultimately, the outcome of their struggle will
affect the entire world, which is why they deserve the soli-
darity and support of concerned citizens everywhere.
David Dudenhoefer is a freelance journalist based in Peru
who has covered indigenous issues sporadically for two decades.
For more information about issues raised in this story, visit
www.worldwatch.org/ww/indigenous.
www.worldwatch.org
Seeing REDD
A useful climate-change policy tool,
or a license to deny forest dwellers’ rights?
by Zachary Wells and Kelly Moore Brands
Deforestation causes about 20 percent of global greenhouse
gas emissions, but tackling the problem has proved as difficult
as reducing fossil fuel-based emissions. The most promising
current approach is a proposal called Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), which will be a
centerpiece of the December 2009 international meetings on
climate change in Copenhagen. REDD is meant to help poor
countries reduce deforestation by enabling aid organizations,
NGOs, corporations, and governments to buy carbon credits
generated from activities that keep forests standing. The buyers
could then apply the credits toward their own quotas or trade
them in carbon markets.
REDD is a critical policy tool because slowing deforestation
can simultaneously help to put the brakes on catastrophic cli-
mate change, slow species loss by protecting habitat, and pro-
mote sustainable development. And while the technical
challenges are immense, some experts believe that REDD may
© 2005 Todd Shapera, courtesy Photoshare
be the one coalition-building facet of a hotly debated post-
Kyoto climate agreement.
But some key affected parties have serious doubts. Forests
provide homes and livelihoods for millions of the world’s poor-
est people. Many traditional forest dwellers and indigenous
groups do not own the forests they live in and have voiced sub-
stantial opposition to REDD. In 2008, indigenous leaders railed
against their own representative body, the United Nations Per-
manent Forum on Indigenous Issues, for what they saw as a
failure to represent them in the climate change debate. The
Indigenous People’s Global Summit on Climate Change last
April produced a declaration that REDD must “secure the recog-
nition and implementation of the human rights of Indigenous
Peoples, including security of land tenure, ownership, recog-
nition of land title according to traditional ways, uses, and cus-
tomary laws, and the multiple benefits of forests for climate,
ecosystems, and Peoples before taking any action.”
According to the Washington, D.C.-based Rights and
Resources Initiative, 80 percent of forests in the world’s 30
most forested countries are state-owned. While most of the
developing world’s forests are owned by governments, the
people living in far-flung forests and dense jungles are the
de facto managers because governments, especially in Africa,
cannot control what happens in their vast hinterlands. Legally,
these forest dwellers are squatters.
Yet forest ownership is going largely unnoticed by REDD’s
principal negotiators. If REDD makes forests more valuable,
some locals will benefit from having strong partners in conser-
vation groups and dedicated governments, but a great many
others may be overrun in the scramble to secure REDD benefits.
www.worldwatch.org
From a government perspective it may make more sense to fur-
ther centralize forests and make decisions about who gets what
from the national capital. If REDD dollars accumulate nationally
under existing tenure regimes, locals will have to depend on the
benevolence of their governments to keep their forest homes
and to realize any profit from leaving the trees standing. The
responsibility to ensure that the rights of traditional forest
dwellers are respected then falls to the donor countries and
organizations that are behind REDD. The best way to do this
would be by making REDD participation conditional on a thor-
ough examination of existing tenure legislation and a rewriting
of unjust laws. Yet such a polarizing stance could leave the
Copenhagen negotiations in a stalemate.
The Tulepan Indians of Pico Bonito National Park, Honduras, have a forest man-
agement plan that allows them to sustainably harvest timber inside the park.
The second-best option might be to work for traditional
rights bilaterally, as donors partner with REDD governments.
Norway, for instance, has made a US$12 million commitment
to Tanzania’s REDD activities, and could hinge its support on
specific land tenure goals while assisting Tanzania in carrying
them out. This is also a way to guarantee the best return on an
important investment, because many developing country gov-
ernments will never be able to control what happens in their
remote forests without local support. Making partnerships con-
ditional on activities like comprehensive mapping of forest own-
ership, forest uses, and even the locations of forest dwelling
groups can help lay the groundwork for drafting empowering
land legislation. Real, legal tenure may be the cornerstone of for-
est conservation and what dictates if REDD will function or fail.
Zachary Wells and Kelly Moore Brands are practicing conserva-
tionists and Masters graduates of the Monterey Institute of
International Studies program in international environmental
policy.
November/December 2009 | World Watch 29
 WORLDWATCH FIRST P E R S O N
Seeking a Low-Carbon Future
Ben Block
A
s I traveled through the German and Danish countryside
this past August, driving past forest corridors and har-
vested fields, the landscape seemed not to have changed
for centuries. The exception, of course, was the wind farms. I
spotted the spinning white towers with nearly every glance from
my window. On several occasions, a single farm had installed
more wind turbines than my entire home state of Maryland.
Along with six other U.S. journalists, I was participating in a
tour of the countries’ low-carbon advances. The trip provided a
glimpse of how a renewable energy future may look. My ideal
vision would line hilltops and seashores with windmills, power
homes with sunlight, and heat farmhouses with energy from
cow manure. I realize the vision is a bit rosy, even for Germany
and Denmark. Although renewable energies such as wind, solar,
and biogas are spreading, these technologies are too frequently
beyond financial reach.
Regardless, we need to reach further. In the nearly two years
since I began reporting on sustainability issues for World Watch,
the world has lived through an energy crisis, a food crisis, and
a financial crisis. Clearly, our business-as-usual strategies are
failing to provide security and sustenance for all. Meanwhile,
climate change, quite possibly the most daunting of today’s
challenges, is threatening to dismantle our way of life. We are
currently on a development path that would heat the world’s
atmosphere by 5°C or more. Immediate emissions reductions
are necessary if we are to limit global warming to 2°C, the stated
goal of the industrialized world’s leaders. Even so, “two degrees
Centigrade will mean several small island states will go under.
We will lose large coastal cities. It’s by no means harmless,” I was
told by Stefan Rahmstorf, an oceanographer with the Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research.
My life of comfort has surely been part of the problem.
When I built outdoor forts as a child, I scrounged up all our
extension cords and carried the TV to my back yard. Society’s
three-meal norm did not quite fit with my gluttonous mind: the
occasional buffet meal was a calling to consume five-plateful
servings, if not more. My recent European travels contribute to
climate change, as well. Each flight over the Atlantic pumped
nearly a ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
I have made an effort to curb my excesses. The food item with
the largest carbon footprint, beef, is no longer a part of my diet.
When I relocated to Washington, D.C., I made an intentional
effort to live where I could walk or bike wherever I need to go. I do
30 World Watch | November/December 2009
an
Søren Gisselm
own a car, which I
bought used, for the sole reason of visiting my
otherwise-inaccessible family. I try to purchase organically raised
vegetables, rather than the more energy-intensive produce of
mainstream agriculture, and I support local farmers markets.
Yet such personal actions will never be enough. A world
that’s only 2°C warmer will be impossible even with the most
optimistic projections of lowering the industrialized world’s
emissions. Developing nations need to decarbonize, too. We
must not forget, however, that one-fourth of the developing
world still lives in extreme poverty. An Indian child deserves a
lightbulb to read by at night. A Chinese food vendor deserves
a refrigerator.
In December I will return to Denmark as a witness to one
of the largest international negotiations in the history of
humankind. The goal could hardly be more challenging: Our
leaders must prevent a climate catastrophe by raising at least
US$475 billion annually by 2030 for mitigation and adaptation
activities in the developing world, according to World Bank esti-
mates. While the global financial crisis may have ended by the
time negotiators meet, economic hardship will worry most gov-
ernments more than anything else.
Rather than be frozen in despair, I remain optimistic.
Businesses are only beginning to dig deep within their produc-
tion strategies and supply chains to uproot inefficiencies. An
unprecedented wave of innovative technologies is waiting to be
released. My low-carbon vision is a possibility if we take decisive
action that stimulates an alternative economic course. We must
find the courage to change, the compassion to give, and the
anger to refuse anything short of transformational. A difficult
journey confronts us, but we already have the wind at our backs.
www.worldwatch.org
V I TA L S I G N S
Growth in Protected
Areas Continues
Margarita Yatsevich
T
he areas of the world that are officially protected grew by
some 26 percent between 1997 and 2007. In total, land-
based and sea-based protected areas occupy 21.8 million
square kilometers, or 4.27 percent of Earth’s surface. Globally,
12.4 percent of terrestrial land and territorial waters (that is, water
up to 12 nautical miles from shore) are devoted to protection.
Protected areas include nature reserves, wilderness areas,
national parks and monuments, habitat management areas, pro-
tected landscapes and seascapes, and so on. They are managed
for a broad range of purposes, including recreation,
use of natural resources, and conservation. Between
1872 and 2007, governments around the world des-
ignated nearly 114,000 terrestrial and marine sites.
At present Germany boasts the highest number of
Area Protected (million km2 )
protected areas (14,388), followed by Russia (11,181)
and Estonia (9,617). In total protected area, the
United States tops the list at over 3.2 million square
kilometers; Brazil is second with over 2.5 million
square kilometers and Russia third with 1.6 million
square kilometers.
More than 30 percent of the world’s protected
areas are found in mountains, which are a valuable
source of high-quality fresh water. Mountain ecosys-
tems are marked by high levels of biodiversity and
endemism (when a species is found only in a partic-
ular place) due to the isolation of mountains from
one another and the lowlands. Mountain peoples are critical to
planning efforts for protected areas because of their experience
in sustainable coexistence with nature.
Marine environments are much less protected than their
terrestrial counterparts: Only 0.7 percent (about 2 million
square kilometers) of the world’s oceans are included in pro-
tected areas. Over the last century, the annual rate of increase in
protection of marine environments has been approximately 3–5
percent. At this rate, the Convention on Biological Diversity’s
target for 2012—that 10 percent of all marine and coastal eco-
regions should be conserved—will not be met until 2069.
And simply creating protected areas is not enough to con-
serve biodiversity. According to a 2006 study by WWF Interna-
tional, success requires strong law enforcement, control of access,
resource management, monitoring and evaluation, maintenance
of equipment, budget management, and annual work plans.
International initiatives sometimes spur the creation of pro-
www.worldwatch.org
tected areas. Signatories to the international Convention on Bio-
logical Diversity have agreed that protecting at least 10 percent
of each of the world’s 825 terrestrial ecoregions is an effective
way to conserve biodiversity. Similarly, conservation is a part of
the Millennium Development Goals, the set of social, economic,
and environmental targets that governments worldwide are
striving to achieve by 2015. Goal Seven, which focuses on revers-
ing the loss of environmental resources, lists the growth in pro-
tected area coverage as an indicator of progress.
Biodiversity protection has economic benefits. For example,
one study found that marine protected areas helped alleviate
poverty in several ways: fishing improved as a spillover from
no-fishing zones; more jobs were created, especially in tourism;
local governance improved; and people gained health benefits
from their increased protein intake from fish and from their
higher incomes.
Nationally Designated Protected Areas Worldwide, 1872–2007
20 80
Source: UNEP
Protected Areas (thousands)
16
Protected Areas 60
Area Protected
12
40
8
20
4
0 0
1870 1890 1910 1930 1950 1970 1990 2010
Year of Establishment
Innovative public-private partnerships are helping to protect
ecosystems while providing recreation and employment oppor-
tunities. A 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize winner, Ignace
Schops of Belgium, led the establishment of that nation’s first
and only national park by raising more than US$90 million
from public and private sources. The Hoge Kempen National
Park opened in early 2006 and covers 60 square kilometers. Since
its opening, 400,000 people have visited the park and 400 new
jobs have been created in the local community. The Interna-
tional Union for the Conservation of Nature plans to use
Schops’s model for creating and funding a national park as an
example for its other member countries around the world.
Vital Signs are adapted from Vital Signs Online, which contain
additional data and more in-depth analyses.
Visit www.worldwatch.org/vsonline to view and read
the complete list of available trends.
November/December 2009 | World Watch 31
 MATT E R S O F S C A L E

Blogging Lies,
Damned Lies,
and Statistics

stock.com
www.cartoon
Approximate number of blogs in the world, per Blogcount, June 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.9 million
Approximate number of blogs in the world, per Perseus, October 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 million
Approximate number of blogs in the world, per Technorati, June 2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.7 million
Estimated number of blogs in the United States, 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 million
Approximate number of blogs in the world, per writer Lee Siegel, 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 million
Approximate number of blogs ever started in the world, per Universal McCann, March 2008 . . 184 million


Estimated share of blogs abandoned within one month of being started, percent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 – 80


Share of blogs created by people under the age of 30, percent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92


Share of U.S. bloggers who are employed fulltime, percent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Share of European bloggers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Share of Asian bloggers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45


Share of U.S. blogs with advertising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Share of European blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Share of Asian blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Median annual revenue, U.S. blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $200

European blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $200
Asian blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $120


Rank of “blogger” among the most frequently used words in the blogosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Of “blog” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Of “stupid” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Of “me” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Of “myself” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

SOURCES: Blog numbers compiled by Caslon Analytics, except U.S. total (Worldwatch estimate
based on data from Pew Internet and American Life Project) and Siegel (from Against the
Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, Ch. 9). Abandoned blogs: Caslon Analyt- To view other archived Matters of Scale
ics. Under 30: Perseus Development Corporation. Employed, advertising, and revenues: Techno- visit www.worldwatch.org/ww/.
rati. Word ranks: Caslon Analytics.

32 World Watch | November/December 2009 www.worldwatch.org

 Save up to 40% on Worldwatch’s new research in 2010!
Prices are unchanged from 2009.

STATE OF THE WORLD LIBRARY 2010

Worldwatch’s research has been called the gold standard for
research on sustainability topics. Subscribe to our Library to
ensure that you don’t miss out on any of our new publications
in 2010 and save up to 40% off the cost of purchasing each
title separately.
• State of the World 2009: Transforming Cultures, From
Consumerism to Sustainability
PUBLICATION DATE: JANUARY 2010

• Vital Signs 2010: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future
PUBLICATION DATE: WINTER 2010

• Worldwatch Report: Renewable Energy and Energy

Efficiency in China
PUBLICATION DATE: SPRING 2010

• Worldwatch Report: Women, Population, and Climate

PUBLICATION DATE: SUMMER 2010

• Worldwatch Report: An emerging sustainability topic

PUBLICATION DATE: FALL 2010

Subscribe today to ensure that

you get all of these essential resources
on critical global issues.

Order Today! 2009 Prices

Four Easy Ways to Order: U.S., CANADA, MEXICO

• Phone: 301-747-2340 or toll Individual Institution

free 1-877-539-9946 1 year $59.95 $74.95
• Fax: 1-301-567-9553
INTERNATIONAL
• E-mail:
wwpub@worldwatch.org 1 year $69.95 $84.95

• Online:
www.worldwatch.org Plus shipping & handling.

Visit our website at www.worldwatch.org for information on all of our

publications and to sign up for e-mail updates or any of our four blogs:
• Dateline: Copenhagen • Green Economy
www.worldwatch.org • Nourishing the Planet • Transforming Cultures
Satellite image by GeoEye, captured 23 August, 2009

The Earth Moved…

and continues to move, at the Marcona Mine near San Juan de Marcona in southeast
Peru. Miners there recently ended a strike against the Chinese owners of the open-pit
iron ore mine in return for increased wages of US$19.40 a day. Canadian, Korean, and
Peruvian interests are now developing nearby copper and gold deposits as well. www.worldwatch.org