National Post | Fri 10 Mar 2006 | Byline: Tom Blackwell
John Scott was supposed to be in Toronto yesterday to tell government officials what it is like to have suffered for 20 years from Lyme disease. But he never showed up -- the disease's continuing ravages left him too sick to make the 100-kilometre trip from his home in Fergus.
"It's been hell on wheels, really," the 60-year-old former agrologist said. "I've just had to change my life completely in terms of what I can and can't do. I used to be very outgoing and community-minded and I've had to back off that completely."
It is a toll that increasing numbers of Canadians may face. As government experts waded into an emotional debate over the illness's scope yesterday, they acknowledged that Lyme, a bacteria spread by tiny ticks, is a growing threat across Canada.
Not only are Lyme-carrying ticks settling permanently in more parts of the country, but itinerant ticks from the United States are routinely bringing the disease across the border on the backs of migrating birds, said Dr. Harvey Artsob, a Public Health Agency of Canada official.
"There is no question we are seeing the spread of [Lyme-] established areas," he said. "When we project with other aspects, like climate change, we think the problem, the issue of Lyme disease in Canada will only become greater."
His comments came at the start of an unprecedented meeting between federal and provincial officials and patient advocates to discuss updating official guidelines on Lyme, which patients say has been vastly underdiagnosed.
Controversial issues around the 15-year-old guidelines include the adequacy of testing in Canada and a definition of the illness that critics say is too narrow.
Differences of opinion are still great. But the very fact that patient groups were invited is an important step, one officials have never taken in the United States, where the Lyme debate has spawned lawsuits, investigation of doctors and even state legislation to free up doctors to treat patients, said Jim Wilson, president of the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation.
"What we're doing right here today is different than anything that's been done in the United States. I'm hoping that this can be the door that needed to be opened. I think we have a chance here to set a global model."
Lyme disease is transmitted by certain tick species -- the blacklegged, or deer, tick in Central and Eastern Canada and the western blacklegged tick in B.C., after the bugs have picked it up from mice, birds and other small animals.
In humans, it can often cause a circular rash around the site of the bite, possibly followed by flu-like symptoms and progressing, if untreated, to weakness, painful joints, abnormal heartbeat and neurological problems, like paralysis and dementia.
It can be treated with antibiotics if caught early enough, though it is a matter of debate whether drugs have much effect late in the course of the illness.
Dr. Artsob said established populations of Lyme-carrying ticks have been identified in Long Point, Rondeau and Turkey Point in southwestern Ontario and around Lunenberg, N.S. Another area in Nova Scotia, Admiral's Cove, is being investigated, as is a part of southeastern Manitoba that had three human cases in a row, he said.
LYME DISEASE IN CANADA
WHAT CAUSES IT A bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi.
HOW HUMANS GET IT Bites from the blacklegged (or deer) or western blacklegged tick, usually when walking through vegetation. The tick contracts the disease from mice and other small animals.
WHERE LYME-CARRYING TICKS LIVE IN CANADA Known populations in Lunenberg, N.S., and southwestern Ontario communities of Rondeau, Long Point and Turkey Point.
THE SYMPTOMS Many patients develop a circular rash, which can be followed by flu-like symptoms. If untreated, that can be followed by migraines, weakness, abnormal heartbeat and neurological symptoms.
HOW IT IS TREATED With antibiotics.
HOW TO PREVENT LYME If spending time in wooded areas that might be tick infested, wear long sleeves and long pants and spray clothing and skin with insect repellant that contains DEET.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Friday, March 03, 2006
Warming creates havoc in British Columbia forests
By Washington Post | Mar 02, 2006 - 07:05:45 am PST
QUESNEL, B.C. -- Millions of acres of Canada's lush green forests are turning red in spasms of death. A voracious beetle, whose population has exploded with the warming climate, is killing more trees than wildfires or logging.
The mountain pine beetle has devastated swaths of lodgepole pines, reshaping the future of the forest and the communities in it.
"It's pretty gut-wrenching," said Allan Carroll, a research scientist at the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria, B.C., whose studies tracked a lock step between warmer winters and the spread of the beetle. "People say climate change is something for our kids to worry about. No. It's now."
Scientists fear the beetle will cross the Rocky Mountains and sweep across the northern continent into areas where it used to be killed by severe cold but where winters now are comparatively mild. Officials in neighboring Alberta are setting fires and traps and felling thousands of trees in an attempt to keep the beetle at bay.
"This is an all-out battle," said David Coutts, Alberta's minister of sustainable resource development. The Canadian Forest Service calls it the largest known insect infestation in North American history.
U.S. Forest Service officials say they are watching warily as the outbreak has spread. The United States is less vulnerable because it lacks the seamless forest of lodgepole pines that are a highway for the beetle in Canada. So far, U.S. officials say, the outbreaks have been mostly in isolated clumps of remote wilderness areas of northern Washington.
"It's a rapid warming" that is increasing the beetles' range, said Carroll. "All the data show there are significant changes over widespread areas that are going to cause us considerable amount of grief. Not only is it coming, it's here."
"We are seeing this pine beetle do things that have never been recorded before," said Michael Pelchat, a forestry officer in Quesnel, as he followed moose tracks in the snow to examine a 100-year-old pine killed in one season by the beetle. "They are attacking younger trees, and attacking timber in altitudes they have never been before."
The tiny beetle has always lived in high areas from Arizona to northern British Columbia, and occasionally populations have grown in limited outbreaks. In Canada, where the beetle's favored lodgepole pine thrives, it has been controlled by winters with early cold snaps or long killing spells of 20 degrees below zero. But for more than a decade, forestry experts say, the weather here has not been cold enough for long enough to kill the beetle.
Scientists with the Canadian Forest Service say the average temperature of winters here has risen by more than 4 degrees in the last century. "That's not insignificant," said Jim Snetsinger, British Columbia's chief forester. "Global warming is happening. We have to start to account for it."
The result is a swarm of beetles that has grown exponentially in the past six years, flying from tree to tree. The advance is marked by broad swaths of rust-red forest, the color pines turn before they drop all their needles to become ghostly grey skeletons.
"It's depressing to see," said Steve Dodge, a British Columbia forestry official whose office is along the Quesnel River. This town of 10,000 sits in the heart of the province's vast evergreen woodlands. Steam billowing from the kilns of a half-dozen sawmills and pulp plants enshroud the town, which proudly calls itself the "Woodsmart City" in homage to its timber industry.
In an attack played out millions of times over, a female beetle no bigger than a rice grain finds an older lodgepole pine, its favored host, and drills inside the bark. There, it eats a channel straight up the tree, laying eggs as it goes. The tree fights back. It pumps sap toward the bug and the new larvae, enveloping them in a mass of the sticky substance. The tree then tries to eject its captives through a small, crusty chute in the bark.
Countering, the beetle sends out a pheromone call for reinforcements. More beetles arrive, mounting a mass attack. A fungus on the beetle, called the blue stain fungus, works into the living wood, strangling its water flow. The larvae begin eating at right angles to the original channel, sometimes girdling the tree, crossing channels made by other beetles.
The pine is doomed. As it slowly dies, the larvae remain protected over the winter. In spring, they burrow out of the bark and launch themselves into the wind to their next victims.
British Columbia is a buffet laid out before them. Years of successful battles against forest fires have allowed a thick concentration of old lodgepole pines to grow -- a beetle feast that natural wildfire would have stopped.
"It was the perfect storm" of warmer weather and vulnerable old trees, coupled with constraints that slowed logging of the infected wood, said Douglas Routledge, who represents timber companies in the city of Prince George.
At the province's Ministry of Forests and Range in Quesnel, forestry officer Pelchat saw the beetle expansion coming as "a silent forest fire." He and his colleagues launched an offensive to try to stop or at least delay the invasion, all the while hoping for cold temperatures. They searched out beetle-ridden trees, cutting them and burning them. They thinned forests. They set out traps. But the deep freeze never came.
"We lost. They built up into an army and came across," Pelchat said. Surveys show the beetle has infested 21 million acres and killed 411 million cubic feet of trees -- double the annual take by all the loggers in Canada. In seven years or sooner, the Forest Service predicts, that kill will nearly triple and 80 percent of the pines in the central British Columbia forest will be dead.
Pelchat is now spending his time planning recovery through replanting. In this area, a mature pine forest takes 70 years to grow.
Meanwhile, the beetle is moving eastward. It has breached the natural wall of the Rocky Mountains in places, threatening the tourist treasures of national forest near Banff, Alberta, and is within striking distance of the vast Northern Boreal Forest that reaches to the eastern seaboard.
"If that beetle is allowed to come any further, it will absolutely devastate our eastern slope forests," said Coutts, in Alberta. "If we're not prepared, it's going to infest all Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and then northern Ontario in 20 years. This is the battlefront."
Ironically, Quesnel is booming now. Officials have more than doubled the allowable timber harvest, so loggers can cut and haul as many dead trees as possible before they rot. The icy roads are choked with giant trucks loaded with logs marked with the telltale blue stain fungus.
In town, two sawmills and the plywood and pulp plants of the largest company, West Fraser Mills, are "running flat-out," with shifts round-the-clock, said Tom Turner, a manager there. Computers sized up each log, instantly figured the best cut, and shoved it at furious speed through giant disk saws and planers to produce lumber that rail cars would carry to home builders in the United States.
West Fraser is spending $100 million to upgrade the mill. Other companies have added shifts and proposed new plants to make chipboard or wood-fuel pellets. Property values in Quesnel are rising, rents are up, the local shopping center is flourishing again and unemployment has dropped, said Mayor Nate Bello.
But the boom will end. When what people here call "beetlewood" is removed or rots out -- and no one is sure how long that will take -- the forestry industry "will be running at about half speed," Bello acknowledged.
He sees his chief challenge as figuring out how to convert Quesnel from a one-industry town to something with a more diverse economic base. Some people in town say those are quixotic plans. "This town is going to die," scoffed Pat Karey, 62, who spent 40 years at the sawmill. Other men in the Quesnel cafe -- "Smokers Welcome" said the sign in the window -- nodded in assent.
"A mill job is $20 an hour, or $30 with benefits. The jobs they are talking about bringing in are $8-an-hour jobs," said Del Boesem, whose runs a business dismantling heavy logging machinery.(+)
QUESNEL, B.C. -- Millions of acres of Canada's lush green forests are turning red in spasms of death. A voracious beetle, whose population has exploded with the warming climate, is killing more trees than wildfires or logging.
The mountain pine beetle has devastated swaths of lodgepole pines, reshaping the future of the forest and the communities in it.
"It's pretty gut-wrenching," said Allan Carroll, a research scientist at the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria, B.C., whose studies tracked a lock step between warmer winters and the spread of the beetle. "People say climate change is something for our kids to worry about. No. It's now."
Scientists fear the beetle will cross the Rocky Mountains and sweep across the northern continent into areas where it used to be killed by severe cold but where winters now are comparatively mild. Officials in neighboring Alberta are setting fires and traps and felling thousands of trees in an attempt to keep the beetle at bay.
"This is an all-out battle," said David Coutts, Alberta's minister of sustainable resource development. The Canadian Forest Service calls it the largest known insect infestation in North American history.
U.S. Forest Service officials say they are watching warily as the outbreak has spread. The United States is less vulnerable because it lacks the seamless forest of lodgepole pines that are a highway for the beetle in Canada. So far, U.S. officials say, the outbreaks have been mostly in isolated clumps of remote wilderness areas of northern Washington.
"It's a rapid warming" that is increasing the beetles' range, said Carroll. "All the data show there are significant changes over widespread areas that are going to cause us considerable amount of grief. Not only is it coming, it's here."
"We are seeing this pine beetle do things that have never been recorded before," said Michael Pelchat, a forestry officer in Quesnel, as he followed moose tracks in the snow to examine a 100-year-old pine killed in one season by the beetle. "They are attacking younger trees, and attacking timber in altitudes they have never been before."
The tiny beetle has always lived in high areas from Arizona to northern British Columbia, and occasionally populations have grown in limited outbreaks. In Canada, where the beetle's favored lodgepole pine thrives, it has been controlled by winters with early cold snaps or long killing spells of 20 degrees below zero. But for more than a decade, forestry experts say, the weather here has not been cold enough for long enough to kill the beetle.
Scientists with the Canadian Forest Service say the average temperature of winters here has risen by more than 4 degrees in the last century. "That's not insignificant," said Jim Snetsinger, British Columbia's chief forester. "Global warming is happening. We have to start to account for it."
The result is a swarm of beetles that has grown exponentially in the past six years, flying from tree to tree. The advance is marked by broad swaths of rust-red forest, the color pines turn before they drop all their needles to become ghostly grey skeletons.
"It's depressing to see," said Steve Dodge, a British Columbia forestry official whose office is along the Quesnel River. This town of 10,000 sits in the heart of the province's vast evergreen woodlands. Steam billowing from the kilns of a half-dozen sawmills and pulp plants enshroud the town, which proudly calls itself the "Woodsmart City" in homage to its timber industry.
In an attack played out millions of times over, a female beetle no bigger than a rice grain finds an older lodgepole pine, its favored host, and drills inside the bark. There, it eats a channel straight up the tree, laying eggs as it goes. The tree fights back. It pumps sap toward the bug and the new larvae, enveloping them in a mass of the sticky substance. The tree then tries to eject its captives through a small, crusty chute in the bark.
Countering, the beetle sends out a pheromone call for reinforcements. More beetles arrive, mounting a mass attack. A fungus on the beetle, called the blue stain fungus, works into the living wood, strangling its water flow. The larvae begin eating at right angles to the original channel, sometimes girdling the tree, crossing channels made by other beetles.
The pine is doomed. As it slowly dies, the larvae remain protected over the winter. In spring, they burrow out of the bark and launch themselves into the wind to their next victims.
British Columbia is a buffet laid out before them. Years of successful battles against forest fires have allowed a thick concentration of old lodgepole pines to grow -- a beetle feast that natural wildfire would have stopped.
"It was the perfect storm" of warmer weather and vulnerable old trees, coupled with constraints that slowed logging of the infected wood, said Douglas Routledge, who represents timber companies in the city of Prince George.
At the province's Ministry of Forests and Range in Quesnel, forestry officer Pelchat saw the beetle expansion coming as "a silent forest fire." He and his colleagues launched an offensive to try to stop or at least delay the invasion, all the while hoping for cold temperatures. They searched out beetle-ridden trees, cutting them and burning them. They thinned forests. They set out traps. But the deep freeze never came.
"We lost. They built up into an army and came across," Pelchat said. Surveys show the beetle has infested 21 million acres and killed 411 million cubic feet of trees -- double the annual take by all the loggers in Canada. In seven years or sooner, the Forest Service predicts, that kill will nearly triple and 80 percent of the pines in the central British Columbia forest will be dead.
Pelchat is now spending his time planning recovery through replanting. In this area, a mature pine forest takes 70 years to grow.
Meanwhile, the beetle is moving eastward. It has breached the natural wall of the Rocky Mountains in places, threatening the tourist treasures of national forest near Banff, Alberta, and is within striking distance of the vast Northern Boreal Forest that reaches to the eastern seaboard.
"If that beetle is allowed to come any further, it will absolutely devastate our eastern slope forests," said Coutts, in Alberta. "If we're not prepared, it's going to infest all Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and then northern Ontario in 20 years. This is the battlefront."
Ironically, Quesnel is booming now. Officials have more than doubled the allowable timber harvest, so loggers can cut and haul as many dead trees as possible before they rot. The icy roads are choked with giant trucks loaded with logs marked with the telltale blue stain fungus.
In town, two sawmills and the plywood and pulp plants of the largest company, West Fraser Mills, are "running flat-out," with shifts round-the-clock, said Tom Turner, a manager there. Computers sized up each log, instantly figured the best cut, and shoved it at furious speed through giant disk saws and planers to produce lumber that rail cars would carry to home builders in the United States.
West Fraser is spending $100 million to upgrade the mill. Other companies have added shifts and proposed new plants to make chipboard or wood-fuel pellets. Property values in Quesnel are rising, rents are up, the local shopping center is flourishing again and unemployment has dropped, said Mayor Nate Bello.
But the boom will end. When what people here call "beetlewood" is removed or rots out -- and no one is sure how long that will take -- the forestry industry "will be running at about half speed," Bello acknowledged.
He sees his chief challenge as figuring out how to convert Quesnel from a one-industry town to something with a more diverse economic base. Some people in town say those are quixotic plans. "This town is going to die," scoffed Pat Karey, 62, who spent 40 years at the sawmill. Other men in the Quesnel cafe -- "Smokers Welcome" said the sign in the window -- nodded in assent.
"A mill job is $20 an hour, or $30 with benefits. The jobs they are talking about bringing in are $8-an-hour jobs," said Del Boesem, whose runs a business dismantling heavy logging machinery.(+)
Logging industry targeted
Environmentalists determined to save province's vast tract of boreal forest
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT | ENVIRONMENT REPORTER
TORONTO -- For years, British Columbia has been the scene of Canada's hottest wars in the woods between environmentalists and forestry companies.
But since environmentalists' major victory last month preserving B.C.'s Great Bear Rainforest, the battle over logging practices is shifting to Ontario. Conservationists who were instrumental in lobbying B.C. have launched a high-profile fight with logging companies over the future of Ontario's last untouched tract of wilderness, the vast boreal forest that stretches across the northern half of the province.
In an opening salvo, environmentalists are trying to hit Ontario companies where it hurts most -- on their bottom lines -- by urging U.S. buyers of forest products to reconsider purchases from some of the province's biggest operators, including Abitibi Consolidated Inc. and Weyerhaeuser Co.
Environmentalists are also targeting the two giants because of a bitter dispute the companies have with natives over logging practices around the Grassy Narrows First Nation in Northwestern Ontario.
ForestEthics, a B.C.-based group, and the Rainforest Action Network, based in San Francisco, have written to more than 500 companies in the United States that buy paper or lumber products from Ontario, warning them that their orders "may soon become embroiled in the growing controversy about Ontario's boreal forest," according to one of the letters.
"We're putting both the Ontario government and industry and major customers of Ontario's forest products on notice that they all have a responsibility and a capacity to take action to protect Ontario's forests," said Tzeporah Berman, a program director at ForestEthics.
"A growing coalition of environmental groups from Canada and the U.S. are focusing their efforts on Ontario," she said.
Representatives of both Abitibi and Weyerhaeuser say their logging plans comply with the province's forestry rules.
"All of our forest plans are worked out in advance with the province," said Paul Barnum of Weyerhaeuser.
Among the highest-profile uses of Ontario forest products in the United States is in newsprint for The New York Times and The Washington Post. Environmentalists want the province to place a moratorium on logging in boreal forest areas that provide habitat for caribou, a species that has been wiped out from half of its historical range in Ontario because of its need for large tracts of mature forest.
The moratorium would allow time to develop conservation plans for the remaining uncut land, which stretches north from about the Red Lake area in the west to Cochran in the east. Environmentalists also want Ontario to end clear-cutting in favour of smaller-scale, more selective harvesting.
Up until now, the boreal forest -- which doesn't have towering, photogenic trees -- hasn't received the kind of publicity from environmentalists that has made conservation of the Amazon and the temperate rain forests of B.C. major international issues.
"This is an issue that the marketplace wasn't really aware of. When you say boreal forest, it doesn't immediately resonate. It's not like the Amazon basin," said Brant Olson, a spokesman for the Rainforest Action Network.
He said the activist group is trying to "educate buyers about what the issues are," and plans to invite purchasing managers from big U.S. building supply chains and paper buyers to tour logging sites in Ontario during the spring and summer to view industry practices.
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT | ENVIRONMENT REPORTER
TORONTO -- For years, British Columbia has been the scene of Canada's hottest wars in the woods between environmentalists and forestry companies.
But since environmentalists' major victory last month preserving B.C.'s Great Bear Rainforest, the battle over logging practices is shifting to Ontario. Conservationists who were instrumental in lobbying B.C. have launched a high-profile fight with logging companies over the future of Ontario's last untouched tract of wilderness, the vast boreal forest that stretches across the northern half of the province.
In an opening salvo, environmentalists are trying to hit Ontario companies where it hurts most -- on their bottom lines -- by urging U.S. buyers of forest products to reconsider purchases from some of the province's biggest operators, including Abitibi Consolidated Inc. and Weyerhaeuser Co.
Environmentalists are also targeting the two giants because of a bitter dispute the companies have with natives over logging practices around the Grassy Narrows First Nation in Northwestern Ontario.
ForestEthics, a B.C.-based group, and the Rainforest Action Network, based in San Francisco, have written to more than 500 companies in the United States that buy paper or lumber products from Ontario, warning them that their orders "may soon become embroiled in the growing controversy about Ontario's boreal forest," according to one of the letters.
"We're putting both the Ontario government and industry and major customers of Ontario's forest products on notice that they all have a responsibility and a capacity to take action to protect Ontario's forests," said Tzeporah Berman, a program director at ForestEthics.
"A growing coalition of environmental groups from Canada and the U.S. are focusing their efforts on Ontario," she said.
Representatives of both Abitibi and Weyerhaeuser say their logging plans comply with the province's forestry rules.
"All of our forest plans are worked out in advance with the province," said Paul Barnum of Weyerhaeuser.
Among the highest-profile uses of Ontario forest products in the United States is in newsprint for The New York Times and The Washington Post. Environmentalists want the province to place a moratorium on logging in boreal forest areas that provide habitat for caribou, a species that has been wiped out from half of its historical range in Ontario because of its need for large tracts of mature forest.
The moratorium would allow time to develop conservation plans for the remaining uncut land, which stretches north from about the Red Lake area in the west to Cochran in the east. Environmentalists also want Ontario to end clear-cutting in favour of smaller-scale, more selective harvesting.
Up until now, the boreal forest -- which doesn't have towering, photogenic trees -- hasn't received the kind of publicity from environmentalists that has made conservation of the Amazon and the temperate rain forests of B.C. major international issues.
"This is an issue that the marketplace wasn't really aware of. When you say boreal forest, it doesn't immediately resonate. It's not like the Amazon basin," said Brant Olson, a spokesman for the Rainforest Action Network.
He said the activist group is trying to "educate buyers about what the issues are," and plans to invite purchasing managers from big U.S. building supply chains and paper buyers to tour logging sites in Ontario during the spring and summer to view industry practices.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Forestry industry lauds Ontario aid plan
MURRAY CAMPBELL | Globe and Mail
It took several attempts, but the Ontario government has finally come up with an aid package that makes the province's beleaguered forest industry happy.
Premier Dalton McGuinty said yesterday that the government will provide $220-million over the next three years to offset the industry's cost of building and maintaining forest roads and to retroactively reduce the stumpages fees for harvesting wood on Crown land.
The forestry industry, which is the bedrock of the Northern Ontario economy, has been hemorrhaging jobs in recent years as it struggled with the higher-valued Canadian dollar, skyrocketing costs for electricity and stiff competition from low-cost offshore jurisdictions. The cost of delivering wood to mills in Ontario is about $55 a cubic metre, compared with a worldwide average of $35.
In the past year, mill closings put about 4,000 people out of work.
Mr. McGuinty said he hopes the aid package will make the industry more competitive with jurisdictions that have lower costs for energy and raw timber.
"We can't make a guarantee that there will be no more job losses," he said at Queen's Park. "But what we do believe is we have put in place now the necessary supports to ensure we can turn the industry around and put it on a more sustainable footing."
There are three parts to yesterday's announcement.
The government will contribute an additional $47-million annually for construction and maintenance of roads into forests. This is in addition to an earlier pledge for $28-million of support, for a total of $75-million annually.
Government support for forest roads was slashed in the late 1980s. In 1987, the province spent $41-million on roads but only about $5-million last year.
A $70-million refund in stumpage fees will be remitted to the industry next month.
Stumpage fees for poplar veneer and white birch will be reduced by $3-million a year for the next three years.
The government did not directly address the issue of high energy costs, but the Premier said that the recent extension of a price cap on Ontario Power Generation production will give the industry some certainty about its future costs.
Jamie Lim, president of the Ontario Forest Industries Association, praised the government for recognizing the forest sector needed to become more competitive. "This is absolutely a home run," she said.
Like Mr. McGuinty, she said she could not guarantee there would not be more layoffs or mill closings. "But what I can tell you is that [yesterday's] announcement definitely addressed key issues that were crippling us, so we're hopeful."
The Premier said the government recognized that earlier aid efforts had not been enough and that it had to enrich its aid package.
Last spring, in response to a task force report that said the forestry industry was in crisis, the government offered $350-million in loan guarantees.
In September, it offered help on forest roads and established a $150-million fund to leverage investments for plant modernization. (*)
Monday, February 13, 2006
Manitoba to annex northwestern Ontario?
Some Ontarians would like you to consider it
Tessa Vanderhart Staff
Since the boundaries between Manitoba and Ontario were drawn, there have been concerns that northwestern Ontario — including the communities of Kenora, Dryden, Fort Frances and Thunder Bay — are more West than East.
These days, the region is economically troubled: jobs are being lost in the pulp and paper industry, the already small population continues to diminish, and politicians of all stripes are expressing discontent with the way the region is represented in government.
To that end, Tannis Drysden, a city councillor for Fort Frances, Ontario, has conceived the Central Canadian Public Policy Trust. The trust will fund research in universities to make decisions about the region’s future by examining the possibility of different regional structures, including joining the province of Manitoba.
Still, Drysden said that the biggest benefit she sees is “a more thoughtful recognition of rural and northern communities,” among other shared interests with her neighbour to the West.
“We’ve seen new territories formed in my lifetime, in Canada. If there’s thoughtful, good data to prove that, I can’t see why it wouldn’t happen,” said Drysden.
Livio Di Matteo, an economics professor at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, explained that with 60 per cent of the land mass of Ontario but only 230,000 people, the region does not fit well within the province.
This has manifested itself for a number of years in letters to local papers, but as the difference between northwestern Ontario and Toronto continues to grow, so does the desire for a restructuring.
This desire is particularly strong with regard to forestry and energy policies. The provincial capital at Queen’s Park manages the region’s industry by controlling the crown lands that are logged, and higher energy costs have been hard on the pulp and paper industry.
Di Matteo explained that with the new City of Toronto Act attempting to give more power to the GTA, it is important to keep the rebalance of powers symmetrical.
He noted that regional government is the most realistic approach, as there is no reason to think the region could not survive economically on its own.
“In actual fact, it would be as self-supporting as Manitoba or Saskatchewan, or any of the Atlantic provinces, for that matter,” he said.
Herb Emery, an economics professor at the University of Calgary, co-authored the study with Di Matteo, looking at economies of scale in provincial boundaries.
“All of these things have roots in history, where it was originally suggested that northwestern Ontario should be a part of Manitoba,” said Emery.
The idea of changing the borders of central Canada is hardly new. In 1912, northwestern Ontario was officially awarded to Ontario, after being promised to Manitoba by Sir John A. Macdonald.
David Canfield, Mayor of Kenora, has two daughters currently living in Winnipeg. His is the second municipality, along with Rainy River, to have signed on to the idea — and he will sit on the board of the Central Canadian Public Policy Trust.
Canfield said that, while the border is hurting the region economically, “the perception that we’re not important in Queen’s Park” hurts more.
He noted another upside: “when all you Winnipeggers come down here in the summertime, you wouldn’t have to go out of province.”
Howard Hampton, MPP for Rainy River, rural affairs critic and leader of the Ontario NDP, expressed concern with the way Ontario’s Liberal government has treated the region, leading to protests from the rural population. He said that more and more people are expressing the same concerns: the loss of tens of thousands of jobs, high energy rates in a region where industry is king, even lower tuition fees and auto insurance rates in Manitoba.
“I’m quite convinced the majority of them would say ‘I wish I was part of Manitoba,’” he said.
Michael Gravelle, the MPP for Thunder Bay- Superior North, is not convinced.
“I’m a good friend of Drysdale, but I honestly do not think the solution is to become part of the province of Manitoba,” said Gravelle. “It’s still, I think, advantageous for us to stay a part of the province of Ontario.”
He said that he believes it makes more sense to press the provincial government for help than to attempt to amend the Constitution.
“I suppose someone should ask the province of Manitoba what they think about it, now,” Gravelle said.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Trees aren't falling for city's false spring
It may feel like March, but bare branches stay safely dormant, forestry experts say
By JAMES RUSK | Globe and Mail
Tuesday, January 31, 2006 Page A9
Although Toronto is having its warmest January on record, the city's deciduous trees haven't been fooled. They have remained dormant throughout the month, which reduces the risk of damage if February turns in its usual frigid performance, says Richard Ubbens, Toronto's director of forestry.
"The concern for us is that you get nice weather and you get a hard, hard frost when the buds have already begun to flush or swell. That's when you can sometimes get quite a bit of damage and a lot of die-back," he said in an interview.
"It's too early to tell if we are going to get that. Right now, though, things are good and dormant still."
Temperatures recorded this month are usually felt in March, and the amounts of snow and rain are more like an average April, Environment Canada climatologist Dave Phillips said yesterday.
Through the first 29 days, the average temperature was zero, half a degree warmer than the record set in 2002, he said. And if today's high is more than zero as forecast, January will have had 26 days in which temperatures were above freezing, Mr. Phillips said.
It has been wet. Until yesterday, Toronto had received 64.4 millimetres of rain, more than twice the average of 24.9 millimetres, and 7.8 centimetres of snow, a quarter of the long-term average of 31.1 centimetres, Mr. Phillips said.
The wetness has been good for trees, Mr. Ubbens said. "Lots of water presence in the trees means that there's less chance of frost damage, because it is more water to freeze."
The wet, mild winter has also reduced the chance of salt damage to trees, he said, and not just because it means that the city and other municipalities use less salt.
The fine dusty salt that ends up on streets after they dry tends to blow onto trees and desiccate them, he said. But the rain has washed it off the trees and the ground, and "that's terrific."
Len Troup, a Jordan Station peach farmer who is chairman of the Ontario Tender Fruit Producers Marketing Board, echoed Mr. Ubbens's assessment of the weather's impact. "To this point, we're just fine. . . . It hasn't been extremely cold, and it hasn't been outlandishly warm. It's just been nice. Nice is okay. The secret is that our trees are still fully dormant.".
He noted that a peach tree has about a 45-day period when it has to be extremely dormant. The trees are in that stage. Once past that by mid-February, they will become more vulnerable to cold, he said.
Jim Gardhouse, a horticulturalist who is Toronto's parks supervisor, said that when he looked last week, some shrubs in city parks were "starting to push out a bit."
"They are still not in trouble," he said. "But if it continues to be warm and warmer and there's more rain . . . they will think it's spring. And they could, all of a sudden, get walloped, which will set them back."
The next few weeks are crucial. "We just need to get through the next three or four weeks and then we'll be okay, once you start getting into March," Mr. Gardhouse said.
By JAMES RUSK | Globe and Mail
Tuesday, January 31, 2006 Page A9
Although Toronto is having its warmest January on record, the city's deciduous trees haven't been fooled. They have remained dormant throughout the month, which reduces the risk of damage if February turns in its usual frigid performance, says Richard Ubbens, Toronto's director of forestry.
"The concern for us is that you get nice weather and you get a hard, hard frost when the buds have already begun to flush or swell. That's when you can sometimes get quite a bit of damage and a lot of die-back," he said in an interview.
"It's too early to tell if we are going to get that. Right now, though, things are good and dormant still."
Temperatures recorded this month are usually felt in March, and the amounts of snow and rain are more like an average April, Environment Canada climatologist Dave Phillips said yesterday.
Through the first 29 days, the average temperature was zero, half a degree warmer than the record set in 2002, he said. And if today's high is more than zero as forecast, January will have had 26 days in which temperatures were above freezing, Mr. Phillips said.
It has been wet. Until yesterday, Toronto had received 64.4 millimetres of rain, more than twice the average of 24.9 millimetres, and 7.8 centimetres of snow, a quarter of the long-term average of 31.1 centimetres, Mr. Phillips said.
The wetness has been good for trees, Mr. Ubbens said. "Lots of water presence in the trees means that there's less chance of frost damage, because it is more water to freeze."
The wet, mild winter has also reduced the chance of salt damage to trees, he said, and not just because it means that the city and other municipalities use less salt.
The fine dusty salt that ends up on streets after they dry tends to blow onto trees and desiccate them, he said. But the rain has washed it off the trees and the ground, and "that's terrific."
Len Troup, a Jordan Station peach farmer who is chairman of the Ontario Tender Fruit Producers Marketing Board, echoed Mr. Ubbens's assessment of the weather's impact. "To this point, we're just fine. . . . It hasn't been extremely cold, and it hasn't been outlandishly warm. It's just been nice. Nice is okay. The secret is that our trees are still fully dormant.".
He noted that a peach tree has about a 45-day period when it has to be extremely dormant. The trees are in that stage. Once past that by mid-February, they will become more vulnerable to cold, he said.
Jim Gardhouse, a horticulturalist who is Toronto's parks supervisor, said that when he looked last week, some shrubs in city parks were "starting to push out a bit."
"They are still not in trouble," he said. "But if it continues to be warm and warmer and there's more rain . . . they will think it's spring. And they could, all of a sudden, get walloped, which will set them back."
The next few weeks are crucial. "We just need to get through the next three or four weeks and then we'll be okay, once you start getting into March," Mr. Gardhouse said.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Canada must change trade policies to help manufacturing sector, critics say
Sun, January 29, 2006
By ROMINA MAURINO | Calgary Sun
TORONTO (CP) - Canadian companies in the auto assembly, heavy equipment, pork processing and pulp and paper sectors have announced more than 2,300 job cuts in the last week alone, continuing a wave that has battered the blue-collar workforce.
Manufacturing workers will continue to take hits in the coming year - with possibly another 100,000 lost jobs - unless Canada changes its trade policies, critics say.
The high loonie, rising energy prices and increasing competition from China and other low-wage countries have weakened the manufacturing industry, leading to the loss of 112,000 jobs in two years, primarily in the auto, forestry, aerospace, textile and industrial products sectors.
But rather than making plans to help struggling companies, critics say, Canada is supplying raw materials to the United States and allowing China to sell endless quantities of goods without buying much back.
"With some of our resource exports, especially in energy, we are managing to single-handedly put a crimp in our manufacturing industries because of the lack of thought and strategizing about the best interests of Canada," says Keith Newman, research director at the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.
"No other country in the position of Canada would do what we're doing."
A week ago, Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F) announced 1,200 jobs will be cut its assembly plant in St. Thomas, Ont. On Thursday, tractor giant John Deere said it will close a harvesting equipment factory in Woodstock, Ont., with the loss of 325 jobs, and paper maker Bowater said it will close a shut a 280-job mill in Thunder Bay, Ont.
On Friday, meat processor Olymel said it will shut pork-cutting operations in Saint-Simon, Que., affecting 525 workers, and Industrialex Manufacturing Canada (TSXV:IXC.U) announced the closure of its Windsor plant, which employed about 50 people.
Last year, forestry companies including Domtar, Cascades, Abitibi-Consolidated and Weyerhaeuser - along with auto giant General Motors Corp. - announced thousands of job cuts, many in Ontario.
Overall, the manufacturing cuts are offset by growth in other sectors - especially oil and gas in Western Canada, which is luring many Canadians from the East. Financial services, retail, health care and education are all growing as well.
In addition, industrial giants such as Toyota are expanding, creating job opportunities for laid-off people in Woodstock, for example.
Economists believe a lot of Canada's lost manufacturing jobs will go to China or other low-wage countries such as Mexico, while some companies will consolidate operations in the United States.
Jim Stanford, an economist with the Canadian Auto Workers, expects the manufacturing sector to lose 100,000 jobs in 2006.
"Canadian workers get the downside of globalization but none of the upside," he said.
"Companies will try to do what they can, and the things that make the most sense are investing in more equipment and new technology and trying to make their operations fundamentally more efficient - rather than trying to squeeze the workers that much more," Stanford said.
But without changes to trade and exchange rate policies, he added individual company initiatives "are like spitting in the wind."
CIBC World Markets economist Benjamin Tal says barriers to trade with China are unlikely, because "the momentum is there and it would be very difficult to stop."
He said the outlook for manufacturing is bleak despite an unemployment rate at its lowest level in decades at 6.4 per cent.
A lot of the jobs being created, he says, are "low-quality" service sector jobs, and one-third involve self-employment.
There is also evidence of older men dropping out of the workforce altogether after losing their jobs.
Some laid-off workers, says CEP president Brian Payne, have found work in the Alberta oilsands.
"Alberta is the Klondike of modern-day Canada, so there's certainly job opportunities there," he said. "But it's not a particularly good thing to have everybody move from one part of Canada to another." (*)
By ROMINA MAURINO | Calgary Sun
TORONTO (CP) - Canadian companies in the auto assembly, heavy equipment, pork processing and pulp and paper sectors have announced more than 2,300 job cuts in the last week alone, continuing a wave that has battered the blue-collar workforce.
Manufacturing workers will continue to take hits in the coming year - with possibly another 100,000 lost jobs - unless Canada changes its trade policies, critics say.
The high loonie, rising energy prices and increasing competition from China and other low-wage countries have weakened the manufacturing industry, leading to the loss of 112,000 jobs in two years, primarily in the auto, forestry, aerospace, textile and industrial products sectors.
But rather than making plans to help struggling companies, critics say, Canada is supplying raw materials to the United States and allowing China to sell endless quantities of goods without buying much back.
"With some of our resource exports, especially in energy, we are managing to single-handedly put a crimp in our manufacturing industries because of the lack of thought and strategizing about the best interests of Canada," says Keith Newman, research director at the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.
"No other country in the position of Canada would do what we're doing."
A week ago, Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F) announced 1,200 jobs will be cut its assembly plant in St. Thomas, Ont. On Thursday, tractor giant John Deere said it will close a harvesting equipment factory in Woodstock, Ont., with the loss of 325 jobs, and paper maker Bowater said it will close a shut a 280-job mill in Thunder Bay, Ont.
On Friday, meat processor Olymel said it will shut pork-cutting operations in Saint-Simon, Que., affecting 525 workers, and Industrialex Manufacturing Canada (TSXV:IXC.U) announced the closure of its Windsor plant, which employed about 50 people.
Last year, forestry companies including Domtar, Cascades, Abitibi-Consolidated and Weyerhaeuser - along with auto giant General Motors Corp. - announced thousands of job cuts, many in Ontario.
Overall, the manufacturing cuts are offset by growth in other sectors - especially oil and gas in Western Canada, which is luring many Canadians from the East. Financial services, retail, health care and education are all growing as well.
In addition, industrial giants such as Toyota are expanding, creating job opportunities for laid-off people in Woodstock, for example.
Economists believe a lot of Canada's lost manufacturing jobs will go to China or other low-wage countries such as Mexico, while some companies will consolidate operations in the United States.
Jim Stanford, an economist with the Canadian Auto Workers, expects the manufacturing sector to lose 100,000 jobs in 2006.
"Canadian workers get the downside of globalization but none of the upside," he said.
"Companies will try to do what they can, and the things that make the most sense are investing in more equipment and new technology and trying to make their operations fundamentally more efficient - rather than trying to squeeze the workers that much more," Stanford said.
But without changes to trade and exchange rate policies, he added individual company initiatives "are like spitting in the wind."
CIBC World Markets economist Benjamin Tal says barriers to trade with China are unlikely, because "the momentum is there and it would be very difficult to stop."
He said the outlook for manufacturing is bleak despite an unemployment rate at its lowest level in decades at 6.4 per cent.
A lot of the jobs being created, he says, are "low-quality" service sector jobs, and one-third involve self-employment.
There is also evidence of older men dropping out of the workforce altogether after losing their jobs.
Some laid-off workers, says CEP president Brian Payne, have found work in the Alberta oilsands.
"Alberta is the Klondike of modern-day Canada, so there's certainly job opportunities there," he said. "But it's not a particularly good thing to have everybody move from one part of Canada to another." (*)
Friday, January 27, 2006
Bowater to close Thunder Bay mill
Jan. 26, 2006. 06:50 PM | CANADIAN PRESS
THUNDER BAY, Ont. — U.S. forestry company Bowater Inc. is shutting down a pulp mill in Thunder Bay, Ont., a move that will put about 280 people out of work.
The South Carolina-based company announced Thursday it is closing the kraft mill at the end of April as part of a streamlining in the wake of a loss of $101.9 million (U.S.) for the fourth quarter
The mill produces about 210,000 tonnes of market pulp a year, but has faced high costs for wood fibre and energy.
"I regret the impact that our decision at Thunder Bay will have on our employees, their families and the community," said Arnold Nemirow, chairman, president and CEO, said in the company's earnings report released early Thursday.
"However, this restructuring is essential for the viability of this site. Also critical is an improved operating environment in Ontario. Although better than 2004, our 2005 financial results were very disappointing, as we continued to face a stronger Canadian dollar, and higher energy and wood costs."
In Thunder Bay, company spokesman Don Campbell said the decision to close the mill, which has been operating for 40 years, was necessary because of high energy and wood fibre costs.
"The issue is costs," Campbell told CKDR, a radio station in Dryden, Ont. "Costs to operate this kraft mill have deteriorated and are at unacceptable levels right now, mainly due to high energy costs, including electricity, but also natural gas, and then the high and unacceptable fibre costs. The company just can't tolerate these levels of costs any more."
The latest closure follows a spate of mill shutdowns that have battered Canada's forestry sector in the last year or so. Major companies such as Domtar, Abitibi-Consolidated, Tembec and others have shut down operations that are losing money because of higher energy costs, a rising Canadian dollar and other factors.
The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada estimates about 7,500 jobs have been cut at mills from Newfoundland to British Columbia in the latest industry downsizing.
In a statement, the union called on prime minister designate Stephen Harper to urgently address what it called a crisis in Canada's forestry sector.
"Just before the election, the then federal government announced a $1.5 billion aid package for forest-based companies and we are asking Mr. Harper to renew that commitment with a firm resolution to tie government aid to maintenance and creation of jobs," said union president Brian Payne.
Meanwhile, the union's Ontario region vice-president Cec Makowski demanded that Bowater reverse the shutdown and join the union in appealing to the federal and provincial governments to find ways to save the Thunder Bay mill and others across northern and eastern Ontario, where more than 3,500 workers have lost their jobs in recent months.
"The solution to this crisis lies with a change in policies at both levels of government," Makowski said. "High energy and fibre costs are crippling the industry in Ontario while trade and monetary policies at the federal level are also hurting.(*)
THUNDER BAY, Ont. — U.S. forestry company Bowater Inc. is shutting down a pulp mill in Thunder Bay, Ont., a move that will put about 280 people out of work.
The South Carolina-based company announced Thursday it is closing the kraft mill at the end of April as part of a streamlining in the wake of a loss of $101.9 million (U.S.) for the fourth quarter
The mill produces about 210,000 tonnes of market pulp a year, but has faced high costs for wood fibre and energy.
"I regret the impact that our decision at Thunder Bay will have on our employees, their families and the community," said Arnold Nemirow, chairman, president and CEO, said in the company's earnings report released early Thursday.
"However, this restructuring is essential for the viability of this site. Also critical is an improved operating environment in Ontario. Although better than 2004, our 2005 financial results were very disappointing, as we continued to face a stronger Canadian dollar, and higher energy and wood costs."
In Thunder Bay, company spokesman Don Campbell said the decision to close the mill, which has been operating for 40 years, was necessary because of high energy and wood fibre costs.
"The issue is costs," Campbell told CKDR, a radio station in Dryden, Ont. "Costs to operate this kraft mill have deteriorated and are at unacceptable levels right now, mainly due to high energy costs, including electricity, but also natural gas, and then the high and unacceptable fibre costs. The company just can't tolerate these levels of costs any more."
The latest closure follows a spate of mill shutdowns that have battered Canada's forestry sector in the last year or so. Major companies such as Domtar, Abitibi-Consolidated, Tembec and others have shut down operations that are losing money because of higher energy costs, a rising Canadian dollar and other factors.
The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada estimates about 7,500 jobs have been cut at mills from Newfoundland to British Columbia in the latest industry downsizing.
In a statement, the union called on prime minister designate Stephen Harper to urgently address what it called a crisis in Canada's forestry sector.
"Just before the election, the then federal government announced a $1.5 billion aid package for forest-based companies and we are asking Mr. Harper to renew that commitment with a firm resolution to tie government aid to maintenance and creation of jobs," said union president Brian Payne.
Meanwhile, the union's Ontario region vice-president Cec Makowski demanded that Bowater reverse the shutdown and join the union in appealing to the federal and provincial governments to find ways to save the Thunder Bay mill and others across northern and eastern Ontario, where more than 3,500 workers have lost their jobs in recent months.
"The solution to this crisis lies with a change in policies at both levels of government," Makowski said. "High energy and fibre costs are crippling the industry in Ontario while trade and monetary policies at the federal level are also hurting.(*)
Thursday, January 26, 2006
John Deere to close Ontario plant; 325 jobs lost
Last Updated Thu, 26 Jan 2006 15:16:37 EST | CBC News
The company that makes John Deere tractors, lawnmowers, and forestry products told 325 workers at its Woodstock, Ontario plant Thursday that the work they've been doing will be moving to Iowa later this year.
Deere & Company said the closing of the Woodstock facility is part of its attempt to "create more efficiency in its business operations." The plant will close in September. John Deere Forestry is one of Woodstock's biggest private employers.
Deere said an internal efficiency study showed that the closure of the Woodstock operation would "improve product delivery times."
The plant makes forestry products for Deere's construction and forestry division – specifically, log skidders, wheeled and tracked feller-bunchers, tracked harvesters, and knuckleboom loaders.
A feller-buncher is a large logging machine that cuts trees. Knuckleboom loaders grab the trees and put them onto trucks.
Production will be consolidated in existing Deere facilities in Davenport and Dubuque, Iowa.
Deere said it would record pretax charges of about $60 million US over the next 12 to 18 months.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Forecast for Earth in 2050: It's not so gloomy
But people must begin to manage its ecosystems to put the planet on a sustainable path, a new report says.
By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
When researchers scan the global horizon, overfishing, loss of species habitat, nutrient run-off, climate change, and invasive species look to be the biggest threats to the ability of land, oceans, and water to support human well-being.
Yet "there is significant reason for hope. We have the tools we need" to chart a course that safeguards the planet's ecological foundation, says Stephen Carpenter, a zoologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "We don't have to accept the doom-and-gloom trends."
That's the general take-home message in an assessment of the state of the globe's ecosystems and the impact Earth's ecological condition has on humans.
Thursday, officials released a five-volume coda to the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an ambitious four-year attempt to explore the relationship between the environment and human development. Summary reports of the findings as they affected four international environmental treaties were released last year. These new volumes represent the detailed information that underpins the earlier reports.
In the process, it outlines four plausible ways the planet could develop politically, economically, and socially by 2050, and the effect they would have on people and the environment.
The pathways for political and economic development the authors use - ranging from a relatively wide-open global system to a circle-the-wagons, fragmented world - emerged out of discussions with political and business leaders, scientists, and nongovernmental organizations worldwide. The authors then drew on the latest research to estimate the impact of these paths. The assessment was conducted by 1,360 researchers from 95 countries.
By 2050, it estimates that the highly global approach - with liberal trade policies, and concerted efforts to reduce poverty, improve education and public health, yet respond reactively to environmental issues - could yield the lowest population growth and the highest economic growth. But the environmental scorecard would be mixed.
In a fragmented world that focuses largely on security and regional markets and takes a reactive approach to ecological problems, economic growth rates are the lowest and the population is the highest of the four pathways.
Two other paths, which place a greater emphasis on technology and a proactive approach to the environment, yield population growth rates somewhere in the middle, and economic growth rates that may be slow at first, but accelerate with time.
Even under the most environmentally beneficial paths, however, ecological trouble spots are likely to remain - central Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia.
In the end, Carpenter says, "there is no optimum approach, no one-size-fits-all. It's all about trade-offs."
To put the planet on a sustainable path, he continues, the report makes clear that people must view Earth's ecosystems as one interlinked system, rather than as fragments. People must begin to actively manage those ecosystems in ways that ensure that they will receive the benefits those ecosystems provide - from blunting the surge from ocean storms and filtering water to feeding a hungry world. Indeed, with efforts now under way to develop worldwide observing systems to monitor the oceans, atmosphere, and land use, technology is moving into place to support such broad management efforts.
Unfortunately, humans have "badly mismanaged" the ecosystems that support them," says Walter Reid, a professor with Stanford University's Institute for the Environment and director of the assessment. "We need to manage for the full range of ecosystem benefits, not just those that pass through markets."
For instance, the report holds that to safeguard the availability of fresh water and encourage its more ecologically prudent use, governments could consider replacing their subsidies with a more market-based pricing system. To ensure that the poor aren't priced out of the system, Carpenter says, one could adapt South Africa's approach. It guarantees a minimum allotment per person. Once the meter ticks beyond that amount, market prices kick in.
By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
When researchers scan the global horizon, overfishing, loss of species habitat, nutrient run-off, climate change, and invasive species look to be the biggest threats to the ability of land, oceans, and water to support human well-being.
Yet "there is significant reason for hope. We have the tools we need" to chart a course that safeguards the planet's ecological foundation, says Stephen Carpenter, a zoologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "We don't have to accept the doom-and-gloom trends."
That's the general take-home message in an assessment of the state of the globe's ecosystems and the impact Earth's ecological condition has on humans.
Thursday, officials released a five-volume coda to the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an ambitious four-year attempt to explore the relationship between the environment and human development. Summary reports of the findings as they affected four international environmental treaties were released last year. These new volumes represent the detailed information that underpins the earlier reports.
In the process, it outlines four plausible ways the planet could develop politically, economically, and socially by 2050, and the effect they would have on people and the environment.
The pathways for political and economic development the authors use - ranging from a relatively wide-open global system to a circle-the-wagons, fragmented world - emerged out of discussions with political and business leaders, scientists, and nongovernmental organizations worldwide. The authors then drew on the latest research to estimate the impact of these paths. The assessment was conducted by 1,360 researchers from 95 countries.
By 2050, it estimates that the highly global approach - with liberal trade policies, and concerted efforts to reduce poverty, improve education and public health, yet respond reactively to environmental issues - could yield the lowest population growth and the highest economic growth. But the environmental scorecard would be mixed.
In a fragmented world that focuses largely on security and regional markets and takes a reactive approach to ecological problems, economic growth rates are the lowest and the population is the highest of the four pathways.
Two other paths, which place a greater emphasis on technology and a proactive approach to the environment, yield population growth rates somewhere in the middle, and economic growth rates that may be slow at first, but accelerate with time.
Even under the most environmentally beneficial paths, however, ecological trouble spots are likely to remain - central Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia.
In the end, Carpenter says, "there is no optimum approach, no one-size-fits-all. It's all about trade-offs."
To put the planet on a sustainable path, he continues, the report makes clear that people must view Earth's ecosystems as one interlinked system, rather than as fragments. People must begin to actively manage those ecosystems in ways that ensure that they will receive the benefits those ecosystems provide - from blunting the surge from ocean storms and filtering water to feeding a hungry world. Indeed, with efforts now under way to develop worldwide observing systems to monitor the oceans, atmosphere, and land use, technology is moving into place to support such broad management efforts.
Unfortunately, humans have "badly mismanaged" the ecosystems that support them," says Walter Reid, a professor with Stanford University's Institute for the Environment and director of the assessment. "We need to manage for the full range of ecosystem benefits, not just those that pass through markets."
For instance, the report holds that to safeguard the availability of fresh water and encourage its more ecologically prudent use, governments could consider replacing their subsidies with a more market-based pricing system. To ensure that the poor aren't priced out of the system, Carpenter says, one could adapt South Africa's approach. It guarantees a minimum allotment per person. Once the meter ticks beyond that amount, market prices kick in.
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