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Sustainable Development Update Issue 4, Volume 7, 2007 The Sustainable Development Update (SDU) focuses on the links between ecology, society and the economy. It is produced by Albaeco, an independent non-profit organisation. SDU is produced with support from Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Environment Policy Division. Dr. Fredrik Moberg, Editor Click the miniature below to download in pdf-format: 
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| Editorial | ||
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When markets work for the environment Iceland will not issue any new whale hunting quotas for the coming hunting season according to Reuters (August 24). The fisheries minister, Einar K. Gudfinnsson, explains why: “The whaling industry, like any other industry, has to obey the market. If there is no profitability there is no foundation for resuming with the killing of whales”. To a sector not long ago described as the arena subject to ‘the greatest market failure ever seen’ these are good news. The consumer power has an important role to play in moving from ‘business as usual’ to ‘business as sustainable’. The growing biofuel car market is another example - even though ethanol is unlikely to be a sustainable substitute for fossil fuels in the long run (se feature article, p 2-3). Sure enough these examples show that markets can be sensitive to changing currents in society and new insights about changes in the environment and climate. However, ‘Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change’ released last year argues that climate change is the consequence of market failures. Why the market so often fails to manage the environment is often attributed to the inability of neo-classical economic theory to ‘include the externalities’. Where the externalities are the indirect consequences of a transaction between two parties, that affects a third party. In the case of global warming, the externalities could be seen as carbon dioxide emissions as a result of, for instance, oil companies selling fuel to car owners. These kinds of externalitites can take the shape of great injustice. As the Stern Review points out, CO2-emissions from rich countries of the North are believed to have devastating effect on the lives of poor people in the countries of the South. The gradual degradation of ecosystems and the services they provide to society is often used as another market failure example, but there are innovative examples proving the opposite. The rather well-known project in Costa Rica where the government for many years has paid landowners for managing their land to produce services such as carbon serquestration, water purification or simply scenic beauty is one example. Similar projects are being tried out in other parts of the world as well. For example, the the Rural Poverty and Environment Programme (RPE) of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is scouting for programmes to compensate local people for managing and conserving valuable ecosystem services in large areas of SubSaharan Africa, South America as well as South-East Asia. If this trend continues and more and more governments commit to developing instruments which make markets work for the climate and environment we might hopefully hear a minister of finance saying something like this in the near future: “The oil industry, like any other industry, has to obey the market. If there is no profitability there is no foundation for resuming with the burning of fossil fuels”. /Jacob von Heland, Albaeco
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| SDU - Feature | ||
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The biofuel boom: curse or blessing? Will biofuel production increase developing countries’ wealth by making them energy exporters? Or will the biofuel boom simply starve the poor by putting pressure on global supplies of food crops? One thing is for sure: the future of biofuels is indeed complex and will have a profound influence on climate, poverty and food security all around the world.  Truck driver transporting sugar canes used in the production of biofuels in the Dominican Republic. Photo: Nicolas Desagher, azote.se After the latest energy crisis in the 1980s, the industrialised world halved its spending on energy research and development. If not, then perhaps the transition from a fossil fuel dependent society would have slipped directly into one driven by the sun. As for now, the shift doesn’t seem to be that close. Projections estimate that solar energy will become really significant first around 2070, although applications for heating and electricity are already a reality. Of course nobody knows exactly, when major breakthroughs in science or technology will occur. How will for instance, the parallel revolution in nano technology affect energy production? But still, to roll out a new infrastructure, as in the case of a sun-based hydrogen society, in addition with replacing the fleet of vehicles, will take time. No wonder then, that many now present bioenergy as the only viable option for an intermediary phase in the conversion to a fossil free and sustainable society. Moreover, biofuels have so far the advantage, in comparison with renewables like windenergy, of being a commodity possible to store and move. Others hold that the craze for biofuels is mainly driven by powerful lobbyism well established in the agricultural sector. Yet others strongly believe that the surge for biofuels, will be a blessing for tropical developing countries, because of their comparative advantages of sun and excellent energy crops. Modern distilleries, might both facilitate electrification in remote areas and lead to a diversification of job opportunities, thereby making developing countries players in the global market. Today, bioenergy supplies 12 % of total commercial world energy demand, new renewables so far only 0.5 %. Fossil fuels make up 78 % of total commercial energy demand, oil constituting 35 %. Transportation uses 60 % of this oil . Biofuels make up only 1-2 % of total motoring fuel supply, bioethanol constituting 85% and biodiesel and biogas the rest. In 2030 it is believed that biofuels will have a 15 % share of the world`s motoring fuel supply. Lately, numerous institutions and think tanks have published reports concerning biofuels. Evidently, the bioenergy issue engages several policy domains (like agriculture, energy, environment and trade) which have to be integrated in biofuel policies. These reports offer a range of far reaching, probably indispensable, recommendations for decision makers. But the current state of knowledge is changing so fast, and the parameters – known and yet unknown – that influence calculations are so many, that forecasts diverge considerably, sometimes even arriving at contrary conclusions.
The fuel-food controversy Assessing whether land will suffice to cover expected bioenergy demand without jeopardizing water resources, food security and biodiversity is one example of a troublesome calculation exercise. Many biofuel advocates presume that energy crops will be grown solely on degraded and abandoned land, hence, actually enhancing biodiversity and soil quality without an impact on food production. Some plants used for bioenergy can actually be grown in areas not suitable for traditional food crops, e.g. Jatropha and Pongomia that can grow under conditions of low fertility and rainfall. Jatropha is already used to mitigate desertification and to rehabilitate degraded lands around mines. However, the economic benefits for using marginal lands must be more thoroughly assessed, e.g. input requiremens versus output price as well as impacts on water and land ecosystems. On the other hand, when comparing the estimated area that biofuel production will require, 440-1000 million ha, with current arable land of 1500 million ha, it seems reasonable to expect serious implications for primary forests as well as food production. A recent report from the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, shows that deforestation in developing countries continues at an alarming 13 million hectares per year, mainly due to crooked alliances between logging and palm oil plantation, driven by the demand for palmoil as a source for biodiesel. Of course, with thoroughly implemented environmental standards it might indeed be possible with an environmentally benign production of biofuels. Consequently, the need to elaborate standards and systems for certification is brought to the forefront in all surveys. It is further stressed, that all stakeholders should be involved, when shaping biofuel policies. Especially those, that are at the risk of being evicted, in connection with large land areas put under cultivation.
Climate change In the last report on climate change from the IPCC it is assumed that conditions for agriculture in northern latitudes will probably improve, while production potentials in many developing countries of the South will be decreased, due to changed water balances. If land scarcity develops, will it then be those having money to fill their cars up that decide what is grown on soils in EU and US, or the ones that are poor and hungry? Us department of agriculture projects that fuel distilleries will require 139 million ton of corn in 2008, this is almost the same amount as India might lose of its rainfed cereal production because of climate change. Food prices In contradiction with what is often maintained professor Christian Azar and colleagues from Chalmers in Gothenburg, Sweden, have shown that bioenergy plantations will be competitive on cropland already at carbon taxes about US $20/ton C. This could double wheat prices, at farm gate, in three decades. But if higher food prices will be a curse or a blessing, again depends on who is favoured. For decades, the unjust trade in agricultural products has been criticized. Farmers in developing countries have been living at the mercy of giant multinational retail companies. If competition for land will lead to small scale farmers getting decently paid, this is something to wish for, but how is this to be accomplished? Are international institutions like the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD, together with NGO:s working for fair trade, powerful enough to circumvent the separate interests of multinational corporations trading in grain and food?  Jatropha is a “new” biofuel plant that is also used to mitigate desertification
and to rehabilitate degraded
lands around mines. Photo: www.jatropha.de
Different motives for change In conclusion, the outcome of the current biofuel boom will heavily depend on the strategy chosen and the motive for change. If main concerns are about security of fuel supply and independence of imports, as it tend to be in the US, then expansion of ethanol from homegrown corn is encouraged, in spite of corn giving just 20% in CO2 reductions compared with 90% when produced from tropical sugar cane. If mitigation of climate change is in focus, then it is more efficient to replace coal with biomass for combined heat and power generation, instead of making fuels for transportation. A second-best choice is to administer transfer of technology and investments for ethanol production to places where the highest CO2 reductions can be achieved, together with abolishing tariffs on ethanol. If the Millennium Development Goals to halve poverty and hunger are taken seriously, then biofuel production is developed with the goal to empower local areas, with decent working conditions and fair terms of trade. It is furthermore important to distinguish between biofuels derived from waste and biofuel directly from energy crops – the first being part of the recycling society bringing about a reduction in total energy use whereas the second runs the risk of competing with land for food production purposes. Likewise, it is important to remember the hugh potential in improved energy efficiency and in choosing alternative ways of transportation, instead of producing more fuels. Lifecycles and fair-trade If energy crops are grown to abate climate change then it is extremely important to analyse the whole lifecycle to assess if there are net reductions in CO2. Clearing forests to grow biofuels, for example, was recently shown to be a bad idea. A forest would sequester two to nine times more carbon over a 30-year period than the emissions avoided by growing biofuels (using current technology) on an equivalent area of land, according to a report published August 17 in the journal Science. Finally, it is a fact that markets are acting to lower risks, thereby conserving known solutions. True renewables like sun energy, wave and wind are the future. But to get there, persuasive policies must be adopted. Meanwhile, deliberate global consumers have the choice to sidestep market power distortions and as far as possible make free trade fair. /Maria Mutt
More at: “Fuel for development”: http://www.snf.se/pdf/rap-trafik-biobfueldev.pdf “Towards a sustainable biomass strategy”: http://www.wupperinst.org/uploads/tx_wibeitrag/wp163.pdf “Sustainable bioenergy: a framwork for decision makers”: http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a1094e00.htm http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk http://www.biopact.org http://www.globalbioenergy.org http://www.bluemoonfund.org http://www.bioenergywiki.net | ||
| SDU - Interview | ||
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"The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism provides perverse incentives for tropical countries to deforest an area so that they can be paid to re-grow trees" Holly Gibbs from the University of Wisconsin-Madison is an expert on tropical deforestation and its implications for the global climate. She has served as a science advisor for the Coalition for Rainforest Nations and climate negotiators from developing countries. Earlier this summer, she gave a talk in the Stockholm Seminars at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. SDU asked her three questions about the linkages between poverty, deforestation and climate change.  Holly Gibbs presenting research on the relationship between deforestation and climate change. Photo: Fredrik Moberg 1) You said during the seminar that we know surprisingly little about deforestation in the tropics. Why is it important to get more accurate data? We have made major advances in using satellite imagery to monitor tropical deforestation from space, but our understanding of where and how quickly tropical forests are being cleared is indeed limited. It is important to get more accurate information about tropical deforestation so that we can better understand the impacts of these land cover changes on the climate system, biodiversity habitat, human health and other ecosystem services. Further, improved understanding of the causes of tropical deforestation is needed so that we can better design policies and incentives to encourage sustainable land-use pathways across the tropics. 2) You also criticised the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol and its treatment of deforestation, why? Tropical deforestation accounted for nearly 20% of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere during the 1990s and is expected to account for even larger emissions over the next few decades. Clearing tropical forests not only emits CO2 but it also removes future stores or sinks for CO2. The Kyoto Protocol ignores emissions from tropical deforestation despite the importance of tropical forests to avoiding and mitigating climate change. The Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) allows industrialized nations who cannot meet their emissions commitments to purchase “carbon credits” from non-industrialized nations for re-growing new trees, but provides no incentives to avoid cutting the trees down in the first place. Ultimately the CDM provides a perverse incentive for tropical countries to deforest an area so that they can be paid to re-grow trees. 3) You have been involved as an expert for developing countries in the UN climate negotiations. Why is this important? Active engagement by scientists is critical to provide timely and relevant information needed to create and negotiate international climate change policies. Scientists have a particularly important role in providing support to climate negotiators from developing countries that have historically been sidelined during U.N. technical discussions and negotiations because they did not have adequate science support to debate issues or propose new solutions. This is not surprising considering that the U.S. and China alone have the nearly the same number of UN climate experts as all developing countries combined. The good news is that scientists are increasingly providing the needed interpretation of key issues and “backup” during climate negotiations necessary to help even the playing field. In fact, a group of developing countries recently introduced a promising initiative to use financial incentives to reduce carbon emissions from tropical deforestation that will be formally negotiated in December 2007.  Early morning mist of the Danum Valley rain forest in Northeastern Borneo, Malaysia. Photo: Bent Christensen/azote.se /Fredrik Moberg
More at: http://www.sage.wisc.edu/people/gibbs/gibbs.html | ||
| SDU - Feature | ||
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Making research more effective to support policy and practice for reducing vulnerability to environmental change Vulnerability and livelihood security of the world’s poor and marginalized people are closely linked to biodiversity and ecosystem resilience. In order to be more effective in supporting change towards more resilient and sustainable societies, the research community needs to place more emphasis on processes and outputs that are relevant to local stakeholders. This is one of the main conclusions of a Sida-funded programme on poverty and vulnerability. The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) concluded that unprecedented human-induced changes to ecosystems in recent decades are expected to increase the frequency, duration and magnitude of periods of abrupt change. This includes changes in freshwater availability, the recurrence of weather-related hazards, the emergence of new diseases, environmental degradation, and the loss of biodiversity. On top of this, many regions are increasingly affected by socio-economic changes due to globalisation, demographic changes, economic integration, and changing power structures. As a result, individuals and communities all over the world – particularly in developing countries – are experiencing new kinds of vulnerabilities affecting livelihoods, health and overall well-being.  With climate change poor people often become more vulnerable and forced to transport water over long distances. Photo: Bent Christensen/azote.se In recognition of this rise in human vulnerability to environmental change, the Sida-funded Poverty and Vulnerability Programme was initiated in 2002. It represents one of the largest efforts aimed at gaining an improved understanding of how environmental risks and changes affect the world’s poor and marginalized people. The programme, undertaken by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and engaging partners and stakeholders at all levels, focuses on applied research and policy support to address social vulnerability to environmental and socio-economic change and to support the overall goals of poverty reduction and sustainable development. Employing participatory and action-research approaches, the programme builds on a multidisciplinary vulnerability framework jointly developed by SEI and Clark University, which draws attention to how multiple socio-political, ecological and geo-physical processes operate at different spatial and temporal scales to produce vulnerability within coupled human-environment systems.
The programme is also underpinned by recent research indicating that human vulnerability and livelihood security are closely linked to biodiversity and ecosystem resilience, e.g. that healthy ecosystems provide more options for communities to recover their livelihoods following a disaster. A wide array of issues and regions have been studied within the programme, including adaptation to climate, water and health stresses in South Africa; the causes of social vulnerability to coastal hazards in Southeast Asia; the impacts of genetically modified agriculture on the poor and the vulnerable; and the integration of a vulnerability perspective in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. Outputs relevant to local stakeholders When summing up the programme’s achievements since 2002 we highlight six main insights on effective research and policy support for vulnerability reduction (see box). One of the key insights that neatly summarizes our overall findings is that most outputs of vulnerability research are too theoretical and conceptual and only disseminated through scientific journals published in English. In order to be more effective in supporting change towards more resilient and sustainable societies, the research community needs to recognize the importance of sub-national level organizations and decision-makers. More emphasis needs to be placed on outputs that are relevant to stakeholders at the village, municipality and district levels. For instance, the research findings arising from place-based case studies should be translated into the local languages and targeted to clearly defined audiences, taking their perspectives, constraints and opportunities into consideration. Focusing in particular on social learning, institutions and adaptive management and governance, future work is aimed at developing innovative approaches and methods on risk, vulnerability and resilience, linking community-based vulnerability/adaptation science to larger drivers and policy debates with a strong focus on Africa and Southeast Asia. /Frank Thomalla
More at: http://www.vulnerabilitynet.org/sei-pov/overview.html http://www.sei.se/index.php?section=risk | ||
| Sustainability School | ||
 "Blue and green water"
In the aftermath of the World Water Week policy forum
that was held in Stockholm recently, this seems to be a
good time to sort out the terms blue and green water.The distinction between blue and green water has become an accepted distinction in the freshwater management jargon. Yet, it is not an entirely obvious set of definitions. For example, what does someone mean when saying that there is a “scope for improvement of green water management for rain-fed agriculture” and most importantly why should you care? The concept of blue and green water was coined by the Swedish professor Malin Falkenmark for an FAO conference on water and agriculture in 1995. It was recently used as a framework in the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture that is a similar study to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The buzz-words of the framework Blue water + irrigated agriculture: ‘Blue water’ is the liquid water in rivers, lakes and ground water. It is linked to irrigation-based agriculture. Green water and rain-fed agriculture: ‘‘Green water’ is the water that feeds the system as rain and forms soil moisture that is absorbed by plants (and then exhaled as vapour flow). In Africa, 95% of the agriculture is rain-fed in this way by ‘green water’. Savanna systems: The focus on ’green water’ can be explained as an outcome from much research on savanna systems in agricultural based regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. These systems have different conditions from those in the northern hemisphere, or ’blue water’ systems, because of the high evaporation and the little groundwater that exists. Up-stream and down-stream: The volumes, patterns of flow and quality of water in an area will be determined by up-stream activities. That means that conflicts over the use of water in large boils down to the fact that if water is used up-stream in plant production, then it will evaporate through photosynthesis and be transformed into vapour. Thus, it will leave the area and not continue to flow down-stream to be used again. Water is a shared resource between many actors and ecosystems along a stream that must agree on how the water is to be managed in order to avoid conflict. The essence of the framework The basic idea of the blue-green water framework is to address the freshwater demands of human societies, the ecosystems and economic development at the same time. A major insight is that when discussing the water needed to produce food for an expanding human population we tend to neglect that most food production comes from rain-fed farming, not least in hunger and poverty stricken areas with rapid population growth. Solutions based on this shift in water thinking includes: making better use of the ’green water’ in the system (e.g. through rainwater harvesting) and addressing the trade-offs between the multiple functions that freshwater plays in society as well as in ecosystems in order to minimise the risk for up-stream/down-stream conflicts. /Jacob von Heland More at: www.siwi.org/downloads/Reports/2005_Blue_Green_Policy_ | ||
| In Brief | ||
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UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon: "Time to save lake Chad now" Lake Chad has lost more than 90 percent of its surface area in less than three decades. It is by many seen as a symbol of Africas deteriorating environment and its implications for livelihoods and poverty. Now UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has seen it with his own eyes and wants to launch a big programme to save the lake. The magnitude of the Lake Chad crisis is comparable to what has happened in the much more well-known Aral Sea area. To many the extent of the crisis became obvious after UNEP launched its unique satellite images in One Planet Many People: Atlas of our Changing Environment (see SDU 3/05 and the pictures above). These pictures reveal how the lake has changed dramatically in recent decades with severe consequences for ir- rigation, biodiversity and fisheries and increasing competition over these resources. The crisis is of course even more apparent on the ground: – I came here to visit the lake to see for myself the damage caused by desertification and global warming, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said to IRIN News after his recent visit. Lake Chad has shrunk from 25,000km2 to 2,000 km2 in less than three decades. Declining rainfall due to climate change and increased water demand in agriculture are the main reasons, experts say. Deforestation in Africa’s high rainfall coastal regions and in the southern Sahel has also been linked to the shrinking Lake Chad, as less forests implies decreased capacity of the land to recycle water to the continent’s interior. Many former fishermen have become farmers around the lake, which was once Africa’s third largest inland water body. The 25 million people living around the lake have always lived with a fluctuating size over the seasons, but during the past three to four decades the lake has become gradually smaller. New international programme? – Our hope is that the United Nations and the international community will launch a big programme to save Lake Chad, Ban Ki-Moon said. This would probably please the member countries of the Lake Chad Basin Commission who have appealed for money to save the lake since 2003, for instance by channelling water from a river in the Central African Republic to the lake. This will, however, be utterly futile in the long run in the fight against climate change. Africa’s green- house emissions are low, but it is their lakes and rivers that are drying up. /Fredrik Moberg
More at:http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74240 New guide to the complex trade and environment debate The relationship between international trade and the environment is gaining ever increasing attention. While some argue that international policies and instruments on trade and the environment have compatible goals, others have engaged in a heated debate over the environmental consequences of liberalized trade. Overall, the trade and environment debate has become highly complex, specialized and increasingly difficult to follow. A recent interesting addition to this debate is the publication Trade and Environment: A Resource Book published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) in cooperation with the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development and The Ring. This Resource Book includes 61 authors from 34 countries and is claimed to be a “global collection of some of the best minds that work on these issues”. Although focusing on more or less all aspects of the trade and environment debate, the book emphasise on developing country concerns because they tend to be underrepresented in the global discussions. The book is meant to be a reference volume providing clear, unambiguous and easy-to-understand information, but does not “shy away from opinion and analysis”. http://www.iisd.org/trade/environment/ Update on the Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries A recent monthly update from the web portal EarthTrends neatly summarises recent findings on the vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in developing countries. They reiterate that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is no longer enough as some human-induced climate change is now considered inevitable and is in fact already occurring. Another insight is that the poor in developing countries are the most vulnerable, and that their capacity to adapt to the changing climate has become an important area of research, funding, and policymaking. Along this line the update from Earth Trends presents a number of interesting and daunting maps and graphs. Among these a number of graphs showing future world cereal production under different climate scenarios and different levels of adaptation. In these it becomes painstakely clear that most of the predicted production declines due to climate change will occur in developing countries. The Sahel grasslands of Africa is one example put forward as a striking example. This region on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert is home to millions of people who depend on cattle herds and subsistence farming for survival. Unfortunately, the region’s climate has become even drier in recent decades resulting in spread of the desert and additional pressure on already vulnerable countries such as Sudan. “The subsequent social and economic instability has helped fuel violent conflicts resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees”, concludes EarthTrends. http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/225 Climate link when the Swedish government launched guidelines for international development cooperation In a recent debate article of the largest daily newspaper in Sweden, the Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation, Gunilla Carlsson, presented Sweden’s new development strategy that will guide Sida’s work during the next four years. The most dramatic change described was to reduce the number of aid receiving countries from 70 to 33. Interestingly, the minister announced an increased focus on “prioritised areas” as human rights and equity-related concerns as well as environmental and climate related issues. During this summer’s World Water Week in Stockholm Danielle Hirsch from the organisation Both Ends presented a study on the impact that climate change scenarios will have on the Dutch development policies in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Bolivia. The results showed quite cleary that unless you ’climate proof’ development objectives – i.e make sure that the climate change trajectory does not conflict with the development objectives – your policies are more or less doomed to fail even before they leave the planning table. Hopefully, it was such an awareness that made minister Carlsson and the government to mention climate as an important focus area of the new guidelines for Sweden’s development cooperation. http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/3102/a/86621
The quote: "The future of a sustainable environment demands that scientists and policymakers understand the coupling of human and natural systems. Without such understanding and systems thinking, we are doomed to degrading environments, reduced biodiversity, social instability and an overall decline in the quality of life." Professor William Taylor comments his (and 15 colleagues’) recent article in the journal Science: http://newsroom.msu.edu/site/indexer/3174/content.htm |