First there was the Hornblower Hybrid, a revolutionary vessel that began plying the waters of San Francisco Bay in 2008 using a combination of solar, wind and diesel power. Now Hornblower Cruises & Events is planning to bring the hybrid ferry concept to the East Coast for its service to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, but with a twist: The new 1,400-horsepower New York Hornblower Hybrid will run on energy generated by hydrogen fuel cells, in addition to diesel, solar and wind.

Statue Cruises, a division of San Francisco-based Hornblower, said that Derecktor Shipyards in Bridgeport, Conn., is working on what it called “the world’s first hybrid ferry using hydrogen fuel” and expects to be done by April 2011. “This boat will produce minimal carbon emissions and sip, rather than guzzle, diesel fuel,” Gavin Higgins, Derecktor’s VP for business development, said in a statement. “Along the way it will help make New York harbor a cleaner, safer and more pleasant place.”

Statue has the contract with the National Park Services to run cruises out to the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island. The company said the 600-passenger New York Hornblower will be powered in part by a proton exchange membrane fuel cell that turns hydrogen into electricity.

The company also outlined a long list “eco-friendly” elements to the vessel, including recycled glass countertops, LEED-certified carpet and aluminum wall coverings, LED video screens and low-VOC exterior paint, including a copper-free paint the company has been testing as part of an Environmental Protection Agency-funded project.

You can follow the vessel’s progress toward launch on a blog set up by Hornblower.

Reprinted with permission from EarthTechling

We normally wouldn’t give a story like this much attention in the grand scheme of covering clean energy related items, but with it being the holidays and all, this novel use of solar power somehow seems fitting. Two Christmas tree lots in sunny San Diego, California are being powered by solar energy provided by an outfit called Stellar Solar.

The two Purdy Farms Christmas tree lots make use of a mobile solar power system provided by Stellar to power the on-site CFL lighting and electric chainsaws. These power systems are small scale in nature – rated at an equivalent 5000 watt generator for five hours – but easily fit the needs of such an installation.

This is said to be the first known use of solar to power a Christmas tree lot (certainly the first we’ve heard of). Purdy Farms, which hauls its trees down from Oregon, said it uses sustainable farming in what we assume are the growing and harvesting practices with the trees. The use of solar power is seen by the tree farmers as a natural extension of their green actions.

Reprinted with permission from EarthTechling

The proposals are in after Monday’s final public meeting to decide the future of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway trench which serves the Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and Columbia Street Waterfront neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Residents spoke up and prioritized their wishes for a less disruptive BQE including reduced noise and pollution, increased neighborhood connectivity and bike / pedestrian safety, and an overall greener streetscape.

In short, the BQE is going green, or at least as green as a pollution-spewing six-lane highway can be. Luckily the NYC EDC, NYC DOT, and Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects have come up with three compelling design solutions to improve the area.

Here’s some good news on the coming makeover of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

There are 3 proposals remaining now, all of them will help green the 6-lane highway (if you don’t count all the cars driving on it), but they do so to different degrees.

The greenest option (or “dream scheme”) includes a heavily landscaped streetscape, a number of pedestrian bridges over the highway, extensive buffering to mitigate noise and pollution, solar panels that could bring in $312,000 worth of electricity annually, and even retail space above the highway.

Of course, the best option comes with a bigger price tag, but as The Architect’s Newspaper writes: “Cost to cover the highway with a giant metal mesh? $78.8 to $82.7 million. Cost to forget about the BQE forever? Priceless.”

Read much more about the three proposals and see numerous graphics depicting the different options via The Architect’s Newspaper: Envisioning a Green Future for the BQE.

Reprinted with permission from Ecolocalizer

Cars have gotten a hugely disproportionate bulk of transportation funds in the U.S. for decades, over half a century even. But with more and more people realizing this is bad for our health, bad for our pocketbooks, bad for the environment, and bad for the vibrancy of our cities, this is (slowly) changing.

One of the cities leading the pack on this front, giving more and more funding to bicycle/pedestrian projects and transit projects, is Portland. I did my graduate studies on the topic of city and regional planning and I swear Portland was mentioned as a best case example in every class I took at some point.

Portland’s newest (I think) effort to promote clean, green transportation is the Willamette River Transit Bridge, the first bridge going over the Willamette River to be built in 37 years. The bridge “will link a future Oregon Health & Science University campus on the west side of the river with a museum and opera house on the east.” The bridge will include 14-foot-wide bicycle/pedestrian paths on both sides and space for public transit vehicles down the middle, but as the title above indicates, it will not be accessible to cars.

“The active-transit structure, a critical piece of a 7.3-mile light-rail line that will link downtown Portland with the south suburb of Milwaukie, will be the first of its kind in the United States,” Michael Burnham of Next American City writes.

14-foot bicycle pedestrian paths are very generous in the U.S. and will make a pleasant bicycle or pedestrian trip over the bridge that much more so.

The look of the bridge, designed by San Francisco-based architect Donald McDonald is reported by some to be anything but eye candy. It “will feature two 181-foot-tall towers that anchor cables that rise from the river like a sea monster’s fins” and has been called

“Godzilla on the Willamette.” And at least one reporter is concerned its design will even “severely limit” residential development nearby.

I think this is an inflated exaggeration of one person’s own opinion on the matter, though. Gerik Kransky, advocacy director for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, says: “Personally, I think it’s beautiful.” Just seeing the rendering above, I definitely think it looks nice, one of the prettier bridges I’ve seen in my life. And I think a litlle bit of a quirky design is a perfect fit for Portland.

If all goes as planned, the bridge is supposed to open in 2015.

Reprinted with permission from Ecolocalizer

I just wrote a piece on a cool visualization project of the new London cycle scheme, or bike sharing program. Now, on the other side of the Atlantic, we have some very exciting news about a bicycle sharing program in New York.

I have been pretty critical of U.S. bicycle sharing programs in the past, and I think for good reason. While many of them reference and are trying to replicate the extremely successful Paris bike-sharing program, Velib, they are using 100 bikes or so instead of the tens of thousands of bikes Velib uses — not even on the same playing field.

Nonetheless, my point is not that bicycle sharing programs aren’t awesome. When I was working as the Executive Director of a non-profit promoting sustainable transportation and development in Virginia a couple years ago, this is one of the main programs I was interested in. And my thoughts were that such programs would become some of the hottest and best ways to promote cleaner transportation.

The point is just, if you want to make a difference, you have to put something significant in first.

Now, one city that seems to get this is New York City. When I was working in this field full-time, I have to say that NYC seemed to be doing the best work the fastest. Portland and some other cities are at a higher level for such things today, but NYC seems to be doing the most to improve themselves. And, as a result, cycling has risen dramatically in NYC in recent years.

Their newest effort is to actually, more-or-less, replicate the extremely successful Velib bicycle sharing program, not just say they are.

NYC is reportedly aiming to launch a new bicycle sharing program now that will start with 10,500 bikes (500 more than Velib started with), and expand to 49,000. Now, that is the way to do it!

This is brand new… news, so there aren’t a lot of details out there on it just yet. But I definitely plan to come back to this if it moves forward as it is supposed to.

Reprinted with permission from Ecolocalizer

In what can only be called an amazing turn-around, a site that was covered by ten feet of water during Hurricane Katrina is now the location of Mississippi’s first state government-owned LEED certified building. The Grand Bay Coastal Resources Center, located on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, was recently awarded a LEED Gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. The building was designed by Lord, Aeck & Sargent in Atlanta, in collaboration with Studio South Architects, and built by Rod Cooke Construction out of Mobile, Alabama.

“Our new facility is one of the greenest buildings in the state of Mississippi, but even more important, it demonstrates our philosophy of environmental consciousness and shows visitors how natural building materials and sustainable design strategies and techniques can be used,” said David Ruple, Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) manager. The Center is the headquarters for NERR and the Grand Bay National Wildlife Refuge. The 20,000 square foot building will serve as a center for environmental research and education.

The reserve, an isolated bit of nature on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, comprises some 18,000 acres of marsh, waters and coastal wetlands that are home to several rare plant and animal species as well as numerous commercial and recreational fish species. The land is owned and jointly managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources (DMR). Through its research and educational outreach efforts, the new facility supports the NERR’s charter to promote stewardship of coastal resources using an integrated program of research, long-term monitoring, training and education.

Inside the Grand Bay Coastal Resources Center

The Center is built 19.5 feet above sea level through the use of a framework of galvanized steel trusses that sit on top of pilings, and it was constructed on a previously developed section of the Reserve, reducing its footprint even more.

Another unique feature is the Firewise landscaping used around the perimeter of the site to help ward off forest fires. The principles of this approach to landscaping provide several layers of protection from the forest to the building. Through the use of St. Augustine grass, a Firewise buffer, and a special gravel path that allows rainfall to soak into the ground instead of running off, the Grand Bay Resource Center is able to protect itself naturally from potential fires.

“The Center is about creating a community for coastal research, so in order to achieve the feeling of community, the facility is designed with five wings that create a large courtyard with amphitheater-style seating for outdoor education and mingling,” said Joe Greco, Lord, Aeck & Sargent President and the building’s project designer. “It’s a grouping of smaller building components united through a mission to save the coastal habitat and educate visitors – adults and children – about the ecology and habitat of the region.”

The research wing includes a screened mudroom that connects the ramped loading dock to the chemistry, biology and microbiology laboratories used for research and stewardship projects that will help the DMR better understand and manage the state’s coastal resources. The laboratories will be shared with researchers from around the country who come to study the environment at Grand Bay. Another wing, known as the dormitory wing, supports the Center’s facilitation of other researchers and educators to use the NERR as a “living laboratory,” Ruple said. The wing includes two bunkhouses, each sleeping eight, and two private rooms for long-term visiting researchers. The wing also houses a kitchen, living room and restrooms.

The education wing houses two classrooms and interpretive exhibits that pertain to the local ecology. The other two wings house administrative office space for Grand Bay NERR and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff.

Reprinted with permission from Green Building Elements

With 20 percent of the world’s population but just 7 percent of its available freshwater, China faces serious water shortages as its economy booms and urbanization increases. The government is planning massive water diversion projects, but environmentalists say conservation — especially in the wasteful agricultural sector — is the key.

On a recent visit to the Gobi desert, which stretches across China’s western Gansu province, I came upon an unusual sign. In the midst of a dry, sandy expanse stood a large billboard depicting a settlement the government intended to build nearby — white buildings surrounded by lush, green, landscaped lawns, and in the center a vast, gleaming blue reservoir. The illustration’s bright colors were quite unlike the actual surroundings, which consisted of dull sky that faded into a horizon of undulating, parched-brown hillsides.

Still, the billboard’s promise was clear: Through feats of engineering and willpower, specifically the planned construction of a series of aqueducts to bring water from a tributary of China’s Yellow River, the government pledged to build new homes and remake nature. Let there be water. My companion, the young Chinese environmentalist Zhao Zhong, founder of the nonprofit group, Green Camel Bell, was dubious. He pointed out that not only has the water level of the Yellow River been declining in recent years, in some months no longer reaching the Pacific Ocean, but that the river is now an estimated 10 percent sewage by volume. Watering the desert seemed to him, quite literally, a pipe dream.

Yet the sign conjuring an oasis in the desert does point to a very real dilemma: In order to sustain its rapid development, China needs a lot of water. It can only build as many cities as it can supply with clean water. And the country’s water supply is precariously limited: The Middle Kingdom is home to 20 percent of world’s population, but just 7 percent of its available freshwater resources. Rapid urbanization is quickly increasing demand for fresh water, while climate change threatens to further reduce availability.

Wang Rusong, an expert in urban ecosystems at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an environmental advisor to Beijing’s mayor, told me when I visited his offices in May that China’s most worrisome environmental challenge is not what it has too much of — pollution, sewage, carbon emissions, etc. — but what it doesn’t have enough of: “The limiting factor in Beijing’s development is water,” he said. And Beijing is hardly alone.

Over the next 20 years, 350 million people in China — more than the population of the United States — are expected to move from the countryside to the cities, requiring an immense infrastructure build-out. (Imagine constructing all America’s cities in one generation.) One measure of the nation’s rapid growth and urbanization is its production of cement — China is by far the world’s largest user of cement, producing seven times more cement than the second-largest user, India. For other natural resources, Beijing is scouring the earth: importing vast quantities of timber from Southeast Asia and Latin America; financing oil rigs in Nigeria, Chad, and Sudan; investing in copper mines in Afghanistan. Yet securing enough fresh water may be the gravest challenge of all, as it is the one resource that cannot be imported.

Instead, China must learn to make due with the water it has. World Bank estimates show that China possesses only one-fourth the global average amount of water per capita. As more and more of its people move to cities, household demands will grow. Professor Wang estimates that Beijing’s water use has grown 150 percent in just the last decade. China’s power sector is extremely water-intensive, and steeply rising energy use is also driving water demand.

A recent study, “Charting Our Water Future,” by the global consultancy, McKinsey and Co., and the Water Resources Group, looks at increasing water demand across sectors (residential, agricultural, industrial) and forecasts that by 2030 China could face a gaping water shortage of 201 billion cubic meters. To make matters worse, much of the available water is located in southern China, while the majority of the population is in the north.

Across China today, one encounters frequent scenes of people struggling to deal with water scarcity. In Gansu province, not far from where the billboard boasts of a modern oasis, local farmers eke out an existence growing vegetables in low greenhouses that they cover with straw mats to retain every last drop of moisture. “There is nothing to spare,” one 40-something farmer told me. Nearby, the wells supplying rural schools have had to be dug deeper in recent years, as groundwater levels sink. In many Gansu villages, canals that run behind homes are dry in the winter months.

In southwest China, a severe drought this spring affected as many as 18 million people, drying fields and limiting drinking water to residents in large cities. Such water-scarce regions in China have little buffer against even naturally occurring dips in precipitation — a problem that could be exacerbated as the world warms. As Ma Jun, author of the seminal book, China’s Water Crisis, explained: “In some regions, the environmental capacity is very low, and the groundwater is now quite depleted. We have either to change our livelihoods, or make space for natural restoration to happen. We have to recognize that in certain parts of our earth, existence is fragile.”

In northern China and adjacent Mongolia, the sands of the Gobi desert are expanding — a process known as “desertification” — largely due to land-use changes, soil erosion, and perhaps climate shifts. Each spring, seasonal sandstorms strike Beijing; on the worst days, the skies are yellow, and residents are advised to remain inside. In the 1950s, sandstorms hit Beijing only every seven or so years; now they strike each spring.

In western China, the melting glaciers on the Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau have already begun to shrivel streams in Tibet, Qinghai, and Gansu. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimates that the glaciers, the world’s largest outside the poles, are shrinking by about 7 percent each year. Tenzin Dorje, a Tibetan shepherd living in the rugged Qilian mountains, where streams are fed by glaciers, says that each year he must trudge further to find streams where his sheep can drink.

In west China, the Chinese government projects that 150 million people must move from their homes to secure reliable access to water. As Wen Bo, an environmentalist in Beijing, points out: “This is a clear indication that we can’t think only about economic development. We have to think about ecological capacity.” He adds that part of the problem is man-made. “Problematic irrigation policies and dam construction [on the nearby Yangtze River] contributed to the recent drought,” he says. “China is not good at water resources management.”

Indeed, Beijing’s typical mindset is to dig its way out of a hole and fight challenges with massive engineering projects. One example is the plan to move vast quantities of water from the southern Yangtze River to the northern Yellow River through a series of grand aqueducts carved through mountainsides and etched across deserts; the eastern leg of the project has already been built, but subsequent stretches appear, many argue, to be geologically and financially unsound. Yang Yong, an independent Chinese geologist who has studied some of the engineering pitfalls of the current proposals, estimates that there may be better ways to approach the dilemma: “You can get more water through better conservation measures than actually building the South-to-North Water project,” he said.

Indeed, China is starting to emphasize conservation. The city government of Beijing last December announced price hikes of 8 percent on residential water use, one of a series of such increases across the country recently designed to discourage household water waste. As Julian Wong, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, observes: “Natural resource inputs have long been underpriced in China. Conservation measures are going to be a priority in the coming years.”

Currently the greatest culprit of water waste in China is the agricultural sector, which accounts for more than two-thirds of all water use. Yet up to 45 percent of that water disappears before it reaches farmers — evaporating off the surface of open canals, seeping into the dirt walls of poorly constructed rural diversions, or being literally skimmed off the top by any number of unaccounted-for water users, according to research by Christine Boyle, a recent Fulbright fellow at the Chinese Academy of Science’s Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy. She points out that when it comes to water management in China, “there are a lot of moving parts, but not a lot of oversight.”

The reasons for such water waste include poor rural infrastructure (every village or district is responsible for maintaining its irrigation infrastructure, and some have little money for repairs); lack of coordination between governing bodies; and lack of measurements or accountability to tell where, precisely, water is being lost.

Recognizing the problem is the first step to fixing it. As Professor Wang told me in Beijing, “First we have to change people’s minds – then our systems.”

Image Credit: Colegota

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360

Plastiki expedition leader David de Rothschild talks about the challenges--and opportunities--of running an environmental education campaign from the middle of the Pacific on a boat made out of plastic bottles.

As the Plastiki cruises into Sydney today after a journey of 130 days and 8,000 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco, the crew might be a bit weathered and worn--as may be the one-of-a-kind sailboat made largely out of two-liter plastic soda bottles--but the crew's spirits are higher than ever.

I had a chance to talk with the expedition leader David de Rothschild aboard The Plastiki via Skype as the boat made one last pit-stop before its final leg to Sydney on Monday. The British adventurer and environmentalist, de Rothschild has made it his current mission to bring attention to the scourge of single-use plastic bottles.

With the job of bringing attention to the plastic bottle issue made a bit more difficult by the fact that the crew was bobbing around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a boat made of puffed-up plastic soda bottles, I asked de Rothschild about the technical hurdles of running a wired environmental campaign in such a challenging work setting.

"From the very start of the project one of the expedition's biggest concerns was the harsh environment," said de Rothschild.

Relaying one scenario that played itself out several times over the trip, de Rothschild, who was almost constantly writing, communicating, and uploading photos and other content during the trip, explains, "You'll be sitting there writing a blog a memo or a book, all of a sudden a wave will come smash down the side of the boat and these two streams of water will come bursting through the window. And if you're unlucky you get saltwater in your face and your laptop just gets nailed."

"It's like someone punching you in the face with a bucket of water," said de Rothschild, adding that the constant threat of the ocean looming outside have had an impact on his behavior. "I've become a backup freak," said de Rothschild. "And the message has just rocketed."

But from the cold and foggy San Francisco Bay to the 100-degree heat and high humidity of the equatorial Line Islands, the team and the equipment stayed operating like a well-oiled communications machine. In terms of the on-board technology's impact on the mission, de Rothschild was adamant. "It's totally changed it, man," he told me with an unmistakable tone of dead-seriousness and awe. "This mission is only possible because of the technology we have on board."

The mission was about taking advantage of the opportunity of having a "disproportional impact" on society and behavior and "sharing the expedition in the most interactive, instantaneous-feedback way."

"We've been able to do live Skype chats with schools all over the world. We've been doing live feeds to massive news agencies from Oprah to Al Jazeera to CNN... And the message has just rocketed," says de Rothschild enthusiastically.

When asked about the true impact of this adventure, de Rothschild says we'll have to wait ten years. "And those kids that have talked to us on the boat, ask them what they do. Ask them what they believe in. Ask them about their values. I guarantee, out of those 15, 20 kids in every classroom, there's maybe two or three who you know have changed paths because of this project who are now marine biologists or ocean scientists or inventors and engineers."

Buoyed by the response, de Rothschild said, "I've been overwhelmed. It sent my benchmark of what's possible through the roof.

"I'm like, anything's possible now."

The Plastiki will be moored at Australian National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour for a month and will be open to visitors on Sunday August 1st.

Reprinted with permission from Ecopolitology

Primatologist Patricia Wright has spent the past 25 years studying — and protecting — Madagascar’s rich yet highly threatened biodiversity. Now, as many of the island’s remaining forests are being felled in the wake of a 2009 coup, Wright describes how she is helping organize the local residents and international conservation organizations to fight back.

Patricia Wright has devoted most of her professional life to working on Madagascar, home to a remarkable collection of plants and animals, more than 80 percent of which are endemic to the island nation. For more than two decades, Wright has managed to combine her research — among other things, she discovered two new species of lemurs on Madagascar — with efforts to preserve the country’s beleaguered forests and the many species of flora and fauna they harbor. She was the driving force behind the 1991 creation of Ranomafana National Park, a 106,000-acre World Heritage Site in southeastern Madagascar that has been instrumental in preserving the island’s biodiversity, which evolved as Madagascar was separated from other landmasses for 80 million years.

Earlier this decade, Wright and scores of other scientists, conservationists, and local activists made significant progress in slowing the rampant deforestation of Madagascar — roughly 90 percent of the island’s forests and ecosystems had already been denuded — and in building a thriving ecotourism sector. But in the wake of a March 2009 coup by local politician Andry Rajoelina, the destruction of Madagascar’s forests has resumed with a vengeance. One of Rajoelina’s first acts was to lift a ban on the harvesting of precious hardwoods, such as rosewood and ebony, and that decree — coupled with rampant illegal logging in some national parks — has led to the felling of tens of thousands of trees, a surge in bushmeat hunting for lemurs and other species, and a drop in ecotourism, which is vital to Madagascar’s economy.

In an interview with journalist Steven Kotler for Yale Environment 360, Wright — a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, executive director for the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments, and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius award” — describes what she and others are doing to halt the current plunder before it’s too late. Wright has helped publicize the recent wave of destruction in the world press, has presented information on the decimation of Madagascar’s forests to the U.S. government, and has worked with local activists in Madagascar to halt the illegal logging.

The actions by Wright and others have had some effect, with the Rajoelina government issuing a decree in April banning the logging of precious hardwoods. Yet some illegal logging continues, with a shipment of banned hardwoods leaving Madagascar recently, bound for China. Still, Wright, who just returned from Madagascar, is pressing her fight to save Madagascar’s remaining wilderness, pushing for a genuine halt in logging, backing programs to reforest the island with native species, and working on initiatives worldwide to create meaningful incentives to preserve tropical forests. “Right now there are laws all over the tropics that say once you cut [the] forest, you own it,” she says. “We have to reverse that somehow.”

Yale Environment 360: How important is Madagascar to science?

Patricia Wright: Madagascar is unique. It’s the fourth-largest island in the world and it’s been isolated for [tens of millions of] years. That’s a long time for evolution to take its course. So the things that have happened in Madagascar are very important for us to understand because it’s in a very special position. Only certain animals arrived on Madagascar. You don’t have any ungulates or any woodpeckers — instead you have lots of lemurs. It’s the only place to go if you want to understand these rare ecosystems.

e360: Before Rajoelina came to power, if you had to assess the state of Madagascar’s ecological health, what would you say?

Wright: The state of Madagascar’s ecological health was actually improving. It’s one of the success stories in all of the conservation world. Because of big inputs from conservation agencies — U.S. AID [Agency for International Development], the European Union — the infrastructure of the country improved. The protected areas were being protected. Everything looked really optimistic for keeping the island’s forests in place.

e360: And now? What’s the impact of the current political situation on the island’s flora and fauna?

Wright: That’s the problem with a coup d'etat: Everyone assumes they can literally take anything they want. So we have major rosewood being extracted from the beautiful forests in the north. We have a certain amount of lawlessness that’s going on, also in the north. Inside protected areas, the National Park Service [rangers] abandoned their posts because they were afraid. They’ve since returned, but it’s been a very difficult year for protecting wildlife.

e360: So what does all this rosewood logging jeopardize?

Wright: It’s a beautiful rainforest that’s being pillaged, where 13 to 15 species of lemur live, and the chameleons come from. [Madagascar is home to about half of the world’s 150 chameleons, with 59 species existing nowhere else.] Many of Madagascar’s endemic birds live here, too. This used to be the biggest tract of pristine forest in the eastern rainforest. But thousands, maybe millions, of logs came out of there last year.

e360: Rosewood is a rare hardwood we’re all supposed to be avoiding — so who’s doing all the buying?

Wright: My sources are saying it’s going mostly to Asia, to China.

e360: Mongabay.com proposed a three-part plan to end the logging crisis: An absolute moratorium on logging; an amnesty program for traders; and a reforestation program funded by the sales of illegal timber. Would it work?

Wright: It takes a long time to regrow a rainforest. We know from studies in Ranomafana, where there was some timber exploitation in the 1980s, that these forests can recover — so there’s no question about that anymore. But it takes a long time. Even after 25 years we’re still seeing the damage in things like the reproduction of the lemurs. But the damage has already been done, and we can’t go backwards. Reforestation with native trees has to be part of the plan. I think it’s the way to go.

e360: Along the same lines, there’s a new paper in Science calling for rosewood to be added to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora [CITES] list. But would this even do any good considering the current situation?

Wright: Again, it would be a step in the right direction.

e360: Are foreign governments applying any pressure to stop hardwood exportation?

Wright: There has been some, but not enough to make an impact. In the U.S., we have been putting pressure on anyone who buys rosewood from Madagascar to stop, but as far as I know there hasn’t been major pressure put on China.

e360: There have also been reports that the bushmeat trade has risen significantly because of the crisis — what have you found on the ground?

Wright: With the lawlessness, people are not obeying the rules. In Madagascar, obviously, it’s against the law to kill lemurs. They’re an endangered species, some of them critically endangered. But the loggers are also hungry, so they’re buying bushmeat for cash. The people of Madagascar are poor and need the money. So without any kind of enforcement of the law, there’s more poaching than we’ve ever seen before. And lemurs are primates, and primates don’t reproduce often — or every year. This means the bushmeat trade will make a major impact on lemur populations in the future.

e360: There are also roving bands of armed thugs running around the national parks — especially in the north — scaring off tourism. Your park, Ranomafana, is not in the north, but have you seen an impact?

Wright: Well, the Madagascar National Park service has put a ban on anybody going into the forest at night because of security problems. Now we don’t have any security problems at Ranomafana, but it does impact our research on nocturnal lemurs. So we have had to make special cases for our work.

e360: You’ve taken a very bottom-up approach at Ranomafana, where you’ve employed and educated a large chunk of the local population. Do you feel that Ranomafana is more protected because you’ve worked so closely with the locals?

Wright: Yes, I think so. We now, at our research station, employ 71 people full-time, with benefits. Each of those people represents a good-sized extended family. And that helps. When I first returned to Madagascar after the coup, the mayor [of Ranomafana] asked to see me. They had held a meeting with all the gendarmes and the traditional leaders and voted to keep this forest intact, to not allow in the problems they’ve been having in the north. We’ve also been working with very remote villages and even those villages have a feeling that this park — these forests — are protecting their watersheds and that the tourism and research in this forest have resulted in a big economic increase for them.

These days, I see people on bicycles in Ranomafana. I see houses improving and people putting their kids through college. This is something they couldn’t afford in the past. It’s really gratifying after 20 years to see that this does make a difference, but it sure does take a long time. Progress is slow, but progress is there. And the people in this region do understand that it’s the national park that has given them this opportunity to increase their income. It’s a good thing...

e360: You have a different relationship with the environment than most conservationists. As a primatologist — especially because lemurs are so long-lived — you’ve been studying the same families of animals since you’ve gotten to Madagascar, so you have intimate and personal relationships with some of these animals. Does that make it harder when they’re threatened?

Wright: I do have a long-term study, now over 25 years. And many lemurs live to over 30. So many of these animals I’ve known for a long, long time. And they do become your friends. You’re following them through the forest and you get involved in the soap opera of their lives: who’s fighting with who, and which teenagers are going to exit the group, and what does that mean, not only for the ones who are leaving, but for newcomers who are entering it. We have predation events that occur. They’re very tragic to the families of lemurs, and we feel sad to see some of our friends no longer with us. Having gone through a lot with these animals, I do feel really close to them. The one thing I don’t want is for them to be further threatened by deforestation and hunting. Every day, when I wake up, it’s my goal to make sure that doesn’t happen.

e360: You did something a little unprecedented in response to the crisis — you got all the environmental groups on the island to work together. How exactly did you pull that off?

Wright: It’s a very important part of what’s happened this last year that’s been a collaborative effort. We started early on, when we first heard about the danger to the rosewood.

e360: What did you do exactly?

Wright: First, I alerted the press, and also some of the conservation groups. Then we started organizing against the slaughter. Everybody came together. The first meeting was held at the World Wildlife Fund’s office. Then we put together a document that was published in the newspaper, presented to the government, given to the press, and also given to the U.S. Congress. It was our way of letting the world know that this last remaining rosewood forest was being pillaged.

e360: And you were successful, sort of. In April, 2010, the transitional government signed a decree banning the logging of precious hardwoods. But a shipment of rosewood just left Madagascar for China. So what gives?

Wright: It’s been very difficult because the current government seems to be going in one direction — towards stopping the exploitation of the forests — and suddenly they reverse their verdict. I think this latest reversal took place after they met with the loggers. Either way, the wood got sent to China. It was very discouraging.

e360: Even more discouraging, the European Union voted in early June to suspend all aid to Madagascar. What does that mean both for the Malagasy and for the island’s environment?

Wright: The European Union has been in conversations with the government since last July about having legitimate elections, but nothing happened. So on June 1, the EU decided they have no recourse but to cut off aid to Madagascar. What does that mean? Well, Madagascar pretty much runs on aid. The EU and the U.S. government have both been instrumental in making the kind of economic progress Madagascar has made in the past five to eight years. It’s amazing, really. It used to be that 80 percent of Madagascar lived below the poverty line; now that’s down to 60 percent. The roads have all been fixed. The tourism industry has been booming. Then suddenly, because of the coup, everything has been put on hold...

e360: Considering how many other biodiversity hot spots are now threatened — and given the limited supply of capital for protecting such places — has the time come to make a global priority list?

Wright: I think so. This is not just Madagascar’s problem. There are forests everywhere that are threatened. If we don’t take this seriously, we’re going to have big problems in the future with climate change, loss of biodiversity. This is supposedly the year of biodiversity, yet we’re finding that the world’s conservation agencies haven’t fulfilled their promise. We haven’t been able to stop loss of biodiversity by 2010. So I think we need to revisit these old issues in a more realistic way. It’s time for these agencies to join together to make a plan that governments of the world take seriously.

e360: This raises a deeper question about the nature of protected landscapes. You created Ranomafana, which became a World Heritage Site in 2007. The whole purpose of designating something essential to the planet’s scientific/cultural heritage is in order to protect it. Is it time we actually had some muscle behind World Heritage Sites?

Wright: Yes. The designation, calling something a World Heritage Site, is important. And not just for Madagascar — for the whole world. But we need some teeth behind those declarations. There’s money for crisis situations when a World Heritage Site is threatened — but I haven’t seen any action. Two of the sites that have been pillaged for rosewood in Madagascar are also World Heritage Sites. They should be receiving that emergency aid.

e360: So can that money be used for protection? Can you use it to hire armed guards?

Wright: I think so — and just releasing those funds would put pressure on the Malagasy government. We need to treat these situations more seriously. As if a country was invaded. This wildlife that’s being eliminated can’t be replaced easily. You can’t get these forests back easily. It’s going to take hundreds of years.

e360: So we need new ways to protect species?

Wright: We have to think up something that’s going to work a little better in the future than what we’ve done in the past. There has been a sea change in how we treat protected areas in the last 20 years. We’ve started to work with the local people — and not just for a year or two years. Rather, working with them for a very long time — training them, capacity building, making their lives better. And making them understand that it’s the protection of the forest that makes their lives better... We have to make sure there’s funding for this because it seems to be very successful. But we have to be very careful and make sure we evaluate what is going on. We’ve had instances in Madagascar when the forest was handed over to the local people, and they just sold it to the timber operators. So you have to be sure people understand what their responsibility is.

We also have to think about reforestation with native species. We have to be thinking about what’s going to be happening to these forests in 50 years, in 100 years. One of the most optimistic things for me is that we had replanted rainforest trees in the 1990s in areas that had been slashed and burned. I didn’t think these trees would actually grow. Now we’re seeing them, 15, 20 years later, fruiting and flowering and doing well. That means the lemurs can come back. And they’ll increase the forest by doing their job of seed dispersal. Pretty soon we’ll have more and more forest being reforested by the lemurs. This reforestation is very important, and not just for our carbon footprint. Ninety percent of the forest in Madagascar has been destroyed already — and destroyed to the point that no one can live on it because the soil has been depleted of its nutrition. To get that nutrition back you’ve got to have the forest doing it. Once you have the forest growing up, you get this replenishing below. But in order to do that, you first need to convince the population that it’ll mean something to them. And we have several new programs giving incentives to local people to keep their forest.

It’s very important, incentives to keep the forest rather than cutting it. Right now there are laws all over the tropics that say once you cut your forest you own it. Logging is encouraged by the governments. We have to reverse that somehow. We need laws and compensation for preserving forests and biodiversity.

e360: Does that also mean we need some kind of centralized authority overseeing various conservation projects — a way to give all of these protected ecosystems a solid voice?

Wright: I think the time has come, but that’s a very complex endeavor. You don’t want to add a layer of bureaucracy and slow things down even more, but you do want an effective coalition that’s worldwide. But we’ve reached the point that we’re ready for it. We weren’t back in 1993, when we had our first worldwide biodiversity conference in Rio. Since then we’ve learned a lot. We’ve gathered incredible amounts of data. We have to use that data, put it together, and make a plan.

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360

Greenies tout that one of the best ways to help save the Environment is to utilize the public transportation system. Well, Amsterdam Metro gets this stunning makeover which should encourage riders to ride more often. Theses creative and stunning designs are truly a work of art.

Dutch design group Million Dollar Design won a competition to give a 30-year-old Amsterdam metro train a face-lift. Taking a worn-out grey background as a canvas, they transformed an old subway car into an incredible underwater world! Mermaids, sea turtles, eels, and octopuses are only a few creatures seen in this colorful fantasy.

The underwater theme is soothing relief to the concrete tubes and metal boxcars. I love how they incorporated the powerful and wondrous nature of the ocean to urban technology. What a treat for Amsterdamians and millions of travelers that visit this progressive and artistic city. Another great reason to celebrate public transpo. I am sure this will inspire other cities to revamp their metros and trains.

Reprinted with permission from Green Building Elements