Each sand-filled plastic bottle weighs three kilogrammes - Photo: AFP

The idea undoubtedly seemed strange at first: take the plastic water bottles that litter Nigeria’s roads, canals and gutters and allow people to [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 07 Nov 2011

Each sand-filled plastic bottle weighs three kilogrammes - Photo: AFP

The idea undoubtedly seemed strange at first: take the plastic water bottles that litter Nigeria’s roads, canals and gutters and allow people to live inside them.

Not literally, but almost.

What a group of activists did was come up with a plan to build a house using those bottles, providing what they say is an environmentally smart strategy of chipping away at a housing shortage in Africa’s most populous nation.

With the prototype near the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna now well underway, the group wants to extend its efforts and build more, aiming to unleash what they say is some long bottled-up potential.

Unconvinced? Supporters say those yet to see the structure on the outskirts of the village of Sabon Yelwa can throw stones if they want to. This house is being built to last.

“This is the first house in Africa built from bottles, which could go a long way in solving Nigeria’s huge housing need and cleaning the badly polluted environment,” project initiator Christopher Vassiliu said during a tour of the building.

It is in many ways a marvel to look at. The project was initiated by the Kaduna-based NGO Development Association for Renewable Energies (DARE), with help from foreign experts from Africa Community Trust, a London-based NGO.

Sitting on 58-square metres , the two-bedroom bungalow looks like an ordinary home, but it differs in many ways. When completed, the house whose construction started in June will be used to train masons in building such structures.

It is made from capped, sand-filled plastic bottles, each weighing three kilogrammes, or nearly two pounds.

The bottles are stacked into layers and bonded together by mud and cement, with an intricate network of strings holding each bottle by its neck, providing extra support to the structure.

Bottle caps of various colours protrude from the cement-plastered walls, giving them a unique look. Those behind the project claim the sand-filled bottles are stronger than ordinary cinder blocks.

“The structure has the added advantage of being fire proof, bullet proof and earthquake resistant, with the interior maintaining a constant temperature of 18 degrees C which is good for tropical climate,” Yahaya Ahmad, the project coordinator said.

With the right adjustments to the supporting pillars the building can be as high as three stories, but can go no higher due to the weight of the sand-filled bottles, Ahmad said.

Situated amidst an expansive irrigation farm, the building consists of a rotunda-shaped living room which connects to the interior via a short corridor.

Two rooms stand opposite with a bathroom and a toilet between them. A side door leads to an open courtyard and the kitchen.

The house is also designed to produce zero carbon emissions as it will be wholly powered by solar panels and methane gas from recycled human and animal waste.

“Nigeria has a serious waste and energy problem, and this project is one small step towards making positive changes,” said Katrin Macmillan, a British environmental activist involved in the project.

“Plastic bottles take hundreds of years to bio-degrade in landfills.”

Construction, which has reached 70 percent completion, is estimated to require 14,000 bottles. Huge piles of empty plastic bottles litter the site from donations from embassies, hotels and restaurants.

Environmental experts say Nigeria, a country of some 160 million, throws out about three million plastic bottles daily.

The country is also grappling with a deficit of 16 million housing units that requires a staggering 45 trillion naira ($300 billion) to meet, according to Nigeria’s Federal Mortgage Bank.

Plastic houses are cheap to construct as it costs a quarter of the money required to build a conventional house, said Vassiliu, a Greek national who has been working in Nigeria as a water drilling engineer for 30 years.

The project is to cost two million naira ($12,700), Vassiliu said.

A second plastic bottle project is due to commence in January at a primary school in need of more classrooms in the town of Suleja near Nigeria’s capital Abuja.

“The project would take 200,000 bottles out of landfills into education”, said Macmillan.

By: Aminu Abubakar
- Sapa-AFP

Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 02 Aug 2011

South Africa hopes to cut its carbon emissions 34 percent by 2020, Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa says.

Building coal-fired power stations would not affect this, as cutting emissions did not [...]]]>

Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 02 Aug 2011

South Africa hopes to cut its carbon emissions 34 percent by 2020, Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa says.

Building coal-fired power stations would not affect this, as cutting emissions did not happen in an instant, but required space and time, she told reporters in Pretoria.

The rolling out of renewable sources of energy, including wind, was “well underway”.

Cutting emissions would be achieved through “nationally appropriate mitigation actions” in the transport, agriculture and energy sectors.

“The extent to which this commitment is achieved depends on the provision of finance, technology and capacity building support by developed countries, and through the United Nations climate change regime,” she said.

Molewa and International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane were briefing journalists about the upcoming climate change conference in Durban.

Nkoana-Mashabane said the country was ready to host the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s 17th Conference of Parties in Durban from November 28 to December 9.

“South Africa is very much on schedule, if not ahead. We are hoping for a balanced outcome, one that is fair, equitable and inclusive,” she said of preparations for the conference.

Source: Times Live

South Africa, which will host the next round of United Nations (UN) climate change talks in Durban in November, said on Wednesday that the Kyoto Protocol should be extended.

Durban cannot be the [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 23 April 2011

South Africa, which will host the next round of United Nations (UN) climate change talks in Durban in November, said on Wednesday that the Kyoto Protocol should be extended.

Durban cannot be the death of the Kyoto Protocol

South African environment minister Edna Molewa told the media at the South African parliament in Cape Town that South Africa does not want the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to be the end of the Kyoto Protocol.

The South African government views continuation of the protocol as critical, the South African Press Association (SAPA) reported her as saying.

The Kyoto Protocol is a 1997 international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The first commitment period of the agreement expires in 2012.

COP17 aims to build on agreements reached during COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico. It also hopes to establish a new global climate change regime.

“That period is quite critical for all of us, because in the Kyoto Protocol we carry the rules of operations, the rules of agreement, and none of us would like to lose those rules of operation,” Molewa said.

Molewa said there are very serious ongoing discussions with other countries.

However, some developed countries did not want to get into the second commitment of the Kyoto Protocol.

“We are negotiating, we are pushing hard. We believe that this is an area that we can’t leave unattended, and something’s got to come out of Durban, without having Durban being the death of the Kyoto Protocol, because that we wouldn’t want to happen,” she said.

South Africa also feels there must be a distinction between developed and emerging economies.

Molewa said emerging economies must be given the space and time to develop.

The minister also said South Africa will push harder to increase action by countries on controlling their carbon emissions.

Other issues that had “fallen through the cracks”, including carbon “equity” and the two-track commitment to actions, would also be pursued, she said.

Source:  China.org.cn

Global warming is a looming threat to stability and national security around the world, and militaries should spend some of their ever-expanding budgets on reducing carbon emissions to avoid “climate chaos,” the U.N.’s top [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 16 February 2011

Global warming is a looming threat to stability and national security around the world, and militaries should spend some of their ever-expanding budgets on reducing carbon emissions to avoid “climate chaos,” the U.N.’s top climate official said Tuesday.

Much of the funding for the growth of armies could help curb carbon emissions that fuel global warming

Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. climate secretariat, warned of the destabilizing effects created by growing water stress, declining crop yields and damage from extreme storms in some of the world’s poorest countries, which could set off mass international migration and regional conflicts.

Figueres said the world’s military budgets grew by 50 percent in the first nine years of this century. Rather than continue that growth in weaponry, she said, the generals should invest in preventative budgets to “avoid the climate chaos that would demand a defense response that makes even today’s spending burden look light.”

She was speaking to Spanish legislators at the national defense college in Madrid. Her remarks were distributed by her office in Bonn, Germany.

Scientists and defense think tanks have warned for years of the heightened military risks created by global warming. In 2007, the U.N. panel of climate scientists said hundreds of millions of Africans will face persistent drought and food insecurity over the next decades that could prompt many to abandon ancestral homes.

Other U.N. academics reported last year that in 2008 alone 20 million people were displaced by sudden climate disasters, at least temporarily, and gradual climate changes over the next 40 years could cause 200 million people — and perhaps up to 1 billion — to migrate.

Figueres said much of the funding that pays for the growth of armies today could help curb carbon emissions that fuel global warming. It also could help poor countries in the most vulnerable and unstable parts of the world to protect themselves from the most devastating effects of climate change.

Militaries should pursue their historic role as technology innovators, she said. “This is an opportunity for the military industry to become the cutting edge of clean technologies that are urgently needed.”

She cited estimates by the U.S. Defense Department that it costs $400 per gallon to supply gasoline to NATO military forces in Afghanistan, and protecting the fuel convoys is a major cause of casualties. Some military bases have begun using solar power to help cut the need to truck in liquid fuels, but the experiments are limited.

Source: Yahoo News

An architect of Australia’s stalled climate-change policy has linked the nation’s recent natural disasters with global warming and called for a new political push to cut carbon emissions.

Cyclone Yasi - just a [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 06 February 2011

An architect of Australia’s stalled climate-change policy has linked the nation’s recent natural disasters with global warming and called for a new political push to cut carbon emissions.

Cyclone Yasi - just a taste of what could come.

Ross Garnaut, releasing updated advice to the government, said extreme weather events like massive Cyclone Yasi, which hit the northeast coast on Thursday, and recent floods were just a taste of what would come if climate change went unchecked.

“The greater energy in the atmosphere and the seas can intensify extreme events and I’m afraid that we’re feeling some of that today, and we’re feeling that at a time when global warming is in its early stages,” he said in a speech late on Thursday.

Australia accounts for 1.5 percent of global emissions but is one of the world’s top per-capita polluters because of its reliance on coal for around 80 percent of power generation.

Canberra has delayed plans to force polluters to pay for carbon-emission permits on an open market and has instead set up a committee to find the best way of putting a price on carbon.

Greens and independent MPs are involved in developing the new policy, with other options such as an interim carbon tax also being considered.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday reaffirmed a commitment to pricing carbon pollution, likening the move to key economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s and saying the move would lead to a new technological revolution in Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper has said the government is moving toward the Greens idea of a hybrid carbon-trade plan, with an initial fixed price on carbon pollution until a full carbon market could be established.

The government’s previous carbon-trade plan proposed an initial set price of around A$1 a tonne, before moving to a market price, and emission cuts of at least 5 percent of year 2000 levels by 2020. The Greens want cuts of 25 to 40 percent.

In Europe, the world’s largest carbon market, prices have been trading around 14.50 euros ($19.70) per tonne.

Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has previously played down the benefits of a carbon tax, saying a carbon trade scheme would give more certainty on cuts to emissions. ($1 = 0.735 Euros)

Source: Reuters

By 2030, climate change will indirectly cause nearly one million deaths a year and inflict 157 billion dollars in damage, according to estimates presented at UN talks on Friday.

Poor countries will face [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 04 December 2010

By 2030, climate change will indirectly cause nearly one million deaths a year and inflict 157 billion dollars in damage, according to estimates presented at UN talks on Friday.

Poor countries will face acute exposure to climate change

The biggest misery will be heaped on more than 50 of the world’s poorest countries, but the United States will pay the highest economic bill, it said.

“In less than 20 years, almost all countries in the world will realise high vulnerability to climate impact as the planet heats up,” the report warned.

The study, compiled by a humanitarian research organisation and climate-vulnerable countries, assessed how 184 nations will be affected in four areas: health, weather disasters, the loss of human habitat through desertification and rising seas, and economic stress.

Those facing “acute” exposure are 54 poor or very poor countries, including India. They will suffer disproportionately to others, although they are least to blame for the man-made greenhouse gases that drive climate change, it said.

“Without corrective actions” a press release accompanying the study said, the world is “headed for nearly one million deaths every single year by 2030.”

More than half of the 157 billion dollars in economic losses, calculated in terms of today’s economy, will take place in industrialised countries, led by the United States, Japan and Germany.

But the cost to their GDP will proportionately be far lower than for poor countries.

The peer-reviewed report was issued by DARA, a Madrid-based NGO, and by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a coalition of island nations and other countries that are most exposed to climate change.

Saleemul Huq, a researcher at a London-based thinktank, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), said the findings spelled out the need to start shoring up defenses against climate change now, rather than later.

“We are now entering into a highly vulnerable phase of our planet’s existence and humanity’s existence,” Huq told a press conference.

“No amount of (greenhouse-gas) mitigation will prevent at least another 0.7 degree (Celsius, 1.26 degrees Fahrenheit) of temperature rise over the next two decades,” he said.

“In the last century we have already seen a 0.7 degree (1.26 F) rise. So we are headed for 1.4 (2.5 F) almost certainly.

“If emissions carry on their current pathway then we may in the longer term be headed for three or four degrees (5.4-7.2 F), which is practically impossible for everybody to adapt to.

“But at the lower level, we can do a lot by adapting to the impacts of climate change, to prepare for them.”

The November 29-December 10 talks in Cancun gather the 194 parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), tasked with crafting a deal to roll back global warming and its impacts after 2010.

Among the long list of problems they face is how to muster funds to tackle climate change — and decide how much of the money should be allocated for adapting to the threat, and how much to reduce carbon emissions.

So far, adaptation has been given far less priority than emissions mitigation, say campaigners.

“When you know your car has a brake problem, you do not sit around and talk about it. You fix it immediately before the kids get in,” commented Wendel Trio of Greenpeace.

“No one escapes from the climate crisis, old or young, rich or poor, unless we all act together now.”

Previous studies into climate vulnerability have been more narrowly focussed and have a longer timeframe, looking at, for instance, the risks by 2100.

By focussing on what happens in a couple of decades, the report has a better chance of swaying policymakers, as these events are likely to happen within their lifetime, said former UNFCCC chief Michael Zammit Cutajar.

-AFP

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres urged the air transport industry on Thursday to press on with curbs on emissions, underlining that it held “critical keys” to tackling global warming.

Aviation produces an estimated two [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 19 September 2010

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres urged the air transport industry on Thursday to press on with curbs on emissions, underlining that it held “critical keys” to tackling global warming.

Aviation produces an estimated two percent of global emissions from human activity which “if left unchecked, will have further impacts on climate change,” Figueres told an industry conference on aviation and the environment.

“The world will continue to need a strong aviation industry but the high flying plane must also be a symbol of pro-active action to address climate change,” the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said.

“Your sector has been proactive and I welcome that… but we face major challenges and the aviation sector holds some critical keys,” Figueres added in a video message to the two-day gathering in Geneva.

Over the past three years, airlines under the wing of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), backed by the aerospace industry and airports, have set targets for cuts in carbon emissions.

They include 1.5 percent a year increases in fuel efficiency by 2020, carbon neutral growth thereafter and a 50 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.

Cuts are being sought through more efficient modern aircraft, better flight management and air traffic control and improvements in infrastructure, as well as the ongoing development of biofuels.

However, industry executives warned that they needed a global and coordinated approach from governments to issues such as aviation emissions, flight paths and to stimulate the nascent biofuels industry.

Paul Steele, head of the Air Transport Action Group, a joint lobby for airlines, airports and aircraft makers, said that 12,000 new aircraft would be needed at a cost of 1.3 trillion dollars to meet the 2020 target.

Carbon neutral growth “is probably the most crucial target and probably the most difficult one, and it’s certainly politically the most contentious one.”

“What we’re seeing emerge is… a fragmented approach,” he complained.

The industry is pressing the 190-nation International Civil Aviation Organisation to agree on a global framework on emissions at its assembly starting on September 28, before aviation and shipping are scrutinised at the UN climate conference in Cancun in December.

Source: Yahoo News

MTN is spending R22m to reduce carbon emissions at its headquarters by building a power plant fuelled by methane gas.

The “tri-generation” plant will produce 2MW of electricity and use an estimated 800 kilowatts of waste heat to air-condition the company’s [...]]]> Posted by: Yes Solar Cape (Cape Town, South Africa) – 12 August 2010

MTN is spending R22m to reduce carbon emissions at its headquarters by building a power plant fuelled by methane gas.

The “tri-generation” plant will produce 2MW of electricity and use an estimated 800 kilowatts of waste heat to air-condition the company’s buildings in SA, MTN said. MTN is applying to earn carbon credits from the project from the United Nation’s CDM programme.

MTN says it wants to migrate to alternative, cleaner sources of energy to “address environmental and commercial costs over the longer term.”

The company is currently looking at using solar, wind and hydrogen fuel cells to power its base transceiver stations in several African countries including Sudan, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Swaziland.

Generating its own energy also protects MTN from an unreliable electricity supply enabling it to roll out its services to areas off the grid, the firm said.

Source: Money Web

A meeting of the BASIC group, formed by Brazil, South Africa, India and China, ended on Monday without consensus on a unified plan to deal with the global climate change.

The group, which met in [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 27 July 2010

A meeting of the BASIC group, formed by Brazil, South Africa, India and China, ended on Monday without consensus on a unified plan to deal with the global climate change.

The group, which met in Rio over the weekend, tried to reach a common ground on the maximum limit of carbon emissions for developing countries, to be presented to the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference, which will take place in Cancun, Mexico, in November.

As they failed to reach a common ground, the four countries decided to hold another meeting in Beijing in October. According to Brazilian Environment Minister Izabela Teixeira, the countries expect to achieve a convergent position at the Beijing meeting so they can work together in Cancun.

In Beijing, the BASIC countries will discuss the impacts of the carbon emission reduction on the economic development of developing countries.

Teixeira stressed that the Rio meeting is the first talks attended by technical personnel from the BASIC countries.

The minister also highlighted the transparency of the conversations and the presentation of concrete figures on each country’s situation.

Source: Xinhua

A leading Dutch environmental agency, taking the blame for one of the glaring errors that undermined the credibility of a seminal U.N. report on climate change, said Monday it has discovered more small mistakes and [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 06 July 2010

A leading Dutch environmental agency, taking the blame for one of the glaring errors that undermined the credibility of a seminal U.N. report on climate change, said Monday it has discovered more small mistakes and urged the panel to be more careful.

Maeslantkering Storm Surge Barriers. 55 percent of Netherlands is prone to flooding. Photo: Ralph Hargarten

But the review by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency claimed that none of the errors effected the fundamental conclusion by U.N. panel of scientists: that global warming caused by humans already is happening and is threatening the lives and well-being of millions of people.

Mistakes discovered in the 3,000-page report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year fed into an atmosphere of scepticism over the reliability of climate scientists who have been warning for many years that human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases could have catastrophic consequences, including rising sea levels, drought and the extinction of nearly one-third of the Earth’s species.

The errors put scientists on the defensive in the months before a major summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December, which met with only limited success on agreeing how to limit carbon emissions and contain the worst effects of global warming.

The underlying IPCC conclusions remain valid, said Maarten Hajer, the Dutch agency’s director. The IPCC report is not a house of cards that collapses with one error, but is more like a puzzle with many pieces that need to fit together. “So the errors do not affect the whole construction,” he said at a news conference.

But he said the boiled-down version of the full IPCC report, a synthesis meant as a guideline for policymakers, included conclusions drawn from “expert judgments” that were not always clearly sourced or transparent.

With some conclusions, “we can’t say it’s plainly wrong. We don’t know,” and can’t tell from the supporting text, Hajer said. The IPCC should “be careful making generalizations.”

The IPCC, in a statement from its Geneva headquarters, welcomed the agency’s findings, which it said confirmed the IPCC’s conclusion that “continued climate change will pose serious challenges to human well-being and sustainable development.”

It said it will “pay close attention” to the agency’s recommendations to tighten up review procedures.

The Dutch agency accepted responsibility for one mistake by the IPCC when it reported in 2005 that 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level, when only 26 percent is. The report should have said 55 percent is prone to flooding, including river flooding.

The mistake happened when a long report was compressed into a short one, and two figures were meshed into one. “Something was lost, and it wasn’t spotted,” said Hajer.

“The incorrect wording in the IPCC report does not affect the message of the conclusion,” that the Netherlands is highly susceptible to sea level rise, the agency’s report said. “The lesson to be learned for an assessment agency such as ours is that quality control is needed at the primary level.”

The second previously reported error claimed the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, which the Dutch agency partly traced to a report on the likely shrinking of glaciers by the year 2350.

The review, which lasted five months, also found several other errors in the IPCC report on regional impacts of climate change — one of four separate IPCC reports in 2007 — although it said they were inconsequential.

The original report said global warming will put 75 million to 250 million Africans at risk of severe water shortages in the next 10 years, but a recalculation showed that range should be 90 million to 220 million, the agency said.

Another error it found involved the effect of wind turbulence on anchovy fisheries on Africa’s west coast.

The Dutch agency said it examined 32 conclusions in the summary for policy makers on the impact of climate change in eight regions.

“Our findings do not contradict the main conclusions of the IPCC,” the report said. “There is ample observational evidence of natural systems being influenced by climate change … (that) pose substantial risks to most parts of the world.”

It said future IPCC reports should have a more robust review process and should look more closely at where information comes from. It also recommended more investment in monitoring global warming in developing countries.

By: Arthur Max – AP