Saturday, October 18, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Keeping our Head Above Water
Rising Concern: Sea Level and the Effects of Climate Change in Puerto Rico
By Mónica Pérez Nevárez (published Aug 25, 2008 in Business Puerto Rico magazine)
[editors note: no pictures could be uploaded to this blog.]
“Hotter temperatures, sea-level rise and increased hurricane intensity threaten lives, property and livelihoods throughout the Caribbean. As ocean levels rise, the smallest, low-lying islands may disappear under the waves. As temperatures rise and storms become more severe, tourism—the life-blood of many Caribbean economies—will shrink and with it both private incomes and the public tax revenues that support education, social services, and infrastructure.”
Ramon Bueno, Cornelia Herzfeld, Elizabeth Stanton, and Frank Ackerman, The Caribbean and Climate Change: The Cost of Inaction, May 2008; a study by the Stockholm Environment Institute and the US Center Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, http://www.gdae.org/CaribbeanClimate.html
Of all the consequences of global warming that will affect island nations, the one Puerto Rico is least prepared to deal with is rising sea levels. And the island has not yet felt the oceanic encroachment as thoroughly as some other small countries have. Last year, the 1,500 inhabitants of the Carteret Islands of Papua New Guinea became the first environmental refugees in the world, and Tuvalu (Polynesia) sought and received an immigration accord with New Zealand in order to accommodate its 11,000 threatened inhabitants in the near future. So the world is already seeing the effects of global warming to small, low-lying islands. There are several studies that shed some light on Puerto Rico’s particular situation.
Sea Level Rise in Puerto Rico
Dr. Aurelio Mercado, UPRM Professor of Oceanography and Director of the Coastal Hazards Center relayed some eye-popping graphic renditions of what the metro and island coastlines would look like under normal (current seal level, 0m), 1 meter rise (3 feet), 2 meter rise (6 feet) and 3 meter rise (9 feet) scenarios. And remember, in low lying areas, for every vertical foot of rise, the sea takes away 100 horizontal feet of land.
Metropolitan San Juan from Piñones in the east to Vega Baja in the west under current conditions.
A three foot (1meter) rise in seal level turns Piñones into swampland, the San Juan Lagoon floods surrounding areas, the land adjacent to the Caño Martin Peña is lost, and large parts of Cataño, Toa Baja and Vega Baja are flooded.
A 6 foot (2m) rise in sea level creates an island out of Santurce, floods Luis Muñoz Marin Airport, Isla Grande Airport, the Cruise Ship docks and the Industrial/Commercial docks of Cataño and Puerto Nuevo. Most of coastal Vega Baja is below sea level, as well as great swathes of Toa Baja, Dorado and Manati.
In this island-wide graphic of a 1 meter rise, most of the coast from Luquillo to Arecibo north of the expressway will either be flooded or revert to swampland. This includes all the new hotel and residential development in Rio Grande, Loiza, Canovanas, and Carolina to the east of San Juan, and in Toa Baja, Dorado, Vega Baja, Manati, Barceloneta, and Arecibo to the west. The east coast of the island will lose low-lying areas of Fajardo, Naguabo, Ceiba and Humacao. The south coast would lose parts of Jobos Bay, Salinas, Santa Isabel, Ponce, Tallaboa Bay, Guayanilla Bay, La Parguera and Playa Sucia. The west coast would lose parts of Boqueron, Mayaguez Bay, Añasco Bay, Las Marias and Aguada.
At a 3 meter rise, most current sea-level areas of the island are under water. Viewed by some as an extreme scenario, scientists point out that if all of the polar ice melts, the rise in sea level could go much higher.
Source: Dr. Aurelio Mercado, NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center
In a recent email, Mercado explained that these graphics show only the effects of passive flooding, and that the effects of storm surges will speed up the process. He went on to write that a “6 – 7 meter rise is what would happen only if all of Greenland’s ice disappears. Notice that I don’t say “melts’ because the effect on Sea Level Rise (SLR) would be the same if it melts, or if it slides (unmelted) to the sea in the form of icebergs. If the latter, the effects would be felt much sooner than if we waited until it melts. This is called the “dynamic instability” of the Greeland inland ice sheet, and it is what experts say will decide if SLR is kept below 1 meter, or goes up to possibly several meters within a century. Further in the future, the same uncertainty holds true for the Antarctic ice sheets (which imply dozens more meters of SLR).”
Mercado continued by saying that his “ main message is that we should start seriously discussing and planning for these eventualities since the amount of people and infrastructure that will need to be relocated implies decades of work, and billions of dollars. And we need to reserve inland space to accommodate all of that. And there exists pre-historic evidence of SLR of several meters in less than a century, so history could repeat itself.”
Another issue Mercado is worried about is the at-risk coastal infrastructure such as the mega-yacht marina in San Juan Bay or the Ponce Superport. “Have they considered SLR in their planning? Should billion dollar investments, specially of public monies by the government, include SLR studies? I think they should, but I am not sure it is being done. Because the problem is that if you combine SLR with more frequent storms, then you don’t have to wait until sea level rises 1 meter before starting to feel the effects.” The question is valid for any type of coastal development, be it private or public.
“Another message I am trying to emphasize concerns the way we are “developing” our coastline. We are creating irreversible damage irrespective of whether SLR is below 1 m, or above 1 m. The way we are building is not sustainable, even though our Constitution demands it. We have not been struck by an intense hurricane since 1932, and we have become complacent. We are getting ourselves into a deep hole by “developing” this island in the absence of a study on possible SLR consequences. As the saying goes, ‘when in a hole, stop digging’. We have to stop building on the water. The same holds true when we think of earthquakes; the last big one was in 1918, and we build as if that possibility didn’t exist any more.”
We are Responsible
Unlike the smaller Pacific atoll islands, which have no cars or electricity and therefore did not perceptively contribute to global warming, Puerto Rico cannot claim such a distinction. Local EPA Director Carl Soderburg stated in his July 21, 2008 speech in the “Hybrids 101 Forum” that “Puerto Rico had the highest electrical consumption per square mile in the world, and the highest consumption of gasoline in Central America,” and since electricity on the island is based on burning fossil fuels, you can see how the island is responsible for its own contributions to climate change.
In this nighttime photograph, heat-sensitive film was used to capture the intensity of light emanating from cities. Puerto Rico outshines everything else in the Caribbean.
Source: World Atlas of the artificial night sky brightness by P. Cinzano, Dipartimento di Astronomia, Universita` di Padova, vicolo dell’Osservatorio Padova, Italy; F. Falchi , Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologia dell’Inquinamento Luminoso (ISTIL), Thiene, Italy C. D. Elvidge, Office of the Director, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80303, USA, website http://www.lightpollution.it/cinzano/download/0108052.pdf
Annual Energy Consumption in Puerto Rico:
1,089,200,000 gallons of gasoline
70,000,000 barrels of petroleum
3,952,000 megawatts of electricity
Source: Puerto Rico Environmental Protection Agency
If current plans are not changed, by 2017 electrical generation in Puerto Rico will break down this way: 32% from petroleum, 33% from natural gas and 33% from coal, or 98% dependency on fossil fuels. This means that in nine years, when the majority of other countries with similar economic structures are generating electricity from autochthonous renewable sources of energy, the island will still be paying foreign suppliers billions of dollars for most of its energy supply, and continue to pollute the environment. Source: AEE Executive Director Jorge Rodríguez
Miguel Rosa, spokesperson for Misión Industrial and an expert in environmental science and environmental health who also participated in the Hybrid 101 Forum stated that “we would need a country 44 times the size of our island in order to produce all that we consume, build all the infrastructure we plan and store all the waste we generate.” In other words, Puerto Rico would need a landmass the size of the state of California to be self-sufficient under current consumption patterns. He added that as for correcting the problem, he “thought it imprudent to do nothing; in fact, it’s criminal to do nothing.”
Geologic Time Frame and What Must be Done
The next question on everyone’s lips is: So, what time frame are we talking about? Is this going to happen this year? The good news is that no, it’s not going to happen this year. There are various estimates, and some scientists say that recent projections show much more rapid deterioration in the polar icecaps than previously thought. But all projections revolve around a time frame of 30 to 100 years, within our, or our children’s, lifetimes. In truth, that is the wrong question to ask, because once certain natural forces are set in motion they cannot be undone. The problem is, unless carbon emissions are lowered quickly, we may not be able to control nature’s feedback loops that multiply the effects of global warming. Most academics agree that the world has about a ten year window of opportunity before catastrophic temperature changes become unavoidable.
Mercado adds that “…as far as SLR is concerned, models predict that even if we lowered our production of Green House Gases (GHG) right away to year 2000 levels, the oceans will keep warming up, with the consequent SLR, for a few centuries more.” In other words, the atmosphere and oceans will still not be in equilibrium even if we reduced GHG levels by 80% right now. The only thing that we can do is avoid the catastrophic effects, not avoid sea level rise altogether. We cannot undo 100 years of air pollution in ten years, but we can mitigate the consequences.
Time is Running Out
For an explanation on the importance of the ten-year window of opportunity, here are some excerpts from Why We Can’t Wait ( http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2007/2007_Hansen_3.pdf ) from the May 7, 2007 edition of The Nation, written by Dr. James Hansen, physicist, adjunct professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, and director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science:
“There’s a huge gap between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known about global warming by those who need to know: the public and the policy-makers. We’ve had, in the past thirty years, one degree Fahrenheit of global warming. But there’s another one degree Fahrenheit in the pipeline due to gases that are already in the atmosphere. And there’s another one degree Fahrenheit in the pipeline because of the energy infrastructure now in place—for example, power plants and vehicles that we’re not going to take off the road even if we decide that we’re going to address this problem.” Estimates show that a 3 degree rise in temperature is all that is needed for the feedback loops to begin their inexorable magnification spiral.
“If we follow the path [of current CO2 emissions], even for another ten years, it guarantees that we will have dramatic climate changes that produce what I would call a different planet—one without sea ice in the Arctic; with worldwide, repeated coastal tragedies associated with storms and a continuously rising sea level; and with regional disruptions due to freshwater shortages and shifting climatic zones.”
The second question people always ask revolves around what can be done. Dr. Hansen has five recommendations for what should be implemented immediately:
• A moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture and sequester the CO2. By my estimation, that technology is probably five to ten years away. Coal fired power plants that do not capture and sequester CO2 are going to have to be bulldozed. That’s the only way we can keep CO2 from getting well into the dangerous level, because our consumption of oil and gas alone will take us close to the dangerous level.
• The only way we are going to prevent having an amount of CO2 that is far beyond the dangerous level is by gradually putting a price on emissions.
• We need energy-efficiency standards for building construction and vehicle efficiency standards. The technology to raise efficiency is readily achievable today, let’s make it compulsory.
• The fourth recommendation involves the question of ice-sheet stability. The west Antarctic ice sheet in particular is very vulnerable. If it collapses, that could yield a sea-level rise of sixteen to nineteen feet, possibly on a time scale as short as a century. This problem with the stability of ice sheets is so critical that it really should be looked at by a panel of our best scientists. Congress should ask the National Academy of Sciences to do a study on this and report its conclusions in very plain language.
• The final recommendation concerns how we have gotten into this situation in which there is a gap between what the relevant scientific community understands and what the public and policy- makers know. A fundamental premise of democracy is that the public is informed and that they’re honestly informed. There are at least two major ways in which this is not happening. One of them is that the public affairs offices of the science agencies are staffed at the headquarters level by political appointees. While the public affairs workers at the centers are professionals who feel that their job is to translate the science into words the public can understand, unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case for the political appointees at the highest levels. Another matter is Congressional testimony. I don’t think the Framers of the Constitution expected that when a technical government employee reports to Congress, his testimony would have to be approved and edited by the White House first. But that is the way it works now. Reform of communication practices is needed if our government is to function the way our Founders intended it to work. The global warming problem has brought into focus an overall problem: the pervasive influence of special interests on the functioning of our government and on communications with the public. It seems to me that it will be difficult to solve the global warming problem until we have effective campaign finance reform, so that special interests no longer have such a big influence on policy-makers.
So besides changing your light bulbs to fluorescents, conserving energy and resources, cutting down on waste, lobbying for the creation of an efficient island-wide mass transportation grid and buying a fuel efficient car, everyone needs to get involved in the process, become part of the solution, and demand political action. A new Land Use Plan that takes into account SLR is needed. All agricultural lands should be set aside and developed exclusively for local food production. In the construction and tourism industries, standards should be set up for green building, and all new construction should have some level of LEEDS (green building) certification, including homes, hotels and office buildings. For those individuals that can afford to do so, installing passive solar or wind turbines to run home electrical needs will guarantee their household energy needs will be met. But most importantly, people should begin thinking in terms of creating a sustainable local economy, with local businesses serving local clients.
At What Cost?
The third question everyone asks, and the one that concerns Puerto Rican business most, is how much is this going to cost? Ramon Bueno, a Puerto Rican researcher and policy analyst with the Tufts University-based U.S. branch of the Stockholm Environment Institute, wrote a study on the costs of inaction with Cornelia Herzfeld, Elizabeth Stanton, and Frank Ackerman titled The Caribbean and Climate Change: The Cost of Inaction, published last May and which can be downloaded from the web here: http://www.gdae.org/CaribbeanClimate.html . The study projects differential costs for the Caribbean region in general as well as for Puerto Rico in particular.
“For just three categories—increased hurricane damages, loss of tourism revenue, and infrastructure damages, the Caribbean’s annual cost of inaction is projected to total $22 billion annually by 2050 and $46 billion by 2100. These costs represent 10 percent and 22 percent, respectively, of the current Caribbean economy.” Ramon Bueno
Bueno uses numbers in his study that depict the difference between a high-impact scenario, one in which we carry on in business-as-usual manner and do not lower carbon emissions, and a low-impact scenario, where we reduce a considerable amount of our carbon emissions within the next ten years. So, while not stating the absolute billion-dollar cost that Sea Level Rise will have on the region and in Puerto Rico, he describes how much more expensive it will be if nothing is done. Bueno’s figures counter all of the naysayers when they say that alternative sources of energy are too expensive. If they take into account the amount of money we will have to spend in the worst case scenario, it is not as expensive to take care of the problem now, before it gets out of hand.
Puerto Rico’s Costs
“In Puerto Rico, most of the population lives in or near coastal zones, and most economic activity is located there as well, including most hotels, hospitals, and electric power plants. More than half of the population lives in the San Juan metropolitan area, a coastal city that is very close to sea level. A rise of three feet in sea level would flood large parts of the city. The cost of global climate inaction for Puerto Rico is projected to reach $2.5 billion annually by 2050 and exceeds $5 billion by 2100. These costs represent nearly three percent and six percent, respectively, of Puerto Rico’s current GDP.” Ramon Bueno
Mercado points out that we must also include the costs of rebuilding the island’s drainage systems because “as sea level rises it floods the pipes and makes it almost impossible for rainwater to drain off, and since it is predicted that storms will intensify, we will have an amount of rainfall that in the past would have taken several days to fall now falling in less than a day. For example, I have a photo showing how in a city in Hawaii, on a clear day, you open the manholes and see seawater already piling up just a few feet from the street level. And I have a movie showing how a street is regularly flooded by seawater during high tide.” So seawater would invade the drain pipes, and would not allow the efficient flow of waste water to reach the sea in the case of a storm. The waste water would remain over land for a much longer period of time, increasing health concerns for the population. In computing the costs of SLR, this secondary effect must be reflected, because SLR will make all existing drainage infrastructure ineffective or unworkable.
Puerto Rico—Cost of Inaction
(Differential cost: High-Impact minus Low-Impact Scenarios in terms of dollars)
Puerto Rico Cost of Inaction ($US Billions)
2025 2050 2075 2100
Storms 0.2 0.4 0.7 1.1
Tourism 0.2 0.5 0.7 1.0
Infrastructure 0.8 1.6 2.4 3.2
Total $1.2 $2.5 $3.8 $5.2
% Current GDP 1.4% 2.8% 4.4% 6.0%
Sources: Authors’ calculations. Amounts in 2007 dollars; percentages based on 2004 GDP.
Metro San Juan
A 1 meter rise in sea level would flood the eastern half of Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport, parts of Piñones, the shores of the San Juan Lagoon and the length of the Caño Marin Peña, parts of Ocean Park, the southern shores of the Condado Lagoon, the Port of San Juan and most of Cataño. For an interactive Google map of a 1 m rise, go to http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=18.2476,-65.9811&z=8&m=1.
A 2 meter rise in sea levels would extend the San Juan Lagoon to the point of making Santurce an island, would flood two thirds of the International Airport as well as Isla Grande Airport, the industrial docks, all of Cataño and parts of Puerto Nuevo and Bayamon. Ironically, sea level rise will most directly affect Puerto Rico’s transportation infrastructure and agrarian soils, as both airports in the metro area will be flooded, as well as all the ports, and many agricultural areas. This not only affects the travel industry, but as most of the goods consumed in the island are imported, it also affects the survival of the people living on the island. Much of the best agricultural land would become unusable, limiting the possibility of growing foodstuffs on the island.
Tangible Changes
If global warming continues unchecked, money that could be used for economic development or other services will instead be diverted to recovery efforts from the impacts of climate change.
Half of the island population is concentrated in coastal areas where, according to Bueno, “much of the infrastructure may not be able to withstand significantly stronger winds, deeper incursions from more forceful ocean surges, and heavier rains. The anticipated climate changes will accelerate the erosion of coastal beaches, land and protective mangroves. Coastal houses, hotels and other buildings, along with roads and other infrastructure are vulnerable, as are those who live and work there.”
“Despite greater precipitation during storms and other peak periods, more frequent and longer droughts are expected in parts of the Caribbean in this century,” Bueno states in his study. “Negative health impacts will include greater heat stress for vulnerable populations (such as the elderly), worse sanitation conditions from limited water supplies or contaminated water from floods, and conditions that can favor the spread of water and air-borne diseases, such as dengue fever, malaria, and diarrhea. Public health systems may not be adequate to face greater demands on their service.”
Higher temperatures will also have serious consequences for marine ecosystems. Important fisheries are at risk as their coral reef habitats are stressed by warmer waters and more acidic waters as the oceans become unable to absorb all the carbon in the atmosphere. During the summer of 2005, there was record bleaching of coral reefs throughout the Caribbean. Coral reefs in the area have also been under stress from increasing human impacts and development; now climate change emerges as a major new threat. Reefs are a vital part of the island’s economy, providing fishing grounds, coastal protection, and tourism opportunities.
Tourism contributes 15% of the Caribbean region’s national income, or gross domestic product (GDP). In 2004, regional tourism was a $28 billion industry and employed 2.4 million people; in Puerto Rico that same year saw 4.9 million visitors who spent $3 billion dollars on the island (source: Puerto Rico Tourism Company). The hospitality industry, of course, is entirely dependent on the existence of attractive beaches and other natural areas, and on comfortable weather. Cruise ship voyages, a market in which the Caribbean accounts for half of the global total, are vulnerable to climate impacts. Most tourists come from colder climates—over 80% come from the United States, Canada and Europe—and more of them might vacation closer to home if northern winters become milder in future decades, or if oil prices make it financially unfeasible to travel.
Food and Fuel
Lastly, energy and food security are pressing concerns for a region that is highly susceptible to rising world prices for fuel and food. Bueno writes that “about 90% of energy used in the Caribbean is derived from crude oil, which must be imported. As temperatures rise in a region that is normally warm to begin with, those who can afford to consume more electricity for air conditioning will do so, causing greater carbon emissions and raising the demand for energy even higher.”
“Food security is also of concern due to the vulnerability and limited scale of Caribbean agriculture, already facing uncertain impacts from temperature and precipitation changes. Many islands, including Barbados, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, are highly dependent on imported food and agricultural products, and very susceptible to changes in world food prices. Such prices may spike upwards as climate change exacerbates droughts and floods in the world’s major agricultural producing regions and oil prices soar.”
Bueno concludes that “the combination of strong local climate effects, low-lying island geography, and limited economic resources with which to create buffers against the worst climatic effects, makes the Caribbean region especially vulnerable.”
A Call to Action
Recently, Al Gore challenged the American nation to wean themselves off of fossil fuels entirely within the next ten years. His call echoes a small group of local political and academic sources, and many environmental groups, that are asking for the political conviction needed to make the necessary social and economic changes. “We face so many problems today: economic, environmental, high gasoline prices, high electricity prices, loss of jobs, loss of homes or mortgages, the banking collapse. We have tried to fix these problems the old way, one at a time, and that seems to have only made things worse. There are three intractable challenges that have a common thread running through them, deeply ironic in their simplicity: dangerous overreliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three challenges: economic, environmental, and national security. We are borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that equation has to change. If we pull on that common thread hard enough, we find that we have the answer to all of them right in our hands. The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuel.” Al Gore http://www.wecansolveit.org/
The Last Word
"’To those who say 10 years is not enough time, I respectfully ask them to consider what the world's scientists are telling us about the risks we face if we don't act in 10 years,’ Gore said. He's right. A number of scientists warn that the world has a decade at most to reverse the growth in greenhouse gas emissions, or risk catastrophic climate change. De-carbonizing our energy supply will require innovation, funding and sacrifice at every level of society. It will be long and arduous, and even if it works, we won't be rewarded with stirring film of a man on the moon. The spoils of this fight will be a world that will perhaps be less bad than it would have been had nothing been done.” http://permanentlyindignant.wordpress.com/category/peak-oil/
Hopefully in Puerto Rico people will heed the warning call and react in time.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
From Panic to Organic
The Food, Climate, & Energy Crisis: From Panic to Organic by Ronnie Cummins
* By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association/Grassroots Netroots Alliance, June 13, 2008
Rising food prices and shortages have joined the energy and climate crisis, economic recession, and the war in Iraq, as headline news. While consumers struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table, Monsanto, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland rake in billions from taxpayer-subsidized biofuels. Monopolizing markets, polluting the environment with genetically modified organisms, and hoarding future reserves of crop seeds, wheat, rice, soy, corn, and other grains, the food and gene giants profit from global crisis and misery. Adding fuel to the fire, Wall Street speculators have shifted their greed from sub-prime mortgages to food and non-renewable resources.
The public are becoming aware of the causes of the food crisis: millions of acres of corn and soybeans diverted into biofuels; corporate-driven free trade agreements that discourage nations from maintaining grain reserves and becoming self-sufficient in food production; massive subsidies for industrial agriculture and a misguided export model that have forced millions of family farmers off the land; sharply escalating oil prices, farm inputs, and transportation costs; commodity speculation; population growth; a growing demand for feed grains for meat consumption, and, most ominously, a destabilized climate spawning deadly droughts, pests, floods, and unpredictable weather.
Fortunately, there are hopeful signs that we can move beyond crisis to positive solutions. Connecting the dots in our food-climate-energy crisis, millions of green consumers are voting with their dollars for foods and products that are healthy, locally produced, energy efficient, and eco-friendly. A growing number of politicians, mainly at local and state levels, are also waking up.
Organic food and farmers markets are booming. Chemical-free lawns and gardens, green buildings, solar panels, wind generators, "buy local" networks, and bike paths are sprouting. A critical mass of organic-minded Americans are waking up to the fact that we must green the economy, drastically reduce petroleum use and greenhouse gas pollution, re-stabilize the climate, and heal ourselves, before it's too late.
For 10,000 years locally based family farmers and ranchers managed to grow and distribute healthy food, and ample feed and fiber, largely without the use of petroleum-based chemical fertilizers, toxic pesticides, animal drugs, or energy-intensive irrigation, processing, and long-distance transportation.
In 1945 most of the U.S.'s six million family farmers were still rotating their crops and cultivating a wide variety of fruits, grains, beans, and vegetables organically, fertilizing with natural compost, and generally practicing sustainable farming methods they had learned from their parents and grandparents.
By 1945, as part of the war effort, Americans were growing a full 42 percent of our vegetables and fruits in our backyards, schoolyards, and community Liberty Gardens.
The nutritious, primarily non-processed foods that people cooked for their family meals were purchased from locally owned grocers who stocked their shelves with a wide variety of items - typically grown or raised within a 100 mile radius of our communities.
In the 1950s the average American household spent 22 percent of our household income for fresh, locally produced food. Currently we are spending 13-15%, though low-income households are spending 30-35%.
By today's standards the post-war generation was relatively healthy in terms of low rates of diet-related diseases such as cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, food allergies, birth defects, and learning disabilities.
Sixty years later we have a Fast Food Nation, living in denial (at least until recently), gorging ourselves on the industrialized world's cheapest and most contaminated fare, allowing out-of-control politicians, corporations and technocrats to waste our tax money on corporate welfare, destroy the environment, starve the poor, wage a multi-trillion dollar war for oil, and destabilize the climate.
The good news is that there is a solution at hand. Turning back to the time-tested practices of local, eco-friendly, organic food and farming will go a long way toward restoring our health and the health of the planet. Revitalizing democracy and bringing our politicians to heel will guarantee that these organic and green alternatives become the norm.
Organic and local farms dramatically reduce energy use in the agricultural sector by 30-50 percent while safely sequestering in the soil enormous amounts of greenhouse gases. Decades of research have shown that small farms produce far more food per acre than chemical farms, especially in the developing world, and that organic farms outperform chemical farms (by 40-70%) under the kind of adverse weather conditions that are quickly becoming the norm. Buying local and regionally grown organic products means food doesn't have to travel 1500-3500 miles before it reaches your kitchen.
Crisis demands change. We must continue to buy local and organic foods and green products. Patronize farmers markets. Start or expand your garden. Move your diet away from restaurant fare and over-consuming meat and animal products. Buy in bulk and cook your meals at home with healthy whole foods ingredients--vegetables, fruits, beans and grains. If you're going to eat meat or animal products, make sure they're both organic and grass-fed or free range. Most important of all, get political. Demand an end to the war. Demand healthy and sustainable food and farming, energy, and climate policies from your local, state, and federal elected public officials-or else vote them out of office. Don't panic go organic. To press the politicians on these burning issues, go to
http://www.grassrootsnetroots.org
Comments
localvore
post Jun 15 2008, 03:14 PM
When you were born, there were 50% more species than today, and half as many people. Green has become an excuse for holding tight to the unsustainable dream of independent wealth. Economic reorganization on a global scale is now the only possible way out to effectively address the global crisis - wiser eating choices wont do it.
TomAstoria
post Today, 08:33 AM
Wiser eating choices is an excellent beginning! How else are we to start -- we can't go back to 1945.
There aren't too many options to restore balance on earth:
1. Nuclear Catastrophe will decrease the population, and a lot more.
2. Global epidemics and starvation are likely without some active response to the mess we are in.
3. Individual choices to become more moderate, eat better, drive less, avoid airplane travel, recycle -- all can help. Enough? Likely? Probably not, but we have to try.
* By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association/Grassroots Netroots Alliance, June 13, 2008
Rising food prices and shortages have joined the energy and climate crisis, economic recession, and the war in Iraq, as headline news. While consumers struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table, Monsanto, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland rake in billions from taxpayer-subsidized biofuels. Monopolizing markets, polluting the environment with genetically modified organisms, and hoarding future reserves of crop seeds, wheat, rice, soy, corn, and other grains, the food and gene giants profit from global crisis and misery. Adding fuel to the fire, Wall Street speculators have shifted their greed from sub-prime mortgages to food and non-renewable resources.
The public are becoming aware of the causes of the food crisis: millions of acres of corn and soybeans diverted into biofuels; corporate-driven free trade agreements that discourage nations from maintaining grain reserves and becoming self-sufficient in food production; massive subsidies for industrial agriculture and a misguided export model that have forced millions of family farmers off the land; sharply escalating oil prices, farm inputs, and transportation costs; commodity speculation; population growth; a growing demand for feed grains for meat consumption, and, most ominously, a destabilized climate spawning deadly droughts, pests, floods, and unpredictable weather.
Fortunately, there are hopeful signs that we can move beyond crisis to positive solutions. Connecting the dots in our food-climate-energy crisis, millions of green consumers are voting with their dollars for foods and products that are healthy, locally produced, energy efficient, and eco-friendly. A growing number of politicians, mainly at local and state levels, are also waking up.
Organic food and farmers markets are booming. Chemical-free lawns and gardens, green buildings, solar panels, wind generators, "buy local" networks, and bike paths are sprouting. A critical mass of organic-minded Americans are waking up to the fact that we must green the economy, drastically reduce petroleum use and greenhouse gas pollution, re-stabilize the climate, and heal ourselves, before it's too late.
For 10,000 years locally based family farmers and ranchers managed to grow and distribute healthy food, and ample feed and fiber, largely without the use of petroleum-based chemical fertilizers, toxic pesticides, animal drugs, or energy-intensive irrigation, processing, and long-distance transportation.
In 1945 most of the U.S.'s six million family farmers were still rotating their crops and cultivating a wide variety of fruits, grains, beans, and vegetables organically, fertilizing with natural compost, and generally practicing sustainable farming methods they had learned from their parents and grandparents.
By 1945, as part of the war effort, Americans were growing a full 42 percent of our vegetables and fruits in our backyards, schoolyards, and community Liberty Gardens.
The nutritious, primarily non-processed foods that people cooked for their family meals were purchased from locally owned grocers who stocked their shelves with a wide variety of items - typically grown or raised within a 100 mile radius of our communities.
In the 1950s the average American household spent 22 percent of our household income for fresh, locally produced food. Currently we are spending 13-15%, though low-income households are spending 30-35%.
By today's standards the post-war generation was relatively healthy in terms of low rates of diet-related diseases such as cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, food allergies, birth defects, and learning disabilities.
Sixty years later we have a Fast Food Nation, living in denial (at least until recently), gorging ourselves on the industrialized world's cheapest and most contaminated fare, allowing out-of-control politicians, corporations and technocrats to waste our tax money on corporate welfare, destroy the environment, starve the poor, wage a multi-trillion dollar war for oil, and destabilize the climate.
The good news is that there is a solution at hand. Turning back to the time-tested practices of local, eco-friendly, organic food and farming will go a long way toward restoring our health and the health of the planet. Revitalizing democracy and bringing our politicians to heel will guarantee that these organic and green alternatives become the norm.
Organic and local farms dramatically reduce energy use in the agricultural sector by 30-50 percent while safely sequestering in the soil enormous amounts of greenhouse gases. Decades of research have shown that small farms produce far more food per acre than chemical farms, especially in the developing world, and that organic farms outperform chemical farms (by 40-70%) under the kind of adverse weather conditions that are quickly becoming the norm. Buying local and regionally grown organic products means food doesn't have to travel 1500-3500 miles before it reaches your kitchen.
Crisis demands change. We must continue to buy local and organic foods and green products. Patronize farmers markets. Start or expand your garden. Move your diet away from restaurant fare and over-consuming meat and animal products. Buy in bulk and cook your meals at home with healthy whole foods ingredients--vegetables, fruits, beans and grains. If you're going to eat meat or animal products, make sure they're both organic and grass-fed or free range. Most important of all, get political. Demand an end to the war. Demand healthy and sustainable food and farming, energy, and climate policies from your local, state, and federal elected public officials-or else vote them out of office. Don't panic go organic. To press the politicians on these burning issues, go to
http://www.grassrootsnetroots.org
Comments
localvore
post Jun 15 2008, 03:14 PM
When you were born, there were 50% more species than today, and half as many people. Green has become an excuse for holding tight to the unsustainable dream of independent wealth. Economic reorganization on a global scale is now the only possible way out to effectively address the global crisis - wiser eating choices wont do it.
TomAstoria
post Today, 08:33 AM
Wiser eating choices is an excellent beginning! How else are we to start -- we can't go back to 1945.
There aren't too many options to restore balance on earth:
1. Nuclear Catastrophe will decrease the population, and a lot more.
2. Global epidemics and starvation are likely without some active response to the mess we are in.
3. Individual choices to become more moderate, eat better, drive less, avoid airplane travel, recycle -- all can help. Enough? Likely? Probably not, but we have to try.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Renewable Energy Companies in Puerto Rico
Alternative Energy Solutions
Business type: retail
Product types: photovoltaic systems, backup power systems, battery charge controllers, DC to AC power inverters, wind energy systems (small), deep cycle batteries.
Address: Jardinez de Caparra, Calle #31 Q-4, Bayamon, Puerto Rico 00959
Telephone: 787-633-5536
Alternative Energy http://www.energiaalterna.com/quienessomos.html
Business type: retail
Product types: DC to AC power inverters, solar electric power systems, solar electric power systems.
Address: St. Azucenas 146 Bo. Duque (P.O.Box 3529, Naguabo, Puerto Rico 00718-0352 Telephone: (787) 485-2906 // 329-2906 Fax: (787) 874-2906
Alternative Energy Systems
Business type: retail
Product types: photovoltaic systems, deep cycle batteries, energy efficient homes and buildings, hybrid power systems.
Service types: consulting, design, installation, engineering, project development services, education and training services, research services, maintenance and repair services, testing services
Address: CEIC - Univ. Politecnica de PR 377 Ave. Ponce de Leon, Hato Rey, PR Puerto Rico 00918
Telephone: 787-622-8000 x617
Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institute http://www.annwigmore.org
Living foods/raw foods healing center
Categories: health spa / retreat center / camp
Address: P.O. Box 429 Rincon, PR
Phone: 787-868-6307 Contact: Julie Jewell
Description: Two week health detox programs, living foods/raw foods lifestyle.
Borinquen Air Conditioning http://www.borinquenairconditioning.com/
Product types: Air Conditioning.
Service types: Sales, Service, Maintenance and Instalation
Address: P.O. Box 37511 Airport Sta, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00937
Telephone: 787-257-8775 Fax: 787-750-0266
Casa Solar, PR http://www.casasolarpr.com/
Business type: RE Energy services and products
Product types: solar electric power systems, inverters, batteries, wind generators, charge controllers, photovoltaic solar panels, fuses, cables, outside lamps.
Address: Marginal St. # EE-11 / Villa Contesa (RD 167), Bayamon, PR Puerto Rico 00959 Telephone: 787-269-2852,
Centro Sol de Utuado http://centrosolpr.com/Sobre%20Nosotros.htm
Business type: manufacturer, retail sales, service
Product types: Water heating systems, manufacturer and distributor of solar water heaters.
Address: Carr. 10 Km. 52.1, Utuado, Puerto Rico 00641
Telephone: (787) 894-2950 (787) 894-2886 Fax: (787) 894-9596
Clean Power Energy Corp.
Business type: retail
Product types: solar lighting systems, solar pool heating systems, emergency batteries backup, wind energy systems (small), energy efficient homes and buildings, photovoltaic systems, solar garden products, electric metering equipment, compact fluorescent lighting, electrical protection equipment.
Service types: consulting, design, installation, engineering, education and training services, research services
Address: Edificio Pucho Pool Center Carr. #2 Int. 417 Suite 203, Aguada, PR Puerto Rico 00602 Telephone: 787-868-8300 Fax: 787-868-8300
Diversified Green Energy, Inc.
Product types: solar lighting systems, solar street lighting.
Service types: engineering
Address: Paseo Las Olas, 373 Sabalo St., Dorado, Puerto Rico 00646
Telephone: 787-510-3556 Fax: 787-796-3044
ecosolar
Business type: retail, wholesale supplier
Product types: solar water heating systems.
Telephone: 787-4537635 Fax: 787-8456313
ESB PR Corporation http://www.esbpr.com
Business type: retail, wholesale, exporter, importer
Product types: industrial batteries, automotive batteries, nickel cadmium batteries, marine batteries, battery chargers, telecommunication batteries.
Service types: installation, project development services, education and training services, recycling services, testing services
Address: Bo. San Anton, Rd. 887 Km 2.5, Carolina, Puerto Rico Puerto Rico 00987
Telephone: 787-752-2886 Fax: 787-276-2758
Fepinc http://fepinc.net/
Product types: solar electric power systems, solar panels, inverters, batteries, charge controllers, fuses, etc.
Address: 2053 Ave. Pedro Albizu, Suite 2 Pmb # 134, Aguadilla, Pr Puerto Rico 00603
Telephone: (787) 560-1414 Fax: (787) 819-0169
Genesis Solar Systems, Corp. http://www.genesisolar.com/
Business type: retail, wholesale, importer
Product types: air cooling systems, photovoltaic systems, DC to AC power inverters, energy efficient homes and buildings, energy efficient appliances, solar outdoor lighting systems, solar air conditioning.
Address: P.O. Box 193243, San Juan, Pr Puerto Rico 00919-3243
Telephone: (787) 793-2303 Fax: (787) 793-2303
Hotwire Power
Business type: manufacturing and sales
Product types: Electricity generation and backup power appliance for home, businesses and industry. Our appliances can be integrated with solar panels, wind generators, diesel/gasoline generators or the electrical grid.
Service types: renewal energy systems
Address: Bo. Bayamon, Cidra, PR Puerto Rico 00739
Telephone: 787-934-1995 Fax: 787-263-6419
Iris M. Rivera
Business type: wholesale supplier
Product types: solar water heating systems, energy efficient appliances.
Address: P.O. Box 1220, Barceloneta, PR Puerto Rico 00617
Telephone: (787) 594-6050 Fax: (787) 796-1772
L.A. Home Security Systems, Inc.
Business type: retail sales
Product types: photovoltaic systems.
Service types: design, installation, project development services, contractor services, maintenance and repair services
Address: Ave AA N13 Ciudad Universitaria, Trujillo Alto, PR Puerto Rico 00976
Telephone: 787-283-0480
Multi-Batteries & Forklifts, Corp. http://www.mbfpr.com/
Business type: manufacturer, retail sales, wholesale supplier, exporter, importer
Product types: industrial batteries, automotive batteries, flooded lead acid batteries, lead acid sealed AGM batteries, gelled lead acid sealed batteries, deep cycle batteries.
Service types: consulting, design, installation, construction, engineering, education and training services, maintenance and repair services, recycling services, testing services
Address: Villa Blanca Industrial Park, Ave. Sakura Lot #16, Caguas, PR Puerto Rico 00725 Telephone: (787) 704-7100, 653-2244 Fax: (787) 704-7107
Prisscor
Product types: backup power systems, solar electric power systems, wind energy systems (small).
Service types: consulting, design, installation
Address: Urb Montecasino Heights, 400 Rio Guajataca St, Toa Alta, Puerto Rico 00953-1234 Telephone: (787) 779-6717 Fax: (787) 779-6717
Renewable Solutions Engineering, Inc. www.rsepr.com
Product types: solar electric power systems, wind energy systems (small), hybrid power systems, backup power systems, solar water pumping systems, Solar Lighting.
Address: La Quinta Industrial Site, 177 Balboa St., Mayagüez, Pr Puerto Rico 00680
Telephone: (787)834-5700 ext. 1005 Fax: (787)834-5898
Smart Security Solutions PR, Corp
Business type: Manufacturing, Consulting & Research
Product types: Solar outdoor illumination systems, solar power for security applications, other security related services.
Service types: Custom Design, Manufacturing, Sales and Installation
Address: Urb Veredas, 512 Camino de la Amapolas, Gurabo, PR Puerto Rico 00778
Telephone: 787-469-8065
Solar Renewable Solutions http://www.ysolarsolutions.com
Dedicated to the sale and instalation of renewable sources of energy.
Business type: Solar Renewable systems
Product types: Photovoltaics, solar, backups, aerogenerators, inverters, battery banks.
Service types: installation
Address: B-30 calle 2 Rincon Espanol, Trujillo Alto, PR Puerto Rico 00976
Telephone: 787-236-7539
Solartek http://www.solar4me.com/Solartek.html
Business type: distributor, consulting/ contracting services
Product types: photovoltaic modules (PV modules).
Service types: project planning, engineering, system design, installations
Address: Marginal C28, Ext. Forest Hills, Bayamon, Puerto Rico 00959
Telephone: (787) 633-8947 Fax: (787) 740-0242
Sunergy
Business type: retail
Product types: solar electric power systems, wind energy systems (small), energy efficient lighting, energy efficient appliances, Sunpipe Daylight System.
Service types: consulting, design, installation, engineering, education and training services
Address: PO Box 7463, Ponce, PR Puerto Rico 00732
Telephone: (787) 640-5136
Technical House, Inc. http://www.lifelinebatteries.com/distributorpage.php?id=219
Business type: manufacturer, retail sales, wholesale supplier, exporter, importer
Product types: energy efficient appliances, backup power systems, electric vehicle batteries, DC to AC power inverters, hydro energy system components (small), wind energy systems (small), solar water heaters, battery chargers, industrial batteries, stationary/ UPS batteries, voltage regulators, renewable energy, marine/medical batteries, fuel savings catalysts.
Service types: consulting, design, installation, research services, maintenance and repair services
Address: 1723 Pinero Ave., Summit Hills, PO Box 10758, San Juan, PR Puerto Rico 00922 Telephone: 787-633-7080 Fax: 787-781-2020
Universal Solar http://www.universalsolar.com/
Business type: manufacturer, retail sales
Product types: solar water heating systems, water storage tanks, water filtering and purification systems.
Address: Roosvelt Ave 1108, San Juan, PR Puerto Rico 00920
Telephone: 787-781-5555 Fax: 787-783-7733
Puerto Rico Economic Outlook 2008
By Monica Perez Nevarez
Economist Gustavo Velez reveals the mechanisms at work behind the current recession.
BPR: How did we get into this mess?
GV: Puerto Rico’s economy has been in a recession for the last 24 months. There are several events that influenced the situation: back in 2005 there were increases in costs for basic public services and a structural deficit; in 2006, the recession began in March, then the government shut down in May, the IVU tax was implemented in November, and the price of a barrel of oil rose to above $90 by year’s end, all of which contributed to making inflation skyrocket. In 2007, 60,000 jobs were lost, and participation rates in the labor market were at its lowest levels in the last 27 years. There has been an increase of 43% in bankruptcies over the last twelve months, and in that same time frame, the Puerto Rico stock index lost 40% of its value. The end of the “Ley de Incentivos Contributivos” (Tax Incentives Law), coupled with expiring patents, led important pharmaceutical companies with operations in the Island to announce closings or reductions in their operations, and there was a massive layoff of 3,000 employees in the months between October and December 2007. Early in 2008, the price of oil hit $111 per barrel, and the price may keep rising.
BPR: What are some local contributing factors to the recession?
GV: Political events (such as the upcoming elections and the Governor’s legal woes) are going to continue to influence consumer confidence as well as the investment climate; the continuing banking crisis (non-performing mortgages, sub-prime crisis, bankruptcies, low interest rates and decreasing exchange rates), as well as the fact that our government may yet again face budgetary problems are some of the larger challenges we face.
BPR: What influence will the global economy have on the local situation?
GV: We are part of the global economy. Unfortunately, those external forces may make the local economic situation deteriorate even further. There is a real possibility that the economy of the United States will fall into a recession, or that the global financial markets weaken, or that the value of the dollar keeps decreasing, and that the price of petroleum keeps going up. Any of these measures would have a negative impact, and if taken together, their influence will have an exponentially harmful effect. But a very interesting fact is that this recession happened independently of what was happening in the United States; for the first time in our history, we created this situation ourselves, it is not the result of what is happening in the US. Let me explain. As you can see from my graph (below), the local economy has historically mirrored the US economy, so that when it did well, so did we, to a lesser extent. If it did poorly, so did we, to a greater extent. But in 2006, we see clearly that the US economy began to recover, whereas the Puerto Rican economy went into a steep decline.
BPR: So what is the short term outlook?
GV: We are facing the most severe recession in recent history. The main economic indicators predict that the local economy will remain stagnant in 2008 with a negative growth (contraction) that will fluctuate between -1% and -1.5%. If these decreases materialize, all the other macroeconomic indicators will follow suit. Even more worrisome is the fact that both the manufacturing and construction sectors, deprived of new investment, will fall into a descending spiral. Consumer spending, which represents 80% of aggregate demand, also shows a declining trend due to the weak spending power of the consumers.
BPR: What can be done to alleviate the situation?
GV: At the moment, 15 local enterprises have banded together with the Chamber of Commerce and are working on a legislative project directed to reduce individual and corporate tax contributions. Also, on June 30th the new Tax Incentive Law comes into effect, a move that will be vital to attracting investment in the short term. There is also a program in the works for tax credits for housing, which together with lower interest rates will help the housing sector. And with the new elections, we might see an end to the so-called “shared government”, which has been an exercise in futility.
BPR: Let’s get to specifics. What is happening in each sector?
GV: We lost 60,000 jobs in 2007 according to statistics published by the Labor Department. Specifically, in January 2007 there were 1,276 million jobs. By December 2007, there were only 1,216 million. This is the lowest number of jobs registered for a month of December since 2003. You must remember that this is within a context of a population of four million people. 1.8 million working-age people are not included in the labor market statistics because they are chronically unemployed, and only reflected in the separate Participation Rate. In December 2007 the rate of unemployment (for the 1.2 million that are employed) was 10.5%, a 1% increase with respect to the same period in 2006. Nevertheless when analyzing the average rate of unemployment for 2007, we see it was 10.9%, or two tenths smaller than that registered in 2006. In spite of the loss of 60 thousand jobs, the rate of unemployment did not increase because the labor pool was reduced by 57 thousand people and the group of unemployed people increased by 3 thousand. This reduction reflects the unprecedented migration for better job opportunities outside Puerto Rico, and to the 3,000 that were employed and now receive unemployment benefits.
The Participation Rate lost 2.4 percentage points in 2007: 44.8% versus the 47.2% registered at the beginning of year, for a contraction of 5%. The rate of participation in the month of December was the same as the one registered in that same month in 1987; and taken for the whole year, the rate of participation was 46.1%, the same as in 2000. So, in a retrospective analysis of the total labor market in Puerto Rico, 2007 is the third time since 1980 in which a loss in total participation during a natural year is registered, and that loss is the most significant of the three: in 1981 22 thousand jobs were lost, and in 1997 a reduction of 11 thousand jobs was registered. These reductions have a direct impact on Puerto Rico’s fiscal health: net income in the General Fund fell from 3.1 to 3.0 billion.
If broken down by sector, public transportation, utilities and communications; retail; and finances, insurance and real estate; had small increases in available jobs, whereas agriculture, manufacturing, construction, government and services had significant reductions, as you can see in the graph (below). It is interesting to note that in December 2007 the retail sector, while it posted a gain of two thousand jobs overall, was still 8 thousand jobs below the numbers generated for that same month the previous year.
Construction
The reduction in the construction sector reflects the fact that as of last September there were 7.5% less construction permits granted and 23% less new housing units, as well as a decrease of 8.7% in total dollar amount of permits.
Bankruptcies
There were also considerably more bankruptcies in 2007. In spite of the new regulations established in 2005 that diminished the benefits of declaring bankruptcy, there was an increase of 43% in bankruptcy filings. Between January and December 2007, 7,740 requests for bankruptcies were registered, whereas for the same period during the previous year there were only 5,425,481 commercial bankruptcies show a 70% increase over the 283 bankruptcies of 2006. The five types of businesses with the greatest amount of bankruptcies were: construction contractors (39); cafeterias (29); restaurants (27); clothing stores (24) and mechanics (17).
Pueblos con Más Radicaciones
San Juan Mayagüez
Carolina Arecibo
Ponce Bayamón
Caguas Toa Alta
Negocios con más radicaciones
Contratista de Construcción 39
Cafetería 29
Restaurante 27
Tienda de Ropa 24
Mecánicos 17
Salón de Bellaza 16
Panaderías 15
Doctores en Medicina 15
Agricultores 15
According to information compiled by the Bankruptcy Courts, the total accumulated debt added up to $1.3 billion dollars, which represents a 94% increase over December 2006’s $671 million. Consumer requests increased 66% for a total of $734 million, and commercial bankruptcies increased 153% for a total of $583 million. There were a total of 84,066 defaulting debtors in 2007, 60% more than in 2006, when there were 52,543.
Manufacturing
In the Manufacturing sector, downsizing and closures, and the controversy over the Tax Incentive Law, prevailed over the sector’s agenda in 2007. Up until September 2007 there were 23 closings or significant downsizing events, of which eight were in the pharmaceutical industry. These events caused the dismissal of 2,343 employees, of whom 845 were in the pharmaceutical industry. Some of the reasons for this decrease include reconstruction, reductions in sales and transfer of operations to other parts of the world, among others. One of the municipalities most affected by the downturn is Cidra, whose Mayor will see himself forced to restructure the municipal budget after losing nearly $5 million dollars in patent income after the Ivax, Ciba Vision, Millipore and Glaxo operations left the county.
After several months of bitter controversy between the House of Representatives and the private sector, a compromise was reached which establishes that the new Tax Incentive Law must be approved by the House on or before the 15th of May 2008 and in the Senate on or before the 25th of May. If some discrepancy were to arise between the House and the Senate, then a Conference Committee must decide the outcome before May 31st. Not renewing or approving the new statute would mean the loss of 96,000 direct and indirect jobs, and an economic loss of $2.9 billion in income and wages.
Interest rates
As a result of the stock market volatility, the Federal Reserve announced a new interest rate cut to 3.50 %. They also trimmed the discount rate to banks down to 4.0%. The Fed cut occurred little more than a month away from the December 11th 2007 cut of 4.25%, and a discount rate of 4.75%. This cut was particularly unexpected because it happened between meetings. It is the first time since September 2001 that the Federal Reserve has lowered the interest rate in between its regular meetings.
Perspectives by Economic Sector
The Retail industry will benefit from lower interest rates, and will see modest gains of 2% to 2.5%. The Banking sector will be negatively affected by the erosion in economic activity. The consolidation trend will continue, so there will be fewer brands of banks on the island. The banks will see some relief from lower interest rates. The Construction sector should recover somewhat, as the approved credits are stimulating consumers. Lower interest rates are also favorable for the sector. In Manufacturing, the approval of a new Tax Incentives Law will determine their future, and the development of the Pharmaceutical industry will be a determining factor. China and the Asian nations will continue to instill competitive pressure on this sector. The Services sector will continue to be an important sector of the economy. Businesses such as insurance, advertising, marketing, and legal services will continue their strong presence.
Retail
Winners and Losers
Winners
• Pharmacies (9.7%)
• Meat and Fish stores (9.3%)
• Variety Stores (8.3%)
• Food retailers (7.3%)
• Office Equipment and Toy retailers (7.1%)
• Gasoline Stations (6.1%)
• Other General Stores (4.4%)
Losers
• Electronic retailers (radios, tv’s, pc’s) (-17.8%)
• Jewelers (-12.2%)
• Women’s Clothing (-10.8%)
• Motor Vehicles (-10.5%)
• Construction Materials (-7%)
• Shoe Stores (-5.2%)
• Men’s Clothing (-5.2%)
Automotive
Banking
Projected Growth
BPR: So we are in a recession and prices have gone up; there’s been a marked increase in bankruptcies, so we know that people are feeling the pinch; the government cannot keep spending money they way they have, many people have left the island to find work elsewhere, and the private sector lost jobs that are going to be hard to replace. What can be done?
VG: I suggest the following measures for overcoming the recession:
• lowering taxes,
• lowering costs,
• approving the new Tax Incentives Law,
• joining CAFTA and other regional markets,
• reducing welfare benefits,
• strengthening the local private sector,
• retaining and developing the local manufacturing sector
• developing an alternative energy investment program
BPR: Lowering taxes will ease the burden a little bit, but will also lessen the government coffers. GV: There is excessive spending right now, and there comes a point where you cannot ask for more taxes or the economy will suffer. High taxes are a disincentive for people that work as well as for private industry, so it lessens the amount of people that are looking to start a new business and for people that want to get off welfare.
BPR: Lowering costs sounds idyllic, but with the new IVU tax, any drop in price is not going to have much of an impact for the consumer.
GV: That’s right. There has to be a breathing space for the economy to catch up, so that the new salaries translate into disposable income which generates new sales, and is invested in productive activities.
BPR: Approving a new tax incentive law might attract foreign investment, but if it is not broadened so the benefits also include local businesses, the situation will improve only marginally.
GV: Absolutely. We have to balance the needs of foreign investors as well as local merchants, and give them both the incentives they need.
BPR: Joining CAFTA sounds reasonable, but we would also have to be very careful not to step into the “race to the bottom”, with low salaries and cheap products; shouldn’t we strengthen our local private sector and extend it to include more micro-businesses, as well as embrace doing business on the web?
GV: Yes, and the way to do that is to identify those industries that are best suited to exporting, and help those out first. For example, the service industry, professional services, banking, construction, architecture, technology. Right now there are several local companies that are doing just that. They have started projects in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, and are opening up their markets outside Puerto Rico.
BPR: As to reducing welfare benefits, you suggest that measure as a way of moving the 50% of our population that is chronically unemployed to either start businesses of their own or find employment somewhere. But if there are no adequate private sector jobs, and not enough of them to fill the demand, how will cutting their benefits work?
GV: I understand that there are not enough jobs and not the right kind of jobs to fill the gap right now. But we must start somewhere. We must use every tool at our disposal to educate the community as to what needs to be done and how it is going to happen, and this is politically very risky, because it is taking away a measure of security that the government has given the citizenry for many years. But it must be done, because right now there is simply no incentive for them to get off welfare. We are late arriving to this game. We should have done this a long time ago. So it is even more important to do it now and do it as fast as we can. There are some technological gaps, for example, many people might be able to use the internet to form their own businesses, but to use the internet, you need to know a little English, and a bit about computers, so there is a gap between what people can do and the needs that this new economy has. The government has to make sure that they help close these loopholes, and help get our people involved. Also, we have to change all these things at once. Doing a little at a time will not work. We must strengthen the private sector and develop a thriving local manufacturing base: one part that builds things we consume here, while at the same time helping those companies that are already set up for it, to export their wares and open markets abroad. And creating our own energy from alternative sources like wind and solar power will take away our dependence on fossil fuels, and keep a large percentage of our money inside the island budget, as opposed to giving it to foreign oil companies.
BPR: Finally, new technologies are supplanting old ways of doing business as a reaction to the groundswell of grassroots interest in healthier food, healthier transportation, healthier lifestyles, manageable waste disposal and alternative energy sources. I realize that with the economic situation so hard right now, it’s a little naïve to hope that we immediately go into using green accounting (counting the social and environmental costs of our business actions). But shouldn’t we try to start acting on these opportunities, making the challenges into victories?
GV: Yes, and we should start with producing our own renewable energy and recycling our wastes. We are one of the countries in the world with the least amount of recycling being done, and, because of our limited size, we are a country that really needs to recycle. Landfills are closing, and we are running out of room for landfills. So we need to recycle and reuse: start a secondary market for all things recycled. As far as industry is concerned, there are gains to be had by using recycled materials. Also, there is great opportunity in alternative sources of energy, like wind and solar. These are great opportunities for local businessmen to start a new business. Another interesting idea is creating financial mechanisms that fund environmental businesses. Merril Lynch has a capital fund oriented toward green businesses, just as Dow Jones has the Environmental Index, and Vinod Khosla invests his venture capital in green businesses. The new Incentives Law should incorporate green incentives, to help new local businesses as well as established companies go green.
Economist Gustavo Velez reveals the mechanisms at work behind the current recession.
BPR: How did we get into this mess?
GV: Puerto Rico’s economy has been in a recession for the last 24 months. There are several events that influenced the situation: back in 2005 there were increases in costs for basic public services and a structural deficit; in 2006, the recession began in March, then the government shut down in May, the IVU tax was implemented in November, and the price of a barrel of oil rose to above $90 by year’s end, all of which contributed to making inflation skyrocket. In 2007, 60,000 jobs were lost, and participation rates in the labor market were at its lowest levels in the last 27 years. There has been an increase of 43% in bankruptcies over the last twelve months, and in that same time frame, the Puerto Rico stock index lost 40% of its value. The end of the “Ley de Incentivos Contributivos” (Tax Incentives Law), coupled with expiring patents, led important pharmaceutical companies with operations in the Island to announce closings or reductions in their operations, and there was a massive layoff of 3,000 employees in the months between October and December 2007. Early in 2008, the price of oil hit $111 per barrel, and the price may keep rising.
BPR: What are some local contributing factors to the recession?
GV: Political events (such as the upcoming elections and the Governor’s legal woes) are going to continue to influence consumer confidence as well as the investment climate; the continuing banking crisis (non-performing mortgages, sub-prime crisis, bankruptcies, low interest rates and decreasing exchange rates), as well as the fact that our government may yet again face budgetary problems are some of the larger challenges we face.
BPR: What influence will the global economy have on the local situation?
GV: We are part of the global economy. Unfortunately, those external forces may make the local economic situation deteriorate even further. There is a real possibility that the economy of the United States will fall into a recession, or that the global financial markets weaken, or that the value of the dollar keeps decreasing, and that the price of petroleum keeps going up. Any of these measures would have a negative impact, and if taken together, their influence will have an exponentially harmful effect. But a very interesting fact is that this recession happened independently of what was happening in the United States; for the first time in our history, we created this situation ourselves, it is not the result of what is happening in the US. Let me explain. As you can see from my graph (below), the local economy has historically mirrored the US economy, so that when it did well, so did we, to a lesser extent. If it did poorly, so did we, to a greater extent. But in 2006, we see clearly that the US economy began to recover, whereas the Puerto Rican economy went into a steep decline.
BPR: So what is the short term outlook?
GV: We are facing the most severe recession in recent history. The main economic indicators predict that the local economy will remain stagnant in 2008 with a negative growth (contraction) that will fluctuate between -1% and -1.5%. If these decreases materialize, all the other macroeconomic indicators will follow suit. Even more worrisome is the fact that both the manufacturing and construction sectors, deprived of new investment, will fall into a descending spiral. Consumer spending, which represents 80% of aggregate demand, also shows a declining trend due to the weak spending power of the consumers.
BPR: What can be done to alleviate the situation?
GV: At the moment, 15 local enterprises have banded together with the Chamber of Commerce and are working on a legislative project directed to reduce individual and corporate tax contributions. Also, on June 30th the new Tax Incentive Law comes into effect, a move that will be vital to attracting investment in the short term. There is also a program in the works for tax credits for housing, which together with lower interest rates will help the housing sector. And with the new elections, we might see an end to the so-called “shared government”, which has been an exercise in futility.
BPR: Let’s get to specifics. What is happening in each sector?
GV: We lost 60,000 jobs in 2007 according to statistics published by the Labor Department. Specifically, in January 2007 there were 1,276 million jobs. By December 2007, there were only 1,216 million. This is the lowest number of jobs registered for a month of December since 2003. You must remember that this is within a context of a population of four million people. 1.8 million working-age people are not included in the labor market statistics because they are chronically unemployed, and only reflected in the separate Participation Rate. In December 2007 the rate of unemployment (for the 1.2 million that are employed) was 10.5%, a 1% increase with respect to the same period in 2006. Nevertheless when analyzing the average rate of unemployment for 2007, we see it was 10.9%, or two tenths smaller than that registered in 2006. In spite of the loss of 60 thousand jobs, the rate of unemployment did not increase because the labor pool was reduced by 57 thousand people and the group of unemployed people increased by 3 thousand. This reduction reflects the unprecedented migration for better job opportunities outside Puerto Rico, and to the 3,000 that were employed and now receive unemployment benefits.
The Participation Rate lost 2.4 percentage points in 2007: 44.8% versus the 47.2% registered at the beginning of year, for a contraction of 5%. The rate of participation in the month of December was the same as the one registered in that same month in 1987; and taken for the whole year, the rate of participation was 46.1%, the same as in 2000. So, in a retrospective analysis of the total labor market in Puerto Rico, 2007 is the third time since 1980 in which a loss in total participation during a natural year is registered, and that loss is the most significant of the three: in 1981 22 thousand jobs were lost, and in 1997 a reduction of 11 thousand jobs was registered. These reductions have a direct impact on Puerto Rico’s fiscal health: net income in the General Fund fell from 3.1 to 3.0 billion.
If broken down by sector, public transportation, utilities and communications; retail; and finances, insurance and real estate; had small increases in available jobs, whereas agriculture, manufacturing, construction, government and services had significant reductions, as you can see in the graph (below). It is interesting to note that in December 2007 the retail sector, while it posted a gain of two thousand jobs overall, was still 8 thousand jobs below the numbers generated for that same month the previous year.
Construction
The reduction in the construction sector reflects the fact that as of last September there were 7.5% less construction permits granted and 23% less new housing units, as well as a decrease of 8.7% in total dollar amount of permits.
Bankruptcies
There were also considerably more bankruptcies in 2007. In spite of the new regulations established in 2005 that diminished the benefits of declaring bankruptcy, there was an increase of 43% in bankruptcy filings. Between January and December 2007, 7,740 requests for bankruptcies were registered, whereas for the same period during the previous year there were only 5,425,481 commercial bankruptcies show a 70% increase over the 283 bankruptcies of 2006. The five types of businesses with the greatest amount of bankruptcies were: construction contractors (39); cafeterias (29); restaurants (27); clothing stores (24) and mechanics (17).
Pueblos con Más Radicaciones
San Juan Mayagüez
Carolina Arecibo
Ponce Bayamón
Caguas Toa Alta
Negocios con más radicaciones
Contratista de Construcción 39
Cafetería 29
Restaurante 27
Tienda de Ropa 24
Mecánicos 17
Salón de Bellaza 16
Panaderías 15
Doctores en Medicina 15
Agricultores 15
According to information compiled by the Bankruptcy Courts, the total accumulated debt added up to $1.3 billion dollars, which represents a 94% increase over December 2006’s $671 million. Consumer requests increased 66% for a total of $734 million, and commercial bankruptcies increased 153% for a total of $583 million. There were a total of 84,066 defaulting debtors in 2007, 60% more than in 2006, when there were 52,543.
Manufacturing
In the Manufacturing sector, downsizing and closures, and the controversy over the Tax Incentive Law, prevailed over the sector’s agenda in 2007. Up until September 2007 there were 23 closings or significant downsizing events, of which eight were in the pharmaceutical industry. These events caused the dismissal of 2,343 employees, of whom 845 were in the pharmaceutical industry. Some of the reasons for this decrease include reconstruction, reductions in sales and transfer of operations to other parts of the world, among others. One of the municipalities most affected by the downturn is Cidra, whose Mayor will see himself forced to restructure the municipal budget after losing nearly $5 million dollars in patent income after the Ivax, Ciba Vision, Millipore and Glaxo operations left the county.
After several months of bitter controversy between the House of Representatives and the private sector, a compromise was reached which establishes that the new Tax Incentive Law must be approved by the House on or before the 15th of May 2008 and in the Senate on or before the 25th of May. If some discrepancy were to arise between the House and the Senate, then a Conference Committee must decide the outcome before May 31st. Not renewing or approving the new statute would mean the loss of 96,000 direct and indirect jobs, and an economic loss of $2.9 billion in income and wages.
Interest rates
As a result of the stock market volatility, the Federal Reserve announced a new interest rate cut to 3.50 %. They also trimmed the discount rate to banks down to 4.0%. The Fed cut occurred little more than a month away from the December 11th 2007 cut of 4.25%, and a discount rate of 4.75%. This cut was particularly unexpected because it happened between meetings. It is the first time since September 2001 that the Federal Reserve has lowered the interest rate in between its regular meetings.
Perspectives by Economic Sector
The Retail industry will benefit from lower interest rates, and will see modest gains of 2% to 2.5%. The Banking sector will be negatively affected by the erosion in economic activity. The consolidation trend will continue, so there will be fewer brands of banks on the island. The banks will see some relief from lower interest rates. The Construction sector should recover somewhat, as the approved credits are stimulating consumers. Lower interest rates are also favorable for the sector. In Manufacturing, the approval of a new Tax Incentives Law will determine their future, and the development of the Pharmaceutical industry will be a determining factor. China and the Asian nations will continue to instill competitive pressure on this sector. The Services sector will continue to be an important sector of the economy. Businesses such as insurance, advertising, marketing, and legal services will continue their strong presence.
Retail
Winners and Losers
Winners
• Pharmacies (9.7%)
• Meat and Fish stores (9.3%)
• Variety Stores (8.3%)
• Food retailers (7.3%)
• Office Equipment and Toy retailers (7.1%)
• Gasoline Stations (6.1%)
• Other General Stores (4.4%)
Losers
• Electronic retailers (radios, tv’s, pc’s) (-17.8%)
• Jewelers (-12.2%)
• Women’s Clothing (-10.8%)
• Motor Vehicles (-10.5%)
• Construction Materials (-7%)
• Shoe Stores (-5.2%)
• Men’s Clothing (-5.2%)
Automotive
Banking
Projected Growth
BPR: So we are in a recession and prices have gone up; there’s been a marked increase in bankruptcies, so we know that people are feeling the pinch; the government cannot keep spending money they way they have, many people have left the island to find work elsewhere, and the private sector lost jobs that are going to be hard to replace. What can be done?
VG: I suggest the following measures for overcoming the recession:
• lowering taxes,
• lowering costs,
• approving the new Tax Incentives Law,
• joining CAFTA and other regional markets,
• reducing welfare benefits,
• strengthening the local private sector,
• retaining and developing the local manufacturing sector
• developing an alternative energy investment program
BPR: Lowering taxes will ease the burden a little bit, but will also lessen the government coffers. GV: There is excessive spending right now, and there comes a point where you cannot ask for more taxes or the economy will suffer. High taxes are a disincentive for people that work as well as for private industry, so it lessens the amount of people that are looking to start a new business and for people that want to get off welfare.
BPR: Lowering costs sounds idyllic, but with the new IVU tax, any drop in price is not going to have much of an impact for the consumer.
GV: That’s right. There has to be a breathing space for the economy to catch up, so that the new salaries translate into disposable income which generates new sales, and is invested in productive activities.
BPR: Approving a new tax incentive law might attract foreign investment, but if it is not broadened so the benefits also include local businesses, the situation will improve only marginally.
GV: Absolutely. We have to balance the needs of foreign investors as well as local merchants, and give them both the incentives they need.
BPR: Joining CAFTA sounds reasonable, but we would also have to be very careful not to step into the “race to the bottom”, with low salaries and cheap products; shouldn’t we strengthen our local private sector and extend it to include more micro-businesses, as well as embrace doing business on the web?
GV: Yes, and the way to do that is to identify those industries that are best suited to exporting, and help those out first. For example, the service industry, professional services, banking, construction, architecture, technology. Right now there are several local companies that are doing just that. They have started projects in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, and are opening up their markets outside Puerto Rico.
BPR: As to reducing welfare benefits, you suggest that measure as a way of moving the 50% of our population that is chronically unemployed to either start businesses of their own or find employment somewhere. But if there are no adequate private sector jobs, and not enough of them to fill the demand, how will cutting their benefits work?
GV: I understand that there are not enough jobs and not the right kind of jobs to fill the gap right now. But we must start somewhere. We must use every tool at our disposal to educate the community as to what needs to be done and how it is going to happen, and this is politically very risky, because it is taking away a measure of security that the government has given the citizenry for many years. But it must be done, because right now there is simply no incentive for them to get off welfare. We are late arriving to this game. We should have done this a long time ago. So it is even more important to do it now and do it as fast as we can. There are some technological gaps, for example, many people might be able to use the internet to form their own businesses, but to use the internet, you need to know a little English, and a bit about computers, so there is a gap between what people can do and the needs that this new economy has. The government has to make sure that they help close these loopholes, and help get our people involved. Also, we have to change all these things at once. Doing a little at a time will not work. We must strengthen the private sector and develop a thriving local manufacturing base: one part that builds things we consume here, while at the same time helping those companies that are already set up for it, to export their wares and open markets abroad. And creating our own energy from alternative sources like wind and solar power will take away our dependence on fossil fuels, and keep a large percentage of our money inside the island budget, as opposed to giving it to foreign oil companies.
BPR: Finally, new technologies are supplanting old ways of doing business as a reaction to the groundswell of grassroots interest in healthier food, healthier transportation, healthier lifestyles, manageable waste disposal and alternative energy sources. I realize that with the economic situation so hard right now, it’s a little naïve to hope that we immediately go into using green accounting (counting the social and environmental costs of our business actions). But shouldn’t we try to start acting on these opportunities, making the challenges into victories?
GV: Yes, and we should start with producing our own renewable energy and recycling our wastes. We are one of the countries in the world with the least amount of recycling being done, and, because of our limited size, we are a country that really needs to recycle. Landfills are closing, and we are running out of room for landfills. So we need to recycle and reuse: start a secondary market for all things recycled. As far as industry is concerned, there are gains to be had by using recycled materials. Also, there is great opportunity in alternative sources of energy, like wind and solar. These are great opportunities for local businessmen to start a new business. Another interesting idea is creating financial mechanisms that fund environmental businesses. Merril Lynch has a capital fund oriented toward green businesses, just as Dow Jones has the Environmental Index, and Vinod Khosla invests his venture capital in green businesses. The new Incentives Law should incorporate green incentives, to help new local businesses as well as established companies go green.
Sustainable Development Timeline
By Monica Perez Nevarez
"If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst."
-- Thomas Hardy
In an effort to highlight the importance of connecting business with environmental conservation, this third issue of Business Puerto Rico is dedicated to all things green: from a timeline charting its evolution, to the myriad opportunities it brings, to the exciting future it promises. In this Sustainable Development Timeline, we start with colonial Puerto Rico, through the Industrial Revolution, on through the development of multinational corporations; the worldwide backlash against uncontrolled development; the new integration of economics and environmental concerns and how they translate into political policies; and the growth of the sustainability movement to include population concerns, social justice and economic inequities; to better explain the current groundswell in corporate activism and the general acceptance of Sustainable Development.
10,000 BC 4 million
2,000 BC 27 million (6.75 times the population in 6,000 years; 3,833 average births per year)
1,000 BC 50 million (2 times the population in 1,000 years; 23,000 bpy)
1 AD 190 million (4 times the population in 1,000 years; 140,000 bpy)
1,000 AD 265 million (1.4 times the population in 1,000 years; 75,000 bpy)
1400 AD 350 million (1.3 times the population in 400 years; 212,500 bpy )
1800 AD 978 million (2.8 times the population in 400 years; 1.57 million bpy)
1950 AD 2.5 Billion (2.55 times the population in 150 years; 10 million bpy)
1987 AD 5 Billion (2 times the population in 37 years; 67 million bpy)
2000 AD 6.6 Billion (1.32 times the population in 13 years; 123 million bpy)
2030 AD 8.3 Billion
2050 AD 9.6 Billion
"...democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears."
-Isaac Asimov
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population for more information
2000 BC – Ortoroid peoples reach Puerto Rico
430 BC – Cedrosan Saladoid peoples reach Puerto Rico
1200 AD – Classic Tainos emerge as dominant Indian tribe in
1493 - Christopher Columbus discovers
1508 - Formal Spanish colonization begins.
1509 – “Repartimiento” begins (a system of using the indigenous population as indentured labor). This caused the demise of 80% of the Indian population within the next three years.
1513 -
1530 - Sugar becomes the most important agricultural product. Census reports 369 Spanish men, 57 Spanish women, 1,537 Taino Indians and 4,227 black slaves living on the island.
1553 –
1570 - Gold mines are depleted by the Spaniards.
1590’s – Sugar production in
1598 - Ginger emerges as the primary cash crop.
1765 – Census states 39,846 Spanish settlers, 5,037 black slaves
1778 – Agriculture in
The Beginning of the Environmental debate: the 18th and 19th centuries
The Industrial Revolution (1750 – 1850) caused a global shift away from an agrarian economy that relied on animals, back-breaking manual labor and simple tools to an industrial economy based on machinery and mass production by the introduction of the steam engine in 1769, the power loom in 1783, and the cotton gin in 1793.
The steam engine was a revolutionary technology that engendered mass transportation in
1800 – Census indicates 155,000 population in Puerto Rico
1815 – A “Decree of Grace” was issued by the King of Spain whereby all foreigners were admitted to
1851 – International Expositions, or World's Fairs, were important business events in the 19th century, beginning with the Crystal Palace Exhibition in
1851 – Isaac Merritt Singer formed I.M. Singer & Company. By 1855, Singer had become the first truly multinational corporation manufacturing and mass-marketing sewing machines internationally.
1873 – The Spanish Crown abolished slavery in
1886 – The establishment of two experimental farms, one in Rio Piedras and the other in Mayagüez, inaugurated the scientific study of agriculture in
1898 – 52,089 tons of sugarcane produced
1898 – After the Spanish American War,
1899, August 8 – Hurricane San Ciriaco hit Puerto Rico. One of the most destructive hurricanes in the history of the island, it resulted in several thousand deaths and provoked a major economic crisis.
1899 – The US Congress first addressed water pollution issues in the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899.
1899 – 953,243 inhabitants in Puerto Rico
1900 – The South Porto Rico Sugar Company, a
1900’s – Conservationist John Muir wrote Our National Parks (1901) and The Yosemite (1912), and influenced President Theodore Roosevelt to create
1907 – The first comprehensive listing by the Union of International Associations named 185 international corporations in existence.
1910 – The Sugar Producers Association organized an experiment station in Rio Piedras which in 1914 became the Insular Experiment Station. The problem of the concentration of land ownership in
1913 – The Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce is formed.
1914 – The First World War caused destruction in
1917 – President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones Act. It gave Puerto Ricans
1920 – The International Chamber of Commerce was created as a confederation of national commercial associations and other business groups. It played an important consultative role in economic conferences in the interwar period and, after World War II, received consultative status with the UN.
1920’s - The development of the livestock industry in
1920’s – Individual industries in the US coordinated standards and activities through associations like the International Hotel Alliance (1921), the International Wool Textile Organization (1929), the International Broadcasting Union (1925), and the International Shipping Conference (1921). A large number of other associations reflected the increasing globalization of all significant areas of business activity.
1928 – The Puerto Rico Manufacturer’s Association is created
1928 – The Bureau of International Expositions was created to regulate the holding of World's Fairs.
1929 – NY Stock Exchange crash
1930’s – The Depression.
1930 – Census indicates 1,543,913 inhabitants in Puerto Rico
1930 – The
1934 – 1,103,822 tons of sugar was produced in
1936 – In Arroyo, the
1939 – The New York World's Fair was the last major fair before World War II
1940 – With 1.9 million inhabitants, overpopulation becomes a serious problem in
1941 – World War II is declared.
1942 –The Puerto Rico Industrial Development Co. was created.
1944 – The
1945 – End of the Second World War. The International Monetary Fund was created. The Marshall Plan is created to help reconstruct
1946 – The first native governor, Jesus T. Piñero, is appointed by the
1946 – The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (now the World Bank) began operations to stabilize currency and international financial relations.
1948 – The International Union for the Protection of Nature founded in
1948 – Operation Bootstrap goes into effect in
1949 – The United Nations Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources was held in
Aldo Leopold introduced the concept that our environment was directly tied to our survival. He stated that conservation called for an ethical approach to life and business based on respect for the environment. He published “The Land Ethic” in A Sand County Almanac in 1949.
The 1950’s, and the proliferation of multinational corporations
1950’s – More than a thousand international organizations were in operation by the mid-fifties. In those industries involving production of mass consumer goods or new advanced technologies, there was a significant internationalization of enterprise. Ford and General Motors led in internationalizing the automobile industry. Philips Electrical (originally Dutch), Courtaulds in synthetic fibers, and the German I. G. Farben chemical trust were other emerging multinational corporations. In some major industries, Cartels, or groups of large companies that coordinated their efforts, emerged as an important form of multinational economic enterprise. Major cartels emerged in the chemical, steel, and synthetic fibers industries. The most successful was the oil cartel, in which the seven largest oil companies in the world, led by Standard Oil (
the Directory of Transnational Corporations http://www.endgame.org/dtc/directory.html , The Elusive Saviors: Transnational Corporations and Sustainable Development, http://www.xs4all.nl/~contrast/elusive ,
The Global Policy Forum http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/tncs/index.htm ,
The Multinational Monitor Online http://multinationalmonitor.org/ ,
OneWord, http://www.oneworld.net/guides/TNCs/front.shtml ,
Transnational Corporations Observatory http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/ .
1950 – Census indicates 2,210,703 people live in
1952 – Luis Muñoz Marin becomes the first locally elected Governor of Puerto Rico, and
1954 – Harrison Brown publishes The Challenge of Man’s Future in the
1956 Mercury is released into
1958 The first UN Conference on the Law of the Sea in
1958 – The Brussels Exposition, first World’s Fair after the Second World War.
The 1960’s: A Growing Concern over the Environment
1961 The World Wildlife Fund is created in
1962 – Rachel Carson published “Silent Spring”, which catalogued the devastating impact of toxins and pollutants on the environment and caused society to reevaluate their impressions of the limits of our ecosystems. Her descriptions of the dangers of agricultural pesticides made clear that the survival of all species on earth depends on the well-being of the environment in which they live. This one book created a widely dispersed grassroots movement known as the Environmental Movement throughout the Unites States.
1963 – Creation of the International Biological Program. This ten-year study analyzed environmental damage and the biological and ecological mechanisms through which it occurs. In creating a large body of data, it laid the foundation for the science of environmentalism. http://www7.nationalacademies.org/archives/International_Biological_Program.html
1963 – US Congress passes the first Clean Air Act to curb pollutant emmissions from smokestacks from endangering the surrounding habitat.
1966 The first photos of “Spaceship Earth” taken by the US Lunar Orbiter, revealing the finite nature of the biosphere. The pictures became a powerful symbol for the ecology movement.
1967 The
1967 - The Environmental Defense Fund forms to pursue legal solutions to environmental damage. EDF's founders go to court to stop the Suffolk County Mosquito Control Commission from spraying DDT on the marshes of
1968 - Paul Ehrlich publishes "Population Bomb" on the connection between human population, resource exploitation and the environment.
1968 - Experts from around the world meet for the first time at the UN Biosphere Conference in
1968 - The Club of Rome, led by Italian industrialist Aurrelio Peccei and Scottish scientist Alexander King, is established by 36 European economists and scientists. Its goal is to pursue a holistic understanding of and solutions to the world’s problems. It commissioned a study of global proportions to model and to analyze the dynamic interactions between industrial production, population, environmental damage, food consumption and natural resource usage. http://www.clubofrome.org/
1968 - Intergovernmental Conference for Rational Use and Conservation of the Biosphere (UNESCO) held a forum for early discussions of the concept of ecologically sustainable development.
1969 - Friends of the Earth forms as a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the planet from environmental degradation; preserving biological, cultural, and ethnic diversity; and empowering citizens to have an influential voice in decisions affecting the quality of their environment -- and their lives. www.foe.org/
1969 -
The 1970’s, and the rise of the Environmental Movement
1970 - Natural Resources Defense Council forms with a professional staff of lawyers and scientists to push for comprehensive
1970 – The US Congress passes the Clean Air Act Extension
1970 - Senator Gaylord Nelson (D., Wis) founded the first Earth Day to educate the public about the impact of industrial processes on the environment. An estimated twenty million people participated in peaceful demonstrations all across the
1971 - Greenpeace is founded in
1971 - International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) is established in
1971 - Founex Report is prepared by a panel of experts meeting in
1971 – The Polluter Pays Principle - OECD Council says that those causing pollution should pay the costs. http://www.eoearth.org/article/Polluter_pays_principle
1972 - Researchers report that three-quarters of the acid rain falling in
1972 - Rene Dubos and Barbara Ward write "Only One Earth". The book sounds an urgent alarm about the impact of human activity on the biosphere but also expresses optimism that a shared concern for the future of the planet could lead humankind to create a better common future.
1972 – The
1972 – The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in
1972 - The Values Party was formed in
1972 - Environmental Liaison Centre International is founded to integrate NGO input into UNEP.
1972 - Environnement et Développement du Tiers-Monde (ENDA -- Environment and Development Action in the
1972 - Club of Rome publishes "Limits to Growth". The report is extremely controversial because it predicts dire consequences if growth is not slowed. Northern countries criticize the report for not including technological solutions while Southern countries are incensed because it advocates abandonment of economic development. The ensuing debate heightens awareness of the interconnections between several well-known global problems.
1972 – The OPEC oil crisis fuels the Limits to Growth debate
1973 - European Environmental Action Programme was the first attempt to synthesize a single environmental policy for the European Economic Community (EEC). http://ec.europa.eu/environment/newprg/index.htm
1973 -
1973 - The Chipko Movement was begun by women living in Himalayan villages in
1973 - The Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) is adopted to restrict the release of pollutants from ocean-going vessels. It regulates dumping and accidental spills of oil, garbage, plastics, and sewage. http://www.imo.org/Conventions/contents.asp?doc_id=678&topic_id=258
1974 - Rowland and Molina release seminal work on CFC’s in Nature magazine. They calculated that if human use of CFC gases was to continue at an unaltered rate the ozone layer would be depleted after some decades. Laws banning the use of CFC’s greatly reduced their use.
1974 – The Bariloche Foundation publishes "Limits to Poverty". It is the South's response to "Limits to Growth" and calls for growth and equity for the
1975 - Worldwatch Institute is established in the
1975 - Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) comes into effect. http://www.cites.org/
1976 - Participants at the UN Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, agree that adequate shelter is a basic human right and draw up 65 recommendations for countries about how to provide it.First global meeting to link the environment and human settlement
1977 – Congress passes the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1977.
1977 - The Greenbelt Movement starts in
1977 - UN Conference on Desertification is held, predicting the expansion of some desert areas around the world.
1977 - Indigenous protestors in the
1978 – PRMA publishes EcoNews for the first time, publishing economic data for local manufacturers.
1978 – The oil tanker the Amoco Cadiz, transporting 227,000 tons of crude oil, ran aground on Portsall Rocks, on the Breton coast. The entire cargo spilled out as the breakers split the vessel in two, progressively polluting 218 miles of shoreline from
1978 also saw the contamination of Love Canal (President Jimmy Carter declared a State of
1979: Equipment malfunction and human error lead to a partial reactor meltdown at the
1979 – The Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution is adopted. http://www.unece.org/env/lrtap/
1979 - Banking on the Biosphere - IIED report on practices of nine multilateral development agencies, including the World Bank, sets the stage for reforms which are still underway.
The 1980’s: Contemporary Environmentalism and the rise of Sustainability
1980 - World Conservation Strategy released by IUCN. The strategy defines development as "the modification of the biosphere and the application of human, financial, living and non-living resources to satisfy human needs and improve the quality of human life". The section "Towards Sustainable Development" identifies the main agents of habitat destruction as poverty, population pressure, social inequity and the terms of trade. It calls for a new International Development Strategy with the aims of redressing inequities, achieving a more dynamic and stable world economy, stimulating accelerating economic growth and countering the worst impacts of poverty. http://cms.iucn.org/
1980 - Independent Commission on International Development Issues publishes "North : South - A Programme for Survival" (the first Brandt Report). The Brandt Report is a broad-based analysis of the state of the world, with an emphasis on the failure of the world economic system to provide social and economic equality for humanity. It asks for a re-assessment of the notion of development and calls for a new economic relationship between North and South. http://www.stwr.net/content/view/43/83/
1980 -
1980 – Robert Allen published “How to Save the World” and a year later Lester Brown tackled the subject of economic development versus the earth’s ecological limits in his “Building a Sustainable Society”, stressing the need to integrate economic and ecological issues.
1981 - The AIDS virus is detected in clinical studies. In the following two decades, the virus rapidly spreads throughout the world, killing millions of people and undermining development efforts in many countries.
1981 - World Health Assembly unanimously adopts a Global Strategy for Health for All by the year 2000. It affirmed that the major social goal of governments and the World Health Organization should be the attainment of a level of health by all people of the world that would permit them to lead socially and economically productive lives. http://www.who.org/
1982 - The United Nations World Charter for Nature adopts the principle that every form of life is unique and should be respected irrespective of its value to humankind. It also calls for an understanding of our dependence on natural resources and the need to control of our exploitation of them. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/37/a37r007.htm
1982 - World Resources Institute established in the
1982 - The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea establishes material rules concerning environmental standards as well as enforcement provisions dealing with pollution of the marine environment.
1982 -
1983 - The United Nations created The World Commission on Environment and Development, headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/42/ares42-187.htm
1983 -
1983 - The
1983 - Development Alternatives is established in
1984 - An estimated 10,000 people are killed and 300,000 injured when Union Carbide's pesticide plant in
1984 - Worldwatch Institute published its first “State of the World” report, which provided a global perspective on the relation between the world’s resource base and the dynamics of economic development. The report monitors changes in the global resource base, focusing particularly on how the changes affect the economy. It concludes that "we are living beyond our means, largely by borrowing against the future." http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1043 (2004 edition)
1984 - Drought in
1984 - Third World Network is founded during an international conference "The Third World: Development or Crisis?" which was organized by the Consumer's Association of Penang. TWN's role is to be the activist voice of the South on issues of economics, development, and environment. http://www.twnside.org.sg/
1985 - Responsible Care®, an initiative of the Canadian Chemical Producers, provides a code of conduct for chemical producers, which is now adopted in many countries. http://www.ccpa.ca/
1985 - Antarctic ozone hole discovered by British and American scientists.
1985 – In
1986 - IUCN Conference on Environment and Development held in
1986 - Accident at nuclear station in Chernobyl generates a massive toxic radioactive explosion. One of the four reactors at the
1987 - "Our Common Future" (the second Brundtland Report) is published. It ties problems together and, for the first time, gives some direction for comprehensive global solutions. It also popularizes the term "Sustainable Development". Strategic imperatives include reviving growth, changing the quality of growth, meeting essential human needs, ensuring a sustainable level of population, conserving and enhancing the resource base, reorienting technology and managing risk, and merging environment and economics in decision making. http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02.htm
1987 - The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is designed to reduce depletion of the ozone layer. It sets limits on production and consumption of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) and halons. It was the first global treaty to protect every single human being on the planet.
1987 – World population reaches 5 billion
1988 -
1988 - Biologist E.O. Wilson publishes Biodiversity, a collection of reports from the National Forum on Biodiversity in the
1988 - The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is established with three working groups to assess the most up-to-date scientific, technical and socio-economic research in the field of climate change. http://www.ipcc.ch/
1988 - Centre for Our Common Future is founded in
1989 - Stockholm Environment Institute is established as an independent foundation for carrying out global and regional environmental research.
1989 - The Exxon Valdez tanker runs onto a reef in
1989 - The
The 1990’s: the Beginnings of Corporate Involvement in “Green Business”
1990 - The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe is established as an independent, non-profit organization to assist environmental nongovernmental organizations, governments, businesses, and other environmental stakeholders to fulfill their role in a democratic, sustainable society.
1990 - International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) established
in
1990 – Congress passes the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990. It proposed emissions trading, added provisions for addressing acid rain, ozone depletion and toxic air pollution, and established a national permits program.
1991 – WWF, UNEP and IUCN publish Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for Sustainable Living, setting forth 132 actions required to increase human well-being and halt the Earth’s declining capacity to support life.
1991- The Canadian east coast cod fishery collapses when only 2,700 tons of spawning biomass is left after a harvest of 190,000 tons. The government imposes a ten year moratorium on fishing, and all Canadian fishermen of the
http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/cbio/cancod.html
1991- Hundreds of oil fires burn out of control in
1992 - U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) otherwise known as the Earth Summit held in
1992 - The Business Council for Sustainable Development publishes Changing Course which establishes business interests in promoting Sustainable Development (SD) practices.
1992 - The Convention on Climate Change sets non-binding carbon dioxide reduction goals for industrial countries (to 1990 levels by 2000). The final treaty calls for avoiding human alteration of the climate, but falls far short of expectations, largely due to lack of support from the United States.
1992 IISD releases its first publication, Business Strategy for Sustainable Development: Leadership and Accountability for the '90s. The work develops into a comprehensive program aimed at corporate decision-makers, with analysis of corporate SD reporting, and initiatives on green standards and eco-labeling.
1992 IISD introduces a focus on poverty eradication and its relationship to SD as an underlying theme in its research. Community-based research emerges as an approach to understanding poverty, environmental change and other related issues. The Community Adaptation and Sustainable Livelihoods program addresses rural people's livelihoods, and tools needed to build a sustainable future in poverty-ridden areas.
1992 - The Earth Council is established in
1992 - Bringing together 1,700 scientists from 69 countries, the Union of Concerned Scientists issues its World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, which states that "human beings and the natural world are on a collision course."
1992 - The Convention on Biological Diversity mandates that countries formulate strategies to protect biodiversity and that industrialized countries help implement these strategies in developing countries.
1993 - EarthEnterprise is launched to encourage entrepreneurs, innovators and investors to create wealth by meeting sustainable development needs. The first IISD Partnership Conference brings together about 100 entrepreneurs and investors in
1993 - The Great Plains Program convenes stakeholders across the Canadian and American prairies to articulate their needs on community and livelihood sustainability issues. An initial study looks at sustainability from a scientific, historical and economic perspective. Later work produces an SD policy framework tool that is successfully applied in several cases in
1993 - The China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) provides SD advice to the State Council. Within a year IISD begins cooperation on Trade and Environment, with a decade-long period of policy support as
1993 – The President’s Council for Sustainable Development is announced by President Bill Clinton. They publish Sustainable
1993 – First meeting of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development established to ensure effective follow-up to UNCED, enhance international cooperation and rationalize intergovernmental decision-making capacity. http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/
1993 – World Conference on Human Rights: Governments re-affirmed their international commitments to all human rights and appoint the first UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
1994 - Global Environment Facility. Billions of aid dollars restructured to give more decision-making power to developing countries. The GEF affirms its commitment to fund projects that are country-driven, based on national priorities and reflect the incremental costs of meeting international commitments that achieve global environmental benefits. http://www.gefweb.org/
1994 - North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) enters into force. A side agreement – the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation – establishes the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). http://www.cec.org/ Many environmental activists oppose the trade agreements because they do not include environmental and social justice concerns in their agreements, and actually pose more of a threat to indigenous peoples in the third world.
1994 – The Foreign Trade Board is established in
1994 The
1994 IISD forms a new Business Advisory Group, and continues efforts started at the Rio Earth Summit to form links with the new World Business Council on Sustainable Development. Website http://www.wbcsd.org/templates/TemplateWBCSD5/layout.asp?MenuID=1 and case studies http://www.wbcsd.org/templates/TemplateWBCSD5/layout.asp?type=p&MenuId=ODY
1994 - The World Conservation Union (IUCN) publishes a revised Red List of endangered and threatened species, creating a world standard for gauging threats to biodiversity. Later versions report that one in four mammal species and one in eight bird species faces a high risk of extinction in the near future.
1994 - IISD publishes Action Plan: Protecting the Environment and Reducing
1994 - The Winnipeg Principles, a set of guidelines to promote trade policies and practices that serve sustainable development needs, are published. The principles are: efficiency and cost internalization; equity; environmental integrity; importance of a local value-chain; international cooperation; science and precaution; and openness.
1994 - The new EarthEnterprise Tool Kit, containing contact information and practical information to help businesses achieve sustainability, is released as a book, and the intense interest in the program leads to the second EarthEnterprise Forum in
1994 – The UN holds the International Conference on Population and Development in
1995 - The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in
http://www.mosopcanada.org/text/ken.html
1995 - The World Trade Organization is established, and formally recognizes trade, environment and development linkages. http://www.wto.org/
1995 World Summit for Social Development held in
1996 - Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and Pete Myers publish Our Stolen Future, which warns of reproductive threats to animals—including humans—due to the release of billions of pounds of synthetic chemicals into the environment, many of which mimic and disrupt natural hormones.
1996 -
1996 - The International Organization for Standards releases the new comprehensive ISO 14001 environmental management standards. Organizations that adopt these standards commit to minimizing harmful effects on the environment caused by their activities, and to achieving continual improvement of their environmental performance. http://www.iso14000-iso14001-environmental-management.com/ , and a summary http://www.praxiom.com/iso-14001-2004.htm
1996 - The Summit of the Americas on Sustainable Development held in
1997 - The Kyoto Protocol strengthens the 1992 Climate Change Convention by mandating that industrial countries cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 6 to 8 percent from 1990 levels by 2008-2012. But the protocol's controversial emissions-trading scheme, as well as debates over the role of developing countries, clouds its results.
1997 -
1997 – The UN General Assembly review of Earth
1998 – Controversy over genetically modified organisms. Global environmental and food security concerns raised over genetically modified (GM) food products. The European Union blocks import of GM crops from
1998 - Unusually severe weather.
of
1998 –Environmental groups, social activists and concerned citizens effectively lobby against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). That, along with disagreement by governments over the scope of the exceptions being sought, led to the demise of the negotiations.
http://www.citizen.org/trade/issues/mai/articles.cfm?ID=1021
1998 - The ozone hole over
1999 - The World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development releases its report “Our Forests...Our Future”. This independent Commission, after extensive hearings with stakeholders worldwide, concluded that the world’s material needs from forests can be satisfied without jeopardizing them by changing the way we value and manage forests. http://www.iisd.org/wcfsd/default.htm
1999 - Launch of the first global Sustainability Index tracking leading corporate sustainability practices worldwide. Called the Dow Jones Sustainability Group
Indexes, this financial analysis tool provides a bridge between those companies implementing sustainability principles and investors looking for trustworthy information to guide sustainability-focused investment decisions. http://www.sustainabilityindex.com/
1999 -Third World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference held in
1999 – World population reaches 6 billion people
The New Millenium
“History will be our judge, but what is written is up to us: who we are, who we’ve been, what we want to be remembered for. We can’t say our generation didn’t know how to do it. We can’t say our generation couldn’t afford to do it. And we can’t say our generation didn’t have reason to do it. It’s up to us. We can choose to shift the paradigm.”
--Bono, foreword in The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
2000 – Census indicates 3,808,610 people living in
2000 – George W. Bush becomes President of the
2000 – Increasing urbanization. Almost half of the world’s population now lives in cities that occupy less than two per cent of the Earth’s land surface, but use 75 per cent of Earth’s resources. http://www.aaas.org/international/atlas/contents/pages/population06.html
2000- The
2000 - The UN Biosafety Protocol implements a more precautionary approach to trading genetically altered crops and organisms, and requires exporters to receive prior consent from destination countries before shipping genetically altered crops.
2000 - The Treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) requires the complete phaseout of nine persistent, highly toxic pesticides and limits the use of several other chemicals, including dioxins, furans, and PCBs.
2000 – The Millennium Summit of the United Nations is held to assess the role of the United Nations in the twenty-first century. Over 150 of heads of state ratify the UN Millennium Declaration. Leaders also resolve to meet a number of “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs), which include halving the proportion of people living in poverty and hunger by 2015, ensuring primary schooling for all children, and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases.
2000 - Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus Monkey declared extinct. It is the first extinction in several centuries of a member of the Primate Order, to which human beings belong. According to the IUCN Red Book, 11,046 species are threatened with extinction. http://wcs.org/news/wcsreports/6989/#story4
2001 – EPA measures Air Pollution for the Municipality of San Juan as follows: 1,851 tons of carbon dioxide, 4,550 tons of nitrogen oxide, 253 tons of volatile organic compounds, 639 tons of sulfur dioxide, 8 tons of ammonia, 166 tons of PM2.5, or particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers, and 184 tons of PM 10, or particulate matter smaller than 10 micrometers, for a total emissions into the San Juan air of 7,486 tons. This amount is small compared to other more industrialized counties, but it does account for the black soot people find in their living rooms if they leave their windows open. Without the benefit of the trade winds,
2001– 9/11 – Terrorists bomb the
2001 – Fourth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) held in
2001 - The IPCC releases a report citing "new and stronger evidence that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." The study projects that at current rates, temperatures will increase by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100.
2001 -
2001 - The $3 billion Human Genome Project reports that the human gene count is only about 30,000—about the same as that of a weed or a mouse—not 100,000 as expected. The finding adds to the concerns about the wisdom of genetic manipulation, including inserting genes into food crops and re-engineering animals or humans.
2001 - Study links nearly 2,000 cases of thyroid cancer to the 1986
2001 - UN reports that tropical countries lose more than 15 million hectares of forests a year to agriculture, logging, and other threats.
2001 - 116 countries vote for a new International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, which gives farmers the right to save, trade, and sell seeds and limits biotech patents on plant genes.
2001 - Scientists warn that native maize in
2001 - UN warns that the world’s reservoirs are losing storage capacity as deforestation causes erosion and sedimentation behind dams.
2001 - Pathbreaking UN Agreement for the Conservation and Management of Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks enters into force, laying the ground rules for fisheries in international waters.
2002 – President George W. Bush announced the Clear Skies Initiative, a market-based cap-and-trade approach to conservation which intended to legislate power plant emissions caps without specifying the specific methods used to reach those caps. The Initiative would reduce the cost and complexity of compliance and lessen the need for litigation. The law would reduce air pollution controls, including those of the original Clean Air Act, including caps on toxins in the air and budget cuts for enforcement. It did not make it out of Committee, but President Bush went ahead and gave the EPA instructions to follow the parameters set by the Act. Among them, the presidential orders ordered the EPA to lower their benchmarks to allow 42 million more tons of pollution than the original EPA proposal; weaken controls on mercury pollution levels compared to what would be achieved by enforcing the Clean Air Act stringently; weaken the current cap on nitrogen oxide pollution levels from 1.25 million tons to 2.1 million tons, allowing 68 % more NOx pollution; delayed the improvement of sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution levels compared to the Clean Air Act requirements; and delayed enforcement of smog-and-soot pollution standards until 2015. Many environmentalists opposed the initiative and describe its “Clear Skies” title as cynical propaganda.
2002 - Study says half of
2002 - Report says up to 80 percent of
2002 -
2002 - Some 3,250 square kilometers of
2002 – Desertification - Schools in
2002 - Survey finds that coral bleaching at
2002 - Study says habitat conversion to agriculture and other uses costs the planet roughly $250 billion each year.
2002 - European Union ratifies the
2002 - UN warns that a 3-kilometer-deep smog layer stretching across
2002 The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is held in
2002 - Oil tanker Prestige carrying 77,000 tons of oil splits apart, contaminating
2002 - Report says the global acreage of genetically modified crops increased by 12 percent worldwide, reaching 145 million acres.
2003 - UN reports that 30 million women and children throughout
2003 - Report says the death toll from malaria remains “outrageously high,” with more than 3,000 African children dying daily.
2003 - Scientists report industrial fishing has killed off 90 percent of the world’s biggest and most economically important fish species.
2003 – The
2003 - Gates at Three Gorges Dam are shut and
2003 - Relief agencies report AIDS is fueling famine in southern
2003 - 15 of the world’s largest mining and metal-producing companies pledge not to explore or mine in existing World Heritage sites.
2003 - Report says Amazon deforestation increased 40 percent compared with 2001, and
2003 -
2003 - Scientists report Earth’s northern hemisphere has been hotter since 1980 than at any time during the past 2,000 years.
2003 - WTO meeting in
2004 - The European Union issues it’s first-ever Pollution Register—containing a wealth of data on industrial emissions and representing a “landmark event” in public provision of environmental information.
2004 - Study reports that within the past decade, war, hunting, mining, and other human pressures have wiped out 70 percent of the global population of eastern lowland gorillas—leaving fewer than 5,000 worldwide.
2004 - More than 2,000 people are killed during a week of torrential rains and flooding in
2004 – Four hurricanes strike the state of
2005 – The Kyoto Protocol finally enters into force on February 16, thus marking the beginning of a new era in global efforts to combat climate change. The Protocol sets binding targets for developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on average 5.2 percent below 1990 levels.
2005 – The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) assesses the consequences of changes in ecosystem services for human well-being, and the scientific basis for action needed to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of those systems and their contribution to human well-being.
2005 – Hurricane Katrina strikes the
2006 – Census indicates 3,941,459 people live in
2006 – The Millennium Development Summit is held at the UN in
2007 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide and other gases from new motor vehicles to control pollutants believed to contribute to global warming. This decision reversed a 2005 ruling that the EPA had not violated the Clean Air Act in refusing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and on remand the EPA must explain its reasoning either for action or inaction on the question of regulating greenhouse gases. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf
2007 – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes its fourth assessment report (AR4) on climate change. The Sustainomics Principle of making development more sustainable (MDMS) is clearly recognized. The report confirms that climate change policies are best addressed by integrating them within the broader framework of sustainable development strategy. http://www.eoearth.org/article/Basic_concepts_and_principles_of_sustainomics
2008 – 700 Billion dollars spent on the
Epilogue
The Knowledge Economy demands more of us, as individuals and as businesses. It demands we process more information, and be more connected to our local community as well as to our cyber-communities. Now the environment is demanding we pay attention to it as well. The connection between our environment and our economy is essential to our society’s growth. It is no longer enough to figure out a way to sell a good product. It’s imperative that we, as individuals and as business owners, begin to think of ourselves as a part of a wider, more mature society, and work in ways that allows for all of us to thrive. To do that we must broaden our horizons: not just of business possibilities and technological breakthroughs, but of consciousness for the environment and every living being in it. It will not be easy, but it must be done. To quote Mahatma Gandhi: “First they ignore us; then they laugh at us; then they fight us, and then we win.”
“Either we build real community -- with mass transit and local food -- or we will go down clinging to the wreckage of our privatized society.” Bill McKibben
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