Showing posts with label sustainable development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sustainable development. Show all posts

Monday 24 August 2020

Fundamental fungi: the forgotten kingdom vital to our future

At the end of 1993 the Convention on Biological Diversity came into force. A key piece of global legislation in the promotion of sustainable development, it marked a change in focus for environmental concerns. Whereas previous high-profile conservation efforts such as those of the World Wide Fund for Nature or Greenpeace were frequently aimed at individual species or regional ecosystems, the legislation initiated by the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro was aimed at the biota of the entire planet. However, there are still segments of enormous ecological importance that are lacking sufficient research.

I've previously discussed how little attention general-readership natural history pays to the kingdom of fungi, which may have somewhere between 1.5 million and 3.8 million species. Of these, less than 150,000 have been scientifically described. Clearly, this is one life form where our knowledge barely covers the tip of the iceberg. It's hardly as if this attitude is a new one, either. While Linnaeus produced comprehensive editions on plant and animal taxonomy in the 1750s, it took over seventy years for anyone to bother with fungi: it wasn't until 1821 that another Swedish naturalist, Elias Magnus Fries, produced an equivalent work called Systema Mycologicum.

Thanks to the majority of fungal material living either underground or in dark, damp environments such as leaf litter, the kingdom fails to get the attention it deserves. Even the forms we see more regularly, such as mushrooms and symbiotic lichen, engender little interest. Many people no doubt still mistake the former as plants - and are scared off any interest in the wild forms due to the dangers of poisonous species - while the latter are rarer in polluted, i.e. urban, environments and fail to compete in sight and scent with the glories of the flowering plants.

In the eight years since I wrote about the lack of interest in fungi, I've found reason to mention the long-forgotten kingdom in various important contexts. For a start, numerous animals and plants are becoming critically endangered due to fungal pathogens accidentally being spread by global travel. In addition, research over the past three years has shown that Aspergillus tubingensis and several other types of fungi show promise as a bio-friendly solution to plastic waste. Finally, last month I looked at non-animal protein substitutes, including the mycoprotein-derived Quorn.

Despite the potential of these various forms of fungi, the organism's losses due to rapid environmental changes don't appear to be garnering much attention. The IUCN Red List, which tabulates the differing levels of threat faced by all life on Earth, only shows 343 fungi as currently endangered; this contrasts with over 43,000 plants and 76,000 animals on the list. Undoubtedly, the Kingdom Fungi is being given an underwhelming amount of attention just as we are discovering how important it is to maintaining ecosystem stability and for the future of our species.

Recently published reports of studies conducted in the Amazon region show that deforestation has a long-term impact on soil biota, which in turn affects the entire local ecology. Studies of a range of habitats, such as primary forest, agricultural land (including monoculture), pasture/grazing, forestry plantations and secondary/regenerated forest showed that although overall fungal mass might remain consistent, species diversity is far lower outside of the original rainforest. The lack of fungal variety was linked directly to the lack of plant diversity in those biomes, with recovery a slow or unlikely prospect due to the newly-fragmented nature of the landscape preventing efficient dispersal of fungal spores.

There are some obvious points that agribusiness seems to ignore, such as the effects of pesticides and fertilisers on local fungi and the loss of microhabitats vital to maintaining a healthy variety of fungal species. If only more generalist fungi can survive the change in land use from the wonderful diversity of the rainforest (with up to 400 fungal species per teaspoonful) then this may have repercussions for future farming. As an example, the fungus Fusarium oxysporum has a phytopathogenic effect on agricultural plants including palm oil, but without competition from a wider cross-section of fungi (for example, Paraconiothyrium variabile) it could spread rapidly within a dismal monoculture environment. 

As a predominantly visual species, we humans are unthinkingly biased about the natural world based upon what we see: think cute giant panda versus the unappealing aesthetics of the blobfish. It really is a case of out of sight, out of mind, but unfortunately no amount of spin doctoring will make fungi as much loved as furry mammals. Yet our attitudes need to change if we are to maintain the delicate ecological balance; fungi are highly important for recycling nutrients, regulating carbon dioxide levels, and as a source of food and pharmaceuticals. Yet they remain the soil equivalents of the ubiquitous underwater copepods, unsung heroes of the global ecosystem. It's about time we took a lot more notice of this forgotten kingdom.

Tuesday 24 December 2013

The great outdoors: getting children back to nature

With Christmas just around the corner it seems like a good time to look at the benefits of persuading children to swap their hi-tech electronic gadgets for the wonders of the great outdoors. The recently-slated Toys 'R' Us television advert that promotes their plastic junk at the expensive of a 'dull and boring' nature field trip only highlights a trend that as the rural population decreases, natural phenomena such as animals, weather and good, clean soil are deemed solely of interest to farmers. Some years ago, a London acquaintance who teaches English at a senior school reported that during a woodland walk - to explore nature poetry rather than nature itself - several of her female teenage students cried due to getting mud on their shoes. Just how distanced are children becoming from the world beyond their front door!
A sense of scale: humans against California redwoods

The last few decades have seen a move away from the outdoor adventures that typified my childhood: catching butterflies; building woodland dens; even exploring a derelict house. Instead, sitting in front of computers, TVs and games consoles has become prevalent, sometimes all at once. Not that this has gone unnoticed, as discussed in Richard Louv's best-selling Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. Although the phenomenon is common across the developed world, some countries fare better than others. For example, recent reports suggest New Zealand children (feeling a bit smug at this point) spend rather more time outdoors than their Australian, American or British counterparts. However, I'm sure there's room for improvement just about everywhere. There are many reasons behind the stay-at-home trend in addition to the obvious delights of being cosily tucked up with digital devices, but I believe it is more important to explore the effects this is having on our children:
  1. The most obvious problem caused by a shortage of physical activity outdoors - which after all is free, compared to the indoor play centres often used for children's parties - is the lack of opportunity to develop coordination and motor skills beyond the mouse or joystick. Since we've experienced a generation-on-generation increase in the number of calories, sugar and fat in our diet, then clearly there should also be an increased amount of time spent burning this off. Obviously this hasn't happened, and various groups such as the International Association for the Study of Obesity have tracked the post-war growth in overweight children. If you haven't seen any of the resulting graphs, they make for troubled reading...
  2. But it isn't just physical health that is affected. As a species, we are still coming to terms with urban living and the psychological problems of existence in near-identical cuboids in residential estates frequently bereft of greenery. The World Health Organization's definition of health includes mental well-being, which can incorporate the notion that regular playing outdoors confers benefits on children. I don't consider this as just referring to strenuous exercise: exploring the randomness of nature - from building sand castles to snowball fights - as well as the simple joys of experiencing weather at first hand, are also important. As if to confirm the problems that a lack of balance in indoor/outdoor activities can lead to, a work colleague recently informed me that his twenty-year-old son, a business degree student, was reduced to tears when he was unable to log on to his online gaming account for a few days. Oh, for an adequate sense of perspective!
  3. Does the changing emphasis from natural to man-made environments mean are we losing a vital part of our humanity? Or are we seeing a new form of evolution for our species? The differences between nature and artifice are profound, from the seemingly (although only from our viewpoint) haphazardness of the former to the non-messy convenience sought as a given via the latter. Even a basic understanding of processes from food at its source might be useful as an educative tool to engender empathy for a planet we are so rapidly despoiling. It's very easy for children to overlook the natural wonders that still exist in even the most densely populated of nations when they primarily associate the rural environment with the exotic non-developed locales usually favoured by natural history documentary programme makers.

    Viewing nature at second hand is no substitute for - literally - getting your fingers dirty, whether it is planting flowers or foodstuffs, or simply scrabbling over muddy terrain. A 2010 survey conducted in the UK indicated that between one quarter and one half of British children lack basic knowledge concerning familiar native and introduced species such as horse chestnut trees and grey squirrels. Not that I'm convinced an appreciation of the facts might lead to more environmental awareness; after all, how many times has the 'closer to nature' sustainability of pre-industrial societies been shown to be a myth? But considering for example the enormous amount of bought food that is thrown away uneaten (perhaps reaching over 40% in the USA) surely any understanding of the complex cycles within the far from limitless ecosystem may engender some changes in attitude towards reduce, reuse and recycle? As evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould once said, we will not fight to save what we do not love.
  4. Further to the last point, knowledge as a safety net might come in handy, should the need arise. There's an old adage that even the most 'civilised' of societies is only nine missed meals away from anarchy, as the citizens of New Orleans learnt all too well in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Considering just how much food manufacturers rely on oil for everything from transport to packaging (did you know North Sea prawns are flown on a 12,000 mile round trip to be cleaned and de-shelled?) it doesn't just have to be a natural disaster to generate such chaos. In October 2011 a leak in the Maui gas pipeline here in New Zealand led for a few days to empty bread shelves nationwide, highlighting the fragility of our infrastructure.

    A 2008 UK report concluded that British food retailers would exhaust their stocks in just three days in the event of a Hurricane Katrina-scale emergency, thus suggesting that those who follow chef and forager Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall or adventurer/survivalist Bear Grylls will be the victors. I'm not suggesting children should be taught to distinguish edible from poisonous fungi but considering the potential dangers of even cultivated food crops (did you know that potatoes turning green may be a sign of the poison solanine?) any knowledge of foraging and food preparation may prove useful as well as fun.
  5. Encouraging children to explore outside is as good a method as any to beget a new generation of biologists, ecologists and their ilk. Ironically, Toys 'R' Us list over 370 items in the science and discovery section of their online catalogue. Indeed, their advert includes several seconds' footage of a boy looking through the eyepiece of small reflecting telescope labelled 'science', although judging by the angle the telescope is pointing into the ground! As I've explored previously, doing practical science seems to be a far better way to introduce young children to the discipline than mere passive viewing or reading. It can also demonstrate that - with several exceptions such as high-energy physics - many of the basic structures of scientific procedure and knowledge are well within the grasp of non-scientists (perceptions are hard to shift: I recently heard a law graduate declare she wasn't sure she would be able to understand this blog, as science is of course 'very difficult'! )

    Each one of the above alone would be reason enough to encourage children to spend more time outside, but taken together they suggest that there is likely to be severe repercussions across many aspects of society if the adults of tomorrow don't get enough fresh air today. It may sound like something out of a Boys' Own Journal from the era of the British Empire, but there's something to be said for the simpler pleasures in life. I know I'd rather go for a forest walk or rock pooling than play Grand Theft Auto 5 any day...

Sunday 7 March 2010

How green is my alley? Reduce, reuse & recycle

British artist Richard Hamilton's 1957 definition of pop art included the terms 'transient', 'expendable', 'mass-produced', and 'Big Business'. We've come a long way since similar contemporary cultural attitudes led to throwaway clothing and disposable furniture, but there's still plenty that needs to be done before we achieve anything approaching sustainable development. The recent news articles showing that like the Pacific, the North Atlantic Ocean has its own enormous patch of floating plastic waste, clearly define a multinational problem: but what can the average Briton do to help the environment?

The three green 'R's of reduce, reuse and recycle involve a lot of statistics published by a variety of concerns, ranging from manufacturers to environmental groups. Going with the old saying that there are lies, damn lies and you-know-what, how can the public find a way through the minefield? As an example, estimates for the UK's annual waste total vary from 100 million to 400 million tonnes - although even the lower figure is more than enough! In recent years there have been several scandals involving potentially dangerous waste collected by local councils for recycling, only to be sent to developing countries where it is picked over by scavengers. Clearly, in some cases, out of sight is also out of mind.

Perhaps this shouldn't be too surprising considering how quickly we've had to adopt ecologically-motivated measures, but another concern is the enormous regional variation in recycling collection, waste processing and recovery. Lack of processing plants and a deficiency of recycling knowledge within councils supply yet another example of the postcode lottery. In response to this some local communities are taking matters into their own hands, such as the Somerset village of Chew Magna, where the inhabitants are attempting to gain zero waste status.

In addition to the lack of processing facilities another issue is sorting, although the use of high-tech approaches such as x-ray fluorescence and infra-red spectroscopy may increase efficiency, especially of plastics where recycling can create enormous savings in everything from oil to water. It isn't just the percentage that is recycled that counts, but how effective the processing and recovery methods are and whether as a nation we can reduce the amount of waste in the first place. Britain is an intensely consumerist nation and as if we need further proof, our household waste continues to grow by about 3% each year.

One of the most astonishing statistics (you see, they keep on cropping up), is the estimated 17.5 billion plastic bags given away in British shops every year. This amounts to over 130,000 tonnes of plastic, very few of which are composed of biodegradable material. An example of how quickly habits could change is shown by Ireland's introduction of a tax on plastic bags in 2002, which lead to an almost immediate reduction of over 90%. What's the difference to the UK? As far as I can tell, it boils down to the simple fact that unlike in Ireland, we have companies who make plastic bags: far be it from the Government to inhibit sales within our increasingly pitiful manufacturing base.

Despite the popularity of city allotments we are so divorced from food sources as to blindly follow use-by dates without actually checking the food itself. Recent evidence, including personal experiments by yours truly, show that in many cases the dates are wildly pessimistic (fingers crossed, I haven't been poisoned yet.) Again the figures vary widely, but estimates for food wastage in Britain range from 2.5 million to 8 million tonnes per year, which even for the lower figure equates to 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Food safety scares have a lot to answer for, but surely effective food science education of adults as well as children is the obvious solution? After all, it would save us at least £10 billion per year on our shopping bills.

Of course it isn't just the consumer who is at fault: British industry must bear much of the blame. Every year we each spend up to one-sixth of our food budget on packaging, much of which uses standard sizes to cut manufacturing costs at the expense of material wastage. We could do worse than look at South Korea, where over the past decade legislation has reduced both the size and materials that can be used for packaging processed foods.

Another issue is planned obsolescence. Both the Trading Standards Institute and the Office of Fair Trading investigate consumer claims of items ceasing to work shortly after the initial warranty expires, but there are plenty of less obvious instances of products deliberately built to limits short of their potential working life, such as printer cartridges and rechargeable batteries. More insidious still is the use of advertising and clever marketing, combined with long-term release cycles, to promote a more rapid replacement of items than is really necessary. This 'obsolescence of desirability' is particularly obvious with mobile phones, which rapidly outstripped manufacturer's sales estimates in the early 1990s and are now updated on the basis of a fashionable new function or user interface rather than improvements to their core purpose. There can be no better illustration of the needlessly short life span of electronic goods than the seven metre tall WEEE Man sculpture at the Eden Project in Cornwall, which is composed of the consumer goods the average British citizen gets through in a lifetime - including no less than 35 mobile phones!

One irony is that the rapid development of storage formats over the past few decades has created a cycle of obsolescence from floppy disks to laser discs at a time we most need to counter expendability. Perhaps the current generation of 'virtual' devices such as Ipods and Ipads will help offset this, as long as their material and energy costs don't outweigh the savings in paper and packaging.

We cannot be in any doubt that things are changing for the better, but the big question is whether it is fast enough. The world's third largest retailer, Tesco, plans to be carbon neutral…in about forty years time. Many office buildings are already zero carbon and the Government plans for all new homes to be built to this standard from 2016. Meanwhile the Welsh firm Affresol has developed TPR, a wholly-recyclable substance stronger than concrete yet made mostly of waste and intended to provide load-bearing walls for buildings; fingers crossed for their pilot project!

Obviously just cutting back on domestic waste and power consumption will not do as much as reducing fossil fuel usage, but every little bit helps. A final shocking statistic: every Christmas this nation uses 8,000 tonnes of wrapping paper. Do we really need that amount? And as for carbon-trading - that's a whole other issue...

Thursday 4 February 2010

Don't Catch the Cod: the ebb and flow of marine biology in the UK

About quarter of a century ago I was walking along the north Welsh coast when I came across an extraordinary sight: dozens of large, pink jellyfish, some a metre across, were lying stranded on the beach. I later discovered that these were Rhizostoma octopus - jellyfish despite the name and so-called because of their eight tentacles - marooned during a gathering to breed. In a country not known for unusual fauna, events like this give food for thought about the unknown creatures living just off our shores. Since fifty to eighty percent of all life resides in the sea, there's obviously a lot more out there besides cod, haddock and plaice. Another exotic but almost unknown organism that inhabits British waters is Regalecus glesne, a species of oarfish that grows up to 11 metres long and is therefore probably the longest bony fish in existence today. With more than a passing resemblance to the classic sea serpent of yore this king of herrings has rarely been seen alive, with only around fifty known strandings over the past two and a half centuries. Incidentally, this category excludes the cartilaginous basking shark, at 20 tons the second largest fish in the world and commonly to be found around the British coastline. Lucky for us, it's a filter feeder!

For a nation where it is impossible to live much more than 100 km from the sea, we appear astoundingly ignorant of our marine neighbourhood. In an early example of what has now become a cliché, pioneer environmentalist Rachel Carson pointed out in The Sea Around Us (1951), that the oceans remain the last great frontier on Earth. We are only now realising just how little we know about the role marine organisms play in everything from climate stability to food chains. Speaking of marine cuisine, a thoughtful example of changing attitudes can be found in Arthur C. Clarke's 1957 novel The Deep Range, which concerns the herding of whales for food, at least until a Buddhist leader campaigns for the slaughter to stop. Interestingly, it was the recordings of humpback whale song in the 1960s that started the anti-whaling movement, gaining popularity through the 1970s (including a UK top-forty single Don't Kill the Whale in 1978), leading to an eventual, if not outright, ban in 1986. Not that, if given half a chance, several nations wouldn't like to see 'scientific whaling' increased to the level of commercial operations...

If whaling shows the traditional viewpoint of the oceans as a limitless larder, another popular notion but somewhat at odds is to treat the sea as an ever-obliging rubbish tip. Despite the likes of Jacques Cousteau starting campaigns as early as 1960 to halt the dumping of nuclear waste from ships, it is generally recognised that the Irish Sea is one of the most radioactive in the world thanks to land-based pipelines. The rest of our coastal waters aren't much better off, being subject to pollution from oil, bilge water, sewage and nitrogen fertiliser run-off, all of which do little for the health of marine organisms. As an extreme example, in 1988 half of Britain's seal colonies were lost due to immune deficiency linked to pollution, with smaller-scale outbreaks reoccurring since.

Going back to the perception of the sea as a food store par excellence, the E.U. announced last year that over 80% of fish stocks in the region were over-fished, the classic example of the fishfinger's friend, North Atlantic cod, having reduced by over 98% in three decades. Whilst many people may not worry whether their children eat pollock/pollack or coley instead, a rapid decline in a few species could have unforeseen consequences, as with the proliferation of a rapidly expanding Humboldt squid population which is currently supplanting the dwindling number of sharks as top predator off Mexico's west coast.

But at least as important as well-known species are the minute marine organisms that will continue to require a high level of research for decades to come. Microscopic phytoplankton are responsible for at least half of all photosynthetic activity, thereby regulating atmospheric oxygen content, in addition to being the base of many food chains. Evidence is even beginning to favour the CLAW hypothesis (the 'L' being co-author James Lovelock), in which one group of phytoplankton is viewed as an essential component of the cloud condensation cycle. So what happens 'down there' may have an enormous influence of what goes on over our heads. The Gaia hypothesis (in the strictest feedback loop sense) could be alive and well, after all...

Whilst we are currently lacking the kind of public fervour seen in the 1970s anti-whaling campaigns, marine biology in the UK appears to be flourishing. There are about sixty higher education courses to chose from with an apparently good success rate in obtaining relating jobs. The subject is often taught as one of several components, including conservation and oceanography; what interests me is this way it so readily interacts with other disciplines, ranging from chemistry to meteorology, and thereby uses a wide gamut of scientific tools, from observation satellites to remotely-operated vehicles or ROVs. On that basis alone it is currently one of the most exciting areas of science in Britain, as well as being increasingly relevant to our quality of life. One scheme involving British scientists in recent years was some of the earliest research into pouring iron sulphate powder into the oceans, in an effort to stimulate plankton production (and thereby other marine life), reduce carbon dioxide, and decrease atmospheric temperature. The recent licences issued for nine new offshore wind farms around the UK will presumably provide research for marine biologists too, as current studies indicate the short-term disruption is more than compensated for by the turbines doubling as artificial reefs.

An example outside the scope of the promising Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 but now under active consultation, is the controversial campaign to turn the Chagos archipelago in the British Indian Ocean Territory into the world's largest marine reserve. Although protection status would obviously be a positive move, the primary downside would be the permanent dispossession of the local inhabitants: such is the complexity facing sustainable development projects. Closer to home, we can't all be involved in marine conservation, but it's very easy for anyone to help preserve biodiversity - simply find an alternative to cod to go with your chips!

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