Aquaculture looks to green dawn. 14 June 2011Last updated at 12:01 Not a science fiction movie, but the lab that breeds food for growing fish Here's a thing you might not know about aquaculture. The amount of food it's producing is increasing faster than anything else - meat, cereals, vegetable, whatever - and it has been that way since the 1970s. This is one of the top line findings from a new report on the industry, Blue Frontiers, co-produced by the WorldFish Center and Conservation International. Whether news of its rapid growth produces warm feelings ("lots more lovely fish to eat! ") or alarm ("lots more horrible environmental damage! ") might depend on what you already know about the business. Certainly its environmental issues have been well documented - soil salinsation by shrimp ponds, vast extraction of wild anchovies to feed farmed salmon, disease, and so on. Like many big industries, aquaculture is really many small ones.
That's what Blue Frontiers is about. So what's the point? Poor language skills 'leave Britons out of EU jobs' 9 May 2011Last updated at 06:04 By Gillian Hargreaves Education correspondent, BBC News The proportion of UK students studying foreign languages has dropped over the past decade Poor foreign language skills among the British workforce are leaving the UK under-represented in European Union institutions, an official has said. The head of the European Parliament's London information office has warned of a "serious problem". Only 5% of the jobs in the European Parliament and Commission are taken by British workers - although the UK contains 12% of the EU's population. The government is aiming to reverse a decline in language study in schools. On Monday, for the first time, the European Parliament and European Union are holding an open day for UK school leavers and graduates encouraging them to think of a career in Brussels or Strasbourg. 'Renaissance' The proportion of students taking language GCSEs has fallen from 61% in 2005 to 44% in 2010.
Printondemand-worldwide | Book Printing | Environmentally friendly book production. On Restoring the Oceans. The ocean—our major life-support system—is endangered. And it cannot be reimagined or redesigned, as it is too vast and complex for us to re-create from scratch. It must be restored to sustainable levels. The only reason that our planet is habitable (and a great place to live) is because of the innumerable goods and services that the ocean provides: more than half of the oxygen in the atmosphere, regulation of the climate, carbon sequestration, food security, and huge recreational and commercial opportunities. But in the past century we’ve taken much of this for granted, harvesting from its waters the things we like, especially the large and small animals we love to eat, and throwing in the things we dislike—sewage, garbage, and invisible pollutants such as mercury and PCBs. In just a few generations the rules of the game have changed dramatically—and continue to do so at an unprecedented rate.
First, we need to conduct a global Ocean Ecosystem Assessment. River and lake fish 'neglected but essential' 22 October 2010Last updated at 13:13 By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News, Nagoya The report argues that biodiversity is key to keeping critical fisheries afloat Inland fisheries provide employment for more people than their marine equivalents, as well as being a vital source of nutrients, a study concludes. The UN-backed Blue Harvest study says that in Africa alone, fish from rivers and lakes are a key source of protein and minerals for 100 million people.
However, dams and other kinds of water management have drastically reduced yields, particularly in Europe. Properly valuing these fisheries could lead to better forms of management. The study was launched at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity meeting here. It puts the yield of fish from these predominantly freshwater sources at 13-30 million tonnes per year. In terms of quantity, that is dwarfed by the amount coming from the oceans and aquaculture, which produce in the region of 50 million tonnes annually. Basin cut. Ports 'failing to halt illegal fishing'
21 May 2010Last updated at 10:08 By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News IUU fishing is a global problem needing a global solution, the study says Global measures to regulate the fishing industry lack the capability to tackle illegal catches, warn researchers. Writing in the journal Science, they say that up to 26m tonnes of fish, worth an estimated $23bn (£16bn), are landed illegally each year. They add that a global monitoring and information sharing network is needed to crack down on illegal operators. Eighty percent of the world's fish stocks are deemed to be fully or overexploited.
"Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a global problem and it needs a global answer," said co-author Kristin von Kistowski, a senior adviser to the Pew Environment Group, a US-based think tank. "By creating this first comprehensive overview of port state performance, we have identified the weaknesses and problem in the system. " Closing the net Continue reading the main story. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture - 2010 (SOFIA) Foreword (Download 851 Kb) Acknowledgements Abbreviations and acronyms PART 1 WORLD REVIEW OF FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE (Download 1.6Mb) Fisheries resources: trends in production, utilization and trade Notes PART 2 SELECTED ISSUES IN FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE (Download 970 Kb) Trade measures against IUU fishing Maintaining biosecurity in aquaculture Which fish to eat: enjoying the benefits while minimizing the risks Fisheries sector transparency PART 3 HIGHLIGHTS OF SPECIAL STUDIES (Download 1.6 Mb) Climate change implications for fisheries and aquaculture: overview of current scientific knowledge From drain to gain in capture fisheries rents: a synthesis study Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear Private standards and certification in fisheries and aquaculture: current practice and emerging issues Aquaculture development in Southeast Asia: the role of policy Human dimensions of the ecosystem approach to fisheries PART 4 OUTLOOK (Download 1.3 Mb) What future for inland fisheries?
Global fish consumption hits record high. 1 February 2011Last updated at 16:02 By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News Fish products provide the planet's population with almost 16% of its animal protein intake The global consumption of fish has hit a record high, reaching an average of 17kg per person, a UN report has shown. Fisheries and aquaculture supplied the world with about 145m tonnes in 2009, providing about 16% of the population's animal protein intake. The findings published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also stressed that the status of global fish stocks had not improved. It said that about 32% were overexploited, depleted or recovering.
"That there has been no improvement in the status of stocks is a matter of great concern," said Richard Grainger, one of the report's authors and FAO senior fish expert. "The percentage of overexploitation needs to go down, although at least we seem to reaching a plateau," he observed. Big business Closing the net. Fish discards could end under EU proposals. 1 March 2011Last updated at 22:32 By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall backs 'bold move' The European Commission has set out ideas for ending fish discards. Currently, EU boats in the North Sea have to throw away up to half of what they catch to stay within their quotas. Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki proposes instead to regulate fleets through limits on fishing time and greater use of measures such as CCTV.
She discussed the ideas with delegates from EU member states in Brussels on Tuesday, with the aim of finalising plans later in the year. She hopes to introduce a discard ban as part of a reformed Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) in 2013. UK Fisheries Minister Richard Benyon said the atmosphere had been positive. "We are all agreed - tackling the waste of discards must be a top priority," he said. During the meeting, Ms Damanaki told ministers that business as usual was not an option.
Controlling effort Ms Damanaki suggests: Plagiarism: The Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V boom. A German minister has resigned after copying huge chunks of his doctoral thesis, while the London School of Economics is probing whether Colonel Gaddafi's son lifted chunks and used a ghost writer for his own. So is plagiarism out of control? It's been a bad week for honest educational endeavour. The German defence minister has stepped down after being stripped of his 2006 university doctorate thesis for copying large parts of it.
The University of Bayreuth had decided Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg had lifted whole sections without attribution. And the LSE is looking into allegations that Colonel Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam plagiarised his PhD thesis. These are very high-profile cases, but in the worlds of academia and publishing, the issue of plagiarism has been a problem for many years. "Google gave students access to a much greater library of texts," she says. "The difference now is that we can all copy each other's libraries. " Plagiarism has been with us for as long as the written word. Report: Urgent action needed to avert global hunger. 24 January 2011Last updated at 11:32 By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News The report calls for an urgent change to food production in order to feed future generations A UK government-commissioned study into food security has called for urgent action to avert global hunger.
The Foresight Report on Food and Farming Futures says the current system is unsustainable and will fail to end hunger unless radically redesigned. It is the first study across a range of disciplines deemed to have put such fears on a firm analytical footing. The report is the culmination of a two-year study, involving 400 experts from 35 countries.
According to the government's chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir John Beddington, the study provides compelling evidence for governments to act now. The report emphasises changes to farming, to ensure that increasing yields does not come at the expense of sustainability and to provide incentives to the agricultural sector that address malnutrition. Radical changes. EU paves way for common patent system. 29 November 2010Last updated at 12:40 The EU aims to ease the administrative burden for firms registering patents A group of EU countries plans to strike a deal soon on a simplified and cheaper European patent system - a goal that has eluded the EU for a decade. The European Commission has thrown its weight behind the move, admitting that there is no unanimity on the issue among the 27 member states.
Translation costs make patents in the EU much more expensive than US patents. Germany, the UK and several other countries want a fast-track deal under the "enhanced co-operation" procedure. The procedure is an innovation brought in by the EU's Lisbon Treaty. "Enhanced co-operation" allows nine or more countries to push ahead with a measure they deem important but that is blocked by a small minority of EU states. It has been used only once before - to simplify divorce rules in cases where spouses come from different EU countries. Language barrier Global competition. How To Survive A Mass Extinction. Quakes are a problem with underground cities. If well won't happen something like 2012 crazyness, something that makes easier quakes, at least for an area (i.e. meteorite hitting near enough, or a megavolcano) is possible. Being in a geologically stable area will help. If well the 2012 movie had some, lets say questionable, science (acting, argument and so on), had one danger to take into account, is how "natural selection" will play there if mankind keeps acting as with current culture, if only rich/old/few people manage to get into a high-tech surviving city (and/or high amount of canned food) when everyone else dies we could have no future.
We advanced a bit over old salamanders. IF we have time, space is the final solution for most extintion events, managing to build safe self-sustaning space stations (orbiting sun, earth or other planet) should be a goal for mankind/civilization if it want to remain in the long term. Nature's sting: The real cost of damaging Planet Earth. 12 October 2010Last updated at 00:08 By Richard Anderson Business reporter, BBC News The global cost of replacing insect pollination is around $190bn every year You don't have to be an environmentalist to care about protecting the Earth's wildlife. Just ask a Chinese fruit farmer who now has to pay people to pollinate apple trees because there are no longer enough bees to do the job for free. And it's not just the number of bees that is dwindling rapidly - as a direct result of human activity, species are becoming extinct at a rate 1,000 times greater than the natural average. The Earth's natural environment is also suffering.
In the past few decades alone, 20% of the oceans' coral reefs have been destroyed, with a further 20% badly degraded or under serious threat of collapse, while tropical forests equivalent in size to the UK are cut down every two years. Costing nature For the first time in history, we can now begin to quantify just how expensive degradation of nature really is.
Huge snowfall caused by rare clash of weather events. 1 September 2010 Last updated at 20:34 ET By Pamela Rutherford Reporter, BBC News The harsh winter in America was caused by a rare coincidence of weather events, say scientists Scientists have shown that a severe snowfall in North America and Northern Europe in the winter of 2009-10 was caused by a rare, once-in-a-century, collision of two weather systems. They concluded the harsh winter and heavy snow was an example of hard to predict weather events, not a change in climate. They analysed historical snow records. The research was published in Geophysical Research Letters. In the winter of 2009-10 much of Northern Europe experienced heavy snow and temperatures were at the lowest they had been for nearly 30 years. Some news reports took the extreme cold weather as evidence against climate change.
El Nino events result from a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean coupled with changes in the atmosphere. "The NAO on its own doesn't cause much precipitation in America. Gaddafi wants EU cash to stop African migrants. 31 August 2010Last updated at 13:47 Despite historical tensions Col Gaddafi has forged friendlier relations with Italy Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi says the EU should pay Libya at least 5bn euros (£4bn; $6.3bn) a year to stop illegal African immigration and avoid a "black Europe". Speaking on a visit to Italy, Col Gaddafi said Europe "could turn into Africa" as "there are millions of Africans who want to come in".
Italy has drawn criticism for handing over to Libya migrants it intercepts at sea, without screening them first. Far fewer now reach Italy from Libya. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote We don't know... what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans” End QuoteCol Muammar Gaddafi European Commission figures show that in 2009 the number of people caught trying to enter Italy illegally fell to 7,300, from 32,052 in 2008. Audience of women Mr Berlusconi made no immediate comment on Col Gaddafi's demand. Swarms of marine turbines could 'tap the Gulf Stream'
Rainfall impacts of climate warming to persist. Climate sceptics rally to expose 'myth' EU seeks trade breakthrough with Latin America. Autumn delayed by cold winter, Woodland Trust predicts. Google EArth underwatter.