New Orleans problems

Climate change is effecting New Orleans as well. Annual rainfall increases, more rain arrives in heavy downpours and the sea level is rising. The changing climate is likely to increase damages from floods, but also increase the risk of heat stroke and other heat-related illnesses. However, Louisiana has warmed less than most of the US, but soils have become dryer.

The land along the Mississippi River are sinking with one inch every three years. Because of the rivers levees, navigation channels and other human activities has made it harder for the river to continue his natural land-building process. This causes coastal lands to be submerged. If the sea rises more rapidly, Louisiana will loose its lands.

Tropical storms and hurricanes have become more intense ass well. Most of New Orleans was flooded during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Hurricane wind speeds and rainfall are likely to increase together with the rising temperatures.

The changing climate is likely to increase the risk of inland flooding. Heavy rainstorms are increasing and most of the rainfall in the Midwest drains into the Mississippi River. This worsens the chance of flooding in Louisiana. Also the Port of New Orleans is vulnerable to river floods followed by high water levels.

As the climate changes, progress towards clean air will become difficult. Ozone has health effects. The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality have been woking to reduce ozone concentrations.

Technology and innovation

The world’s population is growing, which means that more food is necessary. This is where Technical solutions offer solutions for the future. Tractors and other advances were introduced in the 20th century, but less people tend to work on farms. Nowadays there are enough agricultural technical startups, but which one will linger? These three examples are in the top 25 most innovative agriculture technology companies.

One example of an agricultural technical solution is CropX. Cropx is a cloud based software, which aims focus on saving water and energy. The Cropx has a sensor that automatically delivers the correct amount of water to each plant, instead of watering the field the whole time. This innovation was founded in 2013. It is a simple “do it yourself” installation, reliable and not as expensive compared to other innovations.

 

Another example of an agricultural technical solution is Trace Genomics. This technology stands for soil health. By using machine learning and genomics testing this technology can id microbes and other biological data in soil, helping farmers maximize harvest. The quality of soil is essential for crop yield and quality. Each tablespoon of soil contains millions of microbes that from an ecosystem for the plant.

 

The last example is the agricultural technical solution called mOasis. This innovatige  is a non-toxic gel soil additive that help seeds grow on less water. By holding extra water near a plant’s roots and releasing it once the soil dries out. A field test found the product provided 30% increase in harvest for broccoli using 25% less water. This solution was also selected by the Climate Innovation Exchange in Abu Dhabi.

These are only three of the 25 agriculture technical solution startups where, eventually one solution is selected for best solution.

These three examples will be helpful in New Orleans, because the climate change increased the temperature and soils have become dryer. These are solution working with less water or a specific soil.

Climate Smart Agriculture

Changing Climate will have effect on farming. The temperature in Louisiana will rise, there must be adequate water. In New Orleans there is a lot of livestock productivity, this will be reduced by the heath, because the stress disrupts the animals’ metabolism.

Climate Smart agriculture, or CSA, is an approach for developing agricultural strategies to secure sustainable food security under climate change. It provides the means to help stakeholders identify agricultural strategies suitable to their local conditions. The goal of CSA is to make agriculture, forestry and fisheries more productive and more sustainable.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is an organisation specialized in het efforts to defeat hunger. They have 194 member states and works in over 130 countries. Their goal is to achieve food security for all and, eventually, ending world hunger.

 

The Netherlands became a member of the FAO of the United Nations in 1945. The Netherlands is currently contributing to FAO’s climate smart agricultural projects in Zambia, Malawi, Vietnam Guatemala and Honduras. By applying CSA in these countries, productivity will increase, environmental and climatic risks will be reduced and ongoing work will be complemented.

The five principles of sustainable food and agriculture are:

1. Improving efficiency in the use of resource
2. Conserve, protect and enhance natural resources
3. Ensuring that producers have adequate access to and control of productive resources.
4. Enhanced resilience of people, communities and ecosystems is key to sustainable agriculture
5. Responsibility and effective governance mechanisms

 

Sustainable Development

The subject of this week was Sustainable Development: “Economic development that is organized without exhaustion of natural resources.”

 

The economy is often given priority, where the environment than becomes a victim of the actions, but these two concept are more connected than one might think. By making development sustainable, the environment will meet the needs of later generations.

An huge example to achieve sustainable development are “The 17 goals to transform our world.” In 2015 these 17 goals, shown above, were introduced and in 2016 they actually became operative. With these goals, countries make its efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind.

 

Another example of achieving sustainable development is, of course, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, addressing the need to limit the rise of global temperatures. In this agreement, all countries agreed to strive to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius. This agreement supports the achieving the 17 goals mentioned before.

 

Sustainable development includes environmental development together with social- and economic development. Development has taken the world to another level, but development only will not be sufficient anymore, since our resources are slowly dying out.

Value Chains

A value chain is a set of activities performed in a specific industry in order to deliver a product for the market. It is a complete system, considering every link and activity from start to finish. These chains deliver a huge value to businesses trying to solve world challenges. The challenges varies between trusting others in the supply chain and threats, such as fraud, theft and disasters.

 

One of the threats is cargo theft, this attacks the merchants. The average value of stolen goods of 2015 was over 140K dollars. The five states of America were in actually happens most are Texas, California, Florida, Georgia and New Jersey. In America there is a initiative called Food LINC. The initiative supports 13 value chains in the US. The key component is to track, capture and report the impact of the value chain.

 

A example of a value chain is the Louisiana shrimp value chain. The fishers face challenges such as low prices of shrimp and future environmental uncertainty that may change conditions. By working on the relation, such as direct sale to retailers, better marketing, improved handling and cooperative processing, profitability may be improved and the chain will be resilient to future economic changes.

 

Another way to become resilient to future changes, such as climate change, are sustainable value chains. Sustainable efforts could influence all the levels of a chain and the impact is insignificant. However, this can only be achieve when all parts of the value chain work together.

Climate Change

Climate change is affecting New Orleans and the rest of the whole world. The temperatures are rising, which causes arctic ice to melt. The patterns of precipitation are changing, the sea level is rising and all these affects put us in a dangerous position

It was only last August, water was inundating parts of New Orleans. The city lies below sea level and had to deal with a lot of rainfall. Since 1950 the city has to deal with a 62% increase in the number of heavy rainfall events and a 7,87 millimeters increase of rainfall per decade.

Louisiana will become warmer and floods and droughts will become severe and the soils have become dryer.

Adaptation

However, New Orleans has a plan. The city will restore wetlands to reduce the chance of flooding. Over the last 200 years, wetlands in the US have been drained, filled, leveled and flooded for urban, agricultural and residential development. The wetland losses in Louisiana re greater than any other place in the US. This has increased the vulnerability of New Orleans. By restoring these wetlands, New Orleans will restore a highly productive ecosystem that fight climate change.

In addition to adaptation, the city needs to end the contribution to climate change and become more resilient and sustainable.

 

Water Footprint

Water is used to sustain thriving communities and nature’s diversity. The water footprint of a country is defined as the volume of water needed for the production of goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of the country. The global average water footprint is around 1,240 m3 per year per person. However, in America the water footprint is between 2100-2500 m3 per year and therefore has the highest water footprints per capita. In some systems the extraction of large amounts of groundwater can result in land subsidence.

Our consumption of water is hidden in agriculture, construction and manufacturing. However, companies are taking steps in the right direction. By taking water cycle management, waste management, sustainable agriculture and energy efficiency into account. While they are making ambitious commitments, why don’t we do the same?

Water Scarcity

In the centre of the fertile, irrigated Haouz Plain, south of the Tennsift river lies Marrakech, the main tourist location in Morocco, famous for its parks and gardens. The city has always been supplied by ancient underground water channels designed to transport water down slopes, without active pumping. Then water demand started to outgrow the traditional resources and farmers were forced to use water from the Tensift River aquifer. This led Marrakech toward the verge of a watercrisis in the 90’s. The water resources were dwindling. The water channels were all dried up and there was no sufficient water to cater for everyone’s demand.

However, Marrakech didn’t give in to the water scarcity. The city made two tactical decisions. The first decision was to restrain the water losses by curbing leakages. The second decision was to diversify the water resources portfolio by turning to wastewater treatment and reuse this water for the water supply.

These two decisions helped Marrakech become more water resilient, however, climate change will keep challenging cities like Marrakech. These cities have to look for solutions, such as stormwater capture or treated wastewater. The city’s challenges are still remaining.