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Government accused of lack of transparency as public denied access to progress reports on 12 of Decc's 13 projects

Key information about the progress of many of the UK government's most costly projects is being withheld by the energy department, the Guardian has found.

In contrast to all other government departments, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) is refusing to release progress reports for 12 out its 13 major projects, which include the green deal for energy-efficient homes, smart meters, electricity market reform, new nuclear power stations and its nuclear waste storage programme.

As a result, there is no way for the public to know if these projects are running over-budget, over-time, or have been granted "red" status, meaning "successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable". Many of the Decc projects have been delayed or suffered other setbacks, such as Cumbria's county council voting against hosting a deep nuclear waste store.

Together, the "whole life costs" of Decc's 13 projects amount to £81bn, which includes spending expected from the private sector. This figure is second only to the Ministry of Defence, which has a programme of major projects valued at £88bn. In contrast to Decc, the MoD has exempted only eight of its 36 major projects.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: "The refusal of Decc officials to publish vital information about the progress of billion-pound projects suggests a worrying disregard for transparency and an unwillingness to play by the same rules as other departments on accountability. The public has a right to know how their money is being spent and whether policy decisions made by ministers are delivering good value."

Lucas added: "Given the evidence that Decc initiatives such as the green deal are running into trouble, I hope this lack of transparency doesn't reflect a desire to keep potentially embarrassing information about the progress of key projects out of the public eye."

A Decc spokeswoman said: "We're aware that other departments didn't exempt as many [projects] as Decc. Our exemptions reflect the fact that we have more projects in contract negotiations or the decision-making phase at this particular point of time. Publishing this commercially sensitive information would, at this stage, impact on the progress of the projects moving forward. Decc fully supports the transparency principle and we will publish information when the public interest in sharing the data outweighs that of withholding it."

Out of the 191 government projects currently being monitored by the Cabinet Office's Major Projects Authority (MPA), just 21 have been exempted by their departments from having their progress reports published. These 21 exempted projects have been valued together at £48bn. Decc projects account for 12 of those 21 exempted projects.

Eight government projects out of 191 have been rated as "red", with a further 23 rated "amber/red", meaning "successful delivery of the project is in doubt, with major risks or issues apparent in a number of key areas". There is currently no way of knowing if any of Decc's 12 exempted projects have received such negative ratings.

The MPA's guiding principles state that exemptions should be "made sparingly". It adds: "Publication and genuine transparency is the standard: there is a presumption in favour of publication." The only major project Decc has published a progress report for is the decommissioning of the Dounreay nuclear reactor in Scotland. It was rated as "green", meaning "successful delivery of the project to time, cost and quality appears highly likely".

Luciana Berger MP, Labour's shadow energy and climate change minister, said: "It's no surprise ministers at Decc don't want to admit what a mess they've made of things. Under this government, investment in clean energy has collapsed, smart meters have been delayed and the number of people getting their homes insulated has slumped."

Alexandra Runswick, deputy director of Unlock Democracy, which campaigns for greater government accountability and transparency, said: "We know from our own investigations that there is a particular problem with Decc in terms of its intimate links to industry, with numerous industry staff working on secondment within the department itself and advisers moonlighting as industry lobbyists. When relations have got this cosy between government and industry, there is a need for far greater transparency, not less."

• Green politics
• Energy

Leo Hickman
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Burning coal also costs companies and governments billions of pounds in disease treatment and lost working days

Air pollution from Europe's 300 largest coal power stations causes 22,300 premature deaths a year and costs companies and governments billions of pounds in disease treatment and lost working days, says a major study of the health impacts of burning coal to generate electricity.

The research, from Stuttgart University's Institute for energy economics and commissioned by Greenpeace International, suggests that a further 2,700 people can be expected to die prematurely each year if a new generation of 50 planned coal plants are built in Europe. "The coal-fired power plants in Europe cause a considerable amount of health impacts," the researchers concluded.

Analysis of the emissions shows that air pollution from coal plants is now linked to more deaths than road traffic accidents in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. In Germany and the UK, coal-fired power stations are associated with nearly as many deaths as road accidents. Polish coal power plants were estimated to cause more than 5,000 premature deaths in 2010.

The cumulative impact of pollution on health is "shocking", says an accompanying Greenpeace report. A total of 240,000 years of life were said to be lost in Europe in 2010 with 480,000 work days a year and 22,600 "life years" lost in Britain, the fifth most coal-polluted country. Drax, Britain's largest coal-powered station, was said to be responsible for 4,450 life years lost, and Longannet in Scotland 4,210.

According to the study, Polish coal power plants have the worst health impact in the European Union. The Polish government and Polish utilities are planning to build a dozen new power plants. The utility companies with the worst estimated health impacts, according to the report, are PGE (Poland), RWE (Germany and UK), PPC (Greece), Vattenfall (Sweden) and ČEZ (Czech Republic).

Acid gas, soot, and dust emissions from coal burning are, along with diesel engines, the biggest contributors to microscopic particulate pollution that penetrates deep into the lungs and the bloodstream. The pollution causes heart attacks and lung cancer, as well as increasing asthma attacks and other respiratory problems that harm the health of both children and adults.

"Tens of thousands of kilogrammes of toxic metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic and cadmium are spewed out of the stacks, contributing to cancer risk and harming children's development," says the Greenpeace report, which does not emphasise the impact of coal burning on climate change.

The 300 plants produce one-quarter of all the electricity generated in the EU but are responsible for more than 70% of the EU's sulphur dioxide emissions and more than 40% of nitrogen oxide emissions from the power sector. The Greenpeace report notes that coal burning has increased in Europe each year from 2009 to 2012.

"The results are staggering. The only way to eliminate the health impacts associated with burning coal in Europe is to phase out these dirty power plants and replace them with clean renewable energy. The current EU renewable energy target has been proven to boost renewable energy and help modernise energy systems and the economy. Europe must continue down the path of clean renewable energy by setting an ambitious, binding 2030 renewable energy target," said Greenpeace International energy campaigner Lauri Myllyvirta.

The air pollution from coal burning comes on top of transport emissions that are still increasing despite attempts by the EU to force reductions. According to the European Environmental Agency, more than 90% of urban population in the EU is exposed to fine particle (PM2.5) and ozone pollution levels above the World Health Organisation guidelines.

Greenpeace International is calling on the European commission to come forward with proposals for a binding renewable energy target of 45% and a greenhouse gas reduction target of at least 55% by 2030.

• Coal
• Pollution
• Energy
• Fossil fuels
• Greenpeace
• Activism
• Health
• Europe
• Poland
• Germany

John Vidal
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Just learned today that there is an updated photo on GoogleEarth of TFL taken 4/18/13.  Pleased to double check my near perfect rectangle of a pen I built for the boys.  I measured the long diagonals by hand when I built it.  Doesn't get much more rectangular than that.  Check it out on GoogleEarth and see if you can find Ben and Bud.  89,101,73,0,B,0

Facilities to build offshore windfarms needed under current plans could create tens of thousands of jobs, finds Renewable UK

As many as 32 new factories will be needed to build the components for the fleet of British offshore windfarms envisaged under the government's current renewable energy plans, potentially creating tens of thousands of jobs, a new report has found.

So far, only 10 such factories have been built or are planned in the UK, according to Renewable UK, the trade association for wind companies.

The report found that the commitment of the UK government to offshore wind should lead to a thriving manufacturing industry. Maria McCaffery, chief executive of Renewable UK, said: "This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. If we don't seize it, the large scale offshore wind supply chain factories of the future, making the blades, towers and foundations that we'll need to retain the UK's global lead in offshore wind will be sited elsewhere. We are determined to work with the government to ensure that the UK capitalises on this chance to build an industry that will be the envy of the world."

Michael Fallon, the Conservative energy minister, said the government was committed to the sector: "The UK leads the world in offshore wind. This is a major success story and one we should all be proud of. Not only do we have more installed offshore wind we also have the largest windfarms and a real knowledge base about how to build offshore windfarms."

He said that the government's planned reforms to the electricity market would be key to encouraging low-carbon generation, and announced a new Offshore Wind Investment Organisation "to significantly increase the levels of inward investment to the UK".

However, while the government is committed to the EU-wide target of generating 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020, giving manufacturers some confidence in the number of turbines that will be needed to that date, coalition ministers have opposed the setting of a 2030 target. Investors in wind have complained that this leaves them facing a potential collapse in demand after 2020.

The manufacturing operations needed will include plants to build all of the parts that make up an offshore windfarm, including the towers, blades, foundations, electricity substations and cables, according to the report Building an Industry, published on Wednesday. The estimates are based on the government's renewable energy road map, which sets out plans for 18GW of offshore wind generation capacity to be built by 2020, against the 3.3GW installed to date. That equates to nearly 1,000 offshore turbines at present and about 4,000 more to be installed in order to reach the target.

As well as the turbines themselves and their components, there will also be a need for several more large seagoing vessels to install offshore turbines, and scores of vessels to carry workers to and from the turbines once they are operational. Renewable UK estimated that the turbine towers needed to meet the target would stretch from London to Cologne if laid end to end. So many blades are required that if they were similarly configured they would reach from London to Barcelona, and the cables needed to connect the turbines would stretch from London to Thailand.

• Energy industry
• Energy
• Wind power
• Renewable energy

Fiona Harvey
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Every night for thousands of years, bats have poured out of the Bracken Cave Reserve, near San Antonio, by the millions. But conservationists are worried that plans for a housing development nearby will disrupt the bats' rural habitat.

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Sky-high prices for elephant ivory and rhino horn have pushed wildlife poaching to a fever pitch. So in attempt to outfox the sophisticated poaching operations, conservationists and government rangers are teaming up to launch small, camera-carrying drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, above southwest Africa.

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Kit Hill, Tamar Valley: Shadowy valleys cut through the landscape; the hill catches light from the setting sun, which shimmers through the flowers of sweet vernal

In the evening sun shadows from bosky hedge banks encroach on the various greens of pasture and arable fields surrounding Kit Hill. Across the expanse of undulating land, between the skylines of Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor, pale fields have been shorn of grass. This first cut of silage was left to wilt then baled and carted off for wrapping in black plastic for winter fodder – all in two or three days. Cereal fields are verdant apart from maize planted under sheets of plastic, where shoots emerge through the shiny film which covers the earth. Shadowy valleys cut through the landscape; old mine stacks poke up from the summer crowns of trees and, to the south, the Tamar estuary is a blue lake before the haze of open sea.

The hill catches light from the setting sun, which shimmers through the flowers of sweet vernal. A few ponies and their foals graze off bramble shoots, gorse bushes, rough vegetation with sorrel, tormentil and bedstraw – part of a scheme to enhance heathland around the prospecting pits, adits and disused mine buildings of this designated country park. In the low light, red campions are luminous on a wall around a mine shaft, and bluebells among the granite boulders become indistinct pools of mist. Below, in the shade of beech trees, Kelly Bray was the terminus of a railway line from Plymouth and London. The line was built to carry ores and stone towards the river at Calstock, but once it was linked by the viaduct to the upcountry line it was used for agricultural produce and passengers. Further around the hill, sheltered from the prevailing wind, dumps of quarried granite blend with thickets of may, rowan, willow and oak scrub where ferns thrive in the undergrowth. There is no sound of the cuckoo reported to be here but, beneath the quarry beside the course of the old incline tramway, a group of people sit around a campfire to shout and chant. Meanwhile the red sun sinks behind Brown Willy on Bodmin Moor and the song of willow warblers continues to drift uphill.

• Rural affairs

Virginia Spiers
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The US Congress wants to deny 2 million people food stamps, while hardly denting large agribusinesses

The cost of providing poor Americans with food stamps has doubled in the past four years, reflecting the fact that a record 47.8 million people are struggling to feed themselves and their families. The US Congress has an answer to the growth in poverty: force more people to struggle.

This glib response to a national crisis will be tested in the farm bill that passed the US Senate on Monday and will be up for debate in the House soon. Even though it's called "the farm bill," it's actually the legislation that primarily funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – better known as food stamps.

The Senate version would cut food stamps by $400m a year, adding up to $4bn over the decade covered by the bill. The House version, up for bitter debate starting next week, promises to cut even more: $20bn, mostly as a sop to conservative lawmakers who killed the bill last year because of what they considered a measly $16bn in cuts. At the current size, the House bill would deny 2 million people with low incomes access to food stamps, Reuters said.

By cutting the food stamp program, lawmakers are trying to make room or trade political points for what they really have to do, which is cut wasteful and ineffective subsidies to wealthy farmers that favor factory farming and disadvantage small farmers who make less than $250,000 a year. By the way, some of those wealthy farmers benefitting from subsidies in the farm bill are, very conveniently, also members of Congress.

And before you start believing this is an issue just concerning "the poor," remember that poverty has increasingly affected the middle class, too. Food stamps were initially created to help feed working families. Even now, a man or woman working full-time at minimum wage is making only $15,000 a year – a salary so low that it is eligible for food stamps. Not only do 14% of Americans live in poverty, but in some suburbs, food stamp use has doubled or even tripled. CNN Money told the story of one New Jersey suburb, Morris County, where food stamp use had grown by 240% by 2012. Then, of course, there is the unemployment crisis as 12 million Americans remain unemployed, about 40% of them for long-term periods longer than 6 months.

It should be clear to members of Congress that improving the financial lot of Americans is more important than any other task at hand, as well as a task they have consistently failed to accomplish. Yet legislators keep blowing their chances to do anything constructive, leading even Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to chide fussbudget lawmakers for their counterproductive waste of time on cutting pie-in-the-sky estimates of deficits.

So, in response to this very real, very pressing, very immediate crisis, Congress is creating a particularly grotesque imitation of economic stimulus. Congress is not providing any alternatives to struggling families as it cuts the food stamp program, it is just slashing the cost and hoping that poverty – and its siblings, unemployment and crime and homelessness – fix themselves. Good plan.

This bill, like almost everything else in Congress, will prove a testing ground for what America values more: partisan power and petty bickering, or some progress, however meager, on our ongoing economic crisis. The economic recovery is not real. The farm bill is an economic disaster as well as a public health disaster.

There is one thing that can change this: any kind of response from Americans. Unfortunately, too many have been silent on the subject of the farm bill. That will leave Congress, over the next few weeks of debate, to listen selectively to the the voices that are loudest: their donors in big agricultural companies and among wealthy farmers. In one year – 2009 to 2010 – those groups poured $8.5m into the fundraising coffers of members of the House Agriculture Committee.

Needless to say, corporate sponsors don't much care what happens to food stamps. Let's see if they carry the day.

• Farming
• US politics
• US Congress

Heidi Moore
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Experts and campaigners worry about the use of veterinary antibiotics, but officials say there is little cause for concern

The use of some of the most potent antibiotics available has surged among British farmers in the last decade, stoking fears that the burgeoning number of factory farms could greatly increase the risk of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria escaping and infecting people.

Medicines to treat meningitis, pneumonia and other serious diseases, called third and fourth generation cephalosporins, increased threefold from 2003-11, while drugs called fluoroquinolones – used for tuberculosis, C difficile, HIV-related infections and others – are up by 50% in the same period.

These antibiotics have been flagged by the World Health Organisation as some of the most important in human medicine, because they are our last line of defence against serious diseases, and are under threat from bacterial strains that are growing more resistant to them.

Their rapidly rising use on farms is a threat to people, experts told the Guardian. Christopher Thomas, professor of molecular genetics at Birmingham University, said: "There a lot of worry about whether we should be using the same antibiotics on a farm as we do in [human] clinics, as the resistance developed on farms could spread to humans. However good your hygiene [on farms], it is inevitable that resistant bacteria bred on the farm will get to humans."

The government does not track the use of veterinary antibiotics in detail – unlike their human counterparts – so it is impossible to tell how many animals are being treated, for what diseases, and whether the medicines are being used as a prophylactic or to treat diseases already present. The only data available is the total annual tonnage of antibiotics sold for agriculture, some of which could be left unused, and the dosage of which could vary widely.

Green campaigners are also unhappy that vets are allowed to profit by selling farmers the antibiotics they prescribe, a practice banned in many other countries because of conflicts of interest. The government confirmed there were no plans to change this practice.

Thomas said that despite guidelines on avoiding routine use of antibiotics, it was difficult to distinguish in practice. "There is a fine line where you have lots of animals together. For instance, in an intensive chicken rearing facility if you get one or two animals that get an infection, it's quite common for vets to decide they need to treat all the chickens in the facility just in case it has already spread to others that are not noticeably sick."

He said there were many ways in which antibiotic-resistant bacteria on a farm could spread to humans: by people working there, who could spread it to their families; by run-off water from the farm, and by meat from slaughtered animals getting into the food chain.

But Peter Borriello, chief executive of the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, the government agency that oversees antibiotic use on farms, said people should not be over-concerned as the UK farming industry was well-regulated and used fewer antibiotics than other EU countries, being about the 8th biggest user of farming antibiotics, but only the 14th biggest user of the potent fluoroquinolones.

"We are not aware of any major resistance problems and not aware of any major changes in veterinary pathogen populations with respect to their resistance potential," he said.

Another key issue is the import of meat and fish from countries where farming antibiotic use is higher than in the UK, such as the US, where 80% of antibiotic use is for animals.

A Defra spokesman said UK food importers were only allowed to buy from countries that met standards similar to those in operation in Europe. However, the use of antibiotics in other countries does not fall under these rules, so imported meat can come from much looser antibiotic regimes. Defra said there were checks in place to ensure infected meat did not enter the UK food chain.

There are also moves in the US to cut antibiotic use. Citing a recent study, Louise Slaughter, the only microbiologist in Congress, said: "This study ends any debate. The extreme overuse of antibiotics in livestock is endangering human health. For decades, the United States Food and Drug Administration has failed to act in the face of a growing threat. These findings make it clearer than ever that their failure is endangering human life. Starting today, the FDA must take strong federal action to reduce antibiotic use in livestock and protect human health."

Antibiotics are routinely used in fish farms, particularly in Latin America. David Santillo, a Greenpeace fellow at Exeter University, said: "Eating raw fish as sushi can raise additional concerns regarding food safety. Although properly prepared, stored and handled sushi should be free from harmful pathogens, the potential presence of antibiotic residues or even of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria remains a concern, especially for fish and shellfish farmed in parts of the world in which controls on the use of such chemically intensive disease treatments are lacking or harder to police and verify."

The Food Standards Agency said that if meat and fish were cooked properly, any bacteria living on them should be killed, and advised people to follow best practice in handling uncooked food. Avoiding sushi and steak tartare might be one way to cut risk, but Thomas said the government should be more active in testing for microbes in the food chain.

For Sue Weston, in Foston, Derbyshire, the question of antibiotic-resistant bacteria breeding and evolving on British factory farms and finding its way into the human population is not an abstract one of academic studies and best hygiene practice. She lives "a car's width" from the site of a proposed intensive 25,000-pig farming facility. Her 19-year-old son suffers a serious heart condition that makes him vulnerable to infections.

"I'm petrified," she said. "It beggars belief that they can build something like this so close to people when so many of the dangers are still not fully known."

• Antibiotics
• Medical research
• Drugs
• Drug resistance
• Health
• Animal welfare
• Animals
• Agriculture
• Fishing
• Food
• Wildlife
• Conservation
• Marine life

Fiona Harvey
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As water levels on the Elbe river appear to be stabilising, Fitch warns total cost of damage could be about €12bn

Damage from the past week's flooding in Germany is expected to lead to insurance claims of up to €3bn (£2.5bn), a credit rating agency has said, as flood levels on the Elbe river in the country's north appeared to stabilise.

Further south, the peak of the flood on the Danube, Europe's second-longest river, moved away from the Hungarian capital, Budapest, toward Serbia.

The Elbe, the Danube and other rivers have overflowed their banks following weeks of heavy rain, causing extensive damage in Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary.

Fitch Ratings said that the total cost to insurers of the floods in Germany alone is likely to total between €2.5bn and €3bn.

That's well below the expected total cost of the flood damage, which Fitch put at about €12bn. It said the difference is down to the fact that many residents in flood-prone areas may have been unable to get insurance cover for natural hazards, at least at a reasonable price.

There was no immediate estimate available of the flooding's cost in the other central European countries affected.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the governors of the country's 16 states plan to discuss the aftermath of the floods at a meeting on Thursday.

Waters were receding on the Danube in southern Germany, while the crest of the swollen Elbe river is now making its way through a largely rural swath of the country's north-east.

By Tuesday, flood levels in the eastern city of Magdeburg were about three-quarters of a metre below their peak, and water levels further downstream were largely stable. The interior ministry said that German authorities have ordered more than 1.6m unfilled sandbags from other European countries in recent days to help keep pace with their needs.

In Hungary, high flood walls saved most of Budapest from major damage. Viktor Orban, the prime minister, said the high waters were expected to exit Hungary for Serbia on Thursday.

"We have ... two difficult days ahead of us," Orban said. "If we get through those, we will be close to declaring success, but it will demand two more days of intense work and attention."

• Germany
• Flooding
• Natural disasters and extreme weather
• Europe
• Insurance industry

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Local Organic Meals on a Budget is back with a 3rd season of wonderful classes. They are just $22 for a 90 minute class where you can enjoy tastings.

Kitchen Angels, the Santa Fe Farmers Market Institute, Home Grown New Mexico and The Santa Fe School of Cooking have teamed up to present educational cooking classes on how to cook local, organic meals on a budget.

Joining under the name of the Healthy Food Cooking Coalition of Santa Fe, this community enrichment program brings together the talents and resources of all four partners to put the focus on enjoying healthy, local food that is both delicious and affordable. See the planning committee online.

2013 Schedule of Cooking Classes

 Classes: Each 3rd Wednesday of the month
June through Dec. from 5:30 – 7:00 pm

Location: The Santa Fe School of Cooking
125 North Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe

You must register in advance for each class. Class fees are non-refundable. Please arrive before 5:30 to enjoy appetizers and so we can start the class on time. Due to unforeseen circumstances, presenters and topics may change without notice.

The Mediterranean Table: 
One chicken, many healthy meals

with Tracy Pikhart Ritter

Executive Chef and Culinary Director, The Santa Fe School of Cooking

June 19th  •  $22 

Register Now! 

Includes tastings, recipes, Whole Foods give-away

Stretch one organic chicken into several spectacular meals with Chef Tracy’s innovative recipes and ideas. She’ll be showing us how to divide up the chicken and make a soup and pasta dish, among others, incorporating the flavors of the Mediterranean!

Chef Tracy is a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in NYC and the International Pastry Arts Academy in Katonah, NY. She is considered an expert in nutritional cuisine with an emphasis on Southwestern flavors. Tracy opened the first “Tex Mex” restaurant in NYC in addition to working at Arizona 206, The River Cafe and Gotham Bar & Grill before heading west to become the Executive Chef at the prestigious Golden Door Spa and consultant to Rancho La Puerto in Tecate, Mexico.

Tracy’s Southwestern cuisine was featured on the cover of Bon Appetit Magazine’s Guide to the Best Restaurants in America and in a six page feature in Art Culinaire magazine. She has appeared on Good Morning America and the Food Network numerous times, cooked at the James Beard House as a Rising Chef, trained chefs in Malaysia, debated Julia Child on the merits of healthy cuisine, owned two restaurants in Santa Fe and helped write the curriculum for the New York Restaurant School.

Classes each month:

Please register online for one or all the classes!

July Class: Handmade Pizza with Garden Fresh Veggies, Local & Squisita! with Roland & Sheila Richter the Chef & Restaurant Owners
of Joe’s Dining

August Class: Vegan? Gluten free? 
How about just plain delicious! with Ryan Gabel the Chef, The Palace Restaurant

September Class: Local Organic Cooking Class with Erin Wade the Chef and Restaurant Owner of
Vinaigrette

October Class: It’s the Great Pumpkin Fest with Harry Shapiro & Peyton Young the Chefs, Cookbook Authors & Restaurant Owners of
Harry’s Roadhouse

November Class: A New Twist on Holiday Favorites
, Turkey Day Timesavers, Tips & Treats with Andrew Cooper, Executive Chef
Terra, Four Seasons Resort Rancho

December Class: Saucy & Raw: Guys in the Kitchen! 
Soups, sauces & tasty holiday treats with Danny Rhodes & Matthew Sherrill

Construction of Grand Renaissance dam to continue despite Eygptian concerns over impact on water supply and farming

Ethiopia has refused to halt work on a controversial giant dam across the river Nile that Egypt fears will severely curb its water supply.

The refusal came after the Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, promised to "defend each drop of Nile water with our blood" and other senior Egyptian politicians called for the dam's destruction.

A spokesman for the Ethiopian prime minister said on Tuesday that Morsi's speech was irresponsible and that the project would proceed as planned.

"Nothing is going to stop the Renaissance Dam. Not a threat will stop it," Getachew Reda said via telephone. "None of the concerns the Egyptian politicians are making are supported by science. Some of them border on what I would characterise as fortune-telling."

Ethiopia hopes its Grand Renaissance dam – which will cost more than $4.3bn (£2.8bn) – will form Africa's largest hydropower plant. But Egyptian authorities have contested its construction after water experts claimed it would drastically lower the level of the Nile, which supplies almost all of Egypt's water, and could reduce cultivated farmland by up to 25%.

In a speech to Islamist supporters on Monday night, Morsi called the Nile "God's gift to Egypt", and ambiguously veered between calls for peaceful dialogue, and veiled military threats. He said that while Egypt did "not want war … we do not accept threats to our security", and claimed that all possible responses to the dam remained open to Egypt – a line that has been interpreted as a threat of force.

Last week, other senior Egyptian politicians were filmed discussing aggressive measures against their upstream neighbours – apparently unaware that their discussion was being broadcast live. Younis Makhyoun, the leader of Egypt's second largest political grouping, the ultraconservative Nour party, suggested to Morsi in a televised meeting that as a last resort Egyptian intelligence forces could destroy the dam. In response to the embarrassing gaffe, Ethiopia summoned the Egyptian ambassador in Addis Ababa to explain Egypt's stance.

Morsi's own aggressive speech is aimed at a domestic audience as much as a foreign one, as he seeks to regain support ahead of anticipated large protests against his presidency on 30 June. However insincere his military threats may be, they are nevertheless rooted in very real and widely held Egyptian fears about the dam's effect.

Dr Bahaa Alkoussey, the former chairman of Egypt's National Water Research Centre, and a one-time senior official in the ministry of water resources and irrigation, claimed the Ethiopian plans copuld reduce waterflow to Egypt by more than 10bn kilolitres.

"Then you might cross the Nile on the back of a camel," he said. "It's not a joke. This is a serious matter. The Egyptians already have a deficit in their water supply of about 10bn kilolitres. If you add just 1 kilolitre to that, it will be a disaster. Now it's already a problem. If you add more reductions, then you'll have a catastrophe."

Alkoussey claimed the dam would make it harder for ferries to travel up the Nile, and would cause more pollution, harming fish farms.

Most seriously, Alkoussey claimed the dam would devastate the farming community. "Every 1bn kilolitre reduction in natural flow to Egypt will cause 200,000 feddans [207,600 acres] of land to go out of production, and 500,000 farmers to be out of work – which will affect 2.5 million families," he said.

Supporters of the dam have argued that Egypt could solve the crisis by using its water more efficiently. But Hani Raslan, an expert on water politics at Cairo's government-affiliated Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, argued Egypt recycled much of its water. "Egypt is one of the most efficient countries with water consumption," he said. "Our supplies are 55bn cubic meters but we consume 70bn, which means we're recycling 15bn cubic meters."

Ethiopia disputes the Egyptian experts' conclusions, claiming the dam has been largely exonerated by a recently completed, but as yet unreleased report written jointly by scientists from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan.

"Of course we are going to go ahead with the project, because we believe we are justified," Reda said. "Why would a self-respecting government spend $4.5bn simply to spite Egypt? It's beyond reason and it's beyond science. None of the concerns of the Egyptians [are] really something you can remotely associate yourself with."

Additional reporting by Mowaffaq Safadi

• Ethiopia
• Africa
• Egypt
• Middle East and North Africa
• Water
• Hydropower
• Energy
• Renewable energy

Patrick Kingsley
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Firms say they face crippling costs if forced to monitor in 'real-time' noise some blame for health problems

Lenore Taylor

Crude discharged after pipeline was ruptured by landslide has entered Napo river which flows across border

An oil spill in the Ecuadorean Amazon is flowing downstream towards Peru and Brazil, heightening concerns about the impact of drilling in one of the world's last remaining wildernesses.

About 1.6m litres of crude was discharged into a tributary of the Amazon from the Trans-Ecuador pipeline, which was ruptured by a landslide on 31 May.

The slick contaminated the drinking supplies of Coca, a gateway city into the Amazon forest. Local media reported that 60,000 people had to rely on water brought in by 65 tankers.

Petroecuador, the pipeline operator, has hired the US clearup company Clean Caribbean & Americas, which was involved in the operation after the Gulf of Mexico spill.

Although the company and local authorities tried to contain the slick with a boom, some of the oil entered the Napo river, which flows across the border.

Last week Peru reported traces of the oil in its Amazon region of Loreto, prompting an apology from the Ecuadorean president, Rafael Correa.

The Peruvian environment minister, Manuel Pulgar Vidal, described the slick as a "very serious problem" and said Peru could seek compensation if the damage proved extensive.

Brazil, which is located many hundreds of miles downstream, has put its navy on alert and offered technical assistance.

"Brazil has offered aid to Ecuador and Peru to support the work of containment and dispersion of the oil slick in the two countries," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The environment of Ecuador, the smallest member of Opec, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, has long suffered from the oil industry. In 2011 the country's courts ruled that the US oil firm Chevron should pay $8.6bn in compensation for the dumping of about 7bn litres of waste over several decades.

The latest slick is not large by comparison, but it comes at a sensitive time in an area of immense ecological wealth. With the oil fields now largely owned and operated by domestic state-run companies, the government plans to ramp up production in the Amazon to fund an ambitious development programme and repay loans from China. Its plans have been opposed by indigenous groups and environmental campaigners.

• Amazon rainforest
• Oil spills
• Oil
• Ecuador
• Americas
• Peru
• Brazil

Jonathan Watts
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Sustainability is more than just a green issue. Join our #HElivechat Friday 14 June from 12-2pm BST to discuss its relationship with leadership, procurement, learning and research

"Universities are the true thought leaders of society and if they don't lead the way, there is a risk that less independent voices fill the vacuum with their own agenda on the subject of sustainability, rather than insights based on robust research," wrote Jonathon Porritt for the network last year.

A year on, are universities driving the sustainability movement forward – or has energy on this issue stalled? The 2013 People & Planet Green League shows some universities are making more effort than others.

Manchester Metropolitan University moved from 10th to top place in the table, achieving the highest ever Green League score of 59.5 out of 70. The biggest jump came from the University of Reading which moved up 42 places to 17th, while the University of Oxford, which failed this year's assessment, moved down 13 places to 132.

What is higher education's role in creating a more sustainable environment for the wider community, as well as its own students and staff? Is it tradition that's preventing some universities from adopting more ethical forms of procurement, infrastructure and teaching models – or a case of sustainability scepticism among senior heads and academics?

"We're seeing excruciatingly slow progress from too many universities in some criteria such as ethical investment given the urgency of the climate challenge," says Louise Hazan, who created the People & Planet Green League. Are universities failing to connect academic research into climate change with their own decisions on who they procure from, and partner with?

How can education respond to these complex challenges? In this debate, we want to hear your views on how far the sector has come on university sustainability, and ask in what way it's more than just a green issue. How does it impact on leadership, teaching and learning, research, procurement and the overall mission of the university?

Here's what we're looking to discuss:

• How sustainability research is being supported and funded

• Challenges and benefits of ethical procurement

• Education's role in a sustainable future

• Collaborative partnerships

• Where to focus university efforts

Join our live web chat in the comments below on Friday 14 June from 12-2pm BST. The discussion is open to all and we invite you to have your say on what is expected to be a lively debate.

You can also follow the debate live on Twitter using the hashtag #HElivechat.

Panel to be confirmed

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• Live Q&A
• Sustainability
• Leadership
• Management, admin and services
• Research
• Learning and teaching
• Higher education
• Sustainability
• Sustainable development

Claire Shaw
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Reducing energy consumption on the university estate, switching to clean energy, and monitoring the ethical standards of suppliers, are all ways that universities can rise up the ranks of the green league

• Webchat June 11, 1-3pm: how can students help make their universities greener?

The University of Reading attracts over 20,000 students, all of whom need to be fed and housed. Campus buildings need to be lit, heated and furnished, staff require uniforms and everybody is reliant on computing power. Seeing to the needs of its people and operations means the university has to pull in a staggering amount of resources, and thus has a distorting impact on society and nature around it. People produce the textiles, food and electronics the university uses, and their production and transport releases greenhouse gases. The energy used running the campus not only contributes to carbon emissions but represents a significant chunk of profits for the energy supplier in question – be that fossil fuels or a form of renewable energy. As educational institutions, universities have historically been spearheads of progressive thought and cultural enlightenment. In this era of global citizenship, we should be the first to take a long hard look at the impact we're making and try to find a positive solution, or at least mitigate the damage.

This is, of course, what many universities are doing. People & Planet have constructed the Green League to quantify and incentivise these efforts, and it is having a noticeable effect. Affiliation to the Worker's Rights Consortium, a monitoring organisation which carries out grassroots surveillance in textile factories, is fast becoming an ethical standard both in the USA and here at home, and is the kind of change which nets Green League points for an affiliated institution – such as the University of Reading. Tireless work by estates and facilities staff to make campus buildings more energy efficient, both directly and through behavioural changes in building users, has reduced our carbon footprint significantly. Similarly, campaigns run by students on issues such as corporate greenwashing and food sustainability are rewarded with Green League points.

This is not to say that we should see the league table as an end in itself; our students and staff, and I am sure the same could be said for higher education all over the country, would be tirelessly running these projects and campaigns regardless of being rewarded with points for our efforts. Whether we would be as successful or as quick in achieving some of our goals without the decision makers being influenced by league standing is another question – and of course it is always nice to have evidence of your successes when the institution you are a part of rises sixty-six places in two years.

The University of Reading rose 42 places and came 17th out of 143 institutions in this year's Green League, scoring a well-earned 1st class award.

• People & Planet Green League
• Green universities
• University of Reading
• Higher education

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Obama's meeting with Xi overshadowed by revelations of NSA's snooping – but deals are made on N Korea and HFCs emissions

The Chinese contrition over cyber-attacks that Washington had hoped for failed to materialise, but historic talks between presidents Obama and Xi Jinping lived up to their billing in other regards with agreement on issues ranging from climate change to North Korea.

Meeting in the baking heat of a Palm Springs country estate, the two leaders broke with protocol for two days of informal talks aimed at creating a new spirit of co-operation between the world's two economic superpowers.

The common ground they found, however, was not quite what the White House expected as talks on cyber-espionage were overshadowed by revelations of Washington's own cyberwarfare strategy.

Both leaders discussed the issue for several hours, according to aides, but the best that the US was able to boast afterwards was that Beijing was no longer unaware of the depth of feeling on the subject.

"It's quite obvious now that the Chinese senior leadership understand clearly the importance of this issue to the United States," said Obama's national security adviser, Tom Donilon.

Washington stressed that it wished only to discuss "cyber-enabled economic theft" – the theft of intellectual by entities based in China of property and other kinds of property in the public and private realm – rather than broader espionage and surveillance activity, but the nuance may have been lost. Xi chastised US media for failing to report equally on attacks made against China.

The two leaders appeared to make progress in other areas, seemingly aware they faced increasingly shared challenges and responsibilities.

Under the climate deal, the US and China – the world's two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases – said they would work with other countries to reduce the fastest growing source of emissions, the hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) used in air conditioners and refrigerators.

HFCs are an extremely potent class of greenhouse gas – up to 1,000 times more so than carbon dioxide – but they clear out of the atmosphere relatively quickly, in about 10 or 15 years.

That short lifespan means cutting HFCs can deliver almost immediate results, avoiding up to six times as much warming by 2050 as reductions in carbon dioxide.

The White House said on its website that the deal reached on Saturday could potentially reduce the equivalent of some 90 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050, or about a year's worth of current greenhouse gas emissions.

"Left unabated, HFC emissions growth could grow to nearly 20% of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, a serious climate mitigation concern," the White House said.

The potential significance of the co-operation between Washington and Beijing on climate issues could be even broader. China has in the past argued that cutting emissions would compromise its economic growth, while the US has typically has countered that it would not act on climate change until China did.

In the case of HFCs, there was already momentum building towards such a deal before Obama and Xi's meeting. More than 100 countries have shown support for using the Montreal protocol, an agreement reached in 1987 to phase out substances that were depleting the ozone layer, to act on reducing HFCs.

Donilon said the Chinese also reaffirmed their anxiety about nuclear proliferation in North Korea and pledged to work together to encourage regional talks.

"I think what you have essentially underway here is a shared threat analysis and a shared analysis as to what the implications and impact would be of North Korea pursuing a nuclear weapons programme," said Donilon.

Detailed quotes were less forthcoming from the Chinese delegation. Xi's senior foreign policy adviser, Yang Jiechi, simply said the two leaders "talked about co-operation and did not shy away from differences".

The bonhomie was also punctured by a last-minute decision from the Chinese delegation not to stay with Obama at the historic Sunnylands estate, favouring a downtown hotel – reputedly to minimise the risk of electronic eavesdropping.

• US foreign policy
• United States
• Barack Obama
• Cybercrime
• Internet
• Xi Jinping
• China
• Asia Pacific
• Climate change
• Carbon emissions
• North Korea

Dan RobertsSuzanne Goldenberg
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Sand seas, tornado trails and 'ice shoves' were among the images captured by European Space Agency and Nasa satellites last month

Oxford University's willingness to accept donations and form partnerships with individuals and businesses that are mired in controversy puts it at the bottom of the ethical league table

The words 'Oxford' and 'fail' don't often appear in the same sentence – our university is renowned for academic excellence and successful graduates. Academically it has a reputation that people are eager to buy into. But it's ethical and environmental performance is poor. This week it ranked a mere 132 out of 143 UK universities in People & Planet's Green League 2013. By anyone's standard Oxford failed in this respect.

Given the ongoing cuts to higher education funding, private contributions can often be a good thing. Oxford though, has been forgetting about one crucial thing with these deals, the need to enforce strong ethical red lines. Financial contributions, regardless of the subject area, do not take place in an ethical vacuum. The most recent example of this was the university's decision to accept £5.9 million from Royal Dutch Shell, a corporation involved in human rights abuses in Nigeria and extracting the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel in the Canadian tar sands. While researchers in one department advocate cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, the vice-chancellor is directly endorsing research in another department into finding more hydrocarbons. He even invited Ed Davey MP along to give the deal a government stamp of approval, a recent Freedom of Information request revealed.

There are numerous individual cases that justify Oxford's low ranking in People & Planet's Green League; from Shell's deal with the earth sciences department to their controversial acceptance of funding from Wafic Saïd for the business school. Students, alumni and academics came together just last month to launch their new Fossil Free Oxford campaign which aims to sever the university's ties with Royal Dutch Shell and other fossil fuel companies. In recent weeks, Google supremo Eric Schmidt was a guest speaker at the university during the height of the furore over the search engine's alleged tax avoidance, and introduced by the vice-chancellor. Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, was also invited to the business school recently to receive an award despite concerns about Kagame's human rights record. Sadly, the list goes on.

On the upside, Oxford is a hub for student campaigning and its researchers are having a powerful influence on international development and the environment. The trouble is, this positive activity becomes rather tainted when the vice-chancellor and others at the top set a tone of profit before people, and deals before ethics. This sets a poor example to Oxford's students and those in the outside world who respect and acknowledge Oxford's reputation. Deals such as the one agreed with Shell, represent a conscious choice to invest in a more unjust and potentially unstable world. That's enough to justify a fail.

• Students
• University of Oxford
• Higher education
• People & Planet Green League
• Green universities

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Need advice on starting an environmental project at your university or college? Join in the discussion by posting in the comment thread and join us between 1-3pm on Tuesday

As education cuts force universities to tighten their belts, investing in sustainability isn't always priority. But it's not just vice-chancellors who can create a green campus – students also play a key role in helping institutions meet their environmental targets.

Following on from the launch of the 2013 People and Planet Green League – which ranks universities to show how well they manage their environmental impact – we will be hosting a webchat with sustainability experts and students.

Perhaps you're keen to make your campus greener and want advice on the funding and support that's available. Or maybe you've got an eco success story to share. Join in the discussion from 1-3pm by posting in the comment section below.

The panel

Jon Emmett is sustainability projects officer at the London School of Economics. He works to improve the university's environmental impact. You can follow him on Twitter @SustainableLSE

Jesse Scharf is senior project manager at the student switch off campaign, which encourages students to save energy by changing their behaviour. The campaign works in halls at 51 universities, reaching over 130,000 students

Chris Garrard is a postgraduate music student at Oxford University who campaigns for People and Planet.

Joanne Dernie is in her final year studying geography at Nottingham Trent University. She has worked with her university's environment, geography and conservation societies as well as local campaign groups.

• Students
• Higher education
• Student politics
• Green universities

Rebecca Ratcliffe
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds