Water underpins a country’s development, and China – one of the world’s fastest-growing economies – is no exception. Water supports the country’s 1.43 billion population and booming industries, but it is limited and unevenly distributed. In 2005, Former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao warned of the danger of water shortages which he said would threaten “the very survival of the Chinese nation.” Climate change is diminishing accessible water resources in China, triggering a severe water shortage crisis within the national boundary. Massive water projects are being constructed to deal with this shortage crisis, bringing a new range of environmental, social, and geopolitical challenges.

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Home to 20% of the global population, China has only 6% of the world’s total freshwater resources. 2014 statistics from the World Bank indicate that the total renewable water resource per inhabitant amounts to just 2,018 cubic meters per year  75% less than the global average. 

Causes of the Water Shortage Crisis in China

Climate change plays a key role in the water shortage crisis in China. For thousands of years, civilisations along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers fed on the glacial meltwater from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau – also known as ‘The Third Pole’. Once a stable source of river flow, the ice mass is now less capable of supplying glacial melt with fresh snow and ice, since global warming has raised the temperature of the glacial region by 3- 3.5C over the past half-century.

A study by Greenpeace in 2018 revealed that 82% of China’s glaciers have retreated and more than one-fifth of the ice cover has disappeared since the 1950s. Consequently, glacial run-off into the Yangtze alone has been reduced by 13.9% since the 1990s, lessening freshwater availability. Greenpeace anticipates the shortage will become “dramatically” acute when the glaciers reach their ‘peak water’ – when the rate of water consumption surpasses water supply – which could happen as early as 2030.

Meanwhile, increasing temperatures have also changed atmospheric circulation. It has become more difficult for humid summer monsoons to reach northern and inland areas, resulting in more unreliable rainfall patterns. This abnormally dry weather has been experienced by Beijing in recent years: between October 2017 and February 2018, no precipitation, including rain and snow, was recorded in the metropolis. The 116-day drought is unprecedented in the country’s record. 

The country’s uneven resource distribution further exacerbates the scarcity problem: 80% of water is concentrated in South China, but the North is the core of national development. For instance, President Xi Jingping’s JingJinJi Project initiated in 2014 integrates three heavily industrialised Northern provinces- Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei – as a single megalopolis to compete with other world-class economic regions such as the New York Tri-State Area. The estimated population of the regions combined is 130 million, whereas the water available for consumption annually per person in the three provinces stands below 184 cubic meters (Hubei is below 100) as illustrated by the China Statistical Yearbook (CSY), far below the 500 cubic meter standard of water scarcity. Water is insufficient in the North and intense development is only putting more pressure on water demand. 

The combination of inefficient water management and widespread water pollution has rendered China unable to effectively supply enough consumable water in some provinces; this is not taking into consideration the demand for water in future urbanisation. 

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The Solutions to the China Water Shortage Crisis

The pressing water shortage crisis has forced China to develop various water schemes to boost water availability in dry regions; the South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP) is arguably the most well-known. With its conceptualisation traced back to the 1950s, the project is the largest and most expensive engineering work in the country; it is expected to cost US$62 billion by completion in 2050, almost double the Three Gorges Dam Project. 

The SNWTP aims to alleviate the water shortage problem in northern China by moving water from the Yangtze River in the South through 1 500 kilometre-long canals. The East and Middle routes – each taking 10 years to build – have been in service since 2013 and 2014 respectively and are capable of transferring 20.9 billion cubic meters of water each year. The West Route is expected to be completed by 2050. 

However, the project opens the door to environmental, social and geopolitical challenges. 

New Environment Problems

As construction advances across the country, natural landscapes are harmed, leading to biodiversity loss. All three routes will change natural hydrology on an unprecedentedly large scale; the East Route rises the water level of the four lakes it passes through. A study in 2009 estimated that aquatic plants will decline by up to 0.25 million tons in Dongping Lake surrounding the construction of the East Route. Freshwater clams, whitebaits and algae are among those species that will be affected. 

It is not the first time China’s water schemes have led to the disappearance of local species. In the last decade, the construction of the Three Gorges Dam has permanently changed the Yangtze’s landscape, damaging the habit of the already-endangered baiji dolphin and rendering them ‘functionally extinct’ at the end of 2006. 

The same study also warns of the potential of southern aquatic species invading northern waters; increasing global temperatures are making waters at higher latitudes habitable for southern species, threatening the biodiversity of the water-receiving regions. Research in 2017 warned of the invasion potential of three southern aquatic plants, namely alligator weed, water hyacinth and water lettuce; alligator weed has already invaded Shandong Province in Northern China. The water diversion project is further facilitating this invasion. 

The project may change hydrology and microclimate in the region; a 10-year study analysing the potential climatic impacts of the Middle Route predicts that the sudden influx of water may alter local evaporation and precipitation rates by bringing more frequent convection (short and intense rain) to the area. Because rain patterns affect temperature, the researchers predict regional microclimate will be modified as the project progresses. 

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Social Conflict and Political Instability

The project diverts natural resources to one mega-region at the expense of another, adversely impacting the social well-being of the southern water-supplying region and challenging China’s domestic stability in the long term. 

China’s provincial water disputes provoked the ‘‘blocking dam’ incident of 2001. Industries in the upstream Jiangsu province had been degrading the shared water of the Zhejiang province since the 1990s. A decline in usable water triggered Zhejiang residents to protest by sinking boats in the waterway to block the polluted water, revealing the provincial governments’ ineffective cooperation on resource management. If there is any public discontentment due to the SNWTP, it will not be merely provincial but regional, which could compromise the country’s national governance. 

The project forces about 330,000 people to relocate to allow for the expansion of the Danjiangkou reservoir on the Middle Route. Insufficient compensation and lack of employment opportunities have created difficult lives for the displaced population, igniting a number of revolts including violence against immigration officials and obstruction of main roads, as reported by China Daily. Coercive displacement is typical of command economies in communist countries like China, North Korea, and in the past, the Soviet Union, whereby the distribution of natural and human resources is manipulated by the central government to maximise national interests, while sacrificing individual rights. Forced evictions occur with most infrastructure projects in China, and is a constant source of mass protests. 

The water supply of the Yangtze Basin in Southern China relies on natural precipitation and glacial melt. As climate change accelerates Himalayan glacial retreat and brings abnormal weather, Southern China may become equally vulnerable to water insecurity; already, south-west China experienced a severe drought in 2011, which impacted the drinking and irrigation water of more than 60 million people. The SNWTP takes water from the Yangtze River and reduces its river discharge; a decline in groundwater may result in seawater flowing inland in dry seasons, contaminating the freshwater aquifers of the Yangtze Delta.

Military Implications and International Relations 

China’s South-East Asian neighbours are equally concerned by China’s response towards its water issues. Chinese territory hosts the headwaters of many important regional rivers. For example, the Mekong originates from the Tibetan Plateau and flows through Western China before reaching Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar. The  Brahmaputra also flows across the boundary of China, Bangladesh and India. Therefore, China’s changes upstream can significantly impact the water of downstream countries. 

China is often feared to control regional water resources, shown in its reluctance to sign international agreements on cross-border water management. The country can seize water sources without any military force; because the rivers originate within its territory, they are seen as China’s natural assets. The SNWTP reinforces this impression- despite the inclusion of transboundary rivers such as the Mekong, the Nu River and the Brahmaputra in the West Route, China keeps the project unilateral without seeking input from the affected countries. As a study has analysed, any physical resistance by these countries would be deemed as military aggression, forcing them to comply so as not to compromise regional peace and water sovereignty. 

While the West Route is currently in its planning stage, there is already tension and mistrust by residents. In late 2017, the ‘Red Flag River Project’ – a proposal by Chinese scientists and engineers to divert Himalayan glacial water to China’s arid West – created panic among India’s media, since Himalayan glacier melt is an important source of water for two of India’s most important rivers. Although the project was found to be fraudulent, India’s response illustrated its mistrust of China’s use of the region’s water resources.

Territorial issues have existed since the Sino-Indian War in 1962, exacerbated in recent times by China’s mining operations in India’s Lhunze county and rapid military buildup in Ladakh. By August 2019, the two countries had held 21 rounds of Special Representative talks concerning boundary conflicts. The large-scale water diversion project, which involves shared natural resources, may stoke future disputes. 

China’s SNWTP is at best a short-term solution, preventing the government from correcting man-made problems and creating new challenges in the intra- and international community. Experts suggest alternative solutions, such as proper utilisation of local water resources through raising the water price and improving water management bodies. 

Featured image by: Boris Kasimov

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A new study states that it is not too late to save our planet’s coral reefs before they go extinct.

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Coral Reef Extinction Facts

Coral reefs host a quarter of the Earth’s marine biodiversity and support livelihoods of more than half a billion people. But, the planet has already lost half of its coral reefs over the last three decades, and more than 90% of them might become extinct by 2050.

Corals face a number of threats including overfishing, diseases, and pollution, while the biggest of them all is climate change. The world’s largest coral reef system- the Great Barrier Reef, which is visible even from outer space- has lost half of its coral in the past two years because of extreme heat stress from global warming.

While conservationists around the globe are grappling with how to preserve the last surviving ‘underwater rainforests’, the most comprehensive study on coral reefs published last week has suggested a few ways to save them. As part of the research, an international group of 80 scientists surveyed more than 2,500 coral reef systems across 44 countries to determine how to protect them in the face of extensive damages caused by human activities and global warming.

“The good news is that functioning coral reefs still exist, and our study shows that it is not too late to save them,” said Emily Darling, the lead author of the study and a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) scientist leading the global coral reef monitoring program. “Safeguarding coral reefs into the future means protecting the world’s last functioning reefs and recovering reefs impacted by climate change. But realistically — on severely degraded reefs — coastal societies will need to find new livelihoods for the future.”

Examining coral abundance in the Indian and Pacific oceans, they found that many of the reef systems were full of complex species that created distinctive structures and were functioning in spite of deadly marine heatwaves in recent years.

Heatwaves had affected many coral reefs during the El Niño event between 2014 and 2017. But 450 reefs in 22 countries survived in protective cool spots. The scientists believe those areas should be the focus of urgent protection and management efforts. Previously, the Indo-Pacific reefs were also hit by mass coral bleaching and heat stress in 1983, 1998, 2005 and 2010, before the world’s most intense, longest and largest bleaching event between 2014 and 2017.You might also like: Artificial Corals: Improving the Resilience of Coral Reefs (part II)

The scientists pointed out that strategic local management can help protect corals through tools such as marine protected areas, or other management restrictions that reduce threats and keep coral reefs above functional thresholds.

“While coral reef sustainability depends largely on reducing carbon emissions, identifying reefs that are likely to respond — or importantly, not respond — to local management is critical to targeting development and management strategies to build the well-being of the millions of people dependent on coral reefs across the globe,” said Georgina Gurney, study co-author from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University

The researchers also noted that limiting global temperature within two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels is the only way to ensure the survival of reefs.

“Saving reefs will require combining local and global efforts, such as reducing local dependence on reef fish to maintain a reef’s important functions while also reducing carbon emissions to keep warming below 1.5C,” said Tim McClanahan, co-author of the study and Wildlife Conservation Society senior conservation zoologist.

Gabby Ahmadia, director of marine conservation science at World Wildlife Fund and co-author of the study said that the study would help policymakers and conservationists make informed management decisions for coral reefs and the communities that rely on them before they go extinct.

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Alibaba, the world’s largest fintech company, is using Alipay to tap into mobile games to fight desertification, greening China in the process.

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China’s Gobi desert–the fastest growing desert on the planet–transforms more than 3600 kilometers of grasslands into inhospitable wastelands every year. Its expansion has eaten away hectares of agricultural lands and human habitats besides creating unbridled sandstorms that batter cities located near its edge. The Chinese government has been fighting the desertification with ambitious programs like ‘the great green wall’ creating a 4500 km tree belt on the edge of the Gobi, where more than 66 billion trees have been planted so far.  

Now an app called Ant Forest by the world’s largest financial technology company Ant Financial Services Group (Alipay) is sweeping across China rewarding its millions of users for their low-carbon lifestyle by planting trees on behalf of them to stop the desertification. Ant Forest rewards its users with green energy points for choosing low-carbon activities like taking public transportation, recycling waste, using less plastic, etc. Once users have earned enough points, they can plant a virtual tree in the app. For every single tree planted in this app, Alipay plants a tree near the Gobi desert.

Unlike traditional government-led forestation campaigns, Ant Forest is highly interactive and transparent. Users can choose different types of drought-resistant plants based on the number of points they earned, and monitor the growth of their trees in real time using satellite imagery. They can also share or pool their points with their friends to plant a bigger tree.

Alipay has partnered up with conservation groups like China Green Foundation (CGF) and the Society of Entrepreneurs and Ecology (SEE) to materialise the tree plantation drive. 

Over 500 million people–more than 6% of the world’s total population–have signed up for the app while Alipay has so far planted over 100 million real trees in Inner Mongolia and Gansu province, which share borders with the Gobi desert. The newly planted trees cover over 1000 sq km–an area almost the size of Hong Kong. The users’ behaviour changes and low-carbon lifestyle have reduced carbon emissions by more than three million tons so far.  

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How the World’s Largest Fintech Company is Greening China

How the World’s Largest Fintech Company is Greening China

Experts say that Alipay has gamified carbon footprint tracking and mitigation making sustainable living fun for millions of people in China. The app has tapped into the addictive nature of mobile games to reduce China’s carbon emissions.  

“Emerging digital technologies are enabling a bottom-up approach to the battle–avoiding greenhouse gas emissions gram by gram, bus fare by bus fare, day by day,” says Ant Forest’s Chief Executive Officer Eric Jing. “This is essential to complement top-down action, such as the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda on sustainable development. The success of the programme is a sign of the powerful change we can create when people are provided with the opportunity to live a greener life.”

Ant Forest has received high praise from conservationists across the world for their innovative approach. “This (the app) shows that digital finance holds a huge untapped power to mobilise people in support of sustainable development and the fight against climate change,” says Erik Solheim, Head of UN Environment. “And this power is literally at our fingertips through our mobile devices.” 

According to a 1982 regulation, every Chinese citizen aged above 11 is legally obliged to plant three to five trees every year. Now, a large number of people use Ant Forest to fulfill their obligations. The app, which is now officially recognised by the National Afforestation Commission (NAC), allows users to apply for the certificate issued by NAC.

China has been tackling its increasing carbon footprint with aggressive afforestation, and Ant Forest’s digital clout is helping the country to achieve its 2035 target of increasing its forest cover by 26%. 

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Mozambique’s Niassa Reserve marks a year without losing a single elephant to ivory poaching.

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Elephant Poaching Statistics 

Half a decade ago, with rising demand for ivory in the world market, poachers ran amok in Niassa Reserve killing thousands of elephants. In 2009, over 15,000 elephants had roamed free in the reserve that spans over 42,000 sq km–an area larger than Taiwan–in a remote part of northern Mozambique. But 70% of them were killed by 2015 as the rampant poaching went unchecked.

Life for the remaining 4500 elephants continued to be dotted by serious threats despite the national government introducing new anti poaching measures. 200 more elephants were killed in the following two years.

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But a new collaborative approach taken by the government and conservationists brought the poaching death toll down to zero in the last 12 months.

How to stop elephant poaching?

The Mozambique government teamed up with two conservation groups–the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society and the Niassa Conservation Alliance–to implement a well-coordinated anti-poaching strategy last year. The plan included aerial surveillance and deployment of a newly formed rapid-intervention police force capable of being quickly dispatched to remote poaching locations in the wilderness, in areas where poachers previously roamed unhindered by the law.

Year-round air surveillance relied on a Cessna aircraft and a helicopter. Air patrols were further strengthened during the wet summer season–a period running from December 2018 to May 2019–when the elephants were most vulnerable to poaching.

Unlike the reserve’s normal rangers, the new rapid-intervention police force was better armed and was empowered to arrest suspected poachers. The force’s ability to immediately arrest the poachers made a real impact. They processed each case within 72 hours and submitted it to the local prosecutor. Meanwhile, the government fast-tracked the cases in the court and prosecuted a number of suspects under the revised conservation law.

The government also invested more in improving Niassa’s radio communication system leading to better coordination between surveillance and enforcement teams. Besides stopping every single poacher from entering into the nature reserve, the police also cleared a number of illegal mining and fishing camps within the boundary.

Anti-poaching measures by various African nations together with an ivory trade ban by countries including China, have significantly reduced the threats African elephants face. A recent study finds that African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60% in the last six years. The annual poaching mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa fell from 10% in 2011 to less than 4% in 2017. Yet the rate of annual elephant losses still exceeds the birth rate. Africa’s elephant population has plummeted from an estimated few million around 1900 to a little more than 400,000, according to a survey. The recovery of elephant populations will require as much as 90 years even if poaching were to be completely eradicated from Africa tomorrow. Gaps in policy and enforcement, coupled with corruption, and sluggishness on behalf of most local governments are still major challenges that hinder conservation efforts of elephants in the continent. 

The post How Africa’s Fourth-Largest Nature Reserve Turned Tide on Deadly Ivory Poaching appeared first on Earth.Org.

Sand is the world’s second most heavily exploited natural resource after water. But it’s scarcer than you imagine. Are we running out of sand?

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Why Do We Need Sand?

Human civilisation is literally built on sand. It is the key ingredient for concrete, roads, glass, and even electronics. It is also the most extracted material in the world today, exceeding fossil fuels and biomass. Every year, over 50 billion metric tons of sand are mined around the globe for construction, land reclamation projects, shale gas extraction, and beach renourishment programs.

Rapid urbanisation and a growing number of behemoth infrastructure projects have spiked demand for sand especially in developing countries, and a handful of nations are already running out of it. For instance, Vietnam might run out of the sand as early as 2022. The rest of the world might also face the same issue by 2050 with more than 7 billion people expected to become city-dwellers by then.

If sand seems so abundant with all those deserts around the globe, then why are we running out it? Desert sand is too smooth and fine to bind building materials together making it unsuitable for commercial purposes. Qatar and Dubai– Middle Eastern regions with large deserts–had to import sand from Australia to build their mammoth towers like the Burj Khalifa.

Rapid Urbanisation and Spiking Demand

Massive urbanisation projects across Asia require many million metric tons of sand. With its increasing appetite for new buildings, roads, glass, and even electronics, China is the top consumer of sand in the world. Its construction boom has been consuming half the world’s supply of sand. Its artificial islands in the South China Sea with military bases and the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative require much more sand than it consumed so far. The country has laid down 146,000 km of new highways in a single year. Between 2011 and 2014, it used more sand than the US did in the entire 20th century. The nation’s biggest dredging site at Lake Poyang produces 989,000 metric tons per day. 

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Singapore, a small island nation, has been growing its physical size through land reclamation projects since the 1950s, and it plans to grow further. All these projects require large amounts of sand, which it has traditionally imported from her neighbors–Cambodia, Vietnam, and Malaysia. The island state imports 13% of the world’s sand, making it the largest sand importer in the world, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC). 

With its growing urban population, India too is hungry for sand. The country’s booming construction industry is valued at well over $126 billion per annum and is expected to be one of the top three in the world by the next decade.

What Would Happen if We Run Out of Sand?

Extensive sand mining physically alters rivers and coastal ecosystems, increases suspended sediments and causes erosion. 

The negative environmental consequences of overexploiting sand are already felt in poorer regions across the world. In the Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam, sand mining has been reducing sediment supplies so drastically that it threatens the sustainability of the entire delta itself. It also enhanced saltwater intrusion during the dry season negatively affecting water and food supply of local communities. More than two dozen small islands have disappeared in Indonesia since 2005 as a result of excessive sand mining. In Cambodia, it has wiped out crabs and fish in the mangrove-rich estuaries of Koh Kong province, destroying lives of local fishing communities.

China’s Lake Poyang, where miners have taken away 400 million metric tons of sand annually, lost its water retention ability and drained half of its water to the Yangtze River making the area more vulnerable to drought.

Research reveals that sand mining operations are affecting animal species, including fish, dolphins, crustaceans, and crocodiles.

Sand extraction has serious impacts on human settlements too. Increased erosion from extensive mining makes many communities vulnerable to floods and storm surges. A recent report by the Water Integrity Network finds that sand mining exacerbated the impacts of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka.

Extraction activities also create new standing pools of water that can become breeding sites for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Such pools caused the spread of diseases like Buruli ulcer–a bacterial skin infection–in West Africa.

A Sustainable Future?

Short supply of sand and the environmental impacts have compelled many countries to take tough measures to control sand mining. While Malaysia banned sea sand exports to Singapore and other countries in late 2019, Vietnam successfully cut its international sand sales by more than 30% in 2018. Cambodia also ceased all sand exports to Singapore in 2017.

Such individual actions are not enough to ensure a sustainable future.  The international community needs to develop a global strategy for sand governance, along with global and regional sand budgets. It is time to treat sand as a scarce resource just like water to avoid running out of it. 

An alternative to sand for construction purposes would be to use the residue dust from quarry mining operations, which is currently considered waste. A study in India showed that between 55% and 75% of sand used in concrete mixtures can be replaced with quarry dust to achieve the same effect. The study also shows that the sand can be removed entirely if fly ash, particulate waste from coal-fired boilers, is added. For most countries, such materials can be found domestically, eliminating hefty trade and international tax burdens on nations that import sand. By investing in infrastructure and transportation systems that capitalise on the byproduct waste of other activities, sand reserves can be maintained. Combined with advancements in construction and demolition waste recycling technology, concrete and mortar-heavy infrastructure projects can become significantly more sustainable.

The post Are We Running Out of Sand? appeared first on Earth.Org.

The latest campaign by WWF warns that man-made noise causes chaos in the Arctic marine ecosystem, where whales once thrived for thousands of years safely under the thick sea ice cover. Global warming cracked open the ice shields and let the men enter with their commercial ships, tourist cruises, and fuel exploration vessels.  Their unsettling noises damage whales’ hearing and impede their communication.

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Earth’s northernmost waters are never quiet. Every day, the whistles of beluga whales and the grunts of humpbacks compose underwater symphonies in the Arctic Ocean. The natural orchestras that nurture the lives of Arctic whales are now disrupted by invasive and dangerous man-made noise.

Doom of the last acoustic refuge

Scientists once saw the Arctic Ocean as ‘the last acoustic refuge’ for marine mammals. But that was before the ice started melting exponentially.  An analysis of three decades of data by the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) reveals that the extent of Arctic sea ice loss in the last four years hit the highest rate ever.

The absence of thick ice prompted maritime traffic in the Arctic waters. In 2017, for the first time, a giant Russian commercial LNG tanker sailed across the northern route from Europe to Asia without the protection of an ice-breaker. The imminent doom of whales’ last natural sanctuary thus became obvious.

Currently, the four main trans-Arctic routes of commercial navigation see a steep increase in traffic year by year. In the northern route alone, the Russian government predicts, the cargo turnover would grow tenfold by 2020. WWF warns that Arctic sea traffic will quadruple by 2025.

There is an emerging trend of whale-watching tourism, cruise ships and boats carrying scores of travellers across the arctic waters- Skjálfandi Bay in the northern coast of Iceland draws more than 100 000 tourists every year. Whale-watching boats operate from 8 am to 11 pm all year round.

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The Arctic sea ice extent is declining at a rate of 12.8 percent per decade since 1979 (Photo: National Snow and Ice Data Center)

The deadly noise

WWF explains that marine mammals heavily depend on acoustic information to survive the underwater environment where it’s always dark.

Research published in the scientific journal Biology Letters last year by oceanographer Ms. Kate Stafford and her team points out bowhead whales, an endangered Arctic whale species can sing up to 24 hours to attract mates during breeding season. Analysing five years of data Ms. Stafford, Associate Professor at the University of Washington, reveals that bowhead whales make new and diverse songs each year.  The round-foreheaded belugas—nicknamed as “the canaries of the sea”– are considered the most vocal among whale species. They use diverse clicks, whistles, and clangs to communicate, navigate and locate food. The humpback whales, on the other hand, compose new tunes each year to mate- like the behavioral pattern of the bowhead whales.

The man-made noise of ships overlaps the vocal frequency of whales and interrupts their communication. It hampers their navigation and cripples their ability to detect dangers. Sounds to them are like eyes to human. Man-made noises mask their senses.

Many whales stop singing when heavy ships pass by. Although some other species like the begulas try to overcome their challenge by changing their vocalisation level, the increasing number ships may soon exhaust them.

Industrial activities such as oil and gas exploration pose a great danger to them. Seismic air guns used for searching fuel deposits generate intense, acoustic impulse signals. The noise is louder than a jet’s take-off and can travel over 2,000 miles. Marine mammals experience temporary or permanent hearing loss when they get exposed these air gun blast—just like a human.

A 2017 study highlighted that air gun blasts can double the death rate of zooplankton, jellyfish, shrimps and sea snails.  The result is a disturbed oceanic food chain with the whale species, which feed on these small creatures, face starvation.

Humpbacks are known for ‘singing’ to attract mates. (Photo by Thomas Kelley/Unsplash)

Solution

In their campaign, WWF urges the eight Arctic States, including Canada, Norway, Russia, and the US, to take action to stop the noise pollution. Experts have suggested practical solutions to the problem. 

One simple step for mitigation is to slow down ships’ speed. Belén García Ovide, a Spanish marine biologist, who studied acoustic effects on whales for more than five years, says a boat’s speed is the biggest single factor of noise intensity in the ocean. Research published last year in Acoustic Society of America also sees the potentials in reducing acoustic masking by lowering cruise ships’ speed from 25 knots to 15 knots (equivalent to about 17 mph to 11.5 mph).

Quiet-ship technology is also an efficient way to deal with the noise. However, WWF points out existing technologies, which are designed to produce quiet military vessels, are either too expensive or unfit for the size of commercial ship engines.

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), in charge of leading the implementation of ship-quieting technology, drafted a set of voluntary guidelines in 2014. The implementation of these guidelines might yield some positive results. WWF recommends regulations such as limiting vessels’ access to port facilities if they cannot meet noise level requirements.

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