Purpose of the articles posted in the blog is to share knowledge and occurring events for ecology and biodiversity conservation and protection whereas biology will be human’s security. Remember, these are meant to be conversation starters, not mere broadcasts :) so I kindly request and would vastly prefer that you share your comments and thoughts on the blog-version of this Focus on Arts and Ecology (all its past + present + future).
The earth is you. You are the earth. When you realize there is no separation, says Thich Nhat Hanh, you fall completely in love with this beautiful planet.
At this very moment, the earth is above you, below you, all around you, and even inside you. The earth is everywhere.
You may be used to thinking of the earth as only the ground beneath your feet. But the water, the sea, the sky, and everything around us comes from the earth. Everything outside us and everything inside us come from the earth.
We often forget that the planet we are living on has given us all the elements that make up our bodies. The water in our flesh, our bones, and all the microscopic cells inside our bodies all come from the earth and are part of the earth. The earth is not just the environment we live in. We are the earth and we are always carrying her within us.
The earth is not just the environment we live in. We are the earth and we are always carrying her within us.
Realizing this, we can see that the earth is truly alive. We are a living, breathing manifestation of this beautiful and generous planet. Knowing this, we can begin to transform our relationship to the earth. We can begin to walk differently and to care for her differently.
We will fall completely in love with the earth. When we are in love with someone or something, there is no separation between ourselves and the person or thing we love. We do whatever we can for them and this brings us great joy and nourishment. That is the relationship each of us can have with the earth. That is the relationship each of us must have with the earth if the earth is to survive, and if we are to survive as well.
If we think about the earth as just the environment around us, we experience ourselves and the earth as separate entities. We may see the planet only in terms of what it can do for us.
We need to recognize that the planet and the people on it are ultimately one and the same. When we look deeply at the earth, we see that she is a formation made up of non-earth elements: the sun, the stars, and the whole universe. Certain elements, such as carbon, silicon, and iron, formed long ago in the heat of far-off supernovas. Distant stars contributed to their light.
When we look into a flower, we can see that it’s made of many different elements, so we also call it a formation. A flower is made of many non-flower elements. The entire universe can be seen in a flower. If we look deeply into the flower, we can see the sun, the soil, the rain, and the gardener. Similarly, when we look deeply into the earth, we can see the presence of the whole cosmos.
A lot of our fear, hatred, anger, and feelings of separation and alienation come from the idea that we are separate from the planet. We see ourselves as the center of the universe and are concerned primarily with our own personal survival. If we care about the health and well-being of the planet, we do so for our own sake. We want the air to be clean enough for us to breathe. We want the water to be clear enough so that we have something to drink. But we need to do more than use recycled products or donate money to environmental groups.
We have to change our whole relationship with the earth.
Reprinted from Love Letter to the Earth (2013), by Thich Nhat Hanh, with permission of Parallax Press.
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Thich Nhat Hanh is a renowned Zen Master and poet, the founder of the Engaged Buddhist movement, and the founder of nine monastic communities, including Plum Village Monastery in France. He's also the author of At Home in the World, The Other Shore, and more than a hundred other books that have sold millions of copies worldwide. Thich Nhat Hanh currently lives in Vietnam.
The big environmental stories in the Chinese media this week (20-26 November)
A few provinces might fail to meet their 2016-2020 energy intensity target, just when China’s new carbon neutrality pledge requires even more ambitious targets, a Chinese media report revealed this week.
China Energy News reports that more than 10 provinces, including Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and Shaanxi, will have difficulty meeting key energy targets assigned to them under the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-2020) – including for lessening energy intensity (consumption per unit of GDP) and total energy consumption.
Reducing energy intensity has been central to China’s climate agenda and its efforts to decouple economic growth from carbon emissions. The central government has been setting binding targets to lower energy intensity since the 12th FYP period (2011-2015), when it mandated a 16% reduction from 2010 levels. In the 13th FYP, a further reduction of 15% was required. The total consumption cap is non-binding but is used to monitor energy development trends. Both national level targets were broken down and allocated to more than 30 provinces.
The investigation by China Energy News shows that, as a whole, China is on track to meet its 15% energy-intensity reduction target by the end of this year. However, that success is regionally unbalanced. Some provinces will overachieve, while others are struggling to keep energy consumption under control. Inner Mongolia, for example, is seeing a 10.56% increase in energy intensity. As such, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) summoned Inner Mongolia’s leaders for a meeting. Shaanxi province’s energy officials also admitted to the newspaper that the province’s energy intensity would rise.
The provincial leaders explained to China Energy News that during the 13th FYP period, their provinces had built many high-energy projects. On the other hand, newer, cleaner industries had not grown fast enough. They also maintained that many of the energy-heavy projects were for the energy security of the whole country, and advocated for more lenient intensity targets in consideration of their special role as energy producers. For instance, a Ningxia official wondered openly if key energy projects put in his province by national planners should be accounted for separately, rather than eating into the province’s precious energy budget.
While some national level policymakers are sympathetic to such calls, others are more blunt. “The whole point of setting a binding energy intensity target is to put pressure on provinces to reform their energy structure,” said one anonymous central government official to China Energy News. “You can’t loosen the target just because some provinces have difficulty meeting it.” Du Xiangwan, a member of China’s Academy of Engineering, told the newspaper that energy intensity is the primary indicator of the quality of a country’s energy system. “China’s energy intensity is still 1.5 times the global average. It is simply unsustainable,” he said.
Read China Dialogue’s earlier report on China’s efforts to improve industrial energy efficiency.
The big environmental stories in the Chinese media this week (20-26 November)
The Emmy Award winning documentary Gasland (2010) described how tap water in some US homes caught fire. The film linked the flammable water to nearby hydraulic fracturing, known as “fracking”, to get at natural gas reserves.
In the past few years, a few dozen residents in Panjin city, northeastern Liaoning province, have had the same fracking-related problem, China’s state broadcaster CCTV has said.
In a shocking video on China's social media, resident Ms Wang set ablaze her tap water by putting a lighter to it. “Some gas will appear after turning on the tap water… It feels like oil sticking to your hands after washing,” she told CCTV.
Although the residents had made complaints to the local water company and government, the problem remained unsolved and unexplained for years.
In an interview, the head of the local water supply service station confirmed they had noticed gas in the water a long time ago. Without knowing if it was harmful, they continued to supply water.
On 22 November, the same day Wang’s video went viral, the local district government launched an investigation and shut down the water well. Two days later, the government claimed the flame was caused by a small amount of natural gas that had leaked into the groundwater and then been extracted and supplied to residents. The problem was due to water temporarily being extracted directly from the ground, while a storage device at the local water station undergoes expansion work, it added. This appeared to contradict the residents' claims that the issue had lasted for at least two years. The government pledged those responsible would be held accountable.
Lioahe, one of China's largest domestic oil fields is located in Panjin. On the official website of Liaohe Oilfield, a subsidiary of the state-owned PetroChina, the company says they have been fracking while drilling for oil.
Gasland sparked fears of the potential danger of fracking. But different scientific studies have produced different results. Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development, an NGO representing the oil and gas industry, cites a few studies showing that fracking could not be linked to contaminated groundwater. The culprit was most likely “compromised well casings”, one study stated.
In 2011, a study by Duke University found the type of methane gas in drinking water wells linked to closed natural gas wells: “Our results ... suggest important environmental risks accompanying shale gas exploration worldwide.”
China’s coal-related CO2 emissions hinge on consumption, not capacity, so the surge in new coal plants likely won’t lead to a dramatic increase in emissions
About 250 gigawatts of coal power capacity is planned or under construction in China, more than the existing coal capacities of the US and of India (Image: Alamy)
Long gone are the days when China held up negotiations and blocked efforts for a new global climate agreement at the 2009 Copenhagen summit. More than a decade later, the former enfant terrible of the global climate regime is increasingly asserting itself as a leader. Perhaps the clearest evidence of this can be found in the new set of commitments announced at the UN general assembly in September, including a national target of carbon neutrality by 2060.
The test of such commitments is in their implementation through domestic policies. So, it is concerning that China saw a surge in newly proposed coal power capacity during the first half of 2020, although this remains in line with the country’s 13th Five Year Plan. The growth in coal plants highlights one of the obstacles China must overcome to significantly reduce its emissions. But as coal-related emissions hinge on consumption, not capacity, the former may not contradict China’s new pledges.
China’s coal power overcapacity problem
An estimated 249.6 gigawatts (GW) of coal power capacity is planned or under construction in China. This exceeds the entire coal capacity of the United States (246.2GW) and India (229GW). Following the loosening of the so-called “traffic light system” by China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) in February, 40.8GW of new coal capacity was proposed in the first half of 2020, of which 17GW is already permitted for construction. This constitutes a significant surge compared to the 12GW permitted in China in the years 2018 and 2019 combined.
At first glance, this paints a bleak picture for China’s future emissions, and one that appears decisively at odds with its emissions reduction targets. However, the country’s coal sector is already plagued by overcapacity. China has an estimated 400GW of excess coal-fired capacity beyond what it needs to ensure a stable power supply. This has decreased the utilisation rate of the country’s coal fleet over time: in 2019, an average thermal power plant was generating electricity at 49% of capacity, down from 50% in 2015 and 60% in 2011. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, half of China’s coal-power firms are loss-making.
Consumption versus capacity
China’s coal power growth is not driven by a need for more coal power. By financing large industrial and infrastructure projects, officials are instead exploiting a system of promotion based on meeting local GDP and investment metrics – even if projects provide limited long-term economic value or may result in asset stranding. That said, there are notable differences between provinces, with the more developed ones in the east making efforts in recent years to cut back on coal consumption to reduce air pollution.
As CO2 emissions depend on coal consumption rather than generating capacity, it is likely that China’s coal-power CO2 emissions are not going to rise in proportion with plant construction – indeed, emissions may not rise at all. A surge in capacity could lead to a further decrease in average utilisation rates of coal plants, which would in turn worsen certain operators’ economic losses. What is more, new coal plants may replace older, less-efficient plants with higher emissions per unit of power produced.
All eyes on the 14th Five Year Plan
If plant construction provides a distorted picture of actual coal-related carbon emissions, a better indication can be found in China’s five-year plans for economic and social development. The current plan includes a 1,100GW cap on total coal power capacity as well as separate targets for the share of non-fossil sources in China’s energy mix, and development plans with sectoral targets for renewable energy. China is finalising its 14th Five Year Plan for the 2021-2025 period with updated targets, which is set to be released during the next Twin Sessions in March 2021. Following its approval, sectoral and regional plans will be drawn up accordingly. The NEA’s plan for the power sector, for example, will be finalised in late 2021.
Many analysts see the 14th Five Year Plan as a decisive test for China’s new commitments, spanning as it does a key period both for achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 and the intermediary step of peaking CO2 emissions before 2030. While recent plans for coal power plant expansion may not offer an accurate prediction of future increases in China’s coal consumption, the root causes of overcapacity in the coal sector do offer a cautionary tale for the country’s broader climate ambitions. In particular, the incentive structure behind officials’ support for new coal plants must urgently change.
This involves directing the flow of credit towards climate-friendly projects, and away from projects that are – as in the case of many coal power plants in China – both carbon-intensive and economically unviable. For example, the 360 coal-fired plant units built in China between 2015 and 2019 cost at least US$80 billion solely in construction. Even if these plants ultimately do not have a severe effect on China’s CO2 emissions, their costs represent a missed opportunity for investment in lower-carbon alternatives. What is more, they are bound to put a strain on the financial system when they inevitably become stranded assets.
In other words, beyond the ambitiousness of its targets and policies, the Chinese government needs to ensure their stringent implementation – even if this means facing trade-offs. As the surge in proposed coal plants shows, certain provinces still rely on a supposed dichotomy between economic and environmental aspirations. Thus, contradictory goals may be pursued through different channels at the same time, even though this goes against the government’s pursuit of an ecological civilisation. To fulfil its new climate targets, China must translate its rhetoric into unambiguous policy at all levels of government. This will involve making hard choices about the country’s energy sources and committing to the consequences.
Amelie Bahr is a recent graduate from University College London (UCL). She has previously worked for the European Parliament and, most recently, the Beijing office of the German development agency (GIZ).
A nurse at a health centre in Cape Coast, Ghana, talks to women about family planning. Credit Kate Holt/eyevine
Worldwide, almost half of women who are of reproductive age use contraception1. Another 171 million women — around 1 in 11 aged between 15 and 49 — do not use it, yet want to avoid pregnancy1. Several factors contribute to this unmet need. New, effective and more-desirable contraceptive options are urgently needed. Family planning is a key aspect to meeting United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 5.
Many women and men are highly dissatisfied with the contraceptives available2. Male condoms fail too often — in the first year of condom use, about 13% of women become pregnant3 — and women must rely on men. Implants and intra-uterine devices (IUDs) require medical procedures and can be invasive; pills have to be taken every day. Hormonal methods and non-hormonal IUDs can have side effects, including irregular or unpredictable menstrual bleeding, headaches, acne and weight gain, as well as depression and other mood changes4. For many women worldwide, contraception has been difficult to obtain or afford, even before the COVID-19 pandemic.
All of this has serious consequences. Around 40% of pregnancies globally are unintended, and about half of those end in induced abortion5. A high proportion of unintended pregnancies occur even where contraception is relatively accessible and cultural stigma against it is generally low, for example in North America (48%) and Europe (43%)5. Those pregnancies can happen because women aren’t using contraception, because their method failed or because it was used incorrectly. Nearly 25% of unintended pregnancies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) occur in women who were using modern forms of contraception6, and globally it’s an even higher share (see ‘Needs gap’).
Source: Internal analysis by Avenir Health using multiple sources of global pregnancy data; funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Unintended pregnancies can have lasting effects on women, children, families and society. The direct health-care costs in LMICs amounted to US$10 billion6 in 2019 alone; the indirect, longer-term economic costs could be 40 times that7. Estimates suggest that US unplanned births resulted in $21 billion in publicly funded medical costs in 20108. Progress in contraceptives research and development (R&D) has been slow in recent decades. Pharmaceutical companies typically spend around 20% of their sales revenue on R&D for new products9. For contraception, that figure is just 2%. We estimate that most of this spending has focused on incremental improvements to classes of hormonal contraceptive compound that have been in use for decades.
Encouragingly, there are now more opportunities than ever for innovation. Many scientific advances of the past decade can now be applied to developing non-hormonal drugs that target the egg, sperm or processes along the journey to conception. Such products could have fewer and less-severe side effects than current ones. And alongside daily oral pills, to meet the needs of women who want contraception for different lengths of time, various non-hormonal products with months or years of action could be delivered — through injections, implants, IUDs and other user-responsive systems that are currently in development.
At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic is changing health-care services, possibly forever. Many of today’s contraceptives, such as implants and IUDs, require an in-person appointment10. New methods could be delivered remotely, directly to users.
A coalition of innovators, researchers, biopharmaceutical firms, donors and investors needs to come together now to produce better contraception for women. Many of the steps needed might catalyse innovation in male contraception, too.
Lack of satisfaction
The contraceptives available do not fully meet many women’s changing needs and preferences through their reproductive lives. Among women in LMICs who do not want to get pregnant but are not using modern contraceptives, more than one-quarter cite side effects as the main reason11. And the same types of side effect accompany many different products. Globally, about one-third of women discontinue their hormonal method of contraception in the first year of use, many citing side effects or health concerns as the main reason4.
Large-scale, detailed data are extremely sparse, especially from women who continue to use a method of contraception despite being dissatisfied with it. More than 100,000 women from nearly 200 countries completed a survey on contraceptive preferences within 1 month of its opening. (The survey was released through the reproductive-health app Clue and online at http://shapefuturect.org; it was developed by Avenir Health, where M.W. works, and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, with S.E.G. as program officer). Early analysis suggests that a range of side effects would lead respondents to stop using a method, especially changes to mood, physical changes such as acne, weight gains of 2–4.5 kilograms, loss of hair and lowered sex drive. These findings echo others (go.nature.com/35hgqsm). A 2018 review showed that changes to heaviness or frequency of menstrual bleeding have all been associated with reported dissatisfaction with contraceptives12.
All of this probably helps to explain the enthusiastic responses to product launches over the past decade. For example, the Mirena family of products, a hormone-releasing intra-uterine system made by Bayer in Leverkusen, Germany, has maintained blockbuster sales of more than $1 billion for each of the past 5 years. An oral contraceptive introduced in 2011, Lo Loestrin, which offers the lowest amount of daily oestrogen available (with the potential for fewer side effects than for those of related products), captured a significant share of the market9 and net revenues have seen double-digit growth over time. In 2018, an app called Natural Cycles was approved as a contraceptive, and relies on body temperature to inform users when they are fertile. Earlier this year, Evofem launched Phexxi — a first-in-class vaginal pH modulator that works as a non-hormonal contraceptive. The impact of these two latest products will become clear over the next few years.
A women’s clinic in Cairo.Credit: Tara Todras-Whitehill/NYT/Redux/eyevine
Yet there are few truly innovative and highly effective contraceptive products in development. According to ClinicalTrials.gov, there have been 20–25 industry-funded clinical trials between 2017 and 2020. The majority focus on incremental revisions to existing hormonal products. By comparison, in 2019 there were about 3,100 trials for cancer drugs, 600 for cardiovascular drugs and 140 for treatments for eye disorders13.
Funding of R&D for female contraception comes from just a handful of players. These include the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Rockville, Maryland, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (where K.M.V. works and S.E.G. recently worked) and the US Agency for International Development. Over the past few years, other organizations have funded or invested in specific non-hormonal technologies, including the BioInnovation Institute in Copenhagen and US-based RHIA Ventures and Adjuvant Capital. There’s room for many more.
Cycle of neglect
Why are funding and R&D so limited for female contraceptives? One reason is that they are given to healthy women of reproductive age, so the safety requirements for regulatory approval are (appropriately) very high: serious or severe adverse effects are not acceptable. Efficacy requirements are also extremely stringent. These regulations act as commercial disincentives for trying something new.
In addition, there are unique liability concerns for new products in reproductive health — especially in the United States, which is a litigious market. There have been a number of high-profile cases against leading contraceptive manufacturers, resulting in multimillion-dollar settlements (see go.nature.com/3ncb7jv). Vaccines are one of the only other product classes that are administered to a healthy population. However, in the United States, vaccine manufacturers are protected from liability under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, established by an Act of Congress in 1986. This is unlikely to happen for contraception.
Another problem is that,from a business perspective, the contraceptive market seems to be healthy and growing. It was valued at $24 billion in 201814. Yet the demand from women for transformational change is not reflected as a reduction in sales. Furthermore, women’s health issues, and their preferences, are simply under-studied and under-funded, and unmet needs are ignored and misunderstood by those who could work to address these issues.
These barriers — tight regulations, high liability risk and the lack of a strong market signal — fuel a false perception of low return on investment in contraceptive R&D. So, over the past 20 years, many global biopharma companies have sold off, reduced or closed divisions that were developing non-hormonal contraceptives and other women’s health products, such as those to support menopause. Companies have instead focused on therapeutic areas that are evidently fast-growing, such as oncology.
When drug firms step away from a field, it can start a cycle of neglect. Venture capitalists become wary of supporting technologies with unclear opportunities for exit strategies. Academics become cautious about pursuing an area with reduced commercial outlets and financial support. Private companies have few promising avenues to explore, and potential funders cannot easily identify where to invest.
For contraception, this has led to missed opportunities, because the scientific tools for R&D have mushroomed. Public-sector funding has been one of the key reasons the field has dodged dormancy (see ‘Funding gap’).
Sources: NIH/EvaluatePharma/BCG Analysis
Prime time
For the first time in a generation, a coalition of stakeholders could revolutionize the sector. For example, it is now possible to use genomics tools in a way that was not available 20 years ago. Operating costs have plummeted, and analytical methods and data sets have rapidly expanded in sophistication and size. Biostatisticians can comb for genes or proteins key to egg or follicle maturation, fertilization or gamete function. This can isolate targets for non-hormonal pharmaceutical interventions in a way that is much more efficient than previous, failed approaches.
The neighbouring fields of gynaecological oncology and infertility have seen industry funding increase over the past decade. Advances in those fields could help contraceptive R&D. For example, progress in understanding the mechanisms underpinning ovulation could help to identify potential drugs that could temporarily affect the same biological pathways.
Online tools also offer opportunities. Between 2015 and 2018, investors ploughed more than $1 billion into digital and diagnostic products and services that aid family planning, including menstruation and fertility-tracking apps (go.nature.com/2toj2vp). The sector is expected to be worth $50 billion by 2025 (go.nature.com/3pcswpt). Other apps and social media could help to create large-scale data sets articulating women’s needs, as long as privacy can be protected.
Key collaborations
Public–private partnerships will be key. The best innovation models in oncology, immunology and applied genomics, for example, engage industry in early stages. Such collaboration focuses research on saleable products targeted at consumer need. It also increases reproducibility of results, breaks down silos and brings in diverse perspectives to improve robustness. Without early buy-in, innovation efforts typically fall outside biopharma’s tolerance for risk.
Fresh thinking will also be needed to ensure that the latest contraceptive products get to those who need them most. For example, new non-hormonal contraceptives might require new manufacturing processes and are therefore likely to be priced higher than existing products. Revenue from high-income markets could subsidize affordable prices in LMICs15.
Vaccine development is a good example of collaboration on product development that enables access by LMICs. Research communities such as the Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery focus on discovery. These bring the best scientists together, prioritize high-impact research and support the development of assays and model systems. To aggregate public, private and philanthropic funding, product-development partnerships have come together, such as the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, the International Vaccine Institute and PATH Center for Vaccine Innovation and Access. These mechanisms drive innovation and significantly reduce the financial risk of early-stage investment. This type of infrastructure and collaboration has been crucial to the fast pace of innovation and development for COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics.
Regulators, too, can help to lower the barriers to innovation. For example, once contraceptive drugs are well studied for safety and efficacy, developers might be allowed to use modelling, alongside clinical-trial data, in support of future products using the same drug16. Regulators might also need to consider how they assess effectiveness. A new non-hormonal product might have lower efficacy in clinical settings but have fewer side effects than some existing products, leading to higher acceptance and use, for example.
New funding is crucial to catalyse innovation in any sector. Venture funds, biopharma, biotechnology firms and universities should assess opportunities to apply their technologies and expertise to contraception, which could accelerate and increase innovations in R&D across multiple fields.
The public needs to speak up about its desires and demands, so that we can move from methods that women tolerate to those that actually satisfy their needs.
Success stories of new, reliable contraceptives with fewer side effects will create a virtuous cycle, spurring more funding and research and better options for consumers. A thriving contraceptive R&D ecosystem might also catalyse innovation in other sectors of women’s health: infertility, endometriosis and sexually transmitted infections, to name a few. What are we waiting for?
