ENB Update – 17 October 2019 | Budapest Water Summit 2019

Jay OwenEarth Systems Science, Latest Headlines

“Ethical Markets welcomes the many proposals in this high-level Summit.  However, the widespread cognitive disability: theory-induced blindness, (described by Kahneman and Tversky) persists!  There was little definitional clarity that the discussion was limited to the planet’s 3%  freshwater on which the global food systems is currently over-reliant.

There is no shortage of water and efforts mentioned to desalinate ever more of the planet’s 97% saltwater are still tragically misplaced, as we point out in our Green Transition Scoreboard: “TRANSITIONING TO  SCIENCE-BASED INVESTING, 2019-2020“.  Precious freshwater for human needs can be conserved, by expanding agriculture to include the planet’s other half of its plant kingdom:  the hundreds of nutritious food plants that thrive on saltwater, i.e. halophytes (e.g. quinoa, China’s salt-tolerant rice. Salicornia, etc) without fertilizers, pesticides on the planet’s 40% unused, degraded or desert lands in 22 countries for centuries and which can be expanded rapidly.  A co-benefit is that these halophyte plants have very long roots that capture and store more ambient CO2 than even trees, or any other method, as we reported in “CAPTURING CO2 WHILE IMPROVING HUMAN NUTRITION & HEALTH, 2018”.   The power of the existing agro-chemical industrial complex over our fragile current monocultured foods must be challenged!

 

~Hazel Henderson, Editor”

Thursday, 17 October 2019

Daily Reports

Budapest Water Summit 2019

The final day concluded with a summary of recommendations on the way forward to achieve water security. Read

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