Corrupt contractors and militants take up to 50% of aid before it reaches the country's hungry people, says leaked document

Up to half the food aid meant to feed hundreds of thousands of hungry people in Somalia is being stolen, according to a leaked UN security council report.

The report, seen by the New York Times, says the food is being diverted to corrupt contractors, radical Islamic militants and local UN workers. It advises the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to open an independent investigation into the organisation's world food programme operations in Somalia.

The losses are blamed on improper food distribution and the country's war-ravaged infrastructure.

The bags of food have to be driven through roadblocks manned by a bewildering array of militias, insurgents and bandits.

Not only are kidnappings and executions common, the country's insecurity also makes it difficult for senior UN officials to travel to the country to check on procedures. Investigators who do go there run the risk of relying for protection on the same people they are examining.

A UN diplomat, who did not wish to be named, told Associated Press that a significant amount of food delivered by the UN food programme was being diverted to cartels who were selling it illegally.

Although nearly half of Somalia's 3.7m people need aid, the country's main extremist Islamic group said earlier this year that it would stop the UN's food programme distributing food in areas under its control because it says the aid undercuts farmers selling recently harvested crops.

The group, al-Shabaab, also accused the agency of handing out food unfit for human consumption and of secretly supporting "apostates" who have renounced Islam.

The UN's ability to conduct investigations was badly damaged in 2009 when it dissolved its special anti-corruption unit, the procurement taskforce, three years after its establishment. Investigations are now conducted by the office of internal oversight services' permanent investigation division.

An AP analysis in January found not a single significant fraud or corruption investigation was completed in 2008 out of about 150 begun. Five major corruption cases were halted.

A spokesman for the world food programme, which is based in Rome, said it would not be commenting until it had studied the report.

A Nairobi-based spokesman for the programme had previously said that internal investigations showed between 2% and 10% of aid was being sold.

The US reduced its funding to Somalia last year after its treasury department said it feared that aid could be diverted to al-Shabaab, which the Americans say has links to al-Qaida. The issue remains unresolved.

The report also found regional Somali authorities to be collaborating with pirates and says that government ministers have auctioned off diplomatic visas.

However, the Somali finance minister, Abdirahman Omar Osman, denied the charge. "We don't sell visas. That is not true," he said, adding that his government would investigate the allegations.

Somalia's government is readying a military offensive to combat an Islamist insurgency linked to al-Qaida and to retake Mogadishu, the capital. The insurgents frequently attack government forces in the city and stage public amputations with impunity.

However, the report described the security forces as "ineffective, disorganised and corrupt".

The issue of aid distribution has been in the news over the last week following a BBC World Service programme which claimed that 95% of the $100m (£67m) aid raised to fight famine in northern Ethiopia was diverted by rebels and spent on weapons.

The allegation prompted a furious denial from the veteran aid campaigner Bob Geldof, who threatened legal action and called for a string of resignations at the World Service.

Others, however, have argued that any allegations over the misuse of aid have to be investigated.

The former BBC correspondent Rageh Omaar, who was born in Somalia, provoked Geldof's ire by saying that humanitarian operations in disputed territories were "almost always politicised and misused".

He added: " The idea that this never happens and that NGOs are never put in situations where, in order to get the aid delivered, they have to work with and often through the powers that control the territory where the suffering is taking place is a ridiculous fantasy.

"It's happening now, in Congo; in my own country, Somalia, where al-Qaida-affiliated groups have dictated how the world food programme delivers emergency food; and also in Zimbabwe, where I have just spent two weeks talking to aid workers having to work through government bodies in delivering aid to prisoners of Mugabe."

• Somalia
• al-Qaida
• United Nations
• Ethiopia
• Zimbabwe
• Famine
• Food
• International aid and development

Sam Jones
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta by the photojournalist Ed Kashi documents the consequences of fifty years of oil extraction in the Niger delta

Eric HilaireShiona Tregaskis

The future of the bluefin tuna could be decided within days, along with two other endangered fish, the spiny dogfish and porbeagle, according to a national conservation charity.

RenewableUK says inconsistencies in tariff favour solar panels, which takes microgeneration business out of UK

UK small wind turbine manufacturers say they will lose out to foreign solar panel manufacturers in the race to cash in on the UK government's new feed-in tariff scheme.

They claim their products will be penalised because solar panel owners will receive higher government subsidies than wind turbine buyers. As the arrangement stands, a wind turbine would qualify for 26.7-34.5p per KWh in government subsidies, while solar panels would typically bring in 41p per KWh.

Turbine manufacturers will also have to pay a fee of up to £100,000 to have their models certified for the scheme, and they argue that planning rules make it harder for customers to get approval for turbines.

Due to come into effect on 1 April, the tariff – also known as Clean Energy Cashback – will offer home owners a government subsidy for installing small-scale renewable energy technologies, including solar panels and wind turbines.

Alex Murley, RenewableUK's head of small systems, said: "Small wind is the only microgeneration technology which UK manufacturers dominate the market for. If we don't get this right we could be shooting ourselves in the foot and killing off a burgeoning UK success story."

According to Renewable UK, planning applications for small wind turbines have traditionally taken up to 14 months to process. Britain's oldest surviving small wind manufacturer, Ampair, has accused some local authorities of "systematically rejecting" applications.

The government promises to allow households to install small turbines without planning permission from June, but turbine manufacturers say the current planning allowance is too limited, restricting domestic wind turbines to a hub height of 10 metres and 2.2 metres blade diameter.

This will allow a 1.5KW turbine, producing an average of 800KWh a year in windy conditions – less than a fifth of the average UK household's electricity needs. By comparison, UK panel installer Solarcentury has estimated that the typical 18 metre square domestic solar panel installation would on average generate just over 2,000KWh – nearly half the average household's electricity consumption.

The government's Energy Saving Trust said that although such limitations are fine for urban roof top turbines, wind turbines in rural locations need to be bigger for small wind turbines to generate a significant amount of energy for the UK. It is these rural locations that will generate the lion's share of energy from "small" turbines. EST figures published last year show small turbines could meet 4% of the UK's electricity demands but only 4% of that energy would come from small turbines in urban locations.

UK manufacturers currently produce four-fifths of the country's small turbines, 3,500 of which were installed in the UK in 2008. All larger wind turbines and the vast majority of solar panels are manufactured abroad.

David Sharman, managing director of Ampair, claims the UK government is penalising its own manufacturing industry through inequalities in the feed-in tariff.

He also claims that the rigorous tests to qualify for the tariff's quality assurance certificate, the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS), are prohibitively expensive at at £50,000-£100,000 per product certified. No small wind turbines have so far been MCS accreditedbut the government has set up an MCS 'transition list' for small wind turbines, which allows them to temporarily qualify for the tariff for one year while they complete the accreditation scheme.

Responding to criticism of planning restrictions for wind, a spokesperson for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "We consulted on the proposals to find the right balance for these technologies. We want to enable homeowners to install microgeneration easily and also make sure we're fair about planning permission for larger installations. Different homes will be suitable for different technologies based on a number of factors – it's not a one size fits all."

• Feed-in tariffs
• Wind power
• Renewable energy
• Energy
• Utilities
• Manufacturing sector

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Ministries of Environment and Trade, in partnership with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD) will start as from the first fortnight of March, a course on climate change and carbon market.

As global warming and habitat degradation accelerates, people indigenous to the Arctic circle say they have much to teach the world about how to adapt, survive, and thrive

Elina Helander-Renvall comes from Utsjoki, a place so obscure that even many Finns have little idea where it is. Utsjoki, or Ochejohka, Uccjuuha, and Uccjokk, depending on which local language you are speaking, is Finland's northern-most municipality. Straddling the border with Norway, it shivers, unregarded, deep inside the Arctic circle, a few icy miles from the shores of the Arctic Ocean.

Utsjoki, population 1,034, is home to Finland's largest concentration of Sami speakers, the indigenous people once loosely known as Lapps who have eked out an itinerant existence herding reindeer across the frozen wastes of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and western Russia since the last Ice Age. Nearly 50% of Utsjoki's population are Sami. In Finnish terms, it's the closest this eternal minority has got to being the majority.

Born and raised on the margin though she was, Helander-Renvall's message these days is strictly mainstream. As accelerating climate change and other man-made environmental degradations create growing alarm across the planet, the Sami people have much to teach the world about how to adapt, survive, and thrive, she says.

"There is a lot to learn from the Sami, they have the traditional ecological knowledge, they really know about nature," said Helander-Renvall, head of the Arctic Indigenous Peoples Office at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi. "They have the most precise knowledge about the weather conditions, about the plants, the diet, the resources. The Sami people have an ethical relationship with nature; a respect for nature that also has a spiritual side."

The Arctic region is uniquely vulnerable to global warming, but if it is to weather the storm, it would do well to adopt Sami methods of land and resource management, communal co-operation and communication, local knowledge and best practice, she said.

In order to keep a reindeer herd out of trouble, for example, a knowledge of different types of snow could be decisive, Helander-Renvall said. Muohta (ordinary snow) or oppas (untouched snow) might be safe. But the presence of sievla (wet snow), skarta (thin, ice-like snow layers) or ceavvi (a hard layer that the reindeer cannot penetrate in search of lichen) could dictate a life-saving change of route or decision to move camp.

Local knowledge will also be vital to the large-scale industrial development on the fast-expanding oil and gas fields of western Russia's Yamal peninsula, and for the burdgeoning commercial and tourism industries in the Scandinavian north. Knowing where it is safe to build, how to site the foundations for a new road, airstrip or pipeline, what terrain to avoid, and how to do so responsibly while protecting biological diversity will all be increasingly important. "We need to preserve and transfer indigenous knowledge to future generations," Helander-Renvall said.

Professor Monica Tennberg of the Arctic Research Centre in Rovaniemi said the Sami had shown notable ability to adapt to changing climate conditions. "We've seen how the community adapts, for example finding new ways to deal with floods. We've seen better co-operation, better municipal leadership, better communications, better early warning systems," she said. Adverse effects of climate change on pasture and traditional herding trails had been met with new rotation and migration patterns and also by a tighter communal discipline.

The Arctic as a whole faces enormous challenges. Broadly speaking the region is warming at double the rate of the rest of the world, said Paula Kankaanpaa, director of the Research Centre, with local "hotspots" that fare even worse.

Symptoms include reduced sea ice; the opening of blue-water sea passages both east and west in summer, north of Canada and Russia; increased levels of carbon-carrying organic waste in the Arctic Ocean caused by melting tundra; coastal erosion due to increased wave activity; loss of habitat for large mammals such as seals and polar bears and growing disruption of indigenous human communities.

Governments still resist the idea that Arctic indigenous peoples have something unique to contribute. Canada announced this month that it will convene a foreign ministers' meeting of the five Arctic Ocean states (Canada, Russia, the US, Norway and Denmark/Greenland) in March "to encourage new thinking on responsible development" and "reinforce ongoing collaboration in the region".

To their dismay, Arctic indigenous people's organisations, including the Sami, Inuit and Inuvialuit, were not invited.

• Climate change
• Polar regions
• Finland
• Arctic

Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

This is a weekly email briefing from environmentguardian.co.uk, bringing you the best news, analysis and debate

Sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

Conservation and wildlife

• Humans driving extinction faster than species can evolve, say experts
• New hope for mountain gorillas in Congo
• Ghost orchid comes back from extinction
• Downpours threaten extinction for Britain's rarest butterfly
• Conservationists unveil plans to restore bison to North American plains
There was good news this week for bisons in the US and gorillas in South Africa, but bad tidings for Duke of Burgundy butterflies and biodiversity globally. "There's no question that the current extinction rates are faster [than the rate at which species evolve]", warned an expert at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

The great feed-in tariff debate

• George Monbiot: Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off?
• Jeremy Leggett: Solar panels are not fashion accessories
• George Monbiot: There is no 'green treachery' in questioning this solar panel rip-off
• Jeremy Leggett: I accept George Monbiot's £100 solar PV bet
• Ask Leo: Is it time to generate your own domestic power?
Guardian columnist George Monbiot sparked a war of words over the government's plans to pay householders, businesses and communities for generating their own green energy. Monbiot argued it was an inefficient and costly way to increase the UK's renewable energy capacity, while Jeremy Leggett and other commentators argued the scheme would create UK jobs and bring down the price of solar PV.

Multimedia

• In pictures: Paul Nicklen: Polar Obsession
• The week in wildlife
• In pictures: Saving Congo's mountain gorillas
• Audio: Moth predator to attack knotweed: '£150m damage every year'
• Video: The National Geographic archives: The wildlife of Namibia
This week's galleries include stunning photos of wildlife from the polar regions by award-winning photographer Paul Nicklen, plus our regular roundup of wildlife around the world - including a spectacular glowing squid.

Green living

• Do digital screens have a greater carbon footprint than printed posters?
• Which manifesto pledges for cycling would get your attention?
• You ask, they answer: Nokia
• 'Eco' lifestyle magazine is depressingly predictable disappointment
• The innovator: Tom Podkolinski, eco nappy designer
Help us answer Leo Hickman's dilemma this week - do digital screens have a greater carbon footprint than printed posters? And don't forget to post your questions for Nokia on its green track record.

Everybody's talking about

If you only read one thread...

How food and water are driving a 21st-century African land grabAn Observer investigation reveals how rich countries faced by a global food shortage now farm an area double the size of the UK to guarantee supplies for their citizens

Best comment
Humans driving extinction faster than species can evolve, say experts
Valleyboi: Look at it this way: You have been dropped into a situation where your task is to tackle Jonah Lomu in his prime in order to survive. If he was walking slowly towards you from 10m away, you'd have a bit of time to sum up your options and formulate the best plan of attack to bring down the big man. Conversely, if he was already running at full steam you'd only just have time to sob for your mummy before most probably being steam-rolled. That's how I think of the situation we are putting nature in.

Read interaction manager Mariam Cook's latest blogpost for more about this week's community activity.

...And finally

• The 'waterless' washing machine that could save you money

Would you trust plastic beads to clean your clothes, if it saved energy and water?

Environment editor
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

TOURISM Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk has worked hard over the years to shed his image as the overly junior head of the disintegrating New National Party. Since then he seems to have outgrown his tainted roots, gaining due recognition as the skilful politician and diplomat that he has become.

I learned something about how we see ourselves from a close psychologist friend. We were discussing relationships and I was told that people can only have relationships with other people, which startled me because I thought I had relationships with my pet dog Fritz, the tree in my front yard and the countless other species we share the planet with. It's actually a pretty contemporary idea to think we only have relationships with other Homosapiens. After all, founder of the Franciscan Order Saint Francis of Assisi gave his most famous sermon to a flock of birds. And many indigenous American cultures recognized brother bear and the spirits in living things. But as the ancient Greek Sophist Protagoras so clearly stated, "man is the measure of all things." More than 2000 years later, existential relativist Luigi Pirandello restated it as: "It is so if you think so," which essentially says humans create reality in their heads.

This truth was turbo-charged when we mastered our Neanderthal predecessor's invention of language. Once we started talking with each other, we began creating ever more complex - and shared -world views. It is the social animal's shared discourse that becomes our individual reality. The discourse can change over time; an Earth-centric solar system can give way to a heliocentric system, but we humans are always creating the story and convincing each other it is true. Our world is self-referential, always referring back to our shared story -even when we are refuting it. The information revolution has exponentially multiplied the self-referential power of shared language. Politicians and spin doctors recognize that the Internet is a cyberspace echo chamber where something that is repeated enough can become the "truth." A Colbertian Truthiness-net.

So why has a sustainability blogger digressed into a postmodern homily? It is fundamental to our sustainability challenge. As my psychologist friend says, we only have relationships with each other (actually our text messaging software), and thus only a tenuous connection to the larger environment. Ask kids where peas come from and you'll likely hear "cans" or "the refrigerator" before you hear "a plant." This reality means most of the technological innovations emerging from our conversations are designed to obviate the need for some natural ecological service, like water purification or nutrient cycling, and insulate us from the messiness of the biosphere. It leads to flamboyant extremes like Dubai's giant indoor ski resort smack dab in the middle of the sweltering Arabian Desert. Albert Einstein famously observed that "we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." When our self-referential group think says that "a winter wonderland in the middle of the desert cooled through the massive use of fossil fuels" is a good idea, you don't have to be Einstein to see the sustainability challenge.

The thinking that we can only have relationships with each other is part of the problem. We do have very close relationships with the natural world; it's just they are usually obscured by our shared discourse and the technologies - like indoor ski resorts - that the discourse produces. To be blunt, we need to learn to listen to nature again. If you didn't listen closely to the environment in the days of our hunter and gather ancestors you starved to death. While the consequences are not quite so immediate, it's still true today. Many of our present day problems exist because we convince each other that things like synthetic chemicals are commercial miracles before we understand the impacts on our health and ecosystems. We may have avoided mercury poison, DDT, Lindane, PFOS and other banned chemicals if we asked scientists to have a conversation about it with natural systems prior to dumping them into the environment.

Now this doesn't mean you have to get all mystical about it. You don't even have to talk to your houseplants, although MythBusters says it helps. But you should get out of the house, especially if you're a scientist. British scientist James Lovelock highlighted the pitfalls of shared mental model building when took the climate science community to task in 2007 for spending too much time building and arguing about computer model representations of the climate system and too little time looking at the real climate itself. Doing so showed that the models were consistently underestimating important variables like sea level rise, temperature changes and Arctic sea ice melt. The bottom line: we could get a lot further with our sustainability challenges if we all started paying just a bit more attention to the natural world outside our heads.

Read more: Science, Sustainability, Climate Change, Postmodern Theory, Green News

Yesterday, President Obama met with a bipartisan group of more than a dozen senators to discuss passing comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. It is yet another sign that momentum for climate action is building and that our leaders are engaged in the hard work of moving legislation forward.

And yet some naysayers continue to claim that clean energy and climate legislation is on life support. I am reminded of the famous Mark Twain quote: "the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

There is far too much activity on climate legislation to declare it moribund. As Tuesday's meeting illustrates, President Obama is actively trying to push clean energy and climate solutions forward. He invited a mix of strong climate leaders from both parties and key fence-sitters as well, and he is no doubt trying to find common ground between the two.

Meanwhile, senators are continuing to draft new climate bills. In addition to Senators Cantwell and Collins recent proposal, Senators Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman will likely release their clean energy and climate bill any day.

None of these White House meetings or senate bills would occur for a dead issue. But similar activities surround nearly every piece of major legislation before it passes.

These senators who met with President Obama recognize that something needs to be done to set this country on the course toward energy security and prosperity. If they weren't serious about taking action, they wouldn't have been invited to the White House.

Obama didn't require these senators to pledge votes up front. He knows that's not how good legislation gets made. He did want to make sure, though, to have a bipartisan group that could hammer out a set of workable measures that have the support needed to pass the Senate.

Seated around Obama in the Cabinet Room were a number of his former Senate colleagues who well understand the stakes.

Senator Lugar, a Republican, was present. Lugar has been a leader on nearly every major piece of bipartisan legislation since he entered the Senate. Lugar has recognized for years that climate change is making the world a more dangerous place. Now he understands that clean energy means real jobs for Indiana steelworkers, real benefits for Indiana farmers and real improvement in energy security for Americans everywhere.

Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, was also in attendance. He knows there are already thousands of people at work in Ohio in companies that manufacture bearings, electric coils, gears and 80 other components that go into making wind turbines, the kind of technology this legislation will promote.

I'm betting they all know what Senator Graham, a Republican, means, when he says we need "a red, white and blue" climate and energy policy that strengthens our economy and makes our country more secure.

This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog.

Read more: Senate, Sherrod Brown, John Kerry, President Obama, Climate Change, Climate Legislation, Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, Global Warming, Richard Lugar, Climate Bill, Green News

Changes in weather patterns have turned agriculture into a gamble with nature for Tanzanian farmers. Prolonged droughts and floods have made the lives of small-scale farmers, who don't have access to irrigation, extremely difficult.

While the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is charged with protecting "the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the products we consume have a direct impact on the health of our families," some of its staffers apparently feel it should also serve as a front for the devastating pollution of Big Coal.

As hundreds of citizens from ravaged coalfield areas in Appalachia and around the nation fill the corridors of Congress this week, calling on the House and Senate to pass the Clean Water Protection Act/Appalachian Restoration Act to stop the illegal dumping of toxic coal waste into our American waterways, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and his staff on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee are reportedly providing free window space for Big Coal ads in our taxpayer financed federal buildings.

Check out this photo the office window at the E/PW Committee, sent by concerned coalfield residents from West Virginia, who have repeatedly asked the staffers to take down the offensive T-shirt on government property:






While Sen. James Inhofe's comments on climate change are legendary, his prairie land and plains state support for flattening Appalachia through devastating mountaintop removal mining is dangerously uniformed. Last spring, Inhofe sent a letter to EPA chief Lisa Jackson, charging her agency for delay in issuing Clean Water Act permits. Inhofe erroneously claimed:

"As you know, mountaintop mining is a vitally important economic activity. It provides a significant portion of the coal that contributes nearly 50 percent of the nation's electricity. It also provides well-paying jobs and revenues for some of the neediest regions."

Significant portion of coal?

Setting aside the reality that mountaintop removal's irreversible destruction has eliminated over 500 mountains and nearly 1.2 million acres of hardwood forests in the carbon sink of America, led to the largest forced removal of American citizens since the 19th century, and jammed an estimated 2,000 miles of headwater streams and waterways with toxic coal waste, Inhofe's distortion of the true cost of coal and his window dressing for Big Coal overlooks four main points:

1) As everyone else on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee does know--or should know-- mountaintop removal mining provides less than 8 percent of all national coal production.

2) Mountaintop removal has bled the Appalachian economy and job market. As the recent study, "The Decline of Central Appalachian Coal and the Need for Economic Diversification," makes clear:

Despite these economic benefits, coal-producing counties in Central Appalachia continue to have some of the highest poverty and unemployment rates in the region, and due to the dependence on coal for economic development, any changes in coal production will have significant impacts on local economies.

Specifically, a study last year by West Virginia University reseachers found:

The coal industry generates a little more than $8 billion a year in economic benefits for the Appalachian region. But, they put the value of premature deaths attributable to the mining industry across the Appalachian coalfields at -- by a most conservative estimate -- $42 billion.

And check out West Virginia blogger Clem Guttata's analysis of the economics of mountaintop removal on the heels of Inhofe's misinformed comments.

3) Even the most pro-coal legislators in Appalachia and on Capitol Hill recognize that Appalachian coalfields and across the country are facing a clock of peak coal, and need to shift toward a just transition for clean energy jobs and economic development.

4) Sorry Sen. Inhofe: Coal-fired plants provided only 45% of our electricity last year, and it's declining.

You can let Sen. Inhofe and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, as well as all members of Congress, know what you think about public financing for Big Coal and misinformation here.

Read more: Epa, Capitol Hill, Appalachia, US Senate, Lisa Jackson, Dirty Coal, President Obama, Sen. James Inhofe, Green Jobs, Mining, Big Coal, Climate Change, Mountaintop Removal, Green News

When you wake up and the major headline in a newspaper is 'No hope' you are tempted to blame someone. Prof. Tarsis Kabwegyere thinks it's okay to blame the government if we are looking for something to blame over the Bududa disaster. And he is spot on, who else can we blame?

Water butts, on the whole, are ugly things: green plastic hulking things that lurk by the downpipe and are hard to disguise.

So isn't it about time someone designed a stylish water butt you can be proud to display on your patio? Sankey is leading the way with its beehive water butt, which is made of practical plastic, but looks like it's terracotta.

We've got two 150L Sankey beehive water butts in Terracina (that's a terracotta effect to you and me) plus accompanying stand to give away.

To enter, please email your name, postal address and phone number to jane.perrone@guardian.co.uk with "water butt" in the subject line. Entries will be accepted until the end of the day on March 16 2010.

Terms and conditions
1. The Sankey water butt competition (the "Competition") is open to residents of the UK aged 18 and over.

2. The Competition is not open to employees or agencies of Guardian News & Media Limited ("GNM"), their group companies or family members, freelance contributors to GNM, or anyone else connected to the Competition.

3. Entry into the Competition is acceptance of these Terms and Conditions.

4. To enter the Competition you must email your name, postal address and telephone number to jane.perrone@guardian.co.uk with "water butt" in the subject line. If you have any questions about how to enter or other queries in connection with the Competition, please email space@guardian.co.uk with "water butt competition query" in the subject line.

5. Only one entry per person. Entries on behalf of another person will not be accepted and joint submissions are not allowed. You are responsible for the cost (if any) of sending your Competition entry to us.

6. No responsibility is taken for entries that are lost, delayed, misdirected or incomplete or cannot be delivered or entered for any technical or other reason. Proof of delivery of the entry is not proof of receipt.

7. The Competition closes at 23.59pm on March 16 2010. Entries received after that date and time will not be considered.

8. The winner will be chosen from a random draw of correct entries.

9. Two winners will each receive a Sankey terracotta water butt and stand. GNM accepts no responsibility for any costs associated with the prize and not specifically included in the prize.

10. The winners will be notified by phone or email on or before March 20 2010 and given details of how to claim their prize. If a winner does not respond to GNM within 7 days of being notified by GNM, then the winner's prize will be forfeited and GNM shall be entitled to select another winner (and that winner will have to respond to the phone call or email from GNM within 7 days or else they will also forfeit their prize). If a winner rejects their prize, then the winner's prize will be forfeited and GNM shall be entitled to select another winner.

11. Details of the winners will also be published on the Guardian gardening blog on or before March 30 2010.

12. The prize will be sent to the winners by April 30 2010.

13. Details of the winners can be obtained by sending a stamped addressed envelope to the following address: Gardening editor, Guardian News & Media Limited, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU.

14. The prize is non-exchangeable, non-transferable, and is not redeemable for cash or other prizes.

15. GNM retains the right to substitute the prize with another prize of similar value in the event the original prize offered is not available.

16. The winners may be required for promotional activity.

17. No purchase necessary.

18. Nothing in these terms and conditions shall exclude the liability of GNM for death, personal injury, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation as a result of its negligence.

19. GNM accepts no responsibility for any damage, loss, liabilities, injury or disappointment incurred or suffered by you as a result of entering the Competition or accepting the prize. GNM further disclaims liability for any injury or damage to your or any other person's computer relating to or resulting from participation in or downloading any materials in connection with the Competition.

20. GNM reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, this Competition with or without prior notice due to reasons outside its control (including, without limitation, in the case of anticipated, suspected or actual fraud). The decision of GNM in all matters under its control is final and binding and no correspondence will be entered into.

21. GNM shall not be liable for any failure to comply with its obligations where the failure is caused by something outside its reasonable control. Such circumstances shall include, but not be limited to, weather conditions, fire, flood, hurricane, strike, industrial dispute, war, hostilities, political unrest, riots, civil commotion, inevitable accidents, supervening legislation or any other circumstances amounting to force majeure.

22. The Competition will be governed by English law.

23. Promoter: Guardian News & Media Limited, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9GU.

• Gardens
• Ethical and green living

Jane Perrone
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The dark hand of nature that devastated Bududa last week has taken its turn on Butaleja district.

Environmentguardian.co.uk's interaction manager rounds up this week's liveliest debates

Over the weekend John Vidal wrote that food and water are driving a 21st-century African land grab. His analysis told how African land tends to be cheaper: "Ethiopia is only one of 20 or more African countries where land is being bought or leased for intensive agriculture on an immense scale." Commenters deliberated over whether this was indeed a new form of colonialism, how it might feel to be forced from where you have always lived, whether Africans are worse off as paid employees or subsistence farmers, or whether this might actually present an opportunity for Africans to capitalise on globalisation.

Debate of the week

How food and water are driving a 21st-century African land grab

Huroner: What is wrong with large scale agriculture in Africa? It offers a route out of poverty for millions.

MorganaLeFay: This is modern day colonialism ... I think that we all know what we have to do to stop this. Boycott the big food giants, and shop locally wherever, whenever we have the option, physically and financially.

jemay: Too many on the left of a green hue (not to mention those on the right) give the impression that they're not particularly interested in Africans, but keeping Africa as some sort of permanent backwater to better protect the flora and fauna for their edification and delight.

mwauragrace0: They don't make the Africans rich, instead they have made them even poorer and dependent on wages that can barely provide their basic needs.

janbe: It's always the same story: there's no balance of power between the investors and the local population. The investors have lawyers who will turn a land-grab into something remotely legal. The local population has no chance, because they cannot afford lawyers, cannot fight the security people, get no support from their government, because the officials are on the payroll ...

AndrewWorth: It looks like we're finally seeing Africa reaping the benefits that globalisation has delivered to many countries in Asia.

Made me smile

I accept George Monbiot's £100 solar PV bet

robertwiloughby: This is gambling - the Guardian needs a licence to host this sort of event.

Best comment

Humans driving extinction faster than species can evolve, say experts

Valleyboi: Look at it this way: You have been dropped into a situation where your task is to tackle Jonah Lomu in his prime in order to survive. If he was walking slowly towards you from 10m away, you'd have a bit of time to sum up your options and formulate the best plan of attack to bring down the big man. Conversely, if he was already running at full steam you'd only just have time to sob for your mummy before most probably being steam-rolled. That's how I think of the situation we are putting nature in.

Elsewhere on the web

davidsouthafrican encourages us to join the Facebook group Fight overpopulation and environmental degradation.

ps

Please get your entries in for the Observer Ethical Awards by Friday 12 March. We are particularly keen on receiving more conservation nominations - please spread the word.

Mariam Cook
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Doomsaying precludes the possibility of ingenious solutions – and indicates a morbid vanity that we must be the saviours

Isn't it welcome to have Ian McEwan as an advocate for a little optimism in the climate change debate? His hope, expressed in his new novel Solar, that humanity will prove ingenious enough to solve the problem through the skill of coming generations is a welcome change from those who portray our descendants as helpless victims of our "excess".

Their injunctions to "save the world for our children and grandchildren" fly in the face of history, which repeatedly shows how progress – from the wheel to the internet – transforms the world picture as time marches on. The doom brigade has its moments, such as the collapse of the classical world in Europe, the Black Death and the first world war, but they are exceptions to learn from. And we have learned.

Not to the extent of mastering clairvoyancy, however. Like miserabilism, a constant in human behaviour is the inability of Today to successfully imagine Tomorrow. The archive of prophecy and science fiction contains some good guesses, but in general the seers get it wrong. Which of my grandparents, addressing me in the 1950s, could possibly have foreseen today's IT? Which of my grandparents' grandparents had a notion of the bicycle or national parks?

This is true of scientists as much as of the more general type of wise person. Science is too often mistakenly treated in the way that history was by those 19th-century Germans who thought that one day the whole truth could be set down. Certainty is not absolute. Scientists are ambushed by novelty – see Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, Einstein – as often as the rest of us.

None of this is to argue against the risks of global warming or prudence in facing them. It is to warn against vanity, in the form of the exaggerated belief that it is all down to our generation: here, now, hurry, rush. It's also an appeal against pessimism, because of the limitations glumness places on the very potential which, odds-on, will prove the planet's salvation.

A writer in the Economist's most recent green supplement made this point neatly by questioning assumptions (rather reminiscent of Catholic dogma in Galileo's day) that spending the world's limited resources on Tomorrow rather than Today is necessarily morally right. The Economist's writer said: "Since future generations will probably be much richer than we are, it makes no more sense for us to sacrifice our wellbeing for them than it would to expect 18th-century peasants to go without gruel so we can buy more computers."

That is the sort of sally that deserves a wide hearing. If we stall Today's wonderful spread of international knowledge, travel and general prosperity, we risk a future like Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, where unknown Miltons remain mute and inglorious and village Darwins never get further than their shacks.

• Climate change
• Climate change scepticism
• Climate change
• Ian McEwan

Martin Wainwright
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Should you be getting an e-reader for the planet's sake? I'd always thought not, but a new study has made me think again

The recent announcement that Foyles are soon to launch the bebook is further proof (as if any were needed) that the e-reader bandwagon is well and truly rolling. News that the New York Times book review will soon be available in e-reader format, meanwhile, also points the way to an increasingly interesting future for what we used to know as the "print industry".

The ability to buy something I wouldn't be able to get in a better format elsewhere (so long as the UK remains starved of the glory of the Sunday NYT delivery) even makes me think I might possibly find a use for an e-reader. Up until now, they've struck me as less pleasant than books, far more problematic in terms of copyright theft and – at least for personal use – rather decadent. They're a big computer that can only read books and so, I've always assumed, a waste of resources. But a bit of research has led me to question even that assumption.

I've only managed to find one report – on the Kindle (by The Cleantech Group) – but it backs up suggestions that so long as e-readers are used as book replacements rather than supplements, they soon start to pay back in carbon terms. The report states that a book uses up "approximately 7.46 kilograms of CO2 over its lifetime" and that the Kindle produces "roughly 168 kg" during its lifecycle, making it "a clear winner against the potential savings: 1,074 kg of CO2 if replacing three books a month for four years; and up to 26,098 kg of CO2 when used to the fullest capacity of the Kindle."

There are still problems. Crucially, the report states: "Amazon declined to provide information about its manufacturing process or carbon footprint" – so we're still really dealing with educated guesswork. I was also curious about whether the report has taken into account the role of books as "carbon sinks". My theory was that books last a long time before they are destroyed – often longer than their source trees ... And even when they aren't furnishing rooms they have a useful second life under the floor of motorways and similar.

When I contacted the author of the report, senior research analyst Emma Ritch, she said: "While some of the carbon stored in the forest will remain stored in paper, the majority will be emitted into the atmosphere. There is a significant amount of carbon stored in the soil, the roots of harvested trees, the usable saplings and other understory vegetation. These release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere when they decay, or when they are burned as energy sources for the pulp mill."

So it seems I'm – literally – barking up the wrong tree. Even wood sourced from sustainable forests uses a lot of energy (not to mention water) when it is being processed, and yet more when transported afterwards. (Books are heavy, after all.) Ritch also made the point that textbooks are often updated – and so become obsolete – every couple of years, showing another clear advantage to ebook readers. There are also plusses for academics ploughing through multiple journals and probably even for professional book reviewers.

However, I parted company with Ritch's positive view of e-readers when she suggested a further advantage: "the consumer who purchases an ebook often has the rights to use it on five or more devices, meaning multiple users within a household would not have to purchase multiple physical versions of a book." I'd actually view that as a problem, as far as fiction goes. Five or more devices probably gives the ebook a lifespan of little more than 10 years if my experience with such machines is anything to go by – and that's if you don't share it. A book (so long as it stays together) can be shared with hundreds of people over hundreds of years.

I also have concerns about the supply side. There's no information available about the energy required to run Amazon's "whispernet" and it's hard to work out the amount involved in supplying other books for download. The internet is too often thought of as a cost-free resource in carbon terms – but it's recently been suggested that Google alone produces as much as some nation states. Ritch suggested a good comparison would be that "a physical book purchased by a person driving to the bookstore creates twice the emissions of a book purchased online." But of course, that depends on someone driving rather than walking to the shop.

Nevertheless, I'm part-way convinced. There are clear advantages to using e-readers in schools and academe. At home, I'm less sure – especially when you factor in side-issues such as the toxicity of the heavy metals used in ebook readers and their batteries. I also hesitate because the devices are so new we still know little about how they're used.

Here, I'm hoping an informal survey here might shed more light. So tell me: if you own an e-reader, how often do you use it? (Have you for instance topped off the 22.5 books The Cleantech Group require to break even with traditional books in carbon terms?) Are you buying fewer books? How long does your battery last? Have you had to replace it? Do these carbon savings seem realistic to you? And has that influenced your decision to buy one?

I'd also be curious to know if other ebook agnostics are likely to be converted by the idea that they could be more environmentally friendly. I know it makes me waver. But then again, won't an iPad be more useful? Even if that does mean my reading could be interrupted by emails … And you can't throw the thing across the room when whatever you're reading gets too annoying …

• Ebooks
• Amazon.com
• Carbon emissions
• Ethical and green living

Sam Jordison
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

When bad things happen to good folks, it sometimes feel as if God went to sleep. The Bududa landslide tragedy last week is just such an event, turning upside down the lives of several thousands of hardworking people who happened to be in the path of the killer mudslide. But this is not about the Almighty forgetting the people of Bududa. This is about bad policy of land management finally coming to a head thereby putting innocent people in harm's way.

At least four schools have been closed due to flooding of classrooms and latrines in Butaleja district, while gardens are water logged with crops rotting and several roads have become impassable.