Socorro, Colombia — In northeast Colombia, police guard warehouses stacked high with confiscated timber with a noble new destiny: transformation into homes for bees beleaguered by pesticides and climate change.

The illegally harvested wood is used in the Santander department’s “Timber Returns Home” initiative, building hives since 2021 to house the little pollinators so critical to human survival.

So far, the project has seen about 200 cubic meters of wood transformed into 1,000 beehives, with another 10,000 planned for the next phase, according to the Santander environmental authority.

Previously, confiscated timber was turned into sawdust, donated to municipalities for projects … and sometimes just left to rot.

Now it is being repurposed to help address the “extremely serious problem” of possible bee extinction, said biologist German Perilla, director of the Honey Bee Impact Foundation.

About three-quarters of crops producing fruits or seeds for human consumption depend on pollination, but the U.N. has warned that 40% of invertebrate pollinators — particularly bees and butterflies — risk global extinction.

“The main threat is that we will run out of trees and there will be no flowers, because without flowers there are no bees, without bees there are no humans, and we will run out of food,” said beekeeper Maria Acevedo, one of the beneficiaries of the project.

In 2023 alone, she told AFP, she lost more than half of her hives. She blames pesticides used in nearby production of crops such as coffee.

Multiple threats

According to official data, some 3,000 hives, each able to house around 50,000 bees, die off in Colombia each year. Laboratory tests found traces of the insecticide fipronil in most of the dead insects.

Colombia has issued a ban on fipronil — already banned in Europe and restricted in the United States and China — starting February 2024.

According to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, higher temperatures, droughts, floods and other extreme events caused by climate change reduces nectar-bearing flowers that bees feed on, and studies have also linked bee infertility to heat stress.

The Santander environmental authority seizes some 1,000 cubic meters of illegally felled timber in anti-trafficking operations in Santander every year.

The country lost 123,517 hectares of trees in 2022, mainly in the Amazon — the world’s largest rainforest.

Nearly half of all timber traded in Colombia is of illegal origin, according to the environment ministry. 
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Yuma, Arizona — As the world pivots from planet-warming fossil fuels to renewable energy, a new pollution problem is rearing its head: What to do with old or worn-out solar panels? 

Thousands of photovoltaic slabs are being installed across the United States every day, particularly in the sunny west and south of the country, as states like California race to toward greener energy production. 

But with an expected lifespan of around 30 years, the first wave of solar installations is now coming to the end of its usefulness, sparking a rush to recycle things that might otherwise end up in the landfill. 

“What is about to happen is a tsunami of solar panels coming back into the supply chain,” said Adam Saghei, chief executive of Arizona-based We Recycle Solar. 

“One of the challenges with any industry is, there hasn’t been that much planning for a circular economy,” he said. “(Solar) is a sustainable form of energy; there needs to be a plan for the retirement of those assets.” 

Saghei’s plan involves, among other things, reusing panels. 

Up to 5% of panels either have a minor production defect or get damaged during transport or installation. 

These still-working panels can be refurbished and diverted to other markets, often abroad, Saghei said. 

But for the panels that no longer function, either because they’re decrepit, or because they were damaged beyond use during installation, or smashed by hailstones, there’s treasure to be found. 

“We’re doing what’s called urban mining,” Saghei said, referring to a process that took his engineers three years to perfect. 

That mining recovers silver, copper, aluminum, glass and silicone, all commodities that have a value on the open market. 

While the uses for the metals might be obvious, what to do with silicone and glass is less so, but nonetheless intriguing. 

“You can use it for sand traps on golf courses, you can refine it for sandblast mix, you can also use it for the stones or the glass mix that you get for outdoor fireplaces,” Saghei said. 

With the capacity to process up to 7,500 panels every day at the plant in Yuma, a surprisingly small amount goes to waste. 

“Depending on the make and model of the panels … we’re able to get up to 99 percent recovery rate,” he said. 

Logistics challenges

For Meng Tao, who specializes in sustainable energy infrastructure at Arizona State University, developing an efficient lifecycle for solar panels is a pressing issue. 

With the United States among the countries committed to weaning itself off of fossil fuels, solar panel installation looks set to increase and peak two decades from now. 

“Once it matures, then the annual installation and the decommissioning will be about the same,” he told AFP.  

“But for the next 20 years … at least for the next 10 years … we’ll just have more installations than retirements,” he said. 

The problem with recycling, he said, is not just that the value of recovered materials from panels can be relatively low, but also the logistics. 

With panels distributed to thousands of sometimes far-flung rooftops, it can cost a lot of money just to get them to a recycling center. 

And unlike some jurisdictions, the United States imposes the cost of removal and recycling on the end user, making it more attractive for households just to dump their old units at the local landfill. 

“There has to be some policy support” to plug the gap between what consumers will pay and the total lifecycle cost of the panels, Tao said. 

Growing market

For Saghei, as for any business leader, profitability is important. 

“You don’t see too many getting into the business because recycling has a cost. It’s not free. It’s labor intensive. It’s energy intensive,” he said. 

But he does see a way forward. 

Recovering materials from old solar panels that can be put back into new solar panels is — he is convinced — a winning proposition. 

“These are markets that are growing,” he said. 

“Right through this process we are able, once the industry scales to even larger figures, to put those raw commodities back into the supply chain,” he said. “What’s exciting is we’re at the forefront.” 
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The COVID-19 pandemic affected students around the world, disrupting their studies and weakening their social skills. But the pandemic did generate some positive outcomes, say college counselors and international students who are back to in-person learning in the United States. VOA’s Laurel Bowman explores. Camera: Adam Greenbaum and Saqib Ul Islam.
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WASHINGTON — Arnong Mungoei has farmed rice in Thailand’s Khon Kaen province for half a century.  

Working land some 500 kilometers northeast of Bangkok never made her rich, but it provided a dependable livelihood.  

But since February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, global geopolitical tensions and weather conditions elsewhere have upended the rice markets and by 2023, worldwide rice prices had exploded.  

Yet Arnong said she made less than she has in years. 

“The mills [that buy rice] don’t increase the price. What can I do? I bring rice there to sell. Whatever they offer us, we have to sell it. We won’t take the rice back because we had to pay for the truck,” said Arnong, 68.

In 2023, the prices of wheat and grains such as oats and corn declined 20% to 30% as stocks were replenished, according to an annual report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

But according to the FAO report, rice prices remained high throughout the year due to a persistent La Niña in March, followed by an El Niño anomaly in June and India imposing restrictions on non-basmati rice in July due after a late monsoon raised fears of a production shortfall.

India’s export control removed 9 million metric tons of grain from the international market and ignited global prices. India is responsible for 40% of global rice supplies after overtaking Thailand as the world’s largest rice exporter in 2011.

The countries most reliant on India’s rice include the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam in Southeast Asia, and Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal in West Africa.

“Rice is tough, because there are just not a lot of other suppliers,” Joseph Glauber, a senior fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, told Bloomberg in November, adding that India’s export-control policy leaves “a big hole to fill.”

The World Bank predicted, “Rice prices will remain high into 2024, assuming India maintains its export restrictions. The outlook assumes a moderate-to-strong El Niño.”

The bank’s commodity report published on Oct. 30 said rice prices had reached their highest point in the third quarter of 2023 since the 2007-2008 food crises due to the Hamas-Israel conflict and El Niño.

While India’s controls benefit its own consumers, for the billions elsewhere in Asia and in Africa who depend on a stable rice supply, continued high prices could increase food insecurity. 

In Nigeria, the cost of rice increased 61% from September through November. The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast the nation would import 2.1 million metric tons of rice in 2024. 

In the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. imposed a price cap Sept. 5 after the cost of rice hit a 14-year high in September. Marcos, who blamed the soaring prices on “smugglers, hoarders and price manipulators,” removed the cap Oct. 13 as concerns over tight supply eased.

Alfie Pulumbarit, national coordinator at MASIPAG, a Philippine-based network of farmers, scientists and nongovernmental organizations working on farmer empowerment, told VOA Thai that rising food prices significantly affected the people in the island nation with “a lot of families now going hungry.”

Citing official information, Pulumbarit said that while it takes a person at least 79 pesos or about $1.50 dollars per day to survive in the Philippines, rice now costs $1.10 dollars per kilogram.

Continued Indian controls coupled with farmers “already leaving rice production in the Philippines” could lead to “a food crisis of epic proportions,” he said.

Climate is one of the key factors in analyses for rice production and price in the coming year.

The U.S. National Weather Service forecasts that the Northern Hemisphere, home to major rice producers like China, India, and Southeast Asia nations, will likely be affected by El Niño April through June, right around sowing season for rice across Asia.

An Asian Bank Development analysis recommends that the private sector should assume a bigger role in rice trading to help stabilize domestic production loss in importing countries. It also encourages policymakers to consider more sustainable rice production.

“Rice paddy is responsible for 12% of global methane emissions and 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In Asia, rice irrigation consumes more than half of freshwater resources,” according to the analysis.

As the COP 28 meeting at Dubai was concluding, the FAO suggested stakeholders should seek out climate-friendly cultivating techniques ranging from using fertilizers that can reduce methane emission to growing plants that create rhizobacteria, which may promote producing oxygen in soil.

Smanachan Buddhajak contributed to this report.
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Tokyo, Japan — Japan’s SLIM space probe entered the moon’s orbit Monday in a major step toward the country’s first successful lunar landing, expected next month.

The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is nicknamed the “Moon Sniper” because it is designed to land within 100 meters (328 feet) of a specific target on the lunar surface.

If successful, the touchdown would make Japan only the fifth country to have successfully landed a probe on the moon, after the United States, Russia, China and India.  

On Monday, SLIM “successfully entered the moon’s orbit at 04:51 p.m. Japan time” (0751 GMT), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in a statement released Monday evening.  

“Its’ trajectory shift was achieved as originally planned, and there is nothing out of the ordinary about the probe’s conditions,” the agency said.

The lander’s descent toward the moon is expected to start around 12:00 a.m. Japan time on January 20, with its landing on the surface scheduled for 20 minutes later, JAXA said.  

The H-IIA rocket lifted off in September from the southern island of Tanegashima carrying the lander, after three postponements linked to bad weather.

JAXA said this month that the mission would be an “unprecedentedly high precision landing” on the moon.

The lander is equipped with a spherical probe that was developed by a toy company.

Slightly bigger than a tennis ball, it can change its shape to move on the lunar surface.

Compared to previous probes that landed “a few or 10-plus kilometers” away from targets, SLIM’s purported margin of error of under 100 meters suggests a level of accuracy once thought impossible, thanks to the culmination of a 20-year effort by researchers, according to JAXA.  

With the advance of technology, demand is growing to pinpoint targets like craters and rocks on the lunar surface, Shinichiro Sakai, JAXA’s SLIM project manager, told reporters this month.

“Gone are the days when merely exploring ‘somewhere on the moon’ was desired,” he said.  

Hopes are also high that SLIM’s exactitude will make sampling of the lunar permafrost easier, bringing scientists a step closer to uncovering the mystery around water resources on the moon, Sakai added.  

Japanese missions have failed twice — one public and one private.  

Last year, the country unsuccessfully sent a lunar probe named OMOTENASHI (outstanding moon exploration technologies demonstrated by nano semi-hard impactor) as part of the United States’ Artemis 1 mission.   

In April, Japanese startup ispace tried in vain to become the first private company to land on the moon, losing communication with its craft after what it described as a “hard landing.”
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2023 demolished temperature records worldwide. It was the hottest year on record, and some scientists say the hottest in 125,000 years. Those supercharged temperatures helped drive a series of climate disasters around the world. VOA’s Steve Baragona has a look back.
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KYIV, Ukraine — When Alexis Cholas lost his right arm as a volunteer combat medic near the front lines in eastern Ukraine, his civilian career as a surgeon was over. But thanks to a new bionic arm, he was able to continue working in health care and is now a rehab specialist helping other amputees.

The 26-year-old is delighted with his sleek black robotic arm — he described it as “love at first sight” — and realizes how lucky he was to get one.

“There are fewer (bionic) arms available than lost ones,” Cholas said.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has created a massive need for prosthetic limbs. An estimated 20,000 Ukrainians have had amputations since the war started in February 2022, many of them soldiers who lost arms or legs due to blast wounds.

Only a small number was able to receive bionic prostheses, which are more advanced and can provide greater mobility than the traditional prosthetic limbs.

They are also far more costly than conventional prostheses.

Bionic artificial limbs typically pick up electrical signals from the muscles that remain above the amputation site, thanks to something called myoelectric technology, to carry out an intended motion.

Cholas’ bionic arm was made by Esper Bionics. Before 2022, the Ukrainian startup primarily targeted the United States market, but due to the sharp rise in demand for prosthetic limbs caused by the war, Esper now distributes 70% of its products at home.

The company’s production hub in the capital of Kyiv is working at full capacity, with more than 30 workers producing about dozen bionic hands a month.

In one corner of the factory, a small group of engineers huddle as they program, assemble and test the elegant bionic arms — known as Esper Hand. Each finger’s movement on the robotic hand is accompanied by a soft whirring sound, assuring the engineers of its smooth operation.

Bohdan Diorditsa, head of strategic relations at the company, says that despite ramping up production, Esper Bionics is struggling to keep up with demand, with almost 120 people on the waitlist.

In Ukraine, the company says it provides the bionic prostheses at zero profit for about $7,000 apiece, just enough to cover production costs. In the United States, the Esper Hand sells for more than $20,000.

“We do not consider Ukraine as a market, but rather as an opportunity to help,” says Diorditsa.

Compared to a conventional prosthesis, which is designed to replicate simple basic functions of a missing arm or leg, a bionic one offers the capability to restore fine motor skills.

“Everyone wants them,” says Anton Haidash, a prosthetist at Unbroken, a municipal center in the city of Lviv that focuses on rehabilitation of civilians and soldiers affected by the war. The center has helped provide prosthetic limbs to about 250 people so far, including about 20 bionic arms.

The difference in cost is significant. While bionic limbs can cost up to $50,000, conventional artificial limbs are priced at $800-$2,700, Haidash says.

Ukrainians can get the regular artificial limbs free of charge through the public health care system. However, to get a bionic prosthesis, they normally need additional funding from charities or rehabilitation centers such as Unbroken, which depend on donations.

And while patients can make the final decision about the type of prostheses they want, a variety of factors, including the nature of the injury and the person’s occupation, also play a role.

Unbroken purchases bionic prostheses from German and Icelandic companies as well as Esper Bionics, whose notable advantage is having both a manufacturing and a service center in Ukraine. This means people don’t need to travel abroad when a repair or resizing is required.

Another outstanding characteristic of the Esper Hand, which is powered by artificial intelligence, is its ability to adapt over time, learning the user’s unique interactions with the hand.

After getting outfitted with his bionic arm, Cholas went back to volunteering as a combat medic on the front lines, while in his day job in Kyiv he works as a rehabilitation specialist in a public hospital. Most of his patients are members of the military or civilians who, like him, have lost limbs. He says their shared experience helps him quickly develop a rapport with his patients.

“I now know a lot not only from textbooks but also from my own experience,” he says.

Cholas speaks to his patients encouragingly as he examines their injuries. His movements with the bionic hand are natural and fluid. He effortlessly removes a bandage and dresses a patient’s wounds without the assistance of nurses.

The bionic prosthesis allows him to perform even delicate movements, such as picking up a grape without crushing it, he says.

“I feel uncomfortable when I’m without the prosthesis,” he says. “But when I have the bionic arm on, I feel comfortable. It’s like a part of you.”
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