YCLOAK

Led by cutbacks in China and India, construction of new coal-fired power plants is falling worldwide, improving chances climate goals can be met despite earlier pessimism, three environmental groups said Wednesday.

A joint report by the groups CoalSwarm, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace follows a warning this week by two international agencies that the world needs to shift quickly away from fossil fuels to curb global warming. Environmentalists were dismayed by President Donald Trump’s U.S. government budget proposal last week that would cut spending on renewable energy.

Construction starts for coal-fired plants in China and India were down by 62 percent in January from a year earlier while new facilities starting operation declined 29 percent, according to the report. It said older plants in the United States and Europe are being retired at a record pace.

‘Global climate goals’

The latest developments “appear to have brought global climate goals within feasible reach, raising the prospect that the worst levels of climate change might be avoided,” said the report.

It acknowledged “the margin for error is tight” and said sustained progress will require China and India to scrap more than 100 coal plants on which construction has been suspended. And it warned that countries, including South Korea and Indonesia, are failing to develop renewables, which could increase their need for coal power.

In a separate report, the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said falling power demand in Japan means most of the 45 new coal plants the country has planned will likely never be built.

The reports mark a shift in sentiment from six months ago, when environmentalists warned governments were doing too little to carry out the Paris climate accord. Signed by 170 countries, it calls for holding global temperature increases to no more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) in hopes of preventing sea level rise and other drastic change.

Biggest greenhouse gas emitter

China, the biggest greenhouse gas emitter, said at that time its coal use would rise until 2030. But later data showed the peak passed in 2013 and consumption is falling.

Countries including China, Germany, India and Japan are moving away from coal as alternatives get cheaper, said Tim Buckley, the IEEFA’s director of energy finance studies.

“I don’t think Trump can stop that,” he said.

Despite such changes, the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose to a new high last year and is increasing, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Asia alone is expected to account for 70 to 80 percent of the global growth in coal-fired power capacity over the next two decades.

Industry experts cautioned that countries including India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam need to keep adding coal power because it is the only affordable option in a region where 500 million people lack access to electricity. The cost of solar and wind have fallen by up to 80 percent in some markets, but in places such as Bangladesh or parts of China it can still be double that of coal.

“We have to meet the basic needs of people while pushing for energy transition at the same time,” said Yongping Zhai, an adviser on energy to the Asian Development Bank. “You will need a mixture of different fuels. Coal will be there. You cannot avoid it.”

Canceled half its plans

China canceled half its planned additional coal-fired generating capacity over the past year but will still add 100 gigawatts by 2020, according to Xizhou Zhou, who heads the Asian gas and power practice for IHS Markit, a research firm. He said Asian countries are due to add 180 gigawatts out of a global total of 210 gigawatts.

“It’s true that we are seeing a slowdown in coal plant additions, but that doesn’t mean that demand will stop increasing or that they won’t need to build coal plants,” Zhou said.

In China, construction of power plants totaling more than 300 gigawatts was suspended following last year’s release of the latest five-year economic development plan, according to the CoalSwarm report.

On Saturday, Beijing’s last major coal-fired power plant was shut down under plans to switch the Chinese capital to gas and other power sources.

China’s power demand is cooling due to official efforts to reduce reliance on heavy industry and encourage services and technology, said Zhou. He said that might lead to higher demand in India or Southeast Asia if manufacturing of products such as smartphones that require glass, metal and other energy-intensive components migrates there.

“You have a lot of countries that could become a new manufacturing hub but still rely on coal-fired power,” he said.

No new coal-fired capacity

India’s government said in December it needed no new coal-fired capacity until at least 2027. But industry leaders expect work to resume on power projects that have been suspended.

Analysts also warn India is just setting out on a vast and energy-hungry process of building highways and other infrastructure, while China has completed that cycle.

“What happens in India is still an open question,” said Navroz Dubash of the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi think tank. “It’s important not to switch from the point of view that coal is inevitable to coal is unnecessary. I don’t think we’re there yet.”

In Japan, the amount of power generated from coal should fall by 40 percent from 2015 levels by 2030 due to lower demand and more use of alternative sources, the IEEFA report said.

“The economic arguments will win out,” said Paul Fisher, an economist at Cambridge University’s Institute for Sustainable Leadership. “Once the financial sector sees that it’s not in their interest to finance fossil fuels, we’ll get there.”
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When it comes to the deployment and use of an HIV vaccine, researchers say even a partially effective vaccine, although not perfect, still could prevent millions of infections each year.

There are no AIDS vaccines in use, but many are in the development pipeline or clinical trials. The problem is the vaccines are turning out to be less effective than hoped.

To get a handle on what the future might hold, scientists at Oregon State University developed a mathematical model of HIV progression, transmission and intervention, tailored to 127 countries around the world.

According to the model, using current interventions, the world might expect to see about 49 million new cases of HIV in the next 20 years.

But the study concluded that 25 million of those infections might be prevented if ambitious targets for diagnosis, treatment and viral suppression set by the United Nations are met.  

And that’s where an HIV vaccine comes in.

Jan Medlock, the study’s lead author, said adding a vaccine to the mix — even one that is only 50 percent effective — by 2020 could prevent another 6.3 million new infections, potentially reversing the HIV pandemic.

“Partial efficacy is still better than zero efficacy, and it really becomes (a matter) of thinking about the cost and trade-off,” she said. “Are you taking away money from treatment or some other health program to buy these vaccines?  If not, then they’re probably worth doing, even at very low efficacy.”

Medlock’s model — reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — input clinical data from a vaccine that’s now in large-scale trials in South Africa.  

Until it was modified for the phase-three trial in the hopes of boosting its effectiveness, the vaccine candidate showed about a 60 percent efficacy in preventing infection for the first year. The effectiveness dropped to 31 percent 3½ years later.

Even without an improvement in current levels of HIV detection and treatment globally, a vaccine that’s only 50 percent effective has the potential to avert 17 million new cases during the next two decades, Medlock said.

Medlock added an even less effective vaccine could make a sizeable dent to slow the pandemic.

“Twenty percent efficacy at the global population scale is still going to prevent several million infections,” she said.

Medlock said many countries will inevitably fall short of the U.N.’s ambitious goals to contain the HIV pandemic.  

That’s why researchers believe the firepower of imperfect HIV vaccines should be brought to bear in the fight against the AIDS virus.
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Wastewater from households, industries and agriculture should not be seen as a problem but a valuable resource which could help meet the demands for water, energy and nutrients from a growing global population, a U.N. water expert said.

Globally, more than 80 percent of wastewater is released into rivers and lakes without treatment with a negative impact on health and the environment, according to the 2017 U.N. World Water Development Report published on Wednesday.

Pollution from human and animal waste affects nearly one in three rivers in Latin America, Asia and Africa, putting millions of lives at risk, it said.

But wastewater contains nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrates which can be turned into fertilizer, said Richard Connor, editor-in-chief of the report.

Treated sludge can be turned into biogas that could power wastewater treatment plants or be sold on the market, he added.

“Wastewater itself is a valuable resource, even the term wastewater is an oxymoron,” Connor told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“We need to stop seeing it as a burden to be dealt with. It’s not a waste and should not be a waste, especially in this world of water scarcity,” he said by phone from Perugia.

With the world’s population expected to grow by one third to more than 9 billion by 2050, the world will need 55 percent more water and 70 percent more energy, the United Nations says.

Population growth will also lead to a 70 percent increase in demand for food, putting more pressure on water through farming, which is already the biggest consumer of water.

More people also means more wastewater, including from sanitation, which governments have pledged to improve as part of development goals agreed by U.N. member states in 2015.

Increased wastewater is one of the biggest challenges associated with the growth of informal settlements in rapidly expanding cities in developing countries, the report said.

Connor said even though wastewater is a valuable resource, what often stops governments from investing in treatment plants is the cost while what puts people off using it is the “yuck factor”.

Yet the International Space Station has been using the same water for 17 years, Connor noted.

“One morning it’s tea, by the afternoon it’s pee and then the next morning somebody is shaving with it,” he said.

A solution for governments is to invest in smaller, decentralized treatment systems, which cost a fraction of conventional plants and require less maintenance, Connor said.

He added that not all water needs to be treated to drinking water quality but to a level where it is safe to use by industries, municipalities, agriculture or for cooling in power plants.

“You go for what’s affordable and design the level of treatment according to your needs,” Connor said.

“The key word is ‘fit for purpose treatment’.”
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Thirty-three of Europe’s most polluted cities are in Poland. Part of the reason: in winter, people keep warm by burning coal. Northern China has a similar problem. And it’s a big problem. Burning coal pours particulate matter into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming and significant health problems. But some simple technology may help reduce the problem. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The cost for individual homes in the U.S. to “go solar” has dropped by more than 60 percent over the last decade.

Those low costs helped convince more than a million Americans to install solar panels on their roofs.

Now schools are beginning to get in on the benefits. One of them is the school system in Fremont, Indiana.

The residents of this small town in America’s upper Midwest have always relied on the sun to warm their fields and draw tourists to their lakes. Now school superintendent William Stitt said they’re counting on it to power their schools.

“The technology has advanced so much in the last couple of years that it’s become more energy efficient, more cost effective for schools to get solar energy,” Stitt said.

Start-up cost

Construction of the solar project will cost $3 million. But when finished, it will completely power the elementary, middle and high school buildings. It may generate so much electricity, that the school will be able to sell some back to the power company at a profit.

The system will work through several rows of 3,000-4,000 panels each. They will be located in a special 2.5 hectare solar field behind the middle school.

The district has to lease the equipment from the local power company for 20 years, at a fixed rate.

But Kim Quick, facility director, said that even with that added cost, the schools should save money because the panels should last 40 years.

“[It] is going to cost us approximately the same amount we’re paying for utilities today. So that cost is never going to increase for the next 20 years,” Quick said. “So if the power company comes in next year and says, ‘We want to increase utilities 6 percent,’ we’re going to pay the same we’re paying today 20 years from now.”

Free electricity, eventually

In 20 years, the school district will own the equipment outright, meaning it won’t pay anything for electricity.

Since the panels are always “on,” Quick said the district will save additional money by banking the unused electricity that’s generated when school is not in session.

“These work year-round. Even in a full moon they will produce electricity,” he said.

Just 3 percent of the nation’s 125,000 schools use some form of solar energy. While not all can use solar power cost-effectively, a recent report by the Solar Foundation found that 72,000 US schools could save money with solar.

Schools could install panels on their roofs or elevate a field of panels over a parking lot. Those innovations would save most schools an average of $1 million over 30 years.

Educational component

Going solar also offers schools an educational component. It provides teachers opportunities to incorporate lessons in science, technology, engineering, and math into the curriculum.

All three schools in the Fremont system will have a live display module that kids can visit daily to learn how much energy is being used and saved.

If all goes according to plan, Fremont School District’s new solar field will be up and running by mid-summer. Superintendent Stitt is already looking further ahead.

“I’d love the community and the kids in 40 years to go, ‘Man, they made a great decision 40 years ago by creating this solar project!’ ” he said.
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The biggest construction project in Europe is taking place beneath the British capital, London.

The largely subterranean Crossrail route linking Heathrow airport to the eastern financial district and beyond is designed to ease congestion as London’s population grows; but, it has also unearthed a trove of archaeological finds that provide a fascinating window on eight thousand years of the city’s history.

“The great thing about the Crossrail project is that it’s allowed us to basically sort of take a slice through London. We’ve been amazed at the quantity, tens of thousands of artifacts,” said Jackie Keily, curator of “The Archaeology of Crossrail” exhibition at the Museum of London – itself housed in a 200-year-old shipping warehouse in the old docks next to the River Thames.

Among the highlights is a bronze medallion dating from the year 245 AD, when southern Britain was ruled by the Romans.

“It would have been given by the emperor to a high-ranking official, probably in Rome. And it’s quite fascinating that it’s traveled right across the Empire to be here in London,” Keily said.

Nearby, a glass case contains a dozen carefully worked metal discs. These “hipposandals” were an early form of horse shoe designed to aid pack animals as they negotiated the rain-soaked streets of Roman London.

Many of the finds hint at macabre rituals. Hundreds of skulls were found beneath what is now the financial heart of London. Could the victims have been executed and put on display as a warning? Were they the losers of gladiatorial battles at the nearby Roman amphitheater?

One of the most striking exhibits is the decapitated skeleton of a Roman woman found buried beneath what is now Liverpool Street station. The skull is placed between the leg bones.

“To have placed the head between the legs one feels was almost certainly sending some sort of message, either about the person or was some kind of ritual associated with the burial,” Keily said.

The Crossrail route tunnels through several graveyards, many dating to major disease outbreaks such as the “Black Death” in the mid-1300s. That plague pandemic wiped out much of London’s population and killed an estimated 1.5 million people across Britain.

Despite the panic that swept across Europe at the time, archaeologists have noted that burials appear to have been conducted with as much dignity as possible. There are few mass graves and most burial sites were dug in an orderly fashion. Some held up to 20,000 bodies.

Lighter aspects of London life are also on display: a bowling ball found in the moat of a 16th century manor house, perhaps lost beneath the murky water during a high society summer party. Laws prevented lower class peasants from partaking in such revelry.

A collection of leather shoes has survived five centuries buried in the London mud. Some are plain with rounded toes, patched up and well worn. Others appear to have barely been used, their tapering ends suggestive of the modern stiletto heel.

“So very fashionable shoes that Londoners were wearing. It connects us in a way with people in the past,” Keily noted.

Despite the painstaking archaeological work each time something new is unearthed, construction of Crossrail remains on schedule. The first trains are due to take passengers through the tunnels in late 2018.
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Animal testing has become problematic in the past few decades. Animal rights activists have uncovered numerous instances of animal cruelty, and it’s also expensive to keep animal test subjects, especially if they’re treated humanely. But how else can pharmaceutical companies test the effectiveness, and safety of their products, some of which could save thousands of lives? The answer to that problem may be wriggling in a laboratory petri dish. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Fifty thousand Haitians will have access to quality health care for the first time after a modern new hospital opened Monday in the isolated and impoverished Cotes-de-Fer region.

The Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan Center for Health will serve those who, until now, had to travel for hours on rough roads for treatment.

The new hospital is a project of the nonprofit charity Catholic Medical Mission Board. The U.S.- based group Mercy Health contributed $2 million for construction costs.

“With active involvement of the community and an emphasis on training and knowledge sharing, the health center will strengthen the local health system in a long-term and sustainable way,” said CMMB’s director in Haiti, Dr. Dianne Jean-Francois.

Along with an emergency room and pharmacy, the new hospital will give pregnant women a place to deliver their babies, along with postnatal and pediatric care.

The hospital also has plans for expansion for dental and ophthalmology clinics.
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An experimental anti-malaria vaccine has been developed that protects against more than one strain of the malaria parasite that causes the mosquito-borne illness.  

The vaccine, tested by principal investigator Kirsten Lyke and colleagues, is called PfSPZ and uses whole, live weakened early versions of the most common form of malaria Plasmodium falciparum (P. Falciparum), called sporozoites.

This early form of the parasite is what’s first injected into humans by an infected mosquito.  

By using the entire sporozoite in the vaccine, the immune system responds to more of the parasite, according to Lyke.

15 healthy adults tested

A study of the vaccine conducted by Lyke and colleagues, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, enrolled 15 healthy adults who were assigned to receive three doses of the vaccine over several months.  

Nineteen weeks after receiving the final dose, the volunteers were exposed to bites of mosquitoes carrying one strain of parasite from Africa.

A second group of six controls that was not vaccinated also got exposed to the mosquitoes. They showed signs of malaria and were promptly treated.

Nine of 14 vaccinated participants, or 64 percent, showed no signs of infection after exposure.  

Of the nine, six participants were selected and exposed to a different strain, 33 weeks after the final immunization.

This time, five of the six were protected against this second strain, according to Lyke.

‘Great’ is not good enough

“Which is great, but not good enough,” said Lyke. “I mean, you don’t want to take a vaccine that’s going to give you a two out of three chance of being protected. So we have to improve on that and get it up to as close to 100 percent as we can. But at least we’ve established that we can get very high protection in six months and we’re seeing cross-strain protection.”

The agent would offer broader protection against a disease that kills mostly young children in sub-Saharan Africa.  

According to the World Health Organization, 212 million people were infected with the mosquito-carrying parasite in 2015, and 429,000 died.  

There are four types of malaria parasite that typically infect people. The most common and deadly is Plasmodium falciparum, which goes through a number of life-cycle stages during which the parasite evolves into a different form.  

That is what makes it difficult to develop a vaccine.  

Multiple strains a problem

The problem is further complicated by the fact that P. falciparum can mutate and develop into multiple strains.

Lyke said this is particularly true in Africa, in places where the disease is common.

“The falciparum malaria that is so endemic, there’s a lot of genetic change that occurs because it’s so prevalent in the population. And that contributes to different strains of the falciparum malaria so that you know any vaccine that we’d want to introduce we would want to make sure that it broadly covers multiple different strains of falciparum malaria,” Lyke said.

Clinical trials of the early vaccine, produced by the company Sanaria, also are going on in Africa, including in Burkina Faso, Kenya and Bioko Island off of Africa’s west coast.
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Tanzania has announced a plan to send 500 doctors to Kenya after a doctors’ strike paralyzed health services in the neighboring country for months. Kenyan doctors, however, say the government should not hire any foreign doctors but instead employ the more than 1,000 trained physicians who are unemployed.

Tanzanian President John Magufuli announced the plan to dispatch the doctors after a recent meeting in Dar es Salaam with a visiting Kenyan delegation that included Kenya’s health cabinet secretary, Cleopa Mailu.

Mailu said this was a deal that would benefit both countries.

 

“We have so many government health centers that need doctors,” said Mailu. “Yes, we have doctors in our country; we recently had a doctors’ strike and one of their reasons for their strike was that there were not enough doctors to attend to patients. The doctors were spending a lot of hours attending to the patients.”

Doctors from public hospitals in Kenya went on strike last December to demand a pay raise and improved working conditions for physicians and patients.

A deal struck by the doctors’ union and the government opened the way to negotiations that ended the 100-day-old strike.

 

According to Mailu, it is because of the doctors’ demands that the push to recruit foreign physicians was realized.

 

“There is so much work and we will continue looking for more doctors; we will continue negotiations with the government to see if they will provide us with more doctors so that we can strengthen our health services here in Kenya,” said Mailu.

Dr. Elly Nyaim of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board says the move may not have been clearly thought out.

 

“As per the World Health Organization recommendation, we still have a shortage even with the ones we produce from our universities, that state actually cuts across the entire East Africa… so Tanzania is actually even worse off than we are in terms of the doctor-patient ratio,” said Nyaim.

The physician’s union says Kenya currently has 1,400 doctors who have not been absorbed into the workforce.

 

Low doctor-to-patient ratio

According to the World Health organization, the Tanzanian doctor-to-patient ratio stands at 1 doctor for every 20,000 patients. In Kenya, it’s 1 doctor for every 16,000. The recommended doctor-patient ratio is one to 300.

 

“It would be very unfortunate that you are actually exporting when you do not have enough yourself; it should not be done at the expense of denying qualified Kenyans positions because you are bringing foreigners,” said Nyaim.

In a press briefing held after the meeting with the Kenyan delegation, Tanzania’s president welcomed the new deal with the Kenyan government.

 

“By good luck our friends have said they will pay good salaries and the payment will be in dollars. They will be given accommodation and security,” said Magufuli.

 

Health Secretary Mailu says the Tanzanian doctors will start working in Kenya in April and will be given two to three-year contracts.

And he says there are plan underway to also hire doctors from Cuba.

 

 

 

 
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Would you drink beer made from toilet water?

The brewers at one popular brewery in California are betting you would.

Stone Brewing of San Diego unveiled a new beer made from water that “comes from the toilet,” according to ABC 10 News in San Diego.

Granted, the water for the brew, called Full Circle Pale Ale, is not made from water directly from the toilet, but it does use recycled water from the Pure Water San Diego program, the channel reported.

At the unveiling of the new beer Thursday, San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer called the beer “delicious,” while Stone’s senior manager of brewing and innovation, Steve Gonzalez, said it was among the best pale ales the brewery he has ever made.

Gonzalez told News 10 drinkers would “get some caramel notes, some tropical fruit notes. It’s a very clean tasting beer.”

According to News 10, some attendees at the unveiling were a little sceptical of the beer, but after a taste, they were converted.

“[I thought] that it would have an off taste or be something different to it … it’s outstanding,” Shane Trussell said.

The beer is not yet available to the public, but the brewery said it would be soon.

The Pure Water San Diego program aims to supply one-third of San Diego’s water supply through recycled wastewater.
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Only 17 snowy miles from the Canadian border, Katie Bushey’s most basic needs are met by traveling health aides who come into her home to change her diapers, track her seizures, spoon-feed her fettucine Alfredo and load her wheelchair into the shower.

But that’s only if someone shows up.

Bushey, 32, who lost her vocal and motor skills shortly after birth, is one of more than 180,000 Medicaid patients in New York who are authorized to receive long-term, in-home care, the most in the state’s history. But there are increasingly too few aides to go around, especially in remote, rural areas.

When there aren’t enough aides for Bushey — over a recent two-day stretch there were workers for only four of the 26 hours of care for which she is authorized — her mother must stay home from her job at an elementary school, forgoing a day’s wages and scraping her savings to pay the bills.

Minimum wage

It’s a national problem advocates say could get worse in New York because of a phased-in, $15-an-hour minimum wage that will be statewide by 2021, pushing notoriously poorly paid health aides into other jobs, in retail or fast food, that don’t involve hours of training and the pressure of keeping someone else alive.

“These should not be low-wage jobs,” said Bruce Darling, executive director at the Center for Disability Rights. “We’re paying someone who gives you a burger the same as the person who operates your relative’s ventilator or feeding tubes.”

There are currently 2.2 million home health aides and personal care aides in the U.S., with another 630,000 needed by 2024 as the Baby Boomer generation ages, according to the nonprofit research and consulting group PHI. New York state employs about 326,000 home health workers but is predicted to need another 125,000 by 2024.

For now, home health aides in New York state earn an average of about $11 an hour, though wages are lower in upstate regions. Advocates say the system needs a complete overhaul that focuses on higher pay, worker retention and finding methods of compensation beyond what is provided through Medicaid.

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has committed nearly $6 billion in funding for home health care reimbursements in coming years as the agencies transition to the $15 minimum wage.

Statewide initiative

The state’s health department has said it is developing an initiative to attract, recruit and retain home health workers.

New York lawmakers have held hearings on the issue, and both the Senate and Assembly have so far included language in their budgets that would review and restructure how the state transfers Medicaid dollars to the providers, agencies and workers with the aim of providing workers and hours where they are needed most.

Other states are grappling with how to address the dwindling workforce as their minimum wages climb.

In Maine, legislation in 2015 attempted to make personal care worker wages more competitive with specific reimbursements for worker compensation. But a popular initiative will raise the minimum wage to $12 by 2020, minimizing those differences.

In Arizona, minimum wage increases have been accompanied by increased reimbursement rates, and in Washington state, workers negotiated a $15 wage for some home-care workers for when the state minimum increases to $13.50 in 2020.

New York advocates say a higher state minimum wage won’t attract any extra workers in rural regions such as Clinton County, where Bushey lives.

A single agency, North Country Home Services, hires and trains about 300 home health aides and personal care aides for about 1,000 people throughout a mountainous region the size of Connecticut. In any given week, the agency says, it leaves 400 hours of state-authorized care unfilled due to staffing shortages.

Special type of worker

The aides who continue despite the wages are a special breed, said Erica Stranahan, of Plattsburgh, who has worked as a home health aide with North Country for nine years and earns about $12 an hour. Stranahan said several of her co-workers have recently left home care for less-intensive professions that will soon have similar wages.

Stranahan acknowledged she makes it work only by sharing rent and living expenses with her boyfriend. She said she feels a responsibility to those she cares for, and would rather find a second job than quit caring for others.

“I enjoy helping people,” she said. “We’re with them for so many hours. It’s almost like we’re a second family for them,” Stranahan said.

But Rosalie Kline, a personal care aide in Canandaigua for nearly 13 years who also struggles to make ends meet, said that if worse came to worst, she would find another job that paid more.

“I wouldn’t want to. I love my job,” she said. “But I might need to.”
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Eight million metric tons of plastic wind up each year in the oceans, harming marine life and entering the food chain. Mike O’Sullivan reports a new documentary film called “A Plastic Ocean” looks at the problem, and its solutions.
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For some medical students, getting a yes or no Friday was more important than finding the right life partner.

Friday was “Match Day,” the annual day when medical students find out which U.S. medical institution has accepted them for a residency program. It is a competition, of sorts: 32,000 training slots are available for 42,000 applicants, according to this year’s data.

A residency, three to five years of practical experience and training in a student’s chosen medical specialty, is the next step after medical school, which in the United States generally means four years of postgraduate university studies.

Of those 42,000 applicants vying for residencies, all but about 6,000 are foreign nationals. And that is where their aspirations could collide with President Donald Trump’s latest executive order regulating immigration to the United States.

‘Extensive upheaval’

The National Residency Match Program (NRMP), a nonprofit group that organizes the matches between students and hospitals, said the new immigration order has had a substantial impact on its program. In its current revised form, the order bans citizens from six Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the U.S., at least temporarily.

“The consequences of the [January 27] executive order are far-reaching for match applicants, and the upheaval it is causing is extensive,” NRMP’s chair, Dr. Maria Savoia, and CEO Mona Signer said in a joint statement.

“The affected applicants have worked hard for many years to achieve their goal of becoming physicians,” the two medical-education experts said, “and they should not be denied that opportunity because of a blanket policy that does not consider the individual.”

U.S. courts have issued a restraining order preventing enforcement of the travel ban, pending further legal arguments, but NRMP says it is concerned that some immigrants or foreign medical students with valid visas will nevertheless be delayed or rejected at U.S. borders.

Holidays at home are not care-free

In addition, foreign medical students who travel to their home countries during holidays or breaks in their university studies fear they may not be able to return in time to take up their new residencies in the U.S. Such medical programs typically begin each year on July 1.

“U.S. training programs should be able to select applicants based on their excellent character and qualifications, without regard to nationality. Both applicants and programs benefit from an orderly process for entry into graduate medical education,” said Signer, who is a public health specialist, and Savoia. “The executive order disrupts that process very considerably.”

Hospitals and other medical institutions that offer residencies worry that foreign students they choose for the multiyear training programs will be unable to begin their studies on schedule, Signer said.

Medical residencies are sometimes known as internships, or first-year post-graduate studies, because they occur during a fledgling doctor’s first year of practical training alongside or under direct supervision of a fully qualified physician in one of 21 recognized medical specialties.

Is US becoming less welcoming?

Those who administer medical residency programs do not directly choose the candidates they would like to attract. Instead they rank applicants in order of preference. Under those conditions, Signer said, “It seems likely that residency program directors will be reluctant to rank J-1 visa applicants because they may not be able to enter the country to begin training.”

The U.S. State Department’s J-1 visa program offers foreign nationals an opportunity to come to the United States “to teach, study, conduct research, demonstrate special skills or receive on-the-job training for periods ranging from a few weeks to several years,” according to Cultural Vistas, a nonprofit American group that has been organizing international exchange programs since 1963.

The perception that the United States is becoming less welcoming to foreign nationals in the medical professions appears to be having an effect.

Fewer non-U.S. citizen “international medical school graduates,” or IMGs, submitted program choices for this year: 7,284 in 2017 vs. 7,460 in 2016. However, NRMP said more of these candidates (52.4 percent) were matched with institutions – the highest match rate since 2005.

Foreign physicians benefit all Americans

About 1,800 IMGs already enrolled in accredited residency and fellowship programs in the U.S. are impacted by the travel ban, according to Dr. Thomas J. Nasca, CEO of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

“These physicians are providing much needed medical care to a conservatively estimated 900,000 patients in urban, suburban and rural communities across the country annually. They are a valued and welcomed group of colleagues,” he wrote in a statement.

“Many communities, including rural and low-income areas, often have problems attracting physicians to meet their health care needs. To address these gaps in care, IMGs often fill these openings. These physicians are licensed by the same stringent requirements applied to U.S. medical school graduates,” the chief executive officer of the American Medical Association, Dr. James Madara, wrote last month.

“The medical education community must support all international medical graduates and their families during these difficult times,” NRMP’s statement said.
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Washington’s National Zoo hired its first animal nutritionist 30 years ago. Since then the zoo has been preparing specific, well-balanced meals for each animal, provided by volunteers and food preparation teams. For Yahya Barzinji, Elizabeth Cherneff reports.
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In a medical emergency, an ambulance with a qualified medical team on board can be a lifesaver. But in Nepal, this service is rare if not nonexistent. To help provide the best possible medical emergency services, a team of doctors from Stanford University in California spent 12 weeks training four dozen medical technicians in Kathmandu. VOA’s Faiza Elmasry has more. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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As deaths from painkillers and heroin abuse spiked and street crimes increased, the mayor of Everett took major steps to tackle the opioid epidemic devastating this working-class city north of Seattle.

 

Mayor Ray Stephanson stepped up patrols, hired social workers to ride with officers and pushed for more permanent housing for chronically homeless people. The city says it has spent millions combating OxyContin and heroin abuse – and expects the tab to rise.

 

So Everett is suing Purdue Pharma, maker of the opioid pain medication OxyContin, in an unusual case that alleges the drugmaker knowingly allowed pills to be funneled into the black market and the city of about 108,000. Everett alleges the drugmaker did nothing to stop it and must pay for damages caused to the community.

 

Everett’s lawsuit, now in federal court in Seattle, accuses Purdue Pharma of gross negligence and nuisance. The city seeks to hold the company accountable, the lawsuit alleges, for “supplying OxyContin to obviously suspicious pharmacies and physicians and enabling the illegal diversion of OxyContin into the black market” and into Everett, despite a company program to track suspicious flows.

 

“Our community has been significantly damaged, and we need to be made whole,” said Stephanson, who grew up in Everett and is its longest-serving mayor, holding the job since 2003.

 

He said the opioid crisis caused by “Purdue’s drive for profit” has overwhelmed the city’s resources, stretching everyone from first responders to park crews who clean up discarded syringes. The lawsuit doesn’t say how much money the city is seeking, but the mayor says Everett will attempt to quantify its costs in coming months.

 

Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma says the lawsuit paints a flawed and inaccurate picture of the events that led to the crisis in Everett.

 

“We look forward to presenting the facts in court,” the company said in a statement.

 

Purdue said it is “deeply troubled by the abuse and misuse of our medication,” and noted it leads the industry in developing medicines with properties that deter abuse, even though its products account for less than 2 percent of all U.S. opioid prescriptions.

 

In 2007, Purdue Pharma and its executives paid more than $630 million in legal penalties to the federal government for willfully misrepresenting the drug’s addiction risks. The same year, it also settled with Washington and other states that claimed the company aggressively marketed OxyContin to doctors while downplaying the addiction risk. As part of that settlement, it agreed to continue internal controls to identify potential diversion or abuse.

 

While numerous individuals and states have sued Purdue, this case is different because Everett is getting at the results of addiction, said Elizabeth Porter, associate law professor at the University of Washington.

 

She thinks Everett may have a shot at winning, though it will have to overcome some legal burdens, including showing that diverted OxyContin from rogue doctors and pharmacies was a substantial factor in the city’s epidemic.

 

Stephanson said he was “absolutely outraged” after the Los Angeles Times reported last summer it found Purdue had evidence that pointed to illegal trafficking of its pills but in many cases did nothing to notify authorities or stop the flow. That newspaper investigation prompted the city’s lawsuit.

 

In response to the newspaper’s reporting, Purdue said in a statement that in 2007, it provided LA-area law enforcement information that helped lead to the convictions of the criminal prescribers and pharmacists referenced by the Los Angeles Times. The company also pointed to court documents that showed a wholesaler alerted the Drug Enforcement Administration about suspicious activity at a sham clinic noted in the newspaper’s story.

 

Still, Everett contends Purdue created a market for addicts that didn’t exist until the company let its pills flood the streets.

 

The region saw two spikes in overdose deaths: first from OxyContin and other opioid painkillers in 2008 and then, after the drug was reformulated in 2010, a spike from heroin as people switched to a potent but cheaper alternative, officials said.

 

The city contends Purdue’s wrongful conduct fueled a heroin crisis in Everett. Between 2011 and 2013, nearly one in five heroin-related deaths in Washington state occurred in the Everett region.

 

In response to the drug epidemic, Everett last year began sending social workers on routine patrols with police officers. Sgt. Mike Braley says the community outreach and enforcement team strikes a balance between enforcement and connecting people to addiction treatment, mental health and other services.

 

“We understand that we can’t arrest our way out of problems that addiction is causing our city,” Braley said.

 

Sometimes it takes many follow-ups and hours of handholding to get people help. On their first stop one morning, Braley and his team check under a street overpass, a popular hangout for addicts. They find plenty of needles, drug packaging and mounds of garbage but none of the people they had encountered there recently.

They swing by a woody vacant piece of city property to follow up with a homeless man who told social workers he was on a housing list. He previously was reluctant to talk but opens up this time.

 

Social worker Kaitlyn Dowd offers to check on the man’s housing status with a local nonprofit provider and then punches her number into a cellphone he recently got.

 

“You can call me, and I have your number,” she tells him.

 

Social worker Staci McCole said they come across many cases where highly functioning residents were introduced to opiates or heroin.

“So many of these people – somehow it’s taken a hold of them, and their lives now have forever changed,” she said.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday it had awarded $100 million to upgrade Flint, Michigan’s drinking water infrastructure to address a crisis that exposed thousands of children to lead poisoning.

The grant to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality will enable the city to “accelerate and expand” its work to replace lead pipes and make other improvements, according to the EPA. Estimates of the upgrade’s cost range from $200 million to $400 million.

Friday’s announcement made the disbursement official. Last year, Congress passed and former president Barack Obama signed the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act to allocate $100 million to aid Flint.

$31.5 million to be paid immediately

The EPA’s state revolving funds, which Congress can allocate to help with cleanup efforts, were one of the few programs that the Trump administration did not slash in its proposed budget for the agency.

“Flint’s water infrastructure as part of our larger goal of improving America’s water infrastructure,” said a statement from agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.

The EPA will make $31.5 million immediately available for lead pipe replacements and upgrades, and Michigan will provide a $20 million required match.

The remaining $68.5 million will come after the city and Michigan complete additional public comment and technical reviews.

“Today we have good news for families in Flint who have already waited far too long for their water system to be fixed,” said a statement from U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, and Congressman Dan Kildee, all Michigan Democrats.

Flint mayor meets Trump

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, also a Democrat, said the funds would help the city reach its goal of replacing 6,000 pipes this year. She met briefly with President Donald Trump on Wednesday.

In January, 1,700 Flint residents filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Michigan, saying the EPA failed to warn them of the dangers of the toxic water or take steps to ensure that state and local authorities were addressing the crisis. The plaintiffs seek $722 million in damages.

Midwestern politicians are worried about the elimination in the proposed U.S. budget of funding for an effort to clean up the Great Lakes, from which some states draw their drinking water.

Flint was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it switched its water source to the Flint River from Lake Huron in April 2014. The more corrosive river water caused lead to leach from pipes and into the drinking water.

The city returned to its original water source in October 2015.
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Australian scientists, working with counterparts in Myanmar, are hoping to reduce Myanmar’s high death toll from snake bites in rural communities, especially among vulnerable populations facing inadequate emergency care.

The official toll from snake bites in Myanmar is 600 deaths a year out of some 13,000 cases among a rural population dependent on rice harvesting for a living. But rice paddy fields and rice stacks lure rats and mice, and in turn draw snakes, the most venomous being the Russell’s vipers and cobras.

But the hopes for survival are often challenged by long distances from emergency care, with poor roads and infrastructure between snake bite victims and life-saving medical treatment.

Chen Au Peh, a renal specialist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in South Australia, said speedy access to emergency medical treatment is crucial.

“So all these factors accumulate to a long delay between bite and administration of an anti-venom. So to help them, we have to help them produce more anti-venom, to get the anti-venom to where it’s required to help them keep the anti-venom in the refrigerator and to help the health professionals,” Peh said.

Lifestock also affected

The project has also involved ensuring higher survival rates of horses used in the production of the anti-venom after being injected with snake venom. High mortality rates were evident among the horses due to anemia, nutritional problems and veterinary practices. Changes in practice included learning the skills developed by Myanmar horse handlers.

“In the last 10 months the average horse mortality is something like six or seven per month – compared to 50 per month – and this is very good news not only for horses but for human patients who may need the anti-venom. The more horses that survive the month, the more vials of anti-venom you can produce,” Peh said.

As a result, production of anti-venom has risen sharply to 100,000 vials from 60,000 vials.

The team’s work, part of a $1.77 million effort begun in 2014 with support from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and working with Myanmar’s Ministries of Industry and Health, is focused on the northern city of Mandalay, a region that faces an estimated 700 to 800 snake bite victims each year.

The Australian team, which includes Afzal Mahmood, a senior lecturer in public health at the University of Adelaide and Julian White, a world renowned toxicologist from the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide, is working with specialists in Myanmar and local partners on guidelines, protocols and standard operating procedures for the health sector.

Real numbers higher

Mahmood said a recent survey indicated the rate of snake bites was considerably higher than official figures.

“It is not a new phenomenon, it happens because many people do not reach the health system where recording takes place. Some people get treated by the traditional healers; some may die without actually reaching the health system and some may suffer and get healed,” Mahmood told VOA.

But he said the program has succeeded in boosting the skills among the local medical and non-medical community.

“We have produced revised guidelines for the doctors [and] some diagnostic tests, and the training of some 200 health care providers,” he said.

The work has reached about 150 villages with local community meetings targeting around 7,000 people to promote awareness of snake bite treatments.

The goal, the scientists said, is to shorten the time to treatment by providing solar powered refrigerators near to local communities with supplies of anti-venom.

Mahmood says the challenges go beyond the initial treatment.

“Psychological issues post-bite [affect] not only the person but the family themselves suffer. It’s a very life-changing experience,” he said.

Victims of snake bites are among Myanmar’s poorest. They often face long periods of hospitalization, leaving families facing high medical bills, often equivalent to several months of real earnings as they struggle to meet hospital and transport expenses, even those receiving subsidies.

To ensure the project is sustainable, its goal is to provide a model that can be applied elsewhere in Myanmar.
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The human nose, in all its glorious forms, is one of our most distinctive characteristics, whether big, little, broad, narrow or somewhere in between.

Scientists are now sniffing out some of the factors that drove the evolution of the human proboscis.

Researchers said on Thursday a study using three-dimensional images of hundreds of people of East Asian, South Asian, West African and Northern European ancestry indicated local climate, specifically temperature and humidity, played a key role in determining the nose’s shape.

Wider noses were more common in people from warm and humid climates, they found. Narrower noses were more common in those from cold and dry climates.

The nose’s primary functions are breathing and smelling. It has mucous and blood capillaries inside that help warm and humidify inhaled air before it reaches more sensitive parts of the respiratory tract.

Having narrower nasal airways might help increase contact between inhaled air and tissues inside the nose carrying moisture and heat, said Penn State University geneticist Arslan Zaidi, lead author of the study published in the journal PLOS Genetics.

“This might have offered an advantage in colder climates. In warmer climates, the flip side was probably true,” Zaidi said.

Our species appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago and later migrated to other parts of the world. The researchers said people with narrower nostrils may have done better and produced more offspring than those with wider nostrils in colder, drier locales, driving a gradual decline in nose width.

The finding generally supports what’s called Thomson’s rule, formulated by British anatomist and anthropologist Arthur Thomson (1858-1935), that people from cold, dry climates tend to have longer and thinner noses than people from warm, humid climates.

Zaidi said most previous evidence regarding Thomson’s rule came from skull measurements, while this study expanded on that by analyzing external nose shape.

The researchers studied nose width, nostril width, nose height, length of the nose ridge, nose tip protrusion, external surface area and total nostril area.

“What we have tested is a very simple hypothesis about the nose, which likely had a very complex evolutionary history. There’s a lot we don’t know,” Zaidi said, citing the need to probe genes underlying nose shape.

“One can imagine how cultural differences in attractiveness could have led to some of the differences in nose shape between populations. For example, were wider noses considered more attractive in some populations relative to others?”
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Brazil’s Health Ministry says 424 people have been infected with yellow fever in the largest outbreak the country has seen in years. Of those, 137 have died.

 

An update published Thursday said that more than 900 other cases are under investigation. During the current outbreak in the Southern Hemisphere’s summer rainy season, the vast majority of the confirmed cases have been in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.

 

Much of Brazil is considered at risk for yellow fever, and people in those areas are supposed to be vaccinated. But this outbreak struck some areas not previously considered at risk, and Brazil is rushing vaccines to those areas.

 

Yellow fever is a mosquito-borne disease that cause causes fever, body aches, vomiting and can cause jaundice, from which it gets its name.
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A U.N. body on Thursday added two chemicals used to make the drug fentanyl, which killed music star Prince, to an international list of controlled substances, which the United States said would help fight a wave of deaths by overdose.

Fentanyl is a man-made opioid 100 times more powerful than morphine. Roughly 20,000 U.S. overdose deaths in 2015 involved heroin or synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

An annual meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which also acts as the governing body of the Vienna-based U.N. office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), voted to “schedule” two fentanyl precursors and a fentanyl-like substance, meaning they would be added to an international control list.

Putting the chemicals on the control list ensures closer international monitoring of suspicious orders and transactions, which should make it harder for people aiming to produce fentanyl illegally to get hold of these chemicals.

“None of us lives under the illusion that this is a silver bullet to solving our opioid crisis,” a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said in response to the decision.

“But this vote will make it harder for the criminals that are illicitly producing fentanyl to access the necessary resources. It will require countries to regulate the production, sale, and export of the precursors to fentanyl, and to criminalize sale or trafficking outside of those regulations.”

The UNODC named the two precursors as 4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (ANPP) and N-phenethyl-4-piperidone (NPP). A fentanyl analogue called butyrfentanyl, a drug similar to fentanyl, was also added, it said.

The State Department spokeswoman said they were the two leading chemicals used to illegally produce fentanyl in the United States.

United Nations and U.S. officials also emphasized that Thursday’s decision was an example of effective action by the United Nations at a time when the Trump administration is aiming to slash funding for both the State Department and the United Nations.

“The U.S. mission [to the United Nations in Vienna] … welcomes this decision as a concrete example of how international action can have a clear benefit for the United States, as we face a crisis taking a tremendous toll on American communities,” it said in a statement.
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Developers of an experimental blood test for autism say it can detect the condition in more than 96 percent of cases and do so across a broad spectrum of patients, potentially allowing for earlier diagnosis, according to a study released on Thursday.

The findings, published in PLoS Computational Biology, are the latest effort to develop a blood test for autism spectrum disorder, which is estimated to affect about 1 in 68 babies. The cause remains a mystery although it has been shown that childhood vaccines are not responsible.

The hope for such tests, if proven accurate, is that they could reassure parents with autism fears and possibly aid in the development of treatments, coauthor to the study, Dr. Juergen Hahn of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, told Reuters Health.

They could also speed the age at diagnosis. Autism encompasses a wide spectrum of disorders, ranging from profound inability to communicate and mental retardation to relatively mild symptoms, as in Asperger’s Syndrome.

Doctors typically diagnose children by observing behaviors associated with the disorder, such as repetitive behaviors or social avoidance. Most children are not diagnosed until around age 4, although some skilled clinicians can pick it up earlier.

Hahn and colleagues measured levels of 24 proteins that have been linked to autism and found five that, in the right combination, seemed most predictive of the condition, which affects about 1.5 percent of children and can vary widely in severity and how it manifests.

Dr. Max Wiznitzer of the University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, who was not involved in the research, called the finding “interesting, but not earth-shattering,” saying that it needs to be tested by many more at-risk children.

“We don’t know if this is a marker specific to autism or whether it’s a marker for any chronic illness of any kind,” he told Reuters Health. “They have quite a way to go before they can show if it has any meaning.”

The researchers derived the combination by testing 83 children age 3 to 10 who had been diagnosed with autism through conventional means. While the combination was present in 97.6 percent, it was absent in 96.1 percent of 76 normal children.

Wiznitzer noted that the research offers no evidence that the chemical combination being blamed for autism “will be there for infants and toddlers.”
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Twice a week, fisherman Romould Compton puts on scuba gear to dive to the seabed and clean tiny elkhorns growing in the coral nursery off the Caribbean island of Carriacou, tending them until they can be transplanted to a damaged reef nearby.

He hopes his conservation work will help to bring back more of the fish, such as red snapper, king butterfish and hind, that many islanders depend on.

“In my area we depend on the reef for our survival and livelihoods, and a lot of reef is dead,” said Compton by phone from Windward, Carriacou, one of the lush, mountainous islands that make up Grenada in the southeast of the Caribbean.

“A lot of unemployment has been happening so we’ve got to turn to the sea to keep our livelihood going.”

Across the Caribbean, scores of projects are underway to restore battered coral reefs and replant damaged mangroves, crucial to livelihoods from fishing and income from the millions of tourists who flock to the tropical beaches each year.

The intricate reefs and salt-tolerant mangrove swamps also offer protection against storms and hurricanes on climate-vulnerable islands which often lack resources to build extensive engineered coastal defenses.

Insurers are now looking closely at how ecosystems can help bolster coastal resilience, while high-tech models help determine how new hotels and infrastructure might impact the fragile ecological balance as well as local communities.

“When you talk to the prime minister of any country in the Caribbean, they absolutely recognize the path of climate change,” said Luis Solorzano, executive director of The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) program in the Caribbean, which is working to restore marine habitats.

“They’re also thinking, instead of providing assistance, what can we do to prevent, to try and minimize the expected damage of what we know is going to be an increasing frequency of extreme events,” he said.

Using ecosystems to help buffer against extreme events such as hurricanes and storm surges could generate cost-savings of “billions if not trillions” of dollars, he said.

Climate resistance

At the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida, scientists are trying to replicate the sea conditions they expect to see in 50 to 100 years to determine which corals are the hardiest, then cross strains to produce climate-resistant species that can be transplanted onto reefs across the Caribbean, said David Vaughan, who manages Mote’s reef restoration program.

One of Vaughan’s most important discoveries came by chance: He accidentally shattered an elkhorn coral and found micro-fragmentation can cause it to grow up to 40 times faster.

“If people think climate change is just a theory, they should just look at that wonderful thermometer in the field that’s called corals and that’ll tell them differently,” said Vaughan, whose laboratory works with TNC and produces 1,000 corals a day, including bulbous brain and mountain corals.

He hopes the new coral “offspring” will be “better prepared in the future for whatever man or mother nature hands to them.”

The 63-year-old, who has vowed to plant a million corals by the time he retires, said Mote is planning a laboratory to train up to 50 people each week from around the world, who could eventually replicate its coral restoration project.

With that scale-up, “we could literally plant a billion corals around the world,” he said.

Getting ahead

Alongside bringing in tourist dollars, healthy coral reefs, seagrasses and salt-tolerant mangroves provide habitats for many species that generate an income for fishermen — from spiny lobsters in Belize to bonefish in the Bahamas.

Reefs can also act like breakwaters to dramatically reduce wave strength, while mangroves can buffer against hurricane winds and storm surges.

Marine scientist Michael Beck calculates coral reefs can slash up to 97 percent of the wave energy that would otherwise hit the shoreline, while a 100-meter-wide (330 feet) band of mangrove can cut wave height by up to two-thirds.

High-tech modelling is helping Caribbean governments bolster coastal resilience by demonstrating how development can affect coastal ecosystems, livelihoods and property, said Katie Arkema, lead scientist at the Natural Capital Project, which has used its technology in Belize and the low-lying islands of the Bahamas.

“What we seek to do is understand how will our decisions and the decisions of governments … affect ecosystems and how in turn will those ecosystem changes affect people,” said Arkema.

The World Bank, which is helping pilot a coastal insurance project offering reduced premiums to governments working to make the region’s over-exploited fisheries more resilient, said Jamaica, Grenada and St. Lucia were among those interested.

But payouts would likely hinge on countries agreeing to invest a slice of the money in marine habitats, he said.

“Increasingly, Caribbean governments are finding ways to make better use of their marine resources, [to] take advantage of their marine ecosystems, the natural assets that are so important to them,” said Miguel Angel Jorge, senior fisheries specialist with the World Bank.

“They want to be much smarter about how they invest and plan with the likely climate impacts in mind.”

In Grenville, Grenada, where many low-income families depend on fishing, efforts to boost coastal resilience were partly driven by the community — which is involved in projects to replant mangroves and establish an artificial reef, said Nealla Frederick, TNC’s Eastern Caribbean conservation planner.

“Just everybody has recognized this is happening and wants to try to get ahead of it,” she said.
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