GDP growth is not everything, but must be based on environmental sustainability and benefit people's welfare.

The good news is in from Qinghai: Two years after the western province dropped GDP growth from its system for evaluating the performance of government officials in two of its prefectures, the ecological deterioration of the source area of China’s three major rivers has begun to ebb.
According to Chinaview.cn, once vanished wetlands have reappeared, while water has returned to some of the dried-up lakes in the Sanjiangyuan, China’s largest nature reserve, which sits at the headwaters of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang/Mekong rivers. The reserve covers an area of 318,000 sq. km, slightly larger than Italy.
According to the provincial forestry administration, while desertification throughout Qinghai is still a problem, the annual rate at which the desert is spreading has dropped to 2,000 hectares from 13,000 hectares in the late 1990s.
It may take a while before the ecosystem in that part of the ecology-sensitive Qinghai-Tibet plateau is fully rehabilitated. Nevertheless, the initial effect of conservation efforts in the two Tibetan autonomous prefectures, Yushu and Golok, is promising.
More important is that Qinghai’s move signals a departure from the “GDP cult“, which sees economic growth as the only yardstick for development, even if it comes at the cost of the environment and people’s welfare.
For years, this cult has dominated China’s development pattern. In the fervor to pursue GDP growth, China has seen its mountains denuded by mining and other construction projects, cropland devastated by factories and urbanization and air and water polluted by heavy industry and human misconduct.
China has managed to unleash double-digit growth in its GDP, which is envied by many. Yet the cost it has paid for it is rather dear.
Among the 20 most polluted cities in the world last year as listed by the World Bank, 14 are in China. The worsening air quality has given rise to occurrences of lung cancer, which has become a top killer in the country. Also on the rise are TB (tuberculosis) and other diseases.
Pollution has aggravated the country’s tight water supply and even caused the occasional drought. At 500 sections of China’s nine major river systems that are monitored for water quality, only 28 percent have water suitable for drinking, while 31 percent have water with limited or no functional use. A sample survey of 118 cities in 2005 revealed that 97 percent of their groundwater was polluted to a varying degree, with 64 percent having seriously polluted groundwater.
Despite the hazards they have caused, many polluters manage to escape punishment because they are valued as “local economic pillars“. Their contributions to the local GDP often override all other considerations.
That is why Qinghai’s decision to delete GDP growth when evaluating government accomplishments, though in two prefectures only, is admirable. The move compels the local governments to shift its outlook on development from a pattern focused on GDP growth to one that is environmentally friendly and socially conscious.
Some might say it was not a big deal for Yushu and Golok to be exempted from GDP evaluations, since the secondary and tertiary industries are relatively small there. After all, the two prefectures, which sit at the headwaters of the three rivers, are known as “China’s water tower“ and have traditionally been pastures for nomadic Tibetans.
Still the habits of the GDP cult have led to overgrazing and gold mining, which have damaged vulnerable vegetation on the highlands, which sit at an average elevation of 4,000 meters above sea level. If the livestock population and mining spree are not checked, ecological deterioration will choke any attempt at further development.
GDP growth is not everything, but must be based on environmental sustainability and benefit people’s welfare.

US payroll count is notoriously volatile.

A recession in America is a worry that the latest data on American employment will do much to deepen.
January’s non-farm payroll numbers showed a surprise drop of 17,000, the first decline since August 2003, according to figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday February 1st.
Forecasters had hoped for a rise of 80,000, partly owing to good weather during the survey and partly because earlier data had been more upbeat; the figures didn’t oblige, AP reported.
As usual with American jobs data, not all the numbers pointed in the same direction. Optimists could take heart from an upward revision to December’s payroll numbers and from a small fall (from 5 percent to 4.9 percent) in January’s unemployment rate (a figure calculated from a separate survey of households). But pessimists could focus on a slippage in average hours worked, often an early indicator of bad times to come as firms slowly cut back their output.
The data added to the debate about the Federal Reserve’s recent cuts in interest rates of 1.25 percentage points. Some commentators claim that the weak jobs count vindicated the Fed’s pre-emptive move, others saw it as more evidence that the America’s central bank had acted too tardily. The chance of a further half-point cut at the Fed’s next meeting in March increased in response to the news.
The weak payroll number was driven by further falls in employment at construction companies and manufacturers. But while that might have been expected, the big surprise was a 11,000 drop in professional and business-services employment.
One crumb of comfort for those worried about the state of the economy is that the payroll count is notoriously volatile. It is derived from a survey, which questions 160,000 businesses and government entities accounting for a third of total non-farm payrolls. Despite a large sample size the initial payroll count is somewhat sketchy and subject to significant revision. Between 2003 and 2006 the first estimate was revised by an average of 51,000 jobs each month.
These revisions occur because, in January (as with other months), only about 56 percent of businesses have responded to the survey by the time of its first release. Furthermore, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has to guess at the number of jobs created by new companies--the so called birth-deaths figure.
The unemployment rate is calculated from just 60,000 households, a small fraction of the total of 110 million. But it is not subject to the same drastic revisions as it receives over 90 percent of survey responses by the time of release.
A recent study by Congress’s joint economic committee found that the unemployment rate is the most useful indicator of recession and the payroll count has little value as a guide to economic turning points. If that is so, the news is ominous.
The study found the unemployment rate increases by 0.12 percentage points in the first three months of recession. A sharp rise in unemployment in December outpaced the improvement in January giving an average rise over the past two months of 0.13 points.

MAB varieties could help create crops with more nutritive value and better pest resistance.

Marker Assisted Breeding (MAB) is seen as an alternative to GM technology in India. It involves crossbreeding with genes from related species.
Unlike GM crops, MAB varieties do not raise health concerns as they don’t involve introduction of foreign genes. MAB varieties in the market now include corn and pearl millet. Varieties of rice, wheat and mustard are next on anvil.
According to Outlookindia.com, at a time when there are serious concerns about genetically modified (GM) food, another plant breeding technology has evolved which could help create crops with more nutritive value and better pest resistance. And it does this minus the side-effects of GM crops which have come in for some flak.
Last month, a new variety of maize--Vivek QPM 9--was commercially released from Vivekananda Parvatiya Krishi Anusandhan Sansthan (VPKAS), Almora, that uses what is called marker assisted breeding (MAB).
This involves genetic screening of different varieties of a plant to identify the specific gene responsible for a desired trait. It is then crossed with a related species. On the other hand, transgenic or GM crops are produced by the introduction of alien genes, such as those from microbes and human breast milk. Such modification has raised concerns about unpredictable effects on health.
In Almora, scientists crossbred a high-protein gene from the QPM corn variety with the indigenous Vivek 9. The resultant, improved variety now has a protein content that approaches milk in terms of quality.
“MAB can to a good extent supplement transgenic technology. For instance, bacterial blight in rice can also be fought with MAB,“ says P.K. Agarwal, principal scientist at VPKAS.
The technology has one limitation: the required trait has to be available with a related species of the plant variety sought to be modified. This, at the same time, is also an advantage. Since the introduced gene belongs to a related species, there are no transgenic concerns.
MAB technology has taken a while to deliver results as required genetic traits have to be first identified and then isolated. This ongoing process is known as genome mapping. MAB’s potential is bound to be enhanced as agri scientists do a more complete job of such mapping.
“It is a very promising technology. Our main plant breeding thrust will be on MAB,“ says R.R. Sinha, an advisor with the Department of Biotechnology (DBT).
Some other crops being engineered under DBT’s MAB plan are rice, wheat, chickpea, linseed, mustard and groundnut. The private sector, Sinha says, overlooked the MAB technique initially amidst the hype built around GM crops, “but they too are now switching over now“.
The maize variety just released is the first instance of a MAB crop being released through the network of Indian Council of Agricultural Research institutes. Around two years ago, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Haryana Agricultural University jointly released a MAB variety of pearl millet resistant to downy mildew, a devastating fungal disease.
The response has been encouraging. From 30,000 hectares in 2006, the farmed area using this improved variety of pearl millet is expected to touch 500,000 hectares in 2008.
Tom Hash, a principal scientist at ICRISAT, says “MAB is likely to be much more popular than transgenics as these varieties do not require the additional tests for food safety that GM crops require,“ he says.
But Suman Sahai, president of Gene Campaign, which backs sustainable agriculture, feels conventional breeding, despite “delivering consistently“, is being ignored for other techniques.
“There are few scientists now trained in simple plant breeding and taxonomy that helps them identify, classify plants,“ she concludes.
Even so, MAB offers a positive alternative to extremes.

Practical solutions to the global sanitation crisis will require greater knowledge-sharing among developing nations, and also even more support for those efforts by multilateral institutions like the World Bank and United Nations, experts say.
Some 1.5 million children die every year due to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene, while more than a third of the world’s population has no access to basic toilet facilities, reported Ipsnews.net.
Governments and development agencies are working to cut these numbers at least in half by 2015 as part of the UN Millennium Development Goals. According to the children’s agency UNICEF, the situation is most serious in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Western Asia, Eurasia and Oceania, none of which is on track for meeting the sanitation target.
India is now on track to meet the sanitation goal ahead of schedule, having increased coverage from 1 percent in 1981 to 48 percent in 2007. Much credit for this is owed to the work of the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, which promotes sustainable, affordable sanitation and hygiene throughout India.
The Sulabh sanitation strategy has since been expanded to other developing countries like Afghanistan. According to the Millennium Project Task Force on Water and Sanitation, over the past couple of decades, several countries in the developing world have made significant progress in substantially increasing access to water and sanitation services.
As a result, there are now numerous globally relevant examples of success that provide guidance for reaching the water and sanitation targets. In Bangladesh, the Community-Led Total Sanitation program is widely viewed as an effective model that can be replicated in rural places where open defecation is a norm, and one which is controlled by local communities, who decide where to dig the holes and construct homemade pit latrines.
It has since been used in Indonesia, Cambodia, Mongolia, Nepal, Uganda and Zambia, where it has had a major positive impact on the incidence of diarrhoeal and other diseases.
There is an ongoing debate within the water and sanitation community about whether the prevailing western model of water-based flush toilets should be applied in the context of developing countries, with some advocating for systems that convert human waste into low-cost fertilizer.
The most important thing is that communities should choose what the best system that they want is, and they should not impose any particular technology.