AFP UK

More than three million people have been affected by the annual monsoon deluge as torrential rains pummel eastern India, officials said Wednesday, with villagers fleeing to higher ground and wildlife sanctuaries underwater.

Monsoons are crucial to replenishing water supplies after the scorching summer season but also cause widespread death and destruction across South Asia each year.

The storms have been worsened by climate change, experts say.

India’s poorest state Bihar and wildlife-rich Assam have been hit by incessant rains for a week, with swollen rivers bursting their banks and stranding thousands of people in villages.

In Assam, water levels for the Brahmaputra — a mighty transborder Himalayan river system — have risen above their “danger levels”, a water resource department official told AFP.

Villager Amshar Ali said locals were struggling with basic needs.

“We are in great suffering. It is difficult to get food, drinking water and other essential items,” Ali told AFP.

“Many villagers do not have their own boats, so people are suffering.”

Farmer Liyakat Ali said he had to move his livestock to a friend’s property after his house was submerged.

“The floodwaters have risen to above four to five feet (1.2-1.5 metres) in the last two days,” he told AFP.

Up to 80 percent of the Kaziranga National Park and Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary — both along the Brahmaputra and home to rare one-horned rhinoceroses — were underwater, officials said.

“All the wild animals are taking shelter on higher lands in the sanctuary,” Pobitora ranger Nayanjyoti Das told AFP.

Assam officials said at least 11 animals — including two swamp deer, eight hog deer and one capped langur — have been killed in the floods.

“We have been surviving on dry food grains as our kitchen is in chest-deep water,” villager Prem Yadav told AFP from his rooftop, where he and his family have been sleeping since Saturday in Bihar’s Gopalganj district.

The homes of villagers in other low-lying areas were also inundated with floodwaters, forcing them to take shelter at nearby embankments and roads.

More than 3.2 million people in over 2,200 villages in 17 districts in Bihar have been impacted by the rising waters since last week, authorities said.

Some 215,000 people were evacuated from their homes.

Since the start of the monsoon season in June, some 43 people have died in Bihar, according to official data.

The India Meteorological Department said the heavy downpours could continue in the two states until Thursday.

strs-grk/axn

Weather-related disasters have skyrocketed over the past half-century, causing far more damage even as better warning systems have meant fewer deaths, the UN said Wednesday.

A report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) examined mortality and economic losses from weather, climate and water extremes between 1970 and 2019.

It found that such disasters have increased fivefold during that period, driven largely by a warming planet, and warned the upward trend would continue.

“The number of weather, climate and water extremes are increasing and will become more frequent and severe in many parts of the world as a result of climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

In total, there were more than 11,000 disasters attributed to these hazards globally since 1970, causing more than two million deaths and some $3.64 trillion in losses.

Hurricane Ida, which slammed into the US Gulf Coast at the weekend and killed at least four people, could become the costliest weather disaster on record, Taalas told reporters.

“There is a chance that the economic cost will be higher then Katrina,” he said, while adding that improved prevention and protection measures had ensured that Ida caused only a fraction of the casualties of the giant storm that devastated the same area exactly 16 years earlier.

Until now, Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people and destroyed large parts of New Orleans, had been considered by far the costliest weather-related disaster, racking up nearly $164 billion in economic losses.

– 115 deaths each day –

On average, a disaster linked to weather, climate and water extremes has thus occurred every single day over the past 50 years, killing 115 people and causing $202 million in daily losses, the WMO report found.

More than 91 percent of the deaths occurred in developing countries, it said.

Droughts were responsible for the largest losses of human life during the period, alone accounting for some 650,000 deaths, while storms have left over 577,000 people dead.

Floods have meanwhile killed nearly 59,000 over the past 50 years and extreme temperatures have killed close to 56,000, the report found.

On a positive note, the report found that even as the number of weather and climate-related disasters ballooned over the past half-century, the number of associated deaths declined nearly threefold.

The toll fell from over 50,000 deaths each year in the 1970s to fewer than 20,000 in the 2010s, WMO said.

And while the 1970s and 1980 reported an average of 170 related deaths per day, the daily average in the 1990s fell to 90, and then to 40 in the 2010s.

Taalas said dramatic improvements in early warning systems were largely to thank for the drop in deaths.

“Quite simply, we are better than ever before at saving lives,” he said.

– More people exposed –

WMO stressed though that much remains to be done, with only half of the agency’s 193 member states currently housing the life-saving multi-hazard early warning systems.

It also cautioned that severe gaps remained in weather and hydrological observing networks in Africa and parts of Latin America and in Pacific and Caribbean island states.

Mami Mizutori, who heads the UN office for disaster risk reduction, also hailed the life-saving impact of the improved early warning systems.

But she warned that “the number of people exposed to disaster risk is increasing due to population growth in hazard-exposed areas and the growing intensity and frequency of weather events.”

And while early warning systems save lives, they have done little to shield disaster-prone areas from swelling economic damage.

In fact, the reported losses from 2010 to 2019 stood at $383 million per day — seven times more than the some $49 million in average daily losses in the 1970s.

Seven of the costliest 10 disasters in the past 50 years have happened since Katrina hit in 2005, with three of them in 2017 alone: Hurricane Harvey, which caused nearly $97 billion in damages, followed by Maria at close to $70 billion and Irma at almost $60 billion.

Hurricane Ida, which slammed into the US Gulf Coast at the weekend, could become the costliest weather disaster on record, the UN said Wednesday, hailing though that prevention measures had dramatically limited casualties.

Louisiana and Mississippi are still taking stock of the disaster inflicted by the powerful Category 4 storm that hit exactly 16 years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall and devastated the area.

Ida is known to have killed four people, although the death toll is expected to rise, and knocked out power for more than a million properties across Louisiana.

“There is a chance that the economic cost will be higher then Katrina,” Petteri Taalas, who heads the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), told reporters in Geneva.

He pointed as an illustration to the “major damage to the electric system in Louisiana.”

Until now, Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people and destroyed large parts of New Orleans, had been considered by far the costliest weather-related disaster.

A fresh WMO report that examined mortality and economic losses from weather, climate and water extremes between 1970 and 2019, found that Katrina had raked in nearly $164 billion in economic losses.

Currently, hurricanes Harvey and Maria, which both hit in 2017, are considered the second and third-costliest weather-related disasters, carrying price tags of nearly $97 billion and over $69 billion respectively.

Taalas said it would likely take a month or more before a full cost estimate for the losses caused by Ida could be made.

But he hailed that improved early warning and flood protection systems as well as evacuation procedures appeared to have saved numerous lives.

“The good news when it comes to Ida is that the casualties as compared to Katrina, they were much lower,” Taalas said.

Mami Mizutori, who heads the UN office for disaster risk reduction, agreed.

She told reporters that the differences between the impacts of the two storms showed the importance of investing in prevention.

“The economic loss indeed will be quite big, but the good news is that … the mortality has been very, very low, and this is because the city of New Orleans and Louisiana … invested in prevention.”

What had made the biggest difference since Katrina, she said, was the $14.5 billion invested in building flood walls and levees as part of a new “hurricane and storm damage risk-reduction system.”

“They did not wait for another century to do this. They did it very quickly.” 

The United Nations warned Wednesday that weather-related disasters have skyrocketed over the past half-century, causing far more damage even as better warning systems have meant fewer deaths.

A report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) examined mortality and economic losses from weather, climate and water extremes between 1970 and 2019.

It found that such disasters have increased fivefold during that period, driven largely by a warming planet, and warned the upward trend would continue.

“The number of weather, climate and water extremes are increasing and will become more frequent and severe in many parts of the world as a result of climate change,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

In total, there were more than 11,000 of disasters attributed to these hazards globally since 1970, causing more than two million deaths and some $3.64 trillion in losses.

– 115 deaths each day –

On average, a disaster linked to weather, climate and water extremes has thus occurred every single day over the past 50 years, killing 115 people and causing $202 million in daily losses, WMO found.

More than 91 percent of the deaths occurred in developing countries, it said.

Droughts were responsible for the largest losses of human life during the period, alone accounting for some 650,000 deaths, while storms have left over 577,000 people dead.

Floods have meanwhile killed nearly 59,000 over the past 50 years and extreme temperatures have killed close to 56,000, the report found.

On a positive note, the report found that even as the number of weather and climate-related disasters ballooned over the past half-century, the number of associated deaths declined nearly threefold.

The toll fell from over 50,000 deaths each year in the 1970s to fewer than 20,000 in the 2010s, WMO said.

And while the 1970s and 1980 reported an average of 170 related deaths per day, the daily average in the 1990s fell to 90, and then to 40 in the 2010s.

Taalas said dramatic improvements in early warning systems were largely to thank for the drop in deaths.

“Quite simply, we are better than ever before at saving lives,” he said.

– More people exposed –

WMO stressed though that much remains to be done, with only half of the agency’s 193 member states currently housing the life-saving multi-hazard early warning systems.

It also cautioned that severe gaps remained in weather and hydrological observing networks in Africa and parts of Latin America and in Pacific and Caribbean island states.

Mami Mizutori, who heads the UN office for disaster risk reduction, also hailed the life-saving impact of the improved early warning systems.

But she warned in the statement that “the number of people exposed to disaster risk is increasing due to population growth in hazard-exposed areas and the growing intensity and frequency of weather events.”

And while early warning systems save lives, they have done little to shield disaster-prone areas from swelling economic damage.

In fact, the reported losses from 2010 to 2019 stood at $383 million per day — seven times more than the some $49 million in average daily losses in the 1970s.

Seven of the costliest 10 disasters in the past 50 years have happened since 2005, with three of them in 2017 alone: Hurricane Harvey, which caused nearly $97 billion in damages, followed by Maria at close to $70 billion and Irma at almost $60 billion.

From agriculture to housing to transportation, economic growth has historically depended on burning through finite natural resources and rearranging natural landscapes.

As the IUCN World Conservation Congress kicks off in France on Friday, an urgent question will be how to reduce the devastation wrought by humanity on the environment.  

One idea gaining currency is to assign nature an economic value.

“It’s the only way to speak the same language as political decision-makers,” Nathalie Girouard, an expert on environmental policy at intergovernmental think tank OECD, told AFP.

“We have increased economic growth at the expense of nature.”

Chemical-intensive agriculture, over-fishing, pollution and climate change are all pushing ecosystems to the brink of collapse. 

For business, putting a monetary value on nature means that damaging resources such as breathable air and drinkable water becomes not just a survival risk, but a financial one.

But experts are divided on how to measure “natural capital”, and some argue that it should not be done at all.

– Natural capital – 

During most of industrialisation, the intrinsic value of nature’s bounty — air, fresh water and oceans, for example — was not recognised because it cost nothing to consume or pollute.

The concept of natural capital, some conservationists and economists argue, makes it possible to evaluate ecosystems in terms of the “services” they provide — and the cost of repairing them when damaged. 

Mary Ruckelshaus, head of the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University, acknowledges that it is a complex task.

She gives the example of their work in Belize where indigenous populations, fishermen and real estate developers all value mangrove forests, but have very different ideas of what to do with them.

Some will value their capacity to dampen storm surges, while others would prefer to see aquaculture or sandy beaches in their place.

“They help protect coastlines, communities from sea-level rise and hurricanes,” she says, adding that such a “service” is worth millions, in some cases billions, of dollars. 

“You can monetise that.”

But she says such numbers cannot always cover the true cost of harming a resource.

“What’s the cultural value of the mangrove forest to an indigenous community who lives in Belize? Priceless,” she continues. 

Ruckelshaus says the best way to assign value to ecosystems is to get all the interested parties around a table.

“If you articulate and quantify where the most value is for each stakeholder, often you don’t have as many trade-offs as you think,” she says.

– Regulation still key –

When you scale things up, the numbers are eye-popping.

Some $44 trillion (37 trillion euros) of annual economic value generation — half of the world’s gross domestic product — is moderately or highly dependent on nature, according to the World Economic Forum. 

Using the natural capital as the guiding principle, proponents favour integrating natural resources into the calculation of a country’s wealth.

“This is the first step to integrating biodiversity in national strategies and plans and to bring about real change, thanks to clear targets and indicators,” said Girouard. 

But the concept remains controversial for some.

In 2018 British writer and environmentalist George Monbiot argued against the idea, which he said “reinforces the notion that nature has no value unless you can extract cash from it”.

French author, environmentalist and member of the European Parliament Aurore Lalucq agrees.

“We don’t need to give a price to bees — we need to outlaw the pesticides that kill them,” she told AFP.

She believes that legislation, not financial incentive, will work best to protect remaining ecosystems.

“We need to regulate, make practices illegal and invest in green infrastructure and biodiversity,” she said.

Ruckelshaus acknowledges that the monetary value system has its limitations and that government regulation remains crucial.

“Valuing nature… gives everybody the same information but it doesn’t guarantee that everyone will make the decision to protect nature,” she said.

Nigerian farmer Nwale Nchimaonwi celebrated when he learnt that an oil law to overhaul the industry and improve the plight of communities living on crude-producing land had passed after two decades wait.

His Niger Delta region has long seethed with discontent as communities face a potent mix of poverty, crude pollution and state neglect despite the wealth pumped from the ground beneath them.

But Nchimaonwi’s enthusiasm soon gave way to anger after it emerged that the law demanded oil companies contribute only 3 percent of operating costs to communities, far below the 10 percent they see as fair compensation.

Disappointment with the Petroleum Industry Bill is again testing patience in Nigeria’s delta where many lost farming and fishing livelihoods to contamination even as foreign oil giants pumped crude from Africa’s largest producer.

“How do you think three percent can clean the spills, provide potable water, roads, hospitals and jobs in the oil communities?, Nchimaonwi, a leader for the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) group, told AFP outside his home in Ejamah-Ebubu.

A decade ago, the Niger Delta was a hotbed of militants who abducted foreign oil workers and raided their installationsto push for more share of the oil wealth.

OPEC-member Nigeria’s output was slashed before a 2009 amnesty finally restored peace.

For communities, the years since were spent waiting for lawsuits against foreign oil companies for environment damages to meander though the courts, but tensions are simmering again.

– Nearly 3,000 spills –

Ejamah and three villages make up the Ogoni community of Ebubu, which recently won a ruling for $111 million (97.3 million euros) in compensation from Shell. 

Shell agreed to compensate the community over a 1970 spill that polluted over 225 hectares of their farmlands and fishing waters, though without acknowledging responsibility.

Shell says spills came during Nigeria’s 1967-1970 civil war when oil infrastructure was damaged. 

Acting Ogoni community ruler Emere Emmanuel Olako Oluji told AFP the money was a relief and could provide for the community and “put smiles on the faces of the people.”

But other community leaders say the damage is vast.

Ejamah boasts 57 oil wells once operated by Shell before the Anglo-Dutch oil giant was forced to quit in 1993 because of the unrest.

While oil production has ceased, pipelines operated by Shell still traverse the land, creeks and waterways of Ogoniland.

Nigeria’s state-run oil company NNPC recently took over the oil wells following a court order but Ogoni leaders vow to resist any resumption of production.

According to industry data, between 1976 and 1991, over two million barrels of oil polluted Ogoniland in 2,976 separate spills.

“Just take a look at this spill,” MOSOP’s Nchimaonwi said, pointing to large swath of blackened, dried ground left abandoned in the B-Dere area of Ogoniland.

“Saro-Wiwa died fighting for justice for his people,” he said, referring to writer, environmental campaigner and MOSOP founder Ken Saro-Wiwa who was hanged along with eight Ogoni activists in 1995 after a trumped up murder charge.

He said frustrations were growing among the youth with few opportunities in the delta.

“Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gunpowder,” he said.

– Major step –

President Muhammadu Buhari’s government hopes the oil law will draw in more investment to Nigeria, whose petroleum industry has long been troubled by corruption, inefficiency, high costs and security concerns. 

But officials said it should also provide for the host communities. 

“My prayer is that the people would see this as a major step,” Godswill Akpabio, the minister in charge of the Niger Delta told reporters.

“People are arguing about percentages, I am not interested in that. We could manage with this percent but the major thing is to use it well.” 

Tamaranebi Benjamin, president of Host Communities Organisation, applauded the new law’s passage, but said a provision holding communities liable for sabotage in their areas should be removed.

“It’s only by expunging the obnoxious provisions that lasting peace can be guaranteed.”

For many like cassava farmer Gideo Loole, the law and its 3 percent compensation feels like an insult stirring up anger.

“We cannot farm and fish. Our people are suffering and all the government and oil companies could do is to give us a paltry three percent,” he told AFP, brandishing a cutlass to show his anger.

“We are going to mobilise the youth to fight the government and take back our God-given resources.”

Nigerian farmer Nwale Nchimaonwi celebrated when he learnt that an oil law to overhaul the industry and improve the plight of communities living on crude-producing land had passed after two decades wait.

His Niger Delta region has long seethed with discontent as communities face a potent mix of poverty, crude pollution and state neglect despite the wealth pumped from the ground beneath them.

But Nchimaonwi’s enthusiasm soon gave way to anger after it emerged that the law demanded oil companies contribute only 3 percent of operating costs to communities, far below the 10 percent they see as fair compensation.

Disappointment with the Petroleum Industry Bill is again testing patience in Nigeria’s delta where many lost farming and fishing livelihoods to contamination even as foreign oil giants pumped crude from Africa’s largest producer.

“How do you think three percent can clean the spills, provide potable water, roads, hospitals and jobs in the oil communities?, Nchimaonwi, a leader for the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) group, told AFP outside his home in Ejamah-Ebubu.

A decade ago, the Niger Delta was a hotbed of militants who abducted foreign oil workers and raided their installationsto push for more share of the oil wealth.

OPEC-member Nigeria’s output was slashed before a 2009 amnesty finally restored peace.

For communities, the years since were spent waiting for lawsuits against foreign oil companies for environment damages to meander though the courts, but tensions are simmering again.

– Nearly 3,000 spills –

Ejamah and three villages make up the Ogoni community of Ebubu, which recently won a ruling for $111 million (97.3 million euros) in compensation from Shell. 

Shell agreed to compensate the community over a 1970 spill that polluted over 225 hectares of their farmlands and fishing waters, though without acknowledging responsibility.

Shell says spills came during Nigeria’s 1967-1970 civil war when oil infrastructure was damaged. 

Acting Ogoni community ruler Emere Emmanuel Olako Oluji told AFP the money was a relief and could provide for the community and “put smiles on the faces of the people.”

But other community leaders say the damage is vast.

Ejamah boasts 57 oil wells once operated by Shell before the Anglo-Dutch oil giant was forced to quit in 1993 because of the unrest.

While oil production has ceased, pipelines operated by Shell still traverse the land, creeks and waterways of Ogoniland.

Nigeria’s state-run oil company NNPC recently took over the oil wells following a court order but Ogoni leaders vow to resist any resumption of production.

According to industry data, between 1976 and 1991, over two million barrels of oil polluted Ogoniland in 2,976 separate spills.

“Just take a look at this spill,” MOSOP’s Nchimaonwi said, pointing to large swath of blackened, dried ground left abandoned in the B-Dere area of Ogoniland.

“Saro-Wiwa died fighting for justice for his people,” he said, referring to writer, environmental campaigner and MOSOP founder Ken Saro-Wiwa who was hanged along with eight Ogoni activists in 1995 after a trumped up murder charge.

He said frustrations were growing among the youth with few opportunities in the delta.

“Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gunpowder,” he said.

– Major step –

President Muhammadu Buhari’s government hopes the oil law will draw in more investment to Nigeria, whose petroleum industry has long been troubled by corruption, inefficiency, high costs and security concerns. 

But officials said it should also provide for the host communities. 

“My prayer is that the people would see this as a major step,” Godswill Akpabio, the minister in charge of the Niger Delta told reporters.

“People are arguing about percentages, I am not interested in that. We could manage with this percent but the major thing is to use it well.” 

Tamaranebi Benjamin, president of Host Communities Organisation, applauded the new law’s passage, but said a provision holding communities liable for sabotage in their areas should be removed.

“It’s only by expunging the obnoxious provisions that lasting peace can be guaranteed.”

For many like cassava farmer Gideo Loole, the law and its 3 percent compensation feels like an insult stirring up anger.

“We cannot farm and fish. Our people are suffering and all the government and oil companies could do is to give us a paltry three percent,” he told AFP, brandishing a cutlass to show his anger.

“We are going to mobilise the youth to fight the government and take back our God-given resources.”

With the world’s biggest biodiversity summit set to kick off Friday in the Mediterranean city of Marseille, experts are sounding the alarm over a long-overlooked seagrass increasingly threatened by human activity.

Named posidonia oceanica — or “Neptune grass” — for the Greek god of the seas, the plant covers at least one million hectares (3,900 square miles) of the Mediterranean seabed from Cyprus to Spain.

The Mediterranean Network for Posidonia says the real area is probably much larger than that, with data largely unavailable for countries on the sea’s eastern and southern shores. 

But neptune grass meadows have long fallen prey to boating activity, with official figures estimating some 7,500 hectares in damage along the French coastline alone.

“The biggest culprit is mooring,” says Thibault Lavernhe, spokesman for the Maritime Prefecture of the Mediterranean.

“When a boat drops its anchor, it hits the ocean floor and has a devastating effect… that repeats when the anchor is pulled up.”

Since seagrass grows slowly — just few centimetres each year — the impact can take a long time to repair.

In an open letter published this month in French daily Le Monde, 10 scientists from France, Italy and Spain emphasised the essential services the humble seagrass provides “to all of humanity”.

“Seagrass meadows serve as spawning beds and nurseries for species of fish living along our coasts from the most common to the rarest,” they wrote.

A wide range of animals depend on them, including tiny invertebrates that are a food source to fish prized by small-scale, artisanal fishing operations. 

Arnaud Gauffier, conservation director for the World Wide Fund for Nature’s French branch (WWF), says the plant’s ability to absorb carbon make it a crucial ally in the fight against global warming.

And he says the plants protect the coastline from erosion — both when firmly rooted to the seabed and when they wash up on shore.

Dead blades of grass collect along beaches and mix with sand to form large banks that protect the coastline. 

But for some, the phenomenon is just an unsightly inconvenience.

“Unfortunately the ecosystem is poorly understood,” says Gauffier.

“Often people just think, ‘Oh no, it’s a dead thing on the beach that’s keeping me from swimming.'” 

In an effort to fight damage to Mediterranean seagrass, France has made it illegal for larger boats — measuring longer than 24 metres (79 feet)– to drop anchor in sensitive zones.

Spain’s Balearic islands took similar measures in 2018 and enforces them with regular patrols. 

Their conservation efforts, which include awareness campaigns in schools and a seagrass festival, have been highlighted as exemplary by the WWF.

Last year when France moved to protect Mediterranean seagrass beds by barring larger boats from dropping anchor near them, Yves-Marie Loudoux found himself adrift.

Captain of the 41-metre (135-foot) Ocean Sapphire, Loudoux remembers suddenly being unable to access his usual spots near fragile beds of so-called Neptune grass off the coast of Corsica.

“We had no solution, we were pushed to very inconvenient moorings too far from the coast,” he recalls. “[Instead] we had to go to Sardinia (Italy) nearby so that people could swim.”

But today his clients — who pay some 110,000 euros ($130,000) per week to cruise the Mediterranean in style — can once again plunge into Corsican waters thanks to anchorages designed specifically to protect seagrass.

A total of 14 ecological moorings are planned for the Sant’Amanza bay to protect some 60 hectares of Neptune grass meadows, said Michel Mallaroni, director of the port of Bonifacio and head of the 2.3 million euro ($2.7 million) project.

“The challenge is to keep the southern tip of Corsica attractive for boaters while protecting the environment,” he said.

– Vital role –

Unique to the Mediterranean, Neptune grass is one of 70 species of marine seagrass growing in vast underwater meadows from the Arctic to the tropics.

The plants play a vital role in improving water quality, absorbing CO2 and exuding oxygen, and provide a natural nursery and refuge for hundreds of species of fish.

Earlier this year, it was even discovered that Neptune grass helps remove plastic from Mediterranean waters, trapping it in its leaves and forming balls that wash up on shore.

But the fragile ecosystems have come under increasing threat from human activity, with boat anchors a major culprit.

An estimated 7,500 hectares of Neptune grass meadows have been damaged along the French coast alone, and in 2020 the country made it illegal for boats measuring longer than 24 metres (79 feet) to drop anchor within designated zones.

“The orders by the maritime prefecture outlawing mooring in certain zones of the Mediterranean for the protection of neptune grass were historic,” scientist and environmentalist Charles-Francois Boudouresque told AFP.

And with so many large yachts depending on stops along France’s famed Cote d’Azur and in Corsica, the decision had a significant financial risk attached.

– Ecological moorings –

The solution: ecological moorings that “adapt to the sea floor by mimicking it” with a rough surface that “makes it easier for biodiversity to take hold”, said Line Babiol of the BRL engineering firm.

She explains that the underwater components have cavities that allow fish inside and “don’t impact the movement of the water”. 

On the surface, floating chests attached to the concrete below allow boats of up to 60 metres to safely moor — without dropping anchors that could tear up the seagrass below.

For captain Loudoux, the anchorages are a highly-anticipated solution. 

“The more moorings like this, the more people will be drawn to the sublime Corsican coasts again,” he said. 

According to Mallaroni, some 44 percent of leisure boats navigating off Corsica stop in Bonifacio, with the majority of vessels measuring over 24 metres.

The traffic accounted for 60 percent of the port’s revenues in 2019, he said.

With additional income generated by their wealthy passengers, boats stopping in Bonifacio are a vital source of income to the town’s 3,000 inhabitants.

Mallaroni says some 90 moorings are needed along the island’s shores, citing the French Federation of Nautical Industries. 

– Example for other countries –

On the mainland, a first ecological mooring off Pampelonne beach near Saint Tropez on France’s famed Cote d’Azur should be available by 2022.

Two other sites are in development, including one in the Calanques national park between Marseille and Cassis that should be operational by 2024.

In the meantime, the seagrass zones remain off-limits to boaters — although the authority responsible for enforcing rules has so far only issued warnings.

“Most of the boaters pull up their anchors and move to authorised zones,” says Thibault Lavernhe of the Maritime Prefecture of the Mediterranean.

“But there have been several repeat offenders and eventually sanctions will have to be applied,” he says, with a maximum penalty of 150,000 euros and a year in prison at stake.

Environmentalist Boudouresque meanwhile hopes that other countries with Neptune grass ecosystems will adopt similar rules — and solutions.

“The environment has no borders,” says Boudouresque.

“Other Mediterranean countries should get inspired by these protective measures.”

A Bengal tiger cub is being cared for by humans at Nicaragua’s National Zoo after its mother was unable to produce the milk necessary to feed the latest little addition to the endangered species, the zoo’s director Eduardo Sacasa said Tuesday.

The tiger, which was born on Saturday, is the fourth of its kind to be born at the National Zoo in Masaya, some 20 miles (30 kilometers) south of the capital Managua. 

The four-day-old baby, who does not yet have a name, is “being fed with a special milk for cats,” Sacasa said. 

“She is very sweet,” he said.

“We’re taking care of her so that she survives — this is a difficult period for her because she did not get any colostrum for her natural defenses,” Sacasa explained, referring to the early nutrient-dense milk mammals produce right after birth. 

The cub’s mother Dalila had given birth to a female white tiger cub — called Nieve, or snow — in December, but that baby died of respiratory problems only two weeks later, despite the special care given by the zoo. 

Nicaragua’s National Zoo has two other female tigers that have also given birth.

Sacasa said the births give him hope the zoo can be a kind of “genetic center” in protecting the species.

Bengal tigers are listed on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species as in danger of extinction, thanks to hunting and deforestation of its natural habitat in Asia.