Amy Yee

This is not a desert apparition. It is a research vineyard, where scientists are studying how grapes can best grow in this harsh environment.

The Negev is a far cry from the temperate climates of many wine-growing regions. Yet about 20 wineries have sprouted here over the past 15 years, along with a budding wine tourism business.

The researchers are focusing on this harsh environment for a reason: to study how wine grapes can grow in the desert conditions that dominate Israel. That knowledge will become even more valuable in a world with more frequent droughts and heat waves.

“Climate is becoming more and more unpredictable,” said Aaron Fait, a biochemistry professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. “The desert model is a way to study how climate change will affect wine worldwide.”

The techniques being tested here on 30 varieties of grapes include the use of nets that provide shade, trellises that coax vines to grow in formations that limit sun exposure, sensors that measure soil humidity and thermal cameras that track how much sunlight grapes and leaves absorb.

The work is gaining increased interest from European winemakers as summer heat waves and other climate shifts affect their vines. In July, temperatures hit 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius) in the French wine-growing region of Bordeaux — the hottest day on record. Heat records were broken elsewhere on the Continent, including in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

In recent years, scientists and vineyard owners from France, Italy, Slovenia and other parts of Europe have visited the researchers in the Negev. Experts hope Israel’s desert agriculture can provide valuable lessons about adapting crops to extreme and unpredictable weather.

To study innovations in winemaking, Fait works with several Negev wineries, as well as European researchers like Enrico Peterlunger, a professor of viticulture at the University of Udine in northern Italy. The effort started in 2014 with the Israeli irrigation company Netafim and support from the Italian and Israeli governments.

“Growers are concerned about climate change” in Europe, Peterlunger said. In his region, he said: “It rained a lot in May, which caused some problems during flowering and fruit set. June, July and August were really hot, and that is not optimal for grapevines.”

Naftali Lazarovitch, a soil scientist at the Blaustein Institutes of Desert Research in the Negev, also studies desert viticulture at the research vineyard. Europeans “are looking at Israel and the way we are dealing with harsh conditions and trying to learn from it,” he said. “We produce more with less, that’s our objective.”

More than 40% of the earth’s terrestrial surface is made up of drylands, including tropical dry forests, savannas and deserts, that are home to roughly 2.5 billion people. These regions are already threatened by resource overuse and desertification and more vulnerable to extreme weather, including droughts, heat waves and dust storms, according to a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Most of Israel is arid; the Negev spans more than half the country. Out of necessity, Israel has honed desert agriculture to yield bountiful crops. In the 1940s, the Polish-Israeli inventor Simcha Blass pioneered modern drip-irrigation systems that now are used around the world.

Desert agriculture has existed in the region since ancient times. The Nabateans, nomadic Arab peoples dating to the fourth century B.C., used runoff and built small stone dams to divert water to irrigate crops and grow wine grapes.

Today in the Negev, farmers can control water with precise drip irrigation, unlike parts of the world that are at the mercy of rainfall. “Desert viticulture, where we can control a large number of variables like nowhere in a traditional vineyard, is of immense importance to test certain climate scenarios,” Fait said.

For his tests, he works with Negev wineries like Nana Estate, whose owner, Eran Raz, left a career in film production. Raz moved to the Negev to start a vineyard “because no great story ever began with salad,” he joked.

Water piped from a local aqueduct nourishes Nana Estate’s grapes, which produce chardonnay and chenin blanc wines.

“I have total control over water,” Raz said. “I control how big the grapes will be.”

He closely monitors his vines to ensure that grapes grow — not the leaves — and checks sugar levels of the fruit. An optimal yield for one vine is 4 kilograms (almost 9 pounds). If there are too many grape clusters, it strains the plant, so Raz discards them.

In the Negev, days can reach 97 degrees and nights can drop to freezing in the winter. With its dry climate, Negev vintners might spray fungicide twice a season, whereas some European counterparts spray every week.

In addition to viticulture, Israeli researchers are studying a range of techniques to grow other crops. The Ramat Negev Agro-Research Center has about 15 hectares (37 acres) of research plots and greenhouses where scientists cultivate wine grapes, date palms, olives and jojoba.

In large greenhouses, researchers cultivate cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, eggplant and other vegetables, like an edible, crunchy grass called sarcocornia that thrives in saline conditions. Even strawberries are grown in long, suspended planters.

Lazarovitch and other scientists are testing innovations including cameras that monitor plant roots and sensors that monitor carbon dioxide, fertilizer and salinity levels. Mulching techniques can reduce water use by 20%. Covering plant roots with plastic also prevents evaporation.

These innovations “will be more and more relevant to many countries as a result of global warming,” said Ofer Guy, an agricultural researcher at the Ramat Negev center. “Issues of saline soil and water, extreme hot weather and lack of water are going to be big problems in the global future as agriculture is forced into marginal soils,” he added.

“Today agriculture, and food consumption, is based on a small variety of plants that are relatively sensitive to salinity,” Guy said. “This poses a great challenge to humanity.”

In a region that gets about 300 days of sun each year, scientists closely study how crops are affected by shade, assessing the color, density and material of various kinds of canopies and netting. For example, when grapes ripen, researchers cover them with nets to shield them from the sun. This reduces temperature, but increases humidity and the potential to draw insects.

The Ramat Negev center works with local farmers, many of whom are not from farming backgrounds. This helps bolster an industry whose numbers are dwindling. In the 1950s, more than 70% of Israel’s population worked in agriculture, compared with less than 2% today.

“It’s difficult to be a farmer,” Guy said. “You’re like a gambler. You don’t have any guarantees. It’s a very big risk. In 10 to 20 years, if no one promotes farms, less and less people will want to be farmers. There’s a lot of potential and cooperation. There’s a lot to learn from us, and a lot for us to learn still.”

This article originally appeared in

MITZPE RAMON, Israel — In the Negev Desert, the sun beats down on a parched landscape of brown, undulating hills. But on a parcel of land here in southern Israel, trees grow in green rows, and fat bunches of grapes dangle amid lush leaves.

The Future of Wine: Very, Very Dry

“Climate change is there,” Simango, 55, said during an interview in December. “Things are changing in the city.”

The country has been taking steps to confront the danger of extreme weather — with the help of global organizations. But there are not nearly enough resources.

Because of its low-lying coastal perch, this city of about 530,000 is especially vulnerable to cyclones, violent storms, ocean surges, and flooding from rivers and creeks.

Storms seem stronger and hit beyond the regular rainy season from December to April.

In March, Cyclone Idai ravaged southeastern Africa in the “worst extreme weather event to occur so far this year,” according to the U.N. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. As the cyclone made landfall March 14, heavy rain and unusually strong winds pummeled Beira and other parts of central Mozambique, as well as neighboring Malawi and Zimbabwe. At least 2.8 million people in the three countries were affected.

The storm killed 598 people in Mozambique, and as of early April injured more than 1,600 because of falling trees and debris, according to the government. More than 130,000 people across the country were displaced.

In Beira, about 300,000 people who live in flimsy housing in crowded, haphazard settlements are especially vulnerable to natural disasters. Dirty, stagnant floodwaters also breed mosquitoes and deadly diseases. In Mozambique, there were about 6,600 cholera cases and nearly 15,000 malaria cases in one province, as of April 22.

About six weeks later, Cyclone Kenneth hit northern Mozambique, killing at least five people and destroying nearly 30,000 homes. It was the first time that two cyclones had struck Mozambique in the same season.

Mozambique ranks third in Africa for vulnerability to climate change. It has about 2,300 kilometers (more than 1,400 miles) of coastline along the Indian Ocean — about 300 kilometers longer than the entire western coast of the United States — as well as nine river basins prone to flooding. The country has a history of natural disasters. In 2000, storms and flooding killed 800 people.

The human toll of natural disasters is expected to increase as Africa’s population swells, especially in cities, leaving denser communities vulnerable to widespread destruction.

“Urbanization is a major driver of risk on this continent,” said Michel Matera, senior urban specialist at the World Bank based in Maputo, the capital.

In Beira, the population is projected to double in the next 10 to 15 years, Simango estimated.

This city, known for once-grand buildings abandoned by Portuguese colonialists, has been trying to fortify itself against climate change.

But it is impoverished people like Eliza Shica who are most vulnerable to extreme weather.

In December, Shica, 25, stood outside her modest cinder-block house alongside Beira’s new drainage canal, cradling her 3-month-old baby. The mother of three said the creek outside her home would flood during the rainy season each spring. “It was really bad,” she said. “There was water everywhere. Water came into the house.” The canal, Shica said, stanched flooding.

With thousands of people still displaced in Beira, it is unclear how Shica and her family fared after Cyclone Idai. Even months before the havoc from the cyclone, Simango said, “You see a lot of families taking off days or weeks from work, sleeping on tables, removing furniture. They are suffering a long, long time.”

Last year, to reduce the threat of flooding, Beira finished dredging and rehabilitating an outdated and ineffective stormwater drainage system; constructed almost 7 miles of drainage canals in flood-prone areas; and built a large basin to retain water that would normally inundate dense settlements.

The drainage system and basin worked well during heavy rains earlier this year, Simango said. Even after Cyclone Idai, Beira faced less flooding than other parts of the country. “Now we need to extend our drainage network to other parts of the city.”

The new infrastructure was planned and built starting in 2012 with $120 million of credit from an arm of the World Bank. “The challenge is huge. More work is needed in terms of investment and maintenance of the system,” Matera said.

A few days after Cyclone Idai, the World Bank approved a $90 million grant to support Mozambique’s second disaster risk management plan, which includes making school infrastructure more resilient to storms. And on May 3, the World Bank announced an additional $545 million in financing for Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe to rebuild infrastructure and water supply and support early storm warning systems, among other projects.

In Beira, Cyclone Idai’s strong winds were more destructive than the floodwaters. Wind destroyed everything from houses to schools, hospitals and factories, Simango said.

“The wind damage was way beyond anything ever experienced in Beira before,” said Ben Lamoree, a Dutch consultant who leads Beira’s post-cyclone recovery task force. Wind damage “was the real catastrophe, while the limited flooding was probably experienced as ‘normal.’”

New buildings that can withstand winds up to 150 mph are being discussed with the U.N. Human Settlements Program (U.N.-Habitat) and other humanitarian agencies. That and many other issues will be on the agenda during a donors’ conference in Mozambique at the end of May, as part of a larger recovery plan.

Mozambique has also started other adaptation measures. With support from the U.N. Development Program, the country carried out a pilot program from 2012 to 2017 that improved meteorological monitoring and climate data collection. Under the program, local disaster management committees were formed in towns to organize early warning and evacuation systems.

Beira was also building an urban park around the mouth of a river with about $30 million from the Climate Investment Funds, a group of government donors, and KfW, the German development bank. The green space was meant to improve drainage to the sea and provide more trees to delay rain runoff.

Before, an urban creek overgrown with vegetation and clogged with trash obstructed the flow of water.

The Dutch government funded a new master plan for Beira to expand on higher ground, improve drainage and fortify its port, among other measures. And in 2012 the government approved a national climate change mitigation and adaptation plan, although implementation depends on funding.

But plans are easier to make than to pay for and execute.

“Strategies themselves are not the bottleneck,” Lamoree said. “What is lacking is the necessary investment in infrastructure that is required to achieve flood protection. The money is simply not there, and donors are unwilling to finance.”

He added that countries like the Netherlands and Bangladesh invested about 1% to 2% annually in flood protection. “For Mozambique, with its vulnerability and low gross domestic product, the figure could be higher,” Lamoree said.

Challenges abound for resource-strapped developing countries. Africa’s coastal and riverside communities suffer from storms and flooding. At the other extreme, the continent’s hot, arid areas are highly vulnerable to drought. Both natural disasters can occur in proximity to each other.

In inland Mozambique, “10 kilometers away from river flooding, there are communities suffering from drought,” said Janeiro Avelino, former program specialist at UNDP based in Maputo. “It’s quite a unique situation.”

Ideally, canals could be built to divert water from Mozambique’s flood regions to drought-prone areas, Avelino suggested.

This article originally appeared in <a id="79ee1923-1616-3d74-a220-3db7048c3cec" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/climate/mozambique-climate-change-protection.html">The New York Times</a>.

Mozambique looks beyond Cyclone Idai to better protection in the future

BEIRA, Mozambique — Daviz Simango grew up in Beira, the port city on the Indian Ocean, and has been mayor since 2003. He has seen many changes in Mozambique’s fourth-largest city, including the weather: Flooding has worsened over the years, he observed.

Armed with brooms and shovels, they sweep up the usual detritus of discarded vegetables and fruit, along with bottles and plastic packaging, and throw it into the maw of the trucks that haul it away to the dump.

In developing countries, trash doesn’t easily disappear, so this scene of formal garbage collection signals progress in Dar es Salaam, East Africa’s largest city.

But complicating the trash disposal problem is the increasing amount of electronic waste. E-waste includes everything from computer monitors to television sets to cellphones and beyond.

Regular garbage collectors are not equipped to deal with e-waste. And much of it is scavenged for recyclables, stored in warehouses, then dumped.

Solar energy products that help low-income, rural people without electricity are also adding to the e-waste blight. As solar energy booms in the region, so do expired lead-acid batteries for rooftop solar panels and lithium batteries for solar lamps. E-waste can damage the environment by leaking dangerous chemicals into groundwater and harm people who scavenge recyclable materials by hand.

Already an environmental concern in wealthier countries, the problem is growing in places like East Africa as incomes rise and more people can afford electronic devices.

But many of these regions also lack facilities and equipment to properly dispose of the waste.

In Tanzania, “there’s no training for hazardous materials,” said Allan Suddih, general manager of Green WastePro, a waste management company here that does not deal in e-waste.

In Dar es Salaam, for example, laborers who collect heavy lead-acid batteries used in cars, power backup systems and rooftop solar systems frequently break them open with machetes and drain the acid into the ground by hand. Then they sell those batteries to factories that melt lead scrap in furnaces to be resold to dealers.

The process pollutes the soil and water with lead, which can lead to brain damage and other health problems, according to a report from Phenix Recycling, which operated briefly in Tanzania.

Water and soil around the Msimbazi River are already polluted from battery, steel, paint, food processing and other factory waste, according to a paper published in 2018 in the Journal of Scientific Research and Reports. Samples showed levels of chromium, copper and lead far above the World Health Organization’s safety levels.

“The chance of having contaminated groundwater is very high,” said Ghanima Chanzi, an engineer at the Water Institute in Dar es Salaam who wrote the paper.

Water from the river is used to irrigate nearby vegetable fields, she said, adding that Tanzania has virtually no safe disposal systems for industrial waste.

In East Africa, the vast majority of expired lead-acid batteries are car batteries and power backup systems, used during frequent blackouts. Solar products account for a fraction of overall e-waste, although the amount is growing as the industry booms.

Power Africa, an initiative of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and various partners aim to have 25 million to 30 million new solar connections across Africa by 2030.

Companies mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia sold 3.7 million solar energy products, including solar lamps and rooftop systems, in the first half of 2018, according to a report from the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association (GOGLA), a nonprofit organization representing the off-grid solar industry.

Solar energy has clear benefits, of course. It is a clean alternative to fossil fuels, which contribute to climate change.

It provides renewable energy that is often cheaper than electricity created from dirty diesel generators and kerosene.

However, the lithium batteries in solar lanterns are difficult to recycle. They are often dumped or even burned with other trash.

Rooftop solar systems connect to lead-acid batteries that last five to eight years if properly maintained and then are discarded.

Some lead-acid battery companies provide formal recycling services in East Africa. But they are limited.

“There are not sufficient facilities with robust health and safety standards to handle lead-acid batteries,” acknowledged Drew Corbyn, program manager at GOGLA.

Solar companies, industry donors and investors are starting to address e-waste, especially because environmental pollution and health risks are undermining their green brands.

“By taking a proactive stance and working with local and regional governments now, the industry can avoid punitive measures in the future,” said Declan Murray, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh who studies e-waste in Africa.

Investors interested in social good often have stringent environmental and social criteria. They are also increasingly concerned about hazardous solar e-waste.

Companies that can show proper e-waste management plans presumably will have an advantage, Corbyn said. However, it is a “challenge that requires further work and investment.”

To help address the problem, aid agencies in the United Kingdom and the United States have vowed to give $1 million in grants to companies addressing solar e-waste in sub-Saharan Africa. The aid is available through the Global Leap Awards program, supported by groups like the USAID.

For example, German solar company Mobisol is working with Associated Battery Manufacturers in Kenya and with Enviroserve, which opened an e-waste recycling center in Rwanda in December 2017.

That center is building a lead-acid battery treatment center about an hour from Kigali, the capital, said Olivier Mbera, the center’s manager.

In Nairobi, Kenya, the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Centre, the country’s only registered e-waste recycler, collects batteries but sends complex materials to Europe.

Mobisol is also using technology for better maintenance. Solar home systems have a controller with a modem and SIM card.

“It communicates with our database and informs us about the system performance, energy consumption, appliance use,” explained Paula Berning, corporate sustainability manager at Mobisol.

“We find out automatically if something is wrong with the product.”

The need to confront the waste problem does not necessarily guarantee a business’s success, however. Phenix Recycling was founded by Athina Kyriakopoulou, who worked for several years at solar energy companies in Tanzania and Uganda, where she saw the “alarming” accumulation of e-waste.

Phenix received e-waste from clients including the solar companies M-Kopa and Mobisol. It sent difficult-to-recycle circuit boards and lithium batteries to Belgium, and solar panels to South Africa, Israel and Belgium.

A lot of e-waste must be sent abroad for recycling that meets international standards. Phenix also received conventional recyclable materials like plastic and paper.

Despite the huge need for recycling services, many businesses still struggle for support and funding.

Case in point: Phenix closed down last year partly because of “the lack of investors willing to fund waste companies, and a hesitation from companies to pay for their waste because of lack of regulation or lack of enforcement,” explained Kyriakopoulou.

A lot of money goes into understanding the issue “but not yet to support growing companies. Phenix came a few years too early,” she said.

But Kyriakopoulou is optimistic that e-waste recycling in East Africa will improve with stronger regulation and more competition. There may be hope yet for Phenix to rise from the ashes.

This article originally appeared in <a id="501d7a4e-d346-3594-a291-07cb18a71cdf" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/climate/electronic-marvels-turn-into-dangerous-trash-in-east-africa.html">The New York Times</a>.

Electronic Marvels Turn into Dangerous Trash in East Africa

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — After nightfall, when trash covers the streets of the busy Kariakoo market here, compactor trucks rumble along followed by men in green uniforms and women wearing skirts and rubber boots.

Electronic marvels turn into dangerous trash in East Africa

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Amy Yee

Articles written by the author

The Future of Wine: Very, Very Dry

Mozambique looks beyond Cyclone Idai to better protection in the future

Electronic marvels turn into dangerous trash in East Africa