The Natural Patriot

We often hear that nature provide “ecosystem services” to humanity that would be difficult or impossible to replace if lost, and that support various aspects of human well-being.  The evidence and rationale for this view was recently synthesized in the monumental work of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

But ecosystem services strikes many people as a somewhat vague and squishy term.  What does it really mean?  And with the inevitable trade-offs between the engine of human economic development and nature conservation, how can we estimate the value of these so-called services?

Perhaps the most famous example that addresses this question comes from a historic decision made a decade ago by the government of New York City.  The Big Apple was concerned about the declining quality of water in the area that supports its gigantic population and how to ensure a stable and safe water supply into the future.  To do so, the city could either (1) build new water filtration plants with a price tag of four to six billion dollars, and annual operating costs of 250 million, or (2) pay to preserve a large forested area in the Catskill Mountains that supplies most of the state’s water, in effect employing a natural ecosystem as a water purification plant.  After careful analysis, the City opted to invest $250 million to buy and prevent development on the land in the watershed to protect the natural filtration system.  The overhead on this filtration plant involves paying farmers $100 million a year to take measures that keep fertilizers and pesticides out of the waterways. In a nutshell, a cold, economic cost-benefit analysis favored the natural alternative.

But such analyses depend on an openness to alternative ideas (thinking outside the box, to use the current cliche) and, importantly, good data on how the natural system works and its influence on services of value to us.  Now a new study published in Global Change Biology provides this kind of data on a global scale for the flood-protection services provided by natural forests. Deforestation has accelerated tremendously in recent decades, with many costs in terms of lost biodiversity, loss of soil fertility, and so on.  Forests are also widely believed to protect lowlands against flooding, but this idea has been controversial.  The authors of the new study compiled data from 1990 through 2000 from 56 developing countries, and used various sophisticated statistical techniques to show that (1) the frequency of floods is lower in areas with greater natural forest cover, and (2) floods are more frequent in areas that have experienced greater losses of natural forest area.  Importantly, these results remained strong even after controlling statistically for effects of rainfall, slope, and area of degraded landscape. Surprisingly, despite the fact that the study compared a wide range of forest types across a global area, with all kinds of other factors that might potentially obscure these trends, the best models nevertheless accounted for more than 65% of the variation in flood frequency, and roughly 14% was explained by forest cover variables alone.  And here’s the kicker:

“During the decade investigated, nearly 100 000 people were killed and 320 million people were displaced by floods, with total reported economic damages exceeding US$1151 billion . . . Based on an arbitrary decrease in natural forest area of 10%, the model-averaged prediction of flood frequency increased between 4% and 28% among the countries modeled. Using the same hypothetical decline in natural forest area resulted in a 4–8% increase in total flood duration. These correlations suggest that global-scale patterns in mean forest trends across countries are meaningful with respect to flood dynamics.”

The bottom line, therefore, is that rampant forest loss is likely to exacerbate the frequency of flood-related disasters, potentially impacting millions of poor people throughout the world, and causing trillions of dollars (yes, that’s a “t”) in damage in developing economies in the coming decades. This synthesis of global data emphasizes that protection of existing forests and active reforestation of appropriate degraded land may reduce flood-related catastrophes.

So forests are not only important sources of renewable products like wood, or nice places for a stroll or camping trip to regain your mental balance, they are natural sources of flood insurance. And we need all the insurance we can get in this rapidly changing world.

[Source: Bradshaw, C.J.A., N.S. Sodhi, K. S.-H. Peh, and B.W. Brook. 2007. Global evidence that deforestation amplifies flood risk and severity in the developing world.  Global Change Biology (OnlineEarly Articles). doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01446.x]

In the wake of the 2004 US Presidential elections, one of the buzz streams we heard from the punditocracy concerned the allegedly historic metamorphosis of soccer moms to security moms.  Regular folks were (and are) terrified of another 9/11, evidently, and the voting moms of America had shifted their focus from health care, education, and other traditional mom-stereotype issues to “security”.  In practice this ended up giving carte blanche to the GOP, and the traditional mom issues of education and health care be damned.

Well, fair enough.  There are serious dangers in the world and security is an important issue, though some of us might ague for a broader definition of what security means than the caricature that evidently motivates certain powerful politicians in this country.  In that vein, it behooves us to consider what the biggest threat to our security is.  Is it Al Qaeda?  Hardly.  Try climate change. 

According to “Australia’s top policeman” Mick Keelty, the biggest security threat of the 21st century will be the movement of “climate refugees” displaced by warming-induced drought in the world’s most populous country:

“We could see a catastrophic decline in the availability of fresh water. Crops could fail, disease could be rampant and flooding might be so frequent that people, en masse, would be on the move . . . Even if only some and not all of this occurs, climate change is going to be the security issue of the 21st century . . . In their millions, people will look for new land and they’ll cross borders to do it.  The existing cultural tensions may be exacerbated as large numbers of people undertake a forced migration.”

Mr. Keelty has reason to be concerned.  Australia stands (if that is the appropriate word for this posture) with the USA as one of the few industrialized countries that has declined to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.  Interestingly, just the other day, President Bush declined to atend a major UN meeting on the urgent need for action on climate change, preferring an alternative that has become a hallmark of his administration —  holding his own junior meeting among people of like mind that he feels comfortable with and that can be counted on to stand and cheer at his pronouncements. 

The President is not one to be moved by an official from Australia, even its top policeman.  On the other hand, he is fond of stating in discussions of the Iraq war that he goes to his top generals for advice on how to proceed.  Curiously, he appears not to have followed this protocol on the issue of future security threats, when a group of America’s top generals came to a conclusion very similar to that of Mr. Keelty.  The report notes that “The chaos that results [from climate change] can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism.”  General Anthony Zinni, Mr Bush’s ex-Mid-East peace envoy and former commander of US Central Command, wrote:

“It’s not hard to make the connection between climate change and instability, or climate change and terrorism . . . We will pay for this one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll.”

“The leadership role of the United States is absolutely essential,” said Timothy E. Wirth, a former senator and an environmental official in the Clinton administration, who is now president of the United Nations Foundation. “Unless the United States decides that it wants to be a major and committed leadership player in this and make very specific commitments, much of the rest of the world is effectively going to hide behind the skirts of the United States and not do anything.”

But leadership, alas, appears to be in short supply here.  I sincerely hope we can rely on the security moms and other concened voters to change that. 

Yesterday I stopped by the fish counter at my local grocery store for something to grill on a Saturday evening. The selection was typical — farm-raised salmon from Chile, farm-raised tilapia from Ecuador, farm-raised catfish from Mississippi, farm-raised crawfish from China, snow crab legs from Alaska.  And a few spot and croaker, presumably from local Chesapeake waters. 

But what stopped me in my tracks was a little plate of “wild-caught cod fillets, product of USA”.  First of all, I’m always a bit surprised to see cod in a store at all, to know, that is, that cod is still being fished after the once gargantuan populations of this archetypal fish have collapsed throughout its extensive range. But I was struck by something more specific:

These cod fillets were actually smaller than the tilapia fillets.

Honestly. They reminded me of the flimsy (albeit tasty) little slips of flesh you shave off the sides of your first 6-inch bluegill caught with a worm and a bamboo pole in a quiet pond. The little cod scraps were so pathetic I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  This, evidently, is what’s left of the fish that changed the course of western civilization.  These little white morsels are the ghosts of the fish once represented by monsters as large as the burly fishermen that pursued them. This was the animal that supported the fantastically lucrative fishery that drew intrepid Basque seafarers to North America centuries before Columbus and kept their mouths shut through those centuries for fear of losing their monopoly on the most gigantic supply of animal protein on earth.  This was the fish that fed the vikings in their medieval conquest of the North Atlantic and settlement of Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland. This was the fish that saved the nascent American colony of Massachusetts from failure and gave birth to the first international market economy in the New World. (It’s all in Mark Kurlansky’s fantastic book.)

This was the fish that dominated the ecosystem of the entire north Atlantic Ocean and that, finally, after centuries of plunder, collapsed suddenly and perhaps irreversibly throughout most of that range little more than a decade ago.

Now, I have nothing against tilapia.  In fact, I eat it on a regular basis and I’ve argued elsewhere that tilapia is an ideal food because it has (potentially) one of the smallest ecological footprints of any animal food product.  But, let’s face it, tilapia is a scavenging creature of reedy ditches.  For all its practical merits, it is not a noble fish.  It cannot keep company with the aristocracy of the storied cod, the formerly undisputed King of the North Atlantic Ocean, now relegated to sitting forlornly on a piece of lettuce next to its utilitarian peasant sister.

Now there’s a shifting baseline for you.

Oh, wait, now I get it — this news is from the UK.  Yes, the country where it is evidently understood on both sides of the aisle that vigorous science is the key to a strong, sustainable economy, a safe and healthy population, a livable environment, and general resilience in an increasingly uncertain future on a crowded planet. What the Tories are calling for is so striking that I have to quote it at length:

“Consideration should be given to extra laboratories in primary schools, while children should study design and technology until they were 16, it said. It also called for top civil servants to take ’scientific literacy’ courses. Its report outlined nine objectives to help a future Tory government ‘put science at the heart of its plans to enhance the prospects of the UK becoming a sustainable and competitive knowledge-based economy’ . . . In education, it recommended that the salaries of teachers of [science and technology] subjects were increased permanently. The student loans of these teachers should be paid off for them, over a five-year period, to encourage more people to go into the profession, it said. And it called for the refurbishment of university science laboratories to ‘receive greater priority’ when funding was allocated.”

Now I strive to avoid descending into the sort of political rants that are choking the blogosphere to death these days.  But the contrast between such a sensible forward-thinking proposal and the perverse anti-scientific cancer infecting conservatism in America is so glaring that it can’t be ignored.

Imagine, even in the most deluded Michael Crichton plot, such a proposal coming from the mouths of conservatives in the USA.  The reality, back on this side of the pond, is that three of the ten Republican aspirants to be Leader of the Free World can stand up in a nationally televised “debate” and say with a straight face that they don’t believe in evolution, the central concept without which, as the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky said, “nothing in biology makes sense.”  

The reality over here is that our current administration shows not only indifference but an active contempt for, and systematic attack on, objective science, cutting the budgets of the National Institutes of Health, hobbling research on stem cells, deleting evidence for global warming from official reports,  interfering with legally mandated enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, trying to override scientific evidence in an effort to ban contraceptives, and installing unqualified political hacks in positions of authority at regulatory agencies.

Meanwhile, in contrast to what conservatives are proposing for teachers in the UK, dedicated American teachers are buying supplies for our children out of the pittance they scrounge from their own pockets, while major league baseball stars make tens of millions of dollars a year.

This is a crying disgrace. As a Patriot I have to say “Shame on this country“.

The dawn of what we now consider civilization (in the various places where it arose independently) hinged on an event that was probably little noticed at the time, namely the transition from hunting and gathering of wild foods to the active cultivation of certain desirable plants and animals.  How did people first begin to grow the weeds and wildlife that came to be crops and livestock? One part of the answer, presumably, is that as people collected and ate favorite types of plants, they began sprouting up in backyards and trash dumps from the discarded seeds, and before long people were sowing them intentionally.  Call it the “trash dump” hypothesis of agricultural origins.

As humans gathered (and discarded) the various plants that proved useful to them, such volunteer kitchen gardens must have accumulated a motley assortment of species that don’t normally occur together.  New evidence from Mexico suggests that these prehistoric human gardeners created an evolutionary crucible in which, usually unwittingly, they conjured up new types of organisms that would not otherwise exist. And thus crops were born.

This hypothesis is supported by a combination of genetic, archaeological, ethnobotanical, and biogeographical data on small trees in the genus Leucaena, of which 22 species and a swarm of hybrids occur in the Americas. The seeds of these legume trees have been used as food crops in Mexico for 6000 years, and several are still intensively cultivated today.  Interestingly, many plants now cultivated in Mexico are “polyploid”, meaning that they have multiple sets of chromosomes (usually 4 instead of the typical 2 sets).  In “allopolyploids”, the combined set of chromosomes originated from two different parent species, apparently as a result of interbreeding between formerly separate species.  Often such new types of plants have quite different characteristics than either parent does. Hughes and colleagues found that several of the most widely used Leucaena varieties in Mexico are hybrids of this sort, and that the key to their origin involves spontaneous “backyard hybridization”, as separate species normally found in different regions or habitats are brought into close contact human habitations and kitchen dumps. Along with genetic evidence of hybrid origins, a key clue to this process is that several favored varieties that are widely cultivated today are unknown in the archaeological record prior to about 3000 years ago. 

The case of the Leucaena trees is evidently not an isolated one. The new results corroborate previous findings, notably for the Agave and Opuntia (”prickly pear”) plants also extensively cultivated in Mexico:

“Taken together Leucaena, Agave, and Opuntia comprise three of the dominant perennial plants cultivated in [south-central] Mexico today. In all three genera, domestication has apparently been facilitated by spontaneous hybridization after extensive predomestication cultivation. In each case there is evidence that the prominent species in cultivation . . . have hybrid origins most likely after cultivation. There is also evidence to suggest that hybridization has been important in many other Mesoamerican crops . . . It seems that . . . the simple step of bringing species together, consciously or casually, in dump heaps and informal backyard orchards has played a central role in Mesoamerican crop domestication.”

I see two broader implications of these results.  First is the evidence provided by this study for the relatively rapid (probably over decades to centuries) evolutionary changes that can occur in species when human activities change their distributions.  We can expect to see much more of this as modern technological humanity completely rerwites the book on biogeography by altering habitats and redistributing species on a planetary scale. 

The second implication is a cautionary tale about preservation of wild biodiversity.  One of the most compelling utilitarian arguments for benefits of biodiversity involve the “library” of genetic resources that wild organisms provide for developing new crop and livestock varieties, which will be especially important in the facing of changing climate, emerging new diseases, and so on (and recent developments support this idea). The experience of early Central American farmers in developing new crop varieties through both active cultivation and serendipitous backyard experiments emphasizes the benefits of having a variety of wild plants and animals out there that provide raw materials for such experiments. Such wild variety provides a diversified portfolio for agriculture. In the end, this will serve us better than putting all our eggs in one lucrative but highly risky basket such as corn or rice, as Enron’s stockholders discovered all too painfully.

Original source: Hughes, C.E., R. Govindarajulu, A. Robertson, D.L. Filer, S.A. Harris, and C.D. Bailey. 2007. Serendipitous backyard hybridization and the origin of crops. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104:14389-14394.

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Order before midnight tonight! Operators are standing by!

Once again it’s that somber time of year when the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) issues its “Red List” of threatened and endangered species.  The report has never been an occasion for celebration, and this year is no exception.  More than 16,000 species are listed as threatened with extinction (out of >40,000 assessed), with human alteration and degradation of habitat fingered as the single most important driver of extinction risk.

One in three amphibians, one in four mammals, one in eight birds and fully 70% of plants that have been assessed are now considered at risk of extinction.  Even scavengers are facing extinction, for cryin’ out loud — not even the iconic vultures gliding ominously overhead will be left to see many of these species give up the ghost. 

In contrast, one single species has been moved up (from critically endangered to “merely” endangered).  That one is the Mauritius echo parakeet (see photo), whose population was down to around ten birds in the 1970s through the mid-1980s, but has increased steadily through intensive management and discovery of new breeding birds. The population is now estimated at over 100 individuals. Good news of a sort, but not exactly numbers you’d want to bet on.  Perhaps we can at least take some comfort in the finding that North American reptiles are doing better than expected.

One new and bittersweet development this year is that the IUCN has begun paying attention to the wildlife inhabiting the three quarters of earth’s surface covered by oceans.  The picture, predictably, is not encouraging. As reported by the BBC:

“This is the first time we’ve assessed corals, and it’s a bit worrying because some of them moved straight from being not assessed to being possibly extinct,” said Jean-Christophe Vie, deputy head of IUCN’s species programme. “We know that some species were there in years gone by, but now when we do the assessment they are not there. And corals are like the trees in the forest; they build the ecosystem for fish and other animals.”

The data in this report provide a detailed picture of what the human footprint looks like. We often hear nowadays about how many tons of carbon we release, or how much water or land or coal is devoted to keeping the average American going.  Sobering as they are, those are pretty abstract statistics.  The dwindling status of our fellow sentient organisms puts a real face – literally, thousands of faces — on what that land and water formerly supported. But the plight of earth’s other inhabitants may also stem in part from the human fault of only being able to focus on one problem at a time (can you say “War on Terror”?).  Again, from the BBC:

“Many in the environmental movement argue that too much money and attention has gone on climate change, with other issues such as biodiversity, clean water and desertification ignored at the political level. IUCN’s assessment is that climate change is important for many Red List species; but it is not the only threat, and not the most important threat. There are conflicts between addressing the various issues, with biofuels perhaps being the obvious example. Useful they may turn out to be in reducing greenhouse gas emissions; but many conservationists are seriously concerned that the vast swathes of monoculture they will bring spell dire consequences for creatures such as the orangutan.”

Although the details of this year’s Red List are new and important, the story is of course depressingly familar. It is another in the series of punches to the gut that those of concerned with environmental conservation and sustainability have come to expect as a regular part of the job.  How does one keep moving forward with this sort of news coming on every front? There are philosophical and practical issues that need addressing, and they are intertwined. Some biologists have challenged us to wake up and admit that saving most of these species is impossible, and that scarce resources should be allocated more strategically. Professor Tim Halladay of the Open University, UK, has put it starkly:

“It is clear that the mainstay of conservation, the protection of habitat, is no longer sufficient to ensure the survival of many species. There is a widespread culture of denial about this situation, not least among conservationists, who must take a lead in alerting humanity to the current extinction crisis . . . Even if they had plenty of time and money, conservationists can only hope to protect a few of the many species that face imminent extinction. It is the responsibility of biologists, I suggest, to admit that the conventional view of conservation - that we can and should preserve at-risk organisms - is simply untenable. What we can and must do is document the decline and disappearance of species that cannot be saved, so that at least some kind of record of them will be preserved.”

This is a sobering argument and a hard pill to swallow.  But with so many species in decline and no credible possibility of slowing the train of human population growth and resource use, it is hard to make a strong case against it.  Triage appears to be in order.

A brave new world is ahead of us.  There will be many opportunities in addition to the threats we hear about with such pounding frequency.  I’m confident that our grandhcildren will still find peace and beauty in their world, and we should never underestimate the resilience and healing power of Nature, who undoubtedly still has a few tricks (good and bad) up her sleeve.  But, as the new Red List makes clear, there can be little question that the future world will be much poorer in the diversity of life that makes it unique in the known universe.  Our greatest challenge will be to redesign civilization on the fly so that it preserves as much of that biological diversity as possible.  In the meantime, to combat hopelessness, there are concrete measures each person can take to reduce individual and societal impacts:

1) Eat less meat, preferably none.  This may seem arbitrary but there is almost no single step an individual can take that produces a bigger reduction in environmental impact with less personal inconvenience.

2) Exercise your right and responsibility as a member of a democratic society.  Read and understand what legislation is in the works and how it affects the environment. Then get on the phone or word processor to your congressperson!  This is not difficult, you will find it surprisingly satisfying, and it may even make a difference.  

3) Help kids get to know the outdoors so that there will be a constituency for Nature in the future.

Sometimes a bump in the road knocks us out of the rut we often find ourselves in, and we get an unexpected glimpse of what a miracle the world really is. OK, I know this is corny.  But a bird by the name of Alex — may he now rest in peace — helped to do do this for me and many others. He was the real thing, as is Dr. Irene Pepperberg, the animal psychologist and companion who learned to converse with him, in clear English, patiently worked with him for years, and opened a hitherto almost completely unknown window into the minds and emotions of animals outside the primates.

Alex, an African gray parrot, died last week, but not before showing us something deep and important about how much closer we are to other animals than we sometimes like to think. Here is a partial list of Alex’s accomplishments, from Wikipedia:

“Pepperberg, listing Alex’s accomplishments in 1999, said he could identify fifty different objects and recognize quantities up to six; that he could distinguish seven colors and five shapes, and understand the concepts of “bigger”, “smaller”, “same”, and “different,” and that he was learning “over” and “under”. Alex had a vocabulary of about 150 words, but was exceptional in that he appeared to have understanding of what he said. For example, when Alex was shown an object and was asked about its shape, color, or material, he could label it correctly. If asked the difference between two objects, he also answered that, but if there was no difference between the objects, he said “none.” When he was tired of being tested, he would say “I’m gonna go away,” and if the researcher displayed annoyance, Alex tried to defuse it with the phrase, “I’m sorry.” If he said “Wanna banana”, but was offered a nut instead, he stared in silence, asked for the banana again, or took the nut and threw it at the researcher. When asked questions in the context of research testing, he gave the correct answer approximately 80 percent of the time.^“

You’ve gotta hear this for yourself.  Check out this video  [The Diane Sawyer commentary is a bit difficult to take but the video reveals a little of Alex’s amazing abilities.]

How would Alex say goodbye? Pepperberg says that she imagines it would sound something like what Alex would say to her every night before going to bed: “You be good. I love you. See you tomorrow.”

Imagine a future world of extremely efficient buildings, arranged in their environment so as to maximize passive heating and cooling, outfitted with solar panels and highly efficient windows, and geothermal heating so that they are actually net producers of electricity by day, maybe even with inspiring vistas of butterfies and bees buzzing around the native plants on their green roofs.

Yeah, but this is all liberal-claptrap pie in the sky, right? Green building would hobble the economy and America’s competitive edge, right?

Actually, that view appears to be in error.  According to the Environmental Research Web, a new survey by the World Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) reveals that:

“Key players in real estate and construction misjudge the costs and benefits of ‘green’ buildings, creating a major barrier to more energy efficiency in the building sector . . . Respondents to a 1400-person global survey estimated the additional cost of building green at 17% above conventional construction, more than triple the true cost difference of about 5%. At the same time, survey respondents put greenhouse gas emissions by buildings at 19% of world total, while the actual number of 40% is double this.”

The new study focuses on how to promote environmentally efficient building with the ultimate goal of moving toward zero-net-energy construction worldwide. Zero-net-energy buildings reduce power and material demands through efficient design and generate at least as much energy as they consume. The WBCSD’s “Energy Efficiency in Buildings” Project aims to develop plans for achieving zero net energy use for both residential and commercial buildings. Sounds Naturally Patriotic to me. 

The full report is available here.

Can we have our biofuel and eat it too?  Obviously not.  Which is one reason that the current euphoria in some quarters about corn biofuel is all wet.  Corn agriculture is extremely resource-intensive and putting land into corn production for biofuel is raising its price on global markets, to the detriment of the large numbers of poor people for whom it is a dietary staple. In the USA, ethanol production replaces only 3.5% of gasoline needs, but takes up 20% of land devoted to corn production. The surge in corn production also threatens to exacerbate hypoxic “dead zones” by increasing nutrient runoff into estuaries and coastal seas.

So does biofuel still make sense? The answer may lie with other “feedstock” species.  Switchgrass still looks promising, as does harvest of wild prairie vegetation, which would have the added benefit of maintaining biodiversity in areas under production.

Now there is a new candidate, which illustrates beautifully the old adage that “a weed is a plant we haven’t yet found a use for.” Jatropha is a poisonous weed originally from Central America that was spread around the world, evidently by Portuguese explorers in the olden days. It now grows wild in Africa, India, and other regions of the developing world, where it is used — if at all — primarily as a natural fence between crop plots and, in the words of one Malian farmer, as “a plant for old ladies to make soap.”   It turns out that the seeds are also very rich in oil that appears ideal for biofuel production.  According to the New York Times:

“But now a plant called jatropha is being hailed by scientists and policy makers as a potentially ideal source of biofuel, a plant that can grow in marginal soil or beside food crops, that does not require a lot of fertilizer and yields many times as much biofuel per acre planted as corn and many other potential biofuels. By planting a row of jatropha for every seven rows of regular crops, Mr. Banani could double his income on the field in the first year and lose none of his usual yield from his field.

Poor farmers living on a wide band of land on both sides of the equator are planting it on millions of acres, hoping to turn their rockiest, most unproductive fields into a biofuel boom. They are spurred on by big oil companies like BP and the British biofuel giant D1 Oils, which are investing millions of dollars in jatropha cultivation.”

And, from an environmental perspective, here’s the kicker from the Wall Street Journal:

“But unlike other biodiesel crops, jatropha can be grown almost anywhere — including deserts, trash dumps, and rock piles. It doesn’t need much water or fertilizer, and it isn’t edible. That means environmentalists and policy makers don’t have to worry about whether jatropha diverts resources away from crops that could be used to feed people.”

A great example of “biodiversity working for you”. More info on the “soil to oil” program is available from the Centre for Jatropha Promotion.