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cogdis

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Why Eye Exams Are the Future of Alzheimer's Screening

Getting screened for Alzheimer's disease could soon mean taking a trip to the eye doctor. Decreased retinal thickness, the presence of abnormal proteins, and changes in how the retinal blood vessels respond to light all appear to be signs of neurodegenerative disease, according to researchers who spoke at the recent Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC 2016) in Toronto.

All of these could be detected with non-invasive eye exams, which would represent a huge leap forward for patients and Alzheimer's researchers alike.

Alzheimer's is the most common cause of dementia, and it's irreversible. It affects an estimated 5 million Americans, and the numbers are growing. But right now, there's no perfect way to diagnose it: Doctors perform memory tests on their patients, or take a detailed family history, which means the disease sometimes isn't caught until it's progressed. A definitive diagnosis generally can't be done until after the patient's death, when clusters of abnormal proteins called amyloid plaques (a hallmark of the disease) can be found in brain tissue samples.

Earlier detection would mean that patients and their families could plan ahead, and that researchers could better study the disease. Improved screening methods would enable doctors to identify who's at risk, maybe even before their symptoms start to show.

The eyes are attracting attention as a portal to what's happening in the brain. At a session at the AAIC 2016, researchers focused on the retina, which sits in the back of the eye and is made up of nerve tissue. The eyes are like windows into the brain, said Melanie Campbell, professor of optometry and vision science at the University of Waterloo. She told Motherboard in an interview that amyloid plaques can appear in the back of the eyes on the retina.

It's possible amyloids leak into the vitreous fluid of the eye from the cerebrospinal fluid, Campbell said. Researchers also hypothesize that amyloid proteins are synthesized by neural cells within the eye, a similar process to what happens in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, appearing in both the retina and the vitreous fluid.

Image: The University of Waterloo

Right now, in the lab, amyloids can be detected on retinas using rather complicated and expensive eye-imaging techniques. But Campbell and colleagues developed a prototype device that does the job more easily and cheaply. This new technology, called polarimetry, uses polarized light.

“It turns out amyloids show up very clearly under polarized light,” she said.

Image: The University of Waterloo

She presented results of a series of proof-of-concept scans done on human and canine retinas. The scans were conducted on a series of cadaver retinas from the Eye Bank of Canada (20 from people who had Alzheimer's, and 22 controls), as well on living and postmortem canine retinas.

The researchers found that amyloid deposits were not only easy to detect with this new technology, but it was relatively easy to count them, and to measure their size—something other imaging techniques can't do. The next step will be testing the device clinically on patients with Alzheimer's disease, Campbell said. However, the presence of amyloids isn't a guaranteed way to diagnose it; they show risk so this would be for screening.

Image: The University of Waterloo

Another clue of the disease is thin retinal nerve fiber layers (RNFL). In fact, the thinner RNFLs are, the poorer the cognition levels of subjects, according to Fang Ko, clinical associate professor of ophthalmology, Florida State University and Moorfields Eye Hospital in the UK, who also spoke at the conference.

Here, researchers used data from the UK Biobank, which included medical and health details of 500,000 volunteers aged between 40 to 69 years from across England. Of these, 67,000 underwent eye exams, which included retinal imaging. Many were ultimately excluded (including those with diabetes or other conditions that affect the retina), leaving about 32,000 subjects. They completed four different cognitive tests. Of those, a total of 1,251 participants went on to repeat the cognitive tests after three years.

Image: Fang Ko et al

Researchers found that people with thinner RNFLs performed worse on each of the cognitive tests than those whose RNFLs were thicker. And those who started the study with thinner RNFL had greater cognitive decline at the three year follow-up than those who had thicker ones.

It may be possible to use thin RNFL as a predictor of cognitive decline, she said, but it isn't a surefire method: diseases like glaucoma can also affect its thickness, so once again, this could be a useful tool for screening rather than diagnosis.

A third technique, using a flickering light exam of the retinal blood vessels, could also help screen for Alzheimer's, according to Konstantin Kotliar, a biomedical engineer at the Aachen University of Applied Sciences in Germany.

In healthy eyes, a flickering light shone on the retina causes immediate dilation of both retinal arteries and veins. “In people with Alzheimer's disease, retinal arteries and veins have a delayed reaction to a flickering light test,” he said. But, they undergo greater dilation than in people without the disease. (Diminished and sometimes delayed dilation is also seen in eye diseases like glaucoma, he said.)

At the conference, Kotliar presented a study (unpublished as of yet) measuring and comparing retinal vessel reactions to flickering light in patients aged 60 to 79. Fifteen had mild-to-moderate dementia due to Alzheimer's; 24 had mild cognitive impairment, also from Alzheimer's, and 15 were healthy controls with no cognitive impairment. Retinal artery and vein reactions to 20-second-long flicker stimulation were measured.

Both arteries and veins dilated more in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's than in controls. Also, the start of dilation in the retinal arteries took longer in people with Alzheimer's than in controls—though the delay wasn't as pronounced in the veins. How the retinal vessels behaved in Alzheimer's patients was a surprise, and this might contribute to another screening test, he said.

Finding new ways to screen for Alzheimer's has never been more important: with the number of patients expected to balloon in years to come, so finding new ways to detect it will crucial.

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On the Poetics—and Elusive Subtext—of Kanye West's Poem About French Fries

Who knew that Kanye West's feelings about McDonald's French fries were so complicated they could only be expressed in verse? Over the weekend, West published a poem in Frank Ocean's zine Boys Don't Cry, which came out in conjunction with Ocean's new album, Blonde. The magazine is 360 pages long, flush with interviews and photography and poetry, but West's stanzas are what push it to the edge of sanity. They are great, in their way. They go like this:

McDonalds Man McDonalds Man
The french fries had a plan
The french fries had a plan
The salad bar and the ketchup made a band
Cus the french fries had a plan
The french fries had a plan

McDonalds Man
McDonalds
I know them french fries have a plan
I know them french fries have a plan
The cheeseburger and the shakes formed a band
To overthrow the french fries plan
I always knew them french fries was evil man
Smelling all good and shit
I don't trust no food that smells that good man
I don't trust it
I just can't

McDonalds Man
McDonalds Man
McDonalds, damn
Them french fries look good tho
I knew the Diet Coke was jealous of the fries
I knew the McNuggets was jealous of the fries
Even the McRib was jealous of the fries
I could see it through his artificial meat eyes
And he only be there some of the time
Everybody was jealous of them french fries
Except for that one special guy
That smooth apple pie

This is some artfully artless jibber-jabber, with irregular rhymes and no consistent meter I could figure out (despite a strong rhythm helped by repetition). The lines are end-stopped—no enjambment—so you don't get the feeling of thoughts twisting, turning, or gathering steam (though in reading the piece aromatic steam is never far from your mind).

The speaker's observations announce themselves in the same flatly gleaming monochrome as a McDonald's logo. Few clauses, no real argument. Unlike the fries, this guy doesn't appear to have a plan. But that declarative simplicity belies a frightening instability.

The speaker himself fails to show up as a character until the middle of the poem—why the secrecy, and then the egoistic interruption? This West mouthpiece is dealing in certainties: “I know” the French fries are planning something, he says, and “I knew” other menu items envied the fries. But how does he know? Did the taters tell him? That would be problematic, because the “evil” golden spuds smell too delicious to “trust.” We already suspect our speaker may not have the firmest grasp on reality. (Since when does McDonald's have a “salad bar”?) Could it be that the speaker is, in fact, jealous of the fries and projecting that onto the McNuggets? And why is he constitutionally incapable of trusting something that smells good? (“I just can't.”)

Toward the end, the speaker seems so bedeviled by his simultaneous attraction to and skepticism of the fries (they “look good tho,” he reminds us wistfully) that he loses the thread. He must retreat into Zen mantras: “McDonalds Man,” he mumbles, “McDonalds Man.” But is the speaker the same person or someone different entirely from this titular “McDonalds Man,” who in the body of the poem registers less as a mysterious entity than as an interjection: “McDonald's, man”?

The real coup in this mystifying work of surrealist darkness is the ninth-inning entrance of its two most vivid and enigmatic characters. “Even” the McRib, who appears and disappears according to a logic the other foodstuffs cannot understand, covets the fries' tempting fragrance, their plots. And he is a single Rib, separated from his fellows. The oven-crisped taters are a brotherhood. The McRib has presumably not been invited to conspire with the ketchup, the shakes, or the cheeseburger, despite his familial relationship with the third. And yet in a transcendental leap, the speaker is able to peer through the McRib's artificial meat eyes, like Emerson through his transparent eyeball, and to perceive a deep, existential angst that transcends the food-human divide.

Then, the masterstroke. Like a dessert after the cognitive and sensory meal this elusive poem proffers, we have “that one special guy,” that “smooth apple pie.” He is the single item on the menu who does not envy the fries, who floats coolly above all the plotting and counterplotting of his fellow lunch options. This mysterious, debonair treat is the poem's twist ending, heralding … well, we are not sure. But he resembles an important piece of West's personal iconography—the “damn croissants” that will not be rushed. He gives those unflappable buttery pastries of 2013 an American spin, one infused with our native fruit, and with all of the hard-won experiential knowledge apples have suggested since the fall of man. In a universe of loneliness, ambition, and epistemological confusion, what precious truth, veiled to the rest of the fast food ecosystem, does this “special guy” know?

The poem won't answer these questions. And yet a pale, speculative allegory emerges from McDonald's' bill of edible fare. You can be the conniving fries, West seems to say, or you can be the sad haters who want to be the fries, squinting out at them with your artificial eyes. (Fries, as potatoes, once had eyes, but no longer do. Their pandering to commercial tastes has corrupted their vision, perhaps.) The fries may smell good and have a lot of fans, but they aren't the real thing.

Only a very few special guys can be the apple pies: self-possessed, secretive, genius. The apple pie is who the speaker ultimately wants to emulate, if he can shake off the hollow, glamorous value system of the fries. He yearns to, but those fries look good. McDonalds, damn.

cogdis

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What Does A Fish Know And Feel?

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Most of us would cringe at the thought of ripping a dog's mouth open with a hook. Why don't we cringe when we think about doing this to a fish? Our society not only considers hooking and suffocating fish to be socially acceptable, we celebrate it. Fishing shows abound on TV, almost every coastal town holds fishing competitions, and CNN routinely displays photos of fishermen with their latest and largest catch. Fishing is also commonly used as a sentimental symbol of the good life.

Perhaps we don't think twice about the ways we treat fish because we don't really know much about these animals. Biologist Jonathan Balcombe wants to change this. In his New York Times best selling book, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins, Balcombe presents the latest scientific evidence showing that there is so much more to fish than we commonly believe. And, to emphasize that fish are individuals, Balcombe doesn't use the word "fish" as a collective plural. If there is more than one fish, he uses "fishes." I had the occasion to speak with Balcombe about his book.

Why did you decide to write a book about fish and why now?

As a scientist working on animal sentience, I was often encountering new studies of fishes showing that they have rich, interesting lives. But most of this information was buried away in scholarly journals that most folks never read. Translating science into something lay-readers find engaging is something I find challenging and enjoyable. And with fishes being the most exploited group of vertebrates on Earth, there was also a strong ethical motive to write a book of popular science about fishes.

What has your research found about what a fish knows?

Fishes are incredibly diverse, and many are clearly intelligent. Consider groupers. These large, charismatic reef-dwelling fishes will approach trusted divers for handouts or just for the pleasure of being stroked. Careful studies in the Red Sea have shown that a grouper will perform a head-shaking signal to a moray eel as an invitation to go hunting together. Groupers will also point to a prey fish hiding in the reef where the grouper cannot reach but the eel can. If the prey escapes to open water, the grouper is waiting to catch it. Both species have higher hunting success when they collaborate.

Another sharp fish is the cleaner wrasse. A 2012 study showed that these small fishes learned to solve a mental problem faster than chimpanzees, orangutans, monkeys, and a scientist's four-year-old daughter.

What about what a fish feels? Do they experience emotions?

It's pretty clear that fishes can form attachments to one another, and they can become bonded to their human guardians, too. Several readers wrote to me about the games and affection they shared with individual pet fishes, and one can watch online videos of pet fishes who swim into the hand to receive gentle caresses and other pleasurable or playful interactions.

This behavior is borne out by studies like one in which wild-caught surgeon fishes responded to stress by swimming up next to a moving wand to receive caresses, which caused their stress--measured as blood cortisol--to decline. Stationary wands were ignored by these fishes, whose stress levels remained high.

Why do you think other no other scientist has written this book before?

I'm rather dumbfounded that nobody had. With all the great things we are learning about this hugely underestimated group of animals, it has to have been one of the lowest hanging fruits for an author to pick. The moment I thought of it I knew that it was something that had to be done, and it is an incredible privilege to have written this book.

What is the most interesting feedback you have received so far from a reader?

I enjoy hearing from readers wanting to share their personal stories of fishes, and I find these the most interesting. For instance, I received a letter last week from a woman in her seventies who detailed an experience from over 40 years ago when she used to feed the fishes at the back of a pet store. She had to use a stepladder to hand-feed a tank of Oscar cichlids on the top shelf. Soon these smart fishes were jumping from the water to take morsels from her fingertips. It became a game. One day, one Oscar jumped clear of the tank and made a nosedive toward the cement floor six feet below. Miraculously, a tank holding "feeder" goldfishes protruded from a shelf at floor level and the Oscar landed in it. Megan quickly returned the cichlid to his home tank. When she returned to the shop the next morning she found the same Oscar in the goldfish tank! After this happened three days in a row, she installed a lid on the Oscar tank.

You know I focus on the intersection between animal protection and human health. Why should we care about fish? Is there any benefit for us?

There are many reasons to care about fishes. For one thing, their ocean habitats produce most of the world's oxygen. For another, fishes are a critical part of aquatic ecosystems. As they go, so go their ecosystems (and vice versa). Beyond these practical considerations are the philosophical ones that recognize fishes as having lives of value to themselves. Most of us do not need to harm fishes or their habitats to live happy healthy lives. Today, consumers have many choices in what they eat, and I hope growing numbers of humans will make compassionate, conscientious food choices that no longer support industries that cause ecological harm and animal suffering.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

science

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What Does A Fish Know And Feel?

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Frank Ocean Versus The Real Ocean
It's nice that Frank Ocean just released his long-anticipated new album, 'Blonde', that some say is truly awesome. But the fact that 12 of 20 stories on a Google News search under the word "ocean" on Sunday were about his music and that on Monday it had proportionately grown to 6 out of 9 "ocean" news stories might also indicate a larger problem with our culture, society and survival odds as a species.

Our increasingly urbanized celebrity-driven culture and corporate ratings-driven news media are reducing people's awareness of how essential the seas are to our economy (90 percent of trade, also fishing, tourism, real estate, etc.) national security (we're still a maritime nation) and yes, survival. Over half the oxygen Frank Ocean breathes in before singing some of his haunting "baritone with tenor moments" comes from the photosynthesis of ocean phytoplankton that is now in decline for reasons science does not yet fully understand.

The global ocean is experiencing a cascading series of disasters linked to industrial overfishing, pollution, loss of habitat and fossil-fuel fired climate change. By mid-century, by weight, there could be more plastic than living fish in the seas. The ocean's basic chemistry is being altered by climate-linked ocean acidification that is making it harder for shell-forming creatures to survive be they plankton, coral, crab or clam. And a warmer more acidic ocean also holds less dissolved oxygen. Within decades it could look more like the seas did 20 million years ago, meaning more jellyfish, harmful algal blooms and microbial mats and far fewer bony fish, seals, whales and dolphins.

Certainly the flooding disaster in Louisiana that reflects how fossil-fuel fired climate change can and will put low-lying coastal regions at risk and the mucky green algal bloom that's choking parts of Florida's shoreline are two reasons we ought to be seeing more news stories about our coasts and ocean than we are. Frank Ocean and his family were themselves forced to leave New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. And while no single weather event can be directly linked to climate change, that's kind of like saying no single medal won by Russian athletes at the last Winter Olympics can be directly linked to Russia's state-sponsored doping program, yet the trend lines are clear. Just ask the next president.

As much as some would like to think it's about Donald Trump's policy choices like climate denial, his celebrity status and the media's love of spectacle were contributing factors in turning a former reality show TV star and real estate developer into one of this year's two major party contenders for President of the United States. Still, neither Mr. Trump nor former Secretary of State and Senator Hillary Clinton have mentioned ocean issues on the campaign trail. I don't know if they've mentioned Frank Ocean but I'd be less surprised.

In the past two weeks, I've written about what a good ocean policy for the next President should be (in Sierra magazine) where the presidential candidates stand as best we can tell (in The Progressive) and why President Obama should establish an Atlantic Ocean Monument before leaving office (in The Hill).

I've also helped launch a letter to Secretary Clinton and Mr. Trump signed by 115 prestigious ocean leaders in the hope we'll get a response from their campaigns in September and thus make the blue in our red, white and blue something voters get a chance to learn and think about when they cast their ballots.

But if the media won't address serious issues beyond border walls and emails then we'll just have to continue to work at the marine grassroots (seaweed) level and hope for a breakthrough in public awareness and citizen action. And of course it would help if some of our major celebrities would also speak out for healthy seas and the practical solutions that can still help turn the tide. That bait ball is in your court, Mr. Ocean.

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Pluto: Not A Planet For 10 Years

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A Grown-Up's View
When I was a kid, Pluto was a planet. Of course, when I was a kid our map of the solar system was very immature. Astronomers knew of nine round planets that went around the Sun, and Pluto was one of them. But Pluto was always the oddball. It was the smallest, the coldest, the last, and the planet with the weirdest orbit. But in my youth, it was always a planet, and I liked Pluto all the more for its eccentricities.

However, in the 21st century we grew up. Astronomers put aside their smaller toy-telescopes of the past and utilized their new big-boy technology. With these grown-up telescopes, we learned that the solar system was much, much more complex. In addition to the planets, there are over 600,000 asteroids of various sizes and shapes that circle the Sun. There are objects that defy easy definition that swing wildly in elongated orbits or hang out near planets or even between planets. Then, there is the big shocker: we found over 1,000 other objects in Pluto's realm and beyond. Pluto, it turned out, was not alone, was not the last, and was not even weird. It had over 1,000 other brother-, sister-, and twin-worlds way out there. There is Eris an object nearly as large as Pluto, Makemake, Haumea, and countless other unnamed orbs plying the outer edges of our solar system. These new objects along with Pluto didn't fit into the categories we set up in our infancy.

"2016-08-22-1471872002-8612962-Pluto2.jpg"

Seeing Pluto Clearly
And there is another layer to our solar system, a region even farther from the Sun where a mysterious object named Sedna lives. Sedna takes almost 12,000 years to circle the Sun and it may be the forerunner to a myriad of future discoveries in this region of space. Perhaps a new, never-before-seen planet exists 10-1,000 times farther away than Pluto.

Ten years ago, an international group of astronomers decided Pluto's fate. Pluto was not a planet in the same way that the Earth was a planet. They did not destroy it. Pluto did not fly out of the solar system or get sucked into a black hole. It did not change at all. We changed. It was as if we went to the eye doctor and got new glasses. We see Pluto much more clearly for what it is.

I miss my childhood fascination with Pluto, but it's time to come of age. I know there will be some growing pains, but after ten years let's fully jettison our childish notions of Pluto. Pluto isn't a planet. My new boyish crush is with a true oddball - a lone wolf in the depths of space called Sedna. Let's not bemoan the loss of Pluto but instead revel in what has been gained. Check it out and you'll see that Sedna is the new Pluto!

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science

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Water: the commodity underwriting our low-carbon future
The quintessential first thought when you think of saving water, drilled into us at childhood, is turning off the tap when you brush your teeth. As we age and the world advances -- with a global climate agreement and the new Sustainable Development Goals -- a broader view on water is now mainstream. It includes economic pillars such as agriculture; the immense amount of cooling water that power plants need to function; and the water embedded in the food you eat, the cotton shirt you wear and even the smart phones we cannot imagine living without.

We must now take that thinking another step forward, and consider the vital role that water will play as the world moves towards enacting the Paris Agreement and its underlying promise to cut GHG emissions by the nearly 200 countries that signed it.

Water security - access to a stable supply of sufficient amounts of good quality freshwater - is fundamental to achieving our low-carbon ambitions. For instance, China's climate action plan, submitted to the United Nations earlier this summer, outlines the pivotal role that hydropower will have in achieving its goal of reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Hydropower is already the country's second largest source of energy, after coal, and Beijing plans to increase its capacity to 420GW by 2020, up from nearly 300 GW today. To give you an idea of its importance to China's power market, Bloomberg reports that "hydropower accounts for all the increase in China's electricity output over the past two years."

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From Bloomberg Gadfly, China's Fossil Fuel Washout

Now consider the fact that in less than 15 years, a 40% global shortfall in water supply versus demand is expected to materialize if we carry on with business as usual. We find ourselves in a position where urgent action is required, in river basins the world over, to secure the water we need to enable us to meet our sustainable development and climate goals.

This reality is already becoming apparent to the business world, as some companies have found that water challenges have the potential to increase GHG emissions. For example, poor water governance in a basin BASF operate in has forced them to increase the amount of recycled water they use, which in turn is now challenging the company's 2020 energy goal. Endesa reports that many of their current activities aimed at reducing GHG emissions require large amounts of water. Carbon Capture and Storage Technology (CCS) for example, will allow the company to generate electricity from coal with nearly zero emissions, but would increase power plant's water needs and dependencies.

So water, and the lack thereof, could put a halt to our low-carbon ambitions. However, better water management could also help us go further in delivering much needed emissions reductions. Clues as to the opportunities available are found in plain sight in CDP's corporate water data, disclosed through our platform by some of the world's largest companies.

Mars reports working with farmers in the Mississippi Delta to use alternate wetting and drying (AWD), an irrigation technique that reduces both water use and GHG emissions with little or no impact on yields. And Lockheed Martin discloses cutting US$77,000 in electrical costs, 800 metric tons of carbon emissions and 8% of its water usage annually in its site in Maryland as a result of a chiller replacement.
By ensuring water security is considered in GHG emissions reductions plans, companies will ensure that their growth strategies and low-carbon transition plans remain on track. Early action and leadership will be beneficial to company's bottom lines as well as contributing positively to the communities and environments upon which they depend.

While it is clear companies have a critical role to play in safeguarding our water resources, they can't do it alone. Policymakers are increasing recognizing that they must not only work with local water users, but also forge impactful partnerships with the private sector. Our new policy briefing, launching at World Water Week in Stockholm at the end of August, offers clear recommendations for policymakers to consider in the run up to COP22. And this Autumn, CDP will be doing more to help companies take their first steps towards improved corporate water stewardship, in partnership with the We Mean Business coalition. We'll be revealing more on this at Climate Week New York in September. Be sure to follow @CDP and @WMBtweets to keep up to date with our news.

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A Market-Based Strategy for Sustainable Water Management

"The — The Murray river flows along Ned's Corner in Northwest Victoria, Australia. Photo © Mark Schapper

By Brian Richter, Chief Scientist, Water, The Nature Conservancy

Australia is one of the driest inhabited places on Earth. Yet nearly two-thirds of the country's land area is devoted to agriculture, generating 93 percent of the domestic food supply. The country is only able to sustain this level of food production through irrigation and an active water market—a system in which water-use entitlements can be bought and sold and water can be transferred from one user to another. The system is working for farmers, but Australia is still trying to figure out how to meet the needs of one specific water user—nature. One potential solution to balance the water needs of people and nature, though, may lie with the power of impact investment.

Around the world, more than 30 percent of all rivers, lakes and aquifers are being heavily tapped, mostly for irrigated agriculture. These sources are spread across 60 countries, and dependence on them continues to grow. But as use grows, so does the impact on people and nature. Since 1970, freshwater species populations have declined by an estimated 76 percent globally. And depletion of water sources leaves our communities and economies vulnerable to water shortages in drier times.

To date, our approach to overcome these water scarcity challenges has been to invest more in infrastructure to increase water supplies, such as large reservoirs that store river water, canals that import water from distant sources and wells that go deeper into our aquifers. But we can no longer build our way out of water scarcity—the cost of new infrastructure remains out of reach for many communities, and there are no new supplies to tap.

Water markets have proven immensely effective in many regions—from Australia to the western United States—for stimulating water conservation and enabling the transfer of saved water to other users who need more. By making water a tradeable asset, the system rewards those who can save some water and make it available to others. Furthermore, the cost of providing water to new users through markets is far less than the cost of infrastructure-based approaches and further damage to the environment can be averted.

Water markets can be especially effective when implemented in areas where water is mainly consumed for irrigation. If we can find ways to save just a small percentage of the water used on farms, it will free up a great volume of water that can be used for other purposes, including the protection and restoration of natural ecosystems. But having a water market does not necessarily ensure benefits for nature. In Australia's Murray-Darling Basin and many other areas with water markets, too many entitlements were originally issued, too much water has been withdrawn from the environment and freshwater ecosystems are suffering the consequences.

This is where impact investment can help. Investors who wish to see environmental and social returns, as well as financial returns, can put their money toward market-based solutions that direct water back to the environment while still preserving human uses. One example of this is Water Sharing Investment Partnerships (WSIPs), which operate within existing water markets and use investor capital and other revenue sources to acquire water-use entitlements from willing sellers.

These rights can then be reallocated to depleted freshwater ecosystems or sold or leased to other water users seeking more supplies, thereby generating financial returns for investors. While the primary purpose behind WSIPs is to move water back into the environment, another critically important purpose is to keep farmers farming. In some areas, funds from WSIPs could even be used to help farmers invest in more efficient water technologies, freeing up some of their water to be returned to the environment or sold on the market.

The Nature Conservancy, through a partnership between the Conservancy's impact investing unit, NatureVest, and its Australia and Water teams, launched its first WISP, the Murray-Darling Basin Balanced Water Fund in Australia, in April 2016. This and other impact investment-driven solutions are explored in a new report released by the Conservancy, titled “Water Share,” which shows the potential to return water to depleted ecosystems in many of the 37 water-scarce countries that already have water rights systems, the basic prerequisite for a water market. If all regions with existing water rights systems could establish water markets functioning on par with the Australian market, they could collectively generate total annual water sales of US$13.4 billion per year, equating to market assets of US$331 billion.

Those numbers indicate the great potential water markets hold for nature and investors, and it is high time to unleash that potential—because scarcity is expanding and intensifying around the globe. But with creative financial solutions, nature and people can better share the most precious resource on our planet.

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