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Archive for March, 2010
Flower farms may be killing Kenya’s Lake Naivasha
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 10th, 2010
Mongabay: Heavily polluted and shrinking, Lake Naivasha is in dire trouble. Environmentalists say the cause is clear: flower farms. Some 60 flower farms line the entire lakeside, growing cut flowers for export largely to the EU. While the flowers industry is Kenya's largest horticultural export (405.5 million last year) it may have also produced an environmental nightmare. Environmentalists say that flower farms have taken water from the lake for irrigation and then dumped pesticide-waste back ...
UN brings in top scientists to review IPCC report on Himalayan glaciers
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 10th, 2010
Guardian: The UN called in the world's top scientists today to review a report by its climate body, four months after public confidence in the science of global warming was shaken by the discovery of a mistake about the melting rates of Himalayan glaciers. In an announcement at the UN in New York Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, and Rajendra Pachauri, the much-criticised head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the InterAcademy Council, which represents 15 national ...
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Comments Off on UN brings in top scientists to review IPCC report on Himalayan glaciersTanzania: Weather changes turn farming into gamble with nature
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 10th, 2010
Inter Press Service: Changes in weather patterns have turned agriculture into a gamble with nature for Tanzanian farmers. Prolonged droughts and floods have made the lives of small-scale farmers, who don't have access to irrigation, extremely difficult. In Tanzania, where the economy is largely driven by agriculture, the largely poor, rural population has become even more vulnerable. According to the national Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), agriculture accounts for up to 60 percent of the country's ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Tanzania: Weather changes turn farming into gamble with naturePapua New Guinea: New Frog FoundHas “Striking” Color Change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 10th, 2010
National Geographic: A newfound frog species undergoes a "striking" change from a black, yellow-spotted youngster to a peach-colored, blue-eyed adult, scientists say. Oreophryne ezra was discovered in 2004 in a tiny, mountaintop cloud forest in southeastern Papua New Guinea. The forest has been long avoided by locals, who believe the misty jungle to be taboo, and perhaps guarded by spirits. Though a few other frogs are known to switch colors as they mature, "I don't think the difference in color ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Papua New Guinea: New Frog FoundHas “Striking” Color ChangeKenya: Marking of Mau Borders Begins
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 9th, 2010
Daily Nation: Marking of the Mau Forest Complex boundaries started on Tuesday. It is after completion of the demarcation being undertaken by 12 government surveyors that settlers targeted in the third phase of the evictions will know whether they will be ejected from the country's largest water tower. The surveyors seek to mark forest blocks that form the great Mau complex. Lands PS Dorothy Angote and her Forestry counterpart Mohammed Maoche were joined by officials of the Interim ...
Drought ravages famed Philippine rice terraces
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 9th, 2010
Agence France-Presse: A worsening drought is exacting a terrible toll on the world-famous mountain rice terraces of the northern Philippines, local officials said Tuesday. A state of calamity was this week declared for the Banaue area that is home to many of the ancient stone-walled paddies and one of the Southeast Asian nation's most popular tourist destinations, the officials said. "The tourists still come here, but all they see are parched fields and forest fires and leave disappointed," Abriol ...
Uganda: Landslides – Experts Warn Worst is Yet to Come
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 9th, 2010
Inter Press Service: Fourteen-year-old Isaac Wadyegere of Bundesi village in Bududa district woke up to a rainy and chilly Monday morning and went to school as usual. But Mar. 1 was not a usual day in eastern Uganda. When he heard the sound of rocks and soil tumbling down Mountain Elgon on a path to destroy part of his school, Wadyegere, along with other pupils, fled home. But instead of finding the refuge he hoped for, disaster awaited Wadyegere. His house and family were ...
United Kingdom: Gardeners urged to stop using peat-based compost
Posted by Water Conserve: Water Conservation RSS Newsfeed on March 9th, 2010
Independent (UK): The star of the BBC's Gardeners' World has been drafted in by the Government as they try to persuade the public to stop using peat compost. Ministers hope that Diarmuid Gavin will help them convince gardeners to stop using peat, which is present in almost half of all compost sold by garden centres. Yesterday the Environment Secretary Hilary Benn announced a new target to phase out the use of peat compost in amateur gardens by 2020 but shied away from imposing a ban, provoking ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United Kingdom: Gardeners urged to stop using peat-based compostWater Woes Fall on Women’s Shoulders
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 9th, 2010
Inter Press Service: As a wife of a rice farmer and mother of two children aged nine and two, Sanjeevani Bandara's days are packed with chores. Yet while she used to be able to keep up with all she has to do in a day, this Sri Lankan mother now finds herself struggling to accomplish even the most basic tasks. Blame it on the weather, which has been causing water shortages that force Bandara to spend more and more time fetching water for her family, farther away from home. While the volume of annual ...
World’s nature ‘becoming extinct at fastest rate on record’, conservationists warn
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 8th, 2010
Telegraph: Despite hope that nature was fighting back, it appeared that the global wipeout of species was accelerating, they said. Speaking ahead of two next week on the state of British and European wildlife, Simon Stuart, from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, admitted that the rate of extinction had not slowed. Previously research has shown that world was currently in the midst of a "sixth great extinction" of species, which was being driven by natural habitat ...
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