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Archive for September 5th, 2010
India: National project to help crops fight climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2010
Times of India: In the near future, Goa could avail of funds under the national agriculture innovation project to tide over instances of saline water entering agricultural land. The project, which is aimed at making farming more resilient to climate change, could also apply to the state as salinity in its seven major rivers is likely to increase due to a rise in temperatures. Anil Kumar Singh, deputy director general (NRM), ICAR, New Delhi, announced this to the press on the sidelines of a seminar on ...
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Bangladesh dams to reclaim 600 square kms of land
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2010
AFP: Bangladesh plans to build a series of dams to reclaim 600 square kilometres (230 square miles) of land from the sea over the next five years, officials said Sunday. The government has approved the ambitious project under which dams would be built in the Meghna estuary to connect islands and help deposit hundreds of millions of tonnes of sediment, project chief Hafizur Rahman said. "The project would cost only 1.20 billion taka (18 million dollars). The dams will expedite ...
Guatemala landslides kill dozens, toll seen rising
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2010
Reuters: A massive landslide buried a crowd trying to dig out a bus from deep mud on Sunday, killing at least 22 people, with dozens more feared dead, as torrential rains battered Guatemala. Emergency workers recovered 22 bodies from the landslide on a major highway in Cumbre de Alaska northwest of the capital, and they warned it could take two days to dig out all the victims. "A wall of earth fell on a bus and around 100 local people organized themselves to dig out the victims," said ...
Migratory birds decline in UK due to low African rain
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2010
Telegraph: Ornithologists have found that species including the turtle dove, willow warbler, tree pipit and redstart are struggling to find enough food in the weeks before they set off in the spring to fly to the UK. The scientists believe that years of poor rainfall in sub-Saharan Africa have reduced supplies of the seeds, fruits and insects which the birds rely on to build up vital energy supplies. The finding could explain a steep decline which has led to many migratory birds being ...
Water meet focuses on pollution and quality
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2010
AFP: Increasing water pollution and dwindling water quality around the globe will be the main focus as around 2,500 experts begin gathering in Stockholm Sunday for the 20th edition of the World Water Week. "Driven by demographic change and economic growth, water is increasingly withdrawn, used, reused, treated, and disposed of," organisers cautioned in their introduction to this year's conference. "Urbanisation, agriculture, industry and climate change exert mounting pressure on ...
Diverse water sources key to food security: report
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2010
Reuters: Increasingly erratic rainfall patterns related to climate change pose a major threat to food security and economic growth, water experts said on Monday, arguing for greater investment in water storage. In a report by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), experts said Africa and Asia were likely to be hardest hit by unpredictable rainfall, and urged policymakers and farmers to try to find ways of diversifying sources of water. The IWMI research estimates that up ...
Mozambique’s food riots – the true face of global warming
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2010
Guardian: It has been a summer of record temperatures – Japan had its hottest summer on record, as did South Florida and New York. Meanwhile, Pakistan and Niger are flooded and the eastern US is mopping up after hurricane Earl. None of these individual events can definitively be attributed to global warming. But to see how climate change will play out in the 21st century, you needn't look to the Met Office. Look, instead, to the deaths and burning tyres in Mozambique's "food riots" to see what happens ...