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Archive for September, 2010
Diverse water sources seen key to food security
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 7th, 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 ...
Biofuels and the Scramble for Farmland in Africa
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 7th, 2010
AllAfrica: The European Union has been urged to drop its pledge to produce 10 per cent of all transport fuels from biofuels by 2020 because of the effect this has had on the purchase of African land by multinational companies. According to a report released on August 30 by a UK-based campaign group, Friends of the Earth, the amount of land being taken in Africa to meet the EU's rising demand for biofuels "is underestimated and out of control.' Its report echoes findings from another UK ...
Unpredictable Weather Could Lead To Global Food Crisis
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 7th, 2010
REDORBIT: Experts meeting in Stockholm during the annual World Water Week conference are concerned that unpredictable weather patterns around the world could endanger global food security, according to Tuesday reports from AFP's Nina Larson. "We are getting to a point where we are getting more water, more rainy days, but it's more variable, so it leads to droughts and it leads to floods," Sunita Narain, the head of the Centre for Science and Environment in India, told Larson during the ...
Climate change threatens rural poor
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 7th, 2010
United Press International: Erratic rainfall patterns caused by global climate change are a growing threat to the world's rural poor, a water conference in Sweden was told. "Millions of farmers in communities dependent on rain fed agriculture are at risk from decreasing and erratic availability of water," said Colin Chartres, director general of the International Water Management Institute, which released a report to coincide with World Water Week in Stockholm. "Climate change will hit these people hard, so we ...
How to Stem a Global Food Crisis? Store More Water
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 7th, 2010
National Geographic: This post is part of a special National Geographic news series on global water issues. The key to averting a global food crisis may simply be a matter of storing more water, according to a new report released yesterday at World Water Week in Stockholm. As we've seen with severe droughts in Pakistan followed just months later by debilitating floods, the climate change impacts scientists have warned us about for years may finally be here, making the weather harder to predict and ...
Diverse water sources seen key to food security
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 7th, 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 ...
Ecuador’s tallest waterfall to be destroyed by Chinese dam
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 7th, 2010
Mongabay: San Rafael Falls, Ecuador's tallest waterfall, is threatened by a Chinese-funded hydroelectric project, reports Save America's Forests, an environmental group. The 1,500 megawatt Coca-Codo Sinclair Hydroelectric Project will divert water flow away from the 480-foot San Rafael Falls, leaving it "high and dry." Worse, the project, which is scheduled for completion in 2016, will be pressure on Sumaco Biosphere Reserve, an area so renowned for its biodiversity that "even the oil companies ...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Ecuador’s tallest waterfall to be destroyed by Chinese damClimate change may add to disaster death tolls
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 7th, 2010
Reuters: Natural disasters are tending to kill fewer people but climate change may add to the toll by unleashing more extreme weather and causing after-effects such as disease and malnutrition, experts say. Better warnings of cyclones or heat waves and an easing of poverty in developing nations in the past few decades have made many nations better prepared for weather extremes, helping to curb death tolls. "In terms of actually saving lives we are doing well," said Diarmid ...
Access to clean water down due to urbanisation: UN
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 7th, 2010
AFP: Global efforts to improve access to drinking water have been hampered by rapid urbanisation, with the proportion of people in urban areas with access actually declining, according to UN figures presented at a conference in Stockholm this week. "In cities, there are today more people suffering from a poor and unsatisfactory access to safe water and sanitation than at the end of the 20th century," Gerard Payen, who heads up the International Federation of Private Water Operators ...
Food crisis worsens in central Africa
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 7th, 2010
New York Times: Torrential rains and flash floods that swept through cities and villages in West Africa in late August have intensified a food crisis in the region, leaving upwards of 10 million people suffering from severe food shortages, the United Nations and relief organizations warned last week. The floods, which destroyed crops and livestock, struck an area already on the brink of famine after successive years of drought and failed harvests. Rising world grain prices, resulting partly ...