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Archive for October 26th, 2010
Brazilian Communities Find Ways to Live in Semiarid Environment
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 26th, 2010
Inter Press Service: No longer is the image of women trudging through fields carrying heavy water vessels on their heads just a "quaint" scene of Brazil's semiarid northeast, for outsiders. In many parts of this impoverished region, it's also an increasingly rare sight for the locals, as it gradually becomes a thing of the past, thanks to a simple initiative that is spreading to other countries: the harvesting and storing of rainwater. "Women used to have to walk six or eight kilometres carrying 20 ...
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Drought has Amazon tributary at record low levels
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 26th, 2010
Business Week: A severe drought has dropped water levels on a major Amazon tributary to their lowest point since officials began keeping records more than a century ago, the government reported Monday, cutting off dozens of communities who depend on the river for work and transportation. Floating homes along the Rio Negro now rest on muddy flats, and locals have had to modify boats to run in shallower waters in a region without roads. Some riverbanks have caved in, although no injuries have been ...
United States: Court approves new Hanford cleanup schedule
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 26th, 2010
AP: The U.S. District Court in Spokane has approved a new schedule for cleaning up toxic waste in underground tanks at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Watchdog groups have complained that the new schedule delays cleanup at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation for too long. But federal and state officials said the consent decree imposes a new, enforceable and achievable schedule for ridding the tanks of waste. In a statement Tuesday, Gov. Chris ...
Greenpeace hands PNG ‘golden chainsaw.’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 26th, 2010
Sydney Morning Herald: Greenpeace has presented the Papua New Guinea government with a "Golden Chainsaw" for being greedy rather than green when it comes to tackling climate change. Greenpeace gave the award to PNG representative Federica Bietta during climate change talks in Nagoya, Japan, on Monday. Greenpeace said it chose PNG for the dubious honour for its continued corruption in the forestry sector, stalling UN talks on reducing climate change, disregard for indigenous people's rights and ...
Fifth of vertebrates face extinction-study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 26th, 2010
Reuters: About a fifth of the world's vertebrates are threatened with extinction, a major review has found, highlighting the plight of nature that is the focus of global environment talks underway in Japan. The study by more than 170 scientists across the globe used data for 25,000 species from the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of threatened species and examined the status of the world's mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes. The authors ...
Climate change and water issues
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 26th, 2010
Sydney Morning Herald: "Politicians dream this up to take your mind off the global meltdown to distract people. It is also designed to appease the Greens" ... Mayor and climate change sceptic Peter Laird. The anger over plans for water cuts along the Murray-Darling Basin underlines how the issues of water, climate change and the environment play out in country and city, writes Debra Jopson. The angular remains of John Pettigrew's 10,000 peach trees lie in his paddocks where he has pushed them over, ...
Brazil’s Amazon region suffers severe drought
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 26th, 2010
Reuters: A severe drought has pushed river levels in Brazil's Amazon region to record lows, leaving isolated communities dependent on emergency aid and thousands of boats stranded on parched riverbeds. The drought fits a pattern of more extreme weather in the world's largest rain forest in recent years and is, scientists say, an expected result of global warming. Last year, the region was hit by widespread flooding and in 2005 it endured a devastating drought. The level of the dark Rio ...
More ducks land on Syncrude Canada oil sands pond
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 26th, 2010
Reuters: About 125 ducks had to be euthanized after landing on a toxic waste pond owned by Syncrude Canada Ltd, just three days after the oil sands producer was penalized C$3 million for a similar incident two years ago that killed 1,600 waterfowl. In a statement posted on its website, Syncrude said about 200 birds landed on its Mildred Lake tailings pond in the northern Alberta oil sands on Monday night and the majority had to be euthanized after becoming fouled by tar-like bitumen floating ...
Food security risk if crop biodiversity lost: report
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 26th, 2010
Reuters: Future global food security may be at risk unless greater efforts are made to conserve and use the genetic diversity of cultivated crops and their wild relatives, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said. The world's cereals output needs to rise by 1 billion metric tonnes a year by 2050 to feed a population that is expected to grow by about 40 percent by then from 2005, the FAO said in a report published on Tuesday, reaffirming its earlier ...
COP10 flirts with Copenhagen funk
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 26th, 2010
Japan Times: As the COP10 biodiversity conference headed into its second week Monday with no sign of accord on the key issues dividing delegates, participants feared the same failure that befell last year's climate change talks in Copenhagen. "COP10hagen" was the word on the lips of many delegates, those from nongovernmental organizations in particular, as no progress was reported on securing a strong new agreement on access and benefit-sharing (ABS), after negotiators met over the weekend. COP10 ...