Author Archive
Water hazard: How the UN plans to provide clean drinking water for everyone in Rwanda
Posted by Independent: Martin Hickman on August 31st, 2013
Independent: A winding path sweeps down past the banana trees to the swamp. Yves, aged 13, follows the path, fills a plastic jerry can, and carries the liquid cargo home on his head, despite knowing it will make him and his family ill. Fortunately the shallow pools do not attract crocodiles, but the water must be collected before the hippos gather at dusk.
Yves and his parents live in a cement-covered mud-brick hut in Bugesera District, southern Rwanda, where they grow beans, cassava and sweet potatoes, and...
Study forecasts global increase in freak weather
Posted by Independent: Martin Hickman on July 10th, 2012
Independent: Heatwaves and flooding are more likely in coming decades because of climate change, according to a new report which found that global warming probably caused freak weather around the world last year.
The burst of heat in the UK in November and Texas’s driest summer for 100 years were more likely to have happened because of climate change, according to the study.
However other freak weather events such as floods in Thailand were unlikely to have been caused by an increase in man-made greenhouse...