Business Green: The Chinese government has reportedly pledged to increase its hydroelectric power capacity 50 per cent by 2015 as it continues to accelerate efforts to boost its low-carbon energy supplies. According to local reports, officials said they were aiming to increase hydropower capacity from 200 million kilowatts currently to 300 million kW by 2015. The announcement came as China's largest hydropower station, the Xiaowan dam in Yunnan province, came online. State-backed news ...

Independent: A genetically modified salmon which grows twice as fast as normal is completely safe for human consumption and poses little risk to the environment according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The regulatory body's verdict paves the way for GM animals to be produced commercially for food for the first time. The creature, dubbed "Frankenfish" by critics, looks likely to be approved for human consumption later this month. Its developers, a Boston-based company called ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 "Driven by demographic change and economic growth, water is increasingly withdrawn, used, reused, treated, and disposed of," organisers cautioned in their introduction to this year's conference.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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Independent: Since its establishment more than a decade ago, the reputation of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has been as spotless as the consciences of shoppers who buy fish bearing its blue "tick" logo in the expectation it has been sustainably caught. Until now. In a trenchant attack on the world's biggest certifier of ethical fish, a group of six marine experts have accused the MSC of giving in too readily to the demands of big trawler organisations and endorsing fisheries racked by ...