Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Lake Naivasha: Then and Now

In Kenya’s Nakuru Rift Valley, the lakes are drying up: Nakuru, Naivasha, Baringo, Solai, Bogoria, Turkana, and Elementaita are rapidly wasting away, leaving cracked lakebed deserts. In only six years, Lake Naivasha has receded to the point that fishermen have dug long channels in the lakebed to reach the now-distant shore. 2002   2009 Technorati […]

Kenya: A lake lies on its deathbed

By WANJIRU MACHARIAPosted Tuesday, December 8 2009 at 22:00 The short rains that pounded the larger Nakuru District for a few days in August, September and November were greeted with a sigh of relief. For a while, residents and tourists marvelled at the replenished Lake Elementaita that had dried up due to the long drought, […]

Image of the Day: Dandora Garbage Dump, Kenya

A woman sorts through a heap of garbage at the Dandora dumping site among other people, cattle, pigs and storks, in Nairobi on December 10, 2009. The dumping site was declared full and a health hazard for the neighboring population in 2001 but chemical, hospital, industrial, agricultural and domestic waste are still dumped here and […]

Grounded ship: 3km oil spill on Great Barrier Reef

By MARISSA CALLIGEROSApril 4, 2010 – 5:08PM Maritime authorities are racing to disperse an oil spill stretching three kilometres along the Great Barrier Reef. The Chinese-owned, 230 metre-long bulk coal carrier Shen Neng 1, ran aground about 70 kilometres east of Great Keppel Island shortly after 5pm on Saturday, sparking a national oil spill response […]

U.N. urges Central Asia talks on shrinking Aral Sea

  By Patrick Worsnip and Conor Sweeney; editing by Philippa FletcherMOYNAK, UzbekistanSun Apr 4, 2010 9:51am EDT MOYNAK, Uzbekistan (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Central Asian states to work together to tackle the disastrous effects of the shrinking Aral Sea Sunday after local people urged the United Nations to resolve a regional […]

Great Barrier Reef ‘in danger of being damaged’ due to grounded oil-leaking coal freighter from China

The Great Barrier Reef is in danger of being damaged due to a stranded Chinese ship leaking oil into the ocean after it ran aground off north-eastern Australia. By Our Foreign StaffPublished: 4:05PM BST 04 Apr 2010 The 230 metre (754ft) Shen Neng I bulk coal carrier was on its way to China from the […]

Record floods impact thousands in Rhode Island and Massachusetts

As rivers recede, thousands seek flood aid and disaster response organizations assess needs. BY SANDIE GARCIA | BALTIMORE | April 3, 2010 More than 11,000 residents of Rhode Island and Massachusetts have already applied for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) following historic flooding that has hit the region. While some survivors will […]

East Siberian Arctic Shelf releases 8 teragrams of methane per year

(AFP) Recently a team from Russia, the US, and Sweden found that the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) is releasing around 8 teragrams of methane from subsea sediments each year. Now team member Natalia Shakhova and colleague Dmitry Nicolsky have come up with a new model for the Dmitry Laptev Strait region of the shelf […]

Kenya investors to lose Mau Forest land without compensation

By Paul Ilado and Geoffrey Mosoku 29 March 2010 Nairobi — POWERFUL individuals including former President Daniel arap Moi who were allocated huge parcels of land in the Mau Forest will not only lose their land but will also not be compensated. Last year’s fierce struggle within the ODM over whether the Mau evictees should […]

Fishing banned on the Sea of Galilee

Fishing in the Sea of Galilee has been banned, Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture has announced, amid claims stocks have fallen to a dangerous low. By Nathan Jeffay, in Tiberias and Anita SinghPublished: 8:00AM BST 03 Apr 2010 It is the site where Jesus told his disciples: “I will make you fishers of men.” As the […]

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