Nicosia (AFP) Dec 3, 2010 – Israeli firefighters are battling a deadly forest fire as unseasonably warm weather blankets a tinder dry Middle East, and some countries are even organising prayers for rain. Thousands of Israeli firemen and rescuers fought to put out the fire on the second day running, as international help poured in […]
By Matt WadeDecember 4, 2010 UNDERESTIMATED from the start and then quickly forgotten. That is how aid workers have summed up the international reaction to the Pakistan floods, one of the worst natural disasters in modern times. More than four months after the emergency, more than 10 million are still receiving daily emergency assistance and […]
Of the many important results published during Desdemona’s second year of blogging, one stood out: a BioScience paper titled “Untangling the Environmentalist’s Paradox: Why Is Human Well-being Increasing as Ecosystem Services Degrade?” This question is central to the Desdemona Thesis. Essentially, the authors of this paper (Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, et al.) challenge us to reconcile the […]
By John Vidal, www.guardian.co.uk Friday 26 November 2010 16.52 GMT Last month I went on an extraordinary, epic journey through the Andes mountains of Peru and Ecuador. The aim was to record the stories of the largely hidden people on the frontline of climate change, and see how communities and governments are trying to adapt. […]
By Staff WritersNov 26, 2010 Nairobi (AFP) – Most African countries will fail to attain the United Nation’s Millennium Goals on access to water and sanitation, the world body’s environment agency said on Friday. “Only eight countries in Africa are expected to attain the MDG target of reducing by half the proportion of the population […]
By JACK HEDINNovember 27, 2010 THE news from this Midwestern farm is not good. The past four years of heavy rains and flash flooding here in southern Minnesota have left me worried about the future of agriculture in America’s grain belt. For some time computer models of climate change have been predicting just these kinds […]
By Mark Grossi, The Fresno BeeNov. 24, 2010 After investing millions of dollars, Westlands Water District is pulling out of an extensive planning effort to heal the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, saying high-ranking federal officials are derailing it. The draft of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan offers hope of restoring slumping water deliveries to […]
By Athar ParvaizNovember 15, 2010 The devastating flood that struck the normally arid desert of Ladakh, north-west India, in August has multiplied the worries of local farmers, already struggling with water shortages and harsh climatic conditions. Flashfloods and mudslides killed 233 people and damaged 14.2 square kilometres of agricultural land. Tucked high up in the […]
By Sean O’Grady, Economics EditorThursday, 18 November 2010 A food crisis could overtake the world in 2011, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, an agency of the United Nations. Climate change, speculation, competing uses such as biofuels and soaring demand from emerging markets in East Asia are the factors that will push global food […]
By Staff WritersNov 17, 2010 Tashkent (AFP) – Uzbekistan Wednesday warned world powers of a looming environmental disaster from Tajikistan’s plan to build a huge hydro-electric dam, in a new show of tensions from the ex-Soviet neighbors. Tashkent also accused Tajikistan’s main aluminum plant, the largest in Central Asia and located near Uzbekistan’s southern border, […]
