By Staff WritersQue Dien, Vietnam (AFP) July 14, 2010 The rivers that should nourish his thirsty rice paddies are too salty, and the rains are late this year. Dang Roi does not know if he will be able to salvage anything from this spring’s crop. Vietnam is the world’s second-biggest rice exporter and the Mekong […]
Decadal means of temperature of (a) the whole of China, (b) frequencies of droughts, (c) floods, (d) internal wars, (e) external aggression wars, (f) all wars, (g) locust plagues and (h) rice price in China during AD 10–1990. Dynastic periods are defined by following Chen (1939) as: A, Han (206 BC–AD 220); B, Three Kingdoms […]
Jul 1st 2010 IT IS sometimes called the “polio of agriculture”: a terrifying but almost forgotten disease. Wheat rust is not just back after a 50-year absence, but spreading in new and scary forms. In some ways it is worse than child-crippling polio, still lingering in parts of Nigeria. Wheat rust has spread silently and […]
By Maria Kolesnikova; editors: John Deane, Alastair Reed July 12 (Bloomberg) — Russia’s worst drought in a decade has damaged more than half of grain planted in 11 regions and hot, dry weather may continue for the rest of this month, a meteorologist said. “We don’t see much room for improvement in July,” said Anna […]
Addis Ababa (AFP) July 8, 2010 – Ethiopia has reassured Egypt that a new pact it signed with four other countries on the sharing of water from the River Nile will not harm Egypt. Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda in May signed the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework meant to replace a 1959 accord […]
Urgent aid is needed to avert a catastrophe in West Africa By Alastair Stewart To the north of Niger, the creeping Sahara; to the south, oil rich and agriculturally lush Nigeria – this nation straddles the Sahel – dry, hot and cruel. It has suffered catastrophic droughts – 1974, 1984 and 2005. And now, another. […]
Singapore (AFP) June 30, 2010 – Asia is in the grip of a water crisis that could set back the region’s robust economic growth if left unresolved, according to a top Asian Development Bank (ADB) official. Arjun Thapan, special adviser to ADB president Harukiko Kuroda on water and infrastructure issues, said governments must start managing […]
ScienceDaily (July 1, 2010) — The emission of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide has been structurally underestimated, as a result of the measuring methods used. This is the conclusion of the scientist Petra Kroon, who carried out research for the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) and Delft University of Technology […]
Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Paul Tait (Reuters) – China will move 345,000 people, mostly poor villagers, within about two years to make way for a vast scheme to draw on rivers in the south to supply the increasingly dry north, an official newspaper said on Tuesday. The forced resettlement for the South-to-North […]
ScienceDaily (June 28, 2010) — University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia and his colleagues say this year’s Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” is expected to be larger than average, continuing a decades-long trend that threatens the health of a $659 million fishery. The 2010 forecast, released by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric […]
