By Staff WritersHanoi (AFP) Feb 26, 2010 Water levels in the northern Mekong River are at record-low levels, posing a threat to water supply, navigation and irrigation along a stretch of water that is home to millions, a regional official said. Northern Thailand, northern Laos and southern China have all been affected, Jeremy Bird, chief […]
Nomads paid to collect goats and yaks killed by extreme drought followed by harsh winter to stop disease and soil contamination By Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondentwww.guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 February 2010 14.06 GMT The United Nations has launched a $4m dollar carcass-clearing appeal for Mongolia as millions of camels, goats, yaks and horses perish across […]
February 26, 2010 – 10:30AM Thailand has seized two tonnes of elephant tusks from Africa hidden in pallets labelled as mobile phone parts in the country’s largest ivory seizure. Thai customs officials valued Wednesday night’s haul at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport at 120 million baht ($4 million). It is a further sign that Thailand is emerging […]
By Staff WritersShanghai (AFP) Feb 23, 2010 Authorities in eastern China have said they will release 20 million algae-eating fish into one of the nation’s most scenic lakes that has been ravaged by pollution. Taihu Lake, which straddles Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, has been severely polluted by sewage as well as industrial and agricultural […]
By Ulf Laessing SANAA, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Yemeni water trader Mohammed al-Tawwa runs his diesel pumps day and night, but gets less and less from his well in Sanaa, which experts say could become the world’s first capital city to run dry. “My well is now 400 metres (1,300 feet) deep and I don’t […]
Falling supplies due to rising temperatures and retreating glaciers could spark conflict between water-stressed countries in the region, says Oxfam By John Vidal, environment editorwww.guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 February 2010 06.00 GMT It has been occupied by the Russians, the Mongols, the Turks, the Arabs and the Uzbeks, the Chinese, as well as Genghis Khan. But […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.comFebruary 11, 2010 A new study in Science shows that farming practices in China are acidifying the nation’s soils and threatening long term productivity at a time when food concerns worldwide have never been higher. The culprit is the increasing use of nitrogen fertilizer. “Chinese agriculture has intensified greatly since the early […]
By Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 02.12.10 What’s dzud you ask? Well, it’s the Mongolian word for the sort of weather they are now experiencing. Roughly translated by Shambala Sun, it’s an unusually dry summer where there isn’t enough grass growth to allow herd animals to grow strong, followed by an unusually cold winter […]
KUALA LUMPUR: Tribesmen in Malaysia are being paid by syndicates to trap wildlife, including critically endangered tigers, to meet insatiabledemand from China, a conservationist said Wednesday. “Local tribesmen are being used by the middlemen to collect the forest products as they are familiar with the jungle,” said Dionysius Sharma, executive director with WWF-Malaysia. “The demand […]
BY HITOSHI TANOHATA AND ERINA ITO, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN Fisherman Hideo Kawamura recalls how the Suruga Bay seabed full of kelp and other sea grasses gave him an eerie feeling as a novice abalone catcher. “I went down to find grasses dancing as if they were the long hairs of a woman. It was scary,” […]
