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,” […]
By Stephen Messenger, Porto Alegre, Brazil on 02.8.10 A recently published report is exposing some shocking exploitation of the Amazon’s natural resources–and this times it’s water being stolen. Where is this water headed? According to the report, “tankers are quietly removing water” to be bottled and sold in Europe and the Middle East. This […]
By Ben BlanchardBEIJINGMon Feb 8, 2010 3:57am EST BEIJING (Reuters) – China has an estimated 50 or fewer tigers left living in the wild, but efforts to stabilize one population in the bleak northeast are starting to pay off, a conservationist said on Monday. Tigers once roamed huge swathes of China, right up to […]
By Ben Blanchard, BEIJINGWed Jan 27, 2010 9:39am EST BEIJING (Reuters) – China still faces a serious threat from pollution despite recent government efforts to clean up, the Cabinet said on Wednesday, adding the country would step up investment in environmentally friendly industries. While noting some progress at closing outdated factories, cleaning up dirty rivers […]
The mighty Himalayan glaciers are vanishing. The rate of recession is unprecedented and accelerating. If the present rate of melting continues, many of these glaciers will be gone by the middle of this century, disrupting the perennial water supply to hundreds of millions of people at the least. Explore this extraordinary and growing collection of […]
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis, DAMASCUSWed Jan 27, 2010 1:54pm EST DAMASCUS (Reuters) – Syrian officials addressing a rare public forum have revealed the full impact of a drought that ravaged the 2008 wheat crop and displaced hundreds of thousands of people in the east of the country. The officials recommended diversifying the eastern Syrian economy […]
