HONG KONGMon Mar 22, 2010 10:38am EDT (Reuters) – Hong Kong’s harbor was cloaked in thick smog on Monday as air pollution soared to record levels ahead of the Hong Kong Sevens rugby tournament this weekend, the city’s premier sporting event. Taiwan, too, was hit by what are being called the worst sandstorms in 25 […]
The Aral Sea, located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in central Asia. Left: 2000. Middle: 2004. Right: 2009. Once one of the largest inland bodies of salty reservoirs in the world and the second largest sea in Asia, the Aral Sea has shrunk dramatically over the last 30 years. One of the main reasons why is […]
Bonn, 7 September 2009. Chetan Soni is the first-prize winner of the International Photography Contest of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the secretariat of the Convention, which is based in Bonn, Germany, announced today. The picture depicts a young Indian girl dressed in a colorful blue and orange saree with pot in hand […]
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 […]
ScienceDaily (Feb. 10, 2010) — Researchers have measured the degradation of the planet’s soil using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a scientific methodology that analyses the environmental impact of human activities, and which now for the first time includes indicators on desertification. The results show that 38 percent of the world is made up of […]
By Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentOSLOFri Feb 5, 2010 1:31pm EST OSLO (Reuters) – Losses of animal and plant species are an increasing economic threat and the world needs new goals for protecting nature after failing to achieve a 2010 U.N. target of slowing extinctions, experts said Friday. Losses of biodiversity “have increasingly dangerous consequences for […]
The Amazonian apocalypse is just around the corner, according to scientists gathered at the conference launching the International Year of Biodiversity. By Stephen Leahy PARIS, Feb 1 (Tierramérica).- The Amazon forest “is very close to a tipping point,” and if destruction continues, it could shrink to one third of its original size in just 65 […]
By Staff WritersRosetta, Egypt (AFP) Jan 28, 2010 The Nile Delta, Egypt’s bread basket since antiquity, is being turned into a salty wasteland by rising seawaters, forcing some farmers off their lands and others to import sand in a desperate bid to turn back the tide. Experts warn that global warming will have a major […]
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 […]
DAMASCUS, Syria, January 27, 2010 (ENS) – A severe shortage of rainfall that has lasted more than three years has crippled agriculture in northeastern Syria, where residents say conditions are still deteriorating in the absence of economic alternatives and an adequate government response. People’s living conditions in the area are dire, said Ahmad al-Salem, an […]
