Damascus (AFP) June 22, 2010 – A severe four-year drought is devastating Syria’s rural communities, forcing them to abandon the country’s traditional breadbasket in the northeast for cities in search of employment. Earlier this month, the World Food Programme started delivering food aid to nearly 200,000 people in the provinces of Al-Hasakeh, Al-Raqqa and […]
Toya, Mali (AFP) June 22, 2010 – In single file, hundreds of residents of Toya wait patiently for meat distributed by the Red Cross who bought up thousands of starving animals to feed Mali’s drought-stricken population. With containers in hand they await the meat from four cows slaughtered in the village in the north-west […]
By MICHAEL JANSEN in Damascus SYRIA IS sweltering in an unseasonable heatwave which Damascenes are blaming on climate change. “We have to fight global warming now, as well as so many other battles,” asserted Zuhair, an academic. Battle was joined in 2007 when the rains failed and 40,000 farm families in the country’s northeastern breadbasket […]
A solitary man and an ox cart travel across an area where locals went fishing less than a year ago in Damoguzhen County, Yunnan. ‘The old folk say it has never dried up in their lifetimes.’ Photograph: Jonathan Watts / Guardian Drought in south-west China and the Mekong basin Technorati Tags: drought,freshwater depletion,desertification,agriculture,China,global warming,climate change
By ALI KOTARUMALOS (AP) JAKARTA, Indonesia — The discovery of three dead Javan rhinos has intensified efforts to save one of the world’s most endangered mammals from extinction, with an electric fence being built Monday around a new sanctuary and breeding ground. With only about 50 of the species left in the wild — […]
By Jessica Shankleman, BusinessGreen17 Jun 2010 British businesses need to invest in adaptation measures to cope with flooding and drought in the coming decades even if substantial reductions in greenhouses gas emissions are achieved. That is the stark warning from the insurance industry today after a new report from the Met Office warned that global […]
(University of Haifa) Cyclical changes in atmospheric pressure and sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic Ocean affect drought in the Sahel region on the southern Sahara rim. This has been revealed in an international study carried out by researchers from the University of Haifa, the French National Meteorological Service, Columbia University and the University […]
By BEN DOHERTYJune 12, 2010 Farmers in Thailand’s drought-stricken north have been told by the government they cannot plant any more rice, further fuelling anti-Bangkok sentiment in the Red Shirt-loyal region. Thailand is the world’s largest rice exporter, shipping more than 9 million tonnes offshore each year, but the worst drought in nearly 20 years […]
By STEVEN LEE MYERSPublished: June 12, 2010 SIBA, Iraq — The Shatt al Arab, the river that flows from the biblical site of the Garden of Eden to the Persian Gulf, has turned into an environmental and economic disaster that Iraq’s newly democratic government is almost powerless to fix. Withered by decades of dictatorial mismanagement […]
Sanaa, Yemen (UPI) Jun 9, 2010 – Two people were killed recently in a dispute over water rights in Yemen where extreme water scarcity is arguably the violence-plagued country’s greatest crisis. With the ancient capital, Sanaa, expected to run dry in a few years, water shortages are stirring popular discontent and fueling growing political unrest […]
