LONDON (Reuters) – Floods, storms, drought and other climate-related natural disasters drove 20 million people from their homes last year, nearly four times as many as were displaced by conflicts, a new U.N. report said Tuesday. The study tried to quantify for the first time the number of people forced to flee their homes because […]
Rome (AFP) Sept 21, 2009 – Drought, conflict and displacement are causing the worst humanitarian crisis in war-torn Somalia in 18 years, the UN food agency warned Monday. Some 3.6 million people, about half the Somali population, need emergency aid including 1.3 million people displaced by fighting in the Horn of Africa country, the Food […]
Geneva (AFP) Sept 18, 2009 – The United Nations warned Friday that Guatemala is facing its worst drought in three decades, and that at least 2.5 million people have been affected by the crisis. “The country is facing the worst drought in 30 years, which has triggered a food crisis,” said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of […]
By Alex Morales Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) — Diverting overseas aid from economic development to fight global warming may threaten the lives of at least 4.5 million children in the poorest nations, the anti-poverty group Oxfam said. Pledges made by the 27-nation European Union and various donors to help the developing world adapt to higher sea […]
Pictures of hundreds of cow carcasses being tipped into a mass grave near Nairobi highlight the scale of the natural disaster By Xan Rice in Nairobi guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 September 2009 The devastating drought sweeping across Kenya is causing widespread hunger, thirst and, in the case of cattle, death. Pictures of hundreds of cow carcasses […]
By MALCOLM BROWN, September 18, 2009 FREDDI MARTIN, who has often been a lone voice warning about fire catastrophe, looks out from her balcony across the East Killara bushland and despairs of the prospects of the Ku-ring-gai area getting through the next long, hot summer. For years Ms Martin has sat as the community representative […]
By Jeremy Hance Kenya was once considered one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s success stories: the country possessed a relatively stable government, a good economy, a thriving tourist industry due to a beautiful landscape and abundant wildlife. But violent protests following a disputed election in 2007 hurt the country’s reputation, and then—even worse—drought and famine struck the […]
Kenya risk is only Medium? The global map of hydro-meteorological natural disasters profiles 208 countries. It displays a subset of the data used in Maplecroft’s global map of natural disasters. The rationale behind mapping subsets of natural disaster data is that each type of natural disaster presents different challenges in terms of preparedness and response […]
By Madeleine Baran, Minnesota Public RadioSeptember 15, 2009 St. Paul, Minn. — A new article by University of Minnesota ecologists says Minnesota’s forests could shrink more rapidly than expected, as droughts, fires, and growth of native and exotic species accelerate the changes caused by global warming. The authors argue that prairie lands could expand by […]
In the isolated border lands between Kenya and Somalia, families have always clung to a precarious existence. Now a decade of droughts has tested their endurance By Peter Beaumont in Elwak Hawa Hassan comes leading three donkeys, accompanied by two female relatives and a handful of the family’s smallest children. They have walked out of […]
