By ANDREW WHALEN, Associated Press Writer – 18 April 2010 CERRO DE PASCO, Peru – The mile-wide gash grows almost daily with each dynamite blast, slowly devouring this bleak provincial capital high in the Andes. The half-century-old, open-pit zinc and lead mine belches streamers of dust that coat homes. The soil is so contaminated, indigenous […]
Arable land expansion has slowed down substantially in the last 50 years. This implies that much of the best arable land is already in use. Land Commodities: Investment Fundamentals Technorati Tags: soil degradation,desertification,agriculture,deforestation,habitat loss,drought,freshwater depletion
Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton (Reuters) – South Africa will increasingly use desalinated seawater to meet growing demand for drinking water in coastal towns facing the worst drought in 150 years, the country’s water minister said Thursday. South Africa is a water-scarce country with an average rainfall of 450 millimeters — […]
Nick Brandt has been photographing the wild animals of East Africa for the past ten years; these images are from his new collection, A Shadow Falls, out now from Abrams. “My images are unashamedly idyllic and romantic, a kind of enchanted Africa,” Brandt has written. “They’re my elegy to a world that is steadily, tragically […]
By Tom Whipple Wednesday, April 14 2010 11:56 We all need to pause for a minute and consider the possible implications of the droughts that are engulfing China. One of these is in the north — Inner Mongolia, and the second more serious one covers most of southwestern China. If the weather patterns revert to […]
8 April 2010 Thugs and plain-clothed police officers are destroying the homes of Ogiek tribe members in Kenya’s Mau Forest, leaving families destitute. Some houses were burned to the ground, while others were hacked apart with chainsaws and machetes. The attacks, in Ngongori area of the Mau Forest complex, began last week when most of […]
By Manipadma Jena 12 Apr 2010 15:58:00 GMT ISLAMABAD (AlertNet) – A 1960 trans-boundary water sharing agreement between India and Pakistan has stood the test of two wars and various periods of unease. Climate change, however, may prove the toughest test of the Indus River deal, observers say. … Pakistan’s meteorological department has already recorded […]
By Staff WritersGeneva (AFP) April 9, 2010 The United Nations on Friday appealed for funds to help Guatemala cope with the worst drought in 30 years and counter a looming famine, after a March appeal for financing went largely unanswered. “This appeal of 4.7 million (dollars), which is not enormous, has received only three […]
April 12, 2010 – 10:29AM (AFP) Around 50 people have suffered injuries in Peru after part of a glacier broke off and burst the Hualcan River banks in a disaster the local governor attributed to climate change. The mass of glacial ice and rock fell into the so-called “513 lake” in the northern Ancash region, […]
VIENNA, April 9 (AFP) Apr 09, 2010 Almost 90 percent of Austrian glaciers shrank in 2009, some by as much as 46 metres (150 feet), the Austrian Alpine Association (OeAV) said Friday. In a report, the OeAV said 85 out of 96 glaciers had shrunk over the past year. The biggest changes were seen in […]
