By Staff WritersKathmandu (AFP) Dec 6, 2009 More than a billion people in Asia depend on Himalayan glaciers for water, but experts say they are melting at an alarming rate, threatening to bring drought to large swathes of the continent. Glaciers in the Himalayas, a 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) range that sweeps through Pakistan, India, China, […]
For the week ending 2 December there was welcome rain across the lower half of the Murray-Darling Basin (see Map 1). The highest rainfall was recorded in the Snowy Mountains at Charlotte Pass with 80 mm and in the Victorian Alps with Mt Buffalo receiving 72mm. Notably, many regions such as the Riverina, the western […]
Murray Bridge (AAP) —A mass exodus of dairy farmers is threatening small communities around the lower reaches of the River Murray in South Australia. In the past few years more than 80 per cent of the industry in Murray Bridge has collapsed, taking with it farm employment, property values and even entire families whose spending […]
Phil Mercer, Foreign Correspondent, Last Updated: December 06. 2009 7:47PM UAE / December 6. 2009 3:47PM GMT SYDNEY // Water thieves in Australia are to be targeted by tougher penalties as the authorities promise to protect declining supplies amid a long-standing drought and the threat of climate change. Officials have said vast that amounts of […]
By David ShukmanEnvironment correspondent, BBC News, La Paz, Bolivia Fears are growing for the future of water supplies in one of Latin America’s fastest-growing urban areas – Bolivia’s sprawling city of La Paz and its neighbour El Alto. Scientists monitoring the glaciers high in the Andes mountains – a key source of water – say […]
By Staff WritersSydney (AFP) Dec 3, 2009 The rotting carcasses of thousands of wild camelswho have died of thirst in Australia’s desert Outback are polluting vital waterholes and sacred sites, a report said Thursday. The Central Land Council, which administers Aboriginal land in the nation’s arid centre, said the corpses were poisoning water supplies, describing […]
Caption by Holli Riebeek with information provided by Kenneth Duda, USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. Normally a picturesque blue lake surrounded by steep volcanoes and Mayan settlements, Guatemala’s Lake Atitlán acquired a film of green scum in October and November 2009. A large bloom of cyanobacteria, more commonly known as blue-green algae, […]
India has long been plagued by unscrupulous moneylenders who exploit impoverished farmers. But with crops failing more frequently, farmers are left even more desperate and vulnerable. By Mark Magnier, 1 December 2009 … Here in the Bundelkhand region in central India that is among the nation’s more impoverished areas, the problem is exacerbated by climate […]
By SARA GOODMAN of GreenwirePublished: December 1, 2009 Twenty-five years after a toxic gas cloud from a pesticide factory killed thousands of people in Bhopal, India, groundwater at the accident site — a drinking water supply for 15 communities — remains contaminated, according to a report [pdf] released today by an advocacy group and a […]
Reporting by Rina Chandran; Editing by Paul de Bendern and David Fox MUMBAI (Reuters) – One man was killed and about a dozen injured in a violent protest on Thursday against water cuts in India’s largest city after the worst monsoon in nearly four decades left Mumbai authorities scrambling to ration supplies. Mumbai is facing […]
