By Harold Thibault, Guardian Weekly31 January 2012 For visitors expecting to see China’s largest freshwater lake, Poyang is a desolate spectacle. Under normal circumstances it covers 3,500 sq km, but last month only 200 sq km were underwater. A dried-out plain stretches as far as the eye can see, leaving a pagoda perched on top […]
By KARLA ZABLUDOVSKY30 January 2012 MEXICO CITY – A drought that a government official called the most severe Mexico had ever faced has left two million people without access to water and, coupled with a cold snap, has devastated cropland in nearly half of the country. The government in the past week has authorized $2.63 […]
Between 2000 and 2010, the worst drought ever recorded since Euro-American settlement hit the Colorado River Basin. Water levels in Lake Mead dropped to record lows. The drought not only threatened the supply of water to cities like Las Vegas, it also harmed the ecosystems and riparian areas that support countless fish, plants, and animals […]
[Desdemona’s been following this story since the beginning: Mau forest evictees. It’s a true climate refugee tragedy and emblematic of the kinds of terrible decisions nations will be forced to make as large swaths of the planet become uninhabitable.] By Peter Kahare24 January 2012 RIFT VALLEY, Kenya (IPS) – Six-year-old Victor Muruga points to a […]
Baghdad, 27 January 2012 (UPI) – Iraq is facing worsening water shortages caused by the failure of successive postwar governments to ensure supplies and extensive dam-building in neighboring states that could trigger sectarian conflict. “One prediction, which has yet to come true, has been made repeatedly by former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali since 1988: That […]
By FELICITY BARRINGER23 January 2012 To see how thoroughly the concept of ecosystem services — the economic analysis of the natural world’s intersection with human endeavors — is embedded in climate change research, check out this forecast from a group led by researchers at Duke University and the Environmental Defense Fund. It examines the future […]
Contact: Alan Buis, 818-354-0474, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov 18 January 2012 La Niña, “the diva of drought,” is peaking, increasing the odds that the Pacific Northwest will have more stormy weather this winter and spring, while the southwestern and southern United States will be dry. Sea surface height data from NASA’s Jason-1 and […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com19 January 2012 Damming of the Xingu River has begun in Brazil to make way for the eventual construction of the hugely controversial, Belo Monte dam. The Norte Energia (NESA) consortium has begun building coffer dams across the Xingu, which will dry out parts of the river before permanent damming, reports the […]
Water scarcity is growing and salinization and pollution of groundwater and degradation of water bodies and water-related ecosystems are rising, the State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture (SOLAW) reports. Large inland water bodies are under pressure from a combination of reduced inflows and higher nutrient loading — the excessive […]
Contact: David T. Eisenhauer (FWS), 703-358-2284 John Ewald (NOAA), 202-482-3978 Laura MacLean (AFWA), 202-624-7744 19 January 2012 WASHINGTON – In partnership with state, tribal, and federal agency partners, the Obama Administration today released the first draft national strategy to help decision makers and resource managers prepare for and help reduce the impacts of climate change […]
