NASA’s carbon dioxide satellite mission returns first global maps

By Jonathan Amos18 December 2014 (BBC News) – NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) has returned its first global maps of the greenhouse gas CO2. The satellite was sent up in July to help pinpoint the key locations on the Earth’s surface where carbon dioxide is being emitted and absorbed. This should help scientists better understand […]

Graph of the Day: Progress toward Millennial Development Goals and World Food Summit targets for global food insecurity, 1990-2014

(FAO) – The latest estimates indicate that 805 million people – about one in nine of the world’s population – were chronically undernourished in 2012–14, with insufficient food for an active and healthy life. This number represents a decline of more than 100 million people over the last decade and of 209 million since 1990–92. […]

Deforestation may be at root of Brazil drought – ‘We’re like the Titanic moving straight toward the iceberg’

By BRAD BROOKS and ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON 4 December 2014 SÃO PAULO (Associated Press) – Vera Lucia de Oliveira looks to the sky, hoping for any sign of rain. For weeks, the taps in her home have run dry as São Paulo has suffered its worst drought in eight decades, with rainfall at one-third the […]

Ecuador indigenous leader murdered days before planned Lima protest – ‘His body was beaten, bones were broken’

By Jonathan Watts and Dan Collyns6 December 2014 LIMA, Peru (The Guardian) – The body of an indigenous leader who was opposed to a major mining project in Ecuador has been found bound and buried, days before he planned to take his campaign to climate talks in Lima. The killing highlights the violence and harassment […]

São Paulo taps emergency water reserves which may last for two months – ‘If it doesn’t rain, we won’t have an alternative but to get water from the mud’

By Adriana Brasileiro29 November 2014 RIO DE JANEIRO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – São Paulo, Brazil’s drought-hit megacity of 20 million, has about two months of guaranteed water supply remaining as it taps into the second of three emergency reserves, officials say. The city began using its second so-called “technical reserve” 10 days ago to prevent […]

Amazon deforestation in Brazil drops 18 percent in 2013/2014 – Still nearly 5,000 square kilometers lost in one year

By Rhett Butler 26 November 2014 (mongabay.com) – Preliminary data released by the Brazilian government suggests that deforestation in Earth’s largest rainforest slowed 18 percent over the past year. Figures published Wednesday by Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE) show that 4,848 square kilometers (1,871 square miles) of forest — an area about the size […]

São Paulo drought: Five major reservoirs that serve water to the São Paulo metropolitan area are critically below their normal operating levels

17 November 2014 (Washington Post) – São Paulo’s drought: Five major reservoirs that serve water to the São Paulo metropolitan area are critically below their normal operating levels, 17 November 2014. Jaguari is at 10.8 percent of normal operating level, Jacareí is at 10.8 percent, Cachoeira is at 9.2 percent, Atibainha is at 4.4 percent, […]

São Paulo drought issue for global concern – ‘The region is facing its worst-ever crisis’

By Natalia Ramos26 November 2014 (AFP News) – He cast his rod happily here for 30 years — but where a river once teemed with fish, Brazilian fisherman Ernane da Silva these days stares out over a valley of weeds and bone dry, sun-parched land. The southeastern state of São Paulo is suffering its worst […]

Taps run dry in São Paulo drought, but water company barely shrugs

By Dom Phillips 18 November 2014 ATIBAIA, Brazil (Washington Post) – Seen from a micro-light aircraft, flying low near this small town in Brazil’s interior, the scale of the water crisis blighting São Paulo, a megalopolis 40 miles away, was frighteningly clear. Four of the five reservoirs in an interlinked system that supplies 6.5 million […]

Biggest Brazil metro area desperate for water – ‘If deforestation in the Amazon continues, São Paulo will probably dry up’

By Adriana Gomez Licon8 November 2014 ITU, Brazil (AP) – It’s been nearly a month since Diomar Pereira has had running water at his home in Itu, a commuter city outside São Paulo that is at the epicenter of the worst drought to hit southeastern Brazil in more than eight decades. Like others in this […]

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