EcoWorldly

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The top 10 headlines in international environmental news for the week of March 24 - 30.

1. World — Earth Hour 2008

As the clock struck eight in the evening, people across each time zone turned off their lights on March 29. It’s activism en mass and it’s called Earth Hour. The purpose: to inspire people to take action on climate change and to demonstrate that massive and immediate action is possible.

Earth Hour began as a city-wide voluntary blackout in Sydney, Australia, in 2007. This year, they’ve moved the date ahead two days and invited the world to join in. Even Google’s joined in. People from roughly 35 countries participated in this global event, which has become a yearly call to action. Read more: EcoWorldy, CNN.

2. Asia — Japanese Man Crosses Pacific with Wave-Powered Boat

A Japanese man named Kenichi Horie is attempting to be environmentally friendly by boating across the Pacific without sails and without fossil fuels.

How does he do it? With a wave-powered boat. Wave power has been discussed quite a bit recently, with a lot of applications including traditional grid energy generation. However, Kenichi is taking things to the next level by powering his ocean going vehicle with the very thing it bobs atop. Read more: Gas 2.0.

3. Antarctica — Huge Arctic Ice Chunk Collapses

A chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed, putting an even greater portion of glacial ice at risk, scientists said Tuesday.

Satellite images show the runaway disintegration of a 160-square-mile chunk in western Antarctica, which started February 28. It was the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf and has been there for hundreds, maybe 1,500 years. Read more: CNN.

4. Asia — Third Annual ‘World Renewable Energy Summit’ Held in Kuala Lumpur

The third annual ‘World Renewable Energy Summit (WRES)’ was held at the JW Marriot hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from March 27 to 28.

The surge in energy demand and oil prices combined with the depletion of fossil fuels has the world turning to renewable energy as a solution. Research and insights to the latest developments and trends are vital to the renewable energy market. Read more: Energy Asia.

5. Africa — South Africa Considers Elephant Culling

Elephant population in South Africa has increased to more than 20,000 from 8,000 thirteen years in 1995 when the country was talking tough against culling. With overpopulation, the elephants come into conflict with people as they search for their daily diet of about 300 kilograms of grass, leaves and twigs.

South African environment minister, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, says: “Our simple reality is that elephant population density has risen so much in some southern African countries that there is concern about impacts on the landscape, the viability of other species and the livelihoods and safety of people living within elephant ranges.” Read more: EcoWorldly, BBC.

6. South America — Continued Pressure on the Amazon Rainforest

A six-year study of Amazonian small farmers and their responses to climate change shows the farmers are vulnerable to natural catastrophes and risky land use practices, say Indiana University Bloomington anthropologists Eduardo Brondizio and Emilio Moran. Read more: ENN.

Several other threats to the Amazon cropped up elsewhere in the news this week. Time Magazine focused on the threat of certain biofuels to forests. In addition, EcoEarth passed around a petition to keep soybean farming out of the Amazon.

7. Europe / Asia — Soviet Pollution

Camels cross the dry bed of the Aral Sea… A gloss of oil and chemicals sheens standing water in an oil field near Baku… Hospital staff cares for an infant plagued by immune deficiencies… Nuclear fallout from the Semey test site has resulted in a plague of birth defects… Homey décor does little to ease young fears at a medical diagnostic center… Area residents suffer nightmarishly high rates of cancer and other diseases linked to fallout from nuclear tests… These children, all from two city neighborhoods, were born with missing forearms. Many scientists suspect their congenital deformities to be caused by Moscow’s bewildering mix of pollutants… In winter, men drill fishing holes in the ice of the Ural River. Knowing that the river is badly polluted by the Steel Works looming behind them, they often sell their catch to markets rather than consume it themselves… Children play in the inky pools of runoff from leaky oil pumps. Read more and see the photos: Gerd Ludwig Photography via Digg.

8. Europe — 1000 Activists Close Down NATO

About 1,000 people from 17 European countries went to the NATO headquarters in Brussels on the 23rd of March to take part in the international non-violent action NATO GAME OVER. 5 years after the start of the Iraq war and 10 days before the Bucharest NATO summit, peace activists from all over Europe demonstrate that preventing war starts in Europe. Read more: Independant Media Center, Sherwood Gazette.

9. Asia — Buy A Tree and Watch it Grow Thanks to Google Earth

Your $5.50 donation will buy a tree, lifelong care and feeding, scientific study of the forest that it becomes a part of, and the exact coordinates of where that tree is on our big beautiful Earth. Linking that data with Google Earth shows the precise location (on the island of Borneo) of the tree, as well as all of its hundreds of neighbors.

You can buy trees that will be planted in Indonesia today at MyBabyTree.org. Read more: EcoGeek.

10. Africa — Local Communities Use Science to Re-green Tanzanian ‘Desert’

Two decades ago former President Julius Nyerere characterized it as the ‘Desert of Tanzania.’ Today much has changed in Shinyanga and Tabora provinces, a dryland region in western Tanzania.

Gradually and steadily, residents are reclaiming large parcels of land through the efforts of their communities and public sector agencies. They are rehabilitating once-thriving dryland ecosystems using science-based agroforestry techniques. Read more: World Agroforestry Center via ENN.