In many parts of Africa, climate change threatens to unravel women’s lives putting paid decades of efforts aimed at improving women’s lives and livelihoods. Unfortunately, women in rural areas lack of knowledge on the imminent dangers posed by climate change.
Despite the fact that women living in poverty are the most threatened by the dangers that stem from global warming, they also key actors in ensuring their communities’ ability to cope with and adapt to climate change.
In general, women lives are more intimitately connected to the environment more than men. Oftentimes, men tend to be away in the cities while the women look after children and work on the land in rural areas.
Many women depend on the ecosystem for food, energy, water and medicine, the very ecosystem which is threatened by the specter of climate change. Read the rest of this entry »
Baoli - A centuries old step-well in the heart of Delhi city.
The urbanization process in India in the 20th century led to the formation of large city-centers with very high density of population. The urban sprawl also meant an immense pressure on the natural resources of these city-centers thus also affecting, among others, the quality of life of the urbanite. One of the first resource to get impacted was water - that began to both deplete and deteriorate as rapidly as was the pace of urbanization in the respective urban-centers.
Delhi, the capital of India has obviously been one of the cities to have now turned into a mega-city. Delhi faces regular water crisis that only aggravates in summers and all stakeholders agree on the inadequacy of Delhi’s current water supply.
But Delhi is also one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. It has been the capital of many conquerors who ruled Northern part of present day India from here and has always been a populated center. Water was traditionally harvested in a number of ways to support the population that also comprised large armies; something, the planners of today can and should learn from.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - a scientific body set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UNEP celebrated twenty years of its existence on the 31st of last month. At its 29th session, the IPCC re-elected by acclamation, its Chairman Dr. R.K. Pachauri to a second term. A new IPCC Bureau and Task Force Bureau were also selected in the process.
Last year had been glorious for the IPCC and for climate change research and action. Especially historical was the 10th of December, 2007 when the IPCC (and Albert Arnold Gore Jr.) were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”.
It is thus not too surprising, that the then Chairman has been re-elected, unopposed, for a second term by the IPCC.
On Saturday, the 6th of September 2008, 34 years of nuclear isolation for India came to an end in the Austrian capital of Vienna. After going into a few extra days of meetings, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) finally agreed to a nuclear waiver for India, thus giving the country “full civil nuclear cooperation” and complete access to the nuclear market. The move also allows India to resume civil nuclear cooperation with the world despite possessing nuclear weapons.
After getting the NSG waiver, the next stop for the deal is Washington, where it would be put in front of the US Congress. The Indo-US nuclear pact will then be approved or rejected by an up and down vote. However and irrespective of the decision taken by the US Congress, India can now buy reactors and fuel from countries like Russia and France. India now wakes to a nuclear dawn.
Americans are Reportedly Inhaling 10 billion Pounds of Chinese Toxic Fumes Annually
It was reported a few days ago that some 10 billion pounds of airborne pollutants from Asia — ranging from soot to mercury to carbon dioxide to ozone — reach within the borders of the US annually, quoting numerous scientific estimates.
But the pollution figures that scientists studying the impact of Asian, and mostly Chinese, environmental waste in the atmosphere have suggested are more than alarming.
The real impact of the Asian Tigers, helped by their giant brother, China, which is now thought to have overtaken the US in emissions of greenhouse gases, may amount to a kind of colonization of the United States, and by extension, North America, potentially destabilizing weather patterns across the North Pacific and masking the effects of global warming.
Floods have been a common phenomenon all across the Indian state of Bihar - unfortunately, also the least developed region in the country. So much so that river Kosi, a major river that passes through the state is more popular as the Sorrow of Bihar. Now, this sorrow has turned into grief and a catastrophic one at that, with the river changing its course and inundating a large part of the state.
Around 15 days ago, river Kosi broke open its embankment in the Northern part of the state (bordering Nepal) to pick up a channel it had abandoned over 200 years ago, drowning towns, numerous villages and rendering over a million homeless in the process.
This is the biggest disaster in the history of independent India and by far the most challenging rescue and relief work ever carried out in the country is now under operation.
With water shortages emerging as a constraint on food production growth, the world needs an effort to raise water productivity similar to the one that nearly tripled land productivity during the last half of the twentieth century.
Worldwide, average irrigation water productivity is now roughly 1 kilogram of grain per ton of water used. Since it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain, it is not surprising that 70 percent of world water use is devoted to irrigation. Thus, raising irrigation efficiency is central to raising water productivity overall.
This week on ZapRoot: KFC Canada tries to do chickens right with their new animal welfare plan. China’s air control results. Check out new Alternative Autos: Chevy Volt, Shelby Supercars, Prius, and more.
Ancient Egyptian pyramids and Middle Eastern ziggurats are coming alive in the 21st century technology.
A new futurist concept that encompasses green building technology and—according to the developer—can house up to a million people, will make a debut at the world stage in October.
The 2.3 square kilometer Ziggurat Project, undertaken by Timelinks, a Dubai based environmental design company, will be 100 per cent carbon neutral and will run by harnessing the power of nature setting a futuristic pace for eco-friendliness for other similar projects in the pipeline.
Borrowing from ancient ingenuity, the inhabitants won’t even have any use for a car: transport throughout the complex would be connected by an integrated 360 degree network (horizontally and vertically) so cars would be redundant. Biometrics would provide security with facial recognition technology.
The most recent scientific research suggests that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, we will cause huge and irreversible damage to the earth. Realizing the urgency to spread this message and to take the word across to each continent and to each country, 350.org took shape as a movement that is now working to spread this most important number on the planet by building a global grassroots climate movement united by a common call to action.
350 is the most important number on the Planet. This number is a safe line for our global climate and a start line for a global movement is how 350.org begins to explain the importance of 350.
EcoWorldly brings you news on sustainable successes and ecological failures in other countries that offer lessons for green progress in America. Find perspectives and news on the environmental movement from around the world.
In many parts of Africa, climate change threatens to unravel women’s lives putting paid decades of efforts aimed at improving women’s lives and livelihoods. Unfortunately, women in rural areas lack of knowledge on the imminent dangers posed by climate change.
