RSS Feed
Archive for March 21st, 2011
Wave of Water Privatisation Over; Coverage Challenge Remains
Posted by Inter Press Service: Gonzalo Ortiz* on March 21st, 2011
Inter Press Service: Now that the wave of water privatisation of the 1980s and 1990s has let up, the main challenge facing water utilities in Latin America is expanding coverage of high-quality water services.
In Mexico, water has always been publicly controlled. Each state has its own water system, in charge of supplies and billing.
But in other countries, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank recommendations in the last two decades of the 20th century drove the privatisation of water, whose management...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Wave of Water Privatisation Over; Coverage Challenge RemainsUnited Kingdom: First-Hand Experience Makes People Care More About Warming
Posted by Discovery News: Marianne English on March 21st, 2011
Discovery News: Stepping into a flooded house or driving through submerged streets after a river overflows can be both a headache and health hazard. But new research suggests such events may be one of the few factors that get people thinking about the effects of climate change.
Featured in the journal Nature Climate Change, one study surveyed approximately 1,800 British adults living in the United Kingdom and found those personally affected by flooding were more likely to be concerned with global warming and...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United Kingdom: First-Hand Experience Makes People Care More About WarmingToday’s networked activists can achieve real change
Posted by Guardian: Paul Hilder on March 21st, 2011
Guardian: Were the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia simply a consequence of the internet and its mysterious powers? Or was New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell right to argue, in a widely read piece, that today's networked activists are trivial and ineffective by comparison with the courageous sit-in organisers of the civil rights movement?
As someone who has spent much of the last decade harnessing the internet to organise networks and movements for change, I find myself taking these questions personally....
2010 Russian heatwave more extreme than previously thought
Posted by Climate Central: Alyson Kenward on March 21st, 2011
Climate Central: It's safe to say the sweltering heat wave that struck western Russia last summer brought the hottest temperatures anyone from the region could remember. After all, the daytime temperatures in Moscow surged past 100°F, and prior to last summer, the city's all-time high temperature had never reached the century mark (with records going back as far as 1879).
The Russian heatwave was a record-breaking event by nearly any description. Now, months later, there is a new perspective on just how rare the...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on 2010 Russian heatwave more extreme than previously thoughtCanada: The boreal forest: ours to preserve
Posted by Montreal Gazette: None Given on March 21st, 2011
Montreal Gazette: Until very recently, forests, freshwater lakes and plant and animal life were rarely thought of in terms of their worth to the world's well-being, or even survival. Nature, it was grandly and wrongly assumed, could take anything we threw at it: pollution, garbage, even global warming.
That attitude is changing, and not a moment too soon. As glaciers melt, deserts spread and freshwater bodies dry up, conservationists and economists alike have started to put a dollar figure on nature's irreplaceable...
Australia: Divvying Up the Water Down Under
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 21st, 2011
New York Times: In 2007, the Murray-Darling basin, Australia`s heartland of irrigated agriculture, was mired in a deep drought. Water marketing helped keep permanent crops like nut trees and grapes alive.
Andrew Gregson, an official with the New South Wales Irrigators Council, is the kind of Australian completely at home in the agricultural sea that is California`s San Joaquin Valley. He knows all about the business and the social fabric of farming and about irrigated agriculture. He believes that modern regulators...
Flooding at home not polar bears convinces people of man made climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 21st, 2011
Telegraph: Nick Pidgeon, Professor of Environmental Psychology at Cardiff University, showed for the first time that people with a direct experience of flooding are more likely to believe in man made climate change.
He said "scare' tactics, such as warning people of floods in Bangladesh or desertification in Sudan, are less likely to motivate people to take action.
"Polar bear images and melting glaciers do raise people's concern but they feel disempowered because they cannot do anything about it, whereas...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Flooding at home not polar bears convinces people of man made climate changeRare albatross is unique species
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 21st, 2011
BBC: The Amsterdam albatross's status puzzle has been solved
The world's rarest albatross has been confirmed as a separate species by scientists.
The genetic analysis solves 20 years of debate over the status of the Amsterdam albatross.
Canadian researchers have proven that the birds' DNA varies significantly from wandering albatrosses, their closest living relatives.
Only 170 of the birds remain on Amsterdam Island, where the whole population breed on a single plateau.
Amsterdam albatrosses...
Ethiopia’s land rush: Feeding the world
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 21st, 2011
Guardian: Ethiopia's land rush: Feeding the world
John Vidal reports from Ethiopia's remote Gambella region, where foreign investors are pouring in to exploit land the government has cleared of people
Read John Vidal's report from Gambella
Interest buoys State
Posted by Fiji Times: Samisoni Nabilivalu on March 21st, 2011
Fiji Times: A GOVERNMENT department is buoyed by many landowners being interested in the REDD-plus (reducing emission from deforestation and degradation) policy.
Department of Fisheries and Forests director Jope Davetanivalu said they were happy despite it having taken a while.
"An important exercise in our consultations with them was the identification of the drivers (human causes) of carbon stock change, deforestation and degradation.
"It was necessary for developing an effective REDD-plus strategy...