tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41718293128836434722024-03-12T22:13:15.731-04:00Water Spouts BlogWater Spouts will speak volubly and endlessly about all the issues concerning water. The ongoing degradation, and growing scarcity, of the water supply here in the US, and the rest of the world. The continued absence of potable water in so many parts of the world. The work being done by NGOs, and charities, in the third world, to help alleviate the situation. The emphasis on WASH ( Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene ) so health and healthy water are maintained. "Water Spouts" will spout it all out.off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.comBlogger1762125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-16469954487374690042012-10-18T23:36:00.001-04:002012-10-18T23:36:02.257-04:00UK Experiences ‘Weirdest’ Weather<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The UK has just experienced its “weirdest” weather on record, scientists have confirmed.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The driest spring for over a century gave way to the wettest recorded April to June in a dramatic turnaround never documented before.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The scientists said there was no evidence of a link to manmade climate change.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But they say we must now plan for periodic swings of drought conditions and flooding.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The warning came from the Environment Agency, Met Office and Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) at a joint briefing in London.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Terry Marsh from the CEH said there was no close modern precedent for the extraordinary switch in river flows. The nearest comparison was 1903 but this year was, he said, truly remarkable.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What was also remarkable – and also fortunate – was that more people did not suffer from flooding. Indeed, one major message of the briefing was that society has been steadily increasing its resilience to floods.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Paul Mustow, head of flood management at the Environment Agency, told BBC News that 4,500 properties were flooded this year. “But if you look back to 2007 when over 55,000 properties were flooded we were relatively lucky – if lucky is the right word – for the impacts we saw this summer,” he said.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The rainfall patterns affected different areas – and also there were periods of respite between the rain which lessened the impact.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He said 53,000 properties would have been flooded this year without flood defences. In total, he said, 190,000 properties had received flood protection in recent years.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr Mustow claimed that flood defences repaid their investment by a factor of 8-1 but admitted that continuing to invest would be a “challenge”, after government cuts to planned projects.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But he said that new streams of joint funding from local authorities and private developers had allowed 60 schemes to happen that otherwise would not have gone ahead.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He said: “We have to get our heads round the possibility now that we’re going to have to move very quickly from drought to flood – with river levels very high and very low over a short period of time.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We used to say we had a traditional flood season in winter – now often it’s in summer. This is an integrated problem – there’s no one thing that going to solve it. The situation is changing all the time.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But scientists present from the Met Office and CEH said not much could be read into the weird weather. Terry Marsh from CEH said: “Rainfall charts show no compelling long-term trend – the annual precipitation table shows lots of variability.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sarah Jackson from the Met Office confirmed that they did not discern any pattern that suggested manmade climate change was at play in UK rainfall – although if temperatures rise as projected in future, that would lead to warmer air being able to carry more moisture to fall as rain.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She said that this year’s conditions were partly caused by a move to a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation which would be likely to lead to more frequent cold drier winters – like the 1960s – and also wetter summers for 10-20 years.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Longer term we will see a trend to drier summers but superimposed on that we will always see natural variability,” she said.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whatever happens with the weather, the Environment Agency expects that more and more people will be protected from floods and droughts thanks to water sharing between farmers, water transfer between water companies, and better management of leaks and demand.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But Mr Mustow admitted that much more needed to be done to ensure that farmers didn’t increase flood risk with land drainage schemes and that developers and builders ensured that new developments allowed water to drain into the soil rather than flushing into the sewers.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><a href="http://updatednews.ca/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>updatednews.ca</b></span></a></span></div>
off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-22880423521111462212012-10-18T23:26:00.001-04:002012-10-18T23:28:46.028-04:00Clean Water Act’s Essential Role in Restoring the Great Lakes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicfP2CNQoek_xgGQc7VSVhbJUoSEtl9BQ4L1Cf5imvuFyXebOWqpm6O0nyhYL7udBPYoMhwNqWJ5p2PqlGWTZLTp_Z9OD7gjEJ-9uKmQvYshmOOzvdlQD6336uSe0Xz97iHsfnIlHacys/s1600/zzzcuyahogariver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="444" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicfP2CNQoek_xgGQc7VSVhbJUoSEtl9BQ4L1Cf5imvuFyXebOWqpm6O0nyhYL7udBPYoMhwNqWJ5p2PqlGWTZLTp_Z9OD7gjEJ-9uKmQvYshmOOzvdlQD6336uSe0Xz97iHsfnIlHacys/s640/zzzcuyahogariver.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17px; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b> Kayaking on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio.</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">As the </span><a href="http://ecowatch.org/p/water/clean-water-act-water/" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Clean Water Act</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> celebrates its 40th anniversary, conservation leaders are asking public officials to not undermine protections which have lead to healthier </span><a href="http://ecowatch.org/p/water/" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">water</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> to drink; cleaner streams, rivers and lakes in which to swim, fish and play; and dramatically lower rates of natural wetland loss.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">“The Clean Water Act has been instrumental in improving our environment and economy for people across the nation,” said Jan Goldman-Carter, senior manager of Wetlands and Water Resources for the </span><a href="http://www.nwf.org/" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">National Wildlife Federation</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">. “Unfortunately, over the last decade Clean Water Act protections have been eroding. Public officials need to restore bedrock protections that benefit our health, economy and way of life.”</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">For the past decade, Clean Water Act protections for wetlands, lakes and streams have been put at risk. Over the past two years, the Clean Water Act has been under relentless attack by some members of Congress. These attacks are jeopardizing drinking water for 117 million Americans and accelerating wetland losses that damage hunting, fishing and wildlife watching.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">The Clean Water Act anniversary comes amidst a national commitment to restore the </span><a href="http://ecowatch.org/2012/landmark-revisions-to-the-great-lakes-water-quality-agreement-signed-today/" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Great Lakes</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> and other iconic U.S. waters. The Great Lakes have received more than $1 billion to restore habitat, clean up toxic pollutants and reduce </span><a href="http://ecowatch.org/2012/poor-farming-practices-foul-drinking-water-at-the-source/" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">run-off from farms</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">and cities.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">“Great Lakes restoration projects are producing results, but there is more work to do,” said Gary Botzek, executive director of the </span><a href="http://www.mncf.org/" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Minnesota Conservation Federation</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">. “At a time when the nation is making historic investments to restore the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and other U.S. waters, it does not make sense to undermine those efforts by weakening strong clean water protections.”</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">The Clean Water Act has been essential in the effort to restore the Great Lakes and the waters which feed it, including streams and wetlands. U.S. Congress passed the law four decades ago, as rivers were catching fire, Lake Erie was declared “dead” and fish and wildlife populations were suffering devastating impacts. Passage of the act—and subsequent infusion of federal funds to help modernize wastewater infrastructure in communities across the region and across the country—helped to dramatically improve water quality.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">“Before passage of the Clean Water Act, people treated waterways like open sewers,” said Chuck Matyska, president of</span><a href="http://www.wiwf.org/" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Wisconsin Wildlife Federation</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">. “Now, water quality has improved. Fish populations are back. Simply, the Clean Water Act is a winner for people and wildlife.”</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">Clean water is especially vital to the economy in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, fishing, hunting and wildlife-watching generated $36.8 billion per year in those states in 2011.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">“For the first time in decades, the number of people fishing and hunting has increased,” said Kent Wood, legislative director for</span><a href="http://www.mucc.org/" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Michigan United Conservation Clubs</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">. “The Clean Water Act has paved the way for healthier habitat and healthier fish and wildlife populations—and that is healthier for the economy as well. Good hunting and fishing opportunities result from abundant wildlife. Wildlife requires good habitat, and good habitat requires clean water. It is a chain. You cannot have one without the other, and it would be a mistake to undermine the progress we’re seeing by weakening the Clean Water Act.”</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">A recent National Wildlife Federation poll found 79 percent of sportsmen support clean water protections. Families, communities, farmers and businesses large and small depend on clean, healthy waters for their health, jobs and prosperity. The Clean Water Act is essential to keeping our drinking water safe; providing millions of acres of fish and wildlife habitat across the country; ensuring abundant clean water for irrigating crops; and bolstering the robust fishery, tourism and outdoor recreation industries.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">“A key part of the Clean Water Act has been to give millions of people a voice to protect and improve the waters that they depend on,” said Brian Perbix, grassroots organizer for </span><a href="http://prairierivers.org/" style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Prairie Rivers Network</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">. “The act has helped clean up water across the country—but there’s still more to do. Now’s not the time to chisel away at one of the most successful laws in this nation’s history.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://ecowatch.org/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>ecowatch.org</b></span></a></span></span>off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-89499895615702547132012-10-18T23:18:00.002-04:002012-10-18T23:18:40.047-04:00Emerging Asia Hits a Wall of Water<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY7DQdcxIGgbr9ZuPijnwfCbnljYgcIYBU_mmIk6qXP5KfVsbPTsk-f33LYiz2jwjIotl6nZMeggcB_P0q4BgAwS4INQxN2G9uCc10zeT74ceYkJX29bAzelKkf5QLaxLWTVpTUtUEdHE/s1600/zzdam_bright.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY7DQdcxIGgbr9ZuPijnwfCbnljYgcIYBU_mmIk6qXP5KfVsbPTsk-f33LYiz2jwjIotl6nZMeggcB_P0q4BgAwS4INQxN2G9uCc10zeT74ceYkJX29bAzelKkf5QLaxLWTVpTUtUEdHE/s640/zzdam_bright.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s often said that people are a nation’s greatest resource. That can be true, especially with their knowledge and creativity, which can supplement physical resources. But one basic must is hard to think your way around: water.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So it is that the great emerging nations of Asia–China, India, Indonesia–face a wall in their development. All are confronted with either a scarcity of moisture in key regions, or an inability to contain the water that sometimes pours and deliver it in potable form to millions for daily life. The results can be barren fields, destructive floods or sickened populations from exposure to contamination.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Usually the water problem is a natural one of scant rainfall or the absence of topographical means of collection and retention, such as mountains for snowpack or lakes and flowing rivers. Thus you can have monsoons and still be dried out. (Some challenge the notion that this is any longer “natural” by contending that man-made climate change is involved.)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">However, even tropical states can be water-constrained when the public infrastructure is so poor that inundation causes bacteria to run off from sewage and other sources and spoil the vital supply. This is the case in booming Indonesia, according to a currently featured article in the country’s fine <a href="http://www.sr-indonesia.com/" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Strategic Review quarterly</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">India has both natural and man-made problems. <a href="http://forbesindia.com/article/world-watch/who-has-the-worlds-water/33775/1" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A recent feature</a> in the licensed edition Forbes India said the country has only 4% of the “total world resource” of water but 18% of the population. It noted: “Deficient monsoons often lead to shortage of drinking and irrigation water. Groundwater is polluted due to poor land practices, atmospheric deposition of pollutants and direct discharge of sewage into water bodies.” Quite a bill of particulars. And then there is <a href="http://blog.heidi-barathieu-brun.ch/wp-archive/217" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">controversy when dams</a> have ultimately been attempted.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Forbes India cited a similar predicament in China, with 7% of “resource share” and 19% of global population. The Chinese government, of course, is more proactive on this front, at least in terms of damming and other diversions intended to route precious fluid from the mountainous south to the populous north. What this is doing or will do to areas like the Tibetan Plateau is debated, and it is now difficult for many foreigners to enter that sensitive zone to investigate. China has stumbled on an <a href="http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/burma-delivers-its-first-rebuff-china" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">attempt to dam northern Burma</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(Dams are also a growing issue in the <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21563764" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">strategic battleground of Central Asia</a>, where the major powers are plying for mineral wealth, whose extraction also takes water.)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, mere expenditure for mass public works–even if done honestly and efficiently, and not riddled by graft–is not necessarily an easy response to water scarcity. (Few would object to basic water containmentl and purification projects.) There is also, for most nations, the option of the vast sea, if desalination can be afforded. Countries in North Africa and the Middle East have chosen this course as a palliative. It takes a well-stocked Treasury.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A supremely logical approach is to curb waste and misallocation by pricing water. Yet, failure to do so is common, nowhere more egregiously than in India. But this is understandable: where democracy is most rampant, the interests favored by currently free or cheap common water, if numerous, will be most able to keep their booty. Moreover, <a href="http://www.phiplanet.com/page/news/age-old-fixes-for-india-s-water" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">some who grasp the environmental aspects</a> of water misuse nonetheless have a mental block on invoking the market as a remedy.<br /><br />So we have a fundamental problem amid rising affluence, one that software code largely cannot solve, especially if politics blocks better allocation. Indonesia should be able to marshal its abundance, given honest government. But unless science somehow can muster rain clouds, much of Asia cannot affordably get “more” of something it needs to grow–and live. At some point, if the policy riddle of unpopular allocation is not solved, this becomes a Malthusian knot. That could trump the wisdom of the “people resource” and sidetrack a very promising growth story.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>By <a href="http://blogs.forbes.com/timferguson/" style="border: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tim Ferguson</a>@<a href="http://www.forbes.com/" target="_blank">forbes.com</a></b></span></div>
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off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-72641439458639995472012-10-16T20:56:00.003-04:002012-10-16T20:56:22.481-04:00Protecting and Restoring the Great Lakes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSXYmE2ePsAWxVTyuMDYD9yp74HNd-KJ5m-UiHarPYMDvEnsoh5N4se78dqX7Xvkt16n2ezO0QDjOVyMGJhN2zl4kx4frYP7wNFLwie1JmeTNAWF0ItzGQ43EExDzki94I3_1IEQnR0a8/s1600/zGreat_Lakes_from_space_crop_labeled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSXYmE2ePsAWxVTyuMDYD9yp74HNd-KJ5m-UiHarPYMDvEnsoh5N4se78dqX7Xvkt16n2ezO0QDjOVyMGJhN2zl4kx4frYP7wNFLwie1JmeTNAWF0ItzGQ43EExDzki94I3_1IEQnR0a8/s640/zGreat_Lakes_from_space_crop_labeled.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;"><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The University of Michigan and 20 other U.S. and Canadian research institutions will join forces to propose a set of long-term research and policy priorities to help protect and restore the Great Lakes and to train the next generation of scientists, attorneys, planners and policy specialists who will study them.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Great Lakes Futures Project of the Transborder Research University Network will use a cross-disciplinary, cross-sector approach to outlining alternative Great Lakes futures through science-based scenario analysis.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"With the recent release of the revised Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, this is a critical time to bring together scholars and practitioners from across the region to chart a more protective future for this precious resource," said Donald Scavia, director of U-M's Graham Sustainability Institute.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Great Lakes basin is home to more than 35 million people -- 30 percent of the Canadian population and 10 percent of the U.S. population. The economic output of the basin is one of the largest in the world (more than $4 trillion gross regional product), and the area is expected to grow by 20 million people over the next 20 years. While the basin contains more than 80 percent of the water in North America and 21 percent of the world's surface fresh water, demands from within and outside the basin are substantial and escalating.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Great Lakes Futures Project will be led by Irena Creed of Western University, Gail Krantzberg of McMaster University, Kathryn Friedman of SUNY at Buffalo and U-M's Scavia. The project will be managed by Katrina Laurent of Western University.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This unprecedented collaboration of U.S. and Canadian academics, governments, nongovernment organizations, industry and private citizens will address questions such as "How can this water and watershed be managed?" and "What are the environmental, social, economic and political impacts of those management plans?"</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The assessment will begin with development of white papers outlining critical drivers of change in the Great Lakes basin over the past 50 years and the next 50 years, including climate change, the economy, biological and chemical contaminants, invasive species, demographics and societal values, governance and geopolitics, energy and water quantity.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These papers will be developed by teams of graduate students from Canadian and U.S. universities under the mentorship of leaders in Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River basin research and presented at a workshop at U-M in January. The assessments will drive scenario analyses and policy briefs that will be communicated to residents and government officials in both Canada and the U.S.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Great Lakes Futures Project will also produce scholarly and popular publications and will conduct public events with schools and community groups. In addition, it has the potential to create a binational academic forum, research collaborations and a think tank. This initiative has also laid the foundation for two major federal grant opportunities for training of highly qualified personnel who will work on improving the status of the Great Lakes.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eighteen U.S. and Canadian universities and colleges have provided cash support to the project. They are: University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne State University, SUNY at Buffalo, Guelph University, McMaster University, Queens University, Trent University, University of Toronto, University of Windsor, Ryerson University, Waterloo University, Western University, York University, McGill University, Seneca College, Université de Montréal and the Université du Québec à Trois Rivière.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Funding was also provided by the Group for Interuniversity Research in Limnology and Aquatic Environment, Michigan Sea Grant and New York Sea Grant.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Project officials will recruit students for the next phase of the scenario analysis this fall.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Transborder Research University Network expands and supports cooperation among research universities in the border region of Canada and United States through collaborative/ consortial research; joint applications for external funding; cooperative academic programs; faculty and student exchanges; shared facilities, library materials and electronic resources; and joint conferences, symposia and workshops.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/" target="_blank">sciencedaily.com</a></b></span></div>
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<br />off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-29718516239697029852012-10-16T20:35:00.001-04:002012-10-16T20:35:55.675-04:00Green Crude: The Quest to Unlock Algae’s Energy Potential<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLOV2HeS44Yteij3KAJnNvvZuxOPQCA-3eXCjl0V25htPgnvMrNBvroM1Jm4ZmAeRxwhkzkrSrt6jRNjIitZbsUxVCU7Mv-zK07t3LYPQO53_v897oQWcNJd13xMZ1cvYylUCzNNjaBag/s1600/zzzzzzzzgallery_sapphire_green_crude_farm_aerial.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="484" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLOV2HeS44Yteij3KAJnNvvZuxOPQCA-3eXCjl0V25htPgnvMrNBvroM1Jm4ZmAeRxwhkzkrSrt6jRNjIitZbsUxVCU7Mv-zK07t3LYPQO53_v897oQWcNJd13xMZ1cvYylUCzNNjaBag/s640/zzzzzzzzgallery_sapphire_green_crude_farm_aerial.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Earlier this year, Sapphire Energy began producing oil on its 300-acre algae farm in Columbus, New Mexico. By next year, the company hopes to produce about 100 barrels a day at the “green crude farm.” (Sapphire Energy)</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">Tiny Columbus, New Mexico (population, 1,678) is hot, flat and uncrowded — an ideal place to launch a new green revolution in agriculture. That, in essence, is what a well-funded startup company called</span><a href="http://www.sapphireenergy.com/" style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Sapphire Energy</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;"> wants to do: It is turning a 300-acre expanse of desert scrub into the world’s largest algae farm designed to produce crude oil. Sapphire began making oil there in May, and its goal is to produce about 100 barrels a day, or 1.5 million gallons a year, of oil, once construction of the “green crude farm” is completed next year.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">“We take algae, CO2, water and sunlight, and then we refine it,” says Cynthia Warner, the chief executive of Sapphire, who joined the company after working for more than 20 years at oil-company giants Amoco and BP. Algae, she says, has the potential to change the world, by reducing carbon dioxide emissions and enabling almost any country to make its own oil. “This technology is so compelling — and it will make such a big difference — that, once it gets out of the gate, it will ramp up very quickly,” Warner says.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">Sapphire is one of scores of companies worldwide that today are making biofuels from microalgae, albeit on a small scale, according to the Algae Biomass Organization, a trade group. Solazyme, which is arguably the industry leader, last year sold an algae-derived jet fuel to United Airlines, which used it to fly a Boeing 737-800 from Houston to Chicago — the first </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">time a commercial jet flew using a biofuel made using algae. Synthetic Genomics, a company founded by geneticist J. Craig Venter and financed by ExxonMobil, is building an algae farm in the Imperial Valley of southern California. Other algae farms are under development in Hawaii, by Phycal, and in Karratha, Australia, by Aurora Algae, and in Florida, by Algenol. In Europe, the Swedish energy company Vattenfall and Italy’s Enel Group have been using algae, which is then made into fuel or food, to absorb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and Algae-Tec, an Australia-based company, has agreed to operate an algae-based biofuel plant in Europe to supply Lufthansa with jet fuel.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">Although scientists and entrepreneurs have been trying to unlock the energy potential of algae for more than three decades, they don’t yet agree on how to go about it. Some companies grow algae in ponds, others grow them in clear plastic containers, and others keep their algae away from sunlight, feeding them sugars instead. To improve the productivity of the algae, some scientists use conventional breeding and others turn to genetic engineering. “Algae is the most promising source of renewable transportation fuel that we have today,” says Steve Kay, a distinguished professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego, and co-founder of the </span><a href="http://algae.ucsd.edu/" style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">, a partnership of research institutions, business, and government.</span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></span>
<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">And yet there’s plenty of reason for skepticism about algae. Scientists and entrepreneurs have been trying for decades to unlock algae’s energy potential, with mixed results. After the 1970s oil shocks, the U.S. government created an algae research program that analyzed more than 3,000 strains of the tiny organisms; the program was shut down in 1996, after the Department of Energy concluded that algal biofuels would cost too much money to compete with fossil fuels. A decade later, after President George W. Bush declared that the U.S. is “addicted to oil,” government research into algae was restarted, and venture capital flowed into dozens of algae startups. Oil companies ExxonMobil and Chevron placed bets, too.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">But algae companies haven’t made much oil yet: Sapphire’s annual production target of 1.5 million gallons for 2014 compares to U.S. </span><em style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">daily</em><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;"> oil consumption of 18.8 million </span><em style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">barrels</em><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">. Even algae’s most enthusiastic advocates say that commercialization of algal biofuels, on a scale that that would matter to the environment or the energy industry, is at least five to 10 years away.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">High costs remain the big obstacle to commercial production. The algae business has suffered from “fantastic promotions, bizarre cultivation systems, and absurd productivity projections.” says John Benemann, an industry consultant and Ph.D. biochemist who has spent more than 30 </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">years working on algae. Even if the capital costs and operating costs of algae farms are low, and the productivity of the algae is improved, Benemann says that “algae biofuels cannot compete with fossil energy based on simple economics… The real issue is that an oil field will deplete eventually, while an algae pond would be sustainable indefinitely.” In a thorough </span><a href="http://esd.lbl.gov/files/about/staff/nigelquinn/EBI_Algae_Biofuel_Report_2010.10.25.1616.pdf" style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">2010 technology assessment</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that producing oil from algae grown in ponds at scale would cost between $240 and $332 a barrel, far higher than current petroleum prices.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">Perhaps more worrisome, government scientists say the environmental benefits of algae remain unproven. </span><a href="http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2011/6/making-biofuel-from-microalgae" style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Writing in <em>American Scientist</em></a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">, Philip T. Pienkos, Lieve Laurens and Andy Aden, all of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, say that the few life-cycle assesements of algae done so far have shown “unpromising energy returns and weak greenhouse gas benefits.” By phone, Pienkos acknowledged that, in theory, algae should produce low-carbon fuels because the CO2 emitted when the fuels are burned is absorbed from the air when algae grow. But, he says, calculating the true sustainability benefits of algae requires doing a detailed study of inputs and outputs and “that will be difficult until big algae farms are built.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 21px;">So why continue to pursue the algae dream? Because algae, even skeptics say, are remarkable little creatures that could someday realize their potential as energy producers. Algae are easy to grow, as any owner of a background swimming pool knows (and as does the U.S. National Park Service, which this month began draining the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool to remove a sea of green). Algae grow rapidly, reaching maturity in days. They absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. They thrive in fresh, saline or brackish water. And they don’t compete with food crops for land.</span><a href="http://www.nrel.gov/biomass/pdfs/24190.pdf" style="line-height: 21px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory</a><span style="line-height: 21px;">, algae yield more lipids, or oil, than other biomass feedstock — as much as 30 times more per unit of land when compared to terrestrial oilseed crops like palm and soy.</span><br style="line-height: 21px;" /><br style="line-height: 21px;" /><span style="line-height: 21px;">What’s needed now are concentrated efforts to deploy all the tools of modern agriculture to bring down the costs of growing algae, harvesting the crop, and extracting its oil. That’s the focus of all the algae startups. In New Mexico, for example, Sapphire is trying to drive extraneous costs out of its ponds (do they need plastic liners, or will dirt do?), out of the process of removing algae and returning water to the ponds, and out of the thermo-chemical process used to separate oil from the algae. “Each step requires multi-disciplinary, multi-year R&D,” Warner says.</span><br style="line-height: 21px;" /><br style="line-height: 21px;" /><span style="line-height: 21px;">None of this comes cheap: Sapphire has raised $300 million from investors including venture capitalists Arch Venture Partners and Venrock, British charity </span><a href="http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/" style="line-height: 21px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">The Wellcome Trust</a><span style="line-height: 21px;">, and Cascade Investment, which manages the personal fortune of Bill Gates. The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Sapphire a $50 million grant in 2009, and the company </span><span style="line-height: 21px;">has secured a</span><span style="line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 21px;">$54.4 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.</span></span></h1>
<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">Solazyme experimented with open-pond technology in the late 2000s before deciding to abandon the sun (though it kept the “sola” in its name). The company now grows its algae indoors, in big industrial fermenters in a factory in Peoria, Ill., and feeds them biomass such as sugarcane or corn stover. In an email interview, Solzayme’s CEO, Jonathan Wolfson, said, “The economics for producing oil via open ponds was simply not viable in a time frame that would work for our commercialization plans. While algae is a prolific oil producer, it is far from the most economic way to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into sugars, which is the first step in making oils.”</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">By engineering its algae to perform whatever task is at hand, Solazyme says it has developed for the first time in history “the ability to design oil rather than simply use what’s available in nature.” The company makes not just transportation fuels, but oils for food products including cakes, cookies and ice cream; personal care products like soaps and detergents; and chemical products like lubricants and surfactants. Serving a variety of markets enabled Solazyme to attract investment from the likes of Chevron, British entrepreneur Richard Branson, and Unilever, and to generate enough revenue so the company could go public last year. (Its current market value is about $650 million.) More important, Solazyme plans to grow its production capacity faster than its rivals — it says it will produce about 142 million gallons a year of renewable oil by 2015.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">By far the biggest opportunity to reduce the costs of algal fuels lies within the algae. Just as crop scientists have bred corn and wheat to improve yields, with spectacular results, the algae companies are using conventional breeding and genetic modification to develop strains of algae to grow faster, yield more oil, and repel pests.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">Venter’s Synthetic Genomics is going a step further, studying natural algae in order to design, from scratch, a plant of its own. Venter was not available for an interview but </span><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-algae-feed-the-world-and-fuel-the-planet" style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">he told <em>Scientific American</em> last year</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">: “Everybody is looking for a naturally occurring algae that is going to be a miracle cell to save the world and, after a century of looking, people still haven’t found it. We hope we’re different.” Venter noted that genetic tools “give us a new approach: being able to rewrite the genetic code and get cells to do what we want them to do.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">For now, Synthetic Genomes is growing algae in a greenhouse in La Jolla, Calif. The company recently acquired 81 acres of land in the California desert, near a power plant that is expected to be a source of cheap CO2. Like the other algae companies, Venter’s venture is well financed. ExxonMobil has promised the company $300 million over the next decade, provided that its research and development milestones are met; other backers include BP and venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">Venter admits that success is by no means guaranteed, and that patience will be required to see the benefits of algae. Algae plants may grow in days, but a real algae industry will need years, if not decades, to reach maturity.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant: small-caps; line-height: 21px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>by marc gunther@<a href="http://e360.yale.edu/" target="_blank">e360.yale.edu</a></b></span></span>off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-188385725880705542012-10-16T19:19:00.001-04:002012-10-16T19:20:55.469-04:00Water Scarcity Compounds India’s Food Insecurity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2yRincTfwtf7_P3AM_n9sw-x3eVTK1q099SAUEC8u05E9Jm6yUCAftmkcvsRDh890zc1C7erGKQFJyGoqmDYb6Z3eUUZfO1Vb2dsJCoyEAJPXM9psSuAitNSqlK8vwXoPQV00Z4Dv08c/s1600/zzor_12_India.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2yRincTfwtf7_P3AM_n9sw-x3eVTK1q099SAUEC8u05E9Jm6yUCAftmkcvsRDh890zc1C7erGKQFJyGoqmDYb6Z3eUUZfO1Vb2dsJCoyEAJPXM9psSuAitNSqlK8vwXoPQV00Z4Dv08c/s640/zzor_12_India.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<em style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b> A woman carries firewood in Gujarat on Aug. 6, 2012, as others rest under a tree after they migrated because of a water shortage. Reuters photo: Ahmad Masood</b></span></em><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since India’s independence, the mammoth task of feeding its hundreds of millions, most of whom are extremely poor, has been a major challenge to policymakers. In the coming decades, the issue of food insecurity is likely to affect almost all Indians. However, for the poorest amongst us, it could be catastrophic. India ranks 65 of 79 countries in the <a href="http://www.ifpri.org/publication/2012-global-hunger-index" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Global Hunger Index</a>. This is extremely alarming.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the past few years, uneven weather patterns combined with over exploited and depleting water resources in various parts of India have wreaked havoc on food security, particularly for small and marginal farmers, as well as the rural poor.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The recently launched Global Food Security Index (GFSI) estimates that in 2012, there are 224 million Indians, around 19 percent of the total population, who are <a href="http://zeenews.india.com/business/news/economy/224-million-indians-are-undernourished-report_61491.html" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">undernourished</a>. The same report also estimates that while the Indian government has various institutions designed to deal with the impact of inflation on food prices, it only spends 1 percent of agricultural GDP on research to build food security for the poorest. Overall, India ranked 66th on the GFSI. It is estimated that one in four of the world’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-19190437" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">malnourished</a> children is in India, more even than in sub-Saharan Africa.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Water insecurity, further exacerbated by climate change, is arguably the most important factor for India’s food security. India’s total water availability per capita is expected to decline to 1,240 cubic metres per person per year by 2030, perilously close to the 1,000 cubic metre benchmark set by the World Bank as ‘<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-19190437" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">water scarce</a>’.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Factors such as increasing usage, poor infrastructure, and pollution have led to a decline of water quantity and quality in India. Climate change, meanwhile, is expected to cause a two-fold impact.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One, increasing temperatures have hastened the rate of melt of the Himalayan glaciers, upon which major Indian rivers like the Ganges, Indus and Brahmaputra depend.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Second, the effect of climate change on monsoons in India will cause them to become more erratic, arriving earlier or later and lasting for shorter, more intense periods of time. India’s farming communities depend overwhelmingly on the monsoon, as their cropping patterns are built around it. The combined effect of climate change and over exploitation is violating the water cycle, degrading aquifers and eroding ground water resources.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Over 50 percent of agricultural land in India depends entirely on groundwater. In North and Northeast India, where perennial rivers (rivers that have water year round, i.e. glacier fed rivers in India, such as the Ganges) sustain the agricultural land, have to deal with issues such as flooding caused by climate change impacts such as speedier glacier melt and erratic monsoons.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, farmers in states in West and South India, where rivers are seasonal, have to depend heavily on rapidly depleting groundwater resources.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The worst affected by this type of water-fuelled food insecurity are the small farmers of India. Estimates suggest that between 1995 and 2010, over 2,50,000 farmers in India, mostly from states like Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, killed themselves. Most of these farmers were drowning in vicious cycles of debt caused by failed monsoons and increasing droughts.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Responses to this crisis, including the National Action Plan on Climate Change, lay out various solutions and intended interventions, but most focus on the long term. To secure the future of India’s water resources vis-à-vis its agriculture in the future, it is important that certain steps be taken immediately. First and foremost, authorities will have to remove the mindset that water is an endless resource and the solution to water woes is simply a further development of India’s fast depleting groundwater.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Indeed, Dr. Mihir Shah, co-Founder, <a href="http://www.samprag.org/" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Samaj Pragati Sahayog</a> (SPS) and member of the Planning Commission of India has stated that the ‘era of further water development may be over’ and emphasized that we have to urgently introduce more efficient water management. In this regard, promotion of irrigation efficiency will be crucial in the future.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Systems such as drip irrigation and <a href="http://www.trust.org/alertnet/blogs/the-battle-for-water/indias-food-insecurity-compounded-by-water-scarcity/" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">System of Rice Intensification</a> (SRI) to farmers across India will be essential. It will also be necessary to promote water conservation methods such as rain water harvesting, which has been successful in urban India, in villages as well.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the same time, reducing inefficiencies and water wastage through conveyance losses will require governmental and NGO support in actions such as replacing faulty pipes and pumps. Hence, India needs to invest on improving its water productivity, and any capacity to produce more food like rice with less water will be an important contribution to sustainable water and food security.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In short, India is facing a bleak future of becoming water scarce and painfully food insecure. How exactly are the country’s hundreds of millions, who depend entirely on agriculture for their livelihoods, as well as those that depend on agriculture for their food needs, to make ends meet?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Delaying this issue is simply not an option for India as this could lead to increased instability, poor human development and enhance inter-generational poverty. India needs to ensure food security through sustainable development and create resilience amongst the most vulnerable in the country: the poor.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><a href="http://www.reuters.com/" target="_blank">reuters.com</a></b></span></div>
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<em style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b><br /></b></span></em>off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-24027192713868530472012-10-15T16:07:00.002-04:002012-10-15T16:07:22.537-04:00Water, Water, Not Everywhere<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh47e2P7zA8uVXRk4s0gS9KeEFF7SEcBW1Oe_8YpMrcwfm7UXAR3j5sLdRVcglhhb3gy4h5S3CdTlL9VQ3xLsZ7ml9p5_NJVg3t0wVWdeF0JAvs9Penxgf_DSxhb7fVKanwp8fuRhlKbVY/s1600/zzIV-AA298_CALIFO_G_20121011181519.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh47e2P7zA8uVXRk4s0gS9KeEFF7SEcBW1Oe_8YpMrcwfm7UXAR3j5sLdRVcglhhb3gy4h5S3CdTlL9VQ3xLsZ7ml9p5_NJVg3t0wVWdeF0JAvs9Penxgf_DSxhb7fVKanwp8fuRhlKbVY/s640/zzIV-AA298_CALIFO_G_20121011181519.jpg" width="508" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Few people in the world are more water-conscious than California farmers.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The state leads the nation in farm revenue and produces nearly half of the domestic supply of fruits, nuts and vegetables. It also boasts nine of the top 10 producing counties in the nation, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet California is one of the driest states in the U.S., getting an average of just 22 inches of precipitation annually compared with more than 40 inches for states like Missouri and New York. And, with nearly 40 million people, California is also the most populous state—meaning there's a lot of competition for that precious rain and snow.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How do the farmers make do with so little water? They use technology and the state's topography to stretch existing supplies as far as they can. "If you have limited water supplies, you have to be as careful and efficient as you can with it," says Larry Schwankl, an irrigation expert with the University of California Cooperative Extension.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The efficiencies start at the northern end of the Central Valley, the 400-mile corridor that's home to most of the state's farmland. There, farmers along the Sacramento River use a system called flow-through, which means that the water they take but don't use flows back into the river by a network of valves and drains.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As water flows to the driest southern reaches of the valley via the California Aqueduct, many farmers use drip irrigation, microsprinklers and extensively plumbed groundwater caverns—filled with runoff from the Sierra Nevada—to maximize their water usage.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Daniel Errotabere, for instance, says his 5,200-acre farm's conversion to drip irrigation over the past five years has helped yield water savings as high as 50%—helping to cushion the blow during the most recent drought. "You can't deliver water much more efficiently than what we are doing today," Mr. Errotabere said on a recent tour of the farm near Riverdale, Calif.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The accompanying images outline how irrigation and water conservation work in California's Central valley.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">By <a href="http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=JIM+CARLTON&bylinesearch=true" style="letter-spacing: 1px; outline: none; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase;">JIM CARLTON</a>@<a href="http://online.wsj.com/home-page">The Wall Street Journal</a></span></h3>
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off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-18095489989110892872012-10-15T15:57:00.001-04:002012-10-15T15:57:46.538-04:00Last Call At The Oasis<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DIqykLVw24c" width="640"></iframe>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Although it covers 70 percent of the earth's surface, there is a very real possibility that in the near future, there won't be enough water to sustain life on the planet. This documentary illuminates the vital role water plays in our lives, exposes the defects in the current system and shows communities already struggling with its ill-effects and individuals championing revolutionary solutions. Firmly establishing the urgency of the global water crisis as the central issue facing our world this century, the film posits that we can manage this problem if we are willing to act now.</span><br style="line-height: 18px;" /><br style="line-height: 18px;" /><span style="line-height: 18px;">Inspired by the book "The Ripple Effect" by Alex Prud'homme, "Last Call at the Oasis," is from Participant Media, the company that brought you "Page One," "An Inconvenient Truth," "Food, Inc.," and "Waiting for Superman."</span></span>off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-52282782231855876862012-10-15T15:52:00.001-04:002012-10-15T15:52:07.739-04:00Reverse Osmosis to Rescue Water Scarcity in the Dead Sea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Engineers and scientists are expected to use Reverse Osmosis (RO) technology to merge the Dead and the Red seas under the “Two Seas Canal Project” worth 10 billion dollars.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">RO, occurs when water is moved across a membrane against a concentration gradient from lower to higher concentration, under pressure to force ions, molecules and bacteria to be filtered, which is used purposely for the commercial desalination of seawater.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The project, to run in three-phases would be financed through international and multi-national institutions with counterpart funding from beneficiary countries, namely, Palestine, Jordan and Israel, would haul in 700,000 cubic metres of water into the Dead Sea from the Red Sea, a distance of 180 kilometres.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Results of feasibility studies and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) supported by the World Bank and other donors are yet to be released for concrete works to commence. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The region is witnessing water scarcity with its main freshwater source, the River Jordan, which has kept shrinking in size and posing declines in its annual flow from more than 1.3 billion cubic meters per year to less than 30 million cubic meters annually.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With Israel, Jordan and Syria, each grabbing as much clean water as they could, it is ironically the sewage that is keeping the river alive today.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact, water scarcity is a disincentive to many in the agriculture and industrial sectors as well as for domestic consumption, largely due to urbanization, pollution and global warming.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr Batir Wardam, environment expert and researcher, said the project, though ambitious, is expected to revive the biodiversity and water scarcity in the region.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He called for use of science to distinguish between myths and reality while urging the media to lead the crusade by setting the right agenda.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">General Secretary of the Ministry of Water, Mr Bassem Talfah, said the situation is scary, which demands prompt action hence the invitation to the private sector to strike partnership with to government to diversify funding and implementation of the project.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He said the sector needs higher investment portfolios resulting from higher financial outlays in production cost stating that this manifests in a financial gap of One Billion Jordanian Dinar.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr Khaled Irani, President of Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature, said the problem of water scarcity is not only a humanitarian issue but economic as well.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Sixty-six percent of water is imported into Jordan of which 15 percent goes into agricultural activities. We cannot wait for the commencement of this project as its prospects are overwhelming.” </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He entreated stakeholders to avoid knee-jerk reactions even as the recommendations are released and positive that the project would provide an alternative means for water in the country and beyond.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Contrarily, Dr Samir Mahmoud, media expert, said double-political commitment was needed to actualize the Two-Seas canal project as it is “haunted by political inactivity.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“With the pace of development and disregard for timelines, the canal project will not see the light of day now, not within the next two decades,” he suggested.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He said merging the two seas would have an environmental catastrophe for Jordan, especially for occupying the lowest bit of the project.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dr Mahmoud explained that Jordan’s location with increased salinity could be a bouquet for destabilization of the ecology in relation to marine life and culture of the Dead Sea.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><a href="http://www.ghananewsagency.org/">ghananewsagency.org</a></b></span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/nbPNw3JaL7w" width="480"></iframe>off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-40282968535053817552012-10-15T15:35:00.001-04:002012-10-15T15:35:38.185-04:00Nigeria: Flood - Danger Looms in Lagos<br />
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<em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dr. Akintola Omigbodun</strong> is an expert in flood management. In this interview, he says the floods ravaging many states in Nigeria are avoidable. Omigbodun, who fielded questions from <strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Vanguard editors </strong>during a visit to the media house, last week, also deplores the Ministry of Water Resources' handling of the crisis and warns that there are grave dangers ahead for Lagos and Ogun states should the water in Oyan Dam not be properly managed.</span></em></div>
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<strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You are an expert on environmental issues, particularly flooding. What got the flooding story in Nigeria started and was it avoidable?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is a dam across the River Benue in Cameroon called Lagdo Dam. This dam is about 40meters high. Its storage capacity is about half of what is found in Kainji Lake Dam. And at full flow, if equipment was installed in it, it could possibly generate 700 megawatts of electricity. But the equipment is limited and is only generating about 20 megawatts.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They are also supposed to have an irrigation scheme in that dam. The result is that the dam is storing a huge amount of water and is not being used for any purpose. In the event of so much rainfall like what we have now, the people around the dam would become terrified that it might be overtopped. So the authorities release additional water from the dam.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What we get now is a lot more than what we would get. If there was no dam, the water will continue to flow day in day out. But when you put a dam, you are controlling the flow of water; when you now suddenly release the water because you are afraid your dam will overtop, then it will result to releasing much water. The Lagdo Dam has been flooding every year, just that this year is exceptional. Communities in Cameroon are also flooded. There is a town called Garua; every year, that place is flooded. But in order to save Nigeria, the Cameroonian government should lower their operational level, otherwise, every year, most Nigerian communities will continue to be flooded.</span></div>
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<strong style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can we know more about this operational level that you want the Cameroonian authorities to lower?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What really happened was that they opened the gate of their dam. The actual water released from that dam from 1992 to 2002 showed that they opened a number of gates at higher percentages. Floods are associated with rainfall, water courses, streams, rivers, dams and reservoirs where water behind dams are stored. Rainfall is natural while dams and their reservoirs are hand made and are therefore subject to human control. Dam owners and operators are expected to exercise control over the water behind their dams such that in years of heavy rainfall and for singular rainfall events, water passing through the dams does not damage infrastructure or create floods. Earthquakes are natural events and, when they occur in certain regions, there is considerable damage to buildings and other social infrastructure. However, in some areas such as Tokyo in Japan, Los Angeles and San Francisco in the United States, buildings are designed to withstand earthquakes. Damage from natural occurrences can be limited through appropriate human action. For example, the Netherlands has over two-thirds of its economy and half its population below sea level. The Netherlands has about 350km of coastline on the North Sea and major rivers, the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt passing through on their way to the North Sea. The Netherlands has an active coastal and river flood management programme to keep the country flood-proof and maintain its prosperity.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our experience in Nigeria suggests that dam operators should prepare for heavy rainfall within the next 20 years and for singular rainfall events leading to exceptional floods within the next 35years.</span></div>
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<strong style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is there a nexus between the Dam in Cameroon, and the River Benue and the flooding of the Oyan Dam?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is no physical connection. What we have is operational connection. They (Cameroon) are storing a lot of water in the lake and they are not doing much with it. And when the water is much, they release it and the released water causes flooding.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If they release it in small quantity, it would not have effect, but when they release the water in large quantity, it results to flooding. The Osun River is not in any way connected to the Ogun River or the Niger. That tells you that there is no physical connection. I am hoping that government will live up to expectations. I have personally involved the Ministry of Environment and I must say that I am disappointed with their level of involvement in the crisis. They are just being arrogant.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Minister of Water Resources has not lived up to expectation and I have met with the Director of Water Resources and I could not get him to do anything. I have also written to the Attorney General of the Federation on the Oyan Dam, so that they can do something about it. We must understand that the dams are designed to have spillways and the spillways guide the release of water. The people are suffering as a result of the flooding and government has to rise to the challenges posed by the flood.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We have River Ogun which starts in Oyo North. And there is a dam in Iseyin. That dam is about 47meters high. There is also a tributary of the Ogun River which also has a dam.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the moment, the Okere Dam is not gated. There is no gate and water flows over. The dam is supposed to provide irrigation and also generate power. What is important is that the dam is supposed to provide water for Iseyin and environs. Following the non-utilisation of the dam for various purposes, there is huge storage of water. All the things that caused the flooding in Lagos and Ogun are under the control of Ogun River Basin Authority. They should manage the dams in such a way that we do not have flood in the areas of their mandate. We are about to be flooded again like what happened in 2010 and 2011.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have had experience of the floods along the River Ogun in Ogun State and Lagos State in 2007, 2010 and 2011. The flood path is over 27km long and is up to 4km wide in places. The flood level in 2010 was 0.5m higher than the level of 2007. The River Ogun system has two major dams, the Okere Gorge Dam on the River Ogun at Okere Village 28km north east of Iseyin in Oyo State and the Oyan Dam located about 20km northwest of Abeokuta on the River Oyan, a tributary of the River Ogun.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Okere Gorge Dam is ungated while the Oyan Dam is gated. The Federal Ministry of Water Resources has been asked to direct that the freeboard in the reservoir behind Oyan Dam should be increased by 4meters as an interim measure pending appropriate studies and a construction programme along the River Ogun from Oyan Dam to Lagos flood plains. Put simply, the floods now taking place yearly at Isheri North, the Lagos wetlands communities and parts of Ogun State and the River Oyan Dam were not built on the River Oyan respectively, floods will occur in the Lagos flood plains within the intervals of 10years and 25years.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the construction of both dams, floods should no longer occur in the Lagos flood plains if both dams are being operated in accordance with their designs. In the exceptional situation, floods may occur once in 50 years.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the months of August, September, October for years 1992 to 2002, it was only in August 1993 that there was water release. Presently, exceptional release of water takes place yearly in August, September and October. This was observed in 2007, 20010 and 2011. A greater part of the area covered by flood water in 2007 qualified to be included in the disaster area as opposed to the flood plains of the River Ogun. For example, a newspaper published on Friday, November 4, 2011 that the Itowolo Community Primary School Ikorodu started experiencing flood in 2007. The report indicated that the community was founded over 200 years ago and the community never experienced flood until 2007. Further, when the school was established 30years previously, there was no sign that the school would be affected by water.</span></div>
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<strong style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why does flood incidence wreaks so much havoc in the face of the existence of River Basin Authorities? Does it mean that the River Basins are no longer working?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The law establishing River Basin Development Authorities all over Nigeria, which is the River Basins Development Authorities, RBDAs, Act Chapter R9 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, required RBDAs to control floods in their areas of operations. Under section 4(1) of this Act, part of the functions of the RBDAs is to undertake comprehensive development of both surface and underground water resources for multi-purpose use with particular emphasis on the provision of irrigation infrastructure and the control of floods and erosion and for watershed management. The river basin is also established to construct, operate and maintain dams, dykes, wells, boreholes, irrigation and drainage systems, and other works necessary for the achievement of the authority's functions and handover to be cultivated under irrigation scheme to the farmers.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, they have not been performing their functions well. Even though the Ogun River Basin Authority is responsible for what we are experiencing here in Lagos, we are not taking them to court because of my not pleasant experiences in Nigeria's judicial system. The truth is that the flood in Lagos and some parts of Ogun State is entirely avoidable.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is regrettable that the river basins are not working. For example, when I met the General Manager of Sokoto River Basin Authority, he told me that he only had three qualified staff to work with. Why should the government continue to award new contracts to build new dams, when they have not properly managed the ones they have?</span></div>
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<strong style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some have attributed this flooding disaster to climate change. Do you in anyway see climate change as a factor?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We should not be talking of climate change and sea level rise as the cause of the flooding because they are measurable. What the New York City panel on climate change said was that the figures of rainfall analysis from 1970 to 2000 indicated that rainfall and snow will only be ten percent different from 1970 to 2000. The rainfall in 1991 for Abeokuta and Iseyin in 1990 was higher than what we have today. People who are doing research on climate change have come up that there are variations in the rate of rainfall in West Africa. That implies that there are years of low rainfall and years of high rainfall change have variables that are measurable. What is needed to be done in the case of Oyan Dam is to lower the operational level by 4 meters.</span></div>
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<strong style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What can be done proactively to forestall further damages by flood?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The best thing is for the government to perform its functions. I don't think the government is deaf to newspaper publications, even if they are deaf to letters, because I have written in the past and present on how to avoid the present damages that the flood is unleashing all over the country. What we are saying is that they should take correct measures so that we don't experience this kind of disaster again, because the chances of occurring again are real. The water we are seeing in the Niger Delta is River Niger and Benue water, because there is exceptional rainfall in Kainji and Lagdo Dams.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were forced to release water. In River Benue, for instance, they wait for the water to be so much high before they release it. Government should realise that they are losing economically to the flooding. It affects our GDP and well-being.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My message is that the losses we are encountering as a result of the flood is avoidable. Definitely the flood would unleash food crisis on the nation, because farmers would lose their crops to the flood. We experienced a similar thing in Sokoto in 2010 when the Goronyo Dam wreaked havoc. The same thing will happen as a result of this year's disaster, especially for those that planted by the river side.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 16px; text-transform: uppercase;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>BY CHARLES KUMOLU@<a href="http://allafrica.com/">allafrica.com</a></b></span></span></div>
off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-35297162715813384272012-10-15T15:25:00.001-04:002012-10-15T15:25:08.542-04:00Somaliland: Drought Leaves Nothing Untouched <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The village elders are quick to tell me that Boodhlay, the name of this village, means dusty. A quick glance around shows that this name is very apt indeed.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is hardly any vegetation here at all. No grass, just pockets of dry scrub, spiky acacia trees and dust as far as the eye can see. Unusually for this part of Somaliland, I can't see a single camel.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Almost everyone in the village is a pastoralist. This means that they are largely reliant on their herds of camels, goats and sheep to provide food, milk and income for their families. When there is not enough rain, the pasture soon disappears and people are forced to move in search of food and water for their animals.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"It is affecting every aspect of life"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yusuf, one of the village elders tells me: "There have been droughts here for a long time now. The situation is very difficult. It is affecting the food and water supply, our incomes and the children's education. It is affecting every aspect of life."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the drought came last year many people lost animals. In a place where your livestock are your livelihood, some families lost everything.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recently, the humanitarian situation in Somaliland has modestly improved. The rainy season – known in the region as the Gu rains – was not as meagre as predicted this year. But there are many pockets of land, like Boodhlay, where the rains have been both late and insufficient. In these areas pasture remains extremely limited and water – both for livestock and human consumption – is scarce.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Yusuf told me: "People think that because we have had some rains recently everything is OK. But they are wrong. Ten days ago it rained for two days. We've had nothing since. These two days of rain will not fix things. It takes a long time to recover. Nothing has changed."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our response</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unless assistance is provided, these factors could lead to destitution for many of the pastoral communities that call eastern Somaliland home. We're calling for urgent funding to contribute towards sustainable early recovery in these areas.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We have also have launched an emergency intervention to address the lack of water in villages where we are already working, such as Boodhlay.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) component of our response is already underway, and we're aiming to provide immediate access to safe water for more than 7,000 families. This is being achieved via emergency water trucking, the restoration of water sources (berkads), or a combination of both.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In total we're targeting 21 villages in eastern Somaliland. To date, we've reached 13,557 people, including 6,110 children in the area through our WASH intervention.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><a href="http://somalilandsun.com/">somalilandsun.com</a></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">In response to 2011's famine in parts of southern Somalia, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) more than doubled its support to Somali farmers, especially in the cereal producing parts in the country's south.</span><br style="line-height: 18px;" /><br style="line-height: 18px;" /><span style="line-height: 18px;">To restore the crop production capacity, FAO distributed appropriate agricultural inputs (cereal seeds and fertilizers) and provided technical assistance in conservation agriculture. In the cropping season that followed 2011's famine declaration, FAO procured and distributed 3750 tons of Urea and 1300 tons of DAP fertilizer to Somali farmers. Other farm inputs included 135 tonnes of maize seeds, 935 tonnes of sorghum seeds and 120 tonnes of sesame seeds.</span><br style="line-height: 18px;" /><br style="line-height: 18px;" /><span style="line-height: 18px;">Distribution of these inputs is aimed at restoring the productive capacity (and improving food security) of some 150, 000 farming households (equivalent to 900 000 people) in Somalia.</span><br style="line-height: 18px;" /><br style="line-height: 18px;" /><span style="line-height: 18px;">However, 2012 has seen the introduction of tractor hours per beneficiary, through which farmers access tractors to cultivate their land resulted in cultivation of over 1,533hectares of land. Through a creating irrigation scheme, farmers pay money to access water pumps to irrigate their fields. As a result, some 8496 hectares has been irrigated to date.</span><br style="line-height: 18px;" /><br style="line-height: 18px;" /><span style="line-height: 18px;">FAO's agricultural activitiesEuropean Commission, United Kingdom, United States, Australia Aid, The World Bank Belgium, Spain and Italy.</span></span></div>
off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-8610677335764610032012-10-15T15:14:00.002-04:002012-10-15T15:14:36.920-04:00Water, water, everywhere…<br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Water, water, every where/Nor any drop to drink. This is verse from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner seems like a prelude to the water sharing problems dogging the world. The long poem’s reflection, particularly ebbing in the Cauvery issue is now at its peak, like it does every summer.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Cauvery water sharing dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu is one of the many water disputes in India and the world. The other two parties in this dispute are Kerala and Pondicherry. Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka are caught in a triangle over the sharing of Krishna waters.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The same states along with Madhya Pradesh and Orissa dispute over the Godavari waters. The Ravi-Beas dispute is between Punjab and Haryana, two agricultural surplus states that provide large quantities of grains to the rest of India.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Narmada River is the bone of contention between Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Similar water sharing issues bubble at the Mahadayi and Vasandhara rivers too. Dispute settling mechanisms like Acts and Tribunals, methods of resolution including political interference and constitutional provisions applied during negotiations have so far yielded partial or no results in resolving water disputes.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Declaration of water as a national property might settle inter-state water squabbles. What about the same issue of water sharing between countries?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Water systems usually arise in one country and pass through others before reaching the sea or oceans. Rivers and lakes that come off these larger water systems are typically shared by more than one country. The states where these systems originated tend to try and gain the most control over the water, like the Nile and the Jordan River.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Chinese efforts to divert water resources of the Brahmaputra away from India, has worsened situations that have remained tense since the 1962 Indo-China war.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Israel and Palestine have a traditional history of fighting over water — conflicts over the Tigris and Euphrates. Some experts believe the only documented case of a ‘water war’ happened about 4,500 years ago, when the city-states of Lagash and Umma went to war in the Tigris-Euphrates basin.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is tension between India and Pakistan over hydroelectric projects in Leh and Kargil, which will affect the flow of water from the Indus and Suru rivers.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">India and Bangladesh share 54 rivers. Despite setting up a Joint River Commission for water management in 1972, tension between the two countries on how to share resources recently came to a head in a dispute over the Teetsa River.Whether in South Asian countries or between Middle East provinces, water issues hold up peace talks and pose graver conflicts.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In March 2012, a classified US report listed India’s three major river basins — Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra — among the top 10 world water conflict zones in ten years from now. “Beyond 2022, use of water as a weapon of war or a tool of terrorism will become more likely, particularly in South Asia (India), the Middle East and North Africa,” the report based on National Intelligence Estimate on Water Security stated.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A new of genre of water journalists address the delicate issue of corruption in the water sector and sustainable practices for water conservation, particularly in countries like West Africa.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Water too often is treated as a commodity, as an instrument with which one population group can suppress another,” according to Ignacio Saiz, Centre for Economic and</span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Social Rights.</span></strong></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Solution to water conflict and ultimate co-operation between warring segments is required as water is projected to become scarce and amicable trans-boundary water distribution will also address issues of global warming and climate change at the higher level.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Otherwise, water will remain a powerful weapon of mass conflict to settle other bubbly episodes, outside the purview of environmental issues and the natural resource will never be considered as the world’s water!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mark Twain’s quote of “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over,” does not seem to be exaggerated, despite Twain’s biographer debating the authenticity of this scholarly certitude.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>By <a href="http://postnoon.com/author/shoaib" rel="author" style="outline: none; text-decoration: none;" title="Posts by Syed Shoaib">Syed Shoaib</a>@<a href="http://postnoon.com/">postnoon.com</a></b></span></div>
off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-15686039345700520852012-10-15T15:09:00.001-04:002012-10-15T15:09:36.356-04:00The Central Asian Water Crisis<br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The deficit of water resources that may in the future be in greater demand than petroleum and natural gas has already become a reality for many districts of the inner Eurasia. Central Asia has not enjoyed the surplus of water for quite some time. The water problem is getting more and more charged with geopolitical meanings, directly affecting Russian interests.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the start of 2009, when on the one hand there was in Russia a growth of interest in old Soviet projects of building big hydro power stations in Tajikistan and Kirghizia, on the other activities of Uzbekistan that essentially began forming in the region a sort of the “water bloc” were also evident. Russian diplomacy made attempts to have a balance between the interests of “the water source countries” (Tajikistan, Kirghizia) that control the heads of the biggest water arteries, the Amu Darya and Syr-Darya, and the “downstream” countries (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenia) with their critical dependence on the water flow from the sources, but these attempts were almost futile.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Should the “bloc”-type geopolitical constellation be established in Central Asia, the standoff between the “upstream” and the “downstream” countries in their debate on the expediency of building big hydro power facilities on the trans-border rivers Amu Darya and Syr-Darya will be inevitable.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On April 13 Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry posted a press release, whose gist can be summed up by the following two points:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) Construction of new hydro power stations is a matter of concern for all the states in the region and it would aggravate the already difficult water supply situation to “the downstream regions” resulting in violations of the fragile ecological situation;</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) The problems relating to water and energy supply in Central Asia should be solved without interference of “third” countries (read: the Russian Federation). According to Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry developers of large-scale hydro power projects should take into account the interests of all the states in the region and be thoroughly investigated by international experts to assess their technological and environmental safety as well as guarantee maintenance of water balance. Violation of these principles could have “unpredictable environmental, economic, social and political consequences.” In the last several years the problems of water supply faced by “the downstream countries” was aggravated by shortage of water whose level in the Amu Darya and the Syr-Darya is, according to Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry, about 70% of the average annual standard.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Uzbekistan’s foreign ministry views the Kambaratinsk hydro power station (HPS) currently under construction in Kirghizia and the planned construction of the Rogunsk HPS in Tajikistan, as the Central Asian environment least friendly. The construction of both power stations was launched in the USSR and is still unfinished. The rated capacity of the Kambaratinsk-1 HPS in the mid-stream Naryn, a tributary of the Syr-Darya, is 1,900 MWt and a rated annual output of electricity at 5.1bln KWt/h. Uzbekistan’s government plans to have the capacity of the Rogunsk HPS in the Vakhsh basin almost twice as high, up to 3,600 MWt with an annual electricity output at up to 13.4bln KWt/h.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Russia is expected to play a decisive role in the construction of both power stations, becoming the principal investor in both projects. In October 2008 during the visit to Bishkek of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev agreements on the participation of Russian companies in the construction of the Kambaratinsk power stations in Kirghizia were signed. In November, the head of the RF Presidential Administration S.Naryshkin pledged assistance in the construction of the Rogunsk power station in Tajikistan.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Uzbekistan has the biggest population among Central Asian countries, about two-thirds of whom reside in rural agricultural areas; it depends more than others on water supply from the “upstream” countries. The Tashkent authorities are concerned over potential usage of water as a tool of political and economic pressure upon its neighbours. The statement president Medvedev made during his visit to Uzbekistan’s capital in January to the effect that implementation of major hydro power projects should meet the interests of all the countries in the region did not allay their fears.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In turn, erection of hydro power stations is essential for the Central Asian “upstream” countries. Unlike Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenia, Kirghizia and Tajikistan do not have significant oil and natural gas resources to provide heating and electricity to its population and economy. The principal suppliers of electricity in Kirghizia and Uzbekistan are hydro power stations. Water in their reservoirs is needed for watering the fields in summer in the “downstream” states, and for the production of electricity in winter – in the “upstream” ones. These contradictions were aggravated after the dismembering of the Soviet Union, when its former republics that were oil- and gas-rich began selling them at market prices, whereas the new independent states that were unable to purchase energy carriers in adequate amounts, had to dramatically increase, electricity production in winter, whose output, nevertheless, is critically inadequate. The only way out for Kirghizia and Tajikistan is erection of new power stations to both overcome the deficit of electricity and sell it to the neighbouring countries.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The interests of “the downstream” countries in the area of water usage coincide and objectively contradict the interests of their “upstream” neighbours to build new hydro power stations. During a telephone conversation in April 2009 the presidents I.Karimov of Uzbekistan and G.Berdymukhammedov of Turkmenia they “noted the significance of joint efforts in working out new approaches to finding solutions to the water problem, common to the countries of the region, as well as that of the Aral Sea.” Earlier I.Karimov discussed the water problem with Kazakhstan’s president N.Nazarbayev. And then Kazakhstan’s prime-minister paid a visit to Tashkent. Analysts say that these negotiations aim at working out a common position of both the “downstream” countries with an eye to construction of new hydro power stations in Kirghizia and Tajikistan.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The difference of interests of the “upstream” and “downstream” Central Asian countries that poses a threat of ending in an inter-state conflict is both a diplomatic and geopolitical challenge to Russia. Refusing to build power stations in Kirghizia and Tajikistan and ignoring their interests would be tantamount to inviting other state s, primarily China and Iran that have energy-related interests in Central Asia. However, it is not less significant for Russia to maintain close ties with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the oil-and-gas area. In a word, the Central Asian “water problem” has questions for the Russian diplomacy that need to be addressed without delay.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><span style="background-color: #ebebeb; line-height: 24px; text-align: start;">By </span><a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/aleksandr-shustov" style="background-color: #ebebeb; border: 0px; font: inherit; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Posts by Aleksandr Shustov">Aleksandr Shustov</a>@<a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/">globalresearch.ca</a></b></span></div>
off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-4081791240309334362012-10-13T13:23:00.001-04:002012-10-13T13:23:59.340-04:00The Quickest, Easiest Way to Save Water<br />
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I admit it: I’m kind of obsessed with saving water. Not only have I done everything possible at home (low-flow toilets, showerhead, washer/dryer, dishwasher, etc.), I even stealthily installed a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faucet_aerator" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">faucet aerator</a> in the bathroom of a favorite restaurant of mine. Since bathrooms in businesses get a lot of use, I couldn’t resist the 4.5 gallons per minute savings. But what if I told you that you could save even more water than me, without being a total weirdo? What if it was free?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the United States, the average person uses about 69 gallons of water at home indoors per day (<a href="http://www.waterrf.org/PublicReportLibrary/RFR90781_1999_241A.pdf" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">25,295 gallons per year</a>) and about 100 gallons of water per day (36,500 gallons per year) if you include <a href="http://www.epa.gov/WaterSense/pubs/indoor.html" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">outdoor use like watering a lawn.</a> While that is already a lot of water, this number doesn’t even represent all our water use. In fact, the water we use at home is just 3.6% of our <a href="http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Hoekstra-Mekonnen-2012-WaterFootprint-of-Humanity.pdf" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">total water use</a>! Another 4.4% is industrial, and a whopping <strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">92% is agricultural</strong> (food and fiber).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Home water use is <a href="http://www.awwa.org/files/Resources/Waterwiser/JAW0211rockaway.pdf" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">declining in the U.S.</a>, and you can join in on the fun by <a href="http://www.drinktap.org/consumerdnn/Default.aspx?tabid=85" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">saving about 25 gallons per day</a>with standard conservation measures (like low-flow showers). But if you really want to use less water, you can save far more than that by making <strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">one tiny change in your diet on a weekly basis</strong>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The trick here is to reduce the portion of water use that goes to agriculture (92%) by choosing different foods. Just as we can calculate a person’s “carbon footprint” to measure their total contribution towards climate change, we can do the same with water. Your “<a href="http://www.waterfootprint.org/downloads/TheWaterFootprintAssessmentManual.pdf" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">water footprint</a>” includes both your direct and indirect water use (e.g. the water used to produce products you buy), and includes both the consumption and<a href="http://www.care2.com/greenliving/best-and-worst-u-cities-for-water-quality.html" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">pollution of water</a>. In the U.S. the average annual water footprint per capita is 750,777 gallons; the <a href="http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Report50-NationalWaterFootprints-Vol1.pdf" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">global average</a> is less than half of that at 365,878 gallons.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, here’s the quickest, easiest way to reduce your water footprint: Once per week, <strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">eat a soy burger instead of a hamburger.</strong> That’s it. That single swap saves you a whopping 579 gallons each time, and if you do it once per week it <a href="http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Report49-WaterFootprintSoy.pdf" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">adds up to saving 30,111 gallons per year</a> (more than your total indoor water use at home).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you also drink a cup of <a href="http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Report49-WaterFootprintSoy.pdf" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">soy milk instead of cow’s milk</a> you can save another 47 gallons each time (2,447 gallons per year if you make the switch once per week). So between the burger and the milk, that’s a total savings of 32,559 gallons per person per year, enough to take <a href="http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/myths/shower_vs_bath.html" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">814 baths</a>. Trust me, choosing soy products instead of cow products is a lot easier than trying to <a href="http://www.care2.com/greenliving/20-ways-to-conserve-water-at-home.html" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">save that much water at home</a> (and way easier than installing aerators at restaurants, which requires stealth).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Think about that: <strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">you could <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">shut off your water</em> at home</strong> (no toilet, no shower, no washing machine, etc.) <strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">and still have less impact than switching from beef to soy <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">once per week*</em></strong>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inspired? The <a href="http://www.ers.usda.gov/datafiles/Livestock_Meat_Domestic_Data/Quarterly_red_meat_poultry_and_egg_supply_and_disappearance_and_per_capita_disappearance/Beef/WASDE_Beef.xls" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">average American eats 57.3 pounds of beef</a> and <a href="http://media.eatwisconsincheese.com/assets/media/statistics/us_per_capita_milk_sales_60_10.xls" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">drinks 20 gallons of milk per year</a>; swap that all out for soy and save 115,396 gallons of water each year! If you don’t like soy, there are <a href="http://www.care2.com/greenliving/can-you-be-a-soy-free-vegan.html" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">plenty of other options</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can educate yourself on how much water various foods and drinks require at a fantastic <a href="http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/productgallery" style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">web site put out by the Water Footprint Network</a>. (Before you click over, let me warn you: you may not <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">want</em> to know.)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So if you find yourself pulling your hair out because you can’t afford a front-loading washer, or if it starts to seem like a good idea to leave a spare aerator and a wrench in your backpack (just in case), remember there’s an easier way.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>By <a href="http://blog.nature.org/author/jfisher/" rel="author" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="Posts by Jon Fisher">Jon Fisher</a>@<a href="http://www.nature.org/">nature.org</a></b></span></div>
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off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-26461343364639965302012-10-13T13:10:00.003-04:002012-10-13T13:13:34.846-04:00Race for Dams May Trigger Water Disputes Between India, China<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite the prevailing calm along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Arunachal Pradesh since the end of India-China war in 1962, anxiety still prevails among the people of Arunachal. However, the apprehension is not about another impending war, but this time it is about the dam-building spree on both sides of the LAC.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While over 100 large and small hydroelectric projects were being planned in almost all the tributaries of Brahmaputra in Arunachal Pradesh, it is believed that China also has similar plans on the river which originates from Jima Yangzong glacier of Mount Kailash in Tibet. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Brahmaputra in Tibet is called Yarlung Tsangpo. China had earlier announced construction of a 1.2 billion dollar run-of-the-river hydroelectric power project known as Zangmu dam on Yarlung Tsangpo. Strategic analysts here said that as China has plan to exploit the water resources of Yarlung Tsangpo in a big way, India needs to be well-prepared to assert its rights over Brahmaputra in Arunachal Pradesh.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Water of Brahmaputra remains a major concern for India and China. To my view the future dispute between the two countries will be on water. Both the countries should sort out the differences on exploiting water resources amicably before the dispute reaches a flashpoint," said Ashokanand Singhal, president of Jana Jagriti, a Guwahati-based NGO spearheading against China's hydro-projects on Yarlung Tsangpo. Last year Jana Jagriti came out with coordinates and maps of China's purported plan to construct hydroelectric projects and water reservoirs on the river.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Singhal is a votary of India's plan to tap water resources of Brahmaputra in Arunachal Pradesh, saying that the country needs to establish user rights over the river before China goes full steam ahead.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of the 100-odd projects in Arunachal Pradesh, 13 are planned in Tawang alone, the birthplace of VIth Dalai Lama. China claims Tawang as southern extension of Tibet.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People of Tawang, who predominantly belong to Monpa tribe, have opposed the hydroelectric project as they claimed many of the projects were located in Buddhist sacred sites. Save Mon Region Federation (SMRF), a Tawang-based NGO, said that the discontent caused by the proposed projects would only benefit China which has not yet given up its claim over Tawang.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even as China denied any plan to divert water from Yarlung Tsangpo last year, strategic analysts here are of the view that India should go ahead with hydroelectric project constructions in Brahmaputra's major tributaries to counter China's similar move. They said that the hydroelectric dams on Brahmaputra tributaries should be looked as strategic projects.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 2010, during a public consultation on dams here, the former environment minister Jairam Ramesh said that construction of dams in major tributaries of Brahmaputra is necessary for India to have a "negotiating position" with China.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><a href="http://m.timesofindia.com/">timesofindia.com</a></b></span><br />
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off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-12139378044569390492012-10-13T13:06:00.004-04:002012-10-13T13:06:51.877-04:00“Soap and Water, Make Hygiene a Priority for Global Development” <br />
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Governments do not prioritize hygiene in their policy and budgeting, in the school curriculum, in promotion activities," the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque, emphasized on Global Handwashing Day.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"All too often, when we consider water and sanitation, the importance of good hygiene, including handwashing, is forgotten," Ms. de Albuquerque said. "However, in times of global health threats, the life-saving potential of handwashing must be explored. During the 2009 A virus flu pandemic, global leaders were very conscious of handwashing's vital importance."</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the 2015 deadline for the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals approaches, the independent human rights expert urged world leaders "not to lose sight of the centrality of good hygiene for the full realization of the human rights to water, sanitation, health, as well as for dignity and development."</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Good hygiene is essential to prevent the spread of water-borne diseases, one of the main causes of infant mortality. Encouraging good handwashing habits among children can act as a 'do-it-yourself' vaccine against diarrhoeal disease, for a lifetime's protection, preventing more deaths and illness than any other medical intervention.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Women's needs should be also considered and incorporated in the delivery of water and sanitation services if we want to attain gender equality," Ms. de Albuquerque stressed, making clear that, with adequate menstrual hygiene management, adolescent girls do miss school days during their menstruation.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"I call on all to prioritize handwashing and hygiene in the post-2015 development framework," the rights expert appealed as world governments start to set priorities and to make trade-offs in the context of discussions in respect of the next generation of global development goals.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Water and sanitation services have little value if not accompanied by the necessary resources which can be committed to promoting hygiene, to ensuring that sufficient water and the necessary soap is available for handwashing at the appropriate times – particularly before eating and preparing food and after using the toilet," the UN Special Rapporteur said. "It all begins with soap and water."</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><a href="http://www.unric.org/en/"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>unric.org</b></span></a></span></div>
off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-14898555077138648622012-10-13T12:48:00.001-04:002012-10-13T12:48:16.797-04:00Forty! It Only Gets Better From Here?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Clean Water Act turns 40 on October 18th, with a remarkable record of accomplishment. I remember back in the 1960s when the Great Lakes were declared dead, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire and many of our rivers were so full of toxic chemicals that they’d eat the paint right off boats. I remember being told not to eat the fish from Lake Ontario or to swim at the beach near my neighborhood.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today, the Clean Water Act has fixed many of those problems. The Great Lakes are much healthier and cleaner. Rivers in cities like Philadelphia, Providence, Washington DC and others are now tourist attractions! Fishing, boating and water-based recreation are huge job-creators and sources of income for communities. We’ve made incredible progress in cleaning up our rivers, lakes and streams, and our communities are healthier and more vibrant for it.<span id="more-2445"></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So you’d think the 40<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Clean Water Act’s passage would be a time of celebration and re-dedication to the cause of clean water. You’d think we’d be focusing on the challenges we still face and the problems we haven’t yet solved. But instead, polluters and their allies in Congress can’t stop trying to weaken this landmark law. In fact, on the very last day before they recessed for the election in September, the U.S. House of Representatives passed yet another bill that would undermine EPA’s ability to make sure states uphold the clean water protections in the Act!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It only gets worse from there. Since January 2011, the U.S. House of Representatives has voted 38 times to roll-back critical Clean Water Act protections. Thankfully, the Senate and Obama Administration have prevented any of these roll-backs from becoming law. This is one of the main reasons Clean Water Action has endorsed Obama for President in 2012. The contrast between the environmental platforms of the two presidential candidates could not be starker – while the Obama administration has introduced guidelines to help restore Clean Water Act protections to streams and wetlands, a Romney administration would only protect so-called “navigable” water from pollution and destruction. You can learn more about our 2012 campaign endorsements <a href="http://www.cleanwateraction.org/elections2012" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">here.</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This month Clean Water Action is joining other environmental groups to celebrate the 40<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Clean Water Act. We are celebrating its accomplishments and the incredible progress we’ve made. And we are rededicating ourselves to the goal the Act laid out: making all of our nation’s waters fishable and swimmable. I hope you will join us in celebrating 40 years of Clean Water success!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><a href="http://www.cleanwateraction.org/">cleanwateraction.org</a></b></span></span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7pfqCK1niPw" width="640"></iframe>off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-34578577532869831912012-10-13T12:38:00.001-04:002012-10-13T12:38:23.195-04:00She's Alive... Beautiful... Finite... Hurting... Worth Dying for.<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/nGeXdv-uPaw" width="480"></iframe>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">This is a non-commercial attempt from </span><a class="yt-uix-redirect-link" dir="ltr" href="http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/" rel="nofollow" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/">http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/</a><span style="line-height: 18px;"> to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless 'consumers' are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network </span></span>off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-62853644590890914922012-10-13T12:33:00.001-04:002012-10-13T12:33:19.802-04:00All About Aquaculture.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpWFVygVKASwLyeCAtkxte0_ZSXDPql3yzw_NzZWwnJTfDHwC0VLorXEwvXSVCpKbP7zXGO5qNaC5sSVJQ5mHzWcfu5vK-9vCQ6fiv-IWdUvr0v55GGnO7iILIXR-EUUv-4R609mIZrSE/s1600/zzzzSalmon-Aquaculture-NetPen_USDA-440x430.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="624" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpWFVygVKASwLyeCAtkxte0_ZSXDPql3yzw_NzZWwnJTfDHwC0VLorXEwvXSVCpKbP7zXGO5qNaC5sSVJQ5mHzWcfu5vK-9vCQ6fiv-IWdUvr0v55GGnO7iILIXR-EUUv-4R609mIZrSE/s640/zzzzSalmon-Aquaculture-NetPen_USDA-440x430.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="line-height: 20px; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b> Marine finfish like Atlantic salmon are raised in net pens like these</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">The term “aquaculture” refers to a broader spectrum of practices than many realize. In freshwater and marine ecosystems, finfish and shellfish are raised in a variety of different man-made structures. Mesh nets, lines, cages, and rafts are used for </span><a href="http://www.whoi.edu/science/seagrant/education/focalpoints/FPshellaqua.pdf" style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">shellfish aquaculture</a><span style="line-height: 20px;">, which in New England produces mostly mussels, clams, and oysters. These systems are placed in estuaries and bays, which are natural habitats for shellfish. Seed (very young shellfish) are obtained from hatcheries or collected from wild populations and allowed to settle on the aquaculture structure being used, where they can filter food and nutrients from the surrounding marine environment and grow to a commercially harvestable size.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Saltwater finfish aquaculture, which in New England consists mostly of <a href="http://www.maineaquaculture.org/industry/species.html" style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">salmon farming in Maine</a>, is carried out in large net-cages placed in coastal marine waters, which are stocked with fry from freshwater hatcheries on land. There have also been efforts to expand this technology offshore in the U.S. for raising or growing out other finfish species and some extensive operations based on offshore structures elsewhere in the world. Because the fish are not free to forage or hunt for themselves, finfish aquaculture requires feed from the fish farmer. On land, aquaculture is carried out in natural habitats such as ponds as well as artificial environments like raceways and tanks. Freshwater finfish aquaculture in New England consists mainly of trout and salmon hatcheries in <a href="http://www.voga.org/vermont_fish_hatcheries.htm" style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Vermont</a>, <a href="http://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/Fishing/fisheries_management/hatcheries.htm" style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">New Hampshire</a>, and <a href="http://www.mass.gov/dfwele/dfw/facilities/hatcheries.htm" style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Massachusetts</a>, where juvenile fish are raised to a certain size in tanks on land and then released into streams and ponds.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These different practices can be categorized by the level of human intervention involved in the animal’s growth and life history. Extensive aquaculture, which requires minimal intervention, usually involves introducing species from a hatchery or a wild stock into a new natural or slightly altered environment and then leaving them alone until they are ready to be harvested. An example of extensive methods can be found in ancient <a href="http://www.fao.org/fishery/culturedspecies/Cyprinus_carpio/en" style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Chinese carp aquaculture</a>, in which the carp ponds were stocked with fry from wild populations but left to feed on naturally occurring or introduced algae. Many shellfish farms – such as the<a href="http://www.nantucketoystercompany.com/?page_id=2" style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Nantucket Oyster Company</a> in Massachusetts – also practice extensive methods, in which wild or hatchery seed is set on a man-made raft or line suspended in a natural marine environment. Because shellfish are filter feeders, they do not need any supplemental feed. Since rearing seafood in this manner requires modest energy inputs, extensive aquaculture is among the most efficient and sustainable food production processes in the world.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Intensive aquaculture is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Both feed and habitat are artificially supplied in intensive aquaculture systems, which are generally less sustainable because the higher level of human intervention requires higher energy, water, and land use. Within intensive systems, farming low trophic-level species (herbivorous and omnivorous fish such as tilapia and catfish) is much more sustainable than farming high trophic-level species (piscivorous fish like salmon) – a future blog post in this series will explore the issue of sustainability further. Cage aquaculture – such as that used by <a href="http://www.truenorthsalmon.com/how-salmon-are-farmed.asp" style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">True North Salmon Company</a> in Maine – is often considered intensive because even though fish may be raised in a natural habitat (rather than on land in a recirculating system or raceway) they are entirely dependent on humans for survival.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Semi-intensive aquaculture involves an intermediate level of human intervention, in which feed may be provided in a natural environment or an environment is provided but feed is not. In some cases, feed may be added to a natural environment to augment growth or nutrition of the cultured species, but at levels below those required to fully sustain the population. Some people consider the New England lobster industry to fall in this category as current populations are nurtured and grow as a result of millions of pounds of food put in the water in the form of baits in traps. Of course, if the lines between these three categories seem fuzzy, it’s because they are – every farm is different, and there are many ways to farm the same aquatic animal. Extensive, intensive, and semi-intensive are general terms that attempt to roughly describe the amount of energy needed to produce the final seafood product.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><a href="http://www.talkingfish.org/"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>talkingfish.org</b></span></a></span></div>
off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-36288658928620548942012-10-12T16:44:00.001-04:002012-10-12T16:44:19.961-04:00Global Warming May Shift Summer Weather Patterns<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOmROLwHsphVDWhLIHIalU-PiSJ6R1Uq36kMAVeBdqfQ6AAKyP01-6qu8hUf-_GPXxLljb-R6mzgPSVFQwhxG0H66p9fqycrwdfRr_ijsUCz7D9bQIUh_nCattlzmU461kRl2VHkfUpsg/s1600/zzzzzzzzzpattern_recognition_east_coast_hurricane+(Small).PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="614" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOmROLwHsphVDWhLIHIalU-PiSJ6R1Uq36kMAVeBdqfQ6AAKyP01-6qu8hUf-_GPXxLljb-R6mzgPSVFQwhxG0H66p9fqycrwdfRr_ijsUCz7D9bQIUh_nCattlzmU461kRl2VHkfUpsg/s640/zzzzzzzzzpattern_recognition_east_coast_hurricane+(Small).PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By altering the heat balance between land and sea, manmade global warming may be altering summer weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, a <a href="http://www.nature.com/uidfinder/10.1038/ngeo1590" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">new study</a> found. The study, published on Sept. 30 in <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nature Geoscience</em>, shows that the sprawling high pressure areas that set up shop over the Western North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans during the summer months have become larger and stronger during the past 40 years, and these trends are likely to continue during the next several decades as temperatures increase.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These changing weather patterns could have far-reaching impacts, from redirecting powerful hurricanes toward the East Coast, to making the Southeast and Central states see-saw more frequently between extremely hot and dry summers and cooler, wetter summers. In addition, a shift in the strength and shape of the North Pacific subtropical high could affect the South Asian Monsoon, which is already being altered by warming and increased regional pollution. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The study does not formally attribute the cause of the recent trends, but says that the future changes will most likely be driven by global warming.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although highs (the big "H" symbols on your local TV weathercast) are typically associated with pleasant weather, the position and shape of these systems shape large-scale weather patterns, helping to determine the locations of subtropical deserts. More importantly for the U.S., they help steer the most powerful storms on Earth, and modulate rainfall amounts in the Central, Southeast, and Mid-Atlantic states.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Atlantic subtropical high, more commonly known as the “Bermuda High” because of its semi-permanent location near that Western Atlantic island during the summer months, helps determine whether Atlantic hurricanes recurve harmlessly out to sea before reaching the East Coast, or make landfall with potentially devastating impacts.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hurricanes tend to skirt around the edges of the high by catching a ride on the clockwise flow of air around the periphery.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Bermuda High also helps draw warm and humid air up the Eastern seaboard, contributing to some of the most intense heatwaves on record.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The study, which relies on climate model simulations as well as weather data for the past 40 years, shows that the Bermuda High has already expanded westward, which could be making summertime rainfall in the Central and Southeast U.S. much more variable.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The intensification and westward movement of the subtropical highs may cause more landfalling hurricanes/typhoons and cause more intense Southeast U.S. rainfall variability, leading to more extreme events in the[se] regions,” said coauthor Mingfang Ting of Columbia University in an email conversation.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A <a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2010JCLI3829.1" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">2010 study</a> published in the<em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Journal of Climate</em> found that a westward shift in the Bermuda High helped cause a marked increase in the frequency of summers with “strongly anomalous precipitation” in the Southeast. Recent summers have seen <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2010/11/southeast_summer_rainfall_more.html" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">dramatic flips between punishing droughts and severe flooding</a> in states such as Georgia, for example.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to the research of Ting and her colleagues, the sharpened temperature contrast between land areas and the oceans, which is related to manmade global warming, is the main mechanism behind the intensifying and expanding Highs.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“... In the future warming scenario, we show that this pattern is intensifying, and land and ocean heat contrasts are intensifying. This leads to the intensification of the anticyclones,” Ting said.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the Pacific, the consequences of the intensifying and expanding subtropical high could be just as serious, considering that the high helps regulate the <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&ved=0CEMQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Fnclimate%2Fjournal%2Fv2%2Fn8%2Ffull%2Fnclimate1495.html&ei=lJh1UPalKonA0QG83YD4Bg&usg=AFQjCNF7oM6nEQ2JaOG-jRzCPvHxl1aIxQ" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">South Asian Monsoon season</a>, which provides vital water for irrigating crops.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><span style="line-height: 50px;">By </span><a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/what-we-do/people/andrew_freedman" rel="author" style="border: 0px; line-height: 50px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Andrew Freedman</a>@<a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/">climatecentral.org</a></b></span></div>
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off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-44472238943683158242012-10-12T16:19:00.001-04:002012-10-12T16:19:13.327-04:00Water in a Climate Change World<br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the 2008 book,<em> <a href="http://www.dryspringbook.com/" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Dry Spring – the Coming Water Crisis of North America</a></em>, Chris Wood <a href="http://globalwarmingisreal.com/2008/09/23/book-review-dry-spring-the-coming-water-crisis-of-north-america-by-chris-wood/" style="text-decoration: none;" title="Book Review: Dry Spring – The Coming Water Crisis of North America by Chris Wood">detailed the scope of impacts</a> we could anticipate as more volatile and extreme weather patterns become the norm. Wood, who continues to track climate change as a research collaborator, author and journalist, revisited the book in a recent interview, and noted that climate change impacts projected at the time of publication have largely proven true.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some geographic areas continue to receive more water than they need, and it’s easy to imagine transferring surplus water to drought regions, especially north to south. Wood cautions that this is largely fiction – the <a href="http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2012/world/climate-change-alters-the-calculus-for-water-infrastructure-planning/" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Climate Change Alters the Calculus for Water Infrastructure Planning">scale and cost of infrastructure</a> to make these connections, as well as the political ramifications are apt to be insurmountable. In particular, Wood cited the common misperception in the US that Canada has a uniform over-abundance of water that could potentially be shared in a worst-case scenario; in fact, precipitation is greatest in the northern provinces, further from the US.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If the water can’t be transferred, population and jobs will naturally migrate over time from areas of water scarcity to areas of relatively greater abundance.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wood asserted that a key to water management will be to <a href="http://walrusmagazine.com/articles/2008.10-environment-chris-wood-water-economy/" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="The Business of Saving the Earth">think more broadly about landscapes</a> – urban and non-urban – as potential hydrologic resources that warrant protection.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While some communities already incentivize low-impact development and other stormwater management practices, the capacity for water retention, runoff, and groundwater recharge associated with all kinds of land uses and land covers (including rooftops) warrant scrutiny. In other words, water management will need to become a stronger driver in land-use planning.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Considering that roughly <a href="http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/faqs.html" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">70 percent of all water use is agricultural</a>, current efforts to achieve water savings through urban conservation may be misguided. The need for more efficient irrigation has created a market opportunity for green tech companies. The Cleantech Group, a market research firm, tracks 53 companies globally that are identified as “smart irrigation” providers.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, a decrease in irrigation and agricultural runoff can also have the unintended consequence of reducing groundwater recharge, creating challenges for adjacent landowners.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wood anticipates that farmers will ultimately need to rethink their crop choices to maximize food production using the least water.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Research is currently underway at the University of British Columbia to evaluate the food value per unit of water input for globally traded commodities. As drought affects more and more of the countries that currently provide the bulk of the global food supply, careful crop selection will be imperative to meet the growing demand of an expanding population.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><a href="http://theenergycollective.com/"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>theenergycollective.com</b></span></a></span></div>
off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-82071949355324806082012-10-12T16:03:00.001-04:002012-10-12T16:03:15.206-04:00Harare Water Woes No Solution in Sight <br />
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Ratepayers took full advantage of the opportunity provided by Monday's meeting to express their views on the question of Salisbury water supply and members of the City Council who attended heard some outspoken criticism. The public was told that the present position was caused 'by the failure of the Cleveland Dam', the 30 million gallons of water in which was unuseable, and further that lack of rainfall was the sole reason for the failure of Cleveland Dam.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"These explanations are all very well, but what the average ratepayer would consider more valuable would be an assurance that the present position will not arise again and a statement of what steps are to be taken to prevent its recurrence.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The City Council seems to be pinning its faith to the Prince Edward Dam which, with its daily average reserve of 500 million gallons, could more than satisfy Salisbury's present hot weather consumption over one million gallons a day if all the filters were in operation," read part of a story published in The Herald of October 9, 1937.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Water problems dogged Salisbury residents back then with the then council officials facing criticism from angry residents left, right and centre.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Each council that came into office made many promises on how they would put an end to the water challenges.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seventy-five years later, serious water problems still stalk Harare and similar challenges haunt residents raising the question of what it will take to bring an end to the crisis.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The solution seems elusive; it is like looking for the legendary Lochness monster.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Town planner Mr Percy Toriro says there are three key issues regarding Harare's water shortages and what can be done.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Firstly, in the short term it is about managing the inadequate resource well. This should be two-pronged -- water demand management by residents on one hand, and attending to water loss by city authorities on the other part," said Mr Toriro.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He said residents of Harare should be conscious of the fact that their water is inadequate and the only way it can be enough is by using less of the resource.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"This is the opposite of water cuts by authorities, which does not work because for as long as the residents do not co-operate, once the water service is restored, they will still waste the water," he added.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He said water loss caused by old leaking pipes and burst unattended pipes is also too high, at about 50 percent of the treated water.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"We need an accelerated pipe replacement programme complemented by swift reaction teams to repair burst pipes," he pointed out. Mr Toriro added that in the long term, the sewer reticulation network should be upgraded as well as building new water supply dams away from the Manyame catchment that has become highly polluted.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"We also need a medium- to long-term plan to reclaim the Manyame catchment by dealing with the sources of pollution," he added. While measures that include the sinking of boreholes have been put in place through funding by organisations like Unicef to at least manage the water challenges and curb the spread of diseases like cholera, Mr Toriro says this is not the solution.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Boreholes are not a sustainable source of water for millions of residents.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"In the long run the water table falls and many of them become dry. They are also difficult to manage because they must be regularly tested and so on," he said.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He added that even with a fully functional Morton Jaffray waterworks, the water will still be insufficient.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"At the moment Harare can only at best supply half the 1400 megalitres required per day, and of this half, 50 percent is lost along the reticulation network. More can certainly be done and we hope with the recently talked-about Chinese loans, the infrastructure issues will be addressed soon," he added.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kunzvi Dam, according to Mr Toriro, would go a long way in solving Harare's water problems, but will not constitute the full solution.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"It will also address the geographical challenge where suburbs in the north and east that are at the end of the current network tend to suffer the worst shortages by having sources at both ends of the city. In the long run, a sustainable solution is a combination of water demand management, technical solutions to attend to lost water, increased treatment capacity, and new dams," he pointed out.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unicef chief of water, sanitation and hygiene Mr Kiwe Sebunya said Zimbabwe's urban water system was a complex one. "We are always in a dilemma, most sewage systems are waterborne. Raw sewage is flowing into dams that provide drinking water.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"If sewer rehabilitation is to be tackled, it needs enough water to have it flowing hence availability of water receive first priority," Mr Sebunya said during a media workshop on women and children reporting in Nyanga recently.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He, however, said channelling more resources towards water supply first before sewage reticulation would expose residents to diseases as raw sewage continued to flow along streets. "The situation is a complex one. There is a need for at least some little water to have the sewage flowing.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Tackling the sewage when there is no water may result in blockages as the sewage fails to flow along the pipes," Sebunya added. Mr Sebunya urged authorities to rehabilitate the sewer reticulation as the water situation improves. "The reticulation systems in most urban areas are very old and require replacement at very huge costs," he said.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr Sebunya, however, said Unicef had not abandoned urban water programmes after launching the rural water programmes. "There is hope that we can get more resources for water and sanitation programmes in small towns. We are in the process of mobilising resources with some donors," he said. Mr Sebunya also said boreholes were not an appropriate long-term solution for water problems.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Boreholes for urban areas were never an option as a source of clean water, but were only an emergency option during the 2008 and 2009 cholera outbreak," he said.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead, he revealed, there is need to push for the completion of the Kunzvi Dam project, which is a long term solution. Kunzvi Development Corporation recently secured US$375 million to build Kunzvi Dam and the construction of the dam is expected to begin late this year ending in 2015.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">University of Zimbabwe senior lecturer in the Rural and Urban Planning department Mr Innocent Chirisa also described the water situation in Harare as complex.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"There are more problems underlying the issue than meets the eye. City of Harare is one out of many stakeholders in the water issue. Water is a politicised good. As long as the local authority is not in a position to out-manoeuvre the politics then it is in deep problem," he pointed out.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He said the technical solutions to Harare's water problems are very clear and have worked in many parts of the world.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"These should simply be adhered to. I don't have to expound on them given that textbooks on the subject have adequately dealt with such. I will deliberately be dodgy on the subject," he added.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr Chirisa also argued that what is needed in Harare is reticulated water.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Boreholes were sunk as a stopgap measure because there was a crisis. Crises teach us to be innovative but not all innovation is meant to be a permanent solution.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"As long as there is little investment in the maintenance methodologies of the existing and proposed infrastructure, there will ever be challenges. Infrastructure, like babies, is easy to produce, but difficult to maintain," he said.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Marlborough resident, Mr Tapiwa Mubonderi, said council should set up more purification plants, replace the water pipes and create new sources of raw water for the metropolitan.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The sewer system should also be repaired and capacity of treating sewage increased so that we can dispose of the waste we produce," he said.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He added that council could consider looking for money by entering into agreements with financiers in countries that do not have a financial embargo such as South Africa, India, China, Russia or Brazil.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"There are also funds available within the city that if pooled appropriately could be used to improve infrastructure.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"In the past few years how much money has been spent by individuals and entities in making alternative water supply arrangements either as boreholes, bulk water tanks and water purification equipment? What is the quantum of all these funds? What could we have achieved if they had pooled those funds and used them to fix and upgrade Harare's ability to supply treated water? This illustrates that there is potential for use to get a good proportion of the funds required from within the city," he pointed out.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He added: "However, most people do not want to contribute to collective purses because there are reservations on the capability of the city to effectively manage those funds.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"It requires that the citizens of Harare at the next election should choose fit and proper councillors and not vote blindly or the council will not have the capacity to execute its mandate."</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr Mubonderi also suggested that the City of Harare could approach banks and the financial community and get them involved in a finance vehicle that would be used to find long-term financing for parts of the water project.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Bankers who live and work in Harare would want to use their expertise to make it possible to have a safe and consistent water supply. This is will only come about and play ball with a competent council at the helm of the city.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The work to replace the pipes must be given to local companies, so we construct and install the required infrastructure. This is pertinent for Zimbabwe as we face a perennial unemployment problem. We can make products on our own," he proposed.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He also said most of the materials required for water systems are available locally while foreign partners could be involved in terms of technology transfer and capital injections or as equity partners for the creation of local capacity.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"There is the controversial issue of water subsidies being pushed by central government, at best it's a noble gesture but could be the escalation of electioneering for next year. Until there is a significant change in the macroeconomic conditions, our population is severely compromised in its ability to pay for water services. If a pay as you go system is adopted it will risk public health, as it will expose vulnerable members of the community to unsafe water.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Our Government cannot afford to pay for the water for its citizens, imagine what the old, disabled, ill and redundant members of our community can afford. "The idea of everyone paying for services is good and sounds profitable but it is only possible in an economy with higher per capita incomes," said Mr Mubonderi.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 16px; text-transform: uppercase;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>BY ROSELYNE SACHITI@<a href="http://allafrica.com/">allafrica.com</a></b></span></span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WyXYH1N8TP8" width="640"></iframe>off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-41640514465811246752012-10-11T15:43:00.001-04:002012-10-11T15:43:10.945-04:00Water Is the Next Global Problem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The world is on the verge of the greatest crisis it has ever faced. Worsening water security will have irreversible consequences on ecosystems, livelihoods and the global economic system.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ever-expanding water demand by the world's growing population and economy has made water scarcity a reality in many parts of the world. We are witnessing severe damage to livelihoods, human health, and ecosystems.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is predicted by most accounts that by 2013, global water requirements would increase by 40% above current accessible and reliable supply.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the next two decades, global demand for fresh water will vastly outstrip reliable supply in many parts of the world, especially in the developing world.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are exerting heavy pressure on river basins and underground aquifers. Moreover, climate change is predicted to escalate scarcity in water-stressed regions.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Global warming is expected to accelerate melting of glaciers and snow cover upon which over a billion people depend on for their water.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The world is increasingly turning its attention to the issue of water scarcity. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) of the USA recently released a report entitled Global Water Security, which posits that water supply issues around the globe will lead to economic instability, civil and international wars, and even the use of water as a weapon in the next several decades.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Predictions by the US government and the United Nations show that by 2030 over 30% of the world population will be living in river basins that will have to cope with significant water stress, including many of the countries and regions that drive global economic growth.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For instance, water tables in many countries, including the USA, India and China have dropped significantly in the last 20 years, indicating that we have exceeded our renewable water budget and are unsustainably mining the resource.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because of increasing water scarcity, India's "green revolution" is being reversed; crop yields in northern India have fallen in some areas by 15-20%. Desertification and drought are hurting farmers in northern China, and both India and China are now significant importers of grain.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many regions already experiencing water stress will become more stressed. Water stress may contribute to the risk of instability and state failure, particularly when combined with poverty, environmental degradation and governance incapability.More importantly, regional tensions over shared river basins are likely to rise. The Nile Basin is a case in point.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Under British colonial rule, a 1929 treaty reserved 80% of the Nile's entire flow for Egypt and Sudan. 75 percent of Egypt's water is used for agriculture, most of it wasted by inefficient, old-fashioned irrigation practices.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Investors from China, India and the Persian Gulf region have expressed interest in underwriting enormous agriculture projects in Uganda and Ethiopia. Increased upstream water use in the Nile Basin is a potential tinderbox for regional conflict.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to the Global Water Security report, transnational water basin agreements often do not exist or are inadequate. For example, the report concludes that mechanism to the govern the Brahmaputra basin and Amu Darya basin (shared by is "inadequate," and those governing the Tigris-Euphrates, the Nile, and the Mekong is "limited, while the governance of the Indus and the Jordan rivers is moderate.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While climate change will undoubtedly have an increasing impact on water availability and food production over the coming decades, there are many other factors including urbanization, changing diets that will increasingly impact water availability.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The growing water gap between supply and demand is likely to have major ramifications for our planet. Urgent national and global action is needed to avert what is evidently an imminent crisis. What we need is a Blue Revolution. Actions needed to underpin a Blue Revolution must include:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Access to high quality data and monitoring networks for water planning and management. Data is critical for water allocations and also a dynamic picture of the impact of climate change and additional water use on the water resources and the environment.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you can't measure it you cant manage it; Reform of water governance by improving determination of water rights and allocation systems, including innovative systems for valuation, pricing and trade to water productivity;</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Managing agricultural water demand by increasing in irrigation efficiency, growing drought-resistant crops and improving soil water holding capacity in rainfed systems;</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Managing urban water demand by increasing recycling and reuse, renovating infrastructure to reduce urban water losses, which averages 40-60% in many cities and demand management strategies including technology and pricing;</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Promoting participatory watershed management and market efficiency for environmental stewardship through coupling water resource management with payments for ecosystem services.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We must act to solve the complex and related problems of water security, food security and global sustainability. And time is of essence!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px; text-transform: uppercase;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>BY DR. ALEX O. AWITI@<a href="http://allafrica.com/">allafrica.com</a></b></span></span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QUGrUF2kyMU" width="480"></iframe>off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-50189826264136773442012-10-11T15:28:00.002-04:002012-10-11T15:28:28.533-04:00Evolve Regional Strategy on Drinking Water Supply, Sanitation<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">As unclean water and sanitation is the world´s second biggest killer of children, the World Bank official on Wednesday urged countries in South Asia to evolve out a common strategy to tackle this problem in the region.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">"Policy priority, insufficient funding, rapid urbanization and lack of public awareness have mainly impeded attainment of long-term sustainability of water supply and sanitation in South Asia," said Tahseen Sayed, World Bank country manager for Nepal. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;"></span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">"Weak institutional capacities are other problems for us in the region to attain our goal of reducing number of people who do not have access to drinking water and sanitation," she stated </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">Sayed was speaking at the South Asian regional conference on drinking water and sanitation, which kicked off in Kathmandu on Wednesday.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">The three-day conference is being attended by more than 100 experts and officials from the different countries of the region. Through the conference, they hope to identify a common strategy to mitigate challenges seen in access to drinking water and sanitation in rural areas and also identify the workable institutional models for the region. </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">According to the World Bank, more than 500 million people do not have access to sanitation and 250 million people to drinking water in South Asia, which is home to 1.6 billion people. </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">"Despite its economic success, South Asia, now, represents the largest concentration of the world´s poor, as well as those lacking access to safe water and sanitation," said its statement.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">According to the Bank, the conference will discuss on identifying sustainable ways of water supply, increasing sanitation access and reducing challenges -- challenges of declining water quality and quantity. "It will also focus on developing partnership between public and private sector to advance rural water and sanitation," Sayed said.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">Janak Raj Shah, member of the National Planning Commission (NPC) said that the inadequate coordination among major players in the field of water supply and sanitation, weak implementation of the program and lack of proper approach to handle the projects were major hurdles of water supply and sanitation in Nepal. “</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">"We are lagging behind to achieve our targets under millennium development goals on sanitation and water supply," Shah said. The government has targeted to increase access to water supply and sanitation to 53 percent of the total population by 2015.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;"><a href="http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php"><b>myrepublica.com</b></a></span></span>off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171829312883643472.post-34263198281628259122012-10-11T15:20:00.001-04:002012-10-11T15:20:42.205-04:00Climate Change Video<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qEPVyrSWfQE?list=SP38EB9C0BC54A9EE2&hl=en_US" width="640"></iframe>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The US National Research Council has been doing a lot recently to expand background knowledge of the climate system and of climate change. In tandem with a new report discussing <a href="http://dels.nas.edu/Report/National-Strategy-Advancing-Climate/13430">strategies for advancing climate modeling</a>, they have put up a an introductory web site on <a href="http://nas-sites.org/climatemodeling">climate models</a> (including some interviews with some actual climate modelers).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">More comprehensively, they have helped put together a series of videos discussing everything from the definition of climate to attribution of climate changes and future projections. The series is in seven parts, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?annotation_id=annotation_616930&feature=iv&list=PL38EB9C0BC54A9EE2&src_vid=2_10jtPCjQw">viewable here</a>. There are additional resources <a href="http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/new-resources-about-climate-change/">here</a>.</span></div>
off-beathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04367617686919982475noreply@blogger.com0