December 25, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The global aid group, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF / Doctors Without Borders) has released its 11th annual report on the ten most severe humanitarian crises around the world. This years list cites mass poverty, resource scarcity and ungovernability in Somalia, Ethiopia and DR Congo, severe health risks to the populations of Zimbabwe, Burma (Myanmar) and DR Congo, and the constant danger of violence against civilians in Iraq, DR Congo, and Sudan’s Darfur region, along the Chad border.
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December 21, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
There are over 230 million people suffering from hunger or undernourishment in India. No other nation has so many people suffering chronic malnutrition, and the undernourished in India represent 27% of the worldwide hunger-stricken population. While India’s economy develops and the potential for an expanded middle class takes root, the total number of Indians going [...]
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December 9, 2008 :: Evelyn Winston Perez :: No Comment Yet
The spread of cholera due to Zimbabwe’s foundering hygienic infrastructure is reaching crisis proportions. UNICEF is calling for an emergency fund of $17.5 million to fight the spread of cholera in Zimbabwe, calling the outbreak “a cholera crisis of unprecedented levels”. With 13,960 cases already declared and an estimated 589 dead to date, the UN warns upwards of 60,000 people could become infected if drastic and immediate action is not taken to contain the epidemic.
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November 17, 2008 :: Denver Lessing :: No Comment Yet
The cloud of soot and smog choking India and China and their neighbors is worsening. The massive brown cloud hovering over Asia now poses serious long-term health risks and environmental dangers to much of the continent, according to a new UN report. The world’s largest pollution phenomenon already drastically reduces the amount of daylight reaching ground level in many Chinese cities, and there is concern the sunlight-blocking effects could impede agricultural production.
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August 24, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) recently joked at an event in Colorado that he was there “to take your water”, a tongue-in-cheek reference to his pronouncements on the need to “renegotiate” the terms of the Colorado River Compact, which determines how much water each of the 7 states in the Colorado Basin can draw from the river. The joke has become fodder for McCain’s opponents, at the national and local level. Colorado’s governor told the press, in a call reportedly organized by the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), that the reference raised serious concerns about the favorability of McCain’s water policies to his state.
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July 27, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
There are few things more damaging to the right of witnesses and bystanders to contribute to the resolution of a given problem than harboring the assumption that no one involved has anything to contribute. For western and Asian lookers on, viewing the problems of the African continent as outsiders, there is absolutely nothing to be gained by surrendering to the ugly bias of the belief that Africans cannot contribute to the change and development they both need and deserve.
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June 23, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
A fast-unfolding food shortage is engulfing the entire world, driving food prices to record highs. Over the past half-century grain prices have spiked from time to time because of weather-related events, such as the 1972 Soviet crop failure that led to a doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices. The situation today is entirely different, however. The current doubling of grain prices is trend-driven, the cumulative effect of some trends that are accelerating growth in demand and other trends that are slowing the growth in supply.
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March 25, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
As part of the Crisis Policy Forum, the HotSpring collaborative innovation initiative is now planning an effort to tackle the problem of food supply management and chronic food and water scarcity in Africa. The lessons from this experiment in collaborative research will be applicable in many cases to other situations around the world, and we [...]
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March 23, 2008 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
As part of the Crisis Policy Forum, The Hot Spring’s collaborative innovation initiative is now planning an effort to tackle the problem of food supply management and chronic food and water scarcity in Africa. The lessons from this experiment in collaborative research will be applicable in many cases to other situations around the world, and [...]
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November 2, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
2 November :: 60 Minutes reveals WMD intel fraud, Iraqi emigré known as ‘Curve Ball’ by spy agencies said to have lied to officials about involvement in WMD work in Iraq in order to get asylum in Germany; US later used his false claim as support for invasion of Iraq; program to air Sunday in [...]
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October 31, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
31 October :: US authorities fear catastrophic dam failure in Iraq: “A catastrophic failure of the largest dam in Iraq would send a wave 65ft high hurtling down the valley of the river Tigris, killing up to 500,000 people, US engineers warned yesterday” reports UK’s Independent; Army Corps of Engineers warns failure of the two-mile-across [...]
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October 28, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
28 October :: US southeast caught up in political conflict over scarce water resources; PhysOrg reports “Hoping to guarantee no one will go thirsty, Georgia authorities want to drastically reduce the outflow from a reservoir that supplies drinking water to three million people. But neighboring Alabama claims that would have devastating economic effects on its [...]
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October 17, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
17 October :: Lake Lanier, Atlanta’s main water source, might be dry within four months, according to one worst-case projection; drought across the US southeast has reached the most severe warning level… Guardian reports “Britain risks the prospect of a US-style crash in its house prices as the credit crunch in the financial markets takes [...]
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September 28, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
28 September :: Shijiazhuang, a city of 2 million on the North China Plain has seen 11% growth, construction boom, even as irreplaceable aquifers are drying up, water tables fast dropping; as IHT reports, “China is scouring the world for oil, natural gas and minerals to keep its economic machine humming. But trade deals cannot [...]
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September 22, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
Lester R. Brown, EPI :: On March 16, 2003, some 10,000 participants [met] in Japan for the third World Water Forum to discuss the world water prospect. Although they [would] be officially focusing on water scarcity, they [would also] indirectly be focusing on food scarcity because 70 percent of the water we divert from rivers [...]
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September 19, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
Sentido.tv :: More than 1 billion people already face fresh water scarcity, figure expected to double in 20 years’ time
Water is one of the “fundamental building-blocks of life”, as is often said in science, in biology classrooms, in medicine, theology, environmental policy debates, and in cosmology and space exploration. It is also a commodity whose [...]
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August 14, 2007 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Water is one of the “fundamental building-blocks of life”, as is often said in science, in biology classrooms, in medicine, theology, environmental policy debates, and in cosmology and space exploration. It is also a commodity whose economic reality is increasingly defined by chronic scarcity and often intensely uneven distribution.
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March 13, 2003 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
On March 16, 2003, some 10,000 participants will meet in Japan for the third World Water Forum to discuss the world water prospect. Although they will be officially focusing on water scarcity, they will indirectly be focusing on food scarcity because 70 percent of the water we divert from rivers or pump from underground is used for irrigation.
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June 21, 2000 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
At a time when drought in the United States, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan is in the news, it is easy to forget that far more serious water shortages are emerging as the demand for water in many countries simply outruns the supply. Water tables are now falling on every continent. Literally scores of countries are facing water shortages as water tables fall and wells go dry.
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