Nigeria: Beating the ‘macho’ ego in reproductive health matters

Posted on August 21, 2010
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In the face of a rising cycle of maternal deaths, Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) and abject poverty, now is the time for the men folk to show renewed commitment to family planning methods, writes Zebulon Agomuo.

A few years ago, Mike, a company driver, lost his job and life became very difficult. Before the sad development, he had six children – four males and two females. A year after Mike lost his job, his wife was delivered of the seventh child; yet, he had no means of livelihood. Consequently, he started mounting pressure on some of his friends and former colleagues, for financial assistance.

On the arrival of the eighth child, Mike’s financial situation had still not improved and he was contending with a lot of pressure. It was at that point that someone pointed out to him the need for family planning, either for himself or his wife, at which point he flared up. “Is it because I came to you for assistance that has given you the audacity to probe into my private affair? Children are gifts from God and I do not intend to stop them from coming. God who brings them knows how they will survive. Family planning is totally against the will of God,” Mike snapped. True to his threat, he neither sought medical help for himself nor his wife.

On the ninth pregnancy, the wife could not survive the complications. She had a prolonged labour and became very hypertensive during the labour session. She did not only die but also lost the baby in the process. In another instance, a lecturer with one of the nation’s polytechnics decided to undergo a vasectomy when his wife refused to submit herself for any form of family planning. Speaking with BusinessDay, the lecturer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said his decision was based on the belief that marriage demands sacrifice, even when it means death.

“After three children, I saw no reason for us to continue raising children. My wife, though she agreed with me, refused to use any family planning device. I felt we should stop at that number and focus on their education. So to avoid any mistake, I volunteered to go for the vasectomy. I had the section peacefully; it was two years ago,” the lecturer said.

Women cannot achieve sexual and reproductive health without the cooperation and participation of men. Usually, it is the men folk who usually decide on the number and variety of sexual relationships, timing and frequency of sexual activity and use of contraceptives, sometimes through coercion or violence.

Chauvinism has been taken to a ridiculous height, even in serious matters. Hiding under the erroneous belief that “it is a man’s world”, a good number of men have adopted reckless lifestyles that, not only hurt them, but also ruin their families. Many years ago, it used to be a mark of respect and heroism for men to have large families. Those were the days when polygamy thrived. However, with the economic realities of our days, it has become necessary for people to cut their coats according to their means, not necessarily their sizes.

More:http://www.businessdayonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13864:beating-the-macho-ego-in-reproductive-health-matters&catid=126:health

Afghanistan and African nations at greatest risk from world food shortages

Posted on August 19, 2010
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Pakistan’s devastating floods highlight how climate change is having “a profound effect on global food security”. Photograph: Horace Murray/Reuters

Soaring commodity prices and natural disasters in Russia and Pakistan have combined to put African nations and conflict-ridden countries such as Afghanistan most at risk from food shortages, according to a report released today. Sharp price rises for wheat and other grains will hit the world’s neediest countries hardest, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, as they grapple with their own poor harvests and failing transport networks, according to a food security index by risk management consultancy Maplecroft.

It also says conflict is a key factor behind food insecurity and Afghanistan tops the index of threatened countries. The other nine nations categorised as “extreme risk” are all in Africa, led by Democratic Repubkic of the Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia. African nations make up 36 of the 50 countries most at risk in the index.

The report highlights climate change as having a “profound effect on global food security”, with a heatwave in Russia coinciding with devastating floods in Pakistan – ranked 30th and “high risk” in the index. “Russian brakes on exports, plus a reduction in Canada’s harvest by almost a quarter due to flooding in June, are provoking fluctuations in the commodity markets,” said Fiona Place, environmental analyst at Maplecroft. “This will further affect the food security of the most vulnerable countries.”

Using 12 criteria developed with the World Food Programme, including GDP per head and cereal production and imports, Maplecroft’s index evaluated risks to the supply of basic food staples for 163 countries. Finland was least at risk, while the UK was ranked 146th.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/19/food-shortages-afghanistan-africa-pakistan-russia

Scottish gold mine turned down at Loch Lomond

Posted on August 19, 2010
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Photo: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

A proposal to build Britain’s only commercial gold mine in Loch Lomond national park has been refused after councillors decided it would “devastate” the park’s outstanding scenery. Buoyed by record gold prices, the developers had hoped to mine up to five tonnes of gold worth around £110m, and a further 20 tonnes of silver, from an unworked mine at Cononish near Tyndrum in the north-eastern corner of the park.

Despite substantial local support, the application was narrowly rejected by the park’s planning committee yesterday evening, by 12 votes to 10, after taking evidence and debating the proposal for more than five hours at a special hearing in Tyndrum village hall. The developer, Scotgold, which raised more than £4.5m from Australian private investors for the project and believed it would be welcomed by local planners, is now expected to appeal to the Scottish government.

National park officials said the decision was “very tricky”. Last week, the park’s director of planning, Gordon Watson, claimed the project was of doubtful economic viability yet its vast waste dump, a dam holding 820,000 tonnes of ground rock “tailings”, would permanently ruin the immediate area.

Mike Cantlay, the park’s convenor and chair of the Scottish tourism authority VisitScotland, voted against the proposal. He said: “Thriving communities in the national park are fundamental and this has been an especially difficult application to consider. The statutory aims of the national park are very clear: that we must give greater weight to our first aim, to conserve and enhance our natural heritage, therefore we can’t balance the potential economic benefits against the certain devastating long-term impact on this spectacular scenery.”

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/19/scottish-gold-mine-rejected

Can demography save Afghanistan?

Posted on August 19, 2010
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Link to an article by Richard P. Cincotta of the National Intelligence Council:

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0Bxq-A-AsZDhmYTNmZTU1ZjMtODg1Ny00ODA0LTg2NTMtZmIzZDE3ODIxYjM4&hl=en&authkey=CLDGrJoI&pli=1

 

How to ensure food security

Posted on August 19, 2010
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This summer has been brutal. More than 1,200 people have lost their lives in China as a result of torrential rain and landslides; millions more have lost their homes and seen their farms inundated - and this on top of the worst drought in the south-west of the country earlier this year. We (World Food Programme China) extend our sincere condolences to the families who have lost their loved ones. And we understand the despair that farmers must feel as they watch their harvest disappear.

Sadly, the suffering is being felt across the globe. In Pakistan, 20 million people have been affected by massive flooding. In Russia, wildfires have cost countless lives and together with drought, reduced the harvest by up to 20 percent. In West Africa, drought has ravaged Niger and other countries of the Sahel, with as many as one in four young children acutely malnourished.

China’s response has been exemplary. Not only has it mounted several massive simultaneous rescue and relief operations for its own people, but also it has been swift in sending relief to Pakistan, Russia and Niger, including $1 million through the World Food Programme (WFP).

Ominously, the effects of these natural disasters may be felt long after the immediate danger passes. Their impact on global grain prices is already being felt. Countries are beginning to introduce export restrictions on grain in an effort to control domestic prices. Expectations of higher prices to come may be causing some producers to hold onto their stocks. Speculators are rediscovering agricultural commodities. News that China has imported more grain so far this year than in recent years has also attracted attention.

Are we on the cusp of another “global food crisis” like the one seen in 2008? In many ways, the global food crisis never abated, it was simply overshadowed by the financial crisis. In many developing countries, food prices have stayed high. In Tajikistan, wheat prices started out this year more than 100 percent higher than the average before the crisis. In Sri Lanka, even the poorest of the poor are expected to pay more than twice as much for rice, and the same goes for Benin, where the price of sorghum has more than tripled compared to the average price over the previous five years.

More: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2010-08/18/content_11167883.htm

Extreme weather fails to heat up climate debate

Posted on August 19, 2010
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We’ve had so much record heat around the world lately that the records themselves are setting records: 17 nations have reached new temperature highs, a new record for records in a year. Pakistan hit (129F) 54C, a new record for all of Asia. Moscow had never hit 100F (38C) before; lately it’s been a rare day when the mercury settles lower.

Now scientists have confirmed what’s been pretty obvious: the entire world has just come through the warmest six months, the warmest year, and the warmest decade on record. Following the hottest June ever,  AccuWeather.com yesterday said July was the second hottest July recorded – and the warmest ever for land temperatures alone.

Just in case those feel like abstractions, here’s what they mean in practice: since warmer air holds more water vapour than cold, deluge increases. Hence, Pakistan has seen the worst flooding in its history. Because heat cuts grain yields, Russia has stopped exporting grain, spiking prices. Greenland? Guess what – heat melts ice.

In fact, the only thing that defies common sense this brutal summer is how little political reaction there’s been. The Un process continues its post-Copenhagen wander – even many NGOs continue out of sheer habit to support old targets, like limiting the level of CO2 to 450 parts per million (ppm) and a 2C increase in temperature. Why? If the current 390 ppm melts the Arctic, who would aim for 450? In Washington, meanwhile, the Congress and White House have decided there’s no need for any kind of urgency: they let the tepid and tame climate bill die without even scheduling a vote.

So here’s what we need: a movement. A really big one, all over the world. Right now the energy companies are winning, and winning easily. Because they’re the most profitable business the world has ever seen, they have enormous influence. And because all they need to do is delay, so far they’ve barely even been bothered by environmentalists.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/aug/18/extreme-weather-climate-debate

Victoria, Australia: Free condoms for 12 year olds

Posted on August 19, 2010
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US: Wisconsin Makes Push on Free Birth Control

Posted on August 19, 2010
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Wisconsin is pushing to expand a controversial program that uses federal Medicaid funds to provide free birth-control pills, vasectomies and other forms of contraception to low-income people, an effort made possible by the federal health-care overhaul.

It and 26 other states already provide free contraception and other reproductive-health services through a Medicaid pilot project to lower-earning women who otherwise wouldn’t qualify. Among other things, the women get access to prescription birth control, Pap smears, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and, in some states, infertility treatments. Women qualify for Wisconsin’s program if they make up to $21,600 a year for single people—twice the federal poverty level.

Now, Wisconsin wants to widen the reach of its plan. Where funding previously was conditional and states had to reapply regularly, a provision in the health-care law allows states to make their plans permanent and get federal funding faster. Wisconsin applied in June to raise the qualifying limit to $32,490—a move that would expand the program’s reach.

“That’s just insane,” said Julaine Appling, president of Wisconsin Family Action, a conservative lobbying group. “That is a whole new segment of our population that is now seeking reproductive health care on taxpayer money.” Her group and others say they will try to thwart Wisconsin’s expansion, though they see little chance, because Democrats control the legislature and the governor’s office.

Wisconsin says about 53,000 people receive extra family-planning help under Medicaid. With federal Medicaid funds reimbursing 90% of the cost of most family-planning services, the state spent $18.4 million on the program in 2008.

More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703908704575433714132688140.html

On the frontline of climate change

Posted on August 19, 2010
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Getty Images

Irrigated by one of the world’s mightiest river systems, the Murray-Darling Basin yields nearly half of Australia’s fresh produce. But the basin is ailing, and scientists fear that as climate change grips the driest inhabited continent, its main foodbowl could become a global warming ground zero. The signs are already ominous: in the Riverland, one of the nation’s major horticulture areas, dying vines and parched lemon trees attest to critical water shortages. Farmers have had their water allocations slashed during the recent crippling drought; 200 sold up, and many of those who hung on are struggling.

In Renmark, the region’s oldest town, tales of hardship abound. Some families have spent their life savings; others are drowning in debt. At one school, children have reportedly been stealing packed lunches from classmates. “That’s how bad things have got, and I know people in those circumstances,” says Jim Belehris, an almond grower.

Since the 1880s, when Europeans settled in the Riverland and began irrigating its arid soil, fruit and vegetable producers have depended on the broad River Murray. However, the river is in a sorry state, and this once lush area – at the southern end of the sprawling Murray-Darling Basin – faces a bleak future. The picture is similar across the million-square-kilometre basin, which consists of vast inland plains crisscrossed by the Murray, Darling and numerous other rivers and tributaries. The reasons are complex.

The past half-century has witnessed an enormous – and officially sanctioned – over-extraction of water. The river system, which straddles four states and one territory, has been badly mismanaged. Falling commodity prices – and a glut of wine grapes – have exacerbated farmers’ woes. But it was the decade-long drought, the worst for more than 100 years, that tipped the balance. It also brought the basin’s plight to public attention, with its images of skeletal cattle in cracked, brown paddocks and broad waterways reduced to muddy trickles. And such spectacles, scientists say, will become increasingly common in Australia as the planet heats up.

According to the country’s Department of Climate Change, global warming will trigger more frequent and severe droughts, as well as more devastating bushfires, cyclones and floods. The government’s main scientific body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, says there is growing evidence that lower rainfall in south-eastern Australia is linked to global climate change.

More: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/on-the-frontline-of-climate-change-2056322.html

 

Ethiopia: Tackling the perils of pregnancy

Posted on August 18, 2010
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When Safi Mukhtar had her first baby, she never considered going to a hospital or clinic for the delivery. Faced with some of the world’s worst maternal mortality statistics, the Ethiopian government hopes that next time, she will think differently. Childbirth will prove fatal for one in 27 women in Ethiopia and much of the rest of the continent, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), [http://bit.ly/8ZyZu7] versus a rate of one in 8,000 in industrialized countries. “Giving birth at home is like a tradition; it is mainly the difficult [pregnancies] that we take to the hospital,” Muktar told IRIN in Kebribeyah village, south of Jijiga, in the eastern Somali region. “For example, if a woman goes into labour at 4pm and by 8pm she has not given birth, we will take her to Jijiga [40km away].” 

Cultural norms, low education levels and poor health infrastructure limit the number of women giving birth in a medical facility to about 5.3 percent, as well as reducing contraceptive use, another factor in maternal mortality. Just 6 percent of births in Ethiopia take place in the presence of a skilled health professional, according to the 2005 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS), the most recent survey of its kind; the next one is due in 2010. The same survey states that for every 100,000 live births, 673 women died. 

“Women [tend to] deliver at home, where there are delays in diagnosing problems,” Premila Bartlett, the senior reproductive health and family planning adviser for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Ethiopia, told IRIN. “Delays in identifying obstetric emergencies, in getting the woman to the health facility and in getting the services at the health facility all combine to result in maternal death.” In many parts of the country facilities for comprehensive obstetric care are non-existent.

More: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/9bc3be88a23540a74001ec7be8d39d1e.htm

Contraceptive pill ‘increases brain size and function’

Posted on August 18, 2010
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Scottish scientists develop whisky biofuel

Posted on August 18, 2010
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It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “one for the road”. Whisky, the spirit that powers the Scottish economy, is being used to develop a new biofuel which could be available at petrol pumps in a few years.

Using samples from the Glenkinchie Distillery in East Lothian,  researchers at Edinburgh Napier University have developed a method of producing biofuel from two main by-products of the whisky distilling process – “pot ale”, the liquid from the copper stills, and “draff”, the spent grains.

Copious quantities of both waste products are produced by the £4bn whisky industry each year, and the scientists say there is real potential for the biofuel, to be available at local garage forecourts alongside traditional fuels. It can be used in conventional cars without adapting their engines. The team also said it could be used to fuel planes and as the basis for chemicals such as acetone, an important solvent.

The new method developed by the team produces butanol, which gieves 30% more power input than the traditional biofuel, ethanol. It is based on a 100-year-old process that was originally developed to produce butanol and acetone by fermenting sugar. The team has adapted this to use whiskey by-products as a starting point and has filed for a patent to cover the new method. It plans to create a spin-out company to commercialise the invention.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/17/whisky-biobuel-scotland

The majestic plastic bag - a mockumentary

Posted on August 18, 2010
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Not strictly news, but your editor cannot resist drawing this 4-minute video to your attention:

A spoof wildlife documentary narrated by Jeremy Irons on the life of a plastic bag en route to the ‘Pacific garbage patch’. It was produced by campaign group Heal the Bay, which is lobbying for a ban on plastic bags in California

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2010/aug/17/majestic-plastic-bag-mockumentary

Green machine: Fighting the efficiency fallacies

Posted on August 18, 2010
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Which is the more effective way to reduce your household’s carbon footprint – turn off lights and appliances when you are not using them, or switch to more energy efficient devices? Environmental experts say the latter will have a far greater impact on the greenhouse gas emissions that your home is responsible for, but research published this week suggests few of us realise it.

Shahzeen Attari at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University in New York and colleagues asked volunteers what they considered the best thing they could do to cut their CO₂ emissions. Over half of the 505 people questioned chose steps like turning off lights and gadgets or driving less, while only 12 per cent mentioned more effective efficiency improvements such as swapping incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent bulbs, or using more efficient household appliances or cars when renewing.

Some assumptions are perhaps unsurprising, albeit mistaken – people believed that line-drying clothes rather than using a tumble-dryer would save more energy than changing the settings on their washing machine to wash at lower temperatures, for example, although the reverse is actually true. Other examples of misunderstandings included the assumption that the energy used to transport goods by truck was roughly the same as by train. In fact trucks consume 10 times more energy per than trains per unit of cargo.

“For small devices and appliances, people have a pretty good understanding of how much energy they use,” says Attari. “However, for large devices they really underestimate the amount of energy they use.” As a result people underestimated the energy consumed by devices by a factor of nearly three, she says. So when asked to compare moderate energy-consuming devices, respondents correctly identified that desktop computers consume more energy than laptops, but they significantly underestimated the difference.

With households accounting for around one-third of US energy consumption and emissions when personal travel is taken into account, the decisions individuals make can have a huge impact.

More: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19322-green-machine-fighting-the-efficiency-fallacies.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=environment

UK: Rising price of hay drives rise in theft

Posted on August 18, 2010
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UK: Teenagers to be offered more contraception options

Posted on August 18, 2010
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Different forms of contraception should be available to girls as young as 13. The British Medical Association (BMA) says GPs’ need to stop recommending the pill as the main method for teenagers. It’s a change to previous advice. Long-term forms of contraception such as injections, implants and coils have generally been offered to older women who’ve already had children. A BMA spokesman told Newsbeat: “We believe it is important females of all ages should be aware of the many types of contraception available.”

Cheryl’s 20 and went on the pill at 14 but she often forgot to take it and got pregnant for the first time at 15. “I had my son at 15 then I went on the implant,” she said. “It’s basically where doctors put a contraceptive rod or needle in your skin. It lasts up to three years. I came off that because it messed up my cycle and then I got pregnant two days later. Now I just use condoms because it’s the best contraceptive out there and it protects me against STIs.”

According to the Office for National Statistics, teenage pregnancy rates in the UK have fallen by 13% in the last two years but it is still has the highest levels in Europe.

Family & Youth Concern, an organisation which opposes children being given information about sex at a young age, doesn’t agree with the new guidelines. Its director Norman Wells said: “We are very concerned that girls as young as 13 will now be able to go on long-term contraceptives without their parents knowing. “GPs should be discouraging girls as young as 13 from having sex, but instead they seem to show interest in injecting girls with contraceptives. More importantly coils, implants, injections and even the pill will not protect you from sexually transmitted infections (STIs).”

Amy told Newsbeat her GP advised her to go on the pill when she was 14 because she had really heavy periods. After a while she started to feel really ill. When Amy went back to her GP she found out she was four months pregnant.

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/10988401

Australia: Food for thought on population

Posted on August 18, 2010
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Eons before Jesus and Solomon walked the Earth, humans called Australia home. They were here tens of thousands of years before the last ice age held the world in its grip. Apart from vegetation changes caused by repeated firing of bushland, the original Australians trod lightly upon the land. Early Europeans remarked how well they blended with the landscape. Contrast that with modern Australians. Our big environmental footprint is seen as an outcome of technologies and economies that draw heavily on natural resources, but one other factor often gets overlooked: sheer weight of numbers.

The number of indigenous Australians when the First Fleet arrived at Port Jackson in 1788 has been estimated to be no more than 750,000, based on a calculation of the maximum sustainable population given the natural resources available to these non-agricultural nomadic people.  As Aboriginal numbers dropped, European immigrants arrived at an increasing rate. It took 170 years for the population to reach eight million, but only 40 years for that number to double. Today, Australia is home to about 30 times the number of people it held in 1788 — the figure calculated to be the “unimproved” continent’s carrying capacity.

………………………………………

In the present election campaign, both sides of the main party divide are at last talking about our land’s capacity to feed us, and to question our rate of population growth. The Liberal Party has routinely taken the position that a high population growth is good for business, but in one of those sudden turns that have become his trademark as Liberal leader, Tony Abbott announced a fortnight ago that he would restrict annual immigration to the average of the past 40 years — 1.4 per cent of the Australian population.

Enter the ubiquitous Dick Smith, aviator and former electronics retailer, who has started a campaign to limit the country’s population in a documentary screened on ABC-TV last week. In Dick Smith’s Population Puzzle, Smith said that he had never thought much about the issue of population, both for Australia and the world, until his daughter Jenny put it to him that in all the talk about sustainability and climate action, this was the elephant in the room.

The hour-long show was a statistician’s delight. Australia’s population growth leads the world (last year 2.8 per cent or 480,000 — close to Tasmania’s total population). Two-thirds of the increase comes from immigrants, the rest are natural increase. To accommodate the extra people, each year we need to build 300 new schools and recruit 1200 extra police.

………………………………….

Tony Jones’s Q&A show, screened after the documentary, revealed why we don’t talk much about population. This was as heated and personal a debate as you will ever see on public television.

More: http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2010/08/17/166555_opinion.html

India: Despite laws and campaigns, child marriages persist

Posted on August 18, 2010
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Soon after she had her second child, Rathna fell into a frenzied state and had to be brought to a hospital in the southern Indian village of Dharmapuri. After a month-long series of tests, doctors issued their diagnosis: Rathna, they said, was suffering from a psychiatric aberration that seems to occur often among adolescent mothers. Rathna was just 16 years old. Her parents had married her off to a total stranger with whom she had two children in quick succession. A mere child herself, the experience was apparently too much for her to handle, causing her to suffer what appeared to be a breakdown.

The story of Rathna, however, is hardly rare in India, where child marriages are still considered acceptable by many people. This is despite the legal age for marriage for men being 21 years old and that for women, 18 years old. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which defines child marriage as one in which either the bride or groom is under the age of 18, says that 40 percent of the world’s child marriages take place in this country. In most cases, it is the girl who is the minor – and with the groom more than a decade older.

Yet not only are the aspirations of such child brides dashed because of their early marriages. Experts say that these girls’ health is seriously compromised as well as a result of their having wed and borne children before they are physically and psychologically mature.

More: http://www.ips.org/mdg3/rights-india-despite-laws-and-campaigns-child-marriages-persist/

England’s green and pleasant land may have to change to feed our thirst for fuel

Posted on August 17, 2010
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Photo: Guardian

Yesterday Dustin Benton of the Campaign to Protect Rural England criticised the vision for the countryside outlined in [the Centre for Alternative Technology's] Zero Carbon Britain Report. He argues that our proposals would disrupt the familiar look of the countryside. Our vision for the countryside is about creating energy security, rural jobs and tackling climate change. It also increases food security – we can produce all of our own essential food in the UK. The benefits include many things the CPRE values: rural jobs, biodiversity and locally produced food. But it does result in a landscape that looks very different. That said, I think the changes we propose are not as drastic or unattractive as Dustin imagines. We can avoid the monoculture plantations he’s worried about and the increased diversity of what we grow will lead to a mixed patchwork landscape.

But we still face a dilemma about UK-grown energy crops. I’m pleased that we’ve agreed on the need for a rapid decarbonisation and to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. However, without UK-grown energy crops we have a problem: where will we get the aviation fuel from?

We have several other options:

• We could carry on making it from oil. This commits to looking for oil in increasingly difficult and dangerous places such as offshore drilling and from tar sands. Both of which are destroying the “warp and weft” of someone else’s “historic landscape”.

• We could make aviation fuel from biofuels grown in another country. This would destroy the “familiar meadows and pastures” of someone else’s countryside. Recent experience has shown us that growing biofuels has led to a variety of problems including food shortages and human rights abuses.

• We could cut aviation entirely. No aviation means no energy crops interfering with our “valued English landscapes”. We thought a two-thirds reduction in aviation was radical – but maybe you think we can persuade the British public to ditch flying completely.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/17/england-biofuels-oil-aviation

Soaring temps cause mass coral killing in Indonesia: study

Posted on August 17, 2010
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A dramatic spike in ocean temperatures off Indonesia’s Aceh province has killed large areas of coral and scientists fear the event could be much larger than first thought and one of the worst in the region’s history. The coral bleaching — whitening due to heat driving out the algae living within the coral tissues — was first reported in May after a surge in temperatures across the Andaman Sea from the northern tip of Sumatra island to Thailand and Myanmar. 

An international team of scientists studying the bleaching event found that 80 percent of some species have died since the initial assessment in May. More coral colonies were expected to die within the next few months and that could spell disaster for local communities reliant on the reefs for food and money from tourism. “I would predict that what we’re seeing in Aceh, which is extraordinary, that similar mortality rates are occurring right the way through the Andaman Sea,” said Andrew Baird of James Cook University in Townsville, in the Australian state of Queensland. If so, that would make it the worst bleaching recorded in the region, said Baird. 

Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Syiah Kuala University in Aceh have also been assessing the damage. “This one of the most rapid and severe coral mortality events ever recorded,” the U.S.-based WCS said in a statement. It also fits a pattern of climate extremes, from heat waves to flooding, that have hit many areas of the globe this year. Between April and late May, sea surface temperatures in the Andaman Sea rose to 34 degrees Celsius or about 4 degrees C above the long-term average, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Hotspots website.

More: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67G1BX20100817?

First Women’s Radio Station Opened in Liberia

Posted on August 17, 2010
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The President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, presided over the launch of the Liberia Women Democracy Radio in Monrovia on 5 August – the country’s first radio station that is dedicated to raising the voices of women and increasing women’s access to information. The radio station also seeks to highlight gender issues and to provide practical training and exposure to female journalists.

More: http://www.unifem.org/news_events/story_detail.php?StoryID=1154

Coerced Reproduction

Posted on August 17, 2010
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About a decade ago, Elizabeth Miller remembers seeing a certain teenage girl at a hospital clinic for adolescents in Boston. The patient thought she might be pregnant and asked for a test. When it came out negative, Miller started asking the standard questions, inquiring as to whether her patient wanted to be pregnant (she didn’t) and whether she was using contraceptives (she wasn’t). So Miller explained all of the birth-control options and, as she describes it, “sent her on her merry way with a brown bag of condoms.” It was, by most measures, a pretty routine appointment.

Except that, two weeks later, the same patient was back at the hospital, in the emergency room after her partner pushed her down the stairs. “That was the wake-up call where I started thinking there might be a relationship between the two situations,” says Miller, now an assistant professor of pediatrics at University of California, Davis. “She was coming in for a pregnancy test, not wanting to be pregnant, and not wanting to use birth control. And now I’m wondering what’s going on for her, knowing she was in a physically and sexually violent relationship. I started wondering whether I needed to be asking her about why [she isn't using birth control] at that visit.”

This month, Miller published a study in the journal Contraception detailing “reproductive coercion,” when the male partner pressures the other, through verbal threats, physical aggression, or birth-control sabotage, to become pregnant. According to Miller’s research, about a third of women reporting partner violence experienced reproductive coercion, as did 15 percent of women who had never reported violence.

Overall, rates of reproductive coercion among family-planning-clinic patients are suprisingly high: about one in five women report their partner having attempted to coerce them into pregnancy. “What we’re seeing is that, in the larger scheme of violence against women and girls, it is another way to maintain control,” says Miller, who studied 1,300 female patients culled from five family-planning clinics in Northern California. “You have guys telling their partners, ‘I can do this because I’m in control’ or ‘I want to know that I can have you forever.’ ” This may help explain previous findings of higher rates of unintended pregnancies in relationships with partner violence.

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Reproductive coercion among adolescents could be an overlooked factor behind the United States’s unusually high, and now increasing, teen-pregnancy rate. “I think [reproductive coercion] is underreported and not thought about as often as it should be,” says Leslie Walker, chief of adolescent medicine at Seattle Children’s Hospital, who is not affiliated with either the Guttmacher or Contraception study.

More: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/01/26/coerced-reproduction.html

and: http://www.endabuse.org/content/news/detail/1495/

and: http://www.thenation.com/article/when-teen-pregnancy-no-accident

UN launches decade-long drive to combat desertification

Posted on August 17, 2010
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The General Assembly designated 2010-2020 as the Decade in 2007 to heighten public awareness of the threat posed by desertification, land degradation and drought to sustainable development. As the 10-year scheme gets under way, Mr. Ban said, “let us pledge to intensify our efforts to nurture the land we need for achieving the Millennium Development Goals and guaranteeing human well-being.”

More: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35633&Cr=desert&Cr1=

 

Protect nature for world economic security, warns UN biodiversity chief

Posted on August 17, 2010
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Britain and other countries face a collapse of their economies and loss of culture if they do not protect the environment better, the world’s leading champion of nature has warned. “What we are seeing today is a total disaster,” said Ahmed Djoghlaf, the secretary-general of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. “No country has met its targets to protect nature. We are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate. If current levels [of destruction] go on we will reach a tipping point very soon. The future of the planet now depends on governments taking action in the next few years.”

Industrialisation, population growth, the spread of cities and farms and climate change are all now threatening the fundamentals of life itself, said Djoghlaf, in London before a key UN meeting where governments are expected to sign up to a more ambitious agreement to protect nature. “Many plans were developed in the 1990s to protect biodiversity but they are still sitting on the shelves of ministries. Countries were legally obliged to act, but only 140 have even submitted plans and only 16 have revised their plans since 1993. Governments must now put their houses in order,” he said.

According to the UN Environment Programme, the Earth is in the midst of a mass extinction of life. Scientists estimate that 150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours. This is nearly 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate and, say many biologists, is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago. Around 15% of mammal species and 11% of bird species are classified as threatened with extinction.

Djoghlaf warned Britain and other countries not to cut nature protection in the recession. In a reference to expected 40% cuts to Britain’s Department of the Environment spending, he said: “It would be very short-sighted to cut biodiversity spending. You may well save a few pounds now but you will lose billions later. Biodiversity is your natural asset. The more you lose it, the more you lose your cultural assets too.”

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/16/nature-economic-security

‘Only children’ are not socially disadvantaged, research suggests

Posted on August 17, 2010
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Australia: Pendulum swings back to younger mothers

Posted on August 17, 2010
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More young women are having children in their 20s, reversing a decline that has been evident for nearly 40 years. The surprise increase in births for women aged 20-24 and 25-29 began in 2006 and was sustained through 2008, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics has revealed.

It was premature to declare it a strong trend, a demographer, Genevieve Heard, said. But the phenomenon of women postponing childbearing until their 30s might be coming to an end. ”The publicity about the risks of ‘leaving it too late’ may be a factor,” she said. ”Twentysomethings may be looking at the cohort of women preceding them and not wanting to do things exactly how they did them.”

Dr Heard, a research fellow at the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University, examined the factors behind Australia’s rising birth rate in a paper Interpreting Australia’s Fertility Increase, published in the journal People and Place.

More: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/lifematters/pendulum-swings-back-to-younger-mothers-20100813-1233o.html

Korea: Low birthrate calls for more women to return to work

Posted on August 17, 2010
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Korea is in dire need of raising women’s participation in economic activities, considering the rate has gone down to the level seen 10 years ago against the gloomy outlook of a population decrease expected to start in 2008. The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA) sounded an alarm in a recent report, calling for efforts to be made to come up with ways of addressing this issue.  The state-run research center cited a statistics, saying that women’s ratio of participation in economic activities or the portion of women engaged in economic activities against their whole population has decreased since 2006.

The decrease comes at a critical time when the nation is suffering from a dwindling birthrate, meaning that its population is forecast to diminish so the under-utilization of women in economic terms is seen as a key way of coping with it. The report cited Korea Statistics to say that the portion of working women and peaked at 50.3 percent in 2006 but decreased to 50.2 percent in 2007 and 50 percent in 2008.Last year, it dipped below 50 to 49.2 percent.

The number of women with jobs decreased from 10.14 million in 2008 to 10.08 million in 2009. The portion of working men also dropped from 74.1 in 2006 to 73.1 percent in 2009 while the percentage of the working population dwindled down from 61.9 to 60.8 during the same period. This trend also beats the expectation that more women will join the labor force as more of them receive higher education and employers have supposedly become female-friendly.

The report says that the diminishing ratio of women participating in economic activities is likely to be triggered by a structural problem in society that hampers women from returning to work after they get married, give births or raise children.

More: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2010/08/123_71463.html

Mankind is using up global resources faster than ever

Posted on August 16, 2010
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Artificial meat? Food for thought by 2050

Posted on August 16, 2010
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Artificial meat grown in vats may be needed if the 9 billion people expected to be alive in 2050 are to be adequately fed without destroying the earth, some of the world’s leading scientists report today. But a major academic assessment of future global food supplies, led by John Beddington, the UK government chief scientist, suggests that even with new technologies such as genetic modification and nanotechnology, hundreds of millions of people may still go hungry owing to a combination of climate change, water shortages and increasing food consumption.

In a set of 21 papers published by the Royal Society, the scientists from many disciplines and countries say that little more land is available for food production, but add that the challenge of increasing global food supplies by as much as 70% in the next 40 years is not insurmountable.

Although more than one in seven people do not have enough protein and energy in their diet today, many of the papers are optimistic.

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The 21 papers published today in a special open access edition of the philosophical transactions of the royalsociety.org are part of a UK government Foresight study on the future of the global food industry. The final report will be published later this year in advance of the UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/16/artificial-meat-food-royal-society

Rothschild giraffe added to Red List of endangered species

Posted on August 16, 2010
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 A male baby Rothschild giraffe with his mother, Nora, at Prague Zoo.

Driven from its wide-ranging west African habitats, the Rothschild giraffe is clearly in peril. Now, its plight has been officially recognised. The world’s largest environment network, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, has added it to its red list of endangered species. Named after the banker and zoologist Walter Rothschild who first described it, the species joins the West African giraffe on the list, making it the second most threatened of the nine giraffe sub-species.

Fewer than 670 Rothschild giraffes now live in the wild, in isolated populations. Some 40% live in national parks and private land in Kenya and the remaining 60% in Uganda. While giraffes overall are ranked of “least concern” by the IUCN, partly due to a lack of data, there are far fewer Rothschild giraffes remaining than there are endangered African elephants. Conservationists say farming developments are largely to blame for the animal’s decline.

Dr Julian Fennessy, co-founder of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and one of the researchers whose analysis led to the species being added to the list, said: “I am delighted and of course saddened at the same time that the Rothschild giraffe has finally made the IUCN red list status. We have been striving for this for a while now and hope this will highlight to the world the critical state its tallest creature is in.”

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/16/rothschild-giraffe-endangered-red-list-conservation

Coal-fired power stations win reprieve

Posted on August 16, 2010
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The coalition is watering down a commitment to tough new environmental emissions standards, raising the possibility of dirty coal-fired power stations such as Kingsnorth going ahead. Green groups are aghast that a flagship policy called for in opposition by both Lib Dems and Tories, and which they last year tried to force on the Labour government, will now not be implemented in the coalition’s first energy bill to be published this year.

Their criticism of the government’s commitment to green issues follows news last week that nature reserves could be sold off as countryside protection measures also bear the brunt of budget cuts in the Department for Environment. Introducing a so-called “environmental performance standard” (EPS) for power companies would have restricted greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas plants and encouraged companies wishing to build to use more efficient technology.

The introduction of an EPS was personally championed by David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg when in opposition; their opposition to Kingsnorth became something of a cause célèbre – and even features in the coalition agreement – but was opposed by energy companies and Tory backbenchers.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/15/coal-fired-power-stations-coalition

Price of red meat likely to push more people towards vegetarian diet

Posted on August 16, 2010
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Fish is likely to become a larger part of the British diet because it is one of the few foodstuffs that has fallen in price in recent years, research suggests. The price of fish has fallen by eight per cent over the past three years as the cost of meat has surged by 10 per cent. The trend reflects the high price of grain and fossil fuels, which are needed to raise pigs and cattle. In comparison, fishing the oceans requires no feed input and less fuel. Health and environmental concerns are also contributing ,to the changing consumption patterns.

Increase in ‘warm water’ dolphins off North East England coast

Posted on August 16, 2010
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Warmer seas could be responsible for a change in the type of dolphins spotted off the coast of the North East of England, a survey has suggested. The North East Cetacean Project found an increase in sightings of common, bottlenose and Risso’s dolphins - species associated with warmer waters. There have also been fewer sightings of white-beaked dolphin and harbour porpoise, which prefer colder water. It is thought the distribution shift is due to increasing sea temperatures.

The NECP is a partnership including the charity Marinelife, Northern Experience Wildlife Tours, Natural England, the Northumberland and Tyneside Bird Club and the University of Aberdeen. Dr Tom Brereton, who analysed the findings, said: “This research adds to the growing body of evidence that some species of whales and dolphins are showing shifts in distribution, possibly as a result of increasing sea temperatures.

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-10980145

Russia ban on grain export begins

Posted on August 16, 2010
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Russia has imposed a ban on grain exports until the end of the year, after a severe drought and a spate of wildfires devastated crops. Russia is one of the world’s biggest producers of wheat, barley and rye, and the ban is likely to see bread prices rise in places like the Middle East. The measures are designed to keep domestic food prices under control. But agriculture ministry data has revealed that this year’s crop is unlikely to meet even domestic demand.

Hundreds of wildfires have been burning across central Russia in the last three weeks. But officials say the area being affected by the fires is now almost a quarter less than a week ago, reports say. The grain harvest is down by at least a third compared with last year.

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10977955

Stephen Hawking: only space travel can save mankind

Posted on August 15, 2010
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Livestock farmers hit by rising wheat price

Posted on August 15, 2010
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Photo: Getty Images

Rising wheat prices are are threatening the trade of livestock farmers, according to Peter Kendall, the president of the National Farmers Union. He says the current record price of wheat is good news for crop farmers but a serious concern for those who feed their animals grain.  

USA: Ella, Morning After Pill Approved By FDA

Posted on August 15, 2010
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A new morning after pill, also known as an emergency contraception pill, called Ella (ulipristal acetate) has been approved in tablet form by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It has been approved as a prescription-only-product, and prevents pregnancy if taken within five days after unprotected sexual intercourse or contraceptive failure.

The FDA stresses that Ella is not intended for routine use as a contraceptive. As a progesterone agonist/antagonist, Ella’s main likely effect is to inhibit or delay ovulation. It is known as EllaOne in Europe, where it has been on the market since May 2009, the FDA informs. An FDA Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs met in June, 2010 to discuss the application for approval of the drug. The Committee voted unanimously for the drug’s approval after reviewing compelling data on efficacy and accepting that there was sufficient information on its safety.

More: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/197735.php

Cornwall Wave Hub cable laying halted

Posted on August 14, 2010
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A multi-million pound project to create a testing platform for wave energy devices in Cornwall has ground to a halt. Engineers have postponed plans to float the copper cable ashore after it sank, raising fears it could become enmeshed on the seabed. The cable, which was 650ft (200m) from land on Thursday evening, will now be rewound onto a ship offshore. Engineers are considering whether to deploy a new flotation device.

The setback is the latest of a series to hit the £42m Wave Hub project over the past week. Guy Lavender from the Regional Development Agency, which is co-ordinating the project, told BBC News: “It’s frustrating and disappointing. It could be a few days’ time or longer before we try to bring it ashore again.” He admitted the problems were also surprising. “Copper cable has been laid all over the world using the same methods.”

The cable will link wave energy machines off the Cornwall coast with the National Grid.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-10968890

A Referendum on “Big Australia”

Posted on August 14, 2010
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With polls showing Australia’s general election too close to call, it’s uncertain whether Labor Party Prime Minister Julia Gillard will keep her job or be replaced by Tony Abbott, leader of the Liberal-National coalition. Either way, it appears one group will lose: immigrants.

For six decades, Australia has had a political consensus in favor of immigration. But support is wavering as suburban areas struggle to cope with rising home prices and traffic congestion, by-products of a sharp increase in new arrivals in recent years. To appeal to voters from those districts, Gillard has said the government needs to do more to manage population growth, though she has stopped short of openly endorsing new restrictions on immigration. Abbott, her opponent, has pledged to reduce immigration levels to 170,000 a year by the end of his government’s first term, from 298,924 in 2009.

Economists warn that Australia will risk slower growth and faster inflation if it clamps down on the flow of migrants. A February report from the Australian Treasury forecast the country’s population will expand by 1.2 percent a year, to 35.9 million by 2050. Paring that rate by one-third would reduce the average annual economic growth rate to 2.3 percent from 2.7 percent, according to the study.

Australia has been experiencing strong job growth, with much of the gains coming in the mining industry. Curtailing immigration would shrink the supply of workers and potentially set off a spike in wages. To contain the resulting inflation, the central bank might be forced to raise rates, further choking off growth.

More: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_34/b4192010570865.htm

Antibacterial socks may boost greenhouse emissions

Posted on August 14, 2010
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Antibacterial nanoparticles may have more of an impact on the environment than we thought, including potentially raising levels of greenhouse gases. Silver nanoparticles are used as an antibacterial agent in a wide range of products, from odour-free socks to wound-healing bandages (see diagram). They can find their way into waste water, and have been shown to reduce the activity of bacteria used to remove ammonia when the water is treated.

So far most of the research on the environmental impact of nanoparticles has been carried out on single microbe or plant species within the laboratory. To try to pin down their action in a more realistic setting, Benjamin Colman, a chemist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and colleagues added a high dose of silver nanoparticles - 1.25 milligrams per gram of water - to microbes in a sample of stream water and soil kept within their laboratory. They also set up two outdoor tubs of plants. Treated sludge known to be free of nanoparticles was added to the soil in both tubs, while one tub was also dosed with 55 micrograms of silver nanoparticles per gram of sludge, a concentration similar to levels often found in waste water.

“We are trying to find out what happens when these silver nanoparticles get into the real environment,” says Colman. “These particles are developed with the express purpose of killing things.”

Two months on, the microbial population in the outdoor tub containing silver had significantly declined relative to the lab sample measured after one week. What’s more, the activity of the enzymes they produce to break down organic matter was 34 per cent lower in the tub that had been dosed with nanoparticles than in the tub to which only sludge had been added.

Given that the outdoor tub containing nanoparticles had a much lower concentration of silver than the lab samples, the drop in its microbial activity is so large that it suggests the lab samples are not a good guide to real-world behaviour, Colman says.

More: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727735.300-antibacterial-socks-may-boost-greenhouse-emissions.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=environment

Will the Pakistan floods strike again?

Posted on August 14, 2010
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Scientific analysis and discussion: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10958760

Russian dairy to sack women who have abortions

Posted on August 14, 2010
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The head of a Russian dairy company has threatened to sack Russian Orthodox Christian employees who have abortions or refuse a religious marriage. Vassili Boiko-Veliki, president of Russkoe Moloko, said staff married in a civil ceremony had until 14 October to undertake a religious wedding. Critics said the rules violated labour laws and the constitution.

The Russian Orthodox Church has experienced a revival since the fall of the officially atheist Soviet Union. Mr Boiko-Veliki said those women who had had abortions, or chose to have one in the future, would face dismissal. “Abortion is the murder of someone,” he told the radio station, Ekho Moskvy. “We do not want to work with murderers.” Mr Boiko-Veliki was also quoted as saying that newly-hired employees who had been married in civil ceremonies would be given three months to have a religious wedding.  Even employees from other religions would be obliged to receive instruction about Russian Orthodox culture, he said.

According to Ekho Moskvy, Mr Boiko-Veliki has said that the record heatwave that hit Russia in recent weeks was divine retribution for sins committed in the past.

Russkoe Moloko has some 6,000 employees.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10958202

Slogans won’t stop Taiwan’s falling birthrate

Posted on August 14, 2010
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Taiwan’s population is graying very fast, while its young people do not want to get married early enough to bear more children. As a matter of fact, Taiwan’s birthrate is the lowest in the world. That’s why the government is doing what it can to encourage our younger generation to have more kids. The special municipality of Taipei is offering a cash subsidy of NT$20,000 to any female citizen who gives birth to a baby. Mayor Hau Lung-bin is also asking all corporate bodies in Taipei to help develop preschool education of children by joining with his municipal government to raise the extra funds required, the purpose being to encourage childbirth by easing the financial burden of the young parents.

Much earlier this year, the Ministry of the Interior came up with a new idea to encourage childbirth. It advertised for new attractive slogans to persuade people of child-bearing age to help increase Taiwan’s soon-to-shrink population. That’s the repetition in reverse of what the Kuomintang administration did in the 1950s and 1960s, when the population was increasing at the highest speed in the world. The best slogan at that time was: “One (child) isn’t few and two are just right.” Those were the days when the government kicked off the much-hated family planning campaign to prevent the people from adding an equivalent of an extra city of Kaohsiung each year.

More: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2010/08/12/268327/Slogans-wont.htm

Wisconsin, USA: Diocese offers birth control insurance, but warns employees not to use it

Posted on August 14, 2010
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A state law is forcing the Madison Catholic Diocese this month to begin offering its employees insurance coverage for birth control. However, a diocesan spokesman said employees will be warned against using the benefit and that open defiance of Catholic teaching on the issue could ultimately lead to termination. St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison has notified employees that it, too, soon will be required for the first time to cover contraception. Both entities sought to get around the mandate by becoming self-insured, but the costs proved prohibitive.

The law, which took effect Jan. 1, requires all commercial insurance policies with a drug benefit to cover prescription contraceptives. Self-insured policies are exempt. The law allowed employers to honor their current insurance contracts until they expire, which is why the diocese had until Aug. 1 to make a decision. Officials decided a self-insured plan wasn’t financially feasible, said Brent King, a diocesan spokesman.

The diocese’s commercial insurance policy now will offer birth-control coverage, but employees will be expected to employ their consciences in not using it, King said. “If someone were to misuse that freedom in this regard, it could be grounds for termination,” he said. Such a step would be taken only if the employee, after being counseled, refused to get in line with Catholic teaching, King said. “It wouldn’t be the first thing we do,” he said.

The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is immoral because it diminishes God’s role as the giver of life and interferes with the full giving of each spouse to the other. All diocesan employees sign a morals clause in their job offers saying they will abide by Catholic teaching, so the diocese expects them to follow the prohibition against prescription contraception, King said. He acknowledged that the diocese has no way to police the issue — an employee would have to offer it up, he said.

More: http://www.twincities.com/news/ci_15743402?source=rss&nclick_check=1

Bangladesh court seeks report on population growth control initiatives

Posted on August 14, 2010
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A High Court Division bench of Bangladesh Thursday directed the government to submit a report within a month on the country’s population growth rate in the last 10 years. The court also issued a rule upon the government to explain within four weeks why it should not be directed to take additional measures to control over population growth rate in the country.

The High Court bench issued the directives following a writ petition as a public interest litigation jointly filed by four lawyers of the country’s apex court Thursday. In the writ petition, a total of 15 people, including the country’s cabinet secretary, health secretary, and director general of the Department of Family Planning were asked to respond. The petitioners prayed for direction upon the government to take immediate measures to control population growth identifying it as a very urgent concern of the country. The court also ordered the government to explain why an independent ministry should not be established to control the additional population in rural and urban areas.

Bangladesh is among the most densely populated countries in the world with a high poverty rate. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Bangladesh’s present population is 162.2 million and may rise to 222.5 million by 2050 at the current growth rate of 1.4 percent.

Source: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/7103007.html

In India, age often doesn’t stop women from seeking help to become pregnant

Posted on August 14, 2010
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Rajo Devi Lohan, 72 — who gave birth to a daughter, Naveen, 18 months ago after seeking fertility treatment in India — is thought to be one of the oldest mothers in the world. (Emily Wax/the Washington Post)

Inside a crowded rural hospital, gray-haired Nananki Rohtash rested on a cot, her swollen legs elevated while her sister-in-law paced nearby. Rohtash is a 60-year-old mother of five and a grandmother of eight. She’s also nine months pregnant, the result of an in vitro fertilization clinic, one of hundreds that have opened recently in India, urging clients to “Come alone. Leave as a family. Age no bar.” With 1.2 billion people, India is still growing rapidly, and there are few efforts to control population growth, in sharp contrast to China’s one-child policy. Some planning advocates argue that India’s population is stalling development, adding to unemployment, and overwhelming roads, schools, water supplies and other basic infrastructure needs.

There are no government regulations for IVF clinics, especially in rural areas of northern India, and women older than 50 make up a surprising number of their patients, in a country where giving birth to many children defines a woman’s worth and is considered parents’ best chance for financial security.

Rohtash was awaiting a Caesarean section in the private National Fertility Center in Hisar, a middle-class frontier farming town in the northern state of Haryana, more than 170 miles outside the capital of New Delhi.

In the past 18 months, the doctors at this clinic have helped 100 women older than 50 become pregnant. About 60 were able to carry those pregnancies to full term. Some of the women received eggs donated by younger relatives. Their husbands’ sperm was used to fertilize the eggs in a lab, and the embryos were then inserted into the women’s wombs.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/12/AR2010081206876.html

 

Australia can easily cut CO2 and keep growing - business

Posted on August 13, 2010
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Australia, one of the world’s top carbon polluters, can cut carbon emissions by at least 15 percent by 2020 without hurting its economy, business leaders at a climate conference said on Thursday. By espousing the right policies, the country could cut its emissions by 25 percent by 2020, the conference heard. A price on carbon was a key component, but by no means the only one. “Australia has very large scope for reducing emissions through energy efficiency,” said Jonathan Jutsen, executive director of energy and climate change consultancy Energetics. “The Australian economy is only about 10 percent efficient — this means that 90 percent of the energy in the fuel we dig up is lost in the supply chain and end uses,” Jutsen told business leaders in a message just nine days from a national election. 

Climate change has been a major issue and the government has been pressed by power generators to put a price on carbon to give certainty to long-term investment plans. Wealthy inner-city voters have also urged tougher climate policies in a nation that faces major costs from rising seas, the impacts of more extreme weather on crops and hotter bushfires. 

Heavily reliant on cheap coal for power generation, the country ranks among the developed world’s top per-capita emitters of carbon. Energy efficiency programs, wind, solar and other green power, as well as greener buildings and cars can all cut emissions with the right policy incentives, the delegates heard. 

The government has pledged to trim carbon emissions by at least 5 percent by 2020 from 2000 levels. The opposition has said it would match the 5 percent cut but remains deeply opposed to a carbon emissions trading scheme.

More: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67B1JP20100812?

Family planning: Andhra Pradesh set to go slow

Posted on August 13, 2010
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“The ‘hum do hamare do’ mantra is now history. We have now embraced ‘population stabilisation’ as our goal,” a senior health official told TOI. But the state has been slow to react to this reality. The NAtional Family Health Survey of 2005-06 clearly pointed out that AP had a fertility rate (the number of children per woman) of 1.8 as against the national average of 2.7.

As per government figures, the number of births in the state dropped from 17 lakh in 2001-02 to a little over 15 lakh in 2009-10. “Much has changed in the state. We have moved from high fertility and mortality to a stable population with low fertility and mortality. Hence, we cannot continue with the same old strategy,” said family welfare secretary Dr P V Ramesh.

Madhya Pradesh: “Promote family planning as campaign”

Posted on August 13, 2010
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Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has given instructions to promote family planning on a campaign basis. He said that eligible couples would be motivated to adopt family planning. Cooperation of people’s representatives will be enlisted to spread the message. All party meet would soon be convened regarding this.
He was reviewing the progress of health department here today. Minister of State for Health Mahendra Hardia, Secretary Health SR Mohanti, Director Health Manohar Agnani and senior officers were present. Giving instructions for observing family planning week, the Chief Minister stressed the need for intensive campaign to encourage family planning.
Chouhan instructed the officers to ensure that all medical equipments in hospitals are properly maintained and remain functional. The officers and employees will have to face action in case X-ray machines, sonography and other machines do not work despite availability. He gave instructions to follow fully transparent procedure for purchasing machines and avoid undue procedural delay. He also asked the officers concerned to be ready with precautionary measures to check spread of diseases occurring in rainy seasons, swine flue, chickengunya and dengue etc.

More: http://www.mpnewsonline.com/node/1212

Economic crisis rekindles Irish debate on abortion

Posted on August 13, 2010
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Minutes after the test revealed she was pregnant, Amy saw only one option — to leave Ireland and have an abortion in Britain. Her architect partner had lost his job in Ireland’s property crash and she was worried about hers, so the 29 year-old office assistant felt she had no choice. “We found it hard enough to finance the abortion,” said Amy, who declined to give her full name because of the sensitive subject. “So how could we effectively support a child?” 

Women’s activists say Ireland’s deep economic crisis may have driven more women to consider an abortion. But a growing number cannot afford to travel to Britain for the procedure and may be forced into the hands of underground abortionists. A year later, Amy has not told her parents. Growing up in mainly Roman Catholic Ireland, abortion was taboo and she recalls how women rumoured to have had one were shamed. “Abortion was a no-no then, and still is now,” she said.

 Terminating a pregnancy has long been a fraught issue in Ireland, where one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe allows it only when the mother’s life is in danger. Women who have an abortion still face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, driving thousands abroad each year, mainly to Britain. Even that is a little more liberal than before a 1992 referendum which gave women the freedom to receive abortion information and travel abroad to terminate pregnancies.

More: http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE67A1QT20100811

Biggest relocation in China since Three Gorges

Posted on August 13, 2010
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China’s growing thirst for water is driving one of the world’s biggest mass relocations, with 440,000 people leaving their homes to make way for a huge man-made canal project to channel water to drought-prone Beijing. An advance party of 499 villagers were moved yesterday from their homes near Wuhan in Hubei province, China’s heartland, in preparation for one of the biggest irrigation schemes in history. By the end of September, 60,000 people will have left the area. The remainder will be relocated by 2014, giving up their homes to make way for the South-North Water Diversion Project (SNWD) which will divert water from China’s largest river, the Yangtze.

The last time China moved so many people was when it was building the £15bn Three Gorges Dam project, the world’s largest hydroelectric project, on the Yangtze in the late 1990s. Back then 1.4 million people were forced to move as their villages were submerged beneath a reservoir 410 miles long. The project was completed in 2006.

Environmentalists have criticised both projects and say that the dam scheme has caused ecological problems. The banks of the Yangtze are being eroded by the weight of the water behind the dam, hazardous landslides blight the area as water levels fluctuate wildly and huge waves crash against riverbanks. Construction of the dam flooded 116 towns and hundreds of ancient historical sites, but it remains a potent symbol of China’s technological prowess. However, the Three Gorges Dam project has given the Chinese valuable experience in moving large numbers of people.

More: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/biggest-relocation-in-china-since-three-gorges-2051297.html

Water meters will save wildlife

Posted on August 12, 2010
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New monkey species already looks scared

Posted on August 12, 2010
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Picture of the day

 

 

 

 

 

Meet Callicebus caquetensis: a new species of titi monkey that has been discovered in the Amazon.

The monkey was found in a region called Caquetá, in the south of Colombia, which had been inaccessible for many years due to a violent insurgence.

About the size of a cat, the Caquetá titi has grey-brown hair and makes an extremely complex call. Unusually for a primate, it forms lifelong monogamous pairs. It is thought that there are less than 250 Caquetá titis in the wild, thanks to the destruction of their forest habitats, meaning they are critically endangered. The discovery is described in the journal Primate Conservation.

(Image: Javier García / Conservation International)

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/08/-meet-callicebus-caquetensis-a.html

Indonesia: APP says audit shows deforestation claim untrue

Posted on August 12, 2010
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Indonesian paper firm Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) on Wednesday released an audit it said showed allegations it destroyed rainforest were baseless and invalid.The audit marks the latest chapter in an increasingly bitter dispute between environmentalists and the plantation industry over Indonesian forests, which trap huge amounts of climate-warming greenhouse gases.

French retailer Carrefour said last month it would stop buying certain APP products, a day after Greenpeace released a report accusing the paper firm of planning to destroy vast areas of Indonesian rainforest. APP described the allegations as ‘ridiculous’. 

Following other allegations of forest destruction by another conservationist group, WWF, APP produced a report that it said refuted the claims and had been checked by audit company Mazars.”The audit conducted by Mazars found that the facts contained in the APP report were accurate and, therefore, the allegations made by the environmental NGOs were indeed baseless, inaccurate and without validity,” the report said.”APP is making efforts to reduce its environmental impact” by undertaking carbon footprint calculations in its mills and preserving tracts of valuable forest,” their report said. 

Greenpeace forest campaigner, Bustar Maitar, said the audit was “just greenwashing.”

More: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67A3GL20100811?

Argentina Faulted for Reproductive Policies

Posted on August 12, 2010
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The government of Argentina’s president, Christina Fernandez de Kirchner, has reversed steps toward protecting women’s health and reproductive rights, and backtracked on its intention to guarantee access to legal abortions, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Tuesday.

Despite what seems to be a liberal social wave sweeping through Argentina — including Congress’s approval last month of a  law authorising same-sex marriages, the first in Latin America — the Human Rights Watch report offered a scathing assessment of the reproductive rights policies under Mrs. Kirchner, who took over from her husband, Nestor Kirchener, as president in late 2007.

Women continue to struggle to obtain birth control, despite a 2002 law ensuring access to it, and doctors shy away from offering legal abortions in the predominantly Roman Catholic country, the report said. Argentine law strictly limits abortions, with exceptions that include physical or mental risk to the patient and pregnancies resulting from rape.

 ……………………….

The report’s author, Marianne Mollmann, wrote that anti-abortion voices continued to carry significant political weight, as in many Latin American countries. Last month, the Health Ministry “backtracked on its declared intention to guarantee access to legal abortion” under wilting questioning by the Argentine press, Human Rights Watch said.

A spokesman for Health Minister Juan Luis Manzur declined to comment on the report on Tuesday. Neither the minister nor Mrs. Kirchner addressed the issue publicly. At an event on July 30, Dr. Manzur declared that the government was “against abortion,” noting that the president felt the same way. Earlier in July, though, a ministry official said Dr. Manzur had signed a resolution backing a guide to legal abortion services. The guide would allow doctors to carry out abortions for rape victims without securing a police report. But a day later, the minister issued a statement saying he had not signed the resolution, and Argentine news outlets suggested that Mrs. Kirchner had ordered him to halt the effort.

In 2002, Argentina’s Congress dismantled an 11-year ban on the use and sale of contraceptives when it enacted the National Law on Sexual Health and Responsible Procreation. The law focused on providing universal access to contraceptives and information on reproductive health. But researchers from Human Rights Watch have found that, in practice, women in Argentina have encountered barriers to making independent decisions about reproduction, obstacles that include lack of information, domestic and sexual violence, and economic restraints that the government had not adequately addressed. The group also found that public officials were not being penalized for failing to uphold the laws on the books.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/world/americas/11argentina.html

Now Britain and Iceland go to war over the mackerel

Posted on August 12, 2010
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The European Union could impose trade sanctions against Iceland or stop its ships from entering EU ports in an emerging “mackerel war”. In an echo of the 1970s “Cod War” when British gunboats were sent to ward off Icelandic trawlers in disputed waters, the EU has warned it will take “all necessary measures” to protect its fishing and economic interests.

The rising tension follows Iceland’s unilateral decision to catch three times as much mackerel this year as the EU considers reasonable, prompting a similar move by the Danish-owned Faroe Islands. Together with the amounts traditionally taken by the EU and Norway, the quotas would exceed the sustainable catch by a third and threaten a success story in European fishing, which has been dogged by political dithering and national self-interest. Iceland – which traditionally has a reputation for good stewardship of fish – insists it has the right to catch any fish it wants within its 200-mile territorial limit, established during the Cod War. The Federation of Icelandic Fishing Vessel Owners defended its behaviour as “legal and responsible”.

After failing to resolve the dispute – which Brussels says threatens to wreck international fishing agreements, Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki said on Monday the EC would be sending a “very clear message” to the two states demanding a sustainable deal.  She added: “However, should the current anarchic situation in the mackerel fisheries continue with unreasonable positions being maintained by parties, then the Commission will contemplate all necessary measures to conserve the mackerel stock and safeguard EU interests.”

More: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/now-britain-and-iceland-go-to-war-over-the-mackerel-2049099.html

Australia: $1m for person who reduces population

Posted on August 11, 2010
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Until now, Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith says he has never seen $1 million laid out in cold hard cash. The aviation aficionado, five blonde bombshells and a chihuahua named Chilli gathered in Sydney’s financial district on Wednesday with a suitcase filled with money to launch his new global award. The Wilberforce Award, and the $1 million prize, will go to a young Australian under 30 who can impress Mr Smith by coming up with alternatives to “our population and consumption growth-obsessed economy”.

“If we keep growing by 2.1 per cent a year in population, that doubles our population in 30 years, it means in 220 years’ time we would have over one billion people here and no one believes we could feed one billion,” Mr Smith told reporters. “So between now and then we actually have to come up with a system that runs without growth.”

The prize, which will be given out in a year’s time, can’t be applied for but the winner should generate wide attention for his or her ideas. “I will be following the media throughout the world to see who is the most outstanding individual who not only made a significant contribution to this important issue, but also becomes famous through his or her contribution to the debate,” Mr Smith said.

More: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/1m-for-person-who-reduces-population-20100811-11z6a.html

Britain’s migrant squatter shambles

Posted on August 11, 2010
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The impact of uncontrolled immigration on the fabric of British life was graphically laid bare yesterday by the sight of the tented communities in Peterborough, Cambs. Dozens of rough-sleeping Eastern European migrants have set up elaborate camps in nature reserves and parks around the city and some have even taken to squatting in homeowners’ garden sheds. Tents, fires, shacks and shelters have been set up across the city with an immigrant community that now accounts for 64 per cent of local population growth – the fastest in Britain. An investigation yesterday revealed one thriving settlement had even been established in the middle of Boongate roundabout on the busy A1139, a major route into the city.

Immigration Minister Damian Green last night said the situation was “shocking” and promised to try to tackle the problem. Sir Andrew Green, chairman of think-tank MigrationWatch UK, said: “It’s completely unacceptable to have unemployed foreign workers camping out in our cities, even on roundabouts. “Free movement of people within the European Union does not mean this. Those concerned must find a job or go home, with Government help if necessary.”

The majority of the squatters in Peterborough came to the UK seeking factory work and seasonal farm work in the area. Around 15 per cent of an estimated population of 163,000 are now migrants – mainly from former Communist countries in Eastern Europe which are now part of the EU.

Source: http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/192506/Britain-s-migrant-squatter-shambles/

Greenland ice sheet faces ‘tipping point in 10 years’

Posted on August 11, 2010
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The entire ice mass of Greenland will disappear from the world map if temperatures rise by as little as 2C, with severe consequences for the rest of the world, a panel of scientists told Congress today. Greenland shed its largest chunk of ice in nearly half a century last week, and faces an even grimmer future, according to Richard Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University. “Sometime in the next decade we may pass that tipping point which would put us warmer than temperatures that Greenland can survive,” Alley told a briefing in Congress, adding that a rise in the range of 2C to 7C would mean the obliteration of Greenland’s ice sheet.

The fall-out would be felt thousands of miles away from the Arctic, unleashing a global sea level rise of 23ft (7 metres), Alley warned. Low-lying cities such as New Orleans would vanish. “What is going on in the Arctic now is the biggest and fastest thing that nature has ever done,” he said.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/10/greenland-ice-sheet-tipping-point

Frozen jet stream links Pakistan floods, Russian fires

Posted on August 11, 2010
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Raging wildfires in western Russia have reportedly doubled average daily death rates in Moscow. Diluvial rains over northern Pakistan are surging south – the UN reports that 6 million have been affected by the resulting floods. It now seems that these two apparently disconnected events have a common cause. They are linked to the heatwave that killed more than 60 in Japan, and the end of the warm spell in western Europe. The unusual weather in the US and Canada last month also has a similar cause.

According to meteorologists monitoring the atmosphere above the northern hemisphere, unusual holding patterns in the jet stream are to blame. As a result, weather systems sat still. Temperatures rocketed and rainfall reached extremes. Renowned for its influence on European and Asian weather, the jet stream flows between 7 and 12 kilometres above ground. In its basic form it is a current of fast-moving air that bobs north and south as it rushes around the globe from west to east. Its wave-like shape is caused by Rossby waves – powerful spinning wind currents that push the jet stream alternately north and south like a giant game of pinball.

In recent weeks, meteorologists have noticed a change in the jet stream’s normal pattern. Its waves normally shift east, dragging weather systems along with it. But in mid-July they ground to a halt, say Mike Blackburn of the University of Reading, UK. There was a similar pattern over the US in late June.

Stationary patterns in the jet stream are called “blocking events”. They are the consequence of strong Rossby waves, which push westward against the flow of the jet stream. They are normally overpowered by the jet stream’s eastward flow, but they can match it if they get strong enough. When this happens, the jet stream’s meanders hold steady, says Blackburn, creating the perfect conditions for extreme weather. A static jet stream freezes in place the weather systems that sit inside the peaks and troughs of its meanders. Warm air to the south of the jet stream gets sucked north into the “peaks”. The “troughs” on the other hand, draw in cold, low-pressure air from the north. Normally, these systems are constantly on the move – but not during a blocking event.

And so it was that Pakistan fell victim to torrents of rain. The blocking event coincided with the summer monsoon, bringing down additional rain on the mountains to the north of the country. It was the final straw for the Indus’s congested river bed (see “Thirst for Indus water upped flood risk”). Similarly, as the static jet stream snaked north over Russia, it pulled in a constant stream of hot air from Africa. The resulting heatwave is responsible for extensive drought and nearly 800 wildfires at the latest count. The same effect is probably responsible for the heatwave in Japan, which killed over 60 people in late July. At the same time, the blocking event put an end to unusually warm weather in western Europe.

Blocking events are not the preserve of Europe and Asia. Back in June, a similar pattern developed over the US, allowing a high-pressure system to sit over the eastern seaboard and push up the mercury. Meanwhile, the Midwest was bombarded by air from the north, with chilly effects. Instead of moving on in a matter of days, “the pattern persisted for more than a week”, says Deke Arndt of the US National Climatic Data Center in North Carolina.

So what is the root cause of all of this? Meteorologists are unsure. Climate change models predict that rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere will drive up the number of extreme heat events. Whether this is because greenhouse gas concentrations are linked to blocking events or because of some other mechanism entirely is impossible to say. Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado – who has done much of this modelling himself – points out that the resolution in climate models is too low to reproduce atmospheric patterns like blocking events. So they cannot say anything about whether or not their frequency will change.

More: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727730.101-frozen-jet-stream-leads-to-flood-fire-and-famine.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=environment

Scottish gold mine in doubt

Posted on August 11, 2010
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Plans to mine more than £110m worth of gold in the Scottish Highlands have hit a serious setback after planners at Loch Lomond National Park today said the application should be refused. With gold prices soaring, the mining company Scotgold wants to dig out 700kg of gold and 17 tonnes of silver a year over the next decade from an unworked mine called Cononish, which sits near Tyndrum, just inside the north-eastern boundary of the national park. The proposal has been enthusiastically supported by local councillors and appeared to have been positively received by the national park. But following objections from conservationists and countryside groups, Gordon Watson, the park’s director of planning, has recommended the proposal be rejected.

The park’s planning committee is due to visit the site next week to finally decide on the application, which has taken three years and nearly Aus$8m (£4.6m), raised from private Australian investors, to develop. In a report to the committee, Watson said the site, which would cover about 39 hectares near Ben Lui mountain with a large waste tailings dam up to 30m high and a 100m-long rock-crushing plant, would cause “acute” and “significant” landscape and environmental damage. He disputed Scotgold’s claims it would create 52 jobs and a new local industry selling Scottish gold jewellery, with £50m invested in the local economy. Gold prices – currently at a near record high of $1192 (£757) a Troy ounce – were too volatile, he claimed.

“Any overall economic gain is extremely difficult to quantify, may be less than projected and is highly vulnerable to market conditions for the price of gold,” he said. “The longer-term economic legacy is likely to be marginal, while the long-term landscape impacts will certainly not be.”

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/10/mining-scotland

Early puberty in girls doubles in a decade

Posted on August 11, 2010
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Twice as many white girls in the US reach puberty aged 7 as a decade ago. No one is sure why this should be the case, but obesity and exposure to chemicals that mimic the female hormone oestrogen are the prime suspects. The figures come from a study of 1200 girls in three US cities. Of the girls studied, 10.4 per cent of white 7-year-olds had breast development consistent with the onset of puberty, compared to 5 per cent in a 1997 study.

Earlier studies had identified early puberty mainly in black girls. Marcia Herman-Giddens of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who led the 1997 study, expressed shock at the increases. “To find the girls are starting breast development earlier and earlier is extremely concerning,” she says. “To have that much change in such a short time, it has to be the environment.”

More: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19288-early-puberty-in-girls-doubles-in-a-decade.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=environment

Jordan:National Population Strategy not meeting goals

Posted on August 11, 2010
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Despite efforts in Jordan to achieve the goals of the National Population Strategy, the total fertility rate (TFR) dropped by only 0.1 per cent during the last five years, according to a recently released study. The population has grown by 2.5 per cent annually in the last decade, and is expected to double by the year 2032, while the number of females of reproductive age (15-49) is expected to increase to two million by the year 2020 from 1.3 million in the year 2004, according to the study, published by the Higher Population Council (HPC).

In the HPC study, which sought to address the obstacles facing reproductive health and family planning programmes in Jordan, the majority of the surveyed sample was aware of the concept of family planning, but 19 per cent had no knowledge about it or perceived it incorrectly. The report, which surveyed 800 clients of government health centres and 60 healthcare providers, also showed that health providers were the primary source of information on reproductive health followed by television, publications, family and friends.

A total of 73 per cent of currently or previously married respondents said they had used contraception in the past, while 26 per cent of them said they had not. “Large numbers of women interviewed by the study confessed that their fear of possible side effects when using contraceptives and the fact that 30 per cent of physicians encourage women to use traditional contraceptive methods, which are unsafe and ineffective, made them reluctant to use any,” Saad Kharabsheh, who supervised the study, told The Jordan Times. “Of course, willingness to have more children is a reason behind women refraining from using contraceptives,” he noted.

More: http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=29029

Climate change ‘partly to blame’ for sweltering Moscow

Posted on August 10, 2010
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Global climate change is partly to blame for the abnormally hot and dry weather in Moscow, cloaked in a haze of smoke from wildfires, say researchers. The UK Met Office said there are likely to be more extreme high temperatures in the future. Experts from the environmental group WWF Russia have also linked climate change and hot weather to raging wildfires around the Russian capital. Meteorologists say severe conditions may linger for several more days.

The Moscow health department said earlier that the number of people dying daily in the city had reached about 700 - twice the usual number. Jeff Knight, a climate variability scientist at the UK Met Office, attributed the situation in Moscow to a number of factors, among them greenhouse gas concentrations, which are steadily rising.The recent El Nino, a climate pattern that occurs across the tropical Pacific Ocean and affects weather around the world, and local weather patterns in Russia may have also contributed to this summer’s abnormal conditions.

“The Russian heatwave is related to a persistent pattern of circulation drawing air from the south and east (the very warm steppes),” said Dr Knight. “Circulation anomalies tend to create warm and cool anomalies: while it has been very hot in western Russia, it has been cooler than average in adjacent parts of Siberia that lie on the other side of the high pressure system where Arctic air is being drawn southwards.  Some long-term records have been broken - for example the highest daily temperature in Moscow. We expect more extreme high temperatures as the climate changes. This means that when weather fluctuations promote high temperatures… there is more likelihood of records being broken.”

More (including video report): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10919460

Hotter nights threaten food security - rice at risk

Posted on August 10, 2010
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Production of rice — the world’s most important crop for ensuring food security and addressing poverty — will be thwarted as temperatures increase in rice-growing areas with continued climate change, according to a new studyby an international team of scientists. The research team found evidence that the net impact of projected temperature increases will be to slow the growth of rice production in Asia. Rising temperatures during the past 25 years have already cut the yield growth rate by 10-20% in several locations.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) — a peer-reviewed, scientific journal from the United States — the report analyzed 6 years of data from 227 irrigated rice farms in six major rice-growing countries in Asia, which produces more than 90% of the world’s rice. “We found that as the daily minimum temperature increases, or as nights get hotter, rice yields drop,” said Mr. Jarrod Welch, lead author of the report and graduate student of economics at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD).

This is the first study to assess the impact of both daily maximum and minimum temperatures on irrigated rice production in farmer-managed rice fields in tropical and subtropical regions of Asia. “Our study is unique because it uses data collected in farmers’ fields, under real-world conditions,” said Mr. Welch. “This is an important addition to what we already know from controlled experiments. Farmers can be expected to adapt to changing conditions, so real-world circumstances, and therefore outcomes, might differ from those in controlled experimental settings.”

More:  http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/44618/icode/

Two pints of lager & a vasectomy please

Posted on August 10, 2010
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Hundreds of Irishmen are queuing up to have the snip after vasectomy clinics started advertising on pub beermats. Family planning clinic Marie Stopes flooded pubs in Dublin with the cheeky ads, but drinkers first thought they were for something else entirely….

One man said: “When I saw the front of the beer mat I assumed it was advertising condoms, but then I turned it over and had a bit of a shock.”  The front of the beermat shows a footballer on his knees celebrating scoring a goal, with the words: “He scores…”. But flip it over and it reads: “… He doesn’t score! Vasectomy… the best defence!” The beermats have all the contact details for boozed up punters who fancy a EUR450 snip to go with their pints.

Marie Stopes Programme Director, Gabrielle Malone, says they’ve seen the number of men looking vasectomies increase every month since the campaign began during the World Cup. And now they’re considering rolling out the campaign across the whole of Ireland following its success. She said: “The campaign tied in with the World Cup because we knew a lot of guys would be in pubs watching the matches with their mates and we thought it would be a novel way to attract their attention. We’ve noticed that vasectomy inquiries have gone up each month, with a large number of men calling in after seeing the beer mats. It was targeted in Dublin for the first campaign and on the success of the advertisement we will now be looking at doing it another time throughout the whole of Ireland.”

More: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20100808//ai_n54722206/?tag=content;col1

Jamaica: Two still better than too many - Principals advocate campaign to address overcrowded classrooms

Posted on August 10, 2010
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President of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools, Sharon Reid, is calling for the implementation of a national family-planning policy as a long-term solution for the overcrowding in the nation’s classrooms. Reid believes this intervention is needed because Jamaicans are having too many children.

She also is of the view that the shortage of high-school places across Jamaica would be greatly assisted by a proper family-planning programme like the ‘two is better than too many’ campaign that started in the 1970s. “You know one of the biggest problems we have? We have too many children to educate in this nation,” said Reid, who is the principal of St Andrew High School For Girls. “What happened to the family-planning programme?” she questioned.

In seeking to justify her position, Reid argued that the country needs to take a long, hard look at how many children the nation can adequately afford to raise. “We have too many children in Jamaica who are having a little sugar and water for their breakfast,” Reid lamented, as she pointed out that the breakfast served at schools as part of their welfare programmes was the only meal of the day for many children.

More: http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100808/news/news2.html

New Zealand: More teenage pregnancies, fewer births

Posted on August 10, 2010
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The teen pregnancy rate hit a 40-year peak in 2008 despite a long-term downward trend in the proportion of teenagers actually giving birth. A report by Social Development Ministry analyst Dr Barbara Collins has found that an almost continuous rise in the number of teenagers having abortions has more than offset the downward trend in the actual birthrate since the mid-1980s.

Both the abortion rate and the teenage birthrate dropped last year, but the overall teen pregnancy rate was still the fifth-highest since the teenage birthrate peaked in the early 1970s. The teenage birthrate was also still fifth-highest in the developed world at last count, after Mexico, Turkey, the United States and Bulgaria.

More: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10664608

Indonesia: First Lady asks for family planning overhaul

Posted on August 10, 2010
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First Lady Ani Yu-dhoyono on Sunday called for the government to revitalize the family planning programs that have been in decline since more autonomous regional administrations give it less priority.  Ani said the family planning program would undoubtedly have a positive impact on the people’s and country’s welfare in the long run.

“I hope every family pays serious attention to the need to have less children because the more children they have, the less attention parents give to their children,” she said as quoted by kompas.com. She added that although the latest census had not yet released official figures, she was certain the population growth rate remained high in Indonesia.

Indonesia had a lot of success in slowing the birth rate under Suharto. However, family planning has received less attention from his successors. 

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/09/first-lady-asks-family-planning-overhaul.html

Population explosion in Pakistan

Posted on August 10, 2010
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Pakistan is facing numerous problems, including food, drinking water, education, health, unemployment and shelter. The reasons are well-known, but nobody even once tried to understand that behind all these problems, there is one major reason and that is the population explosion.

The world’s financial experts have placed Pakistan on a list of 36 countries that face a serious food crisis. And that is again due to reason of population. It is time that we develop the awareness on population. South Korea is one such example whose programme to lower the birthrate had an unexpected result: Fertility fell so far below the replacement levels that population is ageing and decline in population size is a real prospect. South Korea initiated a population policy to lower the birthrate during the 1960s and 1970s to have its birthrate fall to world record low levels.

In Pakistan, the population growth rate is among the world’s highest, officially estimated at 3.1 percent per year, but privately thought to be closer to 3.3 percent per year by many planners involved in population programmes. Pakistan’s population was expected to reach 150 million by 2000 and to account for 4 percent of the world’s population growth between 1994 and 2004, Pakistan’s population is expected to double between 1994 and 2022.

More: http://www.brecorder.com/index.php?id=1088953&currPageNo=1&query=&search=&term=&supDate=

Hydroelectric dams pose threat to tribal peoples, report warns

Posted on August 9, 2010
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Photo: Xan Rice for the Guardian

Giant hydroelectric dams being built or planned in remote areas of Brazil, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Peru and Guyana will devastate tribal communities by forcing people off their land or destroying hunting and fishing grounds, according to a report by Survival International. The first global assessment of the impact of the dams on tribes suggests more than 300,000 indigenous people could be pushed towards economic ruin and, in the case of some isolated Brazilian groups, to extinction.

The dams are intended to provide much-needed,low-carbon electricity for burgeoning cities, but the report says tribal people living in their vicinity will gain little or nothing. Most of the power generated will be taken by large industries, it concludes. At least 200,000 people from eight tribes are threatened and a further 200,000 people will be adversely affected by the Gibe III dam on the Omo river in Ethiopia. Ten thousand people in Sarawak, Malaysia, have been displaced by the Bakunh dam, which is expected to open next year, and a series of Latin American dams could force many thousands of people off their land.

The authors say enthusiasm for large dams is resurfacing, driven by a powerful international lobby presenting them as a significant solution to climate change. Lyndsay Duffield, said: “The lessons learned [about the human impact of large dams]last century are being ignored, and tribal peoples worldwide are again being sidelined, their rights violated and their lands destroyed.”

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/09/hydroelectric-dams-tribal-people

Food inflation is a rumble that won’t go away

Posted on August 9, 2010
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Is the era of cheap food coming to an end? With wheat prices jumping 20pc last week after the failure of the Russian harvest, fears of an imminent food shock have once again emerged. Things aren’t as bad as they seem. The current steep jump in prices is likely to be temporary - but the long-term outlook looks very different. A number of fundamental things are happening that means in the long term, food prices are almost guaranteed to rise. The number of mouths that need feeding is rapidly increasing – and the regions with a booming population are where arable land is scarce.  

Madagascar’s forests plundered for rare rosewood

Posted on August 9, 2010
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Rosewood traders turn up in villages on the Masoala peninsula with cash and rice. They want local people to help them find precious rosewood trees in the dense forest, and then to haul the heavy logs out. The illegal trade is irresistible to poor communities. Local people used to make money from tourists who came to see the lemurs - primates found only in Madagascar. This was a national industry worth more than $400m (£256m). But last year’s military-sponsored change of government has frightened off all but the most intrepid international travellers.

In March 2009, Marc Ravalomanana was forced into exile and replaced as president by Andry Rajoelina, a 36-year-old former mayor of the capital, Antananarivo. The international community deemed this a coup and refused to recognise the new regime. Large donors like the World Bank, the European Union and the United States withdrew all but humanitarian aid from President Rajoelina’s government. This has had a dramatic impact as more than half of Madagascar’s budget had come from international donors.

More, including video report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10765418

New battles in the countryside as ramblers take on owners over access

Posted on August 9, 2010
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Water funds tempt investors with booming growth

Posted on August 9, 2010
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Funds that invest in water are booming, as investors shun volatile credit and equity markets and commodities that have already reached dizzying heights. Global water indices have gained about 9% so far this year against a 4% drop in the FTSE 100 index, according to Guardian research. Water funds have grown to more than 100 over the past few years.

Growth is mostly driven by water-technology businesses as utilities invest in improving the quality of pipes to reduce waste, investors say. The average person in the UK uses about 150 litres of water every day and of this about one third is wasted, according to Waterwise, an organisation that promotes water efficiency.

“Water is scarce, and scarcity is a technology question,” said Klaus Kämpf, who manages the Sarasin Sustainable Water Fund in Basle, Switzerland.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/08/water-funds-investors-booming-growth

The world’s first really green oil deal

Posted on August 9, 2010
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The Tiputini river on the border of Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park, which is threatened by oil drilling. Photo: EPA

The world’s first genuinely green energy deal is about to be sealed. In a plan which could be a blueprint for saving large tracts of the planet from exploitation, a greater value is being put on a pristine wilderness than on the oil that lies beneath.

 

While the world’s industrialised countries are building complex carbon markets to enable them to carry on polluting, Ecuador has come up with a much simpler idea for mitigating climate change: leave the oil underground. It is promising to lock up as much as a fifth of its oil reserves indefinitely, providing rich nations pay out at least half the market value of the oil – some $3.6bn – as compensation.

The trail-blazing proposal was first floated in 2007, but it took a step towards reality last week when the UN Development Programme signed an agreement with the Ecuadorean government to be the independent administrator for the project’s trust fund. The accord makes Ecuador the only country in the world offering to leave lucrative oil reserves untapped in an attempt to slow climate change.

Crucially, the oil in question – some 846 billion barrels of crude – lies beneath the Yasuni National Park, one of the most bio-diverse swathes of rainforest on the planet. Located in the heart of the Ecuadorean Amazon, one hectare contains more tree species than the whole of the US and Canada combined. It is also home to 105 amphibian species – the UK has six – more than 500 birds, 200 mammals and countless insects and plants. Declared a world biosphere reserve by Unesco in 1989, the park is also the ancestral land of two of the world’s last remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes, the Tagaeri and the Taromenane.

More: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/the-worlds-first-really-green-oil-deal-2046512.html

Australians change their mind about climate change

Posted on August 9, 2010
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Fewer Australians believe that humans are responsible for climate change, but despite this, the market for environmentally friendly products such as LED bulbs is growing and manufacturers are releasing increasingly innovative and eco-friendly products. 

An August 6 report by Gallup Worldview has revealed that while Australians are still concerned about climate change, fewer blame it on human activities. The percentage of Australians who are aware of climate change and say it results from human activity fell from 52 percent in June 2008 to 44 percent in March 2010, while the number of Australians who attributed climate change to natural (i.e., not man-made) causes, rose by 10 percent from 21 percent in 2008 to 31 percent in 2009. Only 2 percent of Australians had not heard of climate change, down 1 percent from 2008.

This shift in attitude is surprising as Australia is considered one of the most knowledgeable countries in the world on climate change; 97 percent say that they know at least ‘something’ about the issue. However despite changing minds over the causes of climate change, the market for environmentally friendly products in Australia and the world is growing. One such area for growth is that of LED lighting: the market is expected to reach €15.5 billion ($20.4 billion) by 2012. LED lighting solutions are more energy efficient than standard incandescent bulbs, and it is estimated that the widespread adoption of environmentally friendly LED bulbs would reduce carbon emissions by 246 metric tons across the US alone. In Europe the EU plans to completely phase in LED lighting by 2016.

More: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/australians-change-their-mind-about-climate-change-2047407.html