World Water Day 2008

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: developing world
• Date: Sat, Mar 22, 2008

Video from 2007 Children’s World Water Forum

Today is World Water Day. Here’s some water and sanitation facts:

• 1.1 billion people lack access to an improved water supply - approximately one in six people on earth
• 2.6 billion people in the world lack access to improved sanitation
• Less than 1% of the world’s fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human use
• The average American individual uses 100 to 176 gallons of water at home each day. The average African family uses about 5 gallons of water each day.
• Millions of women and children spend several hours a day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources.
• Every $1 spent on water and sanitation creates on average another $8 in costs averted and productivity gained
• Almost two in three people lacking access to clean water live on less $2 a day
• Poor people living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more for per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city.
• For children under age five, water-related diseases are the leading cause of death.
• 88 percent of all diseases are caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.
• At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease.
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.

Visit: Engineers without Borders and UNICEF

• Tags: africa, americas, asia, children and opportunities, developing world, global responsibility, sanitation, water

FAO Report Highlights Concern Over Rapid Loss of Mangroves

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: Uncategorized
• Date: Sun, Feb 3, 2008

A study by the UN Food and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned that 20% of the world’s mangrove area has been destroyed since 1980 and urged better protection of mangrove ecosystems.

Mangroves are salt-tolerant evergreen forests that are found along coastlines, lagoons, rivers or deltas in 124 tropical and subtropical countries and areas around the world, providing protection against erosion, cyclones and wind. Around 50% of the world’s total mangrove area is found in Indonesia, Australia, Brazil, Nigeria and Mexico.

“Mangroves are important forested wetlands and most countries have now banned the conversion of mangroves for aquaculture and they assess the impact on the environment before using mangrove areas for other purposes,” said Wulf Killmann, Director of FAO’s Forest Products and Industry Division.

The total mangrove area has declined from 18.8m ha (46.4m acres) in 1980 to 15.2m ha (37.5m acres) in 2005. However the report did show that there has been a slowdown in the rate of mangrove loss: from some 187,000 ha destroyed annually in the 1980s to 102,000 ha a year between 2000 and 2005. This reflected an increased awareness of the value of mangrove ecosystems, the report said.

The destruction of mangroves is mainly due to high population pressure, large-scale conversion of mangrove areas for shrimp and fish farming, agriculture, infrastructure and tourism, as well as pollution and natural disasters.

Asia suffered the largest net loss of mangroves since 1980, with more than 1.9 million ha destroyed, mainly due to changes in land use.

North and Central America and Africa also contributed significantly to the decrease in mangrove area, with losses of about 690 000 and 510 000 ha respectively over the last 25 years.

At the country level, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and Panama recorded the largest losses of mangroves during the 1980s. A total of some one million ha were lost in these five countries - a land area comparable to Jamaica. In the 1990s, Pakistan and Panama succeeded in reducing their rate of mangrove loss. Conversely, Viet Nam, Malaysia and Madagascar suffered increased clearing and moved into the top five countries with major area losses in the 1990s and 2000-2005.

“On a positive note, a number of countries have had an increase in mangrove area over time, including Bangladesh,” said Senior Forestry Officer Mette Wilkie.

“Part of the largest mangrove area in the world, the Sundarbans Reserved Forest in Bangladesh, is well protected and no major changes in the extent of the area have occurred during the last few decades, although some damage to the mangroves was reported after the recent cyclone in 2007. In Ecuador, the abandoning of ponds and structures for shrimp and salt production led to a rebuilding of various mangrove sites,” she said.

Full Report: The world’s mangroves 1980-2005.

Sources: FAO and The Guardian

Image Source: Wikipedia Commons

• Tags: americas, asia, endangered species, environment, oceans

salamanders

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: Uncategorized
• Date: Sun, Jan 6, 2008

Scientists in Costa Rica have found three new species of salamander, bringing the total known number of Costa Rican salamanders known to science to 43. The salamanders were among some 5,000 plants and animals recorded by scientists from London’s Natural History Museum during three expeditions to Central America.

The three new salamanders were found in La Amistad National Park, a Unesco World Heritage Site on the Costa Rica-Panama border.

Salamanders were one of the first forest critters I fell in love with as a kindergartener. I was walking home, down the big dirt hill, when I found one, partly mangled, lying in a puddle on the road. I picked him up and brought him up the steps to my mom. There, she told me how they grow their tales back, and what type of environment they best like. I kept him for two days, till he popped back to life, then let him go into the forest.

source: BBC

• Tags: americas, environment

chocolate 3,000 years old

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: Uncategorized
• Date: Wed, Nov 14, 2007

Archaeologists have dated fragments of Hondoruan pottery used to hold a chocolate-based drink to 1150 BC, pushing back the earliest known use of chocolate 500 years. Archaeologists found the residue of a chemical called theobromine, which only occurs in the cacao plant, on the pots.

The cacao beverages consumed at the Puerto Escondido site were likely to have been produced by fermenting the sweet pulp surrounding the seeds to make an alcoholic drink much like the South American drink chicha.

news source: Guardian UK, image source: panama pilgrim

• Tags: americas, archeology

Teshekpuk Lake Revised Environmental Impact Document to be Released Soon…making it “ok to allow drilling”

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: Uncategorized
• Date: Wed, Jul 11, 2007

Remember Teshekpuk Lake? The sensitive wetland in northern Alaska that BuchCo wants to sell off for some oil company profits? It’s back in the news:

from ENN:

The Bureau of Land Management could go ahead with plans to allow drilling in a sensitive area near Teshekpuk Lake on the North Slope, an agency spokeswoman said.

The BLM added to its environmental impact assessment of drilling in the area and that information is now being reviewed, said spokeswoman Sharon Wilson. The results of the review should be completed soon, she said.

• Tags: americas, endangered species, environment, environmental economics, indigenous peoples, military industrial complex, oceans, oil, science

U.S., Mexico and Canada To Protect Threatened Monarch Butterflies and Porpoises

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: Uncategorized
• Date: Thu, Jun 28, 2007

U.S., Mexico and Canada To Protect Threatened Monarch Butterflies and Porpoises

June 28, 2007 — By Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — The U.S., Mexico and Canada agreed to work together to protect the monarch butterfly, threatened in Mexico by illegal logging destroying its winter nesting grounds.

Meeting in the central Mexican state of Michoacan, where millions of butterflies spend the winter months, the three-nation Commission for Environmental Cooperation, or CEC, formally pledged Wednesday to support conservation initiatives for the monarch, according to a commission statement.

The statement did not offer details on the initiatives.

The monarch butterfly is not listed as endangered, but scientists say deforestation could threaten its existence.

The monarchs’ annual 3,400-mile journey from the forests of eastern Canada and parts of the United States to the central Mexican mountains is considered an aesthetic and scientific wonder.

The nations also agreed to joint efforts to aid the vaquita marina, a gray porpoise native to the Gulf of California. They are sometimes caught in fishing nets and their habitat is damaged by shrimp boats that trawl the sea floor.

Only 500 of the porpoises are thought to exist, environmentalists say.

The CEC — a panel set up by Mexico, the United States and Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement — also said it has launched a Google Earth mapping tool that lets users explore pollution data from more than 30,000 industrial facilities in the three countries.

Vaquitas

• Tags: americas, endangered species, environment