Water, energy, and food under climate extremes— Are water markets a solution?
Drought and flood events increasingly make the news in every part of the globe. In 2012, China was in the news for severe summer flooding that caused $14 billion in economic losses. The following year, the country was affected by severe droughts that again had large negative economic impacts, while Central Europe grappled with crippling floods that caused economic losses of $22 billion. The 2012 drought in the United States affected about 80 percent of agricultural land and lowered average maize yields to levels last seen in 1995; food and energy price increases as a result of this drought are still impacting the US economy. The ongoing California drought similarly affects all economic sectors and local livelihoods, and has caused energy costs and food prices to rise in much of North America and further afield.
L'Oréal-UNESCO Award For Women in Science 2014 Reveals Results
Five outstanding female scientists received the 2014 L'Oréal-UNESCO Award For Women in Science 2014 at the Great Amphitheater of the Sorbonne University in Paris, on March 19, 2014.
The five laureates are from different continents, and each of them represents a unique career path combining exceptional talent, a deep commitment to her profession and remarkable courage in a field still largely dominated by men.
Professor Cecilia Bouzat from Latin America was named a National Fellow by Argentina's L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Jury in 2007, Professor Bouzat is now an international leader in neurotransmitter pharmacology and works at the National University of the South in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Prof. Bouzat is being honored for her contribution to our understanding of how brain cells communicate among themselves and with muscles.
Professor Brigitte Kieffer from Europe was named to the French Academie des sciences in December 2013, Prof. Kieffer is being honored for her decisive work on the brain mechanisms involved in pain, mental illness and drug addiction. Prof. Kieffer is now working at the University of Strasbourg in France.
Women show the way in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In my country, Nigeria, rural women and their children, especially their daughters, have the burden of providing water to their homes. They are also expected to keep their houses and environs clean. So over the years, from experience, when the issue of a good water supply is mentioned the women are usually very interested.
Nigeria has one of the highest infant (under five) mortality rates as a result of inadequate and poor quality water supply, poor sanitation and hygiene practices. The under-five deaths are sadly caused by preventable diseases such as diarrhoea, typhoid, cholera etc. which are all waterborne.
Before the introduction of CLTS (Community Lead Total Sanitation) through the GSF (Global Sanitation Fund) Projects in Nigeria, Water Committees were usually set up when water was provided by any of the three tiers (Federal, State and Local Government Areas) of government. Women’s inclusion on Water Committees was always insisted upon. Experience has shown that where the women are given leadership roles in the Committees they excel. If they are made the treasurers, the token payments made by villagers when they fetch water are properly kept and managed efficiently for the operation and maintenance of the water source and its environs.
The United Nations Children’s’ Fund on Friday said no fewer than 768 million Nigerians lacked access to safe drinking water
This is contained in a statement signed by Mr Geoffrey Njoku, Head, Media and External Relations, and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja.
The statement reported Ms. Jean Gough, Country Representative, as saying that this was the leading cause of death in thousands of children.
It said 1,400 children under five died each day from causes linked to lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene globally.
“Most of these people without access are poor and live in remote rural areas or urban slums,” Gough said.
According to UNICEF estimates, globally no fewer than 1,400 under-five children die every day from diarrhoea diseases linked to lack of safe water, adequate sanitation and hygiene.
Thousands of children die every year
Dr Alfred Tia Sugre, the Deputy Minister of Heath, has said some 82,000 children die every year out of 1,000,000 live births in the country before they attain the age of five. He said the nation was losing its women and children annually due to limited access and quality healthcare and appealed to health personnel to strive hard to address the situation.
Dr Tia Sugre said this during the launch of Integrated Sanitation Hygiene and Nutrition for Education (I-SHINE) and Rural Emergency Health Services and Transport (REST) Project at Walawale in the West Mamprusi District.
The two projects, which were launched by the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), were to be implemented in six districts including, East and West Mamprusi, Mamprugu Moaduri in the Northern Region, Nabdam, Talensi and Kasena Nankana West in the upper East Region aimed at improving the overall health and well-being of some 1,000,000 people.
The I-SHINE project is to target some 120 community schools to reach 450,000 beneficiaries within three-year period.
On World Water Day, focus where it’s needed most
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
As we approach this year’s World Water Day on 22 March, it’s a moment of particular poignancy for WaterAid.
We know that 768 million people are still without safe drinking water and another 2.5 billion people are without decent toilets – shocking statistics for 2014.
The story gets worse. New research from WaterAid released this week, Bridging the Divide, shows that of all the donor aid directed at water and sanitation programmes, just one-quarter of it is going to the countries that need it most. Most of it goes to countries where most people already have water and sanitation.
It doesn’t make sense. And we need to change this.
For instance, Jordan and Mauritius are both nations on their way to full economic development, with more than 90 per cent coverage on water and sanitation. Yet both receive hundreds of dollars in water and sanitation aid per person living without, each year. In Jordan, aid for water and sanitation per person without amounts to $855. In Mauritius, it’s US $588.Yet in Ethiopia, where aid for water and sanitation amounts to just $1.56 per person without. In Madagascar, the number is just $0.42. More than half of the population in both of these countries live without safe drinking water and sanitation.
FAO launches new satellite-based data on forest resources on the International Day of Forests
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
21 March, 2014, Rome - New data released on the occasion of the International Day of Forests confirm that forest areas continue to decline globally, with the biggest losses of tropical forests occurring in South America and Africa.Improving information on forest resources is a key factor in halting illegal deforestation and forest degradation, said FAO on the International Day of Forests (IDF), celebrated by the United Nations today.
UN experts predict higher temperatures and hunger
Scientists have come together to look at the future effects of climate change - and many countries are at risk, says Joe Ware
NEXT week, the world's leading climate scientists publish their latest report, in which they predict the impact that the changing climate will have on the world in the coming years.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the first part (Working Group I) last year. It examined the atmospheric science, and raised their level of certainty that climate change was being driven by human activity to an "almost certain" 95 per cent.
This second part (Working Group II) translates that science into the physical impact which is likely to follow from an increase in greenhouse-gas emissions such as carbon dioxide. The report comes only weeks after Britain experienced record rainfall, which flooded large parts of the south of England, and storm surges that washed away the coastal railway in Devon.
The Chief Scientist at the Met Office, Dame Julia Sligo, said at the time that the storms were a likely result of climate change. The Prime Minister said that he believed the extreme weather in the UK and the United States were linked to global climate-change.
Member-states of the UN have agreed to take action to ensure that global temperatures do not exceed two degrees above the pre-Industrial Revolution level - the level described as "dangerous climate-change" by scientists. Two degrees may not sound like much, but the changes in climate which are being experienced now are at a current rate of 0.8 degrees above pre-industrial levels; and, unless substantial action is taken to curb emissions in the next few years, the two-degree target will not be met.
POTENTIALLY HUGE CLIMATE TURNABOUT
One of the big problems with the climate establishment is that, like many institutions, it tends to polarize according to interest and ideology. Like the League of Women Voters or the American Association of University Women (both reliably liberal organizations, though they did not start out that way), a combination of self-selection and bias has placed the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and various scientific associations, almost wholly in the hands of True Believers. While the IPCC has included some prominent dissidents from the “consensus,” their critiques from inside the process tend to be ignored or rejected.
This is what makes so significant today’s news that the American Physical Society is appointing a balanced, six-person committee to review its stance on climate change. The APS, with 60,000 members, has hitherto fallen in line by issuing statements reflecting the usual alarmism about climate, but experienced the resignations of some of its high profile members because of their official stance.
Climate adaptation faces funding crisis warn UN officials
Last updated on 21 March 2014, 5:11 pm
Collapse of revenue from carbon markets has left Adaptation Fund critically short of money
- See more at: http://www.rtcc.org/2014/03/20/climate-adaptation-facing-funding-crisis-warn-un-officials/#sthash.nRfKG1Gt.dpuf
Flows of money towards climate adaptation projects are becoming increasingly unpredictable, making it difficult for vulnerable countries to prepare for the hardships caused by global warming.
Future fundraising tactics would have to be “extremely aggressive” in order to raise enough money to continue their work, according to board members of the UN-run Adaptation Fund, the primary finance provider for adaptation projects around the world.
“We are essentially going with our hands out to everyone,” Philip Weech, the board member from the Bahamas representing the Latin American and Caribbean regions, told RTCC.
“We take funds from anyone, any inch, but the reality of it is the scale of resources we need is hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The Adaptation Fund currently provides money to 34 projects around the world, including over US$ 4million to develop agro-pastoral shade gardens in Djibouti, and over US$ 5million on improving flood management practices in Georgia.
Efforts to tackle climate change have been mainly concentrated on how to prevent it from getting worse by cutting greenhouse gases. But experts now acknowledge that many of the impacts are unavoidable.
- See more at: http://www.rtcc.org/2014/03/20/climate-adaptation-facing-funding-crisis-warn-un-officials/#sthash.nRfKG1Gt.dpuf
Project gets US$63.3 million to address climate change
[NAIROBI] Four research consortia aimed at tackling impacts of climate change in major hotspots in Africa and Asia have received a fundingboost from Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and UK’s Department for International Development.
The consortia, funded under the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA), will receive 70 million Canadian dollars (around US$63.3 million), according to a statement from the IDRC released this month (7 March).
“This initiative will take a new approach to understanding climate change and adaptation in Asia and Africa,” says Jean Lebel, the president of IDRC.
World must use renewables to avoid water and energy crisis - report
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The world’s growing appetite for water and energy will greatly stress the limited water resources in nearly all regions, and governments must turn to renewable energy to meet increasing demand for both and avoid a looming crisis, a report published on Friday said.
The world will need 55 percent more water and 70 percent more energy by 2050 to meet the demands of its growing population. Better cooperation between and planning by the two sectors is essential to avoid future shortages in water and energy supplies, according to the World Water Development Report (WWDR), published by the United Nations on the eve of World Water Day.
“The link between the two is very close and you cannot look at one without the other. We need to better understand the interlinkages between water and energy, we need to promote better governance to reduce dramatically the number of people without access to drinkable water, sanitation and energy”, Michel Jarraud, Chair of UN-Water and Secretary-General of the WMO (World Meteorological Organisation), told Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview from Tokyo.
Around the globe, 768 million people still do not have access to safe drinking water and 1.3 billion live without electricity, the majority of them in developing countries.
World Energy Outlook Underestimates Renewables
The IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook (WEO) is seen as the most authoritative set of energy scenarios in the world. Yet when we test the forecasts for the growth of renewable energies in the WEO’s main scenario against reality, we find that the WEO consistently comes out too low. Each year from 2006 on the WEO has had to increase its forecast for wind and solar power. Yet each year the WEO predicts the growth of renewables to level off by 2020, for no clear reason. This sends a wrong message to policy makers about the real potential of renewable energy. It is time for the IEA to acknowledge that its assumptions need correcting.
Every year in November, the International Energy Agency publishes its annual World Energy Outlook (WEO). It intends to show the possible directions for our global energy system, with the goal of guiding policy makers in designing their policies and measures. The World Energy Outlook is the most authoritative scenario exercise in the world, and is seen as such by policy and decision makers. It’s not a prediction of the future, but a sketch of possible pathways. The fact that the WEO appears every year makes it possible to assess how well it forecasts the development of renewables in the various scenarios. Looking back is not a favourite activity of scenario builders – they prefer to look forward. But it is instructive if you want to evaluate how well the scenarios hold up against reality.
Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2014/03/21/world-energy-outlook-underestimates-renewables/#ZFHrhkjhFAZVxYqv.99
World BanWorld Bank boost for Congo hydro
k boost foThe World Bank has approved a $73.1m grant to the Democratic Republic of Congo to help the country develop a 4.8GW expansion of the Inga hydroelectric dam cluster.
The funding for the Inga 3 project at the site, which currently has a capacity of 1.8GW through Inga 1 (pictured) and 2 and is believed to have the potential for up to 40GW, follows $33.4m approved by the African Development Bank late last year.
“This is undoubtedly the most transformative project for Africa in the 21st century. It is one of the strategic pillars of development for the DRC, which needs energy to expand growth and reduce poverty in a sustainable way,” said Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo HE Matata Ponyo Mapon.
“The World Bank’s involvement in this project reinforces its mission to fight poverty and its ongoing commitment to help the Congolese government in its goal to move the country along the path to a strong development future.”
World must use renewables to avoid water and energy crisis - report
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The world’s growing appetite for water and energy will greatly stress the limited water resources in nearly all regions, and governments must turn to renewable energy to meet increasing demand for both and avoid a looming crisis, a report published on Friday said.
The world will need 55 percent more water and 70 percent more energy by 2050 to meet the demands of its growing population. Better cooperation between and planning by the two sectors is essential to avoid future shortages in water and energy supplies, according to the World Water Development Report (WWDR), published by the United Nations on the eve of World Water Day.
“The link between the two is very close and you cannot look at one without the other. We need to better understand the interlinkages between water and energy, we need to promote better governance to reduce dramatically the number of people without access to drinkable water, sanitation and energy”, Michel Jarraud, Chair of UN-Water and Secretary-General of the WMO (World Meteorological Organisation), told Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview from Tokyo.
Top 10 actions to help counter ‘climate departure’ in Asia Pacific
Ten recommended actions on energy, consumption, and cities were outlined in an outcome document at the end of a three-day conference by the Asian Productivity Organisation (APO) last week in Taipei.The APO International Conference, under the Eco-Products International Fair 2014, focused on the impacts of climate change, particularly the concept of ‘climate departure’ or the projected timings of when countries will face the dangerous repercussions of climate change from 2020 onwards.
This refers to the findings of a University of Hawaii study reported last October in Nature, which detailed the clear indication that this ‘climate departure’ is expected to occur earlier than previously thought in Asia and the Pacific.
The majority of international aid is not reaching the countries that need it the most
The majority of international water and sanitation aid is not reaching the countries that need it most, according to a new report, which also found that a third of the aid pledged over the last decade, or $27.6 billion [£16.7 billion], had not even been delivered.
Around 768 million people do not have access to safe water to drink and 2.5 billion are without basic sanitation. But just over a quarter of the aid is being targeted at the world’s 48 poorest and least-developed countries, according to new report by charity WaterAid.
It found that richer countries, such as Jordan and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which both have more than 90 per cent of their populations accessing water and sanitation, are receiving more aid per person then countries like Ethiopia, DRC and Madagascar, where more than half the populations do not.
Project aims to help vulnerable communities in Africa adapt to climate change
Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are embarking on a major new project to help communities in some of the most vulnerable areas of Africa adapt to the future impacts of climate change.
International Development UEA has been awarded a £1.1 million grant to undertake collaborative work on vulnerability and adaptation in some of the driest zones of East Africa, as part of a new Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) research group.
Led by the University of Cape Town in South Africa, ASSAR's five-year project starts from the premise that, by the middle of this century, the impacts of climate change may require radical changes in how people utilize land and resources. It will look at how climatic, biophysical, social, political, and economic factors interact in semi-arid regions and produce scenarios and practical advice for communities and decision-makers, so that they can develop strategies to help them adapt to changes in the climate, such as more frequent and prolonged droughts which threaten livestock and agriculture.
ZAMBIA LANDS K39M FOR CLIMATE CHANGE
THE Nordic Development Fund has given Zambia a grant of K39 million for the climate change resilience project.
Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda signed the grant agreement with Nordic Development Fund (NDF) programme manager Johanna Palmberg in Lusaka yesterday.
Mr Chikwanda described the grant as a step in the right direction which would help the country and the region structure investments that would be able to counter the effects of climate change.
The grant agreement was a continuation of related activities signed on June 14 and December 18, 2013 in Mongu and Choma, respectively, for the strengthening of climate resilience in the Barotse and Kafue sub-basin.
The minister bemoaned the hampering of Zambia’s development by inadequate and dysfunctional infrastructure, saying no country could develop without appropriate and adequate infrastructure.
“We have backlogs of infrastructure deficiencies and, consequently, tackling infrastructure deficits is very prominent on the Patriotic Front Government’s ambitious development agenda,” Mr Chikwanda said.
He said it was important to ensure that infrastructure was constructed to the highest specifications and standards to guarantee reasonable levels of structural integrity.
UN highlights value of biogas from wastewater
Many governments are scrambling to find ways to meet the growing energy needs of their citizens, and biogas from waste and wastewatercould be a solution, according to experts.
In the UN’s latest World Water Development Report, launched today in Tokyo, Japan, ahead of World Water Day tomorrow, biogas technology is highlighted as a promising way to provide energy, especially in rural areas.
“In developing countries, particularly in warm climates … generating biogas from wastewater can be very useful,” says the report. “This is now a widespread practice in many cities in Africa and in Asia.”
“This is an opportunity for developing countries to access energy in a way that’s sustainable for the environment.”
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Global warming could melt Africa’s famed mountain peaks
Some African mountain peaks are in danger due to climate change, according to a number of scientists.
(GIN)—Ice is vanishing from Africa’s snow-topped peaks, raising fears of a meltdown from the continent’s “Alps.”
“We are the last few who will climb on the ice, it is going so fast,” said John Medenge, who scaled the treacherous ridge up Mount Stanley, part of the Rwenzori mountain range straddling the border between Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo.
At 16,763 feet, Mount Stanley’s jagged peak is the third highest mountain in Africa, topped only by Mount Kenya and Tanzania’s iconic Kilimanjaro.
African nations discuss impact of climate change on cotton
‘African cotton faces the challenge of climate change’ was the theme for 2-day discussion organized by the African Cotton Association (ACA), in Yamoussoukro, the capital of Ivory Coast, last week.
ACA acting president Salif Abdoulaye Cissoko said nearly 25 million Africans derive a significant portion of their revenues from the cotton industry, but the industry is experiencing enormous difficulties, with climate change being one of the reasons for the vulnerability of the cotton industry, Abidjan.net reported.
Climate change leads to increasing temperatures and lower and erratic rainfalls, which causes land degradation, the resurgence of pests and loss of quality cotton, ultimately leading to a decline in cotton production.
Burkina Faso, the largest producer of cotton in Africa with over 700,000 tons, is also affected by climate change. Yacouba Koura, representative of the National Union of Cotton Producers of Burkina Faso (UNPCB), said the problem of climate change is real in his country. He said the rains caused enormous problems for farmers during the last planting season, and the rains stopped earlier than usual negatively impacting the maturity of cotton.
Climate change will reduce crop yields sooner than we thought
A study led by the University of Leeds has shown that global warming of only 2°C will be detrimental to crops in temperate and tropical regions, with reduced yields from the 2030s onwards.
Professor Andy Challinor, from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds and lead author of the study, said: "Our research shows that crop yields will be negatively affected by climate change much earlier than expected.
"Furthermore, the impact of climate change on crops will vary both from year-to-year and from place-to-place – with the variability becoming greater as the weather becomes increasingly erratic."
The study, published today by the journal Nature Climate Change, feeds directly into the Working Group II report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, which is due to be published at the end of March 2014.
Concerns about vanishing forests
Pandurang Hegde, March 21, 2014, DHNS
Modern tools need to be aligned with that of indigenous knowledge to evolve a strategy for forest conservation...
On the occasion of World forestry Day today (March 21), it is important to know and analyse the reasons for disappearance of the greenery from our midst. The global forests are decreasing at an alarming rate. A study by University of Maryland and Google shows that the world lost 2.3 million sq km of forests between 2000 and 2012, the equivalent of losing 50 soccer fields worth forests every minute for the past 13 years.
The Washington based World Resources Institute (WRI) reports that 30 per cent of the global forest cover has been cleared, and another 20 per cent has been degraded, fragmented and only 15 per cent is in tact. With the aim to monitor the existing forests, WRI launched a dynamic online Global Forest Watch (GFW) in February 2014. It unites satellite technology and crowd sourcing to track the deforestation anywhere in the world. It enables the people all over the world to participate in assessing the forest wealth and set in a motion of two way process of establishing a dialogue to share people’s experiences on illegal logging and fire.
What is carbon sequestration?
Carbon sequestration is a term that is used regularly today, but was not heard of before the recent interest in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. There are sources and sinks of carbon dioxide. Sources produce and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They include burning of fossil fuels, decay of organic materials and respiration from humans and animals. A sink is something that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and stores it in a liquid or solid form, including oceans, photosynthesis in plants and new carbon sequestration technologies. In a balanced system, the release of carbon dioxide by sources is equivalent to the uptake by sinks. Today, a great deal of excess carbon dioxide is being stored in the atmosphere, which impacts global climate.
The ‘absurdity’ of manufacturing in Africa
BY KATE DOUGLAS | 20 MARCH 2014 AT 15:30
Africa’s wealth of natural resource reserves make it one of the largest producers and exporters of a number of commodities in the world. For example, the continent produces roughly three-quarters of the world’s platinum and over half of the world’s diamonds.
Despite this wealth of resources, very little value is added to these commodities on the continent, with the large majority of its raw materials being exported to the international market.
Edward George, head of soft commodities research at Ecobank, told an audience at the Africa Trade Finance Week in Cape Town this week that despite producing 70% of the world’s cocoa, three-quarters of West Africa’s cocoa crop is exported raw to Europe and Asia where it is processed into cocoa products and chocolate.
“Even more striking, less than 10% of Africa’s oil is refined – around 400,000 barrels a day versus production of around 5.5m barrels. So something like 93% of Africa’s oil production is exported raw as crude oil,” highlighted George.
Ending Hunger and Undernutrition by 2025
African Renewable Energy Fund Launches With $100 Million
SustainableBusiness.com News
The first renewable energy fund has launched to develop projects across sub-Saharan Africa.
Not only that, most of the money is being sourced from within Africa. $100 million has been raised so far for the AfricanRenewable Energy Fund, with a goal of doubling that this year.
"$200 million isn't the end of it. The whole idea is that this is supposed to catalyze and crowd in other investors, so I can assure you that in a few years' time we may be looking at $500 million to $1 billion," says Gabriel Negatu, regional director of African Development Bank
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