Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, Feb 10 2006 (IPS) – Several leading energy and manufacturing firms have joined with a prominent environmental think tank to develop the United States first comprehensive plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Shell Oil, British Petroleum, Cinergy Corp., Intel, the aluminium producer Alcan Inc., and others have endorsed the Agenda for Climate Action issued by the Virginia-based Pew Centre on Climate Change, a non-governmental group that works with the private sector to provide reliable information and solutions on climate change.
The report, released Wednesday, is the first broad consensus of the policies needed for the U.S. to successfully address the environmental problems caused by the burning of fossil fuels like oil and coal, says…
Ngoc Nguyen and Aaron Glantz
HANOI, Mar 15 2006 (IPS) – Nguyen Thi Thuy was 22 when she left her village to help build roads for the North Vietnamese army during the war. She remembers crawling into tunnels during the day and covering her mouth with a wet rag when the United States military sprayed the landscape with defoliant.
I didn t know what it was then, but it was white, she recalled. The sky and earth were scorched. The earth had lost all its greenery. We didn t know it was Agent Orange at that time.
And now, more than three decades later, an international conference here on Thursday and Friday, will examine the social impacts of the notorious wartime herbicide. Until now, research on the effects of the chemical has focused primarily on science that proves a …
Zarghona Salihi – Pajhwok Afghan News*
KABUL, Apr 16 2006 (IPS) – For once, Afghanistan can report good news on the public health front. The country has been selected for a special award for its effective fight against tuberculosis (TB), which claims 20,000 lives every year, the majority of them women, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced.
The selection of Kabul for the award is a matter of pride for both the ministry of public health and WHO, observed Dr Abdi Momin Ahmad, representative of the Geneva-based world health body, at a meeting in the Afghan capital, earlier this month.
Afghanistan s minister for public health, Syed Muhammad Amin Fatimi, said the number of TB cases was finally on the decline. Some 520 TB treatment centres in different parts of…
Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, May 17 2006 (IPS) – The world is now eating more food than farmers grow, pushing global grain stocks to their lowest level in 30 years.
Rising population, water shortages, climate change, and the growing costs of fossil fuel-based fertilisers point to a calamitous shortfall in the world s grain supplies in the near future, according to Canada s National Farmers Union (NFU).
Thirty years ago, the oceans were teeming with fish, but today more people rely on farmers to produce their food than ever before, says Stewart Wells, NFU s president.
In five of the last six years, global population ate significantly more grains than farmers produced.
And with the world s farmers unable to increase food production, policymakers must …
Fritzroy A. Sterling
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 20 2006 (IPS) – The eastern areas of Sudan near the Eritrean-Ethiopian border are drought-stricken and dry during the hot months, and in recent years, a steady decline in rainfall continues to threaten basic survival efforts such as the cultivation of land and raising of livestock.
When the rains do come, some areas become muddy, mucky and swamp-like, rendering many roads impassible and cutting off outside access to the areas.
Far removed from the larger, more volatile camps in Darfur and eastern Chad are an estimated 110,000 refugees from Ethiopia and Eritrea currently living in 12 camps in eastern Sudan. While they are not as visible, humanitarian aid workers stress that the basic needs of the rarely-mentioned refugees in eas…
Linus Atarah
HELSINKI, Aug 7 2006 (IPS) – Civil society organisations have expressed deep dissatisfaction over the invitation to Burma s military junta to attend the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) here next month.
The Asia-Europe People s Forum (AEPF), a coalition of European and Asian non- governmental organisations, says the invitation violates the European Union travel ban on Burmese officials over the human rights record of the junta.
If representatives of Burma s military junta are invited, we must call for ASEM to discuss the situation and push for democratic changes, Pietje Vervest of the Netherlands-based Transnational Institute and member of the coordinating committee of AEPF told media representatives.
It is difficult to understand why Finland, whose f…
Zofeen Ebrahim – Asia Water Wire*
KARACHI, Sep 8 2006 (IPS) – Floods and torrential rain have caused public sanitation in this port city to deteriorate to a point where health experts are not sure whether its 12 million inhabitants are going to be hit by malaria first or by gastroenteritis conditions are rife for both, as well as a host of other pestilences.
Pools of smelly water have stagnated for so long that they have turned a sickly shade of green. And fly-infested mounds of garbage lie around uncollected, emitting a stink so foul that not even the hardiest of scavengers man, beast or bird dare venture near.
Mosquitoes swarm over open drains, sewers and manholes that are overflowing with sewage and discarded plastic bags. The mid-August floods, killed more than 80…
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Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 2006 (IPS) – The statistics are mind-boggling: of the more than six billion people in the world today, over one billion have no access to improved drinking water a basic necessity for human life and about 2.6 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation.
The statistics are mind-boggling: of the more than six billion people in the world today, over one billion have no access to improved drinking water a basic necessity for human life and about 2.6 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation.
And according to the U.N. children s agency UNICEF, polluted water and lack of basic sanitation claim the lives of over 1.5 million children every year, mostly from water-borne diseases.
Despite commendable progre…