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The World’s Worst War

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JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
The World’s Worst War
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LAST month, as I was driving down a backbreaking road between Goma, a provincial capital in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kibumba, a little market town about 20 miles away, I came upon the body of a Congolese soldier. He was on his back, half hidden in the bushes, his legs crumpled beneath him, his fly-covered face looking up at the sun.

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The World’s Worst War

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Mid-East governments sign Red Sea-to-Dead Sea water deal

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BBC News
Dead Sea The surface of the Dead Sea is falling by about a metre a year
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Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority have signed a water sharing pact aimed at one day replenishing the rapidly drying Dead Sea.

The agreement will build a pipeline to carry brine from a desalination plant at the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, while providing drinking water to the region.

The Dead Sea is dropping by as much as 1m (3.3ft) a year as the River Jordan is depleted for use in irrigation.

But critics fear the plan's impact on the Dead Sea's fragile ecosystem.

Such a project has been under discussion for years.

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Mid-East governments sign Red Sea-to-Dead Sea water deal

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Water, bugs, labor challenge county's agriculture industry

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Katherine Connor, The Daily Transcript
Agriculture Industry problems san diego
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Water, bugs, labor challenge county's agriculture industry Katherine Connor, The Daily Transcript September 2, 2013 San Diego’s military, biotech and health care industries often hog the spotlight, but the county’s agricultural  scene is increasingly large and poised to face threats in the near future.

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Water, bugs, labor challenge county's agriculture industry

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How technology is transforming emergency preparedness

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IRIN NEWS, Aug 16, 2013
Flooding in Chad. Use of technology to warn of disasters is increasing
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DAKAR, 16 August 2013 (IRIN) - Mobile phone, geographic information systems (GIS), Twitter and other technologies are increasingly being used to warn communities of potential crises and inform them how to prepare, and to help governments and aid agencies predict how emergencies may unfold. 

IRIN looks at some of the ways these innovations are transforming early warning and preparedness. 

Market monitoring 

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How technology is transforming emergency preparedness

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Africa’s Farmers Seek Private Money

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Busani Bafana, Sep 08, 2013
Sweetpotato breeder Jose Ricardo in Maputo Mozambique. Africa currently imports almost 40 billion dollars worth of food, and experts say that the continent needs to become more self-reliant.
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Africa currently imports almost 40 billion dollars worth of food a year, but it should implement measures to attract private sector investment in agriculture in order to reduce its food import bill and increase its self-reliance, experts in the sector tell IPS.
“In the next 10 years, African countries should not rely on food aid, but should produce their own food and buy from within Africa when they run out of food,” agriculture researcher and director of the Barefoot Education for Africa Trust, Professor Mandivamba Rukuni, told IPS.

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Africa’s Farmers Seek Private Money

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Africa faces sharp rise in climate adaption costs - UNEP

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Megan Rowling, Nov 19, 2013
An abandoned canoe is seen on a water hyacinth covered lagoon near the Makoko slum in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos
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Africa faces climate adaptation costs in the range of $7 billion to $15 billion per year by 2020, and that figure could rise to around $350 billion annually by 2070 if global warming exceeds 2 degrees Celsius, a U.N. report said on Tuesday.

Even if the 2 degrees goal - agreed by nearly 200 governments in 2010 - were to be met, the cost of adapting to more extreme weather and longer-term climate shifts would still be around $35 billion per year by the 2040s and $200 billion per year by the 2070s, according to the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

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Africa faces sharp rise in climate adaption costs - UNEP

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Good Electricity Grids Make Good Neighbors

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Daniel Kammen of University of California, Berkeley, Nov 20, 2013
Hell's Gate, Rift Valley, Kenya, a source of geothermal energy that will feed a new transmission line running between Kenya and Ethiopia. Photograph by Franca DelSignore, National Geographic Your Shot
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In the poem “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost asserted that “good fences make good neighbors.”  World history is replete with foreign policy built around physical walls, from Emperor Hadrian, to the Great Wall of China, to the Berlin Wall, the wall between Palestine and Israeli, to the U.S.-Mexico border.  Containment and isolation have often been the cornerstones of policy.

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Good Electricity Grids Make Good Neighbors

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Deforestation in Amazon jungle increases by nearly a third in one year

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The Guardian, November 14 2013
Illegally logged timber, which has been confiscated, is floated down the Guam river delta in Brazil
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Deforestation in the Amazon increased by nearly a third over the past year, according to Brazilian government figures released on Thursday.

The data confirms a feared reversal in what had been steady progress over the past decade against destruction of the world's largest rainforest.

Satellite data for the 12 months through the end of July 2013 showed that deforestation in the region climbed by 28% compared with a year earlier.

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Deforestation in Amazon jungle increases by nearly a third in one year

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West Antarctic Ice Sheet warming twice earlier estimate

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Matt McGrath
The Larsen B ice shelf collapsed in just a month in 2002
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A new analysis of temperature records indicates that the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet is warming nearly twice as fast as previously thought.

US researchers say they found the first evidence of warming during the southern hemisphere's summer months.

They are worried that the increased melting of ice as a result of warmer temperatures could contribute to sea-level rise.

The study has been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

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West Antarctic Ice Sheet warming twice earlier estimate

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Arctic ice melting at 'amazing' speed, scientists find

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By David Shukman Science Editor, BBC News, in Svalbard
Sea ice extent- Millions of kilometres squared
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Scientists in the Arctic are warning that this summer's record-breaking melt is part of an accelerating trend with profound implications.

Norwegian researchers report that the sea ice is becoming significantly thinner and more vulnerable.

Last month, the annual thaw of the region's floating ice reached the lowest level since satellite monitoring began, more than 30 years ago.

It is thought the scale of the decline may even affect Europe's weather.

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Arctic ice melting at 'amazing' speed, scientists find

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