What looked like an admittedly temporary reprieve for the swift currents and extraordinary biodiversity of the Mekong river is now over. In December the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental body made up of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, called again for approval of a potentially devastating dam at Xayaburi in northern Laos to [...]
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In the past year alone, say Chinese officials, levels in nine lakes on the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau (South China) have dropped by 70cm, marking a total loss of 300m cubic metres of water. The regional drought is now in its third year, and in that time 270-odd rivers and 410 small reservoirs have dried up [...] From the Press Release of Environmental Support Group Feb. 7, 2012 In a shocking development, the Karnataka State Biodiversity Board [India] has resolved in its 19th meeting held on 20th January 2012 that it will not prosecute institutions and companies who violate the Biological Diversity Act.This highly controversial and illegal decision was taken in [...] An international fund to protect the Amazon forest launched by Brazil in 2008 has gotten bogged down in red tape and donors are frustrated their $466 million contributions are hardly put to use, a Norwegian official said. The fund was designed to slow deforestation by stimulating sustainable economic alternatives to cattle ranching and farming, [...]
A nuclear decontamination law will go into full effect Sunday Jan. 1, 2012), setting the stage for full-fledged efforts to clean up buildings, soil and waste contaminated with radioactive materials in areas affected by the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Fukushima Prefecture. The central government will be responsible for [...] After several sleepless nights negotiators (at Durban, South Africa, climate change negotiations, December 2011) were desperate to conclude and objections from India resulted in a watered down text which left the door open to future wrangling. In 1995 in Berlin, countries unambiguously launched negotiations on a legally binding protocol, which they agreed would only [...] The Brazilian Amazon is now home to 24m people, many of them settlers who trekked those roads in the 1960s and 1970s, lured by a government promise that those who farmed “unproductive” land could keep it. Chaotic or corrupt land registries left some without secure title. Rubber-tappers, loggers, miners and charcoal-burners came too. The [...] Scientists working on the EC-funded research project Monacat, are looking at how nanomaterials can remove water pollutants such as nitrates. “Nitrate reduction has been studied for decades; it’s very hard to do and it isn’t commercially viable,” says Alexei Lapkin, professor of chemical engineering at the University of Warwick, who works on Monocat. Nitrates [...] |
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