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Sudan: ‘Water is running out’
Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times via Philadelphia Inquirer
Five years of bloody battles have depleted western Sudan’s natural resources.
—
ABU SHOUK CAMP, Sudan – Water wells at this giant Darfur refugee camp are drying up.
Women wait as long as three days for water, using jerricans to save their places in perpetual lines that snake around pumps. A year ago, residents could fill a five-gallon plastic can in a few minutes, but lately the flow is so slow it takes half an hour.
“The water is running out,” said Mariam Ahmed Mohammed, 35, sweating at the pump with an infant strapped to her back. “As soon as I fill one jerrican, I put another at the back of the line.”
Water isn’t the only endangered resource. Forests were chopped down long ago, and the roots were dug up for firewood. Thousands of displaced families are living atop prime agricultural land, preventing farmers from growing food.
As the Darfur conflict approaches its fifth year, the environmental strain of the world’s largest displacement crisis is quickly depleting western Sudan’s already-scarce natural resources. Experts say the situation is exacerbating chronic shortages of land and water that contributed to the fighting in the first place.
(7 October 2007)
For West, climate change is about water
Joel Connelly, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
BIG SKY, Mont. — With the Gallatin Mountains glistening from the fall’s first snows, water experts, lawyers and economists gathered last weekend to look at THE key resource that sustains the West — its water!
The conference, “Fresh Water: Exploring New Frontiers,” took place against a prolonged drought in much of the region.
The current inflow at Lake Powell on the Colorado River is at 50 percent of normal, and has been subpar seven of the past eight years. Last winter, California received 29 percent of its normal mountain snowpack.
“It is moving toward drier and drier times,” said Rosalind Bark, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona who is working on climate science and the Colorado Basin.
The Pacific Northwest has, however, gotten socked by two large fall floods in the past four years: Climatologists predict a regime of wet early winter, but warmer temperatures and smaller mountain snowpacks.
Trails and roads were inundated in Mount Rainier National Park in December; a woman drowned in the basement office of her Seattle home; thousands of trees blew down in Vancouver’s fabled Stanley Park.
“We may not see the reservoirs refilling in my part of the country. We could have more droughts in the West, but also more floods, as a result of climate change,” said Katharine Jacobs, executive director of the Arizona Water Institute.
“We’re not coming back to the same mean: We cannot assume the future will be like the past,” Jacobs added.
Whether we are realists or deniers on the topic of global warming, the future will dictate changes in how the West manages its vital resource.
(7 October 2007)
Inner Mongolia grasslands turning to sand
Tan Ee Lyn, Reuters
BAOLIGEN, China – The steppes of Inner Mongolia are arid even at the best of times, but low rainfall as world temperatures rise is turning these grasslands into sand.
… Deserts make up about 27.5 percent of China’s total land area today compared to about 17.6 percent in 1994, experts say.
Many homes in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Qinghai and Gansu have been swallowed up by sand. In spring, dust storms dump sand not only on Beijing but also send dust particles as far away as Korea, Japan and even the United States.
Doctors are seeing the health effects as fine dust inhaled during increasingly frequent dust storms cause respiratory problems, especially for children and the elderly.
(8 October 2007)
One thousand SUVs in Sweden disarmed by The Indians of the Concrete Jungle
Asfaltsdjungelns Indianer
In recent months, a climate action group calling itself The Indians of the Concrete Jungle has struck against SUV:s across Sweden. Tyres on one thousand cars have been deflated. The campaign is spreading like wildfire, prompting national debate and furious aggression among SUV-owners.
(This is a message from The Indians of the Concrete Jungle to the world.)
Everyone knows it: action on climate change is a matter of utter urgency. Nonetheless, carbon emissions continue to accelerate, powered by the uncontrollable machines of the world economy. One eminent sign of this rush to disaster is the trend of SUV:s,…
Armed with this analysis, and with mung beans or grains of gravel, a group called The Indians of the Concrete Jungle has struck against hundreds of SUV:s in Sweden in recent months. The first action occured in the poshest part of innercity Stockholm in June. Tyres on 60 SUV:s in Östermalm were deflated. A weblog was posted on the internet, and since then, the campaign for disarmament of SUV:s in Sweden has spread like wildfire. To this date, approximately 1000 SUV:s have been temporarily disarmed in at least nine Swedish cities, including the three largest (Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö) as well as several smaller cities; new tribes are popping up by the week. The Indians of the Concrete Jungle have appeared in virtually every major media outlet in the country – from a prime time debate on national television, to a very sympathetic report in the company of Indians in action published in the biggest morning newspaper, to an op-ed piece in the biggest evening paper and countless news reports in local media.
(5 October 2007)
Haven’t seen any news reports in English about this group. As noted, this article is from the group itself, so take any claims with a grain of salt. -BA
Sunday Linkfest
Brain food for your day of rest
David Roberts
Got a website? Here are 11 carbon-neutral hosting options.
Environmental websites that effectively use graphics and imagery to convey the scope of a problem. I particularly like Gapminder.
If Bill Clinton didn’t clear it up for you, the Christian Science Monitor has a nice little rundown on utility decoupling.
The Energy Justice Network has a nice, compact fact sheet on the myth of clean coal. Pass copies out to your friends.
Two cool blogs I’ve recently discovered: Greenline and Apartment Therapy Green.
(7 October 2007)
Environmentally-oriented links, mostly on global warming and energy.
