The GEO Carbon Strategy is a sweeping plan to multiply measurements of carbon flows and facilitate their conversion into analysis and model-building. The goal is to determine carbon’s fluxes through the environment with enough accuracy to pin-point the regions that are carbon sinks and sources. But the plan needs to secure the resources required to address under-observed regions and ecosystems.
When natural disasters hit developing countries, lack of clean water can lead to a health crisis. Instead of responding after the fact, it may be more effective to prepare local communities by providing them with water sanitation kits (WatSan-Kits), along with training in their use.
Mr. Arjun Thapan is Special Senior Advisor to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) President for Infrastructure and Water. ADB, based in Manila, is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration. In this opinion essay, he discusses Asia’s impending water crisis, exacerbated not just by the environmental consequences of economic and population growth, but now also by climate change.
– Research shows warming over past decade caused droughts that reduced number of plants available to soak up CO2.
Recent changes in public opinion appear contrary to the growing empirical evidence that climate change will have significant impact to human society. In their essay, Drs. Jean-Louis Fellous and Catherine Gautier describe the thickening fog of climate skepticism and put forth a remedy for clearing the air.
South Africa, having proven its satellite capacity in the design, build out, and launch of SunSat and SumbandilaSat, is preparing to take its space program into higher orbit with the launch of a space agency. Twelve months ago President Kgalema Motlanthe signed legislation to create the South African National Space Agency (SANSA), and nominations for a board were approved in the fall. Its mandate is to promote the peaceful use of space, accelerate the industrial development of space technology, and foster research and international cooperation space science and engineering.
The risk of food supply disruptions will continue to grow as our agricultural systems and the land that sustains them respond to the pressures of climate change, energy and water needs and population increases. GEO has a critical role to play, working with its partner organizations to coordinate and secure the necessary global observations for agricultural monitoring. This paper describes recent developments in the GEO Agricultural Monitoring Task (Ag 07-03a)
If the Senate doesn’t pass a bill to cut global warming, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer says, there will be dire results: droughts, floods, fires, loss of species, damage to agriculture, worsening air pollution and more. …Read more at the original article here (This article was syndicated in an earlier version of the Earthzine website, but is no longer reproduced here. … Read More
Droughts like that which killed more than 100,000 and shocked the world in the 1970s actually occur on a regular cycle every 50 years.
In his contest essay, Benjamin-Axel Mugema of Uganda’s Martyrs University explores humankind’s negative impact on the environment since the Industrial Revolution and how sustainability can lighten our toll on the natural environment while simultaneously improving life for people around the world.
