Posted by Stephen Smoliar

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“I have been in this trade for three years; we get our supply from northern Uganda because the charcoal produced there is of a good quality and in high demand,” Sserwada told IRIN.

The charcoal trade, referred to as “black gold” by Kampala traders, has become more profitable than the forests where trees are being indiscriminately cut down for charcoal-burning. For the rural population, charcoal trade is an opportunity to earn an income.

According to the National Forest Authority (NFA), more than 73,000 hectares of private forest are cleared every year across the country and over 7,000ha of protected forest reserves are destroyed annually for timber and charcoal.

“People are cutting down trees indiscriminately without thinking of the future,” said Moses Watasa of the NFA.

Watasa said Uganda had no clear policy on charcoal production. “We must encourage planting fast-growing trees like eucalyptus now so that we can be in a position to get timber and charcoal in 10 years,” he said.

Northern Uganda has thick forest cover, comprising both hard and soft wood. Forest growth in the area flourished during the two-decades-long Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) conflict as many locals were displaced from their villages.

Previously, Kampala charcoal traders relied on charcoal from Nakasongola, Hoima, Masindi, Kafu, Luwero areas of eastern Uganda. These have since been depleted of private and community forests.

For instance, Langele village, adjacent to the Murchison Falls National Park in Nwoya district in northern Uganda, known for its beautiful scenery and thick forests, is no more. Locals refer to Langele as a charcoal factory.

“The price of forest depends on its thickness but on average it costs 1.5 million shillings [US$600] for a hectare,” said Otto Oola, a resident of Langele. “Any patch of land here covered with trees is [worth] a fortune, it can earn you millions of shillings any time.”

Read more of the story here at the IRIN news service:
UGANDA: Charcoal boom a bust for forests

“We know these tree rings capture most temperature changes quite well,” said Michael Mann, professor of meteorology and geosciences and director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. “But the problem appears to be in their response to the intense short-term cooling that occurs following a very large volcanic eruption. Explosive volcanic eruptions place particulates called aerosols into the stratosphere, reflecting back some fraction of incoming sunlight and cooling the planet for several years following the eruption.”

Tree rings are used as proxies for climate because trees create unique rings each year that often reflect the weather conditions that influenced the growing season that year. For reconstructing climate conditions, tree-ring researchers seek trees growing at the extremes of their growth range. Inferring temperature changes required going to locations either at the tree line caused by elevation or at the boreal tree line, the northern most place where the trees will grow.

For these trees, growth is almost entirely controlled by temperature, rather than precipitation, soil nutrients or sunlight, yielding a good proxy record of surface temperature changes.

“The problem is that these trees are so close to the threshold for growth, that if the temperature drops just a couple of degrees, there is little or no growth and a loss of sensitivity to any further cooling. In extreme cases, there may be no growth ring at all,” said Mann. “If no ring was formed in a given year, that creates a further complication, introducing an error in the chronology established by counting rings back in time.”

The researchers compared temperature reconstructions from actual tree-ring data with temperature estimates from climate models driven with past volcanic eruptions.

Science Brief thanks to EurekAlert.

Read more here:
Tree rings may underestimate climate response to volcanic eruptions

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Nevertheless, there is one significant difference between the two productions. While Fiennes’ appearance may resemble a high-ranking Marine, his portrayal seems basically generic. We are at liberty to “fill in the blanks” as we wish. Hirsch, on the other hand, had the luxury (if you can call it that) of modeling Coriolanus on a specific individual. The actor performing the role bore a disturbing resemblance to Oliver North, almost as if Hirsch was trying to use Shakespeare’s character to get us to think beyond the pre-digested news reports about North and get under the man’s skin to hypothesize all those motives behind not only what he actually did with regard to our adventures in Nicaragua but also how he conducted himself under Congressional review. He further exploited our sense of history by modeling Menenius Agrippa (who delivers the wonderful parable of the revolt against the belly staged by the other parts of the body) to resemble one of the great champions of Congressional review, the late North Carolina Senator (and “country lawyer”) Sam Ervin. In other words Hirsch managed to take on two major scandals under Republican Presidents in a single play!

On the other hand I can appreciate Fiennes’ more generic approach. One could not really enjoy Hirsch’s interpretation of Coriolanus without catching the references to these two major figures of recent American history. However, in a culture that no longer seems to care very much about history, references to recent events do not signify as much for any purpose other than that of a cudgel that one candidate can take to another’s head.

Posted by Stephen Smoliar

Net News Publisher for World News

Currently Franzen is one of the honored guests at the Hay Festival in Cartagena, Columbia. My primary source for learning about these events is the London Telegraph; and today’s Web edition includes a transcript of remarks that Franzen gave at his press conference. I cannot resist observing that this transcript was prepared by Anita Singh, whom the Telegraph lists as a “Showbusiness Editor.” This was a slightly amusing red flag. At the very least it suggested that, while The New York Review was trying to approach Franzen’s work as literature, the Telegraph preferred to think of him as a show business act. However, this did not soften the blow of my experience of reading Singh’s transcript; and I should be thankful that my computer configuration cannot easily be thrown at the wall in the matter I had seriously considered for Douglas Hofstadter’s manuscript.

However, while I eventually reviewed GEB with a laundry list of its misconstrued assertions, I think that this time I can contain myself to a single excerpt from Singh’s transcript:

My problem with e-book readers is that one minute I’m reading some trashy website, the next minute I’m reading Jane Austen – on the same screen. I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change. Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don’t have a crystal ball. I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That things can be ‘whatever’, depending on the moment. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.

My problem (to assume Franzen’s rhetorical stance) is that this text seems to lack a fundamental understanding of concepts like “reading” and “permanence.” It seems as if Franzen rejects reading literature from the screen because it is too easy to be distracted by “trash.” My own experience is that susceptibility to distraction has a lot to do with what you are reading and how well the text has managed to absorb you. I can read even the most abstruse academic text while sitting in a concert hall full of a chattering audience waiting for the lights to lower; but, if the author has me hooked, none of that distracts me. That’s the kind of reader I am, and perhaps I should take this statement as some kind of affirmation that I am really not the right reader for Franzen’s texts!

As to the question of permanence, to revive that old cliché from the MIT Media Lab, bits on the screen are neither more nor less permanent that the atoms necessary to put marks on paper. After all, it was only yesterday that I was celebrating my ability to relish a facsimile of a first edition of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, which I may never get to do in the world of atoms but can easily do in the world of bits. I would even go so far as to say that the permanence of that first edition has been enhanced by virtue of being digitized: While both digital and physical copies are susceptible to destructive forces, I have a certain amount of faith that digital versions have backup versions through which they may be restored should such forces strike.

This kind of logical lapse, unfortunately, is but the tip of the greater iceberg of Singh’s transcript. Ultimately, one does not have to turn to The New York Review to learn about Franzen. Mose Allison got his number, even if he never met the guy. He’s the one who wrote the line, “your mind is on vacation and your mouth is workin’ overtime!”

Posted by Stephen Smoliar

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Tropical deforestation is considered a major source of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, releasing as much as 1.1 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. Based on new data in this study, researchers believe that current models may overestimate the net flux of carbon into the atmosphere due to tropical vegetation loss by 11 to 12 percent. For countries trying to meet their greenhouse gases reporting requirements under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), these new data are particularly important.

Lead author Alessandro Baccini, an assistant scientist at WHRC, explained that the new data set provides a spatially and temporally consistent estimate of carbon stock and a stronger foundation for estimating carbon emissions by better characterizing the carbon density of the forest that has been lost. “For the first time we were able to derive accurate estimates of carbon densities using satellite LiDAR observations in places that have never been measured,” said Baccini. “This is like having a consistent, very dense pantropical forest inventory.”

In many developing nations, deforestation is the largest source of emissions of greenhouse gases. In order to reliably report emissions to the UNFCCC, and to participate in international schemes such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), which provides compensation for avoiding deforestation, these countries need an accurate way to calculate stored carbon and to track deforestation and reforestation. “We worked closely with collaborators in 12 countries around the tropics to collect the field data needed to calibrate the satellite measurements and ensure relevance for their national reporting,” said co-author Nadine Laporte, a WHRC associate scientist, who coordinated field measurements in Africa.

Science Brief thanks to EurekAlert.

Read more here:
The good news about carbon storage in tropical vegetation

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“More than half of the expected harvest was lost in flooding and siltation,” Methode Niyongendako, a consultant with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said.

The rains peaked in mid-September and November, exceeding forecasts in terms of volume and frequency, and were the heaviest since October 1961, according to households questioned, added Niyongendako.

The most affected provinces include Gitega, Mwaro, Ngozi and Ruyigi, which have many rivers running through them.

In Makamba, in the south of Burundi, at least 60 percent of the banana, cassava and maize crop was swept away, according to Salvator Sindayigaya, the agriculture provincial director, with the Kayagoro, Kibago, Makamba and Nyanzalac communes the most affected.

The affected crop accounts for the country’s June to December harvest, agriculture season C, which represents 15 percent of the annual production.

According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), the persistence of banana bacterial wilt in the provinces of Cankuzo and Kirundo and the continuation of cassava mosaic disease have further undermined food availability.

“In Cankuzo, food stocks for the poorest households are quickly depleting because the harvest from the 2011 C, mainly beans and maize, was lower than expected due to excess rains,” added FEWS NET.

At present, the Ministry of Agriculture and partners are assessing the production for season 2012 A, which ends in January and represents 35 percent of the total annual production.

But there is little hope for good stocks as heavy rains, which started with the planting season in September 2011, continued throughout the cropping season.

On 11 January, for example, some 45 hectares of crops were destroyed in Buganda, northwestern Cibitoke Province.

“We were expecting a good harvest but hail destroyed all the crops of cassava and maize,” said Ernest Ndayizeye, a local leader. “Our children will die of hunger.”

Read more of the story here at the IRIN news service:
BURUNDI: Fears of looming food shortage

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is there a food shortage in 2012

The Governor observed that the youth of the State are highly talented and given an enabling environment they can achieve excellence in all spheres of human endeavor. Referring to the situation that obtained in the past years, he said that it caused irreparable loss to the careers of the youth. He said that now they have come up in a big way and many of them are competing successfully for All India Services and securing seats in the reputed technical and professional institutions across the country on merit. Referring to the turmoil faced in the preceding three summers, he said that the spurt of economic activity during 2011 clearly demonstrated that progress can be achieved only when normalcy prevails. He observed that the stable environment during the past year attracted nearly one crore and twenty lakh pilgrims and tourists to visit the State, including over thirty two thousand foreigners. He hoped that this number would increase during this year. He stressed that we should ensure such an environment for the visitors that they go back with happy memories about the State.
The Governor said that the situation in the State in the past years has adversely affected our development and there is need for redoubling the efforts to make good this loss.

The Governor said that the massive turnout of people in the last year’s Panchayat elections once again demonstrated that people want sustained peace, progress and prosperity.

Referring to his interactions with the functionaries of the J&K Peace Foundation during the past about three years, the Governor complimented Fayaz Ahmed Bhat, Chairman of the Foundation, members of his team and all the associated activists for taking the highly laudable initiative of promoting communal harmony, peace and amity and wished them high success in their continuing endeavors. He emphasized the importance of spreading the message of peace in all nooks and corners of the State.

The Governor presented awards to a number of prominent peace activists, students and others who had rendered valuable services, on this occasion.

The Governor was honored by the Foundation in recognition of his contribution for the restoration of sustained peace and normalcy and for encouraging initiatives aimed at promoting communal harmony and brotherhood.

Mrs. Mamta Sharma, Chairperson, National Commission for Women, Government of India, highlighted the role of women in strengthening peace initiatives. She also stressed for enlarging awareness against female feticide.

Ali Mohammad Sagar, Minister for Rural Development, congratulated the JKPF for organizing the Peace Conference. He said that peace is essential pre-requisite for progress and prosperity. He said that we can immensely benefit from the rich experience of the Governor in establishing a lasting peace and normalcy in the State.

Ghulam Hassan Mir, Minister for Agriculture, said that Jammu and Kashmir is known for its glorious pluralistic traditions and we have to further strengthen this ethos. He added that issues have to be resolved through discussion and dialogue. He complimented the JKPF for its laudable initiative of spreading the peace message.

Sheikh Ghulam Rasool, MLC, said that peace, amity and reconciliation are the bedrock of progress and prosperity and we need to strengthen these.

Yashpal Kundal, MLA, said that in the present day globalized world there is need for working towards sustained global peace and harmony.

Sheikh Abdul Rehman, Patron, JKPF, congratulated JKPF Chairman for his untiring efforts to carry forward the peace movement across the State.

Abdul Rashid Kabuli, former Member of Parliament, referring to the huge loss of life and property during the past years turmoil in the State, said that we have to restore the pristine glory of the State as an abode of peace and tranquility. He thanked the Governor for taking keen interest in the promotion of initiatives aimed at ensuring sustained peace and progress in the State.

Kuldeep Khoda, Director General of Police, thanked the Governor for being the Chief Patron of the Jammu and Kashmir Peace Foundation. He assured all possible support to the Foundation in carrying out its activities so that every child of the State grows and progresses in an atmosphere of peace. Ms. Dilraj Bedi from the Art of Living read out the message of H. H. Shri Shri Ravi Shankarji, sent for this Peace Conference.

Fayaz Ahmed Bhat, Chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Peace Foundation, thanked the Governor for his keen interest and patronage to the Foundation for carrying forward its endeavors for promotion of peace and amity in the State. He stated that the Foundation will set up Committees at the village level during 2012 and organize a global peace conference at Srinagar in July this year.

R. L. Malla, President, Haryana Chapter of the Foundation, invited the Governor to address next Peace Conference being held in Haryana.

In his welcome address, Anil Kapahi, President Jammu and Kashmir Peace Foundation, Jammu Region, spoke about the aims and objects of this Conference.

Balraj Puri, noted journalist, presided over the day long Peace Conference.

A cultural program based on the composite cultural heritage of the State and national integration was presented on the occasion by the artists of the State Information Department and students of various educational institutions.

Several Legislators, a large number of functionaries of the Foundation, prominent social and political activists, people from all walks of life, teachers and students were present on the occasion.

Source:-  ScoopNews.in

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Or rather, it is replaced.

A team led by USC microbiologist Katrina Edwards found that the microbes that thrive on hot fluid methane and sulfur spewed by active hydrothermal vents are supplanted, once the vents go cold, by microbes that feed on the solid iron and sulfur that make up the vents themselves.

These findings – based on samples collected for Edwards by US Navy deep sea submersible Alvin (famed for its exploration of the Titanic in 1986) – provide a rare example of ecological succession in microbes.

The findings were published today in mBio in an article authored by Edwards, USC graduate researcher Jason Sylvan, and Brandy Toner of the University of Minnesota.

Ecological succession is the biological phenomenon whereby one form of life takes the place of another as conditions in an area change – a phenomenon well-documented in plants and animals.

For example, after a forest fire, different species of trees replace the older ones that had stood for decades.

Science Brief thanks to EurekAlert.

Read more here:
Life discovered on dead hydrothermal vents

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The airborne survey captured images of permafrost over a substantially larger area, and with greater data density, than has been previously achieved using sparse boreholes and ground-based geophysics.

“Liquid water conducts electricity better than ice,” explained USGS director Marcia McNutt. “We can detect from the air the weak magnetic fields generated by those electric currents, thus distinguishing quickly and easily melted from frozen ground. This new technology, and the maps of changing permafrost, will be valuable for both climate change research and engineering in the challenging Alaskan environment.”

Because the Yukon Flats is near the boundary between continuous permafrost to the north and discontinuous permafrost to the south, it is an important place to study permafrost dynamics. Dr. Burke Minsley, geophysicist in the USGS’ Crustal Geophysics and Geochemistry Science Center in Denver and lead author of the study in Geophysical Research Letters, and his team surveyed more than 116 square miles centered 140 miles northeast of Fairbanks. Their data not only capture in detail the distribution of permafrost and its relation to surface- and groundwater features, but also the legacy of the Yukon River lateral migration over a period of roughly 1,000 years as manifested as a thawed region of permafrost.

Knowledge of the current permafrost distribution is critical for analyses designed to evaluate hydrologic and ecologic consequences of climate warming. It also provides a baseline for future investigation of the dynamic evolution of permafrost systems.

In addition, the study is important because it presents a methodology for assessing permafrost not only in Alaska but throughout sub-Arctic and Arctic regions. The airborne approach allows periodic monitoring of perennially frozen ground over broad areas as climatic warming decreases the extent of permafrost and accelerates the emission of greenhouse gases.

“Our group, spanning seven different USGS centers, has been very excited about this extremely high-quality dataset and its far-reaching implications for other permafrost-related studies,” Minsley said.

The study is expected to have significant implications for hydrologists, ecologists, climate scientists, and land managers in the Yukon Flats and elsewhere in the Arctic.

News Release from the United States Geological Survey

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geophysical research letters minsley

Atmospheric deposition is the predominant pathway for mercury to reach sensitive ecosystems, where it can accumulate in fish and harm wildlife and humans. Coal-fired power plants and industries are among the primary sources of mercury emissions. Mercury emissions can travel far in the atmosphere, and the relative importance of local, regional, or international mercury emissions to natural waters is generally unknown.

This is the first study to quantify the relation between mercury fallout and distance from major urban centers. The study included lakes nearby, and remote from Boston, Mass., Albany, N.Y., Montreal, Canada, New Haven, Conn., Tampa and Orlando, Fla., Chicago, Ill., Minneapolis, Minn., Denver, Colo., Salt Lake City, Utah, and Portland, Ore.

To better understand geographic patterns of mercury deposition, the USGS analyzed sediment cores from 12 lakes with undeveloped watersheds near to (less than 30 miles) and remote from (more than 90 miles) several major urban areas in the United States. Mercury deposition in the near-urban lakes greatly exceeds amounts found in remote lakes. The full report can be found in the journal Environmental Pollution.

“With all of the environmental issues requiring attention, this study is an excellent example of how science can help target our attention and actions to geographic areas where mercury’s toxic impacts are likely to be the greatest in the near term on both ecosystems and humans,” said USGS director Marcia McNutt. “This study also helps scale the distance over which atmospheric deposition of mercury is most severe, although no region escapes mercury contamination.”

Mercury emissions were previously known to contribute to global air pollution, but the importance of deposition near sources was less certain. Mercury deposition to South Reservoir, a protected water supply lake six miles north of downtown Boston, Mass., was five-times greater than mercury deposition to Crocker Pond, 130 miles to the north in western Maine.  This pattern was repeated in near-urban and remote lakes in other parts of the country.

“This finding could have important implications for management of mercury emissions to reduce the risks mercury poses  to humans and wildlife,” said USGS scientist Peter Van Metre, author of the study. “The results illustrate the importance of reducing mercury emissions in the U.S. and not focusing only on emissions globally.”

The study is part of the USGS National Water Quality Assessment Program, which has been using age-dated lake sediment cores from across the United States to evaluate contaminant trends. Other lake coring studies have found  elevated mercury levels in urban areas. However, many urban lakes are affected by urbanization in the watershed, which makes it difficult to distinguish atmospheric mercury deposition from other sources of mercury pollution.

An important factor in this study was finding and sampling lakes in undeveloped, protected watersheds in and near major cities. The findings of this study support previous conclusions from models that indicate increased mercury deposition near major cities.

News Release from the United States Geological Survey

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Every day, working in the electronic studio, the worst problem I have is to describe what I have done. All you can use are words and numbers. Incidentally, a studio in Stockholm is almost ready where every action is automatically recorded. You just fool around, and at the end you get a so-called reportage. Recently I worked four days in our studio. At the end, I had to spend another four or five days analyzing what I had done in order to write it down. It is an awful thing for me. But without what I describe there will be no culture whatsoever in the new dimension. If I make a thing, I’m not only interested in the result; I’m interested in the initial culture. Let’s say we have no score, but we do have a tape. The tape alone doesn’t help enough for study. We can listen, yes; we can get a kind of idea; it may stimulate other things one can do. But one is really not able to go further in that direction. There wouldn’t be any scientific or philosophical or musical progress in our culture if one couldn’t learn from one’s forefathers.

I suppose there is no reason to assume that Stockhausen would have been aware of what was happening in literary theory at the time he made this remark. I wonder if he would have been comforted or disturbed by the proposition that description was the most difficult of the major text types, to a point where an entire monograph was eventually written to explain why it was so difficult.

More important, however, is why Stockhausen was obsessing over the difficulty of description. It concerned what he later called the “medium of transport,” which entailed the principle that one could not “learn from one’s forefathers” without some kind of physical medium. This strikes me as yet another example of artifact-centered noun-based thinking, overlooking the fact that making music is a verb-based practice. Thus, while Stockhausen may have had the “secret stash” of jazz records that may have inspired him, he may not have had much of a clue as to how the practice of jazz is passed from musician to musician through verb-based practice, rather than through noun-based artifacts. This makes for an excellent example of how all of us, no matter what we do or how well we do it, have particular blinders that limit our worldview; and those blinders are so effective that we do not even know they exist!

Posted by Stephen Smoliar

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The report shows that since the establishment of the Acid Rain Program, under Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, there have been substantial reductions in sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and nitrogen oxides (NO_x) emissions from power plants that use fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil, which are known to be the primary causes of acid rain. As of 2009, emissions of SO₂ and NO_x declined by about two-thirds relative to levels in the 1990s. These emissions levels declined even further in 2010, according to recent data compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Because emission reductions result in fewer fine particles and lower ozone concentrations in the air, in 2010 there were thousands fewer premature human deaths, hospital admissions, and emergency room visits annually leading to estimated human health benefits valued at $170 to $430 billion per year.

“The SO2 [portion of the] program includes the use of a creative emissions cap-and-trade program that combines the best of American science, government, and market-driven innovation,” said Dr. John P. Holdren, director of Office of Science and Technology Policy and assistant to the President for science and technology.

Despite these emission reductions, the report also indicates that full recovery from the effects of acid rain is not likely for many sensitive forests and aquatic ecosystems. For example, in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, an especially sensitive region, 30 percent of the lakes were receiving acid rain during 2006-08 in excess of the level needed to prevent harm.

Based on models which analyze various emission scenarios, the report concludes that beyond current SO₂ and NO_x emission levels, future emission reductions would likely promote additional and more widespread recovery as well as to prevent further acidification in some U.S. regions.

“The principal message of this report is that the Acid Rain Program has worked. The emissions that form acid rain have declined and some U.S. areas are beginning to recover,” said Doug Burns, lead author and director of the NAPAP and also a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist. “However, some sensitive ecosystems are still receiving levels of acid rain that exceed what is needed for full and widespread recovery. We have every reason to believe that recovery will continue with further decreases in emissions which is why further emission reductions would be beneficial.”

The NAPAP reports to Congress on the latest scientific information and analysis concerning the costs, benefits, and environmental effectiveness of the Acid Rain Program, which was established by the Clean Air Act Amendments to reduce the primary sources of acid rain. Member agencies include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Departments of Energy, Interior and Agriculture, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Acid rain occurs when emissions of SO₂ and NO_x react in the atmosphere with water, oxygen, and oxidants to form acidic compounds. These emissions may be transported hundreds of miles away from their emitting sources, and have the potential to impact large areas and populations.

Together these acidic compounds can damage human health, and in addition to degrading air quality and visibility, can cause further environmental damage, including acidification of lakes and streams, harm to sensitive forests and coastal ecosystems, and accelerate the decay of building materials. Adverse ecological impacts from acid rain include reductions in biodiversity, an increased risk of damaging forest fires, and increased susceptibility of trees to pests, disease, and winter temperatures.

The report also highlights the need for better information including the costs and benefits to ecosystems from emission reductions, consideration of the role of climate change, and the interactions of multiple pollutants.

This report, “National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program Report to Congress 2011: An Integrated Assessment,” is available online.

News Release from the United States Geological Survey

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The Yangtze Conservation and Development Report 2011 (YCDR 2011) shows that lower water levels, rapid urbanization and large water infrastructure projects across the Yangtze Basin are impacting the overall health of many lakes along the 6,300km river, which supports the livelihoods of nearly one-third of China’s population.

“Lake ecosystems in the Yangtze River Basin are showing tell-tale signs of degradation, and problems like water eutrophication from industrial runoff are on the rise. We are also seeing a decline in flood retention capacity and insufficient water supply. These changes are putting increased pressure on many of the species found in the Yangtze, including the finless porpoise and Chinese carps,” says Yang Guishan, President of the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Climate change in the Upper Yangtze
While water resources will increase over the short term, the YCDR 2011 predicts that the long-term impacts of climate change will result in massive water shortages in headwater regions.

“Over the short term, increased glacial melt in the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau means more water. But after the glaciers are gone – and with them the source of the Yangtze River – available water resources will decline. The lack of water could cause lakes that depend on glacial melt to shrink or dry up completely,” says Yang Guishan.

Pollution, population and land reclamation
From 1950-2010, the central and lower reaches of the Yangtze lost approximately two thirds of its lakes due to increased land reclamation for agriculture and industrial development. This has resulted in a water storage capacity loss roughly equivalent to 20 million Olympic-sized swimming pools – and means that smaller floods now have the potential to inflict much more damage.

Meanwhile, population growth and rapid economic development – particularly in the central and lower Yangtze – as well as excessive fish farming has resulted in more serious water pollution issues and increased instances of eutrophication, a process where excessive nutrients diminish water quality in lakes or other bodies of water.

Water quality monitoring data from 2007-2010 in the central and lower Yangtze shows that 77 per cent of the 77 lakes with an area of 10 km2 or more could not provide safe drinking water, while over 88 per cent were in various stages of eutrophication. Meanwhile, in 2009 alone, over 33 billion tonnes of sewage was discharged into the Yangtze River Basin, nearly a 22 per cent rise from 2003.

Solutions
Similar to the diagnosis offered in the previous two editions of the YCDR, the 2011 update points out that more work still needs to be done to ensure the future health of the Yangtze River:

“The Yangtze Conservation and Development Report 2011 shows that a comprehensive action plan is an absolute necessity to ensure the future of this irreplaceable resource,” said Jim Grandoville, CEO of WWF China. “WWF will be working with partners and seek solutions towards the protection and sustainable usage of the lakes along the Yangtze.”

The report also emphasizes the importance of mitigating the accumulative impacts of large infrastructure projects such as the Three Gorges Dam and South to North Water Transfer Project on the Yangtze River, especially downstream.

Known as the “Yangtze health check”, this is the third edition of the Yangtze Conservation and Development Report. It is jointly developed by WWF, the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Development Bank.

Source WWF

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“I don’t want the world to move on and say everything in Côte d’Ivoire is fine,” Catherine Bragg, assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and deputy emergency relief coordinator for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said on 17 January in Duékoué, 400km northwest of Abidjan.

She was on a three-day tour of the county, which included a visit the Nahibly camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Duékoué which hosts 4,557 people.

“There are still people displaced without water, electricity, and dependent on food assistance,” she added.

Thousands of returnees who missed the planting season are also dependent on food aid for survival, and their prospects for planting this year are poor. Most were unable to return to their fields because their land was taken over after they were displaced.

Bragg launched a consolidated appeal in Abidjan for Côte d’Ivoire on 16 January. UN agencies are seeking more than US$173 million to cover the needs of over three million people from now until the end of December 2012.

“If they don’t receive humanitarian help, tensions could escalate again,” Max Hadorn, head of OCHA operations in Côte d’Ivoire, told IRIN.

To kick-start what OCHA describes as a “vital humanitarian response”, it said the Central Emergency Relief Fund had just allocated $8 million for life-saving projects in the country.

Farmers typically begin preparing the fields in February and planting in March. “If they don’t plant, they will be dependent on humanitarian aid for the rest of the year,” he added.

Read more of the story here at the IRIN news service:
COTE D’IVOIRE: Loss of relief aid could threaten fragile peace