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Spurred by shrinking freshwater supplies, U.S. states could begin “water wars” in the next years to claim rights to Great Lakes water, warned American and Canadian scientists at a water conference in Toronto last week.
Nations around the world, such as India and Australia, are already experiencing drought and its effects on access to clean water and increases in food prices–and states in the American South and West are bracing themselves for a [...]
By Gavin Hudson •
April 5, 2008
It’s springtime in South Korea. Just a month ago the ground was covered in snow; today the hills are pink with cherry blossoms. Eager solar panels soak up the warm sunshine. On the mountain, wind turbines spin in the sweetly scented spring breeze. In the seaboard city of Gangneung, children’s delighted shrieks fill neighborhood parks.
Over the city, military jets cleave the sky.
The jets that weave all day long over Gangneung are a reminder that for the past 60 years Korea has been a country divided and at war with itself. Gangneung, with its windfarm, solar panels, and cherry blossoms, lies less than 100 miles (160 km) from the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, the world’s last remaining Cold War border.
This week, as springtime blooms, a series of events unfolded which threaten to destabilize the delicate balance between the North and the South.
By Sam Aola Ooko •
March 6, 2008
There is no recent conflict in Africa that has elicited so much debate around the world and in the United States, in particular, as Darfur. Not even the post election political skirmishes in Kenya drew so much attention. Kenya, once the darling of the continent, the erstwhile adversaries are today sharing a cup of tea as well as power, something unthinkable only two months ago.
In a 2007 newspaper article, UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said: “Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand - an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change.”
What does this mean? The Darfur conflict inflicts even more damage on Sudan’s environmental degradation with nearly two million internally displaced people putting pressure on the fragile environment as they clear land and source ground water to survive.
Chocolate, along with coffee and tea, is one of the most popular Fair Trade certified products available. Côte d'Ivoire is the largest producer of cocoa in the world, and the abundance of this popular ingredient has played a major role in the country's political crisis. A diplomatic source in Abidjan made the comparison that cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire "is the same as timberor diamonds were in Liberia."
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