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Isalo National Park, Madagascar (photo: Bernard Gagnon)

160 million years ago, what is now called Madagascar–the world’s fourth largest island–broke free from its parent continent (Africa), allowing evolution to do some of its most creative work.

The Island, located just off the Southeast coast of Africa and roughly the size of California, is home to an amazing array of life-forms found no where else: bats (with suction cup “elbows”), the Silky Sifaka lemur (an ancient line of primate relatives), dozens of “new” species of scorpions and spiders, and an estimated 200 - 400 new species of frog (most of which have yet to be named). There are also numerous, unique species of plants. An estimated 80% of these new species (especially the frogs) exist only in protected areas of Madagascar’s remaining rain forests.

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You may not have heard of Ug99 yet, but, if its rapid spread continues unchecked, chances are you will not only be hearing about it, but you’ll be paying for it too. That’s because this fast-spreading strain of the fungus that causes stem rust–a seemingly unstoppable plant disease–and is now spreading around the globe and threatening to devastate the world’s wheat harvest.

One hopeful remedy may in fact lay in certain native, durum wheat species (”landraces”) found only in certain African nations–in particular, Ethiopia–which are believed to possess “slow rusting” genes. These native durum wheats are stronger (durum is Latin for “hard”) than7  other strains and originally evolved under much different environmental conditions than European and Western Hemisphere varieties. These durum landraces have most likely evolved slight gene variations as a result. These variations in gene sequences (and/or their expression in the wild), it is believed, can confer survival advantages to the plants when transplanted in a different locale.

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Australian musician Ben Lee brilliantly weaves daunting issues such as the global water crisis, religious intolerance, consumerism, hunger, greed, renewable energy and global warming into this inescapably catchy pop song. Lee has also been nominated as one of PETA’s world’s sexiest vegetarians.

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Governments across the world must commit to hundreds of billions of pounds in green investments within months in a combined attack on the global economic crisis and global warming, according to leading economists including Nicholas Stern.

The team says some $400bn (£277bn) should be channelled to support low-carbon technologies such as home insulation and renewable energy. Given the urgency of both the economic and climate crises, it wants the green investment made by this summer and to total 20% of the £1.4tn likely to be spent globally as fiscal stimulus.

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In an effort to tackle Pakistan’s growing energy shortage, representatives of the burgeoning Chinese solar industry have offered to cooperate with the country on a high profile partnership to manufacture solar energy equipment.

The offer was made at a press conference to promote the 2010 International Solar Cities Congress, to be held in Shangong province. Speaking at the event, Huang Ming, Vice‑President of the International Solar Energy Society said, “Pakistan and China are like brothers. We are eager to promote our solar energy industry in Pakistan.”

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I just found about this new tool as the fires burned in Santa Barbara. And when I say, “brand new’, I mean it launched yesterday.With the Sylmar Fires burning today…they are quite busy already!This cool tool keeps you informed about disasters in real time using social media.

CrisisWire.comCrisiswire’s gathers information about crises. This site is contains real-time info about what’s happening during a crisis.

A bit brief right now, but hey, they’ve been up less than 24 hours. Let’s give them a break. Here’s the basic concept as I found out on Mashable, from site founder Nate Ritter:

“During a disaster people spend valuable time searching the Internet and waiting for the media to report on their city, their neighborhood, their street,” Nate told us. “While main stream media serves a vital role during disasters, it is impossible to update the population on everything that is happening during a crisis.”

From a green and social responsibility standpoint, this is important news if it takes off. Each year disasters claim hundreds of thousands of homes, wilderness, animal habitats and businesses. This may turn out to be the best early response system we will have. Already MSM news sources are using it to update their reports.

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The BBC reports

Photo Credit: By Photo Credit: Julien Harneis via Flickr’s Media Commons

With water shortages emerging as a constraint on food production growth, the world needs an effort to raise water productivity similar to the one that nearly tripled land productivity during the last half of the twentieth century.

Worldwide, average irrigation water productivity is now roughly 1 kilogram of grain per ton of water used. Since it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain, it is not surprising that 70 percent of world water use is devoted to irrigation. Thus, raising irrigation efficiency is central to raising water productivity overall.

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