RELATED e360 DIGEST ITEMS

19 Nov 2009: Kenya Evicts Squatters
From Beleaguered Mau Forest

The Kenyan government has begun evicting an estimated 30,000 families that have squatted illegally in the vital Mau forest and caused major environmental damage to the one-million-acre woodland. The Mau forest, located in the Rift valley, is Kenya’s largest water catchment area, the source of at least a dozen rivers that feed Lake Victoria, the Masai Mara nature reserve, and the tea fields of Kericho. Over the last 20 years, however, squatters and officials in the government of ex-President Daniel Arap Moi moved into the Mau and have destroyed roughly a quarter of the forest by clearing the land for timber production and agriculture. The forest destruction has created large-scale soil erosion and caused aquifer levels to fall, exacerbating a recent drought that caused many rivers to run dry. Prime Minister Raila Odinga has made clearing the Mau of squatters and restoring the forest the nation’s top environmental priority. Already, officials report, 3,500 squatters have moved out of the forest after being served with eviction notices.
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04 Nov 2009: Seismic Fissure in Ethiopia
Evidence of Ocean in Making, Study Says

A 35-mile seismic crack that formed over a few days in 2005 in the Ethiopian desert is evidence of a new ocean in the making, scientists report in a new study. The abrupt formation of the rift, which is 20 feet wide in places, is similar to the shifting that occurs on the ocean’s floor, according to the study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Using seismic data from the September, 2005 eruption of Dabbahu, a volcano located in Ethiopia’s remote Afar Region, scientists were able to reconstruct how, over just a few days, the fissure stretched 35 miles. The evidence, they say, suggests that volcanic boundaries near the edges of tectonic plates can experience massive, sudden splits and do not necessarily separate slowly during a series of smaller events. “We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift,” said study co-author Cindy Ebinger, of the University of Rochester, “but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this.” The African and Arabian plates, which meet in this remote area of Ethiopia, have been separating by less than an inch per year for 30 million years. Scientists believe the Red Sea will eventually pour into the new sea — perhaps in about a million years.
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03 Nov 2009: Glacial Ice on Kilimanjaro
Melting at Increased Rate, Study Says

Glacial ice atop Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania continues to melt at an accelerated rate, shrinking 26 percent since 2000, and about 85 percent since 1912, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study’s lead author, Ohio State University glaciologist Lonnie G. Thompson, said melting of this level has not occurred on Kilimanjaro in 11,700 years. The study was based on aerial photographs and examination of long stakes of the ice core collected nine years ago. When those samples were extracted in 2000, Thompson found high volumes of bubbles in the upper regions — evidence that the ice had been melted and refrozen in recent years. There was no such evidence from deeper levels of the ice core. Georg Kaser, of Austria’s Institute for Geography of the University of Innsbruck, said the ice samples were only a few hundred years old, so no such conclusion could be reached. In fact, he said, the recent melting is more likely the result of lower moisture levels than a warmer climate. But Thompson noted the Kilimanjaro melting seems to mirror trends elsewhere in the world, including rapid ice-field melting in South America, Indonesia and the Himalayas. “It’s when you put those together,” he said, “that the evidence becomes very compelling.”
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29 Oct 2009: Solar Power Potential
Is Huge in Developing Countries

The developing world, where 44 percent of people lack access to electricity, could soon be one of the biggest markets for solar power, according to participants at the Solar Power International conference in California. To date, just 1 percent of solar panel production has been installed in poor nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, a situation that Michael Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, called “a scandal for our industry.” Eckhart and other experts said that in addition to finding financing to help low-income residents install solar panels, a major challenge is purchasing and replacing the batteries to store electricity at night and on cloudy days. Another significant hurdle is replacing the energy-wasting incandescent bulbs and old, inefficient appliances and computers often used by village households. One expert who has installed off-the-grid solar arrays in Africa and China said in regions where villagers use compact fluorescent bulbs and efficient appliances the cost of installing an adequate solar array and battery can be 75 percent cheaper.
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16 Sep 2009: Heat-Resistant Forests Could Reverse Warming in the Sahara, Study Says

Planting forests of quick-growing trees in the world’s most arid deserts and sustaining them with desalinated water from nearby oceans would cool the regions significantly and draw down billions of tons of carbon dioxide, according to climate simulations being published in the journal Climatic Change. The concept, proposed by cell biologist Leonard Ornstein of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, includes transporting desalinated water to parched deserts with aqueducts and pumps to support growth of such heat-resistant trees as eucalyptus. By watering the plants with drip irrigation, in which water is sent directly to the trees’ roots via plastic tubing, engineers could reduce water loss, says Ornstein, who calculated the climatic effects with NASA modelers. According to the models, planting heat-resistant trees in the Sahara Desert or the Australian outback could draw down about 8 billion tons of carbon annually. In the Sahara, temperatures in the forests could drop by as much as 8°C. The costs of building and running reverse-osmosis plants for desalination and transporting the water would be about $2 trillion per year. “Any solution to climate change has to be a multitrillion-dollar project,” Ornstein says. “The issue is what the payback is.”
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20 Aug 2009: Slaughter of Lemurs
Rises After Madagascar Coup

Taking advantage of political turmoil in the island nation of Madagascar, hunters are slaughtering endangered lemurs at an unprecedented rate. An investigation by Conservation International reveals a growing market for lemur meat since the March overthrow of President Marc Ravalomanana. Madagascar's forest reserves have recently been invaded by illegal loggers and by poachers targeting lemurs, primarily for the restaurant trade. As enforcement has declined, poachers have targeted crowned lemurs and the golden crowned sifaka in conservation areas in the island nation’s northern forests, according to Conservation International and the Web site, Mongabay. Russ Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and a lemur expert, said the continuing decimation of lemurs is a major blow not only to the island's biodiversity, but also to its ecotourism business. “These poachers are killing the goose that laid the golden egg,” Mittermeier said, “wiping out the very animals that people most want to see, and undercutting the country and especially local communities by robbing them of future ecotourism revenue.”
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09 Jul 2009: Poaching for Horns Driving
Extinction of Rhinos, Report Says

A surge in the illegal trade of rhino horns in Asia and Africa is pushing the already endangered animal closer to extinction, according to a new report. Increased poaching by Asian-based gangs has produced a 15-year high in rhino deaths, particularly in South Africa and Zimbabwe, according to the report by WWF-International and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The poachers are feeding a demand in Asia for horns to be used in folk remedies, including the horns’ alleged — and disproven — boost in male potency. “Rhinos are in a desperate situation,” said Susan Lieberman of WWF. While only about 3 rhinos in Africa were killed illegally each month from 2000 to 2005, about 12 of the continent’s estimated 18,000 rhinos are now killed monthly. Meanwhile, 10 rhinos have been killed for their horns in India since January. Another seven have been killed this year in Nepal. The total rhino population in those two nations is about 2,400. Lieberman said it was time for governments "to crack down on organized criminal elements responsible for this trade" and to increase funding for enforcement efforts.
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01 Jul 2009: Oil Companies and Nigeria
Accused of Mass Pollution in Niger Delta

Amnesty International says Royal Dutch Shell, other oil companies, and the Nigerian government have violated the human rights of residents of the Niger Delta by polluting their land and harming their health with oil spills, natural gas flaring, and waste dumping. In a 141-page report, the human rights group said that at least 9 million barrels of oil may have been spilled in the past 50 years in the delta, home to an estimated 500,000 Ogoni people. “People living in the Niger Delta have to drink, cook with and wash in polluted water,” said the report. “They eat fish contaminated with oil and other toxins. The land they farm on is being destroyed... yet neither the government nor oil companies monitor the human impacts of oil pollution.” A Shell spokesman said that, despite its efforts to protect the environment, 85 percent of the pollution from its operations comes from attacks and sabotage carried out by criminal bands operating in the Niger Delta.
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26 Jun 2009: Spreading Desertification
Affecting Mediterranean, Group Says

Growing depletion of aquifers and climate change are turning parts of Italy, Spain, and France into desert, according to the Italian environmental group, Legambiente. The group said that 11 percent of arable land in Sicily, Sardinia, and sections of southern Italy already shows signs of drying up and could eventually affect the livelihoods of 6.5 million people. The main cause is the depletion of underground aquifers, which can result in seawater intruding into the groundwater, effectively poisoning water supplies, Legambiente said. The group reported that 74 million acres of land in Italy, Spain, and the French Riviera were gradually turning to desert because of overexploitation of water resources, with 20 percent of the Iberian Peninsula already experiencing desertification. Legambiente said that nearly half of Egypt’s farmland had been compromised by brackish groundwater caused by saltwater intrusion. U.N. officials confirmed the threat of desertification to large areas bordering the Mediterranean, and Legambiente said that unless water and land-use policies are changed “the risk will become concrete and irreversible.” Climate scientists say that rising temperatures also are contributing to spreading desertification in Spain and around the Mediterranean.
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09 Jun 2009: Shell to Pay Settlement
In Nigerian Environment, Rights Case

Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to pay $15.5 million to family members of a slain environmental activist and other plaintiffs who accused the company of working with the Nigerian military junta to crush protests against the company’s pollution of the Niger River delta. The settlement came on the eve of a New York trial in which the son and brother of murdered activist Ken Saro-Wiwa were suing Shell for working with the military regime to silence criticism from environmental activists from the Ogoni tribe. Saro-Wiwa was hung by the regime in 1995 after he led a campaign to force Royal Dutch Shell to cease polluting the Niger delta, home to roughly 500,000 Ogoni. Saro-Wiwa and others accused Shell of causing several thousand oil spills, lighting natural gas flares that covered villages in soot, and destroying mangroves to make way for pipelines. Shell said it was making the payment to the ten plaintiffs as a “humanitarian gesture” and denied any involvement in the execution of Saro-Wiwa or other human rights abuses.
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04 Jun 2009: Kenya Considers Ban
On Pesticide Used to Kill Lions and Wildlife

The Kenyan Parliament is considering a ban on the highly toxic pesticide, Furadan, used by herdsmen to poison lions and other carnivores. The pesticide, originally manufactured by the U.S.-based FMC Corporation, is cheap and widely available in Kenya and is the favored poison of herdsmen hoping to kill predators threatening livestock. The conservation group, Wildlife Direct, says that at least 60 of Kenya’s 2,100 lions have died from Furadan poisoning in the past two years, and that the death toll may actually be much higher. A large number of other animals have died from eating bait laced with Furadan, a pesticide so lethal that a quarter-teaspoon can kill a human. Wildlife Direct and other groups have been trying to buy back Furadan from herders, but the program has had only limited success. As a result, a Kenyan member of parliament has introduced a bill to ban the substance, which is now being produced by companies in China, India, and Pakistan. Furadan has been banned in the U.S. and Europe.
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19 May 2009: Largest Nesting Population
Of Leatherback Turtles Is Found in Gabon

The world’s largest nesting population of the critically endangered leatherback turtle has been found along the 372-mile coastline of Gabon in Central Africa. In a study spanning 6 years, researchers from the University of Exeter in the UK and the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society estimated a population of 16,000 to 41,000 nesting females along the Gabon coastline. That discovery significantly increases the worldwide estimate of populations of leatherback turtles, which the International Union for Conservation of Nature has classified as critically endangered. The study, published in the journal Biological Conservation, noted that one reason the leatherback population is thriving in Gabon is because roughly 80 percent of its nesting areas lie with parks and protected areas; Gabon has one of the most extensive national park networks in the world. The leatherback is the world’s largest sea turtle, growing to 6.5 feet in length and 1,200 pounds.
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20 Apr 2009: Developing Nations Will Need
$267 Billion A Year To Fight Climate Change

Nations in the developing world will need up to $267 billion annually to confront the effects of climate change, a coalition of African nations concluded in a report prepared for the U.N. climate treaty negotiations. That figure is more than double the amount of development aid currently provided. In 2008, the amount was $120 billion. A coalition called The African Group, consisting of more than 50 nations, called for an investment of $200 billion by 2020 so developing nations can reduce carbon emissions by improving energy efficiency and bolstering renewable energy sources. “Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change, with major development and poverty eradication challenges and limited capacity for adaption,” according to the text submitted by the group to the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat. Among other priorities, African nations will need an infusion of cash to build stronger defenses to rising sea levels and develop drought-resistant crops.
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17 Apr 2009: Climate Change Could Worsen
'Mega-droughts' in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced extended periods of drought — some lasting 300 years — in recent millennia and could be at risk for even more severe dry spells as temperatures rise in the coming centuries, according to a new study. Reporting in the journal Science, researchers said that a detailed analysis of lake sediments in Ghana showed that severe droughts have developed every 30 to 65 years and that several centuries-long droughts occurred in the past 3,000 years, most recently from 1400 to 1750. Several recent African droughts — including one in the Sahel that killed 100,000 people in the 1960s — have been far less severe than some of the droughts in the climate record, a conclusion researchers were able to draw after studying how sharply water levels dropped in Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana. The researchers say their findings highlight the potential for devastating droughts in densely-populated West Africa as the region warms. “Clearly much of West Africa is already on the edge of sustainability, and the situation could become much more dire in the future with increased global warming,” said study co-author Jonathan Overpeck.
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24 Feb 2009: Rare Saharan Cheetah
Photographed by Camera Trap in Algeria

An international team of researchers has taken several photographs of the critically endangered Saharan cheetah, believed to number fewer than 250 individuals across its range in northern and western Africa. Using motion-sensitive camera traps that automatically take photographs of passing animals, researchers in Algeria identified four separate individuals in the photographs by their unique spot patterns. The photos were taken as part of the first systematic camera trap survey across the central Sahara, covering an area of 1,100 square-miles. Saharan cheetahs — a sub-species of cheetah found in isolated pockets of Algeria, Niger, Mali, Benin, Burkina-Faso, and Togo — are elusive animals protected by the Convention of Migratory Species. The Wildlife Conservation Society and the conservation group Panthera are funding the research being carried out by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Algerian scientists and national park employees. “Virtually nothing is known about the population, so this new evidence, and the ongoing research, is hugely significant,” said Sarah Durant, senior researcher at the ZSL.
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10 Feb 2009: Climate Adaptation Network
Launched by MacArthur, WWF, and IUCN

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is giving $2 million to the World Wildlife Fund and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature to develop programs to help human communities and vulnerable ecosystems adapt to climate change. The conservation groups will use the money to establish an Ecosystems and Livelihoods Adaptation Network, which is designed to identify regions especially vulnerable to climate change and study ways to cushion the impact of higher temperatures, rising sea levels, and other effects of global warming. The new network will initially examine how a rise in sea level will impact coastal ecosystems and communities in Melanesia, the Caribbean, and Madagascar. The $2 million grant is part of a larger, $50 million effort by MacArthur to develop climate adaption programs. Foundation President Jonathan Fanton said that while it is important to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the rapid pace of climate change “demands global cooperation and innovation to help animal and human populations adapt to our changing planet.”
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22 Dec 2008: Scientists Use Google Earth
To Discover Forest in Mozambique

Using satellite photographs from Google Earth, U.K. scientists have located and explored an uncharted highland forest in Mozambique, discovering several new species in the 17,000-acre woodland. A scientist working for the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew was using Google Earth images to search for virgin forest above 5,400 feet in southern Africa when he discovered an unexplored swath of green encompassing Mount Mabu in Mozambique. The Royal Botanic Gardens sent an expedition to the area this fall with 28 scientists and 70 porters and discovered an area rich in biodiversity and new species. To date, the scientists have identified three new species of Lepidoptera butterfly and a new member of the highly poisonous Gaboon viper family. In addition they found a wide array of previously known species, including duiker antelope, samango monkeys, elephant shrews, 200 types of butterflies, and thousands of plants. The untouched areas around Mount Mabu are increasingly under threat as residents log and clear the land for agriculture.
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05 Dec 2008: U.N. Maps Target Hot Spots to Slow Warming and Protect Wildlife

U.N. officials unveiled an atlas that targets areas where better planning and conservation would provide double benefits: protecting rare wildlife and slowing global warming. The series of maps, introduced at climate talks in Poznan, Poland, focus on the forests of Madagascar and the Amazon, regions with diverse wildlife and large amounts of carbon dioxide stored in trees and soil. Officials hope the atlas will help guide public policy in those regions, particularly when it comes to decisions on forest clearing. “When countries plan, they may wish to prioritize action in some areas ahead of others,” said Barney Dickson of the U.N. Environmental Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Center. For instance, protection of forests in the Congo basin would also help preserve gorilla populations, and rare birds would benefit from preserving forests in Ecuador. Other regions targeted include the Amazon basin, the tip of South Africa and central Papua New Guinea. More than 18 million acres of forest was lost from 2000 to 2005, according to the U.N.
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04 Dec 2008: Wealthy Nations Buying Large Farm Tracts in Africa

In the face of food shortages and with demand for biofuels growing, an increasing number of wealthy nations are buying up land in developing countries, particularly in Africa, to ensure a steady supply of crops. A South Korean firm last month sought a 99-year lease to cultivate maize and oil palm on 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) in Madagascar; several countries are growing sugar cane in Tanzania to produce bioethanol for the European market; and investors from Persian Gulf states are leasing or purchasing farmland across Africa. Other firms, including a British hedge fund, are making major investments in farmland in South America and Russia. Some analysts are concerned that this spate of foreign investment will cause a political backlash and jeopardize the lifestyles of local farmers. But others predict the infusion of foreign dollars will mean new technology, new roads, and new opportunities. “These deals could provide more security and predictability for poor farmers than just selling crops on open markets,” said Duncan Green of the anti-poverty group, Oxfam.
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01 Dec 2008: U.S. Engineering Students Bring Small-Scale Hydropower to Rwanda

Engineering students from Dartmouth College have designed, built, and installed two small hydropower turbines to supply electricity to a remote mountain village in Rwanda, according to Scientific American magazine. The students from Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering built one of the turbines in the U.S. and shipped it to the village of Banda, a settlement of 6,000 adjacent to Nyungwe National Park. The second turbine was built on site using local materials, as the goal of the project is to enable residents of Banda and beyond to make their own turbines rather than importing expensive ones. The turbines now electrify about a third of the village’s homes, since each turbine can charge 30 of the batteries a day that residents use to electrify their homes. A charge lasts two weeks. The students plan to return and install additional turbines on mountain streams to generate 1.5 kilowatts, enough to supply the entire village with electricity. Locally built turbines can provide electricity to a typical household for about $50 a year, the same price residents now pay to light their homes with polluting kerosene.
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