This publication looks at how sharing technological infrastructure can support gender equality and serve the broad betterment of mining communities. It illustrates how mining companies in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are sharing technological infrastructure with local communities and how partners are collaborating in Peru …
Ahead of the World Bank's Spring Meetings here this week, government ministers from almost 40 developing countries are meeting with UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, UK International Development Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell, Chair of the United Nations Secretary General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation HRH the Prince of …
Huge reserves of underground water in some of the driest parts of Africa could provide a buffer against the effects of climate change for years to come, scientists said on Friday. Researchers from the British Geological Survey and University College London have for the first time mapped the aquifers, or …
Tropical forests in Africa may be more resilient to future climate change than the Amazon and other regions, a gathering of scientists has said. An international conference agreed that the region’s surviving tree species had endured a number of climatic catastrophes over the past 4,000 years. As a result, they …
Crop-raiding is a major source of conflict between people and wildlife globally, impacting local livelihoods and impeding conservation. Conflict mitigation strategies that target problematic wildlife behaviours such as crop-raiding are notoriously difficult to develop for large-bodied, cognitively complex species. Many crop-raiders are generalist feeders. In more ecologically specialised species crop-type …
British oil firm Soco International said on Thursday it has been given permission to carry out aerial surveys of a Congolese oil block where exploration was suspended last year due to concerns over environmental damage. Soco has rights to Block 5 but exploration has been halted as the block sits …
The Nouabale-Ndoki National Park is a lush rainforest park within the equatorial nation of the Republic of Congo (ROC), not to be confused with the much larger Democratic Republic of Congo to the south and east. The ROC has followed through on its commitments to expand the park by 8 …
Low-cost solar panels and solar batteries will be provided to poor communities in 14 countries in Africa and Asia in the next four years, the UN Development Programme said Thursday. A total of 33 million people in the 14 countries will be able to make use of solar energy for …
Cholera cases have soared in the Democratic Republic of Congo in recent weeks, the UN said on Friday, bringing the number of people infected in the year-long outbreak to 22,000 with 584 deaths. Aid agencies have been trying to halt the spread of the water-borne disease that has ravaged eight …
The potential of biodiversity to increase and sustain nutrition security is increasingly recognized by the international research community. To date however, dietary assessment studies that have assessed how biodiversity actually contributes to human diets are virtually absent. This study measured the contribution of wild edible plants (WEP) to the dietary …
The World Health Organization on Friday warned that Europe faces an explosion of measles cases next year unless it takes urgent steps to contain the viral respiratory disease. In the first nine months of 2011, 36 Western European nations reported a total of 26,000 measles cases, including more than 14,000 …
The world’s deforestation rate has accelerated to 6.4 million hectares a year, the UN said on Wednesday in its most comprehensive survey yet, but Asia showed net gains due to extensive planting in China. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation used satellite technology for the first time to map forests, …
PANJIM: In a development that could send shivers down the spine of Goan iron ore exporters, China on Saturday said that they have already started looking out for alternate markets considering the unstable situation of ore supply from India, especially Goa. Chinese delegates, who were in Goa to participate and …
Kinshasa, Congo: A national park in Congo best known for its endangered mountain gorillas is now inviting tourists to go on overnight treks to see a volcano spurting fountains of lava nearly 1,000 feet into the air. Mount Nyamulagira began erupting on November 6 and could continue to do so …
Close to one lakh children below the age of five years died of diarrhoea attributable to rotavirus infection in 2008, accounting for 22 per cent of the total deaths reported globally, reports the latest edition of the Lancet Infection Diseases magazine. Diarrhoea related with the rotavirus infection resulted in 453,000 …
A cholera epidemic sweeping through west and Central Africa, one of the biggest in the vast region's history, has infected more than 85,000 people, killing at least 2,466 so far this year, United Nations aid agencies said yesterday. The virulent diarrhea disease is spreading quickly along waterways between and within …
According to a new analysis, the United States now ranks 41st in the world in terms of neonatal mortality, the death rate of infants less than one month old. The rate is higher in the United States than in, among others, Cuba, Slovakia, Croatia and all of Western Europe and …
Historically, the main focus of studies of childhood mortality has been the infant and under-five mortality rates. Neonatal mortality (deaths <28 days of age) has received limited attention, although such deaths account for about 41% of all child deaths. To better assess progress, we developed annual estimates for neonatal …
“CHOLERA most forcibly teaches us our mutual connection. Nothing shows more powerfully the duty of every man to look after the needs of others.” So said Titus Salt, a Victorian wool baron who worked to put an end to cholera in Yorkshire. It was cholera, as much as the great …
Federal officials seized roughly a ton of ivory in one of the largest U.S. seizures on record and arrested the owner of an African art store accused of smuggling carved elephant tusks into the United States, authorities said on Tuesday. Victor Gordon, 68, pleaded not guilty in U.S. federal court …
A cholera outbreak that has already killed 32 people in Congo has spread to the capital, Kinshasa, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. Three cases of cholera, a waterborne disease, have been confirmed since last week in Kinshasa, which has a population of at least nine million people, many of …
