The global cost of disasters is growing: The economic burden of disasters is intensifying. While the direct costs of disasters averaged $70–80 billion a year between 1970 and 2000, between 2001 and 2020 these annual costs grew significantly to $180–200 billion. But the real cost is far higher. Disaster costs …
The drought that hit Argentina's 1996-97 cotton crop earlier this year, has stripped the country of an output of as much as 100,000 tonnes (t) of lint, said a leading Argentine cotton exporter. With the harvesting about 40 per cent complete, the extent of the damage to the cotton crop …
lack of rain, freezing temperatures and cold winds have brought fears of drought across Europe. Many farmers across Europe are now facing a 'catastrophe' according to Copa, the association of European farmers' unions. The worst hit countries are Italy, Spain and Portugal, while parts of France, Belgium and the uk …
Eastern Uganda has been hit below the belly by a severe famine owing to a continuous draught this season. An earlier report had stated that 19 out of 39 districts in the country are suffering from the dry spell. In fact, residents in the district of Kumi and the Ongino …
Northern Kenya is again facing the onslaught of droughts, having received scant rain in the last two years. The tell-tale signs are growing malnutrition, rising grain prices and falling cattle prices. The government of Kenya has been too slow to acknowledge the crisis. Only recently did it ask for help …
african nations could possibly find some avenue out of the endless series of droughts, under-production of food and resultant civil wars, if they manage to emulate India by urgently acquiring and utilising appropriate food technologies to boost production, preservation, packaging and distribution of local food stuff. This conclusion was reached …
THE mythic origins of Jodhpur's water crisis go back to the time when the Rao Jodha clan laid claim to the rocky outcrop that was to be the-Mehrangarh fort about 500 years ago. But to do so, they first had to dislodge the forts only inhabitant Chidiya Nathji1 a savant …
Aquatic weeds need no longer be just a nuisance. Kaiser Jamil, a scientist from the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, reports that weeds such as water hyacinth can remove toxic inorganic and organic pollutants from waterbodies. Air pollution ruins medicinal plants, says a study conducted by the botany department …
With the delayed monsoons and the threat of drought looming large over India, K 81kram Singh's first independent feature film, Tarpan, was premiered in July at the most appropriate time. Singh uses tarpan - the practice of offering water to the dead ancestors - as a metaphor to relate how …
AT least 2 million tonnes of loss of rice production is feared in Bangladesh during the current kharif-1 -- a drought which has left small rivers, mostly canals, creeks and ponds dry and rendered hundreds of thousands of pumps used for lifting ground water for irrigation and drinking, dry because …
A long summer of discontent seems to be in store for residents of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. Last year, the city's Simly Dam reservoir had dropped to a record low level because of a prolonged drought. Despite recent rains, water tankers are still visible on the streets of the city's 22 …
Zimbabwe is gearing up for a bone dry period ahead. A so-called rainy season actually left the country high and dry, and turned out to be drier than the great drought of 1992. And the department ofwater has let out the alarming news that the country's dams are on the …
You can't tilt against these windmills. A good wind has literally swept into the lives of the inhabitants of Chile's Coquimbo region as 31 windmills have been set spinning to pump water. Some of the ranchers in this drought-stricken area spend more than 8 hours a day drawing up the …
Australia is in the grip of a severe drought. Recently, food production has decreased sharply, prices have soared and there has been water shortages and Flowering in concrete jungles bush fires in the eastern parts of the country. The state of agricultural production looks dim for the country. According to …
The Japanese must learn to consume less water or they might soon have to do without it altogether. This is the warning has been issued by the National Land Agency in Japan. Following an unusually dry monsoon the Land of the Rising Sun is reeling under what is being described …
Scientists trying to accurately forecast droughts in Zimbabwe have found that the country's maize production is more dependent on El Nino -- a warm water current that occurs in the Pacific Ocean and causes climate variability in the tropics and the sub-tropics -- than it is on rainfall (Nature, Vol …
ETHIOPIA, one of the oldest of farm civilisations, has been mercilessly ravaged by war and famine. Fortunately, Valiant & Khan's Treasures of Ethiopia spares the viewer the stereotypical images of hollow-eyed children and food convoys. Instead, it wanders into the countryside to look at its plant treasures. Covering about a …
Tanzanian farmers need no longer flee to the cities in search of greener pastures. The spectre of mass migration from rural areas has been haunting the nation ever since it was hit by a severe crop failure early this year due to drought in its northern highlands and the late …
FRUIT and vegetable farmers in California, USA, are experiencing one of the driest seasons of the century, not because of paltry rains but due to a shortsighted official policy. A new ruling has reined back billions of gallons of water in rivers and streams to protect the dwindling supply of …
THE AKKADIAN empire flourished on the banks of Euphrates in Iraq, from 2300 BC to 2200 BC. Though the reason for its sudden collapse has long puzzled archaeologists, Harvey Weiss and his colleagues at Yale University in USA now say it literally dried up and withered away. The archaeologists base …
