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Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 28 April 2011
By: Aaron Maasho
More than two million Ethiopians are in need of food aid due to drought caused by one of the worst La Nina weather phenomenon in a decade, the United Nations said.
 Oromiya Region, Ethiopia. Photo by Andrew Heavens La Nina, which was blamed for Australia’s floods this year, is an abnormal cooling of waters in the Pacific Ocean that wreaks havoc with weather patterns across the Asia-Pacific region, and has brought poor rains to the Horn of Africa.
The U.N. humanitarian affairs office (UNOCHA) said the March-May rainy season had largely failed in Ethiopia’s lowland areas, and appealed for $75 million in food and other assistance to meet the needs of two million people.
“Pasture and traditional water sources un-replenished by rains have been depleted in most of the affected areas,” UNOCHA said in a report released late on Wednesday.
“Animal body conditions are declining rapidly, resulting in lower livestock prices at market even as the price of staple cereals is increasing.”
An additional one million people are also seeking relief aid throughout Ethiopia — one of the world’s largest recipients of foreign aid, receiving more than $3 billion in 2008, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW). Continue reading Ethiopians in need of food aid due to La Nina
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 12 April 2011
Farming is moving indoors, where the sun never shines, where rainfall is irrelevant and where the climate is always right.
 Indoor rice field in Tokyo. The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with meticulously controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in a New York high-rise, a Siberian bunker or a sprawling complex in the Saudi desert.
Advocates say this, or something like it, may be the answer to the world’s food problems.
“In order to keep a planet that’s worth living on, we have to change our methods,” says Gertjan Meeuws of PlantLab, a private research company.
The world is already having trouble feeding itself. Half the people on earth live in cities, and nearly half of those – about 3 billion – are hungry or malnourished.
Food prices, currently soaring, are buffeted by droughts, floods and the cost of energy required to plant, fertilise, harvest and transport produce.
And prices will only get more unstable. Climate change makes long-term crop planning uncertain.
Farmers in many parts of the world already are draining available water resources to the last drop.
And the world is getting more crowded: by mid-century, the global population will grow from 6.8 billion to 9 billion, the UN predicts.
To feed so many people may require expanding farmland at the expense of forests and wilderness, or finding ways to radically increase crop yields. Continue reading Indoor farming may solve world food problem
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 27 February 2011
The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, “with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and [...]
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 24 February 2011
2010 was the world’s hottest year on record, as was the past decade. These changes can be attributed to emissions of greenhouse gases related to human activity, says Alec Joubert, director of climate consultancy Kulima Integrated Development Solutions.
 In the Western Cape, higher winter temperatures are causing the quality of deciduous fruit crops to deteriorate Climate change is an inconvenient truth, as former US vice-president Al Gore put it, but one that business and government ignore at their peril.
“We’re not just talking climate change, but major risks,” says Santam’s strategy unit head, Vanessa Otto-Mentz. The risks are many, ranging from food security to extreme weather events.
Driving climate change is global warming that “continues unabated”, warns US space agency Nasa , which reports that 2010 was the world’s hottest year on record, as was the past decade.
These changes can be attributed to emissions of greenhouse gases related to human activity, says Alec Joubert, director of climate consultancy Kulima Integrated Development Solutions. He adds that the outcome will depend on how much these emissions will grow or be cut. It is widely accepted that without major cuts the global average temperature will rise by up to 6°C by 2100. Continue reading 2010 was hottest year on record
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 16 February 2011
If SA was able to recycle its total national water resource 1,7 times over by 2035, the country’s unemployment problem would be solved, International Water Resources Association vice-president Anthony Turton said yesterday.
 We will create jobs and lose them again if we don’t recycle our water. Photo: Reuters SA’s government is battling a 24% unemployment rate (4,1-million people), as measured by Statistics SA in the last quarter of last year, and has promised, in its New Growth Path economic plan, to create 5- million jobs by 2020.
While the ability to recycle water would not of itself create jobs, without this ability the necessary preconditions for the kind of economic growth that would create jobs would not be in place, Dr Turton told Business Day after his presentation to the inaugural Water and Energy Forum which ended in Sandton yesterday.
“We can incentivise and do whatever we like, but we will create jobs and lose them again if we don’t recycle our water…. In order to sustain growth we need 62-billion cubic metres of water and we have 3 8- billion cubic metres now,” he said.
However, for the first time in history SA’s economic and infrastructure development was constrained by environmental considerations, Dr Turton said in his presentation. SA’s water resources were increasingly compromised by growing demand and looming pollution problems from decades of mining that did not take the environment into consideration. Continue reading Recycled water will create employment
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