Tag archives for Development
Posted by In this guest-article, Dr. Tore Knos, member of the Disaster Aid USA Response Team and its Board of Directors, and Dr. Michele Zebich-Knos, Professor Emeritus at Kennesaw State University and former Director of the International Policy Master’s Program, discuss the current situation in South Sudan and how long-term strife affects the environment. This blog post…
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The remarkable variety of life’s interdependent phenomena and processes — what we call ‘diversity’ — is being eroded by the modern forces of homogenization. The rich tapestry — woven from a countless multitude of mutually reinforcing strands of biological, cultural and linguistic relationships — is wearing out. Our increasingly fatigued world is losing its…
Posted by At the forefront of an important agricultural revolution in the developing world is not a leading scientist or a tireless advocate. Instead, the leader is a farmer.
His name is Purushottambhai Patel, from the state of Gujarat in Western India. He is a smallholder farmer with eight cows, three hectares of tobacco, rice, potatoes and sapota, and limited access to water.
Rather than tapping a large-scale water project for his farm, Patel uses the dung from his cows to generate biogas, which is then fed to a pump that runs partly on diesel. This novel arrangement saves him $400 a year in fuel costs, and the improved water supply enabled him to double his crop production. He also sells water to adjacent farms, further boosting local food production.
The pace of innovation in water management on small farms across Africa and Asia is remarkable. Using water more effectively, together with improved market access, can transform marginal subsistence agriculture into a thriving business opportunity. At the same time it can have a major impact on local food security and contribute to lasting poverty alleviation.
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“Our fuel bill was $20 billion last year,” Sharon Burke, assistant secretary of defense for operational energy plans and programs, told a big crowd at the Aspen Environment Forum in late June. Burke explained that the U.S. Department of Defense also spends about $4 billion a year in electricity costs for its 300,000+ buildings…
By Luis A. Ubiñas In the 20 years since 172 countries came together for the first Earth Summit in Rio, the world has undergone an extraordinary transformation. Seven billion people today inhabit a planet that is safer, freer, healthier and more prosperous. Yet, we are still moving too slowly toward a world that is…
Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park: Baja’s Miracle Threatened
Posted by IZILWANE on June 9, 2012 Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park: Baja’s Miracle Threatened By the 1990s, decades of destructive overfishing in the waters of the Sea of Cortez left the coral reef at Cabo Pulmo severely impacted. In order to restore and recover the vitality and biological diversity of the reef’s ecosystem, the local community on the east cape…
Scientists Sound Alarm on Massive Oil Palm Development in Cameroon
Posted by David Robinson on March 20, 2012 
The following is an open letter written by several world-class scientists on the subject of a proposed oil palm farm in Cameroon. To whom it may concern: As established scientists with leading academic and research institutions around the world, we would like to express deep concerns about a proposed, massive oil palm development in Cameroon,…
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“The environment does not exist as a sphere separate from human actions, ambitions, and needs, and attempts to defend it in isolation from human concerns have given the very word ‘environment’ a connotation of naivety in some political circles.” These words come from the foreword of “Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on…
Hope for Haiti: Progress in Broken Shoes
Posted by Ford Cochran on January 12, 2012 
January 12, 2012 marks the second anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince, Haiti, leaving more than 180,000 homes destroyed and 1,500,000 people homeless. While the United Nations and a number of governments, NGOs (such as SOIL, lead by NG Emerging Explorer Sasha Kramer, a project to transform wastes into resources), and volunteers have worked…
Posted by You don’t have to spend long in many African agricultural markets to realise the need for better information. Farmers lack prices, traders need transport and new contacts, projects and governments need a better way to reach out to people, businesses lack real-time updates on their stock and the value of their harvests. The list goes…
Bolivian Indigenous Groups Protest Highway Construction
Posted by Anne Marie Houppert on September 2, 2011 
Indigenous groups in Bolivia have begun a march to protest the construction of a highway that will bisect a biodiverse rain forest region. For more background on the issues facing indigenous South Americans, revisit these articles from the National Geographic archives.
There are few greater challenges facing rural farmers in the developing world today than climate change, as the current drought in the Horn of Africa demonstrates so clearly. In this installment of Digital Diversity, Riedner Mumbi and Polly Ghazi explain how mobile technology is being increasingly used to get crucial information out to poor farmers…
Not only has mobile technology spread to all corners of the globe, it’s also reaching some of the highest places, too. Mobile phones can today help keep climbers connected with the outside world in places where they would previously have been well out-of-reach. In this installment of Digital Diversity, Laura Hartstone, Co-Founder and Executive Director…
