By Staff Writers
Dehradun, India (AFP) Jan 12, 2010Hundreds of ash-covered, naked holy men and millions of Hindu pilgrims are making their way to northern India to take part in one of the largest religious gatherings on Earth. …
The Mela marks the only public gathering of the Nagas, many of whom live in remote, spartan conditions in mountains, caves and communes in the Himalayas and other regions of India.
The highest ranked among them will ride in chariots decorated with marigolds and pulled by tractors, while others follow behind, carrying swords, tridents and saffron flags.
Naked and generally covered in a layer of grey ash, they are regarded by devotees as earthly representatives of the gods because of their self-sacrifice and denial of the material world.
Their isolation does not, however, prevent their organising for particular causes and they plan to use the 2010 Kumbh Mela to highlight the issue of global warming.
"Sadhus like us who go up to the higher reaches of the Himalayas to meditate have a clear picture of how bad the situation is," Soham Baba, considered as the head of the Nagas, told reporters recently in Kolkata.
"Pristine lakes and waterfalls that existed till a few years ago have dried up," he said.
"The Kumbh Mela will be the appropriate place to protest," he added. …
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Kumbh Mela focuses on global warming
Monday, January 11, 2010
‘Amazon Chernobyl’: 18 billion gallons of toxic waste dumped in Amazon waters
A film released this week in Britain recounts the 16-year battle by Ecuadorians for damages against Chevron for oil pollution
By Esme McAvoy
It's barely eight in the morning and already the dusty oil town of Lago Agrio, on the fringes of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is sweltering. Its name means "sour lake" in Spanish, after the hometown of Texan oil company Texaco – a fitting name for an area of once-pristine rainforest that has been decimated in the pursuit of oil. So severe is the environmental damage here that experts have called it an "Amazon Chernobyl".
But the people of Lago Agrio and its surrounding area have been fighting back. Sixteen years ago, 30,000 Ecuadorians began legal action against the US oil company – now owned by Chevron – they hold responsible. Early this year, from the town's tiny courtroom, a lone judge will deliver a verdict on their class-action case. If the judge rules in favour of the Ecuadorians, Chevron could face damages of $27.3bn (£17bn), making it the biggest environmental lawsuit in history.
This week, while both sides await the verdict, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the case goes on release in Britain. Called Crude, it is directed by Joe Berlinger, whose movie Metallica: Some Kind of Monster charted the band's travails.
Crude tells a story more complex than even that, and it began when Steve Donziger, a lawyer acting for the Ecuadorians, arrived at the film-maker's office. "The story the lawyer told me was indeed shocking," said Berlinger.
In the words of the film's producers, the claim was "that from the mid-1960s until the early 1990s, Texaco (now Chevron) dumped 18 billion gallons of toxic waste and formation water directly into streams, rivers, and the jungle floor; that nearly 18 millions of crude oil was spilled and leaked from pipelines, that more than 235 billion cubic feet of natural gas was burned into the atmosphere, and that nearly 1,000 unlined toxic waste pits were built throughout the region."
A Chevron spokesperson said: "What is being missed, even by well-intentioned people, is that the responsibility for the lack of potable water, insufficient access to proper health care, and malnutrition now affecting the people of the Oriente lies squarely with the government of Ecuador, which has failed to properly address these serious challenges for decades." The company says there is no increased incidence of cancers in the oil-producing areas, that "poor sanitation" contributes to local health issues, and adds that the film is "long on emotion, short on fact", something Berlinger denies.
Within a few days of Berlinger's trip to Ecuador, he realised that the case was virtually demanding to be made into a film. "I noticed a group of indigenous people sitting by the riverbank, preparing a meal by an open fire using processed tuna fish from a big industrial-sized can that came from another corner of the world. They were eating this canned tuna because the fish that swam in their river, which had fed these proud people for millennia, were dead." …
Who will pay for Amazon's 'Chernobyl'?
Saturday, October 10, 2009
First clown in space hosts show to save Earth's water
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Wearing a red clown nose, the Canadian founder of Cirque du Soleil hosted an out-of-this-world performance event on Friday, saying he wanted to use his trip as a space tourist to highlight the scarcity of water on Earth.
Guy Laliberte's two-hour performance event called "Moving Stars and Earth for Water" linked the International Space Station with singers, dancers and celebrity campaigners in 14 world cities in what organizers called the first event of its kind to be hosted from space.
"I see stars, I see darkness and emptiness. But planet Earth looks so great, and also so fragile," Laliberte said from the International Space Station, where he has spent the past week after paying $35 million to fly on a Russian spacecraft and become the world's seventh space tourist.
"I decided to use this privilege to raise awareness of water issues," he said. "I believe that with true art and emotion we can convey a message." …
Monday, June 15, 2009
Wong's challenge to Australia farmers
By Stuart Rintoul
WATER and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has told Victorian farmers there is "no escaping the scale of adjustment" that needs to be made in the Murray-Darling Basin food bowl.
Senator Wong said at a Victorian Farmers Federation meeting in Melbourne that unprecedented action was needed to restore the river system's health and that the federal government's accelerated water purchase program was "smoothing the transition" to new, lower limits on water use in the basin.
She said it would be "simply irresponsible" to ignore the possibility that climate change had already caused a "step-change" and regardless of whether or when the drought broke, farmers would be prudent to prepare for lower diversion limits.
"The challenge for irrigation operators is to modernise, rationalise and consolidate irrigation delivery systems to reduce system losses and ensure their ongoing financial viability in a future where there will be less water," she said.
Senator Wong's comments yesterday came as the Murray-Darling Basin Authority issued the key elements of the Basin Plan, which authority chairman Mike Taylor described as planning "at a scale and complexity that has never been undertaken anywhere else in the world". …
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Water wars in Wild West over rainwater catchment
Photo via fireballsedai
Colorado is seeing dust stirred up over water rights and water catchment systems. While homeowners want the ability to catch the moisture from the snow and rain that lands on their roof, others, including Native Americans, want to protect their water rights and access to water by making rainwater catchment a no-go. ...
Water Wars in Wild West Over Rainwater Catchment
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Food and water production will be next for green tech innovations
Photo via iLoveButter
Forget clean energy for a moment. If climate change alters the earth's ecosystems and rainfall levels to the point that we can't rely on usual methods or locations for water and food supplies, then that means food and water production will need to be the focus of clean tech. Nicholas Parker of the Cleantech Group argues this point in a presentation given yesterday at the Entrepreneurial Energy Expo at Babson College. ...
Food and Water Production Will Be Next for Green Tech Innovations
Sunday, March 22, 2009
'Another water management is possible': Day 6 at the World Water Forum
There weren't any naked protesters rushing the stage, or thousands marching in the streets, like there were at previous World Water Forums, but activists haven't wavered in their conviction that the triennial event is an "elitist," "undemocratic," and "illegitimate" forum for addressing
'Another Water Management is Possible': Day 6 at the World Water Forum
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Protecting watersheds secures freshwater and saves billions of dollars
The World Water Forum brings together 25,000 experts this week in Istanbul, Turkey to discuss the water challenges facing a growing world. According to a compilation of case studies by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is sponsoring the event, one of the simplest and least expensive ways to have ample water for a growing human population is to protect watersheds. Not only do protected watersheds provide clean and easy-access water for many of the world's largest cities, their protection also saves billions of dollars.
“Many of the world’s big cities have understood that protecting their catchment areas makes economic sense. Rather than chopping down the forests or draining their marshlands, they are keeping them healthy and saving billions of dollars by not having to pay for costly infrastructure to store water, clean it or bring it from elsewhere,” says Mark Smith, head of IUCN’s Water Programme.
The IUCN points to Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, which sources its water from 60 rivers that originate in Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park. The free water is worth an estimated $1.5 billion dollars.
The capital of Venezuela, Caracas, also relies on rivers in national parks. Guatopo and Macarao National Parks provide the city's 5 million residents with a constant supply of freshwater.
Improving degraded river systems can also have huge impacts on the availability of freshwater. Better water management in South Africa's world famous Kruger National Park has improved the availability of water both for humans and animal.
“Kruger’s main five rivers have suffered from pollution and unsustainable water use upstream which led to some of them drying up completely. After implementing a large river-related programme with the agriculture, forestry and mining industries, we have seen an improvement in flows. Previously disappeared species have re-colonised, and fewer unnatural fish kills have occurred,” says Harry Biggs, Programme Integrator at South African National Parks and leader of IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas Freshwater Task Force. …
Protecting watersheds secures freshwater and saves billions of dollars
Monday, March 16, 2009
Turk police detain 17 protesters at water forum
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police fired teargas to disperse a group of about 100 protesters gathered at the start of a global water forum in Istanbul on Monday and detained 17, state-run news agency Anatolian reported.
Government ministers from 120 countries, scientists and campaigners are meeting in Istanbul this week to discuss how to avert a global water crisis and ease tensions between states fighting over water resources.
Nearly half of the world's people will be living in areas of acute water shortage by 2030, the United Nations has warned.
Protesters accused the forum of being a platform for water privatization, and shouted "water for life, not for profit," Reuters television showed.
Four heads of state are expected to attend the World Water Forum. …
Turk police detain 17 protesters at water forum
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Scientist's hunger strike halts work on Himalayan dam
The near-death of one of India’s most distinguished scientists has halted work on a major hydroelectric dam in the Himalayas. Professor AD Agarwal, 77, former dean of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi at Kanpur, has been on hunger strike for 38 days in protest against a project that would dam the waters of a Ganges tributary.
"The water ... is not ordinary water to a Hindu. It is a matter of the life and death of Hindu faith," Agarwal said, before beginning his fast in January.
This is his second fast in the past year, which he called off last week only after the Indian government agreed that it would look into electricity generation that would not impede the flow of the holy Ganges. The river must run free in order to maintain its sacred status.
However, this dam project is only one of the hundreds planned to for the Himalayan foothill regions of India, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan. The power needs of these nations are rising, but according to a recent report by the NGO International Rivers, many are being carried out with little environmental assessment. …
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