E&E News: One of the worst droughts in Florida history has raised the stakes in the long-standing battle over water allocations between farmers, cities and the Everglades.
The South Florida Water Management District announced today that water levels in Lake Okeechobee, the Everglades’ headwaters, had tied a record low of 8.97 feet — roughly 4 feet below normal.
UN News Service: A United Nations agency today urged countries to invest more in fire preparedness and prevention. “Countries need to enhance collaboration, share their knowledge and increasingly target people, who are the main cause of fires, through awareness-raising and education,” said Peter Holmgren, FAO’s Chief of the Forest Resources Development Service, in a news release.
Global warming may bring down even more rain worldwide than previous studies have predicted, a new report says.
Many climate models have predicted that as the Earth warms, “the wet will get wetter and the dry will get drier,” said lead author of the new study, Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems.
UN News Service: Five community groups from the tropical regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America won the United Nations-backed Equator Prize today for their initiatives to alleviate poverty while conserving local biodiversity. The winners, who will each receive $30,000, were announced at a ceremony at UN Headquarters in New York after being selected by a jury from a group of 25 finalists chosen from more than 300 original nominations.
The village of Andavadoaka in Madagascar was among the winners
UN News Service: The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) today announced that an expert panel it convened is supporting trade restrictions on sawfish and the European eel. The proposals have been submitted to the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in a bid to protect stocks in the wild.
E&E News: One of Wall Street’s gray ladies is getting a green makeover, and climate has much to do with the change.
The 135-year-old New York Mercantile Exchange this month launched the world’s first futures market for uranium, the workhorse fuel used in low-pollution nuclear power plants.
E&E News: Business experts are warning that the government’s ramped-up action and policy for the energy boom could end up bursting like a bubble, adding that the rupture might not be such a bad thing.
With government subsidies on everything from buying fuel-efficient cars to tariffs on biofuels from Brazil, governments of all sizes are attempting to subsidize and encourage the alternative fuels boom. But experts say that incentives, while driving the boom, could inevitably turn it into a bubble.
UN News Service: Warning of the dangers of toxins in fish feed, and calling for greater vigilance to protect aquaculture, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) opened a conference on the issue today in China. The agency cited recent incidents, including when feed used on some United States fish farms contained the toxin melamine.
“The convoluted way in which it ended up being fed to fish destined for human consumption underscores the difficulties
By Euan Paulo C. Añonuevo
The Manila Times: Despite hefty increases in the price of oil in the international market for the last couple of months, the peso’s recent strength is helping mitigate the rise in pump prices, the Department of Energy (DOE) said.
Air-conditioning systems in about 50 large buildings in Bahrain will be affected by a soon to be implemented treaty that bans imports of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons).
Within 30 months under the Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer, all available CFCs will be phased out and imports will be banned in Bahrain and other countries in the West Asia region.
