Ernst-Jan Pfauth

UNITED NATIONS, May 24 2007 (IPS) – Valuable resources in every discarded product with a battery or plug computers, televisions, phones and other household gadgets are being trashed in rising volumes worldwide, and unless countries start recycling more of this high-tech scrap, they will soon face serious shortages, experts say.

Computer recycling centre Credit: StEP Initiative

Every year, the world generates 40 million metric tonnes of electronic scrap e-scrap, noted Jeremy Gregory, a postdoctoral associate in the Materials Systems Laboratory and …

Steven Lang

JOHANNESBURG, Jul 25 2007 (IPS) – Water resources are unevenly distributed throughout the countries of Southern Africa. The region boasts of some of the world s largest lakes and rivers, but is also a land of vast deserts.

Women carrying water in eastern DRC, where many struggle to access this resource. Credit: Tiggy Ridley/IRIN

Measured by volume the Congo River, rising in the East African highlands and flowing through the rainforests …

Ellen Massey

WASHINGTON, Aug 23 2007 (IPS) – One of the largest international aid organisations in the world turned the food aid industry on its head recently by declaring that they will turn down 46 million dollars in food subsidies from the U.S. government.

Combine harvesting corn near Stockton, Kansas. Credit: USDA/Dave Hein

The United States budgets 2 billion dollars a year in food aid, which buys U.S. crops to feed populations facing starvation amidst crisis or those that endure chronic hunger.

But the U.S.-based CARE Int…

Julio Godoy

BERLIN, Nov 19 2007 (IPS) – New species of insects have begun to establish themselves all across Europe, raising concerns about the impact of global warming on biodiversity and public health.
The school in Dorsten, a village near the German border with Belgium, had to be closed down recently because oak processionary caterpillars had infested the schoolyard, and teachers and parents were afraid of the health consequences for the students.

The massive presence of these caterpillars in Germany is a very recent consequence of climate change, Stefanie Hahn, a biologist at the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Forestry, told IPS. Because its presence is so recent, we have no systematic information on their evolution among us, Hahn stressed.

These bug…

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 20 2007 (IPS) – Racing to adjourn for the year, the U.S. Congress this week approved a 560- billion-dollar omnibus 2008 appropriation that includes 70 billion dollars more for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and sizable increases in development, refugee, and disaster assistance.
The bill, which President George W. Bush is expected to sign into law later this week, provides for a nearly 50 percent increase to 4.66 billion dollars in spending on fighting diseases, such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, that particularly afflict developing countries.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, a multilateral facility to which the administration has been reluctant to contribute, will get a record 845 million dollars, 120…

Raúl Gutiérrez

SAN ISIDRO, El Salvador, Feb 1 2008 (IPS) – Peasant farmers from the northern Salvadoran province of Cabañas fear that mining operations planned for the region will consume 30,000 litres of water a day, drawn from the same sources that currently provide local residents with water only once a week.
Environmentalists and experts have also warned that if the operations that are now awaiting legal permission actually begin, the cyanide that would be used by the Canadian mining company Pacific Rim to extract gold and silver could contaminate the area s groundwater and soil.

Cabañas ranks second only to Morazán as the province with the highest rate of poverty in this country, where over 55 percent of the population officially lives under the poverty line…

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 10 2008 (IPS) – The northeast of Brazil, known for its droughts and poverty, has been drenched by torrential rains since early March. Floods have left over 400,000 people homeless and 33 dead, but the abnormal conditions are not due to global warming, according to meteorologists.
Rare rainy seasons like this one have been observed since the 19th century, whenever the cyclical La Niña climate phenomenon occurs, bringing cooler surface waters to the Pacific ocean and warmer temperatures to the Atlantic, said Lincoln Alves, a meteorologist at the Centre for Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies (CPTEC).

This combination of ocean conditions favours the formation of a low pressure belt on land in the equatorial region, known as the Intert…

Aileen Kwa

GENEVA, May 21 2008 (IPS) – As the 61st annual World Health Assembly gathers in Geneva this week, a major issue that the world s governments are struggling with is patents on medicines, and whether the option to digress from a strict patent system should be endorsed by the United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO).
The United States is the sole country obstructing the ability of the WHO to push for a more flexible intellectual property system, according to several sources. This issue is being negotiated at the WHO s Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (IGWG).

According to the WHO s website, developing countries remain largely excluded from the benefits of modern science. IGWG s mandate is to prepare a …

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 18 2008 (IPS) – AIDS and global health activists are calling on the U.S. Senate leadership to urgently approve a record five-year, 50-billion-dollar bill to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis primarily in Africa so that President George W. Bush can take it with him when he meets with other western leaders at next month s Group of Eight (G8) summit in Japan.
The activists believe that Congressional approval of the package will give Bush greater leverage in persuading his counterparts from Europe and Japan to commit substantially more of their own money to the same cause.

The bill, an extension of Bush s own five-year, 15-billion-dollar President s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), enjoys strong bipartisan support. But it is opposed in…

Mohamed Fofanah

FREETOWN, Aug 27 2008 (IPS) – A barefoot girl watches expressionless as men clad in expensive suits and women in designer clothes make their way on foot to the Community Centre in Kroo Bay, Freetown. They are here to launch the first ever State of Human Rights Report for Sierra Leone; Zainab, 12, is in the midst of another day on the narrow, muddy streets of the area, selling groundnuts to help support her family.
Home for her is the warren of patchwork wood and tin dwellings that sits at the bottom of the west end of the Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown. The paths in Kroo Bay are of hardened dirt that turns to mud during the rainy season. There are no sewage pipes or water mains beneath them and they are too narrow for a car to travel.

Children bare t…