In The News

Beijing's Threat to India's Water Security

Amit Ranjan November 15, 2010
Several of India's major rivers originate in Tibet and China's ongoing dam construction, diverting water away from other nations, raises alarm. “Population pressures and increased economic activity mean demand for water is growing inexorably while the supply is finite,” writes Amit Ranjan. China and India, the word's most populous nations, lack a water treaty, and analysts in India...

A Quick Fix for Climate Change?

Michael Richardson November 8, 2010
Spewing particles into the skies to block sunlight, releasing chemicals into the oceans to encourage plankton growth and carbon absorption, are just two examples of how geoengineering technologies might ease impacts of climate change. The interventions, still being tested, would be temporary and costly, warns Michael Richardson, senior research fellow with the Institute of South East Asian...

UN Report Warns of Threat to Human Progress From Climate Change

Larry Elliott, Mark Tran November 5, 2010
The United Nations' annual human development report mixes good news with bad. Despite global financial crisis, the vast majority of nations have made progress in poverty elimination, jobs, education continues, and only three – the Congo, Zambia and Zimbabwe – show declines in human development since 1990. Fast-growing emerging economies in Asia demonstrated the most progress. However, a...

Changing Climate's Irreversible Devastation for the Seas

Alex David Rogers October 29, 2010
Evidence of rapid climate change abounds in scientific research and routine observations. Yet policymakers are slow to act. Legislators and researchers attending international gatherings such as the 10th Conference of Parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity in Japan label climate change a “threat,” yet cannot agree to call for international agreements or action. Meanwhile climate...

Climate Change Threatens Global Rice

October 21, 2010
The high-yield IR8, so-called Miracle Rice, was developed in the 1960s and saved millions in Asia from starvation. But now, climate change seems to be reducing yields. According to research by Shaobing Peng in the current edition of the journal Field Crop Research, yields have fallen by 15 percent, primarily due to hotter nights, and also air pollution and changes in soil properties from...

Hungary Toxic Sludge Spill an “Ecological Catastrophe” Says Government

Mark Tran October 7, 2010
An industrial dam broke loose, releasing a torrent of toxic red sludge, left over from an aluminum manufacturing plant, over the Hungarian countryside. In minutes, the sludge transformed picturesque communities into scenes from a horror movie, with deaths, injuries, mass evacuations and threats to the Danube and Raba rivers, already heavily polluted in that nation. “Local environmentalists said...

Steps Out of the Global Development Crisis

Jens Martens September 20, 2010
As world leaders gather in New York to review the progress of the Millennium Development Goals set a decade ago, the enormity of the task ahead is clear. As the economic crisis spread across the globe, the government quickly adopted stimulus packages to stave off collapse. The fixes were temporary, though, failing to address immense structural challenges of trade imbalances, wage inequality and...