In recent decades, the rate at which humans worldwide are pumping dry the vast underground stores of water that billions depend on has more than doubled, say scientists who have conducted an unusual, global assessment of groundwater use. These fast-shrinking subterranean reservoirs are essential to daily life and agriculture in many regions, while also sustaining streams, wetlands, and ecosystems and resisting land subsidence and salt water intrusion into fresh water supplies. Today, people are drawing so much water from below that they are adding enough of it to the oceans (mainly by evaporation, then precipitation) to account for about 25 per cent of the annual sea level rise across the planet, the researchers find.

Doctors are working 12-16 hour shifts to cope with the increasing demand at Malakal teaching hospital in Upper Nile State of Southern Sudan, say officials.
"We are trying to encourage more doctors to come work here," Upper Nile State health minister Steven Lor said. The relatively poor living conditions in Malakal, however, made it difficult to convince Southern Sudanese doctors working in the capital Khartoum to move.

Punjab-based farmers, who are known for feeding the country, now want to try their hands offshore, with a group of progressive farmers all set to acquire 50,000 hectares of farm land on lease in Ethiopia for growing high-value cash crops, including pulses and maize.

NGOs are outraged after confirmation that the world's largest bank will finance the destructive Gibe 3 hydropower dam. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is underwriting a $500 million contract awarded 13 May to Dongfang Electric Corporation for the dam's turbines and electro-mechanical works. Although ICBC has not publicly announced the loan, an official confirmed 8 September by email that the financial agreement between ICBC and the Ethiopian government was signed in July. The funding undermines ICBC's efforts to build a global reputation as a socially and environmentally responsible lending institution.

A controversial Ugandan hydropower project is making its second application for approval under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), drawing criticism from an environmental NGO. California-based International Rivers says the 250MW Bujagali dam project on the Victoria Nile river in Uganda should not be eligible for the CDM and would have gone ahead regardless of approval under the UN mechanism.

Investing in clean energy, sustainable transport, forests and environmentally-friendly agriculture is essential, if internationally-agreed goals to reduce poverty are to be achieved. This is among the central conclusions of 'A Brief for Policymakers on the Green Economy and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)', launched as heads of state and ministers met at UN Headquarters to review progress to date - five years before the MDG deadline of 2015.

Climate-smart, climate-resilient, climate-compatible development - call it what you will. These days, it's received wisdom in the aid sector that extreme weather and longer-term climate shifts are hitting the poor hard and things are likely to get worse as global warming heats up the planet. Many agencies now plan their work with at least an eye on the weather and climate hazards forecast for the coming months and years and how that could affect their programmes and the people they're helping. A growing number of projects aim to equip local communities with tools and knowledge to cope with increasingly adverse meteorological conditions.

The European Union and Africa have agreed to take joint action to achieve a goal of setting up over 15,500 MW of renewable energy facilities in Africa and pledged to provide sustainable energy to at least 100 million Africans additionally by 2020.

The UK government has come under fire for delivering 75 per cent of its climate finance for developing countries as loans, which the World Development Movement warns threatens to reverse decades of hard-fought progress on debt relief. Rich countries claimed a key success of the Copenhagen Accord was the announcement of $30 billion of new climate finance to developing countries. But UN Adaptation Fund, set up specifically to manage climate finance, has received just one per cent of money committed so far by donors.

Managers of the Office du Niger irrigation scheme in Mali are using remote sensing data to analyse the efficiency of the system without having to physically check the infrastructure. The information will help them prepare for future expansion.

Zimbabwe held a secret auction of diamonds from its Marange fields, where the army has been accused of forced labour and torture, an official said on Tuesday. 'Yes, the sales were carried out this weekend,' said Secretary for Mines Thankful Musukutwa, as reported in the Mail & Guardian.

O Lord!
What happened
To the Somali Land?
No wonder…

Social movements from around the world are mobilizing for the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP 16) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that will take place in Cancun from 29 November to 10 December 2010. The COP 15 in Copenhagen demonstrated governments' incapacity to tackle the root causes of the current climate chaos. At the very last moment, the US undemocratically pushed through the so called "Copenhagen accord", in an attempt to move the debate out of the UN and the Kyoto promises and to favor even more voluntarily free market solutions.

At least 17 people have drowned in northern Ghana in recent weeks after nearby Burkina Faso opened spillway gates to dams following heavy rains, the country's relief agency said on Friday. "As at yesterday, the death toll in the three northern regions stood at 17 and a number of farmlands have been destroyed," National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) spokesman Nicholas Mensah told AFP.

Kenya is set to become the first East African nation to develop regulations on the management of electronic waste (e-waste), following a national conference held at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi. The aim is to minimize the impacts of the unsafe disposal of electronic products on public health and the environment.

Gambela, one of the nine regional states of Ethiopia is fast growing into what the local media has described as “a land grabbing” hub among Indian companies. Gambela’s new tag as a land grabbing hub comes as BHO Agro Plc becomes the third Indian firm to begin operations in the region after two other Indian companies, Karuturi and Ruchi Group, moved into Gambela in 2008 and early 2010, respectively.

If dodgy emails offering millions in return for your down payment to repatriate a stranded Nigerian astronaut do not tempt you, then maybe this will appeal to your speculative side — a hectare of fertile African land on a 99-year lease — for $1 a year. Think about it: crop prices are soaring, land is appreciating and importdependent rich nations almost guarantee you a never-ending export market. It’s starting to sound like that Nigerian astronaut deal. But this is not a scam.

East African governments have been criticised for failing to protect their agricultural workers from exploitation, and chided for leasing to foreigners land without the explicit consent of existing users. A regional meeting heard that land deals are often done in secret without informing the current land users, in a manner that causes abrupt dispossession and food insecurity.

Companies access to farm land in Sudan, the first deal of its kind between the two countries, an agriculture ministry official has said. The agreement would allow Egyptian firms to grow crops on 1 million feddans (1.04 million acres) [400,000 hectares] of land, said Saad Nassar, advisor to Egypt’s agriculture minister.

Across the globe, from the floodplains of the Amazon to the foothills of the Himalayas, from Burmese forests to Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, peasant and indigenous communities are fighting against destructive dams. Dams have deprived hundreds of millions of people of their homes, farmlands, fisheries and forests. Millions more are threatened by projects that are planned or under construction, writes Peter Bosshard.