Africa

Desertec gets international support

According to Enerzine [Fr] and other sources the Desertec Project is getting international support as several companies from Europe, America and Africa are joining the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii). The US company First Solar was the first to join in and five more companies from Morocco, Tunisia, France, Spain and Italy followed suit. Desertec is […]

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Glaciers are melting faster and faster

The UNEP and the World Glacier Monitoring Service published a report showing how glaciers all around the world are melting faster and faster, thus threatening the water supplies of hundred of millions of people. The report then noted that “the average annual melting rate of glaciers doubled after the turn of the millennium.” This scary

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Solar energy, a panacea for Africa

Solar energy is to me the panacea for Africa, a continent where 550 million people still lack electricity. With molten salts, concentrating solar could bring light to these populations during important parts of the night. Solar cookers could also help fighting deforestation by removing the need for fuelwood. Now an experiment run in Benin (West Africa) shows

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An interesting geoengineering idea

I was previously noting that  the Sahara desert is slowly turning green. To a new study hurrying the process and extending it to the Australian outback by planting eucalyptus trees (left) could absorb our global CO2 emissions. Indeed this geoengineering idea would absorb eight billion tons of carbon a year. But we shouldn’t forget that

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Least developed nations call for climate action

It is no news if you have been reading this blog as China – alongside with other nations – has been calling the richest nations to cut drastically their GHG emissions by 2020 in order to prevent the worse from occurring. Now the 49 least developed countries are calling the G8 to cut their greenhouse

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Could the Sahara desert become green again ?

We have seen it previously, the Amazon Rainforest could become a desert because of deforestation and climate change. As I noted in May a three degrees Celsius increase would destroy it by up to 75 percent. But could global warming help the Sahara region becoming green again ? To National Geographic it could be the

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Green concrete made of rice husks

If you are an early reader of this blog you perhaps remember my article on how aerogel, a fantastic material could be made of rice husks. Now comes another great use of this by-product of the most consumed cereal. To Discovery Channel: A new way of processing rice husks for use in concrete could lead

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Fighting desertification matters

Today is the World Day to Combat Desertification, an initiative raising awareness about this important phenomenon which decreases the amount of water, food and place available to both Nature and Mankind. As the UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner noted: “Land degradation threatens nearly a billion people in some 100 countries and it is estimated that

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Pro-Natura International: green charcoal for developing countries

Thanks to Pro-Natura International, an interesting project is beginning in Africa with the use of green waste as a new source of charcoal. This alternative to solar cookers is another solution to stop deforestation in tropical countries. This project started in 2007 with a single plant in Senegal which products already benefit to 20,000 people.

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Afforestation projects you should know about

Instead of writing about Earth Day – I consider the issue is too important to have only a day or a week as to me every day is Earth Day – I would like to present you a few afforestation projects. The Figaro Magazine from France presented a series of articles presenting afforestation projects in

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