Africa

Some progress achieved in UN Accra talks

In the capital city of Ghana took place between the 21st and the 27th of August the latest series of UNEP talks to prepare the future of climate change mitigation. The United Nations are indeed already preparing the successor of the Kyoto Protocol – due to end in 2012. Discussions focused this time on forests […]

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Humanitarian implications of climate change

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Care NGO published last week an interesting report on the humanitarian implications of a full scale climate change. According to the conclusions, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Indonesia (representing populations worth of 1,587 million people) are particularly at risk from increasing  climate-related phenomena. But

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50 million more hungry people in 2007

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization – FAO, part of the United Nations – the amount of people undernourished rose by approximately 50 million in 2007. Many factors contributed to such a dramatic increase, like the increasing population and demand, biofuels production (see cartoon on the left) and climate change related phenomena. As world

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Africa’s rapidly changing environment

According to the 390-pages atlas released by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Africa is changing rapidly because of many factors like deforestation and climate change. The already fragile environments are under pressure due to wars, the increasing population and water scarcity, a major problem as 300 million people suffer from it. However, all these

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Over a billion climate refugees in 2050 ?

According to two different sources – the UNHCR and the NGO Christian Aid – as much as a billion people may find themselves homeless or stateless by the middle of century. Stateless might be too strong a word, but with the situation of countries like Bengladesh and many islands threatened by rising sea levels, this

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Toward seven billion trees planted by the UNEP ?

You perhaps remember the enthusiastic article I wrote last December on the UNEP programme that enabled to plant over a billion trees. It was such a tremendous success – two billion trees were planted in 18 months – that this institution wants to plant one tree per person on this planet : seven billions !

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Soaring cereal bills and the riots of hunger

The prices of cereals keep on increasing in an important way and numerous riots of hungers already occured in many countries of South America, Africa and Asia. Biofuels aren’t the only reason for such increases – we will see below that many other factors were also involved – but they contribute in an important way.

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Morocco investigating the nuclear option

Morocco has been for some time having a look at nuclear to answer its energy needs. This leading economy in North Africa indeed sees its electricity demand growing by around eight percent per year. Let us review the main figures about Morocco. On a personal note, it is a country where I have been enjoying

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