London: Britain should grow far more fruit, vegetables and cereals to help feed the extra 2.7 billion people there may be in the world within 40 years, said a powerful committee of MPs in a report published today.
Michael Jack, who chairs the environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee, said: "If people go hungry then political stability goes out of the window... Read more...
Kampala: The snow caps on Mt. Rwenzori are melting, crops are failing due to erratic rain and much of Uganda is experiencing food shortage. Although Uganda may not have contributed to climate change as much as other countries, it will be hit just as hard, if not harder, by the effects of climate change... Read more...
Cape Town: The use of remote sensing and satellite imaging looks set to become more widespread in South Africa as sustainable agriculture and natural resource management become more urgent in the face of climate change. Remote sensing, a technique that uses recorded or real-time wireless sensing devices to collect information on an object or phenomenon, is proving more successful in South Africa than other African countries for two reasons: South Africa has the required telecommunications network infrastructure to support remote sensing, and its higher internet capacity means that information can be transmitted consistently and timeously... Read more...
Johannesburg: Many South African companies are losing sight of their carbon footprint reduction programmes in the midst of the market turmoil. South African companies are asking themselves whether it is better to start developing a carbon management strategy now or to wait and see what transpires with impending climate change regulations, analysts say... Read more...
Clinton: Indian Agricultural Research Institute comments
New Delhi: Here at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, some of India's top scientists are working to solve one of the most difficult challenges we face as a global community: the problem of chronic hunger and malnutrition, which affect nearly a billion people in the world. You know, hunger affects the entire human condition... Read more...
World Bank pledges support to Nigerian climate investors
Laos: Against declining investments in the light of the global economic depression, the World Bank is urging Nigeria's organised private sector to go green and tap into a new chain of opportunities available in the carbon market and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
The bank says that companies stand to make more money by going 'green', as development can no longer be business as usual... Read more...
Nairobi: Millions of gene banks in the world will benefit from a new grant from the Global Crop Diversity Trust. The money will support research in biodiversity, which is critical to safeguard food production against the ravages of climate change. Some 1,500 seed samples are in gene banks... Read more...
Tanzania on the road to clean energy for cars and domestic use
Dar es Salaam: Tanzania has introduced the first ever natural gas compression plant to power motor vehicles and other domestic gadgets. The shift is expected to halve both the cost and dependence on charcoal and petroleum products, hence reducing gas emissions and the cost of living. Until June this year, the country had saved more than $1 billion from the use of natural gas in electricity generation and industrial production... Read more...
Acord: Investing in agriculture for economic growth and food security
African governments must live up to their commitments to invest at least 10% of the national budgets in agriculture, in order to address the current food crisis and break Africa's present dependency on the whims of the global market.
This must be coupled with a focus on protecting the most vulnerable... Read more...
Turning the tide on farm productivity in Africa - an agroforestry solution
Lusaka: A recent cross-site visit to share the successes of an agroforestry programme in Malawi with conservation agriculture practices in Zambia has scientists excited about a system of maize production that could transform the lives of millions of farmers. "By combining the best of both systems, we believe it is possible to double or even triple maize yields without an increase in labour or the need to apply mineral fertilizers," says Dr Dennis Garrity, Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre... Read more...
New Delhi: Stating that India was well positioned to help it lead the fight against hunger, the US on Sunday said agriculture will be the strongest of the five pillars of co-operation the Obama administration was seeking with New Delhi. "We will be announcing the five pillars of our cooperation (after talks tomorrow)... Read more...
New York: As the world community gears up for another round of climate-change talks -- and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Delhi on Sunday for meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- a central issue will be how to bring developing countries into a climate-change pact... Read more...
Nairobi: The government is now planning to revise Vision 2030 to include the issue of climate change. Nominated MP Rachael Shebesh said on Tuesday that the Ministry of Planning had accepted to include disaster risk reduction focusing on climate change in the ambitious plan.
"You know planning is everything... Read more...
Paris: The pledges trip easily off the tongues of global leaders on summit occasions, but experts canvassed by AFP fear African nations may forever struggle to be truly heard no matter the global forum. The days of undue Group of Eight influence on their lot may be numbered, given admissions at this month's summit gathering Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and the US in Italy's earthquake-hit L'Aquila... Read more...
Nairobi: In the run-up to this year's global climate negotiations in Copenhagen, the international community is fiercely debating proposals for mitigating climate change, including strategies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). African forests - which cover 635 million hectares and account for 16 per cent of the world's forests - are attracting increasing attention... Read more...
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