Find out what you can do, or check out what’s going on already here.
Loads of information, campaign materials, T-Shirt templates and an events calender which already includes, “The World’s Longest Toilet Queue”.
Pull the chain here http://www.worldwaterday2010.info/ for more on the up and coming events to be held on World Water Day, 22 March. 2010.
By Imran Khan for Thaindian
Patna, Feb 24 (IANS) The Ganges River Dolphin was declared the national aquatic animal last month, but is still in urgent need of being saved from extinction, experts on the subject said. There are only about 2,000 left, down from tens of thousands just a few decades ago.
Participating in a two-day seminar here on conservation of the Ganges River Dolphin, the experts said its numbers continue to dwindle alarmingly due to killing, pollution and the break-up of its habitat by building dams.
“Conservation of the Ganges River Dolphin should be given priority by all,” Wildlife Institute of India director P.R. Sinha told IANS. “It should be given the same importance as conserving tigers.”
He was one of the dozens of national and international experts who attended the workshop Monday and Tuesday. It was organised by the working group for action plan for dolphin conservation, set up by the central Ministry of Environment and Forests to finalise India’s dolphin conservation plan.
The group is likely to submit its report to the ministry by April.
“Conservation of the Ganges River Dolphin must be initiated on a massive scale because freshwater dolphins are found only in some countries in South America and Asia,” said Randall Reeves, chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) cetacean (whales, dolphins and porpoises) specialist group.
IUCN has classified the species as endangered.
Reeves said one way to save the dolphins was to turn stretches of river where they were found into tourist spots, as had been done in South America.
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Juliette Jowit for The Guardian
Report for the UN into the activities of the world’s 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment
The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world’s biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.
The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.
Later this year, another huge UN study - dubbed the “Stern for nature” after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern - will attempt to put a price on such global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. The report, led by economist Pavan Sukhdev, is likely to argue for abolition of billions of dollars of subsidies to harmful industries like agriculture, energy and transport, tougher regulations and more taxes on companies that cause the damage.
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From Circle of Blue
Climate change is expected to bring less precipitation and more extreme droughts to certain parts of the world, causing electricity shortages in hydro-reliant countries.
On Tuesday Venezuela’s Energy Minister, Ali Rodriguez, said the government would consider purchasing electricity from Colombia, contradicting a statement from the country’s Vice President Elias Jaua given earlier this week. One day before Rodriguez’s announcement, Jaua said he’d reject the Colombian proposal because Venezuela would “power up its own electricity system,” according to Business Week.
These conflicting statements reflect the already confused and poorly managed policies officials have attempted to implement against the country’s worst drought in nearly a century.
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From REUTERS
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A year after President Barack Obama proposed a plan to clean up the Great Lakes, the government Sunday laid out its plan to improve the ecology of the major bodies of water that support much of U.S. agriculture and industry.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson met with governors of states that touch the inland waterways to describe an “action plan” that will focus on eliminating invasive species, cleaning up pollutants, and remediating more than a half million acres of the area’s wetlands, she told reporters.
“It’s about creating a new standard of care for the Great Lakes system,” Jackson said. “Instead of minimizing harm, our new standard of care is to leave the Great Lakes better for the next generation than the condition in which we inherited them.”
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