Category: 12 Water

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Health: Fish Watch (US) & the Bluefin Tuna Black Market Global Investigation (Global)

01 Agriculture, 04 Education, 07 Health, 08 Wild Cards, 12 Water, True Cost
link

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/

“..providing the most accurate and up-to-date information on seafood available in the U.S. FishWatch is brought to you by NOAA Fisheries Service, the U.S. authority on marine fisheries science, conservation, and management.”
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report

Looting the Seas: How Overfishing, Fraud, and Negligence Plundered the Majestic Bluefin Tuna
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Also see:
+ Seafood harvest calendar
+ FishPhone: Text 30644 with the message FISH and the name of the fish in question. We'll text you back with our assessment and better alternatives to fish with significant environmental concerns. Also: text the word BLUE to 30644 to opt-in to receive ocean-alerts, info on new seafood rankings and cooking tips.

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New Low Cost + Extremely Portable Water Filter – OsmoPure

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 12 Water, Gift Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Technologies

MassChallenge has awarded OsmoPure, an NCIIA E-Team, one of its four $100,000 prizes. See announcement.

OsmoPure, from Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, is developing a low-cost water purification device for developing countries based on simple membrane filtration technology. The team showcased the invention at NCIIA's student innovation showcase in San Francisco earlier this year.

Source link

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Journal: Water War in Somalia

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 12 Water
DefDog Recommends...

Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink…..

NAIROBI, 9 November 2010 (IRIN) – Fighting between two sub-clans over grazing pasture and water has left 20 dead and thousands of families displaced from several villages in central Somalia, say locals.

“In my own town of Galinsor, about 1,300 families [7,800 people] have been displaced, out of a total population of 5,500 families,” Osman Abdi, an
elder, told IRIN on 9 November. “Many of the families have fled to surrounding villages and are living in the open or sheltering under trees.”

An aid worker in the region told IRIN many of the displaced were nomads who were forced to flee their water sources. “They are now in areas where there are no water points,” he said.

Full Story Online….

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Reference: The Secret Life (True Cost) of Beef

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 11 Society, 12 Water, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

“THE SECRET LIFE OF BEEF” REVEALS BEEF’S ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

INFORM launches third video in “The Secret Life” series

(New York City) INFORM, Inc., the educational and advocacy nonprofit that raises environmental consciousness through visual media, has just launched “The Secret Life of Beef,” an engaging and enlightening six-minute video. The video increases awareness about the environmental impacts of industrial beef production, illustrates how it contributes to global warming, and offers more sustainable alternatives.

Americans consume over twenty-eight billion pounds of beef a year, one of the highest per capita rates in the world, yet few beef eaters are aware of the connection between their dietary choices and the environmental damage caused by beef production.

  • Livestock production produces one-fifth of all global greenhouse gases, more than all transportation sources combined
  • It takes seven pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of hamburger
  • Seventy percent of all antibiotic use in the U.S. is used in livestock production

“The Secret Life of Beef” tells its story through academic experts, grass-fed beef farmers, chefs, sustainable butchers, educators, and restaurant owners. It also offers more eco-friendly alternatives to the heavy meat consuming habits of most Americans—from going meatless one day a week to purchasing grass-fed beef.

  • If every American went meatless one day a week, it would be equivalent to taking eight million cars off the road.
  • The best way to reduce your carbon footprint is to reduce your overall beef consumption.

For a preview viewing of “The Secret Life of Beef,” visit: http://www.informinc.org/pages/media/the-secret-life-series/secret-life-beef.html

Continue reading “Reference: The Secret Life (True Cost) of Beef”

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Reference: Water, Earth, and We

12 Water, Blog Wisdom, Briefings (Core)

Maude Barlow

Our Commons Future is Already Here

A stirring call to unite the environmental and global justice movement from Maude Barlow

By Maude Barlow

Maude Barlow gave this stirring plenary speech, full of hope even in the face of ecological disasters, to the Environmental Grantmakers Association annual retreat in Pacific Grove, California. Barlow, a former UN Senior Water Advisor, is National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and founder of the Blue Planet Project.

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Half the tropical forests in the world – the lungs of our ecosystems – are gone; by 2030, at the current rate of harvest, only 10% will be left standing. Ninety percent of the big fish in the sea are gone, victim to wanton predatory fishing practices. Says a prominent scientist studying their demise “there is no blue frontier left.” Half the world’s wetlands – the kidneys of our ecosystems – were destroyed in the 20th century. Species extinction is taking place at a rate one thousand times greater than before humans existed. According to a Smithsonian scientist, we are headed toward a “biodiversity deficit” in which species and ecosystems will be destroyed at a rate faster than Nature can create new ones.

We are polluting our lakes, rivers and streams to death. Every day, 2 million tons of sewage and industrial and agricultural waste are discharged into the world’s water, the equivalent of the weight of the entire human population of 6.8 billion people. The amount of wastewater produced annually is about six times more water than exists in all the rivers of the world. A comprehensive new global study recently reported that 80% of the world’s rivers are now in peril, affecting 5 billion people on the planet. We are also mining our groundwater far faster than nature can replenish it, sucking it up to grow water-guzzling chemical-fed crops in deserts or to water thirsty cities that dump an astounding 200 trillion gallons of land-based water as waste in the oceans every year. The global mining industry sucks up another 200 trillion gallons, which it leaves behind as poison. Fully one third of global water withdrawals are now used to produce biofuels, enough water to feed the world. A recent global survey of groundwater found that the rate of depletion more than doubled in the last half century. If water was drained as rapidly from the Great Lakes, they would be bone dry in 80 years.

The global water crisis is the greatest ecological and human threat humanity has ever faced.

Read full presentation….

See Also:

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Water

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Journal: 10 US Cities Short on Water

12 Water

The Ten Biggest American Cities That Are Running Out Of Water

24/7 Wall Street 29 October 2010

Some parts of the United States have begun to run low on water. That is probably not much of a surprise to people who live in the arid parts of America that have had water shortages for decades or even centuries. No one who has been to the Badlands in South Dakota would expect to be able to grow crops there.

The water problem is worse than most people realize, particularly in several large cities which are occasionally low on water now and almost certainly face shortfalls in a few years. This is particularly true if the change in global weather patterns substantially alters rainfall amounts in some areas of the US.

24/7 Wall St. looked at an October, 2010 report on water risk by environmental research and sustainability group, Ceres. We also considered a comprehensive July, 2010 report from the National Resources Defense Council which mapped areas at high risk of water shortage conflict. 24/7 Wall St also did its own analysis of water supply and consumption in America’s largest cities, and focused on the thirty largest metropolitan areas.

Read Middle of Story Here…and details on each of the ten cities listed below…

These are the ten largest cities by population that have the greatest chance of running out of water.
10. Orlando, FL

9. Atlanta, GA

8. Tucson, AZ

7. Las Vegas, NV

6. Fort Worth, TX

5. San Fransisco Bay Area, CA

4. San Antonio, Texas

3. Phoenix, AZ

2. Houston, TX

1. Los Angeles, CA