South Asia cooperation urged on climate change

DHAKA, Bangladesh, August 30 2008 - AP: Regional cooperation to promote the sharing of weather information, improved technologies and increased financial support are needed to combat the impacts of climate change in South Asia, experts said.

The recommendations came Saturday at the end of a six-day international conference on global warming and food security in South Asia.

Results of global climate change, such as melting Himalayan glaciers, rising sea levels and frequent natural disasters are threatening food production and economic development in the South Asia region, the experts said.

The region — which includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives — is home to nearly a fifth of the world's people, and 40 percent of its poor. More >>>

Raising Water Productivity

With water shortages emerging as a constraint on food production growth, the world needs an effort to raise water productivity similar to the one that nearly tripled land productivity during the last half of the twentieth century.

Worldwide, average irrigation water productivity is now roughly 1 kilogram of grain per ton of water used. Since it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain, it is not surprising that 70 percent of world water use is devoted to irrigation. Thus, raising irrigation efficiency is central to raising water productivity overall.
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Rich Countries Once Used Gunboats To Seize Food Now They Use Trade Deals

27 August, 2008: In his book Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis tells the story of the famines that sucked the guts out of India in the 1870s. The hunger began when a drought, caused by El Niño, killed the crops on the Deccan plateau.

As starvation bit, the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4m hundredweight of wheat. While Lytton lived in imperial splendour and commissioned, among other extravagances, "the most colossal and expensive meal in world history", between 12 million and 29 million people died. Only Stalin manufactured a comparable hunger.
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New broom in US could help nuke disarmament: Gareth Evans

THE next Washington administration could bring a historic US commitment to "serious nuclear disarmament", Gareth Evans, Australia's co-chairman of a new international nuclear disarmament commission, said yesterday.

Mr Evans said the world faced major proliferation challenges - the leakage of weapons material from the increasing adoption of civilian nuclear energy, terrorism, and nuclear weapons states standing outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime - but also a large opportunity from US politics.

He cited a changed atmosphere in Washington, led by a bipartisan alliance on disarmament of former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, former defence secretary William Perry and former Senate armed service committee chairman Sam Nunn.

"(They are) making over the past two years a hard-headed, realistic case for the first time in US history for serious nuclear disarmament and the prospect that will flow through into the new US administration - particularly Obama but also a McCain administration." More >>>

Climate change threatens South Asia food supplies

DHAKA, Bangladesh: August 25, 2008. Melting Himalayan glaciers, rising sea levels and depleting fresh water sources as a result of global climate change are posing grave threats to food production and economic development in the populous South Asia region, experts said Monday.

Dozens of scientists and policy makers from 18 countries and international agencies gathered Monday at the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, for the start of a six-day conference to discuss ways to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on food security in South Asia.

South Asia is home to a fifth of the world's population, and 40 percent of its poor.

The region — which includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives — is prone to incessant monsoon rains, drought, heat waves, frost freezes, desertification and salinization, all of which experts attribute to climate change. More->>>

Climate Change: Joint Study Indentifies Humanitarian Hotspots and Warns of Dire Consequences Unless World Leaders Act Now

GENEVA & NAIROBI (August 22, 2008) - India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Indonesia are among the pivotal states identified as climate change "hotspots" – countries particularly vulnerable to the increase in extreme drought, flooding, and cyclones expected in the coming decades – according to a new report commissioned by humanitarian relief agency CARE International and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"Leaders and communities in these pivotal states and in other states at risk in the Sahel, Horn of Africa and southeast Asia are already facing enormous political, social, demographic, economic and security challenges. Climate change will greatly complicate and could undermine efforts to manage these challenges," said Dr. Charles Ehrhart, climate change coordinator for CARE International and one of the report's authors. More >>>

NSG Fails To Reach Agreement, Schedules Extra Meetings

Nuclear Overseer Extends Talks on Pact

August 23, 2008: The international body overseeing trade in nuclear materials has scheduled two additional days of discussion on a U.S.-India nuclear-trade pact.

On Thursday and Friday, representatives of 45 countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, meeting in Vienna, failed to agree on a U.S. proposal to allow, for the first time, the transfer of nuclear technology for civilian purposes to India, which hasn't signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. More >>>

Musharraf out; Pakistan to keep fighting terror

Tuesday, August 19, 2008 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Facing imminent impeachment charges, President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation on Monday, after months of belated recognition by U.S. officials that he had become a waning asset in the campaign against terrorism.

The decision removes from Pakistan's political stage the leader who for nearly nine years served as one of the United States' most important -- and ultimately unreliable -- allies.

And it now leaves U.S. officials to deal with a new, elected coalition that has so far proven itself to be unwilling or incapable of confronting an expanding Taliban insurgency determined to topple the government.More >>>

NZ to oppose India's nuclear deal

Auckland - 19 August 2008 - New Zealand is set to oppose a nuclear agreement between India and the United States which could potentially create a diplomatic problem with Delhi.

Speaking to reporters today Prime Minister Helen Clark said that New Zealand, as a nuclear free state, was concerned about the deal.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has invested his political future in a treaty with the US where Washington will supply India with civilian nuclear fuel and technology.

He narrowly survived a confidence vote last month to push through the deal on his side.More >>>

Australia to back US-India nuclear pact with suppliers: Rudd

SINGAPORE (AFP) 12 August 2008 - — Australia will support a civilian atomic energy deal between India and the United States at a meeting of key nuclear supplier states, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said here Tuesday.

Rudd's statement comes ahead of an August 21 meeting in Vienna of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group on the deal, under which the United States will provide energy-starved India with nuclear fuel and technology.

Australia is a key member of the NSG, which must approve the US-India deal in order for it to proceed. The US Congress must also ratify the agreement.

"We have already indicated to the most recent meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors that the government of Australia would not stand in the way of such an agreement," Rudd said after giving a lecture. More >>>

Think Tank ISIS suggests US or Israeli attack on Iran non-productive

US too much in the dark for Iran strike

WASHINGTON - A military attack on Iran's major nuclear facilities by the United States or Israel would likely result only in a delay - and not a particularly significant one at that - in Tehran's ability to produce the fuel necessary to build a nuclear weapon, according to a report released on Friday by an influential think-tank on nuclear proliferation issues.

The 15-page report by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) concludes that too much is unknown about Tehran's entire program for enriching uranium and how quickly it can be reconstituted if its major known facilities were destroyed in such an attack.More >>>

Switzerland can derail Indian nuclear run at NSG meet

NEW DELHI: August 9th 2008: As hectic Indian diplomacy ahead of the August 21 NSG meet wins more and more support, Switzerland remains one country which can give India the jitters on the bumpy road to nuclear glory.

It's unlikely that Switzerland would want to single-handedly derail the India-US nuclear deal but its ambassador to India Dominique Dreyer told TOI on Friday that the Swiss government had not yet taken a decision on whether or not to support the deal at the NSG because of non-proliferation concerns. More >>>

Hiroshima Peace Declaration 2008

Another August 6, and the horrors of 63 years ago arise undiminished in the minds of our hibakusha, whose average age now exceeds 75. "Water, please!" "Help me!""Mommy!" — On this day, we, too, etch in our hearts the voices, faces and forms that vanished in the hell no hibakusha can ever forget, renewing our determination that VNo one else should ever suffer as we did."

Because the effects of that atomic bomb, still eating away at the minds and bodies of the hibakusha, have for decades been so underestimated, a complete picture of the damage has yet to emerge. Most severely neglected have been the emotional injuries. Therefore, the city of Hiroshima is initiating a two-year scientific exploration of the psychological impact of the A-bomb experience.

This study should teach us the grave import of the truth, born of tragedy and suffering, that "the only role for nuclear weapons is to be abolished." More >>>

Japan has 'concerns' on US-India nuclear deal

NEW DELHI: August 5, 2008. Japan's foreign minister said Tuesday that his country had concerns about a landmark civil nuclear deal between India and the U.S. because New Delhi has not signed international nonproliferation accords and has tested nuclear weapons.

The deal with Washington would reverse more than three decades of U.S. policy that has barred the sale of nuclear fuel and technology to India.

"We need to confirm that this nuclear cooperation is satisfactory in the sense that it will maintain and further strengthen the international nuclear disarmament and not undermine the nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime," Masahiko Koumura told reporters in New Delhi at the end of a three-day visit to India. More >>>

Ahmadinejad says Iran `serious' in nuclear talks

TEHRAN, Iran —Sunday August 3, 2008 - Iran's president says diplomacy is the only way out of his country's nuclear standoff with the West. State TV aired footage Sunday of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying "there is no way except talks and obedience to the law."

He says Iran is "serious in nuclear talks" and hopes "the other side" will do the same.

A deadline expired this weekend for Tehran to respond to a package of incentives offered by six world powers, in exchange for Iran's promise to curb uranium enrichment. That's a process that can generate electricity, or the material for a nuclear bomb. Ahmadinejad said Saturday his country would not give up its "nuclear rights," and that any participation in international talks would "be aimed at reinforcing" those rights. More >>>

IAEA approves deal for India's nuclear inspection

VIENNA, Austria 2 August 2008 (AP) — India and the U.S. moved a decisive step closer to implementing a landmark nuclear deal Friday following approval of an inspections plan by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The deal with Washington would reverse more than three decades of U.S. policy that has barred the sale of nuclear fuel and technology to India, a country that has not signed international nonproliferation accords and has tested nuclear weapons.

To implement the deal, India must strike separate agreements with the IAEA and with the Nuclear Suppliers Group of countries that export nuclear material. It then goes to Congress in Washington for approval.

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