The Battle for Water - Harvesting and conserving rainwater key to boosting crop yields

In its Rio+20 call for action, CGIAR urged Rio+20 actors to address the unequal sharing and unsustainable use of natural resources such as water and land, through improved governance and technology dissemination. World food production, hence food security depends on water but water availability per capita is drastically decreasing.

To sustainably ensure a steady food production especially in poor smallholdings in the (global) south, mainly practicing rain fed agriculture, one priority is to help local rural communities better manage “green water” – the rainwater captured by the soil and available for plants.

For decades the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has been working on successful local and farmer participatory water governance models.

Whether it's bread, meat, milk or bananas, whatever we eat demands water. But with a rapidly growing population (already more than 7 billion people), water availability gets more and more scarce.

There is a correlation between poverty, hunger and water stress. The UN Millennium Project has identified the "hot spot" countries in the world with the highest number of malnourished people.

These countries coincide closely with semi-arid and dry sub-humid hydroclimates, savannahs and steppe ecosystems, where rainfed agriculture is the dominating source of food, and where water constitutes a key limiting factor to crop growth.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that we need to increase agricultural production by 70% to feed the projected 9 billion people expected on the planet by 2050. But, given the current global food crisis, boosting agricultural production will certainly increase water stress.

PRODUCING MORE WITH LESS WATER

We urgently need to increase water productivity. But how do we produce more cereals, milk and bananas with less water? And what type of water are we talking about?

At the last World Water Forum in Marseille in March, experts talked about the colour of water: blue water (irrigation), green water (rainwater captured by the soil and available for plants) and grey water (polluted water that could be treated and recycled). More

National Energy Conference 2012

A Two Day National Conference titled “Applications of Nuclear Science and Technology in Pakistan” Organized by South Asian Strategic Stability Institute (SASSI) to be held from 12th-13th July 2012 (Tentative) at Islamabad Serena Hotel.

Concept:

Economic growth and industrialization in a globalized world today is inextricably linked to the continuous availability, access, diversity and modernization of energy resources. Ensuring a secure and safe supply of energy, both from domestic and foreign sources, constitutes a core foreign policy pillar of both emerging and established global powers today.

Energy security establishes a frame work which links the issues regarding energy supplies with foreign and national security policy. This link is all the more relevant and provides the requisite flexibility for a state to manage both the crisis and opportunities in this regard. Placing the formulation of energy policy in security domain comes with the benefit of establishing linkage between economic development and national survival.

Pakistanis facing an acute crisis of energy and consequently adverse economic situation. The energy crisis is effecting cross spectrum dimensions of society and economy. The crisis have resulted in a number of substantive protests, some of them being violent, in the back drop of power shortages, limited availability of transport fuel such as compressed natural gas and petrol and price hikes.

The industrial sector is also struggling to meet its production demands and improving the consumer output required to sustain a minimum level of sustainability. Energy crisis has slowed the industrial output and resultantly the already limited manufacturing base. Moreover, the energy crunch has also put restraint on Pakistan’s economy to compete globally in an era of increasing globalization.

In an environment of bleak global economic outlook in the after math of prevailing financial crisis, the problem is compounded given the lack of competitiveness. The much touted Pakistani narrative of “market access” is exhausted by the fact that the energy crunch has limited Pakistan’s capacity to compete with emerging and established economies. So market access will not bring desired output unless the domestic economic front is strengthened in Pakistan.

There also exists an international dimension to Pakistan’s energy crunch.Pakistanis subjected to international diplomatic and political pressure, by the select few, over its efforts of diversification of its energy imports. The case in point isIran–Pakistangas pipeline (IP). International sanctions on Iran and subsequent diplomatic pressure on Pakistan to be a process of Iranian containment have exacerbated the energy crisis and increased the uncertainty of its economic future. More

 

UN talks could finally rein in lawless trade in killing

At first glance they look like any other bullet. A 54mm slither of brass built for one purpose – to kill another human being. But bullets tell a story.

The markings around the circular primer at the base of the casings reveal they were manufactured in Iran – a country supposedly under an international arms embargo.

Since 2010, these cartridges have flooded into west and central Africa. Some are bought on the black market, peddled by soldiers looking to make some cash on the side. Others have been illegally smuggled in shipping containers to countries where they fill the magazines of soldiers known for gross human rights abuses.

Iranian-manufactured bullets have appeared in the hands of both rebel and government forces in the Ivory Coast, a country that is supposedly banned from importing new weaponry. And when 157 demonstrators were killed in a Guinea stadium in 2009, Iranian casings were among the thousands of spent shells.

Virtually every major commodity – from oil to bananas – is regulated by international agreement. Yet there are no global conventions or treaties prohibiting the arms trade, which was valued at $411bn (£262bn) in 2010.

Shortly after the First World War attempts were made to lay down some rules. But ultimately individual states have been left to decide who they should sell to. Even when arms embargoes are in place, dealers find loopholes to smuggle their way into supposedly closed markets – as the conviction of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout illustrated this year. Only 52 countries have laws regulating arms brokers – and fewer than half of those have criminal or monetary penalties for illegal brokering.

But that could change. Starting today, delegates from around the world will gather in New York for a month of negotiations at the United Nations in an attempt to agree a global Arms Trade Treaty. The product of more than a decade of lobbying by human rights groups, it is the best chance the world has had to bring an oversight to an industry that lives on death. Countries such as Britain, Mexico, France and Germany are pushing for a "bullet proof" treaty that would cover almost every aspect of the arms trade. Campaign groups hope to see a clause that would ban the sale of any weapons to states where they are likely to be used for human rights abuses. More

Given that the next hundred years may well be overshadowed by resource shorthges, water, food, petroleum, metal and rare earths it may well be a time to reduce the global arms trade. This is a long overdue initiative, and one that to a great extent is carried out by States Party to the United Nations. Editor

Six Billion Consumers and Rising

May 19, 2008 - "The wars of the twenty-first century will be fought over parking spaces." So writes Suketu Mehta in his recent portrait of Mumbai, a city pushing the limits of overpopulation, struggling with sewage overflows, and clawing for limited electricity, water, and gas supplies.

The wars Mehta predicts in fact are well under way. Easily missed in the clamor over the spiking prices of oil, natural gas, coal, iron, aluminum, copper, and a long list of other commodities (WSJ)—not to mention shortages of wheat, rice, flour, and other basic foodstuffs—is that population pressures weigh on the availability of all these goods. More >>>