2008/07/27
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/world/asia/27cambodia.html?ref=world
By SETH MYDANS
Published: July 27, 2008ANDONG, Cambodia--- When the monsoon rain pours through Mao Sein's torn thatch roof, she pulls a straw sleeping mat over herself and her three small children and waits until it stops.
She and her children sit on a low table as floodwater rises, bringing with it the sewage that runs along the mud paths outside their shack.
Ms. Mao Sein, 34, was resettled by the government here in an empty field two years ago, when the police raided the squatters' colony where she lived in Phnom Penh, the capital, 12 miles away.
She is a widow and a scavenger. The area where she lives has no clean water or electricity, no paved roads or permanent buildings. But there is land to live on, and that has drawn scores of new homeless families to settle here, squatting among the squatters.
With its shacks and its sewage, Andong looks very much like the refugee camps that were home to those who were forced from their homes by the brutal Communist Khmer Rouge three decades ago.
Like tens of thousands of people around the country, those living here are victims of what experts say has become the most serious human rights abuse in the country: land seizures that lead to evictions and homelessness.
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With the economy on the rise, land is being seized for logging, agriculture, mining, tourism and fisheries, and in Phnom Penh, soaring land prices have touched off what one official called a frenzy of land grabs by the rich and powerful. The seizures can be violent, including late-night raids by the police and military. Sometimes, shanty neighborhoods burn down, apparently victims of arson.
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The brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge, during which 1.7 million people are estimated to have died, began in 1975 with an evacuation of Phnom Penh, forcing millions of people into the countryside and emptying the city. It ended in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge was driven from power by a Vietnamese invasion, sending hundreds of thousands of refugees into Thailand.
Many of the refugees returned in the 1990s, joining arootless population displaced by the Khmer Rouge and the decade of civil war that followed in the 1980s. Many ended their journeys in Phnom Penh, creating huge colonies of squatters.
http://www.heldref.org/env-dabelko.php
By Geoffrey D. Dabelko
In 1988, nuclear war was "undoubtedly the gravest" threat facing the environment, according to Our Common Future, commonly known as the Brundtland report. The possible environmental consequences of thermonuclear war radioactive contamination, nuclear winter, and genetic mutations were widely feared during the Cold War, especially by citizens of the United States and Soviet Union, which the report called "prisoners of their own arms race."
Thankfully, these nightmare scenarios did not come to pass, and, aside from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, our environment has largely escaped the impact of radioactive fallout. However, in the 20 years since the report's publication, the specter of nuclear destruction has not yet been "removed from the face of the Earth," as the report called for, but has merely changed scale: the threat of the mushroom cloud has been replaced by the threat of the the dirty bomb a crude device that a terrorist cell could fashion out of pilfered nuclear material. Setting off such a bomb in a world city-a major hub in the global economy could create more disruption than the paradigm-shifting attacks of September 11, 2001, although the radioactivity would impact far fewer people than the feared global nuclear winter of old.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/23/eaclimate123.xml
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/04/2008
Climate change could cause global conflicts as large as the two world wars but lasting for centuries unless the problem is controlled, a leading defence think tank has warned.
| The hidden threat from the world's water shortages Food shortages: how will we feed the world? Biofuel rules 'could make millions homeless'The Royal United Services Institutesaid a tenfold increase in research spending, comparable to the amount spent on the Apollo space programme, will be needed if the world is to avoid the worst effects of changing temperatures. |
However the group said the world's response to the threats posed by climate change, such as rising sea levels and migration, had so far been "slow and inadequate," because nations had failed to prepare for the worst-case scenario.
"We're preparing for a car bomb, not for 9/11," said Nick Mabey, author of the report which comes after Lord Stern, who compiled an economic assessment of climate change for the Government, said last week that he had underestimated the possible economic consequences.
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Even if climate change was more benign than the worst-case scenario, the research would not be wasted as technological advances in nuclear power, biofuels, carbon capture and storage and renewables were urgently needed anyway, he added.
| Climate change is like 'World War Three' Climate change 'likely to cause wars' 'Climate change: adapt to it, don't fight it'The report said: "If climate change is not slowed and critical environmental thresholds are exceeded, then it will become a primary driver of conflicts between and within states." It added: "Climate impacts will force us into a radical rethink of how we identify and secure our national interests. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/magazine/27wwln-phenom-t.html?ref=science
By STEPHAN FARIS
Published: July 27, 2008
Stephan Faris is author of "Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, From the Amazon to the Artic, From Darfur to Napa Valley", to be published inJanuary.
Greenland's ice sheet represents one of global warming's most disturbing threats. The vast expanses of glaciers — massed, on average, 1.6 miles deep — contain enough water to raise sea levels worldwide by 23 feet. Should they melt or otherwise slip into the ocean, they would flood coastal capitals, submerge tropical islands and generally redraw the world's atlases. The infusion of fresh water could slow or shut down the ocean's currents, plunging Europe into bitter winter.
Yet for the residents of the frozen island, the early stages of climate change promise more good, in at least one important sense, than bad. A Danish protectorate since 1721, Greenland has long sought to cut its ties with its colonizer. But while proponents of complete independence face little opposition at home or in Copenhagen, they haven't been able to overcome one crucial calculation: the country depends on Danish assistance for more than 40 percent of its gross domestic product. "The independence wish has always been there," says Aleqa Hammond, Greenland's minister for finance and foreign affairs. "The reason we have never realized it is because of the economics."
Climate change has the power to unsettle boundaries and shake up geopolitics, usually for the worse. In June, the tiny South Pacific nation of Kiribati announced that rising sea levels were making its lands uninhabitable and asked for help in evacuating its population. Bangladesh, low-lying, crowded and desperately impoverished, is watching the waves as well; a one-yard rise would flood a seventh of its territory. But while most of the world sees only peril in the island's meltwater, Greenland's independence movement has explicitly tied its fortunes to the warming of the globe.
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But the real promise lies in what may be found under the ice. Near the town of Uummannaq, about halfway up Greenland's coast, retreating glaciers have uncovered pockets of lead and zinc. Gold and diamond prospectors have flooded the island's south. Alcoais preparing to build a large aluminum smelter. The island's minerals are becoming more accessible even as global commodity prices are soaring. And with more than 80 percent of the land currently iced over, the hope is that the island has just begun to reveal its riches.