Environment | WPN World People News

The world cannot afford escalating disasters of the kind recently witnessed in Pakistan and Russia, the top United Nations climate change official said today, underscoring the need for governments to take swift action to lead the world towards a low-carbon future.

A few kilometres outside Mingora, Swat Valley’s principal city in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa Province, a group of village women discuss the various problems they have been facing in the wake of the recent devastating floods - including the lack of firewood, without which they cannot cook.

As rising food prices, growing populations and natural disasters increasingly put pressure on food production, governments and scientists are focusing on preserving the world’s agricultural biodiversity through seed and gene banks.

An evacuation has started in the US as residents of eastern beaches wait for Hurricane Earl.

Authorities in Western Australia have used a large amount of explosives to blow up a live whale.

An assessment of the environmental impact of oil spills across Ogoniland and the Niger Delta regions in Nigeria is not yet complete, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) stressed today as it refuted allegations in the media that it has already reached key findings.

Families in Senegal’s Casamance region have less to spend and less to eat this lean season because of a drastic drop in mango production, residents and agriculture experts say.

An estimated 18,000 children will die this year - 50 a day - in drowning accidents in Bangladesh, one of the most flood-prone parts of the world, according to the International Drowning Research Centre in Bangladesh (IDRC-B).

In Pakistan there are drowned homes and millions of lives set adrift by floods, in Russia wheat crops have been shrivelled by drought and devoured by fire. Some scientists think the floods and the fires could be linked.

Scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) report signs of progress in their efforts to enhance rice's photosynthetic efficiency to boost yields.