An Acehnese farmer takes a break after collecting mangrove trees for planting in Lembada village, on the outskirts of Banda Aceh, in April 2005. REUTERS/Tarmizy Harva
An environmental theme today.Remember all the talk after the Indian Ocean tsunami about the life-saving properties of mangroves? At a recent disaster prevention conference in Bonn, U.N. tsunami envoy Bill Clinton stressed their importance in protecting people from the killer waves. But some researchers are challenging this theory.
They say mangroves offer little or no protection and warn that planting new ones may give a false sense of security, leading to greater loss of life if there is any repeat tsunami.
After reanalysing data from a recent Indian study they concluded it was height above sea level and distance from the shore that protected some villages, not vegetation.
"The apparent link between vegetation area and mortality was actually due to the fact that more vegetation grows at higher elevations above sea level - and the greater the distance from the sea, the greater the area of vegetation,&${esc.hash}39; researcher Alex Kerr said.
Many mangroves have been destroyed since the 1980s due to development and the growth of shrimp and fish farms &${esc.hash}39; the conventional wisdom is that this contributed to the death toll and damage from the tsunami. Millions of aid dollars are now being spent on planting new mangroves and restoring those destroyed by the waves.
"It&${esc.hash}39;s a beautiful idea that green belts can stop a tsunami, and its aims are commendable. But it isn&${esc.hash}39;t true, and it won&${esc.hash}39;t work," researcher Andrew Baird said.
The research, carried out by James Cook University, the University of Guam and the Wildlife Conservation Society-Indonesia Programme, is published in April&${esc.hash}39;s edition of Estuarine and Coastal Shelf Science. Read more.
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If you want proof of changing land use in Africa, look at forest cover. Over-herding and over-ploughing&${esc.hash}39; along with increased fuel-wood gathering and timber exports &${esc.hash}39; are devastating woodland across the continent, with serious environmental consequences.
Deforestationand desertification go hand in hand. The removal of protective woodland whips up dust and sand storms that turn fields and pastures into wasteland. Experts say the Sahara is marching south at an alarming rate, forcing herders and farmers to compete for productive land and thus fuelling conflict from Nigeria to Sudan.
According to the Earth Policy Institute, a global environmental watchdog based in Washington, Africa lost 64 million hectares (16 million acres) of forest between 1990 and 2005, the biggest decline of any continent in a world of shrinking forests. South America, which is almost synonymous with intensive logging, lost 59 million hectares (15 million acres). For more worrying statistics like these, see the institute&${esc.hash}39;s forest cover resources.
Increased farming may be shrinking forests, but it doesn&${esc.hash}39;t mean fewer people are going hungry. Quite the contrary. According to the United Nations and other sources, some 43 million people in 36 sub-Saharan countries are in need of some form of food aid.
Experts blame outmoded farming techniques that don&${esc.hash}39;t make enough use of two basic but essential techniques: irrigation and the application of fertiliser.
"Poor farming techniques, rather than drought or AIDS, were the reason why a hectare of arable land in sub-Saharan Africa produced less than half the amount of cereal&${esc.hash}39;as the rest of the developing world and only 20 percent of the average yield in Europe," said Frans Cronje, a researcher with the South African Institute of Race Relations.
"While AIDS and erratic weather patterns have been identified as aggravating food insecurity, these factors were not sufficient to explain the high levels of undernourishment." Full story.
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Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has done the decent thing and stepped down following the unexpectedly large protest vote against him in Sunday&${esc.hash}39;s polls. But what does this mean for the Muslim south of the country where insurgents have been pursuing a campaign of violence against the government?
Thaksin has named his deputy Chidchai Vanasatidya as interim prime minister &${esc.hash}39; Chidchai is the minister responsible for security, including in the restive south, and is a former police general.
Sunai Phasuk of Human Rights Watch says the government&${esc.hash}39;s hardline attitude towards Muslim rebels is unlikely to change, and more &${esc.hash}39;tit-for-tat&${esc.hash}39; attacks can be expected.
HRW plans to call on the interim government to make a fresh effort at reconciliation in the south, but with Thaksin still pulling the strings behind the scenes &${esc.hash}39; and the next prime minister almost certain to come from his party &${esc.hash}39; the prospects for moving towards peace look fairly dim.
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Now some bad press for the American Red Cross, which has been criticised by officials from no less than the international Red Cross movement for its response to Hurricane Katrina last year.
Badly planned and often failing to meet victims&${esc.hash}39; needs. That&${esc.hash}39;s how international officials sent to help their American counterparts described the response in an unusually harsh assessment leaked to the New York Times by a former Red Cross official.
The report details mismatches between victims&${esc.hash}39; needs and supplies, the absence of a distribution plan and lack of record-keeping, which allowed stuff to go astray, the Times says.
"What is clear is that the basic needs of the beneficiaries are not being met," Mike Goodhand of the British Red Cross, wrote on Sept. 15. He described a case where victims were asking for water and juice, but Red Cross volunteers only had bleach to hand.
Similar criticism came from a logistics expert with the International Committee of the Red Cross and representatives of a host of other Red Cross agencies.
The Red Cross received roughly 60 percent of the ${esc.dollar}3.6 billion that Americans donated for hurricane relief, the Times says.
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Christian Aid has dropped the A in ABC &${esc.hash}39; the mantra used by faith-based organisations tackling HIV/AIDS.
ABC teaches people that abstinence is the best way to protect yourself from AIDS. Failing that, you should try B for being faithful and C for condoms as a last resort.
But Christian Aid says it&${esc.hash}39;s now prioritising safer sexual practices. It admits to upsetting several supporters but says most feedback has been positive.
"I have had numerous e-mails, 95 percent of which have been positive," Rachel Baggaley, head of Christian Aid&${esc.hash}39;s HIV unit, told British charity magazine Third Sector.
But Catholic charity Cafod won&${esc.hash}39;t be following suit. "We believe abstinence has a very important role to play," a spokeswoman told the magazine.
ABC is also under fire in the United States where congressional investigators say the Bush government&${esc.hash}39;s emphasis on abstinence in a ${esc.dollar}15 billion AIDS programme is hampering efforts to fight the disease in Africa and the Caribbean.
Two-thirds of the funding for preventing sexual HIV transmission has to be used to promote ABC initiatives. Full story.
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On the subject of condoms, we learn that some people in Uganda are boiling them for re-use - with steam from cooking food.
A Makerere University professor says some poorer people have resorted to sterilising used condoms because they can&${esc.hash}39;t afford new ones, according to a report in Uganda&${esc.hash}39;s Daily Monitor. Read more.
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More than 60 years since the end of World War Two, almost 74,000 poor and elderly Roma survivors of the Holocaust will lose basic aid such as food and clothing unless new donations come in quick, warns the International Organisation for Migration.
The Geneva-based agency has distributed ${esc.dollar}36 million since 2002 to help Roma victims of Nazi persecution living in central and eastern Europe. But now the money has dried up.
Many Roma face discrimination and have trouble accessing jobs, education, healthcare and housing. About 10 million Roma live in Europe and are the continent&${esc.hash}39;s poorest minority. Full story.
That&${esc.hash}39;s it for now. Emma Batha and Tim Large
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