#Drought

Much of West Africa has been struggling under severe drought conditions – their third round since 2005. Some experts hope better than expected seasonal rains will bring an end to the regional food security crisis but others fear that rising global food prices, an influx of desert locusts and continuing political unrest will turn out […]

Posted by contributor Andres Santamaria. The recent drought that has been spreading throughout the Midwest portion of the United States could now potentially create another global food crisis like the one in 2008, according to an article by Suzanne Goldenberg, U.S. environment correspondent for the Guardian. Why is there such a danger now?  Extreme heat […]

  The United States has designated one-third of its counties as federal disaster areas in order to authorize emergency funding for them to cope with some of the worst drought in nearly 60 years, according to John Eligon’s article in The New York Times. The extensive drought zone falls within some of the country’s largest […]

Just as the food crisis and famine in the Horn of Africa becomes manageable for aid groups, another crisis begins on the other side of the continent in the Sahel region of West Africa. On the edges of the Sahara Desert, drought is not uncommon, but is becoming more frequent with major food emergencies in […]

Last week the UN declared a famine in two regions of Southern Somalia and warned that it could spread to other parts of the Horn of Africa. That is a big deal. As Mark Leon Goldberg of UN Dispatch pointed out, a famine is a technical finding based or mortality, malnutrition and water consumption; they […]

By now, everyone monitoring the developments in the Middle East can’t help but liken them to dominos: once the first dictatorship fell (in Tunisia), the rest were just a matter of time.  Of course societies do not behave like toys – what is common among the revolting populations of the Middle East is that they […]

Cambodia – My colleague, Sean Patrick Murphy, over at FB’s Global Film Review blog, has an interesting post about a new documentary, “S21,  The Khmer Rogue Killing Machine”.  The documentary interviews former Khmer Rogue members who worked at the infamous S21 prison camp, where various crimes against humanity were committed during the reign of Pol […]

I wrote in July on a number of comprehensive reports on how climate change is devastating many parts of the world and many different sectors.  (See Impacts.)  I also referenced a stunning “National Geographic Magazine” article on the drought in Australia. Well, the “Financial Times” has a story on drought right here in the US, […]

The Wall Street Journal last week highlighted the growing role that water shortages are playing in the decision about building power plants. A lack of water in 2001 reduced energy in Brazil, which relies on hyrdopower, questioning its reliance on water for such a high proportion of its energy needs. But its not just dams. […]