If the Sindh government goes ahead with its plan to auction fishing rights, fishermen like this man will lose their livelihood.

A national radio programme is addressing the issue of women, gender equality and water in Pakistan, where rural women like these in this picture still have to toil everyday under harsh conditions just to get water.

KATHMANDU (IPS) - The United Nations World Food Programme is planning its first ever emergency food operation in Nepal to counter a severe drought in the country's northwestern hills and mountains.

    The three-month plan, likely to be approved at the Rome headquarters of the U.N. agency this week, envisions 3,800 tonnes of rice and flour being delivered to the region by trucks, mules and porters, WFP deputy country director Jean-Pierre de Margerie told IPS.

    "We're trying to borrow food from other projects so we can maybe do a first wave of deliveries mid-June," de Margerie said in an interview here Sunday, before the WFP held its 'Walk for Hunger' fund-raising program.

    "We're confident that if we have the money we'll be able to reach everyone," he said, adding that a donors' meeting could be held in the Nepali capital soon after the plan is approved.

    Ten of Nepal's 75 districts are affected by the drought, which is following the driest winter on record in the region, among the poorest parts of this badly impoverished country.

    Earlier this month WFP revealed that 47 percent of Nepalis do not have enough food to live active, healthy lives. About half of all children are malnourished. But while the national poverty rate is about 31 percent, in the Karnali region and affected adjoining districts it is 45 percent, said de Margerie.

    In normal years there is a "hunger gap" in the Karnali, the period between harvests when food stocks run out and people survive by buying food with what little money they earn as day labourers or with cash repatriated by relatives who have migrated for jobs.

    But the drought means that gap will stretch dangerously this year until the August-September crop is harvested.

    Seventy village development committees (VDCs) within the 10 districts are "severely affected" with crop failures of 75-100 percent, according to de Margerie, based on three WFP on-the-ground assessments.

    "People are starting to resort to damaging coping mechanisms," he said. "They're starting to cut the number of meals or the size of meals," selling livestock and tools and even migrating.

    "Many people have already run out of their food stocks and are now eating herbs and roots to survive," Chandra B Shahi, an MP from Mugu district, told the 'Nepali Times' newspaper.

    In February and March, French NGO Action Contre la Faim visited Mugu and neighbouring district Humla to assess the health situation, particularly of children.

    "It can be concluded that the acute malnutrition in the 10 surveyed VDCs is more alarming than expected and is an issue that needs to be addressed in terms of treatment and also in terms of prevention," says the report of that mission.

    ACF also discovered that children less than 30 months are 5.5 times more likely to be malnourished than children aged from 30 to 59 months. And 20.8 percent of women suffered night blindness during their last pregnancy, a result of Vitamin A deficiency.

    The drought and extended hunger gap might have affected these results, concludes the report. "But the causes of malnutrition are multi-factorial and the nutrition situation is also linked with a lack of diversified foods, with poor hygiene practices, with lack of women education, and very poor availability of public health services".

    The remote region, where some villagers must walk five days to reach districts' headquarters, has long been ignored by the capital Kathmandu. That neglect has been exacerbated by a decade of a Maoist insurgency, which, among other things, has chased many local health workers from their far-flung posts.

    To reverse the impact of this disregard, ACF recommends: - Improving the water and sanitation situation by increasing access to potable water, implementing irrigations systems and improving hygiene practices; - Increasing the quantity of food available for people and helping them to diversify their diet; - Promoting and supporting iron/folic acid and de-worming distributions that would decrease anaemia. - Promoting the use of adequately iodized salt.

    De Margerie said the WFP emergency operation will include fortified wheat flour for families with children under two and pregnant or nursing mothers, along with the rice allotment they will get at the start and end of a 20-day food for work programme.

    The agency does not want to simply give the rice to the people, fearing that could compromise its long-standing programmes of providing locals with food in return for local works, such as road building, that contribute to development, he added.

    "We consider this a very short-term intervention. We're confident it won't affect long-term development activities," said de Margerie. ***** +World Food Programme (http://www.wfp.org.np) +Action Contre la Faim (http://un.org.np/uploads/reports//ACF/2006/2006-5-17-ACF-Nutritional-Survey-06.pdf)

(END/IPS/AP/WD/NP/DV/HU/MD/ML/RDR/06)

BEIJING (IPS) - As the last loads of concrete are poured into the wall of the world's largest dam and the waters behind rise, the long battle against the Three Gorges Dam -- spanning generations of Chinese leaders -- is considered lost. 

   But green activists here say the completion of the huge reservoir is only the beginning of an even harder fight to preserve the country's last virgin rivers and dwindling water resources. 

BANGKOK  (IPS) - Flash floods that hit northern Thailand in May, killing nearly 100 people, have revealed the vulnerability of communities to freak weather patterns in the region, say environmentalists. And this, they warn, will not be the last. 

   The heavy rains in the three worst-hit provinces bear this out. Uttaradit, Sukhothai and Phrae received a fifth of their annual rainfall, which is 1,500 millimetres, leading to flash floods and mudslides in May 23. 

Mars today is too cold, with an atmosphere that is too thin, to support liquid water on its surface. Yet scientists who studied images from the Viking orbiters kept encountering features that appeared to be formed by flowing water - among them deep channels and canyons, and even features that appeared to be ancient lake shorelines. Added to this were more recent observations by Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor which suggested widespread flowing water in the planet's past. Some scientists identified features which they believe appear to be carved by torrents of water with the force of 10,000 Mississippi Rivers.

Poet and journalist Raim Farhadi with his young artists showing their masterpieces on environmental concerns.

Worries over warehouses storing radioactive wastes are increasing due to the warehouses' proximity to rivers and fear of landslides.

Worries about warehouses storing radioactive wastes are increasing because of the warehouses' proximity to the river, which could be submerged in spring or collapse due to landslides.

Worries about warehouses storing radioactive wastes are increasing because of the warehouses' proximity to the river, which could be submerged in spring or collapse due to landslides.

 

 

   The project to reinforce and rehabilitate the storehouses at Mailuu-Suu began in April and is expected to be completed within two years. The World Bank has given 11 million U.S. dollars to finance the operation.

   Radioactive scrap from Soviet-era uranium mines – and former Eastern European bloc nations – are stored in 23 storages near Mailuu-Suu City in Jalal-Abad province in southern Kyrgyzstan.

   All the storages near Mailuu-Suu are said to contain 1.37 million cubic metres of radioactive waste including 7,000 tons in semi-liquid form. The radiation level ranges from 100 to 1,800 mR/hr (micro Roentgen per hour).

   Experts say the nuclear refuse threatens the entire region because many are located near rivers. The ones in Mailuu-Suu City are near the Mailuu-Suu River a tributary of the Syr Darya.

   They fear a strong earthquake or a landslide could cause the content of any one of the storages to spill into the river and trigger a nuclear catastrophe.

   Syr Darya flows 2,000 kilometres across Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan before emptying into the Aral Sea.

   The reinforcement and rehabilitation work is now focused on a slope that could crash into the river along with the warehouses if there is a major tremor in the region. This would involve excavating and moving 30,000 cubic meters of soil and rock.

   Engineers of NarynGES, the company involved in the excavations, say the slope stabilization would be complete within six months after which they plan to move the bulldozers to tackle two warehouses.

   Warehouses number 2 and 3 are lying close to the bank of the Aylampa-Say river, a tributary of the Mailuu-Suu.

   In all, five of the 23 warehouses near Mailuu-Suu City lie dangerously close to the river and could be submerged during high waters in the spring.

   The plan is to build embankments to reinforce the riverbank and to construct a new road to the city to avoid the existing one that is threatened by landslides.

   The engineers would also have to drill holes on unstable rock faces, place sensors to monitor seismic activity and build drainage systems to tap surface and subsoil waters.

   Payzulla Kejebaev, the Head of Jalal-Abad province department of the Ministry of Extreme Situations (MES), says the government plans to closely monitor the weak slopes – especially the Koy-Tash landslip – after the new road connecting Sary-Bee and Mailuu-Suu city is completed.

   "We have been unable to monitor the landslip now but every year experts from Uzbekistan come and check its conditions,” said Kejebaev.

 

   Waste from storages that cannot be rehabilitated would have to be moved to safer locations for which Russian and German expertise is to be brought in for assessing the implications.

   Kyrgyzstan has set up a new Control Centre of Crisis Situations (CCCS) under the Ministry of Emergency Situations to share information for tackling regional problems.

   “Our efforts are aimed at the safety of the Central Asian states and for resolving questions of cross-border emergencies,” says Janysh Rustenbekov, MES minister of Kyrgyzstan.

   The projects now underway are to be completed in 2009 but the MES says it would need more funds – a total of 30 million U.S. dollars – for rehabilitating all radioactive waste storages in Kyrgyzstan.
(END/AWW/IPSAP/EK/BB/180506)

HAVANA (IPS) - Beyond the hotels and the bathing suits, the Caribbean landscape bears the scars of drought. To combat soil degradation and desertification, young people from 16 countries in the region will be trained in reforestation and sustainable development techniques as part of an environmental rehabilitation programme.

BAGH, AZAD KASHMIR, Pakistan (Asia Water Wire) – An extended drought has brought reconstruction of homes and infrastructures in the earthquake-affected areas of Azad Kashmir to a stand-still.

   The massive earthquake in October 2005 that killed over 73,000 people not only damaged homes and other infrastructures but also dislodged or buried many fresh-water springs or caused them to change course and dry up. 

WASHINGTON (IPS) - The mammoth Three Gorges dam in China is attracting renewed calls for an independent financial and environmental audit, as concerns mount over the hefty costs of the world's largest dam and its social and environmental impacts.

   The Toronto-based environmental group Probe International (PI), which put up stiff opposition to Canadian financial backing for the multi-billion-dollar project, said that claims by the dam authorities that the Three Gorges project will cost some 25 billion dollars have never been independently verified.

Anqet (Anket, Anuket, Anjet, Anukis) was an Old Kingdom goddess related to the Nile in the Aswan area. She was called "She Who Embraces", a name indicating that she was probably thought to hold the Nile in her arms, and thus was related to the banks of the Nile as well. She was also a goddess of the hunt whose sacred animal was the gazelle.