BISHKEK, Kyrgyz Republic (Asia Water Wire) - A precariously located mountain lake in the Tajik highlands has become a constant source of fear for residents of four Central Asian states.

   Scientists from Russia and Uzbekistan say the right bank of Lake Sarez in Tajikistan - formed after an earthquake in the early 1900s -- is geologically unstable and may not withstand another tremor or an increase in water level.

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines (Asia Water Wire) - In this mountain resort town, a mining town during the U.S. colonial era, water has become such a precious commodity that one of the biggest gold mines here is switching from producing gold to water.

   Benguet Corp Inc. (BCI), among the biggest and earliest mining operators in this South-east Asian country, is closer to converting its open-cast mine into one giant water reservoir to service the needs of the 300,000 residents of this town, a popular tourist town for Filipinos escaping the summer heat in the lowlands.

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan (Asia Water Wire) – Genetically modified crops have few supporters even in many food-scarce developing countries, but officials here say it could be the long-awaited solution to tackling salinity in the waters of the Amu Darya River.

   The debate has been going on since a closed-door meeting at the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan about a year ago, where two scientists from Japan’s General Biology Institute in Nagoya proposed developing and growing a new variety of GM rice in the highly saline lower wastelands along the Amu-Darya.

 residents ask.] Sakina Mallah, married with eight children, and now living on the flat part of the land inside Manchar in a mud and straw hut, has just come back after collecting fodder for her cow and taking a bath.

“We’re like the fish, if you take us out of water we won’t be able to survive,” says Haji Allah Baksh, an elderly mohanna living on Manchar Lake. He says he doesn’t know any other way of life except fishing, making boats and catching water fowl, weaving mats from the reeds.

As you jump into his houseboat, filled with over a dozen dark-complexioned women, young and old, a few straddling infants on their hip, the first thing you notice is a neat stack of bedding piled up on one side. The miniscule cradle covered with a shocking-pink cloth hanging over your head is actually the place to keep the Holy Koran. On the far side is another cradle, slightly bigger, which is used for the children.

By Zofeen Ebrahim KARACHI, Pakistan -

 

   By Ranjit Devraj NEW DELHI - Protests by environmental activists are building up on either side of the Palk Straits against a shipping channel that India will begin dredging this month along its international maritime border with Sri Lanka.    Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to inaugurate the Sethusamudram Ship Channel Project (SSCP) in the third week of June. At a cost of 550 million U.S. dollars, it is expected cut sailing time between peninsular India's eastern and western seaboards by 36 hours and actual distance by 400 nautical miles. But for all the obvious advantages to navigation, the project, first conceived in 1860 by British naval officer A D Taylor, could imperil the delicate marine ecosystem that exists in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mannar biosphere system and the Palk Bay, say leading environmental activists in both countries.