IGIHE

Category: Environment

  • Alpha & King James in New hit ‘Connected’

    {{A new hit song, {‘Connected’} has conquered the airwaves from a successful collaboration between Tusker Project Fame star Alpha Rwirangira and popular artist King James}}.

    Alpha’s latest Connected song comes just a few days after he released another popular song ‘African Swagger’.

    He told IGIHE in an exclusive interview that, ” my interest is to produce quality music for my fans. thats why i decided a collabo with King James because he is a strong RnB artist.”

    Alpha is currently studying in the United States.

    listen to ‘connected’….http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ANCTquG49fE

  • Alaska Volcano Erupts

    A remote but long-restless Alaska volcano rumbled to life on Saturday with three explosions and started emitting a continuous plume of ash, steam and gas in an area important to air traffic, scientists said.

    The low-level explosions at Cleveland Volcano, which lies below a major air-traffic route between North America and Asia, were not severe enough to cause a significant threat to planes, said experts.

    But the incident did prompt federal aviation authorities to divert some traffic north of the volcano as a precaution, said Rick Wessels, a U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

    “Based on the signals we can see, we think it’s continuously in an eruption right now,” Wessels said of the volcano, located 940 miles southwest of Anchorage.

    Cleveland Volcano, which has been restless since mid-2011, is on an uninhabited island in one of the most sparsely populated regions of the world, although major eruptions could cause potential aviation threats.

    The 5,676-foot volcano began oozing lava in the summer of 2011, causing lava domes to form at the crater and allowing pressure to build inside the peak. There have since been 20 to 25 explosions at sporadic intervals.

    {reuters}

  • Plants Form Cloud Sunshade to Slow Climate Change: Study

    {{Plants help to slow climate change by emitting gases as temperatures rise that lead to the formation of a sunshade of clouds over the planet, scientists said on Sunday.}}

    The tiny sun-dimming effect could offset about one percent of warming worldwide and up to 30% locally such as over vast northern forests in Siberia, Canada or the Nordic nations, they wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience.

    While proportionally small, some scientists said the study provided further evidence of the importance of protecting forests, which help to slow climate change by absorbing greenhouse gases as they grow and to preserve wildlife.

    Observations of forests from 11 sites around the world showed that plants emitted tiny particles that float on the wind as temperatures warm and act as seeds for water droplets that create clouds, they wrote.

    Clouds’ white tops in turn reflect sunlight back into space and offset warming, they wrote.

    The study focused on forests in Europe, North America, Russia and southern Africa.

    The effect is believed to be smaller over far hotter tropical forests such as in the Amazon or the Congo basin.

    “It’s a small effect – one percent is not much,” said lead author Pauli Paasonen of the University of Helsinki and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

    “If temperatures were to increase by 1 degree without this effect, they’d rise 0.99 degrees with it,” he said of a study that included researchers in the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Hungary and Sweden.

    {{Sunshade}}

    Many other tiny aerosols, such as human pollution from factories, cars and power plants, also have a sun-dimming effect that may be slowing the pace of climate change, blamed mainly on emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

    But there has been uncertainty about the role of nature, and of plants’ emissions of gases such as monoterpenes.

    “Everyone knows the scent of the forest,” Ari Asmi, a University of Helsinki researcher who also worked on the study, said in a statement.

    “That scent is made up of these gases.”

    It is unclear why plants emit more monoterpenes at higher temperatures – it may be a side-effect of trees’ natural air conditioning to reduce heat.

    “Forests are providing an additional cooling. This is another reason why we should conserve and protect forests,” said Dominick Spracklen, an expert on plants and climate change at the University of Leeds who was not involved in the study.

    But the damaging effects of warming on forests, such as more wildfires or insect pests, may exceed tiny benefits of more clouds that would only come from healthy forests, he said.

    Spracklen said plants’ cooling effect was tantalizing evidence for people who believe the planet somehow acts as a self-regulating organism for life, sometimes known as the Gaia hypothesis.

    One idea launched in 1987 was that warmer temperatures spur the growth of more algae in the upper oceans.

    These tiny plants would in turn release more of the chemical dimethyl sulphide that seeds clouds to reflect sunlight.

    “No one has yet proved that this effect exists,” he said.

    The U.N. panel of leading climate scientists says that human emissions of greenhouse gases are driving up world temperatures and will lead to ever more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

    It says that it is at least 90% certain that human activities, rather than natural variations in the climate, are to blame for most of the warming in the past half-century.

    {reuters}

  • 156 Killed in CHina Earthquake

    {{A powerful earthquake struck the steep hills of China’s southwestern Sichuan province on Saturday, leaving at least 156 people dead and more than 5,500 injured, nearly five years after a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage across the region.}}

    Saturday’s quake, while not as destructive as the one in 2008, toppled buildings, triggered landslides and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county.

    The village of Longmen was hit particularly hard, with authorities saying nearly all the buildings there had been destroyed in a frightening minute-long shaking by the quake.

    “It was such a big quake that everyone was scared,” said a woman who answered the phone at a kindergarten hours later and declined to give her name. “We all fled for our lives.”

    Rescuers turned the square outside the Lushan County Hospital into a triage center, where medical personnel bandaged bleeding victims, according to footage on China Central Television.

    Rescuers dynamited boulders that had fallen across roads to reach Longmen and other damaged areas lying farther up the mountain valleys, state media reported.

    CCTV reported that at least 156 people had died. The government of Ya’an city, which administers Lushan, said in a statement that more than 2,600 people were injured, 330 of them severely.

    The quake — measured by the China Earthquake Administration at magnitude-7.0 and by the U.S. Geological Survey at 6.6 — struck the steep hills of Lushan county shortly after 8 a.m., when many people were at home, sleeping or having breakfast.

    People in their underwear and wrapped in blankets ran into the streets of Ya’an and even the provincial capital of Chengdu, 115 kilometers (70 miles) east of Lushan, according to photos, video and accounts posted online.

    The quake’s shallow depth, less than 13 kilometers (8 miles), likely magnified the impact.

    Chengdu’s airport shut down for about an hour before reopening, though many flights were canceled or delayed, and its railway station halted dozens of scheduled train rides Saturday, state media said.

    Lushan reported the most deaths, 76, but there was concern that casualties in neighboring Baoxing county might have been under-reported because of inaccessibility after roads were blocked and power and phone services cut off.

    As the region went into the first night after the quake, rain started to fall, slowing rescue work. Forecasts called for more rain in the next several days, and the China Meteorological Administration warned of possible landslides and other geological disasters.

    Startribune

  • Mikhail Gorbachev Blames eco-risks on Poor Global Leadership & Vision

    {{Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Thursday painted a dim picture of the world’s environmental progress, two decades after he founded the environmental group Green Cross International.}}

    Laying much of the blame on a lack of leadership and vision, he railed against governments for falling short on nuclear disarmament, waste, development and climate change.

    The Nobel Peace Prize laureate launched the Geneva-based organization in 1993 as a kind of Red Cross that could help countries in environmental trouble.

    Reflecting on the 20 years since then, the 82-year-old Gorbachev acknowledged deep frustrations as an environmental crusader.

    “The current economic crisis is being aggravated by the growing pressure on the environment, by poverty, by persisting international conflicts and by the worsening state of the global environment,” a bespectacled Gorbachev said in Russian to reporters in Geneva by video link.

    “The gap between the poor and the rich is unacceptably wide. The response to climate change has been weak and disunited,” he said.

    “The possibility of building a more secure, more just and more united world has been largely missed.”

    U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says that among his top hopes for 2013 is reaching a new agreement on climate change.

    Two-decade-old U.N. climate talks have so far failed in their goal of reducing the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions that a vast majority of scientists says are warming the planet.

    Green Cross, an international organization with affiliates in Switzerland, the United States and two dozen other nations, has helped facilitate destruction of some 57,000 tons of chemical weapons and promoted nuclear disarmament.

    Alexander Likhotal, the Green Cross president, said leaders must be honest about the size of the real challenges facing them and recognize that “incremental gestures will no longer suffice.”

    Gorbachev, whose democratic changes led against his will to the collapse of the Soviet Union, urged governments to step up their efforts and use his policies of “perestroika” (restructuring) and “glasnost” (openness) to address global climate change and overconsumption of resources.

    {AP}

  • Floods Destroy Property in Rubavu

    {{Floods have engulfed three sectors in Rubavu district destroying property and damaging crops following heavy rains in the area on Wednesday.}}

    IGIHE reporter in the district said three sectors affected include; Kanama, Nyakiriba and Nyundo.

    The floods were more severe after River Buceri burst its banks letting water to overflow and submerging the entire Mahoko trading center.

    Several houses were destroyed after soaking into water.

    Rescue efforts to save valuable property from submerged houses were fruitless by press time. No causalities were reported at the time of filing this story.

    Jeannette Uwajeneza the Kanama sector leader revealed that Karambo river bridge had been washed away by the floods.

    The bridge was a major link of Kanama residents to other sectors especially in promoting trade links.

    Uwajeneza noted that during the month of April heavy rains affect the area coupled by the disastrous Sebeya River.

  • Argentina Torrential Rains kill 52

    {{At least 52 people drowned in their homes and cars, were electrocuted or died in other accidents as flooding from days of torrential rains swamped Argentina’s low-lying capital and province of Buenos Aires.}}

    At least 46 died Wednesday in and around the city of La Plata, Gov. Daniel Scioli said. Six deaths were reported a day earlier in the nation’s capital.

    Many people climbed onto their roofs in the pouring rain after storm sewers backed up. Water surged up through drains in their kitchen and bathroom floors, and then poured in over their windowsills.

    “It started to rain really hard in the evening, and began to flood,” said Augustina Garcia Orsi, a 25-year-old student. “I panicked. In two seconds, I was up to my knees in water. It came up through the drains — I couldn’t do anything.”

    The rains also flooded the country’s largest refinery, causing a fire that took hours to put out. The La Plata refinery suspended operations as a result, and Argentina’s YPF oil company said an emergency team was evaluating how to get it restarted.

    “Such intense rain in so little time has left many people trapped in their cars, in the streets, in some cases electrocuted. We are giving priority to rescuing people who have been stuck in trees or on the roofs of their homes,” Scioli said.

    But many complained that they had to rescue themselves and their neighbors as cars flooded to their rooftops and homes filled with up to two meters (six feet) of water.

    woman pushing bike through floods
    AP

  • Sebeya River Kills 3, Destroys Property

    {{Lives have been lost and property destroyed valued in millions when River sebeya in Rubavu district burst its banks overflowing.}}

    Reports indicate that a house was washed away and a resident was killed by the over flowing river.

    Witnesses observed that when the river burst its banks there was no rainfall. However, it could have been raining upstream in the hills.

    On April 1, lifeless bodies were discovered along the path of the overflowing river that destroyed property along its downstream path.

    Munyanganizi Sebikari Jean the executive secretary at Kanama sector told IGIHE in an interview, “three people including an adult and 2 children aged 8 and 12 were washed away and killed by the overflowing river at Kibuga village, Rusongati, Kanama sector”.

    Munyanganizi said one of the killed children was a refugee at Nkamira camp. He was washed away by Gatare River that feeds into Sebeya River where this child was found lifeless.

    Another child killed by Sebeya River was traced to Nyabirasa sector in Rutsiro district.

    Munyanganizi told IGIHE that area authorities are currently sensitising residents about the dangers of natural disasters and urging them to relocate to safer zones away from the banks of the rivers.

    {Residents trying to rescue a pair washed away by Sebeya River}

  • Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania & 5 Others Face Possible Sanction Over Ivory Trade

    {{The worst offending countries in the ivory trade have been given a strict deadline to reduce their involvement or face sanctions.}}

    The decision taken at the final meeting of the Cites conference in Bangkok is meant to compel countries like China and Thailand to tougher action.

    But some campaigners say Cites is failing to protect elephants and want more urgent action.

    Data indicates that 17,000 elephants were killed by poachers in 2011.

    This is the most up-to-date information available for areas monitored by Cites.

    In its final session here in Bangkok, delegates approved a decision to demand a clear set of targets for reducing the trade in ivory from the countries deemed the worst offenders.

    The “gang of eight” countries include the supply states, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, plus the consumer states of China and Thailand. The group also includes three countries – Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines – which are important in the transit of ivory.

    Resource issue

    The meeting heard that six of the eight countries had now come up with action plans.

    The standing committee of Cites also agreed that if the actions described in those plans were not completed then sanctions against the offending country, or countries, could be taken from July 2014.

    Secretary General of Cites, John Scanlon, explained that the deadline was real.

    “The eight states are prepared to do more and be measured against that,” he said. “There is also a recognition that a failure to take action, [may see] the standing committee consider compliance measures. And the ultimate sanction under our convention is a trade suspension.”

    wirestory

  • Rain Water Harvesting to Improve Welfare

    {{Residents of Rubavu district will begin harvesting rain water from house roofs to enable families reduce water shortages.}}

    This follows a pilot project launched by the Ministry of Natural resources under close supervision by Natural Resources Authority aimed at improving living conditions of targeted groups through protection and sustainable management of the natural resources (soil and water).

    The program was started as a pilot project in 2011, however, it has since been a success and will be implemented across the country.
    The official launch was made in Rubavu District, starting with 60 households.

    The program is financed by FINA Bank providing short term loans to families to purchase water tanks from Aquasan and is running based on an agreement facilitated by MINIRENA/RNRA.

    MINIRENA exploring with FINA BANK and other Banks prospects to upscale the program country-wide.

    The one year loan servicing term may be extended to a longer period to reduce the amount of installments to be paid, which would allow beneficiaries with limited resources to access the scheme.

    The program offers multiple win-win benefits from the environmental, business, improved livelihoods perspectives.

    Rwanda Minister of Natural resources Stanislas Kamanzi has encouraged Districts to embrace the program to transform the rainwater management challenges into profitable opportunities.