Coherent and wholistic water management strategies are still required for the Nile Basin region especially with increasing population, accelerating needs for diversified uses, enhanced degradation in water quality because of waste, pollution and sanitation as well as existing threats from global warming.
The current trends in the international security environments are very dynamic and constantly changing and shifting. Tension in major parts of the world are in best cases persistent, if not growing e.g. Europe. New and serious tensions are to emerge more and more, e.g. the MENA region and Africa. All these tensions either existing or emetging are caused by transnational criminality or by old ethic, religious, territorial or separatist disputes to contest existing borders.
Honeybee loss can induce global threats for food production as it is estimated that one third of the entire world’s food supply comes from pollination. Pesticides are a key suspect for honeybee loss and there is something that we can all do to counteract their use.
Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is a global phenomenon in which worker bees from European and North American hineybee colonies abruptly disappear. Colony collapse disorder is significant economically because many agricultural crops worldwide are being pollinated honey bees (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder).
The negative effects of the honeybee shortage were predicted years ago and there are several theorized causes of colony collapse disorder, from disease, to mites, to pesticides. However, in recent studies, e.g. U.C. Davis, where large sample of hives was examined, as much as 150 different chemical residues were found on the bees.
http://www.realfarmacy.com/effects-of-colony-collapse-disorder-now-manifesting-in-california/
For decades the US has been pushing for two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestine conflict and there are no other alternatives seem to be avialable for achieving peace in the MENA region. The end of the road will be taking up the issue in the UN as all negotiations, options and details have been fully assessed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-dismisses-netanyahus-softened-stance-on-two-state-solution/2015/03/21/27f0148a-d02e-11e4-8c54-ffb5ba6f2f69_story.html
Water means everything from health, nature, urbanization, industry, energy, food and equality. It is part of our daily life everywhere and at anytime. It is the heart of sustainability and essence of life. Today the 22nd of March, World Water Day, is an occasion for us to celebrate water as ancient Egyptians did (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_of_the_Nile). To promote water and sanitation in Africa there is a dedicated Facebook page for communication and information, visit it at: (https://m.facebook.com/commonwealthafricabuja/posts/1610941099118189).
http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/
Egypt is in on its feet again after years of turmoil. On the top of Egypt’s long-term renaissance strategy is providing energy, housing, education and work for its growing population, in particular young people.
The MENA region as whole is investing heavily in renewable energy, unlike Iran with much investment in nuclear solutions. It is the particular geographical situation of the MENA region by being rich with solar resources and the long-term needs for desalination, water treatment and wastewater treatment, all of which are much power dependent. The region as whole still needs appropriate policies and sustainable long-term solutions for affordable and accessible water resources because of the arid and semi-arid nature of the region. Also, the negative impacts of climate change, in particular Egyptian Nile-delta, accelerating pressures not only of groundwater resources but also surface waters of the Jordan River, the Tigris-Euphrates River Basin, and the Nile River and their catchments with huge populations. Sound and sustainable large-scale and long-term policies for protection and conservation of the natural resources in the MENA region against waste and pollution are, also, important emerging necessities.
http://www.utilities-me.com/article-3326-mena-renewable-energy-zeal-spreads-to-egypt/#.VQv6kYp86nN
If you can not measure it, it does not exist and if you can measure it properly you would not be able to control it.
What is sustainability and how can we measure it, below are some information. To know more follow, share and contribute in: http://sustain-earth.com to know more
Slavery is not only daily pain for humans but it is a national socio-economic defect that cause pile-up of different threats on several national and international levels. Such threats can and do cause long-term and large-scale barriers in secio-economic and socio-political structures. This is evident from the historical evolution of slavery (http://youtu.be/nHk-WceZeFg). It is interesting to see how developing countries suffered and still suffer from severe socio-economic disparities, and also mental health problems, from slavery. Slavery of yesterday still affect our ability to be successful today. There are interesting statistics, e.g. from the USA, that need to be taken into account (http://thyblackman.com/2015/02/15/the-slavery-card-fact-or-just-the-ultimate-excuse/).
Among important features of modern slavery are acceleration of different forms of gender and age discrimination and abuse of children (http://youtu.be/nNY2Vl8jUjU).
Water management is becoming IMPERATIVE with the increasing concern about the effects and impacts of global warming. Many ancient civilizations, if not all, evolved and sustained around water resources by using intensive water-demanding irrigation techniques.
The MENA region which helped birth of earliest agricultural civilizations is now signaling one of the strongest warnings of its mortality. It lost huge amount of its water resources mostly because the groundwater pumped up and out of the region’s fragile aquifers for irrigation. Groundwater is/was being over-pumped, some massively so, at rates much higher than ability to recharge. Ongoing global warming poses further threats for additiknal severe decline in groundwater resources unless counter measures and mitigation actions can be done.
http://ensia.com/features/groundwater-wake-up/
Be part of a new future and join the ongoing changes in one of the most dynamic regions in the world where all challenges, but yet diverse and new possibilities, for socio-economic developments, co-exist.
Hear what global investors tell about investing in Egypt. The call is still opened for any to join and respond to people’s call for major changes. Yes, you can contribute in creating sustainsble societies.
Among the new plans for the socio-economic developments of Egypt a new capital “New Cairo” is planned to be established in region of the Red Sea so the pressure on the existing capital can be mitigated. Interesting enough the Red Sea region and Sinai, including the Suez Canal are becoming among the major changes and reforms in “Egypt the Future”. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=941998875850439
To know more visit also, http://m.bbc.com/news/business-31874886
Would 2015 be a chance to change history? UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Youth Forum organized by the UN’s Economic and Social Council that “[You are] “the first generation with the potential to end poverty and the last generation to avoid worst effects of climate change”. It was his message to fully engage young people in the post-2015 MDG (http://www.un.org/en/ecosoc/youth2015/).
However, what is the situation of children and young people in Africa today. The Children’s situation in Morocco gives some idea about what we may expect in this part of the world. Morocco has made vast improvements in the past decade. The child and infant mortality rates were greatly reduced, the net primary school enrolment rates have been increasing rapidly. However, net secondary school rates are still extremely low: 37% for boys and 32% for girls.
A large number of children are vulnerable and there are still many harmful traditional practices. The children are especially affected by the custom of early marriage. Although reforms (2004) have raised the minimum age of marriage for women from 15 to 18, judges are still authorize marriages before that age, including girls as young as 13. The child early marriages is increasing, between 2009 and 2010 were in total of 33,253. Though forced child labour is prohibited, it remains a critical challenge as it concerns 9% of children aged 5 to 14 years. Girls as young as 6 or 7 years old from rural communities are recruited to work as child maids in cities, and often experience conditions of forced labour. Boys experience forced labour as apprentices in the artisan and construction industries and in mechanic shops. In education teachers and parents still believe children should fear them to work and behave better, so “violence is often socially-accepted and approved”. In addition, children are vulnerable by armed conflict and natural disasters. Morocco, for example, suffered 32 events during the period 1980-2010, affecting on average 17,000 persons per year.
http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/start/countries/morocco
Flooding is among major threats in many countries around the world. Global warming is a modern man-made driver of negative feedback impacts on the global water cycle.
World Vision Australia is a member of the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) and adheres to the ACFID Code of Conduct which defines minimum standards of governance, management and accountability of development for non-government organisations (NGOs). http://worldvision.com.au/home/defaultverD.aspx?lpos=top_drop_0_Home
To know more about flooding visit: http://montagepages.fuselabs.com/public/Benji-kun/Floods/3cc1dea9-0708-4b2a-a127-389832eea821.htm
China’s future vision for increasing economic and trade interactions with the Middle East, Europe and Africa is enormous. If this vision would become a reality there would be global tectonic shifts on several fronts. However, for such vision to become true security and safety issues need to be resolved particularly in the Middle East region.
http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/chinas-new-silk-road-vision-revealed/
Clean and crime free environment to all living creatures on our earth is a mission humanity. This mission is not only limited to science and politics. Active contributions of all of us, our awareness of existing realities and our continuous support for scientific and political efforts are IMPERATIVE for achieving sustainable socio-economic developments worldwide. We are sharing one planet for living and our lives are dependent on sharing clean air, water and food. To have clean and crime free environment, not only for us but also for the future generations, we need to have all the necessary instruments, actions and efforts for conservation and protection of our common natural resources on earth.
http://missioncleanenvironment.com.au
It is not new that science and politics don’t mix, and there are increasing gaps in many societies between facts and values because of the different paths of historical evolution, limited exchanges in micro-cultures and also between major civilizations. Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University, recently wrote an essay for the New Republic in defense of science. As is the case everywhere around the world, science is under attack for its arrogance, vulgarity and narrowness of vision. But is this true? If not why? What are the limits of science and politics? Who has the right to decide this? Above all what are the consequences if science and politics run in conflict? When, how and where this takes place? These are important, if not essential, questions but the answers are not simple or straightforward and the debate will go on for generations.
Why is this happening? Pinker asks. Because, he says, science is intruding on the humanities, disciplines lacking in vitality or any real purpose of their own, and the intrusion is resented. Far from deriding science as a campaign to diminish and oversimplify — to reduce beauty to brain chemistry, say, or ethics to natural selection — the humanities should welcome science as a source of new inspiration: “Surely our conceptions of politics, culture, and morality have much to learn from our best understanding of the physical universe and of our makeup as a species.”
Science is judged by quality and has its own limits. However, it is always expecting respect, as is the case for values. Quality has “scientific” instruments for assessment but the limits of science are described by the distinction between facts and values. Values have other “cultural” frames to be judged upon and assessed, even economic and environmental issues are finding their way into values. Here, comes a continuous dilemma and paradox, science is practiced and done by “minorities” though its content “facts” is still shaped by the needs of the society, at least in societies that recognize the importance of science. It is, also, true that politics seek help from science whenever is necessary. This isn’t to deny that science “facts” can shed light on “values”, make moral values intelligible in physical terms, it can explain how certain moral instincts might confer an evolutionary advantage, or why they might persist. It can show that the supposed empirical basis for some moral values is simply false. Values, on the other hand, are practiced by majorities in societies, if not by everyone, and they have their own “codes of conduct” which get support by political parties and have more legitimate status through elections and political systems. Values have, therefore, enormous momentum in many societies especially where science is week with has little support.
“Though the scientific facts do not by themselves dictate values,” Pinker goes on, “they certainly hem in the possibilities.” He’s right about this — but the second point, though interesting, is much less important than the first. Science can’t dictate values. That’s what matters. And because it can’t dictate values, it can’t dictate courses of action.
Science is always seeking respect especially when it acts beyond the limits set by politics. Climate science for example, as viewed by non-experts is a far-flung family of loosely related disciplines, which resulted in a set of costly and controversial policy proposals. This is not strange because of the extent and dimensions of the threats and as many climate scientists require urgent measures to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Still there is criticism that The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will release its fifth assessment report on global warming next year, is an advocacy organization rather than a neutral compiler of scientific evidence. But who would invent appropriate solutions without having the knowledge and how-how to decide how, why, where and when? What to do about climate change is indeed not only a political question and if so where were the politicians? What do they want? What are their arguments? Who would take the responsibility when things go wrong? “Business as usual” still is requiring science to be cautious and do not mix with politics.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-08-20/why-science-and-politics-don-t-mix
Amazing conclusions from continuous and comprehensive global research that are based on all developments in science as a whole “big science”. They involve, also, integrated global observations on several scales and enormous human thinking and intelligence of the whole past century. It is how climate change shaped and formed global creativity (http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/nov/05/climate-change-theatre-2071-katie-mitchell-duncan-macmillan) to bring politics and science for a better future. A future we want to create and for generations to come. Climate change is not just about science – it’s about creating the future (http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/22/-sp-climate-change-special-report).
Saving is essential not only in economic terms but is also for the very sake of lasting survival, not only our survival but the protection and preservation of life on the planet. It took us so much time to arrive to the conclusion that “production and consumption” of natural resources, in particular fossil fuel, at the existing rapid speed is not more than destruction and annihilation of our life. It is a hard conclusion and inconvenient reality that much of the fossil fuel of the planet must stay buried and not to be burned. For the coming decades, until 2050 and beyond, the emission of carbon dioxide has to be cut down to zero which essentially mean much of the fossil fuel on the planet has not to be burned.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/07/much-worlds-fossil-fuel-reserve-must-stay-buried-prevent-climate-change-study-says
Climate change creativity
The accelerating urbanization in the world is bringing an increasing degradation in air quality (http://www.scgh.com/green-news/the-cleanest-and-the-most-polluted-cities/). While this is not reflected in life expectancy (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy) yet, it is definitely causing emerging new health threats to the world population, as 70% will be living in cities by 2050. The life expectancy of humans on the Earth is likely to gradually decrease because of such threats and can very well show up in future statistics of the coming decades. What regards consumption of natural resources there are no definite answer on What is Enough? or How enough is enough? (http://www.mnn.com/leaderboard/stories/meet-the-woman-who-elevated-conservation-photography-to-a-whole-new-level). Facts on the role of urbanization on air quality, i.e. sources/types of pollution, are given in a document by United Nations Environment Program (http://www.unep.org/urban_environment/PDFs/handbook.pdf).
What is interesting and many of us may not know is that the world cleanest air is indeed mostly available in the Southern Hemi-sphere because of three reasons: (1) most of the land in the Northern Hemi-sphere is very much populated; (2) major parts of emission of atmospheric pollution is produced in the Northern Hemi-sphere; and (3) the atmospheric mixing of air between the northern and southern hemi-spheres is quite limited. The cleanest areas in the Northern Hemi-sphere are either above the troposphere, i.e. at elevated altitudes, or far away from emission areas, i.e. quite near in the Arctic region and/or quite near to the Arctic.
http://www.travelandleisure.com/slideshows/the-worlds-cleanest-air
