Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. Space Industry and Business News .




CLIMATE SCIENCE
Urgent action needed to tackle Sahel's lack of rainfall: UN
by Staff Writers
Nouakchott (AFP) Aug 19, 2014


A dearth of rainfall in the Sahel could have "severe consequences" for food and agriculture across the region, a UN official said Tuesday, urging urgent action to tackle droughts.

"The countries in the Sahel in general are suffering from a lack of rain this winter, the consequences of which could be severe," Coumba Mar Gadio, Mauritania's UN representative, warned at a meeting of regional environment ministers in Nouakchott.

"Most of the rural populations (in the region) are dependent on the rains" for food and work, she said, adding that it was "urgent to put in place sustainable methods of production and consumption."

The Sahel, which stretches from Mauritania in the west to Eritrea in the east, has undergone three major droughts in less than a decade and has seen huge swathes of land turn to desert.

The UN is backing a regional plan to build a "Great Green Wall" of trees and vegetation which aims to stop the advance of the sands and lessen the effects of desertification.

Many countries in the region are already experiencing a delay in their rainy seasons, and the UN representative said the initiative aimed to strengthen the resilience of countries and communities in the face of climate change.

The green wall will be around 15 kilometres (9 miles) wide and stretch over more than 7,000 kilometres from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east.

Experts estimate that Africa has lost around 650,000 square kilometres of productive land in the last 50 years, an area greater than the size of France.

.


Related Links
Climate Science News - Modeling, Mitigation Adaptation






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle








CLIMATE SCIENCE
Drought and war in E.Africa put 14 million people at risk: UN
Nairobi (AFP) Aug 08, 2014
Poor rains and multiple conflicts across eastern Africa have put over 14 million people in need of food aid, three years since extreme drought devastated the region, the United Nations said Friday. "The situation is very worrisome," said Matthew Conway, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for Eastern Africa. "There are similarities to the situa ... read more


CLIMATE SCIENCE
Paper offers insights into new class of semiconductors

Discovery suggests surprising uses for common bubbles

Lockheed taps GenDyn unit for Space Fence ground equipment structures

The Future of CubeSats

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Saudis seek to upgrade AWAC planes

ADS will bid for USAF order for commercial satellite bandwidth

RRC supports Navy's Satellite Communications Facility in Virginia

Communications system used in Afghanistan gets Northrop support

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Optus 10 delivered to French Guiana for Ariane 5 Sept launch

Aerojet Rocketdyne Supports Fifth Successful Launch in Six Weeks

SpaceX to build world's first commercial rocket launch site in south Texas

Ariane 5 is readied for Arianespace's September launch with MEASAT-3b and Optus 10

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Twin Galileos meet, ready for Thursday's launch

First operational Galileo GPS satellites integrated for Soyuz launch

Payload Integration Begins For Next Arianespace Soyuz Galileo Launch

Two new satellites for Europe's Galileo space network

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Airborne Systems supplying decoys to New Zealand

Snoozing China air traffic controllers force jet to delay landing

Digital cockpits for UH-60L Black Hawks

Army taps Sikorsky-Boeing to develop new helicopter

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Ferroelectric Materials Suffer Unexpected Electric Polarizations

Could hemp nanosheets topple graphene for making the ideal supercapacitor?

Can our computers continue to get smaller and more powerful?

Graphene-based planar micro-supercapacitors for on-chip energy storage

CLIMATE SCIENCE
NOAA analysis reveals significant land cover changes in US coastal regions

New Satellite Data Will Help Farmers Facing Drought

Snow Cover on Arctic Sea Ice Has Thinned 30 to 50 Percent

NASA to Investigate Climate Impacts of Arctic Sea Ice Loss

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Mexico closes 80 schools after chemical leak

Mexico acid leak leaves orange river, toxic water

India's top court raps Modi government over filthy Ganges

Physicists create water tractor beam




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement All images and articles appearing on Space Media Network have been edited or digitally altered in some way. Any requests to remove copyright material will be acted upon in a timely and appropriate manner. Any attempt to extort money from Space Media Network will be ignored and reported to Australian Law Enforcement Agencies as a potential case of financial fraud involving the use of a telephonic carriage device or postal service.