Saturday 12 September 2015

Alang shipyards

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India is also the location of the Alang shipyards where half of all the ships that are salvaged around the world are sent for recycling. Hundreds of manual laborers dismantle the ships, often in very dangerous conditions.

Every day, the port city of Lagos

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Every day, the port city of Lagos (where there is a giant electronics market) in Nigeria receive an estimated 15 shipping containers filled with discarded electronics. Most of the electronics are unfortunately broken and beyond repair so they end up in dumps where people scavenge for valuable components in dangerous conditions.

A former wetland

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A former wetland, Agbogbloshie is now known as one of the world’s biggest dumps where scores of workers burn waste and strip valuables from obsolete electronics.

Ghana e-waste

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Ghana, Africa is one of the countries where e-waste from all over the world “go to die”. The hardest hit region is the Agbogbloshie, or as the locals call it, “Sodom and Gomorrah”.

Friday 11 September 2015

UNEP and Partners Step up Conservation Efforts for Kenya's Tana River

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The Tana River - Kenya's longest - plays a vital role in the country's economy, with the basin covering around 20 per cent of Kenya's total land area. The basin supplies 80 per cent of the drinking water for Kenya's capital, Nairobi, and about 32 per cent nationally. It is also the country's primary source of hydro-electric power through the river's many dams.
Fisheries and agriculture in the basin provide a major source of food and employment for the estimated 7 million residents that live in the greater basin area and in other parts of the country.
The river delta is also a biodiversity hotspot and is home to several endangered primate species, including the Tana red colobus and the Tana River mangabey. The habitat also supports 22 species of birds, over 40 species of fish and provides nesting sites for marine turtles.
Today, the river basin is facing a number of environmental challenges. Forests in the upper catchment are threatened as more land is allocated to farming and logging to produce timber and charcoal. Exacerbated by climate change, deforestation has had an adverse effect on water quality and quantity.
Unsustainable farming practices in the upper catchment have also led to soil erosion, pollution of the rivers by agro-chemicals and siltation of dams.
Sand mining and over abstraction of water are other key environmental challenges in the basin. Proposals for the expansion of sugar cane and biofuel crop plantations in the lower catchment have also raised concerns.
The various land use practices within the basin have led to increasing demand for water resources leading conflicts between local communities, as well as conflicts between humans and wildlife
To address these issues, organizations involved in the management of the Tana River Basin have agreed to establish the Tana Basin Coordination and Information Platform (TABCIP).
The new coordination platform is backed by over 100 organizations, including UNEP, other UN bodies, government agencies, national and international NGOs, private companies and research institutes.

It will focus on combining expertise from these different groups to identify priority issues for ensuring the health and productivity of the Tana River ecosystem.
"From fisheries and grazing land, to biodiversity and renewable energy, the economic and environmental importance of the Tana River to the communities that border it, and to Kenya as a whole, cannot be underestimated," said Jacqueline Alder, Head of the UNEP's Freshwater and Marine Ecosystems Branch at the meeting.
- See more at: http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx?DocumentID=2691&ArticleID=9240#sthash.NrHtx1QV.dpuf
Kenya's Tana River basin provides water and hydroelectric power for many parts of the country and supports livelihoods through fishing and agriculture. - See more at: http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx?DocumentID=2691&ArticleID=9240#sthash.NrHtx1QV.dpuf
Kenya's Tana River basin provides water and hydroelectric power for many parts of the country and supports livelihoods through fishing and agriculture. - See more at: http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx?DocumentID=2691&ArticleID=9240#sthash.NrHtx1QV.dpuf

Turkana

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Lake Turkana is notable as a major volume of (more or less) fresh water in an otherwise arid and barren part of the county, while a number of rivers, including the Turkwel, Kerio, Athi-Galana, Tana and Northern and Southern Ewaso Ng’iro, flow for long distances through dry parts of the country.

One of the many waterfalls on the kathita river. This is how beautiful unpolluted water looks like


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How to stop the mess

It is difficult to prevent city rivers from being polluted, but it is not impossible. It is easy to prevent rivers from drying up. Enough with the conferences, enough with NEMA and other organizations in charge of conserving the environment. Here are my suggestions:
  • Stop further diversion of river water, legal or illegal
  • Dam rivers so that they can collect more water in the rainy season
  • Water intakes should be built on dams, not directly on the river
  • Stop planting of eucalyptus trees in catchment areas
  • Plant more indigenous trees
  • Come up with stricter laws governing our water sources
  • Form new, more powerful organizations to take care of water sources
  • Learn how to dispose garbage
  • Do regular city cleanups. A garbage collection day can be set up, where everyone gets involved
  • Blow up all water intakes with dynamite to allow flow of water downstream

The extremely polluted ngong river, probably the dirtiest river in Africa.


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As if drying up of Kenyan rivers is not enough, we are polluting them with more waste than our toilets can handle. The biggest victims are  the Nairobi, Ngong and Mathare rivers. They are so dirty you can smell them from a mile. These three rivers eventually merge, join the Athi river and flow more than 500 kilometres to the Indian ocean. Yet there are millions of people that rely on them for water downstream – I wonder how they use the water.

Thursday 10 September 2015

Charcoal burning

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Police and Kenya Forestry officers tour a section of a forest cleared by encroachers in Rift Valley. Experts are warning that continued deforestation in Kitui and Tharaka Nithi could turn regions into deserts.

Wednesday 9 September 2015

The Banqiao Dam Collapse, China











The worst dam collapse ever killed an estimated 171,000 people in the floods of 1975. The causes of the dam failure were both natural and man-made. The amount of rainfall received by the area was double the amount the dam had been constructed to withhold. However investigations have also reported that the dam was poorly engineered and constructed making it vulnerable to such contingencies. On August 8 the dam collapsed and released a total of 15.38 billion m3 of water. The natural disaster coupled with man-made errors destroyed lives of over 250,000 people.http://pelings.com/

Bhopal Gas Tragedy, India













The worst industrial tragedy ever known was a result of utter negligence on part of a pesticide manufacturing company and incompetence of the government authorities. Over 500,000 people were exposed to the deadly methyl isocyanate and other chemicals leaking from the pesticide plant of Union Carbide India Ltd at Bhopal, India on the night of December 2-3, 1984. The gas leaked spread in the town through air and water killing 8000 people within two weeks and injuring 558,125 of which of which approximately 3900 were seriously and permanently disabled. UCC had been warned before of potential leakages though no real efforts were made to improve the situation finally leading to a disaster which claimed thousands of life.http://pelings.com/

Chernobyl Disaster, Ukraine



The Chernobyl disaster occurred at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, Ukraine is considered to be the worst nuclear power plant disaster ever as the explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere which spread over much of the western USSR and Europe. On April 26, 1986, a fire began at the reactor number four of the Chernobyl plant as a result of a series of stem explosions which happened while attempting an emergency shutdown due to an unexpected power surge during a test. The disaster claimed the lives of 54 workers instantly and over the years almost 4000 people have died due to diseases from the projection to radiations.http://pelings.com/

Oppau Explosion, Germany


One of the biggest chemical disasters happened in the Oppau, Germany plant of BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, on September 21, 1921 when a tower silo storing 4500 tonnes of a mixture of ammonium sulphate and ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded. The explosion killed about 500-600 people and injured more than 2000. More than 80 percent of all buildings in Oppau were destroyed leaving 6500 people homeless. The exact cause of the accident could not be known as all those involved died in the explosion. However researches suggest that an inaccurate estimation of sulphate-nitrate could have been a reason. A few months before the incident the manufacturing process had been changed in a way which lowered the humidity level which is another estimated trigger for the explosion.http://pelings.com/

Enschede Fireworks Disaster, Netherlands



Enshede fireworks disaster was a calamitous incident killing 23 people, injuring 940 and destroying over 1500 buildings as the fireworks exploded at the SE Fireworks depot on May 13, 2000 in the city of Enschede, Netherlands. It was discovered that a fire began in the work area of the central building at the depot where around 900kg of fireworks were stored. The fire then spread to two full containers that had been stored illegally outside of the building. The ignition caused the explosion of 177 tons of fireworks. It was also reported that SE had been audited and met all safety regulations and inspected as safe by the Dutch authorities only a week prior to the explosion thus highlighting the negligence to Dutch authorities.http://pelings.com/

Deepwater Horizon explosion.

April 20, 2010 – Deepwater Horizon explosion. An explosion at the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers, injured 17 others and resulted in the largest oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. Media reports indicate that management knew key safety equipment had been compromised in earlier incidents, but chose to ignore the significance and continue operations.http://pelings.com/

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Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Alaska

It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters claiming a huge toll on aquatic flora and fauna when on March 24, 1989, Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker targeted to Long Beach, California, hit the Bligh Island Reef, Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 260,000 to 750,000 barrels of crude over the next few days. Immediate effects of the spill included the deaths of as many as 250,000 seabirds, at least 2800 sea otters and hundreds of other sea creatures. As per reports, by 2010 there was still an estimated 23000 gallons of Valdez crude oil in Alaska’s soil, breaking down at less than 4% per year. The spill has continued to affect the sea animals in Alaska till date as a higher death rate and reduction in reproduction of many species have been noted since then.

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