Fracking Hell? South Africa’s Gas Dilemma

Published on Feb 20, 2013
Caught between the promise of prosperity that natural gas extraction in the Karoo Basin might bring and concerns about environmental and health impacts, citizen resistance to fracking is growing in the Republic of South Africa. Earth Focus correspondent Jeff Barbee reports.

Climate changes threaten Iraqi wetlands

Published on Nov 28, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish
Marshes restored after they were drained under Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980′s are now under the risk of being completely destroyed due to rising temperatures and drought. Al Jazeera’s Jane Arraf reports from Iraq’s southern marshes.

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring Turns 50

Published on Sep 4, 2012 by VOAvideo

Rachel Carson wrote and published Silent Spring 50 years ago. Carson was ahead of her time. She said pesticides like DDT were damaging the environment and human health. Although the book became an inspiration for the environmental movement, the battle for the environment continues. VOA Zulima Palacio has this report.

Faucets of Change: Empowering Women in Lao PDR

Published on Aug 26, 2012 by AsianDevelopmentBank

In Lao People’s Democratic, women and girls are faced with the hardship of collecting water for multiple purposes. They travel far distances and make numerous trips—often across uneven terrains. Ms. Buakham’s story is one of many whose life has changed as a result of an ADB-financed water supply system in Sing district. It has helped to ease women’s domestic burden and enhance their economic role through local markets and ecotourism opportunities. The system supplies piped water to more than 1,700 homes and businesses since it began operations in 2010.

Using Ingenuity to Combat Global Water Crisis

The United Nations says there is enough fresh water for everyone on earth. Yet nearly 1.6 billion people still face water shortages, due to inadequate infrastructure, uneven distribution and wasteful practices. There’s an organization in California, (called “Well Done,”) that is working to lessen this global water crisis, by implementing new approaches to an old problem. VOA’s Monaliza Noormohammadi has more.

At Unique High School, New York Harbor Is the Subject

Jun 22, 2011

It’s the sole New York school reachable only by ferry, a short ride from the lower tip of Manhattan to Governors Island, a 70-hectare former military base where birds and trees greatly outnumber human visitors. The Urban Assembly Harbor School is located in a renovated Coast Guard building. A basketball court and a garden tended by students flank the entrance; inside, the rooms include a greenhouse, an aquaponics lab where tilapia and oysters are raised, and a boat-building workshop, where a sloop patterned on one that sailed the harbor in 1849 is under construction.

Choosing mass suicide over hunger in India

Sep 4, 2010

In eastern India, crop failure due to a severe 2-year drought is pushing one village to take extreme measures. The inhabitants are threatening to commit mass suicide. In the village of Jarad in a remote part of eastern India, Surendra Karmali lives alongside his family, including his little grandson. While his life may look like a happy picture, the reality is quite the opposite. With no food to eat, Surendra and over 20 other farmers in the small village of about 300 families have threatened to commit mass suicide.

North Korea’s cruise line

North Korea has launched its own tourist liner using an old freighter.

Filipinos experiment with solar lighting

Millions of the poorest people in the Philippines live without electricity.

Some try to tap external power sources – an illegal and often dangerous practice, but a new and cheap solar light idea provides an answer for a growing number of Filipinos.

Al Jazeera’s Marga Ortigas reports from Manila, the Philippines.

Otters ‘back from the brink’ in every county

Otters can now be seen in every English county just 30 years after they came close to extinction.

Pesticides nearly destroyed the otter, but new environmental regulations saved the day.

Life in a pink bus

A young family of three lives in a converted school bus.

Nigeria’s oil spill exposes Shell’s neglect

UN report says it will cost up to $1bn and 30 years to clean up the damage done by decades of drilling by Shell.

Oil exploration in Nigeria’s south for decades has had a debilitating effect on the environment of the region.

A UN report released last week says it will cost up to $1bn and 30 years to clean up the damage from the oil spill in the region.

Oil company Shell has been accused of serious failures in its handling of the pollution in the Niger Delta but the oil giant has shirked its responsibility so far.

Activists have demanded that Shell’s licence be revoked for the environmental disaster.

But with 90 per cent of the government’s revenue coming from petroleum exports, oil companies seem to have clear political leverage over the issue.

Al Jazeera’s Yvonne Ndege reports from southern Nigeria.

Poor suffer as Mississippi levels rise

In the American south, the Mississippi River has crested just short of record floods in 1937.

The rising river and its tributaries is now affecting those who live in low lying areas – poor people mainly without insurance, who by American standards have nothing, and who now are about to lose even that.

Al Jazeera’s John Terrett reports from the Mississippi Delta.

Walk for Water Honors Those Who Walk Far to Drink

The U.S. State Department says roughly 900 million people in the developing world walk an average of six kilometers to get water for their families. So on Wednesday, the department sponsored a six-kilometer walk to raise awareness about the lengths many people must go simply to get a drink. VOA’s Laurel Bowman was there.

Students from the U.S. and Israel Go Green with an Eco Center

An agricultural school in Israel has teamed up with a college in the U.S. to establish an ecological center. Our correspondents have more on the story.

Students from an agricultural school in northern Israel are working with American students from New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College. The American students traveled to Israel to help the agricultural school Kfar Galim to make an ecological center.

The ecological center is being made from recycled materials, mostly tires.