Via Surfbirds News
With Madagascar’s priceless biodiversity on the line, a new report says “Go for it!” to USAID.
Twenty-five years of environmental assistance in Madagascar by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has achieved major progress in the biologically spectacular nation, but the gains are at critical risk of being reversed – and will likely be lost all together – if the international community continues to punish its government for the ongoing political situation.
That was the conclusion of a major new report which was commissioned by USAID’s Bureau for Africa, following the 2009 coup d’état in Madagascar and subsequent US suspension of environmental funding. The report, a comprehensive review of environmental assistance by the United States to Madagascar dating back to 1984, was produced by the International Resources Group (IRG), and launched at Conservation International’s (CI) global headquarters in Arlington this week.
Read the whole story.
A lesson in Coca Cola's World Cup video.
Does anyone know someone at Coca Cola?
We sure could use their deft marketing expertise as displayed in the video above made by the corporate giant for the World Cup! (Click on the image to play the video.)
Granted, selling the beautiful game loved by billions is easier than promoting energy efficiency technology and policies for the base of the pyramid.
Still, making a video that mists the eyes of the most hardened anti-soccer mysanthrope is no small feat.
While we wait for Coca Cola to helps us produce the perfect video that will help the energy-efficiency-technology-and-policies-solutions community tell its story (we can start by giving it a real name!) , we’ve compiled four slideshows recently published in the New York Times that we think help visualize the energy hunger/energy obesity world we live in.
Two of these four slideshows appear in Andy Revkin’s weekly roundup of green news on the NYT’s website.
Finding Design Solutions for the forgotten ones
William Kamkwamba attended the MIT sessions
The first piece is a slideshow narrated by the Time’s Andy Revkin reporting on the great work being done by Amy Smith at MIT’s D-Lab. We are thrilled to see that her annual sustainable design workshop has this year brought together folks from around the world to think about simple design solutions to many of the challenges faced by those living at the base of the pyramid.
This is a good opportunity to note that Smith was an early booster of our work here at The Charcoal Project.
No, really. These photos are worth more 1000 words!
Tibetan glaciers' vanishing act
The second piece is a more sobering slideshow about the dramatic recession of Asia’s Tibetan glaciers. The images are taken from a current photo exhibition at New York-based Asia Society. The idea of documenting receding Tibetan glaciers by matching photographic images taken from the same vantage point is not new. In fact, one of our scientists at The Nature Conservancy did this back 2005 using photographs taken in the first half of the XXth century.
Read New York Times columnist Nick Kristoff’s take on the images.
Add concrete, mix, and voila!
The third slideshow is titled China’s Instant Cities and the images speak for themselves.
Pizza delivery for Apt. 1,288,757 - A? (Photo: Christoph Gielen)
Quoting from the story intro: This year China will add more than 17 million people to its urban population. To house this unprecedented wave of migration from the country side, cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou are building countless high-rise residential towers at breakneck speed.
Climate Change? What Climate Change?
Finally, the last slideshow is a collection of images documenting the record-breaking heatwave that is baking many parts of the world, including our hometown, New York City.
We hope this selection of New York Times slideshow will help people who have the power to effect change to connect the dots because the time to take action is now!
Kim & Nina
A group of Latin American NGOs has called on the World Bank and IDB (InterAmerican Development Bank) to pay greater attention to energy efficiency and Climate Change mitigation and adaptation.
According to a story reported in IPS, a news service that does a great job of covering the Global South, a group of 10 NGOs from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and United States told the regional bank “it should reduce its projects’ contribution to climate change, respect communities’ rights, make accounting more transparent, finance the development of renewable energy sources and phase out fossil-fuel sources and hydroelectric dams.”
The IDB, headed by Colombian Luis Alberto Moreno, opened a first phase of consultations with NGOs from Apr. 26 to May 26, and will begin a second stage, Jul. 30 to Oct. 30, centred on drafting a strategy against climate change. 
IPS quoted Astrid Puentes, co-director of the Inter-American Association for Environmental Defence (AIDA, in Spanish), and a signatory of the letter as saying, “access to sustainable energy should be a priority.”
In November and December, the bank — which was created to promote development and reduce poverty in the region — is to receive more comments, and has slated April 2011 for the release of the final climate change plan.
IPS said the NGO’s called on the the IDB “to put the priority on investments in energy efficiency and truly renewable and clean energy, which effectively promote climate change mitigation and adaptation, and discourage those investments that cause serious impacts.” 
“Hey, watch out Robert Zoellick, they’re coming your way, too!”
– Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the IDB.
This time, 13 different NGOs told the World Bank it needed to consider its energy strategy, emphasizing communities’ rights, green energy and transparency in the elaboration, execution and accounting of the projects the bank supports.”
IPS said, “groups from Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru and United States want the World Bank to make equitable and sustainable energy a priority, and to take into account the past, present and future effects of its financing on the environment, the climate and the communities.
In a timeline similar to the IDB’s, from February to June, the World Bank collected comments from civil society around the globe, and from July to September it is drafting a strategy, and will conduct more consultations in November and December.
Tranquilo, Luis, I have it under control.
The World Bank plans a public debate of the final document in February-April 2011 amongst its top officials.
The Charcoal Project hopes Mssrs. Zoellick and Moreno will take a personal interest in ensuring that access to energy efficient biomass technologies and sustainable alternative solid fuels for the base of the Latin American pyramid becomes a reality in this decade.
By Frederick Womakuyu, reported in The New Vision, and reprinted in allAfrica.com
7 July 2010
Kampala — Uganda’s population hit the 33 million mark in 2010. National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) warns that the country’s environment is in danger as much of its forest cover and wetlands could soon disappear.
The dramatic reduction of the forest cover in Kibaale district perhaps demonstrates the impact the high population is having on nature.
In 1990, Kibaale had about 114,000 hectares of forest cover with a population of about 220,300 people. But by 2005, its forest cover had fallen to about 58,300 hectares with a population of about 413,000 people due to migration.
The Uganda Bureau of Statistics warns that if the population growth of Kibaale remains unchecked in the next 10-15 years, the forest cover in Kibaale will be reduced to 2,433 hectares. Read more.
By Arsène Séverin
KINKALA, Congo, Jun 22, 2010 (IPS) – The trees are falling in Pool, and there are plenty of people to hear the sound. In a painful irony, the end of armed conflict in 2003, has signaled the wholesale devastation of forests in this southern region of the Republic of Congo.
All along the 75 kilometre road between the capital Brazzaville, and Kinkala, the southern region’s principal city, there are bundles of wood and sacks of charcoal stacked ready to be trucked to feed the household energy demands of the capital.
Since the end of the civil wars which lasted from 1998 to 2003, production of charcoal and firewood has become profitable for the people in the Pool department, one of 12 administrative areas in the country.
There are farmers who produce nearly 300 sacks of charcoal every three months. A 15-kilo bag of sells for the equivalent of $10 in Brazzaville. Read more.
