The world’s rivers, the single largest renewable water resource for humans and a crucible of aquatic biodiversity, are in a crisis of ominous proportions, according to a new global analysis.

The report, published Sept. 30 in the journal Nature, is the first to simultaneously account for the effects of such things as pollution, dam building, agricultural runoff, the conversion of wetlands and the introduction of exotic species on the health of the world’s rivers.

The resulting portrait of the global riverine environment, according to the scientists who conducted the analysis, is grim. It reveals that nearly 80 percent of the world’s human population lives in areas where river waters are highly threatened posing a major threat to human water security and resulting in aquatic environments where thousands of species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction.

For full article, visit:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100929132521.htm

Thanks to the Post Carbon Institute for this article.
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Out of sight, out of mind means deep trouble when it comes to the reserves of freshwater stored underground. New numbers are out on the rate of groundwater depletion around the globe, and if they hold up to further scrutiny, the world is almost certainly facing a future of food shortages.

In an upcoming issue of Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, Professor Marc Bierkens of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues estimate that the rate at which humanity is pumping dry the underground reservoirs that hundreds of millions of people depend upon for food and drinking water more than doubled between 1960 and 2000.

For full article, visit:
http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs

Below is an article about PMC’s radio dramas in Senegal that appeared in Audience Scapes.
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Radio that Resonates in Senegal
By Paromita Pain
http://www.audiencescapes.org/radio

Senegal is using the popular and entertaining medium of the radio drama to tackle some of its most pressing public health problems. Ngelawu Nawet (“Winds of Hope”) and Coñal Keele (“Harvesting the Seeds of Life”) are two serial dramas that represent the first time that “entertainment-education” has been attempted in Senegal. The plots involve serious health issues presented in the form of absorbing narratives.

Women and adolescents are the target audience for the dramas, which are being produced by the Population Media Center, an NGO working worldwide to encourage family planning. Many Senegalese homes own a radio and radio is one of the country’s most influential mediums. People listen to these radio shows in groups, especially in community settings.
Continue Reading »

If you live in the Bay Area of northern California, join us for the awards ceremony on December 2. Contact Jennie Wetter for details at jwetter@populationinstitute.org
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Population Institute Names 31st Annual Global Media Award Winners

http://www.populationinstitute.org/newsroom/news/view/39/

Washington, DC – A Kenyan serial drama, the Senior Editor of Grist, and a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist are among the 10 recipients of the Population Institute’s 2010 Global Media Awards for Excellence in Population Reporting. The awards will be presented December 2nd, at a ceremony in San Francisco, California.

Laurie Mazur, a writer and the director of the Population Justice Project, will receive the Best Book award for her book A Pivotal Moment: Population, Justice, & The Environmental Challenge. The book, which she edited, explores the relationship between population growth and climate change, ecosystem health, and other environmental issues.
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Many thanks to Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury for this announcement from the Center for Global Development (CGD).

CGD announces a new working group to examine the United Nations’ evolving role in population and development, with a specific focus on the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). CGD’s Rachel Nugent is co-chairing the working group with Professor David Bloom from Harvard University’s School of Public Health, and Dr. Jotham Musinguzi, head of the Africa Regional Office of Partners in Population and Development. Working group members are population and development experts from all regions of the world, and include policymakers, filmmakers, funders, academics and advocates. The Working Group will offer recommendations to the incoming executive director of UNFPA in January 2011.
Continue Reading »

By Brian Wheeler
Charlottesville Tomorrow
Monday, October 18, 2010
http://cvilletomorrow.typepad.com/charlottesville_tomorrow_/2010/10/asap.html

Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population wants the Charlottesville area to become a model for the rest of the country when it comes to planning how to live within its means.

Jack Marshall, ASAP’s president, says a fundamental change in thinking could lead to a stabilized or even reduced local population. Other local leaders think the group’s approach to limiting population growth is unrealistic.

“We must, if we care about having a sustainable community for our grandchildren, we must consume less and simultaneously we must stabilize our population size or even reduce the population size of our community,” Marshall said.
Continue Reading »

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article.
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Some like it hot. According to environmentalist James Lovelock, we’ll get plenty of hot between now and the end of the century. “We are so far down the path toward the hottest we have been, since we were 55 million years ago,” Dr. Lovelock, who is also a leading atmospheric scientist, told StockInterview in a tape-recorded interview last week, “that as many of us look at it, it’s not going to make very much difference what anybody does.” In stronger commentary, which he wrote for England’s Independent newspaper, this past January, Lovelock warned, “The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years.” And we were worrying about another Ice Age?

For full article, visit:
http://adeck.us/world-population-to-crash-by-80-percent-says-top-u-k-scientist-part-one-2/

In 2010-2011, PMC had projects in Brazil, Burkina Faso, Caribbean, Ethiopia, Mexico, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Senegal, Sierra Leone, the United States, Vietnam and a worldwide electronic game.

2010/2011 Annual Report (PDF, 5.5 MB)

Papua New Guinea has been warned of the adverse impact the increase in the country’s population would have on the economy, education, health and other sectors. if the government did nothing to take control.

Obstetrician and gynaecologist, Professor Glen Mola sounded the warning when he gave a presentation on population and resources to the media in Port Moresby recently.

PNG’s population is now estimated to be more than 6 million.

For full article, visit:
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/pacbeat/stories/201009/s3023182.htm

Thanks to Kathleene Parker for this article.
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When we write about food, the accounts are generally superficial, analogous to the way we cast our politics as celebrity and glitter. We ponder sauces and seasoning, but ignore the flow of real power that lies beneath. This is especially odd, given that food is so fundamentally significant to the human endeavor, the one story each and every one of the 6.865 billion of us engages directly and daily, the luckiest among us three times a day, with sauces and seasoning.

Nonetheless, when somebody does delve deeply into this story, the telling can enlighten, entertain, and unsettle. Such is the case with Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations by Evan D. G. Fraser, an academic specializing in farming, climate change, and the environment, and Andrew Rimas, a journalist based in Boston.

For full article, visit:
http://www.onearth.org/article/the-dirty-secret-on-the-farm