Category: WM Reports

The essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty. While we continue to debate these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter,” warned Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan activist and environmentalist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. Her words are now remembered, in 2010, by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to underline the importance of the International Year of Biodiversity. Launched last January by the UN, under the motto “Biodiversity is Life: Biodiversity is Our Life,” the International Year, however, does not only have the world’s poor in mind but all humanity, because what is at play is the health and the future of the Earth, our common home. Reminds Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP: “Even if we act immediately, the world is doomed to lose many of its animal and plant species and this, in turn, will reduce the ability of ecosystems to deliver vital services to human populations.”  “Humans are part of nature’s rich diversity and have the power to protect or destroy it,” the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which is hosted by UNEP, said in summarizing the Year’s main message, with its focus on raising awareness to generate public pressure for action by the world’s decision makers. “Biodiversity, the variety of life on Earth, is essential to sustaining the living networks and systems that provide us all with health, wealth, food, fuel and the vital services that our lives depend on. Human activity is causing the diversity of life on Earth to be lost at a greatly accelerated rate. These losses are irreversible, impoverish us all and damage the life support systems we rely on every day. But we can prevent them.” The Convention – which opened, for signature, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, entered into force at the end of 1993 and now has 193 parties – is based on the premise that the world’s diverse ecosystems purify the air and the water that are the basis of life, stabilize and moderate the Earth’s climate, renew soil fertility, cycle nutrients and pollinate plants. As a former UNEP Executive Director, Klaus Töpfer, puts it: “If any part of the web suffers a breakdown, the future of life on the planet will be at risk.”    An unprecedented loss The CBD, conceived at Rio alongside with the climate change convention, acquired its key global pledge during the Johannesburg Summit of 2002, when governments agreed to achieve a “significant reduction” in the rate of biological diversity loss by 2010. However, conservation organizations acknowledge that, despite some regional successes, the target is not going to be met; some analyses suggest that nature loss is accelerating rather than decelerating. The UNEP estimates that the loss of the world’s species due to human activity is unprecedented, and is going on at a rate some experts put at 1,000

Global challenges like over-consumption, population growth, privatization and climate change all affect the quality and accessibility of water, and put a strain on limited freshwater systems. Water scarcity and contamination disproportionately impact low-income women and girls. For many girls who must walk miles just to get clean water, school is not a reality. Without a basic education or the ability to get a formal wage-earning job, many women become locked in a vicious cycle of poverty. This has a ripple effect that impacts communities and countries socially, economically and environmentally.  See “Breaking the Cycle: Women, Water and the Search for Equity” in www.sierraclub.org/population 

As a wife of a rice farmer and mother of two children aged nine and two, Sanjeevani Bandara’s days are packed with chores. Yet while she used to be able to keep up with all she has to do in a day, this Sri Lankan mother now finds herself struggling to accomplish even the most basic tasks. Blame it on the weather, which has been causing water shortages that force Bandara to spend more and more time fetching water for her family, farther away from home. While the volume of annual rainfall in Sri Lanka has not changed, agriculture specialist Champa Navaratna says that weather patterns are changing to high-intensity rains for short periods, causing floods and landslides, and long periods of drought resulting in water problems. A water crisis has a grim impact on this South Asian country’s women, whose long list of household chores includes securing and managing the family’s water supply. In rural areas, that can include ensuring a steady source for the family’s crops. Water expert Kusum Athukorala, chairwoman of the Colombo-based Network of Women Water Professionals (NetWater), even says that the impact of scarce water resources on women is at the heart of the water issue. A shortage, she says, “makes their life harder and more so because they are not part of the decision-making process.” Bandara, for instance, says that wells in her village in Kurunegala, in Sri Lanka’s north central region, have been running dry far too often. She has thus been forced to pedal a bike more than two kilometers for water, carrying it gingerly back in an earthen pot each time. “I have to go about six times a day to collect water for the family,” she says, adding that she leaves her two-year-old with her husband or a friend whenever she has to fetch more water.   Others have to walk Activists say Bandara can still consider herself lucky because at least she can load her pots of water onto a bicycle. Many other women walk the distance from home to the water source and back. By comparison, says Lanka Rainwater Harvesting Forum director, Thanuja Ariyananda, “men transport it on trucks or motorcycles.” Just about 35% of Sri Lanka’s 20 million people receive pipe-borne water provided by a state agency. The rest get their supply from wells, rivers or streams. Water for agriculture, mainly rice farming, is provided through a system of canals and channeled from rivers or streams. Securing a steady supply of water has thus been a perennial problem for most Sri Lankan households, but the situation has become more desperate of late. Many Sri Lankans now sound like Jeevani Fernando, a grassroots environmentalist from Negombo, about 30 km north of Colombo on the west coast, who says there is a shortage of water in several areas in her locality. “Rivers are running dry and pipe-borne water to most homes is reduced to two or three hours a day,” she says. “As a result, women face more problems

One of the most mysterious cloths in the world, bearing the image of a tortured, crucified man, is preserved in the Royal Chapel of St. John the Baptist in the Cathedral of Turin, Italy. It is called the Shroud of Turin. Pious tradition holds that it is the actual burial cloth of Jesus, used to wrap Him in His tomb after His crucifixion in 33 A.D., nearly 2,000 years ago, and that the image on the cloth is an actual “picture” of Jesus Himself as He laid in His tomb. Benedict XVI will go to Turin on May 2 to see the Holy Shroud in person. The Vatican and the Archdiocese of Turin announced the visit. “As the first act of his visit, the Holy Father will pause for a personal prayer before the Holy Shroud,” the archdiocese said. The Pope will see the Holy Shroud, along with millions of the faithful, as it will be on public display for 54 days, from April 10 until May 23. By visiting the Shroud and by praying before it, the Pope is showing his respect and veneration for this mysterious linen. But is the Shroud really authentic? Let’s take a look at the evidence. More than a century ago, in 1898, the image on the Shroud was photographed for the first time. The photographer was an amateur, an Italian named Secondo Pia, who was allowed to photograph it while it was being exhibited in the Turin Cathedral. On the evening of May 28, 1898, as he looked at the photographic plate, he saw the image much more clearly than it could be seen in real life because it is a negative image. This was never noticed prior to the age of photography. It means that only in the past 110 years have we begun to realize how truly mysterious this image is.   Science Speaks During the 20th century, there were increasing calls for the Church to “test” the age of the Shroud using carbon-14 dating, and settle, once and for all, whether it was an ancient cloth, or one from a more recent time. I myself played a role in this – an almost insignificant role, but still, a role – as I was a reporter for Time magazine in 1987 and 1988 when the carbon-14 dating of the Shroud was performed.  I was present at the press conference on Oct. 13, 1988 when Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero, then archbishop of Turin, and others presented the findings of the laboratorial tests: the Shroud dated between 1260 and 1390; it was medieval in origin and so could not possibly be authentic. I reported those results at the time. And I can testify that those present were shocked as they believed the Shroud was authentic and were confident it would have been ascribed to “between 50 B.C. and 50 A.D.” But the scientific evidence seemed clear: the cloth was only about 650 years old and not 2,000. The “verdict of science” had been given.