Africa

-Program could match Colo.'s next generation of farmers with land, expertise
-Feeding the city
-The Nitrogen Fix: Breaking a Costly Addiction
-Aid Groups, Farmers Collaborate to Re-Green Sahel

The poor in the South African townships are feeling the brunt of it already, a growing electricity crisis that will squeeze already meagre household incomes, spur inflation, add to the costs of essential foods, and raise transport costs in a country whose mass transport systems are utterly inadequate. Already saddled with a more than 30% hike in metered power costs for this year, they were told to expect a hike of a further 150% over the next three years.

Until 1 January 2010 Sweden holds the presidency of the EU. This means that Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt is head of the EU-delegation that today travels to the USA for a summit on climate between the EU and the USA on Wednesday. Reinfeldt will meet president Obama today and can then present the offer that the EU nations agreed on last week.

-Conservationists rip water policy, quit state panel
-Finding Water from Outer Space
-Melting Himalayan ice prompts conflict fear

-Ecuador, Indians trade blame for bloody clashes
-Greenpeace protesters target Alberta oilsands again
-Nigeria's oil rebels name mediators

Marc Wegerif is an old school friend of mine from when I grew up in Bristol. After school he moved to South Africa and was very involved in activism there, and he now lives in Tanzania and works for Oxfam. He recently got back in touch and I sent him a copy of The Transition Handbook. Subsequently he sent me a long and thoughtful letter, with his reflections on the book, and on how it might relate to Africa. The whole question of what Transition might look like in a developing world context is something we have rarely explored at Transition Culture, and Marc has given me permission to reprint his letter here by way of initiating that discussion.

Although the SW sunshine resource is enormous and largely untapped, critics of solar energy routinely note the sun does not shine all the time. The implication is that power is needed all the time, and since the sun is not always available, solar opponents say it would be foolish to invest in generating electricity from the sun.

China’s Wide Reach in Africa
The new scramble for Africa
Congo-Kinshasa: Firms Fuelling 'Conflict Minerals' Violence, Report Says

Nigerian Peace Remains Elusive After Oil Region Truce
Obama Visits Africa's 'Oil Gulf'
West Africa: Another Stab at the 'Resource Curse'

As Iraq runs dry, a plague of snakes is unleashed
African farms becoming too hot to handle
Warming may outstrip Africa's ability to feed itself
Climate change hits China's 'poor hardest'
Learning to live with climate change will not be enough

Water stress, ocean levels to unleash 'climate exodus'
Hotter planet means more underweight babies
Large area of Africa vulnerable to climate change
Captured on camera: 50 years of climate change in the Himalayas
China alone could bring world to brink of climate calamity, claims US official

Incendiary graphic from the The Lancet shows who causes climate change (the North) and who will suffer (Africa and South Asia).

During the past 28 years, I have spent a lot of time in Kenya, where our family has a home. What I experience there is a society that does pretty well with VERY little energy, all things considering. Mind you, not 'pretty well' by any standard of the Western world. But survival - and happiness! - are pretty much possible.

Scottish greenwash: Dirty claims on clean coal
Is it selfish to have more than two children?
Dumped in Africa: Britain’s toxic waste

Astyk: Food security as a cottage industry
Industrially grown produce shows long-term nutritional decline
Zimbabwe's starving millions face halving of rations as UN cash dries up