Shimla: Scientists are trying to protect a traditional rice variety that is on the verge of extinction in Himachal Pradesh. The red rice is more disease-resistant and hardier than strains cultivated commercially over most of India and can lend that through cross-breeding.\"We are trying to provide legal protection to the vanishing red rice variety, grown in the state for centuries, by bringing it under the ambit of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers\ Rights Act 2001,\" R.P. Kaushik, director of the rice research centre at CSK HP Krishi Vishvavidyalaya, an agricultural university based in Palampur. told IANS.At present, most of the red rice is grown in around 1,000 hectares on the banks of the Pabbar, a tributary of the Yamuna river, in Chhohara Valley in upper Shimla. It is also cultivated in some stretches of Kullu and Kangra districts.

Red rice can be grown in flooded fields where many varieties would rot. Apart from that, agriculture experts are keen to conserve all traditional crop strains that can be used in case the more widely cultivated varieties develop a disease they cannot cope with.However, red rice production is declining in recent years as most farmers in the state have turned to lucrative cash crops.Kaushik said legal protection to the rice variety would also protect the rights of the farmers and enable them and others to market the product around the world.\"If the red rice is brought under the ambit of the act, it would protect the rights of the farmers in respect of their contribution towards conserving, improving and making available plant genetic resources for the development of new plant varieties,\" he said.Under the act, a plant breeder wanting to use the farmers\ varieties to derive another will have to first seek the permission of the farmers. \"With the registration, due benefits could be extended to the local farmers,\" Kaushik said.Added Shiv Singh, a farmer from Chirgaon in Shimla district: \"We have been planting the red rice for decades. Now, its cultivation has declined in the region due to availability of lucrative cash crops. But we are still cultivating it because of its religious and cultural relevance.\"

According to Singh, red rice now sells for Rs.50-70 a kilogram in the market.Kaushik attributed the decline in red rice production to the Green Revolution.\"During the Green Revolution, most of the traditional varieties of the crops were wiped out. Some of the farmers in remote areas are still growing traditional crops because of their medicinal and religious importance and red rice is one of them,\" he said.The variety is also grown in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. But in the hills, it is grown in a totally organic manner.The university is also trying to get the red rice registered under the Geographical Indications (GI) of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act , 1999.

\"The registration of the red rice under the GI Act would enable the farmers and others in marketing their product around the world,\" Kaushik said.\"The certification of the product by a department of the central government will stamp the genuineness and origin of the product. This will, of course, help boost its exports too. The ultimate gainer will be the growers.\"
The GI registration is a community patent in which instead of an individual, the entire community of producers and other stakeholders of a particular area are benefited.


FOREST BIODIVERSITY ; ECOSYSTEM APPROACH

 REDD shouldn\t neglect biodiversity say scientists Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com
July 30, 2009

Schemes to mitigate climate change by protecting tropical forests must take into account biodiversity conservation, said two leading scientific organizations at the conclusion of a four day meeting in Marburg, Germany.
The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) and the Society for Tropical Ecology (GTOE) jointly issued a \"Marburg Declaration\" highlighting the dangers of excluding biodiversity from emissions mitigation strategies like the proposed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanism, which could direct billions of dollars annually to forest conservation initiatives. The risk is that REDD developers may focus efforts where land is the cheapest and most carbon-dense, leaving other biologically-rich ecosystems exposed to degradation or destruction. In some cases REDD could even bias conservation decisions against low-carbon ecosystems that are important reservoirs of plant and animal life.

\"If we\re going to limit harmful climate change, we simply must reduce the rampant destruction of tropical forests, which spews 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year,\" said William Laurance, former ATBC president and a professor at James Cook University in Australia. \"But it\s not enough just to reduce carbon emissions—we also have to save imperiled species.\"The most critically endangered species are not in Amazonia,\" said Priya Davidar, current ATBC president and a professor at the University of Pondicherry in India. \"They\re in the last surviving scraps of forest in places like the Philippines, Magagascar, India, West Africa, and the Andean Mountains of South America. These places are biodiversity hotspots—final refuges for thousands of endangered plants and animals.\"

\"There\s enormous potential to help protect vanishing forests with carbon money, but if we\re not careful we could squander our chance to save critically endangered wildlife.\" Due to the technical and financial hurdles to establishing a qualifying project, REDD currently favors large projects over small community-based initiatives. The implication is that forest fragments — often the last vestiges of forest in species-rich regions such as Madagascar, West Africa, the Brazilian Atlantic forest, and small islands — are less likely to see benefits from the mechanism. Although there have been some efforts to integrate these forest islands into broader projects, but success is by no means assured. Similarly, while there are emerging standards, like the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Project Design Standards, for forest carbon projects, it is still unclear whether biodiversity conservation be a key priority during negotiations of the post-Kyoto climate treaty. Signees of the \"Marburg Declaration\" want to make it one. Manfred Niekisch, president of the GTOE and director of the Frankfurt Zoo in Germany, says that companies and countries should also be encouraged to consider biodiversity when supporting forest carbon initiatives.

\"We urge all nations and corporations to invest in carbon funds to help preserve disappearing forests,\" said Manfred Niekisch, president of the GTOE and director of the Frankfurt Zoo in Germany. \"But when you do so, pay a little extra so you\re protecting the most imperiled habitats. That way we can slow global warming and also save some of the most amazing and imperiled wildlife on earth.\"

 THE MARBURG DECLARATION

The Urgent Need to Maximize Biodiversity Conservation in Forest Carbon-Trading

A joint communiqué of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) and the Society for Tropical Ecology (GTÖ) during their joint annual meeting in Marburg, Germany, 26-29 July 2009 WHEREAS, tropical forests around the world are being destroyed at an alarming pace, currently averaging 10-15 million hectares per year—roughly equivalent to 50 football fields per minute; and WHEREAS, tropical forests are among the biologically-richest ecosystems on earth, sustaining at least half of all plant, animal, and fungal species in an area spanning just 7% of the planet\s land surface; and WHEREAS, tropical forests perform an array of vital ecosystem services, such as storing large stocks of carbon in their living biomass and soils, reducing soil erosion and downstream flooding, and copiously releasing water vapor into the atmosphere that creates clouds and promotes life-giving rainfall; and

WHEREAS, tropical forests are home to an estimated 50 million indigenous forest peoples and provide livelihoods for large numbers of rural communities; and WHEREAS, the rapid destruction of tropical forests produces about 20% of all human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases—the equivalent of 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually—which is a serious contributor to global warming; and WHEREAS, tropical deforestation further promotes global warming by reducing the formation of clouds, which reflect much solar radiation away from earth; and WHEREAS, current policy initiatives designed to use international carbon-trading to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation of tropical forests—termed \REDD\—are rapidly gaining momentum and deserve strong political and public support; and WHEREAS, at present rates of growth, international funding for REDD could soon dwarf all other spending for tropical conservation; and WHEREAS, as presently structured, REDD funding will be focused largely on protecting areas that are most cost-effective for reducing carbon emissions, such as countries that have high deforestation rates and large expanses of relatively inexpensive forest land; and WHEREAS, from a biodiversity-conservation perspective, the most urgent areas to protect are biodiversity \hotspots\—the last vestiges of forest in species-rich regions such as Madagascar, the tropical Andes, the island nations of Southeast Asia, Indochina, West Africa, the Brazilian Atlantic forest, and many smaller tropical islands—that contain large concentrations of endangered species threatened with imminent extinction; and WHEREAS, many of the recognized biodiversity hotspots occur in areas that have been climatically stable over long periods of time, and if protected might become important refugia for wildlife facing serious climatic change in the future; and

WHEREAS, despite its potentially huge benefits for biodiversity protection, the costs of implementing REDD will often be greater in biodiversity hotspots because these forests are limited in extent and development and human-population pressures there are often intense; THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, the world\s largest scientific organization devoted to the study, protection, and wise use of tropical forests, and its sister European organization, the Society for Tropical Ecology, jointly urge the following:

1) That efforts to maximize the benefits of REDD for biodiversity conservation be a key priority during international negotiations of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, especially during its forthcoming meeting of the Convention of Parties in Copenhagen, Denmark; and

2) That nongovernmental conservation groups promote private funding strategies to increase the cost-competitiveness of carbon credits from the world\s most imperiled forests and ecosystems; and

3) That REDD initiatives also focus on reducing other immediate threats to tropical biodiversity beyond deforestation, such as overhunting, fires, and unsustainable logging; and

4) That efforts to promote biodiversity conservation via REDD are done in a manner that is sensitive to the needs of indigenous and local communities; and

5) That cost-benefit analyses be urgently conducted to help develop optimal strategies to simultaneously maximize the benefits of REDD for both reducing carbon emissions and protecting endangered biodiversity; and

6) That public and private donors to REDD schemes stipulate wherever possible that their funds are to be used not only to reduce carbon emissions, but also to help halt or mitigate threats to the most endangered forests and species on earth.

THE GENERAL

Magna Carta and Anne Frank diaries among items joining UNESCO register

Anne Frank\s first diary

30 July 2009 – The diaries of Holocaust victim Anne Frank, the Magna Carta and the royal archives of Madagascar and Thailand are among 35 items of documentary heritage that are being added to a United Nations register designed to preserve them for future generations. Koïchiro Matsuura, the Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, announced today that these items will be inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register after they were recommended by a panel of international experts who have gathered in Barbados this week. There are now 193 inscriptions on the register, which began in 1997 and aims to preserve and promote documentary heritage that is considered to be of global significance and often endangered. The newly inscribed items include the Magna Carta, the English legal charter from 1215 that is considered highly influential to the development of liberty, law and democracy worldwide, and the diaries of Anne Frank, the Jewish schoolgirl whose account of her family’s daily life in hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam before she was killed is now one of the world’s most read books.

This year’s additions also include the royal archives of Thailand and Madagascar; the so-called Archives of Terror from Paraguay, which document police repression during 35 years of dictatorship that ended in 1989; the archives of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the UN; and the archives of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia, which contain photographs and other documents showing the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Another archive joining the list is that of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which began operations in 1949. One of the newest items to be inscribed is the collection of documents recording the 600-kilometre-long peaceful human chain that formed in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1989 to press the case for freedom in those Baltic countries, which were then part of the Soviet Union.

Other additions include more than 34,000 Vietnamese woodblocks depicting the official literature and history of the country; the collected works of Canadian animator Norman McLaren; Song of the Nibelungs, the heroic poem from mediaeval Germany; a registry of slaves of the British Caribbean from the early 19th century; and an encyclopaedia of medical knowledge and treatment techniques compiled in Korea in 1613. The other items to be inscribed either come from or relate to the following countries and territories: Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Finland, France, Hungary, Iceland, Iran, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherland Antilles, Poland, Russia, Saint Lucia, Spain, Ukraine and the United States. Mr. Matsuura also announced that this year’s UNESCO/Jikji Prize has been awarded to the National Archives of Malaysia in recognition of its outreach, educational and regional

HUMAN AND HEALTH

One-shot vaccine offers typhoid hope

[NEW DELHI] A cheap single-shot vaccine can protect young children from typhoid, new research shows.The vaccine, originally developed by Indian company Biological E in 1999, costs as little as 50 US cents per dose.It can protect 80 per cent of children aged less than five years, according to the study, which was conducted in a Kolkata slum where the disease is prevalent.The WHO recommends two anti-typhoid vaccines. One is an oral vaccine, Ty21a, a capsule that must be taken three times. The second is an injectable vaccine that can be given as a single shot. But despite WHO recommendations, the injection has not been widely used in public-health programmes in developing countries because of doubts over its effectiveness.In addition, \"many developing countries lack sufficient surveillance infrastructure to document burden, and are therefore unaware of the magnitude of the problem or even the specific highest-risk age groups\", Abdullah Brooks, head of the infectious diseases unit at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh, told SciDev.Net. \"Thus, there is no demand from the public or policymakers.\"Typhoid is a deadly bacterial infection, endemic in the developing world, that is spread through contaminated water and food. Caused by the bacterium Salmonella enterica Typhi, it causes up to 600,000 deaths per year. In most countries, infections peak in school-age children, but in the urban slums of South Asia they tend to peak in pre-school children.The study, conducted by the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) in Kolkata and the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, was carried out on more than 37,000 children aged between two and 18 years. The initial study was done in 2004, and subjects were followed up for two years.

The protection rate of 80 per cent in children under five years old falls to 56 per cent in children aged 5-14, and 46 per cent in older children.An additional benefit is \herd protection\ — 44 per cent of unvaccinated people living close to vaccinated people were protected as the spread of infection stopped. \"This is important new information,\" said Myron Levine, director of the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland, in an accompanying commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). It \"further bolsters the case for school-based immunisation to control endemic typhoid, since one might expect some indirect protection of pre-school children as well\".

MARINE AND COASTAL BIODIVERSITY

Les bancs de poisson en danger, mais peuvent être sauvés

Les zones de pêche de la planète sont en danger mais elles peuvent être sauvées si les autorités agissent pour réguler la pêche commerciale, indique une vaste étude publiée jeudi aux États-Unis.Selon cette enquête qui paraît dans le journal Science, 63% des réserves estimées de poissons dans le monde nécessitent d\être reconstituées pour éviter la disparition d\espèces vulnérables.«Dans toutes les régions, nous constatons toujours une tendance inquiétante vers un effondrement croissant des stocks», affirme le principal auteur de l\étude Boris Worm de l\université canadienne Dalhousie.

«Mais cette étude montre que nos océans ne sont pas une cause perdue», ajoute-t-il. En effet, selon l\étude, des progrès importants ont été faits dans plusieurs régions aux Etats-Unis, en Islande ou encore en Nouvelle-Zélande pour reconstituer des stocks dévastés par des décennies de surpêche en mettant en oeuvre des stratégies de gestion prudentes.La moitié des 10 zones de pêche examinées dans le cadre de l\étude sont ainsi parvenues à diminuer le taux d\exploitation (la proportion de poissons pêchés) principale cause de raréfaction ou de disparition des poissons.«Cela veut dire que la gestion dans ces zones ouvre la voie à un rétablissement écologique et économique», explique Boris Worm. «Ce n\est qu\un début, mais cela me donne l\espoir que nous avons la capacité de maîtriser la surpêche».M. Worm a néanmoins souligné que l\analyse, la plus vaste à ce stade, avait porté principalement sur les zones de pêche de pays développés où sont recueillies des données à long terme sur l\abondance de poissons.Cela veut dire que le risque d\effondrement des stocks pourrait être encore plus grand dans les autres zones.Malgré tout, l\étude révèle que certaines stratégies ont permis de protéger et de rétablir les réserves de pêche.

L\usage de filets permettant aux petits poissons de s\échapper et la fermeture de certaines zones à la pêche ont par exemple permis au Kenya d\augmenter la taille et la quantité de poissons disponibles et d\accroître les revenus de la pêche.Dans de nombreuses zones, toutefois, le taux de capture devra être réduit de moitié pour préserver les réserves de poissons, a expliqué M. Worm lors d\une conférence de presse par téléphone.L\étude est publiée dans un numéro spécial de Science dédié à l\écologie.Dans une autre étude, des chercheurs ont montré que la restauration écologique sur terre pouvait renverser certains effets -mais pas tous- des dégradations causées par l\homme. Des chercheurs espagnols et britanniques ont analysé 89 bilans de tentatives de restauration dans une grande variété d\écosystèmes du monde.

Ils ont découvert que la biodiversité avait été améliorée en moyenne de 44%, et que des éléments utiles à l\écosystème comme l\eau, les sols ou le stockage de carbone avaient connu une amélioration de 25%.«Néanmoins, les valeurs des deux sont restées inférieures (de 14 et 20% respectivement) dans les zones restaurées par rapport aux écosystèmes intactes de référence», a indiqué Jose Rey Benayas de l\univeiisté espagnole Alcala, principal auteur de l\étude.

There is fresh hope that the world\s depleted fisheries can be saved from collapse, says a team of researchers. 

 PROTECTED AREAS IN SITU CONSERVATION

 New Panda Preserves Suggested

Liu Jin/AFP-Getty Images A giant panda at the China Conservation and Research Center in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan, the epicenter of the May 12, 2008, earthquake.The magnitude 7.9 earthquake that killed more than 70,000 people in Sichuan Province in China last year also struck the world’s remaining wild populations of giant pandas. Scientists knew the impact on the animals’ habitat was severe, but most of the attention was on the immediate damage at one protected area, the Wolong National Nature Reserve, which is home to about 150 of the country’s roughly 1,500 pandas as well as a breeding center.

Now a study using satellite imagery has put some hard numbers on the quake’s long-term impact. In one of the hardest hit areas, the southern part of the Minshan Mountains, about one-quarter of the panda habitat, or 135 square miles, was destroyed by mudflows and landslides. The flows also had the effect of fragmenting much of the remaining habitat into smaller patches.In a paper in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Weihua Xu and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences detail the destruction in South Minshan, which is home to about 35 pandas and contains four reserves. They suggest that several new protected areas be created in the region, and that new corridors between fragmented areas be established “to ensure the long-term sustainability of the giant panda population and habitat.”

Dr. Xu and his colleagues used satellite images from before the quake, supplemented by fieldwork, to identify areas of suitable panda habitat — forested, not-too-steep mountain land at elevations between 3,300 and 12,500 feet, with plenty of pandas’ staple food, bamboo. Then they compared post-quake satellite images to determine where mud- and landslides had obliterated the habitat. They found that habitat in the region was reduced from about 590 square miles to 455.Fragmentation of panda habitat has long been a problem in China, but in the past it was mostly due to deforestation and other human activities. In an email message, Dr. Xu said that while the scope of the new fragmentation was difficult to quantify, “the isolation of pandas got worse after the earthquake.”

The researchers recommended that three new protected areas, totaling about 120 square miles of habitat, be established, along with two small corridors to allow pandas to move between the old and new reserves. They also suggested that because most of the intact panda habitat is now at lower elevations, where the possibilities of human disturbance are greater, that the government consider relocating some people who live in scattered plots throughout the protected areas.Dr. Xu said he thought there was a “high possibility” that some of the recommendations would be adopted, and noted that some of his team’s habitat analysis had already been used in planning for reconstruction of the region. But relocating people, he noted, “is a big issue which needs further analysis.”

Alaska Natives try to halt proposed Pebble Mine

A coalition of village corporations and others files suit to put an end to drilling and exploration for a copper and gold mine above Bristol Bay -- a sanctuary for wild salmon.

By Kim Murphy
July 31, 2009

Reporting from Seattle -- It has always been a match made in peril: One of the biggest copper and gold mines in the world perched in the watershed above Bristol Bay, Alaska -- the last, best refuge for millions of Pacific wild salmon.The proposed Pebble Mine would dwarf all the others operating in the Alaskan wilderness and generate up to 9 billion tons of ore, most of which would have to be sifted and disposed of near the ponds and streams that feed into Bristol Bay.also would generate hundreds of jobs in troubled southwestern Alaska, and as much as $300-billion worth of copper and gold.

In an attempt to head off the project before it gets too big to stop, a coalition of Alaska Native village corporations and others filed suit this week in Anchorage, charging that the state was violating its Constitution by allowing drilling and other exploration to proceed without full environmental review.The mine would cover 15 square miles, with a 1,600-foot-deep open pit stretching across two square miles. Early development proposals have called for holding the hazardous tailing behind massive dams -- one 740 feet high, the other 450 feet high. The exact plans won\t be known until 2010 or 2011, when Pebble Partnership submits its development permit applications to the state.

Conservationists worry that the millions of dollars spent on exploration while officials conduct public hearings and await the environmental impact statement will give the project political momentum that even Alaska\s powerful fishing industry would find hard to fight.The lawsuit invoked an article of the Alaska Constitution that requires hearings and analyses to determine whether state-owned natural resources are being managed for the common public good. Specifically, the suit argued that Alaska should conduct studies to determine whether exploration at the mine was affecting other users of public land, water, fish and wildlife.

\"This kind of activity is being treated . . . as if there\s some guy out there with a mule, a pick ax and a shovel turning over a little bit of rock and looking for a nugget. But this is in essence industrial-scale activity,\" Steve Cotton, executive director of the public interest law firm Trustees for Alaska, said at a news conference in Anchorage.Representatives of Nunamta Aulukestai, a coalition of eight native village corporations that filed the lawsuit, said they already were seeing effects from the exploration. Fewer caribou linger in the area, they said in court papers, and waste from exploratory drilling has trickled into streams and ponds.\"What we would like to see right now is for everyone to take a step back and look at all the potential negative impacts associated with a development this large in an area that\s incredibly sensitive and extremely important to a lot of people in this state,\" said Tim Bristol, director of Trout Unlimited in Alaska, which has opposed the mine but is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit.\"You have a giant open pit proposed; you\re going to have billions of tons of waste rock, 100 miles of access road; a deep-water port is going to have to be constructed; there\s going to have to be a source of power, incredible amounts of water to charge the system and store the waste; and you have to think about how to treat that waste in perpetuity . . . in a region that right now is sort of this wild salmon wilderness,\" Bristol said.Trout Unlimited and other conservationists back legislation that would require a separate set of reviews for the Pebble Mine, given its proximity to Bristol Bay, which generates a third of the state\s commercial fishing revenue. The state Legislature won\t have a chance to act on that until it re-convenes in January.

State officials have said that plenty of studies would be done once Pebble applies for its development permits. At the moment, they added, exploration is going on at hundreds of mining claims, large and small, across the state, and Alaska law does not require formal studies or public hearings.\"There are 400 to 500 of these in place, statewide, at any one time,\" said Tom Crafford, mining coordinator at the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. \"Absolutely, once a project applies for development permits, then that triggers a whole host of permit requirements, public notice requirements,comment periods, both state and federal.\"Pebble Partnership Chief Executive John Shively said there already has been full inspection by state and federal agencies, including the state Department of Fish and Game and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. \"So it\s not like there\s no oversight,\" he told KTUU-TV in Anchorage, \"or that the public doesn\t have the ability to look at what our program is and to go tell the agencies what they think about it.\"

SUSTANABLE DEVELOPMENT / MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

New, cheaper method for extracting clean water

A mobile pilot system could make preliminary feasibility tests for desalination easier and cheaper for developing countries.The system — known as \M3\ — can test whether fresh water can be extracted from almost any water source, say a team from the US-based University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).It harnesses a popular desalination technique known as reverse osmosis, a filtration process that forces water through a membrane, filtering out impurities.Desalination is often costly but the M3 system can cut costs. Normally, a new static pilot plant must be constructed at every potential water source both to test water quality and to assess strategies for pretreating water.

Pretreatment is needed to remove impurities before they pollute the reverse osmosis membranes. These are costly to clean and replacing them means shutting down desalination plants, Nidal Hilal, director of the Centre for Clean Water Technologies at Nottingham University, United Kingdom, told SciDev.Net.M3\s flexible and portable nature means that a country interested in desalination could buy one system and use it to test all potential water sources, says UCLA team leader Yoram Cohen saving time as well as money. Deepak Kachru, of Aquatech International\s Indian subsidiary, welcomes the system: \"I am sure a mobile reverse osmosis system would be useful, especially for a system provider like Aquatech, which requires the same tests to be conducted at multiple sites.\"Adel Sharif, director of the Center for Osmosis Research and Applications at the University of Surrey, UK, told SciDev.Net: \"Mobile pilot plants are absolutely useful in developing countries wanting to use reverse osmosis to test water quality.\"

\"The M3 can fit into a standard cargo van with little effort,\" says Cohen. \"It can be used for a wide-range of brackish [a mixture of seawater and fresh water] as well as sea water desalination. It produces up to about 5,000 gallons of water from seawater or up to about 8,000 gallons from brackish water. This means that the M3 can readily be used in emergency situations.\"But Vincent Casey, technical support manager at international nongovernmental organization WaterAid, says that the technology isn\t feasible for communities WaterAid works with. He said WaterAid doesn\t usually suggest reverse osmosis because it is costly, needs pre-treatment, spare parts are hard to get locally, and plants needs expertise for maintenance. Also, it doesn\t usually address the issue of bringing water closer to the home.Nevertheless, Cohen and his team \"absolutely\" hope that when the M3 becomes commercially available it will be affordable by developing countries. He adds: \"Our main goal is to make the process smart so that it can be used even in areas where there is little expertise.\"

UN to help Angola achieve ‘water for all’

30 July 2009 – The United Nations has joined forces with the Angolan Government to achieve universal access to water to boost health and curb poverty in the Southern African nation. Under the “Water for All” scheme – also known as the Joint UN Programme on Water and Sanitation – that was launched last week in the capital, Luanda, Angola has committed to providing water for 80 per cent of urban and 50 per cent of rural dwellers by 2012, with targets raised to 100 per cent and 80 per cent, respectively, by 2020. The multi-year programme is a joint initiative of the Government, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) and the non-governmental organization Institute of Medicine (IOM). Clean, piped water is prohibitively expensive for many Angolan families, forcing them to rely on unsafe water, which, along with poor sanitary conditions, contributes to nearly 90 per cent of deaths from diarrhea. UNICEF has underscored children’s right to water and a clean environment, as enshrined ini the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

At the launch of the new initiative, Jocelline Bazile-Finley, UN Resident Coordinator, said that it will help Angola reach the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on ensuring environmental sustainability and “will also contribute to reducing poverty.” Some 120,000 people are set to benefit directly from the initiative, funded by the Spanish Government, while 400,000 others are expected to impacted positively.