AdvanceAid

admin May 6th, 2011

Two stories published today give different halves of the same picture.  In Western Tanzania 3,500 people are made homeless by what are described as ‘devastating’ floods.   Meanwhile from Bonn in Germany comes the news that none of the world’s rich countries have met a May 1st deadline for outlining how they will help developing countries combat climate change.

In fact, two countries did respond by the May 1st deadline set up at last year’s Cancun COP meeting – Russia and Ukraine.  But they both wrote in to say that they did not feel obliged to contribute under the deal under which the rich countries would provide almost $30 billion in initial “fast-start” climate funds from 2010-12.
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Tags: Cancun, Climate change, Copenhagen, Floods, natural disasters, Plan International, Russia, Tanzania, Ukraine, UNFCCC

• East Africa
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admin March 2nd, 2011

DFID yesterday announced the results of its bilateral aid programme and the decision that has been made is that it will be focussing its money on 27 countries, many of them in East Africa.  The review says that it wants to target support “where it will make the biggest difference and where the need is greatest”.

These 27 countries, according to DFID, account for three quarters of global maternal mortality and nearly three quarters of global malaria deaths.  And seventeen of them are in Africa: Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda , Zambia and Zimbabwe.
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Tags: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, DFID, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Russia, Rwanda, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe

• East Africa , Great Lakes , News , Southern Africa , West Africa
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admin February 15th, 2011

Sometimes it does seem that the link between global warming and actual climate change is hard to establish.  We know from the massive evidence of the scientific literature that the earth is warming.  We know from our own experience that the climate is changing, but tying the two together can be hard.

But now Nature Climate Change has reported on an academic study that shows that spikes in Indian Ocean sea-surface temperature have changed the region’s weather patterns and triggered more frequent droughts in East Africa in recent decades.
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Tags: Climate change, Drought, Ethiopia, Floods, Global warming, Kenya, natural disasters, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda

• East Africa
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admin July 29th, 2010

Opinion is growing that a La Niña phenomenon has officially arrived and this means that disaster response teams probably need to brace themselves for heavier monsoons, bigger and more frequent hurricanes, and angrier cyclones.

“There is global consensus that we are at the beginning of a La Niña, but we cannot pronounce the intensity of the event yet – we have to wait for it to evolve,” Rupa Kumar Kolli, Chief of the World Climate Applications and Services Division at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) told IRIN News.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Climate change, DRC, Floods, IDPs, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Mozambique, NASA, Pakistan, Red Crescent, Red Cross, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, WMO

• Americas , East Africa , Great Lakes , Latin America , North Africa , South Asia , South East Asia , Southern Africa
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admin April 29th, 2010

As a world, we rely massively on two liquids – oil and water.  Wars have already been fought over diminishing supplies of the one and it will not be long before wars are fought over the diminishing supply of the other.  And whilst it is relatively easy to see how we could replace oil – renewable energy sources, principally solar, changes in economic patterns, the death of globalisation – it is impossible to replace water.

Cue a row that has broken out over the ‘rights’ to the water that flows down the Nile.  River basins are one of the planet’s major communal assets – one of the great Commons, like the air – and also politically one of the most fraught.
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Tags: Congo Republic, DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nile, Ruaha, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambezi

• East Africa , North Africa
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