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The two tribes lived there in a plum lakeside community when the Sahara Desert, as we know it, was a lush, green country, but were separated by effects of climate change over a time line of 1,000 years.

The mystery of the lost tribes of the green Sahara has been unraveled by a joint team of archaeologists and palaeontologists who were out on a dinosaur-hunting expedition in the Ténéré Desert in present-day Niger but instead stumbled on a large, Stone Age graveyard.

Now whatever little may be known about the Kiffian and Tenerian tribes, thought to have lived in the Sahara between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago are bone harpoons, earthen pots, among other artifacts.

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By Lester R. Brown

With water shortages emerging as a constraint on food production growth, the world needs an effort to raise water productivity similar to the one that nearly tripled land productivity during the last half of the twentieth century.

Worldwide, average irrigation water productivity is now roughly 1 kilogram of grain per ton of water used. Since it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain, it is not surprising that 70 percent of world water use is devoted to irrigation. Thus, raising irrigation efficiency is central to raising water productivity overall.

Read the rest of this post at sustainablog…

This week on ZapRoot: KFC Canada tries to do chickens right with their new animal welfare plan. China’s air control results. Check out new Alternative Autos: Chevy Volt, Shelby Supercars, Prius, and more.

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With the rapid retreat of polar ice, a brave new world is being opened up to those who are willing to go take it. We’ve seen America and Russia send parties north to stake claims, and now Canada is following suit, looking to discover and tap mineral, oil and gas riches beneath the Arctic.

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the decision on Tuesday. Researchers both on the ground and in the air will be gathering data on Canada’s three northern territories: the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

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According to an old adage, necessity is the mother of invention; it forces people to find alternative ways and tools. In Zimbabwe today, devising skills to survive is the norm of daily living.

As a means to cope with erratic electricity power cuts which are undoubtedly a defining characteristic of the ongoing socio-economic crisis in Zimbabwe, many Zimbabweans living in urban areas have resorted to using the tsotso stove because of its low labour and energy saving characteristics.

Traditionally, rural as well as low-income households have always depended on fuelwood which usually chews up loads of firewood, thereby endangering the environment. Read the rest of this entry »

Ancient Egyptian pyramids and Middle Eastern ziggurats are coming alive in the 21st century technology.

A new futurist concept that encompasses green building technology and—according to the developer—can house up to a million people, will make a debut at the world stage in October.

The 2.3 square kilometer Ziggurat Project, undertaken by Timelinks, a Dubai based environmental design company, will be 100 per cent carbon neutral and will run by harnessing the power of nature setting a futuristic pace for eco-friendliness for other similar projects in the pipeline.

Borrowing from ancient ingenuity, the inhabitants won’t even have any use for a car: transport throughout the complex would be connected by an integrated 360 degree network (horizontally and vertically) so cars would be redundant. Biometrics would provide security with facial recognition technology.

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The average man living in forest-prone areas and who depends on meat from endangered apes and other wildlife for his proteins plays the role of a carrying agent for the hundreds of infectious diseases that humanity is suffering from.

Now experts are warning of the danger to humanity this lifestyle may be posing. Most of these diseases, identified in medical terms as zoonotic because of their ability to jump from animal to man, have been labeled as “emerging infectious diseases” or EIDs.

Over 60 percent of the 1,415 infectious diseases currently known to modern medicine are capable of infecting both humans and animals. Most of these diseases originated in animals and now infect people and include viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and helminths, with 175 pathogenic species associated with diseases considered to be ‘emerging’.

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The most recent scientific research suggests that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, we will cause huge and irreversible damage to the earth. Realizing the urgency to spread this message and to take the word across to each continent and to each country, 350.org took shape as a movement that is now working to spread this most important number on the planet by building a global grassroots climate movement united by a common call to action.

350 is the most important number on the Planet. This number is a safe line for our global climate and a start line for a global movement is how 350.org begins to explain the importance of 350.

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100 Million Trees Are Cut Each Year to Generate Junk Mail
A report by ForestEthics, the nonprofit environmental organization whose mission is to protect endangered forests, has made a very startling revelation: that there are 100 million green reasons why junk mail are an annoying intrusion.

Not that the 100 billion pieces of junk mail Americans receive each year are irksome enough or that the emissions of junk mail are equal to those of over nine million cars or 51 million tons of greenhouse gases.

The group estimates that every year, more than 100 million trees are cut down to make junk mail - the equivalent of clear-cutting all of Rocky Mountain National Park every 4 months!

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A fleet of scientists, business leaders, and policy makers have convened at the 2008 World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden for the past week to exchange views on the world water crisis and promote initiatives to build a clean and healthy world.

Organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute, the conference this year focuses on sanitation and hygiene issues related to water, which compliments the United Nations’ 2008 International Year of Sanitation theme.

“Sanitation is one of the biggest scandals of all times,” Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, who heads the UN Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, was quoted in an article by news agency Agence France-Presse. “It’s something that we have to put on our radar screen. Some 7,500 people die every day due to this lack of sanitation,” he added.

According to the UN, 2.6 billion people around the world lack access to adequate sanitation, while half the world’s population lacks access to clean water. Consequently, citizens in underdeveloped countries experience premature deaths, illness, a degradation of living quarters and damage to the environment and local economies at alarming rates. Combined with the effects of global warming and the world water crisis, this creates cause for alarm.

A goal of World Water Week is to encourage the 2,500 international conference attendees to strategize ways to advance best practices, scientific understanding, and policy making processes related to water, health, poverty, and the environment.

Using preventive medicine, building sustainable cities, changing human behaviors, and comprehending sanitation’s link to global warming are other items highlighted during the week.

Another honorable mention for WWW is its commitment to arranging an environmentally responsible conference; using less bottled water, promoting carbon off-setting, recycling, providing organic and fair trade food, and supporting eco-hotels are all part of the conference’s plan to bring the issues home.

More information on conference topics:
WWW press releases

Photo: Stockholm International Water Institute