A quarter of world population lacks safe drinking water: UN
22 March 2023 - A report issued on the eve of the first major U.N. conference on water in over 45 years says 26 percent of the world's population doesn't have access to safe drinking water and 46 percent lacks access to basic sanitation. The U.N. World Water Development Report 2023, released Tuesday [21 March], painted a stark picture of the huge gap that needs to be filled to meet U.N. goals to ensure all people have access to clean water and sanitation by 2030. (more)

UN: Many African children at risk from lack of clean water
22 March 2023 - March 22 is the United Nation's World Water Day, marked annually since 1993 to raise awareness about the pressing need for billions of people around the world to have access to clean water and sanitation. According to the UN, 1 in 4 people -- 2 billion people worldwide -- lack safe drinking water and 1.4 million people die annually of diseases related to poor water, sanitation, and hygiene. (more)

Scientists deliver 'final warning' on climate crisis: act now or it's too late
20 March 2023 - Scientists have delivered a 'final warning' on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world's leading climate scientists, set out the final part of its mammoth sixth assessment report on Monday [20 March]. The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile and runs to thousands of pages, but boiled down to one message: act now, or it will be too late. (more)

World on 'thin ice' as UN climate report gives stark warning
20 March 2023 - Humanity still has a chance, close to the last, to prevent the worst of climate change's future harms, a top United Nations panel of scientists said Monday [20 March]. But doing so requires quickly slashing nearly two-thirds of carbon pollution by 2035, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said. The United Nations chief said it more bluntly, calling for an end to new fossil fuel exploration and for rich countries to quit coal, oil, and gas by 2040. (more)

'Alarming' rate of mountain forest loss a threat to alpine wildlife
17 March 2023 - An area of mountain forest larger than the state of Texas has been lost since 2001, with the amount disappearing each year accelerating at an 'alarming' rate, a study warns. Scientists found 78m hectares (193m acres) of mountain forest have been lost across the world in the past two decades, which is more than 7 percent of all that exists. The main drivers of loss were logging, the expansion of agriculture, and wildfires. Mountains are home to more than 85 percent of the world's birds, mammals, and amphibians. (more)

Florida beaches brace for 5,000-mile blob of seaweed to deposit rotting goop
17 March 2023 - It's brown, it weighs millions of tons, it stretches over 5,000 miles and it is headed for Florida's beaches. An enormous clump of seaweed circulating the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic is set to coat beaches in a spongy goop, bringing with it a pungent odor similar to rotting eggs. The huge mass of sargassum is the latest in a series of massive blooms scientists have noticed in the Atlantic since 2011 but could be the largest yet. ...The brown morass has doubled in size every month from November to January, forming a belt wider than the continental US. It is expected to hit beaches elsewhere in Florida and along the Gulf of Mexico this summer, potentially causing problems for tourists. (more)

Global fresh water demand will outstrip supply by 40 percent by 2030, say experts
17 March 2023 - The world is facing an imminent water crisis, with demand expected to outstrip the supply of fresh water by 40 percent by the end of this decade, experts have said on the eve of a crucial UN water summit. Governments must urgently stop subsidizing the extraction and overuse of water through misdirected agricultural subsidies, and industries from mining to manufacturing must be made to overhaul their wasteful practices, according to a landmark report on the economics of water. (more)

Millions of dead fish wash up near Australian town
17 March 2023 - Residents in a regional Australian town have woken to find millions of dead fish in their river. The large-scale fish deaths were first reported on Friday morning [17 March] in the New South Wales' (NSW) town of Menindee. The state's river authority said it was a result of an ongoing heatwave affecting the Darling-Baaka river. Locals say it is the largest fish death event to hit the town, that experienced another significant mass death of fish just three years ago. ... Heatwaves have become more frequent, more intense, and last longer because of human-induced climate change. (more)