This document presents the findings of a modelling study that examined in detail the costs and benefits of tuberculosis (TB) screening plus TB preventive treatment (TPT) in four countries – Brazil, Georgia,
More than 70 per cent of small cetaceans
Eco-Message
Moving an elephant was never meant to be easy. Obviously, the Kenya Wildlife Service's (kws's) much-publicised "single largest translocation of animals ever undertaken since Noah's Ark', comprising
Kenya, which has been trying to develop its fishing industry, recently cracked down on illegal fishing in Homa Bay and Rachuonyo districts, where small-scale commercial fishing is rampant.
Halfway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole in an archipelago called Svalbard, three enormous caverns have been blasted 130 m into the permafrost. Called the doomsday vault, it will be a Noah's Ark of food in the event of a global catastrophe. Among the world's 45,000 most important seeds stored in this Svalbard Global Seed Vault, there will be quite a bit of India too. Seeds of sorghum, pearl millet, chickpea, pigeonpea, groundnut and six small millets will be transferred by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) from its headquarters in Patencheru, near Hyderabad to this location, 1000 km from the Arctic. William Dar, Director General of ICRISAT, is at Svalbard for the opening celebrations tomorrow. He will join European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist Wangari Mathai in this global initiative. Norway is footing the $8.9-million bill for building the Arctic archipelago where, ironically, no crops grow. Secured behind an airlock door, the three airtight chambers can house duplicates of samples from the world's more than 1,400 existing seed banks. The Norwegian archipelago was selected for its inhospitable climate as well as its remote location. The seeds of wheat, maize, oats and other crops will be stored at a constant temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius, and even if the freezer system fails, the permafrost will ensure that temperatures never rise above 3.5 degrees Celsius below freezing. This project is important as some of the world's biodiversity has already disappeared, with gene vaults in both Iraq and Afghanistan destroyed by war and a seed bank in the Philippines annihilated by a typhoon. Seed banks have begun contributing: potato seeds from Peru; 30,000 samples of different beans from Colombia; 47,000 seed samples of wheat and 10,000 types of maize from Mexico and thousands of rice varieties from Philippines. Pakistan and Kenya, both wracked by serious unrest, have sent seed collections too. By the time of the inauguration on Tuesday, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault will hold some 250,000 samples, which will remain the property of their countries of origin. According to Dar, ICRISAT's participation adds a special significance to the project
In Food or Fuel, the second episode of the Future Food series, Kenyan Farmer and campaigner, Moses Shaha is cynical about ‘biofuels’, energy extracted from crop plants. He journeys through southern Kenya
This event "the 2nd Africa Food Security and Adaptation conference (AFSAC2)" is taking place on July 30 to 31, 2015. The theme this year is: Africa’s Soil the New Frontier: Re-imagining Africa Food Security
