Cameroon Dam Could Collapse in 10 Years

Reuters -- A natural dam holding back the water of Cameroon's Lake Nyos, where hundreds were killed in a 1986 poison gas disaster, is not solid and could collapse in a decade, putting thousands at risk, United Nations experts said.

After a three-day inspection, Olaf Van Duin and Nisa Nurmohamed of the Netherlands Ministry of Transport and Public Works reported weaknesses in the volcanic rock barrier at the lip of the lake in northwest Cameroon.

They confirmed surveyors' warnings that erosion has been rapidly undermining the dam at Lake Nyos, where a cloud of carbon dioxide that had built up in the water escaped in August 1986, killing 1,800 people in surrounding villages.

"We've seen that the dam structure is not safe ... actually we expect it to breach within 10 to 20 years," Van Duin told Reuters in Yaounde late on Tuesday.

Geologists say that if the dam were to break, it could send a wall of water downhill through Cameroon and into neighbouring Nigeria, submerging an estimated 10,000 people as well as animals and crops.

It might also release another cloud of poison gas, which is stored in the lake's deeper layers.

Van Duin and Nurmohamed said fractures, cracks and holes were visible in the dam structure. Repeated landslides had torn away rock and soil from its outer side and soil had also been eroded from the lake side of the dam, causing cave-ins.

"We are concerned that in time it is going to collapse," Nurmohamed said.

The U.N. experts' visit followed debate among scientists in Cameroon about the timeframe for an eventual collapse of the dam. While some say it could happen at any moment, especially if a volcanic tremor occurs, others argue it will take longer.

Van Duin and Nurmohamed, who will report their findings to the Cameroon government and the U.N. Development Programme, recommended that the easiest and cheapest way to make the dam safer would be to reduce water pressure by lowering the water level by about 20 meters.

This could be done by installing giant pipes to pump water out of the lake.

Building a new artificial dam to strengthen the natural barrier could take a long time and be costly, the experts said.

Efforts have been made to drain carbon dioxide from the lake but scientists say more work needs to be done to reinforce the dam and accelerate the degassing. Cameroon officials say a lack of money has delayed progress.

Scientists say Lake Nyos is one of only three lakes in the world known to be saturated with carbon dioxide -- along with Lake Monoun, also in Cameroon, and Lake Kivu on Rwanda's border with Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Sharon Inaugurates UJC Project

Akron Jewish News -- Ariel Sharon endorsed a United Jewish Communities effort to bring the remaining Jews of Ethiopia to Israel. The Israeli prime minister helped launch Operation Promise in a Sept. 16 meeting with UJC leaders and supporters. “I believe this must be a joint effort of Israel and the Jewish world,” Sharon said. “It is our duty, and so it is your duty.” The program aims to raise $160 million to aid the emigration of Ethiopian Jews and the mainstreaming of Ethiopians already in Israel, as well as provide assistance to struggling elderly Jews in the former Soviet Union and help strengthen Jewish identity among young Jews there. The initiative is supplemental to the regular federation campaign.

Ethiopian Opposition Cancels Rally, Blames Govt

Reuters -- Ethiopia's two main opposition parties on Thursday said the government forced them to call off post-election protest rallies planned for the weekend, in violation of their constitutional rights.

The United Ethiopian Democratic Front (UEDF) and Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) had planned to call supporters out on Sunday to protest the results of a May 15 parliamentary election.

Allegations of fraud in the election, which was won by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), prompted street protests that led police to shoot dead 36 people in July.

"The government and the ruling party, acting above the law and violating the country's constitution, have forbidden us to hold a peaceful protest rally," UEDF Chairman Beyene Petros said at a press conference jointly held with the CUD.

Meles said earlier this week that the planned rally by opposition parties "was part of a plot to incite violence and topple the government."

The opposition also said a total of 859 of their members have been arrested this week.

Information Minister Bereket Simon confirmed that armed opposition members had been arrested but declined to give a total number. Earlier this week, police said they had arrested 43 armed opposition members.

Bereket said the government recognises the rights of citizens to hold peaceful demonstrations.

"It is public knowledge that opposition parties have called waves of demonstrations across the country on October 2, to undermine law and order and seize political power in an unconstitutional manner," he said.

Yacob Haile Mariam, a CUD official, rejected the government's accusation: "We have confirmed time and again that we have no intention to overthrow the government violently."

Yacob accused the government of harassing, beating and imprisoning opposition supporters throughout the country, echoing complaints from the campaign, the polls and their aftermath.

International observers broadly endorsed the official results of the polls, which gave Meles' ruling party the victory, but noted some irregularities during the vote.

It was only the second real multi-party poll in sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous nation.

Ethiopian Children Cannot Go to School in Or Yehuda While Politicians Argue

Haaretz -- Six-year-old Adiso Dasa, who immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia three years ago, did not start school on Thursday. Rather than beginning first grade, he stayed home because of an order given by Or Yehuda Mayor Yitzhak Bokovza barring 50 children of Ethiopian immigrant families from registering in local schools.

The families all immigrated within the past three years, and until a few months ago they lived in absorption centers around the country, where they were given a governmental grant to purchase an apartment. Many of the families chose to move to Or Yehuda, where they believed they could integrate into Israeli society, find jobs and make a decent living. But sometimes dreams are dashed.

In Or Yehuda, it appears, the immigrants received a cold welcome. Mayor Bokovza is angry at state authorities, which, he said, do not allow "controlled absorption of immigrants" and allow large numbers of immigrants to end up in the same city, creating "ghettos." Some 1.5 percent of Or Yehuda residents are Ethiopian, according to Bokovza. "If this situation continues, in two years they will be 4 percent," he said.

Because of his actions, the State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss called on Bokovza to allow the students into the city's education system immediately. Bokovza will come today to a meeting of the Knesset State Control Committee, where he said he would hand down an "indictment" against the State of Israel for its conduct regarding immigrant absorption.

Adiso has lived for three years with his family in an absorption center in the Jerusalem area. Two months ago his family moved to Or Yehuda. Over the summer, his parents went to the municipality's education department to register him for class. "They told us the mayor has not yet decided what to do. They didn't tell us where to go. Now my brother is sitting at home, doing nothing. He is very disappointed by the entire situation," said Rahel, Adiso's older sister, on Friday.

Ethiopian Immigrants Association chair Adiso Masala had some words for Bokovza: "If citizens of Israel want to move from one community to another, they can do so freely; we're a democracy. I discovered that this man has no desire to absorb immigrant families. I now call on the government ministries to forbid mayors from denying immigrants the right to be absorbed in their cities, because that would be a dangerous precedent," he said.

Masala also blasted Education Minister Limor Livnat: "I heard her say Thursday that the school year opened with no hitches. Dozens of Ethiopian students who aren't in school is not a hitch?" he asked.

One person has stepped in to propose a solution - Ramat Hasharon Mayor Yitzhak Rochberger, who has already informed the Education Ministry that he has agreed to take dozens of Ethiopian pupils from Or Yehuda into his city's education system and will even offer busing services to the children. "It is not right that someone who doesn't send his kids to school risks being shown an arrest warrant, but a mayor is exempt from this. Because of his refusal 50 kids are on the street. I think Bokovza should be presented with 50 arrest warrants, one for each child who was left outside the school gates," Rochberger said.

Bokovza is convinced that he is only saying out loud what many other local authority heads only think, but prefer not to say so as not to be accused of "racist behavior." "When someone is ready to fight, he gets called racist. I am fighting the State of Israel, not Ethiopians. I'm actually protecting them. The State of Israel is sending them randomly to all sorts of places, and causing them to concentrate in certain places. The process could continue, and it should be stopped. Like in a healing process, sometimes you have to cut into the flesh. The sight of dozens of kids who aren't in school is also distressing for me to witness. Today I will go to the State Control Committee and accuse the government ministries of abandoning certain populations and segregating strong populations from weaker ones," he said.

Ethiopia to Host Int'l Information Technology Forum

People's Daily -- Ethiopia said Monday it has been elected to host the Third World Information Technology Forum, which is scheduled to be held on August 22-28, 2007.

According to a news release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an agreement enabling it to host the forum has recently been signed in South Africa between the Ethiopian government representatives and officials of the forum.

The ministry said Ethiopia is selected to organize the forum due to its efforts to reduce poverty, ensure good governance and its commitment to improve public service provision.

It also said information and communication technology-related programs and projects, which enable to design and implement multi- faceted development programs, helped the country to be selected to host the forum.

The Second World Information Technology Forum was held in 2005 in the Botswana capital of Gaborone, with nearly 900 senior government officials drawn from over 70 countries taking part in the meeting.

The forum aims at sharing experience on policy implementation with a view to supporting developing countries in their efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

The commitment of the Ethiopian government in giving due priority to information technology has been commended as compared to other African countries which are at the same level of development, the ministry said.

Ethiopia, one of the poorest nations on earth, will expand Internet coverage from a handful of users to the entire country in three years.

Currently there are just 30,000 Internet lines in a country of 71 million people, making it one of the lowest users of information technology in the world, according to a study by the World Bank. But within six months that figure will be expanded to 500,000 lines.

The Ethiopian government has begun laying 10,000 km of fiber optic cables and invested around 40 million US dollars in developing its Internet service.

South African Farmers Clean Up with "Green Sugar"

Reuters -- From the air, sections of South Africa's sugar country resemble a vast green carpet that has been gently rolled across the landscape.

But environmentalists say this bucolic scene is deceptive and masks an ugly truth: Much of the sugar industry has laid waste to fragile ecosystems, its tentacles reaching deep into valleys and destroying vital wetlands.

"You can see from here how the sugar can just blanket everything, choking other things out," shouts Vaughan Koopman, a wetland ecologist, as a four-seater Cessna banks over sugar fields in the KwaZulu-Natal province, the heart of the sugar belt.

Environmentalists say the industry is a thirsty one that not only sucks up a lot of water but also spews dirty water back through erosion, fouling river systems and damaging habitats.

Conservation group WWF International says that in South Africa, 68 to 114 gallons of water are used to produce just

one pound of sugar.

It is hoping to change this through its Sustainable Sugar Initiative, aimed at encouraging both commercial and peasant farmers to adopt more ecologically friendly methods of working.

A number of sugar farmers in South Africa -- the world's 11th largest producer if the
European Union is viewed as one -- are starting to clean up their act and hoping to market their sugar as a "green product."

WASTE NOT

Colin Hohls is at the cutting edge of "green sugar."

When he bought his farm in the Eshowe district, north along the coast from Durban, he found it was heavily degraded with much of the soil stripped from the hills.

"I had to go to the lower parts of the farm and drag up tons of soil that had been eroded and washed away," he said.

The previous owners had removed all of the natural vegetation from a river system running through his property but he is allowing native trees to reclaim it.

Hohls also plowed up "contour banks" -- raised ridges of soil across his fields -- which channel the water down natural courses as well as grassed channels he built himself.

"If you don't do this the water will take the shortest route through your field and take the soil out," he said.

The changes are costly and the work hard -- at a time when margins are narrow -- but Hohls said they make the farm more efficient.

"You are less wasteful with your water and you don't lose your soil," he said.

It's not just good for farmers. The benefits of ecologically friendly farming can be glimpsed in the Dlinza forest, one of the last fragments of coastal scarp forest left in South Africa.

Coastal scarp is a particularly rare forest type that grows on plateaus near the sea. Moisture rolls in from the coast and up escarpments, making the forest rich in plant and animal life.

Good rainfalls and soil also explain why so much has been cleared for agriculture and commercial timber plantations.

A walk along the aerial boardwalk suspended above the forest floor at Dlinza takes you briefly back to an era before the region was transformed by modern agriculture and urbanization.

Trumpeter hornbills, striking birds with massive beaks, sit atop ancient hardwoods like sentinels of the forest.

From a lookout in the canopy one can see purple-crested loeries glide through the trees, their scarlet wings a vivid contrast with the surrounding foliage of dark green.

In the distance, one can see the sugar fields that have radically altered the local landscape.

WASHED AWAY

Erosion from farming practices and deforestation is a huge problem across Africa, with much of the continent's scarce top soil muddying rivers and flowing out to sea.

The effects can be seen throughout rural KwaZulu-Natal, where sugar cane is often grown on steep hills which are being stripped bare of their soil because water runs rapidly off.

Commercial forest plantations -- many farmers have diversified into both sugar and timber -- compound many of these problems as they are often planted straight into wetlands.

KwaZulu-Natal farmer Lotar Schulz points to an emerging wetland in a valley on his property.

"This was all commercial eucalyptus trees and there had been serious erosion from the previous farmer. There was a gully so deep here you could fit two buses in it," he said.

He pulled the trees out, filled in the gully, and laid down grass, allowing the wetland and native plants to recover.

The association he belongs to -- Noodsberg Canegrowers -- is encouraging green practices among its members. Such methods could prevent tough regulations from being slapped on the industry because of its water use.

The growers would also like to market their sugar as a "green" product but that is not easy.

"The biggest problem is traceability," said Schulz.

Sugar could wind up on the counter in a bag or it could be used in the manufacture of soft drinks or chocolate.

Plans being mooted include certifying that a certain percentage of a shipment or the raw product being refined at a mill come from growers using "green methods."

Back in Eshowe, Hohls says such an approach is the only way to maintain the land and the farming way of life.

"Farming is a privilege. You mustn't abuse it. I want to preserve this farm for future generations," he said.

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Previous Post: Sowing the Seeds of Famine in Ethiopia

More Ethiopians Israel Bound

Jewish Week -- Ariel Sharon’s announcement that the Israeli government will double the rate of Ethiopian Jewish immigration to Israel is being called a breakthrough by those who long have lobbied to help the Falash Mura.

But with the bill projected at close to $2 billion — an estimated $100,000 for each of the 20,000 Ethiopians eligible to immigrate — no one is sure just who will pay.

The Israeli prime minister said Monday that all eligible Falash Mura — Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity but who have returned to Jewish practice — would be brought to Israel by the end of 2007.

Some 300 Falash Mura currently are allowed to immigrate to Israel each month, but that number will be doubled starting in June, Sharon said.

His announcement came after a meeting with Sallai Meridor, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, which handles immigration and absorption; Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Absorption Minister Tzipi Livni; and Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz.

The Falash Mura still in Ethiopia have been gathered in compounds in Addis Ababa and Gondar run by the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, a New York-based group.

Three months after the new immigration policy takes effect, the Jewish Agency will take over the camps, said Joseph Feit, a past NACOEJ president.

Long in the works, the agreement between NACOEJ and the Jewish Agency was secured Sunday night, Feit said.

This is not the first time Israel has promised to expedite Falash Mura aliyah, but there is reason to think the plan will be implemented this time.

The Law of Return, which guarantees Israeli citizenship to almost any Jew who wants it, does not apply to the Falash Mura because of their past conversions. However, the Israeli cabinet voted in February 2003 to immediately begin to determine who among the Falash Mura could trace matrilineal descent back past the generation of converts.

The process has been slow, with Israel sometimes citing the high cost of absorbing the Falash Mura, given the tremendous social and cultural gap separating them from other Israelis.

Meanwhile, the Jewish Agency and its primary funder, the North American Jewish federation system, have pressed Israel to bring the Falash Mura on aliyah.

When the federation system held its annual conference in Israel two years ago, then-president Stephen Hoffman personally urged Sharon to expedite the immigration.

When news of Sharon’s announcement reached this week’s board meetings of the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella group for the federation system, Hoffman said the federations deserved partial credit for a step of “great historic significance.”

It “just doesn’t happen unless we all band together and change history,” Hoffman said, according to one UJC official.

But the federation system has yet to determine its share in easing the financial burden of Falash Mura immigration and absorption.

Observers of the issue expect payment to come from various groups including the Israeli government, the federation system and its overseas partners, the Jewish Agency and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

The Jewish Agency, which long has lobbied for quicker Falash Mura immigration, will be the group’s primary caretaker, managing the compounds and handling immigration and absorption.

The Jewish Agency receives $50 million a year from the U.S. government to settle immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union in Israel.

The group plans to discuss fund raising for the project at its Board of Governors meetings Feb. 20-22 in Jerusalem.

For now, the partners committed to the project say vaguely that their will can lead to a way forward.

John Ruskay, executive vice president and CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York, which took a prominent role on the issue, said: “The dedication of the Israeli government is a very positive step forward on all fronts, and if the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency and world Jewry wants to resolve this issue, as it appears we all do, then I have no doubt we’ll find the resources together.”

Katrina's Real Name

The Boston Globe -- THE HURRICANE that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.

When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global warming.

When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia and cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the United Kingdom, the driver was global warming.

When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the Missouri River to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the reason was global warming.

In July, when the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in Spain and Portugal and left water levels in France at their lowest in 30 years, the explanation was global warming.

When a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110 degrees and killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was global warming.

And when the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received 37 inches of rain in one day -- killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of 20 million others -- the villain was global warming.

As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.

Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.

The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying.

Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.

The reason is simple: To allow the climate to stabilize requires humanity to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course, threatens the survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history.

In 1995, public utility hearings in Minnesota found that the coal industry had paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were public dissenters on global warming. And ExxonMobil has spent more than $13 million since 1998 on an anti-global warming public relations and lobbying campaign.

In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest electoral victory yet when President George W. Bush was elected president -- and subsequently took suggestions from the industry for his climate and energy policies.

As the pace of climate change accelerates, many researchers fear we have already entered a period of irreversible runaway climate change.

Against this background, the ignorance of the American public about global warming stands out as an indictment of the US media.

When the US press has bothered to cover the subject of global warming, it has focused almost exclusively on its political and diplomatic aspects and not on what the warming is doing to our agriculture, water supplies, plant and animal life, public health, and weather.

For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to accord the same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations.

Today, with the science having become even more robust -- and the impacts as visible as the megastorm that covered much of the Gulf of Mexico -- the press bears a share of the guilt for our self-induced destruction with the oil and coal industries.

As a Bostonian, I am afraid that the coming winter will -- like last winter -- be unusually short and devastatingly severe. At the beginning of 2005, a deadly ice storm knocked out power to thousands of people in New England and dropped a record-setting 42.2 inches of snow on Boston.

The conventional name of the month was January. Its real name is global warming.