GreenWatch

B. McPherson Ethiopia has a rich resource in the Omo River and Lake Turkana. Fertile lands fed by annual floods provide a renewal of the agricultural land each rainy season. The Omo River falls from the highlands to Lake Turkana providing opportunities for hydro-electric production. The only obstacle to rapid development of hydro-electricity and massive plantations is that the land is occupied and has been occupied for thousands of years. The people there who have lived peacefully and self sufficiently are being forcibly removed from their traditional areas and herded into small reservations. They will lose their cattle and lose their agricultural lands. The government of Ethiopia has partly finished the Gibe III Dam which, when finished will be the largest in Africa. The impoundment of water will end the seasonal renewal of the land. On the other hand, electricity generated by the dam will be able to power electric lights in Adis Ababa with enough power left over to ...

By B. McPherson Is that blood on your ear? Is blood oozing from the coltan that helps power your phone, your computer and a myriad of other electronic goods that make life in N. America so enjoyable? Coltan is the commercial name for the ores columbite and tantalite which, when refined, is used in electronic capacitors. Australia, Brazil and Canada are some of the leading producers of this new “gold”, but 80% of the world’s supply comes from sub-Saharan Africa. At one point this most useful substance was fetching $1000 per kilo. It has fueled a mineral rush in the eastern Congo (DRC). There were far reaching effects of the discovery of this mineral. Firstly, the miners rushed to exploit possible deposits, with no regard to the environmental consequences. Virunga Park has fallen victim to the freelance digging. Accompanying the ruin by mining is the poaching of large mammals for bush meat, including the critically endangered mountain gorilla. The DRC has the second large...