Governmental and non-governmental agencies should forge a joint effort with the mass media towards securing the protection and development of the environment, Panelist said.
At a discussion forum held here in connection with the 6th anniversary of "Radio Fana" the panelists said that the environment issue is part and parcel of the development agenda adding that a concerted effort was imperative in protecting the environment.
Mezgebu The Monitor, November 30, 2000,
Natural resources conservation is less about money, and more about giving it its due priority. Less about huge investments and more about shading off age-old misconception about the relationships between man and nature.
If poor, third world countries themselves believe that only rich countries deserve clean surroundings, adequate forests, properly looked after wildlife and wilderness, clean streams where fish can live; if we accept ourselves those things are only for rich people and rich countries, then that would be the last straw to our people.
Ayenew Haileselassie,The Monitor, November 17, 2000-
Just think of it: you having to eat
your "Kangaroo" or "Ok Jamaica" model shoes. May be not the soles, but the leather tops.
Imagine, also, that you were not satisfied with your pair, and you had to sneak away with a
neighbour's pair of military boots, and still not call it a meal! How on earth can I do this, you
may say, but that was what happened to Ferdinand Magellan and his crew midway their gruelling
voyage. Among the horrors of Kiffu Qan, the time of a great starvation in Ethiopia, was that of
mothers eating their children, according to Aleka Lemma.
B. Mezgebu,The Daily Monitor , November 16, 2000
The problem has been with us for so long to escape our notice and the notice of policy makers.
The solution is with us too. Reforestation has never been something that was beyond the capacity of ordinary farmers that inhabit this same land.
Finding alternative sources of energy for domestic consumption in urban Ethiopia seems to be one area that we couldn't make much headway in. The wider
use of kerosene stoves, for example, can contribute towards saving the country from total decimation of its little existing vegetation and soil erosion.
WIC ,November 16, 2000-
The Forest Development Research Centre
(FDRC) announced that a research aimed at identifying the types of trees to be used
for firewood and construction would be undertaken with an outlay of 1.3 million birr.
WIC ,November 15, 2000-
The
Yayu-Murumu court in Illubabor zone has sentenced
twelve individuals who were engaged in illegal tree felling in
Yambu kebele to eight
months imprisonment or a fine of 200 birr each.
Irish Independent, November 11, 2000
According to Dr David Evans of Glasgow University, the key to
climate change lies in the
long distant past. "If you take a deeper,geological
perspective, you have to consider
another culprit the last Ice Age," he says. The last Ice Age
ended about 10,000 years ago,
though there have been what are termed "little Ice
Ages" since then, the most recent in the late
17th-century, when Ethiopia suffered from blizzards and crops
failed regularly across the
whole of Europe due to unseasonable freezing weather.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE , November 10, 2000-
Africa produces just 3.2 percent of worldwide emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, but this year's floods in
Mozambique and drought in Ethiopia showed how vulnerable the continent is to freak weather caused by
global warming.
Africa's poverty and its high dependence on farming and natural resources put it at greatest risk.
A study published in this week's New Scientist magazine, which measured the expected impact of global warming
according to national wealth and predicted temperature rise, said Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone were the most
vulnerable.
__________________________
Read the latest from the Climate Change Conference
AFP, November 11, 2000-
The most vulnerable countries are 15 sub-Saharan countries, the poorest being Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Tanzania, as well as Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cambodia and North Korea in Asia.
__________________________
Note: An international conference on Global Warming, what is called "the last chance to save the planet" by some analysts, is going on in the Hague, the Netherlands.
How much do you know about 
?
WIC, November 10, 2000-
Environmental Protection Clubs have been formed in ten
Senior Secondary Schools in the South Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Regional
State, SNNPRS.
____________________
Comment: Such clubs should be supported in all possible ways to help realize the cause they are aiming at.
IUCN - The World Conservation Union -
Ethiopia is one of the countries facing serious ecological imbalances. During this century natural resource degradation has
accelerated and a destructive cycle of land use has developed in parts of the country involving deforestation followed by
continuous cropping and grazing with little or no investment in the soil..........The challenge today, which the National Conservation Strategy (NCS) must help the country face, is to develop
these improved management practices for the sustained use of natural resources and identify the circumstances which will
facilitate their adoption.
The Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC)
This fire fighting campaign - the very first and successful multinational intervention in history - had started in late February 2000. On request of the Government of Ethiopia immediate situation analysis and subsequent assistance was provided by a group of countries. The agencies officially involved through the diplomatic channels and the individual fire specialists dispatched to Ethiopia or supporting the campaign from their home offices worked together smoothly and efficiently.
.....At the peak of the campaign more than 70,000 people have been involved in fire-fighting. All worked together to save the ecologically and biodiversity rich assets of the afro-montane forests of Ethiopia.
More challenges are ahead:
Read also the Legacy of the Forest Fire.
__________________________________________________________
PANA, October 26, 2000
The raw sewage is placed on the open at the Kotebe
treatment plant to be dried by air and the sun.
The dried refuse is then collected and used as fertiliser
for the city's afforestation project of denuded areas in the
outskirts of Addis Ababa, where the vegetation had been cut off
for firewood.
ENA, October 26, 2000
A Waste treatment plant constructed with an outlay of 100 million birr at the Kotebe suburbs in the metropolis has gone operational, the Addis Ababa Water and
Sewage Authority (AAWSA) said.
The Monitor, October 25, 2000
The now reorganized, if not defunct, cement factory in Addis, can be taken as a good warning
sign of what awaits manufacturing or other plants that are health-hazards: Get switched off. The thick smoke that the plant's huge chimney belched held the
community hostage.
It can be argued that jobs would be lost when archaic and hazardous plants get the work over. But in this case, although no study has been made, the gains in
improved health and less unpleasant environment to the hundreds of thousands of people living in this part of Addis ("Gotera") more than compensate the downsizing
that took place, if downsizing took place at all.
On the other hand...............
ENA, October 25, 2000
Drivers here in the metropolis complained about the low quality benzene they have been buying
from filling-stations over the last two weeks.
They said the low quality benzene that emits more smoke when burned was damaging the motors of their vehicles.
The Ethiopian Standards and Quality Control Authority[Dereja Medabi] meanwhile declined to comment on the matter saying that there has been no
approved standard on petroleum products.
_____________________________________
Comment : The only analysis done by Dereja Medabi on petroleum products as far as I know is just testing specifc gravity to prove a sample of an alleged mixture of water and kerosene brought by Asela police. I have been to Dereja Medabi to write about Air Pollution in Addis. It is to be noted that drivers' worry is the damage on their cars not on the public health and the environment.
WIC, October 24, 2000
The Gambela Agriculture Bureau says about 500 hectares of forest was being cleared annually in the
region for various reasons.
The Gambella region is said to be one of States with large forest resources with about 657 thousand hectares of its land covered with
natural forest.
Panafrican News Agency, October 23, 2000
All African countries[including Ethiopia] have now
signed the UN Convention to Combat Desertification or UNCCD, it
was revealed in Dakar during the 19-21 inter-session committee
meeting of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment.
The meeting was held to prepare Africa's positions for the
January "2002 Earth Summit" or "Rio +10".
...........Africa's positive response was no doubt inspired by the
growing impact of desertification, whose effects are evident in
practically all of the continent's geographical regions, with the
Horn of Africa worst hit.
_____________________________________
Comment : Ethiopia is party to the following international agreements : Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Ozone Layer Protection. It has also
signed, but not ratified the following agreements: Environmental Modification, Law of the Sea, Nuclear Test Ban.
WIC, October 18, 2000
"...Many of the regions have now draft laws in establishing their
institutional structures for managing the environment, for monitoring environmental activities and for regulating it. Some of them have already approved the laws, while some are in the process of approval....the Awash River upstream and the Akaki River must be one of the most polluted waters on
earth."
