May 18 2012 – Achieving the Millennium Development Goal of providing access to safe drinking water for its 160 million people by 2015 is a tough call for Bangladesh, which is caught between arsenic contaminated groundwater and diarrhoea-causing microbes in its ponds and rivers.
Queueing up for arsenic-free water in Bangladesh. Credit: NGO Forum
Yet, with a programme of using simple hand pumps and involving the women in affected communities, Bangladesh has managed to ensure that 98 percent of its rural population now has access to safe drinking water.
Despite widespread arseni…
Dr. Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the U.N., is co-chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Biological Diversity Beyond Areas of National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), along with Dr Liesbeth Lijnzaad of the Netherlands.
An unknown medusa-like plankton viewed from a submersible in the Gulf of Mexico, as part of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration’s Operation Deep Scope 2005. With the increase in the research into and exploitation of marine genetic resources, more and more patents on them are being filed annually.
Credit: Dr. Mikhail Matz/public domain
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 29 2015 (IPS) – After almost 10 years of often frustrating negotiat…