Floods drive thousands from wrecked homes along rain-swelled Congo River

 At least 50 people have been killed and thousands more left homeless in southwestern Congo, after heavy rain falls leading to floods and a river bursting its banks.


Kalamu River, which flows through the city of Boma into the Congo River, overflowed for two hours before the waters receded, washing some victims across the border into Angola.

The waters left parts of the city, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sole Atlantic port, covered in up to a metre of mud. Searchers are dig out bodies.

"The rains on the night of Monday to Tuesday in Boma have caused at least 50 deaths," said Jacques Mbadu, governor of Kongo Central province. "We buried 31 bodies on Wednesday and expect about 20 more bodies back today that ended up across the border in Angola."

Mbadu said the waters hit a peak of 2m above their usual level, wrecking at least 500 homes and leaving several thousand people homeless.

Boma, which lies near the mouth of the Congo River about 470km southwest of Kinshasa, is home to 150,000-200,000 people. "This is a cyclical phenomenon which (usually) happens every 10 years. It last happened in January 2015, but with climate change it’s now happened again in December 2016," Mbadu said.

Locals said two of the city’s three districts were still covered in mud up to a metre deep in places, and described tragic scenes with waters rushing into their houses.

"I lost my two children, carried off by the waters, which rose up to 3m like a tsunami. I could only watch them as they were washed away," said government worker Faustin Lutete.

Fisherman Jean-Marie Kola said he just had time to run far away when his house began shaking. "It collapsed later." Provincial governor Mbadu said the authorities were encouraging homeless people to seek shelter with relatives rather than reception centres.

He said he had been working with a Dutch company to reduce the risk of the Kalumu flooding.

Congolese towns and cities are typically built up in a haphazard fashion. Government services to deal with natural disasters are practically nonexistent.

Floods in Kinshasa in December 2015 left more than 30 people dead and 20,000 families homeless, most of them in the capital’s slums, where residents were left to battle with their bare hands through smelly mud, slime and faecal matter.

Despite its vast mineral wealth, Congo is classed among the world’s poorest countries. Two-thirds of its 70-million live on less than $1.25 a day.

Source: AFP

   

Shanghai water supply hit by 100-tonne wave of garbage: effects of environmental waste

 Shanghai water supply hit by 100-tonne wave of garbage: effects of environmental waste.

Medical waste, broken bottles and household trash are some of the items found in more than 100 tonnes of garbage salvaged near a drinking water reservoir in Shanghai.

The suspected culprits are two ships that have been dumping waste upstream in the Yangtze River. 

The river, then flowed downstream to the reservoir on Shanghai’s Chongming Island, which is also home to about 700,000 people.

The reservoir at the mouth of the river is one of the four main sources of drinking water for the country’s largest city.

China has struggled with air, soil and water pollution for years during its economic boom, with officials often protecting industry and silencing citizens that complain.

China’s cities are often blanketed in toxic smog, while earlier this year more than 80% of water wells used by farms, factories and rural households were found to be unsafe for drinking because of pollution.

Source: The Guardian

World's first solar panel road opens in France

World's first solar panel road opens in France

The world’s first solar panel road has been inaugurated in a Normandy village in France.

A One kilometre route in the small village of Tourouvre-au-Perche covered with 2,800 square metres of electricity-generating panels was inaugurated on Thursday.

According to the Ecology minister, Ségolène Royal, who commissioned the road, it cost more than four million pounds to construct.

Royal explained that the road will be used by about 2,000 motorists a day during a two-year test period to establish if it can generate enough energy to power street lighting in the village of 3,400 residents.

The Minister said that the panels were tested at four car parks across France, before the solar-powered road was opened on the RD5 road.

The road, which was named Wattway was constructed by Colas, part of giant telecoms group Bouygues, and financed by the state.

Colas said the panels have been covered with a resin containing fine sheets of silicon, making them tough enough to withstand all traffic, including heavy goods vehicles.

In 2014, a solar-powered cycle path opened in Krommenie in the Netherlands has generated 3,000kWh of energy, which is enough to power an average family home for a year.

However, critics have said that the solar-road is not a cost-effective use of public money.

Marc Jedliczka, who is the Vice-president of Network for Energetic Transition said, “It’s without doubt a technical advance, but in order to develop renewables there are other priorities than a gadget of which we are more certain that it’s very expensive than the fact it works.”

International Migrants Day: Effects of the environment on migrants

International Migrants Day:  Effects of the environment on migrants 

Every December 18^th is commemorated around the world as International Migrants Day. But the question that comes to mind every year is that who are the migrants? How is the environment affecting them where they are?

Now who is an “environmental migrant”? Is he/she a citizen of an island nation escaping rising seas at his/her doorstep; a drought-stricken farmer who cannot grow crops or raise livestock; or someone living  in a highly polluted metropolis forced to move to another country to cure persistent asthma attacks?

These are not anecdotal examples; rather they are realities that many environmental migrants face. The International Organization for Migration has predicted that by 2050, there could be as many as 200 million environmentally displaced people around the globe.

Recently, the 2006-2009 droughts in Syria, the worst the country has experienced in modern times and exacerbated by climate change, led to the migration of as many as 1.5 million people from rural to urban areas. This movement added to existing social stresses and may have contributed to the outbreak of violence and civil war in 2011.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme UNEP, an average of 26.4 million people per year, have been forced from their homes by natural disasters since 2008. This is the equivalent to one person displaced every second. And the trend is on the rise. Cumulatively, these factors present a tremendous challenge to the international community.

In May this year, at the World Humanitarian Summit, Tuvalu’s prime minister called for a UN resolution to create legal protection for people displaced by the impacts of climate change, including communities that might have to move because of rising seas, water shortages and other threats to their homes.

The low-lying island nation of Kiribati has raised the prospect of having to relocate its entire population to Fiji if sea levels continue to rise. The country even bought a symbolic plot of land in Fiji to highlight the choices that may face the Kiribati government.

The UN Environment, together with its other international partners, works to support vulnerable countries and communities around the world on issues of displacement and migration.

They encourage and enable ecosystem approaches to disaster risk reduction that help communities build ‘green defences’ to natural disasters. They also help countries anticipate and adapt to the impacts of climate change; and work with humanitarian agencies to reduce their own environmental footprint.

“When you look at the root causes of displacement environmental change or degradation is often a part of the story, so better environmental management should be part of the solution,” said Oli Brown, Senior Programme Coordinator, Disasters and Conflicts, UN Environment.

In the coming year, UN Environment will be joining the Global Migration Group, the main UN platform for interagency cooperation on migration and displacement, and will be well poised to contribute to discussions and negotiations on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in 2018

World's first zero-emission hydrogen train to begin operations in Germany

The world's first hydrogen powered, emission-free train will soon start operations in Germany in 2017. 

The initiative is a ground-breaking innovation that will help in phasing out heavily polluting, diesel-powered trains.

According to the German newspaper Die Welt, the first "hydrail", or hydrogen-powered train, will begin transporting passengers on the Buxtehude-Bremervörde-Bremerhaven-Cuxhaven line in Lower Saxony, in northern Germany, in December 2017. 

Although the first train in operation will only run a short, 60-mile (96-kilometer) route, four German states have signed an agreement with Alstom, the French company that builds the trains, for the purchase of up to 60 additional locomotives, if the train operation successful. 

The new, silent train, called the Coradia iLint, was unveiled by Alstom at a railway industry trade fair in Berlin earlier this year, and only emits steam and condensed water.

Although not suitable for electric railway lines, it's designed to provide a clean alternative to the large number of heavily polluting diesel trains that run on non-electric lines throughout Europe.

Germany alone has more than 4,000 diesel-powered train cars, according to Alstom, and about 20% of all of Europe's current rail traffic is hauled by diesel locomotives according to the European Union.

The train uses the same equipment as a diesel train but runs on an entirely new technology that uses hydrogen, which is a waste product of the chemical industry just as the fuel source.

Energy to power the train is generated by large fuel cells that sits on top of the train. This cell combines hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity, which is then stored in batteries.

Each two-car train-set requires a fuel cell and a 207 pound (94kg) tank of hydrogen to supply it, while the oxygen is obtained from the local air. 

The train can complete a 500 mile (800 kilometer) journey on a full tank of hydrogen, which is enough for one day according to Alstom, and carries up to 300 passengers.

Although the 87 miles per hour (140 kilometers per hour) speed the train reaches is far below that of other European trains, it is well suited to the quieter and shorter stretches of the European rail network that haven't yet been converted to electricity.

Initial tests on the two pre-production trains that were unveiled at the trade show will be completed by the end of the year, according to Alstom.

The two units will then undergo further testing throughout 2017, prior to their expected approval for operation by Germany's Federal Railway Office at the end of that year.