Displaying items by tag: Issue 34

The Eco Kids Film Initiative (EKFI) is the first festival of its kind aiming to stimulate environmental awareness in young viewers. It is also the first children's film festival and the first environmental film festival on the African continent.

The e-Waste Alliance (eWA), together with the Institute of Waste Management of Southern Africa (IWMSA) is delighted to announce its third public e-Waste Collection Drive that will be taking place on Saturday 24 September 2011.

'Waste pickers are not fighting for the right to be on landfill sites, they are fighting to be part of the waste management system,' said Mr Simon Mbata, representative of the South African Waste Pickers Association (SAWPA) at a workshop debate hosted by the Institute of Waste Management of Southern Africa (IWMSA) in Midrand last week.

Spring is in the air and South Africans are starting to emerge from their homes after a long and cold winter.

Many people are aware of the recent campaign in the Karoo against a proposed natural gas mining process known as hydraulic fracturing or 'fracking'. However most do not realise that large parts of the Free State, Eastern Cape Highlands and KZN are also under threat.

 

Gift of the Givers has just been granted permission to set up base, medical teams, equipment and supplies at Banadir Hospital, the largest hospital in Mogadishu (the largest city in Somalia) where thousands of patients are flocking to from various refugee camps in and around Mogadishu and the South, and are in desperate need of life saving medical assistance.

 

A database detailing all microhydro installations in Eastern and Southern Africa will be launched at the upcoming Hydropower Africa conference and exhibition in Johannesburg from 19-23 September.

 

Massive public enterprises are still battling to get maintenance off the back-burner while at the same time huge investment is going into new-build projects, according to Tracey-Lee Zurcher, the project director of Reliability & Maintenance Week, taking place in Johannesburg in November. 

 

Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, recently announced that he would allow the destruction of 7,100 hectares of the Mabira Forest to make way for sugarcane plantations. If REDD is to mean anything in Uganda, it has to provide some sort of mechanism for preventing this sort of destruction. So far, there is no sign that this is the case.

The environmentally-aware traveller represents one of the fastest growing niche markets in the tourism, travel and leisure sectors today and this discerning market is set to become one of the key income generators in global tourism over the next decade. For the southern African travel industry, this global trend presents an opportunity for sustainable growth, but this will require tourism professionals to understand the profile of the 'green' traveller and how to meet their expectations as a service, establishment or destination.

Indians of the Guarani tribe in Brazil have demanded that energy giant Shell stop using their ancestral land for ethanol production.

Unguarded barrels of radioactive uranium (yellow cake) have been discovered on Swakopmund beach. Near the sewerage works at Tamariskia investigators found 4 barrels.