Tiempo Climate Newswatch

President Festus Mogae has declared Botswana "drought stricken." Low rainfall has caused widespread crop failure. Only a quarter of the cultivable area has been planted, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. "This year's cereal production is now estimated at... about 10 per cent of the national requirement and less than half [that] produced during 2003/04", reported Mogae. "While livestock conditions are generally fair in most - though certainly not all - parts of our country, deterioration can be expected in the coming months", he continued.

The government will provide income support to families in need over the next 12 months through a labour-intensive public works programme. The programme will involve the construction of classrooms, administrative offices and homes for nurses and teachers, alongside other activities such as desilting dams. Children under five attending welfare clinics will receive supplementary feeding. There will also be free distribution of seeds.

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• All Africa
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• Government of Botswana

"The warming of the environment of the Himalayas has increased noticeably over the last 50 years. This has caused several and severe floods from glacial lakes and much disruption to the environment and local people," according to Edmund Hillary. Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, were, in 1953, the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Hillary is calling for the mountain to be placed on the United Nations' list of endangered heritage sites because of the threat of climate change.

Hillary was speaking before a meeting of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Heritage Committee. While the Committee did not place Mount Everest on the endangered list, it did set up a task force to investigate the impact of climate change on mountainous regions. Peter Roderick, Director of Climate Justice, responded that: "The jury's still out, and I'm not sure the urgency has been fully grasped; but at least it keeps alive the hopes that Everest, the Peruvian Andes, and the Belize Barrier Reef can be enjoyed by future generations."

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• ENN
• BBC
• ENN

• Media advisory, Climate Justice

Research by Gisela Lannig and Inna Sokolova of the University of North Carolina suggests that global warming will increase the sensitivity of oysters, which are cold-blooded organisms, to pollution by metals such as cadmium. The rate of oxygen use, an indicator of basic metabolic rate and physical stress, in eastern oysters was three times higher when kept at a temperature of 28°C as at 20°C. Cadmium pollution was shown to increase oxygen use further at temperatures of 20 and 24°C but not at 28°C, at which temperature mortality rates were considerably higher. The oysters were clearly less able to cope with the contamination at the highest temperature.

"One possible mechanism for this observation is increased damage of mitochondria in cadmium-exposed oysters with increasing temperature", Lannig argues. "These organelles become significantly more sensitive to cadmium as temperature rises, so that cadmium levels which were not damaging to mitochondria at lower temperature become strongly toxic with increasing temperature." She concludes that, "with global warming, some areas that are polluted might become a kind of graveyard for these animals."

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• Science Daily
• Food and Drink Europe

• 24hourscholar