Ecology and Environment

Japanese children have been shown to be contaminated with radioactive caesium just weeks after the government raised the acceptable level of contamination in schools which provoked angry responses from parents. At the same time it is revealed that the UK government attempted to minimise the importance of the accident in order to prevent a backlash against nuclear energy.

We go on with the publication of Ivo Ghignoli’s Chronicles from the garrison of Maddalena, where NO TAV militants are peacefully protesting against the construction of the Turin-Lyon high-speed railway line; the line will pierce a mountain and disrupt the entire hydro-geological structure of Val di Susa, near Turin.

Ivo Ghignoli, NO-TAV militant, humanist, regional leader of ARCI, reports on the brutal actions of the police at the nonviolent barricade, put in place to defend the sacrosanct right of people to self-determination of their destiny. It’s been years that in Val di Susa, north-west of Italy, the NO-TAV movement asks that the works for High-speed trains not be carried out.

A Nuclear Weapons Lab in New Mexico and a Nuclear Power Plant in Nebraska continue to show the on going safety issues and the consequent threats posed by these high risk technologies as these articles from Democracy Now show.

Steven Starr from Physicians for Social Responsibility writes about the dangers of creating so much radioactive waste in the world’s 440 nuclear reactors, the ongoing situation in Fukushima and the legacy of the radioactive exclusion zone around Chernobyl. “It is time to admit that nuclear power is neither a “safe” nor “clean” method to produce energy.”

Reflecting profound concerns of developing countries, a new report – ‘Catalysing Catastrophic Climate Change’ – has strongly criticized the World Bank group for promoting false solutions to climate change, such as carbon trading, mega-dams, agro-fuels and industrial mono-culture tree plantations.

Article by Jutta Wolf

An educational forum was held 10 June, 201l, according to its blurb intending to increase literacy on nuclear issues to help civil society in Hong Kong to discuss and debate the issues surrounding nuclear energy as a part of the current local fuel mix – others are coal then natural gas – with presentations and open discussions.

When 151 ministers of United Nations’ atomic energy agency gather in Vienna on June 20, for 4 days, they will be dealing with a world that has changed in the aftermath of Fukushima nuclear disaster, the third after serious accidents in Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, thus imposing a global review of the regulations governing nuclear safety.

By Ronald Joshua

Almost three months after the earthquake and tsunami that triggered a nuclear disaster in Japan, new radiation “hot spots” may require the evacuation of more areas further from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency recently admitted for the first time that full nuclear meltdowns occurred at 3 of the plant’s reactors

An integrated approach to address Africa’s abiding challenges of desertification and biodiversity loss, and the new climate change threat is the subject of the First Africa Drylands Week in Dakar, Senegal, from June 10-17. It will be held back-to-back with the global observance event on June 17 to mark this year’s World Day to Combat Desertification.