The News Review:

- Thai Tap Water to float 740m shares next year.
- KARACHI: Water, sewerage system schemes progressing
- Experts Advise World Policies To Cope With Causes, Rising Consequences…

Thai Tap Water to float 740m shares next year.
Free with registration – Bangkok Post – AccessMyLibrary.com – Dec 14, 2006
| Bangkok Post (Bangkok, Thailand) (December, 2006). 14–Thai Tap Water Supply (TTW) plans to list on the Stock Exchange of Thailand next year with a float of 740 million shares at one baht par value.

KARACHI: Water, sewerage system schemes progressing
Pakistan Dawn – Dec 14, 2006
com ———- –>KARACHI: Water, sewerage system schemes progressingKARACHI, Dec 13: Water supply and sewerage system improvement schemes worth Rs7 million pertaining to Shah Faisal Town are progressing fast. This was stated by the nazim of Shah Faisal Town, Mohammed Imran, during a visit to the laying of 2300 running feet water pipeline of 10-inch dia on Jamia Millia road for supply of water to societies and goths in UCs 6 and 7 here on Wednesday. He said the town administration was committed to ensuring supply of clean drinking water to peoples houses and all problems in this regard would soon be overcome. He said that after laying of this pipeline, the people of a large area including Azimpura, Millat Town, Bagh IIbrahim, Shad Bagh Society, Ibrahim Villas, Anaam Housing Society, Gulfishan Society, Shamsi Society in UCs 6 and 7 will be rid of the problem of non-water supply soon. He directed the water board officials to complete the work of pipeline laying expedetiously.

Experts Advise World Policies To Cope With Causes, Rising Consequences…
Science Daily – Science Daily (press release) – Dec 14, 2006
Such policies, if successful, could also directly reduce the impact of climate change while ensuring adequate food, water and livelihoods for dryland dwellers. And reducing poverty in drylands can have a strong impact on the efforts to curb the flow of people — popularly termed "environmental refugees" — inside countries as well as across national borders. "Bad policies are as much to blame for aggravating desertification as climate change, which is also largely human-induced," says conference organizer Zafar Adeel, Director of the UNU’s Canadian-based International Network on Water, Environment and Health and co-chair of the team that developed a global assessment of desertification as part of the landmark 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. "Put simply, desertification — which people commonly think of as the expansion of desert sands but is defined as the persistent decline of ecosystems’ benefits in dry areas — has been on the international agenda for 50 years but we still do not know precisely how fast desertification is growing, much less how best to address it…
"Environment-related migrants now outnumber political refugeesWhile desertification is a truly global issue (for example, desert dust affects the health of people even continents away), it is estimated to directly affect some 10 to 20% of dryland regions, where population pressure is increasing and where renewable water supplies are limited, says Dr. Adeel of UNU-INWEH. Over 2 billion people living in hyper-arid, arid, semi-arid and subhumid regions are extremely vulnerable to the loss of ecosystem services, including water supply, he says. According to research: Drylands make up 41% of Earth’s land cover and about 35% of world population resides in drylands; 10 to 20% of drylands are already degraded, affecting nearly 200 million people; Pressure is increasing on dryland ecosystems for food and water; Droughts are becoming more frequent and climate change is likely to increase water scarcity in regions already water stressed as they accommodate a third of world population with only 8% of global renewable freshwater resources. The effects of desertification, however, are not limited to dryland areas. "As livelihoods deteriorate and climate extremes manifest themselves with increasing frequency and severity, more and more people will choose to migrate," says Dr.