The buckle of the Rust Belt, Youngstown, Ohio, is getting a shining with shale gas. But will the shale gas boom end any differently for the town than the steel bust? Read the whole story from Pulitzer Center grantee Dimiter Kenarov. Don’t miss Kenarov’s reporting on shale gas in Poland, Pennsylvania and Ohio, which was funded by the Pulitzer Center and Calkins Media, publishers of Shalereporter.com.
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The buckle of the Rust Belt, Youngstown, Ohio, is getting a shining with shale gas. But will the shale gas boom end any differently for the town than the steel bust? Read the whole story from Pulitzer Center grantee Dimiter Kenarov.

Don’t miss Kenarov’s reporting on shale gas in Poland, Pennsylvania and Ohio, which was funded by the Pulitzer Center and Calkins Media, publishers of Shalereporter.com.

Stateless: Migrant workers in Borneo

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Pulitzer Center grantee Jason Motlagh is reporting on stateless workers in the palm oil industry in Borneo. These workers have not been recognized by the government and are provided few services. While in Lahad Datu, a former pirate-town that is now booming from palm oil business, he spoke with the locals about migrant workers:

“But change the subject to the migrant laborers who work the plantations that keep the tankers revving around the clock, and the mood at the table sours a bit. With a passing mention of the vital role legions of Indonesians and Filipinos play by filling back-breaking plantation jobs for a pittance, the men grumbled vaguely about an increase in drunken behavior (“…the migrants are causing public disturbances”); the erosion of local culture and traditions; and the threat they posed to local employment prospects (“…what about the locals?”).

That migrants do work most Malaysians would never consider does not occur to anyone. Nor does it seem to register that, without legal documents, they tend to avoid authorities at all costs. “The foreigners must be controlled. They are stealing jobs… Those that don’t have documents should be kicked out of Malaysia,” says Arnan Angkut, 50, a contractor. But what about those who have toiled for years on remote plantations under harsh conditions? Surely their children deserve access to health care and an education given their parents’ labors on behalf of the national economy? He relented, slightly. “That’s up to the bosses (of the plantations). They can take care of their workers as they see fit. We don’t want to pay for anything.”

The sentiment persists despite labor shortages in the palm oil industry. Read the whole Untold Stories here and see Jason’s other articles, photos and video on stateless workers in the palm oil industry here.

Source: bit.ly

Palm oil is extracted at a heavy social and environmental cost that makes it one of the most controversial commodities in the world. Nowhere is the toll more acutely felt than on the island of Borneo, divided between Malaysia and Indonesia. Together these countries account for nearly 90 percent of global palm oil exports. On both sides of the border the industry thrives on cheap labor. In Malaysia’s Sabah province, thousands of stateless children, born to undocumented Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers, live without access to health care or education. Pulitzer Center grantee Jason Motlagh offers a closer look in this video.

Read more of Jason Motlagh’s reporting on palm oil in Borneo here.

Source: bit.ly

Climate Change and Rising Sea Levels

The New York Times asked “How high could the tide go?” today in its ScienceTimes section. The article, by Justin Gillis, profiles a team researching sea level rise through Earth’s millennia, looking for clues on what we can expect from man-made climate change. The verdict is that as much as three to six feet of sea level rise will likely occur in this century, which would displace millions of people currently living in coastal areas. Gillis talked to Dr. Maureen E. Raymo of Columbia University, one of the leaders on the project: 

““I wish I could take people that question the significance of sea level rise out in the field with me,” Dr. Raymo said. “Because you just walk them up 30 or 40 feet in elevation above today’s sea level and show them a fossil beach, with shells the size of a fist eroding out, and they can look at it with their own eyes and say, ‘Wow, you didn’t just make that up.’ ”

If you’re interested in learning more about sea level rise and Dr. Raymo’s work, Pulitzer Center grantee Dan Grossman followed her and her team on a 4,000 mile research trek in Australia and produced Deep Water, a TED eBook available on all eReader platforms. You can also read more of Dan’s work on the local effects of global climate change on the Pulitzer Center website.image

Mount Hualcan, about 20,000 feet above sea level. Image by Dan Grossman. Peru, 2011.

Source: bit.ly

From Pulitzer Center grantee Sean Gallagher’s latest post from the Tibetan Plateau:

“The Tibetan Plateau seems really far away, but it’s actually one of the most important hotspots in the earth’s ecosystem. Scientists sometimes describe the Tibetan Plateau as the engine of the global climate system. It has a unique role in the natural cycle, climate system and water system,” explains Li Yan of Greenpeace East Asia, a passionate woman who is determined to help the general public understand the importance of this region and the implications of the changes there.

“A change of one degree might not mean a big thing to people living in air-conditioned rooms in big cities, but that level of change, temperature fluctuation, will bring sometimes very visible and sometimes even profound ecological changes to the plateau,” she says. “The tongues of the glaciers have been retreating hundreds of meters in the past decades. And it’s not just the loss of beautiful scenery—it’s actually melting away precious freshwater reserves on the surface of the earth. The far-reaching impacts of that glacier and tundra melting will have a big impact on the water flows in three or four decades time. And those big rivers that originate from the plateau will face a bad time when the reserves are gone.”

Photos by Sean Gallagher. Read his whole post and see the rest of his photos here.

Source: bit.ly

climateadaptation:

Above, video describing IRI’s climate research project in the Andes mountains. Short report, here.

Climate change threatens a fragile ecosystem in the Andes  

Climate change threatens these Andean communities because it is causing glaciers and high altitude water bodies to disappear and it may be drying out the páramo, reducing its water-storage capacity. At the same time, population pressure and water demand continue to rise. Anticipating changes to water availability will be a critical part of municipal planning and climate adaptation efforts. But first, researchers will need to understand the changes taking place in the páramo.

Source: Columbia University’s IRI

After watching the video, read some of our stellar reporting about the Páramos – Columbia: Mining Fever in Paradise

The Coming Storm

longformorg:

What overcrowded and swelling Bangladesh can tell us about how the planet’s population, more than 1/3 of which live within 62 miles of a shoreline, will react to rising sea levels.

Don Belt 

For more super coverage of the challenges overcrowding and rising waters pose to Bangladesh check out our project Easy Like Water. Or watch this video:

There’s really no wrong choice.