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Watershed management has come to be recognized as a critical issue in the Nile Basin. Upstream land use can cause degradation and soil erosion, resulting in lower agricultural yields locally and causing sedimentation downstream. The increased sediment load causes economic problems by reducing water quality, and irrigation and hydropower potential, as well as increasing flooding. This note shows how, through Basin-wide cooperation, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) has led efforts to address these problems, developing successful projects to deliver real results to restore the Nile.

Much of our understanding of Earth's past climate states comes from the measurement of oxygen and carbon isotope variations in deep-sea benthic foraminifera. Yet, major intervals in those records that lack the temporal resolution and/or age control required to identify climate forcing and feedback mechanisms. Here we document 66 million years of global climate by a new high-fidelity Cenozoic global reference benthic carbon and oxygen isotope dataset (CENOGRID). Using recurrence analysis, we find that on timescales of millions of years Earth's climate can be grouped into Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse and Icehouse states separated by transitions related to changing greenhouse gas levels and the growth of polar ice sheets. Each Cenozoic climate state is paced by orbital cycles, but the response to radiative forcing is state dependent.

Bangladesh, with two-thirds of its land area less than five meters above sea level, is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world. Low-lying coastal districts along the Bay of Bengal are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise, tidal flooding, storm surges, and climate-induced increases in soil and water salinity. This paper investigates the impact of drinking water salinity on infant mortality in coastal Bangladesh. It focuses on the salinity of drinking water consumed during pregnancy, which extensive medical research has linked to maternal hypertension, preeclampsia, and post-partum morbidity and mortality. The study combines spatially-formatted salinity measures for 2001-09 provided by Bangladesh with individual and household survey information from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys for 2004 and 2007. It uses probit and logit analyses to estimate mortality probability for infants less than two months old. Controlling for many other determinants of infant mortality, the analysis finds high significance for salinity exposure during the last month of pregnancy and no significance for exposure during the preceding months. The estimated impact of salinity on infant mortality is comparable in magnitude to the estimated effects of traditionally-cited variables such as maternal age and education, gender of the household head, household wealth, toilet facilities, drinking water sources, and cooking fuels.

The effects of climate change, from changing precipitation patterns to rising seas, will exacerbate the coastal erosion already affecting West Africa, increasing the exposure and vulnerability of the people and assets located there. Given the importance of the coastal zone to the region as a whole, it is critical that policy makers consider the effects of future climate change in the decisions they make today. Regional cooperation is challenging, but it has been successful in many places, particularly where the issue addressed presented an existential challenge to the coun¬tries affected. Efforts to build trust and coordinate efforts will help policy makers protect the lives and livelihoods of the people in the region and allow their countries to build on the development gains made in recent years rather than see them rolled back as a result of climate change.

The purpose of this study was evaluation of export performance of Iranian caviar and identification of its affecting factors. Therefore, this study has examined theimpact of variables like ability of strategic sustainability management, the measure of export market-oriented and export flexibility taking into consideration of environmental differences between internal and external market on export performance of Iran's caviar. Current research with the view to objective is applied research and with a view to data collection is descriptive research and Statistical population of this study to include all managers of exporting firms Caviar exporting companies in Iran. Cronbach's alpha was 0.9 which indicates that the reliability of the questionnaire is appropriate. Connection between research variable has been investigated through path analysis in LISREL Version 8.8 software. The consequence of this study shows that strategic sustainability management has the most impact on Caviar export performance of Iran. After that parameters of export flexibility, export market-oriented behavior finally dynamic of market have significant and positive impact on export performance. Published

Purpose: Identify impacts of Song Bung 4 Hydropower project to diversity and hydrology; Criticise on mitigation practice and impacts. Method: Screen of impacts from records of other projects and mitigations; Compare with identified impacts and mitigation practices. Findings: Direct lost of some species; environmental flow is not implemented regularly; higher fish yield in reservoir; threaten migratory fish

The World Bank Group (WBG) has a long experience in engaging in biodiversity with world-class expertise in the field. It has been the single largest funder of biodiversity investments since the late 1980s. The WBG investments have largely been of two kinds: (1) investments in biodiversity, aimed at the conservation and sustainable use of species, habitats, and ecosystems that sustain healthy ecosystems, while enhancing people's livelihoods and safety nets. These investments have also been providing jobs and economic development in frequently impoverished rural areas for example by supporting protected areas and an increasingly important tourism industry; and (2) investments that add value to projects in other sectors, such as irrigation, hydropower, and infrastructure, by increasing their environmental sustainability. The WBG is a global center of excellence that provides economy wide technical and economic knowledge and expertise on biodiversity and ecosystems. It has the standing and convening power to facilitate participatory dialogue between client countries and networks of other relevant stakeholders on matters of biodiversity and climate change concern, such as loss of ecosystem resilience, forest law enforcement and governance, wildlife trade, and overexploitation of natural resources.

In an enclosure experiment, we employed two levels of inorganic NP ratios (10 and 5) for three distinct plankton communities collected along the coast of central Chile (33ºS). Each combination of community and NP level was replicated three times. The experiment lasted 12 days, and the data set include inorganic nutrients (NO3, PO4, DSi), particular organic carbon (POC), nitrogen (PON) and phosphorus (POP), Chlorophyll a, a range of fluorescence based measurements such as photochemical efficiency (Fv/Fm) and community data. The primary effect of the NP treatment was related to different concentrations of NO3, which directly influenced the biomass of phytoplankton. Additionally, low inorganic NP ratio reduced the seston NP and Chl a-C ratios, and there were some effects on the plankton community composition, e.g. benefitting Synechococcus spp in some communities.

The effectiveness of conservation interventions such as Payments for Environmental Services (PES) is often evaluated, if it is evaluated at all, only at the completion of the intervention. Since gains achieved by the intervention may be lost after it ends, even apparently successful interventions may not result in long-term conservation benefits, a problem known as that of permanence. This paper uses a unique dataset to examine the permanence of land use change induced by a short-term PES program implemented in Quindío, Colombia, between 2003 and 2008. This the first PES program to have a control group for comparison. Under this program, PES had been found to have a positive and highly significant impact on land use. To assess the long-term permanence of these changes, both PES recipients and control households were re-surveyed in 2011, four years after the last payment was made. We find that the land use changes that had been induced by PES were broadly sustained in intervening years, with minor differences across specific practices and sub-groups of participants. The patterns of change in the period after the PES program was completed also help better understand the reasons for the program s success. These results suggest that, at least in the case of productive land uses such as silvopastoral practices, PES programs can be effective at encouraging land owners to adopt environmentally-beneficial management practices and that the benefits will persist after payments cease.