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Ask the World’s Economic Leaders to Make Microfinance a Focus

In January, the world’s economic leaders will gather at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2009 to discuss the current financial crisis. This meeting is a powerful opportunity to advocate for those hardest hit by the crisis—the 3+ billion people around the world currently living on less than $2 a day.

Microfinance provides the world’s poor with the tools and resources they need to permanently lift themselves and their families out of poverty. But there is an urgent need to expand these services as microfinance is currently reaching only 10-20% of the estimated 500 million poor entrepreneurs who would benefit from it.

Please join us in contacting the Forum’s Co-Chairs by January 21st, to urge them to promote and prioritize microfinance at the upcoming conference and help eradicate poverty.

Posted in food, politics, socialization, sustainability, women. Tagged with , , , , .

By barenose
06/01/2009

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Coral Growth Slows Sharply On Great Barrier Reef

Date: 05-Jan-09
Author: Michael Kahn

Great Barrier Reef

LONDON - Coral growth since 1990 in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has fallen to its lowest rate for 400 years, in a troubling sign for the world’s oceans, researchers said on Thursday. This could threaten a variety of marine ecosystems that rely on the reef and signal similar problems for other similar organisms worldwide, Glen De’ath and colleagues at the Australian Institute of Marine Science said. The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral expanse, and like similar reefs worldwide is threatened by climate change and pollution.

“These organisms are central to the formation and function of ecosystems and food webs, and precipitous changes in the biodiversity and productivity of the world’s oceans may be imminent,” the researchers wrote in the journal Science.

Coral reefs, delicate undersea structures resembling rocky gardens made by tiny animals called coral polyps, are important nurseries and shelters for fish and other sea life. They also protect coastlines, provide a critical source of food for millions of people, attract tourists and are potential storehouses of medicines for cancer and other diseases.

De’ath and his team studied 328 large coral colonies from 69 reefs and found the skeletal records indicate that calcification — or the deposit of calcium carbonate — by these creatures has declined by 13.3 percent throughout the Barrier Reef since 1990. The researchers blamed a combination of global warming, ocean acidity level and decreasing carbonate content in seawater for the decline, unprecedented over the past 400 years.

“Verification of the causes of this decline should be made a high priority,” the researchers said.

Coral covers about 400,000 square km (154,000 sq miles) of tropical ocean floor, but needs sustained sunlight, warmer waters and high levels of carbonate to flourish. The biggest is Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, a collection of 2,900 reefs along 2,100 km (1,300 miles) of Australia’s northeast coast in a marine park the size of Germany.

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Mark Trevelyan)
Reuters

Posted in environment, water. Tagged with , , , , , , .

By barenose
05/01/2009

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Big Solar Power Plant Planned For Northwest China

Date: 05-Jan-09
Author: Nichola Groom

LOS ANGELES - Two Chinese companies on Friday announced plans to build a solar power plant in northwestern China that could one day be the largest photovoltaic solar project in the world. The news helped spur a rally in shares of solar power companies that was also underpinned by higher oil prices and a strong rise the broader market.

A worker piles up water tanks used for solar water heaters at a factory in Jinan, east China’s Shandong province September 1, 2007.

China Technology Development Group Corp and privately held Qinghai New Energy Group will begin building a 30 megawatt solar power station in China’s Qaidam Basin this year with an initial investment of $150 million, they said in a joint statement. The project, which will combine thin-film and traditional silicon-based technologies that turn the sun’s rays into electricity, ultimately will produce 1 gigawatt of power, the companies said, without giving a timeframe.

According to Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov, the largest photovoltaic solar project announced to date is the 550 MW deal between closely held thin-film company OptiSolar and California utility PG&E Corp.

“The initial phase of the project is … itself one of the largest solar farms ever announced in China,” Molchanov wrote in a client note, adding that the Chinese government is beginning to offer more incentives for solar power projects. “While PV demand has been historically driven by a small number of key countries, the demand profile should become more geographically diverse over time,” Molchanov added.

The news was a welcome reprieve for investors in solar power companies, which have been hard hit by a lack of funding for new projects, a drop in prices on solar panels as supplies have jumped and a dramatic drop in oil prices that has tempered investor appetite for renewable energy.

China Technology Development shares rose 29 percent to $2.61 on Nasdaq following the announcement. The rally extended across the industry, with U.S. solar equipment maker GT Solar International Inc up 24.6 percent at $3.60, Chinese solar cell maker JA Solar Holdings Co Ltd up 12.6 percent at $4.92, U.S. cell maker SunPower Corp up 12.8 percent at $41.74, and China’s Yingli Green Energy Holding Co Ltd up 13.1 percent at $6.90.

A jump in the price of crude oil to over $46 a barrel and a 2 percent rise in Wall Street’s main indexes also boosted solar stocks, Molchanov said in an interview.

The solar rally came despite a downward revision by Piper Jaffray analyst Jesse Pichel to five solar companies’ earnings estimates. Pichel lowered his estimates on GT Solar, Canadian Solar Inc, Evergreen Solar Inc, LDK Solar Co Ltd and Renesola Ltd.

“We cautiously assume Q1 will be the industry shipment trough,” Pichel wrote, adding that solar “stocks could trade higher in the next 12 months depending on credit and the extent renewables play in the Obama recovery package.”

(Editing by Richard Chang)
Reuters

Posted in environment, solar power, sustainability, technology. Tagged with , , , , .

By barenose
05/01/2009

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