Tehran to Host Eco-City Confab

Society Desk

The first national conference themed “Eco-City in Iran 2025” will be held in Tehran on March 6.
Announcing this, Mohammad Hadi Heydarzadeh, the head of Environment and Sustainable Development Headquarters, said on Tuesday that paying attention to environment is more important than before because of rapid urban expansion and population growth in large cities around the globe.
“An eco-city is built on the principles of living within the means of the environment,” he said.
Observing such principles is very important for lowering environmental damages.
“Today, environmental issues are very important around the world such that all nations have special programs to expand environment-friendly programs,” he said.
Heydarzadeh noted that proper management of large cities can save the environment.
“The quality of life in large cities depends on the number of environmental issues,” he said, explaining that in cities that are more environment-friendly, citizens live in better conditions and enjoy higher living standards.
The official said that four leading eco-city indicators, including green space, wastage, modern technologies and visual beauty, will be discussed at the conference.
Heydarzadeh further said that Iranian cities have taken great steps in becoming eco-friendly in recent years.

The ultimate goal of many eco-cities is to eliminate all carbon waste, produce energy entirely through renewable sources and incorporate the environment into the city. However, eco-city management can also stimulate economic growth, reduce poverty and organize cities to have higher efficiency and improved health services.
The ideal eco-city fulfills the following requirements:
-Operates in a self-contained economy, such that resources are procured locally
-Has completely carbon-neutral and renewable energy production
-Enjoys a well-planned city layout and public transportation system that prioritizes the following modes of transportation: walking, cycling and public transportation.
-Resource conservation--maximizing efficiency of water and energy resources, constructing a waste management system that can recycle waste and reuse it, creating a zero-waste system
-Restores environmentally damaged urban areas
-Ensures decent and affordable housing for all socioeconomic and ethnic groups and improves job opportunities for disadvantaged groups, such as women, minorities and the disabled
-Supports local agriculture and produce
-Promotes simplicity in lifestyle choices and increases awareness of environmental and sustainability issues.

Killer Floods Linked to Climate Change

Killer heat waves, floods and storms are increasingly caused by climate change, new research reveals.
Scientists in Germany say they have found how greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels are helping to trap the jet stream, resulting in extraordinary weather such as the 2010 Pakistan flood and the 2011 heat wave in the United States.
Human-driven climate change repeatedly disturbs the flow of atmospheric waves around the globe’s Northern Hemisphere, said lead author Vladimir Petoukhov of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, Allvoices reported.
Giant atmospheric waves called Rossby waves are meanders in the strong, high-altitude winds known as jet streams and have a major influence on weather. These wave movements are caused by the difference in temperatures between the cold air from the Arctic and hot air from the tropics.
“When the waves shift north, they suck warm air from the tropics to Europe, Russia, or the US, and when they swing down, they do the same thing with cold air from the Arctic,” said Petoukhov.
“During several recent extreme weather events, these planetary waves almost freeze in their tracks for weeks. So, instead of bringing in cool air after having brought warm air in before, the heat just stays.”
This unnatural pattern is due to human heating of the climate through emissions of greenhouse gases that result from burning fossil fuels, according to the study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
However, this heating of the atmosphere is wildly uneven. The Arctic is warming two to three times faster than the global temperature rise of 0.8C and that affects the Rossby waves and slowing the jet stream.

Afghan Girls Facing Grave Problems

In Afghanistan, the maternal mortality rate is on the rise; hospitals are filling up with anemic women and girls; and in over 200 districts, high schools are devoid of even a single female pupil.
These issues are not unrelated--they are all products of a grave social problem in this country of 35 million people: early child marriages.
According to Sadia Fayeq Ayubi, the head of Reproductive Health Department at the Ministry of Public Health, early marriage (of girls younger than 16 years) is illegal in Afghanistan yet girls as young as 13 are frequently married, often to much older men, IPS reported.
“In 2013 alone, 53 child marriages have been reported,” said Nazia Faizi, a representative of the Rights Department at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.
And although that number is less than in previous years, it does not provide an accurate picture of the situation, since “there are more unreported cases in the rural areas where women are more deprived and have no rights or access to legal help”, Faizi added.

Child Marriages
Child marriages are most common in four northern provinces: Kunduz, Sarpol, Faryab and Herat, where women’s “access to justice is poor”, she said.
Girls are coerced into marrying young. Many families consider it a matter of shame if their daughter is not married by the time she is 16 years old.
Sometimes, young girls are also ‘traded’ in marriage to save family honor or in compensation for a crime committed against a member of the family the girl is being married into.
According to Ayubi girls are married off between 13 and 17 years, and are often pregnant between 17 and 19 years.
This statistic is put in sharper perspective when viewed alongside national maternal mortality statistics: one in 50 Afghan women is likely to die of pregnancy-related causes, according to the 2010 Afghanistan Mortality Survey.
Deadly Data
The lifetime risk of pregnancy-related death is five times as high in rural areas as it is in towns and cities.
But the survey’s maternal mortality rate of 327 per 100,000 live births in the survey area--which excluded parts of the country disrupted by conflict--is significantly lower than the 1,400 per 100,000 live births assigned by United Nations agencies and the World Bank for the same year.
Meanwhile, divorce rates, suicide and self-immolation are on the rise, said Parwin Rahimi, in charge of the Women’s Support Department at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
In 2010, former deputy health minister, Faizullah Kakar, completed a study based on hospital reports and Health Ministry records, which showed that over 2,300 women and girls in the 15 to 40 age-group attempt suicide annually.
That same year, 100 cases of self-immolation were registered at the Herat City Hospital--76 of those women succumbed to their burns.
Experts and advocates suspect that early marriages are playing a role in pushing an increasing number of women to these desperate, often fatal, acts.
Child marriages could also explain the high dropout rate for girls in Afghanistan.

26,000 Gone Missing in Mexico

Mexico’s government has estimated that 26,122 people have gone missing since December 2006, a period dominated by drug-related violence.
The latest figure is much higher than previous government estimates, which put the number at a few thousand, BBC reported.
The list includes more than 20,000 ongoing official investigations, but 5,206 still have to be verified.
Last week, pressure group Human Rights Watch said it found evidence “of disappearances involving state agents.”
The group documented 250 disappearances that took place during the previous administration of President Felipe Calderon and accused all branches of the security forces of involvement, often at the behest of drug cartels.
“This database will be fine-tuned by the government and local prosecution services to determine in which cases the non-localization is related to crime, as well as cases of migration, relocation for family reasons, natural disasters or others,” she said.
In many cases, the missing could simply have been immigrants who went to work in the United States without telling their family. Others could have moved to escape drug-related violence.
The war on drug cartels declared by Calderon after his election in 2006 is seen as having led to a surge in drug-related violence.

7m Britons Take Painkillers So They Can Work

More than seven million people are taking painkillers on a regular basis just to feel well enough to go to work, according to a survey.
Many who take medicines such as tramadol and those containing codeine fear they are becoming dependent on them, research by the firm Nuffield Health was cited by Guardian.
Drugs charities say dependence on prescription painkillers is a huge but largely hidden problem.
Nuffield Health found a quarter of the British adult population has been regularly taking painkillers for at least five years.
Overall, about one in five said they had to take painkillers just to keep working.
Given that there are about 38 million people of working age in the UK, the survey suggests about 7.5 million people are reliant on painkillers to attend work.

Nepalese Woman Scales Mt. Everest Twice Within Days

A Nepalese climber was confirmed on Monday as the first woman to scale Mount Everest twice in a single season, Guinness World Records said, after she made the second summit within days of the first.
Chhurim Sherpa, 29, reached the 8,848-meter (29,028-feet) peak on May 12 last year before returning to base camp for a well-earned rest and then repeating the stunning feat a mere week later, Bangkok Post reported.
“I am very happy for this recognition. I was determined that the record should be held by a Nepalese woman and I’m proud to be one,” said Sherpa, from Nepal’s eastern hills.
Another Sherpa, Pasang Lhamu, died on her descent after becoming the first Nepalese woman to reach the summit of the world’s tallest mountain in 1993.
Her feat was followed by 21 Nepalese women but no female climber in the world had ever managed two ascents in one season before Chhurim Sherpa.
“Climbing Everest turns out to be very tough for women like me because there are no toilets. Five of us had to share a tent,” she told reporters at a ceremony in the capital Kathmandu to hand her the official record certificate.

Japan Will Not Stop Whale Hunting

Japan’s fisheries minister said on Tuesday the country will not stop hunting whales, despite fierce criticism from other countries and violent clashes at sea with militant conservationists.
“I don’t think there will be any kind of an end for whaling by Japan,” Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told ChannelNewsAsia in an interview.
Hayashi, who took the ministerial post overseeing the country’s whaling programs in December, said the criticism of the practice is “a cultural attack, a kind of prejudice against Japanese culture”.
Japan uses a loophole in an international ban on whaling that allows for lethal scientific research on the mammals, but it makes no secret of the fact that the mammals ultimately end up on menus.
Tokyo defends whaling as a tradition and accuses Western critics of disrespecting its culture. Norway and Iceland are the only nations that hunt whales in open defiance of a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling.
Australia and New Zealand voice outrage over Japan’s annual expeditions in the Southern Ocean, which the International Whaling Commission considers a sanctuary for the ocean giants.

China Tiger Parts

China defended its record on protecting endangered species after an environmental group accused it of allowing the sale of captive-bred tiger skins and body parts.