Indonesia's devastating 'mud volcano' could keep spewing for the next 30 years, filling the equivalent of 50 Olympic-size swimming pools every day, a top Australian expert warned on Thursday.

Curtin University of Technology's doctor Mark Tingay, who has just returned from the disaster site in East Java, said about 100,000 people remained under threat from subsidence three years after the volcano first erupted.

"In effect, the whole region around the vent hole is sinking by about two to five centimetres each day due to the rising mud level, causing more damage to suburban villages and triggering frequent bursts of flammable gas around homes," he said, according to a Geological Society of Australia statement.

Tingay added that damage caused by the mud, which has been devouring land and homes in Sidoarjo district since May 2, 2006, was estimated at about 4.9 billion dollars.

The volcano has buried 12 villages, killed 13 people, displaced more than 42,000 residents and wiped out 800 hectares (1,977 acres) of densely populated farming and industrial land.

...Australian oil and gas giant Santos, which was drilling in the area when the volcano erupted, by September had declared previsions of just 88.5 million dollars to cover the clean-up cost.

In December, Santos exited the project and said it would pay an Indonesian firm 22.5 million US dollars "to support long-term mud management efforts" at the site.

Montreal, Canada (SPX) Jun 11, 2009
Antibiotics, antimicrobials and antifungals are seeping into the waterways of North America, Europe and East Asia, according to an investigation published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). Authored by Universite de Montreal and Environment Canada researchers, the review found that consumption of anti-infectives for human and agriculture use contributes to their release into the environment and even into drinking water.

"Anti-infectives are constantly discharged, at trace levels, in natural waters near urban centres and agricultural areas," says senior author Sebastien Sauve, a Universite de Montreal professor of environmental analytical chemistry. "Their potential contribution to the spread of anti-infective resistance in bacteria and other effects on aquatic biota is a cause for concern."

The research team compiled published data for three classes of antibiotics (macrolides, quinolones and sulfonamides) and the compound trimethoprim present in the urban wastewaters of East Asia, Europe and North America. The scientists found higher concentrations of these pharmaceuticals in raw wastewater compared to treated wastewater.

"Rivers, creeks, lakes, estuaries, basins, sea waters and wells have been reported to be contaminated by several of these compounds," says Dr. Sauve, adding that a previous review by the scientific team also demonstrated that pharmaceuticals could promote microbial resistance when released in the environment.

CAPE TOWN, Jun 20 (IPS) - The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) claims that its "stress breeding", high-yield seed program and its emphasis on grassroots farmer input will boost agricultural production among poor, small scale farmers. But NGOs and environmentalists say AGRA's Programme for Africa's Seed System (PASS) is essentially a top-down, corporate driven approach that further threatens food security on the continent.

Like its predecessor, AGRA's `new' Green Revolution views food shortages as a crisis of demand-and-supply and has initiated what Joe de Vries, director of PASS, describes as a "farmer participatory" program that aims to develop strains of crops specifically suited to African conditions.

"It is our belief that Africa's farmers need to move beyond subsistence farming and that by doing so they will benefit, and so will African consumers through greater abundance of food in local markets," says de Vries.

For many NGOs working with subsistence farmers, AGRA's model has more to do with increasing Africa's production of commercial crops for export and opening up markets for agribusiness than it does with contributing to food security.

"The need to increase yield is a neat argument that is easily swallowed by governments and citizens.It does not necessarily lead to ending hunger, especially when that yield is headed for a global market and remains inaccessible to the majority", says Haidee Swanby, researcher at the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB).

One of the main criticisms levelled at AGRA is that it has not taken cognizance of the 2008 report by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) which suggested that food sovereignty is inextricably tied to traditional and ecological agricultural models.