In recent years, scarcity and pollution of water have become the paramount environmental woe in China. Numerous reports and books have exposed China's water crisis, depicting a nation suffering in the face of black-running rivers and dried-up waterways. Nationwide, the per capita availability of fresh water is only one-quarter of the world average.

Arctic ice is melting fast and the area covered by ice sheets in ocean could shrink this summer to the smallest since 1978 when satellite observation first started, Japanese scientists warned in a report. Ice sheets in the Arctic Ocean shrank to the smallest area on record in late summer in 2007, researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said in a report on the website (http://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/imgdata/topics/2008/tp080430.html).

If anyone had doubts about the importance of the voluntary carbon market they would certainly have been overcome by the announcement last month by Merrill Lynch of a new carbon offset service to assist businesses to reduce emissions through voluntary offsets. In partnership with ICF International, Merrill Lynch's new Green and Gold initiative is the latest in a series of moves by major financial institutions to position themselves in a market valued by Abyd Karmail, Merrill Lynch's managing director and global head of carbon emissions at over of $70 billion.

Computer analyses of global climate have consistently overstated warming in Antarctica, concludes new research by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Ohio State University. The study can help scientists improve computer models and determine if Earth's southernmost continent will warm significantly this century, a major research question because of Antarctica's potential impact on global sea-level rise.

An unprecedented 1.5 million Chinese children have participated in a painting competition on the topic of climate change, in a sign of the country's growing awareness of environmental issues. The competition, held in China for the first time, saw the children collectively submit 200,000 paintings on the theme of climate change. Some 620 paintings were selected for prizes by the jury, which was made up of renowned Chinese artists, UNEP officials and Ms Elizabeth Rihoy of Resource Africa.

Climate change is harder on women in poor countries, where mothers stay in areas hit by drought, deforestation or crop failure as men move to literally greener pastures, a Nobel Peace laureate said on Tuesday. "Many destructive activities against the environment disproportionately affect women, because most women in the world, and especially in the developing world, are very dependent on primary natural resources: land, forests, waters," said Wangari Maathai of Kenya.

Sydney-based Ecocho founder Tim Macdonald had an idea; build a search engine based on Google and Yahoo technology and use the ad revenue to plant two trees for every 1,000 searches, offsetting tons of carbon dioxide.

Climate change and the carbon emissions seem inextricably linked. However, new research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Carbon Balance and Management suggests that this may not always hold true, although it may be some time before we reach this saturation point.

Is my sustainability work consonant with the gravity of the climate crisis and the urgency of the ecological challenges we face? At Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), as a complement to our work on renewable energy hedges, we are working to transform energy use on campus. One project underway is a system of grid-tied electric vehicles (Vehicle to Grid or V2G) combined with a solar photovoltaic charging system and smart computer control.

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