Claudia Albino, a washerwoman who earns about $3 a day and lives in a one-room hovel with her family in this bleak town of La Oroya in the Andes, might seem at first to have nothing to do with Ira Rennert, the reclusive New York billionaire who built one of the largest homes in the United States, an Italianate mansion sprawling over more than 66,000 square feet in the Hamptons.
Despite the fact that dumping old computers in developing countries has been declared as violation of international law, Pakistan was being used as dumping ground for over 50,000 tons of e-waste that hurts local industry and also creates environmental and health hazards.
Greater Dhaka has been a major engine of growth and prosperity in Bangladesh, representing more than 40% of Bangladesh's national GDP. This rapidly growing city of 12 million inhabitants has also emerged as a major hub for over 7000 small and medium scale industries.
Over the past decade, scholars have begun to develop the discipline of global environmental ethics. In doing so, they have encountered two obstacles. First, much environmentalism cloaks itself in the discourse of prudence and security, and thus, ethical concerns are difficult to identify.
Poisoning from pesticides, drug medicaments, biological substances and snake bites, are now the eight causes of death in Sri Lanka. In 2005 18,174 people died of poisoning, in 2006 19,381 died of poisoning and in 2007 23,675 people have died of poisoning.
Sukh Ram strips to his bare minimum and slithers into a stinky manhole as traffic whizzes above him. With no masks to protect against odious fumes, no protective gloves and a primitive spade as a tool, his job is to clean a choked drain of muck so that it does not overflow when monsoon hits the city.
Water of the Buriganga and Shitalakhya rivers has become difficult to treat due to high level of pollution, said Dr MA Taher Khandker, director general of Bangladesh Haor and Wetland Development Board at a seminar yesterday.
The discharge of heavily contaminated domestic and industrial waste into Phuleli Canal in Hyderabad continues unabatedly and no relevant authority has taken notice of the grave threat this situation poses.
A large portion of the province, particularly the lower Sindh, has brackish and saline underground water due to the influence of the sea and water shortage in the Indus River.
