Floods in Pakistan

Hopefully will be doing something to help with “Other Asias” before the end of the month.It seems unbelievable that such an arid country could have such floods leading to such suffering and devastation.What could have caused them? Is it overlogging in the Himalayas? Climate change moving weather patterns?
There are floods also in China, could they be linked? We need to have a clearer idea of what has caused them in order to safeguard against re occurrence and then see what can be done to help prevent another catastrophe.
In Britain there are often yearly floods on a much milder level but both here and abroad it should not be beyond the environment agencies to study methods such as used in Holland in order to know how to build against disaster.
Could extra reservoirs be built with sluices that could open and run off an amount of flood water? We all need water and that would store it for future use.It would be great to hear comments from those working in the field.

Sustainableart is website of the month on http://www.cultureartist.org/

“What is a ‘Culture Artist?’
Deep Ecology is the principle that humanity cannot be separated from the environment; that human beings and nature are one and the same. Somewhere along the way, humankind seems to have forgotten that we aren’t separate from nature.

Since our culture at present revolves more around material wealth and accumulation than family, friends and the environment around us, some of us feel that we need to modify our culture to make room for nature; to return to our roots.

Those of us who use the principles of Deep Ecology to make cultural change are artists working with the medium of culture itself: we are Culture Artists, working to change the world for the better.”

This is a quotation from this interesting site where my site is featured. One often thinks that Americans are only interested in slash and burn but here one can see there are thoughtful ones too. Also the Solar Power Stations are set to take off in California if they can handle the rare animals that live on the projected sites. It is a great to be site of the month with Cultural Artist who share many of the aims of my own work.

http://www.cultureartist.org

London exibition 09

My work on Solar Power and the Indus River Dolphin has come to London as part of “Other Asias” and is being exhibited through;

http://otherasias.webnode.com/redo-pakistan-in-london/

snow leopards

New paintings on my web site;  www.sustainableart.co.uk

The Indus River Dolphin

The following two articles are from the conference held recently in Lahore Pakistan on “Re-doPakistan” ,organised through;

www.OtherAsias.com

The Indus River Dolphin

There is a wonderful rare dolphin in the Indus River that could become extinct as in the Yantese River in China. These animals are a good indication of the health of the river, if they die out it shows that too much water has been siphoned off and also that it could be polluted. They are also part of the heritage of Pakistan, a joy for our children to see and a source of pride and income from tourism for the local people. Various groups are trying to look after them and their web addresses etc are included below.

These paintings were inspired originally by a large work done for the group WDCS, in Speyside, where the indigenous dolphins that live in the Moray Firth in Scotland are at risk from drilling for oil in their habitat. My painting can be seen there and the charity uses the image to help raise funds. It led to researching the dolphins in Pakistan and hoping that people will want to preserve Indus River ones for future generations.

www.sustainableart.co.uk

Marisa Rehana Samiullah Mann

REFERENCES

Pakistan Wetlands Program: http://www.pakistanwetlands.org

www.animalinfo.org/species/cetacean/platmino.htm -

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_River_Dolphin –

http://www.wdcs.org/submissions_bin/indus_river_dolphins_pakistan.pdf -

http://www.defence.pk/forums/general-images-multimedia/20511-indus-river-dolphin-endangered-freshwater-river-dolphin.html

http://indusdolphin.org.pk/about/

http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/freshwater/publications/index.cfm?uNewsID=21901

http://www.wwfpak.org/sc_indusriverdolphin.php

This group is helping people and dolphins showing how less water and agrochemicals can be used in growing rice and cotton

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.wildlifeofpakistan.com/indusdolphin3.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.wildlifeofpakistan.com/RiverDolphin.html&h=262&w=450&sz=15&hl=en&start=6&um=1&tbnid=3YTROa5u-FtbiM:&tbnh=74&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dindus%2Briver%2Bdolphin%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official

an image and write up about the dolphin

Email: sajjad.musavi@gmail.com

An Urdu speaking group

This group helps local people ;

http://indusdolphin.org.pk/about/urdu/urdu_01.asp [urdu version]

http://un.org.pk/undp/sgp/green-pioneers/chap-15.htm

http://indusdolphin.org.pk/river_dolphins/ [some also seen near Amritsar]

“Tragedy of the Yangtze Dolphin” New Scientist, 15 September 2007,UK,Lacon House,84 Theobald’s Road, London, WCIX8NS

Re do Pakistan Solar Power Stations

Re do Pakistan Solar Power Stations

Artist; Marisa Rehana (Samiullah) Mann

There are many ideas that can transform Pakistan and one of them is to envisage solar power stations. They could provide clean energy that will never cease and allow all Pakistanis to have a good standard of living. Solar Power Stations are to be contrasted with solar panels that are good on a local or individual level, (CSP) Concentrated Solar Power, as they are known are for powering industry, transport and buildings. They would take a large start up cost but that could be loaned from World Organisations or countries such as the Arab States. Already some are planned; the far sighted Abu Dhabi is building a Solar City at Masdar and CSP plants are planned in Morocco, Libya and Algeria. A unified grid would be needed, known as (HVDC) high voltage direct current, to enable the power to be circulated; excess can be stored in melted salts. My painting is of a Dish power station. There are also other ones including a Power tower, parabolic trough and Fresnel mirror system.

CSP is a particularly good technology for hot desert regions as the heat gathered from the sun using mirrors is concentrated and used to power a steam turbine thus creating the electricity. Desalination plants could be set up and also powered near the coast to provide water for the station giving water and shade as waste products. It may be possible to thus also grow vegetables and fruits around the plants.

Other systems could also be fed into the grid; hot rock, wind, HEP and tidal turbines. This will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air so as to help global warming, as otherwise deserts will increase, and without the set up and decommissioning costs of nuclear power.

This sounds like a story but it is only for us to open our eyes and look, use our brains and work together and this concept together with my other to help maintain the Indus River are 2 ideas envisaged for Pakistan

Sources

http://www.desertec.org/concept.html – 28k

http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/ – 23k

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Mediterranean_Renewable_Energy_Cooperation – 59k –

http://www.desertec-iran.org/

http://www.desertec-india.org.in/

Time magazine February 25 2008

International Climate Forum

London June14 2008

www.campaigncc.org

“Green grid”, New Scientist 14 March 09

http://www.openhydro.com/technology.html

P249-256, Global Fever, How to treat climate Change, William H. Calvin 2008, University of Chicago Press

Lynx in the Pyrenees

The European Lynx has been sighted in the Canigou Massif and elsewhere in the Pyrenees until the last 10 years. There is a programme to possibly release other ones back into the wild;

www.pyrenees-decouverte.com

www.lynx.uio.no

www.iberianature.com

My paintings have brought back to these magnificent creatures to the wonderfully wild mountains of the local area.

Wildlife this summer

I shall be putting the Eurasian Lynx back in the Canigou Massif in the Pyrenees, France with my gallery there. They were sighted until 10 years ago and there are plans to re-introduce them. The paintings are based on studies taken from http://www.whf.org.uk/cats.cfm?id=lynx in Kent where there are a number of large cats.

Comment on News Blaze video

Comment on story http://newsblaze.com/story/20090403094001kamw.nb/topstory.html
My comment is in the form of a short satire and can be seen here or published on NewsBlaze

How a Planet lost itself
Once upon a time there was a planet inhabited by creatures without much fore or hindsight. Somehow some of them got in charge of looking after the institutions where the vast majority kept their savings. This was strange because none of them had the extremely difficult qualification of previously running a market stall ,so they had no idea that they could not keep lending their customers fruit and vegetables ,or even allowing them to bet on the future price of legumes ,or the stall holder would go out of business.

Luckily for them the creatures chosen by the majority of everyone to check on systems had no idea either. They were only experienced in having nice trips and boat rides and the two groups became a kind of oligarchy, each granting the others large sums and future payments and occupations for when they went on to fully enjoy themselves.

Eventually there was a huge gap in the actual savings that everyone else had put in these societies and what had been paid out and mass panic took place with lots of communications on how could this have happened? The creatures in overall charge said no one could have seen this coming and solved the problem by enslaving the great grand creatures and there was much hand ringing and confusion.
However nothing was done to introduce a system of training to send the ones looking after savings to learn with stall holders. In fact they started to get cross that they were being criticised in small sections.

Also the rulers put nothing in place to stop this happening again, but as the two groups own funds were carefully safeguarded even though everyone else was doing terribly badly, these two groups lived happily ever after.

re do Pakistan

Am currently preparing 2 ideas for this conference. Look on March 20 for details