Global News by Topic: Environment
MBERENGWA, ZIMBABWE – Phineas Moyo, 31, works in a small mine and as a farmer in Mberengwa, a district in southern Zimbabwe. He is married and has two children.
His wife is pregnant with their third child. She is a housewife and also takes care of the family vegetable garden for household consumption.
KATHMANDU, NEPAL – Hari Bahadur Nepali, 50, is busy helping his wife, Radha, to fetch water from the tap in their two-story house in Kapan, a village in Nepal's Kathmandu district.
But this is not just any tap.
The water comes from a metal pipe attached to a machine that extracts water from underground. Nepali says that the process, called water boring, has enabled his family of 10 to attain water despite a persistent nationwide shortage.
ACCRA, GHANA – Nana Okyere Akrofie, 24, says it has been months since he and his neighbors have had water flow from their taps in North Legon, a suburb of Accra, Ghana’s capital.
“The situation is so bad that for over four months now, we have not had water supply in our area,” Akrofie says.
NAIROBI, KENYA – Hellena Wanjiku, 29, lives in Wanyee, an area west of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, with her sister and brother-in-law. She works as a hairdresser and manages one of the couple’s salons. But she says that recent power cuts have hurt business.
“Electricity is central to the thriving of my business – heating water, powering the radio, which is for entertaining my clients, hair drying and styling,” Wanjiku says with a loud sigh.
BARAMULLA, KASHMIR, INDIA – Shamshada Bano, a young woman from Sopore, a town in Kashmir’s Baramulla district, says the day starts early for women here as they set out to fetch water for their families. Because of the scarcity of water in her village, Tujjar, she says it’s never an easy task.
“We set out to collect water at 6 in the morning,” she says. “Sometimes we move out while still rubbing our eyes and without even washing our face.”
VICTORIA FALLS, ZIMBABWE – Balbinah Nyoni, 37, grew up in Sianyanga village, a rural area that lies in the semiarid region of Matabeleland North province in western Zimbabwe.
Although the province is home to the world-famous Victoria Falls, the people here suffer from long dry spells and high temperatures, thanks to climate change and environmental degradation.
NAIROBI, KENYA – It is early evening, and one of the fast food outlets in the South C Shopping Center in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, is bustling with activity as hungry souls troop in one after the other. But Paul Mwangi, a taxi operator, says that no matter what he orders on the menu, he can’t spend less than 100 shillings, $1.10 USD, on a simple snack.