Global Excerpts | A water crisis; breaking up the forest

A water crisis
From the Daily Nation, Nairobi, Kenya
The full impact of environmental degradation is beginning to be felt in Kenya as water and other natural resources diminish. Nairobi and all other urban centers are perennially short of water these days because of the depletion at the source. And the situation threatens to get worse unless drastic action is taken to reverse the trend.
This is why we commend the Ministry of Water Development for undertaking to sink some 20 boreholes in Nairobi in the next two months to ease the crisis.
Provision of water is becoming a huge challenge because the major dams no longer fill up to the required level.
Breaking up the forest
From the London Guardian
For the last two months, the indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon have been protesting peacefully against the destruction of their lands.
The protests turned bloody recently, however. An Indian uprising has seen rivers blockaded to prevent oil companies from sending barges into the forest in the hope of overturning a new law that lets rip the exploitation of the Amazon forests by loggers, miners, biofuel farmers and oil men.
Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, is determined to parcel up the forest into blocks for commercial use, encouraged by a free trade deal with America signed three years ago.