Event: Poster Presentation Event: Press Conference
Date: Tuesday, 22 August 2006 Date: Wednesday, 23 August 2006
Time: 17:00 – 18:45 hrs. Time: 17:15 hrs.
Venue: Room 206 Venue: Glashall A+B
At: Stockholm City Conference Centre, Folkets Hus, Barnhusgatan, 12-14
Produced by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in cooperation with Belgian Development Cooperation, Africa’s Lakes: Atlas of Our Changing Environment compares and contrasts spectacular satellite images of the past few decades with contemporary ones.
Africa’s Lakes Atlas is an effort to increase local and international awareness of some natural and some human-made changes. This comprehensive collection of 60 images, 40 photos and 15 environmental maps demonstrates rapid shrinking of Lake Songor in Ghana, the extraordinary changes in the Zambezi river system beside more familiar images of the near 90 per cent shrinkage of Lake Chad. Other impacts, as seen from space, include the extensive deforestation around Lake Nakuru in Kenya, dramatic rejuvenation of the Djoudj Sanctuary wetlands in Senegal and farming of scorching hot desert in Toshka, Egypt.
Satellite measurements detailing the falling water levels of Lake Victoria are also mapped. Africa’s largest freshwater lake is now about a metre lower than it was in the early 1990s. The development of this visual proof of Africa’s environmental changes revolving around lakes involved the input of 42 contributors from 16 organizations in 11 countries including Cameroon, Canada, China, Ethiopia, India, Italy, Kenya, Madagascar, Nepal, the United States of America and Zimbabwe.
For more information visit: http://www.na.unep.net/ Contact: Ashbindu Singh, Ph.D., Regional Coordinator
UNEP Division of Early Warning & Assessment-North America
1707 H Street, Suite 300, Washington DC 20006
Tel: 202 785 0465
Fax: 202 785 2096
Email: ashbindu.singh@rona.unep.org
[e-nass]
