The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
Zephania Ubwani
8 May 2008
Arusha — President Jakaya Kikwete will today officially launch a major programme to save the earth from environmental hazards.
The International Year of Planet Earth for the African region will be launched at the Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge outside Arusha.
Eminent scientists from within and outside the continent will attend the function and a scientific conference later.
The International Year of Planet Earth is a global programme coordinated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).
Activities to mark the year started last year across the continent, according to officials of the Vice President's Office dealing with environment matters.
The activities include conservation programmes and mitigation of disasters.
Experts expected to be in attendance include earth scientists. Others are geologists, mining and energy experts, hydrologists and a host of other specialists.
The Unesco director general, Koichiro Matsura, is already here for the occasion as are senior officials of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and representatives of other UN agencies.
Further details of the programmes and the main environmental hazards threatening the earth could not be availed to this paper.
However, climate change, a process which leads to increased temperature on the earth's lower atmosphere due to increased emissions of green house gases, has been cited as one of the main threats to the earth.
Growth to industry, agriculture, transportation and urbanisation since the Industrial Revolution have produced vast quantities of greenhouse gases which experts equate to augmenting a thermal blanket over the planet.
According to recent reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, atmospheric temperatures over the earth have risen by 0.6 Centigrades in the last century.
Some projected longer-term results of global warming include melting of polar ice, sea level rise, disruption of drinking water supplies dependent on snow and extinction of species.
It is feared that the global temperature will increase by between 0.8 to 3.5 degrees by the year 2100 if no action is taken to reduce green house gas emissions.
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