By 2050, Asia could be connected by a massive energy and information architecture, believes Stewart Taggart.

A ‘Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure’ could be inspired by – and dramatically extend – the concept of cross-border grids elsewhere, most notably in Europe and North Africa. Examining infrastructure projects now underway in Asia, how might these organically develop into a ‘Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure’ by 2050?

Global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased by 49 per cent in the last two decades, according to the latest figures by an international team, including researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia.

Published Dec. 4 in the journal Nature Climate Change, the new analysis by the Global Carbon Project shows fossil fuel emissions increased by 5.9 per cent in 2010 and by 49 per cent since 1990 -- the reference year for the Kyoto protocol.

Millions of people in up to five West African countries will face a food crisis in early 2012 if early warning systems are ignored, the United Nations and aid officials say.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), together with the World Food Programme (WFP) and British charity Oxfam, said this week that failed harvests and low food reserves in the Sahel, and particularly the countries of Chad, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Mali, would affect up to 11 million people.

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

The proportion of the world’s population with access to improved drinking water sources grew by 10 percent over a period roughly covering the past two decades, according to a United Nations study released Tuesday.

The study was released by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and UN World Health Organization (WHO).

The study found that between 1990 and 2008, the proportion of the world’s population with access to improved drinking water sources increased from 77 per cent to 87 percent.