The Stream, March 26: Tighter Rules for Coal Seam Gas in Australia?

South Australia has become the third Australian state to agree to the federal government’s tightened approvals process for future coal seam gas and large-scale coal mining projects, Platts reported.

Water Security
Germany has offered to help resolve the water disputes in Central Asia and to invest in water-saving solar and wind energy in the region, uznews.net reported.

The British Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has warned that the growing pressure on water resources globally could worsen existing tensions or trigger wars, the Guardian reported.

Agriculture & Land
Drought is plaguing Brazil’s southern soy growing states, prompting analysts to cut down their forecast for the 2011-12 output, MercoPress reported.

Despite opposition, Ethiopia’s government plans to clear land, relocate people and build infrastructure for investors to speed up a commercial farming surge in the west of the country, Bloomberg News reported. Ethiopia is one of the world’s top five recipients of food aid but has leased out hundreds of thousands of hectares of land over the past four years to foreign investors to grow crops partly for export.

Meanwhile, the Brazilian government has recently proposed a re-mapping of the Amazon that would remove protection for more than 81,000 hectares (200,000 acres) of rainforest, including national parks, to make way for hydroelectric dams, according to International Rivers.

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