Water and Sanitation

On Wednesday, April 14, PBS NewsHour aired Fred de Sam Lazaro's latest story from Kenya: a report on social entrepreneur and Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz. She's developed a new idea called "patient capital", that is funding innovative approaches in tackling some of the worlds most entrenched social problems. Also, a look at one man's vision for cleaner and greener public toilets in Kenya. It's part one of a two part series.

Decades of civil war in southern Sudan has have hindered the population's access to clean water and allowed some parasites to persist. But international efforts have made headway on one particular scourge: the guinea worm. Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from Sudan.

The piece aired on PBS NewsHour April 7, 2010.

Photographer Sean Gallagher's 12-page photo-essay 'China's Growing Sands' is featured in the April 2010 edition of National Geographic China. The work focuses on the subject of environmental crisis of desertification and its effects on northern China.

Read the full article at National Geographic Magazine China.

The Kolahoi glacier in Kashmir is receding at a rate of nearly 10 feet (3 meters) a year.

In Ethiopia, where lack of access to water is a significant issue, aid groups have found that local involvement in establishing water wells betters the chances that they will last. Fred de Sam Lazaro reports on these community-based initiatives, especially their impact on women.

This piece is part of a reporting collaboration on water issues in east Africa between NewsHour and the Pulitzer Center.

"I'm not going to Kashmir," said my brother defiantly. We were in the ticket line at the New Delhi airport about to board a flight to Srinigar, the capital of Kashmir. "I just don't have a good feeling about going to this place, it's just too dangerous." When I looked at the fear in his eyes, I realized there was no way he would board the plane.

Beijing, China — China's poverty-stricken northwest is swathed in sand. The deserts are creeping over ever larger areas, in part because of weather changes linked to climate change. Sean Gallagher a young British photographer travelled to Ningxia to document China's growing sands.

"You can smell a sandstorm.

As I woke this morning, my throat was drier than normal and the smell of dust and sand had crept into my room whilst I was sleeping.

I opened my curtains expecting to see the Yellow River out of my window but all I could see was a haze of yellow light."

As I looked at the Himalaya Mountains, from my window, on a flight from New Delhi to Kashmir last week, I realized that something was missing. Snow. The mountains usually snowcapped by December were bare. My friends in Kashmir had told me that this was an abnormally warm winter and there was no snow, but somehow I just did not realize the magnitude of the situation. I was not the only one.

On October 5 2005, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India. The eighth most destructive earthquake on record, an estimated 75,000 people were killed. Millions more were left homeless as entire villages were flattened.

Fleeing natural disasters that destroyed their villages, many Bangladeshis have moved to Dhaka's slums, where disease is on the rise.

See this article as it originally appeared at TIME.com.

Fighting the war against sand - Outlook talks to the photojournalist who has travelled across the spreading deserts of China where more and more people are becoming environmental refugees - it's now estimated that almost one fifth of China's land area is now desert.

Gallagher's interview begins at 16:56.

Listen to the interview on BBC World.

People across the globe are learning that the glaciers in the western Himalaya are receding as fast as any place on the planet. But few know how the glacier's recession is measured. In September, I joined an expedition team led by one of the foremost glaciologists in India, and trekked to Kolohai glacier. These pictures show how the measurements on Kashmir's glaciers are taken and gives insight into the lives of people already affected by climate change.