A Lecture on Afghanistan by Edward Girardet

From page 1: "Note: Edward Girardet, a free-lance journalist based in Paris, has visited Afghanistan and Pakistan several times over the past few years and has had extensive contacts with Afghan resistance fighters. He has written a book on Afghanistan that will be published by Little, Brown & Co. sometime this year. On February 22, 1983, he gave a lecture at Radio Liberty about his experiences in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The lecture is reproduced below in revised form; since Mr. Girardet's talk was accompanied by slides, a certain amount of cutting, re-organization, and rewording of the text was unavoidable."This material from the personal archives of Professor M. Mobin Shorish is made available by the University of Arizona Libraries as part of the Afghanistan Digital Collections. Email [email protected] with your questions about this collection

Environmental analysis of the logistics of agricultural products from roof top greenhouses in mediterranean urban areas

Background: As urban populations increase so does the amount of food transported to cities worldwide, and innovative agro-urban systems are being developed to integrate agricultural production intobuildings; for example, by using roof top greenhouses (RTGs). This paper aims to quantify and compare, through a life cycle assessment, the environmental impact of the current linear supply system with a RTG system by using a case study for the production of tomatoes. Results: The main results indicatethat a change from the current linear system to the RTG system could result in a reduction, per kilogram of tomatoes (the functional unit), in the range of 44.4-75.5% for the different impact categoriesanalysed, and savings of up to 73.5% in energy requirements. These savings are associated with re-utilisation of packaging systems (55.4-85.2%), minimisation of transport requirements (7.6-15.6%) and reduction of the loss of product during transportation and retail stages (7.3-37%). Conclusions: The RTG may become a strategic factor in the design of low-carbon cities in Mediterranean areas. Short-term implementation in the city of Barcelona could result in savings of 66.1 tonnes of CO2 eq. ha-1 when considering the global warming potential, and of 71.03 t ha-1 whenconsidering that the transformation fromwoodland to agricultural land is avoided. \ua9 2012 Society of Chemical Industry