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The Olympic Games is both a symbolic and a practical opportunity to ensure that these global sporting games live up to the ideals enshrined in the Olympic charter and that people who enjoy the games can also know that the souvenirs and garments they wear are produced in factories where basic (...)

Following the first "Global Day of Action", which took place on January 26th, and after 7 years of existence, the World Social Forum is in debate. A political and strategical debate focused on the process of the FSM, the international situation as well as the anti-globalization’s movement as a (...)

So as to play a part in the information society, free software could drive the computerisation of West Africa. But although migration to free software may be a development alternative, it first has to transit via organising the world of developers and navigate through the interests of (...)

On the eve of International Women’s Day, a new ITUC report, the Global Gender Pay Gap reveals that on average, women are paid 16% less than their male counterparts. The report includes detailed analysis of statistics from official sources in 63 countries around the world. Data from an online (...)

There is increasing concern over the effects of import liberalisation on the viability of agriculture, particularly that practised by small farmers of food crops in developing countries.
Such concern has emerged because of the experience of many developing countries undertaking structural (...)

Venezuela has undergone profound political and social changes since Hugo Chávez assumed the presidency in February 1999. These transformations have been reflected in the fundamental pillars of the government’s economic policy. Chávez’s initially spoke about combating “savage neo-liberalism” and (...)

"Before forming part of the association, we were shut up in our houses. Now we have overcome our fear and shame of going out and seeing new places, and we are bringing money in for our families," says Nicolasa Raxtun, a 30-year-old Maya Cakchiquel Indian woman. Read (...)

KARAT Coalition presents a report "Fair play – always in fashion" on sportswear in Poland. On who, where and in what conditions produces it, and who and why buys it. The report portrays Polish manufacturers, workers, consumers and the relationships among all these groups.
The authors are trying (...)

It is a terrible time for the global economy. The latest sign of this is the deep plunge in the Asian and European stock markets on Monday, 21 January in response to the string of bad news last week in the United States, leading to the conclusion that the US has now slipped into recession. Read (...)

Living modified organisms (LMOs), also known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), are living organisms that have undergone changes in their genetic constitution by artificial incorporation of an exogenous gene into their genome, making use of recombinant DNA technology, also known as (...)

The vision behind organic agriculture is one in which care for the environment and health are central, and farmers get a fair deal for their efforts. But organic agriculture is also becoming serious business – with marketing tools, like certification, occupying more and more space and influence. (...)

New Delhi: The four day Independent Peoples Tribunal (IPT) on the World Bank in India concluded here today hearing numerous depositions indicting the Bank’s policy and project interventions in India. While the World Bank India office did engage with the IPT and claimed they would make a (...)

Researchers from usa and Denmark have confirmed an association between increased exposure to persistent organic pollutants (pops) like polychlorinated biphenyls (pcb) and decreased antibody production in children vaccinated against tetanus and diphtheria. Action against pops was initiated in (...)

One of the terrible truths of the 20th century is that it was a blight on small farmers or peasants everywhere. Before looking at the question of whether Asia’s farmers need protection, it is necessary to consider this historical background.
In both wealthy capitalist economies and in socialist (...)

How corporations use bilateral trade channels to weaken biotech regulations
The agribusiness sector has been struggling to respond to worldwide opposition to genetically modified (GM) foods ever since farmers started sowing the laboratory-engineered seeds in the mid-1990s. Transnational (...)

The big players in the world seed industry are grumbling about loopholes in the plant variety protection system, which was the alternative to patenting that they set up in the 1960s. The Europeans want to get rid of farmers’ limited entitlement to save seed. The Americans want to restrict the (...)

Backyard or free-range poultry are not fuelling the current wave of bird flu outbreaks stalking large parts of the world. The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is essentially a problem of industrial poultry practices. Its epicentre is the factory farms of China and Southeast Asia and — while wild birds can carry the disease, at least for short distances — its main vector is the highly self-regulated transnational poultry industry, which sends the products and waste of its farms around the world through a multitude of channels. Yet small poultry farmers and the poultry biodiversity and local food security that they sustain are suffering badly from the fall-out. To make matters worse, governments and international agencies, following mistaken assumptions about how the disease spreads and amplifies, are pursuing measures to force poultry indoors and further industrialise the poultry sector. In practice, this means the end of the small-scale poultry farming that provides food and livelihoods to hundreds of millions of families across the world. This paper presents a fresh perspective on the bird flu story that challenges current assumptions and puts the focus back where it should be: on the transnational poultry industry.

This report compares the ETC’s findings from 2003 to the current situation to reveal the dramatic increase in corporate concentration in 2005. Furthermore, it demonstrates how what looks like buying and selling between countries is very often the redistribution of
capital among subsidiaries of the same parent multinational corporation.

An introduction guide to some of the major issues which will be battled out during the WTO meetings in Hong Kong this December. As well as suggesting ways disrupting the meetings and explaining why it feels this action is necessary, the guide also presents an idea of what the alternatives to the current make-up might be.

Next year, in June, world leaders will get together in the joyful city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to mark 20 years of UNCED—the Earth Summit (see Down to Earth, May 15, 1992).
Unbelievably, it will be 40 years since the Stockholm conference, when the question of the environment first caught (...)