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Will the host city for the November-December world climate summit, COP17, clean up its act? The August 23 launch of a major Academy of Science of South Africa (Assaf) report, Towards a Low Carbon City: Focus on Durban – offers an early chance to test whether new municipal leaders are climate (...)

The Southeast Asian city-state strives to end its dependence on Malaysia for water
How does a city-state that has no natural water body, very little groundwater and even less land to store rainwater quench the thirst of its five million people? Singapore faces this question just as one of its (...)

Even as the elements of the roots of the current environmental and social crisis were already present at the Rio Conference of 1992, the consciousness of a finite and partially destroyed world, due to the irreversible character of the some phenomena (climate, biodiversity, resource depletion), (...)

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations to be hosted in Durban later this year, with this round of talks commonly referred to as COP 17, must not be seen in isolation of the troubled waters gnawing at the knees of multilateral environmental agreements (...)

For some, food is a crisis of scarcity, but for many in U.S., it’s just the opposite. The book "American Wasteland" show us how much we squander and what we can do about it.
As a nation, we grow and raise more than 590 billion pounds of food each year. And depending on whom you ask, we squander (...)

The revolution in Libya, led by a motley group of democrats and Islamists and their imperialist allies, is likely to entrench the deep divisions in the country, writes Samir Amin, warning of the possibility of disintegration of the nation.
Libya is neither Tunisia nor Egypt. The ruling group (...)

The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) has recently released a practical strategic analysis that provides a “greenprint” to shift us from our collective environmental crises toward a sustainable future.
Entitled “Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty (...)

South Sudan faces severe challenges; although 99 per cent of the south voted for independence, the people there are far from united.
ON July 9, South Sudan officially joined the international community as an independent nation. Its President, Salva Kiir, in his speech to mark the historic (...)

In the final analysis, sanctions are unlikely to produce the desired effect in time. Assad’s killing machine will continue to target civilians, but sanctions will suck the economic and political oxygen out of the regime.
Western countries are at loss about how to pressure Bashar al-Assad to end (...)

The recent nuclear scare in Japan has reinforced pressure in China to raise its awareness of the risks of new technologies.
Like many other countries, China is currently reviewing the safety of its nuclear power programme following the damage caused by Japan’s tsunami to the Fukushima nuclear (...)

Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Aric McBay call for new strategy to stave off environmental catastrophe.
Environmental groups are trying to build a critical mass around issues like global warming to inspire public action and encourage legislators to get their heads out of the sand. The Sierra (...)

Centre for Science and Environement, 128 pages, 39$
This is CSE’s latest book. CSE’s Environment Education Unit has always been working towards providing easy-to-understand reading material. Our new publication on this subject is an attempt to lend teachers a helping hand. It unfolds in two (...)

What do you do if you want to build a pipeline to move 300 million barrels of oil but an "uncontacted" tribe is in the way? Employing consultants who claim they don’t exist certainly helps.
On July 22, Peru’s Energy Ministry gave the green light to Anglo-French company Perenco to build a (...)

Ting does not know exactly how the proposed Xayaburi hydropower dam will change his life, but he knows he will be forced to leave his village if it goes ahead.
"I don’t have any power over this decision," said Ting, 50, who like other Lao villagers, goes by only one name. He earns a living (...)

WWF’s flagship scheme to promote sustainable timber – the Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN) – is allowing companies to reap the benefits of association with WWF and its iconic panda brand, while they continue to destroy forests and trade in illegally sourced timber, a new briefing by Global (...)

International Rivers, a non-profit organization founded in 1985 and working for the protection of rivers and the life they support, specially in Latin America, Asia and Africa, made a clear slideshow that brings to the light all the negative impacts of hydropower, a source of energy most of the (...)

Everywhere in the world people care for and try to preserve the things they value.
What is considered valuable is relative to the socio-cultural context, and often things that are of great significance and deeply precious for some individuals and groups are not for others. There are things and (...)

What can a humble loaf of bread tell us about the world?
The answer is: far more than you might imagine. For one thing, that loaf can be “read” as if it were a core sample extracted from the heart of a grim global economy. Looked at another way, it reveals some of the crucial fault lines of (...)

As the U.S. suffers through catastrophic tornadoes, heat waves, and other climate extremes - no doubt just a small taste of what the climate crisis will bring in the future - polluting industries and the politicians that serve them want to convince you that excess carbon dioxide in the (...)

Increasing oil prices, rising energy demands, climate change and Kyoto Protocol commitments are the causes of an emerging worldwide renewable energy boom. These renewables include agrofuels, such as agrodiesel made from rapeseed, palm oil, soybean oil or other types of vegetable oil, as well as (...)