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How can fossil fuels and uranium be kept in the ground and agrofuels off the land in ways that do not inflict suffering upon millions? Mainstream policy responses to these issues are largely framed in terms of "energy security".
Yet far from making energy supplies more secure, such policies (...)

Patenting seeds has led to a farming and food crisis - and huge profits for US biotechnology corporations.
The seed is the first link in the food chain - and seed sovereignty is the foundation of food sovereignty. If farmers do not have their own seeds or access to open pollinated varieties (...)

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has been campaigning furiously for the past two months against the assertion that Cape Town is racist, after this was again thrust into the public spotlight at the beginning of the year by acclaimed singer Simphiwe Dana’s tweet that “no matter how famous/ rich you (...)

Two Ecuadoran journalists have been ordered to pay President Rafael Correa US$2 million in moral damages - the latest in a string of incidents that point to a "disturbing" and "deteriorating" free expression situation in Ecuador under President Rafael Correa, says IFEX-ALC, an alliance of 16 (...)

After President Ollanta Humala’s state visit to Venezuela Jan 7, and despite some adverse reactions to the visit in Peru, Humala announced that the two countries have “succeeded in turning away from the bilateral politics of the past in which nothing major had been accomplished in diplomatic, (...)

’Use of a failed and dangerous technology’ expanding
Despite the Fukushima nuclear disaster, potentially flawed plant design and worlwide protests, the world is moving towards building more nuclear power plants.
Just last week the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted licenses to build (...)

By Gervais Williams, Bloomsbury Publishing, 208 pages
Gervais Williams explains why investment miles matter. His new book Slow Finance anticipates a forthcoming change in public attitude to the financial sector. Just as the Slow Food movement represents a reaction to the food industry losing (...)

Public demonstrations have been central to South Africa’s democratic life for decades. Yet recent events suggest a narrowing of the substance of the right to assemble, demonstrate and picket, and a de-legitimisation of street politics. In this regard, the City of Cape Town’s near hysterical (...)

John Riddell interviews Felipe Stuart Cournoyer
In a fit of petulant anger, the US government lashed out on January 25 against the outcome of Nicaragua’s recent presidential election. To understand the context of the US threats, I talked to Felipe Stuart Cournoyer, a Nicaraguan citizen and (...)

New factors in deforestation like the world economic crisis, speculation in markets for basic products and arable land, and worsening poverty and climate change are aggravating the old causes of this phenomenon such as the advance of agricultural frontiers, tree cutting for timber and fuel, and (...)

Malawi is more dependent on environmental assets than most other countries, with over 80 per cent of Malawians involved in farming. The country is also vulnerable to environmental risks, such as floods and droughts and long-term climate change. If the stocks and flows of environmental assets (...)

Only four of the 12 hydropower projects in the Northeast generate at their projected 90% dependability or higher. The rest are underperforming miserably. Regardless, several big projects are under construction in the Northeast. Why don’t the stakeholders analyse the performance and impact of (...)

Burma edges towards peace.
Hopes of an end to the world’s longest-running insurgency were raised in recent days, as several ethnic rebel groups entered into ceasefire agreements with the Burmese government. The most important of these took place on 12 January, when the Karen National Union (...)

Questioning whether certain sections of Indian society suffer from multiple deprivations, the National Human Development Report 2011 evaluates whether the social indicators of the excluded groups are converging or diverging with the rest of the population.
The Report addresses three critical (...)

India’s Finance Minister has said that his country “does not require” British aid, describing it as “peanuts”.
Pranab Mukherjee and other Indian ministers tried to terminate Britain’s aid to their booming country last year - but relented after the British begged them to keep taking the money, The (...)

Resistance by a combined opposition thwarts the Union Cabinet’s move to allow foreign investors 51 per cent equity in multi-brand retail.
IT was an avoidable diversion. While Parliament was in session, the Union Cabinet met to approve hitherto prohibited foreign direct investment (FDI) in (...)

India seems to have arrived at the threshold of polio eradication, but should it lower its guard?
ON January 13, India achieved what had only two years ago seemed impossible in the immediate term. The country, which, given the epidemiological data in the new millennium, had come to be regarded (...)

As the most significant region yet to be urbanised, India presents a unique opportunity for capturing impacts of urbanisation on the spatial dimension, writes Madhav Pai.
India will be the one of the last major countries in the world to experience the urbanization of its population. In 2001, (...)

India fails to extract emission cut commitments from Annex I countries in return for agreeing to the Durban Mandate at the climate talks.
INDIAN negotiators perhaps lost the wood for the trees at the two-week-long 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework (...)

A quarter of a million women in Kerala are showing us how to earn livelihoods with dignity.
If the malnourished in India formed a country, it would be the world’s fifth largest — almost the size of Indonesia. According to Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 237.7 million Indians are (...)