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A plan to boost agribusiness, but based mainly on family farming and cooperatives, in Argentina is geared to producing and exporting more food – in a more sustainable manner.
That is the goal of the Strategic Agribusiness Plan (PEA) that representatives of the country’s 23 provinces and of 53 (...)

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 (...)

Nanoparticles are harmful, but India is yet to regulate their use
NANOTECHNOLOGY has revolutionised industry. It is used to improve wide ranging products, from cosmetics, toys and toothpastes to textiles and missiles. Industry thinks the technology holds promise to change every facet of life (...)

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 (...)

By Philippe Bourbeau, Routledge Editions, 176 pages.
The international movement of people is provoking worldwide anxiety and apprehension. Nation-states around the globe, especially Western ones, are cracking down on migration for security reasons. International migration has become a key (...)

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 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 (...)

On the morning of June 5, 2011, a 23-year-old African-American transgender woman, Chrishaun McDonald, and her friends were walking down Lake Street in Minneapolis. As they passed Schooner Tavern, Dean Schmitz, a 47-year-old white man, began shouting racial slurs at McDonald, asking, "Did you (...)

The civil society organizations that make up the Commission against Femicide (the murder of women) in Honduras expressed last week their indignation and concern at the increase in this phenomenon in the country and the fact that the authorities are showing "little or no interest" in it. They (...)

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 (...)

While the farcical drama around Anna Hazare’s protest and arrest has hogged the limelight, Irom Sharmila’s indefinite fast since 2000 to get the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) repealed continues to be ignored by the nation and the media…
A day after Indians ‘celebrated’ Independence Day (...)

Projects that Start Small, Scale Quickly and Drive Systemic Change
Take your pick in the national education blame game. Your choices would include teachers’ trade unions, an ideological curriculum unsuited to South Africa, the National Treasury because it does not adequately fund schools or (...)

What does the police killing of a homeless man in San Francisco have to do with the Arab Spring uprisings from Tunisia to Syria? The attempt to suppress the protests that followed. In our digitally networked world, the ability to communicate is increasingly viewed as a basic right. Open (...)

A New York Times column from early July provided an unusual if cynical insight into the “a la carte” corporate lobby influence on American legislation. While the United States is among the world’s strongest proponents of ever-increasing intellectual property protections and their worldwide (...)

Jacob Zuma’s rise to power has unleashed a torrent of rash, boorish, misogynistic and inciteful speech from politicians and commentators. In this regard, the utterances of ANC Youth League’s Julius Malema and ex-columnist Eric Miyeni come to mind. Why has public discourse plumbed to such depths (...)

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 (...)

The riot has been a feature of English life for a lot longer than William Shakespeare, village cricket matches or, for that matter, The Clash. The English have rioted against the enclosure of common land, fences, press gangs, factories, prisons, bread prices, tolls and banks. Arson, tearing (...)

Consider Targeted Sanctions, Arms Embargo, Commission of Inquiry
The United Nations Security Council should press Syria to comply with the council’s demand to end attacks against peaceful protesters, Human Rights Watch said today. Syria should comply with the Security Council’s August 3, 2011 (...)