ECONOMY: Namibia Gets BIG on Poverty

There was no mention of a special grant to tackle poverty in the Namibian national budget speech delivered on Mar. 19, much to the disappointment of campaigners for a Basic Income Grant (BIG) for all citizens.

AGRICULTURE-AFRICA: Livestock Vital to Rural Livelihoods

The Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute estimates 250 million people in Africa - a quarter of the population - rely on livestock for their livelihoods, yet African governments invest almost nothing to support the sector.

ZAMBIA: Food Vouchers Not Enough to Fight Hunger

In an attempt to mitigate rising food insecurity and malnutrition, the Zambian government and the World Food Programme (WFP) have started to hand out food vouchers to the country’s urban poor.

CHILE: Controversial Fuel Taxes and Subsidies

In 2008, Chile’s state coffers took in just over one billion dollars from the specific tax on fuels. But at the same time, the government injected 700 million dollars into a fund that year to shore up fuel prices and made another 500 million available in case the price of oil continued to rise.

POVERTY: Cash Transfers Transform Lives of Malawi’s Poor

Malawi has taken major strides towards reducing poverty and hunger in the country. Government’s cash transfer scheme has managed to reach many of those usually unable to access grants due to lengthy and complicated bureaucratic processes and assessments.

CHILE: Biofuels Head to the Forests

Chile has set its sights on producing second-generation plant-based fuels from forest biomass within the next five years. But before that it must consider the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of such an endeavour, warn experts and activists.

VENEZUELA: The Cost of the World’s Cheapest Gasoline

The world’s most inexpensive gasoline is sold in Venezuela, through a longstanding subsidy programme that benefits car owners while depriving the oil industry of a large source of funds for reinvesting.

ARGENTINA: Companies Pocketing Gas Subsidy for the Poor

Companies that produce and distribute liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in Argentina are benefiting from large government subsidies aimed at bringing down the price of the fuel, which 40 percent of the population depends on for cooking and heating.

WORLD FOOD-DAY-PAKISTAN: Hunger, Poverty Initiatives Suspect

As Pakistan’s food crisis deepens, with an estimated 60 million people facing food insecurity, the GCAP (Global Call to Action Against Poverty) plans to hold rallies through the weekend demanding ‘’public accountability’’ even for hunger and poverty alleviation initiatives.

DEVELOPMENT: Challenging the Bio-fuel-Hunger Paradigm

Participants at The Third India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Business Forum 2008 came together here to debunk the belief that development of bio-fuels would invariably exacerbate global hunger. Conventional wisdom has it that increased production of bio-fuel - particularly ethanol - will invariably result in decreasing acreage for food grain production, rising food prices and a surge in hunger and malnutrition. Participants at the Forum - held in New Delhi during the lead-up to the third IBSA Summit - declared that this was not necessarily true.

ENVIRONMENT-US: Florida Hopes Energy Farm Will Be First of Many

If an experiment to plant sweet sorghum in rural Florida and convert it to fuel ethanol pans out, it could herald a fundamental change in how the U.S. and other countries create and use renewable bio-energy, researchers say.

OBAMA: "Subsidising Big Oil Makes No Sense"

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama sat down with IPS correspondent Bankole Thompson again on Thursday for a one-on-one interview in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where over 15,000 enthusiastic Obama supporters turned out to hear his message of change at downtown's Calder Plaza.

U.S.: Great Place for the Oil Business

Why do U.S. oil companies - some of the most profitable corporations on the planet - receive 20 to 40 billion dollars a year in subsidies from the U.S. government?

MALAYSIA: Murum Dam – Public Funds for Corporate Profit?

Who will foot the bill for the Murum resettlement? ''Is it Sarawak Energy or will it be passed on directly to the state government and hence the tax payer,'' asked one Sarawak-based activist, who declined to be identified.

MALAYSIA: Power-Surplus Sarawak Funds Another New Dam

Preliminary work on a 3 billion ringgit (875 million dollar) dam in Murum in the north Borneo state of Sarawak has put the spotlight on a controversial scheme to build a string of public-funded dams to provide cheap electricity for energy-intensive industries to the state.