Sustainable development

New Plans to Protect Nature

At the close of the ten-day World Conservation Congress that ran from Sept. 6-15 on the South Korean island of Jeju, members of the convening International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) agreed on an ambitious four-year action plan for protecting global natural resources.

Rio Summit’s Legacy Still a Question Mark

Academics gathered in Washington on Wednesday suggested that the mixed experience at the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in June, has increased the importance of citizen engagement and consumer accountability in issues of environment, renewable energy and sustainability.

Farming Among the Waste in Cameroon

Cameroonian urban famer Juliana Numfor has six plots of land where she grows maize, cassava, sweet potatoes and leafy vegetables, including cabbages, wild okra and greens.

Riding Towards Sustainable Development, on Bamboo

In Ghana, a country burgeoning with traffic congestion, increasing economic growth, and a stark urban-rural divide, making frames of bicycles out of bamboo could be the key to promoting sustainable development. It also makes stronger, longer-lasting bikes.

International Union for Conservation of Nature director general Julia Marton-Lefèvre says that a sustainable future cannot be achieved without conserving biological diversity. Courtesy: Laurent Villerent

Q&A: Sustainability Now a Matter of Life and Death

Humanity is living beyond its means with the growing demand for food, medicines and other nature-based products, making sustainable consumption and conservation a matter of life and death. This is according to the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network, the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Tomson Chikowero carrying the bags of plastic bottles that he collected from people’s trash for recycling. People like him have become Zimbabwe’s unlikely climate change ambassadors. Credit: Stanley Kwenda/IPS

Trash Collectors Become Zimbabwe’s Unlikely Climate Change Ambassadors

Tomson Chikowero was ashamed of his job. He did not want anyone finding out what he did to earn a living, so he used to wake up early every morning and leave his home in Hatfield, a residential suburb in Zimbabwe’s capital city Harare, under the cover of darkness.

Thomas Pietschmann, drug expert at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Photo courtesy of Mr. Pietschmann

Q&A: Sustainable Development Key to Reducing Drug Use

"Drugs and crime threaten one of our most important goals - to ensure sustainable development around the world," United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated on Jun. 26, during a General Assembly debate on drugs and crime  as a threat to development.

Eco-Villages Breathe New Life Into Rural Senegal

Eighty-odd kilometres outside Dakar, the Senegalese capital, solar power and an irrigation scheme are transforming a traditional village into what the government hopes will be a model for the future of the countryside.

Market Gardens Key to Autonomy for Niger Women

Four figures bend intently over their work in one corner of the large vegetable garden near the western Niger village of Dioga. Months after the village's main harvest has been brought in – and eaten up – the irrigated green of the garden is welcome relief in a part of the country where hunger never seems far away.

Get Ready for a World of Nine Billion

As the global population threatens to explode - from the current seven billion to over nine billion by mid-century - the sharp increase in humans not only means overcrowded cities but also increasing demands on food, water, energy and shelter, foreshadowing devastating implications for a sustainable future.

Rio’s Roadmap Falls Flat, Civil Society Groups Say

"Very disappointing." That was the term business and non-governmental organisations used to describe the formal intergovernmental negotiations at the Rio+20 Earth Summit as of Tuesday.

Despite the United Nations

U.N. Paper Factory Threatened with Closure

One of the world's largest "paper factories" – a dubious title traditionally conferred on the United Nations -  is on the verge of running out of business.

José Graziano da Silva, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). Credit: FAO News

Q&A: Planting the Seeds for Sustainable Development

By now, the dilemma is well recognised but hardly solved: as the global population grows, resources become increasingly scarce. Indeed, food production will have to increase by a whopping 60 percent by 2050 in order to meet the future demand for food and agricultural products.

ZAMCOM hopes to establish environmental flows on the Zambezi. Credit: Johannes Myburgh/IPS

Establishing Environmental Flows in the Zambezi

When Jose Chiburre was a boy growing up in Mozambique, he would often challenge his friends to a swim across the Incomati River. That was in the 1970s, when the river was 300 metres wide in the dry season: today, the race would be over before it begins.

Malawi Turns to Mozambique for Power

On-again, off-again… it's the story of both Malawi's power supply and the interconnection project that could end blackouts with power imported from neighbouring Mozambique.

The current global food system is unsustainable and does not allow for farmers to live lives of dignity, says Sameer Dossani, ActionAid International advocacy coordinator. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Time for a More Sustainable Global Food System

It is vitally important that governments and civil society organisations start transitioning to a more sustainable global food system in order to achieve lasting development. 

Green Groups Urge Obama to Attend Rio+20

With a month to go before the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, nearly two dozen NGOs are calling on President Barack Obama to confirm his attendance at the event, known as Rio+20.

Credit: Courtesy of Tommy Koh

Q&A: Earth Summit Deadlocked Until Eleventh Hour

The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro has been described as one of the largest international conferences in the history of the United Nations, attracting over 20,000 participants, including more than 100 world leaders.

Bangladesh Set to Take the Reins at Rio+20

Experts believe that the upcoming United Nations Earth Summit, Rio+ 20, scheduled to take place in Brazil from Jun.20-22, could be a real opportunity for Bangladesh to negotiate a road to sustainable development.

Brazilian Government Sets Guidelines for Success at Rio+20

As the host of Rio+20, the Brazilian government has defined guidelines for achieving success at the upcoming world summit, whose aim is to assess and strengthen what has been done since the 1992 Earth Summit, the first global meeting on sustainable development.

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