ROMANIA: Digging Gold With a Cyanide Lining

Canadian company Gabriel Resources has managed to resurrect a cyanide-based gold exploitation project which had been declared illegal in courts, and is opposed by most Romanians.

Domestic Workers Begin to See Some Rights

Twenty-seven-year-old Maria Puscariu is about to complete her MA in philosophy at a Belgian university. The Moldovan has been working for over five years as a domestic worker in Western Europe in order to support herself and finance her studies.

ROMANIA: Trade Unions Warn Against Unjustified Pay Cuts

Romania’s trade unions have warned that a series of protests against drastic cuts in pensions and salaries would turn into full-fledged general strikes by month-end unless the government heeded to the needs of ordinary people.

Q&A: Albanians Press Democracy With Hunger Strike

Since May 1 over 200 people have been on hunger strike in a tent in the centre of the Albanian capital of Tirana supported by rallies of 200,000 protestors and road blocks across the country to press for a recount of last year’s parliamentary vote.

BULGARIA: Blue Danube Meanders Into Road Building

The European Union Danube Strategy (DS), unfolding this year, is proving to be a litmus test for the viability of the concept of ‘green growth’ in Eastern Europe.

BIODIVERSITY: Developers Stalk the Carpathians

When the Slovakian government moved to open Tatra National Park to developers, last month, it did not consult experts or the public. Other protected sites across Central and Eastern Europe are said to be equally vulnerable.

ROMANIA: Slow Food – Opportunity for Small Farmers

Mari Cat, an economist by profession, thinks nothing of selling meat, bread and apple juice at a stall in the ‘Slow Food’ market in this central Romanian town.

CENTRAL ASIA: Kyrgyzstan – Wakeup Call For EU, US

The popular revolt in Kyrgystan this month should "serve as a wakeup call to the European Union and the United States, prompting some serious rethinking of their policy priorities in Central Asia," says a leading area expert.

ECONOMY: Voluntary Simplicity – Answer to Financial Meltdown

The global financial crisis offered an opportunity to reform the economic system and participants in a conference on ‘degrowth’ in Barcelona, last week, appeared determined not to lose it.

BULGARIA: Inhuman Life Sentences Replace Death Penalty

The death penalty was outlawed in Bulgaria in 1998. But restrictive legislation on conditional release, and the overcrowding and precariousness of the Bulgarian prison system makes life hardly livable for some lifers.

EAST EUROPE: “Inevitable” Budget Cuts Anger Unions

Trade unions in Romania and Bulgaria are embarking on a spring of protests in response to the governments’ anti-crisis measures involving considerable cuts in budget expenditure.

BULGARIA: Govt Forced Down on Genetically Modifed Crops

Campaigning by environmental groups and the general public has weakened the determination of the Bulgarian government to allow the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in this country.

ROMANIA: Starting Early on Human Rights With School Textbook

A textbook on human rights activism, being introduced in Romanian schools this year, steers away from preaching and uses interviews with global and local rights activists to suggest how young people may get involved.

ECONOMY-EUROPE: Czechs Bank on Cooperatives for Revival

The Czech Republic’s strong heritage of cooperative movements, dating from the interwar period, is serving as inspiration for new initiatives in the post-communist era and acting as "harbingers of a new global economic system".

Q&A: ”Copenhagen Was Great for Citizen Mobilisation”

"It is important that we all come together, the Green Party, NGOs and citizens, on major issues such as pollution in big cities or deforestation," says Remus Cernea, the new executive president of the Romanian Green Party. "And we have to use all means, from public protests and working with the media to judicial action and party politics, in order to achieve our goals."

CLIMATE CHANGE: “The Intelligence We Lacked”*

World leaders speaking in Copenhagen on Friday, the last day of negotiations for a deal on climate change, retreated into their national positions.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Norway Is Trying*

Norway is the world’s third largest donor in terms of development aid as a percentage of GDP. Norwegian Minister of Environment and International Development Erik Solheim spoke to TerraViva about the initiatives promoted by his country on environmental protection and its role during the Copenhagen negotiations.

Q&A: Global Economic Apartheid Is Obstacle to Fair Climate Deal

"Climate change is an opportunity to deal with all the issues of equity and justice that we have been struggling for all along," said Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International in an interview with IPS on Thursday in Copenhagen.

CLIMATE CHANGE: ”The Struggle Does Not Stop Here,” Say Witnesses

‘’Those who run the decision-making on climate change are the same who have caused it,’’ said Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the world’s first international climate hearing on Tuesday, pithily identifying the reason why justice has been elusive at the ongoing climate change summit in the Danish capital.

CLIMATE CHANGE: ‘Cut Fossil Fuel Subsidies but Compensate the Poor’

Cutting governmental subsidies for fossil energy could lead to a 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 as compared to 1990 levels, says a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Scientists Turn to Inuit for Clues

The Inuit people who live in and around the Arctic are among the worst victims of global warming, and scientists are now turning to their experience and indigenous knowledge to understand the staggering effects of climate change.