Tackling Crime Takes on Import As Urban Populations Rise

As people around the world continue to migrate into cities, swelling urban populations, they have sparked growth in another area: crime and security issues.

Q&A: Reworking Finance to Serve People and the Environment

The wake of the global financial crisis, as many national governments in Europe cut back on services to citizens and used public money to rescue banks, taught many people a valuable lesson.

Environmentalists See Seeds as Key to Agricultural Reform

As the global agricultural sector is faced with ever-greater challenges, the question of how to reform and improve the sector is a controversial and difficult one. So Terra Futura, a three-day exhibition and conference on agricultural good practises held annually in Florence, brought the debate back to its roots: seeds.

Pioneering Italian Town Leads Europe in Waste Recycling

Capannori, a rural town in the Italian province of Lucca, in Tuscany, boasts a proud history. Six years ago, it became a trendsetter and leader, not just in Italy but throughout all of Europe, as the continent's first Zero Waste town.

Rights Crushed in Italy’s Overcrowded Prisons

When Claudio was detained in a prison in the northeastern Italian city of Vicenza, he had to share a 7.6 square-metre cell with two other people. “Once you excluded the space taken up by beds and drawers, each inmate was left with 90 centimetres to himself. We had to take it in turns to stand up,” he told IPS.