Environment

Despite Setbacks, Global Sanitation Makes Progress, Says Fund

By Thalif Deen
When the United Nations hosted a panel discussion last year urging its partners to “break their silence” on open defecation, Singapore’s deputy permanent representative Mark Neo was outspoken in his characterisation: “Open defecation is a euphemism. What we are talking about is shitting in the open.”

Prolonged Drought Leaves Caribbean Farmers Broke and Worried

By Kenton X. Chance
St. Lucian farmer Anthony Herman was hoping that next year he’d manage to recoup some of the losses he sustained after 70 per cent of his cashew crop withered and died in the heat of the scorching southern Caribbean sun.

Growing Mobilisation Against Introduction of Fracking in Spain

By Inés Benítez
Thousands of people in Spain have organised to protest the introduction of “fracking” – a controversial technique that involves pumping water, chemicals and sand at high pressure into shale rock to release gas and oil.

Indigenous Voices Ignored in Financing Panamanian Dam Project

By Kwame Buist
Indigenous people who would be directly affected by the impact of a hydroelectric project in Panama were not consulted despite national and international human rights obligations to obtain their free, prior and informed consent, according to a just-released report.

Small Arms Proliferation a Trigger for Rising Wildlife Crimes

By Thalif Deen
The ongoing military conflicts in the Middle East and Africa continue to be fuelled by the proliferation of small arms and light weapons (SALW), primarily assault rifles, sub machine guns, hand grenades, portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, rockets and self-loading pistols.

Bahamas Builds Resilience Against a Surging Sea

By Desmond Brown
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have championed the phrase “1.5 to stay alive” in demanding that global temperature increases be kept as far below 1.5 degrees C as possible to limit the anticipated devastating effects of climate change on the world’s most vulnerable countries.

Opinion: Let’s End Chronic Hunger

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
At the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS), heads of government and the international community committed to reducing the number of hungry people in the world by half. Five years later, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) lowered this level of ambition by only seeking to halve the proportion of the hungry.

Laissez Faire Water Laws Threaten Family Farming in Chile

By Marianela Jarroud
Family farmers in Chile are pushing for the reinstatement of water as a public good, to at least partially solve the shortages caused by the privatisation of water rights by the military dictatorship in 1981.

Pineapple Industry Leaves Costa Rican Communities High and Dry

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
Twelve years after finding the first traces of pesticides used by the pineapple industry, in the rural water supply, around 7,000 people from four communities in Costa Rica’s Caribbean region are still unable to consume their tap water.

Q&A: Papua New Guinea Reckons With Unmet Development Goals

By Neena Bhandari
As Papua New Guinea celebrates 40 years of independence, 2015 marks a defining year for the largest Pacific Island nation, set to record 15 percent GDP growth this year.

When Kenyan Children’s Lives Hang on a Drip

By Miriam Gathigah
Acute watery diarrhoea is a major killer of young children but misunderstanding over the benefits of fluid treatment is preventing many Kenyan parents from resorting to this life-saving technique and threatening to reverse the strides that the country has made in child health.

School Gardens Combat Hunger in Argentina

By Fabiana Frayssinet
In Argentina, where millions of families have unmet dietary needs despite the country’s vast expanse of fertile land, the Huerta Niño project promotes organic gardens in rural primary schools, to teach children healthy eating habits and show them that they can grow their own food to fight hunger.

Bougainville: Former War-Torn Territory Still Wary of Mining

By Catherine Wilson
From Arawa, once the capital city of Bougainville, an autonomous region in eastern Papua New Guinea in the southwest Pacific Ocean, a long, winding road leads high up into the Crown Prince Ranges in the centre of the island through impenetrable rainforest.

Novelists, Directors Respond as ‘Water Wars’ Loom

By Dan Bloom
Item: In a recent blog post at the New Yorker magazine, staff writer Dana Goodyear surveys the current drought impacting California and writes: "It’s hard to escape the feeling we are living a cli-fi novel’s Chapter One."

Caribbean Looks to France as Key Partner in Climate Financing

By Kenton X. Chance
By the time leaders of the international community sit down in Paris later this year to discuss climate change, at least two Caribbean leaders are hoping that France can demonstrate its commitment to assisting their adaptation efforts by re-joining the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).

Opinion: Voice of Civil Society Muffled in Post-2015 Negotiations for Better Future

By Esmee Russell
In September, the United Nations will agree on new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will set development priorities for the next 15 years. The draft goals that have been developed are ambitious – they seek to end poverty and ensure no one is left behind.

Climate Change: Some Companies Reject ‘Business as Usual’

By A. D. McKenzie
When it comes to climate change, business as usual is simply “not an option”.

Lessons from an Indian Tribe on How to Manage the Food-Forest Nexus

By Manipadma Jena
Scattered across 240 sq km on the remote Niyamgiri hill range in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, an ancient tribal group known as the Dongria Kondh have earned themselves a reputation as trailblazers.

Lessons from an Indian Tribe on How to Manage the Food-Forest Nexus

By Manipadma Jena
Scattered across 240 sq km on the remote Niyamgiri hill range in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, an ancient tribal group known as the Dongria Kondh have earned themselves a reputation as trailblazers.

U.N., World Bank Set 2030 Deadline for Sustainable Energy for All

By Thalif Deen
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, an unrelenting advocate of sustainable energy for all (SE4All), once dramatised the need for modern conveniences by holding up his cell phone before an audience in the Norwegian capital of Oslo and asking: “What would we do without them?”

Development Threatens Antigua’s Protected Guiana Island

By Desmond Brown
In June 2014, Gaston Browne led his Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party to a resounding victory at the polls with a pledge to transform the country into an economic powerhouse in the Caribbean.
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