Environment

There’s CO2 Under Those Hills

By Silvia Giannelli
“If  they go ahead and dig those wells, all my work will be destroyed, all my life, everything,” says Franca Tognarelli, looking at the hills and vineyards around her house in Certaldo, Val d’Elsa, in the heart of Tuscany.

Crisis Fuelled Resurgence of Horse-Drawn Carriages in Cuba

By Ivet González
Up and down the streets of towns and cities in Cuba go horse-drawn carriages with black leather tops and large back wheels, alongside more simple carts, operating as public transportation.

Fossil Fuels Won’t Benefit Africa in Absence of Sound Environmental Policies

By Miriam Gathigah
Recent discoveries of sizeable natural gas reserves and barrels of oil in a number of African countries — including Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya — have economists hopeful that the continent can boost and diversify its largely agriculture-based economy. 

OPINION: Towards an Inclusive and Sustainable Future for Industrial Development

By Li Yong and A.L. Abdul Azeez
As representatives of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), we are sometimes asked whether industrial development is still relevant to a world which many observers have claimed over the past decades to have entered the “post-industrial age”. Our answer is always an emphatic “yes”, shaped both by the evidence of history and current events.

St. Vincent Takes to Heart Hard Lessons on Climate Change

By Desmond Brown
Glenda Williams has lived in the Pastures community in eastern St. Vincent all her life. She's seen the area flooded by storms on multiple occasions.

Deadly Floods and Climate Change Resilience in St. Vincent

By Desmond Brown
In the last three years, St. Vincent and the Grenadines has been forced to spend more than 600 million dollars to rebuild its battered infrastructure. Landslides in April 2011, followed by December 2013 floods that also affected Dominica and St. Lucia and left 13 people dead, may be just the beginning, as climate change brings more extreme weather events to the Caribbean.

Bangladeshi ‘Char Dwellers’ in Search of Higher Ground

By Naimul Haq
Jahanara Begum, a 35-year-old housewife, is surrounded by thatched-roof homes, all of which are partially submerged by floodwater.

Panama Regulators Could Slow U.S. Approval of GM Salmon

By Carey L. Biron
Officials in Panama have fined the local facility of a U.S. biotechnology company for a series of permitting and regulatory failures around a pioneering attempt to create genetically modified salmon.

Bougainville Voices Say ‘No’ to Mining

By Catherine Wilson
The viability of reopening the controversial Panguna copper mine in the remote mountains of Central Bougainville, an autonomous region in the east of Papua New Guinea, has been the focus of discussions led by local political leaders and foreign mining interests over the past four years.

Good Twins or Evil Twins? U.S., China Could Tip the Climate Balance

By Stephen Leahy
China and the United States are responsible for 35 percent of global carbon emissions but could do their part to keep climate change to less than two degrees C by adopting best energy efficiency standards, a new analysis shows.

“Yeil” – The New Energy Buzzword in Argentina

By Fabiana Frayssinet
In Argentina they call it “yeil”, the hispanicised version of “shale”. But while these unconventional gas and oil reserves are seen by many as offering a means to development and a route towards energy self-sufficiency, others believe the term should fall into disuse because the global trend is towards clean, renewable sources of energy.

OPINION: Where Governments Fail, It’s Up to the People to Rise

By Diana Maciaga
Pomerania in northern Poland is famous for its unpolluted environment, fertile soils and historic heritage. So far, these valuable farmlands have been free from heavy industry but that situation might change as a shadow looms over the lives of Pomeranians.

OPINION: The Front Line of Climate Change is Here and Now

By Kaio Tiira Taulu
The fate of my country rests in your hands: that was the message which Ian Fry, representing Tuvalu gave at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen five years ago. This is also the message that the Pacific Climate Warriors have come to Australia to bring.

OPINION: Renewable Energies – a Double-Edged Sword

By Bradnee Chambers
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has set a target of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2. One way countries can meet their obligations is to switch energy production from the burning of fossil fuels to “renewables”, generally understood to include wind, wave, tidal, hydro, solar and geothermal power and biomass. 

Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev Signals U-Turn on Alternative Energy

By Paolo Sorbello
From small villages to big cities, wherever you go in Kazakhstan these days, billboards offer reminders that Astana is gearing up to host Expo 2017, the next World’s Fair. Kazakhstan helped secure the right to host the event with a pledge to emphasise green energy alternatives. But now it appears that Kazakhstan is red-lighting its own green transition.

Global South Brings United Front to Green Climate Fund

By Carey L. Biron
The United Nations’ key mechanism for funding climate change-related mitigation and adaptation in developing countries is now ready to receive funds, following a series of agreements between rich and poor economies.

Kashmir Flood Carries Away Humble Dreams

By Athar Parvaiz
Rafiqa Kazim and her husband Kazim Ali had a simple dream – to live a modest life, educate their four children and repay the bank-loan that the couple took out to sustain their small business.

Añelo, from Forgotten Town to Capital of Argentina’s Shale Fuel Boom

By Fabiana Frayssinet
This small town in southern Argentina is nearly a century old, but the unconventional fossil fuel boom is forcing it to basically start over, from scratch. The wave of outsiders drawn by the shale fuel fever has pushed the town to its limits, while the plan to turn it into a “sustainable city of the future” is still only on paper.

Sustaining Africa’s Development by Leveraging on Climate Change

By Busani Bafana
By leveraging knowledge about climate change, through adopting improved agriculture technologies and using water and energy more effectively, Africa can accelerate its march towards sustainable development.

Climate Negotiators “Sleepwalking” in Bonn

By Stephen Leahy
The 410,000 people who took to the streets for climate action in New York City during the U.N. Climate Summit would have been outraged by the 90-minute delay and same-old political posturing at the first day of a crucial round of climate treaty negotiations in Bonn at the World Congress Center.

The Nagoya Protocol: A Treaty Waiting to Happen

By Stella Paul
For over 20 years, Mote Bahadur Pun of Nepal’s western Myagdi district has been growing ‘Paris polyphylla’ - a Himalayan herb used to cure pain, burns and fevers.
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