Environment

Hard-Hit CDM Carbon Market Seeks New Buyers

By Jewel Fraser
Since they first emerged as a result of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, carbon offset markets have been a key part of international emissions reductions agreements, allowing rich countries in the North to invest in “emissions-saving projects” in the South while they continue to emit CO2.

Chile Graduates in Earthquake Preparedness

By Marianela Jarroud
Chile appears to have learned a few lessons from the 2010 earthquake and tsunami, and it successfully drew on them the night of Apr. 1, when another quake struck, this time in the extreme north of the country.

Brazilian Dams Accused of Aggravating Floods in Bolivia

By Franz Chávez
Unusually heavy rainfall, climate change, deforestation and two dams across the border in Brazil were cited by sources who spoke to IPS as the causes of the heaviest flooding in Bolivia’s Amazon region since records have been kept.

OP-ED: “Cli-Fi” May Be No Stranger Than Reality

By Dan Bloom
When we read novels or short fiction in any language, we read to understand the story. We read to learn something new, and hopefully to get some kind of emotional uplift through the words on the page and the skills of the storyteller.

U.N. Aims at Treaty to Protect Marine Biodiversity

By Thalif Deen
At a political level, when the United Nations speaks of a "high seas alliance", it is probably a coalition of countries battling modern piracy in the Indian Ocean.

Fracking, Seismic Activity Grow Hand in Hand in Mexico

By Emilio Godoy
Scientists warn that large-scale fracking for shale gas planned by Mexico’s oil company Pemex will cause a surge in seismic activity in northern Mexico, an area already prone to quakes.

Rural Costa Rican Women Plant Trees to Fight Climate Change

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
Olga Vargas, a breast cancer survivor, is back in the countryside, working in a forestry programme in the north of Costa Rica aimed at empowering women while at the same time mitigating the effects of climate change.

For Guyana, Energy Plus Efficiency Equals Common Sense Development

By Desmond Brown
Guyana is shaping up to set a gold standard for the Caribbean in implementing a national energy efficiency strategy to curb greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

What Nepal Doesn’t Know About Water

By Mallika Aryal
Water is a critical resource in Nepal’s economic development as agriculture, industry, household use and even power generation depends on it. The good news is that the Himalayan nation has plenty of water. The bad news - water abundance is seasonal, related to the monsoon months from June to September.

IPCC Climate Report Warns of “Growing Adaptation Deficit”

By Carey L. Biron
The latest update of the world’s scientific consensus on climate change finds not only that impacts are already being felt on every continent, but also that adaptation investments are dangerously lagging.

Kyrgyzstan’s Glacial Floods a Growing Risk

By Adriane Lochner
It is a tough climb to the weather station: The trail leads across snow-covered boulder fields and steep, icy slopes. But for four researchers from Kyrgyzstan’s Geology and Mineral Resources Agency, the six-hour climb to the Adygene Glacier weather station, perched at 3,600 meters above sea level, is routine. From there, they can monitor 18 growing lakes at the glacier snout in the mountains above Bishkek.

Commonwealth Works to Raise Climate Resilience on Global Agenda

By Peter Richards
As they fine-tune preparations for the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Conference in Samoa and the United Nations post-2015 development framework meeting in September, Commonwealth states are focusing on getting the international community to pay more attention to the challenges they face.

Organic Farmers Fight the Elements in Brazil

By Fabíola Ortiz
Brazilian farmer Isabel Michi’s day starts before dawn, when she goes out to the organic garden on her small five-hectare farm that she runs with help from her husband and occasionally their children.

Look Who’s Helping Olive Ridley

By Manipadma Jena
When Olive Ridley sea turtles nest on the beach in his village, little Warthy Raju can barely wait for the millions of hatchlings, with their three-inch shells and thumb-sized heads, to scramble out.

A Honduran Paradise that Doesn’t Want to Anger the Sea Again

By Thelma Mejía
At the mouth of the Aguán river on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, a Garífuna community living in a natural paradise that was devastated 15 years ago by Hurricane Mitch has set an example of adaptation to climate change.

Pacific Islands At Sea Over Land Rights

By Catherine Wilson
For many Pacific Islanders, customary land is the source of life, identity and social security. However, most island states are developing countries, and governments claim land reform is needed to improve infrastructure and economic development. Registration of customary land, the predominant tenure system, with more options for leasing to the state and developers is being promoted as the way forward.

ExxonMobil to Disclose Carbon Emissions Risk

By Bryant Harris
As the international community and the U.S. government place a heightened emphasis on reducing carbon emissions as a way to combat global climate change, shareholders have convinced the oil-and gas giant ExxonMobil to publicly disclose the risk that strengthened regulation could pose to its profits.

Despite Risks, Cuban Fisher Families Don’t Want to Leave the Sea

By Ivet González
The road to Guanímar, a fishing village on the southern coast of Cuba, is as narrow as the future of its 252 inhabitants, who don’t want to abandon the area despite its vulnerability to hurricanes, storm surges and flooding.

Zimbabwe’s Growing Electronic Waste Becomes a Real Danger

By Tatenda Dewa
Electronic waste in Zimbabwe is becoming “an emerging environmental crisis that is by and large unheralded,” according to Steady Kangata, the education and publicity manager of the government-run Environmental Management Agency (EMA).

U.S. Joins Global Transparency Tide in Extractives Sector

By Carey L. Biron
An unusual combination of industry, government, investors and civil society here is celebrating the United States’ initial acceptance into a prominent global initiative aimed at strengthening transparency and accountability in the extractives industry.

Uruguay’s Public Transport Goes Electric

By Inés Acosta
Uruguay plans to gradually replace oil-based fuels with electric energy in its public transport system, and is currently assessing the costs and benefits of the shift.
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