Environment

In Home Gardens, Income and Food for Urban Poor

By Elizabeth Whitman
Flowers burst out of old tires and rows of pepper plants fill recycled plastic tubs as herbs pop out of old pipes. As utilitarian as it is cheery, this rooftop array is one of several urban agriculture projects that are significantly improving livelihoods for the urban poor in this sprawling city.

Politicians’ Delay Means Climate Catastrophe for Malawi’s Poor

By Mabvuto Banda
Delays in finalising Malawi’s climate change policy, which has been in the making for the last three years, are affecting millions of families living in disaster-prone areas across this southern African nation, says the country’s minister of environment and climate change management Halima Daudi.

Developing Countries Still Waiting for a Global Response to Climate Change

By Peter Richards
As president of the Council of Ministers of the African, Caribbean and Pacific states, Samoa's Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi had the perfect forum to voice his concerns about the effects climate change has had on his island nation.

“We in the Caribbean Are Living Climate Change”

By Desmond Brown
The Mocho Mountains that run through the centre of Jamaica were once covered by lush tropical forests that helped control rainfall. Now, much of the forests and farmlands have been destroyed and the community is hard hit by the resultant extreme weather.

Africa Urged to Use Multilateral Approach to Achieve Sustainable Development

By Isaiah Esipisu
Africa can achieve sustainable development by scaling up "green economy" initiatives. What is needed is increased allocations from within national budgets supplemented by donor funding, claim experts.

Deforestation Spawns Creeping Desert in Central Argentina

By Fabiana Frayssinet
This small town in the semi-arid central Argentine province of Córdoba now has a 24-hour hotline for people to report their neighbours for sprinkling their lawns or using water to clean off the sidewalks.

Preserving Life in Cuba for When the Climate Changes

By Ivet González
Nature reserves act as a safe deposit box for biodiversity and contribute to adaptation to climate change. But in a country like Cuba, plagued by a chronic economic crisis, efforts to increase the number of protected areas go largely unnoticed.

U.N.’s Post-2015 Agenda Needs a Triple Play

By Thalif Deen
As the international community fleshes out a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be unveiled next year, civil society activists and U.N. officials agree their success will hinge on policies that address the nexus of poverty, hunger and environmental degradation.

The African Battle to Access Climate Change Funds

By Jeffrey Moyo
Livias Duri, 72, from Zimbabwe’s Mwenezi district in Masvingo province, 436 km southwest of the capital Harare, depends on agriculture for his livelihood.

WTO Urged Not to Treat Water Like Widgets

By Carey L. Biron
As government representatives gather Tuesday in Indonesia for what could be final negotiations towards a global trade agreement under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), environmentalists and social justice campaigners are urging them to specify that water resources cannot be treated as commodities.

Uruguay’s Mega-Mining Law in Place – Before the Minerals

By Pablo Tosquellas
The Uruguayan government, which recently passed a law on large-scale mining, does not actually have a clear idea of the country’s mineral wealth and has only just now proposed a geological study to find out.

Argentine Protesters vs Monsanto: “The Monster is Right on Top of Us”

By Fabiana Frayssinet
The people of this working-class suburb of Córdoba in Argentina’s central farming belt stoically put up with the spraying of the weed-killer glyphosate on the fields surrounding their neighbourhood. But the last straw was when U.S. biotech giant Monsanto showed up to build a seed plant.

Saving Children From Loggers

By Catherine Wilson
Logging is the largest industry in the Solomon Islands, an archipelago located northwest of Fiji, where 80 percent of the islands are covered in tropical rainforest. But, although timber accounts for 60 percent of this South Pacific nation’s export earnings, most local communities have experienced no beneficial development.

The Carbon Warrior

By Anna Shen
Watching the colossal destruction of Typhoon Haiyan over the past month, Columbia University Professor Graciela Chichilnisky knows one thing for sure: climate change will likely result in more of these massive storms, threatening the very existence of humanity.

When Calamity Strikes, Think Local

By Malini Shankar
More than a month after Cyclone Phailin battered Orissa, tribes in the eastern Indian coastal state are still feeling its wrath. Besides the damage to their homes and hearths, it has also meant a loss of their traditional food.

Storms, Flooding Can Unleash a Toxic Soup

By Desmond Brown
It’s a dirty, smelly business, but wastewater is gaining prominence across the Caribbean as countries from Jamaica in the west to Guyana in the south increasingly recognise its effects on the environment and the importance of improving its management.

Arab World Sinks Deeper into Water Crisis, Warns UNDP

By Thalif Deen
The Arab world is widely perceived as blessed with an embarrassment of riches: an abundance of oil (Saudi Arabia), one of the world’s highest per capita incomes (Qatar), and home to the world's tallest luxury building (United Arab Emirates).

In Haiti, Planting Trees Is No Simple Matter

By Correspondents
Reforestation and soil conservation programmes costing many thousands of dollars in this rural community have resulted in hundreds of small ledges built of straw or sacks of earth. In certain areas, the earthworks seem to be lasting, but in others, they are disintegrating.

Green-Friendly Enterprise Helps Save Biggest Caribbean Wetlands

By Ivet González
The 18 communities in Cuba’s Ciénaga de Zapata, the largest wetlands in the Caribbean, have long survived on the abundant local hunting and fishing and by producing charcoal. But that is no longer possible, due to climate change.

GM Crop Could Migrate Dangerously

By Ranjit Devraj
Food security activists who secured a moratorium on introducing genetically modified brinjal (aubergine) into India fear that their efforts are being undermined by the release of GM brinjal in neighbouring Bangladesh.

U.S. Unveils Military Strategy for Arctic

By Carey L. Biron
The United States is calling for greater cooperation in the Arctic, even as it warns that it will defend its sovereignty in the face of strengthening international interest in newly opening shipping lanes and natural resource extraction opportunities as the region’s ice disappears.
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