Environment

Q&A: “The Real Target Is Zero Hunger”

By Claudia Ciobanu

Under the leadership of Brazilian Director General (DG) José Graziano da Silva, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has been engaged in a process of deep reform meant to make the organisation leaner and more effective in the fight against hunger. 

U.N. Urges Turkish Police to Exercise “Restraint”

By Roger Hamilton-Martin
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay have advised “maximum restraint” following media reports of a violent police crackdown on peaceful protestors in Istanbul’s Gezi Park.

Straightening Out Accounts on Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

By Walter García and Fabiana Frayssinet
The bold strategy implemented by the Brazilian government has achieved an 84 percent reduction in deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in the last eight years. But when the natural resources and pesticides used in agricultural production are taken into account, the environmental progress made is not so impressive.

Fishing Undercuts Kiribati President’s Marine Protection Claims

By Christopher Pala
A growing chorus of politicians, scientists and environmentalists are urging President Anote Tong of Kiribati to actually do what he claims was already done in 2008: create the world's most effective marine protected area in a remote archipelago in the Central Pacific Ocean.

Resurgence of Indigenous Identity in the Crossfire in Brazil

By Mario Osava
The powerful tractors and other farm machinery that landowners recently used to block roads at a dozen points from north to south in Brazil illustrated the economic clout of big agriculture, which rose up against the demarcation of indigenous reserves.

Climate Change to Determine Economic Growth

By Amantha Perera
The Monetary Board of Sri Lanka’s Central Bank, tasked with keeping the island’s economy on an even keel, does not only keep tabs on exchange rates, gold prices and inflation – it also has an eye on a less obvious indicator of economic stability: water levels in the country’s main reservoirs.

Leasehold Forestry Brings a New Lease on Life

By Naresh Newar
Nearly 300 km from Nepal’s teeming capital, Kathmandu, in a small village dug into the steep slopes of the mountainous Palpa district, 35-year-old Dhanmaya Pata goes about her daily chores in much the same way that her ancestors did centuries ago.

FAO Highlights Inseparable Links Between Food and Water

By Thalif Deen

Since food and water are so closely interlinked, there is a lingering fear based on the assumption, if there is no water, there will be no food.

Opponents Question Proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade Deal

By Jared Metzker
Controversy is building following the announcement that negotiations will soon begin on a free trade agreement between the United States and European Union, with critics warning that any such agreement could negatively affect a host of regulatory concerns.

Rural Mexican Communities Protest Wind Farms

By Emilio Godoy
"We can't sow our fields, which they have rented for next to nothing. What good do we get out of it?" Guadalupe Ramírez complained about wind farms operating in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.

Diamond Mining Could Push Angola’s Antelope to Extinction

By Walter García and Louise Redvers
Environmental campaigners are urging the Angolan government to halt plans to mine diamonds inside a national reserve that is home to the world’s last wild population of a rare antelope, the Giant Sable.

Cuba Wakes Up to Costs of Climate Change Effects

By Ivet González
"How much is a species worth? What is the price tag on the services provided by a river or a forest?" These are the questions biologist María Elena Perdomo is asking to encourage Cubans to take account of environmental costs, which may apparently be incorporated in the present economic reforms.

MDGs Fund Boosts Food Security

By Thalif Deen
Since its founding in 2007 to help developing nations fight poverty, hunger, illiteracy, disease and gender discrimination, the Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund (MDG-F) has financed about 130 joint programmes in 50 countries.

OP-ED: Social Protection Can Help Overcome Poverty and Hunger

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
The growing consensus, momentum and commitment to eradicate world hunger may seem overly ambitious in view of the slow progress in reducing the number of hungry people in the world in recent decades.

Stealing Gas from the Poor to Power the Rich

By Thembi Mutch
In Kilwa District in southern Tanzania local community leader and fisherman Salim Riziki stands next to a set of turbines, newly imported from Dubai, talking about the gas finds on Songo Songo, an island 15 km off the mainland.

Small Ponds Bring Bumper Harvests

By Naimul Haq
“I would never have believed it possible to get a bumper rice harvest during the drought season,” 43-year-old Mohammad Shajahan Ali, a farmer hailing from the village of Magtapur in Bangladesh’s northern Chapainawabganj district, told IPS.

Caribbean Looks at Financial Approach to Combat Climate Change

By Desmond Brown
The Caribbean has the unenviable reputation as one of the most disaster-prone regions in the world, a situation exacerbated by climate change and vulnerability that experts warn could have significant economic consequences if unaddressed.

Small Farmers Buffeted by Climate Change

By Thalif Deen
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has long warned that a quarter of the world’s farmland is “highly degraded".

In Swaziland, Seeds Beat Drought

By Mantoe Phakathi
The overcast sky is a sign that it might rain, and Happy Shongwe, a smallholder farmer from rural Maphungwane in eastern Swaziland, is not exactly happy.

Sowing a Healthier Future

By Claudia Ciobanu
“If there was enough political will to defeat hunger, we would defeat it right now - immediately,” says Enrique Yeves, chief of corporate communications at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

EUROPE: Floods Are Here to Stay

By Zoltán Dujisin
Record floods in Central and Eastern Europe have highlighted some of the challenges of climate change for the continent, as well as the floods' potential to spur populist politics.
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