Environment

The Sri Lankan Monsoon, Better Prepared Than Sorry

By Amantha Perera
The monsoon in Sri Lanka is always a much-awaited event. There is something about the sight of the gathered clouds, the washed trees and the drenched landscape that stirs romance even in the most hardened of souls.

Weather Forecasts Go Mobile in Thailand

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
It was another Monday afternoon in the remote Thai village of Baan Dong when an incoming text message lit up the black, dust-covered Nokia phone belonging to Eiem Sompeng.

Guardians of the Land and Sea Meet in Darwin

By Milagros Salazar
“Are you a park ranger?” IPS asked. “No, I am one of the owners of the territory,” Ángel Durán responded in a firm voice. The Bolivian indigenous leader is in this northern Australian city along with 1,200 other native delegates from over 50 countries for the World Indigenous Network (WIN) conference.

Wind Power Finds a Toehold in Green-Minded Nevis

By Desmond Brown
When it comes to generating clean energy and reducing costs, the tiny Caribbean island of Nevis considers itself the leader within the nine-member Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).

Activists Claim Win as Herakles Halts Cameroon Operation

By Katelyn Fossett and Carey L. Biron
After coming under fire from environmental and social justice organisations for violations of land protection laws, Herakles Farms, a New York-based agricultural company, has suspended a large, controversial palm oil project in Cameroon.

Forestry Programmes Bogged Down in Latin America

By Emilio Godoy
Issues related to the ownership of forest carbon and to prior consultation mechanisms threaten to derail plans for the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of Forests (REDD+) in some countries of Latin America, according to experts.

Advocates Cheer Tightening of Extractives Transparency Standards

By Carey L. Biron
Development groups and corruption watchdogs are applauding landmark new standards adopted Wednesday by an international initiative focused on ensuring greater transparency among oil and mining companies operating particularly in developing countries.

Indian Gov’t on Collision Course With Civil Society

By Ranjit Devraj
For years India’s pro-liberalisation, Congress party-led coalition government chafed at civil society groups getting in the way of grand plans to boost growth through the setting up of mega nuclear power parks, opening up the vast mineral-rich tribal lands to foreign investment and selling off public assets.

Water Debt and Leaks Plague City Residents

By Brendon Bosworth
Nokuzola Bulana has a problem with leaks. The water that drips from the pipes of the toilet outside her home in Khayelitsha, a large semi-informal township on the fringes of Cape Town, South Africa goes to waste and drives up her water bill.

Insects, from Delicacy to Tool against Hunger

By Emilio Godoy
The Food and Agriculture Organisation's recommendation to consider using edible insects as a food source to combat hunger may have particular repercussions in Colombia and Mexico, two Latin American countries that have a tradition of eating insects and a high degree of biodiversity.

New Effort Targets the Leading Killers of Children

By Lucy Westcott
PATH, a Seattle-based global health development organisation, is aiming to save two million lives by 2015 by jointly tackling diarrhea and pneumonia, the leading killers of children globally.

Fresh Water “More Precious Than Gold” in Bangladesh

By Naimul Haq
Fahima Begum rises each morning at dawn and walks two kilometres to a small pond, the nearest source of fresh water. On her way she passes the rusty old hand-pumped tube well that used to supply water to her village in Bangladesh’s arid Barind region until the water table here dropped out of reach.

Growing Peas and Greens to Maximise Water Usage

By Miriam Gathigah
Amid warnings that Kenya’s agricultural water use is surpassing sustainable levels and adversely affecting food security, biodiversity researchers say that agrobiodiversity should be considered as a vital tool to combat this.

Water Flows Again in the Valley

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Staring out at his golden wheat field with satisfaction, 50-year old Alamgir Akbar says with a sigh of relief: "We've had a good crop this season.”

U.S. Strategy on Water, Development a “Major Advance”

By Carey L. Biron
U.S. officials Tuesday formally unveiled the government’s first comprehensive strategy aimed at integrating water into all U.S. development funding and programmes, a step long urged by advocates and development experts.

Stressed Ecosystems Leaving Humanity High and Dry

By Stephen Leahy
Everyone knows water is life. Far too few understand the role of trees, plants and other living things in ensuring we have clean, fresh water.

Organic Cooperative Proves that Agriculture Can Prosper in Cuba

By Ivet González
“The people are the only thing that matters,” says agronomist Miguel Ángel Salcines, who then goes on to list a series of other “secondary” factors that have turned Vivero Alamar, an urban farm on the outskirts of the Cuban capital, into a rare success story in the country’s depressed agricultural sector.

Indigenous Brazilians Learn to Fight for the Right to Food

By Clarinha Glock
Indigenous communities in remote areas of Brazil have begun to recognise that they have the right to not be hungry, and are learning that food security means much more than simply having food on the table.

Caribbean Farming Gets Its Roots Wet

By Desmond Brown
As Caribbean communities grapple with the entwined challenges of climate change and food security, modern technologies offer hope that the region's stagnating agricultural sector can be made more profitable.

Environmentalists See Seeds as Key to Agricultural Reform

By Silvia Giannelli
As the global agricultural sector is faced with ever-greater challenges, the question of how to reform and improve the sector is a controversial and difficult one. So Terra Futura, a three-day exhibition and conference on agricultural good practises held annually in Florence, brought the debate back to its roots: seeds.

How to Save a Fish … a Lake and a People

By Mabvuto Banda
Lloyd Phiri, a fisherman from Senga Bay on Lake Malawi’s shores in Malawi’s central region, knows that the lake’s water levels are dropping. He can see it in his catch, which has shrunk by more than 80 percent in recent years.
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