Nepal’s Female Farmers Fear Climate Change

When Arati Chaudhary’s husband left for India to find work as a migrant labourer, the job of managing farm and family fell on her slender shoulders.

Activists Aren’t Mourning Obama’s Absence at Rio Summit

When a reluctant George H.W. Bush, Sr., then U.S. president, changed his mind and decided at the eleventh hour to address the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, he sounded defensive in his strong response to charges that the United States was one of the major powers responsible for the some of the world's worst environmental ills - from greenhouse gases to conspicuous consumption.

Mine Tailings Pollute a Chilean Town’s Water

People in the small town of Caimanes in northern Chile will suffer severe health problems if water pollution produced by a tailings dam built by the Los Pelambres mining company is not cleaned up, experts warn.

Q&A: Women Must Be at the Forefront of Rio+20, and Beyond

Unlocking women's energies and allowing them to become drivers of change could fuel the motor of sustainable development.

Q&A: “We All Have to Start Being City Changers”

Building the cities of the future requires not only smarter planning but a profound shift toward greater equity and social justice, says Joan Clos, executive director of the U.N. Human Settlements Programme, or UN-HABITAT.

Rio+20: Transforming Political Platitudes into Economic Realities

When world leaders endorse the final plan of action, titled "The Future We Want, at the Rio+20 summit in Brazil next week, a lingering question may remain unanswered: how best can the United Nations transform political platitudes into economic realities?

Will Water Dry Up at Summit on Sustainable Development?

The headline in a New York newspaper last March captured the essence of a future potential threat to political stability the world over: "U.S. Report Sees Tensions Over Water."

Dam Threatens Turkey’s Past and Future

Hasankeyf, a small village in southeastern Turkey, has been under threat for 15 years. Home to approximately 3,000 people, the site is one of the oldest continuously inhabited human settlements, with an archaeological record going back at least 9,500 years.

How Would You Measure Success at the Rio Summit?

When the heavily hyped three-day U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) comes to a close in Rio de Janeiro Jun. 22, what would be the yardstick to measure its successes and failures?

Establishing Environmental Flows in the Zambezi

When Jose Chiburre was a boy growing up in Mozambique, he would often challenge his friends to a swim across the Incomati River. That was in the 1970s, when the river was 300 metres wide in the dry season: today, the race would be over before it begins.

Water Knows No Border Between Angola and Namibia

A transboundary initiative aimed at providing clean drinking water and proper sanitation between Angola and Namibia is making steady progress.

Rural Zambia’s Drinking Supply Fraught with Danger and Disease

Bupe Bana-Victor has lived in the Mwense district of Luapula Province in northern Zambia all her life. And for her, water talk is synonymous with the Luapula River, which lies just 20 metres from her village and snakes through the entire region before it joins the Lualaba River – a tributary of the mighty Congo, Africa’s second-largest river.

RIO+20: A Stalemated U.N. in Do-or-Die Session on Action Plan

After weeklong negotiations, a meeting of the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) to finalise a plan of action titled "The Future We Want" for next week's Rio+20 summit has failed to reach agreement - and deferred a decision to a final three-day session in Brazil.

24 Policies to End the Earth Emergency

Ecologically ignorant policies are largely responsible for the interlinked crises that are unraveling the planet's life support system.

RIO+20: Earth Summit Negotiated the Size of the Zero

Amidst much political fanfare, the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro concluded with the adoption of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and the landmark Agenda 21 blueprint for a sustainable future in the 21st century.

Sharing Southern Africa’s Water

The Southern African Development Community's protocol on shared watercourses is recognised as one of the world's best. But sound agreements on the sustainable and equitable management of joint water resources require effective means to implement them.

Dam Company in Chile Presses Gov’t for Supportive Policies

Colbún, the electricity generating company that co-owns HidroAysén and its multi-dam project in southern Chile, has recommended suspending the environmental impact assessment for power transmission lines that would connect the hydropower complex to the country's central grid, until the right conditions are in place.

RIO+20: Canada, Last Holdout, Drops Opposition to Water as Human Right

Canada, in a dramatic political turnaround, has signaled its willingness to recognise water and sanitation as a basic human right.

A Future With Food, or No Future At All

The upcoming Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development will not succeed if the crises of hunger and malnutrition are not effectively addressed. The issues are so inextricably linked with sustainable development that they have to be part of the agenda, according to a report released Wednesday by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) for the upcoming Earth Summit that will take place in Rio de Janeiro from Jun. 20-22.

Rio+20 is Everyone’s Conference

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, otherwise known as Rio+20, is a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

India’s Economic Growth Leaves Human Development in the Dust

Ahead of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of India, a coalition of NGOs denounced the gap between the country’s growth rate and the rate of poverty, malnutrition and lack of health and sanitation.