Reframing Rio

Small Island States Combining Forces In Preparation for Rio+20

By Peter Richards
By the time small island developing states (SIDS) arrive at the Rio+20 conference in Brazil in June, they will have worked hard to co-ordinate their message to the rest of the world about the importance of sustainable development for their countries.

Vietnam’s Climate Woes Ignite National Strategy

By Vanya Walker-Leigh
Vietnam is hailed as a development success story for lifting millions out of poverty and staying on track to meet all of its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. But the country's future progress is severely threatened by the impact of global climate change.
UNDP Administrator Helen Clark Credit: UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré

OP-ED: Putting Resilience at the Heart of Development

By Helen Clark
The world's population today is healthier, wealthier, and better educated than ever before. Yet, despite incredible progress, disconcerting realities stubbornly persist.

Standing Up for the Planet and the Future

By Stephen Leahy
What are you doing on Saturday? Peter Nix, a retiree, will be standing on a railway track on Canada's west coast blocking a coal train destined to ship U.S. and Canadian coal to Asia.
Ivana Savic, left, and Kiara Worth, co-ordinators of the Conference on Sustainable Development Major Group for Children and Youth. Credit: Aline Jenckel/IPS

Q&A: Reviving the Spirit of Rio+20

By Aline Jenckel
In the weeks and months leading up to the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development, groups spanning a wide spectrum of interests are doing everything in their power to ensure that the outcomes of the summit are actually carried out.
Cooperative member Rosinéia Soares displays the aubergines growing in her garden in Parque Genesiano da Luz. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

Urban Farming Takes Root in Brazil’s Favelas

By Fabiana Frayssinet
Women in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of this city 40 km north of Rio de Janeiro no longer have to spend money on vegetables, because they have learned to grow their own, as organic urban gardening takes off in Brazil.

“The Two Guatemalas” Meet

By Danilo Valladares
"It’s very hard for them to put food on the table, but they are very noble people," Diego Orozco, one of the thousands of young urban Guatemalans who spent last weekend with a poor rural family, told IPS.

Q&A: Restructuring the Planet’s Food System

By Charundi Panagoda
Thirty percent of food is wasted globally, while one billion people go hungry and another billion are obese.

U.S. Lifestyle Is Not Up for Negotiation

By Thalif Deen
Just before the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, some of the industrial nations, and specifically the United States, were lambasted for their obscenely high consumption of the world's finite resources, including food, water and energy.
Cobb EMC

U.S.: Citizens Reclaim Energy Cooperatives

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
As the United Nations and countries around the world look at cooperatives as an alternative economic model for the production of energy, rural energy cooperatives have thrived for over eight decades in the U.S., and citizens in some parts of the country are beginning to reclaim them through the democratic process.
Michael Herrmann Credit: Courtesy of UNFPA

Q&A: The Road to Rio Goes Through Cairo

By Thalif Deen
The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) rightly believes the road to Rio goes via Cairo - and that sustainable development and population are inextricably linked.

OP-ED: Carbon Doxide Emissions on the Rise as the Kyoto Era Fades

By Xing Fu-Bertaux
At the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the latest on-site measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography reveal that global atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations reached 391.3 parts per million (ppm) in 2011, up from 388.56 ppm in 2010 and from 280 ppm from pre-industrial times.

AGRICULTURE: Farm Animals Join Rio+20 Agenda

By Johanna Treblin
Human development and biodiversity will not be the only focus of the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June, for which representatives of hundreds of states and non- governmental organisations (NGOs) will gather to discuss sustainable development.
A recent study found that "zero percent" of federal funding of synthetic biology was going into risk assessment. Credit: Horia Varlan/CC By 2.0

In New U.S. “Bioeconomy”, Industry Trumps Environment

By Carey L. Biron
The White House on Thursday announced the formulation of the National Bioeconomy Blueprint, aimed at shoring up the U.S. commitment to bioscience-related research.

Blue Crab Revival Offers Hope for Ailing Fisheries

By Christopher Pala
Authorities in Maryland and Virginia have rescued the Chesapeake Bay's blue crab from the brink of collapse, tripling its population in five years, by using methods that emerging crabmeat-exporting countries in Asia and Central America could emulate, scientists say.

Civil Society Determined to Have an Impact on Rio+20

By Fabíola Ortiz
Innovating and stepping up the pressure on governments are the bywords for civil society participation in the run-up to Rio+20, a conference with the ambitious goal of changing the way humankind relates with the planet.

Coming Together for Environmental Restoration in Haiti

By Beverly Bell
In honour of Earth Day, we run an interview with Yves-André Wainright, who discusses ways that poor governance and the role of foreign donors have contributed to the country's environmental catastrophe.
Teddy Ruge Credit: Courtesy of Teddy Ruge

Q&A: Harnessing the African Information Renaissance

By Charundi Panagoda
About 140 million Africans are now on the internet. With half of the population under age 15 and 70 percent of the population under 30, social media is becoming an important feature in the continent's development path.

OP-ED: The Road Less Traveled

By Lakshman Ratnapala
The celebrated storyteller Mark Twain (1835-1910) wrote, "Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover."
Farmer Selinah Mncwango is proud of her traditional sorghum seeds. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

South Africa’s Smallholders Lose Battle for Seed Security

By Kristin Palitza
In an almost ceremonial manner, Selinah Mncwango opens her big plastic bag and pulls out several smaller packets, each filled with different types of seeds: sorghum, bean, pumpkin, and maize. They are her pride, her wealth, the "pillar of my family," says the farmer from a village in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province.

U.S.: Trekking for Wild Florida

By Adrianne Appel
There was a time when big, yellow cats freely roamed the length of a wild Florida. Today, three medium-sized humans are trekking the length of this southeastern U.S. state - 1,000 miles of swamp, forest, ranchland and blistered feet - in hopes that panthers may one day be able to safely tread the same path.
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