Reframing Rio

Senegal’s Leader Urged to Save Sardinella

By Christopher Pala
Hours after President Macky Sall of Senegal met in Washington with President Barack Obama late last month, he stepped into a brightly lit hotel meeting room to accept the Peter Benchley Award for National Stewardship of the Ocean, the only prize for ocean conservation given to heads of state.

OP-ED: Letting Nature Take Its Course?

By Erik Assadourian
Is sustainability still possible? Yes. Is it still probable? No. With bold action today, tomorrow, and in years to come, we could succeed in creating a sustainable and prosperous society. But what does bold action actually mean?

International Carbon Markets Expanding but Still Contentious

By Carey L. Biron
Nascent carbon emissions-trading exchanges in several countries are increasingly looking at options to interlink with one another, which advocates say would offer investors long-term stability, increase revenues for the development of renewable energy and strengthen corporate support for climate policy.

U.N. Chief Singles Out Monaco for Raising Climate Awareness

By Thalif Deen
When Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Kiribati in 2011, he had "an unexpected insight" into the fear that stalks the Pacific Island nation.

Q&A: Obesity and Hunger Are Two Sides of the Same Problem

By Joan Erakit
Over 40 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2010. In fact, since 1980, the worldwide prevalence of obesity has doubled, according to the British medical journal the Lancet.

Investing in Renewable Energy Means Investing in Lives

By Nasseem Ackbarally
Residents of Albion, a small village in Pointe-aux-Caves, western Mauritius, say that by opposing the construction of a new coal power plant near their homes, they are defending their constitutional right to live.

For Climate Action, 2013 “Good as It’ll Get”: Nicholas Stern

By Carey L. Biron
A confluence of factors could make 2013 the most fruitful opportunity in years – and for years – for potentially major action on climate change, according to a leading voice on climate change policy, the British economist Nicholas Stern.

World Bank Aims to End Extreme Poverty by 2030

By Carey L. Biron
World Bank President Jim Kim has unveiled a series of new institutional goals aimed at ending extreme poverty by 2030 and focusing on the promotion of “shared prosperity” – increasing the incomes of the poorest 40 percent in each country while placing increased focus on dealing with climate change.

U.N. Goes Global to Set Post-2015 Agenda

By Thalif Deen
The United Nations apparently lacked the online resources of the fast-growing digital age when it created its highly-touted Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2001, with a targeted deadline of 2015.

OP-ED: Falling Gasoline Use Means U.S. Can Just Say No to New Pipelines and Food-to-Fuel

By Janet Larsen
Freeing America from its dependence on oil from unstable parts of the world is an admirable goal, but many of the proposed solutions - including the push for more home-grown biofuels and for the construction of the new Keystone XL pipeline to transport Canadian tar sands oil to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast - are harmful and simply unnecessary.

Subsidies Play “Significant Role” in Climate Change, IMF Says

By Carey L. Biron
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is urging national governments around the world to roll back or eliminate subsidies on petroleum-based energy sources, estimating that this alone could result in a 13-percent decline in global carbon dioxide emissions.

Group Warns of “Natural Resources Giveaway” in Latin America

By Joe Hitchon
Researchers have unveiled new data warning that governments in Latin America are infringing on the rights of their indigenous populations in a bid to fuel development through the extraction of natural resources.

Water Crisis Hitting Food, Energy – And Everything Else

By Stephen Leahy
How much water does it take to turn on a light? It took 10,000 litres to make your jeans. Another three big bathtubs of water was needed for your two-eggs-toast-coffee breakfast this morning.

Water and Sanitation Seek Rightful Place in Post-2015 Agenda

By Thalif Deen
When the General Assembly unanimously adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) back in 2000, water and sanitation were reduced to a subtext - never a stand-alone goal compared with poverty and hunger alleviation.

Cameroonian Farmers Find Justice in Fair Fruit

By Monde Kingsley Nfor
The fruit farmers in Njombe, a small town in the coastal Littoral Region of Cameroon, learned a life lesson about “making lemonade out of lemons” - or rather “dried fruit out of fruit” when their land was taken from them by the government and leased to an international farming company.

Mozambican Farmers Fear Foreign Land Grabs

By William Mapote
Mozambican farmers’ unions believe that soon land will become very scarce for locals as the government leases more and more of it to foreign agribusinesses – thus displacing thousands of rural communities and smallholder farmers with no official title deeds to their land.

The Open and Rocky Road Post-2015

By George Gao
What values does a Yemeni journalist who fuelled the Arab Spring hold in common with a former principal of the U.S. National Security Council? And how in turn will they see eye to eye with a Jordanian queen, or the president of Indonesia?

Diamonds are Not Forever, But the Land Is

By Tommy Trenchard

In the village of Makonkonde in western Sierra Leone, Mabinti, who no longer knows her age, sits on a low wooden stool in the dappled shade of several palm trees. She clutches a solitary papaya fruit in hands toughened by a lifetime of hard manual work.

Shell Case Shows Failure of Nigerian Judiciary

By Toye Olori
The decision by The Hague over Shell’s liability for polluting in the Niger Delta shows that justice is possible – but it is extremely hard to achieve if you are taking on a massive multinational, says Amnesty International’s Africa programme director Audrey Gaughran.

Are the Masdarians the new Jetsons?

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Back in 2006, when the government of Abu Dhabi — a Middle Eastern emirate that controls eight percent of the world's oil reserves — announced that it would build "the world's first zero-carbon city," skeptics took it with a pinch of salt. Few believed it would be possible.
coal_plant_350

More Aging U.S. Coal Plants Hit the Chopping Block

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, one of the largest utilities in the U.S. south, plans to retire 15 coal and oil-fired energy generating units at four different plants, in the latest sign that a national campaign against coal is gaining traction.
« Previous Page — Next Page »
*#*