Dubious Awards Presented at Davos

Only a stone's throw from the Davos World Economic Forum meeting, a group of non-governmental organisations presented the annual Public Eye Awards this week to Goldman Sachs and Royal Dutch Shell.

Shadow Over Aichi Biodiversity Targets

With negotiations to mobilise resources for preservation of biodiversity at a major United Nations conference going nowhere, the Group of 77 and China have hinted at  possible suspension of the ‘Aichi targets’  under the Nagoya Protocol.

Funds Crunch Skews Aichi Targets on Biodiversity

The United Nations 11^th Conference of the Parties  to the Convention on Biological Biodiversity (COP 11 CBD), underway in this southern Indian city, is lost on where to garner the billions of dollars needed to implement the ‘Aichi targets,’ due to be met by 2020.

Caught Between Quarries and Sea Erosion

After more than a century of fighting sea erosion by massively dumping granite boulders along the beaches of southern  Kerala state, environmentalists and administrators are beginning to see that this has been a costly and ineffective solution.

Caribbean Islands Brace for Challenges of Climate Change

Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas remembers how quiet - even uneventful – this tiny twin-island federation was for the first four decades of his life.

Floods Dampen Thai Adaptation Plans

Thailand’s flood-management blueprint  received a jolt when the dykes in Sukhothai were breached by the rain-swollen Yom river last week, submerging large stretches of the former royal capital.

Small Islands Push for New Energy

Most islands are well endowed with one or more renewable energy source – rivers, waterfalls, wind, sunshine, biomass, wave power, geothermal deposits - yet virtually all remain heavily or entirely reliant on imported fossil fuels to produce electricity and power transport.

IUCN Puts the Accent on Business

The outcome of the June Rio+20 UN conference on sustainable development was the undisputed inability of governments to come to an agreement on moving ahead to protect the planet. Three months later, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is proposing what can be done as a collective.

Kyoto Protocol May End With the Year

As government negotiators from the world’s poorest countries ended a round of United Nations climate change talks in the Thai capital, they sounded a grave note about what appears imminent when they assemble in November in Doha – the reading of the last rites of the Kyoto Protocol.

Getting Into the Business of Environment

Regulations that stand in the way of conservation programmes lower their likely success, experts warned at the World Conservation Congress of the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Jeju, South Korea.

Small Step to Set Up the Biggest Marine Park

The world’s largest marine park is due to be launched in the Cook Islands located in the Pacific Ocean about 3,000 km from New Zealand. Covering an area of almost a million square kilometres, the park will be three times the size of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and twice as large as the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean that topped the list of marine protected areas (MPAs) for two years.

Men and Women Farming Together Can Eradicate Hunger

Three years ago, the residents of the semi-arid Yatta district in Kenya’s Eastern Province lived on food aid due to dwindling crops of maize that could not thrive because of the decreased rainfall in the area. That was until a local bishop, trying to find ways to prevent mothers from forcing their teenage daughters into prostitution, changed everything.

Kashmir’s Melting Glaciers May Cut Ice With Sceptics

Jowhar Ahmed, an air-conditioner dealer in Srinagar, is pleased at a spurt in business this summer caused by temperatures soaring over 35 degrees Celsius - unusual in this alpine valley ringed by snow-capped mountains.

International Food Prices Again at Record Levels, World Bank Warns

After decreasing somewhat in recent months, international food prices have again risen dramatically, according to figures published on Thursday by the World Bank. Statistics for July indicate a 10 percent rise over just the previous month, and a six percent increase over already high prices from the same time frame a year ago.

Farming Among the Waste in Cameroon

Cameroonian urban famer Juliana Numfor has six plots of land where she grows maize, cassava, sweet potatoes and leafy vegetables, including cabbages, wild okra and greens.

Filling the Granaries in Burkina Faso

The seeds were sown, and the harvest is beginning to come in. Burkina Faso farmers are reaping the benefits of their government's programme to develop and popularise improved varieties of maize.

Q&A: Smallholder Farmers Driving New Trend Against Climate Change

Small-scale irrigation schemes can provide the biggest opportunity for boosting food security in Africa, according to Meredith Giordano, the research director at the International Water Management Institute.

“The Truth is That All Problems Have Solutions” – Even Climate Change in Ethiopia

Eight years ago Kenbesh Mengesha earned an uncertain income collecting firewood from local government forests and selling them to her fellow slum-dwellers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She would earn on average about 50 cents a day, if she was lucky.

Riding Towards Sustainable Development, on Bamboo

In Ghana, a country burgeoning with traffic congestion, increasing economic growth, and a stark urban-rural divide, making frames of bicycles out of bamboo could be the key to promoting sustainable development. It also makes stronger, longer-lasting bikes.

Livelihoods Drying Up on Malawi’s Lake Chilwa

Fisherfolk and farmers living near Malawi’s second-largest water body, Lake Chilwa, are relocating en masse and scrambling for space around its shores as the lake has dried to dangerously low levels.

Mauritian Fishers Want EU Vessels Out of Their Seas

“Look out there, the blue one…. that is a European Union fishing vessel that is threatening our livelihood,” says Lallmamode Mohamedally, a Mauritian fisherman, as he points to a boat offloading its catch at the Les Salines port, close to the country’s capital Port Louis.