CLIMATE CHANGE: No Deal in Sight at Bali

As a major United Nations 'framework convention' on climate change (UNFCCC) crossed into its second half on Monday, the official view is one of optimism that progress has been made in laying the ''building blocks'' for a future agreement.

DEVELOPMENT-LATIN AMERICA: Local Innovation – Fresh and Fair

This is no ordinary contest. The participants are from the most vulnerable areas of Latin America, and they are already winners because they have been selected out of 900 projects applying for the Social Innovation Fair organised by ECLAC in this southern Brazilian city.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Forests Could Cool or Cook the Planet

A two-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures could flip the Amazon forest from being the Earth's vital air conditioner to a flamethrower that cooks the planet, warns a new report released at the climate talks in Bali, Indonesia Friday.

DEVELOPMENT-SOUTHERN AFRICA: Local is Essential

Local communities in Southern Africa should be given a greater opportunity to participate in initiatives for the management and conservation of natural resources such as water. This was one of the main conclusions of the third Zambezi Basinwide Stakeholders Forum, held recently in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Cut GhGs or Face Extreme Events – Scientists

Scientists attending a major United Nations conference on climate change on this Indonesian resort island warn that unless greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions are contained extreme geo-climatic events are only expectable.

POPULATION: Awards Highlight Media Impact

A U.S. Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, a television news reporter from the Philippines and a radio show host from Cameroon were among the 12 recipients of the Population Institute's 28th Annual Global Media Awards for Excellence in Population Reporting Wednesday.

CLIMATE CHANGE: CO2 Cuts Needed Across the Earth

Imagine that the world's leading industrial nations stopped spewing greenhouse gases tomorrow. Now stop smiling: Severe climate change would still plague the world within a generation because of pollution in developing countries.

CUBA: (Some) Men Renounce Violence Against Women

Orlando Berrios, 53, works over eight hours a day as a barber in the Párraga district in the Cuban capital, and shares household tasks with his wife, to the astonishment of their neighbours, who regard him as an "odd character."

DEVELOPMENT: Food Prices Climbing, With No End in Sight

Globalisation, climate change, and the mass production of biofuels are pushing up food prices worldwide, which could jeopardise the livelihoods of the world's poorest, according to a report released Tuesday by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

RIGHTS-PARAGUAY: More Than a Rap on the Knuckles

The Paraguayan government was reprimanded by a United Nations expert committee for the extent and degree of poverty in the country, the denial of land to campesinos and indigenous people, the indiscriminate use of agrochemicals and the persistence of discrimination against women.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: The Indispensable Role of Mud Flats, Marshes and Swamps

The need for greater urgency in addressing loss of wetlands in the Zambezi River Basin has been highlighted at a recent meeting in northern Zimbabwe.

Q&A: "Sanitation Is a Political Orphan"

Last month, the Prince of Orange, Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined forces to declare 2008 the International Year of Sanitation (IYS).

MEDIA-KENYA: For a Woman Candidate, It&#39s Good To Be a Man

As with political candidates everywhere, women running in this month's general elections in Kenya are doubtless keeping a close eye on the media to see how they are being portrayed by news outlets. Then again, these women may simply be concerned about whether they are portrayed at all.

AGRICULTURE-CUBA: Waiting for Announced Reforms

While saving up for the extra expenses of the year-end holidays, Cubans are hoping that 2008 will bring reforms, at least in agriculture, that will result in a more varied supply of food, at affordable prices.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Waking Up Finally to the HIV and AIDS Threat

When the new government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) set up in August a separate ministry devoted to containing HIV and AIDS in this Pacific Island country, it reflected the enormity of the threat to its six million people.

ENVIRONMENT: Pacific Islands Get Climate Change to Water Summit

It could have been a Pacific Islands summit on climate change. Of the nine heads of state attending the first Asia Pacific Water Summit (APWS), underway in this Japanese town, seven are from the islands and more concerned with global warming than anything else.

GUATEMALA: Teaching With Two Voices

In the Xepanil village school in Santa Apolonia, to the west of the Guatemalan capital, 20 children are learning both Spanish and the Mayan indigenous language Kaqchikel. Their teacher, Marta Lidia Rodríguez, one of thousands of bilingual education teachers in this country today, walks an hour a day to get to the school.

AGRICULTURE-ARGENTINA: Using Internet and Bicycles to Search Out Markets

Just 45 kilometres outside of Buenos Aires, a group of 20 families have set up a farming operation where they work in harmony with nature and without bosses, selling their products through a small network of consumers who appreciate the benefits of organic food and cooperative labour.

CUBA: Machismo Not O.K. – But Not Yet K.O.’d

Gradually, more men in Cuba are declining to take on traditional masculine behaviour patterns, and women who oppose the machismo and sexism that still predominates are opening up ways of changing gender relations, beyond the effects of official measures taken to promote equality over the last 50 years.

ENVIRONMENT-ASIA: ‘Talking Dirty’ on Sanitation Can Save Lives

Although 2.6 billion people in the world - two-thirds of whom are in southern or eastern Asia - are living without access to basic sanitation, the issue has been a poor cousin to water supply in terms of visibility and financing.

BRAZIL: Sanitation for All…in 115 Years

Just 47 percent of the population of Brazil is hooked up to the main sewage system, and at the current rate of public spending on sanitation, universal coverage will be reached when the country celebrates its 300th anniversary of independence, in the year 2122.