Q&A: "After the Initial Warnings About Desertification, We Could Have Done More"

Years of working in West Africa have given agricultural technician Henri Girard many insights into what is needed to halt land degradation in the region.

ENVIRONMENT-CHILE: Public-Private Partnership Defends Biodiversity

The rich biodiversity of the Altos de Cantillana mountain chain two hours from the Chilean capital has received attention in the past two years through a unique and ambitious conservation model based on a public-private partnership.

RIGHTS-TOGO: Celebrations as Anti-Trafficking Law Is Put Into Effect

Civil society organisations in Togo have welcomed the sentences handed down to five child traffickers last week. The trials marked the first application of a law adopted in August 2005 against the trafficking of children.

LATIN AMERICA: Black Women on the Bottom Rung

There are at least 75 million black women in Latin America and the Caribbean, but those who occupy high-level political or public administration posts number less than 50. As activists pointed out to IPS this week, black women are at the very bottom of the social ladder in this region.

ENVIRONMENT-CHILE: Town of Alhue Goes Green

Time seems to have stopped in Alhué. The dirt roads, colonial history and low-key activity in this sleepy Chilean farming town of 4,500 make it hard to remember that downtown Santiago is just two hours away.

TRADE: Fears That G4 Meet Will Shift Burden to Developing World

As trade ministers of the Group of Four - European Union, United States, Brazil and India - launched a make-or-break effort in the Doha Round of negotiations Tuesday in Potsdam, Germany, developing countries worry that their concerns won't be adequately addressed, say trade envoys.

SRI LANKA: Primary Education in Crisis

The dismal results of Sri Lanka's school-leaving General Certificate of Education (GCE) exams this year, which showed only 48 percent of the 525,000 candidates passing, have left educationists wringing their hands and asking where they went wrong.

RIGHTS-ZIMBABWE: Another Attempt to Reclaim Media Independence

Zimbabwean media practitioners have launched a self-regulatory media body for journalists despite government threats of unspecified action against them.

DEVELOPMENT-BOTSWANA: Even More Children Are Dying

While Botswana has succeeded in decreasing its poverty rate, it is unlikely that the country will achieve the United Nations' fourth Millennium Development Goal of decreasing child mortality rates by two-thirds by 2015. Figures have shown an increase in child mortality between the 1990s and the 2000s.

COTE D’IVOIRE: Forests Sacred No More

In Côte d'Ivoire, the importance of a forest can go far beyond its environmental significance, as critical as this may be. Certain wooded areas are viewed as sacred.

AFRICA: “If You Want More Development, Include Women in Decision-making”

The '8th Triennial Commonwealth Women's Affairs Ministers Meeting' (8WAMM) has closed with an acknowledgement that gender equality is central to democracy, peace and economic growth; ministers also called for greater efforts to achieve parity between men and women.

TRADE-MALAWI: Clothing and Textiles Become Unstitched

Following the liberalization of the global trade in textiles and clothing between 1994 and 2005, Malawi has seen an influx of second-hand clothing on the local market. But while consumers have been happily buying cheap items on almost every street corner, the country's textile industry has been steadily collapsing.

TRADE-MAURITIUS: Meeting EU Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary Norms

Mauritian producers and exporters are slowly adapting to the sanitary and phyto-sanitary norms imposed by the European Union (EU) on fruit, vegetables and fish.

HEALTH: Commonwealth Event Debates Why AIDS Wears “the Face of a Woman”

The issue of women continuing to be at higher risk of HIV infection than men has received considerable attention at a gathering of women's affairs ministers from Commonwealth countries underway in Uganda's capital, Kampala.

ENVIRONMENT-SOUTH AFRICA: Land Returned in St Lucia World Heritage Site

A section of the world heritage site the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, Africa's largest estuary, has been returned to its rightful owners, who have in turn undertaken to manage the land in accordance with the country's environmental laws.

RIGHTS-SOUTH AFRICA: Back to the Land of Our Parents

‘‘Today we are here to say never again shall our people lose their land rights because they are black,'' said Lulama Xingwana, South Africa's minister of agriculture and land affairs.

POLITICS-AFRICA: Continental Government by 2015?

Debate on the prospects for continent-wide government in Africa is heating up ahead of the African Union (AU) summit that is scheduled to begin Jun. 25 in the Ghanaian capital of Accra.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Nobel Laureate Calls for Post-Kyoto Treaty

Large developing nations like China, India and Mexico should sign a new international treaty to curb climate change which must include economic penalties to clamp down on emissions of greenhouse gases, Nobel chemistry laureate Mario Molina said Wednesday.

AGRICULTURE-BRAZIL: David, Goliath and Land Reform

The largest movement fighting for the distribution of unproductive rural property to landless peasant farmers in Brazil complains that the "euphoria" over the production of biofuels from sugar cane and other crops is aggravating the concentration of land ownership and driving up land prices.

RIGHTS-AUSTRALIA: Too Little, Too Late for Lost Generation Aborigines

A decade after the release of the landmark 'Bringing Them Home Report' on the forced removal of indigenous children from their families - known as the Stolen Generations - the situation for indigenous Australians remains desperate.

AGRICULTURE: 70 Percent of Worst Forms of Child Labour

The global campaign for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour by 2016 is focusing this year on agriculture, which accounts for 70 percent of such jobs, said Kari Tapiola, executive director of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).