BRAZIL: Water Mega-Project for the Thirsty Agreste

The development of one part of Brazil's semiarid Northeast, the Agreste region in the state of Pernambuco, could begin with the construction of canals that will bring in water diverted from the São Francisco River.

Re-Greening Africa in the Footsteps of Wangari Maathai

Africa needs to remain focused and continue following the late Professor Wangari Maathai’s initiatives for environmental sustainability in order to address climate change across the continent, environmentalists say.

PERU: Councilwomen Fight Climate Change in Land of Melting Glaciers

Some symbolic acts are powerful reflections of a broader struggle. In March some 300 women planted trees in the Santa River basin in northwest Peru to demonstrate their determination to preserve the environment and help adapt to climate change.

In Expanding Energy Access, Businesses Can Reap Benefits

The United Nations is partnering with private sector firms to promote universal access to energy, improved efficiency and wider deployment of renewable sources.

200 Million Depend on Melting Glaciers for Water

At least 200 million people in the world are in danger of being left without water, because they depend for their supply on glaciers that are melting, although paradoxically the process creates the illusion of plentiful water resources.

Q&A: “We Do Not Want It To Be ‘East’ And ‘West'”

About 80 percent of Qatar's population is foreign. Of the 1.6 million people living in the Arab emirate in 2010, 685,000 were Indian or Pakistani, 160,000 were Iranian and about 430,000 came from other parts of the world.

BRAZIL: Logistics Drives Tardy Industrialisation in Northeast

The steel and oil industries are still finding new frontiers for expansion. In Brazil's impoverished semiarid Northeast the key is not, like in China, cheap labour power or abundant raw materials, but logistical advantages.

DR CONGO: Hard to Save All Women Suffering from Fistula

"Every quarter, more than a hundred women with fistulas - including many younger than 20 years old - are admitted for surgery in Maniema province," says nurse Julie Mawazo. "The number of affected women who don't have the means or awareness to come in must be far greater."

BURKINA FASO: Bonuses Help Reforestation Take Root

This year Fatimata Koama and her associates received more than half a million CFA francs as a reward for planting - and looking after - 1,200 trees in their small corner of Burkina Faso.

How to Nurse the Unemployment Epidemic

At a meeting in the suburb of Carthage, just outside of Tunis on Nov. 18, 2008, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Dominique Strauss-Kahn applauded the economic efforts of the now deposed Tunisian dictator Abidine Ben Ali, calling his policies "sound, the best model for emerging countries".

WEST AFRICA: Joint Action Against Piracy

There have already been more than thirty pirate attacks on ships along the West African coast so far this year. Regional governments will meet in Cotonou, Benin in October to discuss coordinating efforts to stem piracy.

Polio Spreading Out From Pakistan

Despite two decades of mass oral polio vaccination (OPV) drives, Pakistan has failed to control the crippling paediatric disease. Health authorities now fear that it is exporting the virus and setting back global eradication plans.

Give Women the Seeds and They Can Feed the World

If women farmers were given more tools and resources, the number of hungry people in the world could be slashed by 100 to 150 million.

Grassroots Women Urge Rights-Based Development Path

The streets around the headquarters of the world's leading financial institutions – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – have been transformed into a canvas over the last three days.

Moving Aid from Fire-Fighting to Long-Term Results

Civil society organisations weighed in Friday on the risks and necessities associated with results-driven aid, asking the key question when it comes to a development project: Results for whom? Donors, or the people on the ground?

SPAIN: Protest Movement Chalks Up Victories

"I want to thank the 15-M. I will not forget them," Algerian immigrant Sid Hamed Bouziane, whose deportation order was revoked after a group of activists from this burgeoning Spanish protest movement held an 11-day demonstration on his behalf, told IPS.

PAKISTAN: Fighting a Taliban-Polio Alliance

With Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province turning into the ‘polio capital of the world’, authorities are warning parents that heeding Taliban propaganda against oral polio vaccination (OPV) could earn them a prison sentence.

GHANA: The Abandoned Offspring of Oil

Kobina's legs are dappled with scars. He gets them flitting across the beach in Sekondi, in southwest Ghana, slipping in the soot-black mud and clambering over pirogues slippery with fish guts, only to sell a sachet of water or a freshly peeled orange to fishermen working on the shore.

Bill Gates to Support “Robin Hood” Tax

Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates appears poised to endorse the adoption of a controversial financial transactions tax (FTT) to be used as a new source of development aid for poor countries.

Tapping Boys in the Struggle for Girls’ Equal Rights

Brothers, husbands, boyfriends and fathers are key actors in the creation of a world where girls enjoy the same rights as boys, and will themselves benefit from greater gender equality, stresses a new report from Plan International released Thursday.

SOUTH SUDAN: Children Snatched Out of their Homes

In villages across South Sudan children are being snatched out of their homes in the dead of night, never to see their families again.