A new report takes a close look at the territorial distribution of poverty and inequality in Latin America, which has long had a reputation of being the most unequal region in the world.
Millions of Angola’s poorest families are facing critical food insecurity as a prolonged dry spell across large parts of the country has destroyed harvests and killed off livestock.
While women constitute the majority of food producers, processors and marketers in Africa, their role in the agricultural sector still remains a minor one because of cultural and social barriers.
Land is the missing element at next month's big U.N. sustainable development summit known as Rio+20, where nations of the world will meet Jun. 20-22 with the goal of setting a new course to ensure the survival and flourishing of humanity.
The controversial concept of degrowth receives little press coverage in a region like Latin America. But the idea of a way of life that is not aimed exclusively at GDP growth does have its proponents in Argentina.
The U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), whose mandate includes the preservation and protection of the world's fast-degrading oceans, will play a pivotal role in Expo 2012, an international exhibition to be formally opened later this week in the coastal town of Yeosu in South Korea.
Clean, renewable energies contribute to economic growth and job creation while decreasing dependency on imports. This is why governments should be increasing incentives for the development of renewable energy during a crisis like the one facing Europe today, German engineer Björn Pieprzyk told Tierramérica.
The vital role of women in creating a green economy will be highlighted at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, to be held in Brazil in June.
"Out of love for the river, we reforest, recycle, and make this place beautiful," says a sign welcoming visitors to the Floragaita school, where a balsa (Ochroma pyramidale) tree with enormous white flowers guards the entrance to the lush green grounds on a hill in the heart of Colombia’s Andes mountains.
After two weeks of closed door negotiations, a U.N. preparatory committee (PrepCom) has failed to reach consensus on a global plan of action, titled "The Future We Want," to be adopted by a summit meeting of world leaders mid-June in Brazil.
By the time small island developing states (SIDS) arrive at the Rio+20 conference in Brazil in June, they will have worked hard to co-ordinate their message to the rest of the world about the importance of sustainable development for their countries.
Vietnam is hailed as a development success story for lifting millions out of poverty and staying on track to meet all of its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. But the country's future progress is severely threatened by the impact of global climate change.
The world's population today is healthier, wealthier, and better educated than ever before. Yet, despite incredible progress, disconcerting realities stubbornly persist.
What are you doing on Saturday? Peter Nix, a retiree, will be standing on a railway track on Canada's west coast blocking a coal train destined to ship U.S. and Canadian coal to Asia.
In the weeks and months leading up to the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development, groups spanning a wide spectrum of interests are doing everything in their power to ensure that the outcomes of the summit are actually carried out.
Women in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of this city 40 km north of Rio de Janeiro no longer have to spend money on vegetables, because they have learned to grow their own, as organic urban gardening takes off in Brazil.
"It’s very hard for them to put food on the table, but they are very noble people," Diego Orozco, one of the thousands of young urban Guatemalans who spent last weekend with a poor rural family, told IPS.
Thirty percent of food is wasted globally, while one billion people go hungry and another billion are obese.
Just before the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, some of the industrial nations, and specifically the United States, were lambasted for their obscenely high consumption of the world's finite resources, including food, water and energy.
As the United Nations and countries around the world look at cooperatives as an alternative economic model for the production of energy, rural energy cooperatives have thrived for over eight decades in the U.S., and citizens in some parts of the country are beginning to reclaim them through the democratic process.