World Trade Organization (WTO) members concluded the Tenth Ministerial Conference in Nairobi on 19 December by securing an historic agreement on a series of trade initiatives. The “Nairobi Package” pays fitting tribute to the Conference host, Kenya, by delivering commitments that will benefit in particular the organization’s poorest members.
Just a week after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave its starkest warning yet that the vast majority of existing oil, gas and coal reserves need to be kept in the ground, a new report reveals that governments are flagrantly ignoring these warnings and continuing to subsidise exploration for fossil fuels.
With governments, activists and scientists tearing their hair out over the world’s impending crisis in biodiversity, the outgoing president of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) delivered a simple message to participants at the 12
th Conference of the Parties to the CBD (COP12) currently underway in the Republic of Korea’s northern Pyeongchang county: honour the promises you made last year.
A group of developing countries brought a tectonic shift at the World Trade Organization on Friday by turning the tables against the industrialised countries, when they offered a positive trade agenda to expeditiously arrive at a permanent solution for food security and other development issues, before adopting the protocol of amendment of the contested Trade Facilitation Agreement.
The “fragility” of the World Trade Organization’s ‘Bali package’ was brought into the open at the weekend meeting in Sydney, Australia, of trade ministers from the world’s 20 major economies (G20).
Framing rules at the World Trade Organization for maintaining public stockholding programmes for food security in developing countries is not an easy task, and for Ambassador Jayant Dasgupta, former Indian trade envoy to the WTO, “this is even more so when countries refuse to acknowledge the real problem and hide behind legal texts and interpretations in a slanted way to suit their interests.”
Civil society activists from five Arab countries are urging the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to ease pressure on their governments to reduce food and fuel subsidies until stronger social-protection schemes and other basic reforms are implemented.
Four decades after they signed the treaty establishing the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), government leaders are gathering in Trinidad and Tobago, the birthplace of the integration process, as they seek to give greater meaning to the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) that encourages the free movement of nationals across the 15-member grouping.
The bio-gas digester on the roof of Hussein Farag's apartment in one of Cairo's poorest districts provides a daily supply of cooking gas produced from the kitchen waste his family would otherwise discard in plastic bags or empty into the clogged sewer below his building.
She has taken a personal pay cut, promised reforms, resumed aid flows from Western donors and put her predecessor’s private jet up for sale.
Caribbean governments have begun a quiet lobbying effort to convince Washington to rethink the subsidies it grants to the rum industry in U.S. territories, or face a formal complaint in the World Trade Organisation.
Calls are mounting for the world's big fishing powers to stop subsidising international fleets that use destructive methods like bottom trawling in foreign coastal waters, drastically reducing the catch of local artisanal fishers who use nets and fishing lines.
Countries have chained themselves to a fossil fuel train that is headed straight off a cliff, warns the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Lesotho’s textile sector – the country’s largest employer - is regarded by many as the only way out of the poverty trap in a tiny kingdom where more than half of the population lives on less than 1.25 dollars a day. But what many do not know is that the government and the World Bank have unofficially turned their backs on the sector and will soon cut important subsidies.
As a light drizzle fell Saturday, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu pointed to solar houses constructed by students on the National Mall park in Washington as evidence that the U.S can compete internationally in the renewable energy market to create jobs and win "the war against climate change".
Despite the 2.4 billion emalangeni (342 million dollar) loan from the South African government to its cash-strapped neighbour, Swaziland is sinking deeper into debt.
The United States should recognise Brazil as a global power and treat it accordingly, concluded a major new report issued by the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) here this week.
Access to treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) remains compromised, especially in developing countries, because too few pharmaceutical companies manufacture quality-assured drugs. Lack of competition has led to skyrocketing prices and this means that public health budgets are quickly spent.
The first-ever official meeting of Ministers of Agriculture from G20 countries, to be held in Paris Jun. 22-23, presents an extraordinary opportunity. Tasked with developing an action plan to address price volatility in food and agricultural markets and its impact on the poor, the ministers are uniquely positioned to not only tackle the immediate price volatility problems, but also to take on a more fundamental and long-term challenge - extreme poverty and hunger.
For years, European governments and corporations have made use of a loophole in the Kyoto protocol on climate change to make exorbitant profits. According to some sources, this lucrative scheme has caused more pollution than ever before while lobbyists in Brussels have methodically undermined the European Commission's decision to put a stop to it.
For years, European governments and corporations have made use of a loophole in the Kyoto protocol on climate change to make exorbitant profits. According to some sources, this lucrative scheme has caused more pollution than ever before.