environment and sustainable development

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF)

Manila Water’s holiday gift to consumers: P14/cu. m. rate hike

Members of Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) and Progresibong Alyansa ng Tagatangkilik ng Tubig sa Kamaynilaan (PATTAK) brought holiday gift packages and Christmas lanterns as symbols of their protest against Manila Water Company Inc.’s proposal to increase rates by P14/cu. m. starting January 1, 2008. “This has always been the concessionaires’ gift to us – business driven interests, thus leading to unabated rate increases. Their ambitious service projections, and other contentious areas (...) read

date of on-line publication : 19 December 2007

KOTHARI Smitu, WYSHAM Daphne

Climate change will devastate India

In South Asia, millions of people will find their lands and homes inundated, according to a draft report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A FINAL draft of a report leaked from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to the authors lays out shocking scenarios for India and the rest of South Asia. The summary for policy makers that was released by the IPCC on Friday is a call for urgent action globally. While shocking, the fuller final draft version of the (...) read

date of on-line publication : 22 May 2007

dossier

Progressio

Food sovereignty : the people’s alternative

> Ernest Cañada, Progressio, October 2006, 32 p. (pdf)

Two conflicting approaches to food production are currently dividing the world : on the one side, the large-scale production of crops for export, controlled by transnational agribusiness companies ; on the other, the agriculture of small family farmers. In this comment, Ernest Cañada outlines how small family farmers are opposing the dominant agribusiness model with an alternative approach based on the concept of food sovereignty. Drawing on a detailed discussion of the situation in (...) read

date of on-line publication : 20 March 2007

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International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

Gender and desertification : expanding roles for women to restore drylands

The livelihoods of over 1.2 billion people inhabiting dryland areas in 110 countries are currently threatened by drought and desertification. Over the past 23 years, IFAD has committed over US$3.5 billion to support dryland development and combat land degradation in developing countries. Of IFAD-supported projects, 70% assist pastoralists and small farmers in ecologically fragile, marginal environments such as rangelands and rainfed croplands through small-scale irrigation, agroforestry, (...) read

date of on-line publication : 14 February 2007

UN Conference on Environment and Development : Earth Summit of Rio de Janeiro,

« Agenda 21 addresses the pressing problems of today and also aims at preparing the world for the challenges of the next century. It reflects a global consensus and political commitment at the highest level on development and environment cooperation. Its successful implementation is first and foremost the responsibility of Governments. National strategies, plans, policies and processes are crucial in achieving this. International cooperation should support and supplement such national (...) read

date of on-line publication : 5 February 2007

International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

Carbon capture and storage : legal issues

Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) describes the process of capturing CO2 emissions from industrial and energy-related processes, compressing the gas to a liquid form, transporting it to a storage site (by pipeline, ship, truck or rail), and injecting it into a geological cavity - to isolate it from the atmosphere. CCS has been described as one option in the « portfolio » of mitigation options - useful as a bridging technology to address the most prevalent greenhouse gases by volume in (...) read

date of on-line publication : 5 January 2007

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ActionAid International

Delivering the 2010 target : financing universal access to HIV and AIDS treatment

The commitment to achieve universal access to HIV and AIDS treatment is destined to fail unless the donors bridge the funding gulf that currently exists between what is needed and what is actually spent on treating HIV and AIDS. In 2005, the UK and other G8 leaders gave hope to millions of people for whom AIDS is still a potential death sentence. The G8 Finance Ministers’ meeting in June that year, and then the Gleneagles Communiqué in July, built upon earlier efforts to expand HIV (...) read

date of on-line publication : 8 December 2006

FERNANDES Sujatha

Smelter Struggle: Trinidad Fishing Community Fights Aluminum Project

> CorpWatch

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php (...)

The roads that wander through the southwestern peninsula of Trinidad pass small fishing villages, mangrove swamps, and coconut plantations; they skirt herds of buffalypso and reveal sheltered beach coves. This February, Alcoa signed an agreement in principle with the Trinidad and Tobago Government that threatens to fundamentally alter this gentle landscape. Plans by the Pittsburgh-based manufacturing company to build a large aluminum smelter have sparked criticism from local residents and environmentalists.
The $US1.5 billion project slated for the Chatham/Cap-de-Ville area envisions a 341,000 metric-tons-per-year aluminum smelter, an anode plant, and a cast house. Alcoa, the world’s leading producer of aluminum, is promoting the project as a boon to local employment and other community benefits.  read

date of on-line publication : 16 November 2006

dossier

The Blacksmith Institute

The world’s worst polluted places : the top ten

> A project of The Blacksmith Institute, october 2006, 59 p., pdf

http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/t (...)

After decades of effort and attention, industrial pollution is now only an occasional worry for most of the developed world. Although there are a few remaining threats, pollution is generally regarded as a problem that is carefully regulated, managed and watched over by many.
This is not the case in the poorest countries. There, pollution continues to be a major source of death, illness and long-term environmental damage. Across the developing world, pollution kills thousands of people indiscriminately, shortens lives, damages children’s development and growth, and creates a background of chronic illnesses that makes strong economic development nearly impossible.
Despite the emotional and incomparable suffering of poor communities world wide, this report attempts to objectively expose sites that have the most extreme effects on human health. Despite isolation of the sites and complacency of those responsible, this list recognizes that the challenges of pollution are far from resolved for millions in the developing world.
This report is also intended to indicate that there are potential remedies for these sites. Problems like these have been solved in the developed world, and we have the capacity and the technology to spread our experience to our afflicted neighbors. This report’s purpose is to highlight significant problem sites, and show that something can be done to begin to fix them. A discussion of solutions is presented later in the report.  read

date of on-line publication : 2 November 2006

Groups in Africa, Latin America condemn World Bank biosafety projects

> Libération Afrique

http://www.liberationafrique.org/spi (...)

The World Bank is set to secure funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) for two projects that will undermine public debate and aggressively drive GM crops into the heart of peasant agriculture. The two projects, one in West Africa and the other in Latin America, will hasten the spread of GM crops into farmer seed systems and even into certain centres of origin.
The projects are clearly being driven by an outside agenda. At their core is a longstanding strategy pursued by the World Bank and the US government to harmonise regulations for GM crops across regions in order to override national processes that are more susceptible to local opposition. The idea is to establish favourable regulations in a few countries whose governments are open to GM crops and then to use these regulations as a model that can be imposed on neighbouring countries by way of regional policy bodies. In this way, harmonisation side-steps any possible democratic debate and provides corporations with a large, one-stop shop for their GM crops.  read

date of on-line publication : 5 July 2006