Agribusinesses increasingly shape food policies worldwide. Claiming to best address recent food security concerns, they profit more from innovations in food production, processing, and distribution.

U.S. President Trump’s economic strategy for his second term aims to get the rest of the world, especially its wealthy allies with greater means, to pay more to strengthen the world’s richest economy.

Opposition to data centres has been rapidly spreading internationally due to their fast-growing resource demands. DCs have been proliferating, driven by the popularity of artificial intelligence.

The World Bank’s 1981 Berg Report provided the blueprint for structural adjustment, including economic liberalisation in Africa. Urging trade liberalisation, it promised growth from agriculture.

President Trump’s snide barbs against his appointee, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, have revived support for central bank independence–long used by powerful financial interests against growth and equity.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have risen over the last two centuries, with current and accumulated emissions per capita from rich nations greatly exceeding those of the Global South.

The accumulation of still growing greenhouse gas emissions in an increasingly unequal world is accelerating planetary heating. This is worsening inequalities, both nationally and internationally.

Natural flows do not respect national boundaries. The atmosphere and oceans cross international borders with little difficulty, as greenhouse gases (GHGs) and other fluids, including pollutants, easily traverse frontiers.

The ongoing plunder of Africa’s natural resources drained by capital flight is holding it back yet again. More African nations face protracted recessions amid mounting debt distress, rubbing salt into deep wounds from the past.

The latest annual climate conference has begun in the face of a worsening climate crisis and further retreats by rich nations following the energy crisis induced by NATO sanctions after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Ahead of the first United Nations environmental summit in Stockholm in 1972, a group of scientists prepared The Limits to Growth report for the Club of Rome. It showed planet Earth’s finite natural resources cannot support ever-growing human consumption.

Developing countries have long been told to avoid borrowing from central banks (CBs) to finance government spending. Many have even legislated against CB financing of fiscal expenditure.

Preoccupied with enhancing their own ‘credibility’ and reputations, central banks (CBs) are again driving the world economy into recession, financial turmoil and debt crises.

The dogmatic obsession with and focus on fighting inflation in rich countries are pushing the world economy into recession, with many dire consequences, especially for poorer countries. This phobia is due to myths shared by most central bankers.

Central banks (CBs) around the world–led by the U.S. Fed, European Central Bank and Bank of England–are raising interest rates, ostensibly to check inflation. The ensuing race to the bottom is hastening world economic recession.

Sep 20, 2022 (IPS). Policymakers have become obsessed with achieving low inflation. Many central banks adopt inflation targeting (IT) monetary policy (MP) frameworks in various ways. Some have mandates to keep inflation at 2% over the medium term. Many believe this ensures sustained long-term prosperity. 

After a quarter century of economic stagnation, African economic recovery early in the 21st century was under great pressure even before the pandemic, due to new trade arrangements, falling commodity prices and severe environmental stress.

As rich countries raise interest rates in double-edged efforts to address inflation, developing countries are struggling to cope with slowdowns, inflation, higher interest rates and other costs, plus growing debt distress.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 30 2022 (IPS) – Most sub-Saharan African French colonies got formal independence in the 1960s. But their economies have progressed little, leaving most people in poverty, and generally worse off than in other post-colonial African economies. 

After four years of Trump’s ‘America first’ isolationism, U.S. President Joe Biden announced “America is back”. His White House has since tried to find allies against China and Russia.