Subjects Archives: Ecology

  Meena Raman: The developed countries have gained quite a bit [at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancún] because the proposals in there [in the COP16 Outcome] really take them off the hook in terms of doing the real kind of emission reduction they need to do and a lot of responsibility has […]

Pablo Solón, Bolivia’s Ambassador to the United Nations: To the Via Campesina protesters, to social movements, we can tell you: What you’re doing is key because we, Bolivia, the ALBA countries, are not going to be able to change the reality of these negotiations if the people of the whole world don’t raise their consciousness, […]

  US and Canadian UN COP16 observers and climate justice activists will demonstrate against their governments’ position at the climate change conference by joining the Via Campesina and Espacio Mexicano marches and sit-ins throughout Cancun today, then gather at the Cancun Messe this afternoon at 4pm to deliver a specific message to US & Canadian […]

A year after the chaotic Copenhagen summit, the 2010 UNFCCC climate conference begins in Cancun.  Expectations are low this time around, especially compared to the eve of Copenhagen. That’s probably both good and bad.  The conference last year had been so hyped up beforehand, with so much hopes linked to it, that the lack of […]

  Reference ID Date Classification Origin 05TELAVIV1593 2005-03-17 14:02 SECRET Embassy Tel Aviv This record is a partial extract of the original cable.  The full text of the original cable is not available. S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 TEL AVIV 001593 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/14/2015 TAGS: PARM PREL MNUC […]

Bolivian President Evo Morales lamented this Friday that his proposal as well as that of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, calling on the rich countries to halve their greenhouse gas emissions, has not been welcomed into the Cancún Summit on climate change to be held next week. Morales indicated at a press conference that the petitions […]

  In 2009, the European Union, United States and Mexico filed a complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against China’s export restrictions on certain raw materials, including bauxite, coke, fluorspar, silicon carbide and zinc.  They said that, firstly, these constraints — in the form of export taxes, quotas, licences and so on — caused […]

  Oscar Martínez is Deputy Head of the International Relations Department of the Cuban Communist Party.  This interview was conducted during the South African Communist Party visit to Cuba this month. What is the nature of the economic problems Cuba is currently experiencing? In the context of our other problems, the US economic and financial […]

The government of the USA has planned for India to become an important consumer of its agricultural exports and crop science.  India has also been planned as a host country for an agricultural research agenda directed by American crop-seed biotech corporations.  This is to be achieved through a variety of programmes in India, some of […]

It is now abundantly clear that each and every response by the eurozone (EZ) to the galloping sovereign debt crisis has been consistently underwhelming.  This includes the joint EZ-IMF operation, back in May, to “rescue” Greece and, in short order, the quite remarkable overnight formation of a so-called “special vehicle” (officially the European Financial Stability […]

It’s those foreigners again!  In June and July, during the World Cup, Germans cheered their soccer team’s every skilled pass, every goal — and seemed proud that so many of its players had immigrant backgrounds, from Tunisia, Nigeria, Brazil, Spain, Yugoslavia, Ghana, Poland, and Turkey.  Hurrah! But now it’s October.  The leaves have changed color […]

The past decade has been one in which export-led economic strategies have come to be seen as the most successful, driven by the apparent success of two countries in particular — China and Germany.  In fact, the export-driven model of growth has much wider prevalence as it was adopted by almost all developing countries. This […]

  Kolontàr, Hungary: An aerial photograph taken in June showing a damaged and clearly leaking sludge pond wall shows that the toxic mud disaster in Hungary and subsequent pollution of rivers including the Danube could have been avoided, WWF-Hungary said today. The sludge pond dam wall burst Monday flooding six villages with toxic red mud. […]

With a shovel in hand, Secretary General of Hezbollah Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah appeared on television screens, planting and watering a small tree outside his home in the southern suburbs of Beirut. His message to the whole world was save the environment: go green.

The opening section of this note dealing with the most important issue in the current political situation—’the Maoist’ or the Naxal issue—sets the context for the argument that follows, which deals with issues involved in understanding and acting in this situation. I reproduce some key passages, marginally modified and compressed in one case, from my 2008 T. Nagi Reddy Memorial Lecture—now available as Indian Politics Today published by Aakar Books, New Delhi—touching upon these issues; a little reason and ability to interconnect is all that is needed to recognise the issue involved. I conclude with a brief summing up of the argument.

  Summary: In 1989, services comprised no more than 10 per cent of Cuba’s export revenues, with sugar accounting for over 70 per cent.  In 2007, by contrast, it was sugar that made up 10 per cent of overseas earnings while services accounted for 70 per cent.  The article provides an overview of this drastic […]

In recent years, climate change seems to have elbowed out other environmental issues to become the No. 1 global problem.  But the alarming problems of water — increasing scarcity, lack of access to drinking water and sanitation, pollution, flooding — are equally important and an even more immediate threat. On 28 July, the UN General […]

Indigenous brothers of the world: I am deeply concerned because some are attempting to use certain indigenous leaders and groups to promote the commodification of nature and in particular of forests through the establishment of the REDD (Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) mechanism and its versions REDD+ and REDD++. Every day an expanse […]

Paper prepared for the American Sociological Association Meetings in Atlanta, August 16th, 2010. There are many explanations for the crisis of capital that began in 2007.  But the one thing missing is an understanding of “systemic risks.”  I was alerted to this when Her Majesty the Queen visited the London School of Economics and asked […]

Nationalization and Workers’ Control: Achievements and Limitations The economic, social and political situation in Venezuela has changed a lot since the failure of the constitutional reform in December 2007, which acted as a warning to the Chávez government.1  This failure had the effect however of reviving the debate on the need to have a socialist […]