Subjects Archives: Environment

In a 6‒3 decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled on June 30 against the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, a move that signals a major setback in the fight against climate change.

The Supreme Court’s undermining of the EPA’s ability to fight climate change brings the terms and stakes of the current crisis into blinding focus.

The rulers of rich nations are like arsonists who, after lighting the fire, prevent anyone calling the fire brigade. An example of this took place at the Bonn Climate talks that finished on June 16.

ExxonMobil responded to the US President by urging his administration to enact emergency measures.

Throughout their history, agricultural, chemical and food corporations have created and implemented tactics to marginalize the peasant farmer community and indigenous people.

In March 2022, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned of a ‘hurricane of hunger’ due to the war in Ukraine. Forty-five developing countries, most of them on the African continent, he said, ‘import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia, with 18 of those import[ing] at least 50 percent’.

The labour relations on South African farms continue to maintain race, gender, and class inequalities as a central character of work and life.

The world faces a food crisis due to war, sanctions, and inflation. China has shown how to strengthen food sovereignty, while fighting poverty, with state-funded agricultural cooperatives, government crackdown on waste, and investment in technology.

Two new books trace the history of global inaction over the climate emergency, and seek to identify the culprits.

A vital effort to establish a legal right to a living planet could soon move forward—but the Biden administration is trying to stop it.

Land is and means different things to different people. Indigenous, pastoralist, and rural farming communities are especially dependent on land, which is widely recognised by conservation organisations. Such communities are often uniquely vulnerable to the effects of ecosystem destruction while simultaneously having strong social norms and cultural values that support ecosystem preservation.

This week, Grace talks to John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review. They discuss Marx’s theory of nature and the relationship between humanity and nature under capitalism.

For years, the loss of land and livelihood has been upheld as the sacrifice people would have to make in order to get jobs and money later on. It does not seem to matter that any sort of prosperity has failed to trickle down to the people till date, barring those few who get to fatten their pockets.

These were no minor initiatives; they jeopardized the agendas put forth by the neoliberal administrations of the past.

RUSSIA and Ukraine together account for 30 per cent of the world’s wheat exports. Many African countries, in particular, are heavily dependent on them for their food supplies, which are now getting disrupted because of the war; and this disruption would continue since the war is also affecting the acreage being sown under foodgrains there.

2022 will likely be one of the coolest years Earth will experience in the foreseeable future; much more intense heat waves are in India and Pakistan’s future.

Lucidly argued and touching in its appeal, Corine Pelluchon’s latest book ‘Les Lumières à l’âge du vivant’ will be a theoretical source both for ‘green’ and ‘red’ movements alike.

Texaco operations in Ecuador from 1962 to 1994 dumped 70 billion litres of “wastewater”, heavily contaminated with oil and other chemicals, into the Amazon rainforest, plus over 650,000 barrels of crude oil. They polluted over 800,000 hectares.

KUALA LUMPUR: Capital flight from the global South is immense, with widespread adverse effects. A new book proposes measures to curb, even reverse capital flight from Africa. It also offers pragmatic lessons for many developing countries.

Importers must step up support for sustainable palm oil, and producers be bold in revoking the licences of illegal palm estates, writes Andre Barahamin.