This is a joint posting with Vijaya Ramachandran
The World Bank Group's board appears to be operating under a severe case of cognitive dissonance, supporting efforts to save tigers - threatened in India and Bangladesh by habitat loss due to climate change - while helping build coal-fired power plants that will only speed up this process.
Back in June the Bank launched a campaign to help governments develop and better manage forests inhabited by endangered tigers, including in the Sunderbans. This massive mangrove forest spans the India-Bangladesh border and is home to the Bengal tiger. While the Bank has a less-than-stellar conservation track record in Sunderbans, more important is the fact that this impoverished World Heritage site would be one of the hardest hit by climate...
Click here (opens Google Reader) to access my weekly selection of mainstream news articles covering rich world policies and practices that affect poor people in developing countries.
This week's development news focused on global health and climate change. As the International AIDS conference winds down, the media report on past accomplishments and failures as well as new research promoting the fight against AIDS and other global health threats. Climate change coverage reported increased flooding in developing countries at the same time rich countries are shutting down a program aimed at strengthening poor countries’ ability to forecast and withstand such climate-related threats.
Sample articles:
Climate-Change Program to Aid Poor Nations Is Shut (New York Times:...
Governor Rick Perry of Texas, representing a major livestock-producing state hammered by rising feed costs, has petitioned the Environmental Policy Agency to suspend half of the mandated level for blending ethanol in gasoline. The EPA has the authority under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 to suspend all or part of the mandate for up to a year if there is a "significant renewable feedstock disruption or other market circumstance" and the administrator is supposed to respond to Governor Perry's petition by July 24. Surely the current food price crisis, exacerbated by this spring's flooding along the Mississippi, qualifies as a significant disruption.
If the administration and Congress do not revisit the ethanol mandate, it will rise from this year's 9...