The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the European Commission (EC) have issued a joint report on the oilspill in the Ukraine's Kerch Strait in November 2007 (full text, pdf, 2.46 MB). According to the UNEP press release, the report "provides a series of recommendations to improve oil spill prepa......
28 percent of Namibian people are poor, according to a new report of state released by the countries Central Bureau of Statistics.Denver Isaacs reports in this story from The Namibian, that the country is one of the most unequal countries in the world. The most telling result of the new report is its identification of education as a critical factor in addressing poverty.Among Namibians with no formal education, 50 per cent were found to be poor and 26,7 per cent severely poor.The situation shows improvement as education levels rise, with 12.6 per cent of those who finished high school classified as poor and 5.1 per cent as severely poor."Poverty among those who hold a tertiary degree is virtually non-existent," the report reads, noting that of all poor households identified countrywide,...
The GF Progress Out of Poverty Index Series recently published a case study that describes the role of the Grameen Foundation in
developing training programs for Oikocredit partner microfinance
institutions in the Philippines and Peru. Through pilot-testing and data analysis, these microfinance
institutions created poverty assessment models that Oikocredit could
extend to other microfinance institutions in its widespread network as
well as to other social investors seeking similar data on social
outcomes. Read the case study here.
Support Grameen Foundation -- Fighting poverty with microfinance...
Despite gloomy economic forecasts, manufacturers of solar panels, wind turbines and other non-fossil fuel technologies say they are ready to deliver more than the bloc's target of sourcing 20% of energy needs from renewables by...
Climate scientists wonder why people don’t do more about global warming. Social scientists have some tough answers
By Lisa Bennett
Three years ago, I became obsessed with global warming. Practically overnight, my worries about its potential effects outstripped my worries about so many other national and global issues, even personal ones.
Indeed, as the mother of two young boys, I began to think it a bit crazy that I attended to every bump and scrape of my children’s little bodies and budding egos, but largely ignored the threat likely to put sizeable areas of the world underwater within their lifetime.
That year, 2005, marked a turning point for many people. After decades of observation, speculation, and analysis, the world’s climate scientists had reached a consensus,...
Franco Sacchi at TED leads us through the Nigerian film industry with his documentary "This is......
(Editor's note: Today, November 19, is World Toilet Day, part of an awareness campaign led by Water Aid. This post is timely to stop for a second, think about and learn more a crisis that keeps 2.5 billion of the world's poorest citizens away from basic sanitation services)Guest blogger Mike Pezone is a returned Peace Corps volunteer from the Philippines and a 2nd year MBA from The Johnson School at Cornell University. He focuses on Base of the Pyramid business models at Cornell's Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise. This past summer he worked in Mexico conducting the BoP Protocol to develop a water purification business model for an early stage startup. By Mike PezoneWater touches everything. This was reflected in the diverse backgrounds and interests of...
(Washington, DC, November 19, 2008) – President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia should stop making false and dangerous accusations against human rights groups that criticize his government, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today in a joint statement. Colombia should instead address the human rights concerns they raise.
read...
By 2015, the Aluminum Association wants to be recovering 75 percent of aluminum containers made in the United States. The industry is currently collecting and recycling about 54...
The world is awash in climate change books, many of them bad, boring or both. It's all too common to see these books repeating the same ideas and arguments, often scattering facts (or supposed facts) around to make themselves look researched, often mixing exhortations and haphazardly explored solutions. I have piles of these books a few yards high.
So when I got Worldwatch's latest State of the World report, Into a Warming World, I feared the worst. This year's offering, after all, departs from Worldwatch's tried-and-true survey formula to focus in solely on climate change and its implications. I worried that instead of great ideas across a range of subjects, I'd find more of the same ideas and insights I've read so often before. I feared that Worldwatch was grasping at...
OYAM DISTRICT, Uganda, 19 November 2008 – The Government of Uganda has launched a large-scale malaria campaign here in the country's northern Lango sub-region. It is the latest effort to combat malaria, a preventable disease that is the top killer of children under the age of five in Uganda....
a) Photograph of the garnet sand used to produce nanotubes; the inset is an SEM image showing the average diameter of the sand particles (average size ca. 200 m). b-d) SEM images of the CNTs grown on the surface of the garnet sand particle (in parts b and c, G and T indicate the garnet particle and CNT, respectively; part d corresponds to the CNTs only). e, f) TEM images showing the central hollow core of a typical as-grown CNT (e) and the highly linear and crystalline lattice of the wall (f).http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/aboutus/hottopics/suschem/Interscience, Vol 1, issue 10,...
China will provide subsidies to companies that use straw to generate energy through advanced technologies, state media on Wednesday reported the Finance Ministry as...
BAMAKO, Nov 19 (IPS) - Health experts and activists have heavily
criticised African governments for failing to collaborate with
civil society organisations (CSOs) on health research and health
policy...
There are so many good ideas in Latin America, with visible and powerful people behind many of them. Hernando de Soto is not an elected official but as head of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy the ideas he continues to shape the world of development, most recently through the UNDP Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor.
After more than a decade of increasing poverty, rampant inflation and general economic malaise, Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s election as President of Brazil brought on a new era of fiscal discipline and economic responsibility; enabling today’s poverty reduction strategies under current President Luiz Ignacio Lula da SIlva.
Last week, Alejandro Char, mayor of Barranquilla (Colombia), was in Washington D.C. to participate in a panel discussion on...
California and two other U.S. states signed a pact late on Tuesday with Indonesia's Aceh province that could see forest carbon credits from Aceh accepted into U.S. emissions trading...
by Jiang Gaoming
Mobilizing farmers to use readily accessible, traditional bioenergy sources -- like straw -- may go a long way toward helping the country reduce its carbon footprint.
Coal-mining efforts have recently been shifting from China’s northern Shanxi province to an even more vulnerable ecosystem: the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. Many worry that if this area becomes the next big provider of energy and chemical products, large amounts of its natural resources will be destroyed beyond the point of restoration, as we have seen in Shanxi. We must remember that no amount of money can replace the soil carried off by sandstorms.
China’s population is mainly rural, and if that population (all 800 million of them) were to realize their full potential for...
11.19.08 | Unitus to Accelerate Access to Microfinance in East...
Following the G20 summit this weekend, the leaders of the world's largest economies issued a statement explaining how they intend to remake the world's economic architecture. On the very first page of the statement you'll run across the following:Our work will be guided by a shared belief that market principles, open trade and investment regimes, and effectively regulated financial markets foster the dynamism, innovation, and entrepreneurship that are essential for economic growth, employment, and poverty reduction.It might be tempting to treat this merely as empty rhetoric, but I think it's worthwhile to look at what the data actually shows about these relationships. The most recent data from the World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey - which covers 100 countries - indicates a very...
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Government,
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sun,
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Intel,
Ceres,
Levi Strauss,
Nike,
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Climate Change
JOHANNESBURG, 19 November 2008 (IRIN) - South Africa's newly sworn-in Health Minister, Barbara Hogan, came head-to-head with her first real crisis when antiretroviral (ARV) treatment was withheld from hundreds of people in Free State Province. Some may give her an "A" for effort, but others say the health department's response is way off...
JOHANNESBURG, 19 November 2008 (IRIN) - Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has crossed into South Africa, with four confirmed diagnoses in a total of 68 suspected cases in the border town of Musina, according to aid...
The British government said it sold 4 million 2008 European Union carbon emissions permits on Wednesday at 16.15 euros a tonne in the country's first auction of the allowances to emit greenhouse...
BISSAU, 19 November 2008 (IRIN) - After more than six months of battling cholera in Guinea-Bissau the epidemic is now under control health officials say, though they admit they have not identified its root causes or put in place measures to prevent future...
CAPE TOWN, 19 November 2008 (IRIN) - Governments across the world grapple with the question of how best to deal with sex work: should it be decriminalised, or should existing legislation be enforced to better control the...
Japan has approved a third test project to make ethanol from farm waste with subsidies to pay for building and running of plants totalling about $32 million over 5 years, the agriculture ministry said on...
THIES, 19 November 2008 (IRIN) - Researchers have sold over 1,000 solar stoves to rural families in Senegal in a bid to prove that the ovens can improve child and maternal health and reduce household fuel consumption....
Nobuo Tanaka, head of the International Energy Agency, says high energy prices are here to stay and tackling climate change requires a paradigm shift in the power sector. Tan Copsey reports.
Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), is a global authority on energy. The organisation that he leads provides energy policy advice to 28 countries in the developed world. So, when Tanaka recently said, “we can no longer expect low energy prices” and that addressing climate change requires a “paradigm shift” in energy production, it was clear that the energy outlook is changing.
At the heart of this change is oil. The IEA was formed in response to the first oil crisis in 1973. Tanaka was part...
U.S. business leaders including the troubled Big Three automakers offered a prescription on Tuesday for economic recovery and job creation: cap the carbon emissions that spur global...