One of the UN’s most influential annual reports warns that personal energy rationing in richer countries is a necessary component of any coherent global strategy for sustainable development. American citizens might be capped at less than one sixth of their current carbon consumption by 2050.
Never let a good crisis go to waste, twice
Yesterday’s panic in the financial markets has conjured a repeat of that sense of things falling apart – with no answers ready from any quarter.
No value in global poverty guesswork
Publication of the progress report on the UN Millennium Development Goals is the time of year to ask whether momentum for the 2015 targets is really there.
Asian migrants are not for sale
There’s something uncomfortably de-humanizing about packaging economic migrants, as though they were destined for shipping containers.
Business leader loses patience with UN forest talks
Negotiations to save the world’s rainforests conducted within the UN climate change framework are failing and should be replaced with separate high level government dialogue, according to the group chief executive of Kingfisher plc, the UK’s largest home improvement retailer.
Kumi unable to scale the FSC platform
A no-show by the Executive Director of Greenpeace hints at a deepening crisis between the FSC and the big environmental groups over recognition of carbon offset schemes.
How to make COP17 interesting
Could the Green Climate Fund conceivably support a programme which would increase greenhouse gas emissions?
Green economics unsettles Rio+20 prospects
Separate UN conferences held in Europe last week reached very different conclusions about the optimum speed of transition to a green, low carbon world economy.
Farms and forests must join up their plans
The global food crisis and the future of tropical forests have recently been covered in separate research and advocacy reports. It’s time to join up the two subjects.
Addis treads in Chicago footsteps
The Ethiopia Commodities Exchange is a brave initiative to hook up farmers to customers they would never find within narrow local markets.