GoodPlanet.info Débats

In Fast-Track Technology, Hope For a Second Green Revolution

Thu, 10 May 2012 08:52:51 GMT

With advances in a technique known as fast-track breeding, researchers are developing crops that can produce more and healthier food and can adapt and thrive as the climate shifts.

Don’t Blame it on Rio

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 07:15:44 GMT

We are little more than a decade into the twenty-first century, but a terrible precedent has already been set: all of the major international negotiations and cooperative efforts initiated in this century thus far have ended in failure.

On the Road Back to Rio, Green Direction Has Been Lost

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 09:05:53 GMT

Twenty years ago, an historic environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro produced groundbreaking treaties and high hopes that pressing issues would be addressed. But as organizers prepare for the Rio+20 conference in June, there is little on the agenda to suggest any substantive action will be taken.

Rebuilding Afghanistan’s irrigation network

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:31:50 GMT

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is boosting its technical support for rehabilitation of Afghanistan's dilapidated traditional irrigation systems, in a bid to help farmers increase crop production. The initiative also aims to improve the knowledge and skills that farmers need to run and maintain irrigation systems.

China’s Reforestation Programs: Big Success or Just an Illusion?

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:41:47 GMT

China has undertaken ambitious reforestation initiatives that have increased its forest cover dramatically in the last decade. But scientists are now raising questions about just how effective these grand projects will turn out to be.

Solar Power Off the Grid: Energy Access for World’s Poor

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:56:17 GMT

More than a billion people worldwide lack access to electricity. The best way to bring it to them — while reducing greenhouse gas emissions — is to launch a global initiative to provide solar panels and other forms of distributed renewable power to poor villages and neighborhoods.

Europe’s Ethical Eggs

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:26:07 GMT

Forty years ago, I stood with a few other students in a busy Oxford street handing out leaflets protesting the use of battery cages to hold hens. Most of those who took the leaflets did not know that their eggs came from hens kept in cages so small that even one bird – the cages normally housed four – would be unable to fully stretch and flap her wings. The hens could never walk around freely, or lay eggs in a nest.

Nietzsche’s horse

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:39:15 GMT

It’s a famous anecdote. On February 3, 1889, in Turin, Friedrich Nietzsche saw a coach. The coachman was whipping the horse violently. Nietzsche went up to the animal, wrapped his arms around it, burst into tears and instructed everyone to stay away. He collapsed and after a delirious phase, he became catatonic and died.

Endorse the Nuclear Test Ban

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:31:47 GMT

Indonesia’s parliament has just taken a historic step, one that makes the planet safer from the threat of nuclear weapons. The importance of Indonesia’s decision to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty cannot be overstated. This is a golden opportunity for the remaining eight countries to endorse the CTBT, enabling it to come into legal effect.

Greening the European Investment Bank

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 14:06:16 GMT

Over the past four years, the European Investment Bank – the European Union’s house bank – has loaned €48 billion ($62 billion) to energy projects around the world. Indeed, the EIB lends more to the energy sector than to any other, except transport (and its €72 billion total loan portfolio in 2010 made it a bigger lender than the World Bank).

Mountain forests under threat

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:12:21 GMT

The integrity and resilience of mountain forests is under threat from increasing temperatures and wildfires, population growth and food and fuel insecurity, warns a new FAO publication released today.

Population pressures and the expansion of intensive agriculture have forced smallholder farmers to move higher towards marginal areas and steep slopes, sparking a loss of forests, warns Mountain Forests in a Changing World. It also notes that climate change is likely to facilitate more rapid expansion by pests and disease-causing organisms which may cause additional damage to mountain forests.

Fossil fuel or modern slavery ?

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:08:03 GMT

Slavery is often approached with a similar outlook, based on the underlying positivist assumption that modern civilisation is morally superior to the barbaric slave-owning societies of the past. Yet, before jumping too quickly to this conclusion, we should pause for a moment and reflect on the similarities in our current attitudes towards fossil fuels and climate change and the behaviour of slave owners. This article aims to do just this in two parts. First it examines the role of the IndustrialRevolution in eradicating slavery and in triggering our large-scale burning of coal and, later, oil and gas. Second, it suggests that, even though today’s societies look very diff erent from slave societies, by replacing the institution of slavery and
the social structures that supported it with a new set of structures built on fossil fuels, modern societies have, in many ways, become similar to their problematic predecessors (this phenomenon is not limited to Western societies). For instance, since we now know the consequences of climate change in some parts of the world, we have to acknowledge that carbon dioxide emissions produce affliction, certainly not in a direct way like slavery, but nonetheless a very real affliction for those who suffer from it. There are also many similarities between the way in which fossil fuels are used today and the way in which slave labour was used in the past. So evident is this correlation that it is now fairly common for authors to refer to “energy slaves” to designate the services provided to us by machines: in the 1990s the average global citizen “deployed about 20 ‘energy slaves’ meaning 20 human equivalents working24 hours a day, 365 days a year”, recently wrote McNeill (2000: 15). Hence, the second section argues that we now behave much like slaveholders.

The Education Solution

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:38:05 GMT

he world is assailed by problems that defy easy answers. Economic shocks are destabilizing countries and regions, and inflicting great social and financial hardships on families and their communities. Environmental damage threatens our food supplies, the air we breathe, and the rich biodiversity that sustains the balance of life. Wars and conflict produce millions of new refugees.

Footprint onto the dashboard!

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:27:23 GMT

Aircrafts without a fuel gauge on their dashboard are dangerous. They are fine for take-off. But once in the air and flying for some time, it is good to know how much is left in the plane’s kerosene tank. Is it enough for reaching our destination, or should we land before?

Transition

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:45:55 GMT

In 2004, the UK imported 10.2 million kilos of milk and cream by weight from France and exported 9.9 million to France. Germany sent us 1.5 million kilos of potatoes and we sent them exactly the same amount of potatoes in exchange. That year, the UK imported £310 million worth of beer and exported £313 million worth. Of course the UK is not the only country that does this, economic globalisation demands that the highways of the world are filled with goods passing each other that could just as easily have been grown in the place they are heading to. The Transition movement is an international, bottom-up movement which asks, as the economist Herman Daly once put it, “why don’t we just email each other the recipes?”

The Microfinance Catalyst

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:55:57 GMT

So-called “impact investors” – providers of capital to businesses that solve social challenges while generating a profit – are the current rage in economic development. US President Barack Obama’s Office for Social Innovation and Civic Participation recently convened more than 100 practitioners to discuss how impact investing could be unleashed in the United States and the developing world. The United Nations Foundation and the US State Department have launched a $50 million public-private partnership to promote clean cooking stoves in poor countries. In the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France, development agencies are looking to reposition some of their funding to businesses serving the poor.

UNEP Ogoniland Oil Assessment Reveals Extent of Environmental Contamination and Threats to Human Health

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 09:02:50 GMT

The environmental restoration of Ogoniland could prove to be the world's most wide-ranging and long term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full, productive health.

Water is key to food security

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 12:59:41 GMT

The vulnerability of rain-dependent food production systems and the people who depend on them has been brought into stark relief by the situation in East Africa. While the challenges of finding stable water supplies for growing crops and raising animals are many -- and vary from place to place -- investing in irrigation where it is possible, improving the efficiency of agriculture's use of water, and adopting water-smart farming practices can all help. In this Q&A interview, FAO Assistant Director-General for Natural Resources, Alexander Muller -- in Stockholm this week for World Water Week - talks about these and related issues.

All Man’s Land

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 10:27:25 GMT

Ernest Hemingway’s collection of stories, Men without Women, examines tense gender relationships. In a particularly poignant story, a young man convinces his partner to have an abortion, viewing their unborn child as a hindrance to the status quo. Frustrated, the woman gives in.

A Planet for All Apes

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 07:05:59 GMT

Two new movies released this month – one a science-fiction blockbuster, the other a revealing documentary – raise the issue of our relations with our closest non-human relatives, the great apes. Both dramatize insights and lessons that should not be ignored.