In The News

Stumbling Blocks Threaten Kyoto, Copenhagen

Yolandi Groenewald October 16, 2009
It is no secret that global community must act swiftly and decisively to curb carbon emissions and thus halt climate change. Originally, the Kyoto Protocol was one attempt to solve such problems, its many critics notwithstanding. Now the US and a small group of developed nations want to dismantle Kyoto and incorporate its best provisions into a new treaty to be drafted in Copenhagen. One reason...

WTD 2009 – Experts Discuss Role of Tourism in Globalization

Victor Nze October 6, 2009
Many believe globalization undermines cultural diversity through its tendency to homogenize. But this year's World Tourism Day (WTD) celebration included a debate over strategies to partner globalization with diversity through tourism. After all, the panel concluded, diversity can be an economic asset, as different communities serve as resources of “social wealth” that attract increasingly...

Thai Workers Fly to Sweden Where the Wild Berries Are

Bertil Lintner September 23, 2009
Wet summer weather in Northern Sweden has affected not only the yield of wild berries growing there, but also the economic well-being of the berry pickers, which, in this case, happen to be temporary workers from Thailand. Journalist Bertil Lintner writes that in 2007, Sweden began to give Thais temporary work visas to pick berries, encouraging close to a five-fold increase in workers by 2009. It...

China Takes First Step Towards Climate Deal By Committing To Carbon Target

Suzanne Goldenberg September 22, 2009
At the UN, China’s President Hu Jintao made a dramatic commitment to reduce carbon emissions. Unfortunately, specific targets were not forthcoming. However, US President Obama failed to provide even a commitment to work with the US Senate to craft a bill that would cap greenhouse gas emissions. China, for its part, is factoring climate change into the long term direction of its economy. The...

How Not to Kill the Oceans for Fish

Alex David Rogers September 18, 2009
The oceans and the seas – lifegivers to billions of people through sustenance and subsistence – are being quickly depleted of their fish through wasteful fishing methods, fisher overcapacity, and illegal fishing, writes Alex Rogers, Scientific Director of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean. The degradation not only affects the sustainability of an important food source and the...

Climate Change Warning from Greenland

Kerri Smith September 17, 2009
In the past, environmental scientists have analyzed Greenland’s ice sheet to study the effects of climate change. By examining samples of the core from the ice sheet, scientists are able to get a picture of the climate history going as far back as 6,000 to 12,000 years ago. A new study shows what might happen to the sheet should temperatures increase. The data from Greenland’s ice sheet show that...

Elimination of Food Waste Could Lift 1bn Out of Hunger

Adam Vaughan September 9, 2009
Eliminating food waste could have a number of beneficial, and potentially multiplicative, effects. First, if a quarter of the amount of food typically thrown away annually in the US and UK was instead redistributed globally to the poor, this action could lift over a billion people out of the hunger. Second, by reducing food waste, consumption would decline, thereby lowering demand and thus prices...