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Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble

Our global civilization today is on an economic path that is environmentally unsustainable, a path that is leading us toward economic decline and eventual collapse. China has eclipsed the United States in the consumption of most basic resources, and the western economic model-the fossil-fuel-based, auto-centered, throwaway economy-is not going to work. This book, which is available for download by chapter online, explains why business as usual-Plan A-cannot take us where we want to go. It is time for Plan B, time to build a new economy and a new world. Plan B has three components-(1) a restructuring of the global economy so that it can sustain civilization; (2) an all-out effort to eradicate poverty, stabilize population, and restore hope in order to elicit participation of the developing countries; and (3) a systematic effort to restore natural systems. (Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute, 2006)

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB2/Contents.htm

(Added: Thu Nov 16 2006   Hits: 311)

A Capability Centred Approach to Environmental Sustainability: is productive employment the missing link between micro and macro policies [PDF]

This paper, produced by the United Nations Development Programmes' International Poverty Centre, examines economic growth, personal well-being, the environment and employment using the Capabilities Approach to poverty measurement popularised by Amartya Sen. The paper's authors discuss how different economic strategies fare with respect to poverty reduction (as defined using the capabilities approach) and environmental sustainability.

http://www.undp-povertycentre.org/newsletters/WorkingPaper13.pdf

(Added: Tue Apr 18 2006   Hits: 121)

A Fury Building Up Across India

In this interview, Arundhati Roy updates her essay on the Narmada issue, The Greater Common Good, published in 1999. Roy talks about how the battle in the Narmada Valley has raised radical questions about the top-heavy model of development India has opted for. But also how it has raised very specific questions about specific dams. Though much of the noise now is centered on the issue of displacement and resettlement, Roy argues that the really vital questions that have not been answered are the ones that question the benefits of dams.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=66&ItemID=10174

(Added: Mon May 01 2006   Hits: 103)

African environment outlook : Past, present and future perspectives

Natural resources form the backbone of Africa's economy, and provide the life-support system for most of its people. As most people directly depend on them for their livelihoods, they are particularly vulnerable to the effects of environmental change. Over the past three decades, the region's environment has continued to deteriorate and poverty has deepened despite attempts by governments to try to halt and reverse degradation. In the past Africa's people had well-developed strategies for coping with change, but poverty has both reduced their ability to cope, and increased their vulnerability. Increased vulnerability to environmental change, in turn, causes greater pressure to be put on the environment. A vicious cycle ensues. Crop failures as a result of recurrent drought and high debt service payments intensify it. The African Ministerial Conference on the Environment requested UNEP to coordinate the production of the region's first major report on the African environment. Africa Environment Outlook assessed the state of the environment of the region and outlined four scenarios for the future.

http://www.unep.org/aeo/

(Added: Fri Nov 15 2002   Modified: Mon Jun 13 2005   Hits: 170)

Another Sort of World Map

This website maps the world - but uses carbon emmissions and population size instead of land mass to determine the size of countries. (World Watch, April 2006)

http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/2006/01/12/

(Added: Wed May 03 2006   Hits: 299)

Assessing Access to Information, Participation, and Justice for the Environment: A Guide

The Access Initiative has developed a set of tools to help civil society groups measure how well governments are performing on access to information, public participation, and justice in decision-making for the environment. These tools are available in the new CD-ROM publication, Assessing Access to Information, Participation, and Justice for the Environment: A Guide. The Guide describes our unique methodology and includes more than 150 research questions designed to measure law and practice in the following areas: * Degree of access to selected types of Information about the Environment; * Degree of Public Participation in decision-making processes; and * Comprehensiveness and quality of Capacity Building efforts to encourage informed and meaningful public participation. In addition, the Guide provides detailed and user-friendly instructions for all phases of the assessment, including assembling a coalition, launching a study, selecting cases and research methods, finalizing data, and using findings to stimulate tangible results.

http://www.accessinitiative.org/how_to_guide.html

(Added: Thu Jan 19 2006   Hits: 444)

Banks, pulp and people: a primer on upcoming international pulp projects

This report examines the pulp industry's current expansion plans as well as the implications of these plans for people and the environment. The report argues that pulp mills have severe impacts on biodiversity, water, land rights and livelihoods. The report provides country case studies and information on problematic pulp projects in the pipeline and it makes recommendations to financiers regarding their future role in this sector (Urgewald, 2007).

http://www.pulpmillwatch.org/media/pdf/BPP_A_FIN_2.pdf

(Added: Wed Oct 03 2007   Modified: Thu Oct 04 2007   Hits: 105)

Bulldozing Progress: Human Rights Abuse and Corruption in PNG's Large Scale Logging Industries

The logging industry in Papua New Guinea is dominated by a handful of Malaysian companies and is is synonymous with political corruption, police racketeering and the brutal repression of workers, women and those who question its ways. Its operations routinely destroy the food sources, water supplies and cultural property of those same communities. They provide a breeding ground for arms smuggling, corruption and violence across the country. In return, the industry generates no lasting economic benefit to forest communities, considerable long-term cost and a modest 5 per cent contribution to the national budget. A concerted international effort backed by credible enforcement agencies is now needed to reform the industry and restore the human and economic rights of PNG forest communities. (Australian Conservation Foundation, 2006)

http://www.acfonline.org.au/uploads/res_ACF-CELCOR_full.pdf#search=%22Bulldozing%20%22

(Added: Mon Sep 11 2006   Hits: 244)

Canada aids massive dam projects

By GEOFFREY YORK. The Globe and Mail, Thursday, Jun. 12, 2003. Beijing - Canada continues to give financial support to massive dam projects around the world, despite mounting concerns that the dams are causing environmental damage and forcing millions of people to abandon their homes, according to a new report. From the rain forests of Belize to the famed Three Gorges of China, the Canadian government and private sector have persistently promoted dam projects that inflict damage on people and the ecology, according to the report, which was issued today by a coalition of Canadian environmental and human-rights groups.

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030611.udamm0612/BNStory/National/?query=edc

(Added: Tue Jun 24 2003   Modified: Tue Jun 07 2005   Hits: 211)

Chatham House

Chatham House has been the home of the Royal Institute of International Affairs for over eight decades. Our mission is to be a world-leading source of independent analysis, informed debate and influential ideas on how to build a prosperous and secure world for all.

http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/

(Added: Thu Mar 27 2008   Hits: 40)

China Internet Information Center

Information on Politics, land, resources, population, ethnic groups, Economy, culture & Education, Sports, Technology, Society and World News

http://www.china.org.cn/english/index.htm

(Added: Wed Jan 05 2000   Modified: Wed Dec 14 2005   Hits: 271)

Climate change threatens to hamper development efforts in poorest countries

Droughts, floods, changing rain patterns and rising sea levels are threatening development efforts in the world's poorest countries, experts and aid workers said at an international water forum. Developing countries may pay the brunt of the costs of a problem caused mainly by industrialized countries whose vehicles and factories contribute to greenhouse gases. By Mark Stevenson, Associated Press, March 21, 2006. (From TradeObservatory.org)

http://www.tradeobservatory.org/headlines.cfm?RefID=80315

(Added: Thu Mar 23 2006   Hits: 118)

Climate change, agricultural policy - how much do we know?

by Rachel Slater, Leo Peskett, Eva Ludi and David Brown, ODI, September 2007. Projections suggest that, by the end of the 21st century, climate change could have had a major impact on agricultural production and on the scope for reducing poverty. This paper looks at the likely impacts through changes in the quality of the physical asset base, access to assets, and impacts on grain production and on agricultural growth more generally. At moderate degrees of warming, impacts are likely to be negative in some regions, but positive in others, making it important to understand the possible implications for trade between the regions. The short term impacts of climate change, particularly changes in the frequency and severity of adverse weather events, remain uncertain, but their impacts on many developing countries are likely to be negative. There is likely to be time to make appropriate policy responses to some of the longer-term impacts.

http://www.odi.org.uk/nrp/NRP109.pdf

(Added: Tue Nov 20 2007   Hits: 41)

Colombia's Palm Oil Biodiesel Push

Megaprojects to produce biofuels purport to be a solution to fossil fuel addiction. However, have the people proposing such alternatives even stopped to consider their potential impact on ecosystems, communities, and cultures? This article lays out the steps that have paved the way for these projects, focusing especially on the ramifications of the African palm in Colombia, from which one type of biofuel is derived. (Tatiana Roa Avendaño, IRC, 2 February 2007)

http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3962

(Added: Mon Feb 12 2007   Hits: 105)

Commentary: More rights, less destruction?

Jonathan Lash is president of the World Resources Institute (WRI), an environmental research and policy organization that creates solutions to protect the Earth and improve people's lives. "Environmental destruction often translates into human misery, and is frequently accompanied by abuse of the most basic human rights. The victims are usually poor - those least able to defend their interests, least likely to have or assert property rights, and least likely to have access to the resources needed to protect themselves."

http://jlash.wri.org/letters.cfm?ContentID=883

(Added: Mon Apr 07 2003   Modified: Tue Jun 07 2005   Hits: 169)

Community forestry in the Amazon: The unsolved challenge of forests and the poor [pdf]

The international research project ForLive, analysing experiences in the Amazon, revealed that considerable external resources are needed to overcome the technical, legal and financial barriers inherent in the current community forestry framework (Benno Pokorny and James Johnson, ODI, April 2008).

http://www.odi.org.uk/publications/nrp/NRP112.pdf

(Added: Tue Apr 08 2008   Hits: 77)

Continuing the struggle for accountability and justice in Guatemala

Making reparations a reality in the Chixoy Dam case. COHRE Mission Report, 2004. This COHRE report, prepared in collaboration with Rights Action, addresses the issue of reparations for the forced eviction and displacement of Maya-Achi communities in Guatemala during the construction of the Pueblo Viejo-Quixal Hydroelectric Project (Chixoy Dam). Between 1980 and 1982, an estimated 440 persons of the Río Negro community were brutally murdered in a series of massacres. This was the principal means used to forcibly evict the community in order to make way for the Chixoy Dam Reservoir, which was funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank. Despite evidence to the contrary, to this day, both institutions deny any knowledge of, or responsibility for, the role that they played in the massacres through their financial backing of the Chixoy Dam Project. This report examines, from the perspective of international human rights law, the legal issues surrounding the question of reparations for the survivors of the Chixoy massacres and forced displacement.

http://www.rightsaction.org/Report.Chixoy.Cohre.pdf

(Added: Mon Aug 01 2005   Modified: Tue Jan 10 2006   Hits: 89)

Darkness in the Lesotho Highlands: Promises for Power Go Unfulfilled

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) is a massive, multi-dam scheme built to divert water from Lesotho's Maloti Mountains to South Africa's industrial Gauteng Province. In an effort to prevent the permanent impoverishment of these people, the governments of South Africa and Lesotho promised in the LHWP Treaty that affected people "will be enabled to maintain a standard of living not inferior to that obtaining at the time of first disturbance." Now, ten years after the pledge was made, affected people's hopes of electricity have faded. It is just another promise not kept. (Ryan Hoover, International Rivers Network, October 31, 2000)

http://www.irn.org/programs/lesotho/index.php?id=001031darkness.html

(Added: Thu Apr 27 2006   Hits: 87)

Defiance in the land of the free

For over 30 years, Carrie and Mary Dann have fought the US government for Western Shoshone rights to 60m acres of land that stretch through Nevada into neighbouring states. Until now, the harassment has hardly scratched the conscience of America, but that might be about to change. In March, in an unprecedented document, the UN demanded that the US government halt all actions against the Shoshone and find a solution acceptable to them and in accordance with their rights. This landmark decision could force the government to transform antiquated federal Indian law. (Nicola Graydon, The Sunday Times, 23 April 2006)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-2142374.html

(Added: Fri Apr 28 2006   Modified: Wed Jun 21 2006   Hits: 112)

Development Issues Crucial for Post-2012 Climate Regime

A discussion of the four building blocks towards a post-2012 UNFCCC climate regime - science and targets; relations between developed and developing countries; the need to link development and environment; and policy coherence (Third World network, September 2007).

http://www.dev-zone.org/downloads/development.issues.in.climate.doc

(Added: Fri Dec 21 2007   Hits: 45)

Development, Environment and Mining: Enhancing the Contribution of the Mineral Industry to Sustainable Development (PDF)

(World Bank/UNEP/UNCTAD/ICME) This document reports on the conduct and outcome of an "International Workshop on Development, Environment and Mining: Enhancing the Contribution of the Mineral Industry to Sustainable Development", held in Washington D.C., U.S.A., 1-3 June 1994. (PDF-2.3MB)

http://www.mineralresourcesforum.org/docs/pdfs/washington1994b.pdf

(Added: Fri Oct 10 2003   Modified: Fri Jun 10 2005   Hits: 150)

Dubious development: how the World Bank's private arm is failing the poor and the environment

A new report by Friends of the Earth charges the World Bank's private sector lending arm with failing to deliver on its mission to promote development. In the report Friends of the Earth criticizes the International Finance Corporation (IFC) for failing to fulfill its mission to alleviate poverty and for bankrolling the interests of corporations.

http://www.panna.org/resources/gpc/gpc_200104.11.1.09.dv.html

(Added: Mon Nov 27 2000   Modified: Tue Jun 07 2005   Hits: 214)

E-mail list for the Environment and Poverty Linkages: An e-Discussion

Sign up for the e-mail postings of this on-line discussion.

http://vx.worldbank.org/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=env-rio-10

(Added: Thu Feb 21 2002   Modified: Tue Jun 14 2005   Hits: 200)

Ecosystem Conservation - A neglected tool for poverty reduction

While one cannot say with any confidence what forms an ecological crunch might take, when it might happen, or how severe it might be, it is easier to predict who will have the worst of it. The poor and powerless cannot shield themselves from ecological problems today, nor will they be able to do it in the future. The wealthy and powerful in the past have normally had the wherewithal to insulate themselves from the effects of pollution, erosion, or fisheries collapse

http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=11033IIED&n=321&l=323&c=natres

(Added: Fri Jun 28 2002   Modified: Wed Oct 04 2006   Hits: 128)

Environment and Urbanization

This twice-yearly journal, published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), focuses on urban and environmental issues and their interconnections, with a particular emphasis on Africa, Asia and Latin America (where most of world's urban population now lives). Each issue of the journal focuses on a particular theme and includes between 9 and 15 papers on that theme, papers responding to the themes of previous issues and a Book Notes section with details of new publications. Examples of journal themes include: globalization and cities; chronic poverty; ecological urbanization; meeting the Millennium Development Goals in urban areas; participatory governance; violence and security; water and sanitation; sustainable cities; and rural-urban linkages. Most issues of the journal include profiles of innovative organizations; some include papers on participatory tools and methods and a guide to the literature. A full text of all its issues (from its first issue in April 1989) is available on-line. All but the issues from the past two years are open-access.

http://eau.sagepub.com/

(Added: Wed Jan 31 2007   Hits: 136)

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