Environment Archives - Page 59 of 127 - Foreign Policy In Focus

Beating Swords Into Ploughshares

by Hannah Gurman | Aug 16, 2010

In last month’s blitzkrieg tour of Central and Southeast Asia, two of the four stops Secretary Clinton made share the unfortunate bond of enduring an invasion by U.S. air and ground forces. In the space of a few days, Clinton visited both Vietnam and Afghanistan, thus physically linking what had once been, and then what has now become the United States’ longest war. One of the more insidious links that tie these conflicts together was highlighted in a few of the news stories about Clinton’s trip. That link, in a word, is agribusiness.

Starving Africa’s Future?

by Beth Tuckey | Aug 11, 2010

In what may be President Obama’s most significant foray into changing U.S.-Africa policy since his election in 2008, the United States is embarking on a new initiative to boost agricultural production in the global south. Feed the Future (FTF) came out of the G8 summit in L’Aquila in 2009 where developed country leaders committed to acting to “achieve sustainable global food security.” Obama pledged $3.5 billion over three years toward this goal, in hopes that other rich nations would also make significant investments in agricultural development.

What the Zapatistas Can Teach us About the Climate Crisis

by Jeff Conant | Aug 3, 2010

With their 1994 battle cry, “Ya basta!” (“Enough already!”) Mexico’s Zapatista uprising became the spearhead of two convergent movements: Mexico’s movement for indigenous rights and the international movement against corporate globalization.

So That All May Drink

by Daniel Moss | Jul 27, 2010

After years of grassroots pressure, the UN General Assembly will debate a resolution July 28^th on the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation.

Latin America: Climate Change Swing States

by Janet Redman | Jul 22, 2010

U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern traveled with Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela to Chile, Peru, and Ecuador last week, to discuss climate change with his government counterparts and civil society. Deepening bilateral and multilateral cooperation to increase economic growth, cutting greenhouse gasses, and helping climate-vulnerable populations were on the official program.

Loose Oil Is a Way of Life in West Africa

by E. Ethelbert Miller | Jun 21, 2010

Big oil spills are no longer news in Africa. The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates

The Oil Spills You Never Heard Of

by Conn Hallinan | Jun 11, 2010

Spills, leaks and deliberate discharges are happening in oilfields all over the world and very few people seem to care.

U.S. Energy Policy Creating a New Generation of Dr. Strangeloves

by Alice Slater | Jun 8, 2010

At a time when the United States should be creating a new Manhattan Project for safe, clean, green energy from the sun, wind, and tides, the Obama administration is trying to recreate the old Manhattan project, training our best and brightest to continue to wreak havoc on the planet with nuclear know-how.

Multinational Oil, The US and Nigeria: A Crude Contrast

by Alex Free | May 21, 2010

In the wake of the environmental disaster caused by the 20 April explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the oil multinational was immediately pressured into providing adequate compensation by the US government. This is an experience palpably not shared by Nigerian people in the face of another multinational, Shell, in the country’s Niger Delta, writes Alex Free.

Bolivia Climate Conference: Indigenous Peoples Design Roadmap to New World

by Brenda Norrell | May 12, 2010

President Morales called the alternative climate summit following the failed United Nations Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, COP15, in 2009. Morales, in his opening address in Bolivia, urged individual lifestyle changes, with flagrant consumerism relying on disposable  products and plastics to be replaced with new standards of living in harmony with the earth. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was among the dignitaries and participants from 150 countries. Although originally 5,000 to 10,000 people were expected, ultimately there were 30,000 at the gathering held April 20–22 in Cochabama, Bolivia.