This pesticide is destroying life across the natural world: the evidence cannot be denied. Only a global moratorium will stop it George Monbiot, The Guardian, Tuesday 15 July 2014 Here’s our choice. We wait and see if a class of powerful pesticides, made by Bayer and Syngenta, is indeed pushing entire ecosystems to oblivion, or suspend their use while proper trials are conducted. The natural world versus tw ...

By Milagros Salazar JEPELACIO, Peru, Jul 2 2014 (IPS) - He may look like a rapper, but 33-year-old José Antonio Bardález is the mayor of Jepelacio, in the Peruvian Amazon. His ingenious innovations in the municipality include transforming waste management into a source of income and making spring water a source of drinking water. “I’m a civil engineer, but people think I’m an environmental engineer,” the ma ...

Across the world, forests provide employment, energy, nutritious foods and a wide range of other goods and ecosystem services with tremendous potential to contribute to sustainable development and a greener economy, according to the United Nations agency report The State of the World’s Forests (SOFO).* “This 2014 edition of SOFO focuses on the socioeconomic benefits derived from forests. It is impressive to ...

Concern is growing over widespread plastic waste that is threatening marine life – with conservative yearly estimates of $13 billion in financial damage to marine ecosystems, according to two reports issued at the inaugural meeting of the United Nations Environment Assembly.* “Plastic contamination threatens marine life, tourism, fisheries and businesses,” underscores the eleventh edition of the UN Environm ...

Global environmental crime, possibly worth more than $200 billion annually, is helping finance criminal, militia and terrorist groups and threatening the security and sustainable development of many nations, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new joint United Nations-INTERPOL report.* The report was compiled by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and INTERPOL for release at the first UN Environme ...

By Fabiola Ortiz Fabíola Ortiz interviews MYCLE SCHNEIDER, nuclear energy consultant RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 2014 (IPS) - It has been three years since the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan. But the consequences are still ongoing due to continuous leaks of radioactivity into the environment, says independent nuclear energy consultant Mycle Schneider. In 1997 Schneider won the Right Livelihood Award, consi ...

We cannot reach people by terrifying them; there has to be a positive agenda. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 17th June 2014: "Saving the world should be based on promise, not fear" If we had set out to alienate and antagonise the people we’ve been trying to reach, we could scarcely have done it better. This is how I feel, looking back on the past few decades of environmental campaigning, inclu ...

The level of elephant poaching across Africa remains alarmingly high, according to a new United Nations-backed report released on 13 June 2014, which also found an increase in the number of large seizures of ivory.* “Africa’s elephants continue to face an immediate threat to their survival from high-levels of poaching for their ivory and with over 20,000 elephants illegally killed last year, the situation r ...

Santa Cruz, June 15 (MC) -. The "Declaration of Santa Cruz de la Sierra" from the G77 Summit "Towards a New World Order to Live Well" stated as a priority of its member countries to eradicate poverty as main objective of the post-2015 development agenda, said President of Bolivia Evo Morales. Delegates from 133 members worked previously on the proposal at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York ( ...

By Stephen Leahy UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jun 13 2014 (IPS) - Pollution, not disease, is the biggest killer in the developing world, taking the lives of more than 8.4 million people each year, a new analysis shows. That’s almost three times the deaths caused by malaria and fourteen times those caused by HIV/AIDs. However, pollution receives a fraction of the interest from the global community. “Toxic sites along w ...