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Archive for October 21st, 2010
Canada Seeks to Drop Native Peoples from New Biodiversity Pact
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 21st, 2010
Inter Press Service: Blame Canada if countries fail to agree to a new binding treaty to curb the rapid loss of plant, animal and species that form the intricate web of life that sustains humanity. That is the view of indigenous representatives from Canada in response to a late night move by the Canadian delegation to strike a reference to indigenous peoples' rights at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) members' conference here. "Canada is stalling progress here, weakening our rights and ...
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Farmland the size of Italy lost each year: UN report
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 21st, 2010
AFP: An area of cultivated land the size of Italy is lost each year to environmental degradation, industrialization and urbanization, a UN expert said Thursday. Up to 30 million hectares (75 million acres) of land is lost to the new pressures and Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said 500 million small farmers suffer from hunger partly because "their right to land is under attack." "As rural populations grow and competition with large industrial units ...
Chemical industry wary of extended REACH
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 21st, 2010
Business Green: UK companies are on the alert after the EU moved towards finalising the first wave of harmful substances that could be widely banned under its Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulations. Six substances of very high concern (SVHCs) were earmarked by an EU committee late last month as the first chemicals to be subject to significantly tighter regulations governing their use. Under the restrictions, which would come into effect within ...
Pakistan: After the Bitterness of the Floods Comes ‘Sweet Water’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 21st, 2010
Inter Press Service: Pakistan's recent catastrophic floods has had many alternately worried and depressed, but the indigenous community that calls the mudflats between the creeks of the Indus delta home has been having a decidedly far different reaction. Flashing a smile that reveals a mouth stained red from years of chewing 'ghutka' (a concoction of tobacco, betel nut and flavourings), 70-something Ayub Dablo says: "With so much sweet water, our land will become green again." Dablo lives with his ...
Target numbers take back seat in Nagoya
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 21st, 2010
Japan Times: The success or failure of U.N. conferences often hinges on whether delegates come to agreement after days or months -- in some cases years -- of intense haggling over a few numbers. But at the COP10 talks in Nagoya, the numbers debate is of secondary importance to more basic issues that have no real quantitative solutions. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol conference and the 2009 Copenhagen Accord conference went into overtime, with delegates, and in the case of Copenhagen, world ...
Nature’s law: Business will pay the costs of depleting natural resources
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 21st, 2010
BBC: The natural world supports the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people the world over. It also provides the foundations upon which all the world's major corporate enterprises are built. For it is not just farmers, fishermen, tour operators and the like that are dependent on nature. Miners, energy providers, food and clothes retailers - you name it, most companies rely to varying degrees on natural resources. The majority of businesses, for example, would ...
Senate foes give mountaintop mining a pass
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 21st, 2010
AP: Kentucky's U.S. Senate candidates are unwilling to blast the practice of mountaintop removal mining as the two rivals depict themselves as pro-coal in a state ranked third in the country in coal production. Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway characterize coal as a vital source of jobs and a key part of the nation's energy equation when questioned by The Associated Press about the highly efficient but highly destructive mining practice. Mountaintop removal is a form ...
Save our cities
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 21st, 2010
Nature: Scientists are city people. More than one-tenth of the workforce in the Washington DC metropolitan area are scientists and engineers. Beijing has more than 160,000 professionals in research and development. Worldwide, resources such as universities and researchers are concentrated in urban areas. So why do so many scientists ignore the needs of our cities? It is time to encourage scientists and universities to pay more attention to urban areas, and Nature this week includes a package of ...
Summit must tackle impacts of food production
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 21st, 2010
Guardian: Nagoya biodiversity summit 2010 Biodiversity summit must tackle destructive impacts of food production Nagoya delegates need to plan how the world achieves food security, before ecosystems reach critical tipping points Governments from around the world will arrive in Nagoya, Japan next week for the high level ministerial segment of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting. Their task is daunting. Even the modest target set in 2002 of reducing the rate of ...
Publication Stresses Role for Biodiversity in Fight Against Climate Change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 21st, 2010
Vanguard: Nature's riches can play a major role in poverty eradication, but only if governments and businesses recognise the true economic value of the goods and services our environment provides us. This is the central message of a free book published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Birdlife International and Pavan Sukhdev, leader of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study. It warns that biodiversity loss is not only an environmental ...