Updated: 2010-03-19 10:20:34
Indonesia in 2008 became the world’s first country to design a legal framework for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), a scheme that would allow rich countries to pay developing nations not to chop down their trees. Forest preservation is seen as an important step in slowing global warming because trees soak up large [...]
Updated: 2010-03-19 10:06:56
A secret experiment allowing families in a rural Chinese county to have two children could herald the beginning of a social revolution after years of the notorious one-child-only rule. It has emerged that, 25 years ago, Beijing secretly authorised a pilot project in Yicheng county, 560 miles (900km) southwest of the capital, in which families [...]
Updated: 2010-03-19 09:50:58
China and India could together decide the future of the global environment, a team of senior scientists warn today in a call for closer collaboration on conservation by the world’s two most populous nations. Writing in the journal Science, the eight coauthors — including zoologists from both nations — warn of the security and biodiversity [...]
Updated: 2010-03-19 09:42:15
The Indian capital’s streets are notorious for the swarms of green and yellow autorickshaws – and for their surly, betel nut-chewing and overcharging drivers. But their days may be numbered after Delhi’s chief minister, Sheila Dikshit, said she wanted to see the three-wheelers phased out within five years. Amid uproar in the state assembly, she [...]
Updated: 2010-03-19 09:28:55
While more than 200 million slum dwellers worldwide have escaped their conditions in the past decade, the overall population of slums has swelled by nearly 60 million in the same period, a new United Nations report finds. Some 227 million people have moved out of slum conditions, largely due to slum upgrading, since 2000, more [...]
Updated: 2010-03-19 09:21:30
Some weeks ago the Canadian Government announced a major initiative to champion maternal and child health as its legacy project as hosts of the 2010 G8 Summit. IPPF welcomes the priority to be given to saving women’s lives. But yesterday, a statement from the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lawrence Cannon, to the Canadian Foreign Affairs [...]
Updated: 2010-03-19 09:18:51
Today we are an oil-based civilization, one that is totally dependent on a resource whose production will soon be falling. Since 1981, the quantity of oil extracted has exceeded new discoveries by an ever-widening margin. In 2008, the world pumped 31 billion barrels of oil but discovered fewer than 9 billion barrels of new oil. [...]
Updated: 2010-03-19 09:15:56
A proposal to ban international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna, which is a sushi mainstay in Japan, has been rejected by a UN wildlife meeting. Thursday’s decision occurred after Japan, Canada and many poor nations opposed the measure on the grounds it would devastate fishing economies.
Monaco tabled the plan at the meeting of the Convention [...]
Updated: 2010-03-19 09:12:09
For the first time, a causal link has been established between climate change and the timing of a natural event – the emergence of the common brown butterfly.Although there have been strong correlations between global warming and changes in the timing of events such as animal migration and flowering, it has been hard to show [...]
