International Youth Day 2009
SUSTAINABILITY: OUR CHALLENGE, OUR FUTURE Sustainability does not only refer to maintaining environmental balance and renewal. Sustainability encapsulates three facets of life: the environment, society and the economy. We live our lives in the overlaps and intersections of these facets, and our actions and attitudes help shape them. Their changing shapes in turn affect the...
Number games: 2 degrees Celsius, 2050 and the G8. But does it all add up?
G8 leaders have come out with a land mark climate change agreement on the back of meetings in L’Aquila in Italy (read the full communiqué here). Is this good news? In a word, yes. Is it jump for joy and do an embarrassing dance kinda news? In another word, no. Why? Well, the answer lies...
Actuality / Climate & Energy / Developing Countries / Earth & Environment / Globalization & Global Culture / Human Rights / Photography & journalism / Politics & International Relations / Society / Sustainable Development / World
HOME: It’s Too Late To Be A Pessimist
‘If we can improve the images of the world, perhaps we can improve the world’ Wim Wenders Wim Wenders’ words have perhaps never been more relevant to a movie than in the case of Home. Following directly on from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Home is, of course, a film with a message that sets...
The crisis can be an opportunity to rethink the global economy
Interview with Jacques Weber by Meriem Bouamrane With the financial and economic crisis tightening its grip around the world, many researchers, organizations and institutions are being galvanized into action. Terms like Green Deal or Global New Green Deal are circulating and, with natural resources becoming scarcer, there is talk of creating a tax system based...
Earth Hour
Tomorrow, from 8.30 PM onwards for one hour, the world will cast a first truly global vote: between the planet or global warming. Last year, 2.2 million people and several companies in Sydney switched off their lights for one hour, resulting in an equivalent of 48.000 cars being taken off the road and saving 10,2%...
Elkouria “Rabab” Amidane wins student peace prize
Today, students are playing crucial roles in opposition movements throughout the world, fighting for democracy and the implementation of human rights. Though they often are the first ones to climb the barricades, sadly they are also the first ones to be forgotten. The purpose of the Student Peace Prize is to make their voices heard,...
Climate & Energy / Developing Countries / Economic Development / Society / Sustainable Development / World
Tackling Climate Change, Reducing Poverty
It a time of rising unemployment and economic insecurity, some argue that protecting the environment is a ‘luxury’; but a new report, Tackling Climate Change, Reducing Poverty shows that tackling climate change actually offers a huge opportunity to boost the economy and tackle UK poverty at the same time. For example, government investment in home...
60 Years
Today marks the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some places you should definitely take a look: Official UN website Know Your Human Rights Amnesty International Opendemocracy | Human Rights at 60: early retirement or another chance? International Herald Tribune; China hails ‘progress’ but quells protest on human rights anniversary Right Now (Dutch...
Actuality / Climate & Energy / Earth & Environment / Economic Development / Politics & International Relations / Sustainable Development / World
The Climate for Change
- by Al Gore Op-Ed Contributor Ny Times The inspiring and transformative choice by the American people to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president lays the foundation for another fateful choice that he — and we — must make this January to begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly...
The 100 Day Action Plan to Save the Planet
When the 44th President of the United States is elected, he will face urgent crises on three major fronts: the American economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the growing threat to the world environment caused by climate change. This short, powerful book shows the way forward: a clear action plan for the new...
Climate & Energy / Earth & Environment / Economic Development / Politics & International Relations / Sustainable Development / World
We need a ‘Green New Deal’ to tackle ‘triple crunch’ of credit, oil price and climate crises
The world needs leaders with the vision to forge New Deal-type policies to confront the potentially disastrous combination of climate change, high inflation and economic slowdown, a British research group said. The recommendation is made in “A New Green Deal,” a report by the New Economics Foundation. It uses the convergence of the credit crisis,...
Former Finnish President Wins Nobel Peace Prize
LONDON — Former President Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, who has worked to end conflicts in troubled spots around the world for more than three decades, won the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday In its announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee called Mr. Ahtisaari “an outstanding international mediator” whose efforts “have contributed to a more peaceful world and to...
