International Institute for Environment and Development - Communication

In Our World: 30 May (land, forests, cities and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Thu, 30 May 2013 07:47:26 +0100

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

In the Cities

How can we make cities more sustainable in the face of rapid urbanization? "The Human City" by Parag Khanna.
Jakarta passes regulation to manage waste – and floods.
Slum Lab: Manila’s quest to build a better informal settlement, by Kate Hodal.

Carbon and Climate

Can we tackle climate change with a robust carbon price? Rachel Kyte of the World Bank says yes. Chris Lang of REDD-Monitor says no.
The odds of disaster. An economist’s warning on global warming.
Indigenous people in Panama say no to REDD.

Forests, Farms and Land

Three quarters of Ghana’s logging permits could break Europe’s new timber law.
Farmers need stronger incentives to preserve trees on farms in Africa: study
Cameroon orders foreign investors to halt 60,000 hectare oil palm plantation after local protests.
After 40 years, Brazil's 'lost report' surfaces. It covers decades of alleged crimes against indigenous tribes over land.
New US$120 million fund for research in drylands.
Gabon convicts Goldman Prize winner who accused government of corruption over a major agribusiness deal.

Who Owns What?

Brand Maasai: Why nomads might trademark their name.
Rich and poorest nations face off over TRIPS extension.
Latin America up in arms over domain name grab by Amazon and Patagonia

Conservation and Biodiversity

VIDEO – Andy Revkin speaks with Mark Turcek about his case for a profit motive in conserving the environment.
Founding Chair of new world biodiversity body offers first public remarks.
Eyes in the sky: Drones are changing the face of conservation
Budget cut bleeds African biodiversity research.

Voices from the Web

Michael Spence hopes for a Sino-American decade of cooperation on big issues like environment and development.
Too many developing-country NGOs follow foreign agendas, says Dipak Gyawali.
Calestous Juma says Africa’s army should build roads and decentralised power grids.
Rina Saeed Khan on solving Pakistan’s energy crisis with renewables.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer.

In Our World is a new blog series. Each week it will publish links to top content about environment and development that we have seen online in the past week. You can subscribe by email here or via the RSS feed using this link. As we develop this new feature its content and length will vary – so do let us know what you like and don’t like about it.

In Our World: 24 May (natural resources, climate, long reads and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:17:10 +0100

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

Climate Change and Energy

China agrees to impose carbon targets by 2016.
A second chance to keep average global warming below 2 degrees C? Michael Marshall reports.
European Parliament calls for 2030 binding renewable energy target [PDF].
Ecuador reveals plan for OPEC to save the Amazon.
Six distinct groups within the Indian public think about climate change in very different ways

Forests and Biodiversity

The future of Central Africa’s forests. CIFOR has a bilingual feature package of photos, stories and videos.
Crime and corruption threaten African forest carbon
Indonesia's indigenous people win right to millions of hectares of forest
Call to mainstream ethnobotany into development.

Mixed Bag

Tighter standards agreed on transparency in extractive industries.
Could a ‘Slum Technology Hub’ lead the way to Nairobi’s future?
How media saves lives. A diarised account of how BBC Media Action warned of a cyclone.
The Innovation Prize for Africa winner makes animal feed from food waste and flies.
Rina Saeed Khan reports on ways ancient knowledge systems matter again to Pakistan’s water future.
Here’s a new spreadsheet of major dams in China.
UK government publishes its Payments for Ecosystem Services Best Practice Guide.

Longer Reads

For Africa’s solar sisters, off-grid electricity is power. Diane Toomey interviews Katherine Lucey.
SciDev.Net has a package of articles on the challenge of getting scientists and development NGOs to align efforts.
Must world-class cities be bland and betray the poor? Atossa Araxia Abrahamian reviews and reflects on A History of Future Cities.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer.

In Our World: 17 May (forest food, city resilience, climatic effects and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:07:30 +0100

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

Forests Mean Food

Scientists aim to pinpoint role of forests in battle against “hidden hunger”. Julie Mollins reports.
Forests and food security: back on the global agenda, says Terry Sutherland.

Land and Nature

New study suggests farmers should share land with nature not spare land for nature.
Rubber barons, logging and land grabs in Lao and Cambodia. By Amy Hall (+ land grab infographic).
Revising ideas on what is pristine and wild. Fred Pearce reports.

Energy

Africa’s oil demand to rise fastest, says the International Energy Agency.
Bornean rainforest people urge Norway’s King to recall energy executive.
Peru spares Amazon rainforest from oil and gas push.
Mafia "deeply involved" in renewable sector, say Chinese companies. By Xie Dan and Wang Yue.

Development

How we are misled by African development statistics and what to do about it. By Morten Jerven.
Aid groups fear high-level panel on development has turned into "a bit of a car crash".
Africa’s new science and innovation agenda, by Calestous Juma.
The pollution crisis and environmental activism in China: A Q&A with Ralph Litzinger
Chart shows a big decline in famine deaths in recent decades.

In the Cities

Angola's poor hit hard by urbanisation crackdown in Luanda. By Lily Peel.
Rockefeller Foundation announces a US$100 million fund to help cities face climate-related or man-made disasters.
Mohammed Ehsanul Haque Tamal on what low-income citizens of Dhaka think about climate change.
When a market burns, traders fear eviction follows. Sharon Benzoni reports from Ghana.

Climate Change

A survey of thousands of peer-reviewed papers published in scientific journals over 20 years has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.
Here's what happened when Christiana Figueres took to Twitter to talk gender and climate change.
Delali Dovie and Eno Anwana say links between researchers, communities and policy makers, help coastal Ghanaians become climate resilient.
Fish species are shifting their ranges in response to warming oceans, a new study found.
Study: half of common plant species and a third of animals could lose habitat range because of climate change.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer.

In Our World: 10 May (natural resources, climate, cities and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:49:38 +0100

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

Resources and Rights

Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan urges David Cameron to use Britain's G8 to end to 'unconscionable' exploitation of Africa's resources.
Here’s Annan’s opinion piece in the New York Times ‘Stop the plunder of Africa’.
And here is his African Progress Panel’s report “Equity in Extractives”.
Global biodiversity panel urged to heed local voices, reports Imogen Mathers.
Can rural women also have it all? Voices of “elite women” important for truly oppressed.

Forest Futures

New UN report gives low marks in forest governance to Indonesia, home to the third largest area of tropical forest coverage in the world.
Expanding agriculture by deforesting the Amazon will only harm farming by creating more climate change, says a new study [PDF].
Satellite-based monitoring and law enforcement prevented the clearing of over 59,500 km² of Amazon forest area from 2007 to 2011.
Violence hits Nicaraguan rainforest as land invasions mount.
Here's a declaration [PDF] by forests scientists and others who Prince Charles gathered at his palace this week.

Changing Climate

Jake Schmidt and Barbara Finamore give their tips to the new US-China working group on climate change.
Joanna Carpenter reports on how the UN Climate Technology Center and Network can help developing countries access technology to deal with climate change.
Can political changes bring new action on climate risks in Kenya?
A view from Nepal: Ramesh Prasad Bhushal on climate diplomacy.
Nepal floods change river course and threaten tourism. By Navin Singh Khadka.
Chris Shaw: Is it time to abandon the 2-degree target?

Communicating sustainable development

COMPASS: Navigating the rules of scientific engagement.
Duncan Green asks: Why are there so few bloggers at the UN.
Ian Thorpe, a blogger at the UN replies.
And Duncan writes again, about how the World Bank (with 300 bloggers) has cracked it.

Tales from the Cities

The world needs more slums says Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar.
Through illegal pipes and shady cartels, water flows into a slum in Kenya. Jason Patinkin reports.

Trading Up

UNEP report shows how advancing the green economy in six key sectors creates new trade opportunities
US$25 million fund launched to connect smallholder famers in Africa to international markets.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer.

Virtual conferences: not in the future, but now

suzanne.fisher@iied.org (Suzanne Fisher) — Fri, 3 May 2013 11:53:32 +0100

In this digitally connected world, could virtual participants meaningfully follow and take part in an IIED conference, cutting carbon footprints and expense?

Last year at a conference I met a project manager and mum who said that she and many of her colleagues were increasingly opting out of attending conferences. Worried about her carbon footprint, the expense of flights and accommodation and being away from her family, she felt conferences didn’t always justify the expense and extra exhaust fumes. And for many people, attending an international conference is financially impossible.

Generating evidence through hands-on research with grassroots partners is one of IIED’s key aims. Helping participants get inside conference rooms where knowledge is being shared, and helping them actively participate in proceedings by asking questions or leaving comments is an important part of that work.

This year at CBA7 the web team at IIED used a number of different technologies to do just that. We used Scribble Live, also used by a number of news agencies, including Reuters, CNN and the Press Association, to report live from the conference.

Once up and running, it allowed participants (both those at the conference and also ‘virtual’ online ones) to:

read curated content on the live blog, including comments and social media postings that participants had published on social media accounts and which were then pulled through onto the live blog page
live ‘report’ from the event (through comments and social media content)
leave comments – for instance, by watching the live web cast and then asking questions online.

How we did it

The live pages were actually running on the Scribble live site, so we needed to make alterations to make the pages conform to the IIED site design. The web team adapted some of the style sheet (CSS) settings on the Scribble live template, changing fonts, font sizes and colours, so that it sat seamlessly when embedded within the IIED website. And we embedded the live blogging technology onto our website to ensure that we generated traffic on our site.

All the content posted by participants ‘pulled through’ onto a dashboard, and was checked before it was posted live to ensure no defamatory comments or spam ended up on the live blog.

The result

Was the hard work worth it? The online statistics suggests it was. We had 203 comments on the live blog. This means that during the four day conference 203 people bothered to log in and participate in the discussion, which shows a high level of interest.

Overall we had 3,568 unique page views on our CBA7 web pages (including the live blog and the highlights pages) from 21 – 29 April 2013. If we include the CBA-related blogs and press releases in total the figure is 4,367 unique page views for this time period. This is an impressive achievement for eight days.

Likely a two-hour online debate on how the poorest can act to adapt, hosted by IIED and AlertNet Climate and held a few weeks before the event, helped drive online traffic and interest in the conference. According to AlertNet Climate, that chat alone had 832 unique visitors, 80 of whom posted comments themselves. At least some of those participants likely followed CBA7 virtually. Read a storify summary of the AlertNet Climate chat.

Viewer figures were higher on the first day and then progressively tailed off on the following days. We can only guess why, but generally the live blogging model works best in short and sharp bursts – and it’s harder to maintain momentum over a four day period.

Teething problems

We produced a web page with highlights from the live blog each day, including social media, comments and web link highlights from the day. The first day I tried to use Scribble live to do this, but found that it only pulled through the first day of social media data. On contacting Scribble live, they said this was a bug they were addressing. So, my experience was that this functionality is still in its infancy. I switched to using Storify, which is built to curate user generated content on the last three days. Read the online highlights from Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4.

Given the number of comments we received, we were under-resourced to respond to all the virtual participants in a timely and meaningful way. Many comments were quite technical in nature, and required responses from researchers. We will need to think this through in more detail before the next ‘virtual’ event.

A major obstacle that we faced in Bangladesh was connectivity. It often dropped out in the main conference hall, which meant that at times the live web cast stopped working for virtual participants and that we couldn’t live report on the conference. Many of the hotel conference rooms, where side events were being held, didn’t have wifi. All of this no doubt had an impact on people’s social media and web participation, as most people couldn’t get onto the live blog to comment or onto social media to live tweet from the side panel sessions, or lost their connection in the main hall and gave up.

But, the figures show that, despite the obstacles, there was great interest to follow the proceedings and to take part.

Of course, there are important perks to attending conferences. Meeting someone face to face over a coffee is invariably better than communicating virtually. Most of the community-based adaptation conferences involved participants visiting communities and projects to see first-hand how communities are adapting to climate change. That kind of experience can’t be replicated online.

But this was an important first step in helping virtual participants take part. And it made me wonder: will we all be virtual participants by 2020?

Do you have any experience of managing a virtual conference - if so, what technology did you? Any lessons to share? Were you a real or virtual CBA7 participant? Do you have any suggestions on how we could improve the experience for virtual participants next year? Please get in touch and leave a comment below.

In Our World: 3 May (transparency, investment, environment and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Fri, 3 May 2013 11:01:08 +0100

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

Out in the Open

VIDEO: Kofi Anna urges civil society to work with politicians and businesses to improve transparency and accountability in the extractive industries.
The Access Initiative has published the Jakarta declaration on strengthening the right to information for people and the environment.
To mark World Press Freedom Day – the Committee to Protect Journalists published an Impunity Index.
Alice Harrison asks how transparent the Green Climate Fund will be.
Technology to promote transparency around land acquisitions.

Climate Change

As the latest round of UN talks end today, Ed King has a great summary of the big issues…
... and an interview with UNFCCC chief Christiana Figueres about where the talks are headed.
Poorest nations show low-carbon willing in climate talks
This month could see the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide reach 400 parts per million.
Jake Schmidt outlines five reasons we need a new global agreement on climate change by 2015

Urban Angles

Why Africa should be wary of its ‘new cities’, by Jane Lumumba.
Creating organised communities of slum dwellers in Uganda.

Water Stories

Why has water-rich Yunnan become a drought hotspot? By Yang Fangyi and Zhou Jiading.
VIDEO – “Damocracy”, documentary highlights battles over the Belo Monte and Ilisu dams in Brazil.

Forests, Land and Biodiversity

Global Witness says Africa’s logging permit crisis puts EU at risk of laundering illegal timber imports
Greater Mekong countries 'lost one-third of forest cover in 40 years'.
Linking deforestation and agricultural sourcing is an important first step to consumer goods companies meeting their zero deforestation target, writes Joanne Sonenshine.
Hazel Healy reports from Mozambique on a land rush in full swing.
Europe debates draft biopiracy law to compensate indigenous people for use of their knowledge.

Invest or Divest

Norway’s government pension fund divests US$314 million from unsustainable palm oil producers.
Ten US cities commit to pursue fossil fuel divestment.
Naomi Klein argues that big environment groups are hypocrites for investing in fossil fuels.
Led by Mexico, clean energy investment is booming in Latin America with US$4.6 billion recorded in 2012.
Deborah Brautigam explains why a new database on Chinese finance in Africa is “way off”.
Investors bet on Asia's smoggy, polluted cities, writes Anjani Trivedi.

Development Futures

Anju Sharma says the last thing the world needs is another “to-do” list for developing countries policed by rich countries.
Should overseas aid be spent on the military? Dan Smith takes a look.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer.

In Our World: 26 April (cities and forests, mines, climate and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:11:50 +0100

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

Gold Standard

Afua Hirsch reports on Ghana's gold rush in an article and film that discovers how Chinese immigrants are profiting from industrialising the country's small-scale mining industry.

Nature’s Riches

The 2013 Biodiversity Barometer [PDF] found that 75% of consumers surveyed worldwide are aware of biodiversity, while 48% can give a correct definition of the term.
Human actions threaten the world's pollinating insects.
Rachel Kyte says natural capital accounting is central to the World Bank’s core mission.

Tales from the Cities

The battle for Golibar: urban splintering in Mumbai.
William Cobbett, argues that cities can eliminate slums is by getting behind the people who live in them.
Architecture must be defended: informality and the agency of space.
The 70 per cent in Ghana (hint: it’s the informal sector).
Can a party for the urban poor rise in the Philippines?

Forest News

A new study says Brazil's success in reducing deforestation will be hard to replicate in other countries where commodity production is a major driver in forest loss.
Forest-dwelling Borneo children foresee grim times ahead.
Since 2004, 600,000 hectares of forest cleared for mining in India.
Cloud forests keep tropical dams in water.

Viewpoints

Jacob Scherr asks if PINCs-- partnerships, initiatives, networks, and coalitions -- can save the planet
Science and NGO practice are closer than they appear, say Anita Makri and Nick Ishmael Perkins.
‘Buttering the parsnips’ – how to ensure research has an impact. By Simon Bager.
Anju Sharma says we need a marriage counsellor to overcome distrust between the environment and development camps and their parallel SDGs and MDG processes.
Hannah Ryder suggests a user-review rating system for development knowledge.
Does farm size really matter in Africa?

Climate and Development

Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and the UEA block climate change from UN poverty goals,
Minister Xie Zhenhua announces Chinese Climate Law within 1 to 2 years at GLOBE Event in Beijing.
Are current efforts to integrate climate change and development misdirected? Tom Tanner blogs about this IDS event (video).
Straight-talking John Ashton answers questions on climate negotiations and policy.
China taking unfair blame for its exported carbon emissions.

China’s Challenge

The environment in China and the return of civil society, by Isabel Hilton.
In China, breathing becomes a childhood risk, writes Edward Wong.
Audio slideshow: Lu Guang's 'the polluted landscape'.

Least Developed Countries

Energy subsidies in developing countries: An inefficient policy for LDCs especially?
Over-armed and underfunded: essays examine the impact of disarmament on LDCs.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer.

In Our World: 19 April (natural capital, climate, land, cities and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 08:18:46 +0100

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

Rights and Resources

An arrest over bribery in the deal that raised eyebrows, even within the buccaneering world of African mining.
Mining company has boasted of an Indonesian government decision to free up 1.2 million hectares of virgin forest for commercial exploitation
Once neglected, now courted: The run on Latin America's resources
National Geographic News has a special series on “Water Grabbers: A Global Rush on Freshwater”
Keith Slack on the growing battle between mining and agriculture.

Changing Climate

China and United States form a "Climate Change Working Group" to advance cooperation on technology, research, conservation and alternative and renewable energy.
Jaspreet Kindra reports on the Nansen Initiative, which aims to support people displaced by climatic shocks.
Ed King puts questions to Prakesh Mathema, chair of the Least Developed Countries group at the UN climate change talks.
The Economist says we can simply adapt to climate change. Louis Verchot and Arild Angelsen of CIFOR disagree.
Millions of people could become destitute in Africa and Asia as staple foods more than double in price by 2050.

Ideas Factory

On the DFID blog, Hannah Ryder asks what the development sector can learn from Wikipedia when sharing knowledge.
Pablo Barros explains how collaborative consumption and the sharing economy in emerging economies could rewrite development – and business -- models.
Corporations can't ignore climate change, says Mindy S. Lubber -- President of Ceres, and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk.
Li Shuo says it’s time to end China-bashing on the environment.
Margaret Thatcher: four views on her impact and legacy in global development

Power Up

Entrepreneurs are bringing light to Nepal – and you, writes Melissa C. Lott
The International Energy Agency says development of low-carbon energy is progressing too slowly to limit global warming.
A Pew Research Center report says private investment in clean energy globally was US$269 billion in 2012, five times greater than 2004.

Telling Stories

Thin Ice – The Inside Story of Climate Change will broadcast for free on Earth Day (22 April)
Meet Esther Agbarakwe -- the young woman passionately spreading the word on climate change in Nigeria
InsideClimate wins Pulitzer Prize for reporting on tar-sands spill.

Land and Investment

Ireland’s President calls for an international framework to regulate land deals (full speech here).
How China is rewriting the rules of investment in Africa.
Rob Nash – a former banker now with Oxfam – examines the World Bank’s position on large land deals.
Tanzania's Maasai battle game hunters for grazing land. Jason Patinkin reports.

In the City

Ahmedabad gets India's first ever heat wave preparation and early warning system.
UNEP report says scaled-up investments in sustainable cities will be crucial for improved resource efficiency and poverty eradication The 30 detailed case studies are available here.
Foreign land owners, shoe-repair shops and other visions of Bangkok in 2040, by Witchaya Pruecksamars.
In Lima, Peru, through riots and police barricades, a market for the poor staggers on.

Nature’s Bounty

None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use. David Roberts report on the findings in this report by Trucost.
FAO underlines the urgency of safeguarding genes that will help farmers face climate change.
Biodiversity loss doesn't appear for decades, says a new large-scale study.
Mike Childs shares his top five reads on ‘bioproductivity’.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer.

In Our World: 12 April (urban updates, natural capital, and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 23:08:12 +0100

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

Towards better land deals

World Bank acknowledges that access to land is critical for the world’s poorest people.
Oxfam asks why the World Bank won’t halt big land investments until the new measures are in place to protect the poor.

Changing Climate

SciDev.Net reports that temperatures in South-East Asia's Lower Mekong Basin are set to rise by as much as six degrees Celsius by 2050, according to a USAID-funded study.
A “perfect storm” of climate change and population growth spells trouble in the Sahel, say researchers in a new report [PDF].
A failure to integrate climate change into the post-2015 agenda could condemn many Africans to a life of poverty, says Richard Munang.
Reuters AlertNet hosted a great live online chat about adaptation to climate change. Here’s their summary. Here’s IIED’s Storify summary.

Something in the Air

The head of the UN industrial Development Organization says air pollution kills more people than AIDS and malaria, and that a shift to cleaner energy could easily halve the toll by 2030.

A New Development Agenda

Melissa Leach warns that the Sustainable Development Goal process fails to acknowledge politics, lacks democratic values and does not challenge the authority of scientific expertise.
Roger Pielke Jr reacts, seizing on the notion of planetary boundaries as a power grab by scientists.
Victor Galaz, of the Stockholm Resilience Center, says that Pielke has created a straw man and that there is no power grab.
Hugh Roberts says we need balance between the competing visions of technocrats and humanists.

Tales of the Cities

New report on new business models for urban transport in the developing world.
Study: Environmental policies matter for growing megacities
Teresa García Alcaraz blogs about urban agriculture in Caracas.
Sharon Benzoni records a daily quest for water, in Accra — a city running dry.
Counter-intuitive trade-offs to strengthen an urban protected area — Nairobi National Park.

Plant Oil Merchants

Fred Pearce revisits Jatropha, the wonder crop that boomed, then busted and now may be bouncing back.
New paper on Improving the performance of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil for nature conservation

Business Bits

World's biggest emerald miner loses fifth of market value after Zambia announced anti-corruption plans
A new health and happiness index aims to bring social and environmental considerations to the top of policy and corporate agendas.
Joanne Sonenshine asks: Can consumer goods companies achieve zero deforestation by 2020?

Natural Capital

The UK published its State of Natural Capital report [PDF]
The Poverty-Environment Initiative’s videos explain how countries are doing natural capital accounting.
Marc Gunther review's Mark Tercek's new book Nature's Fortune.
Green Economy -- a new film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

Viewpoints

Anna Colom on the pitfalls of participatory development – and how to avoid them.
John Matthews says South Korea’s US$500 million green bond sets the nation apart as an environmental leader.
Richard Manning, former chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, says rich nations “get away with murder as they seek to massage reported aid upwards”.
Sharon Ede hopes we can become unconsciously sustainable.
Are you an environmentalist… or do you work for a living?

China's Urbanization

Mary Ann O'Donnell explores the social antagonisms that have emerged through Shenzhen's informal urbanization of villages.
Why more Chinese migrant workers are saying ‘goodbye’ to first-tier cities, by Shi Yunhan.

Restorations

Nassif Ahmed reports on the extraordinary achievements of Jadav Payeng, the ‘Forest Man of India’ who has created a forest all by himself.
Mamadou reports in a blog and a video on the villagers in Mali who, since 1985, have restored the Akka-Goun forest.

In Our World is a new blog series. Each week it will publish links to top content about environment and development that we have seen online in the past week. You can subscribe by email here or via the RSS feed using this link. As we develop this new feature its content and length will vary – so do let us know what you like and don’t like about it.

CBA7: Live debate on climate change adaptation tweet-by-tweet

suzanne.fisher@iied.org (Suzanne Fisher) — Tue, 9 Apr 2013 16:37:41 +0100

We took part in a fast-moving live AlertNet online chat on climate change adaptation today.

View the story "CBA7: Live debate on climate change adaptation tweet-by-tweet" on StorifyCBA7: Live debate on climate change adaptation tweet-by-tweetWe took part in a fast-moving live AlertNet online chat on climate change adaptation today. Storified by Suzanne FisherMurray· Thu, Apr 11 2013 01:44:11

Comments ranged from how communities can adapt, how toinvolve communities in tracking climate change, promoting gender equality in the climate talks, educating and communicatingabout climate change adaptation and climate finance.

Experts who took part included Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow with IIED, Maarten van Aalst, Director of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre, Yvette Abrahams, Women for Climate Justice, South Africa, Charlotte Sterrett, Principal Consultant, Climate Concern (Australia) and Kit Vaughan, Director, CARE Poverty Environment and Climate Change Network (PECCN).

It was a busy debate. According to Alertnet there were 554unique visitors to the live blog and 77 different people postedcomments. Here’s some hand picked tweets and comments from the debate. Visit the debate page to read all the comments.

Is it too late for the poorest people to adapt to #climate change impacts? Join our debate today, 12:30 BST ow.ly/jSJA0 #CBA7AlertNet10 minutes to go until live chat on #climate change starts but discussion's already kicked off! Join in bit.ly/Ya56ei #CBA7IIEDAs all good things do, the debate kicked off with some good questions.
#Adaptation or #mitigation. #CBA7 Which way for #Africa? #climatechange.Geoffrey KamadiGood question: "What does one do about traditional ways of living (cultures, customs and traditions) that are anti-climate change?" #CBA7...AlertNetVery curious to know: is anyone assessing, or even seriously taking loss/direct impact of adaptation on people's cultural traditions? #CBA7Stella PaulThe experts were asked for examples of community-based adaptation that has worked well. Saleemul Huq said: " I am afraid it is diffcult to say for sure since climate change is a long term problem and we will not know what works well as adaptation to climate change for another decade or so. However, in the interim we can use proxies such as adaptation to disasters through disaster risk reduction of which there are many examples from Bangladesh to Cuba. However, these remain adaptations to climate variabality rather than adaptations to climate change (which, as I have said, is a much longer term phenomena that cannot be judged yet)." Community-based adaptation: how can we make sure all voices are heard?
Local-level adaptation is spreading around the world quite rapidly - IIED expert #CBA7 ow.ly/jSXCk @IIEDalertnetclimateIf 'transformation' is needed to adapt to future change, how do we ensure all views are heard (vested interests and power not abused)? #CBA7Lindsey Jones#Climate scientists 'need to be more humble' and better understand community problems - #RedCross expert #CBA7 ow.ly/jT1axalertnetclimate#Climate 'adaptation in Africa cannot become another job creation project for middle class of global North' #CBA7 bit.ly/1518ISUTR Foundation'We can't develop adaptation plans in air-conditioned offices far away from #women who make living off land' #CBA7 ow.ly/jT0Q4alertnetclimatePromoting greater gender equality was a theme running through much of the discussion. AlertNet's Laurie Goering called for "More women at all levels." But Agnes Otzelberger, from CARE said it was "important not to assume that the presence of more women in high level decision-making bodies automatically leads to more gender-equitable decisions being made." They agreed that while it wouldn't solve all problems it was a: "very very good start." Gender equity not the whole answer to better climate adaption, but a start bit.ly/10BcVFH #CBA7alertnetclimateYvette Abrahams reminded people that adaptation, justice and gender are interlinked: "In Africa...women work the land they do not own, in order to feed the families they did not make alone. So when we talk about adaptation issues we shall never be able to run away from issues of justice."Building up the evidence base for what works, and what doesn't
We need to get better at collecting evidence to show investing in adaptation>more effective than reconstruction bit.ly/Ya56ei #cba7IIEDAbsolutely! RT @IIED: We need to get better at collecting evidence to show investing in adaptation>more effective than reconstruction #cba7Giordano CossuClimate Crisis: How can the poorest and most vulnerable act to adapt?Megan, good point. As you know, there are many factors. One problem is that I feel too many people working in this field feel that it is ...Climate Finance
#CBA7 40% of #carboncredit funds go into admin work. The rest divided among 700 farmer groups. Sensible? #climatechange.Geoffrey Kamadi"Climate finance is no charity, its obligation under the UN Convention on Climate Change" Quamrul Chowdhury bit.ly/10BcVFH #CBA7alertnetclimate#Climate #adaptation finance must not be diverted from development #aid budgets - #CAREClimate expert #CBA7 ow.ly/jT3ycCARE Climate ChangeMassive ramp up of support for #climate #adaptation is urgent - Bangladesh negotiator #CBA7 ow.ly/jT2Z0alertnetclimate"The figures for for adaptation funding need to be revised upwards" says @IIED 's @saleemulhuq. Join debate bit.ly/Ya56ei #cba7IIEDClimate Crisis: How can the poorest and most vulnerable act to adapt?But Kit and Saleem: I agree that we may need more funding, but so far very little is "new and additional" -- much of it comes from regula...Differing views on whether #climate finance should be inside or outside development #aid budgets #CBA7 ow.ly/jT3TCalertnetclimateExperts see limited role for private finance in #climate adaptation because limited profit opportunities #CBA7 ow.ly/jT2PLalertnetclimateClimate adaptation in conflict zones: can it work?
Can adaptation in conflict zones work? bit.ly/10BcVFH #CBA7 #climatealertnetclimate@alertnetclimate: But for conflict areas, banks seem to differ. Donald Kaberuka,president of African Development Bank said so in delhi #CBA7Stella PaulClimate Crisis: How can the poorest and most vulnerable act to adapt?Hi Stella, Good question. You can find some answers on pp.91-97 of www.ecbproject.org One example is to explicitly identify linkages betw...The importance of communicating about climate change — and even including it as a form of adaptation to climate change — was a key topic. Soraya Agaoglu, a journalist with Al Jazeera English said that while it's still hard to publish stories that don't sit neatly within the 'catastrophe' genre she is increasingly finding good community-based climate change stories (full quote below).
'Better communication is a form of adaptation to #climate change' but media coverage lacking - IIED #CBA7 ow.ly/jT1OX @IIEDTR Foundation"I think people like to hear or see climate stories to which they can relate" #CBA7 bit.ly/10BcVFHTR FoundationGood communication key to #adaptation & working w/ editors as they're key story decision makers. Join live chat bit.ly/10LdEpC #cba7IIEDRe: media, is there one outlet specialised in "climate change stories" as a tool to demonstrate what it means for communities? #CBA7Giordano CossuClimate Crisis: How can the poorest and most vulnerable act to adapt?Hi all - from the Southern Voices on Climate Change! A programme coordinated by Care DK supporting climate policy networks in the South. ...Climate Crisis: How can the poorest and most vulnerable act to adapt?Hi Peter -- great to see you here. Anyone interested in the Southern Voices programme -- which IIED is proud to support -- can also check...Did you know that games, song, dance, theatre and poetry can help people adapt climate change? Find out more ow.ly/jT1p8 #CBA7alertnetclimateClimate Crisis: How can the poorest and most vulnerable act to adapt?I work for Al Jazeera English and thankfully we've done some decent community-based CC stories outside of the 'catastrophe' genre but I a...Education and playing games to experience consequences, cross cultural divides and experience the tough choices facing others was also discussed. Laurie Goering suggested that combinging games and education could work in schools..."Seems to me this desire to pull in students, and to educate using games, should go together, no? How about getting these climate games into schools at all levels?"
Education needs to change to provide skills to adapt and to innovative using traditional knowledge bit.ly/10BcVFH #CBA7alertnetclimateClimate Crisis: How can the poorest and most vulnerable act to adapt?@ornacejoy and @charlottesterrett: one way we connect realities across scales is to play the same games (mentioned earlier) in different ...Climate Crisis: How can the poorest and most vulnerable act to adapt?Games were mentioned as a way of crossing divides and experiencing the touch choices facing others. As a last (fun) post, this blog explo...Innovative idea: Crowdsourcing to track climate change in partnership with local communities. Is it being done? Only one example was cited during the debate, but this is very much anecdotal and needs to be looked at. Are there any other examples out there?
Anybody with direct experience of #crowdsourcing projects to track climate change in partnership with local communities? #CBA7Giordano Cossu@Agashya Interests me too! There's one org I know in eastern #India, works with forest tribes, using traditional early warning system .#CBA7Stella Paul@stellasglobe Thanks Stella, would you have more info on the Indian project you mentioned? #CBA7Giordano Cossu@Agashya The org's Living Farms. The tribe's Kondaria Gond -lives around #Niyamgiri hills, was in news recently for Bauxite mining #CBA7Stella Paul@Agashya I'm gonna visit the area soon. More details then. For now, they use signs - birds, insects behavior etc - to predict changes #CBA7Stella PaulThe live #climate discussion’s over but don’t despair. Read all the comments and questions here: bit.ly/Ya56ei Enjoy! #cba7IIEDAre you keen to find out more? Read more about IIED's work in this field, or sign up to be a virtual participant at our upcoming community-based adaptation to climate change conference in Bangladesh in a few weeks. We will have a live blog where you can take part of the discussion. We look forward to hearing from you again there.

In Our World: 5 April (water, long reads, forests, business and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Fri, 5 Apr 2013 10:26:03 +0100

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

In Depth

The Broker untangles the myth of the global land rush with this piece by Annelies Zoomers and Evert-jan Quak.
Niluksi Koswanage reports on how Malaysia’s rainforest politics could play a big role in its upcoming general election
Shannon Service reports on the eight tiny Pacific island nations that banded together to fight tuna pirates and change the rules of the sea.
Sarandha, writing in Himal magazine asks how South Asia's religious festivals impact the environment.
Giordano Cossu reports on Ethiopia’s quest for deeper water in a changing climate.
UNEP’s new GEAS bulletin [PDF] covers the impact of corruption on environmental governance, with a focus on emissions trading

Sharing Water?

Water shortages threaten renewed conflict between Pakistan and India, writes Shahid Husain.
Amazon dam activists threaten to wage war on Brazil over military incursion.
John Daly explores what US foreign policy has to say about transboundary river agreements around the world.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India proposed setting up a joint mechanism on rivers it shares with China.
28,000 rivers wiped off the map of China

The Business of Sustainability

Accounting for environmental externalities is good for business and the planet, say Samantha Putt del Pino and Alex Perera in part 4 in a series on WRI’s blog.
How can companies move from being ‘less bad’ to being ‘net positive’? Here’s a report [PDF] with some answers.
Annual survey of corporate giants says just one in six of the companies rated has a "good" level of commitment.

World Review

Maasai people furious at Tanzanian plan to lure Arabian Gulf tourists threatens their ancestral land. Avaaz petitions the Tanzanian government to change its mind.
Environmental degradation cost China US$230 billion in 2010, or 3.5% of its GDP
Kenya launched its national climate change action plan. You can find it here.
Uganda has won a landmark US$434 million oil tax case in a London court.
In Pakistan, islanders see development of ‘a new Dubai’ as attack on their survival.
A Ugandan MP threatens to raid President Museveni’s cattle.
Selling solar power in Indian slums.
Mining tragedy casts shadow over industrialising Tibetan plateau.

Forest News

Five Vietnamese men were shot dead in a forest on the border with Laos while collecting valuable fragrant wood
25 years after Chico Mendes was killed for defending the Amazon, such killings continue there.
This week a jury has acquitted a man accused of masterminding the killing of two Amazon activists in northern Brazil in 2010, but found two others guilty.
Meanwhile, Brazil confirms rise in deforestation
Dead forests release less carbon into atmosphere than expected
Green groups have accused Indonesian forestry giant Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) of breaking its commitment to stop clearing natural forests and peatlands. But as Mongabay.com reports that's not the whole story

Getting Strategic

Jason Mark explores the internal strains within the environmentalist movement.
If we really want to change the world, we need to put our core beliefs about how the world changes to the test, says Jon Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment.
Joe Uehlein and Gus Speth say labour and environmentalist movements can create a common vision.

Viewpoints

Podcast interview with Teddy Ruge, founder of Project Diaspora. It asks “Were the headlines of Western media already written before Kenya’s election?”
Peter Seligmann says we need to protect nature to maintain global security.
Clare Melamed on migration and development.
In America, mainstream green is still too white, says Brentin Mock.
Gordon Conway says we can feed a world of 9 billion, if we focus support on smallholders, especially women.
Katherine Brickell on the Cambodian 'housewives' who have led a sustained campaign of nonviolent protest against forced evictions.
On a World Bank blog Tom Bundervoet asks are the poor really happier?

Communication Corner

VIDEO: Why information matters for the Post-2015 framework
Resource Media has published its new best practices guide on visual storytelling, “Seeing is believing”.
New paper explores changing relationships between journalism and the NGO activities that replace and overlap it -- through an analysis of coverage of the UN climate change talks.
Conservation International has got a new blog – Human Nature.
The lack of information during disasters disengages local communities from the aid response, says Jacobo Quintanilla.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer.

In Our World is a new blog series. Each week it will publish links to top content about environment and development that we have seen online in the past week. You can subscribe to the RSS feed using this link. As we develop this new feature its content and length will vary – so do let us know what you like and don’t like about it.

In Our World: 28 March (dams, land grabs, energy, meat and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:01:02 +0000

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

Dams and Rights

In Panama, masked assailants killed an indigenous man who protested against a dam the UN says is illegal. Robin Oisin Llewellyn reports in depth for Mongabay.com.
In Brazil, women have been trafficked as sex-slaves for workers at what is hailed as the country's ‘greenest’ dam, Belo Monte.

Land Fights

Somali Media for Environment, Science, Health and Agriculture says police there are holding an activist called Mohamed Omar, who heads the Green Land Organization without charge.
Tanzania plans to take 1,500 square kilometres of grazing land away from Maasai communities. Susanna Nordlund reports.
Rina Saeed Khan asks “Who will dare to be Perween Rahman?”

Roots Remembered

Ramachandra Guha surveys Indian environmentalism on the 40th anniversary of the Chipko movement’s first protests.
Terralingua’s Vitality Index of Traditional Environmental Knowledge is the first quantitative measure of trends in retention or loss of traditional knowledge.

A Coming Collapse?

David Biello takes a detailed look at population and consumption and how they affect the environmental outlook for humanity.
Global investment bank HSBC says the world is hurtling towards a “Peak Planet” scenario where the global carbon budget from 2000 to 2050 is consumed well before 2030.
Phil McKenna reports on North Korea’s environmental collapse.

Power Plays

The IMF says governments spent US$1.9 trillion on energy subsidies in 2011 – and should shift some of that spending to do more to help the poor.
Amory Lovins surveys clean energy gains in Japan, China, and India.
Meanwhile a study says India’s coal power plants kill tens of thousands each year.

Meaty Matters

Fred Pearce asks if African governments take pastoralism seriously.
The conflict in Mali piles pressure on climate-stressed herders, reports Soumaila T. Diarra.
The main group of supermarkets in Brazil has says it will no longer sell meat from cattle raised on land cleared from the Amazon rainforest.

Changing Climate

Study shows global warming has accelerated, with deep ocean layers warming quickly.
Research in Botswana suggests climate change will make intestinal diseases a bigger problem in Africa’s arid countries.
Key advisor to David Cameron blocks climate change from G8 agenda
WRI uses new OECD data to ask “are developed nations falling short on their climate finance commitments?” The short answer is yes.
China wants to create the world's largest emissions trading scheme and link it with others globally.

China’s Reach

Deborah Brautigam says China’s ‘US$20 billion for Africa’ is business not aid.
Jonathan Watts reports on concerns about China’s interest in Latin American natural resources.

Water

A report from the Asian Development Bank and the Asia Pacific Water Forum says most countries in the region face serious water crises.
The Global Water Forum will publish 13 lectures on international water politics over 13 weeks

Mining’s Side Effects

Jaine Roberts says gold mining companies must make amends to South Africans with work-related tuberculosis.
Jeremy Smith says Chinese mining in Guinea fuels trade in the country’s endangered apes.

Food and Forests

Local crops can still be grown as farming intensifies, says a study from a 10-year project investigating farming in Bolivia, Mexico and Peru.
Lidia Cabral explores the role of the BRICS nations in African agriculture.
Why planting trees is always a good idea. Zoe Cormier explains a new CIFOR study.

New Agendas

Kenya pushes ahead on building a green economy. Geoffrey Kamadi reports.
Beyond 2015 released the initial results of consultations in 22 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America on a new global development agenda.
Jenny Price says “Stop saving the planet!” in this podcast interview by Stanford’s Generation Anthropocene.

Canadian Shuffle

Canada closed its international development agency: Tom Murphy reacts here. Lucas Robinson and Owen Barder react here.
Canada also plans to withdraw from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification – and would be the first country to do so.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer.

In Our World: 22 March 2013 (protests, migration, forests in flux and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:58:47 +0000

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

New Visions for Sustainable Development

Scientists writing in Nature propose a new way to think about sustainable development. Andy Revkin has a useful summary in which Owen Gaffney explains all.
John Elkington highlights seven changes that could help businesses make breakthroughs in sustainability.
The Independent Research Forum – IIED included – also published their new vision of eight shifts needed for humanity to achieve sustainable development.
Peggy Liu, chair of Chinese non-profit JUCCCE, wants to change the way we talk about sustainability.

Land, Money and Protest

Communities are protesting over land deals in Tanzania and in Malaysia, where one farmer was badly hurt in a violent attack.
NGOs call on the World Bank to end its support for a Honduran palm oil company, which they link to dozens of murders.
World Bank told to investigate complaints by Ethiopians of forced evictions.

Forests in Flux

Satellites show that deforestation accelerated in a key Madagascar park after the 2009 coup d’état.
Hunting can lead to rapid change in rainforest structure.
Logging and ecotourism have had a huge impact on a wildlife icon, Mexico’s monarch butterfly.
An undercover investigation by Global Witness exposes corrupt forest deals in Malaysia.
Anna Bolin looks at the threat large-scale agro-industrial plantations pose to forests, communities and the success of REDD+.

Sticky Business

Peter Guest explores whether the new surge in oil and gas exploration will be a boon or a curse in Kenya's arid Turkana?
Indigenous communities in the Amazon unite against Canadian oil giant.
Uganda’s President Museveni asks Tullow Oil to explain bribe claims while parliamentarians there call upon the President himself to explain.

Wild Things

Tanzania’s top wildlife official asks the United States NOT to classify lions as endangered.
Scientists say that forcing companies to carry out costly biodiversity surveys often backfires. Zoe Cormier reports

Roads Bad? Roads Good?

A new paper in Nature says that roads could help rather than harm the environment.
On his blog, Richard Conniff explains the paper and what it means for governments, mining and logging companies, and the taxpayers who pay for roads.

On the Move

An international network of lawyers wants countries to commit funds to help people forced from their homes by climate change. Chinadialogue’s Olivia Boyd has the story.
Peter Sutherland, chair of Goldman Sachs International and the London School of Economics, says migration is development.

Greening Economies

Adinda Hasan describes how the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan is trying to balance ‘green growth’ and economic expansion.
The World Future Council says in a new report that feed-in tariffs can unlock Africa’s untapped renewable energy potential.
Fish will be at the centre of Malawi’s shift to a green economy.

News and Views

Hannah Ryder blogs on the shift from "aid effectiveness" to "development effectiveness"
Henrik Ernston hails Cityscapes – an urban magazine from the global South
Maureen Azuh reports from the 5th Lagos Climate Change Summit.

Food, Glorious Food

An intiative to provide food for school children creates a new market for small-holder farmers.
Genna Reed and Rachael Ludwick debate Golden Rice following this NPR radio report.
In 10 years Cambodia lost more than half of its seasonally flooded grasslands to industrial agriculture and illegal drainage. Mongabay.com has the story.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer.

In Our World: 14 March 2013 (resilience, dev-goals, forests and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:25:50 +0000

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

Rest in Peace

On 13 March gunmen assassinated Perween Rahman, an architect who devoted her life to improving the lives of people in Karachi’s poorest neighbourhoods. She was the director of the Orangi Pilot Project Research and Training Institute and a long-term partner of IIED.
Steve Inskeep’s moving eulogy for National Public Radio includes audio clips of Perween’s wonderful voice and ideas.
On 12 March assassins murdered a Guatemalan activist and indigenous leader, Gerónimo Sol Ajcot, who was a senior member of the National Indigenous and Campesino Coordinating Council.

Banking on Biodiversity

Science for Brazil reports on the country’s moves to derive sustainable profits from the riches of the Amazon.

Forest Politics

"It’s a mystery why we chose Guyana," to give money to for avoided deforestation, says a Norwegian Government official.
Panama’s Indigenous Peoples Coordinating Body withdraws from the UN body for reduced emissions from deforestation.
CIFOR has a new guide to getting women’s perspectives into forest management. Zoe Cormier blogs about it here. Meanwhile Catriona Moss and Amelia Swan blog about what policymakers need to know about gender analysis in forest research.

Critical Thinking

Keith Kloor asks: is localism a retro fad or a blueprint for sustainability?
Adam Merberg takes down a TED Talk on cattle and climate change.
Rina Saeed Khan analyses the green policies of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf political party.

Resilience

Jaspreet Kindra and colleagues at the IRIN news agency have published a special multimedia feature that explores the new buzzword “resilience” and what it means for vulnerable communities and development actors.
Research suggests that tropical forests such as the Amazon are more resilient to climate change that scientists previously thought. Olive Heffernan has the story.
Manipadma Jena reports on India’s efforts to become drought-proof.

Fishing and Farming

Full speed ahead for fisheries policy reform in the South West Indian Ocean.
Ghillean Prance explores whether risks to biodiversity from genetic modification are real or imaginary [PDF]
That piece is just one of 18 essays in Africa's future... can biosciences contribute?

Urban Outlooks

Rio de Janeiro’s favelas are going green -- with newly planted trees to provide livelihoods and protect against landslides.
A New Movement for The New City: The problem with cars.
More evidence that housing improvements are good for people’s health.

Scoring Development Goals

Jonathan Glennie says changes to the global development agenda are set to be radical – with universality, sustainability and equality all at front and centre.
In this video clip Duncan Green talks about aspiration, evidence and diversity in setting global development goals.

Sunny Delights

Marianela Jarroud reports on Chilean women going to India to learn how to become solar engineers.
Land prices rise as solar farms take off in India.

Report Roundup

2013 Human Development Report -- The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World.
The 2012 Global Food Policy report came out on 14 March.
Connecting the Last Mile: Internews Europe Report on the Role of Communications in the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Mixed Bag

The Elinor Ostrom Award on Collective Governance of the Commons is open for nominations.
In China, there is rising public anger over secrecy on environmental issues.
The United Nations Forum on Forests Secretariat has short-listed 15 finalists for the first ever International Forest Photograph Awards.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer

In Our World is a new blog series. Each week it will publish links to top content about environment and development that we have seen online in the past week. You can subscribe to the RSS feed using this link. As we develop this new feature its content and length will vary – so do let us know what you like and don’t like about it.

In Our World: 8 March 2013 (land, forests, oil and more)

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Fri, 8 Mar 2013 10:23:07 +0000

"In Our World" relates to IIED's world of environment and development. It connects us with what’s going on in both the real world and online worlds.

Land, Life and Liberty

Another week, another murder. Venezuela probes killing of indigenous leader Sabino Romero who campaigned for return of Yukpa tribe's ancestral land. See also this profile.
Meanwhile, in Cambodia, land-rights activist Mam Sonando is fighting a jail term for speaking out on radio against land grabs. Prosecutors dropped two charges but adding one of ‘illegal logging’ – the case continues.
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy released a new report on ‘land grabs and fragile food systems’
Chelsea Diana reports on a new study by NGO GRAIN that says demand for biofuels has led to 300 land deals around the world.

Food and Farming

Empowering women at every level of society would dramatically reduce hunger and malnutrition, says top UN official.
What will environmentalists say if GM crops reduce global warming?
Barbara Fisher tells us 5 myths about mercury in the fish people eat in Madre de Dios, Peru.

On the Wild Side

Thomas Fuller has a detailed investigative piece on the wildlife trade in SE Asia and its links to Africa.
Meanwhile The Economist argues that trade bans only drive prices up in illegal markets -- spelling bad news for rare species.

Forest Futures

Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province will issue no new forestry, mining and plantation permits for one year amid land disputes and concerns about deforestation.
Jacek Siwek of Asia Pulp & Paper says timber producers and users can confront illegal logging together.
The European Union’s new ban on products from illegally logged forests has prompted new reports on illegal logging in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia.
Beatrix Richards of WWF welcomes the new law but says the world’s forests are not safe yet.

Longer Reads

Jeff Tollefson reports in depth on Brazil's long road to rainforest diplomacy -- and what it means for global climate change.
From urban slums to rural farms, land reform is a burning issue in Kenya. Robert Wanjala reports on how land has taken centre stage in Kenya’s elections.

Wet and Dry

Researchers say human emissions of greenhouse gases were partly to blame for the major drought that killed thousands of people in East Africa in 2011.
Other researchers point to the connections between climate, drought and social unrest that culminated in uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.
Is rainfall really changing? This ICRAF blog explores the mismatch between farmers’ perceptions and meteorological evidence in Malawi and Botswana.
Researchers say that sea surface temperatures in the tropical South Atlantic Ocean can be used to accurately forecast, by up to four months, malaria epidemics thousands of miles away in Northwest India.

Stories of Oil

In Ecuador, two sisters are split over the lure of oil money. They are not alone, as Jonathan Watts reports.
'Nothing else in this country gives you money like this,' say Burmese villagers who seek profits from abandoned oil wells.
Kashish Das Shrestha says Nepal is drowning in diesel.

Greener China?

China’s new leaders face big environmental challenges and environmentalists seem unconvinced by outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao’s words on the matter.
This in a week when officials in Chengdu were caught spraying the grass green.
Former journalist Pan Yue, a Chinese official unafraid of taking on powerful interests is tipped to become China’s new environment minister. Here’s an interview he gave Chinadialogue in 2006.

RIP Environment Journalism?

The New York Times has closed its Green blog, just weeks after reassigning its team of environment reporters to other beats.
The Washington Post has moved Juliet Eilperin top climate change reporter to a new role in reporting on the White House.
Greg Hanscom of Grist magazine reacts to the news here. Curtis Brainard of the Columbia Journalism Review reacts here.
Andy Revkin has created a list of Twitter accounts of the former authors of the New York Times Green blog.
Gustavo Faleiros came to IIED to present one vision of the future of environment journalism.

Climate and Carbon

Pakistan has launched its first national climate change policy and Cambodia adopted its 2013-2030 green growth plan.
Shell has published alternative visions of 2050-2100 that "highlight areas of public policy likely to have the greatest influence on the development of cleaner fuels, improvements in energy efficiency and on moderating greenhouse gas emissions."

Pricing Nature

Frank Merry, financial director of Brazilian non-profit Aliança da Terra and Ian Cheshire, CEO of Kingfisher plc argue for the importance of natural capital.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer