Environment & Sustainability
Environment & Sustainability
Fair Observer's analysis of the latest debates on climate change, pollution, sustainable development, clean and renewable energy and environmental conservation.
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Brazil is potentially an agricultural giant but its farmers are challenged by low competitiveness. Ask anybody at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the IMF or even the CIA, and you will get the same answer: Brazil is the country with the highest agricultural potential in the world. At present, however, this potential is compromised by the sector’s high costs and low profitability. Several factors explain this conundrum. First, Brazil’s largest agricultural areas, especially the areas with the highest growth potential, are more than 1,000kms away from existing ports. Railways transport a very small part of agricultural output, with most production reaching the...
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By Kwei Quartey Rather than fostering development, the workings of the oil industry in Ghana seem to be damaging communities and re-routing wealth out of the country. In 2007, substantial oil deposits were discovered in the Jubilee field off the coast of Ghana’s Western Region, and production began in 2010. As a result, Sekondi-Takoradi, the region’s coastal capital, has gained new prominence in a country whose most high-profile urban center has generally been the national capital of Accra. There is already unmanageable congestion at Takoradi Harbor. During my visit to Ghana in March 2012, I was eager to assess the mood of the country in light of its much-touted new oil...
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Failure to comprehensively examine all the drivers of climate change may produce a false fear of a dangerously overheated planet. Scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) are convinced that by using fossil fuels man is currently destroying the climate. But we do have one last chance; modern industrial society has to abandon its current way of living and allow itself to be revolutionized. They say that this will mean lots of hardship, but it is for a good cause. They also tell us that the scientific material that forms the basis of this warning is complex, in fact too complex for us to possibly understand. So it seems that we have to believe the climate experts....
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Background With the Kyoto Protocol set to expire at the end of this year, and the 20th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit about to take place in June, it would seem that addressing climate change should be on everyone’s minds. Scientists first started noticing the upward trend in atmospheric CO2 as early as the 1950s. Yet up until the 1990s, the so-called ‘global warming’ debate centered on the reliability of the data, and whether the phenomenon was in fact real at all. As scientific consensus grew, the mounting evidence finally led to the landmark Kyoto Protocol in 1997, a legally binding treaty. The term ‘global warming,’ which refers to the global...
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By Peter ByrneThoughts on the climate change debate. In mid-February, several thousand scientists descended in a flurry of umbrellas upon rain-soaked Vancouver, Canada. The occasion was the annual meeting of the world’s largest science club, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For nearly two centuries, the association has slowly settled scientific controversies by relying upon evidence and peer consensus. But this year, a thread of existential fear snaked through presentations on technical topics ranging from archeology to zoology. The reason? Not the weather. The climate. I am a journalist, not a scientist. Roaming the Vancouver Convention Center in search of news, it dawned...
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360° Analysis / Politics / United States / Europe / Middle East / Americas / Africa / Asia / Environment & Sustainability / OceaniaBy Amy HenslinThere has been a shift in recent years of the analysis of brain drain. New approaches can help find benefits for all countries touched by this phenomenon. “Brain drain": the phrase alone has a negative connotation that tends to elicit sympathy for developing countries. In the midst of so much corruption, violence, and hunger, having the best and brightest leave the country inevitably hinders development instead of promoting it. How can Western countries allow this to happen? Or so popular opinion went between 1973 and 2000. Neo-Marxist and Structuralist theories dominated, concluding that the West was responsible for disrupting development by encouraging talented...
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How the brain drain affects the African continent and what can be done to counter it. Africa loses the very people it needs. Even though reliable data is pretty scarce, it is estimated that around 23,000 professionals are leaving the continent each year. Many of them are trained in key areas for development and possess skills that are in high demand all over Africa. Unfortunately, in addition to this, developed countries have extended their search for talent beyond their borders and their scouting seems to be successful: almost one quarter of all African emigrants move to one of the high income OECD countries. The US has benefited from the African brain drain especially; the number of...
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This is an edited and somewhat expanded version of my comments in the education panel of the Harvard India Conference 2012. The topic of discussion was "Education in India - Opportunities and Challenges in the Next Decade". We are considering what challenges and opportunities in education await India over the next decade. I would like to share with you three lenses I look at the question through — from the perspectives of the individual, the community, and technology. For me, the highest purpose of education for the individual is simply this: to cultivate attention -- the state of being where one can engage with the question at hand with clarity, care and affection, bringing...
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By Kumi NaidooGregor Konzack and Christian Franz interviewed Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, at the Munich Security Conference. Mr. Naidoo describes what is going wrong in the global fight against climate change. Q - Mr. Naidoo, on yesterday’s discussion panel you sat next to people like Mr. Aliev, the president of Azerbaijan - who presented his country as a new source for energy, Mr.Viktor Yushchenko, the president of the Ukraine, told us that he is a reliable partner, and Günther Öttinger, a German politician and European Commissioner for Energy– who explained how we can become more efficient in terms of energy. You, Mr. Naidoo, came with the call for...
