Ecology & Climate Change

Just in the last month there have been two cases of environmental protests occurring in China. Around one thousand people protested on the streets of Yangjiang city, in Guangdong province, against the construction of an incinerator. And ten thousand  people protested against a chemical factory in Shangrao city, Jianxi province. The protesters in both cases battled with the police. As a result, many people were injured or arrested.

[WASHINGTON, DC]: Today, the World Bank launched a new partnership with global corporations including Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Veolia. Housed at the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), the new venture aspires to “transform the water sector” by inserting the corporate sector into what has historically been a public service. The new partnership is part of a broader trend of industry collusion to influence global water policy.

Profit maximization is the iron rule of capitalism, setting limits to ecological reform. A profit-based economy that requires continuous economic growth makes ecological catastrophes inevitable.

by water By Ian Angus & Simon Butler From Grist The United Nations says that the world’s population will reach 7 billion people this month. The approach of that milestone has…

Here's a fairly simple choice: the Global North would pay hard-hit Global South sites to deal with climate crisis either through complicated, corrupt, controversial 'Clean Development Mechanism…

  By Liam Macuaid Note: This is an editorial from the issue of Socialist Resistancewhich comes out next week. In December the world’s rulers will meet in…

Though climate change and human rights are important corporate responsibility issues on their own terms, they are increasingly interrelated.

The paper, A Thirst for Distant Lands: Foreign investment in agricultural land and water, provides a synopsis of current trends in the expansion of foreign investment in agriculture. Drawing on current literature, media reports and a series of interviews, the paper looks at the causes, the mechanisms and the growth, in particular, of long-distance farming for home-country consumption.

A lifetime would have to be spent to really assess exactly what parts of the actual technological package are the most crucial, as this is an ever-evolving process. The challenge for Africa is to operationalise technologies in the absence of much of the necessary flanking support (policies, prices, infrastructure, agricultural credit etc). But what are these actual technologies? Sometimes it is hard to assess as to whether the technologies are Chinese developed or imported – but this should not matter. The crucial question is – what has worked for China that could be applicable to Africa?

Current global modes of production, consumption and trade have caused massive environmental destruction including global warming that is putting at risk our planet’s ecosystems and pushing human communities into disasters.