POLITICAL
ECONOMY OF DISASTER
Food
Crisis To Impact Women And Children Heavily
The
spreading food crisis -- triggered primarily by rising prices,
declining outputs and growing scarcities worldwide -- is threatening
to impact heavily on the most vulnerable in society: women and
children. The United Nations and international humanitarian
organisations fear the crisis may get worse before its gets better.
Countercurrents,
30/04/2008,
Global
Warming
Rich
states failing to lead on emissions, says UN climate chief
Developing
countries, including China and India, are unwilling to sign up to a
new global climate change pact to replace the Kyoto protocol in 2012
because the rich world has failed to set a clear example on cutting
carbon emissions, according to the UN's top climate official.
by
David Adam and John Vidal,
The
Guardian,
14/04/2008
Need
for balance
Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh has made it clear that India's economic
success has to continue and it can only commit that its emission
would not cross the emissions of industrialised nations. However,
major developing countries cannot completely shrug off their
responsibility, though the attempts of industrialised nations to
pressure them into unfair agreements will have to be resisted. This
will be the major challenge in the negotiations over the next 18
months and India, along with other developing countries, will have to
find the difficult balance between its right to prosperity and
commitment to a safe environment.
The
Deccan Herald, 16/04/2008
U.N.
Effort To Curtail Emissions In Turmoil
The
United Nations is the main global policeman in an effort by wealthy
nations to reduce the impact of their own pollution by paying for
cleanups in the developing world. The program, known as the Clean
Development Mechanism, is one of the most important coordinated
efforts to attack global warming.In recent months, however, U.N.
regulators who administer the program have objected to dozens of
these developing-world projects, ranging from hydroelectric plants to
wind farms, questioning whether the projects would produce a real
environmental payoff.U.N. regulators are also concerned that some
independent auditors of these projects, who are responsible for
vetting their environmental legitimacy, have been letting project
developers push through ventures of questionable environmental value.
by
Jeffrey Ball, MINT, 14/04/2008
Bush
shifts on global warming
In
a significant shift on global warming, U.S. President George W. Bush
will propose stopping growth in U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025
and signal that he is open to lawmakers reining in pollution from
power companies. The stance, set to be unveiled later Wednesday at a
White House speech, indicates Mr. Bush's willingness to grapple with
the growing legislative debate over global warming. It marks an
acknowledgment by the Bush administration that the U.S. likely will
adopt some sort of broad new legal system to curb greenhouse-gas
emissions in coming years. Mr.Bush has opposed comprehensive
legislation to curb emissions.
by
John D Mckinnon & Stphen Power, Mint, 17/04/2008
Global
warming :The politics behind it
In
spite of the recommendations of the Kyoto protocol, the developed
countries have failed to cut down their emission. Instead, countries
like the US and Australia have in fact increased their emission by
over 16 per cent since 1990, with some of them having gone back on
Kyoto Protocol. Yet these same countries are particularly targeting
developing countries like India, even though per capita CO2 emission
in India is just one-fifteenth of American and one-eigth of European
contribution.
by
U R Rao, The Deccan Herald, 19/04/2008
