Chocolate Nations: Living and Dying for Cocoa in West Africa

Chocolate - the very word conjures up a hint of the forbidden and a taste of the decadent. Yet the story behind the chocolate bar is rarely one of luxury...

Zed Books | 25 April 2012

Chocolate Nations: Living and Dying for Cocoa in West Africa by Orla Ryan

20 January 2011- Paperback - ISBN: 9781848130050 - 192 pages

 

 

 

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Green Resources’ carbon plantations in Tanzania. Curse or cure?

A recent report gives a critical view of the Clean Development Mechanism in Africa. The report, “The CDM in Africa: Can’t Deliver the Money”, draws together a dozen researchers under the guidance of Patrick Bond of the Centre for Civil Society in Durban, South Africa

By Chris Lang | REDD-Monitor | 2nd May 2012

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Out of Africa (and Elsewhere): More Fossil Fuels

The world’s largest energy companies have big plans for Mozambique

By MARK SCOTT | The New York Times | April 10, 2012

A rig near the village of Lesniowice in Poland, where Chevron has been exploring for shale gas. Kacper Pempel/Reuters

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Getting Somalia Wrong?

Somalia is a failed state, representing a threat to itself, its neighbours and the wider world

Zed Books | 13 March 2012

Getting Somalia Wrong: Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State by Mary Harper

9 February 2012 – Paperback - ISBN: 9781842779330 - 232 pages

 

 

 

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Shell in court over Nigeria oil spill compensation

Lawyers representing a Nigerian fishing community are taking the oil firm Shell to court in London over alleged unpaid compensation for recent oil spills

BBC News | 23 March 2012

Ogoni people say their land has been devastated by pollution from the oil industry over many years

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Deforestation increases in the Congo rainforest

Deforestation in the Congo Basin has increased sharply since the 1990s, reports an extensive new assessment of forests in the six-nation region

mongabay.com | March 20, 2012

Deforestation in the Congo Basin

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Stemming rural depopulation in Ethiopia

Fasil Giorghis’ office in the centre of Addis Ababa affords a good view of the Ethiopian capital. There are building sites wherever you look: grey concrete structures with protruding armouring irons, sheathed in scaffolding made from eucalyptus trees

by Samuel Schlaefli | OurWorld 2.0 | March 12, 2012

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Energy in East Africa

Poverty refers not only to one’s economic situation, but also to other factors that influence life. Especially in the past years the term “energy poverty” has become more common

by Kristin Kretszchmar | Mar 10 2012 by Glopolis in Energy Bulletin | Mar 20 2012

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Global poverty: A fall to cheer

For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere

The Economist | Mar 3rd 2012

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Imperial leftovers

You probably don’t know it, but Réunion Island has been racked by riots about the price of gas last week. For those of you who happen not to be specialists of African geography, Réunion Island is a French département, roughly half the size of Rhode Island, located in the Ocean Indian, not far from Madagascar. It is officially a part of France, even if, of course, Frenchmen care about it only when it affects the mainland, such as when a chikungunya epidemic threatened to spill over Southern France

by Damien Perrotin | Feb 29 2012 by The View from Brittany in Energy Bulletin | Feb 29 2012

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Possible embezzlement halts WWF-run REDD project in Tanzania

Two conservation and community projects in Tanzania have been halted after the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) reported possible corruption

Jeremy Hance | mongabay.com | February 29, 2012

Forest in Tanzania. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.

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Co­lo­ni­al­ism in Africa helped launch the HIV epidemic a century ago

We are unlikely to ever know all the details of the birth of the AIDS epidemic. But a series of recent genetic discoveries have shed new light on it, starting with the moment when a connection from chimp to human changed the course of history

By Craig Timberg and Daniel Halperin | The Washington Post | Feb 28, 2012

To export ivory and rubber from what is now Cameroon, traders created routes that enabled the first cases of HIV to reach large population centers. This photograph is from a collection by Alice Seeley Harris and her husband, John Harris, who were missionaries in the Belgian Congo at the turn of the century. They documented the horrific abuses of the indigenous people of the Congo by Belgian King Leopold II's regime. Anti-Slavery International/PANOS

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After the Durban climate talks: State and market climate failures amplified by civil society failure

In 2007, former World Bank chief economist Nick Stern termed climate change the worst "market failure" in history – since those who pollute with greenhouse gases are not charged, and since they threaten future generations and vast swathes of natural life – and at that moment, even the 1991 ravings of another former World Bank chief economist, Larry Summers, made sense

By Patrick Bond | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal | February 28, 2012

Durban, December 3, 2011. Photo by Anne Petermann/GJEP-GFC.

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REDD under the spotlight – Can ‘Reducing Deforestation and Forest Degradation’ deliver real benefits for the climate and for rural communities?

In this article, Wally Menne of the Timberwatch Coalition in South Africa asks whether REDD can really help address climate change and whether it can bring genuine benefits for rural communities. The article was first published in Drynet News, in February 2012

By Chris Lang | REDD-Monitor | 22nd February 2012

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Nigeria again delays power sector privatisation

Nigeria has again pushed back the timeframe for selling off state-owned power assets, its privatisation agency said on Monday, another setback for reforms which investors hope will unlock the potential of Africa's second largest economy

Reuters | Feb 20, 2012

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‘Global sustainability’ wilts in South Africa’s political hot air

The latest acts in South Africa’s’s intensifying political drama include a sizzling summer-long battle between young and old within the African National Congress (ANC), the February 10 State of the Nation speech by President Jacob Zuma and the release of the ANC’s “research” on alternatives to mining nationalisation, a demand by the ANC Youth League which is now one of the main issues dividing the ruling party

By Patrick Bond | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal | February 15, 2012

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Central African rainforests disappearred from climate change

Climate change combined with human activity caused the disappearance of tropical rainforests in central Africa 3,000 years ago, a study has found

The Economic Times | 12 FEB, 2012

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Global Fund Fights AIDS, TB and Malaria

The long-awaited shake-up in the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Fund) finally became operational this month with the assumption of office of Gabriel Jaramillo, a former leading banker, as the new general manager. The change followed various unflattering audit reports of the Fund operations in some recipient countries that suggested money lost to corrupt practices and lax oversight

Chinua Akukwe | World Press | February 6, 2012

A pregnant Sudanese woman being treated for Malaria in a health center in Nyala. (Photo: Raul Touzon, National Geographic Society, Corbis)

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Somali famine 'will kill tens of thousands'

The UN in Somalia says tens of thousands of people will have died of starvation by the time the famine in the Horn of Africa ends

BBC News | 15 January 2012

Many Somalis have fled across the border into Ethiopia to seek aid

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Lead kills 400 Nigerian children

400 Nigerian children dead of lead poisoning due to gold mining

Disaster News Network | February 10, 2012

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