Menu
Ecology
Know where YOU stand when it comes to using our planet's resources.
Take the ecological footprint quiz and find out.
2008
A new resource on water. See the trailer of this new film on YouTube:
F.L.O.W - For Love of Water
Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis.
Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question 'CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?'
The real story about 'bio-fuels':
Secret Report: Biofuel Caused Food Crisis
Internal World Bank Study Delivers Blow to Plant Energy Drive
by Aditya Chakrabortty
LONDON - "Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.
The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.
The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil..."
Read full article here.
Oxfam report issued, 25 June 2008: "Another Inconvenient Truth: Biofuels are not the answer to climate or fuel crisis."
"Today’s biofuel policies are not solving the climate or fuel crises but are instead contributing to food insecurity and inflation.
"In today’s report “Another Inconvenient Truth”, Oxfam calculates that rich country biofuel policies have dragged more than 30 million people into poverty, according to evidence that biofuels have already contributed up to 30% to the global rise in food prices.
“Biofuel policies are actually helping to accelerate climate change and deepen poverty and hunger. Rich countries’ demands for more biofuels in their transport fuels are causing spiralling production and food inflation,” said report author, Oxfam’s biofuel policy adviser Rob Bailey."
More info and download the report here.
Biofuels: The Five Myths of the Agro-fuels Transition, by Eric Holt-Giménez:
"The term invokes a life-giving image of renewability and abundance—a clean, green, sustainable assurance in technology and the power of progress. This image allows industry, politicians, the World Bank, the United Nations, and even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to present fuels made from corn, sugarcane, soy and other crops as the next step in a smooth transition from peak oil to a yet-to-be-defined renewable fuel economy. Drawing its power from a cluster of simple cornucopian myths, “biofuels” directs our attention away from the powerful economic interests that benefit from this transition. It avoids discussion of the growing North-South food and energy imbalance. More fundamentally, it obscures the political-economic relationships between land, people, resources and food. By showing us only one side, “biofuels” fails to help us understand the profound consequences of the industrial transformation of our food and fuel systems—The Agro-fuels Transition..."
********
Climate Change Policy and Women's Rights
Recently the US-based international human rights group MADRE organized an event to highlight connections between women's human rights and climate change - "a linkage that has been sorely under-recognized in international negotiations." This audio slideshow presents clips from that event, featuring the commentary of Yifat Susskind (MADRE), Sonia Smallacombe (UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues), and Annette Williams (Sustainable South Bronx).
Drought and climate change by the end of the century
A study led by British climate researcher Eleanor Burke estimates that by 2100 up to a third of the planet could be unproductive desert due to global warming and related climate change. Major victims will be the poor countries of the Global South, already suffering from increased heatwaves, drought and desertification.
» Read the article on the study "The century of drought", by Michael McCarthy (The Independent, October 4, 2006).
» Read the press release from the Climate Clinic.
More on climate change and global warming.
Archive
More than a hurricane: the Katrina disaster began on August 29, 2005
For too many it is still going on. A number of groups are working for a just, fair reconstruction of people’s lives, homes and cities. Here are some key resources and websites, featuring work by and about women, who were especially affected by the storm, racism, official neglect and “disaster profiteering.” Women have also been taking action…
Women and food sovereignty
Food sovereignty means having control over the production, amount and quality of safe, nutritious food.
Earth:
Women and the tsunami
Women and Life on Earth extends its deepest sympathies for the victims of the earthquake and tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, and their families.
This report includes various reports and opinions about the effects on women and the ecological aspects of the disaster.
Earth Day At 30
Donella Meadows (1941-2001), environmental studies professor and director of the Sustainability Institute, offered this summary of the 'state of the earth' in April 2000.Earthday
Water
"1.4 billion people have no access to safe drinking water and 2.4 billion are without access to adequate sanitation services. The consequences are devastating: 30,000 persons are dying every day from diseases caused by absence of safe drinking water and lack of sanitation..." (from brochure: "People's March For Water", People's World Water Forum)
Women and Chernobyl, nuclear power and links
A catastrophic accident and release of radiation took place at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine (then part of the USSR) on April 26th, 1986. Twenty years later it is important to learn its real effects, especially at a time when the nuclear industry is attempting a come-back. But nuclear radiation and wastes are no alternative to oil and coal, and cannot solve the climate change problem. Here is the start of our on-going Chernobyl report, and a few links.
Global warming and climate change
Global warming describes the "greenhouse" effect, which is created when the sun's heat is trapped by certain gases in the Earth's atmosphere, like carbon dioxide. These gases absorb heat that would otherwise escape from the Earth's atmosphere. So-called "greenhouse gas" emissions have increased since the industrial revolution, caused by the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, pollution from cars, methane from animal and other sources. Therefore, an unnatural amount of heat has been trapped which has caused the Earth's surface to warm.
Health
Health news and analysis: for and by women
Genetic engineering
"The biotech industry rarely uses the phrase 'genetically engineered foods,' sticking with the more bland (and less controversial) phrase 'biotech foods.' In Europe, genetically engineered foods are more commonly referred to as genetically modified foods, genetically altered foods or GMOs (short for genetically modified organisms). But scientists generally agree that 'genetically engineered' more accurately represents the process than 'genetically modified.'" (http://www.thecampaign.org/#environment)
Women and environment
Wangari Maathai: Nobel Laureate
Environmentalist and political leader, Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt movement in Kenya in 1977. The movement's members have planted more than 10 million trees to prevent soil erosion and provide firewood for cooking fires. In 1997 Wangari Maathai ran for the presidency of Kenya. In December 2002 Wangari Maathai was elected to Parliament. Since January 2003 she is Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife. In 2005 she won the Nobel peace prize.