Africa
-
Desmond Tutu (with a little help from the scientific community) explains Africa's position
There’s been so much bad journalism written from Copenhagen that it boggles the mind. The problem has been particularly acute with respect to the developing world’s refusal to quietly accept the wealthy world’s many and various moves to evade its obligations. In fact, the Africans have good reasons for their uncompromising positioning. You can see […]
-
Naomi Klein says Obama’s stiffing Africa on climate
Cross-posted from MotherJones.com. Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International.Photo: foei via Flickr A highlight of my time at COP15 so far was a conversation with the extraordinary Nigerian poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International. We talked about the fact that some of the toughest activists here […]
-
The ‘small problem’ with GMOs and Africa
Drought in Ethiopia.The Des Moines Register‘s Philip Brasher is in Africa reporting on the potential for GMO crops to help alleviate hunger in the developing world. The current focus is on drought-tolerant crops for obvious reasons: I grew up in western Texas and covered the Midwest’s devastating drought of 1988. I know what a drought […]
-
Will Africa’s farmland become a ‘resource curse’?
Palm-oil trees in the making, Ivory Coast.In his Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis teases out the mechanisms of famine in British-ruled 19th century India. When a drought would wipe out a grain harvest in one region of India, the price of grain would spike. People all over the subcontinent would suddenly find themselves priced out […]
-
Disappearing slave history
James Island’s grisly connections with the slave trade draw thousands of tourists to this shrinking patch of Gambia each year. In high season as many as a hundred tourists a day take small, motorized pirogues out to this tiny island and hire guides from nearby villages to explain the horrors once endured there. The island […]
-
Europe places outcome of Copenhagen squarely on Obama
The chief negotiator for the European Commission announced this afternoon in Barcelona that the failure of the U.S. Congress to pass legislation before December has doomed the chances for success in Copenhagen. A climate protest at the Barcelona talks: World leaders with ‘big heads’ moving cash from an aid money box to a climate money […]
-
Africa returns to Barcelona talks, while U.S. resists giving up the numbers
The African nations that walked out of the climate negotiations on Monday, just hours after the Barcelona meeting started, returned late yesterday. The point of the day-long demonstration was made. Delegates of the 192 nations gathered here to make significant progress on a new climate treaty next month in Copenhagen are frustrated, terribly frustrated with […]
-
Africa walks out on climate talks in Barcelona, citing lack of commitment from West
Negotiations among more than 190 countries meeting in Barcelona to address climate change continued today, but only on certain matters, as delegates from 50 African nations collectively shut down the talks about how to extend the Kyoto Protocol when the first phase of the agreement expires in 2012. Africa refuses to continue the negotiations until […]
-
Rich countries halt Barcelona climate talks with inaction; Africa walks out
African negotiators at the U.N. climate talks in Barcelona refused to continue formal discussions about all other issues until wealthy countries live up to their legal and moral responsibility to commit to deep emissions reductions. Rich countries (also called “Annex 1 countries”) have ground negotiations to a halt by failing to agree to their new […]