Blogs & Ecology

Nick Wadhams was able to categorically identify the owner of the yellow hummer mentioned by GV in the post on yellow humvees and the UN procurement scandal. He posts a conclusion to the BYH saga on his blog.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdulla sat in the same room with Israeli political leaders for the first time ever, during the UN Interfaith conference, held in New York, US.

Writing at Arabic Media Shack, Rob highlights reactions from a few Egyptian newspapers, on how this historic meeting would impact the Arab-Israeli peace process.

At the blog, which describes itself as a non-partisan site which analyzes political, strategic, and security issues of the Middle East, Rob states:

Image source: Gainesville

In anticipation of the upcoming meetings to update Kyoto next month in Poznan, Poland, the 53 African nations met recently to develop the Algiers Declaration, stating that they will vote as one bloc during climate change negotiations, reports the Monterey Herald. Forests, renewable energy and deserts are the three major issues that African nations are most concerned about and its felt that voting as one bloc will give them more power during negotiations. Europe is hoping to get in on the action....

Image source: Spink Shreves Galleries Inc.

Bill Gross, Wall Street money manager, recently auctioned off another portion of his British Empire Stamp collection and donated all proceeds to the Millennium Villages Project. Stamps range in estimated value from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars and include rare stamps such as the Indigo Blue shade two-pence stamp of Mauritius; a trial printing "square pair" of 1863 Cape of Good Hope triangular-shaped, carmine red, mint-condition, one-penny denomination stamps; and an 1866 Dominica six pence stamp. The auction brought in $1,491,385 USD....

Image: DESIGN 21

Image source: Getty Images

With the melting of the polar ice caps, countries around the world are finding that new shipping lanes are now opening up, and with that, areas that were previously off limits to exploration and drilling are now accessible. Scientific American reports that countries are now waging war on the high seas and drawing lines of "ownership" to get to these reserves. ...

The United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held in Poznań, Poland, 1-12 December 2008. The goal of the meeting is to move from "discussion to negotiation mode in 2009- prior to the later scheduled Copenhagen Denmark meeting", "at which the negotiations are set to conclude". (Look below for summary excerpts of announcement.)

Image: The artist Ashley Cecil with her winning entry (Photo: Donald Vish, Oxfam America)

Art can be a powerful tool for social change, disseminating ideas and inspiring people to act together.Oxfam America’s Climate Change on Canvas initiative is doing just that – with the aim of bringing art, activism and concern for climate change together for an exhibition at December’s UN Conference of Parties meeting in Poznan, Poland.

Image source: Getty Images

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Oxford University School of Geography and Environment just released Climate Change Country Profiles. The website includes a database with information on climate observations and multi-model projections for 52 developing countries. Information on each country includes a set of maps and diagrams which display the currently observed climate in the country and the projected climate for the country. ...

[The Indigenous Network of Environment and Trade] argued that Canada’s policy of not recognizing aboriginal treaty rights [in the Canadian-US softwood lumber dispute]…was a form of a cash subsidy, a real cash subsidy, because the only thing that the World Trade Organization and North American Free Trade Agreement recognizes is cash subsidies – nothing else, no ‘intangibles’. And the WTO actually accepted our [amicus curiae] submissions three times.

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Source: TreeHugger

Image courtesy of Greenpeace

Given the gusto with which we've decimated the ocean's major fisheries stocks over the past half-century, it should hardly come as a surprise that we've been extremely wasteful in the process. According to a new U.N. report, entitled "The Sunken Billions: Economic Justification for Fisheries Reform," the world's fishing fleets are pissing away close to $50 billion a year through poor management and overfishing, reports BBC News' Richard Black.

As politics, elections, and bailouts are just starting to heat up here in the US, and our media (and lives) will inevitably revolve around hardly anything else over the next few weeks, it’s extremely important to remember that there is a huge world beyond our borders with its own matters, issues and crises that may not effect us as directly but are just as important for us to keep in mind.

photo: Zane Edwards

This week is a big policy week in New York City, the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting is over at the Sheraton in midtown (check out Bonnie’s pre-conference chat with Bill Clinton himself), and across town the United Nations General Assembly meeting is going on. Some of the climate and energy concerns cropping up in speeches are as follows (ENS):...

Image from sporkist

And you thought $20 billion worth of wasted food was a lot. According to a new policy brief issued by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Stockholm International Water Institute and the International Water Management Institute, huge amounts of food -- close to half of all food produced worldwide -- are wasted after production.

Image source: author.

Bucking the tide of many developing nations, South Africa has chosen to set a limit on its greenhouse-gas emissions and to increase its use of renewable energy sources. South Africa's Environment Minister, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, said the country has a target to "stabilize" emissions by 2020 to 2025, "with absolute reductions in emissions...to begin ten years after growth was halted."