Pambazuka News 589: Squeezing Africa dry

Negotiations for Rio+20 have been fraught with attempts to take 'people' and social development out of the equation and lay the solutions at the altar of market driven forces through the 'green economy.' For women and young people, this means that fundamental issues affecting them, such as their right to health and education, are in danger of being sidelined, says this article.

Biotech giant Syngenta has been criminally charged with denying knowledge that its genetically modified (GM) Bt corn kills livestock during a civil court case that ended in 2007. Syngenta’s Bt 176 corn variety expresses an insecticidal Bt toxin (Cry1Ab) derived from the bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and a gene conferring resistance to glufosinate herbicides. EU cultivation of Bt 176 was discontinued in 2007. Similar varieties however, including Bt 11 sweet corn are currently cultivat...read more

Thirty per cent of threatened species are at risk because of consumption in developed world according to research made by University of Sydney. The study mapped the world economy to trace the global trade of goods implicated in biodiversity loss such as coffee, cocoa, and lumber. Years of data collection and thousands of hours on a supercomputer to process, lead to these global supply chains in amazing detail for the first time. The study evaluated over five billion supply chains connecting c...read more

The UN Web TV Channel is available 24 hours a day with selected live programming of United Nations meetings and events as well as with pre-recorded video features and documentaries on various global issues. Videos for the Rio+20 event are available from the site.

The global financial crisis of 2008/09 has not sent migrant workers streaming back home, despite worsening employment prospects and anti-immigration rhetoric in some destination countries, says a new book on migration and remittances, published by the World Bank. In fact, migrants may have mitigated some of the pain of the crisis as they tend to work for lower wages, receive fewer benefits and rely relatively little on the state, says the ‘Migration and Remittances during the Global Financial...read more

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