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Millennium Development Goals are Within Reach, but Stronger Efforts Needed – UN Report

Sat, 2013-07-06 11:59 — Kathy Gilbeaux

un.org

The Millennium Development Goals Report - 2013
(64 page .PDF report)

1 July 2013 – Thirteen years after the world set the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), countries have made big strides to meet the eight anti-poverty targets by their 2015 deadline, says a United Nations report released today, which stresses that the unmet goals are still within reach, but nations need to step up their efforts to achieve them.

“In more than a decade of experience in working towards the MDGs, we have learned that focused global development efforts can make a difference,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in the report's foreword, in which he urges for accelerated action to close development gaps.

“Now is the time to step up our efforts to build a more just, secure and sustainable future for all.”

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Situation Report

China’s Next Chapter: The Infrastructure and Environmental Challenge

Thu, 2013-07-04 21:51 — Kathy Gilbeaux

mckinsey.com - June 2013

McKinsey’s Jonathan Woetzel explores China’s huge infrastructure program and the country’s plans to build sustainable urban clusters for hundreds of millions of its people.

“It’s safe to say that China has had the single-biggest buildout of infrastructure in the history of mankind,” says McKinsey’s Jonathan Woetzel. “And clearly still more to go.” Indeed, despite the progress resulting from hundreds of billions of dollars in investment over the past 15 years, the efficiency of China’s infrastructure still lags behind that of developed countries by decades.

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Could Climate Bonds Become a Major Force in Green Finance?

Thu, 2013-06-27 13:05 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Albert Gomez

environmentalleader.com - June 3, 2013

So-called “green” or “climate” bonds, being issued by a number of financial institutions and state governments as a means of generating funding for sustainable development and clean energy technology, are becoming increasingly popular and could become a major new force in the green investment world, according to the Globe-Net.

The World Bank developed the Green Bond concept in 2007/2008 and simplicity is key to its popularity, according to Globe-Net blog post. The World Bank’s green bonds are triple-A rated and can be traded as easily as other “vanilla” investments, offering investors a high rate of liquidity.

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EcoAméricas

Mon, 2013-06-24 00:04 — Maeryn Obley

ecoamericas.com

EcoAméricas covers development and the environment in Latin America for an international audience of businesses, NGOs and public agencies.

Published by Fourth Street Press, an independent corporation in Beverly, MA, EcoAméricas provides continuing, objective coverage at a time when reporting on Latin American environmental issues has been piecemeal at best--and too often biased by competing agendas.

Every month, EcoAméricas draws on a network of experienced correspondents in the region to produce a concise, 12-page report. All articles include detailed contact and resource information.

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Big Oil Gets a Much Needed Reality Check

Sun, 2013-06-23 21:55 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

ecowatch.com - May 16, 2013

Launching today in Canada, Europe and the U.S., TarSandsRealityCheck.com presents up to date, accurate facts about Alberta’s tar sands to counter the high-level pro-oil sands lobbying ongoing in Canada, the U.S. and Europe around the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and Europe on the Fuel Quality Directive.

The digital campaign launches the same day Canadian Prime Minister Harper is expected in New York to address the Council of Foreign Relations and promote the tar sands and the Keystone XL pipeline. It also comes just days after the Canadian government launched a new website as part of its massive pro-tar sands PR campaign.

For the first time, world renowned economists, scientists and academics, including Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon from the University of Waterloo and Dr. Danny Harvey from the University of Toronto, have come together to present peer-reviewed, easy to understand facts about the tar sands that counter misinformation spread by the oil industry’s glossy PR machine.

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Climate Change And The Nile: Floods From Major Rivers Around The World May Increase

Fri, 2013-06-21 18:45 — Maeryn Obley

huffingtonpost.com - June 9th, 2013

Climate change is likely to worsen floods on rivers such as the Ganges, the Nile and the Amazon this century while a few, including the now-inundated Danube, may become less prone, a Japanese-led scientific study said on Sunday.

The findings will go some way to help countries prepare for deluges that have killed thousands of people worldwide and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage every year in the past decade, experts wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Given enough warning, governments can bring in flood barriers, building bans on flood plains, more flood-resistant crops and other measures to limit damage.

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Why Regional Seed Matters

Thu, 2013-06-20 16:59 — Maeryn Obley

Petra is thrilled to be surrounded by gold medal tomatoes, tome verde tomatillos and black beauty eggplant: all are adapting well to the Finger Lakes!

Image: Petra is thrilled to be surrounded by gold medal tomatoes, tome verde tomatillos and black beauty eggplant: all are adapting well to the Finger Lakes!

fruitionseeds.wordpress.com - June 13th, 2013

Each seed tells the story of its entire life history, millions of years in the making.  A few seeds, in a single generation, may travel the globe.  Most will stay within their watershed and most likely, their microclimate.  In this way, seeds become profoundly adapted to place.

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Toxic waste spill in northern Alberta biggest of recent disasters in North America

Thu, 2013-06-13 17:53 — Gina Angiola

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE

CALGARY — The Globe and Mail

PublishedWednesday, Jun. 12 2013, 2:10 PM EDT

...The spill was first spotted on June 1. But not until Wednesday did Houston-based Apache Corp. release estimates of its size, which exceeds all of the major recent spills in North America. It comes amid heightened sensitivity about pipeline safety, as the industry faces broad public opposition to plans for a series of major new oil export pipelines to the U.S., British Columbia and eastern Canada....

...“Every plant and tree died” in the area touched by the spill, said James Ahnassay, chief of the Dene Tha First Nation...

Full Article Here

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Introducing Global Sustainability

Sun, 2013-06-09 21:38 — Kathy Gilbeaux

huffingtonpost.co.uk - by HRH The Prince of Wales - June 3, 2013

I have long been deeply concerned about the effect our modern, highly industrialised approach is having on nature's capacity to sustain life on Earth. There is a growing set of alarming problems which, if not addressed with real urgency, will severely affect nature's capacity to keep her life support systems running and thus guarantee the well-being of billions of people around the world.

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Climate research nearly unanimous on human causes, survey finds

Fri, 2013-06-07 00:38 — Maeryn Obley

'Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary'. Photograph: John McConnico/AP

Image: 'Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary'. Photograph: John McConnico/AP

guardian.co.uk - May 15th, 2013 - Suzanne Goldenberg

A survey of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.

Authors of the survey, published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, said the finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.

The survey considered the work of some 29,000 scientists published in 11,994 academic papers.

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