Forests spark emotional debates in Australia. Much of the rhetoric is about saving “the last of Tasmania’s wild forests” or how we must “stop logging in Australian native forests”.
Australian forests…
Facing tough questions: NSW's planning review must grapple with competing visions of development.
Flickr/Askew One
Later this year Brad Hazzard, NSW Minister for Planning and Infrastructure, faces a difficult decision. Will he prepare new state planning legislation that prioritises a desired outcome: healthy, functional…
Questions of planetary power: a mere 0.3% of transnational corporations control 40% of global revenue.
Flickr/paul (dex)
The Planet Under Pressure 2012 Conference was held in London a fortnight back and released the first State of the Planet Declaration. The conference aim was to set out the science (in a broad sense) in…
Will the UN recommendations pull people out of poverty and reduce pressure on the environment?
The Advocacy Project
A recent cartoon (below) extrapolates the use of the word “sustainable”. It predicts that in 50 years each sentence will on average contain the word at least once.
The cartoon is clever, and “sustainable…
Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest in November last year was a very significant step towards reform in Burma.
EPA/Mizzima News
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd is cautious, but says we are seeing the first signs of change in Burma, but the government there still needs to do more for its people. He is correct in saying “It is in our…
The world's population is racing ahead compared to growth in the rest of the world.
AAP/Dean Lewins
SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE: As the global population passed the seven billion mark yesterday (give or take a few months – the data aren’t exact), Australia’s resident population will reach about 22.75 million…
Women will be the key to dealing with the growth in population.
Flickr/PhotograTree
SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE: I had better write fast. Sometime between my deadline to submit this story and the time it goes live, the estimated world population will exceed 7 billion for the first time ever…
Developing smaller urban areas may mean better employment and living conditions for migrant workers.
AFP
SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE: The world’s seven billionth person is likely to be born today. Beatriz Carrillo Garcia, lecturer in China Studies at the University of Sydney looks at effect a growing population…
Taxing international aviation emissions could help pay our climate change bill.
Flickr/FatMandy
Wealthy countries have committed to mobilise up to $US100 billion a year by 2020 for climate change action in developing countries.
This is almost as much as the total amount of aid provided globally…
Environmental activists have targeted palm oil – an industry crucial to Indonesia's development.
AAP
In 1990 there were about 400 international environmental groups. Today, this number is more like 1.4 million.
So why is the world apparently in a worse state now? Have environmental groups paid too much…
Development agencies can't ignore the impact of illicit drugs.
AAP
Around 6% of the world’s population aged 15 to 64 use illicit drugs – that’s 250 million people. It’s a rapidly changing population, with many different pathways to illicit drug use and new users constantly…
Anti-US feelings run high after drone attacks in north-western Pakistan EPA
Washington’s decision last week to suspend $800 million in military aid to Pakistan should not have come as a surprise to anyone who has been following recent developments in the US-Pakistan relationship…
It's time to begin preparing for the "tertiary effects".
AAP
Public health experts have warned for more than two decades that climate change will harm human health.
Initially their attention focused on “primary” health effects (e.g heat waves, bush fires and flooding…
Australia's foreign aid commitment falls far short of the level promised in 1970.
AAP
In the foreword to the international development assistance component of this year’s Federal Budget, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd gives cogent reasons for Australia’s position on foreign aid funding.
He…
