By Jamshed Baruah GENEVA (IDN) – The Social Forum of the UN Human Rights Council serves since 2008 as a unique space for open and interactive dialogue between civil society actors, representatives of Member States, and intergovernmental organizations, on a theme chosen by the Council each year. The 2018 Social Forum, with Sri Lanka’s Permanent […]
China Suspected of Going Green by Dumping Brown Through BRI
Viewpoint by Dokku Nagamalleswara Rao & Atmaja Gohain Baruah Dokku Nagamalleswara Rao and Atmaja Gohain Baruah are research scholars at the Center for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi India. This article first appeared in East-West Forum on 25 September 2018. – The Editor. NEW DELHI (IDN-INPS) – The environmental impact of […]
Turning Waste into Wealth for Growth and the Planet
Viewpoint by LI Yong and Hongjoo Hahm LI Yong is the Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and Hongjoo Hahm, Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). BAGKOK (IDN) – The business case for making our economy more sustainable is clear. Globally, transitioning […]
Bribery Rampant in Over Half of Global Trade
By Sean Buchanan LONDON (IDN) – There are many losers and few winners when companies bribe foreign public officials to win lucrative overseas contracts. In prioritising profits over principles, governments in most major exporting countries fail to prosecute companies flouting laws criminalising foreign bribery. What is missing, according to Transparency International – the global coalition […]
Costa Rica Set to Achieve Carbon Neutrality by 2021
By Fabiola Ortiz SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (IDN) – It has been twenty two years since Costa Rica embarked on its national program of payment for environmental services (PES), the first in the world to start a nationwide scheme for compensating landowners for keeping the forests standing for people and the planet. Now that the […]
Africa Gets Ready for Biodiversity and Climate Change Summits
By Justus Wanzala NAIROBI (IDN) – African governments have been availing of two conferences at the UN Environment Headquarters in the Kenyan capital in September to gear up for the Biological Diversity Summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, and the Climate Summit in Katowice, Poland. The African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) from September […]
China-Japan Rivalry Intensifies in Asia’s New Growth Region
By Kalinga Seneviratne SINGAPORE (IDN) – While China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been in the news for a while – thanks mainly to negative reporting by the western media – Japan is slowly funding the building of supplementary trade corridors in the Mekong region projecting itself as not only interested in building infrastructure, […]
Rethinking Mobility – How to Respond to Opportunities in a Changing World
Viewpoint by David Suttie* ROME (IDN) – Rural people often migrate seasonally with their herds, or to join the harvest in other districts. They frequently travel to towns and cities to trade, do temporary jobs, or advance their education. In some regions of the world, nomadic cultures are commonplace. Migration is one of the most […]
Brazil at Another Major Turning Point
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – From the time of its beginning as a nation state “Brazil has been a paradise for some, an endless hell for others, and for the rest, a kind of purgatory on earth.” So write two Brazilian historians, Lilla Schwarcz and Heloisa Starling, in their massive, newly published, […]
Right to Information a Mixed Success in the Asia-Pacific Region
By Sean Buchanan LONDON (IDN) – Freedom of information is not only a human right, but also an essential tool to engage and empower citizens to demand accountability from governments and fight corruption. Worldwide, around 120 countries have a right to information (RTI) act, indicating that most countries consider it important to spell out in […]