The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Saliem Fakir -
The mention of green jobs salivates the eager tongues of politicians seeking quick answers for dismal economic prospects. Green jobs have become the new panacea for joblessness and a ‘pathway out of poverty’.
Statistics dazzle and sometimes flail the timid heart. Countries that have used the recession to kick-start a new industrial opportunity have seized on the idea of the green sector as a strategic choice. It has also helped them save jobs given the rapidity with which other...
The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill. Host, Annie Leonard, introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the "devils in the details" in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake offsets and distraction from whats really required to tackle the climate crisis. If you've heard about Cap & Trade,...
Patrick Bond -
The decade since the Seattle World Trade Organisation (WTO) fiasco on November 30, 1999, taught civil society activists and African leaders two powerful lessons.
First, working together, they have the power to disrupt a system of global governance that meets the Global North’s short-term interests against both the Global South and the longer-term interests of the world’s people and the planet.
Second, in the very act of disrupting global malgovernance, major concessions can be...
Rebecca Solnit -
Next month, at the climate change summit in Copenhagen, the wealthy nations that produce most of the excess carbon in our atmosphere will almost certainly fail to embrace measures adequate to ward off the devastation of our planet by heat and chaotic weather. Their leaders will probably promise us teaspoons with which to put out the firestorm and insist that springing for fire hoses would be far too onerous a burden for business to bear. They have already backed off from any binding...
The Angry Mermaid Award is organised by five international nonprofit organisations working in the environmental sector. The award will expose the "company or lobby group doing the most to sabotage effective action on climate change." Among those nominated for the award is South Africa's SASOL. Others on the list of nominees, include Royal Dutch Shell and Monsanto. For the full list of nominees and to cast your vote for the worst corporate climate change culprit, please click...
Saliem Fakir -
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released its "State of the World Population 2009" report on the 18th of November. It chose to take up a politically delicate topic, the relationship between climate change, population stabilisation and the importance of gender.
The fundamental question it seeks to address is: how much of a threat is the growth in population to the world and how much of this increase will lead to a spike in green house gas (GHG) emissions?
As the report...
