Sustainable Human Development

PATTANI, Thailand, Jul 5 (IPS) - Rohana Samu is among the fortunate. She is glad to have steady work for the past four years no matter how monotonous her job is -- working an eight-hour shift daily in a frigid room, cleaning fish.

SANTIAGO, Chile, Jul 5 (Tierramérica) - Eighteen Latin American countries are currently involved in whale and dolphin watching tourism, which brings in about 278 million dollars a year. But experts say there is a lack of standards, research and education to ensure that it is a sustainable activity.

MELBOURNE, Jul 3 (IPS) - Australia’s food security is under threat from a tiny parasite with the potential to devastate the nation’s bee and pollination industries.

BEIJING, Jul 4 (IPS) - The silence surrounding investigations into why so many schools collapsed during China's massive earthquake in May suggests Beijing's reluctance to face up to the fact that the failure of government education policies is partly to blame for the deaths of thousands of children.

TOKYO, Jul 4 (IPS) - Japan is preparing to test its leadership role at the summit meeting of seven western industrial democracies and Russia (G8) Jul. 7-9 in Toyako on the northern island of Hokkaido.

LA PAZ, Jul 4 (IPS) - The governing party in Bolivia is reeling from its latest electoral defeat, and beginning to doubt the popularity of President Evo Morales, who is putting his office, the vice president's and those of provincial governors up for ratification in a recall referendum to be held on Aug. 10.

WASHINGTON, Jul 4 (IPS) - The world's biggest economy marked Independence Day Friday with little cause for economic cheer. Job losses are the worst in nearly six years and a de facto recession appears to have gripped all sectors.

OSLO, Jul 4 (IPS) - A new commission appointed by Norway will investigate ways of putting a stop to the huge flows of money into tax havens. Tax evasion and corruption are believed to cost poor countries at least 50 billion dollars a year.

TOKYO, Jul 4 (IPS) - Japan wants countries to reconsider biofuels as an alternative technology to fight climate change by using fuel cell cars at the Group of Eight (G8) Summit on Jul. 7-9. The vehicles will transport the leaders of the world's major industrialised nations when they gather on the northern Japanese Island of Hokkaido.

CAIRO, Jul 3 (IPS) - Civil society organisations (CSOs) have mixed feelings about the outcomes of the latest African Union Summit, which concluded in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh earlier this week. The summit meeting of African heads of state and officials was largely dominated by debate – or lack thereof – over the crisis in Zimbabwe and the participation of the controversial president, Robert Mugabe.

GENEVA, Jul 3 (IPS) - Japan wants next week's summit of seven major western industrial nations and Russia (G8) to urge the international community to push towards combating HIV/AIDS. It sees this as a critical objective of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that are meant to be achieved by 2015.

LIMA, Jul 3 (Tierramérica) - The conflicts surrounding extractive industries in Peru could shift from the mountains to the jungles due to the rising number of concessions granted for the Amazonian regions of San Martín, Madre de Dios and Amazonas, and which are being strongly opposed by the local indigenous communities.

BRUSSELS, Jul 3 (IPS) - Caution needs to be exercised in developing African food production to avoid long-term social and environmental harm, according to an ecologist credited with averting mass hunger on the continent.

TOKYO, Jul 3 (IPS) - Japan has one of the world’s most aggressive environmental policies, set both to meet 2012 emission reduction targets and to make the country -- which has no natural resources of its own -- less dependent on imports, according to experts meeting here. At a meeting of influential parliamentarians of GLOBE (global legislators for a balanced environment) ahead of the upcoming G8 summit in Hokkaido, Jul. 7-9, several high-profile Japanese politicians spoke of Prime Minister Fukuda’s low-carbon initiatives.

ACCRA, Jul 1 (IPS) - Older Ghanaians remember when the country's coast was lined with coconut trees. Fishermen would mend their nets in the shade the trees provided, as well as drink the water and eat the fruit. Thousands of women made a living extracting oil from copra -- the dried meat of the coconut. But today, the beaches have been stripped bare by Lethal Yellow Disease (LYD).

GAZA CITY, Jul 2 (IPS) - Gaza is being forced to pump 77 tonnes of untreated or partially treated sewage out to sea daily due to the Israeli blockade of the coastal territory. The fear is that some of this is creeping back into drinking water.

BEIJING, Jul 1 (IPS) - Few in the Chinese capital are aware of the price their city would pay for staging the world’s first ‘green Olympics’ in August. The fabulous capital of Chinese emperors and the epitome of modern China’s ambitions is being driven to extinction by its chronic lack of water. And the Olympic games are expediting the city’s slow demise, according to experts.

HARARE, Jul 1 (IPS) - The perennial political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe has wreaked havoc with the country’s once thriving tobacco industry.

TOKYO, Jul 1 (IPS) - Approximately 133 parliamentarians from 23 countries along with prominent politicians under a caucus called GLOBE (global legislators for a balanced environment) have gathered here ahead of the Jul. 7-9 G8 meetings in Hokkaido. They hope to influence the G8 -- the world’s most industrialised countries -- to adopt a policy for tacking climate change post-2012 when the current Kyoto Protocol ends.

ST JOHN'S, Antigua, Jun 30 (IPS) - Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders are gearing up for their annual summit in Antigua early next month amid worrying signs that after 35 years, the regional integration movement has not progressed beyond a "community of sovereign states".