The report presents a mixed picture. Over the past 25 years, there have been notable improvements in child well-being in the group of countries examined in this report: steady decline in child mortality, overall reduction in adolescent suicide and increase in school completion rates. But the last five years have …
Now that the reality of climate change has been accepted even by its strongest sceptics, there is a rush to find answers. The latest buzz is to substitute the use of greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels with biofuels - fuel processed from plants. Unfortunately, the way we are going about implementing …
in a recent meet in Germany's Potsdam city on March 16-17, 2007, g8 countries and five other major developing countries agreed to launch the Potsdam Initiative aimed at preventing biodiversity loss due to climate change. It was for the first time that developing nations took part in the annual g8-ministerial …
recently the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, denounced us president George Bush's new-found fondness for biofuels. Food stocks for millions would be threatened, Castro warned. The octogenarian Communist speaking on ecology doesn't get much press. Castro's fulminations were duly consigned to back pages of newspapers, where they had more to do …
Divers exploring a maze of submerged caves in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula have found what may be the world's longest underground river. According to British diver Stephen Bogaerts who made the discovery with his German colleague Robbie Schmittner, the waterway twists and turns for 154 km through the region's limestone caverns …
The Mexican government has launched an emergency plan to contain the invasion of a moth (Cactoblastis cactorium), which is threatening the country's national symbol
Previous studies have linked climate variations to the collapse of societies around the world. According to a study published in Nature (Vol 375, No 6530, June 1, 1995), drought caused the demise of the Maya civilisation in Mexico. The researchers argued that internal factors like population growth and environmental degradation, …
The Citizen Submissions on Enforcement Matters is administered by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), a trilateral institution established by the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States as part of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). The CEC received 55 submissions from June 1995 …
A 4,500 year-old skeleton of a man recently discovered in Mexico could be the earliest example of dental work in the Americas, claim scientists. The skeleton, dating back to around 2,500 BC, was found buried in volcanic ash in a remote mountain of western Mexico. The man's upper and front …
The Mexican National Mining and Metal Workers Union representing four million workers recently gave strike notices to the labour department's arbitration board. More than 200 Mexican organisations also called for a national strike in solidarity with striking miners. The unions have demanded that the government stay out of their internal …
In this paper I address the general perception that agricultural activities are the principal threat to primate biodiversity in the tropics and argue that in Neotropical landscapes some agricultural practices may favor primate population persistence, and that this situation merits attention and investigation. To explore these issues, I examined three …
The state of California and the city of Los Angeles have sued Coca-Cola over the distribution of batches of Coke manufactured in Mexico. RELATED STORY • Cover: Pesticides in bottled drinks [Feb.15, 2003] A lawsuit filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court claims high levels of lead were detected …
Interview with Anil Naidoo, Director of the Blue Planet Project, which is fighting against the commercialisation of water. Anil Naidoo was a key organiser of the alternative forum as a counter to the World Water Forum in Mexico City recently. He is Director of the Blue Planet Project, an international …
A World Trade Organization (wto) panel has ruled that Mexico violated global trade regulations in a long-standing soft drinks dispute with the us. In 2002, Mexico levied a 20 per cent tax on drinks that are sweetened with anything other than cane sugar grown in Mexico. Before the tax, Mexico …
This article examines the divergent political responses to unplanned exposure to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the Global South. Although scientific and domestic political considerations have some relevance to explaining different positions among developing countries, trade considerations appear to be a principal driver of GMO policy. This consideration is strikingly …
danger spilling out: Mexico's oil monopoly Pemex recently confirmed the fifth fuel spill in the past four months, even as authorities quoted a requirement of US $9 billion to repair the country's degenerating oil pipeline network. Media reports said nearly 45,000 litres of oil spilled in the latest incident near …
a meeting of the Convention on Biodiversity (cbd) will be held in February in Bangkok to discuss rules for international transfer of biological resources. In preparation, ministerial delegations of a group of developing countries called the Like Minded Megadiverse Countries (lmmc) met January 20-21 in New Delhi to develop a …
Uncle Sam's unquenchable thirst for energy now threatens Ensenada, a Mexican town by the sea. Located on the Baja California peninsula, Ensenada houses rare seals, sea birds and fish. It has a growing tourism industry. But a recent government decision permitting California-based Sempra Energy's (se) huge liquefied natural gas (lng) …
