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 …
Hardrock mining - the extraction of minerals such as gold, silver, lead, copper and uranium from the earth is practiced in a manner inherently threatening to human health. Several studies have addressed work-related illnesses suffered by hardrock miners. Yet relatively few studies have looked at hardrock mining's greater ecological effects …
bully power: A World Trade Organisation panel will examine the US claim that a tax imposed by Mexico on American soft drinks that use corn sweeteners violates international trade rules. Mexico's 20 per cent tax on soft drinks and syrups using high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) have almost halted the …
function table() { var popurl="html/20040815_negotiation.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=500,height=500,scrollbars=yes") } On August 15 last year, the eu and the us put forward a proposal as the basis for negotiations on agriculture at Cancun. It did not accommodate developing country concerns. So Brazil and India got together to work out an alternative one. Argentina …
This paper shows that attenuation formula for peak ground acceleration (PGA) for Chile subduction zone, derived from a homogeneous database for thrust interplate and inslab of intermediate depth earthquakes recorded on ‘hard rock’ and ‘rock and hard soil’, give systematically higher values than universal formulas proposed for subduction zones. Also …
People in the us, especially children, women and Mexican Americans, carry dangerously high levels of pesticides in their bodies, according to a recent study. Many of these toxic chemicals have serious health effects: cancers, infertility and birth defects. The study also zeroes in on companies responsible for the population's high …
The collapse of the World Trade Organization's (wto) ministerial meet at Cancun last year was a big shock to the eu. The union had calculated that it would drive home its agenda related to agriculture and the so-called
The Ecologist Green Party of Mexico (pvem) On February 24, 2004, scandal erupted when Mexican network giant Televisa and other media publicised a video showing images of senator Jorge Gonzales
Cancun: a paper tiger jurgen maier The strategy of the European Union (eu) did seem to be transformed in the conference centres of Cancun. A coherent eu policy is non-existent. Europe is deeply divided between the American satellites (the uk, Spain and Italy) and the Gaullist camp (France, Germany and …
October 16, 2003 saw the release in the uk of Farm Scale Evaluations of GM Crops , the largest-ever field trials to be hitherto held. Commissioned by the uk government in 1999, the crops on trial were Bayer's oilseed rape, maize and fodder beet, and Monsanto's sugar beet. According to …
Nine years since the North America Free Trade Agreement (nafta) was created, the environmental impacts of trade liberalisation in the region remain uncertain. It is clear, however, that neither the dire environmental fears predicted nor the direct improvements in environmental performance, stemming from higher income, have generally materialised. Between 1995 …
In December, it will be five years since the World Bank (wb) formally adopted its Operational Policy on pest management (op 4.09). However, two recently released reports of the Pesticide Action Network North America (panna) clearly show "widespread violations of the wb's pest management policy'. op 4.09 requires World Bank …
more than a month after the debacle in Cancun, Mexico, where global trade talks collapsed, the stalemate persists. Two crucial World Trade Organization (wto) meetings in Geneva have not yielded any noteworthy results. And while the deliberations have resumed informally, little progress can expected anytime soon. The heads of delegation …
The first day of a multilateral conference involving most of the world’s nations is usually spent on procedural matters. So it was at Cancun, Mexico, where the Fifth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was held from September 11 to September 14, 2003. After the usual ceremonial inauguration, …
At Cancun (“snakepit” in Spanish), it was widely expected that negotiations on agriculture would make or break the talks. However, delegates were quick to point to two other issues as equally damaging: (a) the manner in which the Cotton Initiative was methodically dismissed by the US; and (b) the poisonous …
What kind of ripples were let loose by the breakdown of talks? Celso Amorim, Brazil's minister of external relations and leader of the G-22 group, felt that the lack of engagement (of developing nations) in the Singapore issues, which mirrored the lack of engagement (of the developed world) on agriculture, …
negotiations on the crucial issue of agriculture intensified in the build-up to the Fifth World Trade Organization (wto) Ministerial Conference in Cancun, Mexico, with several developing countries joining hands to take on the formidable eu-us combine. The latter presented a joint paper on August 13 at the wto general council …
a crucial decision confronts the forthcoming Fifth World Trade Organization (wto) Ministerial Conference in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003: whether or not to launch negotiations on a possible multilateral framework on investment. Issues such as the very need for this type of an arrangement under the wto, and the pro-investor …
Imagine this is the India of the 1970s. The lush green of high-yielding rice and wheat varieties is spreading far and wide in the Indo-Gangetic belt. The much-awaited green revolution is on in full swing. Godowns in moffusil towns as well as cities are filled with sacks of imported pl-480 …
