Paris climate talks kick off with rhetoric, will action follow?

December 1, 2015By David TurnbullFeatured

The COP21 climate negotiations in Paris opened on Monday with a flurry of activity, speeches, and announcements from some 150 world leaders gathered to kick things off. It’s hard to come away from a day like yesterday without feeling a tinge of hope continuing…that is, until the real negotiations begin. While many impressed with their calls for action … Read More

Rio – 20

June 25, 2012By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured

First the gloss from Rio. This was the UN’s largest ever conference with 45,300 delegates from more than 180 nations. The UN says it has obtained pledges worth $500 billion from governments and companies for projects aimed at reducing the strain on the planet’s resources. There are nearly 700 commitments from governments to supposedly cut … Read More

EU Commissioner Calls for End to Subsidies

June 20, 2012By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured

Connie Hedegaard, the outspoken EU Commissioner for Climate Action, has lent her weight to the growing calls for ending fossil fuel subsidies. Earlier in the week, Oil Change International revealed that fossil fuel subsidies could be as high a $1 trillion. Oil Change has been working with others NGOs to make phasing out subsidies a … Read More

Greenwashing +20

June 19, 2012By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured

If you open a copy of the Financial Times this morning, you will see a full page advert from the “Friends of Rio+20” with a message to the delegates at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development. These “friends” say they are an assortment of big business, scientific and civil society leaders, but a quick glimpse … Read More

Universal energy access stressed at UN

September 22, 2010By Elizabeth BastBlog Post

Yesterday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed the importance of making energy available to the poor as a foundation for combating poverty as world leaders gathered in New York this week at the Millennium Development Goal Summit. At a high-level event yesterday, the Secretary General said that it is lack of political will that is keeping … Read More

A complete mockery of forest protection

February 25, 2010By Andy RowellBlog Post 2 Comments

Anyone following the palm oil debate would not have been surprised by the findings of the BBC’s top investigative programme Panorama earlier in the week, which investigated the industry. Using GPS technology and satellite imaging, the BBC exposed how the palm oil giant Duta Palma Group is logging on both high conservation lands and deep … Read More