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IPS: Environment news

IPS, civil society's leading news agency, is an independent voice from the South and for development, delving into globalisation for the stories underneath.

Site: IPS Inter Press Service - Environment

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Law on Forest Rights Fails to Deliver
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BHUBANESWAR, India, Mar 13 (IPS) - A four-year-old landmark law that was supposed to bring profound changes in the lives of India?s tribal and forest-dwelling peoples has failed to deliver on that promise.

BIODIVERSITY: Lucrative Shark Trade Under Scrutiny
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WASHINGTON, Mar 12 (IPS) - As climate change transforms the acidity and oxygen levels of the world's waters with devastating effects for some marine species, others are facing an even more immediate threat from human consumption.

INDONESIA: Waste Composting Project Blazes Cleaner Path
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JAKARTA, Mar 11 (IPS) - Battling the pain from a boil on his left thigh, 45-year-old Inggit Tukino pulled his two-wheeled cart through the overcrowded alleys of a slum in Rawabebek, Penjaringan hamlet in here North Jakarta.

EDUCATION-URUGUAY: Gardens of Knowledge
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MONTEVIDEO, Mar 10 (IPS) - "Nature is wise, and if we take the time to observe it, we can learn so much" is the underlying philosophy of a number of innovative programmes being carried out in Uruguayan schools that are using gardens as a teaching resource, explained Edith Moraes, director of the national Primary Education Board.

TANZANIA: Weather Changes Turn Farming into Gamble with Nature
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DAR-ES-SALAAM, Mar 10 (IPS) - Changes in weather patterns have turned agriculture into a gamble with nature for Tanzanian farmers. Prolonged droughts and floods have made the lives of small-scale farmers, who don?t have access to irrigation, extremely difficult.

FINANCE: Self-Policing of Extractive Industries a "Dismal" Failure
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WASHINGTON, Mar 9 (IPS) - An international initiative that seeks to reform how governments profit from their natural resources should not reduce its existing standards of membership solely because candidate countries have been reluctant or incapable of meeting them, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday.

RIGHTS: "Famine Marriages" Just One Byproduct of Climate Change
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UNITED NATIONS, Mar 9 (IPS/TerraViva) - The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men, from higher death rates during natural disasters to heavier household and care burdens.

ENVIRONMENT-UGANDA: Landslides - Experts Warn Worst is Yet to Come
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KAMPALA, Mar 9 (IPS) - Fourteen-year-old Isaac Wadyegere of Bundesi village in Bududa district woke up to a rainy and chilly Monday morning and went to school as usual. But Mar. 1 was not a usual day in eastern Uganda.

ECUADOR: Avatar Downfall a Blow for Indigenous Communities
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QUITO, Mar 9 (IPS) - Science fiction blockbuster Avatar was the big loser in the Oscar awards ceremony - not only a blow for director James Cameron but also seen as a symbolic reverse in the struggle to recover Amazon rainforest areas in Ecuador from the effects of oil pollution.

PERU: Suspension of Mining Operation Merely a Placebo
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LIMA, Mar 9 (IPS) - Although the Peruvian government reported that it had suspended the exploration activities of the Afrodita mining company in the country's northern Amazon jungle region to avoid further protests by local indigenous people, officials took no actual steps to bring the firm's work to a halt.

ENVIRONMENT: Violent Backlash Against Climate Scientists
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UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 9 (Tierramérica) - Climate change science has come under full-scale attack in a last-ditch effort to delay or prevent action by the U.S. government against global warming, experts warn.

MALAWI: Patrilineal Inheritance Prevents Women?s Access to Land
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LILONGWE, Mar 9 (IPS) - Mercy Gondwe, 51, from Rumphi in northern Malawi, was married for 34 years. When her husband died in 2008, she assumed she would inherit the land they had been cultivating together since they got married. But this was not the case.

DEVELOPMENT-SRI LANKA: Water Woes Fall on Women?s Shoulders
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COLOMBO, Mar 9 (IPS) - As a wife of a rice farmer and mother of two children aged nine and two, Sanjeevani Bandara?s days are packed with chores. Yet while she used to be able to keep up with all she has to do in a day, this Sri Lankan mother now finds herself struggling to accomplish even the most basic tasks.

ENVIRONMENT-MEXICO: Green Areas to the Highest Bidder
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MEXICO CITY, Mar 8 (IPS) - Activists in Mexico complain that the deforestation threatening the environmental health of Mexico has been accentuated by the granting of public areas to private companies.

EUROPE: Green Finance Wise, or Otherwise
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BRUSSELS, Mar 8 (IPS) - A plan to give the European Union's lending arm a beefed-up mandate for financing the fight against climate change has drawn a sceptical response from campaigners on green and economic justice issues.