The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
SACSIS is concerned about the impact of climate change and environmental degradation on the lives of the poor. The poor carry a disproportionate burden as result of environmental injustice. SACSIS supports the ethical, balanced and responsible use of land and renewable resources.
Saliem Fakir -
The mention of green jobs salivates the eager tongues of politicians seeking quick answers for dismal economic prospects. Green jobs have become the new panacea for joblessness and a ‘pathway out of poverty’.
Statistics dazzle and sometimes flail the timid heart. Countries that have used the recession to kick-start a new industrial opportunity have seized on the idea of the green sector as a strategic choice. It has also helped them save jobs given the rapidity with which other...
Patrick Bond -
The decade since the Seattle World Trade Organisation (WTO) fiasco on November 30, 1999, taught civil society activists and African leaders two powerful lessons.
First, working together, they have the power to disrupt a system of global governance that meets the Global North’s short-term interests against both the Global South and the longer-term interests of the world’s people and the planet.
Second, in the very act of disrupting global malgovernance, major concessions can be...
Rebecca Solnit -
Next month, at the climate change summit in Copenhagen, the wealthy nations that produce most of the excess carbon in our atmosphere will almost certainly fail to embrace measures adequate to ward off the devastation of our planet by heat and chaotic weather. Their leaders will probably promise us teaspoons with which to put out the firestorm and insist that springing for fire hoses would be far too onerous a burden for business to bear. They have already backed off from any binding...
Saliem Fakir -
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released its "State of the World Population 2009" report on the 18th of November. It chose to take up a politically delicate topic, the relationship between climate change, population stabilisation and the importance of gender.
The fundamental question it seeks to address is: how much of a threat is the growth in population to the world and how much of this increase will lead to a spike in green house gas (GHG) emissions?
As the report...
Glenn Ashton -
All international agreements are moulded around the fine diplomatic art of compromise. The upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen are no different; compromises will have to be made by all parties in one form or another. But the real question we need to ask is whether these compromises will inadvertently trigger chain reactions that stand to damage the environment rather than protect it.
Climate change is only one threat amongst many to global ecosystems. Our oceans are being overfished by...
Ronnie Hall -
In just a few weeks, government negotiators will be jetting in to Europe primed and ready to hammer out a new global deal: fractious, coffee-fuelled all-night negotiations seem inevitable, as each country battles to reach some kind of face-saving deal that sounds far-reaching and progressive, but won’t damage its own economy. All involved claim to be worried about the possibility that talks might collapse: but would a deal, any deal, be better than nothing?
The answer is a resounding...
