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 -
Hurricane Sandy demonstrated how a large-scale catastrophic weather event, like Hurricane Katrina of 2005, is not a once-off incident, but a recurrent phenomenon.
Extreme weather has the potential to set off other crises and disasters too. Japan’s tsunami was quickly followed by the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown magnifying the scale of the disaster from a single extreme event to a multi-crisis economically transformative event -- demonstrated in Japan now debating the use of...
Glenn Ashton -
South Africa may contain the world’s fifth largest reserves of shale gas. Yet there remain critical questions that have neither been raised nor addressed regarding the exploitation of this and other regional gas reserves. The fact is that the full implications of this potentially game-changing proportion of energy supply have not yet been properly examined or analysed. We need to carefully consider how to integrate them into our national and regional energy mix.
The Karoo could...
Sabrina Artel -
South African farmers went to the US to see what fracking might do to their land -- and what they learned terrified them. An American activist documents their experience and concerns.
South Africa announced the end to its moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (known as fracking) on September 7. The African National Congress-led government first declared the moratorium on fracking in April 2011 because of the growing public outcry. This controversial technique for extracting natural gas is a...
Glenn Ashton -
The pesticide industry is the only industry on earth which has, as its primary intention, the dispersal of poisons throughout the environment in order to kill living organisms. Only small amounts of toxins applied actually reach the intended target. The bulk of these chemicals are liberated into our soil, air, water and food, where they can remain active for decades, sometimes for ever.
Fifty years ago this month an eloquent book was published which heralded the birth of the modern...
Fazila Farouk -
Highlighting the need for a more skilled workforce, Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor, recently encouraged youngsters to choose science and technology as a career path at a prize-giving event linked to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope - the world’s largest radio telescope that will be hosted in the Karoo.
Pandor said, "We don't want to rely on extracting raw materials from mines and exporting them to other countries any longer. Many leading economies in...
Scott Thill -
"I don't consider this an environmentalist point of view; I'm just a human who is scared shitless of the future," says the director of the new film "Patagonia Rising."
Set in South America's breathtaking Andes landscape, the visually sweeping new documentary Patagonia Rising bills itself as a frontier story of water and power. But both its frontier and its story nevertheless belong to anyone on the planet that needs water to live.
We are countless compared to the...
