From Danielle Nierenberg On August 9, Food Tank is celebrating the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples by highlighting indigenous peoples’ contributions to biodiversity.
Category: Columns
Israel’s criminal behaviour
By Chandra Muzaffar The violent assault upon a number of unarmed passengers on board Al Awda, a ship bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza has exposed yet again the hideous face of Israeli occupation. Reports suggest that some of the victims…
India’s Yanadi people reclaiming rights one village at a time
Under the blazing midday sun, a tractor moves slowly along a dirt trail in Nacharwari Pallem, a village of the Yanadi indigenous people located some three hours from Chennai city in South India. Atop the tractor, women of the village…
Recipes for sustainability, meal by meal
From Danielle Nierenberg Chef, healthy food advocate and social entrepreneur Sam Kass is drafting a plan for everyone to eat flavorful meals for better health and a better world.
Unlocking private-sector funds for sustainable development
by Mahmoud Moh ieldin, Svetlana Klimenko Washington, DC – For the last three years, dozens of countries have gathered each July to present their national plans to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the latest of these United Nations…
Starved, bombed Yemen kids want trapped in flooded Thai Cave
By Robert J. Burrowes While the world watched and waited with bated breath for the outcome of the substantial global effort – involving over 100 cave divers from various countries, 1,000 members of the Thai Army and 10,000 others in…
Globalization, inequality, convergence, divergence
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Jul 26 2018 (IPS) – Economic divergence among countries and regions was never pre-ordained. According to the late cliometrician Angus Madison and other economic historians, the great divergence between the global North and…
15 organizations creating edible landscapes
From Danielle Nierenberg It may be surprising, but turf grass found on lawns, parks, and schoolyards requires up to 34 billion litres (nine billion gallons) of water per day and 31 million kilograms (70 million pounds) of pesticides for maintenance…
Israel: An American-Russian protectorate?
By Chandra Muzaffar It is partly because the mainstream Western media persists with its hysteria on Trump’s failure to stand up to Putin on alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US Presidential Election that other aspects of the meeting between…
Trade war – Developing countries should respond
By Martin Kh or Penang, Malaysia, Jul 24 2018 (IPS) – The escalating trade war initiated by United States President Donald Trump is a major threat to world trade and the global economy. The developing countries will be among those…
Trump and Brexit
by Simon Wren-Lewis As Trump makes clear, the UK can choose US rules or EU rules. Brexit is about having no say in either. Of course, every Leave voter is an individual with his or her own motives. But if…
The curse of joblessness
Tazlina Zamila Khan The recent data of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics revealed that currently, the total number of unemployed is 4 crore 82 lakhs. It might represent only the quantity, but each number has its own sad story of being…
Balancing trade wars
By Sunita Narain New Delhi, Jul 20 2018 (IPS) – A global trade war has broken out. The United States fired the first salvo and there has been retaliation by the European Union, Canada, China and even India. Tariffs on…
Mandela’s most important lesson – belief in youth: Obama
One hundred years ago, Nelson Mandela was born in the South African village of Mvezo. On Wednesday, I had the honour of celebrating his remarkable life by sharing a few lessons I’ve taken from him with the people of South…
Remember to call grandparents: Multigenerational mobility
Submitted by Daniel Mahler A large body of literature has shown that the outcomes of children are tied to the outcomes of their parents or, in other words, that children face different life prospects based on their family background. But…
‘Technologies that facilitate development should profit all’
From Danielle Nierenberg A sustainable food system requires cultivating equality for the people that nourish the world’s population—farmers. Yet, farmers experience inequality at all levels of the food system. Societal tools— including gendered roles, obstacles to accessing resources, or cultural…
Illegality and Italy’s new government
by Andrea Lorenzo Capussela One trait that distinguishes Italy from her Western peers is the gravity and coexistence of corruption, tax evasion, and organised crime. One encouraging trait of the new governing coalition, among many concerning ones, is its pledge…
Air pollution remains cause for alarm in Asia
By Sinsiri Tiwutanond Bangkok, Jul 17 2018 (IPS) – At the start of Bangkok, the pollution in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, reached six times the World Health Organization’s guideline levels for air quality.
Overcome crisis of globalisation: Redo politics, int’l coop
by Ngaire Woods Recently there’s been a lot of talk about globalisation being pushed back. How would you characterise the situation? I think there was always a deal that permitted globalisation to go ahead. If you think about the 1950s…
We need a food revolution
by Bob Geldof London – In 1984, I gathered the most successful musicians of the time to form a “supergroup” called Band Aid to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. The next year, an even larger grouping was formed…
Are we still good Europeans?
by Jürgen Habermas When I graduated from high school, my career aspiration was listed on my diploma: Habermas wants to become a journalist, it said. Yet once I began working for the Gummersbach section of the Cologne daily Kölner Stadtanzeiger,…
UN Parliamentary Assembly move gains support
A long standing proposal for the creation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) is slowly gathering momentum.
The last chapter of The Macedonian Question?
by Evangelos Liaras It all felt like the end of a James Bond movie: a flotilla of motorboats sailing across a peaceful lake in a Balkan landscape. On the shores of Lake Prespa, the prime ministers of Greece and soon-to-be…
Not an abdication by the left
by Stuart Holland James Downes and Edward Chan (Social Europe, 29 June) have written of the debacle of the social democratic Left in Europe and echoed others such as Sheri Berman who has claimed that this is because it has…
Family planning is a human right
By Tharanga Yakupitiyage UN, Jul 11 2018 (IPS) – It has been five decades since the international community affirmed the right to family planning but women still remain unable to enjoy this right, which is increasingly under attack around the…
New Deal For Irish Families
by Stephan Köppe With the repeal of the 8th amendment, Irish women and their partners will have a choice if and when to have children later this year. This choice will have major implications for social policy and the development…
Can the West’s democracy survive China’s rise to dominance?
By Martin Jacques This is a guest contribution to the debate: Should the West worry about the threat to liberal values posed by China’s rise? For long the West has thought that history is on its side, that the global…
Trade unions and a completely different world of work
by Kate Holman Work is not what it used to be. Change is accelerating on all sides. And whether it is robots replacing people; digitalisation; freelance, short-term and zero-hours contracts or decarbonisation targeting traditional industries, few workers in Europe remain…
Towards the disappearance of politics
The Crisis Of Political Debate Within Contemporary Democracies Exactly sixty years ago, in 1958, Hannah Arendt published The Human Condition. In her philosophical masterpiece, Arendt indicated that the “Vita Activa”, a life actively encompassing public political debate and political action,…
Could The US Become A Democratic Dictatorship?
China calls itself a democratic dictatorship, so it looks like the title’s question is a very odd one to ask. You can find various indices that measure countries on a line with dictatorship at one end and democracy at the…