Sustainability

This week, INESAD’s Ioulia Fenton and Adam Nelson published a cover story in the October 2012 issue of Global South Development Magazine, where Ioulia Fenton is also the Assistant Editor:

12 Initiatives Taking Positive Steps Towards a Healthier, Fairer and More Sustainable Food and Agriculture System

The world’s global food and agriculture system is not working. On the one end, the Green Revolution has converted much farmland into industrial agricultural production that uses man-made chemical pesticides and fertilizers instead of methods that are more harmonious with nature. This has led to the loss of biodiversity as tillage and use of pesticides have killed off or deterred other plant and animal species. Read More »

“What’s the difference between a recession and a depression,” asks a member of the public. “A recession is when you lose your job; a depression is when I lose mine,” replies an economist.

This is just one of numerous little jokettes that colour the pages of The Cartoon Introduction to Economics—a brilliant must-have for any student or teacher of economics or, indeed, anyone else interested in getting to know or simply recapping on the basics of a field that is currently positioned at the center of local, national and global decision-making. Read More »

There are some policies that are obviously correct from both environmental and economic viewpoints, but which are nevertheless difficult to implement. The elimination of fossil fuel subsidies is such an example. This year, the Bolivian government expects to spend at least US$750 million on direct subsidies to diesel (62%), gasoline (27%) and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) (10%) use (1). Apart from dramatically reducing funds available for public investment, these subsidies also encourage contamination, congestion and deforestation (2), all of which mean substantially higher social costs than the direct costs of the subsidy itself. The beneficiaries of the subsidy are dominated by the agro-industry in Santa Cruz, which profits greatly from the combination of cheap diesel and cheap land. Thus, the subsidy is by no means pro-poor, and a lot of the benefits are even lost to neighboring countries, as their nationals rent cheap land and use subsidized fuel for growing crops in Bolivia. For example, more than 70% of the area dedicated to soy production over the last decade is in the hands of foreigners (3). The Bolivian government realizes all this and has tried, unsuccessfully, to eliminate the fuel subsidy.

Read More »

One of the hardest things to do for anyone interested in issues of environmental sustainability is to translate ideas and complaints into practical, positive, change-making action. For those who try to teach the next generation of environmental and social leaders in schools, in communities, or even online, this is even more important—merely talking about problems is likely to inspire only the students’ depression and frustration at lack of solutions. Luckily, Ecoliterate, a new book by psychologist Daniel Goleman and Lisa Bennett and Zenobia Barlow of the Center of Ecoliteracy—an organization that supports and advances education for sustainable living—is a deep well of ideas for those seeking inspiration.

Read More »

“Nature is like love: one of the most beautiful things on earth,
but if you put a price on it, it becomes prostitution.”
Nele Marien

Every time somebody converts a hectare of forest into a hectare of agricultural land, they have—implicitly or explicitly—compared the value of standing forest to the value of agricultural land, arriving at the conclusion that agricultural land is more valuable to them. Read More »

INESAD’s Ioulia Fenton is currently researching food and agriculture topics at Worldwatch Institutes‘ Nourishing the Planet project (NtP). Check out her latest article that was featured on the NtP website:

Five Holistic Alternative Farming Methods: Agroecology at its Best

In March 2011, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Olivier De Schutter, presented a report highlighting how agroecology holds promise for alleviating hunger, reducing poverty, preserving the environment, and fighting climate change. Read More »

By Grahame Russel

Increasingly, over the past few years, information has been published about serious human rights violations and health and environmental harms being caused in Guatemala by (mainly) Canadian mining company operations: Goldcorp Inc., Radius Gold Inc., Tahoe Resources Inc., Hudbay Minerals, and others.

It is not possible to understand how these violations and harms occur, and will continue to occur, without understanding the political context.  Read More »

One of the primary lessons in Economics 101 is that of the rules of supply and demand in a market economy and their relationship to price. The basics being that the price of a product will adjust depending on the level of demand and level of supply in any given market and will eventually settle on an equilibrium when supply balances with demand.

Now we don’t need to go into all the details, as, for the sake of argument, we are interested in only one theoretical law governing this relationship. It states that should the market for a particular good get over-saturated with supply, then the price of this good will keep going down until a point where producers will stop making it or scale down their operations as they will no longer be as profitable. Read More »

“More and more and higher-level technology” is heralded as the way that the human population will eventually get itself out of the global troubles it has wreaked. Under-researched genetically modified seeds to be sold to poor rural farmers in India; financially, socially and environmentally expensive Three Dams Project in China; and ethically dubious biofuel alternatives made in order to stem the toxic air pollution of the global transport industry. Each high-tech solution has its merits and its downfalls, of course, but do we always need to be looking forward or could we learn something from our ancestors? Read More »