As Chinese everywhere were celebrating the first couple of days of the Year of Dragon on January 23rd and 24th, 2012. Chinese police fired indiscriminately on hundreds of Tibetans who had gathered peacefully to claim their basic rights in Drakgo, Serthar, Ngaba, Gyarong, and other neighboring Tibetan areas. Six Tibetans were reportedly killed and around sixty injured, some critically.

On the third annual Agriculture and Rural Development Day taking place in Durban, South Africa on December 3rd, governments will be grappling with an apparently unsolvable conundrum; how to feed a world that recently crossed the seven billion population mark, while reducing the contribution of agriculture to global climate change?

Further opening of the markets for agricultural products leads to lower production costs for food. This will happen at the expense of the environment though, if for example forests are turned into cropland. The conflict of interests between food production and climate protection is now shown by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in calculations for the years 2005 to 2045. For the first time, the effects of an advancing liberalization of agricultural trade were comprehensively analyzed through computer simulations, focusing both on the economic impacts and on those on land use and nature. This is one of the important issues to be discussed at the UN summit in Durban next week.

Heads of Rome-based UN food agencies call for forceful action. Food price volatility featuring high prices is likely to continue and possibly increase, making poor farmers, consumers and countries more vulnerable to poverty and food insecurity, the United Nations' three Rome-based agencies said in the global hunger report published.

A UNHCR report released today reveals deep imbalance in international support for the world's forcibly displaced, with a full four-fifths of the world's refugees being hosted by developing countries – and at a time of rising anti-refugee sentiment in many industrialized ones.

The estimated 2.5 billion people across the world who do not have access to reliable electricity supplies can benefit from clean and renewable energy generated through partnerships between governments and the private sector, the United Nations said.

Growing demands for freedom and justice across the Middle East and North Africa and the rise of social media offer an unprecedented opportunity for human rights change – but this change stands on a knife-edge, said Amnesty International as it launched its global human rights report on the eve of its 50th anniversary.

After the Tohoku Earthquake,Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Crisis.

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and massive tsunami wavesup to 38 meters high struck the northeastern part of Japan, causingwidespread devastation. As of April 11, a month after the disasters, thedeath toll exceeded 13,000, with 14,600 still missing and about 150,000people still in shelters. It will take a lot of time, money, and effortto restore and reconstruct the affected areas.

New report shows urgency of ensuring good governance in climate policy. As governments prepare to spend up to US$100 billion annually by 2020 to limit climate change and prepare for its impact, Transparency International (TI) warns of the corruption risks of climate finance flowing through new, untested channels and recommends strengthening governance systems to tackle them. The Global Corruption Report: Climate Change sets out practical guidelines to prevent corruption undermining climate change measures and calls on governments, international organisations, businesses and civil society to ensure good governance in climate policy.

Swiss Re’s new sigma study reveals that natural catastrophes and man-made disasters caused economic losses of USD 218 billion and cost insurers USD 43 billion. According to Swiss Re’s latest sigma study, worldwide economic losses from natural catastrophes and man-made disasters were USD 218 billion in 2010, more than triple the 2009 figure of USD 68 billion. The cost to the global insurance industry was more than USD 43 billion, an increase of more than 60% over the previous year. Approximately 304 000 people died in these events, the highest number since 1976.