Small-scale farmers can double food production within 10 years in critical regions by using ecological methods, a new UN report* shows. Based on an extensive review of the recent scientific literature, the study calls for a fundamental shift towards agroecology as a way to boost food production and improve the situation of the poorest.

The government and Central Bank of Bangladesh is presently operating the expulsion of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Prof. Muhammad Yunus founded by him from the "bank for the poor," Grameen. Instead there will now take over the state power. Grameen Bank is currently one of the poorest themselves as cooperative with the open letter we want to prevent this scandalous nationalization of the most successful "Bank of the Poor". Every vote counts support. We ask everyone to participate in this action and each one's friends to call attention.

Just like last year’s World Social Forum held in Belem (Brazil), the Forum in Dakar took place under the impression of the deep crisis of neoliberal globalization. Whereas the economy has recovered for some time already in some regions of the world, it started to do so recently in others. But all that cannot hide the existence of deep social, economic and ecological problems. The WSF provided a meeting point for a broad range of individuals originating in movements and civil society who hope to overcome neoliberal globalization: Either by establishing social and ecological regulations, for instance by implementing a “Green New Deal”, or by breaking with capitalism in general. This range of political alternatives characterized this WSF, just as the alterglobalist movement in general. In the run up to Dakar, Gustave Massiah (2011a & 2011b)* wrote a widely acknowledged book and published 12 theses on the alterglobalist movement. By Sven Giegold

Report provides a roadmap for food security and agricultural investment, revealing 15 high- and low-tech solutions that are helping to reduce hunger and poverty in Africa. Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2011 Shows Agricultural Innovation Is Key to Reducing Poverty, Stabilizing Climate.

“Bread and Freedom” said the insurgents’ many posters in Cairo and Tunis. The hunger of millions of people and rising food prices were undoubtedly among the triggers of both revolutions. One of the main causes of hunger is climate change and the weather extremes that precede it, a fact which climatologists have been predicting for years.

The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) releases its Annual Report 2010: Human Rights Situation in Tibet. This 90-page report documents violation of right in Tibet in the area of Civil and Political Rights, Religious Freedom, Right to Education and Right to Subsistence.

Energy production from plants could provide up to twenty percent of the world's energy demand in 2050, half of it from biomass plantations alone – but only at the price of a substantial expansion of land used for cultivation, to the expense of nature. This is the finding of a study carried out by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) “which for the first time determines the potential and the risks of energy production from biomass plantations in a complex biogeochemical computer simulation,“ lead author Tim Beringer says. Human land use could increase by ten to thirty percent, depending on the scenario, and irrigation water demand could double.

Even global warming of just 1.5 degrees Celsius would have consequences for centuries. The oceans store elevated temperatures for a longer time than was previously thought. This is due to a change in ocean-atmosphere heat exchange, scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research discovered. Heat in lower oceanic layers is trapped by a cooling of upper layers, says a study which is about to be published in the journal Earth System Dynamics.

The presentation of the ‘Laudatio’ to Hermann Scheer today is not only a great honour for me but indeed a personal pleasure and satisfaction as I am connected in friendship since many years with both Hermann Scheer, the awardee, and with the sponsor of this Solar Energy Medal of Merit, Karl Wolfgang Böer. By Wolfgang Palz | Mai 2009

A documentary about the worldwide destruction of food. Why do we throw away so much? And how can we stop this kind of waste?