Free Republic

RAS AL KHAIMAH // Sustainable development is the only answer to spreading the wealth among nations, the Ruler of Ras al Khaimah told a science forum yesterday. Sheikh Saud bin Saqr was speaking yesterday at the opening of the 17th Annual Micromachine Summit, a gathering of leading research scientists from 22 countries. "I can't overemphasise the role of scientists and research," he said. "What is our wealth? It's really nothing. With the six or seven billion people on Earth, we have great challenges ahead of us. Only through knowledge and research can we afford to make a better future for...

Rep. Keith Ellison, the Muslim Congressman from Minnesota who shed tears in protest over the congressional hearings on the growing radicalization of Muslims in the U.S., wrote the foreword to a book entitled Green Deen: What Islam Teaches about Protecting the Planet. In Arabic, “deen” means religious creed. The author of Green Deen is Ibrahim Abdul Matin. He wrote his book to demonstrate that there is a close relationship between Islam and modern environmentalism. It turns out Ellison would have been a good witness to how Muslims are being radicalized as foot solders not only for global Jihad but for...

The UAE’s trade with the rest of the OIC countries has witnessed tremendous growth in the past five years, and the OIC Expo presents an opportunity to give a further fillip for intra-trade among Islamic countries, according to senior officials attending the show that got under way today (April 24) at Expo Centre Sharjah. The 13the edition of the show was inaugurated by H.H. Sheikh Sultan Bin Mohammed Bin Sultan Al Qassimi, Crown Prince and Deputy Ruler of Sharjah. The intra-trade among member countries has touched US$ 550 billion in 2009 and this is in for a 20 per cent...

THE ONLY PART YOU NEED TO SEE: "United States Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke noted that economic indicators did not adequately capture the economy in relation to the Earth’s natural systems. “This is like flying a very large airplane with no map,” he said. Societies had already exceeded planetary boundaries in terms of climate, biodiversity laws and overproduction of nitrogen. A “de-growth” agenda was essential. “We have to get discourse about de-growing the economy going, especially in North America,” he insisted. The sustainable development discourse should be grounded in the Earth Charter, a document developed over a decade of...

Speech by Ambassador Pablo Solón, Permanent Representative of the Plurinational State of Bolivia to the United Nations, on the Occasion of the General Assembly Interactive Dialogue on Harmony with Nature, New York, April 20th, 2011 Victor Hugo, the author of Les Misérables, once wrote: “How sad to think that nature speaks and mankind doesn’t listen.” We are here today to attempt to have a dialogue not just among States, but also with nature. Although we often forget it, human beings are a force in nature. In reality, we are all a product of the same Big Bang that created the...

With more than 50,000 women dying annually from unsafe abortions, especially in Africa and South-Central Asia, Governments everywhere must make greater efforts to ensure that the old-age and widespread practice of abortion was safe, legal and available to all women and girls, today's keynote speaker told the Commission on Population and Development as it continued its general debate. "When political leaders and policymakers fail to implement known, affordable solutions to an entirely preventable problem, one can only conclude that they do not sufficiently value the women and girls whose lives are at stake," said Eunice Brookman-Amissah, Vice-President for Africa of...

International trade union leaders meeting April 12 in Madrid with the UN Panel on Sustainability and business and NGO representatives are calling for decisive and ambitious climate action in the lead-up to the Durban climate summit at the end of this year, and the "RIO+20" meeting in 2012. The union proposals are centered on a tax on financial transactions, a universal social protection floor, doubling the number of green and decent jobs and ensuring a just transition to a greener future. "The current economic model is heading us towards more crises, unemployment and environmental degradation", said Zwelizima Vavi, General Secretary...

The unrest engulfing the Middle East and North Africa shows that more inclusive and sustainable development is crucial for countries around the world, and more progress should be made in creating more economic, education and civil opportunities for common people, World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick said here on Wednesday. "There are lessons here for the region, for the world, for governments, for development institutions and for economics," Zoellick said at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics. The region has the highest unemployment among developing regions, the highest jobless rates among the best educated as well as the lowest...

I've said it a lot recently, and it's only getting more true with time: when it comes to taking on climate change, Paris is kicking butt. With major plans to redesign its river banks, create a pedestrian paradise out of the Les Halles shopping mall, and improve the already great Vélib bike share system, the City of Lights isn't slowing down. And now a new exhibit is having fun imagining what the City will look like in the year 2100: 2º C warmer, due to climate change, but also a whole lot greener, where pedestrians rule and every building has...

President of the G8,Joseph Deiss, opines on global governance and the Millenium Development Goals.

Famed for having the steepest wine-growing mountains in Europe, the Rhineland county of Cochem-Zell is engaged in an uphill climb to ward off climate change - by working to become a carbon-neutral region by 2050. Cochem-Zell's 2008 declaration that it intended to become a zero-emissions county generated great regional fanfare in southwestern Germany. Curiously, this county of 65,000 residents in the Mosel River Valley just south of Cologne has attracted surprisingly little national, much less international, attention. The initiative is well-known, however, within the insular community of climate change researchers and policy-makers. It is also playing a starring role in...

Africa is well poised to take advantage of a host of opportunities on the continent for building a ‘green economy,’ one that generates decent jobs in an environmentally sustainable way, a senior United Nations official said today. “This continent is in many ways the envy of the 21st century world,” Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), told African ministers of finance, planning and economic development gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “Africa is rich in the kinds of natural resources that in many parts of the world have been over-exploited and diminished by centuries of unsustainable development,”...

Four communities have rejected “Sustainability” since the first of the year. More will surely follow. To confront sustainability in your community you should learn everything you can about it. More than 600 American communities have entered into agreements with ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives), an international non-government organization created by the United Nations. ICLEI-USA was formed in 1995. ICLEI is a tool of both the U.N. and the federal government, used to transform American cities into “Sustainable Communities.” What is, and is not, sustainable is defined in Agenda 21, a 40-chapter document adopted in 1992 by the United...

The Inter-American Development Bank annual conference kicked off Friday in Calgary, Canada. The meeting is focusing on the sustainable future for emerging cities. Our CNC correspondent Al Campbell has more details at the scene. STANDUP: AL CAMPBELL, CNC CORRESPONDENT "Sustainable emerging cities was very much the focus of the Inter-American Development Bank conference being held here in Calgary, Alberta, on Friday afternoon. IDB president Luis Alberto Moreno spoke about how there was 3,500 emerging cities around the world. Each of these cities has a population between 100,000 people and two million people. He says that their sustainable development was vital...

"Noting the interdependence among peace, security and development, President Rousseff and President Obama reaffirmed their desire to build a just and inclusive world order, which promotes democracy, human rights and social justice." "They reaffirmed the imperative to modernize the international financial institutions in a way that reflects the changes in the world economy and moves towards global financial stability, sustainable development and poverty reduction." "They welcomed the strengthening of the collaboration on environment and climate change, including under the Common Agenda on Environment and the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation Regarding Climate Change, and agreed to include in the Common...

California is the unfortunate testbed for almost every new lunatic idea promulgated by the radical left—which is to say, every idea they offer—the complete explanation for why the state is such a train wreck. One of the worst examples is California’s oppressive environmental statutes. In combination with these, Agenda 21 has spread like cancer throughout California. Today I received some explicit examples of how this is playing out in Ventura County. The county Board of Supervisors is attempting to impose, almost word-for-word, the Wildland Project’s despotic edicts that will turn wide swaths of rural private property into complete wastelands. A...

Archie Bunker on Democrats, sacrifice, & climate change.

PR05/2011 February 23, 2011, Vienna, Austria Press inquiries: info@ofid.org The OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) and nine partner countries of which four are African (Ethiopia, the Gambia, Niger and Sierra Leone), two Asian (Cambodia and China), one Latin American (Cuba) and one European (Bosnia & Herzegovina) has signed ten loan agreements to finance projects in key development sectors - energy, education, transport, health, water and agriculture. Implementation of the projects will provide vital services to communities that strive to improve living standards. All ten projects will be co-financed by the respective governments and various international institutions, including BANDES (Banco...

What is Agenda 21? According to Michael Shaw, it is an NGO effort to limit agriculture and even gain control over private property. Hear what your county may be doing to promote an extreme sustainable development agenda and to subvert your property rights.

France, as current head of the Group of 20 countries, will help the transition to a global financial system based on 'several international currencies', French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said today. Lagarde, speaking ahead of a G20 finance ministers meeting in Paris on Friday and Saturday, said the world had to move on from the 'non-monetary system' it now has to one 'based on several international currencies'. Accordingly, France wants to see less need for countries, especially the emerging economies, to accumulate huge foreign reserves, she said. At the same time, international capital flows should be better regulated and the...