In 2012, 31.752m people were displaced by climate and weather disasters, according to figures gathered by Norway’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
That’s around half the UK population – think of half your town or village being made homeless and desperately needing to find somewhere to go, and then multiply that by every town and village in the UK.
It’s pretty unthinkable, but that’s the reality.
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Join UK campaigners calling on Cameron to withhold £395m in so-called ‘aid’!
African farmers’ movements and civil society groups have rejected the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition as part of a “new wave of colonialism” targeting their food systems for corporate profit.
War on Want explains that this warning comes in a statement that the African Centre for Biosafety sent to G8 leaders on 3 June 2013 in advance of the `hunger summit’ hosted by David Cameron in London today (8 June). This includes a meeting of the G8‘s New Alliance.
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Midway along his life’s path, George Monbiot found himself on a dreary moor with no track to show him the way.
Lacking a poet ghost to guide him on the necessary descent into the circles of hell, through purgatory and on to paradise, Monbiot’s new book Feral conjures an Edenic fantasy of re-forested uplands, prowled by wolves, beavers and other top predators. In his dreams, he has banished the pesky sheep and hill farmers who between them have degraded this once and future biodiverse ecosystem.
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Last night the IEM management committee met with our shiny new social enterprise consultant Adrian Ashton, to work out how to move forward with the Green Food Adventures business plan. We’ve already done our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analyses for the five “fingers” of the proposed sustainable food business (formerly known as Growing Futures). You can read our revised Concept paper here.
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The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has given the lie to UK Coalition government claims that its field studies show that neonicotinoids do not cause unacceptable damage bees.
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If you’d like to learn how to make useful things out of green wood, you’re in luck. There is a choice of short courses this summer in Hebden Bridge, run by Keith from Blackbark and his friend Julie.
Absolute beginners are welcome. So, what might you turn your hand to?
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A new scientific paper reports on the greening of semi-arid regions since 1982, as a result of the “carbon fertilisation” effect. Plants grow by photosynthesising atmospheric carbon dioxide and turning it into hydrocarbons to feed on.
Australian scientist Randall Donohue and his team predicted that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, the result of increased fossil fuel burning worldwide, would increase the growth of plants in semi-arid areas.
20’s Plenty 4th Annual Conference on 23rd May brought together news of the campaign’s progress over the past year.
How did Care UK and Virgin Care end up with contracts to run GP services in Calderdale? And after Calderdale CCG completes its review of GP services and community unplanned care (ie urgent care that isn’t A&E), how many more privatised GP services are we going to end up with?
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Not that you’d realise it from outward appearances, but Richard Branson’s private health care company Virgin Care has contracts with Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group to run a dermatology clinic in Halifax, as well as three General Practice centres that go under the name of Meadow Dale Group Practice – one in Elland, one in Ovenden and one in Sowerby Bridge.
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