Category Archives: Environment news

Calderdale Council Partnerships – including Environmental Partnerships

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In the Calderdale Council section of the Who’s Who page, I’ve been trying to figure out what all the Council talk of partnerships means – particularly in terms of what environmental partnership means and how that bears on Calderdale’s Energy Future vision.

The Calderdale Council Partnerships Support Team has now kindly cleared up a lot of questions:

What are Calderdale Council partners?

Calderdale Council partners can refer to organisations and businesses where the Council has entered into a legal partnership with one or more bodies.  There is a wider definition which describes partners as those organisations, bodies or agencies where they and the Council have jointly agreed to work towards common aims.  Thus the wide definition would include all those local and regional organisations that the Council works with to deliver agreed objectives.
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Corporate sponsors of the Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum – and what they get in return

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Check out this webpage showing all the corporate sponsors of the Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum – which “will provide a venue for business, industry and investors to meet with Governments, local authorities, civil society and UN entities – with 2,000 participants expected”

And then check out what the United Nations is offering the corporate sponsors.
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What is the Green Economy? By Joanne Cabello of Carbon Trade Watch at Rio +20

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The Rio +20 People’s Summit is focussing on the problem that the United Nations, like many member states, seems to have effectively been captured by the private sector. The Climate Connections article says, “In the lead-up to the summit, major corporations positioning themselves to benefit from the market mechanisms being promoted have launched a greenwashing onslaught…”

UK delegation to Rio+20 – government, NGOs, Unilever & Aviva

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The ever-wonderful Otesha project is blogging about who’s who on the official UK delegation to Rio +20 (not hug-a-husky David Cameron, though).

In brief:

There is Non-Government Organisation (NGO) and Business representation on the delegation, something which has not previously happened at the The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Otesha Project blog asks:

” Is it good that Oxfam and WWF have close access to the delegation? Maybe, although it brings up interesting questions about how entrenched NGOs have become in the UN processes. Is it good that Unilever and Aviva do? I don’t think so…at the end of the day they are representing their shareholders… Because companies’ sole obligation to their shareholders is to turn a tidy profit.

And… if NGOs and Business get to have an official voice on the delegation… where the eff is the youth representation? Some of the other countries have official youth delegates, and rightly so. Because there are no other stakeholders who are going to be more affected by what happens here at Rio+20 than young people. Last night, we found out that any mention to a potential High Commissioner for Future Generations has been deleted from the text. This is not good enough. “

For the full list of our democratic representatives at Rio +20, see the blog.

 

Rio+20 day 5 live blog -reposted from Responding to Climate Change

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Here’s the link to Responding to Climate Change’s live blog on day 5, which has been mostly about desertification and also an RTCC report on the sorry “compromise document” that the Brazilian government’s produced as the basis for discussions by heads of states and ministers at the high-level sessions which start on Wednesday.

Growing your own food is great, but won’t solve problems caused by agribusiness

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This is the view of Stan Cox, a committed, long term food gardener who turned over his lawn to fruit and veg growing, as part of the Edible Estates movement in the USA.

While he says growing your own food is great and he has no regrets about doing it, he also  thinks that,

“The corporate agriculture industry would like nothing better than to see us spend all of our free time in our gardens and not in political dissent.”

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Petition Bayer to stop making pesticides linked to bee population decline

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On the basis of two studies that link bee population decline to a pesticide called neonicotinoid, public attention has turned to Bayer, the main company that makes and sells it. As a result, Bayer has had to put a motion on its Annual General Meeting agenda, that calls for the company to stop producing neonicotinoid.
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