In Our World: 21 February 2013 (food, water, mining and more)

Deadly Concern

• Fred Pearce -- writing for Yale Environment 360 -- examines whether 2012 was the worst year yet for violence against those working to protect the environment

Mining Matters

• Mongabay.com reports that Brazil has rejected a Canadian company's bid to mine a controversial Amazon dam site for gold.
• Global Witness has welcomed the move by EU finance ministers to maintain sanctions against Zimbabwe’s diamond sector.

From the Blogs

• Kirsty Newman gets beyond the hyperbole about science and development
• Rosebell Kagumire profiles Congolese journalists and activists whose freedom of expression is never certain.

South-to-South

• China has overtaken the EU as Brazil’s top trading partner, says the Climate News Network, which explores what this means for the Amazon and agriculture.

Forest Crime

• INTERPOL’s has arrested close to 200 people and seized of millions of dollars’ worth of timber in Latin America, in its first international operation targeting large-scale illegal logging.

Climate Action (or Inaction)

• Edward Cameron explains why he thinks climate justice will dominate the UN talks this year in this piece for Responding to Climate Change.
• Brazil, South Africa, India and China are disappointed over low ambition from industrialised nations.
• Do you know what the world is getting wrong about China and climate change? Chinadialogue's Xu Nan and Zhang Chung explain.

Opening Up

• Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene is a new, non-profit, open-access journal.
• The UN Environment Programme has opened up its governance to all nations rather than the minority that usually sit on its governing council.

Better Harvest

• The UN treated government ministers and officials to a meal of blemished African fruit and vegetables to highlight how European supermarkets reject edible food.
• In a village in India's poorest state, Bihar, farmers are growing world record amounts of rice – with no GM seeds, and no herbicide, reports John Vidal.

Something in the Water?

• The new State of the Science of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals report by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Health Organization paints a complex picture of how pollution and factors such as age and nutrition could explain disease increases.
• New Scientist's Michael Marshall reports on a new study that says coastal areas in India, Bangladesh, Japan, South Africa, Argentina and Australia are likely to face more sea-level rise than other countries.

Land Grabs

• Jonathan Glennie writes on the Guardian's Poverty Matters blog about a report that makes the business case for companies investing in land to work with local communities.
• Matt Collin responds on the Aid Thoughts blog to urge people to remember the roles of governments and governance in the great land story that is unfolding.

Mike Shanahan is IIED’s press officer

In Our World is a new blog series. Each week it will publish links to top content about environment and development that we have seen online in the past week. You can subscribe to the RSS feed using this link. As we develop this new feature its content and length will vary – so do let us know what you like and don’t like about it.