In Our World: 22 March 2013 (protests, migration, forests in flux and more)

New Visions for Sustainable Development

• Scientists writing in Nature propose a new way to think about sustainable development. Andy Revkin has a useful summary in which Owen Gaffney explains all.
• John Elkington highlights seven changes that could help businesses make breakthroughs in sustainability.
• The Independent Research Forum – IIED included – also published their new vision of eight shifts needed for humanity to achieve sustainable development.
• Peggy Liu, chair of Chinese non-profit JUCCCE, wants to change the way we talk about sustainability.

Land, Money and Protest

• Communities are protesting over land deals in Tanzania and in Malaysia, where one farmer was badly hurt in a violent attack.
• NGOs call on the World Bank to end its support for a Honduran palm oil company, which they link to dozens of murders.
• World Bank told to investigate complaints by Ethiopians of forced evictions.

Forests in Flux

• Satellites show that deforestation accelerated in a key Madagascar park after the 2009 coup d’état.
• Hunting can lead to rapid change in rainforest structure.
• Logging and ecotourism have had a huge impact on a wildlife icon, Mexico’s monarch butterfly.
• An undercover investigation by Global Witness exposes corrupt forest deals in Malaysia.
• Anna Bolin looks at the threat large-scale agro-industrial plantations pose to forests, communities and the success of REDD+.

Sticky Business

• Peter Guest explores whether the new surge in oil and gas exploration will be a boon or a curse in Kenya's arid Turkana?
• Indigenous communities in the Amazon unite against Canadian oil giant.
• Uganda’s President Museveni asks Tullow Oil to explain bribe claims while parliamentarians there call upon the President himself to explain.

Wild Things

• Tanzania’s top wildlife official asks the United States NOT to classify lions as endangered.
• Scientists say that forcing companies to carry out costly biodiversity surveys often backfires. Zoe Cormier reports

Roads Bad? Roads Good?

• A new paper in Nature says that roads could help rather than harm the environment.
• On his blog, Richard Conniff explains the paper and what it means for governments, mining and logging companies, and the taxpayers who pay for roads.

On the Move

• An international network of lawyers wants countries to commit funds to help people forced from their homes by climate change. Chinadialogue’s Olivia Boyd has the story.
• Peter Sutherland, chair of Goldman Sachs International and the London School of Economics, says migration is development.

Greening Economies

• Adinda Hasan describes how the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan is trying to balance ‘green growth’ and economic expansion.
• The World Future Council says in a new report that feed-in tariffs can unlock Africa’s untapped renewable energy potential.
• Fish will be at the centre of Malawi’s shift to a green economy.

News and Views

• Hannah Ryder blogs on the shift from "aid effectiveness" to "development effectiveness"
• Henrik Ernston hails Cityscapes – an urban magazine from the global South
• Maureen Azuh reports from the 5th Lagos Climate Change Summit.

Food, Glorious Food

• An intiative to provide food for school children creates a new market for small-holder farmers.
• Genna Reed and Rachael Ludwick debate Golden Rice following this NPR radio report.
• In 10 years Cambodia lost more than half of its seasonally flooded grasslands to industrial agriculture and illegal drainage. Mongabay.com has the story.

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.