In Our World: 8 February 2013 (forests, farms, money and more)

Forest Positives…

• Asia Pulp and Paper – a major driver of deforestation – has announced it will stop cutting down trees in virgin rainforests. Even the company’s nemesis Greenpeace has hailed the move. Kate Sheppard has the story.
• From slash-and-burn to Amazon heroes. Jeremy Hance interviews the filmmaker whose new video series highlights an agricultural transformation.

…and Negatives

• Poachers have killed more than 11,000 forest elephants in Gabon's Minkebe National Park rainforest since 2004. The park is home to more than half of the 100,000 members of this subspecies.

America's Climate Game

• The Guardian reports that US carbon emissions are at their lowest levels since 1994, and Ensia.com calls President Obama a “stealth climate warrior”…
• But the World Resources Institute says the US is falling short of its 2020 emissions target and the US Department of Agriculture warns in a new report [PDF] of the dangers climate change poses to the sector.

The Accountability of Corporations

• A Dutch court says Shell is responsible for oil spills in Nigeria. Audrey Gaughran, Amnesty International’s Africa Programme Director, discusses what this means.

On Message

• A new book – reviewed here -- says the media has failed on climate change. Is that true where you live?
• Jen Christiansen, art director at Scientific American, explains how art aids science communication.
• DeLene Beeland summarises the session on narrative writing that she co-organised at the ScienceOnline2013 conference.

Land Ahoy

• Agribusiness now owns 55 per cent of Cambodia's arable land. That’s just one of the many factlets in this opinion piece in the New York Times by Michael Kugelman, co-editor of “The Global Farms Race: Land Grabs, Agricultural Investment, and the Scramble for Food Security.”

Money Matters

• The World Bank estimates that, last year, 30 million Africans who have left their home country sent back US$60 billion to 120 million relatives and friends.
• The Guardian has a cool infographic that shows where the money flows.

The Divest Test

• Three US colleges have now withdrawn their investments in fossil fuels, and divestment campaigns are underway on 200 more campuses. Bill McKibben explains in this video interview with Democracy Now.
• Al Gore has thrown his weight behind the campaign for Harvard University to divest.

Down on the farm

• VIDEO: Gordon Conway on “Linking food, farmers & markets”—his keynote speech at the annual general assembly of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development. There’s more video from the meeting here.
• Luigi Guarino points out here that while  “traditional farming hold all the aces” it must be protected with all kinds of international treaties.

Thoughts and Ideas

• Matt Andrews says the post-2015 development goals should be shaped around country-specific problems, not global agendas
• Mark Tran says we need to make customary laws work for women
• Eve Andrews asks “are earth markets the new farmers’ markets?”
• Lawrence Haddad: “The Drugs (policies) Don't Work: Can Development Help?”

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.