Sustainable development

Among the experts and practitioners attending Fair Ideas, a group of highly-engaged students discussed the future of our generation, questioned speakers, filmed short video interviews and brainsto

While the outcomes from Rio +20 may not currently give grounds for much optimism, its value is likely to be in less tangible, longer-term changes in attitudes and understanding.

The UN draft agenda revealing the vision for Rio +20 sustainable development goals and what might be decided at the conference in June 2012 has been made public and reported on in the media.

Hunting for and engaging with the right partners has become a serious business for those who engage in sustainable development. The Millennium Development Goal 8 calls for the international community and the private sector to “DEVELOP A GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT” to achieve six key targets by 2015.

Some might say that archaeology is all about potsherds and old bones. But digging into the past can be a way of uncovering patterns of human behaviour with real relevance for our own time. And recently a group of archaeologists did just that, by unearthing an earlier culture that is an uncomfortable echo of our own.

A study by this University of Cambridge group claims that the Nazca — a people famed for creating the gigantic ‘Nazca Lines’, patterns on a Peruvian desert that can only be seen from a plane — precipitated their own decline through excessive deforestation.

When it’s done, the global tally could be 50 million. So says the International Labour Organization (ILO) about job losses from this recession.

In richer countries, that has meant growing pressure on central government resources, as formal jobs have been lost and draws on government benefits have increased. Estimates include 8 million jobs lost in the US and 1.3 million in the UK.

In developing countries, people are more likely to juggle several jobs than in the developed world. This means underemployment

Last week, over 100 bloggers reacted to Prem Sikka’s ‘Comment Is Free’ piece in the Guardian, which opined that ‘big business must be forced to temper its obsession with profit and align corporate practice with social justice and democracy’.