Search Results for: United Nations

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE LATEST and probably last draft communiqué for next week’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong (Dec 13-18) includes the hopeful goal of setting overall targets for liberalising cotton production subsidies worldwide. This has long been the determined ambition of west African states, who want developed world producers, especially the United States, to stop subsidising their cotton industries, payments that depress world prices, impeding exports from low-wage developing countries.…

Keith Nuthall
THE COMPREHENSIVE wine trade deal recently concluded between the United States and the European Union (EU), that has been controversial in some corners of the EU drinks industry (such as in the Champagne region), has been formally approved by the EU Council of Ministers.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
AN ENVIRONMENTAL organisation has blamed American businesses for dodging safe, but costly recycling methods for their used computer equipment by shipping them to developing countries in an insincere show of philanthropy, which actually causes severe environmental damage.

A report called ‘The Digital Dump: Exporting Reuse and Abuse to Africa,’ written by the Seattle-based Basel Action Network, says the bulk of used computer equipment sent from the United States to developing countries for use in homes, schools and businesses is often neither usable nor repairable.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers this month (November) resume their discussions on the medium-term (2007-13) budget for EU institutions, they have a lot of balls to juggle, including farm subsidies, the infamous British rebate, overall economic competitiveness and future EU research spending.…

BY MARK ROWE
WEATHER forecasters have always come in for criticism but the reality is that forecasting has evolved somewhat beyond the reliance of medieval truisms such as rain on St Swithun’s Day means 40 more days of showers. Today’s forecasts are more reliable than ever, and meteorologists can provide long-term predictions of wet weather, heat waves and other extreme events.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has released details of how it helped a cluster of Indian knitwear producers deal with liberalisation following India’s accession to the World Trade Organisation. The knitwear industry of Ludhiana, the Punjab, was helped to cope with a skilled worker shortage, a limited product range and excess reliance on a domestic market that was no longer protected.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Security Council has transferred more than US$2 million of residual funds from the now defunct Iraq Oil-for-Food fund to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to settle the Iraqi government’s remaining arrears with the UN agency.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A UNITED Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal, Canada, has agreed the final rulebook for the Kyoto Protocol, eight years after the treaty was agreed. Final differences have been ironed regarding accounting for emissions, CO2 allowances based on forests, soils and other natural resources and on data systems.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SATELLITE images of the shrinking Aral Sea in central Asia have long horrified environmentalists, but now similar creeping disasters are threatening the many fresh water and brackish lakes of Africa. These are illustrated by disturbing satellite images within an atlas produced by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNLIKELY prospect of China – one of the world’s least environment-friendly countries – running a green Olympics has come closer to reality through an agreement with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It has struck a deal with the Beijing Organising Committee for the (2008) summer games (BOCOG), involving the UN agency boosting public awareness of air, water and noise pollution plans focusing on transport, landscaping and waste disposal.…