Briefings

Climate Chaos in a Geoengineering Age, a Report Commissioned and Published by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.

Sunday 13th December 2009

This critical overview of geoengineering technologies examines the history, politics and social and ecological implications of attempts to add large-scale, intentional manipulation of the planet to the menu of possible responses to climate change. The report contests the notion that more funding, research and experimentation is needed into geoengineering technologies, and provides a series of recommendations on how these controversial technologies should be regulated.

LA SOCIETÀ CIVILE CHIEDE VALUTAZIONE DEGLI IMPATTI DELLE TECNOLOGIE NELL'AMBITO DI UN ACCORDO A COPENHAGEN

Tuesday 8th December 2009

l trasferimento di tecnologia è uno dei quattro temi principali che

verranno discussi nel corso dei negoziati sulle azioni di cooperazione
per il lungo termine a Copenaghen (gli altri sono mitigazione,
adattamento e finanziamenti). Il testo negoziale preliminare contiene
diverse misure volte ad accelerare la diffusione di nuove tecnologie.
Con ogni probabilità i negoziati si tradurranno in un "piano d'azione"
e in un nuovo "organismo" di gestione delle tecnologie, che dovrà
coordinare diversi pannelli tecnici e/o centri di innovazione, e che
avrà grande influenza negli anni a venire sul tipo di sostegno
politico e finanziario che le nuove tecnologie riceveranno. In questo
quadro, è di grande importanza riuscire a fare in modo che siano le
tecnologie appropriate e benefiche a ricevere il necessario sostegno,
e non quelle pericolose o dannose. Questo non può avvenire senza una
valutazione approfondita ed adeguata degli impatti ambientali e
sociali di ogni nuova tecnologia.

让我们三思而行 公民社会呼吁技术评估成为 任何哥本哈根协定的组成部分

Thursday 3rd December 2009

我们 - 来自世界各地的公民社会组织和社会活动团体 – 认为迫切需要真正
的、持久的应对气候变化的解决方案。我们认识到,如果没有真正的、持久的应
对气候变化的解决方案,将带来人类不得不面对的致命后果。我们必须紧迫地增
强应对气候变化挑战的能力,同时显著减少温室气体的排放。
一些公司、个人、甚至是政府正在恐慌和无助地推广未经测试和未经证明的技术,
作为“我们唯一的选择”。然而我们不愿意看到,在没有考证对生态和社会影响
的情形下,这些未经测试和未经证明的技术,就被推广使用。一些视为能储存碳
或调控自然体系的技术,可能造成灾难性的生态和社会后果。在某些情形或方面
技术转让是在哥本哈根长期合作行动谈判中的四个关键议题之一 (其它是减
缓、适应和资金)。在讨论中的政府间谈判文本考虑了不同的加快技术渗透的
措施。它很可能是创建一个“行动计划”以及一个“技术机构”和不同的技
术组或创新中心,在以后的时间内证实它对决定何种技术获得资金及政治上
的支持具影响力。我们需要保证恰当的技术可以得到它们需要的支持,而错
误的技术会被放弃。如果没有一个全面的社会和环境的评估过程,这个目标
就不会实现。

Wednesday 2nd December 2009

Technology transfer is one of the four key topics being discussed under negotiations on Long-Term Cooperative Actions in Copenhagen (the others are mitigation, adaptation and financing). The inter-governmental negotiating text that is under discussion contemplates various measures for accelerating the diffusion of technologies.

Rome’s Food Summit may determine who decides who will eat

Monday 16th November 2009

The declaration coming out of the World Food Summit for Food Security in Rome is even worse than the “shameful” document adopted by world leaders in 1996, so famously criticized by Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Governments won’t promise anything to anybody. The only issue really being debated in Rome is whether control of the UN’s “Department of Agriculture” will be wrested from the UN’s Rome-based agencies and surrendered to an amorphous, G8 conjured, public-private compact called the Global Partnership for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition. If the Partnership prevails, national sovereignty fails, and civil society's hopes for Food Sovereignty will suffer.

Wednesday 4th November 2009

At the beginning of October 2009, the Córdoba Group -- a small gathering of independent food and agrocultural specialists (including the first and current UN Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Food) that have been meeting over the past two years -- published a brief (two-page) analysis of the state of global governance around food and agriculture and of the need to place the Right to Food and the interests of peasant producers at the center of the food and climate debate. The Group’s report was widely distributed at the UN Committee on World Food Security that met in mid-October and is influencing deliberations around both the World Food Summit in November and the December Conference in Copenhagen on Climate Change.

The Cordoba Group is formed by senior experts on hunger, agriculture, agrobiodiversity and human rights, convened in his/her personal capacities by the Chair of Hunger and Poverty Studies, a joint initiative by the University and the Diputacion of Cordoba, Spain.

Questions for the Food and Climate Crises

Saturday 31st October 2009

By 2050, or much sooner, we will be growing food under climatic conditions we’ve never seen before and learning that “normal” weather is an illusive fiction. Yet, we are told that global land grabs and plantations of agrofuels are a “win-win.” The truth is that policymakers don’t know enough about our food supply. We don’t know where our food comes from and we don’t know who is feeding the hungry today. We have absolutely no idea who will feed us in 2050. This report raises more questions than answers. It begins with a comparison of the likelihood of the industrial food chain and the peasant food web getting us through climate chaos.

Geoengineering as 21st century fairytale

Thursday 1st October 2009

The idea of re-engineering the entire planet (geoengineering) used to be the stuff of science fiction, but in the past few years a small group of geoengineering enthusiasts has worked hard to give it a veneer of respectability. On 1st September, they will have succeeded in getting the world’s oldest scientific academy, the UK’s Royal Society, to legitimize dangerous planet-tinkering schemes with minimal transparency and even less public participation.

What is nanotechnology?

Saturday 4th July 2009

Nano-scale technology is a suite of techniques used to manipulate matter at the scale of atoms and molecules. “Nano” is a measurement – not an object. Unlike “biotechnology,” where you know that bios (life) is being manipulated, “nanotechnology” speaks solely to scale. A “nanometre” (nm) equals one billionth of a metre. One human hair is about 80,000 nanometres thick. It takes ten atoms of hydrogen side-by-side to equal one nanometre. A DNA molecule is about 2.5 nm wide. A red blood cell is vast in comparison: about 5,000 nm in diameter. Everything on the nano-scale is invisible to the unaided eye and even to all but the most powerful microscopes.

Sunday 5th April 2009

We are grateful that the Royal Society is willing to accept a submission at this late stage in its proceedings. We regard this submission as an urgent matter, for we are alarmed at the apparent emergence of an "official view", most recently articulated by the UK House of Commons Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills, which is prepared to sanction real-world geoengineering experiments despite complete absence of any global rules or regulations. We find that emerging view complacent, irresponsible and dangerous. This short note outlines six points on the question of geoengineering governance that no study concerned with policy-making in this critical area should ignore:
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