A 5,000-house development has just won planning permission on a SSSI nature area in Kent which is home to over 1% of the UK's nightingales. It violates government planning policies, and ministers have the power to stop it. But will they? Yes they will, writes Martin Harper - provided enough people show they care!
The global construction industry is dominated by steel and concrete, writes Dirk Hebel - but it doesn't have to be that way. There's a strong, fast-growing, climate-friendly, sustainable material ready and waiting. Bamboo could be the basis of a whole new 'green' building industry, that also provides abundant rural livelihoods.
GM crops may benefit agribusiness, writes Andrew Adam-Bradford. But they offer little to Africa or the millions of farming communities that feed the continent. Rather than impose corporate 'solutions', governments should invest in indigenous agro-ecological farming.
The World Bank's 'Tropical Forest Action Plan' was an abject failure, writes Chris Lang. Now the same mistakes are being repeated under a new acronym. TFAP is out, REDD is in - but it's still all about corporate control of forests, and blaming deforestation on its victims.
As Israel pursues its war on Gaza with ever-increasing ferocity, and with 25% of Gaza's people forced from their homes, what's the final objective? It's unthinkable that Israel's aim is to 'cleanse' the territory of its people, seize its vast gas reserves, and annex some of the Med's hottest real estate. Isn't it?
An illegal road on India's Andaman Islands has already opened up a 55,000 year old tribe to disease, sexual abuse and the theft of their resources. But instead of closing the road, local politicians are upgrading it with two new bridges.
Russia is rich in nature reserves and national parks, writes Mikhail Kreindlin. But the government body meant to be protecting them is in fact promoting logging, building and mining projects. Conservationists are fighting back, but the odds are stacked against them.
In modern India any form of dissent from the neoliberal corporate model of development is being criminalised, writes Kumar Sundaram. Opponents of nuclear power, coal mines, GMOs, giant dams, are all under attack as enemies of the state and a threat to economic growth.
Next week the indigenous peoples of the Yukon challenge their Government in the Territory's Supreme Court, writes Jill Pangman. At issue, its plans to open the Peel watershed, a vast unspoilt ecosystem rich in wildlife and cultural meaning, for industrial development.
The World Bank is still deciding how to respond to Kosovo's request for funds to build a new 600MW power station burning filthy 'brown coal', writes Michael Brune. It's time for the World Bank, with strong US backing, to give the project a firm 'no way'!
After a five year battle against fracking companies, the New York Court of Appeals has ruled that towns and cities can pass zoning laws that forbid fracking and other industrial land uses. The verdict will inspire other communities across the USA to enact similar measures.
The High Court has overturned a 'fatally flawed' decision by Eric Pickles MP to refuse planning permission for a locally popular 24MW solar farm on former WW2 airfield in Suffolk, England, close to an industrial estate and go-kart circuit.
It may all be over for England, but for Brazil, the battle is only just beginning. Anger over the vast cost of the World Cup - well over $10 billion - and its huge social impacts, is spilling over into a wider fury at massive mega-projects than enrich elites, trash the environment, and leave the poor poorer.
As the World Cup gets under way in Brazil, Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa told Liam J Shaughnessy about the very different world he inhabits, deep in the Amazon rainforest - a world of bright spirits, ancient knowledge, union with nature. And a world under threat.
Developers are determined to build a massive motor sports complex on common land above the South Wales valleys, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park, writes Kate Ashbrook. But although they have planning permission, they can still be defeated. Image: Ross Merritt, via Flickr.
Governments worldwide have been warned: draw up plans to help populations who are being forced to move because of climate change, or face a future of growing conflict and insecurity, writes Paul Brown.
Oil company Soco International is suspending all operations in Virunga World Heritage Site - Africa's oldest national park. It has also committed to keep out of all other UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The neoliberal model of 'development' is ravaging nature and pitting communities and eco-defenders against powerful corporations and colluding police and military forces. The violence must stop!
The Baja California peninsula is rich in history and natural beauty, with thousands of unique plants and animals making up its globally unique ecosystems, write Sula Vanderplank & Benjamin Wilder. Just the place for a new giant hotel resort?
You can actually be better off, healthier and happier with less consumption, says Munasinghe. And it's not just rich countries that need to change, he told Noah Sachs - poor countries too must develop sustainably, or the Earth's resources will simply run out.
Supporters of HS2 assert that it will cause prosperity to trickle down from London to the entire North of England, writes Tony Payne. But economic theory and hard experience tell us that the reverse is more probable - that it will help London to 'suck out' northern wealth.
Britain's nightingales are in decline - not least because of intensive farming, and our insistence on building over their last refuges. But their song is as unforgettable as ever, writes Chris Rose, and that will surely be the key to valuing them more ...
Vandana Shiva reminds us that the very future of food security in India (and indeed worldwide) lies in protecting and promoting the country's small farmers.
India is in the grips of a state-backed corporate war against the environment, the poor and indigenous peoples, writes Graham Peebles. The new rulers avert their gaze as their countrymen, doused in poverty, burn on the party pyre.
