Revenues obtained from the often illegal extraction and supply of commodities such as timber and diamonds are directly bankrolling corrupt regimes and armed insurgency groups, and fund the purchase of weapons and other contraband goods that perpetuate cycles of conflict.
Must-have handbags? shoes to die for? From cheap trinkets to luxury car interiors, Jim Wickens discovers the startling facts behind what we buy into when we buy leather goods.
It’s fair to say that we have our share of robust discussions in this office. Opinions get aired, fingers get pointed, occasionally voices get raised. It’s all in a good cause. Setting the world to rights isn’t always a civilised tea party.
Natural resources,are increasingly responsible for fuelling violence across the world. Now some environmentalists want to fight back – using force if necessary.
Ever wondered where computers go when they die? Or what the endless expanse of a Chinese factory floor actually looks like? This film is a meditation on the consumer world
No one believed Big Tobacco could ever be snuffed out - until health warning stickers were made law. If the same principle of science, information and activism were applied to the aviation industry, argues Mark Anslow, the air we breathe could get cleaner yet
Sometimes it’s good to take a peep at what the enemy is up to. I spent last weekend reading the New York Herald Tribune, and I’ll sometimes look at The Economist. Both these publications are excellent in their way – the Tribune is far superior in writing and information to The Times, for example – but essentially feed the greed of a business-minded readership anxious to figure out what is going on in the world, the better to profit from it.
Don’t be afraid of the recession, says Andrew Simms , it may just be the lucky break we need to get our heads around a more sane economy and a better quality of life
Economist Herman E Daly argues that our future depends on a new economic model, one that needs to be defined by the dynamic balance – the steady state – of the natural world upon which it depends.
The corporate market has become the institutional equivalent of a compulsive eater. It has a built-in hunger that cannot be filled, and it is hard to stop the damage within the framework of its own game.
It’s the battle of the century. In one corner, the Economy – big, bloated, greedy and growing. In the other, the planet Earth – fragile, finite and fighting back.
Green energy is coming under pressure to clean up its act after severe criticism of the Government’s attempts to change the rules on how renewable energy is calculated and further condemnation of the ‘splash and dash’ trading scam in biofuels.
Last night British nuclear assets went on sale to the private sector to help the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority raise cash to help pay for its £72bn nuclear waste clean up bill.
From Catalonia in the South, through the Ariège and Béarn, to the Basque country in the North, both locals and tourists are used to seeing Nationalist slogans daubed in white paint on Pyrenean mountain roads. But now a new clarion call is vying for their attention: Non Ours (no bears) and Mort aux Ours (death to the bears.)
There were deaths, pollution and substandard goods, but last year’s slew of negative
publicity may have encouraged China to face up to its responsibilities, says Isabel Hilton
The halting of a controversial petrochemical project in south China was a victory for people power, writes China Dialogue's Tang Hao. Now the country should consider the reforms it needs to enshrine public participation in law.
