Al Hidd water plant in Bahrain, the most water-stressed country in the world. (Photo: Abe World!/ Flickr/Creative Commons)

The bad usage of water is depleting this scarce and vital resource in the Arab region, preventing the development of the countries and sinking the people’s hope of a better life, according to the Social Watch Report 2012, that will be launched this week in New York.

Coffee tree in La Carona, Nicaragua. (Photo: A Look Askance/Flickr)

Economic growth “at any cost” has driven many developing countries, especially in Latin America, to focus on the production of a limited variety of crops, frequently only one, driven by the demand from industrialized nations and risking their right to development and to food sovereignty and security, according to the Social Watch Report 2012, that will be launched in the middle of December in New York.

Activists pass a message in Busan (Photo: Oxfam)

Civil society organizations that participated in the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held this week in Busan, South Korea, regretted that the deal reached at the conference was not binding for all the donor countries, and the lack of a rights based approach, especially on gender, and of commitments on favorable conditions for the NGOs.

Minister of State Samia Suluhu. (Government of Tanzania)

Tanzanian civil society organizations are unhappy with the government’s failure to ratify some international agreements that should guarantee the promotion of people’s development, said Armando Swanya, from the Southern African Human Rights NGO Network (SAHRiNGON), focal point of Social Watch in that country.

Swenya cited the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1976, which the government of Tanzania had not ratified yet. This and other international agreements are important in pushing ahead efforts to fight against poverty, he said.

Strathcona refinery in Vancouver. (Photo: Imperial Oil)

Greenhouse gas emissions embodied in Canadian exports of fossil fuels in 2009 were 15% greater than the emissions from all fossil fuel combustion within that North American country, and almost four times the emissions from extracting and processing fossil fuels in its territory, according to a study released this week by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).