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PHILIPPINES: Jatropha Key to Self Sufficiency?
By Prime Sarmiento
MANILA - The jatropha plant may be the key to addressing the problems of energy and food self-sufficiency in the Mekong region. Cultivating this hardy plant will not only provide biofuel but will also ensure that agricultural lands devoted to food production will not be diverted to fuel crops.
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BRAZIL: Agroenergy Can Boost Food Production - Experts
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO - The web of truth and lies surrounding the controversy over agrofuels has led to the distortion or oversight of certain facts. For instance, making biodiesel from soybeans does not reduce food production, but increases it, according to experts.
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INDIA: Forum Addresses Rural Energy Security
By Prime Sarmiento
MANILA - For poor rural women in India, access to energy connotes having the means to own a non-polluting stove and lantern that can help them cook, do household chores and earn a living. And yet even these basic needs are barely met -- a majority of these women still spend much of their time and effort collecting firewood and cow dung for cooking and lighting.
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ENVIRONMENT-CHINA: Banking on Wind Power
By Prime Sarmiento
MANILA - China plans to triple its wind power capacity over the next two years in line with the central government’s goal of promoting clean energy and more sustainable economic development, says a senior policy development official.
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LATIN AMERICA: Factors in Climbing Food Prices - A Baker’s Dozen
By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS - Where today’s high food prices are concerned, there are 13 villains of the piece: the structural and circumstantial causes associated with supply and demand, according to the Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (SELA), which says that to tackle them, regional cooperation is essential.
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BRAZIL: Climate Change Will Weaken Renewable Energy Sources
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO - To Brazil's credit, 45 percent of its energy comes from renewable sources, three times as much as in industrialised countries, but for that very reason it will be more vulnerable to climate change, according to a new study.
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DEVELOPMENT: About Farmers, Without Farmers
By Sabina Zaccaro
ROME - Record high food prices and their impact on poor countries will dominate the three-day UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) summit of world leaders that opened Tuesday in Rome. But the solutions to the food crisis cannot be left to governments only, according to several small farmers groups running a parallel civil society food forum.
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Q&A: 'Biofuels Must Include the Poor'
Interview with Ali Mchumo, managing director of the Common Fund for Commodities
ROME - Biofuels are being criticised for contributing to the rise in commodity prices, but their energy potential can be developed too, on condition "that the poor are part of the production chain."
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ECONOMY: 'Biofuels Will Keep Food Prices High'
By Mattias Creffier
PARIS - In the next ten years, prices for agricultural commodities will come down from current record levels but remain higher than the mean of the past decade, according to a new prediction.
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EUROPE: In a Civil War over Subsidies
By David Cronin
BRUSSELS - Few things cause tempers to flare up among governments on both sides of the English Channel more than the future of the European Union's massively expensive farm subsidies regime.
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Q&A: Can Save the MDGs Yet
Interview with Glenys Kinnock, Member of the European Parliament
BRUSSELS - White banners were draped across public buildings in much of Europe during 2005 as an unlikely coalition of celebrities, church groups and trade unionists took part in the Make Poverty History campaign. The Group of Eight (G8) top industrialised countries and the European Union responded by promising to double their aid to Africa by 2010 at a summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.
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EUROPE: Subsidies Fail the Poor Among the Rich
By Claudia Ciobanu
BUCHAREST - Romanian farmers have started receiving the first payments under the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). But the poorest farmers might have to wait years to see some benefits.
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BRAZIL: Sugarcane Alcohol Tarnished by U.S. Maize Ethanol
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO - Recent efforts by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to clearly mark the difference between Brazilian ethanol and the agrofuels produced by the United States are an admission that signing an agreement with Washington to promote a global bioethanol market was a serious political mistake, say analysts.
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Subsidies - Who Really Benefits? - RSS Why Do Subsidies Matter?
Subsidies -- transfers of public money to private interests -- have profound and long-lasting effects on the economy, the distribution of income in society, and the environment. Holding governments to account for how they allocate resources is important to citizens, not least because the bill goes to the taxpayers. At a global level, the impacts of subsidies are felt across borders, often most acutely in developing countries.

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Issue Eleven: Fertiliser Subsidies
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Issue Eight: Fisheries Subsidies - EU
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Issue Five: Energy Subsidies
Issue Four: Investment Incentives
Issue Three: WTO Farm Subsidy
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Issue One: Biofuels
Subsidies Newsletter - Sign up for the free GSI-IPS monthly newsletter, addressed to journalists and experts.
Partnership with the
GSI
Global Subsidies Initiative
Understanding the complexity of subsidies -- the jargon, rhetoric and figures -- and the effects they have on people, the environment and economies is a challenge for journalists. IPS is an independent media partner of the Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI), in a collaborative effort to raise the capacity of journalists to investigate the hidden impacts of government subsidies. The GSI, a programme of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), is a research-driven organisation that aims to put a spotlight on subsidies and the ways they can undermine efforts to put the world on a path toward sustainable development. The International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ) is another GSI media and communications partner.
News in RSS
SUBSIDIES DRIVE US CORN ETHANOL BOOM DESPITE MAJOR DRAWBACKS
by Mark Sommer
The fuel source the United States has chosen to start replacing petroleum, corn-based ethanol, is expensive, inefficient, and both environmentally and economically destructive, writes Mark Sommer, who hosts the award-winning, internationally-syndicated radio programme, ''A World of Possibilities''.


BIOFUELS: NO SILVER BULLET AGAINST FOSSIL FUELS
by Vicente Paolo Yu III
While increasing the proportion of biofuels in the fuel mix for motor vehicles is a step in the right direction, it is not the ''silver bullet'' that will break the world's dependence on fossil fuels, writes Vicente Paolo Yu III, coordinator of the Global Governance for Development Programme at the South Centre.


BIOFUELS: MORE BENEFITS THAN JUST ENERGY
by Supachai Panitchpakdi
Many economic, social, and environmental goals could be fulfilled by increased production, use, and international trade of biofuels, writes Supachai Panitchpakdi Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).


AFRICA, LATIN AMERICA AND THE BIOFUEL REVOLUTION
by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
Biofuels should be at the centre of a planetary strategy to preserve the environment and spur sustainable development, writes Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, President of Brazil.


BUSH ALLIANCE WITH BRAZIL FOR CONTROL OF WORLD BIOFUEL MARKET
by Leonardo Boff
Anyone who thinks that President Bush's current tour of Latin America, and especially to Brazil, was inspired by the urgent warnings in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is dead wrong, writes Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian liberation theologian and member of the International Committee of the Earth Charter.


THE SINISTER NEW BIOFUEL ALLIANCE
by Joao Pedro Stedile
The Landless Movement of Brazil and the international organisation Via Campesina condemn the new initiative of President George W. Bush, who in his upcoming trip to Latin America hopes to seduce and co-opt the countries of the region into becoming major producers of biofuels for export to the United States, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Landless Movement of Brazil (MST) and Via Campesina Brazil.