Biofuels for cars can help reduce CO 2 emissions, but there are drawbacks to this approach of the environmental problem. The large areas of land needed to grow biofuel crops could threaten food production. Or nature will have to make way. The second generation of biofuels with more efficient fermentation processes are claimed to overcome these problems, but not all scientists are convinced.   read more >>

Twelve South American countries have decided to deepen regional integration by investing heavily in intraregional infrastructural projects. But economic rationale collides with social and ecological goals.   read more >>

Louise Stoddard is the web editor for The Broker and a freelance writer and consultant based in Amsterdam Last week, after completing my registration for the Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, I went to see the new ‘ultimate disaster movie’ 2012 at the cinema. The storyline was poor, but the effects were horrifyingly impressive. Hawaii was turned into a luminous series of bubbling volcanoes and enormous floods; earthquakes and clouds of ash wiped...   read more >>

We arrived at Hotel Volendam this morning for the start of the Earth System Governance (ESG) conference to a glorious sunrise over the neighbouring cheese factory. If participants at the conference didn’t realize they were in the Netherlands before, then they sure do now. The plenary kicked off with Frank Biermann outlining the Earth System Governance Project, a ten-year plan with a focus on global, but also local level, governance. Frank briefly outlined the five different areas of foc...   read more >>

Bas Hofs is a researcher working for KWR Watercycle Research Institute in the drinking water treatment group. Of all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), number 7 (ensure environmental sustainability) is perhaps the most important, globally speaking. Unfortunately, it is also the one most likely to be unmet (certainly not by 2015, as originally envisioned), as it means shifting from an ever more consuming society to a more sustainable one. With the current world population soaring to...   read more >>

Paulo Roberto Martins is coordinator of Brazilian Research Network in Nanotechnology, Environment and Society. The link between human rights and the environment consists of the Earth Rights expressed by the Kasentini Principles. Earth Rights The Earth Rights / Kasentini Principles consist of 5 chapters and 26 principles. The first and second principles are very important for the social scientist to understand the relationship between human rights, public goods and nanotechnology:...   read more >>

Extreme weather events, partly caused by climate change, are already wreaking havoc, especially in the South. Both floods and droughts are expected to become more frequent and more severe and more people will be forced to live in vulnerable areas. But who will pay for the measures needed to respond to the impacts of climate change?   read more >>