Environment

Bamboo Bikes for the People

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Craig Calfee, an elite bicycle designer, makes high quality, fully functional bicycles out of bamboo that sell for over $2,000 in the United States.  
Now, Calfee has launched Bamboosero Bikes, which will bring a priced-down version of his eco-friendly bicycles to rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa, according to industry journal Bicycle Retailer.  
Most bikes in Africa are cheaply made imports from China and India. 
Calfee has designed a cargo bike made from locally grown bamboo that is more appropriate for heavy loads and bumpy roads than imported bikes.   
The bikes, which are said to be fully sustainable and require no power tools to make, are intended to to give rural Africans better transport options, and to foster a bike-building cottage industry.   
–Julia Hengst/Newsdesk.org 
Source:
“Africans Mold Bamboo into Cargo Bikes”
Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, March 2, 2009

Environment

Sweden's own Ecotopia

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The small town of Kalmar, Sweden, is on track to become entirely free of fossil-fuel use by the year 2030, according to a report in the Chicago Tribune. 
The city’s comprehensive program to reduce fossil fuels includes heat and electricity generated by a local wood pulp plant, an entire fleet of biodiesel municipal trucks, strict energy efficient building codes and tax incentives.  
Kalmar’s 60,000 residents save money by getting over 65 percent of their energy from renewable resources. 
They say that while the shift has been an adjustment, it “hasn’t made life miserable.” 
At first, most of the city’s politicians scoffed at the idea of independence from fossil fuels, but now they are overwhelmingly in support of the transition. 
“We are not eco-freaks,” one sustainability officer told the Tribune. “We’re just making it easy to change, giving people the tools.”  
–Julia Hengst/Newsdesk.org
Source:
“Going green: Entire Swedish city switches to biofuels to become environmentally friendly”
Chicago Tribune, March 3, 2009
 

Public Health

In Kyrgyzstan, Stigma Trumps Hippocrates

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Some doctors in the central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan are refusing to treat people with a history of drug use, incarceration and HIV infection. EurasiaNet reports that such individuals are “regularly denied treatment at hospitals around the country.” Scarce medical resources are partially to blame, but social stigma also drives the problem. According to a report funded by the Soros Foundation, one doctor said that drug users “made a personal decision to choose such a lifestyle” and should therefore be denied care even in life-threatening situations. –Julia Hengst/Newsdesk.org

Source:
“Kyrgyzstan: Doctors Deny Treatment To Undesirables”
EurasiaNet, February 20, 2009

World

Bulgaria Juggles its Nuclear Waste

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Bulgarian dependence on nuclear energy has produced a hot problem — how to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. The BBC reports that although nuclear power keeps Bulgaria’s carbon emissions down, it also creates tons of toxic waste that will remain radioactive far into the future. Some of the waste goes temporarily to Russia, but after reprocessing and a ten-year waiting period gets returned to its source. For this reason, and increasing transport costs, other Eastern European countries no longer work with Russia — but Bulgaria is running out of room in-country to store the spent fuel produced by its two active nuclear plants. So far, the problem has not caused Bulgaria to rethink the way it produces electricity.

Democracy & Civics

El Salvador Amnesty Again Under Scrutiny

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A Spanish judge said he would prosecute 14 military officers from El Salvador for the 1989 massacre of eight Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. The case challenges El Salvador’s amnesty law, reports the Chicago Tribune, and also is a new test for the “universal jurisdiction” principal, which Spain used in 1998 in its attempt to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity. The soldiers involved in the killing were imprisoned for a few years, but have been free since the amnesty law was passed in 1993 after El Salvador’s 12-year civil war ended. Although human-rights campaigners are pushing for a change in the law, so far there is no drive inside the country to do so. Even the leftist front-runner in El Salvador’s upcoming presidential elections broke with his party’s position, saying that he would leave the amnesty law in place if he were to win the poll.

Democracy & Civics

Fiji Elections Still in Doubt

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Fiji’s military leaders have a plan for racial unity in the ethnically divided nation, but stymied elections are raising concerns of dictatorship. The 16-nation Pacific Islands Forum, whose members include Australia and New Zealand, are giving Fiji until the end of April to set a date for elections, which they say must be held by the end of this year. South Pacific leaders say if Fiji fails to comply, it will drop Fiji from its roster and suspend financial and technical assistance. The military has ruled Fiji since its December 2006 coup, the fourth in more than 20 years. Commodore Josaia Voreqe “Frank” Bainimarama, the coup leader, has advanced a vision of a more racially integrated nation, which is divided between native Fijians, and descendents of farm laborers from India imported by Britain during the colonial era.

Democracy & Civics

Bolivia: Property Rights vs. Land Reform

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Bolivia voted in a new constitution that, among other things, will limit the size of the largest rural properties, and potentially redistribute land to poorer communities. The BBC said more than 60 percent of voters approved the constitution, although Bolivia’s landowners rejected it. Morales, the country’s first indigenous president, originally wanted all “unused” land to be available for redistribution to the poor. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, according to Inter Press Service, a left-leaning news agency, with most of the country’s arable lands in the hands of the wealthiest, European-descended citizens. Strong opposition from this sector forced Morales to focus landholding limits on future land sales only.

Economy

Diamond Dilemma in Botswana

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Botswana is moving ahead with plans to build a state-of-the art diamond cutting facility — at a time when declining diamond sales are threatening the jobs of thousands of miners. Government officials see the facility, which will expand the types of diamond processing in Botswana, as a path to economic diversity, reports The Voice of Francistown. Even as the officials rave about the possibilities of the high tech diamond park, its Debswana Diamond Company — a joint venture with South Africa’s De Beers Group — is meeting with the mine workers union to discuss mine closings and layoffs throughout the country. Worldwide diamond sales are down in the face of the global recession, and Botswana’s economy is hurting. Diamond mining is Botswana’s economic mainstay, and the source of most of the country’s funding for development and public health.

World

Renewable Energy Gets Global Boost

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A lot of global energy went into the creation of a new international agency that aims to promote a clean and green world — but many environmentalists fear the effort may not be enough. Inter Press Service reports that some 75 nations endorsed the creation of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in January — excepting China and the United States, the world’s biggest polluters. Funding and staffing is also a concern. IRENA’s $25 million budget is just a tenth of that of Greenpeace International, according to the environmental advocacy group. There is also a question about how much clout IRENA can have without official status as a United Nations organization.

World

Kosovo: A Brittle Peace?

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One year since Kosovo’s secession from Serbia, the fledgling country is at peace but struggling with severe poverty and unemployment. Economic challenges, corruption and lawlessness persist, especially in the mostly Serbian north. While interactions between Serbs and majority Albanians have remained non-violent, Deutsche Welle reports that “ethnic tensions and conflicts are still bubbling below the surface.” On February 10, thousands of Serbs gathered in Mitrovica to protest Kosovo’s mostly Albanian security forces. Pieter Feith, the EU’s representative to Pristina, said the protest “highlights the continued fragility of the situation on the ground.”