by Adele on 09 May 2012
Patrick Bond will be discussing climate justice politics between Durban and Rio at London’s Bookmarks bookshop on the 14 May at 6:30 PM. This event will also see the launch of his latest books, Politics of Climate Justice (UKZN Press) and Durban’s Climate Gamble (Unisa Press).
Bond chronicles the main conflicts over climate change, from the standpoint of putting social justice at the centre of politics. His two new books, Durban’s Climate Gamble and Politics of Climate Justice, document problems of elite mismanagement of climate governance at global scale, and possibilities for the required economic transformation from below.
Event Details
- Date: Monday, 14 May 2012
- Time: 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
- Venue: Bookmarks,
1 Bloomsbury Street,
London | Map
- RSVP: sarah@bookmarks.uk.com
Book details
by Mafeno on 09 May 2012
Patrick Bond will be discussing climate justice politics between Durban and Rio at London’s Bookmarks bookshop on the 14 May at 6:30 PM. This event will also see the launch of his two latest books, Durban’s Climate Gamble (Unisa Press) and Politics of Climate Justice (UKZN Press).
Bond chronicles the main conflicts over climate change, from the standpoint of putting social justice at the centre of politics. His two new books, Durban’s Climate Gamble and Politics of Climate Justice, document problems of elite mismanagement of climate governance at global scale, and possibilities for the required economic transformation from below.
Event Details
- Date: Monday, 14 May 2012
- Time: 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
- Venue: Bookmarks,
1 Bloomsbury Street,
London | Map
- RSVP: sarah@bookmarks.uk.com
Book details
by Simon on 26 Apr 2012
Associate professor Tumi Murombo of Wits University School of Law, spoke to Polity.org about the state of environmental legislation and compliance in South Africa.
Although he believes that the country’s environmental law is improving, Murombo says that industries still consider environmental compliance as an “afterthought”. It is not implemented as part of their project cycle from the outset. This is a challenge that Murombo says still needs to be addressed:
Book details
eBook options – Download now!
by Adele on 25 Apr 2012
In his latest column for Counterpunch, Patrick Bond, author of Politics of Climate Justice: Paralysis Above, Movement Below, expresses his concern over the volatility of the South African rand, which he believes will only get worse once the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) pay $100 billion to the International Monetary Fund, supposedly to “stabilise world finance”:
Just before last weekend’s meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) board in Washington, South Africa’s Finance Minister dropped us an obscure news item: “Gordhan concerned about rand volatility”(Reuters, April 16).
Hidden away in the business pages, it was nevertheless an important confession. Pretoria can no longer remain in denial about South Africa’s glaring economic HIV+ status, what with our regular breakouts of full-blown financial AIDS, in a world featuring the collapse of so many sickly economies. Indeed, the rampaging plague will infect many more countries now that the IMF has an additional $430 billion to jet around the world with, thanks to careless finance ministers like our Pravin Gordhan.
Book details
by Adele on 17 Apr 2012
Writing for Counterpunch, political economist and environmental activist Patrick Bond berates the World Bank for its policies, which he believes have a deleterious effect on the poorest in the world. He suggests that its newly appointed president, Jim Yong Kim, should simply resign, if he is to remain an effective agent for change. Bond is the author of the book Politics of Climate Justice, among others.
The situation for the many constituencies hopeful about Jim Yong Kim’s ‘election’ as World Bank president is comparable to early 2009.
Barack Obama entered a US presidency suffering institutional crisis and faced an immediate fork in the road: make the change he promised, or sell out his constituents’ interests by bailing out Wall Street and legitimizing a renewed neoliberal attack on society and ecology, replete with undemocratic, unconstitutional practices suffused with residual militarism. As president-elect, surrounding himself with the likes of Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Paul Volcker, William Gates, Rahm Emmanuel and Hillary Clinton, it was obvious which way he would go.
Unlike the corporate-oriented politician Obama, by all accounts Jim Kim is a genuine progressive, a wunderkind Harvard-trained physician and anthropologist with a terrific track record of public health management and advocacy, especially against AIDS and TB. So unlike predecessor Robert Zoellick, who in the service of power broke everything he touched since the late 1980s,[1] Kim spent the last quarter century building an extraordinary institution, the Boston NGO Partners in Health, and improving another by working at its top level, the ultra-bureaucratic World Health Organisation in Geneva.
Book details
by Mabel on 12 Apr 2012
In an article for Cape Town 2014, Michelle Matthews highlights some of the key issues raised by Mark Swilling and Eve Annecke in their book Just Transitions: Explorations of Sustainability in an Unfair World.
According to Matthews, Swilling and Annecke, who head up Stellenbosch University’s Sustainability Institute, emphasise the need to develop systems that “actively restore life” rather than merely lessen damage:
Mark Swilling and Eve Annecke head up the University of Stellenbosch’s Sustainability Institute, which is housed in the Lynedoch EcoVillage – an experiment in and invaluable test case for a range of sustainable approaches, from mixed-income living to household sewerage composting. Their latest project is a book, Just Transitions, launched in February 2012.
As their home town, Cape Town gets a lot of coverage in the text (and is dealt with in detail in chapter nine). What do they have to say to local designers and urban planners? Mark and Eve warn against Cape Town simply looking at green urbanism – which seeks to minimise environmental impacts through techno-fixes and high-barrier economic programmes – rather than focusing on a truly socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable (or liveable, as they call it) urbanism. They propose a form of urbanism that goes beyond simply minimising damage, to designing systems and cities to actively restore life (both natural and social).
Book details
Download this eBook at LittleWhiteBakkie.com
Apr
