Here in Curitiba, environmentalists argue Brazil’s rich biodiversity must be protected from biopiracy.
An international convention is needed to regulate access to genetic resources (that is make access more difficult), then national governments can regulate the benefits (that is ensure more benefits go to nationals than foreigners)
Brazilian Greens justify this on the grounds that foreigners are biopirates, earn profits from Brazilian genetic resources and deny Brazil its entitlement to (...)

Progress towards the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD). New challenges and opportunities for revitalizing rural communities. 6 till 10 March 2006. Porto Alegre (RS), Brazil
Approximately three quarters of the world1s poor live in rural areas and depend on access to land and other natural resources for their livelihoods. For most of them, insecure access to land is closely linked to poverty. Since FAO’s founding 60 years ago, the Organization has been (...)

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is taking the lead in increasing this renewed international commitment by organizing in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from 6 to 10 March 2006, the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development.
Approximately 900 million people – three quarters of the world’s poor – live in rural areas and depend on access to land and other natural resources for their livelihoods. For most of them, insecure access to land is closely (...)

Photo: By Roberto Neumiller, Mauritania
Desertification, in the words of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is one of the world’s most alarming processes of environmental degradation. The issue is often obscured, however, by a common misperception: that it’s a “natural” problem of advancing deserts in faraway developing countries. In fact, Desertification is about land degradation: the loss of the land’s biological productivity, caused by human-induced factors and climate change. It affects one (...)