Issues & Trends

As any analyst will tell you, the power is in the data. To know where we are going, we first must know where we are. But, setting global energy baselines is anything but easy.

As we’ve written before, the mysterious mass die-off of honey bees that pollinate $30 billion worth of crops in the US has so decimated America’s apis mellifera population that one bad winter could leave fields fallow.

JOHANNESBURG, 26 July 2013 (IRIN) - By the end of the next decade food security could deteriorate in some of the world’s poorest countries, according to a recent global forecast by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Peak oil has generated headlines in recent years, but the real threat to our future is peak water. There are substitutes for oil, but not for water. We can produce food without oil, but not without water.

ADDIS ABABA , Jul 2 2013 (IPS) - Sub-Saharan Africa may be home to six of the world’s 10-fastest growing economies, but it also has a majority of the countries that are suffering from a food crisis.

The world suffered unprecedented climate extremes in the decade to 2010, from heatwaves in Europe and droughts in Australia to floods in Pakistan, against a backdrop of global warming, a United Nations report said on Wednesday.

Over the last year, the world has become a less peaceful place, and although the rate of decline was not tremendous, the deterioration has been steady since 2008, says a new report, the Global Peace Index.

In the partnerships-for-development arena, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is one of the largest and most complex. It launched with fewer than 20 partners and now has 700 around the world.

India looks set to overtake China as the world's most populous country from 2028, according to the United Nations.

At that point, both nations will number 1.45 billion people. Subsequently India's population will continue to grow until the middle of the century, while China's slowly declines.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations forecast Thursday that the world's population will increase from 7.2 billion today to 8.1 billion in 2025, with most growth in developing countries and more than half in Africa. By 2050, it will reach 9.6 billion.