As thousands gear up for the 2012 Earth Summit, Rio+20, scheduled to kick off in Brazil on Jun. 20, questions on the viability and adequacy of a ‘green economy’ abound.

Participants at the Fifth International Parliamentarians’ Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) ended their meeting here Friday with a joint pledge to advocate for increased funding for full implementation of the decades-old ICPD Programme of Action.

Candidates competing in Egypt's first presidential election since Hosni Mubarak was ousted are vying for a prestigious position whose job description — oddly enough — has not yet been written. An unresolved dispute over who will write a new constitution for post-Mubarak Egypt has put the country in the unusual position of voting for a president with undefined authority.

South Sudan is losing its forests. And with no unified policy to deal with the situation the government is at odds, with one ministry saying that the loss of forests is a necessity for farming and another warning of the dire environmental consequences if this continues unchecked.

Along a dirt road in Mozambique’s Sofala province, a long line of men on bicycles stretches into the distance, each carrying an impossibly big bag of charcoal strapped to his bike.

Climate-heating carbon emissions set a record high in 2011, in a 3.2 percent increase over the previous year, the International Energy Agency reported this week. The main reason for this dangerous increase is that governments are failing to implement policies to prevent catastrophic increases of global temperatures.

The families of victims of Chile’s 1973-1990 dictatorship were shocked to find out that the names of more than 1,000 victims of forced disappearance have appeared on the on-line voter rolls generated by a new automatic registration system.

At the height of the Cold War, a Peruvian diplomat, Dr. Victor Andres Belaunde, publicly expressed scepticism about the ability of small countries to survive the diplomatic might of the big powers in the world body.

One of every two Peruvians knows what 'biodiversity' means, and most would stop buying products that are not socially or environmentally responsible, according to an international survey that for the first time included this megadiverse South American country.

For yet another occasion, it was not the good news Caribbean leaders wanted to hear.