PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Oct 07 (IPS) - Relief work done by emergency responders during natural disasters may inadvertently exacerbate problems caused by climate change and lead to further disasters, recent reports suggest.

MORIGAON, India, Oct 07 (IPS) - The northeastern Indian state of Assam is no stranger to devastating floods. Located just south of the eastern Himalayas, the lush, 30,000-square-km region comprises the Brahmaputra and Barak river valleys, and is accustomed to annual bouts of rain that swell the mighty rivers and spill over into villages and towns, inundating agricultural lands and washing homes, possessions and livestock away.

PYEONGCHANG, Republic of Korea, Oct 07 (IPS) - Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is the world's leading producer of vetiver. In the southwest of the country, vetiver production is hard to ignore.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 07 (IPS) - The dream of electing Brazil's first black president, an environmental activist from the Amazon jungle, lasted only 40 days and was frustrated in Sunday's elections. In the end, it is the two parties that have dominated Brazilian politics for the last 20 years that will face off in the second round of voting on Oct. 26.

PYEONGCHANG, Republic of Korea, Oct 07 (IPS) - With governments, activists and scientists tearing their hair out over the world's impending crisis in biodiversity, the outgoing president of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) delivered a simple message to participants at the 12^th Conference of the Parties to the CBD (COP12) currently underway in the Republic of Korea's northern Pyeongchang county: honour the promises you made last year.

JOHANNESBURG, Oct 07 (IPS) - A few weeks ago, I co-signed perhaps the most import open letter of my career. It was an open provocation to my fellow activists and colleagues, to the members of our organisation, and to all those who, like me, earn their living in the civil society sector.

ERBIL, Iraq, Oct 07 (IPS) - "We had ten minutes to leave our hometown," says 33-year-old Kamal Faris who, together with his entire family, was forced to flee the threat of Islamic State (IS) fighters approaching his village.

WASHINGTON, Oct 07 (IPS) - Hopes that the strategy announced by President Barack Obama a month ago against the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL) might yield a relatively quick victory have disappeared amidst growing fears that the U.S.-led air campaign has at most only slowed the radical group's advance.

WASHINGTON, Oct 07 (IPS) - A year after a U.S. company was accused of engaging in the systematic importing of flooring made from illegally harvested timber, pressure is mounting on federal agencies currently investigating the allegations.

ROME, Oct 06 (IPS) - If ever there was a need to prove that we are faced with a total lack of global governance, the U.N. Climate Summit, extraordinarily called by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sep. 23, makes a very good case.