Development – Page 2

10Feb

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Development

Rio+20:`The Future ‘They’ Want

Farida Akhter A Critique of the Rio+20 Zero Draft Twenty years after the Earth Summit, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) will take place in Rio from 20-22 June, 2012. For two decades, peoples movement have worked hard for social, economic and environmental justice but yet the global economic system only resulted in a billion people starving from hunger. The gap between the rich and poor is widening with 70% of world’s resources enjoyed by top 20% and those in bottom quintile get only 2%. Climate justice could not be achieved because the rich in the North and the South do not want to change their life style and target to stop loss of biodiversity failed. Twenty years ago, with a view to the implementation of Agenda 21, some hope was raised that the...

22Dec

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Development

Poverty Trap and the Kidney trade

Farida Akhter Sale of body parts for overcoming poverty and indebtedness! In a country where over 40% of the population lives below poverty line and 13% (or 20 million) of the total population suffer from kidney diseases, the link between kidney trade and poverty is not very difficult to establish. The recent incidents of kidney trade, by some unscrupulous ‘brokers’ buying the kidneys from the poor people for transplantation within and outside the country, has raised serious concern among the general public and also among the medical profession. The poor people who have ‘sold’ their kidneys have become impaired due to the extraction of an organ from their body for the rest of their lives. They can perhaps solve some problems with the cash money received from the trader but may ...

13Jun

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Development

Peoples Perspectives

UBINIG Dreaming & Mumbling with Numbers Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith made a Power Point presentation of the National Budget for 2010-11 fiscal year in the parliament on June 10, to spend Tk 1,32,170 crore or US$ 19 billion, with a target of 6.7 % GDP growth as against 5.5 percent for the current year. The proposed Budget will have a deficit Tk. 39,323 crore or 5% of proposed GDP. The prevailing mainstream responses to the budget miserably reflect the poverty of thought on macro-economic policy and the role of such yearly financial tool to set a dynamic direction for the economy to recover from the assault of neo-liberal economic policies. Only substantive critique so far one could hear even from prestigious think tanks is that the budget is big and ambitious, but ...

Poverty Programme have bypassed the “hardcore poor”…

15Mar

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Development

Poverty Programme have bypassed the “hardcore poor”…

This is SANFEC Policy Brief # 1 prepared for sharing our findings on uncultivated food and its relation to biodiversity, livelihood, culture and food sovereignty. SANFEC members, along with the farmers have conducted research on this issue and have enough empirical information to substantiate statements made in this policy brief. A SANFEC International workshop on Uncultivated Food and Plants was held during 2 – 4 October 1999, which helped enormously in developing the concept and methodology of information collection of this relatively ‘un-noticed’ but profoundly important issue for food sovereignty. The first edition of this policy brief was circulated widely during the World Social Summit held in Johannesburg, South Africa during August 2002. Uncultivated Food: The Missing...