Date:11 December 2007

To
His Excellency,     
The President of the Republic of Korea
Honourable Sir Roh Moo-Hyun,
We, the undersigned, wish to bring to your attention our deep concern over several issues that have arisen in the aftermath of the memorandum of understanding signed between the Pohang Iron and Steel Company (POSCO) and the Government of Orissa, India, for setting up a steel rolling plant and captive port in the state of Orissa. This US$ 12million project is being pushed through in a manner that has not only ignored fundamental questions of sustainable development but is also today associated with grave human rights abuse. We urge you, in your capacity as the head of a country from whose soil POSCO operates and a country which is party to several internationally-drawn commitments to human rights as well as socially and environmentally sustainable development, to intervene immediately in preventing further violations.    

 

By Walden Bello*

(Bali, Dec. 16). A day after the dramatic ending of the Bali climate talks, many are wondering if the result was indeed the best outcome possible given the circumstances. The US was brought back to the fold, but at the cost of excising from the final document--the so-called Bali Roadmap--any reference to the need for a 25 to 40 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 to keep the mean global temperature increase to 2.0 to 2.4 degrees Celsius in the 21st century.

November 5, 2007

Current global modes of production, consumption and trade have caused massive environmental destruction including global warming that is putting at risk our planet's ecosystems and pushing human communities into disasters. Global warming shows the failure of a development model based on high fossil energy consumption, overproduction and trade liberalization.

Farmers - men and women - around the world are joining hands with other social movements, organizations, people and communities to ask for and to develop radical social, economic and political transformations to reverse the current trend.