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Agroecology approach mimics natural ecosystems.

from The Guardian

"Small-scale farmers produce food for 70 percent of the global population. Yet, they are some of the world's poorest and most food insecure people. Alternatives to conventional farming should be embraced to improve subsistence farmers' yields and to ensure adequate food production for the growing global population. The stark reality, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, is that the world needs to produce more food with fewer resources.

"Agroecology, a farming approach that mimics natural ecosystems, is an alternative method that can produce more food using fewer resources. Small-scale farmers in Africa have used agroecology to more than double crop yields within 3 to 10 years of implementation, according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to food. Farmers also use agroecology to improve soil fertility, adapt to climate change, and reduce farming input costs. …"

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Global stock markets are betting on countries failing to adhere to legally binding carbon emission targets.

from The Guardian

"The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists.

"'The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed,' said Lord (Nicholas) Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics. He said the risk was 'very big indeed' and that almost all investors and regulators were failing to address it.

"The so-called 'carbon bubble' is the result of an over-valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a report published on Friday, at least two-thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for 'dangerous' climate change. If the agreements hold, these reserves will be in effect unburnable and so worthless — leading to massive market losses. But the stock markets are betting on countries' inaction on climate change."

History shows terrorist attacks often exploited to obtain new government powers.

from The Guardian

"In sum, even if the perpetrators of Monday's attack in Boston turn out to be politically motivated and subscribers to an anti-US ideology, it will still be a very rare event, one that poses far less danger to Americans than literally countless other threats. The most important lesson of the excesses arising from the 9/11 attacks should be this one: that the dangers of overreacting and succumbing to irrational fear are far, far greater than any other dangers posed by these type of events. …"

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Our labour market looks more and more like The Apprentice: sixteen people chasing after every fantasy job going

by Tanya Gold 

As this [UK Conservative] administration withers, The Apprentice seems darker, more prescient and metaphorical — a television game show where the first prize is a job. With Alan Sugar. (And the second prize is? Oh, forget it.) Sugar has been a cartoon villain in Employment Law Land since his notorious pronouncement in the Daily Telegraph in 2008 on female employment rights — "These laws are counter-productive for women, that's the bottom line … You're not allowed to ask, so it's easy — just don't employ them … It will get harder to get a job as a woman".

He has beaten off his former Apprentice Stella English's constructive dismissal claim, which was brought on the odd — and entirely predictable — grounds that she was treated "like an overpaid lackey". Sugar says he's been cleared after a "derisory attempt to smear my name", his reputation is intact. I wouldn't go that far; even Theresa May thought his comments on women were appalling.

Is this a fair wind for employers who have a responsibility only to short-term profit? It seems so; under the hellfire rhetoric of triple-dip recession, workers' rights recede into myth as we race, ever faster, to the bottom. When profits rise, will rights be reinstated? Even now David Cameron is in Europe, seeking to pull us out of its progressive employment legislation.

Zero-hours contracts, a system of indenture where the worker is expected to be available even if no work is offered (or paid for), rose by 25 percent in 2012, to at least 200,000, although there are likely to be far more, as many employees do not understand the term; 23 percent of large British firms now use them. Zero-hours contracts are not for the traditionally wretched — the low paid in catering or caring or retail. Doctors, university lecturers and — ha! — journalists are now habitually on zero-hours contracts; the House of Lords is advertising for a zero-hours reporter for Hansard. (The closing date for the application is tomorrow.) The barbarians are inside the gates….

President Correa has put humans above capital to create a nation worthy of its nickname the jaguar of Latin America.

from The Guardian

"The jaguar is the tiger of the South American continent. Living in the Amazon rainforest, it symbolises agility, cunning and surprise. Ecuador is now being described as Latin America's jaguar. That's because not only have we broken with the orthodoxies of the Washington consensus but we are developing innovative economic alternatives of our own, born in the southern hemisphere.

"Ecuador's transformation began in 2007, after the electoral victory of President Rafael Correa's so-called citizen's revolution. After six years in office, the revolution won a new democratic majority in February, with 57percent of the vote in the presidential election and two-thirds of the seats in the parliament.

"By rejecting the neoliberal recipes of privatisation, structural adjustment and curtailed demand, we have grown by 4.3percent over the last five years despite the global slowdown. Central to this growth, and to the reduction of unemployment to the lowest rate in the region, has been public investment, which at 14percent in 2011 is the highest in Latin America. …"