Fact Sheets: World

From June 20–22, 2012 in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, heads of state, UN agencies, and global stakeholders will convene for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) — commonly known as “Rio+20.”

The world is at a crossroads: the convergence of global economic meltdown and unchecked global warming is driving action in the streets, from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Movement. We must seize this momentum and use Rio+20 to force a paradigm shift.

Basée à Paris, en France, Veolia Environnement est la première entreprise mondiale dans le secteur de l’eau et de traitement de l’eau usée, générant en 2009 un chiffre d’affaires de 50 milliard $ et un revenu d’exploitation de 2,9 milliard $. La société offre un service de distribution d’eau dans 66 pays et détient Veolia Water North America, le plus important fournisseur en eau aux Etats Unis, servant plus de 14 millions de personnes dans environ 650 communautés nord américaines.

Formal recognition of the human right to water by the United Nations is a vital first step to ensure that all people have access to this most basic human need. Yet the United States government has historically opposed this movement. It is time for the administration of Barack Obama to take a stand for human rights and throw its support behind a U.N. resolution that codifies the human right to water.

The open water aquaculture and salmon industries tout fish farms as an opportunity to create jobs. Given current economic struggles worldwide, any potential for a new industry to increase job opportunities is hard to dismiss. Viable, gainful employment is badly needed. So we decided to investigate these claims. Unfortunately, we found that the jobs created by fish farms are unstable, in some cases undesirable, and are very few in number related to the number of fish produced. In fact, the trend in the industry has been to cut jobs to increase “efficiency” (meaning profit), and to abandon communities if better sites arise elsewhere. Moreover, due to pollution, escapes of farmed fish, and other problems that negatively impact wildlife or aesthetic values of the area, open water fish farms can threaten previously existing jobs in tourism, recreational fishing and commercial fishing. Open water finfish farming (including salmon farming) is a failed promise that offers nothing more than some short-term advantages to the local economy at the cost of long-term environmental, social and economic damage.

Factory fish farming in the ocean, a practice also known as offshore aquaculture, is the mass production of fish in huge, often overcrowded cages in the open water. Over the past decade, the fish farming industry, the U.S. Congress and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have discussed creating a plan for expanding offshore aquaculture to federal waters. Proponents of this industry have often boasted that it will lead to increased seafood for our country, or even the world.

Over the past five years, a little-noticed wave of investors has been snapping up fields and forests in some of the poorest developing countries. Governments, sovereign wealth funds and companies from rapidly industrializing or oil-rich developing nations have purchased or leased millions of acres of land in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. The trend is likely to continue. In June 2009, representatives from 200 financial and agribusiness firms gathered in New York to discuss agricultural investments in the developing world. These investments in some of the most productive agricultural land threaten to further undermine food security and sustainable rural economic development in the developing world.

In June 2009, the Paris City Council announced that the city’s water system would revert to public control at the end of 2009, after a century of private control. Paris is one of more than 40 French municipalities and urban communities that reclaimed public control of their water systems over the last decade to reduce prices and improve services.

The Peru Free Trade Agreement is based on the same flawed agriculture policies that have already threatened U.S. tomato, bell pepper and cucumber growers in the United States under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Peru FTA would provide permanent access to the U.S. market for Peruvian fresh and processed vegetables as well as other crops. American vegetable farmers would be especially vulnerable to Peruvian fresh and processed vegetable imports since Peruvian asparagus, green pea, and onion imports are already significant and growing. American vegetable companies are already investing in processing plants in Peru to take advantage of lower farmland, labor, and environmental costs.

We all know that driving a gas-guzzling SUV contributes to climate change, but did you know that what you put on your plate could too? Here‚ how your food choices affect climate change and what you, as a consumer, can do about it.

Today, the global food system is in the hands of alarmingly few corporations that can run roughshod over consumer health, the environment, and human rights. Cargill is one of these companies. While its name may not be on the package, Cargill produces many processed food ingredients consumers see in the fine print on food labels like high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable oils, citric acid, lecithin and xanthan gum. Cargill is probably the largest grain trader in the world, with hundreds of grain terminals worldwide, as well as a fleet of cargo ships that can connect their global network of storage facilities. It‚ a top beef, pork, and turkey processor, and cattle feedlot operator. Its European meat operations are the largest poultry supplier for McDonald‚, supplying them with sandwich patties and Chicken McNuggets. Cargill also lobbies in Brussels on the EU‚ the Common Agricultural Policy. Cargill has been a leading architect of an agricultural system in which it is both buyer and seller, and it has made a tidy profit doing it.