Source: Worldwatch Institute

Date: January 14, 2008 

This Christmas marked the third anniversary of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004. While reconstruction has inched forward in the affected countries, in Sri Lanka, one of the hardest-hit areas, progress remains challenging. Unlike Indonesia's Aceh province, which in the disaster's aftermath was able to overcome a decades-long armed conflict, Sri Lanka actually lapsed back into internal fighting a little more than a year after the waves struck.

Over the last two years, the fighting between the country's Sinhala majorityand Tamil minority has intensified, and both the government and the Tamil Tiger rebel group (LTTE) have engaged in a vicious tit-for-tat of air strikes, bus bombings, assassinations, and terror tactics against civilian populations. A ceasefire agreement, dating to February 2002, was reduced to little more than a piece of paper. Then on January 2, the government announced its decision to officially end the agreement.

For the full article, please visit: http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/29228

January 14, 2008 

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippine Supreme Court will designate special courts to speed up a backlog of environmental cases and ensure polluters are penalized for breaking the law, a spokesman confirmed on Monday.

Manila's decision came as experts from the Asia-Pacific region began a conference in Bangkok aimed at improving enforcement of environment laws.

Illegal mining, logging and overfishing are serious problems in the Philippines but few violators are punished either because they pay off officials or because overworked judges tend to prioritize civil and criminal cases over environmental disputes.

For the full article, please visit, http://www.enn.com/business/article/29196  

Source: Reuters

By Sybille de La Hamaide

January 14, 2008

PARIS (Reuters) - The recent price rally in farm commodities such as grains, oilseeds and sugar beet can be attributed partly to higher biofuel demand but their share of the blame has been exaggerated, a top official of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Loek Boonekamp, a division head in the Agro-food Trade and Markets Division at the Paris-based OECD, said the surge in farm product prices -- with cereals more than doubling last year -- would have happened even without the rise in biofuel production.

"Closing your eyes and blaming the current high prices to biofuels is just too simplistic," he told the Reuters Global Agriculture and Biofuel Summit. Boonekamp said a sharp drop in supply mainly due to adverse weather conditions in top producing countries such as Australia, tight stocks worldwide and higher demand for food in developing countries were playing the biggest role in the rally.

For the full article, please visit: http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/29220