In Our World: 7 February 2014

Food and Farming

• Half a million Vietnamese coffee farmers can't all be wrong
• African agriculture is growing, but is it transforming?
• Figures from China's national survey of land use seem positive, but the effort exposed some worrying trends, says Xiangbin Kong

Changing climate

• Tunisia embeds protection of climate in new constitution
• Could 'obstinate' poor countries break climate negotiations deadlock?
• So far no head-of-state has committed to attend Ban Ki-moon's climate summit

Cities

• New, privatized African city heralds "climate apartheid"
• Climate Action in Megacities 2.0 report show big cities are accelerating action on climate change

From the forests

• Pakistan's timber mafia threaten forest protection plans
• Sharp global decline in the legal recognition of community and resources rights in tropical forested countries. (see also)
• Sustainable Development Goals: Nine suggested indicators for forests and landscapes
• REDD+ could fail without near-term financial support

Money talks

• Wonder why inequality and climate change persist? Most of the 37 corporations bigger than nations are oil companies or banks
• UN highlights China's progress on 'greening' its finance sector
• Capital theft, not government corruption, is root of poverty
• Goldman Sachs opts to invest US$40 billion in renewables

Rights and resources

• Save nature, save lives
• Do China's nature reserves only exist on paper?
• Mapping resource rights in sub-Saharan Africa

New economies

• Why targets alone won’t build a green economy
• Netherlands joins race to be circular economy hotspot

Doing development

• Hannah Ryder of DFID makes predictions for the year aheadin development
• Are celebrity ambassadors worth the trouble?

​Mike Shanahan is IIED's press officer.

In Our World is a blog series. Each week it will publish links to top content about environment and development that we have seen online in the past week. You can subscribe by email here or via the RSS feed using this link.