The main cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels, so why are billions of dollars being invested to find and produce more oil, coal and natural gas?. That is the question posed by Canadian indigenous representatives at the alternative civil society meet, Klimaforum.

At the end of the first week of climate negotiations under way in this Mexican Caribbean resort city, it seems a distant possibility that the nearly 200 national delegations will agree on renewing the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The 2010 edition of the UNAIDS Report on the global AIDS epidemic includes new country by country scorecards on key issues facing the AIDS response. Based on the latest data from 182 countries, this global reference book provides comprehensive analysis on the AIDS epidemic and response. For the first time the report includes trend data on incidence from more than 60 countries.

The compilation lists research materials dealing with the security and protection of defenders, resources that women activists can consult concerning their wellbeing and self-care, manuals dealing with how to document and monitor violations of women’s rights, as well as manuals on the rights and mechanisms available to women human rights defenders at risk.

A year after the chaotic Copenhagen summit, another climate conference begins in Cancun today. But, expectations are low on what it can achieve. One year after the Copenhagen conference that ended in chaos, it’s Mexico’s turn to host this year’s big international climate gathering.

On Nov. 29, the 190-member Conference of Parties (COP) will flock to the Moon Palace Hotel, an all-inclusive luxury coastal resort in Cancún, Mexico, to discuss governments' progress on climate change. The 16th COP session comes barely a year after the 2009 December meeting in Copenhagen, now widely considered a massive diplomatic failure.

Registration for the centralized edition of the WSF, to be held on February 06-11 in Dakar (Senegal), is now open. Registration will close on December 15th.

The G20 summit last week was overshadowed by a new financial near-crisis in Europe, highlighting the dangerous state of the world economy.

A regional consultation and training institute on Gender, Economic and Environmental Justice (GEEJ) will be held in Accra, Ghana from 20-23 November 2010. This meeting is convened by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), in collaboration with Third World Network-Africa (TWN-Africa).

La Via Campesina delegates attending the conference of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) in Nagoya from 19 to 29 October 2010 regret that the conference failed to achieve a radical decision to halt the mass commercialization and destruction of biodiversity.