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Global Focus

Welcome to GlobalFocus, a website feature that spotlights our breaking news.
 

The Right to Food: Food Access, Food Subsidy, and Residue-Based Bioenergy Production in India

Liu Institute researchers will be working to answer important questions on food security in India, thanks to a $345,000 grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The project, titled “The Right to Food: Food Access, Food Subsidy, and Residue-Based Bioenergy Production in India” has two themes: access to food and food subsidy, and the relationship between biofuels, agricultural productivity and food security. Read more

 

Energy poverty creating a respiratory disease ‘epidemic’ for almost half the world’s population 

Limited access to clean sources of energy, known as energy poverty, makes nearly half the world’s population reliant on burning wood, animal waste, coal or charcoal to cook. This leads to severe respiratory diseases that kill roughly two million people worldwide each year - a problem Hisham Zerriffi (Liu Institute) and Michael Brauer (SPPH) are trying to solve. Read more

 

Liu Institute researchers provide recommendations for $100 billion in annual climate change aid

In advance of a major United Nations climate conference, Liu Institute researchers are providing recommendations for managing a $100 billion annual commitment made by the international community at last year's United Nations climate conference to help the developing world respond to climate change -- a funding promise almost equal to all existing official development aid from major donor countries today.

In today's issue of Science, Simon Donner, Milind Kandlikar and Hisham Zerriffi argue that the aid commitment made by developed nations is unprecedented and that the world must learn from the troubled history of international development to ensure that countries meet the commitment and provide real actions on the ground. Read more

 

India: Can solar power become a tool for pro-poor development?

Recepients of the Martha Piper Research fund, associate professor Milind Kandlikar and Sumeet Gulati want to find out if solar power can be a viable energy solution for the 100 million households in rural india who do not have access to electricity.

India is one of the most energy poor countries in the world. In rural India, about one in five villages are not connected to the electrical grid. Even in villages with grid connectivity, about 100 million households do not get power from the electrical grids due to a lack of last mile connectivity. Read more

 

Rural Electrification: Strategies for Distributed Generation  

For an estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide, the absence of electricity is their daily experience. An untold number of others live with electricity that is erratic and of poor quality. How can electric power be brought into their lives when the centralized utility models that have evolved in developed nations are not an economically viable option?

Small-scale Distributed Generation (DG), ranging from individual solar home systems to village level grids run off diesel generators, could provide the answer. In his new book, Professor Zerriffi compares 20 DG enterprises and projects in Brazil, Cambodia and China, and shows that privately run and localized solutions can be both self-sustaining and replicable. Read more  

 

Colombia: The Task of Reconstructing Historical Narratives when the Conflict is Ongoing

During Colombia’s ‘Week of Memory’ this week, the Commission of Historical Memory presents four major reports on emblematic episodes of the war in Colombia. As a researcher for the Commission, Prof. Pilar Riaño-Alcalá has been working to document the different narratives generated during the conflict. Pilar is the rapporteur of “The Massacre of Bahia Portete: Wayuu women in the crosshairs” and the co-rapporteur of “Bojaya. The war without limits”. Read more

 

UBC researchers call for “social offset” to tackle neglected tropical diseases

Public health and international development experts at the Liu Institute are calling for a “social offset” mechanism to set aside a portion of research funding slated for neglected tropical diseases (NTD) to address broader social determinants of disease. Their comments are published today alongside other perspectives in the Debate section of the online journal PLoS Medicine. Read more

 

On the Edges of Conflict

Armed conflict in the early 21st century tends to be asymmetrical and protracted, fought by an array of armed groups on both physical and political battlefields, and causing disproportionate suffering and death to civilians. The Edges of Conflict Project is working to better understand the nature of such conflict and to improve respect for the rule of law in complex security environments. Read more

 

A Daunting Nuclear Agenda for 2010

A year ago, President Obama took office with the stated goal of making the elimination of all nuclear weapons a central element of its nuclear policy. In a landmark speech delivered in Prague on April 5, 2009, he further detailed his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and he outlined an ambitious arms control agenda for the next decade. The task of translating this vision into action is now upon him. In this op-ed, David Santoro looks at 2010, and the challenging task of driving that vision to completion. Read more

 

Former UN Special Rapporteur Calls for National Housing Program for Canada

In his recent lecture at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, Miloon Kothari, a former UN Special Rapporteur, explained that the right to housing is in fact included in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in numerous international covenants such as the Rights of the Child and the Status of Refugees. Mr Kothari is also the author of the 2007 UN Human Rights Council Report on Adequate Housing in Canada. Read more

Part 1 [9:48min]

Part 2 [8:36min]

Both videos are also available at the Liu Institute on iTunes U.

 

Her name is Beatrice, my name is Lara 

"Her Name is Beatrice, My Name is Lara: experiences in witnessing, internal displacement and conflict in Northern Uganda after 23 years of war" is a documentary project examining a documentary’s potentials and pitfalls in critical 'witnessing,' while exploring how voices from those living in the centre of conflict can challenge dominant media and humanitarian narratives. A photo- and video-based exhibition will be featured in the Liu Institute's lobby starting 14 January 2010. Read more

 

Global Climate Change: Reaching Agreement in Copenhagen

Leading up to the Copenhagen talks this month, the Liu Institute and its faculty members have been involved in a series of events aiming to inform, highlight, debate, and discuss the challenges and opportunities that world leaders face in the task of agreeing on an ambitious, global agreement that meets the challenge set by science. Read more

 

What should Canada be doing in Afghanistan post-2011?

To discuss this issue, the Liu Institute hosted a workshop on "Peacebuilding - Afghanistan after 2011", chaired by Taylor Owen and Emily Paddon, with support from Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and the Trudeau Foundation. Read More

 

From obscurity to action: Why Canada must tackle the security dimensions of climate change 

On October 29th, 2009, Margaret Purdy spoke to the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) International Conference, about the security implications of climate change for Canada. Margaret outlined why the climate change-security nexus is so critical for Canada and offered five recommendations for action. Read more 

 

Rape in the DR Congo: Canada, where are you?

On September 14, 2009, the Africa Canada Accountability Coalition, a student led initiative at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, spoke before the Canada Senate Committee for Human Rights about why and how Canada should address mass rape in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo; regions where mineral exploitation fuels a conflict that preys upon women and girls, and where Canada is the largest non-African investor in the mining industry. Read more

 

Hybrid vehicles produce scant environmental benefits, high cost

Despite major costs to taxpayers in the U.S. and Canada, government programs that offer rebates to hybrid vehicle buyers are failing to produce environmental benefits, a new UBC study says. The study finds that hybrid sales have come largely at the expense of small, relatively fuel-efficient, conventional cars, rather than large SUVs, trucks and vans, which produce substantially greater carbon emissions. Read more

 

Ending the Vacation of Canada’s Travelling Sex Offenders

A new study by researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) finds that Canada has fallen behind Australia and the United States in cracking down on its travelling child sex offenders, and calls on the RCMP to pro-actively enforce Canada’s so-called “child sex tourism” laws. The study is particularly timely with the recent extradition of an alleged Canadian child sex offender on child sex tourism charges in the U.S. Read more

 

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