Fair trade is a growing global movement. A huge and widening range of fair trade goods are now available in the shops. Why is fair trade so important? This book provides 50 reasons why buying fair trade delivers a host of benefits to people and the planet. It's an inspiring account of how every consumer can play a part in improving and even saving lives and making global trade work better for poor people.Did you know that buying fair trade:-- Helps eradicate sweatshops...

This book traces religion and secularity in eleven countries not shaped by Western Christianity (Japan, China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, and Morocco), and how they parallel or diverge from Charles Taylor's grand narrative of the North Atlantic world, A Secular Age (2007). In all eleven cases, the state - enhanced by post-colonial and post-imperial legacies - highly determines religious experience, by variably regulating religious belief, practice, pro...

Transnational corporations are one of the most important actors in the global economy, occupying a more powerful position than ever before. In their persistent battle to increase profits, they have increasingly turned to the developing world, a world that holds many attractions for them. But what is their impact on the poor?Now in its second edition, Big Business, Poor Peoples finds that these corporations are damaging the lives of millions of poor people in developing countries. L...

What are Australia's 'barbecue stopper' conversations right now? What are the things we talk and worry about?the 2009 ABC Boyer Lecturer is our best-known military officer, General Peter Cosgrove - an Australian Everyman whose interests are our own. As a father, General Cosgrove is concerned about the world we will leave to future generations. As a proud Australian, he is interested in how migration changed our sense of national identity. As an ex-soldier his life was about guarante...

Most Canadians know that Stephen Harper has had a tremendous impact on the country since becoming prime minister in 2006. But few have the in-depth knowledge of how far his transformation has gone -- what has already been done, and what the consequences will be in the future.This book brings together Canadian experts in a wide variety of areas. They document key changes put in place by the Harper government. There have been dramatic changes in education, health care, women's rights...

An Inconvenient Truth of water.“Imagine a world in twenty years, in which no substantive progress has been made to provide basic wastewater service in the Third World, or to force industry and industrial agriculture production to stop polluting water systems, or to curb the mass movement of water by pipeline, tanker and other diversion, which will have created huge new swaths of desert."“Desalination plants will ring the world’s oceans, many of them run by nuclear ...

In this international bestseller, currently available in more than a dozen countries, Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke describe the real and worsening global water crisis, and reveal the plans of transnational corporations to profit from it. The authors present both a compelling case and a practical plan for fighting back against the corporate takeover of this most precious natural resource.

Affluenza has not just changed the world, it has also changed the way we see the world. Short of money? Borrow some. Caught in the rain? Buy an umbrella. Thirsty? Buy a bottle of water and throw the bottle away. Our embrace of “convenience” and our acceptance of our inability to plan ahead is an entirely new way of thinking, and over the past seventy years we have built a new and different economic system to accommodate it.There is nothing inevitable about this current way of think...

In this groundbreaking work, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner and founder of the Green Belt Movement offers a new perspective on the troubles facing Africa today. Too often these challenges are portrayed by the media in extreme terms connoting poverty, dependence, and desperation. Wangari Maathai, the author of Unbowed, sees things differently, and here she argues for a moral revolution among Africans themselves. Illuminating the complex and dynamic nature of the continent, Maathai of...

Dick Smith takes on the hot topic of our times, arguing that Australian and global population growth carries enormous risks, dangers that none of our political parties is prepared to address.In 2011 the world's population exceeded 7 billion. Each year we add nearly 80 million people and by mid-century we will require twice as much food and double the energy we use today. Australia will be deeply affected by these trends - we have the fastest growing population of a...

What are countries famous for making? For Japan, the answer might be electronic goods. For Germany, automobiles. For France, perhaps a Louis Vuitton bag. But what about Britain?Here, Evan Davis sets himself the task of finding out. Offering a fascinating look at our manufacturing industries and revealing the various companies that might not be household names, but are very much world leaders in their fields, he shows how we have learnt to specialise in high end and niche areas that...

This book is about Tanzania and its development prospects. Within ten short chapters, each with well-chosen sub-titles, the text covers a wide range of subjects.Each subject highlights a specific theme or themes that are of topical interest in the current development debate. Under each theme the author, without trying to delve deeply into the subject, raises a number of pertinent questions, enough to whet the readers appetite and to cause him to think twice about the contemporary d...