http://www.choike.org a portal on Southern civil societies http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/1799.html When tens of thousands of people staged demonstrations in Mexico last year to protest a 60 percent increase in the price of tortillas, many analysts pointed to biofuel as the culprit. Because of US government subsidies, American farmers were devoting more and more acreage to corn for ethanol than for food, which sparked a steep rise in corn prices. The diversion of corn from tortillas to biofuel was certainly one cause of skyrocketing prices, though speculation on biofuel demand by transnational middlemen may have played a bigger role. However, an intriguing question escaped many observers: how on earth did Mexicans, who live in the land where corn was domesticated, become dependent on US imports in the first place? http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/32.html The emergence of alternative international development institutions, new sources of development funding, and alternative mechanisms for financing development are occurring in the context of two major international processes relating to aid: the Accra meeting on the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and the Doha meeting on Financing for Development. http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/2035.html Evidence from Latin America suggests that good trade performance and trade policy reforms alone cannot deliver growth and poverty reduction. If trade is to have a significant impact on broad-based growth and poverty reduction across the region, a raft of complementary policies, investment programmes and social protection measures needs to be designed, debated and implemented. http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/1872.html Factory owners complain of audit fatigue and that different brand buyers are demanding compliance with different code of conduct standards. Trade unions and NGOs criticize brands for adopting weak codes with imprecise standards as a mere public relations exercise. Brand buyers complain that the high standards demanded by unions and NGOs are not achievable, at least over the short term. One of the major weaknesses of voluntary codes of conduct has been the lack of consistency in code provisions and the lack of consensus among companies and stakeholders on the minimum labour standards that companies should be expected to meet. http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/3283.html Their embarrassing presence evokes an archaic world, in which humanity creates its own shelter out of industrial debris, scrapes a living off the garbage heaps of abundance, recycles the discarded goods of others, lives a pinched and frugal existence. In other words, the poor offer a ghastly example of meagre resource-use and compulsory austerity in a context where excess and extravagance are now the norm.