Frans Cronje, deputy CEO, tells us more.

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Its key finding? Humanity’s demands exceed our planet’s capacity to sustain us. That is, we ask for more than what we have.

In a world first, LPR 2012 was launched from space – by astronaut André Kuipers in the International Space Station, in collaboration with the European Space Agency.

Read more:

• Visit the LPR 2012 section of the WWF website, which includes Andre’s message to the planet
• Online, interactive and print assets for the Report are free to download
• Past news headlines can be found in our News archive.

Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed provides an insight to situations where “everything is open to negotiation”. As long as the compromises “reduce the number of deaths, the suffering and the frequency of incapacitating handicaps within groups of people who are usually poorly served by public health systems,” reads the introduction.

But as actors in conflict zones who enter into agreements with warlords, rebels, aggressors and governments, MSF’s compromises are a gamble and subject to criticism. In Sri Lanka it was suspected of supporting the Tamil Tigers, and so agreed with the government not to speak out on what it saw. In Somalia, it was required to pay taxes to Al Shabaab militants.

During the recent famine in Somalia, Michiel Hofman, head of the team who took MSF back to Afghanistan in 2009, set up the emergency response mission in Mogadishu. Two of his colleagues were shot in the following months.

He hopes that laying bare the complex reality of MSF’s work in Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed will help the aid industry become more transparent. “Wars are nasty, dirty, messy places. Anybody that enters into that arena will become part of the messiness. Everybody that engages will make compromises, take risks and continuously struggle with dilemmas that are very uncomfortable,” says Hofman.

“In the end, transparency, to be honest about it, is still the best weapon to be able to get access.”

Read more:

• The complete article at Daily Maverick.
• Past news headlines can be found in our News archive.

We’re joined by Tshikululu COO Sarah Morrison, and Senior Communications Specialist Gina de Villiers.

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We explore this further by talking with Jane Roach and Sarah Ball, both very involved in this part of CSI. Specifically, we explore the notion that principals, school governing bodies, parental associations, and the supply of teaching aids are of secondary importance to getting things right at the TEACHER level.

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MSF is concerned about the dearth of national and regional migration and health policy instruments, cross-border programmes and activities that could provide suitable access to healthcare and continuity of care for treatment of communicable and chronic diseases, like HIV and tuberculosis. This gap is also evident in the lack of a unified civil society response to prevent and condemn the physical and institutional discrimination and violence targeting migrants in South Africa.

Solidarity for Survivalis an exhibition and a call to action that seeks to inspire collective understanding and responsibility among South Africans to ensure vulnerable migrants do not remain invisible and their healthcare needs ignored.

Venue: Rampart Rooms, Constitution Hill, 1 Kotze Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg
Dates:10 May to 16 June 2012.

For more information, contact Borrie la Grange (Head of Communication, MSF South Africa) on borrie.lagrange@msf.org

Read more:

• Visit the MSF SA website.
• On 14 May 2012, Solidarity for Survival with MSF launches a poetry competition for Gauteng schools and the first in a series of community dialogues and mural paintings in Mayfair, Alexandra, Thokoza and Hillbrow. More information here.
• Past news headlines can be found in our News archive.

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“AIDS is not a new disease. With Tinderbox we wanted to write a defining AIDS book for this generation that will get people excited to talk about AIDS again. We were able to apply new discoveries on the origin of AIDS,” said Daniel Halperin, who co-wrote the book with American journalist Craig Timberg.

Scientists have long known that a blood sample preserved in a hospital in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, dating from 1959, indicated that HIV had been around decades before it was recognized in the 1980s. In 2008, Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona reported on a second sample of the virus, from a lymph node biopsy taken in Kinshasa in 1960, which helped establish the virus’ evolutionary timeline.

One goal of Tinderbox is to change public perceptions about AIDS. No longer a great mystery, HIV has been identified as a mutable virus with a documented history. The second popular perception the book addresses is that AIDS prevention and treatment can be “one size fits all”.

Read more:

• Read the full article on Irin PlusNews
• Past news headlines can be found in our News archive.

This year, the third global Copenhagen Consensus will be held, putting together the world’s smartest minds to analyse different approaches to tackling these challenges. This will aim to provide an answer to the question:

If you had $75bn for worthwhile causes, where should you start?

An Expert Panel including four Nobel laureates will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, later this month. Their deliberations will be informed by thirty new economic research papers that will be written just for the project by top scholars from around the world. Following the same format as past Copenhagen Consensus projects, first, the Center commissioned Challenge Papers on the costs and benefits of solutions to ten different global challenges. ‘Perspective Papers’ were also commissioned to ensure that there was a range of expert points-of-view.

Across the topic areas – armed conflict, biodiversity, chronic disease, climate change, education, hunger and malnutrition, infectious disease, natural disasters, population growth, water and sanitation – the research will rigorously examine different approaches to tackling one global challenge.

After deliberations, the Expert Panel’s task is to create a prioritised list of solutions to the ten challenges, showing the most cost-effective investments. As in the past, the Center expects that this list will be utilised as an input by donors, governments and philanthropists. The Expert Panel’s recommendations will be released in May 2012.

(We’re proud to see South Africa represented in the list of authors – J. Paul Dunne from the School of Economics, University of Cape Town, has written the Challenge Paper on armed conflict.)

Read more:

• Visit the Copenhagen Consensus Centre website.
• Download Copenhagen Consensus 2012 research as it is released. As of writing, Challenge Papers on chronic disease, hunger and malnutrition and infectious diseases are available with more to follow.
• Past news headlines can be found in our News archive.

The Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (Sasscal) is intended to support cross-border research and land management.

Ministers from the five countries were joined by Annette Schavan, Germany’s science minister. Germany is providing €50m (£41m) in aid for the first four years.

African countries have often lagged behind the rest of the world in cross-border co-operation, for example in intra-African trade. But last year Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe created a trans-frontier conservation area, allowing animals and people to roam freely across borders and establishing a framework to protect and share precious water resources.

Read more:

• Read the full report on the Guardian’s website.
• Mail & Guardian has reported on the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area.
• Past news headlines can be found in our News archive.