Could Wall Street's bull charge for good? Photo: iHeylen (flickr)

If Wall Street's excesses contributed to the decline of the nation's economy, could the same profit-driven environment really spawn a new generation of do-gooders?

Absolutely, says Wall Street Journal columnist David Weidner, and it's a process that's already begun, exemplified by those who seek profit by selling to poorer consumers. (I wrote about this general trend for Global Envision in "Slashing Health Care Costs, and Slashing, and Slashing", "How to Irrigate on a Shoestring", and Selling to the Poor, On Terms They Can Afford".)

Such entrepreneurs may be guided by a social conscience when they choose the products to fund and invest in and they may be willing to wait a little bit longer to turn a profit, but profit is still the end goal. "This new breed of Wall Streeter has turned the maxim 'greed is good' into 'greed can do good,'" explains Weidner.

A paragon of this model is The Acumen Fund, a non-profit venture fund that invests in business and entrepreneurial solutions to poverty. Its projects include replacing kerosene lamps with the safer and more affordable LED lamps, and pay-per-use toilets in Kenya.

Heidi Krauel, The Acumen Fund's founder, goes further "This is one of the new faces of capitalism," she says. For those just beginning to enter the world economic system, this is certainly good news.

Jared Diamond praises Chevron's environmental stewardship in Papua New Guinea. Photo: Arthur Chapman (flickr)

From Michael Moore to Jonathan Safran Foer, American liberals love to criticize corporations for violations on everything from the environment to human rights to animal rights.

But in some cases they're dead wrong, writes Jared Diamond — an American liberal himself. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed, he argues that big corporations can be a force for good in the fight against climate change, simply because they also stand to benefit by preserving the resources they depend on and reducing their costs through lower consumption.

Diamond draws on examples from three companies: Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, and Chevron. All three are working to protect the environment in different ways for their own reasons. Coca-Cola depends heavily on water resources and is working to make its plants water-neutral, while Wal-Mart is making its operations more energy-efficient and reducing packaging waste. Chevron, on the other hand, practices a degree of environmental stewardship on the land it owns overseas that Diamond believes is superior to government stewardship of many national parks.

Why would these companies take on such projects? Diamond explains:

Lower consumption of environmental resources saves money in the short run. Maintaining sustainable resource levels and not polluting saves money in the long run. And a clean image — one attained by, say, avoiding oil spills and other environmental disasters — reduces criticism from employees, consumers and government. [...] [I]n the long run (and often in the short run as well) it is much more expensive and difficult to try to fix problems, environmental or otherwise, than to avoid them at the outset.

Diamond readily admits that not all big businesses are so admirable. But he maintains that when working to stop climate change, activists should focus less on working against corporations, and more on working with them to help them realize how much their own economic interests can be aligned with environmentalists' goals.

A new, low-cost water filtration system will make it easier for poor Indians to access clean drinking water. Photo: Jackol (flickr)

Here's some conventional marketing wisdom: People who live on less than $2 per day simply aren't a worthwhile target demographic.

But recently, some Indian companies are challenging such ossified thinking with innovative products designed to fit the needs of India's poor, reports The Wall Street Journal:

Such inventions represent a fundamental shift in the global order of innovation. Until recently, the West served rich consumers and then let its products and technology filter down to poorer countries. Now, with the developed world mired in a slump and the developing world still growing quickly, companies are focusing on how to innovate, and profit, by going straight to the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

As the Wall Street Journal explains, Indian companies started to change the way they looked at impoverished consumers after they snapped up low-priced cell phones. Then companies began to design products that they hoped would find a similarly huge demand. Soon, Tata Motors released the Nano car, a small $2000 vehicle that made car ownership a possibility for a whole new slice of Indians since it sold for less than half the price of the next-cheapest car on the Indian market. Tata plans to export a more luxurious version of the Nano to Europe — providing an example of how the goods designed for local markets could increase global competition between Indian and Western companies.

There are several other examples of products redesigned with the poor in mind. Cheap battery-powered refrigerators are a huge help to families without electricity in their homes. The solar-powered cell phone base station won third place in The Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovation Awards earlier this year. And the introduction of mobile banking is revolutionizing banking and money transfers in rural areas via cell phones in many poor countries.

It's a newer way of thinking about poverty, and one driven by bottom-line concerns: How can firms sell the poor what they need now, rather than waiting until they have the money to buy what others already have?

Thomas Benke (center) works with Sichuan Research Institute of Environmental Protection chemists and OFSSA staff to set-up the Gas Chromatograph. Photo: Courtesy of Thomas Benke.

Four years ago, a petrochemical plant on the border of China and Russia spilled 100 metric tons of the toxic chemicals into a tributary of the Amur River. The river is the main drinking supply for a town in Russia named Khabarovsk, and it put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk.

Naturally, Khabarovsk turned to Moscow for help. But they also contacted a group of friends in Portland — including my dad.

My dad, Thomas Benke, has been involved in the Portland-Khabarovsk Sister-City Association, or PKSCA, for many years. And his actions after the toxic spill showed me that sister-city associations can be a means for not only cultural exchange but also serious global cooperation.

PKSCA implements a wide reach of humanitarian programs in Khabarovsk that include solid-waste management, emergency services, educational exchanges, hospitals, orphanages, and village schools. And it, along with Oregon Fujian Sister State Association (OFSSA), has responded to disasters such as chemical spills and earthquakes. My dad has volunteered for both. One of his main motivators has been to help preserve the environment. (He holds degrees in chemical engineering and environmental law.)

There is an undeniable synergy between a clean environment and economic development. The old idea that there must be some trade-off between economic development and environmental protection in developing economies is gradually being replaced by the realization that the foundation of economic development — a healthy workforce — thrives on clean air, clean water and an unpolluted landscape.

My father explained to me that soon after the spill in Khabarovsk, he traveled there to deliver and introduce a Gas Chromatograph, a device for testing drinking water in disaster areas. The device was purchased by the City of Portland. In May 2007, PKSCA followed up by inviting two chemists from the Vodokanal (Khabarovsk Water Bureau) to work with the Portland Water Bureau and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Most importantly, PKSCA set up a training session at SRI Instruments in Los Angeles — the company that built the Gas Chromatograph. SRI Instruments' contribution was substantial — they built a specialized device that could detect the contaminants in the Amur River and provided free repair for the device.

Not only did PKSCA quickly respond to the water crisis in Khabarovsk, but by providing further training sessions in the United States, they also sustained and fostered a stronger more informative relationship between Portland and Khabarovsk officials, as well as sister-city board members.

On May 12, 2008, an 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck China’s Sichuan Province, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing nearly five million. Immediately, Fujian Province requested assistance from its Sister State, Oregon, for whatever aid they could provide. Below, Thomas described the international and OFSSA response to the crisis.

The world responded with cash and supplies. The people of Oregon donated cash generously through several local and international non-profit organizations. The Oregon-Fujian Sister State Association, because of its unique relationship with Fujian Province, resolved to do more — to donate emergency response tools that would leverage Sichuan Province’s capacity to respond.

The pre-existing relationship of trust between the two jurisdictions allowed Fujian province to request help from Oregon. The Sister-Province relationship made all the difference — we were able to overcome the cultural issues of pride and face that might have otherwise required Fujian province to decline aid. It's all about overcoming the formidable cultural barriers, and I think that that's the key.

It's the difference between your neighbor, somebody in your community coming in and offering help as opposed to a stranger from someplace you know nothing about.

When my dad first explained sister city associations right after the toxic spill four years ago, I thought he was obsessed with his involvement in both organizations. Now about to graduate from college, I plan to follow his lead and hope to work internationally for an NGO.

Many African countries, like Madagascar pictured here, are increasingly leasing land to foreign firms, but critics argue the deals are exploitative. Photo: goukley (flickr)

A million hectares in Uganda. Some 690,000 hectares in Sudan. And 500,000 hectares in Tanzania. These are just a few of the numbers that have appeared on the bargaining table in the past year as foreign firms scramble for land leases in Africa.

The Independent takes a look at the phenomenon known as "land grabbing," or the recent trend of foreign governments and corporations leasing or purchasing large swaths of land in poorer countries to grow food or other crops for export back to their home country. The phenomenon is most prevalent in Africa, but leases have been sought elsewhere, including the Philippines and Pakistan.

[The sudden increase in "land grabbing"] has its roots in the food crisis of 2007/8, when prices of rice, wheat and other cereals skyrocketed across the world, triggering riots from Haiti to Senegal. The price spike also led food-growing countries to slap export tariffs on staple crops to minimize the amounts that left their countries. That tightened the supply still further, meaning food prices were driven up more by a situation of policy-created scarcity than by supply and demand.

This situation also made many rich countries that are reliant on massive food imports question one of the fundamentals of the global economy: the idea that every country should concentrate on its best products and then trade. Suddenly having unimaginable quantities of cash from oil was not enough to guarantee you all the food you needed. The oil sheikhs of the Gulf states found that food imports had doubled in cost over less than five years. In the future it might get even worse. You could no longer rely on regional and global markets, they concluded. The rush to grab land began.

Investors say they will bring needed infrastructure, technology and employment, but in some cases, these investments have been met with resistance. Riots erupted earlier this year in Madagascar, where almost half the children under age five don't get enough to eat. The riots were driven in part by the news that the government had given South Korean firm Daewoo a 99 year lease over 1.3 million hectares of land. On an area amounting to half the island's arable land, Daewoo planned to grow maize and palm oil solely for export to South Korea. The deal fell through when the riots forced the president, Marc Ravalomanana, out of office, BBC News reports.

Nevertheless, land grabbing is poised to continue at a rapid pace, according to The Independent:

The government of President Ravalomanana became the first in the world to be toppled because of what the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization recently described as "land grabbing." The Daewoo deal is only one of more than 100 land deals which have, over the past 12 months, seen massive tracts of cultivable farmland across the globe bought up by wealthy countries and international corporations. The phenomenon is accelerating at an alarming rate, with an area half the size of Europe's farmland targeted in just the past six months.

Critics question the truthfulness of the investors' promises. The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf, warned that land grabbing is simply neo-colonialism, and Africa will again be exploited for its resources while seeing little direct revenue.

The Independent offers an analogy from international development policy consultant Mark Weston for understanding the current nature of the leases and what makes them magnets for controversy:

Imagine if China, following a brief negotiation with a British government desperate for foreign cash after the collapse of the economy, bought up the whole of Wales, replaced most of its inhabitants with Chinese workers, turned the entire country into an enormous rice field, and sent all the rice produced there for the next 99 years back to China.

Imagine that neither the evicted Welsh nor the rest of the British public knew what they were getting in return for this, having to content themselves with vague promises that the new landlords would upgrade a few ports and roads and create jobs for local people.

Land grabbing is just one aspect of the current discussion about agricultural development in Africa. When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Kenya earlier this month she voiced interest in Africa's agricultural potential: "More and more, the world will look to Africa to be its breadbasket, and I hope that when the world looks ... it is Africans and African farmers who will profit from becoming the world's breadbasket."

By allowing Wal-Mart to sell only to wholesalers, the Indian government hopes to protect smaller merchants like the one shown here. Photo: (nz)dave (flickr)

Wal-Mart has long been a source of controversy, but the July opening of the chain's first store in India was greeted relatively warmly and drew huge crowds in its opening days, the Washington Post reports.

Wal-Mart India isn't the same as the American version. The store goes by the name Best Price Modern Wholesale, which reflects the fact that Wal-Mart India is a joint venture with Indian business conglomerate Bharti Enterprises. Another difference is that the store is open only to wholesale customers like hotel and restaurant owners, and their friends and family. Time reports that India's commercial laws prevent international retailers from directly competing with domestic businesses.

The flagship store is located in Amritsar, in the northwestern Indian state of Punjab. The arrival of Wal-Mart has created curiosity and interest, which the Washington Post highlights through one customer's reaction:

"In Punjabi, we have an expression: When there is a wedding, everyone flocks to see the new bride," said Kamal Gambhir, a wholesaler whose congested offices are located in this city's oldest bazaar. "I myself had returned from a trip and came back to hear little children asking, 'Where is the new Wal-Mart?' I told them it's on our most historic road."

As the largest retailer in the world, Wal-Mart has raised concerns in India about the store's consequences for smaller retailers and the vendors found in community markets. According to American Public Media's "Marketplace," some worry Wal-Mart's presence will raise business owners' profits while less-connected and poorer members of society are hurt by the new competition.

Wal-Mart says it will build 10 to 15 stores in India over the next three years.

This has been reposted from the Mercy Corps blog.

I’ll get right down to it: I was disgusted, then furious when I read this morning that an energy trader might receive a $100 million bonus this year. The headline reads “Big Bonuses Are Back on Wall St.”

Dozens of financial services companies are now partially owned by the U.S. government (who has also covered huge percentages of their losses with federal bailout money) and are still posting quarterly losses in the billions of dollars. Yet they — and other Wall Street entities — continue to dole out bonuses that very few of us can even fathom.

Wall Street claims that such exorbitant bonuses are necessary to “retain top talent.” They’d have you believe that this is some kind of meritocracy, simply market forces at work. But when taxpayer money is involved, I believe it becomes something quite different: offering a $100 million bonus to one man is blatant kleptocracy.

I did some figuring. If I work until I’m 65 years old and average a salary of $60,000 per year, I will make $2.52 million over the course of my career. In other words, it would take me almost 40 lifetimes to earn as much as this man will be handed as a one-year bonus.

My father made just over $1 million, total, working 34 years for the same company. While I realize that inflation over a few decades must be factored in, the pay discrepancy between the average American worker and Wall Street executives is monstrous — but not as monstrous as the gap between those executives and hard-working folks in developing countries:

• The average worker in Bosnia and Herzegovina earns $7,700 each year (calculated by per capita income). Assuming that worker has a career spanning 40 years, it would take him or her 325 lifetimes to make $100 million.
• Nepal is one of Asia’s poorest countries — annual per capita income is only $1,040. It would take the average Nepali worker 2,404 lifetimes to bring home the amount of money that one financial services firm wants to give a single person as bonus pay.
• In Central African Republic, where per-capita income is only $740 per year and life expectancy 44 years for a typical male, it would take someone who worked for 30 years of that short life an astonishing 4,505 lifetimes to earn the $100 million casually paid out as an annual bonus to one man.

There are no easy answers to these glaring gaps. Obviously Wall Street has not learned its lesson from helping precipitate the global economic crisis — a crisis that is making millions of people around the world, including hundreds of thousands of Mercy Corps beneficiaries, suffer more than ever. Please take this as just a bit of perspective from one person who is pretty damned angry about it all.

People protest government bailouts and exorbitant executive pay on New York City's Wall Street. Photo: Walking Off the Big Apple (flickr)

Idle mining cars on a train track in La Oroya, Peru. Photo: Max Opp (exoppholdsvaer) (flickr)

La Oroya, Peru, is one of the ten most polluted places in the world, according to the Blacksmith Institute, a New York-based global health agency.

The pollution is caused by a smelter owned by Doe Run Peru, which melts and purifies metals from the mountains surrounding La Oroya. The process is highly toxic: It's estimated that the smelting process emits 890 tons of sulfur dioxide every day.

Today, the area is plagued by acid rain and pollution, among other health and environmental problems. A recent article by the New York Times cited a 2005 study by Saint Louis University that estimated that 97 percent of children under six in La Oroya have lead poisoning, which can cause seizures, anemia as well as problems with the brain and kidneys.

Financially, however, the community needs Doe Run Peru since the majority of residents rely in some way on the smelting plant to earn a living, says the New York Times. About 3,000 people work in the actual plant, and other thousands make a living from selling food to workers and cleaning uniforms.

Community members say they want environmental conditions to improve, but cannot afford to see the jobs go elsewhere. They share their opinions in this video from the U.S. environmental law firm Earthjustice.

By the summer of 2008, the price of rice had increased five times from the average price in 2005. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

The following post is from One Table, a Mercy Corps campaign to fight world hunger by investing in the world's women.

Today almost a billion people worldwide are unable to buy or grow enough food to avoid malnutrition. That's 120 million more than were hungry in 2006.

What happened? Basically, the world saw dramatic spikes in food prices. But there were many underlying causes of what's known as the global food crisis:

• Drought and other climate-related problems that resulted in smaller harvests
• Changing diets — rise of the middle class in India and China and an increased demand for food, especially meat, which requires large amounts of grain to raise
• Diversion of crops from food production to the production of biofuels
• High fuel prices during 2008 — if it costs more to transport food, prices go up
• Declining investments in agricultural productivity — total agriculture development aid to poor countries plunged from $8 billion in 1984 to $3.4 billion in 2004. At the same time, the developing world's cities have been ballooning with people who do not grow any of their food
• Export bans and restrictions last year in several major grain-producing countries like China as governments sought to lower food prices for their own citizens, with the result of reducing the global supply on hand.

While food prices have come down from their highs of 2008, they remain substantially above historic levels. Many economists feel this trend, which most severely affects those who can least afford it, is likely to continue for some time.

The economic, health and societal costs of the global food crisis have been severe. One of the first things Mercy Corps did to figure out how and where to direct our efforts was to survey the communities where we work. We discovered that within communities Mercy Corps serves, roughly 70 percent of income is spent on food, and 80 percent of the population had been affected by rising food prices over the past year. The survey also confirmed something we already suspected: that families were coping with higher prices by eating fewer meals, selling off household belongings, going into debt and removing children from school so that they can work.

In addition to being a record year for food prices, it's also been a record year for our food security team, allowing Mercy Corps to aggressively respond to this crisis. We now have 17 programs in 13 countries designed specifically to respond to this on-going problem. Through support from donors including USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Gap Foundation, the Hunger Site, and private individuals, our Food Crisis Response employs a strategy designed to ensure that the groundwork for increased prosperity in the future is laid — even while addressing the immediate problem of accessing sufficient food.

Food distributions, much of which are specifically targeted to improve child nutrition, are taking place in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, in the Central African Republic, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Nepal, Niger, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Uganda and again Zimbabwe, Mercy Corps is helping hungry households to access food by providing employment opportunities, agricultural training and inputs (such as seeds and tools), and helping people establish and grow small businesses.

Combined, these programs are reaching almost 1.5 million individuals who have been directly impacted by higher food prices. Overall, Mercy Corps’ Crisis Response will lead to a sustainable increase in income for these people, leading in turn to greater food security over the long-term.

What happens when tens of thousands of impoverished Africans sue one of Britain's biggest oil companies for sickening them with toxic waste?

In 2006, the British company Trafigura unloaded a ship full of untreated chemical slop at a household garbage dump in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. Scores of people living nearby were diagnosed with poisoning, hundreds lost their livelihoods as trash-scavengers, and 17 died. Now, 30,000 residents are suing the oil trading company for exposing them to toxic sludge. The company paid for a clean-up and admitted to "neglecting its duty of care," but has denied responsibility for the poisonings. The trial starts this fall.

Al Jazeera chronicles this David-versus-Goliath tale of Britain's biggest-ever lawsuit in the first installment of Corporations on Trial, which covers five lawsuits that pit ordinary people against the world's most powerful and wealthy corporations.

The other shows are just as compelling: Yesterday, the program aired the story of why Native American villagers in Alaska are suing Exxon Mobil. Next week, learn why 40,000 Indonesians who fled their homes after a volcanic eruption blame a gas company for their troubles.

Pigs in a crowded sty in Wieckowice, Poland. Photo: Wojciech Grzedzinski for The International Herald Tribune. visionshare (flickr)

Pork is a staple of the Romanian diet, and the country has become one of the largest producers of pig products in Europe. But it's not necessarily Romanians who are profiting from the growing industry.

U.S. agribusiness giant Smithfield Foods has carved its way into Eastern Europe's pork market, tapping European Union farm subsidies to set up shop in countries like Poland and Romania. Since its arrival in 1999, the Virginia-based Fortune 500 company has swiftly become Romania's top pork producer.

Smithfield has upended traditional ways of doing farming in Romania, one of Europe's poorest countries. The New York Times reports that 90 percent of the country's small farmers have lost their jobs in the last six years. Many have been forced to leave home in search of construction jobs in other EU member states.

The impacts of Smithfield's empire can be tracked all the way to West Africa, where the company exports cheap pork scraps to markets in Liberia, Equatorial Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire. In these countries, frozen offal sells at half the price of local pork — a bargain for consumers that again comes at the expense of local farmers.

“My farm isn’t working,” said Cote d'Ivoire farmer Patrice Yao, who told the The New York Times that he owns 45 hogs compared to the 100 he had three years ago."The Europeans are sending all their cheap meat to our market."

Pirates stock up on goats, cigarettes and other supplies when they return to shore. Photo: CharlesFred (flickr)

Piracy along Somalia's coastline represents a very lucrative business — as the pirates collectively earned an estimated $150 million in 2008 — but what is piracy's effect on Somalia's economy?

Somalia's economy is in a fairly grim state. An estimated 73.4 percent of the country's population lives in general or extreme poverty and the average Somali earns only $600 per year, making Somalia one of the poorest countries in the world.

Fishing used to be one of Somalia's most profitable industries. But as piracy has increased — there were roughly 100 attacks in 2008 — the New York Times reports that foreign ships have become reluctant to brave the waters surrounding Somalia's coastline to buy fish and other exports. The amount of goods coming into Somalia, including aid, has also declined.

Pirate money has also skewed prices. In the town of Garowe, near Somalia's central coast, resident Mohamed Hassan told the BBC that "piracy has a negative impact on several aspects of our life," including a financial one:

They have made life more expensive for ordinary people because they "pump huge amounts of U.S. dollars" into the local economy which results in fluctuations in the exchange rate.

On the other hand, pirates are putting wealth back into the Somali economy — an estimated $1 million to $2 million is made from each captured ship.

Whenever a ship is seized, pirates stock up on sheep, goats, water, fuel, rice, spaghetti, milk, and cigarettes in towns up and down Somalia’s coast. Sugule Dahir, a local shop owner in Eyl, a town just off the coast in central eastern Somalia, feels the incoming money has had a positive impact. He tells ABC News that, because of the pirates, more businesses are beginning to emerge and the general public seems better off. "There are more shops and business is booming because of the piracy. Internet cafes and telephone shops have opened, and people are just happier than before."

Government officials are getting a fair sum of pirate money as well. By allowing the pirates to work in controlled areas, the regional Puntland Government is given shares of the pirate's earnings. About 30 percent of the collected ransom goes directly to government officials, Farah Ismael Eid, a captured pirate, tells Time.

Some Somalis are worse off because of piracy. But it's clear that the pirates do spread the wealth.

For many local business owners in Syria, they hope that the economic transition will improve business and living standards. Photo: hazy jenius (flickr)

Syria’s economy is undergoing some real changes. Once known for its socialist policies, Syria is now attempting to spur economic growth through market-based reforms. While such growth is expected to boost Syria's income, experts differ on how, or if, they believe money will reach the poor.

The reforms include cutting back on government subsides, expanding the private sector, and attracting foreign investment. A World Bank report states that between 2006 and 2007, Syria's foreign direct investment nearly doubled — reaching $885 million by the end of 2007. What's more, foreign investment is expected to expand following the opening of the Damascus Securities Exchange — Syria's new stock exchange.

Robert F. Worth of the New York Times says Syria is being forced into a new economic model.

Socialist self-sufficiency is no longer an option for Syria. The oil reserves that once provided the mainstay of state revenues are running out. Exports have tumbled in recent months, as have remittances sent home by Syrian expatriate workers.

In the mid 1990's Syria's oil output hovered around 600,000 barrels per day. Today, output has shrank to 350,000 barrels a day — a decline of nearly 60 percent.

But, as Syria transitions, critics question whether these changes will actually reduce poverty.

“In Syria the growth rate is a strong 6 percent, but the question is: who gets this growth?" says Safi Shujaa, director of the Syrian Economic Center. "According to some economists, 70 percent of gross domestic product goes to only 30 percent of Syrians.” Shujaa thinks that cut backs on government subsidies — which range from agricultural products to fuel, water, and electricity — have pushed many economically vulnerable Syrians directly into poverty. On the other hand, the subsides have simply gotten too expensive for Syria to bear along with its mounting debt. In 2008, subsidy costs for the government reached $7 billion.

Syria's economic transition comes at an interesting time. With talk of a new and improved relationship between Syria and the United States — and possibly Israel — Syria's economic strategy may be aided by improving political relationships with the west.

"If relations will improve," says Mohammed Salem, a Damascus perfume-shop owner, "the economy will improve too."

Are the people who've lived on this planet the longest the best-suited to protect it?

Liza O’Reilly thinks so.

She's a researcher with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy who spent last week in Alaska at a climate change summit with native peoples around the world. Participants from Borneo, Mexico, Kenya, Nepal traveled to attend … like the rest of us, they all recognize the earth is in peril. What they're saying is, "Let us help save it."

O'Reilly says it makes sense to take them up on their offer, in part because many indigenous groups are themselves affected by climate change. Not far from the conference site, even, the village of Newtok has lost 320 residents because of swollen rivers and melting permafrost.

Another reason for inviting indigenous peoples to the table is their strong spiritual connection with the earth, O'Reilly says. Because of this, they're more likely to come up with solutions that are sustainable over the long haul.

This very timeless wisdom recognizes [Indigenous peoples’] capacity to lead "developed" Nation/states, corporations, and other failed institutions and models out of the dark, wiping the soot out of their infirmed and capitalistic eyes to look at the Indigenous-based model of micro-energy, developed and controlled by the people.

So what would a climate change solution engineered by indigenous peoples look like? Well, it wouldn't involve massive-scale energy solutions like big dams and new nuclear power plants. Instead, it would curb the production of new fossil fuels and call on the various UN agencies to work with indigenous peoples to "address climate change impacts in their strategies and action plans."

Check out O'Reilly's posts on the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change.

Hostage takings, vandalism and attempted assault sound like charges on a rap sheet for a hardened criminal. But they're the collective crimes of people who've been laid off recently.

Workers in the French factories for 3M and Sony — enraged about the size of severance packages for laid-off workers — held their bosses captive last month. The captured CEOs actually ended up bargaining with the kidnappers, while the police — not wanting to incense the workers even more — promptly responded by doing ...nothing.

Just last week, workers at a Caterpillar plant in France held their bosses captive as well. They, too, were looking for better treatment for laid-off coworkers. In another incident, workers at the French luxury retail company PPR surrounded their CEO's car and blocked roads so he couldn't escape. This time police did intervene and escorted François-Henri Pinault to safety.

Across the Channel in the United Kingdom, people are outraged with the multimillion dollar pension package given to former Royal Bank of Scotland CEO Fred Goodwin. One group was so upset that it vandalized Sir Goodwin's house and car.

An ominous e-mail from the vandals threatened more attacks:

We are angry that rich people, like him, are paying themselves a huge amount of money, and living in luxury, while ordinary people are made unemployed, destitute and homeless. This is a crime. Bank bosses should be jailed. This is just the beginning.

Joining in the spirit of protest, as many as 5,000 protesters gathering in London's financial district on the first day of the G-20 summit, expressing discontent over the financial crisis, climate change and war. Several demonstrators threw projectiles and forced their way into an RBS branch through broken windows.

Bert Klandermans, a professor of applied social psychology at Amsterdam's Free University, offers a psychological explanation for why some people are expressing their frustration in this way.

Anger is an emotion that spurs collective action ... [It's] an emotion that results from feeling that somebody is responsible for something, and could have acted differently ... [For many] the bankers did it wrong, and they did it wrong because they were greedy. That's what makes people angry.

Frustrated by executive compensation and the economy, protesters broke windows of an RBS branch in London. Photo: Camus Live Art (flickr)