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The Carbon Levy Project is working to introduce a global fossil fuel extraction levy to ensure that the people facing the worst impacts of climate change are compensated by those that caused the problem. In Paris, the Carbon Levy Declaration has been signed by many supporters from around the world, among them Barbara Unmüßig.

Globally, political leaders are lauding the acceptance of the global and legally binding Paris Agreement on Climate Change at COP21 as a historical moment. It achieves a goal long believed unattainable. However, judged against the enormity of the challenge and the needs and pressure from people on the ground demanding a global deal anchored in climate justice, the Paris Agreement can only be called a disappointment.

For intersex people and their concerns, 2015 was a very important year because it saw intersex issues being thrust more and more into the spotlight of European and international policy making. Caroline Ausserer talks about these developments with Dan Christian Ghattas, co-chair of OII Europe, the umbrella organization of European human rights-based intersex NGOs.

Lena Herrmann-Green is a 19-year-old student with two younger siblings who lives a relatively normal life. But she was one of the first children in Germany to be conceived via anonymous sperm donation.

With a backlog of more than 350,000 asylum applications, Germany is under pressure to speed up the asylum process. But efforts to quickly process Syrian refugees shortchange Afghanis and others.

The research project highlights the national level parliaments and critically reviews quota designs, practices and experiences of women parliamentarians on both quota seats as well as general seats. A delegation of women parliamentarians, together with civil society activists from Afghanistan and Pakistan, went on a visit to Berlin and Brussels to discuss the first key findings.

Jutta Kill provides an excellent summary of why market-based or market-like valuation of ‘nature’ does not work as a tool for reducing climate change and biodiversity loss but rather is likely to worsen both trends.

Thida Khus is the Executive Director of SILAKA, a Cambodian NGO that has been working since 1997 to increase the participation of women in Cambodia. Thida will be speaking at the Heinrich Böll Foundation about the situation of women in Southeast Asia.

This report is an excellent overview of the pitiful state of environmentalism and its neoliberalisation. The issues raised are important and should be taken seriously. I would like to suggest a few areas in which the argument could benefit from some further reflection.

As the UK debates extending into Syria, there is a striking absence of consideration for citizens. A commentary.

Shrinking – closing – no space: Governments across all continents villainize civil society actors. Where does their sense of threat emanate from?

More than two thirds of European oil refineries are now equipped to process tar sands, research has found, raising fears the EU is ready to welcome a flood of imports of one of the most environmentally devastating fuels in production.

The Brussels climate dialogue series that was held from the Climate Summit in Warsaw (COP19 ) until the Climate Summit in Paris (COP21) resulted in the following six key messages to build EU climate ambition in the international climate negotiations.

As a result of the climate change India and South Asia will likely have a huge economic, social, and environmental damage. Therefore climate solutions must be considered in national climate policy.

Is Gas a climate-friendly energy sources? And the gas industry a climate protector? No, says Laura Weis and explains why we delay the energy transition with this idea.

A compensation mechanism could provide countries with incentives to stop their deforestation and thus reduce emissions. However, this relatively simple economic solution remains controversial.

We should not completely abandon economic arguments; but instead of hectically following and reinforcing the trend, we should lessen the prominence of these arguments by strongly fostering alternative ones, especially those which relate to the very intuitions and reasons why people protect nature.

South Africa is highly dependent on coal but also considered a leader on climate policy. How does it look at the upcoming climate summit in Paris? An interview with Richard Worthington.

Creating the visibility to the economic eye requires abstractions that may in the end result in much more far-reaching changes to how we understand nature than initially imagined. There are three claims implied in this statement.

For his documentary a finnish filmmaker followed the coaltravel from Kuzbass to Helsinki. His plan: talking to people in the train about climate change. But they didn't want to talk with him.

The people of Myanmar have collectively placed their faith in the NLD. The party will have to go on - even beyond Aung San Suu Kyi’s lifetime. A commentary.

Poland is a major coal producer. Miners there are well organised and have strong political leverage. There is a big question mark over how the new government want to approach EU climate policy. An analysis.

The new economy of nature tends to produce a similar right to decide what lives and what does not in the /natural world/ according to its economic value for capital, whether that world lies in the hands of corporations or of states.

Migrant workers in the Asean Region live and work under inhumane conditions. To improve this situation policies, the migration industry and the accountability of employers must all get a lot more attention.

Refugees in Southeast Asia live in legal limbo and are subject to harassment, arrest, and detention. Especially Rohingya refugees are in indefinite detention and have been forgotten by the international media.

Over 100 young cyclists, 60 percent of them women, took to the streets of Islamabad. Dressed in green attire they were campaigning that “There is no planet B” and requesting policy makers in Pakistan and around the world that it is policies that need to be changed, and not the climate.

In times of increased ASEAN economic integration the official rhetoric around migration is one of free labour markets, opportunities and exchange. However, there are indications that ASEAN's migration management is in fact a "politics of return".

Around the world, people are fighting back against the coal industry. Theyface repression, harassment and violence – but sometimes they are successful. A chapter from the Coal Atlas.

Trading in pollution permits has blossomed into a big business. The system has produced little benefit for the climate. Even so, the alternatives are barely discussed. A chapter from the Coal Atlas.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation and Friends of the Earth International have published the first English edition of the Coal Atlas 2015 in Brussels. The Coal Atlas contains the latest facts and figures on the use of coal and its environmental and social consequences.