Resources

In the midst of one of the worst economic crises to have hit Cuba since the fall of the Soviet Union, the government of Cuba has been forced to cut back aid provided to workers of the communist state.

The German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) has announced the release of the full edition of International Fuel Prices 2009.   The report provides an overview of the retail prices of gasoline and diesel in more than 170 countries, discusses pricing policies, presents case studies on the impact of high and volatile fuel prices in 2007 to 2008 in developing countries and provides access to numerous additional resources.

This month, Germany's Federal Environment Agency has published an English translation of Environmentally Harmful Subsidies in Germany, a 2008 report that had previously only been available in German.

On 21 January, the Earth Policy Institute published a data highlight on their website about the impact of United States biofuels production on world food supplies. Originally part of the larger work, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, which stresses more generally the importance of acting to ensure world food supplies, the analysis starkly illustrates the cost of U.S.

The European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) has released a report criticizing the European Union's biofuels policy, Green Protectionism in the European Union: How Europe's Biofuels Policy and the Renewable Energy Directive Violate WTO Commitments.

According to an analysis conducted by the Pew Charitable Trust's Subsidy Scope project at the end of November 2009, road ‘user fees' paid in the United States - including fuel taxes, vehicle registration fees and tolls - make up a decreasing share of the cost of highway construction and maintenance.

The irony of water scarcity on a planet 70% covered by ocean does make us gaze longingly at the seas as the ultimate answer. The public, politicians and water authorities continue to hope that cost-effective and environmentally friendly desalination - the removal of salt from seawater to make it drinkable - will come to the rescue of water-scarce regions.

The European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) and the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) are supporting a new website lobbying for reform of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), ‘Reform the CAP'.

This November, the Global Subsidies Initiative released the first of its series of reports on fossil-fuel subsidies, The Politics of Fossil-Fuel Subsidies. The report, written by David Victor, Director of Stanford University's Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, investigates the logic behind the creation and endurance of perverse subsidies: despite the seemingly obvious problems they cause, entrenched vested interests among beneficiaries can create political obstacles to reform.