We are working on the English version of PALA throughout 2025

Recente inhoud op Pala

A growing network of satellites is mapping the many leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. This knowledge is needed to reduce global warming. But knowledge does not guarantee effective climate action ... especially since governments are playing second fiddle. Very strange.

A study confirms what has long been known: online dating causes greater inequality within societies. What is new is the recent media attention.
 

Why the World Social Forum and other movements are failing to shape another world.

During the heydays of apartheid, Flanders featured one of the world’s most archaic pro-apartheid lobbies. Something more fundamental was at work than language affinity. The Action Committee on Southern Africa managed to constitute a broad-based coalition in Flanders to better hit where it hurt.

One year and a half into the COVID-19 crisis and slowly beginning to see the end of the tunnel, messages are still spread about the necessary changes in ‘the system’ to which this crisis will surely lead. But what changes? And what ‘system’? And how ‘necessary’ are they?

This Q & A reveals how European experts responded and advised very differently from their peers in many West Pacific countries. Europeans – and the whole world – are paying the highest price for what may be the biggest blunder of the 21st century.

If Belgium performed just like Taiwan, it would now have three covid-19 dead and not 6500 dead Belgians. The coronacrisis approach was catastrophic. How many more will die an unnecessary death?

Corona forces societies to respond at lightning speed. Instantly the question arises how to tackle quickly and most intelligent the revival after the acute crisis. Because there are vital choices to be made.
 

Social policies have been the major victims of neoliberal globalisation. Slowly the IMF and the World Bank adopted a more open attitude. However, the road is bumpy. In a recent report the World Bank proposes a ‘New Social Contract’. But what the World Bank is really up to?

Action research confronts the Transition Network Civil Society with some challenges. Civil society organisations seem to lack the power to realise system-wide solutions – for example to regain the grip of society on the banking system after the financial crisis – or to push the political and economic world into that direction.