Environment | WPN World People News

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva and French Minister of Agriculture Stéphane Le Foll at a side event of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in Rome.

Organic farmers, processors, traders and importers must meet higher but realistic sustainability criteria and undergo strict food fraud checks to boost trust in the EU organic label, said agriculture MEPs on Tuesday. They introduced measures to avoid contamination of organic food, including on mixed organic and conventional farms, and endorsed plans to help small farmers turn organic.

The use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) remains controversial, which is why the EU has very strict rules and complex authorisation procedures concerning their cultivation and commercialisation. Since April 2015, EU countries are able to ban the cultivation of GMOs on their territory, but should they have the same power regarding their commercialisation? Parliament's environment committee has rejected plans for this, fearing it could lead to problems. Read on for all the facts.

This grayscale image of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet shows the Recovery Ice Stream flowing out of the Shackleton Range Mountains and merging into Filchner Ice Shelf. The image is from the Mosaic of Antarctica, a map of digital images of the continent based on observations collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites.

MEPs have another busy week ahead of them.

Greenpeace East Asia activists Tuesday entered the restricted zone of the Kori nuclear power plant (NPP) near Busan, South Korea’s second largest city, to protest the country’s expansion of nuclear and its risk to the public. The protest aims to ramp up pressure on the South Korean government, which is about to give permission for the construction of two additional reactors.

Only two months left before world leaders gather in Paris to hammer out a global agreement to fight climate change. Parliament will send a delegation of 15 MEPs to the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in December to help obtain a successful result. MEPs debate and vote on Parliament's position on Wednesday. Follow it live on our website and find out more about the stakes involved in our infographics.

Industrial agriculture, with its heavy use of chemical pesticides, pollutes our water and soil and leads to loss of habitats and biodiversity, according to a Greenpeace report published Tuesday.

FAO Director-General Jos Graziano da Silva addresses the Committee on World Food Security.