PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jul 18 (IPS/IFEJ) - The southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, a pioneer in participatory budgets and environmental policies, and habitual host of the enormous World Social Forum, has returned to the international stage.

Chosen as one of the 12 sites for the 2014 football World Cup, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state, with a population of 1.4 million, faces a dilemma.

In August, local residents will vote on whether to allow the construction of apartment buildings in the Ponta do Melo zone on the banks of the Guaíba River. The referendum will take place in a context of major plans, including sports stadium expansion and road construction, to better receive fans for the football championship.

But some of the projects are facing legal challenges because of their potential for harming the environment. The Porto Alegre Fundamental Law establishes that the areas along the Guaíba River - actually an estuary and also referred to as a lake - are permanent protected zones.

CAPE TOWN, Jul 17 (IPS) - Commercial farmers sometimes fail at organic farming because they switch over too quickly, ditching all chemicals, which is as traumatic for the soil as "a drug addict going cold turkey".

This is how Cornelius Oosthuizen, the head of the South African Biofarm Institute's management team, explains why there are relatively few organic farming success stories in South Africa. The South African Biofarm Institute promotes sustainable and profitable biological and organic farming.

"Failure occurs when a farmer who has been using chemicals on a farm for a long time suddenly switches to 100 percent organic farming. If you have 1,000 ha of land, you cannot start monoculture organic farming on all the land. One first has to farm biologically.

"If you suddenly take away all the chemicals from land that has been chemically farmed, it experiences trauma. It is like a drug addict that goes cold turkey."

The soil has to be primed - the micro and macro minerals have to be brought into balance; the ecological system has to be reinstated (there has to be robust insect and worm activity in the soil); and soil erosion has to be countered in various ways. With biological farming, non-harmful chemicals are used while organic farming does not permit the use of any kind of chemicals.

This is one of the factors that need to be addressed if South African farmers are to make inroads into organic farming which is not only lucrative but will address the African continent's perennial problem with food security.

DURBAN, Jul 17 (IPS) - Nigeria's gas flare-out date has once again been extended - this time to 2011. The decision follows 25 years of political procrastination by the federal government and illegal behaviour on the part of major oil multinationals engaged in flaring associated gas (AG), the byproduct of oil production in the Niger Delta.

Nigeria is famous for its trademark low-sulphur crudes such as Bonny Light; the delta's oil is the source of 80 percent of the federal budget and 95 percent of export earnings. In 2008, Nigeria, the world's eighth largest oil exporter, produced an average of 2.1 million barrels of oil per day.

Forty-four percent of this output was exported to the United States; other importers include Europe (25 percent of Nigeria's output), India (11 percent), Brazil (7 percent), and South Africa (4 percent).

Apart from its status as a seemingly bottomless barrel of oil, Nigeria also has the world's seventh largest reserves of natural gas, possessing proven reserves of 184 trillion cubic feet and estimates suggest the country could possess as much as 600 trillion cubic feet.

Oil has generated billions of dollars in profits, making Nigeria one of Africa's leading economies, but there have been few benefits for the 30 million people who live in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

They lack adequate basic infrastructure like schools, clinics and potable water, and many of the better-paying jobs in the industry are held by foreigners or Nigerians from elsewhere in the country.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy made the call for a global environmental organization after a working lunch at the French consulate in New York City with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, where the two took part in wide-ranging discussions on global issues, with climate change topping the agenda.

Speaking on French television after the meeting, Sarkozy called for new action on environmental issues, which were a major part of discussions at this month's G8 summit in Italy. Sarkozy didn't give any indication of how he thought this new global organization should be laid out.

"We will fight, hand in hand, a battle against the consequences of climate change. We must create a global organization on the environment," he added.