We look at how the building of new coal fired power stations can qualify for carbon credits under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism. And where does Australia stand five years on from the passing of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

We focus on international agreements on the environment and climate change. One, the Montreal Protocol, has been in place for 25 years and has been pretty successful. You might remember that little issue of that the Montreal Protocol was drawn up to deal with: the hole in the ozone layer. Are there lessons there for the Kyoto Protocol? And we discuss another agreement which doesn’t exist yet - for people displaced by climate change.

We look at the arguments for and against Australia’s renewable energy target, which currently aims to have us producing 20% of our power from renewables by 2020. And we hear about the two-fold threat to the Great Barrier Reef posed by a new coal-mining rush getting underway in QLD.

We find out how industry regulations have changed three years on from Australia’s Montara oil spill, and we take a close look at what data journalism can do for environmental reporting.

The Federal Government has made significant changes to its Clean Energy Futures package. They’ve announced that the carbon trading scheme will no longer be subject to a carbon floor price when trading of permits begins in 2015. Instead the price of carbon permits will be linked to the European carbon market. The Third Degree is in conversation with Gareth Bryant, a climate justice campaigner with Friends of the Earth Sydney.

In Conversation with Nick Chesterfield from West Papua Media. In West Papua, massive gold mines dump toxic sludge into river systems, an independence movement is aggressively crushed by Indonesian soldiers and political leaders are assassinated – and only rarely do we hear about it. In response to an Indonesian media blackout in the region, a variety of people inside and outside West Papua formed West Papua Media, an organization which attempts to bring independent news about West Papua to the rest of the world.

We look at the complex issue of violence as an occupational hazard for Journalists in Latin America, why the latest plan to save the Murray Darling River has been called ‘laughable’ by the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, and we’ll hear how a community responds to Dart Energy beginning construction on the company’s first coal seam gas pilot production wells in the state.

A look at media in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. With Mbuyi Tshielantende and Patrice Nyembo of the Congolese Community of Australia and their plans for an online platform based on the West Papua Media website. We also talk to Journalist Shant Fabricatorian who was in DRC last year.

This week we’re talking incarceration in our criminal justice system. We look at the living and working conditions for inmates, why it's so extraordinary that the community in Grafton blockaded the gaol to keep the prisoners in and the gaol open, and it’s a year on from the mass hunger strikes at Pelican Bay prison in California.

We look at the Union push for a national asbestos authority to be established, the conflicts of interest with the Environmental Authority’s assessment of the James Price Point gas hub, and we head to Rio for the International Uranium film festival, the week after Rio plus 20 Earth Summit.

This week - the UN cautions Australia on industrial development near the Great Barrier Reef, the Federal Government is looking to give away some of its environmental regulations to the states, and we look at managing e-waste in the Pacific.

We hear about gas bubbling up through the Condamine River, near Chinchilla in Queensland, we question Australia's involvement in carbon offset forestry programs in Indonesia, and discuss the Federal Government's cuts to green building incentives

We look at the health effects of living near an aluminium plant, electronic waste, and the latest, surprising update for coal seam gas in inner Sydney.

Orica’s troubled Kooragang Island plant is closed for maintenance, and with nowhere to store 3000 tonnes of explosive ammonium nitrate - Orica boarded it onto a cargo ship and sent it out to sea. And in Malaysia, Australian mining company Lynas Corp planning to operate a controversial rare earths processing plant in Kuantan, is suing a local campaign group and an alternative news website for defamation. And unlike Australian law, Malaysian law has no cap on damages that can be awarded for defamation.

There were delays in notifying workers of asbestos at the Barangaroo site in Inner Sydney, and hazardous chemicals found on the Pacific Highway during upgrade works. The latest draft for the Murray Darling Basin Plan is hotly contested by the South Australian Government, Environment groups and scientists saying it's not 'best science', and has attracted calls that it flouts Aboriginal Sovereignty over the water.

After years of working alongside Libby King, Tessa Dowdell and Hannah Walters, Third Degree producer Jess Minshall looks around 2ser’s newsroom and studios with the realisation that these amazing women have moved on. She sets off to track down their voices for this International Womens Day Special.