Population

Population Aging: Hallmark of the 21st Century

By Joseph Chamie
While rapid population growth may be the defining feature of the 20th century, with world population nearly quadrupling from 1.6 to 6.1 billion, the hallmark of the 21st century is likely to be population aging.

A Hostage to Parliament, Temer Sacrifices Indigenous Rights to Save Himself

By Mario Osava
Brazilians now have new reasons to yearn for and at the same time fear the parliamentary system of government. It facilitates quick solutions to political crises such as the one that is currently affecting the country, but it also further empowers reactionary forces and has led to backsliding on gains such as indigenous rights.

Climate Change Brings Migration from the Dry Corridor to Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast

By José Adán Silva
If the impact of drought and poverty in the municipalities of the so-called Dry Corridor in Nicaragua continues pushing the agricultural frontier towards the Caribbean coast, by the year 2050 this area will have lost all its forests and nature reserves, experts predict.

Water Is Precious, Fragile and Dangerous – It Can Sustain or Destroy

By IPS World Desk
Water is precious, fragile, and dangerous. It can sustain or destroy.

US Lags Far Behind in Banning Dental Health Hazard

By Thalif Deen
The United States is lagging far behind its Western allies – and perhaps most of the key developing countries – in refusing to act decisively to end a longstanding health and environmental hazard: the use of mercury in dentistry.

Value of Water Is on the Rise

By Rafiqul Islam
In the wake of recent water-related disasters in Bangladesh, including water-logging and floods that displaced thousands of families, a high-level consultation in the capital Dhaka on valuing water will look at ways to optimize water use and solutions to water-related problems facing South Asia.

“The Time is Now” to Invest in Youth, Girls

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
The demographic dividend: though not a new concept, it is one of the major buzzwords at the UN this year. But what does it really mean?There are 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 around the world, the most in the history of humankind.

To Achieve Ambitious Goals – We Need to Start with our Basic Rights

By Oliver Henman and Andrew Firmin
Recent protests in Ethiopia have seen people demonstrate in their thousands, angry at their authoritarian government, its favouritism towards those close to the ruling elite, and its failure to share the country’s wealth more equally.

Parliamentarians Study Nexus of Youth, Refugees and Development

By Safa Khasawneh
Held for the first time in the Arab world, an annual meeting of Asian and Arab Parliamentarians examined how regional conflicts hinder the development of effective policies to achieve sustainable development, particularly as they generate large numbers of refugees, internally displaced persons and migrants.

Promoting Sustainable Population Growth, Key to Raising Human Rights Standards

By Dr. Hanif Hassan Al Qassim
The world population has witnessed a remarkable growth during the recent decades. In 1965, it stood at 3.3 billion people. In 2017 –52 years later-- the global population reached a staggering 7.5 billion people corresponding to more than a doubling of the Earth’s residents over the last half-century.

Mideast: Water Use Innovations ‘Crucial’ to Face Climate Change

By IPS World Desk
In the Near East and North Africa region, the per capita renewable water availability is around 600 cubic metres per person per year --only 10 per cent of the world average- and drops to just 100 cubic metres in some countries, the United Nations warned.

Is Religion the New Colonial Frontier in International Development?

By Azza Karam
A decade ago, it was difficult to get Western policy makers in governments to be interested in the role of religious organizations in human development. The secular mind-set was such that religion was perceived, at best, as a private affair. At worst, religion was deemed the cause of harmful social practices, an obstacle to the “sacred” nature of universal human rights, and/or the root cause of terrorism. In short, religion belonged in the ‘basket of deplorables’.

Top 300 Cooperatives Generate 2.5 Trillion Dollars in Annual Turnover

By IPS World Desk
The top 300 cooperatives alone generate 2.5 trillion dollars in annual turnover, more than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of France, according to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).

Rural Poverty? Cooperatives!

By Johan Galtung
Humanity has had and has big projects. Mastery of nature is one, still going on. Middle range phenomena have been mastered, but not the micro level of viri–HIV is a current case–nor the macro level of climate–to the contrary, humanity is making it worse.

Global Devaluation of Work Drives Up Unemployment in Brazil

By Mario Osava
In addition to driving up the number of unemployed people to 14.2 million, the severe recession of the last two years led Brazil to join the global trend of flexibilisation of labour laws in order to further reduce labour costs.

“Black Soils” – Excessive Use of Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, Mercury…

By IPS World Desk
Soils are polluted due mostly to human activities that leave excess chemicals in soils used to grow food, the United Nations reports.

No Wall for Ethiopia, Rather an Open Door—Even for Its Enemy

By James Jeffrey
It’s one thing to read about the exodus of souls flowing out of Eritrea, it’s quite another to look into the tired eyes, surrounded by dust and grime, of a 14-year-old Eritrean girl who’s just arrived on the Ethiopian side of the shared border.

Asia-Pacific: Farming Rice and Fish Together to Reduce Poverty

By IPS World Desk
Rice is a major food commodity and staple food for many, and adding fish to flooded rice paddies has been a farming tradition practiced in a number of Asian countries for many centuries—even for more than 1000 years in some Chinese areas, the United Nations reports.

BRICS to Lead World’s Efforts to Eradicate Hunger, Poverty by 2030

By IPS World Desk
With the clock ticking toward the 2030 deadline for meeting the international goals to eradicate hunger and poverty, five of the world's most important emerging economies are well positioned to take a leading role in helping to achieve these objectives, according to the United Nations.

Drought Pushes 1 in 3 Somalis to a Hunger Knife-Edge

By Baher Kamal
Another famine in former European colonies in Africa and another time in its Eastern region, with Ethiopia and Somalia among the major victims of drought and made-made climate disasters mainly caused by US and European multinational business.

Mideast: Drought to Turn People into Eternal Migrants, Prey to Extremism?

By Baher Kamal
Worldwide, land degradation, severe droughts and advancing desertification are set to force populations to flee their homes and migrate. In the specific case of the Middle East and North of Africa (MENA), such an obliged choice implies the additional risk to turn peoples into easy prey to extremist, terrorist groups.
Next Page »