Monday, May 23, 2022
News and Views from the Global South
‘By Deliberately Ignoring Risk, the World Is Bankrolling Its Own Destruction’
It is often said that a pessimistic person is an optimistic but well-informed person. Here, a good number of people may believe that human wit and inventiveness are capable of facing both the current and the looming disasters, like the impact of climate change, for instance.
Oil Business Burns Enough Gas to Power the Whole Sub-Sahara or Two Thirds of Europe
While the attention of mostly Western media and politicians is quasi exclusively hoarded up by the proxy war in Ukraine and its consequences on the energy sector, the world’s big oil business continues to burn Planet Earth with its underreported though highly polluting, wasteful practice of gas flaring.
Inequality Tightens Its Grip on the Most Vulnerable
Please do not say you were not aware that the world produces enough food to feed all human beings on Earth, while nearly double the combined European Union’s population go to bed hungry… every single night.
Plants: Up to 80% of Food and 98% of Oxygen, Endangered
It is as simple –and as horrifying– as that: both human health and the health of Planet Earth depend on plants. However, plants that make up 80% of the food and 98% of the oxygen, are under growing dangerous threats.
Revealed: The Shocking Extent of Exploitative Baby Formula Milk Marketing
The world's leading health and children specialised organisations have once again sounded the alarm bell about what they classify as “shocking, insidious, exploitative, aggressive, misleading and pervasive” marketing tricks used by the baby formula milk business with the sole aim of increasing, even more, their already high profits.
Biodiversity: Indigenous Peoples, the Last Custodians
Every now and then, experts remind that the Indigenous Peoples are the best (and last?) custodians of the essential web of life: biodiversity.
Big Business Depletes Nature, Big Business Supplants Nature with Synthetic Food
In case you were not aware, please know that humanity used to cultivate more than 6.000 plant species for food, but now instead fewer than 200 of these species make major contributions to food production. Out of these, only 9% account for 66% of total crop production.
Europe Sweeps Away More Refugees, Asylum Seekers – Part II: Hungary, Poland
Part I of this two-part series focused on the cases of the United Kingdom and Greece. This article will deal with how Hungary has been criminalising organisations that provide humanitarian assistance to migrants, and how Poland 'arbitrarily’ detains thousands of asylum seekers.
Europe Sweeps Away More Refugees, Asylum Seekers – Part I: UK, Greece
In what looks pretty much like an ‘operation clean sweep’ aiming at getting rid of more and more migrants, refugees and asylum seekers by shipping them far away, the process of ‘externalisation’ of millions of victims of wars, poverty, climate crisis and political persecution, is now growing fast
The Suicidal War on Nature Continues Unabated – International Mother Earth Day
The gloomy picture is drawn from indisputable scientific conclusions and should be already known by everybody, in particular by decision-makers, whether they are politicians… or rather not.
Drugged Water: A New Global Pandemic Hiding in Plain Sight?
People around the world are unknowingly being exposed to water laced with antibiotics, which could spark the rise of drug-resistant pathogens and potentially fuel another global pandemic, warns a new report.
Warning: Climate Crisis Is Now the Single Biggest Health Threat Facing Humanity
While the world’s top scientists and experts continue their arduous work to finally submit to politicians at the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt (7-18 November 2022), a new alert now emerges: the climate crisis has already become the single biggest health threat to humankind.
South Sudan: Oil Underground, Blood on the Surface
While several politicians -and media– have been viewing the ongoing armed conflict in South Sudan as a “civil war” between rival ethnic groups, so nothing to worry about, there are some key facts that should be considered for the sake of having a wider, more accurate panorama. One of them is that this country is rich in oil.
The Cost of War: 23 Million Afghans Suffer Acute Hunger, 95% Don’t Eat Enough Food
Following 20 long years (2011-2021) of brutal war on Afghanistan by the US-led military coalition, which ended up in delivering the country to the Taliban in August 2021, 23 million Afghans now face severe and acute hunger, economic bankruptcy, healthcare system collapse, unbearable family indebtedness, and devastating humanitarian crisis.
War on Syria: Eleven Years of Carnage
“Hundreds of thousands have been killed, more than half of the pre-war population – somewhere in the order of 22 million - have been displaced. More than 100,000 are missing or forcibly disappeared….
Brutal War on Yemen: Dire Hunger Crisis Teetering on the Edge of Catastrophe
Yemen’s already dire hunger crisis is teetering on the edge of outright catastrophe, with 17.4 million people now in need of food assistance and a growing portion of the population coping with emergency levels of hunger, three UN agencies warned on 14 March 2022.
Over 60% of World Workers Not Recognised, Not Registered, Not Protected
More than 60 percent of the world’s adult labour force –or about 2 billion workers– work in the informal economy. “They are not recognised, registered, regulated or protected under labour legislation and social protection. The consequences can be severe, for individuals, families as well as economies.”
Shall the Arctic Burn?
Climate change and land-use change are projected to make wildfires more frequent and intense, with a global increase of extreme fires of up to 14 percent by 2030, 30 percent by the end of 2050 and 50 percent by the end of the century, according to a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and GRID-Arendal, a non-profit environmental communications centre based in Norway.
Can 70% of the World’s Poor Celebrate International Women’s Day?
The picture is gloomy: not only do women represent 70% of the 1.3 billion people living in conditions of poverty, but also up to 40% of the poorest households in urban areas are headed by women.
With One Million Species Endangered, the Web of Life Is at Risk of Extinction
These are not by any means just mere figures. It is about the risk of extinction of the whole life cycle. See what is at stake.
6 in 7 People Worldwide Experience ‘High Levels of Insecurity’ – Why?
Safety and security are at the base of the ‘hierarchy of needs’ pyramid, second in importance only to life’s absolute necessities—air, water, food and shelter, warns a new report.Next Page »
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Tracking global progress towards a sustainable world
