Friday, July 30, 2021
News and Views from the Global South
With a Little Help, Local Communities Rack up Record Success with Heritage Rice Grains
Madhuri Roy left the famous Kamakhya temple in Guwahati, Assam. She had sought the goddess’s blessings for the safe delivery of her youngest daughter's baby, which was due in a few weeks. Shanty shops lined the temple outside and Roy’s eyes fell on a stack of black rice packets. All through her daughter’s pregnancy she had craved her childhood favourite black rice pudding. But during the country’s COVID-19 lockdown Roy could not procure it even though Meghalaya, her Himalayan home state, grew it.
Call for Political Belt-tightening to Prevent Drought Becoming the Next Pandemic
“Drought is on the verge of becoming the next pandemic and there is no vaccine to cure it.”
– UN Blueprint that Could Urgently Solve Earth’s Triple Climate Emergencies –
On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks. The original article was published on February 19 2021
UN Blueprint that Could Urgently Solve Earth’s Triple Climate Emergencies
“Our war on nature has left the planet broken. This is senseless and suicidal. The consequences of our recklessness are already apparent in human suffering, towering economic losses and the accelerating erosion of life on Earth,” António Guterres Secretary-General of the United Nations said.
India Glacier Disaster: In a Warming World is there no Less Lethal Way to Power Development?
On Sunday morning, Feb. 7, as most of the working-class in India’s Himalayan State of Uttarakhand went about their chores, the glacier-fed Rishi Ganga river started rising. Two hours later, swollen with rock debris and snowmelt, its waters rose 53 feet — the height equivalent of a five-storey building.
International Partnership Helps Mongolia Counter Climate Change
Climate warming is believed to have taken place at some of the fastest rates in the world in Mongolia, raising the country's average temperatures by 2.24°C between 1940 and 2015, with the last decade being the warmest of the past 76 years.
Online Education Moved to Top of Agenda by Indian State after IPS Reports Risks of Unequal Access
High up at an altitude of between 1,500 to 4,000 feet in India’s eastern Odisha state, live the Bonda people — one of this country’s most ancient tribes, who have barely altered their lifestyle in over a thousand years.
E-learning Divide Places World’s Disadvantaged Children at Risk of Dropping Out
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a new layer of challenges to inclusive education. As many as 40 percent of low and lower-middle income countries having not supported disadvantaged learners during temporary school shutdowns, finds United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s 2020 Global Education Monitoring Report released today, Jun. 23.
India’s Outdoor Workers on the Frontlines of Climate Change
Last June when more than half of India was reeling under daily temperatures topping 40 degrees Celsius, Nursing Behera’s 11-month-old son burned both his legs when a pot of boiling water fell on him.
India’s Unique Water Purification Wetland Could Soon Become Extinct
Ramkumar Mondal’s farm is awash in a brilliant yellow mustard bloom. A flock of grey cranes peck for food amidst the shallow watergrass. But Mondal’s fishpond digs in there like a do-or-die last sentinel as nearby high-rise buildings, a symbol of development and encroachment, menacingly tower over the fishpond, permanently blocking the eastern sun so essential for the pondwater to convert sewage into fish-feed.
India’s Electric Mobility Needs Enabling Infrastructure to Pick up Speed
Dogged by intractable air pollution debilitating large northern swathes from mainly urban vehicle emissions, India earlier this year announced targets for a 40 percent non-fossil component in its fuel-mix by 2030 as part of its Nationally Determined Commitments (NDC) to the Paris accord on climate change. It aims for full electrification of public transit systems and of one-third private vehicles by 2030.
Mother Earth’s Café Dares Climate Crises in India
The sun has barely risen when Phlida Kharshala shakes her 8-year-old grandson awake. He hoists an empty cone-shaped bamboo basket on his back, sets the woven strap flat across his forehead and off they go into the wilderness.
Is India on Track to Beat the Perfect Storm?
“The Perfect Storm” was a dire prediction that by 2030 food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources together with climate change would threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration from worst-affected regions.
Q&A: Achieving Sustainable Goals: “In the End it is All About People. If People Want, it Will Happen.”
Today just over two billion people live without readily available, safe water supplies at home. And more than half the world’s population, roughly 4.3 billion people, live in areas where demand for water resources outstrips sustainable supplies for at least part of the year.
Q&A: As Water Scarcity Becomes the New Normal How Do We Manage This Scarce Resource?
Growing economies are thirsty economies. And water scarcity has become “the new normal” in many parts of the world, according to Torgny Holmgren executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).
When a Grass Towers over the Trees
As governments scramble for corrective options to the worsening land degradation set to cost the global economy a whopping 23 trillion dollars within the next 30 years, a humble grass species, the bamboo, is emerging as the unlikely hero.
Crowd-Sourced Data and a Mobile Phone Application Are Making Cities Safer for Women
When Shiba Kurian alighted from Chennai’s city train, the evening office-returning crowd was thick and jostling. Having booked a ride-hail cab she walked out to the entrance. Instead of the cab for which she had to wait an hour, ribald comments and derisive laughter came her way from a group of roadside Romeos.
Q&A: “What Price Do We Put on Our Oceans?”
“Political resolve is the key for succeeding in our fight against oceans pollution,” Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment, who is leading hands-on the organisation’s global campaign to clean up seas and oceans of plastic litter, agricultural run‑off and chemical dumping, told IPS.
The Urbanization of Malnutrition
Rapid urbanization is increasingly shifting the impacts of malnutrition from rural to urban areas. One in three stunted under-five children out of 155 million across the world now lives in cities and towns.
Indian Journalist’s Murder: The Ultimate Form of Press Censorship?
Dauntlessly crusading against curbs on freedom of speech, fifty-five-year-old Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh was gunned down at her very doorstep in Bengaluru city on the evening of Sep. 5, taking three bullets of the seven fired in her lungs and heart. She was shot from just three feet away.
One Earth: Why the World Needs Indigenous Communities to Steward Their Lands
“Showing them a picture-book crow, I intone ‘kaak’ in Bengali, the State language. While others repeat in chorus, the tribal Santhali first-graders respond with a blank look. They know the crow only as ‘koyo’. They’ll happily roll out glass marbles to count but ask them how many they counted, they remain silent because in their mother tongue, one is mit, two is bariah - very different sounding from the Bengali ek and du.”Next Page »
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