Nations without Nationality – An ‘Unseen’ Stark Reality

Here’s another ‘unseen’ stark reality—that of millions of people around the world who are deprived of their identity, living without nationality. Their total number is by definition unknown and their only ‘sin” is that they belong to an ethnic, religious or linguistic minority in the country where they have often lived for generations.

The Illusion of Justice: When Will Reparations be Served to Iraq’s Victims?

It is difficult to spend any time in Iraq without being struck by a sense of profound injustice. After successive decades of war and occupation, violence has become the rule rather than the exception in the country, with each phase of conflict outdoing the previous in terms of brutality and capacity to shock the conscience.

Victims of El Salvador’s Civil War Demand Reparations

Among the sea of names of victims of the Salvadoran civil war, engraved on a long black granite wall, Matilde Asencio managed to find the name of her son, Salvador.

Will Policymakers Listen to Climate Change Science This Time Around?

Climate change is altering the ecosystem of our oceans, a big carbon sink and prime source of protein from fish. This is old news.

Pacific Communities Building Resilience in the Face of Climate Change

In the Pacific, climate change is an ever-present threat, undermining human rights, livelihoods, and security. Pacific Islanders are working with courage and resolve to build the resilience of their communities and to catalyse international actions towards ending global carbon pollution.

Emerging Markets at Risk Again

Emerging market governments often draw lessons from previous financial crises – or at least claim to do so – to prevent their recurrence. However, such preventive measures are typically designed to address the causes of the last crisis, not the next one. Hence, some measures adopted may inadvertently become new sources of instability and crisis.

Conservation Agriculture: Zambia’s Double-edged Sword against Climate Change and Hunger

As governments gather in Bonn, Germany for the next two weeks to hammer out a blueprint for implementation of the global climate change treaty signed in Paris in 2015, a major focus will be on emissions reductions to keep the global average temperature increase to well below 2°C by 2020.

4 Reasons for Countries to Enhance Climate Commitments by 2020

The Paris Agreement was widely hailed for drawing all nations together to tackle climate change, based on bottom-up contributions that will be reviewed and strengthened over time. These contributions are aimed at achieving the ambitious but necessary long-term goals of limiting global temperature increase and building resilience to climate impacts.

Fourth Industrial Revolution & Its Dramatic Impact on Society

I am an engineer and, for the time being, I am also Secretary-General of the United Nations and we are all here because we believe in the force of Science, Innovation and Technology.

Protein Plants Bolster Animal Feed in Cuba

Based on protein plants, pasture and fodder, Orlando Corrales produces cow and goat milk on a farm located next to a major road in the Cuban capital. "We do not use any industrial feed here," he says proudly.

Climate Change Summit a Step Further, Yes… But Where To?

The UN Climate Change Summit in Bonn is a step further, most experts say. Fine, but towards what?

Argentina Aims to Be a Leader in Mining, But Obstacles Abound

Argentina does not have the mining tradition of other South American countries, but this could begin to change. The government wants to draw 30 billion dollars in foreign investment to tap the great mining potential along the eastern slope of the Andes mountain range, stretching from north to south.

Got Climate Questions? Climate Watch Has Answers

Negotiators and stakeholders headed to Bonn, Germany, for next week’s UN climate summit continue to confront a range of questions surrounding one essential query: How do we meet the imperative to lower greenhouse gas emissions now — quickly — to minimize the most severe impacts of climate change?

Locals Learn to Live in Harmony with Drought in Brazil’s Semi-arid Region

Irrigated green fields of vineyards and monoculture crops coexist in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast with dry plains dotted with flowering cacti and native crops traditionally planted by the locals. Two models of development in struggle, with very different fruits.

Widespread Natural Disasters Threaten Development Goals

This year in the Caribbean and on the American mainland, hurricanes have left millions of people in need of assistance.

Slave Labour, Another Setback for the Government of Brazil

The wave of conservativism is testing its limits in Brazil, as reflected by a Labour Ministry decree that seeks to block the fight against slavery-like working conditions, which has been provisionally revoked by the justice system.

The Roots of Exodus: Why Are People Compelled to Leave their Homes?

Facts are facts, and one of them is that while everybody talks about the growing forced movement of people --be they migrants or refugees—decision-makers haven’t seriously acted on the root causes of why millions of humans are compelled to leave their homes.

Cuban Immigration in the Eye of the Storm

Cuban migration to the United States is the great loser under Donald Trump's hostile policy toward Cuba, and creates additional difficulties for citizens of this Caribbean island nation who were accustomed to benefits that their neighbors in the rest of Latin America never enjoyed.

Pollution or How the ‘Take-Make-Dispose’ Economic Model Does Kill

The prevailing “Take-Make-Dispose” linear economic model consisting of voracious depletion of natural resources in both production and consumption patterns has proved to be one of the world’s main killers due to the huge pollution it causes for air, land and soil, marine and freshwater.

Latin America Heads to Climate Summit with Uneven Progress

Difficult to measure and unequal in their scope are the advances that the countries of Latin America will have to show, regarding their voluntary commitments to greenhouse gas emissions, during the climate summit to be hosted by Bonn, Germany in November.

Role of the Fashion Industry in UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

Fashion is not a sector that exists in a vacuum. In fact, the fashion industry is not unlike any other key economic drivers; it is a key component of a global economy and certainly an important sector to consider when thinking about the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).