Conflict, forced displacement, climate change and COVID-19 are disrupting the education of millions of crisis-affected children and adolescents around the world.
The ocean covers more than 70 percent of our planet. There is no question it is critical for our health and well-being. It provides half the earth’s oxygen supply and every organism in existence depends on it to survive.
With consistent, robust economic growth, countries across Asia have made monumental strides in eradicating extreme poverty over the past 30 years. In Bangladesh, for example, the population
living in extreme poverty dropped from 43% in 1991 to
10.5% in 2019. Similarly in Cambodia, poverty incidence fell from
53% in 2004 to
below 10% by 2016.
In the past, the people of Sande Village in Chikwawa district, Malawi, would go to bed with empty stomachs even when the rest of the country harvested bumper yields.
The Mexican government is prioritizing the construction and modernization of mega water projects, without considering their impacts and long-term viability, according to a number of experts and activists.
Safeguarding food security has long been a critical priority for the Chinese central government. President Xi’s latest comments and meetings demonstrate continued concerns at the top about
China’s food security. Ahead of the 20th National Congress this year and the release of the No 1 policy document, there are already several hints regarding what the Chinese central authorities could prioritise in terms of food security for this year and beyond. Other factors, including the potential influences of gene-edited plants, commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) crops, and of a Russia-Ukraine conflict should also be considered.
People living in Jardim Pantanal, a low-income neighborhood on the east side of the Brazilian megalopolis of São Paulo, suffer floods every southern hemisphere summer. Many residents remember the three months their streets and homes were under water in late 2009 and early 2010.
On January 10, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) arrested three men found with fertilizer worth about 130,000 US dollars.
Regardless of a success or failure to reach a new agreement with Iran, Israel must not attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and must work closely with the US to develop a joint strategy to curb Iran’s ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and potentially end the conflict with Iran on a more permanent basis
Education lifts millions out of poverty, but because the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out gains made in recent decades, a holistic approach to providing education in crises is crucial, says German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Svenja Schulze.
On Jan. 3, the leaders of the five nuclear-armed members of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) issued a rare joint statement on preventing nuclear war in which they affirmed, for the first time, the 1985 Reagan-Gorbachev maxim that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
In her wildest dreams, smallholder farmer Sarudzai Sithole never imagined that her pineapples could someday stock the produce section of Europe’s finest supermarkets.
The new Yangtze River Protection Law (YRPL), which came into effect on March 1, 2021, is China’s
first legislation on a specific river basin. The Yangtze River is China’s longest and largest river system,
stretching over 6,300 kilometres and has over
700 tributaries. With a drainage basin covering more than 1.8 million square kilometres, approximately one-fifth of China’s total land area, the river basin is home to over 40% of the
country’s population.
Nothing is wasted from sugarcane, one can conclude from the biomethane production process at the Cocal plant, a Brazilian company that produces sugar, ethanol, electricity and other by-products from sugarcane agro-industrial waste.
"When I was a little girl we didn't suffer from water shortages like we do now. Today we are experiencing more droughts, our water sources are drying up and we cannot sit idly by," Kely Quispe, a small farmer from the community of Huasao, located half an hour from Cuzco, the capital of Peru's ancient Inca empire, told IPS.
First came sugar. For four centuries, it was the main sugarcane product in Brazil. But since the 1970s sugarcane has grown and diversified as a source of energy: ethanol, electricity and biogas.
In 2021, COVID-19 continued to plague the world – a world already burdened by armed conflicts, climate-induced disasters and forced displacement. Communities, nations and people struggled to maintain normalcy in the midst of the abnormal. This was especially notable in the education sector – a sector that is the very foundation for achieving all human rights and all Sustainable Development Goals.
While the COVID-19 impact has been predominantly negative, the pandemic appears to have sparked increased interest in developing agricultural technology (agtech) to improve the efficiency of food systems, from input supplies through farming and processing to delivery and retail.
COVID-19 has upended our world, threatening our health, destroying economies and livelihoods, and deepening poverty and inequalities. It also created the single largest disruption to education systems that the world has ever seen.
Rahab Munene’s shoe selling business crumbled at the height of COVID-19 in 2020. She traded the enterprise for a mobile grocery along the Thika Superhighway, Kiambu County.