Global South countries did get one benefit from the COVID-19 pandemic. A professor at St. George’s University in Grenada describes it as the pandemic’s “silver lining." He was referring to the widespread use of next-generation genomic sequencing technology to identify, track, and trace the numerous variants of the Sars Cov-2 virus. Researchers and scientists in the Caribbean, Africa, and elsewhere have been eagerly harnessing genomic sequencing technology to develop resilience and greater self-sufficiency in numerous fields, ranging from health surveillance to agriculture and beyond.
In Zambia, over 6.5 million people need humanitarian assistance because of the drought. 3.5 million of them are children.
Ecosystems are being threatened all over the world.
From forests to drylands.
From farmlands to lakes.
The world is going through an unprecedented environmental emergency which poses an existential threat to this and future generations.
Journalism is in crisis - again.
The challenges to press freedom are enormous and multi-faceted.
Before COVID-19 hit, in January 2020, 388 million children worldwide were being fed every day at school. Soon after lockdowns began, that number plummeted to 18 million, but just two years later, in 2022, it had recovered, and more — school feeding had reached 420 million children.
Faced with the recurring problem of environmental pollution caused by the poultry industry in rural communities in El Salvador, some companies are responding by producing biogas from organic waste from their chicken farms and processing plants, and using the gas to generate clean electricity.
On March 8th, we celebrate International Women’s Day.
A day to honour the resilience, achievements, and potential of women worldwide.
The world faces crises—geopolitical conflicts, poverty, and climate change.
At the tenth session of the IPBES Plenary, held in Bonn, Germany from 28 August - 2 September 2023, the IPBES Thematic Assessment of Invasive Alien Species and their Control was accepted and its summary for policymakers was approved. The Report is the result of four years of work by 86 experts from 49 countries, and synthesizes information from over 13,000 references into a comprehensive scientific assessment and concise summary document for policy makers.
After interviewing a member of the Nepal organizing committee ahead of opening day, I was excited about covering my first ever World Social Forum (WSF). He suggested that at least 30,000 and as many as 50,000 activists from over 90 countries would attend the three-day event.
Land rights are fundamental for three things.
One: economic development. No country in the world has gone from low income to Middle income to high income without clear land and property rights and markets. It is a core part of the economy.
Find the answer in this interview with Frédéric Castell, Senior Natural Resources Officer at FAO
UN Spokesperson Farhan Haq answers common questions about the UN’s budget, including how the UN gets its money, how it prevents fraud and waste, what is spent on humanitarian operations, and how the cost of peace compares to the price of war.
The combined use of clean energies allows Finca del Medio, a farm in central Cuba, to practice a unique system of family farming production that guarantees self-sufficiency based on permaculture, agroecology and care of the environment.
If I asked you to name the world’s most deadly diseases I’m guessing that you might say HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, cholera, maybe even COVID-19. In fact, those have all been major killers throughout human history – and some like TB continue to be so, especially in low-income countries.
2023 is going to be the hotest year recorded on Earth for some 125,000 years.
September and October set shocking records for monthly global temperature highs.
Neither the central government nor most of El Salvador's 262 municipalities have had the capacity to install enough wastewater treatment plants to prevent it from being discharged directly into the environment.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard a lot of negative talk about the media in recent years. Much of it has focused on the integrity of the so-called mainstream or legacy media that has dominated the information landscape in recent decades, or longer. These attacks, which sometimes actually degenerate into physical assaults, call into question how honestly or fairly these outlets portray the world, including in politics and global issues such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
Water is essential for life on Earth.
It makes up 50% of our human bodies.
It covers about 70% of the planet’s surface.
Ijora Badia, a slum in Lagos, was swimming in plastic waste. Now children pay their school fees in plastic bottles, and these are used to build classrooms.
“If you were waiting for a couple of years to see how the Taliban would perform, we now have a pretty good idea. We can see that they have moved, step by step, back towards how they ran the country in their first period in power,” says UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, in this episode.