‘Epic’ Pakistan floods show need for climate action
29/8/2022: Pakistan is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change. It faces rates of warming considerably above the global average. Campaigners are calling on countries most historically responsible for climate change to support vulnerable countries’ adaptation efforts.
Source: Human Rights Watch
Heat renders parts of Africa ‘not suitable’ for life
31/8/2022: According to a senior European humanitarian official, parts of Somalia, northern Kenya and Ethiopia are becoming uninhabitable due to rising temperatures. Almost 3 million people in the Sahel region are surviving in pre-famine conditions.
Source: Devex
UN report finds serious human rights violations in Xinjiang
31/8/2022: Michelle Bachelet, the departing UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, has finally published her investigation into treatment of ethnic minorities by the Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It concludes that the extent of arbitrary detentions against Uyghur and others may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.
Source: UN News
Omens are good for a CoP15 plan to protect nature
30/8/2022: Despite many challenges, December’s crucial biodiversity talks in Montreal may set a new path for humans to live with nature. If agreed, the Global Biodiversity Framework would reboot conservation by greatly expanding protected areas, phasing out billions of dollars of subsidies that harm nature, and reducing pollution.
Source: The Guardian
GiveDirectly taps former UK global development minister
29/8/2022: Former UK International Development Secretary Rory Stewart has been appointed to lead GiveDirectly, a US foundation that provides cash transfers direct to impoverished people around the world. This model aims to cut out inefficiencies of traditional aid.
Source: Devex
UN fails to reach agreement to protect marine life
27/8/2022: Negotiations to establish a UN Ocean Treaty to protect biodiversity in two-thirds of the world’s oceanic areas have closed without agreement. Environmental campaigners expressed disappointment and blamed wealthy countries, including the US, for being too slow to compromise.
Source: The Guardian
The UN in crisis: big powers and bad influence
22/8/2022: Individual member states have always exerted a heavy influence on the United Nations and the five veto-wielding members are the most egregious offenders. The Security Council is largely dysfunctional, as President Zelensky of Ukraine has pointed out.
Source: PassBlue
Countries must step up efforts to protect freshwater sources
25/8/2022: As events marking World Water Week continue in Stockholm, countries are urged to do more to adapt to the cascading impacts of the climate crisis on freshwater ecosystems, with increasingly frequent and intense dry periods interspersed with floods and extreme precipitation.
Source: UN Environment Programme
Warnings of default in Laos are misguided
25/8/2022: Laos faces unprecedented financial difficulties but, unlike Sri Lanka, Laos is unlikely to default on its external debt obligations. China, its largest creditor and political ally, does not want to be seen as an irresponsible lender by other developing Asia Pacific or indeed African nations.
Source: East Asia Forum
Rainforest politics of the DRC oil auction
23/8/2022: The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has two main goals in selling oil blocks that overlap with the world’s second largest rainforest. Neither involves developing oil.
Source: African Arguments