'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on 9 November 2015 announced that the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached yet another new record high in 2014, continuing a relentless rise which is fueling climate change and will make the planet more dangerous and inhospitable for future generations.
Emissions from an old coal-fired power plant in Kosovo. Photo: World Bank/Lundrim Aliu | Source: UN News Centre
– With the worldwide numbers of displaced people at all-time highs, migration has become the watchword for humanitarian crises.
**Photo: Ibrahim Diallo Manzo/IRIN | Smuggled migrants on edge of Sahara desert
Given the cost in economic, political and moral terms of coping with mass migration – and particular the experience of what has been unfolding this year in Europe – the need for a universal set of rules and principles is increasingly evident.
So is the desire to keep people safely in their homes.
**Photo: Irish Naval personnel from the LÉ Eithne (P31) rescuing migrants as part of Operation Triton. | Author: Irish Defence Forces | Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. | Wikimedia Commons
“There is no secret that the Africans are looking for opportunity for legal migration, work permits and these kinds of things, while the Europeans are focusing more on returns and readmission,” an EU official told EU Observer.
A computer-generated image that shows the Centre for Political Beauty’s project plan to building a 230km-long bridge from Africa to Europe (Centre for Political Beauty) | Source: Middle East Eye.
Initiated by Austria’s newly elected refugee coordinator Christian Konrad, the stone bridge would connect the coasts of al-Huwariyah, Tunisia to Agrigento, Sicily in an attempt to save lives and curb people smuggling.
The project also includes installing 1,000 rescue platforms as soon as possible across the Mediterranean sea.
8 November 2015 – Without inclusive and climate-smart development, alongside efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions that protect the poor, agricultural shocks, natural disasters and the spread of diseases could push more than 100 million additional people into poverty by 2030, the World Bank warns in a new report released just weeks ahead of a major United Nations climate conference in Paris.
Walking through fields Mali. Photo: Curt Carnemark /World Bank-ML020S06 | Source: UN News Centre
The report, Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty, finds that poor people are already at high risk from climate-related shocks, including crop failures from reduced rainfall, spikes in food prices after extreme weather events, and increased incidence of diseases after heat waves and floods.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 