'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
At least 3,740 refugees and migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean in 2016 – why is the route so deadly? Credit: UNHCR
They are so desperate that trusting the promises of human traffickers comes almost naturally to them. After all these human traffickers are the very people who lure them to the ‘promised land.’
Fertilizers contain nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Concentrations of such nutrients cause environmental damage on land and at sea.
Excess nutrients in the marine environment can lead to a process called eutrophication, where the nutrients nourish the growth of algae; when the algal growth becomes excessive and dies it robs the water column of oxygen, affecting the health of the marine environment.
This vast region suffers the effects of pollution and climate change. Despite recent advances in tackling degradation and deforestation, the Amazon´s survival is still threatened.
Since 2014 UN Environment, along with a number of partners, has been implementing a project to protect two large areas of the rainforest in a bid to conserve biological diversity and unique ecosystems.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki moon welcomed the steps agreed upon on 28 October 2016 by the members of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to address greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping.
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Photo: IMO
According to a statement issued by Ban’s spokesperson, the steps include: efforts to limit sulphur emissions; a mandatory data system for fuel consumption; strengthened implementation of energy-efficiency regulations; and a road map for developing by 2023 a comprehensive IMO strategy on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from ships.
28 October, 2016 (Greenpeace) – Today, the largest marine protected area in the world was created in the Ross Sea, off the coast of Antarctica. This is a HUGE victory for the whales, penguins, and toothfish that live there and for the millions of people standing up to protect our oceans.
A group of Adeli Penguins are seen here in the Antarctic sea ice of the Southern Ocean.
For years, Greenpeace has campaigned for protection of the Ross Sea at CCAMLR, the international body responsible for stewardship of Antarctic waters.
24 October 2016 – TRANSCEND Media Service – The last one hundred years life expectancy has increased by about 25 per cent-from near 80 to near 100-in some countries. But, instead of increasing playful childhood, education, work and retirement by 25 per cent, the age of retirement has moved much less than the age at death.
Johan Galtung
That deprives masses of older people with experience and wisdom of productive work, of being useful, meeting others constructively; reducing them to being playful–bridge or golf as case may be–and just keeping alive.
Homo sapiens as homo ludens not homo faber.
Longer, but emptier lives.
A crime against humanity if there ever was any. However, with two clear remedies: continue working self-employed with pension as salary, or find meaning in dedication to something beyond oneself, some cause, volunteer work.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on 28 October 2016 welcomed a unanimous decision from the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to create the world’s largest protected area – land or marine – in the Antarctic’s Ross Sea.
In the Ross Sea region of Antarctica, the Adélie penguins have been observed to travel an average of 13,000 kilometres during the year from their breeding to their winter foraging grounds. Photo: UNEP GRID Arendal/Peter Prokosch
“We are thrilled that this very special part of our planet’s oceans has been safeguarded for future generations,” said Executive Director of UN Environment Erik Solheim in a press release.
Credit: UNEP
Now, globally averaged concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has surged again to new records in 2016… and will not dip below pre-2015 levels for many generations.
The warning comes from the United Nations weather agency–the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and further confirms the alarm of climate experts and world specialised organisations.
Lund, Sweden, October 26th, 2016 ((TFF–Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research) – Is there a new cold war? And what steps can be taken by whom to reduce tension and make peace?.
Indeed highly relevant issues in an era of European history where the characteristics of a new Cold War are becoming ever more significant.
And a good intellectual way to celebrate an important research institute’s 50th Anniversary, namely SIPRI – Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
While this new Cold War is certainly different from the first Cold war that ended in 1989, we are not in doubt that there is a new such tragic war and that the risk of military confrontation between Russia and NATO countries in Europe has increased.
We also happen to think it could have been avoided.
This Cold War has to do with, among many other things, NATO’s counterproductive expansion since 1994, the way Yugoslavia broke down and was broken up, with Ukraine and now Syria as well as – perhaps surprisingly to some – the rapidly diminishing political power and legitimacy of the West in the emerging world order.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 