Air pollution is “stunting children’s brains” and affecting their health in more ways than was previously suspected, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday 29 October 2018.
In a call for concrete policy pledges from governments across the world to tackle the problem, the UN health agency reports that more than nine in 10 youngsters breathe air that is so polluted, “it puts their health and development at serious risk”.
Bali, 29 October 2018 (UN Environment)*– A Global Commitment to eradicate plastic waste and pollution at the source has been signed by 250 organisations including many of the world’s largest packaging producers, brands, retailers and recyclers, as well as governments and NGOs.
The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment is led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, in collaboration with UN Environment, and will be officially unveiled at the Our Ocean Conference in Bali today [29 October 2018].
The electoral authority announced the results at 7:00 p.m. local time after the closing of the last polling stations.
Supporters of Fernando Haddad, presidential candidate of Brazil’s leftist Workers Party (PT), react during a runoff election in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. | Photo: Reuters | Photo from teleSUR.
28 October 2018 (teleSUR)* — Far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro has won the Brazilian presidential elections with over 55 percent of the vote beating leftist Fernando Haddad who scored 44.3 percent in the country’s most polarized elections in decades.
17 October 2018 (UN Environment)* — Ali Omar remembers a time when the practically bare patch of desert in northern Djibouti he calls home was a bustling seaside resort and the waters around it were teeming with fish. “Lots of people lived here and they had shops all along the seaside,” says 75-year-old Omar, recalling his hometown Khor Angar’s 1970s heyday, before it was hot year-round and the village had dwindled to just a few huts in the desert.
UN Environment / Hannah McNeish
“You used to need a jacket around here,” he says, squinting in the morning sun next to a sparkling shoreline, now empty apart from crabs scuttling to and from the froth. There used to be enough fresh water for all and so much seafood that planes would come from the capital to fill up with lobster, crab, fish and langoustine.
Only sixteen countries out of the 197 that have signed the Paris Agreement have defined national climate action plan ambitious enough to meet their pledges, according to a policy brief released on Monday (29 October), ahead of the crucial UN climate conference COP24 in Katowice (Poland) in December.
Three years ago, the EU was leading the pack in the run up to the Paris Climate Change talks. [WeMeanBusiness / Flickr]
The 16 countries are: Algeria, Canada, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, FYR Macedonia, Malaysia, Montenegro, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Samoa, Singapore and Tonga.
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