Human Wrongs Watch
By Silvia Swinden*

'Unseen' News and Views

Stockholm (SIPRI)* — Sales of arms and military services by the world’s largest arms-producing and military services companies—the SIPRI Top 100—totalled $398.2 billion in 2017, according to new international arms industry data released on by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).


Two tools are relevant here: one is the High Carbon Stock Approach, a new global methodology that helps answer such questions and implement No Deforestation commitments.
In many ways it is painful to reflect on the year 2018; a year of vital opportunities lost when so much is at stake.

Robert J. Burrowes
Whether politically, militarily, socially, economically, financially or ecologically, humanity took some giant strides backwards while passing up endless opportunities to make a positive difference in our world.
Let me, very briefly, identify some of the more crucial backward steps, starting with the recognition by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in January that the year had already started badly when they moved the Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight, the closest it has ever been to ‘doomsday’ (and equal to 1953 when the Soviet Union first exploded a thermonuclear weapon matching the US capacity). See ‘It is now two minutes to midnight’.
This change reflected the perilous state of our world, particularly given the renewed threat of nuclear war and the ongoing climate catastrophe.
It didn’t even mention the massive and unrelenting assault on the biosphere (apart from the climate) nor, of course, the ongoing monumental atrocities against fellow human beings.
As the calendar flips to 2019, about 395,072 babies will be born around the world, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on 31 December 2018, adding that a quarter will be born in South Asia alone.
