With 250,000 Iraqis still living in camps after fleeing ISIS, sudden closure of 14 sites in late 2020 forced many to return to destroyed homes and villages lacking basic services.
27 May 2021 (UNHCR)* — When 68-year-old famer Dahi finally returned to his village after spending more than three years in a camp south of Mosul for Iraqis who fled ISIS militants, his homecoming was far from the joyous occasion he had long imagined
Deep sea mining companies are currently out in the Pacific carrying out tests in an attempt to prove their industry is safe for the environment. A few weeks ago, one of those companies, GSR, lost control of a 25-tonne robot at the bottom of the ocean. Bearing witness to this and confronting this industry at sea is Victor Pickering, a Fijian activist onboard Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior ship..
Nairobi (UNEP)* – A new atlas published on 26 May 2021 shows that 54 per cent of the world’s land surface consists of vast tracts of land covered by grass, shrubs or sparse, hardy vegetation that support millions of pastoralists, hunter-gatherers, ranchers and large populations of wildlife–and store large amounts of carbon.
Yet while most climate plans focus on forests, much less importance is given to rangelands, leaving these massive planetary ecosystems supporting people and nature exposed to a wide variety of threats.
Geneva, 27 May 2021 (WMO) – There is about a 40% chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5°C above the pre industrial levels in at least one of the next five years – and these odds are increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
There is a 90% likelihood of at least one year between 2021-2025 becoming the warmest on record, which would dislodge 2016 from the top ranking, according to the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, produced by the United Kingdom’s Met Office, the WMO lead centre for such predictions.
I would like to announce the publication of a book which discusses the duty of scientists and engineers to try to prevent the catastrophes that currently threaten human society and the biosphere.
The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:
Science and technology have conferred many benefits on human society, but as we start the 21st century, most thoughtful observers believe that our science-driven and information-driven industrial civilization has entered a period of crisis.
All indices are increasing rapidly – population, total wealth, industrial output, rates of scientific discovery, and so on. But it is clear that the total human footprint on the face of nature has become too great.
Nairobi (UNEP)* – Despite progress in key environmental areas such as clean water, sanitation, clean energy, forest management and waste, countries are still living unsustainably and are on course to miss the environmental dimensions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, according to the Measuring Progress: Environment and the SDGs report.
MONTREAL/VICTORIA, Canada, May 26 2021 (IPS)* – Over the past 75 years, there have been many UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions acknowledging Israel’s violations of international law, including a Resolution under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, that could have addressed, if implemented, the plight of the Palestinians.
A tower block lies in ruins in Gaza city following an Israeli air strike. The humanitarian community has welcomed the ceasefire agreed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel but warned that the destruction in Gaza will take years, if not decades, to fix. Credit: UNRWA/Mohamed Hinnawi
Celebrations to mark Timor-Leste’s independence in 2002 were held in the capital Dili. | UN Photo / Sergey Bermeniev
25 May 2021 (United Nations)* — In the UN Charter, a Non-Self-Governing Territory is defined as a Territory “whose people have not yet attained a full measure of self-government.”
In 1946, several UN Member States identified a number of Territories under their administration that were not self-governing and placed them on a UN list.
25 May 2021 — As those individuals aware of it will have observed, presumably with deep regret, the latest ‘International Day for Biological Diversity’ passed on 22 May with the bulk of the human population continuing to act in ways that destroy Earth’s biosphere at an ever-accelerating rate.
Robert J. Burrowes
Unaware that many authors continue to report the ongoing destruction of Earth’s biodiversity, which is under siege on a range of fronts by unchecked human destruction of Earth’s biosphere as well as particular assaults on Earth’s living creatures, responses to this ‘hidden’ path to human extinction continue to waver between non-existent and token.
Consequently, in such circumstances, the destruction of biodiversity might yet become the means by which Homo sapiens is consigned to the fossil record ‘beating’ nuclear war, the climate catastrophe and electromagnetic radiation as the fundamental driver of extinction.
The crisis of 2020 has created the greatest wealth gap in history. The middle class, capitalism and democracy are all under threat. What went wrong and what can be done?
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Ellen Brown
In a matter of decades, the United States has gone from a largely benign form of capitalism to a neo-feudal form that has created an ever-widening gap in wealth and power.
In his 2013 bestseller Capital in the 21st Century, French economist Thomas Piketty declared that “the level of inequality in the US is probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past anywhere in the world.”
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 