'Unseen' News and Views
The 2021-2030 initiative hopes to raise funding for ocean science and focus on the sustainable use of marine resources
– The United Nations Secretary-General has urged nations to rise to the ‘defining challenge’ of restoring the ocean’s power to support humanity and regulate the climate.
(UN News)* — January marked the beginning of what many within the UN and beyond view as “the most critical decade of our lives”, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said on Wednesday [3 February 2021], launching a major initiative to protect the world’s oceans through the next ten years.
UNESCO marked the start of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, with a global online event headlined: ‘A Brave New Ocean’.
It aims to raise awareness of the immense challenges and opportunities the world seas provide to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
ROME, 2 February 2021 (FAO)* — Global fisheries and aquaculture have been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and could face further disruption in 2021 as lockdowns affect supply and demand across the sector, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
ROME, 4 February 2021 (FAO)* — Global food prices rose in January for the eighth consecutive month, led by cereals, vegetable oils and sugar, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
FAO’s Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of commonly-traded food commodities and was released today [4 February 2021], averaged 113.3 points in January, marking a 4.3 percent increase from December 2020 and reaching its highest level since July 2014.
Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss, with agriculture alone being the identified threat to 24,000 of the 28,000 (86%) species at risk of extinction. The global rate of species extinction today is higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years.
In the last decades our food systems have been following the “cheaper food paradigm”, with a goal of producing more food at lower costs through increasing inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, energy, land and water.
Over 60 Detained, Forcibly Moved from Occupied Territories
– Access to COVID-19 vaccines for many developing countries and most of their people will have to wait as the powerful and better off secure earlier access regardless of need or urgency. More profits, by manufacturing scarcity, will surely cause even more loss of both lives and livelihoods.
Credit: UNICEF/Nahom Tesfaye
Good intentions not enough
To induce private efforts to develop and distribute vaccines, the WHO initiated COVAX to ensure more equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. However, interest by vaccine companies has been limited, while some governments – especially from better-off upper middle-income countries – pursue other options.
COVAX has been co-led with GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). Buoyed by their earlier success with advance market commitments (AMC), they have extended the same approach in very different circumstances.
Poor and vulnerable communities across the world, including the forcibly displaced, struggle with the pandemic’s far-reaching consequences.
3 February 2021 (UNHCR)* — In a data visualization project entitled ‘Livelihoods, food and futures: COVID-19 and the displaced,’ UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, collated statistics from numerous sources to shed more light on the effects of the pandemic on poor and vulnerable people, including refugees.
(UN News)* — Although almost 50,000 victims of human trafficking were detected and reported in 2018 by 148 countries, the “hidden nature” of the crime means that the actual number of victims could be “far higher”, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said on Tuesday [2 February 2021].
(UN News)* — The UN Special Envoy on Myanmar appealed on Tuesday [2 February 2021] for the Security Council to unite in support of democracy in the country in the wake of the recent power grab by the military and the declaration of a one-year state of emergency.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 