— The deep ocean — 200 to over 10.000 meters below the surface — is one of Earth’s last untouched frontiers, but it is under threat from a nascent industry: deep sea mining. Some countries and corporations are racing to extract metals and minerals like cobalt, nickel, manganese, copper from the seabed, pretending that those minerals are needed for a clean energy transition.
Greenpeace activists crash Deep Sea Mining Summit in London in April 2024 with a giant octopus to show wherever the deep sea mining industry goes, they’ll be there to stop them.
.
As if it was not enough to plan to destroy fragile ecosystems, some deep sea mining companies are now marketing deep sea minerals as necessary to strengthen military power, exacerbating geopolitical tensions between world superpowers with worrying implications for global peace and stability.
Asia remained the world’s most disaster-hit region from weather, climate and water-related hazards in 2023. Floods and storms caused the highest number of reported casualties and economic losses, whilst the impact of heatwaves became more severe, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Adobe Stock/martinhosmat083
The State of the Climate in Asia 2023 report highlighted the accelerating rate of key climate change indicators such as surface temperature, glacier retreat and sea level rise, which will have major repercussions for societies, economies and ecosystems in the region.
In 2023, sea-surface temperatures in the north-west Pacific Ocean were the highest on record. Even the Arctic Ocean suffered a marine heatwave.
The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean report documents the Region’s struggles with the devastating impacts of climate change, and urges action to reduce the burden of disasters.
The coastal village of Scotts Head, Dominica: The 2023 State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean report is calling for robust early warning systems to safeguard small island developing states from rising sea levels and other impacts of climate change. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS
DOMINICA, May 10 2024 (IPS)* –Every year for the last four years, a collaborative effort involving scientists and other experts has assessed the state of the climate in Latin America and the Caribbean. The findings have revealed increasingly alarming trends for the world’s second-most disaster-prone region.
Devastating flooding in East Africa is claiming an increasing number of casualties, destroying infrastructure and crops and killing livestock and wildlife. An incoming tropical cyclone is set to worsen the situation by bringing yet more heavy rainfall to the worst affected countries, including the United Republic of Tanzania and Kenya.
Credit: Copernicus EC Sentinel2 satellite
.
Kenyan President William Ruto addressed the nation, outlining a series of measures to deal with the emergency, including evacuations and urgent health provisions. Water dams are overflowing, roads and bridges have been destroyed, and schools are closed. As of 3 May, 210 people have been killed and many more injured, he said.
10 May 2024 — It was the warmest April on record – the eleventh month in a row of record global temperatures, according to Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). Sea surface temperatures have been record high for the past 13 months.
The monthly report highlights the extraordinary duration of record temperatures fuelled by the naturally occurring El Niño event and the additional energy trapped in the atmosphere and ocean by greenhouse gases from human activities.
BULAWAYO, May 8 2024 (IPS)* – While there have been a record number of displaced people worldwide, according to a new report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), migrant remittances are promoting human development.
Migrants use a cross-border bus in Bulawayo to enter South Africa. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS
Millions of people from developing countries rely on money sent from abroad by relatives, helping drive local economies marked by high unemployment and poverty, according to humanitarian agencies that include the World Bank.
(UN News)* — Money sent home by migrants abroad has surpassed foreign direct investment in boosting the gross domestic product (GDP) of developing countries, UN migration agency IOM said in the latest edition of its flagship report, released on Tuesday [7 May 2024].
World Migration Report 2024 reveals a significant shift in global migration patterns, including a record number of people displaced due to conflict, violence, natural and other disasters.
Speaking at the launch in Dhaka, Bangladesh, IOM Director General Amy Pope said the report aims to “demystify the complexity of human mobility through evidence-based data and analysis”.
Is the West launching an all-out war against global ‘South,’ against the BRICS – plus, against the ‘other’? Are we in the first stages of a civilizational struggle initiated by the U.S.-led assemblage we call the “collective West”? That would have seemed an absurd idea until very recently.
Bremmer, Michael
Yet, there are remarkable developments on the world scene that suggest that dramatic alterations indeed are in the offing. Let us examine them; then interpolate what systemic meaning they might auger.
1) Palestine is the most revealing, graphic indicator that something is badly askew in the mentality of political elites in North America and Europe – with resonance among their accommodating publics.
Complicity in the genocidal actions of Israel in Gaza – accompanied by pogroms in the West Bank – is a stunning phenomenon. It forces us to reconsider who we in the West are and what we stand for.
COTONOU/BENIN , Apr 26 2024 (IPS)* — A group of young girls aged between 15 and 17 sit tight, following attentively a lesson being taught by a Mualim (Islamic teacher) in a makeshift madrassah (Qur’anic school) located in one of the impoverished townships of Benin’s economic capital, Cotonou.
.
Girl refugees from Niger now living in Benin, often end up as child brides. Graphic: IPS
They arrived in Benin recently, fleeing poverty, hunger, climate change, and rising insecurity in their home country, Niger, in the aftermath of the military coup that toppled democratically-elected president Mohamed Bazoum.
Unexpected blistering temperatures across Gaza have added to the daily misery faced by the enclave’s people and sparked new fears of disease outbreaks amid a lack of sufficient clean water and waste disposal, UN humanitarians said on Thursday [].
The warning from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, came as some 1.2 million people continued to shelter in tents pitched in and around the enclave’s southernmost city, Rafah, with nowhere else to go.
“It is like living in a greenhouse, no-one can tolerate living inside,” the UN agency said, quoting Mustafa Radwan, formerly from Gaza City, in a social media post on X.
Greenpeace activists crash Deep Sea Mining Summit in London in April 2024 with a giant octopus to show wherever the deep sea mining industry goes, they’ll be there to stop them.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 