'Unseen' News and Views
We have known for a long time that biodiversity, and the services it provides, have been in decline. It is on this background that ten years ago, the international community adopted the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020. The goal of the plan, and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets, was to halt biodiversity loss and ensure that ecosystems continued to provide essential services.
Montreal, 15 September 2020 (UN Environment)* – Despite encouraging progress in several areas, the natural world is suffering badly and getting worse. Eight transformative changes are, therefore, urgently needed to ensure human wellbeing and save the planet, the UN warns in a major report. 
Pixabay
The report comes as the COVID-19 pandemic challenges people to rethink their relationship with nature, and to consider the profound consequences to their own wellbeing and survival that can result from continued biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystems.
(UN News)* — The continued degradation of the environment is increasing the likelihood of diseases spreading from animals to humans, warns a UN report on biodiversity, released on Tuesday [15 September 2020].
The phaseout of controlled uses of ozone depleting substances and the related reductions have not only helped protect the ozone layer for this and future generations, but have also contributed significantly to global efforts to address climate change; furthermore, it has protected human health and ecosystems by limiting the harmful ultraviolet radiation from reaching the Earth.
(UN Environment)* — 16 September is World Ozone Day. Thanks to international cooperation, this year we celebrate 35 years of the Vienna Convention and 35 years of global ozone layer protection.
Unsplash/Thomas Bennie
World Ozone Day shows that collective decisions and action, guided by science, are the only way to solve major global crises.
In 1985, the world’s governments adopted the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer. Under the Convention’s Montreal Protocol, governments, scientists and industry worked together to cut out 99 per cent of all ozone-depleting substances.
Lessons for today from the 1960’s
Everyone agrees that the 1960’s were very special. Those of us who lived through that era remember it as a time when the danger of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union was very real indeed.
John Scales Avery
The world came extremely close to disaster during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In response to the threat of nuclear destruction, there were massive public protests against nuclear weapons. Millions of people all over the world took to the streets.
Where is that passion and engagement today? When the Cold War supposedly ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, everyone heaved a sigh of relief, and decided that the threat of global nuclear annihilation had gone away. But it has not gone away. It is still with us, and is perhaps greater today than ever before. Why do we not protest? Where are the millions of protesters that we saw in the 1960’s?
On 16 August 1819, an estimated 60,000 pro-democracy and anti-poverty activists were peacefully protesting the utterly corrupt nature of the Parliament in Westminster and demanding the reform of parliamentary representation (which afforded less than 2% of people the right to vote).
Robert J. Burrowes
The gathering took place in St Peter’s Field, Manchester in England.
The protest was precipitated by the acute economic slump, including chronic unemployment and harvest failure, following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars as well as by enforcement of the Corn Laws which kept the price of bread high, by blocking (or imposing tariffs on) the import of cheap grains, at the expense of ordinary people.
We suffer through today’s a difficult, complicated and partially obfuscated time | Image from Wall Street International. 12 September 2020 (Wall Street International)* — It is hard to know where things began when we are already in the middle of it all. This is especially so as we suffer through today’s difficult, complicated and partially obfuscated time. Perhaps the beginning occurred in 1865 when the American Civil War was officially declared ended, but continued to seethe in less organized ways.
World leaders have been urged to stay home in the first “virtual” UN General Assembly sessions in the 75-year history of the United Nations. The annual high-level sessions, with mostly pre-recorded video speeches, begin September 22. The UN says there will be “no marvelling at seemingly endless presidential motorcades on First Avenue and no “standing-room only” moments in the gilded General Assembly Hall, as the Organization’s busiest time of the year is reimagined in the time of COVID-19. Credit: Anton Uspensky, UN News
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 