'Unseen' News and Views
– Food processing extends shelf-life and can transforms raw food into attractive, marketable products. It can also prevent contamination. The transformation can involve numerous physical and chemical processes such as mincing, cooking, canning, liquefaction, pickling, macerating, emulsification, irradiation and lyophilization.
Processed, canned food lines the shelves at a Canadian supermarket. Credit: Trevor Page
New York, 21 September 2021 (UNEP)* – Today, at Climate Week NYC 2021, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Global Environment Facility (GEF) and partners launched UrbanShift – a new global initiative to improve lives and transform cities into green and liveable spaces that address climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
Credit: Unspalsh/Koukichi Takahashi
Cities are home to 4.2 billion people, more than half of the world’s population. But they face growing challenges – from floods, storms and heatwaves triggered by the climate crisis to dangerous air quality, lack of affordable housing and deep social divides.
Indigenous Peoples’ food systems have survived for centuries, generating an incredible diversity of food without depleting the natural resource base of surrounding ecosystems. ©National University of Columbia/Daniel Baena
(FAO)* — The running fresh water of the Amazon River is a welcoming sound to the peoples of the indigenous resguardo (reserve) in Puerto Nariño, southern Colombia.
This watercourse is the only access to the banks of rivers, lakes, flood plains and mainland areas that connect the 22 communities where the Tikuna, Cocama and Yagua peoples live.
Why food? According to scientists from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), land use for farming is responsible for one-quarter of all global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).
11 August 2021 (UNEP)* — Nemonte Nenquimo has spent years fending off miners, loggers and oil companies intent on developing the Amazon rainforest.
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The leader of Ecuador’s indigenous Waorani people, she famously fronted a 2019 lawsuit that banned resource extraction on 500,000 acres of her ancestral lands — a court win that gave hope to indigenous communities around the world.
H.G. Wells
The enormously prolific English writer, Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), who also wrote novels. short stories, history books, biology textbooks, utopias, and so on, has been called “The Shakespeare of Science Fiction”.
John Scales Avery
During his writing career, he made a number of predictions about the future, many of which were astonishingly accurate.
He foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web.
George Orwell’s famous dystopian book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, warned the world of the dangers of totalitarianism. In Orwell’s book, people are terrorized into submission. Orwell had Stalinist Russia in mind when he wrote the book, but sadly, it seems to describe the situation in a large number of countries today.
(WMO)* — Scientists are observing changes in the Earth’s climate in every region and across the whole climate system, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, released on 9 August 2021.
Indigenous Peoples are stewards of natural resources, biodiversity and nutritious native foods. They are key partners in finding solutions to climate change and reshaping our food systems. @FAO/Francesco Farnè
10 August 2021 (FAO)* — Constituting only 6 percent of the world population, Indigenous Peoples are nevertheless vital stewards of the environment.
28 percent of the world’s land surface, including some of the most ecologically intact and biodiverse forest areas, are primarily managed by Indigenous Peoples, families, smallholders and local communities.
These forests are crucial for curbing gas emissions and maintaining biodiversity.
Indigenous foods are also particularly nutritious, and their associated food systems are remarkably climate-resilient and well-adapted to the environment.
(World Food Programme)* — Grab your cooking pot to start cooking a delicious meal. You need:
0lb spaghetti
0 cloves garlic
No cup of olive oil,
No teaspoon red pepper flakes
0 pinch of salt
No chopped fresh parsley.
But wait – where are the ingredients themselves, you ask. Well, this is an #InvisibleMeal.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 