'Unseen' News and Views
– Smelly, boggy, and full of bugs, mangroves’ superpowers are well hidden. However, there is rising confidence that mangroves are the silver bullet to combat the effects of climate change.
Mangroves could be the silver bullet needed to mitigate climate change, however, approximately 75 percent of mangrove forests globally remain unprotected and overexploited. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
9 October 2021 (UNEP)* — This month’s oil spill in California and the sinking of the X-Press Pearl off the coast of Sri Lanka in July have renewed attention to the environmental dangers of such disasters, especially the toll they take on marine and coral life.
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9 October 2021 (UNEP)* — When world leaders attend the make-or-break United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland in a few weeks, they will be ferried around in electric vehicles – a reminder that the transport sector has a critical role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
While many developed nations have pledged to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles in the next two decades, the transition will be more complicated in developing countries, where old cars imported from Europe, Japan and the United States are often the only affordable option.
Many of these used cars emit dangerous fumes, exposing people to high levels of air pollution, and they are often not roadworthy, resulting in more accidents and fatalities.
7 October 2021 (United Nations)* — Cotton is one of the most common fabrics in our wardrobes. It is comfortable, hypoallergenic, breathable and durable.
But cotton represents so much more than just a commodity. This natural fabric is a life-changing product worldwide that sustains 28.67 million growers and benefits over 100 million families across 75 countries in 5 continents.
5 October 2021 (Wall Street International)* — Human evolution, as in all species on Earth, is driven by stress – as all are challenged by continually changing conditions and environments.
Like all species, we humans become habituated to our current situations and cultural norms. Our reactions to change range from outright denial to reluctant acceptance and attempts at adaptation.
– It’s bad enough that mainstream news outlets routinely call the Pentagon budget a “defense” budget. But the fact that progressives in Congress and even many antiwar activists also do the same is an indication of how deeply the mindsets of the nation’s warfare state are embedded in the political culture of the United States.
(UN News)* — Between 2009 and 2018, the continuous rise in sea temperature cost the world 14 per cent of its coral reefs – that’s more than the size of Australia’s reefs combined – a UN-backed report revealed on 5 October 2021.
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In the Sixth Status of Corals of the World: 2020 Report, experts from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, funded by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), collected data from more than 300 scientists from 73 countries, over a span of 40 years, including two million individual observations.
– As finance ministers and central bank governors gather next week for the IMF-World Bank annual meetings in the US capital, the first shots of a new putsch against multilateralism have been fired. The target: Kristalina Georgieva, Fund Managing Director (MD) since 2019.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Georgieva’s sins
She has tried to enhance multilateral coherence by aligning the Fund with the United Nations, as envisaged by then US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Like predecessor Christine Lagarde, the former Bank environmental economist is committed to the Sustainable Development Goals and addressing global warming.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 