Rapid growth of digital economy calls for coherent policy response. The growth of digital labour platforms is presenting opportunities and challenges for workers and businesses and a need for international policy dialogue.
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GENEVA, 24 February 2021 (ILO)* – Digital labour platforms have increased five-fold worldwide in the last decade according to the ILO’s latest World Employment and Social Outlook 2021 report.
CAMBRIDGE MA, Feb 24 2021 (IPS)* – Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador quietly rocked the agribusiness world with his New Year’s Eve decree to phase out use of the herbicide glyphosate and the cultivation of genetically modified corn. His administration sent an even stronger aftershock two weeks later, clarifying that the government would also phase out GM corn imports in three years and the ban would include not just corn for human consumption but yellow corn destined primarily for livestock. Under NAFTA, the United States has seen a 400% increase in corn exports to Mexico, the vast majority genetically modified yellow dent corn.
Tractor caravan to Mexico City farmer protest demands “Mexico Free of Transgenics”. Credit: Enrique Perez S./ANEC
(UN News)* — More collective action is needed to address the risks climate change poses to global peace and security, the UN Secretary-General told a high-level Security Council debate on Tuesday [23 February 2021], as renowned natural historian David Attenborough warned countries that the planet faces total ‘collapse’.
CIFOR/Axel Fassio | Young girls carry water from a source near Yangambi, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Climate shocks such as record high temperatures and a “new normal” of wildfires, floods and droughts, are not only damaging the natural environment, said UN chief António Guterres, but also threatening political, economic and social stability.“The science is clear: we need to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century,” the Secretary-General said.
WFP/Oscar Duarte, women cooking free meals for the children of the community named Guililandia, who were affected by the Hurricane. Part of the rice she has served to the children was WFP rice.
Implementation of nature-based solutions has been growing. But there is an urgent need to gather more evidence on the outcomes of adaption projects worldwide. As temperatures rise and climate change impacts intensify, nations must urgently step up action to adapt to the new climate reality or face serious costs, damages and losses, the 2020 edition of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Adaptation Gap Report finds.*
(UNEP)* — Implementation of nature-based solutions has been growing worldwide for the past two decades. Since 2006, multilateral funds serving the Paris Agreement have backed around 400 adaptation projects in developing countries, half of which started after 2015. The majority focus on agriculture and water, with drought, rainfall variability, flooding and coastal impacts.
23 February 2021 (UN News)* — People living in low-income countries are at least four times more likely to be displaced by extreme weather compared to people in rich countries, despite being the least responsible for climate change, that’s according to the UN’s humanitarian office, OCHA.
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IRIN/Jacob Zocherman | The most vulnerable people in the world, like these displaced persons in South Sudan, are more likely to suffer from the effects of climate change.
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The UN is warning that much more needs to be done to anticipate, and plan for, the extreme weather events that put millions in need of urgent assistance.
(UN News)* — During this time of “crisis and fragility”, the UN chief told the United Nations Environment Assembly on 22 February 2021 that human well-being and prosperity can be vastly improved by prioritizing nature-based solutions.
CIFOR/Tri Saputro | A farmer harvests rice in Bantaeng, Indonesia.
Painting a picture of the turmoil wreaked by COVID-19, whereby millions are being pushed into poverty, inequalities are growing among people and countries, and “a triple environmental emergency” of climate disruption, biodiversity decline and a pollution epidemic that is “cutting short some nine million lives a year”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres upheld in his video message that now is “a critical year to reset our relationship with nature.”
Ankara, 20 February 2021 (IOM)* – Turkey, host to almost four million refugees and migrants, has established a dedicated United Nations Network on Migration (UNNM). The initiative flows from the 2018 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), the first cooperative framework addressing international migration.
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As GCM convenor, IOM hosted a gathering in the Turkish capital Ankara on 18 February 2021, which brought together United Nations representatives to formally bring the country’s UNNM into being.
The world we live in has been built around an economic system that prioritises never-ending growth over the welfare of people and the planet. This system plunders our planet’s resources while oppressing our most vulnerable. It perpetuates structural inequalities and deepens the climate crisis and fossil fuels are at its core and is known as “Fossil Capital”.
20 February 2021 (UNEP)* — The COVID-19 pandemic is drawing young people around the world into the fight against climate change, as witnessed this week during the Youth Environment Assembly.
Photo: IISD/19 Feb 2021
The gathering, which is being held virtually, as part of the UN Environment Assembly, is the planet’s largest youth-led environmental event. It has zeroed in on climate change, which participants described as a dire threat to the planet.
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