'Unseen' News and Views
By Musonda Mumba Chief, Terrestrial Ecosystems, UNEP and Hugo Mantilla-Meluk Coordinator, Climate Service Health Surveillance Platform, University of Quindio, Colombia*
This year, much of the planet will mark World Environment Day, which falls on 5 June, under lockdown. But if we want to be reminded of the majesty of nature, we can look to Colombia, which is hosting the international celebration. A treasure trove of biodiversity, Colombia’s natural bounty is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the Andes, which run through the country. *
5 June 2020 (World Environment Day)* — Barranquilla, the largest city on the Colombian Caribbean coast, lies 15 miles upstream the mouth of the Magdalena river. This huge waterway is the setting of some of Nobel prize-winning author, Gabriel García Márquez’s, most famous works. (*)
Since colonial times, Barranquilla has served as a gateway to Colombia’s interior. The city today accounts for 27 percent of Colombia’s coastal gross domestic product.
But the economic growth has come with a price. Urban expansion, shipping and wastewater dumping has impacted biodiversity in the river delta, degrading habitats for fish and caiman.
– Maliha Masud (25), was promised an affluent life and opportunities for higher education. A bright student studying Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, she wanted to complete her studies and become someone her parents would be proud of. She was promised an opportunity to get her Master’s degree from a good university in the United States but, two years later, was left battered and wounded at the doorstep of a shelter.
Credit: Unsplash / Gabriel Benois
Maliha was 20 years old when she married an immigrant living in the United States, who was completing his Master’s at a renowned university. A marriage arranged by a “reputable marriage medium,” she was promised the freedom to study and work after the nuptials.
5 June 2020 (UN News)* — On this year’s World Environment Day, celebrated on June 5, the UN is drawing links between the health of the planet, and human health, and highlighting the importance of protecting biodiversity, the system that supports life.
5 June 2020 (UN Environment)* — “I have never seen anything quite like this,” says Kathleen Usher, a Canadian elementary school teacher as she clicks through the website of Earth School.
The portal, which the UN Environment Programme, and TED-Ed launched together with a wide array of partners as a response to COVID-19 on 22 April, features 30 kid-friendly primers on a range of environmental issues, from the origins of water to the life cycle of a t-shirt.
Photo by Kari Prestgaard
4 June 2020 (UN Environment)* — Srečko was a young stork that – like hundreds of others – spread its wings and set off to migrate from Slovenia to the warmer African climate a couple of winters ago. Sadly, his journey ended too early.
The bird, whose name ironically means ‘lucky,’ got entangled in one of the five trillion plastic bags our world uses each year, and he passed away en route.
3 June 2020 (Wall Street International)* — The Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas during the 17th to 19th centuries.
On 19 August 1982, at its emergency special session on the question of Palestine, the General Assembly, “appalled at the great number of innocent Palestinian and Lebanese children victims of Israel’s acts of aggression”, decided to commemorate 4 June of each year as the International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression.
This country reached 18 consecutive days without having a regular health minister.
Image of Jair Bolsonaro against the background of mass graves in Brazil, 2020. | Photo: Twitter/ @ptbrasil
3 June 2020 (teleSUR)* — When asked for a word for the relatives of the COVID-19 victims, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro replied that death “is everyone’s destiny” on Tuesday [2 June 2020], a day in which his country recorded new records of infections and deaths.
“I regret all the dead but it is everyone’s destiny,” Bolsonaro told a supporter who, after mentioning passages from the Bible, asked him for a message for the mourners.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 