'Unseen' News and Views
“Finding new ways of ensuring food security is one of the most defining challenges of our time. We need the creativity and innovation from youth to help all of us to restore soils, stabilize the climate and save biodiversity,” said Tim Christophersen, Head of Fresh Water, Land and Climate at UN Environment Programme.
Unsplash/Paul Proshin | The UN health agency, WHO, is encouraging adolescents to exercise more. (photo posted here from UN News).
The first ever global trends for adolescent insufficient physical activity show that urgent action is needed to increase physical activity levels in girls and boys aged 11 to 17 years.
The study, published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal and produced by researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO), finds that more than 80% of school-going adolescents globally did not meet current recommendations of at least one hour of physical activity per day – including 85% of girls and 78% of boys.
The Marshall Islands say that plutonium is leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the concrete dome the U.S. built to dispose of its nuclear waste. (Also see information below on Johnston Island plutonium contamination, etc.)
During the Cold War, the United States nuked the Marshall Islands 67 times. After it finished nuking the islands, the Pentagon dropped biological weapons on the islands.
Photo from UN Environment.
“Seabird droppings wash into the ocean and fertilize the coral, which attracts the fish, which feed the seabirds, and so on. Rats break this natural cycle.”
Fishing vessels with Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) increasing by 10 to 30 percent each year
Fishing vessel moored in the port of Lima, Peru.
ROME, 19 November 2019 (FAO)* — A new global atlas – the first-ever of its kind – analyses the opportunities and challenges of using Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) to monitor fishing activity around the globe.
Rome (FAO)* — Fisheries are facing an important crossroad and the world needs a new vision for fisheries in the 21st century. This was FAO-Director General Qu Dongyu’s main message today [18 November 2019] at the opening of the UN agency’s International Symposium on Fisheries Sustainability (18-21 November).
There is a clear link between the seedy underbelly of the seafood industry, and fishers’ safety, now ranked as the second deadliest profession in the world; and more must be done to ensure people dependent on this type of labour are working in safe conditions, UN partners urged on Thursday [21 November 2019]. *
21 November 2019 — A group of thirty men in Gaza have succeeded in preventing the early marriage of girls under the age of 18, from 50 different families, thanks to a training programme supported by the UN gender agency, UN Women. (*).
Antimicrobial resistance is a problem not just in our hospitals, but on our farms and for the safety of our food, too. ©FAO/Hoang Dinh Nam
Representatives from across the Middle East are meeting at UN Headquarters this week in efforts to negotiate a legally binding treaty establishing a regional zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. (*).
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 