'Unseen' News and Views
Global Costs of Unlawful Detention and Interrogation Post-9/11
New York, 9 January 2022 – Twenty years after Guantánamo Bay detention operations commenced on January 11, 2002, a new report assesses the massive costs of US unlawful transfers, secret detention, and torture after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
– There are more under-reported consequences of human activities unmatching the rhythm of Mother Nature. Such is the case, among many others, of the growing salinisation and ‘plastification’ of the world’s soils.
In fact, currently it is estimated that there are more than 833 million hectares of salt-affected soils around the globe (8.7% of the planet). This implies the loss of soil’s capacity to grow food and also increasing impacts on water and the ability to filter pollution.
Soil salinisation and sodification are major soil degradation processes threatening ecosystems and are recognised as being among the most important problems at a global level for agricultural production, food security and sustainability in arid and semi-arid regions, says the UN on occasion of the 2021 World Soil Day.
(UN News)* — The UN’s benchmark food and commodity prices index rose sharply on average through 2021, compared with the previous year, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) informed on Thursday [6 January 2022].
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FAO Senior Economist Abdolreza Abbassian explained that, normally, high prices are expected to ease as production increases to match demand.
5 January 2022 (UNEP)* — Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – the atmospheric gases responsible for causing global warming and climatic change – are critical to understanding and addressing the climate crisis. Despite an initial dip in global GHG emissions due to COVID-19, the United Nations Environment Programme’s latest Emissions Gap Report (EGR) estimates that emissions rebounded to near-2019 levels in 2021.
(UN News)* — UN humanitarians warned on Tuesday [4 January 2022] that a harsh winter in Afghanistan is aggravating already severe conditions faced by millions across the country.
(WMO)* — Record-breaking heat and rainfall, devastating fires and debilitating drought were among the extreme weather, climate and water events of 2021, with human, economic and environmental impacts which will far outlast the calendar year.
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I would like to announce the publication of a new book which discusses the reasons for our human encroachment on the earth’s ecological systems, and the possible consequences if we do not take steps to correct the problem.
John Scales Avery
The book may be downloaded and circulated free of charge from the following link:
Here are some of the problems that are discussed in the book:
There is a danger that by the middle of the present century, population growth, the end of the fossil fuel era, and the effect of climate change on agriculture will combine to produce an extremely large-scale famine, afflicting billions of people rather than millions.
1 January 2022 (UN News)* — The number of Haitians who have tried to migrate by unofficial channels to neighboring countries by boat has increased dramatically in 2021. They are being driven by economic hardship, insecurity, and a recent earthquake, to seek what they believe will be a better life.
The story of Jacques* a 32-year-old father from Limonade on Haiti’s northern coast is perhaps typical of the increasing numbers of people who try to leave the Caribbean country in unofficial ways and without proper documentation.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 