SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 30 2021 (IPS)* – COVID-19 has set back the uneven progress of recent decades, directly causing more than two million deaths. The slowdown, due to the pandemic and policy responses, has pushed hundreds of millions more into poverty, hunger and worse, also deepening many inequalities.
Anis Chowdhury
Development setbacks
The outlook for developing countries is grim, with output losses of 5.7% in 2020. Compared to pre-pandemic trends, the expected 8.1% loss by end-2021 will be much worse than advanced countries dropping 4.7%.
COVID-19 has further set back progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As progress was largely ‘not on track’ even before the pandemic, developing countries will need much support to mitigate the new setbacks, let alone get back on track.
In late 2020 Robert J. Burrowes and myself were asked by some Melbourne activists protesting against the lockdowns and Covid vaccinations to help them develop more effective strategy.
Anita McKone
Many of the protesters were new to activism, and those with an inclination towards following a nonviolent approach wanted education in this area.
In February, Robert and I ran two Introduction to Nonviolent Action workshops, and one Nonviolent Strategy weekend, and with the inspiration and input of this great group of participants, I have now put the basics of a worldwide nonviolent campaign strategy to defeat the Great Reset on a website. We have named this campaign We Are Human, We Are Free.
The website is designed as a resource that activists anywhere in the world can use to develop effective local nonviolent campaigns.
(UN News)* — Now is not the moment to reduce humanitarian aid to Syria, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator told the Security Council on Monday 29 March 2021, stressing that after 10 years of conflict, more support was needed to avoid further “dramatic and widespread” deterioration.
Mark Lowcock, who’s also the Humanitarian Affairs chief, said that after a decade of “death, destruction, displacement, disease, dread and despair”, Syrians “see no respite”.
Shark fin soup is well-known. When we hear that 100 million sharks are killed every year by the fishing industry, some people may assume it’s because of shark fin soup. But these assumptions are just not true. Only focusing on shark fin soup crowds out other reasons sharks are in trouble, including a huge global market for shark products like meat and oil.
27 March 2021 (UN News)* — The UN is scaling up its efforts to help Nepal, which faces numerous natural threats, to become more resilient, minimize human casualties and preserve livelihoods.
UNDP Nepal | Nepal has promoted farming which helps to reduce the impact of natural disasters.
Floods, landslides and wildfires are regularly occurring threats in Nepal, and the climate crisis is making such extreme weather events more frequent, and unpredictable.
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Working closely with the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the Nepalese Government is ensuring that the voices of marginalized groups, such as women, people with disabilities, and indigenous communities, are heard and taken into consideration in their plans, which include early warning systems, off-grids clean energy solutions, and reforestation.
CRATER, Yemen, 25 March 2021 (UNFPA)* — “It was the morning of a normal working day before fighting escalated close to the hospital. I heard a mother screaming at the gate,” midwife Shrook Khalid Saeed told UNFPA this week at the Al Shaab Hospital in the district of Crater, in Yemen.
Improving tenure in Amazon basin can lower deforestation rates and biodiversity loss
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean are the best guardians of their forests when compared to those responsible for the region’s other forests.
Santiago, Chile/Rome (FAO)* – Deforestation rates are significantly lower in Indigenous and Tribal territories where governments have formally recognized collective land rights, according to a new report launched on 25 March 2021.
27 March 2021 (Wall Street International)* — As almost every new technology emerging, ML (Machine Learning) is a double-edged sword that can be used as a solution or as harm depending on the situation.
Machine Learning can be used as a solution or as harm depending on the situation | Image fromWall Street International.
So, it is only natural to assume that adversaries will become more and more interested in learning how to attack involving ML models.
During my time as an oceans campaigner at Greenpeace, I’ve sat in a tiny boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean, watching a fishing boat pull in miles of drift nets. The nets were full of tuna, but there were also dead spinner dolphins, manta rays, thresher sharks and more – a grim demonstration of devastation at sea. I’ve been right up close with some of the biggest fishing vessels in the world, watching as they haul out incomprehensible numbers of fish.
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 23 2021 (IPS)* – At least 85 poor countries will not have significant access to coronavirus vaccines before 2023. Unfortunately, a year’s delay will cause an estimated 2.5 million avoidable deaths in low and lower-middle income countries. As the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General has put it, the world is at the brink of a catastrophic moral failure.
Anis Chowdhury
Vaccine apartheid
The EU, US, UK, Switzerland, Canada and their allies continue to block the developing country proposal to temporarily suspend the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement to enable greatly increased, affordable supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, drugs, tests and equipment.
Meanwhile, 6.4 billion of the 12.5 billion vaccine doses the main producers plan to produce in 2021 have already been pre-ordered, mostly by these countries, with 13% of the global population.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 