11 August 2021 (UNEP)* — Nemonte Nenquimo has spent years fending off miners, loggers and oil companies intent on developing the Amazon rainforest.
Photo: UNEP / 09 Aug 2021
The leader of Ecuador’s indigenous Waorani people, she famously fronted a 2019 lawsuit that banned resource extraction on 500,000 acres of her ancestral lands — a court win that gave hope to indigenous communities around the world.
Canada is developing a new image: one of burning churches, toppling statues, and mass graves. There are thousands more unmarked graves, thousands more Indigenous children killed at residential schools, remaining to be unearthed. There can be no denying that this is Canada, and it has to change.
The enormously prolific English writer, Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), who also wrote novels. short stories, history books, biology textbooks, utopias, and so on, has been called “The Shakespeare of Science Fiction”.
John Scales Avery
During his writing career, he made a number of predictions about the future, many of which were astonishingly accurate.
He foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web.
George Orwell and Aldous Huxley
George Orwell’s famous dystopian book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, warned the world of the dangers of totalitarianism. In Orwell’s book, people are terrorized into submission. Orwell had Stalinist Russia in mind when he wrote the book, but sadly, it seems to describe the situation in a large number of countries today.
(UN News)* — A group of UN-appointed experts on 12 August 2021 called for a moratorium on the sale of surveillance technology, warning against the danger of allowing the sector to operate as “a human rights-free zone.”
World Bank/Simone D. McCourtie | A person browsing through social media on their laptop computer (content blurred to protect privacy).
Their recommendation comes in the wake of the Pegasus spyware scandal targeting hundreds of journalists, activists and politicians.
(UN News)* — With 40 per cent of the global population under 25, the international community has a special responsibility to ensure young people can share their perspectives and concerns about existential threats to current and future generations, UN disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu on 12 August 2021 said.
UN Office for Disarmament Affairs | File photo of UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu (centre) meeting young people in Japan at an event focused on the 75th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and the establishment of the UN
(WMO)* — Scientists are observing changes in the Earth’s climate in every region and across the whole climate system, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, released on 9 August 2021.
Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes already set in motion – such as continued sea level rise – are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years.
Indigenous Peoples and their food systems can provide answers to food insecurity and climate change
Indigenous Peoples are stewards of natural resources, biodiversity and nutritious native foods. They are key partners in finding solutions to climate change and reshaping our food systems. @FAO/Francesco Farnè
10 August 2021 (FAO)* — Constituting only 6 percent of the world population, Indigenous Peoples are nevertheless vital stewards of the environment.
28 percent of the world’s land surface, including some of the most ecologically intact and biodiverse forest areas, are primarily managed by Indigenous Peoples, families, smallholders and local communities.
These forests are crucial for curbing gas emissions and maintaining biodiversity.
Indigenous foods are also particularly nutritious, and their associated food systems are remarkably climate-resilient and well-adapted to the environment.
#Invisiblemeal is putting hunger around the world in focus
Bangladesh: Sadek and Ibrahim are two boys whose family lost their home in Kutupalong, the world’s biggest refugee camp, to the fire in March. Photo: WFP/Sayed Asif Mahmud
(World Food Programme)* — Grab your cooking pot to start cooking a delicious meal. You need:
0lb spaghetti 0 cloves garlic No cup of olive oil, No teaspoon red pepper flakes 0 pinch of salt No chopped fresh parsley.
But wait – where are the ingredients themselves, you ask. Well, this is an #InvisibleMeal.
Young people led millions around the world in marches demanding action on climate change days before the UN Climate Action Summit (23 September 2019). UN Women/Amanda Voisard
Young people are on the frontlines of the struggle to build a better future for all.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the dire need for the kind of transformational change they seek – and young people must be full partners in that effort.
(United Nations)* — With the world’s population expected to increase by 2 billion people in the next 30 years, it has become recognized by numerous stakeholders that simply producing a larger volume of healthier food more sustainably will not ensure human and planetary wellbeing.
