Leaders at the COP26 summit have no intention of tackling the growing environmental impacts caused by their ‘defence’ spending.
Physicians for Social Responsibility
World leaders gathered in Glasgow last week for the COP26 summit in a bid to demonstrate how they are belatedly getting to grips with the climate crisis.
Agreements to protect forests, cut carbon and methane emissions and promote green tech are all being hammered out in front of a watching world.
(UN News)* — Following pandemic-driven school closures, five UN agencies threw their strong support behind an international coalition to improve the nutrition, health and education of school-age children around the world.
In a joint declaration on Tuesday [16 November 2021], the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) committed to assisting the School Meals Coalition in which over 60 countries envision a nutritious meal in school for every child in need by 2030.
(UN News)* — Over the past week, mass arrests of people reportedly of Tigrayan origin have continued in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa and elsewhere, the UN rights office said on Tuesday 16 November 2021.
The alert from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) comes as the World Food Programme (WFP) described the aid situation for vulnerable people in Tigray as “hand-to-mouth”.
Citing reports, OHCHR said that at least 1,000 individuals are believed to have been detained by police officers in the last seven days, on suspicion of being linked to the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
It is almost impossible to know what kind of data will be gathered by drones all over the world | Image fromWall Street International.
16 November 2021 (Wall Street International)* — Are drones already conquering the world? Hi-tech is exponentially and rapidly changing our lives.
We are observing the rise of AI technology in all sectors of society. A large number of industries, including both the military and commercial sectors, governments and recreational users are all adopting the technology of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) — or drones.
The climate emergency we face today is part of several interlocking crises involving our health, our soils, and the biodiversity on the planet. The same line of thinking and actions that are driving climate change is leading to biodiversity loss and extinction of species and has also created the current hunger, malnutrition, and health emergencies. The climate crisis is a symptom of the broader ecological crisis being perpetuated by an extractivist and profit-driven system.
(UN News)* — As the humanitarian crisis grows in Ethiopia’s conflict-affected north, the UN announced on Monday 15 November 2021 that $40 million in funds have been made available to scale up emergency operations.
The UN’s top emergency relief official, Martin Griffiths, said that millions of people in northern Ethiopia are now “living on a knife-edge, as the humanitarian crisis is growing deeper and wider”.
Drought, a complex and slowly encroaching natural hazard with significant and pervasive socio-economic and environmental impacts, is known to cause more deaths and displace more people than any other natural disaster.
(UNCCD)* — By 2025, 1.8 billion people will experience absolute water scarcity, and 2/3 of the world will be living under water-stressed conditions (1).
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed and exacerbated the social protection gap between countries with high and low income levels.
GENEVA (ILO)* – Despite the unprecedented worldwide expansion of social protection during the COVID-19 crisis, more than 4 billion people around the world remain entirely unprotected, a new International Labour Organization (ILO) report says.
It finds that the pandemic response was uneven and insufficient, deepening the gap between countries with high and low income levels and failing to afford the much-needed social protection that all human beings deserve.
Exclusive: Details of secretive meeting between the PM and the oil giant among crucial climate documents the Cabinet Office refuses to release.
The Cabinet Office has refused to disclose details of a meeting between Boris Johnson and BP | Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Alamy
11 November 2021 (openDemocracy)* — Details of a meeting between Boris Johnson and oil company BP are to be kept secret, the UK government has said, claiming it would “not be in the public interest” to reveal what was discussed.
The news comes as world leaders meet in Glasgow for the COP26 climate conference, where Johnson is calling for “ambitious commitments”.
GLASGOW, Nov 14 2021 (IPS)* – Developing countries will surely remember the Glasgow climate summit, the most important since 2015, as a fiasco that left them as an afterthought. | En español
Demonstrations demanding ambitious, substantive and equitable measures to address the climate crisis continued throughout the 14-day climate summit in Glasgow, which ended on the night of Saturday Nov. 13 with disappointing results for the global South. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
That was the prevailing sentiment among delegates from the developing South during the closing ceremony on the night of Saturday Nov. 13, one day after the scheduled end of the conference.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 