GLASGOW, Nov 4 2021 (IPS)* – “For my people, the effects of climate change are an everyday reality. The rainy season is shorter and when it rains, there are floods. And we’ve suffered droughts.” said Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a member of the Wodaabe or Mbororo pastoral people of Chad.| En español
In the face of substantial international offers of funding for indigenous lands and forests at COP26, indigenous peoples are calling for specific schemes for their participation. Shuar leader Katan Kontiak (left) of Ecuador and Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim of Chad took part in a Nov. 2 forum on the indigenous peoples and local communities platform. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
(UN News)* — As millions took to the streets of cities around the world on Saturday 6 November 2021, demanding greater climate action, some countries taking part in the COP26 negotiations, made new pledges to invest in nature-based solutions and a greener approach to farming.
UN News/Grace Barret | Indigenous activists demonstrate on the streets of the COP26 host city, Glasgow, during the landmark UN climate conference.
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Mother Nature, or “Pachamama”, as they say in Latin America, took centre stage as the pivotal UN climate conference reached the halfway point.
Nature is critical to our survival: it provides the oxygen we need to breathe, regulates weather patterns, supplies food and water for all living things, and is home to countless species of wildlife, and the ecosystems they need to survive.
According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), human activity has disrupted almost 75 per cent of the earth’s surface and put some one million animal and plant species on the endangered list.
5 November 2021 (UN News)* — Nearly 23 million people, or 55 per cent of the Afghan population, are estimated to be in crisis or experiencing emergency levels of food insecurity between now and March of next year.
UNICEF Iran/Mehdi Sayyari | A mother of six tends to her youngest child in Khorasan Province in Iran.
Speaking to journalists in New York, the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General pointed to reports that isolated clashes and violence affecting civilians and resulting in casualties continued countrywide this week.
In Jalalabad, in Nangarhar Province, gunfire directed at de facto authorities resulted in the deaths of two children on the 1 November.
(UN News)* — The UN barometer of world food prices has surged to a new peak, reaching its highest level since July 2011, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced this Thursday [4 November 2021].
The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks the international prices of a basket of food commodities, is up 3.9 per cent from September, rising for a third consecutive month.
Cereal prices overall increased by 3.2 per cent, with wheat rising five per cent, due to reduced harvests in major exporting nations, including Canada, Russia and the United States. Prices of all other major cereals also increased.
“The Arab word’s a veritable mess. The cosmic leadership deficit, the absence of legitimate institutions, the lack of transparency, disrespect for human rights, abysmal regard for gender equality, and too much conspiratorial thinking make it impossible to come to terms with the magnitude of the problems. In short, this region will remain broken, angry, and dysfunctional until the leaders who purport to take responsibility for governing these unhappy lands get their proverbial acts together. And that’s … well, a generational enterprise at best, and I suspect something that will take a good deal longer.”
— Aaron David Miller (“Where Have all the Arab States Gone” Foreign Policy: 4/14/2015)
3 November 2021 (UNEP)* — The impact of climate change on global peace and security is high on the agenda as world leaders gather at the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow this week.
Photo: Reuters/Muhammad Fuhaid | Belongings on a truck heading to a camp for internally displaced people in Marib, Yemen.
As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in his landmark state of the planet speech: climate change is one of the biggest dangers to peace. “The fallout of the assault on our planet is impeding our efforts to eliminate poverty and imperiling food security. And it is making our work for peace even more difficult, as the disruptions drive instability, displacement and conflict.”
Brexit showed that a few ruthless, well-connected people with big money behind them can change history. Now they’re at it again, and the stakes are even higher
Nigel Farage presents his first show on GB News channel in London | SOPA Images Limited / Alamy Stock Photo
1 November 2021 (openDemocracy)* — If Brexit proved anything, it’s that a handful of people with powerful connections can go a long, long, way.
Conflict and the environment are deeply interlinked. Around the world, at least 40 per cent of all intrastate conflicts have had an important natural resource dimension. Rising temperatures due to climate change now threaten to further amplify environmental stresses and tensions.
And, all too often, the environment is among the casualties of war, through deliberate acts of destruction or collateral damage, or because, during conflicts, governments fail to control and manage natural resources.
A Nepalese peacekeeper with the African Union-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) plants a tree outside UNAMID Headquarters in El Fasher, Sudan.
PHOTO:UN Photo/Albert Gonzalez Farran
3 November 2021 (United Nations)* — Though humanity has always counted its war casualties in terms of dead and wounded soldiers and civilians, destroyed cities and livelihoods, the environment has often remained the un-publicized victim of war. Water wells have been polluted, crops torched, forests cut down, soils poisoned, and animals killed to gain military advantage.
The U.S. Military is the greatest polluter and creator of chaos on the planet.
The Roman Empire, as bad as it was, left cobblestone streets and aqueducts in areas it conquered or occupied, many of which are still in use today throughout the world.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 