Bonn – Accelerating progress to restore 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land around the world and jumpstarting a trillion-dollar land restoration economy will be the focus of this year’s Desertification and Drought Day on 17 June.
The theme of Desertification and Drought Day 2025 is “Restore the land. Unlock the opportunities”, underscoring multiple benefits linked to land restoration.
BALTIMORE, Maryland, May 14 2025 (IPS)* – Here’s a question: Over the past 40 years, what natural disaster has affected more people around the globe than any other?
Livestock in eastern Mauritania are dying due to drought. Credit: UNHCR/Caroline Irby
The past 10 years have been the hottest 10 years on record, and higher temperatures and drier conditions are making more regions vulnerable to drought and arid land degradation, or desertification.
(UN News)* — Devastating floods in South Sudan in recent months left thousands of herders without their most precious possessions: goats, cows and cattle. The animals are central to people’s lives and age-old customs including marriage and cultural traditions. All risk being swept away or scorched by the ravages of climate change.
(UN News)* — Gazans remain at “critical risk of famine,” UN-backed food security experts warned on Monday 12 May 2025, a full 19 months since war began with Israel and 70 days since deliveries stopped of all aid and commercial supplies.
UN News | All 25 bakeries supported by the UN World Food Programme have been closed for weeks as stocks of wheat flour and cooking fuel ran out.
“Goods indispensable for people’s survival are either depleted or expected to run out in the coming weeks…The entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity,” said the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) platform.
In its latest update, the IPC estimated that one in five people in Gaza – 500,000 – faces starvation.
12 May 2025 –Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, the physicist known for his pioneering work in the field, told LBC’s Andrew Marr that artificial intelligences had developed consciousness – and could one day take over the world.
Mr Hinton, who has been criticised by some in the world of artificial intelligence for having a pessimistic view of the future of AI, also said that no one knew how to put in effective safeguards and regulation.
8 May 2025 (openDemocracy)* —Since entering office in January, Donald Trump’s repeated threats to seize control of the Panama Canal, a critical passage for global freight traffic, have dominated headlines around the world. | ESPAÑOL
“Respect our land”, one of many the signs rejecting the planned reservoir on the road to the community of Limón de Chagres, in Colón province, Panamá | Pich Urdaneta / Dialogue Earth
But two hours west of Panama City, 12,000 locals have a more pressing concern: their government plans to flood their lands and relocate them to create an artificial lake to ensure water supply to the canal.
Monitoring in Motion for Migrants in the Darien Gap
8 May 2025 —The Darien jungle on the border between Panama and Colombia is a labyrinth of rivers, filled with wild animals and oppressive, humid heat that envelops everything. It is a transit and destination route for migrants and asylum seekers, where fear, despair, and danger are constant.
It is also the main entry point for people heading towards Canada, Mexico and the United States of America. Yet, the greatest danger does not come from nature itself, but from traffickers and criminals who prey on people on the move.
(UN News)* —Israel’s plan to take control of relief assistance in Gaza would put civilian lives in danger and cause mass displacement while using aid as “bait”, UN humanitarians said on Friday .
UNRWA | A displaced girl waits her turn to fetch water for her family in the southern city of Rafah in Gaza.
UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder insisted that the Israeli proposal to create a handful of aid hubs exclusively in the south of the Strip would create an “impossible choice between displacement and death”.
The plan “contravenes basic humanitarian principles” and appears designed to “reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic”, he told journalists in Geneva.
(UN News)* — An estimated 3,800 people have died as a result of the devastating earthquakes that struck Myanmar on 28 March. Six weeks on, the situation in Myanmar remains dire, with whole communities still traumatised and vulnerable.
“I hate earthquakes. Earthquakes took my mother and my aunt away,” five-year-old Khin Yadanar told the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), after both her mother and aunt were killed when a brick wall collapsed on them.
Around 6.5 million children were already in need of humanitarian assistance before the earthquake, which compounded existing vulnerabilities resulting from the brutal civil war between multiple armed opposition groups and the military junta which seized power in a February 2021 coup.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 