“We want Thai society to understand that our people have lived in the forest for countless generations. We are not intruders. We are guardians of the forest.”
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.
(UN News)* — Two senior UN officials denounced on Sunday [28 March 2021], “systematic” attacks on peaceful demonstrators in Myanmar and flagged that the international community has a responsibility to protect the people from atrocities.
Unsplash/Zinko Hein | People across ethnic and religious divides hold vigil in Yangon, Myanmar.
Following another day of widespread bloodshed by the Myanmar military, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, and Michelle Bachelet, High Commissioner for Human Rights, strongly condemned the Myanmar military’s widespread, lethal, increasingly systematic attacks against peaceful protesters, as well as other serious violations of human rights since it seized power on 1 February.
26 March 2021 (IWGIA)* — Liberalisation of the Indian economy began in 1991. One of the priority objectives was to exploit the natural resources located on Indigenous territories. Anyone calling for respect for the rights of Indigenous Peoples, implementation of environmental safeguards or exercise of their right to freedom of association and assembly was therefore viewed as suspicious.
The world knows little of the political situation in India. With a conservative regime that considers social protest to be seditious, the Indian state is persecuting Indigenous Peoples and human rights defenders. Tribal communities are the silent victims of growth in the Indian economy. The cases of defender Soni Sori and Jesuit priest Stan Swamy.
27 March 2021 (UNEP)* — Hidden in and around the muddy depths of the Mekong River is a wondrous animal world.
Reuters/Chor Sokunthea / 25 Mar 2021
Here you can find catfish that weigh up to 300 kilograms and measure almost the length of a car. You might come across a dolphin that is known to communicate with humans to coordinate fishing expeditions.
Or you could stumble upon something completely unknown: between 1997 and 2014, over 2,000 new species were discovered in the Lower Mekong Basin.
But this critical ecosystem is under immense strain from climate change, toxic farm runoff and scientists suspect, a rising tide of plastic pollution.
Rohingya refugees who lost everything in the massive fire that tore through a camp in southern Bangladesh on Monday prepare to start over, once again. | Español | عربي
27 March 2021 (UNHCR)*— Halima, 37, was inside her shelter in the Kutupalong camp with her five young children when the sound of people screaming drew her outside.
“When I went out, I saw fire coming towards us,” she said.
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.