2014/10/10 | Click here for the online version of this IPS newsletter |
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Marine Litter: Plunging Deep, Spreading Wide
Manipadma Jena
Imagine a black-footed albatross feeding its chick plastic pellets, a
baby seal in the North Pole helplessly struggling with an open-ended
plastic bag wrapped tight around its neck, or a fishing vessel stranded
mid-sea, a length of discarded nylon net entangled in its propeller.
Multiply these ...
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A Billion Tons of Food Wasted Yearly While Millions Still Go Hungry
A. D. McKenzie
In his parody of the Michael Jackson hit “Beat It”, the American
satirist and singer Weird Al Yankovic has a parent urging his son to eat
the food on his plate, warning that “other kids are starving in Japan”.
The parody has raised smiles since it was released 30 years ago, but
today “Eat It” ...
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Hotter Caribbean Poses Challenges for Livestock Farmers
Jewel Fraser
Livestock farmers in the Caribbean are finding it increasingly difficult
and expensive to rear healthy animals because of climate change, a
situation that poses a significant threat to a region that is already
too dependent on imports to feed its population.
Norman Gibson, a livestock scientist ...
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Displacement Spells Danger for Pregnant Women in Pakistan
Ashfaq Yusufzai
Imagine traveling for almost an entire day in the blistering sun,
carrying all your possessions with you. Imagine fleeing in the middle of
the night as airstrikes reduce your village to rubble. Imagine arriving
in a makeshift refugee camp where there is no running water, no
bathrooms and hardly any ...
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Floods Wash Away India’s MDG Progress
Priyanka Borpujari
The northeastern Indian state of Assam is no stranger to devastating
floods. Located just south of the eastern Himalayas, the lush,
30,000-square-km region comprises the Brahmaputra and Barak river
valleys, and is accustomed to annual bouts of rain that swell the mighty
rivers and spill over into ...
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Synthetic Biology Could Open a Whole New Can of Worms
Desmond Brown
Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is the world’s
leading producer of vetiver. In the southwest of the country, vetiver
production is hard to ignore.
Driving into Les Cayes, the largest town in the south, one is greeted by
fields of vetiver on either side of the road. The same ...
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OPINION: Planet Racing Towards Catastrophe and Politics Just Looking On
Roberto Savio
If ever there was a need to prove that we are faced with a total lack of
global governance, the U.N. Climate Summit, extraordinarily called by
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sep. 23, makes a very good case.
The convocation of the climate summit – albeit just for one day –
appeared to ...
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Humanity Failing the Earth’s Ecosystems
Kanya D'Almeida
In pure numbers, the past few decades have been marked by destruction:
over the last 40 years, Earth has lost 52 percent of its wild animals;
nearly 17 percent of the world’s forests have been felled in the last
half-century; freshwater ecosystems have witnessed a 75-percent decline
in animal ...
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Panama, a Country and a Canal with Development at Two Speeds
Fabiola Ortiz
With the expansion of the canal, Panama hopes to see its share of global
maritime trade rise threefold. And many Panamanians hope the
mega-engineering project will reduce social inequalities in a country
where development is moving ahead at two different speeds.
The expansion is happening one ...
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Thirsty Land, Hungry People
Amantha Perera
Gazing out over the parched earth of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, one
might think these farmlands have not seen water in years. In fact, this
is not too far from the truth.
The World Food Programme (WFP) last month allocated 2.5 million dollars
to assist hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans in ...
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Zimbabwe’s Family Planning Dilemma
Ignatius Banda
Pregnant at 15, Samantha Yakubu* is in a fix. The 16-year-old boy she
claims was responsible for her pregnancy has refused to accept her
version of events, insisting that he was “not the only one who slept
with her”.
Now Yakubu has dropped out of school and, like many sexually active
youth in ...
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Lack of Accountability Fuels Gender-Based Violence in India
Stella Paul
On a bright March morning, a 17-year old tribal girl woke as usual, and
went to catch fish in the village river in the Chirang district of
India’s northeastern Assam state.
Later that evening, villagers found her lifeless body on the riverbank.
According to Taburam Pegu, the police officer ...
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Blistering Drought Leaves the Poorest High and Dry
Amantha Perera
The last time there was mud on his village roads was about a year ago,
says Murugesu Mohanabavan, a farmer from the village of Karachchi,
situated about 300 km north of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo.
“Since last October we have had nothing but sun, all day,” the
40-year-old father of two ...
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Zero Nuclear Weapons: A Never-Ending Journey Ahead
Thalif Deen
When the United Nations commemorated its first ever "international day
for the total elimination of nuclear weapons," the lingering question in
the minds of most anti-nuclear activists was: are we anywhere closer to
abolishing the deadly weapons or are we moving further and further away
from their ...
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Friday, October 10, 2014
The Week With IPS 10/10
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