The Week with IPS

   2017/4/7

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	Tomatoes, Limes and Sex-Selective Abortions Lyndal Rowlands When Bimla Chandrasekharan saw that women who gave birth to baby girls were being sent out of the house by their angry husbands and mothers-in-law she realised a basic biology lesson was needed. “We start educating them on this XY chromosome,” Chandrasekharan who is Founder and Director of ... MORE > >
	UN Strengthens Kenya’s Resilience to Disaster Miriam Gathigah Kenya’s lack of capacity to cope with wide-scale disaster has seen thousands of households continue to live precarious lives, especially in light of erratic and drastically changing weather patterns. If millions are not staring death in the face due to the raging drought, they are fighting to ... MORE > >
	Green Power: Wave of the Future Françoise d’Estais, Angus McCrone & Ulf Moslener The price of renewable energy — especially solar power — continues to tumble, and the result is more green power generating capacity for fewer dollars. That’s the bottom line message from the latest figures on world investment in clean technologies. In 2016, record levels of new ... MORE > >
	Work, What Future? Seven Big Questions Needing Urgent Response Baher Kamal Around the world, profound changes in the nature of work are underway, that’s clear. So it is a fact that the on-going transformations in the world of labour are disrupting the connection between work, personal development and community participation. The future of work gains special ... MORE > >
	"Devastating Consequences” for Women, Girls as U.S. Defunds UN Agency Tharanga Yakupitiyage The U.S. has withdrawn all of its funding to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), an agency that works on family planning and reproductive health in over 150 countries. The decision is based on what the UNFPA says is an erroneous claim that it “supports, or participates in the management of, a ... MORE > >
	Feast and Famine in Africa's Dubai James Jeffrey As balmy night settles over Djibouti City, the arc lights come on at its growing network of ports as ships are offloaded 24 hours a day and trucks laden with cargo depart westwards into the Horn of Africa interior. Not that long ago Djibouti was known for little more than French legionnaires, ... MORE > >
	Plastic No More... Also in Kenya Baher Kamal Good news: Kenya has just joined the commitment of other 10 countries to address major plastic pollution by decreeing a ban on the use, manufacture and import of all plastic bags, to take effect in six months. The Kenyan decision comes three weeks after the UN declared “war on plastic” through ... MORE > >
	Catastrophic Antibiotic Threat from Food Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Tan Zhai Gen The greatly excessive use of antibiotics in food production in recent decades has made many bacteria more resistant to antibiotics. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has estimated that antibiotic use in animal husbandry, poultry farming and aquaculture in the US is over four times ... MORE > >
	Climate Change Solutions Can’t Wait for U.S. Leadership Desmond Brown From tourism-dependent nations like Barbados to those rich with natural resources like Guyana, climate change poses one of the biggest challenges for the countries of the Caribbean. Nearly all of these countries are vulnerable to natural events like hurricanes.3 Not surprisingly, the climate ... MORE > >
	El Salvador Passes Pathbreaking Law Banning Metal Mining Edgardo Ayala El Salvador, Central America’s smallest country, has become the first country in the world to pass a law banning metal mining in all its forms, setting a precedent for other nations in the world to follow, according to activists and local residents. “This is historic; we are sending a signal to ... MORE > >
	World Bank Ignores Land Grabbing Linda Flood Sales of huge land areas of Ethiopia, by the Ethiopian government, to foreign investors, have led to starvation and forced displacement. In his documentary Dead Donkeys Fear no Hyenas, Swedish film director Joakim Demmer exposes the consequences of land grabbing, and holds the World Bank ... MORE > >
	Depressed? Let’s Talk Baher Kamal Just three weeks after celebrating the International Day of Happiness, the United Nations now asks you the following questions: do you feel like life is not worth living? Are you living with somebody with depression? Do you know someone who may be considering suicide? Not that the world body ... MORE > >
	People With Autism Have Right to Autonomy Too Lyndal Rowlands Guardianship laws meant to protect people with autism actually deprive them of their basic rights and autonomy, according to experts on a UN panel. When people with autism turn 18, their parents or other caregivers are encouraged to legally become their guardians. However, as Zoe Gross an ... MORE > >
	Brazilian Dam Causes Too Much or Too Little Water in Amazon Villages Mario Osava The Juruna indigenous village of Miratu mourned the death of Jarliel twice: once on October 26, when he drowned in the Xingu River, and the second time when the sacred burial ground was flooded by an unexpected rise in the river that crosses Brazil’s Amazon region. Their cries are also of ... MORE > >
	IPS Interviews FAO DG on appointment of David Beasley as WFP head IPS World Desk As widely known, the key objective of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is to eradicate hunger and malnutrition by 2030, as established with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals two years ago. The two other Rome-based Agencies, partners of FAO in ... MORE > >
	Indonesian Farmers Weather Climate Change with Conservation Agriculture Kanis Dursin Fifty-two-year-old farmer Theresia Loda was effusive when asked how conservation agriculture has changed her economic situation. “My corn harvest has increased fourfold per season since I started practicing conservation agriculture,” Loda told IPS by phone from Kalimbu Ndara Mane Village, Wejewa ... MORE > >