Tag: bionoia

Oceania
Tuvalu

Tuvalu regains full sovereignty over security relations

Australia and Tuvalu released a joint statement announcing new commitments to improve security relations, and remove the veto power Australia previously had over the small island nation’s security relations with other countries. The announcement concerned implementation and interpretation of the Falepili Union, a bilateral treaty entered into last November, which expands upon the Australia-Tuvalu Security Partnership of 2017. However, it eliminates the 2017 provision that limited Tuvalu’s sovereignty in foreign affairs—a sensitive matter given Australia’s growing regional rivalry with China. (Image via Pixabay)

Planet Watch
Gaza

How to break cycle of rising global hunger?

More countries facing crises; more people going hungry. Some 281 million people were locked in high levels of acute hunger last year, according to the latest Global Report on Food Crises—a benchmark analysis of food insecurity by a network that includes UN agencies, donors, and famine analysts. The figure is 24 million higher than the previous year—a rise driven in part by Sudan’s civil war and Israel’s destruction of Gaza. Global hunger numbers have spiked since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and continue to rise. A mix of conflict, extreme weather, El Niño, inflation, and volatile food prices suggest there won’t be a reprieve by the time 2024’s numbers are tallied. (Photo: Maan News Agency)

Planet Watch
air pollution

Lower emissions from US power grid (at least)

The US Department of Energy released its preliminary estimate for the nation’s carbon emissions in the previous year. While falling far short of the kind of drop needed to meet the Paris Agreement goals, a dip in emissions was recorded—almost entirely due to changes in the electric power sector. US carbon emissions have been trending downward since 2007, when they peaked at about six gigatonnes. The COVID-19 pandemic produced a dramatic drop in emissions in 2020, bringing the yearly total to below five gigatonnes for the first time since before 1990, when DoE monitoring began. Carbon releases rose after the return to “normalcy“; 2023 marked the first post-pandemic decline. The drop is largely due to the phase-out of coal-burning power plants. However, electricity generation remains the second source of emissions, behind transportation. (Photo: Ralf Vetterle, Pixabay)

East Asia
ĂśrĂĽmqi Road

China: activist filmmaker faces prison

Police in China charged Chen Pin Lin, director of documentary Not the Foreign Force, with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” according to Chinese human rights monitors Weiquanwang and Civil Rights & Livelihood Watch. The charge, an offense under Article 293 of China’s Criminal Act, has been widely criticized for its elusive definition and use against dissidents and human rights defenders. The film, also known as ĂśrĂĽmqi Road in Chinese, depicts the nationwide protests against COVID-19 lockdown measures in China. Posted online by Chen under the pseudonym “Plato,” the film criticizes the Chinese government for attempting to blame foreign forces for the protests. (Image via YouTube)

Palestine
Gaza

Gaza humanitarian response: ‘convenient illusion’

In a message delivered to the UN Security Council, the head of MĂ©decins Sans Frontières, Christopher Lockyear, said that the “illusion” of a humanitarian response in Gaza “perpetuates a narrative that this war is being waged in line with international laws.” The already low volume of aid being delivered to Gaza has collapsed in recent weeks, despite Israel having been ordered by the World Court to enable the provision of humanitarian aid. The World Food Program announced that it has suspended aid deliveries to northern Gaza—where the suffering is most extreme—because of the dissolution of public order. A new report from the Gaza Health Impact Projections Working Group estimates that, even in the best-case scenario of an immediate permanent ceasefire, there will be more than 6,500 excess deaths in Gaza over the next six months due to the catastrophic food, shelter, sanitation, and healthcare situation in the enclave. If the status quo of ongoing bombardment continues, the projections rise to more than 74,000 deaths. Reports are beginning to emergeof children dying of hunger. (Photo: Maan News Agency)

Southeast Asia
South Thailand

Thailand: southern insurgency accepts peace plan

Muslim separatists in Thailand’s Deep South agreed in principle  to an “improved” peace plan with the government. The agreement, facilitated by Malaysia, follows years of abortive talks. The Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the main separatist organization, announced a unilateral ceasefire in 2020 in response to the COVID 19 pandemic. More than 7,000 people have been killed in 20 years of intermittent fighting between government forces and separatists in the country’s three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, whose populations are overwhelmingly Malay Muslim. (Map: Wikipedia)

Palestine
Gaza

What UNRWA funding suspensions mean for Gaza

UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was plunged into crisis when Israel accused12 of its Gaza employees of involvement in Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel. In response to the Israeli allegations, the US, UK, Germany, and other top donor countries suspended funding to UNRWA. In a statement, nearly two dozen aid organizations said they are “deeply concerned and outraged” by the suspension of funding, as some 2.3 million people in Gaza face “starvation, looming famine and an outbreak of disease under Israel’s continued indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate deprivation of aid.” (Photo: Maan News Agency)

Planet Watch
climate

2023 hottest year on record —by ‘alarming’ margin

The year 2023 is officially the warmest on record—overtaking 2016, the previous warmest year, by an alarming margin. According to new data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, Earth was 1.48 degrees Celsius hotter last year compared with pre-industrial levels—dangerously close to the 1.5-degree threshold set by the Paris climate deal. 2023 also marked the first year in which each day was over one degree warmer than the pre-industrial average. Temperatures over 2023 likely exceeded those of any year over the past 100,000 years. This was partially due to the year’s El Niño climate phenomenon, but those impacts only began in June—and every subsequent month last year was the warmest on record for that particular month. September represented the largest climatological departure since record-keeping began over 170 years ago. (Image: blende12/Pixabay)

Palestine
Gaza

Girding for a long war in Gaza

There have been resounding calls from across the world for a long-term ceasefire to bring an end to more than two months of bombardment and a spiralling humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip. Over 20,000 people have now been killed by Israel’s aerial campaign and ground invasion, according to the health ministry in the Strip, with over 80% of the 2.3 million residents of the enclave displaced from their homes. While Washington has continued to support Israel’s war effort (including through massive weapons transfers), Israel has paid little heed to belated US calls to try to limit civilian casualties and allow more access for humanitarian aid. Israel now says its war against Hamas could last months. With aid agencies already struggling to operate, amid food shortages and outbreaks of disease, the impact of a prolonged war in the Strip challenges the imagination. (Photo: Mohammed Zaanoun/TNH)

The Amazon
Secoya

Ecuador: court orders return of Siekopai homeland

In what is being hailed as an historic decision, an appeals court in Ecuador ordered the return of a 42,360-hectare expanse of the Amazon rainforest to the Siekopai indigenous people, generations after they were driven from the territory by the military. The Provincial Court of Sucumbios ruled that the Siekopai retain indigenous title to their ancestral homeland, known as Pë’kĂ«ya, which lies along the border with Peru in remote country. The lands were seized by Ecuador’s army during the war with Peru in 1941, and remained a military-controlled zone until being incorporated into Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in 1979. Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment has been given 45 days to deliver a property title to the Siekopai Nation, and make public apologies for the usurpation of their homeland. (Photo: Amazon Frontlines)

Mexico
Mexico

US leans on Mexico to increase deportations

Mexico will step up efforts to deport asylum-seekers and migrants to their countries of origin in order to “depressurize” northern cities bordering the United States, the country’s National Migration Institute announced following a meeting with US officials. Texas border cities such as El Paso and Eagle Pass are scrambling to find shelter space as thousands now cross the border on a daily basis, overwhelming reception capacity. But thousands more still wait in northern Mexico, trying to make appointments using a government cell phone application to enter the US and lodge asylum claims. (Map: PCL)

North America
border wall

As Title 42 ends, US troops to Mexican border

President Joe Biden is deploying 1,500 soldiers to the US-Mexico border ahead of the end of a pandemic-era entry restriction known as Title 42. The soldiers are to perform administrative tasks, but critics say the move sends the message that migration is a threat. Tens of thousands of asylum seekers and migrants currently stranded in dire living conditions in northern Mexican border cities by US policies are growing increasingly desperate and frustrated. More than 15,000 people–mostly from Venezuela–crossed the border in the vicinity of Brownsville late last month, overwhelming shelter capacity. And in El Paso, nearly 2,000 people who recently crossed the border are sleeping on sidewalks in the city center. The Biden administration has introduced a number of policies aimed at extending asylum restrictions at the border, having reached a deal with Mexico that for the first time allows the US to deport non-Mexicans who enter the country irregularly back across the border. (Photo: Savitri Arvey, The Conversation)