Tag: peak food

South Asia
Sindh

Pakistan floods highlight climate injustice

As world leaders meet at the COP27 in Egypt to try to reinvigorate stalled global climate talks, survivors of Pakistan’s heaviest flooding in living memory are facing a health crisis, with stagnating floodwaters fuelling a rise in malaria, dengue, and diarrhoea. The unprecedented scale of the disaster—up to $40 billion in economic damage, 1,700 killed since mid-June, eight million displaced, and almost half the country’s farmland submerged—has given impetus to calls for COP27 to take up the question of climate reparations. (Photo: Verena Hölzl/TNH)

Syria
Hassakeh

Syria faces ‘dire water crisis’

Syria’s cholera outbreak has now spread to every one of the country’s 14 provinces, with 24,000 suspected cases and more than 80 deaths since early September. Severe water shortages—exacerbated by war, politics, and climate change—have forced people to drink unsafe water and allowed cholera bacteria to spread in the extremely low Euphrates River. There are other dangerous impacts from what the UN calls an “already dire water crisis” that is likely to get worse: Pastures dry up, and farmers have to sell their livestock. Crop yields are low, prices go up, and more families are forced to skip meals. This has especially grim implications as winter comes to northern Syria, where some 1.7 million are displaced and living in camps—already facing privation and harsh conditions. (Photo: Daniela Sala/TNH)

Greater Middle East
Yemen

Yemen’s imperfect truce expires

Yemen’s nationwide truce expired, as warring parties failed to agree on terms for a renewal. With each side blaming the other for the failure and negotiations ongoing to find common ground, there’s concern that fighting will erupt again on familiar front lines, such as the central province of Marib and the southwestern city of Taiz. While gunfire and shelling never completely stopped over the past six months—in some places it got worse—the truce did offer some respite for Yemenis who have suffered through seven and a half years of war. Roads to besieged Taiz didn’t open up, and food prices continued to soar, but there were some serious diplomatic wins—such as the reopening of Sanaa airport and an easing of the blockade on the port of Hodeida. (Map via University of Texas)

Africa
ethiopia

Eritrea in mass mobilization for Tigray offensive

More than a month after renewed clashes broke out in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, there are few signs of de-escalation. New air-strikes hit Tigray’s capital of Mekelle, while the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), accused Eritrea of launching a full-scale offensive in support of the Ethiopian government. There are reports that Eritrea (which has a historical enmity against the TPLF) is mobilizing army reservists, with notices handed out in Asmara, the capital. The return to combat came after a five-month truce that saw back-channel meetings between Mekelle and Addis Ababa but no formal talks. The risk that fresh fighting poses to civilians was underscored by UN investigators, who submitted their first report on the two-year conflict, accusing Ethiopia’s government of war crimes in Tigray, and of using starvation as a counterinsurgency tool. (Map: Political Geography Now)

Africa
Burkinabé

Attacks, displacement in post-coup Burkina Faso

When mutinous soldiers ousted Burkina Faso’s democratically elected president in late January, they vowed to do a better job of securing the Sahelian country from attacks linked to al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State. But violence has only increased over the past months, draining public confidence in the junta, threatening coastal West African states, and worsening a humanitarian crisis that has now displaced almost two million people–around one in 10 BurkinabĂ©. (Photo: Sam Mednick/TNH)

Afghanistan
afghanistan

Afghanistan: a year of worsening crisis

It has been a year since the Taliban took back power—a year since desperate images at Kabul airport went around the world. Over those 12 months, Afghanistan has seen a reduction in conflict, but its economy has collapsed, record numbers are facing hunger, and it’s projected that most of the population will soon be below the poverty line. Aid groups are calling for unprecedented amounts of donor funding, while urging foreign governments to release frozen Afghan assets and look at how to constructively engage with the Taliban government to address the crisis. (Photo: Samiullah Popal/TNH)

Planet Watch
doomsday

Nuclear war would cause global starvation: study

More than 5 billion people would die of hunger following a full-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia, according to a study led by Rutgers climate scientists, published in the journal Nature Food. The team estimated how much sun-blocking soot would enter the atmosphere from firestorms that would be ignited by the detonation of nuclear weapons. Researchers calculated soot dispersal from six scenarios—from a regional India-Pakistan exchange to a large US-Russia war. Under even the smallest nuclear scenario, global average caloric production decreased 7% within five years of the conflict. In the largest scenario—a full-scale US-Russia nuclear conflict—global average caloric production decreased by about 90% three to four years after the exchange. “The data tell us one thing: We must prevent a nuclear war from ever happening,” said Alan Robock, professor of climate science with the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University and co-author of the study. (Image: MoreSky)

Africa
freetown

Econo-protests rock Sierra Leone

Authorities in Sierra Leone imposed a nationwide curfew amid anti-government protests, in which a still undetermined number of people have been killed, apparently including at least four police officers. In the capital Freetown, protesters barricaded the streets and clashed with security forces, enraged at a 40% spike in the cost of living. A key demand is the resignation of President Julius Maada Bio, who is on a month-long vacation with his family in London—a trip apparently paid for with misappropriated public funds. The government has shut down internet access in the country to prevent activists from issuing calls to protest and spreading images of the repression. President Bio has long been accused of rampant corruption and human rights abuses. (Image: Africa Facts Zone via Twitter)

Southern Cone
BsAs

Econo-protests sweep Argentina

Argentina has seen weeks of mass protests in response to a rapidly deepening economic crisis. Prices for basic goods are skyrocketing, leaving many struggling to make ends meet. The protest wave began on Argentina’s independence day, July 9, when thousands marched on the presidential palace. Dubbed the “Argentinazo,” the mobilization was held in Buenos Aires and cities across the country. Last week, center-left President Alberto FernĂĄndez named his second new economy minister in less than a month, as his own coalition has fractured over how to handle the burdensome national debt. The country avoided defaulting on an IMF loan in March, postponing scheduled payments in exchange for pledges of belt-tightening measures. These include a slash in energy subsidies that have helped keep utility bills low—imposing further hardship on the poor amid the spiralling inflation. (Photo: PagĂ­na12)

South Asia
colombo

Fascist pseudo-anti-fascism in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s newly appointed acting president Ranil Wickremesinghe unleashed police and army troops against remnant protesters at an encampment site in the capital, Colombo. More than 50 were injured in the raid and several arrested. Military personnel also reportedly detained a group of protesters for several hours and severely beat them before they were released. Just hours earlier, protest leaders had agreed to disband the encampment the following day, in response to a court order. The site had been occupied by protesters since March, when an uprising began in response to near-total economic collapse in the country. Wickremesinghe, implicated in past atrocities during a counterinsurgency campaign against leftist rebels, has repeatedly derided the protesters as “fascists.” (Photo via Twitter)

Syria
syria refugees

Syria aid access resolution expires amid UN standoff

A Security Council resolution that allowed the UN to deliver humanitarian aid across Turkey’s border into northwest Syria without President Bashar al-Assad’s permission expired  as diplomats failed to come to a deal in the face of a Russian veto. Russia, which has long opposed the cross-border aid operation as an affront to Syrian sovereignty, used its veto to stop a one-year renewal. Its own proposal for turning aid deliveries over to the Assad regime after six months was voted down by the US, UK, and France. The Assad regime is accused of denying aid to besieged rebel-held enclaves. Aid workers in the region are warning of imminent “famine” in northern Syria in the wake of the resolution expiration, which coincided with the Eid al-Adha holiday. (Photo: UNICEF via UN News)

Planet Watch
#ariseghana

Ghana to Peru: more ripples from Ukraine storm

Governments around the world are scrambling to shore up economies hard hit by rising oil and wheat prices as a resut of the Ukraine war. Ghana has opened talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for emergency relief after angry protesters flooded the streets of the capital Accra, clashing with police. Protests were called under the slogan “Arise Ghana” to pressure President Nana Akufo-Ad to address a dramatic spike in the cost of food and fuel. Meanwhile, the Central Reserve Bank of Peru is to raise its key interest rate in a bid to quell inflation, after freight shipping was briefly paralyzed across the country. The truckers’ union, the National Council of Terrestrial Transport, announced an “indefinite” strike, although it was suspended following a pledge by the government of President Pedro Castillo to bring soaring fuel prices under control. (Image via Twitter)