Climate Action

Photo: A community meeting. Credit: High Atlas Foundation

Mobilizing Decentralized, Participatory Energy Transition in Morocco

Viewpoint by Kerstin Opfer, Yossef Ben-Meir, Imane Akhezzane & Marine Pouget

Kerstin Opfer is a Policy Advisor with Germanwatch. Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is President of the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) in Morocco. Imane Akhezzane is a Program Director at HAF. Marine Pouget is a Project Manager at the Climate Action Network in France.

MARRAKECH (IDN) – Humankind faces the unprecedented challenge of existing on the warmest earth we have known. A lack of political will and societal awareness has inhibited the necessary, vigorous change to meet this challenge.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 23 September 2020

Photo: Stabilising the global food system. Credit: Barilla Center.

Transforming Agriculture for Food, Nutrition and Livelihoods

By Busani Bafana

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe (IDN) – Horticulture farmer Prosper Chikwara, grows cabbages, spinach and kale on the idyllic family farm, 20km north of the city of Bulawayo. Word of mouth is no longer enough to sell his produce.

He now grows on order because it no longer guaranteed there will be buyers at his gate when the crops are ready for harvest.

Six months ago, Chikwara, supplied 20 000 kg of vegetables to wholesalers in the city of Bulawayo. He is now selling less than half of his produce since the Covid-19 coronavirus lockdown was imposed.

: Africa & ME Editor; THE WORLD; Africa; 21 September 2020

Photo: inland Northwest National Wildlife Refuge Fire Management staff conducted a fifty-acre prescribed fire at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge earlier this spring. Credit: Ken Meinhart, USFWS. Public Domain.

Indigenous Techniques Could Help Fight Out-Of-Control Wildfires in California

Viewpoint by Sonali Kolhatkar

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.

LOS ANGELES (IDN) – In more than 20 years of living in Southern California, I have never been in a potential fire evacuation zone—until now. The entire state is seemingly on fire with a record-breaking 2 million acres already burned this year alone, with months to go before the end of fire season. The situation is so dire that the state’s fire officials are warning they “simply do not have enough resources to fully fight and contain every fire.”

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 14 September 2020

Photo: The La Mojana region of Colombia is highly vulnerable to climate-change induced floods and droughts. By building resilience to these impacts, the project also insulates communities from other shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: UNDP Colombia/Mauricio Enriquez O.

UN Report Presents A Unified Assessment of The Critical State of Our Earth System

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – As global temperatures continue to hit new highs, the choice, according to the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, is between "business as usual, leading to further calamity, or using the recovery from COVID-19 to provide a real opportunity to put the world on a sustainable path".

Speaking at the launch of the report United in Science 2020 on September 9, he emphasized that there is "no time to delay" if the world is to slow the trend of the devastating impacts of climate change, and limit temperate rise to 1.5 degree-Celsius. "Whether we are tackling a pandemic or the climate crisis, it is clear that we need science, solidarity and decisive solutions," he said.

: J Nastranis; SUSTAINABILITY; Climate Action; 09 September 2020

Photo: Fires like this one in the city of Ventura, California, are likely to be more common, say University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) climate scientists. Credit: Ryan Cullom/Ventura County Fire Department.

Why The November U.S. Election Is Critical

Viewpoint by John Scales Avery *

COPENHAGEN (IDN) – Why did Prof. Noam Chomsky call the US Republican Party “The most dangerous organization in the history of the world”? He did so because the party is characterized by climate change denial and by support for giant fossil fuel corporations. According to the 2018 IPCC Report, the world has only a very short time left in which to stop the extraction and use of fossil fuels. If we collectively fail to do this within a decade or so, feedback loops may be initiated which will make human efforts to avoid catastrophic climate change useless. Much of the world could become uninhabitable, and a very large-scale mass extinction could be initiated.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 09 September 2020

Photo: Nairobi National Park is the only national park in the world that shares a fence with a city. It boasts of abundant wildlife, including the “big five” animals – the lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant and buffalo. Credit: Olga Lev-Ari Ercolano

Concerted Campaign to Protect Nairobi National Park

By Dominic Kirui*

This article was originally published on Waging Nonviolence and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

NAIROBI (IDN) – The Nairobi National Park is a rare gem that defines the Kenyan capital and it is the only national park in the world that shares a fence with a city. It boasts of abundant wildlife, including the “big five” animals – the lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant and buffalo – that can, in places, be viewed against a backdrop of city skyscrapers and planes coming in to land at the local airports.

: Africa & ME Editor; THE WORLD; Africa; 28 August 2020

Photo: Iwokrama forest in Guyana. Credit: Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development.

Indigenous Communities of Guyana and Women in Togo Fight Forest Degradation

Viewpoint by P.I. Gomes*

The writer, Dr Patrick I Gomes, was Secretary-General of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States for five years until February 29, 2020. The 79-nation inter-regional body officially became the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) on April 5, 2020. Dr Gomes was previously Ambassador of the Republic of Guyana, to the EU in Brussels.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago (IDN) – The discussion on “Income Opportunities for Women" in the Togolese Republic in West Africa, reported in IDN on July 6, provides an opportunity to share some aspects of the experiences by Indigenous women and community loggers in the Iwokrama Forest area in Guyana, where sustainable forest management and income-generating activities are being pursued.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 28 July 2020

Human Nature Is a Central Theme of Philosophy

Viewpoint by John Scales Avery*

COPENHAGEN (IDN) – What is human nature? Are we humans good or evil? To what extent is the character of a person produced by heredity, and to what extent by environment? Is competition more central to our existence than cooperation, or is it the other way around? How can a happy, peaceful and stable society be created? Are humans essentially the same as other animals, or are we fundamentally different? Should humans dominate and control nature, or should we be the custodians of nature?

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 17 July 2020

Photo: Women tend a community nursery created as part of a completed ITTO project to assist forest landscape restoration in Togo. Credit: ODEF

A Landmark Project Aims at Reforestation in Togo

Income Opportunities for Women

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | TOKYO (IDN) – Togo in West Africa is the venue of a milestone project between Soka Gakkai, a global community-based Buddhist organization and the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO). The two have signed a memorandum to launch a reforestation project offering income opportunities for women's groups in two rural areas of Togo.

The memorandum involving a donation of 10 million yen (US$93,300) for the initial one-year phase of the project was signed on July 1 at the Soka Gakkai (SG) headquarters in Tokyo. The project will kick off on September 1.

: Ramesh Jaura; SUSTAINABILITY; Poverty; 05 July 2020

Collage: Backdrop population and environment image from Kullabs with photo of Malthus from Brittanica.

Malthus Revisited: Close Relationship between Population and Environment

Viewpoint by John Scales Avery*

COPENHAGEN (IDN) – The total human population and economy have imposed excessive weight on the global environment, as discussed in my new book circulated and freely downloadable from http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Malthus-Revisited-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf

Thomas Rpbert Malthus' "Essay on The Principle of Population", the first edition of which was published in 1798, was one of the first systematic studies of the problem of population in relation to resources. Earlier discussions of the problem had been published by Boterro in Italy, Robert Wallace in England, and Benjamin Franklin in America.