Food security, nutrition & sustainable agriculture

Photo: A group of school children walk hand in hand after school in rural Nepal. © World Bank/Aisha Faquir

Ukraine War Threatens Development Aid to World’s Poorer Nations

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) — UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that the current devastating war in Ukraine has an equally destructive impact on the outside world: an assault on the world’s most vulnerable people and countries.

The worst affected are the world’s poor as food, fuel and fertilizer prices are skyrocketing while one of the world’s major bread baskets, Ukraine, is being bombed—a country which alone provided more than half of the World Food Programme’s (WFP) wheat supply.

: Thalif Deen; SUSTAINABILITY; Global Partnerships; 18 March 2022

Photo: Shelling killed six-year-old Milana's mother. She is now recovering after surgery at a children's hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine. © UNICEF/Oleksandr Ratushniak

Ukraine: ‘We Need Peace Now’ Declares the UN Chief & Warns of Global Hunger Meltdown

By UN News

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) — Ukraine is being “decimated before the eyes of the world” with Russia’s military offensive against civilians “reaching terrifying proportions”, said the UN chief on March 14, warning that a resulting meltdown of the global economy is provoking a hunger crisis that is hitting the poorest, hardest.

Secretary-General António Guterres addressed correspondents outside the Security Council chamber in New York, and said that with each passing hour in Ukraine, the death and destruction is getting worse: “Whatever the outcome, this war will have no winners, only losers.”

: UN Bureau; SUSTAINABILITY; Poverty; 15 March 2022

Australia: Acquittal of White Police Officer of Murder Upsets Aborigines

By Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY (IDN) — The acquittal of a White Police Officer of murdering an Aboriginal teenager over two years ago, has deeply upset the Aboriginal community with many weeping outside the courts in the northern city of Darwin, after the verdict was announced on March 11. Some could not contain their anger with one Aboriginal elder, reportedly shouting at the police officer when he left court saying, “Black Lives Matter”.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 12 March 2022

Photo: Somali women and children stand outside temporary tents in the Dagahaley refugee camp near the Kenya-Somalia border. © UNICEF/Kate Holt

Africa Anxious About Rising Farm Prices Due to Russia-Ukraine Crisis

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) — Wheat and other grains are back at the heart of geopolitics following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Both countries play a major role in the global agricultural market.

That was the clear-eyed assessment of Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz), a member of the Presidential Economic Advisory Council, and a visiting research fellow at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 01 March 2022

Photo: Africans fleeing from Ukraine are seen after crossing Ukrainian-Polish border due to Russian military attack on Ukraine. Medyka, Poland on February 28, 2022. Credit: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via AP

African Students in The Ukraine Plead for Help as Poland Says ‘Ukrainians First’

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) — Thousands of African students are among the tens of thousands of Ukrainians seeking shelter from a barrage of Russian airstrikes against its southern neighbour in what has been called an unprovoked and unjustified effort to remove and replace the Ukrainian government by the President of Russia.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Russia; 01 March 2022

Photo credit: Institute for Security Studies (ISS)

Drought and Hunger Stalk the Horn of Africa While the Continent Is in the Grip of Coups

Viewpoint by Azu Ishiekwene

The writer is the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP newspaper based in Abuja, Nigeria.

ABUJA (IDN) — There's a severe, earth-baking drought in the Horn of Africa. About 13 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Djibouti are in the grip of acute hunger. The rains have failed in three consecutive years, prompting the driest conditions experienced in the region in 41 years.

: Africa & ME Editor; OPINION; 18 February 2022

Photo: Paddy field in Polonnaruwa. Credit: L.G. Piyarathna

Sri Lanka: Government’s Badly Planned Organic Farming Policy Upsets Rice Farmers

By R.M.Samanmalee Swarnalatha

POLLONNARUWA, Sri Lanka (IDN) — Sri Lankan government’s badly planned organic farming policy that has banned the use of chemical fertilizer in farms has upset farmers in this rice-growing heartland and a political stronghold of the ruling coalition. The policy has also drawn criticism from agricultural experts, who warn that Sri Lanka’s food security is at stake.

Chairman of Minneriya Integrated Farmer Organization, Anil Gunawardhna argues that the government organic fertilizer program is an utter failure because it was announced without any proper program and work plan to achieve its aims.

: Asia Editor; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 09 February 2022

Photo: A young woman carries water in a camp for displaced people in Tillaberi region, Niger. © UNOCHA/Michele Cattani

UN Warns of Food Insecurity in 20 Countries and Regions

By Jaya Ramachandran

ROME (IDN) — A new report by two UN agencies has identified "hunger hotspots" across 20 countries and regions where parts of the population are expected to face a significant deterioration of acute food insecurity in the coming months that will put their lives and livelihoods at risk. This warning of spiralling uncertainty relates to areas where conflict, economic shocks, natural hazards, political instability, and limited humanitarian access, are hard-hitting.

: J Nastranis; SUSTAINABILITY; Food security, nutrition & sustainable agriculture; 30 January 2022

Photo: Protest against the Amazon/River Club development Credit: Leon Lestrade. African News Agency/ANA.

Court Freezes Planned Amazon HQ in Cape Town on Historically Significant Site

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) — A massive new complex housing Amazon’s proposed South African headquarters along with a hotel and other businesses continues to face stiff opposition from indigenous Khoisan, environmental and community groups despite city officials already approving of construction of the nine-story construction.

Opponents say the project will ruin a historically significant riverside site in Cape Town and harm the environment. The Khoisan were some of the country's first inhabitants and their presence in the southern tip of Africa dates back thousands of years.

: Global Information Network; SUSTAINABILITY; Poverty; 24 January 2022

Photo: Two indigenous persons. Source: Survival International

Concern Over 'Fortress Conservation' and Evictions of Kenyans from Ancestral Homelands

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) — Nature conservancies, with the stated goal of protecting wilderness and endangered wildlife, have enabled the removal of tribal peoples from their ancestral homelands in Africa to allow superior “western” models of conservation to prevail, according to the activist group Survival International.

Under the western model, half of all land must be kept in a natural state to protect Earth, as the National Geographic Society recently declared on its magazine pages, if a stable climate and high quality of life are to be preserved in the near future.