Category Environment & Development

‘Perfect storm’ created for food collapse, panel hears

0 Comments read Environment & Development, Health & Science
A vegetable seller in Hanoi, Vietnam. COVID-19 disruptions have worsened hunger and receded development gains. Photo Credit: © Neena Bhandari

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 26.11.2021 (SciDev.Net): Hikes in oil prices, conflicts, emerging diseases, poor governance, and disruption in supply chains due to transportation blockages during the pandemic have come together to create a potentially devastating scenario for the global food system, a panel on food security heard.

“These have created a perfect storm for global food collapse”, Fan Shenggen, chair of the academy of global food economics and policy at China Agricultural University, told an online panel hosted by SciDev.Net and its parent organisation CABI on Thursday (25 November).

Globally, food prices are up nearly 33 per cent since the same period last year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s monthly food price index released on 2 September.

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Legal Identity for all a must

0 Comments read Environment & Development, Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 24.11.2021 (SciDev.Net): A strong, universal, responsive civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system is critical for Asia Pacific countries to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure that the most vulnerable have access to healthcare, immunisation and social welfare services.

This was highlighted in the Ministerial Declaration issued at the conclusion in Bangkok of the Second Ministerial Conference on CRVS (16—19 November) in Asia and the Pacific, organised by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Nearly 40 per cent of global deaths in 2020 were unregistered, according to a WHO report. And preliminary WHO estimates suggest that the total global excess mortality directly or indirectly attributable to COVID-19 amounts to 1.2 million more than the reported deaths in 2020.

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How satellite technologies can aid Fiji & other Pacific Island countries to build climate resilience

0 Comments read Climate Change, Environment & Development
Sepesa Curuki with his daughter at their home in Cogea Village in Fiji. Photo Credit: Supplied by Sepesa Curuki

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 23.09.2021 (IPS) – Sepesa Curuki and his community are coming to terms with the prospect of relocation from Cogea village on Fiji’s second largest island of Vanua Levu. Their village, which lies between two rivers that flow into the Pacific Ocean only 2km away, has been battered by intense and frequent cyclones, flooding and erosion, threatening their very existence.

“We are heartbroken to be having to leave our ancestral land, but to survive we must relocate to a safe place”, the 36-year-old school teacher tells IPS on a scratchy phone line, reverberating with the background sound of pelting rain.

“Our close-knit community of 72 people has experienced three severe tropical cyclones in one year.  TC Harold in April 2020 and TC Ana in January 2021 caused extreme flooding, and TC Yasa in December 2020 completely consumed 23 of the 37 houses in the village. Not even a single post was left standing. The remaining homes, including ours, experienced widespread destruction”, says Curuki, who now lives with his wife, mother, two brothers and four children in a two-bedroom concrete home and a tent.

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