Protect biodiversity to secure traditional medicine sources

25/08/2023 0 Comments read Climate Change, Environment & Development, Health & Science

Fostering conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, empowering indigenous communities, and building evidence on the efficacy and safety of traditional medicine knowledge could help with narrowing the health gap. Photo Credit: ©Neena Bhandari

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 25.08.2023 (SciDev.Net): Traditional medicines and their natural sources must be protected from threats such as illegal wildlife trade to secure their role in narrowing the global health gap, say scientists.

For millions of marginalised communities, traditional medicine is the only recourse for meeting their primary healthcare needs, especially in remote and rural areas that lack access to formal healthcare systems. The World Health Organization (WHO), which held its first-ever Traditional Medicine Global Summit in Gandhinagar, India, last week (17-18 August), estimates that 80 per cent of people in most Asian and African countries use some form of traditional medicine for primary healthcare.

“Developing countries need not look towards developed countries to provide solutions, rather they can embrace what they already have – indigenous knowledge…grounded in generations of experience,” said Ritu Bharadwaj, principal researcher in the UK-based climate change research group of the International Institute for Environment and Development. Continue reading →

Crisis resilience ‘critical’ to stem rising hunger

19/04/2023 0 Comments read Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 19.04.2023 (SciDev.Net): A shift towards permanent “crisis resilience” from short-term aid is crucial to mitigate increasingly frequent shocks to the global food system and tackle rising global hunger, say food policy researchers.

Disruption to food systems from multiple crises such as economic downturn, conflict, climate change-related weather events and the COVID-19 pandemic, has caused a surge in acute food insecurity in recent years.

The Global Report on Food Crisis: Mid-Year Update 2022 estimates that as many as 205 million people in 45 countries experienced crisis-level acute food insecurity or worse, nearly double the number in 2016. It says requests for humanitarian assistance reached a record high of US$41 billion.

“Crises, shocks, and volatility are no longer exceptions and may become the new normal,” says Johan Swinnen, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and managing director of the CGIAR Systems Transformation. “We should better predict and prepare, implement effective and accountable governance and institutions, and invest to build resilience against future crises.”

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Pacific Island Countries to develop Advanced Warning System for tuna migration

19/04/2023 0 Comments read Climate Change, Environment & Development, Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 19.04.2023 (IPS): Climate change and warming ocean waters are causing tuna fisheries to migrate to international waters, away from a country’s jurisdiction, thereby putting the food and economic security of many Pacific Island countries and territories at risk. Now a Pacific Community (SPC) led regional initiative will help ensure that these countries are equipped to cope with climate change-induced tuna migration.

“All the climate change projections indicate that there will be a redistribution of tuna from the western and central Pacific to the more eastern and towards the polar regions, that is not Antarctica or the Arctic, but to regions outside of the equatorial zones where they primarily occur at the moment,” says SPC’s Principal Fisheries Scientist, Dr Simon Nicol.

“This has really important implications for the Pacific Island countries. Our projections suggest that about one-fifth or about USD 100 million of the income derived from the tuna industry directly is likely to be lost by 2050 by these countries,” Nicol tells IPS.

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