Posts tagged climate change

The omnipresence of Omicron as we usher in 2022

By Neena Bhandari

The incisive eyes of a Powerful Owl were staring at me from the last page of the wall calendar. The days had melted into weeks and then months. 2021 had begun on a note of optimism, ignited by a promise of vaccines against the novel coronavirus, but that ray of hope has been eclipsed by the lengthening shadow of new mutations.

A more transmissible mutation — the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant is surging unhindered as we usher in another year of living with SARS-CoV-2. The omnipresence of Omicron has dimmed New Year festivities and disrupted family reunions, just as we were hoping life would return to some form of normalcy.

Globally, on an average one million new coronavirus cases are being recorded daily. Public health systems have been stretched to a breaking point. Doctors, nurses, medical laboratory professionals, pharmacists, scientists and the innumerable health professionals have spent most part of their waking hours over the past two years helping the world cope with the pandemic.

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‘Perfect storm’ created for food collapse, panel hears

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

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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