By Eileen Travers, UN News NEW YORK | 22 January 2025 (IDN) — When the plague, cholera and yellow fever rippled deadly waves across a newly industrialised and interconnected world in the mid-19th century, taking a global approach to health became an imperative. Doctors, scientists, presidents and prime ministers urgently convened the International Sanitary Conference […]
Carbon Offsetting in Arid Lands Won’t help Fight Climate Change – Great Green Wall Shows Why?
By Jeremy Allouche and Detlef Müller-Mahn* BONN, Germany | 22 January 2025 (IDN) — Carbon offsetting—the practise where businesses or individuals offset their carbon emissions by investing in environmental projects – is expanding from reforestation projects to tree planting in areas with no history of tree cover, such as semi-arid to arid lands, despite the […]
Peace With China Is Far More Important Than Power Over China
By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 21 January 2025 (IDN) —The West, the US especially, has got itself into a fretful mood over the rise of China. Quite unnecessarily so. The Chinese growth rate is slowing. As a BBC commentator said recently, reviewing this week’s government-issued statistics, China never will hit double digit growth again. […]
Universities Can Help Catalysing Sustainable Development
By Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir* MARRAKECH, Morocco | 21 January 2025 (IDN) — Most of our world is experiencing a time of public discontent that now necessitates accomplishing a better and different driver of renewal for our cities and rural places. Let us consider a new approach, rooted in a long-held understanding of the purpose of […]
The Battle Against Inequality: A Message to the Elite and Super-Rich in Davos
By Thalif Deen UNITED NATIONS | 20 January 2025 (IDN) — As the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), described as a gathering of the world’s elite and super rich, meet in Davos, Switzerland, January 20-24, more than 30,000 activists across nearly 50 cities staged protests over the weekend demanding economic justice, climate action, and an […]
Human Rights Watch Takes Stock of 2024: A Year of Reckoning
By Jan Servaes* BANGKOK, Thailand | 18 January 2025 (IDN) — The Human Rights Watch Report 2025 was recently launched in Bangkok under the title “2024: A Year of Reckoning”. The press conference, which can also be followed via YouTube, started with a video message from Tirana Hassan, HRW Director General, who tried to put […]
India Takes Yet Another Step Toward Sending Humans to the Moon
By Devinder Kumar* NEW DELHI | 17 January 2025 (IDN) — The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)—which has been working on key technologies to realise its vision of setting up a space station by 2035 and sending humans to the Moon by 2040—on January 16 morning successfully demonstrated space docking, or the joining of two […]
WHO Appeals for USD 1.5 billion to Tackle Unprecedented Global Health Crisis
By Jaya Ramachandran GENEVA | 17 January 2025 (IDN) — The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued 2025 Health Emergency Appeal (HEA), calling for US$ 1.5 billion to support an unparalleled global health crisis, with 305 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. Conflict, climate change, epidemics, and displacement have converged to create this […]
Combating Climate Change Strengthens Rather Than Stifles Economic Growth
By Dr. Alon Ben-Meir* NEW YORK | 16 January 2025 (IDN) — Climate change deniers, including President Trump, insist that there is no such thing as climate change and that measures taken to combat it only decrease economic productivity and stifle growth. In fact, the opposite is true; a plethora of scientific evidence suggests that […]
Sri Lanka: Better Manage the Water Tanks to Ensure Food Security
By Mohan Seneviratne* COLOMBO, Sri Lanka | 16 January 2025 (IDN) — Water is at the centre of economic and social development. It influences whether communities are healthy places to live, whether farmers can grow food and underpins natural ecosystems. Moreover, humans experience Climate Change through water be it floods, droughts, cyclones or tsunamis. Sri […]