Tag Archives : poor countries

The International Organization for Migration (IOM), a Geneva-based body, warned that ‘the world must prepare for a mass increase in climate-linked migration.’ Deemed as a certain reality in the foreseeable future, it is what leaders who wrangled deals at the Copenhagen Climate Conference failed to be alarmed about. The United Nations Climate Change [...]

In the run-up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December, African countries are boycotting climate change conferences. They allege that ‘the world’s rich nations must do more to cut emissions.’ This is just one of the hurdles being encountered by the controversial climate deal negotiations whose final agreements hope [...]

In spite of many local and international restrictions, overfishing continues to be a glaring reality, even escalating at an alarming rate. Countries have been breaking their environmental pledges in this regard, creating a huge gap between what countries promise to do to end overfishing and what actually happens in the seas, oceans, and coastal waters. [...]

The G20 ‘agreed that all subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption must go.’ The G20 is composed of 19 countries plus the European Union and international financial institutions. This group accounts for 80 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions, also because of fossil fuel subsidies that do not augur well for the fight against climate change [...]

There is a popular notion that to effectively solve climate change and other environmental ills, the problem of ‘exponential population growth’ has to be necessarily solved. Strict birth control is touted to prevent doomsday. In the past, there had been concrete efforts to stem the burgeoning human population on the planet. Forced vasectomies [...]

The passing away this week of Norman Borlaug, the father of Green Revolution that ‘created high-yielding wheat varieties to stave off famine,’ is a reminder that his well-intended campaign did not end up as he dreamed it would. Today, there is prevailing hunger in the world in spite of the potential to have so much food. Little did Borlaug imagine [...]

A lack of optometrists in the world’s poorest countries means that the poor cannot have their much-needed glasses. One such country is Ghana where there is just one optometrist for every eight million people. There is now a technological solution to this situation which could ‘provide glasses for one billion people.’ Joshua Silver, a physics [...]

A leaked ‘UN report says pandemic may result in anarchy unless the rich western countries pay for antiviral drugs and vaccines.’ The amount to shell out is $1.5 billion. The swine pandemic is expected to ‘kill millions’ which would ‘cause anarchy in the world’s poorest nations,’ thereby causing weak economies to completely collapse, [...]

Requiring poor countries, along with the developed world in the proposed CO2 emission reduction bid, to go back to 2000 emission levels for a 2050 population would mean putting the developing countries on a very stringent and drastic energy diet. This move might be suicidal for these countries as it forces them to abandon their plans, strategies, and [...]

The world economic crisis directly translates to food insecurity. According to the Food Security Assessment, 2008-09, a report from the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), “Food security in 70 developing countries is projected to deteriorate over the next decade. After rising nearly 11 percent from [...]