STOCKHOLM, Aug 27 2012 (IPS) – Paradoxically, the water we eat is likely to become one of the growing new dangers to millions of the world’s thirsty, hungering for this finite natural resource.
More than one-fourth of all the water we use worldwide is taken to grow over one billion tons of food that nobody eats, Torgny Holmgren, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), told delegates during the opening of the annual international water conference, World Water Week, in the Swedish capital Monday.
Forty-nine percent of all disaster survivors are women. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
BHUBANESWAR, India, Oct 13 2012 (IPS) – In the aftermath of a natural disaster, women are often the most vulnerable. Particularly in rural areas, women suffer disproportionately from inadequate shelter and poor sanitation facilities and are often tasked with rebuilding shattered homes.
The theme for this year’s , led by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), is more relevant than ever: ‘Women and Girls: The [in]Visible Force for Resilience’.
Across India, droughts and floods – which Rajan Joshua of the Society for Education and Developm…
Lack of family planning has led to a surge in unsafe abortions in Eastern Europe. Credit: William Murphy/CC-BY-SA-2.0
PRAGUE/WARSAW, Nov 14 2012 (IPS) – Pressure from the Catholic Church, social stigma, a lack of information about sexuality and reproductive health and limited access to reproductive healthcare services are putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of women across Eastern Europe at risk.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), “Women are over four times as likely to die in childbirth in the newly independent states of the former USSR as in the European Union.
“In some countries unsafe abortions cause over 20 percent …
Julia Kallas interviews ALVILDA JABLONKO, activist against Female Genital Mutilation
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 3 2013 (IPS) – For the estimated 140 million girls and women living with the consequences of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), it is already too late. But since a global ban on FGM was passed at the end of last year, activists hope many more will now escape this brutal practice.
Alvilda Jablonko. Credit: Julia Kallas/IPS
Alvilda Jablonko, coordinator of the No Peace Without Justice Programme on FGM, has been fighting for such a ban in the U.N. General Assembly since 2010. It was finally adopted Dec. 20, 2012.
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The Empire State Building viewed at night. Credit: NLNY/cc by 2.0
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 19 2013 (IPS) – As usual, midtown Manhattan is packed with whisper-quiet cars and trams while thousands walk the streets listening to the birds of spring sing amongst the gleaming, grime-free skyscrapers in the crystal-clear morning air.
Welcome to New York City in April 2030.I think the public will be 100 percent behind this, if they know about it.
This is not a fantasy. It is a perfectly doable goal, said Stanford University energy expert Mark Jacobson. In fact, the entire state of New York could be powered by wind, water and sunlight based on a detailed plan Jac…
One of the students at the Gymnasia Herzliya School checks on the plastic bottles containing samples of a blue-green algae called Spirulina. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS
TEL AVIV, May 12 2013 (IPS) – At the Gymnasia Herzliya School in Tel Aviv, 20 ninth and tenth graders are testing the simplest, cheapest and fastest way to solve the problem of malnutrition among their peers around the world.
Under the guidance of their principal and biology teacher, these Israeli teenagers are attempting to breed a blue-green algae called spirulina, widely believed to contain a array of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.
Fourteen-yea…
SKOPJE, Macedonia , Jul 12 2013 (IPS) – A “virus” of restrictive abortion legislation is spreading from Eastern Europe, health experts and rights campaigners have said, amid Church pressure and misguided government attempts to stop falling birth rates.
Just weeks ago a new law was introduced in Macedonia tightening up relatively liberal abortion legislation which had been followed for more than 40 years. And last month, Lithuanian lawmakers gave initial approval to some of strictest abortion legislation in the world.
Tighter abortion laws are also being considered in Russia and the Ukraine while the Georgian parliament is expected to debate abortion laws after the country’s Orthodox Church made calls in May for it to be banned.
Critics say that some governm…
Paediatrics waiting room in Albert Schweitzer Hospital, Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Agencia Brasil Marcello Casal Jr/EBr
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 23 2013 (IPS) – Brazil plans to import doctors to provide healthcare in poor suburbs of large cities, impoverished regions of the interior and border areas. But is there really a shortage of doctors in this country?
Dr. Pedro Henrique Grezele was 24 years old and fresh out of med school when he enlisted in the army in 2010. He chose the Amazon region to put into practice the medical knowledge he had acquired at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ).
He engaged in many missions in the Amazon jungle, boating u…
The Agbogbloshie e-Wasteland in Ghana. Fires are set to wires and other electronics to release valuable copper and other materials. The fires blacken the landscape, releasing toxic fumes. Credit: Blacksmith Institute
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Nov 5 2013 (IPS) – Parts of Indonesia, Argentina and Nigeria are among the top 10 most polluted places on the planet, according to a new report by U.S. and European environmental groups.
They are extraordinarily toxic places where lifespans are short and disease runs rampant among millions of people who live and work at these sites, often to provide the products used in richer countries.
People would be shocked to see the condit…
“Area of sacrifice” – a sign put up by local residents in Bouwer, Argentina to protest the garbage and toxic waste dumped in their town. Credit: Courtesy of Bouwer Sin Basura
BOUWER, Argentina , Dec 16 2013 (IPS) – Towns traditionally celebrate their most characteristic aspect. So the town of Bouwer in central Argentina decided to “celebrate” garbage.
But the “first provincial festival of pollution and against discrimination” is not a reason for pride, but a mechanism of resistance by a town that wants to stop being “an area of environmental sacrifice” in the central province of Córdoba.
In the festival, to be held Feb. 22 in this working…