Inter Press Service | News and Views from the Global South

Inter Press Service | News and Views from the Global South

Citizen Action in Europe’s Periphery: “An Antidote to Powerlessness” Daan Bauwens Unjustified extra charges on drinking water, exploitation of labourers in the countryside and uncontrolled property speculation. In Europe’s periphery, citizens' initiatives show how all too prevalent modern-day ailments can be tackled successfully. More often than not with the help of ... MORE > >

Looking Beyond Fossil Fuels To Reduce Emissions Tharanga Yakupitiyage In midst of the 24th United Nations climate change conference (COP24), many are trying to double down in the search for practical, actionable solutions to the climate crisis: land itself. Ahead of the ongoing COP24, the U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP) launched a report warning that the ... MORE > >

Thermal Houses Keep People Warm in Peru's Highlands Mariela Jara Thirty families from a rural community more than 4,300 meters above sea level will have warm houses that will protect them from the freezing temperatures that each year cause deaths and diseases among children and older adults in this region of the southeastern Peruvian Andes. José Tito, 46, and ... MORE > >

Conserving Canada's Diverse Marine Life Stephen Leahy Despite the deep, cold waters, newly discovered undersea mountains off Canada’s west coast are home to a rich diversity of life. “When we reached a seamount (undersea mountain), it was often like we were entering a forest, only of red tree corals and vase-shaped glass sponges,” said Robert ... MORE > >

Watering the Paris Agreement at COP24 Maggie White Most people will experience climate change in the form of water – higher frequency and intensity of floods and droughts, an increase in waterborne diseases, and overloaded sewage systems that are unable to cope with new demands. At the same time, water offers some of the best solutions for ... MORE > >

Q&A: Creating an African Bamboo Industry as Large as China’s Jamila Akweley Okertchiri The bamboo industry in China currently comprises up to 10 million people who make a living out of production of the grass. But while the Asian nation has significant resources of bamboo — three million hectares of plantation and three million hectares of natural forests — the continent of Africa is ... MORE > >

Will Member States Help Offset US Funding Cuts to UN? Thalif Deen The speculation that the Trump administration plans to reduce its mandatory assessed financial contributions to the UN’s regular budget was implicitly confirmed when the US president told delegates last September that Washington “is working to shift more of our funding, from assessed contributions ... MORE > >

Why Bother about World War I Jan Lundius Why do we still need to be concerned about a war that ended a hundred years ago? Sure, it caused the death of at least 37 million people, but why bother about that now? Anyhow France´s president Emmanuel Macron believed it was worthwhile to commemorate the end of World War I and seventy world ... MORE > >

'Antimicrobial Resistance Knows No Boundaries' Ed Holt European Union officials and global health bodies have called for help for poorer countries as growing resistance to antibiotics threatens to become a ‘global health tragedy’ and jeopardises Sustainable Development Goals in some parts of the world. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has risen by as ... MORE > >

Havana Charter’s Progressive Trade Vision Subverted Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury In criticizing the ‘free trade delusion’, UNCTAD’s 2018 Trade and Development Report proposes an alternative to both reactionary nationalism, recently revived by President Trump, and the corporate cosmopolitanism of neoliberal multilateral discourse in recent decades by revisiting the Havana ... MORE > >

Fish Farming Takes on Crime in Papua New Guinea Catherine Wilson In the rugged mountainous highlands of Papua New Guinea in the southwest Pacific Islands fish farming has transformed the lives of former prisoners and helped reduce notorious levels of crime along the highlands highway, the only main road which links the highly populated inland provinces with the ... MORE > >

Q&A: How Political Will can Accelerate Green Growth in Africa Emmanuel Hitimana While the African Green Growth Forum 2018 was taking place for the first time ever in Kigali, Rwanda last week, IPS sat down with Okechukwu Daniel Ogbonnaya, the Acting Country Representative and Lead Advisor for the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) to talk about the new forum, working with ... MORE > >

Rwanda to Build Ecotourism Park in Kigali Emmanuel Hitimana Rwanda’s capital city Kigali will be home to a 134 hectare urban park in the city’s biggest valley in 2020. The Nyandungu Urban Wetland Eco-Tourism Park will conserve wetlands and habitat for wildlife while providing walking and cycling trails, fish ponds and botanical gardens for residents and ... MORE > >

The Bond that is Educating Girls Across India Neeta Lal Barely five months into the start of Sneha's year at a government school in Bhilwara, a town in India's desert state of Rajasthan, the bubbly 15-year-old was pulled out by her parents. They wanted her to stay at home instead, to look after her four younger siblings and to cook and clean for the ... MORE > >

Legal Weapons Have Failed to Curb Femicides in Latin America Fabiana Frayssinet Left blind by a beating from her ex-husband, Susana Gómez barely managed to avoid joining the list of nearly 2,800 femicides committed annually in Latin America, but her case shows why public policies and laws are far from curtailing gender-based violence in the region. "I filed many legal ... MORE > >

South Sudan Faces one of the World’s Worst Displacement Crises Daniel Sullivan South Sudan is facing one of the worst displacement crises in the world today. More than half of the population is food insecure and, if not for international humanitarian aid, the country would almost certainly have already faced famine. A new peace agreement is bringing cautious hope to the ... MORE > >

Migrants Send Record Amounts to Home Countries, but Overall Poverty Pertains Daan Bauwens At the end of this year, migrants will have sent 466 billion dollars to family and friends in their countries of origin. Despite this record amount these remittances have little to no effect on the dire economic state of affairs in those home countries. Earlier this week in Brussels, a group of ... MORE > >