Goal 13+14+15 - SDGs for All

Photo: Home and boats on the water. © Curt Carnemark/World Bank

Africa's Blue Economy Or a Global Ocean Grab by the Rich?

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – Six counties in Kenya’s coastal region have been tagged for technical training in the blue economy – what some have called "the new frontier of the African Renaissance". The goal is to enable young people to find jobs in the maritime industry.

Kevit Desai, a Kenyan vocational training principal, says institutions of higher learning must begin to focus on developing skills, nurturing innovations and enterprise creation for this "overlooked opportunity". He suggested a post-Blue Economy Conference workshop to create awareness and enhance community participation in this vision for the future.

: IDN-INPS Editor; Goal 13+14+15; 18 December 2018

Of Cockroaches and Humans

Viewpoint by Roberto Savio

The writer is publisher of Other News, a vehicle for "voices against the tide", and founder of IPS-Inter Press Service News Agency. This article is being reproduced courtesy of Other News with the writer's permission. He can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and his articles and comments can be read on Facebook @robertosavioutopia

ROME (IDN) – Rita Levi-Montalcini, the Italian Nobel laureate honoured for her work in neurobiology, once gave a splendid conference with the title "The imperfect brain". There she explained that man has a brain that is not used completely, while the reverse is true for the cockroach.

: Ramesh Jaura; Goal 13+14+15; 17 December 2018

Parliamentarians for Nuclear Disarmament Emphasize Need to Combat Climate Change

By Aleksandra Gadzinski

KATOWICE (IDN) – Nuclear weapons and climate change are the two major existential threats to the survival of humanity, civilization and the planet Earth. With this in view, in January 2018 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the legendary Doomsday Clock to 2 minutes to Midnight, due to the threats from nuclear weapons and climate change, said Alyn Ware, Global Coordinator of the Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (PNND) at an event on December 9.

: IDN-INPS Editor; Goal 13+14+15; 10 December 2018

Photo credit: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Shigeo Hayashi - RA119-RA134

Nuclear Weapons and Climate Change Threaten Human Survival

John Avery interviews David Krieger

COPENHAGEN | SANTA BARBARA, CA (IDN) – One of the five “M’s” can trigger a nuclear war any time: malice, madness, mistake, miscalculation and manipulation. "Of these five, only malice is subject to possibly being prevented by nuclear deterrence and of this there is no certainty. But nuclear deterrence (threat of nuclear retaliation) will not be at all effective against madness, mistake, miscalculation or manipulation (hacking)," David Krieger tells John Scales Avery in an exceptional interview.

: IDN-INPS Editor; Goal 13+14+15; 09 December 2018

Photo (L-R): Benjamin Schachter, OHCHR; Jennifer Hanna, PCCB; Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba, UN Secretary General Special Envoy for the 2019 Climate Summit; Verona Collantes, UN Women; Michael Windfuhr, German Institute for Human Rights; Agnes Leina, Illaramatak Community Concerns; and Sébastien Duyck, Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Credit: IISD.

Experts Urge Respect for Human Rights in Climate Actions

By Aleksandra Gadzinski

KATOWICE (IDN) – Independent experts of the UN Human Rights Council, are calling on States to fully integrate human rights standards and principles in the rules for implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change (the Paris Rulebook) adopted by the international community.

In the run-up to the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, they recalled that "in a significant breakthrough" in 2015, Parties to the Paris Agreement recognized the need to integrate their human rights obligations and their efforts to address climate change, pledging to respect and protect human rights in all climate actions.

: IDN-INPS Editor; Goal 13+14+15; 09 December 2018

Leaders Pledge to Boost Blue Economy, Protect Water Bodies

By Justus Wanzala

NAIROBI (IDN) – The Kenyan capital was literally painted ‘blue’ for the first-ever global conference on the blue economy attended by over 18,000 participants from 180 countries.

Running from November 26 to 28, the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference ended with various countries signing commitments to ensure that humanity benefits from the blue economy – or the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs.

: IDN-INPS Editor; Goal 13+14+15; 05 December 2018

Photo: Seyni Nafo (left), spokesman of the African delegation to the COP24, with Amina J. Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General, at a meeting in 2016. Credit: World Bank

Africa Seeks Commitments to Fight Climate Threat at COP24

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – Seyni Nafo, spokesman of the African delegation at the UN Climate Change Conference COP24 taking place in Katowice in southern Poland from December 2-14 is not one to mince words about the serious climate threat now facing the African continent.

"We are the most vulnerable, we are the least responsible but we will suffer the most," the Malian-born Nafo summed up in an interview with Germany’s international broadcaster DW. The African continent is already experiencing the effects of climate change. In many places drought, torrential rainfall or flooding are regular occurrences.

: IDN-INPS Editor; Goal 13+14+15; 04 December 2018

Photo: Lesotho has had its fair share of the climate change impacts owing to the El Nino crisis in the past years. Credit: Lesotho: Agence Kaolin

ACP Steps in to Rescue Africa from Climate Change Impacts

By Jeffrey Moyo

MASERU (ACP-IDN) – Three years ago, Lesotho, Southern Africa’s small mountain kingdom surrounded by South Africa, was hit hard by the drought that led to the driest season in the region in 35 years. In the tiny dynastic nation, the El Niño driven-phenomenon resulted in a fall in maize production, the country's staple food.

But now thanks to ACP, the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States, a group that was created by the Georgetown Agreement in 1975, climate change impacts in African countries like Lesotho have met their match.

: IDN-INPS Editor; Goal 13+14+15; 01 December 2018

Photo: African Penguin Credit: Mike Barth. Source: www.unep-aewa.org

AEWA - International Environmental Cooperation At Its Best

Viewpoint by Jacques Trouvilliez

Internationalism seems to be falling out of vogue, but Jacques Trouvilliez, Executive Secretary of the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA), holds his organization up as an example of how conservation objectives are being effectively achieved through cross-continental cooperation.

BONN (IDN) – The Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) is a good, and certainly not the only example of international cooperation working well. It is a UN Treaty which operates on the basis of concerted actions. It has 78 members including the European Union with another 41 countries within its area eligible to join.

: IDN-INPS Editor; Goal 13+14+15; 30 November 2018

Photo: A boy watches the shore from a boat near Sirajganj, a community affected by severe erosion that has left many displaced. Sirajganj, Bangladesh. October 2016. Credit: IOM/Amanda Nero.

New Study Calls for USD 2.3 Billion Support to ACP Countries

By Reinhard Jacobsen

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – A new study finds that the 79-nation African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) Group of States can boost climate action with technical and financial support amounting to a minimum of USD 2,317 billion. Capacity building, an important aspect of efforts to halt climate catastrophe, is expected to draw considerable attention at the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in Katowice, Poland.

The urgency of climate action is underlined also by the new report released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It shows that global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions rose again during 2017 after a three-year break, highlighting the imperative for countries to deliver on the historic Paris Agreement to keep global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.