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News for a Sustainable World
Published by The Non-profit International Press Syndicate Group
with IDN-InDepthNews as the Flagship Agency
Download Sustainable Development Observer
Dear Reader,
We are pleased to send you Edition 44 | 2021. This weekly is the flagship news product of the Non-Profit International Press Syndicate Group with registered offices in Canada, Germany, Japan and Singapore, and correspondents around the world. Feel free to share and re-publish articles pro bono mentioning the source. Previous editions are available on https://newsletter-archive.indepthnews.net. Your feedback is most welcome.
Kind regards from the Non-Profit
International Press Syndicate
Viewpoint by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies*
NEW YORK (IDN) — COP Twenty-six! That is how many times the UN has assembled world leaders to try to tackle the climate crisis. But the United States is producing more oil and natural gas than ever; the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere and global temperatures are both still rising; and we are already experiencing the extreme weather and climate chaos that scientists have warned us about for forty years, and which will only get worse and worse without serious climate action.
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By Elizabeth Frame Ellison
The writer is president and CEO of the Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation.
TULSA, United States (IDN) — As Oklahoma is poised to resettle nearly 2,000 Afghan refugees in the near future, it is more important than ever to welcome newcomers who are fleeing war, poverty, trauma and many other hardships. That is why the Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation (LTFF) and its associated businesses, made the decision to sign the Businesses for Refugees Pledge.
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Viewpoint by Denise Garcia
This article was issued by Toda Peace Institute and is being republished with their permission.
BOSTON (IDN) — In May 2021, the United Nations Security Council met for the first time to discuss the role of emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), in peace and security. In the following month, the Security Council met to discuss how to keep peace in cyberspace, also for the first time, ushering emerging technologies to the highest level of diplomatic efforts at the United Nations (UN).
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By Pattama Vilailert
SISAKET, Thailand (IDN) — With a series of COVID-19 lockdowns, many workers in Bangkok and other major business cities like Pattaya, Phuket, Chiang Mai, and Samut Prakarn flocked to their hometowns. They are forced to seek ways to begin their new lives and rationalise how to live sustainably in the long term.
In Thailand, it is common to see laypeople giving alms to monks in the morning all over the country as part of merit-making before starting their day. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, some monks have reversed roles in merit-making.
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Viewpoint by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — One of the most peculiar aspects of the current debate in the US Congress on the big expenditure bills, and last month’s budget presentation before the British parliament, as the country struggles from the economic fallout from Brexit and the Pandemic, is that rarely has there been mention of the name John Maynard Keynes.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — A sweeping draft bill framed in the guise of “family values” has put a bullseye on Ghana’s LGBTQ community, proposing some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ laws on the African continent.
The bill gives LGBTQ members 2 options: Jail time or conversion therapy—practice which aims to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It has been condemned by more than 60 associations of doctors, psychologists and counsellors worldwide.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — Since the surprise coup by Sudan’s Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the nation’s international standing as a nascent democracy is endangered, essential debt relief and aid is threatened and peace with rebels in Darfur and the Nuba mountains has been jeopardized.
Prominent civilian leaders including Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok were put under house arrest.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — In a sharply-worded letter aimed at media leaders and chief editors prior to the UN Climate Change Conference now taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, young woman activist Vanessa Nakate of Uganda spared the politeness and highlighted today’s calamities in her part of the world.
“Melting glaciers, wildfires, droughts, deadly heat waves, floods, hurricanes, loss of biodiversity. These are all symptoms of a destabilizing planet, which are happening around us all the time,” she said in a letter co-authored with activist Greta Thunberg of Sweden.
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Viewpoint by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
BANGKOK (IDN) — As the leaders of Asia and the Pacific prepared to head to Glasgow for the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), they could be sure that our region will be in the spotlight.
Many of the most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change are located here; the seven G20 members from this region are responsible for over half of global GHG emissions; and five of the 10 top countries with the greatest historic responsibility for emissions since the beginning of the twentieth century are from Asia.
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Viewpoint by Daryl G. Kimball
The following by Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director of The Arms Control Association, was published on October 29, 2021 in Arms Control Today.
WASHINGTON, DC (IDN) — Twenty-six years ago, as states-parties negotiated the terms for the extension of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the future of the treaty was not assured.
Yet at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, the world came together, committed to the “complete elimination of nuclear weapons,” and endorsed specific disarmament actions that led to the indefinite extension of this bedrock agreement to reduce the nuclear danger. Additional commitments were made at the 2000 and 2010 review conferences to advance implementation and compliance with all three pillars of the treaty.
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By Kalinga Seneviratne
SYDNEY | BANGKOK (IDN) — The second issue of Sustainable Development Observer—an e-monthly of IDN-InDepthNews in association with INPS Southeast Asia with news and views on sustainable development goals from the perspective of the two-thirds world (Global South)—has been published. The inaugural issue can be downloaded here.
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By Nena Palagi
PUERTO PRINCESA, Palawan, Philippines (IDN) — It is a feat unimaginable by any modern standard. Six young people from this remote island of Palawan, in the Philippines, have taken on the goliaths of land ownership, and won. They got over 40,000 hectares of land legally declared as protected habitat with the direct endorsement from the Indigenous custodians.
The small non-profit Centre for Sustainability PH (CS) had been spearheading the campaign, helping local Indigenous Batak people since 2014. How did they do it? CS Co-founder and Advisor, Karina May (KM) Reyes, says it is through sheer grit and “resilience day in day out”, for the last seven years. They implement their mission through Land Conservation, Reforestation and Citizen Science.
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By Asia Pacific Report Newsdesk
SUVA (IDN) — Australia needs to be put on notice by Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders over abandoning its commitments under the South Pacific’s nuclear free accord— he Treaty of Rarotonga—by signing up to the controversial security pact, AUKUS, says the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG).
The deal by the Australian, the United Kingdom, and the United States governments is “highly problematic” and “heightens risks for nuclear proliferation” in the region, PANG coordinator Maureen Penjueli said.
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Viewpoint by Fernando Rosales
The author is Coordinator of the Sustainable Development and Climate Change Programme (SDCC) of the South Centre.
GENEVA (IDN) — The SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) adopted in 2015 reflect the multilateral consensus to deal with the most crucial problems humanity is facing nowadays. The 17 goals are multidimensional and are interlinked with each other. At the same time, climate change crisis is the most serious threat to human life itself and it has deepened in the last 30 years.[1] Even though, SDG 14 specifically relates to “Climate Action”, it is very likely that the climate crisis is also going to affect the achievement of many other SDGs.
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Viewpoint by Tariq Rauf*
“We now have the opportunity to carry out the important work of the Review Conference and to ensure the NPT maintains its place as the cornerstone of the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime and an essential pillar of international peace and security”, Ambassador Gustavo Zlauvinen.
VIENNA (IDN) — It’s done, finally Ambassador Gustavo Zlauvinen (President-designate) has confirmed that the Tenth Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), will convene at the United Nations in New York from January 4 to 28, 2022.
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By Thalif Deen
New York (IDN) — The politically and militarily volatile Middle East continues its run as one of the world’s biggest single arms markets—led primarily by Saudi Arabia. But the Saudi dominance is being gradually challenged by another oil-blessed country in the region: the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
According to the latest report from the US Commercial Service, the trade promotion arm of the US Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration, the UAE is second only to Saudi Arabia, which has been ranked first globally, due to several large deals, topping $1.9 billion in purchases over the past year, while the UAE’s purchases amounted to $609 million during August 2020-July 2021.
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