Responsible Consumption & Production

Photo: IDN-INPS collage of pictures by from Commonwealth Secretariat. Left: Aelan Ltd hires local women from the next village to make organic products. Right: Adding value to coconut. Bottom: Vanuatu Deputy Prime Minister Bob Loughman wants the country to focus on value addition and moving up global value chains.

Ensuring the Future of Coconut, the 'Tree of Life'

By Josephine Latu-Sanft

For the eminent American actor and director Dustin Hoffman sunshine and coconut milk are "the two basic items necessary to sustain life". The German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht compared love to a coconut "which is good while it is fresh". In the Pacific, coconut is king, writes Josephine Latu-Sanft.

LONDON | PORT VILA (IDN) – Known as the ‘tree of life’, locals make use of every part of the tree to survive – the fruit for eating, husks for fuelling fires, fronds for making multiuse baskets, and the trunk for building houses.

: Asia Editor; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 18 April 2019

Sustainable Wildlife Management Program Launches Newsletter

By ACP Press

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – Recent studies have shown that overhunting for wild meat is threatening hundreds of wildlife species with extinction, with the result that many indigenous peoples and rural communities are deprived of food and income.

An initiative of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States, the Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme, established to tackle these challenges, has published their first newsletter to bring attention to these issues.

: UN Bureau; GLOBAL GOVERNANCE; ACP Group of States; 05 April 2019

Photo: Atewa forest. Source: Save Atewa Forest

Bauxite Mining Threatens Ghana’s Crown Jewel of Biodiversity

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK | ACCRA (IDN) – Environmental groups in Ghana are waging an eleventh-hour battle to stop the government of Ghana from opening the Atewa Forest Reserve – a crown jewel of biodiversity and a source of three rivers – to commercial large-scale bauxite mining.

Their resistance conforms to the Fourth United Nations Environment Assembly's resolution on mining resource governance in Nairobi from March 11-15. The resolution stresses in particular Sustainable Development Goal 7 calling for 'affordable and clean energy' and Goal 12 on 'responsible consumption and production', "reminding the important contribution of mining to their achievement".

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 02 April 2019

IDN is flagship agency of the International Press Syndicate.

UN Environment Assembly Spells Out 'The Future We Want'

By Justus Wanzala

NAIROBI (IDN) – Global gross domestic product has doubled since 1970, enabling immense progress, and lifting of billions of people out of poverty. At the same time, this economic growth has been fueled by a relentless demand for natural resources. At no point in time nor at any level of income, has our demand for natural resources wavered, notes the Global Resources Outlook 2019.

"Our consume and throwaway models of consumption have had devastating impacts on our planet," says the report presented during the fourth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi, Kenya, March 11-15.

: Justus Wanzala; UN INSIDER; 25 March 2019

Photo: Coal-fired power plant. Credit: ozone.unep.org

New Agreement Seeks To Resist Powerful Greenhouse Gases

By Devendra Kamarajan

NAIROBI (IDN) – A new agreement signed in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, promises to fight global warming. Known as the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, came into force on January 1, 2019.

According to UN Environment, it will reduce the projected production and consumption of powerful greenhouse gasses termed as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by more than 80 per cent over the next 30 years.

: Devendra Kamarajan; UN INSIDER; 06 January 2019

Photo: The Lesotho National Development Corporation (LNDC) is the main parastatal of the Government of Lesotho charged with the implementation of the country’s industrial development policies. Credit: LNDC

Lesotho and South Africa Among Winners of UN Awards

By Ronald Joshua

GENEVA (IDN) – Bahrain, India, Lesotho and South Africa have won 2018 United Nations Investment Promotion Awards for excellence in boosting investment into sectors that will have social and economic benefits and help countries meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the awards honour investment promotion agencies (IPAs) and their governments for their achievements, but also showcase best practices in attracting investment into SDG-related projects that can inspire investment promotion practitioners in developing and developed countries.

: Ronald Joshua; UN INSIDER; 22 October 2018

Photo credit: Rafael Murillo, Courtesy Congress SEE

Costa Rica Set to Achieve Carbon Neutrality by 2021

By Fabiola Ortiz

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (IDN) – It has been twenty two years since Costa Rica embarked on its national program of payment for environmental services (PES), the first in the world to start a nationwide scheme for compensating landowners for keeping the forests standing for people and the planet.

Now that the world struggles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit the global temperature rise by the end of the century, this Central American nation of five million people has served as an example of public policies addressing the taxation of fossil fuels in favour of the protection of nature. The country pledges to become carbon neutral by 2021.

: Fabiola Ortiz; THE WORLD; Latin America & the Caribbean; 03 October 2018

Africa Gets Ready for Biodiversity and Climate Change Summits

By Justus Wanzala

NAIROBI (IDN) – African governments have been availing of two conferences at the UN Environment Headquarters in the Kenyan capital in September to gear up for the Biological Diversity Summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, and the Climate Summit in Katowice, Poland.

The African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) from September 17 to 19 provided an opportunity to prepare for the 14th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD-COP14) from November 17 to 29, 2018 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.

: Justus Wanzala; THE WORLD; Africa; 03 October 2018

Rethinking Mobility – How to Respond to Opportunities in a Changing World

Viewpoint by David Suttie*

ROME (IDN) – Rural people often migrate seasonally with their herds, or to join the harvest in other districts. They frequently travel to towns and cities to trade, do temporary jobs, or advance their education.

In some regions of the world, nomadic cultures are commonplace. Migration is one of the most debated topics and policymakers are fully aware of how much people move around. What is lacking is reliable data – movement is very difficult to capture in official statistical systems.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 02 October 2018

You Can Help Achieve Zero Land Degradation

By Monique Barbut

The writer is Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, and the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCDD) based in Bonn, Germany. This viewpoint underlines the importance of June 17 that marks every year the celebration of the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought (WDCD). – The Editor.

BONN (IDN) – Are you overwhelmed by the depressing news coming at you daily? Conflict, forced migrants, famine, floods, hurricanes, extinction of species, climate change, threats of war … a seemingly endless list. It might surprise you, but you can really make a difference on many of these issues.

Just like every raindrop counts towards a river and every vote counts in an election, so does every choice you make in what you consume. With every produce you consume, you strengthen the river of sustainability or of unsustainability. It is either a vote in favor of policies that spread 'social goods' like peace and poverty eradication or 'social bads' like – conflict or grinding poverty.