Central America – Page 2 – Desdemona Despair

EIU Democracy Index 2022, global map by regime type. The average global index score stagnated in 2022. Despite expectations of a rebound after the lifting of pandemic-related restrictions, the score was almost unchanged, at 5.29 (on a 0-10 scale), compared with 5.28 in 2021. The positive effect of the restoration of individual freedoms was cancelled out by negative developments globally. The scores of more than half of the countries measured by the index either stagnated or declined. Western Europe was a positive outlier, being the only region whose score returned to pre-pandemic levels. Graphic: EIU

February 3, 2023

EIU Democracy Index 2022: Frontline democracy and the battle for Ukraine – “Overall the story is one of stagnation. This is a dismal result given that in 2022 the world started to move on from the pandemic-related suppression of individual liberties that persisted through 2020 and 2021”

1 February 2023 (EIU) – The Democracy Index, which began in 2006, provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide in 165 independent states and two territories. This covers almost the entire population of the world and the vast majority of the world’s states (microstates are excluded). The Democracy Index is based on five […]

A graveyard that has been washed into the sea due to coastal erosion at Monkey River, a coastal village in south-east Belize. Photo: Andrea Ocampo / UN Video

January 30, 2023

Saving a Belize village from man-made erosion – “I don’t want to see more graves go to the sea”

8 January 2023 (UN News) – “My grandma and my grandfather are now washed out in the sea,” says Mario Muschamp, gazing out at the coast near his close-knit Creole community. “You know, their graves are gone. That really hurts.” This is the reality for the inhabitants of Monkey River, who have watched on, powerless, […]

Map showing Biodiversity Intactness Index for the year 2020 at 0.25° resolution. The global average is 77 percent. Data: Natural History Museum, 2022. Graphic: WWF / ZSL

October 27, 2022

WWF’s Living Planet Report 2022 reveals devastating 69 percent average drop in wildlife populations since 1970 – “We have cut away the very foundation of life and the situation continues to worsen”

TORONTO, 12 October 2022 (WWF-Canada) – Monitored wildlife populations — mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish — have seen a devastating 69 per cent drop on average since 1970 according to WWF’s Living Planet Report (LPR) 2022. The report highlights the stark outlook of the state of nature and urgently warns governments, businesses and the public to take […]

Colombian natives and activists during a protest in Bogotá, Colombia, on 23 August 2019. Photo: RAUL ARBOLEDA / AFP / Getty Images

October 21, 2022

Countries where the most people are killed defending the environment

By Angelo Young 15 October 2022 (24/7 Wall St.) – As the world comes to the realization of the profound damages human beings are causing to natural environments worldwide, groups across the globe have long been trying to protect the local land and environment. In some places, these struggles are not always peaceful, and last […]

Prevalence of undernourishment (left axis) and number of undernourished people (right axis), 2005-2021. World hunger rose further in 2021, following a sharp upturn in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The persistence of the pandemic and its enduring consequences, which exacerbated existing inequalities, have contributed to further setbacks in 2021 toward achievement of the Zero Hunger target by 2030. Between 702 and 828 million people in the world faced hunger in 2021. Considering the middle of the projected range (768 million), hunger affected 46 million more people in 2021 compared to 2020, and a total of 150 million more people since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Graphic: FAO

July 6, 2022

UN report: World hunger rose again in 2021, with 2.3 billion people severely or moderately hungry – “This year’s report should dispel any lingering doubts that the world is moving backward in its efforts to end hunger”

By Edith M. Lederer 6 July 2022 UNITED NATIONS (AP) – World hunger rose in 2021, with around 2.3 billion people facing moderate or severe difficulty obtaining enough to eat — and that was before the Ukraine war, which has sparked increases in the cost of grain, fertilizer and energy, according to a U.N. report […]

Gallup Worldwide Negative Experience Index, 2006-2021. Globally, unhappiness has been rising for a decade. In 2021, negative emotions — the aggregate of the stress, sadness, anger, worry, and physical pain that people feel every day — reached a new record in the history of Gallup’s tracking. As 2021 served up a steady diet of uncertainty, the world became a slightly sadder, more worried, and more stressed-out place than it was the year before, which helped push Gallup’s Negative Experience Index to yet another new high of 33 in 2021. Graphic: Gallup

June 29, 2022

Gallup Global Emotions Report 2022: World unhappier, more stressed out than ever – “2 billion people are so unhappy with where they live, they wouldn’t recommend it to anyone they know”

By Julie Ray 28 June 2022 WASHINGTON, D.C. (Gallup) – Emotionally, the second year of the pandemic was an even tougher year for the world than the first one, according to Gallup’s latest annual global update on the negative and positive experiences that people are having each day. As 2021 served up a steady diet of uncertainty, […]

Map showing the Global Peace Index in 2022. The average level of global peacefulness deteriorated by 0.3 percent in the 2022 GPI. Graphic: IEP

June 21, 2022

Global Peace Index 2022: Peacefulness declines to lowest level in 15 years – “The economic value of lost peace reached record levels in 2021”

15 June 2022 (IEP) – The 16th edition of the annual Global Peace Index (GPI) report, the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness, reveals that the average level of global peacefulness deteriorated by 0.3% in 2021. This is the eleventh deterioration in peacefulness in the last fourteen years, with 90 countries improving, and 71 deteriorating, […]

Climate change impacts on poverty by 2030 in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Additional people living in extreme poverty as a percent of the total population, by country (left); additional people living in extreme poverty, by country (right). Climate change could drive millions of people in LAC back into extreme poverty. Graphic: World Bank

May 7, 2022

Climate disasters in Latin America threaten to drive six million into poverty in next decade

By David Callaway 26 April 2022 MANAGUA, Nicaragua (Callaway Climate Insights) – As Latin America prepares for another disastrous hurricane season, two major intergovernmental reports are pointing to the need for urgency in reversing years of climate-related disasters that have driven more people into poverty. A report by the World Bank this month said over the past […]

South African environmental activist Fikile Ntshangase was assassinated by four gunmen in her own home on 22 October 2020. “Mama” Ntshangase was a leading member of the Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation, which is taking legal action against the proposed expansion of an open-cast coal mine operated by Tendele Coal near Somkhele, situated near Hluhluwe–Imfolozi park, the oldest nature reserve in Africa. Photo: Rob Symons / All Rise

September 13, 2021

Record number of environmental activists murdered in 2020 – “Fighting the climate crisis carries an unbearably heavy burden for some, who risk their lives to save the forests, rivers, and biospheres”

By Claire Marshall 13 September 2021 (BBC) – A record number of activists working to protect the environment and land rights were murdered last year, according to a report by a campaign group. 227 people were killed around the world in 2020, the highest number recorded for a second consecutive year, the report from Global […]

Global quantities of cocaine seized, by region, 1998–2019. Quantities of cocaine seized reached record levels in 2019. In 2019, the global quantity of cocaine seized increased by 9.6 percent compared with the preceding year to reach 1,436 tons (of varying purities), a record high. The 90 percent increase in the quantities of cocaine seized between 2009 and 2019 is likely a reflection of a combination of factors, including an increase in cocaine manufacture (50 per cent between 2009 and 2019) and a subsequent increase in cocaine trafficking, as well as an increase in the efficiency of law enforcement, which may have contributed to an increase in the overall interception rate. Graphic: UNODC

June 28, 2021

Illegal drug trade back to business as usual in 2020 and 2021 – Cocaine production hits record high – Number of people using illegal drugs increased by 22 percent in 2010-2019 decade

By Pia Lee-Brago 28 June 2021 (The Philippine Star) – Around 275 million people used illegal drugs worldwide in the last year of unprecedented upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, up by 22 percent from 2010, and it is “business as usual” again for drug traffickers, according to the latest annual world drug report by […]