South America – Page 9 – Desdemona Despair

Maps showing poverty impact hotspots as percentages of countries’ population that could fall into poverty as a result of soaring food and energy prices. Among those countries likely facing high poverty impacts across all poverty lines are Armenia and Uzbekistan in the Caspian Basin; Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Sudan in Sub-Saharan Africa; Haiti in Latin America; and Pakistan and Sri Lanka in South Asia. In these countries, around 3 percent of the population, on average, could fall into poverty. In Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Yemen, the impacts could be particularly hard at the lowest poverty lines, whereas in Albania, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine, the hits could be hardest at $5.50 a day.7 Clear geographical hotspots, depending on the poverty line, emerge in Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly in the Sahel region, the Balkans and the Caspian Basin. Graphic: UNDP

July 7, 2022

Cost-of-living crisis drives 71 million people into extreme poverty in three months – “This cost-of-living crisis is tipping millions of people into poverty and even starvation at breathtaking speed”

By Marc Jones 7 July 2022 LONDON (Reuters) – The global cost-of-living crisis is pushing an additional 71 million people in the world’s poorest countries into extreme poverty, a new report published by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) on Thursday has warned. Achim Steiner, UNDP administrator, said an analysis of 159 developing countries showed that […]

Poster demanding justice for Dom Phillips, a British journalist, and Bruno Pereira, a Brazilian expert on indigenous people, who were murdered while doing investigative work in a remote region of the Amazon rainforest in early June 2022. Graphic: Cris Vector

June 27, 2022

Assassinated British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira laid to rest in Brazil – Indigenous group Univaja demands probe into murders – “They tried to tell the world what was happening to the rainforest and its inhabitants”

By Tom Phillips and Andrew Downie 26 June 2022 Niterói (The Guardian) – The British journalist Dom Phillips has been laid to rest in Brazil, exactly three weeks after he was gunned down while journeying through the Amazon with the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira. Pereira and Phillips, a longtime Guardian contributor, disappeared while travelling on […]

Esther Elaar, a pregnant mother living in Loima, Turkana County, Northern Kenya, fetches and carries 20 litres of water for her family to use every day. Photo: BBC Media Action

June 26, 2022

Is the world running out of freshwater? “A lot of women have miscarried in this area while going to look for water”

By Simge Eva Dogan 1 June 2022 (Wellcome) – More than half of the world’s population faces water scarcity for at least one month a year. Safe water is a basic human right and essential for our health, whether we use it for drinking, food production or hygiene. But it’s also a finite resource. Only […]

Aerial view of an illegal mining operation on Yanomami land in Roraima, in the Amazon rainforest. By April 2021, a Greenpeace flyover had already shown the expansion of the mine in the Yanomami land, which a year later was the second most deforested indigenous territory in the entire Amazon. Photo: Christian Braga / Greenpeace

June 4, 2022

Amazon deforestation in April 2022 increased by 54 percent, making it the worst April in the last 15 years

11 May 2022 (Imazon) – The Amazon is getting closer and closer to suffering from a new annual record for deforestation. However, there is still time to reduce forest loss before the so-called “deforestation calendar” closes at the end of July. And the time to act must be now, because in May begins the dry […]

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro arrives at a resort hotel to meet with Elon Musk in Porto Feliz, Brazil, Friday, 20 May 2022. The Telsa and SpaceX chief executive officer tweeted that he was in Brazil to help bring Internet service to rural schools in the Amazon and to help monitor the Amazon environmentally. Photo: Andre Penner / AP Photo

May 22, 2022

Elon Musk visits Brazil’s Bolsonaro to discuss Amazon plans

By Diane Jeantet 20 May 2022 RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Tesla and SpaceX chief executive officer Elon Musk met with Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday to discuss connectivity and other projects in the Amazon rainforest. The meeting, held in a luxurious resort in Sao Paulo state, was organized by Communications Minister Fábio Faria, who has […]

Russia tree cover loss, 2001-2021. The rate of loss in in boreal forests reached unprecedented levels in 2021, increasing by 29 percent over 2020. An unprecedented fire season in Russia drove much of this increase. Russia experienced the worst fire season since record-keeping began in 2001, with more than 6.5 million hectares of tree cover loss in 2021. While fires are a natural part of boreal forest ecosystems, larger, more intense fires are worrying. Hotter, drier weather related to climate change has led to fire-prone conditions, drier peatlands and melted permafrost. Siberia’s vast peatland area — the largest in the world — stores massive amounts of carbon, which is released into the atmosphere when peat dries up. Melting permafrost also releases stored carbon and methane. These conditions may represent a new normal, impacting people living in Siberia and creating a feedback loop in which increasing fires and carbon emissions reinforce each other and lead to worsening conditions. Graphic: WRI

May 8, 2022

Vast forest losses in 2021 imperil global climate targets, report says – “We’re seeing fires burning more frequently, more intensively and more broadly than they ever would under normal conditions”

By Jake Spring 28 April 2022 SAO PAULO, April 28 (Reuters) – The world lost an area of forest the size of the U.S. state of Wyoming last year, as wildfires in Russia set all-time records and Brazilian deforestation of the Amazon remains high, a global forest monitoring project report said on Thursday. Global Forest Watch, which […]

Global distribution of estimated excess mortality rate due to the COVID-19 pandemic, for the cumulative period 2020–21. Although reported COVID-19 deaths between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021 totaled 5.94 million worldwide, IHME estimates that 18.2 million (95 percent uncertainty interval 17.1–19.6) people died worldwide because of the COVID-19 pandemic over that period, as measured by excess mortality. Graphic: Wang, et al., 2022 / The Lancet

May 7, 2022

WHO estimates nearly 15 million deaths associated with COVID-19, more than double the official toll – “When you have a massive outbreak where people are dying in the streets because of a lack of oxygen, we end up never knowing just how many people died”

By Maria Cheng 5 May 2022 LONDON (AP) – The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 15 million people were killed either by coronavirus or by its impact on overwhelmed health systems during the first two years of the pandemic, more than double the current official death toll of over 6 million. Most of the […]

Global quantities of amphetamine-type stimulants seized, 2009-2019. Data: Responses to the annual report questionnaire (UNODC, 2021). Graphic: EMCDDA

May 7, 2022

Europe turns into cocaine hub as multi-billion-euro market expands, EU says

By Francesco Guarascio 6 May 2022 BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Europe is increasingly becoming a hub for production and trans-shipment of cocaine to other regions of the world, in addition to being a major consumption market, EU agencies said on Friday, warning also about the expanding methamphetamine industry. After cannabis, cocaine is the most consumed drug […]

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 […]

Press freedom situation in 180 countries and territories, 2013-2022. Graphic: Reporters Sans Frontières

May 3, 2022

RSF’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index: a new era of polarisation – Journalism situation classified “very bad” in record number of 28 countries

2 May 2022 (RSF) – The 20th World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reveals a two-fold increase in polarisation amplified by information chaos – that is, media polarisation fuelling divisions within countries, as well as polarisation between countries at the international level. Читать на русском / Read in Russian The 2022 […]