Africa

Ranton Anjain, 17, from the Marshall Islands, speaks at a press conference announcing a collective action being taken on behalf of young people facing the impacts of the climate crisis. UNICEF/Radhika Chalasani

By Esther Ngumbi
ILLINOIS, United States, Feb 14 2020 (IPS)

Recently, the Associated Press cropped out Ugandan climate change activist Vanessa Nakate from a photo at the World Economic Forum. The remaining activists in the photo, including Greta Thunberg, were all white.

While the AP cited picture composition as the reason for the edit and later apologized for their actions, it still happened. The editing out of Nakate – who said it felt like her story had been erased — calls for a deeper reflection on the issue of diversity, inclusion, and the lack of representation of people of color and other marginalized groups in key global conversations.

In fact, people of color should be the ones we hear from the most when it comes to issues like climate change. According to climate research and many reports, including the recently released IPCC report, the outcomes of climate change disproportionally affects people living in developing countries.

Highlighting activists of color is good for everyone. Convincingly, a growing body of evidence shows that when minorities and underrepresented voices are included, and their voices and actions displayed, including in science, everyone benefits

For example, in March of 2019, flooding events in Malawi and Mozambique brought about by climate change affected and disrupted the lives of nearly 843,000 people. In addition, in the same year, drought, floods, and conflicts brought about by the changing climate, contributed to soaring levels of hunger in the horn of Africa.

According to Save the Children, nearly 13 million people were affected by hunger with children making half the number.

Instead, climate activists and voices from these communities must be centered in global conversations if we are to sustainably mitigate climate change. They bring in firsthand experience which can greatly inform climate change conversations, science, action, and policy.

As an African climate change activist who has greatly benefited from media visibility, I strongly feel we must highlight activists of color in the media – it matters who is featured there. Undoubtedly, Thunberg is a passionate, fearless and determined activist and she deserves to be celebrated.

But we should also hear about the actions of young people like Kaluki Paul Mutuku from Kenya, who has been engaged in conservation work and activism,  Leah Namugerwa, a climate activist from Uganda, also engaged with Friday climate strikes and Ridhima Pandey, a climate activist from India.

Failing to showcase and highlight the contributions, ideas, and actions of these activists from developing countries hurts us all. It actively crops these voices out and reduces the chances that their worthy ideas will help shape policies and the world.

Often those ideas are ingenious, born of necessity and creativity. This is something I saw firsthand while growing up in rural Kenya in a town with no electricity or Internet. People in these regions innovate every day, but their ideas and ways of addressing challenges are rarely featured – and not on a global scale. This should change.

Further, rendering these activists invisible potentially denies them the chance of catching the eye of and benefiting from funding agencies that can finance their ideas and amplify their contributions. It perpetuates the problem by allowing groups with more visibility and funding in the first place to continue to grow through support.

Highlighting activists of color is good for everyone. Convincingly, a growing body of evidence shows that when minorities and underrepresented voices are included, and their voices and actions displayed, including in science, everyone benefits.

It makes our world stronger. It also sends a message to other activists and aspiring young people that they, too, can be the voice on issues of our day.

In contrast, by failing to recognize all activists, we perpetuate the narrative that only certain people can achieve greatness. Only certain people can be activists. Yet, this is not true. Even with the lack of representation, we have examples of people of color who have broken glass ceilings.

The Late Nobel Prize winner, Wangaari Maathai, for example, was an environment activist whose work continues to inspire many people-young and old. Imagine how much more persons of color may be able to achieve if they have more recognition and support.

In the end, we all must make an effort to ensure that diversity and inclusion happens. Small actions like calling out these injustices as they happen would go a long way.  If you see something—say something.

We cannot stand by the perimeter and expect a just and equal world to happen. Evermore, we must continue to be creative and find other avenues to highlight activists of color and those from marginalized groups. We all have a stake in mitigating climate change.

 

Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the Entomology Department, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She is a Senior Food security fellow with the Aspen Institute and has written opinion pieces for various outlets including NPR, CNN, Los Angeles Times, Aljazeera and New York Times.

The post Amplifying Voices of Climate Activists of Color appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Harald Matern from Pixabay.

By Nelson Mandela Ogema
NAIROBI, Feb 14 2020 (IPS)

Widespread hatching and movement of destructive desert locusts will turn into a full-blown crisis in the coming weeks in East Africa and neighbouring countries, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization warns.

“Breeding continues in the Horn of Africa, which will cause locusts to increase further in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya with new swarms forming in March and April,” explains the FAO in a forecast.

The desert locusts have destroyed 70,000 hectares of farmland in Ethiopia and Somalia, threatening food security and livelihoods in both countries. According to the FAO, locust swarms of one square kilometer can eat the same amount of food in one day as about 35,000 people.

This is the worst desert locust invasion Kenya has had in 70 years, while Ethiopia and Somalia experienced an invasion of this magnitude 25 years ago, the FAO says.

The region experienced abnormally heavy rains between October and December, with flooding in regions that are normally semi-arid, creating conditions that are favourable for locust breeding.

 

A map dated February 10, 2020 showing Desert Locust spread from Kenya to Uganda and Tanzania. Source: FAO Locust Watch

 

“Locust swarms have started laying eggs and another generation of breeding will increase locust numbers,” says Keith Cressman, a senior locust forecasting officer at the FAO. “Urgent efforts must be made to stop them from increasing to protect the livelihoods of farmers and livestock holders.”

Stephen Njoka, the director-general of Desert Locust Control Organisation for Eastern Africa, tells SciDev.Net: “Climate change could be behind this invasion, for example the current rains in Kenya are very unusual, making vegetation available to the pests and creating suitable egg laying sites in the soil.”

The Horn of Africa, made up of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, has about 115 million people. Because locusts have been found to be nutritious by some communities and cultures in the region, eating them may be a mild measure of control given the overwhelming numbers of the insects, Njoka suggests.

Njoka says that aerial and ground spraying with safe pesticides are the best ways to control locust invasion. The FAO says US$70 million is needed to support rapid control operations, such as spraying with insecticides.

 

Desert Locust swarm in Kenya. Copyright: FAO/Sven Torfinn (This image has been Cropped).

 

But Daniel Otaye argues that the use of pesticides in the control of locusts is a source of concern, as pesticides might have devastating effects on other beneficial insects such as bees, green lacewings, and dragonflies, which contribute to ecosystem health.

Otaye, an associate professor and chairman in the Department of Biological Sciences, Egerton University in Kenya, says: “The invasion poses disastrous effects on the East African region that is still smarting from insecurity, droughts and aggressive floods.”

According to Otaye, the insects can devour fields of crops, such as maize and sorghum, and ravage pastures meant for livestock. He tells SciDev.Net that if the situation is left unchecked, the region might need additional food aid because of the anticipated crop and forage losses.

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

 

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A selection of the best photos from across the continent and beyond this week.

A lot of work is needed before Sudan's ex-dictator faces an international court, argues Alex de Waal.

From captaining a club in crisis in his early twenties to shining on Europe's biggest stage, Chelsea's latest signing Hakim Ziyech has had quite a journey from his street football origins.

The post Female Genital Mutilation: Not just an Emotional and Health Impact on Women but a $1.4 Billion Dollar Cost to Communities appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Two al-Qaeda bombers who had been trained in Sudan attacked the ship in 2000 killing 17 US sailors.

Chelsea reach an agreement with Ajax to sign the Dutch club's winger Hakim Ziyech this summer.

By Ebru Gokce Dessemond
GENEVA, Feb 13 2020 (IPS)

Digital platforms are at the centre of the global economy and daily lives of consumers.

A handful of these platforms have become dominant in specific markets without facing meaningful competition. They include Amazon as a marketplace, Facebook in social networking, Google in search engines and Apple and Google in application stores.

Digital platforms rely on big data and are characterized as multisided markets with economies of scale, network effects and winner-takes-all features.

These firms offer their products for “free” on one side of the market and earn revenues from online advertising and selling user data on the other side of the market.

The growing market power of these platforms raises concerns not only for consumers and smaller businesses but also for competition authorities.

Consumers not in control

Consumers can no longer control the use of their data. Smaller businesses face unfair market conditions, where they compete with big platforms that offer services by self-preferencing their own products. It is now widely recognized that these markets cannot self-correct.
What needs to be done?

One effective response is competition law and policy that promotes open and accessible markets with fair and reasonable terms for businesses. This goal is more pronounced in highly concentrated digital markets, where large platforms’ market power is enduring.

The most important competitive threats to monopolists are likely to come from new entrants, which are vulnerable to exclusionary conduct or anticompetitive acquisitions.

Governments should have in place relevant policies and legal frameworks to overcome different challenges of the platform economy. These include competition, consumer protection and data protection policies and legislation.

Adapt to new realities

There is a need for adapting competition law enforcement tools to new business realities by revising laws like in Germany and Austria or issuing regulations or guidelines as has been done in Kenya and Japan.

A 2017 law revision in Germany incorporated in the assessment of the market power of firms in the digital economy such criteria as direct and indirect network effects, parallel use of services from different providers and switching costs for users.

It also factored in economies of scale in connection with network effects, access by firms to data relevant for competition and innovation-driven competitive pressure.

This amendment allowed the Federal Cartel Office in Germany to consider these criteria in analyzing Facebook’s dominance in the social network market during its investigation into Facebook between March 2016 and February 2019.

Merger control regimes should enable competition authorities to scrutinize the acquisition of start-ups by major platforms.

Merger analysis needs to incorporate the role of data in acquiring and sustaining market power and establishing entry barriers to new firms, thereby affecting future competition and innovation.

Not only free but also fair competition

It is important to ensure not only free but also fair competition. This is more so in digital markets, where smaller firms face challenges in their contractual relationship with big platforms.

Competition law provisions on unfair trade practices and abuse of superior bargaining position, as found in competition laws of Japan and the Republic of Korea, would empower competition authorities in protecting the interests of smaller firms vis-à-vis big platforms.

Developing countries could consider this policy measure in revising their competition legislation or introduce a separate regulation concerning digital platforms’ dealings with their business users.

Such measures could facilitate entry of local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to platform markets, thereby allowing developing countries to reap the benefits of the digital economy.

This is important as SMEs are crucial to job creation and innovation. Both the implementation of fair competition legislation and review of acquisitions of startups by dominant platforms could play an important role in maintaining an inclusive, competitive and fair business environment in the digital economy. This might eventually enhance innovation.

Apt taxation policy needed

Another critical element needed to ensure fair competition is an appropriate taxation policy. A significant proportion of the value created in the digital economy results from users who provide data.

The current international corporate tax system is not adapted to the digital economy. There is not yet a common understanding of “value creation” for taxation purposes in the digital economy.

This leads to a disconnect between where value is generated and where taxes are paid. According to the UNCTAD Digital Economy Report 2019, taxes paid abroad by Facebook represented only 2.9% of the profits it generated outside the United States in 2017.

Ideally, an international taxation system, which is agreed upon by all countries, and recognizes the main aspects of digital businesses that have significant implications for taxation, should be put in place.

The post Restoring Competition in ”Winner-took-All” Digital Platform Markets appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ebru Gokce Dessemond is Legal Officer, UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

The post Restoring Competition in ”Winner-took-All” Digital Platform Markets appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Tsitsi Matekaire
LONDON, Feb 13 2020 (IPS)

Online sexual exploitation is a global epidemic that is increasing at an alarming rate.

At any one time, 750,000 individuals across the world are looking to connect with children and young people online for sexual exploitation. The expansion of the Internet, advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs), and the development of increasingly sophisticated digital tools that provide anonymity, mean that the number of potential victims is growing exponentially, and so too is the pool of those seeking to abuse them.

An investigation by The New York Times on how technology companies and the US government are being overwhelmed by this epidemic found that a record 45 million online photos and videos of child sexual exploitation were reported by US-based technology companies to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in 2018.

And the problem is getting worse. In 2019, record-breaking 70 million total images and videos were reported to NICMEC, an enormous increase on the 1.1 million it received in 2014.

Children and young people are especially connected online. One in three Internet users worldwide are under the age of 18 years, and with availability and accessibility continuing to improve, more and more children own or have access to Internet-enabled smart devices.

Technology is also making children contactable around the clock. Young people across the world are spending an increasing amount of time online, and in the US, teenagers are now engaging with screen media seven hours per day on average.

Accompanying this is the expansion of social media, which has created a plethora of new opportunities for would-be offenders to connect and interact with children anonymously and unsupervised.

Adolescent girls are particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation. They are subjected to a double layer of discrimination because they are young and female, and are sexualized from a young age, both in the way society treats them and in how the media portrays them.

Sexualized images of girls and young women are ubiquitous in advertising, merchandising, and the entertainment industry. All this perpetuates gender stereotypes that can negatively impact the developing body image and self-esteem of girls.

Social media has amplified these long-standing pressures, pushing girls to conform to particular sexualized narratives, and leaving them especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation both off and online.

New data gathered by UK based internet watchdog the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) revealed that 30 percent of sexually explicit images of children found online are self-generated.

IWF took action over 124,605 images found online between January and November 2019. Over three-quarters of these images (78 per cent) featured children aged 11 to 13, most of whom were girls.

Adolescent girls are particularly at risk of being groomed, coerced, or blackmailed into providing explicit images and videos, often via webcams, which can then be posted online and shared via networks operating across the world.

In some instances, children are sending videos and images to their peers on smartphones and via social media platforms. For the most part, this content will remain with the person it was intended for, but sometimes material is passed onto others. Once online, it is almost impossible to control where it ends up or stop its spread.

Victims can be left feeling sexually violated, powerless, socially isolated, and stigmatized. A range of mental health problems are associated with this, including PTSD, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts.

Exploited children are at a heightened risk of becoming exploited and vulnerable adults, and as victims reach the age of majority, they no longer have the legal protections afforded to minors in different legal and policy contexts.

Particularly disturbing can be the ongoing sense of re-victimization arising from images of abuse being shared repeatedly across the digital landscape and viewed multiple times by countless people.

Frequently, requests asking for content to be removed are ignored, or image taken off one online platform, soon reappear elsewhere. This can feel like ongoing sexual assault, casting a long shadow that can have a profoundly damaging impact continuing into adulthood.

Commendable efforts in progress, but more challenges to overcome

Governments, technology companies, research institutions, civil society organizations, donors, and many others are rising to the challenge and are providing various examples of successful interventions and innovations.

In 2009, Microsoft partnered with Dartmouth College to develop PhotoDNA, a technology that aids in locating and removing online child abuse content. Today, PhotoDNA is used around the world to detect and report millions of illegal images. It works by creating a unique digital signature of an image called a “hash”, which is similar to a fingerprint.

The hash can then be matched to copies of the same image so they can be located and removed by governments and tech companies.

Organizations such as NetClean and Thorn are harnessing the power of technology to create tools to assist law enforcement, tech platforms, and civil society organizations in identifying illegal material online, track exploiters, and bring them to justice.

The Global Threat Assessment by WePROTECT Global Alliance to End Child Sexual Exploitation Online has brought together governments, the tech industry, and NGOs to galvanize global action, increase understanding about the nature and scale of the problem, and develop and implement strategies.

These efforts are commendable and have begun to make inroads. However, the globalized nature of online sexual exploitation, combined with it continuously expanding and evolving landscape, means we still face enormous challenges and new obstacles.

Not everyone around the world is being afforded the same protections. International women’s rights organization Equality Now is undertaking a review of existing international and regional legal frameworks relevant to online sexual exploitation to understand in greater detail the practices, gaps, and opportunities.

Technological solutions need to work alongside legal and policy solutions, but existing legal frameworks are diverse and inadequate. In many countries, legislation and law enforcement have failed to keep up with cybercrime, and some governments have not yet prioritized the threat or have limited resources to invest in infrastructure and safeguards to protect vulnerable people.

Exploiters and the online platforms they use operate across national borders, and legislation has not been updated to adequately address issues regarding legal jurisdictions. For instance, any website – whether a large multinational company, one set up specifically to facilitate exploitation, or any other platform – may use servers located in various locations overseen by different legal authorities.

Other difficulties arise from balancing the rights to privacy and freedom of expression with the need for regulation that protects vulnerable people from exploitation.

Analysis of the problem, and identification and development of solutions, needs to include a gendered lens so that the specific vulnerabilities and needs of adolescent girls are considered and addressed.

Teenage girls often fall through gaps in the law, leaving them without the same basic protections that are in place for younger children, meaning they are less safe, less likely to be given support, and less likely to receive justice if their rights have been violated. They are also commonly blamed or even criminalized instead of being treated as victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation.

The global and complex nature of online sexual exploitation requires that all of us come together to find solutions. This involves applying a gendered lens to research and understanding how the Internet and technology are being misused to facilitate sexual exploitation.

We need to formulate and adopt common international regulations or a global convention the layout the responsibility and accountability of all actors involved in the online sexual exploitation of vulnerable people. This involves having mechanisms in place to address new legal challenges as they emerge.

Crucial to success is having survivors at the center of discussions so their voices are heard and their perspectives inform and strengthen solutions. Listening to those with first-hand experience and documenting systematically what they have been through can help us identify what needs to change and put better protections in place so the world can benefit from an Internet that is safer for all. For media enquiries and interview requests please contact Sr.

*Equality Now is an international human rights organization that works to protect and promote the rights of women and girls around the world by combining grassroots activism with international, regional and national legal advocacy. Equality Now’s international network of lawyers, activists, and supporters achieve legal and systemic change by holding governments responsible for enacting and enforcing laws and policies that end legal inequality, sex trafficking, sexual violence, and harmful practices such as female genital mutilation and child marriage.

For details of our current campaigns, please visit www.equalitynow.org and find us on Facebook @equalitynoworg and Twitter @equalitynow.

The post Internet Needs New Global Regulations Against Online Sexual Exploitation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Tsitsi Matekaire is Global Lead for Equality Now’s End Sex Trafficking programme.

The post Internet Needs New Global Regulations Against Online Sexual Exploitation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Rupert Smith, one of 17 convicted offenders deported to Jamaica, says he has "had his life taken away".

Women form the largest labour population, yet prior to the passing of the ‘Sindh Women Agricultural Workers Bill’, customary laws in Pakistan did not recognise women as legal inheritors. Copyright: Asian Development Bank, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. This image has been cropped.

By Quratulain Fatima
ISLAMABAD, Feb 13 2020 (IPS)

When Pakistan’s eastern Sindh province passed the ‘Sindh Women Agricultural Workers Bill’ on 20 December, giving women in agriculture, livestock, fisheries and other agro-based work the same rights and benefits enjoyed by workers in the industrial sector, it was a revolutionary step for the whole of South Asia. 

The new legislation is limited to Sindh province but speaks volumes about the state of women’s rights in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan, countries where  agriculture is  the biggest sector and women form the largest labour population.

As a land revenue officer and administrator in Pakistan for the past nine years, I have come across women who have worked their whole lives on lands they are prevented from owning by male relatives.

Although they make up more than half the agricultural labour force in developing nations, women own only 10 to 20 per cent of the land

Although Pakistan’s land and inheritance laws make it mandatory to divide land fairly among heirs on the death of the owner, more often than not women avoid staking claims for fear of being ostracised by their male relatives.

In Pakistan, as late as the 1960s, land records were maintained according to customary laws as introduced by the British Raj in pre-partition India. The said customary laws did not recognise women as legal inheritors and the family trees required for keeping land records omitted women’s names to deny them legal existence.

In 1960, the enforcement of Islamic laws of inheritance saw inclusion of women in land ownership. But in practice, this right to property was twisted either by force or by manipulating it to ‘gift’ their share to male relatives. Few women with rustic backgrounds dare stand up against this injustice — but that is a larger struggle against extreme patriarchy.

The state of women’s land and agriculture rights in Pakistan is a microcosm of the historical barriers that prevent them from owning land or farming around the world. For example, until 1850, married American women had no legal right to own land, and in Brazil, women’s right to own land became official only in 1988.

In 2010, the Nicaraguan government finally adopted legal measures to improve rural women’s access to credit in order to facilitate their path toward land ownership. There is very little sex-disaggregated data on land ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, but most studies suggest that women own far less land than men.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020 said that only a handful of countries are approaching economic equality, and estimated that it will take another 257 years for the world to achieve economic gender equality. While 78 per cent of men are in the labour market, only half of all adult women are employed.

To achieve gender parity, the rights of women employed in the agriculture sector are urgent and important. Although they make up more than half the agricultural labour force in developing nations, women own only 10 to 20 per cent of the land. That restricts a woman’s chances of making farming contracts that provide higher incomes and better returns on labour.

Gender norms in developing countries also prevent women from bringing their crops to market, and when they do, they usually face hostile environments in male-
dominated farm markets.

Governments can intervene on behalf of women farmers. They can reposition gender equality and protection as central to all development initiatives. The first step, as taken by Pakistan, can be to end discrimination against women farmers under the law, followed by rights to buy and sell land, demand equal wages for agricultural labour, take legal steps for income generation, and access credit, technology and technical assistance.

Enacting the laws is not enough, implementing them through good governance is as important.

Gender-focused policies towards women farmers and donor initiatives like ‘Feed the Future,’ aimed at empowering women farmers, can be helpful in private and public sector alike. Access to gender-specific trainings, agri-extension services, mobile technology for market information and laboursaving technology for enhanced productivity are other empowering measures.

Women in agriculture must be facilitated to avail of finance and loans, infrastructure and markets so that they can switch from wage-based labour to sustainable ownership farming. Women-only farm markets and women focused subsidies on crops and equipment may generate better results than generic policies.

FAO estimates that given equal access to agricultural resources, women’s farming yields can increase. By giving women the same access as men to agricultural resources such as credit, technology and equipment, increase in productivity on their farms in developing countries can rise by 20—30 percent which, in turn, can help feed an additional 100—150 million people in the world.

FAO asserts that earning extra income would enable women to spend more money on health care, nutrition and education for their children — investments that could produce long-term, positive results for farm families and their neighbours.

Sindh province seems serious in implementing the new law. However, Pakistan is a country where land reforms have been thwarted by big landlords who tend to be influential politicians.

Implementation can begin with documentation of all women labourers working in agri-sector. Defining punishments and fines for persons who indulge in discriminatory practices against women workers are another step. Above all, the law needs to be followed by policies and practices in a consistent manner.

Gender equality may still be a hundred years away but giving women agricultural rights will not only help close the gender gap but also boost the economy and reduce poverty.

 

Quratulain Fatima, is a co-founder of Women4PeaceTech and a policy practitioner working extensively in rural and conflict-ridden areas of Pakistan with a focus on gender-inclusive development and conflict prevention. She is a 2018 Aspen New Voices Fellow.

 

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

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An audit into the state of the Confederation of African Football (Caf) has revealed an organisation in a state of disarray - both with regard to finances and governance.

In South Africa, residents sick of intermittent water and power in their town are taking action.

Mohamed Salah's potential involvement at the Tokyo Olympics will be a decision for the player and his club Liverpool, says Egypt coach Shawky Gharib.

By External Source
Feb 12 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The Pacific Community (SPC) is calling for contestants to join the Pacific Healthy Recipe Contest and showcase their cooking skills and creativity to promote healthy eating and prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

Up to 75 per cent of deaths in Pacific countries are related to NCDs, such as diabetes and heart diseases, with unhealthy diets and lifestyles seen as important factors in their development.

From observation, the Pacific diet has changed over time and consumption of local foods has transitioned into consumption of more imported processed foods that are high in sugar, fat and salt. Approaches to improve eating habits includes trainings on healthy eating, development of resources to improve knowledge and health promoting campaigns to increase awareness.

Who can apply?
The contest will be open to all Pacific Island Countries and Territories.

How to apply
The contest will be launched through SPC social media.

Contestants will be invited to:
– Complete the registration online until 29 February 2020
– Follow the directions given to submit details of their recipe that they have created together with a photo of the prepared dish.

Prize
The winner and their entire family (up to 10 people) will enjoy a gourmet meal prepared in the comfort of their own home by a well-known chef!
All participants will get a copy of the ‘Pasifka Plates’ cook book.

How to assess the winner?
Assessment of the winner will be based on:

• Use of local ingredients
• Recipe with less sugar, salt and fat
• Creative and aesthetic presentation
• Showcasing of Pacific cooking traditions.

The recipes will be made available on the SPC website as well as shared through other means of communication.

Useful links:
Competition Terms and Conditions
Participation Form

For more information, it is possible to contact the organizers at the following address: health-enquiries@spc.int.

Media contacts:
Solène Bertrand-Protat, Non-Communicable Diseases Advisor, Public Health Division (PHD), Pacific Community (SPC) | soleneb@spc.int

General Inquiries:
Evlyn Mani, Communications Officer, Public Health Division (PHD), Pacific Community (SPC) | evlynm@spc.int

Alexandre Brecher, Senior Communications Officer, Corporate Communication Office, Pacific Community (SPC) | alexandreb@spc.int

About SPC:
The Pacific Community has been supporting sustainable development in the Pacific, through science, knowledge and innovation since 1947. It is the principal intergovernmental organization in the region, owned and governed by its 26 member countries and territories.

Division
Corporate
Public Health Division (PHD)

The post The Pacific Community launches the Pacific Healthy Recipe Contest appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A blue ice area, part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Professor Chris Turney, Author provided<

By Chris Fogwill, Chris Turney, and Zoë Thomas
Feb 12 2020 (IPS)

Rising global temperatures and warming ocean waters are causing one of the world’s coldest places to melt. While we know that human activity is causing climate change and driving rapid changes in Antarctica, the potential impacts that a warmer world would have on this region remain uncertain. Our new research might be able to provide some insight into what effect a warmer world would have in Antarctica, by looking at what happened more than 129,000 years ago.

We found that the mass melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was a major cause of high sea levels during a period known as the Last Interglacial (129,000-116,000 years ago). The extreme ice loss caused more than three metres of average global sea level rise – and worryingly, it took less than 2˚C of ocean warming for it to occur.

To conduct our research, we travelled to an area on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and drilled into so-called blue ice areas to reconstruct the glacial history of this ice sheet.

Blue ice areas are areas of ancient ice which have been brought to the surface by fierce, high-density winds, called katabatic winds. When these winds blow over mountains, they remove the top layer of snow and erode the exposed ice. As the ice is removed by the wind, ancient ice is brought to the surface, which offers insight into the ice sheet’s history.

While most Antarctic researchers drill deep into the ice to extract their samples, we were able to use a technique called horizontal ice core analysis. As you travel closer to the mountains of the ice sheet, the ice that been brought to the surface by these winds progressively gets older. We then were able to take surface samples on a straight, horizontal line across the blue ice area to reconstruct what happened to the ice sheet in the past.

Drilling into blue ice.
Professor Chris Turney, Author provided

Our team took many measurements. We first looked at the fine layers of volcanic ash in the ice to pinpoint when the mass melting took place. Alarmingly, the results showed that most ice loss happened at the start of Last Interglacial warming, some 129,000 years ago – showing how sensitive the Antarctic is to higher temperatures. We think it’s likely this melting started well before the ocean warmed by 2˚C. This is concerning to us today, as ocean temperatures continue to increase, and the West Antarctic is already melting.

We also measured temperature-sensitive water molecules across the blue ice area. These isotopes revealed a large shift in temperatures, highlighting a major gap in our record at the start of the Last Interglacial. This indicates a period of sustained ice loss over thousands of years.

This period of missing ice coincides with extreme sea level rise, suggesting rapid ice melt from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. DNA testing of ancient microbes preserved in the ice revealed an abundance of methane-consuming bacteria. Their presence suggests that the release of methane gases from sediments under the ice sheet may have also played a role in accelerating the warming process.

The West Antarctic ice sheet can tell us a lot about the effect of warming ocean temperatures because it rests on the seabed. It’s surrounded by large areas of floating ice, called ice shelves, that protect the central part of the sheet. As warmer ocean water travels into cavities beneath the ice shelves, ice melts from below, thinning the shelves and making the central sheet highly vulnerable to warming ocean temperatures. This process is currently being researched on the West Antarctic Thwaites Glacier, nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier”.

Using data from our fieldwork, we ran model simulations to investigate how warming might affect the floating ice shelves. These ice shelves protect the ice sheets and help slow the flow of ice off the continent. Our results suggest a 3.8 metre sea level rise during the first thousand years of a 2˚C warmer ocean. Most of the modelled sea level rise occurred after the loss of the ice shelves, which collapsed within the first two hundred years of higher temperatures.

These findings are worrying – especially if persistent high sea surface temperatures could prompt the larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet to melt, driving global sea levels even higher. But our findings suggest the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may be close to a tipping point. Only a small temperature increase could trigger abrupt ice sheet melt and a multi-metre rise in global sea levels.

At the moment, research suggests that global sea levels could rise between 45-82cm over the next century. However, it’s thought that Antarctica will only contribute around 5cm of this – most of this sea level rise will be caused by warmer ocean waters and the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. But based on our findings, Antarctica’s contribution could be much greater than anticipated.

Despite 197 countries committing under the Paris agreement to restricting global warming to 2˚C by the end of this century, our findings show that even minor increases in temperature could have far-reaching impacts.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Excerpt:

Chris Fogwill, Professor of Glaciology and Palaeoclimatology, Keele University; Chris Turney, Professor of Earth Science and Climate Change, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW, and Zoë Thomas, ARC DECRA Fellow, UNSW

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