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Human activity is causing the diversity of life on Earth to be lost at a greatly accelerated rate. These losses are irreversible, impoverish us all and damage the life support systems we rely on every day. However, if the international community shows the will to mobilize and coordinate efforts, it’s possible to prevent them. That’s why the UN declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity.
The Arctic is warming at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the world, and the results of the melting ice in the “Earth’s fridge” will be catastrophic to the planet. The data from this summer’s “defrosting” came just in time as a warning to the leaders
who will meet next December in Copenhagen to discuss an agreement to curb greenhouse gases. A debate that will affect all humanity.
The food being wasted in Europe and the US alone would be enough to feed, seven times over, the world’s starving. The scandal is denounced in a new book by a British farmer, food analyst and anti-waste activist.
Relativists beware. Whether you like it or not, truth matters – even in the economy. That’s the core message of Pope Benedict XVI’s new encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth).
China is using the “partnership” with several African countries to exploit local workers, to export unemployed people and to sell cheap Chinese goods labeled in Cantonese.
In South Africa, the problems are as huge as the country and its enormous potential. But some small steps are being made. In the mentality of a people that not so long ago lived the drama of the most radical form of racial segregation. But also in the missionary field: there we can find this sense of celebration that is undoubtedly Black Africa’s special gift to the universal Church.
Unless more intelligent and creative management is brought to the world’s agricultural systems, the 2008 food crisis – which plunged millions back into hunger – may foreshadow an even bigger crisis in the years to come. The warning comes from the United Nations Environment Program that underlines the almost incredible waste of food that the present model implies.
Few people are aware that climate change will cause severe droughts in many parts of the world and turn fertile lands into deserts. But an expert warned sometime ago: one third of the planet will be a desert by 2100 if climate change is not addressed urgently.
Conventional wisdom claims that the only way to increase agricultural output is through modernizing agriculture. But, in the contrary, experts say that organic farming holds the key to food security in Africa.
For the poor, the near future seems bleak. While world food prices have declined, they remain close to their 2008 peaks in many poor countries; as a result, the number of hungry people has grown by 40 million; and with prices for seeds and fertilizers more than doubling since 2006, many poor farmers cannot increase production. This means, according to FAO, that some one billion people worldwide are going hungry.
