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Building local resilience will prove key to better addressing the effects of climate change in Cambodia, last year’s Cambodia Human Development Report (CHDR) stated. “Local action and local solutions are what is needed most,” Tin Ponlok, deputy director-general for climate change of the Cambodian Ministry of Environment, said. “This is where we can make the most difference.”
At least 200 million people in the world are in danger of being left without water because they depend for their supply on glaciers that are melting although, paradoxically, the process creates the illusion of plentiful water resources. While the average global temperature has risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius in the last 100 years, the temperature of glaciers has increased by 1.5 degrees in just two decades. Local communities, especially in the Himalayan and Andes mountain ranges, are the most affected.
Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa, a former Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) Secretary General, Ambassador to the United States, and Chief of Staff for President Paul Kagame, confesses at last that he knew all the time that it was Kagame who, in 1994, started the genocide in which over 800,000 Rwandans died in just 100 days. He says: “By killing President Habyarimana, Paul Kagame introduced a wild card in an already fragile ceasefire and dangerous situation. This created a powerful trigger, escalating to a tipping point towards resumption of the civil war, genocide, and the region-wide destabilization that has devastated the Great Lakes region since then.” Now he felt the need to ask the families of the victims and God’s forgiveness, saying: “Our individual and collective search for truth will set us free.”
At All Saints Roman Catholic Church Cathedral in Nairobi, African workers were recently singing lively Christian worship songs as they broke ground for the construction of a new office block for the Nairobi Archdiocese. However, they were not working for an African or British construction company. China Zhongxing Construction is building Maurice Cardinal Otunga Plaza, one of many church contracts Chinese construction companies have won in recent years as China has expanded its influence in Africa. Now, Chinese firms build many bridges, roads and stadiums across the continent.
India is the fourth country in the world where the female gender is most at risk, after Afghanistan, Congo and Pakistan. But, in this case, the reason is unique: the widespread practice of selective abortion of female fetuses. The national average has dropped to 914 girls per 1000 boys from 927 per 1000 in the 2001 census. That year, demographers said that there were six million ‘missing girls’ in India; now, of a total population of 1.21 billion people, 7.1 million are missing.
Simultaneously tackling obesity and malnutrition may seem like “polar opposites,” conceded UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the High-Level Meeting on Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases in New York, but an increasing number of countries are experiencing higher rates of both and the answer to reducing this phenomenon is the same: better nutrition.
It is a graphic demonstration of the sickening, symbiotic relationship between hunger and conflict and highlights food supply problems from Somalia to India to Spain. A new map of food security risk around the world is, in some ways, depressingly familiar. Sub-Saharan Africa leaps out as the place where the most people fear for their next meal, while the rich world has more to fear from obesity. But there’s plenty of salutary reminders and fascinating detail, like India’s food problems and the vulnerability of Spain.
It opens its doors right in the middle of the Arab spring. And this is not a mere coincidence. For the past few weeks at Madaba – a Jordanian city 35 kilometers from Amman – registrations are open in a new Catholic University of the Middle East, strongly desired by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem whose jurisdiction includes the Catholics of Jordan. It was Benedict XVI himself, during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in May 2009, who laid the cornerstone of this new university. In these two years, it has been called “American University of Madaba,” in the name of a partnership with the University of New Hampshire which has strongly committed itself to supporting the initiative. But it remains a university that is fully recognized by Jordan, whose High Council for Education in 2005 assigned to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem the license to open its own university. This project has now become a reality: this month the courses of the first academic year will begin in the already completed wing of a large campus that, once totally finished, will accommodate up to 8,000 students.
The present crisis in the country is a call for the Church to introspect and repent, said Archbishop Bernard Moras of Bangalore (photo at right). In a pastoral letter, Archbishop Moras, who is also the president of the Karnataka Regional Catholic Bishops’ Council, urged people to join hands to dialogue and work towards making India and the Church free of corruption.
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the historic meeting that took place in Assisi (Italy) on 27 October 1986 (see picture), a day of reflection, dialogue and prayer for peace and justice in the world will take place this month. Pope Benedict XVI invited fellow Christians from different denominations, representatives of the world’s religious traditions and, in some sense, all men and women of goodwill, to join once again a pilgrimage to the home of Saint Francis.
