In 2019, the illegal wildlife trade reached staggering levels. Pangolin scales and ivory were being trafficked in massive quantities from Africa to Asia, exposing a network of crime syndicates operating at an industrial scale. The sheer volume of these shipments marked a disturbing milestone, one that revealed the global reach …
Future pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, do more damage to the world economy and kill more people than COVID-19 unless there is a transformative change in the global approach to dealing with infectious diseases, warns this major new report on biodiversity and pandemics by 22 leading experts …
Agriculture has been the engine of overall economic growth in developing countries, whereby agriculture significantly contributes to national GDPs, rural employment levels, household food security and trade balance. The crisis generated by the spreading of COVID-19, however, is already affecting food systems under different dimensions and threatens the gains so …
At the heart of the 2030 Agenda was a promise to prioritize two objectives: to eradicate poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in all their forms. While global hunger, measured by the prevalence of undernourishment, had been on the decline, the absolute number of hungry people remained very high. In …
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered government lockdowns, collapsed consumer demand, and disrupted imports of raw materials, battering the Asia Pacific garment industry especially hard, according to a new report by the International Labour Organization (ILO). The UN labour agency highlighted that in the first half of 2020, Asian imports had …
An estimated 1 in 6 children – or 356 million globally – lived in extreme poverty before the pandemic, and this is set to worsen significantly, according to a new World Bank Group-UNICEF analysis. Global Estimate of Children in Monetary Poverty: An Update notes that sub-Saharan Africa – with limited …
The World’s Women 2020 is a collection of 100 stories providing up-to-date assessments of progress towards gender equality in the following six critical areas, including, under each area, the impact of COVID-19 on women: (a) population and families; (b) health; (c) education; (d) economic empowerment and asset ownership; (e) power …
Order of the Supreme Court of India in the matter of The Nanded Sikh Gurudwara Sachkhand, Shri Hazur Abchalnagar Sahib Board Vs Union of India & Others dated 19/10/2020. The petitioner represents the Gurudwara Sachkhand Sri Hazur Abchalnagar Sahib, Nanded district, Maharashtra. The petitioner has filed a writ petition under …
A basic meal is far beyond the reach of millions of people in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic joins conflict, climate change and economic troubles in pushing up levels of hunger around the world, according to this new study by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). This report highlights …
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries were making steady progress in tackling tuberculosis (TB), with a 9% reduction in incidence seen between 2015 and 2019 and a 14% drop in deaths in the same period. High-level political commitments at global and national levels were delivering results. However, a new …
Immunity against COVID-19 may persist for at least five months after being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, according to a study led by an Indian-origin researcher in the US. The researchers from the University of Arizona studied the production of antibodies from a sample of nearly 6,000 people infected with …
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development pledged to move away from growing inequality to more inclusive, shared growth, away from ecocide, mass extinction of our plant and animal biodiversity, and waste and destruction of our planet’s abundant but still finite natural resources to practices that respect and protect our common …
The COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed online shopping behaviours, according to a survey of about 3,700 consumers in nine emerging and developed economies.The survey, entitled “COVID-19 and E-commerce”, examined how the pandemic has changed the way consumers use e-commerce and digital solutions. It covered Brazil, China, Germany, Italy, the Republic …
The World Energy Trilemma Index is an annual measurement of national energy system performances across each of the three trilemma dimensions: Energy Security measures a nation’s capacity to meet current and future energy demand reliably, withstand and bounce back swiftly from system shocks with minimal disruption to supplies. The dimension …
For almost 25 years, extreme poverty was steadily declining. Now, for the first time in a generation, the quest to end poverty has suffered its worst setback. This setback is largely due to major challenges — COVID 19, conflict, and climate change — facing all countries, but in particular those …
The coronavirus pandemic has swept across a world unprepared to fight it, because countries had failed to choose policies to fight inequality. Only one in six countries assessed for the CRI Index 2020 were spending enough on health, only a third of the global workforce had adequate social protection, and …
Rapid adoption of digital technologies can help the Philippines overcome the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, recover from the crisis, and achieve its vision of becoming a middle-class society free of poverty, according to the report released by the World Bank and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA). The …
The global economy is climbing out from the depths to which it had plummeted during the Great Lockdown in April. But with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to spread, many countries have slowed reopening and some are reinstating partial lockdowns to protect susceptible populations. While recovery in China has been faster …
The past two decades have demonstrated the manifold pathways through which comprehensive and integrated social protection systems can enable and ensure food security and nutrition in Southern Africa. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the importance of these systems and illustrated the kinds of crises for which social protection …
This report of a survey completed by 130 countries during the period June-August 2020 provides information about the extent of disruption to mental, neurological and substance use services due to COVID-19, the types of services that have been disrupted, and how countries are adapting to overcome these challenges.
This paper examines the relationship between contemporaneous exposure to fine particulate matter and COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Harnessing daily changes in county-level wind direction (within the United States), they show that fluctuations in local air quality can almost immediately impact the rate of confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19.
