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    Common Steroids After ‘Long Covid’ Recovery May Cut Risk Of Death By Up To 51 Per Cent

    OWSA Contributor
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    Common Steroids After ‘Long Covid’ Recovery May Cut Risk Of Death By Up To 51 Per Cent

    Researchers say that severe inflammation during hospitalization for COVID-19 increases risk of death within one year from seeming recovery by 61 per cent. This risk is reduced again by 51 per cent if anti-inflammatory steroids are prescribed upon discharge.

    By Mischa Dijkstra

    Evidence continues to gather that ‘long Covid’, that is, continued negative health impacts months after apparent recovery from severe COVID-19, is an important risk for some patients. For example, researchers from the University of Florida Gainesville showed last December that hospitalized patients who seemingly recovered from severe COVID-19 run more than double the risk of dying within the next year, compared to people who experienced only mild or moderate symptoms and who had not been hospitalized, or who never caught the illness.

    Now, a team including some of the same authors shows for the first time that among patients hospitalized for COVID-19 who seemingly recovered, severe systemic inflammation during their hospitalization is a risk factor for death within one year. This may seem paradoxical, as inflammation is a natural part of the body’s immune response, which has evolved to fight infection. But in some illnesses, including COVID-19, this response may overshoot, causing further health damage.

    “COVID-19 is known to create inflammation, particularly during the first, acute episode. Our study is the first to examine the relationship between inflammation during hospitalization for COVID-19 and mortality after the patient has ‘recovered’,” said first author Prof Arch G Mainous III, vice chair for research in the Department of Community Health and Family Medicine at the University of Florida Gainesville.

    “Here we show that the stronger the inflammation during the initial hospitalization, the greater the probability that the patient will die within 12 months after seemingly ‘recovering’ from COVID-19.”

    Inflammation

    Mainous and colleagues studied the de-identified electronic health records of 1207 adults hospitalized in 2020 or 2021 after testing positive for COVID-19 within the University of Florida health system, and who had been followed up for at least one year after discharge. As a proxy for the severity of systemic inflammation during hospitalization, they used a common and validated measure, the concentration in blood of the molecule C-reactive protein (CRP), secreted by the liver in response to a signal by active immune cells.

    As expected, the blood concentration of CRP during hospitalization was strongly correlated with the severity of COVID-19: 59.4 mg/L for hospitalized patients who didn’t require supplemental oxygen, 126.9 mg/L for those who needed extra oxygen through non-invasive, non-mechanical ventilation, and 201.2 mg/L for the most severe cases, who required ventilation through a ventilator or through extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.

    COVID-19 patients with the highest CRP concentration measured their during their hospital stay had a 61% greater hazard – corrected for other risk factors – of dying of any cause within one year of discharge from the hospital than patients with the lowest CRP concentration. These results are published in Frontiers in Medicine.

    Mainous said: “Many infectious diseases are accompanied by an increase in inflammation. Most times the inflammation is focused or specific to where the infection is. COVID-19 is different because it creates inflammation in many places besides the airways, for example in the heart, brain, and kidneys. High degrees of inflammation can lead to tissue damage.”

    Importantly, the authors showed that the elevated hazard of death from any cause associated with severe inflammation was lowered again by 51 per cent if the patient was prescribed anti-inflammatory steroids after their hospitalization.

    Chronic disease

    These results mean that the severity of inflammation during hospitalization for COVID-19 can predict the risk of subsequent serious health problems, including death, from ‘long Covid’. They also imply that current recommendations for best practise may need to be changed, to include more widespread prescription of orally taken steroids to COVID-19 patients upon their discharge.

    COVID-19 should be seen as a potentially chronic disease, propose the authors.

    “When someone has a cold or even pneumonia, we usually think of the illness being over once the patient recovers. This is different from a chronic disease, like congestive heart failure or diabetes, which continue to affect patients after an acute episode. We may similarly need to start thinking of COVID-19 as having ongoing effects in many parts of the body after patients have recovered from the initial episode,” said Mainous.

    “Once we recognize the importance of ‘long Covid’ after seeming ‘recovery’, we need to focus on treatments to prevent later problems, such as strokes, brain dysfunction, and especially premature death.”

    India’s Green Hydrogen Drive Faces Heavy Odds

    Policy Circle
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    India’s Green Hydrogen Drive Faces Heavy Odds

    India has the potential to become a global leader in green hydrogen, but it needs to plug gaps in technology and funding.

    Sajna Nair

    India is looking to emerge as a world leader in green hydrogen and it has all the reasons to look for alternatives to fossil fuels. The economy is heavily dependent on imported crude oil for its energy needs. With the Ukraine crisis leading to a more than 50 per cent increase in global crude prices, India is looking at renewable energy sources to power its growth.

    Like many other economies looking for alternatives to fossil fuels, India is also focusing on green hydrogen as a potential energy source that can replace crude oil and coal. The fossil fuels are responsible for most of the global greenhouse gas emissions, blamed for global warming and climate change. India’s global commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions necessitates an energy transition away from fossil fuels.

    Energy experts consider green hydrogen as the end of their search for a fuel that emits no exhaust. It is produced by splitting water using renewable energy. It can be stored and transported using the existing infrastructure for oil and natural gas and is capable of powering energy hungry industries such as steel, cement and fertilizers.

    Ambitious targets

    India has set an annual green hydrogen production target of 5 million tonne by 2030 under its national green hydrogen policy. The government has announced a slew of benefits to the industry including tax breaks to boost investment. It also has allotted land to bring down the investment requirement. India has huge potential for renewable energy, a prerequisite for producing green hydrogen at competitive prices. It also has a large number of rivers and a long coastline that provide the second ingredient, water, in large quantities.

    Prospects look bright for India with some of the largest corporates have taken the plunge into the green hydrogen dream. India’s largest conglomerates the Reliance Group and the Adani Group have committed billions of dollars for green hydrogen production. The industry needs heavy investments and the viability and profitability are uncertain. So, the it needs powerful investors like Ambani and Adani who could absorb the risk involved. Reliance and Adani look to produce green hydrogen at $1 per kilogram, compared with the current cost of around $6.

    Reliance Industries has committed $75 billion to green energy, a major part of which is expected to go into green hydrogen production. Adani Group plans to invest $70 billion in renewable energy infrastructure by 2030. Greenko Group, based in Hyderabad, has plans to set up the largest electrolyser plant outside China in collaboration with John Cockerill of Belgium. State-run Indian Oil Corporation has also formed a joint venture to develop green hydrogen.

    While India has taken definitive steps to become a global leader in green hydrogen, the journey towards the goal wouldn’t be easy. India is not a technology leader in solar energy or in electrolyser production.

    Finance and technology

    At COP26 in Glasgow last year, India had announced a renewable energy generation capacity of 500 GW by 2030. It has revised its 2022 solar power target to 100GW after achieving the earlier target of 20 GW way ahead of the schedule. However, expanding the solar infrastructure would be a challenge for India that is dependent on imports for critical components. The country imports more than 80% of its solar cells and modules from China. It needs to reduce import dependence if it were to emerge as a major force in renewable energy.

    Availability of cheap credit is another key concern with most of the financing deals happen at around 12-14 per cent interest. The country needs to ensure diversified supply of components and cheap finance if it were to achieve its ambitious targets for solar energy and green hydrogen. The government has brought solar module manufacturing under the PLI scheme, which can go a long way in reducing import dependence. There is a need to protect the fledgling manufacturing sector using both tariff and non-tariff measures.

    Another problem for India is in the field of technology. China is the market leader in electrolysers, but Europe has developed a number of innovative technologies for green hydrogen production. The European Union has launched a plan to catch up with China in mass production of electrolysers. The EU executive has plans to have an installed electrolyser capacity of 40 gigawatts by 2030 that can produce 10 million tonnes of green hydrogen.

    Possible collaborations

    The EU is keen to fortify its leadership in electrolyser manufacturing. India can provide the ideal foil to its ambitions as a market for technologies as well as a mass producer of green hydrogen. It can lean on Europe for green hydrogen technologies and to reduce dependence on China for electroliers and other green technologies.

    The government seems to be taking the right steps in this regard. During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s European visit, Union power minister RK Singh and Germany’s minister for economic affairs and climate change Robert Habeck signed a joint declaration of intent on Indo–German Green Hydrogen Task Force. Singh extended an invitation to the German industry to build a green hydrogen ecosystem in India.

    Under the agreement, an Indo-German Green Hydrogen Task Force will be set up to strengthen cooperation in production, utilization, storage and distribution of green hydrogen through collaboration in research and development. Trade of green hydrogen and its derivatives would be the focus of the agreement. India needs a powerful partner to help achieve its green hydrogen ambitions and it seems it has found one in Germany.

     

    Sajna Nair is a former banker. Her areas of interest are environment, art and culture.

    This piece has been sourced from Policy Circle — www.policycircle.org 

    Image: IRENA

    Afghanistan: War, Economic Crisis, Drought, Winter, Hunger

    OWSA Contributor
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    Afghanistan: War, Economic Crisis, Drought, Winter, Hunger

    While humanitarian assistance averted a food security catastrophe in the harsh winter months, hunger persists at unprecedented levels in Afghanistan. People require humanitarian assistance, livelihood support, jobs, and long-term investments. More than 20,000 people in the north-eastern province of Ghor are facing catastrophic levels of hunger because of a long period of harsh winter and disastrous agricultural conditions.

    Some 19.7 million people, almost half of Afghanistan’s population, are facing acute hunger according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis conducted in January and February 2022 by Food Security and Agriculture Cluster partners, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and many NGOs.

    The report predicts that the outlook for June-November 2022 sees a slight improvement in the food security situation, with a reduction in the number of people facing acute food insecurity to 18.9 million people. This is due in part to the coming wheat harvest from May to August, and this year’s well-coordinated scale-up of humanitarian food assistance – alongside increased agricultural livelihood support.

    However, gains will be limited – the report warns. Lingering drought and the deep economic crisis mean that unprecedented hunger will continue to threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across Afghanistan.

    Sufferings grow where crops cannot

    Of particular concern – and for the first time since 2011 – a small pocket of “catastrophic” levels of food insecurity has been detected in the country. More than 20,000 people in the north-eastern province of Ghor are facing catastrophic levels of hunger because of a long period of harsh winter and disastrous agricultural conditions.

    “Unprecedented levels of humanitarian assistance focused on bolstering food security have made a difference. But the food security situation is dire. Humanitarian assistance remains desperately important, as do the needs to rebuild shattered agricultural livelihoods and re-connect farmers and rural communities to struggling rural and urban markets across the country. Unless these happen, there will be no way out of this crisis,” said Richard Trenchard, FAO Representative in Afghanistan.

    “Food assistance and emergency livelihood support are the lifeline for the people of Afghanistan. We mounted the world’s largest humanitarian food operation in a matter of months, reaching more than 16 million people since August 2021,” said Mary-Ellen McGroarty, WFP’s Country Director and Representative in Afghanistan.

    “We are working with farmers, millers, and bakeries, training women and creating jobs to support the local economy. Because the people of Afghanistan would much prefer jobs; women want to be able to work; and all girls deserve to go to school. Allowing the economy to function normally is the surest way out of the crisis, otherwise suffering will grow where crops cannot,” she added.

    Cost-effective, strategic intervention

    The upcoming harvest will bring some relief to millions of families struggling with income losses and food shortages. However, for many, the harvest will only offer short-term relief and very little opportunity for recovery. The war in Ukraine continues to put pressure on Afghanistan’s wheat supply, food commodities, agricultural inputs, and fuel prices. Access to seeds, fertilizer and water for irrigation is limited, labour opportunities are scarce and enormous debts have been incurred to buy food over the last few months.

    Both FAO and WFP continue to scale up their programmes across the country. WFP has reached more than 16 million people so far in 2022 with emergency food assistance, and is supporting local markets, working with retailers and local suppliers. WFP continues to invest in people’s livelihoods through skills training and climate adaption projects so that families can cultivate their land and grow their own food.

    FAO continues to scale up its assistance to farmers and herders in rural areas and will assist more than 9 million people in 2022 through a range of interventions supporting crop, livestock and vegetable production, cash transfers and the rehabilitation of vital irrigation infrastructure and systems.

    Supporting agriculture is a cost-effective and strategic intervention that delivers great short-term impact as lifesaving support, while it paves the way for longer-term recovery and sustainable development.

    Regulate Cross-Border Alcohol Trade, Says WHO

    OWSA Contributor
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    Regulate Cross-Border Alcohol Trade, Says WHO

    A new report from the World Health Organization WHO highlights glaring gaps in regulation of cross-border alcohol marketing that employs sophisticated online marketing techniques. The report speaks of how young people and heavy drinkers are increasingly targeted by alcohol advertising, often to the detriment of their health.

    Alcohol is increasingly being marketed across borders, with young people and heavy drinkers particularly targeted, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a new report on Tuesday that calls for more effective regulation.

    The study outlines how the digital revolution in marketing and promotion is being used to advertise alcohol across national borders, and in many cases regardless of social, economic, or cultural environments.

    Drinking alcohol is causally linked to an array of health problems, WHO said, ranging from alcohol dependence and other mental and behavioural disorders, to major non-communicable diseases such as liver cirrhosis, some cancers and cardiovascular diseases, as well as injuries and deaths resulting from violence and road traffic accidents.

    Saving young lives

    Worldwide, some three million people die each year as a result of the harmful use of alcohol – one every 10 seconds – representing around five per cent of all deaths.

    Young people account for a disproportionate number of these alcohol-related deaths, with 13.5 per cent of all deaths among people aged 20-39 being alcohol-related.

    “Alcohol robs young people, their families and societies of their lives and potential,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director-General.

    “Yet despite the clear risks to health, controls on the marketing of alcohol are much weaker than for other psychoactive products. Better, well enforced and more consistent regulation of alcohol marketing would both save and improve young lives across the world.”

    Rise of digital media

    The report highlights how recent changes in alcohol marketing have created new opportunities to reach audiences.

    The collection and analysis of data on users’ habits and preferences by global internet providers has allowed alcohol marketers to target messages to specific groups across national borders.

    The study found targeted advertising on social media is especially effective, and further bolstered by influencers and through sharing posts.

    One data source quoted in the report calculated that over 70 per cent of media spending of leading alcohol marketers based in the United States in 2019 was through promotions, product placement and online advertisements in social media.

    “The rising importance of digital media means that alcohol marketing has become increasingly cross-border,” said Dag Rekve of the Alcohol, Drugs and Addictive Behaviours Unit at WHO.

    “This makes it more difficult for countries that are regulating alcohol marketing to effectively control it in their jurisdictions. More collaboration between countries in this area is needed.”

    Sponsoring sporting events

    Alcohol companies are also sponsoring major sporting events at the global, regional and national levels, which according to the report can also significantly increase brand awareness among new audiences.

    They are also partnering with sports leagues and clubs to reach viewers and potential consumers in different parts of the world.

    Other opportunities include sponsorship of competitive gaming events or product placement in movies and serials streamed on international subscription channels.

    Drinking as ‘empowerment’

    The report – Reducing the harm from alcohol – by regulating cross-border alcohol marketing, advertising and promotion – also examines how specific audiences are targeted, with particular concern for children and adolescents, women, and heavy drinkers.

    WHO said studies have shown that starting to drink alcohol at a young age is a predictor of hazardous drinking in young adulthood and beyond. Marketers are also particularly targeting areas of the world with young and growing populations, such as Africa and Latin America.

    And while men consume three-quarters of the alcohol that the world drinks, the lower rate among women also presents an opportunity for growth.  Alcohol marketers often depict drinking by women as a symbol of empowerment and equality, according to the report.

    Heavy and dependent drinkers are another focus for marketing efforts.

    “Alcohol-dependent people frequently report a stronger urge to drink alcohol when confronted with alcohol-related cues, yet they rarely have an effective way to avoid exposure to the content of the advertising or promotion,” WHO said.

    Integration and collaboration

    The report recommends that comprehensive restrictions or bans of alcohol marketing, including its cross-border aspects, are integrated in public health strategies.  It also calls for greater collaboration between countries.

    WHO said that although many governments have implemented some form of restrictions on alcohol marketing, they tend to be relatively weak.

    A 2018 study by the UN agency revealed that while most countries have some form of regulation for alcohol marketing in traditional media, almost half have no regulation that applies to the Internet and social media.

     

    Image: Eduardo Soares / Unsplash

    Tree Loss In Tropics Casts Doubt Over Climate Goals

    SciDevNet
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    Tree Loss In Tropics Casts Doubt Over Climate Goals

    Tropics lost 11.1 million hectares of forest cover in 2021, with the Amazon, Democratic Republic of Congo seeing the greatest losses. The need for a ‘consistent annual decline’ to put COP26 deforestation goals on track.

    By Dann Okoth

    Tropical regions of the world lost 11.1 million hectares of forest cover in 2021, new data shows, calling into question global pledges to end deforestation by 2030.

    Taking in the Amazon and the Congo Basin, the tree loss included 3.75 million hectares of “critically important” primary rainforests, according to the World Resource’s Institute’s Global Forest Watch.

    This resulted in 2.5 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, equivalent to the annual fossil fuel emissions of India, the forests monitor said.

    Global Forest Watch deputy director Mikaela Weisse told a virtual press conference: “The team specifically focused on the loss in humid tropical primary forests, which are areas of pristine rainforest that are important for carbon storage and biodiversity.

    “We also focused on tropical forests because that is where modern-day deforestation — more than 96 per cent — takes place.”

    The report described the rate of primary forest loss in the tropics in recent years as “stubbornly consistent”. The loss in 2021 was 11 per cent less than in 2020 but followed a 12 per cent increase in 2019, mostly attributed to fires, it said.

    At the UN climate summit, COP26 in Glasgow last November, leaders from 141 countries signed a declaration on forests and land use, pledging to “halt and reverse forest loss by 2030”.

    Amazon Congo tropical forest tree cover loss COP26 SDGs

    Amazon losing resilience

    Realising these goals requires “a consistent decline in forest loss every year for the rest of the decade”, according to the report based on data from the University of Maryland in the US. So far this is only happening in a few countries in the tropics, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, where primary forest cover loss has declined in recent years.

    “This new data underscore just how much effort is needed to achieve the deforestation goals,” said Weisse.

    Brazil accounted for more than 40 per cent of the world’s tropical primary forest loss in 2021, amounting to 1.5 million hectares. The vast majority of this occurred in the Amazon, said Rod Taylor, global director of the forests programme at the World Resource Institute.

    “Forest cover loss in Brazil, especially in the Amazon has been persistent over the years,” said Taylor, adding that loss due to fire fluctuated depending on the conditions. The analysis, for the first time, took into account tree cover loss due to wildfires, intentionally set fires and fires from agricultural activities.

    Between 2020 and 2021, non-fire losses in Brazil — usually linked to agricultural expansion — increased nine per cent, according to the report. It said clear-cut deforestation was the highest it had been since 2006, when a number of measures were introduced to reduce deforestation.

    Key states in the western Brazilian Amazon saw a 25 per cent increase in non-fire loss of primary forest loss, with new “hot spots” springing up where large-scale clearings had been made alongside existing roads, probably for cattle grazing, the report suggests.

    “New research shows that the Amazon is losing resilience much faster than we thought, even reaching a tipping point where vast areas transform from rainforest to Savannah, resulting in massive emissions,” said Weisse.

    Amazon tropical forests loss climate goals COP26 SDGs

    New development pathways

    The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had the second largest forest loss in 2021, losing nearly half a million hectares of forest cover. This was driven by small-scale agriculture and harvesting of trees for charcoal production, according to the analysis.

    “DRC’s vast forest is a big global carbon sink and big changes are needed to curb this forest loss,” warned Elizabeth Goldman, senior geographic information system research manager at Global Forest Watch.

    “These should include pursuing of new development pathways and improving agricultural yields so that expansion of agriculture does not continue unchecked into primary forests, and access to clean energy,” she suggested.

    On the positive side, Indonesia saw a 25 per cent reduction in primary forest loss compared to 2020, the country’s fifth year in a row in decline. Malaysia also experienced a fifth year in decline.

    Hidayah Hamzah, forest and peat monitoring senior manager at World Resources Institute, Indonesia attributes Indonesia’s progress to corporate and government actions that “are clearly working” as the country “heads in the right direction to meeting its climate commitments”.

    She said the Indonesian government had increased fire monitoring, expanded forest restoration, and revoked licenses for logging, palm oil plantations and mining in forests.

    But Hamza is worried that palm oil prices in the country are at a 40-year high. “This might increase the appetite to expand palm oil plantation in forest areas,” she warned.

    These exceptions aside, Benson Ochieng’, executive director at the Institute for Law and Environmental Governance in Nairobi, says the global forest loss trends are indicative of unwillingness to follow through on climate commitments.

    “Commitments such as zero-deforestation are beautiful. But they are as good as the people who implement them. Otherwise they would not be worth the paper they are written on,” Ochieng’ said.

    He challenged leaders and corporations to put pledges into action, citing the example of the AFR100 initiative where African countries will begin restoring 100 million hectares of degraded land by 2030.

    “Unlike other pledges and commitments, the AFR100 initiative has a budget, funders and timelines,” he said.

     

    This piece has been sourced from SciDev.Net.

     

    Banner image:  Planet Labs, Inc., (CC BY-SA 4.0).

    Inset images: Hippopx Images.

    UN Secretary-General Must be Non-Risk Averse, Play a More Pivotal and Active Role

    Inter Press Service
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    UN Secretary-General Must be Non-Risk Averse, Play a More Pivotal and Active Role

    In the context of current world affairs and international relations, it is imperative that the Secretary-General plays a more pivotal and far-greater active role to uphold the primary mandate of the United Nations and ensure the maintenance of Global Peace and Security.

    By Purnaka L. de Silva

    Vladimir Putin’s illegal War of Aggression in Ukraine, launched on February 24, 2022, brought into stark relief the fractured state of Global Peace and Security. Militarized conflicts, civilian deaths and forced migration in the tens of millions have been ongoing for decades, with little or no relief to the beleaguered victims.

    The war in Ukraine appears to have displaced other ongoing major wars in Yemen, Ethiopia, and Myanmar in the global public imagination thanks to the 24/7 news cycle. The primary mandate of the United Nations is to ensure the maintenance of Global Peace and Security, sadly we seem to have neither, apart from a lot of talk by eminent personages with little or no action to redress the dystopian realities and carnage on the ground.

    The Latin motto res, non verba comes to mind – meaning “deeds, and not words” – as quite an appropriate model for the United Nations to adopt rather than sticking to ‘business as usual’ – which is quite lame and pathetic to say the least in these trying times.

    Secretary-General António Guterres must not leave diplomacy, mediation, and negotiation to half-baked UN diplomats out in the field and even within his own Executive Office – UN-EOSG.

    In the context of current world affairs and international relations, it is imperative that the Secretary-General plays a more pivotal and far-greater active role to uphold the primary mandate of the United Nations and ensure the maintenance of Global Peace and Security.

    More active and visible role

    The time for protecting the image and status of the UN Secretary-General is over, as well as being held hostage by the P-5 Permanent Member States of the UN Security Council who have run roughshod over all current and previous UN Secretaries-General.

    Rather than being risk averse, Secretary-General Guterres must play a much more active and visible role on the global stage and behind-the-scenes – traveling incessantly to war-torn UN member states to meet the protagonists regularly and personally mediating, using his high office and moral standing to good effect – to boost UN mediation efforts.

    Reminiscent of the active and energetic interventions of one of his predecessors, the late Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, who sadly paid the ultimate price along with 15 other UN advisors, bodyguards, and aircrew when their plane was shot down on September 18, 1961, in Northern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

    In today’s geopolitical environment, Secretary-General Guterres cannot be seen as one of the last of a long line of diplomats and politicians to visit a war-torn region, as was the case of his recent visit in late April 2022 to Moscow and Kyiv – to put it bluntly this is bad optics.

    Secretary-General Guterres must use his Executive Office to better effect and the global public needs to be aware and supportive. Given the very high stakes involved he must be much more proactive regarding Ukraine, and all ongoing wars and armed conflicts in evenhanded fashion – without fear nor favor.

    On the plus side Secretary-General Guterres did call the war in Ukraine “evil and unacceptable” and called for justice. However, Guterres’ call fell on deaf ears in Moscow, demonstrated by the fact that Russia launched five missiles striking central Kyiv less than one hour after he held a news conference with Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelenskyy.

    Independence from Western powers

    So, what is to be done when a P-5 Permanent Member State of the UN Security Council goes “rogue” – i.e., beyond the bounds of civilized, rules-based behaviour of a nation-state in the 21st Century adhering to tenets of Global Peace and Security enshrined in the UN Charter, the Laws of War, the Geneva Conventions, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court – as in the case of Putin and his government?

    Notwithstanding the fact that Secretary-General Guterres is a former Prime Minister of Portugal, he must demonstrate his independence from the Western powers, and immediately follow-up on his Moscow and Kyiv visit by visiting Beijing to enlist President Xi Jingping’s not-so-inconsequential support to put pressure on Moscow to end the aggression in Ukraine and call off the dogs of war.

    And while he is negotiating in Beijing, he must also secure the support of China to pressure the Tatmadaw Kyi military junta to standdown and restore democracy without delay in Myanmar to provide relief to its beleaguered peoples. Non-confrontational diplomacy is the key to success in Beijing something that Secretary-General Guterres is adept at doing, which he should use to good effect considering that the Chinese are not belligerents.

    Beijing is more inclined towards global trade and commerce and promoting their ambitious “Belt and Road Initiative” global megaproject, which is undoubtedly being hampered by war in Ukraine.

    After two bloody world wars where tens of millions of human beings died, nobody wants another largescale inter-European war, which has potential ramifications for militaries and civilians well beyond Europe.

    Without fear nor favour

    In fact, Putin’s War of Aggression in Ukraine is already deepening world hunger given that global wheat production, storage and supply is severely hampered by fighting. The power of the United Nations is a reflected power – i.e., that of its leading member states adhering to a rules-based system of global governance – and that power is what all UN Secretaries-General must harness for the greater good through the arts of diplomacy, mediation, and negotiation to maintain Global Peace and Security.

    Secretary-General Guterres is urgently called upon to demonstrate his leadership and political acumen in these dystopian and troubled times, using his moral courage as a beacon to rally global publics to support the mandate and mission of the United Nations. The UN Secretary-General cannot and must not be relegated to the role of bystander while belligerents run amok, he/she must lead, irrespective of the personal cost, without fear nor favour.

    As for Secretary-General Guterres a devout Catholic (close to His Holiness Pope Francis an outspoken critic of war), he cannot accomplish this mammoth task alone – to enhance his moral authority he needs to harness the power and voice of civil society together with that of the world’s multiple religions – all working together at manifold levels to maintain Global Peace and Security.

     

    Dr Purnaka L. de Silva is Professor UN Studies at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University, and Director, Institute of Strategic Studies and Democracy (ISSD) Malta.

     

    This piece has been sourced from Inter Press Service.

    Image: UN

    WMO Says 1.5 °C Rise Above Pre-Industrial Level Temperature Is Round The Corner

    OWSA Contributor
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    WMO Says 1.5 °C Rise Above Pre-Industrial Level Temperature Is Round The Corner

    The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic. It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet. For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise.

    There is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for at least one of the next five years – and the likelihood is increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

    There is a 93 per cent likelihood of at least one year between 2022-2026 becoming the warmest on record and dislodging 2016 from the top ranking. The chance of the five-year average for 2022-2026 being higher than the last five years (2017-2021) is also 93 per cent, according to the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, produced by the United Kingdom’s Met Office, the WMO lead centre for such predictions.

    The annual update harnesses the expertise of internationally acclaimed climate scientists and the best prediction systems from leading climate centres around the world to produce actionable information for decision-makers.

    Paris Agreement goals

    The chance of temporarily exceeding 1.5°C has risen steadily since 2015, when it was close to zero.  For the years between 2017 and 2021, there was a 10 per cent chance of exceedance. That probability has increased to nearly 50% for the 2022-2026 period.

    “This study shows – with a high level of scientific skill – that we are getting measurably closer to temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic. It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.

    “For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise. And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise and our weather will become more extreme. Arctic warming is disproportionately high and what happens in the Arctic affects all of us,” said Prof. Taalas.

    The Paris Agreement sets long-term goals to guide all nations to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 °C while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 °C.

    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that climate-related risks for natural and human systems are higher for global warming of 1.5 °C than at present, but lower than at 2 °C.

    An El Niño can fuel temperatures

    Dr Leon Hermanson, of the Met Office led the report. He said: “Our latest climate predictions show that continued global temperature rise will continue, with an even chance that one of the years between 2022 and 2026 will exceed 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. A single year of exceedance above 1.5 °C does not mean we have breached the iconic threshold of the Paris Agreement, but it does reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5 °C could be exceeded for an extended period.”

    In 2021, the global average temperature was 1.1 °C above the pre-industrial baseline, according to the provisional WMO report on the State of the Global Climate. The final State of the Global Climate report for 2021 will be released on 18 May.

    Back-to-back La Niña events at the start and end of 2021 had a cooling effect on global temperatures, but this is only temporary and does not reverse the long-term global warming trend. Any development of an El Niño event would immediately fuel temperatures, as it did in 2016, which is until now the warmest year on record.

    Edging closer

    According to the findings, the annual mean global near-surface temperature for each year between 2022 and 2026 is predicted to be between 1.1 °C and 1.7 °C higher than preindustrial levels (the average over the years 1850-1900).

    The chance of global near-surface temperature exceeding 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels at least one year between 2022 and 2026 is about as likely as not (48 per cent). There is only a small chance (10 per cent) of the five-year mean exceeding this threshold.

    The chance of at least one year between 2022 and 2026 exceeding the warmest year on record, 2016, is 93 per cent. The chance of the five-year mean for 2022-2026 being higher than the last five years (2017-2021) is also 93 per cent.

    The Arctic temperature anomaly, compared to the 1991-2020 average, is predicted to be more than three times as large as the global mean anomaly when averaged over the next five northern hemisphere extended winters.

    Soil Microbes Derived Products Could Be an Alternative to Expensive Agricultural Fertilizers

    Inter Press Service
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    Soil Microbes Derived Products Could Be an Alternative to Expensive Agricultural Fertilizers

    Derived from naturally occurring microorganisms, microbial inoculants offer the same benefits as chemical fertilizers while reducing agricultural systems environmental footprint. Due to their popularity, microbial inoculants are currently valued at $12.9 billion. Complementing their popularity is the proliferation in the number of start-ups and companies developing and commercializing microbial products.

    By Esther Ngumbi

    Around the world, commercial fertilizer prices are soaring, pushing farmers and countries into a frenzy. In addition, soaring fertilizer prices are sparking fears of inflation, food supply shortages and food insecurity. There are several reasons that have contributed to the rising fertilizer prices including the Russian-Ukrainian war and the global pandemic.

    To avert the ongoing fertilizer crisis, farmers in developed and developing countries alike, could turn into other alternative products such as microbial inoculants. Derived from naturally occurring microorganisms, including the billions of beneficial bacteria that teem in the soil near plant roots, microbial inoculants offer the same benefits as chemical fertilizers while reducing agricultural systems environmental footprint.

    Moreover, scientific evidence, generated over the years including through both long-term studies and short-term studies have shown that these microbes when applied directly to seeds can improve the crop growth, nutrition, and productivity. As an example, a 10-year long-term field study carried in Germany showed that beneficial microbes increase maize plant growth and the availability of phosphorous – and essential plant nutrient – in the soil. In Italy, beneficial soil microbes improved tomato yields. In the US,

    Need to invest in science

    Due to their popularity, microbial inoculants are currently valued at $12.9 billion. Complementing their popularity is the proliferation in the number of start-ups and companies developing and commercializing microbial products. These include AgBiome, Indigo, Novozymes, Corteva, BASF, and Bayer.

    What’s more is that these microbes can provide other benefits to plants including helping them to tolerate drought and hot temperatures that have increasingly become common with climate change. Further, they can increase plant defenses against crop damaging insects. These products also offer environmentally sustainable integrated crop management.

    Cost wise, in the US, for example,  microbial inoculants are relatively priced, from $30 – $100 per gallon.

    Of course, there remains a few challenges including the often-cited inconsistent results and  concerns that these products could eventually become invasive.

    As fertilizer prices keep escalating, the world must invest in understanding and harnessing these naturally occurring microbes to improve crop productivity.

    Just like the world is investing in producing fertilizers, there is need to invest in science that is aimed at understanding beneficial soil microbes and the mechanisms that underpin microbe facilitated crop growth improvement.

    Microbial inoculants could be the next sustainable tools for breaking the dependence on fertilizers.

     

    Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a Senior Food Security Fellow with the Aspen Institute, New Voices.

    This piece has been sourced from Inter Press Service.

    Image:  Jorge Luis Baños  /  IPS

    Future Super Cyclones Will Expose Vastly More People To Extreme Flooding in SouthAsia, Say Researchers

    OWSA Contributor
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    Future Super Cyclones Will Expose Vastly More People To Extreme Flooding in SouthAsia, Say Researchers

    Research shows that future super cyclones would expose greater numbers of people in most vulnerable parts of the world to extreme flooding. The study says that if the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere continues at the same scale, over two-and-a-half times the population in India would experience flooding of greater than 1 metre, compared to the event in 2020.

    A new study from the University of Bristol has revealed super cyclones, the most intense form of tropical storm, are likely to have a much more devastating impact on people in SouthAsia in future years.

    The international research, led by the University of Bristol, looked at the 2020 Super Cyclone Amphan – the costliest cyclone to make landfall in South Asia – and projected its consequences in different scenarios of sea level rise due to global warming.

    Its findings, published on Monday in the Royal Meteorological Society journal Climate Resilience and Sustainability, showed if the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere continues at the same scale, more than two and a half times (250 per cent) the population in India would experience flooding of greater than 1 metre, compared to the event in 2020.

    Super cyclones India Bangladesh South Asia greenhouse gas emissions climate change vulnerable

    Ramp down greenhouse gas emissions

    Lead author Dann Mitchell, Professor of Climate Science at the university’s Cabot Institute for the Environment, said: “South Asia is one of the most climate-sensitive regions in the world, with super cyclones causing tens to hundreds of thousands of deaths in historical cases. Comparatively, very little climate impact research has been done in SouthAsia, despite the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighting it as such a critical region.

    “This study, in collaboration with local scientists, provides much-needed climate impact information in one of the most vulnerable regions in the world. It presents a critical piece of evidence in support of ramping down our greenhouse gas emissions to achieve the Paris Agreement climate goals, where other lines of evidence all too often focus on high income countries where impacts are lower, and adaptation is more easily achievable.”

    The researchers, which included scientists from Bangladesh, used sophisticated climate model projections to anticipate the scale of those affected by cyclones in the rest of this century.

    Although the increasing numbers of people at risk is anticipated to be more modest in Bangladesh, estimated to rise by 60 per cent to 70 per cent, this factors in declining coastal populations in future.

    Encouragingly, the research team went on to show if the Paris Agreement climate goals of 2 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels are adhered to, population exposures to flooding dropped close to zero there.

    But even in this climate warming scenario, the exposures in India still showed an alarming increase in the number of people (ranging between 50 per cent to 80 per cent) expected to experience flooding in future.

    Reduce losses and damages

    The main objective of the Paris Agreement, a global framework to tackle climate change, is to hold the global average temperature increase to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and endeavour to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.

    Saiful Islam, Professor of Hydrology at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), and contributing author of the study, said: “The latest IPCC report has mentioned with high confidence that tropical cyclones with higher intense categories will be more frequent in the future. This study shows that population exposure in Bangladesh and India will be increased up to 200 per cent in the future for extreme storm surge flooding (greater than 3 metres) from intense cyclones under high emission scenarios. Hence, a strong, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas reduction is essential to achieve goals of the Paris Agreement and to reduce losses and damages of highly vulnerable countries like Bangladesh.”

    Study: Immigrants in the US Are More Likely to Start Firms, Create Jobs

    OWSA Contributor
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    Study: Immigrants in the US Are More Likely to Start Firms, Create Jobs

    Compared to native-born citizens, immigrants are more frequently involved in founding companies at all scales.

    Peter Dizikes   |   MIT News Office

    Immigrants to the US are more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans are, according to a study that takes a wide-ranging look at registered businesses across the country.

    Co-authored by an MIT economist, the study finds that, per capita, immigrants are about 80 per cent more likely to found a firm, compared to US-born citizens. Those firms also have about 1 per cent more employees than those founded by US natives, on average.

    “Immigrants, relative to natives and relative to their share of the population, found more firms of every size,” says Pierre Azoulay, an economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a published paper detailing the study’s results.

    Taking firm creation into account, the results indicate that immigration to the U.S. is associated with a net gain in job availability, contrary to the common perception that immigrants fill jobs that US-born workers would otherwise have.

    “The findings suggest that immigrants act more as ‘job creators’ than ‘job takers’ and that non-US born founders play outsized roles in US high-growth entrepreneurship,” the authors write in the paper.

    The paper, “Immigration and Entrepreneurship in the United States,” appears in the spring issue of American Economic Review: Insights. The authors are Azoulay, who is the International Programs Professor of Management at MIT Sloan; Benjamin Jones, the Gordon and Llura Gund Professor of Entrepreneurship and a professor of strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management; J. Daniel Kim PhD ’20, an assistant professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School; and Javier Miranda, a principal economist at the US Census Bureau.

    Three scales of firms

    To conduct the study, the scholars examined three types of data sources. To begin with, the researchers used U.S. Census Bureau data and tax records for all new firms founded in the US from 2005 through 2010, a total of 1.02 million businesses. This allowed them to study firm creation and job growth in those companies over a five-year period.

    Of course, many US firms were founded earlier than 2005. To analyze those firms and their founders, the research team examined the US Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners from 2012, a periodic survey with data covering 200,000 businesses and including data about the owners. This allowed the scholars to expand the study’s time period and include many larger firms.

    However, many of the largest companies in the US do not respond to the Survey of Business Owners. For this reason, the research team also analyzed the 2017 Fortune 500, identifying the citizenship and immigration status of founders of 449 of those companies.

    Ultimately, the study showed that 0.83 percent of immigrants to the US founded a firm from 2005 to 2010, while 0.46 per cent of native-born US citizens founded a firm in that time. That disparity — the 80 per cent higher rate of firm founding — also held up among firms founded before 2005.

    “Immigrants found more firms in every bucket,” Azoulay says. “They create more firms, they create more small firms, they create more medium-size firms, they create more large firms.” He adds: “It’s not the case that [immigrants] only create growth-oriented startups. It’s not the case they just create subsistence businesses. They create all kinds of businesses, and they create a lot of them.”

    Azoulay emphasizes that the study, focused on the empirical facts about business creation, does not explain why immigrants tend to found firms more often. It may be that some immigrants, finding it hard to access the US workforce as employees, may start service-type businesses instead.

    Alternately, some immigrants to the US arrive as students, stay in the country, and found high-growth, high-tech startup firms. The breadth of the overall trend suggests there are likely multiple such scenarios in play at once.

    “There can’t be just one explanation,” Azoulay says. “There is probably a different story for the firms that eventually grow to be large, and for the firms that start small and stay small.”

    Facts for a larger discussion

    As the researchers note, defining whether a firm’s founders are immigrants is not always a straightforward matter. Some firms have multiple founders, representing a mix of immigrants and native-born people.

    To address this issue, the scholars tested multiple ways of classifying firm data. In one iteration of the analysis, they allocated credit for firm founding proportionately among founders. In another iteration, they only credited a firm as being founded by an immigrant if the “lead” founder was an immigrant. Still another round of analysis defined a firm as being immigrant-founded if any member of the founding team was an immigrant. All these methodologies yielded the same large-scale trend.

    Indeed, as the authors write in the paper, “Immigrants appear to play a relatively strong role in expanding labor demand relative to labour supply, compared to the native-born population.”

    Azoulay notes that debates over immigration policy may have many dimensions and are not always going to revolve around the economics. Still, when it comes to that economic impact, and specifically to the issue of job creation and availability, Azoulay hopes the study will provide some baseline data points for public consumption.

    “Any discussion needs to start from a common set of facts,” Azoulay says.

    Reprinted with permission of MIT News 

    Image: Courtesy MIT

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    The high-stakes meeting brought together 20 leaders from various political parties and organisations in two separate sessions, as Yunus sought to shore up support amid reports of internal tensions within his interim government and growing external pressure.
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