The President of the Community [Government] of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, today received the Institutional Award from the Union of New Entrepreneurs Association UNE 2022 for health management before the regional government’s COVID-19 and in recognition of the work of combining the protection of health with the defence of the economy.
“During the pandemic, what we did was to go directly against the virus, but not against prosperity, against projects or against the dreams of the citizens who work and who pay so many taxes every day”, explained the head of the Madrid Executive on receiving the award during a gala where the role of the manager of Novapro, Ana Isabel Jiménez, was also highlighted as a Woman Entrepreneur; PSH Energía for Environmental Protection; the Don Germán restaurant in the Hospitality category; Lujisa in Commerce; FuturWagen in Industry; and MHODAS in Innovation.
Looking to the future, the President of Madrid said that “now it is time to think ahead to see what we have to face”. “As you know, the Government of the Community of Madrid has spent decades lowering taxes, reducing bureaucratic obstacles and supporting pioneering and in many cases groundbreaking policies of freedom”, said Díaz Ayuso, adding that they will use all the tools at their disposal to continue in the same direction and not generate “legal uncertainty or change the rules of the game halfway through, as is often the case”.
Senior UN officials have echoed the Secretary-General’s call for an independent investigation into the killing of scores of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, following the emergence this past weekend of graphic images from the suburb of the capital, Kyiv.
In a statement on Monday, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said she was horrified by the images of people lying dead on the streets and in improvised graves.
“Reports emerging from this and other areas, raise serious and disturbing questions about possible war crimes, grave breaches of international humanitarian law and serious violations of international human rights law,” she said.
Ms. Bachelet called for all bodies to be exhumed and identified so that the victims’ families can be informed, and the exact causes of death established. She added that every measure should also be taken to preserve evidence.
“It is vital that all efforts are made to ensure there are independent and effective investigations into what happened in Bucha, to ensure truth, justice and accountability, as well as reparations and remedy for victims and their families,” she said.
The UN in Ukraine has also joined the Secretary-General’s call for a probe into what happened in Bucha.
Rights monitors on the way
Osnat Lubrani, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine, highlighted the horrifying violence against civilians in the city and in two other areas near the capital, Irpin and Hostomel, as well as in other parts of the country.
It is essential that all reports of violence against civilians are independently verified, she said, and the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine is trying to visit these locations without delay.
An independent investigation is critical to determine the extent of these crimes and to ensure that perpetrators are held to account, she added.
A man walks in front of a crater left by an explosion during escalating conflict in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Ukrainians caught ‘in living hell’
Ms. Lubrani recalled that for UN Member States, protection of civilians is a “bedrock” of their commitments to people worldwide, and in times of war they are further bound to commitments agreed under the Geneva Conventions.
“We will continue to closely monitor and report on attacks on schools, hospitals, medical workers and other civilian infrastructure, on the use of heavy weapons in residential areas and on the denial of humanitarian access,” she said, speaking on behalf of the UN in Ukraine.
The country’s people “have been enduring the living hell of war for more than a month”, and the UN has called for humanitarian pauses so that civilians can leave safely, and aid workers can deliver life-saving relief supplies.
“We continue to call for a ceasefire and peace in Ukraine,” said Ms. Lubrani. “We know that words alone cannot comfort the loss of loved ones or replace action. This deadly war needs to stop: that is the only way to end this pointless loss of life and suffering.”
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, UN agencies and partners have so far reached more than 1.4 million people with critical assistance.
A $1.1 billion humanitarian appeal to support people in the country, launched last month, is just over half funded.
‘Relief chief’ in Moscow
UN Humanitarian Coordinator Martin Griffiths travelled to Moscow over the weekend and has held several high-level meetings with Russian Government officials, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, as well as the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister and Defense Minister.
The UN relief chief ‘s meetings are taking place to explore the possible agreements and arrangements for a humanitarian ceasefire.
The VITA SafeREFUGE campaign provides a collection of free-to-use, educational resources for those wanting to host refugees in their homes and communities.
The campaign aim is to provide a trauma-informed, health-centred approach to the prevention, intervention, and aftercare of survivors of human trafficking and exploitation in the context of humanitarian crises, with notable reference to that caused by the Russian military’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Humanitarian crises affect everyone in different ways. Many survivors will feel overwhelmed or be experiencing trauma responses. We made our collection of SafeREFUGE resources to support our UK-based hosts in providing a physically and psychologically safe environment for survivors of humanitarian crises”, says Dr. Rosie Riley, Founder & Chair, VITA Network.
“Whilst millions are fleeing Ukraine, there is an inevitable increase in risk of trafficking at all stages of the refugee journey. By making use of the medical and experiential expertise of the members of the VITA Network, we want to reduce this risk through prevention and intervention activities, as well as through support for survivors, ultimately contributing to a coordinated trauma-informed public health response nationally.”
The VITA SafeREFUGE campaign will provide free-to-access, educational resources for all, whether they be members of the public who will be welcoming refugee guests into their home, rural village communities with refugee hosting schemes, GPs and Practice Nurses who want to get ready to support their new patients, and refugees and asylum seekers newly arriving in the UK. The topics covered by the resources include:
Hosting Preparation Checklist
Guest Welcome Pack
Basic psychological first aid training
Trauma-informed support materials
Press release distributed by Pressat on behalf of VITA Network, on Monday 4 April, 2022. For more information subscribe and follow https://pressat.co.uk/
Buddhists wearing face masks, carry lanterns to celebrate the upcoming birthday of Buddha while maintaining social distancing as a part of precautions against COVID-19 at Jogye temple in Seoul, May 6. AP-Yonhap
By Buddhist Times.news
After a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a large-scale lantern parade will resume next month as part of the UNESCO-listed Lantern Lighting Festival, an annual festival to celebrate Buddha’s birthday, organizers said Thursday.
The Jogye Order, the country’s largest Buddhist sect, said this year’s parade will start at 7 p.m., April 30, on the usual route in central Seoul from the Heunginjimun gate to Jonggak.
The annual lantern parade, in which tens of thousands of Buddhists carry colorful lanterns of various shapes, has provided a spectacle with crowds coming to enjoy the centuries-old traditional festival.
Also known as “Yeondeunghoe” in Korean, the festival has been held annually in celebration of Buddha’s birthday on the eighth day of the fourth month on the lunar calendar. It was inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity List in 2020.
But the massive parade was canceled that year and was scaled down last year due to the pandemic.
Jogye Order officials said they have decided to resume the annual parade under strict COVID-19 protocols, as the government’s easing of some virus-related regulations has opened the way for the resumption of large religious and cultural events.
Including the parade, many programs have been prepared for this year’s festival, according to the organizers.
The first event will be a lighting ceremony Tuesday for a large sculpture lamp installed at the public square in front of Seoul City Hall. The sculpture lamp is made of traditional Korean paper, or “hanji,” in the shape of the three-story stone pagoda at Hwaeom Temple located in Gurye, 422 kilometers south of Seoul. The lighting ceremony will be streamed live on the festival’s YouTube channel.
The main programs, including a cultural performance for participants returning from the annual lantern parade, will be held from April 29 to May 1.
On May 1, Jogye Temple will run booths that provide visitors a chance to experience making paper lotus lanterns and playing traditional Korean folk games, according to the organizers. Buddha’s birthday falls on May 8 this year. (Yonhap)
HALLE (SAALE), SAXONY-ANHALT, GERMANY, April 5, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ — Agriculture is the main driver of global deforestation and land conversion, and food systems account for more than a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it a major contributor to climate change. A new report by Europe’s National Academies of Sciences provides evidence that a transformation to regenerative agriculture holds promising keys to reducing climate risks while providing the growing world population with food and enhancing biodiversity.
Regenerative Agriculture: Healthy Soil Best Bet for Carbon Storage
“Transforming agriculture is the planet’s greatest untapped treasure for coping with the climate crisis. Today’s large-scale conventional agriculture has huge negative impact on soil.”
— Professor Thomas Elmqvist
“Transforming agriculture is the planet’s greatest untapped treasure for coping with the climate crisis. Today’s large-scale conventional agriculture has huge negative impact on soil. Soil erosion, the loss of flora and fauna and thereby nutrients in soils, has become a major factor in Europe,” explains Prof. Thomas Elmqvist, one of the lead authors of EASAC’s first-time scientific analysis of the potential of regenerative agriculture. The report shows that restoring biodiversity in soils, particularly in grasslands can dramatically increase their capacity to capture and store carbon.
“Sawing off the branch we’re sitting on” While being responsible for a third of global carbon emissions, agriculture is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as shifts in temperature and rainfall. More and more farmers, and particularly the smallholders that produce about a third of the world’s food, are struggling with harvest and livestock losses while trying to adapt to the increasingly irregular weather conditions caused by a changing climate. “We are literally sawing the branch that we are sitting on,” says Orsolya Valkó of Hungary’s Institute of Ecology and Botany.
Need to protect scale of food production “There seems to be a belief that regenerative agriculture can only be applied at small scale, and that making any changes to current industrial farming practices will make it impossible to feed a growing world population”, explains Prof. Thomas Elmqvist. “But the opposite is true: we have maybe a decade for a massive transformation. We need to get industrial farmers on board and take a landscape perspective to reach the goals. Ultimately, we can only protect the scale of food production by moving away from only emphasizing quantity of agricultural production to more quality and nutritional value of agricultural products.”
No contradiction to modern plant and animal breeding technologies EASAC’s results demonstrate that many of the analyzed practices show synergies between carbon capture and storage and enhancing biodiversity, while not having large negative effects on food production in the long term. The scientists underline that regenerative agriculture does not contradict the use of modern plant and animal breeding technology, tilling, use of mineral fertilizer or pesticides. Instead, it aims for a limited, more targeted use. The use of chemical pesticides, for example, can be reduced by using biological alternatives, employing gene-edited crops that are pathogen-resistant, or even introduction of predators.
Most potent carbon capture storage on the planet Regenerative agriculture can take large amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere and tie it back into the soil. “We are literally standing on the largest and most potent carbon capture storage of the planet,” Orsolya Valkó says. “Many field tests show how high the soil’s storage performance is. If we want not only to preserve biodiversity, expand food production and at the same time fight climate change, there is no alternative to regenerative agriculture!”
Insufficient implementation of EU’s Biodiversity and Farm-to-Fork Strategies EASAC recommends that regenerative agriculture should be prioritized by Member States when implementing the new Common Agricultural Policy. This includes more diversification within and among crops, introduction of permanent and perennial crops, expanded agroforestry and intercropping, keeping green plant cover on all farm fields during all seasons, and reduced tillage.
EU and national governments must sharpen their instruments The report welcomes the European Union’s Biodiversity and Farm-to-Fork Strategies as steps in the right direction but underlines that governments have done little so far to implement them. “We need sharp policies and sharp economic instruments,” says Elmqvist. “Targeting the farm scale is insufficient. Financial schemes should also benefit communities and associations of farmers managing landscapes in a coordinated way.”
Full Report is available from 5 April 2022 here: https://www.easac.eu/. Please contact secretariat@easac.eu if you would like to receive the publication in advance.
Viktor Yushchenko and Kateryna Yushchenko in Paris near graves of Symon Petlura. Montparnasse Cemetery, November 16, 2005. Autor: Skapirus. Sourse: https://maidan.org.ua/n/foto/1132218578 (GNU FDL)
Nazism in Ukraine – Sociologist Massimo Introvigne has just published, in his already popular online magazine BitterWinter.ORG, a series of articles with in-depth research to separate facts from fiction, about the propaganda that is trying to portray Ukraine as Nazified country.
See the excellent series of 7 articles published by Massimo Introvigne: Nazism in Ukraine – Separating Facts from Fiction.
A main argument of Russian propaganda in the current Ukrainian war is that Ukraine is under the decisive influence of “Nazis” and needs to be “denazified.” The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish, which makes any claims that he heads a “Nazi government” paradoxical. However, the Russians insist that Nazis are a significant part of those fighting against pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass, and that Ukraine keeps lionizing those who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. The Ukrainians counter that there are quite a few Nazis fighting “for” the pro-Russian Donbass separatists rather than against them. Read the full article by clicking on the title above.
The main argument used by Russians to prove that present-day Ukrainians have Nazi sympathies are the honors officially tributed to nationalist leader Stepan Bandera (1909–1959). Putin’s Russia has inherited from the Soviets the use of “Banderist” as synonym for “Ukrainian Nazi.” The story, however, is somewhat more complicated. Read the full article by clicking on the title above.
Ukraine became independent in 1991. By then, there were few who had been involved in significant ways in the Nazi German occupation of Ukraine who were still alive. Many had been executed in Soviet times; others had escaped abroad or died of old age. However, small neo-Nazi groups emerged, as they did in most European countries, among young people who had never encountered German Nazism. Read the full article by clicking on the title above.
There is a propaganda war around neo-Nazism in Ukraine, and it is a war where intelligence services play their usual roles. Not many outside Ukraine are familiar with the story of Eduard Kovalenko, but it is a perfect illustration of how Russian disinformation works on this issue. Read the full article by clicking on the title above
Those who have heard of Nazis in Ukraine have certainly heard of the Azov Battalion, which is presented often by Russian and pro-Russian propaganda as the smoking gun proving that the Ukrainian government promotes Nazism. Read the full article by clicking on the title above
Putin has repeatedly indicated that “denazification” of Ukraine is one of the aims of its war. One can ask, however, whether, before denazifying other countries, he should not put his own house in order. Neo-Nazism is not a peculiar Ukrainian phenomenon. It exists in all European countries, and Russia is no exception. Read the full article by clicking on the title above
It is now time to draw some conclusions from the six articles I have devoted to the question of Nazism in Ukraine. They show, I believe, that Russian propaganda is just propaganda, and war propaganda is rarely informative. Read the full article by clicking on the title above
The last few weeks seem to have demonstrated, on the one hand, that an armed confrontation between Russia and NATO countries is out of the question and, on the other hand, that international sanctions alone will not be enough to force Moscow to stop the invasion of Ukraine. So who can stop Vladimir Putin in this war (or in his future wars)? The answer is single: the Russian people.
However, it is obvious that the Russian people will not be able to do this tomorrow morning. And no external force will be able to push them to oppose the Kremlin regime en masse in the immediate future. But, in the end, real changes in Russia will take place only when the society strongly demands freedom and a dignified life. That is why it is essential to study in detail how Russians are reacting to Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine.
Russia: many arrests during anti-war demonstrations – FRANCE 24, 6 March 2022
In his 22 years in power, Putin has succeeded in creating a resilient repressive system. The power vertical tightly controls political life and public expression throughout the country, so that for years a large majority of Russians have preferred to assert themselves “outside politics” in order not to risk losing their jobs, their physical integrity, their freedom or even their lives – and, at the same time, in order not to admit that, in the face of power, they feel powerless and weak.
This sense of fear and helplessness is compounded by incessantly hammered propaganda, which is being deployed in a media landscape that the government has finished cleaning up in recent weeks. This propaganda has convinced a large part of the population that the president has no choice but to launch a “special military operation” in Ukraine to save Russia from destruction.
Yet the invasion of Ukraine has not generated euphoria in Russia comparable to that seen in spring 2014 following the annexation of Crimea. Despite surveys that announce 70% popular support for the “special operation”-but which cannot be taken seriously given the Russian government’s total control over polls-there is a lack of enthusiasm about the war among the Russian population.
Supporting actions are mainly organized by administrations, and the people who take part in them are, most often, civil servants.
For example, in universities, administrations have staged videos of students expressing their support for Putin; in several public elementary school, teachers have arranged groups of children to form the letter Z (which has become the symbol of the invasion of Ukraine); in St. Petersburg, on the famous Nevsky Prospect, a police band played patriotic songs at the top of its lungs to disrupt anti-war demonstrators; in some cities, municipal bus drivers were forced to put a Z sign on their vehicles.
On March 18, 2022, the Kremlin organized a large concert in the Luzhniki Stadium on the eighth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea to show public support for the war in Ukraine.According to official data, nearly 200,000 people attended. Testimonies of participants later revealed that many of them were forced to come (under threat of being fired) and many were paid.
In reality, all these actions do not tell us anything about the public opinion in Russia. For the moment, we can only see the mosaic of different trends in Russian society.
Fear and denial
The first trend is fear and denial in Russian society. An example of the fear caused by the all-out repression unleashed by the government against all those who contest the war: in mid-March, an attempt to conduct a realistic survey on the population’s perception of the war had edifying results. Of the 31,000 people the agency was able to reach by phone, almost 29,000 hung up as soon as they realized they were going to be asked about the “special operation” in Ukraine (usually, the proportion of people refusing to answer telephone polls is three to five times lower).
Much of the denial is due to the success of the propaganda mentioned above. After the closure of the last few media outlets open to alternative views to the government’s, most Russians found themselves in an information bubble. The state-controlled media are broadcasting an extremely biased interpretation, hiding the real information about the Russian offensive on Ukrainian towns and villages, presenting Ukrainians as hostages of a Nazi clique and claiming that it is the Ukrainian army and volunteer battalions that are themselves firing missiles at residential buildings in their country and blaming the destruction on the Russians – who, for their part, are allegedly extremely careful to spare civilians.
Some Russians, especially those who have installed VPNs on their computers and smartphones, have access to sources of information inaccessible to their compatriots, know that the reality is different from the image presented on television. But even these people rarely have the courage to discuss it with their relatives, friends and colleagues.
Anonymous denunciations, widespread under the USSR, have become commonplace again. The fear of arrest has begun to destroy horizontal social ties and has atomized society, making collective resistance impossible.
Soviet reflexes The second trend is precisely the emergence of Soviet reflexes in the Russian population. The “homo sovieticus” was thought to have disappeared with the fall of the USSR, but it seems that its burial was premature.
In addition to the anonymous reports already mentioned, the ideas of nationalization of foreign companies that have decided to suspend their activities in Russia, the introduction of strict price controls by the state, or the expropriation of property owned by the “enemies of the people” who left the national territory after the beginning of the “special military operation” are often brandished by those who support the war in Ukraine.
More directly, direct references to the USSR are flourishing. Tanks on their way to Ukraine are flying Soviet flags. During the concert that the Kremlin organized on March 18, 2022 in Moscow to show popular support for the president, the main song was “Made in the Soviet Union” (which starts with “Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova… That’s my country!” before adding a little later “Kazakhstan and the Caucasus, and the Baltic too!”).
Today’s deeply corrupt and kleptocratic Russian system, run by an elite that generally uses the embezzled money to afford a luxurious lifestyle, has little to do with any communist ideal. Nevertheless, the country’s current leaders, most of whom are old enough to have been trained and educated in the USSR, are happy to use typical Soviet propaganda.
Thus, in September 2021, on the Facebook page of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to justify the idea that Russia has never attacked another country (a fundamental element of the Kremlin’s propaganda) the partition of Poland by Germany and the USSR in 1939 was simply presented as a “liberating expedition” by the Red Army – a vision in line with the one propagated in the USSR and taken up on several occasions by Vladimir Putin, who did not hesitate to rehabilitate the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
Young against old
The third trend at work is the growing generation gap in Russia.
Many young Russians are opposed to this war. They are the ones who come out in the streets the most, they are the ones who are most often arrested by the police during demonstrations. Students confide on social networks and sometimes to their teachers that the hardest thing for them today is to talk to their own parents, who are either indoctrinated by television or paralyzed by fear of repression, and therefore pressure their children to keep them quiet.
Modern Russian youth is largely globalized and open to dialogue with other cultures. They live like Western youth: they listen to the same music, watch the same series, love the same brands and use the same formulas (lol, crush, chill, etc.). This trend may contribute to the evolution of Russian society in the future – but not in the immediate future.
What about the intelligentsia?
It is impossible to understand Russian society without mentioning the intelligentsia. The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev said that writers and poets are the conscience of the nation and best represent the real Russia. Today, we can see that a large majority of the Russian intelligentsia is radically opposed to the war that Putin has unleashed.
These include writer Boris Akunin, director Andrei Zviaguintsev, writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya, actress Shulpan Khamatova, writer Dmitry Glukhovsky, as well as Russian youth idols such as singers Oxxxymiron, Monetochka, Face, Noize MC, and the country’s most popular blogger, Yuri Dud. Most of them have already left Russia.
Report on the “Russians against war” concert organized by Oxxxymiron in Istanbul, CNN, 18 March 2022.
All of them take up positive ideas intrinsic to Russian culture: the value of individual freedom sung by Alexander Pushkin, the absurdity of a harmony built on even a single tear of a child, as expressed by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and the rejection of violence that Leo Tolstoy placed at the heart of his philosophy.
The Russian people have always been slightly out of step with their intelligentsia. Nevertheless, they have always managed to reunite with it. It will still take time for the whole population to become aware of the tragedy that is currently taking place. How long? That is the uncertainty. What is certain is that only after a critical analysis of the Putin regime and the expurgation of the hatred it has infused into Russian society can real changes take place.
An astonishing 99 per cent of the world’s population breathes polluted air that exceeds internationally approved limits, with negative health impacts kicking in at much lower levels than previously thought, UN medical scientists said on Monday.
Noting that fossil fuels are responsible for most of the harmful emissions that are linked to acute and chronic sickness, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for tangible steps to curb their use.
The UN agency also urged more governments to take note that it has made significant revisions to its air quality indicators, including for particulate matter – known as PM2.5 – that can enter the bloodstream, along with nitrogen dioxide (NO2), another common urban pollutant and precursor of particulate matter and ozone.
“It has been recognised that air pollution has an impact at a much lower level than previously thought,” said Dr. Sophie Gumy, Technical Officer at WHO’s Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health.
“So, with all the new evidence that has come up over the last 15 years since the last WHO air quality guideline update, most of the values of the guidelines levels have been reduced. So (for) particulate matter it has been reduced by two, and for nitrogen dioxide it has been reduced by four.”
According to the WHO, low and middle-income countries still experience greater exposure to unhealthy levels of particulate matter compared to the global average, but nitrogen dioxide patterns “are different, showing less difference between high and low and middle-income countries”.
Invisible danger
The agency’s data indicates that 4.2 million people die from exposure to outdoor air pollution, in addition to the 3.8 million whose deaths are linked to household smoke produced by dirty stoves and fuels.
And based on WHO’s mathematical modelling of available air pollution data from 80 per cent of the world’s urban areas, it indicates that almost every one of us faces an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, lung disease, cancer and pneumonia.
As depressing and as dangerous as this situation is, the UN health agency insists that momentum has been growing for better air quality everywhere in the last decade.
Proof of this is the fact that more than 6,000 cities in 117 countries now monitor air quality, compared to 1,100 cities in 91 countries a decade ago.
Smog fills the skyline of the city of Toronto, Canada.
Achieving cleaner air is also one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and an increasing number of UN agencies have passed resolutions urging Member States to address the health impacts of smog-filled air.
Welcoming the increasing number of cities that have begun to measure air quality for the first time, Dr. Maria Neira, Director, WHO Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health, said that it was particularly significant that data is also being gathered on nitrogen dioxide.
NO2 “is a proxy indicator for traffic and it’s telling us what is happening at urban level and how this gas that we know that is so damaging and causing so many of respiratory diseases – one of them being asthma – is increasing in many cities around the world.”
Despite this progress, “the bad news is that we still have a majority of cities who do not comply with the air quality guidelines,” said Dr. Gumy. “The people living in them are still breathing unhealthy levels of fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide, with people in low and middle-income countries suffering the highest exposures.”
Hot data
Released ahead of World Health Day on 7 April, the 2022 update of the World Health Organization’s air quality database includes for the first time ground measurements of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter with diameters equal or smaller than 10 microns (PM10) or 2.5 microns (PM2.5). Both groups of pollutants originate mainly from human activities related to fossil fuel combustion.
The new air quality database is the most extensive yet in its coverage of air pollution exposure on the ground, WHO says. Some 2,000 more cities/human settlements now record ground monitoring data for particulate matter, PM10 and/or PM2.5, than the last update. This marks an almost six-fold rise in reporting since the database launched in 2011.
Chiang Rai (Thailand), 4 April 2022 – The so-called Golden Triangle area, bordering Myanmar, Thailand and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, has historically been a centre of Southeast Asia’s illicit drug economy. In her first mission to the Golden Triangle, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Ghada Waly learned about what Thailand has done, and is doing, in response to the regional drug challenge that might be applied to other parts of the world.
Ms. Waly’s mission to northern Thailand started with a visit to the Mae Fah Luang Foundation in Doi Tung, Chiang Rai Province. For the past four decades, Mae Fah Luang has transformed communities characterized by opium production and insecurity into places with sustainable economies. Interacting with Doi Tung’s community, the Executive Director appreciated learning many lessons and key concepts of the Thai approach to alternative development.
The mission also included a visit to neighbouring Chiang Mai Province and the Roi Jai Rak project, which was conceived as a way to address significant and long-standing problems related to synthetic drug use and trafficking. The Roi Jai Rak project applies traditional alternative development approaches to provide sustainable livelihoods to local communities, community policing, and health services for people who use drugs. Beneficiaries of the project shared their experience with Ms. Waly and discussed the strengths of the approach, lessons to consider for other places, and their hopes for the future.
Thailand also cooperates extensively with other regional partners on law enforcement operations. Executive Director Waly visited the Doi Chang Moob military observation base on the Thailand-Myanmar border with Wichai Chaimongkhon, Secretary-General of the Office for the Narcotics Control Board of Thailand. She met with Thai military officers to discuss the current security situation, and joined the Royal Thai Navy for a patrol on the Mekong river – a key corridor for illicit trafficking – and to learn about border security operations and cooperation.
An important example of UNODC’s cooperation with Thailand is found in the recently-established International Narcotics Control College in Chiang Saen, Chiang Rai Province. Visiting the college, Ms. Waly announced UNODC’s support for it as a regional training hub and centre to assist countries to advance capacities in law enforcement, cross-border cooperation, demand reduction, and health and prevention services, and as a venue to share experiences in alternative development.
Executive Director Waly’s mission reaffirmed UNODC and Thailand’s strong partnership to help address the regional drug problem. Through the newly-launched Regional Programme for Southeast Asia and the Pacific 2022-2026, UNODC will continue supporting Thailand and other regional governments to respond.
Find out why MEPs want legislation to guarantee the right to repair and what concrete measures they propose.
Ahead of a planned European Commission proposal on the right to repair during the third quarter of 2022, Parliament is set to outline its priorities on 7 April. The right to repair is seen as a key step for the the EU’s plan to achieve circular economy by 2050 in the framework of the European Green Deal, the EU’s roadmap to reach climate neutrality by 2050.
Another obstacle to a more sustainable consumption is obsolescence: some products are designed to fail after a certain time or amount of use. In some cases, the components of the devices are fixed in such a way that they cannot be taken out and replaced.
Repairs of electronic devices would be good for the environment, leading to a reduction in resource use, fewer greenhouse gas emissions and less energy consumption.
Electronics are the fastest growing source of waste in the EU. In 2017, more than 3.5 million tonnes were collected and only 40% recycled.
What should be included in right to repair legislation?
The European Parliament has been in favour of improving the consumers’ right to repair for over a decade and has made a number of concrete proposals to the Commission to make repairs systematic, cost-efficient and attractive.
Among the measures MEPs are set to demand in the upcoming legislative proposal are:
Make repairs more attractive to consumers, like bonuses for repairing a faulty device or receiving a replacement device for the duration of the repair
Oblige manufacturers to grant free access to repair and maintenance information and guarantee software updates for a minimum period
Ensure devices are more durable, easier to repair and include removable and replaceable parts
Offer better consumer information regarding the reparability of devices
Extend guarantees
More on what Europe does to achieve a circular economy
