Global

Rizelle, 17, and her three-week-old baby. Rizelle lives in a squatted home under a bridge in San Dionisio, Indonesia. Photo: Save the Children

Urban slums a deathtrap for poor children

by Valentina Ieri Inter Press Service May 8, 2015

It’s called the urban survival gap – fuelled by the growing inequality between rich and poor in both developing and developed countries – and it literally determines whether millions of infants will live or die before their fifth birthday....

This hunter is a member of the Waorani community, an Amazonian indigenous people who live in eastern Ecuador. According to United Nations estimates, upwards of 370 million indigenous people are spread out over 70 countries worldwide. Between them, they speak over 5,000 languages. Photo:: Courtesy Nicolas Villaume, Land is Life

Living the indigenous way, from the jungles to the mountains

by Stephen Leahy Inter Press Service May 8, 2015

In the course of human history many tens of thousands of communities have survived and thrived for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Scores of these largely self-sustaining traditional communities continue to this day in remote jungles, forests, mountains, deserts, and in the icy regions of the No...

Feeding ourselves thirsty: how the food sector is managing global water risks

by Ceres May 1, 2015

The global food sector, which uses 70% of the world’s freshwater, faces extraordinary risks from the twin challenges of water scarcity and water pollution. Rising competition, combined with aging water infrastructure, weak regulation and climate change are creating a water availability emergency t...

Does community-driven aid need a makeover?

by Obinna Anyadike IRIN News April 27, 2015

CDD/R (the R stands for reconstruction) has three principal goals: improved socio-economic recovery, enhanced social cohesion and better governance. It’s regarded as particularly useful in post-conflict countries where infrastructure is often weak, institutions absent, order and society disrupted....

Rising toll on migrants leaves Europe in crisis; 900 may be dead at sea

by Jim Yardley New York Times April 20, 2015

ROME — European leaders were confronted on Monday with a humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean, as estimates that as many as 900 migrants may have died off the Libyan coast this weekend prompted calls for a new approach to the surging number of refugees crossing from Africa and the Middle East....

An Arara indigenous village along the Volta Grande (Big Bend) of the Xingú River, whose flow will be severely reduced when a large part of the water is diverted in a canal that will feed into the Belo Monte dam, which will be the third-largest hydropower station in the world. Photo: Mario Osava/IPS

Deforestation in the Amazon aggravates Brazil’s energy crisis

by Mario Osava Inter Press Service April 13, 2015

In Brazil water and electricity go together, and two years of scant rainfall have left tens of millions of people on the verge of water and power rationing, boosting arguments for the need to fight deforestation in the Amazon rainforest....

World Health Day 2015: Five food safety tips

by Judy Stone Forbes April 7, 2015

Last week’s post on antibiotic resistance in the environment, promoted by herbicides and spread by dust storms from factory farms is a good segue into this week’s observance of the World Health Organization’s Safe Food Day. We also just had news of an outbreak of antibiotic resistant Shigella ...

Greenhouses grow greenhouses. As far as the eye can see, greenhouses cover the landscape in Almeria, Spain. ‘We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire – a crackpot machine – that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate.’ Edward Abbey.  Photo: Yann Arthus Bertrand

Weed killer, long cleared, is doubted

by Andrew Pollack New York Times March 27, 2015

Thirty years ago, an Environmental Protection Agency committee determined that the popular weed killer Roundup might cause cancer. Six years later, in 1991, the agency reversed itself after re-evaluating the mouse study that had been the basis for the original conclusion....

  • World Hunger Education
    Service
    P.O. Box 29015
    Washington, D.C. 20017
  • For the past 50 years, since its founding in 1976, the mission of World Hunger Education Service is to undertake programs, including Hunger Notes, that
    • Educate the general public and target groups about the extent and causes of hunger and malnutrition in the United States and the world
    • Advance comprehension which integrates ethical, religious, social, economic, political, and scientific perspectives on the world food problem
    • Facilitate communication and networking among those who are working for solutions
    • Promote individual and collective commitments to sustainable hunger solutions.