News headlines in 2015, page 9

KINGSTON, Jamaica, Nov 18 (IPS) - This past summer Jamaicans sweltered through their third consecutive year of reduced rainfall resulting in wild fires, a crop-killing drought and daily water cuts.

Thiruvananthapuram, India, Nov 18 (IPS) - Until September this year, Lissie Sunny was not a name known to the Indian public. All of this changed when this lean and dark woman, working for over a quarter century plucking tea leaves in the misty mountain slopes of southern India finally had enough and took on one of the most powerful tea companies in the world.

DOKOLO, UGANDA, Nov 17 (IPS) - Households in Northern Uganda are recovering from a prolonged dry spell which has devastated harvests and led to food shortages. Long-awaited rains are expected to replenish pastures, and communities are being encouraged to plant short-term crops. But those that can, fear losing their produce again, when the rains stop.

LIMA, Nov 17 (IPS) - Lawmakers in the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean decided at a regional meeting to work as a bloc for the passage of laws on food security – an area in which countries in the region have show uneven progress.

MIAMI, Florida, Nov 17 (IPS) - We humans are acutely aware of risks. From our earliest times, the risks we faced were from hunger, predatory animals, extreme environmental conditions and, as our numbers grew, from other human tribes.

NEW YORK, Nov 17 (IPS) - Concerned with the consequences of demographic decline and population ageing, especially with respect to economic growth, national defence and pensions and health care for the elderly, a growing number of governments are seeking to raise birth rates. Whereas nearly 40 years ago 13 countries had policies to raise fertility, today the number has increased four-fold to 56, representing more than one-third of the world's population.

HARARE, Zimbabwe, Nov 17 (IPS) - With droughts wreaking havoc in vast areas of Zimbabwe, a majority of people here are fast falling in line with climate-smart agriculture (CSA) as food deficits continue.

MONTEVIDEO, Nov 17 (IPS) - Uruguay is modifying its energy mix with the aim of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030, by means of a strategy that bolsters non-conventional clean energy sources through public-private partnerships and new investment. A majority of this South American country's energy already comes from renewable sources.

GENEVA, Nov 16 (IPS) - South-South cooperation is usually seen as a poor second fiddle to North-South aid in the world of development assistance. Indeed, developing countries' policy makers themselves insist that South-South cooperation can only supplement but not replace North-South cooperation.

ANKARA, Turkey, Nov 16 (IPS) - The world loses 23 hectares to land degradation each and every minute, adding up to the disappearance of 12 million hectares worldwide – an area half the size of the UK.