News headlines in 2018, page 10

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 05 (IPS) - The speculation that the Trump administration plans to reduce its mandatory assessed financial contributions to the UN's regular budget was implicitly confirmed when the US president told delegates last September that Washington "is working to shift more of our funding, from assessed contributions to voluntary contributions, so that we can target American resources to the programs with the best record of success."

Stockholm/Rome, Dec 05 (IPS) - Why do we still need to be concerned about a war that ended a hundred years ago? Sure, it caused the death of at least 37 million people, but why bother about that now? Anyhow France´s president Emmanuel Macron believed it was worthwhile to commemorate the end of World War I and seventy world leaders were invited to attend the centennial ceremony by Paris´s Arc de Triomphe.

NAIROBI, Dec 05 (IPS) - Mithika Mwenda is the Executive Director for the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA).An African delegation is in the Polish city of Katowice to join 30,000 delegates and thousands others from almost 200 countries attending the 4th edition of what has come to be known as annual climate change negotiation conferences organised under the auspices of the United Nations.

BRUSSELS, Dec 04 (IPS) - European Union officials and global health bodies have called for help for poorer countries as growing resistance to antibiotics threatens to become a ‘global health tragedy' and jeopardises Sustainable Development Goals in some parts of the world.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 04 (IPS) - Robert Muthami is a Programme Coordinator at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Kenya Office. He coordinates work around socio-ecological transformation.

African countries have been at the climate-change negotiating table for more than 20 years. The continent faces some of the most severe impacts of climate change, but questions remain over its adaptive capacity despite this engagement.

KUALA LUMPUR & SYDNEY, Dec 04 (IPS) - In criticizing the ‘free trade delusion', UNCTAD's 2018 Trade and Development Report proposes an alternative to both reactionary nationalism, recently revived by President Trump, and the corporate cosmopolitanism of neoliberal multilateral discourse in recent decades by revisiting the Havana Charter on its 70th anniversary.

MANILA, Dec 04 (IPS) - Rodrigo Duterte's bloody war on drugs has claimed tens of thousand of lives. Lorena Villanueva and Emy Pagaduan lost their sons. Now they are demanding that the President of the Philippines be held responsible for the killings.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 04 (IPS) - Patricia Espinosa was appointed Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2016, a year after the adoption of the Paris Agreement to intensify actions and investments needed for a sustainable low carbon future. Prior to that, she was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mexico.The IPCC report says that it is not impossible to limit climate change to 1.5͒C? Do you think we can realistically achieve that? Politically, what needs to happen?

History shows that when the human race decides to pursue a challenging goal, we can achieve great things. From ridding the world of smallpox to prohibiting slavery and other ancient abuses through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we have proven that by joining together we can create a better world.

BERLIN, Dec 03 (IPS) - Manuela Matthess is advisor on international energy and climate policy at Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) Berlin*

COP24 is the time for governments to act and increase their pledges to prevent global warming ensuring a just transition that leaves no one behind.

ACCRA, Dec 03 (IPS) - Karim Hussein was Executive Secretary of the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services from September 2016 to August 2018.

In mid-2018 the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) that brings together key development partners  and 17 multistakeholder Regional Networks and country fora across six continents, published a new book: What Works in Rural Advisory Services: Global Good Practice Notes.