News headlines in 2018, page 15

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 24 (IPS) - Only 18 percent of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean live in rural areas, but these are increasingly hotbeds of poverty, and climate change is playing a major role in this phenomenon.

STOCKHOLM, Nov 23 (IPS) - The recent rise of nationalism in some western countries has been fuelled by an anti-immigration campaign based on the assumed negative influences migrants may have on the host country's "culture". Nationalists seem to conceive culture as a static concept. However, culture is not invariable, it develops and changes over time and as most things created by humans, it is also connected with power. Generally, when people define themselves as "cultured" they assert themselves as superior to others.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 23 (IPS) - Selim Jahan is Director of the Human Development Report Office, UNDP.

The lack of women's empowerment is a critical form of inequality. And while there are many barriers to empowerment, violence against women and girls (VAW) is both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality.

SYDNEY/BROOME/CYGNET BAY, Australia, Nov 23 (IPS) - Australia's remote north-western Kimberley coast, where the Great Sandy Desert meets the sapphire waters of the Indian Ocean, is home to the giant Pinctada maxima or silver-lipped pearl oyster shells that produce the finest and highly-prized Australian South Sea Pearls.

OTTAWA, Nov 23 (IPS) - Jonathan Wilkinson is Canada's Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard. A Rhodes Scholar, Wilkinson holds Masters Degrees from Oxford University and McGill University.

This November, Canada, along with Kenya and Japan, is proud to host the world's first global conference focused on the world's ocean economy: the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

NAIROBI, Nov 22 (IPS) - In a matter of days the world's blue economy actors and experts will converge in Nairobi, Kenya for the first ever global conference on sustainable blue economy.

PHNOM PENH, Nov 22 (IPS) - Karolien Casaer-Diez is the new country representative of Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) for Cambodia. She started her career in Foreign Affairs in Belgium and worked for the United Nations Development Programme in Somalia and Bangladesh. She has been based in Myanmar and Laos for GGGI and was assigned to Cambodia three months ago.

Driven by garment exports, tourism and construction, Cambodia has sustained an average growth rate of 7.7 percent between 1995 to 2017, making this Southeast Asian nation the sixth fastest-growing economy in the world.

ADDIS ABABA, Nov 21 (IPS) - Mahawa Kaba Wheeler is Director for the Women, Gender and Development Directorate, Bureau of the Chairperson, at the African Union CommissionThe blue economy has quite rightly been described as the ‘New Frontier of the African Renaissance'. Its potential for a continent on which almost two thirds of its states have a coastline, whose trade is 90 percent sea-borne and whose lakes constitute the largest proportion of surface freshwater in the world, is enormous.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 21 (IPS) - Economic inequality – involving both income and wealth concentration – has risen in nearly all world regions since the 1980s. Gross economic inequalities moderated for much of the 20th century, especially after World War Two until the 1970s, but has now reached levels never before seen in human history.

ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands, Nov 21 (IPS) - I recently connected with Felix Dodds and a colleague of his Chris Tomkins about the development around how the Blue Economy prior to the Kenya Government's international conference (26-28 November) on the subject. Felix is a global sustainable development leader who has worked on sustainable development for more than two decades observing and participating in international development meetings, including the negotiations on the Global Goals for Sustainable Development, which the Blue Economy is part of and asked for his take on why and how the business and finance community should get behind them.