News headlines in 2022, page 7

The UN chief said on Monday he was determined to make 2023 “a year for peace” and a “year for action”, highlighting the need for practical solutions to a raft of pressing problems facing all regions of the world.

The UN Biodiversity Conference, COP15, concluded early on Monday in Montreal, Canada, with a landmark agreement to protect 30 per cent of the planet’s lands, coastal areas and inland waters by the end of the decade. 

Humanity faces unprecedented engineering challenges if it is to survive. Solutions to these challenges are waiting to be discovered in plants, animals, and microbes, but these could be lost forever, if we do not preserve the rich diversity of life on Earth.

More than 280 million people have left their countries to pursue “opportunity, dignity, freedom, and a better life”, the UN chief said on Sunday, International Migrants Day.

Secretary-General António Guterres “strongly condemns” an attack against a UN police patrol in northern Mali that claimed the lives of two Nigerian peacekeepers, according to his spokesperson.

The natural world has gifted humanity with untold health benefits, and it is believed that it harbours many more undiscovered health breakthroughs. However, we risk losing these benefits, if we continue to degrade the environment.

MONTREAL, Dec 16 (IPS) - In addition to its nutritional properties, quinoa, an ancestral grain from the Andes, also has cosmetic uses, as stated by the resource use and benefit-sharing permit ABSCH-IRCC-PE-261033-1 awarded in February to a private individual under a 15-month commercial use contract.

NEW YORK, Dec 16 (IPS) - Climate change is the defining issue of our time. In the words of the UN Secretary General at COP27, “we are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” Cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050 is crucial when it comes to meeting the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.

BRATISLAVA, Dec 16 (IPS) - A new law banning LGBTQI ‘propaganda’ in Russia will further stigmatise LGBTQI people in the country and could worsen what is already one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics, critics have warned.

The first step to legitimacy and security in Libya is to allow registered voters to cast their ballot in fresh elections, UN Special Representative Abdoulaye Bathily told the Security Council on Friday.