Agrégateur de flux

Commissioned by Sweden's conservative government, history professor and author Lars Trädgårdh has put together and presented a proposal for a Swedish "cultural canon": a list of 100 major achievements in the areas of literature, theatre, cinema, music, religion, business and inventions. Sweden's press is divided over the significance and purpose of the list.

Swiss food company Nestlé has dismissed its CEO Laurent Freixe with immediate effect just one year after he took office. Freixe was dismissed for having an undisclosed 'romantic relationship' with a female employee who reported directly to him, according to the company. The board of directors saw this as a clear violation of Nestlé's code of conduct and internal guidelines.

Les intentions du Maroc en matière d’achats d’équipements militaires donnent souvent matière à des rumeurs. Ainsi, ces dernières semaines, il a été avancé que Rabat était sur le point de signer un contrat en vue de se procurer trente-deux chasseurs-bombardiers F-35A auprès de Lockheed Martin… alors que la DSCA [Defense Security Cooperation Agency], l’agence chargée...

Cet article Le Maroc est sur le point de confirmer la commande de dix hélicoptères H225M Caracal auprès de la France est apparu en premier sur Zone Militaire.

What India’s and South Korea’s dealings with Washington tell us about real and imagined U.S. peace initiatives in Asia.

The Wagner Group is no more but Moscow is peddling the same false promises.

While most of Europe was already off holidaying, the European Food Safety Authority quietly released its long-awaited scientific opinion on the welfare of mink, foxes, raccoon dogs and chinchillas kept for fur production.

EXCLUSIF - À quelques jours d’un vote de confiance décisif pour François Bayrou, une étude Ifop-Fiducial pour Le Figaro fournit de nouvelles intentions de vote dans l’hypothèse où les Français seraient appelés aux urnes.

Les tensions entre l’Algérie et la France suscitent toujours des réactions. Dans un entretien avec Le Figaro, l’ex-président français Nicolas Sarkozy a abordé à nouveau […]

L’article Visas, OQTF et accords de 1968 : Sarkozy appelle Paris à durcir le ton avec Alger est apparu en premier sur .

À l’approche de la rentrée sociale 2025/2026, l’Établissement public de transport urbain et suburbain d’Alger (ETUSA) a dévoilé un nouveau dispositif pour l’ensemble de ses […]

L’article ETUSA met en place un nouveau programme de bus à Alger dès la rentrée est apparu en premier sur .

BAROMÈTRE FIGARO MAGAZINE - La cote de confiance du chef de l’État chute de six points pour atteindre son plus bas niveau depuis 2017 : 15 % !

DÉCRYPTAGE - Le Rassemblement national s’est mis sur le pied de guerre, avec l’espoir d’une dissolution de l’Assemblée et avec à la clé l’obtention d’une majorité absolue.

À Kibera, le plus grand bidonville du Kenya situé à Nairobi, des habitants collectent des déchets plastiques et les échangent contre des points "verts", qui peuvent ensuite être utilisés pour accéder à des services essentiels – installations sanitaires, eau potable... – généralement inaccessibles à de nombreux ménages. 

Produce trucks arrive at Lo Valledor, Chile’s largest wholesale market, where edible surplus is recovered for vulnerable communities; Latin America and the Caribbean lead hunger reduction, yet inequalities and malnutrition persist. Credit: Max Valencia / FAO

By Máximo Torero
SANTIAGO, Sep 3 2025 (IPS)

In perspective, good news: world hunger is beginning to decline. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025 (SOFI 2025) reported a drop in the proportion of people suffering from hunger, from 8.5% in 2023 to 8.2% in 2024. Latin America and the Caribbean has played a pivotal role in this progress.

In 2024, undernourishment in the region affected 5.1% of the population, down from 6.1% in 2020–2021. Moderate or severe food insecurity fell significantly, from 33.7% in 2020 to 25.2% in 2024, the largest reduction recorded worldwide.

Even after crises such as the pandemic, rising inflation, and extreme climate events, progress is possible through sustained public policies, cooperation, investment, and strengthening the resilience of agrifood systems

Five countries in the region—Chile, Costa Rica, Guyana, Uruguay and now Brazil— no longer appear on the hunger map, thanks to coordinated policies in the areas of economy, health, education, agriculture, and social protection, a viable formula to tackle the structural determinants of hunger.

These figures demonstrate that, even after crises such as the pandemic, rising inflation, and extreme climate events, progress is possible through sustained public policies, cooperation, investment, and strengthening the resilience of agrifood systems.

This positive development should not hide an uncomfortable truth: these advances are not reaching everyone equally. SOFI 2025 points out that while some countries are reducing hunger, others face challenges such as increasing child stunting, overweight, and obesity. In the region, 141 million adults are obese, and 4 million children under the age of five are overweight.

The analysis of specific cases highlights contrasts: Colombia reduced hunger to 3.9% with territorial policies and support for family farming, while the Dominican Republic cut the indicator by more than 17 percentage points in two decades with a multisectoral approach.

However, progress is not always uniform. Panama and Guatemala, although reducing hunger, continue to struggle with the challenge of malnutrition. Ecuador and El Salvador face a similar paradox: while hunger is decreasing, moderate and severe food insecurity is on the rise.

In Venezuela, hunger fell to 5.9%, but the pressure of food inflation persists. Mexico has reduced its figures to 2.7%, although adult overweight reached 36% in 2022, above the regional average. In Argentina, while hunger remains at low levels (3.4%), there has been an increase in child overweight and adult obesity.

Unfortunately, the Caribbean remains the greatest challenge. Some 17.5% of the population is undernourished, and the cost of a healthy diet reaches 5.48 PPP dollars per person per day. Haiti is facing one of the world’s most severe crises: 54.2% of its population suffers from hunger. This is not only an alarming statistic; it is an urgent call to strengthen greater cooperation and investment in the region’s most fragile context.

SOFI 2025 concludes that the countries that have reduced hunger under adverse circumstances in Latin America and the Caribbean share common approaches. These include strong and well-targeted social protection systems capable of cushioning crises; and integrated policies that strengthen local production, inclusive value chains, and market access, support family farming, and promote environmental sustainability.

Added to this are productive diversification, climate resilience measures to withstand extreme events, and open and stable trade to ensure supply and moderate price volatility; as well as coordination among institutions and levels of government to align investments, and data and monitoring systems that anticipate and respond quickly to crises.

These experiences show that a combination of political will, strategic investment, and evidence-based management can reverse hunger—even in an uncertain global environment.

Excerpt:

Máximo Torero Cullen is FAO Chief Economist and Regional Representative ad interim for Latin America and the Caribbean

Scientists warn that water risk threatens iconic heritage sites such as the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Sep 3 2025 (IPS)

From Zimbabwe’s ‘The Smoke that thunders,’ Victoria Falls, to the awe-inspiring Pyramids in Egypt and the romantic Taj Mahal in India, these iconic sites are facing a growing threat – water risk.

Several World Heritage sites could be lost forever without urgent action to protect nature, for instance, through the restoration of vital landscapes like wetlands, warns a new report by the World Resources Institute (WRI) following an analysis indicating that droughts and flooding are threatening these sites.

World Heritage sites are places of outstanding universal cultural, historical, scientific, or natural significance, recognized and preserved for future generations through inscription on the World Heritage List of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

About 73 percent of the 1,172 non-marine World Heritage sites are exposed to at least one severe water risk, such as drought, flooding, or river or coastal flooding. About 21 percent of the sites face dual problems of too much and too little water, according to an analysis using WRI’s Aqueduct data.

While the global share of World Heritage Sites exposed to high-to-extremely high levels of water stress is projected to rise from 40 percent to 44 percent by 2050, impacts will be far more severe in regions like the Middle East and North Africa, parts of South Asia, and northern China, the report found.

The report highlighted that water risks were threatening many of the more than 1,200 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The Taj Mahal, for example, faces water scarcity that is increasing pollution and depleting groundwater, both of which are damaging the mausoleum. In 2022, a massive flood closed down all of Yellowstone National Park and cost over USD 20 million in infrastructure repairs to reopen.

River Flooding is affecting the desert city of Chan Chan in Peru. According to WRI’s Aqueduct platform, the UNESCO site and its surrounding region in La Libertad face an extremely high risk of river flooding. By 2050, the population affected by floods each year in an average, non-El Niño year in La Libertad is expected to double from 16,000 to 34,000 due to a combination of human activity and climate change. In an El Niño year, that increase may be much higher.

In addition, the biodiversity-rich Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, the sacred city of Chichén Itzá in Mexico, and Morocco’s Medina of Fez are facing growing water risks that are not just endangering the sites but also the millions of people who depend on them for food, livelihoods, or a connection to their culture or who just enjoy traveling to these destinations, the report said.

Straddling the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, the Victoria Falls was inscribed on the World Heritage site in 1989 for its vital ecosystem and essential source of livelihoods for thousands of people, and a major tourism drawcard.

Despite its reputation for massive cascading water, Mosi-oa-Tunya/Victoria Falls has faced recurring drought over the past decade and at times dried up to barely a trickle. The report stated that the rainforest surrounding Mosi-oa-Tunya/Victoria Falls is home to a rich diversity of wildlife and plants.

According to WRI, Victoria Falls experienced droughts as recently as 2016, 2019, and 2024. Research on rainfall patterns near Mosi-oa-Tunya/Victoria Falls shows that the onset of the rainy season, normally in October, is arriving later in the year. That means in a drought year, it takes longer for relief to arrive, and the longer the drought continues, the more it affects the people, crops, and economy around it.

An Aqueduct analysis found that Victoria Falls ranks as a medium drought risk, below the more than 430 UNESCO World Heritage Sites that rank as a high drought risk. This is primarily because relatively low population density and limited human development immediately surrounding the site reduce overall exposure.

“However, the site faces increasing pressure from tourism-related infrastructure development, and data shows the probability of drought occurrence ranks high—a finding reinforced by the many recent droughts that have plagued the region,” said the report. “Climate change is not only expected to make these droughts more frequent, but recovery is expected to last longer, especially in places that aren’t prepared.

“The time between droughts may not be long enough for the ecosystem to recover, which is particularly concerning for Mosi-oa-Tunya/Victoria Falls.”

Restoring nature, a solution to plugging water risks

The report recommends swift action to restore vital landscapes locally that support healthy, stable water and investment in nature-based solutions like planting trees to restore headwater forests or revitalize wetlands to capture floodwaters and recharge aquifers. Political commitment is key to making this happen.

Besides, countries have been urged to enact national conservation policies to protect vital landscapes from unsustainable development globally, and water’s status as a global common good needs to be elevated while equitable transboundary agreements on sharing water across borders are established.

Zimbabwe hosted the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Ramsar Convention in Victoria Falls under the theme ‘Protecting Wetlands for our Common Future.’ The protection of global water resources is now more urgent.

“You will find the political will to invest in nature exists all over the world,” Samantha Kuzma, Aqueduct Data Lead at the World Resources Institute, told IPS. “Dedicated communities are finding ways to protect and restore vital landscapes like wetlands. The problem is that these efforts are piecemeal. Globally, we are not seeing the political will at the scale needed to achieve real, lasting change.”

The world needs to mobilize up to $7 trillion by 2030 for global water infrastructure to meet water-related SDG commitments and address decades of underinvestment, according to the World Bank. Currently, nearly 91 percent of annual spending on water comes from the public sector, including governments and state-owned enterprises, with less than 2 percent contributed by the private sector, the World Bank says, pointing out the importance of firm commitment to reforming the water sector through progressive policies, institutions, and regulations, and better planning and management of existing capital allocated to the sector.

“We are at the point where inaction is more costly than action,” Kuzma told IPS, emphasizing that the world must do a better job of understanding water’s fundamental role in sustaining economies because its value is everywhere and invisible until it’s at risk.

“Take UNESCO World Heritage Sites, for example. Their ecological and cultural worth is priceless, and in purely pragmatic terms, they’re often the linchpin of local economies,” said Kuzma. “Any closure or damage will send immediate ripple effects through communities. It is safe to say that globally, we are falling short when it comes to protecting nature. But to change course, we must first understand why.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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