NI 529 - January, 2021

The biodiversity emergency

A note from the editor

Nature’s restoration

Probably by mistake, a tiny bird flies up to my balcony in the busy, restless city and looks me in the eye. Is it sheer sentimentality that floods me with joy? Why does it feel like a visitation?

I haven’t taken the train anywhere in months due to the Covid-19 pandemic and I find myself filled with irrational longings for the inquisitive, iridescently speckled starlings that used to dart about my feet at the station, threading the cavernous space with their silvery song.

Many of us who live in urban areas feel a periodic yearning, an ache sometimes, for the wild. Even a cultivated green space becomes a refuge from daily stresses. And the scientific knowledge is piling up about all the ways simply being in nature helps our mental health, our immune systems, our wellbeing.

Nature restores, but is itself in need of restoration. Due to our constant commodification of the natural world we are erasing huge chunks of its awe-inspiring variety and damaging ourselves in the process. This edition’s Big Story amplifies some of the concerns of those who live closest to nature, while attempting to get to grips with the complex challenges involved if we want to stop biodiversity’s catastrophic decline. In the words of author Lucy Jones, we can no longer view nature as ‘a luxury, an extra, a garnish’.

Our continuing Food Justice series dovetails into the biodiversity theme with articles on the virulent consequences of Big Agriculture and forest farming in Ethiopia, a country in the news for reasons of conflict. Elsewhere we report on relatives’ agonizing search for Syria’s missing and what Finland has done to make its citizens so content.

Dinyar Godrej for the New Internationalist co-operative.
www.newint.org

The big story

Another chunk of the Amazon rainforest goes up in smoke. In the last 10 years alone, 38,600 km2 (equal to 8.4 million football fields) has been deforested for ranching, logging, soy and oil-palm cultivation.

Photo: Loren McIntyre/Stock Connection Blue/Alamy

NI 529 - January, 2021

The biodiversity emergency

A note from the editor

Nature’s restoration

The big story

We have brought the natural world and its diversity to a breaking point. Dinyar Godrej surveys the damage and explores how we need to act to repair it.

The Big Story

Action, information, and advocacy groups to support on biodiversity.

Facts, and stats on biodiversity.

Seirian Sumner gives voice to a creature of amazing ecological value that humans usually consider a pest and the stinging scourge of summer picnics.

Graeme Green speaks with local experts about why wildlife protection in Africa and Asia must push beyond relying on international visitors and foreign professionals towards sustainable, locally led initiatives.

Peru’s Manu National Park is a biodiversity success story. But its management has left its ancestral peoples without voice and agency. Could that be about to change? asks Jack Lo Lau.

Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is an environmental activist and member of Chad’s pastoralist Mbororo community who believes in twinning traditional knowledge with science to tackle ecosystem challenges.

Around the world thousands of conservation projects are trying to rescue wildlife species in peril, often against huge odds. Each of them will face unique challenges, as these brief case histories demonstrate. Words: Dinyar Godrej.

As industrial agriculture encroaches into the last wild places of the Earth, it’s unleashing dangerous pathogens. Time to heal the metabolic rift between ecology and economy, suggests Rob Wallace.

Tesfa-Alem Tekle travels to meet the Ethiopian farmers whose unique agroforestry system has kept hunger at bay for millennia.

The families of the disappeared are not giving up their search until they have answers. Jan-Peter Westad reports.

Danny Dorling and Annika Koljonen explain how Finland has come to be so equal, peaceful and happy – and sketch out the lessons we might learn from its example.

Opinion

The assault on journalists is an assault on democracy. Chin’ono’s crime was using Twitter to criticize Zimbabwe’s government, writes Nanjala Nyabola.

With Trump’s defeat, Bolsonaro loses his imaginary friend. Bolsonaro’s desperate pledges to Trumpism have not paid off, argues Leonardo Sakamoto.

Adding pain to the pandemic. Nilanjana Bhowmick on the recent legislation steamrolled through parliament that has disadvantaged working people and gripped India’s farmers in protest.

Currents

‘Let them think for themselves’, says the ‘ghetto president’, Bobi Wine.

The Bolivian president elect.

Police profiling in Nigeria by Shayera Dark.

Update on queer tango from Argentina by Nina Meghji.

Sustainable living in Mexico, report by Antonio Cascio.

Another day of mourning for First Nations people in Australia, reports Will Higginbotham.

The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, report by Jan-Peter Westad.

Coal mines out; Cleaners in; Park life.

Regulars

Praise, blame and all points in between? Give us your feedback.

Iris Gonzales joins a repatriation flight bringing home Filipino workers – a bittersweet rite of passage.

A scheme that was dreamed up by Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean.

Transparency in food marketing.

Empty homes vs homeless people in the US.

Manchester Metropolitan University students protest the handling of Covid-19.

President Trump is defeated by Omar Al Abdallat (Jordan).

The photos, facts, and politics of Argentina.

Is it time for reparations for transatlantic slavery? Kehinde Andrews and KA Dilday deliberate.

A poem by Otto René Castillo.

Fresh hell by Kate Evans.

Can Amazon deliver a zero-carbon future? Words by Danny Chivers.

Nyani Quarmyne’s bird’s-eye view of a community gathering in Ghana.

Big Momma Carrie Lam is on a mission in Hong Kong.

The intrepid Betty Bigombe talks about her immersive way of negotiating peace with the ultra-violent Lord’s Resistance Army.

Conspiracy - by P J Polyp.

Ethical and political dilemmas abound these days. Seems like we’re all in need of a New Internationalist perspective. Enter stage: Agony Uncle.

What if we got real about sustainability? It might reverse the UN’s order of holiness, Vanessa Baird finds.

Crossword Puzzle, Association Words and Wordsearch

Trickle down, by Marc Roberts.

Film, Book & Music Reviews

Theatre of War by Andrea Jeftanovic; Untraceable by Sergei Lebedev; How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm; Imagining Orwell by Julio Etchart.

The Mole Agent (El agente topo) directed and written by Maite Alberdi; African Apocalypse directed and co-written by Rob Lemkin.

Freedom by Yvette Janine Jackson; Kologo by Alostmen.