Legumes, the likes of peas, lentils, beans, and chickpeas, are one of the most nutrient-rich crops on the market – they are abundant in protein, fibre, iron and potassium – and they are a healthier alternative to cereals and meat. 

The appetite for them is starting to grow: more than 40% of Brits are looking to reduce the amount of meat in their diet and 14% of the population consider themselves “flexitarians” (following a flexible vegetarian diet.)

While traditional European crops such as oats, barley, wheat and rapeseed require synthetic fertilisers to obtain nitrogen – a critical nutrient for growth – leguminous plants produce their own nitrogen from the air. They also leave nitrogen behind in the soil, ready to be used by future crops.

 Dr David Styles, a lecturer in environmental engineering at the University of Limerick, explains,  “Synthetic fertiliser nitrogen dominates the carbon footprint for the cultivation of crops. If we can reduce that by increasing legume production, we’re automatically going to massively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But these crops aren’t so prevalent in Europe,” he added. “They only cover about 1% of European outer land at the moment. Whereas in other countries, like Canada, it’s more than 20%.” Europe obtains most of its protein-rich crops by importing soya beans from South America – a system that drives deforestation.

 Introducing legumes to traditional crop rotations in Scotland would reduce the use of synthetic fertilisers by up to 50%.

Legumes research gets flexitarian pulses racing with farming guidance | Farming | The Guardian

 Woodland now covers 13% of UK land.

About half is made up of native tree species, such as oak, beech and ash, including centuries-old ancient woodlands. The remaining half comprises non-native trees such as conifers grown commercially for timber.

 Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai. and his close family,  has acquired a land and property empire in Britain that appears to exceed 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres), making him one of the country’s largest landowners.

The property portfolio ranges from mansions, stables and training gallops across Newmarket, to white stucco houses in some of London’s most exclusive addresses and extensive moorland including the 25,000-hectare Inverinate estate in the Scottish Highlands. It surpasses the size of the Queen’s personal estates, according to Guy Shrubsole, a leading expert in land ownership.

The exact scale of his British landholding is not known because most of the properties connected to him are owned via offshore companies in the tax havens of Guernsey and Jersey. That raises familiar questions about the secretive nature of large amounts of property ownership in Britain, and whether it is structured in ways to avoid paying UK taxes when the properties are sold.

Revealed: the huge British property empire of Sheikh Mohammed | Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum | The Guardian

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA), has released a report highlighting the inability of women control their own bodies and be free from violence or coercion.

Nearly half of the world’s women, in 57 countries, are denied the right to say yes or no to sex with their partner, use contraception or seek healthcare.

Twenty countries still allow rapists to marry their victims to avoid criminal prosecution.

Dr Natalia Kanem, executive director of UNFPA, said such laws were “deeply wrong” and were “a way of subjugating women. The denial of rights cannot be shielded in law. ‘Marry your rapist’ laws shift the burden of guilt on to the victim and try to sanitise a situation which is criminal.” She explains, “The fact that nearly half of women still cannot make their own decisions about whether or not to have sex, use contraception or seek healthcare should outrage us all,” said Kanem. “In essence, hundreds of millions of women and girls do not own their own bodies. Their lives are governed by others.”

43 countries have no legislation criminalising marital rape.

Dima Dabbous, director of Equality Now’s Middle East and Africa region, whose research is cited in the UNFPA report, said the laws reflected a culture “that does not think women should have bodily autonomy and that they are the property of the family. It’s a tribal and antiquated approach to sexuality and honour mixed together”.

More than 30 countries restrict women’s freedom outside the home.

“The denial of bodily autonomy is a violation of women and girls’ fundamental human rights that reinforces inequalities and perpetuates violence arising from gender discrimination,” said Kanem. “It is nothing less than an annihilation of the spirit, and it must stop.”

‘Marry your rapist’ laws in 20 countries still allow perpetrators to escape justice | Women’s rights and gender equality | The Guardian

 The climate emergency and the greenhouse gas emissions have unleashed heat waves, droughts, hurricanes, and other extreme weather.

Another problem is that the overheated atmosphere has in turn overheated the oceans, assuring a future sea level rise. As oceans heat up the water rises in part because warm water expands but also because the warmer waters have initiated major melt of polar ice sheets. There are various projections, mostly bleak. 

Sea level rise is accelerating at a dangerous pace. In 1900, global sea levels were rising 0.6 millimeters a year. After 1930, as ocean warming and water expansion kicked in, the rate of sea level rise doubled and doubled again, reaching 3.1mm a year by 1990. Since then, as ever-warmer oceans have driven polar ice melt, the rate of sea level rise has quickened further. Today, oceans are rising 6 mm a year (over two inches a decade), and this pace will continue to dramatically accelerate. Two inches a decade may seem a trifle but remember: we are just at the beginning of this acceleration. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projected in 2017 that global mean sea level could rise five to 8.2ft by 2100. Four years later, it’s clear that 8ft is in fact a moderate projection. And regional influences – subsidence, changing ocean currents, and redistribution of Earth’s mass as ice melts – will cause some local sea level rise to be 20-70% higher than global.

A global mean sea level rise  could be two feet of sea level rise by 2040, three feet by 2050 under worse case scenarios. Sea level rise of that extent will transform human societies the world over. South Florida, residents will lose access to fresh water. Sewage treatment plants will fail, large areas will persistently flood, and Miami Beach and other barrier islands will be largely abandoned. In China, India, Egypt and other countries with major river deltas, two to three feet of sea level rise will force the evacuation of tens of millions of people and the loss of vast agricultural lands. It would flood much of New York and Washington DC, Shanghai and Bangkok, Lagos, Alexandria and countless other coastal cities underwater. Sea walls and levees protections will be in deep trouble.

Sea levels are going to rise by at least 20ft. We can do something about it | Climate change | The Guardian

 In 2019, neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) killed more than 80,000 people and caused the loss of more than 18 million disability-adjusted life years (a measure of the burden of disease burden, expressed as the years lost to ill health, disability or early death.) 

Nonetheless, the resources allocated to help people suffering from NTDs remain scarce.  Despite their collective impact, do not attract as much attention as diseases such as HIV/Aids, malaria or tuberculosis.

 Currently, the WHO identifies 20 NTDs, different conditions that are caused by parasites, bacteria, viruses, fungi and toxins, with complex transmission cycles involving multiple vectors – mosquitoes, sandflies or dogs via routes such as  oral, through the skin or congenital.

 Though medically diverse, NTDs can slowly kill, blind, disfigure and debilitate their victims. They cause untold suffering to victims and caregivers in the poorest communities and contribute to perpetuating a cycle of disease, stigma and poverty.

The WHO roadmap for NTDs sets a goal to “control and eliminate the NTDs by 2030”.

Neglected tropical diseases are the landmines of global health | Global health | The Guardian

 The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says more than 3 billion people worldwide cannot afford a healthy diet. 

“Reduced access to nutritious food has resulted in negative impacts for many. Families will find it difficult to put food on the table. The fortunate ones will skip meals while those without will have to go to bed with an empty stomach,” Erdelmann said, adding that “for the most vulnerable people, hunger will have a lasting effect on their lives.”

A new Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation (BCFN) report,  “A one health approach to food – The Double Pyramid connecting food culture, health and climate”, raises concerns that in some African countries, the consumption of cheap sources of high-quality protein, vitamins, and minerals – such as eggs – remains low. 

690 million people globally lack sufficient food. COVID-19 has worsened these conditions, and it’s projected that between 83 and 132 million more people will join the ranks of the undernourished because of interrupted livelihoods caused by the pandemic. 

Its Global Nutrition Report showed that 88% of countries face a serious burden of either two or three forms of malnutrition, namely undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency or overweight or obesity. Recent findings include that child and adult obesity have increased in almost all countries, burdening already struggling global health care systems. 

The Barilla report notes that healthy diets’ affordability is “compromised especially in low- and middle-income countries.”

New Report Calls for Improved Eating Habits in a World of Extremes | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 The head of the IRS calculated that tax evasion in the U.S.A. may total $1 trillion a year.

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Chuck Rettig told a Senate panel Tuesday that previous tallies of the tax gap — which came to a cumulative amount of about $441 billion for the three years through 2013 — didn’t include some tax evasion-techniques that weren’t on their radar at the time. New estimates include the use of cryptocurrency, he said. Offshore tax evasion, illegal income that goes undetected by the IRS and underreporting from pass-through businesses also contribute to a larger than previously known tax gap, Rettig said.

“I think it would not be outlandish to believe that the actual tax gap could approach and possibly exceed $1 trillion per year,” Rettig told the Senate Finance Committee.

Most individuals earn their income through wages, where taxes are automatically deducted from each paycheck. However, income from pass-through entities, such as partnerships and limited liability corporations isn’t subject to automatic withholding, giving the owners more opportunity to skirt tax obligations.

A study released last month, which included two IRS officials as authors, found that the richest 1% of Americans don’t report about 20% of their income to the government. Those individuals are able to use pass-through businesses and offshore structures to shield their income from the IRS’s view, the study said. Collecting that money would boost tax collections by $175 billion a year, the study found.

Pay up: US tax dodgers are costing US $1 trillion, IRS says | Tax News | Al Jazeera

Countries are legally obliged to treat sewage before it is released into waterways. Discharges of untreated human waste are permitted only in exceptional circumstances.

New figures show the scale of untreated human effluent discharged in England into rivers and seas increased from 292,864 incidents in 2019 to 403,171 in 2020 – a 37% rise.

Hugo Tagholm, of Surfers Against Sewage, said: “Water companies making rampant profits at the expense the health of our rivers, ocean and people has to stop.”

The Rivers Trust’s deputy technical director, Michelle Walker, said: “The 2020 data indicates that, appallingly, almost one in five overflows across England are discharging more than 60 times per year, a number which is supposed to trigger an EA investigation. This is a staggering statistic.”

Raw sewage discharges into seas and rivers by water companies

Anglian Water – spill events: 17,428; duration in hours: 170,547

Welsh Water – spill events: 3,969; duration in hours: 21,300

Northumbrian – spill events: 32,497; duration in hours: 178,229

Severn Trent – spill events: 60,982; duration in hours: 558,699

Southwest Water – spill events: 42,053; duration in hours: 375,37

Southern Water – spill events: 19,782; duration in hours: 197,213

Thames Water – spill events: 18,443; duration in hours: 215,886

United Utilities – spill events: 113,940; duration in hours: 726,450

Wessex Water – spill events: 28,994; duration in hours: 237,035

Yorkshire Water – spill events: 65,083; duration in hours: 420,419

Water firms discharged raw sewage into English waters 400,000 times last year | Water | The Guardian

While in the United States a study has found potable drinking water to be polluted and contaminated.

Testing of the samples showed:

More than 35% of the samples had PFAS, potentially toxic “forever chemicals”, at levels above CR’s recommended maximum. 

Almost every sample tested had measurable levels of PFAS, a group of compounds found in hundreds of household products. These chemicals are linked to learning delays in children, cancer, and other health problems. 

About 8% of samples had arsenic, at levels above CR’s recommended maximum. E

xposure to even low levels of arsenic can pose health risks over the long term. A 2014 study  found an association between water with arsenic of 5 ppb or greater and a five- to six-point IQ reduction in children.

In total, 118 out of 120 samples had detectable levels of lead. 

It is unsafe at any levelWe sampled tap water across the US – and found arsenic, lead and toxic chemicals | US news | The Guardian

 The International Monetary Fund has called on governments to close the income gap between the richest and poorest that has worsened during the Covid pandemic, by spending more and taxing wealthy households.

 The organisation said surveys showed governments would have the support of the public if they shifted the burden of taxation away from low and middle earners to better-off members of society,  warning that the economic shock triggered by the pandemic could undermine public attitudes to the fairness of taxation and welfare systems and lead to social unrest.

It called for governments “to provide everyone with a fair shot”. The IMF said despite government finances coming under pressure from health and welfare spending during the pandemic, ministers needed to “enable all individuals to reach their potential – and to strengthen vulnerable households’ resilience, preserving social stability” and, in turn, broader economic stability.

The IMF said trends during the pandemic that have accelerated a move to digital services would damage the job prospects of unskilled workers and lead to higher rates of long-term unemployment.

“Against this backdrop, societies may experience rising polarisation, erosion of trust in government, or social unrest. These factors complicate sound economic policymaking and pose risks to macroeconomic stability and the functioning of society,” it said.

The IMF added, “The pandemic has confirmed the merits of equal access to basic services – healthcare, quality education, and digital infrastructure – and of inclusive labour markets and effective social safety nets. Better performance in these areas has enhanced resilience to the pandemic and is key for the economic recovery to benefit all and to strengthen trust in government.”

More than 100 countries have approached the IMF about receiving help since the pandemic led to the biggest contraction of the global economy since the 1930s. A package of loans worth $500bn (£360bn), mostly for poorer countries, is due to be announced next week at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. The expansion of the IMF’s special drawing rights, extra funds to help developing countries cope with the economic effects of Covid-19, is expected to go ahead after the US Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said the US would reverse its previous opposition.

“With limited fiscal space, governments will need to prioritise efficiency gains toward those most affected by the Covid-19 crisis before scaling up spending. At the same time, governments should plan medium-term policies for better basic services and better protection from income shocks while fostering a job-rich and inclusive recovery. If governments are unable to meet the challenge, the erosion of trust could lead to more polarised politics in which some call for a smaller government, while those affected by illness or job loss would urge for more government services.”

IMF calls for tax hikes on wealthy to reduce income gap | International Monetary Fund (IMF) | The Guardian