After a boat carrying migrants from Lebanon sank off Syria’s coast, the overall toll has risen to 94. At least 14 survivors were recovering in hospitals in Syria, while six others were discharged. Two remained in intensive care. As many as 150 people were on board the small boat that sank off the Syrian port of Tartus, some 50 kilometres north of Tripoli in Lebanon, from where the migrants set sail. Those on board were mostly Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians, and included both children and elderly.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, described the shipwreck as a “heart-wrenching tragedy”.

Nearly three years of economic collapse have turned Lebanon into a launchpad for migrants, with its own citizens joining Syrian and Palestinian refugees clamouring to leave by dangerous sea routes.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said: “No one gets on these death boats lightly. People are taking these perilous decisions, risking their lives in search of dignity.” Lazzarini said more must be done “to offer a better future and address a sense of hopelessness in Lebanon and across the region, including among Palestine refugees”.

Antonio Vitorino, head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said: “People looking for safety should not be compelled to take such perilous and often deadly migration journeys.”

More than 90 dead in Lebanon migrant shipwreck off Syria (france24.com)

 Biden said “the pandemic is over”—an assertion he made as Covid-19 kills nearly 11,000 people across the planet each week, including roughly 3,000 in the U.S. alone. More than 1 million people worldwide died from the disease during the first eight months of 2022, and the number of fatalities caused directly and indirectly by the ongoing public health crisis that began in late 2019 surpassed 15 million earlier this year.

 WHO senior adviser Bruce Aylward warned that richer nations must not step back from tackling COVID-19 as a global problem now, ahead of future potential waves of infection. Aylward said that the group he co-ordinates, which focuses on equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests worldwide, is not yet ready to move out of the emergency phase of tackling the pandemic and that countries need to be ready and have treatments in place for any further waves of infection.

“If you go to sleep right now and this wave hits us in three months… God – blood on your hands,” he said.

Experts are anticipating a coronavirus surge this fall and winter that could infect hundreds of millions of people around the world, potentially leading to millions of hospitalizations and hundreds of thousands of additional deaths. Epidemiologists have long warned that the persistence of a massive inoculation gap between rich and poor countries allows the coronavirus to keep circulating and mutating, increasing the likelihood of a vaccine-resistant variant emerging.

People in Africa and other parts of the world remain completely unprotected due to a combination of dose hoarding by high-income nations and knowledge hoarding by pharmaceutical corporations.

 In June Big Pharma lobbied policymakersand defeated a widely supported proposal to temporarily waive the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) corporate-friendly intellectual property rules, which sought to unleash generic production and boost the global supply of jabs, diagnostics, and therapeutics.

Last week, The Lancet’s Covid-19 commission declared that “widespread failures during the Covid-19 pandemic at multiple levels worldwide have led to millions of preventable deaths and a reversal in progress towards sustainable development for many countries.”

Economist Philip Schellekens wrote, “Not only is the pandemic not over, the world remains underprepared to deal with the adverse contingency of a highly contagious and potentially more lethal variant.”

‘Blood On Your Hands’ If Global Poor Hit With Covid Wave, WHO Official Tells Rich Nations (commondreams.org)

A positive message about Canada’s immigration that is worth quoting.

“There are basically two ways to respond to immigration… accuse immigrants of taking jobs, housing, and social services away from White Canadians. These racist messages are openly promoted by… the mainstream People’s Party of Canada that campaigns to “Substantially lower the total number of immigrants and refugees” because (they claim) immigrants “cost Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars” and undermine “Canadian values.”

The socialist response to immigration is based on working-class solidarity: the belief that an injury to one is an injury to all and that the best way to raise our living standards is for all workers to stand together against the employer class…

…For hundreds of thousands of years, there were no human obstacles to migration, and people travelled freely from our origins in Africa to populate every corner of the globe. The freedom to travel ended with the emergence of private property, no-trespassing laws, and the rise of nation states.

Nation states are defined by policed borders and by the nationalist myth that people on one side of the border share a common identity and values that are not shared by people on the other side. This is nonsense. Borders are arbitrarily drawn and redrawn…

…We are indoctrinated in nationalism from childhood. ..This practice accustoms us to embrace the interests of our rulers as our interests, and their goals as our goals. The myth of a united nation binds workers to their rulers and, in the process, divides them from their own class, including migrant workers in their own communities who are stigmatized as ‘them,’ not ‘us.’…Nationalism is inherently racist because it distinguishes who is and is not worthy of entry to the nation…

All wealthier nations, including Canada, have a birth rate below replacement level, meaning not enough babies are born to replace those who die. Canada also has an aging population. Since 2001, the number of people over age 85 has doubled. Presently, immigration accounts for more than 80 percent of Canada’s population growth and almost 100 percent of its labour force growth. This has not been enough, and the business class is calling for more migrant labor.

The COVID pandemic caused more than 44,000 deaths in Canada, disabled many thousands more, pulled people out of work to care for the sick and disabled, and prompted a record number of older workers to retire early. This past June, unemployment hit its lowest level in 50 years. Statistics Canada reports over one million unfilled jobs across all provinces and sectors, especially in health care, construction, accommodation, food, retail, and manufacturing…

It’s not as though everyone seeking a job can have one. There are a million unemployed workers in Canada because the wages being offered in many sectors are lower than most workers will accept. People need more. Compared with last year, nearly twice as many workers left lower-paid jobs for higher-paid ones. This has increased the number of unfilled low-waged jobs.

Because of the shortage of workers or, more accurately, the shortage of wages, existing workers are being forced to work extra shifts and extended hours that increase workplace stress, injuries, and deaths. When workers at one scaffolding company refused to work regular overtime, the company threatened to fire them and have them jailed for engaging in an illegal strike. When workers are difficult to attract, employers are forced to compete for them. Some fast-food outlets are offering $17 an hour to start. Other companies are offering thousands of dollars in sign-on bonuses. While offering higher pay does attract workers, it cuts into profits. It also gives workers confidence to push for more.

Governments fear that existing conditions could lead to a wage explosion, so they are raising interest rates to slow the economy, increase unemployment, and dampen workers’ demands.

They also plan to import more low-waged workers with fewer rights to resist substandard conditions. Canada’s immigration system provides this kind of labor by offering mostly temporary and conditional permits that tie workers to a single employer. When temporary and conditional permits inevitably expire, they are difficult to renew because the application process is complicated, and the system is seriously backlogged, with more than 1.5 million applications for study permits, work permits, temporary visas, and visitor extensions waiting to be reviewed. Until their applications are approved, which can take years or even decades, migrants without documents have no legal rights or protections, no access to social services or medical care, and must work for cash under the table. Currently half-a-million people in Canada are undocumented, mostly because of expired permits. They live in poverty, and the threat of deportation makes them vulnerable to wage theft, sexual assault, and other abuses…

There are plenty of workers willing to migrate. Many are desperate to leave homelands ravaged by colonialism, war, poverty, and climate change. Wealthy nations use these migrants to regulate their own labor force. They open their borders to migrant workers when they need more or cheaper labor, and close them when they don’t. A global migration industry has developed to exploit this situation…

anada produces more than enough cookies for everyone. Last year, workers in this country produced $3 trillion worth of goods and services. That’s two-and-a-half times more than we produced 20 years ago. Our wages haven’t gone up two-and-a-half times. On the contrary, wages have stagnated or fallen in real terms. That’s because employers took all the cookies, leaving workers to fight over the crumbs: low wages; threadbare social supports; back-breaking, soul-killing work; and a falling standard of living.

Are bosses taking too much, so there’s not enough for the rest of us? Or are there too many of us, and not enough to go around, so we need to reduce our numbers? This second explanation is based on the myth of scarcity. For over 200 years, the belief that there are too many needy people has been used to justify social inequality and working-class deprivation. Consider the lack of affordable housing. Most people living in large Canadian cities cannot afford the cost of rent. In the US, a full-time minimum-wage worker cannot afford rent in ANY state. Is the problem too many people, not enough housing, or wages too low to access what housing is available? There are millions of vacant homes in the world, including over a million in Canada…

If we think the problem is too many people chasing not enough goods, then we should close the door to immigrants. If we think the problem is rich people hoarding the wealth, the food, and everything else, then we should change society to ensure that what we produce meets people’s needs…

We were lied to and robbed! The benefit of rising productivity went exclusively to the employers, who got richer and more powerful as trillions of dollars were transferred from workers to bosses. During the first two years of the pandemic alone, the world’s 10 richest men more than doubled their fortunes. Today, just 10 individuals command more wealth than the annual value of all goods and services produced by most nations. That is truly mind-boggling! The reason why most people today work so hard and so long for so little has nothing to do with immigrants. We are victims of grand theft capitalism…We were lied to and robbed! The benefit of rising productivity went exclusively to the employers, who got richer and more powerful as trillions of dollars were transferred from workers to bosses.

During the first two years of the pandemic alone, the world’s 10 richest men more than doubled their fortunes. Today, just 10 individuals command more wealth than the annual value of all goods and services produced by most nations. That is truly mind-boggling! The reason why most people today work so hard and so long for so little has nothing to do with immigrants. We are victims of grand theft capitalism…

While the capitalist class want more migrant labor, they oppose giving them permanent resident status because precarious labor is more profitable, and dividing workers makes them easier to manage…we must build a united, anti-racist workers’ movement that replaces nationalist barriers with the invitation, “You are welcome here!”…

The full unabridged article can be read here

Immigration: Who Benefits? Who Suffers? – Susan Rosenthal

 “An escalating malnutrition crisis is pushing millions of children to the brink of starvation – and unless we do more, that crisis will become a catastrophe,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. 

“The majority of children facing severe malnutrition – nearly two-thirds of children who need treatment – live in places not currently in crisis, places that don’t normally receive humanitarian aid,” said USAID Administrator Samantha Power. 

“We are witnessing an unprecedented child malnutrition crisis. The fact that many millions of children have to experience severe malnutrition in their first few years of life is unacceptable,” said Co-founder and Chair of CIFF Chris Hohn.

“Acute malnutrition can be prevented, and the effects mitigated, if detected and treated early.” said Canada’s Minister of International Development and Minister responsible for the Pacific Economic Development Agency Harjit S. Sajjan.

“The world has reached a crossroads where climate change, continuous conflict in many regions, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine have converged to deepen and accelerate global food and nutrition insecurity.” said Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney.

 “Millions of children are currently being affected by the floods in Pakistan and the drought in Somalia, the latest signs of an accelerating climate crisis. People in these countries have done next to nothing to contribute to the crisis, yet they are among the ones being affected the most.” said Climate and environmental activist Greta Thunberg.

 Over half a billion dollars pledged to tackle severe wasting since July in unprecedented international response to deepening child malnutrition crisis – World | ReliefWeb

 The Russian invasion of Ukraine did not only bring bountiful returns to the armament corporations, the oil industries and the grain market but as this article pointed out, the American gas producers benefited profitably from the conflict.

The crisis in Ukraine has helped several LNG companies record bumper profits this year. The export company Cheniere earned $3.8bn more in cash from its operations in the first half of 2022 compared to the same period last year, while Sempra, a gas liquifying company, has enjoyed an eight-fold increase in LNG sales to Europe.

Just one day after the Russian attack upon Ukraine, the gas lobby issued to Biden a   list of demands: more drilling on US public lands; the swift approval of proposed gas export terminals; and pressure on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent agency, to green-light pending gas pipelines, to avoid the anticipated energy shortage.

 The US gas industry has achieved almost all of its initial objectives. Within weeks, Biden adopted the gas industry’s major demands as policy, paving the way for new pipelines and export facilities, establishing a new taskforce to boost gas exports to Europe. 

“I can’t even begin to tell you how much the momentum has changed for companies in the United States that have wanted to bring their projects forward and just haven’t been able to get long-term contracts,” said a jubilant Fred Hutchison, president of LNG Allies, the industry group. Biden administration, which styled itself as deeply committed to tackling the climate crisis, had “changed substantially” within just a week, Hutchison noted. 

 US LNG Association group wanted six specific gas export applications to be expedited, and within three weeks the US department of energy granted two of them, Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass project in Louisiana and its Corpus Christi operation in Texas. By the end of April, two further LNG export licenses had been issued. “Four down and two to go! 

American LNG exports are set to grow an additional 20% by the end of this year.  Biden  has vowed to supply the European Union with at least 15 billion cubic meters of gas, equivalent to about half the amount of gas burned by Spain each year, by the end of 2022.

But the embrace of liquified natural gas (LNG) dismayed climate activists who warn it will lock in decades of planet-heating emissions and push the world closer to climate catastrophe. The International Energy Agency has said no new fossil fuel infrastructure can be built if the world is to avoid dangerous global heating.

Zorka Milin, senior advisor at Global Witness, said, the US gas industry was “licking its lips” at the onset of the Ukraine war. 

“There is no doubt that Biden’s apparent capitulation to the gas industry has opened the door for these companies to continue to profit off the backs of those suffering in Ukraine, those living close to new gas infrastructure in the US and the millions affected by climate change globally.”

Milin explained, “Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, rising energy prices and the devastating impacts of climate change should be the biggest prompt yet to end the world’s dependence on fossil fuels,” said Milin. “Instead, an already rich industry is trying to seize the moment and force the world to double down on the very mistakes that have led us to this situation.”

Much of the new gas infrastructure won’t be operational for several years, which may be beyond the timeframe of the Russia-Ukraine conflict that has squeezed supplies and caused gas prices to spike. So much LNG export is planned or under construction, adding up to around a half of all total US gas production, that it will likely cause gas prices to climb for domestic American users, according to Clark Williams-Derry, analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

“It’s beginning to eat into the amount of gas available to domestic consumers,” said Williams-Derry. “We will see very severe impacts on domestic US gas prices, we will see the impacts for as long as the eye can see.”

Gas has long been touted as a helpful “bridge fuel” in dealing with the climate crisis as it emits less carbon dioxide than coal or oil and provides energy for processes such as steel making that renewables can’t quite manage yet. But the extraction, transportation and liquefaction required to create LNG for export creates almost as much emissions as burning the gas itself.  LNG’s greenhouse gas impact is “at best, only modestly smaller than that of other fossil fuels”.

How the gas industry capitalized on the Ukraine war to change Biden policy | Gas | The Guardian

 All but forgotten, its failure is no longer newsworthy

Two-thirds of countries are yet to meet the target of vaccinating 70 percent of people in all countries against COVID-19 set a year ago

The death toll from COVID-19 is four times higher in lower-income countries, where less than half (48 percent) of the population have had their full initial round of vaccinations. At the current rate, it will take almost two and a half years for 70 percent of people in the poorest countries to be fully vaccinated.

 Meanwhile, rich countries are already beginning to roll out booster programmes and in some cases fifth shots, using the new generation vaccines, the majority of which have been ordered by rich nations.

At the same time, Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna continue to reap huge profits while refusing to work with the WHO to share their vaccine technology. 

Maaza Seyoum, Global South Convenor of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said: “Everyone everywhere should have access to the tools needed to fight a pandemic, But COVID-19 has been a case of survival of the richest. For most of this pandemic, big pharmaceutical companies left people in developing countries to die without vaccines and treatments while they sold doses to rich governments in the global north.

“Now, big pharma is trying to rewrite history, claiming that the industry will voluntarily ensure global access to medicines in the next pandemic. We know from COVID-19 that this isn’t true. Governments cannot rely on the goodwill of pandemic profiteers to do the right thing. We need to overhaul this system to put human life before private profit.”

Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager, said: “This massive failure to meet promises to protect the world from Covid-19 is indefensible. While the end of the pandemic should be in sight, hundreds of millions of people in developing countries are still unprotected from COVID-19. We are calling on President Biden and other world leaders not to turn their backs on them while the virus continues to kill and cause devastation to people’s livelihoods.” She continued, “It is time to radically redesign a system that puts pharma profits ahead of people’s lives. Developing countries need access to vaccines, tests, and treatments at the same time as rich countries, not years later after people have died. We are seeing the same deadly inequality for COVID-19 treatments and now for monkeypox vaccines, governments must not allow this to continue.”

Lack of vaccination means the need for COVID-19 tests and treatments is even greater in poorer nations but inequality in access is even starker, yet rich nations are at this moment fiercely resisting any attempt to extend the WTO agreement on vaccines to tests and treatments. Reports from the ACT-Accelerator indicated that almost no doses of any outpatient antivirals are available in low-and middle-income countries. The campaign groups said this persistent gap demonstrates the massive failings in the international response to COVID-19, which continually ignored the need to diversify manufacturing so that developing countries could make their own doses and manage their own supply concurrently with deliveries to rich countries. 

A recent report found that a combination of unpredictable vaccine supplies, lack of antiviral treatments, and poor funding for health systems led to lower vaccination rates in developing countries, and that vaccine hesitancy was being used as an excuse to mask the international failures in the COVID-19 response.

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA) is pressuring governments to take a greater role to fund, support, de-risk, and provide data for research and development. But they want governments to hand companies a monopoly on the resulting drugs and to waive liability for any adverse impacts. In return, the industry claims it will do better to improve “equity” in the next pandemic, proposing the same voluntary measures that failed during COVID-19 in a lobbying paper dubbed the “Berlin Declaration”.

World leaders’ UNGA pledge to vaccinate world falls woefully short as only a third of countries meet target – World | ReliefWeb

 Food insecurity has become an enormous problem. In 2019, WFP estimated that 145 million people were facing acute food insecurity. Now the organization predicates 345 million people are facing insecurity. The combination of climate change shocks, COVID-19, and conflict has pushed several countries, such as Somalia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Yemen, to a very real risk of famine.

Action on food insecurity today is “more important than ever”, Valerie Guarnieri, WFP Assistant Executive Director, said. Among those particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of food insecurity are refugees and internally displaced people.

“When fleeing many refugees sell or are forced to leave behind their assets their journey to safety is often full of dangers. Family and community support systems breakdown. They usually lose their income and often find themselves with no option but to employ harmful strategies as coping mechanisms.”

Coping mechanisms refer to tactics a family or community employs to compensate for a loss in income. In response to COVID-19 lockdowns, UNHCR reported instances of transactional sex, early marriage, child recruitment, and trafficking in person across its operations.

Raouf Mazou, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, said special attention must also be paid to the specific plights of women and girls, he argued. In searching for food, displaced women and girls are at an increased risk of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and child and forced marriages.

In Somalian regions affected by drought, gender-based violence has gone up 200 percent since 2021, Mazaou noted. He pointed to several factors that may lead to violence when a community is facing food insecurity.

“Food insecurity increases the risk of violence, neglect and exploitation and abuse of children. Girls may drop out of school at a higher percentage rate than boys when families are unable to afford school fees for all their children. Household sent children in search of food work on pasture for livestock exposing them to increased risks.”

The food crisis is also affecting the ability of host countries to provide for refugees. Ethiopia, the third largest refugee-hosting country in Africa, is on the brink of famine. The country is reckoning with the historic drought hitting the Horn of Africa region, which is severely threatening its food networks. The drought has wiped away important nutrition sources that refugees rely on, such as cattle and water wells. Kassaye explained that the lack of natural resources means refugees can only rely on humanitarian assistance. Yet, as a result of funding constraints, in June, the WFP had to reduce its rations for refugees in Ethiopia by 50 percent.

“It is indeed troubling to learn that the level of support by international humanitarian agencies is reported to have decreased due to the funding shortages. In our view, urgent measures are needed if we’re to respond to the people in need of assistance in a timely and effective manner,” Yoseph Kassaye, Deputy Permanent Representative of Ethiopia to the UN, pointed out.

Refugees Most Vulnerable in Ongoing Food Insecurity Crisis – UN | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 The number of people facing acute food insecurity worldwide is expected to continue to rise as the food crisis tightens its grip on 19 ‘hunger hotspots’ – driven by rising conflict, weather extremes, and economic instability aggravated by the pandemic and the ripple effects of the crisis in Ukraine, a joint UN report released today has found.

Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen remain at the ‘highest alert’ as hotspots, alone account for almost a million people facing catastrophic levels of hunger (IPC Phase 5 ‘Catastrophe’) with starvation and death a daily reality and where extreme levels of mortality and malnutrition may unfold without immediate action. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Kenya, the Sahel, the Sudan and Syria remain ‘of very high concern’ with deteriorating conditions – as in the June edition of the quarterly report – but the alert is extended to the Central African Republic and Pakistan. Meanwhile, Guatemala, Honduras and Malawi have been added to the list of countries, joining Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Madagascar that remain hunger hotspots.

The ‘Hunger Hotspots – FAO-WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity’ report – issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) calls for urgent humanitarian action to save lives and livelihoods and prevent famine in countries where acute food insecurity is expected to worsen from October 2022 to January 2023. 

Globally, an all-time high of 970 000 people are expected to face catastrophic hunger (IPC Phase 5) and are starving or projected to starve or at risk of deterioration to catastrophic conditions in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen, if no action is taken – ten times more than six years ago when only two countries had populations in Phase 5.

Up to 26 million people are expected to face Crisis or worse (IPC Phase 3 and above) levels of food insecurity in Somalia, southern and eastern Ethiopia, and northern and eastern Kenya. With humanitarian assistance at risk of being cut due to funding shortfalls, the spectre of large-scale deaths from hunger looms large in Somalia, with famine likely to take hold in the districts of Baidoa and Burhakaba in Bay region come October. Without an adequate humanitarian response, analysts expect that by December, as many as four children or two adults per 10 000 people will die every day. Hundreds of thousands are already facing starvation today with staggering levels of malnutrition expected among children under 5.

“The severe drought in the Horn of Africa has pushed people to the brink of starvation, destroying crops and killing livestock on which their survival depends. Acute food insecurity is rising fast and spreading across the world. People in the poorest countries in particular who have yet to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are suffering from the ripple effects of ongoing conflicts, in terms of prices, food and fertilizer supplies, as well as the climate emergency. Without a massively scaled up humanitarian response that has at its core time-sensitive and life-saving agricultural assistance, the situation will likely worsen in many countries in the coming months,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu.

“This is the third time in 10 years that Somalia has been threatened with a devastating famine. The famine in 2011 was caused by two consecutive failed rainy seasons as well as conflict. Today we’re staring at a perfect storm: a likely fifth consecutive failed rainy season that will see drought lasting well into 2023. But the people at the sharp end of today’s crisis are also facing soaring food prices and severely limited opportunities to earn a living following the pandemic. We urgently need to get help to those in grave danger of starvation in Somalia and the world’s other hunger hotspots,” said David Beasley, WFP’s Executive Director.

Violent conflict remains the primary driver of acute hunger with analysis indicating a continuation of this trend in 2022, with particular concern for Ethiopia, where an intensification of conflict and interethnic violence in several regions is expected to further escalate, driving up humanitarian needs.

Weather extremes such as floods, tropical storms and droughts remain critical drivers in many parts of the globe, and a “new normal” of consecutive and extreme weather events is becoming clear – particularly in the hotspots. Devastating floods have affected 33 million people in Pakistan alone this year and South Sudan faces a fourth consecutive year of extreme flooding. Meanwhile, a third consecutive season of below-average rainfall is projected in Syria. 

For the first time in 20 years, the La Niña climate event has continued through three consecutive years – affecting agriculture and causing crop and livestock losses in many parts of the world, including Afghanistan, West and East Africa and Syria.

On the economic front, the persistently high global prices of food, fuel, and fertilizer – continue to drive high domestic prices and economic instability. Rising inflation rates have forced governments to enact monetary-tightening measures in advanced economies which have also increased the cost of credit of low-income countries. This is constraining the ability of heavily indebted countries – the number of countries increased significantly in recent years – to finance the import of essential items.

Many governments are compelled to introduce austerity measures affecting incomes and purchasing power – particularly among the most vulnerable families. These trends are expected to increase in coming months, the report notes, with poverty and acute food insecurity rising further, as well as risks of civil unrest driven by increasing socio-economic grievances.

Food crisis tightens its grip on 19 ‘Hunger Hotspots’ as famine looms in the Horn of Africa – New Report – World | ReliefWeb

 The dominance of a small number of big companies over the global food chain is increasing.

Only two companies control 40% of the global commercial seed market, compared with 10 companies controlling the same proportion of the market 25 years ago.

Agricultural commodity trading is concentrated, with 10 commodity traders in 2020 dominating a market worth half a trillion dollars. Food prices have risen sharply in recent months, after the disruptions caused by the Ukraine war, and the continuing impacts of the Covid pandemic, sending the profits of key commodity traders and grain producers soaring.

The Chinese state-owned company Cofco is now the world’s second-biggest agricultural commodity trader, behind only Cargill of the US, with sales in 2020 of just over $100bn (£89bn), compared with $134bn for Cargill. The next biggest trader, Archer-Daniels-Midland, had sales of $64bn in 2020.

Syngenta, the seed, pesticides and biotech company, is now majority owned by the Chinese government through Sinochem and ChemChina. The group controlled about a quarter of the global market in agricultural chemicals in 2020, with $15bn in sales, far greater than its nearest rivals Bayer and BASF. Two of the other Top 10 agrochemicals companies are also Chinese, as is the seventh big synthetic fertiliser company, Sinofert.

According to the ETC Group, an eco-justice organisation, “In 2020, the sale of 45% of one of the world’s largest commodity firms, Louis Dreyfus, to a state-owned holding company in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates signals that cash-rich countries are positioning to climate-proof food security via offshore food production with little consideration for sustainability or the notion of regional food self-reliance.”

Jim Thomas, of ETC Group, said the increasing market dominance of a small number of companies was concerning, particularly at a time of high and rising food prices, a gathering climate crisis and biodiversity crisis. “Power over the global food system is being concentrated in a very small number of hands, and we should be concerned about that,” he said. He also warned that agricultural workers were in danger of being thrown off the land as robotic technology began to be used in an increasing number of countries.

“We uncovered a vast digital restructuring of the commercial food system, including AI, robots, drones, blockchains,” he said. “Concerns include manipulating customers, taking decision-making away from farmers, replacing and algorithmically controlling food chain workers, and the climate costs of the data use.”

Small number of huge companies dominate global food chain, study finds | Food & drink industry | The Guardian

 Every two seconds someone under 70 dies of a non-communicable disease (NCDs), the majority of them in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), according to a new report by the World Health Organization.

The WHO study, released today at the UN general assembly in New York, said that LMICs account for 86% of these premature deaths, most of which could be avoided or delayed if people had access to prevention, treatment and care. They are “overlooked and underfunded”, according to the report, entitled Invisible Numbers. “The data paint a clear picture. The problem is that the world isn’t looking at it,” said the report. The world is failing to take heed of the true extent of these diseases, which cause about 41m deaths each year, or 74% of all deaths globally.

At least 17 million people die prematurely before the age of 70 every year due to NCDs, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes and respiratory disease.

Cardiovascular diseases (heart disease and stroke) kill more people than any other disease, accounting for one in three deaths a year or nearly 18m deaths. “Two-thirds of the people with hypertension live in LMICs, but almost half of the people with hypertension are not even aware they have it,” researchers said. About one in six deaths occur due to cancer, one in 13 due to chronic respiratory diseases and one in 28 are caused by diabetes.

More than 8m deaths every year are attributed to tobacco use; unhealthy diets account for a similar number.

Nearly 40m deaths could be averted by 2030 if countries adopted the interventions that are known to work, the report said. Only 5% of external aid for health in LMICs goes to prevention and control of NCDs.

“This report confirms what we’ve long suspected – that chronic diseases are now beginning to outstrip infectious diseases as the main driver of mainly preventable ill health and death in lower- and middle-income countries,” said Katie Dain, CEO of the NCD Alliance. “We urgently need a major financial and public health reset by national governments and the global health community before it is too late.” Dain continued, “The imperative for action is clear and urgent,” Dain said. “NCDs will cost more suffering and lives this decade than any other health issue; will drain the global economy and impede human capital; will both fuel and be fuelled by the growing inequalities in our countries and globally; and will undermine any efforts to ensure the world is better prepared for future pandemics after Covid. Inaction and paralysis is not a viable option.”

Non-communicable diseases kill a person under 70 every two seconds, says WHO | Global health | The Guardian