Category Archives: planetkillers

IRIN | Mongolian livestock succumb en masse to the freezing dzud

Around half of Mongolia’s 3.1 million people rely on livestock production. But with oversupply, prices have plunged on animal products such as milk, wool, meat and camel hair.  Each sheep or goat – the most common livestock – is worth around $30. A cow is worth between $250 and $500, depending on meat quality. A camel is worth about $500, and a horse about $200 to $250, according to estimates by the Asian Development Bank.   “Consequently, there is an incentive to increase animal numbers, leading to the colossal numbers we see today, at over 50 million head of livestock, which degrades the precious pasturelands,” said Robert Schoellhammer, country director for the ADB. The trend has been devastating when combined with climate change. The average temperature in Mongolia has increased by 2.1 degrees Celsius since 1940, more than double the rise of average global temperatures, according to the UN Environment Programme. In its 2014 Global Climate Risk Index, the advocacy group German Watch ranked Mongolia the eighth most vulnerable country to direct economic losses from weather-related events.

Source: IRIN | Mongolian livestock succumb en masse to the freezing dzud

Avian Flu Diary: Not Without Warning – The Return Of Mosquito Disease Threats

Zika, Dengue, and Chikungunya – at least outside of Africa and Asia – have no known non-human animal reservoirs, which means they have a harder time becoming endemic. But when enough people become infected, these viruses are  able to sustain themselves in an Urban Cycle, where transmission is strictly human-to-mosquito-to human. In the middle of the last decade we saw Chikungunya made a break from Africa, and jump to Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean where it reportedly infected about 1/3rd of that island’s population (266,000 case out of  pop.770,000) in a matter of a few months, before moving on to Southeast Asia. About the same time, Dengue began to turn up again in the United States after decades of absence. In January of 2009, in Outnumbered By A Competent Vector, we looked at reports of Dengue’s incursions into Texas and Queensland, Australia. In 2009, Dengue Resurfaced In Key West  after a 70 year absence, but even months before that, we saw a cautionary report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (see NRDC Report: Climate Change and Health Threats) warning that Dengue and other vector borne diseases could one day reestablish themselves in the United States.

Source: Avian Flu Diary: Not Without Warning – The Return Of Mosquito Disease Threats

FAO – News Article: Pollinators vital to our food supply under threat

A growing number of pollinator species worldwide are being driven toward extinction by diverse pressures, many of them human-made, threatening millions of livelihoods and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of food supplies, according to the first global assessment of pollinators. However, the assessment, a two-year study conducted and released today by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), also highlights a number of ways to effectively safeguard pollinator populations. The assessment, titled Thematic Assessment of Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production and the first ever issued by IPBES, is a groundbreaking effort to better understand and manage a critical element of the global ecosystem.  It is also the first assessment of its kind that is based on the available knowledge from science and indigenous and local knowledge systems.

Source: FAO – News Article: Pollinators vital to our food supply under threat

Northern Italy’s trees overrun by toxic caterpillar cobwebs – The Local

“Here the plague has reached biblical proportions and has been getting steadily worse for two years,” a resident in the small town of Conclonaz told La Stampa. “We are all full of painful rashes and it hurts to swallow because we’re constantly breathing in the hairs.”

Source: Northern Italy’s trees overrun by toxic caterpillar cobwebs – The Local

VDU’s blog: Zika virus: pathology, postulates and questions…

There remain a few of voids around the ZIKV/microcephaly topic that I can and have listed below…

  1. How long has ZIKV been in Brazil and in what numbers?
  2. What are the real (not affected by extra attention/poor reporting) rates of microcephaly in Brazil?
  3. Do real rates of microcephaly diagnoses vary by region/state?
  4. What are the real rates of microcephaly in countries other than Brazil?
  5. How many microcephaly diagnoses have been infected with ZIKV?
  6. How many infections by other viruses including Dengue virus (DENV)?
  7. Is microcephaly a seasonal diagnosis?
  8. What other possible causes of microcephaly also occur with a seasonal pattern?
  9. Are DENV and Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) and other mosquito-borne virus infections seasonal?
  10. Is ZIKV seasonal?
  11. Is mosquito treatment and/or mosquito breeding in this region seasonal?
  12. Apart from Pyriproxyfen, what other pesticides are in use and are they all equally safe?
  13. What has been excluded from having a role in causing a GBS or microcephaly diagnosis so far?
  14. What are the data supporting this?
  15. What about other chemicals that have been associated with microcephaly, for example Isoretinoids in cosmetics [22]
  16. What is the tissue distribution of the ZIKV receptor(s) and are we happy we know what that receptor(s) is/are [23]?
  17. Does ZIKV cross the blood-brain and placental barriers in the absence of microcephaly?
  18. What does ZIKV do in foetal, or infant/child/adult, brain tissue?
  19. Is it destructive or inflammatory and does it constantly produce new virus or does it enter some type of latency?
  20. How long does ZIKV persist in foetal tissues?
  21. Are there long-term disease consequences from ZIKV infection of brain tissue that stretch into adulthood?
  22. Does ZIKV persist in the adult central nervous system or anywhere else apart from semen (and what is the upper limit of persistence in semen)? Do DENV, CHIKV, JEV etc persist?
  23. Are the mutations observed between ZIKV lineages and within lineages important for viral virulence, transmissibility or for the clinical course of disease?
  24. Is ZIKV present in and/or able to persist in the eye (during or after conjunctivitis) or in other organs?
  25. Are there mums with evidence of past ZIKV infection who have delivered completely healthy babies?
  26. Do these babies have any other issues?
  27. How has the study of ZIKV infection in mums been done – by unbiased selection and testing or testing only those with symptoms?
  28. When would we expect to see signs of microcephaly among pregnant mothers in Colombia and other countries with large outbreaks of ZIKV?

Source: VDU’s blog: Zika virus: pathology, postulates and questions…

(it is not easy, is it?)

FAO – News Article: FAO calls for international action on antimicrobial resistance

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an emerging public health threat requiring a globally coordinated effort to counter the risks it poses to food security, FAO Deputy Director-General Helena Semedo said Wednesday.Overuse and misuse of antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents foster increasing resistance among the very microbes that cause the infections and disease they were designed to quell, threatening to reverse a century of progress in human and animal health, she said.”We have to help save live-saving drugs,” she told European ministers of health and agriculture at a conference on antimicrobial resistance in Amsterdam.Aside from the human health considerations, the emergence of microbes resistant to antibiotics and other pharmaceutical agents puts animal health at risk and consequently has an impact on rural livelihoods and food security. “AMR is a global threat that in this inter-connected world cannot be solved in Europe alone,” Semedo said.

Source: FAO – News Article: FAO calls for international action on antimicrobial resistance

TPP: Lessons from New Zealand | Inter Press Service

Asia-Pacific, Featured, Food & Agriculture, Globalisation, Headlines, Trade & InvestmentTPP: Lessons from New ZealandBy Jomo Kwame SundaramReprint |      | Print | Send by email |En españolJomo Kwame Sundaram was an Assistant Secretary-General responsible for analysis of economic development in the United Nations system during 2005-2015, and received the 2007 Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb 2 2016 (IPS) – A new paper* on the implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement for New Zealand examines key economic issues likely to be impacted by this trade agreement. It is remarkable how little TPP brings to the table. NZ’s gross domestic product will grow by 47 per cent by 2030 without the TPP, or by 47.9 per cent with the TPP. Even that small benefit is an exaggeration, as the modelling makes dubious assumptions, and the real benefits will be even smaller. If the full costs are included, net economic benefits to the NZ economy are doubtful. The gains from tariff reductions are less than a quarter of the projected benefits according to official NZ government modelling. Although most of the projected benefits result from reducing non-tariff barriers (NTBs), the projections rely on inadequate and dubious information that does not even identify the NTBs that would be reduced by the TPP!Jomo Kwame Sundaram. Credit: FAOAgricultureThe main beneficiaries in NZ will be agricultural exporters, but modest tariff reductions of 1.3 per cent on average by 2030 are small compared to ongoing commodity price and exchange rate volatility. Extensive trade barriers to agricultural exports in the Japanese, Canadian and US food markets remain, and will be locked in under TPP. TPP has also failed to tackle agricultural subsidies that are a major trade distortion. Significant tariff barriers remain in some sectors in Japan, Canada and the US likely to be ‘locked in’ under the TPP that are almost impossible to remove in the future. TPP’s Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures limits on labelling may also restrict opportunities for food exporters to build high quality, differentiated niche market positions.TPP has also been used to undermine negotiations in the World Trade Organization, the only forum for removing such trade distorting subsidies.ISDSTPP’s investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions and restrictions on state-owned enterprises will deter future NZ governments from regulations and policies in the public interest, for fear of litigation by corporate interests. The threat, if not actual repercussions, are good enough to ‘discipline’ governments by causing ‘regulatory chill’. TPP is very much a charter for incumbent businesses, especially US transnational corporations. Thus, it inadvertently holds back the economic transformation the world needs. The agreement’s TPP’s benefits are likely to be asymmetric as it is more favourable to big US business practices and will deepen the disadvantages of small size and remoteness. Potential ISDS compensation payments or settlements could far outweigh the limited economic benefits of TPP. Even when cases are successfully defended, the legal costs will be very high.Value-additionTPP can both help and hinder ambitions to add value to raw materials and commodities, and to progress up value chains. However, it is likely to reinforce NZ’s position as a commodity producer and thus hinder progress up the value chain where greater economic prosperity lies. More analysis based on the actual agreement is required to ascertain the conditions for and likelihood of such progress. TPP will limit government’s ability to innovate and address national challenges and is likely to worsen rapidly escalating problems such as environmental degradation and climate change.Furthermore, TPP is projected to reduce employment and increase income inequality in NZ. In its analysis, the government has not considered the likely costs, which are probably going to be very significant, and may well outweigh economic benefits.TPP thus falls well short of being “a trade agreement for the 21st century”, as its cheerleaders claim. A more comprehensive, balanced and objective cost-benefit analysis on the basis of the October 2015 deal should be completed before ratifying the TPP.

Source: TPP: Lessons from New Zealand | Inter Press Service

Donald Trump Is the Most Dangerous Man in the World – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Trump Wants A Ruthless America”Believe me, I’ll change things. And again, we’re going to be so respected. I don’t want to use the word ‘feared,'” he told the audience. But that is precisely what Trump wants: to be feared. His bid for the White House, long ridiculed, is a fight for a ruthless, brutal America. Behind his campaign slogan “Make America great again!” is the vision of a country that no longer cares about international treaties, ethnic minorities or established standards of decency.Trump wants to attack head-first again. The 69-year-old embodies a new harshness and brutality, and both a physical and emotional crudeness. Trump has launched an uprising of the indecent, one that is now much bigger than he himself, a popular movement of white, conservative America that after eight years under Democratic President Barack Obama, yearns for a leader who will usher in the counter-revolution.

Source: Donald Trump Is the Most Dangerous Man in the World – SPIEGEL ONLINE