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Safety protection products for the oil industry are displayed at the PETROAFRICA exhibition in Tunis, Tunisia, on June 14, 2022.
The four-day PETROAFRICA exhibition kicked off with the participation of more than 120 exhibitors from across the world. (Photo by Adel Ezzine/Xinhua)
ALSO READ:Ranges of storks rising in India, but declining in Africa
The international team of authors included people from the US, India, and South Africa, led by Gula, now a PhD student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa…reports Vishal Gulati
Ranges of six endemic African stork species that are widespread from East to Southern Africa, but have highly fragmented ranges in West Africa, may have declined by over 25 per cent in three decades, says a latest study.
But, separate studies in India indicate a steady increase in the woolly-necked stork, which prefers irrigation canals over wetlands.
In Haryana, ornithologists found a rather large breeding population of storks even in those densely populated villages and towns that have witnessed agriculture for over a century.
In Africa, the studied stork species that have seen a decline are the African openbill, the Abdim’s stork, the African woolly-necked stork, the saddle-billed stork, the marabou stork and the yellow-billed stork. The marabou stork can reach five feet tall with a wingspan of up to 10 feet.
The researchers evaluate species status based on new collated information on distribution and recommend uplisting the global status of the saddle-billed stork to near threatened and West African populations of the saddle-billed stork, the marabou stork and the yellow-billed stork to threatened status.
The assessments of range wide distribution of the six African stork species and their relationships with protected areas has been published in Ostrich, the Journal of African Ornithology, and is the result of Jonah Gula’s master’s research at Texas State University.
The international team of authors included people from the US, India, and South Africa, led by Gula, now a PhD student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.
“Data is largely lacking on the status and distributions of the African storks. We collated records of these species from secondary sources spanning over 150 years to develop the first distribution maps based on known occurrence of each species,” co-author K.S. Gopi Sundar, a Scientist at the Nature Conservation Foundation, told IANS.
“We used these data to estimate range loss since 1990. We then investigated the relationship between occurrence and the amount of protected area where storks were recorded,” he said.
“We found all six stork species were widespread from East to southern Africa, but most had fragmented ranges in West Africa caused by extirpations in a number of countries, such as Mali and Nigeria,” Gula said.
According to the assessment, the range of the African openbill has potentially declined by 21 per cent. It is most abundant in East and southern Africa in major wetland systems, and in West Africa it occurs in smaller numbers in primarily coastal areas.
An isolated population of openbill remains in Sierra Leone and is threatened by the harvesting of chicks from nests.
The range of the Abdim’s stork has potentially declined by 27 per cent.
As an equatorial migrant, it occurs in huge migratory flocks numbering in the thousands. While it still remains widespread in West Africa, where it breeds during the rainy season, there is evidence of decline on the periphery of its range in the region.
It has increased in number on the southern Arabian Peninsula, specifically Oman, where groups numbering in the hundreds are now regularly found in winter.
While the range of the saddle-billed stork has declined by 28 per cent, it was 26 per cent in both the Marabou stork and African woolly-necked stork and 27 per cent in the yellow-billed stork.
Sundar said this study importantly contributes a coarse understanding of distribution and population status of African storks and has helped identify geographic priority areas for future field efforts.
It also highlights the utility of using secondary sources to enhance the knowledge of understudied, large birds such as storks.
“Finally, our work highlights how presumptions about status of species with large geographic ranges can lead to regional declines going overlooked,” said Gula.
According to Sundar, the African study has many similarities with the situation in India.
Storks in India have been classified with respect to status without too many detailed studies. The woolly-necked stork for example was assumed to be negatively impacted by agriculture and was raised to vulnerable status.
After evidence emerged that the species is doing very well in Indian agricultural areas, IUCN had to reassign the status to near-threatened to reflect actual data.
“It is possible that storks in Africa are doing better than what we are finding but the absence of work outside protected areas, like for most species in India, is a major gap that needs filling,” he said.
Currently, all bird species have been assigned an IUCN status even though a large number of them do not have the necessary information to do so.
“The race to place all bird species into IUCN Red List status is illogical, reduces the scientific reputation of the Red List, and is not a good way to understand how birds are doing.
“Bird species without information on their habits and distribution, or with very outdated information, need to be identified so scientists can work on them and assess actual status. Our paper on African storks shows the importance of doing careful assessments,” explained Sundar.
“Our work on nesting woolly-necked storks published in a paper was conducted between 2016 and 2020 where we located 298 nests of this species, the largest data set in the world for this species,” said Sundar, also Co-chair of the IUCN Stork, Ibis and Spoonbill Specialist Group.
“We analysed this information assuming the storks in Haryana would conform to patterns of nest location that have been observed in storks globally, including the single nesting stork species in Europe and China.”
Storks are large birds that have attracted enormous mythological and scientific attention over centuries and are closely associated with endangered habitats such as wetlands.
Talking about the assessment of the African storks, Gula told IANS these storks are very charismatic, and an attraction to them can be seen as far back as ancient Egypt, where the saddle-billed stork was depicted in hieroglyphs as representing divinity.
African openbills, Abdim’s storks and yellow-billed storks were also deified, as evidenced by their mummified remains in Egyptian animal galleries. “I find it surprising that researchers and conservationists have overlooked these species for so long,” Gula adds.
The storks nesting on chimneys in Europe are considered an omen of good luck. The migration of some stork species is celebrated each year as some of the most fantastic animal movements across the globe.
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WTO’s 12th ministerial meeting opens in Geneva to tackle key issues
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) opened Sunday at WTO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
During the four-day meeting, members of the trade organization will hold discussions on such issues as TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, pandemic response, fishery subsidies, agriculture, food security, as well as the WTO’s reform and its future work priorities.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said that the world is currently facing multiple crises such as the epidemic, food shortage, climate change and regional conflicts, and she called on all parties to work together to overcome the difficulties.
“No one country can solve these crises on its own, this is a time that you need the world to work together,” she said.
According to her, the work of the WTO has made progress, and draft documents have been formed on key issues such as TRIPS waiver, pandemic response, fishery subsidies, agriculture and food security. She hoped that more results could be achieved at the ministerial meeting.
China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, who attended the meeting in Geneva, said that the WTO-centered multilateral trading system is the cornerstone of international trade, and China is willing to work with all parties to promote the WTO to play a bigger role in world economic recovery.
ALSO READ:China hits back at WHO report on Covid origins
Wang noted that China will continue to safeguard the multilateral trading system with concrete actions and support the WTO reform to move in the right direction, adding that the reform of WTO needs to reinforce its functions and promote economic globalization to benefit all members.
The Ministerial Conference, which is attended by trade ministers and other senior officials from the organization’s 164 members, is the WTO’s highest decision-making body, and is generally held every two years.
Kazakhstan was originally scheduled to host MC12 in June 2020, but the conference was postponed due to the pandemic.
African countries are struggling to stem child labour as situation worsened by COVID-19 pandemic
As the world commemorated the World Day Against Child Labor, Uganda said it is making effort to eliminate the vice, which has been exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The Uganda National Household Survey 2019/2020 shows that child labor increased to 36 percent up from 21 percent. When government reopened schools in January this year after about two years of closure because of the pandemic, one in 10 school children did not report back to school, according to figures by the United Nations Children’s Fund. Many are believed to have slipped into child labor.
Children aged between 5-17 years engage activities including household chores, selling commodities on streets, working on plantations, in stone quarries, among others. According to Uganda Bureau of Statistics, 45 percent of children from households living below the poverty line are forced out of school to work and supplement their parents’ incomes.
A Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development statement issued here on Sunday said government developed the National Child Labor Policy and Employment Act, which acts as the principal legal framework to curb child labor.
Government has stepped up labor inspection and enforcement of labor standards to ensure compliance with laws against child labor, according to the statement.
Government rolled out Universal Primary Education, which provides for free primary education for all school going age children. Children whose guardians could not afford tuition fees had an opportunity to go to school. Primary school enrolment was at 8.8 million in 2017 and literacy rate is at 76 percent.
According to the ministry, government has rolled out several wealth creation programs aimed at increasing household incomes, which will economically empower families and stop children from involving in child labor.
Bernard Amuriat, the assistant commissioner for labor inspection at the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development, argued that government alone cannot eradicate child labor without everyone’s involvement including parents, development partners and leaders.
ALSO READ:China hits back at WHO report on Covid origins
Amuriat said central and local governments are coming up with ordinances to supplement the national laws. Lower local governments are enacting by-laws to protect children. Those who are found working during school time are rounded up.
Many of the child laborers especially in the capital Kampala are from the semi-arid northeastern Uganda, which sometimes faces food insecurity. Amuriat said there are efforts to come up with a declaration. At the village level in the region, there are committees which create awareness and intercept children who are being smuggled to Kampala. Intelligence has also been beefed up to arrest smugglers.
Crisis in Zanzibar
Tanzania’s Zanzibar authorities vowed to end child labor as they marked the World Day Against Child Labor.
Mudrik Ramadhan Soraga, the Minister of State in the President’s Office responsible for Labor, Economy and Investment, said since 2005 authorities have been taking measures aimed at curbing child labor.
“The government has enacted laws that provide for protection of children against child labor,” Soraga told a news conference.
He said there are about 25,803 children aged between five and 17 that are experiencing child labor in the Zanzibar archipelago.
About 2,256 children, including 840 girls, have been rescued from child labor in different parts of Zanzibar’s twin islands of Unguja and Pemba, said Soraga.
The International Labour Organization started observing World Day Against Child Labor in 2002 to highlight the plight of children who are the victims of child labour.
At least 18.4 million people are already experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity and rising malnutrition across the three Horn of Africa countries of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has warned…reports Asian Lite News
The UNOCHA, in its latest situation update issued late Friday, said the number of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity and rising malnutrition across the three countries could further increase to 20 million by September 2022, Xinhua news agency reported.
In Somalia, nearly 7.1 million people are now acutely food insecure, including 213,000 people in catastrophe, and eight areas of the country are at risk of famine between now and September 2022, with the bay region of particular concern, according to the UNOCHA.
It said nearly 7.2 million people in Ethiopia and nearly 4.1 million people in Kenya are severely food insecure due to the drought.
At least 7 million livestock, which pastoralist families rely upon for sustenance and livelihoods, have died across the Horn of Africa, including more than 1.5 million in Kenya, between 2.1 million and 2.5 million in southern and south-eastern Ethiopia, and 3 million in Somalia, it added.
The death of livestock is consequently resulting in less access to milk for children in the affected areas, which negatively affects their nutrition.
ALSO READ:Hunger Hotspots Of Africa
Humanitarian partners urgently need more than $1.7 billion to respond to the rapidly increasing needs in the coming months, as reflected in the drought response plans in Ethiopia, Somalia and the flash appeal for Kenya.
“However, only a small percentage of the funding required under these plans has been received, severely hampering the response to the rapidly deepening drought,” the UNOCHA warned.
The Ethiopian government has launched a new Covid-19 vaccination campaign to boost inoculations and control the spread of the pandemic…reports Asian Lite News
State-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate, citing Dereje Duguma, Ethiopia’s State Health Minister, reported on Saturday that the number of infected people who are going to the intensive care unit has been increasing over the past month in Ethiopia.
The State Minister said that the dynamic nature of the virus coupled with lax precautionary measures by citizens are the major factors exacerbating the infection rate during the past month, Xinhua news agency reported.
ALSO READ:Kenyans rush for vaccines as Covid-19 cases surge
The East African country, which has so far administered more than 29.7 million Covid-19 vaccine doses, reported 736 new Covid-19 cases over the past 24 hours, taking the national count to 477,742 as of Saturday as the death toll stood at 7,516, according to the latest figures from the Health Ministry.
Acute food insecurity to deteriorate further in 20 countries
Acute food insecurity is likely to deteriorate further in 20 countries or situations, including Ethiopia, from June to September 2022, according to the joint UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) report.
The joint report, entitled “Hunger Hotspots: FAO-WFP Early Warnings On Acute Food Insecurity June to September 2022 Outlook” and published early this week, said acute food insecurity continues to escalate globally.
Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen remain at the highest alert level as in the previous edition of this report. Afghanistan and Somalia have been added to the list in this year’s edition of the report.
“These countries all have some populations identified or projected to experience starvation or death or at risk of deterioration toward catastrophic conditions, and require the most urgent attention,” the report said.
After projecting 401,000 people facing catastrophic conditions in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in 2021, only 10 percent of required assistance arrived in the region until March 2022, the report said. The local agricultural production, which was 40 percent of the average, was critical for food security and livelihoods.
“Any new outbreak of fighting could lead to further major acute food insecurity considering the existing catastrophic situation in the region,” the report read.
It said the recent humanitarian truce, which remains fragile, has allowed for some convoys to reach the region. The Famine Review Committee’s 2021 scenarios of a Risk of Famine for Tigray might remain relevant unless humanitarian access stabilizes, the report said.
According to the report, the Ukraine crisis has already caused immense destruction of livelihoods, supply chains, infrastructure and contamination with explosive ordnances in the country, as well as large-scale displacement in the country and regionally.
ALSO READ:Inflation Dogs Africa
“The conflict in Ukraine is compounding what is already a year of catastrophic hunger, unleashing a wave of collateral hunger that is spreading across the globe, transforming a series of terrible hunger crises into a global food crisis the world cannot afford,” it said.
As Ukraine is a major global food supplier, the current supply disruptions are aggravating already high international prices, which complicates access to food and could result in localized shortages, the report said.
In addition to manmade disasters, the report stressed that natural catastrophes, including drought, are further deepening the food insecurity crisis among the affected areas.
Recurrent La Nina events since late 2020 have impacted agricultural activities, causing crop and livestock losses in many parts of the world, including Afghanistan and Eastern Africa, it said.
The Kenya China Economic and Trade Association (KCETA) on Thursday donated an assort of equipment to the Mcedo Beijing School located in the sprawling Mathare slums of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.
Liu Chenghui, Chairman of KCETA said that the school equipment donations represent the Chinese community’s commitment to improving the quality of education in Kenya. The donations included 87 upper-class chairs, 70 class lockers, six tables, 35 preprimary chairs, and five desks. Zhang Yijun, Minister Counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Kenya said that the donations are a demonstration of the friendship that exists between Kenya and China. (Photo by Ronald/Xinhua)
ALSO READ:African countries acquire 818mn Covid-19 vaccine doses
The number of Kenyans getting Covid-19 vaccinations has increased significantly following a spike in new infections, the Health Ministry said…reports Asian Lite News
At least 20,000 Kenyans are being vaccinated daily across the east African nation, an increase from an average of 3,000 in the last three months when infections had plummeted.
The Ministry said on Thursday that it vaccinated 24,798 people on Wednesday, and on Tuesday, 23,514 took the jabs, Xinhua news agency reported.
The country has vaccinated 18.3 million citizens, among whom 16.5 million are adults, the Ministry added.
Since March, vaccination had slowed down, but a rise in new cases to stand at 202 from a sample size of 2,787 on Thursday has jolted citizens.
On Wednesday, the country recorded 218 positive cases, the highest in recent times, from a sample size of 3,317, said Mutahi Kagwe, the Cabinet Health Secretary.
Kenya’s total confirmed cases now stand at 326,217.
ALSO READ:Africa’s Covid-19 cases pass 11.66 mn
The government has asked citizens to wear masks in public places and get vaccinated following the sharp rise in Covid-19 cases.
“We are urging Kenyans to have their masks on. We are worried that the Covid-19 numbers are going up,” Francis Kuria, the Director of Public Health at the Health Ministry, said recently.
When lifting some Covid-19 mandates in March, Kenya was recording less than five positive cases daily.
African countries have acquired 818 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines so far, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said in the latest weekly briefing…reports Asian Lite News
The Africa CDC, the specialised healthcare agency of the African Union, added on Thursday that nearly 17.3 per cent of Africa’s population have been fully vaccinated, Xinhua news agency reported.
Nearly 579 million of the total 818 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered, which corresponds to 70.7 per cent of the total supply available in Africa, the Africa CDC said.
Countries such as Seychelles, Mauritius, Rwanda, Morocco, and Botswana have vaccinated the largest share of their population against Covid-19, respectively, according to the agency.
Ten African countries have vaccinated more than 35 per cent of their total population, it added.
Ahmed Ogwell, the Acting Director of the Africa CDC, told reporters during his weekly briefing on Thursday that around 37 African countries are offering booster doses for different age groups while Tunisia and South Africa have begun offering the second booster doses for those citizens who are aged 50 years or older.
ALSO READ:Africa’s Covid-19 cases pass 11.66 mn
“We are encouraging our member states to offer booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines to citizens who have already received the full vaccination coverage to ensure that their immunity remains high and avoid serious illness,” Ogwell said.
The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Africa has reached 11,675,825 cases as of Wednesday evening, as the toll from the pandemic reached 253,518 while nearly 11,042,211 people have recovered from the disease, according to Africa CDC.