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2015 has been declared the International Year of Soils by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Dr. Vandana Shiva, who has been at the forefront of the food democracy movement, wants to take the momentum from the victories for food sovereignty in 2014 and make 2015 an even bigger year.
Shiva recaps how food activists reclaimed seed freedom by rolling back seed laws that made it illegal to save seeds in Europe and Colombia, and how a judge overruled the arrest of farmers in Indonesia who saved their seeds. Proponents of GMO got desperate, suing Vermont, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island in Hawaii for wanting to know what's in their food.
A longtime crusader against multinational corporations' push for industrial, chemical farming, Shiva offers regenerative agriculture as the solution. "Organic farming and ecological agriculture is the answer to the havoc that has been created by fossil fuels."
Shiva compares us all to seeds, saying "for a while we might lie underground, but at the right moment we germinate and burst out with all of our potential." She said, "In the year of soil, let us celebrate the connections between Mother Earth and ourselves. We are, after all, of the Earth. We are all made of soil ... Let us stay united, let us stay strong, let us stay joyful."
Watch Dr. Vandana Shiva's new year message:
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India is home to 21 of the world's 30 most polluted cities, but recently air pollution levels have started to drop dramatically as the second-most populated nation endures the second week of a 21-day lockdown amidst coronavirus fears, according to The Weather Channel.
By Eddie Ndopu
- South Africa is ground zero for the coronavirus pandemic in Africa.
- Its townships are typical of high-density neighbourhoods across the continent where self-isolation will be extremely challenging.
- The failure to eradicate extreme poverty is a threat beyond the countries in question.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of two malarial drugs to treat and prevent COVID-19, the respiratory infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, despite only anecdotal evidence that either is proven effective in treating or slowing the progression of the disease in seriously ill patients.
A team of scientists drilled into the ground near the South Pole to discover forest and fossils from the Cretaceous nearly 90 million years ago, which is the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, as the BBC reported.
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The challenges facing the world's oceans are well known: plastic pollution could crowd out fish by 2050, and the climate crisis could wipe out coral reefs by 2100.