Tuesday, September 06, 2022

ICYMI

UN High Seas Treaty Talks End Without Agreement Again

[By Fermin Koop]

While many had hoped this would be the session to do it, after two weeks of talks at the UN headquarters in New York, member states have failed to conclude a legally binding agreement to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity on the high seas.

Now, governments will have to keep bridging their differences until a new meeting, for which a date has not yet been set.

Progress was achieved in several key aspects of the draft agreement, especially during the last two days of the negotiations. Governments largely said they ran out of time, while environmental organisations described the meeting as a missed opportunity.

Conference president Rena Lee said: “We are closer to the finish line than we have ever been before. But we need more time to continue working. I urge everyone to redouble our efforts.”

The high seas – the area more than 200 miles (320 kilometres) from any shore and therefore beyond national jurisdiction – represent about two-thirds of the global ocean. However, only 1% of these waters are currently protected. These areas contain diverse ecosystems and are teeming with life.

Last year, a group of more than 100 countries known as the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) committed to protecting 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. But without an international agreement, this pledge has no legal basis on the high seas. The treaty would place more parts of the world’s oceans into the network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

“The negotiations were able to resolve a number of important issues. In some ways, we made more progress in those two weeks than in the last five years,” said Lisa Speer, head of the ocean program at the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC). “Delegates came prepared to truly negotiate, rather than reiterating their positions.”

Areas of progress

Expectations to finalise the agreement had been high after world leaders at the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon in July pledged to take action to save the world’s oceans. States have been trying to negotiate a treaty for more than a decade.

Negotiations in New York addressed all four components of the proposed agreement: area-based management tools like MPAs; marine genetic resources; environmental impact assessments; and capacity-building and transfer of technology from developed to developing nations.

Luisina Vueso, an ocean campaigner at Greenpeace, said there was a “lack of urgency” from governments, who spent most of the two weeks not actually negotiating. This changed close to the end when delegations showed more flexibility and willingness to reach compromises, Vueso explained.

Countries made progress on area-based management tools and on the institutional arrangements of a future treaty, something that will be critical to its effectiveness. This includes the mandate and rules for a Conference of the Parties (COP), like the one held annually on climate, and coordination with existing bodies regulating the high seas.

However, the sharing of possible profits from the extraction of resources in the high seas remained a very sensitive issue. Delegates still need to reach an agreement on how to do this equitably, on the types of benefits to be shared (monetary and non-monetary) and on whether policies will be voluntary or mandatory.

A revised draft text was published during the first weekend of the summit, with several brackets remaining in the areas where no agreement had been reached. New versions of the text were then circulated among delegates during the second week but not released to the public by the UN.

“There was a lot of good movement and a feeling that we can finalise the treaty; it was a matter of countries running out of time,” Elizabeth Karan, who leads Pew’s high seas program, said. “The sticking point is still around benefit sharing of marine genetic resources. We knew it was going to be the difficult issue, and it was.”

Next steps

Speaking at the closing plenary, representatives from most countries agreed significant progress had been made, highlighting the flexibility of all parties to reach compromises. The mindset of delegates was different this time, enabling more constructive discussions, they said.

Not everybody agreed. Representatives from small island states in the Pacific and the Caribbean were very disappointed. They asked for their special circumstances to be reflected in the text and asked for a balanced agreement that supports them.

“Pacific citizens came with good faith and willingness to negotiate. We live far and it’s not cheap to travel. The money spent to bring a delegation wasn’t spent on roads or medicine. We made hard compromises on issues of importance to us,” a delegate from Samoa said, holding back her tears, and followed by applause from the entire plenary session.

Jessica Battle, an ocean policy expert at WWF, said Norway and Iceland shifted their position furthest at the meeting, now being much more open to a treaty. On the other hand, Russia, and to a lesser extent China, still had doubts over some aspects, including comments on several articles of the text, she added.

Speaking at the plenary, a delegate from China said discussions were “deep and fruitful” and that while an agreement wasn’t reached in all areas, delegations now “have a better understanding of each other’s positions.” The agreement is a package deal and no aspect of it should be ignored, he added.

The UN General Assembly resolution which convened the negotiations mandated that they should be concluded by the end of 2022. This was the final scheduled session and the process is now suspended. It’s not yet clear when countries will come back together to continue negotiations.

There’s a packed calendar of UN meetings on other issues between now and January, including the climate COP27 in November, biodiversity COP15 in December and General Assembly in September. Observers said the next high seas meeting could be one week long instead of two thanks to the progress made at this session.

Fermín Koop is an Argentine journalist, specialising in the environment with experience across diverse publications such as the Buenos Aires Herald, Clarín, Ámbito Financiero, Buena Salud and Notio Noticias.

This article appears courtesy of China Dialogue Ocean and may be found in its original form here.

Capt. Fraser: The U.S. Coast Guard's Forgotten Visionary

. . . [Captain] Fraser opposed an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and this official’s hostility proved fatal to the Captain’s long career: by an arbitrary abuse of power, the administration in 1856 revoked his commission summarily. Both indefensible and stupid, this action resulted wholly from personal animosity and cost the government one of the most far-sighted and loyal men who ever sailed in the Revenue-Marine. - Stephen Evans, The United States Coast Guard: A Definitive History

As the quote above indicates, Capt. Alexander Vareness Fraser, first commandant of the service, was a visionary and a man of character. During his four years as head of the United States Revenue Cutter Service, he did his best to professionalize and modernize the service. Many of his innovations were ahead of their time taking place decades after he tried to implement them.

Alexander Fraser was born in New York, in 1804, and attended the city’s Mathematical, Nautical and Commercial School. In 1832, he applied for a commission with the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service. President Andrew Jackson signed his commission as second lieutenant aboard the Revenue Cutter Alert. Fraser served as boarding officer when the service ordered his cutter to Charleston during the infamous “Nullification Crisis” in which South Carolina officials defied federal law requiring merchant ships arriving in Charleston to pay tariffs. During this event, political tempers cooled and a national crisis was ultimately averted.

After the Nullification Crisis, Fraser was offered command of a merchant vessel destined for Japan, China, and the Malayan Archipelago. Upon his return two years later, Fraser received appointment as first lieutenant aboard the Alert. Soon thereafter, Congress passed a law authorizing revenue cutters to cruise along the coasts in the winter months to render aid to ships in distress. Fraser returned to New York before any cutters actually started this new duty, and he applied for it, taking command of the Alert when its captain was too sick to go to sea. He spent three years performing this mission, becoming the first cutter captain to carry out the service’s official search and rescue mission.

In 1843, Treasury Secretary John Spencer created the Revenue Marine Bureau to centralize authority over the cutters within the department and appointed Fraser head of the Bureau. As head of the service, Fraser busied himself with all financial, material and personnel matters concerning the revenue cutters. During his first year in office, he assembled statistics and information for the service’s first annual report and he outlawed the use of slaves aboard Revenue Cutters. He instituted a merit-based system of officer promotion by examination before a board of officers. He also began the practice of regularly rotating officers to different stations to acquaint them with the nation’s coastal areas. He tried to improve the morale of the enlisted force, raising the pay of petty officers from 20 dollars a month to 30; however, he also prohibited the drinking alcohol aboard cutters. He inspected lighthouses regularly and tried to amalgamate the Lighthouse Board with the Revenue Marine Bureau, a merger that finally occurred nearly 100 years later. With construction of the 1844 Legare-Class cutters, Fraser introduced the service to iron hulls and steam power. However, these hull materials and motive power were experimental at the time and the new cutters proved unsuccessful.

In November 1848, Fraser completed his four-year tenure as commandant. For his next tour, Fraser asked for command of the new cutter C.W. Lawrence on a maiden voyage that would round Cape Horn bound for the West Coast. This journey placed him in charge of the first revenue cutter to sail the Pacific Ocean. The Lawrence arrived at San Francisco almost a year after it departed New York and, during this odyssey, Fraser took it upon himself to educate his officers in navigat ion and seamanship much like the Revenue Cutter Service School of Instruction after its founding in 1876. Unfortunately, all of these trained officers resigned their commissions when they reached California to join the Gold Rush.

On the San Francisco station, Fraser had an exhaustive list of missions to perform with a crew depleted by the lure of gold. He not only enforced tariffs and interdicted smugglers, he provided federal law enforcement for San Francisco, relieved distressed merchant vessels and surveyed the coastline of the new state. Fraser had a busy time with 500 to 600 vessels at anchor in San Francisco harbor, many with lawless crews. There were no civil tribunals to help with law enforcement, so Fraser did his best to enforce revenue laws while aiding shipmasters in suppressing mutinies.

After completing his assignment on the West Coast, Fraser returned to New York City. There, he was suspended and investigated on the charge of administering corporal punishment in San Francisco. The case was unsuccessful so he retained his captaincy in New York. In 1856, the merchants of New York decided they needed a new cutter because the port had become such an important commercial center. Fraser favored building a steam cutter and visited Washington to lobby for new construction. Congress appropriated funds for the steam cutter Harriet Lane, considered the most advanced steam-powered warship of its day, which later earned fame in the Civil War.

Because Fraser had lobbied Congress directly without permission from the Department of Treasury, his commission was revoked in 1856. He went into private business in New York as a marine insurance agent, but he retained a sincere interest in military service. He applied for reinstatement during the Civil War and, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed a captain’s commission for Fraser. By then, however, personal matters intervened and Fraser regretfully declined the appointment. He died in 1868 at the age of 64 and was laid to rest at Brooklyn’s famed Green-Wood Cemetery.

Alexander Fraser introduced the service to professionalization, new technology and moved a reluctant service toward reforms and innovations that would take place long after his death. As the first commandant, Fraser’s foresight and enlightened leadership set the Service on course for growth and modernization. He was a true seaman, a visionary and a member of the long blue line.

William H. Thiesen, Ph.D. is the Coast Guard Atlantic Area Historian.

This article appears courtesy of The Long Blue Line and may be found in its original form here.

UK’s New PM Pledged Expanded Freeports and Curbing Labor Actions

Liz Truss UK {rime Minister — (UK Gov photo)

Liz Truss who became the UK’s new Prime Minister on Tuesday made promises during the hard-fought campaign that would have a significant impact on ports and the shipping community. Truss takes over a country facing industrial unrest and a sweeping energy crisis affecting households’ power bills. Most importantly, Truss’s win has rekindled a conversation about some of the promises she made to the UK shipping community during the campaign.

Top on the agenda is the pledge to introduce what she called “full-fat freeports” in a bid to boost the growth of the UK economy. The Truss campaign said the freeports would see brownfield sites and other locations turned into investment zones. It was part of her new promises of reducing regulation and cutting Whitehall bureaucracy.

“As a prime minister, I will be focused on turbo-charging business investment and delivering the economic growth our country desperately needs. We can’t carry on allowing Whitehall to pick the winners and losers, like we have seen with the current Freeport model,” said Truss back in July.

The outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson had also come out strong on freeports, which became one of the flagship post-Brexit policies under his government with several freeport locations announced last year.

In revamping the policy, Truss indicated that the investment zones would benefit from a low tax burden, reduced planning restrictions, and regulations tailored on an individual basis. Truss also tied the Freeport plan into the government’s leveling-up pledge, which aims to promote growth in Coastal towns.

Supposing Truss fulfills her pledge on the freeports, some observers in the maritime industry believes it is a welcome idea for the UK as a whole and consumers.

“The introduction of freeports would mean a lot of goods can be shipped via, and handled within, the UK tariff-free. This would likely mean an increase in post-production goods and goods that normally have large tariffs applied to them (example, tobacco and alcohol) coming via the UK to take advantage of lower tariffs. It could absolutely see an increase in imports as duty and paperwork are reduced compared with calling at ports in other areas,” said Henry Waterfield, Founder and CEO of the London-based Spot Ship Company, a firm specializing in maritime digital technology.

In addition, Truss had also pledged sweeping reforms to UK trade union laws, which would guarantee minimum services during strikes and raise the minimum threshold on the number of workers needing to take part in ballots on industrial action.

One of the first tests of Truss’s stance on unions could come at the major seaports. Last month, almost 2,000 workers went on strike at the Port of Felixstowe, one of the UK’s largest container terminals. While the dispute at Felixstowe remains unsettled with the union threatening further job actions, another industrial action has been announced from September 19 to October 3 at the Port of Liverpool. Unite the union says over 560 port workers will walk off the job in Liverpool in a dispute over wages and work rules.

100% compostable coffee balls bid to take on Nespresso

Issued on: 06/09/2022 -

Switzerland's biggest retailer hopes its new balls of compressed coffee will challenge Nespresso coffee pods Fabrice COFFRINI AFP

Zurich (AFP) – Switzerland's biggest retailer launched a new coffee machine invention on Tuesday -- fully compostable coffee balls which it hopes will shake up the global market and take on Nespresso's global dominance.

The Migros supermarket chain hopes its innovation will cash in on consumers' environmental concerns by eliminating the aluminium and plastic waste of regular coffee capsules.

Rather than capsules, the new pods are balls of compressed coffee covered with a thin film made from algae.

With its new system, which took five years to develop, Migros is parking its tanks on the lawns of its Swiss compatriot Nestle, the giant in the coffee pod sector with its Nespresso brand.

The machines and coffee balls went on sale in Switzerland and France from Tuesday, but interest in other countries is "already huge", chief executive Fabrice Zumbrunnen said at the launch in Zurich, eyeing a wider rollout.

There are other compostable coffee pods on the market but Migros believes that this is the first system to use biodegradable balls.

The balls have to be used in the Migros CoffeeB system and are not compatible with other coffee machines.

Switzerland's largest employer said the new development was in response to the growing environmental consciousness of consumers, saying that some 63 billion coffee capsules are sold each year around the world, generating around 100,000 tonnes of waste.

Migros is currently a small player in the market.

According to market researchers Euromonitor International, the market share of its Cafe Royal brand was limited to 0.3 percent in western Europe in 2021, compared to 12.1 percent for Nespresso alone, while Nestle also owns the Nescafe and Dolce Gusto labels.

But Migros is hoping its compostable coffee system will gain it some market share.

It points out that the coffee beans used to make the biodegradale balls are sourced from sustainable crops, with fair trade and organic certification.

The cases the balls come in look like egg cartons and are made of recyclable materials. The coffee machines themselves are largely made from recycled materials, Migros said.

© 2022 AFP

G7 corporate climate plans spell 2.7C heating: analysis

Issued on: 06/09/2022 -

In Montreal, protesters condemned Royal Bank of Canada's investment in pipelines last October Andrej Ivanov AFP

Paris (AFP) – The decarbonisation plans of some of the biggest corporations from G7 nations put Earth on course to heat a potentially catastrophic 2.7 degrees Celsius -- blowing Earth well past the Paris Agreement temperature goals, analysis showed Tuesday.

As more and more firms announce their intention to become carbon neutral by mid-century at the latest, scrutinising corporate claims of green action is increasingly important to check whether they are aligned with the latest climate science.

CDP, a non-profit that runs a global disclosure system for companies to manage their environmental impacts, looked at the climate plans of more than 4,000 firms across the world's seven largest economies.

They found that current plans would lead to a world by 2100 that is 2.7C hotter than currently -- a far cry from the temperature goals of the 2015 Paris deal, which enjoins nations to limit warming to "well below" 2C above pre-industrial levels.

Europe was the best performer, with rapid action since 2021 likely to have "cooled" the temperature prediction some 0.3C, the analysis showed.

Businesses in Canada, on the other hand, were the worst performing in terms of decarbonisation plans, with 88 percent of reported greenhouse gas emissions coming from firms that have no disclosed net zero plans.

Across all regions and sectors, only the European power generation sector achieved a temperature rating below 2C, driven by targets from renewable and nuclear energy companies.

Many companies have plans in place to reduce emissions directly produced from their business operations, such as vehicle exhausts and office heating.

Far fewer have plans covering emissions produced by the consumption or use of their products and which often count for most of their carbon footprints.

Companies in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands had policies to reduce their emissions across their entire value chain, which equated with a 2.2C temperature rise, according to the CDP.

"However, despite this progress, the average temperature ratings for corporates remain well above 1.5C across all major European economies," it said.

© 2022 AFP

Majority of trash in Great Pacific Garbage Patch linked to just five countries

Isabella O'Malley, M.Env.Sc -

VIDEO Duration 0:49 View on Watch

A study published in Scientific Reports states that most of the identifiable trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch comes from just five nations.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is located between Hawaii and California and is the largest accumulation of ocean plastic on Earth. Ocean currents transport the plastic until they eventually converge, leading the trash into a swirling gyre that continues to grow in size. The size of the garbage patch is estimated to be 1.6 million square kilometres — three times the size of France.

Through a collaboration with The Ocean Cleanup organization, over 6,000 pieces of plastic debris were collected from the garbage patch in the North Pacific Ocean in 2019. The trash was then counted, weighed, categorized, and analyzed for its origin and age.

Plastic extraction from System 002, The Ocean Cleanup’s ocean system cleaning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Many crates and buoys originating from fishing activities can be seen in the catch. (The Ocean Cleanup)

The researchers analyzed 6,093 items that were larger than 5 cm, which had a total dry weight of 573 kilograms. Plastic fishing and aquaculture gear was the most common type of identifiable trash, which included fish boxes, oyster spacers, and eel traps. One-third of the trash collected in the study was fragments that were unidentifiable due to decomposition.

See also: Innovative ropeless fishing gear helps prevent whale entanglements

Floats and buoys made up just three per cent of the total number of plastic items found but were 21 per cent of the total mass due to the bulky size of these items. Bottle caps, lids, and other items related to food and drinks represented 13 per cent of the total plastic items. Household items such as containers, drums, jerry cans, and baskets were 14 per cent of the total number of plastic items.

Plastic items were analyzed for clues on their origin. (The Ocean Cleanup)

Of the objects that were inscribed with an identifiable language or another indicator of origin, such as brand name, the top five identified origins were Japan (34 per cent), China (32 per cent), Korea (10 per cent), United States (7 per cent), and Taiwan (6 per cent).

The researchers attribute Japan’s high contribution to the nation’s significant fisheries industry and the Tohoku tsunami (2011) that carried debris away from the land. The other countries are also active fishing nations.

Some of the trash had identifiable production dates and nearly half of the items were produced before 2000 with the oldest item being a buoy dated to 1966. Eight items originating from Japan ranged from 1975 to 2007.

Watch Largest river in Guatemala choked by garbage that causes "trash tsunamis"
Duration 1:06 View on Watch

Trawling, fixed gear, and drifting longlines were found to be responsible for more than 95 per cent of fishing activities that may have resulted in the floating plastics found.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch only represents a small amount of plastic trash that is dumped into the environment, which serves as a reminder that this long-lived type of pollution is continuously accumulating at a rapid pace. Current research indicates that several million tonnes of plastic flow into the oceans from coastal cities and rivers each year.

“Our findings further highlight that fisheries play an important role in the solutions to the ocean plastic pollution problem,” the study concluded.

Thumbnail image: The Ocean Cleanup

Tilda Swinton on the importance of believing in ghosts

WHAT DID YOU EXPECT FROM DR. STRANGE'S MENTOR

PUBLISHED BYSeptember 6, 2022

Tilda Swinton spoke on Tuesday about the “therapeutic importance” of believing in ghosts as she presented a haunting, semi-autobiographical new film about a woman dealing with the death of her mother.

Swinton’s latest collaboration with British director Joanna Hogg is “The Eternal Daughter”, competing at the Venice Film Festival, which draws heavily on both women’s experience of losing their mothers in recent years.

Set in a spooky country mansion, it is a deeply emotional film with a ghostly, haunted atmosphere.

“I certainly believe that we need to project ourselves into the idea of ghosts. There’s something very important and therapeutic about that relationship,” Swinton told AFP.

“One of the main motors of grief is the feeling that you have to give up that relationship. And then you come to realise, if you’re fortunate, that you can keep the relationship going,” she added.

“They may not be present but you can keep the conversation going.”

Hogg has become a favourite of the festival circuit following her two-part film “The Souvenir”, based on her younger years with a drug-addicted boyfriend and her attempts to turn the trauma into art.

But she told AFP that the new film was even more personal.

“It’s a bit terrifying to be honest,” she said of the imminent premiere of the film.

“All my films are personal but… I feel more exposed with this one than I have with the other ones.”

Swinton, who lost her mother in 2012, said the film was “a joint autobiography in a way”.

“We were very brave, there were no holds barred,” added Hogg.

“There was nowhere we weren’t going to go in looking at the minutiae of this relationship between mother and daughter.”

Hogg said she, too, believes in ghosts — or at least wants to.

“I think we project a lot as human beings and sometimes these projections are confused — is it coming from me or someone else?

“But I can believe that people hang around after they die, some are ready to go more easily than others.

“I feel that I’ve sensed things, seen things, heard things and I don’t think they were just coming from me.”

Double dose of Tilda Swinton in ghostly Venice flick

PUBLISHED BYSeptember 6, 2022

VENICE : Relations between parents and their children feature strongly in this year’s Venice Film Festival, but Tilda Swinton adds a new twist to the theme, playing both mother and daughter in “The Eternal Daughter”.

Directed by Britain’s Joanna Hogg, the ghostly two-hander had its world premier on Tuesday, offering the audience a haunting tale of a middle-aged daughter and her elderly mother confronting family secrets in a largely deserted country hotel.

The characters had already emerged in Hogg’s previous films “The Souvenir” and “The Souvenir Part II”. But whereas Swinton had only played the role of the mother before, this time she suggested she might tackle both parts in tandem.

“(It) took me less than a millisecond to realise that was the perfect choice to make,” Hogg told Reuters.

The drama takes place in the dead of winter in a converted stately home, complete with creaking floorboards and groaning joists, that had once belonged to the mother’s aunt. But from the very start, all is clearly not as it seems.

“There’s a lot of ghostly presences in the film, but it’s actually one of the most real films that I’ve made in many ways. So it’s very much rooted in one’s memory and experience,” said Hogg, making her debut in the main Venice competition.

Swinton, a veteran of international film festivals, swept into Venice with a crop of brightly dyed yellow hair – a tribute to Ukraine’s blue and yellow flag.

She told Reuters said it was easier for her to play the elderly mother, despite the great age difference, because she was able to build on her earlier work in the role.

But she needed to think harder about playing the daughter Julie – a part previously portrayed by her own daughter Honor Swinton Byrne in the two Souvenir movies.

“As Julie, I drew consciously on energies that my daughter brought to Julie, which was really interesting,” Swinton said.

Although her daughter does not appear in the new film, her dog Louis does, adding to the sense of foreboding as it whines and seeks to escape from the confines of the fog-bound hotel.

“He’s my dog. He’ll do anything I ask him to do,” said Swinton. “If you’re working with a pro dog and I work with pro dogs, they’re not really interested in you. They’re interested in the guy behind you who’s got the sausage in his pocket.”

27 dead as Al-Qaeda launches attack on Yemen separatists

AFP , Tuesday 6 Sep 2022

Twenty-one separatist fighters and six members of Al-Qaeda's Yemen branch were killed Tuesday, government and security sources said, as an attack by the jihadists punctured months of relative peace in the war-torn country.

In this 2017 file photo a Yemeni man looks at a burning vehicle following a reported suicide car bombing in Huta, the capital of the southern province of Lahj, Yemen. AFP

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) attacked positions held by the UAE-trained Security Belt group in Abyan governorate in Yemen's south, the sources told AFP.

About three hours of fighting "left 21 dead among the (Security Belt), including an officer, and six among the Al-Qaeda combatants", a government official said on condition of anonymity. Two security sources confirmed the death toll.

Yemen has been gripped by conflict since Iran-backed Huthi rebels took control of the capital Sanaa in 2014, triggering a Saudi-led military intervention in support of the beleaguered government the following year.

AQAP and militants loyal to the Islamic State group have thrived in the chaos.

Tuesday's fighting comes as the Huthis and forces supporting the ousted government observe a shaky ceasefire in the years-long civil war.

Riven by divisions, the groups opposing the Huthis, who originate from the north, include southern separatists who support the re-establishment of South Yemen.

The country was divided into North and South Yemen until reunification in 1990.

Underlining Yemen's parlous security, on Saturday AQAP released a video showing a United Nations worker who was abducted more than six months ago, the SITE Intelligence Group reported.

Five UN staff members were kidnapped in Abyan in February while returning to the port city of Aden after a field mission, UN spokesperson Eri Kaneko told AFP at the time.

In Saturday's video message, apparently recorded on August 9, Akam Sofyol Anam urges "the UN, the international community, the humanitarian organisations, to please come forward... and meet the demands of my captors", without outlining the demands.

Yemen's UN-brokered ceasefire has drastically reduced fighting since the truce began in April, but outbreaks of violence continue.

Last week, 10 Yemeni soldiers were killed in a Huthi attack near Taez, the country's third biggest city which has been blockaded by the rebels since 2015.

The assault, which also left several soldiers wounded, was aimed at cutting off a key route to the southwestern city of about two million, the government said.

On Thursday, the Huthis held a military parade in the Red Sea port city of Hodeida, drawing a rebuke from the UN.

Chile's failed referendum: Progressive constitution 'was portrayed as a communist document'

Issued on: 06/09/2022 -

Video by:François PICARD

Chileans have overwhelmingly rejected a draft text to replace their constitution, which dates from Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship and is widely blamed for the country's deep-rooted social inequality. Analysts say some of the proposals it contained were too radical for most voters -- a majority of whom have made it clear they want a new constitution, just not this one. For more analysis on the failed referendum on a progressive constitution, FRANCE 24 is joined by Dr. Claudia Sylvia Heiss Bendersky, Head of Political Science of the Institute of Public Affairs at Universidad de Chile. She believes that voters rejected the constitution because it was portrayed as an "extreme" and "very radical proposal," a sentiment she does not agree with. "I think the Constitutional Convention was not successful in showing the document as a moderate constitution, as I think it was, with respect to private property, with an independent central bank, but with many new things regarding the environment, inclusion and social rights."

Lake Urmia risks fully drying up: Iran wetlands chief

Seen here in 2018, Iran's Lake Urmia has been drying up for years in one of the worst ecological disasters of recent decades — Seen here in 2018, Iran's Lake Urmia has been drying up for years in one of the worst

Iran's Lake Urmia will dry out completely if rescue efforts are not prioritised over the needs of farmers in the drought gripping the region, an environment official said Tuesday.

The warning comes just four years after a Japanese government-funded programme had raised hopes of stabilising what was once the Middle East's largest lake and turning around one of the worst ecological disasters of recent decades.

"If the water quotas are not delivered and the approved plans are not fully realised, the lake will definitely dry up and there will be no hope of its recovery," said the head of the environment department's wetlands unit, Arezoo Ashrafizadeh.

"According to the law, the energy ministry is obliged to provide the environmental water needs of Lake Urmia," she told Iran's ISNA news agency.

"But the lake has not received its water entitlement due to a decrease in rainfall among other reasons."

Ashrafizadeh said there needed to be a halt to all new dam construction and measures to "stop agricultural activities" if the lake is to be restored.

Situated in the mountains of northwestern Iran not far from the Turkish border, Lake Urmia is designated as a site of international importance under the United Nations Convention on Wetlands that was signed in the Iranian city of Ramsar in 1971.

The lake has no outlet to the sea and its former size was the result of the volume of water flowing into it matching or exceeding the volume being removed by humans or evaporating off.

The lake once covered 5,000 square kilometres (1,930 square miles). Since 1995, it has been shrinking, according to the UN Environment Programme, due to a combination of rising temperatures, reduced rainfall, dam-building and over-farming.

The drying out has threatened the habitats of shrimp, flamingos, deers and wild sheep and caused salt storms that pollute nearby cities and farms.

Ashrafizadeh said the lake "has not yet completely dried up, but its northern and southern parts have been separated and about 1,000 square kilometres (386 square miles) of the lake remain."

In 2013, Iran and the UN Development Programme launched a campaign to save the lake with funding from the Japanese government.

The plan saw some success as in 2017, the lake expanded in size to reach 2,300 square kilometres (888 square miles) before starting to shrink again in the face of a protracted drought.

In mid-July, police arrested several people for "destroying public property and disturbing the security of the population" after they demonstrated against the drying up of the lake.

It was one of spate of demonstrations in Iran this year against the drying up of rivers and lakes in drought-affected areas of the centre and west.

A largely arid country, Iran suffers from chronic dry spells that are expected to worsen with climate change.

Iran sees 'revival' of imperilled Lake Urmia

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment