Coinciding with Universal Health Coverage Day on Thursday the World Health Organization (WHO) released its 2024 Global Health Expenditure Report, revealing troubling declines in government health spending.

Describing the level of devastation across the Gaza Strip as “absolutely staggering”, the Head of Emergency Communications for the World Food Programme (WFP) has told UN News in an interview that civilians are desperate for lifesaving aid and there’s a growing risk of widespread famine.

The international community owes it to the Syrian people “to listen, to act and to work tirelessly” so the crimes of the deposed Assad regime can never happen again, the top UN envoy for the country said on Thursday.

MADRID, Dec 11 (IPS) - The available data is self-explanatory: business-prompted human activities have already altered over 70% of the Earth’s lands, with 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil lost due to industrial agriculture, the excessive use of chemicals, overgrazing, deforestation, pollution and other major threats.

THE HAGUE & NAIROBI, Dec 11 (IPS) - The Seychelles consider the ongoing public hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) both timely and critical “for the people of the small island developing state in the middle of the Indian Ocean,” Flavien Joubert, Minister for Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment of the Seychelles, told the court today.

NAIROBI, Dec 11 (IPS) - Despite mixed reactions to the outcomes of COP29, Africa has the opportunity to take the lead in harnessing nature to tackle the effects of climate change and secure a resilient future.

BONN, Dec 11 (IPS) - Sustaining nature is not just an environmental goal—it is an essential component of sustainable business—and requires that we redefine business success to include the wise stewardship of nature.

SETE LAGOAS, Brazil, Dec 11 (IPS) - They look like attempts to copy the moon’s surface, in some cases, as craters multiply in the grasslands. But they are actually micro-dams, barraginhas in Portuguese, which have spread in Brazil as a successful way to store water and prevent soil erosion in rural areas.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 11 (IPS) - The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched its newest report on the Right to Food Guidelines on December 10, which focuses on that focused on the urgency of food security as well as the measures that will be taken by the organization to eradicate hunger and malnutrition in the coming decade.

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Dec 11 (IPS) - At a borehole not far from Mpopoma High School in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city, 48-year-old Sakhile Mulawuzi balances a white 25-liter bucket of water on her head as she holds another 10-liter blue bucket filled with water. She trudges these back home along a narrow pathway leading to her house in Mpopoma, one of the high-density areas here.