News stories by Umar Manzoor Shah, page 3

NAIROBI & SRINAGAR, India, January 22 (IPS) - The world is pouring trillions of dollars each year into activities that destroy nature while investing only a fraction of that amount in protecting and restoring the ecosystems on which economies depend, according to a new United Nations report released on today  (January 22).

UNITED NATIONS & SRINAGAR, India, January 20 (IPS) - The world has entered what United Nations researchers now describe as an era of Global Water Bankruptcy, a condition where humanity has irreversibly overspent the planet’s water resources, leaving ecosystems, economies, and communities unable to recover to previous levels.

SRINAGAR, India, December 16 (IPS) - The global refugee system is entering a period of deep strain. The delivery of protection and assistance is undergoing a transformation due to funding cuts, institutional reforms, and shifting donor priorities. Against this backdrop, a new Global Synthesis Report titled From the Ground Up highlights the many issues faced by refugees in the Middle East and Africa.

SRINAGAR, December 4 (IPS) - “I see more philanthropic support aligning with systems thinking, linking climate stability, biodiversity protection, Indigenous leadership, and community resilience,” says Michael Northrop, Program Director at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

WASHINGTON, D.C & SRINAGAR, November 21 (IPS) - A new independent evaluation of the Global Environment Facility’s food systems programs says they are delivering strong environmental and livelihood gains in many countries but warns that a narrow focus on farm production, weak political analysis, and shrinking coordination budgets are holding back deeper transformation.

SRINAGAR, India, November 17 (IPS) - In the fertile fields of Jammu’s R.S. Pura, rice farmer Mohd Yaseen Khan stares at a cracked irrigation canal, battered by erratic rainfall. “One day heavy rain, next week a dry spell,” he says, dusting his palms. “Our crop suffers. Our costs rise.”

SRINAGAR, India & BELÉM, Brazil, November 8 (IPS) - A report by the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC) and Earth Insight paints a stark picture of how extractive industries, deforestation, and climate change are converging to endanger the world’s last intact tropical forests and the Indigenous Peoples who protect them.

SRINAGAR, India & BELÉM, November 6 (IPS) - A decade has passed since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, and a United Nations synthesis report released ahead of COP30 in Belém shows that “Parties are bending their combined emission curve further downwards, but still not quickly enough.”

SRINAGAR, India, November 5 (IPS) - The world is falling dangerously short of meeting the Paris Agreement goals, with global greenhouse gas emissions rising to record levels and current national pledges still far off the mark, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said in its Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off Target.

SRINAGAR, October 21 (IPS) - The Forest Declaration Assessment 2025 warns that global forest loss remains alarmingly high, with little sign of improvement.