Tobacco not only damages human health but also threatens the planet’s wellbeing, according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report published on Tuesday, October 2, 2018 in Geneva, Switzerland. “The damage to the environment occurs across the entire life cycle of tobacco products due to deforestation, water pollution from pesticide use, and cigarette littering,’’ Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, ...

An environmentalist, Mrs Gloria Bulus, has called for the application of evidence-based research and data to mitigate the effects of climate change in the country. Bulus, who is the Founder of Bridge-that-Gap initiative, a Kaduna-based non-governmental organisation, made the call in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday, October 2, 2018 in Lagos. She said that her ...

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) health specialist, Mr Hilary Ozoh, has decried the low-level public awareness of the deadly Maternal Neonatal Tetanus disease (MNT) ahead of the Oct. 18, commencement 2018 MNT elimination campaign. Ozoh made the assertion at the opening of a one-day media orientation forum for 2018 MNTE campaign holding in Benin City, Edo State. MNT is a ...

Nigeria and 180 other countries meeting in Geneva, Switzerland for the Eighth Conference of the Parties (COP8) of the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO-FCTC) have expressed worry about tobacco industry influencing the talks. At the conference which began on Monday, October 1, 2018 (and is billed to end October 6), calls for live-streaming of the discussions ...

The Health of Mother earth Foundation (HOMEF) and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) have pledged to work with the media to increase awareness of the public on genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Nnimmo Bassey, Director, HOMEF and Mariann Bassey-Orovwuje, Chairperson, AFSA made the submission in a statement issued at the close of a Media Training on Promotion of ...

President Muhammadu Buhari has lamented the effects of climate change as well as shrinking of the Lake Chad on the nation. The president made this known while addressing the citizens in a nationwide broadcast as part of activities to mark the nation’s 58th independence anniversary in Abuja on Monday, October 1, 2018. Speaking on the danger of the shrinking of the ...

COPAGEN Mali, a member organisation of the West African Global Convergence for Land, Water and Seeds, is frowning at an apparent plan by the Malian authorities to authorise test for genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in the country. Under the nation’s “Target Malaria” project, which COPAGEN Mali claims is being funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Biosafety ...

Wetlands, believed to be the most economically valuable and among the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world, are disappearing three times faster than forests with severe consequences for our future unless urgent action is taken to ensure their survival, warns a new report released by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands on Thursday, September 27, 2018. Approximately 35 per cent of ...

Seventeen years of long and arduous negotiations later, peasants and other people working in rural areas are only a step away from having a UN Declaration that could defend and protect their rights to land, seeds, biodiversity, local markets and a lot more. On Friday, September 28, 2018 in a commendable show of solidarity and political will, member nations of ...

As India gets ready to mark the Mahatma’s 150th birth anniversary this year with celebrations about the nation’s impending open defecation free ODF status, a new analysis by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Down To Earth magazine has called for a drastic reality check. By February 2019, as per the government, India will lay claim to be an open defecation free ...