BIODIVERSITY: A biodiversity payment program in Switzerland has been shown to maintain the richness of biodiversity. This program constitutes Swiss farmers being reimbursed by the government for overseeing certain parts of their properties in ways that promote biodiversity. The Swiss government began paying farmers to manage at least 7% of their land as far back as the 1990s. They were to manage them as Biodiversity Protection Areas (BPA), using little to no artificial fertilizer and mow about once per year.
CLIMATE CHANGE: A doctor from Michigan has claimed that climate change is a human issue. According to Dr. Lisa Del Buono, founder of Michigan Clinicians for Climate Action, people assume that climate change has its far-reaching effects like affecting polar melting ice. However, she emphasizes that the impact of climate change transcends polar bears to affect our health. She also stressed on the potential impacts of fossil fuel industries on communities. She pointed out that it was low-income neighborhoods that usually bore the brunt of the impacts of climate change. She therefore called for policies that will transition the economy into clean energy and prioritizes people’s health over profit.
COVID-19: The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have made recent updates in its response effort against COVID-19. The administration issued warning letters to Everything Aquatic and Mr. Frags, LLC for issuing unauthorized chloroquine phosphate as a treatment of disease in aquarium fish. According to them, chloroquine phosphate has not “been approved, conditionally approved or indexed to treat aquarium fish diseases”, and consumers may mistake animal drug chloroquine phosphate for its human counterpart. The FDA also issued warning to Predator Nutrition, Beepothecary, and Peterson Research Laboratories dba Covercolgy for selling “unapproved and misbranded” products with fraudulent COVID-19 claims.
ENERGY: Energy is the framework for economic development, and Africa has dragged behind in its pursuit of energy efficiency. The intensity of the systemic challenges posed by the pandemic has revealed our energy dilemma. Africa is serving as a testing ground where conflicting goals set by the ‘energy triangle’ have been complicated by the pandemic. Stakeholders in the 2018 World Economic Forum Paper are of the opinion of creating specialized energy road maps that are country and regional specific. Energy consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa households has posed health risks as safe and healthy cooking remains a major challenge. According to the OECD 2019 report, Achieving clean energy access in sub-Saharan Africa, Only about half of the people in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have access to electricity; only one third have access to clean cooking methods; and 13 countries in SSA have less than 25% access to electricity, compared to only one in developing Asia. This statistics put Sub-Saharan Africa on a wrong pedestal if it resists systemic approaches to boost energy accessibility.