Asia (Page 1,728)

For decades, the Island ‘ sea habitat has cared for, fed, and employed its people. With one of the highest orange economy numbers in the world, accounting for more than 36 % of its complete GDP, it has propelled the nation into a top luxury tourism hub. &nbsp,

This powerful connection between the atmosphere, its citizens and the business is essential for the Maldives. An increase in temperatures of only 1.5 to 2 degrees may mean the difference between our country’s existence and being remembered on the global image, despite currently battling the recurring effects of climate change.

The Island has pioneered a growth strategy centered on the Blue Economy‘s tenets despite all odds.

The sustainability of the tourism sector rests entirely on the beauty and health of its marine and ocean ecosystems, which contribute directly to over 30 % of its GDP and over 80 % of foreign exchange earnings. Its tourism industry offers luxurious vacation accommodations and increasingly affordable holiday huts perched high above turquoise waters. &nbsp,

The Maldives ‘ tuna fishing industry has been a successful one since ancient times, moving from a small-scale operation to a famous exporter of effectively caught fish today.

The whole potential of the Blue Economy has not yet been realized for the Islands and the vast majority of the nations in Asia and the Pacific region that depend on maritime and aquatic organisms. It is not just an economical approach, for these countries, including the Maldives, it’s a necessity for their success.

While angling and marine-based tourism have inevitably prospered, another investment-intensive industries like alternative marine energy, coastal biotechnology, and clean and resilient infrastructure require financing and supportive policies to flourish. &nbsp,,

Some of the most ambitious policies being put in place by Maldives and the Pacific Small Island Developing States ( SIDS ) are aiming to transform their problems into opportunities. Priorities in their Nationally Determined Contributions ( NDCs ) include energy security and just transition.

Leaping ahead, the Island announced at COP28 its commitment to developing renewable energy systems, with the aim of meeting 33 % of the country’s energy needs within the next five years. If this determination were to be realized, it would save the national budget, or practically$ 750 million currently spent on electricity.

We have seen the SIDS putting forth an ambitious statement at the international plastic agreement negotiations in Paris that calls for the implementation of effective waste management options for Danger funded by cheap suppliers.

The Island is also currently experimenting with a plan to build a lasting waste-to-energy service in the capital region, with the potential to spread the plan across all islands.

Missing funding website

The Maldives hosted the first Asia-Pacific Blue Economy Forum in conjunction with the UN Development Programme ( UNDP )’s Climate Finance Network, which was supported by the UK.

Individuals from 15 different nations in the area identified frequent issues that affect all Violet Market sectors, along with think tank and private sector partners. These include a decrease in the international development assistance, a lack of funding opportunities and funding, maritime ecosystem governance, and a lack of big data and innovation.

Dr. Mohamed Muizzu, president of Islands, and other SIDS leaders called for a revitalized international approach that may solve the SIDS ‘ financing gap, use vulnerability steps into the allocation of concessional finance, and reform the global economic architecture to strengthen the voice and representation of SIDS and developing nations. &nbsp,

Investments must be made in the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises ( MSMEs ) that are the main players in the region to close the financing gap and realize the full potential of the ocean’s resources. &nbsp, &nbsp,

MSMEs frequently inspire creativity and create new business segments, and pool and de-risking investments are necessary for quick access to financing. MSMEs also have the power to influence business behavior, as demonstrated by Maldives ‘ own Hologo, an island-based augmented reality educational game that has been popular in 3D, Mr, and VR articles for education.

Similar innovations include, OdiApp, which is harmonizing the water transport sector in the country, and eDhumashi, providing a financial solution for women fishers, expanding their market access and enhancing financial benefits throughout the fisheries sector’s value chain.

The national and international partners in the public and private areas must work right away to help the SIDS unlock their enzymatic blue economy and growth potential. The comprehensive vulnerability index and associated measures may be more widely accepted and help these nations who are at risk of losing more money.

This needs to be met with continuing action and leadership to realize the full potential of a prosperous and inclusive society. The Blue Economy is as significant as the sea as it is for SIDS, and the opportunities it offers are as large and deep as the ocean. As essential public products, the Blue Economy is equally significant globally as it is for SIDS.

Blue Economy: A connection as old as time

A man lives atop a whale, a companion he has had many years, in a folktale from the Maldives. Perched on the whale’s back, he clings to its fin, and the whale, in turn, understands not to dive deep for prolonged periods to safeguard the man’s life.

Occasionally, it submerges briefly if sensing danger nearby. The man lives on raw fish, skillfully catching them with his hands, aided by the whale in locating them. This man was glimpsied atop the whale, according to many fishermen in the Maldives, but when spotted, both quickly retreat into the depths.

The answer to Blue lies in retracing the meaning of the tale and adage old wisdom: the Maldives ‘ profound dependence and connection to nature. The ocean’s love and care for us are treasures to cherish for generations to come.

Enrico Gaveglia serves as the Maldives ‘ resident UNDP representative.

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The US government launched a social media propaganda campaign in the Philippines in the spring of 2020, according to a recent Reuters report that cast doubt on the effectiveness of the Covid pleasure help China had delivered.

Under the pithy slogan# Chinaangvirus (# ChinaIsTheVirus ), these fake accounts explicitly and repeatedly doubted the effectiveness of China’s Sinovac Covid vaccine, in some cases calling the vaccine “fake”. In some cases, it suggested that the disease’s nature was all the necessary proof to make suspicion of the vaccination, whose origin was also in China.

The reasoning may be obscure, but the mood seemed to relate. At first, the Philippines struggled enormously with immunization uptake; only about a third of the population vaccinated itself over the first eight month of its supply.

This was n’t the only such campaign. The military mental operations staff apparently expanded its frontiers to the Middle East and Central Asia from its operations gateway in Tampa, Florida.

In these instances, it furthered the myth that pork jello was present in the Covid vaccinations from both China and Russia. More than 150 Facebook and Twitter accounts repeatedly stated that Sinovac and Sputnik V were no kosher. Do not get the vaccination.

Almost everyone who asked to comment on this history condemned the motion, citing both the immediate destructive result this strategy may have had on Covid illness severity and death rates during the pandemic and its wider effect of encouraging vaccine hesitancy in general. As expected and truly, as appropriate, and almost everyone who asked to comment on it.

Some people were shocked that the US would support such a plan, but others pointed out that this situation had already occurred and had occurred recently.

Not the first day

A CIA-run operation was launched in 2011 to gather DNA from Osama bin Laden’s relatives compound in a neighborhood of Abbottabad, Pakistan. However, it was so misrepresented as a hepatitis B vaccination strategy that concerns were raised right away.

The battle immediately moved from a relatively weak area of the city, where pylori B immunization was a fair undertaking, to the wealthier suburb where Bin Laden lived, an entirely unlikely location for a hepatitis B vaccination drive, not to mention that vaccinators failed to return with the necessary next dose.

Scenarios like these surely drive vaccine hesitancy. Sometimes they even seed violence.

The Taliban issued a fatwa against vaccination programs in response to the CIA’s sham vaccination campaign, and various localities in their area prohibited vaccination teams from entering.

As Lawrence Gostin, an American law professor, has described, vaccination campaign workers in the area ( often women ) were attacked and even killed.

The CIA agreed in 2014 to stop using vaccine programs as a cover because of public health leaders ‘ pressure. Perhaps the Pentagon did n’t get the memo. Although, even if it had, it seems likely that those directing the Covid vaccine disinformation campaign would have gone ahead, anyway.

According to military news outlets, the Pentagon” stands by” its activities. Its justification is that the campaign was merely a response to China’s own disinformation campaign, which suggested America was to blame for the virus ‘ spread.

This admission makes a context clear in which to comprehend the significance of these interventions. Vaccins have long had a political significance that almost outweighs their significance as agents of health prevention.

From the days of the 19th- century European empires, vaccines were lauded for their effectiveness as agents of colonialism. They made it simple to incorporate” Western” medicine into colonial holdings, displacing traditional indigenous medicine, and they also strengthened a relationship between colonizers and colonized people.

Vaccine diplomacy

By the 20th century, and especially during the Cold War period, “vaccine diplomacy” rendered a similar relationship, now not between colonized and colonizer but between so- called” client states” and the behemoths of the geopolitical order – chief among them the US and Soviet Union.

Though vaccine diplomacy has positive valences, as an antidote, for example, to vaccine nationalism, it has an explicit dark side, where the price for receiving vaccines on the part of a client state is “policy concessions and favorable geopolitical reconfigurations”.

During the 1958 smallpox epidemic in Pakistan, both the US and USSR rushed to provide aid. Without a doubt, humanitarianism played a role, but the risks were also the geopolitical advantages a foothold there would bring. Vaccines frequently cost a lot of money.

And that’s what we’ve seen over the Covid era as well, as Russia and China especially raced to supply vaccines “in exchange”, as one commentator put it,” for favorable foreign policy concessions”.

The Pentagon’s actions in the Philippines, where the US perceived China as pursuing the Philippines with Covid aid, are clearly explained by this context. This was deemed inacceptable because it serves as the US’s crucial military base of operations and because it is close to China.

The heightened attention to dis- and misinformation in recent years has rendered the significance of the Pentagon’s disinformation campaign, like the CIA’s sham vaccination drive, too narrowly. When disseminated in terms of misinformation, conspiracy theories, or in terms of science or medical literacy, vaccine hesitancy is poorly defined in these situations.

Instead, the global context’s long history of vaccines has made vaccines just one more potent illustration of the injustices caused by the yawning power imbalances of the world order.

After all, the CIA’s sham campaign did n’t start vaccine hesitancy in Pakistan, just as the CIA’s sham campaign did n’t start with America’s disinformation campaign. We need to take a much longer view if we want to start putting a dent in global vaccine confidence.

Caitjan Gainty is Senior Lecturer in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, King’s College London

This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Residents of the European Union ( EU) cast ballots to elect a new European Parliament between June 6 and 9.

In advance of a far-right breakthrough, there were concerns that this might happen, which was surprising given the recent political success of extreme nationalist, conservative, and elitist parties, many of whom had xenophobic tendencies and were fascist or inspiration.

Six of the 27 EU states – Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and the Czech Republic – have much- right parties in state. Sweden’s majority government relies on the assistance of the republican Sweden Democrats, the next- largest pressure in Parliament.

In the Netherlands, the Partij pro de Vrijheid ( PVV ) of Geert Wilders won 37 votes in the 150- chair Parliament after a battle filled with racism and extra- Islam attitude.

His political constituency is substantially larger than those of the liberals of former prime minister Mark Rutte and the red/green empire of European Commissioner Frans Timmermans, who won 24 and 25 chairs, both. At the time of the German elections, Wilders was occupied forming the most correct- wing authorities in his country’s current history.

Although the Netherlands is a relatively modest nation, the extreme-right’s rise in popularity also raised concerns in big European nations. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, a group that traces its origins back to the totalitarian movement of Benito Mussolini, has been in power since October 2022.

The Rassemblement National of Marine Le Pen topped the pre-election polls in France, while the AfD, Alternative für Deutschland, the extreme right army in Germany, constantly placed third in elections ahead of any of the three controlling events.

The results of the German election confirmed this continent-wide accomplishment of far-right parties. More than 28 % of the vote was cast in favor of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance group, which received just half as many seats, humiliated Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, which was the party of choice for almost one in three citizens. In Germany, the AfD won almost 16 %.

Although it may be less impressive than the extreme-right in Italy and France, the Liberal Party, and the Social Democrats are the only three remaining members of the current customers light coalition.

However, has the extraordinary proper actually taken control of the European Parliament? No truly.

Their political achievement in a number of nations are obvious, as the illustrations of Italy, France and Germany have currently illustrated. Standard centrist parties have suffered the most from the rise of the far-right. The Greens and Liberals each lost roughly one-fourth of their chairs in the European Parliament. The Social Democrats seem to be firm, though, losing just four seats.

However, the center-right European People’s Party ( EPP ) Group is even expanding and continues to be by far the largest group in the European Parliament. Collectively, these four traditional social groups also have a lot in the European Parliament.

Besides, although the severe- right parties did make progress in the June 2024 elections, they are utterly divided among themselves on important issues such as monetary policy, international relations, and EU integration. For instance, while some advocates a complete withdrawal from the EU, another favor renegotiating the terms of membership.

As a result of these groups, there are two political parties that contain much- right events. On the one hand, there are the right- nationalist European Conservatives and Reformists, dominated by the Fratelli d’Italia and Poland’s Prawo i Sprawiedliwość ( PiS ) Party.

On the other hand, there’s the even- right Identity and Democracy Group, whose members include France’s National Rally but also the Hungarian Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs and Geert Wilders’s PVV. The AfD was a part of this organization up until it was expelled weeks before the European elections in response to a number of scandals.

There are also far-right organizations that do not belong to any of those parliamentary groups because they are detained or have already been expelled.

When they left the center-right European People’s Party in 2021, Hungary’s Fidesz party grew to be the largest among them. There’s also a whole range of smaller parties. Since it is unaffiliated with any parliamentary group, the AfD recently joined their ranks.

There are two reasons, therefore, why the extreme- right is not able to dominate the European Parliament. On the one hand, the centrist parties, and especially the EPP Group, remain relatively strong. Besides, the far- right groups are too divided among themselves to become dominant.

The concern that fringe, extreme-right parties may take control of European mainstream politics seems unfounded, at least for the moment. Nevertheless, the influence of the extreme- right is growing undeniably. The real danger might be caused by the tense distinctions between the far-right and mainstream parties.

We have recently seen how center-right extreme political parties have started to imitate center-right parties in exchange for a seat at the table, especially if they can join the government. In addition, Giorgia Meloni’s party is the only of the three major far-right parties in Italy to support NATO and support Ukraine without being contradictory.

Once in government, she became an outspoken supporter of military support. Geert Wilders, from his side, was ready to swallow much of his extreme party program in exchange for his ascension to government.

The French Rassemblement National is also changing its name, and rallies featuring slick firebrand Jordan Bardella do not resemble Jean-Marie Le Pen’s, the party’s founder ,’s nostalgic National Front meetings.

The distinctions between the extreme right and the mainstream have also gotten blurred. The center-right is also slowly but surely moving to the right. The new migration pact, which is defended by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and includes measures previously supported by the far right such as stricter deterrence through border control and stricter asylum procedures, shows the shift of center-right parties to the right.

Likewise, it also reinforces the extreme right’s framing of migration as a threat to European values. The real danger, therefore, might not be that of a takeover of European politics by extreme- right parties but of the alliance between the old center- right with the “new”, supposedly more moderate, extreme right.

Therefore, the only way to stop the rise of the extreme right is to be sought in the left of the political spectrum rather than in the center. Because of its commitment to inclusive and egalitarian policies, which directly oppose the far right’s exclusionary and nationalist rhetoric, the left is positioned to defeat the far right.

However, the left is also divided and is missing a clear strategy. Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht in Germany, a new phenomenon, combines restrictive immigration policies with a more progressive economic program, even though they received a 6.2 % vote in the European Parliamentary elections, which was lower than expected.

La France Insoumise ( France ), the Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas ( Greece ), and Partij van de Arbeid van België/Parti du Travail de Belgique ( Belgium ) scored well, winning the support of some 10 % of their countries ‘ electorate. The left is also displaying resilience in other nations.

In the end, these parties and the social movements they are rooted in will have to provide an answer to the rise of the far-right in Europe.

Wim De Ceukelaire, a member of the People’s Health Movement’s global steering council, is an activist for social and health issues. He is the co- author of the second edition of” The Struggle for Health: Medicine and the Politics of Underdevelopment” with David Sanders and Barbara Hutton.

This article was produced by Globetrotter and is kindly reprinted here with permission.

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