‘Give kids a say in planet’s future’
China to increase environmental inspections
BARCELONA, Dec 3, (RTRS): Children must be given a direct role in making decisions on how to protect the planet because they will suffer most from the impacts of climate change, said the winner of the 2016 International Children’s Peace Prize.
Kehkashan Basu, 16, from the United Arab Emirates, received the annual child rights award in the Hague on Friday, the first time it has been given to a young environmental activist.
In 2013, the prize was won by Pakistani education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, who went on to become the youngest Nobel Peace laureate.
When Basu — who was born on World Environment Day, June 5 — turned eight, she planted a tree in the garden of her apartment complex, and said she hasn’t looked back since.
“I always felt that it was pre-ordained that I should grow up to take care of Mother Earth, and become an eco-warrior,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview from the Netherlands.
Green Hope, the organisation Basu founded when she was 12, now has more than 1,000 members and is active in 10 countries. It helps young people learn about environmental challenges and how to achieve a sustainable world.
When told the facts about global warming, “most of them are extremely shocked because they have never heard of it before”, said Basu.
“Once the children get to know about what’s going on in the world, they start asking what they can do to help save the planet,” she added.
Green Hope encourages young people
in front of him.
Aldrin, 86, was visiting Antarctica as a tourist when he fell ill this week. He was flown to Christchurch from McMurdo Station, to find their own ways of responding to environmental challenges — from composing songs about climate change to recycling waste into fashion and jewellery.
The group has also planted more than 5,000 trees in the United Arab Emirates, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Nepal and Kenya. “Tree planting is the simplest yet most effective way of mitigating climate change and stopping land degradation,” Basu said.
Urgent
Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus, who presented the prize to Basu, said her work was urgent because more than 3 million children under the age of five die every year from environment-related diseases such as respiratory infections and diarrhoea.
“A healthy environment is essential for the survival, wellbeing and development of children, and therefore it is a precondition for the realisation of the rights of the child,” he said.
Since attending a United Nations Environment Programme conference for young people in 2011, Basu has taken part in some 45 international summits and UN climate talks.
China will increase environmental inspections and punish polluters, President Xi Jinping said, vowing more effort to tackle the pollution that blights the lives of millions of Chinese.
In a bid to defuse potential sources of unrest, China’s leaders have been desperate to show they are firmly on the side of the public in the battle against pollution, setting up hotlines,
a US research center on the Antarctic coast.
Tour company White Desert said Aldrin has fluid in his lungs, but was responding task forces and rapid response teams, and encouraging the public to participate in campaigns against violators.
“The goal of achieving an ecological civilization is a key part of China’s overall development strategy and governments at all levels should remember that clear waters and green mountains are invaluable assets,” Xi said, in comments reported by the official Xinhua news agency late on Friday.
More should be done to deepen reforms and establish a framework of institutions and laws to improve the environment, he added.
“China will increase environmental inspections and punish polluters accordingly to ensure the environment improves,” Xi said.
Water in Flint, Michigan, continues to improve, researchers reported Friday after finding no detectable levels of lead in 57 percent of homes during another round of tests.
Marc Edwards of Virginia Tech, a scientist who revealed Flint’s alarming lead levels in 2015, said the “public health crisis” is nearing an end, although he firmly urged residents to continue to use filters on kitchen faucets — perhaps for as long as it takes to replace the old steel lines that bring water into homes.
“It’s very likely folks will never be told the water is safe as long as those lead pipes are there,” Edwards said during a news conference at Virginia Tech that was streamed online.
well to antibiotics. His manager Christina Korp, who accompanied him, said he was in good spirits.
As Aldrin recovers, she said on Twitter, “I did want to let people know that he did make it to the South Pole which was his objective. Thnx for prayers!”
Korp said on Twitter she’d told Aldrin he now holds the record as the oldest person to reach the South Pole, according to the National Science Foundation. (AP)
Hawking hospitalised:
British physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking has been hospitalised in Rome for checks after not feeling well but his condition is not believed to be serious, a spokesman said.
Hawking, 74, who was in Rome to attend a conference at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and met Pope Francis on Monday, was taken to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Thursday night.
Both the spokesman and a Vatican source said Hawking, who suffers from motor neurone disease, was not believed to be in serious condition. The Vatican source said plans for Hawking and his entourage to leave on Saturday had not been changed.
A hospital source said Hawking would spend a second night in the Gemelli “as a precaution” but that “the situation was under control”.
Hawking, author of “A Brief History of Time,” speaks through a computer and travels with a staff that includes two nurses. He gave a talk at the Vatican on Nov. 25 on the origin of the universe. (RTRS)