Bogota, Colombia — Global environmental leaders gather Monday in Cali, Colombia to assess the world’s plummeting biodiversity levels and commitments by countries to protect plants, animals and critical habitats.

The two-week United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP16, is a follow-up to the 2022 Montreal meetings where 196 countries signed a historic global treaty to protect biodiversity.

The accord includes 23 measures to halt and reverse nature loss, including putting 30% of the planet and 30% of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030.

In opening remarks on Sunday, Colombia’s environment minister and COP16 president Susana Muhamad said the conference is an opportunity “to collect the experience that has passed through this planet from all civilizations, from all cultures, from all knowledge … to generate livable, relatively stable conditions for a new society that will be forged in the light of the crisis.”

A real threat to biodiversity loss

All evidence shows a dramatic decline in species abundance and distribution, said Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity at The Nature Conservancy.

“A lot of wild species have less room to live, and they’re declining in numbers,” Krueger said. “And we also see rising extinction rates. Things that we haven’t even discovered yet are blinking out.”

The world is experiencing its largest loss of life since the dinosaurs, with around 1 million plant and animal species now threatened with extinction, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

In the Amazon rainforest, threats to biodiversity include the expansion of the agricultural frontier and road networks, deforestation, forest fires and drought, says Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch, an organization that protects the rainforest.

“You put all of that together and it’s a real threat to biodiversity,” Miller said.

Global wildlife populations have plunged on average by 73% in 50 years, according to the WWF and the Zoological Society of London biennial Living Planet report this month.

The report said Latin America and the Caribbean saw 95% average declines in recorded wildlife populations.

Indigenous communities key to biodiversity protection

Indigenous people are on the front lines of protecting biodiversity and fighting against climate change, putting their lives at great risk, said Miller of Amazon Watch.

“A lot of discourse has been given about the voices of local communities … Indigenous peoples really playing a key role,” he said. “So that’s one of the things that we’ll be looking for at COP16.”

Indigenous peoples hold the solutions to combat the climate change and biodiversity crises, said Laura Rico, campaign director at Avaaz, a global activism nonprofit.

“They’re who have been taking care of the land, healing the land through their governance systems, their care systems and their ways of life,” she said. “So … it’s fundamental that the COP recognizes, promotes and encourages the legalization of their territories.”

In Colombia’s capital, Bogota, the head of an Amazon Indigenous organization said the region’s Indigenous people have been preparing for months for COP16.

“This is a great opportunity to make the impact that we need to demonstrate to all the actors that come from other countries the importance of Indigenous peoples for the world,” said José Mendez, secretary of the National Organization of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon.

“It’s no secret to anyone that we … are at risk right now,” he said. “The effects that we are currently experiencing due to climate change, the droughts that the country is experiencing, the Amazon River has never gone through a drought like the current one. … This is causing many species to become extinct.”

Nature can recover

Environment minister Muhamad told local media this month that one of the conference’s main objectives is to deliver the message that “biodiversity is as important, complementary and indispensable as the energy transition and decarbonization.”

Part of Colombia’s first ever leftist government, Muhamad cautioned last year’s World Economic Forum about the risks of continuing an extractive economy that ignores the social and environmental consequences of natural resource exploitation.

Since the 2022 Montreal conference, “progress has been too slow”, says Eva Zabey, executive director of the coalition Business for Nature.

“There’s been some progress,” she said. “But the headline message is the implementation of the global biodiversity framework is too slow and we need to scale and speed up.”

“COP16 comes at an absolutely critical moment for us to move from targets setting to real actions on the ground,” Zabey said.

Although biodiversity declines are grim, some environmentalists believe a reversal is possible. “We’ve had some very successful species reintroductions and we’ve saved species when we really focus on what is causing their decline,” said The Nature Conservancy’s Krueger.
…

Geneva — The WHO chief on Sunday urged Rwanda to keep up its fightback against Marburg, as the country battles an outbreak of one of the world’s deadliest viruses.  

There have been 62 confirmed cases and 15 deaths in the outbreak, which was first announced in late September.  

No new cases have been detected in the last six days and 44 people have recovered from infection.  

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, visited Rwanda to see the outbreak response for himself and hailed the country’s handling of the situation.  

“We’re pleased to see that there have been no new cases in the past six days, and we hope that remains the case,” he told a press conference in the capital Kigali.  

“But we are dealing with one of the world’s most dangerous viruses, and continued vigilance is essential.  

“Enhanced surveillance, contact tracing and infection prevention and control measures must continue at scale until the outbreak is declared over.”  

Such a declaration can only be made after 42 days — two consecutive incubation periods — without a new confirmed case.  

Marburg is transmitted to humans from fruit bats, and is part of the filovirus family that includes Ebola.  

With a fatality rate of up to 88 percent, Marburg’s highly infectious hemorrhagic fever is often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure.   

However, the case fatality rate in this outbreak has been held down at 24 percent.   

On Saturday, Tedros visited the treatment center where the remaining patients are being looked after.  

“Two of the patients we met had experienced all of the symptoms of Marburg, including multiple organ failure, but they were put on life support, they were successfully intubated and extubated, and are now recovering,” he said.  

“We believe this is the first time patients with Marburg virus have been extubated in Africa. These patients would have died in previous outbreaks.”  

There are currently no officially approved vaccines nor approved antiviral treatments, but potential treatments, including blood products, immune and drug therapies are being evaluated.  

A vaccination program using a trial vaccine was launched in Rwanda earlier this month. 
…

MILWAUKEE — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.

There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.

The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.

Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.

Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.

Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.

“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.

Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.

But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.

That includes his own teenage daughter.

“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.

It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.

“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”
…

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan said Saturday that two children in its southern Sindh province had been paralyzed by poliovirus, bringing the total number of cases nationwide to 39 for the year since March, when officials confirmed the first case.

The South Asian nation of around 240 million people reported six cases of paralytic poliovirus infections in 2023, following a period of more than a year without any documented cases, only to see the numbers rise again.

“Genetic sequencing of the cases is under way,” said a Pakistan polio eradication program statement Saturday while reporting the two new infections in Sindh. “The intense virus transmission and increase in polio cases are indicative of the harm that children suffer when they miss opportunities for vaccination.”

Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, with at least 20 cases this year, are the only two countries where the crippling disease is still endemic.

Pakistani officials are preparing to launch a nationwide vaccination campaign on October 28 to immunize more than 45 million children under 5 against the paralytic disease.

“It is critical for parents to open their doors to vaccinators during this drive and ensure that all children in their care receive two drops of the crucial oral polio vaccine to keep them protected from the devastating effects of polio,” the program emphasized in its Saturday statement.

Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, which sits on the Afghan border, has reported 20 polio cases in 2024, while Sindh has detected 12 cases.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan has documented five paralytic poliovirus cases. Pakistan’s most populous Punjab province and the national capital, Islamabad, reported one case each.

The resurgence of poliovirus in Pakistan is blamed on boycotts of vaccination drives by parents in rural areas who allege the initiatives are a Western plot to sterilize Muslim children.

Anti-state militants in violence-hit districts bordering Afghanistan occasionally attack vaccinators and their police escorts, suspecting them of spying for the government. The violence has claimed the lives of dozens of security forces and vaccinators.

An independent monitoring board of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative noted in a report last month that more than 420,000 Pakistani children could not be inoculated in anti-polio campaigns in 2024.

The board reported more than 200 boycotts of the polio vaccination campaign in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa last year. “It is disturbing to realize that violence, insecurity, and boycotts are still as prevalent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as they were in 2023,” the report said.

It highlighted that residents in several impoverished districts of Pakistan also demanded electricity, gas supply, and road construction in return for getting their children vaccinated.

A representative for Pakistan’s Ministry of Health told a World Health Organization meeting in Doha, Qatar, earlier this week that polio eradication is the country’s “top priority,” and efforts have been intensified to halt virus transmission.

“Despite recent resurgence, a unified plan with provinces aims to stop polio transmission by 2025,” Safi Malik stated. “We’re focusing on quality campaigns, digital tracking of missed areas, and a strong Pakistan-Afghanistan collaboration for cross-border vaccinations,” he said. 
…

KAMIMOMI, Japan — In the remote village of Kamimomi in Japan’s western Okayama prefecture, a small group of rice farmers began their most recent harvest in sweltering heat, two weeks sooner than usual.

The prefecture is called “the Land of Sunshine” because of its pleasant climate, but farmers working among the paddy fields and ancient rice terraces say that climate change is hurting the harvest of rice, long a cornerstone of Japan’s diet.

“Last year, an exceptional heat wave took the water out of the rice, which became small and thin,” rice farmer Joji Terasaka said. “So I am worried about that this year because it will be just as hot.”

This year Japan experienced its hottest July on record, with temperatures reaching 2.16 Celsius higher than average, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The globe has seen a 1.2 C rise in average temperature since preindustrial times, and scientists agree that warming needs to be capped at 1.5 C to stave off the worst effects of climate change. That includes even more powerful heat, storms and irreversible ice melt.

Last year, Japan recorded a poor rice harvest nationwide because of exceptionally hot weather. Ministry data showed the country’s private-sector rice inventory fell to 1.56 million tons in June, the lowest level since records began in 1999. Last year was the hottest on record globally, though it’s feared that this year may top it.

The drop in harvest in Japan was partly to blame for this year’s widespread summer rice shortage, according to officials. There were empty shelves in supermarkets, and some retailers are still enforcing purchase limits of one rice bag per customer.

“Perhaps people think that an increase of one degree Celsius in average temperature isn’t much. But it’s quite a big change for plants and crops,” says Yuji Masutomi, a researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, north of Tokyo.

Masutomi said the rising temperatures not only influence the growth cycle and yield of rice, but also hurt the quality of the grain.

When temperatures rise above 27 C, the buildup of starch inside rice grains is reduced. That causes the crop to take on a chalky appearance, and its value is reduced.

At least a fifth of rice farms have reported a drop in quality from rising temperatures, according to a farming ministry report last year.

“Not only is the appearance not good; people say the taste drops too,” Masutomi said.

For farmers in Kamimomi, there’s another problem with working under exceptional heat. The average age of agricultural workers in Japan is nearly 69, among the oldest in the world, and older people are especially vulnerable to heatstroke.

Toshimi Kaiami led a community project in Kamimomi that involved reviving some of the paddy fields abandoned because of the aging population.

“There are no longer any successors,” says Kaiami. “We are heading toward extinction.”

The community project divides labor among Kamimomi’s farmers. But preparations for the harvest coincided with the hottest months of the year — April to September.

“It takes a half year to produce rice. The heat and the work that we have to endure during that time is really tough,” said rice farmer Mitsumasa Sugimoto, 77.

To deal with climate change, the government is promoting the adoption of heat-resistant rice variants, including Sai no Kizuna, which was developed by a research center in Saitama prefecture, near Tokyo.

Research organizations around the world have worked to produce more resilient strains of essential food like rice while introducing more heat and drought resistant grains like sorghum or millet.

“Last year and this year have been extremely hot, but even in those conditions, Sai no Kizuna maintained a certain level of quality,” said Naoto Ohoka, who manages rice breeding at Saitama’s Agricultural Technology Research Center.

“Its other characteristic is that it is very delicious.”

The center cultivates more than a thousand types of rice strains, and through cross-pollination officials assess and select the best performers to develop new varieties.

Sai no Kizuna was developed in 2012 to better withstand heat, a trait that has become more widely recognized recently as Japan sees hotter summers. The strain also stands up well against typhoon wind and certain pests and diseases.

Researchers want to develop more resilient strains against heat as temperatures are projected to continue rising. Masutomi recommends that variants tolerant of temperatures up to 3 degrees Celsius higher should be introduced across Japan by the 2040s.

But it’s a long process. It can take up to 10 years to develop a new variant. Once it’s approved for the market, farmers must then be convinced to switch to the new strain.

The most widely grown variety is Koshihikari, which is less heat resistant. Even so, older farmers have shown a reluctance to switch to other varieties. Farming ministry data show that only around 15% of Japanese paddy fields have adopted heat resistance variants.
…

WINDHOEK, NAMIBIA — Namibians who are part of the LGBTQ+ community often find it difficult to get decent health care and many report discriminatory practices within the health care system.

For example, when 20-year-old Immanuel Uirab sought contraception at a health facility, the nurse on duty would not assist him.

“I don’t know if it’s the shorts I was wearing or you can generally just tell by looking at me that I am gay,” he said, “but then this particular nurse … came out and she was, like, ‘No, we don’t offer contraceptives for people who practice sodomy. We can’t do that for you. … You can go buy them if you want to use them in your private space, but we … won’t give them to you because our government does not support homosexuality.’”

A recent two-day training workshop facilitated by the group Our Equity Advocacy was aimed at encouraging health care practitioners in Namibia to not discriminate against sexual minorities.

Discrimination in health care services violates the right to health care and the human rights principles of equity, privacy and dignity, said the United Nation’s special rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng.

Mofokeng held a workshop last weekend in Windhoek where she trained health care practitioners and young people about the role of health care in human rights.

There are many opportunities in which health care workers “can take a seat at the table,” she said. “Not just in policymaking, but importantly in advocacy … also in understanding human rights.”

The executive director of Namibia’s Ministry of Health, Ben Nangombe, said that discrimination in health care based on sexual orientation is against the law and that practitioners who refuse health care to patients for any reason can lose their jobs.

“The official position [of the] government on this matter is that the Namibian government provides health care services to all Namibians who need it without any discrimination whatsoever,” he said.

One theme from last weekend’s workshop was the need for nurses to become agents of change and advocates for their patients.

Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane, a legal practitioner and health rights activist from South Africa who co-facilitated the workshop, said members of sexual minority groups in Africa often face intrusive questioning when they seek medical care.

“Let’s say you are going to a hospital or a clinic for a broken arm or a headache, some tummy ache, whatever,” Mokgoroane said. “What often happens is when you are trans or when you are gender nonconforming or when you are a member of the LGBTI community, immediately what happens is that the questions veer away from why you are actually there to really invasive and discriminatory questions, right? ‘I have a headache, why are you asking me about my sex life? … I have a headache, why are you asking me about my genitalia?’”

Mokgoroane said the issue can be addressed by training health care workers to affirm the gender of their patients when they treat them.

However, Mokgoroane expressed worry that the rise of anti-LGBTQ+ laws in Africa will further drive discriminatory practices in the health care system and undermine public health altogether.
…