CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Poor pay and conditions at all-inclusive resorts

A report on pay and working conditions at all-inclusive resorts was launched yesterday (24 March) at a meeting at the House of Commons, part of the UK Parliament. The research for charity Tourism Concern, which was supported by the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF), was undertaken in order to better understand more fully how the all-inclusive model of tourism impacts upon the rights of hotel workers. The report claims that all-inclusive resort staff have worse working conditions and labour rights and are subjected to more stress and longer hours than those in other hotels.

World Water Day 2014

World Water Day (WWD) is held annually on 22 March as a means of focussing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. This year’s theme for WWD on Saturday is “water and energy”, to collectively bring attention to the water-energy relationship, highlighting the 768 million people that currently lack access to water and the 1.3 billion without access to electricity.  According to the UN, in order to meet the demands of a growing population, 40% more water and 50% more energy will be needed by 2030. WWD 2014 aims to facilitate the development of policies that link the public and private sector in order to move towards future energy security and sustainable water use.

Malaria can climb mountains when temperatures rise

A study in Science  by Siraj and colleagues this week showed malaria occurs at higher altitudes in warmer years. Their modelling predicts that a one degree Celsius temperature rise in the Ethiopian highlands could lead to 2.8 million more cases in children each year in current malaria areas and over 400,000 cases in new areas. The finding is early warning of what could happen to malaria spread as the world warms if no action is taken.

To win a soccer match, wear red and play at home

Last Saturday I watched my hometown team, Sheffield United, win through to an FA Cup semifinal for the first time since 2003. For a team in the third tier of English professional soccer (the illogically named League 1), a great achievement given the number of larger, richer and more successful clubs that went out in earlier stages of the cup. As it happens, we won while playing at home and wearing red and white stripes. Research published in the first 2014 issue of the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology examines how much of a role those two factors may have had.

International Women’s Day 2014: Women in agriculture

by Rachel Hill with contributions from Abigail Rumsey, Claire Curry, Emily Palmer and Léna Durocher-Granger.

For over a century countries globally have celebrated International Women’s Day as a day to reflect on the role of women in society. In honor of International Women’s Day 2014 we are giving a special focus to women in agriculture.

Female farmers account for around 40% of the agricultural work force in parts of the developing world. Despite this, women face severe constraints in accessing agricultural resources and markets. This ‘gender gap’ reduces their productivity and their contribution to food security. Reducing the gender gap in agriculture and increasing women’s access to resources such as land, seed and water, and to education, technologies and markets will significantly help to lift rural communities out of poverty and reduce food insecurity.

Mind the gap

In developing countries, women are playing an increasingly prominent role in agriculture, now making up 43% of the agricultural labour force on average. The following graph shows how the numbers of women in agriculture have increased around the word since 1980.

It has been recognized that women are producing 60-80% of the food in most developing countries, but less than 2% of land is owned by women. Women often bear the brunt of managing both agricultural production and providing social protection services to family members and to vulnerable people in their community. The agricultural roles of women may vary between regions, however there is one thing that many women in developing countries have in common and that is lower access to resources such as inputs, extension services, credit and to markets for their produce. Women are also underrepresented in policy-making processes and laws and therefore, their needs, interests and constraints are not reflected. Evidence shows that if women were given the same agricultural resources as men they would achieve the same yields. The current yield gap between males and females in agriculture is around 20-30%. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimate that closing the yield gap will lift 150 million people out of hunger and out of the estimated 925 million people undernourished this would make a significant contribution to global food security.

BBC launches Woman’s Hour Power List 2014: highlights FGM in time for International Woman’s Day

ON February 26^th, BBC Radio 4 programme Woman’s Hour launched the Woman’s Hour Power List 2014, which this year will identify the top 10 female ‘game changers’ operating in the United Kingdom today. Women resident in the UK  who are “changing the rules in culture, society and business” in our country.

The Power List will be drawn up by a panel of 5, from candidates suggested by expert witnesses and Radio 4 listeners. In the programme, Emma Barnett (panel chair) and Rachel Johnson (panel member) were interviewed live as to their criteria for choosing the 10 (we also heard from other panel members via taped interviews).

It became clear that though they expected to be considering high profile whistle-blowers and twitter campaigners, they were not looking for women already household names but those who within their sphere had “game-changed”.  Women who were not close to traditional sources of power i.e. with easy access to parliament, but who were influencing lives to make them better.  

Age was not to be a limitation, for teenage girls have game-changed on the world stage, such as Malala Yousafzai who has influenced education of girls in the Arab world and in Pakistan.

Last year’s Woman’s Hour Power List had 100 names, an average age over 50, and many well-known. They want this 2014 list to be younger and have unexpected names:  a list to make people sit up and think “wow I never knew about her!”

The interviewer suggested a name, which they all agreed was exactly the kind of person for the list, and this name caused my ears to perk up!  It was Fahma Mohamed, the teenage female genital mutilation (FGM) campaigner who, supported by the Guardian newspaper, recently ran a petition to lobby the government to address FGM in the UK. Here in the UK, schoolgirls are sent away for "summer cutting".

How mobile phones could make a difference to maternal health

Mobile technology is revolutionising health and health care in developing countries enabling health promotion campaigns, reminders about therapy and data collecting. To women it could provide a lifeline for them during pregnancy and birth. But what evidence is there that mobile messages are accessible to women in these situations and that they could change women’s behaviour? In this blog for International Women’s day I describe two mobile services and look for some evidence about the impact of mobiles on women’s health.

World NGO Day - 27 February

February 27th 2014 was World NGO Day. It was marked by an international conference held in Helsinki, Finland, across the 27th-28th February entitled ‘Your NGO day: a generation of new NGOs’. The conference agenda reflected some of the roles and values of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with speakers covering health, education, social welfare and the empowerment of women, children and youths.

So what is an NGO?

Illegal wildlife trade - Focus of first ever World Wildlife Day

At the sixteenth meeting of the Conference of Parties to CITES in March 2013, the Thai Government recommended the adoption of a resolution to declare March 3 as World Wildlife Day, which was later agreed at the United Nations General Assembly in December.  The date marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which aims to “ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival”.