Gemma Cruz Araneta
Since 1962, we Filipinos have been celebrating Independence Day on June 12. Before that, it used to be on July 4, a historical aberration corrected by President Diosdado Macapagal who said Filipinos, “… called the whole world to witness their powerful resolve to consider themselves absolved of allegiance to the Spanish crown… The revolution which culminated on June 12, 1898 was the first successful national revolution in Asia since the coming of the west, and the republic to which it gave birth was the first democratic republic outside of the western hemisphere.”
Our road to independence was a rocky one, strewn with treachery, deceit and other obstacles, the most devastating of which was the Philippine-American war. Yet, there were advocates who lent their moral support like the Anti-Imperialist League (AI), established on June 2, 1898 and lasted until November, 1920.The members profile of the AI allowed it to wield its influence rather audaciously.
Climate change is reducing agricultural productivity
Technology is improving productivity, but climate is slowing it down.
Researchers have quantified for the first time the impact of climate change on global agricultural productivity, and it’s bad: the sector is 21% down from where it could have been without the growing emissions. That’s the equivalent of losing about seven years of farm productivity increases since the 1960s, the researchers estimated.
Image credit: Flickr / StateOfIsrael
Enhancing agricultural productivity is vital not just for feeding the world, but also for lifting global living standards. Investments in agricultural research have boosted agricultural productivity in the past decades in several ways, but this has been distributed unequally across the world with growing signs that progress is slowing down in certain regions.
Gergawi: Governments must use Covid pandemic lessons to identify opportunities
Staff Report/Dubai
(Wam file)
Minister commends scientists, private sector and govts for vaccine development in eight months time.
Mohammed Abdullah Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs and Chairman of the World Government Summit Organization said future governments will be those capable of adapting the lessons from the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic to identify growth opportunities.
In his keynote address on ‘Major Global Trends in the Next Decade’ on Day 1 of the two-day World Government Summit Dialogues, he said the pandemic is a turning point in the development of countries’ economies and sectors and is an opportunity to design new mechanisms to provide services for their citizens,