Dear friend,

The world is on fire but don't worry I'm not going to give you bad news week after week. Despite the shitstorm we're experiencing, some good things keep happening as well. This week, researchers from The Nature Conservancy released their research on Hawai'i's coral reefs and good news: the coral reefs that experienced a massive bleaching in 2014 and 2015 are now healing! They found that the corals that were healing the quicker were the ones with limited exposure to humans, shocking right. Read more about these wonders of nature.

Ever wonder how meat became such a staple in our lives and diets? Turns out Victorians are all to blame. The global mass-meat industry as we know it today took its first steps in Britain. It revolutionized the British diet and how the rest of the world consumed meat. Read about the fascinating story of how 'big meat' came to be.

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People in poorer nations might not get a COVID-19 vaccine in 2021

Obstacles

Written by
Deniz Gulsoken

on
8 January 2021

People's Vaccine Alliance, a coalition between Amnesty International, Oxfam and Global Justice now, warned the world on Wednesday, saying if no action is taken 90 percent of people in poorer nations will not get access to a vaccine against COVID-19.

The world's richest nations have currently bought 54 percent of the potential vaccine supplies, despite housing only 14 percent of the world's population. Canada, for example, has ordered almost 5 complete doses of vaccines per person.

"No one should be blocked from getting a life-saving vaccine because of the country they live in or the amount of money in their pocket," Anna Marriott, Oxfam Health Policy Manager.

While affluent countries like the UK who has already administered the first dose of the vaccine to nearly 1.5 million people, 67 low-income countries have made no vaccine purchase yet.
According to the People's Vaccine Alliance, it's likely that these countries, along with 221 others who signed up for the programme, rely on COVAX, a global fund to provide equal access to the vaccine across the world.
High-income countries, along with the EU have pledged to provide funds for COVA, however, there is no clear timeline for the programme's rollout.
According to Duke Global Health Innovation Center, "Current models predict that there will not be enough vaccines to cover the world's population until 2023 or 2024". If there aren't dramatic changes to the vaccine rollout strategies billions of people across the world won't get access to safe and effective vaccination against COVID-19 for years. Which essentially means the pandemic also won't end for the rest of the world.
This upcoming crisis with vaccine distribution is a clear sign of the lack of equitable access to healthcare around the world. Health systems are facing major challenges due to the pricing of pharmaceuticals, research and testing of new drugs and treatments. Public health services do not always provide the care that people require. Accessible healthcare is a luxury the majority of the world's population doesn't have.
If you'd like to support people who don't have access to proper healthcare across the world, you can donate to our Accessible Healthcare for All appeal. By donating to this appeal you'll support 10 organisations chosen by our research team based on our in-house vetting. All organisations are amongst the most transparent and effective tackling healthcare acess in different corners of the world.

This story features:

Healthcare / poverty

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The fast fashion industry is pushing workers to poverty

Obstacles

Written by
Ana Sofia Mergulhão

on
30 December 2020

This question was posed in 2016 by the Dutch trend forecaster Li Edelkoort, at Voices, a gathering of fashion-industry innovators organized by The Business of Fashion.
The fast fashion industry has long been following a business model that is rooted in unfairness. Providing us with the latest fashion trends at unsustainably cheap prices at the expense of people who make the clothes. We’ve known for a long time now that fast-fashion workers receive very low wages and work in inhumane conditions.

“This is a system where the workers at the bottom are taking all the risk and paying the price when things go wrong.” Professor Genevieve LeBaron

The coronavirus pandemic created an economic pressure, plunging the fashion industry into a crisis that exposed, once again, the inequality pervading many corners of the globalized world.
The world faced factory closures, layoffs and the refusal of foreign buyers to continue to pay worker’s wages while business was suspended, threatening the livelihoods of millions of worldwide garment workers that were already on a battle against a deadly disease.

Almost 80% of garment workers, many making clothes for some of the world’s biggest fashion brands, are going hungry due to cancelled orders and while some retailers have agreed to pay for them in full, others are still refusing.
The solution shouldn’t be cancelling contracts, moving manufacturing to local factories, or replacing humans with robots, but to dedicate meaningful resources to the improvement of working conditions for the sector’s most essential workers: people who make our clothes.
Garment workers who work for fast-fashion brands already live in poverty, with the COVID-19 crisis many have lost the little income they had with no protection to fall back on. If you'd like to support garment workers and other people across the world pushed into poverty you can donate our Fighting Poverty appeal below. Your donation will be divided amongst 7 top organisations fighting to eradicate poverty across the world.

This story features:

Sustainability / Work & Poverty

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The secret to saving our oceans is to work together

Solutions

Written by
Deniz Gulsoken

on
24 December 2020

The ocean is a delicate ecosystem where all the organisms live in balance. When something from the outside threatens one single part of this balance it endangers the whole ecosystem.

Currently, there are many threats to ocean life. Yes, plastic is one of them but it’s not the only one. Overfishing threatens fish populations and all the other microorganisms dependent on them. Agricultural runoff, waste disposal and many other kinds of pollution caused by humans leave oceans bare all over the world. The climate crisis is heating the waters to the point of no return. Disasters like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill do irreparable damage and destroy not only marine life but also the lives of people who depend on the oceans for their livelihood.

Stopping all of these threats, saving our living oceans require us to come together under this goal. The problems and threats are numerous, they might seem large and unconquerable to just one, but when many of us work together we have a chance to turn it around.
This is why we created our Save the Oceans appeal. We brought organisations that approach saving our oceans from different angles so that when they are together it becomes one big solution. All of the organisations we picked excel at their work and are highly transparent and effective. If you would like to donate to a comprehensive solution to the destruction of our oceans you can donate to it below. Your donation will support all organisations in the appeal.

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No Nemo without corals

Dear friend,

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