FAO promotes women training in fisheries to face economic crisis in the Caribbean

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Black Immigrant Daily News

The content originally appeared on: Caribbean News Service
The Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization visited the Bridgetown Fishing Complex, where he met with local fisherfolk’s groups. He was accompanied by Adrian Forde, Minister of Environment and National Beautification, Green and Blue Economy

The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu met and interacted with local fisherfolk and women of the Central Fish Processors Association, during his visit to the Bridgetown Fishing Complex in Barbados yesterday.

As part of his agenda during his first visit to the Caribbean, the Director General learned about the details of the implementation of a FAO supported fish silage project. This initiative aims to assist women working in the small-scale fisheries to generate an alternative source of income through the production of animal feed derived from the fish silage. Transforming fish waste into valuable resources with potential for income streams is critical to empowering women and bolstering the spirit of entrepreneurship.

QU stated, “The circular economy is ideal in Barbados as you have sugar cane. You have the residue from the sugar cane, which you can compost to make organic fertilizer and use it to grow vegetables, and you can mix it in with manure. So that’s another cycle”.

The fish silage project is part of the initiative “Promoting the circular economy in fisheries value chains to support sustainable livelihoods”, and seeks to generate alternative measures to promote food and nutrition security while reducing imports of feed and fertilizers, for example.

QU also saw the process for preparing and processing fresh tuna fish for export.

Adrian Forde, Minister of the Environment and National Beautification, Green and Blue Economy in his brief remarks indicated that he was “happy to be part of something like this; something great that we are doing as it relates to a circular economy and ensuring there is sustainable development of our fisherfolk”.

Milton Haughton, Executive Director of Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM) also presented during the meeting along with several local pig and small ruminant farmers who gave first hand positive experiences in using the fish silage pellets.

Shelly-Ann, Chief Fisheries Officer of the Bridgetown Fisheries Complex stated she was happy to host the FAO Director-General and the high-level delegation from FAO, and added that Ministry was exploring innovation in the silage project together with FAO and other stakeholders.

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Tammy Rivera Calls Diplo A Hater For Comment About Beyonce Grammy Win

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The content originally appeared on: Urban Islandz

Tammy Rivera has accused EDM Pop producer Diplo of being a “hater” after Beyoncé fans accused him of saying that the artist bought a Grammy award.

Beyoncé broke another record on Sunday as she won Best Electronic/Dance Album at the 65th Grammy awards ceremony. The moment marked another great milestone for Beyoncé, who earned a record-breaking 32 awards over her 22-year-old career and earned her the title of all-time awards champ of the Recording Industry Association of America.

Beyoncé’s fans celebrated the win, but many, including her husband, Jay-Z, felt that the artist was cheated out of another award- Album of the Year for her project, Renaissance. Fans online theorized that Beyoncé was cheated out of the award, and it seems that some felt that Diplo was one of those who hated to see the artist winning.

A video shared by a fan online showed the moment Beyoncé was named the winner of the EDM award, and the camera also showed Diplo mouthing something as he clapped for the singer. In the video, the fan interprets Diplo talking, “did he say they bought that?”.

Tammy Rivera also reacted to the video by writing on Instagram Story that Diplo was hating on Queen Bey. “If she bought that why not buy album of the year??? HATER,” she wrote along with the “congratulations” and the bee emoji.

Diplo was nominated for Best Dance/ Electronic Recording Grammy award for ‘” Don’t Forget My Love” and Best Dance/Electronic Music Album at this year’s award but did not win in either of the categories.

Despite the video, it seems that some fans felt that the producer was not being malicious as he previously worked with Beyoncé on several releases of her 2016 albums Lemonade and Run The World (Girls) in 2011.

“Some grown woman need to grow up he said I’m apart of that,” one fan wrote on Instagram.

“He said she broke that,” another said.

“That’s not an Edm record it should have not been in that category. Hence why he said they bought it,” another person wrote.

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DDG Hints At Halle Bailey Breakup Delete Photos and Unfollowed Her On IG

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Black Immigrant Daily News

The content originally appeared on: Urban Islandz

Fans on social media think that rapper DDG and songstress Halle Bailey have broken up after he posted a cryptic but shady tweet categorizing all women as the same.

On Tuesday, they shared a tweet and deleted post that fans thought was directed to Halle Bailey. “All these girls the same [crying emoji] ain’t no way,” he wrote. Fans immediately speculated that things were not well with the young couple, who began dating around March last year and were seen out on dates around the summer.

DDG and Halle confirmed their relationship with her sister Chloe Bailey blushing in an Essence interview back in October last year as she shared that she was in love with the “Elon Musk” artist.

“I’ve been a fan of his for years. I grew up being on YouTube and would always see the young Black creators and was constantly inspired by them. He was one of them,” Hall said about DDG, whom she took notice of in 2015.

“I completely forgot about him… then I saw that he was dropping music, and I really gravitated toward this one song. Coincidentally he messaged me—and the rest is history,” she said, smiling.

Well, fans think that the romance is ending faster than it started as they shared that DDG had unfollowed Hall on Instagram, and he has also deleted all of the photos of them shared over the past year.

On the other hand, Halle continues to follow DDG. Some fans speculated that DDG could be pulling an extreme prank, as usual, for his YouTube account. Neither artist has confirmed or denied the news, and as fans try to piece together what happened, there is very little to make sense of since the couple appeared happy together up to this point.

The couple was not seen together at the recent Grammy Awards, but they were spotted at several important events over the last year, including the BET awards and several functions like an Usher concert for his Las Vegas residency last year.

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Loss of Reptiles Poses Threat for Small Islands Where Humans May Have Caused Extinctions

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Black Immigrant Daily News

The content originally appeared on: Caribbean News Service

A new examination of ancient and current species of reptiles conducted by a University of Texas at Austin paleobiologist reveals the serious impact of the disappearance of even a few species of reptiles in some island areas.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has startling conclusions about how, on smaller islands in the Caribbean where human impact was greatest, extinctions have led to the loss of up to two-thirds of the supports for the ecosystem that native reptile species once provided there.

Although similar studies have looked at the role of large mammals or other types of animals in ecosystems over time, this is the first to do so with reptiles–a key component of many island ecosystems.

Exploring what’s known as functional diversity, the study goes beyond cataloging different living things in a place over time, in this case, 418 Caribbean reptile species. Instead, the study maps out the functions that those species offer that support a thriving natural environment. The 418 species can be collapsed into 123 functional entities: groupings of species that share the same suite of traits and may perform similar ecosystem services.

“Functional diversity is a really important measure of the health of an ecosystem,” said Melissa Kemp, an assistant professor of integrative biology at UT Austin. “It’s important to understand the number of species in a given system, but it’s equally, if not more, important to understand the roles those species play. That’s the measure of functional diversity.”

For example, when the giant tortoises of the Caribbean were hunted to extinction, the island region lost not only the tortoises but a core service the reptiles provided. Giant tortoises are important vehicles to spread plant seeds. That function was lost in the Caribbean, and the situation was made worse by the extinction of other large-bodied herbivores such as sloths, leading to certain plants having limited dispersal agents and restricted ranges.

Species introduced by humans also contribute to shifts in functional diversity over time, with sometimes mixed results. One of the clearcut invasive species villains of the study is the mongoose. The small weasel-like mammal preys on reptiles and was brought to the islands by European colonizers.

“In the historical record, you can see when Europeans arrived and the mongoose was introduced, reptile species disappeared on these islands,” Kemp said.

However, the opposite was true when green iguanas were introduced to islands that had lost reptile-related functional diversity. The green iguana filled the gaps. In fact, the species helped return functional diversity to prehistoric levels in some cases.

“While the green iguana is functionally similar to some of the native iguanas, there is concern about how it interacts with native iguanas and its long-term impacts on functional diversity,” Kemp said. “In some places where they co-occur, the invasive green iguanas are interbreeding with native iguanas.”

Kemp found that smaller islands, in particular, lack the buffer that larger islands have when they lose a set of reptile species that help to keep an ecosystem intact to an event like the introduction of the mongoose. For example, the largest islands, Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, retain 80%-98% of their native functional entities. The study found that smaller islands that had limited human impact retained much of their functional diversity, too: Mona and Sombrero, two islands that are no longer inhabited, were used for limited mining after European colonization but had no large-scale agriculture, dense human population or mongoose introduced and retain 75% of their native functional entities.

The islands of the Caribbean are some of the most biodiverse places on Earth, home to delicate ecosystems and teeming with species that exist nowhere else on the planet. Without functional diversity that includes various reptiles, however, more ecosystems are susceptible to collapse, making the topic a vital one for conservation.

“It’s becoming readily apparent that we’re not going to be able to save every single species. Some are already extinct or functionally extinct in the wild,” Kemp said. “Trying to conserve the functions that organisms provide to an ecosystem might be a bigger focus moving forward.”

Funding for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation.

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Women’s Affairs Ministers Will Examine Actions Planned for Implementing Buenos Aires Commitment

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Black Immigrant Daily News

The content originally appeared on: Caribbean News Service
Mar?a-Noel Vaeza

Ministers of Women’s Affairs and senior authorities from mechanisms for women’s advancement in the region will meet virtually on February 8-9 to examine the actions planned for the implementation of the Buenos Aires Commitment, approved at the XV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which was held on November 7-11, 2022 in Argentina.

At this gathering, a special regional consultation session prior to the 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is scheduled to take place, the priority theme of which will be “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.”

The 64th Meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women is organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), as the Conference’s Secretariat, in coordination with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women). Currently, the Government of Argentina, through the Minister for Women, Gender and Diversity of Argentina, is chairing the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The meeting will be inaugurated on Wednesday, February 8 at 11 a.m. local time in Chile (GMT-3) by Jos? Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, ECLAC’s Executive Secretary; Mar?a-Noel Vaeza, Regional Director for the Americas and the Caribbean of UN Women; Ayel?n Mazzina, Minister for Women, Gender and Diversity of Argentina; and Mar?a del Carmen Squeff, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Argentina to the United Nations and Vice-Chair designate of the Latin American and Caribbean States Group on the Bureau for the 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW67).

In the framework of the special regional consultation session prior to the CSW67, a reference document entitled Gender equality and women’s and girls’ autonomy in the digital era: contributions of education and digital transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean – prepared by ECLAC, UN Women, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) – will be presented by Ana G?ezmes, Director of ECLAC’s Division for Gender Affairs, and Cecilia Alemany, UN Women’s Deputy Regional Director for the Americas and the Caribbean and ad interim Representative in Argentina.

The Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, a subsidiary body of ECLAC, is the main intergovernmental forum on women’s rights and gender equality in the region.

In November 2022, in the framework of the XV Regional Conference, the region’s countries committed themselves to moving towards a new development pattern: the care society.

The representatives at this gathering recognized “care as a right to provide and receive care and to exercise self-care based on the principles of equality, universality and social and gender co-responsibility, and therefore, as a responsibility that must be shared by people of all sectors of society, families, communities, businesses and the State.”

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Alliance calls for attention to unseen and neglected cultural heritage during royal visit to St. Eustatius

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Black Immigrant Daily News

The content originally appeared on: Caribbean News Service
Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima

The following statement was issued by the St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance:

On Wednesday, February 8, the royal family will be given a tour through the historic core of Oranjestad in St. Eustatius, as can be read on the website of the royal family. During this walk the slavery past will be discussed, and a manifestation in Fort Oranje dedicated to the cultural heritage of Sint Eustatius will close the day, so we read.

We all know how during royal visits everything gets polished, even the truth. That is why the St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance asks the royal family to look further. Not to the beautiful buildings and monuments in the historic core, not to the memorials of De Graaff, Peter Stuyvesant, the First Salute, and their (great) grandmother Wilhelmina.

But let them see the suffering, the tears and the blood of our ancestors who built the fortresses, the buildings, the walls by hand, brick by brick. Let them see the unmarked burial grounds Golden Rock and Godet where the remains of our ancestors were brutally excavated and have been stored in a depot for over a year now, tucked away like garbage.

Let them see the Waterfort, in a deplorable state, threatened by erosion, where our ancestors, kidnapped from the Motherland, after the Middle passage were packed together to be sold on the market. More than 44,000 Afrikans including 10,000 (!) children set foot on Statia and suffered this fate. This Afrikan cultural heritage is all unseen and neglected.

So let’s talk to each other about how we can preserve this heritage, the Waterfort, the Afrikan burial grounds, the slave walls for the St. Eustatius community and the wider Afrikan diaspora and preserve it for future generations.

160 years after the abolition of slavery, reluctantly approved by King William III, let’s now restore the Waterfort, mark the burial grounds, honor our ancestors, teach our children that there was also a time before slavery with black Pharaohs, black Kings and black Queens who ruled in Afrikan countries for centuries until their civilization was destructed by colonial powers.

Let the royal visit be meaningful and with lasting impact to protect our Afrikan heritage and the indigenous heritage of St. Eustatius. Hopefully the royal family won’t be dazzled by good looking entertainment. Those days are over. We should honor our ancestors and not colonial memorials and former colonial rulers nor should we perform shows for them.

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