Excluded Headlines: This week, poorest countries in the Global South hit by mass climate tragedies they didn’t cause

This week, in Global South news …

While the mainstream media has focused on the graphic videos and the number of foreigners amongst those disappeared in Nepal, it has downplayed the underlying issues leading to the tragedy and overlooked the various other countries experiencing impossible and devastating situations.

On the Nepal-Tibetan border, the current death tolls stands at 389, with some 1,300 people still missing. A landslide-flood of water and mud many stories high suddenly hit the area, burying buses, buildings, roads, land and people in seconds. The flash flood was likely caused by a glacier chunk breaking off and temporarily damming a river. Nepal’s glaciers are shrinking by up to 15 meters annually, and that is destabilizing the Himalayan slopes.

Also this week, a landslide at a huge waste dump killed 30 in Guinea. The landslide occurred as a result of heavy rains and flash flooding - which are typical in the region but getting worse, and combine with poor infrastructure. The landslide and collapsing waste covered nearby tents and shacks.

Drought in Jamaica is seeing the government sending water to people in trucks due to a lack of rain. In Sudan, climate change and El Niño are making the hunger crisis there worse - the Nile’s waters are extremely low, which affects farmers. Somalia is also facing a hunger crisis after a long drought, but is now expecting horrific floods in October which will displace people and kill farm animals.

Both Guinea and Nepal emit less than 0.1% of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions each. Nepal ranks as the sixth most climate-vulnerable country. For comparison, the US is responsible for about 11.7% to 12.7% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions, at least 117 times as much as Nepal. - PANW, CD, CBC, BN, RW, M, AJ, R, H, BBC

• The Ebola outbreak in the DRC is the fastest growing ever, killing 317 people in the past week (a historic record) for a total of 2,642 so far. -M, PANW

• The new conservative Colombian president has ordered a crackdown on undocumented migrants. He is also planning to build maximum-security mega-prisons. - GSW, GSW

• Iran’s currency hit a record low as US sanctions tightened - TRT

• Paraguay doctors have been on strike for three days so far over wages - ABC

• Bolivians protested the suspension of fuel subsidies, and the right-wing government deployed troops against the protesters. -tS

• Gangs killed up to 42 people in one attack in Haiti, hundreds of residents fled -N, GSW

• Indonesia charged 72 over fires as haze choked Borneo and Sumatra -M

• Kurdish-led SDF announced its dissolution after merging with Syria’s military -AJ

• Rohingya refugees face a deepening triple crisis of shrinking aid, no safe path home, and little hope for the future (little to no access to work, education) after almost a decade of displacement -RW

• Guilt, grief and strength: Gaza’s ‘sole survivor’ children face life alone

• Ghana Leads Global Push for Slavery Reparations, While Still Paying for Empire at Home

• A ‘leading’ Chinese miner of Mozambique’s heavy sands linked to environmental destruction

• Polluted waterways and water shortages complicate the fight against Ebola in the DRC

• The Philippines’ security trap

• Why water rights aren’t enough to fix South Africa’s deeply unequal farming sector

• What’s behind Israel’s growing assault on West Bank healthcare

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