All members of SK parliament sign declaration against hate speech
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2022
All members of the South Korean parliament have pledged to take part in a campaign to get rid of hate speech, bullying and human rights violations in cyberspace, the Sunfull Foundation said Sunday.
“All 299 lawmakers have signed a pledge to support using good language during their political activities,” announced the organization’s founder Min Byoung-chul during an award ceremony held Dec. 7 to commend 35 parliamentarians for using what they perceive as a respectful language, as opposed to malicious or disrespectful language.
The NGO was founded in 2007 for the purpose of eradicating malicious online comments. It has been awarding National Assembly members every year since 2013.
Sunfull, referring to kindhearted online comments, is a combination of the Korean word “sun (good)” and “full (short for reply).”
Wednesday’s winners of the “Sunfull Grand Prize” were National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo; Rep. Lee Che-ik of the People Power Party, who chairs the parliament’s Public Administration and Security Committee; and Rep. Hwang Hee of the Democratic Party of Korea. The 35 recipients were selected by the National Youth Sunfull Social Media Reporters, consisting of 300 high school and college students who analyzed each lawmaker’s use of language via transcripts of plenary sessions and standing committee meetings for the past year.
Foreign diplomats and other dignitaries also participated in the awards ceremony, expressing high interest in the movement. They include Indonesian Ambassador Gandi Sulistiyanto Soeherman, Cambodian Ambassador Chring Botumrangsay and Designated Turkish Ambassador Murat Tamer.
Nobel awards take place in Stockholm with full glitz and glamour
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2022
Nobel laureates gathered in the Swedish capital Stockholm on Saturday for the first fully in-person award ceremony since the Covid-19 pandemic that curtailed events in the previous two years.
The ceremony featured glamorous formal wear, with the men in white tie and tails and women in flowing gowns and elegant hairdos. Ceremonies in 2020 and 2021 were scaled back and there was no banquet after the ceremony.
Many laureates from 2020 and 2021 attended this year as well as the 2022 winners – last year there was a ceremony but no laureates attended as they received their medals in their home countries.
Five of the six Nobel prizes are awarded in Stockholm every year after a nomination process that is kept secret for the next 50 years. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo.
Dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel left around 31 million crowns – about 1.8 billion crowns (174.2 million U.S. dollars) in today’s money according to the Foundation – to fund prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace awarded annually since 1901.
Among the laureates for 2022 is a former chairman of US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, who won the Nobel Economics Prize along with economists Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig for research on how propping up failing banks can stave off an even deeper economic crisis.
The economics prize is a later addition to the original line-up, instituted by the Swedish central bank.
Scientists Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and Barry Sharpless won the chemistry prize for discovering reactions that let molecules snap together to create new compounds and that offer insight into cell biology.
Sharpless joins an elite band of scientists who have won two Nobel prizes.
Scientists Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger won the physics prize for experiments in quantum mechanics that laid the groundwork for rapidly-developing new applications in computing and cryptography.
Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo won the medicine prize for discoveries that underpin our understanding of how modern-day people evolved from extinct ancestors at the dawn of human history.
French author Annie Ernaux was awarded the literature prize for “the courage and clinical acuity” in her largely autobiographical books examining personal memory and social inequality.
After the ceremony, there was a banquet in Stockholm’s City Hall, attended by Sweden’s royal family, government officials and dignitaries and business leaders from different countries.
Swedish political party leaders are always invited to the banquet. However, Jimmie Akesson, leader of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, which became the country’s second biggest party in an election in September election, was left off the guest list, with his party not deemed to be in keeping with the prizes’ tenets.
The Nobel Foundation has also snubbed the ambassadors of Russia and Belarus, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Jailed Belarusian activist Ales Byalyatski, Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.
Russia wants to turn Ukraine into a “dependent dictatorship” like Belarus, the wife of jailed Belarusian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Byalyatski said on Saturday upon receiving the prize on his behalf, speaking his words.
Receiving the award on behalf of her husband at Oslo City Hall, Natallia Pinchuk said Byalyatski dedicated the prize to “millions of Belarusian citizens who stood up and took action in the streets and online to defend their civil rights”.
“It highlights the dramatic situation and struggles for human rights in the country,” she said, adding she was speaking her husband’s words.
“I know exactly what kind of Ukraine would suit Russia and Putin — a dependent dictatorship. The same as today’s Belarus, where the voice of the oppressed people is ignored and disregarded,” Pinchuk said, quoting her husband.
Pinchuk has met her husband once since he was named a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, in prison, behind a glass wall, she told a news conference on Friday (December 9).
Belarusian security police detained Byalyatski, 60, and others in July last year in a crackdown on opponents of the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko.
Authorities had moved to shut down non-state media outlets and human rights groups after mass protests the previous August against a presidential election that the opposition said was rigged.
Byalyatski is the fourth person to win the Nobel Peace Prize while in detention, after Germany’s Carl von Ossietzky in 1935, China’s Liu Xiaobo in 2010 and Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest, in 1991.
Russia used Belarus as a staging post for its failed advance on Kyiv, starting on February 24. Belarus has said it will not enter the war in Ukraine. Russia said on Thursday (December 8) its troops were taking part in tactical exercises in Belarus, amid concern that Moscow is pressing its ally to get more involved in the war.
Oleksandra Matviichuk, representing Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties and Jan Rachinsky, representing Memorial, both addressed the ongoing war in their Nobel speeches.
Rachinsky said they had asked themselves if Memorial deserved to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Yes, we have tried to resist the erosion of historical memory and legal consciousness by documenting crimes of both the past and the present. But did our work prevent the catastrophe of 24 February? The monstrous burden that fell on our shoulders that day became heavier after we received the news that the prize had been awarded to us. No, this is not a matter of “national guilt”. It is not worth talking about “national” or any other collective guilt at all – the notion of collective guilt is abhorrent to fundamental human rights principles. The joint work of the participants of our movement is based on a completely different ideological basis – on the understanding of civic responsibility for the past and for the present,” he said.
Founded in 2007, the Center for Civil Liberties aims to document every single war crime committed across Ukraine.
“Since this Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony takes place during the war, I will allow myself to reach out to people around the world and call for solidarity. You don’t have to be Ukrainian to support Ukraine. It is enough just to be humans,” Matviichuk said.
Suspected Dresden hostage taker dies of injuries sustained during the police operation
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2022
Dresden Police said a suspected hostage-taker, a 40-year-old man, died of the injuries he sustained during the police operation to free the two hostages, on Saturday afternoon.
The suspected hostage-taking in the Eastern German city of Dresden took place at the shopping mall “Altmarkt-Galerie” in the historic city centre near the famous Striezelmarkt Christmas market.
“The situation is now more or less under control and there is no longer any acute danger in Dresden,” the spokesperson of the Dresden police Thomas Geithner told Reuters, as pedestrians passed by the mall, the site of the incident.
“A 40-year-old man from Dresden took two people hostage, a woman and a child. In the end, special forces seized the hostages. The two hostages were taken into custody, they are unharmed and safe and are now being looked after,” Geithner said.
The man was believed to have killed his 62-year-old mother in an apartment building in the Prohlis district of Dresden, southeast of the city centre, before making his way to the city centre. According to local media, the suspect is also believed to have tried to break into the premises of a local radio station earlier on Saturday, where the police could be seen undertaking investigations in the afternoon.
The incident comes as security has shifted into focus in Germany after investigators earlier this week foiled a far-right plot to overthrow the German government and install an aristocrat as the leader of a new state.
Russian opposition politician sentenced to 8.5 years in prison on ‘fake news’ charges
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2022
Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin was sentenced in court to eight-and-a-half years in prison on Friday on charges of spreading “false information” about the army.
Yashin, 39, was tried over a YouTube video released in April in which he discussed evidence uncovered by Western journalists of Russian atrocities in Bucha, near Kyiv, and cast doubt on the official Moscow version that such reports had been fabricated as a “provocation” against Russia.
Since Russia sent thousands of troops into Ukraine on February 24 in what it calls its “special military operation”, it has intensified its clampdown on public dissent, with most prominent opposition figures either in jail or exile.
The legislation was passed days later, providing for jail terms of up to 15 years for disseminating “false information” about the military.
In a defiant post on his Telegram channel, Yashin urged his supporters to continue opposing the military operation.
“With this hysterical verdict, the authorities want to intimidate us all but, in fact, it only shows their weakness. Strong leaders are calm and confident. Only weaklings try to shut everybody up and scorch any kind of dissent,” he wrote.
“We have no reason to be sad – you and I have won this trial, friends …
“We told the truth about war crimes and called for the bloodshed to stop … Today, I can only repeat what I said on the day of my arrest: I am not afraid, and you must not be afraid. Changes are just around the corner.”
Jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny slammed the verdict as “shameless and lawless” in a post on his Twitter account, which is managed by his team in exile.
“Ilya Yashin, we are all proud of you. Russia will be free and so will you,” Navalny wrote.
Yashin, a longtime friend and ally of Navalny, rose to prominence during a wave of anti-Kremlin protests in 2011-12 and was elected head of a Moscow district council in 2017. He has been repeatedly blocked from standing for higher office.
As supporters chanted “Freedom for political prisoners!” outside the courtroom, Yashin’s lawyers told them he would appeal.
In his final statement to the court this week, Yashin had appealed directly to President Vladimir Putin, describing him as “the person responsible for this slaughter” and asking him to “look at the consequences of this monstrous war” and “stop this madness.”
“The words ‘death’ and ‘destruction’ are now firmly associated with your name,” he said.
“You have brought terrible misfortune to the Ukrainian people, who will probably never forgive us.”
China’s newly-delivered C919 passenger jet sees 1,000 delivery orders
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2022
China has seen more than 1,000 orders on its first self-developed C919 passenger jet from 32 airline companies so far.
The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) delivered the first C919 large passenger aircraft to China Eastern Airlines in Shanghai on Friday morning.
The aircraft features a 164-seat configuration with a two-class cabin layout, including eight business class seats and 156 economy class seats. Cabin interiors, passenger seats, onboard entertainment systems and aircraft exterior livery are custom-designed.
China Eastern Airlines will carry out more than 100 hours of testing flights on this new aircraft to verify and confirm the operational safety, maintenance reliability and various operational support capabilities. The aircraft is expected to get an official operation license if all results and data of the testing flight meet the requirements of the China Civil Aviation Administration.
The plane conducted its successful maiden flight in 2017. It obtained the type certificate in late September, which indicates that the C919’s design meets airworthiness standards and environmental requirements.
The aircraft delivered on Friday is the basic type of the C919 series, and development on C919 aircraft will be continued in the future.
Asean and South Korea pledge closer cooperation on vaccine security
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 09, 2022
Neena M.L.
South Korea has pledged to contribute towards vaccine security in Southeast Asia as part of the South Korea – Asean partnership in the Indo-Pacific Region through cooperation and collectively responding to the challenges of Covid-19 and other diseases.
The South Korea – Asean solidarity initiative has been launched to expand the relationship not only for political, economic and social issues, but also to tackle global challenges such as the pandemic, health security and climate change.
Speaking at the the 2nd Vaccine Cooperation Forum in the Indo-Pacific Region, held in Seoul on December 7, South Korean Vice Foreign Affairs Minister Cho Hyun-dong said, “Over the past three years, we have experienced first-hand the importance of united action against the common threat of Covid-19. We have learned the effectiveness of joint response and the importance of equitable access to vaccines and treatments.”
Southeast Asia acted quickly and launched the Asean Covid-19 Response Fund and the Regional Reserve of Medical Supplies, making a rapid region-wide response possible. Asean also took leadership in the region’s recovery by adopting the Asean Comprehensive Recovery Framework. However, the South Korean vice minister stressed: “Further cooperation is still critical to deal effectively with possible future outbreaks. South Korea has provided strong support to Asean members for vaccine security, providing US$6 million [208 million baht] to strengthen detection capabilities. South Korea recognised the importance of sustained financing to prepare for future pandemics by pledging to donate $30 million to the World Bank’s Finance Intermediary Fund.”
Despite many countries currently treating the Covid-19 as an endemic, it continues to disrupt the world with its many variants and sub-variants. Dr Tore Godal, the founding CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance & Special Adviser to the Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), emphasised that developing effective and safe vaccines that can tackle the issues is important in terms of sustainability and security, especially in the Indo-Pacific Region to prevent and protect against not just Covid-19 but other diseases that may arise.
Godal, the keynote speaker at the forum, said South Korea and Asean have high potential in this area. “South Korea has a lot to offer. The country has its unique vaccine institutes and companies that are internationally recognised, such as the KBIOHealth [Osong Medical Innovation Foundation] and SK Bioscience; Global Innovative Vaccine and Biotech Company. Both are internationally oriented. While, Asean is very active, for example, Indonesia has Biofarma, Thailand contributes and delivers with high commitment towards research while Vietnam also offers capacities as a good vaccine production base.”
Thailand, as a member of the forum, raised important issues in the global challenges on why vaccine security is crucial and how Asean and South Korea can create a sustained framework.
The representative from Thailand, Dr Sunate Chuenkitmongkol, deputy director of the National Vaccine Institute (NVI), talked about the importance of vaccine and immunisation that is well recognised as one of the most cost-effective public health measures in prevention and control of severe infectious diseases. The Covid-19 pandemic, which took millions of lives in the past three years, has raised the demand for vaccines while the world faces vaccine shortages.
Speaking on the issue of vaccine security, Sunate said that it must be conducted in a sustained and uninterrupted way to smoothly supply and ensure the quality of the vaccine.
“It doesn’t mean that every country has to produce vaccines on its own, but every country should be able to access the vaccine whenever it is in demand,” she said.
Thailand’s perspective on ensuring vaccine security involves several key factors:
Work on vaccine policy in the country
Strengthen research and development, infrastructure in the country
Act as information and integrated vaccine knowledge and management centre in the country
Networking and training vaccine experts
Among regional initiatives, Asean adopted the Leaders’ Declaration on Asean Vaccine Security and Self-Reliance on November 2, 2019, two months before the Covid-19 pandemic began. This initiative aims to integrate and develop collaboration on vaccine security amongst Asean members.
She said that during the pandemic, the demand far exceeded supplies. She said high-income countries are in a better position to access vaccines than middle- or lower-income countries.
Regarding implementation of the AVSSR Strategic and Action Plans 2021 – 2025, she said the NVI had received financial support last year from the Republic of Korea Mission to Asean and the Asean Secretariat to organise an “Asean-ROK Vaccine Webinar to support Regional Priorities and Advocacy on AVSSR” to find a constructive direction, solution for vaccine security and improve research in a sustained way so as to be prepared for future global challenges.
Japan, UK, Italy get together to develop new fighter aircraft
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 09, 2022
Japan, the United Kingdom and Italy plan to jointly develop a fighter jet for their air forces with the aim of deploying it around 2035. A joint statement was expected on Friday.
Japan’s aim is to introduce a successor to its F-2 fighter in the mid-2030s when the aircraft will be retired, and the UK plans to deploy the Tempest, successor to its mainstay Eurofighter Typhoon, in actual combat by 2035.
Since Japan and Britain have almost the same performance requirements, such as stealth features and high-performance radar, and their development periods overlap, governments decided to make final arrangements for joint development. The UK is joining hands with Italy to develop the Tempest.
The development team is expected to be led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd and BAE Systems, a major British aerospace and defence company. The team will oversee the overall design of the aircraft and system development, and the Japanese side has been able to secure the flexibility in modifications that they had been emphasising. Italy is expected to have Leonardo, another major aerospace and defence company, participate in the project, along with other companies.
The three countries aim to procure a total of about 300 aircraft for themselves and to export the finished product overseas.
In Japan, the Three Principles of Transfer of Defence Equipment and Technology and operational guidelines have been a stumbling block to exports, and the government and ruling parties have been in close talks to review them.
China’s economic growth will steadily pick up with the implementation of the 10 newly adopted measures on further optimizing the Covid-19 response, Premier Li Keqiang said on Thursday, vowing to better coordinate the country’s epidemic response and socioeconomic development.
Centralized quarantine for Covid-19 patients has been made voluntary and the rule requiring a negative nucleic acid test result for domestic travel and entry to public venues has been scrapped, as the country takes “small, yet continuous steps” to adjust to the disease.
The isolation period for people infected with Covid-19 and their close contacts will be cut to five days starting Friday, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government announced Thursday.
Beijing and Riyadh agreed on Thursday to scale up Belt and Road cooperation, expand bilateral trade and investment and boost coordination on international and regional affairs during President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Saudi Arabia.
A leading advisory think tank in Saudi Arabia signed on Dec 6 a memorandum of understanding to promote cross-regional cooperation in energy research between the country and China.
Japan sent two fighter jets to the Philippines for the first time as part of a bilateral air force exchange program, as the two US allies seek to reinforce military alliances amid regional tensions.
China’s hegemonic moves are described as “the greatest strategic challenge” Japan faces in a draft of the National Security Strategy (NSS), which is set to be revised in mid-December.
With the Young Persons’ Achievement Award, Dr Nguyen Huyen Duc has become the first Vietnamese scientist to receive the prize from the United Kingdom’s Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS).
India assumed the presidency of the Group of Twenty (G20) on December 1 for a one-year term with the theme of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” or “One earth, one family, one future”. The theme underlines the interconnectedness of the world that we are living in as the issues are global.
Four years ago, the Supreme Court struck down Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalised adultery. At the time, the apex court had noted that few nations had laws penalising adultery, although many retained some form of a legal injunction against the practise as part of divorce laws. The court took note of the fact that several countries had removed adultery from the list of crimes. Among these are China, Japan, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, and most European countries. At that time, it was countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in our neighbourhood and others such as Morocco and the United Arab Emirates that criminalised adultery.
Southeast Asia is adjusting to a new normal with the welcome return of travel and in-person gatherings, be it at work, with family and friends, while shopping, or for play. While it’s easy to slip back into old routines, some habits adopted during the pandemic—such as a heavier reliance on e-commerce—are here to stay.
Hong Kong and Singapore have long squared off to be the preeminent finance hub for Asia. That battleground is now shifting to the environmental, social and governance (ESG) space, with potentially trillions of dollars at stake.
The country’s agriculture and forestry industry continues to suffer as it had the largest employment drop in the third quarter of 2022, according to the latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Samsung on Thursday invited local startups to collaborate on technologies around the ‘Digital India’ stack, including unified payments interface (UPI), Digilocker, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) and Unified Health Interface (UHI), among others.
The South Korean government pledged to make pan-governmental efforts to lift some of the regulations on businesses as part of its drive to draw more foreign-invested companies, the Trade Ministry said Thursday.
Salaries in Southeast Asia Expected to Increase in 2023, Aon Survey Reveals
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 09, 2022
Aon plc (NYSE: AON), a leading global professional services firm, released insights from its 2022 Salary Increase and Turnover Study for Southeast Asia, revealing that salaries in the region are expected to increase slightly for 2023 compared to 2022.
The study was conducted in the third quarter of 2022, surveying the salary changes and turnover rates of more than 700 companies across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Median salary increase budgets are forecasted across industries at 6.8 % for Indonesia 5 .1 % for Malaysia, 6 % for the Philippines, Singapore at 4.7 %, 5.1 % for Thailand and 7.9 % for Vietnam.
While inflation plays a significant role in how salary changes look across the region, they are also driven by supply and demand in the talent market. High attrition rates across southeast Asia in 2022 are putting pressure on firms to use compensation measures to tackle hiring and retention challenges: 15.9 % in Indonesia, 14.9 % in Malaysia, 18 % in the Philippines,19.6 % in Singapore, 15.4 % in Thailand and 15.2 % for Vietnam.
Rahul Chawla, partner and head of Human Capital solutions for southeast Asia at Aon said, “While it is critical for businesses to define and adapt pay for different worker types and the nature of the work, organisations must stay agile as they rethink their pay principles. Businesses need to shape their strategies towards long-term drivers of pay and performance by making changes in a phased manner to optimise pay effectiveness. In addition, companies must define their 2023 salary increase approach in the context of the competitiveness of their current salary levels and employee value proposition. Companies that adopt a skill-based compensation programme will help ensure they can continue to build future skills for their organisation’s resilient workforce.”
The survey further revealed that salary increases in 2022 varied across industries across the region, with the retail industry having the highest increases (6.5 %), followed by technology and life sciences (6.1 %) and financial institutions (5.9 %). The ongoing technology and digital skills shortage across the region as a consequence of firms competing to accelerate the transformation and drive their digital initiatives resulted in higher year-on-year increases in salaries and total compensation for technology and data analytics roles compared to others. However, with the recent reports of a potential global economic slowdown, firms are taking a cautious approach and focusing on salary increases for selected employee groups or levels as they navigate a volatile and uncertain environment.
Alina Cheng, senior consultant, Human Capital Solutions for Southeast Asia at Aon said, “With the rise of fintech and digital banks in the region, roles in areas such as risk, compliance and talent acquisition are in demand. Firms are paying a premium to attract new talent at the junior and middle management levels for these roles. As a result, over the past two years, we have seen compensation structures shifting towards lesser variables and pay at risk and an increased focus on salaries. There is no one-size-fits-all approach for developing a salary increase strategy in a volatile environment. Employers must constantly analyse the market, study the available data and contextualise the unique circumstances of their industry and organisation to make better and more informed decisions.”
Across the world, plant species are disappearing fast
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 09, 2022
Mankind depends on plants for food, clothing, shelter, and medicine, but little is in fact known about the world’s more than 400,000 plant species.
Unlike animals, botanists can’t track a plant’s footprints through the forest or call them in with whistling songs. As a result, we’re often not even sure what the world is losing until it’s too late.
“I think the greatest threat immediately to the plants in the world is land use change, be that for agriculture or housing, it’s certainly an immediate threat where forests are cut down and pristine grasslands are ploughed,” Dr Carly Cowell, Conservation policy Lead at the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG) Kew, told Reuters.
With the world’s remaining jungles and boreal forests still being converted for activities such as livestock farming, palm oil plantations or urban development, at least 40% of the world’s remaining plant species are in trouble and the rate of plant extinctions are at least 500 times higher than the background rate of extinction, according to Kew’s 2020 State of the World’s Plants and Fungi report.
Scientists have now spent decades in sterile laboratories carefully cultivating the remaining individuals of vanishing species and saving seeds in enormous vaults. With an immense array of scientific tools at their disposal, it’s time to start planning for what comes next, scientists said.
As some botanists have even begun discussing outplanting species beyond their known native range as a “hedge against climate change,” Dr Colin Clubbe, a senior researcher at Kew is calling on scientists to look out from the labs to get planting in the wild.
“This is yellow fatu, the Abutilon pitcairnense, found only on the island of Pitcairn in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and this is a plant that was really on the edge of extinction,” Clubbe told Reuters in Kew’s Temperate House which he dubs ‘a cathedral to plants.’
“It was being surrounded and attacked by invasive species and a landslide took the whole population away and destroyed the last remaining plant,” he said.
But the efforts of a local conservation officer mean the plant is still growing, in Kew and the Caymans.
“40,000 seeds were sent back to the Millennium Seed Bank so it’s now safe in ex situ conservation in Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank seeds, but also on (Cayman) island now it’s secure in the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park where they using it to promote it as a landscaping plant and getting people to grow that in their homes and to secure the future of this plant, that’s unique only to the Cayman Islands,” Clubbe said.
World leaders meeting in Montreal, Canada, to develop a global strategy for protecting and conserving nature, hope to persuade countries to set aside 30% of their land for protection in the next seven years – providing potential safe havens for plants.
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