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Worst-case scenario of famine unfolding in Gaza, says UN-backed group
00:29:18
Experts say that famine thresholds have been reached in most of the Gaza Strip
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- [00:00]
Jackie Leonard
This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and at 13 hours GMT on Tuesday 29th July. These are our main stories. A UN backed review has warned that famine is playing out in Gaza despite the limited increase in aid deliveries. Israel says life in the Palestinian territory is tough but lies are being told. A ceasefire along the Thai Cambodian border appears to be holding after a shaky start. And the Russian national airline AeroFlot has canceled 50 more flights today after Ukrainian hackers said they'd attacked its IT systems. Also in this podcast.
- [00:39]
Brian Jones
For the last three years I've only been able to plant half my farm because I don't have enough irrigation water. We feel that Mexico has not been living up to their part of the treaty.
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Jackie Leonard
We'll hear from farmers in the US and Mexico caught in a water crisis driven by a decades old treatment. The worst case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip. That's the assessment of a group of UN backed international agencies after months of an Israeli blockade which has only recently been eased. One woman in Gaza told us how hard it is to get aid.
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Unnamed Woman in Gaza
Where are we supposed to go? The Israelis say they don't want to distribute the aid because Hamas might steal it. And sometimes they allow people to go and get the aid themselves but they end up fighting each other to get it. That's not to mention the bombs that are killing them anyway. Every day more than 500 people are martyred from Rafah to the north while trying to reach the aid. Yesterday for the first time my son went into an aid distribution center. They took the bag of flour he managed to get, broke his shoulder and stabbed him in the hand with a knife.
- [01:47]
Jackie Leonard
Israel has steadily denied that there is starvation in Gaza. Here's its Foreign Minister Gideon Saar. The talking to journalists earlier today it.
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Brian Jones
Is clear that after almost two years of war the situation is tough.
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Gideon Saar
But there is a lie and the.
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Brian Jones
Lie is the starvation policies which the.
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Gideon Saar
International media, including BBC is cooperating with.
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Brian Jones
And the reality is the opposite because.
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Gideon Saar
We are working very hard under very.
- [02:23]
Brian Jones
Complicated circumstances from the beginning of the war until this day in order to.
- [02:30]
Gideon Saar
Facilitate the entrance of humanitarian aid into Gaza Strip.
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Jackie Leonard
In a moment we'll be hearing from our Gaza correspondent Rushdie Abu Alouf. First though, more details on the report itself from Imogen folks in Geneva.
- [02:44]
Imogen Folks
Well, this is the report from the. It's an independent body, it's called the Integrated Food Security Report and it assesses hunger levels around the world. And what it says this morning is that the famine threshold has been reached in Gaza, that all the signs are there, acute malnutrition, deaths from hunger, and that this is now present across nearly all of the Gaza Strip. So it's not, I mean, it's a tragedy, but it's not a surprise. We have heard the warnings from the aid agencies who are present in Gaza. Talk, perhaps Medecin Sans Frontiere, who does a lot with child malnutrition reporting over the last week. I believe that the levels of malnourished children it was seeing was really getting up to this. This is a warning of famine. So here we are. Some aid is coming in. But we heard, I heard the World Food Program in Geneva just half an hour ago saying these airdrops and the humanitarian pauses are just going to be nowhere near enough.
- [03:51]
Jackie Leonard
So just to be clear on the terminology, is there or isn't there a famine?
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Imogen Folks
Now, what the IPC report says is that famine thresholds have been reached or breached in parts of the Gaza Strip. In fact, most of the Gaza Strip. What we need to be careful about is that of course in many places you get more data than you're getting from Gaza. But what the IPC thinks now is that it has enough in terms of reports from the different aid agencies they are talking about. This is the level of acute malnutrition among the under five. This is a key indicator that we saw in July, this is what we saw in June, this is what we saw in May. So they can extrapolate from that. Plus the reported deaths from hunger which have rocketed in July. You know, many more are reported in the last couple of weeks than throughout this conflict.
- [04:56]
Jackie Leonard
That was Imogen folks in Geneva. In Gaza itself, the position remains desperate, as our Gaza correspondent Rushdie Abu Alouf told us from Istanbul.
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Rushdie Abu Alouf
Well, we understand that in the last 48 hours about 152 trucks of food were allowed from three different crossings in Gaza. In the north, in the middle and also in the south. But this is not near enough. People are demanding five to 600 trucks every day full of food for a month at least in order to overcome this humanitarian crisis. In Gaza, the famine is looming. According to Palestinians, more people are dying in hospitals from a lack of malnutrition. Hamas run Health Ministry said about over 100 people died from hunger. Also, the airstrikes did not stop at the time where this humanitarian pause is over. Last night, according to a new statement by the Hamas run health ministry, about 112 people were killed only in the last 24 hours.
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Jackie Leonard
And we've Heard reports of looting. Just how much of what is getting into the Gaza Strip is actually getting to its intended destination?
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Rushdie Abu Alouf
Well, in fact, based on what we are collecting on the ground and talking to local journalists in different areas, about 95%, maybe 98% of the trucks were looted not only by gangs, but by, you know, desperate, hungry people who are waiting somewhere in the road to stop the trucks and loot whatever they can. I've seen a video about 20 second video of like thousands of people, you know, jumping over a truck and taking what they can. There is boxes from the Egyptian Red Cross that contains some food and there is other trucks that carrying flour, which is the most needed item in Gaza. One kilo of flour this morning is about $35. There was a little drop of the prices at the beginning of this Hungarian pause, but then suddenly the prices jumped up again. I spoke to a father in Khan Yunis. He said that he didn't eat and his five children did not eat for the last 48 hours. And he had to buy the flour in this big price which he can't afford.
- [07:07]
Jackie Leonard
Rushdie Abu ALOUF at least 30 people have died in Beijing as northern China experiences days of heavy rains and flooding. Tens of thousands have been evacuated. The downpours started over the weekend and intensified around Beijing and surrounding provinces. Our China Correspondent, Stephen McDonnell is in one of the worst affected areas, the Miyun district of Beijing.
- [07:32]
Stephen McDonnell
In the mountains around Beijing, there's been a mass mobilization involving the People's Armed Police and other emergency teams. There's a roadblock here and there are many like this all around the Meun Reservoir, stopping people from entering the worst hit areas. The government's view is that there have already been too many people dying in this disaster. They don't want more names added to that terrible list. We've just come from a relief center. There are 400 people there now. They're staying in dormitories, they're being given food, and they're pretty happy that they're now in a safer place and they're just waiting to be able to go back in a few days time after the flooding recedes a bit. Down in the city, ordinary citizens have been told not to come to work. But up here in the mountains, it's more a question of the authorities controlling all the roads, controlling where people are going. The good news for the emergency teams, though, is that the rain has stopped. They've been operating in really terrible conditions with driving rain, heavy, strong flooding. Now they've got a bit of a break to reach some of these villages that have been cut off with no electricity, where roads have been washed away. But Xi Jinping has warned them, look, you've got to really muck in now because we don't want any more casualties. However, the rain is going to come back in the coming days. And so China's leader has also warned they should be preparing for the worst.
- [09:00]
Jackie Leonard
Stephen McDonnell In China, Russia's national airline Aeroflot is continuing to experience disruption and flight cancellations after pro Ukrainian hackers claimed to have attacked its IT systems. Aeroflot said it had cancelled more than 50 flights on Tuesday, mostly within Russia, but also including routes to Belarus and Armenia, which the Kremlin said was worrying. Our cyber correspondent, Joe Tidy is following the story.
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Joe Tidy
It's chaos in lots of airports across Russia and in countries that fly to Russia. I think it's being underreported actually, because I just read this morning that there's 42 flights canceled yesterday and more today. But these are round trips, so that means that there are double that number. And if you look at some of the videos on social media, there are huge queues of people that can't get on planes, can't get information on the state service tasks. I was just reading that they've said that people are being urged to kind of keep away from airports because they're becoming overcrowded, they can't do refunds, ticket machines aren't working. And this has all come from hacking group called Silent Crow, which said we declared the successful completion of a prolonged and large scale operation as a result of which the internal IT infrastructure of Aeroflot was completely compromised and destroyed.
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Jackie Leonard
So how common are attacks like this on Russia?
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Joe Tidy
They are regular. Almost every week I'm being told by different hacking groups about various things they've done to take down services and targets in Russia. We often think about cyber attacks, particularly from a Western perspective, as being like, you know, perpetrated against the west by Russia. But in terms of hacktivist attacks, which obviously have really come to the fore in the last few years since the full scale invasion, it's the other way around because you've got pro Ukrainian hackers launching attacks against Russia, you've got other hackers from different countries doing the same. This group, Silent Crow, which have carried out the Aeroflot attack, they have teamed up with a group called Cyber Partisans and they are a long standing hacking group. They describe themselves as a highly organized hacktivist collective that's fighting for the liberation of Belarus from dictatorial rule. But of course they're going against Russia as part of the kind of online allying ship between the two countries. In terms of the attack on Ukraine.
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Jackie Leonard
Generally speaking, how vulnerable are airline IT systems?
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Joe Tidy
We have heard a couple of attacks this year. So for example, there was a criminal attack which is obviously based around money. This one today is not about money and that was against Qantas airlines. But there are almost regular attacks against the IT networks of airlines. But it's really important to say these are attacks on the it, not the ot. And there is a difference. OT is operational technology, IT is information technology. So there's no real concern here that these planes are going to fall out the sky or anything like this. It's about the IT networks that underpin the running of these airlines.
- [11:41]
Jackie Leonard
That was Joe Tidey. President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia has ignored Donald Trump's latest peace ultimatum and pressed on with its bombing campaign targeting more than 70 Ukrainian towns and villages. He said 22 people had died, including a pregnant woman at a in a city on the Dnipro River. A prison facility in Zaporizhzhia was also hit. Our defence correspondent Jonathan Beale reports from Kyiv.
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Gideon Saar
President Zelensky says at least 22 people were killed across the country overnight in the latest Russian aerial assault on Ukraine's towns and cities. Most of the casualties were in a prison near the city of Zaporizhzhia hit by Russian glide bombs. Ukraine's Ministry of Justice said 16 inmates were killed with dozens more injured. Nearby housing was also damaged. The frontline region of Zaporizhzhia in the southeast is already partially occupied by Russian forces and is regularly targeted by Russian drones, missiles and bombs. Russia, like Ukraine, claims it only strikes military targets. But in Ukraine, civilians are often among the casualties of these nightly attacks.
- [12:57]
Jackie Leonard
Jonathan Beale There's a new threat to an 81 year old water treaty between the US and Mexico. It covers two major rivers, the Rio Grande and the Colorado River. Under the treaty, every year Mexico sends to the US enough water to fill 170,000 Olympic sized swimming pools and gets even more back. But northern Mexico is in the middle of a severe drought and it's led to the country country falling behind on deliveries. The Trump administration has stepped in, threatening sanctions and more tariffs. The BBC's Will Grant reports.
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Will Grant
After 30 consecutive months without rain, the townsfolk of San Francisco, the Conchos, gather to plead for divine intervention on the shores of Lake Toronto, the reservoir behind Chihuahua State's most important damage called La Boquilla. Farmers on horseback and their families Pray for a very wet rainy season. So far, they've had no sign of one.
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Jackie Leonard
From its high water mark, the lake.
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Will Grant
Has lost 26.5 meters of depth.
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Rushdie Abu Alouf
It's now at less than 14% of its capacity.
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Will Grant
In the congregation is Rafael Betanze, who has monitored La Boquilla for the state water authority for 35 years. Few know the lake's fluctuations as well as Mr. Bettanze, and as we head out on the reservoir for a closer look, he says he's never seen the situation get this dire.
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Rushdie Abu Alouf
It's impossible. We are not able to water crops. You can see that the dam lies.
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Jackie Leonard
Idle, there's no hydroelectric power being generated.
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Rushdie Abu Alouf
And we can't use any water for agriculture. They're just decent enough.
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Will Grant
Despite the meager supply in Chihuahua, Mexico must abide by the Terms of a 1944 water sharing treaty with the United States. Under the agreement, Mexico must send water from the Rio Grande to Texas. In return, the US sends its own much larger allocation from the Colorado river to supply the Mexican border cities of Tijuana and Mexicali. Mexico is in arrears and has been for much of the 21st century. In April, on his Truth Social site, President Trump accused Mexico of CP stealing the water and threatened tariffs and maybe sanctions unless Mexico sends Texas what it owes. The thing is, the complaints from Texas are valid, but people here on the Mexican side say you simply can't take from what isn't there. People in these communities feel trapped by the terms of what they consider to be an outdated agreement which doesn't account for the ravages of climate change.
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Brian Jones
So this is my corn. It's about a week, 10 days off from being ready to harvest.
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Will Grant
Brian Jones, a fourth generation farmer in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.
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Brian Jones
For the last three years, I've only been able to plant half my farm because I don't have enough irrigation water. We feel that Mexico has not been living up to their part of the treaty.
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Will Grant
The cross border arguments go beyond just water scarcity. They're also about agricultural methods and efficiency. In the face of such a litany of problems, the community around the Rio Conchos can do little besides bow their heads and pray the rain falls sometime soon.
- [16:15]
Jackie Leonard
That was Will Grant. Still to come in this podcast down there we have Sasuma Anna, the Mother of the Sea, which is like a mythical figure in Greenlandic history or in Inuit tradition. Greenland's Inuit majority taking pride in traditional but can they achieve independence? There's been another mass shooting in the United States. A gunman Killed four people before shooting himself at a skyscraper in New York. This was Mayor Eric Adams message to New Yorkers. No words can describe this act of evil. A man who takes the lives of others who are innocent. And no words can fill the void that has been left by this tragedy. Horrific crime reminds us all how easy it is to gain access to a gun. Gun violence has scarred so many neighbors and ripped apart too many families across this entire country. And we will continue the fight to do all we can to protect our city. But tonight we mourn for those who were killed. Our correspondent in New York, John Sudworth has been following the story.
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John Sudworth
These reports started coming in at around 6:30 in the evening here in New York. Reports of a mass shooting at a skyscraper on Park Avenue in central Manhattan. A gunman seen striding into that building carrying an M4 assault rifle at his side and then spraying bullets indiscriminately in the lobby. Taking an elevator up to one of the the upper floors and doing the same there. We've heard from the New York Mayor, Eric Adams and the police commissioner at a press conference here confirming that five people were shot. Four of them have died, including one NYPD officer and another civilian. Another worker in that building has been taken to hospital with critical injuries.
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Unnamed Woman in Gaza
John, mass shootings are sadly a regular occurrence in the US but, but rarely in Manhattan.
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John Sudworth
Yeah, that's right. And I think that's why there's been such a sense of shock, you know, as news of this story has come in. You know, obviously Manhattan is one of the most sort of, has the highest concentration of media organizations in the world. So this is a city that is, you know, under very close scrutiny if you like. But it is also in a state with some of the strictest gun laws in America. These kind of things thankfully are not common in this city. So I think that's part of the reason why there has been such a reaction. I mean of course at the end of last year we had the shooting of the United Healthcare CEO Luigi Mancione, who's facing trial for that similar sense of shock at the time. And of course the political dimension of that particular shooting gave that story such public interest. In this case. The police say that the suspect who They've named as 27 year old Shane Tamura from Las Vegas, he drove by car all the way from Vegas, crossing multiple states, arriving in New York today. They say that he had a history of mental health problems. They are looking at motive, this skyscraper house and pretty high profile companies, including the NFL for example. We don't know whether that's connected or whether it was chosen at random. But obviously the police are going to be looking now very carefully to see if they can understand why this building was targeted in the way that it was.
- [19:51]
Jackie Leonard
John Sudworth, and he was speaking to Anna Foster. The five day conflict between Thailand and Cambodia was the deadliest between them for more than a decade. At least 40 people were killed and more than 300,000 displaced. The ceasefire agreed on Monday appears to be holding despite reports from Thai forces of attacks by Cambodian troops in at least five locations. Some people have begun returning to their homes. Others are waiting to see what happens.
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Imogen Folks
I really wanted to return home, but I dare not go now. I'd rather wait until later today or tomorrow to see what the situation looks like.
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Brian Jones
I was listening to news on my phone last night in bed to hear if they stopped. I didn't hear any gunfire after midnight. So I started praying that they would.
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Gideon Saar
Permanently stop the fighting as agreed.
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Brian Jones
I want to go home. I left all my things, my house and my cattle.
- [20:48]
Jackie Leonard
Jonathan Head in Bangkok told us more.
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Gideon Saar
I mean, it was a very shaky start to the ceasefire and the Thais were clearly unhappy this morning. Cambodia has denied that there were any skirmishes after midnight that delayed the 7 o' clock meeting they were supposed to have between the commanders in each different area. But eventually those meetings did take place. We've had two actual meetings where Cambodian and Thai top officers sat opposite each other with a table between them and hammered out how they're going to avoid fighting again, and one online meeting. They have agreed for the moment that there will be no more shooting, there will be no more movements of troops, attempted reinforcements of positions, and that they will now start facilitating the return of any killed or injured soldiers, but also to start looking at how they can get people back to their homes, back from the evacuation centers. And for that there needs to be an absolute assurance this isn't going to flare up again. I think on the Thai side they're very jumpy because of the number of civilian casualties from Cambodian rockets.
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Jackie Leonard
And Donald Trump has warned Thai and Cambodian leaders that trade negotiations with the US Won't progress if fighting continues. Will that sort of thing focus minds?
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Gideon Saar
Well, I think it did. In fact, the Thai foreign minister has just acknowledged that their decision to attend the meeting in Malaysia on Monday was as a result of the conversation with Donald Trump on Saturday. Now, of course, the Thais aren't framing it as, you know, President Trump put a gun to our heads and we did it. They're saying, well, we you know, we explained to President Trump we are a very good partner of the US and we're committed to resolving things peacefully. So we decided to attend. I think it's very likely that both countries would have come to talks at some point this week because there was a lot of pressure from neighboring countries and Malaysia put a lot of diplomatic efforts into getting the two sides together. But the fact they came together so quickly and announced a ceasefire after just two hours of talks is almost certainly down to the pressure from President Trump. They've got till Friday to get a deal on tariffs. Both are now facing 36% tariffs if they don't have a deal that's much higher than neighbouring countries. So that definitely played a part.
- [22:57]
Jackie Leonard
Jonathan Head. For the first time in Colombia's history, a former president has been convicted of a criminal offence. Alvaro Uribe, who was president from 2002 until 2010, was found guilty of witness tampering. He could now face up to 12 years in prison. Here's our South America correspondent, Ione Wells.
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Unnamed Woman in Gaza
The charges at the centre of this trial date back to 2012, when Alvaro Uribe accused a left wing senator of fabricating links between him and right wing paramilitary groups involved in Colombia's armed conflict. Uribe claimed that the senator was pressuring jailed fighters to testify against him. But the Supreme Court dismissed his case and instead began investigating him. They found evidence that him and his allies had tried to influence or bribe ex paramilitaries who were in prison to change their testimonies and essentially retract statements linking him to those groups. So he was accused of witness tampering, which he's now been convicted of. The paramilitary groups in question fought Marxist guerrillas like the farc, often in extremely bloody battles in Colombia. He's strongly denied all wrongdoing. His sentence will be decided in a future court hearing, but his defence is expected to appeal the conviction. This ruling will likely have a strong political impact in Colombia. He's widely seen as Colombia's most influential politician in the early 21st century. His supporters credited him with leading this military crackdown against the Marxist rebels of the farc, eventually driving the insurgents to the negotiating table, where they signed a peace treaty with the government in 2016 under his successor. His critics, though, accuse him of being responsible for multiple human rights violations committed by the state, by security forces in as part of this crackdown on armed groups. After his initial house arrest in 2020, supporters rallied around him in Medellin, but also critics were seen celebrating in the streets, revealing these deep splits within Colombia itself.
- [25:00]
Jackie Leonard
Ione Wells Greenland has frequently been in the headlines since Donald Trump's return to power with his repeated threats to annex it from Denmark. Greenland has a high level of autonomy, but many in the majority Inuit ethnic group hope that one day it will be fully independent. But to do that the figures need to add up and at the moment it relies on big subsidies from the Danish government. Bob Howard has been to the capital Nuuk to hear how people there might be able to self fund their future. Down there we have Sesuma Anna, the mother of the Sea, which is like a mythical figure in Greenlandic history or.
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Imogen Folks
An Inuit tradition like the protector of the sea, of the animals, the hunting, the survival, everything. You know, she's a really core figure in Inuit mythology.
- [25:48]
Brian Jones
The indigenous Inuit people make up around 80% of the population living on the biggest island in the world. When earlier this year US President Donald Trump announced he wanted to buy or even Annex Greenland, the 55,000 plus people living here suddenly found themselves in the international spotlight. Living in harmony with the environment is critical, as we heard Poet AKA Niviana just say. Greenland has potential for the extraction of many minerals, including so called rare earth metals. But there are currently only two active mines in operation. Thomas Varming, the chief consultant and leader of the National Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland says there are many operational challenges when ice covers more than 80% of the land.
- [26:36]
John Sudworth
Development is a bit hampered by the climate because you can most probably only work three months a year some places. And the longer time it takes before things get started, well, the longer time you have to wait for a cash flow to come in. And that basically also means that the investors have to be risk taking.
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Brian Jones
But then there are the restrictions the Greenlandic government has put on mining and the time it takes to secure various permissions to start extracting.
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Joe Tidy
Getting that permit for some is being.
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Jackie Leonard
Compared to having your root canal at the dentist.
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Joe Tidy
It's a long haul to get that permit.
- [27:09]
Brian Jones
The Greenlandic government is also involved in two legal cases with mining companies which have halted their work. Still, the Minister for Business, Trade and raw materials, Nya Nathanielson, doesn't think that's putting investors off. She believes five new mines might be sustainable in the next five to 10 years.
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Jackie Leonard
In Greenland, we do insist on doing things with a high ESG standard, that is environment, government and social standard, and that adds to the bill. And that means that making profit in Greenland is probably more difficult than many other jurisdictions, but we won't really lower our standards. So if the Western world wants a green transition, they cannot get it as I see it on a discount.
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Brian Jones
Another potential source of income is the tourist trade. Last year 160,000 people visited Greenland, with more expected with direct flights from North America. Helena Stephenson is head of Content and Administration at Visit Greenland.
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Imogen Folks
Before that you had to go flying from North America over Greenland, maybe to Iceland or Denmark and then back to Greenland. Now they can fly directly in high season.
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Brian Jones
Still, Minister Naya Nathanielson says it will take time for the island where fishing generates the 90% of export income to completely be able to stand on its own two feet.
- [28:29]
Jackie Leonard
If you ask if I'm ready to declare full on autonomy, no, because I have an obligation to the population of Greenland and we don't have a self sufficient economy yet. That report by Bob Howard and that's it from us for now. But there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you would like to comment on this edition or topics the covered in it, do please send us an email. The address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk. you can also find us on X@BBC World Service. Just use the hashtag global newspod. This edition was mixed by Alison Purcell Davis. The producers were Carla Conti and Peter Hyatt. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard and until next time, goodbye.