Photo: Domingo Alvarez / Unsplash(CC0)
In today’s edition of Squirrel News, we’re talking about Latin America’s lowest poverty rate on record, India’s pilot programme to compensate women for housework, and New York Fashion Week’s decision to ban fur from the runway.
Latin America’s monetary poverty rate fell to a historic low of 25.5% in 2024 – around 160 million people – according to new data from the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. The 2.2-point drop from 2023 was driven largely by gains in Mexico and, to a lesser extent, Brazil.
Source: Colombia One
Kerala has nearly eradicated extreme poverty through strong investments in health, education, and equitable distribution, paired with well-targeted safety nets and community-driven monitoring.
Source: Brookings
India is trialling providing direct payments to adult women in recognition of the unpaid care work that keeps households running. Eligibility criteria differ by region, with filters such as age limits, income caps, and exclusions for families with government employees, taxpayers, or owners of cars or sizeable landholdings.
Source: BBC News
Four million native oysters are set to be reintroduced to the seabed off Norfolk in eastern England. By the end of 2026, 40,000 specially designed clay “mother reefs” will be each seeded with hundreds of juvenile oysters that will mature and form an interconnected reef system along the North Sea coast.
Source: Positive News
The Council of Fashion Designers of America has announced that shows on the official NYFW calendar – one of the fashion industry’s most prestigious and heavily-publicised events – will no longer be allowed to feature animal fur.
Source: Vogue
The recently announced changes include greater protections for native forests, stricter rules for land clearing and a limit on fast-tracking of coal and gas projects. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claimed that the laws were a win for nature and business, and their implementation would also speed up major projects linked to housing, renewable energy and critical minerals.
Source: BBC News
Year 7 pupils at a school in New South Wales created a 3D-printed hand for their classmate using software openly available from an Australian-based charity. It was three months of brainstorming improvements, each version better than the last, and now they will present their results at a youth summit in Tokyo.
Source: ABC Australia
Launched in 2021, the initiative turns food waste into valuable resources. Each sealed bin, slightly smaller than a shipping container and modelled after a cow’s four-chambered stomach, uses microbes to convert 25 tonnes of food scraps a year into 5,400 gallons of fertiliser, whilst also producing biogas for electricity or fuel.
Source: Grist
Originating from a study on dementia and diabetes, California nonprofit The Good Life encourages healing through healthy cooking, especially in marginalised communities. They offer free online cooking classes for older cooks at home and free food pickup for ingredients and intergenerational contact.
Source: Good Good Good
