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Women and men from the rural community of Sachac, at more than 3500 meters above sea level, build a kilometer-long infiltration ditch to capture rainwater and use it to irrigate crops in Cuzco, in Peru’s Andes highlands. CREDIT: Janet Nina/IPS

By Mariela Jara
CUZCO, Peru , Dec 22 2021 (IPS)

“When I was a little girl we didn’t suffer from water shortages like we do now. Today we are experiencing more droughts, our water sources are drying up and we cannot sit idly by,” Kely Quispe, a small farmer from the community of Huasao, located half an hour from Cuzco, the capital of Peru’s ancient Inca empire, told IPS.

She is one of the 80 members of the Agroecological School of the Flora Tristan Peruvian Women’s Center, a non-governmental institution that has worked for the recovery of water sources through traditional techniques known as seeding and harvesting water in this part of the southern Andean region of Cuzco.

Muñapata, Huasao and Sachac are the three rural Quechua-speaking communities in the province of Quispicanchi, located between 3150 and 3800 meters above sea level, that have so far benefited from the project. The feminist-oriented institution promotes solutions based on nature and community work to address the problem of water scarcity and inadequate water use practices.

“We want to boost water security as well as gender equality because they are two sides of the same coin,” Elena Villanueva told IPS. On Dec. 14 she presented in this city the results of the initiative whose first phase was carried out in 2020 and 2021, with the support of the Basque Development Cooperation Agency and Mugen Gainetik, an international association for cooperation with countries of the developing South also based in Spain’s northern Basque region.

According to the National Water Authority (ANA), Peru is the eighth country in the world in terms of water availability, with a rich hydrodiversity of glaciers, rivers, lakes, lagoons and aquifers. However, various factors such as inefficient management of water and uneven territorial distribution of the population, in addition to climate change, make it impossible to meet consumption demands.

“The lack of water severely affects families in rural areas because they depend on small-scale agriculture for their livelihoods. The melting of glaciers as well as the increase in the frequency and intensity of droughts due to climate change are reducing water availability,” Villanueva explained.

This impact, she said, is not neutral. Because of the gender discrimination and social disadvantages they face, it is rural women who bear the brunt, as their already heavy workload is increased, their health is undermined, and their participation in training and decision-making spaces is further limited.

Kely Quispe, a farmer trained at the Flora Tristán Center’s Agroecological School, holds a tomato in her organic garden in the farming community of Huasao. Her vegetable production depends on access to water for irrigation, but climate change has made water more scarce in the Andes highlands region of Cuzco in southern Peru. CREDIT: Janet Nina/IPS

“Moreover, although they are the ones who use water to ensure food, hygiene and health, and to irrigate their crops, they are not part of the decision-making with regard to its management and distribution,” she stressed.

The expert said that precisely in response to demand by the women farmers at the Agroecological School, where they receive technical and rights training, they are focusing on reviving water harvesting techniques used in ancient Peru, while promoting the equal participation of women in rural communities in the process.

She said that approximately 700 families living in poverty, some 3,500 people – about 11 percent of the population of the three communities – will benefit from the works being carried out.

Harvesting water

So far, these works are focused on the afforestation of 15 hectares and the construction of six “cochas” – the name for small earthen ponds, in the Quechua language – and an infiltration ditch, as part of a plan that will be expanded with other initiatives over the next two years.

The ditch, which is one kilometer long in 10-meter stretches, 60 centimeters deep and 40 centimeters wide and is located in the upper part of the community, collects rainwater instead of letting it run down the slopes.

The technique allows water to infiltrate slowly in order to feed natural springs, high altitude wetlands or small native prairies, as well as the cochas.

The mayor of the rural community of Sachac, Eugenio Turpo Quispe (right), poses with other leaders of the village of 200 families who will benefit from the forestation works and the construction of small reservoirs and infiltration ditches that will increase the flow of water in this highlands area that is suffering from prolonged droughts due to climate change. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

In their communal work, villagers use local materials and greenhouse thermal blankets to help retain water. In addition, they have used extracted soil to raise the height of the ditch, to keep rainwater from running over the top.

Although the ditch has been receiving rainwater this month (the rainy season begins in November-December), the ecosystem impact is expected to be more visible in about three years when the cocha ponds have year-round water availability, helping villagers avoid the shortages of the May-October dry season.

Several community members explained to IPS that they will now be able to harvest water from the ditch while at the same time caring for the soil, because heavy rain washes it away and leaves it without nutrients. Some 150 agricultural plots will also benefit from a sprinkler irrigation system, thanks to the project.

Since agriculture is the main livelihood of the families and this activity depends on rainwater, the main impact will be the availability of water during the increasingly prolonged dry periods to irrigate their crops, ensure harvests and avoid hunger, for both villagers and their livestock.

Eucalyptus and pine, huge consumers of water

The mayor of the Sachac community, Eugenio Turpo Quispe, told IPS that this is the first time that water seeding and harvesting practices have been carried out in his area. “We had not had the opportunity before; these works have begun thanks to the women who proposed forestation and the construction of cochas and ditches,” he said.

The local leader lamented that due to misinformation, two decades ago they planted pine and eucalyptus in the highlands of his community. “They have dried up our water sources, and when it rains the water disappears, it does not infiltrate. Now we know that out of ten liters of rain that falls on the ground, eight are absorbed by the eucalyptus and only two return to the earth,” he explained during the day that IPS spent in the community.

Women farmers from the rural community of Sachac show the map of water sources in their area and the uses for irrigation of their crops, for human consumption and household needs, as well as watering their animals, which they cannot satisfy throughout the year due to the increasingly long and severe dry season. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Turpo Quispe said they had seen forestation and construction of cochas and ditches in other communities, but did not know how to replicate them, and that only through the Flora Tristán Center’s project have they been able to implement these solutions to tackle the serious problem of shrinking water sources.

In Sachac, the three techniques have been adopted with the participation of women and men in communal work that began at six in the morning and ended at four in the afternoon. “Side by side we have been planting native plants, digging ditches and hauling stones for the cochas,” the mayor said proudly.

In this community, 9,000 seedlings of queuñas (Polylepis) and chachacomos (Escallonia Resinosas) – tree species that were used in the times of the ancient Inca empire – were planted. “These trees consume only two liters of rainwater and give eight back to Pachamama (Mother Earth),” Turpo Quispe said. As part of the project, the community has built fences to protect crops and has relocated grazing areas for their animals.

“We have planted seedlings and in 10 or 15 years our children and grandchildren will see all our hills green and with living springs so that they do not suffer a lack of water,” the mayor said.

Kely Quispe from the community of Huasao is equally upbeat: “With water we can irrigate our potatoes, corn and vegetables; increase our production to have enough to sell and have extra money; take care of our health and that of the whole family, and prevent the spread of covid.”

“But just as we use water for life, it is also up to us to participate on an equal footing with men in irrigation committees and community councils to decide how it is distributed, conserved and managed,” she added.

A model shows the water sources in the rural community of Muñapata in the Cuzco region, in Peru’s southern highlands. It was made by local women and men who built a system based on ancestral techniques for the collection and management of water, as increasing drought threatens their lives and crops. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The decade of water security

Villanueva of the Flora Tristán Center said it was important for the country’s local and regional authorities to commit to guaranteeing water security in rural areas within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The International Decade for Action: Water for Sustainable Development was declared for 2018-2028 by the United Nations and SDG6 is dedicated to water and sanitation, to ensure universal and equitable access for all, protect and restore water-related ecosystems, and support the participation of local communities in improving management and sanitation.

“At the national level, public policies aimed at seeding and harvesting water should be strengthened because they revive the communities’ ancestral knowledge, involving sustainable practices with low environmental impact that contribute to guaranteeing the food security of families,” she said.

However, Villanueva remarked, in order to achieve their objectives, these measures must not only promote equal participation of men and women, but must also be accompanied by actions to close the gender gap in education, access to resources, training and violence that hinder the participation and development of rural women.

By Philippe Benoit
WASHINGTON, Dec 21 2021 (IPS)

U.S. President Biden just hosted The Summit for Democracy to demonstrate the advantages of democracy in the global competition with authoritarian regimes. The U.S. can succeed in this competition by demonstrating to the people of developing countries (i.e., the vast majority of the world’s population) how coupling democracy and development is the best course to improve their lives.

The U.S.’s ability to deploy this potent combination is an important advantage it enjoys over authoritarian competitors. For that reason, the Biden administration should add development to its democracy initiative.

As Biden has stressed: “We are in the midst of a fundamental debate about the future and direction of our world .. between those who argue … autocracy is the best way forward … and those who understand that democracy is essential.”

Similarly, he explained to a Joint Session of the U.S. Congress: “We’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st century.” And in this competition, he said, democracy must prevail: “We have to prove that our model isn’t a relic of our history; it’s the single best way to revitalize the promise of our future.”

The strategy should not be anchored in merely displaying that the world’s wealthiest countries are democracies. Rather, the strategy needs to establish that these wealthy democracies and the system they embody are the best equipped to improve the standards of living of the people of the developing world

The December summit was designed to do precisely that. Over 100 countries were invited to participate, with representatives from governments, civil society and the private sector. The number of countries and breadth of representation shows the Biden administration’s ambition.

The summit was organized around three themes: defending against authoritarianism, addressing and fighting corruption and promoting respect for human rights. These are important topics when considering what a vibrant democracy can and should provide to its citizens. But there is a critical fourth theme missing from the summit: the power of democracies to improve the lives of the multitudes in developing countries suffering from inadequate standards of living.

Billions in these countries struggle to meet basic needs in food, shelter, health, education, sanitation and more. Too many families face daily threats of malnutrition, inadequate sanitation, insecurity, and generalized poverty. Too often, unreliable energy and transport systems, as well as corruption and repression, prevent families from raising their incomes to improve their lives. The terror that COVID-19 constitutes for impoverished countries illustrates the challenge.

The U.S. government needs to show the world’s people that democracies provide the best promise to improve their lives and to protect their families. The strategy should not be anchored in merely displaying that the world’s wealthiest countries are democracies. Rather, the strategy needs to establish that these wealthy democracies and the system they embody are the best equipped to improve the standards of living of the people of the developing world.

To win a global competition, it is important to speak to the global audience, and most of that audience resides in developing countries (over 5 billion people outside of China). Moreover, it is in these countries that populations will grow the most — 2 billion more people by 2050, with more than half of that growth occurring in Africa.

China has understood the importance of this audience, as epitomized by its massive trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative to finance infrastructure and other projects in developing countries. For various commentators in Washington, this initiative is less about assistance and more about Beijing’s strategy to advance its geopolitical interests to the detriment of the U.S.

Yet, irrespective of the motivation, developing countries have been taking note of both China’s growing overseas assistance, as well of its development successes in reducing poverty and raising incomes domestically.

But improving the quality of people’s lives is not only about more infrastructure or improved material conditions. It is also about social and political dimensions and, importantly, about freedoms (as reflected, for example, in the UN declaration on development).

This includes freedom from fear and oppression, the right to expression, to participate in politics and the right of minorities to the same opportunities as the majority. Importantly, these are elements that a vibrant democracy should deliver, and an authoritarian system is poorly equipped to provide.

Unfortunately, several of today’s democracies, including in many developing countries, are falling short in delivering on democracy’s promise. For example, minority ethnic groups in various countries are being discriminated against, or even oppressed, by the majority (a torment that is more prevalent in and arguably endemic to authoritarian regimes).

So, as Biden has stressed, democracies must do better: “We have to defend [democracy], fight for it, strengthen it, renew it.”  For these reasons, the three announced themes of the summit are indeed important.

And yet they are insufficient in and of themselves to win the global competition. Providing the conditions to raise people out of poverty and to promote inclusive prosperity free from fear is a critical and complementary fourth theme that would speak to people’s aspirations across the developing world.

While there was some discussion of economic development in connection with the summit, it was too limited.  So, in addition to new commitments on countering authoritarianism, etc., the democracy initiative of the Biden administration needs to catalyze substantial and meaningful action to better fight poverty and deprivation in poorer countries.

Among other things, this should include increased funding and more technical support from wealthy democracies to developing countries, but also commitments from the governments of the poorer nations to foster the conditions domestically for fair and inclusive growth.

The U.S. has historically understood the strategic importance of coupling development and democracy, sponsoring organizations such as the World Bank, UN Development Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The global wars of the last century demonstrated the benefits of a world in which the U.S. democracy surpassed authoritarian regimes — and also that the U.S. and other countries were safer in a world filled with vibrant democracies. This dynamic helps to explain why the U.S. has remained the biggest provider of overseas development assistance, notwithstanding fluctuating domestic political support. But there is growing international competition.

Democracy is a powerful system to be deployed globally to raise standards of living while promoting individual liberties and freedom from oppression. Authoritarian systems cannot stand up to that promise. Democracy’s leaders, including from many of the globe’s richest countries, need to demonstrate what they and democracy can provide to the world’s have-nots.

That is key to any strategy to win the competition of the 21st century. To this end, President Biden should, following on his earlier Leaders Summit on Climate and this Summit for Democracy, convene a “Summit for Development” that addresses the poverty and other challenges, as well as the aspirations, of the world’s disadvantaged.  

First published in The Hill on December 8, 2021

Philippe Benoit has over 25 years of experience working in international affairs and development, including in management positions at the World Bank. He is currently managing director, Energy and Sustainability, with Global Infrastructure Advisory Services 2050.

Online platform Fuzia uses positive reinforcement and creativity to support its community. Credit: Sangeeta CS/Fuzia

By Fairuz Ahmed
New York, Dec 21 2021 (IPS)

This is an age where pandemics are raging, millions live in war-torn strife, yet women are judged on their skin tones and height, says matchmaker Hirion Shah.

“It is sad and frustrating to see educated families, Ph.D. holders, even scientists from high-tech companies turning down suitable matches based on only such issues. I have over 25 years of experience in matrimony matchmaking, and it is high time we change our perspective,” Shah says in an exclusive interview with IPS.

With hundreds of successful matchmaking successes over the years, she expresses her concern about stagnant values that many families demand while looking for potential matches for their children.

“And it does not stop there: fair, dark, skinny, little chubby, tall or not tall enough, these become central traits of being judged. This is almost an epidemic when it comes to Asian communities at home and abroad,” Shah says. “I have seen hundreds of marriages ending in divorce because basic values, characteristics, and overall compatibility were given a backseat during selection, and looks were prioritized.”

According to Compare Comp, in 2020, 55% of marriages across the globe were arranged marriages, and approximately 20 million arranged marriages exist today. The divorce rate for arranged marriages globally is at 6.3%.

India has the highest rate of arranged marriages, hitting 90%, followed by China, Pakistan, Japan, and Bangladesh. It is alarming that 14 million girls get married every year before turning 18.

The UN has declared child marriage a human rights violation. According to the UNFPA, those forced into early or child marriages suffer an increased risk of pregnancy and childbirth complications.

According to IBISWorld, weddings services in the US market alone comprises a $56.7bn industry and are given a center stage in millions of families. Besides wedding expenses, a good chunk of this industry expands to beautification, enhancing and fixing body images, altering skin color or looks.

The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS) says that in 2017, more than half of their practitioners saw an increase in cosmetic surgery or injectables with clients under the age of 30. More than 80% of treatments were cosmetic non-surgical procedures, and the trend was born out of social pressures.

According to Harper’s Bazaar, the top three non-surgical treatments among brides, grooms, and wedding parties are facelifts, eyelifts, and nose jobs. Procedures like Botox, hyaluronic acid injections, and chemical peels are popular. Social media influence, peer pressure, and feeling a need to fit in were the main reasons for approaching a plastic surgeon.

Amina Banu recounts her experience of an arranged marriage.

“I grew up in a metro city. My mother has been a teacher for 30 years and my father a scientist. My older sister and brother both are engineers. I have completed a master’s from Michigan, United States,” Banu says, but none of this seemed to matter.

“It was a tiring process to get married despite our social and economic setting. I met over 25 suitors and settled down with the 26th. The process seems brutal and demeaning.”

She says she was rejected because she is 5’6”, and the suitors’ families thought the partners would look awkward.

Fuzia believe in supporting their online community through workshops, support groups and podcasts where users can understand and gain information about positive body shape affirmation and ways to develop a healthy relationship with their bodies. Credit: Ditsa Mahanti/Fuzia

“Happiness and the mental match have nothing to do with such fickle matter, but still, at our age, these are massive points to weigh in, while families look for suitable grooms or brides. The irony is that my husband is 5’4”, and we have been happily married for the past 12 years,” Banu says. She now has three sons and works in New York. She spends a lot of time promoting healthy lifestyles and body images in teens and young adults in minority communities.

The Obesity Action Coalition has found that among overweight middle-school-aged children, 30% of girls and 24% of boys experienced daily bullying, teasing, or rejection because of their size.

These numbers doubled for overweight, high school students – with 63% of girls and 58% of boys experiencing some form of bullying due to their weight and size. Most of the time, these weight-related comments sound like helpful hints. But in reality, children can feel trapped, alone, and helpless to change their situations.

Also, it is not just school bullies initiating weight teasing, body shaming, or teasing.

A study published on Wiley Online Library in September 2018 states that the victim’s friends, teachers, coaches, and even their parents often participate. They use subtle forms of bullying or relational aggression to bully and tease.

Obesity Action notes that many people bullied or shamed because of their weight suffer depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem.

Pragya Singhal, a social media associate from the online platform Fuzia, says the platform offers support sessions, podcasts and publishes blogs to help people address body image and body-shaming issues.

“The majority of our users’ ages range from teens to young adults. We try to instill the affirmation that, with positivity and a growth mindset, you can become the best and most confident version of yourself,” Singhal says.

Fuzia, which Riya Sinha and Shraddha Varma co-founded, has 5 million users. It has created a safe space where users can network, have a conversation, share their creativity, find work opportunities and study online. The platform has a clear policy about profanity and hate speech and ensures positive engagement.

The online platform uses creative avenues to seek information about mental health, learn ways to cope, ask for help, and express themselves in a safe and judgment-free way.

Shraddha Varma, Fuzia’s co-founder, says that their initiatives align with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations of ensuring good health and well-being.   Fuzia sets up workshops, support groups, and podcasts where users can understand and gain information about positive body shape affirmation and ways to develop a healthy relationship with their bodies.

“In my opinion, body image has long been and is still considered a parameter of how one thinks about themselves and others. We all have something that we want to change about our bodies, and we have very little idea of how hugely it affects our self-esteem,” says Varma.

“Let’s accept that nobody’s perfect, and we must stop body-shaming others and ourselves. What matters instead is what our bodies can do, if we’re aware of our bodies and if we’re taking the right care of our bodies by getting a good dose of sleep, eating healthy, focusing on being strong and fit, and keeping just about a healthy weight.”

• This article is a sponsored feature.

 

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Women have taken the helm in Lebanon’s protests, but not in the realm of formal politics. This role is symbolized in this statue of a protesting woman in Martyrs' Square, Beirut. Credit: Mona Alami

By Mona Alami
Beirut, Lebanon, Dec 21 2021 (IPS)

Despite its apparent liberalism, Lebanon scores low in gender equality, especially in politics.

According to the Gender Gap index, Lebanon ranks third last in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with only Syria and Yemen, both plagued by war, scoring lower.

According to Reliefweb, since 2010, Lebanon has witnessed a consistent decline in its relative gender gap score – reaching close to zero in terms of political empowerment.

In November, incumbent Prime Minister Najib Mikati was criticized for saying that Lebanon’s Independence Day celebrations were similar to a “divorced woman celebrating her wedding anniversary … but let’s not forget that if she had remained understanding until her last day in the marriage, she wouldn’t be divorced…”

Rima Husseini, professor at the Lebanese American University (LAU), says empowerment in the country is superficial.

“On the surface, we are seen as an example because Lebanon has a high number of educated women, with many female entrepreneurs. In appearance, we seem more liberated, but that does not translate into political empowerment at a practical level,” she says in an exclusive interview with IPS.

There is only one woman in the current government.

In the previous election in 2018, only six of 86 women who registered to run for the 128-seat Parliament won their seats. Five of them were members of political parties, which helped facilitate their victory.

Paula Yaacoubian, ventured into politics without the usual patronage – a family name, wealth, or the support of a male political leader.

Only one, former television news presenter Paula Yacoubian ran as an independent, won a seat. Unlike other female candidates, she did not come from a political family nor backed by a local male political leader.

While under Article 7 of the Lebanese constitution, gender equality is guaranteed, personal status is often in the hands of religious communities.  Lebanon recognizes 18 religious communities, each with a different status law, which means gender equality may not apply.

“Inequality stems from the patriarchal framework of households, where family codes and communal laws see women as objects owned by their family. This reality affects women’s political participation in Lebanon,” explains Husseini.

The patriarchal system, where women educate their sons differently from their daughters, is one of the biggest challenges faced by Lebanese women. Another stems from the sectarian system, one of the most detrimental factors hindering women’s political representation, explains Yaacoubian.

More than two decades have passed since Lebanon adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Yet, it has failed so far to comply with the treaty, more specifically when it comes to the gender quota system allowing women’s integration into political life.

“Lebanon’s patriarchal system, which is built on laws that aim to control women and youth, does not allow for real citizenship, with factors of separation such as class and religion prevailing,” says Husseini. “When you think of it, there is no real Lebanese citizenship, no social contract that binds us together. Women have a great role to play but cannot because of the legal system that differentiates between men and women.”

This translates to Lebanon falling behind regarding women’s representation, with no quotas to act as a safeguard, unlike other regional countries.

In nearby Jordan, in appearance, a more conservative country than Lebanon, nine percent of women hold ministerial positions. Another 12 percent participate in Parliament, with an additional 32 percent participating in the local legislatures.

Women played a major role in recent protests in Lebanon. However, this has not translated into political power. Credit: Mona Alami

In Iraq, Women set an unprecedented historical record in the 2021 election. According to an article by the New Arab, 97 female candidates were elected to the 329-seat chamber this year, which equals 29.4 percent of the new Iraqi parliament. This represents 14 more seats than the required quota for female MPs, which is 83, or 25% of parliament according to Iraq’s electoral laws.

The New Arab estimates that the support for female candidates was so significant that 57 MPs will enter the next parliament based solely on registered votes rather than the allocated quota system.

“Conversely, women’s access to politics is restricted in Lebanon. As an example, former MP Dina Boustany only entered parliament after the death of her father. Women get into parliament due to their familial relations,” says Myriam Sfeir, Director of the LAU Arab Institute for Women. “There is a famous saying: ‘women enter parliament as a result of the death of a relative’. Then they leave political life when their male descendant comes of age. In addition, Lebanese political parties are simply more willing to fund men.”

Yaacoubian, who is the only woman to have broken the rules by venturing into politics without the sponsor of a family name, wealth, or the support of a male political leader, underlines that entering political life as a woman is not without cost in Lebanon.

“Women are treated as if they are missing some quality (that men are supposed to have). The prevailing mentality is that men know better, although studies have shown that women tend to be less corrupt and more humane in politics,” she says.

Independent political players such as Yaacoubian, explains Husseini, are often the object of bullying, with efforts made to diminish their value on a personal level or attack their reputation, which would never happen to a male political candidate.

Despite remaining on the sideline of the Lebanese parliamentary life, women have been at the helm of the 2019 protest movement.

They succeeded in easing conflict between separate sectarian regions, such as Ain Remaneh and Chiyah in Beirut, and protected protestors when the riot police attacked them.

In November, three judges, all women, handed in their resignation to protest political interference in the judiciary’s work and the undermining of decisions issued by judges and courts.

“Women are very present, especially as civil society actors. Lebanese women are demanding to be included on decision tables. They are carving a space for themselves in the political world. However, a quota system is essential to ensure better representation in the next parliamentary elections,” says Sfeir.

Women must be brave and persevere at any cost if they want to enter politics, concludes Yaacoubian.

 

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The Republic of Congo received just over 300,000 doses of the COVID vaccines through the COVAX Facility in August 2021. Credit: UNICEF/Aimable Twiringiyima

By Ahunna Eziakonwa
NEW YORK, Dec 21 2021 (IPS)

We are about to start a third year of living with COVID-19. The world’s humanity and solidarity are now at its further test – and yet the implications of the absence of solidarity keep us all in the boat of mutations, lockdowns, quarantines and delayed SDGs – denied prosperity for all. 2021 has unearthed a new expression of global inequity: “vaccine nationalism” – which itself competes high with socioeconomic downturns, jobless growth, the climate crisis, and rising poverty.

As the pandemic ravages on, with Omicron on the scene, the futility of hoarding takes centre stage as even the heavy supply of boosters in advanced economies has not shielded them from the vicious cycle of pandemic-living.

While about 60 per cent of the population in the US and 76 per cent in Canada are fully vaccinated, in Africa – a continent that is home to 1.3 billion people – the number barely reaches 8 per cent.

Many have argued that vaccines’ short shelf life, hesitancy and logistic challenges weigh in. Granted. But the main issue remains the absence of global solidarity – where the rich hoard, and the weaker economies deal with vaccine famine – awaiting their turn…

Vaccine Inequality is also manifest in vaccine affordability. For high income countries to vaccinate 70 per cent of their population it will take raising their health care spending by 0.8 per cent. Lower income countries must increase health care spending by over 50 per cent, on average – to do the same.

Vaccines delayed is development denied. Estimates show that vaccine delays cost Africa up to $14 billion in lost productivity each month and making recovery more challenging – and dragging out the first-in-a-generation recession the continent is facing.

African governments have responded quickly to contain the spread of the virus – but success is overshadowed by the pandemic’s socioeconomic consequences. In 2019, Africa was witnessing record growth numbers in various sectors – like tourism, where Africa had the second-fastest growing tourism sector in the world, contributing 8.5 per cent of the continent’s GDP.

However, with the pandemic, tourism has come to a standstill, and the continent recorded a 2.1 per cent decline in economic growth in 2020. Other accompanying challenges have included general exchange rates depreciations, food insecurity and increased job losses.

Vaccine delays will cost Sub-Saharan Africa 3 per cent of the region’s forecast GDP in 2022-25. UNDP research reveals that recovery rates are strongly correlated to capacity to vaccinate – with a $7.93 billion increase in global GDP for every million people vaccinated.

Low-income countries that are severely impacted by the pandemic do not have the fiscal and financial leeway available to wealthy countries. They risk enduring the pandemic longer if they do not gain early access to COVID-19 vaccines.

This places an inordinate burden on national budgets at a time when the pandemic has decimated fiscal revenues and when higher spending is needed from governments to protect their people and cushion the socioeconomic shock caused by the pandemic.

There is a risk of seeing African countries’ budget deficit widen and it is urgent for us to support countries in developing alternative financing sources. Vaccine famine is putting millions at risk of infection, constraining economic productivity and jeopardizing socioeconomic progress.

The key question today is: Can the world afford such blatant inequality in the face of a pandemic that is sparing no region?

The path to recovery will remain long and uncertain unless we take urgent measures to overhaul the current system of vaccine production, distribution, and financing. Below are some ideas on how to get there fast – building on a consensus emerged from the recently concluded African Economic Conference in Sal, Cabo Verde.

• Development financing in Africa requires an out – of – the – box architecture. Africa will need an additional $425 billion in external funding between now and 2025 to fully recover from the pandemic. It is daunting, but not impossible. It is equivalent to the amount African countries lose to illicit financial flows over a five-year period. Economic governance and creativity can be applied: by, for instance, re-directing investments by pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and similar institutions.

• Leveraging the continent’s natural resources is urgent. Africa’s financial presence in the international system does not reflect its real wealth. Better management and use of extractive industries is critical. Resources like energy, oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium are worth between US$13-14.5 trillion and US$1.7 trillion of potential wealth. Further resources can be harnessed from production in six key sectors: agriculture, water, fisheries, forestry, tourism and human capital. Mobilization of these resources requires governments seriously addressing deficiencies in banking and governance systems to stem illicit financial flows out of the continent. Central banks have a key role to play in unlocking idle resources and channeling them into productive investments. Over $1 trillion of excess reserves could be used to finance Africa’s development.

• International finance systems could be reviewed to become more equitable. Concessional financing should consider countries’ multidimensional vulnerabilities beyond what is reflected in their income levels. The allocation of a record amount of $650 billion SDR issued by the IMF to its country members in August 2021 is a step in the right direction. But more can be done to better support countries that need financing the most. Africa only received $21 billion of SDRs from the total envelope. Such international mechanisms could be reviewed to redress current inequalities.

• Reforming Africa’s financial system. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical role that financial systems have to play in supporting Africa’s development. Improvements in the quality, quantity and efficiency of financial systems are crucial for Africa’s sustainable development. More effective financial systems across the continent can promote resource mobilization and better allocation of savings to productive investments by shifting incentives for the banking system toward the core functions and advancing financial inclusion for individuals and microenterprises.

• Digital innovations are a game changer for Africa’s development financing. Financial systems that harness digital technologies and free and fair competition will be fundamental in revitalizing African economies. The pandemic has proven that digital technologies present enormous opportunities for Africa. They stimulate innovation, economic growth, and job creation in critical economic sectors by allowing better interconnection of African markets with the rest of the world. They can also increase market access and financing for the marginalized population usually excluded by the formal financial systems. However, digitization also has the potential to exacerbate inequalities and we must ensure that the means are sufficiently inclusive for no one to be left behind.

• Sustainable financing will be key. African financial institutions have a role to play in enabling Africa to transform its natural resources advantages, by leveraging blue-carbon markets, and green financing mechanisms. Climate risk-sensitive investment, de-risking, impact investment, environmentally sustainable projects, sustainable energy investment are among critical issues for sustainable financing development. Thus, the financial sector has a key role to play in re-orienting investments towards more sustainable technologies and businesses and fostering low-carbon, climate-resilient, and circular economies.

• Boosting intra-African trade is a gateway to recovery. The transformative power of the AfCFTA must be brought to bear in servicing the needs of 1.3 billion people. If effectively implemented, the AfCFTA will accelerate the continent’s path towards structural economic transformation through value – addition – based industrialization of both goods and services. Investment in trade facilitation reforms and using Regulations as a Stimulus will bring even greater dividends, saving governments money in efficiencies while placing billions directly in the hands of intra-African women and youth – led exporting enterprises.

2022 must be a year where collective global action prioritize vaccine equity and ensure a shot for all. Omicron has reminded us that there is just no other way to build forward better.

Ahunna Eziakonwa is UN Assistant-Secretary General, UNDP Assistant Administrator and Director, Regional Bureau for Africa.

 

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Credit: UNHCR

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 20 2021 (IPS)

A bit of fiction. Or maybe not. If things keep going the way they are, the result will be that such a massive flux would create instability and tensions, impact the global markets, cause record prices of fossil fuels, food and everything else, and the bankruptcy of big private financial corporations…

Already seven years ago, a former director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), William Lacy Swing, estimated that the number of climate migrants and refugees could reach one billion humans by the year 2050.

Such a scenario could well happen given the rapid growth of the ongoing climate emergency.

“Hazards resulting from the increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as abnormally heavy rainfall, prolonged droughts, desertification, environmental degradation, or sea-level rise and cyclones are already causing an average of more than 20 million people to leave their homes and move to other areas in their countries each year.”

What would Europe, the US and other rich countries do then? Shall their politicians –and the growing far-right– fuel once more the fear of the “invasion” of migrants and refugees, saying that they include criminals and terrorists, will occupy the homes of honoured citizens, take all their jobs away, rape their daughters and, consequently militarise their borders?

Shall they send them to third countries in exchange for some money, like what already happens with Turkey? Or shall they just force them back to their countries of origin, which they had to flee due to floods, storms, tsunamis and famine, provoked by a climate disaster they did not generate?

 

Climate change and disaster displacement

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says that climate change is the defining crisis of our time and disaster displacement is one of its most devastating consequences.

“Entire populations are already suffering the impacts, but vulnerable people living in some of the most fragile and conflict-affected countries are often disproportionately affected.”

Refugees, internally displaced people and the stateless are on the frontlines of the climate emergency, it reports, adding that many are living in climate “hotspots”, where they typically lack the resources to adapt to an increasingly hostile environment.

UNHCR urges all countries to combat the growing and disproportionate impacts of the climate emergency on the most vulnerable countries and communities — in particular those displaced and their hosts.

 

1 Person Is Forcibly Displaced Every 2 Seconds due to conflict, persecution

These displacements are the result of conflict or persecution. At mid-2021, their number already reached 84 million. And there are 10 million stateless people, half of them under the age of 18.

Coincidentally, most of their countries of origin are also among the most hit by poverty and climate emergency.

 

Climate crisis is a human crisis

“The climate crisis is a human crisis. It is driving displacement and makes life harder for those already forced to flee.”

The impacts of climate change are numerous and may both trigger displacement and worsen living conditions or hamper return for those who have already been displaced.

Limited natural resources, such as drinking water, are becoming even scarcer in many parts of the world that host refugees. Crops and livestock struggle to survive where conditions become too hot and dry, or too cold and wet, threatening livelihoods, UNHCR adds.

 

Climate change, a threat multiplier

In such conditions, climate change can act as a threat multiplier, exacerbating existing tensions and adding to the potential for conflicts.

“Hazards resulting from the increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as abnormally heavy rainfall, prolonged droughts, desertification, environmental degradation, or sea-level rise and cyclones are already causing an average of more than 20 million people to leave their homes and move to other areas in their countries each year.”

On this, the Global Compact on Refugees, affirmed by an overwhelming majority in the UN General Assembly in December 2018, directly addresses this growing concern. It recognises that “climate, environmental degradation and disasters increasingly interact with the drivers of refugee movements”.

“We need to invest now in preparedness to mitigate future protection needs and prevent further climate caused displacement. Waiting for disaster to strike is not an option,” says Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

 

Every second 1 person is displaced by disaster

More than five years ago, in july 2016, IPS reported that, in fact, “every second, one person is displaced by disaster,” the Oslo-based Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) reported, adding that in 2015 only, more than 19.2 million people fled disasters in 113 countries.

“Disasters displace three to ten times more people than conflict and war worldwide.” See: Climate Victims – Every Second, One Person Is Displaced by Disaster

“On average, 26 million people are displaced by disasters such as floods and storms every year. That’s one person forced to flee every second.”

Further on, IPS wrote: Imagine a world with as many as one billion people facing harsh climate change impacts resulting in devastating droughts and floods, extreme weather, destruction of natural resources, in particular lands, soils and water, and the consequence of severe livelihoods conditions, famine and starvation.

Although not yet based on definite scientific projections, the proven speed with which the process of climate change has been taking place, might lead to such a scenario by 2050. If so, 1 in 9 human beings would be on the move by then, it added.

“Currently, forecasts vary from 25 million to 1 billion environmental migrants by 2050, moving either within their countries or across borders, on a permanent or temporary basis, with 200 million being the most widely cited estimate, according to a 2015 study carried out by the Institute for Environment and Human Security of the United Nations University.”

This figure equals the current estimate of international migrants worldwide.”

For its part, the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) forecasts 200 million environmental migrants by 2050, moving either within their countries or across borders, on a permanent or temporary basis. Many of them would be coastal populations.

In an interview to IPS, the former IOM Director General, William Lacy Swing, explained that political crises and natural disasters are the other major drivers of migration today.

“We have never had so many complex and protracted humanitarian emergencies now happening simultaneously from West Africa all the way to Asia, with very few spots in between which do not have some issue.” See: Q&A: Crisis and Climate Change Driving Unprecedented Migration

 

Droughts, Desertification

Another warning comes from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which estimates that some 135 million people may be displaced by 2045 as a result of desertification.

Up to 12 million hectares of productive land become barren every year due to desertification and drought alone, which is a lost opportunity to produce 20 million tons of grain, adds the Bonn-based Convention secretariat.

Meanwhile, the increase in droughts and flash floods that are stronger, more frequent and widespread is destroying the land – the Earth’s main freshwater store, according to UNCCD.

 

The killing drought

“Droughts kill more people than any other single weather-related catastrophe and conflicts among communities over water scarcity are gathering pace. Over 1 billion people today have no access to water, and demand will increase by 30 percent by 2030.”

Africa is particularly susceptible since more than 90 percent of its economy depends on a climate-sensitive natural resource base like rain-fed, subsistence agriculture.

“Unless we change the way we manage our land, in the next 30 years we may leave a billion or more vulnerable poor people with little choice but to fight or flee.”

For its part, the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), reports that extreme weather events – from floods and storms, to heatwaves and drought – are already displacing an estimated 41 people each minute, and as temperatures continue to increase, climate extremes will worsen, sea levels will rise, and the world’s most vulnerable will bear the brunt.

 

Hunger and the climate

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reports that the world produces enough food to feed everyone, yet, about 800 million people suffer from hunger. That is one in nine people. 60 percent of them are women.

And that about 80 percent of the world’s extreme poor live in rural areas. Most of them depend on agriculture.

“Hunger kills more people every year than malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS combined.”

Most importantly: “No other sector is more sensitive to climate change than agriculture.”

The above-cited causes of massive displacements just add to the fast-growing climate crisis, which will evidently greatly increase the number of migrants and refugees.

No matter if they will be one billion or 500 million or even 100 million. They are humans and victims of circumstances they have not created. What will rich countries do?

 

Various states, and many environmental campaign groups, suspect that carbon markets weaken the overall effort to reduce emissions. Credit: Bigstock.

By External Source
Dec 20 2021 (IPS)

One surprise from COP26 – the latest UN climate change conference in Glasgow – was an agreement between world leaders on a new set of rules for regulating carbon markets. This would allow countries to trade the right to emit greenhouse gases.

Carbon trading is part of how countries intend to meet their obligations for reducing emissions under the Paris Agreement. Unfortunately, the manner in which countries agreed these rules may hobble the Agreement in its goal of averting catastrophic warming.

Carbon markets were central to the design of the Paris Agreement’s predecessor, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which created three different mechanisms for trading carbon. Developing countries had become accustomed to attracting investment via one called the “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM) which allowed industrialised countries to invest in projects to reduce emissions in developing countries and count them against their own targets under the Kyoto Protocol. Many industrialised countries wanted to retain this sort of flexibility in how they met their own treaty obligations.

As a result, most governments were keen to keep carbon markets as part of the Paris Agreement. In Paris in 2015, the bare bones of mechanisms similar to those in the Kyoto Protocol were agreed, but without the details needed to put them into practice.

Why then did it take six years to agree the rules which would govern these markets? This was more than the four years it took countries to do the same in the Kyoto Protocol and, in effect, they were recreating the same mechanisms. The problems in reaching an agreement this time were three-fold, and they weren’t satisfactorily resolved in Glasgow.

 

Going backwards from Kyoto

Various states, and many environmental campaign groups, suspect that carbon markets weaken the overall effort to reduce emissions. As climate change has accelerated over the past decade these concerns have become more acute. Why trade emissions if everyone is trying to get them to zero? There is considerable evidence that carbon offset projects – such as wind farms, which emissions trading can fund – have failed to deliver a reduction in overall emissions. A 2017 study led by the EU Commission found that 85% of projects funded by the CDM hadn’t reduced emissions.

There are also fundamental design issues in the Paris Agreement that make setting up carbon markets under it much more difficult. The Kyoto Protocol expressed the obligations of industrialised states to reduce their emissions as targets. These could be translated into a fixed number of emissions allowances that provided carbon markets with a clear set of accounting rules and indicators of market demand.

No such set of rules exists in the Paris Agreement. Instead, all states submit their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – national plans for reducing emissions. They may or may not have an emissions target and they vary in how they account for emissions or which sources of emissions they include in their plans.

How can a market function if there is no clear way of measuring what is being traded? And how should a country trading with another adjust its own NDC to avoid double-counting, when the design of each country’s NDC varies so much?

And what should countries do with all the credits created in the Kyoto Protocol’s system? Should they just be rolled over to be used in the new markets? Should they be simply abandoned? Or is there some way of allowing them in but controlling their use? A lot of CDM credits in particular remain, and they could flood the new markets and undermine the integrity of the NDCs.

 

A cop out

In the first week of COP26, it looked like these issues would continue to dog the negotiations. India supported unrestricted use of CDM credits in the new mechanism while the Solomon Islands (representing the Least Developed Countries group) opposed using them at all. In week two, these issues were either fudged or hastily agreed. The carbon traders were happy, as were the managers of the COP26 process – the UN secretariat and the UK government. We can now see the cost of failing to grapple with these thorny issues.

The Glasgow decisions on both Article 6.2 and 6.4 of the Paris Agreement are extraordinarily unclear compared with the equivalent ones for the Kyoto Protocol. Specialists in this field are still decoding precisely what they mean in practical terms. It’s likely that states will be able to use this opacity to double-count and claim credit for the same emissions-reducing activities.

Countries are supposed to set new NDCs regularly. At the same time, countries will be negotiating individual emission trades. The possibility for a country to game its NDC – making it appear more ambitious than it really is by counting already agreed trades within them – is impossible to avoid. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t fundamentally weaken the ambition of countries when updating their NDCs.

Monitoring how these mechanisms work in practice and whether they have the desired effect will be important over the coming years. While heralded at the time as a breakthrough in implementing significant tracts of the Paris Agreement, the Glasgow pact on carbon markets might instead be remembered as its undoing.

Matthew Paterson, Professor of International Politics, University of Manchester

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The biodigester and part of the biogas plant of the Cocal company, surrounded by a sugarcane plantation on all sides, in the municipality of Narandiba, in the west of the southern Brazilian state of São Paulo, where sugarcane has replaced cattle ranching as the main economic activity. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
NARANDIBA, Brazil , Dec 20 2021 (IPS)

First came sugar. For four centuries, it was the main sugarcane product in Brazil. But since the 1970s sugarcane has grown and diversified as a source of energy: ethanol, electricity and biogas.

“Sugarcane is the green oil,” said André Alves da Silva, commercial and new products director of Cocal, as the company Comércio Indústria Canaã Açúcar e Álcool Ltda. is better known, which started large-scale production of biomethane, i.e. refined biogas, a renewable and clean equivalent of natural gas.

“We have a biofactory here,” he told IPS in an interview in the Cocal plant in Narandiba, a municipality located in the west of the southern state of São Paulo.

Referring to the plant whose scientific name is Saccharum officinarum as “sugarcane” has become obsolete in this region.

In addition to sugar and ethanol, electricity is generated from sugarcane bagasse, and biogas and other by-products are also created, such as biofertilizers, carbon dioxide gas and dried yeast, leftovers from alcohol fermentation, which, when processed, serve as protein-rich animal feed.

Biomethane in place of gas

The big novelty is biomethane, produced since June, as the starting point of a project that will bring gas to three closely grouped cities: Narandiba, Pirapozinho and Presidente Prudente, with a combined population of 264,000 people.

GasBrasiliano, a company of the state-owned oil conglomerate Petrobras, will be in charge of distribution and is building a 65-kilometer gas pipeline, which is scheduled to be inaugurated in June 2022.

“It is our first biomethane project, the first among many,” Alex Gasparetto, director-president of the distributor that holds the concession for piped gas in the west and north of São Paulo state, an area encompassing 375 municipalities and 9.2 million inhabitants, told IPS.

São Paulo, the richest and most populated state in Brazil, home to 46 million of the 214 million inhabitants of this enormous country, accounts for more than half of the national sugarcane production, in more than 150 agroindustrial sugar or ethanol plants next to sugarcane plantations, most of them in the GasBrasiliano concession area.

Sugarcane is the “green oil”, says André Alves da Silva, commercial and new products director of Cocal, an agroindustrial company located in Narandiba, in southern Brazil, which uses almost everything from sugarcane to produce electricity, biogas, biomethane, biofertilizers, yeast as animal feed and other gases, in addition to sugar and ethanol. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

“The potential is huge, sugarcane biomethane can replace all the diesel and liquefied petroleum gas (for cooking) consumed in the state, a privileged situation,” said Alessandro Gardemann, president of the Brazilian Biogas Association (ABiogás).

“Cocal is a demonstration project, which goes from sugarcane cultivation to the final consumer with the supply of biomethane for the entire year,” he told IPS by telephone from Londrina, a city in the southern state of Paraná where his technology services company, Geo Biogas & Tech, which promoted biogas in the sugar-energy sector, is headquartered.

Solution for seasonal limitations

Geo’s technological contribution was decisive for the Cocal biomethane project to take off. It has long been known how to make biogas from vinasse, but this liquid residue from the ethanol (or alcohol) distillery can only be used during harvest season, generally from April to November.

The vinasse is bulky and smelly, impossible to store for many days in the ponds built to collect it before it is put into the horizontal biodigesters where the organic material is broken down in an anaerobic process that produces biogas.

To ensure a year-round supply, Geo adapted a German technology to incorporate into biodigestion another waste product, cachaça or filter cake, a dark sludge resulting from the processing of sugarcane juice to make sugar. Cachaça, for Brazilians, is the name for sugarcane brandy.

A treatment process that removes impurities and part of the moisture converts this waste, which used to be discarded, into raw material for biogas. It has “10 times more organic matter than vinasse,” which is why it is more productive, Eduardo Baptista, supervisor of industrial production at the Cocal biogas plant, told IPS.

A sea of sugarcane plantations flood Narandiba and its neighboring municipalities in the southern state of São Paulo, where the agroindustrial company Cocal grows it as the raw material for its biofactory for energy, fuels and agricultural inputs. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

This innovation made it possible to overcome seasonality, as it is stored in four open-air tanks next to the two vertical biodigesters, specifically for the cachaça. “During the harvest, we use the vinasse and between harvests, the cachaça,” avoiding interruptions in the production of biomethane, explained Alves, the company’s commercial director.

A second factor in favor of the project, he said, was that there is local demand for gas that could not be met by the GasBrasiliano pipeline, whose nearest point is more than 100 km from Presidente Prudente, the main city in the region, with a population of 230,000.

Extending the existing network to this limited market would not be economically viable, but a 65-kilometer gas pipeline from Cocal is, said Gasparetto, GasBrasiliano’s director-president.

The third factor is environmental. With biomethane, Cocal seeks to reduce the greenhouse gases emitted in its ethanol production. Replacing diesel with green gas decarbonizes the activity by 95 percent. Additional reductions can be obtained with the new fuel in trucks and agricultural equipment, an alternative that is currently being tested.

In addition, the waste from which the biogas is extracted is converted into clean biofertilizers, which emit 75 percent less carbon than chemical fertilizers, said Cocal’s commercial director.

Lastly, the decision was also based on the dual use of biogas: electricity or biomethane.

“Having two options reduces the risks,” the proportions can be modified according to demand and prices, Alves said. Currently, 53 percent of the biogas is refined into biomethane and 47 percent is used for electricity generation.

The vinasse pond at the Cocal plant, in the Brazilian municipality of Narandiba, feeds the biodigesters that produce biogas, later purified and refined for use in electricity generation or conversion into biomethane, a renewable and clean fuel equivalent to natural gas. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Cocal has also been generating energy by burning bagasse since 2002. Today it can supply electricity to a city of 730,000 inhabitants, the company reports.

Social contributions

For all this energy production, Cocal has two industrial units, each with its own sugarcane fields around it. The first was installed in 1980 in Paraguaçu Paulista, 135 kilometers from Narandiba.

It employs a total of 5,500 workers in 22 municipalities and has 125,000 hectares planted to sugarcane, mostly on land leased under 20-year contracts, according to Alves. The harvest reached 8.7 million tons of cane last year.

Narandiba currently has about 6500 inhabitants, after 2000 arrived, attracted by the local operation of Cocal, inaugurated in 2008, said the town’s mayor, Itamar dos Santos Silva, who estimated at 600 the direct and indirect employees of the sugar and alcohol plant a year ago – almost 10 percent of the population.

The municipality, which had stagnated when cattle ranching dominated its economy in the last decades of the last century, has prospered again. “Sugarcane totally changed the social and economic situation in the region,” the mayor said in a meeting with IPS in his office.

Deposits of cachaça or filter cake, a residue from sugar production, proved advantageous in the generation of biogas at Cocal’s two plants in western São Paulo state, in southern Brazil. The reason is that the residue contains a lot of organic material and is available when there is a lack of vinasse between sugarcane harvests. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

In addition to offering more jobs, Cocal pays even the lowest-earning employees double what a ranch worker used to earn, he said. With the rise in purchasing power, “every day a new house is built in Narandiba” and commerce and the demand for schools, health services and recreation has grown, Dos Santos Silva said.

Tax revenue also increased, but it lagged behind the immediate demands created by the influx of new residents, lamented the mayor, whose plans include attracting industry and stepping up the training of young people for the new supply of technical jobs in the sugarcane agro-industry.

Environmental sustainability was the main motive for Liane, a company that makes food products such as biscuits and pasta, to sign the first contract for the purchase of biomethane distributed by GasBrasiliano in Presidente Prudente.

Biomethane does not pollute like fossil fuels and probably has lower costs than “the natural gas that comes to us by truck from far away,” Mauricio Calvo, Liane’s industrial director, told IPS by telephone from the company’s headquarters.

Initially, biomethane will go to companies, fuel stations, shopping malls, hotels and large restaurants, i.e. large consumers.

The supply of piped gas to households remains a long-term goal, Gasparetto told IPS by telephone from GasBrasiliano’s headquarters in Araraquara, a town 280 kilometers from São Paulo.

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Dec 20 2021 (IPS)

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region are trying their best to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic by rapidly rolling out vaccination programmes and putting in place public health interventions to reduce its impact. At the end of November, there were 262 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 5.2 million deaths globally. About 60 per cent of all COVID-19 cases and half of all COVID-19 related deaths were in Asia and the Pacific. About 7.8 billion vaccines have been administered globally, and vaccine supply is generally improving.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

However, the pandemic has exacerbated inequities between and within countries and communities in the region with regard to access to vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics. Many countries, particularly lower income countries, are lagging in vaccinating their populations, with less than 1-in-5 of the total population fully vaccinated. This vaccine inequity is prolonging the pandemic in both developed and developing countries. The recent emergence of a new strain of the virus capable of spreading faster, threatens to derail recent efforts to open economies and borders.

We recently brought together leaders and experts from across the region to examine the reasons for the large inequities in access to vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics, and the ways to close the gap. The Regional Conversation on Equitable Access to Vaccines, Diagnostics and Therapeutics also highlighted some important factors and pre-requisites for ending the pandemic and preventing future ones.

Firstly, while noting the many initiatives supporting countries’ efforts to contain the spread of the virus, inequities had arisen due to procurement and stockpiling of vaccines by higher income countries across the world well in excess of their requirements. Vaccine production was concentrated in selected countries (mainly developed), and “vaccine nationalism” was spreading, coupled with a lack of effective mechanisms to transfer knowledge, technology and other resources. Multilateral mechanisms like COVAX, which had emerged as a lifeline for many lower- and lower middle-income countries, had not been provided adequate vaccines or resources. For the inequity to be narrowed, it is imperative that multilateral mechanisms like COVAX be transformed from a market and charity model to a global public investment and global public goods model.

Second, vaccines and health technologies for fighting pandemics should be recognized as global public goods. Discussions and promotion of this idea at subregional and regional levels could help advance it before elevating it to the global level. At the regional level, procurement of vaccines could be pooled, and regional hubs built for the development and manufacture of vaccines; where these centres already exist they should be strengthened. Public-private partnerships in vaccine development, manufacturing and distribution must be increased. Exchanges and transfer of knowledge, know-how, technology and resources between countries, using North-South and South-South principles, must be stepped up to achieve vaccine self-sufficiency. Promoting policy coherence through regulatory and normative systems to achieve quality and set standards should be part of regional cooperation. WTO member States are discussing the possibility of intellectual property rights to certain health technologies during health emergencies like pandemics, and this needs to be expedited and supported.

Third, having efficient and well-structured vaccination programmes at the national level, with a clear and transparent strategy for reaching population groups in vulnerable situations, was critical to achieving vaccine equity within and between countries. In many high-income countries with abundant supply of vaccines, vaccination rates were lagging due to “vaccine hesitancy” because of misinformation and a lack of trust. In this context, vaccination programmes need to be rooted in strengthened health systems and universal health coverage, with equal access to high quality, comprehensive and affordable health care. More agile, anticipatory and adaptive health systems also must be developed. There should be multisectoral action for health that puts primary health care at its center. Synergies with other sectors should be harnessed to advance public health objectives and to increase public health care funding.

Building on these concrete suggestions that focus on the Asia-Pacific region, we will revisit this subject at our annual session of the Commission in May 2022, when countries will have an opportunity to consider these ideas. Until then, I remind member States and stakeholders in Asia and the Pacific that no single country will succeed in defeating the pandemic on its own. Our only chance is to work together. We require trust and solidarity within and between nations. Without these essential elements, no regional or global arrangements will hold water or succeed.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of ESCAP

 

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By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Dec 20 2021 (IPS-Partners)

In 2021, COVID-19 continued to plague the world – a world already burdened by armed conflicts, climate-induced disasters and forced displacement. Communities, nations and people struggled to maintain normalcy in the midst of the abnormal. This was especially notable in the education sector – a sector that is the very foundation for achieving all human rights and all Sustainable Development Goals.

Yasmine Sherif

Countries affected by existing crises also suffered the absence of infrastructure and the omnipresence of extreme poverty, while conflicts raged all around. In 2021, with little, if any means, these countries had to rise to the occasion. Teachers, parents and students sought to protect lifesaving, continued and inclusive quality education for children and youth to sustain hope in the future.

It was a most difficult year for millions of crisis-affected children and adolescents around the world. More children and adolescents were pushed out of school. While we celebrated Human Rights Day a week ago under the theme of “equality”, one can only lament the stark reality: today, over 128 million girls and boys are being denied their basic right to education due to violent conflicts, forced displacement and climate-disasters wreaking havoc around the world.

In recent months, I witnessed firsthand the impact attacks and disruptions in education are having on the human dignity and well-being of children and adolescents caught in crises as diverse as Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, and just a few weeks ago, Cameroon.

In Cameroon, Jan Egeland, the Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, and I met some of the more than 700,000 children and adolescents affected by deliberate attacks on education and by school closures in the North-West and South-West regions. The Far North region and eastern parts of the country are also impacted by the Lake Chad Basin conflict and the refugee influx from neighboring Central African Republic, respectively.

They reminded us that we all must rise to the occasion, now. Working with our in-country partners in governments, communities, civil society, the United Nations and amongst strategic donors, ECW will launch a Multi-Year Resilience Programme in these three crisis-affected areas of Cameroon in early 2022. With this in mind, we urgently appeal to all ODA, private sector partners and foundations to fully fund this humanitarian life-saving and sustainable development investment in Cameroon and across another 35 crisis-affected countries. In doing so, we need to place the rights of girls upfront.

In Cameroon and elsewhere, I heard tragic stories of despair and lost opportunities, in particular for adolescent girls. As the UK Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Girls’ Education, Helen Grant, stresses in ECW’s latest interview, when crises hit, girls are more likely than boys to miss out on education. Meanwhile, we know that girls’ education is the foundation to creating healthier and more peaceful, prosperous societies, or as the World Bank states, ensuring all girls’ education will contribute with US$12 trillion to the global economy. Together with all our partners, ECW will continue to put girls at the forefront of all our investments and pursue affirmative action with a target of 60% girls and adolescent girls in all our investments.

Thanks to our partners in civil society, communities, host-governments, strategic donors, the UN system, regional organizations and the World Bank, the Education Cannot Wait community has mobilized $845.3 million in contributions to the ECW Trust Fund and leveraged over $1 billion aligned with ECW’s investments in joint programmes. Our latest Annual Results Report highlights our collective impact in reaching nearly 30 million children and youth in response to COVID-19, and an inclusive, whole-of-child quality education approach for close to 5 million children and adolescents, half of whom are girls.

This has brought us hope. As 2021 draws to a close, our hope was further fueled at the RewirEd Summit 2021, convened by Dubai Cares during Expo 2020 last week. The global education community was on fire. It came together in full force to steer the dramatic shifts needed in education globally. It laid the ground for the United Nations Secretary-General’s Summit on Education in 2022, as well as the development of ECW’s new Strategic Plan in 2022 with an expected funding requirement of $1 billion at minimum.

Indeed, we shall rise to the occasion, again and again. This is what education in emergencies and protracted crisis is all about. To learn from those we serve despite the odds they face: the 128 million crisis-affected girls and boys in the world’s toughest contexts. Every morning they bravely rise up to learn.

Yasmine Sherif is Director,
Education Cannot Wait
The UN Global Fund for Education in Emergencies and Protracted Crises

By Andrés Arauz
MEXICO CITY, Dec 20 2021 (IPS)

In a ceremony in early October, the president of Ecuador and my opponent in the presidential elections, Guillermo Lasso, issued a warning to those “daring who seek to scrutinize” his assets. He was referring to the Pandora Papers published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which revealed how dozens of world leaders – including Lasso – hid billions of dollars to avoid paying taxes.

His threatening words were directed primarily at me, because of my knowledge of the offshore underworld and my determination to investigate him despite receiving death threats.

In 2017, Ecuador approved an anti-corruption law prohibiting public servants from holding assets in tax havens, directly or indirectly. This term was there to avoid the use of opaque and complex financial structures like trusts, foundations or partnerships. Last year I formally challenged Lasso’s candidacy for that reason, but he then signed an affidavit in which he claimed not to have properties in tax havens and the electoral commission agreed with him.

That led me to drop this issue and when I lost the election in February, I even gave a concession speech and spoke by phone to congratulate him. He offered me to put an end to the political persecution against progressives that former president Lenín Moreno had started.

However, the Pandora Papers revealed that Lasso had in fact transferred shares in limited liability companies representing 130 Florida properties from Panama to two trusts in the state of South Dakota. Lasso also recognised the existence of 14 entities that had been hidden from the Ecuadorian tax authorities.

Lasso denied having ties to these entities before assuming the presidency, including Banco Banisi in Panama. However, an investigation by the Latindadd organisation revealed that Lasso, a day before signing the affidavit, transferred his shares from Banco Banisi to the Banisi International Foundation, a new private interest foundation where his children are nominal beneficiaries but without any decision-making powers.

After the Pandora Papers were released, a large majority in parliament ordered an investigation. Official institutions cooperated little or nothing, claiming that it is confidential information while Lasso refused to attend the hearings. When the parliamentary commission approved the report linking Lasso to tax havens, his government immediately attacked the commission, and the Prosecutor’s Office launched a criminal investigation against the parliamentarians.

Soon afterwards, I started receiving threats and intimidation, not for having been a presidential candidate, but for insisting in investigating Lasso and speaking in the media about this case as an economic expert in offshore banking. Government supporters then launched coordinated troll attacks on social media, spreading false news about me, death threats, and insults.

A member of parliament linked to Lasso accused me of money laundering based on a false meme widely disseminated on social media. And criminal investigations were launched against me based on false news, also involving my retired parents and all former progressive candidates. Dozens of national and international civil society organisations, including the Financial Transparency Coalition, published a statement of support which I deeply appreciate.

But unfortunately, nothing has changed.

On December 8, the Comptroller General concluded that Lasso had no offshore interests since it did not consider South Dakota a tax haven, despite being widely recognised for this. But the blockade of the investigation against Lasso did not end there. That same day, a majority of the National Assembly of Ecuador decided not to impeach the president, referring their investigation to other state institutions, but asked him to go to parliament and give an explanation, which he refused to do.

Ironically, Lasso – along with the presidents of other countries such as Kenya and Chile, whose leaders were also revealed in the Pandora Papers to have hidden assets in tax havens – was invited to the recent ‘Summit for Democracy’ organised by the United States. During the summit the creation of a beneficial ownership registry was announced, including for South Dakota trusts, as well as anti-fraud measures on real estate which could impact Lasso, but it’s still uncertain whether these commitments by the US and other countries will become reality.

In total, $7 trillion is hidden in secret jurisdictions and tax havens, equivalent to 10% of global revenues, according to the UN High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity. Meantime especially developing countries are fighting the resurgent Covid-19 pandemic and its economic impacts, struggling to provide basic social protection to its citizens and purchase vaccines.

So clearly the problem of tax evasion and financial opacity, and money being funneled by powerful individuals to tax havens, is an issue that not only affects my country, but affects everyone. Fighting for financial transparency is a fight for truth and social justice that we cannot afford to give up.

Andrés Arauz is an Ecuadorian economist and candidate for President in the 2021 elections, currently based in Mexico City where he is a Doctoral Fellow at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM.

 

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By A .H. Monjurul Kabir
NEW YORK, Dec 20 2021 (IPS)

The UN’s 76th anniversary in 2021 arrived at a time of great upheaval and change. If the world is to transition from COVID-19 and we are to deliver on our promises to future generations – to secure a world where everyone can thrive in peace, dignity, and equality on a healthy planet – then 2022 must be the year we change both gear and discourse.

We need a multilateral system that is inclusive, networked but accessible, and effective. Member States have identified many areas of action that can only be addressed through reinvigorated multilateralism. However, such multilateralism must be backed by inclusive regional and cross-regional good practices and lessons learned.

To achieve this, we must think big – whether inside or outside the boxes! We need to reset the foundations and reaffirm the core values that underpin collective action. Shedding light on the complex interplay between global, regional, and national forces which have transformed the Asia-Pacific [hereinafter ‘Asia’] continent into one of the most vibrant and economically successful regions in the world, often does not tell the story. It certainly draws a picture of Asian success.

On top of it, Innovation, according to Asia’s key stakeholders, is often seen as ‘the process of creating new and novel solutions to fulfil unmet client needs.’ Asia is perceived by many as dominating the global scene for innovation However, such success – with or without innovation – is not without its share of challenges and constraints.

UN-ANDI is a global network of like-minded Asian staff members of the UN system who strive to promote a more diverse and inclusive culture and mindset within the UN. Credit: UN-ANDI

As we examine deeper, Asia and its relations with multilateralism and multilateral institutions is not a monolithic discourse. Like other regions, there is often no ‘one Asia’. Differences and diversity added complexity to the understanding of the Asia.

The business case for diversity and inclusion in Asia region is even stronger because it is a highly diverse region comprising a mosaic of many different sub-cultures. Diversity is the region’s strength.

However, they have to be real. It is also important to note here, that tokenistic diversity and inclusion doesn’t help anyone. It is time to move beyond viewing inclusion through a monochromatic lens. Too many organisations and groups consider diversity and inclusion to be only about gender diversity or only about non-local talent.

These are indeed pressing issues, considering that the Asia Pacific region consistently doing better than others in terms of gender roles at the workplace, and considering that the cultural make-up of numerous Asian countries is multilingual.

We must remain vigilant that the diversity can carry forward with it both equality and inclusion agenda. Without them, neither equality including gender equality, nor income equality can be achieved.

As a member of broader UN fraternity, we must be aware of the challenges posed for multilateralism by many factors so that we can add our voice to innovative solutions, growing Asian Knowledge Based Economy (KBE). And Asia can be a learning hub for the world:

• Innovative solutions for more voices to be heard in policy making and implementation;
• Innovative solutions for equitable and effective service delivery;
• Pragmatic solutions for more equitable distribution of power and wealth [i.e., progressive tax reforms etc.) to reduce poverty;
• Effective solutions for achieving gender equality and gender parity,
• Mainstreaming disability inclusion to give real meaning to SDG principle ‘Leave No One Behind’ (LNOB);
• Ensuring accessibility to address exclusion and digital divide;
• Innovative solutions for inclusive and lasting peace process and peacebuilding;

It is clear there are multiple ways in which the region is pursuing its knowledge-based economic development for growing prosperity. The first is learning from the KBE journey of advanced economies (i.e., Japan, Korea, China etc.) and making appropriate investments and policy reforms. Large and populous countries of the region (i.e., India, Bangladesh, China etc.) are also demonstrating examples of scaling-up innovation and lessons learned.

Another successful strategy is exploiting the unique strengths and endowments of the region by pursuing strategies that amplify core regional and sub-regional strengths. The last but not the least is leveraging game-changing trends in technology and business processes that can enable emerging economies to leapfrog technology development cycles and catch up with the latest.

And Asia can contribute more, Asians can do more to promote South-South and Triangular Cooperation, they just have to harness the full potentials of the youth, women, and our committed workforce. Take gender-responsive budgeting, for example.

UN Entities like UN Women are facilitating exchange of knowledge, lessons learned and good practices from Ministries of Finance across LDCs, SIDS and beyond so that countries in the south can benefit from mutual support initiatives and integrate gender equality in national budget planning.

This means that women and girls will benefit from inclusive sectoral budgetary allocations that actually meet their specific needs and priorities. This can apply further to ensure women with disabilities can benefit for inclusive sectoral budgetary allocations.

As UN Charter pledged in its preamble, ‘WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED. to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, we must also remain united to save succeeding generations from inequal impact of public policy making whether that is the roll out of the COVID-19 vaccination and public health support, reducing poverty, achieving gender party, ensuring accessibility and informed participation of the poor and marginalized communities in public policy and governance, access to justice and social services, or creating equal access to jobs and opportunities for both women and men.

Let us walk the talk, and, reinvigorate our journey for inclusion, equality and accessibility in 2022 and beyond.

Dr. A.H.Monjurul Kabir, currently UN Coordination Global Adviser and Team Leader for Gender Equality and Disability Inclusion, with UN-Women HQ, is a political scientist and senior policy and legal analyst on global issues and Asia-Pacific trends. For policy and academic purpose, he can be contacted at monjurulkabir@yahoo.com. He can be followed at mkabir2011

The blog is based on the speech delivered by the author in his personal capacity at an event commemorating the UN’s 76th anniversary organized by the UN-ANDI based in New York. UN-ANDI is a global network of like-minded Asian staff members of the UN system who strive to promote a more diverse and inclusive culture and mindset within the UN.

 

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By Paul S. Teng and Genevieve Donnellon-May
SINGAPORE, Dec 20 2021 (IPS)

While the COVID-19 impact has been predominantly negative, the pandemic appears to have sparked increased interest in developing agricultural technology (agtech) to improve the efficiency of food systems, from input supplies through farming and processing to delivery and retail.

Paul S. Teng

The COVID-19 pandemic has admittedly upended economic activity in the Asia-Pacific region, but a recent event in Singapore (Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit, 16-18 November 2021 — https://agrifoodinnovation.com/ ) showed that, in the case of agriculture and food, it has greatly spurred investments in technology to scale up food production sustainably. During 2020-21, momentum has been building up among financial institutions such as venture capital companies to invest in startup companies that produce technological innovations to address the shortcomings in food production and food supply chains. The UN Climate Summit COP26 further spurred activity before and after it was held, to focus on farming with reduced carbon footprints, reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and valorization of food waste, all aimed at promoting more sustainable and circular food systems.

During the pandemic, the international media highlighted phenomena like farmers dumping milk and feeding quality produce to cattle, vegetables rotting in fields due to lack of labour to harvest, increased food waste in urban environments, delays in supply of inputs for growing crops or feeding fish, and supermarkets with empty shelves. The pandemic has highlighted the need to produce more food locally and to use techniques which both minimize the use of labour and avoid a high carbon footprint. Governments have responded to some of these through policies and action. The private sector has responded even quicker, having detected investment opportunities to support solutions to these problems. Venture Capital funds like AgFunder and Yield Lab have set up their Asian bases in Singapore to support initiatives throughout the Asia-Pacific.

Some of the exciting new agtech developments deal with ensuring new sources of inputs for farming crops and fish. This is exemplified by waste valorization to extract valuable elements from water and biowaste that can be used to grow plants. Many new ventures use the Black Soldier Fly, a ubiquitous insect that feeds on food waste, to harvest larval protein directly or indirectly for use as feed supplements for fish and chicken. Countries like Singapore and Malaysia, which import almost all their agricultural inputs, have provided incentives to spur these activities so that they have more resilience in their supply of fertilizers and animal feed.

Genevieve Donnellon-May

For on-farm production, digital farming is another area which has seen much progress during the pandemic to safeguard food production. Applications of remote sensors for environmental factors such as temperature, light and water quality increased. These sensors included both stationary and mobile sensors mounted on drones. Many now utilise cloud technology to send data back to a centralized processing facility which, among the more “intelligent” sensors, further have capabilities to take action. In Indonesia, one new company in Java has implemented among several hundred shrimp farmers an “Internet of Things” (IoT) system which not only monitors the water in which the shrimps grow for any danger signs, but also the growth of the shrimps and ultimately links the farmer to a potential buyer. In Singapore, Camtech Diagnostics has created Aquafarm, a remote water management tool for aquaculture farmers, which uses wireless sensors to maintain optimal water quality for their stocks. The remote monitoring and wireless communication system allows farmers to monitor the water quality in real-time, reduce labour costs, and increase the yield rate due to the prevention of stock loss. In India, likewise, a startup company has enabled several hundred fish farmers with ponds and indoor tanks to optimize their stocking density of fish and therefore increase their final harvest with minimized mortality. This company also helps the farmers secure credit from banks by providing risk profiles of the fish farmers. These startups are run by relatively young “agropreneurs” and illustrate the growing phenomenon of younger graduates entering farming by providing value-added services.

There are also exciting developments to help farmers make better use of increasingly scarce or expensive inputs like water and fertilizer. Precision technologies, such as drip-irrigation which are supported by the monitoring of soil moisture and plant water status, are now available in several countries. One company has even developed technology to supply chilled, oxygen-enriched water to stimulate plants growth in the tropics.

In land-strapped countries like Singapore, the number of high tech vegetable and fish farms using vertical farming technology with multiple stacks of vegetables or fish tanks, and supported by digital tools to monitor the growing environment, and plant and fish growth, has increased dramatically during the pandemic. The Singapore government in fact enacted a “30 by 30” strategy to produce 30% of its nutrition needs (vegetables, fish and eggs) by 2030 and incentivized an accelerated research and development programme (called the Singapore Food Story) with some Singapore $144 Million to create new technologies that enable high-density farming. This follows on achievements in other Asian countries, notably Japan, China and South Korea, to increase their share of controlled-environment farming using indoor plant factories, a form of “Smart farming”. Moving forward, these indoor plant factories will also allow countries to address weather patterns attributable to climate change.

One of the significant set of activities precipitated by the pandemic has been on e-commerce – using telecommunications and the internet to link farmers to retailers, manufacturers to traders and food and beverage outlets to consumers at home. The growth of this sector has been spectacular in Asia as movement control measures to reduce the spread of the virus encouraged households to use the internet to order raw and cooked food. It is likely that this practice will continue even after the pandemic has become an endemic.

Apart from agtech, there has been similar growth in fintech and foodtech. Using digital technology and the widespread use of mobile phones and other portable personal devices, even giants like MastercardTM have entered this space of providing financial services to small farmers. Others have linked financial services to marketplace information. Likewise, foodtech is providing food processors and ultimately consumers with many new offerings, such as extending the shelf-life of vegetables and fruits with environment-friendly sealants and packaging are now in use. Precision fermentation technology has also seen an upsurge to produce more diverse plant-based protein, and in the near future, also cellular meat. Concern for the negative effects of producing animal protein on the environment and climate have spurred innumerable startup companies to venture into the “Alternative Protein” space. Furthermore, nutrition-enhanced food, such as with vitamin and essential minerals, is also likely to see an increase in the marketplace.

It can be argued that all the above would have happened even without the stimulus provided by the pandemic. But the pandemic has convincingly increased awareness on food security worldwide, and coupled with the COP26 climate summit urgings, has led to this increase in activity to use modern agtech, fintech and foodtech in sustaining our food systems.

Paul S. Teng is Adjunct Senior Fellow, Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at Nanyang Technological University Singapore and concurrently Managing Director of NIE International Pte. Ltd. Singapore. He has worked in the Asia Pacific region on agri-food issues for over thirty years, with international organizations, academia and the private sector.

Genevieve Donnellon-May is a research assistant with the Institute of Water Policy (IWP) at the National University of Singapore. She is also a master’s student in Water Science, Policy and Management at the University of Oxford. Genevieve’s research interests include China, Africa, transboundary governance, and the food-energy-water nexus.

 

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Patients wait for their COVID-19 vaccination at a health centre in Kabale District, Uganda. More than 5.7 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered globally, but only 2% of them in Africa, says World Health Organization (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Credit: UNICEF/Catherine Ntabadde

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 20 2021 (IPS)

The 21-month-long corona virus pandemic has triggered three new phrases in the UN lexicon: “vaccine famine, vaccine apartheid and vaccine nationalism”.

And the largest number of victims facing the triple threats are from developing countries, mostly in Africa, as reflected in grim statistics.

Dr Richard Mihigo, coordinator for the WHO’s Immunization and Vaccines Development Programme in Africa, is quoted as saying that high-income countries are administering more booster doses than even vaccines that are being given in developing countries.

“Remember that we only have 8% — 8% — of people who have been fully vaccinated in this region,” he said, referring to Africa. “This represents around 103 million people in a continent of 1.3 billion.”

Achim Steiner, Administrator, UN Development Programme (UNDP), says that vaccines delayed is “development denied” for Africa. “Therefore, we must ensure vaccine equity which is the fastest way to end this pandemic”.

Rallying around the unifying strength of the UN, he pointed out, “we need the urgent cooperation of vaccine manufacturers, vaccine-producing countries and countries that already have high vaccination rates to tackle the acute vaccine supply shortage.”

Doing so will help to open-up economic and social opportunities across the (African) continent — boosting GDP and driving forward human development,” Steiner told a recent African Economic Conference in Cabo Verde.

Worldwide, says the New York Times, about 73% of shots that have gone into arms have been administered in high- and upper-middle-income countries, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. Only 0.8% of doses have been administered in low-income countries.

Dr Djibril Diallo, President & CEO of the African Renaissance and Diaspora Network Inc, told IPS Article 25 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, ratified in 1948, recognized that the right to health is a human right.

“Now is a time when nations claiming to respect and uplift human rights are being tested. But, more so, it is in their own national interest to pass the test,” he said, pointing out that low inoculation rates are a root cause of the mutation of COVID-19 into new variants.

“From our experience with Delta, and now Omicron, we have seen, in our globally connected world, how swiftly and uncontrollably new variants spread’.

“It is a political fiction to believe that these variants can be contained before they reach a nation’s shore. Instead, we need to shift towards reducing the risks of new variants developing by ensuring that no one is left behind in receiving vaccines,” said Dr Diallo.

As a new COVID-19 variant has just been discovered, says UNDP, flights are being cancelled, travel bans are reinstated, and several countries are closing their borders, African countries are once again most directly affected by the impact of the pandemic has on economies, particularly most vulnerable people.

Despite calls from various international institutions, African countries are still facing critical inequality regarding access to COVID-19 vaccines, leading to what many have called a “COVID-19 vaccine famine”.

According to the World Bank, African countries are still struggling to inoculate all eligible citizens, and vaccine delays are costing Africa $14 billion in lost productivity each month.

When they need additional resources to protect their citizens and plan for a post-pandemic recovery, the cost of borrowing for African countries has increased. African countries pay more than five times more in interest payments for commercial lending than the rest of the world.

“There is an increasingly looming risk of losing more than a decade of efforts to strengthen African countries’ economies and human capital”, the UN agency said.

WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters December 14:

• 77 countries have now reported cases of Omicron, and the reality is that Omicron is probably in most countries, even if it hasn’t been detected yet. Even if Omicron does cause less severe disease, the sheer number of cases could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems.

• Let me be very clear: WHO is not against boosters. We’re against inequity. Our main concern is to save lives, everywhere. It’s really quite simple: the priority in every country, and globally, must be to protect the least protected, not the most protected.

• There remains a vast gap in rates of vaccination between countries. 41 countries have still not been able to vaccinate 10% of their populations, and 98 countries have not reached 40%. If we end inequity, we end the pandemic. If we allow inequity to continue, we allow the pandemic to continue, he warned.

Asked about WHO trying to have 60/70 percent of the world population vaccinated by next June, and whether this is possible?, British Ambassador Barbara Woodward told reporters December 13: “I think it is possible. As we’ve discussed before, there’s really three elements to this.”

“The first is the manufacture of vaccines, and we are seeing that come on stream now much faster. The second is shipping the vaccines and that is happening, although sometimes with quite short lead-in times”.

“Then the third is the simple logistics of health systems getting needles into people’s arms. And that’s an area where we still need to accelerate work. But again, an area where we can work with UN agencies and with NGOs to help that happen,” she declared.

In a statement released November 29, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres commended the Government, scientists and the health community of South Africa for acting early to identify the emergence of a new COVID-19 variant.  

He is deeply concerned about the isolation of southern African countries due to new COVID-19 travel restrictions.   Low vaccine rates are a breeding ground for variants

“The people of Africa cannot be blamed for the immorally low level of vaccinations available on the continent – and they should not be penalized for identifying and sharing crucial science and health information with the world,” Guterres said.

He appealed to all governments to consider repeated testing for travellers, together with other appropriate and truly effective measures, with the objective of avoiding the risk of transmission so as to allow for travel and economic engagement.

Samantha Power, Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) told a virtual meeting on December 6 that for the past year, the story of COVID-19 around the world has been a struggle for vaccine equity—rich nations replete with doses while poorer nations fought to secure vaccines for their people.

But thanks to the efforts of many people and many institutions and nations, including the United States, thanks to the tireless work of COVAX, the African Union, and other regional leaders, that story is now changing fast, she said.

Over the past year, she pointed out, the United States has committed 1.2 billion vaccines to partner countries and delivered more than 290 million of those.

“We have invested in vaccine production capacity in countries like India, South Africa, and Senegal, so that in the future, fewer people would have to depend on vaccine donations from wealthy countries. All of this has been done with no strings attached or expectations—we do it because it is the right thing to do but it is also, we know, the smart thing to do.”

Today, at this critical inflection point, Power said: “I’m pleased to announce that the U.S. is building on this work by introducing a new effort to get a shot in every arm: the Initiative for Global Vaccine Access”.

“We’re going to spend an additional $400 million to double down on our efforts to help countries raise vaccination rates and save lives. This money will speed efforts both to get shots in arms and to support vaccine manufacturing in low-and-middle-income countries,” she declared.

 

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By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Dec 17 2021 (IPS)

Miriam* hoped for a better life in Europe. Instead, her journey ended in Libya, where, double-crossed by traffickers she was raped and abused.  She has returned to Nigeria and shared her experiences with Sam Olukoya.

Miriam fell pregnant and gave birth to a son. In this short documentary, she tells of the growing love for her child, whom she describes as “a very cool guy”.
(*Not her real name)

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which “takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms”.

GSN originated in the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on December 2, 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

 

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• Human Trafficking Survivor Harold D’Souza: “The Perpetrators are More Aggressive Than Ever”

Nature-based solutions for climate change was a major outcome of the COP26 summit. These include people working with nature to manage forests, mangroves and farm sustainably. Credit: Yoel Kahssay - Unsplash

By Ruth Kattumuri
London, Dec 17 2021 (IPS)

A key outcome of COP26 climate summit is the enhanced focus on “nature-based solutions” – the plans for people to work closely alongside nature to avert a planetary catastrophe.

While there is emerging consensus around nature-based solutions (NbS), the overarching concept encompasses a wide range of approaches and actions that involve the ecosystem, which address societal and biodiversity challenges while also benefitting human well-being and nature.

In terms of climate change, it implies working with nature’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gases that cause global warming. This includes sustainable land-use practices and management of forests that can remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it for millions of years. It can also entail transformations in major sectors such as agriculture, livestock, land, water and waste management to ensure the protection of our planet.

Nature-based solutions not only help to mitigate climate change by expanding natural carbon sinks, they enhance biodiversity, provide food and water, help clean the air and sustain other resources, as well as provide job opportunities, whilst also protecting communities against flooding and landslides. Some estimates state that NbS have the potential to supply up to 37 percent of our climate change mitigation needs.

Dr Ruth Kattumuri is Senior Director, Economic, Youth and Sustainable Development at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Importantly, NbS meet the cross-cutting goals of the three key United Nations treaties on the environment – also known as the Rio Conventions, on climate change, biodiversity and desertification.

Across the 54 countries of the Commonwealth, governments, communities and the private sector are keenly adopting NbS approaches, with most countries incorporating NbS actions in their national climate plans. Some examples of NbS include Pakistan’s Ten Billion Tree Tsunami programme, which aims to restore about 600,000 hectares of forest and create thousands of jobs; Sri Lanka’s response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami by rehabilitating vast areas of mangrove swamps; and the “We Plantin’” campaign of Barbados to plant one million trees.

To make natural climate solutions truly effective, there are several issues that we must address. One key challenge is the lack so far of an agreed framework or standard as to what constitutes an effective NbS. As IUCN points out, “misunderstanding and misuse of NbS have led to applications that cause harm to biodiversity and communities and threaten to erode stakeholders’ trust in the approach.” Examples include mass reforestation of single-species or non-native species, land grabbing for reforestation, and curtailing of rights of Indigenous peoples through conservation projects.

Further, NbS should not support or encourage carbon offsetting by polluting industries, as a way to justify their continued or growing emissions. A strong framework and standards have to be developed to guard against the misuse of “nature-based” to ensure effective climate action.

There is also a need to enhance awareness and knowledge about the different ways to include NbS in national climate plans. A recent study suggests that though large-scale tree planting and reforestation have become the most popular route for many governments, other solutions such as sustainable farming and animal-rearing practices, sustainable land and water conservation and management, reducing food waste and engaging indigenous communities in NbS would be more beneficial. The conservation of high-carbon ecosystems – such as peatlands, wetlands, rangelands, mangroves and forests – also deliver the largest and most timely climate benefits.

Finally, there is a massive financing gap to be filled, for, despite our significant dependence on nature, the sector receives very little investment. Estimates by UN environment shows that if our world is to meet targets for climate change, biodiversity and land degradation, it needs to close a US$4.1 trillion financing gap, requiring tripling investments in NbS over the next 10 years and quadrupling them by 2050. This amounts to an estimated US$536 billion worth of funding required every year.

There were some promising announcements at COP26, including a US$12 billion pledge in public financing for ending deforestation, however, we are far short of the required target. At the moment, the total falls significantly short, and private sector funding, in particular, needs to be scaled up.

Former CYEN Special Envoy for Climate Change Jevanic Henry with fellow delegates at the Youth4Climate Summit 2021. Involving people in finding solutions for climate change is at the heart of Nature-based Solutions adopted during COP26 climate summit. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

Of the estimated US$133 billion per year directed towards NbS globally, only 14 percent is private sector finance, compared to 86 percent from public funds and subsidies. Lack of private sector funding is partly related to the complex nature of NbS projects and financial instruments and the long-time frame for returns on investments. The public sector thus has a crucial role to play in leveraging increased private sector funding by de-risking investments in NbS.

Innovative financing mechanisms such as green bonds, credit swaps for climate, debt-for-nature swaps, and carbon markets are also being actively explored in Commonwealth countries.

The Commonwealth through its ‘Call to Action on Living Lands’ is leading on tackling the climate change challenges. Addressing the issues in the context of meeting the targets of the three Rio conventions, leaders from member countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific expressed their support during the COP26 summit for a proposed Commonwealth Living Lands Charter.

The proposed Charter is a progression of the on-going programme on land, biodiversity and climate change of the Secretariat since 2017. The Charter will be discussed at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Rwanda in 2022, with a potential to spur cooperation among all 54 Commonwealth nations to manage land use sustainably, protect the natural world and fight climate change. Focus areas being explored include climate resilient agriculture, soil and water conservation and management, sustainable green cover and biodiversity, low carbon livestock management and active engagement of indigenous people.

Nature-based solutions for acceleration of action around land, climate change and biodiversity need judicial attention and support, not least in terms of finance. NbS do not offer a silver bullet to resolve the climate crisis, but they are extremely vital to drastically curtail greenhouse gas emissions and meet the Nationally Determined Contributions to 2030.

Dr Ruth Kattumuri is Senior Director, Economic, Youth and Sustainable Development at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

 

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By Yasmine Sherif and Joseph Nhan-O’Reilly
Dec 17 2021 (IPS-Partners)

COVID-19 has upended our world, threatening our health, destroying economies and livelihoods, and deepening poverty and inequalities. It also created the single largest disruption to education systems that the world has ever seen.

Schools also play a critical role in ensuring the delivery of essential health services and nutritious meals, protection, and psycho-social support, which means that their closure has imperiled children’s overall wellbeing and development, not just their learning. At the same time, conflicts continue to rage and the disastrous effects of a changing climate threaten our very existence and are driving record levels of displacement.

Crisis upon crisis

128 million children and youth people whose education was already disrupted by conflict and crises have been doubly hit by COVID-19, with the pandemic creating a ‘crisis upon a crisis’. The length and extent of disruption to education systems around the world due to the pandemic has tested the very concept of education in the context of humanitarian crises.

What does it mean to be dedicated to ‘education in emergencies’ in a world in which 90% of schools were shut due to a global pandemic?

How do we support children get an education in countries affected by conflict and fragility when in peaceful and stable countries millions of children are at risk of never returning to school?

Will the push to deliver remedial education for the millions of children who have lost learning over the last two years stretch to helping the three million refugee children who were out of school before the pandemic?

Breakthrough or breakdown?

These questions underscore a stark and urgent choice. Do we push for an ambitious and inclusive breakthrough or accept that the pandemic has led to an irreversible breakdown in educational progress and will permanently deny millions of children the opportunity to go to school?

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe conflicts, forced displacement, famines, and climate-change-induced floods, fires, and extreme heat, together with COVID-19 have combined to form a fatal cocktail that is robbing children of their education.

Last week on a visit to Cameroon, Education Cannot Wait met some of the 700,000 children there who are impacted by school closures due to violence. If this alone were not bad enough, just a few days before the visit, four students and a teacher were killed in a targeted attack, and, in a separate heinous incident, a young girl had her fingers viciously chopped off just for trying to go to school.

Education is a priority for communities caught up in crises

The bravery and determination of the children of Cameroon is a testament to the priority that crisis-affected communities all across the world place on education. They know that education transforms lives, paving the way to better work, health, and livelihoods. They know that continuing education in a safe place provides a sense of normality, safety, and routine for children and young people whilst building the foundations for peace, recovery, and long-term development among future generations.

They tell us their education cannot wait. But delivering that quality education to these children remains a persistent challenge.

 

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Young people take part in a pro-democracy demonstration in Myanmar. Credit: Unsplash/Pyae Sone Htun via United Nations

By Ben Phillips
ROME, Dec 17 2021 (IPS)

Human rights are under global assault. In 2021, the escalation of the worldwide siege on human rights included clampdowns on civil society organisations, attacks on minorities, the undermining of democratic institutions, and violence against journalists.

Human rights came under attack not only from coups, from Myanmar to Sudan, but also from strong men in democracies, from Brazil to the Philippines. The January 6th attack on the Capitol in the US exemplified the fragility of human rights worldwide.

2021 saw the conservative think tank Freedom House raise the alarm about what it calls one of the biggest worldwide declines in democracy “we’ve ever recorded”. But to protect human rights, it is vital to understand why they are under threat.

Crucially, it is not a coincidence that humanity has been simultaneously hit by a crushing of human rights and ever-increasing inequality; they are mutually causal. There is no winning strategy to be found in the approach followed by institutions like Freedom House which cleaves civil and political rights from economic and social rights, and has no answer to the inequality crisis.

Organisations rooted in civil society organising have set out powerfully the interconnectedness of the human rights crisis and the inequality crisis.

Civicus’s 2021 State of Civil Society report notes how “economic inequality has become ever more marked, precarious employment is being normalized [and] big business is a key source of attacks on civic space and human rights violations.”

So too, Global Witness’s 2021 Last Line of Defence report notes that “unaccountable corporate power is the underlying force which has continued to perpetuate the killing of [land and environmental] defenders.”

As human rights scholars Radhika Balakrishnan and James Heintz have noted, “when the political power of the elites expands as the income and wealth distribution becomes more polarized, this compromises the entire range of human rights.” Civicus terms the assault on human rights as one of “ultra-capitalism’s impacts”.

The World Inequality Report records how “in 2021, after three decades of trade and financial globalization, global inequalities are about as great today as they were at the peak of Western imperialism in the early 20th century.

The Covid pandemic exacerbated even more global inequalities. The top 1% took 38% of all additional wealth accumulated since the mid-1990s, with an acceleration since 2020.”

Societies that are more unequal are more violent. As collective institutions like trade unions are weakened, ordinary people become increasingly atomized. As social cohesiveness is pulled apart by inequality, tensions rise.

It is in such contexts that far right movements thrive, and whilst such movements claim to be anti-elite, they soon find common cause with plutocrats in directing anger away from those who have taken away the most and onto those who can be targetted for the difference in how they look, speak, pray or love.

Yet, as writer Michael Massing put it, “many members of the liberal establishment dismiss populism as a sort of exogenous disease to be cured by appeals to reason and facts rather than recognize it as a darkly symptomatic response to a system that has failed so spectacularly to meet the basic needs of so many.”

Human rights can only be protected in their fullness – civil, political, economic and social. As Lena Simet, Komala Ramachandra and Sarah Saadoun note in Human Rights Watch’s 2021 World Report: “A rights-based recovery means governments provide access to healthcare, [and] protect labor rights, gender equality, and everyone’s access to housing, water and sanitation.

It means investing in public services and social protection, and strengthening progressive fiscal policies to fund programs so everyone can fulfill their right to a decent standard of living. It means investing in neglected communities and avoiding harmful fiscal austerity, like cutting social protection programs.”

Only determined organising connecting the inseparable struggles for human rights and a more equal society will be powerful enough to win.

Ben Phillips is the author of How to Fight Inequality and an advisor to the UN, governments and civil society organisations.

 

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Excerpt:

Meanwhile, more than 10 months since Myanmar's military seized power, the country’s human rights situation is deepening on an unprecedented scale, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), warned December 10.

Different initiatives have sought to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on agrifood systems that affect the world's most vulnerable people. Credit: FAO

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, Dec 16 2021 (IPS)

The end of this year has revealed the fragility of food systems when faced with sudden disruptions such as those observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. These disruptions have increased the number of people with limited or no access to food in the world. Today, more than 811 million people suffer from hunger, according to recent studies.

The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2021 report, published in November by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) states that three billion people cannot afford healthy diets, and another billion could soon join these ranks if the crisis of the pandemic reduces their income by a third.

According to current projections, if an alteration in the transport routes of food products continues as it has been since the start of the pandemic, the cost of food could suffer an increase. This increase would greatly affect 845 million people.

These disruptions would impact on long-term trends in the food system, the welfare of people, their assets, their livelihoods and security, the ability to withstand future disarrays caused by extreme weather events and the heightening of diseases and pests in plants and animals.

Resilience in agrifood systems by governments should be one of the main strategies to respond to current and future challenges, seeking to diversify sources of inputs, production, markets, supply chain and actors, supporting the creation of small and medium-sized companies, cooperatives, consortiums and other groups to maintain diversity in the agrifood value chains

Prior to the pandemic, difficulties in meeting the international community’s commitments and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, especially the eradication of hunger and poverty, were already present. The effects of COVID-19, coupled with climate change, armed conflict and rising food prices, could continue to exacerbate these difficulties.

Global agrifood systems, related to the complex production of agricultural food and non-food products, as well as their storage, processing, transportation, distribution and consumption, produce 11 billion tons of food annually and employ billions of people, either directly or indirectly.

The recent FAO report analyzes whether low-income countries face greater difficulties as a result of impacts of the pandemic than middle-to high-income countries. After analyzing this specific situation in more than 100 countries, the report confirms the trend that low-income countries face greater difficulties; however, middle- and high-income countries are not excluded from these impacts.

Such is the case of middle-income countries like Brazil, where 60% of the value of their exports comes from a single trading partner, which reduces their options if their main counterpart is affected by the disruptions generated by COVID-19.

The same can happen in high-income countries, such as Canada or Australia, if they are exposed to transportation variants due to the long distances required to cover food distribution.

According to recent expert studies, reducing essential connections in the distribution network could cause local transport time to increase by 20% or more, thus increasing food costs and prices for consumers.

Resilience in agrifood systems by governments should be one of the main strategies to respond to current and future challenges, seeking to diversify sources of inputs, production, markets, supply chain and actors, supporting the creation of small and medium-sized companies, cooperatives, consortiums and other groups to maintain diversity in the agrifood value chains.

In addition, the resilience of vulnerable households should be improved to ensure a world without hunger, through greater access to assets, diversified sources of income and social protection programs in the event of a crisis.

Today, family farms represent 90% of all farms in the world. FAO established a technical platform for family farming with the aim of fostering innovation and the exchange of information between regions.

According to the Director-General of FAO, QU Dongyu, when resources and knowledge are shared “innovation is accelerated”, and while “this platform will allow us to think big, it will also facilitate the adoption of concrete measures” which will in turn allow for the conservation of biodiversity. This represents the first step towards rural transformation.

The relationship between agricultural nutrition and climate change is another outstanding component of the shocks that have continued to occur in 2021.

The increase in temperatures and the growing impact of radical atmospheric effects are exponentially affecting agriculture, causing an increase in the prices of raw materials as recorded by recent trends, and consequently aggravating the conditions of hunger and malnutrition.

If this trend continues, by 2050 agrifood production will decline by around 10%, at a time when there would be a strong increase in the world population.

There are also opportunities to reverse these trends related to agriculture, food and the environment, but in order for this to happen, greater investments is needed in this sector.

From precision agriculture and early warning systems, to improving the use of food waste and converting it into clean energy, to using water more efficiently, many practices are already being carried out in different countries. These solutions offer a sense of hope and show that we can reverse the present negative trends. When reflecting on the difficulties of the past year, we should continue to work towards finding concrete solutions instead of just pointing out the difficulties that the future of the agrifood industry faces.

Excerpt:

Mario Lubetkin is Assistant Director General at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Maize is a critical food security crop in sub-Saharan Africa with more than 40 million hectares of farmlands dedicated to maize farming in at least 32 countries. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Dec 16 2021 (IPS)

Rahab Munene’s shoe selling business crumbled at the height of COVID-19 in 2020. She traded the enterprise for a mobile grocery along the Thika Superhighway, Kiambu County.

“My son and I buy fruits, vegetables and cereals directly from farmers. This worked very well in the beginning because people did not want to leave their homes for fear of coronavirus. Today, food prices are very high, and many households are buying directly from farmers because it is cheaper,” she tells IPS.

“A 90 kg bag of maize is now going for at least $27 – up from $23 a month ago. Our business is no longer breaking even.”

In October 2021, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics indicated that the cost of food in Kenya showed an unprecedented increase of 10.6 percent compared with the same month in 2020.

UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicates a similarly unprecedented increase, by over 60 percent, of acute food insecurity in Africa over the past year.

In Africa, there is a need to overhaul the food systems to include nutritious crops and diets that are climate and severe weather resilient.

“Global food systems present a complex and multi-faceted set of challenges from farm to fork,” the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BDFN) says. Using science and best practice, BCFN has developed a system of placing the Health and Climate Pyramids side-by-side. The Double Pyramid directly illustrates a balanced, healthy, and sustainable diet.

BCFN double pyramid highlights food systems that are both healthy and good for the planet. Credit: BCFN

Faced with food insecurity exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, BCFN has called for sustainable food solutions.

One of these solutions, says Desmond Kipkorir, a Kenyan-based seed systems analyst in East and Southern Africa, ensures that farmers have high-yielding seeds to match the myriad of challenges facing the African farmer.

The 2019 Access to Seeds Index notes that “less than 10 percent of the world’s smallholder farmers have access to improved and quality seeds that can halt and tolerate climate change impacts.”

Kipkorir tells IPS the most recent data shows despite a growing private seed sector to augment public seed sectors and extensive rural agro-dealers, farmers are still unable to access the high-quality seeds they need and on time.

“Seeds systems involve a lot more than the production of seeds. They include all the factors that lead to the timely delivery of produced seeds to farmers at an affordable price. As recent as 2016, up to 90 percent of farmers in Africa relied on informal seed systems,” he says.

He says that uncertified seeds cannot counter the threats posed by climate change and extreme weather, land degradation and reducing farmlands, water and energy constraints, and an ever-growing demand for food in tandem with a growing population.

“Informal seeds systems are outside the control of government agencies. The quality of unregulated and uncertified seeds is too poor to address today’s challenges. Seeds saved from previous harvests, borrowed from neighbours and those bought from local markets are lacking in many aspects,” Chelangat Ochieng from the Ministry of Agriculture tells IPS.

“Uncertified seeds are often available, accessible and affordable to farmers. But they are not adaptable. They lack germination vigour and disease resistance.”

Experts such as Kipkorir warn that the existing yield gap will only widen and, with it, a rise in food prices.

Ochieng says the Agricultural Commodity Price Index stabilized in the third quarter of 2021. All the same, the price index is 14 percent higher than it was in January 2021.

“Maize and wheat prices are 44 percent and 38 percent higher, respectively, than their pre-pandemic, January 2020, levels,” the index indicates.

Confirming challenges facing Munene’s mobile grocer, the index shows high retail prices. Similarly, other indices confirm high food price inflation at the retail level globally.

FAO’s Food Price Index, a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, released in November 2021, showed the fourth consecutive monthly rise in the value of the food price index.

Prices for cereals and dairy rose significantly, followed by sugar and that the November 2021 index was at its highest level since June 2011.

“Climate change is here with us, and population growth is placing a lot of pressure on available farmland. Governments and the private sector need to strengthen three pillars of food security, quality of seeds, input and good agricultural practices,” Kipkorir tells IPS.

Against this backdrop, the African Seed Access Index, a seed industry research initiative, indicates that national seed systems on the continent are at varying stages of development.

Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia have established mechanisms for seed inspection and that Mozambique, Malawi, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania are on track.

Kipkorir says this is a step in the right direction but decries the generally high cost of certified seeds. He urges governments to subsidize seed prices to ensure that farmers plant seeds that can withstand climate, weather risks and crop diseases.

He calls for maize seed subsidies in the region. He warns that even more severe food insecurity looms if farmers do not access quality, high yielding maize seeds.

According to the FAO, maize is a staple and a critical food security crop in sub-Saharan Africa, with more than 40 million hectares of farmlands dedicated to maize farming in at least 32 countries in the region.

The African Seed Access Index shows that Western and Central Africa lag behind other regions of Africa in seed company presence and investments in local seed business activities, including seed breeding, production, and processing.

Overall, the Index notes significant progress in Kenya, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Other countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Madagascar, are notably lagging because they are characterized by “under-funded government seed agencies, poorly implemented seed regulations and a variety of weak private sector.”

 

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