Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

The World Health Organization calls air pollution the “single biggest environmental threat to human health" and estimates that 99 percent of the world’s population live in locations that are above WHO thresholds designed to protect human health. . Credit: Malav Goswami/IPS

By Felix Horne
Sep 2 2022 (IPS)

Tarik, age 42, lives in a village adjacent to a decades-old coal power plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the day we visited, Bosnian cities were some of the most polluted places on Earth. Describing the devastating health toll the air pollution took each year on the village’s older residents he voiced his fear for his aging parents, who had lived there for over 40 years: “The older people in this village are desperate. They put up with this air for months. They don’t get out, they don’t socialize, they can’t get groceries or medication. It’s a terrible existence.”

An estimated seven million people die every year from indoor and outdoor air pollution. That’s more than died from Covid-19 over the last two years. Often invisible, air pollution receives little attention compared with  other public health emergencies, but the threats to health are every bit as real

Human Rights Watch recently documented the horrific impacts of air pollution in Bosnia and Herzegovina during winter months. People living near some of the country’s five outdated coal-fired power plants told Human Rights Watch about the friends, family and neighbors who had died from cancer or cardiovascular or respiratory ailments that they believe were attributable to or exacerbated by pollution from the nearby coal plants. For them, the danger of air pollution is very real. The country has the world’s fifth highest mortality rate from air pollution.

A reliance on wood and coal for heat, coal for electricity generation in outdated power plants, poorly insulated buildings, an outdated vehicle fleet and natural factors all contribute to the country’s deadly air. Bosnia’s multiple tiers of government have not done enough to tackle the cause of the toxic air. They have failed to mitigate the risks the deadly air poses to human health or even to sufficiently warn the public of the dangers. 

Air pollution affects all of us, but in different ways. People with certain health conditions, pregnant women, children, and older people are the most vulnerable. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, parents told us about their difficulties caring for children with asthma and bronchitis during winter and how their children could not safely step outside without suffering acute respiratory symptoms. 

The International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies is on September 7. It’s an opportunity to take stock of the enormity of the issue and re-double efforts to address the issue. 

Air pollution is a global issue. The World Health Organization calls air pollution the “single biggest environmental threat to human health and estimates that 99 percent  of the world’s population live in locations that are above WHO thresholds designed to protect human health. Ambient (or outdoor) air pollution is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels, forest fires, waste burning, other industrial activities and natural factors.

An estimated seven million people die every year from indoor and outdoor air pollution. That’s more than died from Covid-19 over the last two years. Often invisible, air pollution receives little attention compared with  other public health emergencies, but the threats to health are every bit as real. In fact, 94 percent of air pollution deaths are due to noncommunicable diseases – notably cardiovascular disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer. And nine out of ten of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. 

Under international human rights law,  countries have a responsibility to tackle air pollution, which has devastating impacts on a range of human rights, including right to life and health.  Governments are required not only to take steps to limit air pollution by addressing its causes, but also to protect people during the worst air pollution events. This includes adequately monitoring air quality, enforcing rigorous air quality standards, and assessing, communicating, and mitigating risks to human health when pollutant levels are high. 

Air pollution and climate change are directly linked. Burning fossil fuels, responsible for about 80  percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change, is a key driver of outdoor air pollution. Shifting from fossil fuels to clean energy, including wind and solar, is a crucial means to tackle air pollution and the emissions that cause climate change. It can save millions of lives annually, including in places like Tarik’s village. What are we waiting for? 

 

Excerpt:

Felix Horne is a senior environmental researcher at Human Rights Watch

With the rise in COVID-19 cases fueled by new variants, the number of long COVID cases will keep increasing. Credit: Unsplash/Ivan Diaz

By Ifeanyi Nsofor
ABUJA, Sep 1 2022 (IPS)

More than two-years in, the COVID-19 pandemic rages on with rising cases and deaths every day.  A silent and more long-term pandemic occurring simultaneously is long COVID. The impact of long COVID has serious consequences for the future of humanity and should worry us all.

The recent Household Pulse Survey by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control shows that an average of 14% of US adults report long COVID symptoms. This is staggering because 93 million cases have been reported in the U.S. This implies that 13 million people in the U.S. have long COVID. Long COVID is also a global phenomenon: 2 million people in the United Kingdom, half million in Australia, and more than 100 million people globally.

13 million people in the U.S. have long COVID - Long COVID is also a global phenomenon: 2 million people in the United Kingdom, half million in Australia, and more than 100 million people globally

Long COVID is a group of symptoms which some have who, on the surface, recover from COVID-19 infection. Its occurrence is more frequent in those who had severe illnesses and in people who are not vaccinated. However, even those without COVID-19 symptoms when infected could have long COVID too.

Examples of long COVID include loss of smell, loss of taste, brain fog, difficulty in remembering past events, tiredness on exertion, chest pain, shortness of breath, headache, heart palpitations, muscle pain, change in skin and hair color and lots more.

Long COVID varies in duration. It could last for as short as 2 weeks and as long as many months after recovery from COVID-19 infection.

Research published in the British Medical Journal even documents a female patient with persistent loss in smell 27 months after the initial COVID-19 infection.  Therefore, it is unsurprising that some long COVID sufferers are unable to work. According to the Brookings Institution, long COVID could account for 15% of the  10.6 million unfilled jobs in the U.S.

With the rise in COVID-19 cases fueled by new variants, the number of long COVID cases will keep increasing. This is a wake-up call for global and country-level efforts to mitigate the impacts of long COVID. These are five ways to do so.

First, all global COVID-19 funds replenishment efforts must include plans to support long COVID interventions. These should go beyond COVID-19 prevention activities such as wearing of face masks, washing of hands with soap under running water and COVID vaccination.

Unfortunately, the 2022 “Break COVID Now Summit” co-hosted by Gavi only focused on replenishing funds to enable poorer countries to buy COVID-19 vaccines. Another way to ensure availability of funds for long COVID interventions before the next round of funds replenishment is ensuring that all COVID-19-related funding should include a component on long COVID. Such funding should cover local research on long COVID to determine the burden at country-levels, treatment and care for sufferers.

Second, some long COVID symptoms should be classified as disabilities. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recognises that long COVID can be a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act if it substantially limits one or more major life activities. Other countries should do likewise.

Classifying long COVID symptoms as disabilities would enable sufferers to fully recover while being supported by the government or their employer. It would also protect the rights of sufferers from discriminations and stigmatization. For instance, a worker who has brain fog and difficulty in recalling past events requires time off work and mental health therapy to recover.

Third, update mental health care to include care of those living with long COVID. This should include updating standards of practice for mental health practitioners, mental health policies and laws. In addition, doctors should refer people with long COVID to mental health specialists.

This is relevant globally, especially in low and middle countries with poor awareness and services for mental health care. For example, in Nigeria, public perception of mental health is poor, qualified personnel are few, the law regulating mental health is from colonial times and care of those suffering from mental health disorders is mostly provided by unqualified personnel.

In 2019, I co-led the mental health in Nigeria surgery – the largest mental health survey in the country within the last 20 years. Our result showed that 70% of Nigerians say that mental health disorder is when the sufferer starts running around naked. Such wrong perception delays care and stigmatizes sufferers. One can imagine how long COVID sufferers with mental health disorders could be neglected in Nigeria.

Fourth, prioritise long COVID interventions in children because they are our future and long COVID could tamper with their abilities to be successful in life.

A systematic review of long COVID in children and adolescents shows a prevalence rate of 25.24%. The top five long COVID symptoms in children and adolescents are mood symptoms (16.50%), fatigue (9.66%), sleep disorders (8.42%), headache (7.84%), and respiratory symptoms (7.62%).

The thought of children and adolescents dealing with such conditions is disheartening. Their development and productivity are stifled. Therefore, paediatricians, parents and child social workers should be trained on providing the best long COVID care for children and adolescents.

Lastly, invest in nonprofits providing long COVID interventions because governments alone cannot cater for the huge backlog of sufferers. COVIDAid – the first long COVID Charity in the United Kingdom — has brought long COVID to the front burners of national discuss in the UK. It has provided support to more than 125,000 people via a web hub, held live events on the mental health impacts of COVID-19, launched new free long COVID courses and encourages voluntarism for long COVID.

Nonprofits play important roles in bridging gaps in social development. Having more of these types of long COVID nonprofits would ensure these achievements are replicated in other countries.

Long COVID is an existential threat to humanity. Globally, the 100 million long COVID sufferers are more than the population of Germany. There is fire on the mountain. We must consolidate global efforts to quench the fire.

Credit: Yuryi Abramochkin/RIA Novosti - Creative Commons

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Sep 1 2022 (IPS)

With the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last great statesman, and an entire epoch, disappears.

I had the privilege of working with him, as deputy director of the World Political Forum, which Gorbi had founded in Turin in 2003, with a headquarters agreement with the Piedmont Region. The Forum brought together personalities from all over the world to discuss what was happening.

After Gorbachev, politicians lost the dimension of statesmen. They have gradually fallen back to the demands of electoral success, to short-time politics, to the shelving of debates of ideas, and instead turn not to reason, but to the voters' instincts

The greatest international protagonists, from Kohl to Mitterrand, from Jaruzelski to Oscar Arias, would discuss frankly their role and their mistakes. I will always remember an FPM in 2007, in which Gorbachev reminded those present that he had agreed in a meeting with Kohl, to withdraw support for the East German regime, in return for an assurance that NATO borders would not be moved beyond reunified Germany.

And Kohl replied, pointing to Andreotti who was present, that some were not so enthusiastic about a return to creating Europe’s greatest power, a position shared by Thatcher. Andreotti had said: ‘I love Germany so much that I prefer to have two‘. And the American delegation acknowledged this commitment, but complained that Secretary of State Baker had been overwhelmed by the hawks, who wanted to continue to enlarge NATO and squeeze Russia in a straitjacket.

Gorbi’s comment was lapidary: ‘instead of cooperating with a Russia that wanted to continue on a northern-style socialist path, you hastened to bring it down, and had Yeltsin first, who was conditionally yours‘.

But from Yeltsin was born Putin, who began to see things in a completely different way.

Gorbachev had cooperated with Reagan to eliminate the Cold War. It is amusing to see American historiography attributing the historic victory over communism and the end of the Cold War to Reagan. But without Gorbachev, the powerful but dull Soviet bureaucracy would have continued to resist, and would certainly have lost power. But the Berlin Wall would not have fallen, and the wave of freedom in socialist Europe would surely have come after Reagan’s term.

How much Gorbachev was intent, even more than Reagan, on advancing on the path of peace and disarmament, became clear after the 1986 meeting in Reykjavík. Gorbachev proposed to Reagan the total elimination of atomic weaponry. Reagan said that, because of the time difference, he would consult Washington later. When the two met the next morning,

Roberto Savio

Reagan told him that the US proposed the elimination of 40 per cent of the nuclear warheads. And Gorbachev replied to him: ‘if you can do no more, let’s start like this. But I remind you that we can now destroy the planet and humanity hundreds of times over’. Time would prove that disarming nuclear Russia was certainly in the American interest if Defence Secretary Weinberg, who went so far as to threaten resignation, had been able to look far ahead.

Yeltsin did everything he could to humiliate Gorbachev, to replace him. He stripped him of every pension, every perk: bodyguard, state car, and made him vacate the Kremlin in a matter of hours. But with Putin he became practically an enemy of the people. The propaganda against him was crude, but effective.

Gorbachev had presided over the end of the Soviet Union ‘the great tragedy’, and had believed the West. Now the USSR was encircled by NATO, and Putin saw himself obliged, in the name of history, to recover at least part of the great power that Gorbachev had squandered.

Those who had stood by Gorbachev since Yeltsin’s arrival saw how the elder statesman, who had changed the course of history, suffered deeply to see the course it was taking. Of course, the press preferred to ignore the deep corruption of the Yeltsin era, which cost the Russian people terrible sacrifices. Under Yeltsin, a team of American economists issued decrees privatising the entire Russian economy, with an immediate collapse in the value of the rouble and social services.

The average life expectancy fell back ten years in one fell swoop. I had a great impression to discover that my breakfast in the morning in the hotel cost as much as an average monthly pension. It was deeply saddening to see so many old ladies dressed in black selling their few poor belongings on the street.

At the same time, a few party officials, friends of Yeltsin, were buying up at bargain prices the large state enterprises put up for sale.

But how did they do it, in a society where there were no rich people? Giulietto Chiesa documented this in an investigation in Turin’s ‘La Stampa’.

Under American pressure, the International Monetary Fund granted an emergency loan of five billion dollars (in 1990) to stabilise the dollar. These dollars never reached the Russian Central Bank, nor did the IMF raise any questions. They were distributed among the future oligarchs, who suddenly found themselves fabulously millionaires. When Yeltsin had to leave power, he sought a successor who would guarantee him and his cronies impunity. One of his advisers introduced him to Putin, saying that he could tame the uprising in Chechnya.

And Putin agreed on one condition: that the oligarchs would never get involved in politics. One of them. Khdorkowski, did not respect the pact, and opened a front in opposition to Yeltsin. We know his fate: stripped of all property, and imprisoned. It was the only appearance of an oligarch in politics.

Gorbachev is the last statesman. With the arrival of the League in Turin, the agreement to host the World Political Forum was, to his amazement, cancelled. The Forum moved to Luxembourg and then the Italians in Rome Foundation took over some of its activities (very presciently) on environmental issues. Gorbachev’s right-hand man, Andrei Gracev, Gorbi’s spokesman in the PCUS and in the transition to democracy, a brilliant analyst, moved to Paris, where he is the point of reference for debates on Russia.

Gorbi, suffering from diabetes, experienced the war in Ukraine as a personal drama: his mother was Ukrainian. He retreated to a hospital under close supervision where he finally died. The era of statesmen is over, also the era of debates by great protagonists of history.

After Gorbachev, politicians lost the dimension of statesmen. They have gradually fallen back to the demands of electoral success, to short-time politics, to the shelving of debates of ideas, and instead turn not to reason, but to the voters’ instincts. Instincts to be aroused and conquered, even by a relentless campaign of fake news.

A school that Trump has managed to export to the world, from the constitutional vote in Chile on 4 September, to Bolsonaro, to Marcos, to Putin and, consequently, to Zelenski. And I find myself writing my bitterness, my discouragement, not only for the death of one of my mentors (as Aldo Moro was) but for an era that now seems definitively over: that of Politics with a capital P, capable of shaking up the world it encountered, with great risks and with the great goals of Peace and International Cooperation.

And to write uncomfortable truths, known by few, that will be immediately buried by hostile interventions and ridicule. Andrei was right when he said to me a short while ago on the phone: “Roberto, my mistake and yours is to have survived our era. Let us also be careful, because we will end up being a nuisance…”

 

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti-neoliberal global governance. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.

A family from Sachac, a Quechua farming community in the Andes highlands region of Cuzco in southeastern Peru, where Quechua is still the predominant language and where ancestral customs are preserved. When members of these native families move to the cities, they face different forms of racism, despite the fact that 60 percent of the Peruvian population identifies as ‘mestizo’ or mixed-race and 25 percent as a member of an indigenous people. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Sep 1 2022 (IPS)

Banning the use of the same bathroom, insults and calling people animals are just a few of the daily forms of racism experienced by people in Peru, a multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual country where various forms of discrimination are intertwined.

“In the houses where I have worked, they have always told me: ‘Teresa, this is the service bathroom, the one you have to use,’ as if they were disgusted that I might use their toilets,” Teresa Mestanza, 56, who has worked as a domestic in Lima since she was a teenager, told IPS.

She was born in a coastal town in the northern department of Lambayeque, where her parents moved from the impoverished neighboring region of Cajamarca, the homeland of current President Pedro Castillo, a rural teacher and trade unionist with indigenous features.

With Quechua indigenous roots, she considers herself to be “mestiza” or mixed-race and believes that her employers treat her differently, making her feel inferior because of the color of her skin.

Sixty percent of the population of this South American country of 33 million people describe themselves as “mestizo”, according to the 2017 National Census, the last one carried out in Peru.

For the first time, the census included questions on ethnic self-identification to provide official data on the indigenous and Afro-Peruvian population in order to develop public policies aimed at closing the inequality gap that affects their rights.

A study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) ranks Peru as the country with the third largest indigenous population in the region, after Bolivia and Guatemala.

Teresa Mestanza has experienced discriminatory, if not outright humiliating, treatment because of the color of her skin, as a domestic worker in Lima since she arrived as a teenager from a Quechua community in northern coastal Peru. She defines herself as ‘mestiza’ or mixed-race and believes that this is the reason why some of her employers try to “make me feel less of a person.” CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Before the invasion by the Spaniards, several native peoples lived in what is now Peru, where the Tahuantinsuyo, the great Inca empire, emerged. At present, there are officially 55 different indigenous peoples, 51 from the Amazon rainforest region and four from the Andes highlands, which preserve their own languages, identities, customs and forms of social organization.

According to the census, a quarter of the population self-identified as indigenous: 22 percent Quechua, two percent Aymara and one percent Amazonian indigenous, while four percent self-identified as Afro-descendant or black.

During the Spanish colonial period, slaves were brought from Africa to do hard labor or work in domestic service. It was not until three decades after independence was declared that the country abolished slavery, in 1854.

Indigenous and Afro-Peruvian populations are historically discriminated against in Peru, in a country with traditionally highly segmented classes. Their needs and demands have not been met by the State despite legal frameworks that seek to guarantee equality and non-discrimination and specific rights for indigenous peoples.

This situation is reflected on a daily level in routine racism, a problem recognized by more than half of the population (52 percent) but assumed as such by only eight percent, according to a national survey conducted by the Ministry of Culture in 2018.

Sofia Carrillo is a journalist, activist and anti-racist feminist and Afro-Peruvian proud of her roots, who has faced racism since childhood and despite this made Forbes Peru’s list of the most influential women in the country this year. CREDIT: Amnesty International

“Racism is hushed up because it hurts less”

A journalist, activist, and radio and television host who was chosen by Forbes Peru magazine as one of the 50 most powerful women in the country this year, Sofia Carrillo is an Afro-Peruvian proud of her roots who has faced many obstacles and “no’s” since childhood.

“It was not seen as possible, for example, for me to be a studious girl because I was of African descent, and black people were not seen as intelligent. And that was represented on television and generated a great sense of rebellion in me,” she told IPS in Lima.

Faced with these messages she had only two options. “Either you believe it or you confront the situation and use it as a possibility to show that it is not true. I shouldn’t have to prove myself more than other people, but in a country as racist and as sexist as this one, that was the challenge I took on and what motivated me throughout all the stages of my life,” she said.

In her home racism was not a taboo subject, and was discussed. But this was not the case in the extended family of cousins and aunts and uncles “because it’s better not to be aware of the situation, so it hurts less; it’s a way to protect yourself,” Carrillo said.

“It is not uncommon for people of African descent to even say that they do not feel affected by racism or discrimination, because we have also been taught this in our families: that it will affect you if you identify it, but if you pretend it does not happen, then it is much easier to deal with,” she said.

Her experience as a black woman has included receiving insults since she was a child and sexual harassment in public spaces, in transportation, on the street, “to be looked at as a sexual object, to be dehumanized,” she said.

She has also had to deal with prejudices about her abilities in the workplace. And although she has never stopped raising her voice in protest, it has affected her.

“Now I can admit that it affected my mental health, it led to periods of deep depression. I did not understand why, what the reasons were, because you also try to hide it, you try to bury it deep inside. But I understood that one way to heal was to talk about my own experiences,” Carrillo said.

Enrique Anpay is 24 years old and finished his university studies in Lima last year, where he experienced episodes of racism that still hurt him to remember. In the picture he is seen carrying one of his grandmother’s lambs in the Quechua farming community of Pomacocha, where he is from, in the central Andean region of Peru. CREDIT: Courtesy of Enrique Anpay

Racism to the point of calling people animals

Enrique Anpay Laupa, 24, studied psychology at a university in Lima, thanks to the government scholarship program Beca 18, which helps high-achieving students living in poverty or extreme poverty.

Originally from the rural community of Pomacocha, made up of some 90 native Quechua families in the central Andes highlands region of Apurimac, he still finds it difficult to talk about the racism he endured during his time in Lima, until he graduated last year.

He spoke to IPS from the town of Andahuaylas, in Apurímac, where he now lives and practices as a psychologist. “In 2017 we were 200 scholarship holders entering the university, more than other years, and we noticed discomfort among the students from Lima,” he said.

“They said that since we arrived the bathrooms were dirtier, things were getting lost, like laptops…I was quite shocked, it was a question of skin color,” he said.

During a group project, a student from the capital even told him “shut up, llama” when he made a comment. (The llama is a domesticated South American camelid native to the Andes region of Peru.)

“I kept silent and no one else said anything either,” Anpay said. Although he preferred not to go into more details, the experience of what he went through kept him from encouraging his younger brother to apply for Beca 18 and to push him to study instead at the public university in Andahuaylas.

Afro-Peruvian women participate in a festive demonstration demanding respect for their rights, on the streets of Lima on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2022. CREDIT: Courtesy of Lupita Sanchez

Racism affects the whole country

Racism is felt as a personal experience but affects whole communities and the entire country.

Carrillo said: “We can see this in the levels of impoverishment: the last census, from 2017, indicates that 16 percent of people who self-identify as ‘white’ and ‘mestizo’ live in poverty as opposed to the Afro-Peruvian population, where poverty stands at around 30 percent, the Amazonian indigenous population (40 percent) and the Andean indigenous population (30 percent).”

A study by the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics on the evolution of poverty between 2010 and 2021 showed that it affected to the greatest extent the population who spoke a native mother tongue, i.e. indigenous people.

The percentage of this segment of the population living in poverty and extreme poverty was 32 percent – eight percentage points higher than the 24 percent recorded for the population whose mother tongue is Spanish.

Carrillo considered it essential to recognize the existence of institutional racism, to understand it as a public problem that affects individuals and peoples who have been historically discriminated against and excluded, who have the right to share all spaces and to fully realize themselves, based on the principles of equality and non-discrimination.

She criticized the authorities for thinking about racism only in terms of punitive actions instead of considering a comprehensive policy based on prevention to stop it from being reproduced and handed down from generation to generation, which would include an anti-racist education that values the contribution made by each of the different peoples in the construction of Peru.

Credit: Pakistan Development Alliance

By Zia ur Rehman
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sep 1 2022 (IPS)

Pakistan has been going through the worst time of its recent history due to unprecedented colossal monsoon rains and devastating floods. The current floods would have been expected less than once a century, but climate experts claim that what we are seeing today is just a trailer of what’s in store for us if we don’t pay heed to climate change. More than 112 districts are currently afffected and around 30 million people; their property and land are totally devastated. Across the country, where hundreds of thousands of cattle died due to the Lumpy Skin Disease, now more than 727,000 have perished due to floods and rains. The number is increasing rapidly.

We were in the countryside conducting a study on the rights of women farm workers, when the Monster monsoon hit the country. We had to cut our field mission short and we are now relatively “safe” here in Islamabad, busy organising emergency relief and rescue operations.

Pakistan and its people are paying the costs of what they are not responsible for. For the past 20 years, Pakistan has consistently ranked among the top 10 most vulnerable countries on the Climate Risk Index. We are facing such climate change aggression and devastation while contributing only 0.8% of greenhouse carbon emissions to global warming. We are squeezed, geographically situtated between titans China and India, who are the top two emitters of greenhouse gases. This impacts the glaciers of the Himalaya. In Pakistan, our 7253 glaciers – more glaciers than almost anywhere on Earth – are melting faster than ice-cream in the sun due to climate change. Since the whole country is situated in the downstream of the Hamalaya, heavy floods have become the norm. To this scenario, you need to add flawed developement interventions, absence of rule of law and the lack of policy priorities towards the management of “everyday” disasters. This results in risks being left undone instead of being treated as full-fledged national security emergencies.

Today, the horrific scale of the floods are not in doubt, but the catastrophe is still unfolding. Rehabilitation and reconstruction activities need to be initiated immediately. Pakistan is already facing food insecurity due to this manmade disaster. In the long run, this crisis will increase poverty, inequality and economic instability in the country if we – supported by the world at large – fail to respond quickly.

Being part of a civil society network I see with my own eyes how civil society is vehementally engaged in rescue, relief and emergency activities through local resources and philanthropic initiatives. The international community and INGOs have not yet initiated their field operations. Although the government has officially appealed for the support of the international community and has levereged restrictions, the intensive regulatory frameworks are still working against rights based NGOs.

I have a message for the international community. Please support flood affected communities as early as possible. Local civil society needs to be strengthened and financed as well, as they are on the frontlines, they are the first reaching affected communities. In the future, there needs to be serious investments on addressing the impacts of climate change, particularly in vulnerable countries such as Pakistan, where climate change adaptation mechanism and infrastructure support should be mainstreamed. Now they are at the periphery, and it shows.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Elvie Gallo's thriving chicken business means she can support her family and put aside savings to build resilience against future shocks. Credit: BRAC/Robert Irven 2022

By Joyce Chimbi
Iloilo, Philippines, Sep 1 2022 (IPS)

Elvie Gallo no longer hangs around her local grocery store, hoping for the odd job to put food on the table. Her hand-to-mouth life has been replaced by a viable chicken rearing and selling business in Iloilo province in the Philippines.

“I have enough for today, and I am saving for my children’s future,” she says. Gallo’s story of growth and transformation is replicated across 2,700 households in Iloilo, Bukidnon, and Sultan Kudarat, three of the poorest provinces in the country.

These households have been reached through the Padayon Sustainable Livelihood program (Padayon SLP). This is a capability-building program for households and communities living in extreme poverty to improve their socio-economic conditions and develop thriving livelihoods. The Padayon SLP program is overseen by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI).

This project builds on two existing government programs, the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) and the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), with additional interventions providing access to available government services and resources to households, coupled with supportive coaching and mentorship as well as robust monitoring of household outcomes. This more holistic approach to poverty reduction is often referred to as Graduation, a multifaceted set of interventions designed to address various factors keeping people trapped in extreme poverty within the local context.

Before this most recent program, the government began exploring how to build on their existing cash transfer and livelihood programs to address multidimensional poverty, diversify household income sources, and build resilience to shocks.

Integration of the Graduation approach into the government’s existing cash transfer program was led by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) via a Graduation pilot officially launched in 2018. The pilot worked with 2,400 extremely poor beneficiaries of the 4Ps cash transfer program and administrative systems established for their Kabuhayan (livelihood) program, which provides households with productive assets and technical training.

The program included other Graduation elements to make the interventions comprehensive such as technical training on managing assets, savings mechanisms, coaching by Graduation Community Facilitators, skills building on social and health issues, and linkages to community groups and cooperatives.

 

Corazon Gaylon, a participant of the initial pilot, is comfortably putting her children through school and is no longer in debt. Credit: BRAC 2020

Corazon Gaylon, a participant of the initial pilot, reflected on how much her life has changed in just two years after successfully “graduating” from the program.

“My eldest daughter has been able to finish her college program, my second child is now starting his first year, and my youngest child is fully enrolled in school. I am no longer in debt [to anyone]. Our training sessions helped me a lot during the [COVID-19] lockdowns; I was able to prepare for it and put money aside.”

According to an initial endline impact assessment reported by ADB, despite the many challenges created by COVID-19 and ensuing lockdowns, participants demonstrated more resilient livelihoods and better savings and financial management. 73% of group livelihoods and 60% of individual livelihoods remained fully operational by the end of the program. Likewise, despite some initial dips in savings and new loans taken, by September 2020, 69% of those who reported incurring a debt also reported being able to repay all or part of the loan, indicating improved savings management and a significant decrease in instances of risky financial behavior.

After successfully completing the DOLE Graduation project in Negros Occidental, the government is now on its second iteration of Graduation integration via the DSWD program.

Rhea B Peñaflor, DSWD Assistant Secretary, hopes to see the Padayon SLP program scaled up to become a central part of the 4Ps scheme. This will ensure that people participating in the social protection program will not fall back into extreme poverty.

By integrating these various components, Peñaflor has witnessed drastic changes in the participants. “From livelihood support to social empowerment via coaching, our dreams for these participants are being realized, and they are able to create a more stable and successful future for themselves and their families.”

She stresses that the most significant feature of the Padayon SLP program “is the intensive coaching and monitoring aspects that are mainly facilitated through the coaches. We are also seeing great commitment from the various LGUs (Local Government Units) to oversee the implementation and help participants sustain their livelihoods and progress”.

“Our vision, in particular, is to create self-sufficiency and support the entire household. Extreme poverty should be everyone’s business. All levels of government, top-down and bottom-up, should be involved,” Peñaflor continues.

Every day, you can find Rosalie at the fish market near the docks of Iloilo City, providing customers with quality, freshly caught seafood at a fair price. Credit: BRAC/Robert Irven 2022

Marlowe Popes, Program Manager at BRAC UPGI, says: “The future starts at the local level. We must strengthen the capacity of local government units. They have the most experience working within the local contexts and implementing projects. They have experienced the roadblocks and challenges firsthand and are the real experts.”

Additionally, Popes confirms the need to engage local communities in the adaptation and design, implementation, and measurement of Graduation programs. Emphasizing that monitoring processes are significantly boosted by the participation of the local communities, community members serve as a driver for the success and motivation of the participants.

This level of involvement improves accountability, integration, and community ownership, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our strategy to involve leadership was key to success. Regular updates helped bring them into the fold, allowing them to feel part of success,” Popes concludes.

Meanwhile, Gallo and all other 2,699 targeted households continue their journey of growth and transformation, developing livelihoods of their choice, including agriculture, water buffalo, pig rearing and swine fattening, food carts ventures, convenience stores locally known as ‘sari sari’ stores.

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A worker carries trees to be planted during a reforestation project in Nova Mutum, Brazil, 2020. Latin America is one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change, but adaptation and mitigation projects are increasing in the region (Credit: Alexandre Meneghini / Alamy)

By Alejandra Cuéllar
MÉXICO, Aug 31 2022 (IPS)

Latin America is already one of the world’s regions hit hardest by the impacts of climate change. Extreme weather events such as droughts, heatwaves, tropical cyclones and floods have caused scores of deaths and severe damage to crop production and infrastructure, as underlined in a recent regional report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

As these events have increased in frequency and intensity, they have also driven millions of people to migrate. With the region’s average temperatures projected to rise at rates above the global average, these converging crises are expected to deepen in the coming decades.

As the UN’s next climate summit, COP27, approaches it is apparent that Latin America needs support from the global community. In a region beset by economic struggles, there have long been calls for financial tools that support multi-faceted efforts to combat climate change, at both the local and regional level – calls likely to grow ever louder after many were left frustrated by progress at last year’s COP26 conference.

But a concurrent shift in tone is being seen from some corners in Latin America ahead of the summit, set to be held in Egypt in November, with prominent voices calling on the region to play its own, increasingly assertive role in climate negotiations, and in driving climate action from home.

 

Climate impacts in Latin America

The WMO’s report exposes some alarming data on the impacts a warming world and changing climate have already brought upon Latin America. For example, glaciers in the tropical Andes have lost nearly 30% of their area since the 1980s, increasing the risk of water scarcity for populations and ecosystems in the region – and the risk of flooding for communities in proximity to them.

In 2021, sea levels in the region, specifically on its Atlantic side, also rose at a faster rate than the global average, raising the threats of flooding, freshwater contamination and storm surges in the coastal areas where a large portion of the population is concentrated.

The report also highlight’s Chile’s intensifying mega-drought, which has now entered its thirteenth year, making it the longest and most severe in a thousand years. The worsening drying trend is forcing its authorities to urgently improve water management, as tensions rise in some areas of the country, and address electricity supply issues to account for a shortfall in hydropower output – a source from which it has historically generated a sizeable portion of its electricity.

In South America more generally, droughts contributed to a 2.6% decline in the 2020–2021 cereal harvest, compared with the previous season, the WMO reports. Threats to the region’s agricultural – and by extension economic – output were compounded by heatwaves.

 

 

Upon the release of the WMO’s first edition of its “State of the Climate” report for the region in 2021, the WMO’s secretary-general, Petteri Taalas, had emphasised how Latin America and the Caribbean are “among the regions most challenged by extreme hydro-meteorological events” – an assertion only further underscored by this year’s update.

Taalas pointed to a number of recent extreme weather events, highlighting “the death and devastation from Hurricane Eta and Iota in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and the intense drought and unusual fire season in the Pantanal region of Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina.”

Notable impacts of these events, the secretary-general added, included “water and energy-related shortages, agricultural losses, displacement and compromised health and safety”, all of which “compounded challenges” of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the recovery from it.

 

Standing up in adversity

Latin American and Caribbean nations together account for less than 10% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions, with most of their contributions coming from the energy sector, agriculture and land use change. But in its increased exposure to extreme events and above-average rates of change, the region is bearing the brunt of larger polluters’ emissions.

However, a change in tone was notable among some attendees at the recent Latin America and the Caribbean Climate Week, held in the Dominican Republic in July. Some experts were keen to assure that Latin America would not be entering upcoming climate talks simply as sufferers, but as active participants shaping the direction of action.

Max Puig, executive vice-president of the Dominican Republic’s National Council for Climate Change and Clean Development Mechanism (CNCCMDL), stressed that Latin America and the Caribbean will arrive at this year’s COP with a firm position. “The time to see ourselves as climate victims is over. Although we are, the time to take the helm of the ship has begun,” he said.

“It must be clear to our peoples and to the world that we are serious and that, even in the most difficult circumstances, we are not going to stop. We will overcome the difficulties. This is the message that Latin America and the Caribbean are taking to COP27 in Egypt.”

Some civil society representatives had hoped for more progress at the recent Climate Week, particularly ensuring that climate justice and human rights are put at the centre of discussions. But other figures were more positive about the event’s outcomes in building regional momentum – and steps towards consensus – ahead of COP27.

“After spending several days at this year’s Latin American and Caribbean Climate Week, I have seen that the countries of the region are making progress. I also saw the potential to accelerate climate action,” Ovais Sarmad, deputy executive secretary of UN Climate Change, told Diálogo Chino after the event’s conclusion. “We’ve heard a lot of potential solutions during this week.”

 

Adaptation, solutions and opportunities

Although faced with tremendous challenges, Latin America has also proven to be a hub for innovative solutions to climate change. The region has great potential in renewable energies such as wind, solar and geothermal. There have also been advances in the transport sector, particularly in electric buses in the past decade, and a nascent growth in the uptake of private electric cars, with nations increasingly looking to spark a broader switch to electric vehicles.

Latin America and the Caribbean have also demonstrated a wealth of solutions that promote adaptation and mitigation, many of which may be replicated in other regions according to needs and contexts. Many of these solutions have been seen in the agricultural sector, with some derived from ancestral knowledge and historic practices that promote better management of water, land and energy.

Practices that fall under the umbrella of regenerative agriculture are gaining increased attention in Latin America. Agroforestry for example, which integrates trees into agricultural systems, can enhance productivity, improve and increase biodiversity, and contribute to greater carbon sequestration. Meanwhile, the region’s coastal ecosystems such as mangroves and marshes are now being recognised for their potential to mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon, while providing a range of other benefits.

 

 

Forests are also Earth’s most vital sites of carbon sequestration, but face significant threats – perhaps nowhere more so than in Latin America, where biomes such as the Amazon, Cerrado and Gran Chaco have all witnessed vast deforestation in recent decades.

“With almost half of its area covered by forests, Latin America and the Caribbean represents about 57% of the world’s remaining primary forests, storing an estimated 104 gigatonnes of carbon. Fires and deforestation are now threatening one of the world’s largest carbon sinks, with far-reaching and long-lasting repercussions,” the WMO’s Taalas said at the launch of last year’s “State of the Climate” report. Despite notable progress and declarations at last year’s COP26, the monitoring and prevention of deforestation will likely remain on the agenda heading into this year’s summit.

The WMO’s 2021 report also stressed the need for strengthening early warning systems in Latin America. These are multi-hazard early warning systems (MHEWS) that can warn people about extreme weather events and prevent millions of deaths. These are essential tools for effective adaptation in areas at risk from weather, water and climate extremes, but for many nations, as with many solutions, effectively implementing them may be reliant on increased finance – highlighting once more what is likely to be a key agenda item as Latin America looks towards COP27.

COP27 takes place ​​6–18 November in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

This article was originally published by ChinaDialogue

Africa needs to transit away from fossil fuels to renewables to boost energy security. Pictured here is a coal production plant in Hwange, Zimbabwe. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
Bulawayo, Aug 31 2022 (IPS)

Africa needs to trade in carbon credits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, finance the transition to renewable energy, and boost economic development, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) says.

Carbon credits present an opportunity for African countries – many dependent on fossil fuels for energy – to protect themselves against climate change while raising much-needed finance for the transition to renewable energy transition, said Jean-Paul Adam, Director for Technology, Climate Change and Natural Resources Management Division at UNECA.

Jean-Paul Adam, Director for Technology, Climate Change and Natural Resources Management Division at UNECA.

Carbon credits are globally traded commodities or permits that allow the emission of one tonne of CO2 or one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent gases to be traded on national or international carbon markets. These credits, which can be used to boost economic growth and attract financing for various projects, are traded on the carbon offset markets.

By selling carbon credits, African countries can also tackle climate change by protecting their forests which absorb and store a measured amount of carbon. Besides, the carbon credits can also be sold as ‘offsets’ to companies unable to cut pollution to reduce emissions elsewhere.

Lack of finance and capacity to trade on the global carbon markets are hurdles for African countries have to overcome in the growing global carbon markets, where the carbon pricing revenue increased by almost 60 percent last year to about $84 billion, according to the World Bank.

Cashing in on carbon credits

Africa suffers energy insecurity, as seen in chronic power load shedding and blackouts that have a huge cost on people’s livelihoods and economic growth.

Fossil fuels dominate Africa’s energy mix, which comprises crude oil, coal, natural gas, hydropower, wind, and solar power. Africa is an untapped market for carbon trading. About two percent of global investments in renewable energy in the last two decades were made in Africa,  according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) report.

But letting go of fossil fuels is a catch-22 situation for African countries. Many could lose essential revenue and risk stranded natural resources as the world demand for fossil fuels declines in favour of renewable energy.

According to the African Development Bank, more than 600 million people in Africa have no access to energy, and the continent has some of the world’s lowest electricity access rates for African countries at just over 40 percent.

The UNECA is supporting African countries to raise their resources reliably and transparently through carbon trading, said Adam, noting the need for an appropriate supervisory body for transparent carbon credit trading.

He said that African countries are the guardians of some of the world’s important carbon removing assets. Large-scale natural and land-based assets can enable African countries to meet  30 percent of the world’s sequestration needs by 2050.

“We know that the rate of deforestation in Africa is the highest in all regions of the world, and therefore a well-structured carbon credit system can allow African countries to protect at-risk resources and generate income from the protection of those resources,” said Adam.

UNECA projects that through nature-based carbon removal, Africa can generate between $15 and $82 billion annually, depending on the price of carbon. For example, at  $50 per tonne, the revenue potential from natural carbon sequestration removal would be $15 billion. Adam said the average price for carbon credit in Africa was currently about $10 per tonne, which could be raised with the creation of high-integrity registries.

Africa’s carbon market was not as well developed as many countries did not have a registry to measure carbon emissions and trade them.

Adam argued that a predictive carbon market would benefit African countries with long-term access to affordable energy.

Africa accounts for only three percent of cumulative global CO2 emissions and less than five percent of the world’s annual CO2 emissions. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) highlights that Africa has made the smallest historical contribution to the greenhouse gases causing global warming but bears the brunt of the negative impacts of climate change.

“African countries on average are spending nine percent of their budgets, that means for every $100 that governments are spending, $9 is being removed right at the onset just for paying for climate change,” Adam told IPS. “Essentially, climate change is putting a tax on African countries that is higher relative to incomes in other countries.”

Adam says Africa has crafted an energy transition plan to boost energy security using natural gas as a transition fuel, given that many countries did not have access to geothermal and hydropower that could also be used for baseload generation.

African countries, through the African Union, have adopted a common position for energy transition recognising natural gas as a temporary energy need with oil and coal being phased out and allowing for more investment in renewable energy, particularly solar, wind and geothermal.

No to gas

The African Common Position on Energy Access and Transition proposed for adoption by African Heads of State and to be launched at COP27 in Egypt this year comes on the back of the European Union’s recent vote in favour of a new rule that will consider fossil gas and nuclear projects as “green”.

The African Group of Negotiators (AGN) and the African civil society have opposed the plan. They worry it would detract from Africa’s energy access and transition goals while locking the continent into fossil fuels for decades.

“Africa is blessed with abundant wind, solar, and other clean, renewable energies. African leaders should be maximising this potential and harnessing the abundant wind and sun, which will help boost energy access and tackle climate change,” said Mohamed Adow, Director of Power Shift Africa.

Lorraine Chiponda, Africa Coal Network Coordinator, said the acceleration of gas projects in Africa was another colonial and modern ‘Scramble and Partition of Africa’ among energy corporations and rich countries.

While Omar Elmawi, coordinator of #StopEACOP, commented, “Africa needs to wake up and stop behaving like (it’s) Europe’s petrol station and always looking at resolving their (developed nation’s) energy problems. It is time to think collectively about what’s best for the continent and its people. This is a continent ripe with renewable energy potential.”

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Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait and Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council meet students at the Souza Gare school in the Littoral region, Cameroon. The school hosts displaced children who have fled the violence in the North-West and South-West regions. Credit: ECW/Daniel Beloumou

By Joyce Chimbi
Copenhagen, Aug 30 2022 (IPS)

Hiding in basements during bombings, fleeing their homes, going hungry, and facing the devastating and life-transformative traumas of losing their loved ones as their childhoods go up in flames of war. These are the lived experiences of crisis-impacted children and adolescents.

“They have also seen militia, army and may have been subjected to war crimes, violations of international law, sexual violence and torture. When you go through such experiences, without a doubt, you are going to suffer some form of trauma,” says Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises

She tells IPS that this is the reality for many of the 222 million crisis-impacted children. At the forefront of extreme, unrelenting violence and brutality, but left furthest behind in accessing a most critical human right, mental health services.

“It is imperative that for every child, every adolescent that lives in this complex humanitarian crisis, that their mental health is safeguarded and supported that they receive psychosocial services working with their resilience. For they indeed have a resilience that took them that far and enabled them to survive,” she says.

Sherif stressed that acknowledging and addressing the need for student and teacher mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) is fundamental for children and adolescents to be able to learn. That if they are going to resume education, it is critically important that they receive psychosocial support.

“We must ensure that education investments always entail a strong component of mental health and psychosocial support. ECW has integrated mental health and psychosocial services into all our investments. There is no investment in any of the 44 countries where we have invested which does not have a component of mental health and psychosocial services,” Sherif tells IPS.

“Crisis-impacted children and adolescents receive psychosocial support through the education that we have invested in. It is therefore very important that financing for education through ECW dramatically increases so that we can provide even better context-specific mental health services and psychosocial support.”

Speaking against the backdrop of the Nordic Conference on MHPSS in Fragile and Humanitarian Settings, Sherif unpacked safe, inclusive, and quality education as child-centered, holistic education that includes, amongst others, school feeding, teachers, water and sanitation as well as mental health and psychosocial support.

“ECW has reached 7 million children and adolescents in less than five years, and MHPSS is at the core of our work with our partners. To have an impact on MHPSS, we need funding, long-term investments, and working across organizations and disciplines,” Sherif remarked during the conference’s opening panel.

Over 13,800 learning spaces now feature mental health and/or psychosocial support activities, and the number of teachers trained on mental health and psychosocial support topics doubled in 2021, reaching 54,000.

“It costs money to save the world. To give a holistic education centered on MHPSS requires a minimum of 150 dollars per child, and we are speaking about 222 million crisis-impacted children. We have the greatest dream and science on earth, but if we cannot pay for that, it is not going to happen,” Sherif emphasizes.

Co-hosted by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Danish Red Cross, the inaugural conference “A Human Right Left Behind: A Nordic Conference on MHPSS in Fragile and Humanitarian Settings” was held on August 29 and 30, 2022, in Copenhagen.

The conference aimed to solidify Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) as a priority concern in all humanitarian responses and address urgent needs to increase access to quality MHPSS.

Recognizing the need for meaningful, collaborative approaches and solidarity in MHPSS, the conference’s Steering Committee includes the IFRC PS Centre for Psychosocial Support, Danish Red Cross, International Children’s Development Program Norway, MHPSS Collaborative, Save the Children Denmark and War Child Sweden.

The conference marks the beginning of a process and movement of joint strategies and collaborative action between multilevel MHPSS stakeholders.

Conference themes include localizing and strengthening MHPSS systems, direct MHPSS interventions, child-, youth-, and caregiver-focused MHPSS, cross-sectoral integration/coordination mechanisms, and innovative approaches.

Conference outcomes include a Nordic Network on MHPSS Launch, 2022-2030 Joint Nordic Roadmap on MHPSS in Humanitarian Settings, and a Copenhagen Declaration on Prioritizing MHPSS in Humanitarian Action.

ECW’s most recent estimates released in June 2022 show 222 million school-aged children and adolescents are caught in crises globally, 78.2 million who are out of school. An estimated 65.7 million of these out-of-school children, 84 percent, lived in protracted crises.

Approximately two-thirds of them, or 65 percent, are in just ten countries, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen.

The difficulties they face from sustained conflict and forced displacement are now multiplied by climate-induced disasters and the long-term effects of COVID-19.

Within this context, Sherif urges the global community to respond with an education package centered on healing the brutalized minds of the affected children.

ECW’s landmark Technical Guidance Note on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) in Education in Emergencies, and Protracted Crises (EiEPC) provides practical guidance to grantees to ensure children and adolescents receive a holistic education that protects and promotes student wellbeing.

ECW’s MHPSS in EiEPC Technical Guidance Note aims to be used as a reference in partners’ guidance and standards, such as in UNICEF/WHO/UNHCR’s Minimum Service Package for MHPSS in education in emergencies.

An education that is blind to the special mental health needs of children and adolescents in fragile and humanitarian settings, she says, will simply not keep the promise of a safe, inclusive, and quality education for the world’s most vulnerable children.

To keep the promise of holistic education, ECW’s High-Level Financing Conference will take place in Geneva in February 2023. Hosted by Switzerland and Education Cannot Wait – and co-convened by Germany, Niger, Norway, and South Sudan – through the 222 Million Dreams campaign, the conference calls on government donors, private sector, foundations, and high-net-worth individuals to turn commitments into action by making substantive funding contributions to ECW.

Through these contributions, targeted crisis-impacted children and adolescents will be reached with mental health and psychosocial services that include counseling, social group work, online counseling, training of teachers, and other means of providing mental health support.

“We really appeal to all governments, private sector, and high net individuals to make pledges at the upcoming conference to enable us to expand mental health support and education at large,” Sherif concludes.

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Escaping the flood waters is a family with their livestock. The family was caught in devastating flows in the Taluka Jhudo, District Mirpurkhas. Credit: Research and Development Foundation (RDF)

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Aug 30 2022 (IPS)

The heavy and incessant monsoon downpours across Pakistan in the last two months have triggered floods wreaking havoc across the country, submerging entire villages and vast tracts of land and entrapping people. Anything coming in the way of the relentless water is being destroyed, including roads, bridges, and standing crops.

The Pakistani government has declared a national emergency with more than 30 million without shelter. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 66 districts have officially been declared ‘calamity hit’ by the government of Pakistan – 31 in Balochistan, 23 in Sindh, nine in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and three in Punjab. Many have likened the destruction to the 2010 super floods.

With government resources stretched and communications networks disrupted, flood survivors complain that help is scarce.

Families take refuge on higher ground. Credit Azra Gandehi

Flimsy coverings make keeping dry in the incessant rain an impossible task. Credit Azra Gandehi

Saeeda Khatoon, 28, likened her village of Zakaria Mahesar to the famous 3rd millennium BC Moenjodaro ruins of the ancient Indus civilization, in her district of Larkana, in Sindh province, after the rains destroyed over 200 houses, some made of mud and straw and others, like hers, of brick. She, along with 11 members of her family, has found temporary shelter on higher ground, on the outskirts of the village, under the open sky, unprotected from the vagaries of the unpredictable monsoon rains.

“The water gushed into our home suddenly, and we rushed out just moments before the roof caved in,” she said, rendering them homeless. With water still waist deep, she said there was no way of retrieving their belongings from under the debris.

The monsoon season hit Pakistan this year in June, earlier than usual. Torrential rains continued well into July, with 181% above average rainfall. The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) said it rained 177.5mm against its normal of 63.1mm, making this July the wettest since 1961.

“July 2022 rainfall was excessively above average over Balochistan (+450%) and Sindh (+307%), both rank as the wettest ever during past 62 years,” said the PMD’s monthly summary. And the rains continue to batter the country well into the end of August, spreading more destruction across the provinces of Punjab, KP, and the mountainous region of Gilgit-Baltistan, after annihilating Balochistan and Sindh.

According to the National Disaster Management Authority, the rains have caused havoc across Pakistan, claiming nearly 1,000 lives and more than 1400 rain-related injuries since June. More than half the casualties are from Balochistan and Sindh province.

Over 3,000 km of road network has been damaged, of which over 2,300 km is in Sindh, making it difficult for the government and non-governmental organizations to reach and rescue. “The whole province is inundated with flood water, and roads are battered; it is difficult to reach and provide relief,” said Inayatullah Ismail, senior manager, coordination at the non-profit Al Khidmat Welfare Society. “We are providing tents to the displaced people and will be setting up kitchens on the highways where people are seeking refuge.”

“Since the last three days, our teams have been distributing cooked food to nearly 30,000 flood victims who have set up makeshift camps around RDF offices,” said Soomro.

“Giving cooked meals is best as it is difficult for the displaced to cook having lost everything,” said Aqsa Iqbal, who volunteers with Serve Humanity Together. She suggested: “All those who are providing cooked food to affectees may also want to add drinking water bottles, packed snacks or biscuits, juices and fruits (dates) as well, so that they could have something that does not get spoiled, and they can consume over the next few days.” She also said most people urgently needed tents, plastic sheets, and medical aid.

Further, she said, rescue and relief workers were finding it difficult to reach people stuck in remote villages, surrounded by stagnant rainwater.

“Many of these people are young volunteers with a lot of zeal but not professionally trained. Wading through water, even shallow, was difficult, and there is always the fear that they could be bitten by snakes or fall in open potholes,” said Iqbal. That is why, she said, it would be best to bring the flood affectees to dry land, where it is easier to provide them with food, water, and medicines.

So far, the NDMA has recorded nearly 680,000 houses affected, of which over 58,000 are in Sindh alone. Up to 19,000 of these homes in Sindh have been destroyed.

A father and son remove their belongings from their flood-damaged home in Taluka, Shujabad, District Mirpurkhas Taluka, Shujabad, District Mirpurkhas. Credit: Research and Development Foundation (RDF)

“I have never seen a greater catastrophe in my life,” said Sindh chief minister Murad Ali Shah after visiting various flood-affected districts of Sindh. He said his government was stretched for funds and had run out of tents and food. Over 10 million people in Sindh have been rendered homeless.

The government of Sindh has formally reached out to NGOs requesting help with rescue and relief work.

Despite being surrounded by water, the women from the Taluka Jhudo region have to walk for miles to access clean water for their families and cooking. Credit: Research and Development Foundation (RDF)

Rani Malukhani, a social activist from Khuda Baksh Marri, a village in Sanghar district, said they were starving and sitting on the roadside with nothing to protect them from the lashing rain. “Where is the government; where are the NGOs?” she said over a WhatsApp video phone call, showing how her community was sitting stranded on the roadside.

“Our homes and standing crops have been destroyed,” she cried in distress.

“There are close to 700 people in this village, and all are sitting on both sides of the 2-3 km long road under the sky,” confirmed Azra Gandehi, who works with the NGO, Research and Development Foundation (RDF). She was visiting the village for a preliminary survey and assessment of the damage so she could return with assistance. “The water is chest deep, and all had to evacuate along with their livestock.”

In the neighbouring Mirpur Khas district, things are no better. Motan Bheel, 52, and her five children and two goats, belonging to Jhudo village, had to wade through waist-deep water to reach the safety of the bank of Puraan (a sub-drain that collects saline water, agricultural effluent, and floodwater to the Arabian Sea). “There is water all around us, but not a drop to drink,” she said. “We have not received any help from the government, NGOs or philanthropists.”

Irfan Hussain, working with RDF and helping the district government in Mirpur Khas with rescue work, explained: “They have to walk nearly three kilometres to fetch water, but because they don’t have enough vessels to carry water and big containers to store, they have to keep going back and forth.”

Bheel said her 14-year-old was running a high fever for the last two days and fears it may be malaria. “There is nowhere to go to seek help, and I don’t have the money,” she said.

Hussain said she and half the villagers (from 250 households) staying on either side of the bank urgently need tents, mosquito nets and healthcare to fight malaria, diarrhoea, and scabies.

The government has turned schools and factories into relief camps, but Gandehi, who visited some, found them “too crowded”.

Indus Resource Centre, an NGO, has been running 17 schools, managing five government schools and 25 non-formal post-primary centres, in Khairpur district, for the last 22 years. Sadiqa Salahuddin, heading IRC, sent an appeal for help. She said ten IRC schools, including five government schools, have been turned into camps housing nearly 7,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), and the number was increasing daily.

Contemplating his losses, a man stands in front of his house in Taluka Sanghar, District Sangha. He is among the millions displaced by the floods. Credit: Research and Development Foundation (RDF)

The Larkana district administration has set up around 290 camps where around 28,500 people have been shifted. But people are unhappy with the lack of facilities saying they spend sleepless nights “owing to the huge swarm of mosquitos”. The government has registered nearly 184,061 people in camps set up in 117 districts across the country.

The RDF is also helping the livestock department vaccinate animals to reduce the threat of an outbreak of diseases.

Over 17,600 animals were vaccinated and 8,000 dewormed in the last two days in Tando Allahyar, Matiari, Mipur Khas, Thatta and Tharparkar districts during the floods,” said Ashfaque Soomro, executive director of RDF. “The campaign will continue, and we will increase our outreach in ten other districts.”

The government has launched an international appeal for relief and rehabilitation. The European Union announced €350,000 as crucial humanitarian assistance focusing on addressing the urgent needs of the hardest-hit districts of Jhal Magsi and Lasbela in Balochistan.

Prime Minister Sheh­baz Sharif also appealed to the nation for Rs 80 billion needed for carrying out relief work in addition to “hundreds of billions of rupees” to rehabilitate the victims.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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"Wildfires – well known for their disastrous consequences in southern Europe – are now occurring as far north as Scandinavia". Credit: Unsplash/Fabian Jones.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Aug 30 2022 (IPS)

Shortly before the 25 August approval by the Spanish Parliament of the government’s plan to save energy, the country’s right and far-right opposition parties revived their debate about an earlier suggestion of not wearing neckties in the Spanish Congress and Senate and other official institutions.

The suggestion was made by Pedro Sanchez, President of the Spanish government, as a way to help save energy.

The idea was that neckties increase the feeling of warmth, now that the country has to face two great problems: energy shortage and unprecedented heatwaves that increase the consumption of electricity.

The Spanish-approved plan includes limiting the air condition temperature to 27 degrees C, and the winter heating devices to a maximum of 18 degrees, among many other measures.

The European Commission hailed the Spanish plan to reduce around 7% of its energy consumption. Other European Union member countries allocated different percentages. And one of the most dependent European powers on Russian oil and gas–Germany, plans to reduce its energy consumption by 15-20%.

As expected, the Spanish right and far-right parties voted against the plan, alleging that it falls short, that it demonstrates the failure of the government, that it increases the citizens’ suffering, that promoting public transportation and providing financial assistance to the most hit sectors, are not the solution.

They say that the way out is to reduce taxes. No wonder, now they are focused on the next regional and municipal elections that they hope will lead them to the central government

No wonder, they now focused on the next regional and municipal elections that may hitch them up to the government.

 

The argument

Likewise other European countries, Spanish politicians and the media continue to tirelessly blame the Russian Federation’s President Vladimir Putin for their harsh energy crisis, much too often attributing it to what they call the ‘Russian blackmailing.’

The point is that this crisis has emerged as a consequence of the United States-led severe sanctions on Moscow following the beginning on 24 February 2022 of the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine.

The sanctions include, above all, the prohibition of importing Russian oil, gas and other products like grains and fertilisers; the withdrawal and blockage of Western business activities, and a very long etcetera.

The sanctions were immediately implemented by the chorus of well-mannered US allies in Europe and elsewhere.

Then came the 30 June Summit in Madrid of the Western “defensive” military alliance – The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which decided to double Europe’s military spending on weapons as a way to face the “Russian threat.”

 

All this happened before the Ukrainian war

While the United States continue to rank top oil and weapons producers, the world’s citizens are, once more, to pay the price: skyrocketing energy and food prices, unprecedented inflation rates, economic slowdown and the risk of a great recession, just to mention some.

The Ukrainian war is absolutely condemnable as are all wars. Once more, diplomacy has failed or even unwanted to be seriously tried. Meanwhile, Western powers continue to update the former US president George W. Bush and his allies list the “Axis of Evil.” Vladimir Putin now tops it.

Anyway, the Made-in-Europe current crisis –both Russia and Ukraine are European countries– just adds to earlier disasters. Indeed, likewise everywhere else, Europe now faces unprecedented heatwaves. And devastating fires.

These emergencies: war, energy, heat and fires are not new. They are just some of the symptoms of a much bigger, untreated disease: climate change.

Such a disease is much more dangerous that any other pandemic. Indeed the whole world population, in particular the poor, has been severely infected.

 

The ‘POP’ and the ‘POS’

Being ‘part of the problem,’ Europe is not ‘part of the solution.’ Even if European politicians continue to show shameful indifference toward the unspeakable suffering -and death- of other regions’ human beings, they don’t pay attention even to those of their own citizens.

See what the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Regional Director for Europe stated on 22 July 2022.

“Unprecedented. Frightening. Apocalyptic. These are just some of the adjectives used in news reports as vast swathes of the WHO European Region suffer from ferocious wildfires and record-breaking high temperatures amid an ongoing, protracted heatwave,” said Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge.

Heat kills, he said, and reminded that over the past decades, hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of extreme heat during extended heatwaves, often with simultaneous wildfires.

“Wildfires – well known for their disastrous consequences in southern Europe – are now occurring as far north as Scandinavia, and this week fires in London have destroyed 41 homes. This scorching summer season is barely halfway done,” the WHO representative went on.

Extreme heat exposure often exacerbates pre-existing health conditions. Heatstroke and other serious forms of hyperthermia – an abnormally high body temperature – cause suffering and premature death. Individuals at either end of life’s spectrum – infants and children, and older people – are at particular risk, warned Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge.

 

And the consequences are…

A simple equation would say that more heat and more fires cause greater land degradation, droughts, desertification, loss of fertile soils and water resources, fewer crops, less food supplies, growing demand, more market speculation, higher prices, rising inflation, among others, all of them harshly impacting the already hard lives of the lay citizens.

Talking about water in Europe. As reported in a previous IPS article: Not Enough Clean Water in Europe? Who Cares…, two specialised bodies –the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and the European branch of the World Health Organization (WHO)– have warned that plans to make water access possible in the face of climate pressures “are absent” in the pan-European region.

And “in most cases” throughout the region there has also been a lack of coordination on drinking water, sanitation and health during the Thirteenth meeting of the Working Group on Water and Health held on 19-20 May 2022 in Geneva.

 

The poor?… What is that?

This short story has addressed the case of the highly industrialised, rich Europe.

What about the rarely severe impacts of all that on the so-called low-income countries?. No mention of them in European political speech, let alone the mainstream media.

No matter if the number of hungry humans now amounts to one billion? No matter if the world’s billions of poor have by no means caused the current catastrophe, while bearing the burden of its severest consequences?

They don’t have silk neckties to wear.

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 30 2022 (IPS)

Asia and the Pacific is the most digitally divided region of the world, and South-East Asia is the most divided subregion. The Covid-19 pandemic detonated a “digital big bang” that spurred people, governments and businesses to become “digital by default;” a sea change that generated vast digital dividends. These benefits that have not been distributed equally, however. New development gaps have emerged as digital transformation reinforces a vicious cycle of socioeconomic inequalities, within and across countries.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

Bridging these divides and ensuring advances in technology can benefit everyone will be a key challenge as the region seeks to achieve a more inclusive and sustainable post-pandemic recovery. A new ESCAP report, Asia-Pacific Digital Transformation Report 2022: Shaping our digital future, identifies five key “digital divides;” fault lines that separate those who can readily take advantage of new technology from those more likely to be left behind. These divides are related to age, gender, education, disability and geography.

Typically, those most comfortable with technological innovation are younger and better educated people who have grown up with the Internet as ”digital natives”. Older persons may be more distrustful, or slower to acquire the necessary skills or suffer declines in aptitude. But at any age, poor communities – especially those in rural areas – are most at risk as they may be unable to afford electricity or digital connections or lack the relevant skills, even if the necessary infrastructure and connectivity are there.

The most significant driver of digital transformation is business research and its development and adoption of frontier technologies. Another major component is e-government; the delivery of public information and services via the Internet or through other digital means. This has the potential for more efficient and inclusive operations; especially when linked to national digital ID systems. However, because e-government services often evolve in complex regulatory environments, providing appropriate levels of accessibility for older generations, the disabled, or those with limited education has become more challenging.

It is clear that digital technologies are enabling the delivery of previously unimagined services while enhancing productivity and optimizing resource use that helped reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants. These technologies also helped track and contain pandemic spread. Social networks are fostering and diversifying communications among people of all ages sharing common interests, irrespective of location. This helps them stay in touch, broaden their experiences, continue education or deepen subject knowledge. This provided a veritable lifeline that has continued as we enter the post-pandemic era.

At the same time, the risks have also proliferated. Social networks also created social ”echo chambers” and generated torrents of misinformation and hate speech. New cryptocurrencies have opened the way to speculative financial bubbles, while cybercrime increased alarmingly as it assumed prolific variations. In addition, digital gadgets and the Internet are thought to contribute to more than 2 per cent of the global carbon footprint. The manufacture of electronic hardware can also exhaust supplies of natural resources such as rare-earth elements and precious metals like cobalt and lithium.

Moreover, digital transformation has led to the creation of an immense amount of digital data which become an essential resource to understand digital transformation. However, it raises concerns about the ethical and responsible use of data for privacy protection. A common understanding among countries on the operationalization of such principles has yet to evolve.

The Asia-Pacific Digital Transformation Report 2022 highlights the importance of digital connectivity infrastructure as “meta-infrastructure.” 5G and other high-speed networks can make all other infrastructure – such as transport and power grid distribution – much smarter, optimizing resource use for sustainable development. To contribute to these needs, the Report recommends three pathways for action, which are not mutually exclusive and are aligned with the ESCAP Action Plan of the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway initiative for 2022-2026.

The first pathway focuses on the supply side and provides relevant policy practices for the development of cost-effective network infrastructure. The second addresses the demand side and recommends capacity-building programmes and policies to promote uptake at scale, of new, more affordable and accessible digital products and services. The third involves improving systems and institutions that are related to collecting, aggregating and analysing data in a way that builds public trust and deepens policymakers’ understanding of the drivers of digital transformations.

Finally, in a world where digital data can flash around the globe in an instant, the report highlights the importance of regional and global cooperation. Only by working together can countries ensure that these technological breakthroughs will benefit everyone; their peoples, economies and societies, as well as for the natural environment, in our new “digital by default” normal.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 30 2022 (IPS)

Most sub-Saharan African French colonies got formal independence in the 1960s. But their economies have progressed little, leaving most people in poverty, and generally worse off than in other post-colonial African economies.

Decolonization?
Pre-Second World War colonial monetary arrangements were consolidated into the Colonies Françaises d’Afrique (CFA) franc zone set up on 26 December 1945. Decolonization became inevitable after France’s defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and withdrawal from Algeria less than a decade later.

Anis Chowdhury

France insisted decolonization must involve ‘interdependence’ – presumably asymmetric, instead of between equals – not true ‘sovereignty’. For colonies to get ‘independence’, France required membership of Communauté Française d’Afrique (still CFA) – created in 1958, replacing Colonies with Communauté.

CFA countries are now in two currency unions. Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo belong to UEMOA, the French acronym for the West African Economic and Monetary Union.

Its counterpart CEMAC is the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, comprising Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Chad.

Both UEMOA and CEMAC use the CFA franc (FCFA). Ex-Spanish colony, Equatorial Guinea, joined in 1985, one of two non-French colonies. In 1997, former Portuguese colony, Guinea-Bissau was the last to join.

Such requirements have ensured France’s continued exploitation. Eleven of the 14 former French West and Central African colonies remain least developed countries (LDCs), at the bottom of UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI).

French African colonies
Guinea was the first to leave the CFA in 1960. Before fellow Guineans, President Sékou Touré told President Charles de Gaulle, “We prefer poverty in freedom to wealth in slavery”.

Guinea soon faced French destabilization efforts. Counterfeit banknotes were printed and circulated for use in Guinea – with predictable consequences. This massive fraud brought down the Guinean economy.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

France withdrew more than 4,000 civil servants, judges, teachers, doctors and technicians, telling them to sabotage everything left behind: “un divorce sans pension alimentaire” – a divorce without alimony.

Ex-French espionage documentation service (SDECE) head Maurice Robert later acknowledged, “France launched a series of armed operations using local mercenaries, with the aim of developing a climate of insecurity and, if possible, overthrow Sékou Touré”.

In 1962, French Prime Minister Georges Pompidou warned African colonies considering leaving the franc zone: “Let us allow the experience of Sékou Touré to unfold. Many Africans are beginning to feel that Guinean politics are suicidal and contrary to the interests of the whole of Africa”.

Togo independence leader, President Sylvanus Olympio was assassinated in front of the US embassy on 13 January 1963. This happened a month after he established a central bank, issuing the Togolese franc as legal tender. Of course, Togo remained in the CFA.

Mali left the CFA in 1962, replacing the FCFA with the Malian franc. But a 1968 coup removed its first president, radical independence leader Modibo Keita. Unsurprisingly, Mali later re-joined the CFA in 1984.

Resource-rich
The eight UEMOA economies are all oil importers, exporting agricultural commodities, such as cotton and cocoa, besides gold. By contrast, the six CEMAC economies, except the Central African Republic, rely heavily on oil exports.

CFA apologists claim pegging the FCFA to the French franc, and later, the euro, has kept inflation low. But lower inflation has also meant “slower per capita growth and diminished poverty reduction” than in other African countries.

The CFA has “traded decreased inflation for fiscal restraint and limited macroeconomic options”. Unsurprisingly, CFA members’ growth rates have been lower, on average, than in non-CFA countries.

With one of Africa’s highest incomes, petroleum producer Equatorial Guinea is the only CFA country to have ‘graduated’ out of LDC status, in 2017, after only meeting the income ‘graduation’ criterion.

Its oil boom ensured growth averaging 23.4% annually during 2000–08. But growth has fallen sharply since, contracting by -5% yearly during 2013–21! Its 2019 HDI of 0.592 ranked 145 of 189 countries, below the 0.631 mean for middle-ranking countries.

Poor people
With over 70% of its population poor, and over 40% in ‘extreme poverty’, inequality is extremely high in Equatorial Guinea. The top 1% got over 17% of pre-tax national income in 2021, while the bottom half got 11.5%!

Four of ten 6–12 year old children in Equatorial Guinea were not in school in 2012, many more than in much poorer African countries. Half the children starting primary school did not finish, while less than a quarter went on to middle school.

CFA member Gabon, the fifth largest African oil producer, is an upper middle-income country. With petroleum making up 80% of exports, 45% of GDP, and 60% of fiscal revenue, Gabon is very vulnerable to oil price volatility.

One in three Gabonese lived in poverty, while one in ten were in extreme poverty in 2017. More than half its rural residents were poor, with poverty three times more there than in urban areas.

Côte d’Ivoire, a non-LDC CFA member, enjoyed high growth, peaking at 10.8% in 2013. With lower cocoa prices and Covid-19, growth fell to 2% in 2020. About 46% of Ivorians lived on less than 750 FCFA (about $1.30) daily, with its HDI ranked 162 of 189 in 2019.

CFA’s neo-colonial role
Clearly, the CFA “promotes inertia and underdevelopment among its member states”. Worse, it also limits credit available for fiscal policy initiatives, including promoting industrialization.

Credit-GDP ratios in CFA countries have been low at 10–25% – against over 60% in other Sub-Saharan African countries! Low credit-GDP ratios also suggest poor finance and banking facilities, not effectively funding investments.

By surrendering exchange rate and monetary policy, CFA members have less policy flexibility and space for development initiatives. They also cannot cope well with commodity price and other challenges.

The CFA’s institutional requirements – especially keeping 70% of their foreign exchange with the French Treasury – limit members’ ability to use their forex earnings for development.

More recent fiscal rules limiting government deficits and debt – for UEMOA from 2000 and CEMAC in 2002 – have also constrained policy space, particularly for public investment.

The CFA has also not promoted trade among members. After six decades, trade among CEMAC and UEMOA members averaged 4.7% and 12% of their total commerce respectively. Worse, pegged exchange rates have exacerbated balance of payments volatility.

Unrestricted transfers to France have enabled capital flight. The FCFA’s unlimited euro convertibility is supposed to reduce foreign investment risk in the CFA. However, foreign investment is lower than in other developing countries.

Total net capital outflows from CFA countries during 1970–2010 came to $83.5 billion – 117% of combined GDP! Capital flight from CFA economies was much more than from other African countries during 1970–2015.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A view of two towers in Vaca Muerta, the field whose discovery gave Argentina huge potential in shale gas and oil. Since 2011, governments have dreamed of fully exploiting it, but have been unable to do so, so the country spends billions of dollars annually on imports of gas. CREDIT: Energy Secretariat

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 29 2022 (IPS)

Argentina, which has one of the largest unconventional hydrocarbon deposits in the world, has been forced to import gas for 6.6 billion dollars so far this year.

The main reason for this paradox -which aggravated the instability of the economy of this South American country- is the lack of transportation infrastructure.

In a public ceremony on Aug. 10, President Alberto Fernández signed the delayed contracts for the construction, for more than two billion dollars to be financed by the State, of a modern gas pipeline aimed at bridging that gap.

The objective is to bring a large part of the natural gas produced in Vaca Muerta to the capital, Buenos Aires, home to nearly a third of the 47 million inhabitants of this Southern Cone country.

Vaca Muerta is a geological formation with an abundance of shale gas and oil, located in the southern region of Patagonia, more than 1,000 kilometers from Buenos Aires.

The name Vaca Muerta has been on the lips of recent Argentine presidents as a symbol of the better future that awaits a country whose economy suffers from a chronic lack of foreign exchange and a weakened local currency, resulting in a poverty rate of around 40 percent of the population.

This has been the case since 2011, when the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that Vaca Muerta makes Argentina the country with the second largest shale gas reserves, behind China, and the fourth largest oil reserves.

Vaca Muerta has reserves of 308 trillion cubic feet of gas and 16.2 billion barrels of oil, according to EIA data, confirmed by Argentina’s state-owned oil company YPF.

“With Vaca Muerta, Argentina has the potential not only to achieve energy self-sufficiency but also to export. We are missing a huge opportunity,” said Salvador Gil, director of the Energy Engineering program at the public National University of San Martín, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

Gil told IPS that Argentina could play an important role, given the crisis of rising energy prices driven up by the war in Ukraine, which threatens to drag on.

But to do so, it must solve not only its transportation problems, but also the imbalances in the economy, which for years have hindered the influx of large investments in the country.

“Today, what the world needs is energy security and Argentina has gas, which has been identified as the main fuel needed for the transition period towards clean energies, in the context of the fight against climate change,” the expert said.

Argentine President Alberto Fernández, flanked by Economy Minister Sergio Massa (left), and the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, signed a contract for the construction of the gas pipeline that will expand the capacity to transport natural gas produced in the Vaca Muerta field to the capital. It is considered a key project for the Argentine economy. CREDIT: Casa Rosada

More foreign dependence

However, since 2011, when the EIA made public its first data on Vaca Muerta’s potential, which led politicians and experts to start dreaming that Argentina would in a few years become a kind of Saudi Arabia of South America, the country is in fact more and more dependent from the energy point of view.

A study of the period 2011-2021 released this year by a private think tank states that “the decade was characterized by an increase in Argentina’s external dependence on hydrocarbons: gas imports increased by 33.6 percent over the decade while diesel imports grew by 46 percent and gasoline expanded 996 percent.”

The document, published by the General Mosconi Energy Institute, points out that Argentina, which until the end of the 20th century enjoyed self-sufficiency in gas and oil, began to experience a considerable decrease in production in 2004.

Two years later, gas began to be imported by pipeline from Bolivia and in 2008 liquefied natural gas (LNG), brought by ship mainly from the United States and Qatar, started to be imported.

“Since then, the proportion of imported gas out of the total consumed in the country has grown. In 2009 it represented only six percent, rising to 22 percent in 2014. In 2021 it represented 17 percent of the total,” the report states.

Still far below its real potential, Vaca Muerta’s production has been growing. In June it contributed 56 percent of the 139 million cubic meters per day of natural gas produced in Argentina, according to official data.

Gas is the main fuel in the country’s energy mix, accounting for about 55 percent of the total.

With regard to oil, Vaca Muerta contributed 239,000 of the 583,000 barrels per day of national production in June.

Today, gas from Patagonia in the south is transported to Buenos Aires and other large towns and cities through three gas pipelines built in the 1980s, which do not live up to demand.

For this reason, the gas pipeline whose contract was signed this month has been described by both the political leadership and the academic world as the most urgently needed piece of infrastructure in Argentina at the moment.

Its cost was set at 1.49 billion dollars at the end of 2021, but it will probably exceed two billion dollars, due to the devaluation and inflation that are crippling the Argentine economy.

According to the government, the pipeline will be operational by June next year, at the beginning of the next southern hemisphere winter.

View of the Costanera thermal power plant, which produces electricity in Buenos Aires with natural gas. Thermal generation predominates in Argentina’s electricity mix, making up almost 60 percent of the total in 2021. The gas shortage recorded this southern hemisphere winter made it necessary to use more liquid fuels to supply the power plants. CREDIt: Enel

In search of investment

“Of course the pipeline is important, but it will not solve all of Argentina’s energy problems,” said Daniel Bouille, a researcher with a PhD in energy economics.

The expert reminded IPS that an important factor is that shale oil and gas is extracted using the hydraulic fracturing technique or fracking, which “is more costly than conventional techniques.”

“To develop Vaca Muerta´s great potential, investments of between 60 and 70 billion dollars are needed,” he explained.

Bouille said that today the conditions do not exist for these investments to take place, in a country whose economy has not been growing since 2010 and where there are exchange controls and limits on the export of foreign exchange, none of which foments confidence among international capital.

In order to combat this situation, Economy Minister Sergio Massa announced that on Sept. 9 he will visit oil giants such as Chevron, Exxon, Shell and Total at their headquarters in the U.S. city of Houston, Texas to interest them in the possibility of investing in Vaca Muerta.

Argentina does not seem to be coming up with alternatives. “For 20 years the country’s conventional oil and gas production has been steadily decreasing, because all the basins have been depleted,” said Nicolás Gadano, an economist specializing in energy at the private Di Tella University.

“It is precisely the shale hydrocarbons from Vaca Muerta that in the last five years have offset the situation to slow the fall in total production,” he added in an interview with IPS.

Gadano believes that further development of Vaca Muerta’s potential will be positive for Argentina even from an environmental point of view.

“This year in Argentina a lot of oil was used for electricity production due to the lack of gas. But when the pipeline begins to operate, liquid fuels will be replaced by gas, which is a cleaner fuel,” he said.

There are also less visible but critical voices regarding the focus on Vaca Muerta as the path that Argentina should follow in terms of energy.

“Fracking, in addition to its negative environmental and social impacts, is very expensive,” said Martín Alvarez, a researcher at Observatorio Petrolero Sur, a non-governmental organization that focuses on the environmental and social aspects of energy issues.

He noted that “Vaca Muerta hydrocarbons had no possibilities of being exported until the current global energy crisis. It wasn’t until this year’s international price increase that a market for them emerged.”

“Argentina has forgotten about renewable energies and is committed to fossil fuels, which is a step backwards and goes against international climate agreements. Seeking the development of Vaca Muerta has been the only energy policy of this country in the last 10 years,” he complained.

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The UN General Assembly in session, with diplomats from 193 countries. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 29 2022 (IPS)

When UN diplomats are charged with civil or criminal offenses – from traffic violations to sexual abuse — they avoid prosecution and civil law suits under cover of diplomatic immunity.

It’s a privilege exercised by diplomats worldwide—including US diplomats in overseas postings.

In the 1970s and 80s, there were diplomats from several financially-ailing member states, who were cut-off from their cash-starved home countries, and unable to pay their rents and phone and electricity bills—plus their UN membership dues.

The landlords who had bitter experiences fighting tenants over unpaid rents and damages to their apartments avoided diplomats as tenants because they were protected by diplomatic immunity and couldn’t be dragged into Small Claims Court.

So, at least in one New York City apartment building, the landlord had a sign which read: “Dogs and Diplomats Not Welcome.”

But last week it was a more serious offense—by an envoy from South Sudan, accredited to the UN, who was accused of rape, an allegation made by a neighbor in a Manhattan apartment building.

But he claimed diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution by New York City police.

The immunity can be waived only by the country which accredited the diplomat to the UN—or in the alternative, the US could declare the diplomat persona non grata (PNG).

In international diplomacy, PNG is a status applied by a host country to foreign diplomats to remove their protection of diplomatic immunity from arrest and prosecution.

But South Sudan went one better: it recalled its ambassador.

A letter, dated August 25, from South Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, says “It is with regret that our diplomat was involved in an alleged rape incident with one of New York City residents”.

“The leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation took the decision to immediately recall the diplomat in question, pending a full investigation from a specialised committee. The. The diplomat in question is now back in South Sudan and has been suspended from his duties, awaiting the outcome of this investigation.”

The letter also says the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “would like to take this opportunity to reiterate the government of South Sudan’s, and indeed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ position that sexual misconduct in any shape or form is heinous end wholly unacceptable.”

“As a government, we have worked tirelessly since our inception to ensure that the rights of women and girls are protected. The Ministry of Public Service has worked with civil servants across the country to carry out sensitivity trainings”.

Beyond ratifying regional and international instruments for the protection of women and girls, the letter says, “we have also worked to receive direction from our gender and youth cluster to practically implement these instruments across the country. because it is our belief that living a life devoid of gender-based violence and indeed the threat of it, is a right for all.”

“The mandate of our foreign missions is two-fold. To both protect the interests of South Sudanese citizens abroad and to promote strong bilateral relations with our host countries. It is regretful that in this alleged instance, the latter has been jeopardized. We are committed to working closely with the relevant US authorities to take appropriate action, following the outcome of all investigations,“ says the letter, in an attempt at damage control.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and indeed the extended government of South Sudan stands with victims of pf sexual assault everywhere and is committed to continuing to safeguard all those at risk of sexual violence”, the letter adds.

Antonia Kirkland, Global Lead, Legal Equality and Access to Justice at Equality Now, told IPS: “We welcome South Sudan’s acknowledgment of the seriousness of these rape allegations against one if its UN diplomats”.

The status of an individual — regardless of whether they are a diplomat, a head of state, royalty, or a UN employee — should not be an excuse for impunity or misused to shield someone from facing justice if they have committed an act of sexual violence or other serious crime, she pointed out.

“In cases involving sexual violence, diplomatic immunity should not be invoked and allegations must be effectively investigated and prosecuted, and convicted perpetrators punished. It is also vital that victims are fully supported and receive the justice they deserve and to which they are entitled”.

“Consistent with its stated internal commitment to survivors of criminal sexual harassment by its own employees and intention to waive immunity in such cases, we hope the UN is encouraging South Sudan to cooperate closely with the US and authorities in New York to ensure the case is fully investigated,” said Kirkland.

If the findings indicate that the rape allegations are credible, South Sudan should uphold the rule of law and ensure the case goes to court, and if he is found guilty, ensure he is punished accordingly, she declared.

Asked about the accusations, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters August 23: “We’re aware of this. We’ve seen the press reports. I think this is an issue having to do, as you said, — I think there had been some early misreporting on it — not with anyone who is working for the United Nations but a member of the diplomatic corps.”

“I think any alleged rape or sexual assault needs to be fully investigated. This is a particular issue between the Member State and the US Government, but we’ll keep an eye on it’, he added.

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Zimbabwean First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa appears to be following the example of her predecessor Grace Mugabe. Credit: Wikipedia.

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
Bulawayo, Aug 26 2022 (IPS)

On Friday, November 24, 2017, Emmerson Mnangagwa was sworn as interim leader during a colourful ceremony at the National Sports Stadium in the capital Harare, after the ouster of President Robert Mugabe in a military coup more than a week before.

Seated on Mnangagwa’s side is his wife, Auxillia, wearing a white costume and some expensive-looking gold jewellery. The couple looks on as the ruling party Zanu-PF supporters and Mugabe’s critics cheer the ushering in of a “Second Republic”, “New Zimbabwe”, and “New Dispensation”.

At this point, Auxillia, a former spy from the Central Intelligence Organisation and a former member of parliament who married Mnangagwa in 1984, was seen by many Zimbabweans as a “loving, peaceful and caring woman” popularly known as Amai. This Shona name translates to mother.

After the swearing-in ceremony, Auxillia focused on her philanthropic work supporting and uplifting marginalised communities, including women, young girls, and people with disabilities.

However, nearly five years later, Auxillia has gone into overdrive and seems to be following in the path of her predecessor, Grace Mugabe, nicknamed ‘Gucci Grace’ for her lavish shopping sprees in New York, Paris and Singapore.

Auxillia’s philanthropic work is now heavily funded by the State, she takes up space in the State-owned newspaper Herald and on Zimbabwe Television, and she officiates at the government’s official business.

Zimbabwean journalist and writer Douglas Rogers, in his book Mugabe: Two Weeks and journalist Geoffrey Nyarota with his Graceless Fall of Robert Mugabe: The End of a Dictator’s Reign, captures the story of Grace.

The shy receptionist Grace, who officially married Mugabe in 1996, was conferred a controversial Doctorate in Sociology by the University of Zimbabwe at a time her ally Jonathan Moyo was a Higher Education minister.

Reports emerged that Grace did not defend her thesis and did not spend enough time required for one to complete a doctorate, and the conferment was challenged in court.

Grace rose to power that same year when she got herself heavily involved in Zanu-PF’s shameful politics and State affairs.

She influenced her husband Mugabe to appoint young politicians from her faction, Generation 40, and even summoned government ministers and attended hearings.

Grace had Joice Mujuru and seven cabinet ministers aligned to the war veteran, fired by Mugabe in December 2014 before turning on Mnangagwa in a fierce battle that ended in November 2017 – a few weeks after Mugabe had sacked his deputy.

She used Zanu-PF gatherings to rant against her opponents, including military generals accusing them of working hand in hand with Mnangagwa to topple the long-time ruler and Africa’s strongman.

In 2018, Mnangagwa and his Lacoste faction, who accused Grace of taking over government functions before the coup, warned his wife, Auxillia, from interfering with his government official duties.

Since then, however, things have changed. In the Herald, a team of reporters seems to have become Auxillia’s personal reporters. They cover her philanthropic work, and people from the ‘Office of the First Lady’ apparently have the final say on what the editors publish.

Kudakwashe Munemo, a political analyst, told IPS that there is a lack of transparency on sources of funds channelled to Auxillia’s philanthropic work.

“As a country, we do not have an official office of the spouses of whoever is elected President. That distinction is key, for we ought not to have a conflation between programmes conducted by the President’s spouse and those by the government, especially where state resources are involved at the expense of official government business,” he said.

Maxwell Saungweme, a political analyst, said the problem Zimbabwe is facing is that there is no clear distinction between Mnangagwa’s family, the ruling party, Zanu-PF and State business.

“What she is doing is part of the rot of party-State-military conflation and, in this case, first family-State conflation,” he said.

“She is certainly not learning from Grace and other first ladies elsewhere in Africa who did not keep to their lane while their husbands do government and state business. Everything she is trying to do is wrong.”

Auxillia, who travels around the country using blue lights security detail and sometimes with road-clearing and traffic-blocking police motorcycles, a privilege enjoyed by few top government officials, has been conferred various titles from ambassadors to patrons of some State institutions.

In May, Auxillia was conferred a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) (Honoris Causa) degree at GD Goenka University in Gurugram Haryana, India, in recognition of her philanthropic work.

Also, in May, Auxillia officially opened the African Elephant Conference, held in Hwange, a resort town 335 kilometres from Zimbabwe’s second-largest city Bulawayo, ahead of the 2022 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Even though Auxillia is Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry patron, political analysts say that she took over a government function as the conference was an inter-State meeting attended by ministers from 14 African countries.

“Roles of First Ladies or spouses of leaders vary across political jurisdictions, with some preferring them to remain in the background while others allow a more active role,” Vivid Gwede, a political analyst, told IPS.

“Where they are allowed to play an active role, this does not clash or compete with officials and ministers of government being usually ceremonial.”

He said in Zimbabwe active first lady easily oversteps the boundaries and causes problems.

“This is apart from questions of transparency and accountability in the use of public resources,” said Gwede.

Rashweat Mukundu, a political analyst, said the “Office of the First Lady” should reflect the soft side of the President.

“There is nothing wrong with Auxillia doing philanthropic work. What is of concern is to abuse that office for partisan politics. It could be political campaigning or any other office that excludes other groups. This is because the Office of the First Lady must be a unifying office. It must be an office that reflects the interests of the generality of citizens across the political divide,” he said.

He said accountability is an area that needs to be looked at to guarantee that State resources are not used for partisan politics.

“The challenge is that we have no mechanisms for accountability determining how much the State allocates to the Office of the First Lady. If the First Lady is energetic as the current First Lady is, it is an opportunity for the First Lady to do activities that unite us rather than those that divide us further,” he said.

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By External Source
Aug 26 2022 (IPS-Partners)

The long and distant epoch of pre-history, dated to the time before the start of the Common Era, is conventionally divided into three periods: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. Subsequently, in the era of written history, we generally have not relied upon specific metals or minerals to define our periods. Too many metals and minerals, harnessed by new production techniques and new labour patterns, have contributed to our immense capacity to generate large surpluses. There is the Age of Industry but not, for instance, the Age of Steel, the core metal of our period.

‘We grow out of iron’, wrote the Russian poet Aleksei Gastev in 1914. He watches the furnaces and the forges, the hammers and the machinery, and then:

Gazing upon them, I draw myself up straight.
Pouring into my veins is a new, iron blood,
And I begin to grow.
I myself am growing steel shoulders and infinitely strong hands.
I am merging with the iron edifice.
With my shoulders, I am pushing the rafters and the beams up to the roof.
My feet are grounded, but my head is higher than the building.
And while I am still choking from my inhuman efforts,
I am already crying out:
a word, comrades, a word!
The iron echo has heeded my words, the whole building
trembles with impatience.
I continue to rise upwards; I am on level with the pipes.
And there is no story here, there is no speech.
There is only the cry:
we will triumph!

The virus of deindustrialisation that beset North America and Europe in the 1970s created a field of scholarly literature on post-work and post-industrial society. These writings led to the curious assumption that the digital economy would be the primary motor of capital accumulation; there was marginal interest in the fact that even the digital economy needed infrastructure, including satellites and undersea cables as well as plants to generate electricity and gadgets to link to the digital highways. This digital economy is grounded in a range of metals and minerals – from copper to lithium. Old steel, tempered in large factories, however, continues to be the foundation of our society. This steel – a thousand times stronger than iron – is as ubiquitous in our world as plastic.

Visual Capitalist, 50 Years of Global Steel Production Visualised, 2021.

Over the past fifty years, steel production has tripled. The major steel producers are now China, Europe, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States. During the pandemic, steel production only fell by 1%, largely because internal demand in countries such as China and India kept the furnaces burning. While steel production in China decreased moderately due to concerns about overproduction, Indian steel factories have increased steel production over the course of the pandemic.

Many of these factories in India are in the public sector, built with state funds and administered by state and para-statal entities. Amongst these factories is Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), a steel complex in Visakhapatanam in India’s south-eastern state of Andhra Pradesh. The factory, affectionately called Visakha Steel, was born out of a mass struggle led by the people of Andhra Pradesh that began in 1966 and lasted till the furnaces were lit in 1992. The factory complex was established at a time when the Indian state – under pressure from the Indian ruling class and the International Monetary Fund – began to liberalise the economy, including through the privatisation of state assets. The factory was born into a liberalised world with the government eager to scuttle its possibilities to sell it off to private capital in a wave of privatisation that could better be called piratisation.

The inspirational story of Visakha Steel is the subject of our dossier no. 55 (August 2022), The People’s Steel Plant and the Fight Against Privatisation in Visakhapatanam. The dossier describes the struggles of the people of Andhra Pradesh to force the government to build a factory, a ‘temple of modern India’, as India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru called them. Visakha Ukku, Andhrula Hakku, the youth and students chanted: ‘Visakha Steel is the Andhra people’s right’. In 1966, the struggle was met by terrible state violence that resulted in the death of thirty-two people and the arrests and torture of many, many more. Unable to crush the movement, which was shaped by the communists, and understanding the imperative of more steel for an India that desperately sought to transcend the problems of hunger and illiteracy, the government agreed to build the factory and spent Rs. 17 billion till the mid-1980s to start building the plant.

Since Visakha Steel emerged at a time when the religion of privatisation had become dominant, the Indian government sought on several occasions to scuttle its ability to survive in the public sector by preventing the steel factory from acquiring captive mines, building a captive port nearby in Gangavaram, building sufficient capacity in its steel melt shop (to process the crude iron into steel), and receiving adequate and timely government funding. The government instead tried to let a private company set up a steel melt shop that would use molten iron from Visakha Steel’s blast furnaces to produce processed steel which could be sold in the market at high profit margins – a move that the workers defeated. At no point did the government demonstrate its commitment to either the production of steel or to improving the living conditions of the steel factory workers and their families.

The workers, on the other hand, had their own ideas. Led by the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and other unions, the workers fought to restructure government loans and convert them into state equity, to allot a captive iron ore mine for the plant, and to increase the capacity of the steel melt shop. As our dossier notes, the steel workers have been ‘strongly committed to the company’s growth as a technically efficient and financially viable plant, whether by fighting to expand the plant, gain captive mines, or resolve technical glitches and issues. Whenever a technical problem has arisen in the plant, be it with coke ovens, power plants, steel melt shop, or otherwise, the workers and trade unions have tirelessly conducted thorough study and analysis to come up with and implement adequate solutions’. What we have here is a government eager to cannibalise Visakha Steel and workers committed to production at ‘the people’s steel plant’.

Instead of setting up the Gangavaram Port in the public sector as initially envisaged, the government has given the port to the Adani Group – whose owner has intimate ties with Prime Minister Narendra Modi – which charges Visakha Steel substantial fees. It is important to note that this port was built on land that originally belonged to the steel plant. Further, while Visakha Steel pays property taxes in the city, Adani’s private port is exempt from paying taxes. At the same time, Modi’s government tried to deliver Visakha Steel’s land to the South Korean steel giant POSCO to set up its own rolling mills to produce special auto grade steel products using the steel from the Visakha plant. In a typical example of privatisation by stealth, the dossier explains, ‘Visakha Steel was being asked to handle the most complex, dangerous, and messy kinds of work – procuring ore, running coke ovens, oxygen plants, and various furnaces – while POSCO would take over the most lucrative part of the value chain’.

Nothing doing, said the workers. Drawing from the historic struggle that built the plant in the first place, the workers began a movement to save Visakha Steel. The tidal wave of this movement – which has received key support from the farmers’ struggle, unionised rural childcare workers, and the people of Andhra Pradesh – stayed the hand of the government. While the government dithered during the pandemic, it was the steel workers who ran their oxygen plants continuously to produce medical grade oxygen for the hospitals.

Not much is written about struggles such as this one, led by the brave steel workers who are mostly forgotten or, if remembered, then maligned. They stand beside the furnaces, rolling the steel out, tempering it, wanting to build better canals for the farmers, to build beams for schools and hospitals, and to build the infrastructure so that their communities can transcend the dilemmas of humanity. Our dossier is built through our interactions with the steel workers and their union, who told us how they see their past and how they understand their struggle. They also shared with us their photographs (as well as photographs taken by Kunchem Rajesh of the Andhra Pradesh-based newspaper Prajasakti), out of which our art department made the collages which illustrate the dossier (some of which are shared in this newsletter).

At their demonstrations, the workers sing, chant, and recite poems that tell them to get ready for battle ‘before the earth disappears under our feet, before the steel slips away from our hands’. If you try to privatise the factory, they sing, ‘Visakha city will turn into a steel furnace, North Andhra into a battlefield… We will defend our steel with our lives’.

Source: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

By Michelle Bachelet
GENEVA, Aug 26 2022 (IPS)

As you know, after four years as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, my mandate ends next week, on 31 August.

The world has changed fundamentally over the course of my mandate.

Michelle Bachelet

I would say the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ever-increasing effects of climate change, and the reverberating shocks of the food, fuel and finance crisis resulting from the war against Ukraine have been the three major issues.

Polarization within and among States has reached extraordinary levels and multilateralism is under pressure.

Important protest movements occurred in every region of the world demanding an end to structural racism, respect for economic and social rights, and against corruption, governance deficits and abuse of power – in many instances accompanied by violence, threats and attacks against protesters and human rights defenders, and at some times against journalists.

Some led to real change in the country. In other cases, rather than listening to the voices of the people, governments responded by shrinking the space for debate and dissent.

Over the past few months – once the COVID situation allowed me to resume official country visits – I have been to Burkina Faso, Niger, Afghanistan, China, Bosnia, Peru and Bangladesh. I have been able to see first-hand the impact of climate change, armed conflict, the food-fuel-finance crisis, hateful rhetoric, systematic discrimination, and the human rights challenges around migration, among other issues.

The UN Human Rights Office has worked, in a myriad of ways, to help monitor, engage and advocate for the protection and promotion of human rights. As I have said before, at the UN, dialogue, engagement, cooperation, monitoring, reporting and public advocacy must all be part of our DNA.

We have worked to try to help bridge the gap between government and civil society, to support national implementation of human rights obligations and advise on reforms to bring laws and policies into compliance with international standards, to expand our presences in-country so we are a in a better position to work closely with the people on the ground. We have spoken out in private and public on country-specific and broader issues. And we have seen some progress.

The recognition of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment by the UN General Assembly last month marked the culmination of many years of advocacy by civil society. I am proud of my Office’s support and strong backing of this movement throughout the course of my mandate.

The extreme weather events of the past few months have again driven home, powerfully, the existential need for urgent action to protect our planet for current and future generations. Meeting this need is the greatest human rights challenge of this era – and all States have an obligation to work together on this, and to walk the talk, to fully implement the right to a healthy environment.

The response to the triple planetary crisis of pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss must be centred in human rights, including the rights to participation, access to information and justice, and by addressing the disproportionate impact of environmental harms on the most marginalized and disadvantaged.

There has also been steady progress towards abolition of the death penalty – some 170 States have abolished or introduced a moratorium, in law or in practice, or suspended executions for more than 10 years. The Central African Republic, Chad, Kazakhstan, Sierra Leone and Papua New Guinea are among those who have taken steps to fully abolish the death penalty.

Other States, including Liberia and Zambia are also actively considering abolition. Malaysia announced that it will abolish the country’s mandatory death penalty, including for drug related offences. As of today, 90 States have ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the key international treaty prohibiting the use of the death penalty.

Concerns remain, however, about the increased use or resumption of capital punishment in other countries, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar and Singapore, and others like China and Viet Nam continue to classify data on its use as a state secret, limiting the possibility of scrutiny.

I have – from the beginning of my mandate – pushed for greater recognition of the indivisibility and interdependence of economic, social and cultural rights with civil and political rights. The effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have brought into stark focus this interdependence.

States must draw lessons from the pandemic and the current food-fuel-finance crisis by designing long-term measures to build better and stronger universal public health and social protection systems.

Social protection coverage must facilitate access to health care, protect people against poverty and ensure essential economic and social rights, including food, water, housing, health and education. I also call on States to adopt proactive measures, including food, agriculture and fuel subsidies, to mitigate the impact of the crises.

All of this needs to be designed with people as part of the solution, through investment in inclusive, safe and meaningful channels for debate and participation at all levels.

Governing is tough – I know because I have twice been President of my country, Chile. There are always many pressing demands, challenges and problems to address. But governing is about prioritizing – and human rights must always be a priority. In many situations my Office has been covering, there is a lack of political will to take the necessary steps to really tackle a situation head on. Political will is key – and where there is a will, there is a way.

States often invoke their own particular context when faced with allegations of human rights violations and when called upon to take steps to address them. Context is indeed important – but context must never be used to justify human rights violations.

In many instances, sustained advocacy on key human rights issues, grounded in international human rights laws and standards, bears fruit. In Colombia this month, the incoming administration has pledged a shift in its approach on drug policy – from a punitive to a more social and public health approach.

By addressing one of the deep-rooted causes of violence in Colombia, this approach could be instrumental to better protect the rights of peasants, indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities and of people who use drugs, both in Colombia and globally.

My Office has been advocating – globally – for a human rights-based approach on drug policy, and is ready to assist.

The worldwide mobilization of people for racial justice, notably in 2020, has forced a long-delayed reckoning with racial discrimination and shifted debates towards a focus on systemic racism and the institutions that perpetrate it.

I call on all States to seize this moment to achieve a turning point for racial equality and justice. My Office is working on its second report to the UN Human Rights Council on this issue, to be presented next month.

I have always sought – even on the most challenging issues – to encourage dialogue, to open the door for further exchanges. This means listening as well as speaking, keeping our eyes and ears to the context, identifying entry points and roadblocks, and trying to build trust incrementally, even when it seems unlikely.

During my four years as High Commissioner, I had the privilege of speaking to so many courageous, spirited, extraordinary human rights defenders:

The brave, indomitable women human rights defenders in Afghanistan;

The determined mothers of the disappeared in Mexico;

The inspirational staff working at a health centre in Bunia in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, serving victims of sexual violence;

The wisdom and strength of indigenous peoples in Peru, who are on the frontlines of the impact of climate change, illegal mining and logging, and defend their rights in the face of serious risks;

And the empathy and generosity of communities hosting internally displaced people in Burkina Faso.

I found allies in traditional village leaders in Niger, who were working in their own ways to advance human rights in their communities; I met young people from Malaysia, Sweden, Australia, Costa Rica and elsewhere whose resourcefulness, creativity and ambition was palpable;

I shared the pain of the father in Venezuela who showed me the sports medals his teenage son had won, before he was killed during protests in 2017;

And I shared the tears of the mother I met in Srebrenica who carried hope that 27 years after her son disappeared, she will one day find his remains and lay him to rest next to his father’s grave.

Last week, I spoke with Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar.

One teacher I met told me he had earned distinctions in all his classes at school in Myanmar and had dreamed of being a doctor. Instead, he has spent the past five years in a refugee camp, having had to flee his country – because he is Rohingya. “I still cry at night sometimes when I remember my dream,” he told me, adding that “my Buddhist friends are now doctors in Myanmar.”

My own experience as a refugee was much more comfortable, with the means to continue my education and with a good standard of living – but the yearning for one’s homeland, the desire of so many of the Rohingya to return home resonated deeply with me. Sadly, the conditions needed for them to be able to return to their homes in a voluntary, dignified and sustainable way are not there yet.

Today marks five years since more than 700,000 Rohingya women, children and men were forced to flee Myanmar for Bangladesh – and Myanmar’s human rights catastrophe continues to worsen, with the military (the Tatmadaw) maintaining military operations in Kayah and Kayin in the southeast; Chin state in the northwest; and Sagaing and Magway regions in the Bamar heartland.

The use of air power and artillery against villages and residential areas has intensified. Recent spikes in violence in Rakhine State also seemed to indicate that the last fairly stable area of the country may not avoid a resurgence of armed conflict. Rohingya communities have frequently been caught between the Tatmadaw and Arakan Army fighters or have been targeted directly in operations. Over 14 million need humanitarian assistance.

We continue to document gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law on a daily basis, including repression against protesters and attacks against civilians that may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes.

I urge the international community to intensify pressure on the military to stop its campaign of violence against the people of Myanmar, to insist on prompt restoration of civilian rule, and accountability for violations committed by security forces.

Yesterday marked six months since Russia’s armed attack. Six unimaginably terrifying months for the people of Ukraine, 6.8 million of whom have had to flee their country. Millions of others have been internally displaced. We have documented at least 5,587 civilians killed and 7,890 injured. Of these casualties, nearly 1,000 are children.

Six months on, the fighting continues, amid almost unthinkable risks posed to civilians and the environment as hostilities are conducted close to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

I call on the Russian President to halt armed attack against Ukraine. The Zaporizhzhia plant needs to be immediately demilitarized.

Both parties must respect, at all times and in all circumstances, international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

The international community must insist on accountability for the many serious violations documented, some of which may amount to war crimes.

I am alarmed by the resumption of hostilities in northern Ethiopia. Civilians have suffered enough – and this will only exacerbate the suffering of civilians already in desperate need. I implore the Government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front to work to de-escalate the situation and immediately cease hostilities.

I also urge a renewed focus by the international community on protracted – often forgotten – crises including the situation in Yemen, Syria, the Sahel and Haiti.

And I urge continued support for the UN Human Rights Office, the UN human rights treaty bodies, and the UN Special Procedures mechanism, all of which work tirelessly in defence of international human rights laws and standards.

The journey to defend human rights never ends – and vigilance against roll-backs of rights is vital. I honour all those who, in their own ways, are working to defend human rights. As a woman and a lifelong feminist, I want to pay particular tribute to women human rights defenders, who have been at the forefront of social movements that have benefitted all of us. They have often been the ones bringing to the table the unheard voices of the most vulnerable. I will continue to stand with you as I return home to Chile.

To end, I would like to thank you journalists, based here in Geneva and across the globe, for the indispensable work that you do. When we in the UN Human Rights Office raise the alarm, it is crucial that it rings loudly, and this is only possible when the world’s media gets the stories out there.

Michelle Bachelet is the outgoing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. This article is based on her address to reporters on August 25. She was elected President of Chile on two occasions (2006 – 2010 and 2014 – 2018). She was the first female president of Chile and served as Health Minister (2000-2002) as well as Chile’s and Latin America’s first female Defense Minister (2002 – 2004).

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The Nueva Zelandia school is leading a pioneering experience of community electricity generation with solar panels that will reduce the cost of consumption for the school and 20 local families taking part in the project in the poor municipality of Independencia to the north of Santiago. To this initiative, the school will add another one to recycle gray water to irrigate the gardens. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Aug 25 2022 (IPS)

Renewable energies, especially solar and wind power, are growing inexorably in Chile, driven by large companies. But community generation of alternative energy is not taking off, despite a law promoting it.

This long, narrow country of 19.5 million people, rich in solar energy due to the northern Atacama Desert as well as wind thanks to its location between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains, can accelerate the transition to carbon neutrality, thanks to non-conventional renewable energies (NCRE), which also include hydroelectricity.

On Jul. 28 at 15:00 hours, NCRE broke the record for hourly participation in electricity generation in the country, accounting for 62.3 percent of the total. In 2021, renewable generation accounted for 44.8 percent of all electricity generated, equivalent to 35,892 gigawatt hours (GWh). The total generated that year was 80,116 GWh.

Ana Lía Rojas, executive director of the Chilean Association of Renewable Energies and Storage (Acera), which brings together companies in the field, said that all sectors are making progress in NCRE, especially energy and mining.

Acera estimated that 2022 could end with 13,000 to 14,000 megawatts (MW) of NCRE installed, and in fact there were already more than 12,370 MW in May.

“It’s been a long while since we represented 10 percent, we surpassed 20 percent five years before the date set by law and NCRE are currently above 35 percent of the total. This is a worldwide milestone,” said Rojas.

The target is now 50 percent in the next few years and 70 percent by 2030.

Andrés Díaz, director of the Center for Sustainable Energy and Development at the private Diego Portales University, said “the increase in the share of NCRE in the energy mix, as well as the promotion of storage systems, is fundamental as part of the energy transition we are facing.

“When it comes to meeting the greenhouse gas emission reduction targets resulting from the retirement of coal-fired plants, NCRE must be able to ensure stability in the electric power system,” he told IPS.

Díaz added that this implies providing the capacity to act in the event of possible failures in the transmission systems.

“There is a pedagogical aspect, the solar panels teach children how elements of nature can contribute technologically to making available a resource essential for human life that does not harm the environment,” says Rita Méndez, principal of the Nueva Zelandia school, in the municipality of Independencia on the northern outskirts of Santiago, Chile. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Community generation lacks momentum

These enormous advances in NCRE have not gone hand in hand with the meager development of community generation projects, the distributed or decentralized generation modality focused on self-consumption, mostly solar and collectively owned.

Nicolás O’Ryan, an electrical civil engineer and founding partner of Red Genera, promoted a community NCRE project at the Nueva Zelandia school in the low-income municipality of Independencia, on the northern outskirts of Santiago, by installing solar panels on the roof of the gymnasium.

The initiative is one of the very few promoted using Law 21118, which has been in force for two years, to encourage community electricity generation, also known as citizen generation.

The government’s Energy Sustainability Agency financed 50 percent of the 21,000-dollar investment. A further 3,158 dollars were contributed by Red Genera and the remaining 7,368 dollars were raised by five individuals and a campaign of donations from individuals and companies.

The panels will provide 26,703 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. Of that total, 29.67 percent will go to the school and 3.52 percent to each of the beneficiaries and investors.

The connection process with Enel Chile, the subsidiary of the Italian transnational electricity group Enel, “is well advanced and only the last step remains – notifying the connection,” O’Ryan told IPS.

The energy will serve the school’s consumption and that of 20 neighboring families. The rest will be managed through a process known locally as Net Billing, the simultaneous measurement of consumption and injection of energy into the grid, which enables any user to self-generate electricity and inject the surplus into the grid, receiving a payment for it.

“By the end of the year I hope we will be ready…we need institutional support to channel the process and resolve difficulties such as the change of administration of the school, that will be transferred to the Local Education Service,” he said.

The school’s principal, Rita Méndez, told IPS that the plant contributes to the education of the 393 children (more than 50 percent of them sons and daughters of immigrants, mostly Venezuelans) who are in the 10 grades in the school in this underprivileged neighborhood, starting in kindergarten.

“The plant helps us to train new citizens in environmental awareness, who help care for the environment and think about how to use clean energy to contribute to the development of life,” she said in an interview at the center.

Part of the 33,600 solar panels installed in August 2020 in the vicinity of Til Til, in northern Santiago, with an investment of 15 million dollars and a useful life of about 30 years. In this municipality, one of the poorest in Chile, the project covers 23 hectares and will generate nine megawatts of electric power. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Pioneer project, five years on

Environmental lawyer Cristian Mires, co-founder of the non-governmental Energía Colectiva, presides over Buin Solar, the first initiative in Chile aimed at generating electricity on a community basis, founded in 2017.

At the time 100 people contributed upwards of 52 dollars each to finance a 10 KW solar panel plant installed at the energy laboratory of the Environment Institute (Idma) in Buin, a town 47 kilometers south of Santiago.

The energy is consumed by the Institute and any surplus is injected into the grid. After 10 years of operation, the plant will be transferred to Idma.

Idma pays about 215 dollars a month for the energy, but without panels the cost would have been twice as much. And it consumes clean energy, an important aspect for an Institute that trains professionals to combat climate change.

“Buin Solar was a pioneer collective project to build the first community plant. It is a successful project that has been a great learning experience and has highlighted the importance of working in associative projects,” said Mires.

He added that “community energy is an urgent solution to address the climate crisis. Buin Solar has social, environmental and economic benefits.”

However, the environmentalist regrets the slow progress made in community generation despite the existence of a legal framework that promotes its development.

“The promotion of community energy is very weak, the democratization of energy is very low,” he argued.

According to Mires, trust must be built to work collectively, but incentives are also needed to overcome the financing barrier and the lack of technical capabilities.

“It would be very important to have instruments for promotion. There is a commitment in the government program of President Gabriel Boric (in power since March), which mentions community generation. We are committed to greater development of this kind of energy generation. Up to now, most of them are individual projects,” he said.

The Los Cururos wind farm, inaugurated in 2014, is located in the middle of the desert of the Coquimbo region, facing the Pacific Ocean. The plant contributes 109.6 megawatts of power to Chile’s Central Interconnected System. It belongs to the private EPM Group and has 57 wind turbines of 1.8 and 2.0 megawatts. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Distributed generation – a minimal contribution to the energy mix

Distributed generation is characterized by small power plants that do not exceed 300 kilowatts (kW), as opposed to centralized generation, with large plants that inject all their production into the transmission grid. And while it has grown in terms of the number of individual actors, their contribution to the system is very small.

Felipe Gallardo, a research engineer at Acera, told IPS that as of June there were 12,365 distributed or decentralized NCRE generation facilities in private hands, totaling 125 MW, equivalent to 0.4 percent of the country’s installed capacity.

“Of the Net Billing installations, over 98 percent involve solar photovoltaic technology,” he said. The largest number are in the central regions of Chile.

Diaz, meanwhile, stressed the importance of increasing the number of individuals who generate energy for their own consumption and contribute their surpluses to the grid.

“Energy self-management allows customers not only to receive income for the energy injected into the grid, but also to avoid contingencies in the national electricity system,” he said.

A view of the sunrise amid the steam from the geysers of El Tatio, in the Antofagasta region, where geothermal energy, a non-conventional, clean, infinite source of energy from the earth’s internal heat that abounds in northern Chile, has begun to be harnessed. CREDIT: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

Obstacles to NCRE

A worrying figure is the explosive growth in the dumping of non-conventional renewable energy, due to difficulties in transporting it because of the lack of transmission lines to large consumption centers.

This year 290 GWh of wind and solar energy could not be used.

“Future development depends on storage systems to ensure the stability of NCRE while we move forward in fulfilling the agreements for the retirement of coal-fired plants,” said Diaz.

Gallardo regretted the impact of dumping energy at the country level “because as long as there are these types of limitations, thermal power plants are necessary, which have a higher variable cost and generate polluting emissions.”

“As renewables expand and, on the other hand, coal-fired plants are retired, it will be necessary to adopt additional measures to increase the levels of maximum NCRE participation,” he said.

The Acera advisor believes that in the medium term, storage systems should be implemented to avoid NCRE dumping.

He also says it will be necessary to continue improving the regulatory framework for storage systems.

In the United States, race is the number one indicator of whether or not you live near potential toxic exposures. Credit: Courtesy of the author.

By Chandler Blythe Duncan
BIRMINGHAM, USA, Aug 25 2022 (IPS)

Built in 1942 and still operating today, Camp Lejeune is a military base covering over 153,000 acres in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Shortly after it was founded, it became heavily contaminated with toxic chemicals like perchloroethylene, benzene, trichloroethylene, vinyl chloride, and later on PFAS. However, the military only realized the severity of the issue in 1982, when the Marine Corps discovered volatile organic compounds on base.

Perchloroethylene is a colorless liquid used for the dry cleaning of fabrics. The source of the perchloroethylene contamination was a dry-cleaning firm ABC One-Hour Cleaners, situated off-base. The benzene and trichloroethylene contamination, both industrial solvents, came from years of improper use and disposal of chemicals on Camp Lejeune employed for cleaning weapons and equipment.

Black Americans breathe in 56% more polluted air than they produce, while Latinos inhale 63% more. In comparison, white people breathe in 17% less toxic air than they release

PFAS, a group of dangerous chemicals that may take over a thousand years to break down in the environment, is found in firefighting foam (AFFF). As a result of firefighters using and training with AFFF on base, PFAS ended up polluting at least 14 sites of the military base. AFFF, a fire suppressant, contains between 50% and 98% PFAS and was used regularly at Camp Lejeune.

The level of perchloroethylene detected at the military base was 43 times higher than the safe limit, while the level of trichloroethylene exceeded the safe limit by 280 times. PFAS were found at Camp Lejeune in a concentration over 2,450 times higher than the safe limit. Exposure to such a hazardous mix of chemicals may result in debilitating health problems such as lung cancer, Parkinson’s disease, kidney cancer, leukemia, multiple myeloma, and ovarian cancer.

 

How black service members are impacted by toxic exposure to a greater extent than their white counterparts

More than one million people lived at Camp Lejeune between 1953 and 1987 when toxic exposure on the military base was most extreme. During this time over 20,000 men trained on a racially segregated Marine base known as Montford Point, which is now part of Camp Lejeune, in preparation for World War II. 

The living conditions at Montford Point were inferior compared to Camp Lejeune. The Marines stationed at Montford endured racism and were not permitted to enter Camp Lejeune without being accompanied by a white servicemember.

The military used Montford Point until approximately seven years before the federal government prohibited racial segregation. Although this military base was not part of Camp Lejeune at the time, it was also heavily contaminated with some of the same toxic agents.

Regarding active duty military members, it is important to note that black individuals currently represent only 19% of all enlisted personnel. Only 9% of those are officers. Several decades ago, there were even fewer black service members, and a very small number had a high rank.

According to data from the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs Department, black service members are less likely to become officers. As a result, they are more prone to being injured while serving their country than their white counterparts. 

Some black military members became injured by being exposed to toxic chemicals daily on military bases such as Camp Lejeune. Since most have a lower rank, they must spend time on contaminated military installations, unlike most officers, lieutenants, and generals. Therefore, the risk of toxic exposure among black servicemembers as a whole, is considerably higher. 

 

Toxic exposure, significantly more prevalent among communities living near polluted military bases

In the United States, race is the number one indicator of whether or not you live near potential toxic exposures. There is a consistent pattern in this country of placing hazardous waste and hazardous industry in disenfranchised areas, often predominantly neighborhoods of color.

The availability of affordable land, poverty, historical discrimination, and lack of political power to fight corporations all contribute to environmental racism. Consequently, minority neighborhoods are clustered around industrial sites, military bases, truck routes, ports, and other air pollution hotspots.

Right now, the population of Jacksonville, North Carolina, is 74,313. An additional 170,000 people live at Camp Lejeune. Half of the city’s population inhabits the military base, which places the civilian community at high risk of toxic exposure. Consequently, 37,156 individuals may come to struggle with awful, life-threatening diseases in the near future. This is not uncommon, as there are civilian communities living on or near the 679 contaminated military bases in the United States.

Alarmingly, the military ordered the clandestine burning of over 20 million pounds of AFFF and AFFF waste between 2016 and 2020, despite no evidence that incineration can destroy PFAS. The largest amounts of AFFF remains were burnt in New York, near Plattsburgh Air Force Base, Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station, and Griffiss Air Force Base. By burning this fire suppressant and the waste it left behind on military bases such as Camp Lejeune, the communities that live nearby, will inevitably be affected by the toxins emitted into the air by this reckless process.

 

How can we combat environmental racism?

To combat environmental racism, we must attempt to curb environmental crime and seek justice for its harm. Approximately 1/3 of the total burden of disease worldwide can be attributed to environmental hazards. Black Americans breathe in 56% more polluted air than they produce, while Latinos inhale 63% more. In comparison, white people breathe in 17% less toxic air than they release. 

When industry creates an environmental hazard that harms communities, legislative efforts and criminal conviction can sometimes be an effective deterrent. However, efforts to restrict environmental crime in this way have often been met with opposition from professional organizations who see policy as a hindrance to economic interest.

If the state turns a blind eye private law can aid disenfranchised, harmed communities through toxic tort and class action lawsuits. Grassroots efforts and coalitions with legal groups and private firms can be a successful option for redress. 

 

Chandler Blythe Duncan is a lawyer and MPH at Environmental Litigation Group P.C., whose main practice area is toxic tort law. Chandler’s expertise is providing quality legal assistance in cases involving water contamination and toxic exposure. She is also a member of the American Bar Association, the Birmingham Bar Association, and the Birmingham Volunteer Lawyers Program.