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Climate Change is one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 13), but t’s becoming increasingly clear that climate change plays a role in many, if not all of the SDGs, and that achieving the 2030 Agenda will be impossible without making serious inroads into tackling the problem. Credit: United Nations

By Meena Raman
PENANG, Malaysia, Oct 28 2021 (IPS)

It is well-known that all the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) added together, even those that have been updated, will not help to place the world on a 1.5 degree C pathway.

The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the ‘Physical Science’ shows that for a 50% probability of limiting temperature rise to a 1.5 degree pathway, taking into account the historical and cumulative emissions, there is a remaining carbon budget of 500 gigatons of CO2 left and the world emits about 42 gigatons of CO2 per year.

Which means that within a decade, this budget would be exhausted, leading to difficulty in limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degree C.

Hence, it is important to recognise and acknowledge that the developed countries in particular, have not shown their leadership in taking on their fair share of the emission cuts needed.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and COP 16 in 2010 in Cancun, acknowledged that the largest share of historical global emissions of greenhouse gases originated in developed countries and that, owing to this historical responsibility, developed country Parties must take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof.

We do need to understand that under the UNFCC and the Paris Agreement, the principles of equity and ‘common-but-differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ (CBDRRC) are fundamental in understanding the differentiated obligations between developed and developing countries.

Moreover, developed countries have failed to reduce their emissions despite the decisions taken.

Failure by developed countries to deliver on promised emissions reductions

First commitment period (1CP) under the Kyoto Protocol from 2008 to 2012 only saw aggregate emissions of Annex 1 countries to be cut by 5% compared to 1990 levels. Despite this very low ambition, the United States (US) left the Protocol.

Promise in 2012 by developed countries in the 2nd commitment period to revisit their emission reduction targets by 2014 from 18 per cent by 2020 to at least 25-40 per cent was never realized.

The goal post shifted by developed countries calling all countries to plug the emissions gap –which turns the CBDR-RC principle on its head to ‘common and shared responsibilities’, with no reference to historical responsibility or equity between the North and South.

In fact, between 1990 and 2018, developed countries on aggregate achieved only 13% emissions reductions between 1990 and 2018.

Countries in Western Europe, United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have not managed to reduce their aggregate emissions between 1990 and 2020. Instead, their aggregate emissions slightly increased from 13,227.97 MTCO2eq in 1990 to 13,331.23 MTCO2eq in 2020.

So, instead of undertaking real deep emissions cuts to real zero by now, developed countries are announcing distant net-zero targets with 2050 as the target year, which again reflect reductions which are too little too late and that will exhaust the remaining carbon budget very soon.

Hence, we must demand real and rapid zero from developed countries, not distant targets. Moreover, net zero targets mean that there will be reliance on carbon-offsets, where developed countries will pay developing countries to do the emission removals, which will then go to the credit of developed countries.

This will mean that developing countries will have to do even more emissions cuts in their countries, as the offset credits sold to developed countries cannot be counted as part of their NDCs, as there cannot be double-counting and double-claiming of carbon credits.

There is no more room for offsetting, and what needs to happen urgently in the rich world is for very deep and rapid de-carbonisation.

Then, there is the much-needed finance and technology transfer that has to be delivered to developing countries to enable their transition to low-carbon pathways as soon as possible.

The USD 100 billion per year by 2020 which was promised by developed countries has fallen short and Glasgow has to see actual delivery and timelines for this goal to be realised.

Even this USD 100 billion per year target is a far cry from what is needed by developing countries, who have indicated the need for USD 5.8-5.9 trillion to implement their NDCs up to 2030.

As has been pointed out earlier, the G20 as a group is not recognised under the UNFCCC and the PA but what is recognised is developed and developing countries. It is not the leadership of the G20 that is needed but the leadership of the G7 — as per the Convention and the PA.

The developed and developing countries in the G20 cannot be viewed as having the same responsibility, leadership ability and capabilities. That will be contrary to the equity and CBDRRC principles of the UNFCCC and PA.

Actually, it is the decisions taken in Paris that have to be honoured and respected, and not a shifting of the goal posts by the developed world as pointed out above. It is true that developed countries in particular have to do their fair share of the emission cuts and also provide the finance and technology needed as payment of their climate debt.

Also, we have to remember that it is not only emissions reductions or mitigation that are important. Also critical is adaptation and addressing loss and damage (which goes beyond adaptation, as in for e.g. an extreme weather event that wipes out an economy of a country).

These are critical issues for developing countries, where real action on adaptation and loss and damage are enabled on the ground, including in scaling up finance in this regard.

China has announced a carbon-neutrality target of 2060. India is expected to announce an updated NDC. We cannot put China and India on the same footing as the developed world. China’s and India’s emissions are large due to their population. On a per capita basis, they are still much less than the developed countries.

We do not know about Australia and Russia. It is quite clear that these countries are not going to phase out from their dependence on fossil fuels anytime soon.

In fact, instead of the rich developed countries phasing out fossil fuels, what we see is the continued production and expansion of fossil fuels, as made clear by the UNEP Production Gap report.

This is indeed worrying, as the developed world has no excuse to delay action. It is their delayed action mainly that is responsible for the current global warming, as made clear by their historical overuse of the carbon budget, as shown by the AR 6 of the IPCC.

Meena Raman is Head of Programmes at Third World Network – headquartered in Penang, Malaysia.

 

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To reduce hunger, food systems must be transformed to prevent 17 percent of total food production from being lost, as is currently the case. Credit: FAO

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, Oct 27 2021 (IPS)

During October, the World Food Month, there has been a huge increase in the number of qualified voices promoting new ways to transform food systems that would allow to reduce and eliminate hunger, of which more than 811 million people in the world are already victims.

Based on the conclusions of the Food Systems Summit, held virtually on September 23, as well as its “hybrid” preparatory phase that took place in Rome in July, with the physical presence of 540 delegates and virtual presence of more than 20,000 people around the world, a growing number of personalities continue to advance into these reflections.

Globally, about 14 percent of food produced is lost between harvest and retail sale, equivalent to a loss of $ 400 billion per year, while food waste is estimated to reach 17 percent of total production: 11 percent is wasted in homes, 5 percent in food service establishments, and 2 percent in retail trade

This should pave the way to new avenues paths that will fulfill the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) foreseen by the international community by 2030, for which the eradication of hunger and poverty are considered to be priorities.

The transformation of agri-food systems must begin with normal consumers and the decisions they make about the food they consume, where it is bought, how it is packaged, where it is discarded, on the basis that all this will have an impact on the future of the planet, so it is necessary to reduce food loss and waste.

Globally, about 14 percent of food produced is lost between harvest and retail sale, equivalent to a loss of $ 400 billion per year, while food waste is estimated to reach 17 percent of total production: 11 percent is wasted in homes, 5 percent in food service establishments, and 2 percent in retail trade.

Pope Francis, in his message addressed during World Food Day on October 16, recalled that “currently we observe a true paradox in terms of access to food: on the one hand, more than 3 billion people do not have access to a nutritious diet, while, on the other hand, almost 2 billion people are overweight or obese due to a poor diet and a sedentary life.”

“Our lifestyles and daily consumption practices influence global and environmental dynamics, but if we aspire to a real change, we must urge producers and consumers to make ethical and sustainable decisions, and educate younger generations on the important role they play to make a world without hunger a reality,” stated the pontiff.

And for that, he emphasized, we must begin “with our daily life and simplest gestures: knowing our common house, protecting it and being aware of its importance, which should be the first step to be custodians and promoters of the environment.”

According to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the way food is produced, consumed and wasted “is having a disastrous consequence for our planet”, and “this is putting historical pressure on our natural resources and the environment” and “it is costing us billions of dollars every year”, underlining that “the power of change is in our hands”.

The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu is convinced that efforts must be accelerated towards the achievement of the SDGs foreseen for 2030 “with a view to halving food waste in the world and reducing food losses in the production and supply chain, including post-harvest losses,” noting that “there are only nine seasons (harvests) left to do so.”

The Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Inger Andersen, recalled that food loss and waste “are the origin of 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions”, which means that “valuable land and water resources are being used for nothing.”

She added that reducing food loss and waste will slow “climate change, protect nature and increase food security at a time when we desperately need that to happen.”

Dr QU, FAO’s head, agreed and considered that “it is not possible to continue losing 75 billion cubic meters of water per year in the production of fruit and vegetables.”

Experts from FAO estimate that it will be necessary to invest between 40 and 50 billion dollars annually to end hunger by 2030.

In particular, they highlighted the implementation of low-cost and high-impact projects that can help hundreds of millions of people to better meet their food needs, mainly with research, as well as with development and digital innovation to achieve advanced technology agriculture.

These thoughts and initiatives are added to those already made by the Foreign Ministers of the Group of 20 (G20) in Matera, Italy, in June, and the G20 Ministers of Agriculture in Florence, Italy, in September.

In those meetings, they emphasized the value of creating coalitions of countries together with civil society organizations, the private sector, particularly agricultural producers, academics and scientists, as well as other actors to exchange ideas and solutions in this phase of Covid-19 pandemic.

And in turn, to project the post-Covid scenario that helps relaunch countries with sustainability and resilience in strategic areas such as agriculture and food.

Excerpt:

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

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait, is welcomed by a student at a girls’ primary school in Kabul, Afghanistan. Credit: Omid Fazel/ECW

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 27 2021 (IPS)

Education Cannot Wait Director Yasmine Sherif urged the world to support their efforts to provide education to children living in Afghanistan – in what she called the “biggest humanitarian crisis” on earth.

“Their education cannot wait. Action cannot wait across all sectors. Financing and funding cannot wait. And our own humanity cannot wait,” Sherif said at a press briefing from Islamabad Airport at the conclusion of an all-women UN delegation to Afghanistan to assess the educational needs in the country.

The ECW mission was a joint effort with UNICEF Afghanistan to assess the situation and the capacity for UN agencies and their partners based in the country to respond to issues.

Sherif stated that to support education efforts in Afghanistan, attention must also be given to the other crises within the country. Afghanistan was at risk of an “economic meltdown” and on the “brink of collapse” that would disproportionately impact its citizens. To add to their woes, they were about to go into a devastating winter, and so dire was the situation that teachers had not been paid.

“About 20 years of development and the gains we have made are about to be lost if we don’t take immediate action,” Sherif said. There is an urgency to provide aid and continue running the programmes that work directly with the affected populations, including communities in the hardest-to-reach regions.

She emphasized the need to increase funding for UN agencies, NGOs and regional partners to carry out their work. UN agencies such as UNICEF, UNHCR, and UNWOMEN can negotiate access for children, especially girls, to attend school across all education levels and even pay for teachers’ salaries. UN field agents based in Afghanistan already have the experience and awareness to navigate the systems that would allow them to negotiate access.

Yasmine Sherif is welcomed by teachers and students at a girls’ primary school in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Credit: Omid Fazel/ECW

The ECW has previously provided US$45 million to support education for boys and girls, including a first response emergency grant of US$4 million in the wake of changes in ruling authorities. Sherif stated that an estimated US$1 billion would be needed to cover the cost to run programmes by the UN agencies, including ECW. In addition to education, this would also be distributed to programmes targeting other areas, including but not limited to food security and water sanitation. In this regard, she stated that food insecurity and access to hygiene would influence citizens and impact their quality of life. It would also affect women and children and their access to specialized health.

Sherif urged that it was more important than ever to continue implementing the SDGs in the middle of the current humanitarian crisis. “Education sits at the heart of all the SDGs,” she said.

She advised that a “direct execution modality” approach that would send funds directly to the UN agencies and partners would be critical as it would ensure funding went directly to the agencies that worked with affected communities. Sherif said it was important to maintain an “apolitical approach” to reach the people affected by humanitarian crises.

Access to education in Afghanistan has been challenged due to pre-existing factors such as accessibility to schools, lack of infrastructure and particularly challenging topography, which mean that many live in hard to access rural areas. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic also posed an issue for schools and communities, forcing schools to close in 2020.

A study from UNICEF found that 3.7 million children in Afghanistan are out of school, 60% of which are girls. Sherif stated that shrinking this significant gap would require a collective effort from UN agencies on the field with civil society organizations, non-government organizations, the private sector, and local, regional, and national authorities.

Sherif revealed at the press briefing that some primary schools in Kabul and the northern and southern regions of Afghanistan had reopened to both boys and girls. Some high schools have also had mixed classes with both boys and girls. In rural areas, partner agencies such as UNICEF will continue to support the Community-Based Education (CBE) programmes, which help establish Community-Based Schools and other alternative pathways to learning for children and adolescents based in hard-to-reach regions.

Concerns over girls’ access to education were raised when the Taliban assumed power on August 15, 2021. While they established a channel for communication with foreign groups, they have sent conflicting messages regarding education. They declared that high schools would reopen for their male students but did not mention when girls would return. This was interpreted as an effective ban on girls’ right to school.

The ECW-UNICEF team met with the authorities to determine the steps needed to promote access to education for girls. The authorities have allegedly expressed an interest in preserving women’s rights and access to education. They have stated that they are formulating plans but would need time. Sherif expressed that she was “cautiously optimistic” about the Taliban’s openness to negotiation.

The extent of the reforms and actions needed to improve access to education will remain to be seen. What is more urgent at this stage, Sherif reiterated, is immediate action and funding to agencies and partners to address different issues before it is too late.

 

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Every day, dozens of migrants from Central America, Haiti and Venezuela come early in the morning to the offices of the governmental Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid in downtown Mexico City to apply for asylum. Mexico is overwhelmed by the influx of migrants, to whom it has begun to apply harsh restrictions. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 27 2021 (IPS)

In September, 31-year-old Yesenia decided to leave her home on the outskirts of the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula, driven out by violence and the lack of water.

“The maras (gangs) were threatening me, and it hadn’t rained, there was very little water. I had to leave, I had to go somewhere, anywhere. I want to stay wherever they let me,” the mother of a seven-year-old girl, who was a homemaker in one of the most violent cities in the world, told IPS.

It was the first time she had left her country. She reached the southern Mexican state of Chiapas (bordering Guatemala), and continued on by bus and hitchhiking. “We slept in the bushes, walked, went hungry, got rained on and sometimes froze,” she said, describing the journey she made with her daughter.

Yesenia, who is short and dark-haired with a round face, now lives in an area that she does not name for security reasons, and is applying for refugee status in the capital of Mexico, a country that has historically been a huge source of migrants to the United States as well as a transit route for people from other countries heading there as well. It has also become, over the last decade, a growing recipient of undocumented migrants.

Due to the large number of requests for asylum, which has stretched Mexico’s immigration and refugee system to the limit, it takes a long time for cases to be resolved. Although immigration advocacy organisations provide assistance in the form of money, food, lodging and clothing, these resources are limited and the aid eventually comes to an end.

Driven out by poverty, lack of basic services, violence and climate-related phenomena, millions of people leave their countries in Central America every year, heading mainly to the United States, to find work and to reunite with family.

But in the face of the increasing crackdown on immigration in the U.S. since 2016 under the administrations of Donald Trump (2016-January 2021) and current President Joe Biden, many undocumented migrants have opted to stay in places that were previously only transit points, such as Mexico.

The problem is that Mexico also tightened the screws, as part of the role it agreed with the U.S. to perform during the times of Trump, who successfully pressured the governments of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-December 2018) and current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to step up their own anti-immigration measures. And this has not changed since Biden took office.

Like the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, Mexico and the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) are highly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis. Drought and devastating hurricanes drive people from their homes to safer areas or across borders in search of better lives.

Honduras is one illustration of this phenomenon. Since 1970, more than 30 major tropical storms have hit the country, leaving a trail of deaths and billions of dollars in property damage. Hurricanes Eta and Iota struck in 2020. For this year, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) predicted 17 hurricanes on the Atlantic side before the official end of hurricane season on Nov. 30.

In early September, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández also declared a drought emergency, another increasingly recurrent and intense phenomenon in Central America.

The refugee club

Caribbean island nations such as Haiti are also suffering from the climate emergency. The country was hit by Hurricane Elsa in June and by Tropical Storm Fred and Hurricane Grace in August, on top of an Aug. 14 earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale that claimed thousands of lives.

In 2017, a particularly lethal year, hurricanes Harvey and Irma struck Haiti. As a result, Sadaam decided to leave, heading first to Chile that year and now to Mexico, where he has applied for humanitarian asylum.

“Things got very difficult. The hardware store where I worked had to close because of the rains and I couldn’t work. I can do any kind of job and that’s all I ask for: work,” the 30-year-old Haitian migrant told IPS.

Tall and lean, Sadaam, originally from Port-au-Prince, also arrived in Mexico in September, with his wife and his son, as well as his brother and sister-in-law and their daughter. They are living temporarily in a hotel, with support from humanitarian organisations.

On Oct. 6, the Mexican government deported 129 Haitians to Port-au-Prince on a chartered flight from Tapachula, a city in the southern state of Chiapas. The measure was criticised by social organisations, while the U.N. called for an evaluation of the need for protection of Haitians and the risks of returning them to their country. CREDIT: INM

Climate disaster = displacement

Recent studies and migration statistics show that the paths followed by migrants and climate disasters in the region are intertwined.

Between 2000 and 2019, Cuba, Mexico and Haiti were the hardest hit, by a total of 110 storms which caused 39 billion dollars in damage, affected 29 million people and left 5,000 dead, 85 percent of them in Haiti, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

In 2020, internal and external displacement due to disasters soared in El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras. But the international migratory framework has not yet accepted the official category of climate refugee, despite growing clamor for its inclusion.

Armelle Gouritin, an academic at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences-Mexico, told IPS that the scientific community has linked the sudden events to the climate emergency, whose influence on internal and external migration flows is growing.

“There is evidence that they are increasing. It is quite difficult to say to what extent the volume of migration is growing, because there is little quantitative data. It is hard to compare. It tends to be invisible, especially because of slow onset processes such as drought and desertification,” she explained.

In her 2021 book “The protection of internal climate migrants; a pending task in Mexico”, the expert described scenarios linked to migration, such as gradual-onset phenomena, sudden-onset disasters (hurricanes or violence generated by water shortages), relocations decided by the authorities, sea level rise and the impact of renewable energy megaprojects.

As Mexico has become a magnet for migration, measures against immigration have been stiffened. This year, through August alone, immigration authorities detained 148,903 people, almost twice as many as in all of 2020, when the total was 82,379.

Of the current total, according to official data, 67,847 came from Honduras, 44,712 from Guatemala, 12,010 from El Salvador and 7,172 from Haiti.

Deportations are also on the rise, as up to August, Mexico removed 65,799 undocumented migrants, compared to 60,315 in the whole of 2020. Of these, 25,660 were from Honduras, 25,660 from Guatemala, 2,583 from El Salvador and 223 from Haiti.

The Haitian influx was triggered after the United States announced in August that it would halt deportations of those already in the country because of the earthquake, which drew thousands of Haitians who were in Brazil and Chile, where they had migrated earlier and where policies against them had been tightened.

In Mexico, according to official figures refugee applications increased from 70,406 in all of 2019 to 90,314 this year up to and including September, of which 26,007 were filed by Haitian migrants. Migrants from Honduras, Haiti, Cuba, El Salvador, and Venezuela account for the largest number of applications.

Despite the large rise in applications, Mexico only approved 13,100 permanent refugees in September: 5,755 from Honduras, 1,454 from El Salvador, 733 from Haiti and 524 from Guatemala.

On the night of Oct. 7, a military checkpoint found 800 migrants from Central America in three truck trailers on a highway in the state of Tamaulipas in northeastern Mexico, bordering the United States, where they were headed. CREDIT: Elefante Blanco/Pie de Página

Fleeing the climate emergency

The World Bank study “Groundswell: Acting on Internal Climate Migration” warns that Mexico must prepare for the confluence of climate disasters and migration flows, and projects 86 million internal climate migrants in the world by 2050, including 17 million in Latin America.

The report, published on Sept. 13, estimates that the number of climate migrants will grow between 2020 and 2050, when between 1.4 and 2.1 million people will migrate in Mexico and Central America. Mexico’s central valley, where the capital city is located, and the western highlands of Guatemala will receive migrants, while people will flee arid, agricultural and low-lying coastal areas.

Although several international bodies link migration and the climate crisis, the concept of climate migrant or refugee does not exist in the international legal framework.

Gouritin understands the international reluctance to address the issue. “There are three narratives for mobility: responsibility, security and human rights. States are not willing to head towards the responsibility narrative. The security narrative predominates, we have seen it with the caravans from Central America (on the way to the United States through Mexico),” she said.

Few countries are prepared to address the climate dimension of migration, as is the case of Mexico. The general laws on Climate Change, of 2012, and on Forced Internal Displacement, of 2020, mention climate impacts but do not include measures or define people internally displaced by climate phenomena.

In the United States, undocumented Mexicans are experiencing the same thing, as deportations of Mexicans could well exceed the levels of all of 2020, since 184,402 people were deported that year compared to 148,584 as of last August alone.

Yesenia and Sadaam are two migrants who are suffering the statistics in the flesh, as victims of their own governments and the Mexican response.

“I’ll stay wherever I can get a job to support and educate my daughter,” said Yesenia. With refugee status, migrants can work freely.

Sadaam said: “I was offered a job as a cleaner in a hotel, but they asked me for a refugee card. The government told me that I have to wait for the call for the appointment. If I get a job, I will stay here.”

But above and beyond the detentions, deportations and refugee applications, migration will continue, as long as droughts, floods and storms devastate their places of origin.

Meeting of the Working Group on the National Mental Health Strategic Plan, April 2019

By Saima Wazed and Nazish Arman
DHAKA, Oct 27 2021 (IPS)

Mental health is a state of well-being when both your body and your mind are in balance, and you are able to deal with the difficulties and challenges that come your way and easily find joy, peace, and happiness once the challenge is overcome. For many people though, the challenges often remain for too long – the pain of losing someone you dearly loved, being diagnosed with a chronic disease like cancer or a heart condition, losing your family/home/job or feeling like you failed to meet expectations. All those things and more can trigger so much intense stress and maladjustment, that if it goes unchecked and untreated, it may lead to a chronic disease, a mental health disorder. WHO defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. The majority of people are able to cope and get back to life as normal, but for the many who cannot, they begin to experience intense detachment from reality (experiencing delusions, pervasive sadness, uncontrollable fears, intense anger and/or fantasies and hallucinations). For those individuals, there is limited help and treatment in every country in the world. Those who suffer from mental health disorders and the brave professionals who learn to treat them are chronically stigmatized, under-appreciated and under-paid.

Mental health conditions, substance use disorders, suicide, and neurological disorders like dementia affect more than a billion people annually, account for an estimated third of the global burden of disability and result in 14% of global deaths. (Vigo et al., 2016). There has been increasing global recognition of the importance of mental health and the significant global burden of mental health conditions in both developing and developed countries. More than 80% of people experiencing them are living without any form of quality, affordable health care. Due to negligence and ignorance, we have high levels of mortality through suicide and increased comorbid medical conditions. According to a study published in 2016, it is estimated that 14.3% of deaths worldwide, or approximately 8 million deaths per year are attributable to mental health disorders.

The 7th Five Year Plan (FYP) and Vision 2021 of the Government of Bangladesh recognized the urgency of addressing mental health and developed a comprehensive system of care that can be implemented within our well tiered health infrastructure. This plan emphasized that proper health is essential not only for physical well-being but also for economic livelihood. To realize the vision of the 7th FYP, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is implementing its 4th Health, Population and Nutrition Sector Programme (4th HPNSP) from January 2017 to June 2022. The 4th HPNSP’s objectives include strengthening governance, institutional efficiency, expanding access and improving quality within the universal health care system. To achieve the SDGs target, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has committed to ensuring that mental health is a priority in the 4th HPNSP.

Saima Wazed, Chief Advisor to the Working Group on the National Mental Health Strategic Plan, at its meeting in April 2019

It is important to note that Bangladesh is among the first few countries in the WHO South-East Asia Region to place mental health as one of its top 10 priority health conditions. Mental health programming in Bangladesh has undergone several phases of evolution. Bangladesh passed a new Mental Health Act in 2018; is working on finalizing a Mental Health Policy; and has developed a National Strategic Plan after conducting a thorough situation analysis involving both professionals and those with lived experiences. The focus of the Mental Health Act is to protect the dignity of citizens with mental health conditions, provide them with healthcare, ensure their right to property and rehabilitate them. The law has 31 sections and will oversee the direction, development, expansion, regulation, and coordination of mental health related issues and duties entrusted to the Government. The National Mental Health Policy 2021 which is currently under final approval, provides an overarching direction by establishing a broad framework for action and coordination, through common vision and values for programing and mental health service delivery. Although still under review, this policy document acknowledges the significance and importance of relevant and useful local knowledge and practices, and adheres to global and regional thinking, taking into perspective the Bangladesh context.

Across the globe in most nations, mental health treatment is underfunded and lack a well-designed system of care within the health system primarily due to a limited understanding of how to treat adequately, severe social stigma, and complication of the conditions. The situation is similar in Bangladesh, where mental health has been a low priority in both health services delivery and planning for many years now. To address these issues, developing a comprehensive and multi-sectoral National Mental Health Strategic Plan was the only way forward to ensure access to quality mental health care services across the nation.

Saima Wazed, a licensed School Psychologist, is currently Clinical Instructor for the Department of School Psychology at Barry University. Additionally, she is Advisor to the Director General of WHO on Autism and Mental Health, Member of WHO’s Expert Advisory Panel on Mental Health, Chairperson of the National Advisory Committee on Autism and NDDs in Bangladesh, Thematic Ambassador for “Vulnerability” of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, and Chairperson of Shuchona Foundation.

Nazish Arman is Lead Content Developer of Shuchona Foundation.

Shuchona Foundation is a non-profit organization focusing on advocacy, research, and capacity-building, specialising in neurodevelopmental disabilities, and mental health. It aims to construct an effective bridge between national and international researchers, policy makers, service providers, persons with NDDs and their families, to promote inclusion nationally, regionally, and globally. The Foundation is a member of the UN ESCAP Working Group on disability as of May 2018, and holds special consultative status with UN ECOSOC since 2019.

Shuchona Foundation was the member of the Working Group on the National Mental Health Strategic Plan; and Saima Wazed was its Chief Advisor.

 

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Excerpt:

[First of a two-part article]

Governments, regional organizations and international agencies have failed to come up with sensible answers or effective policies to address the increasing waves of illegal migrants. Credit: Javier García/IPS

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Oct 27 2021 (IPS)

Illegal immigration is a 21st century crisis that will only worsen with the consequences of climate change.

In addition to poverty, civil conflict and violence, the increasing high temperatures, widespread droughts, frequent flooding and rising sea levels are leaving parts of the world unlivable. The result will be climate-fueled instability with millions of people likely migrating for their survival.

Unfortunately, governments, regional organizations and international agencies have failed to come up with sensible answers or effective policies to address the increasing waves of illegal migrants, including caravans of thousands, arriving at borders and the growing numbers of migrants unlawfully resident.

The recently negotiated Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, for example, has done relatively little to address illegal migration. Other than fences, barriers, closed borders, pushbacks and official statements, governments appear ill prepared to deal with the growing numbers unlawfully crossing their borders.

In the coming decades climate-related migration will become an even more critical challenge. A recent landmark ruling by the UN Human Rights Committee found it unlawful for governments to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by a climate crisis

With the assistance of social media and smugglers, thousands of migrants are arriving at borders by boat, motor vehicle and even by foot, pleading to enter the country. Refusing entry and/or deporting them to their home countries, especially when migrants claim asylum or come from failed states, have created serious dilemmas for governments.

Also, governments seem reluctant to acknowledge that visa overstayers and unauthorized migrants don’t expect to be deported. This expectation is largely based on the experiences of millions of unauthorized migrants permitted to live in host countries.

In many countries the public is displeased with their government’s handling of illegal immigration. This dissatisfaction contributes to anti-migrant sentiments, demonstrations against illegal immigration, xenophobia and violence towards migrants.

International surveys have found that approximately 15 percent of the world’s adults, or more than 800 million, want to migrate to another country. If children are included, the number of people wanting to migrate increases to more than 1 billion, or one-eighth of the world’s population of nearly 8 billion.

The preferred destinations are wealthy nations, with the United States being the top choice, followed by Canada, Germany, France, Australia and the United Kingdom. Those countries offer employment, services, opportunities, benefits, safety, human rights and security.

Among the economic, social and environmental forces influencing illegal migration are population size imbalances. For example, whereas the populations of Latin America and the Caribbean and Northern America were about the same size in 1950, today the population of Latin America is nearly double that of Northern America and is projected to remain so for the foreseeable future (Figure 1).

 

Source: United Nations Population Division.

 

Another noteworthy population size imbalance is between Europe and Africa. Whereas, in 1950 Europe’s population was double the size of Africa’s, by 2020 the demographic situation was the reverse. By 2050 Africa’s population is expected to be more than triple the size of Europe’s, 2.5 versus 0.7 billion (Figure 2).

 

Source: United Nations Population Division.

 

World population is also substantially larger than in was in the recent past. Today’s world population of nearly 8 billion is quadruple the number of people in 1921 and double the number in 1974.

Population projections point to continued demographic growth. World population is expected to reach 9 billion in 2037 and 10 billion in 2056, with most of the growth occurring in developing countries. Africa alone is expected to gain more than one billion people by midcentury (Figure 3).

 

Source: United Nations Population Division.

 

The asymmetry of human rights is also contributing to illegal immigration. The Universal Declaration of Human rights states that everyone has the right to leave and return to their country (Article 13). However, the Declaration does not give one the right to entry another country without authorization.

Lacking a legal right to emigrate, migrants turn to illegal migration with many claiming the right to seek asylum, Article 14 of the Declaration, to enter the destination country. Once in the country, unauthorized migrants believe they will not be repatriated even if their asylum claim is rejected, which is typically the case.

Of the world’s nearly 300 million migrants, the number of unauthorized migrants is likely to be no less than one-fifth of all migrants, or about 60 million. In the United States, for example, about one-fourth of the foreign-born population, or approximately 11 million, are unauthorized migrants,

The European Commission reports taking strong actions to prevent illegal migration through ensuring that each European Union (EU) country controls its own portion of EU’s external borders. Increasingly EU states are erecting walls, fences and even military force and technology to secure their borders against illegal immigration. Recently, the interior ministers from 12 member states demanded that the EU finance border-wall projects to stop migrants entering through Belarus.

Despite those actions, illegal immigration to the EU from January through August 2021 increased by 64 percent over the previous year. Along the western Balkan route, illegal crossings to the EU nearly doubled, with most of those migrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Morocco.

In the United States, illegal immigration has reached record levels. Officials detained 1.66 million illegal immigrants, including 145 thousand unaccompanied children, at the U.S. southern border in fiscal year 2021, the highest level ever recorded. The migrants were from 160 countries, with many seeking economic opportunities.

Many governments tolerate illegal immigration. Recently issued administration guidelines in the United States, for example, instruct immigration officials to no longer detain and repatriate migrants based on their illegal status alone; the focus is on those posing safety threats. Also, in Germany enforcement against illegal entry and unlawful residence is generally weak and authorities tend to look the other way regarding unauthorized migrant workers.

How best to address those unlawfully resident in a country remains a controversial political issue that most governments have been unable to resolve effectively. While some wish to offer a pathway to citizenship, others recommend repatriation and still others prefer to maintain the status quo.

Reasonable future levels of legal migration will be insufficient to absorb even a fraction of the estimated 1 billion people who want to migrate to wealthy countries. Consequently, future illegal migration will likely be many times greater than today’s levels.

In addition, in the coming decades climate-related migration will become an even more critical challenge. A recent landmark ruling by the UN Human Rights Committee found it unlawful for governments to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by a climate crisis.

Tens of millions of people are expected to be displaced by 2050 because of life-threatening climate and environmental changes. Some estimate that as many as 143 million people in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America are likely to be displaced due to climate change.

Among the many aspects of the illegal immigration crisis that governments need to address are three critical questions:

1. How to address the millions of unauthorized migrants currently resident in their countries?
2. How to respond to the millions of unauthorized migrants arriving at borders and attempting to enter?
3. How to address the millions of people to be displaced by climate change?

Failing to effectively address those and related issues will only exacerbate the 21st century illegal immigration crisis that will only worsen with climate change.

 

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

 

The WMO has warned that the ability of land ecosystems and oceans to act as sinks may become less effective in the future. Laudat, Dominica. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Oct 27 2021 (IPS)

A few days before the international community gathers for COP26, widely considered the most important climate conference since the 2015 gathering which resulted in the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)  is reporting that despite global hits in trade and travel by the COVID-19 pandemic, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new high in 2020.

The United Nations Agency issued its annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin on October 25. It is the seventeenth bulletin and it concludes that from 1990 to 2020, heating of the earth by greenhouse gases spiked by 47 percent, with carbon dioxide responsible for almost 80 percent of this hike.

“Concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important greenhouse gas, reached 413.2 parts per million in 2020 and is 149% of the pre-industrial level,” the report stated, adding that “the economic slowdown from COVID-19 did not have any discernible impact on the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases and their growth rates, although there was a temporary decline in new emissions.”

“Roughly half of the CO2 emitted by human activities today remains in the atmosphere. The other half is taken up by oceans and land ecosystems,” it added, warning that “the ability of land ecosystems and oceans to act as “sinks” may become less effective in future, thus reducing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide and act as a buffer against larger temperature increase.”

The statistics are crucial ahead of next week’s climate talks. Countries are being urged to commit to increasingly ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“It is clear from the science that the concentration of greenhouse gases is driving climate change and if we are able to mitigate those emissions and phase out the negative trend in climate, that should be our aim,” said Petteri Taalas.

“Some features will continue for hundreds of years like the melting of glaciers and sea-level rise as we already have such a high concentration of carbon dioxide and this problem will not go away soon……..we have to start dealing with emissions in this decade. We cannot wait, otherwise, we will lose the Paris targets. The progress has been too slow,” Taalas added.

The WMO’s chief of atmospheric and environment research division Oksana Tarasova says climate commitments by nations must translate into action.

“There is no way around it. We need to reduce emissions as fast as possible. When countries are making commitments to be carbon neutral, the atmosphere gives us a very clear signal that our commitments should be converted into something that we can see in the atmosphere. If we do not see at least a decrease in the growth rate of the major greenhouse gases, we cannot declare success in the climate agenda,” she said.

The WMO greenhouse gas bulletin coincides with the release this week of the United Nations Climate Office’s updated findings on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are countries’ climate action plans, including goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

They concluded that the world is ‘nowhere near’ where it needs to be to tackle the climate crisis. Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Patricia Espinosa called for an ‘urgent redoubling of climate efforts’ to ensure that global temperatures do not soar past the goals of the Paris Agreement.

“Overshooting the temperature goals will lead to a destabilized world and endless suffering, especially among those who have contributed the least to the GHG emissions in the atmosphere,” she said.
“This updated report, unfortunately, confirms the trend already indicated in the full Synthesis Report, which is that we are nowhere near where science says we should be.”
For WMO officials, a timely, ‘stark scientific message’ is being sent to the world.

“At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” WMO Secretary-General Taalas said.

“We are way off track.”

 

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Egyptian women protesters behind bars. Credit: VOA News

By Reem Abdellatif and Nimco Ali
CAIRO, Egypt, Oct 27 2021 (IPS)

The fate of Egyptian women and girls delicately hangs in the balance as the country continues to have one of the worst records in the world for gender equality. With oppression often state-sanctioned, Egyptian women face a daily struggle against sexual harassment and other violations of their basic human rights, including institutionalised violence.

Today, African Women Rights Advocates (AWRA) and The Five Foundation, The Global Partnership To End FGM, have come together with Equality Now, Democracy for the Arab World Now and several prominent voices from the region and beyond, to demand that the Egyptian government takes immediate steps to fix this situation.

It needs to take clear action to enhance the rights of women and girls in all areas of life, including by ending child marriage and banning articles that perpetuate sexual violence and gender discrimination in the text of the country’s laws.

The signatories to an open letter are also demanding that the Egyptian government enforces laws against female genital mutilation (FGM). With 27.2 million affected – around 90 percent of the female population – Egypt has one of the highest number of survivors of FGM in the world, yet the government is failing to act effectively.

It’s clear that if and when perpetrators are eventually arrested and convicted, they are given extremely short and suspended sentences, such as when 17-year-old Mayar Mohamed Moussa was killed in 2017 — and just over one year ago when yet another girl, 12-year-old Nada Hassan Abdel-Maqsoud, died in a private medical clinic in Manfalout.

In 2013, 13-year-old Soheir al-Batea’s killer Dr. Raslan Fadl only spent a couple of months behind bars in 2016, after evading arrest for three years. The anti-FGM law was strengthened earlier this year, but we know of first hand reports of clinics in Cairo still openly offering to medicalise the harmful and sometimes deadly practice.

Furthermore, women cannot fully claim their basic right to bodily autonomy in a state where public laws do not criminalise marital rape or virginity testing. The government has made no effort to address domestic violence in Egypt, which has been long tolerated and accepted in society.

Egyptian women and girls have had enough. In the last couple of years, they have come forward in unprecedented numbers to break the fear barrier and reveal harrowing lived experiences with sexual abuse.

Survivors demanded justice and called on the state to help end impunity for perpetrators of sexual harassment. However, their pleas for bodily autonomy fell on deaf ears when in January 2021, the Egyptian cabinet proposed a personal status bill that would strip women of their basic rights even further.

Human rights activists and grassroots women protested the regressive proposal, which would have given fathers priority over mothers in child custody. It would also have allowed fathers to prevent mothers from travelling abroad with their children.

In matters of marriage, a male guardian such as an uncle, father or brother would have had to sign a marriage contract on behalf of the wife. Although this particular draft law is now unlikely to be passed, signatories of the Open Letter want more clarity to make sure it does not reappear in a new format since the law was proposed by the government as opposed to one political party representative.

In Egypt, the internet remains one of the only public avenues of alternative expression; and yet Egyptian female social media influencers who are unaffiliated with the state or ruling elite have been targeted with arrests.

Since 2020, authorities launched a highly abusive campaign against women social media influencers and have prosecuted over a dozen of them under vague “morality” and “public indecency” laws, accusing the women of violating “family values.”

When famous influencer Haneen Hossam was acquitted after her arrest, authorities re-arrested her in 2021 and charged her with “human trafficking” for merely using social media in ways that challenged patriarchal norms.

Regional and global women’s rights activists who are familiar with Egypt’s bureaucratic and oppressive history towards women maintain that this is a state-sponsored crackdown to rein in female social media influencers by resorting to sexist “morality” charges that violate women’s rights to freedom of expression, bodily autonomy, and non-discrimination.

Donors and corporations investing in Egypt should also take note of all of these violations against its female population, and provide support where it’s critically needed – particularly to grassroots women activists.

The prosperous, fair, and peaceful vision that the United Nations and global powers hold for “Generation Equality” cannot be achieved when the Arab world’s most populous nation grossly undermines its women and girls.

Egypt must live up to its role as a beacon of hope and civilization, and so the Egyptian government must be held to account to carry through the changes that are needed so that young girls are free to live dignified and fulfilled lives.

Later this month, Egypt will have an ideal opportunity to do so, when it will be asked to be part of a review by the United Nations Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Egypt’s economic transformation is already happening. It is one of the leaders in the region in terms of attracting foreign direct investment, but its potential will never be fully realised until its government allows the female half of its population to be safe, free and be able to contribute socially and economically to the country’s future.

Reem Abdellatif is Director & Chief Operating Officer of the African Women Rights Advocates movement (AWRA). Nimco Ali is CEO of The Five Foundation, The Global Partnership To End FGM.

 

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Instead of investing resources in building a solution from scratch, it’s smarter to research existing solutions and tools that can be modified for specific needs, the authors say. Credit: Unsplash / Marvin M

By External Source
Oct 26 2021 (IPS)

Today, technology has become integral to almost all aspects of work—from implementing and standardising processes and collecting data to monitoring and evaluation and helping an organisation scale. This was increasingly apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, when all organisations turned to technologies like WhatsApp and Zoom to stay connected and deliver their programmes to communities. And yet in the nonprofit sector, tech is viewed as an overhead rather than being fundamental to the functioning of an organisation.

When building budgets for programmes, nonprofits (and donors) must change their mindsets and look at tech as core infrastructure; without this orientation, organisations lose out because they are bearing the cost of technology anyway. It makes no sense not to account for it properly.

 

We misunderstand technology

1. Tech is an enabler, not the solution

When it comes to nonprofits implementing tech, there are a few misconceptions or assumptions we have encountered during our work at Tech4Dev. The first misconception is that tech is the solution. Tech is, in fact, an enabler—it enables an effective, efficient solution. It cannot by itself solve problems. For example, using tech for mobile data collection is superb.

However, to use this technology effectively, an organisation must have the processes and systems in place to know what data to collect, the audience from whom they will collect the data, and the field staff trained in the system and reasonably knowledgeable about data collection and biases. In such a scenario, tech enables high-quality data collection, but the secret is in the organisation process.

2. It’s not about the size of an organisation

The second misconception is that there is a ‘right size’ an organisation needs to get to before implementing tech solutions. In other words, tech is not for smaller grassroots organisations. A better way to think about this would be to ask yourself: Do I currently have a solution for the problem at hand, and do I have a systematic way of implementing that solution? If the answer is yes, then size should not be a factor at all.

For instance, we’ve seen small organisations use Google Sheets extremely effectively. So you can use cheap tech at a small scale, and you can also use cheap tech on a large scale. We’ve also seen really poor tech being used in both small organisations as well as large ones.

So it’s not about size but about having a systematic approach, because even though tech makes things more efficient, it also tends to add more complexity and introduce another element that employees will have to learn and work with.

We were working with a nonprofit organisation—let’s call it Team Health—that had a large number of fieldworkers, from whom they would receive data via multiple channels including WhatsApp, emails, and phone calls. None of this data arrived in a standardised or structured manner, nor was any of it recorded. Team Health wanted to change this.

They were keen to introduce an app, assuming that all their fieldworkers would know how to enter the requisite information in the exact way that the tech required, and that would lead to them having standardised data exactly how they needed it.

But because their processes at the time were not standardised, and their fieldworkers were accustomed to a certain way of submitting data, the app would not solve their problem. In fact, it might have made things worse had they gone down that path.

3. Asking donors to ‘fund tech‘

The third misconception among organisations is that funders are hesitant to pay for tech. Instead of asking donors to ‘fund technology’, nonprofits should articulate why technology is important to the organisation’s core functioning.

They must incorporate it as such in their proposals. We need to educate the funder ecosystem as well as the nonprofit ecosystem for this to become a reality.

Take the case of an organisation—Team Sanitation—working on community toilets for the urban poor in India. They used a fair amount of technology for data collection and geographic information system (GIS) mapping in their day-to-day operations.

These tools were core to their project, and so Team Sanitation started incorporating all costs associated with using these technologies (for example, licensing and operational costs) as necessary project costs in their funding proposals.

And they haven’t got any pushback from donors for doing so. As long as organisations can demonstrate the need for tech within their programmes, most donors will not have any issues supporting such core expenses.

4. Thinking that a custom tech solution needs to be built from scratch

The fourth mistake many organisations make is to think that they need to build custom tech solutions from scratch. But before thinking about this nonprofits need to define their problems and needs.

Detailing what their top problems are, why they are important, and how they impact the work that they are trying to do can help them understand where tech might help, and where it might not. If tech is in fact the way to go, then it’s important to acknowledge that very few nonprofits have a unique problem that they need solved.

The context, communities, and resources might differ, but fundamentally the problem a nonprofit is trying to solve has likely been attempted or solved by somebody else already.

For instance, let’s take the case of an organisation that is in the business of training primary school teachers, and finds that doing this at scale, in person, is cost-prohibitive. Surely, there are others that have faced this issue of cost and scale, and have worked on a solution.

Even still, in the nonprofit sector, there is a tendency to build custom tech platforms when they are not needed. Both funders and nonprofits have been burnt by this, where a solution was built, and in some cases the investment had to be written off, and in others there was little progress to show for it.

Custom tech is not only a waste of resources, time, and effort, but it is also not scalable. For this reason, instead of investing resources in building a solution from scratch, it’s smarter to research existing solutions and tools that can be modified for specific needs.

We’ve seen multiple custom builds of mobile data collection platforms, case management systems, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems across different nonprofits, most of which were inferior and lacking compared to the current open-source and commercially available solutions. ‘Research before build’ is a mantra we follow quite religiously within Tech4Dev.

 

We need to build a culture of collaboration and sharing knowledge where everyone benefits

Given that there are existing solutions to problems that several nonprofits are trying to solve, the question arises: What are the barriers to accessing such information?

Most nonprofits do not have the technological knowledge or expertise that is helpful in thinking about what tools might be useful for their specific problem. Connecting the dots between the problem and potentially useful technologies is usually the responsibility of the software partner.

However, since software partners often have limited experience in the social sector, their approach to an organisation’s problem is to simply build a solution specifically for the nonprofit. This is far from ideal. Not only do we need software partners that are well versed with the social sector and the problems nonprofits are trying to solve, but we also need nonprofits to strengthen their understanding of tech.

In order to do this, we need to build a knowledge base for tech that everyone can learn from—nonprofits, donors, and software partners. This kind of open ecosystem will also help funders realise when they are funding similar solutions across multiple organisations, and it will help organisations learn from each other’s work.

 

We must prioritise open-source publishing of the work

To build an accessible ecosystem, the first step is to share existing knowledge with all the relevant stakeholders. Nonprofits should publish their programmes, challenges, solutions, and learning in the public domain. For example, if a nonprofit is spending 300 hours working on a project, it should spend at least 10 hours creating open-source material that helps people understand what it is that they are doing.

Creating awareness through open-sourced content is crucial for organisations in the social sector so they can learn from and support each other better. While this might not happen right away, as more and more nonprofits share their expertise, the social sector can start to build these broader ecosystems faster. Organisations must ideally move beyond the fear of sharing their ‘trade secrets’, in recognition of the fact that paying it forward will benefit them in the long run.

 

Donors and intermediary organisations have an important role to play

Organisations like IDinsight do an amazing job publishing their work on a timely basis as seen from their blog and LinkedIn pages. Sharing this information helps distribute knowledge across a wide variety of ecosystem players, hence strengthening the ecosystem.

Donors can nudge these organisations to publish their work as it is being done to help disseminate the knowledge as early as possible. We should never wait till we have the perfect, well-crafted report. Publishing things as the work is being done is another mantra for the projects we run within Tech4Dev.

In India today, the onus of facilitating the building of an ecosystem falls more on funders and intermediary organisations than it does on nonprofits. This is because nonprofits are resource-constrained and devote majority of their efforts to their programmes. Moreover, they do not have the kind of influence and clout that donors have, and might not have the skills either.

The first step that funders can take is to move away from traditional contracts that restrict sharing of content and intellectual property (IP) and towards sharing IP in the public domain. Further, given that funders typically work with multiple organisations within a specific sector, they might be better positioned to see the bigger picture here.

They can also help nonprofits choose software partners. Here, they must be sensitive to the skewed funder–nonprofit power dynamic, and play a supportive role rather than a directive one. There is a lot that funders can do to strengthen the tech ecosystem within the social sector. Unfortunately, there are very few donors and organisations focused on this ecosystem.

We need a much greater push towards building ecosystems and platforms at a much faster rate, and providing adequate support to sustain them. The social sector needs such spaces so they can integrate technology better and more smartly across the work they do.

 

Donald Lobo serves as executive director of the Chintu Gudiya Foundation, a private family foundation based in San Francisco, CA, that funds US-based nonprofits and organisations developing open-source software for the public good. 

Sanjeev Dharap is an entrepreneur and start-up adviser, and has worked in Silicon Valley for over 25 years. He holds an MTech in Computer Science from Pune University, India, and a PhD in Computer Science from Penn State University. He has been involved with Tech4Dev since early 2019

 

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

Credit: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace Africa

By Remy Zahiga, Jennifer Morgan and Martin Kaiser
GOMA/AMSTERDAM/HAMBURG, Oct 26 2021 (IPS)

On the brink of an unprecedented environmental emergency, EU ambassadors to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) gathered earlier this month for a luxury river cruise hosted by the country’s Environment Minister, Eve Bazaiba.

Many of them represent donor countries from the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI), in the final stretch of negotiating an estimated $1 billion ten-year DRC forest protection program. The Minister is wining and dining them to push her top priority: the lifting of a 2002 ban on the awarding of new logging concessions.

The decision to lift the ban was approved this July by the Council of Ministers, presided by Président Félix Tshisekedi, but an implementation decree is yet to be signed. In April, at Joe Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate, Congo’s president had pledged to stop deforestation and increase forest cover by 8%.

Minister Bazaiba has responded to a letter from local and international environmental and human rights groups by saying she has no lessons to learn from NGOs. She calls criticism of the lifting of the moratorium “beyond daring for the 21st century”; the Ministry labels critics “the beneficiaries of imperialists.”

The lifting of the moratorium could open some 70 million hectares to logging – an area roughly the size of France – and its impacts would be catastrophic. With or without a “sustainability” label, the logging of the Congo Basin is a nightmare for the rule of law and a constant threat to local people.

For millions of people who depend on the forest for their livelihoods, including Indigenous Peoples, selling it off to multinationals has meant land grabs, displacement and destitution. And bulldozing the rainforest will likely mean less rain.

The Congo Basin forest is estimated to contribute more than half of the annual precipitation in Sub-Saharan Africa, an area already facing a plethora of droughts and extreme heat waves.

One of the things the EU ambassadors the Minister is schmoozing ought to remind her is that no one appears to know exactly who these multinationals are.

Nearly six months after the launch of an EU-funded legal review of logging titles, the lead auditor reported this month that his team still hasn’t been able to pull together a list of titles… He hasn’t yet glimpsed a “so-called existing” list; what there is is “very incomplete.” Ève Bazaiba took her time to sign the team’s mission order, until two months after an intervention by the EU ambassador.

Over 40 Congolese and international NGOs are still waiting for a reply to their 23 September letter to donors, warning of the impending catastrophe.

In the letter they were told that lifting the moratorium in DRC, home to about 60 per cent of the Congo Basin forest, would remove the last shreds of credibility from COP15 on biodiversity in Kunming and from COP26 on climate in Glasgow.

The Congo Basin forest has more than 600 tree species and 10,000 animal species, including forest elephants, lowland gorillas, bonobos, and okapi. Its vegetation is estimated to contain between 25-30 billion tons of carbon, equivalent to about four years of global anthropogenic emissions of CO2. Increased logging might mean greater risk of yet another pandemic.

Just how out of it are the donors? Do they really have any clue what the current logging scene is in Congo?

Over the years, one Minister after another has violated the moratorium, gratifying senior military – including an army general under EU and US sanctions for human rights abuses – and other makeshift “logging” firms.

Bazaiba’s predecessor, Claude Nyamugabo, is facing a legal challenge from Congolese civil society organisations for transferring two million hectares of illegally allocated concessions to Chinese front companies.

But by far the most surreal example of what the lifting of the moratorium would mean is last year’s award of six so-called “conservation” concessions, covering an area half the size of Belgium, to a company called Tradelink.

The only shareholder of the firm that a Greenpeace Africa investigation has been able to identify is Aleksandar Voukovitch, a Belgian expat who’s made his career in mining, oil and timber. He would appear to have no experience in conservation, and even less in the area of forest-rights protection.

In September, the Minister missed the legal deadline to respond to an administrative complaint seeking the cancellation of his contracts.

The national Institute for Nature Conservation, ICCN, has confirmed they were awarded illegally, without its knowledge. The governor of Tshuapa province has also demanded their cancellation.

The same Ministry that’s accusing national and international NGOs of being imperialist stooges has remained silent about what’s probably the biggest handover of territory to Belgian interests since independence.

Finally, over a year after the award of the Tradelink contracts – and, by sheer coincidence, two weeks before COP26 — President Tshisekedi ordered their suspension, as well as that of all other “dubious” forest concessions.

Better late than never, but it would appear that the sudden interest in good “forest governance” may simply be meant to reassure donors that the moratorium can now be safely jettisoned. No sign yet of the opening of a legal investigation to determine the responsibility of the various parties.

Are donors in the process of green lighting the lifting of the moratorium even as we speak? Will the EU taxpayer be financing a free-for-all for EU and Chinese multinationals? Now’s the time for the weekend river cruisers to take a position – a public one.

But the one billion dollar question isn’t whether foreign governments will tacitly support all of the above or simply walk away. There’s a far better path for investment for CAFI and other donors too.

The most effective and just form of forest protection is supporting the land rights of Indigenous People and local communities. In areas designated as community forest concessions, the rate of deforestation is significantly lower than the national average and almost 50 per cent lower than in logging concessions.

Community forest concessions also provide a structure that is inclusive and democratic.

The health of our planet requires ending, rather than endlessly recycling, the colonial concession system so beautifully incarnated by Tradelink. The DRC government and CAFI must extend the moratorium on new logging and invest in the protection of forest rights. They must finally decide to leave the rainforest to its rightful indigenous owners.

Remy Zahiga is a Congolese climate activist. Jennifer Morgan is the Executive Director of Greenpeace International. Martin Kaiser is the Executive Director of Greenpeace Germany.

 

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The Southern African region is particularly vulnerable to climate change while only being responsible for a fraction of emissions. It is hoped that COP26 will deliver tangible benefits to the area which has already suffered severe impacts of climate change like the effects of Cyclone Idai, Mozambique, in March 2019. Credit: Denis Onyodi: IFRC/DRK/Climate Centre

By Kevin Humphrey
Johannesburg, Oct 26 2021 (IPS)

COP 26 is almost upon us, and dire warnings abound that it’s boom or bust for a greener future. Meanwhile, everybody boasts about what they will do to cool down our planet, but there is a disjuncture between talk and action. Even Queen Elizabeth II of the host country, the United Kingdom, has grumbled publicly that not enough action is taking place on climate change.

In the Southern Africa region, the SADC’s member countries are clear that the developed countries must stump up the money to help them deliver their promises to reduce carbon emissions and carry out a raft of measures to combat global warming. All the SADC countries are signatories to the Paris Agreement.

The region has joined the cry of other African countries that the continent suffers most from climate change but hardly contributes to the causes of the phenomenon – emitting less than 4% of the world’s greenhouse gasses.
According to research undertaken on behalf of the UN, climate change adaptation needs for Africa were estimated to be $715 billion ($0.715 trillion) between 2020 and 2030.

In southern Africa, each country has its own Nationally Developed Contribution plan for dealing with climate change, including costs. Of course, funding will be needed to achieve these goals. Developing countries have pledged a $100bn annual target to help the developing world tackle climate change. All the Southern African countries will need a slice of this funding. The Green Climate Fund was established under the Cancun Agreements in 2010 as a dedicated financing vehicle for developing countries.

In the lead up to COP26, the fund is under scrutiny. Tanguy Gahouma, chair of the African Group of Negotiators at COP26, has said: “African countries want a new system to track funding from wealthy nations that are failing to meet the $100bn annual target.”

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates this funding stood at $79.6bn in 2019. OECD data reveals that from 2016-19 Africa only got 26 percent of the funding.

Gahouma said a more detailed shared system was needed that would keep tabs on each country’s contribution and where it went on the ground.

“They say they achieved maybe 70 percent of the target, but we cannot see that,” Gahouma said.
“We need to have a clear road map how they will put on the table the $100bn per year, how we can track (it),” he said. “We don’t have time to lose, and Africa is one of the most vulnerable regions of the world.”

Amar Bhattacharya, from the Brookings Institution, says about the fund, “Some progress has been made – but a lot more needs to be done.”

Denmark’s development coordination minister Flemming Møller Mortensen has warned that only a quarter of international climate finance for developing countries goes to adaptation.

COP26 may turn into a squabble over money and perhaps an attack on developed countries as they are blamed for creating the problems of climate change in the first place by using fossil fuels for the last two centuries. G20 countries account for almost 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Again, it is all about the money. Many developed countries do not want to change; their economies (and their rich elites) are wedded to fossil fuels. There are also problems with paying for adaptation. Will the rich countries fund the developing countries to green themselves up?

Southern Africa will need to deal pragmatically with the outcomes of COP26 as it becomes crucial to deal with climate change impacts – like the vulnerability to intense storms like Cyclone Idai, which hit Mozambique in March 2019. Credit: Denis Onyodi: IFRC/DRK/Climate Centre

Professor Bruce Hewitson, the SARCHI Research Chair in Climate Change Climate System Analysis Group, Dept Environmental & Geographical Sciences at the University of Cape Town, told IPS: “The well-cited meme that Africa is the continent most vulnerable to climate change impacts is true, as is the common response that Africa needs external aid to implement adaptation and development pathways compatible to climate mitigation. However, such messages hide a myriad of political realities about the difference between what is ideal and what is likely.”

Hewitson argues that what emerges from COP26 is an exercise in hope and belief.

“It’s a tightrope walk trying to balance competing demands and self-interests. At the end of the day, Africa will need to pragmatically deal with a compromised outcome and face the climate challenges as best possible under limited resources,” he says.

If Africa goes to COP26 with a begging bowl attitude, it could face the risk of dancing to the strings of the powerful and rich nations.

“Climate change impacts Africa in a multiplicity of ways, but at the root is when the local climate change exceeds the viability threshold of our infrastructural and ecological systems. Hence, arguably the largest challenge to responding to climate change is to expand and enable the regional capacity of the science and decision-makers to responsibly steer our actions in an informed and cohesive way; Africa needs to lead the design of Africa’s solutions,” says Hewitson.

While he argues that some of the best innovation is happening in Africa, it requires resources, and the COVID-19 pandemic has decreased international funding.

“Each community has unique needs and unique challenges, needing unique local solutions that are context-sensitive and context-relevant, and this will inevitably include the pain of some socio-economic and political compromise.”
The southern African region’s climate woes chime with the problems faced by a legion of developing countries. We have Mauritius’s threatened Indian Ocean islands, Seychelles, Madagascar, Comoros and those offshore of Tanzania and Mozambique, plus many thousands of miles of coastline. We have inland waterways. We have jungles, forests, vast plains and deserts. All prey to the viciousness of global warming.

The SADC’s climate change report quotes an academic paper by Rahab and Proudhomme that from 2002 “there has been a rise in temperatures at twice the global average.”

According to the SADC, “A Climate Change Strategy is in place to guide the implementation of the Climate Change Programme over a Fifteen-year period (2015 – 2030). The plan is innovative in terms of food security, preserving and expanding carbon sinks (which play a major role in stabilising the global climate) and tackling problems in urban areas that cause global warming like high energy consumption, poor waste management systems and inefficient transport networks.

Out of the region’s fifteen member countries, South Africa is the biggest culprit when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently said, “We need to act with urgency and ambition to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and undertake a transition to a low-carbon economy.”

This is a big ask for the region’s economic powerhouse with entrenched mining interests, an abundance of coal and a huge fleet of coal-fired power stations.

Recently, Mining and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said South Africa must systematically manage its transition away from coal-fired power generation and not rush a switch to renewable energy sources.

“I am not saying coal forever… I am saying let’s manage our transition step by step rather than being emotional. We are not a developed economy, we don’t have all alternative sources.”

Angola has some of the most ambitious targets for transition to low-carbon development in Africa. The country committed to reducing up to 14% of its greenhouse gas emissions – commentators have met this with scepticism.
Mozambique, not – as yet – a significant carbon emitter, has potential, through its vast natural gas resources, to provide the wherewithal to heat the planet in a big way.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo – a least-developed country, has committed to a 17% reduction by 2030 in emissions. The DRC has the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest – a major carbon sink.

Other SADC countries that suffer from climate change but do very little to cause it are Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Madagascar, which is currently suffering from a climate-induced famine; Malawi, Tanzania, Namibia and Zambia.

While talking up the need to cut emissions, Zambia’s neighbour Zimbabwe said it would increase electricity and coal supply to the iron and steel sectors, thus adding to emissions.

Mauritius, Seychelles and Comoros are all vulnerable Island economies and have a lot in common with the many other island states throughout the world and are very low carbon emitters but extremely vulnerable to climate change especially rising sea levels.

Despite all the problems emerging in the lead up to COP 26, we need to take to heart the fact that scientists and commentators worldwide are warning that COP26 must deliver a way forward that works for our planet and our people. Southern Africa and the African continent as a whole can contribute with innovation and enthusiasm by tapping into the vast potential of our youthful population.

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 26 2021 (IPS)

“The outlook for LDCs is grim”. The latest United Nations (UN) assessment of prospects for the least developed countries (LDCs) notes recent setbacks without finding any silver lining on the horizon.

Promises unkept
Half a century ago, LDCs were first officially recognised by a UN General Assembly resolution. It built on research, analysis and advocacy by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Anis Chowdhury

The landmark 1971 declaration drew attention to LDCs’ unique challenges and pledged support from the international community. The UN has convened four LDC conferences since, with each adopting a 10-year programme of action for national governments and ‘development partners’.

But actual progress has been disappointing, with only seven countries ‘graduating’. The list of LDCs has grown to 46 as more ‘qualify’ to ‘join’. With the fifth conference due in Doha in January 2022, some critical soul-searching is urgently needed for efforts not to disappoint yet again.

The failure of development partners to meet their commitments has been a major long-standing problem. Only 6 of 29 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) partners have kept their promise to give at least 0.15% of their national incomes as aid to LDCs.

As the 1969 UN definition of official development assistance (ODA) has been compromised, the UN report unsurprisingly laments declining aid ‘concessionality’. New OECD aid reporting rules mean its numbers do not reliably measure additional sustainable development finance.

Systemic incoherence
The UN uses three criteria – income, human assets and vulnerability – to classify LDCs. Although nominally part of the UN system, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund do not recognise LDCs.

Instead, the Bank only uses income to classify countries, with only low-income countries eligible for concessional loans from both Bank and Fund. Thus, ‘middle-income’ LDCs – so classified due to poor human assets and/or high vulnerability – are left out.

When the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) was adopted in 1995, LDCs were given more time to comply: first, until November 2005, extended to July 2013, then July 2021, and most recently, July 2034. But such ad-hoc postponements undermine LDCs’ long-term planning.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Instead of the current ‘case-by-case’ approach, LDCs need more predictability. The grace period should be while a country remains an LDC, say, plus a further 12 years after graduation, as proposed by Chad. The 12-year ‘grace period’ should also apply to other “international support measures”, including all types of special and differential treatment.

Limited market access
LDCs account for only 0.13% of global trade. But despite touting trade liberalisation as necessary for development, OECD countries have not given LDCs much access to their own markets. Allowing more meaningful ‘duty-free, quota-free’ (DFQF) access is thus crucial to LDCs.

Helpful 97% DFQF access for LDCs to developed country markets was agreed to at the 2005 World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial in Hong Kong. But most LDC exports are concentrated in a few tariff lines, such as agricultural products and textiles, still subject to constant re-negotiation.

Tariff reduction alone is no panacea, as non-tariff measures have posed barriers to LDC exports. Regulatory standards – e.g., ‘sanitary and phyto-sanitary’ requirements – and ‘Rules of Origin’ clauses limit LDC eligibility for preferences. Even when requirements are met, onerous procedures can still frustrate access.

Also, preferential arrangements – like the European Union’s ‘Everything But Arms’ initiative and the US ‘Generalised System of Preferences’ (GSP) – have often been arbitrarily implemented.

Needing frequent Congressional approval makes GSP unpredictable, ever subject to capricious new conditions. Thus, some US lawmakers are demanding that GSP renewal – which expired on 31 December 2020 – should be subject to conditions such as particular human rights, rule of law, labour or environmental regulation priorities.

Trade concessions?
Despite the lofty 2000 Millennium Declaration, OECD countries have conceded little since. After the African walkout at the 1999 Seattle WTO ministerial, the promise of a ‘Development Round’ brought developing countries back to the negotiating table. Launched in Doha after 9/11, “with much rhetoric about… global unity”, there was little enthusiasm among rich countries.

Still pushing developing countries to open their markets more, rich countries demanded they lower tariffs to nearly zero in sectors never previously covered by multilateral trade agreements, including agriculture and services.

Refusing to recognise tariffs as poor countries’ means to protect their farmers and ensure food security, OECD demands ignore their own heavy subsidisation of food agriculture. Also, LDC protection of their modern services – still in ‘infancy’ – is deemed necessary to withstand transnational competition.

OECD countries became more protectionist after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, later pursuing bilateral, regional and plurilateral ‘free trade’ agreements. In December 2015, the Financial Times gleefully proclaimed “the Doha Round had finally died a merciful death” after long being comatose.

Preferential trade?
Despite DFQF market access, ‘margins of preference’ (MoP) for LDC products have been squeezed by other developing countries’ exports. MoP refer to the difference between preferential rates for LDCs and other rates. These may refer to ‘Most Favoured Nation’ (MFN) rates available to all countries, or preferential rates available to some.

Meanwhile, tariffs have fallen with MFN liberalisation, in some cases to zero. Tariff cuts have deprived LDCs of important revenue. ‘Aid for Trade’ (A4T) – purportedly to promote exports – has never tried to compensate developing countries for lost tariff revenue.

Moreover, A4T conditionalities make them less developmental. A4T is often used for trade policy capacity building – typically focused on encouraging LDCs to open their markets more, as desired by rich countries – rather than enhancing LDCs’ productive capacities and capabilities.

Even if market barriers are reduced, most LDCs still lack the infrastructure and support services to export much more. OECD countries demand LDC trade liberalisation even before they have developed sufficient productive capacities. Hence, even ‘graduate’ LDCs fail to become internationally competitive.

International solidarity critical
While LDCs’ lot remains dismal, new challenges have emerged. For many LDCs, global warming poses an existential threat. The pandemic has also worsened their lot. Inadequate international fiscal support and the high costs of containing the pandemic meant 2020 saw LDCs’ worst growth since the 1980s’ lost decade.

The UN report acknowledges even the meagre progress “painstakingly achieved on several dimensions of development, notably on the fronts of poverty, hunger, education and health” has been reversed. Besides emerging challenges, the LDCs conference must also address the roots of their condition.

LDCs’ development trajectories and options are shaped by the global environment. Besides foreign trade, concessional international financing is key to LDC progress. The latest UN LDCs report proposes new “international support measures”, but recent trends suggest they are unlikely to materialise.

 

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A solar power plant in El Salvador, with 320,000 panels, is one of the largest such installations in Central America, whose countries are striving to convert the energy mix to renewable sources, but whose plans were slowed by the covid pandemic. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 25 2021 (IPS)

Latin America and the Caribbean are heading to a new climate summit with a menu of insufficient measures to address the effects of the crisis, in the midst of the impact of the covid-19 pandemic.

The world’s most unequal region, which is the hardest hit by the effects of climate change and highly vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, has yet to engage in the fight against this emergency head-on, according to analysts and studies.

Tania Miranda, director of Policy and Stakeholder Engagement in the Environment and Climate Change Programme of the U.S.-based non-governmental Institute of the Americas, said Latin America’s high climate ambitions have not been supported by the measures necessary to reduce emissions.

“Goals are aspirational. If they are not backed up with policies and financing, they remain empty promises. There is a need for financing and the implementation of strategies and public policies that will lead them to fulfill their commitments. Billions of dollars are needed,” the researcher told IPS from San Diego, California, where the Institute is based.

Miranda is the author of the report “Nationally Determined Contributions Across the Americas. A Comparative Hemispheric Analysis,” which evaluates the climate targets of 16 countries, including the United States and Canada.

In her study, she analyses pollutant emission reduction targets, plans for adaptation to the climate crisis, dependence on external financing, long-term carbon neutrality commitments and the state of pollution abatement.

Climate policies will be the focus of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which will take place Oct. 31 to Nov. 12 in Glasgow, Scotland in the north of the United Kingdom, after being postponed in that same month in 2020 due to the pandemic.

COP26 will address rules for carbon markets, at least 100 billion dollars annually in climate finance, the gaps between nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and the necessary reductions, strategies for carbon neutrality by 2050, adaptation plans, and the local communities and indigenous peoples platform.

A parallel alternative summit will also be held, bringing together social movements from around the world, advocating an early phase-out of fossil fuels, rejecting so-called “false solutions” such as carbon markets, and calling for a just energy transition and reparations for damage and redistribution of funds to indigenous communities and countries of the global South.

The Glasgow conference is considered the most important climate summit, due to the need to accelerate action in the face of alarming data on global warming since the adoption of the Paris Agreement at COP21, held in December 2015 in the French capital.

A zero-emission electric bus is parked on a downtown street in Montevideo. Public transport is beginning to electrify in Latin America’s cities as a way to contain CO2 emissions, but plans have been delayed and cut back due to the covid pandemic. CREDIT: Inés Acosta/IPS

Since then, 192 signatories to the binding treaty have submitted their first NDCs.

But just 13 countries worldwide sent their new climate contributions in 2020 to the UNFCCC Secretariat based in Bonn, despite calls from its secretary, Patricia Espinosa of Mexico, for all parties to the treaty to do so that year.

Of these, only four from this region – Argentina, Grenada, Mexico and Suriname – submitted the second updated version of their contributions.

Although they are voluntary commitments, the NDCs are a core part of the Paris Agreement, based on the goal of curbing the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, considered the minimum and indispensable target to avoid irreversible climate disasters and, consequently, human catastrophes.

In the NDCs, nations must set their goals for 2030 and 2050 to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions responsible for global warming, taking a specific year as a baseline, outline the way they will achieve these goals, establish the peak year of their emissions and when they would achieve net zero emissions, i.e. absorb as many gases as they release into the atmosphere.

In addition, to contain the spread of the coronavirus and its impacts, the region has taken emergency economic decisions, such as providing support for companies of all sizes, as well as for vulnerable workers.

But these post-pandemic recovery packages lack green components, such as commitments to sustainable and cleaner production.

A street in Mexico City shows reduced traffic due to covid restrictions. Automotive transport is one of the largest generators of polluting emissions in Latin America and the Caribbean. But the transition to a cleaner vehicle fleet, with the increase in the number of electric vehicles and other alternatives, is moving very slowly. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Shared irresponsibilities

While some countries, such as Argentina and Chile, improved their pledges, others like Brazil and Mexico scaled down or kept their pledges unchanged.

The measures of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are in code red, as they are highly insufficient to contain global warming, according to the Climate Action Tracker.

In the case of the first three, the largest Latin American economies, the governments are prioritising the financing of increased fossil fuel exploitation, which would result in a rise in emissions in 2030, the Tracker highlights.

Chile’s and Peru’s measures are classified as insufficient and Costa Rica’s as almost sufficient.

That Central American nation, Colombia and Peru are on track to meet their commitments by 2030 and 2050, the Tracker notes.

In the case of Argentina, Chile and Ecuador, they would need additional measures to achieve their goals. At the other extreme are Brazil and Mexico, the biggest regional polluters, which have strayed from the medium- and long-term path.

Enrique Maurtúa, senior climate policy advisor for the non-governmental Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN), said that Argentina is an example of the countries in the region that are caught between these contradictions.

“Argentina follows the line of what is happening in several countries in the region. In terms of commitments, it does its homework, what it is supposed to do, it is preparing a long-term strategy. But those commitments are not in line with what Argentina is doing behind closed doors,” the expert told IPS from Buenos Aires, where the Foundation is based.

As part of this approach, the Argentine Congress is debating a draft Hydrocarbon Investment Promotion Regime to provide fiscal stability to the sector for the next 20 years.

In addition, the government weakened the carbon tax, which averages a 10 dollar charge, through exemptions and the exclusion of gas, and is preparing a sustainable mobility strategy that dispenses with hydrogen.

Mexico is following a similar path, as the government favours support for the state-owned oil company Pemex and the government’s electric utility Comisión Federal de Electricidad, is building a refinery in the state of Tabasco, on the southeastern coast of the country, and has stalled actions aimed at an energy transition.

On Dec. 29, 2020, Mexico released its updated NDC, without increasing the emissions reduction target, to the disappointment of environmental organisations, and in contravention of the Paris Agreement and its own climate change law.

But on Oct. 1 it was reported that a federal court annulled the update, considering that there was an illegal reduction in the mitigation goals, so the 2016 measures remain in force until the government improves on them.

Isabel Bustamante, a member of the Fridays for Future Mexico movement who will attend COP26, questioned Mexico’s climate stance.

“It does not take a solid stance. We need declarations of climate emergency throughout the country and to make resources more readily available. We are concerned about the focus on more fossil fuel production,” she told IPS from the southeastern city of Mérida.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is facing pressure from the environmental sector, but does not seem adept at changing course. He is even sending mixed signals, such as his announcement on Oct. 18 that the country will raise climate targets in 2022.

At most service stations in Brazil, consumers can choose between gasoline and ethanol, the price of which is attractive when it does not exceed 70 percent of that of gasoline. But users only opt for biofuel when it is economically attractive, so it does not contribute to alleviating the emission of polluting gases. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The COP and the question marks it raises for the region

The UNFCCC stated in September that the NDCs presented are insufficient to curb warming to 1.5 degrees C.

Miranda believes COP26 could be beneficial for the region.

“Expectations are very high. We need the big polluters to be present. There will be pressure for tangible results. The region knows where its needs are, it has many opportunities to use ecosystems to reduce emissions,” she said.

Maurtúa, for his part, stresses that the main results will depend on the concrete financing and means of implementation of the Paris Agreement.

“Developed countries have to make financial contributions to the transition in developing countries. Industrialised nations are asking for more ambition, but they have to provide financing,” he argued.

In the expert’s opinion, “it is what the region needs. There are signs of willingness in Costa Rica, Colombia and Chile. But that is not happening in the case of Argentina or Mexico.”

For young people like Bustamante, the summit needs to offer more real action and fewer empty offers. “We expect an urgent climate action agenda to emerge. We need to stop investments in fossil fuel infrastructure, which compromises our near future. We will not stop until we do,” she said.

Under pressure due to the urgency of pending matters and within the constraints imposed by the pandemic, Glasgow could be a defining benchmark of a real global commitment to address the climate emergency, which is causing more and more destruction.

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Excerpt:

This article is part of IPS coverage ahead of the COP26 climate change conference, to be held Oct. 31-Nov. 12 in Glasgow.

World military spending rose to almost two trillion dollars in 2020, an increase of 2.6 percent in real terms from 2019. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Oct 25 2021 (IPS)

Hadn’t it been so worrisome, it would be ironic to hear that humanity is to mark the World Disarmament Week (Oct 24 to 30, 2021) barely six months after learning that the world’s biggest military powers had spent last year some 2,000,000,000,000 US dollars on killing machines.

And that the world’s nuclear arms arsenal is stuffed with some 150 atomic weapons, hundreds of which can be launched in just minutes.

Also that while the Nobel Peace Laureate, World Food Programme, has recently celebrated that the European Union –which comprises many of those military powers– provided just 2.5 million euro in humanitarian aid to support vulnerable refugees in Tanzania.

Or that while Afghanistan teeters on the brink of universal poverty and as much as 97% of Afghans could plunge into poverty by mid 2022, the International Organisation for Migration appealed last August for 24 million US dollars, which outlines immediate funding requirements in order to respond to pressing humanitarian needs in this Asian, war-torn country which suffered 20 years of military operations by the largest military spender powers.

 

What are all these weapons for?

In addition to national security arguments, part of such huge stockpiles of weapons has been used by the world’s largest military spenders, in ongoing wars on Afghanistan, Irak, Syria, Yemen, and Libya.

Another portion is being sold or trafficked to so-called ‘insurgent’ or ‘rebel’ groups, fuelling regional and local armed conflicts in at least a dozen of countries, including DR Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Nigeria, among others.

 

Who spends the most?

But let’s go to some of the key findings included in last April’s report by the prestigious, independent international institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament: the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI):

. World military spending rose to almost two trillion dollars in 2020. This amount implied an increase of 2.6 percent in real terms from 2019. The increase came in a year when global gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 4.4 per cent, largely due to the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic,

. The five biggest spenders in 2020, which together accounted for 62 percent of global military expenditure, were the United States, China, India, Russia and the United Kingdom,

. Strong increase in US military spending continued in 2020, as the world’s biggest power’s military expenditure reached an estimated 778 billion dollars, representing an increase of 4.4 per cent over 2019, as it accounted for 39 percent of total military expenditure in 2020.

. China’s military expenditure, the second highest in the world, is estimated to have totalled 252 billion US dollars in 2020. This represents an increase of 76 percent over the decade 2011–20.

. Nearly all members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) saw their military burden rise in 2020.

. Military spending across Europe rose by 4.0 percent in 2020.

 

Nuclear arsenals grow as states continue to modernise

Around a couple of months later, on 14 June 2021, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute launched the findings of its Yearbook 2021, which assesses the current state of armaments, disarmament and international security.

 

World nuclear forces, January 2021

Country Deployed warheads Other warheads Total 2021 Total 2020 USA 1 800 3 750 5 550 5 800 Russia 1 625 4 630 6 255 6 375 UK 120 105 225 215 France 280 10 290 290 China 350 350 320 India 156 156 150 Pakistan 165 165 160 Israel 90 90 90 North Korea [40–50] [40–50] [30–40] Total 3 825 9 255 13 080 13 400

Source: SIPRI Yearbook 2021.

 

One of its key findings is that despite an overall decrease in the number of nuclear warheads in 2020, more have been deployed with operational forces.

The nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)—together possessed an estimated 13, 080 nuclear weapons at the start of 2021. This marked a decrease from the 13, 400 that SIPRI estimated these states possessed at the beginning of 2020.

2,000 nukes in “state of high operational alert’

Sipri’s yearbook 2021 explains that despite this overall decrease, the estimated number of nuclear weapons currently deployed with operational forces increased to 3,825, from 3,720 last year. Around 2,000 of these—nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA—were kept in a state of high operational alert.

Two countries, 90% of all nuclear weapons

Russia and the US together possess over 90 percent of global nuclear weapons. Both have extensive and expensive programmes under way to replace and modernise their nuclear warheads, missile and aircraft delivery systems, and production facilities, SIPRI concludes.

Last but not least: Everybody who goes to vote in elections should be aware that the slightest human or technical error or a hasty political judgement can kill every living thing on Planet Earth.

 

More facts

• In addition to China, both India (72.9 billion dollars), Japan (49.1 billion), South Korea (45.7 billion) and Australia (27.5 billion) were the largest military spenders in the Asia and Oceania region. All four countries increased their military spending between 2019 and 2020 and over the decade 2011–20.
• One of the poorest regions on Earth, sub-Saharan Africa increased its military expenditure by 3.4 percent in 2020 to reach 18.5 billion dollars. The biggest increases in spending were made by Chad (+31 percent), Mali (+22 percent), Mauritania (+23 percent) and Nigeria (+29 percent), all in the Sahel region, as well as Uganda (+46 percent).
• Military expenditure in South America fell by 2.1 percent to 43.5 billion dollars in 2020. The decrease was largely due to a 3.1 per cent drop in spending by Brazil, the sub-region’s largest military spender.
• Meanwhile, the combined military spending of the 11 Middle Eastern countries for which SIPRI has spending figures decreased by 6.5 per cent in 2020, to 143 billion dollars.

SOURCE: SIPRI

 

A child health consultation at Obunga Dispensary in Homa Bay, one of the eight counties participating in the malaria vaccine pilot program. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Oct 25 2021 (IPS)

One morning in 2016, Lillian Nekesa’s 3-year-old woke up with flu-like classic symptoms of malaria. This was not Kevin’s first encounter with the killer disease.

Kevin was nonetheless not immediately rushed to Busia County Referral Hospital for advanced treatment in keeping with his severe symptoms.

Nekesa rushed him to a village dispensary because the referral hospital is an hour’s walk away from their home in Mayenje, Busia County.

“Two days went by, and Kevin did not improve, and by the time we got him to the referral hospital, it was too late,” she recounts.

This is not an isolated incidence, says Desmond Wanjala, one of 10 Community Health Volunteers serving a Community Health Unit of 1,000 households in the area.

He says malaria is commonplace in Busia, situated near the Lake Victoria region. Malaria incidence in Busia is six times higher than the national average of 5.6 %.

Government estimates further show that counties around the lake region bear the highest malaria disease burden, with a prevalence rate of 19 %.

“Over 70 % of the population in Busia is at risk of malaria, and help is not always within reach, especially in emergencies. We are deep in the village, and the main mode of transport to the referral hospital is a motorbike that charges $2 to $5, which people struggle to afford,” he says.

Malaria is a primary health concern, as per World Health Organization (WHO) statistics. In 2019, malaria caused an estimated 229 million clinical episodes and 409,000 deaths.

Approximately 94 % of these deaths were recorded in the WHO African Region. In Kenya alone, about 3.5 million new clinical cases and 10,700 deaths are recorded annually, according to government data.

Against this backdrop, Dr Bernhards Ogutu, Malaria Lead Researcher at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), tells IPS that RTS,S with a brand name Mosquirix, has the potential to reverse this trend.

It is the only approved malaria vaccine.

Thirty years in the making, he says that Mosquirix is a lifeline for children, especially in rural malaria-endemic areas. He says that children continue to die despite free malaria treatment, largely due to late presentation to health facilities.

Currently piloted in Kenya, Ghana and Malawi, Dr Christopher Odero tells IPS that the vaccine targets infants and young children in Africa because it was developed to build immunity specifically against the plasmodium falciparum.

Odero, a technical advisor and specialist on malaria and vaccines at PATH, says that Plasmodium Falciparum is the world’s deadliest malaria parasite. The parasite is predominantly found in Africa, accounting for about 90 % of the total Plasmodium parasites on the continent. The female Anopheles mosquito transmits it.

He explained that the vaccine would work best in malaria-stricken regions of sub-Saharan Africa region and other areas of Africa with moderate-to-high malaria plasmodium falciparum transmission.

Odero emphasises that even though the reported vaccine efficacy is 40% against clinical malaria, the public health benefits of using this vaccine are enormous. The benefits of using the vaccine, alongside other malaria prevention measures endorsed by WHO, far outweigh the risks.

He particularly stresses that the vaccine is a complementary malaria control tool that should go hand-in-hand with the routine use of insecticide-treated bed nets, indoor spraying with insecticides and timely access to testing and treatment of malaria.

The potential impact of the vaccine cannot be ignored. Four out of 10 vaccinated children will not get malaria and, three out of 10 vaccinated children will not get severe malaria, says Odero.

He says the vaccine takes the pressure off resource-strapped health systems as six of 10 vaccinated children with severe malaria would not require a blood transfusion.

In Western Kenya, home to the ongoing pilot program across eight counties, Odero says that the vaccine can reduce the average episodes of malaria attacks per child from five to two per year. A crucial outcome as repeated malaria attacks can have lifelong effects such as chronic anaemia and stunted growth.

This proven capacity to reduce child deaths, severe malaria, and safety in the context of routine use has informed WHO’s policy recommendation on the broader use of the vaccine, he says.

Ogutu agrees, emphasising that the vaccine quality and risk-benefit profile are favourable. The feasibility of implementation, potential public health impact and likely cost-effectiveness of rolling out the vaccine are not in doubt.

Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, he says that the vaccine has achieved equitable coverage. Ogutu says that at least 250,000 children in Kenya have already received all four recommended doses, and they will remain in the pilot program until 2022.

Ogutu says that there is a need for continued assessment to gather additional information on the vaccine’s effectiveness over a more extended period and assess long-term effects on the community and any other issues that could emerge with routine use of the vaccine.

The ongoing pilot malaria vaccination program is financed through the collaboration of three global health funding bodies: Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and Unitaid.

Additionally, WHO, PATH and GSK are providing in-kind contributions. GSK, for instance, the vaccine manufacturer, will donate up to 10 million doses of Mosquirix. To date, over 2.3 million doses have been administered across Kenya, Ghana, and Malawi.

Ogutu says that the vaccine could be available for broader use in Kenya in the next year to 18 months – a step in the right direction for all children at risk and the coastal areas near the Indian Ocean and Lake Victoria region.
He cautions against vaccine-related myths and misconceptions associated with any new vaccine that could compromise the use of the ground-breaking scientific innovation.

To increase and sustain a high vaccine coverage, Wanjala urges the government to continue supporting the training on vaccines for community health volunteers (CHVs). The CHVs remain the primary link between communities in rural areas and health facilities.

As of 2019, Kenya had about 6,000 Community Health Units out of a targeted 10,000 units supported by at least 86,000 community health volunteers like Wanjala.

“Each community health unit is supported by ten community health volunteers. We need support to use this community system to promote vaccine uptake,” Wanjala concludes.

 

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Food insecurity increases by 5–20 percentage points with each flood or drought in sub-Saharan Africa.

Changing precipitation patterns, rising temperatures and more extreme weather contributed to mounting food insecurity, poverty and displacement in Africa in 2020, compounding the socio-economic and health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new multi-agency report coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Credit: WMO

By Claudia Sadoff and Joachim von Braun
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 25 2021 (IPS)

The global food system is facing more demands from society than ever before in modern times – and rightly so.

From responding to the climate crisis to dealing with rising malnutrition and ensuring the sustainable use of natural resources and protection of biodiversity, the responsibility of our food systems is no longer just to “feed the world.”

The recent action agenda released by the UN Secretary General at the Food Systems Summit not only highlighted this urgency but reminded us that our food systems are also one of our greatest hopes for making progress on these fronts.

While the US$10 billion pledged by the United States to end hunger and malnutrition is a welcome start, our food systems have been forced to cope with an increasingly complex, interconnected set of challenges for too long – often without a corresponding shift in focus from governments and other key players.

The changes required also need sufficient funding for food systems transformation, estimated to be in the range of $400 billion per year. This goal is within reach and is roughly comparable to three times New York City’s annual budget or less than 0.5 percent of world GDP in 2020.

Food systems transformation also requires impactful innovations, so particular importance in this funding should therefore be placed on investment in research and innovation.

Increased and sustained funding for research and innovation is crucial, as the world requires technological, policy and institutional innovation to address the increasingly complex set of challenges that are facing, and threatening, food, land and water systems in a climate crisis.

Investments in agricultural research and innovation generate significant returns. Benefit-cost ratios of CGIAR research, for example, have shown consistent returns on investments to the order of 10:1.

Despite this, international agricultural research remains underfunded, threatening food, economic, and environmental security around the world, whilst hunger and poverty continue to rise.

In addition to securing funding for research and innovation, research itself must evolve to address the growing challenges around the world. In particular, research efforts should favour more circular business models that are driven by value, rather than volume, and those that promote resilience to shocks and balance with nature over more environmentally damaging models.

We must also ensure that more research translates into concrete innovations that truly advance food systems transformation. While we desperately need technological innovations to increase productivity, reduce poverty, hunger and malnutrition, as well as climate proofing our food systems and making them more equitable, such innovations can only be taken forward if they are bundled with appropriate national policies, institutional changes and global actions, and strategies to deal with shocks and conflict.

Sometimes the implementation of innovations inevitably involves trade-offs, not only synergies. Research and innovation efforts will be crucial to understanding and managing such trade-offs, as well as to help ensure that interconnected challenges are tackled in the most efficient and holistic way.

To both achieve and maximize the potential of research and innovation, governments of the world should consider allocating just one per cent of the portion of their national GDP that relates to food systems, towards research and innovation.

At present, many countries, including many of the world’s richest, only spend half of this. For the least developed countries, aid will be needed to reach such a level, potentially through a special trust fund backed by the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).

Such a fund, when properly backed by developed countries, would help to support greater scientific capacity on the ground in low- and middle-income countries, which will be needed if we are to address the challenges facing the whole world, not just the developed world.

Today’s agri-food systems no longer simply feed people. They must also provide nutrition, promote livelihoods, protect the environment, and tackle climate change – often all at once. Financing and unlocking innovations are needed to address these challenges together.

If our food, land and water systems are ever able to achieve society’s mounting demands, we must ensure our priorities are in order and begin to properly finance them.

Ultimately, all of the ambition generated around the UN Food Systems Summit will fall short if we fail to finance the new research and innovation we know we need.

Claudia Sadoff is Executive Management Team Convener, and Managing Director, Research Delivery and Impact, CGIAR; Joachim von Braun is Chair of the Scientific Group, UN Food Systems Summit

 

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Girls' sexual and reproductive rights activist Mía Calderón stands on San Martín Avenue in San Juan de Lurigancho, the most populous municipality of Peru's capital. She complained that the pandemic once again highlighted the fact that sexual violence against girls comes mainly from someone close to home and that the girls are often not believed. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Oct 22 2021 (IPS)

“During the pandemic, sexual violence against girls has grown because they have been confined with their abusers. If the home is not a safe place for them, what is then, the streets?” Mía Calderón, a young activist for sexual and reproductive rights in the capital of Peru, remarks with indignation.

The 19-year-old university student, whose audiovisual communications studies have been interrupted due to the restrictions set in place to curb the covid-19 pandemic, is an activist who belongs to the youth collective Vayamos in San Juan de Lurigancho, the district of Lima where she lives.

Located to the northeast of the capital, it is a district of valleys and highlands areas higher than 2200 metres above sea level, where water is a scarce commodity and is supplied by tanker trucks. San Juan de Lurigancho was created 54 years ago and its population of 1,117,629 inhabitants, according to official figures, is mostly made up of families who have come to the capital from the country’s hinterland.

Lima’s 43 districts are home to a total of 9.7 million people, and San Juan de Lurigancho has by far the largest population.

In an interview with IPS during a walk through the streets of her district, Calderón said she helped one of her friends during the mandatory social isolation decreed in this Andean nation between March and July 2020, which has been followed by further restrictions on mobility at times of new covid-19 outbreaks.

Since then, classrooms have been closed and education has continued virtually from home, where girls spend most of their time.

“She was in lockdown with her two sisters, her mother and stepfather. But she left before her stepfather could rape her; the harassment had become unbearable. Now she is very afraid of what might happen to her little sisters because he’s still living at home,” she said.

But not all girls and adolescents at risk of sexual abuse have support networks to rely on.

An intersection with hardly any passers-by in San Juan de Lurigancho, one of the 43 districts of the Peruvian capital. There are now fewer children on the streets because schools have been closed since the beginning of the covid pandemic and they receive their education virtually. This keeps them safe from violence in public spaces, but increases the abuse they suffer at home. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Data that exposes the violence

Official statistics reveal a devastating reality: Between early 2020 and August of this year there have been 1763 births to girls under 14 years of age, according to the Health Ministry’s birth registration system (CNV).

All of these pregnancies and births are considered to be the result of rape, as the concept of sexual consent does not apply to girls under 14, who are protected by Peruvian law.

Looking at CNV figures from 2018 to August 2021, the total number increases to 4483, which would mean that on average five girls under the age of 14 give birth in Peru every day.

This is also the conclusion reached by the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women’s Rights (Cladem), which in September completed a nationwide study on forced child pregnancy in Peru, published on Tuesday, Oct. 19.

For Cladem, forced child pregnancy is any pregnancy of a minor under 14 years of age resulting from rape, who was not guaranteed access to therapeutic abortion, which in the case of Peru is the only form of legal termination of pregnancy.

“These figures are unacceptable, but we know they may be even worse because of underreporting,” Lizbeth Guillén, who until August was the Peruvian coordinator of this Latin American network whose regional headquarters are in Lima, told IPS by telephone.

The activist headed up the project “Monitoring and advocacy for the prevention, care and punishment of forced child pregnancy” which was funded by the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women between 2018 and August 2021.

An aggravating factor for at risk girls and adolescents was that during the months of lockdown, public services for addressing violence against women were suspended and the only thing available was toll-free telephone numbers, which made it more difficult for victims to file complaints.

“What we have experienced shows us once again that homes are the riskiest places for girls,” said Guillén.

The Cladem study also reveals that the number of births to girls under 10 years of age practically tripled, climbing from nine cases in 2019 to 24 in 2020. And the situation remains worrisome, as seven cases had already been documented this year as of August.

Julia Vargas, 61, works in the municipality of Villa El Salvador, south of Lima, where she has lived since the age of 11 and where she maintains her vocation of service as a health promoter. Through this work she knows first-hand about sexual violence against girls and adolescents, which she says has worsened during the pandemic since they have been confined to their homes with their potential abusers. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

One district’s experience

“Sexual violence against girls has been indescribable during this period, worse than covid-19 itself. Men have been taking advantage of their daughters, they think they have authority over them,” said Julia Vargas, a local resident of Villa El Salvador.

This municipality, which emerged as a self-managed experience five decades ago to the south of the capital, offers health promotion as part of its public services to the community.

Vargas, a 61-year-old mother of four grown children, is proud to be a health promoter, for which she has received training from the Health Ministry and from non-governmental organisations such as the Flora Tristán Peruvian Women’s Centre.

“It’s hard to conceive of so much violence against girls,” she told IPS indignantly at a meeting in her district, “and the worst thing is that many times the mothers turn a blind eye; they say if he (their partner) leaves, who is going to support me.”

Studies indicate that women’s economic dependence is a factor that prevents them from exercising autonomy and reinforces unequal power relations that sustain gender-based violence.

Vargas continued: “There was a case of a father who got his three daughters pregnant and made them have clandestine abortions, and do you think the justice system did anything? Nothing! It said there was consent, how can a young girl give consent?!”

“Girls can’t be mistreated this way, they have rights,” she said.

Mía Calderón, a 19-year-old youth activist with the Vayamos collective, demands more and better measures in Peru to defend girls from sexual violence, fueled by the closure of schools since the beginning of the pandemic, which keeps them isolated and in homes where they sometimes live with their abusers. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The culprit nearby

Calderón is also familiar with this situation. “The pandemic has highlighted the fact that sexual violence comes mainly from someone close to home and that many times the girls are not believed: ‘you provoked your uncle, your stepfather’, they are told by their families, instead of focusing on the abuser,” she said.

Her collective Vayamos works to help girls have the right to enjoy every stage of their lives. Due to the pandemic, the group had to restrict its face-to-face activities, but as a counterbalance, it increased the publication of content on social networks.

“No girl or adolescent should live in fear of sexual violence or should face any such risk,” she said.

However, Cladem’s research indicates that between 2018 and 2020, there were 12,677 complaints of sexual violence against girls under 14 in the country, the cause of many forced pregnancies.

But official statistics do not differentiate between child and adolescent pregnancy.

The 2019 National Health Survey reported that of the female population between 15 and 19 years of age, 12.6 percent had been pregnant or were already mothers. The percentage in rural areas was higher than the national rate: 22.7 percent.

Youth activist Mia Calderón, health promoter Julia Vargas and Cladem member Lizbeth Guillén all agree on the proposal to decriminalise abortion in cases of rape and on the need for timely delivery of emergency kits by public health services to prevent forced pregnancies and maternity.

These kits contain emergency contraceptive pills, HIV and hepatitis tests, among other components for comprehensive health protection for victims.

“There are regulatory advances such as this joint action protocol between the Ministry of Women and the Health Ministry for a girl victim of violence to access the emergency kit, but in practice it is not complied with due to the personal conceptions of some operators and they deprive the victims of this right,” explained Guillén.

She stressed that in order to overcome the weak response of the State to such a serious problem, it is also necessary to adequately implement existing regulations, guarantee access to therapeutic abortion for girls and adapt prevention strategies, since the danger often lies directly in the home.

Sibonisiwe Hlanze is one of 600 women who are allowed to harvest reeds from the Lawuba Wetland in Lawuba, Eswatini. Hlanze’s income and security is dependent on reliable weather patterns. The Commonwealth has deployed top climate finance advisors to Eswatini, Belize, Seychelles and Zambia assist with the NDCs. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Samuel Ogallah
Eswatini, Oct 22 2021 (IPS)

There is no country today that has not experienced the effects of climate change, from changing weather patterns to extreme, devastating weather events.

The Kingdom of Eswatini is no exception.

Climate change is already affecting the country and key sectors of its economy. It is already having to adapt to pronounced climate change impacts, including significant variations in precipitation patterns, higher temperatures, and increasing frequency and intensity of severe weather events such as droughts, floods, and cyclones.

In 2015, at the United Nation’s annual global climate summit COP 21, the Paris Agreement was hammered. In 2016 Eswatini joined many other countries in signing up to the Paris Agreement, a landmark agreement committing nations to a global effort to tackle climate change.

Article 4 of that agreement commits national governments to provide a National Determined Contribution (NDC) every five years.

The Government of Eswatini submitted its first NDC to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015. But since then, technology, policies, partnerships, data, and stakeholder engagement for climate action have all advanced.

In preparing its second NDC, the government looked to take these advances into account. It went back and reviewed what it had done in 2015 and sought to this time provide an NDC with even greater ambition.

Over a period of 18 months, an inclusive process of assessment, analysis, and modelling of climate change, informed by data and science, was implemented to revise the NDC.

Climate change will affect everyone, and as such, the government put stakeholder participation at the heart of the revision process.

Adopting ‘a whole of government and society approach’ it held over twenty stakeholders’ consultations including virtual and physical workshops. A review of national gender policy to integrate climate change was also carried out.

The process was not always smooth though. There were significant hurdles, not least the Covid-19 pandemic which not only delayed the expected submission of NDCs at the end of 2020 but impacted Eswatini’s technical capacity to undertake such a nationwide participatory stakeholder’s consultative process.

However, these challenges were overcome, and the revised NDC, submitted to the UNFCCC just days ago ahead of COP26, represents an ambitious step-up from its 2015 predecessor.

It adopts an economy-wide GHG emissions reduction target of 5% by 2030 compared to the baseline scenario[1] to help achieve low carbon and climate-resilient economic development. It also includes a provision to raise this target to 14% with external financing, technology, and technical support. This translates to 1.04 million tonnes fewer GHG emissions by 2030 compared to a baseline scenario.

Meanwhile, the revised NDC sets out clear mitigation and adaptation targets along with a comprehensive roadmap, and incorporates new sectors for mitigation and adaptation action.

Alone, however, the ambition of this NDC will not be enough.

The opportunity created by the Paris Agreement comes with an important challenge – to transform the NDC into tangible actions that lead to long term zero-carbon and climate-resilient development.

The effective implementation of the revised NDC is contingent on several factors, key among these being the availability of external support in terms of the provision of means of implementation (finance, technology development, and transfer and capacity building) and domestic resources.

Climate finance must be mobilised at scale to address the adaptation and mitigation component of the NDC.

The revision process delivered a number of key lessons, one of which was that wide-ranging support and partnership – a long list of external groups including the Commonwealth Secretariat, United Nations’ bodies (UNEP, UNDP, FAO), and Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) among others, provided help during the process – is crucial to achieving goals.

And it will only be with similarly broad co-operation with, and support from, international and domestic sources that Eswatini will be able to fully achieve the ambitious potential of its NDC.

The total estimated cost of NDC action for Eswatini is between $950 million and $1.5 billion by 2030.

The support of developed country governments, development partners, international organisations, the private sector, and civil society organisations will be critical to help deliver on Eswatini’s revised NDC targets.

Eswatini’s NDC process has shown that with partnership and help, ambitious plans can be laid.

The country calls on partners, fellow governments, and all those with a similar commitment to a zero-carbon, climate-resilient future, to help Eswatini turn its NDC plans into tangible achievements – for the good of the whole planet.

Support from the Commonwealth Secretariat: The Commonwealth Secretariat partnered with the NDC Partnership under its Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP) Programme to support four Commonwealth member countries – Belize, Eswatini, Jamaica and Zambia – through in-country technical expertise, capacity building and targeted support on climate finance for expediting the implementation of each country’s NDCs.

Technical and institutional support was provided through the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub (CCFAH).

The CCFAH and the Commonwealth National Climate Finance Advisers supported these countries through different and complementary interventions, by developing and deploying different climate finance tools and strategies tailored to the strategic priorities of the member countries.

These have included climate finance landscapes and mapping, the Climate Public Expenditure and Institutional Review (CPEIR), developing strategies such as Climate Finance Strategy and Private Sector engagement strategy, mapping of climate finance for NDC implementation, measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of climate finance, developing climate-sensitive gender policy, as well as climate change project concepts and proposals.

These interventions provided a vital experience for future NDC processes.

• The baseline scenario was developed based on historic GHG emissions between 2010 and 2017 and an updated scenario showing the change in GHG emissions between 2018 and 2030
• The author is the Commonwealth National Climate Finance Adviser to Eswatini.

 

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Credit: UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 2021 (IPS)

The British novelist George Orwell’s “1984” characterized a dystopian society where people were restricted from independent thought and were victims of constant surveillance.

Published in 1949, it was a prophecy of the future with the underlying theme: “Big Brother is Watching You”

Fast forward to 2021

We are back in “1984” where all our movements are monitored—this time by surveillance cameras planted in New York city streets, expressways, public parks, subways, shopping malls, and parking lots– in violation of personal privacy and civil rights.

According to an article in the New York Times last month, the New York Police Department (NYPD) has continued its mass surveillance– which began following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 (9/11) on the World Trade Centre in New York city– uninterruptedly.

The Times said New Yorkers simply going about their daily lives routinely encounter post-9/11 digital surveillance tools like facial recognition software, license plate readers or mobile X-ray vans that can see through car doors.

“Surveillance drones hover above mass demonstrations and protesters say they have been questioned by antiterrorism officers after marches”.

But the United States is not alone.

Perhaps it is now fast becoming a world-wide phenomenon – as electronic surveillance spreads across Western Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

Electronic surveillance devices. Credit: UN Women

According to a new study by the African Digital Rights Network, released October 21, mass surveillance is being carried out by governments in six countries in Africa– Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Sudan– with existing laws failing to protect the legal rights of citizens.

The study, described as the first systematic comparison of surveillance laws in Africa, comes at a time of rising concerns of digital “surveillance creep” as technologies become more sophisticated and more intrusive in our day-to-day lives.

“Many governments have expanded their powers for surveillance and access to personal data during Covid-19,” the study notes.

The African Digital Rights Network is a network of 30 activists, analysts and academics from 12 African countries who are focused on the study of digital citizenship, surveillance and disinformation. It is convened by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), a global leading research and policy think tank.

Dr Tony Roberts, Research Fellow at the UK-based IDS, and co-author of the report, says “States do need surveillance powers, to prevent terrorist atrocities, but to be consistent with human rights such powers must only be narrowly-targeted on the most serious crime, used when strictly necessary, and proportionate to need”.

He points out that citizens need to be more aware of their privacy rights and of the surveillance activities undertaken by their governments. Legislation can usefully define checks and balances to protect citizens’ rights and provide transparency.

“But civil society needs the capacity to monitor surveillance practice and hold government accountable to the law,” he noted.

Asked if state surveillance was also widespread in Western Europe, Dr Roberts told IPS: “Yes, state surveillance of citizens is on the rise in western Europe.”

He pointed out that digital technologies have made it much easier and cheaper for states to surveil citizens. It used to take a whole team of people to stake out a target, tap physical phone lines, record, transcribe and analyze the data for a single target.

“Now searches of internet and mobile communications are automated using artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms”.

He said the Cambridge Analytics scandal showed how social media surveillance is used by political parties in the UK and US.

“The Snowden revelations showed how governments in western Europe and the US systematically conduct mass surveillance on citizens. The Pegasus spyware case showed how states are using malware to spy on the French President, opposition leaders, judges, and journalists,” he added.

Meanwhile, the NYPD’s Intelligence Division, re-designed in 2002 to confront Al Qaeda operatives, now uses antiterror tactics to fight gang violence and street crime in New York city.

According to the Times, the Police Department has poured resources into expanding its surveillance capabilities. The department’s budget for intelligence and counterterrorism has more than quadrupled, spending more than $3 billion since 2006, and more through funding streams that are difficult to quantify, including federal grants and the secretive Police Foundation, a nonprofit that funnels money and equipment to the department from benefactors and donors.

Current and former police officials say the tools have been effective in thwarting dozens of would-be attacks. And the department has an obligation, they say, to repurpose its counterterrorism tools for everyday crime fighting, the Times said.

Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, was quoted as saying her organization was already concerned with creepinpolice surveillance in the 1990s; not long before the attacks, the group had mapped out every camera it could find in the
city. In hindsight, she said, the exercise would prove naïve.

“We made a map, and we had dots — we had pins at that time — where there were cameras. And when we did that, there were a couple of thousands,” Lieberman said. “We repeated the survey at some point after 9/11, and there were too many cameras to count.”

Meanwhile, the new report also identifies Egypt and Sudan as countries where citizens’ rights to privacy were least protected. This is due to a combination of weak legal protections, weak civil society to hold the state to account and increased state or government investment in surveillance technologies.

In contrast, despite the government in South Africa also violating privacy law, the country’s strong civil society, independent court and media successfully force the government to improve its surveillance law and practices.

Overall, the research identified six factors that mean existing surveillance law is failing to protect the privacy rights of citizens in each of the six countries:

(a) the introduction of new laws that expand state surveillance powers
(b) a lack of legal precision and privacy safeguards in surveillance law
(c) the increased supply of new surveillance technologies that enable illegitimate surveillance
(d) state agencies regularly conducting surveillance outside of what is permitted in law
(e) current impunity for those committing illegitimate acts of surveillance
(f) weak civil society unable to hold the state fully accountable in law

Dr Roberts told IPS increased surveillance is a violation of civil rights, specifically the right to privacy.

“I used to live in London when it had the highest CCTV density in the world. Now Seoul, Paris and Boston hold that dubious record. And New York is catching up fast”

He said evidence suggests that Black neighbourhoods are more heavily surveilled than White neighbourhoods. The problem becomes worse when facial recognition technology is combined with the CCTV camera and linked to identity databases to conduct pervasive invasive surveillance.

“Privacy is a fundamental right guaranteed in law. All surveillance is a violation of those civil rights.”

“We give police the legal ability to conduct narrow and limited surveillance of the most serious criminals. However, any other form of non-consensual (prior consent) surveillance violates fundamental rights and mass surveillance of citizens not accused of any crime is never justified in domestic law or in international human rights law.

Nor is it inevitable. In Los Angeles the prevalence of CCTV cameras is relatively low and facial recognition technology is banned, said Dr Roberts.

After 9/11, the Police in New York city also spied on Muslims, including social and religious gatherings and mosques.

Just after the 9/11 attacks in the US on 11 September 2001, two agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) visited my neighbors to check my “credentials” — possibly to find out whether, as a journalist, I was a “good Muslim or a bad Muslim” by American standards.

I was both a Muslim and a journalist – a double jeopardy.

At the John F. Kennedy airport after the 9/11 attacks, and at a time of widespread racial profiling, one of the security officers confiscated my razor, probably assuming it could be used as a dangerous weapon, which was in my hand-carrying luggage when I embarked on a flight to Europe.

I looked at him and said with a mischievous smile: “You take my razor away from me. And if I grow a beard, you call me an Islamic fundamentalist. Either way, I lose.”

 

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By SWAN
PARIS, Oct 22 2021 (IPS)

How does injustice make you feel? Do you see yourself as a perpetrator, or as a victim? Is there any such thing as neutrality? These are some of the questions that Dorian Sari asks through artwork, which includes blurry photographs with violently shattered glass frames.

The award-winning Turco-Swiss artist – who uses the pronoun they – has a solo booth at the current International Contemporary Art Fair in Paris (FIAC), and their work invites viewers to  question reactions and stances when it comes to societal norms. Who, for instance, has thrown the stone that is glued to the cracked glass?

“When people look at this, they rarely see themselves as the perpetrator, but we all do things that exclude others,” says Sari, who is represented by Turkish gallery Öktem Aykut, one of 170 galleries taking part in FIAC this year.

Dorian Sari with artwork at FIAC. Credit: AM/SWAN.

On from Oct. 21 to 24, the annual fair did not happen in 2020 because of Covid-19, and its return sees a range of artwork addressing global political and pandemic issues. Sari, who studied political science and literature before art, wonders however if the world has learned anything from the events of the past two years.

The works on display – a tiny chewed-up whistle, a retractable “wall” with spaces for communication if one wishes, two large photographs and a book titled Texts on Post-Truth, Violence, Anger are meant to spark even deeper reflections about identity and affiliation. (The book was published by the Kunstmuseum Basel when Sari had an exhibition earlier this year, after winning the Manor Art Prize – an award that promotes young visual artists working in Switzerland.)

The intended discomfort is even evident in Sari’s choice of title: “Ding-dong, the itch is back!”, and countries aren’t exempt. Can a nation claim neutrality when they sell arms, the artist also asks, through an illustration showing a gun emitting a red flag that has a white “x” in the middle.

Sari took time out from their busy schedule at FIAC to discuss these concerns. Following is the edited interview.

SWAN: What inspires your work?

SARI: My latest research was on the topic of post-truth, a political adjective for what’s happening in the 21st century. It means that we’re bombarded with information every day, but at the same time nobody knows if this information is true or not. We also live in a technological period where algorithms … just want people to consume more. To keep you on the platform, they show you something that you like, then a more radical version, and then something even more radical. There is so much polarisation and separation in the world, and this is one of my biggest interests. At the FIAC, I’m showing some of the works I showed at the Kunstmuseum in Basel and also at Öktem Aykut in Istanbul. With this series of photographs, I was interested in seeing the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator because we always think that what we do is the right thing, and it is always others’ fault. I wanted to change this position. Whoever is looking at the photograph is the stone-thrower but even though I give this position, people still prefer to identify as the victim. But even if you’re neither, and you’re just watching and being silent, that third option is also problematic.

The exterior of the art fair venue in Paris. Credit: AM/SWAN.

SWAN: What is behind the “itch” in the title of the photograph series?

SARI: It’s a series of 10 photos, and the “itch is back” means there’s an uncomfortable feeling inside, so you scratch your body. Maybe this discomfort comes because there’s something that the stone-thrower doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to see. It can be anything.

SWAN: So, the aim is to make us question our own itch?

SARI: Exactly. And to question what we reject, what we throw stones at in daily life, because we do it so much. We exclude so many things. I always believe we’re separated through the adjectives: the moment we’re born, they tell us our gender, they tell us our nationality, they tell us our religion, they tell us our social class, language, everything. Everything is automatically put on us, and it’s already part of our separation because one group doesn’t want the other group, and di-di-di-di-di-di. But after all, I believe in love, and I believe love doesn’t have a gender, race, social class. Love is love.

SWAN: And the whistle?

SARI: There are so many people who wear a whistle as a necklace, or carry it on a keychain or in their bag, so that in case of something violent in the streets, they can raise an alarm, make their voices heard. Or, in case there’s an earthquake… I was thinking that someone could have so much fear and anxiety, waiting for something to happen. And the whistle could be like a pencil – when you don’t use it, you chew on the end. And I thought that someone waiting for something bad to happen would chew on the whistle. So, it’s like auto-destruction: you eat your own voice in order to be heard because of fear.