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The implications of Colombo’s foreign policy shift under Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, from a time-honoured adherence to non-alignment to a clear affiliation with Beijing. Former minister Dr Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe said Colombo Port City (above) might turn out to be a ‘colony’ of China.

By Neville de Silva
LONDON, Jun 4 2021 (IPS)

June 4, 2021 marks 30 years since the killings of an undisclosed number of Chinese protestors at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. For many years, the Chinese government and its ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with characteristic understatement, called it the ‘June Fourth incident’.

It was the hardliners in the CCP who forced the ouster of its general secretary Hu Yaobang, a party moderate who had encouraged democratic reform, and eventually ordered the military crackdown on the protestors at Tiananmen – perhaps the blackest day in the history of post-revolutionary China.

Sri Lankans should recall the central role of the Chinese Communist Party in turning Tiananmen Square into a horrendous killing field that provoked an unprecedented outpouring of public grief and condemnation from neighbouring Hong Kong, in light of the apparent reverence that Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appears to pay to the CCP’s style of governance.

And he has done so more than once, even telling China’s Defence Minister Wei Fenghe, during his visit to Colombo in April, that he hoped to ‘learn from the governance experience’ of the CCP in poverty alleviation and rural revitalisation.

While the CCP’s role in poverty alleviation might be conceded, the same cannot be said of corruption elimination. It was growing corruption among those in the Chinese government and Communist Party that triggered the massive student protest, which demanded an end to the burgeoning graft and lack of accountability by officialdom, and collectively called for democratic reform in China’s politically regimented society.

Critics say Sri Lanka’s foreign policy of neutrality and its ‘India First’ declaration are mere geopolitical window dressing.

While President Rajapaksa, who has been invited to China, might pick up a thing or two about the success of the CCP in alleviating poverty, there is little he could learn about ridding society of other malaise prevalent in China – a pity, as such knowledge might help to eliminate Sri Lanka’s own political viruses that are causing serious concern, not only in Sri Lankan society but also in the region.

From the early years of Sri Lanka’s independence from British rule, Ceylon (as it was then known) had followed a policy of peaceful co-existence, articulated earlier by India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as the five principles of ‘Panchaseela’, deriving from Buddhist Thought.

It was this Nehruvian Panchaseela that eventually formed the bedrock of the foreign policy of most newly independent states in Asia, Africa and Latin America, under the banner of non-alignment.

Under Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the world’s first woman prime minister, Ceylon was among founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) when 25 countries met in Belgrade at NAM’s first summit in 1961

It was a foreign policy that most Ceylon/Sri Lanka governments were wedded to, except perhaps the pro-western United National Party (UNP) government under President Junius Richard Jayewardene, who cynically told me there were only two non-aligned countries in the world: the USA and the USSR.  

This was in 1979 and, ironically, he was then the Chairman of NAM having taken over the chairmanship from Sirimavo Bandaranaike who lost the 1977 general election having hosted the NAM summit in Colombo in 1976.

President Jayewardene was very much pro-American. Still, he went to Communist Cuba, an arch enemy of the US to pass on the baton to President Fidel Castro who was hosting the next NAM summit in Havana in 1979.

Then, with the advent of another Rajapaksa, Gotabaya, as president, Sri Lankan foreign policy was redefined. He said at his inauguration in November 2019 that it was now one of ‘neutrality’, dropping any reference to the long-standing policy of non-alignment.

Though never clearly defined, to Rajapaksa junior this meant staying aloof from Big Power conflicts. By that time, the Indian Ocean had perceptibly turned into a conflict zone as China’s push into this vital maritime international sea route led to counter responses from other major powers, namely the US, Japan, Australia and India.

Moreover, New Delhi saw the growing Chinese naval and economic presence in the region under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Maritime Silk Route as an intrusion into its sphere of influence, raising strategic security concerns.

So, there was a congruence of interest among other major powers and users of the Indian Ocean in challenging what was perceived as Beijing’s expansionism, that is, asserting its own presence in the region and the freedom of navigation for all.

Shortly after Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister in 2014, he made a dramatic shift in India’s own foreign policy, turning from a ‘Look East’ policy to an ‘Act East’ one. This implied a more conscious and determined involvement in South East Asia, particularly ASEAN.

If Modi enunciated a ‘Neighbourhood First’ doctrine, Gotabaya Rajapaksa claimed his to be ‘India First’, perhaps in an attempt to balance the elder Rajapaksa, Mahinda’s, pro-China predilections as president. It was during Mahinda’s nine years at the helm, from 2005, that bilateral relations were at their strongest, perhaps not without cause.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, with brother Gotabaya as his defence secretary, was at war with the ruthless separatist Liberation Tigers of Eelam (LTTE), popularly known as the Tamil Tigers.

The only country at the time ready to help the Rajapaksas defeat the separatists, with substantial finance and arms aid, was China, which it did in May 2009.

Mahinda returned the favour by contracting China for some major infrastructure projects, including the new Hambantota port in the deep south some 15 nautical miles or so from vital international sea lanes. This port, which is now on a 99-year lease to China because Sri Lanka could not meet its loan repayments, has turned out to be a serious strategic concern to India and other major trading nations.

Last month another major Chinese project Colombo Port City (CPC), some 270 hectares of land reclaimed from the sea close to the capital’s principal port, came alive after the Supreme Court approved the Bill to set up the managing commission after the Court called for several changes to clauses that were inconsistent with the constitution.

The CPC, in which the Chinese development holds 43 per cent of the land (also for 99 years) is intended to be a huge investment and business centre for foreign investors. This made the US ambassador in Colombo, among others, reach for the panic button for fear that the CPC could be a source of money laundering and other ‘dirty’ money.

A former minister in the previous government and a member of the ruling party, Dr Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, even warned that the Port City might well turn out to be a ‘colony’ of China, given the exclusion of Sri Lankan entrepreneurs from investing there, even if they had foreign currency to do so.

Critics of the Rajapaksa government’s policies – including the militarisation of the civil administration and the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic that is still surging in the country – say that Sri Lanka’s foreign policy of neutrality and its ‘India First’ declaration are nothing more than geopolitical window dressing.

They claim it is unsupported by fact and is meant to cover the government’s strong pro-China commitments. They also point to a media release by the Chinese Embassy in Colombo, following Defence Minister Wei Fenghe’s April visit, in which President Rajapaksa is quoted as telling the visiting minister that Sri Lanka ‘has prioritised developing relations with China and firmly supports China’s positions on issues concerning its core issues’.

If, by jettisoning non-alignment and embracing ‘neutrality’, Sri Lanka means it is following an equidistant foreign policy, it has not shown so by its actions. China obviously knows best. In its statement on the defence minister’s visit, the Chinese embassy says: ‘China appreciates Sri Lanka’s independent and non-aligned foreign policy.’

Scant wonder many are puzzled by the nomenclature.

Source: Asian Affairs

Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who held senior roles in Hong Kong at The Standard and worked in London for Gemini News Service. He has been a correspondent for foreign media including the New York Times and Le Monde. More recently he was Sri Lanka’s deputy high commissioner in London

 

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Restoring natural habitats as pictured here in Cuba will help to slow down climate change. A new UN-backed study released May 27 says annual investments in nature-based solutions will have to triple by 2030, and increase four-fold by 2050, if the world is to successfully tackle the triple threat of climate, biodiversity and land degradation crises. Credit: UNDP

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 4 2021 (IPS)

The United Nations has been in the forefront of an ongoing battle against the growing hazards of climate change, including the destruction of different species of plants and animals, the danger of rising sea-levels threatening the very existence of small island developing states (SIDS), and the risks of oceans reaching record temperatures endangering aquatic resources.

But that battle was temporarily undermined last year by a devastating pandemic which brought the world to a virtual standstill.

“The COVID-19 pandemic put paid to many plans, including the UN’s ambitious plan to make 2020 the “super year” for buttressing the natural world”, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last month.

That ambition, he pointed out, has now been shifted to 2021, and will involve a number of major climate-related international commitments, including a plan to halt the biodiversity crisis; an Oceans Conference to protect marine environments; a global sustainable transport conference; and the first Food Systems Summit, aimed at transforming global food production and consumption.

“The fallout of the assault on our planet is impeding our efforts to eliminate poverty and imperiling food security,” Guterres declared.

Professor Luca Montanarella

In an interview with IPS, Professor Luca Montanarella, co-Chair of the 2018 Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration sponsored by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), told IPS the current hazards are well known, and the extent of the destruction is by now fully documented in many independent scientific assessments from the major science-policy interfaces, like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), IPBES and others.

https://www.ipbes.net/assessment-reports/ldr

The devastating effects and the close interlinkages with human health, he argued, “are now fully understood and visible to all of us following the COVID-19 pandemic. It is now time to act.”

He said the UN’s thematic plans to “Reimagine, Recreate and Restore” degraded ecosystems is the key solution, but it needs to be implemented consequently. There is a high risk to fall back to business-as- usual solutions that will be not solve the problem, he declared.

The young generation is the one that can save this planet, if properly empowered to do so. Are we ready to transfer some of the decision power to them?, he asked

The first signals from the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are going in the opposite direction. The highest increases in unemployment rates are among women and young workers, he noted.

Mirna Inés Fernández, a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN) and co-founder of its Bolivian chapter, Kaaijayu-GYBN, told IPS the continued degradation of the global environment has been so devastating to the earth’s ecosystems “that our generation has seen the birth of concepts as the Anthropocene and the Planetary Boundaries”.

“Children and youth are the ones to face the biggest mental health impacts related to ecological grief and anxiety, because we realize that the loss of species and ecosystems have reached levels that threaten the biosphere integrity and our life support systems”.

“And we don’t see enough political will to reverse this situation,” she warned.

The world is ready and in desperate need for a real transformative change, “one that allows us to live in equitable and sustainable systems for all”.

What is missing, she said, is political will, adequate allocation of resources and an inclusive decision-making process that will lead to change the status quo that took us to this point.

“We need our world leaders to address the root causes of the multiple ecological crises that we face today: the UNSUSTAINABLE way we extract, produce, consume, and dispose of things, and the UNEQUAL way the benefits and damages of all these economic activities are distributed, as cited in the Youth Manifesto #ForNature”.

“As young people, we can play multiple roles in this global campaign: by spreading the word and getting more people to join and support this global youth movement, by demanding bold actions from our decision makers, or by leading the change by example, making use of the potential that young people have to bring innovative solutions to the table as transformative education and promotion of intergenerational equity”, she declared.

 

 
Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: The UN points out its Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) aims to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean while it can help to end poverty, combat climate change and prevent a mass extinction. How feasible is this goal? What would prevent the UN from helping the world reach this goal?

Montanarella: Ecosystem restoration needs to go hand in hand with a large social inclusion programmes that will assure employment and sustainable livelihoods to the global population. Otherwise, it will be doomed to failure.

Fernandez: The goal of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is quite ambitious and will be very difficult to be reached in only one decade because effective and complete ecosystem restoration is a process that can take various decades.

But it is very important that we have this goal that will guide the efforts to avoid further ecosystem degradation and start restoration efforts of already degraded ecosystems.

I think that one of the most important risks that could prevent the UN helping the world reach this goal is the misuse of restoration related concepts, such as offsetting, net zero/no net loss approaches, and Nature-based solutions.

Without appropriately defined safeguards for biodiversity and human rights, the wrong implementation of ecosystem restoration strategies can promote further perverse monoculture, offsetting and greenwashing schemes.

Countries and companies who want to be considered implementers of the Decade should follow strong safeguards to ensure that the quality of the restoration efforts matches the quantity in the area within the restoration policies and projects

IPS: What are your thoughts on the findings of the Land Degradation and Restoration Assessment (https://www.ipbes.net/assessment-reports/ldr) by IPBES?

Montanarella: The Land Degradation and Restoration Assessment of IPBES, that I had the honour to co-chair jointly with my dear colleague and friend Prof. Robert Scholes who sadly passed away few days ago, clearly indicates the way forward and especially highlights the social and participatory dimension of land degradation.

Land is the basis of our existence on this planet and needs to be protected accordingly. Consumption habits and micro- as well as macroeconomic developments are the key drivers of land degradation and therefore need to be addressed if we want to reverse the current negative trend.

We can do a lot, starting from our individual lifestyles and dietary habits.

Fernandez: I consider that the IPBES Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration a key tool for policy makers and stakeholders to understand the extent and complexity of land degradation worldwide and take informed, appropriate action to address the drivers of land degradation and develop restoration strategies.

The key messages in the assessment, as well as the proposed ambitions and strategies for addressing land degradation, and possible actions and pathways, should be reflected in the outcomes of the Post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and on the implementation of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

They should also be taken into account in the development of national targets and commitments related to combating land degradation and restoring ecosystems. I come from Bolivia, a country that has lost more than 5 million ha of an endemic ecoregion “The Chiquitano Forest” due to forest fires in 2019.

After these fires, different actors have developed various approaches to restore the devastated ecosystems. Sadly, many of these initiatives lack a solid scientific basis and could do more harm than good, including introducing invasive species, making space for monoculture plantations or changing the structure of the forest.

This is why efforts like this assessment, that provides the best available science and expertise on land degradation and restoration, are crucial to be shared among the implementers of land restoration strategies and the ones combating land degradation at the national levels.

 

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Excerpt:

The following article is part of a series to commemorate World Environment Day June 5

Women working in government-owned nurseries in Haripur, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. Pakistan has launched one of the largest reforestation initiatives in the world — the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Jun 4 2021 (IPS)

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has been making sure that all foreign dignitaries visiting the country get their hands dirty. With a shovel and a watering can, they are invited to plant a tree for one of the largest reforestation initiatives in the world — the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme or TBTTP.

The TBTTP is part of a series of “nature-based solutions” to fight the climate change crisis. Other initiatives include increasing the share of renewables in the energy mix to 60 percent by 2030 and to helping preserve the environment of national parks. In addition, Pakistan has provided over 85,000 green jobs (to be increased to 100,000 by the end of the year) through a Green Stimulus Package following COVID-19.

These strategies fit perfectly with this year’s World Environment Day (WED) theme of ecosystem restoration (ER) as Pakistan readies to host, in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the event tomorrow, Jun. 5.

“This WED is of global significance as it kicks off the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030 with focus on reversing the loss to natural ecosystems to fight the climate crises,” Malik Amin Aslam, Minister for Climate Change and special assistant to the Prime Minister on climate change, told IPS.

“We hope to lead the world towards climate mitigation as well as restoration of ecosystems, ” Aslam said via What’s App.

“Pakistan’s agenda on environment has been validated and our role in ecosystem restoration has been accepted,” a pleased Muhammad Irfan Tariq, Director General of environment and climate change at Pakistan’s Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC), told IPS by phone from Islamabad. He was referring to the TBTTP, which aims to target one million hectares of forest restoration by 2023.  

“We are not doing this for show,” said Prime Minister Khan, referring to the TBTTP. “We are doing this so that we can leave behind a better country for our future generations. The biggest impact of climate change is that it will affect our future generation,” he said while addressing a TBTTP programme last week.

Incidentally, Pakistan contributes less than one percent to global emissions, yet it is among the top 10 most vulnerable countries to climate change.

Pakistan has world’s seventh-largest mangrove forest in Sindh, located along the Arabian Sea coastline in the Indus deltaic swamps, and comprising some 667,000 hectares. These mangroves are in Kakapir village, located around 15 kilometres to the west of Karachi, along the Indus delta. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

Building a relationship with nature

Environmentalist Vaqar Zakaria, however, remained wary of the methods employed by the government saying “greenwashing done in the name of restoration” cannot bring the “bees and the birds” back.

But there must be something right about the TBTTP as Saudi Arabia recently announced its intention of planting 10 billion trees in the coming decades to reduce carbon emissions and combat pollution and land degradation. 

Still, Zakaria favours protecting over restoration.

“It is better to protect because nature will heal itself back,” he said, explaining that restoration required sophisticated techniques and should be carried out with caution. “The right trees must be grown at the right place,” Zakaria, who spends hours in nature re-establishing his “connection to nature”, told IPS via phone from Islamabad. He believes that only after spending time outdoors, will “our hearts be in it and will be able to guide our future decisions”.   

Perhaps that is why the government is carrying out the Protected Areas Initiative (PAI), for “rebalancing” mankind’s relationship with nature as Aslam pointed out with plans to increase Pakistan’s terrestrial and marine protected area to 15 percent and 10 percent by 2023 respectively.

“Already our national parks have increased from 30 to 45 in number,” said the minister.

Recharging aquifers

Recharge Pakistan is a project where the government, in collaboration with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)-Pakistan, is building water storage that aims to benefit 10 million people.

“The focus is on building Pakistan’s resilience to climate change in water-stressed areas,” explained Hammad Naqi Khan, Director General, WWF-Pakistan. Along with increasing the water storage capacity, the project aims to restore the wetland ecosystem.

“But most importantly, it will benefit more than 10 million people (or five percent) of Pakistan’s population directly and 20 million people across 50 vulnerable districts of Pakistan indirectly,” Khan told IPS.

Minister Aslam emphasised these were not mere plans but are actually being implemented with “solid performance to show on the ground”.

Simi Kamal, chair and CEO of Karachi-based think tank Hisaar Foundation that looks at water, food and livelihood security, said: it was “still too early to see results” in the project but that it would have to “be a huge programme to make visible impact”.

Fortunately, the one-year project preparation phase has been approved by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Pakistan will be able to conduct site feasibility studies and prepare a detailed proposal.

“Going beyond the currently underfunded GCF, there is an urgent need for developed countries to establish a truly ambitious climate reparations financing mechanism to provide assistance for adaptation projects and building resilience in many developing regions faced with potentially serious impacts of climate change,” A. Karim Ahmed, a board member of the Washington D.C- based Global Council for Science and the Environment, told IPS via email.

Blue Carbon

Another feather in Pakistan’s cap is a comprehensive assessment on blue carbon (carbon stored in coastal and marine ecosystems) that was recently completed.

“Conservation, rehabilitation, and management of blue carbon ecosystems can provide one-third of the economic mitigation needed until 2030,” climate change expert Hadika Jamshaid told IPS via What’s App.

Among the coastal wetlands, mangroves provide a huge potential to sequestering carbon. “Pakistan has done tremendously well in expanding its mangrove plantation,” said Tariq, Director General of environment and climate change at MoCC.

Pakistan has world’s seventh-largest mangrove forest in Sindh, located along the Arabian Sea coastline in the Indus deltaic swamps, and comprising some 667,000 hectares.

But in the absence of data, this blue carbon remains precluded from both the reported mitigation potential and fiscal benefits for Pakistan.

“Protection of these forests can help Pakistan achieve the country’s NDCs [nationally determined contributions],” said Jamshaid, expressing his support of the MoCC in the revision and implementation process of its NDC document. 

Meanwhile, under the TBTTP the central government will plant mangroves over 40,000 hectares, of which 15,000 hectares have already been planted, Riaz Wagan, chief conservator of forests in Sindh province, told IPS.

In addition, the Sindh government, under a public-private partnership model, is doing its own bit to restore ecosystems. It has signed an agreement with Indus Delta Capital Private Limited under the Delta Blue Carbon to plant and protect mangroves over 350,000 hectares, said Wagan, who is also leading the this Indus Delta Mangroves REDD+ Project.

 

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Excerpt:

On Saturday Jun. 5, Pakistan is hosting World Environment Day in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme. IPS takes a look at the country’s progress in ecosystem restoration, which is this year’s theme of World Environment Day

Stop Islamophobia

By Mariya Salim
NEW DELHI, India, Jun 3 2021 (IPS)

A Muslim call centre operator at a COVID-19 ‘war room’, who once saw himself a COVID-warrior, is now unemployed after being falsely branded by a top politician as a key member of a bed-for-bribe scam. He is a victim of the rise in Islamophobia in India as the country grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic – with scant evidence of condemnation from the authorities, say activists.

Early in May, a member of Parliament for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Tejasvi Surya, stormed into a COVID-19 ‘war room’ ostensibly to expose an alleged bed-for-bribe scam.

In a video live streamed on his social media and later repeatedly shown by many media houses, he read out 16 names, cherry-picked out of the 205 municipal helpline operators. All the 16 names were Muslims.

In the video, BJP member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) and Surya’s uncle, Ravi Subramanya, asks: “Have you appointed them to some sort of a madrasa (Islamic school) or a corporation?”.

The ‘war room’ is a Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) South zone COVID-19 war room with 400 lines and receives about 3 000 calls from citizens across the city every day, according to reports.

What followed were WhatsApp texts with the names listed by Surya – with the named employees labelled as “terrorists”. The viral messages on social media claimed this “team of terrorists” were scamming patients by offering Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds at exorbitant fees and even reserving those beds for those in the Muslim community.

According to reports, the 16 were fired. IPS reached out to one of the named call centre operators who spoke to us on condition of anonymity.

“In April this year, I would proudly call myself a ‘COVID warrior’, helping those who needed urgent information related to the disease,” Faiz Akhtar (name changed) said in an exclusive interview. “My heart sank when I saw the term ‘terrorist’ written next to my name in WhatsApp messages soon after the MP called my name out in public alleging corruption against me.”

He told IPS he was taken in a van, like a common criminal, to the police station and had his pictures taken as if he had committed a crime. “Having a Muslim name perhaps was my crime,” he said.

Faiz, who is the sole supporter of his family, said that despite there being no evidence against him and the other 16 people named, he is yet to be reinstated into his job. This despite assurances from the BBMP south zone management.

While India was (and is) reeling under the second wave of Covid-19, which at its height recorded more than 300 000 cases a day, the blatant Islamophobia around the pandemic and misinformation around Indian Muslims and their link to the virus continues.

The past year saw Muslims labelled as ‘corona spreaders’, and this trend has not stopped.

Dr Zafarul Islam Khan, Delhi Minorities Commission former chairperson, in an exclusive interview to IPS, said when the national lockdown was declared in India last year, the Tableeghi Jamaat people were removed from their centre by the police “like they were criminals”.

The Tableeghi Jamaat are an international group of Muslims who gather in Delhi each year for a religious congregation.

The eviction and arrests received significant live media coverage.

The group had already started its annual conference at its centre in the Nizamuddin area in Delhi before the official lockdown was announced.

“They were taken to various ‘quarantine centres’ across Delhi. But these ‘quarantine centres’ were like jails where they were locked up with little care, untimely food, no medicine or doctors,” Khan said.

As the Delhi Minorities Commission chairperson at the time, he relentlessly lobbied authorities in the Delhi government until the conditions of the inmates improved.

Reports indicate that the centre continued to be targeted by police after the COVID-19 emergency was declared.

Later the courts criticized the scapegoating of the congregation, many of whom were foreigners, for the pandemic.

“This was a golden opportunity for the godi (lapdog) media which started a narrative saying that Muslims were executing a heinous and planned conspiracy to spread the coronavirus in the country, and the term “Corona Jihad” was coined to describe this so-called conspiracy,” Khan added.

What aids and abets a stereotype is when it appears to get government sanction and when those seemingly liberal and anti-communal use their position of privilege to further the witch-hunt that a community is facing. There are significant indications that this is the case in India.

Surya’s open pronouncement of select Muslim employees allegedly involved in the bed scam in Bangalore and the Delhi State Government and the Central Government giving separate figures of Tablighi Jamaat related COVID-19 patients in their daily press briefings has made life very difficult for the Muslim minority in India.

Khan wrote a letter to the Health Minister of Delhi saying that it was unfair that the Jamaat cases were mentioned separately – when no other religious communities’ figures were singled out.

“The health minister conceded to my request, and two days later, separate mention of the Jamaat in daily briefings was stopped. A day later, the central government also stopped this questionable practice,” said Khan.

Prateek Sinha, one of the co-founders of a leading fact-checking platform called Altnews, told IPS how communal information had been the mainstay of the Indian misinformation scene right since they started their platform.

“We saw a deliberate attempt to show Muslims in a bad light, trying to ascribe blame for different things that are happening in the country to Muslims,” said Sinha.

During the pandemic, there had been misinformation of all kinds. However, the way Muslims have been made scapegoats by the media, by political parties and liberals alike had been a worrying trend.

From being called Corona Jihadi (a term used to falsely ascribe the spread of the disease by Muslims as a conspiracy to kill non-Muslims) to being singled out in alleged scams without any substantiated evidence, India’s largest minority continues to face a pandemic of discrimination and scapegoating, within the larger pandemic that the world is facing.

Mariya Salim is a fellow at IPS UN Bureau

 

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By External Source
Jun 3 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Facing the triple threat of climate change, loss of nature and pollution, the world must deliver on its commitment to restore at least one billion degraded hectares of land in the next decade – an area about the size of China. Countries also need to add similar commitments for oceans, according to a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), launched as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 gets underway.

The report, #GenerationRestoration: Ecosystem restoration for People, Nature and Climate, highlights that humanity is using about 1.6 times the amount of services that nature can provide sustainably.

That means conservation efforts alone are insufficient to prevent large-scale ecosystem collapse and biodiversity loss. Global terrestrial restoration costs – not including costs of restoring marine ecosystems – are estimated to be at least USD 200 billion per year by 2030. The report outlines that every 1 USD invested in restoration creates up to USD 30 in economic benefits.

Ecosystems requiring urgent restoration include farmlands, forests, grasslands and savannahs, mountains, peatlands, urban areas, freshwaters, and oceans.
Communities living across almost two billion of degraded hectares of land include some of the world’s poorest and marginalized.

“This report presents the case for why we must all throw our weight behind a global restoration effort. Drawing on the latest scientific evidence, it sets out the crucial role played by ecosystems, from forests and farmland to rivers and oceans, and it charts the losses that result from a poor stewardship of the planet,” UNEP Executive Director, Inger Andersen, and FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, wrote in the report’s foreword.

“Degradation is already affecting the well-being of an estimated 3.2 billion people – that is 40 percent of the world’s population. Every single year we lose ecosystem services worth more than 10 percent of our global economic output,” they added, stressing that “massive gains await us” by reversing these trends.

Ecosystem restoration is the process of halting and overturning degradation, resulting in cleaner air and water, extreme weather mitigation, better human health, and recovered biodiversity, including improved pollination of plants. Restoration encompasses a wide continuum of practices, from reforestation to re-wetting peatlands and coral rehabilitation.

It contributes to the realization of multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including health, clean water, and peace and security, and to the objectives of the three ‘Rio Conventions’ on Climate, Biodiversity, and Desertification.

Actions that prevent, halt and reverse degradation are necessary to meet the Paris Agreement target of keeping global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius.
Restoration, if combined with stopping further conversion of natural ecosystems, may help avoid 60 percent of expected biodiversity extinctions.

It can be highly efficient in producing multiple economic, social and ecological benefits concurrently – for example, agroforestry alone has the potential to increase food security for 1.3 billion people, while investments in agriculture, mangrove protection and water management will help adapt to climate change, with benefits around four times the original investment.

Reliable monitoring of restoration efforts is essential, both to track progress and to attract private and public investments. In support of this effort, FAO and UNEP also launch today the Digital Hub for the UN Decade, which includes the Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring.

The Framework enables countries and communities to measure the progress of restoration projects across key ecosystems, helping to build ownership and trust in restoration efforts. It also incorporates the Drylands Restoration Initiatives Platform, which collects and analyses data, shares lessons and assists in the design of drylands restoration projects, and an interactive geospatial mapping tool to assess the best locations for forest restoration.

Restoration must involve all stakeholders including individuals, businesses, associations, and governments. Crucially, it must respect the needs and rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and incorporate their knowledge, experience and capacities to ensure restoration plans are implemented and sustained.

*******

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 is a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, for the benefit of people and nature. It aims to halt the degradation of ecosystems and restore them to achieve global goals. The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed the UN Decade and it is led by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The UN Decade is building a strong, broad-based global movement to ramp up restoration and put the world on track for a sustainable future. That will include building political momentum for restoration as well as thousands of initiatives on the ground.

About the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
UNEP is the leading global voice on the environment. It provides leadership and encourages partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.

About the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO)
The FAO is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and transform agri-food systems, making them more resilient, sustainable and inclusive. Our goal is to achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. With over 194 Members, FAO works in over 130 countries worldwide.

Excerpt:

Launching the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, UN calls on countries to meet commitments to restore 1 billion hectares of land

A young Sudanese girl holding a baby in the Al Salam internally displaced persons camp. Credit: Sven Torfinn/CC By 2.0

By External Source
NAIROBI, Jun 3 2021 (IPS)

The number of girls who marry before their 15th birthday has remained unchanged for 20 years in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The region has the highest rate of child marriage, with nearly four in 10 girls married before age 18. In Niger, for example, over 77% of girls are married before the age of 18.

This is despite efforts by governments, developmental partners and civil society organisations to end the practice. There are many reasons why it continues. These include inequitable gender norms, laws that permit children to be married in some settings in sub-Saharan Africa, inadequate investment in girls’ education, poverty and unintended pregnancy. In addition, child marriage is backed and justified by culture and religion.

The effects of child marriage on the health and wellbeing of girls are far-reaching and lifelong. It harms their overall health and socioeconomic wellbeing, the survival of their children, and the prosperity of their family and community. Because child marriage harms girls’ physical health and socioeconomic wellbeing, it is considered a human right violation

The effects of child marriage on the health and wellbeing of girls are far-reaching and lifelong. It harms their overall health and socioeconomic wellbeing, the survival of their children, and the prosperity of their family and community. Because child marriage harms girls’ physical health and socioeconomic wellbeing, it is considered a human right violation.

The health consequences of child marriage have received significant attention. But only a few studies have examined the relationship between child marriage and intimate partner violence. One study done in Vietnam in 2013 found that there was a link between the two.

Our study examined the relationship between child marriage and intimate violence in sub-Saharan Africa. We analysed the most recent demographic and health survey data of over 28,000 young women in 16 countries in the region. The survey data encompasses several health and wellbeing indicators including domestic violence. We extracted relevant information about domestic violence as well as the background characteristics of the respondents.

We found that girls aged 20-24 years who married before they turned 18 were 20% more likely to experience intimate partner violence than those who married as adults.

 

Our research

Our principal aim was to assess the association between child marriage and intimate partner violence – physical, sexual or emotional – from a partner. We also compared the rate of intimate partner violence between those who married as adults and those who married as children in the past 12 months.

We analysed data of countries from all four sub-regions within sub-Saharan Africa. In Central Africa, we included Angola, Cameroon and Chad. From West Africa we included Benin, Mali and Nigeria and from the east Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Within Southern Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe were selected.

Countries were selected on the basis of the availability of recent survey datasets.

The demographic and health survey had questions to measure each of the indicators. These questions relate to the experience of:

• Physical violence: women had been asked whether their partners had ever pushed, shaken or thrown something at them, slapped or punched them, kicked or dragged them.
• Emotional violence: women had been asked if their partner ever humiliated them, threatened them with harm, insulted or made them feel bad.
• Sexual violence: questions had included whether the partner ever physically forced the respondent into unwanted sexual acts.

Our analysis of the demographic and health survey data showed that child marriage prevalence ranged from 13.5% in Rwanda to 77% in Chad. Intimate partner violence ranged from 17.5% in Mozambique to 42% in Uganda.

Past year experience of intimate partner violence was higher among young women who married or began cohabiting before the age of 18 (36.9%) than those who did at age 18 or more (32.5%).

This result was consistent for all forms of violence: physical violence (22.7% vs 19.7%), emotional violence (25.3% vs 21.9%), and sexual violence (12% vs 10.4%).

After accounting for the contributions of important socio-demographic characteristics such as educational level, place of residence, wealth status and exposure to mass media, we found that child marriage had a higher association with intimate partner violence than marriage at adulthood.

 

Ways forward

Overall, our findings reaffirm the link between child marriage and intimate partner violence. We found that there was a higher likelihood of intimate partner violence in 14 of the 16 countries. Angola and Chad stood out as exceptions.

As our results show, child marriage is associated with a higher likelihood of intimate partner violence in most sub-Saharan African countries. This suggests that ending child marriage would result in a substantial reduction.

There is therefore a need to institute policies to support and protect women who marry as children from abusive relationship.

Fighting cultural norms that make men unaccountable is critical to ending both child marriage and intimate partner violence. And this can be done through the creation of strict laws. Currently, 43 of the 55 African Union member states have legal frameworks that put the minimum age of marriage at 18 years old or above for both boys and girls. However, 27 of these states allow child marriage with parental or guardian consent and the approval of a judge, court or state. Ten countries allow for the marriage of girls as young as 10. One, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, has no law against child marriage.

All countries should have laws. And these should be strictly enforced.

Community sensitisation on the damaging effects of both child marriage and intimate partner violence is equally critical. This could be implemented with the involvement of various stakeholders, including community and religious leaders.

Anthony Idowu Ajayi, Associate research scientist, African Population and Health Research Center

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

Credit: World Food Programme WFP

By Lauren Baker
TORONTO, Canada, Jun 3 2021 (IPS)

This week*, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) is expected to endorse recommendations on agroecological and other innovative approaches for sustainable food systems, after an intense period of negotiation involving governments, UN agencies and institutions, Indigenous People’s organizations, civil society, and the private sector.

As they do so, they must also take a stance against the creeping co-option and “greenwashing” of agroecology and uphold the social and political foundations of agroecology. It is these inherent characteristics that are so crucial for the deep structural transformation of global food systems that we so urgently need.

As a vital science, practice, and movement, with inextricably linked ecological, social, and political elements, agroecology is gaining more acceptance globally. From our work convening food systems actors working in agroecology, regenerative agriculture, and Indigenous foodways, coupled with the launch of recent studies on the need for investment in agroecology and this review on agroecology’s contribution to food security and nutrition, we know the evidence clearly supports it as a transformative approach.

In particular, agroecology combines ecological principles of diversity, resilience and recycling (for example) and the co-creation of knowledge, contextual factors like culture and tradition with responsible governance and the importance of circular and solidarity economies.

Yet, there is an emerging and real risk that agroecological messages, approaches, and methods are being cherry-picked and absorbed into the public narrative without recognition of the deeply transformative elements that define agroecology and how they lead to a healthy and sustainable future of food for all.

COVID-19 has been a brutal demonstration of what goes wrong when we do not recognize the deep interconnections between human, animal, and ecological health. It has disrupted food systems — and subsequently people’s livelihoods and health — on a global scale and, unlike anything before, has called into question the unsustainable and vulnerable industrialized food systems currently at play.

Support for the industrialized model of food and agriculture — which is premised on a mindset that commodifies food, externalizes its true environmental and social costs and is upheld by short-term, unambitious policies and funding streams — needs to change.

The industrial model marginalizes the world’s majority food producers — smallholder farmers, food provisioners and workers, Indigenous Peoples, and their innovative solutions, while causing far-reaching and detrimental environmental impacts. It is estimated that food systems account for approximately 30% of global emissions.

The pandemic recovery moment cannot be left to pass and instead must be harnessed as a moment for real change.

There is a growing diversity of voices and communities from around the world laying claim to agroecology’s transformative effects: 600,000 farmers in Andhra Pradesh, India, are transitioning to natural farming with support from the state government working in partnership with civil society organizations, while other countries like Costa Rica, Senegal, and Germany are setting meaningful targets and transitioning their support towards agroecology and organic agriculture.

There are increasing numbers of local, regional, and global farmers’ networks advocating for this approach. This is all happening even in spite of the fact that most agriculture and food subsidies, policies and programs, and donor activity, are still geared towards shoring up an industrialized model of food production.

With the UN Food Systems Summit and COP26 just a matter of months away, it’s never been more important to embrace systems-based approaches and protect all that they stand for. In order to unlock the real benefits of agroecology, we need to see adapted policies, public investments, institutions, and research that promote a whole-systems approach and the advancement of agroecological and regenerative approaches that embed social and political principles.

Decision-makers must, from the get-go: acknowledge the strong role that local institutions and communities have; protect and expand rights, investment in infrastructure; and, embrace the central role of smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and women.

Crucially, this will involve actively resisting the rise of so-called “junk agroecology” and, concurrently, widening the frame of the evidence used to influence and inform decision-making.

A narrow focus just on scientific evidence (though critically necessary) at the expense of other types of evidence, diverse perspectives, and ways of knowing will only continue to jeopardize our understanding of the interconnected challenges we face and hold us back from mobilizing around the transformative opportunities across our food systems that are readily available — and within reach.

This is an urgent call to action.

*The Special Session of the 48th Plenary of CFS will take place virtually on Friday, 4 June 2021 to endorse the CFS Policy Recommendations on Agroecological and Other Innovative Approaches. The endorsement of the Policy Recommendations was moved from CFS 47 (held in February 2021) as their negotiations and completion was delayed due to COVID-19.

Dr Lauren Baker, PhD, is Senior Director of Programs at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. She has more than 20 years of experience facilitating cross-sectoral research, policy and advocacy for sustainable food systems in non-profit, academic, business, policy and philanthropic contexts. Previously, she led the Toronto Food Policy Council, a citizen advisory group embedded within the City of Toronto’s Public Health Division, and was the Founding Director of Sustain Ontario — the Alliance for Healthy Food and Farming. Lauren teaches in the Global Food Equity program at the University of Toronto, and is a research associate with Ryerson University’s Centre for Studies in Food Security.

 

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There is no health without mental health. Credit: Unsplash /Melanie Wasser.

By Ifeanyi Nsofor
ABUJA, Jun 2 2021 (IPS)

Recently, Naomi Osaka, the number 2 ranked women’s tennis player in the world, said she would not participate in the press conference at the French Open (Rolland-Garros) because she wanted to protect her mental health.

The organizers of the tournament were incensed, imposed a fine on her and threatened to disqualify her.  Would the organizers have reacted differently if Naomi Osaka said she could not participate in the tournament’s press briefing because of a physical illness, such as abdominal pain? Your guess is as good as mine, but I believe the organizers would have been more empathetic and would have provided her with the best medical treatment. The same should happen for mental health.

Osaka was stigmatized because people do not understand mental health and feel she should “man up” and attend a press conference. Further, athletes like her are all too often viewed as superhuman and incapable of showing weakness

It is wrong for the organizers to impose a fine of $15,000 on Osaka and threaten to suspend her for missing the press conference. Such reactions contribute to why mental health is still so widely misunderstood, shrouded in mystery and stigmatized.

There is no other way to put this. Osaka was stigmatized because people do not understand mental health and feel she should “man up” and attend a press conference. Further, athletes like her are all too often viewed as superhuman and incapable of showing weakness.

Due to the backlash, Osaka has withdrawn from the French Open, apologized and the French Tennis Federation President has also apologized for the way this episode was handled. However, as regrettable as the events are, it can serve as a teachable moment for everyone.

Here are five ways to ensure mental health illnesses receives the same prominence as physical illnesses.

First, there is no health without mental health. The World Health Organization defines mental health as a state of well-being in which an individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.

Surely, from this definition, Osaka could not handle the stress which comes with participating in press conferences. She said so. She mentioned her experience with depression. Participating in the tournament press conference could have worsened her health and well-being. She was right to have withdrawn from the press conference and the tournament. Her health trumps all other concerns.

Second, revealing one’s mental health challenge is a strength and not a weakness. This wrong perception of mental health is ubiquitous.

For instance, EpiAFRIC and Africa Polling Institute interviewed more than 5,000 in a nationwide mental health survey in Nigeria. Some respondents said they will use force and other extreme measures on sufferers of mental health illness.

For example, 4% said they would lock up the sufferer while 2% said they will beat the disease out of the person. The way the French Open organizers responded to Osaka’s cry for help is wrong and must be condemned by all. It is great to see the support extended to Osaka by other Black elite athletes, Serena Williams and Stephen Curry.

Third, sports tournaments must develop a comprehensive mental health support policy for athletes. This is not the first time a major athlete cried out for help in dealing with a mental health challenge.

Naomi Osaka October 28th 2020 during the semi-final match of the women’s Cincinnati Masters played at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center’s Grandstand court. Credit: AndrewHenkelman / Creative Commons.

According to Athletes for Hope, 35% of elite professional athletes suffer from a mental health crisis which may manifest as stress, eating disorders, burnout, or depression and anxiety. Too many athletes are suffering in silence.

Due to their achievements and celebrity status, they are being shamed into silence. To help deal with this silent pandemic, sports tournaments must develop comprehensive mental health support policy. Elite athletes such as Osaka should have mental health counsellors as part of their medical teams. No athlete should have to suffer in silence because the consequences of that could be fatal.

Fourth, we must stop viewing Black women as having higher pain threshold. It is a common misconception for Blacks to be seen to tolerate pain better than other races. According to Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, 40% of first- and second-year medical students were of the belief that “Black people’s skin is thicker than white people’s.”

Even at childbirth, Black women are sometimes refused pain medications because of this wrong belief. This leads to verbal and physical abuse of someone dealing with a debilitating health condition. When Osaka said speaking at the press conference would negatively impact her mental health, she should have been believed. She is dealing with the pain of depression and needs all the support she can get.

Finally, media outlets must train reporters on writing about mental health with empathy. The Daily Mail UK article, in which the writer accused Osaka for “cynical exploitation of mental health to silence the media” is harsh and not the way to describe someone who is dealing with depression. Such articles worsen Osaka’s battle with depression and discourages other athletes from speaking out about mental health challenges they face.

Osaka is 23 years old. At such a young age, she should be celebrated for her boldness in confronting depression and being vocal about it. I hope she gets all the recuperation she needs. I pray she becomes stronger and can play in her next tennis tournament.

 

Dr. Ifeanyi McWilliams Nsofor is a graduate of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He is a Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at George Washington University. Ifeanyi is the Director Policy and Advocacy at Nigeria Health Watch.

Beachfront hotels and yachts at Pigeon Point, Saint Lucia. The ocean supports a myriad of livelihoods on the small island states of the OECS – amounting to 30% of the labour force in some countries. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 2 2021 (IPS)

President of the United Nations General Assembly Volkan Bozkir has told a high-level debate on oceans that the world cannot afford to delay action on ocean protection. “There is simply no scenario wherein we live on a planet without an ocean,” he said.

The debate, which focused on the ocean and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14: Life Below Water, took place on Jun. 1 at the UN Headquarters in New York.

It comes ahead of the Jun. 8 observance of World Oceans Day and against the backdrop of the pandemic-related postponement of the 2nd UN Ocean Conference – a major international gathering which seeks science-based solutions to sustainable ocean use.

The high-level debate was billed as a ‘drumbeat’ to maintain momentum ahead of the conference, now expected to take place in Lisbon next year.

The General Assembly President said the pandemic has revealed an “appetite for change” among people who do not want to live in a world of “one crisis after the next”. He said this change is possible.

“As our understanding of the true benefit of a healthy planet grows, policymakers are increasingly aware of how central a healthy ocean is to a healthy economy,” he said.

“We have seen this in countries and cities that prioritised coastal and marine areas over-tourism, we have seen this in protected wetlands, we have seen this in efforts to address illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and regulate shipping and resource extraction. Why then can we not combine and scale up our efforts?”

The UN has been at the forefront of efforts to mobilise financial, scientific, volunteer and community support for oceans, through initiatives such as the 2021-2030 Decade of Ocean Science.

The high-level debate builds on those ocean conservation and sustainable use measures.

Pigeon Point, Saint Lucia. With 97 percent of the water on the earth’s surface, the ocean is vast. It serves as a source of food and energy, while facilitating commerce, transportation and communication. Sustainable Development Goal 14 lists specific targets to reduce pollution, protect marine ecosystems, tackle illegal and over-fishing and oversee sustainable resource use. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Oceans Peter Thomson told the forum that while there have been improvements on this front, including increased marine protected area coverage and a better understanding of the issues that impact the ocean, progress has not been adequate to address the ocean crisis.

“How can we claim success when a third of assessed global fish stocks are being overfished? When with no tangible end in sight, we have dumped around 150 million metric tons of accumulating plastic waste, microplastics and discarded fishing gear into the ocean? And while the rates of ocean acidification, deoxygenation and warmth are all continuing to head in the wrong direction?”

With 97 percent of the water on the earth’s surface, the ocean is vast. It serves as a source of food and energy, while facilitating commerce, transportation and communication. Sustainable Development Goal 14 lists specific targets to reduce pollution, protect marine ecosystems, tackle illegal and over-fishing and oversee sustainable resource use.

One region taking action to address ocean issues and achieve SDG 14 is the Eastern Caribbean.

In 2012, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) established an Oceans Governance Team, a regional body that oversees work on oceans governance. The team helped to develop the Eastern Caribbean Regional Ocean Policy (ECROP) which articulates the countries’ vision for the ocean and principles of ocean governance.

One of the major ECROP initiatives is the Caribbean Regional Oceanscape Project, known as CROP. Through a partnership with the World Bank, CROP, with its tagline ‘championing resilient oceans for prosperity,’ is helping the Caribbean transition to a blue economy.

“We focus on economic growth, but we also ensure that we are conserving the resources, so that we are not damaging them and impairing our future benefits. It’s really the same sustainable development agenda, focusing on the economics, the environment and the social aspects relating to the oceans,” Susanna Debeauville-Scott, Project Manager in the Ocean Governance and Fisheries Unit at the OECS Secretariat, based in Saint Lucia, told IPS.

For the Caribbean, the goal is to propel discussion on ocean issues and action for the protection and sustainable use of its resources. The Unit is overseeing initiatives like Building Resilience in the Eastern Caribbean through a Reduction in Marine Pollution (ReMLit) to tackle marine waste.

A ‘tag an artiste’ drive based on the theme ‘more than just islands’ hopes to get entertainers in the region singing about oceans and promoting the islands’ blue space as ideal for a thriving blue economy.

The unit is hoping to highlight the critical importance of oceans and get journalists onboard through a special journalism challenge.

Debeauville-Scott told IPS that the Unit is gearing up for a virtual event on Jun. 8th – World Oceans Day. That activity will focus on mapping ocean wealth and marine spatial planning data and tools for improved decision-making in the Caribbean.

 

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Excerpt:

Ahead of World Oceans Day 2021 and the second UN Ocean Conference next year, UN officials stressed the need for ‘clear, transformative and actionable’ solutions to the ocean crisis.

Sunrise in the Ebro Delta in Spain's Catalonia region. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said last month there was a 40% chance of the watershed global warming mark being met during the time frame, and these odds are increasing with time. Credit: WMO/Agusti Descarrega Sola

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jun 2 2021 (IPS)

With the climate negotiations getting more and more intense in the light of ensuring meaningful achievements in the upcoming COP- 26 summit in Edinburgh, an event that is key to move forward the pathway towards a net zero future started in Paris, this year World Environment Day on June 5 assumes an even more emblematic meaning.

While the ongoing climate negotiations have finally found relevance not only among policymakers but also among the masses thanks to new level of civic mobilization that is instrumental in creating a new global consciousness about the real perils of climate change, we are at risk of overlooking an equal important issue that is connected to the core of the climate challenge.

Fortunately, the World Environment Day 2021 could not choose a better topic to bring remedy here, finally highlighting the linkages between the dangers of a world economy driven by carbon fossils and the repercussions that emissions stemming from them and other types of human activities are having on the planet’s biodiversity.

To stress the new sense of urgency, that with “Ecosystem Restoration” as theme, World Environment Day is launching the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration that will be focusing on restoring, supporting and enhancing the planet’s different habitats in which life, of different forms and species, should supposedly abound and thrive rather than being at risk of extinction.

Restoring ecosystems should be therefore seen as a rallying cry, a call for action to ensure that biodiversity claims its due visibility in the broader call for a sustainable future under the banner of the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Policy makers are right now under pressure to come up with bolder and stronger emission targets and it is encouraging how a global leadership movement is emerging to tackle climate change.

If the Petersberg Climate Dialogue has now become a traditional forum, many other leaders from parts of the world’s previously less engaged on climate action, are stepping up.

Just days ago, the P4G Seoul Summit 2021 was held showing a new commitment from the Government of South Korea to become a trailblazer in matter of climate actions.

Yet, with so much discussions on climate change going on, the hope is not just that global leaders will muster the foresight and determination to truly lay out a long term “build forward better” vision of their countries but will also be able to bridge the gap that separate discussions on climate change from those focused on the planet’s endangered biodiversity.

Worryingly enough, the public opinion and consequentially the world leaders did not yet broaden their focus yet from the COP 26 discussions, enlarging their horizons to include another strategic summit that will be held from 11 to 24 of October in Kunming, formally the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Unfortunately, the global governance mechanisms do not facilitate cross cutting thematic linkages and therefore so far Edinburgh got much higher levels of attention than Kunming.

Yet, the same consensus existing now that new ambitious carbon emissions targets are essential for our survival, should also imply an acknowledgement on the need to elevate biodiversity to the same levels of attention and urgency that climate now musters.

The ninth Trondheim Conference on Biodiversity held in 2019 could not make a better case for such recognition.

“Scientists warn that we are heading for fundamental change in Earth systems as a result of changes in the biosphere” while stressing that “there are close links between the biodiversity and climate agendas, and it is well understood that a temperature rise of 1.5˚C will have impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem function and services”.

With such high stakes at play it is baffling how we tend to neglect the importance of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets that were endorsed during the Tenth meeting of the Conference to the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity held Nagoya, Japan, 18-29 October 2010

Kunming is even more important because it will adopt a post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework that will be considered as “a steppingstone towards the 2050 vision of living in harmony with nature, where by 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and widely used, maintaining ecosystem services sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essentials for all people”.

The vision of a “2050 living in harmony” was agreed in Nagoya but it needs an urgent rebooting and this is what Kunming should deliver, a new ambitious agenda that is able to be mainstreamed across the policy spectrum.

Indeed, mainstreaming is one of the biggest issues being discussed in the preparations to the Kunming summit.

In the regional consultation workshop on the post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework for Asia and Pacific, participants highlighted the missing linkages between work in the field of biodiversity, climate change and the overall SDGs framework.

“With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, there is a need to consider how future biodiversity targets will relate to or compliment the Sustainable Development Goals. Similarly, the need to link future biodiversity targets to the climate change agenda was also noted”, the report of the workshop explains.

Fortunately, there are some good news for us.

In the last official review of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, Protected Planet Report, there have been good progress in the extension of lands and oceans being protected but “a third of key biodiversity areas lack any coverage, and less than 8% of land is both protected and connected”.

In addition, the overall “quality” of such protected areas remains a question that must be addressed urgently, a concern well highlighted by Naville Ash with UNEP:

An interesting though much unexplored linkage between efforts on biodiversity and climate action is the “importance of nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation” and this is a huge area open for a global brainstorming and ideation process, reimagining different, more biodiverse and sustainable living settings.

These days the third session of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI-3) of the Convention on Biological Diversity is taking place virtually in order to make the next biodiversity framework more effective, more streamlined and better relevant to the discussions taking in place around climate change.

We need to formulate a new narrative about biodiversity because at the end of the day it is a different side of the same coin and policy makers must be educated on strong linkages between climate change and biodiversity loss.

It is not surprising that resources needed for such “coupling” approach are going to be huge. According to the State of Finance for Nature report, released on the 27th of May, making a much-needed contribution in linking the two areas of biodiversity and climate, a total investment in nature of USD 8.1 trillion is required between now and 2050.

As you can see this year World Environment Day is not like any previous one.

There are two questions that this day should help reflect over: Will the celebrations ensure that the new UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is going to be aligned with climate change discussions and Agenda 2030?

And will it help create a new sense of awareness and urgency that tackling climate change requires the protection and expansion of our wealth expressed in biodiversity and, at the same time, gigantic resources?

Answering these two questions in the right way will determine the odds human beings will have to truly thrive in the decades ahead.

The Author, is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not for profit in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives. He can be reached at simone_engage@yahoo.com

 

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Excerpt:

The following Oped is part of a series of articles to commemorate World Environment Day June 5

On May 28, Zimbabwean and IPS journalist Jeffrey Moyo was arrested for allegedly violating Section 36 of the Zimbabwe’s Immigration Act.

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jun 1 2021 (IPS)

As international correspondent Jeffrey Moyo was denied bail for allegedly breaching a section of the Zimbabwe Immigration Act by helping two foreign journalists work in the country without proper media accreditation, local organisations have called for his release and for him to be accorded a fair trial.

Moyo (37), a correspondent for Inter Press Service (IPS), the New York Times and other media, was arrested in Harare on May 27 and is being detained at Bulawayo Prison.

Bulawayo Magistrate Rachel Mkanga denied Moyo’s bail application yesterday, May 31, stating that Moyo was deemed a threat to national security and that the sovereignty of Zimbabwe was at stake.

Moyo has been charged with violating Section 36 of the Immigration Act, which is essentially based on an allegation that he made a false representation to immigration officials. This pertains to the accreditation of two of his colleagues, Christina Goldbaum and Joao Silva from the New York Times.

Goldbaum and Silva arrived in Zimbabwe on May 5 and were subsequently deported on May 8 for not having proper accreditation with the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC), the media regulatory body in the country.

“The state’s case is weak and they know it, that is why they deported the key witnesses and want to deal with the locals and set him as an example [for others] not to compromise security-related issues,” Tabani Moyo, the Executive Director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa –Zimbabwe, told IPS.

“Jeff must be given a fair trial so that we do not have a situation where the law is used a weapon against the media,” Tabani Moyo said, adding “we are not surprised with the turn of events as the state uses multiple strategies to intimidate depending on how it is irritated not with the media but with its international relations.”

In a statement released on Friday, May 28, the ZMC said it learnt of the deportation from Zimbabwe of “a man and a woman claiming to be New York Times reporters and carrying forged accreditation cards and receipts which they reportedly said had been obtained on their behalf by Jeffrey Moyo, at the time a properly accredited local reporter for the same New York Times”.

The ZMC said the New York Times journalists had not visited the ZMC offices though they had written to the relevant authorities to seek the prior clearance papers required before one can work locally as a journalist on temporary assignment. The relevant authorities had denied Goldbaum and Silva prior clearance.

The state media body also alleged that Moyo had recognised irregularities in the accreditation and reportedly “privately approached a ZMC staffer who also allegedly agreed to collude with Moyo and his now deported colleagues.” The ZMC staffer was also arrested.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa –Zimbabwe said Jeffrey Moyo must be given a fair trial and that his case should not be an instance where the law is used “as a weapon against the media”. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Award-wining, internationally acclaimed journalist and documentary film maker Hopewell Chin’ono told IPS via What’s app that Moyo’s arrest was an abuse of state institutions.

“The arrest of Jeffery is again an abuse of state institutions because the person who committed the crime is person working for the ZMC and not Jeffrey, who was a recipient of something that had been done incorrectly and at the very least he should be  a state witness but he is the one being incarcerated,” Chin’ono told IPS. He was referring to a ZMC staffer.

Over the course of 2020 and early this year, Chin’ono, a critic of the current government, was arrested three times by Zimbabwe police. His arrest made international headlines.

“There is no freedom of speech to practise journalism in Zimbabwe as long as you report against the political elite and Zanu PF is in power….Zanu PF as long as it is in power will continue to use state institutions to persecute journalists and  other citizens for simply doing what is constitutional.”

Meanwhile, Moyo’s lawyer said they would appeal the bail hearing.

“We strongly disagree with those and all the grounds on which the court relied for denying him bail and we are currently preparing an appeal which will be filed as soon as we are able to obtain the record of proceedings from the Magistrate’s court,” Moyo’s lawyer Doug Coltart told IPS by telephone yesterday.

“The main grounds the court relied on was that he was a flight risk and likely to abscond trial and this funny ground that does not have any basis in law that he is a threat to national security and that the sovereignty of Zimbabwe is at stake because the international journalists interviewed Zimbabwean people without the Ministry of Information knowing about it,” Coltart said.

Coltart further said Moyo’s wife wasn’t allowed to visit him and that his prison conditions were deplorable.

“He is ok any and still mentally strong [but] the conditions in prison are still bad,” Coltart said, emphasising that Moyo had to share a blanket with one of the other inmates and was prevented to accessing reading materials.

“They have denied him access to his wife and most concerning of all he was actually slapped, I believe by one of the medical staff at the prison. We intend to make a complaint on that,” said Coltart.

“We are focusing on getting him out with the bail appeal but certainly intend to make a complaint about the inhumane conditions in the prison.”

If convicted, Moyo could face up to 10 years in jail.

 

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Alberto Pérez stands in one of the catchment areas to bring water to the amuna, the Quechua name for an ancient network of infiltration ditches, whose restoration has improved access to water in his village, San Pedro de Casta, while increasing the flow to the watersheds that supply the Peruvian capital. CREDIT: Courtesy of Alberto Pérez

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Jun 1 2021 (IPS)

In the highlands near the capital of Peru, more than 3,000 metres above sea level, ageold water recovery techniques are being used to improve access to water for 1,400 families, for household consumption and for crops and livestock.

This natural infrastructure project is located in the upper area of the town of San Pedro de Casta, some 90 km from Lima. With community participation, a network of ancient stone ditches called amunas in the native Quechua language is being restored there.

“We want to help the people who take care of the water sources to have greater water availability themselves,” Mariela Sánchez, executive director of Aquafondo, an initiative that promotes water security projects with nature-based solutions, told IPS in a video interview.

The non-governmental Aquafondo or Water Fund for Lima and El Callao (two neighbouring provinces) is part of the Latin American Water Funds Partnership, created in 2011 by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and international environmental protection organisations.

Aquafondo’s public and private partners promote the recovery, conservation and protection of the water sources that supply Lima, home to 9.5 million people, where there is a latent risk of water stress due to the arid conditions, climate change and rising demand.

Sánchez, an economist by profession, explained that the amuna ditches will directly benefit the families of this Andes highlands area because they will have water during the dry season to irrigate their crops of potatoes, beans, avocados and other products that are part of their daily diet and to water the pasture used by their livestock.

“Now we are capturing more water in the rainy season, the infiltration is seeding water in the rocky areas and will feed our farms,” Alberto Pérez, a farmer and former community leader of San Pedro de Casta, told IPS by telephone from his village.

The 58-year-old communal farmer gets up every day before six in the morning to get ready for the hour and a half walk to the Chinchaycocha area at 3,500 metres above sea level.

Women from San Pedro de Casta participate in the restoration of water infiltration channels, removing clay used in the process to recover water sources in the Andean highlands, some 90 kilometres from Lima, Peru. CREDIT: Courtesy of Alberto Pérez

The community takes care of the amuna ditches

He is one of the 100 villagers who, in four groups of 25, make the trek from Monday to Saturday to carry out the communal work of restoring the amuna channels – paid work that contributes to their household economy, while their families take over their share of the work caring for the crops and livestock.

“The amuna ditches date back to ancient times, they were used by the Incas for agriculture and now thanks to Aquafondo we are working to improve and widen them,” he said. “This year’s work will be finished in July and the channel will be activated with the next rains in October or November, to the joy of the entire community.”

Greater water availability has motivated them to expand their cultivation areas in order to increase production and have surpluses to take to market, as people are already thinking of doing in other towns and communities surrounding San Pedro de Casta, which includes the 1,400 families benefiting from the project, in the municipality of Huarochirí, department of Lima.

“Without water for irrigation, we could not think of planting more. Now we are planning to incorporate fruit trees such as apples and cherimoyas (Annona cherimola),” said Pérez enthusiastically.

In addition, the number of hours that piped water is available in the community’s homes has increased, which in the current times of the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed local residents to maintain hygiene habits to prevent infection, such as frequent hand washing.

Mariela Sánchez, executive director of Aquafondo, takes part in a Zoom interview with IPS. The Fund develops water security projects with nature-based solutions, and is part of the Latin American Water Funds Partnership. CREDIT: Mariela Jara /IPS

The city also benefits

The restoration of infiltration channels such as the amunas, reforestation or construction of cochas (small reservoirs) are some of the natural infrastructure works also known as water planting and harvesting.

They were used in pre-Hispanic times and their usefulness is being reappraised in different regions of the country. In the case of Lima, this process began with the Aquafondo projects.

Demand in the capital is partly met by water from the basins of the Rímac, Chillón and Lurín rivers. Of these, the first is the largest source and the one that also shows the greatest environmental deterioration.

The technique of infiltration through the amuna ditches is presented as a sustainable alternative with minimal environmental impact.

The already operational Aquafondo projects have so far restored 17.7 km of channels that contribute more than four million cubic metres of water per year to the Rimac and Lurin river basins.

“All residents of Lima are indirect beneficiaries of this work; according to World Bank studies, 80 percent of the water that infiltrates is for the benefit of the community and 20 percent for the city, but these percentages vary over time,” explained Sánchez.

A villager in San Pedro de Casta, in the central highlands of Lima, more than 3,000 metres above sea level, is seen here in the area of the infiltration channels or amunas in the Quechua language, which they have been restoring to capture rainwater and provide water in the dry season. CREDIT: Aquafondo

This means that with more natural infrastructure projects in the basins, the percentage of water needed locally will decrease, so that in the next 10 years, 20 percent of the water would be expected to be used in the community and 80 percent in the city, as the smaller population in the highlands means they would benefit more quickly.

In the case of San Pedro de Casta, Sánchez emphasises that the relationship of trust built with the local population is key to sustaining the joint work.

“We execute the projects that they identify as necessary and participate in their implementation. Once the work is finished, they are in charge of monitoring the projects to ensure that they continue to function and to replace parts if anything deteriorates or breaks down,” she said, specifying that each project must involve 25 per cent women.

The gender quota means that in each of the four groups of 25 people who carry out the daily communal work on the amunas, there are eight women. Pérez highlighted this fact, saying it helped empower women and strengthen the role that they play, although he pointed out that they are not given the most physically demanding tasks.

“They look for the clay, remove the soil, clean the ditches and thus take part in the chain of work, but we don’t ask them to carry the stones, that work is too heavy, and that’s not discriminating,” he said.

Ivan Lucich (left), executive president of the National Superintendency of Sanitation Services, participates in the signing of an agreement between the company EP Emusap and the rural communities of Micaela Bastidas and Atunpata, in the southern Andean municipality of Abancay, to implement the Mechanism of Remuneration for Ecosystem Services in the micro-watershed of Mariño, in Peru. CREDIT: Sunass

Water: governance is the key

In an initiative that began in 2007, the autonomous governmental National Superintendency of Sanitation Services (Sunass) has contributed to the conservation of water sources. Based on its role as a regulatory agency, in 2015 it created a tool for the implementation of the Law on Mechanisms of Remuneration for Ecosystem Services (Merse) to ensure a sustainable secure water supply.

The regulation establishes that water utilities must earmark one percent of the tariff to pay for ecosystem services in watersheds, thus generating a change in investment plans and promoting natural infrastructure projects.

The principle is that water users pay back, as part of their water bills, the people in the highland areas who help maintain water sources.

Iván Lucich, executive president of Sunass, explained to IPS in a video interview that while there has been progress in implementing the Merse in several regions of the country, the situation is different in the capital.

Sedapal, the public company in charge of the water supply in Lima, has not used the funds put aside for conservation since 2015 because it was looking for ways to organise itself internally to do so and because “they saw green infrastructure as unrelated to the work of a water company,” he said.

“The problem is that we didn’t understand that water is more of a governance problem than a resource problem, and that’s serious,” he asserted. But he believes that visits by Sedapal officials to the headwaters of the basins to learn about the experiences of local residents in the maintenance and conservation of water sources will help them understand the value of these initiatives.

Lucich is convinced that good community relations with the population contribute to the protection of ecosystems. He added that the prospect of being able to solve problems together in relation to drinking water and sanitation also strengthens relations.

Sedapal has 26.3 million dollars in its ecosystem services compensation reserve, and with the support of Aquafondo has already identified 15 projects that should be implemented in the coming months, following the required evaluation.

These projects must incorporate a gender perspective in their design and implementation. “Otherwise, from Sunass’ perspective, they could not be approved,” Lucich said.

He said the social dynamics in the different communities where they have worked generated very particular processes of grassroots involvement by women and their social organisations.

He gave the example of the question that was raised of who takes care of the children when women are working on the ditches, and said that in the face of this need it is up to the organised community to provide a solution and to make sure it becomes a shared responsibility.

Credit: iFarmer

By Kaveh Zahedi
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 1 2021 (IPS)

Last year, the Asia-Pacific region recorded its worst economic performance in decades. With the pandemic far from over, the region’s recovery is slow, fragile and highly uneven both across and within countries. As the region struggles to recover, how can countries rebuild their economies and revive their development?

The answer can be found in the flea market of Suva, the Facebook commerce online stores of Bangladesh, and the digital learning centers across Viet Nam. In these and so many other spots across the Asia-Pacific region, it is clear that women entrepreneurs are a driving force of recovery and the mainspring of commerce and technology. While we have always known that women entrepreneurs play an essential role in supporting inclusive economic growth in the region, the pandemic has made it more evident than ever that countries ignore women’s role as job creators, employees and contributors to economic expansion at their peril.

Advancing women’s equality in the Asia-Pacific region could add as much as US$ 4.5 trillion – a 12 per cent increase – to the region’s GDP annually by 2025. With the economic slump that countries now face, none can afford to continue to miss out on this largely untapped dividend.

That is why ESCAP – in collaboration with the Government of Canada – initiated the Catalyzing Women’s Entrepreneurship (CWE) programme. The programme addresses three fundamental barriers that are hindering the growth of women-led businesses.

The first is lack of access to finance. The programme works to unlock private capital and use this capital to support women enterprises. This capital – whether as loans, equity, or blended finance – is used to provide targeted support to women entrepreneurs. It has created partnerships and used blended finance to support a range of gender-smart investment mechanisms, including a FinTech challenge fund, impact investment, and a women’s livelihood bond. To date, the programme has supported over 7,000 women to access formal financial services and has unlocked over US$50 million in private capital for women entrepreneurs.

The second barrier is policy. Existing policies and laws often do not recognize the specific issues women-led Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) face.

The programme is working to influence national Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) policies and laws with Government partners in six countries. For example, in Cambodia, the programme worked with the Ministry of Industry Science Technology and Innovation to review the national SME policy and included special measures for women-led MSMEs.

COVID-19 has illustrated that businesses need to have greater resilience and the ability to ensure continuity through times of crisis. This is even more critical in places where other challenges like vulnerability to disasters and climate change have been in play. In Viet Nam, the past year has seen an extreme impact on agricultural farmers – a vast majority of them being women – because of the drought and saltwater intrusion. Based on consultations with female farmers and provincial officials in Ben Tre province – the largest agricultural bed of the country – the programme is developing a strategy to address the impact of climate change on female farmers in the Mekong Delta region.

The third barrier to growth in women-led businesses is skills. Women entrepreneurs need support to become equipped with digital and business skills to manage, sustain and grow their businesses.The CWE programme has assisted women entrepreneurs to use digital tools in their financial management and leveraging e-commerce to reach new clients and expand to new markets. In Cambodia, CWE is helping women entrepreneurs to use the Kotra Riel mobile app, which allows them to record income and expenses, and more importantly, to prepare financial records for their loan and financing applications.

All of these barriers have been in play in the aftermath of the pandemic. As a result, the impact on women and women entrepreneurs across the region has been disproportionate to their male counterparts. Women have continued to take the burden of unpaid care work and homeschooling. Sectors in which women employees work – such as the garment sector – have been hit harder than other industries, impacting women’s employment. Women entrepreneurs, who predominately make up the informal sector, face a range of financial and digital literacy constraints affecting business continuity.

Over the past year, we heard incredible stories of the resilience of the women entrepreneurs that our programme is supporting. We have seen women entrepreneurs repositioning their businesses and building back not only better but more agile, more capable and better prepared for shocks.

Take for example our partner iFarmer, in Bangladesh that quickly established new digitally enabled supply chains to keep women-led businesses running and providing food delivery Or the women enterprise recovery fund, in collaboration with our partners at UNCDF, that is co-financing fintech solutions that support women entrepreneur’s resilience and recovery.

But the scale of the challenge also requires a change in our response. In 2021 we will continue to scale up our work, leverage more capital, replicate and scale up our financing initiatives and share what we have learned. To increase the footprint of the programme, we are also leveraging regional partnerships, including with organizations like ASEAN.

Building back better means ensuring that women entrepreneurs not only survive this crisis but thrive coming out of it. This requires scaling up the resources directed to women-run businesses exponentially. Now that we have the model for success, we are looking for partners from across the private sector and development landscape to help us do just that. Because quite simply, the smartest investment for the SDGs is in the women of Asia and the Pacific.

Find out more at: https://www.unescap.org/projects/cwe

Contact us at: escap-cwe@un.org

Kaveh Zahedi is the Deputy Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

 

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Women and girls, like Susmita who lives in the Sundarbans, West Bengal, spend an estimated 200 million hours a year walking to fetch water, and climate change is making things even worse. Credit: Wateraid/Ranita

By Jonathan Farr
LONDON, Jun 1 2021 (IPS)

This year is being described as pivotal for climate change. That’s not only because we’re reaching a point of no return when it comes to the rise in global temperature, it’s because the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties – commonly known as COP26 – is due to take place in November in Glasgow.

COP26 is widely considered the last chance for governments to combat the global climate catastrophe. In the wake of the pandemic, the summit will offer world leaders the chance to reimagine how their countries can bounce back with greener, sustainable economies.

It’ll also be the first time that signatories of the landmark Paris Agreement all gather together. Adopted by nearly 200 nations in 2015, it legally binds them to hold global temperature rise to below 2C.

Quite rightly, in the lead up to COP26, focus is on tracking the progress signatories have made towards meeting those targets, as there’s no denying that failure to reduce emissions will result in cataclysmic climate impacts.

But on this World Environment Day on June 5, it needs to be highlighted that for millions of people, climate change is not some threat in a far-off future, but a reality they’re facing right now.

Significantly, the Paris Agreement, while heralded as a moment of unity in providing a global game plan to tackle one of the biggest challenges of our time, the playing field for dealing with climate change, isn’t level at all.

It is vulnerable communities in the world’s poorest countries who’ve done the least to contribute to the climate emergency that are the ones living with its severe effects. Take Mozambique, whose CO2 emissions in 2017 were 7.7 million tonnes. But in that same year, the UK released 379 million tonnes of CO2 – 50 times as much. 1

Yet in 2018, Mozambique’s capital Maputo almost ran out of water following three years of drought. And a year later, the country experienced unprecedented, widespread, and devastating flooding.

Access to clean water is one of the fundamental ways the climate crisis impacts on communities. 2.2 billion people do not have a reliable and safe supply of water, and climate change is making it harder for them to get clean water.

Extreme weather events caused by climate change, such as prolonged droughts, dry up water sources, while rising sea levels and flooding pollute poorly protected water supplies. More people – often women and girls– are having to travel farther for water.

Susmita Mandal Jana, 22 is a housewife, living in the Madhab Nagar area of Sundarbans, West Bengal. A round trip to collect water takes her one hour, and she crosses a rickety bridge over a canal about two to three times a day – while carrying heavy water containers.

Frequent phenomenon in the area are high tides, which can be a consequence of rising sea levels. When they occur, the canal gushes with water, making the walk over the bridge even more perilous. Susmita says: “The water quality is not good either. This water that I collect now is salty.”

Despite the UN climate process, currently, only 5% of total global climate cash is spent helping countries adapt to the changing climate 2, and that money isn’t even getting through to communities most vulnerable to climate change.

But as it’s communities on the frontlines of climate change, who best know how to respond to its effects, more investment in adaptation is needed.

There are practical solutions which are being piloted to address this. Initiatives, such as the recently launched Resilient Water Accelerator. Led by HRH The Prince of Wales’ Sustainable Markets Initiative, the accelerator will aim to protect 50 million people from climate and health threats with clean water, by ensuring that more finance is fast tracked towards providing communities’ with vital water services.

Other organisations are deeply involved in this area of work such as the UN Development Programme working with the government in Bangladesh and the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office to create a disaster management programme and the Dutch government’s programme Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities in Asia.

But with less than 1% of total global climate investment going to basic water infrastructure and services, more needs to be done. COP26 is the moment to change do this, to help people like Susmita cope with the impacts of climate change.

As the hosts of COP26, the UK government must lead the way in pushing for other countries to set more ambitious climate finance goals. WaterAid is calling for the Government to ensure at least one-third of its committed international climate finance goes to locally-led adaptation projects. By pledging this, lives will be saved.

1 https://washmatters.wateraid.org/blog/who-is-picking-up-the-bill-for-climate-crisis-inertia
2 https://washmatters.wateraid.org/publications/just-add-water-climate-finance

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is a Senior Policy Analyst at WaterAid
 
The following Oped is part of a series of articles to commemorate World Environment Day June 5

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait
 
World leaders need to act for children and youth struggling to survive and thrive.

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Jun 1 2021 (IPS)

A few weeks ago, I traveled with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi to the Modale refugee site in the Nord-Ubangi province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). What we witnessed there was a profound humanitarian crisis that has left 4.7 million children and youth in need of urgent, life-saving, life-changing educational support.

Yasmine Sherif

Here on the frontlines of violence, forced displacement, climate change-induced disasters, and COVID-19, an entire generation of children are at risk of being left so far behind they will never catch up.

Fleeing the chaos and insecurity connected with last year’s presidential elections in the neighboring Central African Republic (CAR), they have fled on foot through dense forests, hiding from violent militias. They have crossed raging rivers. They’ve lost loved ones. These children are now living far from their homes, without enough food to eat, many on the verge of losing their last hope.

In CAR, one in every four schools is not functional because of fighting, and half of the country’s children are out of school. 70% of the CAR refugee children have never been to school in their entire life.

They are the lost girls and lost boys of Africa.

And these CAR refugee children are not just lost in the DRC. CAR refugees are flooding across the Central African Republic border into Cameroon, Chad, the DRC and other nations. Elsewhere in Africa, schools are being targeted for attacks and students, their teachers and their communities live in constant fear.

With no education – and no lifeline – this lost generation of young people has few options. Out-of-school girls are at higher risk of sexual exploitation, violence and early pregnancy. Boys may be forced to join armed groups, Boko Haram or turn to kidnapping as is happening in Nigeria. Families fearful for their daughters’ lives might force them into child marriage as a means to protect them.

We have both a legal and a moral obligation to protect the rights of every child against such violations. We, as a global community, can no longer turn a blind eye to what is happening in countries like the Central African Republic and other crisis-affected countries in Africa.

So, what can be done?

For 30 years I’ve worked in and around the United Nations, whose Charter promised all generations to respect human rights, and to build a more peaceful, more prosperous world. Every government is part of this multilateral body and every world leader has thus made a commitment to live by its principles and values.

We’ve made progress, but it has been uneven. The cycle of poverty, violence and forced displacement – all exacerbated by the pandemic – appears never-ending.

We must take bold action and courageous steps to reach the Sustainable Development Goals. Through SDG4, governments across the world have agreed to ensure equitable, inclusive quality education for every girl and boy by 2030. Without an inclusive and continued quality education, all the other Sustainable Development Goals will be impossible to achieve. Education is the very foundation for reducing poverty, achieving gender-equality and creating a more just and peaceful world.

The UN’s global fund for education in emergencies, Education Cannot Wait, has now achieved a proven record of results, reaching children and youth in the darkest spots and most dangerous places on earth. These are countries where armed conflict, climate change and forced displacement are deeply intertwined.

In connecting the dots, it is clear that the only way to achieve all the global goals – and to reach the Paris Climate Agreement targets and other global accords ¬– is to begin with education. Education is both foundational and transformational.

It is a daunting task. COVID-19 has now pushed some 128 million crisis-affected girls and boys worldwide out of an education. That’s more than the total populations of the United Kingdom and Canada combined.

Providing these children and youth with an education is not only a legal and moral obligation. It is a game changer and a tipping point. It’s an investment in more resilient economies. It’s an investment in global peace. It’s an investment in local efforts to build strong nations. It’s an investment in our common humanity and our common future. Eventually, it will cost us more not to invest in them.

On our visit to Modale, I met with hundreds of young girls and boys whose only hope in this world is to be able to attend school, learn, develop and become economically self-reliant. School for them means a place safe from attacks – especially if governments step up efforts on the global Safe Schools Declaration. For this lost generation of Africa, school means a chance to learn to read and write. It is a chance for girls and boys to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses and political leaders. It’s a chance for them to not only build back better, but also to build forward together. For these children, education is their hope for a better future.

I urge world leaders, public and private sector donors and other key stakeholders to turn their eyes to the grave violations against children and youth happening every day throughout Africa. We cannot afford to leave a single one of these young people behind.

Urgent financing by donors in the tens of millions of dollars each is needed, and it is needed now. Because if we cannot do it now, when can we do it? And if we let their education wait, what price will they and we all pay?

Together, we can take action now. Their education and our humanity cannot wait. We need to act, as Martin Luther King Jr once said, with “the fierce urgency of now.”

 

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Excerpt:

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait
 
World leaders need to act for children and youth struggling to survive and thrive.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jun 1 2021 (IPS)

Pandemic relief measures in developing countries have been limited by modest resources, fear of financial market discipline and policy mimicry. COVID-19 has triggered not only an international public health emergency, but also a global economic crisis, setting back decades of uneven progress, especially in developing countries.

Struggling to cope
The pandemic’s economic and social impacts weigh more heavily on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The World Bank estimated that the pandemic pushed 119 to 124 million more people into extreme poverty in 2020.

Anis Chowdhury

The Bank also reported disproportionately larger business impacts in terms of closures, drops in sales, greater corporate debt and financial fragility. Meanwhile, households in poorer countries saw greater food insecurity as well as income and educational losses.

It also found public debt surging in many developing economies as a rising number of LMICs had greater difficulties servicing official debt. Facing sharp falls in tourism and export earnings, access to foreign credit for many has deteriorated.

Urgent financing needs
LMICs must address various urgent needs and other short-term problems. They need to finance emergency contagion containment and relief measures for those most adversely hit by the pandemic.

These would minimally include the costs of diagnostic testing, personal protective equipment for ‘frontline’ personnel, medical treatments for those infected, and urgent vaccination to mitigate further infections.

Liquidity support – e.g., low-interest loans and wage subsidies – can also be vital for the survival of businesses and workers. But in most countries, such credit facilities have mainly benefited more influential larger enterprises.

Policy and fiscal space as well as policy design are key elements influencing implementation of economic measures to cope with COVID-19 recessions. These require understanding the specific nature of recessions and options available, as distinct from simply following what others have done or recommend.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

COVID-19 recessions different
What makes the pandemic economic shocks different? First, SARS-COV2 is a highly contagious aerosol-borne virus with variants and mutations rapidly evolving, with mixed, uneven, even deadly effects. COVID-19 has affected most countries, albeit with varying and unequal economic consequences.

Second, both supply and demand shocks have had mainly negative effects. The pandemic directly affected the ability to work, earn and spend. Containment measures have also hit production, supplies and incomes. In turn, these have lowered demand, spending and incentives for firms to invest.

Third, the shocks have worsened existing disparities and other inequalities. Fourth, they especially hurt LMICs, typically lacking fiscal resources and relevant governance capacities to better cope with the pandemic.

Government as ‘payer-of-last-resort’
Misreading the COVID-19 shocks and expecting brief V-shaped recessions, some novel fiscal and monetary measures were hastily introduced to assist businesses and workers. These typically emulated measures in developed economies including temporary tax relief, low interest loans, cash transfers and wage subsidies.

Many high- and upper middle-income governments have served as ‘payers-of-last-resort’, helping ‘suspended’ businesses to continue paying their involuntarily idle employees, instead of firing them.

Large firms have also been able to get governments to help settle some of their unavoidable bills, to cover their overheads and maintenance costs – such as rent, utility and other payments – during ‘stay in shelter’ lockdowns.

Such ‘payer-of-last-resort’ programmes have successfully complemented effective contagion containment measures, enabling early resumption of economic activity. While high, such costs can remain manageable if governments can secure sufficient fiscal resources and space.

Policy blind spots
There has not been enough consideration of country specific circumstances, or social, economic, cultural and institutional circumstances. Thus, large informal sectors, crowded slums and limited social protection in developing countries have been largely overlooked, or worse, ignored.

Unsurprisingly, most financing disbursed via various official channels have not reached most in the informal sector. These resources have not provided much relief to small and micro-enterprises, let alone the self-employed.

However, much of what was offered to large firms were not used due to uncertainty and reduced domestic spending options. Meanwhile, significant resources have ‘leaked out’ of many developing countries, including via corruption as well as tax and other incentives for foreign investors.

Such failures in policy responses and poor design have greatly impaired prospects for quick and equitable COVID-19 containment and recovery. They have also exacerbated various inequalities within and among countries.

Diverging recoveries
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects divergent so-called k-shaped recoveries, leaving many LMICs and the vast majorities in most societies further behind. With ongoing vaccine apartheid and nationalism, early hopes of quickly addressing the crises in LMICs have faded.

Vaccinations in these countries have been much delayed, while donor countries, such as the UK, have significantly cut aid. Thus, economic crises in LMICs are far from over, delaying recovery with often disastrous consequences.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has even warned that uneven global recovery would ‘ricochet’ as “poorer countries are faced with the risk of interest rates increasing while their economies aren’t growing, and may find themselves ‘really strangled’ to service debt, especially if it’s dollar-denominated”.

Appropriate relief measures
All governments must try their best to prevent protracted recessions becoming extended depressions. Relatedly, policymakers need to ensure that temporary short-term liquidity problems do not become full-blown solvency crises.

Measures are needed to change contracts and other obligations to enable firms to better cope with involuntary suspension of business operations. Much more is needed to address specific challenges facing small family businesses.

Income maintenance policies can help those losing some, if not all their incomes. Often unable to earn their livelihoods from home, lowly paid and casual workers are more likely to be displaced by lockdowns. Typically, they have much less in savings to ride out temporary earnings losses.

Social protection has been poorly, if at all institutionalised in most developing countries. Instead, temporary ‘social safety nets’, in response to crises, have been recommended and deemed adequate by influential foreign agencies.

Such ‘one-off’ relief measures, typically involving targeting, usually miss many of the deserving as they strive, often at great cost, to prevent opportunistic ‘undeserving free-riders’ abusing such chances to secure benefits.

Recoveries threatened
Appropriate design and efficient implementation of adequate relief measures are also vital for enabling robust and equitable recovery. These can be crucial to the survival of businesses – especially micro- and small ones – and vulnerable people.

The absence of sufficient relief measures can strengthen vicious circles of business failures, job and income losses. Declining aid inflows, more capital flight and inadequate relief for high government debt even before the pandemic have prevented most developing countries from deploying the bolder measures needed.

Facing financing constraints, many low-income countries have even cut spending! Fearing punitive market responses and longer-term problems, many developing country governments have been reluctant to borrow more. The urgent challenge now, however, is to enable them to wisely and equitably spend more.

 

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By External Source
May 31 2021 (IPS-Partners)

These are just some of the beautiful ecosystems that we are lucky to have on our planet.

An ecosystem is the interaction between living things and their surroundings – from plants to animals to people.

The health of our ecosystems is what keeps us humans alive.

But we are destroying them and losing them at an alarming rate.

Forest areas the size of a country like Denmark are destroyed every year.

That’s the same as losing one football pitch every three seconds.

More than half of the world’s wetlands have disappeared over the last century.

Greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow and our planet is now at risk of a climate change catastrophe.

Imagine this: COVID-19 and everything that it did to our way of life is an example of what happens when ecosystems are allowed to die.

When a natural habitat for animals begins to shrink, we create the ideal conditions for harmful diseases to spread from them to us.

But we can make a change for the better.

We can act now to help the children of our future. Like me.

This year’s World Environment Day is all about Ecosystem Restoration.

It is a call for all of us to do our part in helping to heal our world and build a better future for everyone.

Restoring our ecosystems is a massive world project to repair billions of hectares of land so that people have access to food, clean water and jobs.

It means bringing back plants and animals from the brink of extinction.

But it also involves many small acts of kindness that every human can take – like planting a tree, rewilding our gardens, cleaning up trash and asking others to do the same.

The next 10 years of our lives are so important.

 

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By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, May 31 2021 (IPS)

Four women, two motorbikes, 64 districts and a journey of a lifetime, this is the story of Dr. Sakia Haque from Bangladesh. In November 2016, Dr Haque co-founded “Travelettes of Bangladesh – Bhromon Konya,” a women’s only group, with the motto of “empowering women through travelling.” This platform is not just an ordinary online travel group, but it is a platform of connection, sisterhood and networking of almost 60,000 girls and women in Bangladesh that empowers them by teaching them to raise their voices and encourages them to step out of their comfort zones and to “go see the world”.

Dr. Sakia Haque

“I believe motorcycles give us freedom, you have amazing views, you can stop whenever you want to and you get to see so much beauty around you,” says Dr. Sakia in an interview to me. “We wanted to prove that women can do it, they can step out of their comfort zones and travel, also because everyone was against it, our families and our society. Have you ever seen a girl ride a bike? They would say this to keep us dependent. It was a rare site, no doubt about that, but now, a lot of women ride scooters and motorcycles.”

When Dr. Sakia is not traveling, she works as a Medical officer, Disease control, Civil surgeon office, at Cox’s Bazar, one of the largest refugee camps in the world. Dr Sakia likes to call herself a full time doctor and a part time traveller. Using her knowledge of medicine and her passion for the outdoors, Dr. Sakia took her travelling as an opportunity to connect with young girls she would meet on the way and engage them in open discussions on their rights, sexual and reproductive health, particularly about menstruation, which is often considered a taboo topic in the country.

“We wanted to go to the root level, talk to women, understand what they are facing and interact with them. What we realized is, it is hard to pour water in a cup which is already full, and that was the reason behind choosing school going girls because we felt we could motivate them more. They were much more open minded towards grasping the idea of empowerment, so that became our goal.”

Dr. Sakia has spent over two years on the road, through highways, small towns, villages, muddy rural roads, including sandy river-chars, stopping at one school in each district/ area they visited. However the road and this journey has not always been an easy one, Dr. Sakia and her fellow volunteers have faced multiple challenges and a lot of criticism for their work. They have been harassed on the roads, eve-teased while riding through cities and even questioned, what and why they were doing what they were doing.

“Women on bikes and traveling alone is not something people were used to seeing, atleast not five-six years ago. But now, women don’t even need Travelettes of Bangladesh to go anywhere, and this is what we wanted, we didn’t want women to depend or rely on any organizations. We wanted them to go on their own, travel on their own, so this has been a major change in the country,” says Dr. Haque.

In Spite of this significant achievement for women in the country, Bangladeshi women and girls continue to face violence in all facets of their lives. In a report published by the Humans Rights Watch, titled, “‘I Sleep in My Own Deathbed’: Violence against Women and Girls in Bangladesh,” draws on 50 interviews to document the obstacles and challenges women face in the country. Human Rights Watch found that “despite some important advances, the government’s response remains deeply inadequate, barriers to reporting assault or seeking legal recourse are frequently insurmountable, and services for survivors are in short supply.”

In an interview given to me earlier by Shireen Huq, a women’s rights activist and founder of Naripokko, a non-profit organization that has been working on women’s rights and impact of sexual violence in Bangladesh since 1983, said “ There is a culture of impunity in the country and when it comes to accessing justice, corruption continues to be a major obstacle. Violence, male dominance and male aggression have existed for years, the tendency to glorify that these things didn’t happen in the past, and that it’s only happening now in our lifetime, is not true. Misogyny has been part of our culture, politics and society for centuries, especially across South Asia.

“At the root of sexual violence there is a culture of misogyny and toxic masculinity that drives it. Looking at the gang rapes that happened in 2020 which sparked off a huge movement in Bangladesh in October, they were all committed by the student wing or the youth wing of the ruling party.”, Shireen said.

According to Ain O Salish Kendra, a Bangladeshi human rights organization, 975 women were raped in the first nine months of 2020, 43 women were killed after being raped and 204 women were attempted to be raped by men in Bangladesh.

Despite a number of major strides made by women in Bangladesh over the past decades, which includes right to vote since 1947, electing its first female Prime Minister in 1991, Bangladesh has the eight lowest gender gap in political empowerment in the world, partially due to the fact that it has had a female head of government for longer than any other country in the world. The proportion of seats held by women in the national parliament doubled from 10 percent in 1990 to 20 percent in 2011.

Bangladesh could be a textbook example of “what is possible when women are involved in decision-making positions”, however unless the Bangladeshi government doesnt take concrete actions, works on making structural reforms against sexual violence and domestic violence against women, and remove obstacles to reporting violence and obtaining justice, no progress can be made in the country.

“The Bangladeshi justice system is failing women and girls with devastating consequences,” says Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should seize this pivotal moment to implement real reform that could save lives and promote the equal society it envisions,” Ganguly said.

The challenge not only lies in the lack of acknowledgement in government structures, but also in the need to create and put in place gender responsive policies that would pave the way for a more equitable environment.

While Dr. Sakia has managed to shatter a big glass ceiling in the country, making solo female travellers a more common sight than what it was before, she has also challenged the notions of what a woman can or cannot do, including riding a motorbike – with or without the street harassment and violence.

“What women also need to do now is know their value and worth, and believe in whatever they want to achieve. Collective workshops are not enough, we have to instill the idea that a woman can be empowered, because she is equal to a man, not just physically, but this equality comes from the mind and her belief system, that’s the change we need,” says Dr. Sakia.

The author is a journalist and filmmaker based out of New Delhi. She hosts a weekly online show called The Sania Farooqui Show where Muslim women from around the world are invited to share their views.

 

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The Meghna River Basin is significant to both Bangladesh and India as it supports the livelihoods of almost 50 million people. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
DHAKA, May 31 2021 (IPS)

Kajol Miah is a rice farmer from the Bangladesh side of the Meghna River Basin. And in towns on the Indian side of the river basin, Bangladeshi rice is in great demand.

The example is a simple one that highlights the concept of benefit sharing between riparian countries. Benefit sharing goes beyond the mere sharing of water resources. It includes equitably dividing the goods, products and services connected to the watercourse.

According to Raquibul Amin, country representative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Bangladesh, benefit sharing can provide a solution to conserve water resources and ensure integrated and cooperative management of the Meghna River Basin.

“Negotiations on benefit sharing are based on the principles of the International Water Law, such as reasonable and equitable utilisation of the shared water resources, not inflicting harm, and achieving win-win outcomes for multiple stakeholders,” Amin told IPS, adding that governance based on benefit sharing was more holistic than traditional governance, which has historically been about allocating water.

One example of traditional water governance is the 1996 Ganges Water Treaty between India and Bangladesh, which is based on sharing volumes of water.

But, according to Amin, parties negotiating a benefit sharing agreement are usually not interested in the water itself, but rather in the economic opportunities and ecosystem services that can be obtained and enhanced through the joint management of a river basin.

The Meghna River Basin is significant to both Bangladesh and India as it supports the livelihoods of almost 50 million people.

The area is also considerably large — almost twice the size of Switzerland — with 47,000 km2 of the basin located in India and 35,000 km2 located downstream in Bangladesh.

A rice paddy in the haor region of Bangladesh. Benefit sharing goes beyond the mere sharing of water resources. It includes equitably dividing the goods, products and services connected to the watercourse. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

Close to 90 percent of the forest or watershed of the Meghna river basin is located in India and is the source of river water flowing downstream into Bangladesh. For example, the Meghalaya plateau in India is rich in forests and is the source of many transboundary tributaries of the Meghna river system, such as the Umngot and the Myntdu, flowing from Jaintia hills into the haor region of Bangladesh, known for numerous wetlands of considerable areal extent representing important sites for fish breeding. 

Tanguar haor and Hakaluki haor are examples of wetland ecosystems rich in aquatic diversity and a roosting place for many migratory species of birds. Both are Ramsar sites, and Hakaluki haor holds the designation of Bangladesh’s largest inland waterbody.

But what happens upstream, affects downstream. This can be seen in the nearly 6 million tonnes of sediment that flows from the Indian side of the basin, down to Bangladesh’s haor region which creates problems for the management of these wetlands. 

“The benefit sharing approach to water dialogue will allow the two countries to engage in joint management of the forest and wetlands. The natural infrastructure of the Meghna Basin is critical for the maintenance of its hydrology,” Amin said.    

Amin noted that Bangladesh and India can discuss ways to jointly manage the forest of the basin for improving flood and silt management — two main challenges that affect the productivity of the fisheries and agriculture sector in the Surma-Kushiyara region in the Upper Meghna Basin in Bangladesh.

Miah, who is a resident from Kalmakanda in the Netrakona District, has also experienced recurring floods.         

“We, the haor [wetland ecosystem] dwellers, are dependent on Boro [rice] paddy as there is no alternative to cultivating other crops in haors. But, flash floods frequently damage our lone crop for lack of proper flood forecast, putting our life in trouble,” he told IPS.

The fortunes of rice farmers of the haor also impacts Bangladesh’s food security as their rice production constitutes 20 percent of the country’s total rice production.

The dialogue of benefit sharing for the Meghna River Basin is part of a larger project by IUCN called Building River Dialogue and Governance in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river basins (BRIDGE GBM), funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) through the Oxfam Transboundary Rivers of South Asia (TROSA) programme.

The Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna or GBM delta is a transboundary river system that traverses the five countries of Nepal, India, China, Bangladesh, and Bhutan.

“IUCN is providing a neutral platform for facilitating transboundary dialogues and joint research among the relevant stakeholders from Bangladesh and India. These have documented a variety of ecosystem benefits provided by the Meghna River Basin, and identified priority areas, such as joint management of forest for flood and erosion control, development of transboundary navigation and ecotourism circuits where the two countries can work jointly to enhance these benefits from the basin,” Vishwa Ranjan Sinha, Programme Officer, Natural Resources Group, IUCN Asia Regional Office, told IPS. 

IUCN developed a six-step process to support the development of benefit sharing agreements in a shared river basin:

• identifying benefits provided by the basin,
• identifying stakeholders and potential equity issues,
• identifying and building benefit-enhancing scenarios,
• assessing and distributing benefits and costs,
• negotiating a benefit sharing agreement, and
• strengthening the institutional arrangement for the implementation of the agreement.

IUCN also facilitated joint research and data sharing on land use and socio-economic changes across the Meghna River Basin to create data and evidence for the bilateral dialogue. Institutions conducting research include the Dhaka-based think-tank Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) and the Asian Centre for Development as well as India’s Northeast Hill University and the Institute of Economic Growth. 

Dr. Malik Fida A Khan, executive director of CEGIS, is optimistic of the advantages of benefit sharing. If done well, he told IPS, local communities of both countries will come forward to support the joint management of the basin because it provides for their livelihoods. He said their mutual benefit could also lead to data sharing for each other’s benefits.

Freshwater Conservation is one of the themes of the IUCN World Conservation Congress, which will be held from Sept.3-11,  2021 in Marseille. One of the Congress sessions will specifically focus on nature-based solutions that have been used as a tool to strengthen inclusive governance in the BRIDGE GBM project.

** Writing with Nalisha Adams in BONN, Germany

 

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Credit: Maricel Sequeira/IPS

By Joel E. Cohen and Joseph Chamie
NEW YORK, May 31 2021 (IPS)

Results from the 2020 population censuses in the United States and China recently made headlines. But rather than recognizing the social, economic and environmental benefits of slower rates of population growth for the U.S., China and the planet, much of the media stressed the downsides of slower growth and wrote about population collapse, baby bust and demographic decline.

The U.S. population increase of 7.4 percent from 2010 to 2020 was the second lowest rate of growth since the country’s first census in 1790, and half typical growth rates since 1790. Only during the Great Depression of the 1930s did U.S. population grow more slowly, by 7.3 percent. However, even slower rates of U.S population growth are expected in the coming decades (Figure 1).

 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

 

The populations of 55 countries or areas will decrease by 1% or more between 2020 and 2050. China's population is projected to fall by almost 3%, Italy by 10% and Japan by 16%. By contrast, the population of the United States, currently at 333 million, is projected to grow by nearly 14%

China’s population grew 5.3 percent in the decade ending in 2020, the lowest decadal growth rate since the catastrophic famine of the late 1950s. India projects for 2011-2021 its lowest decadal rate of population growth, 12.5 percent, since its independence.

Lopsided lamentations have focused on the downsides of slower population growth. For example, some commentators who favor more rapid U.S. population growth contend that Americans desire to have more children than they are presently having.

However, while some Americans want more children than they are having, some want fewer. In 2011 (the latest available year), of the 6.1 million pregnancies in the United States, 1.6 million (27 percent) were mistimed and 1.1 million (18 percent) were unwanted at any time. Of all 2011 U.S. pregnancies, 45 percent were not intended.

Some public handwringers maintain that a large population size aids the United States’ competition for economic and geopolitical dominance with China. But the mercantilist view that there is strength in numbers alone is obsolete by centuries. A large or rapidly growing population is hardly necessary or sufficient for prosperity.

Finland, ranked the happiest country in the world, has an average number of children per woman per lifetime of 1.4, compared to the U.S. rate of 1.6 children per woman, South Korea’s 0.8, Singapore’s 1.1, Italy’s 1.3, Japan’s 1.4, Norway’s 1.5 and Denmark’s 1.7. China currently has an average 1.3 children per woman per lifetime, markedly fewer than the United States (Figure 2).

 

Source: National Statistical Offices.

 

Some advocates of more rapid population growth argue that it would permit more people who want to move to the U.S. to do so. About 158 million adults in other countries would like to settle permanently in the U.S., according to the Gallup poll in 2018. Would the U.S. willingly accept many or most of these would-be migrants?

More rapid population growth, especially through increased immigration of working-age adults, would temporarily ease the pressures on pay-as-you-go public programs for the elderly, particularly Social Security and Medicare, by broadening the country’s tax base.

But there’s a catch: in the future those additional workers would retire, requiring additional workers to broaden the tax base again for the retiring workers. This demographic expansion would need to continue indefinitely.

Public discussion has largely ignored the notable social, economic and environmental upsides of slower American population growth. Slower population growth increases economic opportunities for women and minority groups, and exerts upward pressures on wages, especially for unskilled labor.

For a given rate of capital investment, slower population growth also raises capital per person, raising productivity. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grows more slowly, but GDP per person grows faster.

All else equal, slower population growth lessens America’s contributions to climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and pollution from commercial, industrial, agricultural, and domestic activities such as heating and cooling buildings and fueling transport. Slower population growth makes it easier for governments, schools, and civic and religious organizations to adapt to increasing demands of more people.

Worries about impending demographic doom for the U.S. seem decidedly misplaced. The United Nations projects that the populations of 55 countries or areas will decrease by 1 percent or more between 2020 and 2050. China’s population is projected to fall by almost 3 percent, Italy by 10 percent and Japan by 16 percent (Figure 3). By contrast, the population of the United States, currently at 333 million, is projected to grow by nearly 14 percent, largely through immigration, to 379 million by 2050.

 

Source: United Nations Population Division.

 

The world’s population growth rate peaked in the 1960s and is falling in most regions except sub-Saharan Africa. Whereas the U.S. population increased nearly four-fold during the 20th century, it is expected to increase by roughly 50 percent in the 21st century.

The United States and many other countries, including China, face real population challenges, but not principally slower population growth or even gradual population decline. The problems include rapid population aging, managing cities and economies in recognition of climate change, regulating and responding to migration, and enabling people to have the children they want through reproductive health care and child-care support.

As COVID-19 has clearly demonstrated worldwide, real population challenges include protecting people against present and future pandemics, maintaining competitive technological change with better investments in education and worker training, and raising the value placed on today’s children, who are tomorrow’s future problem solvers. In 2021, 22 percent of all children under age 5 years are stunted from chronic undernutrition, despite record cereal production globally.

The global slowdown in population growth rates is not a transitory demographic phenomenon. It signals important durable successes. Couples are having smaller numbers of children in an increasingly urbanized world while men and women pursue education, employment and careers and live longer than ever before.

It is time to recognize that slower population growth benefits America, China, and the Earth.

 

Joel E. Cohen is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Populations at The Rockefeller University and Columbia University in New York and author of “How Many People Can the Earth Support?”.

Joseph Chamie is a former Director of the United Nations Population Division, New York, former research director of the Center for Migration Studies and editor of International Migration Review, now an independent demographer and author of “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters”.