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By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, May 25 2021 (IPS)

In 2016, when Bosnian-American professional basketball player, Indira Kaljo got in touch with Asma Elbadawi because she had been forced to give up playing basketball after she started wearing the hijab, they decided to take it up with the International Federation of Basketball (FIBA), the sports governing body to change its rules on headgear.

Asma Elbadawi

Most sports federations around the world don’t specify or ban Hijab, but the usage of general language in which ‘headgear’ is banned, means women who wear Hijab, or men or women who wear turbans or other religious gears cannot participate in those sports. However the challenge was not just to overturn the rule, but also counter the belief what Muslim women can or can’t do, which includes playing ‘Basketball’.

Asma became one of the leading voices in the fight to get FIBA to permanently lift the ban on headgears to allow players in turbans, hijabs and other religious headwear to play basketball at all levels. It took four years to finally win the #FIBAAllowHijabCampaign and to overturn the rule.

“That moment when I realized we won the campaign, I was so excited about the girls who would now get that opportunity to play,” says Asma Elbadawi to me in an interview. “Sometimes I think about it and I can’t believe it happened, because in my mind I am a little person, one voice, but we all built our voices together and became so loud that we changed history.”

The impact of this campaign also helped normalize and, for many, introduced covered Muslim women into sports, challenging the stereotype narrative of ‘suppressed Muslim women in a hijab.’

“There were so many people from outside the community who did not understand what it meant for a Muslim woman to maintain her modesty, and if that meant choosing to wear the Hijab, they kept saying why don’t you take it off,” says Asma.

When it comes to sports, it took women a long battle to be able to participate in competitive events, and they still undergo the humiliating practice of sex-testing to make sure they are not men trying to cheat the system – biologically or literally. There was a time when women were not permitted to watch the Olympic games, which were founded in 1894, reserved just for male athletes. It was only in 1900, women were admitted as participants in sports, “that were considered to be compatible with their femininity and fragility, but excluded from the showpiece events of track and field”. It took another 28 years for women to compete for athletics medals, which included, the 100m, the 4x100m relay, the high jump, the discus and the 800m. The latter being an occasion marred by ‘fake news’.

It is not often we see women in male-dominated sports, and even less so for Muslim women, who already have to defy stereotypes, jump multiple social, religious and break personal barriers to be able to be where they are.

“When you deny a whole demographic of people the ability to join in, you are losing out on talent, and most of the time, that talent can add so much to the space and the environment,” says Asma.

It is important for sport federations as institutions to create a more inclusive environment with bigger female representations. How women are portrayed in the press matter, and the media must be held accountable for its unconscious biases and gender markings.

“She’s the female Usain Bolt,” such statements intend to flatter women, “but are actually another way that men’s sport is presented as the standard against which women’s sport should be judged”. Sexualization of female athletes, compulsory heterosexuality and appropriate femininity focused on the athletes bodies rather than athletic abilities are all barriers that are preventing women from performing at the highest level. “Many female athletes are only accepted by the society and receive coverage in the media, if they participate in traditionally feminine sports. If a woman dares to participate in a masculine sport, their sexuality is immediately questioned,” highlights this report.

Multiple athletics retailers have been pulled up for their treatment of women or people of colour in the workplace. Nike, a brand which identified women as one of “four epic growth opportunities” faced criticism for its treatment of female atheltes during pregnancy, in addition to a class action lawsuit alleging sex discremination. At Adidas, Black employees formed a coalition to pressure top management for change against systemic racism. Both the retailers released their list of company actions, acknowledging to put a stop to racism.

Sport is meant to be one of the most important socio-cultural learning experiences. Girls and women who play sports have higher levels of confidence and self-esteem, lower levels of depression, and more positive body image. Playing a sport is where you traditionally learn about teamwork, goal setting, pursuit of excellence in performance and other achievement-oriented behaviours – critical skills necessary for success in the workplace. However the written and unwritten rules in the sports industry such as ban on headgear, are arguably discriminating against female athletes, and that’s why voices like Asma are needed when women’s sports are de-emphasized.

“You do feel you are representing more than just yourself when you wear the hijab, especially when you are going into communities where they have never seen women wearing hijab. You want to show your best self because you want them to feel like these girls are doing something amazing, and everything we hear in the media is not true about their community,” says Asma.

The challenge is not just from the sport providers, the industry and its management, but also to change the attitude of women and girls towards sports and activities in order to increase participation. The barriers to participation faced by Muslim women are not different from those faced by women from other ethnicity and different cultural backgrounds. Safety and security are important to prevent racially or gender motivated incidents. Cultural sensitivity is definitely an enabling tact, but it is also important to promote positive images, have more diverse role models, stories of success and empowerment, along with simply letting a woman to just be an athlete, without stereotypes, without othering and patronization towards what she can or can’t do. As Asma says, “representation is important because it allows young girls to see women they can relate to in fields they aspire to be in. It gives them hope that they can also achieve those things.”

These would be key to developing long term attitudinal change and increasing participation levels of girls and women in sports – which no longer is or should be defined just by the ‘male gaze’.

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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Ntchisi District Hospital, Malawi, April 2021. Credit: WaterAid/Wimbledon Foundation/Dennis Lupenga

By Dennis Lupenga*
LILONGWE, Malawi, May 25 2021 (IPS)

Malawian healthcare workers are facing challenges from all sides. More than half of healthcare facilities in Malawi are without handwashing facilities, almost two thirds have no decent toilets and almost one fifth do not have clean water on site.

With cases of Covid-19 in the country continuing throughout the year, staff are working through the pandemic without a basic first line of defence against infection.

For midwives and those involved in maternity care, this absence is frightening. Without water, toilets and soap, health centres, the very places which are supposed to keep mums and babies well, become breeding grounds for the rapid spread of infectious diseases.

Globally, one million mothers and new-born babies die from infections soon after birth each year. This is a tragedy that could easily be prevented with something so simple – soap and water.

In the run up to this year’s three-day World Health Assembly, which is scheduled to end May 26 in Geneva, WaterAid spoke to health workers, patients and families in about the challenges of keeping mums and babies safe in this environment.

Ntchisi is a rural district in the central region of Malawi. There are four health care centres: Ntchisi District Hospital as well as Kangolwa, Mkunzi and Khuwi health centres.

None have adequate water, sanitation or hygiene facilities. Mothers and babies are at risk of catching and spreading infectious diseases – and staff are struggling to keep the environment clean.

WaterAid and the Wimbledon Foundation are working together to bring clean water, decent sanitation and good hygiene to these four healthcare facilities in the Ntchisi District – a change which will impact 300,000 people.

But there are almost 2 billion people being put at risk every day across the world, because they go to work or seek care at a hospital or clinic without these fundamental services.

Chrissy, a health attendant at Khuwi Health Centre, has to collect water four times a day from community boreholes, 300m away from the health centre. The boreholes are crowded, and she has to either spend time queueing, or fight her way to the front of the line, explaining that it is for the health centre.

She worries that when she leaves the hospital to do this, she is leaving her colleague (one nurse midwife) alone to look after a number of mothers and babies. This means that some are left on their own, and at times when both the baby and the mother require urgent care, one or the other loses out. On any maternity ward, any moment can be critical.

Chrissy, a health attendant at Khuwi Health Centre, Malawi, April 2021. Credit: WaterAid/Wimbledon Foundation/Dennis Lupenga

She said: “The time we leave the hospital to fetch water can literally mean the difference between life or death for women and babies.”

Even though the health centre staff know how important handwashing is as a first line of defence against Covid-19 and other infectious diseases, there simply isn’t enough water to make this happen, or to keep the surfaces clean in the hospital.

Chrissy said: “…during this time of COVID-19, we have been trying our best to make sure that water is available for people to wash their hands before getting any medical attention, but we just can’t keep up with the huge number of people. It is important to keep the surfaces of the hospital clean so that we don’t become a conduit of spreading the virus.”

Khuwi Health Centre attracts a lot of people due to its location, alongside the main tarmac road to Ntchisi District. But the centre bears the scars of somewhere that has, for a long time, struggled with water, hygiene and sanitation issues.

In the maternity ward, women who have no other way to clean themselves once they have delivered a baby have resorted to cutting away pieces of the mattresses (there are only two) and using these pieces as sanitary pads.

Kangolwa Health Centre’s busy labour ward, not far from Khuwi, delivers 40-60 babies every month. Unfortunately, there is only one working toilet for the entire labour ward and this is often blocked. Only one woman can wash in the bathroom each day as it fills up with water and blood.

Some mothers are asked to walk to the other side of the health centre to use a shared bathroom for relatives who are caring for patients at the hospital. This bathroom is often blocked too.

Steria, community midwife at Kangolwa Health Centre says: “Imagine asking a woman who has just given birth to walk all the way to the other side of this facility with blood dripping all the way. “It is heart-breaking, but we just don’t have any other options.”

Loveness’s one day old grandson was born at another healthcare centre in the region. To help her daughter recover, Loveness wants to prepare food and drinking water for her at the health centre’s kitchen but without clean water nearby, this is difficult.

She said: “For the past three days, we have had challenges accessing water. Especially here at the kitchen, there is no running water. “Imagine having to walk several times in a day to fetch water not just for drinking, cleaning plates, pots and others eating utensils not forgetting water for bathing and cooking for both myself and my daughter, but also fetching water for everyone who is here at the hospital.It is not easy.”

One in three healthcare facilities globally do not have readily available access to handwashing facilities and almost half of healthcare facilities in the world’s poorest countries have no clean water. Without these bare essentials, new-born babies are needlessly at risk from infections and diseases.

Community midwife technician Eunice is adamant that hospitals without running water and decent hygiene pose a threat to public health: “We need thorough handwashing in our line of duty. With no water, we can’t wash our hands. We are at great risk as health workers, not forgetting the patients we have to attend to. “Instead of patients getting help from this clinic, they are getting infections. Simply because we have no running water. “Water is life. Without it, we are doomed.”

Data shows that globally, a staggering 1.8 billion people are at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 and other diseases, simply because they use or work in a healthcare facility which lacks basic water services. In the twenty first century this simply shouldn’t be and needn’t be the case.

Last December the WHO estimated that to bring clean water, handwashing facilities and decent toilets to the health care centres in the poorest countries would cost just $3.6billion – which equates to around an hour and a half’s worth of what the whole world spent in a year on the Covid-19 response.

It’s time to make this investment.

*Dennis Lupenga is Voices from the Field Officer at WaterAid, based in Lilongwe, Malawi.

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, May 25 2021 (IPS)

Failure to sufficiently accelerate comprehensive efforts to contain COVID-19 contagion has greatly worsened the catastrophe in developing countries. Grossly inadequate financing of relief, recovery and reform efforts has also further set back progress, including sustainable development.

Anis Chowdhury

Uncertain and unequal recovery
After over a year, “Poor countries are facing severe setbacks on their development paths, encumbered by ballooning debts, high risks of default and limited ability to inject desperately needed liquidity”, observed participants at a recent UN Forum.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief economist, Gita Gopinath, estimates US$9 trillion in economic benefits from adequately accelerating affordable mass vaccination, testing, tracing and treatment at a cost of US$50bn.

Overall global projections obscure disparities among and within countries. With vaccine apartheid and developing countries’ constraints, uneven pandemic containment and recovery have been worsening prior inequalities, further setting back poor countries and people.

Global disparities
Government responses have been much constrained by macroeconomic policy space, especially access to finance. ‘Unconventional’ monetary policies since the 2008 global financial crisis, especially low interest rates, have helped.

Thus, high-income countries (HICs) have borrowed and spent much more on relief and recovery. While rich countries have been able to borrow and spend massively, developing countries have very limited fiscal space due to diminished borrowing capacity.

Often with poorer credit histories and ratings, developing countries generally face much higher interest rates on foreign borrowing. Their foreign debt burdens as shares of national income were already relatively higher before the pandemic. All these have constrained them from adopting bolder expansionary efforts.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Unsurprisingly, developed countries have accounted for nearly 80% of all fiscal efforts. Compared to 16% of their national incomes, least developed countries have only increased government expenditure by 2.6% on average. Facing financing constraints, many low-income countries (LICs) have even cut spending!

Insufficient international support
Total resource flows to developing countries have fallen as official development assistance (ODA) and foreign direct investment (FDI) have declined. FDI in developing economies fell by 12% in 2020: by 37% in Latin America and the Caribbean, 18% in Africa and 4% in Asia.

While donors cut bilateral aid commitments by 36% in 2020, net ODA from 13 OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) rich member countries declined by US$4.7bn – led by a 10% UK cut – as “DAC donors prioritized their national responses towards COVID at the expense of international aid”.

International support for developing countries at this time of great need has been woefully inadequate. Despite acknowledging that “Debt service suspension is a powerful, fast acting measure that can bring real benefits to people in poor countries”, the World Bank has refused debt service cancellations.

The Bank claims these would adversely impact its credit rating, reducing its ability to borrow at low preferential rates for lending to middle-income countries (MICs) and to LICs on concessional terms. Unsurprisingly, debt cancellation has not been envisaged by the Bank.

From April 2020, the IMF’s Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust has provided debt service relief of about US$500m, or 0.2% of GDP for 28 highly indebted LICs, its poorest and most vulnerable members. This relief has been extended twice – for half a year each time – to cover all eligible debt service payments due to the Fund estimated at US$238 million in the latest round.

The G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) is even worse, merely delaying repayments. Interest continues to accumulate to be repaid later. Despite two extensions, borrowing countries’ lack of enthusiasm for DSSI is hardly surprising. As private creditors have not joined, DSSI only covered 2% of total debt service payments due in 2020.

Leveraging the new SDRs
With Biden administration support, US$650bn in new IMF special drawing rights (SDRs) should be approved by August. But this is barely half of the trillion in SDRs (worth US$1.37tn) that The Financial Times deemed necessary.

SDR allocations are proportionate to countries’ shareholdings and voting rights, mainly benefiting developed, especially European countries. Allocations for the Group of Seven (G7) largest developed economies amount to US$272bn, with Africa getting only US$33.6bn! Nonetheless, the new SDRs should provide some welcome relief for many countries.

Developed countries which do not need to use their new SDRs should transfer their new allocations to the 15 ‘eligible’ multilateral financial institutions, including the IMF, World Bank and regional development banks. These should be used to expand their lending to developing countries on preferential terms.

Calling for massive multilateral development bank recapitalization for a ten-fold increase in official funding for poor countries, Jeffrey Sachs has called for much more official financing, by ‘recycling’ at least US$100bn of HIC SDRs.

Financing options for developing countries
Most developing country governments were already heavily indebted to varying degrees before the pandemic. Much greater debt forbearance is urgently needed as well as longer-term development financing are also needed.

While MICs may have more borrowing options, enabling them to minimise the burden of past government debt, domestic or foreign, is urgent. Already, the financial community and media frequently warn that their credit ratings will be adversely affected if they borrow more.

World Bank chief economist Carmen Reinhart – once reputed for her aversion to high indebtedness – now urges countries to borrow to fight the economic impact of the pandemic. She has rightly opposed putting “resources into zombie loans”.

Increasing non-performing loans and financial fragility to enable unviable firms to survive would slow recovery efforts. Instead, Reinhart has stressed the need to “expediently restructure and write down bad debts”.

However, there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to financing needed measures to contain the pandemic and for macroeconomic expansion. Meanwhile, poor countries’ financing conditions are worsening as the pandemic drags on much longer than expected.

Facing economic slowdown, most governments need to spend much more domestically to prevent temporary recessions becoming depressions. Developing countries should not incur foreign debt except on preferential terms as necessary to import essentials such as medicines and food.

International cooperation must ensure significantly more official foreign exchange financing to supplement innovative domestic financing for urgently needed spending for relief, recovery and reform.

 

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Soybean field near Eldorado in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. Credit: Gerson Sobreira

By External Source
QUITO, May 24 2021 (IPS)

Latin America has lots of natural advantages for the coming energy transition. It already has the greenest power matrix in the world. While having the planet’s largest reserves of copper make it a key provider for international electrification programmes.

Yet transport is its Achilles heel. Just 1% of Latin American transport is fuelled by clean energy. So, while more than half of its electricity comes for renewable sources, once you factor in the heavy dependence on oil and gas for moving people and goods around the region, then the renewable share of its primary energy is just 5%.

Latin America will only make significant progress in its energy transition when it manages to fuel more transport with renewable energy. One solution will be electric vehicles (EVs). However, as mining experts reveal elsewhere in this report, copper supply will be unable to replace every existing internal combustion engine with an EV by 2050.

The energy transition is such an ambitious target that countries will have to use all of the tools at their disposal. Latin America’s natural endowment mean that it can increase its biofuel production exponentially, without harming the environment or food supplies

That’s even more true for aviation, where electric planes are nowhere near ready for commercial passenger flights. That means biofuels will also play an important role. Latin America is already the world’s largest biofuel producer and, more importantly, it has ample room to increase production. A UN report found that thanks to abundant freshwater and vast stretches of unused farmland, Latin America’s has 42% of the world’s potential increase in agricultural production.

 

2nd Generation

When Brazil’s largest biofuel producer, ECB Group, starts operations in Paraguay it will cement Latin America’s leading position in the industry. That’s because the Paraguayan project, Omega Green, is Latin America’s first ever second-generation biorefinery.

Omega Green, which opens in 2024, will produce HVO, a type of biodiesel, and SPK, a bio aviation fuel. European oil majors, Shell and BP, have already signed offtake contracts for 90% of production, underscoring the demand for low carbon solutions to the transport problem.

BP has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050 and recognises that biofuels can help it get there. Countries with ambitious environmental targets, such as the UK, will eventually make the same decision. And it’s the technological advantages of second-generation biofuel – from its feedstock to its uses – that will help convince them.

By using an energy-intensive process of applying hydrogen to organic matter, second-generation biofuels can produce a wider range of fuels. For example, aviation fuel that allows biofuels cut emissions that electrification simply can’t reach.

Second-generation biodiesel also has more uses than its predecessor, as it is a ‘drop in’ fuel that can be placed in existing internal combustion engines and work without any modifications. Indeed, you could power your car will 100% HVO or mix any percentage with your usual diesel.

That flexibility – in both feedstock and use – makes biofuel an essential part of the fight against climate change, says Erasmo Battistella, CEO of ECB Group. “Biofuel has many advantages over electric vehicles. Take London for example, with HVO you could replace the dirty diesel fuel, with its polluting emissions, overnight. You don’t need to build new infrastructure, or buy costly new busses, you just put our fuel straight in.”

You would expect a biofuel producer to talk up the benefits of his product, but his assessment is confirmed by the experiences of one of Latin America’s leading proponents of electrification, Irene Cañas, President of the Costa Rican Institute of Electricity.

Cañas, who oversees the most renewable electricity system in the world, plans to replace Costa Rica’s existing fleet of diesel buses with electric buses. “It will begin with a pilot scheme, using three electric buses donated by Germany. That will begin this year, as we test the buses on different routes to evaluate their performance.

The scheme has been delayed by the pandemic because the health restrictions mean that buses can only carry half the passengers, which has cut the revenues for bus companies and made them less willing to invest in electric vehicles.” With proven biodiesel there is no need for performance tests. But more importantly, it doesn’t require costly equipment swaps.

Second-generation biofuel’s feedstock flexibility is another big plus. One of the biggest biofuel criticisms is that it reduces farming for food production. Yet with these new biofuels it’s not true, says Battistella. “The beauty of second-generation biofuels is that they can use such a wide range of feedstocks.

We are keen to develop a diverse supply of different crops. And that’s why biofuels will be a success around the world. Whether it is palm in Indonesia or canola in Canada – biofuels can always be made with local plants.

And by planting more crops we actually increase the food supply. Because the best parts can be used for food and whatever is left as feedstock for biofuel […] it can also come from animal waste, rubbish or agricultural by-products.”

 

Environmental impact

Another supposed flaw with Latin American biofuel is that it will deforest parts of the Amazon. Yet Alfredo Mordezki, manager of the Santander Latin America Investment Grade ESG Bond Fund, says the Amazon is so sensitive that firms who damage it will have restricted access to international capital markets.

“Some may think of Brazil as this terrible polluter that is deforesting the Amazon, but within the country there are many companies with great environmental practises. Take Brazil’s pulp and paper companies. People assume that they are linked to deforestation but actually they are keen to distance themselves from the Amazon because they know how damaging that can be to their reputation.

As a result, most of these companies are making efforts to be more transparent, disclose more information and have ambitious plans to become greener. A lot of the worst environmental damage is committed by illegal groups in Latin America, for example with informal mining. But if we can funnel money to the best listed companies then it should drive change.

A Brazilian soy producer that recently issued bonds has independently certified that all of its land, and that of any suppliers, is not coming from a deforested part of the Amazon. That has raised the bar for any further soy companies looking for investment.”

That assessment is backed up by Battistella. “For us to sign the agreements with BP and Shell we had to certify the environmental impact of everything from planting the raw material to how the final product would be consumed.” That’s why “our pongamia is being produced in the vast, barren Chaco region of Paraguay. This is not land that has been deforested for our production, but farming land that we are reforesting for our project.”

Indeed, Omega Green has already announced that one-third of its feedstock will be coming from Pongamia, a tree that doesn’t require fertilizer, lives for 100 years and has a low carbon density. “The fuel you produce actually has a negative carbon density score. Imagine that – you are supplying airlines with a fuel that actually sequesters more CO2 than it produces.”

Indeed, Battistella feels that biofuel is subject to far more environmental scrutiny than EVs. “The supply chains for a lot of the metals used in electric cars are not very clean, with child labour involved in mining some of the metals. The process for making batteries can also have a harmful environmental impact.”

 

Market niche

The final criticism of biofuel is that it doesn’t produce enough output to make a significant impact on climate change. Battistella says the numbers from Omega Green prove otherwise. “Pongamia is so productive that just 120,000 hectares will produce enough feedstock for 1/3rd of our needs.

With 400,000 hectares it could cover our entire production. That might sound like a lot of land to someone in London but the Chaco region has 24 million hectares.” Again, his words are backed up by the fact that BP and Shell are using biofuel to reach their ambitious carbon neutral targets. Moreover, the success of Omega Green can be replicated throughout the region, says Battistella.

“Even though Brazil is the leader in Latin American biofuels, we also see widespread consumption and production elsewhere in the region. Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Peru are all using and making biodiesel and ethanol. Latin America could increase biofuel production tenfold just by applying new technology and planting more feedstock.”

However, it is true that biofuel won’t be able to replace oil on its own. Current global oil demand is around 100 million barrels per day, while Omega Green’s total production will be 20,000 bpd. Even if you build 1,000 Omega Greens, you would only cover a fifth of oil demand. So, the transition will require a combination of EVs and biofuel. Many investors think of them as mutually exclusive, when in fact they are complementary.

“Look back around 150 years to the last energy transition, when oil began to replace coal. Even though oil became dominant coal is still being used today. We will see something similar with this energy transition – oil will still be used for the next 70 or 100 years. And that’s OK because to limit the impact of climate change, we don’t need to replace 100% of oil, we just need to reduce CO2 to historical levels.

Oil is built-in to a lot of the technology we use so it’s impossible for us to ignore it completely. Moreover, rising energy demand means that we will need it. For example, cargo volumes are expected to triple between now and 2050.

But we need to be intelligent and use biofuels to the best effect. One example is aviation, where electric planes are not viable at the moment and hydrogen is too dangerous to carry people. Another is the city centres where people are forced to breathe in poor quality air, that is like smoking a cigarette each day.”

Biofuel’s advantages in cities make it a perfect solution for Latin America, which is the most urbanised region in the planet. Moreover, biofuel doesn’t just replace oil in the petrol stations. By-products, such as bio naphtha, can be used as feedstocks to make green plastic.

Ultimately the energy transition is such an ambitious target that countries will have to use all of the tools at their disposal. Latin America’s natural endowment mean that it can increase its biofuel production exponentially, without harming the environment or food supplies.

Meanwhile, biofuel’s competitive advantages are well-suited to the region’s needs. Omega Green may be the first second-generation biofuels plant in Latin America but it won’t be the last. It is paving the way for a biofuel boom that will help clean the region’s transport sector.

This story was originally published by LatAm INVESTOR

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 24 2021 (IPS)

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks.

The original article was published on February 25 2021

Forest women in Anantagiri forest in the south-east of India check out their solar dryer. (file photo) There is a growing shift and awareness in mainstream political, corporate and public debate about the need for climate action. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2021 (IPS) – A keen awareness about the intersection of our ecosystem and the “accelerating destabilisation of the climate” is helping shift the narrative for climate action and can help us transition from being polluters to becoming protectors of the climate, said Marco Lambertini, Director General at the World Wide Fund for Nature.

“Science has never been clearer. We are currently witnessing a catastrophic decline in our planet’s ecosystems and biodiversity, and an accelerating destabilisation of the climate. And today we also understand that the two are interconnected,” Lambertini told IPS. “This isn’t in fact new.”

Lambertini spoke to IPS following the Fifth Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) which took place this week, with the launch of the “Medium-Term Strategy” by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Over two days, world leaders gathered virtually to discuss climate sustainability and how deeply the coronavirus pandemic worsened the current climate crisis.

“Humanity continues to misappropriate nature, commoditise it, destroy it,” Keriako Tobiko, the Cabinet Secretary for the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Kenya, said on Monday. “The consequences of our actions are obvious – we’re paying a heavy price for that.”

Indian environmental activist Afroz Shah, a UNEP Champion of the Earth, said during UNEA-5 that leaders must go beyond talk and ensure implementation of measures to protect the environment.

“There must be a paradigm shift in the narrative, to go from being a polluter to a protector,” he said, urging leaders to make sure this message was given to every citizen.

Lambertini told IPS this “shift” in the narrative was already happening.

“What is new is that this awareness is beginning to reach mainstream political, corporate and public debate,” Lambertini added. “The narrative is also shifting. Conserving nature is not only being seen as an ecological and moral issue, but also an economic, development, health and equity issue. This is a true cultural revolution in our civilisation.”

Lambertini’s insight complemented what was said during UNEA-5.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, said during the assembly that a “green recovery” from the COVID-19 pandemic would be a step in the right direction of implementing changes to protect the environment.

Tackling environmental sustainability was, after all, another means to ending poverty, she said.

“We need to start putting words into action after UNEA-5 and that means backing a green recovery from the pandemic, stronger and national determined contributions to the Paris Agreement, more funding for adaptation, agreeing on an ambitious and implementable post-2020 biodiversity framework, and a new progress on plastic pollution,” Andersen said.

Meelis Münt, Estonia’s Secretary General of the Ministry of the Environment, echoed Andersen’s point.

“We are confident that a green and digital transition will support our post-pandemic recovery,” he said, adding Estonia aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, with their government’s plans to “lead the production of solid coastal fuel based electricity by 2035”.

Other speakers at UNEA-5 included ministers from Kenya, Brazil, Jamaica and Malawi, among others, many of whom shared the initiatives their countries were implementing to protect the environment.

Marcus Henrique Morais Paranaguá, Brazil’s Deputy Minister for Climate and International Relations, pointed out that for Brazilians it was a unique situation where development and preservation of the Amazon forest had to be balanced.

“The Amazon forest alone occupies 49 percent of our territory and over 60 percent of our territory is covered today with natural vegetation,” he said. “Brazil must implement innovative public policy to balance nature conservation and the promotion of sustainable development.”

Pearnel Charles Jr., Jamaica’s Minister of Housing, Urban Renewal, Environment and Climate Change, shared that his country’s government was in the process of updating their climate change policy so that it complemented the Paris Agreement. He added that Jamaica’s administration also increased its “emissions reduction ambition,” and was implementing a tree planting initiative to reduce biodiversity loss.

Tobiko of Kenya said a big milestone for the country was banning single-use plastic in public conservation areas. Kenya has recently been acknowledged and applauded for its successful fight against single use plastic.

“We cannot afford another lost decade for biodiversity,” Lambertini told IPS. “Many ecosystems like coral reefs and tropical forests are heading towards tipping points and one million species are now threatened with extinction.”

“If we are to collectively survive and thrive, particularly in this COVID-19 pandemic, we must take the opportunity to review, reevaluate and possibly reinvent in charting the most sustainable way forward,” Charles Jr. said.

Overall, Lambertini was hopeful, citing a heightened awareness of climate justice among activists, and the fact that nature conservation was now seen as an economic, health and equity issue.

“We need clarity and alignment, to create a level playing field, and a north star/southern cross able to unite governments, businesses, investors and consumers around the ambition science demands,” he told IPS. “Only in this way we will meet the challenge to transition to an equitable, nature-positive and net-zero carbon world and forums like UNEA-5 must pave the way for these commitments and more importantly, concrete actions.”

 

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• The Global Insecurity of Climate Change
• Q&A: UN Environment Assembly Kicks Off With a Call to Make Peace with Nature

Scientists in Thailand work to combat zoonotic diseases at their source. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates “intimate” linkages between the health of humans, animals and ecosystems, as zoonotic diseases spread between animals and people, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief said February 21. Credit: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) via UN News

By Andy Peters
EDINBURGH, Scotland, May 24 2021 (IPS)

Although the World Health Organization’s (WHO) mission to discover its origins has proven inconclusive, the Covid-19 pandemic has nonetheless clearly highlighted the need for better care, attention, and investment in animal health systems.

Without a decisive change of course to prevent other diseases from jumping the species barrier, we will likely be unable to avoid the pandemics of the future, which could prove even more severe and destructive.

Some 75 per cent of emerging human infections are shared with animals, according to a UN report, and these emerging zoonoses could just as easily spread or mutate to unleash the next pandemic.

Investing in a stronger and more resilient global animal health system is a clear win-win: it protects all people through the prevention, surveillance, diagnosis, and treatment of otherwise dangerous animal diseases – before they cross species and borders.

However, investment alone will not overcome the fact that our current animal health systems are hamstrung by shortcomings in a crucial area: data.

Poor, disparate, under-researched, and inaccurate data on animal health issues prevent officials and authorities in many parts of the world from taking effective interventions against emerging animal diseases. Such limitations endanger both human and animal health, and leave us all vulnerable to the threat of future pandemics.

To improve our current defences against emerging animal diseases, the world needs more focused and directed investment into the systematic collection, organisation, and use of existing animal health data.

Firstly, we need more and better data on animal health. This includes greater surveillance of animal disease on farms, at border crossings and at wet markets, which are all important interfaces through which animal diseases can spread to humans.

Secondly, we must also ensure we make better use of our existing data. For instance, SEBI-Livestock is using advanced informatics to unlock insights from hard-to-reach data about disease prevalence and mortality, and making it more readily available to decision-makers and scientists in the Global South.

Furthermore, a better standard of data-sharing is also necessary in the fight against the future global health threats. Mechanisms and platforms through which doctors and veterinarians, governments and health authorities can share knowledge on emerging diseases and treatments are vital.

One visual tool developed by the Safe Medicines for Animals through regulatory training (SMArt) project helps animal health companies navigate complex regulatory processes, opening the door to improved animal health, and consequently, human health, around the world.

Finally, more investment in helping decision-makers harness this wide range of data for the livestock sector in low-income countries is essential. Low-income countries are disproportionately affected by neglected zoonoses, and the impact of epidemics and pandemics in these regions is exacerbated as a result, as demonstrated by Covid-19.

Providing training sessions in data literacy and data analysis skills, and raising awareness of global animal health resources will be crucial in helping low-income countries leverage valuable data for greater resilience.

Although data by itself is not enough, with more investment we can build up the knowledge and resources we need to reduce the threat of emerging infectious diseases.

This is why the Action for Animal Health coalition has united groups such as the World Veterinary Association, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Brooke, along with SEBI-Livestock, to call for more support for better, and safer, animal health systems worldwide.

With the knowledge and lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic fresh in our minds, we now stand at an important crossroads.

We can choose to ignore animal health, and continue to endanger human health as a result, or we can begin to properly focus and invest in better animal health systems, using data to guide our interventions.

If we follow this path, we can begin to beat the pandemics of the future before they have even begun.

* Prof. Andy Peters is Program Director, the Centre for Supporting Evidence Based Interventions in Livestock (SEBI-Livestock), at the University of Edinburgh

 

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Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By External Source
JOHANNESBURG, May 24 2021 (IPS)

Social issues and crises tend to affect women more severely than men. This is why terms like “gender mainstreaming policies”, “gender-responsive interventions” and “gender-based budgeting” have become more popular in public policy discussions in recent years.

The case has been made for the need to include gender in every analysis of social policy. But many of the toolkits which have been designed to do so have come up short. This is for a variety of reasons. Some of these shortcomings include a singular focus on women rather than relations between men and women; a focus on policy outcomes without a change in policy processes; and the inclusion of aspirational gender equality goals rather than goals for practical implementation.

The slowdown in economic activity and the restrictions on movement made women particularly vulnerable to physical abuse, a loss of income, and a decline in mental and emotional well-being, among others

But a framework developed by retired economics professor Marilyn Power offers a practical solution. Her framework can be used to evaluate the effects an event is likely to have on women. It can be applied to policies too. It draws together common aspects applied in gender studies and includes accounting for caring and domestic labour, considering human well-being, human agency, making ethical judgements, and undertaking an intersectional analysis.

I have used Power’s framework to examine the impact of COVID-19 on South African women. My research found that many of the challenges women experienced had been made worse by the pandemic. This was mainly as a result of the slowdown in economic activity and the restrictions on movement. These made women particularly vulnerable to physical abuse, a loss of income, and a decline in mental and emotional well-being, among others.

 

How women were affected

Household circumstances: The framework states that household circumstances should be considered in addition to individual circumstances. Household circumstances are vital when studying women because they tend to be the primary caregivers in the home, the number of female-headed households has grown, and they perform the bulk of domestic or household labour.

The importance of looking at both household and individual circumstances becomes clear when one looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The closure of schools and early childhood development centres meant that women experienced an increase in their domestic responsibilities. Evidence shows that far more women than men reported increased time spent on childcare during the first few months of the hard lockdown.

Human well-being and agency: The pandemic affected both the well-being and agency of women.

Human well-being has been defined as “what people are able to be and do”. Amartya Sen, an award-winning economist, has recommended the use of five instrumental freedoms to measure well-being. These list aspects which define an individual’s relationship to their communities or the state. They include political freedoms, economic freedoms, social freedoms, transparency guarantees and protective security.

These freedoms include, for instance, having enough assets, the right to live a life of dignity, and the peace of mind which goes with feeling safe in one’s community.

Agency, on the other hand, has been defined by political analyst and feminist Lois McNay as “the capacity of a person (or other living and material entities) to intervene in the world in a manner that is deemed … to be independent or relatively autonomous”. Thus, the more freedoms individuals are guaranteed in society, the more their human agency will be enhanced.

During the pandemic women were more likely to lose their jobs than men. This loss had a major impact on women’s economic freedoms as well as their social freedoms.

Making ethical judgements: Ethical judgements in the framework relate to traditional economic assumptions which predicate that economic analyses or policies are value and judgement free. Others have argued, however, that policies and interventions which do not explicitly deal with value judgements only serve to mask “implicit assumptions about race, class and gender”, even if unintentionally.

It is thus important to engage with value judgements to make clear what implicit assumptions underlie public policy decision making.

One example of this was the South African government’s social security response to the pandemic, which included the Social Relief of Distress grant. This grant was only made available to unemployed individuals who didn’t get any other grant or qualify for Unemployment Insurance Fund benefits. The conditions under which the unemployed could apply for this grant were stringent – and still emphasised the need to work.

The stringent conditions meant that many vulnerable individuals were excluded. These included those who might already be receiving existing grants or received remittances from family members, but who might still be living in poverty. A large percentage of these would be women.

Intersectional analysis: This requires thinking about other social identities which define women beyond just their gender, such as race, sexual orientation and class, among others. These additional social identities privilege and disadvantage women in varying ways.

Black women, for instance, would be more severely affected by the social ills which have accompanied this pandemic than any other group of women in South Africa. Separating women by race in policy analysis would thus provide useful information which would not be otherwise observed had women been studied as a homogeneous group. Similar arguments could be made for further segmenting groups according to their social identities.

 

Next steps

Women make up half of the South African population. It’s therefore important to consider how decisions and policies affect them. Failing to undertake a gendered analysis doesn’t equate to men and women being treated equally. Rather that women are likely to be implicitly negatively biased.

Odile Mackett, Lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand

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

Laila Shawa (Palestine), The Hands of Fatima, 1989.

By Vijay Prashad
May 21 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Israel’s massive war machine attacks the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) with total disregard for international law. Since the OPT is an occupied territory, the United Nations does not permit the occupier – Israel – from altering the character of the land under occupation. However, this has not impeded Israel, whose attempt to evict families in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood resulted in the entry of Israeli border troops inside the al-Aqsa mosque, followed by waves of aerial bombardment that has resulted in daily death and injury toll that will be known only when the dust settles.

Importantly, the Palestinians did not surrender to this violation of international law. They fought back in Jerusalem and across the West Bank, in Gaza and the lands surrounding Israel. Thousands of people marched to the Jordan-Palestine border and the Lebanon-Palestine border, disregarding Israel’s threat to fire at them. From Gaza, different factions fired rockets to pressure Israel to desist from its violence in Jerusalem. The rockets from Gaza followed the violent and illegal provocations by Israel in the OPT; these rockets were not the first mover in the events of May 2021.

For the past fifteen years, Israel has punctually bombed Gaza in 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2018, and 2019. Apart from this hot violence, Israel has persecuted a policy of strangulation against not only Gaza but all of the OPT, a policy of cold violence that seeks to get Palestinians so demoralised that they leave the OPT. If Israel refuses the one-state solution (a democratic state of Palestinians and Jews) and the two-state solution (Israel and Palestine), it seeks instead a three-state solution (sending the Palestinians to Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon). This is by definition ethnic cleansing. The bombings of 2021 have been particularly harsh, the targets including buildings that house the press and refugee camps. In Shateh (Gaza), a bombing raid on 15 May left scores of people dead. The Abu Hatab family lost ten members, eight of them children. Grotesque violence of this kind defines the Israeli apartheid project to annihilate the Palestinians; Rogers Waters calls this violence ‘primal disdain’.

Juhaina Habibi Kandalaft (Palestine), Jaffa, 2015

Given the clear violations of international law and the asymmetrical violence of the Israeli bombings, it was widely expected that the UN Security Council would call for a ceasefire. But the US government of President Joe Biden informed the other members of the Council that it would not vote for any resolution of that kind. The US alone blocked the release of a council statement on the worsening situation last week. The US also initially opposed holding an open session on Friday – as proposed by Norway, Tunisia, and China – which was eventually held on Sunday. For these reasons, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the United States and twenty-four other countries for standing with Israel. Amongst these countries is Brazil, whose president, Jair Bolsonaro, backed Israel’s right to use terrible force against the Palestinians. This statement from Bolsonaro came just a few days after the police operation against the people of Jacarezinho in Rio de Janeiro, which resulted in the massacre of twenty-five people. The gap between Jacarezinho and Gaza is only one of scale, the brutality equivalent.

On 15 May, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and No Cold War held a seminar, ‘China, USA, and Brazil’s quest for an independent foreign policy’. Former President Dilma Rousseff spoke about how, during her presidency (2011-2016) – and during the administration of her predecessor Lula da Silva (2003-2011) – the Workers’ Party led a process to establish institutions of multipolarity such as the expanded G20 (2008) and the BRICS project (2009). These are not perfect systems, certainly, but they were intended to produce platforms that were not fully subordinated to the United States. Neither have been able to live up to their potential; ‘asymmetrical relationships’, she said, ‘are not equal to multipolarity’. The G20 continues to take its lead from the Western powers and BRICS has been weakened by the rightward shift in Brazil and India. ‘The B and the I of BRICS suffered problems’, she said. ‘The B because of Bolsonaro’. Regarding the strategic necessity of returning to the project of multipolarity for economic recovery, Rousseff explained, ‘Our recovery would have to be necessarily political’.

Gabriela Tornai (@gabrielatornai_) / Design Ativista, Comida, direito do povo! (‘The people’s right to food’), 2021.

Brazil, being the largest economy in Latin America, would need to play a key role in the construction of multipolar institutions and in opening up the possibility for international law to set aside the imperial vicissitudes of the United States and its allies. For Brazil to play this role, the political bloc that stands against Bolsonaro and the right has to strengthen, and it has to be converted into a winning electoral coalition for the presidential election in 2022. Only if the left returns to power in Palácio do Planalto can Brazil once more play a role in building a multipolar world order.

Our May dossier, The Challenges Facing Brazil’s Left, from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research (Brazil) delves deeply into just this subject. To better understand the problems and possibilities for the Brazilian Left, the team in São Paulo interviewed five leaders amongst the range of Brazil’s left: Gleisi Hoffmann, a chair of the Workers’ Party; Kelli Mafort of national board of the Landless Workers’ Movement or the MST; Élida Elena, vice president of the National Union of Students and a member of the Popular Youth Uprising (Levante Popular da Juventude); Jandyra Uehara of the National Executive Board of the Unified Workers’ Central; Juliano Medeiros, national chair of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL); and Valério Arcary, a member of PSOL’s national board. Through conversations with these leaders, the dossier traces the path followed by the Brazilian Left, examining the instruments used to foster unity of the organised sections of the Left and of the people behind these sections. It also explores the debate over whether to build a wider anti-Bolsonaro broad front or a narrower left front, as well as the impact of Lula’s recent pardoning from false corruption charges and his newly renewed eligibility to run for office in the next presidential election.

Cristiano Siqueira (@crisvector) / Design Ativista, Atenção, novo sentido (‘Attention: new direction’), 2019

Polls released recently show Lula ahead of Bolsonaro in the first round by 41% to 23%; in every second round scenario, Lula defeats his opponents (55% to Bolsonaro’s 32%, for instance). MST leader Kelli Mafort says that ‘The Lula factor exercises tremendous influence over the Brazilian left. The urgency of the current situation calls for him to continue to be a leader in solving Brazil’s problems, but it also helps urge activists to carry out base building work, expand solidarity actions, and confront the fascist Bolsonarism [that permeates] the working class’. To root out Bolsonarism would require that Brazil settle accounts with Bolsonaro’s criminal behaviour during the pandemic, which has already set in motion a charge of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Evidence of Bolsonaro’s genocidal policies was made clear in June 2020 by Chief Raoni Metuktire of the Kayapó, who said, ‘President Bolsonaro wants to take advantage of the virus; he is saying that the Indian has to die’.

Mafort’s point about the need to build the bases of the key classes is echoed by the others interviewed for the dossier. They assert that winning the election is fundamentally important but that, in order to secure not only the presidency but a new project for Brazil, building the strength of the working class and the peasantry is essential. The contours of this new project will contain a programme for the post-pandemic scenario for Brazil and the importance of an independent, internationalist foreign policy for Brazil.

Letícia Ribeiro (@telurica.x), photography by Giovanni Marrozzini / Design Ativista, Guardiãs (‘Guardians’), 2019.

Since last year, the United States has used its position of political pre-eminence to get several Arab monarchies (Morocco and the United Arab Emirates) to recognise Israel, which means to set aside the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians. This process of undermining Palestinian rights will continue if the US is left unchallenged on the world stage. Genuine multipolarity would prevent the US from using its force against the Palestinians, the Yemenis, the Sahrawis, and others. The defeat of the ruling classes in countries such as Brazil and India – subordinate to US interests – is essential for advancing the interests of the people of the world, from Palestine to Colombia.

In 2014, the last time Israel bombed Gaza with this level of extreme ferocity, the Iraqi poet Sinan Antoon watched as families fled from their bombed homes for UN schools, which were also bombed. He imagined the danger through a conversation between a child and a grandfather (sidu). They are talking about Jaffa (now inside Israel) and wondering about the Palestinian’s right to return, guaranteed by UN Security Council resolution 194 (1948).

Are we going back to Jaffa, sidu?
We can’t
Why?
We are dead
So are we in heaven, sidu?
We are in Palestine, habibi
and Palestine is heaven
and hell.
What will we do now?
We will wait
Wait for what?
For the others
….
to return

This story was originally published by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, May 21 2021 (IPS)

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks.

The original article was published on February 24 2021

Sudanese youth live with continuous insecurity due to climate change vulnerability, including droughts, desertification, land degradation and food insecurity. Courtesy: Albert Gonzalez Farran/ UNAMID/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

BONN, Germany, Feb 24 2021 (IPS) – For Sudanese youth, climate change is synonymous with insecurity.

“We are living in a continuous insecurity due to many factors that puts Sudan on top of the list when it comes to climate vulnerability,” said Nisreen Elsaim, Sudanese climate activist and chair of United Nations Secretary General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change.

She said this was directly linked to insecurity within Sudan. She noted that even a Security Council resolution from 2018 which acknowledged “the adverse effects of climate change, ecological changes and natural disasters, among other factors,”, including droughts, desertification, land degradation and food insecurity influenced the situation in Dafur, Sudan.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) ranks Sudan as one of the world’s most vulnerable countries when it comes to climate change. Increased frequency of droughts and high rainfall variability over decades has stressed Sudan’s rainfed agriculture and pastoralist livelihoods, which are the dominant means of living in rural areas like north Dafur.

“In a situation of resources degradation, hunger, poverty and uncontrolled climate migration will [mean] conflict is an inevitable result,” Elsaim said, adding that climate-related emergencies resulted in major disruptions to healthcare and livelihoods and that climate-related migration increased the risk of gender-based violence.

She also pointed out that women, youth and children where the groups most adversely affected by climate insecurity.

In January, inter-communal violence in Darfur displaced over 180,000 people — 60 percent of whom are under the age of 18. “Displacement has declined in recent years in Sudan, but many of its triggers remain unaddressed. Ethnic disputes between herders and farmers over scarce resources overlap with disasters such as flooding and political instability,” the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said in a statement. There are currently 2.1 million internally displaced persons in Sudan.

Elsaim was speaking yesterday, Feb. 23, during a high-level United Nations Security Council debate focusing on international peace and security and climate change, led by United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The UK currently holds the Security Council presidency and will also be host to the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), which will take place in November in Glasgow, Scotland.

“Land and resources in Africa and in many other parts of the world, because of climate change, can no longer maintain young people,” Elsaim cautioned.

She said in the youth’s search for decent lives, jobs and proper access to services, the new challenge of COVID-19 meant the only solution for many was in country, cross-border or international migration.

The issue is a global one.

Natural historian Sir David Attenborough addressed the council in a video message also giving a stark warning that the “stability of the entire world” could be altered by climate threats.

“Today there are threats to security of a new and unprecedented kind,” Attenborough said.

“They are rising global temperatures, the despoiling of the ocean — that vast universal larder which people everywhere depend for their food. Change in the pattern of weather worldwide that pay no regard to national boundaries but that can turn forests into deserts, drown great cities and lead to the extermination of huge numbers of the other creatures with which we share this planet.”

He cautioned that no matter what the world did now, some of these threats could become a reality, destroying cities and societies.

“If we continue on our current path, we will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security: food production, access to fresh water, habitable ambient temperature, and ocean food chains,” Attenborough cautioned.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the last decade was the hottest in human history and that wildfires, cyclones and floods were the new normal which also affected political, economic and social stability.

“Climate disruption is a crisis amplifier and multiplier,” Guterres told the Security Council. “While climate change dries up rivers, reduces harvests, destroys critical infrastructure and displaces communities, it [also] exacerbates the risks of instability and conflict.”

He referred to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute which noted that 8 of the 10 countries hosting the largest multilateral peace operations in 2018 where in areas highly exposed to climate change.

“The impacts of these crises are greatest where fragility and conflicts have weakened coping mechanisms,” Guterres said.

The UN has already stated that 2021 will a be critical, not only for curbing the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic, but also for meeting the climate challenge. Guterres has already stated that he plans to focus this year on building a global coalition for carbon neutrality by 2050.

Alongside the Security Council debate, the Fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly wrapped up yesterday. The assembly, world’s top environmental decision-making body attended by government leaders, businesses, civil society and environmental activists, met virtually on Feb. 22 to 23 under the theme “Strengthening Actions for Nature to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals”.

The assembly concluded with member states releasing a statement acknowledging “the urgency to continue our efforts to protect our planet also in this time of crisis”, and calling for multilateral cooperation as they “remain convinced that collective action is essential to successfully address global challenges”.

Joyce Msuya, the Deputy Executive Director for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), noted that 87 ministers and high-level representatives participated during the two days. She shared some of the points of the dialogue noting that the health of nature and human health were inextricably linked.

“For our own well-being we must make our peace with nature in a way that demonstrates solidarity,” Msuya said, making reference to a recent UNEP report.

The report serves a blueprint on how to tackle the triple emergencies of climate, biodiversity loss and pollution and provides detailed solutions by drawing on global assessments.

Msuya added that the nature crisis was linked with the climate and pollution crisis and that the world now had the chance to put in place a green recovery “that will transform our relations with nature and heal our planet”.

She said the green recovery should put the world on a path to a low-carbon, resilient, post-pandemic world.

Meanwhile, Elsaim said that as a young person, she was “sure that young people are the solution”. She urged world leaders to engage with the youth and listen to them.

“Stop conflict by stopping climate change. Give us security and secure the future,” she said in conclusion.

 

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Under the UN-backed COVAX initiative, UNICEF ships COVID-19 vaccine syringes from a warehouse in Dubai Logistics City, United Arab Emirates. And as the world continues to grapple with the health and economic crisis sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN and Islamic Development Bank have teamed up to help the most vulnerable. May 2021. Credit: UNICEF/Ruel Pableo

By Chady El Khoury, Jiro Honda, Johan Mathisen, and Etienne Yehoue*
WASHINGTON DC, May 21 2021 (IPS)

Governments around the world are playing a crucial role in providing lifelines to people and firms to help combat the pandemic and its economic fallout. To support the effectiveness of these efforts, it is important that such spending be subject to adequate transparency and accountability.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) presses for better governance through greater transparency, and has sought specific governance measures for countries receiving IMF financing during the crisis.

These include commitments to publish pandemic-related procurement contracts and the beneficial ownership of companies awarded these contracts, as well as COVID-19 spending reports and audit results.

The measures are tailored to country circumstances and the severity of corruption risks. In addition, all recipient countries commit to undertake a Safeguards Assessment—a due diligence exercise that is aimed at ensuring that a country’s central bank is able to provide reliable information and transparently manage the funds that it receives from the IMF.

Addressing corruption is a long game. These emergency spending measures are not silver bullets and will only go so far in addressing deeper challenges. Longer-term governance and corruption vulnerabilities will continue to be addressed under the IMF’s broader 2018 Framework for Enhanced Fund Engagement on Governance, with a focus on multi-year IMF lending arrangements, annual health checks of IMF member countries, and capacity development.

Are the receipts coming in?

A year into the emergency response, information is becoming available on the progress in implementing these governance measures in pandemic-related spending.

• • On

publication of contract

• information, most of the commitments have or are in the process of being met, including, for example, in the Dominican Republic, Guinea, Nepal, and Ukraine. In some countries, capacity constraints contribute to limited progress. In these cases, the IMF is providing capacity development to support implementation.

 

• • Collecting and publishing the

beneficial ownership

of contracting companies is a measure that aims to deter corruption, including by facilitating the detection of potential conflicts-of-interest involving public officials. It requires bidding companies to provide the names of the people with effective control over a company, that is the “beneficial owners”. This information is provided to the procurement agency, which must publish it.

Implementation of this innovative practice has proven challenging in some cases, with only half of the countries (including Benin, Ecuador, Jordan, Malawi, and Moldova) having implemented this commitment or made substantial progress toward it.

However, such commitments made in the context of IMF financing during the pandemic have helped spur some countries, such as Kenya and the Kyrgyz Republic, to adopt this reform on a permanent basis. That is, beyond just pandemic-related spending.

• • On

audits of emergency spending

, the deadline for conducting ex-post audits is typically set at 3-12 months after the end of the fiscal year. Accordingly, it is too early to assess implementation—most audits are in preparation based on existing systems.

However, some countries, such as Jamaica, Honduras, Maldives, and Sierra Leone have already taken early action by conducting risk-based, real-time audits. Where needed, the IMF is also stepping up its capacity development to help supreme audit institutions fulfill their responsibility, while also supporting efforts to ensure that such information is easily retrievable.

• • On

reporting of pandemic-related spending

• , most countries are, or will shortly begin, publicly reporting on execution of this spending.

 

• •

Safeguard assessments

are being undertaken rapidly, with the pace of these assessments doubling after the pandemic’s onset.

Tackling deeper challenges

Beyond these measures focused on accountability and transparency in the crisis response, broader governance and anti-corruption reforms are also progressing in the context of multi-year IMF financing arrangements.

Such reforms cover multiple areas, including fiscal governance in countries such as Ecuador, The Gambia, Jordan, Liberia, Rwanda, and Senegal; anti-corruption and anti-money laundering frameworks in Angola, Armenia, Republic of Congo, Kenya, and Tunisia; and financial sector oversight and central bank governance in Liberia and Ukraine, among others.

Beyond IMF financing

Transparency and accountability in the crisis response are important for all countries, regardless of their income level, and such measures are of course commonplace in many countries beyond those receiving IMF financing.

These efforts vary. For example, some countries publish comprehensive spending information on dedicated transparency portals as in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, France, and Peru. Others, such as South Korea, conduct frequent external audits to verify pandemic-related spending.

Some develop clear guidelines for emergency procurement, as in Spain, and/or detect conflicts-of-interest by analyzing beneficial ownership data and financial disclosures of senior public officials, as in Romania.

Through the IMF’s regular “Article IV” health check of the economies of its members, and through regular policy dialogue, IMF staff continue to discuss transparency and accountability in pandemic-related spending, such as in Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and, more generally, in fiscal, monetary, and financial sector measures.

Building on progress

Sustained country engagement on governance and anti-corruption will be necessary to support effective implementation of reforms undertaken during the pandemic and beyond. A key component is implementing the IMF’s 2018 Framework—which remains a priority for the IMF and goes beyond anti-corruption to address fiscal governance, financial sector oversight, central bank governance, market regulation, rule of law, and anti-money laundering frameworks.

As the critical capacity to implement governance measures varies across countries and by type of measure, IMF staff will also continue to provide tailored capacity development on these issues through channels such as technical assistance, training, and webinars.

The IMF will take stock of progress in implementing the 2018 framework in mid-2022, with a view to assessing how it can continue to support member countries in strengthening governance.

Efforts to enhance governance will depend even more crucially on high-level political ownership of reforms, international cooperation, and a joint effort with civil society and the private sector, among other stakeholders.

Progress also requires sustained implementation of reforms over an extended period. Such progress is not easy, but it is nonetheless achievable—and it is essential for fostering stronger and more inclusive economic growth.

*Chady El-Khoury is deputy unit chief of the Financial Integrity Group in the IMF’s Legal Department.; Jiro Honda is a deputy division chief in the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department; Johan Mathisen is a deputy division chief in the IMF’s Strategy, Policy and Review Department; and Etienne B. Yehoue is an economist at the International Monetary Fund.

 

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Ameenah Gurib-Fakim is the first woman president of Mauritius and a renowned biodiversity scientist. Courtesy: International Labour Organisation/Crozet / Pouteau

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India, May 20 2021 (IPS)

If we want to address the great challenges this world is facing, we have to factor in science into all our narratives, according to Dr. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, the first woman president of Mauritius and renowned biodiversity scientist.

In an interview conducted over Zoom, Gurib-Fakim tells IPS the real cost of biodiversity loss.

“You know, human beings owe their existence to the byproducts of nature’s activities like oxygen, right? And we don’t value it. We depend on nature and unfortunately, for too long, humans have considered themselves to be outside of the ecosystem.

“We are very much part of this ecosystem, so let us stop destroying it because we’re not preserving nature, we are preserving our own livelihoods,” Gurib-Fakim, who is also a successful entrepreneur, says.

She also tells IPS about the importance of using science diplomacy to better international relations and the importance of investing in the youth. Excerpts follow:

IPS: World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2020 has just identified the loss of biodiversity as one of the two greatest risks to global economy. As a biodiversity scientist, what’s your take on this?

Ameenah Gurib-Fakim (AGF): You have raised a very important question. Nature gives us every year over a hundred trillion US dollars. If you can measure that, that is the input of nature to our livelihoods.

We have read the Word Economic Forum’s Global Risk report and I think by 2025, over 60 percent of the big, big animals, the mammals are really threatened with extinction.

Now, if you look at a country like India, if you look at a continent like Africa, just think of a big animal, like the elephant, how much does the elephant contribute to sustaining the ecosystem, which we thrive on?

A wild elephant takes bath in Moei River near the Myanmar-Thailand border. Elephants contribute to sustaining ecosystems. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

 IPS: We have often heard you speak about science diplomacy. How could science diplomacy help build better relations at an international level?

AGF: Science diplomacy for me is the soft power. For the past few years, there has been an anti-science sentiment voiced by major leaders on this planet. And this undesigned sentiment has weighed very heavily again when it comes to addressing issues like climate science, for example, climate change, biodiversity. They have weighed in as well in terms of handling of this pandemic that we are currently living in. So, I think if you want to address the great challenge that this world is facing, we have to factor in science into all our narratives.

We have also seen, at least in the beginning of this year, how we’re trying to revive the multilateral system. And that’s why we need to bring in science diplomacy because we have to rethink our multilateral system and we have to make it fit for purpose to address major challenges.

IPS:  How can the world help create wealth and jobs for youth across the world and how can tapping into youth power and youth talent help build a more sustainable Africa?

AGF:  If you look at the statistics, 60 percent of the jobs that young people will work in have not yet been created. How do we empower the youth, it’s investment in education, right? And, you know, the education that I received as a child is not fit for purpose for my daughter … So what are we doing in terms of investment in the education system for these kids to be ready for that job that has not yet been created?

If you look at Africa, by 2050 it will be the major provider of labour to the world. And the youth of Africa is considered to be a boon. But I worry because that boon can very quickly become a bane. Why are we seeing young Africans dying in the Mediterranean? Partly because they are climate refugees. Don’t forget that climate change has impacted a lot of the regions in Africa. It has impacted agriculture, for example, and this is a huge sector where the youth have been working in and climate change has impacted crops.

These are things that we have to really consider very, very quickly if we are going to consider the youth as being a boon, otherwise we are going to be in a similar situation as Tunisia 10 years ago, when one person, by setting himself aflame, actually brought the country down.

The Kakum National Park in Ghana is a semi-deciduous rainforest. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

IPS: Can you identify a few sectors where investing in youth is needed right now?

AGF:  The health sector needs capitalisation very, very fast, but I’m thinking of another sector, especially for Africa, the agricultural sector. In Africa, agriculture is estimated to be a $1 trillion business. Now every time there is a messaging on Africa, we see a woman working with a baby on her back with a hoe in her hand, digging a very arid land. And this is not what agriculture is. So, just think what drone technology has been able to do, just think what smart technologies have been able to do to empower youth and investment,…[and] how many jobs can be created.  But again, it calls for smart investment in the youth, in the ecosystem and in infrastructure.

IPS: Many women and young people are trying very hard to become successful entrepreneurs, but they don’t really have a lot of support to guide them or resources. What would be your advice to them?

AGF: To become an entrepreneur, you have to have the appetite to take risks. And it is perhaps easier for a man to take risks, because he would have been told from a very young age that he’s a breadwinner of the family.  In Africa, for example, you see that 12 million graduates are landing on the job market every year. I don’t think any country is going to be able to produce that many jobs. So you need to actually need them to become job creators as to being job seekers. But when it comes to a woman, again, all the odds are stacked against her. For a woman to start taking risks is already a big issue because we tend to be very conservative in our approach.

So this is where we need government to weigh in, to provide the ecosystem so that they become job creators and not just job seekers. So the responsibility comes back to us again, but we have to move fast because the world is changing. And over and above these pandemics, there are so many other factors which are going to deter young people. But one thing that we must not do is allow them to dream big and enact whatever ideas and be confident job creators and not just job seekers.

IPS: Finally, what would be your three key messages today?

AGF: I will summarise it in three words: dream, dare and do. Dream big, your dreams must frighten you. If it doesn’t frighten you, it’s not big. Take risk, go out there and do it yourself. There is no cutting corners when it comes to hard work, because everything that you actually will engage in will demand a huge investment on your side. And one thing that I’m happy to have been able to do is that I have been able to show girls growing up in my village, that it is possible to reach the highest position in the country through hard work and also by taking risks.

 

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Excerpt:

May 22 is the International Day for Biological Diversity. IPS senior correspondent Stella Paul interviews AMEENAH GURIB-FAKIM, the first woman president of Mauritius and renowned biodiversity scientist.

Kathmandu’s main infectious diseases hospital in Teku is full, and patients are being cared for in open verandahs and parking lots – a scene repeated in government hospitals across the country. Credit: Nepali Times.

By Narayan Adhikari and Sanjeeta Pant
KATHMANDU, May 20 2021 (IPS)

If you live in Nepal, a quick survey of friends and family will quickly prove how rapidly Covid-19 infection rates have spiked. For instance, out of 50 people we called last week, more than half had been infected, with the rest reporting that their extended families or colleagues had tested positive.

Recently, the sister-in-law of one of the authors- just 58 years old- died from the virus. She would have survived COVID-19 but despite a frantic rush around the city, we could not find an ICU bed in any of the hospitals in Kathmandu.

These are the kinds of stories that are now dominating headlines- as our health system buckles under pressure. People are dying while waiting in line not just for treatment, but for COVID-19 tests.

Beyond vaccines, the cure for COVID-19 is citizen engagement. It is too easy- and also simply too slow during an emergency- to simply finger point at national political leaders, as culpable as they are

India has dominated the COVID-19 headlines recently, but Nepal is now the global epicenter of the pandemic. The virus is spreading uncontrollably– on a per capita basis we now have 211 infections per 100,000 people, compared to India’s 130 per 100,000. And once again it is becoming clear that both the causes and symptoms of this disaster are not related to healthcare, but are at their core, issues of corruption and lack of accountability.

While countries like New Zealand and South Korea are clear examples of how coherent leadership, transparency, creative public-private partnerships and ongoing citizen engagement can ensure effective COVID-19 responses, Nepal is the complete opposite.

Petty political infighting, opacity in decision-making, nepotistic contracting and complete disregard for citizens’ concerns have characterized the response. Just last week it became clear that a private company called Hukam Distribution and Logistics refused to deliver vaccines from India because they were not paid a 10% kick-back- venality of the highest order which will lead to hundreds of unnecessary deaths.

Our healthcare system has been undermined by corruption and a lack of integrity for as long as anyone can remember- we have never been prepared for a crisis of this kind. Healthcare has become a commodity only for those who can afford it.

It takes hunger strikes by well-known doctors to catalyze even the beginnings of any discussion about reforms. As a result, in early 2020 when COVID-19 emerged in Nepal, we had some of the worst public health outcomes in the world. You might think that our experience with the dual, devastating earthquakes of 2015 would have built some degree of crisis preparation and management capacity within government, but we are now making all the same mistakes as six years ago.

Beyond vaccines, the cure for COVID-19 is citizen engagement. It is too easy- and also simply too slow during an emergency- to simply finger point at national political leaders, as culpable as they are. Citizen engagement now means three things.

First, it entails an understanding that change needs to begin with all of us. We ourselves need to find ways to collectively organize together to hold the government accountable. There are emerging efforts to do this such as the “Enough is Enough” campaign which forced the government to disclose COVID-19 spending and expand testing facilities.

Other organizations such as Shaasan are finding ways to crowdsource citizen concerns and score the performances of public officials; and our own efforts through our Coronavirus Civic Action Campaign are countering misinformation and ensuring citizen voices are heard as part of decision-making at the local level around the pandemic. These ground-up initiatives can make a difference when citizens get involved on a large-scale.

Second, open data is key to ensure transparency and accountability of the response. Transparency is the bedrock of democracy and accountability and information in Nepal is scattered, incomplete and inconsistent. Organizations run by citizens like Open Data Nepal and Open Knowledge Nepal have tried to open-up government, and the health Ministry’s COVID-19 dashboard provides some information, but it is not updated in real-time and is not in a format that makes it easy to synthesize.

And in any case only just over a 1/3 of our population has access to the internet. We need to find new ways to engage citizens around information about the response and how they can get involved. In Nepalgunj, a city in western Nepal, the government uses digital billboards to disseminate information to the public that citizens are now using to monitor decision-making.

This leads us to the last point, which is that we as citizens need to support and amplify the work of local political leaders who are doing the right thing during the pandemic and demonstrating that citizens come first.

In Dhangadhi municipality in Western Nepal for instance, the local government set up women only quarantine centers during the first wave of COVID-19 after a 31-year old woman was gang-raped while in a shared quarantine space, which should become a model for other towns. In Karnali province recently, the local parliament worked with us to collect data from returnee migrants and is now working to prioritize their concerns.

And in Panauti municipality, local officials are creating a databank of citizen needs so they can decide government plans and programs accordingly. Nepal recently moved towards a federal structure through which more power was devolved to the sub-national level- and we have to use this to engage citizens where government is closest to them; and to maneuver around the central government where that is necessary.

There is a famous quote that “people get the government they deserve”. The implication is that citizens have the power to improve government themselves. As Nepal finds itself the world’s next COVID-19 hotspot, there has never been a better time for citizens to do so.

Narayan Adhikari is the co-founder and Country Director of Accountability Lab Nepal; and Sanjeeta Pant is Programs and Learning Manager at Accountability Lab. Follow the Lab on Twitter @accountlab.

By Manipadma Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India, May 20 2021 (IPS)

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks.

The original article was published on February 19 2021

A recent UN report lays out the gravity of Earth’s triple environmental emergencies of climate, biodiversity loss and pollution. Fishers on Kochi, Kerala operates the traditional lift-net method where catches have fallen drastically as a result of mechanised over-fishing. High fuel subsidies make it profitable for deep-sea fishing trawlers even when travelling large distances into sea. Safeguarding small fisher communities’ rights, expanding marine conservation area can allow biodiversity and fish growth to stabilise. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

BHUBANESWAR, India, Feb 19 2021 (IPS) – “Our war on nature has left the planet broken. This is senseless and suicidal. The consequences of our recklessness are already apparent in human suffering, towering economic losses and the accelerating erosion of life on Earth,” António Guterres Secretary-General of the United Nations said.

“By transforming how we view nature, we can recognise its true value. By reflecting this value in policies, plans and economic systems, we can channel investments into activities that restore nature and are rewarded for it,” the UN Chief told the media while releasing a UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) major new report.

‘Making Peace with Nature: A scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies’ lays out the gravity of Earth’s triple environmental emergencies of climate, biodiversity loss and pollution but provides detailed solutions too by drawing on global assessments, including those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as well as UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook report, the UNEP International Resource Panel, and new findings on the emergence of zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19.

Without nature’s help we will not thrive, not even survive

“Without nature’s help we will not thrive, not even survive,” Guterres cautioned.

The UN chief was, however, particularly hopeful climate and biodiversity commitment will see progress as he is set to welcome United States back to the Paris Agreement today, Feb. 19.

The “net-zero club” is growing, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP said.

“Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was emerging as a moment of truth for our commitment to steer Earth and for our commitment to steer Earth and its people toward sustainability. (But) loss of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity, together with climate change and pollution will undermine our efforts on 80 percent of assessed SDG targets particularly in poverty reduction, hunger, health, water, cities and climate,” Anderson said.

“Women represent 80 percent of those displaced by climate disruption; polluted water kills a further 1.8 million, predominantly children; and 1.3 billion people remain poor and some 700 million hungry,” Guterres said.

Christian Walzer, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Executive Director for Health Programs and one of the co-authors of the Making Peace with Nature report, told IPS via email: “Intact and functioning nature is the foundation on which we must build back better. Trying to separate economic recovery from healthy environments and climate change neglects the essential fact that the solutions to these crises are tightly interconnected and reinforce each other.”

He underlined how ecosystem degradation heightens the risk of pathogens making the jump from animals to humans, and the importance of a ‘One Health’ approach that considers human, animal and planetary health together. Walzer is a veterinarian who leads on One Health issues across the world.

Economic growth has brought uneven gains in prosperity to a fast-growing global population, leaving 1.3 billion people poor, while tripling the extraction of natural resources to damaging levels and creating a planetary emergency. Subsidies on fossil fuels, for instance, and prices that leave out environmental costs, are driving the wasteful production and consumption of energy and natural resources that are behind all three problems.

Guterres pointed out how governments are still paying more to exploit nature than to protect it, spending 4 to 6 trillion dollars on subsidies that damage environment. He said over-fishing and deforestation is still encouraged by countries globally because it helped GDP growth, despite drastically undermining livelihoods of local fishers and forest dwellers.

In the current growth trajectory despite a temporary decline in emissions due to the pandemic, the earth is heading for at least 3°C of global warming this century; more than 1 million of the estimated 8 million plant and animal species are at substantially increased risk of extinction; and diseases caused by pollution are currently killing some 9 million people prematurely every year.

A farmer in Kerala’s hinterlands applies chemical fertilisers to his rice paddies. Large areas under unsustainable agricultural methods world-over in a drive for higher food production has damaged the environment. Scientific climate friendly methods are available and are equally productive.
Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

The blueprint for solutions

The authors of Making Peace with Nature report assess the links between multiple environmental and development challenges, and explain how advances in science and bold policymaking can open a pathway towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and a carbon neutral world by 2050 while bending the curve on biodiversity loss and curbing pollution and waste.

Taking that path means innovation and investment only in activities that protect both people and nature. Success will include restored ecosystems and healthier lives as well as a stable climate.

Amid a wave of investment to re-energise economies hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, the blueprint communicates the opportunity and urgency for ambitious and immediate action. It also lays out the roles that everyone – from governments and businesses to communities and individuals – can and must play.

“2021 is a make-it or break-it year, a mind-shift year,” said Guterres. 2021, with its upcoming climate and biodiversity convention meetings, is the year where governments must come up with synergistic and ambitious targets to safeguard the planet.

To turn the tide of current unsustainability, the UNEP blueprint has several recommendations some of which include that governments include natural capital while measuring economic performance of both countries and businesses, and putting a price on carbon and shift trillions of dollars in subsidies from fossil fuels, non-sustainable agriculture and transportation towards low-carbon and nature-friendly solutions.

It is high time, the report advises, to expand and improve protected area networks for ambitious international biodiversity targets. Further, non-government organisations can build networks of stakeholders to ensure their full participation in decisions about sustainable use of land and marine resources, the report recommends.

Financial organisations need to stop lending for fossil fuels, and boost renewable energy expansion. Developing innovative finance for biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture is of utmost importance now.

Businesses can adopt the principles of the circular economy to minimise resource use and waste and commit to maintaining transparent and deforestation-free supply chains.

Scientific organisations can pioneer technologies and policies to reduce carbon emissions, increase resource efficiency and lift the resilience of cities, industries, communities and ecosystems

Individuals can reconsider their relationship with nature, learn about sustainability and change their habits to reduce their use of resources, cut waste of food, water and energy, and adopt healthier diets. two-thirds of global CO2 emissions are linked to households. “People’s choices matter,” Guterres said.

 

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The Al-Aqsa mosque viewed from a house in Jerusalem’s Old City. Credit: Mya Guarnieri/IRIN

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, May 20 2021 (IPS)

Regardless of how the current and future violent conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians in Jerusalem will end, there will be no Israeli-Palestinian peace unless East Jerusalem becomes the capital of a Palestinian state while the city remains united.

Righting the Wrong

The flareup that has engulfed East Jerusalem over the past few days should surprise no one. The status quo could never be sustained; the Palestinians’ resentment of the occupation was only deepening and any incident could have precipitated a violent outbreak.

This time it was the order to evict six families from the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. For the Palestinians, this became symptomatic of Israel’s much wider scheme of ethnic cleansing to make more room for Jewish settlers and thereby Judaize East Jerusalem, which Israel views as an integral part of its capital.

Israel may hold onto East Jerusalem for another 54 years, but the Palestinians, and for that matter the Arab states, will never give up on their claim to East Jerusalem.

While we can find temporary solutions for the current violence, then what? A long-term solution is necessary to ensure that Jerusalem does not continue on its path as a flashpoint city for violence. That said, there is a way whereby both sides can live in a united city and make it a microcosm for peaceful coexistence.

Jerusalem is unique in that both Israelis and Palestinians—and Jews, Muslims, and Christians around the world—have a special affinity to the city. There are four major factors that attest to the city’s uniqueness.

First, East Jerusalem houses the largest mixed Jewish-Arab community anywhere in the world, with roughly 215,000 Israelis and 328,000 Palestinians who move freely across the city, east and west, and throughout Israel.

Second, the city’s infrastructure and services—roads, electrical grid, communications, and maintenance—are all fully integrated, and there is simply no way that they can be divided. In fact, neither Israel nor the Palestinians want to physically divide the city, regardless of its final political status.

Third, Jerusalem is home to the Jews’ holiest shrine, the Western Wall, the third-holiest Muslim shrines, the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, and the holiest sites in Christianity within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The fact that the Jewish and Arab holy shrines are adjacent to one another requires them to fully collaborate on security, tourism, access to the holy sites, and improvements.

Fourth, the main contentious issue between the two sides is the political status of the city. Given however that under any circumstances the city will remain united physically, and the majority of the population in East Jerusalem are Palestinian, it is essential that the city’s administration reflects the reality on the ground.

To truly recreate Jerusalem as a microcosm of peace, East and West Jerusalem would be independent municipalities—East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state and West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In addition, a joint Israeli-Palestinian council must be established to handle any issues or services that impact the two parts of the city, including electricity, water, certain municipal services, cross-border crimes, and joint development projects, to name a few examples. The council should have a clear and well-defined mandate to ensure that neither side can infringe on the other’s separate municipal responsibilities.

In this regard, since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has and continues to maintain the custodianship and the administration over the Muslim holy shrines, Haram al-Sharif, and will continue to do so regardless of the final agreement; Israel will maintain its control over the Western Wall.

As a part of this, a religious council encompassing Judaism, Islam, and Christianity would be established to address various issues related to their holy shrines.

In the final analysis, Israel will have to accept that the Palestinians will establish their capital in East Jerusalem, while all Israeli Jews living on the east side of the city can remain where they are. In fact, the Trump administration’s official recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital clearly states that “We are not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved.”

The ongoing disturbances actually present an opportunity for Biden to be very decisive that this violence is not something that will go away once the immediate flareup subsides. Biden should declare definitively that while West Jerusalem belongs to Israel and the US recognizes it as such (given that the US Embassy is located there), East Jerusalem is not part of Israel’s capital.

There are many Israelis, perhaps a majority, who insist that the Palestinians’ future capital can be established in either Abu Dis or Silwan, which would be incorporated into Greater Jerusalem. The Palestinians will continue to reject that off-hand, especially because they have the backing of the international community and the Arab states and in particular Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the Saudis uphold the establishment of the Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem as sacrosanct to the Arab world as a whole.

Those Israelis who bask in the illusion that East Jerusalem will forever remain under Israeli control must realize that only through the use of force can Israel maintain control and even then, frequent flareups, such the current one, will happen and potentially escalate into a full-blown violent uprising.

The upcoming new Israeli government should view the unfolding events in Jerusalem as the catalyst for looking somberly at long-term Israeli-Palestinian relations. Moreover, every Israeli should remember that under any violent conflict, the Arab states will always land on the Palestinian side, and put an end to and possibly abrogate current diplomatic relations with Israel.

The Biden administration now has a golden opportunity to change the dynamic of the conflict over East Jerusalem. Biden should insist that given the history of the city, its religious symbolism and the reality on the ground, a solution to the future of East Jerusalem could become a microcosm of Israeli-Palestinian peaceful coexistence under the framework of a two-state solution. Only such an outcome will usher in a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace.

 

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Excerpt:

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

Chinese companies have been gaining increasing access to the electricity grids of South American countries. Credit: Bigstock.

By Cecilia Joy-Pérez
WASHINGTON, May 19 2021 (IPS)

Over the past decade, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from China have carved out a niche as owners and operators of electric utilities in South American countries through acquisitions of energy grids. As SOEs shift from their previous role as mostly builders to investors in large energy assets, policymakers in South America and in Washington should consider the implications of having these companies at the helm of such services.

Countries should assess the risk of Beijing directing its SOEs to use their positions as leverage in the event of a diplomatic conflict. Under these circumstances, SOEs could increase the cost of energy, and go as far as to disrupt services.

Although such measures might constitute an extreme response, China has been willing to exert commercial power in disputes with other countries, as a recent episode with Australia has shown.

Furthermore, energy grids are increasingly interwoven with the digital infrastructure of cities – providing an opening for China to introduce backdoors into critical infrastructure. As a result, South American leaders may be less willing to reject Beijing’s claims in international bodies on myriad issues, ranging from the origins of covid-19 to human rights, if basic services hang in the balance.

From Washington’s standpoint, China’s growing role as a service provider could improve perceptions of its economic engagement in the region, paving the way for stronger relationships with South American countries and edging out the US

From Washington’s standpoint, China’s growing role as a service provider could improve perceptions of its economic engagement in the region, paving the way for stronger relationships with South American countries and edging out the US.

This could generate more support for Beijing’s broader policy objectives. US policymakers should engage South American countries to safeguard their energy grids by communicating these potential risks and taking on more leadership in infrastructure development in the region.

 

China’s firms enter South America through non-competitive means

Despite occasional hype, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has largely refused to cut excess capacity in SOEs. One alternative has been to encourage them to pursue international contracting – first through the ‘Going Out’ policy and later with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Supported by cheap state financing, SOEs can participate in projects that for-profit firms cannot compete with. Beijing also supports SOEs efforts to capture market share, often irrespective of commercial gains, in sectors that it deems strategically important.

Firms such as State Grid have an impressive track record of building energy grids in developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and in West Asia, outcompeting other firms through Beijing’s subsidies.

Through this work, SOEs have amassed a wealth of experience working in tough environments, making them attractive partners for Latin American countries that may have unreliable energy grids. Today, SOEs own nearly US$24.4 billion in energy grids in South America, with US$8.9 billion in deals closing or reaching a sale agreement in 2020 alone.

SOE energy grid investments in South America do not yet include any greenfield projects. They are all acquisitions. For example, in June 2020 State Grid announced its acquisition of a 100% stake in Chilquinta Energía S.A., the Chilean arm of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, as well as two additional companies that provide electric construction and maintenance services for Chilquinta.

The acquisition strategy enables China’s firms to enter the market more easily, relying on existing systems and know-how. It also may provide State Grid – and by extension the state – insight into the operations of US energy companies such as Sempra.

 

China’s evolving interests in the region

China is taking on a new role in the region as a service provider through its recent investments in energy grids. Historically, economic engagement in South America fits with the China’s long-standing pursuit of commodities and export markets globally.

Beijing’s international engagement is shaped by its partner regions. Rich areas like the US and the EU generally draw larger amounts of investment, while developing regions like Sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia draw greater construction activity.

Since 2005, however, South America has hosted US$54 billion in construction contracts and received US$129 billion in investment. The lion’s share of the investment has focused on the extraction of commodities, such as oil in Venezuela and copper in Peru. Yet, with the investment in energy grids a new trend is emerging.

China’s approach in the region to date has relied on carrots rather than sticks. However, the pandemic is shifting dynamics worldwide.

China’s trade retaliation for Australia’s endorsement of an investigation into the origins of Covid-19 demonstrates that Beijing is willing to leverage commercial tools in diplomatic conflicts. Australia is home to over US$100 billion in investment from China and, like South America, is a major supplier of commodities.

As Beijing’s global ambitions grow, cultivating allies in South America could prove beneficial. Already, the CPC has dangled economic engagement and used infrastructure cooperation to entice Latin American countries into severing ties with Taiwan.

 

Responding to China’s new presence in South America

Policymakers in Washington are grappling with how to respond to the BRI and China’s broader economic engagement in developing countries. An immediate step should be informing other countries of the risks of doing business with entities from China through diplomatic exchanges and open-source intelligence sharing.

Furthermore, the US, which has long viewed foreign involvement in strategic sectors in Latin America as a potential threat to its own national security, should determine which sectors and countries are of high priority to narrow the China’s gains in those markets.

Most countries treat electrical grids as key assets, limiting foreign investment in the sector. South American countries may welcome the investment from China now, but they would do well to better understand the specific risks that come with it. Subsequently, the US should lead in developing the region’s critical infrastructure, ultimately safeguarding stability in the Western Hemisphere.

 

Cecilia Joy-Pérez is an associate at Pointe Bello, specialising in business intelligence with a particular focus on China’s outward foreign investment

This article was originally published by ChinaDialogue

Farmers like Peris Wanjiku continue to battle climate-related risks at a more frequent and intense rate. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, May 19 2021 (IPS)

Peris Wanjiku, a smallholder farmer in Othaya, Nyeri County, which lies approximately 152 kilometres from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, has watched as her fellow farmers have slowly started to sell off their land in the face of increasingly erratic weather patterns.

“For the right price, more and more farmers are willing to give up their farms. We have seen it happen in Kiambu County and it is slowly happening right here in Nyeri,” she told IPS.

The survival of Kenya’s smallholder farmers, who predominantly rely on rainfed agricultural systems, is at stake as agricultural experts warn that farmers are increasingly battling floods, droughts and heat stress at more frequent, intense and unpredictable rates. It has led to severe crop and livestock losses.

Wanjiku said that in a good year, a commercial crop farmer makes between $2,000 to $3,000 per acre from crops such as maize, wheat, tea and coffee. At the same time the price of land was quite high.

“An acre of farm land in Kiambu generally goes for a minimum of $100,000, depending on the area. If I hold on to my acre, how many years will it take me to make that kind of money? We are at a crossroads,” Wanjiku said.

Government statistics show that the country’s average smallholder land size is approximately 1.2 acres.

At the same time the average price for an acre of land in Kiambu County is $323,000 — the third-highest land price across the county. According to the Hass Consult, a leading real estate company, the highest land prices are in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, followed by the coastal county of Mombasa. 

It is within this context that the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) has developed 45 Climate Risk Profiles for all agricultural counties in Kenya, with the exception of urban Counties of Nairobi and Mombasa.

All 45 profiles were developed in three phases. The first 15 profiles were completed in 2017, the second batch of 16 profiles in 2019 and the final batch of 14 profiles will be launched this year. 

“Kenya’s County Climate Risk Profiles are brief and comprehensive documents. They highlight priority value chains, farming systems and geographic areas that are highly sensitive and exposed to climate factors,” Dr. Caroline Mwongera, a scientist at the Alliance, told IPS. 

A value chain in agriculture is a set of actors and activities involved  right from the production level to consumption.

“Further, these profiles provide an assessment of the programmatic interventions and the level of institutional capacity needed to help farmers and pastoralists cope with climate related risks and vulnerabilities,” she said.

Mwongera explained that these profiles were developed in an effort to guide and prioritise climate-smart agricultural investments at county level. This is critical since Kenya has a devolved system of governance where power and resources are shared between the national government and all 47 county governments. 

“In every county, key value chain commodities were identified and the most problematic climatic hazards outlined. They therefore detail the vulnerabilities and risks posed by climate risks to people, their livelihoods, investments and the environment,” Mwongera said.

For example, one profile on Kakamega County noted the impact of drought and delayed onset of rains as well as higher temperatures during the hot season and lower temperatures during the cold season and this impact on farmers.

The report then listed adaptation strategies that farmers were using to cope with the changing climate and listed additional on-farm and off-farm adaptation practices. Off-farm activities refers to farming activities undertaken outside of a farm setting such as marketing of produce etc.

Overall, all 45 profiles provide an overview of climate risk issues and, historical and future climate trends in this East African nation.

Kenya’s Food Security report released in January predicted a 30 percent decrease in harvest due to below-average rainfall experienced from October to December 2020.

A similar report released in March forecast below-average long rains from March through May this year and a subsequent low harvest.

Against this backdrop, climate risk profiles give a synthesis of the policy, institutional and governance frameworks that can create an enabling environment for farmers to overcome climate related risks.

Mwongera also said that the latest batch of profiles made reference to the need for a women-responsive climate risk management plan.

For the right price more and more farmers are willing to sell their farms. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Judy Matu, the chair of the Association of Women in Agriculture Kenya, explained to IPS: “Women play a very central role in agriculture. Building climate-resilient agricultural systems requires that women are involved, that they actively participate and are champions of climate smart agriculture.”

World Bank estimates show that women run at least three-quarters of Kenya’s farms. Meanwhile, women were allocated only 1.6 percent of approximately 10 million hectares of land that was registered between 2013 and 2017, according to the Kenya Land Alliance.

“We indeed have the issue of male-dominated land ownership and female-dominated land use. A majority of women farmers do not have the power to make decisions on how land is utilised,” Matu told IPS.

Matu said that at the same time, not only do women farm on land that they do not own, all commercial crops and bigger livestock belong to men.

“Women run farms on a day-to-day basis and they need knowledge on proper farming practices such as agroforestry, organic and conservation farming. But trees also belong to men who decide whether a tree can be planted or cut,” Matu said.

Matu said that initiatives are underway to overcome these challenges, including engaging both men and women in sensitisation sessions on the need to adapt more climate-resilient farming practices. This, she said, creates an enabling environment for women to put acquired knowledge into practice.

Meanwhile, farmers like Wanjiku continue to battle climate-related risks at a more frequent and intense rate. But Wanjiku said that if she could find solutions to overcome these challenges, she would not sell her land.

 

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Yunia Cancio and her husband and son stand next to the biodigester installed on their El Renacer farm, in the municipality of Cabaiguán, Sancti Spíritus province, thanks to the Biomass Cuba project financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. CREDIT: Courtesy of Biomass Cuba

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, May 19 2021 (IPS)

Yunia Cancio cooked with firewood until a few years ago, when a biodigester was built on her family’s El Renacer farm in Cabaiguán, a municipality in the central Cuban province of Sancti Spíritus, under the Biomass Cuba project. That change meant a lot for her family’s quality of life, but it was not the only one.

“Life has improved a lot thanks to the biodigester, especially for me, because as the woman of the house I’m the one who cooks,” the 48-year-old farmer told IPS by phone from her family farm. “It’s a very clean fuel, more comfortable and safer, everything is more hygienic. Before I used to cook everything with firewood and my day-to-day workload was harder.”

She explained that using the biogas she normally cooks for 10 people a day and for 20 during the planting and harvest seasons, when the tobacco farm employs more workers.

Cancio and her family are among the residents of agricultural localities involved in Biomass Cuba, a project initiated in 2009 with funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), which is currently in its third stage and is to be completed in 2022.

According to Leidy Casimiro, a professor at the University of Sancti Spíritus and an expert with Biomass Cuba, in its different facets of renewable energy, training and agroecology, the initiative directly benefits more than 15,000 people, including 5,417 with biogas technologies.

The initiative is coordinated by the Indio Hatuey Experimental Station, a research centre attached to the University of Matanzas in western Cuba, and also involves related institutions in the eastern provinces of Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba, Granma and Holguín, and the central provinces of Las Tunas and Sancti Spíritus.

The biodigester at the El Renacer farm began operating on Jul. 15, 2014. “It was built by my father-in-law and brother-in-law, with the help of my husband and children, who carried bricks and made the mixture. With a capacity of nine cubic metres, it was built under the supervision of Alexander López, an expert in biodigesters,” Cancio said.

She also explained that electricity savings have been significant on the 28-hectare farm where her family has long-term “usufruct rights” and where they raise pigs and a few head of cattle and grow tobacco, vegetables and fruit.

“Something really important was when we received a rice cooker that was powered by biogas, a wonderful thing that we hadn’t seen before; we enjoyed it very much,” she recalled when commenting on the changes brought by the biofuel.

The plant also created new routines. Since it is fed mainly by manure from the farm’s pigs, the biodigester is connected to the pigsties. From time to time, cow manure is added to make the biogas more potent, from the stables, which are farther away.

According to Giraldo Martín, national director of Biomass Cuba, “The results are very valuable because today we have farms that consume only 30-40 percent of the conventional energy they used before.”

Engineer Alexander López Savrán stands next to one of the standard fixed-dome biodigesters he has developed, installed on a farm in La Macuca, a village in the municipality of Cabaiguán, in the central province of Santi Spíritus, Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

In a telephone interview with IPS from the municipality of Perico, in the province of Matanzas, Martín explained that in all its stages, Biomass Cuba has provided technologies and created capacities so local residents could move towards the concept of agroenergy in rural areas.

He also mentioned the covered lagoon model, an industrial technology that treats large quantities of biological waste to provide high volumes of biogas on a daily basis, which may be used in the future to generate electricity for the national power grid.

“In social terms, Biomass has had a great impact in the communities where it has intervened, generating employment, producing food, and in Cabaiguán, receiving domestic fuel through the supply networks that conduct biogas from pig farming areas to homes, with social and environmental benefits,” Martín said.

“We have farms that use the solid and liquid waste from the biodigesters as an excellent fertiliser with abundant nutrients that also contributes to the recovery of degraded soils, which are widespread today in agricultural areas in Cuba,” he explained.

Cancio said these techniques are used on her family’s farm, where the effluent from the biodigester “is used to fertilise the farm’s organoponic crops, including varieties of vegetables, herbs and medicinal plants, and fruit trees.”

“We are diversifying and…we now have infrastructure to extract oils, add value to various products, obtain flour from our root vegetables (a staple of the Cuban diet), motivate us to improve consumption habits and create new recipes with things that we did not use before,” she said proudly.

However, the Biomass project has also had its setbacks.

Martín said that one of the barriers that Biomass has had to break down was the lack of understanding about the concept of treating animal waste and producing energy, something that has taken a great deal of explaining and “is still not completely worked out.”

Chavely Casimiro feeds a biodigester located at the Finca del Medio, a farm in the municipality of Taguasco, Sancti Spíritus province, central Cuba. CREDIT: Courtesy of Biomass Cuba

He also considered it a challenge to align the priorities in the bidding and purchasing system with the plans of companies and productive and service organisations, so that the equipment acquisition processes are efficient and allow the technologies and knowledge generated by the projects to be applied expeditiously.

The project director said the main impact of the initiative was the way it influenced public policies.

Biomass contributes to “understanding the importance of renewable energy sources in rural areas, the role of the contributions that farms can make with biodigesters, waste treatment systems on pig farms, the use of rice husks to produce electricity and steam to dry rice, as well as the use of residual wood from sawmills to generate energy,” Martín said.

Meanwhile, José Antonio Guardado, national coordinator of the Movement of Biogas Users (MUB), told IPS that there are between 4,500 and 5,000 biodigesters around the country. “A count is currently being carried out in order to have a more precise figure,” he said by e-mail from Santa Clara, capital of the province of Villa Clara.

The MUB, which brings together producers who use the technology of anaerobic digestion by the action of microorganisms, emerged in Cuba in 1983 and has 3,000 members throughout this Caribbean island nation.

Guardado said the most urgent task of this movement was the promotion of the closed cycle system.

“In our assessment, in less than five percent of the installed biodigesters, closed-loop criteria and concepts are used, which means that the surplus end products are used in the processes that are generated in the chain on the farm, such as fish farming, irrigation or fertilisation,” he said.

Guardado said the MUB and all other actors working on the issue at the local level should defend this technology until all existing biodigesters in the country are closed-loop, including the distribution of surpluses among neighbouring producers.

According to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, 95 percent of the national energy mix is made up of fossil fuels, while this year the generation of energy from renewable sources is expected to grow to 6.3 percent of the total energy produced in the country.

Cuba’s goal is for 24 percent of energy to come from renewable sources by 2030.

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By Martin Kropff and Nteranya Sanginga
IBADAN and MEXICO CITY, May 19 2021 (IPS)

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks.

The original article was published on February 17 2021

A woman farmer in Mozambique with DT maize harvest. Credit: CIMMYT

IBADAN and MEXICO CITY, Feb 17 2021 (IPS) – 17 February – African smallholder farmers have no choice but to adapt to climate change: 2020 was the second hottest year on record, while prolonged droughts and explosive floods are directly threatening the livelihoods of millions. By the 2030s, lack of rainfall and rising temperatures could render 40 percent of Africa’s maize-growing area unsuitable for climate-vulnerable varieties grown by farmers, while maize remains the preferred and affordable staple food for millions of Africans who survive on less than a few dollars of income a day.

Farmers across the continent understand that the climate crisis is affecting their harvests and their “daily bread”. In sub-Saharan Africa, growing numbers of people are chronically undernourished, with over 21 percent of the population suffering from severe food insecurity.

The global battle against climate change and all its interconnected impacts requires a multisectoral approach to formulate comprehensive responses. For farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, especially smallholders, this involves producing improved crop varieties that are not only high-yielding but also tolerant to drought and heat, resistant to diseases and insect pests, and can contribute to minimizing the risk of farming under rainfed conditions.

CGIAR, a global partnership involving numerous organizations engaged in food systems transformation, has been at the forefront of technological innovation and deployment for many decades. The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) are the two CGIAR research centers undertaking innovative maize research and development work in the stress-prone environments of Africa. Successful development of improved climate-adaptive maize varieties for sub-Saharan Africa has been spearheaded by these two CGIAR centers that implemented joint projects such as the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) and Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa (STMA) in partnership with an array of national and private sector partners in the major maize-producing countries in Eastern, Southern, and West Africa. Under the 10-year DTMA initiative, about 160 affordable and scalable maize varieties were released.

High-yielding, multiple stress-tolerant, maize varieties using CIMMYT/IITA maize germplasm released after 2007 (the year the DTMA project was started) are estimated to be grown on 5 million hectares in 2020 in sub-Saharan Africa. The adoption of drought-tolerant (DT) maize varieties helped lift millions of people above the poverty line across the continent. For example, in drought-prone southern Zimbabwe, farmers using DT varieties in dry years were able to harvest up to 600 kilograms more maize per hectare—enough for nine months for an average family of six—than farmers who sowed conventional varieties.

A smallholder woman farmer in northern Uganda with DT maize on her farm. Credit: CIMMYT

The STMA project that followed DTMA also operated in sub-Saharan Africa, where 176 million people depend on maize for nutrition and economic well-being. The project, which ended in 2020, and followed by a new project called Accelerating Genetic Gains for Maize and Wheat Improvement (AGG), developed new maize varieties that can be successfully grown under drought, sub-optimal soil fertility, heat stress, and diseases and pests. In 2020, CGIAR-related stress-tolerant maize varieties were estimated to be grown on over 5 million hectares, benefiting over 8.6 million smallholder farmers in 13 countries across sub-Saharan Africa.

In Kenya, farmers with the new maize varieties are harvesting 20 to 30 percent more grain than farmers without drought-tolerant seeds. Prasanna Boddupalli, Director of CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program and the CGIAR Research Program on maize, says this has a cascading effect on livelihoods—improving the nutritional intake of the community, helping children return to school, and reducing poverty.

Martin Kropff, Director General, CIMMYT

In an interview with Gates Notes, Kenyan farmer Veronica Nduku, who has been growing CIMMYT’s drought-tolerant maize for 10 years, had said that she always harvests even when there is no rainfall.

In Zambia, a study by CIMMYT and the Center for Development Research has shown that adopting drought-tolerant maize can increase yields by 38 percent and reduce the risks of crop failure by 36 percent, even though three-quarters of the farmers in the study had experienced drought during the survey.

Besides climate-adaptive improved maize varieties, both CIMMYT and IITA have developed maize varieties biofortified with provitamin A; vitamin A deficiency is highly prevalent in populations across sub-Saharan Africa. These biofortified maize varieties, developed in partnership with HarvestPlus, are being deployed in targeted countries in sub-Saharan Africa in partnership with national programs and seed company partners.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding this year, CGIAR unveiled its roadmap for a new 10-year strategy at the online 2021 Climate Adaptation Summit, hosted by the Netherlands in January.

The new sustainable research strategy puts climate change at the heart of its mission, with an emphasis on the realignment of food systems worldwide, targeting five impact areas: nutrition, poverty, inclusivity, climate adaptation and mitigation, and environmental health.

Nteranya Sanginga, Director General, IITA

Through food system transformation, resilient agri-food systems, and genetic innovations CGIAR’s ambition is to meet and go beyond the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for a concerted global effort to radically realign food systems to achieve the 17 SDGs by 2030.

CGIAR warns that without more science-based interventions to align agriculture with climate targets, the number of undernourished people around the world could exceed 840 million by 2030.

To shift its focus and investment into agricultural research that responds to the climate crisis, CGIAR is undergoing an institutional reform. Now named ‘One CGIAR’ the dynamic reformulation of CGIAR’s partnerships, knowledge, assets, and global presence, aims for greater integration and impact in the face of the interdependent challenges facing today’s world.

Scientific innovations in food, land, and water systems will be deployed faster, at a larger scale, and at reduced cost, having greater impact where they are needed the most.

Ground-breaking progress to date would not have been possible without the generous funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Yet Bill Gates, who recognizes the essential role of CGIAR in “feeding our future”, also acknowledges that current levels of investment do not even amount to half of what is needed.

Investments in maize breeding and seed system innovations must expand to keep up with the capacity to withstand climate variability in sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s most chronically undernourished region, and provide food and nutritional security to millions of maize-dependent and resource-constrained smallholders and consumers.

At CIMMYT and IITA, we have invested on long-term breeding to increase genetic gains using many new tools and technologies. These efforts need to be further intensified.

More funding is also needed to reach out to smallholders with quality seed of climate-resilient maize varieties. While 77 percent of Zambian households interviewed said they experienced drought in 2015, only 44 percent knew about drought-tolerant maize.

Mindful that adopting new technologies and practices can be risky for resource-poor farmers who do not enjoy the protection of social welfare safety nets in rich countries, CIMMYT encourages farmers, seed companies, and other end users to be involved in the development process.

It is not enough to lower carbon emissions. African farmers need to adapt quickly to rising temperatures, drawn-out droughts and sharp, devastating floods. With higher-yielding, multiple stress tolerant maize varieties, smallholder farmers have the opportunity to not only combat climatic variabilities, diseases and pests, but can also effectively diversify their farms. This will enable them in turn to have better adaptation to the changing climates and access to well-balanced and affordable diets. As climate change intensifies, so should agricultural innovations. It is time for a “business unusual” approach.

 

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Excerpt:

Martin Kropff, Director General, CIMMYT and Nteranya Sanginga, Director General, IITA

The COVID-19 vaccine administered through the COVAX Facility. Credit: PAHO/Karen González

By Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 19 2021 (IPS)

We went to the Kanatte cemetery, Sri Lanka’s largest, where most of us, residents of the capital city, would end up sooner or later. But it was deserted, and so we had time for a leisurely chat with some of the helpful staff there, albeit after admiring some of the grave sites and remaining beautiful trees.

As good social scientists and medical anthropologists, we were on a mission to do some qualitative research and cross-check Covid-19 quantitative data, to see if there was an increase in deaths, in the biggest city and population hub of the country.

Colombo’s cemetery was quiet, calm, green and monsoonal. It was a far cry from the overflowing cemeteries, floating bodies and weeping masses we have encountered on our television screens in narratives from New York, Sao Paulo or New Delhi, where the global Covid-19 media show has gone to town.

We were shown the red log books with the names of the deceased. We learned that over the last two weeks, there was less business, fewer funerals than in January and February this year, as there had been fewer bodies coming for burial and/or cremation during the current month of May 2021, although the country is in lockdown.

This was also corroborated by interviews at A.F Raymond Funeral Parlour, which also had less business and fewer funerals in the past couple of weeks – since May 1, 2021.

There had been a total of 35 Covid-19 positive bodies that came to Kanatte during recent weeks from May 1 to May 13 for cremation. But overall, there were fewer deaths and bodies in the current month of May than in January and February on an average day.

Yet the whole of Sri Lanka is in full blown Covid-19 lockdown at this time and arbitrary regulations are in play until the end of the month: People may go out of their homes based on their Identity Card numbers starting Monday next week.

Interviews with Senior Doctors

Although Colombo has the largest population in the country and urban areas get affected first in epidemics due to population density, a surgeon at the biggest hospital in the country – Colombo General Hospital – said in an interview they did not have a Covid-19 ward until relatively recently as PCR tested Covid-19 patients were sent to the IDH – Infectious Diseases Hospital.

In recent times PCR testing has been increased there are more people identified as Covid-19 positive in hospitals, but almost half are asymptomatic. However, PCR tests recommended by WHO deliver a high number of false positives and hence any ascription of positive results to a COVID-19 diagnosis should require the occurrence of clinical symptoms and further evaluation and confirmation by physicians, including the appraisal of distinct laboratory parameters.

About 45-50 % percent of those who test PCR positive and are kept in hospitals in Sri Lanka at this time are asymptomatic. That is, they may be hospitalized based on false positives and filling up the wards and hospitals — so what we have is a PCR pandemic?

Indeed, PCR tests for Covid-19 are now the subject of court action by a team of international lawyers challenging the test’s validity and the WHO ‘s Covid-19 ‘pandemic’ narrative, in courts in Germany and the USA.

The current much hyped “third wave” of Covid-19 in Sri Lanka at this time appears to be due to a couple of factors: 1) increased testing with PCR tests that deliver a high number of false positives and/ or asymptomatic patients. 2) the arrival of seasonal flu caused by monsoon and inter-monsoon rains which bring “flu season” in the Tropics.

PCR test positive folks who are asymptomatic are filling up hospital beds. At this time there are about 100 PCR positive patients with what are often termed co-morbidity factors or tertiary cases such as diabetes, heart disease, Kidney disease at the General Hospital of Colombo.

There are also many empty beds at the General hospital of Colombo because many people with serious illnesses do not want to go to hospital because of Covid-19 hype and fear psychosis.

What Sri Lanka has at this time appears to be a WHO recommended PCR test induced crisis and pandemic, as in other parts of the world even though PCR tests are known to be flawed and a team of international lawyers have challenged in court in Germany and the US, the WHO leader Tederos Adhanom, and the use of the PCR test to diagnose Covid-19.

No Doctors, nurses, PHIs, have died of the so called deadly Covid-19 in Sri Lanka en masse, unlike in India and some other countries. Yet, Sri Lanka is in lockdown and economy, livelihoods, and poor people’s access to wages and food and nutrition has been compromised based on dubious PCR tests.

At this time, a comparison of Sri Lanka country data, both qualitative and quantitative. show that Covid-19 is milder than seasonal flue. Over the past year there have been 850 Covid-19 deaths, ever since the World Health Organization (WHO), declared a so-called ‘pandemic’ in March 2020, after changing the definition of the word.

However, in an average year between 4,500- and 7000 die of seasonal flu in the island, according to National Data and WHO data. On an average year the highest number of deaths in the island are caused by heart attacks and the second highest number of deaths are due to Cancer in Sri Lanka. Upper respiratory tract infection due to influenza are the third highest cause of deaths in the island.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, (IHME), at the University of Washington in Washington DC, has made projections designed to trigger a fear psychosis in Sri Lanka and predicted a daily death count over 200 by June and a total death toll of 20,000 by September 1, without any data to show how it came to such conclusions about Sri Lanka.
http://www.dailymirror.lk/news-features/Covid-number-crisis/131-211845Covid

The US Government’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has meanwhile issued a travel warning on Sri Lanka.

At this time, Sri Lanka has been shut down and citizens deprived of their collective right to assembly and education, while religious communities, Muslims and Buddhists are deprived their right to worship and celebrate Ramazan and Vesak in the month of May, based on epidemiology models devised in Washington DC at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

It bears repeating that a country’s policy should be made on analysis of national Data, rather than based on images and narratives and epidemiology models of another country- where the US or India.

Meanwhile, certain local and national medical associations, such as the GMOA and Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA) and an outfit called the Institute for Health Policy, have echoed the IHEM’s fear psychosis inducing narrative by calling for island wide shut downs., although national data and the Covid-19 IFR and CFR reveals a different story – that over the last year since WHO declared a global “panicdemic” – Covid 19 is milder than flu in Sri Lanka.

It is increasingly apparent that that there is NO Covid-19 Health Emergency in Sri Lanka at this time, but there is a livelihood, poverty and inequality emergency as a result of unscientific and wrongful policies based on Covid-19 hype and misinformation by Health Authorities influenced by the WHO and Center for Disease control (CDC) and IHME in Washington which has effectively locked down large parts of the country.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s economy shrank 3.5 last year due to Covid-19 lock downs.

At this time the question arises: Why is the Sri Lanka government (GoSL) following mysterious epidemiology models generated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) of the University of Washington?

Why is the GoSL, MOH and Covid-19 Task Force, headed by two Sri Lankan-US citizens making policy that is NOT based on national and local data and evidence, but epidemiology models developed in the US?

These so called Covid-19 policies and WHO recommended PCR testing policies and lockdowns that are also causing a plastic pandemic, medical garbage and environmental crisis are gravely detrimental to the livelihoods, economy, society and well-being of Sri Lankans, particularly poor and vulnerable communities and increasing economic inequality.

There is also the related phenomenon of LAWFARE – where law and justice systems and institutions are weaponized against core principles of justice and equality and democratic rights to assembly and free speech curtailed in the name of emergency.

Finally, questions arise as to why are the so-called opposition political parties – the United National Party, Samagi Janabla and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (UNP, SJB and JVP), which love to attack the Government policy so incapable of national data analysis and evidence -based Covid-19 policy recommendations? Are they also reading from Washington’s playbook?

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is a social and medical anthropologist.

The large part of COVID-19 relief funds is going to big corporation. People who are likely to have been impacted the most by the pandemic in the Global South, such as smaller businesses, marginalised communities, women, and those in poverty, have been left out. Credit: Dionny Matos/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA , May 18 2021 (IPS)

Poverty and income inequality are being deepened as COVID-19 relief funds are handed out to large corporations instead of social protection programmes in developing countries, groups involved in a new study of COVID-19 bailouts have said.

A report by the Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC) civil society group showed that the vast majority of COVID-19 recovery funds in nine developing countries have gone to big corporations instead of toward welfare, small firms, or those working in the informal economy.

“The way COVID-19 relief has been implemented has worsened marginalisation, poverty, and inequality, including income, gender, and other inequalities, in some countries,” Matti Kohonen, FTC Director, told IPS.

“The large part of these relief funds is going to big corporations, but the people who are likely to have been impacted most by the pandemic in the Global South, such as smaller businesses, marginalised communities, women, and those in poverty, have been left out,” he said.

In what the group says is the first major analysis of public bailout funds disbursed in developing countries during the pandemic, FTC members looked at their use in Kenya, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Nepal, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and India.

It found that in eight countries, an average of 63 percent of pandemic-related state aid went to big businesses, while only a quarter was spent on social protection schemes. Only 2 percent went to informal sector workers – despite the informal sector often making up a large part of the overall economies in many poor nations. Meanwhile, much of what was allocated to small and medium-sized companies never reached them and was diverted elsewhere, it claims.

India was examined separately because of a change in the government’s definition of a small business during the pandemic.

However, FTC believes that total corporate stimulus is likely to be even larger due to expected revenue shortfalls from tax cuts, especially in Bangladesh and India, or the cost of tax amnesty programmes, as in Bangladesh and Honduras.

Civil society groups operating in some of the countries in FTC’s report say that the findings were not entirely unexpected, but underlined the extent to which poor and marginalised groups had been apparently neglected by governments during the pandemic.

Speaking about the finding that in Kenya 92 percent of bailout funds had gone to large corporations, Chenai Mukumba of the Tax Justice Network Africa advocacy group, told IPS: “It was not surprising because the private sector has a lot of lobbying power to influence policy. But it was surprising that so little was getting to the people that needed it – the vulnerable and marginalised and especially those in the informal sector.”

In many poor countries the informal economic sector forms a large part of the overall economy with millions of people often relying solely on informal work to make a living. In Bangladesh, for instance, cash-in-hand workers make up 85 percent of the country’s labour force. The figure is similar in Kenya.

COVID-19 restrictions, including lockdowns and travel bans, have had a massive impact on such work as people have no longer been able to travel for work, or to sell goods at markets or outside their neighbourhoods. This has had a drastic effect on some families.

“Among vulnerable populations people have seen their quality of life really fall because of movement restrictions. The narrative we are hearing from people on the ground working with these communities is that there is an acceptance that governments need to bring in restrictions to stop COVID-19 spreading, but that those restrictions need to be accompanied by relief measures, and those relief measures have not been provided,” Mukumba said.

The FTC’s study focused on where COVID-19 bailout funds went, but did not go into detail about the exact reasons why they were disbursed in the way they were, nor did it look at individual disbursements to corporations or other entities.

But Kohonen and Mukumba told IPS there were a number of reasons resources did not go to social protection services, including both private sector lobbying and inadequate government capacities to identify vulnerable populations.

The report also does raise a warning about a lack of transparency around the disbursement of the recovery funds.

It cites how in Kenya, for instance, the World Bank provided $50 million in immediate funding to support the country’s emergency response – funds that are now unaccounted for.

Whatever the reasons behind the allocation of funds, the fact that so little went on social protection remains a serious problem which must be corrected, said Kohonen.

“Much more funding should have gone to social protection and too much went to big corporations which don’t need such a large proportion of relief funding,” he explained.

And even in some states where an ostensibly comparatively large part of relief funding was spent on social protection, the most vulnerable members of society still lost out.

Explaining the situation in Guatemala, where just over half of COVID-19 relief funding went on social protection measures, Ricardo Barrientos of the Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies (ICEFI) which worked on the report, told IPS: “The government response, although mainly allocated for social protection, was too little and too late, and critically insufficient to make a meaningful impact for most Guatemalans.”

He explained that as a percentage of GDP, it amounted to 3.07 percent – of the countries surveyed only Honduras and Sierra Leone had a lower figure – and while most of this money was allocated to an emergency cash transfer programme it was concentrated in cities and urban areas, and failed to reach people who needed it most, especially Mayan indigenous people living in poverty and in appalling conditions in rural areas.

“While more than 70 percent of households survive in the informal sector, accounting for around 24 percent of GDP, the relief funds were ridiculously small for this important part of the Guatemalan economically active population. Many Guatemalans found themselves in the dramatic position of having to [decide whether to] go out and try to sell something, or die due to starvation. The saying was: ‘I prefer to die from COVID-19, than from hunger,’” he said.

The FTC is currently preparing reports on the use of COVID-19 bailouts in other countries, including more developing nations as well as developed states in Europe and elsewhere.

However, it is likely, FTC members say, that in at least the developing states a similarly large proportion of the funds is likely to have gone to large corporations.

“In Sierra Leone we saw most of the relief funds going to corporates and expect it will be a similar story in other countries in Africa we are still looking at,” said Mukumba.

FTC has passed its report on to governments and major COVID-19 bailout donors such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. It has yet to receive any direct response.

It has also called for governments and international financial institutions to adopt a series of measures to address what it calls a “dangerous imbalance in existing COVID-19 relief funds”.

These include implementing a minimum corporate tax rate of at least 25 percent, tax hikes for the wealthy, corporations, and high-income earners, setting up public beneficial ownership registries, to know who benefits from recovery spending, and profits made during the pandemic, and introducing greater accountability to provide transparency on the conditions attached and disbursements made of COVID-19 recovery funds, including World Bank funds.

 

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