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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 18 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations, in a new report to be released next month, has warned “there is no escaping the fact that the global landscape for the implementation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has generally deteriorated since 2015, hindering the efforts of governments and other partners”

And the commitment to multilateral cooperation, so central to implementing major global agreements, is now under pressure, says the 35-page report, due to be released ahead of the upcoming high-level political forum (HLPF) of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), July 9-18.

The reasons for the roadblocks include a spreading economic recession, a decline in development aid, the diversion of funds into humanitarian emergencies, the widespread military conflicts, the growing economic losses from natural disasters, the downsizing of operations by cash-strapped UN agencies, the rise of right-wing governments and the increasing challenge to multilateralism, among others.

The study says “it is cause for great concern that the extreme poverty rate is projected to be 6 percent in 2030, missing the global target to eradicate extreme poverty while hunger is on the rise for the third consecutive year.”

At the same time, biodiversity is being lost at an alarming rate with around one million species already facing extinction, many within decades while green-house gas emissions continue to increase.

Additionally, the required level of sustainable development financing and other means of implementation are not yet coming on stream and institutions are not strong or effective enough to respond adequately to these massive inter-related and cross-border challenges.

On gender empowerment, it says women represent less than 40 percent of those employed, occupy only about a quarter of managerial positions in the world, and (in a limited set of countries with available data) face a gender pay gap of 12 percent.

About a fifth of those aged 15 to 49 experienced physical or sexual-partner violence in the last 12 months.

“There is simply no way that we can achieve the 17 SDGs without achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls,” the study declares.

Asked for his reaction, Jens Martens, director of the Global Policy Forum and coordinator of the Civil Society Reflection Group on the 2030 Agenda, told IPS: “The new UN report is a wake- up call to governments—and it clearly shows that most governments have failed to turn the proclaimed transformational vision of the 2030 Agenda into real policies”.

“We agree with the assessment that the commitment to multilateral cooperation is now under pressure. Even worse, national chauvinism and authoritarianism are on the rise in a growing number of countries,” he added.

But despite these gloomy perspectives, there are signs of change, said Martens.

In response to the failure or inaction of governments, world-wide social movements have recently emerged, mainly with young people and women in the lead.

The UN report clearly shows, that structural transformation is more needed than ever before. It requires strengthening bottom-up governance and governance coherence.

At global level, he said, the upcoming review of the High-Level Political Forum next month should be used to overcoming the weakness of this body and transform it to a Sustainable Development Council.

Martens said enhancing governance coherence requires to give those institutions which are responsible for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, the necessary financial resources and effective political and legal instruments.

At global level this requires to changing the recent course of relying on non-binding instruments and corporate voluntarism.

The SDG Summit, scheduled to take place at the United Nations September 24-25, and equally important, the 75th anniversary of the United Nations in 2020, will provide important opportunities to translate the calls of the emerging global movements for social and environmental justice into political steps towards a new democratic multilateralism, he added.

Chee Yoke Ling, Director of the Third World Network, told IPS the world is very far from meeting the sustainable development commitments, including the targets set under the Convention on Biological Diversity for the period 2011 to 2020, the Aichi Targets, that are integral to the SDGs.

There are promises of implementation, especially new and additional funding, that is a legal obligation of developed countries in various multilateral treaties, she added.

“The global cooperation forged in the 1992 Rio treaties on biodiversity, climate and combatting desertification were rooted in the principle of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities between developing and developed countries.”

She said 27 years later, multilateralism is under attack, with an erosion of all these principles and commitments.

“The Trump Administration is pushing the world into economic protectionism, while the resources of developing countries are now facing a new level of siphoning through digitalization,” she added.

From personal data to gene sequence information, a handful of transnational corporations once again seek aggressively to claim private property rights for profit, she warned.

Meanwhile, on relatively positive note, the report points out that progress is being made and some favorable trends on SDG implementation are evident.

Extreme poverty and child mortality rates continue to fall. Progress is being made against diseases such as hepatitis, where the incidence of new chronic HBV infections has been reduced considerably.

Certain targets regarding gender equality are seeing progress such as implementing gender responsive budgeting. Electricity access in the poorest countries has begun to increase.

Globally, labour productivity has increased and unemployment is back to pre-financial crisis levels. The proportion of the urban population living in slums is falling.

Still progress has been slow on many SDGs, “that the most vulnerable people and countries continue to suffer the most, and that the global response thus far has not been ambitious enough.”

Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch, told IPS the UN report does not mention that, according to its estimates, poverty is actually increasing in Sub-Saharan Africa, where nine out of ten people in extreme poverty will be living in 2030.

A closer look at the income growth of the bottom 40 and the national average, shows that for more than one third of the countries with data, the difference was of less than 0.5 percent, which rounds up to zero, considering the margin error of these measures.

Further, in one third of the countries, income of the bottom 40 actually decreased, making the poor poorer. In many of them the national average decreased even more, said Bissio.

“Is it fair to count those countries where the income of the poor was reduced less than the national average as meeting the promise of target 10.1 to “progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 per cent of the population at a rate higher than the national average”?, he asked.

“While the UN Secretariat is to be commended for looking at the issues that really matter (like the scandalous growth of the income of the top 1 percent), the UN bodies that form the Inter-agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) should take due note and re-formulate the framework they concocted in a way that is actually useful”.

The 2030 Agenda is explicit in mentioning that all countries should take action towards sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12), “with developed countries taking the lead”.

The Progress Report quotes UNEP’s “Global Resources Outlook 2019” per capita average global figure of 12 tons of resources extracted per person in 2015 (up from 8 tonnes in 1990), but it fails to mention what the Outlook says in the following paragraph: “High-income countries consume 27 tons of materials (per capita) on average, which is 60 per cent higher than the upper-middle countries and more than thirteen times the level of the low-income group (at two tons per capita).”

By only providing global average figures, the Progress Report hides the responsibility of developed countries in current global un-sustainability instead of encouraging them to take the lead.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post UN’s Development Goals Remain Largely Elusive appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By UNCCD Media Advisory
Jun 17 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(UNCCD) – Monday, 17 June is World Day to Combat Desertification. It will be observed all over the world.
Download the message from Mr. António Guterres, United Nations Secretary General, by clicking on this link: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIJf-5FUg4k&feature=youtu.be>

Download the message from Mr. Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish or Russian.

Background materials about the World Day are available here:<https://www.unccd.int/actions17-june-world-day-combat-desertification/celebrate-2019wdcd>

A press release (Arabic, Chinese, French, English, Spanish and Russian) from the global observance event taking place in Ankara, Turkey, will be circulated on 17 June.

———————

Le Vendredi 17 Juin sera célébrée la Journée Mondiale de Lutte contre la Désertification. Elle sera observée partout dans le monde.

Téléchargez le message de M. António Guterres, Secrétaire Général des Nations Unies, en cliquant sur le lien: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIJf-5FUg4k&feature=youtu.be

Télécharger le message de M. Ibrahim Thiaw, Secrétaire exécutif de la Convention des Nations Unies sur la Lutte Contre la Désertification, en Arabe, Anglais, Chinois, Français, Espagnol et en Russe.

Les documents d’information sur la Journée mondiale sont disponibles ici : <https://www.unccd.int/actions17-june-world-day-combat-desertification/celebrate-2019wdcd>

La communiqué de presse (en Arabe, Anglais, Chinois, Français, Espagnol et en Russe) relatif à l’événement mondial de célébration de cette journée qui aura lieu à Ankara, en Turque, sera distribué le 17 Juin,

———————

Viernes 17 de junio es el Día Mundial de lucha contra la desertificación que se celebrará en todo el mundo.

Descargue el mensaje de António Guterres, Secretario General de las Naciones Unidas pulsando en el enlace del idioma que desee: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIJf-5FUg4k&feature=youtu.be>

Descargue el mensaje de Ibrahim Thiaw Secretaria Ejecutivo de la Convención de las Naciones Unidas de lucha contra la desertificación en Árabe, Chino, Inglés, Francés, Español o Ruso.

Materiales de información sobre el Día Mundial están disponibles aquí: <https://www.unccd.int/actions17-june-world-day-combat-desertification/celebrate-2019wdcd>

El comunicado de prensa Árabe, Chino, Inglés, Francés, Español o Ruso) del evento de celebración mundial que tiene lugar en Ankara, China, se circulará los días 17 de junio.

The post Celebrating 25 years and growing the future together appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Media Advisory in English; Avis aux médias en Francais; Comunicado de prensa en Espagnol

The post Celebrating 25 years and growing the future together appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Sophia the Robot speaking to UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed at UN Headquarters in 2017. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Hazel Henderson
ST AUGUSTINE, Florida, Jun 17 2019 (IPS)

We humans are at the absurd stage in our technological evolution when we seem to have abandoned our common sense. Billions are spent by governments, corporations and investors in training computer-based algorithms (i.e. computer programs) in today’s mindless rush to create so-called “artificial” intelligence, widely advertised as AI.

Meanwhile, training our children and their brains (already superior to computer algorithms) is under-funded, schools are dilapidated, sited in run-down, often polluted areas while our teachers are poorly paid and need greater respect. How did our national priorities get so skewed?

In reality, there is nothing artificial about these algorithms or their intelligence, and the term “AI” is a mystification! The term that describes the reality is “Human-Trained Machine Learning”, in today’s mad scramble to train these algorithms to mimic human intelligence and brain functioning.

In the techie magazine WIRED, October 2018, we meet a pioneering computer scientist, Fei-Fei LI, testifying at a Congressional hearing, who underlines this truth. She said, “Humans train these algorithms” and she talked about the horrendous mistakes these machines make in mis-identifying people, using the term “bias in—bias out” updating the old computer saying, “garbage in—garbage out”.

Professor LI described how we are ceding our authority to these algorithms to judge who gets hired, who goes to jail, who gets a loan, a mortgage or good insurance rates — and how these machines code our behavior, change our rules and our lives.

She is now back at Stanford University after a time as an ethicist at Google and has started a foundation to promote the truth about AI, since she feels responsible for her role in inventing some of these algorithms herself.

As a celebrated pioneer of this field, Professor LI says “There’s nothing artificial about AI. It’s inspired by people, it’s created by people and more importantly, it impacts people”.

So how did Silicon Valley invade our culture and worldwide technology programs with its short-term, money -obsessed values: “move fast and break things”; disrupt the current systems while rushing to scale and cash out with an IPO?

These values are discussed by two insiders in shocking detail, by Antonio G. Martinez in “Chaos Monkeys” (2016) and Bloomberg’s Emily Chang in “Brotopia” (2018). These authors explain a lot about how /training these algorithms went so wrong: subconsciously mimicking their mostly male, misogynist, often white entrepreneurs and techies with their money-making monopolistic biases and often adolescent, libertarian fantasies.

I also explored all this in my article “The Future of Democracy Challenged in the Digital Age”, CADMUS, October 2018, describing all these issues of the takeover by AI of our economic sectors; from manufacturing, transport, education, retail, media, law, medicine, agriculture, to banking, insurance and finance.

While many of these sectors have become more efficient and profitable for the shareholders, my conclusion in “The Idiocy of Things” critiqued the connecting of all appliances in so-called “smart homes” as quite hazardous and an invasion of privacy.

I urged humans to take back control from the over-funded, over-invested, over-paid computer and information science sectors too often focused on corporate efficiency and cost-saving goals driven by the profit targets demanded by Wall Street.

I have called for an extension of the English law, settled in the year 1215: “habeas corpus” affirming that humans own their own bodies. This extension would cover ownership of our brains and all our information we generate in an updated “information habeas corpus”.

Since May 2018, European law has ratified this with its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which stipulates that individuals using social media platforms, or any other social system do indeed retain ownership of all their personal data.

So, laws are beginning to catch up with the inhuman uses of human beings, with our hard-earned skills being used to train algorithms that then replace us! The computer algorithm trainers then employ out of-work people surviving in the gig economy on Mechanical Turk and Task Rabbit sites, in minimum, hourly- paid data entry tasks to train these algorithms!

Scientist Jaron Lanier in his “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Now” (2018) shows how social media are manipulating us with algorithms to engineer changes in our behavior, by engaging our attention with clickbait and content that arouses our emotions, fears and rage, playing on some of the divisions in our society to keep us on their sites.

This helps drive ad sales and their gargantuan profits and rapid global growth. Time to rethink all this, beyond the dire alarms raised by Bill Gates, Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking that these algorithms we are teaching will soon take over and may harm or kill us as did HAL in the movie “2001”.

Why indeed are we spending all this money to train machines while short-changing our children, our teachers and schools? Training our children’s brains must take priority!

Instead of training machines to hijack our attention and sell our personal data to marketers for profit — let’s steer funds into tripling efforts to train and pay our teachers, upgrade schools and curricula with courses on civic responsibility, justice, community values, freedoms under habeas corpus (women also own their own bodies!) and how ethics and trust are the basis of all market and societies.

Why all the expensive efforts to enhance machine learning to teach algorithms to recognize human faces, guide killer drones, falsify video images and further modify our behavior and capture our eyeballs with click bait, devising and spreading content that angers and outrages — further dividing us and disrupting democracies?

Let’s rein in the Big Brother ambitions of the new techno-oligopolists. As a wise NASA scientist, following Norbert Weiner’s Human Use of Human Beings (1950), reminded us in 1965 about the value of humans: “Man (sic) is the lowest-cost, 150 pound, nonlinear all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by un-skilled labor”, quoted in Foreign Affairs, July-August, 2015, p 11. Time for common sense!

The post Let’s Train Humans First … Before We Train Machines appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 17 2019 (IPS)

A friend of mine who became wealthy as an art dealer but eventually lost his fortune told me: “Money isn´t everything, but it helps.” This made me think of Donald Trump, who likes to describe himself as an entrepreneur, i.e. ”owner of a business enterprise who, by risk and initiative, attempts to make profits.”1 The keyword is profits. According to Trump, success is measured through wealth. Like chess and poker, entrepreneurship is about winning and losing. Trump characterizes people he dislikes as losers, while he considers himself to be a winner.

Donald Trump´s favorite book is Trump: Art of the Deal. On 8 January 2016, while being a presidential candidate, Trump delivered a long-winding speech at the Liberty University. A private, evangelical institution, self-defined as ”the biggest Christian university in the world”. After being introduced by its rector, Jerry Falwell Jr., declaring that Trump: “lives a life of loving and helping others as Jesus taught in the great commandment”, Trump began to speak about religion. It may sound as if he was drunk, but he wasn´t. Trump does not drink alcohol:

We´ve done great with the Evangelicals … the Evangelicals been amazing …The Tea Party been amazing … and we´re doing really well. Let´s see what happens. I think we can do really something special. […] We´re going to protect Christianity. I can say that, I don´t have to be politically correct or … we´re going to protect it. You know … I asked Jerry and I asked some of the folks, because I hear it´s a major theme right here, but Corinthians, right? Two Corinthians 3:17, that’s the whole ballgame. “Where the spirit of the Lord” … Right? “Where the spirit of the Lord is … there´s liberty!” … and here it is … Liberty College, but Liberty University, but it´s so true … when you think … and that´s really the one you like. Is that the one you like? Cause I love it and it´s so representative of what´s taking place. But … we´re going to protect Christianity.

Trump rambled on and on, about Christmas being abandoned, about the wall he is going to build, stating that US generals are incompetent and so are the country´s present leaders. Trump assured his listeners that while talking about these losers he might use foul language, but he was not going to do so because:

My education is too good to be called plain spoken. I´m not so plain spoken. You know I wrote The Art of the Deal. I wrote many bestsellers like The Art of the Deal. Everybody reads The Art of the Deal. Who has read The Art of the Deal in this room? Everybody. I always say … I always say “a deep, deep second to the Bible.” The Bible blows it all away. There´s nothing like the Bible. But, The Art of the Deal was about … in fact there is a few of them over there [?] … was the bestselling business book.2

Trump: Art of the Deal was actually written by Tony Schwartz. Howard Kaminsky, in charge of the book´s publisher, Random House, confirmed that “Trump didn’t write a postcard for us,” while Schwartz declared that writing the book was his “greatest regret in life, without question”. Already during the first hours of the one and a half year Schwartz spent with Trump, he found that the future president had ”the attention span of a five-year-old”. It was almost impossible to make Trump sit down and provide information about business deals and beliefs, and even more difficult to make him share his memories. Instead, Schwartz was allowed to follow Trump around, listen to his phone conversations and witness how he dealt with staff and business partners. Schwartz found that Trump did not even have the patience to read what he had written. Nevertheless, when the book had been published Trump told everyone that he himself had written most of it, he even believed he spoke the truth.3

Schwartz´s observations about Trump´s lack of attention are verified by people who have been close to him. In the 1990´s, Barbara Res was vice president in the Trump Organization. On one occasion she tried to prepare Trump for a court appearance about the purchase of a coveted piece of property. Trump assured her that he did not need any preparations. Against all odds, Res persuaded Trump to meet with her, an associate and an attorney, though Trump was incapable of paying any attention to his visitors. During the entire two hour meeting ”he kept taking phone calls.” Unprepared as he was, Trump acted poorly in court, Trump Organization lost the case and the deal fell apart. Res summarized her working relationship with Trump: ”He was so distracted. He really couldn´t stay focused.”4 Michael D´Antonio, who interviewed Trump five times, came to a similar conclusion

I think he’s definitely got attention deficit disorder. That doesn’t mean he isn’t really smart— it just means he’s not at his best when he’s asked to dwell on a topic.5

President Trump has the final say about the fate of millions. Unfortunately, he seems to lack the ability to listen to others, a fatal flaw for a world leader. Furthermore, he measures capability in money:

I have total net worth of $8.73billion, I’m not doing that to brag. I’m doing that to show that’s the kind of thinking our country needs.6

In ”his” Art of the Deal Trump declared:

There are people – I categorize them as life´s losers – who get their sense of accomplishment and achievement from trying to stop others. As far as I´m concerned, if they had any ability they wouldn´t be fighting me, they´d be doing something constructive themselves.7

A winner like Trump would probably benfit more from thinking about Mark 8:36 than two [sic] Corinthians 3:17, namely ”what good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” The Russian billionaire Aleksandr Lebedev, who gained his wealth during the collapse of the Soviet Union, stated that if you are in the right place, at the right time and supported by the right people it is actually not so difficult to make a lot of money. This does not mean you are a genius, and it does not enable you to head a Government, which is completely different from running a business. Unlike Trump, Lebedev spends a great part of his wealth on investigative journalism and support to the arts, as well as healthcare for children and war veterans.

Lebedev despises other Russian oligarchs: ”I think material wealth for them is a highly emotional and spiritual thing.” He considers them to be a bunch of uncultured ignoramuses spending their money on personal consumption. ”They don’t read books. They don’t have time. They don’t go to exhibitions. They think the only way to impress anyone is to buy a yacht.” Worst of all: ”They have no interest in social injustice.”8

Together with with Mihail Gorbachev, Lebedev owns 49 percent of Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper known for its critical coverage of Russian politics, since 2001 six of its journalists have been murdered in connection with their investigative reporting. Even if he and Putin do not have the same political convictions, Lebedev assumes that they are of another breed than most Russian oligarchs, or billionaire politicians like Trump. Lebedev and Putin have been KGB agents and thus learned ”how to read people” and be capable of playing different roles, essential traits for any secret agent. Most of his time with KGB Lebedev gathered information about financial markets, an experience he later put in practice when he turned himself into a billionaire.

Like another stock exchange speculator turned billionare, George Soros, Lebedev believes that while self-interest has free play in the market, it should not be allowed to influence anything else. The arts, politics, science and education should not be controlled by greed. Like Soros, Lebedev declares his life’s task to make people aware of the dangers of unbridled capitalism and the necessity of providing each and everyone with education and healthcare.

Money provides individuals with power and success, though too much of it tend to blind and corrupt them. However, money might also help others to get a better life. Our lives do not have to be a constant battle to win, we may just as well try to help others out of their misery and pain.

1 Collins Dictionary (2011). Glasgow: Harper Collins
2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDPkUAALSLk
3 Mayer, Jane (2016) ”Donald Trump´s Ghostwriter Tells All,” The New Yorker, July 18
4 Kruse, Michael (2016) ”Donald Trump´s Shortest Attribute Isn´t His Fingers,” Politico Magazine, September 8
5 Ibid.
6 Rushe, Dominic (2015) ”I´m really rich”: Donald Trump claims $9bn fortune during campaign launch,” The Guardian, June 16
7 Trump, Donald J. with Tony Schwartz (2015) Trump: The Art of the Deal. New York: Ballantine Books, p. 59.
8 Tran, Mark and Luke Harding (2010) ”Alexander Lebedev: Profile,” The Guardian, November 2.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

The post The Art of the Deal: What Trump May Teach Us appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he'll never need to deal another.

                           Leonard Cohen Stranger Song

The post The Art of the Deal: What Trump May Teach Us appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Turkey’s Agriculture and Forestry Minister Bekir Pakdemirli (left) and head of the UNCCD Ibrahim Thaw (right) at the international congress on "Successful Transformation toward Land Degradation Neutrality: Future Perspective" being held Jun. 17 to 19 in Ankara. Thaw told delegates at the conference that increasing food production by 50 percent, when land degradation and climate change will be decreasing crop yields by 50 percent, makes restoring and protecting the fragile layer of land an issue for “anyone who wants to eat, drink or breathe.” Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ANKARA, Jun 17 2019 (IPS)

Events marking the 25th anniversary of the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the World Day to Combat Desertification opened here Monday, Jun. 17 with a call for urgent action to protect and restore degrading land.

Two United Nations officials, the secretary-general as well as the UNCCD head, said it’s crucial that countries take action in order to reduce forced migration, improve food security, spur economic growth and help to address the global climate emergency.

“Think about what it takes to feed 7.5 billion people. Only 20 percent of the planet is habitable, yet within our own lifetimes one out of every four hectares of productive land has become unusable, three out of every four hectares have been altered from their natural state, and while agriculture drives that change, we waste a third of the food,” head of the UNCCD Ibrahim Thiaw told hundreds gathered in Ankara who were attending the international congress on “Successful Transformation toward Land Degradation Neutrality: Future Perspective” being held Jun. 17 to 19.

“We must take action to repay our debt to nature and restore our land, generating a tenfold return on our investment, multiplying the benefits of the Sustainable Development Goals, and growing together in a virtuous cycle where everyone contributes and everyone benefits.”

Thiaw said increasing food production by 50 percent, when land degradation and climate change will be decreasing crop yields by 50 percent, makes restoring and protecting the fragile layer of land an issue for “anyone who wants to eat, drink or breathe.”

World Day to Combat Desertification is celebrated every year in every country on Jun. 17 to promote good land stewardship for the benefit of present and future generations.

Thiaw highlighted that more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty since the UNCCD was formed, but exploitation of natural resources continues to widen the poverty gap instead of reducing it.

And, while women are key to closing that gap, the UNCCD executive director said 90 percent of countries legally restrict their economic activity.

“For example, they make up 40 percent of farm workers, but only one in five own their land and even fewer control it,” Thiaw said.

“Yet, lifting such restrictions would add 240 million jobs and 28 trillion dollars to the economy by 2025. That’s like another U.S. economy – and then some – within just six years.”

Thiaw said this is why the UNCCD Gender Action Plan promotes more participation in decision making; more economic and legal empowerment; and more access to resources, education and technology.

“There is a social tipping point when women’s participation reaches 30 percent, and we need to reach it quickly, to avoid reaching one for land, biodiversity or climate.”

UN secretary-general António Guterres, in a video message at the opening of the congress, noted that the world loses 24 billion tons of fertile soil and dry land degradation reduces national domestic product in developing countries by up to eight percent annually.

Guterres said much remains to be done, and stressed the imperative of combatting desertification as part of our efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Turkey’s Agriculture and Forestry Minister Bekir Pakdemirli presided over the global observance celebrations hosted by his country.

Pakdemirli said that in the last 30 years Turkey has increased its forestland by six percent.
Turkey is the world’s number three country when it comes to adding forestland, after China and India. Worldwide, forestland has shrunk over the last 10 years an average of 5.2 million hectares annually, Pakdemirli said.

With its afforestation, erosion control, and rehabilitation efforts over the last 10 years, Turkey is among the world’s leading countries in adding forestland, and these efforts will continue, he said.

As part of efforts to fight desertification and erosion, Turkey carried out 327 projects between 2011 and 2018.

Some 196 countries and the European Union are parties to the UNCCD, of which 169 are affected by desertification, land degradation or drought.

In 2015, the international community agreed to achieve a balance in the rate at which land is degraded and restored by taking concrete actions to avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation, generally referred to as achieving land degradation neutrality or LDN, and mitigate the effects of drought.

In the last four years, 122 countries have committed to take voluntary, measurable actions to arrest land degradation by 2030. And 44 of the 70 countries that have suffered drought in the past have set up national plans to manage drought more effectively in the future.

Whereas a significant amount of the land degradation and transformation has occurred over the last 50 years, Thiaw stressed that the success stories of land restoration and conservation, such as in Turkey’s Central Anatolia region, where rehabilitation and restoration over decades has resulted in increased forest cover, offer hope that change is possible when traditional knowledge, technology and faith communities come together creatively.

He said the restoration of 150 million hectares of farmland by 2030 can generate up to 40 billion dollars in extra income for smallholders, feed another 200 million people and sink several gigatons of carbon dioxide. Scaling it up across all our degraded land could prevent biodiversity and climate from disintegrating and bequeath new opportunities to the next generation, he added.

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On all continents you have the issue of land degradation, and it requires governments, land users and all different communities in a country to be part of the solution. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

By Desmond Brown
ANKARA, Jun 17 2019 (IPS)

The coming decades will be crucial in shaping and implementing a transformative land agenda, according to a scientist at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) framework for Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN).

UNCCD-Science Policy Interface co-chair Dr. Mariam Akhtar-Schuster, who spoke with IPS ahead of the start of activities to mark World Day to Combat Desertification (WDCD) on Monday, Jun. 17, said this was one of the key messages emerging for policy- and other decision-makers.

This comes after the dire warnings in recent publications on desertification, land degradation and drought of the Global Land Outlook, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration, World Atlas of Desertification, and IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

“The main message is: things are not improving. The issue of desertification is becoming clearer to different communities, but we now have to start implementing the knowledge that we already have to combat desertification,” Akhtar-Schuster told IPS.

“It’s not only technology that we have to implement, it is the policy level that has to develop a governance structure which supports sustainable land management practices.”

IPBES Science and Policy for People and Nature found that the biosphere and atmosphere, upon which humanity as a whole depends, have been deeply reconfigured by people.

The report shows that 75 percent of the land area is very significantly altered, 66 percent of the ocean area is experiencing increasing cumulative impacts, and 85 percent of the wetland area has been lost.

“There are of course areas which are harder hit; these are areas which are experiencing extreme drought which makes it even more difficult to sustainably use land resources,” Akhtar-Schuster said.

“On all continents you have the issue of land degradation, so there’s no continent, there’s no country which can just lean back and say this is not our issue. Everybody has to do something.”

Akhtar-Schuster said there is sufficient knowledge out there which already can support evidence-based implementation of technology so that at least land degradation does not continue.

While the information is available, Akhtar-Schuster said it requires governments, land users and all different communities in a country to be part of the solution.

“There is no top-down approach. You need the people on the ground, you need the people who generate knowledge and you need the policy makers to implement that knowledge. You need everybody,” the UNCCD-SPI co-chair said.

“Nobody in a community, in a social environment, can say this has nothing to do with me. We are all consumers of products which are generated from land. So, we in our daily lives – the way we eat, the way we dress ourselves – whatever we do has something to do with land, and we can take decisions which are more friendly to land than what we’re doing at the moment.”

UNCCD-Science Policy Interface co-chair Dr. Mariam Akhtar-Schuster says things are not improving and that the issue of desertification is becoming clearer to different communities. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

UNCCD Lead Scientist Dr. Barron Joseph Orr said it’s important to note that while the four major assessments were all done for different reasons, using different methodologies, they are all converging on very similar messages.

He said while in the past land degradation was seen as a problem in a place where there is overgrazing or poor management practices on agricultural lands, the reality is, that’s not influencing the change in land.

“What’s very different from the past is the rate of land transformation. The pace of that change is considerable, both in terms of conversion to farm land and conversion to built-up areas,” Orr told IPS.

“We’ve got a situation where 75 percent of the land surface of the earth has been transformed, and the demand for food is only going to go up between now and 2050 with the population growth expected to increase one to two billion people.”

That’s a significant jump. Our demand for energy that’s drawn from land, bio energy, or the need for land for solar and wind energy is only going to increase but these studies are making it clear that we are not optimising our use,” Orr added.

Like Akhtar-Schuster, Orr said it’s now public knowledge what tools are necessary to sustainably manage agricultural land, and to restore or rehabilitate land that has been degraded.

“We need better incentives for our farmers and ranchers to do the right thing on the landscape, we have to have stronger safeguards for tenures so that future generations can continue that stewardship of the land,” he added.

The international community adopted the Convention to Combat Desertification in Paris on Jun. 17, 1994.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Convention and the World Day to Combat Desertification in 2019 (#2019WDCD), UNCCD will look back and celebrate the 25 years of progress made by countries on sustainable land management.

At the same time, they will look at the broad picture of the next 25 years where they will achieve land degradation neutrality.

The anniversary campaign runs under the slogan “Let’s grow the future together,” with the global observance of WDCD and the 25th anniversary of the Convention on Jun. 17, hosted by the government of Turkey.

Related Articles

• Loss of Biodiversity Puts Current and Future Generations at Risk
• Making Communities Drought Resilient
• Gender Gap Made Worse by Land Degradation

The post There’s No Continent, No Country Not Impacted by Land Degradation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Emily Thampoe
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 17 2019 (IPS)

In a world that is becoming more and more industrial by the day, air pollution appears to be on the rise.

While there have been efforts in major cities to combat the grave effects that pollution can have on the overall health of its citizens, there is still more progress to be made.

Karen Beck Pooley, a Professor of Practice of Political Science and the Director of Lehigh University’s Environmental Policy Design program, told IPS: “One thing that we’ve always known but we haven’t paid as much attention to until fairly recently is the degree to which people’s immediate environments affect their health.”

The importance of recognising air pollution as a prevalent problem was emphasised by the theme of the recent 2019 World Environment Day, with official celebrations held in this year’s host country, China.

Additionally, reports such as the one released recently in Sarajevo, and titled “Air Pollution and Human Health: The Case of the Western Balkans”, highlighted the adverse effects on the public.

Talking on the implications of air pollution, Catriona Brady, Head of the World Green Building Council’s Better Places for People campaign told IPS that, “air pollution is considered to be the biggest environmental threat to human health today”.

“Research shows that over 90% of people across the world are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution, which includes both the population in big cities and small communities. The effect this pollution has on citizen health is quite horrifying – studies suggest that almost every organ of the human body can be affected by toxic airborne particles, and this is resulting in an approximate 7 million premature deaths each year.”

Pooley notes that the actual planning of cities can have an impact on the amount of pollution produced, saying that, “The way we build our cities and the way people organise their lives in them, affect how much we need car travel or truck traffic. Or environmentally dirty things that we need like trash facilities and where these things are located and who’s living in the midst of the effects of those things.”

While there are positive plans, such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to phase out coal usage in his country by 2030 or Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s plan to ban single-use plastics from being used in the country’s national parks, there are also efforts being made on both smaller and larger scales worldwide.

Pooley observes that, ““At the moment, most of the environmental conservation work and attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and things of that nature are coming from cities.”

Brady says that her organisation, “has embarked on a global ‘Air Quality in Built Environment’ campaign, in partnership with the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.

“With this work we’ve been raising awareness about the role of buildings and cities in generating emissions and air pollution, both inside and outside of buildings, and highlighting strategies that can be valuable to mitigate these. Step one is monitoring – as we can’t reduce what we can’t measure.”

She also said: “We’re advocating for the roll out of air quality monitors to provide detailed data on emissions across the world. With this data we’re equipped with the necessary information to lobby our policy makers to make changes needed to clean up our energy grid, buildings, and air quality.”

Pooley states that citizens can make small changes that will be helpful as well. “Cutting down on car travel can be a big help, because so much pollution comes from cars. So, the more places that are walkable and bikeable and the more trips that are made by something other than cars, the less pollution we’ll have.”

Day to day actions can be quite helpful but having policies put in place may also help deter the harmful effects that poor air quality is having on the lives of those who inhabit such areas.

Brady suggests something similar, while also maintaining that citizen action is important. Policy initiatives – such as the recent London Ultra Low Emission Zone – can help catalyse action towards clean air.

Policy enforcement around energy generation, building energy efficiency, construction practices, transport, waste and many other factors are vital to preserve citizen health.

“But the role of the citizen is also important; reducing the emissions from our lifestyle in terms of energy consumption and choices, diet, and transport methods are all achievable for the individual,” said Brady.

“And if you’re worried about being exposed to pollution by cycling or walking to work, then it’s worth knowing that you’re generally exposed to far higher levels of pollutants in a car in traffic or in an underground system!”

With world leaders proposing plans to help deter ruinous environmental effects and with cities implementing new policies to help out, it is clear that progress is being made in helping to create cleaner environments to live in.

The post Air Pollution Ranked as Biggest Environmental Threat to Human Health appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Spekboom (Portulacaria afra) is a small, succulent tree that is native to the Eastern Cape region of South Africa. It can easily be grown from cuttings, which can survive even in dry conditions (Photos by Tim Christophersen / Florian Fussstetter)

By Tim Christophersen
NAIROBI, Jun 17 2019 (IPS)

Land restoration could attract large private investments in the fight against climate change over the coming decades, if Governments and the United Nations put the right incentives and conditions in place.

When the goats on his farm had nothing more to eat, because the soil was eroded and most of the vegetation destroyed, South African farmer Pieter Kruger had to make one of the toughest decisions of his life. “I have always been a farmer,” he says, “but that moment in 2007, I knew that I could not go on. There was no more water. Zandvlakte is the last farm in our valley in the Bavianskloof, and our river had run dry before it reached my farm.” Pieter reluctantly gave up goat farming, and embarked on the Working for Water programme, a government pilot effort to restore degraded watersheds.

Over the next three years, he and a team of over 100 workers planted 1,500 hectares of his farm with millions of cuttings of an indigenous succulent tree, the spekboom (Portulacaria afra) which can grow well even in dry conditions.

“I have never regretted that decision”, says Pieter Kruger, “the trees are now well established, and in the big flood this year, we managed to keep runoff of water to penetrate the soil, improving ground water levels, instead of washing away our topsoil into the river.”

Tim Christophersen

Spekboom forests can act as ‘natural water dams’: in mountainous areas, the trees can grow even on steep slopes, and when rare rainfall occurs in the semi-arid regions of the Eastern Cape, they suck up all the moisture quickly, and can store if for months. Spekboom forests can serve as grazing and browsing areas of last resort for wildlife and livestock, even when all else has withered in a drought.

Sekboom trees also absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere faster than most other trees in dry conditions. However, farmers are usually not paid for carbon storage, water security and other essential ecosystem services which well-managed land provides for downstream water users, and for the global community. That could change, however, if Governments and the global community set the right conditions.

“Spekboom is an amazing plant. It can take root and regrow, just from simple cuttings from existing trees. It can quickly reform the soil because it continuously sheds a lot of leaves, which help to build up soil organic carbon”, explains ecologist Anthony Mills, who has published extensively on the sub-tropical thicket ecosystem of South Africa, one of the country’s lesser known plant biomes.

Spekboom is the dominant tree of the thicket ecosystem, a complex forest which creates its own microclimate. Thicket forests used to cover up to 5 million hectares across the dry areas of the Eastern Cape, until about 200 years ago, when massive overgrazing by goats and sheep started, and turned much of this ecosystem into a mere shadow of its former biodiversity and natural splendour.

“You can drive for four hours across degraded areas, which look like a savannah woodland, because all you see are some of the surviving jacket plum trees (Pappea capensis), which were originally part of the thicket ecosystem. The richness of this ecosystem is almost all gone today, but we could bring it back,” says Mills. “Today, more than 1.3 million hectares of severely degraded thicket landscapes in the Eastern Cape Province are ready to be restored to their former ecological functionality, which can also increase their productive use for livestock,” he adds.

Scientists from Stellenbosch University came upon the remarkable ability of spekboom to regrow in degraded areas almost by chance. In 1976, a farmer in the Kromport area of the Eastern Cape had planted cuttings of the sturdy tree on a steep slope of about 200 by 100 metres behind a barn on his farm, because he was trying to find a way to stop annual floods that were threatening his livestock. He soon discovered that not only did spekboom rapidly establish itself in the degraded soil, but it also stopped the floods very quickly after it had been planted.

In the foreground, one of the 330 demonstration plots for thicket replanting with spekboom (Portulacaria afra) across Eastern Cape. In the background, the few remaining jacket plum trees (Pappea capensis) on degraded land are an indicator of the former spekboom thicket ecosystem, which could be replanted (Photo by Florian Fussstetter)

“Some of the plants in this area are now over 40 years old, and we can see some of the original thicket ecosystem reforming. Other plants are joining, and birds and wildlife are returning,” says Mills. Although the area is rather small, it has yielded valuable scientific information, including on the amount of carbon stored below ground, in the roots of the spekboom plant and in the soil.

The discovery prompted the South African Government in 2007 to start what is arguably the largest ecological experiment in the world: they planted 330 plots of half a hectare (50 by 50 metres) with spekboom across the entire degraded area, almost 1,000 kilometres. Ten years after the planting, the plots have yielded promising results. In almost all the plots which were planted in degraded thicket and which had their fences maintained, the replanting with cuttings from spekboom has been successful, under a variety of conditions and planting techniques. The most important factor, according to scientists from Stellenbosch University and Nelson Mandela University, is that the grazing pressure from goats must be reduced for at least five years through fencing, and the cuttings need to be planted well and deep enough in the soil.

“By finding a way to boost agricultural productivity, restore a lost ecosystem and store carbon quickly and at scale, we would have a real win-win for farmers and for the global community”, says Tim Christophersen, Coordinator of the Freshwater, Land and Climate Branch at UN Environment.

The goal is to restore an area of thicket of over one million hectares, almost 200 times the size of Manhattan. There is potential to plant more than 2 billion tree cuttings across this immense landscape, providing work and income for thousands of people, for several years.

“This might sound daunting but given the opportunities for combining the real, long-term restoration of these degraded lands with diversified economic benefits to the local economy, the potential is amazing,” says Tim Christophersen.

The South African Government sees thicket restoration as one of the low-hanging fruits for the achievement of national climate and biodiversity goals, and recognizes that private investments are key. “We planted the pilot plots back in 2007 to attract private investors, by demonstrating that this can work,” says Dr. Christo Marais, Chief Director at the Department of Environmental Affairs, which runs the Working for Water programme. “We have studied this thoroughly, and we believe there are big opportunities for ecosystem restoration investments across South Africa.”

One of the next steps in scaling up the restoration could be to establish carbon and livestock farms, where several thousand hectares can be replanted with spekboom, and where income from carbon is combined with other income streams and economic activity.

“Farmers like to look over the fence, and see what their neighbour is doing,” says Pieter Kruger. “Having big demonstration plots on existing farms is important to spread the word that becoming a carbon farmer can pay off, both for restoring the land, and for making a decent return from the land,” he adds.

Even though Pieter has not yet received any compensation for the carbon he has sequestered on his farm, he remains optimistic. “We never give up,” he says. His Zandvlakte farm lies in the Bavianskloof, a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, one of the most remote and beautiful areas of South Africa. Pieter and his family have also branched out into eco-tourism, where visitors can experience the success of Pieter’s shift from conventional farming to restoring his land first-hand.

“The global carbon market, including for carbon offsets, for example from the aviation industry, is starting to boom again, after several years of uncertainty. If current trends persist, carbon credits might provide some income for farmers like Pieter,” says Mills. Carbon credits are compensations which nations, companies, or individuals, can buy to offset part of their emissions which cannot be otherwise reduced. Offsets are not a replacement for ambitious climate mitigation action across all sectors. They can only provide a temporary solution while we deeply de-carbonize our economies. Ecosystem carbon credits often also have many other benefits beyond carbon, such as biodiversity, water, or better income options for farmers.

The carbon market is highly complex and volatile, and farmers should not only rely on carbon for their income. “We must try to blend different income streams for farmers, so that carbon credits are only one of several revenue streams. At the same time, the restoration of degraded lands will increase the value of the farmland in the long run and will improve resilience and ecosystem services for local communities, and for entire nations”, says Tim Christophersen. “We are running out of time for climate and biodiversity action, and large-scale opportunities like the thicket restoration in South Africa must be urgently explored. We would like to support the Government of South Africa and other partners, like Living Lands and Commonland, to realize the potential of the Eastern Cape thicket restoration, as we are moving into the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.”

More information:

South Africa Working for Water Programme:
https://www.environment.gov.za/projectsprogrammes/wfw

UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030:
https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/press-release/new-un-decade-ecosystem-restoration-offers-unparalleled-opportunity

South African Government studies on ecosystem carbon sequestration:

1. https://www.environment.gov.za/sites/default/files/reports/unlockingbarriers_land-usebasedclimatechangemitigation.pdf
2. https://www.environment.gov.za/sites/default/files/docs/carbonsinks_southafricanatlas2017.pdf
3. https://www.environment.gov.za/sites/default/files/reports/indigenousbushencroachment_policybrief.pdf
4. https://www.environment.gov.za/sites/default/files/reports/identificationandmapping_soilsrich_organiccarboninsouthafrica.pdf
5. https://www.environment.gov.za/sites/default/files/reports/biocharreport2015.pdf
6. https://www.environment.gov.za/sites/default/files/reports/nationalterrestrial_carbonsinks_synopsisreport.pdf

Contact: Tim.Christophersen@un.org

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Desertification does not refer to the expansion of deserts, but rather the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, primarily as a result of human activities and climatic variations. Credit: Campbell Easton/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jun 17 2019 (IPS)

Yet another under-reported human-made disaster: the relentless desertification of Planet Earth that may make uninhabitable some regions like the Middle East, endanger food security, aggravate climate crisis, and force more and more millions of people to flee.

But before listing the main causes and consequences of this mounting threat, you should know that, according to the UN, desertification does not refer to the expansion of deserts, but rather the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, primarily as a result of human activities and climatic variations.

Now, alerting against such a disaster, specialised world bodies, like the UN, have just reported on the occasion of the 17 June 2019 World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, that as much as 24 billion tons of fertile land are lost… every single year.

Moreover, degradation in land quality is responsible for a reduction in the national domestic product of up to eight per cent… also every single year.

By 2025, 1.8 billion people will experience absolute water scarcity, and two thirds of the world will be living under water-stressed conditions – when demand outstrips supply during certain periods

Among other consequences, desertification, land degradation, and drought will increase forced migrations, and worsen the growing climate crisis.

The World Day, which raises awareness of international efforts to combat desertification, was established 25 years ago, along with the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the sole legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management, the UN explains.

 

Three key issues

Running under the slogan “Let’s Grow the Future Together”, the 2019 World Day focuses on the following three key issues as reported by the UNCCD in relation to land: drought, human security and climate.

• Land and Drought— By 2025, 1.8 billion people will experience absolute water scarcity, and two thirds of the world will be living under water-stressed conditions – when demand outstrips supply during certain periods.
  A complex and slowly encroaching natural hazard with significant and pervasive socio-economic and environmental impacts that to cause more deaths and displace more people than any other natural disaster;
• Land and Human Security— By 2045 some 135 million people may be displaced as a result of desertification.
  Achieving land degradation neutrality -by rehabilitating already degraded land, scaling up sustainable land management and accelerating restoration initiatives- is a pathway to greater resilience and security for all,
• Land and Climate Change— Restoring the soils of degraded ecosystems has the potential to store up to 3 billion tons of carbon annually.
  The land use sector represents almost 25 per cent of total global emissions. Its rehabilitation and sustainable management is critical to combating climate change.

 

Las Canoas Lake in the town of Tipitapa, near Managua. Credit: Guillermo Flores/IPS

 

 

‘It isn’t just about sand’

Ibrahim Thiaw, the Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, said there are only three things all people need to know about the World Day to Combat Desertification:

• It isn’t just about sand,
• It isn’t an isolated issue that will quietly disappear; and
• It isn’t someone else’s problem

“It’s about restoring and protecting the fragile layer of land which only covers a third of the Earth, but which can either alleviate or accelerate the double-edged crisis facing our biodiversity and our climate.”

Thiaw also explained that “poor land management has degraded an area twice the size of China and shaped a farming sector that contributes nearly a quarter of all greenhouse gases.”

And added that there are even more stories about how half the people on the planet are affected by that damaged land or live in urban areas, consuming resources that require 200 times as much land as their towns and cities and generating 70 per cent of emissions.

“If we take action to restore our degraded land, it will save 1.3 billion dollars… a day to invest in the education, equality and clean energy that can reduce poverty, conflict and environmental migration.”

Shall decision-makers seriously listen and act? Or shall they instead feign deafness as they have been too often doing?

 

Baher Kamal is Director and Editor of Human Wrongs Watch, where this article was originally published.

The post The Implacable Desertification of Planet Earth appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Jun 17 2019 (IPS)

One third of the planet’s land surface is under the threat of desertification, impacting over 250 million people.

Although Africa remains the most affected continent, we are witnessing an alarming shift globally:  30% of the United States for example is affected by desertification, one quarter of the land in Latin America and the Caribbean is now arid, and one fifth of Spanish land is at risk of turning into deserts.

Since the 1950s sand drifts and expanding deserts have taken a toll of nearly 700,000 hectares of cultivated land, 2.35 million hectares of rangeland, 6.4 million hectares of forests, woodlands and shrublands.

 

 

Worldwide, 70% of dryland used for agriculture are already degrading and are increasingly threatened by desertification.

This change is often at the root of political and socio-economic problems, and poses a threat to the environmental equilibrium in affected regions.  135 million people are at risk of being displaced because of desertification and mass migrations are only just beginning.

For example, close to one million Mexicans leave their rural drylands every year to find better lives in the United States.  60 million people are expected to move from Sub-Saharan Africa towards Northern Africa and Europe in the next 20 years.

The World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought has been observed since 1995 to promote public awareness relating to the international cooperation to combat desertification and the effects of drought.

This year marks the  25th anniversary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Under the theme “Let’s grow the future together” this event provides an opportunity to look back and celebrate the 25 years of progress made by countries on sustainable land management, as well as looking at the broad picture of the next 25 years when hopefully we will achieve land degradation neutrality.

 

The post World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought – “Let’s Grow the Future Together” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Given the far-reaching benefits and rising practical feasibility of renewables, it is likely that the global community is heading for a future that embraces clean power sources. Photo: SANJAY KANOJIA/AFP

By Tarannum Sahar
Jun 14 2019 (IPS-Partners)

With the advent of the 21st century, there has been a steady rise in energy access all around the globe. For the first time ever, the total number of people without access to electricity fell below 1 billion in 2017 according to the International Energy Agency. Despite the increase in the pace of electrification, 13 percent of the global population, mostly concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, still lack critical access to electricity—a factor linked closely with productivity, health and safety, gender equality and education. Without much greater ambition and more intensified efforts, the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 that has an objective of “ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” will be impossible to attain by 2030.

At the same time, as the global community faces the persistent and pervasive challenge of energy poverty, it also needs to address the intensifying human-driven climate disruption and the widespread displacement of people as a result of war, persecution and natural disaster. These critically important crises—energy poverty, climate disruption and displacement—are inexorably linked through the strong overlap in the populations affected by all three predicaments.

There is an unprecedented 68.5 million people forcibly displaced across the world. Many of them end in relief camps, where approximately 90 percent do not have energy access as stated by the Center for Resource Solutions. In addition to refugees and internally displaced persons, majority of the people lacking the most basic of electricity services also count amongst the population most vulnerable to the disastrous consequences of climate change. Mass migration ensuing from the dramatic shifts in our environment has the potential of fuelling political unrests and exacerbating conflict. The communities at risk often lack both the political and economic resources that are essential in maintaining stability through strengthening climate resilience and adaptive capacity. As a consequence, many countries with significant energy poverty will bear the worst effects of global warming despite having contributed very little to the historical build-up of greenhouse gas emissions.

Taking constructive steps towards climate change mitigation and achieving universal energy access supposedly seem to be in conflict. The reasoning behind this sceptical notion is the assumption that more people getting access to electricity will require further investment in carbon-intensive power systems and greater exploitation of fossil fuels which largely contribute to the vast majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, with rapid advancement in alternative energy technologies primarily in areas of efficiency and cost-reduction, it is no longer required to address one crisis at the cost of the other. In the current scenario, communities enduring extreme cases of energy poverty often depend on biomass burning to meet basic energy needs. Replacing biomass with clean sources of energy will significantly bring down deforestation, a step that is vital for climate mitigation and adaptation. Renewables like solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind turbines are less expensive than newly installed fossil-based power plants in many regions of the world and in some, it is even less expensive than using existing, traditional power plants.

Communities in remote, rural areas or refugee camps located near borders and inhospitable regions of the world are usually situated far away from traditional transmission lines. Installation of capital-intense grid network is economically unviable as reaching an affordable scale in these places is nearly impossible. In recent decades, decentralised energy solution is becoming an increasingly important factor for expediting electricity access. Deployment of distributed infrastructures is powering a disruptive transformation in the energy sector like never seen before. Through the latest policy brief for SDG 7, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs emphasised that for over 70 percent of those without access in rural areas, decentralised systems based on renewable energy will be the most cost-effective solution.

The new paradigm demands that decision makers think beyond the “grid versus off-grid” dichotomy and recognise the extensive value of autonomous mini-grids and distributed energy services that utilise local resources and effectively serve specific, regional needs. Reducing dependence on centralised generation further democratises the electricity distribution allowing for local ownership of energy services and increased support for alternative energy. Widespread adaptation of distributed systems based on renewables will put a check on the global demand for oil, ease the power struggle over resource-rich areas and cut down energy dominance in political negotiations. Such a transition will help nation states in reducing vulnerability to conflict, and strengthening socio-political stability.

Given the far-reaching benefits and rising practical feasibility of renewables, it is likely that the global community is heading for a future that embraces clean power sources. However, the ultimate question is, will the transition be fast enough to limit global warming to a safe level? The special report on Global Warming of 1.5 degree Celsius published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that increase in temperature beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels will lead to severe environmental catastrophes and the international community has 12 years to limit that.

As the 25th session of the Conference of Parties (COP25) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change draws near, it is critical that governments, negotiators, and other stakeholders not only consider a rapid shift towards a clean energy future, but also a transition that is just and inclusive of unserved and underserved communities. While international support is certainly essential in achieving SDG 7, real and lasting progress will also require participation at the national as well as local and regional levels. With the emergence of decentralisation in electrification, the energy sector can greatly benefit from polycentrism—the contribution of multiple stakeholders from numerous spheres.

The present day is a unique moment in the history of energy access expansion, as distributed networks can viably reach the furthest corners of the globe. It’s critical to make the best use of this opportunity and drive action towards an energy system that will sustain the earth for future generations, while also stepping up electrification and promoting regional stability.

Tarannum Sahar is studying Economics and Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Energy Transition and Technology Development at Cornell University, USA.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post At the intersection of conflict, climate change and energy access appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Wendell Balderas
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 14 2019 (IPS)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision authorizing the sale of Philip Morris International (PMI)’s heated tobacco system, IQOS, in the United States inadvertently puts a foot in the door to increase sales of new tobacco products in the developing world.

In April this year, the FDA authorized the sale of IQOS heated tobacco products in the US. However, it clarified that it has not approved IQOS as a ‘modified risk tobacco product’ (MRTP). But PMI is riding on this ‘US-FDA approved for sale’ of its IQOS as also safer alternative to regular cigarettes to Asian governments.

In Indonesia, PMI’s local subsidiary PT HM Sampoerna signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education (Kemenristek Dikti) to support IQOS research and capacity building.

Local tobacco control advocates have criticised this collaboration claiming this is an industry tactic to attract new smokers, especially among the younger generation. Meanwhile PMI’s plans to sell even more cigarettes in Indonesia remain on track reflected by its ubiquitous cigarette advertisements.

While Malaysia’s Control of Tobacco Products Regulation requires pictorial warning on all tobacco products, IQOs is being sold as safer alternatives to regular cigarettes without these warnings.

IQOS is marketed via social media and have escaped the arm of regulators. BAT and JTI are now applying pressure on the government to allow sales of their versions of heated tobacco products.

In the Philippines, PMI claims on one-hand that cigarettes are harmful, smokers should quit and children should not buy them, however in the same breath it continues to refute evidence about smoking.

PMI’s lawyer, representing the Philippine Tobacco Institute (PTI), has filed two court cases challenging Balanga City, Bataan which has passed laws to ban smoking in public places and protect its youth from being exposed to cigarette promotions.

Also, the tobacco industry is trying to sneak Heated Tobacco Products (HTPs) into the bills being deliberated in the Philippine Senate and House of Representatives to regulate e-cigarettes (Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems).

This deception is a typical duplicitous move by the tobacco industry to weaken tobacco product regulation simultaneously deceiving the public to embrace its HTPS as less harmful than regular cigarettes.

In Vietnam, PMI’s President of South and Southeast Asia has met with the Vice Chairman of the National Assembly (NA) promoting its research and development of less harmful product.

PMI’s request to the National Assembly leader was tactical – that they should provide a legal framework to enable its new products to be developed in Vietnam, and on its part, it will provide its own scientific research as well as research from organizations in the United States and Europe.

According to a press report, the Vice Chairman of the National Assembly was ready to create favorable conditions for foreign businesses to invest and expand their business. In investment talks, the emerging evidence on the risks associated with these new tobacco and nicotine products are somewhat lost and even challenged.

Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced in June last year that five cancer-causing substances were found in HTPs including PMI’s IQOS, British American Tobacco’s (BAT) Glo and Lil, with the level of tar detected in some of them far exceeding that of conventional cigarettes.

PMI has filed a lawsuit against the South Korean government to demand the disclosure of detailed information on Seoul’s test results of harmful substances found in electronic cigarettes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that all forms of tobacco, including heated tobacco products (HTPs), are harmful and that there is no evidence to demonstrate that HTPs are less harmful than conventional tobacco products.

A research paper from the University of California San Francisco also concluded “despite delivering lower levels of some toxins than conventional cigarettes, PMI’s own data fail to show consistently lower risks of harm in humans using its heated tobacco product, IQOS, than conventional cigarettes.”

In April 2019 a Swiss lab found a highly toxic substance, isocyanates, emitted from the filters of IQOS. According to pulmonologist and former vice-president of the Swiss Lung League, Rainer Kaelin, inhaling very small amounts of this toxic substance can cause serious health damage.

Tobacco is inherently toxic and contains carcinogens and toxicants even if not burned. HTPs such as IQOS are not harmless, and the precautionary principle to protect consumer safety must be applied to HTPs.

Around 40 countries already ban the sale of e-cigarettes and emerging tobacco products such as HTPs. Among these are four ASEAN countries: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Singapore and Thailand.

Others include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, East Timor, Kuwait, Taiwan, UAE, and Uruguay. The FDA’s decision should not cause these countries to roll back their ban. These countries have implemented strict tobacco control measures based on the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and have seen their smoking prevalence decline steadily.

Under the guise of ‘harm reduction’, new and emerging tobacco products such as HTPs pose new threats to society. While continuing to increase sales of cigarettes, transnational tobacco companies are aggressively selling e-cigarettes and HTPs as part of their revamped “smoke-free” image and ironic claims to be part of the solution to the smoking epidemic.

Policy makers should be aware of these veiled attempts of tobacco companies to influence governments to create exemptions for their HTPs and roll back tobacco control policies so as to mislead the public, renormalize tobacco use, increase social acceptability for their products and get more people to be addicted to their products.

The post U. S. Backing for Heated Tobacco Products Triggers Misrepresentation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Wendell Balderas is Media & Communications Manager of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA)

The post U. S. Backing for Heated Tobacco Products Triggers Misrepresentation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 14 2019 (IPS)

UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told a Chatham House meeting in London last week that the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), one of the legacies of the late Secretary-General Kofi Annan, “spawned tremendous progress” in the battle against poverty worldwide.

She pointed out that the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day was reduced from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015 — “the largest decline of its kind in human history”.

Yet, she warned, much remains to be done to ensure a life of dignity for all. The new rallying point, she pointed out, is the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Still, a new report released last month by the Bangkok-based Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) warns that the SDGs – the successor to MDGs—have been falling behind in a region which is home to the world’s two most populous nations: China and India.

While there has been limited progress, “Asia and the Pacific will not achieve any of the 17 SDGs on its current trajectory”, the report declares. The targeted date to achieve the SDGs is 2030.

The study says “progress has stagnated or has been heading in the wrong direction in more than half the SDGs.”

The situation is deteriorating when it comes to providing clean water and sanitation (SDG6), ensuring decent work and economic growth (SDG8) and supporting responsible consumption and production (SDG12).

The region has made progress towards ending poverty (SDG1) and ensuring all have access to quality education and lifelong learning (SDG4). Measures are also underway to achieve affordable and clean energy (SDG7), according to the report.

“Yet even where good progress has been made, it is too slow for these goals to be met by 2030”.

Launching the report – titled Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report 2019 during the 75th Commission session of ESCAP in Bangkok May 28– UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP Armida Alisjahbana called for urgent action to reverse these negative trends.

“I hope this report will contribute to targeting our efforts to accelerate progress towards all Goals and to strengthen the region’s commitment to improving the quality of data and statistics essential to measuring progress,” she said.

Responding to the report, Stuart Kempster, WaterAid’s Policy Analyst for Monitoring and Accountability, told IPS: “It is shocking that, on its current trajectory, Asia and the Pacific will not achieve any of the 17 SDGs by 2030”.

Referring to SDG 6 which was singled out in the report, he said: “We are especially alarmed that some nations will be years off track in meeting the human right to water and sanitation, the basic building blocks of any stable and prosperous community”, he added.

Kempster said at current rates of progress, everyone in low- and middle-income countries won’t have safely managed water until 2064, or sanitation until 2107.

“We have only 11 years left to keep the promise made to those living without clean water or a decent toilet. Governments must prioritise clean water, decent sanitation and good hygiene, ensuring proper financing is put in place to build a more sustainable world today and for future generations,” he noted.

Arman Bidarbakhtnia, Head, Statistical Data Management Unit (SDMU)
Statistics Division at ESCAP, told IPS the report only assesses regional and sub-regional progress and does not aim to do a country level assessment.

Even though there are many references to country cases at indicator level, he explained, the conclusions on the goals should not be generalized to countries.

The analysis is based on unweighted aggregations at regional and sub-regional level. So, results are not representative of China and India as the biggest countries, he said.

Also, small islands developing states (SIDS) are as important as China and India in this analysis.

He pointed out that “the region” does not mean an entire region or majority of the population but signifies a “typical country in the region” or “half or more countries of the region” (median values).

He said the report is only focusing on the progress and does not aim for a “cause-effect” analysis.

Meanwhile the report also shows major differences in progress between the subregions of Asia and the Pacific which have recorded different successes and face different challenges.

Each subregion needs to reverse existing trends for at least three Goals. For example, East and North-East Asia is regressing in sustainable cities and communities (SDG11), climate action (SDG13) and life on land (SDG15). South-East Asia has moved backwards on SDG8, SDG13 and peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG16).

Additionally, says the report, South and South-West Asia is moving in the wrong direction on SDG6, SDG12 and SDG13.

Since 2000, there has been a decline on gender equality (SDG5), SDG8 and SDG11 in North and Central Asia. The Pacific subregion has regressed on zero hunger (SDG2), SDG8, life below water (SDG14) and SDG16, according to the report.

“The lack of reliable data across all Goals and in all subregions is one of the Asia and the Pacific’s biggest challenges”.

Despite a significant increase in the availability of SDG indicators since 2017, data gaps remain for two thirds of the global SDG indicators. Nearly one-quarter of all SDG targets lacking evidence relate to the environment, according to the report.

Asked whether lack of political will or a shortfall in development aid were reasons for the setbacks, Bidarbakhtnia told IPS these cannot be deduced purely from results of this report.

But it definitely differs by country, including lack of political will, financial resource, development aid, prioritization, development models etc.

However, he said, “you can refer to one ESCAP publication that the cost of closing these gaps is affordable for governments, and it is definitely not all due to lack of financial resources”. https://www.unescap.org/publications/economic-and-social-survey-asia-and-pacific-2019-ambitions-beyond-growth

Asked how valid the conclusions are when the report singles out the “lack of reliable data across all goals,” he said the conclusion is based on a rigorous data availability analysis that is presented in part III of the report. The same part also provides some hint for closing the gap and overcome challenges.

He said administrative sources are a major primary source for SDG indicators at national level. Given their advantages over surveys (lower cost, more frequency, etc) investing in production and use of administrative data is one long-term strategy to close data gaps.

Also exploring use of other alternative sources of data such as satellite imagery, GIS, mobile data and open online sources.

Asked about the region’s rate of success in alleviating or eradicating poverty by 2030, and whether it includes two of the most populous countries in the region, Bidarbakhtnia said “the current rate for eradicating poverty is not enough to achieve the 2030 targets.”

“We have to keep in mind that under goal 1 we are not only talking about income poverty. The region (including China and India) is on track to eradicate “income poverty” if they can maintain the same pace of progress.

However, SDG1 goes beyond only income poverty, region is lagging behind because other dimensions, especially, government spending on basic services (education and health) and resilience against natural disasters.

The report does not present data on China and India but “our data shows that both are doing better than the region on Goal 1 and are on track if they maintain the progress”.

But they also (same as the region) need to accelerate spending on basic services. And there are several other dimensions such as social protection and multidimensional poverty that there is no data to measure, he added.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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Large numbers of people are bypassing immigration controls as they exit Venezuela. Credit: Tomer Urwicz

By Tomer Urwicz and Liliana Arias Salgado
CÚCUTA, Colombia, Jun 13 2019 (IPS)

Not long ago, 15-year-old Nelsmar attended a middle-class school in central Venezuela. That was before her family was uprooted by the economic and humanitarian crisis in her country, which has pushed nearly 3.9 million persons to migrate or flee, according to recent estimates of the Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela.

Nelsmar’s family made the move over a year ago. They walked for eight days, and spent the rest of the journey traveling by bus, before reaching the border with Colombia. When they arrived in the border city of Cúcuta, she thought the worst was over – but she was wrong.

For weeks, Nelsmar slept either on the street or in a boarding house with shared toilet facilities. Her family struggled to access shampoo, sanitary napkins or even a flashlight to light the way at night.

“When you don’t have the means to bathe or change clothes, or you don’t have enough money, something as natural as one’s menstrual period becomes a real challenge,” Nelsmar told UNFPA.

There are 1.2 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees living in Colombia, and large numbers continue to pour over the border. Many bypass immigration controls.

The mass displacement has led to a heightened risk of sexual violence and exploitation. According to the organization CEPAZ, some 37 per cent of migrant women have reportedly experienced some form of violence. Many migrants are also in need of health services.

Families of migrants and refugees are crossing the border in large numbers. Credit: Tomer Urwicz

UNFPA is working with the government and humanitarian partners to help women receive reproductive health care, including access to maternal health care, contraceptives and other critical services.

UNFPA is also distributing dignity kits, which contain hygiene supplies including sanitary napkins, soap and shampoo, as well as information on where to find health and psychosocial support services. And UNFPA is also organizing workshops on gender-based violence, helping vulnerable migrants identify abuse and learn where to find help.

“The aim of our work was to provide opportunities for the discussion of sexual and reproductive rights, prevent gender-based violence and sexual violence, and share information about the places victims of aggression can go to for care,” explained Dildar Salamanca, a UNFPA field coordinator in Cúcuta, the Colombian city that has received the largest number of Venezuelan migrants in recent years.

In Cúcuta and the city of Maicao, some 2,300 dignity kits have been distributed, and 2,600 women have been reached with contraceptives. More than 2,300 women and adolescents have received information about sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence.

UNFPA is supporting sexual and reproductive health services, including maternal health care. Credit: Tomer Urwicz

Despite the extraordinary challenges, Mr. Salamanca says he has seen that “migrant women and adolescent girls are extremely strong, resilient and capable of rising above the hostility of life.”

Nelsmar is one such example.

Today, she is living in Cúcuta, where she attends a new school and watches over her siblings when her parents work. She has even joined a group of volunteers who meet on Saturdays to work on youth issues.

Asked how she feels about her situation, she replied firmly, “Well, my dreams are still intact.”

The post Dignity & Strength for Venezuelan Refugees & Migrants in Colombia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Cyclone Idai’s aftermath in Mozambique. Credit: Denis Onyodi:IFRC/DRK/Climate Centre

By Edinah Masiyiwa
HARARE, Jun 13 2019 (IPS)

In late March Cyclone Idai carved a path of devastation across Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi.  It was the deadliest cyclone to hit the region in more than a century, others have even referred to it as “Africa’s Hurricane Katrina.” More than 1,000 people were killed. Many more saw their homes, food crops, and even entire villages washed away.

My country, Zimbabwe, has been receiving aid from all over the world. Our citizens also have taken it upon themselves to donate toward the needs of those who survived. We may be feeling like things are getting better. But in fact, for many women and girls, they are getting worse.

We are experiencing an aspect of natural disasters that rarely receives the attention it deserves: the fact simply being female puts one at a far greater risk of suffering harm.

A recent report by the UN Resident Coordinator in Zimbabwe observed that at least 15,000 women and girls in the areas affected by Idai are at risk of gender-based violence linked to disruptions caused by the storm.

Edinah Masiyiwa

For example, there was a report of a 14-year-old girl who suffered a sexual assault in Chimanimani, a community in eastern Zimbabwe hit hard by the cyclone. This one case might be just the tip of the iceberg as there are women walking long distances to get to places where food and other aid is being distributed and being forced to sleep in long queues.

There also are concerns of women and girls being asked to provide sex in exchange for access to aid. Meanwhile, a UN Flash appeal report has noted the lack of privacy and lighting in camps for displaced persons, which can increase the risk of violence and transactional sex for female storm victims.

This situation is, unfortunately, not unique to Cyclone Idai.

UN Women has highlighted that there is a rise in violence, including sexual violence, against women and girls in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Just standing in a queue for food aid and other support leave women more vulnerable to sexual exploitation and, consequently, HIV infections.

Also, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in crisis situations one in five women of childbearing age are likely to be pregnant.  There is an urgent need to ensure access to reproductive health services. Lack of services such as prenatal care and assisted deliveries, puts these women at an increased risk of life-threatening complications. Suspensions in services that provide prevention and treatment for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections also have a greater impact on women.

Right after the Idai hit, the immediate focus of aid efforts was understandably on providing food and shelter. It is now time to broaden that focus to include interventions that protect women and girls from violence, sexual exploitation, and the loss of critically needed health services

Right after the Idai hit, the immediate focus of aid efforts was understandably on providing food and shelter. It is now time to broaden that focus to include interventions that protect women and girls from violence, sexual exploitation, and the loss of critically needed health services.

For example, all actors on the ground responding to the cyclone must ensure they integrate training programs that include efforts to mitigate the risk of gender-based violence. There should be clear procedures for reporting any cases of violence and measures to protect victims who step forward from suffering retaliation.

Zimbabwe’s Civil Protection Unit also should devote resources to helping women retain access to reproductive health services. Pregnant women should be screened for complications and those at high risk—such as women who need to deliver via caesarian section—should be transferred to hospitals where emergency care is available from skilled health workers.

Women will need access to contraception to avoid unwanted pregnancies, which ultimately lead to unsafe abortions.  Also, at a minimum, there should be a system in place for the timely delivery of aid so that women are not forced to sleep in a long queue just to receive assistance. And any temporary shelter should include security guards to help protect women and girls from attacks.

A natural disaster can impose terrible hardships and cyclones like Idai could become more common as climate change increases the risk of weather extremes. But while we cannot prevent these events from occurring, we can ensure that, for women and girls, storms like Idai do not continue to rage in the form of sexual violence and other neglect that greatly compounds their trauma.

 

Edinah Masiyiwa is a women’s rights activist.  She is the Executive Director of Women’s Action Group and an 2019 Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow.

The post The Storm is Over, But in Southern Africa, Cyclone Idai Continues to Rage for Women and Girls appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Emily Thampoe
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 2019 (IPS)

While cities around the world have been providing safe havens to refugees, a few US cities in the Upstate New York region have been integrating refugees and asylum-seekers into their communities.

Specifically, the towns of Utica, Buffalo and Syracuse, are welcoming refugees to live and work. These towns share a border with Canada and so have been allowing asylum-seekers into their communities for many years.

As of 2018, there are 69,058 immigrant residents in the Buffalo Metro Area, according to a report by New American Economy.

This is especially meaningful as immigration policies in the United States have become stricter since the Trump administration took office in 2016.

Eva Hassett, the Executive Director of the International Institute of Buffalo, told IPS: “The Trump administration has lowered the admissions ceiling for refugees coming into the US drastically. There are far lower numbers of refugees arriving in Buffalo, in New York State, in the US – historically low numbers for a program that started in 1980”.

The aforementioned towns fall into the category of “Cities of Light,” as coined by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

This refers to places around the world that have accepted refugees in a warm manner and have provided opportunities and resources that will be beneficial to both the communities and to the refugees who settle in them.

This is just one of the ways that refugees are able to lead lives that are safer than what they would experience in their home countries.

Since 1950, the UNHCR has been aiding in providing assistance to refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced and stateless people.

According to the UNHCR, common solutions for refugees include voluntary repatriation (returning to countries of origin), resettlement in another nation and integration into the host community.

Liz Throssell, the UNHCR’s Global Spokesperson for the Americas and Europe, told IPS: “For refugees who cannot go home, integration into their local community can provide a durable solution, allowing them the chance to build a new life. Integration is often a complex and gradual process, with legal, economic, social and cultural dimensions”.

“It places considerable demands placed on both the individual and the host community. But when refugees are integrated, this can bring benefits all round, as the person is able to contribute economically and socially to the community,” she declared.

With approximately 1.1 million refugees becoming citizens in the countries in which they claimed asylum, the good that Cities of Light do is evident.

These cities have given refugees a way to feel safe and welcome through bestowing governmental provisions and ways to maintain their cultural identity while being helped to adjust to a new environment.

Globally-known Cities of Light include Jakarta, Indonesia; Kigali, Rwanda; Vienna, Austria; São Paulo, Brazil; Erbil, Iraq; Altena, Germany and Gdansk, Poland.

Throssell said, “An increasing number of cities are working to empower refugees and embrace the opportunities they bring. Mayors, local authorities, social enterprises and citizens groups are on the frontlines of the global refugee response, fostering social cohesion, and protecting and assisting the forcibly displaced in their midst.”

In Buffalo, benefits have included, “Affordability, welcoming community, pro-rights and inclusion, lots of support infrastructure, good jobs and cities are easy to get around,” according to Hassett.

Similar social and economic effects have been seen in Utica, New York as well.

Although the number of refugees allowed into the United States has been noticeably cut down to 30,000 this year due, in part, to immigration policies under the Trump administration, refugees are still moving into New York state.

Hassett notes, “Refugee is an immigration status; it is conferred upon an individual by the US Department of State (DOS). Refugees arrive documented and work authorized, they are screened and greenlighted before they arrive by DOS, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). They will naturalize to be legal permanent residents.”

The US refugee resettlement program (officially called Reception and Placement) was established in 1980 and provides 90 days of support and financial support to refugees entering the US under the R&P program. This is the program whose ceiling the President has lowered so drastically”.

This sort of migration is possible as residents of the region are promoting job placements, English language services and housing services in order to direct refugees who are already living in the United States to the state.

Much of this advertising is done through video campaigns by resettlement agencies, Facebook groups, WhatsApp chats and newspapers that are run by refugees.

While this will help give opportunity, it also allows New York to expand its population and the size of its workforce.

Having more people move into towns like Utica, Buffalo and Syracuse has turned areas that once were barren or unsafe, into areas that are bustling with life and culture.

The post Cities of Light are Providing Safe Havens to Refugees appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Syed Neaz Ahmad FRSA
Jun 12 2019 (IPS-Partners)

They are thought to be the world’s most persecuted refugees. It is also argued that they are one of the most forgotten too. Some five year ago I saw and met hundreds of inmates from Burma in a Jeddah prison. Thousands of Burmese Muslims from Arakan – often called Rohingyas – were offered a safe haven in Saudi Arabia by King Faisal but with the change in rulers in Saudi Arabia the rules underwent a change too. A permanent abode of peace that was offered to these uprooted Arakanese is now nothing less than a chamber of horrors.

A Rohingya woman and her child at a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Credit: Kamrul Hasan/IPS

There are some three thousand families of Burmese Muslims in Makkah and Jeddah prisons awaiting their deportation. Women and children are held in separate prisons nearby. The only contact the men have with their wives and children is through mobile phones and clandestine courier service provided by hawkers of food & water – aided & abetted by the prison officers for a small fee!

But the interesting question is: Where will they be sent? Burma (Myanmar) doesn’t want them. Bangladesh with a large population, porous border and poor economy doesn’t have the inclination or the ability to handle a refugee population of this size. The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are having a rough time as it is. Pakistan’s offer to accept part of the Rohingyas – awaiting deportation in Saudi prisons – is seen as mere a diplomatic exercise. Against the background of Islamabad’s treatment of some 300,000 stranded Pakistanis – living a miserable life in camps in Bangladesh – senior Rohingya inmates look at Pakistani overture with suspicion.

But who are these people called Burmese Muslims, Arakanese or Rohingyas? The people who call themselves Rohingyas are the Muslims of the Mayu Frontier area, present-day Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships of Arakan (Rakhine) State, a province isolated in the western part of the country across the river Naf which forms the boundary between Myanmar and Bangladesh.

After Myanmar had gained independence, a concentration of nearly ninety per cent of the area’s population – of Islamic faith formed an ethnic and religious minority group on the western fringe of the republic. In the beginning they favoured a policy of joining Pakistan. This policy faded away when they could not gain support from the government of Pakistan. Later they began to call for the establishment of an autonomous region instead.

Their insistence to call themselves ‘the Muslims of Arakan’ and adoption of Urdu as their national language indicated their inclination towards the sense of collective identity that the Muslims of Indian subcontinent showed before the partition of India (Department of Defence Service Archives, Rangoon: CD 1016/10/11).

In June 1951 All-Arakan Muslim Conference was held in village Alethangyaw, and ‘The Charter of the Constitutional Demands of the Arakani Muslims’ was published. It called for ‘the balance of power between the Muslims and the Maghs (Arakanese), two major races of Arakan.’ The demand of the charter read: North Arakan should be immediately formed a free Muslim State as equal constituent Member of the Union of Burma like the Shan State, the Karenni State, the Chin Hills, and the Kachin Zone with its own Militia, Police and Security Forces under the General Command of the Union (Department of the Defence Service Archives, Rangoon: DR 1016/10/13).

It is noteworthy that in the charter these peoples are mentioned as the Muslims of Arakan and not Rohingyas. The word ‘Rohingya’, it is claimed, was first suggested by Abdul Gaffar, an MP from Buthidaung, in his article ‘The Sudeten Muslims’,

During his campaign for the 1960 elections, Myanmar Prime Minister U Nu promised statehood for Arakanese and Mon people. When he came to power the plans for the formation of the Arakan and Mon states were forgotten. Naturally, the Muslim members of parliament from Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships denounced the plan and called for the establishment of a Rohingya state. (SOAS bulletin of Burma research, 2005)

In 1973, Ne Win’s Revolutionary Council sought public opinion for drafting a new constitution. The Muslims from the Mayu Frontier submitted a proposal to the Constitution Commission for the creation of a separate Muslim state or at least a division for them (Kyaw Zan Tha, 1995).

‘The proposal was turned down. When elections were held under the 1974 Constitution the Bengali Muslims from the Mayu Frontier Area were denied the right to elect their representatives to the “Pyithu Hlut-taw” (People’s Congress). After the end of the Independence war in Bangladesh some arms and ammunitions flowed into the hands of the young Muslim leaders from Mayu Frontier. On 15 July 1972 a congress of all Rohingya parties was held at the Bangladeshi border to call for the Rohingya National Liberation’ (Mya Win, 1992).

Myanmar’s successive military regimes persisted in a policy of denying citizenship to most Bengalis, especially in the frontier area. They stubbornly grasped the 1982 Citizenship Law that allowed only the ethnic groups who had lived in Burma before the First Anglo-Burmese War that began in 1824 as the citizens of the country. By this law those Muslims had been treated as aliens in the land they have inhabited for more than a century.

‘According to the 1983 census Muslims in Arakan constituted 24.3 percent and they were categorized as Bangladeshi, while the Arakanese Buddhists formed 67.8 percent of the population of the Arakan (Rakhine) State’ (Immigration and Manpower Department 1987:I-14).

‘In the 1988 Democracy movement Muslims raised the Rohingya issue. Subsequently when the military junta allowed the registration of the political parties they asked for their parties to be recognized under the name “Rohingya.” Their demand was turned down and so they formed the National Democratic Party for Human rights (NDPHR) that won in four constituencies in 1990 elections – eleven candidates of the Arakan League for Democracy (ALD) were elected to the legislature. However, the Elections Commission abolished both the ALD and the NDPHR in 1991. Some of the party members had to go into exile.’

In 1978 the Burmese junta created a situation for the Arakanese Muslims that forced them to leave their country for safety elsewhere. However, those who crossed over to East Pakistan or Thailand were never considered as welcome visitors. The Myanmar government has consistently refused to recognise the Rohingyas as citizens, who have been forced to flee their homeland since 1978 – to neighbouring Thailand and as far as Japan.

According to Amnesty International, in 1978 over 200,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh, following the Burmese army’s Operation Nagamin. Most – it is claimed by Yangon – were eventually repatriated, but around 15,000 refused to return. In 1991, a second wave of about a quarter of a million Rohingyas fled Myanmar to Bangladesh

The Malaysianinsider.com reports that in January, shocking news emerged of the mistreatment by Thai security forces of over a thousand ‘boat people’ travelling from Bangladesh and Myanmar to Thailand and Malaysia. Most of them were Rohingyas. They drifted at sea for weeks, without sufficient food and water, after having been beaten, towed out, and abandoned. The Indian navy rescued about 400 in different batches; Indonesia rescued a further 391. The rest were reported missing, presumed dead.

In Bangladesh, it is said that there are over 250,000 Rohingyas, some 35,000 of them in overcrowded camps.

There are a further 13,600 registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Malaysia (although there are thousands yet unregistered), an estimated 3,000 in Thailand, and unknown numbers in India.

All of these countries have not ratified the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, its 1967 Protocol, and the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Most Rohingyas in Asia are considered irregular migrants. Without official papers, they are often subject to arrest, detention, punishment for immigration offences and deportation. Forced to work in the informal labour market, they are often exploited and cheated.

In Malaysia, where some Rohingyas have resided since the early 1990s, they continue to be rounded up in immigration operations, whipped, and handed over to human traffickers on the Thai-Malaysia border. Some have been deported multiple times; some have ‘disappeared’ along the way. Around 730,000 remain in Myanmar, most of whom live in the Arakan state. The State Peace and Development Council, the military regime that rules Myanmar, continues to disavow Rohingyas as citizens.

Consequently, the Rohingyas are still subject to forced labour, forced eviction, and land confiscation. Strict restrictions are placed on their freedom of movement, freedom to marry, and freedom to own property. Many who return from abroad have been imprisoned for years, punished for crossing the border ‘illegally’. Conditions in the Arakan state continue to deteriorate, increasing the likelihood of further outflows into neighbouring countries.

The UNHCR has been allowed limited access inside Burma. The UN agency claims that it has helped more than 200,000 to get better healthcare and some 35,000 children to education. But this kind of help is merely a drop in the ocean. It’s an irony that countries in Asia and elsewhere – particularly Muslim countries – have shown little or no desire to help ease the situation.

The UNHCR spokesman in Asia, Kitty Mckinsey says: ‘No country has really taken up their cause. Look at the Palestinians, for example, they have a lot of countries on their side. The Rohingyas do not have any friends in the world.’

Obviously, an immediate and sympathetic solution is needed; otherwise, it can plunge Rohingyas into deeper suffering, cause resistance amongst host societies, and fail at stemming the onward movement of Rohingyas into the region.

The late King Faisal’s decision to offer them a permanent abode in Saudi Arabia was a gesture that reflected his noble approach to the problems faced by Muslims in other countries. However, later Saudi rulers have found the Burmese Muslims a thorn in their side. With strict regulation on their employment and movement within the Kingdom Saudi police find them easy targets for extortion and torture.

Although Myanmar Muslims have showed collective political interest for more than five decades since the country gained independence, their political and cultural rights have not been recognised. On the contrary, the demand for the recognition of their rights sounds like a direct challenge to the right of autonomy and the myth of survival for the Arakanese majority in their homeland.

It is said that there are some 250,000 Burmese Muslims in Saudi Arabia – majority living in Makkah Al-Mukarramah’s slums Naqqasha and Kudai. They sell vegetables, sweep streets, work as porters, carpenters, unskilled labour, and those fortunate enough become drivers.

The correct number of the Rohingya refugees living in Asian countries – Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan and Saudi Arabia – is anybody’s guess. But this diaspora of refugees attracts human traffickers. It is not uncommon for poor Rohingyas to marry off their very young – sometimes underage – daughters to old and affluent Saudis in the hope of getting ‘official favours’. But with a high rate of divorce in Saudi Arabia in the Saudi society this hasn’t worked for many. Rohingya wives of Saudi men are not easily accepted in the Saudi society and they have to survive – as second class wives – on the periphery of the social infrastructure.

Those whom I met in Jeddah prisons seem to have accepted the situation as fait accompli. But it is unfair that these innocent people be made to suffer in a country which is considered the citadel of Islam that houses the two holiest places of worship on earth and the rulers style themselves as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.

King Abdullah is not only the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques; he is also the Custodian of those living in that country, including Rohingya refugees who were invited by one of his illustrious predecessors. Will Saudi Arabia live up to its promises and expectations? Dhaka – with friendly ties with Saudi Arabia – must impress upon Riyadh to find an early solution to this thorn in the side of humanity.

(Syed Neaz Ahmad, who taught at Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, is a London-based journalist. He writes for British, Arab & Bangladeshi press. He anchors a celebrity chatshow on NTV Europe).

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Traditional indigenous attire of a Mayan woman from the Quiche region of Guatemala. Credit: UN Photo/John Olsson

By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 12 2019 (IPS)

Rural and indigenous populations in countries like Guatemala and Honduras are increasingly on the move – either migrating internally or to neighbouring countries.

But the focus on these populations has been limited, leaving them forgotten and marginalized as they continue to be disproportionately affected by climate change.

The disappearance of farmlands and unreliability of crops due to climate change have led families to experience increased food and economic insecurity—that have forced some of them to migrate.

“In general, we can say that the majority of rural migrants are poor people, but often not the poorest, because the latter cannot afford the significant costs of these journeys,” Ricardo Rapallo, Senior Food Security Officer at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told IPS.

According to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), between 2000 and 2010, the number of migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras increased by an average of 59% and the number of illegal immigrants apprehended by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) increased from 50,000 during 2010 to over 400,000 in 2016.

Elizabeth Kennedy, a researcher with Human Rights Watch (HRW) based in Honduras, told IPS, “When we talk about climate change, we have to think about historical and social factors that leave certain groups more impacted than others…many of the people who farm and fish on the lands most vulnerable to climate change have been historically mistreated.”

“Realizing that those most impacted are indigenous is critical, because it hasn’t been part of the main stream conversation, and it needs to be,” Kennedy added.

The United Nations does not label those forced to migrate due to climate change as ‘climate refugees.’

A change in language would require an agreement among member-states altering the definition of refugees (currently defined as: “someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence”.

And a refugee also has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

However, Kennedy emphasized that “Indigeneity is a protected factor, and that is a reason to claim asylum.” But she warns that in the case of migration from Central America, “many people around the US, including lawyers are not aware that they need to be looking at historic and systemic inclusion.”

She added that this is true “even in Guatemala and Honduras. This is in fact demonstrative that the state doesn’t take it seriously.”

Researchers, like Kennedy, are frustrated as they see little data and few programs that help indigenous and rural people which also take into account the fraught history that indigenous people have in Central America, a place where a number of massacres occurred in 1996 and many are still recovering from the violence.

Kennedy said there are six indigenous groups in Honduras and over 30 in Guatemala, but she expressed her desire to see “updated statistics on the various indigenous groups.”

Many climate migrants are also left out of the public eye because they only migrate within their own country.

“It is important to stress that, even if the international migration is the one gathering public attention, and motivating political reactions, internal migration is by far larger,” said Rapallo..

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has estimated external migration in 2015 at around 244 million people, while internal migration (as of 2009) was estimated at 740 million people.

For many who experience food insecurities, families will send one member to another country to provide for the family from afar, but the rest of the family will remain in their home country.

The FAO says “what has been observed is that young people represent a major part of the international migrants.”

Alongside the increase of internal migration and external migration among youth, Kennedy also sees an increase in family units migrating away from Guatemala and Honduras in recent years, which, she says, “shows that more is happening than needing to just provide economic stability to the home.”

Rapallo said: “If we want to give people options and make an impact on migration movements, we should work on the root causes of migration.”

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has taken a specific policy initiative to protect climate migrants: the Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD).

UNHCR representatives told IPS that the PDD “…promotes policy and normative developments to address gaps in the protection of people at risk of displacement or already displaced across borders in the context of climate change and disaster.”

UNHCR says that member-states and stake-holders will have an opportunity to “…deliver concrete pledges and contributions that will advance the objectives of the Global Compact and highlight key achievements and good practices” at the Global Refugee Forum on the 17 and 18 of December 2019.

But, thus far, it remains unclear to what extent the PDD has had an effect on the admittance or protections of climate migrants.

The 2019 Climate Action Summit will take place this September during the UN General Assembly sessions.

Luis Alfonso de Alba, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the summit responded to a question from IPS about the potential need to update language surrounding climate migrants.

At a press briefing on May 28th, he said: “This is not a meeting for negotiations… So I think the topic of language will continue to rather be an issue for member states.”

“We are obviously taking into account the impact of climate change into migration as a topic,” he added, but said “We are not negotiating language.”

Though de Alba assured IPS that indigenous populations will be involved in the summit, rural and indigenous populations migrating internally and externally in Central America are still largely over-looked.

Kennedy worries that not enough is being done. “They need targeted programs, they need targeted statistics, and these are not provided,” she said.

Rapallo said: “The right to migrate also involves the right not to migrate. Migration should be an option, but not the only option to pursue a better life, or sometimes even to survive.”

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Elephants in an area infested by the invasive sickle bush. The Uganda Wildlife Authority fears that the management of the shrub could be a challenge as the plants rapidly colonise grasslands in the Queen Elizabeth National Park, the country's most diverse park. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KASESE, Uganda, Jun 12 2019 (IPS)

As climate change leads to increased temperatures in East Africa, a thicket of invasive thorny trees with the ability to withstand harsh climatic conditions have begun threatening Uganda’s second-largest park, home to a rare breed of tree climbing lions and one of the highest concentrations of primates in the world.

The Queen Elizabeth National Park forms part of the Greater Virunga Landscape, considered the richest part of the African continent in terms of vertebrate species. The park is Uganda’s most diverse and boasts 5,000 species of mammals, including: 27 primates such as chimpanzees, red-tailed and monkeys, and baboons; birds; amphibians; reptiles; hippos and elephants.

But conservation experts at the Queen Elizabeth National Park are fighting to stop the spread of Dichrostachys cinerea, commonly known as sickle bush.

There is a fear that the further spread of of the shrub, which has a long tap root and various lateral roots that make it difficult to remove, could further place at risk the already endangered species that exist here. A recent  Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report found that there is massive loss of biodiversity globally that could “undermine human well-being for current and future generations,” according to Sir Robert Watson, the outgoing chair of the IPBES.

Though not new to the country or the region, the invasive plant, which is native to South Africa and known for its medicinal uses, has begun spreading rapidly across the park, taking up in recent years an estimated 40 percent of the almost 2,000 square kilometres that the park covers.

Edward Asalu, the chief warden here, told IPS that the spread of these thickets was affecting animal settlements in this ecologically diverse part of the country.

“This issue is being studied but we know that it is largely linked to climate change,” he said, alluding to the increased temperatures in the country. He added that higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere also contributed to the fast spread of the sickle bush.

According to a climate risk assessment report on the country by the Climate and Development Learning Platform, which aims to integrate climate change into development programming, “climate projections developed for Uganda … indicate an increase in near-surface temperature for the country in the order of +2°C in the next 50 years, and in the order of +2.5°C in the next 80 years.”

Robert Adaruku is a tour guide with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and has noted that increased temperatures have affected the growth of the sickle bush.

“As the temperature goes high, such kinds of plants like the sickle bush are able to survive in a hotter environment are able to expand. Because the weather or environment will be favouring their expansion,” he told IPS.

The sickle bush and its recent rapid growth due to increased temperatures has led it to become the latest threat to Uganda’s wildlife conservation efforts. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

Thicket drives away animals
The spread of the sickle bush is evident as one drives along the road overlooking the Kazinga Channel, a 32 kilometre stretch of water that joins Lake George and Lake Edward. The channel has previously been considered the ideal spot to view game.

A lonely male elephant is spotted in the early afternoon under a thicket of sickle bush. There is no grass underfoot.

Asalu told IPS the thickets were not easily penetrated by most animals and that “grazers like antelopes, warthogs and buffalos are avoiding those thickets because they can’t find food under there.”

“We have areas which were grasslands but are now being taken over by thickets. Animals, especially the herbivores, like open areas where they can be able to see the carnivores trying to eat them. That is why you cannot find them in area colonised by the sickle bush,” Asalu explained.

Adaruku explained that he first noticed the sickle bush in the park way back in 1997. “The sickle plants were there but on a very small scale. As time goes on it has been able to expand and colonise this area.”

Sickle bush spreading rapidly across Africa and beyond

But it is just not this park that the sickle bush is taking over. Asalu confirmed that Tanzania’s Randilen Wildlife Management Area also recently had to deal with the spread of the sickle bush.

Quoting a study by the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI), a non-profit inter-governmental development and information organisation, Asalu said that Dichrostachys cinerea spreads very fast because it can produce up to 130 shoots from the mother stem.

Studies from West Africa have found that the sickle bush is mostly found in warm, dry savannahs but it can grow in more than three climate groups.

CABI said the subspecies spreading in East Africa is thought to have originated in countries such as Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa and is spreading all over the world.

“Dichrostachys cinerea has a high reproductive rate, meaning that they produce many seeds throughout the year. Although not all offspring are successful, the plants that do establish themselves can typically expect a long lifespan due to their tolerance to natural disturbances like fire, drought and pests,” reads part of a 2017 report by CABI.

It added that the ability by the sickle bush to prosper on nutrient-poor soils and disturbed areas made it very adaptive and resilient in its native region of South Africa.

A 2017 study in the journal Nature Communications found that alien invasive species, like the sickle bush, have the ability to expand rapidly at higher latitudes and altitudes as the climate warms, out-pacing native species. The park is estimated to be 914m above sea level, while Uganda is about 140 kms above the equator.

Geofrey Baluku is a part-time tour operator around Kilembe and Kasese, the areas alongside the Queen Elizabeth National Park. He is also concerned about the spread of the sickle bush.

“It is a serious problem. What will happen to this park if all the animals go away?” Baluku said in an interview with IPS.

He told IPS that the sickle bush is not entirely new to the area but the rate at which it is expanding was.
“We have used those same plants to treat some diseases. It is very good soothing to tooth ache.
“But …even elephants don’t eat their leaves. Other small animals don’t want to stay in areas colonised by sickle bush so they move to other areas, including where there are human settlements,” Baluku said.

Uganda Wildlife Authority wardens at one of the areas formerly colonised by the sickle bush. The authority has undertaken restoration efforts since July to clear the Queen Elizabeth National Park of the shrub. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

A problematic plant

Dr Peter Baine, a research officer at Uganda’s invasive species research unit, told IPS that the sickle bush forms a canopy in a colonised area, releasing chemicals that kill the grass underneath.

“It is quite problematic to other plants because of its ability to spread fast, grow fast, disperse numerous seeds, and the seed’s ability to last in soil up until a year,” he said.

Baine did not rule out the fact that its rapid spread could be linked to climate change. He told IPS that invasive species and climate change are two of the primary factors that alter ecological systems.

He said the National Agricultural Research Organisation and UWA were conducting studies to understand the interaction between climate change and the sickle bush for a possible management plan to fight the problem.

Restoration Effort

The UWA has in the past burnt the sickle bush but discovered that the tree would sprout again after a few weeks.

Since July, the authority has embarked on a new restoration effort, involving the uprooting and burning of the plants in colonised areas.

About six hundred hectares of sickle bush had been uprooted by May when IPS visited the Queen Elizabeth National Park.

Asalu told IPS that there remains a huge challenge ahead because uprooting and burning the sickle bush requires huge financial resources that are not readily available.

But in the meantime the current efforts for eradication are making a difference. IPS saw a number of animals, including buffalo and bushbucks (African antelopes), in parts of the restored area.

*Writing with Nalisha Adams in Johannesburg

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• Mining Grabs Up Land, Deals Blow to Agriculture in Central America

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By Charlotte Munns
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 12 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has been forced to justify its existence at the United Nations ahead of a pledging conference later this month.

UNRWA came under fire by Jason Greenblatt, US Special Envoy for International Negotiations, at a Security Council meeting late last month.

Allegations and criticism raised by Greenblatt did little to aid the already precarious financial situation of the Agency. Last week, UNRWA held a press conference at the UN in an attempt to raise awareness — and funds for their work.

The organisation supports around 74% of Gaza’s population, and also has major operations in the West Bank and Jordan, where millions of Palestine refugees reside. The Agency provides food aid, social services, education and infrastructure.

UNRWA requires US$1.2 billion to fund all its operations in the coming year. However, fears have been raised regarding their ability to do so. Unless the Agency is able to secure at least US$60 million by the end of this month, their ability to provide food aid to over 1 million Palestine refugees seems uncertain.

The Agency is funded predominantly by UN Member States, the European Union and regional governments. These sources contribute 93% of funds. Private individuals and non-governmental sources contributed over US$17 million in 2018.

Matthias Schmale, Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza, noted at the press conference last week, “right now, strictly financially speaking, we don’t have the money to guarantee the opening of schools in the fall.”

These financial concerns have largely arisen following the United States’ refusal to continue funding the organisation. Greenblatt justified Trump’s decision to the Security Council last month.

“The UNRWA model has failed the Palestinian people,” he said, describing the Agency as an “irredeemably flawed operation” and a “band-aid” solution. Instead, he proposed an integration of the Agency’s services into government and non-governmental organisations’ structures.

In his explanation of the United States’ decision, he reaffirmed the country’s support of Israel, stating “the United States will always stand with Israel.”

This prompted criticism that the decision to cease funding UNRWA was a political move, rather than for issues with the Agency’s functioning.

Peter Mulrean, Director of UNRWA’s Representative Office in New York, said in a statement to IPS that “UNRWA regrets the U.S. decision to stop funding UNRWA after decades of being the Agency’s single largest donor and strong partner.” However, he refused to speculate on the motives behind that decision.

Greenblatt claimed the politicisation of UNRWA, despite its intended neutrality, meant “year after year, Palestinians in refugee camps were not given the opportunity to build any future; they were misled and used as political pawns and commodities instead of being treated as human beings.”

In his response, Mulrean said: “UNRWA is a UN humanitarian Agency that has no political role in Palestine or anywhere else.”

Despite this, UNRWA was asked at the press conference to respond to claims its members have involvement with Hamas after weapons were found stored in a school, and tunnels were located beneath multiple UNRWA educational buildings.

The Agency noted its officials reported all such incidents, and measures were taken to remove the weapons and close the tunnels.

Criticism of UNRWA seems at odds with the Security Council’s stance on the Agency.

Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, said in a press briefing last week, “the Secretary General has been speaking on support of UNRWA for a long time,” adding, “his position remains unchanged, that he very much feels that UNRWA is a stabilizing force in the region through the education services it provides, through the health services, and through the support services.”

At the Security Council meeting last month it was only the United States and Israel that spoke against UNRWA. All other 14 member states reaffirmed their support for the Agency.

“That is a reflection of the broad support UNRWA enjoys in the international community,” Mulrean told IPS.

Despite this, UNRWA has for years struggled to meet its budget. Last year, around 42 countries and institutions increased their contributions to erase an unprecedented deficit of US$446 million.

Greenblatt noted the United States was frequently called upon to fill budget gaps. Having pledged around US$6 billion to the organisation over the course of its existence, he reaffirmed his government’s refusal to continue to do so.

Instead, the United States has called for a conference in Bahrain—June 25-26– to discuss possible solutions to the Palestine refugee crisis. Many see this as compensation for withdrawing funding for UNRWA.

While Mulrean refused to take a formal position on the upcoming conference in Bahrain, he did say that UNRWA doesn’t see this as in competition with the Agency’s work.

UNRWA has fought Greenblatt’s criticism before press in order to garner support for its mandate. Within a context of escalating violence in Gaza – some saying the worst since 2014 – and ever- increasing numbers of Palestine refugees, the Agency continues to seek funding from member states so as to continue its operations in the coming year.

“This is our reality,” Mulrean said, “we have schools to run, we have clinics to run, we have people to feed.”

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