Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

An electoral worker prepares identity card and biometric verification readers, at the offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Kano, northern Nigeria, on February 14, 2019. CPJ joined a call for Nigeria to ensure that internet and social media services remain connected during the upcoming elections. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

By Editor, CPJ
Feb 14 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(CPJ) – The Committee to Protect Journalists joined more than 15 rights organizations and the #KeepItOn Coalition to call for Nigerian authorities to ensure that internet and social media services remain connected during upcoming elections, and safeguard internet speeds of websites and messaging applications. In early February, Nigeria’s federal government denied rumors of plans to shut down the internet during upcoming elections, according to the privately owned Guardian Nigeria and Quartz news outlets. Nigeria has two sets of elections scheduled in the coming weeks: federal elections on February 16 and state elections on March 2.

The letter, addressed to Umar Garba Danbatta, executive vice chairman and chief executive officer of the Nigerian Communications Commission, emphasized how internet disruptions inhibit journalists’ ability to safely conduct reporting and run contrary to international law. It also highlighted additional social and economic costs of internet outages.

“The media is critical to this particular election and critical to people understanding both the [election’s] processes and procedures,” Festus Okoye, national commissioner of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, told CPJ on February 13. Okoye also emphasized the importance of internet connectivity because the smart card readers used for voter identification are based on the internet. “Three networks–Glo, MTN, and Airtel–are powering them [the smart card readers], so if you jam the network there won’t be any election…that’s just the bottom line.” he said.

Read the full letter here.

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Maria Ressa--founder, CEO, and executive editor of the Rappler news website--giving her acceptance speech at CPJ's 2018 International Press Freedom Awards on November 20, 2018. (Getty Images/Dia Dipasupil)

By Editor, CPJ
Feb 14 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(CPJ) – The Philippine government’s legal harassment of the news website Rappler and Maria Ressa, its founder and executive editor, took an alarming turn Wednesday when officers from the National Bureau of Investigation arrested Ressa at Rappler’s bureau in Manila and held her overnight over a cyber libel case filed against her by the Justice Department. Ressa’s arrest was in connection to a story published by Rappler in 2012, before the law was enacted. Ressa told CPJ before her arrest that the charge was “political” and that the Philippines has “weaponized” its cybercrime law. Ressa was released on bail on Thursday morning. CPJ’s Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler explored the implications of Ressa’s arrest for press freedom in an op-ed for CNN.

Apart from the cyber-libel charges, Ressa and Rappler face five tax cases. In December, CPJ and First Look Media announced a campaign to provide legal support for journalists, and the first recipients were Ressa and Rappler. CPJ’s board also passed a resolution Wednesday condemning the arrest.

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Dr. Armstrong Alexis, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative for Suriname tells IPS High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) nations need support as they continue to protect their forests. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
PARAMARIBO, Feb 14 2019 (IPS)

As High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) nations meet in Suriname at a major conference, it is obvious that the decision made by these countries to preserve their forests has been a difficult but good one.

“It is a choice that governments have to make to determine whether they want to continue being custodians of the environment or whether they want to pursue interests related only to economic advancement and economic growth,” Dr. Armstrong Alexis, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative for Suriname, tells IPS in an interview.

The UNDP and the U.N. Department for Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) have been instrumental in the coming together of the group of countries under the HFLD umbrella.

Both U.N. bodies have supported countries with the design and implementation of national policies and measures to reduce deforestation and manage forests sustainably, hence contributing to the mitigation of climate change and advancing sustainable development.

Forests provide a dwelling and livelihood for over a billion people—including many indigenous peoples. They also host the largest share the world’s biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services, such as water and carbon storage, which play significant roles in mitigating climate change.

Deforestation and forest degradation, which still continue in many countries at high rates, contribute severely to climate change, currently representing about a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Amid this, Alexis says HFLD countries need support as they continue to protect their forests.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

For a long time Suriname has maintained 93 percent forest cover of total land area which has been providing multiple benefits to the global community, in particular, combatting climate change for current and future generations. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Inter Press Service (IPS): Can you give a brief synopsis of the work of the UNDP in Suriname?

Armstrong Alexis (AA): The UNDP is a partner in development in Suriname. We specifically focus on resources. We cover a whole spectrum of issues around climate change, renewable energy, the reduction of fossil fuels and adaptation and mitigation measures. We also focus on the issue of forests.

IPS: Why is this meeting important for Suriname, and what was the UNDP’s role in collaborating with the HFLD nations?

AA: Suriname is the most forested country on earth. Approximately 93 percent of the land mass of Suriname is covered by pristine Amazonian forests. So, with 93 percent forest cover, Suriname has traditionally, for centuries, been a custodian of its forests and have preserved its forests while at the same time achieving significant development targets for its people.

Given the role of forests as they relate to climate change and in particular the sequestration of carbon, Suriname genuinely believes, and the science will back that up, that Suriname in fact is a carbon negative country. It stores a lot more carbon than it emits. And there are a number of other countries in the world that the U.N. has defined as Heavily Forested Low Deforestation countries. These are countries that are more than 50 percent covered by forests and at the same time they have the deforestation rate which is way below the international average which I think is .02 percent of deforestation per annum.

These countries have come together through a collaborative effort supported by the UNDP and the UN-DESA.

We’ve brought these countries together because they all have a common purpose, they all have a common story and they all are working towards finding common solutions to ensure that there is:

1. Recognition of the fact that these countries have traditionally maintained their forests and have not destroyed the forests in the name of development;
2. Given the relevance of trees and forests to combatting climate change, that these are actually the countries that provide a good example and the best opportunity for serving the earth with high forest cover.

IPS: What is the way forward for the protection of forests?

AA: In every country where there are forests there are activities that result in two things – deforestation, where the trees are cut down and usually not replaced; and you also have what it called forest degradation where the forest is not totally destroyed but it is not as thick, it does not have as many trees and sometimes the trees are much younger for many different reasons, including timber production. So, you might be degrading the quality of the forest but not necessarily deforesting in total.

Those countries that form the HFLD have made commitments with the international community that they will continue to pursue their development objectives without necessarily destroying their forests. And destroying here means either deforestation or degradation.

It’s a challenge because in Suriname for example, the small-scale gold mining sector is the largest driver of deforestation—not timber production, not palm oil as in some countries, and not infrastructure.

IPS: So, what do you say to a country that has gold in the soil? That they should not mine that gold?

AA: It’s difficult to say that to a country when the economy depends on it. How do you say to a country don’t produce timber when the economy of the country depends on it?

There are ways and means of doing it [small-scale mining or timber production] in a sustainable way. There are ways and means of ensuring that in granting concessions whether it be for timber production or small-scale gold mining, that you take into consideration means and approaches for rehabilitation.

You have to take into consideration the biodiversity and the sensitivity of some of those forests and whether or not you value more the biodiversity of that area or the few dollars that you can make by destroying that area’s forests and extracting the gold and extracting the timer.

So, conscious decisions have to be made by governments and our role as UNDP is to provide the government with the policy options, which usually is supported by sound scientific research and data to indicate to them what their real options are and how they can integrate those options in the decisions that they make.

So, it is a difficult choice indeed, but it is a choice that governments have to make to determine whether they want to continue being custodians of the environment or whether they want to pursue interests related only to economic advancement and economic growth.

So far, they’ve done a good job at it. One of the areas that I want to emphasise is that a lot of this work cannot be done by the countries alone, because if you think about it, the market for the timber is not Suriname. The market for the gold is not Suriname.

Usually the companies that come into those countries to do the extractives, they are not even local companies. They are big multinational companies. A country like Suriname or Guyana—those countries cannot take on this mammoth task alone. They need the support of the international community, they need the support of agencies like the U.N., they need the support of the funds that have been established like the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility, the Adaptation Fund, and they need the support of the bilateral donors and the countries that have traditionally invested in protecting the forests.

Related Articles

• Q&A: We Are Helping the World Mitigate Climate Change, Now it’s Time to Help Us
• Our Forests Provide the World With Oxygen But We Need More Climate Change Finance – HFLD Countries
• Q&A: Continuous Struggle for the Caribbean to be Heard in Climate Change Discussions

The post Q&A: What of the Carbon Neutral Countries? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS Correspondent Desmond Brown interviews DR. ARMSTRONG ALEXIS, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative for Suriname.

The post Q&A: What of the Carbon Neutral Countries? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Engineer Roberto Wong Loi Sing says technology has a very crucial role to play in fighting climate change and deforestation. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
PARAMARIBO, Feb 14 2019 (IPS)

At 51, Roberto Wong Loi Sing has spent nearly half of his life working in the field of engineering. But as he spends his days designing more efficient stormwater management systems, or water purification systems, for instance, the child in him comes alive as he combines his skills to find “win-win” solutions for the environment.

“On a practical scale, I am talking about things like water purification,” says Wong Loi Sing, who specialises in land and water management. “The child in me lives when we can combine things for a win, win. So, if I can design, if I can work in making better stormwater management systems but at the same time contribute to better land management, that would be ideal.”

He currently serves as the Leader of Projects at ILACO—an engineering firm in Suriname which is active in a wide range of studies and planning of development projects, among other things. The firm is also one of the local sponsors of a major international conference on climate financing for High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) countries, which the Caribbean nation of Suriname is hosting.

Wong Loi Sing, who spoke with IPS on the sidelines of the conference, says technology has a very crucial role to play in fighting climate change and deforestation.

At the macro level, he says technology can also help big polluters in the world reduce their pollution and become much more environmentally friendly.

“On a large scale, we, as experts in the field of technology, definitely have to take the lead role—not politicians, not economists, not financiers—but technologists, engineers, the scientists. [We] should make it so attractive for investors to be willing to invest in cleaner technology, greener technology,” Wong Loi Sing tells IPS.

“You have to invent. Your mind is the biggest asset that you have, and we are able,” he affirms.

Trinidad & Tobago-based KVR Energy Limited is one company that has taken military technology of Forward Looking InfraRed Optical Gas Imaging (FLIR OGI) and found innovative uses for it—such as using it to find hazardous gases.

The company uses an optimal gas imaging camera, which is considered a highly-specialised version of an infrared or thermal imaging camera, to find gas leaks “which would be otherwise impossible to find using conventional methods,” KVR’s regional manager Vikash Rajnauth tells IPS.

“The technology is not new, it has been used for military and defence, but this aspect of it is very special because it uses a specific tuning of a detector to find hazardous gases. We have worked on a methodology to use footage from the camera to quantify this gas . . . so this way we can put an actual dollar value to it,” Rajnauth says.

Most importantly, Rajnauth says they can also now put a value as to how many credits companies are using by producing hazardous gases and emitting them into the environment.

He explains that his company has already implemented the technology at British Petroleum (BP) and Shell, noting that they were able to get Shell in Tunisia to come onboard long before getting buy-in for the technology from Shell in Trinidad & Tobago.

“At the end of March this year, we will be entering into our first exercise with the Atlantic LNG facility in Trinidad to quantify gas leaks,” Rajnauth says.

But he also admits the technology does not come cheap.

“It has a spectral filter inside the camera. It also has a cryogenic cooler that cools a FLIR Indium Antimonide (InSb) detector inside the camera down to -321 degrees F. The technology is not cheap, but it pays back for itself in no time when we consider loss of containment, prevention of catastrophic failures and harm to the environment,” Rajnauth says.

Information technology consultant Camille Pagee says there are also low-cost solutions available to countries in the Caribbean to gather data. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Meanwhile, information technology consultant Camille Pagee points out that there are low-cost solutions available to countries in the Caribbean to use to collect data as they address climate change.

Pagee, the Managing Director at Connect Consulting Limited, has worked in IT in the Caribbean since 2004, following software development experience in Canada. Over the years she has gained experience in dozens of businesses, from large breweries to small companies and public agencies.

She says that in the Caribbean region, costly solutions and projects by both business and government have a high rate of failure, and she recommends that countries use the tools they already have at their disposal and to also start on a small scale.

“The truth is that climate finance is a subject that is very abstract, but it’s founded 100 percent on data. We are speaking as the HFLD countries and stating that we’re delivering a service and we’re demanding that services have a particular value,” Pagee tells IPS.

“How does business work, how does finance work? It wants to measure value. There’s a value to everything that we purchase and so we have to present a value to everything that we want to receive, sell, market or manage. And where does that come from? Data.”

Pagee says she has found that there are two main myths that have contributed to the high rate of failure of IT projects. The first is that collecting data is a very technical exercise.

“The truth is, every single day in our businesses, in our offices, at client service counters for government public service we are collecting data, some [of it is through] using simple tools like the old fashion ledger, while others conduct face to face surveys.”

Using her own company as an example, she says they have collected data from around the Caribbean trying to make use of simple every-day tools.

“We conduct face-to-face surveys to collect primary, real, current information about a range of things. It could be public opinion, it could be state of projects, it could be impact,” she tells IPS.

“My company [comprises] under 10 people, we have had clients in nine countries around the Caribbean, and in the past eight years we have collected 100,000 face-to-face interviews on points of data ranging from short questions–10 points to as long as 50 points.”

Pagee says the second myth is that data collection is a technical activity and complex projects require complex and advance project structures.

But she says most people, even in developing countries and HFLD nations are already preparing to collect data.

“We’re not lacking any of the tools. I am calling on those who are in a position to make decisions about big projects, especially relating to data which is especially related to the success of climate financing, climate measurements and carbon measurements – let’s think about the importance of small steps and small projects, community level activities,” Pagee says.

“Data is a product which continue to have value. It doesn’t lose the value if you collect it in small portions compared to collecting it in large portions. It all tells you the reality of your process, the success of your business efforts,” she adds.

Related Articles

• Q&A: We Are Helping the World Mitigate Climate Change, Now it’s Time to Help Us
• It is Imperative for the Caribbean to Have a Seat at the COP24 Negotiating Table
• Our Forests Provide the World With Oxygen But We Need More Climate Change Finance – HFLD Countries

The post The Role Technology Can Play in Fighting Climate Change and Deforestation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The post Rapa Nui’s Stone Statues and Marine Resources Face Threats from Climate Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The city of Mogadishu now hosts more than 600,000 IDPs—one-third of the total figure in the East African nation. This dated picture shows one of the many refugee camps outside of Somalia’s capital which played host to almost 400,000 famine refugees who fled to Mogadishu for aid at the height of the 2011 famine. A year later they had still been living in refugee camps and some eight years later more remain. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 14 2019 (IPS)

While the impacts of displacement on wellbeing are well-known, one group has pointed to the equally burdensome economic costs for those displaced as well as host communities.

In a new report, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) examines the financial costs of internal displacement across major crises around the world, raising awareness of the importance of preventing future displacement as well as responding to such situations efficiently.

“We have long understood the devastating impact internal displacement can have on the safety and wellbeing of people affected by conflict, violence, disasters and development projects,” said IDMC’s Director Alexandra Bilak.

“But internal displacement also places a heavy burden on the economy, by limiting people’s ability to work and generating specific needs that must be paid for by those affected, their hosts, governments or aid providers,” she added.

Looking at the economic costs of the consequences of internal displacement on key needs and services such as health, shelter, and income in eight countries, IDMC found that the average cost per internally displaced persons (IDPs) was 310 dollars.

With 40 million displaced around the world, the global financial impact of displacement reaches 13 billion  dollars annually.

The report also notes that the impacts of internal displacement are far higher in low-income countries, partially due the lack of capacity to minimise impacts of crises.

The Central African Republic (CAR) is one such low-income country, with over 70 percent of the country estimated to be living in poverty.

CAR has seen decades of instability and violence, and its most recently conflict has resulted in an ongoing, dire humanitarian crisis and the displacement of over 1 million people, more than half of whom have stayed within the country’s borders.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), one in four children is either displaced or a refugee.

IDMC calculated that the economic impacts of internal displacement in the central African country between 2013 and 2017 total 950 million dollars. This represents 230 million dollars annually, equivalent to 11 percent of the country’s pre-crisis gross domestic product (GDP).

Almost 40 percent of the total cost comes from the impacts of displacement on nutrition and food security.

Approximately two million people are severely food insecure in the country, while UNICEF projects that over 43,000 children under the age of five will face severe acute malnutrition which, if left untreated, is fatal.

Combined with the additional costs associated with providing healthcare to IDPs in emergency settings, health accounts for half of the economic impact of the Central African Republic displacement crisis.

In Somalia, drought alone cost the country 500 million dollars annually between 2017 and 2018, representing almost five percent of the country’s pre-crisis GDP. The country-wide drought lead to 892,000 new displacements in the country in 2017.

As the drought left rural communities unable to cultivate and live off their lands, the highest economic impact is associated to the provision of food assistance to IDPs.

IDMC also found high impacts on housing and infrastructure as the drought drove many Somalis to urban and peri-urban areas in search of new sources of income. However, this further stretched the already limited capacity of municipalities to provide basic services such as water and sanitation.

The city of Mogadishu now hosts more than 600,000 IDPs—one-third of the total figure of IDPs in the East African nation.

“This new research clearly shows the risk internal displacement represents, not only for human rights and security but also for national development,” said Bilak.

By identifying the areas in which internal displacement has the highest cost can help governments and aid providers target their interventions, the report notes.

However, more and better data is needed.

“More data and analysis are needed to further identify where the financial losses are greatest and help governments and aid providers prevent future displacement, as well as respond more efficiently to existing crises,” Bilak concluded.

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Catherine McKenna, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 13 2019 (IPS)

When the Security Council, the most powerful body at the United Nations, met last month to discuss the growing new threats to world peace and security, the discussion veered away from international terrorism, nuclear Armageddon and the rash of ongoing military conflicts in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

And 83 of the 193 member states remained collectively focused on one of the greatest impending dangers to humanity: the devastation that could be triggered by climate change.

In an interview with IPS, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna best captured the grim scenario when she declared: “Whether the issue is desertification in parts of Africa, forced migration of vulnerable people in Central America, conflict over water scarcity, or rising sea levels and tropical storms for small island states, the security aspects of climate change are pressing and multifaceted.”

Addressing the Security Council, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, warned that climate change affects peace and security in indirect but serious ways.

In the Sahel, she said, competition for resources has fuelled tensions between herders and farmers; in the Lake Chad Basin, drought has reduced economic opportunities and threatened the livelihoods of many who are turning to armed groups; and in Asia, studies have shown a link between the impact of climate change on livelihoods and the intensity of civil conflicts.

She also pointed out that climate-related displacement is “an acute problem which drives up local tension, as well as human trafficking and child exploitation.”

In her wide-ranging interview, the Canadian Minister said as part of her country’s $2.65 billion pledge to support developing countries in their mitigation and adaptation efforts, Canada has increased its adaptation support to the poorest and most vulnerable populations impacted by climate change.

This funding includes support for Small Island Developing States (SIDS), some of them, including the Maldives, Tuvalu and Kiribati, are in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth because of sea-level rise.

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: The United Nations has recognized climate change as one of the greatest long-term challenges to international peace and security. How best would you characterize these challenges?

MINISTER McKENNA: The impact of climate change goes beyond the environment. At the national, regional and global levels, climate change is having a significant effect on economies, social development and peace and security, particularly in fragile contexts where it is a threat multiplier to governance challenges.

The increased frequency, severity and magnitude of extreme weather events all over the world – one of the most immediate and visible results of climate change– will likely continue to generate humanitarian crises.

Canada also recognizes that women and girls are disproportionately affected by the adverse effects of the changing climate and we stress the importance of addressing their needs as countries build back better.

Canada’s International Assistance and Defence Policies recognize that climate change poses a serious security challenge and must be addressed to sustain development and peace and security gains.

The Government of Canada believes that an integrated approach to addressing climate change is essential to fully account for social, economic, political and security impacts globally and that multilateral consensus is key to achieving sustainable development, peace and security, noting the importance of involving women and girls in decision-making around environment and climate action issues.

IPS: The countries most vulnerable to climate change are the 57 small island developing states (SIDS)—some of whom like the Maldives, Tuvalu and Kiribati, may be wiped off the face of the earth due to sea level rise and natural disasters. Do you think the international community – and specifically the United Nations – is adequately responding to these dangers with concrete actions on climate resilience and funding for adaptation?

MINISTER McKENNA: Climate change is a global challenge that requires a global solution. At COP21 in Paris, the global community came together to strengthen the global response to climate change including by: enhancing adaptive capacity and reducing vulnerability to climate change; providing financial resources to support developing countries in their transition toward a lower carbon future; and holding the average global temperature increase to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, while striving to limit the increase to 1.5°C.

With the adoption of the Paris Rulebook in 2018, all countries including major economies are moving forward with this commitment.

As part of Canada’s $2.65B pledge to support developing countries in their mitigation and adaptation efforts, Canada has increased its adaptation support to the poorest and most vulnerable populations impacted by climate change. This funding includes support for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Canada is providing $60M to establish a Renewable Energy in Small Island Developing States Program at the World Bank to support the planning and construction of renewable energy infrastructure, energy efficiency and battery storage solutions.

Canada is providing $300M to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to advance projects that support the transition of SIDS, Least Developed Countries, and African States towards clean and climate-resilient economies.

Of note, the GCF is supporting the Pacific Islands Renewable Energy Investment Program in seven SIDS (the Cook Islands, Tonga, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Nauru and Samoa), which is expected to reduce 120,000 tonnes of Co2 per year, while increasing the penetration of renewables in these markets.

Canada is providing $30M to respond to the urgent adaptation needs of developing countries through the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF). As of 2016, the Fund has approved US$1B for projects in 40 countries, including nine SIDS, such as Tuvalu, the Maldives, and Kiribati.

IPS: In November 2015, during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) in Malta, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced grants amounting to $2.65 billion over a five year period to help developing nations in their battle against climate change. With 2020 as the expiry date, how much of these funds have been disbursed and who are the recipients? Will there be further grants after 2020?

MINISTER McKENNA: Canada is delivering $2.65B in climate finance to developing countries. To date, over $1.5B worth of projects have been announced in the form of grants and concessional financing. This pledge covers FY 2015/16 to 2020/21.

(The link to recent announcements: https://climate-change.canada.ca/finance/RecentAnnouncements-AnnoncesRecentes.aspx.)

Funding beyond 2020/21 will require a decision from the Government of Canada.

IPS: The scarcity of water, triggered primarily by climate change, is also responsible for current and past water conflicts and marine disputes, including confrontations between Israel and Jordan, India and Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia, Palestine and Israel, (not excluding Bolivia, Peru and Chile.). Do you think the situation will get any worse with new conflicts on the horizon?

MINISTER McKENNA: Canada recognizes that water, if not governed effectively in a fair and inclusive manner, can act as a conflict driver.

Water in abundance may lead to devastating floods, while water scarcity leads to drought, both of which have significant political, social, environmental and economic implications.

The acceleration of climate change, the increased frequency of drought and flooding, the increasing variation in water flows, the growing volume of hydro generation necessary for agriculture, energy production and human consumption are all conspiring to make access to water, water management and water security a critical global challenge.

Areas that are already struggling with challenges, such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, and/or fragile political institutions, are particularly vulnerable to these changes.

Canada also recognises that women are the most susceptible to bear the impacts of these changes, and of potential ensuing conflicts.

In the future, problems such as water shortage, low water quality, or floods are increasingly likely to exacerbate existing social tensions. This can undermine economic development in various countries and could increase the risk of instability.

However, despite the complexity of the challenges, water is also a resource for collaboration. While the past 50 years have seen approximately 40 cases of acute violent water conflicts, they have also given rise to over 150 water treaties around the world.

Water-related disputes between states have typically been resolved through diplomatic channels; however, the past will not necessarily be a good predictor of the future, as climate change will increasingly amplify existing water challenges at the local, national, regional and global levels.

Still, diplomatic engagement can be a tool for addressing water, peace and security challenges. Canadian diplomatic and development efforts focus on reducing instability and the human tragedy posed by climate change, including through reducing risks and increasing resiliency with respect to natural disasters, forced migration, food insecurity and water scarcity.

We also believe that women should be at the forefront of our interventions addressing these issues, and we ensure that Canada’s initiatives systematically integrate gender.

IPS: The threat of sea level rise, caused by climate change, could also result in a new category of “environmental refugees” fleeing from their sinking homelands to neighboring countries. Shouldn’t the 1951 UN convention be amended to include this new category of refugees?

MINISTER McKENNA: Decisions on actions the Government of Canada may take in the event of natural disasters are taken on a case-by-case basis.

For refugees resettled from abroad, Canada relies on referrals from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) or another designated referral organization, or a private sponsorship group.

Generally speaking, in order to be considered for resettlement to Canada, individuals must be a Convention refugee as defined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

A Convention refugee is “a person who, by reason of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons or race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion, (a) is outside each of their countries of nationality and is unable or, by reason of that fear, unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of each of those countries or (b) not having a country of nationality, is outside the country of their former habitual residence and is unable or, by reason of that fear, unwilling to return to that country.

For questions on amending a UN convention, please contact UNHCR directly.

IPS: How is Canada’s own environmental policies in relation to emissions, pollution, clean technology, renewable energy, marine conservation — and also its contribution to the UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF)?”

MINISTER McKENNA: The Pan-Canadian Framework (PCF) on Clean Growth and Climate Change is Canada’s plan to take ambitious action to fight climate change.

The PCF is built on four pillars: 1) pricing carbon pollution, 2) complementary actions to reduce emissions across the economy, 3) adaptation and climate resilience and 4) clean technology, innovation, and jobs; and includes more than fifty concrete actions that cover all sectors of the Canadian economy.

The PCF positions Canada to meet its Paris Agreement greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target of 30% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Additional emissions reductions will come from measures that have not yet been modelled; including increases in carbon sequestered through forests and agricultural lands, investments in green infrastructure, public transit, and clean technology and innovation, as well as future actions by federal, provincial and territorial governments.

In the PCF, Canada committed to become a global leader on clean technology innovation. The federal government has since announced $2.3 billion in clean technology investments, including nearly $1.4 billion in financing dedicated to supporting clean technology firms and $400 million to support the development and demonstration of clean technologies.

Though 80% of Canada’s electricity already comes from non-emitting sources such as hydroelectricity, solar and wind, Canada has set a goal to increase this portion to 90% by 2030. In support of this goal, Canada has committed to invest $26.9 billion in green infrastructure, a portion of which will support renewable energy projects.

Furthermore, Canada is working to reduce emissions from its existing fossil fuel fired electricity generation, passing final legislation in December 2018 that will phase-out traditional coal-fired electricity by 2030 and limit GHG emissions from natural gas-fired electricity generation.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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Winston Lackin, Suriname’s Ambassador for the Environment, told IPS that developed countries need to step up and have a conversation with countries like his, as they are experiencing the brunt of climate change impact while their own greenhouse gas emissions are negligible. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
PARAMARIBO, Feb 13 2019 (IPS)

The Caribbean nation of Suriname may be one of the most forested countries in the world, with some 93 percent of the country’s surface area being covered in forests, but it is also the most threatened as it struggles with the impacts of climate change.

Suriname, which has a population of just over half a million, holds its forests as “a central component of its economic, social and cultural life,” according to REDD +.

But the low-lying nation, which is one of a few countries in the world to be classified as a High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) country, has faced various impacts of climate change which includes increased temperatures, drought and sea level rise. Some 75 percent of Suriname’s people live along its low-lying coast and according to a USAID report on the Caribbean, the “anticipated sea level rise of 17 to 44 centimetres by 2050, combined with greater risk of flooding due to increased tropical storm strength, will put significant stress on infrastructure and population centres.” 

Winston Lackin, Ambassador for the Environment for Suriname, told IPS that developed countries need to step up and have a conversation with countries like his, as they are experiencing the brunt of climate change impact while their own greenhouse gas emissions are negligible.

Lackin spoke to IPS on the sidelines of a major international conference on climate financing for High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) countries, which Suriname is hosting.

“So, if business as usual continues in the industrial world we will face serious problems even when we are maintaining our forests. But we took the decision that the forest, the environment is in the first place our responsibility. It’s our life, it’s our survival. So, that’s why we commit ourselves to that,” he said.

The objectives of the conference are to strengthen cooperation, collaboration and exchange of knowledge and experience among HFLD countries. It also aims to develop joint strategies and positions to help HFLD countries maintain their intact forests and preserve forest cover, and make international communities more aware of the significant global importance these countries and their productive landscapes play in combating climate change.

Lackin said it was import to preserve and maintain forests and usage in a sustainable way that would guarantee they remained sustainable for future generations. He added that it is important that “a healthy forest, ecosystem, biodiversity, water supply, food security, job creation is in place and maintained.”

Excerpts of the interview follow: 

Inter Press Service (IPS): What issues, if any, do you have with the Paris Climate Agreement and its link to forests?

Winston Lackin (WL): The Paris Agreement is focusing, in our view, too much on mitigation for HFLD countries. We are not part of that. We are a carbon negative country. So, we feel that the focus of the Paris Agreement is too much on mitigation and less on adaptation. Adaptation is our issue because adaptation would guarantee us that the lands are okay, that we can continue with agriculture.

We should do smart agriculture, there are technologies for that, but adaptation is our real challenge. Since, for example, we are a continental country we’re not in the group of the SIDS [Small Island Developing Nations] but still we have challenges when it comes to adaptation. We feel that the Paris Agreement should focus a little bit more on adaptation and direct more finance to adaptation in our specific case, which is the case for most of the HFLD countries.

IPS: So, what are the specific challenges faced by your country as a result of climate change?

WL: The first one that we are facing is access to finance. What we are seeing happening as a result of climate change in certain parts of Suriname, especially the western part, we see the line where salted water was in the beginning, it’s moving further. So, the very important productive area where we have our rice and banana crops, is in danger. We’ve seen that in the interior of Suriname where our indigenous people have their crops, problems with the soil—it is too dry, or they have flooding. They are having serious problems in guaranteeing the food supply. So, we see this affecting directly our people and their environment.

What we are trying to do all the time is to get access to climate finance, but it has been very difficult, too complicated.

They have classified us as one of the middle-income countries, which creates more problems for us to get access to concessional loans. That’s why we thought [that it is] time that we have a new kind of discussion.

We are contributing to the mitigation of the negative effects of climate change, which are not caused by us and still when we look at our social, economic development that we have to guarantee people, we cannot meet our obligations because of a lack of finance.

The money that we don’t have for agriculture, education and health; we are forced now to put into coastal defence. We don’t feel that this is right. We have a feeling that we are being punished by behaving well, so we want to change that.

IPS: What role should the developed countries play in assisting your country and also the SIDS?

WL: The message we are bringing is that if I am helping you by making sure that my forests . . . are contributing to mitigation of the negative effects, now it’s time for you to help me take care of my sustainable development and make sure that what I need comes to me.

I’m helping you, it’s time for you to help me in a different way. We feel that there is too much red tape for countries like Suriname to get finance – the resources we need. And we are feeling the results of the actions which incidentally are not taken by us. We are not part of the making of that.

IPS: Are the HFLD countries speaking with one voice or is there need for a more unified approach?

WL: That is one of the things that we are looking at this conference. And I am happy about the reaction that we received [assurance] from the director of the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] Patricia Espinosa that the outcome of this conference will be part of next steps discussions in the international fora when it comes to the environment.

We feel that the HFLD countries deserve another kind of treatment because of the role they are playing. We are looking also to connect more with the Coalition for Rainforest Nations to create a platform within the structure of the United Nations that when these issues are discussed that we are there in a group.

There are 33 HFLD developing countries where like 24 percent of forests in the world is located in these countries. So, the contribution that we are making is enormous and it is time that we have a louder voice; that we join forces, that we have these durable partnerships to call the attention of the world to access to finance for the challenges that the HFLD developing countries are facing.

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Vice President of Suriname, Michael Ashwin Adhin, addressed delegates during the opening of the conference of a major international conference on climate financing for High-Forest Cover, Low-Deforestation (HFLD) countries. Courtesy: Desmond Brown

By Desmond Brown
PARAMARIBO, Feb 13 2019 (IPS)

Suriname, the most forested country in the world, is this week hosting a major international conference on climate financing for High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation (HFLD) countries.

Among other things, the Feb. 12 to 14 conference aims to make the international community more aware of the significant global importance of HFLD countries and the role their productive landscapes play in combatting climate change.

HFLD countries also include, among others: Panama, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Peru, Belize, Gabon, Guyana, Bhutan, Zambia, and French Guiana.

This conference also aims to strengthen the payment structure for ecosystem services that will be used to advance sustainable development, while mitigating the risk of forest destruction and biodiversity loss.

“Forests bring pleasure to our lives. Next to culture and leisure, it provides us with, among other things, food, timber, clean air and oxygen. But [it] also has important benefits such as mitigation and the adaptation to climate change,” Suriname’s Vice President, Michael Ashwin Adhin, said at the opening of the conference.

“I would like to stress the fact that Suriname has long maintained 93 percent forest cover of its total land area which has been providing multiple benefits to the global community, in particular, combatting climate change for current and future generations.”

Adhin said climate change and sea level rise presents huge threats to the Caribbean nation—a low-lying coastal state where more than 75 percent of the population and the majority of its economic and social infrastructure is located along the coast.

“We are faced with finding remedies to these problems which we did not cause. We are aware of the similarity of the situation for many other countries,” he said.

Adhin reiterated Suriname’s aspirations to maintain a High Forest Cover and Low Deforestation rate. He noted that based on the country’s record, they feel obliged to champion this cause on international and multi-level agendas.

“We have taken the initiative for this conference as we recognise that together as HFLD countries we can stand stronger and create a critical mass, leading a movement for recognition of our contribution to the global community and cooperate to increase the debt contribution while we enjoy equitable and sustainable economic growth,” he said.

But he admits that “the challenges are huge,” especially with regards to the mobilisation of financial and other resources.

For a long time Suriname has maintained 93 percent forest cover of total land area which has been providing multiple benefits to the global community, in particular, combatting climate change for current and future generations. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Winston Lackin, Suriname’s Ambassador for the Environment, said the government took the decision two years ago to commit to maintaining its position of being the most forested country in the world, and to continue being one of the few carbon negative countries in the world.

“When we committed ourselves in November 2017 at the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] meeting in Bonn, we also said that we will not be in a position to do this alone, we would need technical cooperation, expertise, financial support, durable partnership, and political will at the national level but also at the international level,” Lackin told IPS.

“We know that 30 percent of the land area of the world is covered by forests. From this 30 percent, nearly a quarter is in the HFLD developing countries. And when we know the value and role of forests when it comes to mitigation and adaptation and the added effects of climate change, then we feel that it is time for a different kind of discussion when it comes to accessing finance.”

Pointing out that only eight percent of international financial resources has been directed to HFLD developing countries in the last decade, Lackin said one cannot expect these developing countries to meet their commitments when it comes to the Paris Agreement. The goals of the Paris Agreement include boosting adaptation and limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2°C.

He said a very important fact is that the HFLD countries have been contributing to the mitigation of the negative effects of climate change even before the existence of the climate change conferences.

He said these countries were facing serious problems to meet their daily economic and social development challenges, while at the same time being the victims of the negative effects which were not of their making.

Lackin said the expectation is that the conference will help Suriname and other HFLD countries meet the challenges, facilitate access to financial resources, meet their commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in 2020 when the Paris Agreement is enforced, countries should be able to meet their ambitions.

“I’m convinced that this conference will help us, will guide us to the next step. The environment is not only our life, it is our survival,” he told IPS.

“We have an obligation to leave a world behind for the youth, for the next generation. So, it is our common responsibility, the joint responsibility of us all.”

Meanwhile, Shantanu Mukherjee, Chief at the Policy Analysis Branch, Division for Sustainable Development, from the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said the Suriname conference has the full support of the U.N.

He said the conference is the fruit of close collaboration between the Suriname’s government and multiple entities of the U.N. family. He added that the conference is very timely because latest research clearly shows that HFLD countries contribute significantly to the health of the planet but unfortunately also constitute a major gap in climate finance. This, he said, is something which has been overlooked for many years.

“The crucial role that forests in HFLDs play in storing carbon as well as providing food, water, shelter and livelihoods to tens of millions of people is now at stake,” Mukherjee told IPS.

“If this gap is not addressed soon, developing HFLDs may be forced to be in the unfortunate position of choosing between their global role in combatting climate change on the one hand and their legitimate development aspirations of their people on the other. Many are already in dire need of financial support to pave their roads towards a green and more sustainable future in which none are left behind.”

Mukherjee said the conference follows on the very latest scientific discoveries on the important contribution of forests in HFLDs in combatting climate change and that it comes at the beginning of a year replete with milestones and international discussions on climate change.

“The message which delegates of HFLDs present here wish to convey to the world is theirs to craft. But whatever the contents may be, the U.N. fully stands with countries in their commitment to both the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. We will do our utmost to bring the messages coming out of this conference to all of the climate-related events and other development meetings that are coming up,” he added.

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“La Arrancada” is a feature film about a young athlete who is having doubts about her role in national sports in Cuba. Courtesy of FiGa Films

By A. D. McKenzie
BERLIN/PARIS, Feb 12 2019 (IPS)

A documentary about a Cuban family facing an uncertain future has its world premiere Feb. 12 at the Berlin International Film Festival, one of the world’s most prestigious cinema events. “La Arrancada” (On the starting line) is a debut feature by Brazilian director Aldemar Matias, focusing on a young athlete who is having doubts about her role in national sports in the Caribbean country. The narrative follows her as she considers her future, which may well lie abroad, she reluctantly realises.

Structured with sensitivity and shot in an understated style, the film eschews the usual visual clichés associated with Cuba. Instead, with nary a Cadillac in sight, it offers a story with a strong feminist sensibility, told as it is from the point of the view of the athlete, Jenniffer, and her mother Marbelis. The latter is a no-nonsense boss of a fumigation centre in downtown Havana who marshals her army of mostly male fumigators to destroy mosquito nests throughout the city. Away from work, she tries to ensure that her daughter and son fulfil their potential.

The mother-daughter relationship is at the core of the film, with some poignant scenes, but “La Arrancada” also addresses the role of young men who feel they have to quit their homeland to improve their lives. We see Jenniffer’s brother getting ready to leave Cuba, and travelling through several Latin American countries, even as Jenniffer struggles to find her own role at home in the competitive arena. This intimate account of a family in the “Global South” explores issues of emigration and youth unemployment and “unfolds the portrait of a generation unsure of what’s next in Cuba”, as director Matias says.

In the following interview, Matias – who studied in Cuba – discusses his background and the themes in his film (a Cuba-Brazil-France co-production, distributed by Miami-São Paulo company FiGa Films).

Q:  Before we discuss the film, can you tell us about your background, where you were born and how you came to study in Cuba?

Aldemar Matias (AM): I was born in Manaus, Brazil. In my early twenties, I started working there as a TV reporter for local TV channels. It was always TV shows about arts or environmental subjects. Then I had the desire to spend more time with the people I was interviewing, to have the possibility to develop a deeper relationship with the characters. That’s when the interest for documentaries appeared. At that moment I already knew about the school in Cuba. It seemed like a holy land for aspiring filmmakers, specially from Latin America, Asia and Africa. Actually, the institution was initially thought to give high quality film education for these “3 worlds”. For me, It was a life-changing experience. It’s still my favourite place in the world. 

Q: What sparked the idea for La Arrancada?

AM: I already knew Marbelis (Jenniffer’s mom) from a previous short film I did, El Enemigo. Then, I was in Cuba trying to do another project, with multiple characters, that was not working very well. I called Marbelis to be part of it and to film a day at the beach. Her daughter asked if she could join in. When I saw these two interacting, that’s when I really saw the possibility of a powerful story, and I decided to focus completely on them. 

Q: The film could have been set in many other countries in the Global South, with its themes of young people leaving their homeland in search of better opportunities, parents living with the sadness of distance, national uncertainty about the future, etc. Could you discuss your reasons for highlighting these concerns?

AM: I believe the intimacy of a family is a great place to portray bigger political contexts. When we see the lives of these two, we can understand better how complex it is to make these decisions, to deal with these uncertainties. Jenniffer might have the idea that she can reach better opportunities somewhere else, but at the same time, she cares about what she’s doing in Cuba, I mean, she’s very upset when she can’t compete. Marbelis might reproduce a nationalist speech in the morning for her workers, but at the same time she can help her son to leave the country. How do we know what’s the best life project for us and our kids? When we see particular family stories up closer, immigrants (from Cuba or from anywhere else) become more than just a number or statistics. It’s not as reductionist as “there is good, here is bad”. 

Q: La Arrancada may be considered a feminist film, even if this aspect isn’t over-emphasised. Many viewers will appreciate the comments from Marbelis, the mother, to her son in one memorable scene, where she cautions him about the misogynistic lyrics in certain types of music. Can you tell us more about this section and why you included it?

AM: I think about Marbelis’ feminism the whole time! Not just this scene. But it’s not up to me to judge it. As a filmmaker, and especially as a male filmmaker. I love the fact that it just comes naturally: she might know nothing about concepts such as sorority or empowerment. But she’s there leading a troop of men every morning in the health district with “audacity and discipline”, as she says, alongside with her sister Delaires. At the same time, she might make a joke with Jenniffer saying “she won’t get married if she doesn’t prepare the lunch fast”. The patriarchy culture is there as well, obviously. That’s her authentic personality and I have to be honest with its complexity. The same way she might call out her son for misogynistic lyrics, and then she can dance to it later. 

Q: The story is told in a very understated way, leaving viewers to draw their own conclusions, especially concerning the role of women in “male” domains. Why did you choose this approach?

AM: I believe my job as a filmmaker is to open discussions, not to give conclusions. And to make the viewer empathise with complex realities and personalities. That’s why I choose to film in this way. But of course, I also need to take responsibility of the journey the viewer is taking and to provide the right path to generate the questions I want him/her to think about. 

Q: The English title is “On the starting line” but “arrancada” could also be “torn” which accurately sums up Jenniffer’s situation. How did you choose the title?

AM: This great idea is from the editor, Jeanne Oberson. I believe the title must provoke a question at the end of the film. “La Arrancada” has the obvious superficial first layer/meaning connected to Jenniffer’s sports activity that you see immediately in the beginning of the film. But then you think about the title again in the end and you actually might question yourself where is this “arrancada” taking her? Will she be able to be “arrancada”? How is this “arrancada” going to be? At least, that’s what we intended to provoke. 

Q: This is a Brazil-Cuban-French co-production. Can you tell us about the production aspects?

AM: The production company is Dublin Films, from Bordeaux. The film was actually financed and post-produced in France, all shot in Cuba (with a Cuban crew) and directed by me, Brazilian.

Q: What is your next project?

AM: Right now I’m in the post-production of a short film I did in my city, Manaus, and a 5-episode TV series about young dancers in Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil who challenge the conservatism of their communities. Although I’m based in Barcelona, I want to keep researching new stories in Latin America, especially in the Amazon, the region where I’m from. By the way, the political moment we’re living in Brazil now urges new stories to be filmed. 

This article is published with permission from the editor of Southern World Arts News (SWAN). You can follow her on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Vladimir Popov
KUALA LUMPUR and BERLIN, Feb 12 2019 (IPS)

Economic recovery efforts since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis have mainly depended on unconventional monetary policies. As fears rise of yet another international financial crisis, there are growing concerns about the increased possibility of large-scale military conflict.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

More worryingly, in the current political landscape, prolonged economic crisis, combined with rising economic inequality, chauvinistic ethno-populism as well as aggressive jingoist rhetoric, including threats, could easily spin out of control and ‘morph’ into military conflict, and worse, world war.

Crisis responses limited
The 2008-2009 global financial crisis almost ‘bankrupted’ governments and caused systemic collapse. Policymakers managed to pull the world economy from the brink, but soon switched from counter-cyclical fiscal efforts to unconventional monetary measures, primarily ‘quantitative easing’ and very low, if not negative real interest rates.

But while these monetary interventions averted realization of the worst fears at the time by turning the US economy around, they did little to address underlying economic weaknesses, largely due to the ascendance of finance in recent decades at the expense of the real economy. Since then, despite promising to do so, policymakers have not seriously pursued, let alone achieved, such needed reforms.

Instead, ostensible structural reformers have taken advantage of the crisis to pursue largely irrelevant efforts to further ‘casualize’ labour markets. This lack of structural reform has meant that the unprecedented liquidity central banks injected into economies has not been well allocated to stimulate resurgence of the real economy.

From bust to bubble
Instead, easy credit raised asset prices to levels even higher than those prevailing before 2008. US house prices are now 8% more than at the peak of the property bubble in 2006, while its price-to-earnings ratio in late 2018 was even higher than in 2008 and in 1929, when the Wall Street Crash precipitated the Great Depression.

As monetary tightening checks asset price bubbles, another economic crisis — possibly more severe than the last, as the economy has become less responsive to such blunt monetary interventions — is considered likely. A decade of such unconventional monetary policies, with very low interest rates, has greatly depleted their ability to revive the economy.

Vladimir Popov

The implications beyond the economy of such developments and policy responses are already being seen. Prolonged economic distress has worsened public antipathy towards the culturally alien — not only abroad, but also within. Thus, another round of economic stress is deemed likely to foment unrest, conflict, even war as it is blamed on the foreign.

International trade shrank by two-thirds within half a decade after the US passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, at the start of the Great Depression, ostensibly to protect American workers and farmers from foreign competition!

Liberalization’s discontents
Rising economic insecurity, inequalities and deprivation are expected to strengthen ethno-populist and jingoistic nationalist sentiments, and increase social tensions and turmoil, especially among the growing precariat and others who feel vulnerable or threatened.

Thus, ethno-populist inspired chauvinistic nationalism may exacerbate tensions, leading to conflicts and tensions among countries, as in the 1930s. Opportunistic leaders have been blaming such misfortunes on outsiders and may seek to reverse policies associated with the perceived causes, such as ‘globalist’ economic liberalization.

Policies which successfully check such problems may reduce social tensions, as well as the likelihood of social turmoil and conflict, including among countries. However, these may also inadvertently exacerbate problems. The recent spread of anti-globalization sentiment appears correlated to slow, if not negative per capita income growth and increased economic inequality.

To be sure, globalization and liberalization are statistically associated with growing economic inequality and rising ethno-populism. Declining real incomes and growing economic insecurity have apparently strengthened ethno-populism and nationalistic chauvinism, threatening economic liberalization itself, both within and among countries.

Insecurity, populism, conflict
Thomas Piketty has argued that a sudden increase in income inequality is often followed by a great crisis. Although causality is difficult to prove, with wealth and income inequality now at historical highs, this should give cause for concern.

Of course, other factors also contribute to or exacerbate civil and international tensions, with some due to policies intended for other purposes. Nevertheless, even if unintended, such developments could inadvertently catalyse future crises and conflicts.

Publics often have good reason to be restless, if not angry, but the emotional appeals of ethno-populism and jingoistic nationalism are leading to chauvinistic policy measures which only make things worse.

At the international level, despite the world’s unprecedented and still growing interconnectedness, multilateralism is increasingly being eschewed as the US increasingly resorts to unilateral, sovereigntist policies without bothering to even build coalitions with its usual allies.

Avoiding Thucydides’ iceberg
Thus, protracted economic distress, economic conflicts or another financial crisis could lead to military confrontation by the protagonists, even if unintended. Less than a decade after the Great Depression started, the Second World War had begun as the Axis powers challenged the earlier entrenched colonial powers.

They patently ignored Thucydides’ warning, in chronicling the Peloponnesian wars over two millennia before, when the rise of Athens threatened the established dominance of Sparta!

Anticipating and addressing such possibilities may well serve to help avoid otherwise imminent disasters by undertaking pre-emptive collective action, as difficult as that may be.

The international community has no excuse for being like the owners and captain of the Titanic, conceitedly convinced that no iceberg could possibly sink the great ship.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007.
Vladimir Popov, a former senior economics researcher in the Soviet Union, Russia and the United Nations Secretariat, is now Research Director at the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute in Berlin

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Above, Amazigh women in a village with an association that cultivates an olive tree nursery. Credit: Peter J. Jacques

By Peter J. Jacques
ORLANDO, Florida, Feb 12 2019 (IPS)

Life and death for whole communities hang in the balance of achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that include eliminating poverty, conserving forests, and addressing climate change in a resolution adopted unanimously by the United Nations in 2015.

Take for example, the Indigenous Amazigh people who live in the mountains around Marrakech. They are representative of people who need to be served first by sustainable development.

The High Atlas Amazigh people experience hard lives in small villages. Most work as day laborers and agriculturalists with barely enough income to support their families and heat their homes.

Education is a major concern, but is hard to attain for a number of reasons. Sometimes families cannot afford the subsequent costs of backpacks and books, even when the school is open and free.

The challenge is especially difficult for girls, because, as one person explained, “How can fathers let their girls study if it is dark when they must travel?”

The effect of incomplete education is profound, and when we asked one 62-year-old man what he thought the greatest threats to the future were, for his community, he did not have confidence in his own experiences, noting, “What can I say? I am not read [educated].”

Through a partnership of the University of Central Florida (Orlando), the Hollings Center for International Dialogue (Washington D.C. and Istanbul), and the High Atlas Foundation (Marrakech), we recently conducted field work in the High Atlas Mountains, speaking with the people there who poured their hearts out to us.

The most consistent message we heard from the people of the High Atlas was that the future hinges on water. One group told us that when things are good, it is because the rain is abundant and on time; things are very hard otherwise.

They are worried that climate change will affect if the rains come, or that the rain will not “come in its time.” They have good reason to worry because climate change is expected to decrease precipitation significantly, reducing streams, lakes, and groundwater.

Drought is a constant worry. The World Bank estimates that 37 percent of the population works in agriculture, meanwhile production of cereal crops varies wildly due to annual variation of precipitation– and 2018 was thankfully a bountiful year.

Climate change will make the people of the High Atlas Mountains much more vulnerable while they are already living on the edge of survival.

In one area, this change in precipitation timing and amount was already noticeable, resulting in a significant loss of fruit trees. In that same area, we were told that there is fear that there will be no water in twenty years, and that for these people who are deeply connected to the land, there will be “no alternatives.”

The High Atlas people are in an extremely vulnerable position. One group noted that they are so desperate for basic resources that they burn plastic trash to heat their water. Worse, they believe they have been left behind by society and that “the people of the mountains do not matter.”

They feel that Moroccan society is deeply unfair—there is no help for the sick, little support for education, little defense against the cold, and that, for some, corruption is the greatest threat to a sustainable future.

Consequently, civil society has an important role in achieving the SDGs. The High Atlas Foundation has been working to help people in this region to organize themselves into collectives that decide both what the collective wants, and pathways to achieve those goals.

Women have organized into co-ops that they own and they collect dividends from their products together. People in one coop lobbied the 2015 Conference of Parties climate meeting in Marrakech.

Men’s associations have developed tree nurseries that not only produce income, but which protect whole watersheds – and therefore some water for the future. They are also participating in carbon sequestration markets.

In this regard, the Marrakech Regional Department of Water and Forest provides them carob trees and the authorization to plant these trees on the mountains surrounding their villages.

However, perhaps the most important element of these collectives is that they give each person in them a voice. Leaders of these collectives have formal rights to approach the regional governments about their needs, and this voice would not be heard at all without the formal collective organization.

These organizations cannot replace government services, but they do add capacity to the community.

Not only do these collectives lend people some influence over their current and their children’s lives, they love each other and they are not struggling alone. We witnessed profound solidarity. Repeatedly, the collectives told us “We love each other, we are one family,” “We are like one,” “We help each other,” and the conviction that “I will be with you.”

The world is decidedly on an unsustainable path, so If we are going to meet SDGs, all the people like the people of the High Atlas Mountains must matter and their voice deserves to be heard.

The post Are Sustainable Development Goals Reaching Indigenous Peoples? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Peter J. Jacques is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, USA.

The post Are Sustainable Development Goals Reaching Indigenous Peoples? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Valeria Barrientos stands in the recreational area of La Containera, the modern complex of 120 social dwellings that was inaugurated in 2017 inside Villa 31, a shantytown embedded in a central area of Buenos Aires. The rooftops of the buildings are covered by solar panels, which guarantee electricity for the residents. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 12 2019 (IPS)

Solar panels shine on the rooftop terraces of 10 neat buildings with perfectly straight lines and of uniform height, an image of modernity that contrasts with the precariously-built dwellings with unplastered concrete block walls just a few metres away, with rooms added in a disorderly manner, surrounded by a tangle of electric cables.

Villa 31, the most famous shantytown in the capital of Argentina, due to its location in a central area of Buenos Aires, is undergoing a transformation process, not without controversy, in which clean energies play an important role.

The State is building hundreds of new homes with rooftops covered by solar panels, which bring energy to a neighborhood where access to basic services has always depended on informal and unsafe connections."The change today is huge, because the new houses have a guaranteed power supply and do not have to pay for the energy. In addition, the surplus electricity can be injected into the grid." -- Rodrigo Alonso

For decades, Buenos Aires city government authorities periodically promised to eradicate Villa 31, which first emerged nearly 90 years ago, and today is a postcard of poverty, which at the same time shows the vitality of thousands of people who carry out commercial and productive activities despite their deprivation anddependence on the informal economy.

But the threats turned into hope in 2009, when a local law was passed that ordered the urbanisation of the Villa, paving streets, giving property titles to the local residents and – in short – turning it into just another neighborhood of a city that historically saw it as a foreign body impossible to hide.

In Argentina, the word for slums and shantytowns is villa. A survey released by the government in 2018 indicates that around the country there are 4,228 villas, home to around 3.5 million people, out of a total population of 44 million.

In particular, in Buenos Aires proper there are 233,000 people – or 7.6 per cent of the population, not counting the working-class suburbs – living in shantytowns.

The urbanisation of Villa 31 is a monumental task that only began to be carried out in 2016 and today is slowly changing the face of a veritable city within a city, which has grown enormously in size in recent years.

According to the latest official data, 43,190 people live there, in 10,076 houses, compared to just 12,204 people livingthere when the severe economic crisis broke out in 2001.

Since then, despite the fact that Argentina experienced several years of economic growth, Villa 31 was the only option found by more and more families who couldn’t afford to buy or rent a house in the formal market.

Solar panels are seen on rooftops of the La Containera social housing complex in Villa 31, and in the background can be seen the towers of the luxurious office area of the Argentine capital. The shantytown has a privileged location within Buenos Aires, next to La Recoleta, one of the city’s most sought-after neighborhoods. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Villa 31 covers 44 hectares between Retiro, one of the capital’s main railway stations, and La Recoleta, one of the most sought-after neighborhoods in Buenos Aires.

“We came to Villa 31 four years ago, after the building where we lived in the neighborhood of La Boca burned down and we ended up on the street,” Valeria Barrientos, a married mother of four children between the ages of two and 13, told IPS.

Barrientos, whose husband is a truck driver, says it is “a gift from heaven” to have hot water and electricity provided by solar energy, even when there are power outages – especially frequent in Villa 31, where the supply is unstable, and where many homes have irregular, precarious connections to the grid.

Her family has been living in the La Containera section of the Villa since September 2017, which takes its name from the fact that it was a depot for old containers until three years ago. They were offered an apartment there, to be paid over 30 years, because they lived on a plot of land in the Villa where a highway is now being built.

La Containera has three-storey buildings with solar panels to power the thermotanks that heat water for bathrooms and kitchens, to fuel the pumps that raise the water to the tanks, and to provide the homes with electricity.

“We installed 174 solar panels on the rooftops in La Containera,” Rodrigo Alonso, general manager of Sustentator, an Argentine company with 10 years of experience in renewable energy, told IPS.

Alonso recalls that “the first time I came to the Villa I was amazed when I saw the huge bundles of cables running from the electricity poles to the houses. The power is paid by the state, but the houses have very unsafe connections.”

A street in Villa 31, with informal dwellings up to five storeys high and tangles of electric cables unofficially connected to the grid. More than 43,190 people live in the shantytown, according to the Buenos Aires city government, which in 2016 launched an ambitious plan to urbanise the neighbourhood. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“The change today is huge, because the new houses have a guaranteed power supply and do not have to pay for the energy. In addition, the surplus electricity can be injected into the grid,” he added.

Arrangements to feed the energy generated by the solar panels into the power grid and to obtain a credit from the distribution company are expected to be formalised in Argentina this year, when the Distributed Generation of Renewable Energies Law, approved in 2017 and whose regulations were completed last November, comes into effect.

The solar panels are part of the building and are not individual. Therefore, if in the future there is surplus energy to add to the grid, it will be compensated with a credit for the consortium managing the buildings, which will be subtracted from the charge for energy consumption in the common areas of the housing complex.

Solar panels are also being installed to guarantee energy in the most ambitious project going ahead in Villa 31: the construction of 26 buildings with more than 1,000 homes, on land that belonged to the state-owned oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF).

These new homes are earmarked for the people whose houses will be demolished for the construction of the highway and other roads, although many local residents are skeptical.

A total of 174 solar panels and 55 solar-powered water heaters were installed on the rooftops of the new social housing complex in Villa 31, in the Argentine capital. Each water heater has a capacity of 300 liters and supplies two homes, based on the estimate of an average of three people per apartment, who use 50 litres of hot water a day. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“We are concerned that the promises will not be kept and that many families will end up in the street. We are going to defend each family’s relocation,” Héctor Guanco, who has lived with his family in Villa 31 for nearly 20 years, told IPS.

The availability of solar energy makes a decisive difference in a country where electricity tariffs have risen by more than 500 percent in the last three years.

“Going from informality to formality can mean economic pressure that is very difficult to bear, because you have to pay a mortgage for housing, plus taxes and the public services,” Facundo Di Filippo, a former Buenos Aires city councilor, told IPS.

Di Filippo was the author of the law for the urbanisation of Villa 31 and is now president of the non-governmental Center for Studies and Action for Equality.

He is critical of the way in which the city government approached the urbanisation of Villa 31, arguing that “the focus has been on improving the vicinity of an area of Buenos Aires that has a high real estate value, in order to benefit private businesses.”

The new buildings were built with sustainability criteria that are unprecedented in Buenos Aires, as demanded by the World Bank, which provided a credit of 170 million dollars to finance the urbanisation process.

“The walls have both thermal and sound insulation, which reduces energy consumption. In addition, a rainwater collection system was placed on the roofs to irrigate the housing complex’s green spaces,” Juan Ignacio Salari, undersecretary of urban infrastructure for the government of Buenos Aires, told IPS.

“We are also trying to move forward with the World Bank to finance a programme to replace household appliances, because many Villa 31 residents have very old refrigerators or air conditioners, which are very energy inefficient,” he added.

“The people of Villa 31 want to regularise their situation and pay for the services they receive. The state must help them do this,” said the official, who added that the plan is to put solar panels on the new buildings and formally connect the other houses to the power grid.

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The post Solar Energy Provides Hope for Poor Neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Pedro cooks at a deli in Upper Manhattan. He is one of the 775,000 undocumented immigrants estimated to be living in the state of New York in 2018.

By Carmen Arroyo
NEW YORK, Feb 12 2019 (IPS)

One chilly afternoon in November 2005, Hilarino came by Pedro’s house in Oaxaca, Mexico, driving a shiny red car.

“Pedro!” he shouted, “We are leaving in March. There is a route North to the U.S. that passes along the sea.”

Pedro was thrilled. “I saw him with that car and I thought ‘there’s money up there. At least a lot of jobs.’” Pedro shook Hilarino’s hand, went back inside and told his wife Camila he was leaving the country. He was headed to the United States of America.

Twelve years after he initially crossed the border as a mojado, a wetback, Pedro cooks at a deli in Upper Manhattan. He is one of the 775,000 undocumented immigrants estimated to be living in the state of New York in 2018. Like most migrants, he left his family behind and came to the U.S. dreaming of success. But mostly, he dreamt of happiness. And like many of them, he is still looking for it.

Today, Pedro throws food on the grill like a pitcher in the final round of a baseball game—same speed, same accuracy. He also prepares sandwiches, spreads cream cheese on bagels, and sometimes cooks burgers and steaks. He always adds some spices to his cooking: chili powder, cumin, and garlic.

From Monday to Saturday, he stands behind the stove for 8 hours, and talks to his colleagues about their families and their weekends. They’re almost all Mexican and crossed the border by foot.

Samuel, Pedro’s closest friend at the deli, crossed in 1999, when he was 15 years old. Now he is married and has three kids. His other friends at the deli, Jose, Lupe and Juana, had a similar fate. They live with their families in the U.S.

During his shift, Pedro’s dark, straight hair is covered under a white cloth that resembles a chef’s hat. When you ask for a turkey sandwich after 10:00 PM, Pedro peers over the counter, overcoming his 5’2” height, curious to see who’s buying.

I met them—Samuel, Juana, Jose, Lupe and Pedro—when I moved to New York in 2017. They love Spanish-speakers that go to the deli. Being from Spain, I fit right in.

“How’s school?” asks Lupe when I tell her I attend Columbia University. “What do you study? Be careful!”

Pedro fears Donald Trump, “he’s not good for immigrants, he’s just rich.” He loves Mexico’s president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), “he has great ideas, he’s really going to make a difference.”  Pedro supported Hillary in 2016. “She said she would help us out.”

“Are you a Democrat?” I ask him.

He looks at Samuel, they laugh, and reply simultaneously: “You could say so.”

Up until the time Pedro was 23 years old, he had lived in Oaxaca all of his life. He worked for four years as a police officer in his hometown. His job paid enough to provide for Camila and their three-year old daughter, but not enough to own land, launch a business, or do anything aside from surviving.

Pedro was tired. His job was dangerous and boring. “If I’d stayed, I doubt I’d be alive.” He never knew when the narcos [drug dealer] would bribe the officers or would kill them out of spite. “I was going crazy,” he explains over coffee.

Until the age of 23, Pedro lived in Mexico his entire life.

In September 2005, his childhood friend who lived in California, Hilarino, phoned him. “I’m coming back for you, Pedro.”

“I was so excited, híjole. You can’t imagine,” sighs Pedro.

That same night, he told his pregnant wife he was leaving. Camila shook her head. “You are lying.” Pedro remained silent, finished his frijoles, kissed his wife good night, and went to sleep.

Hilarino returned to Mexico in November 2005 when Pedro’s wife had just given birth to a second girl. Hilarino showed up at Pedro’s house in a new car and agreed to take a safe passage through the Gulf of California into Arizona.

Pedro told Camila he was definitely leaving. She stared at him in silence, blaming him for the lonely years to come. But she didn’t quite believe him. “You have a job here,” barked Camila.“If you want to go, go. But you have a job here. Your family is here.” Pedro couldn’t hear her. At that time, happiness lay on the other side of the border.

On the Feb. 28, 2006, Hilarino called Pedro. There was a way into the U.S. on  March 3rd. Pedro hung up, quit his job, and filled a small bag with dried tortillas and canned kidney beans. On the morning of the third, he woke up and left.

Camila begged him to stay. She cried, pointed at their daughters, and let her tears wet the tablecloth. But nothing could move Pedro. He was not going to let his feelings dictate his actions. “I hardened my heart. I already knew what I wanted,” he tells me in a confident voice, while he stirs his coffee. To this day, Camila mentions every time they fight, “you never cried for me when you left.” Pedro shrugs, and the abundance of his wrinkles becomes more apparent.

Hilarino left his car with his parents in Oaxaca, and he joined Pedro and another 12 hopeful Mexicans—10 men, 2 women—on a bus ride from Oaxaca to the Arizona border. Leading them was a “coyote,” a smuggler who helps Mexicans get into the U.S.

Hilarino, Pedro and another 12 hopeful Mexicans—10 men, 2 women—took a bus from Oaxaca to the Arizona border.

Since President Trump took office, coyotes have increased their rates. They now charge eye-popping fees—ranging from 8,000 to 12,000 dollars—to those looking to cross the border. Twelve years ago, Pedro paid only 1, 300 dollars.

After two days on the bus, they arrived at the frontier—1,800 miles away from home. They bought 4 gallons of water, Coke and Red Bulls in preparation for the driest journey of their lives. In a matter of hours, they became mojados—undocumented and unwanted. They had been loved, but now they felt tossed aside. They left their families behind and looked toward the future, towards happiness.

The journey lasted four days. They walked at night and slept in the mornings to avoid the heat. “The first night I was so scared…Wow. Una caminada recia [A tough walk],” says Pedro, to attest to the length of the journey. “We hiked from 6:00PM to 5:00AM. I didn’t even know where I was. Once you are inside the desert, you can deal with anything.”

That first day was a nightmare. Pedro napped next to Hilarino. You don’t hear much in the desert, so his snores filled their moments of rest. Suddenly, one of the 14 migrants came running toward them carrying his shoes in his right hand. “La Migra, la Migra!” he shouted warning his colleagues of the Border Patrol Agents. “Oh my God, I was so scared,” Pedro recalls. They all started running, but the coyote called them back and calmed them down.

“They won’t come here. Let’s just walk fast.”

Pedro bursts into laughter, covering his mouth with his hands. “They didn’t get me. They didn’t get me! Thank God!!”

Pedro mentions God once every five sentences. After a few seconds of doubt, he admits he is  Catholic, but that he doesn’t go to Mass very often, nor do his friends Samuel or Jose. All of a sudden, he realises something: “She’s from Spain, don’t you see? Where do you think religion came from? From Spain!” Samuel nods convinced, and Pedro looks back at me with a satisfied smile. “The Argentinian Pope is a good person,” he adds.

On the third day in the desert, they had run out of water. Pedro and Hilarino licked the remains of their empty water bottles, hoping for one more drop. One of the 14 fainted, so they carried him until they arrived in Phoenix, Arizona. They had walked 380 kilometres, more than 80 hours, eating only corn tortillas and kidney beans from a can.

On the third day in the desert, Pedro and Hilarino had run out of water.

The coyote had arranged for a van to drive them out of Phoenix to Los Angeles, California. “He was a very good man. I’ve heard other stories. Kidnappings, killings. But this coyote did everything he promised he would do. He got the 14 of us to Los Angeles.” Nevertheless, insists Pedro, that was 2006. Now the story has changed. “The border is too dangerous. The narcos are everywhere. If you cross their territory, you become theirs.”

The narcos are not the only problem for Hispanic immigrants in 2018. After President George Bush signed the Secure Fence Act in October 2006, the government built 1,120 km of fencing from San Diego to New Mexico, making it harder for immigrants to cross by foot. Now, with President Trump, the number of arrests by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has surged. Immigrants detained at the border are criminally prosecuted, and funding for Border Patrol Agents has increased. Pedro considers himself lucky to have come to the U.S. in early 2006, instead of today, with these increased challenges.

Once in California, Hilarino and Pedro obtained fake IDs and looked for jobs. For the next six months, Pedro harvested pears, peaches, and kiwis alongside other Hispanics. Their salaries were 420 dollars per week. Pedro sent part of his earnings to Camila. But he hated the job. “It was too hard,” he remembers, rubbing his dry hands against each other.

He also missed his family. “For the first three years, I could barely speak with them over the phone. I couldn’t see them.” Now, with Facebook, Facetime, and WhatsApp, they talk frequently. “The first time I saw them I cried so much. It was incredible,” he smiles again. But then he mumbles, “It’s still so hard. So hard, so hard.”

Silvino, one of his colleagues at the plantation, suggested they go to Montgomery, Alabama, where he had been working earlier in the year. The job was in construction and the pay was higher, 600 dollars per week. Pedro quickly agreed and bid Hilarino farewell.

Pedro paid 200 dollars to get to Montgomery, moved in with Silvino, and phoned Camila, as he did every time he traveled. The following day Pedro was working in construction, where he stayed for the next three months.

By the end of November, winter took over Alabama and construction work stopped. “There were no jobs, nothing I could do.” Pedro wanted to move again, when his wife called him. “My kids… They were sick. They had pneumonia.” He told Camila to use the savings he had left in Mexico for the doctor. Then he looked for someone to take him to New York, where he had a friend living on 125th Street. Silvino, as Camila and Hilarino before him, didn’t want Pedro to leave. But his pleas and promises of employment didn’t make a dent in Pedro’s resolution. He chased his future to New York.

In New York, with its millions of inhabitants rushing to a job, a date, or a doctor’s appointment, Pedro felt more at home than he had for the last nine months.

This time, he paid 400 dollars for a 17-hour ride. When he arrived to the city, it was snowing. “‘What is this?’ I asked. I had never seen snow before. I didn’t know what to do!” He laughs, making his almond-shaped eyes disappear. “I was in the Big Apple.” In New York, with its millions  of inhabitants rushing to a job, a date, or a doctor’s appointment, he felt more at home than he had for the last nine months.

The couple he knew at 125th Street fostered him in their home while he roamed the streets looking for a job. It was so cold that he didn’t look up to the skyscrapers, he just looked down as he trudged through the ice and snow. The next day, Jose, a Mexican friend of the couple, came over. “You don’t have a job, compadre? Let me talk to el patrón, he’ll have a job for you.”

Pedro hadn’t picked up much English on his two previous jobs—everyone was Hispanic in the farming and construction industries.

“What can you do?” asked Jose.

“Anything,” replied Pedro.

Jose called his boss, and Pedro started working at the deli that very night. After his three previous months in Alabama construction, he actually was ready for anything.

For a month and a half, he worked as the handyman and delivery boy of the deli. For once, he finally felt happy: he enjoyed his friends, his children were healthy, and he liked New York. But the rhythm was too fast. “Here, everyone rushes. They work, work, work, every single day of the year. They are busy all the time. Over there, you have more time for family, for tradition.”

He stops for a moment and adds: “Although I love turkey day.”

“Thanksgiving?” I ask.

“Yes, turkey day!!” he laughs.

The deli’s kitchen needed a cook, so one of the Mexicans who worked behind the stove taught Pedro how to grill. Working at the kitchen was much better: He could learn English, and the salary was higher.

After a couple of months, he started looking for a new job. “It didn’t pay enough.” The deli’s kitchen needed a cook, so one of the Mexicans who worked behind the stove taught Pedro how to grill. “This is easy, Pedro. Try one hour per day, before your shift, you’ll become a cook.”

Working at the kitchen was much better: He could learn English, and the salary was higher.

Samuel, who works at the counter, advocated for Pedro in front of his boss.

“I had never cooked before. In Mexico, my wife cooked, and I worked. I came home to a warm meal every day, as is tradition.” So when he got the job, he phoned Camila.

“Don’t be sad,” she said. “We are doing well. Échale ganas.” Pedro did as she said and worked hard every day, and kept sending money back to his family. Two years in, Samuel ran to the deli: “Good news for you, Pedro. El patrón will pay you more starting next week.”

That week Samuel counted Pedro’s cash with him. “He is such a noble man,” smiles Pedro. “He was so happy for me.”

Samuel also speaks highly of Pedro. “He is always laughing, and he talks so much,” Samuel points at him, while Pedro chats with Jose.

Now, Pedro shares a room in Upper Manhattan with an Ecuadorian immigrant. He pays 300 dollars in rent, and sends almost 2,000 dollars to his family every month through Western Union. Most of it goes to Camila and his two daughters. “A couple of years ago, Camila phoned me and said, ‘We are going to buy some land.’”

Pedro leans over and assures me, “That wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t come here. They have everything now.”

Still Camila wants him back home, and Pedro has the same desire. He misses his family. When he wakes up at 12:00PM, he calls his daughters, who are now 13 and 15 years old. The smallest one used to sing songs to him on the phone as a child. “I talked to her and she sang back. She only sang,” he tells me cheerfully. After a 30-minute chat with them, he gets changed for his 4:00PM shift at the deli. He also sends them presents from time to time: socks, shoes, and clothes. 

On Sundays, he listens to rancheras (he hates reggaeton), goes for strolls downtown, and has beers with his Mexican friends. Sometimes he joins Samuel’s family when they go for a picnic on Governor’s Island. Every couple of days he reads El Diario de Nueva York, for immigration news. He also glances over El Diario de Mexico, to feel assured that the demise of Mexico’s largest political party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), has actually happened, and AMLO is in control. Samuel, Jose, Lupe, Juana and the other Mexicans who work at the deli feel the same way.

“Most of my friends want to go back home too. One just left. He had a girlfriend there,” laughs Pedro. When he returns to Mexico, he will start his own business, maybe a restaurant. But he knows that the moment he sets foot on that plane back to his homeland, he will never return.

“I’ve been saying this for three years. Someday I will go. But not now.” Pedro smiles again, and he realigns his chef’s hat, while he throws strips of beef onto the grill.

He looks back at Samuel and repeats: “Someday.”

• All names have been changed to preserve the identity of those featured.

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The post 12 Years Behind a Stove—An Undocumented Immigrant in New York City appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Birgitta Karlström Dorph, 79, was on a secret mission in South Africa between 1982 and 1988. Hundreds of millions were transferred to the anti-apartheid movement. She later became the ambassador to Ethiopia and later Botswana. Credit: Ida Karlsson/IPS

By Ida Karlsson
STOCKHOLM, Feb 11 2019 (IPS)

Between 1982 and 1988 Birgitta Karlström Dorph was on a secret mission in South Africa. “Why didn’t they stop us? Probably they were not aware of the scope of the operation. The money was transferred through so many different channels. We were clever, ” Karlström Dorph says. 

The work was initiated by the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme and the Swedish government, the details of which were not discussed in public.

Altogether, Sweden’s financial support for the black resistance against apartheid in South Africa between 1972 and 1994 amounted to more than SEK 4 billion (443 million dollars) in today’s value ‒ and that is an underestimation ‒ according to figures reported by SIDA, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

“On my first morning in South Africa I went to Burgers Park, in the centre of Pretoria. A black worker was cleaning a path in the park. Suddenly I came across a bench and on it was written: ‘Whites only’. And I looked at it. I was appalled. I gathered up my courage and spat on the bench,” Karlström Dorph recalls.

From 1982, a Swedish humanitarian committee, headed by the general director of SIDA, handled a huge aid effort whose secret elements the government perhaps was not fully aware of. Karlström Dorph’s work in South Africa was twofold comprising her official diplomatic posting and her secret mission.

“My family didn’t know what I was doing.”

She followed what was going on in the resistance movement to see if she could find people and organisations who could receive Swedish aid.

“The documents that show what we did to support the underground resistance are still classified,” she explains.

Money from Sweden was transferred to leaders within the black resistance in South Africa. Sweden paid for Nelson Mandela’s lawyer, including while he was incarcerated on Robben Island. Sweden also provided the priest and anti-apartheid activist Beyers Naudé with funds when he was subjected to a banning order.

The South African government looked at Naudé as an enemy as he played a crucial role in supporting the underground resistance movement.

“I wanted to understand what was going on in the country. Naudé was my key to the whole opposition. He provided me with contacts,” Karlström Dorph explains.

Funds were channeled from SIDA to organisations and small groups in Sweden and then into accounts of community organisations in South Africa.

“I provided Swedish organisations with bank account numbers and contact information to organisations in South Africa, for example in Soweto,” she adds.

Karlström Dorph says she drove around and met people and organisations every day.

One of the most important objectives was to build a civil society that eventually could negotiate with the government. People and organisations that eventually could take over.

“We established a programme for scholarships. The Swedish Ecumenical Council, an umbrella organisation of churches of all denominations, administered about 500 scholarships. People got money transferred into their accounts directly from Sweden. We tried to find relevant organisations throughout the black community,” she says.

People organised themselves and formed a more united opposition in South Africa. UDF, the United Democratic Front, was an umbrella organisation for about 600 member organisations against apartheid. Many of the UDF leaders received money through the scholarships.

“We gave money to those who were arrested and were tortured and interrogated. They needed legal help. A lot of money went to competent lawyers. I also met with wives of those who were imprisoned,” Karlström Dorph explains.

According to Horst Kleinschmidt, a former political activist, Sweden contributed between 60 and 65 percent of the budget of the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, or IDAF, an anti-apartheid organisation. Between 1964 and 1991 the organisation brought 100 million British Pounds into South Africa for the defence of thousands of political activists and to provide aid for their families while they were in prison.

The defence of political prisoners meant that when the prosecutor demanded capital punishment, the sentence was reduced to life in prison. Between 1960 and 1990 this effort saved tens of thousands of human lives, according to the Swedish author Per Wästberg, who was involved in IDAF’s work.

Karlström Dorph got in touch with Winnie Mandela and visited her while Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.

“We sat down and talked a lot about her husband and the struggle, and various contacts,” Karlström Dorph says.

Before they left, she mentioned that she had a book about Nelson Mandela in the car ‒ a book that was banned. Winnie Mandela immediately asked for it.

“I said: ‘If I give you the book, I am committing a crime,’” Karlström Dorph recalls.

But Winnie Mandela insisted and Karlström Dorph finally went to the car to get it.

“If our activities had been exposed, many of those who were involved in our work would have found themselves in a serious predicament,” Karlström Dorph says.

The apartheid regime killed affiliates to the ANC, the African National Congress, within the country and also in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Mozambique. Oftentimes during the national State of Emergency, the police and army were stationed or brought into the segregated, black urban living areas to rule with their guns. People, some of whom were unarmed, were beaten and shot for protesting against apartheid. Police even tore down the housing areas were black people lived.

“They went in with bulldozers and people did not have time to collect their belongings but had to flee,” Karlström Dorp recalls.

She never visited ANC offices or attended anti-apartheid conferences.

“The ANC was forbidden. Members of ANC were imprisoned or killed,” she says making a throat-slitting gesture.

“We never talked about ANC during all these years,” she adds.

Her very close association with Naudé would have made Karlström Dorph a prime target.

“I was never scared. You just had to be careful,” she says.

There was one time when they had a very strange break-in in their house.

“They had turned the house upside down, but they just took one of my dresses and one of my husband’s shirts. They had slept in our beds and left white fingerprints on the hairdryer. My friends said it was typical of the security police. They wanted to show: ‘We know who you are. We keep an eye on you.’”

When they moved to a new apartment, she found a bullet on the floor in the hallway and there was a hole in the window. Someone had shot through it.

“They obviously tried to intimidate us. I took the bullet and threw it in the bin,” she says.

Once they were being followed on the motorway and a car tried to drive them off the road, but they managed to get away from it.

Many experienced the brutality of the apartheid regime. One of Karlström Dorph’s contacts, a 25-year-old young man in Pretoria, was found dead.

“We transferred some funds to his organisation. Someone contacted me and told me that they had thrown him down an old mine shaft in Pretoria,” she says.

In the Swedish documentary “Palme’s secret agent”, Popo Molefe, co-founder of UDF, explains Karlström Dorph’s role.

“Without the support of a strong and committed personality like Birgitta Karlström Dorph I do not think we would have been able to form the United Democratic Front, a coalition of social forces,” he says.

Molefe later became the leader of South Africa’s North Western Province.

Between 1972 and 1994 the exiled ANC received SEK 1.7 billion (188 million dollars) in today’s value. At the time the ANC was considered a terrorist organisation by the governments in the United Kingdom and the United States. The financial support from Sweden was more or less kept secret until the beginning of the 1990s.

In 1994, South Africans took their first step together into a very new democracy after decades of white supremacist, authoritarian rule in the form of apartheid. Sweden’s involvement had been stronger and much more far-reaching than what was ever reported officially.

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The Independence Arch is pictured in Accra, Ghana. Authorities have failed to hold anyone to account in recent attacks on journalists. Credit: CPJ/Jonathan Rozen

By Jonathan Rozen
NEW YORK, Feb 11 2019 (IPS)

Three bullets, fired at close range by two assassins on a black and blue Boxer motorbike on January 16, 2019, killed investigative journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela, according to Sammy Darko, a lawyer working on Divela’s case.

Darko told CPJ over the phone that bystanders saw it happen. Ghana’s media community, international rights groups (including CPJ), and social media users around the world responded swiftly, mourning the loss and demanding justice.

They may not get it.

“I’m devastated because the life of a brilliant, dedicated and young journalist has been cowardly cut short. I’m angered because journalists in Ghana have never felt safe, despite our role very clearly recognized and sealed by the country’s constitution,” Emmanuel Dogbevi, managing editor of the privately owned, investigative Ghana Business News, told CPJ the day after Divela’s murder.

Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela was shot to death in Accra, Ghana, on January 16, 2019. Credit: Tiger Eye Private Investigations

Fatal violence against journalists in Ghana is rare. In 2015, radio reporter George Abanga was also shot dead at close range; he is the only other journalist in Ghana killed in connection with their work since CPJ began keeping global records in 1992.

According to CPJ research, he had been investigating a cocoa farmers’ dispute in western Ghana and covered other political tensions. No one has been held accountable for ending his life, and his reporting.

Impunity prevails in another recent attack that police committed to investigating.

In March 2018, as CPJ reported, journalist Latif Iddrisu said he was dragged into the criminal investigation department (CID) headquarters in Accra and beaten by a group of police officers for asking a question while reporting on a protest outside.

He was left bloody and a medical report at the time identified the “suggestion of right frontal bone fracture” in his skull. Iddrisu this month told CPJ without elaborating that the condition of his head injury has since worsened.

Similar to what followed Divela’s murder, Iddrisu received a wave of solidarity from journalists and private citizens. The hashtag #JusticeForLatif flooded social media, but there has been no justice: “[T]he perpetrators are yet to be identified but the case docket has been forwarded to the Attorney General’s office for advice,” Ghanaian police spokesperson David Senanu Eklu told CPJ recently, 10 months after the attack.

In the case of Divela’s murder, local witnesses had watched his killers–one heavyset and one slim–loitering for hours on January 16 in the Medina neighborhood of Ghana’s capital, Accra, confused about who they were or what they wanted, Darko told CPJ.

Investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas in Abuja, Nigeria, in June 2018, wearing beaded strands to obscure his face and hide his identity. Credit: CPJ/Jonathan Rozen

The two men were conspicuous in a way that their target and the rest of the Tiger Eye Private Investigations team, headed by the undercover journalist known as Anas Aremeyaw Anas, had always sought to avoid. Anas and those with whom he works hide their identities.

Divela had told CPJ he feared for his life after an image of his face was broadcast on live television by Kennedy Agyapong, a member of parliament from the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), accompanied by repeated threats.

During radio and TV appearances in May and June 2018, Agyapong railed against Anas and his team’s undercover method of investigating corruption by secretly filming officials allegedly accepting bribes. Visibly angry, he directed staff of his own Net 2 TV channel to display Divela’s picture and called for those listening to attack the journalist on sight.

Parliament has not taken punitive action, but on January 29 an opposition member submitted a complaint against Agyapong, specifically pertaining to his threats against Ahmed and Anas, and it has been referred to the privileges committee that deals with disciplining parliamentarians, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, the majority leader in Ghana’s parliament and fellow NPP member, told CPJ.

Agyapong did not answer CPJ’s repeated calls for comment since Divela was killed. He told Joy News on camera that he did not regret broadcasting Divela’s face and said police should investigate Anas.

On January 21, Ghanaian police issued a statement saying they had spoken with Agyapong and Kwesi Nyantakyi, the former Ghana Football Association (GFA) president, and were following “significant leads.”

Agyapong’s threats came days before the premiere of Anas’ film “Number 12”–which featured Nyantakyi accepting $65,000, resulting in a lifetime from ban FIFA, and is now part of a corruption investigation by the Ghanaian government, Darko told CPJ. Divela had been assisting prosecutors, the lawyer said.

Oppong Nkrumah, Ghana’s minister of information, told CPJ on January 24 that the government and police were keen to get to the bottom of who killed Divela, but said it was still in question if the attack was related to his work.

Nkrumah said he was not aware of the details surrounding Abanga’s shooting in 2015, and on Iddrisu’s case said the government “continues to encourage the police to be professional and diligent in their work.”

Today, Eklu confirmed to CPJ that authorities have not arrested anyone in Abanga’s case and that the investigation is ongoing. Augustine Kingsley Oppong, chief inspector and police public relations officer for Brong Ahafo, the region where Abanga was killed, told CPJ he is committed to getting to the bottom of Abanga’s murder.

Ghanaian journalist Latif Iddrisu stands outside his Accra home in May 2018, wearing a neck brace and carrying an umbrella because direct sunlight aggravated his head injury from an attack by police in March 2018. Credit: CPJ/Jonathan Rozen

In early May 2018, journalists from around Africa and the world met at a hotel in Ghana’s capital to discuss and celebrate the media’s role in holding power to account. It was World Press Freedom Day and Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo addressed the gathering with praise for his country as one of the safest places in Africa for journalists and the media’s role in a healthy democracy.

Later that week, sitting in his Accra home after the conference, Iddrisu told CPJ he hoped the police attack against him would spark a “new conversation” about press freedom in Ghana. He is now less optimistic.

“If the police had dealt with [the officers] that assaulted me, it would have sent a strong message,” Iddrisu told CPJ this month.”Because they failed to act, people think they can break the law, they can assault journalists, and even go to the extent of killing a journalist and get away with it…now my brother, a colleague, is shot and murdered in cold blood…it’s heartbreaking.”

Dogbevi, from Ghana Business News, told CPJ he also believed the lack of accountability for attacks against journalists would encourage more violence: “Unfortunately, I don’t feel confident in the ability or willingness of the state to protect me–the example of Latif Iddrisu says all.”

The post Ghana Won’t Have Press Freedom Without Accountability appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Jonathan Rozen is Africa Research Associate at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

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Tanzanian ICT entrepreneur, Rose Funja, shows off one of the drones she uses as a key tool in her data mapping business. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Feb 11 2019 (IPS)

Six years ago while wondering how best to use her engineering skills, Tanzanian ICT entrepreneur Rose Funja decided to enter an innovation competition. Years later she has turned a digital idea into a viable business that helps smallholder farmers across the East African nation access credit.   

In Tanzania farmers struggle to obtain credit because many do not have bankable assets or a record of performance to offer as collateral. But Funja had an idea to help farmers, particularly women, obtain proof of land ownership that they could use as collateral to access credit.

It was a smart solution: using geographical information system (GIS) technology to generate useful information for farmers.

“A farmer might have a big piece of land, but if they do not have legal claim to it they cannot use it productively,” Funja tells IPS.

In 2013, she entered the AgriHack Talent Programme for East Africa, a competition organised by the Netherlands-based Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA).

Fungi’s idea was named second runner-up in the competition and she received a cash prize and mentorship from Buni Innovation Hub in Tanzania. In 2015, with a partner and students from the Bagamoyo University in Tanzania, Funja developed AgrInfo. She began working full-time in the business just a year later.

Now AgrInfo profiles farmers, the size and location of their farms, and the crops they grow on them. This data is then posted onto an online platform that financial institutions can access and use to assess the creditworthiness of farmers and their eligibility to qualify for loans.

“Actionable, real-time information is key in making decisions, especially in farming,” says Funja, who has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering and a Master’s in Communication and Information Systems Engineering.

The African Development Bank notes that up to 12 million youth enter the job market across the continent each year while only three million jobs are created, leaving many unemployed. However, agribusiness offers innovative approaches for the youth to develop and roll out smart ICT solutions for smallholder farmers.

“ICTs are a game changer for agriculture development. Technology is offering young people economic benefits from selling goods and services using online platforms,” Funja tells IPS.

AgrInfo has been able to help, for a small fee, over 300 smallholder farmers in Tanzania’s capital city of Dodoma obtain access to financial institutions after mapping their farms.

“We have helped farmers know what they have and [they have been able to] use their land to access credit and buy inputs,” Funja says. Success has come about through trial and error, passion, and through creating value, explains Funja.

Plans are in the pipeline to grow the number of subscribers to the service to one million, and to extend the service to other actors in the agriculture value chain, such as government extension services.

A flying start

When she first started the business Funja used GIS and hand-held GPS gadgets to gather data.

Then in 2017 she was exposed, through CTA, to the applied use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and was trained in the business aspect of operating drones. UAS is based on drone technology and provides information faster and more accurately. Funja went on to become one of the pioneer multi-copter drone pilots in Tanzania.

CTA has collaborated with Parrot, a French drone manufacturer, to support technology start-ups develop precision agriculture in Africa. Running for two years from 2017 till this year, the CTA project aims to help establish approximately 30 enterprises that are run mainly by young entrepreneurs in African countries where there is enabling legislation.

Drones, though a relatively new technology in Africa, offer new opportunities to young ICT entrepreneurs to help farmers increase productivity, sustainability and profitability. Digital tools help in improving land tenure, assessing crops, pests and diseases, according to research by the CTA.

“Considering the fact that in 2017 drones were a new tech for Africa, our project played an important role in establishing an enabling environment,” Giacomo Rambaldi, Senior Programme Coordinator at CTA, tells IPS. “It supported the African Union’s (AU) appointed High Level African Panel on Emerging Techs in selecting ‘drones for precision agriculture’ as one of the most promising technologies which would foster Africa’s development.”

In January 2018, the AU Executive Council recommended that all Member States harness the opportunities offered by drones for agriculture.

Africa should prioritise the adoption, deployment and up scaling of drones for precision agriculture through capacity-building, supporting infrastructure, regulatory strengthening, research and development and stakeholder engagement, says a 2018 report titled Drones on the horizon: Transforming Africa’s Agriculture.

The report notes that optimising agricultural profit through increasing productivity and improved yield has been the result of the application of several innovative developments over the years, one of them being the use of drone technology.

“Whilst such interventions and the green revolution in particular, have benefited many developing countries, this has not been the case in Africa. This situation calls for a review of agricultural policies and practices, and an explicit understanding that enabling policies for the promotion of such drone technologies must be formulated,” the report recommends.

Drones for agriculture development

Funja tells IPS that while digital enterprises are attractive they need smart management, finances and full-time commitment.

“A digital application is just a tool, but value sells. If there is no value, there is no business,” says Funja.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations says drone technology has great potential to support and address some of the most pressing problems faced by agriculture in accessing actionable real-time quality data. The agriculture sector will be the second-largest user of drones in the world in the next five years, according to research by Goldman Sachs.

Investment in ICTs could play a pivotal role in accelerating Africa’s agricultural transformation and can increase both the productivity and income of smallholder farmers, says development consultancy firm Dalberg Global Development Advisors.

“Africa sits on the majority of the world’s uncultivated arable land, but unlocking that large agricultural potential will require strategic deployment of ICT capabilities,” Andres Johannes Enghild, a consultant at Dalberg’s New York office tells IPS. “If new ICT solutions are harnessed well, they could, for example, improve market linkages for farmers and attract international investors.”

Despite Africa’s agricultural potential, it remains the region with the highest food and malnutrition rates in the world.

Today, farmers have limited access to better agronomic farming practices, an area where ICT can make a major difference. And Funja is of the entrepreneurs making this possible.

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Feb 11 2019 (IPS)

The Mediterranean Sea is currently a sea of death. On the 20th of June every year, i.e. The World Refugee Day, an organization called UNITED for Intercultural Action publishes a “List of Deaths”, summarising information on where, when and under which circumstances a named individual has died due to the “fatal policies of fortress Europa”. The data are collected through information received from 550 network organisations in 48 countries and from local experts, journalists and researchers in the field of migration. The list issued in 2018 accounted for 27 000 deaths by drowning since 1993, often hundreds at a time when large embarkations capsize. These deaths account for 80 per cent of all the entries,1 there are probably thousands more dead, corpses that were never found and/or not accounted for.

While considering seas as a place of death and barriers to human interaction it might be opportune to be reminded of their role as means of communication and trade, as well as transfer of culture and innovation. For thousands of years, humans have used the sea to enrich themselves and their communities by interacting with people from other cultures.

The Mediterranean – Sea of seas, hope and doom, Venus cradle and Sappho´s tomb. Over its waters Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Romans, Berbers, Italians, French, Normans, Turks, Slavs, Jews, Christians and Muslims have carried their goods, music, inventions, food and ideas, creating a mighty cultural mix reaching down to the southern shores of Maghreb and Egypt, and beyond, as well as all the way up to the coasts of the North – and Baltic Seas, spreading Greek philosophy, Roman law, Arabic science, poetry, art and culture and much more that have benefitted humankind. Almost every sea in the world has been serving humankind in a similar manner, as a powerful blender of cultures, proving that human mobility benefits us all.

A rosy picture? Let us not forget the shadows. Seas have always been scenes of bloody battles, ruthless piracy and slave trade, the last activity is doubtless one of humanity´s worst crimes. Between 1650 and 1900, more than 10 million enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas, while many had died during the passage across the Atlantic Ocean. During the same period, 8 million East Africans were enslaved and sent across the Indian Ocean to the Middle East and Asia. It was not only Africans who were brought in chains across the seas. European nations like Great Britain, France and Spain sent political prisoners, “vagrants” and other “undesirables” to their colonies. Between 1788 and 1868 more than 160 000 convicts were transported from Britain to penal colonies in Australia. Barbary pirates operating from North African ports carried out razzias on European coastal towns, mainly to capture slaves for the Ottoman slave market. It has been calculated that between 1530 and 1780 the Barbary corsairs enslaved approximately 1 250 000 people.

After the British Empire ended slavery in 1833 indentured labour became the most common means to obtain cheap workforce for its colonies, a practice that soon was employed by other nations as well. This meant that immigrants would contract to work for an overseas employer, generally for seven years. The employer paid the sea passage, the indentured labourer did not receive any wages, but was provided with food and shelter. Millions of people were brought across the seas under such conditions, mainly Asians, but some Europeans as well.

Nationalist political parties often complain that most migrants do not provide any benefits for the receiving country, that the majority of them are poor and uneducated. However, this is nothing new. American immigrants have often been depicted as entrepreneurial, sturdy workers building up a wealthy nation. When the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson in 1879, on his way to California, in steerage crossed the Atlantic he was amazed to find that most emigrants were not any strong, adventurous men eager to make a living and gain success in America, but mainly desperate and tired people trying to escape European persecution, poverty and unemployment.

The more I saw of my fellow passengers, the less I was tempted to the lyric note. Comparatively few of the men were below thirty; many were married and encumbered with families; not a few were already up in years. Now those around me were for the most part quiet, orderly, obedient citizens, family men broken by adversity, elderly youths who had failed to place themselves in life, and people who had seen better days.2

In spite of the desperation and misery of their ancestors, descendants of slaves, criminals and desperate, poor migrants have contributed to the creation of wealthy nations and impressive cultures. Europeans complaining about the influx of poor, uneducated people from distant cultures easily forget that several of their own ancestors found themselves in a similar state of poverty and desperation and that it was human mobility that in the end provided a solution for them and their children.

Christopher Columbus dreamt he would find an utopian India, but instead he discovered a “New World”, which in reality was a very old one and just like the Mediterranean, on which shore he was born, this world was dependent on another mighty, internal sea on which shores there lived people of different cultures – Arawaks, Tainos, Mayas, Aztecs and many more whose cultures eventually mixed with those of European conquerors, Africans slaves and indentured labourers from Europe and Asia.

In spite of immense suffering, wars and plagues a multifaceted mix of cultures developed, evident through a wide variety of food, religious beliefs and especially of music genres, like merengue, calypso, cumbia, rumba, reggae, son, salsa, gospel, jazz and blues. In modern times authors like García Márquez, Juan Rulfo, Miguel Angel Asturias, Marie Vieux Chauvet, Alejo Carpentier, Derek Walcott, Vidhiar Naipul, Jaques Romain, Zora Neale Hurston, Aimé Césaire, William Faulkner and other almost countless writers, story tellers, poets and singers bear witness about this unique blend of cultures created by Mexicans, Colombians, Haitians, Garifunas, West- and East Indians, Jamaicans, Pirates, Slaves, Maroons, Guanches, Turks, Andalusians, Jews, Gypsies, French, Dutch, Voodooists, Santeros, Muslims and Christians. What would the world have been without this blend of cultures along the shores of the Mediterranean – and the Caribbean Seas?

The same is true about the maritime trade, cultural and commercial exchange along the coasts of the Indian Ocean, beginning with the world´s earliest civilization in Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt and the Indian subcontinent. There ancient Romans, Arabs, Africans and people from Sri Lanka and India, and even Chinese, used the monsoon drifts and equatorial currents to connect with each other and spread their goods and cultures, creating culturally mixed, communicating societies along the coasts, like the African Bantu-Swahili culture, which spread its influence further inland.

South China Sea tells a similar story about human interaction across the waters and even if the Champas of Vietnam, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Malaysians, the Indonesians, the Dutch, the Portuguese and the Philippines have claimed superiority over that particular sea it has nevertheless carried goods, ideas, religions and inspiration between the different populations who inhabited and still inhabit its shores.

In the far north we find the North Sea, once ruled over by the Vikings with their superior longships; rading, trading and establishing colonies in Ireland, Iceland, England and on the northern coasts of France. In the Middle Ages and through the 15th century they were displaced by traders from Northern European coastal ports, the Hansa community, shipping grain, fish, timber, dyes, linen, salt, metals, wine, culture and art, following the old Viking, Finnish and Slav trade routes around the Baltic sea and down along the Russian rivers, even connecting with one of the most distant inland seas of them all – the White Sea, which linked the distant cultures of Finns, Sami people, Samoyeds and Russians, among other treasures giving birth to the stunning Karelian epic Kalevala, which like Homer´s Odyssey, among other things, is a tribute to the sea.

So, while we are probing the tragedy of the drowned refugees and migrants of the Mediterranean, let us not forget that the open seas of the world have not only served as routes for desperate migrants, asylum seekers, slavers, pirates and warriors, they have also been channels for civilization and friendship, providing vitality, strength and culture to the peoples of their shores. In spite of its shortcomings, mobility is part of human nature and cannot be blocked. Human interaction and communication is a blessing and instead of drowning people in their waves let us allow the seas to continue to bring cultures, inspiration and friendship between us all.

1 http://unitedagainstrefugeedeaths.eu/about-the-campaign/about-the-united-list-of-deaths/
The list does not only account for deaths occurring at sea, but also in detention blocks, asylum units and town centres.
2 Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes and The Amateur Migrant. London: Penguin Classics 2004, p. 107.

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.

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Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations– once facetiously described as an institution whose bloated bureaucracy moves at the leisured pace of a paralytic snail — is steadily zooming into the field of fast-paced, cutting-edge digital technology where humans may one day be replaced with machines and robots.

Is this a glimpse into a distant future or a far-fetched fantasy?

The technological innovations currently being experimented at the UN include artificial intelligence (AI), machine-learning, e-translations (involving the UN’s six official languages where machines are taking over from humans) and robotics.

The United Nations says it has also been using unarmed and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, in peacekeeping operations, “helping to improve our situational awareness and to strengthen our ability to protect civilians”.

At a joint meeting of the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and its Economic and Social Committee, a robot named Sophia had an interactive session last year with Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed.

Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

Among the technological innovations being introduced in the world body, and specifically in the UN’s E-conference services, is the use of eLUNa –Electronic Languages United Nations — “a machine translation interface specifically developed for the translation of UN documents.”

What distinguishes eLUNa from commercial CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) tools is that it was developed entirely by the United Nations and is specifically geared towards the needs and working methods of UN language professionals, says the UN.

Besides the UN headquarters in New York, the spreading eLUNa network includes the UN Office in Geneva (UNOG), the UN Office in Vienna (UNOV), the UN Office in Nairobi (UNON) and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) based in Beirut.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the breakthrough has been brought on by a combination of computing power, robotics, big data and artificial intelligence—even as they generate revolutions in healthcare, transport and manufacturing worldwide.

“I am convinced that these new capacities can help lift millions of people out of poverty, achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and enable developing countries to leapfrog into a better future,” he predicted last year.

Addressing the executive heads of some 31 UN agencies last November, Guterres singled out some of the challenges emanating from global mega trends and technological advancements in four distinct areas — artificial intelligence; cyberspace; biotechnology; and the impact of technological applications on peace and security — “with a view to identifying specific entry points for UN engagement and to determine focus areas where the UN system can add value.”

He said, he is working with colleagues throughout the entire UN system to determine “how our organization can better harness the benefits and address the risks of new technologies, and how the United Nations itself can make better use of innovation.”

Christopher Fabian, Principal Adviser in the Office of Global Innovation at the UN’s children’s agency UNICEF, one of the agencies making headway in AI, told IPS that UNICEF is using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) for both programmatic and operational purposes.

Based on the “Principles of Digital Development,” (https://digitalprinciples.org/) the organization promotes applications and development of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence with equity at their core, whether through fair and open training sets or through discussions on algorithmic equity and information poverty, he added.

For example, he pointed out, UNICEF is developing Magic Box (https://www.unicef.org/innovation/Magicbox), a collaborative platform that is made possible through the contributions of private sector partners such as Telefonica, Google, IBM, Amadeus and Red Hat, which share their data and expertise for public good.

By harnessing real-time data generated by the private sector, UNICEF can gain critical insights into the needs of vulnerable populations, and make more informed decisions about how to invest its resources to respond to disaster, epidemics and other challenges, said Fabian.

AI can improve efficiency through automation. Facial recognition is one example of this. Credit: UNICEF/TusharGhei/2018

In addition, UNICEF, through its Venture Fund, the first financial vehicle of its kind in the United Nations, collaborates with innovators on the ground in UNICEF programme countries to build and test new solutions at the pace required to keep up with the rapidly evolving challenges facing children.

The Venture Fund was launched by UNICEF in 2016 — a $17.9 million investment fund — applying lessons learned over 8+ years, undertaking the complex work of helping to identify and grow innovations for children.

The UNICEF Venture Fund makes $50–100K early stage investments in technologies — including data science and AI — for children, developed by UNICEF country offices or companies in UNICEF programme countries.

By providing flexible funding to early-stage innovators, it allows UNICEF to quickly assess, fund and grow open-source technology solutions that show potential to positively impact the lives of vulnerable children, declared Fabian.

Meanwhile, Guterres said new technologies could enhance the maintenance of peace and security, including disarmament and non-proliferation objectives, by providing new tools and augmenting existing ones.

For example, he noted, the use of shared ledger technology such as Blockchain in nuclear safeguards, or machine learning in multilateral disarmament verification — as the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization is pioneering.

Excerpts from an interview with UNICEF’s Christopher Fabian:

IPS: What is the upside and downside of automation– and particularly at UNICEF? Is reaching efficiency a key criterion?

Fabian: AI can help UNICEF in several ways — from deep learning algorithms that can learn underlying patterns in satellite imagery to map every school in the world, to predictive models that can help us prevent the spread of diseases. These type of solutions can help improve the reach and efficiency of programmes in the field as well as optimize the allocation of the scarce resources.

However, challenges are many. First, is the lack of quality training sets. Data around the most vulnerable populations is often scarce and inaccurate. As a collective, we need to start putting more resources towards collecting data from the ground, to validate existing records, and to debias these datasets.

But what happens once we have diverse, good quality datasets? We still need to keep working together to ensure that the data is used to build fair, inclusive algorithms. At UNICEF, we need to make sure that we are part of the conversations happening globally, so that we can bring the voice of children, in particular the most vulnerable, to the table.

As one of the efforts to mitigate these risks, UNICEF is a founding partner of the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society – and a member of several Working Groups including the ‘Fair, Transparent and Accountable AI’ and the ‘AI, Labor and Economy’-. The partnership was established to study and formulate best practices on AI technologies, to advance the public’s understanding of AI and its influences on people and society.

IPS: To the best of your knowledge, is UNICEF the only — or one of the few UN agencies –on the path to digitized, highly-automated operations?

Fabian: Initiatives around the use of Big Data, AI, blockchain and other digital innovations are being piloted in several UN agencies and programmes — and sometimes through joint collaborations among them.

In order to promote the sharing of these experiences and learn from each other’s successes and failures, UNICEF co-funded, together with the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Innovation Network (https://www.uninnovation.network) — an informal, collaborative community of UN innovators interested in sharing their expertise and experience with others to promote and advance innovation within the UN System.

Similarly, frontier technologies and digitalization are one of the main priorities of the Secretary General. To strengthen digital cooperation and advance proposals among governments, the private sector, civil society, international organizations, academia, technical community and other relevant stakeholders in the digital space, the High-level Panel for Digital Cooperation was set.

The Panel is expected to raise awareness about the transformative impact of digital technologies across society and the economy, and contribute to the broader public debate on how to ensure a safe and inclusive digital future for all, taking into account relevant human rights norms.

IPS: Kai-fu Lee, author of “AI Superpowers” and a longtime tech executive, is quoted by the New York times as saying that AI will eliminate 40 percent of the world’s jobs within 15 years? And a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF), which met in Davos last month, has estimated that 1.37 million workers will be displaced by automation in the next decade. What is your prediction for UNICEF?

Fabian: According to recent studies, between 75 million and 375 million workers (3 to 14% of the global workforce) will need to switch occupational categories by 2030 if automation happens at a medium-to-rapid rate. Similarly, according to World Economic Forum, 65% of children entering school today, will have jobs that don’t exist yet. This means that even though many jobs will disappear, many new ones will be created.

However, there is a strong evidence of skills mismatch between young people and employers; young people are not learning the skills they need to get jobs. If we manage to understand the skills necessary for the future of jobs and are able to adjust education systems accordingly, children and youth will be more resilient to automation and better prepared for the future.

One of UNICEF’s efforts in this front is Information poverty, an initiative that aims at ensuring that every child has access to the right information, opportunity and choice.

Further Info — UNICEF Generation AI stats (i.e. stats UNICEF predicts/works with):

IPS: Do you think the benefits of AI at UNICEF will eventually spillover — and leading by example — into the UN secretariat and other UN agencies?

Fabian: Similar to question 3 (vis a vis UN Innovation Network and High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation —http://www.un.org/en/digital-cooperation-panel/). We are working with/through both groups and see support for the benefits of AI (and attention paid to identifying and mitigating risks) growing.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post Is UN Planning to Replace Humans with Machines & Robots? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Kunal Sen
HELSINKI, Finland, Feb 8 2019 (IPS)

Following on from Finn Tarp, my predecessor, is a daunting prospect, but I look forward to working with my colleagues at UNU-WIDER and with our many partners to build on the achievements of the past 10 years.

I was first acquainted with UNU-WIDER as a graduate student in the United States in the late 1980s. I came across several of the institutes publications which became classics in the field of development economics, including Hunger and Public Action by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, and Varieties of Stabilization Experience by Lance Taylor.

These publications had a profound impact on my own thinking, and since then many other UNU-WIDER publications have had similar transformative effects on successive generations of social scientists.

Kunal Sen

In a world where there are increasing asymmetries of knowledge creation and sharing between the Global North and South, UNU-WIDER is ideally placed to use the power of its global network to address the pressing questions in development.

The three interconnected transformations I am delighted to take the helm at UNU-WIDER, an institution which has been associated with some of the most advanced thinking in development economics.

UNU-WIDER has combined outstanding research with sustained policy engagement on some of the most pressing concerns affecting the living standards of the world’s poorest people.

WIDER impact
Over the past 33 years, and most recently under the leadership of my predecessor, Finn Tarp, in the last 10 years, UNU-WIDER has significantly advanced our understanding of the causes of poverty and inequality, climate change, the roots of gender inequality, and the challenges of structural transformation for low-income countries necessary to achieve the SDGs

In the new year, we launched our new work programme for 2019–23. This will be the most ambitious work programme that UNU-WIDER has undertaken so far. I believe the challenge of development is ultimately a question of transformation — how to bring about broad-based sustained improvement in multiple dimensions of wellbeing necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This involves transformation in three different dimensions: economies, polities, societies. The new work programme will address these dimensions of transformation, which will become the thematic foci of UNU-WIDER’s research in the coming years: Transforming Economies, Transforming States, and Transforming Societies.

Transforming Economies — the first thematic focus of UNU-WIDER’s new work programme — is at the core of any meaningful development strategy and set of policies.

Large-scale changes in the structure of economic activity and employment opportunities must take place if absolute poverty is to be reduced alongside addressing economic and social inequalities.

Economic transformation is also essential in delivering higher levels of income and increasing market activity. These are critically needed to improve the mobilization of domestic resources and establish an enlarged tax base that can finance the investments needed to achieve the SDGs.

But for meaningful economic transformation to take place, there needs to be a political transformation as well. This is why Transforming States will be the second thematic focus of UNU-WIDER’s work programme.

Capable and effective states are needed to work with the private sector to achieve higher rates of economic growth, but also to bring about a shift to more environmentally sustainable production.

At the same time, the state has a key role to play in providing necessary public goods and in shaping the transformation of societies in ways that yield greater empowerment — through proactive policies to help reduce marginalization of the poor and to achieve greater gender equality.

Accountable states that are responsive to the needs of their citizens are an essential factor in national development. The challenge is to build capable and legitimate states in difficult contexts, especially in fragile and conflict-affected environments.

The third thematic focus of the new work programme is Transforming Societies. Economic and political transformation needs to be accompanied by social transformation, such that every citizen can live in a socially inclusive and egalitarian society.

Increasing the capacities, resources, and confidence of individuals and their communities is a means to end poverty and to contain and reduce not only gender inequality, but other social inequalities as well.

This is now a pressing concern in many societies, especially when high inequality destabilizes political systems, increases state fragility, and hinders the transformation of economies.

The actions of both state and non-state actors (such as non-governmental organizations and community groups) matter in bringing about social transformation. The challenge for us is to understand the conditions under which such actions are possible, and when they can become transformative.

How will we get there?
These three themes are at the very centre of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Much of our work will include mobilizing policy research, evidence, and action around selected goals of the 2030 Agenda as well as responding to the Agenda’s ‘call for increased support for strengthening data collection and capacity-building in Member States’.

With the three transformations in mind we will start the work with launching six flagship projects in 2019 — on informality, women’s work, social mobility, building capable states, structural transformation, and extractives.

As always, we welcome the UNU-WIDER network to engage with us in thinking through and taking action for a more sustainable and equitable future for all. How can this be practically done?

Keep an eye on calls for papers and research proposals coming out throughout the year, apply for visiting scholaror PhD fellowhip in order to visit and work with us.

Right now we have an open call for papers for the next WIDER development conference, being held 11-13 September 2019 in Bangkok, in partnership with UNESCAP. The theme of the conference is Transforming Economies – for Better Jobs.

We welcome submissions of proposals from you and I hope to meet many of you in Bangkok — it is your active participation in UNU-WIDER’s development conferences that have made these events the successes that they are.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or the United Nations University, nor the programme/project donors.

The post Transforming Economies, States, & Societies – Building Evidence for Achieving SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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Kunal Sen is Director, UN University, World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)

The post Transforming Economies, States, & Societies – Building Evidence for Achieving SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.