Africa

Tillie, 15, says being mixed race has made her stronger but there have been some difficult moments.

Even with a metre of snow outside in Ottawa, Canada, a wide variety of imported apples and other fruits are available in Canadian food markets. Credit: Stephen Leahy/IPS

By Stephen Leahy
ONTARIO, Canada, Feb 8 2019 (IPS)

Canada introduced a new healthy eating food guide January 2019 and, for the first time, the meat, dairy and processed food and beverage industries were not involved. Based on the recommendations of health and nutrition experts, the guide places a new emphasis on eating plants, drinking water and cooking at home.

Health experts have long warned that Canadians don’t eat enough vegetables, fruits and whole grains.  The new guide wants to shift diets toward a high proportion of plant-based foods like legumes, beans, and tofu and less dairy, eggs, meat and fish. It also warns parents to limit children’s consumption of fruit juices and sugar-sweetened milk beverages.

“Healthy eating is an important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and helps prevent chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers,” said Theresa Tam, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, in a statement.

Canada’s new guide is amongst the best in the world says Wayne Roberts, an independent food policy analyst and writer. “It’s comparable to Brazil’s excellent guide with its emphasis on eating fresh, unprocessed food,” Roberts told IPS.

The guide goes beyond advising Canadians what foods to eat but how to eat by recommending cooking at home, eating meals together and avoiding fast food said Jennifer Reynolds of Food Secure Canada, an alliance of organisations and individuals working together to advance food security.

Canada’s new healthy eating food guide. Courtesy: Government of Canada

Canadians spent 19 billion dollars on fast food in 2017, an average of 2,200 dollars per year for a family of four.

Unicef ranked Canada 37th out of 41 rich countries when it comes to providing healthy food for kids. The long road to developing a new food guide represents a whole new direction for food in Canada, said Reynolds in an interview. Despite a powerful food industry lobby, new legislation is expected this year to limit marketing of unhealthy food and drinks to children. 

Not only is shifting to more plant-based diets good for both health and the planet, it is a golden opportunity to re-direct Canada’s export-focused, commodity agricultural system to sustainable agriculture and support rural economies while addressing food insecurity, Reynolds said.

Despite living in a wealthy country, more than one in 10 Canadians cannot afford or have access to sufficient nutritious food to maintain health researchers at the University of Toronto report.

They recommend a national food policy that brings all sectors of government together to address this long-standing issue. Such a policy is sorely needed to not only address hunger and under-nutrition but also the challenges of climate change and the decline in rural economies, said Reynolds.

A national food policy could also address the shocking amount of waste in Canada’s food system where nearly 60 percent of all food produced is wasted according to a new report The Avoidable Crisis of Food Waste.

This is the first such analysis of any countries’ food production system said Martin Gooch, CEO of  Value Chain Management International (VCMI), a company that helps industries’ lower costs and improve the efficiency of their supply chains.

“I was astonished by the amount of waste in this industry,” Gooch told IPS.

The research is a “world first” because it measures weight using “a standardised system across the whole food value chain,” and includes all food types from both land and water. It also includes primary data from across the supply chain and consulted more than 700 food industry experts.

The value of all food that is lost or wasted in Canada is a staggering 49 billion dollars, said Lori Nikkel of Second Harvest, an agency that collects surplus food and gives it away to those in need. The VCMI study found that a third of Canada’s wasted food could be “rescued” and sent to communities in need.

Waste happens at all stages of food production including produce left to rot in the fields due to labour shortages, low prices or cancelled orders. Another major issue is the food industry’s focus on producing huge volumes of food as cheaply as possible over quality said Gooch. When a company in the orchard industry switched its emphasis to quality, it resulted in reduced costs, doubled profits while total volume produced was the same or less.

The lion’s share of food waste is during food production and processing the study found. Only 14 percent of food waste is at the household level. Best-before dates are the other major cause of food waste by both consumers and retailers. Product dating practices have nothing to do with food safety. Companies can use any date they wish. There are no standards or regulations, nor were best-before dates found on most products just 10 years ago said Gooch.

Given Gooch’s knowledge of Canada’s food waste he was quite surprised to see the Food Sustainability Index rank Canada among the best in the world in preventing food waste with a score of 97.80 out of 100. “That’s incorrect, we found an astonishing amount of waste in Canada’s food system,” he said. 

The Index was drawn up by the Italian foundation Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition and the Intelligence Unit of the British magazine The Economist. The index ranked 67 countries based on three categories: food and water loss and waste, sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges. Canada ranked third overall, much to the surprise of everyone interviewed for this article. 

When IPS questioned the Barilla Center about food waste it said Canada ranked poorly, in fact 65th out of 67 counties with 80 kilograms (kg) of food waste per capita per year based their estimates. However, since Canada has a wide range of policies to address food waste it received a far higher final ranking on the Index. 

However, the VCMI study found that Canada’s actual per capita food waste was closer to 1,000 kg per year, per person not the estimated 80 kg. 

The third place overall ranking the Index is a result of Canada having strong policies. “While Canada does not perform particularly well in most cases on outcome metrics, the country does have strong policies to make changes, especially when compared to the United States,” Valentina Gasbarri of the Barilla Center told IPS in an email.

“We are open to discussions around what improvements could be made [to the Index],” Gasbarri said. 

Perhaps the index was weighted too much towards policy and intentions mused Roberts. “It certainly does not represent on the ground reality in Canada.” 

Related Articles

• Italy Has the ‘Greenest Agriculture’ in Europe, But it’s Not Sustainable
• Amidst Rising Hunger, BCFN Forum to Promote Food Sustainability
• India Uses Tech to Power its New Battle Against Malnutrition

The post Canada Implements New Food Guidelines, But What About the Food Waste? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Poultry production is giving hope for deported migrants who make up the Association of Active Women Working Together for a Better Future, in the village of Los Talpetates, Berlin municipality in the eastern Salvadoran department of Usulután. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
Feb 8 2019 (IPS)

Salvadoran farmer Lorena Mejía opens an incubator and monitors the temperature of the eggs, which will soon provide her with more birds and eggs as the chickens hatch and grow up.

Mejía is one of the beneficiaries of a project that seeks to offer productive ventures to women who, like her, have been deported from Mexico or the United States while they were attempting to achieve “the American dream.”

“I left because I worked in a factory in San Salvador, but the money wasn’t enough,” the 43-year-old woman told IPS in the yard of her home in the village of Talpetate, Berlin municipality in the eastern Salvadoran department of Usulután."Rural women are the motors of the economy, and at FAO we support returnees through inclusive and equitable processes." – Emilia González

In 1998, after a dangerous journey of several weeks, Mejia managed to settle in Dallas, Texas in the U.S.

She worked there in cleaning services at a school and in a hotel, but she returned to her country in 2001, with many broken dreams.

“Now I’m focused, together with my colleagues, on making this project grow,” she said.

Mejía and other local women farmers founded the Association of Active Women Working Together for a Better Future in 2010, and came up with an initiative that would offer productive opportunities to other returning migrants.

Currently, some 40 women make up this organisation, 15 of whom are involved in poultry production, who have received technical support from the state-run National Centre for Agricultural and Forestry Technology (Centa), as well as from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) office in El Salvador.

The rest grow El Salvador staple crops: corn and beans.

In spite of the importance of the support from Centa and FAO for the women’s organisation, the Salvadoran State has not yet developed a strategy aimed at the economic reinsertion of returning migrants, and in particular women.

“Sometimes what you need is a little boost,” said Mejia.

In the small rural village of Talpetate, home to some 70 families, jobs are scarce and poverty is rampant.

According to official figures published in May 2018, 32.1 percent of rural Salvadoran households are below the poverty line, compared to 27.4 percent in the cities.

The project, which was launched in November 2018, provided each participating family with 25 hens to produce eggs.

Dennis Alejo, a Salvadoran deported while trying to cross into the United States, has found in tomato production the best way to make a living and generate a handful of jobs in his native Berlin, in the eastern Salvadoran department of Usulután. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

According to the participants, income from the sale of eggs is still modest. But in the future, when production has increased, they expect to earn about 200 dollars a month as a collective.

That money is reinvested in the small collective farm, in order to improve and increase production, with more incubators and infrastructure.

“Rural women are the motors of the economy, and at FAO we support returnees through inclusive and equitable processes,” Emilia González, the U.N. organisation’s assistant representative for programmes in El Salvador, told IPS.

An important component of the project is that it also supports food sustainability, because part of the egg and poultry production goes to household consumption.

“We saved the money we would use to buy a few pounds of chicken,” Marlene Mejía, 46, another of the beneficiaries, told IPS.

She also tried to reach the United States, in 2003, as an undocumented migrant. But she only managed to make it partly across Mexico, before she got stuck in a town whose name she never knew.

After several days of confinement with very little food in a house run by migrant traffickers, she decided to return to her country.

The migration of Salvadorans to the United States is a phenomenon that has marked this small Central American country of 7.3 million people.

It is estimated that at least 2.8 million Salvadorans live in the United States, part of an exodus that intensified in the 1980s, when El Salvador experienced a bloody civil war (1980-1992).

Three planes arrive weekly from the United States with deportees, as well as three buses from Mexico.

According to official statistics, more than 26,000 Salvadorans were deported in 2018, mainly from Mexico and the United States. A high figure, but 1.2 percent lower than the total for 2017, which was 26,837.

For the past four years, Marlene Mejía has also been making pupusas, the most popular dish in El Salvador: a corn tortilla filled with beans, cheese and pork rinds, among other ingredients.

“If you have a job here, why suffer over there?” she asked.

The Salvadoran government offers some support for the economic reinsertion of returnees, through the project called “El Salvador is your home”, launched in October 2017.

According to data from the Foreign Ministry, 147 people received seed money to start up a project for economic and psychosocial reintegration, while another pilot project for the productive insertion of Usulután is aimed at 208 people.

But these are derisory amounts in terms of the number of beneficiaries, given the magnitude of the deportations and the country’s economic problems, so that most returnees find no economic stability, and government assistance falls far short.

“Evidently it is insufficient; a bigger effort is needed to be able to offer options to people when they return to their hometowns,” Jaime Rivas, a migration researcher at Don Bosco University, told IPS.

Some returnees manage to set up ventures on their own, with little or no governmental or international support.

Dennis Alejo, 30, has tried to cross the U.S. border five times since 2010.

The last time, in 2015, he managed to reach the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas, but the group of migrants with whom he had been crossing the desert for seven days was intercepted by the “migra”, as migrants popularly call agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But he managed to escape and hide in the bush.

“I spent the whole night hugging the scrub to hide from a helicopter with a searchlight, which was looking for me,” he told IPS.

Now, through his own efforts, and overcoming all sorts of obstacles, Alejo grows good quality tomatoes on a small plot of land he rents in Berlin, thanks to the 1,800 plants he planted three years ago.

He also employs a dozen young people as pickers, and feels he’s preventing youngsters from risking their lives crossing deserts to get to the United States.

“I don’t pay them much, just five dollars a day, but if I had more support, I could employ more people,” he said.

Because Alejo also faces the lack of financial support to set up an irrigation system to boost production.

Related Articles

• Separated Central American Families Suffer Abuse in the United States
• Deported Salvadorans in Times of Trump

The post Deported Salvadoran Women Pin Their Hopes on Poultry Production appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The government claims Boko Haram militants have been "decimated" since it came to power in 2015.

A selection of the best photos from across the continent this week.

West Ham say they have handed over all of their evidence to the police after completing a "thorough and immediate" investigation into racist abuse shouted at Liverpool's Mohamed Salah.

Ugandan police have detained a team of BBC journalists in Kampala.

The baby birds were left behind when the water in their dam in South Africa dried up.

Wilfried Zaha is handed an additional one-match ban and £10,000 fine for improper conduct in his dismissal at Southampton.

Owen Barder is Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), Vice President and Director of CGD, Europe

By Owen Barder
WASHINGTON DC, Feb 7 2019 (IPS)

It is time for an open, fair, merit-based process to appoint the next President of the World Bank. And I’ll explain below why I think the Europeans may, at last, break the cartel that has prevented this.

The “Gentleman’s Agreement”

Since the Second World War, Europe and the United States have operated the so-called “Gentleman’s Agreement”—that the Bank would be led by an American while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would be led by a European.

This carve-up is an accident of history. British economist John Maynard Keynes had assumed that Harry Dexter White, a US Treasury Department official, would be appointed to run the IMF.

But partly because of suspicion that White was a communist—perhaps even a Soviet agent—the US Treasury Secretary decided to back Eugene Meyer as President of the World Bank instead.

The US Government didn’t think they could expect to nominate the head of both major financial institutions, and so a European has run the IMF ever since.

In the last two decades there have been empty promises in summit communiques to replace this cartel with a merit-based system for these appointments, but the World Bank has always gone to the American nominee, and the IMF to a European. And as my colleague Nancy Birdsall pointed out yesterday, the behind-closed-doors process means the World Bank post has always gone to a man.

The first time that the American candidate for President of the World Bank faced serious challenge was in 2012. There were three nominees—Jim Kim, José Antonio Ocampo, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala—who were interviewed by the Executive Board, and the appointment went to a vote.

Though Okonjo-Iweala was clearly the better candidate, Kim was eventually selected. It was assumed he won European votes as payback to the United States for allowing Christine Lagarde to be appointed unopposed to the IMF. Okonjo-Iweala said at the time that, while she had not expected to win, the process “will never ever be the same again.”

Owen Barder

Now that President Trump has nominated David Malpass to succeed Kim, the time has come to find out if Okonjo-Iweala is correct. Will the other shareholders force a fair process based on merit?

If so, Malpass seems unlikely to emerge as the victor. If 2012 was the crack in the glass ceiling, will 2019 be the year that we punch through?

The election is by a simple majority of Board votes, and while the United States is the largest shareholder it has only 16 percent of the votes. The Europeans, between them, have about 30 percent.

So, the United States cannot veto the appointment of another candidate who has the backing of the other shareholders.

High stakes for all

The World Bank (and IMF) are of most importance to the countries which have least control over them. More than a quarter of 2017 commitments were in sub-Saharan Africa, which has less than six percent of votes.

European leaders should seriously take into account the views of the Bank’s main stakeholders when making their decision, not simply adjust their power-sharing agreement with the United States.

There is a lot at stake for all of us. We need an effective and legitimate World Bank to tackle global problems such as climate change, financial instability, and pandemic disease, as well as to share knowledge, ideas and capital to help countries to meet the global goals.

For as long as the US and Europeans conspire to shut out the rest of the world from the leadership of the World Bank, it is impossible for it to be really legitimate and effective.

Given the obvious reasons why it makes sense to have a properly merit-based process, why might the Europeans nonetheless continue with the anachronistic “Gentleman’s Agreement”?

Four possible reasons it may continue:

1. They want to retain the privilege of nominating the Managing Director of the IMF.
2. They are concerned that the US will cut contributions to the World Bank if the US nominee is snubbed.
3. They are concerned to maintain good diplomatic relationships with the US generally, and this seems like a relatively unimportant concession to make for that broader goal.
4. These decisions are made mainly by white men from Europe and America, whose instinct will be to maintain their privileged access to international appointments.

Reasons that may not hold water in 2019

For a start, most European countries accept the inevitability of merit-based appointments at the IMF. It would be a big gamble to back the US nominee at the World Bank in the hope that they might maintain their grip on the IMF one last time.

They are sceptical that a US President committed to putting “America First” will keep his end of that bargain. Malpass’s nomination might, at last, be what breaks European and US collusion. Nor is the prospect of reduced US financing of the World Bank a significant consideration.

The World Bank is depending on donor contributions less and less for its finances, and the UK is currently the largest contributor to IDA, so even if there were a sharp fall in US contributions—which would be a decision for Congress, not the White House—this would not make a very big difference to the overall finances of the Bank.

On the contrary, a change in the leadership arrangements might well open the way to much larger donations from emerging countries such as China and India, as well as other European donors, more than compensating from a reduction in US contributions.

With the decline in US funding of the World Bank, the threat of a cut of funding no longer needs to be taken as seriously as once it was. Would the Europeans be willing to risk this slight to the United States?

Many would: there is little political advantage at home from being seen to cozy up to the Trump administration. Most will reckon that the US is unlikely to pay an enormous amount of attention (after all, the present US administration doesn’t care much about the multilateral system).

For example, nobody batted an eyelid when the rest of the world rejected the US nomination of Ken Isaacs to lead the International Organisation of Migration, another post which had traditionally gone unopposed to the United States. The world community appears to be growing a spine.

The only remaining reason that this might not happen is the inertia of privilege. Decision-makers find it hard to imagine a world in which these choices are made by fair, open processes. But once we make the change, it will be hard to remember why it ever seemed so difficult.

What’s next?

The next step is for one or more of the influential shareholders—perhaps one of the larger European countries—to build support for a more open and contested process, rather than allow the US nominee to be nodded through.

For the UK, this is a teachable moment. All the rhetoric at the moment is that the UK’s development policy should do more to serve the UK “national interest” as well as reducing poverty and spreading prosperity.

Arguably, it is in the UK’s short-term national interest to shore up its alliance with the United States, because the UK needs them for security and economic reasons, perhaps more than ever as it leaves the EU.

But it is also in the UK’s long-term national interest to have an effective, rules-based, multilateral system with legitimate institutions. Reforming the governance of the World Bank, and having a President who commands global respect, will help the UK achieve long-term goals of shared, sustainable development.

From a development point of view, there is no doubt that the UK should back a better candidate than Malpass. From a short-term foreign policy point of view, the temptation might be to go along with Trump’s pick.

Penny Mordaunt, UK Governor of the World Bank, is going to have to choose a side: the UK’s long-term interest in development, global soft power and the multilateral system, or its short-term interest in its relationship with the United States.

Her choice will send a powerful signal about whether the UK remains seriously committed to international development, or if the country has subsumed all that beneath short-term foreign policy considerations.

Potential candidates

There is time to nominate an alternative to David Malpass. Excellent candidates might include Nancy Birdsall, José Antonio Ocampo (again), Suma Chakrabarti, Kristalina Georgieva, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (again), Maria Ramos, Minouche Shafik, and Tidjane Thiam. Let the candidates—including David Malpass—make their case, and see if the world can coalesce around the best person. It is time to call time on the Gentleman’s Agreement.

The link to the original article:
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/time-gentlemen-please

The post Time, Gentlemen, Please—Next President of the World Bank appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Owen Barder is Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), Vice President and Director of CGD, Europe

The post Time, Gentlemen, Please—Next President of the World Bank appeared first on Inter Press Service.

An under-20 friendly against Eritrea on 16 February will be the first international football in Somalia for more than 30 years.

African Women's Player of the Year Thembi Kgatlana and South African compatriot Linda Motlhalo are released by US club Houston Dash.

Algeria's Yacine Benzia is omitted from the Fenerbache squad for the second half of the Turkish league season.

About 20 people remain in the abandoned mine following a gas explosion which killed six, police say.

Senegal will not ease off despite sealing a place at the Under-20 World Cup with a second win at the Africa Cup of Nations in Niger

Erin Myers Madeira who leads the Nature Conservancy’s Global Programme on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities says that communities outperform the government and other stakeholders in stopping deforestation and degradation. The Akaratshie community from the Garu and Tempane districts have been able to restore degraded land. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 7 2019 (IPS)

Sustainable land management is becoming more important than ever as rates of emissions, deforestation, and water scarcity continue to increase. But what if you don’t have rights to the land?
While the impact of agriculture on land is well known, the relationship between land degradation and land tenure seems to be less understood.

In fact, research has shown that insecure land tenure is linked to poor land use as communities have fewer incentives to invest in long-term protective measures, thus contributing to environmental degradation.

“Establishing secure tenure and secure rights to territory and resources for indigenous people and local communities is one of the most important things we can do around achieving positive outcomes for conservation,” said Erin Myers Madeira who leads the Nature Conservancy’s Global Programme on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.

“Communities outperform the government, other stakeholders in stopping deforestation and degradation,” she added to IPS.

Despite holding customary rights to more than half of the earth’s lands, indigenous people and local communities legally own only a 10 percent slice.

Resources and Rights also found the legal recognition of community forest tenure rights also still remains adequate, amounting to just over 14 percent of forest area as of 2017.

While this is partially a result of a lack of government policies, land grabs by companies which fail to acknowledge communities’ ancestral lands are increasingly common around the world.

In 2006, 200 families lost access to their land in Cambodia’s Sre Ambel district to make way for a sugar plantation.

In Liberia, Liberian farmers were evicted after the government allocated 350,000 hectares to Malaysian multinational corporation Sime Darby, causing widespread resentment and conflict in the area.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), 35 percent of the remaining available cropland across Africa has been acquired by large entities, with over 70 million hectares allotted for biofuels.

Many have put up a fight against the expanse but it came with a deadly cost.

According to Global Witness, a record 201 environmental defenders were killed in 2017 trying to protect their land from mining, agribusiness, and other industries.

Drone visual of the area in Upper East Region, Ghana prior to restoration taken in 2015. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

People-Led, Better-Led

Karina Kloos Yeatman, the Women’s Land Rights Campaign Director at Landesa, highlighted the importance of people-led conservation and sustainable land management but the first step is land rights.

“If we aren’t looking forward and thinking about land use and land tenure security and finding more solutions to help people make long term investments to sustainably use their land, we are going to continue to see an even larger influx of climate migrants and people being displaced,” she told IPS.

Yeatman particularly pointed to successes of how secure lands rights have led to increase long-term investments in sustainable soil and forestry management.

For instance, smallholder farmers with secure rights in Ethiopia were 60 percent more likely to invest in soil erosion prevention.

In forests where indigenous land rights have been recognised, deforestation rates have dramatically declined.
In Bolivia, deforestation is 2.8 times lower within tenure-secure indigenous lands.

This has not only helped halt land degradation, but such measures have also mitigated forest-based emissions and curbed global warming.

Both Yeatman and Madeira noted that land rights alone is not enough to promote sustainable land management, but rather four pillars. These are securing the rights to territories and resources; support strong community leadership and local governance; promoting multi stakeholder collaborations, allowing local communities to engage in high levels of decision-making and; identifying environmentally sustainable economic development opportunities in line with communities’ cultural values and sustainable management.

“It’s when you have the four of those ingredients that is when you end up with enduring conservation, communities who have the power to protect those peoples and who can also benefit economically from their stewardship of those places,” Madeira said.

In an effort to curb logging and deforestation, Peru’s Shipibo-Conibo indigenous communities residing in the Amazon enlisted over 6,000 hectares—80 percent of their territory—into the country’s conservation programme and helps manage the land in a way that provides sustainable sources of income.

As part of the National Programme for Forest Conservation, communities receive 3 dollar per year for every hectare they assign to conservation which amounts to potential earnings of at least 18,000 dollar. In order to receive the payment, they must commit to protecting the forest.

A significant proportion of the money received is thus invested back into the forest and its communities who engage in activities such as ecotourism and the sustainable extraction of forest resources.

Farmers undertaking periodic pruning at vegetation Susudi, in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

One Step Forward, Many More To Go

While tenure can look different in various contexts, Madeira highlighted the importance of governments and companies respecting land rights as well as the inclusion of indigenous people and local communities to shape sustainable land management planning.

“A lot of the development decisions are made far away from the ground in board rooms. The extent to which indigenous people and local communities are excluded from those decisions, you’re going to get these poor outcomes,” she told IPS.

Yeatman urged corporations to be aware of the complexities surrounding land tenure and support local communities to ensure a sustainable future.

“[Companies] often have 50-100 year leases and if they want the land to be sustainable, they need to help those farmers secure their land rights and help have access to information and inputs to diversify so that they are not degrading their lands,” she said.

Consumers also have a role to play, Yeatman noted, as they delve into the stories behind the products and companies they buy from.

Oxfam’s campaign Behind the Brands provides a scorecard, assessing how the world’s 10 largest food and beverage companies are measuring up against a number of indicators including support for women farm workers, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and respecting rights to and sustainably using land.

For instance, French multinational company Danone and American manufacturer General Mills are ranked among the lowest on the land indicator as it has not committed to zero tolerance for land grabs and does not require its suppliers to consider how such acquisitions affect livelihoods.

While it is easier said than done, there have already been positive developments across the world.

Most recently, the Malaysian government file a lawsuit against local government of Kelantan state for failing to uphold the land rights of its indigenous people Orang Asli, many of whom lack formal titles, as it continues to grant licenses to logging companies and agricultural plantations.

“Rapid deforestation and commercial development have resulted in widespread encroachment into the native territories of the Orang Asli,” Attorney-General Tommy Thomas said in a statement.

“Commercial development and the pursuit of profit must not come at the expense of the Temiar Orang Asli and their inherent right, as citizens of this country, to the land and resources which they have traditionally owned and used,” he added.

Similarly, Myanmar, which has among the highest rates of deforestation in Asia, plans to transfer over 918,000 hectares of forest land to community management by 2030 in order to help prevent illegal logging and allow traditional residents to practice sustainable forestry.

There is still a long way to go but action is necessary to prevent the dwindling of land and natural resources essential for everyone’s survival.

Related Articles

• The Silent, Invisible Crisis Destabilising Communities Could be a Subject of Hope
• Poverty-Stricken Communities in Ghana are Restoring Once-Barren Land
• Gender Gap Made Worse by Land Degradation

The post The Right to Life, Liberty, and Land appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Brighton boss Chris Hughton says it is up to the FA to take action over an alleged derogatory chant aimed at Gaetan Bong by West Brom fans.

Muhammadu Buhari, the "new broom" president, hoping to win a second term in office.

Atiku Abubakar, the man hoping to unseat Nigeria's president, is a veteran politician and business tycoon.

There has been major backlash against the plan to attract visitors using images of plus-size women.