Africa

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United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD’s) is focusing more on a drought preparedness approach which looks at how to prepare policymakers, governments, local governments and communities to become more drought resilient. Credit: Campbell Easton/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, Feb 1 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD’s) Drought Initiative is in full swing with dozens of countries signing up to plan their drought programme.

The Drought Initiative involves taking action on national drought preparedness plans, regional efforts to reduce drought vulnerability and risk, and a toolbox to boost the resilience of people and ecosystems to drought.

“As of right now we have 45 countries who have signed on to our drought programme,” UNCCD Deputy Executive Secretary Dr. Pradeep Monga told IPS.

He said UNCCD is focusing more on a drought preparedness approach which looks at how to prepare policymakers, governments, local governments and communities to become more drought resilient.

UNCCD says that by being prepared and acting early, people and communities can develop resilience against drought and minimise its risks. UNCCD experts can help country Parties review or validate existing drought measures and prepare a national drought plan to put all the pieces together, identify gaps and ensure that necessary steps are taken as soon as the possibility of drought is signalled by meteorological services. It is envisaged that such a plan would be endorsed and eventual action triggered at the highest political level.

UNCCD Deputy Executive Secretary Dr. Pradeep Monga said UNCCD is focusing more on a drought preparedness approach which looks at how to prepare policymakers, governments, local governments and communities to become more drought resilient. Courtesy: Desmond Brown

“Drought is a natural phenomenon. It’s very difficult sometimes to predict or understand when it happens or how it happens. Yes, prediction has become better with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) so we know in advance that this year there can be more drought than last year so we can prepare communities better,” Monga said.

He said the more resilient communities are, the better they can face the vagaries of climate change.

“They can also preserve their traditional practices or biodiversity, and most importantly, they can help in keeping the land productive,” Monga said.

“This is also important to migration – whether it’s migration of people from urban areas to borders and then to other countries and regions. We believe that addressing drought, preparing communities, governments, policymaker and experts better in drought becomes very relevant for addressing those issues which otherwise will have cascading effects.”

He spoke to IPS at the 17th Session of the Committee for the Review of Implementation of the UNCCD (CRIC 17), which wrapped up in Georgetown, Guyana on Jan. 30.

Minister of State in the Ministry of the Presidency Joseph Harmon says Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean are faced with their own problems with drought.

He said that Guyana is looking at the utilisation of wells in the communities which have been hit the hardest.

Harmon said Guyana and the Federative Republic of Brazil have signed an agreement where the Brazilian army, working together with Guyana Water Incorporated, Civil Defence Commission and the Guyana Defence Force are drilling wells in at least eight major indigenous communities in the southern part of the Rupununi.

“That will now allow for them to have potable water all year round and that’s a major development for those communities,” Harmon told IPS.

“Here in Guyana we speak about the Green State Development Strategy and part of our promotion is that we speak about the good life for all Guyanese. So, when we are able to provide potable water to a community that never had it before, then to them, the good life is on its way to them.

“This is what we want to replicate in every part of this country where people can be assured that drought will never be a factor which they have to consider in planning their lives, in planting their crops, in managing the land which they have again,” Harmon added.

UNCCD Executive Secretary Monique Barbut said droughts are becoming more and more prevalent. For this reason, she said it is even more crucial for countries to prepare.

“We see them more and more, and if you look at all the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] IPCC reports, we know that they are going to become even more severe and more frequent. This is the reality we are faced with, whatever increase of temperature we get,” Barbut told IPS.

“We have been looking in NCCD at what we do on drought. Last year, I did propose a new initiative to the Parties because we noticed that only three countries in the world had a drought preparedness plan. Those three countries are the United States, Australia and Israel.”

Barbut said while preparedness planning will not stop drought, it will mitigate its effects if it is well planned.

“We launched an initiative last year and we’ve got the resources to help 70 countries with their planning. They are now in the process of doing that exercise and we hope that at the next Conference of the Parties in October, we will be able to report on those 70 countries and extend it to the rest of the world.”

According to the latest report from the IPCC, without a radical transformation of energy, transportation and agriculture systems, the world will hurtle past the 1.5 ° Celsius target of the Paris Climate Agreement by the middle of the century.

Failing to cap global warming near that threshold dramatically increases risks to human civilisation and the ecosystems that sustain life on Earth, according to the report.

To keep warming under 1.5 °C, countries will have to cut global CO2 emissions 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero by around 2050, the report found, re-affirming previous conclusions about the need to end fossil fuel burning. Short-lived climate pollutants, such as methane, will have to be significantly reduced as well.

More than 1.5 °C warming means nearly all of the planet’s coral reefs will die, droughts and heat waves will continue to intensify, and an additional 10 million people will face greater risks from rising sea level, including deadly storm surges and flooded coastal zones. Most at risk are millions of people in less developed parts of the world, the panel warned.

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The post Making Communities Drought Resilient appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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The Central Combined Cycle Plant, located in the Nahua indigenous farming community of Huexca, in central Mexico, is practically ready to operate, but local inhabitants managed to block its completion because of the pollution it could cause, and they want to use the facility to open a solar panel factory. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
YECAPIXTLA, Mexico, Feb 1 2019 (IPS)

Social organisations in the central Mexican municipality of Yecapixtla managed to halt the construction of a large thermoelectric plant in the town and are now designing a project to convert the installation into a solar panel factory, which would bring the area socioeconomic and environmental dividends.

Antonio Sarmiento, from the Institute of Mathematics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, outlined the idea when the state-run Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) launched the construction of the Morelos Integral Project (PIM), which consists of a gas and steam generating plant, a gas pipeline that crosses the states of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala, and an aqueduct.

“The plant can be reconverted. There are alternative uses. It can generate significant economic development in the region and make energy change possible,” the expert told IPS, estimating that an investment of some 260 million dollars would be needed."We don't want the thermoelectric plant to operate, because it's going to cause irreparable damage. If the solar plant is viable, go ahead. Or they could turn it into a university, so our children don't have to travel long distances to study and be exposed to violent crime. Something worthwhile should be installed.” -- Teresa Castellanos

Sarmiento calculates that the use of half of the area of the Central Combined Cycle Power Plant, which covers 49 hectares in the community of Huexca and has a capacity of 620 megawatts (MW), would permit the installation of solar panels, the planting of crops under the panels, and a factory to produce them.

“Agrophotovoltaic technology” takes advantage of the water that condenses on the panels, which drips onto the crops below, before it can evaporate – technology that is already used in Germany and other nations. In addition, farmers can use solar-powered irrigation pumps to access water from wells.

For this area of solar cells, with a useful life of 25 years, the generation would total 359 MW-hour per day, which would meet the consumption needs of 34,278 households. The electricity generated would supply the municipality and replace energy from fossil fuel-powered plants, the academic explained.

Huexca, home to the thermoelectric plant that is no longer being built, about 100 kilometers south of Mexico City, has some 1,000 inhabitants, mostly Nahua Indians, part of the total 52,000 people living in Yecapixtla.

The transformation would reduce gas consumption, methane leakage, massive use of water, the generation of liquid waste and the release into the atmosphere of nitrous oxide, which causes acid rain that contaminates the soil and destroys crops.

The local struggle

By means of several judicial injunctions, the People’s Front in Defence of Land and Water in Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala and its ally, the Permanent Assembly of the Peoples of Morelos (APPM), have blocked the completion of the power plant and 12-kilometer aqueduct, as well as the start of operations of the 171-kilometer gas pipeline.

Huexca and other Nahua peasant communities, through legal action brought at the start of the construction of the power plant in 2012, managed to stop construction of the pipeline in 2017 for violating indigenous rights.

In addition, groups of “ejidatarios” – people who live on “ejidos” or rural property held communally under a system of land tenure that combines communal ownership with individual use – blocked the extraction of water from the nearby Cuautla River to cool the turbines of the plant in 2015, and the People’s Front secured, early this year, the suspension of the discharge of treated water into the river.

On Jan. 28, a group of demonstrators blocked the entrance to the Central Combined Cycle Power Plant in Huexca, a village in the municipality of Yecapixtla, Morelos state in central Mexico. Their signs call for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador not to betray his people, and to keep the plant from opening. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Opponents of the power plant also resorted to protests and roadblocks to bring to a halt a project that affects more than 900,000 people, including 50,000 indigenous people from 37 indigenous tribes, according to a 2018 estimate by the autonomous governmental National Human Rights Commission.

Now, they want leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office on Dec. 1, to cancel the Morelos Integral Project and reach an agreement with the local population on the fate of the plant.

“We don’t want the thermoelectric plant to operate, because it’s going to cause irreparable damage. If the solar plant is viable, go ahead. Or they could turn it into a university, so our children don’t have to travel long distances to study and expose themselves to violent crime. Something worthwhile should be installed,” activist Teresa Castellanos told IPS.

Castellanos, a member of the APPM, has been involved in the battle against the plant from the beginning, which has earned her persecution and threats. For her activism, she won the Prize for Women’s Creativity in Rural Life 2018, awarded by the Geneva-based non-governmental Women’s World Summit Foundation.

The opposition to the plant by the affected communities, who make a living growing corn, beans, squash and tomatoes and raising cattle and pigs, focuses on the lack of consultation, the threat to their crops due to the extraction of water from the rivers, and the dumping of liquid waste.

Mexico’s energy outlook

In the first half of 2018, Mexico had a total installed capacity of 75,918 MW, of which 23,874 MW come from clean technologies. The capacity of clean sources grew almost 12 percent with respect to the first half of the previous year.

Mexico assumed a clean electricity generation goal of 25 percent by 2018, including gas flaring and large hydroelectric dams; 30 percent by 2021; and 35 percent by 2024.

But the reality is that the renewable matrix is only around seven percent, although it could reach 21 percent by 2030 with policies aimed at fomenting it, according to data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena).

By 2021, more than 200 clean energy generators are to come into operation, generating 19,500 MW. Of these 200, 136 are solar and 44 depend on wind power, according to the Energy Regulatory Commission.

As López Obrador reiterated during the election campaign, his energy plan consists of the construction of a refinery in the southeastern state of Tabasco, the upgrading of the National Refinery System’s six processing plants and of 60 hydroelectric plants, as well as investment in solar energy.

The president continues to refuse to close plants of the state generator CFE, due to the need to meet the growing energy demand of this Latin American nation of 129 million people, the second largest economy in Latin America.

According to government investment projects for 2019, state-owned oil giant Pemex would have at its disposal about 24 billion dollars for oil exploration and extraction, the overhaul of six refineries and the start of construction of another.

For its part, the CFE will be able to spend some 23 billion dollars on projects such as the renovation of 60 hydroelectric plants and the development of solar energy.

The solar panel factory that is proposed as an alternative for Huexca, could, in fact, cover a significant deficit in technology and inputs in the solar energy sector in Mexico, say experts.

Hopes for change

López Obrador plans to visit the area on Feb. 11 and has requested that a file be put together on the generator in order to decide the future of a construction project which so far has cost around one billion dollars.

The local population does not want to see seven years of struggle against the plant go to waste. “We need alternatives. We voted for López Obrador, he can’t let us down. We are only demanding respect for our right to life,” said Castellanos, the activist.

For Sarmiento, the academic, the environmental and health damages would be greater if the plant goes into operation. “The maintenance of the plant will be more expensive than solar generation. And what will happen when it reaches the end of its useful life? It will be useless,” he said.

Meanwhile, the inactive smokestacks of the unfinished plant are waiting for a signal to belch out smoke and the electric pylons are rusting with no power to transport. Perhaps they never will, if the local residents have their say.

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By Amitava Kar
Jan 31 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(The Daily Star, Bangladesh) – The book “Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism” (2018)—as provocative as it sounds— has nothing to do with women’s carnal pleasures. In it, Professor Kristen Ghodsee of the University of Pennsylvania argues that implementing socialist concepts would make women’s lives more independent and fulfilling. That such an idea is put forth by an Ivy League academic from the United States of America, and not by a bleeding-heart leftist from Cuba, is striking. But not surprising.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the word “socialism” may have landed in the wastebasket of history but is still available for recycling. Socialism is becoming increasingly appealing to young people around the world who value universal health care, strong unions, affordable college, banking regulation and living wages. Some make the case that it would benefit women especially.

Professor Ghodsee insists that the free market is failing most women in many ways. Women are paid less. They are financially dependent on better compensated men. They are seen as less valuable or less productive employees because they are consistently having to take time off in order to work around the house. Most of the housework including child care and elder care and care for the infirm generally falls on the shoulders of women, a job that does not pay.

On the other hand, states that notoriously coerced political conformity and a planned economy also enforced policies to emancipate women. Socialist regimes that we usually vilify, like the former East Germany, supported gender equality in all aspects of life. In the socialist countries of the twentieth-century Eastern Europe, they were fully integrating women into the workforce, which allowed them to achieve economic freedom. Government-funded kindergartens and paid maternity leave were introduced to reduce the economic burden on women.

Life behind the Iron Curtain was not without problems. Many people died under planned economies that led to famines, purges and labour camps. But Professor Ghodsee asks, why not learn from the mistakes and try socialist policies that actually work, like empowering women, a la Scandinavia? Why not try to build a society where profits would be invested back into social services, and human relationships would be ultimately more genuine and satisfying, because people will not look at each other in a transactional way?

Ghodsee opines that the problem with capitalism is that it commodifies everything, including romance. She cites the example of seeking.com, a website that matches young women with wealthy older men, the so-called sugar daddies. The site boasts more than 10 million active users in more than 139 countries. One of the pages on this site suggests being somebody’s sugar baby can reduce your debt, send you to shopping sprees, expensive dinners and exotic vacations. You can get paid for your “time.”

And the free market has not lifted everyone, as promised. We see wage stagnation; we see growing inequality. The contemporary market that we are in has created a lot of risks for young people. Social safety nets have all but disappeared. The top 1 percent now own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Which may help explain why about 51 percent Americans between 18 and 29 hold a positive view of socialism.

People are showing interest in an alternative political system that would lead to a more egalitarian and sustainable future. The imbalances of the existing order have fuelled the rise of leftist politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the US, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Jean-Luc Melenchon in France, Yanis Varoufakis in Greece and Sahra Wagenknecht in Germany. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the New York Congresswoman who ran on an ultra-progressive platform which includes Medicare for all, guaranteed family leave, abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, free public college and a 70 percent marginal tax rate for incomes higher than USD 10 million.

In sum, Professor Ghodsee is saying that we can learn from the experiences of Eastern Europe and that we can actually see them functioning in countries like Denmark and Sweden. And so, why not have a conversation about how socialist policies not only impact our economies but also our personal lives? It may come as a surprise to the younger reader that one of the founding principles of Bangladesh was socialism meaning economic and social justice.

Amitava Kar is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Stephanie Sugars is North America Research Assistant at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

By Stephanie Sugars
NEW YORK, Jan 31 2019 (IPS)

Since announcing his candidacy in the 2016 presidential elections to the end of his second year in office, U.S. President Donald Trump has sent 1,339 tweets about the media that were critical, insinuating, condemning, or threatening.

In lieu of formal appearances as president, Trump has tweeted over 5,400 times to his more than 55.8 million followers; over 11 percent of these insulted or criticized journalists and outlets, or condemned and denigrated the news media as a whole.

To better monitor this negative rhetoric, CPJ’s North America program created a database to track tweets in which Trump mentioned the media, individual journalists, news outlets, or journalistic sources in a negative tone.

The president’s tweets can have an impact and consequences for the press both at home and abroad. His rhetoric has given cover to autocratic regimes: world leaders from Cambodia to the Philippines have echoed terms like “fake news” in the midst of crackdowns on press freedom.

And the rhetoric has sometimes resulted in harassment of individual journalists in the U.S., where CPJ is aware of several journalists who say they were harassed or threatened online after being singled out on Twitter by Trump.

CPJ’s database of tweets can be viewed here and our methodology can be found here.

CPJ found that the focus of the tweets has shifted dramatically. During the campaign, Trump frequently called out specific journalists by name or Twitter handle, accounting for over a third of his negative tweets about the press during that period.

This trend declined in the months leading up to the election and, since taking office, his focus shifted instead to the media as a whole, accounting for 63 percent of his tweets about the press in the first two years of his presidency, compared with 23 percent as a candidate.

The overall number and rate of Trump’s tweeting has also decreased since he took office. However, those targeted at the press constitute a larger percentage of his total tweets during his presidency.

Nine percent of all original tweets during his candidacy contained negative rhetoric about the press, compared with 11 percent in his first two years in office.

His rhetoric–increasingly targeting swaths of the press–appears to be escalating, first from the introduction of “fake news” to “opposition party” and his use of “enemy of the people.”

The term “fake news” did not appear in Trump’s tweets until after he was elected. It was used for the first time in December 2016. It came into more frequent use in January 2017, in reference first to leaked reports on Russian hacking and then to reports on his inauguration and approval ratings.

Overall, in each of the first two years in office the term was used in over half his negative tweets about the press. Trump’s use of the term “enemy of the people” was first used on February 17, 2017, one day after the Trump campaign team distributed a survey urging supporters to “do your part to fight back against the media’s attacks and deceptions.”

Trump uses his tweets to respond and react to critical coverage or investigative reporting. The months where tweets critical of the press accounted for the highest percentage of all original tweets posted were:

• January 2017 (15 percent): In response to reports on the Intelligence Community Assessment’s confirmation of Russian hacking.
• February 2017 (19 percent): In response to reports about his election win, emerging news about Russian hacking, and leakers.
• March 2017 (17 percent): In response to reports about infighting within the Trump administration, the leak of part of his tax returns, and Russian hacking.
• October 2017 (15 percent): In response to reports on hurricane relief in Puerto Rico, Rex Tillerson allegedly threatening to resign, and a perceived lack of positive economic coverage.
• December 2017 (16 percent): In response to focusing on reporting on collusion with Russia, the Republican tax reform, and reviews of Trump’s first year in office).

Trump insulted individual journalists via Twitter 280 times as a candidate. CPJ has documented cases of several journalists who said after being targeted by him on Twitter they were harassed or doxxed.

During the first two years of his presidency, Trump has cited specific journalists 48 times. Notable exceptions to this sharp decline took place in January and September 2018, when Trump tweeted about Michael Wolff and Bob Woodward when their books on the president and his administration were released.

The database showed that the outlets targeted the most–either directly or through tweets about their journalists–were the New York Times and CNN, with Fox News coming in third. During the Republican primaries, Fox was a frequent target, cited in 148 tweets.

Of these, Fox broadcaster Megyn Kelly was the primary target in nearly half, cited in 64 tweets, after the first Republican presidential debate in 2016, where she questioned Trump about the derogatory language he uses against women.

In the weeks following the debate, Trump tweeted negative comments about Kelly, including insulting her both personally and professionally. Trump also targeted other conservative-leaning outlets during this period, including The Blaze, The Weekly Standard, RedState, and the National Review.

Trump has also used Twitter to accuse the press of falsifying anonymous sources. Trump tweeted about “phony,” “nonexistent,” or “made up” sources on five occasions during his candidacy, all of which were posted in the three months between winning the Republican primary and the election.

This number doubled to 11 instances in his first year in office and then again to 27 in his second year as his administration was plagued with leaks and the investigation being led by Robert Mueller.

In the wake of the Annapolis shooting in June, CPJ, press freedom advocates, and media outlets called on Trump to moderate his rhetoric. However, five days after the shooting Trump called the “Fake News” the “Opposition party,” and 17 days after, he tweeted that “much of our news media is indeed the enemy of the people.”

The moniker “enemy of the people” appeared in only four tweets during his first year in office. In his second year, the number was 21, nearly all after Annapolis.

The post From Fake News to Enemy of the People: An Anatomy of Trump’s Tweets appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Stephanie Sugars is North America Research Assistant at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

The post From Fake News to Enemy of the People: An Anatomy of Trump’s Tweets appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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Hazel Halley-Burnett, head of Women Across Differences in Guyana (left); and Ruth Spencer, GEF Focal Point for Antigua and Barbuda, attended the 17th Session of the Committee for the Review of Implementation (CRIC 17) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in the Guyana capital Georgetown. Hazel-Burnett and Spencer are two Caribbean champions for gender equality issues. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, Jan 31 2019 (IPS)

In parts of the world where the gender gap is already wide, land degradation places women and girls at even greater risk.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) framework for Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), highlights that land degradation in developing countries impacts men and women differently, mainly due to unequal access to land, water, credit, extension services and technology.

It further asserts that gender inequality plays a significant role in land-degradation-related poverty hence the need to address persistent gender inequalities that fuel women’s poverty in LDN interventions.

Against this background, Dr. Douglas Slater, Assistant Secretary General Human and Social Development at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat, said gender mainstreaming is very important in all aspects of sustainable development for the Caribbean.

“We know in agriculture, that on several occasions our women are very much involved in some of the work and we have to ensure that they continue to be so, but that the resources are placed at their disposal to get them to really be fully engaged,” Slater told IPS.

“I think that at the same time, because we are small countries, technology that is utilised in agriculture has to be looked at for us to be most efficient and we need to see how all genders can get involved.”

He noted that particularly with regards to the training of agricultural workers and the use of agricultural equipment, there was too much bias towards the male gender.

He added that more needs to be done to convince young people that agriculture can provide a good livelihood and women are capable and should be involved too.  Slater spoke to IPS at the 17th Session of the Committee for the Review of Implementation (CRIC17) of the UNCCD in Georgetown, Guyana.

“When conducting training at our agricultural institutions, we should expect our women to be operating tractors, be managers of greenhouses. They have demonstrated they can do it, we have to encourage them to do more of it,” Slater said.

Globally, women comprise 43 percent of the agricultural labour force, rising to 70 percent in some countries, and UNCCD has cited the importance of taking gender roles into account when making policies and laws to promote land degradation neutrality.

In Africa, for instance, 80 percent of agricultural production comes from smallholder farmers, who are mostly rural women.

Despite their majority in the smallholder agricultural sector, women typically don’t have secure control over their farmland or over its productive resources, especially commercially marketable produce.

This lack of control is linked to land ownership rights in rural areas, which habitually favour men. Women’s access to the land, meanwhile, is mediated by their relationship to the male owner.

Climate change is a compounding factor in land degradation that increases uncertainty with regard to women’s production, accessibility and utilisation of food, as well as in relation to food systems stability.

Late last year, UNCCD organised a technical workshop on the Caribbean sub-regional LDN transformative project – Implementing Gender-Responsive and Climate Smart Land Management in the Caribbean.

The workshop, which was held in St. Lucia, sought to build and strengthen capacity on gender mainstreaming. It also addressed how to refine and finalise a project concept note with the involvement of all key stakeholders prior to seeking financial support from the Green Climate Fund.

A key focus of the project is to build synergies between the on-going activities to the LND initiative, and the workshop was designed to embed gender perspectives in the synergistic implementation of activities in the Caribbean.

UNCCD Executive Secretary Monique Barbut says women are the first to be affected by the main indirect causes of land degradation – population pressure, land tenure, poverty and lack of education

“If you look at all those, generally it’s the women who are the first target of all those things. It is absolutely abnormal. In many countries, women do not have any property rights,” Barbut told IPS.

“So how can you ask a woman who is managing land to manage it well, to think of the future when the land will never be hers? That’s a real question.”

As it relates to education, Barbut said women are usually less educated than men, adding that that is something that also has to be looked at.

She said UNCCD is highlighting all of these issues in its gender plan, while stressing the “for very positive action towards them.”

The UNCCD Executive Secretary also pointed to how LDN interventions can bring positive change to the lives and women and girls.

She cited a planned project in Burkina Faso to transform 3,000 of the country’s 5,000 villages into eco-villages, noting that this will provide solar ovens and also potable water.

“Just by doing that we are taking out six hours of work of women because it takes them about three hours per day to go get food to cook and three hours per day to go get water,” Barbut told IPS.

“We want to have those women get out of that so that they can go to agroforestry programmes which will on top of everything give them revenue. We will make sure that the revenue that they get will go mainly into education of the children and into health facilities for both children and women in particular.”

“So clearly, there is a direct link between the consequences of land degradation and the wellbeing of women in most countries. It’s not as severe in some countries but in every single country we see how things change when we empower women on the land management,” Barbut added.

The UNCCD says gender equality for rural women should include equal ownership rights to family land since security of tenure could be a catalyst for grassroots land management prioritising land degradation neutrality.

It adds that ensuring equality is also about decreasing the burdens of rural women and enabling them to access vital services and goods.

Land degradation and drought affect more than 169 countries today, with the severest impacts being felt in the poorest rural communities.

Previous estimates projected that by 2025, approximately 1.8 billion people – more than half of them women and children – would be adversely affected by land degradation and desertification. These estimates have already been significantly surpassed, with 2.6 billion affected today.

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By Jenny Ricks
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Jan 31 2019 (IPS)

They said they cared about climate change but they flew in on private jets in record numbers. They said they cared about inequality but laughed off the idea of higher taxes for the rich. They spoke about democracy and human rights but they dined with a far-right populist. If there was ever any doubt about Davos representing the epitome of duplicity, then 2019 has firmly laid that to rest.

The billionaires and politicians that clinked champagne glasses at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) charade in Davos tried, as usual, to project concern about the world and those outside of their bubble.

The WEF public relations machinery ensured that the event was slick and that there were panels on climate change and inequality. But the hypocrisy of elites was clear for all to see.

Not only that, this year even some of their usual supporters in the mainstream media said that the global elite is currently out of enthusiasm and ideas.

Opening the conference, David Attenborough urged world leaders to take serious action on climate change, but the attendees broke the record for the number of private jet flights that ferried them in to the luxurious Swiss ski resort.

This, despite WEF’s own report on global risks for 2019 showing that environmental threats are seen as the biggest danger to the world. The disconnect is quite staggering, and further proof that Davos generates nothing more than empty rhetoric and bloated media coverage.

Another disconnect moment, now rightly gaining infamy on social media, saw our Fight Inequality ally Winnie Byanyima of Oxfam, alongside historian Rutger Bregman, tell some badly needed home truths to billionaires – that they need to be taxed more, and about the reality of work without dignity that so many people endure around the world. A reality check that Davos Man was unwilling and unable to face up to.

Whilst Davos played itself out for another year, the leadership required to face up to multiple, urgent challenges that we desperately have to address was coming from elsewhere, including from a sixteen-year-old climate activist.

Greta Thunberg provided a direct challenge to the elites at Davos that put profit before people and planet: “Some people, some companies, some decision-makers in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.”

Thunberg is part of a growing global movement of students demanding urgent change from their governments. Their protests are exciting and vital.

In India, residents of Delhi put forward their demands to end inequality. Credit: Oxfam India

In the face of urgent social problems not being addressed, other grassroots movements too have emerged during the last few years. From students demanding ‘fees must fall‘ in South Africa, to the global me too movement demanding an end to sexual assault and violence against women.

These are examples and reminders of an important historical lesson: that all social progress, from the fight against apartheid to securing women’s right to vote, came about by the power of the people challenging the people in power.

And so it is with inequality, ironically also identified by the Davos elite for several years as one of the greatest risks facing the world, and a subject that remains on the WEF agenda. Unsurprisingly, nothing has been done about it by Davos. The policy prescriptions and solutions are thoroughly researched and well-known but rejected by the plutocrats and politicians in order to maintain the status quo and the economic system that benefits them.

As leading inequality economist Branko Milanovic says about the elites: “Not surprisingly, nothing has been done since the Global Financial Crisis to address inequality. Rather, the opposite has happened.”

Of course, the idea of elites ‘solving’ inequality is absurd – given that the problem is of their making and its perpetuation in their interests. The statistics on inequality bear testament to this.

Wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated – last year 26 people owned the same wealth as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity.

Currently the wealth of the world’s 2208 dollar billionaires is now five times the GDP of the whole of Africa. In the UK, the average FTSE 100 CEO takes home 133 times the salary of the average worker.

We are dealing with a worldwide inequality crisis that is reaching new extremes and undermining global efforts to end poverty and marginalisation, advance women’s rights, defend the environment, protect human rights and democracy, prevent conflict, and promote fair and dignified employment.

Even Davos Man knows this. But what the elites at Davos again made clear, through their rhetoric and inaction, is that only a grassroots movement will fix this.

A growing global movement called the Fight Inequality Alliance – comprised of trade unions, social movements and leading international and national non-profit organisations – is busy organising while those at Davos eat canapés and mouth platitudes.

While the 1% gathered in the Swiss Alps, activists and campaigners held a week of action calling on governments to curb the murky influence of the super-rich who they blame for the Age of Greed, where billionaires are buying not just yachts but laws.

Community groups’ ideas, which elites don’t mention, include minimum living wages, an end to corporate tax breaks, higher taxes on wealth, capital and profits of the richest companies and individuals to enable quality public services for all, and a limit to how many times more a boss can earn than a worker.

From Nairobi to Manila to Guadalajara, to Delhi to London and many countries beyond, tens of thousands gathered in slums and towns across the world in contrast to the opulence of Davos, putting forward their solutions to inequality and celebrating their resilience through music, theatre and cultural expression.

Ultimately, the solutions to inequality will come from those who are at the frontlines of it, not the 1% that caused it and continues to benefit from it. And as anger about shocking levels of inequality continues to grow, so will the movement to fight inequality.

Deflated by its own duplicity and by the movements mobilising people power outside of it, Davos is a gathering in search of a purpose. The real power for the radical and systemic change we need is with ordinary people coming together and organising to demand it. It’s what has worked in the past and it’s the only thing that will work now.

Follow the alliance on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FightInequalit1

The post People Power Will Bring Change — Not Davos appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Jenny Ricks is the global convenor at Fight Inequality Alliance.

The post People Power Will Bring Change — Not Davos appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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