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Marisol and Misael Menjívar pose next to the biodigester installed in March in the backyard of their home in El Corozal, a rural settlement located near Suchitoto in central El Salvador. With a biotoilet and stove, the couple produces biogas for cooking from feces, which saves them money. The biotoilet can be seen in the background. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SUCHITOTO, El Salvador , Jul 25 2023 (IPS)

A new technology that has arrived in rural villages in El Salvador makes it possible for small farming families to generate biogas with their feces and use it for cooking – something that at first sounded to them like science fiction and also a bit smelly.

In the countryside, composting latrines, which separate urine from feces to produce organic fertilizer, are very popular. But can they really produce gas for cooking?

“It seemed incredible to me,” Marisol Menjívar told IPS as she explained how her biodigester, which is part of a system that includes a toilet and a stove, was installed in the backyard of her house in the village of El Corozal, near Suchitoto, a municipality in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán."When the first ones were installed here, I was excited to see that they had stoves hooked up, and I asked if I could have one too." -- Marisol Menjívar

“When the first ones were installed here, I was excited to see that they had stoves hooked up, and I asked if I could have one too,” added Marisol, 48. Hers was installed in March.

El Corozal, population 200, is one of eight rural settlements that make up the Laura López Rural Water and Sanitation Association (Arall), a community organization responsible for providing water to 465 local families.

The families in the small villages, who are dedicated to the cultivation of corn and beans, had to flee the region during the country’s 1980-1992 civil war, due to the fighting.

After the armed conflict, they returned to rebuild their lives and work collectively to provide basic services, especially drinking water, as have many other community organizations, in the absence of government coverage.

In this Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants, 78.4 percent of rural households have access to piped water, while 10.8 percent are supplied by wells and 10.7 percent by other means.

With small stoves like this one, a score of families in El Corozal in central El Salvador cook their food with biogas they produce themselves, thanks to a government program that has brought clean energy technology to these remote rural villages. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Simple green technology

The biodigester program in rural areas is being promoted by the Salvadoran Water Authority (Asa).

Since November 2022, the government agency has installed around 500 of these systems free of charge in several villages around the country.

The aim is to enable small farmers to produce sustainable energy, biogas at no cost, which boosts their income and living standards, while at the same time improving the environment.

The program provides each family with a kit that includes a biodigester, a biotoilet, and a small one-burner stove.

In El Corozal, five of these kits were installed by Asa in November 2022, to see if people would accept them or not. To date, 21 have been delivered, and there is a waiting list for more.

In El Corozal, a rural settlement in the municipality of Suchitoto in central El Salvador, the technology of family biodigesters arrived at the end of last year, and some families are now producing biogas to light up their stoves and cook their food at no cost. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

“With the first ones were set up, the idea was for people to see how they worked, because there was a lot of ignorance and even fear,” Arall’s president, Enrique Menjívar, told IPS.

In El Corozal there are many families with the surname Menjívar, because of the tradition of close relatives putting down roots in the same place.

“Here we’re almost all related,” Enrique added.

The biodigester is a hermetically sealed polyethylene bag, 2.10 meters long, 1.15 meters wide and 1.30 meters high, inside which bacteria decompose feces or other organic materials.

This process generates biogas, clean energy that is used to fuel the stoves.

The toilets are mounted on a one-meter-high cement slab in latrines in the backyard. They are made of porcelain and have a handle on one side that opens and closes the stool inlet hole.

One of the main advantages that family biodigesters have brought to the inhabitants of El Corozal, a small village in the Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán, is that the whole process begins with clean, hygienic toilets, like this one set up in Marleni Menjívar’s backyard, as opposed to the older dry composting latrines, which drew flies and cockroaches. To the left of the toilet is the small handle used to pump water to flush the feces into the biodigester. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

They also have a small hand pump, similar to the ones used to inflate bicycle tires, and when the handle is pushed, water is pumped from a bucket to flush the waste down the pipe.

The underground pipe carries the biomass by gravity to the biodigester, located about five meters away.

The system can also be fed with organic waste, by means of a tube with a hole at one end, which must be opened and closed.

Once it has been produced, the biogas is piped through a metal tube to the small stove mounted inside the house.

“I don’t even use matches, I just turn the knob and it lights up,” said Marisol, a homemaker and caregiver. Her husband Manuel Menjívar is a subsistence farmer, and they have a young daughter.

In El Corozal, biodigesters have been installed for families of four or five members, and the equipment generates 300 liters of biogas during the night, enough to use for two hours a day, according to the technical specifications of Coenergy, the company that imports and markets the devices.

But there are also kits that are used by two related families who live next to each other and share the equipment, which includes, in addition to the toilet, a larger biodigester and a two-burner stove.

With more sophisticated equipment, electricity could be generated from biogas produced from landfill waste or farm manure, although this is not yet being done in El Salvador.

Marleni Menjivar gets ready to heat water on her ecological stove, watched closely by her four-year-old daughter, in El Corozal in central El Salvador, where an innovative government program to produce biogas has arrived. With this technology, people save money by buying less liquefied gas while benefiting the environment. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Saving money while caring for the environment

The families of El Corozal who have the new latrines and stoves are happy with the results.

What they value the most is saving money by cooking with gas produced by themselves, at no cost.

They used to cook on wood-burning stoves, in the case of food that took longer to make, or on liquefied gas stoves, at a cost of 13 dollars per gas cylinder.

Marleni Menjívar, for example, used two cylinders a month, mainly because of the high level of consumption demanded by the family business of making artisanal cheeses, including a very popular local kind of cottage cheese.

Every day she has to cook 23 liters of whey, the liquid left after milk has been curdled. This consumes the biogas produced overnight.

For meals during the day Marleni still uses the liquefied gas stove, but now she only buys one cylinder a month instead of two, a savings of about 13 dollars per month.

“These savings are important for families here in the countryside,” said Marleni, 28, the mother of a four-year-old girl. The rest of her family is made up of her brother and grandfather.

“We also save water,” she added.

The biotoilet requires only 1.2 liters of water per flush, less than conventional toilets.

In addition, the soils are protected from contamination by septic tank latrines, which are widely used in rural areas, but are leaky and unhygienic.

The new technology avoids these problems.

The liquids resulting from the decomposition process flow through an underground pipe into a pit that functions as a filter, with several layers of gravel and sand. This prevents pollution of the soil and aquifers.

Also, as a by-product of the decomposition process, organic liquid fertilizer is produced for use on crops.

Most families in the rural community of El Corozal have benefited from one-burner stoves that run on biogas produced in family biodigesters. Larger two-burner stoves are also shared by two related families, where they cook on a griddle one of the favorite dishes of Salvadorans: pupusas, corn flour tortillas filled with beans, cheese and pork, among other ingredients. CREDIT: Coenergy El Salvador

Checking on site: zero stench

Due to a lack of information, people were initially concerned that if the biogas used in the stoves came from the decomposition of the family’s feces, it would probably stink.

And, worst of all, perhaps the food would also smell.

But little by little these doubts and fears faded away as families saw how the first devices worked.

“That was the first thing they asked, if the gas smelled bad, or if what we were cooking smelled bad,” said Marleni, remembering how the neighbors came to her house to check for themselves when she got the latrine and stove installed in December 2022.

“That was because of the little information that was available, but then we found that this was not the case, our doubts were cleared up and we saw there were no odors,” she added.

She said that, like almost everyone in the village, her family used to have a dry composting toilet, but it stank and generated cockroaches and flies.

“All that has been eliminated, the bathrooms are completely hygienic and clean, and we even had them tiled to make them look nicer,” Marleni said.

She remarked that hygiene is important to her, as her little girl can now go to the bathroom by herself, without worrying about cockroaches and flies.

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Children celebrate during a ECW high-level mission to South Sudan. Credit: ECW

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2023 (IPS)

In times of crisis, education is an essential component of humanitarian intervention packages, South Sudan’s Minister of General Education and Instruction Awut Deng Acuil told IPS in an exclusive interview.

She was speaking to IPS during the UN’s ECOSOC High-Level Political Forum, during which she participated in the side event, “Ensuring Education Continuity: The Roles of Education in Emergencies, Protracted Crises and Building Peace.”

Years of conflict in South Sudan and the region, combined with recurring disasters, massive population displacement and the impact of COVID-19, have adversely impacted the Government’s efforts in delivering quality education to all. Yet, their interest and commitment to invest in inclusive education remains.

“Every time there is a crisis, there is a rush for humanitarian assistance as a life-saving intervention. But I think education (should be part) of this as well. When people run away from conflict or natural disasters, they are mostly women and children,” Acuil said.

“These children arrive exhausted and traumatized, and what is crucial is that the (humanitarian) intervention is integrated. We must also work at the same time to create a safe environment where these children can continue to go to school. This helps them psychologically to be engaged in learning (rather) than thinking of what they have gone through,” she continued.

“Education is lifesaving. They will play, they will get lessons, they will get counseling from those teachers who are well-trained in [trauma] counseling… All these interventions provide them with a crucial sense of normalcy.”

Interestingly, she said, the first thing children in crisis ask is: “Can we go to school?”

According to UNHCR, close to 200,000 people – a majority of whom are children and women – have crossed to South Sudan in recent weeks to flee the conflict in Sudan. International humanitarian partners work with the Government to ensure the new arrivals receive health, nutrition, and schooling.

South Sudan’s Minister of General Education and Instruction Awut Deng Acuil.

“South Sudan has an open-door policy. As soon as they are settled, children have to go to school. [We are] building temporary shelters for them to go to school. Supporting teachers, who will be helping these children, is key.”

Acuil said Education Cannot Wait has been at the forefront of assisting with setting up quality, holistic education opportunities for incoming children. She also stressed the importance of integrating refugees into the national system, citing South Sudan’s inclusion policy as a best practice in the region.

“We have refugee teachers who are head teachers in our public schools. We have refugees in our boarding schools and public schools in South Sudan.”

ECW recently extended its Multi-Year Resilience Programme in the country with a new US$40 million catalytic grant. GPE provided an additional US$10 million for the programme.

The three-year programme will be delivered by Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Finn Church Aid, in close coordination with the Ministry of General Education and Instruction and others partners. The investment will reach at least 135,000 crisis-affected children and youth – including refugees, returnees and host-community children – with holistic education supports that improve access to school, ensure quality learning, enhance inclusivity for girls and children with disabilities, and build resilience to future shocks.

Total ECW funding in South Sudan now tops US$72 million. ECW is calling on five donors to step up with US$5 million each to provide an additional US$25 million in funding to the education in emergencies response in South Sudan.

The needs are pressing for the world’s youngest nation.  South Sudan continues to receive refugees fleeing the conflict in Sudan and requires additional support to address the converging challenges of conflict, climate change, forced displacement and other protracted crises.

“The multi-year programme that was launched last month will help a lot in terms of access, infrastructure, and teacher training. We have ‘hard-to-reach areas’ that have never seen a school, never seen a classroom. These are the places we have prioritized and targeted with this $40 million grant. Along with girls’ education, and children with disabilities, and also materials for education, especially printing more books.”

Acuil highlighted the importance of girls’ education, in a context where cultural norms and practices, including child marriage, hinder their access to school. She said the country is tackling the issue through a vast campaign championed by the President that targets traditional leaders, civil society, members of parliament, executives, educators, teachers and students themselves.

“Our President has taken the lead in campaigning for girls’ education. This year he declared free and compulsory education for all to ensure South Sudan makes up for the two lost generations due to conflict in the country. He is encouraging us to [open] boarding schools for girls, especially. In primary school, the disparity is so close, and in some states, we have more girls than boys. But when they transition to the secondary level, only 18% complete their 12-years education.”

Acuil called on UN Member States to support education in emergencies and invest more resources.

“Education Cannot Wait has shown and demonstrated that when there are crises, they have a prompt response to help children. Whether during disasters or man-made wars, ECW has been able to do that. We need to focus on that, prioritizing education and also investing in education.”

“If you invest in children today, they will be the leaders of tomorrow. We must help facilitate their education and empower them to help their countries and communities. That is why humanitarian assistance and education should go hand-in-hand.”

“I would like to end this with something I heard from a local girl who said: ‘Education cannot wait, but marriage can wait.’ Our humanity’s strength lies in education, and we must continue to remind those who keep forgetting, and ensure to awaken those who have not yet woken up to be part and parcel of education.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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IPS – UN Bureau, IPS UN Bureau Report, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), South Sudan

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By Lawrence Wittner
ALBANY, USA, Jul 25 2023 (IPS)

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the immensely destructive Ukraine War lies in the fact that it could have been averted. The most obvious way was for the Russian government to abandon its plan for the military conquest of Ukraine.

The Problem of Russian Policy

The problem on this score, though, was that Vladimir Putin was determined to revive Russia’s “great power” status. Although his predecessors had signed the UN Charter (which prohibits the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”), as well as the Budapest Memorandum and the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership (both of which specifically committed the Russian government to respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity), Putin was an ambitious ruler, determined to restore what he considered Russia’s imperial grandeur.

This approach led not only to Russian military intervention in Middle Eastern and African nations, but to retaking control of nations previously dominated by Russia. These nations included Ukraine, which Putin regarded, contrary to history and international agreements, as “Russian land.”

As a result, what began in 2014 as the Russian military seizure of Crimea and the arming of a separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine gradually evolved into the full-scale invasion of February 2022―the largest, most devastating military operation in Europe since World War II, with the potential for the catastrophic explosion of the giant Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and even the outbreak of nuclear war.

The official justifications for these acts of aggression, trumpeted by the Kremlin and its apologists, were quite flimsy. Prominent among them was the claim that Ukraine’s accession to NATO posed an existential danger to Russia.

In fact, though, in 2014―or even in 2022―Ukraine was unlikely to join NATO because key NATO members opposed its admission. Also, NATO, founded in 1949, had never started a war with Russia and had never shown any intention of doing so.

The reality was that, like the U.S. invasion of Iraq nearly two decades before, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was out of line with both international law and the imperatives of national security. It was a war of choice organized by a power-hungry ruler.

The Problem of UN Weakness

On a deeper level, the war was avoidable because the United Nations, established to guarantee peace and international security, did not take the action necessary to stop the war from occurring or to end it.

Admittedly, the United Nations did repeatedly condemn the Russian invasion, occupation, and annexation of Ukraine. On March 27, 2014, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution by a vote of 100 nations to 11 (with 58 abstentions), denouncing the Russian military seizure and annexation of Crimea.

On March 2, 2022, by a vote of 141 nations to 5 (with 35 abstentions), it called for the immediate and complete withdrawal of Russian military forces from Ukraine. In a ruling on the legality of the Russian invasion, the International Court of Justice, by a vote of 13 to 2, proclaimed that Russia should immediately suspend its invasion of Ukraine.

That fall, when Russia began annexing the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, the UN Secretary-General denounced that action as flouting “the purposes and principles of the United Nations,” while the UN General Assembly, by a vote of 143 nations to 5 (with 35 abstentions), called on all countries to refuse to recognize Russia’s “illegal annexation” of Ukrainian land.

Tragically, this principled defense of international law was not accompanied by measures to enforce it. At meetings of the UN Security Council, the UN entity tasked with maintaining peace, the Russian government simply vetoed UN action. Nor did the UN General Assembly circumvent the Security Council’s paralysis by acting on its own. Instead, the United Nations showed itself well-meaning but ineffectual.

This weakness on matters of international security was not accidental. Nations―and particularly powerful nations―had long preferred to keep international organizations weak, for the creation of stronger international institutions would curb their own influence.

Naturally, then, they saw to it that the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations, could act on international security issues only by a unanimous vote of its membership. And even this constricted authority proved too much for the U.S. government, which refused to join the League.

Similarly, when the United Nations was formed, the five permanent seats on the UN Security Council were given to five great powers, each of which could, and often did, veto its resolutions.

During the Ukraine War, Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky publicly lamented this inability of the United Nations to enforce its mandate. “The wars of the past have prompted our predecessors to create institutions that should protect us from war,” he remarked in March 2022, “but they unfortunately don’t work.”

In this context, he called for the creation of “a union of responsible countries . . . to stop conflicts” and to “keep the peace.”

What Still Might Be Done

The need to strengthen the United Nations and, thereby, enable it to keep the peace, has been widely recognized. To secure this goal, proposals have been made over the years to emphasize UN preventive diplomacy and to reform the UN Security Council.

More recently, UN reformers have championed deploying UN staff (including senior mediators) rapidly to conflict zones, expanding the Security Council, and drawing upon the General Assembly for action when the Security Council fails to act. These and other reform measures could be addressed by the world organization’s Summit for the Future, planned for 2024.

In the meantime, it remains possible that the Ukraine War might come to an end through related action. One possibility is that the Russian government will conclude that its military conquest of Ukraine has become too costly in terms of lives, resources, and internal stability to continue.

Another is that the countries of the world, fed up with disastrous wars, will finally empower the United Nations to safeguard international peace and security. Either or both would be welcomed by people in Ukraine and around the globe.

Lawrence S. Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/ ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany, the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press) and other books on international issues, and a board member of the Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund.

Source: Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) which envisions a peaceful, free, just, and sustainable world community

Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the official policy of Citizens for Global Solutions.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A Ghanaian minister allegedly lost $1m cash, handbags and jewels from her house.

Credit: Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

At a meeting with European and Latin American leaders in Brussels this July, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva reiterated the bold commitment he had made in his first international speech as president-elect, when he attended the COP27 climate summit in November 2022: bringing Amazon deforestation down to zero by 2030.

Lula’s presence at COP27 was a signal to the world that Brazil was willing to become the climate champion it needs to be. Following a request by the Brazilian Forum of NGOs and Social Movements for Environment and Development, Lula offered to host the 2025 climate summit in Brazil; it has now been confirmed that COP30 will be held in Belém, gateway to the Amazon River.

At COP27 Lula also said he intended to revive and modernise the 45-year old Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation, a body bringing together the eight Amazonian countries – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela – to take concerted steps to protect the Amazon rainforest.

Four years of regression

In his four years in office, Lula’s far-right climate-denier predecessor Jair Bolsonaro dismantled environmental protections and paralysed key environmental agencies by cutting their funding and staff. He vilified civil society, criminalised activists and discredited the media. He allowed deforestation to proceed at an astonishing pace and emboldened businesses to grab land, clear it for agriculture by starting fires and carry out illegal logging and mining.

Under Bolsonaro, already embattled Indigenous communities and activists became even more vulnerable to attacks. By encouraging environmental plunder, including on protected and Indigenous land, the government enabled violence against environmental and Indigenous peoples’ rights defenders. A blatant example was the murder of Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips in June 2022. The two were ambushed and killed on the orders of the head of an illegal transnational fishing network. Both the material and intellectual authors of the crimes have now been charged and await trial.

Reversing the regression

Having being elected on a promise to reverse environmental destruction, the new administration has sought to restructure and resource monitoring and enforcement institutions. It strengthened the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), the federal agency in charge of enforcing environmental policy, and the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), which for the first time is now headed by an Indigenous person, Joenia Wapichana.

Bolsonaro had transferred FUNAI to the Ministry of Agriculture, run by a leader of the congressional agribusiness caucus. Instead of protecting Indigenous land, it enabled deforestation and the expansion of agribusiness.

In contrast, Lula’s first political gestures were to create a new ministry for Indigenous peoples’ affairs, appointing Indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara to lead it, and to make Marina Silva, a leader of the environmentalist party Rede Sustentabilidade, Minister for the Environment, a position she had held between 2003 and 2008.

Lula also restored the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon, launched in 2004 and implemented until Bolsonaro took over. In February, the government set up a Permanent Inter-Ministerial Commission for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation and Fires in Brazil to coordinate actions across 19 ministries and develop zero deforestation policies.

The strategy establishes a permanent federal government presence in vulnerable areas with the aim of eliminating illegal activities, setting up bases and using intelligence and satellite imagery to track criminal activity.

The newly appointed Federal Police’s Director for the Amazon and the Environment, Humberto Freire, launched a campaign to rid protected Indigenous land of illegal miners. It appears to be paying off: in July he announced that around 90 per cent of miners operating in Yanomami territory, Brazil’s largest protected Indigenous land, had been expelled. According to police sources, there were 19 mine-related deforestation alerts in April 2023 – compared to 444 in April 2022.

But the fight isn’t over. There are still a couple of thousand miners active and the criminal enterprises employing them remain very much alive. The key task of recovering damaged land and rivers can only begin once they’re all driven away for good. And an issue that cries out for international cooperation remains unresolved: violence and environmental degradation continue unabated in Yanomami communities across the border in Venezuela, and will only increase as illegal miners jump jurisdictions.

Achieving the ambitious zero-deforestation goal will require efforts on a much bigger scale than those of the past. And such efforts will further antagonise very powerful people.

Obstacles ahead

With the environmental agenda back on track, the pace of Amazon deforestation slowed down in the first six months of 2023, falling by 34 per cent compared to the same period in 2022. However, numbers still remain high and reductions are uneven, with two states – Roraima and Tocantins – showing increases. Deforestation is also still rising in another important part of Brazil’s environment, the Cerrado, where preservation areas are few and most deforestation happens on private properties.

For the Amazon, a crucial test will come in the second half of the year, when temperatures are higher. A stronger El Niño phase, with warming waters in the Pacific Ocean, will make the weather even drier and hotter than usual, helping fires spread fast. Anticipating this, IBAMA has scaled up its recruitment of firefighters to expand brigades in Indigenous and Black communities and conduct inspections and impose fines and embargoes. To discourage people from starting fires to clear land for agriculture, the agency prevents them putting that land to agricultural use.

But in the meantime, Brazil’s Congress has gone on the offensive. In June, the Senate made radical amendments to the bill on ministries sent by Lula, diluting the powers of the Ministries of Indigenous Peoples and Environment and limiting demarcation of Indigenous lands to those already occupied by communities by 1998, when the current constitution was enacted.

Indigenous leaders have complained that many communities weren’t on their land in 1998 because they’d been expelled over the course of centuries, and particularly during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship. They denounced the new law as ‘legal genocide’ and urged the president to veto it. Civil society has taken to the streets and social media to support the government’s environmental policies.

They face a formidable enemy. A recent report by the Brazilian Intelligence Agency exposed the political connections of illegal mining companies. Two business leaders directly associated with this criminal activity are active congressional lobbyists and maintain strong links with local politicians. They also stand accused of financing an attempted insurrection on 8 January.

Against these shady elites, civil society wields the most effective weapon at its disposal, shining a light on their dealings and letting them know that Brazil and the world are watching, and will remain vigilant for as long as it takes. The stakes are too high to drop the guard.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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Northern Algeria has been experiencing a record heatwave with temperatures reaching 48C.

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Trailblazing forward Ghizlane Chebbak on the enduring influence of her late father, Larbi - a star of Morocco's only Africa Cup of Nations win.

Trailblazing forward Ghizlane Chebbak on the enduring influence of her late father, Larbi - a star of Morocco's only Africa Cup of Nations win.

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By Ramiz Uddin and Mohammad Saiful Hassan
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

Blue tourism, widely referred to as Coastal or Maritime tourism, is a distinct idea from traditional tourism, which capitalizes on a country’s ocean, sea, or coastal region.

Coastal tourism is the largest market segment in the world, accounting for 5% of GDP and contributing 6-7% of total employment. Furthermore, coastal and maritime tourism will employ 1.5 million additional people worldwide by 2030.

Though Blue Tourism is not a new concept, but off late Bangladesh has been realizing its importance as it can help earning a lot of foreign exchange contribute to its GDP and accelerate the pace of achieving SDGs by 2030.

Blue Tourism: A Potential Blue Economy Avenue for Bangladesh

According to Asian Development Bank (ADB), coastal and maritime tourism has immense potential in the blue economy and could become one of the largest sources of tourism revenue in Bangladesh. Ocean contributed $6.2 billion in 2015 in total value addition to the Bangladesh’s economy which implies 3 percent of GDP (Business Standard 2020).

Among different sectors of the Blue Economy, Blue Tourism is the most potential sector.

Figure: Why blue tourism shall be nurtured

Potentials of Blue Tourism in Bangladesh

Maritime area of 207K sq. km, with 580 km of coastline, 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone, and 12 nautical mile territorial zones creates unprecedent opportunities for Bangladesh to accelerate the growth of blue economy.

Icing on the top are the 75 large and small islands in the coastal and maritime zone of Bangladesh, which are regarded as touristy sites for their rich biodiversity. Coral reefs, seagrass reefs, sandy beaches, sandbars, marshes, flood basins, estuaries, peninsulas, mangroves etc. are a few examples of the aquatic life.

Currently these zones are endowed with 17 fish sanctuaries, 5 national parks, and 10 wildlife sanctuaries, all of which can spur the tourism sector’s expansion. As a result of the discovery of numerous new sea beaches, the sector continues to expand and diversify.

Policies and interventions introduced to nurture the potential

The government of Bangladesh along with the vibrant private sector have introduced various initiatives to develop and promote blue tourism in Bangladesh.

Since 2015, the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) has been working to unleash the potentials of Blue-Economy. To ensure rapid implementation Government of Bangladesh (GoB) has highlighted major action points in the seventh five-year plan (7FYP) and eighth five -year plan (8FYP) of Bangladesh.

Additionally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), GoB, had formed the “Blue Economy Cell” in 2017 to coordinate the running blue economy related projects across sectoral ministries and departments. The government of Bangladesh has also laid emphasis on the BLUE tourism in different development plans including Perspective Plan-2041, and Delta Plan-2100.

In order to exploit the tourism potential, Sea cruises between Bangladesh and India have already been launched in March 2019. To encourage foreign visitors to Cox’s Bazar’s largest sea beach, the Bangladesh Economic Zone Authority (BEZA) has been establishing three exclusive tourism parks there. These parks include Naf Tourism Park, Sabrang Tourism Park, and Sonadia Eco-Tourism Park.

Bangladesh Tourism Board has formulated a Tourism Master Plan for 25 years (2023-2047) for the country. Primarily a total of 255 tourist sites under 11 tourist clusters have been identified.

These tourist sites are potential for Eco-Tourism, Beach & Island Tourism, Pilgrimage/Spiritual Tourism, Archaeological & Historical Tourism, Riverine Tourism, Adventure and Sports Tourism, Rural Tourism, Ethno-tourism, MICE Tourism and Cruise Tourism in this coastal and maritime region.

The tourism master plan includes 200+ potential interventions overall. The Bangladesh Tourism Master Plan calls for the immediate development of 13 islands altogether in the coastal region.

Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) and UNDP Accelerator Lab Bangladesh’s Joint Initiative:

In the last quarter of 2022, Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) in collaboration with UNDP Accelerator Lab has conducted research on Blue Tourism in Bangladesh, especially in the coastal regions. The core objectives of the joint research comprise identifying the coastal and maritime tourism resources, facilities, and tourist activities in Bangladesh, mapping tourist minds, and identifying the sustainability of Blue Tourism in Bangladesh.

However, with the technical assistance of UNDP Bangladesh Accelerator Lab, Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) has begun to work on the execution of Bangladesh’s Tourism Master Plan.

Dr. Ramiz Uddin is Head of Experimentation, UNDP Accelerator Lab, Bangladesh; Mohammad Saiful Hassan is (Deputy Secretary), Deputy Director (Research and Planning), Bangladesh Tourism Board, Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism – Bangladesh.

Source: UNDP

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Transgender people often entertain at weddings and other events, but they increasingly face violent acts, especially since part of an Act ensuring their rights was recently struck down. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

“The problems transgender people face start from their homes as their parents, especially fathers and brothers, look them down upon and disrespect them,” says 20-year-old Pari Gul.

Gul, a resident of Charsadda district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), left her house at 16 when her mother asked her to or face being killed by her father.

“I was born as a boy, and my name was Abdul Wahid, but when I came to Peshawar and joined a transgender group, I got a female name, Pari Gul. Since then, I have been going to weddings and other festive ceremonies to dance,” she says. “Dance is my passion.”

However, she has often been the brunt of discrimination and violence.

“During my five-year career, people have beaten me more than 20 times. Each time the perpetrators went unpunished,” she told IPS in an interview.

Trans people are often targeted in KP, one of Pakistan’s four provinces.

On March 28, a man shot dead a transgender person in Peshawar. It was the third incident targeting transgender persons in the province in less than a week. Despite the violence, violent attacks on transgender people aren’t considered a major crime.

Khushi Khan, a senior transgender person, says lack of protection is the main problem.

“People have developed a disdain for us. They consider us non-Muslims because we dance at marriages and other ceremonies,” she says.

“We had lodged at least a dozen complaints with police in the past three months when our colleagues were robbed of money, molested and raped but to no avail,” Khan, 30, says.

Last month, clerics in the Khyber district decided they wouldn’t offer funerals to transgender persons and asked people to boycott them.

Rafiq Shah, a social worker, says that people attack the houses of transgender, kill, injure and rob them, but the police remain silent “spectators”.

“We have been protesting against violence frequently, but the situation remains unchanged,” Shah said.

Qamar Naseem, head of Blue Veins, a national NGO working to promote and protect transgender people, isn’t happy over the treatment meted out to the group.

“Security is the main issue of transgender persons. About 84 transgender persons have been killed in Pakistan since 2015 while another 2,000 have faced violence, but no one has been punished so far,” Naseem says.

The lack of action by the police has emboldened the people.

“Health, transportation, livelihoods and employment issues have hit the transgender (community) hard. Most of the time, they remained confined to their homes, located inside the city,” he says.

There are no data regarding the number of transgender in the country because the government doesn’t take them seriously, he says.

In May 2023, the Federal Shariat Court (FSC) dealt a severe blow when it suspended the implementation rules of the Protection of Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act.

Farzana Jan, president of TransAction Alliance, says that FSC’s declaration that individuals cannot alter their gender at their own discretion, asserting that specific clauses within the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018 contradict Islamic law, has disappointed us.

The FSC declared un-Islamic sections 3 and 7 and two sub-sections of Section 2 of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, five years after the law was passed, the FSC rolled back key provisions granting rights to Pakistan’s transgender community.

Some right-wing political parties had previously voiced concerns over the bill as a promoter of “homosexuality,” leading to “new social problems”.

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, is against the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and will cease to have any legal effect immediately, the verdict stated.

Amnesty International said the verdict was a blow to the rights of the already beleaguered group of transgender and gender-diverse people in Pakistan. It said some of the FSC’s observations were based on presumptive scenarios rather than empirical evidence. The denial of essential rights of transgender and gender-diverse persons should not be guided by assumptions rooted in prejudice, fear and discrimination, AI said.

“Any steps taken by the government of Pakistan to deny transgender and gender-diverse people the right to gender identity is in contravention of their obligations under international human rights law, namely the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to which they are a state party,” it said.

The government should take immediate steps to stop the reversal of essential protections, without which transgender and gender-diverse people will be even more at risk of harassment, discrimination and violence, AI added.

On July 12, 2023, transgender representatives from all provinces held a press conference at Lahore Press Club, where they vehemently condemned the recent decision by the FSC against the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018.

Arzoo Bibi, who was at a press conference, said it was time to stand united for justice and equality.

“Militants don’t threaten us, but our biggest concern is the attitude of the society and police,” said Arzoo.
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In a Mexican city with buildings that reflect its level of modernization, a truck collects waste, mainly plastic, ignoring higher standards of care for health and the environment. Plastic garbage is just the tip of a serious social and environmental problem in Latin America and the Caribbean. CREDIT: Greenpeace

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have made progress towards partial regulations to reduce plastic pollution, but the problem is serious and environmental activists are calling for regulations in the entire chain of production, consumption and disposal of plastic waste.

The release of plastic waste into the environment “is the tip of the iceberg of a problem that begins much earlier, from the exploitation of hydrocarbons, to the transport and transformation of these precursors of an endless number of products,” Andrés del Castillo, a Colombian expert based in Switzerland, told IPS."That is why our main call is for an immediate moratorium on increased plastics production, followed by a phased out reduction in supply, and complemented by other crucial measures such as reuse and landfill systems." -- Andrés del Castillo

Ecuadorian biologist María Esther Briz, an activist with the international campaign Break Free From Plastic, said “plastic pollution in our countries is not on its way to becoming a big problem: it already is.”

“From the extraction of raw materials, since we know that 99 percent of plastic is made from fossil fuels – oil and gas – plus the pollutants that are released during the transformation into resins and in consumption, and in the more well-known phase of when they become waste, our region is already very much affected,” the activist told IPS from the Colombian city of Guayaquil.

Plastic production in the region exceeds 20 million tons per year – almost five percent of the global total of 430 million tons per year – and consumption stands at 26 million tons per year, according to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), a coalition of 800 environmental organizations.

In the region, the largest installed production capacity is in Brazil (48 percent), followed by Mexico (29 percent), Argentina (10 percent), Colombia (8.0 percent) and Venezuela (5.0 percent).

The average annual consumption in Latin America and the Caribbean is about 40 kilos per inhabitant, and each year the region throws 3.7 million tons of plastic waste into rivers, lakes, seas and oceans, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

Del Castillo, a senior lawyer at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), warned that “if the trend is not reversed, by 2050 plastic production will reach 1.2 billion million tons annually. Paraphrasing (famed Colombian author of One Hundred Years of Solitude) Gabriel García Márquez, that is the size of our solitude.”

“That is why our main call is for an immediate moratorium on increased plastics production, followed by a phased out reduction in supply, and complemented by other crucial measures such as reuse and landfill systems,” del Castillo said from Geneva.

 

Volunteers from Peru’s Life Institute for Environmental Protection clean up plastic garbage washed up on the coast near Lima. In the waters surrounding cities, as well as in the oceans, discarded plastic waste that is not reused or recycled is added to other forms of pollution, severely affecting nature, including species and the landscape. CREDIT: IPMAV

 

Fearsome enemy

The plastic life chain is an enemy to health due to the release of more than 170 toxic substances in the production process of the raw material, in the refining and manufacture of its products, in consumption, and in the management and disposal of waste.

Once it reaches the environment, in the form of macro or microplastics, it accumulates in terrestrial and aquatic food chains, pollutes water and causes serious damage to human health, to animal species – such as aquatic species that die from consuming or being suffocated by these products – and to the landscape.

It also accounts for 12 percent of urban waste. UNEP estimates the social and economic costs of global plastic pollution to be between 300 billion dollars and 600 billion dollars per year.

It also affects the climate: the world’s 20 largest producers of virgin polymers employed in single-use plastics, led by the oil companies Exxon (USA) and Sinopec (China), generate 450 million tons a year of planet-warming greenhouse gases, almost as much as the entire United Kingdom.

And prominent villains are single-use plastics, such as packaging, beverage bottles and cups and their lids, cigarette butts, supermarket bags, food wrappers, straws and stirrers. Of these, 139 million tons were manufactured in 2021 alone, according to an index produced by the Australian Minderoo Foundation.

After alarm bells went off at the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution, composed of 175 countries, was created. It held its first two meetings last year, in Montevideo and Paris, and will hold its third in November in Nairobi, in a process aimed at drafting a binding international treaty on plastic pollution.

As if the boom in the production, consumption and improper disposal of plastics were not enough, the Latin American region is also importing plastic waste from other latitudes.

Studies by GAIA and the Peruvian investigative journalism website Ojo Público reported that in the last decade (2012-2022) Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Colombia received more than one million tons of plastic waste from different parts of the world.

Although it is claimed that plastic waste is sold to be recycled into raw material for lower quality products or textiles, this rarely happens and it ends up adding to the millions of tons that go into landfills every year.

“We cannot even deal with our own waste and yet we are importing plastic garbage from other countries, often with very little clarity and transparency, so there is no traceability of what is imported under the pretext of recycling,” Briz complained.

 

Single-use plastics, more than a third of global production and ubiquitous in everyday life, are seen as the main villains in the entire plastics business chain, and Latin American and Caribbean countries are moving towards banning them altogether or at least limiting production and use. CREDIT: Goula

 

Laws and regulations are on their way

On the other side of the coin, in 2016 Antigua and Barbuda became the first country in the region to ban single-use plastic bags, and it has gradually expanded the ban to include polystyrene food storage containers, as well as single-use plates, glasses, cutlery and cups.

Since then, 27 of the 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have enacted national or local laws to reduce, ban or eliminate single-use articles and, in some cases, other plastic products.

“There is a wide range: countries that already have strong rules to regulate plastics, especially single-use plastics, and they are applied. Others have very good regulations but they are not enforced. In others there are no regulations, and there are countries where nothing is happening,” Briz said.

In Argentina a 2019 resolution by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development covers the life cycle of plastic (production, use, waste and pollution reduction) and a 2020 law bans cosmetic and personal hygiene products containing plastic microbeads.

Belize, Chile, Colombia, most Mexican states and Panama have passed regulations to progressively ban or limit the consumption of single-use plastics, as have Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. But in some cases there are doubts as to whether these provisions are effectively enforced.

Brazil has had a National Plan to Combat Marine Litter since 2019, which, however, has not yet been implemented. Costa Rica also has a National Marine Litter Plan, which seeks to reduce waste with the support of the communities.

Ecuador is turning the Galapagos Islands into a plastic-free archipelago, and phased out plastic bags, straws, “to-go” containers and plastic bottles in 2018.

Fences, including those made from recovered plastic waste, are being installed in rivers in Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and the Dominican Republic to collect plastic waste and prevent it from being washed out to sea.

In Guatemala, Castillo noted, the municipality of San Pedro La Laguna, in the Lake Atitlán basin, was a pioneer, banning sales of straws and plastic bags in 2016, and the city government won lawsuits in court over the ordinance. The example is spreading throughout the country.

 

View of a petrochemical plant of the Brazilian giant Braskem. Environmentalists’ demands for a halt to the expansion of plastics production focus on states in Mexico and Brazil, which have the largest petrochemical facilities in the Latin American region. CREDIT: Braskem

 

From landfills to petrochemicals

Del Castillo, the Ecuadorian expert, said that “apart from initiatives of a voluntary nature, regional action plans, and the regulation of single-use plastic products, the ongoing negotiation of an international treaty promises to be the path that has been chosen to put an end to plastic pollution.”

The treaty should cover “all emissions and risks from plastics during production, use, waste management and leakage,” del Castillo said, but “we don’t have to wait for the treaty to act: States can already say ‘No to the expansion of virgin plastics production’.”

The MarViva Foundation, which fights marine pollution in Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama, argues that “the best way to manage single-use plastic waste is not to create it,” and advocates discouraging the production, use and consumption of these materials.

But in the face of such proposals, “one of the biggest obstacles has to do with the economic power of the petrochemical industry, which refuses to reduce production. In Latin America, the largest producers of plastics are the petrochemical companies of Mexico and Brazil,” said Briz, the Ecuadorian biologist.

“Plastic is a cheap product, since its environmental and social costs are not taken into account, and while the cost of production and distribution is low, the cost for the health of people and the environment is not,” said the activist.

In short, for activists, an approach based only on recycling and bans will be of limited scope until a moratorium is imposed on the expansion of plastics production, with a global market worth 600 billion dollars a year and which at the current rate could triple in the next two decades.

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