Africa

Access to PrEP has been slow and mostly limited to high income countries. Some countries, like Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia, and Nigeria, have been more proactive than others, but it is still hard for many to get PrEP. Credit: Shutterstock

By External Source
Nov 30 2022 (IPS)

While the world has focused on the COVID pandemic for nearly three years, less and less attention is being paid to HIV. However, HIV is still a global problem. In 2021, according to the United Nations, 38.4 million people were living with HIV, over 650,000 died from AIDS-related illnesses, and 1.5 million became newly infected.

Nearly 70% of infections occur in key groups: sex workers and their clients, men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs, and transgender people and their sexual partners. Adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa are another important group, with nearly 5,000 getting HIV every week.

For many years, options for HIV prevention were quite limited. Early campaigns consisted of the ABCs – abstinence, being faithful, and condoms. In the early 2000s, male circumcision was added, but multiple attempts at developing a vaccine have been disappointing.

When taken regularly, PrEP is highly effective in preventing HIV infection and very safe. PrEP was seen as a game-changer by enabling people to take charge of their sexual health, particularly for those who could not necessarily control when or how they had sex

In 2012, however, much excitement surrounded the introduction of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. The initial form of PrEP was a combination oral pill consisting of two medications used to treat HIV – emtricitabine and tenofovir. When taken regularly, PrEP is highly effective in preventing HIV infection and very safe. PrEP was seen as a game-changer by enabling people to take charge of their sexual health, particularly for those who could not necessarily control when or how they had sex.

Oral PrEP has worked well for many, particularly for men who have sex with men in high income settings and for serodifferent couples (couples in which one person has HIV and the other does not).

For others – like young people – it’s hard to take a pill consistently during periods of risk for getting HIV. The interest is there, but lots of things get in the way. Some relate to the person, like forgetfulness, transport to a clinic, and alternative priorities. Other factors relate to stigma and lack of support.

PrEP administered via a vaginal ring is another safe option that’s been developed. It’s not yet clear how many people will want to use it as it becomes more widely available.

Access to PrEP has been slow and mostly limited to high income countries. Some countries, like Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia, and Nigeria, have been more proactive than others, but it is still hard for many to get PrEP.

Now that injectable PrEP is an option, it’s poised to make a huge difference in HIV prevention – as long as some key issues can be overcome.

 

Benefits of injectable PrEP

The latest version of PrEP is an injection of another HIV drug – cabotegravir (called CAB-LA for cabotegravir-long acting). It is given in the buttocks and lasts for two months. It is even more effective than oral PrEP and it’s safe.

Another injectable drug – lenacapavir – would only need to be given once every six months, and would be easier to inject because it only needs to go into the skin; but it is still in clinical trials.

In many ways, injectable PrEP seems like a perfect solution. It’s discreet, there’s no burden of frequent pill taking, and it can be combined with other services and injections, like contraception for women. People in the CAB-LA trials in many parts of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and the US, really liked it. Although some public health officials and healthcare workers have worried about the pain and any swelling due to the injection itself, most people do very well.

 

Drawbacks of injectable PrEP

Several issues, however, may get in the way of injectable PrEP revolutionising HIV prevention.

First, most people can’t get it. The United States was the first country to approve CAB-LA in December 2021. The next was Zimbabwe in October 2022. The necessary paperwork is being processed in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, but regulatory processes are slow and access is likely be to a challenge for some time.

Second, it’s expensive. CAB-LA is priced at over $22,000 per person per year in the US. It could be covered to some extent by health insurance companies, but not everyone has health insurance. The drug manufacturer will lower the price for the markets in low- and middle-income countries, but the exact cost is not yet known. Some estimates are around $250 per person per year. That’s still about five times as much as oral PrEP costs. The increased effectiveness may be worth it for people at high risk of getting HIV, but getting it to those people will be challenging for ministries of health.

Third, logistical issues complicate delivery of injectable PrEP, including the need for refrigerators to store the drug and nurses to give the injections. Clinics may not be set up to provide many injections in a given day, and limited availability may mean people can’t get the shots when they need them.

Finally, continuing to get injections over time is still likely to be a problem. The experience with injectable contraception has taught us that up to half of people who select that form of family planning stop it within a year. Injectable PrEP does not solve the other barriers people face, like transport to clinic and prioritisation of HIV prevention.

The lack of access raises important ethical concerns. Most of the thousands of people in the CAB-LA trials live in countries without access to it, including Botswana, Eswatini, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe among others. Processes to enable access are unacceptably slow, although the drug is available in the US (and just recently Zimbabwe).

 

Where to go from here?

Despite these challenges, injectable PrEP is a huge advantage for the HIV prevention toolbox. Choice is critical for most interventions to work, and HIV prevention is no different. PrEP use increases when people are given effective options and can choose what works best for them.

PrEP needs to be easier for people to take, for instance by making it more convenient and less medical. Programmes are starting to do this through community delivery. That approach may be more challenging with injections, but it may get easier with time and with injections in the skin, like lenacapavir.

Advocacy will be critical for expediting the regulatory process and negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to license other companies to produce more affordable generics.

Jessica Haberer, Director of Research, Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Global Health and Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Abou Fumarou Mahamadou poses amid millet stalks dried in the sun. She belongs to a co-op of 32 women farmers in the commune of Tibiri in southwest Niger. Credit: Stephan Gladieu / World Bank

By Chakib Jenane
WASHINGTON DC, Nov 30 2022 (IPS)

As a central pillar of African diets for thousands of years, millet has a prized position as one of the continent’s most important crops.

And with the onset of climate change, millet offers valuable security to the continent’s smallholder farmers due to the crop’s tolerance for dry soils.

Yet, the rise of an increasingly affluent urban middle class across Africa is threatening to shift diets away from traditional staples like millet in favor of higher-value and more convenient processed foods often sourced from outside the continent.

However, Africa’s homegrown processing industry can increasingly deliver more sophisticated products, turning unprocessed millet into nutritious ready-to-eat meals such as rice-like products, porridges, and more. This is a win-win for farmers and consumers alike.

Africa’s emerging agrifood processing industry clearly offers a major opportunity to capitalize on the growing demand for processed foods which, to date, has been met in large part by imported products.

Growing this sector can provide valuable opportunities for African livelihoods and economies across the region, all the while reducing the continent’s food import bill, which stands at roughly USD 35 billion a year.

Chakib Jenane

The recently released Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS) Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) shows that Africa’s agrifood processing sector is the essential link in connecting the continent’s smallholder farmers to growing urban markets with changing preferences.

Still, the sector as it exists today is just the tip of the iceberg, and data from across the continent highlights its enormous untapped potential, particularly in terms of the long-cultivated staples.

For instance, the rise of the millet processing sector in Senegal has reversed declining consumption trends due to growing urban populations and their needs for quicker and more convenient staples.

The share of millet has risen to close to 30 percent of the cereal consumption of high-income earners in Senegal, roughly the same as imported rice.

The introduction of more sophisticated millet products has also opened up new market opportunities for smallholder producers, which, alongside rising demand, is boosting the prices they can expect to receive in markets.

This means not only greater economic growth for national economies, but greater spending power and more resilient livelihoods for Africa’s small-scale producers, too.

Another interesting case study is the tomato, the fourth most economically valuable food crop produced in low- and middle-income countries. Fresh tomato is often more accessible to small-scale processors than larger plants, leaving significant potential to develop greater value products.

As a result, the rise of Africa’s processing sector is introducing new opportunities for tomato production by helping to add value and reduce post-harvest losses, stabilizing supplies for consumers throughout the year, while ensuring steady revenue streams for producers.

Meanwhile, some African countries are already seizing on the vast opportunities offered by their processing sectors to deliver a double win for economies and livelihoods.

Roughly 68 percent of Tanzania’s manufacturing exports, for instance, are agri-processed and resource-intensive goods, such as bottled juices, cooking oils, and packaged flours. A large majority of these goods are also being shipped to other African countries, demonstrating how greater agri-food processing capacity on the continent can meet African demand with African processed products.

This not only replaces demand for intercontinental imports, but equally ensures the benefits of processing for producers and consumers remain in Africa to deliver economic growth for future generations.

The growth of Africa’s agrifood processing sector clearly offers sustainable income-generating opportunities for the continent’s smallholder farmers through higher-value products that appeal to changing urban markets.

It also offers many prospects for jobs creation for the continent’s growing youth population – the fastest growing in the world.

With African food tastes and dietary preferences evolving, so too must its agrifood industry if it wishes to stay competitive, successful, and sustainable, delivering growth and improved livelihoods for millions.

Unlocking the potential of the continent’s processing sector, in particular, offers a clear path forward to achieving this goal.

Chakib Jenane joined the World Bank Group in 2014 and is currently Practice Manager for the Agriculture and Food Practice covering West and Central Africa.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A judge rules that he should spend three months in jail unless he reinstates a sacked officer.

A blue sea star (Linckia laevigata) photographed on a largely dead coral reef on the Coral Coast on Fiji's largest island Viti Levu. IPBES estimates that nearly one-third of reefs are threatened with extinction. Credit: Tom Vierus / Climate Visuals

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Nov 30 2022 (IPS)

Up to 1 million species are threatened with extinction – many within decades – this includes nearly one-third of reef-forming corals, shark relatives, and marine mammals. Half of agricultural expansion occurs at the expense of forests, and 85% of wetlands that were present at the beginning of the 18th century had been lost by the year 2000, with the loss of wetlands considered to be happening three times faster, in percentage terms, than forest loss.

Dr Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES. Credit: IPBES

Speaking to IPS ahead of UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) about the urgent need to accelerate measures to stop biodiversity loss, Dr Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES, says the loss we hear about is just the tip of the iceberg.

“In 2019, IPBES alerted the world that a million species of plants and animals, out of an estimated total of eight million, now face extinction, many within decades. A third of coral reefs are threatened with extinction. Nature is being deteriorated at a rate and scale that is unprecedented in human history,” she cautions.

She said that the very first reason to conserve and use biodiversity sustainably is because this is the right thing to do from a moral and ethical standpoint, “it should not be to the purview of one species, the human species, to destroy the non-human species on our shared planet. But an important more selfish second reason is that conserving and using biodiversity sustainably are also a matter of ensuring human existence and good quality of life.”

Biodiversity is central to human development, and its conservation is critical to people in every corner of the world. Fifty thousand wild species, according to IPBES, meet the needs of billions of people worldwide, providing food, cosmetics, shelter, clothing, medicine, and inspiration.

One in five people rely on wild plants, algae and fungi for their food and income; 2.4 billion rely on fuel wood for cooking, and about 90 percent of the 120 million people working in capture fisheries are supported by small-scale fishing.

This is just part of the material contribution Larigauderie says biodiversity makes to humanity, along with innumerable non-material and regulating contributions such as maintaining the quality of air and soil, the control of emerging diseases and the pollination of crops.

Against this backdrop, Larigauderie says COP 15, which will be held in Montreal, Canada, December 7-19, sets the stage for a new Global Biodiversity Framework, hoped to be a quantifiable and well-resourced plan that is meant to set the path to recovery of all life on Earth and the contributions it provides to people by 2030.

She speaks of the failed Aichi Biodiversity Targets 2011-2020, a strategic plan established to halt the loss of biodiversity and how none of the 20 targets agreed by governments for 2020 were fully achieved at the global level.

“COP15 is an opportunity to raise the bar—a renewal of the momentum of the ambitions for the global community. The most desirable outcome would be an agreement whose targets are supported by sufficient resources and quantified,” she emphasises.

For instance, Aichi target 11 called for the effective protection of 17 percent of land and inland waters and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas; now she says, “the bar is raised significantly in the new draft framework, to 30 percent to be protected by 2030. It is challenging but possible with adequate financial means.”

In addition to the 30%, measures need to be undertaken on the 70% which is not under protection. The text, therefore, includes targets to integrate biodiversity in key economic sectors, such as agriculture, fishing, and economic and financial systems, to decrease their impact on biodiversity.

IPBES research reveals that half of agricultural expansion occurs at the expense of forests. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

“Agriculture represents one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss because it competes for land with nature, and because it pollutes nature. Governments could help farmers to transition to agroecological practices that are more respectful of nature,” she observes.

Science, she adds, can inform transitions to new sustainable pathways for agriculture, fishing, and food systems, among others, to help conserve and sustainably use biodiversity. Larigauderie stresses the great need to transition into these new pathways for the good of nature and people for present and future generations.

She also emphasises the need to support developing countries that are now expected to develop while protecting their biodiversity, unlike their more developed counterparts, who ensured their development by leveraging their natural resources.

Speaking about the just-concluded UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), Larigauderie said it is critical to recognise and act on the interlinkages between climate change and biodiversity loss. Research has established that climate change is a major driver of biodiversity loss.

“It is very important for the climate change community to take biodiversity into account. The topic of biodiversity is still very low on the agenda of climate change discussions. Yet, we know there can never be long-term solutions for climate change without better treatment of nature,” she says.

“Moreover, some measures proposed to mitigate climate change are harmful to biodiversity, exacerbating ongoing biodiversity crisis and ultimately the climate change crisis.”

She says these measures can include growing biofuel crops, also known as energy crops, such as sugarcane and soybeans, on a large scale to avoid using fossil fuels. Initially, such crops were meant to be grown on marginal lands.

But with very few marginal lands left, pieces of natural ecosystems are being converted into farmland, often for short-term profit, which in turn does further harm to biodiversity.

Another example of a strategy to combat climate change at the expense of biodiversity, she says, can be tree planting schemes. Rather than working to reduce emissions, “people contribute money for tree planting schemes to offset their carbon footprint. People plant trees and continue to do business as usual.”

“Tree planting schemes can also cause social problems where indigenous people are displaced or ecological problems where trees are planted without factoring in ecological principles such as planting trees that require a lot of water in dry areas, causing serious water scarcity.”

Instead, it is important to implement solutions that take both crises into account and combat climate change and biodiversity loss together.

As governments from around the world gather at COP 15, it is a vital chance to step up for nature. Doing so will call on the global community to leverage the established post-2020 biodiversity framework. The outcome could well be a framework to transform society’s relationship with biodiversity, heal the planet and ensure a sustainable existence for humankind.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A young child receives vaccine drops in Pakistan, but the region has experienced an upsurgence of cases because of vaccine refusal. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Nov 29 2022 (IPS)

Vaccine refusal is impacting the eradication of polio in Pakistan.

Pakistan has vaccinated about 35 million children during its door-to-door campaign, but about 500,000 remained unvaccinated due to refusal by their parents, Jawad Khan Polio officer in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, recorded in 2022 so far.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of Pakistan’s four provinces, has reported all 20 polio cases. North Waziristan has detected 17 infections, Lakki Marwat 2 and South Waziristan 1.

Khan says that hesitancy against vaccination is not a new trend, as Pakistan has been facing this problem since the start of the polio-eradication campaign in the 90s.

Of the 17 cases reported in militancy-riddled North Waziristan, 12 were not vaccinated, while five were partially immunized.

Muhammad Shah, whose son was diagnosed with the polio virus in August, told IPS that he had been opposing vaccination because this wasn’t allowed in Islam.

“Our religion Islam says that no medication is permissible before the occurrence of any ailment; therefore, our people defy vaccination to fulfill their religious obligations,” he said. Shah, a religious preacher, says his son will soon recover from the paralysis.

He says he was unrepentant in refusing vaccination of his child and would continue to thwart efforts by vaccinators to inoculate the toddler.

North Waziristan district, located near Afghanistan’s border, has many militants who staunchly oppose vaccination.

“It was the hub of the polio virus till 2014 when militants ruled the area illegitimately as there was a complete ban on all sorts of immunization. The Taliban militants were evicted through a military operation in 2014, and parents started vaccinating their kids,” Sajjad Ahmed, a senior health worker, said.

According to him, polio vaccinations have decreased with the emergence of militancy in the area.

“In the last three months, three persons, including two policemen and one health worker, have been killed by unknown assailants during a polio drive in North Waziristan,” he said.

People are afraid to take part in the campaign due to fear of reprisals by Taliban militants, he said.

Dr Rafiq Khan, associated with polio immunization in the region, told IPS that parents refuse vaccination, arguing that it was a US and Western plot to render recipients impotent and cut the population of Muslims – a baseless argument.

“Alleged Taliban have killed about 70 vaccinators and policemen since 2012. Government deploys 25,000 policemen in each three-day campaign to ensure the safety of workers,” he said.

Khan said that militants are pressuring the people against vaccination, due to which parents weren’t willing to administer jabs to their kids below five years.

“We are also facing fake finger marking of kids. As a standard procedure, our vaccinators mark the thumb of the vaccine recipients with indelible ink so that we know how many children have been immunized,” he said.

However, the parents ask the vaccinators to mark their kids’ fingers without vaccination, he said. In this way, parents deceive the government.

“Now, we have started convincing the parents through community elders and religious scholars to create demand for vaccination,” he said.

The government has enlisted the services of religious scholars to do away with refusals against poliomyelitis.

Maulana Amir Haq, a pro-vaccination cleric, told IPS that they had been holding awareness sessions with people telling them vaccination is allowed in Islam.

“It is the responsibility of the parents to safeguard their kids against diseases and vaccination aimed to prevent the crippling ailments. There, parents should fulfill their religious duty and inoculate their sons and daughters,” he said.

He said that laboratory reports confirm vaccines given to Pakistan’s children are safe and don’t contain any ingredient to sterilise the recipients. The situation is changing because we now reach hardcore refusal cases and vaccinate them.

Federal Health Minister Abdul Qadir Patel said that it is crucial to understand that the only protection from polio is vaccination, and parents should protect their children against disability through free immunization.

“We want to wipe out the virus and safeguard not only our own kids but all around the world,” he told IPS.

Polio will keep haunting us until we interrupt transmission, Federal Health Secretary Dr. Muhammad Fakhre Alam said.

On August 31, a 16-year-old boy was diagnosed positive for polio in Waziristan, which shows how robust Pakistan’s virus detection network is because it highlights that we can identify polio cases in children outside the usually expected age, he said.

National Emergency Operations Centre Coordinator for polio, Dr Shahzad Baig, expressed concerns about the spread of wild poliovirus as millions of people in the country are displaced by recent floods.

“The scale of the current calamity is absolutely devastating. As part of the polio programme, our network of health workers is here to support in every way we can, but I am deeply concerned about the virus gaining a foothold as millions of people leave their homes and look for refuge elsewhere,” he said.

The province of Balochistan and parts of southern Punjab, and 23 districts of Sindh were unable to hold a vaccination drive as floods swept away homes and villages around the country. Despite the extreme climatic conditions, polio teams reached children in all accessible areas, he said.

Neighbouring Afghanistan is facing the same problems; however, it has detected only two cases this year.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov 29 2022 (IPS)

The recent climate talks in Egypt have left us with a sobering reality: The window for maintaining global warming to 1.5 degrees is closing fast and what is on the table currently is insufficient to avert some of the worst potential effects of climate change. The Nationally Determined Contribution targets of Asian and Pacific countries will result in a 16 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from the 2010 levels.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

The Sharm-el Sheikh Implementation Plan and the package of decisions taken at COP27 are a reaffirmation of actions that could deliver the net-zero resilient world our countries aspire to. The historic decision to establish a Loss and Damage Fund is an important step towards climate justice and building trust among countries.

But they are not enough to help us arrive at a better future without, what the UN Secretary General calls, a “giant leap on climate ambition”. Carbon neutrality needs to at the heart of national development strategies and reflected in public and private investment decisions. And it needs to cascade down to the sustainable pathways in each sector of the economy.

Accelerate energy transition

At the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), we are working with regional and national stakeholders on these transformational pathways. Moving away from the brown economy is imperative, not only because emissions are rising but also because dependence on fossil fuels has left economies struggling with price volatility and energy insecurity.

A clear road map is the needed springboard for an inclusive and just energy transition. We have been working with countries to develop scenarios for such a shift through National Roadmaps, demonstrating that a different energy future is possible and viable with the political will and sincere commitment to action of the public and private sectors.

The changeover to renewables also requires concurrent improvements in grid infrastructure, especially cross-border grids. The Regional Road Map on Power System Connectivity provides us the platform to work with member States toward an interconnected grid, including through the development of the necessary regulatory frameworks for to integrate power systems and mobilize investments in grid infrastructure. The future of energy security will be determined by the ability to develop green grids and trade renewable-generated electricity across our borders.

Green the rides

The move to net-zero carbon will not be complete without greening the transport sector. In Asia and the Pacific transport is primarily powered by fossil fuels and as a result accounted for 24 per cent of total carbon emissions by 2018.

Energy efficiency improvements and using more electric vehicles are the most effective measures to reduce carbon emissions by as much as 60 per cent in 2050 compared to 2005 levels. The Regional Action Programme for Sustainable Transport Development allows us to work with countries to implement and cooperate on priorities for low-carbon transport, including electric mobility. Our work with the Framework Agreement on Facilitation of Cross-border Paperless Trade also is helping to make commerce more efficient and climate-smart, a critical element for the transition in the energy and transport sectors.

Adapting to a riskier future

Even with mitigation measures in place, our economy and people will not be safe without a holistic risk management system. And it needs to be one that prevents communities from being blindsided by cascading climate disasters.

We are working with partners to deepen the understanding of such cascading risks and to help develop preparedness strategies for this new reality, such as the implementation of the ASEAN Regional Plan of Action for Adaptation to Drought.

Make finance available where it matters the most

Finance and investment are uniquely placed to propel the transitions needed. The past five years have seen thematic bonds in our region grow tenfold. Private finance is slowly aligning with climate needs. The new Loss and Damage Fund and its operation present new hopes for financing the most vulnerable. However, climate finance is not happening at the speed and scale needed. It needs to be accessible to developing economies in times of need.

Innovative financing instruments need to be developed and scaled up, from debt-for-climate swaps to SDG bonds, some of which ESCAP is helping to develop in the Pacific and in Cambodia. Growing momentum in the business sector will need to be sustained. The Asia-Pacific Green Deal for Business by the ESCAP Sustainable Business Network (ESBN) is important progress. We are also working with the High-level Climate Champions to bring climate-aligned investment opportunities closer to private financiers.

Lock in higher ambition and accelerate implementation

Climate actions in Asia and the Pacific matter for global success and well-being. The past two years has been a grim reminder that conflicts in one continent create hunger in another, and that emissions somewhere push sea levels higher everywhere. Never has our prosperity been more dependent on collective actions and cooperation.

Our countries are taking note. Member States meeting at the seventh session of the Committee on Environment and Development, which opens today (29 November) are seeking consensus on the regional cooperation needed and priorities for climate action such as oceans, ecosystem and air pollution. We hope that the momentum begun at COP27 and the Committee will be continued at the seventy-ninth session of the Commission as it will hone in on the accelerators for climate action.

In this era of heightened risks and shared prosperity, only regional, multilateral solidarity and genuine ambition that match with the new climate reality unfolding around us — along with bold climate action — are the only way to secure a future where the countries of Asia and the Pacific can prosper.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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After days of intense negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh, countries at the latest UN Climate Change Conference, COP27, reached agreement on an outcome that established a funding mechanism to compensate vulnerable nations for ‘loss and damage’ from climate-induced disasters. 20 November 2022 Credit: United Nations

By Inge Kaul
BERLIN, Nov 29 2022 (IPS)

For decades, there have been non-conclusive deliberations regarding how the international community could support poor and vulnerable countries in their efforts to cope with and recover from the havoc wreaked on their territory by the ill-effects of global warming such as severe droughts, floods, storms, or rising sea levels.

At the COP27 climate summit, this issue figured for the first time as a separate item on the agenda; and, as one of their very last-minute decisions, delegations even agreed to establish a dedicated loss and damage fund (LDF). However, the question of how to operationalize, notably resource the fund was left open.

A “transitional committee” is to be created to examine possible funding options and report to COP28, which could then, eventually, decide on the LDF’s operationalization.

Remembering the many press photos showing the despair written into the faces of people, whose houses and fields were destroyed by floods, or the blank stares of those sitting next to the cadavers of their cattle killed by severe drought conditions,

I feel that business as usual—namely, taking it easy in delivering on funding promises (as we have seen it in the case of the $ 100 billion annual climate-finance promise) — would be an extremely immoral and unethical behavior in the present case.

Therefore, let’s waste no time and start to explore where one could find money fit for the purpose of loss and damage support.

In the following, I argue that only one – still to be established – source will generate on a relatively reliable and predictable manner the longer-term stream of public finance required, as a minimum, for creating a solid basis of LDF core funding.

The funding source to be agreed and established as a matter of highest urgency are UN assessed contributions for climate security.

Money fit for the purpose of loss and damage support

However, at the outset, it is perhaps important to clarify that support for loss and damage should not be confounded with humanitarian assistance delivered as a prompt crisis-response measure.

Disaster may strike countries haphazardly, irrespective of whether they are poor or rich, vulnerable or not. All countries may need or, at least, somehow benefit from immediate and fast-disbursing, short-term humanitarian assistance in cash or kind.

How best to organize such short-term humanitarian assistance is also an important issue that deserves more attention. However, it is an issue beyond the scope of this article.

Therefore, let’s now turn to the specific issue of what type of external support could be most useful for “climate victims”, notably poor and vulnerable countries struggling to rebuild their communities and economies.

An entity such as the newly established LDF and the money that, one day, it might have at its disposal, are governance tools. Like any other tools they should be fit for the purpose at hand.

Considering for now mainly the core funding that the LDF needs to have, it should perhaps have three key characteristics, namely be: (1) public finance; (2) patient, that is, designed for the longer-term; and (3) relatively predictable in its availability.

The reasons are that, typically, a country’s vulnerability to severe climate events is a complex multi-dimensional phenomenon to which both structural factors (e.g., the countries geographic position and size) and non-structural factors (such as its development level) contribute.

Thus, by implication, meaningful loss-and-damage support is likely to be required for several years, maybe, even for a decade or more. This should not come as a surprise, because even in developed countries rebuilding efforts have often been a lengthy process.

Moreover, in the case of small-island developing countries, it could even be that parts of the population need to be resettled to start their life anew.

Initially, patient, predictable public finance may constitute the most important source of funding. As the rebuilding process advances, the public funds could also play an important role in helping to mobilize other resource inflows, including private investments.

Or, they could be twinned with adaptation finance and other types of climate finance, as well as official development assistance.

Making the case for UN assessed contributions for climate-security, including loss and damage support

By now, there exists broad-based agreement that our security today depends on more than the security of our countries’ external borders and on more than the control of within-country conflicts and violence.

As US President Joe Biden, noted in his statement to COP27, military security today is only one dimension of our security, next to climate and food security; and, as COVID-19 taught us, next to global health security.

The security threats we are facing are global in their reach; they tie us together in a web of manifold interdependencies. They require all hands-on deck, or no one will be secure. The United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) is, therefore, correct in pushing for a “Climate Solidarity Pact.”

Thus, it is timely to ask: Why do we have, within the UN, only an established system of assessed contributions to support efforts aimed at keeping and restoring military security? Why not also assessed contributions – a solidarity-based pact – to climate security?

Among the reasons that strongly speak for this financing option are several. First, such contributions could be introduced for, say, an initial period of 20 years, subject, of course, to regular monitoring of their functioning and impact.

Evidently, they would provide the type of reliable and predictable long-term public finance that the LDF needs.

Second, agreement on a UN funding scale for climate security would help end the present continuous tussle among countries over who should contribute how much. The UN assessment scale for determining individual countries’ contributions to climate security would be based on a joint decision by member states.

Besides income (capacity to pay) one would, in the present case, certainly also consider past and current per-capita emission levels and other relevant factors.

Many aspects of the proposed funding source still need further élaboration and consultations. However, let’s start at the beginning and encourage a world-wide dialogue on the pros and cons of the following issues.

Should we: (1) consider climate security, notably that of vulnerable countries, as a global security issue; and (2) grant climate security the same financing privilege that military security enjoys, namely, to benefit from assessed contributions paid by all UN member states according to a formula that aims at promoting climate security and justice?

Why not ?

Inge Kaul is a fellow at the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Timothy A. Wise and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
BOSTON and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 29 2022 (IPS)

Despite its dismal record, the Gates Foundation-sponsored Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) announced a new five-year strategy in September after rebranding itself by dropping ‘Green Revolution’ from its name.

Rebranding, not reform
Instead of learning from experience and changing its approach accordingly, AGRA’s new strategy promises more of the same. Ignoring evidence, criticisms and civil society pleas and demands, the Gates Foundation has committed another $200 million to its new five-year plan, bringing its total contribution to around $900 million.

Timothy A. Wise

More than two-thirds of AGRA’s funding has come from Gates, with African governments providing much more – as much as a billion dollars yearly – in subsidies for Green Revolution seeds and fertilizers.

Stung by criticism of its poor results, AGRA delayed announcing its new strategy by a year, while its chief executive shepherded the controversial UN Food Systems Summit of 2021. Following this, AGRA has been using more UN Sustainable Development Goals rhetoric.

Hence, AGRA’s new slogan – ‘Sustainably Growing Africa’s Food Systems’. Likewise, the new plan claims to “lay the foundation for a sustainable food systems-led inclusive agricultural transformation”. But beyond such lip service, there is little evidence of any meaningful commitment to sustainable agriculture in the $550 million plan for 2023–27.

Despite heavy government subsidies, AGRA promotion of commercial seeds and fertilizers for just a few cereal crops failed to significantly increase productivity, incomes or even food security. But instead of addressing past shortcomings, the new plan still relies heavily on more of the same despite its failure to “catalyze” a productivity revolution among African farmers.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The supposedly new strategy dashes any hopes that AGRA or the Gates Foundation would acknowledge the harmful social and environmental effects of Green Revolutions in India, Africa and elsewhere. AGRA offered no explanation for why it dropped ‘Green Revolution’ from its name.

The name change suggests the 16-year-old AGRA wants to dissociate itself from past failures, but without acknowledging its own flawed approach. Recently, much higher fertilizer prices – following sanctions against Russia and Belarus after the Ukraine invasion – have worsened the lot of farmers relying on AGRA recommended inputs.

It is time to change course, with policies promoting ecological farming by reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizers as appropriate. But despite its new slogan, AGRA’s new strategy intends otherwise.

Last month, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa rejected the strategy and name change as “cosmetic”, “an admission of failure” of the Green Revolution project, and “a cynical distraction” from the urgent need to change course.

Productivity gains and losses
Despite spending well over a billion dollars, AGRA’s productivity gains have been modest, and only for a few more heavily subsidized crops such as maize and rice. And from 2015 to 2020, cereal yields have not risen at all.

Meanwhile, traditional food crop production has declined under AGRA, with millet falling over a fifth. Yields actually also fell for cassava, groundnuts and root crops such as sweet potato. Across a basket of staple crops, yields rose only 18% in 12 years.

Farmer incomes have not risen, especially after increased production costs are taken into account. As for halving hunger, which Gates and AGRA originally promised, the number of ‘severely undernourished’ people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries increased by 31%!

A donor-commissioned evaluation confirmed many adverse farmer outcomes. It found the minority of farmers who benefited were mainly better-off men, not smallholder women the programme was ostensibly meant for.

That did not deter the Gates Foundation from committing more to AGRA despite its dismal track record, failed strategy, and poor monitoring to track progress. Judging by the new five-year plan, we can expect even less accountability.

The new plan does not even set measurable goals for yields, incomes or food security. As the saying goes, what you don’t measure you don’t value. Apparently, AGRA does not value agricultural productivity, even though it is still at the core of the organization’s strategy.

Last month, the Rockefeller Foundation, AGRA’s other founding donor and a leader of the first Green Revolution from the 1950s, announced a reduction in its grant to AGRA and a decisive step back from the Green Revolution approach.

Its grant to AGRA supports school feeding initiatives and “alternatives to fossil-fuel derived fertilisers and pesticides through the promotion of regenerative agricultural practices such as cultivation of nitrogen-fixing beans”.

Business in charge
AGRA’s new strategy is built on a series of “business lines”, e.g., the “sustainable farming business line” will coordinate with the “Seed Systems business line” to sell inputs. Private Village Based Advisors are meant to provide training and planting advice in this privatized, commercial reincarnation of the government or quasi-government extension services of an earlier era.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization successfully promoted peer-learning of agro-ecological practices via Farmer Field Schools after successfully field-testing them. This came about after research showed ‘brown hoppers’ thrived in Asian rice farms after Green Revolution pesticides eliminated the insect’s natural predators.

China lost a fifth of its 2007-08 paddy harvest to the pest, triggering a price spike in the thinly traded world rice market. Seeking help from the International Rice Research Institute, located in the Philippines, a Chinese delegation found its Entomology Department had lost most of its former capacity due to under-funding.

Earlier international agricultural research collaboration associated with the first Green Revolution – especially in wheat, maize and rice – seems to have collapsed, surrendering to corporate and philanthropic interests. This bitter experience encouraged China to step up its agronomic research efforts with a greater agro-ecological emphasis.

Empty promises?
The new strategy promises “AGRA will promote increased crop diversification at the farm level”. But its advisers cum salespeople have a vested interest in selling their wares, rather than good local seeds which do not require repeat purchases every planting season.

AGRA is not strengthening resilience by promoting agroecology or reducing farmer reliance on costly inputs such as fossil fuel fertilizers and other, often toxic, agrochemicals. Despite many proven African agroecological initiatives, support for them remains modest.

The new strategy stresses irrigation, key to most other Green Revolutions, but conspicuously absent from Africa’s Green Revolution. But the plan is deafeningly silent on how fiscally strapped governments are to provide such crucial infrastructure, especially in the face of growing water, fiscal and debt stress, worsened by global warming.

It is often said stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Perhaps this is due to the technophile conceit that some favoured innovation is superior to everything else, including scientific knowledge, processes and agro-ecological solutions.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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