Africa

"Afafata" rice is usually discarded but rising prices mean many northern families are now eating it.

A poster of the World Social Forum in Kathmandu, to be held Feb. 15-19, 2024. This is the second time that the Forum is holding its world meeting in Asia. The first was in Mumbai, India, in 2004, when it was attended by 111,000 people. CREDIT: WSF

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 13 2024 (IPS)

The World Social Forum (WSF) is today “more necessary than ever,” according to Oded Grajew, promoter and co-founder of the global civil society meeting – a festival of diversity that has not yet succeeded in fomenting or designing the “other possible world” that it predicted when it was created and adopted that motto.

The WSF, whose next edition will be held Feb. 15-19 in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, first emerged in 2001 in Porto Alegre, a city in southern Brazil, at the initiative of Brazilian organizations and social movements, in coordination with international groups.

The idea proposed by Grajew was to hold a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum, which meets annually in the Swiss Alps city of Davos. Hence the similar name but different focus, on social issues, the initial coincidence of dates in January, and the banners against neoliberalism and globalization.

The first edition brought together nearly 20,000 people from 117 countries. Participation grew and exceeded 100,000 people in several global meetings held in different countries, after the first three held in Porto Alegre, where it has returned on several occasions.

The meetings took place in the Indian city of Mumbai in 2004, then in 2006, the WSF was divided between Bamako (Mali) and Caracas, to be followed by Nairobi (2007), Dakar (2011), Tunis (2013 and 2015) and Mexico City (2022).

In addition to Porto Alegre, it returned to Brazil in 2009 (Belém, in the eastern Amazon) and 2018 (Salvador, in the northeast). And it expanded into national, regional and thematic forums, promoting debates on a range of issues, from economic to environmental and climate, gender, ethnic, sexual minorities, and disabilities questions.

But the WSF has been in decline since the last decade. It has lost its initial charm and repercussions, and its current impact on global crises is hardly noticeable, especially since it was born as a movement that did not aim to reach conclusions, but rather to generate debates and demonstrate that “another world is possible.”

“We are losing the game so far,” Grajew told IPS by telephone from Sao Paulo. “The climate crisis has worsened, inequalities and conflicts have grown, with the risk of nuclear war, confidence in democracy is declining and global governance is lacking. These are enormous risks that threaten the human species.”

All of this increases the need to revitalize the WSF, because it is about strengthening civil society, the only way to solve the challenges, in the view of its organizers.

The WSF, despite everything, has already left a legacy as a “space for making connections and mounting resistance by society around the world,” Grajew said. It contributed to raising the visibility of the climate emergency on the international agenda, strengthened the anti-racist struggle and fostered alliances that made indigenous peoples “political actors in a way that they were not before,” he said, to illustrate.

In Brazil, it was the increasingly strong civil society that prevented a coup d’état that would have installed a dictatorship and returned the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro to office, said Grajew, currently an advisor to several institutions and president emeritus of the Ethos Institute for Business and Social Responsibility, a businessman turned social activist who remains so at the age of 80.

A picture from one of the first editions of the World Social Forum, in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, showing the globe seen from the South, which has been a repeated part of its logos, as well as its slogan: “Another world is possible”. The assembly style that does not reach conclusions has been at the same time the strength and weakness of the movement. CREDIT: Claes

Solutions and resources are available

“Today we know what the problems of humanity are and how to solve them; what is lacking is political will,” Grajew argued.

“Our problem is not economic, it’s not a lack of resources; it’s a problem of political and social organization,” said Ladislau Dowbor, an 83-year-old economist who always addresses the WSF. “Global GDP is 100 trillion dollars per year, equivalent to 4,200 dollars a month per family of four people. It is enough for a decent and comfortable life for all. All that would be needed is a tax of only four percent on the fortunes of the richest one percent of humanity.”

The WSF is an attempt to create a connected political force from the profusion of organizations and social movements in which civil society seems to be fragmented, with a multiplicity of banners, from environmental to feminist, anti-racist and egalitarian.

There was an explosion of social diversity in the 1960s and 1970s, with the affirmation of multiple identities and their struggles, which seek convergence in processes such as the WSF. These are generally progressive movements, which are not automatically connected together.

The most immediate antecedent was the so-called “Battle for Seattle,” the city in the northwest U.S. state of Washington that in 1999 brought together anti-globalization activists during a World Trade Organization summit, demanding globalization of the people and not of the economy.

“It’s a long-term process. Diversity is a richness, but sometimes it is divided by identity sectarianism,” said Daniel Aarão Reis, a 78-year-old historian who extensively studied Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship and the Soviet revolution.

In his view, the consolidation of opposition to or containment of the damage caused by capitalism in the current situation faces two adverse factors.

“One is the decline of the working class, which since the late nineteenth century, concentrated in the cities, had a demographic weight and organized strength to lead that struggle, attracting other popular segments, which were sometimes even a majority of the population, such as peasant farmers. But it has suffered demographic losses, slow but evident since the 1970s,” Aarão Reis said.

Another is the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which gave way to unbridled capitalism, with the “restoration of tsarist traditions.” This hit progressive forces even if they were critical of authoritarian socialism. For a long period Moscow had supported, for example, national liberation struggles.

Photo of a march of the Thematic Social Forum on Older Adults in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, in January 2023. Thematic, national and regional forums proliferated around the world after the first global meetings of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, from 2001 to 2003, and in Mumbai, India, in 2004. CREDIT: Tânia Rego / Agência Brasil

Far right can unite progressives

“Creating connections between the myriad of dispersed currents, without a powerful hub such as workers’ struggles, with their unions and parties, is a great challenge. But sometimes an external enemy helps foment these connections. That was the case of Nazism, which gave rise to a broad alliance against it,” the historian said in an interview with IPS in Rio de Janeiro.

The far right, which brings together racism, threat to democracy, misogyny and other retrograde stances, can “help condense that dispersed nebula that the left has become,” said Aarão Reis, a professor at the Fluminense Federal University.

In the case of the WSF, its apparent loss of momentum exacerbated internal divisions in the International Council which is responsible for managing the forum.

“The WSF is like the spiritual exercises of the church, which benefit those who are present, but are basically internal, and don’t spread to society,” by not expressing itself on the burning issues of the world and thus making it impossible to communicate outwardly, Argentine- Italian Roberto Savio, co-founder and president emeritus of Inter Press Service (IPS), who was an active member of the International Council, said from Rome.

This is how the 89-year-old expert on South-South communications described the disagreement of some activists and advisers with the Charter of Principles that defines the WSF as “a plural and diversified space” of reflection and connection of entities and movements, that is “non-partisan” and “non-deliberative.”

Screenshot from the closing assembly, on Jan. 31, of the World Social Forum 2021, which was held only in digital format that year. The difficulties of organizing an unprecedented online meeting did not prevent, according to the organizers, 9,561 participants from 144 countries and 1,360 organizations from taking part in 751 activities, including workshops, round tables, debates and sectoral assemblies. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Not a party

Chico Whitaker, another co-founder of the Forum and a fervent defender of the Charter of Principles, said “We have to continue being a space for connection, for the search for alternatives and forms of action, for new paths. Action is a function of the participating organizations and movements, not of the Forum.”

The discrepancy has existed since the beginning of the WSF and stems from “an old culture of hierarchical, autocratic politics,” he told IPS by telephone from São Paulo.

At 92 years of age, Whitaker regretted that he was not able to travel to Kathmandu which was “too far away,” and that he would be engaged in “very limited” digital participation.

The edition in Kathmandu will be hybrid, both face-to-face and digital, but the time zone difference between the capital of Nepal and São Paulo, for example, is nine hours, which makes it difficult to follow the activities from afar.

That is why the debates of greatest interest in the Americas will be held at night in the Nepali capital, said Rita Freire, representative of the Ciranda network, which is in charge of the WSF collaborative communication at the International Council.

Freire, a 66-year-old journalist and editor of the Middle East Monitor, also represents an alternative of political action “within the process of the Forum, but maintaining the Charter of Principles.”

A new body is being tested in Kathmandu, the Assembly of Struggles and Resistance with social movements, which will adopt political positions and declarations. “But it will do so in its own name and not in the name of the Forum,” Freire clarified from São Paulo by telephone a few hours before taking a flight to Kathmandu.

Holding the gathering in Asia opens new horizons for the WSF, as it is the most dynamic region of the global South, at least in economic terms, agreed Freire and Whitaker. It reflects a mobilization of the social organizations of Nepal and neighboring countries, which came together and offered to host the Forum.

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By Anil Ari and Lev Ratnovski
WASHINGTON DC, Feb 13 2024 (IPS)

In the early 1970s, conflict in the Middle East set off a spike in oil prices that left central banks around the world scrambling to control inflation. After a year or so, oil prices stabilized and inflation started to retreat. Many countries believed they had restored price stability and loosened policy to revive their recession-hit economies only to see inflation return. Could history repeat?

World inflation reached historic highs in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered a terms-of-trade shock akin to that of the 1970s. Disruptions to Russian oil and gas supplies added to COVID supply-chain problems to drive prices higher. In advanced economies, prices rose at the fastest pace since 1984. In emerging market and developing economies, the price increase was the largest since the 1990s.

Aided by the sharpest rise in interest rates in a generation, inflation has started to subside at last. Headline inflation in the United States and across much of Europe has halved from about 10 percent last year to less than 5 percent today. The latest conflict in the Middle East has, for now at least, not had a large impact on oil prices. But it is still too soon for policymakers to celebrate victory over inflation.

Our recent study of over 100 inflation shocks since the 1970s offers two reasons for caution. First, history teaches us that inflation is persistent. It takes years to “resolve” inflation by reducing it to the rate that prevailed before the initial shock. Forty percent of countries in our study failed to resolve inflation shocks even after five years. It took the remaining 60 percent an average of three years to return inflation to pre-shock rates (Chart 1).

Second, countries have historically celebrated victory over inflation and loosened policy prematurely in response to an initial decline in price pressures. This was a mistake because inflation soon returned. Denmark, France, Greece, and the United States were among nearly 30 countries in our sample to loosen policy prematurely after the 1973 oil-price shock (Chart 2).

In fact, almost all countries in our analysis (90 percent) that failed to resolve inflation saw price growth slow sharply in the first few years after an initial shock, only to accelerate again or become stuck at a faster pace.

Today’s policymakers must not repeat their predecessors’ mistakes. Central bankers are right to warn that the inflation fight is far from over, even as recent readings show a welcome moderation in price pressures.

Consistency and credibility

How should policymakers respond to persistent inflation? Again, history provides some lessons. The countries in our study that successfully resolved inflation tightened macroeconomic policies more in response to the inflation shock and, crucially, maintained a tight policy stance consistently over a period of several years.

Examples here include Italy and Japan, which adopted tighter-for-longer policies after the 1979 oil-price shock. By contrast, countries that did not resolve inflation had looser policy stances and were more likely to change between tightening and loosening cycle (Chart 3).

Policy credibility matters, too. Countries where inflation expectations were more firmly anchored, or where central banks had more success maintaining low and stable inflation in the past, were more likely to defeat inflation.

Today’s policymakers can take some solace from this finding. Central bankers in many countries may find it easier to defeat inflation this time because of the policy credibility they have built up over several decades of successful macroeconomic management. With the right policies in place, countries could resolve inflationary pressures sooner than in the past.

But it won’t be easy. Conditions in the labor market in particular require close attention. In many countries, workers’ wages have fallen in real inflation-adjusted terms and may need to rise again to catch up with higher prices. Yet wage growth could fuel inflation if it is too high and could lead to pernicious wage-price spirals.

Historically, countries that resolved inflation successfully tended to have lower nominal wage growth. Importantly, this did not translate into lower real wages and a loss of purchasing power, because lower nominal wage growth was accompanied by lower price growth.

The implication for policymakers here is to remain focused on real wages, not nominal wages, when responding to developments in the labor market.

Countries that resolved inflation successfully were also better at maintaining external stability. Free-floating currencies were less likely to depreciate sharply, and currency pegs were more likely to survive. This is not a call for currency intervention.

Instead, it appears that countries’ success in fighting inflation—through tighter monetary policy and greater policy credibility—was instrumental in shoring up exchange rates. Countries that allow inflation to linger ultimately pay a higher price.

The ultimate prize

Fighting inflation is difficult. But it is important to recognize the benefits of price stability. Historically, countries that resolved inflation had lower economic growth in the short term than those that did not. But this relationship reversed over the medium and long term.

Five years after the inflation shock, countries that resolved inflation had higher growth and lower unemployment than economies that allowed inflation to linger.

The economics behind this finding are intuitive. There is a trade-off between bringing inflation down on one hand and achieving higher growth and lower unemployment on the other. But this trade-off is temporary: growth recovers and jobs are created once inflation is brought under control.

By contrast, leaving inflation unresolved comes with its own costs of macroeconomic instability and inefficiency. These costs accumulate for as long as inflation remains high. Consequently, cumulative welfare losses from unresolved or permanently high inflation dominate over the medium to long term (Chart 4). Countries that allow inflation to linger ultimately pay a higher price.

Central bankers are on the front line of the fight against inflation and should pay the most attention to these lessons. But governments must not make the task of monetary authorities harder by adding to price pressures with loose fiscal policy.

To make fiscal support during a cost-of-living crisis less inflationary, governments should target relief to the most vulnerable, where it will alleviate suffering most.

The past is never a perfect guide to the present, because no two crises are precisely alike. All the same, history offers clear lessons to policymakers today. Fighting inflation is a marathon, not a sprint. Policymakers must persevere, demonstrate policy credibility and consistency, and keep their eyes on the prize: macroeconomic stability and stronger growth brought about by returning inflation firmly to target.

If history is a guide, inflation’s recent decline could be transitory. Policymakers would be wise not to celebrate too soon.

Source: IMF Finance and Development

Anil Ari is an economist in the IMF’s Strategy, Policy, and Review Department; Lev Ratnovski is an economist in the IMF’s European Department.

The opinions expressed are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect IMF policy.
This article draws on IMF Working Paper 2023/190, “One Hundred Inflation Shocks: Seven Stylized Facts,” by Anil Ari, Carlos Mulas-Granados, Victor Mylonas, Lev Ratnovski, and Wei Zhao.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A view of part of Guayaquil, Ecuador's second most populated city and main port, which is now dominated by violence as a hub for shipping drugs out of the country to the United States and Europe. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS

By Carolina Loza
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador, Feb 12 2024 (IPS)

“For a couple of years now we’ve been seeing the violence growing so fast,” said José, who asked not to give his last name for fear of reprisals he may face in Monte Sinai, a low-income neighborhood in Ecuador’s most populous city, Guayaquil.

José, a 45-year-old Venezuelan, came here looking for a better life in 2019. “You could scrape by, barely, but you could make a living,” he said.

For José, Ecuador offered an opportunity for a peaceful life that allowed him to cover his expenses and raise his three children, something he could no longer do in his native Venezuela. He first moved to a shantytown in this part of western Guayaquil, which is also the country’s main port and one of its two economic hubs, along with Quito, the capital.

José paused before telling IPS: “In the last two years, the violence has accelerated, it’s impossible to live.”

This South American country has recently become one of the most violent in Latin America and the world. And José’s anxious observations coincide with the analysis of different organizations and experts.

Ecuador’s geographic position between two cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, make it a strategic location for drug distribution across the Pacific Ocean.

The demand for drug trafficking, the gradual economic devastation and the weakening of the country’s political system exacerbated in 2023 with the dissolution of the legislature and a call for early elections, helped strengthen criminal gangs, which began to take root in Ecuador as part of the chain of trafficking of cocaine and other drugs.

Growing institutional corruption enabled the gangs to infiltrate the police and the prison system, making it easier for imprisoned criminal leaders to turn prison facilities, intended for rehabilitation, into their centers of operations and expansion.

In the gangs’ struggle to gain control, in 2021, the first large-scale massacre inside a prison in Ecuador occurred, something that became routine as the violence escalated.

For years in Ecuador, criminal organizations have been coordinating their actions against the State, according to Renato Rivera-Rhon, an organized crime and security analyst. “Prisons are an environment of opportunity for organized crime in Ecuador,” he said in an interview with InSightCrime, an organization that focuses on criminal activities.

Rivera-Rhon mentioned that networks within prisons facilitate dialogue, and gang leaders have lawyers within the network, indicating the existence of a web of a certain level of agreements between organized crime gangs.

Police officers prepare to patrol the streets in Guayaquil, on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, days after the declaration of a state of emergency as the government tries to combat the drug gangs that have turned Ecuador into one of the world’s most violent countries. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS

José told IPS how he went from being a street vendor outside schools in Guayaquil without any complications to becoming a victim of extortion, forced to make “protection payments” known locally as “vacunas” or vaccines.

Monte Sinai was one of the first areas in Guayaquil where residents and business owners became the victims of criminal gangs who began demanding “vacunas”, although none of the residents consulted by IPS would identify the group that controls the area, and they never refer to it by name.

The extortion method varies depending on the business and the payment can be demanded weekly, monthly or, as in José’s case, daily. “One of them (a gang member) would hang around when I was selling outside the schools, and would keep track of how much I sold and charge me a third of what I earned that day,” José said.

“You can’t live like this. They don’t let you do anything, you can’t survive,” he complained.

One of José’s three sons was also a victim of extortion when he set up a fast food business selling mainly hamburgers.

Friends of José told him that when they rode on public transportation buses, people would get on and ask for “a little donation,” which was actually another form of extortion. The charge was one dollar, which they had to plan for on top of the 0.35 cent fare.

“You prefer not to ride the bus, because you don’t have the money to pay a dollar for each trip,” said a friend of José’s who preferred not to be identified.

Monte Sinai is a rapidly growing neighborhood, a city within a city as some demographers call it, where a large number of people make a living in the informal economy.

In Ecuador, a country of some 17 million inhabitants, where more than 3.6 million people live in Greater Guayaquil, over 50 percent of the economically active population works in the informal economy.

The growth of gangs in Ecuador took hold gradually, in poor areas such as Monte Sinai, and their presence and control boomed during the last two years. Bomb threats, sporadic detonations, leaflets in which gangs threaten individuals or groups such as immigrants, and an increase in robberies are reflections of the violent control exercised by these groups.

The activity of the gangs has spread throughout the country, in an escalation that has reached the point of total chaos at times, such as on Jan. 9.

That day, a television station was taken over by a gang in Guayaquil, there were bomb threats in several cities and shootings near judicial entities, which led the government to declare a state of emergency.

The state of emergency allowed for joint military and police action in the streets and prisons, under the premise that the State is in conflict with armed criminal groups.

Lorenzo and his teenage son Carlos are photographed on one of the unpaved streets of Monte Sinai, a low-income neighborhood in northwest Guayaquil, which they had to flee because of threats and extortion by criminal gangs in the area. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS

Rivera-Rhon stressed that on Jan. 9, the alliances and ties between criminal gangs were demonstrated by the scope and coordination of the chaos in the country and the fear provoked among the public.

He said that “if you look at things from the point of view of someone in the capital, law enforcement has a monopoly of force, but this is not the case in rural areas, where there is total abandonment by the State.”

The expert on crime mentioned how in localities on the border with Colombia, there was already a social order imposed by armed groups that “generated a contagion to other areas of the country” and wondered whether the State had control over the exercise of force in other parts of the country and neighborhoods in cities such as Guayaquil.

Carlos Carrión, secretary of the Fundación Desaparecidos en Ecuador (Foundation for Missing People), said abandonment by the State has been going on for decades. A resident of Jaramijó, a fishing village near the port city of Manta, for years he has led petitions for the repatriation of fishermen imprisoned in the United States for transporting drugs.

Carrión pointed to the lack of response at the State level and the growing control of drug trafficking networks that recruit fishermen, without any control by the armed forces. “Nobody seems to have cared for years, and look where we’ve ended up,” Carrión told IPS by telephone from Jaramijó, some 190 kilometers north of Guayaquil.

Lorenzo, 46, said the Jan. 9 violence was nothing new. In 2023 he had to move from Guayaquil to the port of Posorja, after he became the victim of robberies and closed down his small business.

“Outside the store there were four guys on a motorcycle. From far away, one of them pulled a gun on me and I didn’t know how to get away. I had a backpack, where I carried my phone. I also had my watch and money that I always carry, about 20 or 40 dollars. They took everything,” said Lorenzo, who had worked hard to open a small store selling food and other products in Monte Sinai.

He told IPS that “they said to me: ‘get out of here.’ They left quickly, after going around the same street twice.” It was the last episode of violence and extortion he put up with in Guayaquil and the one that led him to decide to close his shop and look for work in Posorja, a small fishing port 113 kilometers away.

“I used to live here, but now we’re doing better. I had my monthly income from the store, but I had to leave the house in Monte Sinai to rent in Posorja,” he said during one of his last Sunday visits to the neighborhood to see friends and check on his now empty house.

One of his sons, teenager Carlos, was with him on the Sunday he was interviewed by IPS in Monte Sinai. His two older sons have also moved out of the neighborhood.

Businesses are closed in a small shopping center on Delta Avenue, near the main university in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, due to people’s fear of going out in certain areas of the port city. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS

Lorenzo’s biggest fear before leaving Monte Sinai was that something would happen to his children. He even considered emigrating in 2022, crossing the Darien Gap, after hearing about people who had made it through that dangerous stretch of Panamanian jungle to the United States.

Both José and Lorenzo lived in fear of the impact that the violence and increased insecurity could have on their families.

According to José, violence during 2023 in the area “increased by 70 percent.” And so far, according to his former neighbors, the armed forces have not yet arrived in Monte Sinaí, despite the fact that a state of emergency has been declared and that the area is notorious for the violence suffered by local residents.

José stays in contact with his former neighbors, a community that welcomed him with solidarity and to which he will always be grateful.

“I love Ecuador, I was welcomed here, but the situation had become unlivable,” he said from Quito, the capital, where he now sells candy at stop lights. At the end of January, José decided to move to Quito and check out the possibility of settling in this city, where he feels safer.

With most of Monte Sinai’s schools closed due to the violence, José had no alternative when he was left without a source of income and became subject to constant threats, he told IPS during a second meeting in Quito, 430 kilometers from his old life.

His eldest son sold the supplies for his fast food business and returned to Venezuela, while his two teenagers are still in Guayaquil, waiting for their father to get everything ready in Quito.

Lorenzo is no longer returning to Monte Sinai, he told IPS by telephone from Pasorj
a a few days after the interview there, because both he and his son Carlos received new threats. He is looking for alternatives to move to the coastal province of Manabí, which is also affected by violence, although to a lesser degree than Guayas province, of which Guayaquil is the capital.

José finds some consolation in living in Quito and being able to go out on the street with a little more peace of mind. He quotes a friend who stayed in Guayaquil: “Back there, the only thing they don’t charge us for is breathing.”

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Goitered gazelle: Credit CMS

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Feb 12 2024 (IPS)

A groundbreaking State of the World’s Migratory Species report is calling for accelerated global conservation measures to counter the threat of extinction faced by 1 in 5 of all migratory species.

The report was launched at the opening press conference of the 14th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS COP14) in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on Feb. 12. 

It is the first comprehensive assessment of migratory animals—species that travel to different parts of the world every year. They include ocean species like sharks and sea turtles, terrestrial animals such as elephants, as well as those undertaking airborne journeys like birds and butterflies. The report’s authors say migratory species’ remarkable journeys not only connect the world; they offer a unique angle to research and understand the magnitude of planetary changes.

The report has concluded that the conservation status of migratory species overall is deteriorating. Its results have been described as “startling” by the Executive Secretary of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), Amy Fraenkel.

“Overexploitation emerges as the greatest threat for many migratory species, surpassing habitat loss and fragmentation,” she stated in the report. “This includes the taking of species from the wild through intentional removal, such as through hunting and fishing, as well as the incidental capture of non-target species. Bycatch of non-target species in fisheries is a leading cause of mortality of many CMS-listed marine species.”

State of the World’s Migratory Species, Credit: CMS

Some of the troubling findings include population declines for almost half of CMS migratory species, extinction threats for almost all (97%) of CMS-listed fish, and a growing extinction risk for migratory species globally, including those not listed under the CMS.

“Migratory species are of ecological, economic, and cultural importance. Within ecosystems, they perform a variety of crucial functions, ranging from the large-scale transfer of nutrients between environments to the positive impacts of grazing animals on grassland biodiversity,” the report states.

It adds that these species’ habitats and movements are at risk, with half experiencing unsustainable levels of human-induced pressure.

“The urgency for action to protect and conserve these species becomes even greater when we consider the integral but undervalued role they play in maintaining the complex ecosystems that support a healthy planet—by, for example, transferring nutrients between environments, performing migratory grazing that supports the maintenance of carbon-storing habitats, and pollination and seed dispersal services,” said Inger Andersen, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Environment Programme.

The present reality for migratory species and the cost of inaction or inadequate action are concerning, but the report is heavy on both hope and concrete recommendations for global action.

It contains a section dedicated to proposed policy actions. Among the most crucial are the need to address the unsustainable and illegal harvesting of migratory species at the national level, measures to reduce bycatch and other incidental captures, and the identification and recognition of all significant sites for migratory species.

The recommendations are to “protect, connect, and restore” habitats, tackle overexploitation, reduce the damaging impacts of environmental pollution, address the root causes and cross-cutting impacts of climate change, and ensure the CMS Appendices protect all migratory species in need of further conservation action. They also call for ‘follow-through’ on global commitments to ecosystem restoration.

“This includes those linked to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and Target 2 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to ensure that at least 30% of degraded terrestrial, inland water, and coastal and marine ecosystems are under effective restoration by 2030. To support these efforts, develop and implement national restoration plans focused on restoring and maintaining important habitats for migratory species,” it states.

UNEP’s Inger Andersen says the report is an important milestone in the establishment of a roadmap for the conservation of migratory species.

“Given the precarious situation of many of these animals and their critical role for healthy and well-functioning ecosystems, we must not miss this chance to act—starting now by urgently implementing the recommendations set out in this report,” she stated.

For the CMS’ Amy Fraenkel, conservation of migratory species is a shared responsibility among the world’s nations.

“Migratory species are a shared natural treasure. This landmark report will help underpin much-needed policy actions to ensure that they continue to traverse the world’s skies, lands, oceans, lakes, and rivers.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

The United Nations inaugural assessment of the state of global migratory species states that 1 in 5 faces extinction and warns that the world cannot afford to miss this chance to act on recommendations to protect, connect, and restore habitats.

Women who always ate last in the household had four times greater chance of having “probable depression,” study finds. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Feb 12 2024 (IPS)

Studies have long shown that some women’s lower status in Nepali households could mean that they eat last and less and as a result lack nutrition. Experts are now looking into how this could affect their mental health, and if the growing impacts of climate change might amplify the process.

“When women eat last (as a mark of respect or due to low status in the household), they often get the last bits of food left over, and they may be compromising the amount of food, which could also be adversely impacting their mental health,” says researcher Lakshmi Gopalakrishnan, in an online interview.

Gopalakrishnan’s research is based on interviews with about 200 newly married women, ages 18-25, in Nawalparasi District in Nepal’s southern Madhesh region, bordering northern India. As is customary, the women moved into their new husband’s homes, living with in-laws in an extended family. They also ate after everyone else had finished their meals, another custom.

The study, titled The relationship between the gendered norm of eating last and mental health of newly married women in Nepal, found that women who always ate last in the household had four times greater chance of having “probable depression.” The reason? Eating last is symbolic of women’s ranking in the household, explains Gopalakrishnan. In the newly married context, women “don’t have the autonomy to make their own decisions; they don’t have the freedom to move outside the house,” she adds.

 

Food insecurity is key

More recent research concluded that household food insecurity is the main factor in determining women’s eating patterns. Although changes such as a woman becoming pregnant or getting a paying job could improve her household status, and therefore her order of eating — at least temporarily — there would be no changes if the household remained food insecure.

Climate change is already destroying croplands, causing farmers to seek seasonal work and migration to escape food insecurity. This leaves their wives victimized in the community, leading to stress and mental illness in these women

“Across the board, women in food insecure households are more likely to eat last always or most of the time,” says the 2022 article, Do changes in women’s household status in Nepal improve access to food and nutrition? published in the journal Maternal & Child Nutrition.

It adds, “a recent analysis of data from India found that women who eat last have worse mental health, suggesting that there could be additional health impacts of this practice.”

Gopalakrishnan did not find the same link between diminishing household food insecurity and eating less. Her study suggests that’s because “women are treated as lower-status individuals regardless of food security levels in the households.”

The researcher is quick to point out that her work did not find that the women had four times as many episodes of depression, but that they were four times more likely to have “probable depression”. She also suggests, but did not measure, that as women are eating last they might not be eating enough or getting adequate nutrition, creating a “biological pathway” to depression.

Chanda Gurung, a consultant in gender equality and social inclusion, agrees that a possible biological link needs further inquiry. “Sometimes there is food, but what kind of food?” she asks in an online interview. “We really need health professionals (who can say) what kind of food is required to affect mental health, such as stress levels, or what women think? The physical impacts we know.”

Gurung formerly worked as a senior gender expert with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, which focuses on eight countries in the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountain region. She is confident that climate change is affecting food security, but adds that there are many more factors that take a toll on rural women’s lives.

“With more men migrating… women’s workload has grown to the point that they shoulder most of the activities now —whether it’s on the farm, meeting government officials, going to health centres; women are doing all that,” Goodyear says.

 

Mental and physical health affected

“In some ways it has made women more empowered, more confident because now they can interact more easily. In a way that’s a blessing… but the work burden is extremely high, which takes a toll on both their physical and mental health.”

The heavier workload, added to societal demands — “She’s alone. Is she getting harassed in the family? Facing a lack of income?” — puts more stresses on women, she adds.

A 2021 assessment found that “mental health issues are likely to increase in Nepal due to climate change… For example, climate change is already destroying croplands, causing farmers to seek seasonal work and migration to escape food insecurity. This leaves their wives victimized in the community, leading to stress and mental illness in these women.”

“Poor, rural, female-headed families will face higher vulnerabilities as the climate continues to change,” concluded the report, by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Gopalakrishnan says studies have shown that there are ways to influence the gender norms that translate into how women are treated in their households.

For example, in one “interventional study”, girls and boys at school were taught about gender equality for two years. “And that actually led to increased support for women and girls opportunities and changed their attitudes towards gender. So these are some examples where we see that yes, it’s possible to change people’s gender attitudes.”

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Secretary-General António Guterres.

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 12 2024 (IPS)

The United Nations and its Member States are up against what the Secretary-General António Guterres calls existential challenges for the world, and they must be organized in taking a united approach to addressing these issues through ambitious plans and widespread reform.

In his statement to the General Assembly on February 7, 2024, Guterres laid out his priorities for the coming year, consisting of various ongoing issues that call for urgent action. He has called for member states to fulfill their obligations to the UN Charter, under which every person’s right to life and dignity should be guaranteed. But at present, governments are undermining the tenets of multilateralism with no accountability, he said.

The mechanisms in a multipolar world that would keep relations in check are not present, he added. “We are seeing the results: a dangerous and unpredictable free-for-all with total impunity,” he said. “…As conflicts proliferate, global humanitarian needs are at an all-time high, but funding is not keeping pace.”

When he spoke to reporters on February 8, 2024, he added: “When the world is divided and the geopolitical divides today are enormous, when we see that we are no longer in a bipolar or unipolar world, we are kind of on the way to a multipolar world, but in a very chaotic situation. Power relations became unclear. And what we see today in the world is political actors doing whatever they want and with total impunity.”

Since the previous year’s SDG Summit, calls have been made for major reforms, notably in the Security Council and in international financial architecture. Much has been said about the divisions within the Council that have prevented decisions from being made. In the context of the current war between Israel and Hamas, resolutions that would have called for a humanitarian ceasefire have not been passed due to those member states that did not vote in favor.

To that end, Guterres has said that the Council’s working methods must be updated in order to make and implement decisions, even where there is division. He added that the Council must also take steps to become more representative, noting that it was unacceptable that the African continent did not have a permanent seat in the Council.

In the context of international financing, Guterres remarked that the architecture was failing to provide all countries with the affordable finance needed to achieve shared goals. They do not provide the “basic function of providing a financial safety net for all developing countries,” he said. This has come as a way to address the ripple effect of disruptions in development and the global supply chain that have been caused by the compounding crises of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate-induced disasters, and conflicts.

The countries that would benefit most from stronger financial support in the current architecture are receiving the least of its benefits. Developing countries in particular have been hit hardest by the disruptions in the global economy, which Guterres noted will be addressed in the upcoming conferences for Small Island Developing States and Landlocked Developing Countries.

The Summit of the Future, which is scheduled to take place this September, is the hope that the international community will not only accelerate its efforts to meet its existing commitments but implement concrete measures to respond to present and emerging challenges. Guterres expressed that among the outcomes of the summit, what should emerge is a path forward “for a number of important transformations,” understanding that the institutions are outdated and that what is needed is multilateralism that is more inclusive and reflects present realities.

In addition to proposing institutional reform, some of the intended outcomes from the Summit include accepting A New Agenda for Peace, which outlines the Secretary-General’s vision for multilateral measures in peace and security. A Global Digital Compact was also proposed as a document that would, according to Guterres, “maximize the benefits of new technologies and minimize the risks”. This is pertinent when considering the public interest in artificial intelligence in recent years, and efforts that have been made within the tech sector and even in the UN through its AI Advisory Board to determine how to regulate it.

When it comes to climate change, Guterres stated that he would be “mobilizing the entire UN system to assist” to support member states to take action in addressing climate change through financing, among other plans of action. He called for expanding the channels for climate finance through innovative sources and for all countries to agree on their goals at COP29 this year. This must be of service to the countries “at the frontline of climate chaos”.

What the Secretary-General is asking—and has been asking for some time now—is ambitious reform while seeking urgent action. The Summit of the Future is one of the answers to the concerns raised in the previous year, when it was made clear that we were far off track in achieving the SDGs. What should have been markers of progress stand now as reminders of the work left to be done, and even regression in some cases.

As long as these issues persist, and as long as the international community is reminded of how they impact everyone, they are interconnected. “In one form or another, every element connects to the most essential of all human endeavours: the pursuit of peace,” Guterres said.

“In today’s troubled world, building peace is a conscious, bold, and even radical act. It is humanity’s greatest responsibility. That responsibility belongs to us all, individually and collectively.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Imams and protesters unite in anger at a poll delay rocking Senegal's democratic credentials.

Credit: Pexels/Plato Terentev

By Jessica Henn, Channe Lindstrom Oguzhan and Angie Elizabeth Carrion Cueva
BANGKOK, Thailand, Feb 12 2024 (IPS)

Let’s call her Anita. Four years ago, her life took an unexpected turn when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted everything she knew. As businesses closed and economic uncertainty loomed, Anita, like countless others, found herself forced out of work. Providing for her three young children became a daily struggle, prompting her to seek informal work as a subsistence agricultural worker to ease the financial burden.

Just as Anita began to rebuild her life, hoping for a semblance of normalcy, climate change left Anita’s village facing the worst drought in decades, destroying the crops on which they survived. With no social protection for informal workers like Anita, the aftermath left her grappling with the devastation, both emotional and economic.

Yet, through it all, Antia’s resilience shone bright. She sought opportunities, determined to shield her children from the harsh realities they faced.

However, the challenges did not cease. Against a backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions and global climate shocks, food prices began to soar. Anita, despite her tenacity, found it increasingly difficult to put food on the table for her children. In a difficult situation, Anita reached out for assistance, seeking a loan to navigate the financial hurdles.

Yet, discriminatory legal frameworks and gender norms prevented Anita from accessing the financial lifeline she desperately needed, pushing her further into poverty.

Anita’s story is not an isolated case. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 165 million people globally have fallen (back) into poverty, with an additional 75 million more people living in extreme poverty, on less than USD $2.15 a day. It is estimated that 8 per cent of the world’s female population (342.4 million women and girls) will live on less than $2.15 a day by 2030 if current trends continue.

In the Asia-Pacific region, existing gender poverty gaps have widened, particularly in South Asia which is forecast to have 129 women in the 25-34 age group living in poverty for every 100 men by 2030, rising from 118 women to every 100 men in 2021.

Yet, while recent polycrises have reversed hard-won gains towards poverty eradication, strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective can get us back on track to eradicate extreme poverty and close the growing gender poverty gap.

A policy simulation analysis using the International Futures Model estimates that nearly 150 million women and girls globally could be lifted out of poverty by 2030 with increased spending on social protection, investments in the green economy, better infrastructure and education.

Pooling resources for these investments is achievable through a combination of public and private financing mechanisms, ensuring gender mainstreaming in all economic policies and interventions.

Strengthened gender-sensitive public institutions play a pivotal role promoting gender equality in all spheres, supported by investments in women’s leadership and political participation, alongside institutional initiatives aimed at overcoming biases and stereotypes.

With this compelling case, has there ever been a more important moment in history for multilateral collaboration and action than now? For many voices at the just concluded Asia-Pacific Regional Consultation on the 68th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68), the call to action rang equally loud and clear.

Participants from diverse backgrounds shared valuable contributions and insights on accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by addressing poverty and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective.

While noting the challenges, they shared innovative solutions to strengthen the policies and institutions and develop innovative new sources of financing for women’s economic empowerment. These included promoting access to finance for women-owned small and medium-sized enterprises, and policies and programmes to reduce poverty and vulnerability by promoting labour markets.

Credit: ESCAP Photo/Caio Perim

The two-day regional consultation resulted in a set of suggested actions highlighting the importance of addressing the interconnections between gender, poverty, and economic inequality, and stress the significance of regional collaboration, involving governments, civil society, the private sector, and other stakeholders.

These suggested actions will contribute towards the set of agreed conclusions for member States to take under advisement at CSW68 that will take place from 11 to 22 March 2024 in New York.

It is now that the global community must come together in solidarity, for the benefit of the most vulnerable population groups, to make good on the promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to leave no one behind.

Disclaimer note: Anita’s story is inspired by real accounts of women experiencing poverty in the Asia-Pacific region. However, the story has been fictionalized for narrative purposes, and any similarities to real individuals or events are purely coincidental.

Jessica Henn is Consultant, SDD, ESCAP; Channe Lindstrom Oguzhan is Social Affairs Officer, SDD, ESCAP; Angie Elizabeth Carrion Cueva is Intern, SDD, ESCAP

Relevant SDGs: 1, 5, 10, 17

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Myanmar’s resistance called a ‘silent strike’ on February 1, the third anniversary of the military coup. This main street leading to Sule Pagoda in central Yangon was relatively quiet, but residents said fewer people heeded the strike call this year. Credit: William Webb/IPS

By William Webb
YANGON, Myanmar, Feb 12 2024 (IPS)

Landing in Rangoon nearly 100 years ago, a young Chilean poet described “a city of blood, dreams, and gold” with “leprous streets”. The flourishing capital of then British-ruled Burma and its major port were a must-see staging post on an Asian tour.

Pablo Neruda’s poem from 1927 rings true today. The city, now called Yangon, with well over five million inhabitants, is bursting with life—part hedonistic and part dystopian—and both fuelled and choked by the grip of the junta that seized power three years ago.

Empty rail tracks in central Yangon. Fewer trains are running in Myanmar because rail workers quit in protest at the 2021 coup, and resistance fighters are targeting lines and trains used by the military up and down the country. Credit: William Webb/IPS

 

The military regime organised a rally in central Yangon on February 1 to counter the resistance’s strike call. People were transported there under heavy security and given flags and a free lunch. Credit: William Webb/IPS

The reality is that Myanmar no longer exists as a coherent country, except on maps. Three years of extremely brutal conflict between a complex patchwork of pro- and anti-military forces has left Yangon—still a vital commercial hub—a relatively calm yet deeply troubled bubble amidst a stop-start process of nationwide fragmentation.

The military that overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s twice-elected government in February 2021 is losing control over large chunks of Myanmar. Armed mainly by China and Russia, the junta uses aerial supremacy and artillery to terrorise a population that, for the first time in modern history, has seen the Bamar majority turn overwhelmingly against the generals in Myanmar’s heartland.

But the war is not quite knocking at Yangon’s door yet, and the military has been emboldened to issue tourist and business visas to foreigners, no doubt welcoming their US dollars.

Yangon’s other “reality” is that despite being ranked as one of the world’s poorest countries, it is actually awash in money—the blood and gold described by Neruda. Billions of dollars flow from the expanding production and trade of narcotics, particularly methamphetamines, ketamine, and opium/heroin, and from vast casinos, brothels, and scam centres along the border with China and Thailand, populated by victims of trafficking.

Street markets in Yangon are brimming with food, but people complain vociferously about soaring prices and low wages. Despite the conflict, food is in plentiful supply in Myanmar’s biggest city. Credit: William Webb/IPS

 

Aung San Suu Kyi, whose government was overthrown after a second landslide election victory, is jailed in the capital, Nay Pyi Taw. She remains popular, and her image can be occasionally spotted in the street, here with other icons. Credit: William Webb/IPS

 

Chinatown in Yangon is packed with people preparing Chinese New Year celebrations on February 10. Tense relations between China and the Myanmar junta have made the community nervous. Credit: William Webb/IPS

 

A woman with two toddlers and a baby on her lap begs outside a temple in Yangon. People say more children can be seen begging these days as the economy struggles and migrants move into the city from conflict areas. Credit: William Webb/IP

The junta does not directly control all these operations, but it takes a large slice, as do allied militias, criminal gangs, and some ethnic armed groups.

A gleaming white Bentley is parked outside one newly opened nightspot frequented by the offspring of the Yangon elite—the “cronies” whose businesses prosper in spite of, or often because of, sanctions imposed by the West. Inside the plush bar, youngsters in smart and sometimes scanty attire order expensive western drinks and truffle-flavoured fries.

“Madness prevails,” says a charity worker who describes walking through a compound and seeing a Rolls Royce, a Ferrari, and “even a Bugatti” parked there. Such ostentatious wealth abounds, but he cannot find a nurse to employ.

Elsewhere, the boom-boom of Burmese techno-rock and the strobe lights of the Levitate nightclub exclude conversation among the heaving dancing mass. There is “the choice of ecstasy, ketamine, or cocaine” instead, as one regular put it.

“FUCK THEM WE SLAY,” a neon sign proclaims ambiguously.

A neon sign illuminates the Levitate nightclub in Yangon, where revellers dance through curfew hours, fuelled by booze and cheap drugs. Credit: William Webb/IPS

 

A book seller said motivational books were popular these days. This classic by Carnegie was translated into Burmese by U Nu, a former prime minister who was ousted by the military in 1962. Credit: William Webb/IPS

Further down the social scale, Yangon’s familiar open-air “beer stations” are thriving too. Supporters of the resistance take a stand by boycotting the once popular Myanmar Beer brand owned by a military conglomerate, but more expensive alternatives exist.

And then there are the growing numbers of beggars, especially children who dodge traffic to thrust their hands through open car windows or huddle with their mothers in the shade of overpasses.

Rush hour traffic is still chokingly intense and was even quite busy on February 1, the third anniversary of the coup, when the resistance called a ‘silent strike’, urging people to stay off the streets in peaceful protest. Adherence in Yangon was patchy and less than last year.

“People are tired and want to get on with their lives,” comments one long-time observer.

And this is the nub of it. Life goes on, but it does not mean the Burmese are less opposed to the junta, as before when troops crushed street protests in 2021 with mass arrests and live bullets. Aung San Suu Kyi, stuck in prison and turning 80 next year, remains popular.

However, people do seem to be losing faith in the opposition’s declarations of the military’s imminent collapse, even if, as one businessman opined, “There’s a strong sense that things are falling apart now, that the military is overstretched.”

Some Yangon residents are also tired of feeling guilty that they are living relatively well while young resistance fighters in far-flung rural parts are dying in combat and conflict-zone civilians are being bombed in villages, schools, and temples.

A woman selling umbrellas made of waterproofed cotton. She said times are difficult. Credit: William Webb/IPS

Many are leaving the country—legally with passports, risking dangerous routes through the jungle to Thailand, or clandestinely by sea for the persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority. Studying Japanese is suddenly popular in Yangon.

The city by day seems normal enough, with little visible military presence in most places, but by night it changes. Plainclothes police demand ID papers and go through mobile phones. Suspicious bank payments, perhaps to the opposition, mean arrest or demands for a bribe.

Ye, whose business collapsed in the post-coup pandemic lockdown, has sent his children back to a public school after taking them out of classes, as many did. They won’t see their mother for a long time. She has gone abroad to earn money as a care worker.

Like everyone you meet, the family frets about the soaring cost of living, especially food.

Daily power cuts, sometimes scheduled but often not, make life almost unbearable in the intense pre-monsoon heat. People are drawn to the air-conditioned cool of shopping malls, powered by giant diesel generators.

Still, Yangon’s vibrancy is irrepressible. Artists are again holding exhibitions (staying clear of controversial themes). Chinatown is a hive of shoppers ahead of the Lunar New Year, ushering in the Dragon, a symbol of good luck and prosperity, but also of power.

• William Webb is a travel writer whose love affair with Asia began 50 years ago

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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