Africa

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South Africa's government is acting to retrieve money lost to corruption, the justice minister says.

Hundreds of mangrove seedlings are growing in a small bay of an island south of Fiji's main island Viti Levu. The Pacific Island Countries are vulnerable to climate change and need resources to adapt. Credit: Tom Vierus/Climate Visuals

By Labanya Prakash Jena
Sharm El-Sheikh, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

The Pacific Island Countries (PICs) – 14 small island developing nations in the Pacific Ocean – comprise one of the most exposed and vulnerable regions to climate change and natural calamities. The region did not cause this climate crisis; the crisis stemmed from heavy carbon emissions by developed countries. Yet paradoxically, the countries in the region are also the least resourced to adapt to climate change.

The IMF estimates that the PICs need an additional investment of an average of 9% of GDP on developing climate-resilient infrastructure over the next ten years. Some countries’ climate-resilient infrastructure needs more than 10% of their GDP. However, this much capital mobilisation is impossible for the region with low per capita income, volatile economy, lack of fiscal space, and low saving rate. Besides, these countries have also committed to ambitious targets to decarbonize their economies.

In this scenario, international climate finance mobilisation is critical to make the region resilient and prosperous. The longer the delay in building the much-needed climate-resilient infrastructure, the higher the cost and greater the risk of exposing these countries to extreme events for a longer time.

Labanya Prakash Jena, Commonwealth Regional Climate Finance Adviser, Indo-Pacific Region, argues international climate finance mobilisation is critical to make Pacific Island Countries resilient and prosperous. Credit: Commonwealth

Tackling the bottlenecks

There are two primary bottlenecks to international climate flows: institutional structure and lack of capacity at various levels. The PIC region’s institutional structure is plagued by limited administrative and financial capabilities, inadequate program management and accountability, and an obscure audit system to mobilise international public climate finance.

In addition, these countries lack the capacity to design and structure projects and develop a robust and tangible climate adaptation project pipeline. Besides, the region is not strategically allocating available capital, including budgetary outlays, international climate finance, development aid, and private finance. The primary focus of international institutions must be to address these challenges quickly.

Options for international climate finance: Grants, debt, equity

The total GDP of the PIC region is only about USD10 billion, with an average per capita income of approximately USD4,000 and a gross capital formation rate of 20%, according to the World Bank. This translates to a maximum domestic capital mobilisation of USD 2 billion per year. Meanwhile, the IMF estimates that the region needs an additional capital of USD 1 billion per annum for climate resilience infrastructure investment.

International grant capital is the only option to fund climate adaptation projects in the region. The reason is that any form of debt capital, even if in the form of concessional debt capital over the long term, is not an economical one. The PIC region cannot pay back debt, and it is unlikely the region’s economic size will increase at a rapid rate in the future to pay back debt.

Although the region’s primary sources of international climate finance – the Green Climate Fund (GCF), World Bank, and Asian Development Bank (ADB) – provide grants, it is only for project preparation and capacity development. These financers mostly provide debt financing, albeit at a better rate than private financers.

However, the low debt servicing ability of the region arrests them, raising foreign debt capital. It is even more problematic if the debt capital is in foreign currency (e.g., USD) – the borrowers face huge foreign currency due to expected and unexpected devaluation in the local currency, and borrowers face currency risk.

Equity capital is not the best form of financing for climate adaptation projects. Unlike climate change mitigating projects, they do not generate clear cash flows as the beneficiaries are difficult to identify to monetize climate adaptation projects. Hence, equity capital is not an efficient source of capital for climate adaptation projects.

Strategic allocation of capital is key

Unlike developed and developing countries, the PIC region does not have a have strong domestic financial and banking sector, and it rarely attracted foreign capital for large-scale investment. So, it is futile to expect large-scale private financing flows to bridge the financing gaps for their climate actions.

Moreover, the public goods nature of climate adaptation projects does not attract private financers. Hence, public financing, including capital Government budgetary outlays, international climate finance, and other development aids must be spent judiciously.

The crux is strategically allocating the available capital and aligning projects’ needs with the mandates of the public finances. One of the most efficient ways is to carve out the climate financing as a separate portfolio and decide where and how the capital would be used in various climate adaptation projects.

In addition, the climate change divisions of these countries can work closely with the Ministry of finance to mainstream climate adaptation in national development plans and sector policies and bring climate change perspectives in economic decision-making. The countries can also need to identify the projects which offer dual benefits of climate migration and adaptation, which brings a lot of attention to global climate financers.

For example, nature-based carbon sequestration through ocean conservation, forestry, and wilding (wetland, grassland) sequestrates carbon, offers natural shields, and protects human life and properties in extreme weather events. The global impact investors will find these projects attractive as they help the region become climate-resilient and create a global public good, helping everyone, including the financer’s country.

Way forward

International institutions must support Pacific Island countries to strengthen administrative and financial structures for better transparency and accountability, which can help the PICs access global public capital. In addition, Governments in the region must strategically allocate climate finance, prioritise climate actions in decision-making, integrate adaptation projects with national climate action plans, and identify suitable projects offering dual climate mitigation and adaptation benefits.

The international institutions can also help the countries identify and design projects to develop pipeline projects for funding. There is a dire need to develop institutional and local capacity to meet the needs of climate change-related economic activities in the region. But if addressed, the region will be able to finally make headway in addressing the deep adaptation challenges they face due to climate change.

• Labanya Prakash Jena is the Commonwealth Regional Climate Finance Adviser for the Indo-Pacific Region.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Yomira Cuadros faced motherhood at an early age, as well as the obstacles of a sexist society like Peru’s, regarding her reproductive decisions. In the apartment where she lives with her family in Lima, she expresses faith in the future, now that she has finally started attending university, after having two children as a result of unplanned pregnancies. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

No woman in Peru should have to die, have her physical or mental health affected, be treated as a criminal or have an unwanted pregnancy because she does not have access to abortion, said Dr. Rocío Gutiérrez, an obstetrician who is the deputy director of the Manuela Ramos Movement, a non-governmental feminist center that works for gender rights in this South American country.

In this Andean nation of 33 million people, abortion is illegal even in cases of rape or fetal malformation. It is only legal for two therapeutic reasons: to save the life of the pregnant woman or to prevent a serious and permanent health problem.

Peru thus goes against the current of the advances achieved by the “green wave”. Green is the color that symbolizes the changes that the women’s rights movement has achieved in the legislation of neighboring countries such as Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina and some states in Mexico, where early abortion has been decriminalized. These countries have joined the ranks of Cuba, where it has been legal for decades."I didn't tell my parents because they are very Catholic and would have forced me to go through with the pregnancy, they always instilled in me that abortion was a bad thing. But I started to think about how pregnancy would change my life and I didn't feel capable of raising a child at that moment." -- Fatima Guevara

But Latin America remains one of the most punitive regions in terms of abortion, with several countries that do not recognize women’s right to make decisions about their pregnancies under any circumstances. In El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Haiti it is illegal under all circumstances, and in some cases draconian penalties are handed down.

In the case of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Peru and Venezuela, meanwhile, abortion is allowed under very few conditions, while there are more circumstances under which it is legal in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador.

“In Peru an estimated 50,000 women a year are treated for abortion-related complications in public health facilities,” Dr. Gutiérrez told IPS. “This is not the total number of abortions in the country, but rather the number of women who reach public health services due to emergencies or complications.”

The obstetrician spoke to IPS from Buenos Aires, where she participated in the XV Regional Conference on Women, held Nov. 7-11 in the Argentine capital.

Gutiérrez explained that the cases attended are just the tip of the iceberg, because for every abortion complicated by hemorrhage or infection treated at a health center, at least seven have been performed that did not present difficulties.

Multiplying by seven the 50,000 cases treated due to complications provides the shocking figure of 350,000 unsafe clandestine abortions performed annually in Peru.

The doctor regretted the lack of official statistics about a phenomenon that affects the lives and rights of women “irreversibly, with damage to health, and death.”

Gutiérrez said that another of the major impacts is the criminalization of women who undergo abortions, due to mistreatment by health personnel who not only judge and blame them, but also report them to the police.

Obstetrician Rocío Gutiérrez (C), deputy director of the feminist Manuela Ramos Movement, stands with two fellow activists holding green scarves – representing the struggle for reproductive rights – during the XV Regional Conference on Women held this month in the city of Buenos Aires. CREDIT: Courtesy of Rocío Gutiérrez

Under article 30 of Peru’s General Health Law, No. 26842, a physician who attends a case of presumed illegal abortion is required to file a police report.

Gutiérrez also referred to the fact that unwanted pregnancies have numerous consequences for the lives of women, especially girls and adolescents, in a sexist country like Peru, where women often do not have the right to make decisions on their sexuality and reproductive health.

Healing the wounds of unwanted motherhood

By the age of 19, Yomira Cuadros was already the mother of two children. She did not plan either of the pregnancies and only went ahead with them because of pressure from her partner.

In 2020, according to official data, 8.3 percent of adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 were already mothers or had become pregnant in Peru.

Cuadros, whose parents are both physicians and who lives in a middle-class family, said she never imagined that her life would turn out so differently than what she had planned.

“The first time was because I didn’t know about contraceptives, I was 17 years old. The second time the birth control method failed and I thought about getting an abortion, but I couldn’t do it,” Cuadros told IPS.

At the time, she was in a relationship with an older boyfriend on whom she felt very emotionally dependent. “I had made a decision (to terminate the pregnancy), but he didn’t want to, he told me not to, the pressure was like blackmail and out of fear I went ahead with the pregnancy,” she said.

Making that decision under coercion hurt her mental health. Today, at the age of 26, she reflects on the importance of women being guaranteed the conditions to freely decide whether they want to be mothers or not.

Peruvian activists go topless to demand the right to legal abortion, during a demonstration in the streets of the capital on Mar. 8, 2018. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

In her case, although she had the support of her mother to get a safe abortion, the power of her then-partner over her was stronger.

“Becoming a mother when you haven’t planned to is a shock, you feel so alone, it is very difficult. I didn’t feel that motherhood was something beautiful and I didn’t want to experience the same thing with my second pregnancy, so I considered terminating it,” she said.

Finding herself in that unwanted situation, she fell into a deep depression and was on medication, and is still in therapy today.

“I went from being a teenager to an adult with responsibilities that I never imagined. It’s as if I have never really gone through the proper mourning process because of everything I had to take on, and I know that it will continue to affect me because I will never stop being a mother,” she said.

She clarified that “it’s not that I don’t want to be a mother or that I hate my children,” and added that “as I continue to learn to cope, I will get better, it’s just that it wasn’t the right time.”

She and her two children, ages nine and seven, live with her parents and brother in an apartment in the municipality of Pueblo Libre, in the Peruvian capital. She has enrolled at university to study psychology and accepts the fact that she will only see her dreams come true little by little.

“Things are not how I thought they would be, but it’s okay,” she remarked with a newfound confidence that she is proud of.

Gutiérrez said more than 60 percent of women in Peru have an unplanned pregnancy at some point in their lives, and argued that the government’s family planning policies fall far short.

The National Institute of Statistics and Informatics reported that the total fertility rate in Peru in 2021 would have been 1.3 children on average if all unwanted births had been prevented, compared to the actual rate of 2.0 children – almost 54 percent higher than the desired fertility rate.

“There are a set of factors that lead to unwanted pregnancies, such as the lack of comprehensive sex education in schools, and the lack of birth control methods and timely family planning for women in all their diversity, which worsened during the pandemic. And of course, the correlate is access to legal and safe abortion,” said Gutiérrez.

She lamented that little or no progress has been made in Peru in relation to the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights, including access to safe and free legal abortion, despite the struggle of feminist organizations and movements in the country that have been demanding decriminalization in cases of rape, artificial insemination without consent, non-consensual egg transfer, or malformations incompatible with life.

University student Fátima Guevara decided to terminate an unwanted pregnancy when she was 19 years old. Four years later, she is sure that it was the right decision, in terms of her plans for her life. The young woman told her story at a friend’s home, where she was able to talk about it openly, in Lima, Peru. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The obscurity of illegal abortion

The obscurity surrounding abortion led Fátima Guevara, when she faced an unwanted pregnancy at the age of 19, to decide to use Misoprostol, a safe medication that is included in the methods accepted by the World Health Organization for the termination of pregnancies.

“I didn’t tell my parents because they are very Catholic and would have forced me to go through with the pregnancy, they always instilled in me that abortion was a bad thing. But I started to think about how pregnancy would change my life and I didn’t feel capable of raising a child at that moment,” she told IPS in a meeting at a friend’s home in Lima.

She said that she and her partner lacked adequate information and obtained the medication through a third party, but that she used it incorrectly. She turned to her brother who took her to have an ultrasound first. “Hearing the fetal heartbeat shook me, it made me feel guilty, but I followed through with my decision,” she added.

After receiving proper instructions, she was able to complete the abortion. And today, at the age of 23, about to finish her psychology degree, she has no doubt that it was the right thing to do.

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Karen Mapusua, SPC’s Director of the Land Resources Division, would like to see food high up on the loss and damage fund if it is agreed to. Credit Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

Food is everything to the culture and identity of the Pacific island countries.

Climate change impacts of rising sea levels and higher temperatures threaten islanders’ food security, which is largely dependent on fisheries and subsistence agriculture. Almost 70 percent of islanders rely on agriculture for their livelihood.

Pacific island countries at the COP27 summit, taking place at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, say agriculture is high on their agenda, with parties to the UNFCCC calling for a decision to protect food security through the mobilisation of climate finance for adaptation.

Activists at the COP27 summit demand food and agriculture remain on the negotiation’s agenda. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

At the COP negotiations, agriculture features on many levels, including during discussions on the ongoing Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA) – a formal process established to highlight the potential of food and agriculture in tackling climate change. However, there has been no progress in countries making commitments to placing agriculture and food systems in the final text.

The agriculture sector accounts for 37% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with land seen as a potential major carbon sink that can be considered for capturing emissions.

Could agriculture be off the menu?

“Not yet,” says Karen Mapusua, Pacific Community’s (SPC) Director of the Land Resources Division. “Unless the parties can come together and through their work demonstrate the value of the Koronivia work programme and a clear way forward for it, then that is a risk.”

She explains that it was critical to keep the Koronivia plan alive and secure a global strategy for agriculture and food systems to be considered solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation.

“Agriculture contributes 30 percent of emissions, and everybody has to eat, and if we do not take this seriously, then we are in trouble,” said Mapusua, who is also the President of IFOAM Organics International, a global organisation specialising in changing agricultural practices.

Pacific countries are very low emitters of harmful carbon emissions – except for a few high-input industries like sugar production in Fiji and the commercial production of exotic horticulture for export.

“We are losing productive land to sea level rise, inundation and desalination of soils near the coast,” she said. Farmers have experienced increased pests and diseases due to a change in temperatures and weather conditions. For example, the islands have been hit by an infestation of the coconut rhinoceros beetle, an invasive pest that can destroy coconut plantations.

Farmers are also experiencing changes in fruiting patterns for major crops. Farmers are relocating their vanilla plantations in Vanuatu because it no longer flowers in the area where it was once most productive.

Developing countries are also pushing for the establishment of a loss and damage facility where they can be compensated for damage caused by climate change, particularly to infrastructure. However, no decision has been reached on this demand.

“There will be a lot of competition on what goes in the loss and damage fund, but I am hopeful that because food is so essential, it will be higher up the priority list when it comes to accessing finance through such a facility, if it is agreed on,” Mapusua, told IPS.

Fish eaters but threatened fisheries

Islanders are also dependent on fisheries for food security. This sector has also been affected by rising sea levels and high temperatures, which have led to the bleaching of coral reefs, which are a key habitat for fish.

Scientific research projects a decline in coastal fisheries of up to 20 percent by 2050 in the western Pacific and up to 10 percent by 2050 in the eastern Pacific, which would impact heavily on the diet of islanders who, on average, consume 58 kg of fish annually.

Mapusua said the island countries were building aquaculture at a local level and poultry to compensate for the projected loss of fisheries.

In Vanuatu, the government was deploying fish aggregating devices (FADS), which are offshore floating objects to attract fish. The project has enabled farmers to harvest fish from the locations where the devices have been installed without travelling far from the coast to fish. In addition, a fishponds system has been promoted at the household level, encouraging families to build their own fishponds to harvest fish.

Nelson Kalo, a Senior Mitigation Officer in the Ministry of Climate Change in Vanuatu, adds there are other projects too.

“Vanuatu is also promoting climate resilience projects working with the United Nations Development Programme to replicate climate resilient root crops that communities when climate condition change.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Matti Kohonen
LONDON, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

G20 leaders met in Indonesia in the midst of multiple crises, with 85 percent of the world population expected to face austerity measures and severe budget cuts next year that will impact the most vulnerable compounded by an insufficient response to the Covid-19 pandemic, with only 38 percent of relief funds going to social protection in global South countries.

The G20 summit motto was “Recovering Together, Recovering Stronger” yet the Joint Declaration failed to deliver any alternatives to the wave of austerity engulfing the world. It ignored the option of raising enough tax revenues from large corporations, taxing the wealthy and tacking illicit financial flows and tax abuses which alone accounts for over US$200 billion of tax revenue lost per year due to profit shifting in the global South.

For one, the summit blocked any progress towards the negotiations of a UN Tax Convention that would address the issues of corporate tax abuses and illicit financial flows, as denounced in an open letter from the Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).

In an open letter denouncing this inaction to tackle corporate tax abuses and IFFs, delivered to embassies of Indonesia, India and Brazil, Lidy Nacpil from the Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) said that the summit blocked “any progress towards the negotiations of a UN Tax Convention that would address the issues of corporate tax abuses and illicit financial flows,” but there was no reaction.

Making matters worse, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) failed to deliver on mandates to publish country-by-country reporting before the summit. This would have allowed to monitor the performance of mechanisms to prevent for example multinational companies shifting profits to tax havens and avoid paying taxes.

The data was only published on 17 November, a day after the summit, which was too late to hold the G20 leaders accountable. According to Alex Cobham, Director at the Tax Justice Network, “without the transparency data, neither the Tax Justice Network nor any other independent research can evaluate how much each government is losing to multinationals’ corporate tax abuse, or any progress made to curb tax losses in recent years.”

But that is not everything since the summit did not confront the hidden offshore wealth and kleptocracy problem. Maira Martini from Transparency International said that the G20 members “in recent years have dragged their feet, unable to agree on key measures and failing to implement even those to which they had already committed. In the meantime, the corrupt have consolidated wealth and power, allowing them to attack everything from sustainable development to global security to democracy.”

In an open letter released ahead of the Bali summit, Transparency International representatives from across G20 countries called on their governments to take immediate action against cross-border corruption. The Joint Declaration stated its support towards implementing Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations for improved financial transparency, but does not say that beneficial ownership registries should be public, a critical element to enable stakeholders and the authorities to uncover hidden assets.

Also the declaration included regional efforts related to signing of the Asia Initiative Declaration in July 2022 on tax and financial transparency in Asia. However, it did not specify whether this initiative would create a stronger standard than the current OECD transparency standard, or simply implement an OECD standard in the Asian regional context.

Positively, the Bali Joint Declaration made a link between increased beneficial ownership information and tackling natural resource crimes, but offered no specific proposals to address this issue. Indonesia loses an estimated US$4 billion in Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) each year due to illegal, unregulated and underreported (IUU) fishing alone, while Africa loses an estimated US$11.5 billion to this illicit activity. It would be vital that beneficial ownership information on all vessels and fishing companies is collected on a public registry, to hold those responsible for illicit fishing activities accountable.

Between 75 and 95 million people are expected to be thrown into extreme poverty this year as a result of the pandemic and the effects of rising inflation and the war in Ukraine, according to the UN. Many other are struggling to make a living and feed themselves as governments around the world are resorting to painful austerity measures.

The G20 had an opportunity to offer solutions to these crises and a lifeline to struggling nations. Unfortunately for all of us, they have failed.

Matti Kohonen is executive director, Financial Transparency Coalition.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A selection of the best photos from across Africa and beyond this week.

Senegal forward Sadio Mane is ruled out of the World Cup and has surgery on a knee injury he sustained playing for Bayern Munich.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres with COP27 President Sameh Shoukry.

By IPS Correspondent
Sharm El-Sheikh, Nov 17 2022 (IPS)

UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the negotiators at COP27 that time for talking about loss, and damage finance is over.

“We need action. No one can deny the scale of loss and damage we see around the globe. The world is burning and drowning before our eyes. I urge all parties to show that they see it – and get it.”

He echoed the words of COP27 President Sameh Shoukry, who spoke about how emergent and developing countries had not reached an agreement on loss and damage – and urged the negotiators to put in extra efforts to reach agreements here.

Guterres said it was clear that there was a breakdown in trust between North and South.

This was no time for finger-pointing.

“The world is watching and has a simple message: stand and deliver. Deliver the kind of meaningful climate action that people and the planet so desperately need,” he said.

Global emissions were at their highest level and rising, and “climate impacts are decimating economies and societies – and growing.”

He said it was not possible to deny climate justice to those who contributed least to the climate crisis and are getting hurt the most.

“The 1.5 target is not simply about keeping a goal alive – it’s about keeping people alive.”

He said the Just Energy Transition Partnerships were important pathways to accelerate the phasing out of coal and the scaling up of renewables – and should be expanded.

Guterres also said the parties should act on the crucial question of finance.

“That means delivery of the $100 billion in climate finance for developing countries.

It means clarity on how the doubling of adaptation finance will be delivered through a credible roadmap. And it means acting on the consensus to reform multilateral development banks and international financial institutions.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Activists say governments should be urgedto put agriculture onto the negotiating table at COP27 especially to diverse,resilient agroecological farming are crucial for farmers which will enablefarmers to adapt to climate chaos. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 17 2022 (IPS)

At a time when sustainable farming approaches such as agroecology have been removed from the text at ongoing global climate negotiation (COP27) taking place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, activists are urging African governments to explore new steps to integrate agriculture into the UN climate agreement.

According to the most recent assessment of climate impacts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), loss and damage can broadly be split into two categories: economic losses involving “income and physical assets”; and non-economic losses, which include – but are not limited to – “mortality, mobility and mental wellbeing losses”.

Million Belay, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty coordinator in Africa, says green revolution solutions have failed the continent. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

In the agriculture sector, estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicate that despite overall gains in food production and food security on a global scale, many countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, have failed to make progress in recent decades.

According to UN experts, the region produces less food per person today than it did three decades ago, and the number of chronically undernourished people has increased dramatically.

“This must change because many of Africa’s agricultural and food security problems have been related to misguided policies, weak institutions in the context of climate crisis,” said Million Belay, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty coordinator in Africa (AFSA).

Belay pointed out that the industrial food system is a major culprit driving climate change but is still not being taken seriously by climate talks.

“Real solutions like diverse, resilient agroecological farming are crucial for farmers [in Africa] to adapt to climate chaos, but they are being sidelined and starved of climate finance,” he told IPS on the sidelines of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

While COP27 in Egypt is trying to address food systems, for the first time, new suggested solutions by multinational companies and global philanthropists by providing new technologies and systems that reward African farmers for mitigating emissions have become a new point of anxiety among climate activists.

The industrial food systems such as monocultures, high-fertilizer and chemical use are described by experts as an enormous driver of climate change in Africa, while small-scale, agroecological farming and indigenous systems comparatively have significantly less GHG emissions and can even work to sequester carbon in healthy ecosystems.

“Historically, these philanthropists and multinationals have been considering Africa as a continent facing an agriculture productivity crisis, yet the serious problem is instead related to resilience crisis,” Belay said.

As global warming patterns continue to shift and natural resources dwindle, agroecology is considered by climate experts as the best path forward for feeding the continent. Most experts agree that under current growth rates, Africa’s population will double by 2050 and then double again by 2100, eventually climbing to over 4 billion by the end of the century.

The latest estimates by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) show that feeding this growing population will require significant advancements in Africa’s food systems.

Martin Fregene, the Director of Agriculture and Agro-Industry at the African Development Bank, told delegates at COP27 that the power of agricultural technologies to raise productivity and combat malnutrition on the continent are desperately needed.

Speaking during a session that focused on major solutions for a sustainable Agriculture sector in Africa, Fregene pointed out that the inadequate public investment in agricultural research, training and infrastructure and the limited mobilization of the private sector are some major contributing factors to food insecurity affecting Africa because of Climate Change.

In May this year, the African Development Bank launched an African Emergency Food Production Facility to provide 20 million African smallholder farmers with seeds and access to fertilizers in a bid to enable them to rapidly produce 38m tons of food – a $12bn increase in production in two years.

The programme aims especially at providing direct subsidies to farmers to buy fertilizer and other inputs, as well as financing large importers of fertilizer to source supply from other regions.

While climate-induced shocks to the food system used to occur once every ten years on average in Africa, experts show that they are now happening every 2.5 years.

Estimates show by 2050, warming of just 1.2 to 1.9℃, well within the range of current IPCC projections, is likely to increase the number of malnourished in Africa by 25 to 95 percent–25 percent in central Africa, 50 percent in east Africa, 85 percent in southern Africa and 95 percent in west Africa.

Both activists and climate experts agree that the public sector in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa can do more to engage the private sector to ensure that smallholder farmers are taking ownership of established adaptation strategies.

Matthias Berninger, the senior Vice-President of Global Public and Government Affairs at Bayer, a global Life Science company with core competencies in the areas of health care and agriculture, told IPS that yet there are positive examples showing how the private sector is getting involved in agricultural adaptation to climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, there is still a long way to go.

“The continent has adaptation projects that are now demonstrating their potential, but there is still a pressing need to reshape Africa’s food system to be more resilient, productive and inclusive,” Berninger said.

A new study by researchers from Biovision, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and the United Kingdom-based Institute of Development Studies shows that such sustainable and regenerative farming techniques have either been neglected, ignored, or disregarded by major donors.

One of the major findings is that most governments, especially in Sub-Saharan still favour “green revolution” approaches, believing that chemical-intensive, large-scale industrial agriculture is the only way to produce sufficient food. “Green revolution solutions have failed,” said Belay.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A new analysis of the “investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 3 million tonnes a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.” Credit: WA

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 17 2022 (IPS)

As much as wars –or even more–, climate disaster represents a great business opportunity, so don’t bother those who pour their fortunes into fueling them with talks about stopping it.

See what happens.

 

Investing in wars

A couple of dozens of companies involved in manufacturing the most inhuman weapons of mass destruction– the nuclear warheads, have been supported by over 150 big banks by lending them money or underwriting bonds, according to the Nobel Peace Laureate International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

“The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments”

OXFAM International

Its Don’t Bank on the Bomb report also shows that another 186 institutions seek to profit from holding shares or bonds. And that altogether 338 financial institutions have made more than 685 billion US dollars available to the nuclear weapon industry since 2019.

This exercise –and the huge ‘investments’ by the world’s top rich corporations- has proved to be highly efficient.

In fact, in its report “Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,” ICAN reveals that in 2021 –the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine– nine nuclear-armed states spent 82.4 billion US dollars on these weapons of mass destruction, that’s more than 156,000 US dollars… per minute!

Another prestigious investigation centre: the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently revealed that, right now, of the total inventory of an estimated 12.705 warheads at the start of 2022, about 9.440 were in military stockpiles for potential use.

Of those, an estimated 3.732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2.000 —nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA— were kept in a state of “high operational alert,” SIPRI adds in its Yearbook 2022.

 

Investing in climate catastrophes

But there is another highly lucrative business: climate change.

“The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments,” reveals a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice–OXFAM International.

“A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person.”

Its recent major study: Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people, reports that a new analysis of the “investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 395 million tonnes of CO2 a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.”

The study also finds billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement are double the average for the Standard & Poor 500 group of companies.

“Billionaires hold extensive stakes in many of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, which gives them the power to influence the way these companies act.”

 

Once destroyed, business set to make more money

In either case, wars and climate catastrophes cause vast destruction, let alone unspeakable human suffering, and death.

Both of them further sharpen the world’s unprecedented food crisis.

Also here, market lords continue to make high profits.

In fact, a ”small number of corporations exercise a high degree of influence over the global industrial food system, powered by mergers and acquisitions of one another to form giant mega-corporations, which enable further concentration horizontally and vertically, as well as influence over policy-making and governance nationally and globally,” as already reported by IPS.

On the current energy crisis, the UN chief António Guterres in mid-September 2022, stated that it is “absolutely unacceptable to see that, when people are suffering so much in different parts of the world and, namely, because of the high costs of energy and high costs of fuel, to see fossil fuel companies having the largest profits ever or at least in the recent past.”

Why not: in addition to speculating with the energy markets, these companies have been largely funded by governments. In fact, politicians have spent six trillion US dollars from taxpayers’ money to subsidise fossil fuels in just one year: 2020. And they are set to increase the figure to nearly seven trillion by 2025.

 

More business ‘opportunities’

Then comes the great business of reconstructing all that the money-making business has been greatly contributing. Buildings, highways, bridges, hospitals, schools, universities, etcetera, let alone in further synthetic food.. all of these are to be paid for by the victims.

But there are more business opportunities, like continue buying vast fertile lands for monoculture and intensive agriculture, a money-making practice that by the way further opens the door for high technology corporations to digitalise more and more food production, among so many others.

A production that, also, by the way, is being greatly disrupted due to both wars and climate disaster.

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