Africa

The BBC got rare access to Mubende, one of the two districts at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in Uganda.

The Confederation of African Football supports global body Fifa's call for unity and inclusion ahead of the World Cup in Qatar.

Moroccan hosts AS FAR set up a Women's African Champions League final clash against defending champions Mamelodi Sundowns.

Credit: UN Photo/Amanda Voisard

By A.H. Monjurul Kabir
NEW YORK, Nov 10 2022 (IPS)

We are living in a world where both our bilateral and multilateral achievements, consensuses on human rights and social justice, and our resolve to public good are being tested like never before.

Now, more than ever, we need to bring to life the values and principles of the UN Charter in every corner of the world. Due to the powers vested in its Charter and its unique international character, the UN can act on the issues confronting humanity, including:

• Maintain international peace and security
• Protect human rights
• Deliver humanitarian aid
• Promote sustainable development
• Uphold international law

Given my own personal trajectory in human rights advocacy and development cooperation, let me focus on aspects of sustainable development and consider whether we need to change and adopt any new approach to it to end extreme poverty, reduce inequalities, and rescue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from exclusionary practices.

Development or Sustainable Development must be inclusive: In fact, inclusion at the heart of Development Cooperation. Inclusive development is the concept that every person, regardless of their identity, is instrumental in transforming their societies.

Development processes that are inclusive yield better outcomes for the communities that embark upon them. The UN was created to promote the rights and inclusion of marginalized and underrepresented populations in the development process and leads the UN’s response to addressing the needs and demands of those in in adversity and youth.

Therefore, the UN implements activities that combat stigma and discrimination, promote empowerment and inclusion of marginalized or underrepresented groups, and improve the lives of populations in high-risk situations.

It is important that we also adopt this in institutional and management settings: For example, UN Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI) recently conducted its first survey on Racism and Racial Discrimination in five languages.

The survey was intended to capture data reflecting the Asian perspective in the UN system. It is planning to issue a report on the survey’s findings to support and address many critical issues of racism and racial discrimination. There are other networks who are addressing different elements of intersectionality including but not limited to, gender, disability, ethnicity, identity etc.

So, the world and its challenges have become much more intersectional, which calls for a robust and intersectional approach to development cooperation.

Intersectional Approach: An intersectionality lens allows us to see how social policy may affect people differently, depending on their specific set of ‘locations,’ and what unintended consequences particular policies may have on their individual lives.

By listening to the most marginalized and/or disadvantaged groups of a community, development organizations can help combat oppression at all levels of society and rebuild communities from the ground up.

Take the example of Persons with Disabilities. They are not a homogenous group, and this should be reflected in our policy advocacy and communications by considering intersectionality—the intersection of disability together with other factors, such as gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, refugee, migrant or asylum seeker status.

For example, a person with disability also has a gender identity, may come from an Indigenous group and be young, old, a migrant or live in poverty.

At the UN System, it is time to adopt an intersectional approach in our development cooperation, policy advocacy, programming, operational support, planning and budgeting. An intersectional approach considers the historical, social, and political context and recognizes the unique experience of the individual based on the intersection of all relevant grounds.

This approach allows the experience of discrimination, based on the confluence of grounds involved, to be acknowledged and remedied. Using an intersectionality lens to approach our development practice means moving beyond the use of singular categories to understand people and groups and embracing the notion of inseparable and interconnected sets of social ‘locations’ that change through time, vary across places, and act together to shape an individual’s life experience and actions.

This would go a long way to contribute to the SDGs’ Leave No One Behind principle (LNOB). The new approach calls for invigorating existing practices, making them more innovative, effective, and efficient.

Innovation: We need to think of innovative approaches and instruments to attract and channel new resources to finance our developmental aspirations, as outlined in the 2030 SDGs now more than ever.

Reliable and well-administered development financial institutions with a well-defined mandate and sound governance framework will continue to be an important vehicle to accelerate inclusive economic and social development.

They can create new channels to crowd-in the private sector. Moreover, they can play a catalytical role by generating new knowledge, convening stakeholders, and providing technical assistance to build capacity in the private and public sectors. Mutual collaboration between and across public and private sector is critical to harness the full potential of innovation and innovative approaches.

Let us not forget new media’s growing impact on both inclusive participation leveraging innovative practices.

New Media: New media, including mobile and social media, could help demystify international institutions and encourage participation. The new media is also critical to widen the breadth of accessibility for persons with disabilities or those who live in rural and/or remote, hard to reach areas.

Alongside this, there could be more regular interactions by the leadership of intergovernmental organisations with multi-stakeholders including civil society, organisations of persons with disabilities, and the media, and the creation of accessible databases of statistical and other information and knowledge on their work.

Notwithstanding the Ukraine war, work at the UN continues. The world body can and should continue to play a constructive role in both development cooperation, crisis management, peace building, and post-conflict stabilization. It should continue to focus on crises from Afghanistan to Mali and Ukraine itself.

However, it must explore new and innovative and intersectional ways to support inclusive development, climate justice and resilience, peacekeeping, and other global and regional key priorities.

Otherwise, the SDGs will not be even near to their desired destination in 2030 or beyond.

Dr. A.H. Monjurul Kabir, currently Global Policy and UN System Coordination Adviser and Team Leader for Gender Equality, Disability Inclusion, and Intersectionality at UN Women HQ in New York, is a political scientist and senior policy and legal analyst on global issues and Asia-Pacific trends.

For policy and academic purposes, he can be contacted at monjurulkabir@yahoo.com and followed on twitter at mkabir2011

This article is from a blog based on a speech delivered by the author, in his personal capacity, at an event commemorating the UN’s 77th anniversary organized by UN-ANDI– a New York-based global network of like-minded Asian staff members of the UN system who strive to promote a more diverse and inclusive culture and mindset within the UN.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Nuclear experts warn that ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons could have devastating death toll and destruction. This photo shows the war damage in Borodianka, Kyiv Oblast. Photo: Oleksandr Ratushniak / UNDP Ukraine

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Nov 10 2022 (IPS)

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the conflict’s potential to escalate to the use of nuclear weapons has been highlighted by political analysts and military experts alike.

Now growingly bellicose rhetoric from Russian president Vladimir Putin, particularly following the illegal annexations of four parts of Ukraine at the end of September, has raised fears he may be seriously considering using them. He has been quoted in September this year as saying that Russia would use “all available means to protect Russia and our people”, but last month said there was no need to consider the use of nuclear weapons. This week Russia ordered troops to withdraw from the Dnieper River’s west bank near the southern city of Kherson.

But while much of the media debate around this prospect has focused on the expected use of a so-called low-yield “tactical” nuclear weapon and what this might mean strategically for either side in the war, anti-nuclear campaigners say any discussion should be reframed to reflect the devastating reality of what the use of even the smallest weapons in modern nuclear arsenals would mean.

They say that even if only one such bomb was dropped, be it in Ukraine or in any other conflict, the consequences would cause a country – if not a continent-wide catastrophe, with horrific immediate and long-term health effects and a subsequent humanitarian disaster on a scale almost certainly not seen before.

Moreover, they say, a single strike would almost certainly be met with a similar response, quickly igniting a full-scale nuclear war that would threaten much of human life on earth.

“There is no conceivable reality in which a nuclear weapon is used, and life goes on as normal. It is very, very likely that there would be escalation and additional nuclear weapons used, but even the use of one nuclear weapon would break a decades-long taboo on the use of the most catastrophic, horrific weapon ever created,” Alicia Sanders-Zakre, Research, and Policy Coordinator,  at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) told IPS.

“We have already seen the global impacts of the war in Ukraine just using conventional weapons, including worldwide rising inflation, and energy and food shortages. But the use of a nuclear weapon would really have consequences beyond what any of us can imagine,” she added.

Since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 – the only time nuclear weapons have been used in conflict – a number of states have built up nuclear arsenals, including bombs many times more powerful than those dropped on the two Japanese cities.

But they also include bombs that can be set to have varying explosive yields -which are measured in kilotons – including potentially in just single figures. For comparison, the devices dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had yields of around 15 kilotons.

These lower yield bombs are, unlike strategic nuclear weapons with yields in the hundreds of kilotons that, are specifically meant to cause mass destruction and serve a deterrent purpose, designed for use on a battlefield to counter overwhelming conventional forces.

The strategic thinking behind their use is that they could cause maximum damage to enemy troops in specific areas without the wider massive destruction caused by larger bombs.

This does not mean, though, that tactical nuclear weapons are not devastatingly lethal – an estimated 130,000 people were killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, while NUKEMAP predicts that even a 5-kiloton bomb detonation on Kyiv would leave more than 90,000 people dead, and injured.

Campaigners against nuclear weapons worry the global public is not being made properly aware of the scale of the loss of life and ecological damage which would be wrought by the use of such a weapon.

“There has been a lot of discussion about using a tactical nuclear bomb in Ukraine. But the use of the word ‘tactical’ is no more than a rebranding exercise to make a nuclear weapon sound like a conventional one,” Dr Ruth Mitchell, Board Chair of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), told IPS.

“A tactical nuclear weapon would be about the same size as the one dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we don’t need to imagine what the effects would be; we have already seen them,” she added.

The death toll itself would be massive, but authorities would also have to deal with radioactive fallout possibly contaminating large areas, while the event itself would trigger massive population dislocation.

And a report by ICAN also shows that even the most advanced healthcare systems would be unable to provide any effective response in such a situation, highlighting the likely destruction of local healthcare facilities and staff and pointing out that the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima destroyed 80% of its hospitals and killed almost all its doctors and nurses.

Healthcare staff in Ukraine have told IPS that preparations are being made at hospitals and healthcare facilities to respond to a nuclear attack, including plans for reprofiling wards and forming special teams of emergency staff to treat those affected both directly in the area of any strike and where needed in other parts of the country.

Meanwhile, authorities in cities have said potential evacuation centres have been set up, and supplies of potassium iodide, which can help block the absorption of harmful radiation by the thyroid gland, have been secured to be distributed if needed.

Some doctors have said they are also counting on international help for Ukraine’s healthcare response if the worst to happen.

But Mitchell said while admirable, such efforts were likely to be of little help.

“It is naïve to think there is a terrible amount that we can do in the event of use of a nuclear weapon against civilian populations, which is the only way any will ever be used. They will be used strategically, i.e., on a populous city. No one’s going to be dropping them in a paddock. It would be a massive disaster,” she said.

Some Ukrainian doctors admit they may not be able to provide much help.

“If the hospital is hit with a bomb then there won’t be much we can do,” Roman Fishchuk, a doctor at the Central City Clinical Hospital in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine told IPS.

Another key issue, Mitchell said, is the fact that any use of a nuclear weapon in a conflict situation, be it in Ukraine or anywhere else, would almost certainly not be left in isolation.

There would likely be a response in kind, followed by a very rapid escalation to nuclear war and multiple missile detonations, with terrifying planet-wide consequences, she said.

A recent report by experts studying the potential effects of a nuclear conflict concluded that while more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia, “even a war between India and Pakistan using less than 3% of the global nuclear arsenal” could result in famine for a third of Earth.

ICAN’s Sanders-Zakre explained that the current situation in Ukraine has only highlighted the need for nuclear weapons to be abolished across the world, and how more attention needs to be paid to experts pointing out their potential for civilisation-threatening destruction.

“What this shows is that we really need to listen to medical professionals, and organisations like IPPNW. They have been warning for decades about the consequences of using nuclear weapons, and we have learned from the catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic that it is essential that we listen to professionals and experts and take their expertise seriously, and it’s the same in this case with the use of a nuclear weapon,” she said.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, people are preparing for the worst. Some have begun stocking rooms converted into bomb shelters with food and other supplies they believe will help them ride out the aftermath of a nuclear strike. Others have been buying potassium iodide tablets.

But some say they have little faith they would survive any such attack and are just hoping it will never happen.

“The Health Ministry has given out advice on what to do if there is a nuclear attack, and I know some of the basic things to do, but I don’t feel like I’m prepared to deal with something like this if it happens. I just hope we won’t have to deal with this. It would be horror,” 23-year-old Kyiv resident Viktoria Marchenko (NOT REAL NAME) told IPS.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Decision-making power is still held at the national and international level, often failing to (financially) enable local actors to lead climate action. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Anne Jellema
CAPETOWN, South Africa, Nov 9 2022 (IPS)

Imagine a world where the people hit hardest by climate crisis have a say in how to stop it. Imagine that youth, Indigenous Peoples, women, and others most affected by global warming have the resources to implement their own climate solutions. Solutions that are highly effective because they meet local needs, suit the local context, and create sustainable economic opportunities for local people. This world would be one where people have a much better chance of surviving, and even thriving, despite the massive upheavals of the climate crisis.

 

Climate finance remains a pipe dream at local level

Decision-making power is still held at the national and international level, often failing to (financially) enable local actors to lead climate action. Even at national level, those most affected by climate change often have the least say in setting priorities for climate policy and funding

At the global level, to achieve the key commitments made in Paris, climate investment should count in trillions rather than billions. The 100 billion per year climate financing target from 2020 onwards has already been missed. Industrialized countries have overwhelmingly failed to provide anything close to the scale of climate financing needed – let alone the specific demand for a loss and damage financing facility.

And at the local level, although ever more governments and stakeholders understand the importance of shifting resources, leadership and agency to the local level, the world pictured above is still far from reach

To illustrate this, in 2017–18 only 20.5 percent of bilateral climate finance went to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and 3 percent to Small Island States (SIDS). It was often in the form of loans and other non-grant instruments, which risks plunging these already vulnerable countries further into debt. Even in the current meagre climate finance, according to some estimates, less than 10 percent actually flows to the local level.

 

Why?

There are many reasons why climate finance doesn’t end up at the local level.

Some are related to complex rules and requirements in accessing international funding, which local actors often lack the knowledge, network, skills and/or scale to comply with.

Moreover, most climate finance typically flows through international, rather than national or regional, intermediaries. Although international agencies currently have the most experience in navigating complex climate finance bureaucracies, they are also the furthest removed from local realities.

Decision-making power is still held at the national and international level, often failing to (financially) enable local actors to lead climate action. Even at national level, those most affected by climate change often have the least say in setting priorities for climate policy and funding.

 

What needs to happen

Recently, Hivos – as part of the Voices for Just Climate Action alliance – studied a handful of promising alternative finance delivery mechanisms. While some have performed better than others, they share the potential for downward accountability and effective participation of different voices as an integral part of the funding mechanism. Based on the study, we put forth the following recommendations which governments, international intermediaries, and global banks and funds should give serious consideration to at the upcoming COP27.

Firstly, create mechanisms for participatory funding and oversight structures to ensure that local actors drive decision making. This includes addressing structural inequalities faced by women, youth, children, Indigenous people, and other marginalized groups, and fully integrating these groups in the design and implementation of adaptation and mitigation actions.

Secondly, routinely set concrete targets for funds that need to reach climate solutions driven by local actors. Provide grants instead of loans, and use long-term, patient and flexible programmatic funding instead of short-term, ad hoc project funding. At COP27 the rich countries must deliver robust action to scale up grant-based climate finance to the developing world.

Thirdly, ensure easy access for local actors by simplifying fund application processes.

Lastly, decisive steps must be taken to use national, not international financing mechanisms and structures for channeling finance. The International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) designed a climate finance delivery mechanism that bypasses international intermediaries. Here, money flows directly to local civil society, national and local governments, and/or the private sector.

Hivos joins hands with its partners and climate movements in demanding that concrete, gender-responsive targets are set to get climate funding into the hands of local actors, and new funding mechanisms are developed by and with climate-affected communities to make climate finance work for them.

 

To conclude…commitments are vital, but focus must shift

The COP Presidency, this year in the hands of Egypt, has called for significant progress on commitments and pledges, especially on the delivery of the annual USD 100 billion from developed countries to developing countries. Failure to keep to this commitment has often been a breaking point in climate negotiations and has damaged trust between countries.

Equally important, however, is shifting our focus from the volume of climate finance to its effectiveness. Only then will a world governed by climate justice be within reach.

This opinion piece was originally published by Hivos

Excerpt:

Anne Jellema is CEO of Hivos

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Map of the 1858 trans-Atlantic cable route. Credit: Wikipedia.

By Manuel Manonelles
BARCELONA, Nov 9 2022 (IPS)

The recent incidents of sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in the depths of the Baltic Sea, the authorship of which still raises doubts today, have reminded us that some of the key infrastructures that condition geopolitics, and our daily lives, are largely located deep under the sea.

One of these strategic infrastructures, the importance of which is inversely proportional to their public awareness, also lies in the underwater environment. It is about submarine cables, generally of fiber optic, through which more than 95% of internet traffic circulates. A thick and growing network of undersea cables that connect the world and through which the lifeblood of the new economy, data, circulates.

More than 95% of what we see daily on our mobiles, computers, tablets and social networks, of what we upload or download from our clouds or watch through platforms —and thus millions of people, institutions and companies of all over the world— go through this submarine cable system

The history of submarine cables is not new. The first submarine cables were installed around 1850 and the first intercontinental cable, 4,000 kilometers long, was put into operation in 1858, connecting Ireland and Newfoundland (Canada).

It was at that time a telegraph cable, and while the first telegram—sent by Queen Victoria to then US President James Buchanan—took seventeen hours to get from one point to the next, it was considered a technological feat. From here, the network grew unstoppably and communications in the world changed.

Telephone cables followed, and in 1956 the first intercontinental telephone cable was put into operation, again connecting Europe and America with thirty-six telephone lines that would soon be insufficient. Thirty years later, the first fiber optic cable —replacing copper— was activated in 1988 and in recent decades the submarine cable network has dramatically increased, driven by the exponential growth in demand generated by the new digital economy and society.

It is surprising, then, that an infrastructure as critical and relevant as this goes so unnoticed, considering that it is the backbone of a society increasingly dependent on its digital dimension. This is what experts call the “paradox of invisibility”.

Because, again, more than 95% of what we see daily on our mobiles, computers, tablets and social networks, of what we upload or download from our clouds or watch through platforms —and thus millions of people, institutions and companies of all over the world— go through this submarine cable system.

The financial transactions transmitted by this network are approximately of 10 trillion dollars a day; and the global market for fiber optic submarine cables was around 13.3 billion dollars per year in 2020, expected to reach 30.8 billion in 2026, with an annual growth of 14%.

A system, however, that suffers from a significant governance deficit and, at the same time, is subject to substantial changes in its configuration and, above all, in the nature of its operators and owners. Moreover, traditionally the main operators of these networks were the telecom companies or, above all, consortiums of several companies in this sector.

Many of these companies were owned or had a close relationship with the governments of their country of origin —and, therefore, were linked in one way or another to some sort of national or regional legislation— and they generated a model focused on the interests and the interconnectivity of its clients.

In recent years, however, the growing need for hyper-connectivity of the large digital conglomerates (Google, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft, etc.) and their cloud computing provider data centers has resulted in that these have gone from being simple consumers of submarine cabling to becoming the main users (currently using 66% of the capacity of the entire current network). Even more, from users they have become the new dominant promoters of this type of infrastructure, which results in the reinforcement of their almost omnipotent power, and not only in the digital environment.

This can induce movements – albeit barely perceptible but equally relevant – in the complex balance of global power, by concentrating one of the strategic components of the global critical infrastructure into the hands of the technological giants.

All this with the absence of a global governance mechanism addressing this question, since the International Convention for the Protection of Submarine Cables of 1884 is more than outdated. As it is the case for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) –in which the abovementioned convention is currently framed- whose challenges are more than evident, with the obvious conclusion about the urgent need for the international community to provide an answer to this pressing question.

A response that not only has to be at a global level, but also at a regional one, for example at the level of the European Union, especially if digital sovereignty is to be ensured, a vital element in the current present and even more in the future.

Proof of this is that in the last weeks there have been several incidents in relation to submarine cables both on the British, French and Spanish coasts that several analysts have linked to the Ukraine war.

In the case of the United Kingdom, there were cuts in the cables that connect Great Britain with the Shetland and Faroe Islands, while in France two of the main cables that land through the submarine cable hub that is Marseille were also cut. Even if some of these cases have been proven the result of fortuitous accidents, in others there is still doubt about what really happened.

Some experts have pointed to Russia, recalling the naval maneuvers that this country carried out just before the invasion of Ukraine in front of the territorial waters of Ireland, precisely in one of the areas with the highest concentration of intercontinental cables in the world.

In this context, perhaps it is not surprising that the Spanish Navy has recently reported that it monitors the activity of Russian ships near the main cables that lie in sovereign Spanish waters, indicating that in recent months more than three possible prospecting actions carried by vessels flying the Russian flag had been detected and deterred. One more proof of the growing value of these infrastructures that, despite being almost invisible, are strategic.

Manuel Manonelles is Associate Professor of International Relations, Blanquerna/University Ramon Llull, Barcelona

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The 7th Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

By Azza Karam
NEW YORK, Nov 9 2022 (IPS)

In this year’s COP 27 two-weeklong summit in Egypt, which concludes November 18, a rough count indicates there will be 40 different sessions organised by, for, and about, religious engagements in/on climate change and related issues. This is likely the highest number of events by and around religious actors, organised at a COP event.

The reason? Religions, religious engagement, interfaith, etc., are the flavour of our geopolitical times. For better or worse.

His Holiness Pope Francis and His Eminence the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar were just addressing a major conference in Bahrain on East-West relations, with the King of Bahrain. After also putting in a similar appearance and speaking together with the President of Kazakhstan, in September. Both countries were hosting major international meetings of religious leaders, in the fanciest of hotels, convened from many corners of the world, replete with lavish food banquets and generous hospitality and care for their every need.

I should know, as I am a most grateful recipient, albeit not a religious leader, but an aspiring servant to religious multilateralism. But I run ahead of myself here.

In convening, countries appear to be competing with Saudi Arabia, which hosted such a seminal gathering (in May 2022, bringing together Buddhist and Hindu faith leaders, for the first time, as equals with their Muslim, Christian and Jewish brethren), as well as with the UAE, Qatar, and Oman, who are also hosting international gatherings of religious leaders this very month.

This year alone, there have been over 50 meetings of religious actors, that is more than 2 per month, and this is not a comprehensive tally.

Each of these major and rather expensive conferences, provides a platform not unlike the UN General Assembly, where each leader gets his (for invariably they are mostly men) time to speak, often eloquently, about their own faith tradition.

Each of these speeches regales with how diligent the efforts of faith/community/organisations are, to secure peace and human dignity for all people. As they remind of the spiritual wisdom each faith upholds, they also speak of past and upcoming initiatives, meant to safeguard dignity for all. Sometimes they also remember to speak about the planet and our responsibility to save it.

As someone who spent decades serving at the United Nations and in diverse international academic and development organisations, and now listening to the religious actors speaking, I find myself asking the same question: if each of these governments, and now these religious bodies, are working so hard and serving so amazingly, why is our world the way it is?

Why are so many governments and peoples and communities at war with one another inside and outside nation-state boundaries? Why are we listening to hate speech from every type of mouth and all types of platforms given ample media attention? Why are arms and drugs the biggest industries?

Why are the rich getting richer and the poor poorer while our planet becomes more bare and parched in one part, and flooded to death, in another? Why is violence of all kinds, inside families and within all communities, a pandemic? Why are medicines, and now even values, a commodity to trade power and privilege with?

Why is nuclear war back on the agenda of consciousness and politics? In short, why do we hate/fear one another one another so much, and so deeply?

Because what ails our multilateral system, in spite of the speeches (and efforts) of political leaders (in and out of electoral times for those fortunate enough to have genuine elections of their national leaders), and now also in spite of the speeches and works of religious actors, is fundamentally the same: each to his own. Multilateral – as an adjective defined by the Oxford Dictionary, where “three or more groups, nations, etc. take part”, is an endangered species.

The United Nations, the premier multilateral entity of 193 governments, is struggling to strengthen multilateralism, yet not necessarily by looking internally at its own behemoth infrastructures, or culture. Ever seen an organogramme of the United Nations system? One should. It is a universe of wonder where every human and non-human thought and action appears to have a dedicated office or structure of some sort.

But before we point fingers at the political multilaterals (who are remarkably good at either ignoring faith communities, or using them to the hilt, or both), we need to ask ourselves, how often do we see or hear of “three or more” religious institutions (not of the same faith) working together to actually deliver needs to diverse peoples around the world?

The answer is, that beyond the speeches, the lavish meetings and innumerable projects, multilateral religious collaboration (where money and efforts from many and diverse are pooled to serve, together, the needs of all, regardless of gender, national, ethnic, racial or religious affiliation) remains rare.

Please do not misunderstand: religious institutions are working to serve hundreds of millions of people on every area of need, humanitarian and development – and now also political. Just as Indigenous Peoples are the original carers of all nature, religious leaders and institutions are the original carers for myriad human needs.

There is plenty of evidence about this. HIV and AIDS, Ebola and the Covid pandemic highlighted how critical religiously managed health infrastructure is to communities – rich and poor. A glance at the education sectors, psycho-social care, migrants and displaced peoples, and other humanitarian areas of need, will show clearly that religious institutions still serve many, widely, and in the remotest areas.

So, it is not a dearth of service to humanity that diverse faith actors need to come to terms with. It is the famine of multireligious collaborative services – as in giving and doing together. At Religions for Peace, for over half a century of supporting interreligious platforms serve the common good in over 95 countries, we live the challenges of multi religious collaboration, on peace mediation, food and human security, migration and displacement, education, gender and women’s empowerment, and trying to save together, the world’s remaining rainforests, through, among other efforts, the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative.

We know that even within the realms of religion, the manner of dealing with these challenges tends to mirror prevailing colonial mindsets, with tendencies to give prominence to one religion, insistence on singular branding, and jockeying for more political influence and financial resourcing.

More and more faith leaders – young and older – are (rightfully) expecting financial remuneration for their time and energies spent in international work, thus slowly but surely reversing a trend of volunteerism that used to uniquely characterise religious service and giving.

Just as governments are failing to systematically work together as inhabitants and leaders of one planet, and just as too many civil society groups and corporations compete for branding and ‘market share’, so too, do religious organisations.

Some religious entities are replicating a secular catastrophic practice of seeking to build other/new/different/more ‘specialised’ entities and initiatives, rather than shoulder the heavy cross of seeking to work together in spite of the damning challenges (both puns intended). In so doing, many of these religious actors are effectively dispersing efforts.

One of the many lessons of failed multilateralism is that more, or different, or new and/or specialised, may well be the well-intentioned road to hell.

When it comes to actually investing in one another’s work so that they are speaking as one and serving together, many religious leaders and leaders of religious organisations will smile, say some nice words, and move on to the next sermon/meeting/international conference, or nevertheless doggedly pursue their own special/unique initiative(s).

Such that we have now so many religious initiatives, dominated by one or a bilateral religious partnership, or two and a half (relatively tokenistic representation of another faith), working on the same challenges, facing all of humanity.

What ails multilateralism is not the absence of resources, tools, values, the clarity of the crisis, or even the will and creativity to serve. Multilateralism fails when some want only their values, truths, communities, nations, cultures, security needs, and/or specific institutions, to prevail.

And with the failure of multilateralism is a failure of common humanity, and planetary survival.

Prof. Azza Karam is Secretary General, Religions for Peace

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. June 2022. Credit: CIAT/Neil Palmer

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Nov 9 2022 (IPS)

The electoral defeat of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is a triumph for everyone who is concerned about the peril of climate change. Bolsonaro’s well-deserved defeat could help save the Amazon rainforest, which has been ravaged under his criminal rule, and the process of reversing the looming climate change catastrophe can begin

Righting the Wrong

President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory over Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil represents a historic chance to begin undoing some of the great harm that was inflicted on Brazil’s Amazon rainforest over the last four years.

Since taking office in January 2019, Bolsonaro has ravaged the earth for short-sighted gains, turning back environmental regulations that any thinking human being would wish to preserve in the face of such unprecedented global degradation.

Bolsonaro systematically dismantled environmental protections so that those who could not care less about the environment would be free to clear the land and turn it into pastures without any accountability. The unfolding crisis of the Amazon is a catastrophe for climate change, biodiversity, Indigenous people of the region, and the untold wonders that human science has yet to understand.

A 2020 study published in the journal Nature has shown that if the systematic destruction of the Brazilian Amazon continues unabated, much of it could become an arid savannah, or even “dry scrubland,” within decades given the rate of deforestation, largely due to deliberate and illegal fires that are meant to permanently convert forest into pastureland.

With the devastation of the rainforests has also come the devastation of those Indigenous people whose homelands and livelihood are being destroyed by deforestation.

Just imagine, between August 2020 and July 2021 over 5,000 square miles of rainforest were lost in the Brazilian Amazon – that is an area larger than the land area of Connecticut. In fact, under Bolsonaro the rate of destruction reached a ten-year high, as his administration turned a blind eye to illegal logging, the deforestation of Indigenous land, and, as Amnesty International notes, the “violence against those living on and seeking to defend their territories.”

Under Bolsonaro’s reckless and corrupt rule, his government deliberately “weakened environmental law enforcement agencies, undermining their ability to effectively sanction environmental crime or detect exports of illegal timber,” as Human Rights Watch describes. Fines for illegal logging in the Brazilian Amazon were suspended by presidential decree at the beginning of October 2019.

Illegal seizures of land on Reserves and Indigenous territories in Brazil’s Amazon became routine, as Bolsonaro slashed the budget of agencies that protected the jungle from unauthorized clearing.

Criminal organizations, aptly called “rainforest mafias,” allow cattle ranchers to operate with impunity, and according to the US State Department possess the “logistical capacity to coordinate large-scale extraction, processing, and sale of timber, while deploying armed men to protect their interests.”

It is hard to fathom the sheer scale of destruction that was wreaked by Bolsonaro upon the Amazon. Such rampant deforestation is tragic on many levels — it is destroying habitats and countless species being pushed to the brink of extinction when we are already in the midst of a mass extinction of this planet’s animals, insects, and plants.

It is hastening the onslaught of climate change when we are already facing the dire effects of a warming planet. And it is obliterating the lands of Indigenous people who have already suffered and been persecuted and murdered for decades.

To be sure, the extent of devastation of the rainforest under Bolsonaro was so enormous that we can barely begin to comprehend the loss to humanity, to science, and to our knowledge of undiscovered plants and animals that hold the answers to questions of which we have not even dreamt. This is a shameful loss to the entire world and to generations hence.

The Bolsonaro government failed miserably to act as a responsible custodian of the Amazon and Pantanal (the world’s largest tropical wetland located mostly within Brazil, which along with the Amazon has some of the world’s most biologically diverse ecosystems) — instead it helped in every way it can to hasten this unimaginable devastation.

Dr Michelle Kalamandeen, a tropical ecologist on the Amazon rainforest, observed that “When a forest is lost, it is gone forever. Recovery may occur but never 100% recovery.”

We must bring this travesty to a halt. By this wanton and dismally short-sighted decimation of the rainforests we are depriving humanity of knowledge which could alter medicine, improve our lives and transform the world, from the way we build our cities to the ways we make our homes.

Plant and animal species inspire new technologies, new forms of architecture, new kinds of design and materiality. Yet probably less than 1 percent of rainforest trees and plants have been studied by science — though not less than 25 percent of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients. By allowing rampant deforestation to continue, we are doing ourselves and future generations untold and unconscionable harm.

Let us remember that the Amazon does not simply belong to the countries in which it happens to be found – it is not the exclusive resource of those companies that are able to exploit it, appropriate its resources, and destroy it with impunity.

The Amazon is part of our collective patrimony, a heritage beyond price which we are duty-bound to pass on to future generations, regardless of the profits that we may yield from its systematic rape.

And let us make no mistake, or mince words—the Amazon is being raped hour by hour, month by month, year by year, and the world is watching in silence as this violation is repeated daily. The time is running out for us to act in a meaningful way to stop this mindless decimation of one of the world’s greatest natural wonders.

With the election of Lula as President of Brazil, we now have a historic opportunity to support and encourage him to immediately start working on a plan to reverse Bolsonaro’s disastrous policies in three main areas: the environment, public security, and scientific discoveries.

First, President Lula should start by prohibiting deforestation, illegal logging, and land grabbing. To that end, he must stop short of nothing to pass a new law to be enshrined in the Brazilian constitution that puts an end to the systematic destruction of the rainforest. The law should include mandatory prison sentences as well as heavy fines to prevent cattle ranchers and illegal loggers from committing such crimes ever again with impunity.

Second, he must develop a comprehensive plan to protect the human rights of Indigenous communities from the criminal networks that use violence, intimidation, and terror to cow the locals into silence. He should make such a plan the center of his domestic policy while improving security and providing the necessary funding for environmental agencies to perform their tasks with zeal.

Third, President Lula should invite the global scientific community to further study the wonders of the Amazon and in partnership with them initiate scores of scientific projects from which the whole world would benefit, while preserving the glory of the Amazon as one of the central pillars in the fight against climate change.

Finally, President Biden, who understands full well the danger that climate change poses, should provide political support and financial assistance to President Lula to help him reverse some of the damage that was inflicted on the Amazon by his predecessor.

President Lula must view his rise to power and the responsibility placed on his shoulders as nothing less than a holy mission that will help save the planet from the man-made looming catastrophes of climate change.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies for over 20 years.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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