Africa

“To force poor countries to repay a loan to cope with a climate crisis they hardly caused is profoundly unfair. Instead of supporting countries that are facing worsening droughts, cyclones and flooding, rich countries are crippling their ability to cope with the next shock and deepening their poverty.” Credit: Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 4 2022 (IPS)

Just a few days ahead of the UN Climate Conference (COP27) in Egypt (6-18 November), new revelations show how far rich, industrialised countries –those who contribute most to the growing catastrophes- have been lying over their real contributions to climate finance.

The True Value of Climate Finance Is a Third of What Developed Countries Report unveils that many rich countries are using “dishonest and misleading” accounting “to inflate” their climate finance contributions to developing countries – in 2020 by as much as 225%, according to investigations by Oxfam International.

 

Inflating the figures

The report estimates between just 21-24.5 billion US dollars as the “true value” of climate finance provided in 2020, against a reported figure of 68.3 billion US dollars in public finance that rich countries said was provided (alongside mobilised private finance bringing the total to 83.3 billion US dollars).

Rich countries' contributions not only continue to fall miserably below their promised goal but are also very misleading in often counting the wrong things in the wrong way. They're overstating their own generosity by painting a rosy picture that obscures how much is really going to poor countries

Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International Climate Policy Lead

The global climate finance target is supposed to be 100 billion US dollars a year, an amount which is slightly more than the 83 billion US dollars the world’s biggest nuclear powers spent in one single year– 2021, on such weapons of mass destruction.

Furthermore, “the combined profits of the largest energy companies in the first quarter of this year are close to 100 billion US dollars,” said already last august the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, adding that it was “immoral” that major oil and gas companies are reporting “record profits”, while prices soar.

 

“Very misleading”

Moreover, “rich countries’ contributions not only continue to fall miserably below their promised goal but are also very misleading in often counting the wrong things in the wrong way. They’re overstating their own generosity by painting a rosy picture that obscures how much is really going to poor countries,” said Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International Climate Policy Lead.

 

Mostly loans

“Our global climate finance is a broken train: drastically flawed and putting us at risk of reaching a catastrophic destination. There are too many loans indebting poor countries that are already struggling to cope with climatic shocks.”

There is too much “dishonest” and “shady” reporting. The result is the most vulnerable countries remain ill-prepared to face the wrath of the climate crisis, warned Dabi.

 

Rich countries’ “manipulation”

Oxfam research found that instruments such as loans are being reported at face value, ignoring repayments and other factors. Too often funded projects have less climate focus than reported, making the net value of support specifically aiming at climate action significantly lower than actual reported climate finance figures.

Currently, loans are dominating over 70% provision (48.6 billion US dollars) of public climate finance, adding to the debt crisis across developing countries.

“To force poor countries to repay a loan to cope with a climate crisis they hardly caused is profoundly unfair. Instead of supporting countries that are facing worsening droughts, cyclones and flooding, rich countries are crippling their ability to cope with the next shock and deepening their poverty.”

Least Developed Countries’ external debt repayments reached 31 billion US dollars in 2020.

 

Such ‘funding’ is primarily based on loans

“A climate finance system that is primarily based on loans is only worsening the problem. Rich nations, especially the heaviest-polluting ones,” said Dabi.

A key way to prevent a full-scale climate catastrophe is for developed nations to fulfil their 100 billion US dollars commitments and genuinely address the current climate financing accounting holes. “Manipulating the system will only mean poor nations, least responsible for the climate crisis, footing the climate bill,” said Dabi.

 

Stalling all efforts

Other findings by this global confederation which includes 21 member organisations and affiliates reveal that an average of 189 million people per year have been affected by extreme weather-related events in developing countries since 1991 – the year that a mechanism was first proposed to address the costs of climate impacts on low-income countries.

The report, The Cost of Delay, by the Loss and Damage Collaboration – a group of more than 100 researchers, activists, and policymakers from around the globe – highlights how rich countries have repeatedly stalled efforts to provide dedicated finance to developing countries bearing the costs of a climate crisis they did little to cause.

 

Six fossil fuel companies

“Analysis shows that in the first half of 2022 six fossil fuel companies combined made enough money to cover the cost of major extreme weather and climate-related events in developing countries and still have nearly $70 billion profit remaining.”

The report reveals that 55 of the most climate-vulnerable countries have suffered climate-induced economic losses totalling over half a trillion dollars during the first two decades of this century as fossil fuel profits rocket, leaving people in some of the poorest places on earth to foot the bill.

 

Super profits. And massive deaths

It also reveals that the fossil fuel industry made enough super-profit between 2000 and 2019 to cover the costs of climate-induced economic losses in 55 of the most climate-vulnerable countries, almost sixty times over.

The report estimates that since 1991, developing countries have experienced 79% of recorded deaths and 97% of the total recorded number of people affected by the impacts of weather extremes.

The analysis also shows that the number of extreme weather and climate-related events that developing countries experience has more than doubled over that period with over 676,000 people killed.

The entire continent of Africa produces less than 4% of global emissions and the African Development Bank reported recently the continent was losing between five and 15% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita growth because of climate change.

 

Enormous gains

Lyndsay Walsh, Oxfam’s Climate policy adviser and co-author of the report said: “It is an injustice that polluters who are disproportionately responsible for the escalating greenhouse gas emissions continue to reap these enormous profits while climate-vulnerable countries are left to foot the bill for the climate impacts destroying people’s lives, homes and jobs.”

Meanwhile, in addition to manipulating the figures and further indebting the poor, business continues as usual. The largest polluters–the fossil fuels private companies make more and more profits, and rich countries’ politicians are set to increase their subsidies to these fuels to nearly seven trillion by 2025.

 

By Elizabeth Mrema
MONTREAL, Canada, Nov 4 2022 (IPS)

It is no secret that humankind’s past actions have accelerated the deterioration of ecosystems, negatively impacting our economies, societies, health, and cultures. It is estimated that humans have altered over 97% of ecosystems worldwide, to date. One million species are currently threatened with extinction (IPBES). The writing on the wall is clear. Our planet is in crisis. The sobering reality is that if we continue on our current trajectory, biodiversity and the services it provides will continue to decline, jeopardizing the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and our lives as we know them. The decline in biodiversity is expected to further accelerate unless effective action is taken to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss. These causes are often justified by societal values, norms and behaviors. Some examples include unsustainable production and consumption patterns, human population dynamics and trends, and technological innovation patterns.

Elizabeth Mrema

With biodiversity declining faster than any other time in human history, our quality of life, our well-being, and our economies are under threat. Over 44 trillion US dollars of assets globally, or over half of the world’s GDP, is at risk from biodiversity loss (WEF). Our economies are embedded in natural systems and depend considerably on the flow of ecosystem goods and services, such as food, other raw materials, pollination, water filtration, and climate regulation. But we still have a chance. We still have a narrow window in which to transform our relationship with biodiversity and create a healthy, profitable, sustainable future. We can still bend the curve of biodiversity loss and leave future generations with prosperity and hope. We can still move to support ecosystem resilience, human well-being, and global prosperity.

This has deemed this the decisive decade. This is because after this decade, once we move past 2030, the damage done to our planet will be beyond repair. That doesn’t give us much time but it does still give us a chance. This December in Montreal, Canada we will get that chance. It is likely our only chance. I can’t emphasize that enough. This December, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will bring world leaders together to address the biodiversity crisis at the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15). Truth be told, the outcome of COP 15 will determine the trajectory of humankind on planet Earth.

The ultimate goal of COP 15 is to emerge with a plan, a roadmap to a sustainable future. We call it the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF). The framework is currently being negotiated by Parties under the Convention on Biological Diversity and represents a historic opportunity to accelerate action on biodiversity at all levels. It aims to build on the outcomes of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets and achieve the 2050 vision of living in harmony with nature. The draft framework, if adopted and implemented, will put biodiversity on a path to recovery before the end of this decade.

Why is it critical that the GBF is adopted and implemented? Because 90% of seabirds have plastic in their stomachs (WWF UK). Because we have lost half of the world’s corals and lose forest areas the size of 27 football fields every minute (WWF LPR). Because an estimated 4 billion people rely primarily on natural medicines for their health care and some 70 per cent of drugs used for cancer are natural or are synthetic products inspired by nature (IPBES). Because Ecosystem-based approaches (biodiversity) can provide up to 30% of the climate mitigation needed by 2030. Because monitored wildlife populations, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, have seen a devastating 69% drop on average since 1970 (WWF LPR). I could go on and on.

Some key targets within the draft framework include:

o Ensuring that at least 30 per cent globally of land areas and of sea areas are protected.
o Preventing or reducing the rate of introduction and establishment of invasive alien species by 50%.
o Reducing nutrients lost to the environment by at least half, pesticides by at least two thirds, and eliminate discharge of plastic waste.
o Using ecosystem-based approaches to contribute to mitigation and adaptation to climate change and ensuring that all climate efforts avoid negative impacts on biodiversity.
o Redirecting, repurposing, reforming or eliminating incentives harmful for biodiversity in a just and equitable way, reducing them by at least $500 billion per year.
o Increasing financial resources from all sources to at least US$ 200 billion per year, including new, additional and effective financial resources, increasing by at least US$ 10 billion per year international financial flows to developing countries.

The post-2020 global biodiversity framework is not just important, it is critical. It will take a whole-of-society and whole-of-government approach and it will take hard work and commitment; but we can do it. We need to act now to bend the curve to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. COP 15 will be a the most crucial and decisive step towards a better and more sustainable future for generations to come. This is our chance. It’s time to decide on a future.

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, a national of the United Republic of Tanzania, is the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Noeleen Heyzer, UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Myanmar, talks with Rohingya refugees in a camp in Bangladesh. October 2022. Credit: Office of the Special Envoy on Myanmar

By Jan Servaes
BRUSSELS, Nov 4 2022 (IPS)

For 10 days in November, the world’s diplomatic attention will largely be focused on three major diplomatic meetings in Southeast Asia.

These include the Group of 20 (G-20) Summit on November 15-16 in Bali, Indonesia, and the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, which will be held November 18-19 in Bangkok, Thailand.

Both follow the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and related meetings, which will take place November 8-13 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and include the East Asia Summit.

The meeting in Cambodia will be the first ASEAN meeting that US President Biden will attend in person as last year’s meetings were held remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He will also become only the second sitting U.S. president to visit the country, after President Barack Obama (also for an ASEAN meeting) in 2012.

While in Cambodia, Biden will, according to a White House statement, “explain the importance of advocating cooperation between the US and ASEAN in ensuring security and prosperity in the region, and the well-being of our combined one billion people”.

This is likely to include much reference to ASEAN’s important position in Washington’s “Indo-Pacific” strategy, and its emphasis on its prized position of ‘centrality’ in Asian diplomacy.

The crisis in Myanmar will also be central to all these meetings. In preparation, in June 2022, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) launched an International Parliamentary Inquiry (IPI) into the global response to the crisis in Myanmar with the aim of providing strategic, principled, achievable and time-bound policy recommendations to international actors, so that they can better work towards an end to violence and a return to democracy in the country.

Their report, titled “Time is not on our side – The failed international response to the Myanmar coup,” was presented at a press conference in Bangkok on Nov. 2.

The IPI is formed by a committee of MPs from seven different countries in Africa, America, Asia and Europe, consisting of IPI President Heidi Hautala (Vice President of the European Parliament), Mercy Chriesty Barends (Member of the House of Representatives in Indonesia and Board Member of APHR), Taufik Basari (Member of the House of Representatives in Indonesia), Amadou Camara (Member of the Gambia National Assembly, and Steering Committee Member of the African Parliamentary Association on Human Rights), Nqabayomzi Kwankwa (Member of the National Assembly Assembly of South Africa, and Chairman of the AfriPAHR), Ilhan Omar (US Congress member), Nitipon Piwmow (MP in Thailand) and Charles Santiago (MP in Malaysia and President of APHR).

The report: “Time is not on our side”

Since the military of Myanmar staged a coup d’état on February 1, 2021, the situation in the country has steadily deteriorated. The military junta, led by Major General Min Aung Hlaing, has waged a brutal war of attrition against its own people, perpetrating countless atrocities and destroying the country’s economy.

Armed forces have killed at least 2,371 people and displaced hundreds of thousands, bringing the total number of displaced persons in the country to more than 1.3 million. The junta has also imprisoned more than 15,000 political prisoners and routinely used torture against those arrested. At the same time, they cracked down on freedom of expression and association, including intense repression against independent media and civil society.

Yet the Burmese resisted en masse. The initial peaceful demonstrations in the immediate aftermath of the coup, as well as the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) in which hundreds of thousands joined a general strike, demonstrated the population’s overwhelming rejection of a return to military rule. The coup has also led to an unprecedented level of unity among those who oppose the military across ethnic borders.

Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG) was formed in April 2021 bringing together parliamentarians ousted in the coup, representatives of ethnic minorities and civil society actors. The NUG rightly claims a mandate as a legitimate representative of the Myanmar people. It enjoys widespread legitimacy and support, especially in the interior of the country, and represents the most inclusive government in Myanmar’s history.

The NUG is committed to the establishment of a new constitution and genuine federal democracy in Myanmar, which would be an important step towards fulfilling the ambitions for autonomy of the country’s ethnic minorities.

The junta’s attempts to quell the resistance with extreme violence failed dramatically, serving only to exacerbate existing tensions and incite some anti-junta activists to turn to armed struggle to defend themselves. Anti-military militias known as People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) – some commanded by the NUG – have been formed across the country, including in previously relatively peaceful areas.

The coup has also sparked a new wave of violence between the military and the Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs), which have struggled for decades for autonomy in the country’s border regions.

Some of these EAOs, such as the armed wings of the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), have joined the NUG. However, not all EAOs have formally joined the anti-military struggle as Myanmar’s political landscape remains highly complex and fractured.

The escalating violence has accelerated the near collapse of the economy and an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Myanmar’s GDP has fallen by 13 percent since 2019 and 40 percent of the country’s population now lives below the national poverty line. Despite the increased needs, humanitarian actors have struggled to reach vulnerable and remote populations as the military has severely restricted access for humanitarian aid.

Poor response by international community

The international community has been largely unable to respond effectively to the crisis. The junta’s international allies—notably Russia and China—prove steadfast and uncritical supporters, providing both weapons and legitimacy to an otherwise isolated regime.

However, foreign governments that support democracy have not supported their rhetoric with the same force. While a number of countries have imposed sanctions on junta leaders and their personal assets, these efforts remain uncoordinated and have failed to crack down on key revenue-generating entities such as the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE).

The United Nations, in particular, is hampered by internal divisions and appears unable to exert any influence. The NUG has attracted supporters worldwide and continues to occupy Myanmar’s seat at the UN, but most governments are hesitant to formally recognize them, despite calls from parliaments and advocates to do so.

ASEAN unable to respond effectively

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member, is also plagued by internal divisions and has been unable to respond effectively. The bloc’s five-point consensus, signed in April 2021 and aimed at tackling the crisis, has failed completely, hampered by a lack of will on the part of all ASEAN member states to enforce it, and a military leadership in Myanmar that has shown no intent to implement it.

While some member states, such as Malaysia, have called for new approaches, including direct involvement with the NUG and other pro-democracy forces, others, including Thailand or Cambodia, remain “junta enablers.”

As Myanmar slides into civil war, the possibility for a negotiated solution to the conflict is almost completely closed. The dialogue prescribed in ASEAN’s five-point consensus is impossible under the current circumstances.

The responsibility lies with the junta, which has shown no willingness to engage with those who oppose it and has instead relied solely on brute force in its effort to wipe out any opposition.

The July 2022 execution of four political prisoners, the country’s first judicial execution since 1988, highlighted both the brutality of the military and its complete disinterest in negotiations. The coup unceremoniously brought an end to the previous power-sharing arrangement with the civilian leadership. Now the vast majority of Myanmar’s population has expressed a clear desire not to return to the status quo of the past.

The military junta has failed to consolidate its power

Nineteen months after the coup, the military junta has failed to consolidate its power. This is also apparent from a recent report by Noeleen Heyzer, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Myanmar. Large parts of Myanmar’s territory are disputed between the military and forces affiliated with the NUG or EAOs, and it can be argued that the coup has failed.

In areas along the Thai border, EAOs are working together, providing basic services to the population. That way one is showing what a future Myanmar, in which different groups will work together instead of fighting each other, looks like.

In sum

With Myanmar’s future at stake, external pressure on the military and support for the resistance could be the deciding factor in the course of the conflict. The international community can and must do more to help the Myanmar people establish a federal democracy.

It should begin significantly increasing efforts to address the worsening humanitarian crisis, increasing pressure on the illegal junta through coordinated sanctions and arms embargoes, and recognizing the NUG as the legitimate authority in Myanmar.

The NUG, as well as the aligned EAOs, should be provided with funding and capacity building programs in governance and federalism. But urgent action is needed because, as Khin Ohmar, Myanmar activist and chairwoman of the Progressive Voice, said at one of the IPI hearings: “Time is not on our side”.

The countries and international institutions that claim to support democracy in Myanmar must act urgently. If they are serious about helping the Myanmar people in their hour of greatest need, they must adopt creative and effective policies to provide support and pave the way for a better future for the country.

Min Aung Hlaing’s junta has failed to take control of the country, but pro-democracy forces cannot drive the military out of Myanmar’s political life on their own. The forces fighting for federal democracy need all the help they can get from allies in the global community.

Recommendations

The International Parliamentary Inquiry (IPI) makes a number of recommendations that focus on the urgent need to increase humanitarian assistance to Myanmar, to urge neighboring countries (notably Thailand, India and Bangladesh) to provide more cross-border humanitarian aid and to work as much as possible directly with local, community-based aid groups, and not with the junta.

Pressure on the junta must also be increased, through coordinated and genuinely impactful sanctions. For instance, by calling on governments that have not yet sanctioned the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), especially the United States, to do so as soon as possible.

At the same time, Myanmar’s pro-democracy forces – including the NUG and ethnic organizations– should be recognized and given the political and financial support they need. The NUG and EAOs should start negotiating a future settlement for a federal democracy in Myanmar.

The NUG should also be encouraged to unconditionally restore Rohingya citizenship and accept the return of those who have sought refuge in Bangladesh over the years.

One should acknowledge that the five-point consensus has failed and that Min Aung Hlaing’s junta is not a reliable partner. ASEAN must abandon the five-point consensus in its current form and negotiate a new agreement on the crisis in Myanmar with the NUG, local civil society organizations (CSOs) and representatives of ethnic armed organizations (EAOs).

Jan Servaes was UNESCO-Chair in Communication for Sustainable Social Change at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He taught ‘international communication’ in Australia, Belgium, China, Hong Kong, the US, Netherlands and Thailand, in addition to short-term projects at about 120 universities in 55 countries. He is editor of the 2020 Handbook on Communication for Development and Social Change.
https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-981-10-7035-8

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 4 2022 (IPS)

The COP 27 climate summit is taking place amid a rash of political, economic and environmental upheavals, including missed funding and emission targets, increased pollution and climate devastation, rising global inflation, cuts in Western development assistance and the negative after-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The summit—the 27th Conference of State Parties (COP27), scheduled for November 6 through 18– is billed as one of the largest annual gatherings on climate action, this time in the Egyptian coastal town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The Brussels-based Centre for UN Constitutional Research (CUNCR) predicts COP27 “will likely face the same empty promises and no actions by most big countries responsible for climate change.”

In a message during the launch of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Adaptation Gap report released on the eve of COP27, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns “the world is failing to protect people from the here-and-now impacts of the climate crisis”.

“Those on the front lines of the climate crisis are at the back of the line for support. The world is falling far short, both in stopping the growth of greenhouse gas emissions and starting desperately needed efforts, to plan, finance and implement adaptation in light of growing risks”.

He also pointed out that adaptation needs in the developing world are set to skyrocket to as much as $340 billion a year by 2030.

“Yet adaptation support today stands at less than one-tenth of that amount. The most vulnerable people and communities are paying the price. This is unacceptable,” Guterres said.

Gadir Lavadenz, Global Coordinator, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ), told IPS COP 27 cannot be another example of how power is usurped.

“It is outrageous to still see big corporations manipulating and dominating this process. Big polluters have a role to play, stop polluting and not use the climate COPs to greenwash their actions. COP 27 must deliver a strong message to the world that the multilateral system can still play a role in the climate crisis”.

Lavadenz also pointed out that the annual $100 billion target was not only evaded systematically by developed nations, but it has demonstrated to be insufficient to deal with the magnitude of our climate crisis and there is growing evidence of this.

“COP 27, unlike its predecessor, should move away from false solutions like geo-engineering, carbon offsets, nature-based solutions and others and instead focus on the matters that have the potential to impact the most vulnerable countries and groups”.

Finance is not about cold numbers, but about the lives at risk in this very moment and that have no means to deal with a problem caused by the consumerist culture of a small privileged portion of this world.

“COP 27 cannot be remembered as just another meeting, but as a moment to show progress and hope through real solutions”, declared Lavadenz, who is the Coordinator of a global network of over 200 grassroot, regional, and global networks and organizations advocating climate justice.

Flagging a new report from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters October 26 that countries are bending the curve of global greenhouse gas emissions downward, but the report underscores that these efforts remain insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

The report shows that current commitments will increase emissions by 10.6 per cent by 2030, compared to 2010 levels.

This is considered an improvement over last year’s assessment, which found that countries were on a path to increase emissions by 13.7 per cent by 2030, compared to 2010 levels, “but it is still not good news”.

Just 26 of 193 countries that agreed last year to intensify their climate actions have followed through, pointing Earth toward a future marked by climate catastrophes, according to the U.N. report

Meena Raman, a Senior Researcher at the Third World Network, a member organization of Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ), told IPS the $100 billion target is supposed to be $100 billion per year.

“This target is not expected to be realised and is complicated by how climate finance is counted.”

She pointed out that the definition of what climate finance is in itself an issue being addressed at the COP.

“Given that many developing countries are in debt distress, the provision of more loans which need to be paid back presents a very major problem for those countries who need the finance”.

What is needed, she argued, is more grants for especially tackling adaptation needs and funds to address loss and damage.

Meeting the climate finance needs of developing countries through non-debt creating instruments is critical, including through the reform and re-channeling of Special Drawing Rights as outright grants for climate finance.

COP 27 must not be a lost cause. It is the time for implementing in real terms the commitments made by developed countries, Raman declared.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters last week: “When we were together at COP26, (in Scotland in October-November 2021), we brought forward a declaration, a statement, for the elimination or the reduction of methane gas by 30 percent by 2030.”

“We are now looking at most countries committing to this. If everyone did this, this would be the equivalent of removing all vehicles and all the ships and all the planes that are currently out in the world in terms of emissions. So, we can have a real impact. We can do what is needed to maintain the 1.5 degree Celsius rise of temperature”, he declared.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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

With time running out, the meeting in Egypt will mark the moment when we start to see if the pledges made at COP26 in Glasgow, are being met. Credit: Shutterstock

By Felix Dodds and Chris Spence
NEW YORK, Nov 3 2022 (IPS)

So, Greta Thunberg won’t be coming to COP27. She’s condemned it as “greenwashing” and cast doubts on the host’s human rights record and lack of access for activists.

To be clear, we have nothing but admiration for what Greta Thunberg has accomplished as far as increasing the pressure on our political leaders to do more. We agree with her completely that a lot more is needed, and fast.

But when it comes to COP27, we hope she’ll change her mind. We have three reasons for this: the impact of diplomacy, the urgency of the situation, and COP27’s role convening people with power and influence.

 

Diplomacy works

One reason she has given for not attending is her concern that civil society representation may be less this time around, and she doesn’t want to take someone else’s place. This is thoughtful. However, Greta Thunberg has access to leaders’ others may not. Her presence could have a significant impact.
While Greta Thunberg is right that many international events are mostly “blah, blah, blah,” the United Nations negotiations on climate change have achieved a lot more than many people realize. Prior to the Paris Climate agreement in 2015, for instance, we were on a trajectory of 4-6 degrees Celsius rise in temperature by the end of the century. Now, estimates suggest we’re on track for somewhere around 2.4-2.8 C, if current pledges are met. While this would be a terrible scenario to have to face, it would be less apocalyptic than those higher numbers.

As we have pointed out in a previous article, international negotiations on climate change have had a profound impact already, kickstarting the shift away from two centuries of fossil fuel dependence and giving us at least a chance of achieving sustainability in the longer term. Just days ago, the International Energy Agency forecast that global emissions will peak in 2025 before beginning to fall. Furthermore, they see all types of fossil fuels “peaking or hitting a plateau” then, too.

Do we wish this had happened sooner? Absolutely. But it shows progress is being made. Besides, there is no alternative to an international process when it comes to dealing with a global problem of this magnitude. No country, company, or coalition, can solve this problem alone. We all need to work together.

 

Urgency means everyone joining the fight

We agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Thunberg’s exhortation for everyone to “mobilize” and be involved in solving this challenge. Many folks may choose to be activists or advocates for change, pressuring their home governments to be more ambitious, taking action locally, or changing their habits as consumers or investors. Thunberg is also quite right that time is running out; the science tells us the window of opportunity to restrict warming to 1.5C or less is closing rapidly.

Yet this is exactly why COP27 is so important. With time running out, the meeting in Egypt will mark the moment where we start to see if the pledges made at COP26 in Glasgow, are being met. Is the global community sticking to its promises or falling short? COP27 will give us an opportunity to review, press for greater urgency, and draw global attention to those who are keeping their promises and those who are not.

The decision at COP26 to not wait for 5 years until governments submit improved National Determined Contributions, but to ask all countries to update their NDCs by COP27, is also important.

A total of 39 Parties have communicated new or updated NDCs since COP26, including critical countries such as Australia and India. This is clearly not enough, but it is a start. The same request should be made at COP27, pressuring countries to review their NDCs in time for COP28.

 

Influencing the powerful

Finally, UN climate summits present a once-a-year opportunity to engage with powerful politicians and urge decisions on the climate threat. With time so short, no one who can influence the process should stay away.

Greta Thunberg has already had an outsized influence inspiring people to action and persuading politicians to take the issue more seriously. Her presence at COP27 would undoubtedly make a difference.

One reason she has given for not attending is her concern that civil society representation may be less this time around, and she doesn’t want to take someone else’s place. This is thoughtful. However, Greta Thunberg has access to leaders’ others may not. Her presence could have a significant impact.

For these reasons, we hope Ms. Thunberg will reconsider and use her influence to its fullest at COP27. As we write this, it appears that another powerful figure who had earlier ruled out attending may be changing their mind.

New British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, had initially also said he wouldn’t attend, citing the country’s financial and energy challenges and urgent budget planning as the reason for staying home.

However, he has now had a change of heart. The public response to his initial decision, as well as concerns from industry and civil society, made the Prime Minister reconsiders his position. This is welcome news and, we believe, the right decision.

If Rishi Sunak wishes to build on the UK’s solid performance at COP26 and burnish his country’s reputation for taking climate change seriously, we hope he attends with not just positive rhetoric, but new commitments and financing. It would be a positive signal if King Charles also attended.

After all, the UK is still the President of the COP until the start of COP27. Missing the next COP would not have sent the right message to the UK’s partners and the global community in general.

With no other realistic way to solve climate change than the multilateral system, we urge Greta Thunberg to follow Rishi Sunak’s lead and join the gathering. In fact, all of those in positions of power or influence should come to Sharm ready to work for the best agreement possible. As John F. Kennedy said. “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate”.

Prof. Felix Dodds and Chris Spence have participated in UN environmental negotiations since the 1990s. They co-edited Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage (Routledge, 2022), which examines the roles of individuals in inspiring environmental change.

Excerpt:

Her recent announcement that she will not attend COP27 is understandable, but we still hope she’ll reconsider. By Prof. Felix Dodds and Chris Spence.

A far-right MP denies telling a black colleague to "go back to Africa" as he talks about immigration.

Stars of the film including Michaela Coel, Danai Gurira and Lupita Nyong'o are on the red carpet.

Aerial view of the community water system located in the canton of El Zapote, in the municipality of Suchitoto in central El Salvador. Mounted on the roof are the 96 solar panels that generate the electricity needed to power the entire electrical and hydraulic mechanism that brings water to more than 2,500 families in this rural area of the country, which in the 1980s was the scene of heavy fighting during the Salvadoran civil war. CREDIT: Alex Leiva/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SUCHITOTO, El Salvador , Nov 3 2022 (IPS)

The need for potable water led several rural settlements in El Salvador, at the end of the 12-year civil war in 1992, to rebuild what was destroyed and to innovate with technologies that at the time seemed unattainable, but which now benefit hundreds of families.

Several communities located in areas that were once the scene of armed conflict are now supplied with water through community systems powered by clean energy, such as solar power."The advantage is that the systems are powered by clean, renewable energies that do not pollute the environment.” -- Karilyn Vides

“The advantage is that the systems are powered by clean, renewable energies that do not pollute the environment,” Karilyn Vides, director of operations in El Salvador for the U.S.-based organization Companion Community Development Alternatives (CoCoDA), told IPS.

Hope where there was once war

The organization, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, has supported the development of 10 community water systems in El Salvador since 1992, five of them powered by solar energy.

These initiatives have benefited some 10,000 people whose water systems were destroyed during the conflict. Local residents had to start from scratch after returning years later.

A local resident of the Sitio el Zapotal community in El Zapote canton, El Salvador, turns on the tap to fill his sink to collect the water he will need for the day. A total of 10,000 people have benefited from the five solar-powered community water projects in El Salvador since 2010. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

This small Central American country experienced a bloody civil war between 1980 and 1992, which left some 75,000 people dead and more than 8,000 missing.

“Before leaving their communities, some families had water systems, but when they returned they had been completely destroyed, and they had to be rebuilt,” Vides said, during a tour by IPS to the Junta Administradora de Agua Potable or water board in the canton of El Zapote, Suchitoto municipality, in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán.

In El Salvador, the term Junta Administradora de Agua Potable refers to community associations that, on their own initiative, manage to drill a well, build a tank and the entire distribution structure to provide service where the government has not had the capacity to do so.

There are an estimated 2,500 such water boards in the country, which provide service to 25 percent of the population, or some 1.6 million people, according to local environmental organizations.

But most of the water boards operate with hydroelectric power provided by the national grid, while the villages around Suchitoto have managed, with the support of CoCoDA and local organizations, to run on solar energy.

The community water project in the Salvadoran community of Sitio El Zapotal was driven by the efforts of local residents and international donors. At the foot of the catchment tank stand Karilyn Vides of CoCoDA, consultant and former guerrilla fighter René Luarca (front) – a member of the project’s water board – and former guerrilla Luis Antonio Landaverde (left), together with two technicians. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

This area is located on the slopes of the Guazapa mountain north of San Salvador, which during the civil war was a key stronghold of the then guerrilla Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party that governed the country between 2009 and 2019.

Some of the people behind the creation of the water board in the canton of El Zapote were part of the guerrilla units entrenched on Guazapa mountain.

“This area was heavily bombed and shelled, day and night,” Luis Antonio Landaverde, 56, a former guerrilla fighter who had to leave the front lines when a bomb explosion fractured his leg in July 1985, told IPS.

“A bomb dropped by an A37 plane fell nearby and broke my right leg, and I could no longer fight,” said Landaverde, who sits on the El Zapote water board.

The Junta de Agua del Cantón El Zapote, in central El Salvador, is the largest solar-powered community water project in the country, although it uses electricity from the national grid, from hydroelectric sources, as backup. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Peasant farmers in the technological vanguard

At the end of the war in 1992, communities in the foothills of Guazapa began to organize themselves to set up their community water systems, at first using the national power grid, generated by hydroelectric sources.

Then they realized that the cost of the electricity and bringing the grid to remote villages was too high, and necessity and creativity drove them to look for other options.

“I was already very involved in alternative energy, and we thought that bringing in electricity would be as expensive as installing a solar energy system,” René Luarca, one of the architects of the use of sunlight in the community systems, told IPS.

The first solar-powered water system was built in 2010 in the Zacamil II community, in the Suchitoto area, benefiting some 40 families.

And because it worked so well, four similar projects followed in 2017.

Two were carried out around that municipality, and another in the rural area of the department of Cabañas, in the north of the country.

Given the project’s success, an effort was even made to develop a similar system in the community of Zacataloza, in the municipality of Ciudad Antigua, in the department of Nueva Segovia in northwestern Nicaragua.

The total investment exceeded 200,000 dollars, financed by CoCoDA’s U.S. partner organizations.

However, these were smallscale initiatives, benefiting an average of 100 families per project.

“There were eight panels, they were tiny, like little toys,” said Luarca, 80, known in the area as “Jerry,” his pseudonym during the war when he was a guerrilla in the National Resistance, one of the five organizations that made up the FMLN.

Then came the big challenge: to set up the project in the canton of El Zapote, which would require more panels and would provide water to a much larger number of families.

“This has been the biggest challenge, because there are no longer four panels – there are 96,” said Luarca.

A valve connected to the pump of the community water system in central El Salvador measures the pressure at which the liquid is being pumped to a catchment tank, located on a hill five kilometers away. The water flows down by gravity to the beneficiary families, who pay a monthly fee of six dollars for 12 cubic meters of water. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The water system in El Zapote is a hybrid setup. This allows it to use solar energy as the main source, but it is backed up by the national grid, fueled by hydropower, when there is no sunshine or there are other types of failures.

“Since it is a fairly large system, it is not 100 percent solar, but is hybrid, so that it has both options,” explained Eliseo Zamora, 42, who is in charge of monitoring the operation of the equipment.

Using the pump, driven by a 30-horsepower motor, water is piped from the well to a tank perched on top of a hill, about five kilometers away as the crow flies.

From there, water flows by gravity down to the villages through a 25-kilometer network of pipes that zigzag under the subsoil, until reaching the families’ taps.

The project started when the armed conflict ended, but it took several years to buy the land, with resources from the six communities involved, and to acquire the machinery for the hydraulic system. It began operating in 2004 with electricity from the national grid, before CoCoDA switched to supporting the solar infrastructure.

For the installation of the panels and the adaptation of the system, the water board contributed 14,000 dollars, part of it from the hours worked by the villagers.

The new solar power system was inaugurated in June 2022 and benefits some 10 communities in the area – more than 2,500 families.

The service fee is six dollars per month for 12 cubic meters of water. For each additional cubic meter, the users are charged 0.55 cents.

“Our water is excellent, it is good for all kinds of human consumption,” the president of the water board, Ángela Pineda, told IPS.

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Petrol pump in Rome. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Nov 3 2022 (IPS)

When it comes to moral endorsements, having the Vatican’s backing takes some beating. So the international campaign for a legally binding Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty took a huge step forward in July when Cardinal Michael Czerny, the prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, gave it his total support.

“The planet already is 1.2°C hotter (with respect to pre-industrial levels), yet new fossil fuel projects every day accelerate our race towards the precipice,” the Czech-Canadian prelate said.

“Enough is enough. All new exploration and production of coal, oil, and gas must immediately end, and existing production of fossil fuels must be urgently phased out.

“This must be a just transition for impacted workers into environmentally sound alternatives. The proposed Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty holds great promise to complement and enhance the Paris Agreement”.

Fossil fuels are responsible for 86% of carbon emissions in the past decade. So despite our efforts over the last 30 years, emissions have continued to increase, and this hasn’t changed since the Paris Agreement was signed seven years ago

The name of the proposed treaty has a familiar ring as it is inspired by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) that came into force in 1970 and successfully helped reduce the threat of nuclear war.

The supporters of the proposed treaty say that, like atomic bombs, fossil fuels pose an existential threat to humankind as they are the main cause of the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving the climate crisis.

“Fossil fuels have been equated as weapons of mass destruction because of the way they threaten our ability to protect livelihoods, security, and the planet,” Rebecca Byrnes, the Deputy Director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told IPS.

“Fossil fuels are responsible for 86% of carbon emissions in the past decade. So despite our efforts over the last 30 years, emissions have continued to increase, and this hasn’t changed since the Paris Agreement was signed seven years ago”.

Under the Paris Agreement, the international community agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions to a degree necessary to try to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C, and, failing that, to keep them “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels.

But Byrnes said that, as things currently stand, governments plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels consistent with limiting global temperature rises to within a 1.5-degree trajectory by 2030, and 10% more than their own climate pledges.

So, she argued that a separate treaty specifically dealing with fossil fuels is needed to stop States from making empty pledges on climate policy.

“We need both domestic action and international cooperation to explicitly stop the expansion of fossil fuel production and therefore emissions,” she said.

“Only addressing half of the equation has allowed countries and companies to claim climate leadership while also supporting new coal, oil and gas extraction projects, directly or indirectly.

“In countries that are particularly dependent on fossil fuel profits for government revenue and economic development, fossil fuel supply is now a driver of demand.

“It will not be possible to reduce demand for, and therefore emissions from, fossil fuels without first breaking this fossil-fuel lock-in through phase-out, economic diversification measures and finding new development opportunities.

“A Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty will complement and implement the Paris Agreement by directly addressing the supply side of the equation and providing support to fossil-fuel-dependent developing countries to make this transition”.

One of the positive aspects of the treaty would be that it would help put an end to the perverse situation in which States are sometimes forced to pay compensation to polluters when they put a halt to fossil-fuel projects because of the protection that corporations enjoy under legal mechanisms such as the Energy Charter Treaty.

“A Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty will mitigate the risk of legal liability faced by country governments in both national courts and international tribunals, by providing legal justification for phase-out policies,” Byrnes said.

Critics have suggested the plan is simply too ambitious to ever come to fruition.

The treaty campaign might have the Vatican on its side, but the fossil-fuel lobby has powerful allies, lots of money and it has not been shy about using its clout to sow doubt about the climate crisis and stop or delay emissions cuts.

“Some of the criticism we get on the idea of the treaty is that it’s unfeasible and that we don’t have time to negotiate something like this,” said Byrnes.

“The same was erroneously said about weapons treaties.

“But we don’t have time for more of the same. We know it’s unlikely that oil-producing countries will enthusiastically embrace a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and the fossil fuel industry has huge influence.

“But so did the tobacco industry at one point before the formation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

“Just creating the concept of a treaty is already sparking new ambition and new conversations”.

Indeed, the treaty campaign is on a roll.

It has the support of over 100 Nobel Laureates, including the Dalai Lama, and dozens of the world’s biggest cities, such as London, Barcelona, Paris, Montreal, Lima, Buenos Aires and Los Angeles.

In September the World Health Organization joined the host of international organizations backing the campaign.

“The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Vanuatu became the first nation-state to call for a fossil fuel treaty in the speech made by President Nikenike Vurobaravu at this year’s United Nations General Assembly.

And on October 20 the European Parliament called on nation-states to “work on developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty” in a resolution outlining its demands for COP27.

“The world has seen treaties deliver when the world has needed to manage, restrict and phase out dangerous products, including weapons of mass destruction, ozone depleting substances and tobacco,” concluded Byrnes .

“Today, we see oil and gas are fuelling war in Ukraine and elsewhere, and are a paramount danger that demands of us and world governments to rally behind a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty”.

It is possible to endorse the call for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty via the campaign’s website.

Furthermore, the Parents For Future Global network of climate parent groups has launched a letter that people can sign online to express their support.

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Africa’s laboratories need to step up testing to aid in fighting Anti-Microbial Resistance. This photo is a 3D computer-generated image of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, the pathogen responsible for causing the disease tuberculosis (TB). Credit: CDC/Unsplash

By Francis Kokutse
ACCRA, Nov 3 2022 (IPS)

African countries must find a way of fighting Anti-Microbial Resistance in the healthcare system to avoid unnecessary deaths.

A few months ago, the President of the Ghana Public Health Association, Amofah George, narrated how he saw a patient die after failing to respond to all the available antibiotics used for managing her septicemic condition, blood poisoning, especially caused by bacteria or their toxins. He attributed the situation to antibiotic resistance, or Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR) which he said has become a growing pandemic.

The problem is simple: Africa’s healthcare system does not routinely rely on laboratories to produce tests for treatment. AMR programme manager of the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM), Edwin Shumba, told IPS, “Ghana, like other countries on the continent, rely on a few medical laboratories to conduct bacteriology testing as part of the routine clinical services.”

“This means that doctors are flying blind when prescribing a treatment to their patients, and public health experts do not have an insight of what is ongoing in terms of AMR, at hospital and national level,” Shumba said.

“The growing threat of AMR has implications for patient care: the antibiotics that used to work will not be able to cure the infections caused by resistant bacteria anymore. This means more that infections might take longer to cure, might be more severe (mortality, morbidity), and will cost more to the society.”

Worried by the increasing cases of AMR, the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) has spearheaded a study, and data from 14 sub-Saharan countries show that only five out of the 15 antibiotic-resistant pathogens – a bacterium, virus, or other microorganisms that can cause disease –designated by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a priority are being consistently tested, and that all five demonstrated high resistance.

Across the 14 countries, clinical and treatment data are not being linked to laboratory results, making it hard to understand what’s driving AMR. Out of almost 187,000 samples tested for AMR, around 88% had no information on patients’ clinical profile, including diagnosis/origin of infection, presence of indwelling devices (such as urinary catheters, feeding tubes, and wound drains) often associated with development of healthcare-associated infection, comorbidities, or antimicrobial usage. The remaining 12% had incomplete information.

The multi-year, multi-country study was carried out by the Mapping Antimicrobial Resistance and Antimicrobial use Partnership (MAAP), a consortium spearheaded by the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM), with partners including the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the One Health Trust, the West African Health Organization (WAHO), the East, Central, and Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA-HC), Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases, and Disasters, and IQVIA. It provides stark insights into the under-reported depth of the AMR crisis across Africa and lays out urgent policy recommendations to address the emergency.

MAAP reviewed 819,584 AMR records from 2016 to 2019 from 205 laboratories across Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Eswatini, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Gabon, and Cameroon. MAAP also reviewed data from 327 hospital and community pharmacies and 16 national-level AMC datasets.

The researchers found that most African laboratories are not ready for AMR testing. Only 1.3% of the 50,000 medical laboratories forming the laboratory networks of the 14 participating countries conduct bacteriology testing. And of those, only a fraction can handle the scientific processes needed to evaluate AMR. Researchers also found that in eight of the 14 countries, more than half of the population is out of reach of any bacteriology laboratory.

The study results provide insights into the AMR burden and antimicrobial consumption in the 14 countries where most available AMR data is based only on statistical modeling. The effort by MAAP is the first of its kind to systematically collect, process, and evaluate large quantities of AMR and antimicrobial consumption (AMC) data in Africa.

The WHO has repeatedly stated that AMR is a global health priority—and is, in fact, one of the leading public health threats of the 21st century. A recent study estimated that, in 2019, nearly 1.3 million deaths globally were attributed to antimicrobial-resistant bacterial infections. Africa was found to have the highest mortality rate from AMR infections in the world, with 24 deaths per 100,000 attributable to AMR.

ASLM’s director of science and new initiatives, Pascale Ondoa, said, “Africa is struggling to fight drug-resistant pathogens, just like the rest of the world, but our struggle is compounded by the fact that we don’t have an accurate picture of how antimicrobial resistance is impacting our citizens and health systems.”

The research also found that only four drugs comprised more than two-thirds (67%) of all the antibiotics used in healthcare settings. Stronger medicines to treat more resistant infections (such as severe pneumonia, sepsis, and complicated intra-abdominal infections) were unavailable, suggesting limited access to some groups of antibiotics.

ASLM’s chief executive Nqobile Ndlovu said, “Across Africa, even where data on antimicrobial resistance is collected, it is not always accessible, often recorded by hand, and rarely consolidated or shared with policymakers; as a result, health experts are flying blind and cannot develop and deploy policies that would limit or curtail antimicrobial resistance.”

“The disconnect between patient data and antimicrobial resistance results, coupled with the extreme antimicrobial resistance burden, makes it incredibly difficult to provide accurate guidelines for patient care and wider public health policies,” said Dr Yewande Alimi, Africa CDC AMR programme coordinator. “Hence, collecting and connecting laboratory, pharmacy, and clinical data will be essential to provide a baseline and a reference for public health actions.”

“Collectively, the data highlights a dual problem of limited access to antibiotics and irrational use of those that are available,” said IQVIA’s head of Public Health (Africa and Middle East) and Real-World Evidence (Middle East), Deepak Batra.

“As a result, people don’t get the right treatment for severe infections, and irrational use of antibiotics drives antimicrobial resistance for existing available treatment options. Routine monitoring of antimicrobial consumption could help monitor the limited access and irrational use,” he added.

Based on the findings, MAAP calls for a drastic increase in the quality and quantity of AMR and AMC data being collected across the continent, along with revised AMR control strategies and research priorities.

For Shumba, Ghana, like the rest of Africa, can fight AMR by including critical interventions in revised versions of the national AMR Action plans, essential medicine Lists, laboratory strategies, and standard treatment guidelines.

“This heavy toll on the health systems poses a major threat to progress made in health and in the attainment of Universal Health Coverage, the African Union’s Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals,” he added.

Shumba said the AMR coordinating committee of Ghana could assist other policymakers in using the evidence gathered by the MAAP project to refine their strategies for AMR containment. In addition, they can plan to increase the number and capacity of medical laboratories to conduct bacteriology testing in the country.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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UN Security Council Meets on Maintenance of Peace and Security of Ukraine. October 2022. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Joseph Gerson
NEW YORK, Nov 3 2022 (IPS)

On November 1, a statement of solidarity with Russians opposed to the Ukraine War was published. It was signed by more than 1,000 U.S. men and women who had opposed the U.S. invasions of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

At a time when the Ukraine War increasingly resembles the trench warfare of the First World War and the spiraling escalation of the Cuban Missile Crisis, leading U.S. peace organizations co-sponsored the statement, which also called for negotiations to end the catastrophic Ukraine War.

The announcement was first sent to a friend in St. Petersburg Russia who must remain unnamed. He is a humble and dedicated scientist who lost his job years ago after revealing independent radiation measurements that he took following the Chernobyl meltdown.

On the day following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this man had signed and was publicizing a petition signed by more in a million Russians condemning the imperial invasion of Ukraine and calling for those who had ordered it to be tried as war criminals. In public and discrete ways, he and others continue to oppose the war despite the risk of serious imprisonment.

The second person to receive our statement was a Russian psychologist who fled Russia shortly before the war. She uses social media to connect with and organize people left behind and others in the Russian diaspora. And, before the statement went to the press and out via social media, it went to Yurii Sheliazhenko, a courageous Ukrainian professor and pacifist who has been speaking inconvenient truths about the futility of war and who had earlier translated our statement into Russian and Ukrainian.

Despite the risks involved, each committed to share the statement, especially among the estimated 500,000 men who have risked fleeing Putin’s increasingly militarized Russia.

What is the value of an expression of solidarity, even one as modest as a computer click?

For many across the world, there was immediate identification with the images of the hundreds of thousands of Russian young men fleeing to impoverished and remote countries like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as well as to Kazakhstan and Germany to avoid the war.

They left families and careers behind, possibly never to return. They face the challenges of finding places to sleep and to finding work to feed themselves in unknown nations and cultures. And we have learned to our sorrow and outrage across the West, desperate refugees are not always welcomed or long tolerated.

Yet, as one Russian woman wrote from exile, she suffers under the weight of people thinking that all Russians support Russia’s aggression. It helps, she wrote, to know that she and other Russians are being recognized as different. That makes it easier for her to face the demands of each uncertain day. To this, I would add, it illustrates the potential for peaceful and mutually beneficial relations between our peoples.

Of course, more than solidarity is needed. Our statement also called for a ceasefire and “negotiations leading to a just peace, including respect for Ukrainian sovereignty as a neutral state”. As we did in the early years of our opposition to the nationally self-destructive invasions of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, the statement was designed to add weight to growing calls for a national policy change.

The Biden and Zelensky commitments to fight this war to the last Ukrainian in order to weaken Russia (which will remain a nuclear power) and to retake all of historic Ukraine including Crimea are worse than futile. The savaging of Ukraine begins to resemble Beirut and Grozny at the end of those civil wars.

And Russian nuclear doctrine informs us that it can resort to nuclear attacks when the survival of the state – read Putin’s political career – is in jeopardy. Pressing for diplomacy to stop the killing and to prevent the war’s spiraling escalation, as well as expressing solidarity, has become imperative.

Our solidarity initiative has roots in experiences and lessons that some of us took from the Vietnam War as from Margaret Mead’s dictum that a small group of people can change the world. The initiative grew from a collaboration of veterans of the Vietnam era peace movement, Terry Provance, now of the United Church of Christ and Doug Hostetter, a Mennonite pastor and Pax Christi International’s Associate UN Representative, and me.

It was during the Vietnam War that I first experientially learned the value of solidarity. After considering a Canadian exile, I became a draft resister facing possible imprisonment and served as a leading organizer against the war in the intellectual and moral wasteland of what was then the Phoenix Valley.

Talk about isolation and alienation. I was an aspiring East Coast intellectual disoriented and making his way in Barry Goldwater’s Arizona. That was before fax machines, before the Internet, and when Phoenix was dominated by a John Birch Society extreme right-wing monopoly newspaper that limited and distorted what people could know, and which used its pages to instruct its readers where to find our small community of war opponents and how to beat us.

Back then, despite constitutional guarantees, it was possible to be arrested and to suffer what more recently has become known as the Eric Garner chokehold at the hands of the police and be sentenced to six months in jail for the “crime” of distributing anti-war flyers on the public sidewalk – an action ostensibly protected by the Constitution.

We and other war resisters experienced the salve and inspiration of solidarity in many forms, from local religious leaders who demonstrated that they cared, from activists back East who sent bail money, and from the distant moral courage of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme whose courageous denunciation of the war made its way around the world – even to the Arizona desert.

Since then, I have learned the sustaining value of even small expressions of human solidarity: from Palestinians whose homes were demolished in illegal Israeli collective punishments; from the suffering and courageous of Japanese, Marshall Islanders, and U.S. downwinder A-bomb survivors, and from Okinawans who have endured and resisted eight decades of Japanese and U.S. military colonialism. In each case, international support and solidarity have played critical roles in their continuing struggles for justice.

Is solidarity enough? Of course not! Thus, our call urges U.S. policy change. It is possible to support Ukrainians without urging and funding another war without end. In recent weeks, we have been reminded of Gandhi’s truth that “When the people lead, the leaders will follow.” The withdrawal of the letter signed by thirty members of Congress urging President Biden to make negotiations a priority will long stand as a profile in cowardice.

Except for several members of Congress including Ro Khanna and Jamaal Bowman who stood their ground, others who support Ukraine but also diplomacy, lacked confidence that they had public backing and withered in the face of threats from Speaker Pelosi.

Our solidarity statement is but one of ways that people are beginning to break the silence, opening the way for rational and humane discourse, and providing off ramps for bellicose U.S., Russian, Ukrainian and European leaders.

A Cuban Missile Crisis redux or a replay of World War I redux must be avoided. Negotiations may not bring an immediate end to the war, but we should have learned from the diplomacy that avoided nuclear annihilation over Russian missiles in Cuba fifty years ago, which brought us the armistice the ended the First World War, and that led to arms control agreements during the last Cold War that war is not the answer.

Pope Francis, U.N. Secretary General Guterres and a growing number of people have it right: human solidarity and diplomacy!

Dr. Joseph Gerson is President of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security and author of With Hiroshima Eyes and Empire and the Bomb.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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