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Journalists, writers, both local and international, have called on the authorities in India to respect human rights and release imprisoned writes and dissident and critical voices. Protests about media freedom have become more urgent in recent years since this protest by the Mumbai Press Club. Credit: Facebook

By Mehru Jaffer
Lucknow, Aug 17 2022 (IPS)

On the eve of India’s 76th Independence Day, the president of the country, Droupadi Murmu, received a letter signed by 102 international writers, including authors from India and the Indian diaspora expressing “grave concerns about the rapidly worsening situation for human rights” and calling for the release of imprisoned writers and “dissident and critical voices”.

Salman Rushdie signed the letter before the attack on him on August 12, 2022. Rushdie joined PEN America and PEN International, two worldwide associations of writers, to convey his anguish to the highest office in India.

Dated August 14, 2022, the letter urged the President of India to support the democratic ideals promoting and protecting free expression in the spirit of India’s independence and to restore India’s reputation as an inclusive, secular, multi-ethnic and -religious democracy where writers can express dissenting or critical views without threat of detention, investigation, physical attacks, or retaliation.

“Free expression is the cornerstone of a robust democracy. By weakening this core right, all other rights are at risk and the promises made at India’s birth as an independent republic are severely compromised,” the writers emphasised.

In its Freedom to Write Index 2021, PEN America considered India the only “nominally democratic country” among the “top 10 jailers” of writers and public intellectuals worldwide. The letter highlighted the arrest of writers, including poet Varavara Rao who was recently granted bail.

The “grave concern” regarding threats to free expression and other core rights has grown steadily in recent years.

The signatories underlined that writers and public intellectuals were “subject to arrest, prosecution, and travel bans intended to restrain their free speech”.

Well-known authors Amitav Ghosh, Perumal Murugan, Orhan Pamuk, Jerry Pinto, Salil Tripathi, Aatish Taseer and Shobhaa De, have signed the letter that said, “Online trolling and harassment is rife, hate speech is expressed loudly”, and criticised frequent internet shutdowns “centred on Kashmir” limit the access to news and information.

The letter registered a strong protest over the “persecution” of writers, columnists, editors, journalists, and artists, including Mohammed Zubair, Siddique Kappan, Teesta Setalvad, Avinash Das, and Fahad Shah.

In yet another PEN America initiative, 113 authors from India and the Indian diaspora have contributed to a collection reflecting on the state of free expression and democratic ideals. Titled India at 75, the collection includes original writings by Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Geetanjali Shree, Rajmohan Gandhi and Romila Thapar, among others.

Rushdie writes that India’s “dream of fellowship and liberty is dead, or close to death”.

“Then, in the First Age of Hindustan Hamara, our India, we celebrated one another’s festivals, and believed, or almost believed, that all of the land’s multifariousness belonged to all of us. Now that dream of fellowship and liberty is dead, or close to death. A shadow lies upon the country we loved so deeply. Hindustan isn’t hamara anymore. The Ruling Ring—one might say—has been forged in the fire of an Indian Mount Doom. Can any new fellowship be created to stand against it?”

On August 15, India celebrated 75 years of independence from colonial rule. The country has yet to conquer poverty, but the largest democracy in the world did enjoy an excellent track record of encouraging free and fair media.

However, press freedom, as well as the unity of the country, is threatened by communal politics. A large section of mainstream media has turned pro-government, especially after the general elections in the spring of 2019. Ever since pressure has increased on the media to toe the line of the Hindu nationalist government. For the same reason, it is often difficult to distinguish between a ruling party spokesperson and a journalist in India today.

“At centre stage of media are views of political parties, their respective spokespersons making more noise than saying anything substantive on the electronic media,” Anand Vardhan Singh, Lucknow-based senior journalist and founder of YouTube channel The Public, told the IPS.

Singh regrets that the people in power have fragmented the national media between English versus regional languages, print versus electronic versus social media.

Investigative journalism is a thing of the past. The reporting aspect of media has taken a backseat.

This year’s independence day celebration will be remembered for what 9-year-old Mehnaz Kappan said.

“I am Mehnaz Kappan, daughter of journalist Siddique Kappan, a citizen who has been forced into a dark room by breaking all freedom of a citizen”.

Siddique Kappan is a Delhi-based journalist from Kerala. He was arrested in October 2020 on his way to Hathras, a poverty-stricken village in north India in Uttar Pradesh, to report on the rape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit woman.

“Attempts to demean, belittle, and outlaw dissent and protest and the problem of growing communalisation are the principal challenges the country faces today. A journalist needs nerves of steel and tremendous courage to continue to ask questions,” senior journalist and founding editor of The Wire, Siddharth Varadarajan, said.

Siddharth Varadarajan, foundering editor of The Wire has also been targeted. Credit: The Wire

Like many others, Varadarajan, too, was punished for speaking out, and court cases are filed against him. Many journalists are booked for sedition to intimidate those scribes who refuse to toe the line of people in power.

The problem is that mainstream media has stopped questioning the government. Public interest is no longer on the mind of the media. The purpose of mainstream journalists, nicknamed ‘godi’ media or ‘cozy’ journalism, is only to praise those in power.

The media has abrogated its responsibility of asking questions, and those journalists who question, like Mohammad Zubair (33), are put into jail. The arrest of journalist Zubair marks a new low for press freedom in India, where the government has created a hostile and unsafe environment for members of the press. Zubair was arrested because AltNews,  a fact-checking website he co-founded, frequently exposed claims made by the government, making him an obstacle to false propaganda. Zubair was arrested last June. He spent 23 days in prisons and police custody in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh and was released on July 23, 2022, after the Supreme Court granted interim bail to him.

Soon after he had walked out of prison, Zubair told the national daily The Hindu that he thinks his arrest was made an example for others.

Zubair said that multiple First Information Reports (FIR) filed against him were a message from the government that it could book 10-15 random FIRs in different states to keep one in jail for years. Zubair was released after a Supreme Court ruling to grant him bail. The FIRs filed against Zubair are random and bizarre, like two FIRs in Uttar Pradesh are for fact-checking a media channel-which is his job. There is another FIR for calling an accused in a hate speech case a hate monger in a tweet!

Zubair happens to be a Muslim. Another Muslim journalist Sana Mattoo was prevented from flying abroad for a book release. To intimidate Zubair, money-laundering charges were filed against him. Maria Ressa, the Nobel Prize-winning journalist from the Philippines, said that she was shocked at the arrest of Zubair and human rights activist Teesta Setalvad. Ressa told a digital media reporter in India that all journalists should unite to oppose what has happened.

“Everyone should be talking about it; everyone should be writing about this,” said Ressa.

In a population of 1.4 billion people, 14 percent are Muslim, but the practice of majoritarian politics in recent times has made the ruling party increasingly intolerant of Muslim voices in the country. Kappan, a Muslim, was denied bail.

Millions of tweets are directed at journalist Rana Ayyub, another Muslim, making her one of the most brutally targeted journalists in the world.

Ayyub, an independent journalist and a Washington Post columnist, has used her social media heft and the global attention she receives to highlight the plight of Indian Muslims and the arrest of journalists in India. She was accused of money laundering and tax fraud related to her crowdfunding campaign to help those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Ayyub has denied any wrongdoing, calling the allegations baseless. Early this year, the United Nations appointed independent rights experts issued a statement calling Indian authorities to stop the systematic harassment against Ayyub.

“Relentless misogynistic and sectarian attacks online against journalist Rana Ayyub must be promptly and thoroughly investigated by the Indian authorities, and the judicial harassment against her brought to an end at once,” the statement said.

For the same reason, India ranks as one of the most dangerous and restrictive countries for journalists today. Despite its secular and democratic status, India is ranked 142nd in the Reporters Without Borders 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

There are other ways to make journalists feel uncomfortable. Notices were sent to the Indian Women Press Corps (IWPC) to vacate the accommodation allotted to them as their lease will soon end. A similar notice was also sent to South Asia’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club. Both organisations are Delhi based.

Shobhna Jain, President of IWPC, said, “It’s a routine procedural thing. The government is giving us renewals, and we are quite hopeful that this year too, we will get the lease renewed for a longer period”.

The IWPC is the country’s first association of women journalists, founded in 1994 as a support group to help women meet challenges unique to women. It was to ensure that women’s by-lines were respected and heard. Today more than 800 women are members of the IWPC who use the premises to network, access news sources, exchange information and share experiences to advance the profession. Located in the heart of New Delhi and equipped with a library and computer centre, the premises are a boon for journalists wanting to save time from commuting in the city.

Often children accompany the women journalist as she works while they play on the premises. Here press conferences are organised and exclusive interactions with newsmakers.

July this year was a terrible month for journalists around Asia.

On July 3, journalist Hasibur Rehman Rubel left his office in the Kushtia district in western Bangladesh, never to return. On July 7, his decomposed body was found in a river.

On July 7, Peer Muhammad Khan Kakar, a Pakistani journalist, was arrested in the Loralai district of southwest Balochistan on complaints related to his Facebook posts.

On the same day in July, Ressa’s prison sentence was increased by several months. A court in the Philippines affirmed the libel conviction of Ressa, Rappler’s head and co-founder.

Two days later, on July 9, members of a television team were attacked in Sri Lanka. The paramilitary police Special Task Force assaulted journalists reporting a protest in the capital city of Colombo.

The BBC reported that a video journalist in Colombo was allegedly punched by a member of the Sri Lankan army, his phone snatched, and footage deleted.

What is the solution to the vicious attack on journalists today? According to Varadrajan, it is unity amongst all media persons that can together fight the assault on the media and freedom of speech in the country.

Despite differences in political beliefs, scribes need to stand by each other today like never before. Varadrajan suggests building a team of lawyers to defend media persons in court.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: SPC/Toga Raikoti

By External Source
Noumea, Aug 17 2022 (IPS-Partners)

When University of Arizona political economy professor, William Mishler needed Kiribati census and household income data for a project he was working on with Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) he turned to the Pacific Data Hub (PDH) to access the microdata he needed.

The PDH is a central repository of data about the Pacific and from the Pacific. It is a collection of different data platforms and tools and a programme of work that encourages data sharing and access for increased transparency and evidence-based decision and policy making across the region.

The Pacific Data Hub – Microdata Library is one aspect of the PDH where microdata is preserved, cataloged and documented.

’Microdata’ refers to data that contain information about people, that has been anonymised but otherwise retains the detailed individual responses to the original survey, to reduce the risk of respondents being identified.

In the past, microdata from the Pacific has been difficult to access. Traditionally there has been a conservative approach to the release of microdata in the region however, through the PDH’s work this is changing and a broad acceptance of the value of microdata for research, transparency and accountability is growing.

Central to this are government statisticians who oversee access to country microdata. It was thanks to Aritita Tekaieti, Republic Statistician in Kiribati, who saw the value in the request and released the microdata that enabled William to access the information he needed.

“Finding so much data on this small island country accessible in a single place and so well documented has been an unexpected treasure”, said William when we caught up with him to discuss his work and the role data plays in it.

Thanks for your time William, can you tell us a bit about your background and work?

My academic research traditionally has been focused on citizen participation and representation in the policy process as part of a more general concern with promoting democracy and democratization.

Virtually all my work over the years relies heavily on rigorous statistical analyses of survey research, which, when done well, is one of the best ways to understand public opinion and one of the best, as well, to give voice to otherwise voiceless people. I see public opinion surveys as fundamental tools for democracy. Indeed, I was co-founder and director for the better part of two decades of the New Democracy Barometer, a bi-annual survey conducted in ten Central and Eastern European Countries during the early years of their post-communist economic and political transitions. I also was co-director of the New Russia Barometer tracking public opinion in Russia from 1991 through 2012.

Parallel to my academic work, I have worked for many years as a consultant to a variety of Non-Profits working with USAID and, more recently, to the Millennium Challenge Corporation on projects promoting both democracy and economic development. It is my work with MCC on promoting productive employment in Kiribati that has prompted my interest with data on Pacific Island Countries in general and Kiribati in particular.

What role does data play in the work that you do?

MCC, and specifically the Gender and Social Inclusion Team at MCC, for whom I work directly, are committed to using data driven research to identify the constraints to private investment and entrepreneurship that are the most binding on inclusive economic growth in the country. In addition to macro-economic data on the economy of the countries in which MCC works, we also rely heavily on survey research and other individual-level data to help us understand how macro-economic forces impact individuals and sub-groups in society, especially those who are economically most at risk and traditionally have been marginalized and neglected.

In Kiribati, surveys not only allow us to assess the economic situations confronted by women and youth, but they also enable assessments of the economic and social forces affecting different islands and villages.

What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered in accessing data on the Pacific?

Being new to research on PICT countries, I, personally, have been pleasantly surprised by how much survey data is available for Kiribati and other Pacific countries. Our work to date in Kiribati has used a variety of surveys including both the 2010, 2015 and preliminary 2020 Census data, but also the 2006 and 2019 Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (including the Village Resources Module of the 2019 HIES), the 2018-2019 Social Development Indicator Survey (MICS6), and the Transparency International 2021 Pacific Global Corruption Barometer.

There have been relatively few challenges to accessing these data. The Kiribati National Statistics Office and the Pacific Data Hub have been extremely generous in providing access to the data they have collected or archived. The data portals are well organized and well documented. The steps for gaining permission to access the data are clear and easy to follow. And the approval process has been fast and uniformly positive. Even data listed as “unavailable” has been made available.

The only limitation to the data that MCC has encountered is the difficulty experienced, in some data sets, of identifying respondent’s islands and villages. These have been anonymized in some surveys for the very good reason of protecting the identities of respondents who might otherwise be easily be identified in small islands and villages by virtual of a respondent’s age, family size, and position, etc. This limitation, however, has proved of minimum importance, however, since most analysis are focused on Island Groups and not specific islands other than South Tarawa, which is easily to identify from contextual data.

How are you using the Pacific Data Hub in your work?

MCC is using Pacific Hub data in combination with data from the World Bank, ILO, and other sources for a variety of purposes. First, the MCC country team for Kiribati is large and diverse, but few of its members have spent any substantial time in country or had any detailed knowledge about the country’s economy or society before starting this project. Moreover, the current international pandemic has made travel to Kiribati all but impossible. Pacific Data Hub data thus provided many of us our first opportunity to become familiar with the country, to “meet” its citizens, and to begin to understand the parameters of daily life on the islands.

Second, the data have allowed us to undertake a variety of more focused analyses of economic life on the islands: who is employed or in in search of employment, in what occupations, with what income and benefits. What limits productive employment for women and youth as well as men? How does household production, fit into the economic situation? How much do households rely on overseas remittances including international labor migration.

Third, the data are being used to test a variety of hypotheses generated by our conversations with Kiribati government officials, NGO leaders, and other Donor groups regarding the root causes of the constraints to private investment and entrepreneurship that have been identified in the country. All of this is intended to ensure that any programs MCC develops in cooperation with the Kiribati government is based on the best possible data we can assemble.

The Pacific Data Hub (PDH), is a central repository of data about the Pacific and from the Pacific. The platform serves as a gateway to the most comprehensive collection of data and information about the Pacific across key areas including population statistics, fisheries science, climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and resilience, public health surveillance, conservation of plant genetic resources for food security and human rights.

By David McCoy
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug 17 2022 (IPS)

Global Public Investment. A short and simple phrase. But one that means so much.

At its most basic, GPI means public money being used to invest in goods and services that are of global benefit. There is no shortage of goods and services that need GPI, whether they be used to prevent or respond to environmental catastrophe, international war and conflict, or the next pandemic.

We live on a single, small and fragile planet and greater levels of GPI are needed to help us look after our planet; and invest in the global institutions and services needed to provide security and health for all.

This is why over the last few years a group of committed individuals and organizations have worked to establish new ideas and thinking around GPI. Following an extensive period of consultation and discussion, an Expert Working Group has just produced a report on how we make GPI a reality.

The report describes the need for GPI, and how governments may contribute and participate in the governance and effective use of public finance for the common good.

Importantly, GPI offers a new model of development finance that can replace the ineffective and colonial forms of donor aid with an approach that is based on true multilateralism, fairness and shared benefit. Central to the idea of GPI is a simple slogan: all contribute, all benefit, all decide.

Nothing perhaps illustrates the need for GPI than the new fund being created to finance pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. The fund, to be managed by the World Bank, has been built to fail according to many experts because of structural flaws that consolidate decision-making power in the hands of a small group of wealthy nations and philanthropies.

The English-language launch of the Expert Working Group’s report on July 27th took the form of a brief presentation of the history and principles of GPI followed by a three-woman panel discussion. Helen Clark (former prime minister of New Zealand), Jayati Ghosh (Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts) and Marianna Mazzucato (Professor of the Economics of Innovation and Public Value) each spoke to the relevance of GPI.

Importantly, the panel noted that for the GPI funding model to work, it must be accompanied by other political and economic efforts. These include restoring and rebuilding the status and capabilities of public departments and institutions after decades of neoliberal attacks on the public sector as well as ‘in-sourcing’ critical public functions that have been commercialized and privatised.

The panel also noted the need to rise to the political challenge of reforming the financial system so that enough public funding can be generated and so that we can better redistribute wealth across society.

This will require, among other things, an end to the tax abuses perpetrated or enabled by trans-national corporations, banks, accountancy firms and corrupt officials.

While the panel focused its discussion on GPI, the broader financialization of society and the role of private finance was not neglected. Indeed, it was argued that private finance needs to be part of the solution to meeting society’s needs. But equally, laws and regulations are needed to stop the social and environmental caused by the rapacious, short-term and unregulated flows of private finance capital that have grown over the past few decades.

It’s clear that transformative and structural social, political and economic is needed if we are to succeed in rescuing the planet, democracy and civilization from further degradation.

Is GPI one element of the new social, political and economic structural settlement that we need? I think it is. But see for yourself.

Professor Dr David McCoy is a public health doctor and currently a Research Lead at the UN University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH). Follow him on Twitter @dcmccoy11.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Refugee tents in a camp in Greece. UN report shows refugees may be affected by poor health outcomes. CREDIT: Julie Ricard/Unsplash)

By Juliet Morrison
United Nations, Aug 16 2022 (IPS)

While refugees globally face insecurity and uncertainty, a new World Health Organization (WHO) report highlights that they also face poorer health outcomes.

The World report on the health of refugees and migrants, published on July 20, 2022, was the first to survey studies of various refugee health outcomes, including mental health.

The report highlighted that refugees are not inherently less healthy than host populations but that various social factors, including changes in income, substandard living conditions, and barriers to other services, can result in poorer health and well-being.

Refugees from conflict-affect areas are also at a higher risk of developing mental disorders like PTSD, anxiety, and depression. While rates vary by population and region, one study cited by the WHO estimated the burden of conditions to be 22.1 percent.

But experts caution that estimates of PTSD in the field may be overstated because of the difficulty of discerning a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) response from a normal behavioral response to trauma.

The WHO report also dove into the importance of mental health, which Dr Timothy Mackey, a global health professor at the University of California San Diego, told IPS is often neglected.

According to one report, only 0.3% of international assistance for health went to mental health care between 2006-2016. Refugees can also be excluded from accessing health services in certain countries based on their migratory status.

The neglect of mental health care is often because of limited resources and capacity, added Mackey. Healthcare issues that are more visible and studied extensively tend to be more significant priorities.

“[Mental health] is harder to advocate for than a lot of the more quantifiable diseases like an infectious disease outbreak, or diabetes, or heart disease or cancer, where you may have more compelling global disease burden statistics.”

Despite this, Mackey added that addressing mental health can be a real benefit for countries as treating mental health leads to many positive effects.

“Because there can be such clear acute trauma, and especially in the early stages of the lifecycle with children, [mental health issues] can have very lasting impacts for economic productivity or long-term health outcomes. […] Addressing mental health is a preventative component. It can save health systems money, and it can lead to better long-term outcomes.”

But disorders are only one aspect of mental health. Some academics advocate for treating refugees holistically – taking into account the overall well-being of refugees in addition to visible health problems.

This means examining the social factors affecting a person’s mental state, like living and working conditions. The WHO report revealed that both could play a big role in overall refugee well-being.

According to one study, Palestinian refugees from occupied territories had a reduced risk of mental disorders when they were in secure housing in Lebanon. Another study on Southeast Asian refugees in Canada showed a significant improvement in mental health once refugees had access to the labor market and could generate income.

Hussein Alzribi, a former refugee from Syria, is familiar with how a lack of security can affect well-being. He fled Syria in February 2016 and underwent a brief transitory period in Greece before settling in the Netherlands.

Unable to practice law as a refugee, Alzribi told IPS that his stretch of unemployment felt hopeless.

“I couldn’t practice my profession, I didn’t know who to ask, and I had no money. There was nobody to give me guidance and help.”

He has since co-founded a non-profit that provides coaching to help refugees find employment. His co-founder, Bev Weise, told IPS that their non-profit, Refugee JumpStart, is a great support to refugees.

She said that being employed and generating income makes them feel part of society.

Dr Michaela Hynie, a psychology professor at York University in Canada, echoes this claim. In her research, she’s found many of these problems around refugee well-being to be rooted in social exclusion and systemic problems, rather than individual issues.

She stressed to IPS that many of the concerns of refugees she’s encountered center around a lack of stability and security.

“We default to mental health, which allows us to then say it’s about the individual and they have a mental health problem, and we need to teach them to be resilient as opposed to they’re in a system that is preventing them from establishing the things that we need for mental health.”

She argued that to improve refugee well-being, governments should focus on finding ways for people to thrive and find opportunities.

Most countries do not have policies on refugee well-being. Many are also far from considering refugee health in a comprehensive way that takes well-being into account, Mackey told IPS.

Getting to that place requires prioritizing refugee health. The WHO has stressed this requires focusing on data collection. Refugees are largely invisible from health data because large-scale surveys tend not to disaggregate their results by migratory status. This can make public officials “oblivious” to health issues within their borders.

The WHO stated that more data could enable better monitoring and strengthen compliance with refugee-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets.

“It is imperative that we do more on refugees and migrants’ health, but if we want to change the status quo, we need urgent investments to improve the quality, relevance, and completeness of health data on refugees and migrants,” Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO’s Deputy Director-General noted in the report’s press release.

Data collection is necessary for meaningful policy development, she added.

“We need sound data collection and monitoring systems that truly represent the diversity of the world population and the experience that refugees and migrants face the world over and that can guide more effective policies and interventions.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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During the first three months of the year, the Quebrada Santander Rural Sanitation System supplied three to four truckloads of water daily to supply the empty tanks in the neighboring town of Pichasca - solidarity typical of these systems in Chile, which did not endanger the supply of its members and was supported by special subsidies to cover the water emergency. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
RENGO, Chile, Aug 16 2022 (IPS)

Local leaders of the Rural Sanitation Services (RSS) warn that the digging of illegal wells by large agro-export companies in Chile is aggravating the effects of drought and threatening drinking water supplies and social peace.

Leaders of these programs also emphasize that the new constitution that may emerge from the Sept. 4 plebiscite would guarantee the human right to water, which would strengthen its management and that of river basins, in addition to facilitating a response to the water crisis to prevent it from triggering protests and social conflict.

Water rights were commercialized during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, and between 1994 and 2006 the governments in power during the democratic transition sold the large water utilities to foreign companies, which have controlled the water supply in Chile’s cities since then.

The water supply in rural areas, considered unprofitable by these companies, was left in the hands of the country’s 2,306 RSS, which were institutionalized and transformed into Rural Sanitation Services in 2020 by a legal reform. They operate throughout this long narrow South American country of 19.5 million people and have 7,000 leaders and 6,000 workers.

The RSS, made up of cooperatives, local residents’ committees and other social organizations of different sizes, have the role of guaranteeing the drinking water supply in rural areas, with the State as supervisor and infrastructure provider. It is possible that in the future they will also take on responsibility for sanitation.

These systems benefit 2.1 million people, to whom they provide water at a lower price than the distribution and sanitation companies.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, 90 percent of the RSS never stopped serving their users, and despite the quarantine most of them paid their monthly fees, to maintain the system.

The Directorate of Hydraulic Works (DOH) of the Public Works Ministry told IPS that during the 2021-2022 period it will invest some 57 million dollars in seeking new sources of supply, and in the conservation and integral improvement of the systems. For 2023 the projected investment is 14 million dollars.

Maintenance is an ongoing job at the La Alianza RSS in the town of Choapino, some 105 km south of Santiago, Chile. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Relief for growing water stress

The Chilean economy is based on mining, especially copper, and large agricultural exports, two industries that require large amounts of water in a country with limited water resources.

The result is growing water stress, which accentuates the tension between powerful industries and human consumption and small-scale agriculture, aggravated by the private management of an essential resource such as water.

Against this backdrop, the RSS have alleviated access to water, but as recurrent droughts and other climatic impacts accentuate the water deficit, their role is becoming more difficult, without a substantial change in the right to water.

Francisco Santander, treasurer of the RSS in Quebrada Santander, in the Andes foothills 450 km north of Santiago, told IPS that “the first well we drilled by hand with 20 members in 1999. Now there are 45 of us.”

“The largest 50-meter well was dug five years ago. It is one of the deepest in the municipality of Río Hurtado. We bought a piece of land and applied for a drilling project. The money was provided by the DOH,” he said in an interview from his hometown.

The investment included pumps, a solar panel for energy, gabions (a basket or container filled with earth, stones, or other material), a well and a 50,000 liter tank.

“Last summer, faced with the drought crisis, we sold water to Pichasca (a neighboring town). They asked us for help. We gave them up to four truckloads a day for their tanks and they paid with an emergency subsidy. Our well is holding up well under a moderate level of consumption,” Santander proudly explained.

The solar panel was the first in Rio Hurtado and reduced energy costs by one-sixth. It contributes to the low price charged for water: 1.3 dollars per cubic meter and 2.2 dollars as a basic service fee.

Gloria Alvarado with the RSS in El Patagual, which serves 800 members in Pichidegua, a municipality of 18,000 inhabitants 165 km south of Santiago, was president of the National Federation of Rural Drinking Water and was a member of the Constitutional Convention that drafted the new constitution that voters will approve or reject in next month’s plebiscite.

Speaking to IPS from El Patagual, as a national expert, she warned about the critical water situation caused by climate change and drought, which is aggravated by overuse, poor distribution of rights and deficient watershed management.

A view of the 75-cubic-meter water storage tank installed at La Alianza, in Choapino, where the office also operates to attend to the needs of members and receive payment of their bills. The users of these rural sanitation systems, which are common in Chile, are not usually late with their payments, because thanks to these systems they have water in a country where water management has mostly been privatized. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

“Petorca (a municipality 205 km north of Santiago) has a very green side with avocado plantations, but has another where the people have no water to drink and are supplied by water trucks. It is difficult for a 50-meter RSS well to compete with a 200-meter well,” she said, complaining about the agro-export companies.

She also alluded to the heavy use of water by forestry companies in southern Chile and mining companies “which until recently had no obligation to report their water use,” as they now do thanks to Article 56 of the new Water Code.

In Chile’s central valley, the plantations of fruit exporters have expanded exponentially, without any limits on their expansion, which has left many areas at water risk, Alvarado said.

“There is no land use planning or protection of the ecological function of the land. Today rural drinking water is at serious risk because there is unequal competition between those who extract for human consumption and those who extract for commercial and industrial use,” she said.

“Seventy-nine percent of water rights are in the hands of one percent of Chileans. It is inequitable and many families suffer the consequences,” she said, complaining that an essential resource has been transformed in Chile into a tradable commodity.

José Rivera is the administrator of the 500-family RSS in La Alianza in Choapino, in the municipality of Rengo, 105 km south of Santiago.

The town is part of the central region of O’Higgins, the largest exporter of fruit, wine, pork and chicken, “which basically means it exports water,” he said during a visit by IPS to the La Alianza facilities. As a result, he said, “we used to make 30-meter wells here, today we dig 100-meter wells, and in the nearby municipality of Machalí we dig 200 meters.”

According to Rivera, who is secretary of the National Federation of RSS Chile, another problem in O’Higgins is that for the last 10 years wells have been dug stealthily and without oversight.

“Farmers have so many plantations that they began to extract groundwater and make clandestine wells. There are thousands of wells” that nothing is known about and which are subject to no controls, he said.

Their RSS has two wells: one is 80 meters deep and the other 100. One collects water in a 75,000-liter metal tank and the other in a 200,000-liter concrete tank. A third 200,000-liter tank is planned.

“Before, we were basically the only ones who used groundwater. Today the agribusiness companies are replacing river water with groundwater and we have no inspectors in the General Water Directorate. They have no resources and no authorization to enter a farm,” Rivera said.

One solution, in his opinion, would be the use of drones to investigate unregistered wells.

“The biggest problem, and I’m speaking for the association, is that there is a war of wells. If I dig a 40-meter well, the farm will dig a 100-meter well and so on and so forth. The State will not have resources and neither will we. And there will be another outbreak of social unrest,” he predicted.

Rivera calls the situation “a silent water earthquake,” after touring the region and seeing the thousands of hectares of land planted.

“The coastal dry land is full of olive trees, where there were none before. Pichidegua is full of avocado trees. It is a crime because we have no water. The powerful, who own 500 or 1000 hectares, take water from here and transport it to the hills, where there are more and more plantations,” he said.

Meanwhile, “there are small farmers with five or six hectares who are without water,” he said, describing the situation as “serious, a powderkeg.”

José Rivera, administrator of the La Alianza RSS, checks the instruments of the new flow measurement system that indicates, second by second, how much water is in the tank and how much is being consumed in the water starters installed in the houses of each of the members of this rural sanitation system, a social organization unique to Chile, which alleviates the water deficit in the country. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Water as a human right

Alvarado said the solution to water management lies in the new constitution.

The text approved by the Constitutional Convention “will redistribute the right to use water,” she said. “It will put an end to the ownership of rights, which will be converted into use authorizations.”

She said that one of the origins of the water crisis is that there is an over-granting of rights that exceed the actual water sources and that there are very few water inspectors.

“An autonomous National Water Agency will be created and there will be integrated basin management in which users will be on an equal footing,” she said.

Rivera said the large landowners deceive small farmers by telling them that if the new constitution is approved they will be left without water, while “the constitutional proposal actually states that water is a public good.”

A step in the right direction

He highlighted, as a positive step, the promulgation in April of this year, under the government of leftwing President Gabriel Boric, of the reformed Water Code “for which we fought for 15 years.”

“The new law is very good because it protects rural areas and indicates that no one can ask for a concession in a rural area. They cannot privatize. Urban sanitation companies cannot enlarge their area of operation,” he stressed.

“We were recognized as RSS and today we can dig wells and draw water if it is for survival and basic consumption,” he added.

“Nobody wanted to change the Water Code, nobody wants to change the constitution…who is ‘nobody’? the economic powers-that-be. They do not want to change. We have to change,” he argued.

The production floor of an apparel exporting factory in Bangladesh. Credit: ILO/Marcel Crozet

By Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Rebeca Grynspan and Pamela Coke-Hamilton
GENEVA, Aug 16 2022 (IPS)

We are in the toughest period the world economy has faced since the creation of the multilateral system more than three-quarters of a century ago. A quadruple shock of COVID, climate change, conflict and cost-of-living has undone years of hard-fought development gains.

As financial conditions tighten, even countries that had seemed on track to prosperity and stability now stare into the abyss of debt distress, fragility and uncertainty about the future.

Coordinated, multilateral action is necessary to tackle the crises we face. Both aid and trade have key roles to play in reversing the impacts of this quadruple shock and putting the world back on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

We head the three international agencies that comprise the Geneva trade hub – the World Trade Organization (WTO), UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Trade Centre (ITC).

The WTO makes and monitors the rules for global trade. UNCTAD delivers research and consensus-building to guide governments. ITC helps small business go global, especially firms led by women and young entrepreneurs. We work together so that trade works better for development.

All three of us share a deep commitment to trade-led prosperity. All three of us understand that a world in crisis means no more business as usual. And all three of us want our organizations to “walk the talk” on making aid and trade deliver for real people.

To guide aid and trade towards a better world, policymakers need to pivot in three fundamental ways.

First, make trade greener. Global trade can play an important role in a transition to a low-carbon economy. Preliminary research at the WTO suggests that removing tariffs and regulatory trade barriers for a set of energy-related environmental goods would reduce global CO2 emissions by 0.6% in 2030 just from improved energy efficiency, with additional potential gains from innovation spillovers and as lower prices accelerate the shift towards renewable energy and less carbon-intensive products.

Second, make trade more inclusive. Promoting greater trade by small businesses and greater participation by women and youth make companies and countries more competitive, drives economic transformation and reduces poverty.

Yet ITC business surveys found that one only out of every five exporting companies is women-led. WTO data show that micro, small and medium-sized firms represent around 95 percent of all companies globally but only one-third of total exports.

Third, make trade more connected. In our networked world, the future of trade is through digital channels and platforms, especially for small businesses. During the pandemic, we saw how doing business online went from being useful to critical for survival. UNCTAD data shows that digitally delivered services reached almost two-thirds the level of global services exports.

These themes were discussed at the Global Review of Aid-for-Trade, which took place 27-29th July in Geneva.

The event took place one month after the WTO’s successful Twelfth Ministerial Conference, which put trade multilateralism back on track and delivered a landmark agreement on fisheries subsidies, and two months before the COP27 meeting in Egypt (November 6-18) that could determine the world’s chances to keep the 1.5C target alive.

The data shows promising signs that aid-for-trade is tilting towards greater sustainability, inclusivity and connectivity. OECD and WTO data reveal a record high of nearly US$50 billion in aid for trade disbursements in 2020, of which half were either climate or gender related, and one-third supported the digital economy.

Despite growing budgetary pressures at home, it is critically important to continue and increase these aid-for-trade flows.

Apart from a stronger thematic focus on sustainability, inclusivity and connectivity, maximizing the contribution of aid for trade to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires a resolute focus on the “where” and “how” of delivering development results.

This means a focus on those countries whose trade and development needs are highest – particularly Least Developed Countries and fragile/conflict-affected countries – and regional initiatives like African Continental Free Trade Area, to ensure they become stepping-stones to wider and more inclusive regional value chains and trade-led growth.

It means partnership across international organizations. The WTO, UNCTAD, and ITC already collaborate on initiatives like the Global Trade Helpdesk, which simplifies market research by bringing key trade and business information into a single portal, as well as on support to cotton-exporting countries in Africa.

Last but certainly not least, it means mobilizing public and private finance. The IFC estimates a worldwide US$300 billion financing gap for women, and the global trade finance gap has nearly doubled from an already-staggering $1.5 trillion. Without access to finance, firms cannot grow, diversify or formalize.

We want to end with a call to action. Creating a more sustainable, inclusive and connected future is the moon shot of our times. Aid, trade and multilateralism – working together – are part of the solution.

It is normal and understandable that governments act to shore up their own economies in troubled times. But we must act now to ensure that the world’s poorest and most vulnerable can still see a pathway to prosperity through global trade.

The joint opinion piece is authored by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General, World Trade Organization, Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General, UN Conference on Trade and Development, and Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Executive Director, International Trade Centre.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 16 2022 (IPS)

Half a century after the 1970s’ stagflation, economies are slowing, even contracting, as prices rise again. Thus, the World Bank warns, “Surging energy and food prices heighten the risk of a prolonged period of global stagflation reminiscent of the 1970s.”

In March, Reuters reported, “With surging oil prices, concerns about the hawkishness of the Federal Reserve and fears of Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, the mood on Wall Street feels like a return to the 1970s”.

Anis Chowdhury

Stagflation in the 1970s
Worse, it seems few lessons have been learnt from the last stagflation episode. There is no agreed formal definition of stagflation, which refers to a combination of economic stagnation with high inflation, e.g., when unemployment and prices both rise.

When growth is weak and many are jobless, prices rarely rise, keeping inflation low. The converse is true when growth is strong. This inverse relationship between economic activity and inflation broke down with supply shocks, particularly oil and other primary commodity price surges during 1972-75.

Non-oil primary commodity prices on The Economist index more than doubled between mid-1972 and mid-1974. Prices of some commodities, e.g., sugar and urea fertilizer, rose more than five-fold!

As costlier energy pushed up production expenses, businesses raised prices and cut jobs. With higher food, fuel and other prices, rising costs, coupled with income losses, reduced aggregate demand, further slowing the economy.

Fed chokes economy to cut inflation
Years before becoming US Fed chair in 2006, a Ben Bernanke co-authored paper noted, “Looking more specifically at individual recessionary episodes associated with oil price shocks, we find that … oil shocks, per se, were not a major cause of these downturns”.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

They concluded, “an important part of the effect of oil price shocks on the economy results not from the change in oil prices, per se, but from the resulting tightening of monetary policy”. Their findings corroborated others, e.g., by James Tobin.

Following Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, other economists also found “in the postwar era there have been a series of episodes in which the Federal Reserve has in effect deliberately attempted to induce a recession to decrease inflation”.

The US Fed began raising interest rates from 1977, inducing an American economic recession in 1980. The economy briefly turned around when the Fed stopped raising interest rates. But this nascent recovery soon ended as Fed chair Paul Volcker raised interest rates even more sharply.

The federal funds target rate rose from around 10% to nearly 20%, triggering an “extraordinarily painful recession”. Unemployment rose to nearly 11% nationwide – the highest in the post-war era – and as high as 17% in some states, e.g., Michigan, leaving long-term scars.

Interest rate hikes reduced needed investments. Outside the US economy, these sharp and rapid interest rate hikes triggered debt crises in Poland, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Korea and elsewhere.

Earlier open economic policies meant “the increase in world interest rates, the increased debt burden of developing countries, the growth slowdown in the industrial world…contributed to the developing countries’ stagnation”.

Countries seeking International Monetary Fund (IMF) financial support had to agree to severe fiscal austerity, liberalization, deregulation and privatization policy conditionalities. With per capita incomes falling and poverty rising, Latin America and Africa “lost two decades”.

Stagflation reprise
The IMF chief economist recently reiterated, “Inflation is a major concern”. The Bank of International Settlements has warned, “We may be reaching a tipping point, beyond which an inflationary psychology spreads and becomes entrenched.”

Central bankers’ anti-inflationary efforts mainly involve raising interest rates. This approach slows economies, accelerating recessions, often triggering debt crises without quelling rising prices due to supply shocks.

Economic recoveries from the 2008-09 global financial crisis (GFC) remained tepid for a decade after initially bold fiscal responses were quickly abandoned. Meanwhile, ‘quantitative easing’, other unconventional monetary policies and the Covid-19 pandemic raised debt to unprecedented levels.

GFC trade protectionist responses, US and Japanese ‘reshoring’ of foreign investment in China, the pandemic, the Ukraine war and sanctions against Russia and its allies have reversed earlier trade liberalization.

Higher interest rates in the rich North have triggered capital flight, causing developing country currencies to depreciate, especially against the US dollar. The slowing world economy has reduced demand for many developing country exports, while most migrant worker remittances decline.

Interest rate hikes have worsened debt crises, particularly in the global South. The poorest countries have seen an $11bn surge in debt payments due while grappling with looming food crises. Thus, developing country vulnerabilities have been worsened by international trends over which they have little control.

Lessons not learned
Supply-side cost-push inflation is very different from the demand-pull variety. Without evidence, inflation ‘hawks’ insist that not acting urgently will be costlier later.

This may happen if surging demand is the main cause of inflation, especially if higher costs are easily passed on to consumers. However, episodes of dangerously accelerating inflation are very rare.

Acting too quickly against supply-shock inflation can be unwise. The 1970s’ energy crises sparked greater interest in energy efficiency. But higher interest rates in the 1980s deterred needed investments, even to reverse declining or stagnating productivity growth.

Raising interest rates also accelerated recessions. But similar commodity price rises before the 1970s’ and imminent stagflation episodes – involving energy and food respectively – obscure major differences.

For instance, ‘wage indexing’ – linking wage increases to price rises – enhanced the 1970s’ inflation spiral. But labour market deregulation since the 1980s has largely ended such indexation.

The IMF acknowledges globalization, ‘offshoring’ and labour-saving technical change have weakened unionization and workers’ bargaining power. With both elements of the 1970s’ wage-price spirals now insignificant, inflation is more likely to decline once supply bottlenecks ease.

But the wage-price spiral has also been replaced by a profit-price swirl. Reforms since the 1980s have also enhanced large corporations’ market power. Greater corporate discretion and reduced employees’ strength have thus increased profit shares, even during the pandemic.

In November 2021, Bloomberg observed the “fattest profits since 1950 debunks wage-inflation story of CEOs”. Meanwhile, the Guardian found “Companies’ profit growth has far outpaced workers’ wages”.

Corporations are taking advantage of the situation, passing on costs to customers. The net profits of the top 100 US corporations were “up by a median of 49%, and in one case by as much as 111,000%”!

Meanwhile, many more consumers struggle to meet their basic needs. Interest rate hikes have also hurt wage-earners, as falling labour shares of national income have been exacerbated by real wage stagnation, even contraction.

Hence, policymakers should ease supply bottlenecks and address imbalances to accelerate progress, not raise interest rates causing the converse. Thus, they should rein in corporate power, improve competition and protect the vulnerable.

Allowing international price rises to pass through, while protecting the vulnerable, can accelerate the transition to more sustainable consumption and production, including cleaner renewable energy.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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