Africa

Nigeria international Chidera Ejuke becomes the latest African footballer to leave the Russian Premier League following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The large Citizen Action warehouse in downtown Rio de Janeiro is filled with food donated by people in solidarity for distribution to poor and hunger-stricken communities. There are 33.1 million Brazilians suffering from hunger, according to a survey by a network of researchers on the subject. CREDIT: Tânia Rêgo /Agência Brasil

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 5 2022 (IPS)

A campaign against hunger, a problem that affects 15.5 percent of the Brazilian population, seeks to mobilize society once again in search of urgent solutions, inspired by a mass movement that took off in the country in 1993.

“Now it’s more difficult, hunger has spread throughout the country, in cities where there was none, it has expanded,” said Rodrigo Afonso, executive director of Citizen Action, one of the social organizations spearheading the campaign.

“Besides, society is anesthetized with so many tragedies, exhausted after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, so many losses,” he lamented in an interview with IPS."Now it's more difficult, hunger has spread throughout the country, in cities where there was none, it has expanded." -- Rodrigo Afonso

And we cannot count on the current government, which in addition to deactivating policies that had been strengthening food security, adopted negative measures, the activist added, saying that for now they are looking towards civil society and companies.

“Brazil feeds one billion people in the world, we provide food security for one-sixth of the world’s population,” President Jair Bolsonaro exaggerated in his speech at the Summit of the Americas on Jun. 10 in Los Angeles, California.

But according to Brazilian agricultural researchers, who made a simple calculation based on the country’s growing grain production, Brazil’s food exports feed 800 million people.

If Brazil accounts for 10 percent of the world’s grain production, about 270 million tons this year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply, then it feeds 10 percent of humanity.

The country is the world’s largest producer of soybeans, coffee and sugar, as well as the largest exporter of meat.

A green sea of soy is the landscape in vast areas of Brazil, especially in the midwest and southern regions of the country. They are held up as the “success” of Brazilian agriculture, which, according to President Jair Bolsonaro, feeds one billion people around the world. But paradoxically, 33.1 million Brazilians suffer from hunger. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Food for other countries, shortages at home

But the production boasted of by political leaders and large agricultural producers is basically destined for export and livestock feed. Brazilians consume only a small portion of the corn and an even smaller portion of the soybeans the country produces – most of it is exported or used for animal feed.

At the same time, Brazil is a net importer of wheat and beans, key products in the diet of the country’s inhabitants. And the production of rice, another staple, just barely meets domestic demand.

Bolsonaro and his far-right government, closely allied with export agriculture, seek to defend a sector that faces international criticism, due to its association with deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, harassment and mistreatment of indigenous peoples and the overuse of agrochemicals.

The hunger faced by 33.1 million Brazilians – 15.5 percent of the population – as reported by the non-governmental Brazilian Network for Research on Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security (Penssan), further tarnishes the image of this country, a major food producer.

Penssan, headed by researchers from universities and other public institutions, but open to all interested parties, released its second National Survey on Food Insecurity in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Jun. 8.

The study based on data collected between November 2021 and April 2022 pointed to a 73 percent increase over the 19.1 million hungry people reported in the first edition, published in late 2020.

In other words, in just over a year of pandemic, the number of people suffering from severe food insecurity or frequent food deprivation increased by 14 million: from nine to 15.5 percent of the Brazilian population, today estimated at 214 million.

The crisis especially affects people in the North and Northeast (the poorest regions), blacks, families headed by women and with children under 10 years of age, and rural and local populations that also suffer from water insecurity. Inequalities have intensified.

Wearing a T-shirt reading “Hunger, the greatest violence”, Herbert de Souza, Betinho (C), is honored as a symbol of the Brazilian fight against hunger. He led a massive campaign starting in 1993 and unleashed a process that allowed Brazil to be removed from the FAO hunger map in 2014. But the country returned to the map in 2018 and hunger worsened with the pandemic and the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in 2021. CREDIT: Facebook

Reviving the movement against hunger

To face this new emergency situation, Citizen Action called a National Meeting against Hunger, which brought together representatives of social movements, non-governmental organizations and food security councils that operate in the Brazilian states, from Jun. 20 to 23 in Rio de Janeiro.

The meeting approved a letter addressed to the public with a proposal for ten priority measures, ranging from an increase in the national minimum wage to a fair tax reform, the resumption of agrarian reform and the demarcation of indigenous lands, interrupted under the current government, and the restoration of food security policies also abolished under the Bolsonaro administration.

These demands will serve as the basis for the new anti-hunger campaign that will be officially launched in the coming weeks, Afonso announced.

The present outlook is due to the economic crisis Brazil has been suffering since 2015 and the pandemic, aggravated as “a product of recent government decisions, which dismantled food security policies and imposed new contrary measures,” the executive director of Citizen Action told IPS.

The Bolsonaro administration has not raised the minimum wage, for example, merely adjusting it each year to keep up with the official inflation rate. The current inflation rate of 11.73 percent accumulated in the 12 months up to May reduces the purchasing power of the minimum wage month by month.

The minimum wage, set at 1,212 reais (233 dollars) a month for this year, is no longer enough to cover the cost of the basic basket of food and hygiene products for a family of four in the southern city of São Paulo, which currently costs 1,226 reais, according to the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies.

Bolsonaro replaced the Bolsa Familia program with Auxilio Brasil, a stipend of 400 reais (77 dollars) – double the previous amount – to 18 million families, in an attempt to win votes among the poor, a sector in which he is highly unpopular according to polls for the October presidential elections.

But there are “almost three million very poor families” still excluded from the program, who are going hungry, Afonso stressed.

Citizen Action is the non-governmental organization heir to the massive movement unleashed in 1993 by sociologist Herbert de Souza, known as Betinho, which awakened the public to the extent of hunger in the country and mobilized the solidarity of millions of people in municipal, factory, school, neighborhood and community committees.

The campaign, called Citizen Action against Hunger and Poverty and for Life, triggered a process that culminated in the creation of a national food security system, governmental but with broad participation by society in councils at the national, state and municipal levels.

“We still have regional and local committees in all 26 Brazilian states” seeking to collect food donations and mobilize the population to prioritize the fight against hunger, Afonso said.

Many companies support the campaign that will also try to mobilize political leaders, delivering the letter approved at the Meeting against Hunger to all presidential candidates in the October elections, announced the activist, confident in a new awakening of society to the problem, despite the current adverse circumstances.

By Carel du Marchie Sarvaas
BRUSSELS, Jul 5 2022 (IPS)

The ongoing discussions at the World Health Organization (WHO) around a new, landmark ‘pandemic prevention treaty’ shows that the world is starting to act on the lessons it learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In fact, countries have already taken the first steps towards amending the International Health Regulations that govern the reporting and national responses to emerging pandemics, which were subsequently found to fall short during the initial outbreak of COVID-19.

Yet, with countries set to discuss a working draft of the pandemic prevention treaty in August, time is increasingly of the essence to fully codify these learnings if we are to prevent future zoonotic disease outbreaks. The recent monkeypox outbreak shows that the world can ill afford to stall when building its defences to emerging diseases.

And at the same time, new vector-borne health threats – whether they originate in humans or animals – are emerging across the world, particularly as climate change creates new opportunities for disruptive outbreaks in previously less impacted regions of the world.

Preventing the next pandemic is clearly no straight-forward task. This is why a ‘One Health’ approach, one which recognizes the interconnectivity of environmental, human, and animal health, offers us the greatest chance of shoring up global defences against emerging diseases, of which an estimated 70 per cent originate from wild animals. Clearly, a ‘One Health’ approach should be the foundation of global efforts to prevent the next pandemic.

To begin with, countries should focus their efforts to create a new One Health Preparedness Unit, which will bolster and unify international preparations against emerging disease outbreaks. Presently, government disease detection and surveillance programs are too often overstretched and under-resourced, leaving countries – and by extension, the global community – unprepared for new threats.

In this context, a new international One Health Preparedness Unit could bring together existing resources, such as the World Animal Health Information System (WAHIS), USAID’s PREDICT project for boosting pandemic preparedness, or the environmental health monitoring undertaken by non-profits like the EcoHealth Alliance, in the most effective and efficient way, while also having a greater capability to undertake wargame-style planning. In doing so, the international community could better map out potential disease threats and reach collective decisions on how best to respond when they emerge.

Secondly, countries could also prioritize new rules and protocols to help products get to market faster to address acute and ongoing crises as part of any draft agreement. The COVID-19 pandemic showed that fast-tracking critical health tools, like vaccines, can save lives and help respond more rapidly to emerging pandemics.

Streamlining regulatory approval could dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes for vaccines to make their way into the hands of veterinarians, which, in turn, will build the resistance of pets and livestock to disease outbreaks.

As it stands, any tweaks to the existing stock of animal vaccines requires new safety assessments, which means it may take months or years to respond to an emerging disease variant. Allowing previous safety assessments to be used to support vaccines for new strains would streamline this process, lowering the barriers to vaccinating animals and reducing the public health risk in the case of zoonotic disease.

Finally, governments should also agree to fund and adopt new policies that expand global access to preventative animal health tools as part of any future pandemic prevention treaty. Prevention of diseases is always better than cure, yet the defences required to prevent the spill-over of zoonotic diseases from animals is uneven around the world.

More investment in preventative measures, particularly biosecurity on farms but also diagnostic technologies which can detect changes in health before serious, observable symptoms emerge, can not only reduce the frequency, but also the severity, of disease outbreaks, as it already has in many developed countries.

Europe, for instance, has not seen the emergence of a major zoonotic disease since Q Fever more than a decade ago, while the UK reduced salmonella outbreaks by 87 per cent from their 1992 peak – thanks to poultry vaccination.

The lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic are clear: the world can no longer afford to treat the threats facing the health of humans and animals, as well as the environment at large, as distinct.

To ensure the world is fully prepared to face the next pandemic, the interconnected principles of a ‘One Health’ approach should be at the core of any future pandemic prevention treaty.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is executive director of HealthforAnimals, the global animal health association
 
World Zoonoses Day, which will be commemorated on July 6, celebrates the success of the first vaccine which was created against the zoonotic disease ‘rabies’. It was developed by Louis Pasteur, a French biologist on 6 July, 1985.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 5 2022 (IPS)

Long seen as means to seek advantage on the pretext of providing mutual benefit, free trade agreements (FTAs) may increasingly be used as economic weapons in the emerging new Cold War.

Pivot to Asia, containing China
In November 2009, President Obama observed, “in an inter-connected world, power does not need to be a zero-sum game… the United States does not seek to contain China”.

Anis Chowdhury

But Obama soon changed course with his ‘pivot to Asia’, first announced in November 2011. After his re-election in 2012, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) became the economic centrepiece of the new US strategy to check China’s growth and technological progress.

His US Trade Representative (USTR) claimed the TPP was based on principles the US champions, such as protecting intellectual property (IP) and human rights. While claiming all who accept its principles would be welcome to join, China was conspicuously not among countries negotiating the TPP.

For Washington, this new rivalry with China involves strengthened US alliances with Japan, South Korea and Australia. In October 2011, the US Congress ratified the Korea-US (KORUS) FTA.

With the military and economic containment of China central to US security strategy, the TPP was concluded in 2015. Obama emphasized, “TPP allows America – and not countries like China – to write the rules of the road in the 21st century.”

Creating an “anyone but China club” was the US motive for establishing the TPP. But with changed public sentiment since Trump’s presidency, once Obama’s loyal Vice-President, now President Biden did not attempt to revive the TPP during his presidential campaign, or since.

Security alliances
“American prosperity and security are challenged by an economic competition playing out in a broader strategic context… We must work with like-minded allies and partners to ensure our principles prevail and the rules are enforced so that our economies prosper”, noted President Trump’s national security strategy.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Accordingly, the ‘Quad’ – Quadrilateral Security Dialogue group for maritime cooperation of the US, Australia, India and Japan, initiated after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami – has become a putative anti-China security arrangement.

By 2020, leaders of all four countries were more aligned in their concerns about China’s rise. In November 2020, navies of all four countries participated in their first joint military exercise in over a decade.

Meanwhile, under Shinzo Abe, Japan radically transformed its security policy. Abe has greatly expanded the Japan Self-Defence Forces’ role, mission and capabilities within and beyond the US-Japan alliance, especially in East Asia.

‘Defence cooperation’ has also been enhanced through country-to-country arrangements, such as the recent Japan-Australia Reciprocal Access Agreement as well as the earlier Japan-India Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement.

The US security profile in the region has been boosted by the AUKUS (Australia-UK-USA) alliance. Its clear intention is to enhance the US and its allies military presence in the Indo-Pacific, with the greatest ‘China focus’ of all regional security arrangements.

World hegemony
The US is also linking trade to its national security strategy, especially to contain China, in Africa and Latin America. As the USTR notes, “The Biden Administration is conducting a comprehensive review of U.S. trade policy toward China as part of its development of its overall China strategy”.

Her office also emphasizes, “Addressing the China challenge will require a comprehensive strategy and more systematic approach than the piecemeal approach of the recent past.”

Reflecting his Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, Biden emphasizes, “The United States must renew its enduring advantages…; modernize our military capabilities…; and revitalize America’s unmatched network of alliances and partnerships”. He notes “growing rivalry with China, Russia… reshaping every aspect of our lives”.

Biden insists his administration “will make sure that the rules of the international economy are not tilted against the United States. We will enforce existing trade rules and create new ones… This agenda will strengthen our enduring advantages, and allow us to prevail in strategic competition with China or any other nation”.

His administration announced a review of all Trump-era trade negotiations. Due to expire in 2025, President Clinton’s African Growth and Opportunity Act has offered enhanced US market access to qualifying African countries since 2000.

In April 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed US-Kenya FTA talks would resume. Observers believe the US-Kenya FTA, initiated by Trump in 2020, would help expand US ‘carrot and stick’ trade and security policies on the continent to counter China.

In the US ‘Monroe doctrine backyard’, six US FTAs already involve 12 Latin American and Caribbean countries. On 8 June, Biden announced a new regional economic partnership to counter China. His speech inaugurated a Summit of the Americas, criticized for omitting countries seen as friendly to China.

But Biden’s Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity is still seen as a work in progress. Not even offering FTAs’ standard tariff relief, the US anticipates initially focusing on “like-minded partners”. Although Biden hailed his “ground-breaking, integrated new approach”, responses suggest “waning” US influence.

Now, five years after Trump withdrew from the TPP, Biden has revived Obama’s China strategy with his own Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. Smug, he could not help but echo Obama’s TPP brag, “We’re writing the new rules”.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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TOPIO ("TOSY Ping Pong Playing Robot") is a bipedal humanoid robot designed to play table tennis against a human being. Photo: Humanrobo. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Jul 4 2022 (IPS)

It is time for countries, especially those with slow growing and ageing human populations, to welcome androids, i.e., humanoid robots with human-like appearance and behavior, including speech, sight, hearing, mobility, and artificial intelligence.

Androids would not only complement and broaden a country’s labor supply, but they would also increase productivity, lower costs, raise profits, offer instruction, reduce accidents, assist in disasters, and provide safety, policing, firefighting, and security.

The introduction of androids into human societies would be especially beneficial for slow growing and ageing populations. Following the rapid population growth of the 20th century, demographic growth rates are slowing down, and populations are ageing globally.

Whereas world population was growing at an annual rate of 1.3 percent at the start of the 21st century, by midcentury the rate is expected to decline to 0.5 percent. The annual population growth rates of major regions are expected to decline over that period, with Europe’s population growth rate projected to decline to -0.3 percent (Figure 1).

 

Source: United Nations

 

With respect to population ageing, countries worldwide are becoming older than ever before. The proportion aged 65 years and older for the world, for example, is expected to more than double during the first half of the 21st century from approximately 7 percent in 2000 to 16 percent by 2050.

Among the major regions, the populations of Europe and Northern America are the most aged. During the first half of the 21st century, their proportions aged 65 years and older are expected to nearly double, reaching 28 and 23 percent by 2050, respectively (Figure 2).

 

Source: United Nations

 

Over the past decades various types of androids, or humanoid robots, have appeared in films, books, video games, and futuristic exhibitions. However, technology firms have been comparatively slow in bringing to market the latest research and progress in androids, including robotics, artificial intelligence, conversation, bipedal locomotion, and related technologies.

The only notable exception to the use of androids has been the sex industries. Those firms have jumped ahead with the rapid development of “sexbots”. Those androids are lifelike robots or dolls with humanoid form, body movements, artificial intelligence, hearing, sight, speech, and designed to have sexual relations with humans.

While certain jobs will be reduced and workers displaced, employment opportunities are expected to increase in other areas of the economy. For example, while the global number of the robots in manufacturing in 2021 had grown to 126 per 10,000 employees, or nearly double the level in 2015, employment opportunities have continued to expand

The market for sexbots is believed to be huge, with some convinced they are the future of sex. The realistic looking sexbots have artificial intelligence for simple conversation, are programmed to imitate basic human emotions, and can perform sexual acts with humans.

A recent study in the United States, for example, found that 40 percent of adults would have sex with a sexbot at least once to try it. Men were 21 percent more likely than women to say that they would have sex with a sexbot.

Most people are well accustomed to interacting with artificial intelligence on their cellphones, computers, and other electronic devices. Today most of those communications, which are provided both orally and by text, center on providing directions, information, explanations, purchases, games, music, entertainment, social activities, and various sorts of data.

Like the use of robotics to manufacture goods and provide services, androids could be utilized to perform a wide range of activities and services, including tasks that are boring, repetitive, hazardous, and dangerous. Already robotic devices have driven millions of miles autonomously, participated actively in space exploration, and reduced boredom and injuries to humans by carrying out dull, difficult, and dangerous tasks.

Androids could perform a variety of jobs, such as receptionist, salesclerk, guard, attendant, translator, and informant. Androids could answer basic questions, direct people to offices and individuals, remember names and faces, translate languages, log entry information, make phone calls, assist in rescues, monitor people’s health, provide caregiving, and alert authorities when human intervention is needed.

For example, the android, Nadine, is a receptionist at a Singapore university welcoming visitors and answering questions. The android, Erica, is a newscaster on Japanese television reporting the daily news and events and Sophia is the first android to be granted citizenship by Saudi Arabia.

Androids at a field hospital in Wuhan, China, perform services, measure temperatures, disinfect devices, deliver food and medicine, and entertain patients. And the android, Kime, is a beverage and food server in Spain that in addition to serving food can pour 300 glasses of beer per hour.

In addition to performing routine tasks and providing services, androids could be utilized to reduce feelings of loneliness, which has increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For those individuals suffering serious loneliness, including older persons limited by dementia and illness, androids could offer conversation and also provide companionship to those lacking a partner. Androids could also offer entertainment as well as facilitate social interaction.

Furthermore, the presence and interactions with androids can help to reduce feelings of stress, encourage wellbeing activities, and improve mental functioning. Androids could also monitor human behavior and health status.

Androids can also be available 24/7. Moreover, unlike humans, androids do not become frustrated, impatient, or angry. And as androids are not judgmental, prejudiced, or biased toward human behavior or appearance, people may feel freer to express their true feelings and thoughts.

In addition, androids could assist people with functional limitations. With speech, sight, hearing, location, and movement, androids can aid and help those with limited or lacking certain functions for daily living.

Despite androids potentially being able to contribute and enhance workplaces and households, concerns, fears, and reluctance persist about their use. For example, some are concerned that androids would replace workers as has been the case with the increased use of robotics in manufacturing, especially by the auto industry.

However, while certain jobs will be reduced and workers displaced, employment opportunities are expected to increase in other areas of the economy. For example, while the global number of the robots in manufacturing in 2021 had grown to 126 per 10,000 employees, or nearly double the level in 2015, employment opportunities have continued to expand.

Also, the numbers of robots per 10,000 employees in many advanced countries have reached substantially higher levels, such as 932 for South Korea, 605 for Singapore, 390 for Japan, and 371 for Germany. Nevertheless, demand for labor in those countries remains high and unemployment levels are comparatively low (Figure 3).

 

Source: World Robotics 2021.

 

Ethical questions have also been raised concerning the introduction of androids into human societies. For example, given that their appearance, intelligence, speech, and behavior will resemble humans, some have asked whether androids should be endowed with personhood that would entail certain rights, duties, and special laws.

While such ethical questions are not immediate concerns, similar questions are now being raised about the responsible use of artificial intelligence, such as facial recognition technology. However, some have suggested that androids rather than being feared may become allies of humans.

Still others have expressed fears that androids with artificial intelligence could revolt and harm humans. Those fears, which have been the plots in some popular science fiction films and books, tend to be highly exaggerated. Artificial intelligence achieving self-awareness or becoming sentient is unlikely any time soon and software safeguards could shut down an android.

Nevertheless, some continue to stress dangers and express warnings about the possibly imminent development of androids with machine intelligence greater than that of humans. Sentient machines, they contend, pose a greater likely threat to human societies than climate change, nuclear proliferation, or pandemics.

Proto-type androids have been introduced in various countries, including China, Germany, Iran, India, Japan, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, and Spain, and the United Kingdom. Many of the leaders in those countries have recognized the vital functions that androids could perform for societies and the market for androids is believed set for rapid expansion.

It’s time for countries to facilitate and promote the inclusion of androids in business establishments, government offices, public places, and personal households. Welcoming androids into human societies will advance the technological futures of countries as well as contribute to addressing slow growing and ageing populations.

 

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

 

The Book Bunk Trust is restoring library archives to help teach a new generation about Kenyan history.

Shaban Mwinji, a community scout ranger, in Ukunda, Kenya. Standing in a restored Mangrove Forest by Mikoko Pamoja. Mikoko Pamoja is a community-led mangrove conservation and restoration project based in southern Kenya and the world's first blue carbon project. It aims to provide long-term incentives for mangrove protection and restoration through community involvement and benefit.

By Juliet Morrison
Toronto, Jul 4 2022 (IPS)

Africa’s unique natural capital assets were the center of conversation at the 2022 Africa Green Economy Conference. Held in a hybrid format from June 27 to 30, participants gathered to discuss the value of nature in Africa’s economy and call for more nature-positive ventures in development.

Hosted by the Green Growth Knowledge Partnership (GGKP), Capitals Coalition, Green Economy Coalition (GEC), and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the conference featured virtual opening and closing plenary sessions and themed in-person national conversations around the continent. These sessions took place in South Africa, Uganda, Gabon, and Mozambique.

Participants stressed that the conference was coming at a unique moment in the face of several global economic shocks affecting Africa: climate change, biodiversity loss, and geopolitical challenges.

Moderator Kevin Urama, Acting Chief Economist and Vice President for Economic Governance and Knowledge Management, African Development Bank addresses the 2022 Africa Green Economy Conference. Credit: Juliet Morrison/IPS

“The failure of the current system’s existing global cooperation mechanism to meet these challenges equitably and sustainably is leading to the current calls for the review of the global system,” moderator Kevin Urama, Acting Chief Economist and Vice President for Economic Governance and Knowledge Management, African Development Bank said.

Most countries are falling short of the climate action needed to meet their 2015 Paris Agreement emission reduction targets. Climate finance to help developing countries meet targets is also lagging.

Oliver Greenfield, Convenor, Green Economy Coalition, argued that the limited progress on environmental action resulted from policymakers’ continual emphasis on economic gains above all else.

“We accept that development is the priority and environment is the trade-off. That’s largely what’s happened for 50 years […] Avoidance of crisis is not the best investment model for most finance ministers, we know that,” he said.

Greenfield suggested policymakers consider investments that contribute to the best outcome in multiple areas—environmental, social, and economic.

Considering the environment alongside the economy would be very beneficial for Africa, stressed Dr Mao Amis, Co-founder and Executive Director of the African Center for Green Economy.

He added that in most African countries, natural capital accounts for 30-50 percent of their total wealth. In Sub-Saharan Africa, over 70 percent of people depend on forests and woodlands for their livelihoods.

“The value of nature in the economy is undisputed. We are so intricately linked to nature that we cannot disassociate our relationship with nature, and the more we recognize that, the more we can make strides in achieving the role of nature in the economy,” he said.

Tapping into nature—and pursuing nature-positive investments—is seen as an avenue for wealth creation by policymakers.

Ligia Noronha, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Head of UNEP, New York Office, views nature-positive investments as a great risk mitigation instrument and a key investment strategy for the continent.

“This is absolutely obvious, but it has perhaps not been invested in sufficiently. Africa has a tremendous amount of natural capital stocks both in minerals and biodiversity, and this can be a tremendous asset for the growth of Africa,” she said.

She added that natural capital could also create many green jobs for Africa’s population.

Multi-stakeholder engagement, however, is needed to center nature’s place in national economic development.

Dr Gabi Teren, Programme Manager, Endangered Wildlife Trust, highlighted that greater skills and communication across sectors are needed to drive action on environmental targets.

“Ultimately, without the companies being involved at all levels, there aren’t enough experts necessarily to have the skills to apply these tools. […] To really have a truly green economy, we have to have far better communication between the private sector, between [small medium enterprises], between environmental practitioners, and between policymakers,” she said.

The involvement of the finance sector, in particular, is crucial.

According to a presentation by the World Resources Institute, access to financing and the limited participation of the private sector are two of the biggest challenges to implementing nature-based solutions (NBS) in Africa.

Nature-based solutions are initiatives involving nature that solve societal challenges while building up natural ecosystems and biodiversity. For example, conserving mangrove forests can protect homes from the impacts of storms and provide nurseries for fish.

NBS can help fulfill critical infrastructure needs, explained Lizzie Marsters, Environmental Finance Manager, World Resources Institute. According to her, NBS can meet 12 percent of Africa’s 90 trillion US dollar infrastructure needs by 2035.

Marsters situated NBS as pivotal to incorporating sustainability and resilience into infrastructure investments.

“When we think about NBS, we think that there’s tremendous opportunity here to re-evaluate how we think about public budgets, how they are spent, and increased private sector participation,” Marsters said.

Closing the conference, moderator Kevin Urama emphasized Africa’s integral relationship with nature.

“Africa can and should take the lead on this … Africa’s culture has always been nature sensitive,” he said.

Natural capital ought to be intertwined in most development planning, he added.

“Let’s work on natural capital, how to invest in natural capital, how to value natural capital and factor it into our decision making, into our national development planning,” he said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The municipality of Puchuncaví in central Chile turns greens after days of rain, but next to it are the smokestacks of the industries located in this development pole that turned this town and the neighboring town of Quintero into "sacrifice zones", with the emission of pollutants that damaged the environment and the health of local residents, which will finally begin to be dismantled. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

By Orlando Milesi
QUINTERO, Chile, Jul 4 2022 (IPS)

A health crisis that in 20 days left 500 children poisoned in the adjacent municipalities of Quintero and Puchuncaví triggered the decision to close the Ventanas Smelter, in a first concrete step towards putting an end to a so-called “sacrifice zone” in Chile.

The measure was supported by President Gabriel Boric who reiterated his determination to move towards a green government.

The decision by the state-owned National Copper Corporation (Codelco), the world’s leading copper producer, was announced on Jun. 17, following a temporary stoppage of the plant eight days earlier, and was opposed only by the powerful Federation of Copper Workers.

The union reacted by calling a strike, which ended after two days, when the leaders agreed to discuss an organized closure of the smelter, which will take place within a maximum of five years. The smelting and refining facility will be replaced by another modern plant at a site yet to be determined.

The smelter is an outdated facility that has suffered repeated episodes of sulfur dioxide pollution, one of the chemicals causing the deteriorating health of the inhabitants of Quintero, a city of 26,000, and Puchuncaví, population 19,000.

In the last three years Codelco invested 152 million dollars to modernize the smelter but without success, admitted Codelco’s president, Máximo Pacheco.

Pacheco argued that the closure was due to “the climate of uncertainty that has existed for decades, which is very bad for the workers, their families and the community.”

Sara Larraín, executive director of the non-governmental organization Sustainable Chile, said the definitive closure of the plant does justice.

“It is the first step for Quintero and Puchuncaví to get out of the category of damage that is called a ‘sacrifice zone’ where for decades the emission standards have been exceeded,” she told IPS.

“Sacrifice zones” are areas that have suffered excessive environmental damage due to industrial pollution. Residents of poor communities in these areas bear a disproportionate burden of pollution, toxic waste and heavy industry.

The back of the Ventanas Smelter reveals the poor operating conditions of the copper processing facility in Chile, which will be replaced by a new one within a maximum of five years at an as yet undefined site. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

The two adjacent municipalities, 156 kilometers west of Santiago, qualify as a sacrifice zone, as do Mejillones, Huasco and Tocopilla, in the north, and Coronel in southern Chile, because the right to live in a pollution-free environment is violated in these areas.

In Quintero and Puchuncaví the main source of sulfur dioxide is the Ventanas Smelter, responsible for 61.8 percent of emissions of this element, causing widespread health problems.

Fisherman-diver forced to move away returns to Quintero

Carlos Vega, a fishermen’s union leader in Quintero, is the third generation of divers in his family.

“My grandfather, a fisherman, taught me how to make fishing nets. He had a restaurant on the coast,” he told IPS, visibly moved, adding that his two brothers are also fishermen and divers, who catch shellfish among the rocks along the coast.

“Fishing was profitable here. We were doing well and making money,” he said.

He added that people are well-organized in the area. “At one time we were the largest producer” of seafood and fish for central Chile, “because we had management and harvesting areas. But they had to close because of the pollution,” he said, describing the poverty that befell the local fishers in the late 1980s.

Then the health authorities found copper, cadmium and arsenic in the local seafood and banned its harvest. As a result, the small fishermen’s bay where they keep their boats and sell part of their catch lost their customers.

The crisis forced him to move to the south where he worked for 15 years as a professional diver in a salmon company.

Carlos Vega, a fisherman, diver and trade union leader, and Kata Alonso, spokeswoman for Women of Sacrifice Zones in Resistance, pose for a photo in the bay of Quintero, during the celebrations in that town and in neighboring Puchuncaví for the announcement of the definitive closure of the Ventanas Smelter of the state-owned Codelco copper company, whose polluting emissions have damaged the local environment and made local residents sick for decades. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Today, back in Quintero, with two sons who are engineers and a daughter who is a teacher, he continues to dive, albeit sporadically. He participates along with 27 fishermen in the management area granted to the north of the sacrifice zone, where they extract shellfish quotas two or three times a year.

“The social fabric was broken down here, that is the hardest thing that has happened to us,” said Vega.

Codelco is not the only polluter

Codelco is the main exporter in Chile, a long narrow country of 19.1 million people sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains where the big mines are located. In 2021 it produced 1.7 million tons of copper and its pre-tax income totaled nearly 7.4 billion dollars.

“Chile is the leading global copper producer and the world is going to become more electric every day,” said Pacheco. “And copper is the conductor par excellence, there is no substitute. We have to be ready for copper to be increasingly in demand in this energy transition.”

The president of Codelco emphasized that the wealth does not lie in exporting concentrate, which has 26 percent copper, but anodes with 99 percent purity, “and for that we need a smelter and a refinery.”

Young residents of Quintero and Puchuncaví came out in a drum line to celebrate the closure of the Ventanas Smelter and participate in a Festival for Life which lasted eight hours and was joined by a hundred local and national artists. Thousands of people gathered in the square which is on the edge of Quintero on Saturday, Jun. 25. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

But the smelter, he explained, must be modern and not like Ventanas, which only captures 95 percent of the gases released. In the last three years, Codelco has lost 50 million dollars in the Ventanas smelter, which has a production scale of 420,000 tons. A modern Flash furnace produces 1.5 million tons and captures 99.8 percent of the gases.

The Ventanas Smelter employs 348 people and another 400 in associated companies. Half of them do not live in the area but in Viña del Mar, Villa Alemana or Quilpué, towns that are also in the region of Valparaíso, but are located far from the pollution.

The smelter is part of an industrial cluster that includes 16 companies.

After the latest health crisis, the authorities decreed contingency plans in plants and maritime terminals of six companies for emitting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and applied an Atmospheric Prevention and Decontamination Plan.

Four coal-fired thermoelectric plants also pollute the area, one of which was definitively closed in December 2020 and another that was to be closed last May, although the measure was postponed.

According to environmentalist Larraín, when the smelter and the four thermoelectric plants are closed “better standards can be achieved, at least with respect to sulfur dioxide and heavy metals,” in Quintero and Puchuncaví.

View from the road of the Ventanas Smelter, in central Chile, which has been temporarily shut down since Jun. 9 and whose antiquated facilities will be permanently closed in a maximum of five years. They are adjacent to populated areas that have been turned into so-called “sacrifice zones” where local residents periodically suffer environmental and health emergencies due to sulfur dioxide fumes. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

The plan to continue decontaminating

Other pollutants are VOCs linked to the refineries of the state-owned oil company Empresa Nacional de Petróleo (Enap) and the private company Gasmar.

Kata Alonso, spokeswoman for the Mujeres en Zona de Sacrificio en Resistencia (Women in Sacrifice Zone in Resistance) collective, told IPS that “the prevention plan is good so that people don’t continue to be poisoned, so that they can breathe better, and so that the companies that pollute can close their doors, instead of the schools.

“There are companies that were built before the environmental law was passed that have not taken health measures. So what we are asking is for each company to be evaluated, and those that do not comply with the regulations must leave,” she said.

The repeated crises occur despite the fact that Chile’s environmental standards are below those of the World Health Organization (WHO).

For level 10 particulate matter, the mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets in the air, the ceiling in Chile is 150 milligrams per cubic meter (m3) and the WHO ceiling is 50.

For particulate matter 2.5 (fine inhalable particles), in Chile the limit is 50 milligrams per m3, while the WHO guideline is 25. And the Chilean ceiling for sulfur dioxide is 250 milligrams per m3 compared to the WHO’s limit of 20.

Three years ago, the Chilean Pediatric Society and the Chilean Medical Association requested that Chile raise its emission standards to WHO levels.

Part of the audience at the Festival for Life, which celebrated the closure of a copper smelter, that along with 15 other industrial plants turned the municipalities of Quintero and Puchuncaví into “sacrifice zones” in central Chile. Performances by musicians and other artists from around the country were interspersed with messages calling for a life free of pollution in the area. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Alonso the activist said that “my two neighbors died of cancer, whoever you ask in Puchuncaví has relatives who died of cancer. Today people are dying younger, breast and uterine cancer have increased in young women, and there are so many miscarriages.

“The statistic we have is that one in four children in Puchuncaví are born with severe neurological problems, down syndrome, autism. Here in Quintero there are two special education schools and many children with learning disabilities,” she said.

Larraín called for “government support for those who have been affected by irreversible diseases, asthma, lung cancer and others that have been proven to be caused by coal combustion and heavy metals.”

The Catholic University conducted a study using data on hospitalizations and mortality in Tocopilla, Mejillones, Huasco, Quintero and Puchuncaví.

“The rates for cardiovascular disease associated with industrial processes are clear. In some cases they are 900 percent higher. Calling them sacrifice zones is real, it refers to impacts that are occurring today,” said Larraín.

The environmentalist said it would be difficult to revive Quintero Bay “because it has a gigantic layer of coal at the bottom, dead phyto and zooplankton because water is used for cooling in industrial processes and is dumped back out with antialgaecides that kill marine life.”

She believes, however, that “over the years, the capacity for regeneration is possible, even in agriculture that has been lost due to sulfur dioxide emissions. There may also be a recovery in fishing and tourism.”

But Larraín demanded “a just transition that restores healthy levels and regenerates ecosystems so that local communities can sustain their economy in a healthy and ecologically balanced environment.”

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The crimes of trafficking and aggravated smuggling of persons are of great concern to UNHCR. More than 3,000 people died or went missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean and the Atlantic last year, hoping to reach Europe, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on April 2022, appealing for $163.5 million to assist and protect thousands of refugees and asylum seekers. Credit: IOM 2020/Alexander Bee

By Jan Servaes
BRUSSELS, Jul 4 2022 (IPS)

A mass attempt on June 24, 2022, of about 2000 African migrants to scale the border fence between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla left at least 37 people dead.

Several human rights organizations call for an investigation into what ranks as the deadliest day in recent memory along this section of the EU’s only land border with Africa. Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, congratulated the coordinated action of the Spanish Civil Guard and the Moroccan security forces. He blamed the mafias and smugglers for the deaths.

On the other hand, Moussa Faki Mahamat, the head of the African Union Commission, expressed “my deep shock and concern at the violent and degrading treatment of African migrants attempting to cross an international border from Morocco into Spain.”

Also Esteban Beltrán, director of Amnesty International Spain, stated: “It is time to put an end to this policy which allows and encourages serious human rights violations. A ‘business as usual’ approach is no longer valid amid the blood and shame”. It is essential “to understand our double standards and ensure that all refugees have the opportunity – as Ukrainians have had – to escape war and repression by seeking asylum through legal and safe channels”.

Mixed Migration Centre

The Mixed Migration Centre (MMC) is a global network engaged in mixed migration data collection, research, analysis, and policy and program development. Their June 2022 report, entitled “Security costs: How the EU’s exclusionary migration policies place people on the move toward Italy and Greece at greater risk – a quantitative analysis”, puts the migration issues in perspective.

The MMC report clearly documents the main protection risks faced by Asian and African migrants and refugees as they travel to Europe along the Central Mediterranean Route (CMR), the Eastern Mediterranean Route (EMR) and the Western Balkans Route (WBR).

The report confirms that a ‘securitized approach’—one that often criminalizes refugees and migrants— coupled with a lack of legal and safe mobility pathways is reducing the protection space for people moving along the main migration routes to and through Europe.

Since its inception in 2014 and through early 2021 MMC’s 4Mi survey has conducted more than 75,000 interviews (that’s about 1,000 interviews per month). The refugees and migrants who took part in the surveys feel that their journey to Europe poses serious risks, including detention, physical and sexual violence, robbery, bribery/extortion and even death.

Children are also exposed to similar protection risks, including detention. The three routes each pose their own specific protection risks, but also share common challenges. Militias are most prevalent on the CMR, and ‘state’ actors on the EMR and the WBR, while criminal gangs are frequently reported across all three routes.

Smugglers are a concern among respondents but are rarely considered to be the main perpetrators of abuse. The CMR—and Libya in particular—is more often reported as dangerous. On the EMR and the WBR routes, migrants and refugees often indicate Turkey, Iran, and Greece as locations where protection incidents are more likely to occur.

Refugees and migrants use a number of strategies to mitigate the risks they expect to face, such as traveling in groups and carrying cash. The latter to prevent them from having to work (under lousy exploitative conditions) to pay for their travels, or to buy themselves ‘free’ and avoid other problems.

The EU’s externalization policies have worsened rather than improved the situation.

Opinions on protection risks are in line with what other studies and reports have noted: that abuse, violence and death are common when migrants and refugees travel through the countries where European externalization policies are implemented — most notably Libya, Niger and Mali across the CMR, and Turkey in the EMR.

Against this background, the externalization policies of the EU and its Member States, and their partnerships with authorities in third countries, remain a major concern in terms of their ethical and financial costs and their impact on the protection of people on the move. Only for the EU does this policy seem effective because arrivals in Europe along various migration routes have been reduced.

In fact, however, it is very likely that the current approach increases the protection risks of migrants and refugees. Indeed, studies have confirmed how these measures violate international and human rights standards set for the protection of people on the run.

A case in point is Europe’s ongoing collaboration with the Libyan coast guard to intercept and return large numbers of migrants and refugees to Tripoli, the city most often considered to be dangerous by the migrants, and one that human rights groups and international organizations have often mentioned in connection to severe forms of violence against, and the unlawful detention of migrants and refugees.

A 2021 report by Amnesty International, for example, highlighted that physical violence and other abuses in Libya had shown no indication of diminishing over the past decade.

The awareness of migrants and refugees of the protection risks in the CMR also points to something else: that there is a feeling that such risks are inevitable on these migration journeys to Europe. One explanation could be that increasingly restrictive border controls and the lack of legal routes mean that migrants and refugees seeking to enter Europe have no other options. Greece is a case in point.

Numerous reports and studies have demonstrated how the EU-Turkey Statement and tighter border controls across the WBR have stemmed the flow of people and exposed migrants to considerable protection risks by forcing them to take highly perilous routes.

Also, the widespread tendency to indiscriminately incarcerate migrants entering the country for lengthy periods of time, in line with the implementation of the EU-Turkey deal, as well as the practice of pushbacks by the Greek coast guard might have led migrants and refugees to opt for the more dangerous, yet more available, paths to Europe.

Bangladeshis, for example, for whom it seems “easier” and safer to use the EMR route, have chosen to try the dangerous crossing via the CMR from Libya to Italy. The question is therefore: why do respondents in the survey continue to use certain routes and locations, despite the many known and very real risks?

The tightening of border controls increases the reliance on smugglers to evade border controls, with smugglers decreasing the chances of arrest by employing increasingly dangerous strategies, ultimately increasing the risks to refugees and migrants.

Such strategies include departing on longer and therefore more dangerous sea and desert routes, choosing unsafe embarkation and boarding points and dumping people on ‘boats’ in rough seas.

The findings of this study regarding the most common perpetrators of abuse across the three routes raise questions about the implications of the EU approach to protecting people on the move.

The prominence of militias and armed gangs are the main perpetrators of abuse reported by respondents who have traveled the CMR. In addition, they traverse areas marked by ongoing political instability, conflict and insecurity, and the collapse of the rule of law.

Nevertheless, the role played by militias and gangs in the protection risks faced by migrants and refugees cannot be separated from the EU’s externalization policies or its interaction with local political economies.

Libya and Niger have been systematically engaged by the EU to stem migratory flows and fight migrant smuggling and human trafficking. Local militias have sometimes even become involved in fighting smuggling groups and/or intercepting refugees and migrants at sea and returning them to Libya.

In summary, while it would be simplistic to argue that EU border policy alone creates all the protection risks faced by migrants and refugees, there seems to be a worrying alignment between the perpetrators the migrants fear most and the actors who secured the funding mobilized by the EU for migration management and the fight against people smuggling.

While the data shows that smugglers remain a major concern for people fleeing to Europe, respondents say they are rarely among the most common perpetrators of violence. These findings indicate that an EU approach mainly focused on ‘securitisation’ and the fight against people smuggling – an approach based on the argument that breaking the so-called business model of smuggling would ensure the safety of refugees and migrants by ending making their perilous crossing of the Mediterranean — may not be as effective as portrayed in political and policy circles.

Recommendations

The Center for Mixed Migration calls on policy makers and authorities to improve European migration management policies, in particular the full implementation of the objectives set out in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees. The EU and its Member States should:

• Provide detailed and evidence-based analyzes of the impact of EU cooperation with third country partners on both human rights and local economies affected by the implementation of EU externalization measures. These analyzes should be performed on a case-by-case basis for all affected communities in each partner country;

• Support the sharing of information on perpetrators of human rights violations between law enforcement actors at national and international level, including outside Europe, while ensuring that all cooperation is in line with international human rights and refugee law;

• Expanding cooperation with the Government of Turkey to increase its capacity in all provinces to properly implement refugee status and provide international protection, taking into account age-, gender- and diversity-specific vulnerabilities and protection challenges (e.g. Afghans, single women with children and young men);

• All aid that contributes to the interception, return and often detention of refugees and migrants in shutting down Libya, as it is not a safe place. Also ensure that no one is at risk of inhumane and degrading treatment in Libya and support humanitarian programs that respond to the needs of the people;

• Improving the monitoring of deaths along migration routes to Europe by including more details in the data systems on deaths along the route;

• Open new channels of legal entry and strengthen existing ones by granting humanitarian visas, creating humanitarian corridors between transit countries and Europe, expanding Member States’ resettlement programs and facilitating alternative legal routes, such as family reunification, university scholarships and training programmes.

Jan Servaes 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 ) and co-editor of the 2021 Palgrave Handbook of International Communication and Sustainable Development. ( https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030697693)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Dr Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES. Credit: IPBES

By Manipadma Jena
New Delhi, Jul 3 2022 (IPS)

Speaking to IPS about the importance of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people, Dr Anne Larigauderie, Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), stressed the importance of moving from knowledge and policy silos to a more integrated approach to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially those related to food, water, health, climate change, and energy, which can only be achieved together with the two goals related to biodiversity.

Larigauderie said it was crucial to provide resources and build capacity in under-resourced developing countries where much of the remaining biodiversity is located. Financial resources were particularly needed, she said, to fund global biodiversity observing systems in order to monitor biodiversity in order to follow progress according to internationally agreed indicators and targets. She was speaking to IPS ahead of the ninth session of the IPBES Plenary (#IPBES9) in Bonn, Germany.

IPBES harnesses the best expertise from across a wide range of scientific disciplines and knowledge communities to provide policy-relevant evidence and knowledge, thus helping to catalyse the implementation of knowledge-based policies at all levels of government, the private sector and civil society.

In the face of the worsening climate crisis and rapid biodiversity loss, IPBES’ role has been growing in importance since it was established in 2012.

IPBES’ first thematic assessment, on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production (2016) brought a global focus to issues relating to the protection and importance of all pollinators, and has since resulted in a number of strong policy changes and actions globally, nationally and locally.

At #IPBES9, 139 member governments are expected to approve two crucial new scientific assessment reports, one regarding the sustainable use of wild species and the other regarding nature’s diverse values and valuation.

Four years in development, the ‘Sustainable Use Assessment’ has been written by 85 leading experts, drawing on more than 6,200 references, while the ‘Values Assessment’ has 82 top expert authors, drawing on more than 13,000 references.

An indigenous forest dweller in India’s Andhra Pradesh, inside a protected area, sells cashew nut seeds to visitors. Indigenous communities’ knowledge of biodiversity contributes to the work of IPBES, alongside science, says IPBES’ Executive Secretary. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): IPBES provides policy-relevant knowledge to catalyse the implementation of policies at all levels, including awareness-raising among the public. What outcome do you expect from #IPBES9? 

Anne Larigauderie (AL): We expect to have three major outcomes. Two new reports will be submitted for approval and are planned for release from #IPBES9. One is on the values and valuation of nature and the other is on the sustainable use of wild species. A third major outcome of the meeting is expected to be a decision about starting a new report on business and biodiversity, which would be produced in a couple of years.

IPS: How significant are these new reports’ findings for biodiversity conservation in particular, and more broadly for achieving a range of biodiversity-related SDGs, including food security and climate change? You have mentioned elsewhere that climate science may be working in a silo and not, ideally, together with biodiversity goals. How are IPBES scientific data-based reports helping bring working synergy to these critically interlinked SDGs?

AL: You really put your finger on a very major issue and message that IPBES has been trying to advance.

One of the key conclusions of the IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services was that with the current loss of biodiversity and degradation of nature, we are not going to achieve the two most directly biodiversity-related SDGs: 14 and 15. We will also miss a number of the other goals related to the production of food, water quality, health and climate change.

With the ongoing overuse of pesticides, loss in soil biodiversity and in pollinators, among others, we will for example not be able to reach SDG-2 on zero hunger.

With current high rates of deforestation, land degradation, and the overuse of fertilisers, we also cannot reach SDG-13 – to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts – because all of the actions that I just described, are either contributing to greenhouse gas emissions or reducing the capacity of natural ecosystems to mitigate against climate change.

Deforestation also threatens SDG-3 related to good health. So, protecting biodiversity is not only necessary for conserving nature, but it also really is about reaching all of those other key SDGs and protecting all of nature’s other contributions to people as well.

IPS: How can IPBES ensure wild species, hugely important but still largely under-appreciated, are sustainably used?

AL: Based on the latest scientific data, IPBES assessments inform decision-making. Then it is up to governments and a diverse set of actors to act.

IPBES’ 2016 report on the status of pollinators and the impact on food security has informed quite a lot of new legislation around the world. It triggered a new UN Food and Agriculture (FAO) international initiative on pollinators, for instance. All this contributes to reducing the loss of pollinators. We hope for a similar level of impact from the report on the sustainable use of wild species once it has been released.

IPS: How effectively and urgently are countries implementing the IPBES-informed policies that would result in much-needed transformative changes for reaching biodiversity targets?

AL: Clearly, not enough. The IPBES Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services concluded in 2019, that good progress had been achieved towards components of only four out of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to be achieved by 2020. Because of the pandemic, the 15th session of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), initially scheduled for 2020 has been rescheduled for December 2022. This is of course having an impact on many policies, which are related to the global agenda, including at the national level.

IPS: What kinds of things would the IPBES scientific community think are still needed globally to enable much greater information flow, robust databases and wider involvement of the scientific community?

AL: What we do not have currently for biodiversity is a global biodiversity observing system. The climate change community has had a Global Climate Observing System ever since the Climate Change Convention started.

As part of this system, governments have agreed on a set of essential climate variables (for example, water temperature or salinity) which are measured by all governments thanks to in-situ and remotely sensed capacity, and shared in common databases, thus enabling scientists to project future trends in climate change, among others.

For biodiversity, there is no such global observing system agreed upon and funded by governments, with the proper capacity to monitor changes in biodiversity and thus know if policy implementation has succeeded or failed.

Currently, biodiversity data are collected according to different protocols, stored in separate databases, with many gaps (for example, taxa, geographic, temporal) and no operational capacity, such as dedicated agencies, to ensure the long-term collection and proper storage of data. These gaps are particularly important in developing countries, where much biodiversity lies.

We can formulate the hope that COP15 will emphasise the need for a proper intergovernmental global biodiversity observing system and pave the way for a mechanism to properly resource such a system.

IPS: Is data collection focusing more on flagship species and not enough on other species which may not be as ‘glamorous’ but are critical for healthy ecosystems?

AL: There is definitely a general bias in data collection. Over the years, particularly in the past, people have focused their efforts on the animals they saw, liked, found attractive or interesting – think about birds, which are the most observed animals in the world because they have always fascinated people. That bias is changing, however, as new technologies provide access to environments which were too small or too difficult to reach. Studying soil microflora and microfauna or deep ocean biodiversity is becoming possible, but many of these techniques remain expensive and thus require funds and capacity building.

IPS: Are countries doing enough to preserve and promote indigenous knowledge of biodiversity?

AL: IPBES has placed a major emphasis on indigenous knowledge in its work. It was one of our guiding principles right when IPBES started. The choice was made by governments to not only rely on scientific knowledge in our reports but also on knowledge from indigenous peoples and local communities. Over the years, IPBES has invested quite a lot in developing an inclusive approach and engaging more closely with indigenous communities.

This has made the IPBES reports richer, more diverse, and more relevant to everyone, including indigenous people, who have often managed to keep their environment in better shape than others – even though their territories are threatened by climate change and other issues for which they are often not responsible.

So yes, this is an area that IPBES strongly supports and values. IPBES has actually played quite an innovative role, and inspired others with its unique approach, including the climate change community.

IPS: Can you share with our readers some clues about future IPBES assessments?

AL: We are finishing a report on invasive alien species and their control, that is planned for launch next year and then we have two new reports that are already in progress. One is on the nexus between biodiversity, water, food and health. Here IPBES is looking at how to simultaneously achieve the Sustainable Development Goals related to food, water, and health and also touching upon climate and energy together with biodiversity and ecosystems. We want to really get out of the silo approach and inform people about the options that are available to reach these goals simultaneously and not one at the expense of the other.

The other assessment is on transformative change– where IPBES is exploring the type of values and behaviours which are the origin of the indirect and direct drivers of biodiversity loss, and how they could be transformed. These underlying causes of biodiversity loss are difficult to study and often neglected but they are the root causes of all the issues and need to be better understood to be properly addressed.

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Excerpt:

IPS interviews Dr Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES