Africa

River and mountain in the interior of Dominica. IPBES' collaboration with the private sector funds research and evidence that helps businesses make better-informed decisions to protect biodiversity. Credit: JAK/IPS

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Jul 1 2022 (IPS)

In the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, the changing climate often eclipses the loss of ecosystems and species in funding and awareness.

For years, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has been one of the world’s most visible forces for policy and action, informed by science, to protect and restore nature.

IPBES is also now making headway in its goal of ensuring that biodiversity issues receive a similar level of priority and awareness to that of the climate crisis – as well as increased funding. An important part of this involves diversifying its funding sources to include the private sector and philanthropic organisations.

Funded primarily by voluntary contributions from its member governments, IPBES recently announced landmark collaborations with the luxury industry’s Kering Group, global fashion retailer H&M, the BNP Paribas Foundation, AXA Research Fund and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“There is a dual purpose in the way we have engaged with the private sector over the last few years, both to find opportunities for their support and to engage them more closely with our work and its outcomes, so that they can use those in their own activities as well,” IPBES Head of Communications Rob Spaull told IPS.

To protect the objectivity and credibility of the Platform’s scientific research, formal collaboration with private sector companies follows a rigorous due diligence process that can take up to one year and is spearheaded by a legal team from the United Nations Environment Programme, which hosts the IPBES secretariat.

“We ensure that any kind of contribution that might be received from the private sector has no influence on the science that IPBES publishes. It was really important for our member States that we implement a model that protects the independence of the Platform,” Spaull said. “We accept contributions, but those contributions go into the IPBES Trust Fund.”

IPBES says the science is clear – businesses can be a vital part of the solution to the biodiversity crisis.

“We want to help the private sector move forward, and we want them on board with us. Our vision is that through their commitment to the work of IPBES, we also help the private sector to better understand and decrease its impact on biodiversity,” said Sonia Gueorguiev, IPBES Head of Development.

“More and more businesses are understanding how biodiversity is strongly interlinked with their core business, as companies rely on nature for resources, and they are recognising how important it is for them, both for ethical and economic reasons, to progressively incorporate biodiversity into their strategies and business models.”

IPBES has produced some of the world’s leading and most cited scientific reports, including the 2019 Global Assessment Report, which concluded that one million species of plants and animals face extinction, while human activity has significantly altered 75 percent of the earth’s land surface and over 60 percent of the ocean area.

For Spaull, IPBES’ budget pales in comparison to the Platform’s value, which includes the many years of voluntary expert contributions to every IPBES report.

“For example, on the Global Assessment Report, we did a bit of a back-of-the-envelope calculation and added up the different person-hours that were contributed free of charge by the experts over the three years that they worked on the report. It added up to more than 17 years of work, which was essentially a voluntary expert contribution to the Platform. The operating budget doesn’t actually reflect the immense value that is created by the Platform.”

These recent private sector collaborations are a solid foundation for IPBES’ funding diversification but represent a small fraction of what is needed for greater financial stability.

“They are a good start, but they are still a start. That is one of the reasons why we are looking forward to the future where hopefully, we will be able to expand into new sectors with other kinds of private sector and philanthropic organisations in a similar way,” said Spaull.

IPBES is already working on a number of new reports. Two highly anticipated assessments will be released in July, after four years of work, one on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species, and one on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature.

IPBES will publish another report next year on invasive alien species and their control and is already working on one about reaching simultaneously sustainable development goals related to biodiversity, water, food and health, as well as one on transformative change. A new business and biodiversity assessment is also planned that will assist businesses with assessing their impacts and dependence on biodiversity.

“The IPBES assessments enjoy strong global recognition and visibility,” Gueorguiev said. “As populations of plants and animals are shrinking and nature’s contributions to people diminish, individuals and providers of funds will make consumption and investment choices that will exclude those companies whose activities contribute to the decline of biodiversity. Public-private partnerships and collaborations are one of the solutions to both the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis,” said Gueorguiev.

“Biodiversity is set to become a social issue as unavoidable as climate change, and we are working with companies with strong sustainability leadership in their industries, which can enable them to set sustainability standards,” she said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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• Addressing the Global Biodiversity Crisis Requires Understanding and Prioritizing the Many Values of Nature
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Excerpt:

With the world facing a biodiversity crisis, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is ramping up collaboration with private sector agencies and philanthropic foundations to support science-based, sustainable decision-making research.

A family shares a meal in Yemen with food provided by the UN World Food Programme (WFP). Credit: WFP/Saleh Hayyan

By Marco Ferroni
CHICAGO, USA, Jul 1 2022 (IPS)

From the worst drought in four decades threatening famine across the Horn of Africa to extreme heat in South Asia, the war in Ukraine and the unequal pace of pandemic recovery, global food systems are under extraordinary pressure.

The combined result is expected to leave more than 320 million people severely food insecure this year, compared to 135 million two years ago.

Until recently, efforts to bolster such an overstretched global food system have focused on a single aspect, such as developing hardier crop varieties, reforming subsidies or reducing food waste, but any system is only as strong as its weakest link.

New varieties, technologies or incentives to increase yields are meaningless if there is no water to irrigate the soil, or if the infrastructure is not there to get the harvest to market.

Policymakers and scientists are increasingly recognising the need for a new approach that considers all aspects from farm to fork, a philosophy that goes beyond individual commodities, and even beyond agriculture as a sector.

A “systems approach” allows for a greater understanding of the bigger picture by considering the broader context in which food is produced, distributed, and consumed, and how those systems function within related systems such as health and energy.

Just as the G7 agriculture ministers warned against short-term responses to the food crisis that come at the cost of medium and long-term sustainability, CGIAR believes a systems approach is necessary to minimise the trade-offs and unintended consequences that have contributed to food crises for decades.

Put simply, systems thinking is a holistic approach that accounts for the interplay of all elements, assessing and addressing both the potential benefits and harms of new developments.

For example, when applied to food, it raises questions such as: does this new seed or practice require additional natural resources and are they available? Is a particular innovation accessible and practical for women as well as men? What repercussions will it have for the environment, trade, food prices, livelihoods and nutrition?

Adopting such a framing can then inspire a so-called “innovation systems approach”, which fosters productive engagement between key actors, including farmers, governments, enterprises, universities, and research institutes, and directs more targeted investment towards effective innovations in line with the G7’s recommendations.

The major advantage of such a systems approach is that it can be applied at all levels.

At a global level, rebalancing food systems requires a complete understanding of our natural resources worldwide, and how they intersect with food production across different regions in different scenarios.

Research shows that agriculture, which produces fuel crops as well as food, is one of the major contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, meaning agricultural innovations must be considered alongside energy innovations to ensure one avoids jeopardising the other.

Understanding how innovations and decisions made in one country can have ripple effects thousands of miles away is made easier through models such as the International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT), while connecting food systems with land and water systems through cross-disciplinary research can help manage agriculture’s contribution to climate change.

At a national level, addressing country-level priorities by understanding the different levers at play can unlock multiple benefits.

For example, when Bangladesh identified a gender gap in agriculture in 2012, the government worked with CGIAR scientists to develop the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) program to achieve its dual goals of greater women’s empowerment and improved nutrition.

The program featured agricultural training as well as nutrition behaviour change communication and gender sensitization trainings to increase women’s empowerment, diversify production and improve the quality of household diets.

Finally, a systems approach tackles localised needs more effectively by addressing the multiple factors that contribute to and compound poverty and hunger.

For example, bean breeders at the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) developed a demand-led research model that has resulted in more than 500 new varieties of beans according to the different needs, tastes and preferences of both farmers and consumers.

By refining agricultural research with an end-to-end approach, scientists developed the new varieties most likely to be successful with consumers and therefore adopted by farmers, doubling bean productivity in Uganda and Ethiopia between 2008 and 2018.

Ultimately, people do not only eat food: they grow it, sell it, buy it, cook it and share it. And so, food systems transformation requires dealing with such complexity by harnessing science and technology, learning from analysis and data, interpreting ambiguity and potential conflicts to develop multiple solutions to tackle interconnected challenges.

These benefits could be fully realised with greater investment into research across the agri-food system as a whole, which in turn starts with a shift in mindset towards more systemic thinking.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Chair of the CGIAR System Board

By Osamu Kusumoto
TOKYO, Jul 1 2022 (IPS)

On June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which had declared abortion constitutional, and a woman’s right to abortion is no longer guaranteed. This is another example of the divisiveness that has surrounded abortion to date, and has sparked controversy on both sides of the issue. While it is politically perceived that this Supreme Court decision resulted from a majority of conservative judges appointed during the Trump administration, an important point is being forgotten.

Osamu Kusumoto

A court based on the law will not make a proper decision if the issue is not properly framed in the first place. This is very strict, unlike the various judgments in our lives. If you are a jurist, you make decisions based on such a way of thinking. The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are first-rate jurists, regardless of whether they are conservatives or progressives, and they make decisions based on legal logic. In other words, if the construction is logically reasonable, they will reach the same decision regardless of their position.

The change in interpretation may have been a change to the question of whether abortion constitutes a right guided by the U.S. Constitution.

This question can be translated into the question of the relationship between basic human rights and abortion.

Human rights are regarded as rights, but they are different in nature from ordinary rights. In social life, most rights are defined by law and guaranteed by legitimacy. When it comes to human rights, however, they are often treated as universal or God-given rights, but their logical basis is not clear.

In response to this issue, the author believes that human rights are a necessity created by the cognitive structure of human beings. Because humans have the capacity for self-recognition, they are necessarily agnostic, unable to determine their own existence on their own. The other is absolutely indispensable in order to determine oneself. Based on this argument, it is logically impossible to protect human rights in the sense of affirming one’s own life without respecting other lives in the same way.

Much of the concept of rights is closely related to the issue of freedom from oppression. The history of modern civil society is the history of winning/ acquires freedom from various forms of oppression, and this process has been recognized as progressive in the Western value system. A woman’s right to abortion is part of this logic. When a woman becomes pregnant in a way she does not want or intend, she feels forced to do so and seeks freedom from it.

This is the view that modern Western intellectuals have held in the modern era, that women are in control of their own lives. Based on this concept, an unwanted pregnancy is a violation of a woman’s fundamental human rights. Therefore, the right to choose abortion is part of her fundamental human rights.

However, if we apply the definition of human rights as defined in this paper, the question arises whether abortion is a right and whether a woman can deny the right to an unborn child, no matter how different from herself, to exist as a life form. It is logically difficult to position abortion as a woman’s human right to choose.

However, another conclusion that can be drawn from the definition of human rights is that women are human beings before they are women, and their lives must be respected. It is on this issue that women are victimized because they are women, with crimes such as rape as an extreme example. Even though abortion is a burdensome and sad procedure for women, it is also a stark fact that if the procedure is not secured, it can lead to even worse misery.

In other words, abortion is not a matter that should be treated as part of fundamental human rights or as a right itself, but as an emergency refuge to avoid the worst possible outcome, and as a matter that should be properly secured in order to ensure human justice.

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development identified reproductive rights as the advancement of women, sexual education, and access to reproductive health for all. Once this is achieved, unintended pregnancies will be reduced to zero. However, to date, this commitment has not been fulfilled.

In the absence of full implementation of this commitment, the failure to ensure medically appropriate abortion as an emergency refuge is a lack of justice. Ensuring fairness is an important function of the law. The debate should not be about abortion as a right, but about allowing medically appropriate abortion as an emergency refuge/evacuation to ensure social justice and to avoid more tragic events as a rights.

Osamu Kusumoto, Ph.D Lecturer, Nihon University
Founder, Global Advisors for Sustainable Development (GAfSD)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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

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By Patricia Balvanera, Brigitte Baptiste, Mike Christie and Unai Pascual
BONN, Germany, Jun 30 2022 (IPS)

Nature has many values. A forest can be a cool and quiet place to retreat to when you need relaxation on a hot summer day. It is a habitat for many species. Trees also sequester and store carbon, reducing future impacts of climate change. But of course, the trees also have a monetary value if they are felled and turned into furniture or put to other uses. These are just four examples of the many values of nature, which are vital parts of our cultures, identities, economies and ways of life.

In 2019 the Global Assessment Report by IPBES (Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) concluded that the health of ecosystems, on which we and all other species depend, is deteriorating more rapidly than ever before in human history. When we lose a forest, we also lose all of the many kinds of values people ascribe to it.

Nature is being threatened more than ever before because we don’t value it enough in our policies, choices and actions. One reason why this happens is that we only value what we can easily measure, such as the amount of wood we extract in a given moment from the forest. What is more difficult to value and therefore often ignored in our decisions is the millions of years of evolution that led to the diversity of wildlife in forests, the role that the forests play in regulating floods for people downstream, or the role of this forest in creating an identity of the people that live within it. These other values are critically important and yet they may be harder to be measured.

For this reason, in 2018 nearly 140 Governments tasked 82 leading experts with preparing a new IPBES Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature. For four years these experts reviewed more than 13,000 references to understand the different ways in which people value nature, and the different ways in which these values can be measured and integrated into the decisions we make.

Policy decisions about nature should take into account the wide range of ways in which people value it, so that they can more effectively address the biodiversity crisis and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. To make this possible the new IPBES assessment drew not only on thousands of scientific articles and government reports, but also included very significant contributions from indigenous and local knowledge.

In the first week of July, the report will be considered by the member States of IPBES. Once accepted, it will inform decisions by Governments, civil society, indigenous peoples and local communities, business, and more around the planet. To this end it will identify concrete opportunities and challenges for embedding values and valuation in decision-making, including a range of policy support tools. The report also identifies key capacity-building needs and knowledge gaps for future research.

It is easy to recognize the value of something once it has been lost. Let us not wait for that. It is time to understand and prioritize the many values of nature in decision-making.

Prof. Patricia Balvanera is a Professor at the Institute for Ecosystem and Sustainability Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Dr. Brigitte Baptiste is the Chancellor of Universidad Ean in Colombia.

Prof. Mike Christie is the Director of Research at Aberystwyth Business School, Aberystwyth University, United Kingdom.

Prof. Unai Pascual is Ikerbasque Research Professor at the Basque Centre for Climate Change, Spain, and Associated Senior Research Scientist at the Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Switzerland.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writers are Co-Chairs of the IPBES Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature.

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Electricity generation in the city of La Paz in the northwestern state of Baja California Sur depends primarily on a thermoelectric plant that burns fuel oil, a highly polluting fuel. The Mexican government plans to replace it with gas. CREDIT: Cerca

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 30 2022 (IPS)

Liquefied gas does not occupy a prominent position in Mexico’s energy mix, but the government wants to change that scenario, to take advantage of the crisis unleashed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the need for new sources of the fuel due to the sanctions against Russia.

The war modified the global outlook for gas by accentuating Europe’s dependence on natural gas and forcing it to look for other suppliers due to the sanctions against Russia. If prior to the war that began on Feb. 24 there was an oversupply and a lack of interest in financing gas projects, now the equation has changed radically.

ln addition to promoting the installation of private plants, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced on Jun. 11 the construction of a three billion dollar natural gas liquefaction plant in the southern state of Oaxaca, to be run by the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).

A new gas pipeline to be laid between Oaxaca and Coatzacoalcos, in the southeastern state of Tabasco, will help feed the liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing plant using gas from the United States.

In July 2021, the Mexican government created the state-owned company Gas Bienestar, to sell the fuel at subsidized prices and thus cushion the impact of the international rise in fuel prices, driven by the increase in demand after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has doubled since the invasion of Ukraine.

Mexico depends on U.S. gas for residential and industrial consumption, transported mostly by pipelines belonging to U.S. companies, which are now looking for ways to sell it in third party markets, re-exporting it from Mexico after liquefying it in processing plants built here.

But this model is criticized for chaining Mexico to gas in the long term and reinforcing dependence on fossil fuels, thus breaking with the commitment to an energy transition to decarbonize domestic consumption.

“This dependence is not sustainable,” Jaqueline Valenzuela, director of the non-governmental Center for Renewable Energy and Environmental Quality, told IPS from the northwestern city of La Paz. “What we are seeing is that we are receiving gas from fracking after the government promised to stop supporting that technology. It is incoherent.”

"The country continues to bet on the fossil fuel extractivist model. We do not see another energy alternative being built in the face of the climate emergency." -- Edmundo del Pozo

In La Paz, the capital of the state of Baja California Sur, most of the power generation depends on fuel oil, a highly polluting petroleum derivative that is also harmful to human health.

Since the 2013 energy reform, which opened the sector to private foreign and local capital, Mexico has become a recipient of gas from the United States, obtained through hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a technique that requires large amounts of polluting chemicals and water, and transported through pipelines.

A network of gas pipelines has been created in this country of 131 million people, with 27 state and private pipelines, for distribution over a territory of almost two million square kilometers.

The recipients of the gas are some 50 thermoelectric combined cycle plants – which burn gas to generate steam for electricity – and turbogas units, both state-owned and private.

Increasingly, however, the LNG processed in Mexico will also be destined for markets in other continents, which are now eager for suppliers that are not facing Western sanctions.

Opportunism

Among the beneficiaries of the new world gas scenario are Mexican facilities that receive the fuel, liquefy it and re-export it by ship, to take advantage of the rising cost of the material.

Four private plants supply LNG in the northeast and northwest of the country, mainly for thermoelectric plants and industrial consumption.

Since 2008, the private Energía Costa Azul (ECA), located in the municipality of Ensenada, Baja California, has been operating with a capacity of one billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas per day, owned by Infraestructura Energética Nova (IEnova), a Mexican subsidiary of the US company Sempra Energy, which invested some 1.2 billion dollars in the facility.

In the Port of Pichilingue, also in Baja California Sur, the terminal of the same name, with the capacity to process three million tons of LNG per year and owned by the U.S. company New Fortress, has been operating since July 2021. The processing plant supplies the derivative to a local thermoelectric plant.

In Manzanillo, in the western state of Colima, the KMS Terminal, owned by Korean and Japanese corporations, has been operating since 2012 with a capacity of 3.8 million tons per year.

On the other side of the country, in Altamira, in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, the terminal of the same name, co-owned by the Dutch company Vopak and Enagás from Spain, has been operating since 2006 with a capacity of 5.7 million tons per year.

Mexico as a producer

Mexico is the 12th largest oil producer in the world and the 17th largest gas producer. In terms of proven crude oil reserves, it ranks 20th, and 41st in natural gas, but its hydrocarbon industry is declining due to the scarcity of easily extractable deposits.

In Mexico, Latin America’s second largest economy, between 2019 and May this year natural gas production ranged between 4.6 and 4.8 bcf per day, according to official data.

Extraction is lower than domestic demand and to balance the deficit Mexico imports gas, especially from the United States, from which it imported a maximum of 935 million and a minimum of 640 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) over the last three years, according to figures from state-owned oil giant Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex).

In addition, LNG processing has been falling. In 2019, the country refined 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) equivalent, which fell to 84,000 in 2021. And in April 2022, the total dropped to 43,000 bpd.

Imports of LNG vary widely: Mexico imported almost 54 billion bpd in 2019, a total that fell by one billion in 2020 and rose to 67 billion bpd in 2021, dropping again to 27 billion bpd last April. In addition, it has not exported LNG since July 2020, due to the demand of the domestic market.

"Our concern is that U.S. exports to Mexico will simply feed Mexican exports of liquefied gas." -- Tyson Slocum

Meanwhile, U.S. pipeline exports to Mexico have quadrupled in recent years, according to data from the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration.

“While the U.S. must help its allies in need, the ability of U.S. gas to provide reliable and affordable energy to the world is quite limited,” Tyson Slocum, director of the Energy Program at the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, told IPS from Washington.

Slocum said that “our concern is that U.S. exports to Mexico will simply feed Mexican exports of liquefied gas.”

Addiction

The greed for gas attracts private and public companies alike. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has issued at least five permits to export LNG and to re-export it via Mexico since 2016. In addition, one project is under construction and three others are planned on Mexico’s Pacific coast.

IEnova and France’s TotalEnergies are building phase one of ECA, a plant with a capacity of 3.25 million tons of LNG per year with an investment of two billion dollars, scheduled to start operating in 2024. Meanwhile, phase two is under design, to produce an additional 12 million tons per year.

Mexico Pacific Limited LLC (MPL), owned by three U.S. private investment funds, is building another regasification plant in Puerto Libertad in the northwestern state of Sonora, with an investment of 2.5 billion dollars, which is projected to export 14 million tons of LNG annually to Asia.

The first stage is to begin in 2025, with 4.7 million tons, President López Obrador said at one of his morning press conferences.

In December 2018, the DOE authorized MPL to export up to 1.7 bcf per day from the future facility, an endorsement required to export the fuel from the U.S.

In addition, the Vista Pacifico LNG project planned by Sempra in Topolobampo, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, is to transport fuel from the Permian Basin oil-and-gas-producing area in West Texas for re-export to Asia and Europe, in addition to several destinations in South America.

In April 2021 Vista Pacifico received permission from the DOE to export 40 bcf per year – 110 mcf per day – to Mexico. Of that total, 200 bcf of gas per year – 550 mcf per day – would be for liquefaction and re-export.

Last January, Mexico’s state-owned CFE and U.S.-based Sempra signed a voluntary memorandum of understanding for the probable construction of a plant for this purpose.

Also in Sinaloa, the private LNG Alliance of Singapore is building the Amigo LNG plant, which will begin operations in 2027 with the capacity to process 3.9 million tons per year.

“The country continues to bet on the fossil fuel extractivist model. We do not see another energy alternative being built in the face of the climate emergency,” complained Edmundo del Pozo, coordinator of the Territory, Rights and Development area of the non-governmental Fundar Center for Research and Analysis.

The expert told IPS that the modernization of hydroelectric plants and the strengthening of Pemex promoted by López Obrador since he took office in December 2018 have favored gas consumption.

“Continuing with fossil fuels is not an option. We are fighting for the inputs used to generate electricity to be local,” such as sunlight, said Valenzuela, the head of the non-governmental Center for Renewable Energy and Environmental Quality.

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Kaddu Sebunya, CEO of the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), in the Serengeti. His current role entails spearheading the vision of a modern Africa where human development includes thriving wildlife and wildlands as a cultural and economic asset for Africa’s future generations. Credit: AWF

By Guy Dinmore
London, Jun 30 2022 (IPS)

The CEO of the Nairobi-based African Wildlife Foundation, Kaddu Sebunya – in London to mark AWF’s 60th anniversary while fundraising and lobbying – shares his thoughts with IPS on the climate and food crises, how Africans have their voice, why western countries need a ‘reset’ with Africa, what Prince Charles should say to the Commonwealth, how China is eating western ‘cake’, and what worries him more than anything else.

(IPS) How are the crises of climate and food security impacting AWF across Africa?

“It has a huge impact because everything is interconnected.  In Kenya, we lost about 78 elephants to drought in Tsavo National Park [in the nine months to April].  That’s more than any poaching, higher than any cause of death of elephants in the last 15 years.  Elephants are a key species – when they suffer, we know what’s going to happen to the plants, the frogs, the butterflies, the trees.  They are a key we use to measure the health of the ecosystem.  The elephant can tell you a lot about what is going to happen to all other species, including humans.

An African elephant in the wilderness. Kenya lost 78 elephants to drought in Tsavo National Park. Kaddu Sebunya expresses concern that governments don’t prioritise conservation and education in times of natural disasters. Credit: AWF

 

Drought and food shortages: people are going to make different choices.  They are going to change the way they live.  In many cases, the resources suffer.  Smaller choices mean a different diet, so they use more firewood, they are going to cut more trees.  When there is food scarcity and drought they are going to rely on hunting for protein… For many Africans, 70 per cent plus are in agriculture – that’s their livelihood.  If there is drought they are going to pick other options.  If the Maasai have lost 40 percent of their livestock in northern Kenya they are going to look for alternatives… The nearest resource is going to be wildlife.

Governments are sourcing from the same budgets.  If there is drought they will change priorities.  Always environment and conservation are going to be the last choice.  Education is going to suffer.  All these other sectors suffer because the budgets are being reprioritised to drought and health.

And at the global level, you see in central and west Africa the impact on migration.  We see rural areas emptying and young people moving to urban areas with no skills.  Especially women and young girls suffer more.  The young boys are recruited into terrorist groups or trafficked to Europe.  So the repercussions of this are not just natural resources… it distorts the whole set-up, entire cultural systems, the entire social network and safety nets, and breaks down government systems… It’s larger than just food… Societies are broken down.  Bringing food in risks destroying local agriculture.  This is why Ukraine is so important, raising the question of dependency on imported food.”

What is AWF’s response?  

“Our work is to represent the voice of wildlife.  Animals don’t speak.  Someone has to do that for them.  We take that responsibility very seriously, in all these changes for us to be at the table, whether a board room, in corridors of parliament or community meetings, to be that voice for wildlife… The only long-term solution for drought is how we can manage nature better.  But in most cases that is not factored in when we are talking about addressing the symptoms, when addressing famine so [the UN] bring in biscuits from Europe and elsewhere, high energy food… That’s not a solution, that’s a band-aid … I was talking to someone from Ethiopia, he said the problem we have is all these NGOs and INGOs are bringing plastic into villages in Ethiopia and it doesn’t come with the education of how you are going to dispose of all this plastic.

Historically it has been easier for international communities to talk to international NGOs who have been working on the continent or to talk government to government.  It hasn’t given us good solutions to our problems historically.  And that’s what we are asking that needs to be changed.  It’s going to take Africans to take ownership and responsibility and leadership, to permanently solve the problems Africa has.  We don’t have very good results where things have happened without African leadership.  There are very few cases.  Where that has been successful it has been very expensive, especially in our sector… They are either training thousands of rangers, they are bringing guns, they are buying and fuelling vehicles, and carrying on training to protect 1500 elephants.  What we are doing, it is actually cheaper if you are supporting Africans who don’t need guns to protect wildlife, they use a relationship with wildlife, who can be supported in developing their wildlife economies…

Sometimes we think our work is to make it cheaper and sustainable.  Models that have been used are not sustainable.  Governments cannot sustain areas that require thousands of rangers and vehicles, I mean Serengeti is the size of a country in Europe… Everything I am telling you is coming from our experiences, what works and doesn’t work.  The challenge we have now over the next 10 years is how do we scale it up.  A project we have been running in northern Rwanda for 30 years, the conservation of mountain gorillas, and how we have mobilised communities for them to have a stake in the tourism.  Thirty years ago eco-tourism was an investor coming to the area, gets a concession, builds a wonderful lodge and he just had to hire local Africans and get a group of local women to dance for tourists, get a few households to sell crafts at the lodge and that model still exists… We said it’s not enough.  We raised the bar.  Now we are talking about equity – communities must have equity in the tourism business and so in the lodges we build, like in Rwanda, Kenya, Namibia, Botswana, the communities own the lodge.  The private investor is a management firm.

Kaddu Sebunya believes new models, where the community is involved in the business, are successful and need replication across the continent. Credit: AWF

The hard work in that formula is how to mobilise communities in that business unit.  What works for that is our relationships with government.  You can’t do that in isolation to policies and laws… the conservation approach is political, economic and social.  It’s not about the science of conservation.  It’s not about the behaviour of elephants and rhinos.  You have to get involved in the political discussion, the social discussion, the economic discussion and that’s how you start moving… We flipped the investment model.  It takes a lot of time but it’s extremely successful.

How is China’s growing role in Africa affecting conservation work?

We work in China.  Pre-COVID I was spending a lot of time in Beijing talking to policy and Communist Party officials.  It’s good.  We have seen results.  We are part of the groups that helped China ban the ivory trade about six years ago… I was in Beijing.  The day that China announced it, the price of ivory fell by 70 percent.  Demand fell 65 percent for our African ivory… it was huge.  We are working with China on mainly three fronts: it’s the Chinese footprint on our continent: the infrastructure they are building, farming, the industries they are setting up in Africa.  We are asking them to be responsible in doing that.  We are not stopping it… Initially, they were telling us it was not their responsibility, that’s African governments’ responsibility, it’s the contracts they signed with the African governments and African governments need to tell them what they want and African governments are not telling us we care about the environment so we are not going to care about it.  We talked to them, we called them out.  It was so important, they told me after huge arguments that went on for a year, to hear from an African NGO directly.  So we are succeeding in that.  The other approach we used is that making sure that African governments are making these conditions so we spend a lot of time with African ambassadors in Beijing… The last thing that China wants to hear is Europe asking them to do better in Africa or US asking them to do better in Africa… Right now we have a technical advisory role to the African delegation on the Convention on Bio-diversity [in talks hosted by China].

Our third thing is people to people, especially the youth.  If anything good comes out of this COVID it is Zoom, so we have created platforms where African youth interact with Chinese youth and they are having very very interesting conversations about Africa, about wildlife, educating each other.  That’s where the future is… Culturally we are very connected, family and extended families, cousins and aunts and uncles, it’s so common between Chinese and Africans.  The connection culturally is just so real.  To the young people this is a globalised world… Culturally it is changing, we have seen that with consumption of African wildlife.  We talk to older Chinese and they still think that owning ivory is a big deal, an investment.  The young people want a Polo shirt and an Apple watch for their status, and so do the young Africans.  They want to drive a Porsche, not have tonnes of ivory in their homes like their grandparents.

We have a very good relationship with Beijing zoo and Shanghai zoo where every year we have an exhibit for three months.  One in Beijing, before COVID, 300,000 people were going in a day.  The numbers in China are mind-blowing.  They go with their families, they learn about the species and the habitat, they watch the videos.  These are young middle-class families, they start questioning things.  We have seen change in China.

How can the UK/EU change Africa policies and deal with China’s growing presence?

[An] example is the Commonwealth.  I think the UK has the opportunity to reset… I think the UK has an opportunity to change their role from big brother to maybe an uncle who sometimes is invited to a dinner and is sometimes left out of a wedding.  But it’s a huge opportunity for UK, and I don’t see that happening as quickly as it should.

I told the European Union parliament and some folks here in the UK in the discussion about China that it’s tiring when you hear UK officials or EU officials complaining about China.  For an African it’s really tiring.  And I have been telling them: look China is not eating Africa’s cake, China is eating UK, French and German and Italian cake in Africa… because for the UK to whine about China in Africa when half of Africa speaks your language, half of Africa believes in you and have common values.  Seventy percent of African leaderships attended Oxford, Yale, Harvard, London University and you sit in London and complain about China?  A huge population of Africans are British.  I’m yet to find a Chinese African or a community of Africans who speak Chinese.

The western world has to think deeper to understand the options China has given Africans.  And look in the mirror and ask why, and counter offer and have a serious conversation.  The Germans are doing that by the way – they are rethinking their engagement and I hope that actually with the war in Ukraine is going to change the relationship between Africa and Europe.  You have a continent that has the richest minerals and richest industrial resources on the planet and you rely on Russia and for food?  It’s mind boggling.  You rely on a country you define as enemy.  It’s total neglect of a continent that is so rich, because it’s easier for Africa just to be exploited and do it that way and do the trade with Russia who is the enemy.  But ‘we’ don’t want to trade with Africa, we just want to continue exploiting.  And see what’s happening now.  It’s that reset.  It can be led by the UK, especially now as it has exited the EU.  But I don’t see that thinking here.  If I was to address the Commons that is what I would tell them.  I don’t see them taking on that opportunity the UK has through the Commonwealth which is coming up.  I don’t know what Prince Charles’ address is going to be but that’s what it should be.

‘Africa’s resources are above, not below, the ground’

A lone black rhino in the Nairobi National Park savannah, Kenya, with the Nairobi skyline and Mombasa railroad bridge in the background. Kaddu Sebunya says it’s important to change perceptions. Africans need to be reminded that the continent’s wealth is above the ground – in nature and conservation and not below the ground as popularly believed. Credit: AWF

Our work is to tell Africans that our wealth is above the ground.  It’s not underground as UK, France and others have told Africans.  It’s only when I come to Europe and North America where I hear Americans and Europeans say Africa is mineral-rich.  Out of 54 countries, there are less than 10 countries that are mineral-rich, so where is this idea that Africa is mineral-rich?  And somehow Africans bought into that because Europe and North America only want the minerals in Africa.  But the wealth of the continent is above the ground.  We can feed Europe with organic food… you [the West] can achieve two objectives with one approach: you can get organic food out of Africa, stop the famine going on, but also you can offer Africa a better model of development, because if you don’t, what happens in Africa won’t stop in Africa, it will reach London and then the streets, whether in terms of refugees or in terms of flooding because of climate change, or just loss of biodiversity… It is so important that we start treating Africa as the last frontier for global solutions, whether it’s health – the next virus is going to come out of Africa, no doubt.  Africa is the last frontier of animals.  It is in all our interests that the virus stays in the wild lands and the wildlife and that‘s the work of conservationists…

You want to solve climate change, you need to do something in a country that absorbs carbon… The source of energy for Congolese should be the most important solution for UK climate change policy.  Because the Congolese population is growing – you know the largest French-speaking city is Kinshasa, it’s not Paris.  If those folks continue to rely on firewood as their energy source, you will have more carbon in the air and temperatures rising.

I sound cynical but you don’t have to change your [western] way of life drastically, but if you help Africa to leapfrog [in technology and development] that change shouldn’t be so drastic but the more you don’t help Africa leapfrog, the harder it will be for everyone… So the choices Africans are making to their prosperity is so crucial to the rest of the world… guess what, Africa is chasing the western world… they want London in Kenya just as it is.  They want to drive big cars, they want to own a village house and a summer house, planes.

‘What worries me more than anything else…’

People need to know what Africans think.  We don’t have to be right but what is our opinion… More importantly, Africans need to hear from Africans.  There is a growing movement in Africa that actually worries me now more than anything else among the young people who think that it’s just ‘the western world doesn’t like us, that we just have to forget the rest of the world, that conservation is a lie, it is really about westerners wanting to grab our land, it’s a quirky way of taking land out of production so Africa’s doesn’t develop.’ That movement has been within my generation but a little bit silent.  The young people are picking that up and they are saying you know these are our resources, we can do whatever we want… I can’t see my children or their children coming to Brussels to negotiate with Europe, going to the US and saying how can you help me to deal with the trees or listening to you… Our grandchildren they will cut down those forests, they will drain all the water, they will do whatever they want because already they are not listening to us… they are so independent they do what they want.  Now when they get in power – in 20 years the 14-year-olds will be the ministers – they are not going to come and attend the Commonwealth, no!  Not unless the Commonwealth changes.  They are stubborn and angry with the rest of the world.  They want to figure out their own ways, they are independent.  They are like any teenager in London, so the rest of the world has 10 years to figure this out before that generation takes over.  My generation we are more diplomatic, we are more forgiving.  That group is not.  It’s going to be tough.  Anything now that Europe wants from us and I focus on Europe, what you want in 10 years you won’t get it, you won’t get a better deal, or you use force, which you have [done before] to get what you want.  Yes, because it’s going to be tougher.  So this is the time to make a deal.

Kaddu Sebunya was talking to Guy Dinmore, a freelance journalist based in Wales

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: UN Peacekeeping

By Riccardo Petrella
BRUSSELS, Jun 30 2022 (IPS)

On Sunday 19 June, we gathered in Sezano, municipality of Verona (VR), at the Monastery of the Common Good to affirm the need and urgency to ban war, all wars, and build peace without yes or no buts.

To the powerful world leaders who want to continue the war in Ukraine (USA, Russia, NATO member states, the European Union which has become a war front, Ukraine) we say STOP your new world war for world domination, of which the one in Ukraine is a dramatic expression.

Why do you still need tens of thousands of dead in the war camps you call liberation camps and tens of millions of people starving to death because of your economic sanctions (countersanctions, retaliations) that only benefit the profits of your big global corporations?

Enough of Putin, Biden, Stoltenberg, Von der Leyen….the world does not need your war in Ukraine. Stop spending over 2.1 trillion dollars on armaments under the hypocritical pretence of saving the peace.

For 70 years, the United States has been at permanent war on every continent with some 800 military bases of occupation in hundreds of countries around the world– and, following the collapse of the Soviet Union– trying to establish themselves in Ukraine as well.

China has only one military base abroad and Russia has only three!

One must know how to lose the victory to know how to build peace.
Because war has never solved problems, it is pure destruction.
War itself is a crime– and if you keep proposing wars, you are a criminal.

The greatest victory is to make peace, because the right to life is a universal right, for everyone and because it shows that you want and know how to live with others. and do not want to dominate others, but live together in the present to promote a future ever more just and united, in common.

Because the world emergency is to put an end to the profits and enrichment of the strongest and collaborate in building hospitals (not tanks), schools (not fighter planes), food production (not fighter planes), to the production of food (not missiles), of drinking water (not toxic gases), to the toxic gases), to the promotion of fraternity (not arms trade).

We must Stop All Wars that are currently martyring and killing people in Syria, Yemen, Congo, Palestine, Western Sahara, Kurdistan, among others.

The cynical silence of the West on the new military invasions by Erdogan’s Turkey in northern Iraq and north-eastern Syria inhabited by Kurdish populations is intolerable.

Inhabitants of the Earth, defend peace and the rights of all! Denunciation is necessary. Building peace, starting with an immediate cessation of hostilities, is even more necessary and positive for all.

Listen to the Intergovernmental Panel on United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which predicts that global warming is three and a half years away to exceed 1.5 degrees.

Do not listen to the US, Russia, France, Britain, China, North Korea, Israel,
India and Pakistan who are building nuclear weapons. Listen to the 130 UN countries that support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Signed in from:
Brussels, Verona, Palermo, Rome, Montreal, Trois Rivières, Coyahique (Patagonia CL), Rosario, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Clermont-Ferrand, Paris, Poitou Charentes, Neuchâtel, Dakar, Beirut, Lisbon, Toronto, Vancouver…

For further information, please contact petrella.riccardo@gmail.com or the Agora ‘s site agora-humanité.org Riccardo Petrella is president of the association.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Professor Emeritus of the Catholic University of Louvain

The diversity and creativity of African fashion are on show in a retrospective at London's V&A museum.

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By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 29 2022 (IPS)

Older persons are highly visible across Asia and the Pacific: they work in agricultural fields producing our food supplies, peddle their wares as street vendors, drive tuk-tuks and buses, exercise in our parks, lead some of the region’s most successful companies and form an integral part of our families.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

Indeed, population ageing is one of the megatrends greatly affecting sustainable development. People now live longer than ever and remain active because of improved health. We must broaden the narrow view of older persons as requiring our care to recognize that they are also agents of development. With many parts of the Asia-Pacific region rapidly ageing, we can take concrete steps to provide environments in which our elders live safely, securely and in dignity and contribute to societies.

To start with, we must invest in social protection and access to universal healthcare throughout the life-course. Currently, it is estimated that 14.3 per cent of the population in Asia and the Pacific are 60 years or older; that figure is projected to rise to 17.7 per cent by 2030 and to one-quarter in 2050. Moreover, 53.1 per cent of all older persons are women, a share that increases with age. Therefore, financial security is needed so older persons can stay active and healthy for longer periods. In many countries of the region, less than one-third of the working-age population is covered by mandatory pensions, and a large proportion still lacks access to affordable, good quality health care.

Such protection is crucial because older persons continue to bolster the labour force, especially in informal sectors. In Thailand, for example, a third of people aged 65 years or over participate in the labour force; 87 per cent of working women aged 65 or over work in the informal sector, compared to 81 per cent of working men in the same cohort. This general trend is seen in other countries of the region.

Older persons, especially older women, also make important contributions as caregivers to both children and other older persons. This unpaid care enables younger people in their families to take paid work, often in metropolitan areas of their own country or abroad.

Older persons should also have lifelong learning opportunities. Enhanced digital literacy, for example, can close the grey digital divide. Older women and men need to stay abreast of technological developments to access services, maintain connections with family and friends and remain competitive in the labour market. Through inter-generational initiatives, younger people can train older people in the use of technology.

We must also invest in quality long-term care systems to ensure that older persons who need it can receive affordable quality care. With the increase in dementia and other mental health conditions, care needs are becoming more complex. Many countries in the region still rely on family members to provide such care, but there may be less unpaid care in the future, and care by family members is not always quality care.

Finally, addressing age-based discrimination and barriers will be crucial to allow the full participation of older persons in economies and societies. Older women and men actively volunteer in older persons associations or other organizations. They help distribute food and medicine in emergency situations, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, monitor the health of neighbours and friends, or teach each other how to use digital devices. Older persons also play an active role in combatting climate change by sharing knowledge and techniques of mitigation and adaptation. Ageism intersects and exacerbates other disadvantages, including those related to sex, race, and disability, and combatting it will contribute to the health and well-being of all.

This week, countries in Asia and the Pacific will convene to review and appraise the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (MIPAA) on the occasion of its 20th anniversary. MIPAA provides policy directions for building societies for all ages with a focus on older persons and development; health and well-being in old age; and creating enabling environments. The meeting will provide an opportunity for member States to discuss progress on the action plan and identify remaining challenges, gaps and new priorities.

While several countries in the region already have some form of policy on ageing, the topic must be mainstreamed into all policies and action plans, and they must be translated into coherent, cross-sectoral national strategies that reach all older persons in our region, including those who inhabit remote islands, deserts or mountain ranges.

Older persons are valuable members of our societies, but too often they are overlooked. Let us ensure that they can fully contribute to our sustainable future.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The gavel of the judges at the International Criminal Court. Credit: ICC-CPI

By Peter Lewis
The HAGUE, Netherlands, Jun 29 2022 (IPS)

On 1 July 2022, the International Criminal Court (ICC) turns 20. The entry into force on 1 July 2002 of the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, officially created the Court and marked the start of its work towards building a more just world.

The Court was created with the “millions of children, women and men” in mind who “have been victims of unimaginable atrocities that deeply shock the conscience of humanity”. 1

The ICC is the world’s first permanent, treaty-based, international criminal court to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, and the crime of aggression.

https://www.icc-cpi.int/

Today, as we look to the future, one can ask: Can the Court fulfil the promises made in the Rome Statute? Promises of justice for the gravest crimes. Promises of fair proceedings. And promises of inclusion for the victims.

With the support of 123 States Parties, from all continents, the ICC has established itself as a permanent, impartial and independent judicial institution. The Court has 17 ongoing investigations into some of the world’s most violent conflicts such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Georgia, or Ukraine.

Peter Lewis

During its first twenty years, the Court has tried and resolved cases of significance for international justice, shedding light on the crimes of using child soldiers, the destruction of cultural heritage, sexual violence or attacks of innocent civilians. 31 cases have been opened. Its judges have delivered 10 convictions and 4 acquittals.

The Court has ensured trials respecting both the rights of the defence and those of the victims. More than 10,000 victims of atrocities have participated in ICC proceedings. The ICC Trust Fund for Victims is currently implementing the Court’s first orders on reparations to victims of grave crimes. The Fund has also provided physical and psychological rehabilitation as well as socio-economic support to more than 450,000 victims through its assistance programs.

The Court has faced incredible challenges, not only due to the nature of the crimes or working in conflict or post-conflict situations, but also due to the need for further support, for example, in making arrests.

Despite the challenges, the Court has responded with resilience and flexibility. Even throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it continued to deal with trials, arrests, investigations, reparations and other activities.

Even as the Court is making progress in carrying out its mission, serious violence is rapidly intensifying. The ICC can only deal with a small number of cases simultaneously and its resources remain limited.

Unlike national tribunals, the Court does not have its own police. It depends on the cooperation of States to investigate cases and to implement its arrest warrants or summonses to appear. Nor does it have territory to relocate witnesses who are at risk due to their interaction with the Court. The ICC thus depends, to a great extent, on the support and cooperation of States.

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the ICC, States around the world should renew their support for the Court in concrete ways. By providing political and financial support. By arresting suspects and freezing their assets. By adopting legislation implementing key Rome Statute provisions in national law.

By signing voluntary cooperation agreements including agreements to relocate ICC witnesses. Only the joint commitment of the international community can help make the promises of the Rome Statute a tangible reality.

1 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Preamble.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer has been the Registrar of the International Criminal Court since April 2018.