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Investment requirements for adaptation are huge, and they are growing every day as rising emissions are increasing adaptation needs. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Philippe Benoit and Gareth Phillips
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 29 2023 (IPS)

In the climate change discourse, “mitigation” (namely, reducing greenhouse gas emissions) often dominates. This is particularly true when the discussion turns to the mobilization of the massive amounts of private capital needed to achieve our climate objections. But “adaptation” — namely, action to respond to the impacts of climate change that are already happening, as well as prepare for future impacts — also faces large funding needs.

To meet this challenge, large amounts of private capital are once again needed — and this will require climate finance innovation targeted at adaptation, specifically.

The journey from this month’s Paris climate finance summit to COP 28  hosted later this year by the United Arab Emirates – and where financing is likely to be a prominent subject — provides opportunities to raise the profile of this often overlooked need to fund adaptation.  While there is relatively little discussion of this topic, it is nonetheless a key to achieving the dual climate goals of reducing emissions while also preparing for the impacts of climate change that are now unavoidable and projected to increase.

Annual funding needs for mitigation have been estimated at around $600 billion by 2030 in emerging economies for energy alone, with private capital providing three-quarters of the required amounts. The reported needs for adaptation are relatively smaller, albeit still only partially identified. For example, annual adaptation needs for developing countries have been estimated at $160-$340 billion by 2030, including more than $50 billion for Africa. These adaptation amounts are beyond any reasonable estimate of the funding capacity of their governments, especially when added to the requirements for mitigation.

There have been various innovative financing mechanisms developed to mobilize private capital for climate but they tend to be focused on mitigation. The best known is probably the carbon markets in which investors are compensated for funding projects that reduce or otherwise avoid emissions.  Article 6 of the 2015 Paris climate agreement establishes a resource mobilization mechanism, but once again, expressly for mitigation action. Similarly, the Energy Transition Accelerator presented by U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry at COP 27, targets private capital to fund clean power sources.

When it comes to adaptation, the discussion is often focused on public sector funds. For example, the Green Climate Fund, a multi-government facility, looks to provide funding for adaptation at levels that match mitigation. Generally, adaptation projects have been seen as providing public goods and, accordingly, have looked to funding approaches reliant on public sector resources, frequently in the form of grants. This greatly limits financing options and amounts.

Yet, the investment requirements for adaptation are huge, and they are growing every day as rising emissions are increasing adaptation needs. This will require more than just public sources; private capital is needed. But in order to unlock this capital, more attention and creativity must be directed to developing new mechanisms for adaptation.

In considering private funding for adaptation, there are three distinct but interrelated major groups of actors.

• The first are companies exposed to climate-related risks in their operations. This includes a variety of agri-businesses, electricity network enterprises, port operators, tourism industry actors and construction companies. The issue here is largely encouraging these companies to spend more on adapting their businesses to climate change.
• A second potential source is the producers and consumers of fossil fuel products whose previous activities have fueled climate change we must adapt to. For example, just as companies have customer programs to raise finance to offset their emissions (e.g., airlines), consumers might also be motivated to support investments to address the impacts of their emissions.
• The third and critical source is third-party private capital, including commercial banks and private equity investors. This constitutes a massive potential source of funding (the bond market totals in the trillions), and it is the focus of the discussion that follows.

The existing mitigation carbon markets provide a potentially fertile precedent for raising third-party private capital. It is important to recognize that the genesis of carbon markets was governments creating regulatory frameworks that gave value to emissions reductions — governments set targets and created mechanisms that offered both financial incentives and flexibility to meet those targets through capital spending.

This also helped lay the groundwork for the parallel non-governmental voluntary markets. Under these types of structures, investors are incentivized to pay for carbon avoidance which makes projects financially attractive — thereby providing project sponsors with access to capital for investments in activities, sectors and regions that were otherwise unbankable.

A similar approach could be taken for adaptation; namely, the creation of a regulatory or voluntary framework in which payments to projects that provide genuine adaptation benefits are recognized and valued.

Eligible adaptation actions might include climate-resilient agriculture goods and services, investments in cold storage, improved treatment and reuse of wastewater, coastal protection, conservation of biodiversity to protect nature’s ability to adapt and actions to mitigate forest fires, a topic that has received increased attention recently. Importantly, this isn’t just a musing.

The African Development Bank, where one of us is the manager of climate and environment finance, has been developing such a facility: the Adaptation Benefits Mechanism. The ABM mechanism creates a financial product for third-party investors (private capital, donors, consumers) to fund project developers in return for Certified Adaptation Benefits, which attribute a value to lowering or avoiding the negative impacts of climate change on agriculture, people’s health, biodiversity, buildings, businesses and other assets.

The ABM product is designed to be priced at a level that enables the developer to fund what would otherwise be an unbankable adaptation investment. Significantly, it provides these developers with access to new capital sources that can make more adaptation projects a reality.

Other mechanisms are being explored and deployed, such as adaptation impact bonds. Many of these programs are designed to attract third-party private capital to adaptation activities, while additional ones address other barriers and constraints to private investment.

Notwithstanding these efforts, there remains a general shortage of instruments and proposals to attract more private capital to adaptation. Overcoming this lack will require putting more intellectual and creative resources into adaptation finance, including by the world’s leading financial centers. The private sector has more to contribute to this area, but unleashing its power will require financial innovation.

With this month’s Paris climate finance summit now completed, the current lead-up to COP 28 to be held later this year is an opportunity not to be missed to advance the effort to raise more private capital for adaptation.

(First published in The Hill on June 14, 2023).

 

Philippe Benoit is research director for Global Infrastructure Analytics and Sustainability 2050 and has over 20 years of experience in international finance and sustainability, including management positions at the World Bank. He is also adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

Gareth Phillips is the manager of climate and environment finance at the African Development Bank Group.

Analysts have questioned what happened to the youth vote in Nigeria. Credit: Commonwealth Observer Group, Nigeria

By Abdullahi Jimoh
ABUJA, Jun 29 2023 (IPS)

As Nigeria’s newly-elected president Bola Tinabu seems to be making his mark by undoing many of his predecessor’s policies – another battle is being waged in the courts between him and one of his rivals Peter Gregory Obi.

Obi has alleged the election was rigged in favor of Tinabu and is in court trying to prove this. Whether he succeeds or not, his ‘non-election’ remains controversial, with many asking what happened to that ‘influential’ youth vote he seemed to inspire confidence in during a poll with the lowest voter turnout since the country returned to democracy.

When Obi, the former governor of Anambra State, got a presidential ticket under the platform of the Labour Party, a political party with a poor track record, in May 2022, he attracted 1.2 million new followers on the giant social media network Twitter.

He had left the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) – a party considered to be a serious presidential challenge, and his followership on Twitter is 3.5 million and growing.

It was the under-30 youth population that makes up about 70 percent of Nigeria’s population, drummed-up support for him, despite his party’s lack of political following.

The pre-election narrative was that the youth were tired of the old politicians, who they believe have nothing new to offer.

They saw Obi as a credible alternative, and his followers ran social media campaigns like #take back Naija on Twitter and tagged themselves “Obi-dients.”

“The run-up saw increased youth participation in the discourse and campaigns. Socioeconomic problems, including incessant university strikes and high youth unemployment, apparently contributed to their engagement. Young people made up around 76 percent of newly registered voters, with 40 percent of that number identifying as students,” says Teniola Tayo, Consultant, ISS and Principal Advisor, Aloinett Advisors on the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) website.

However, the official election turnout tells a different story – the election had the lowest voter turnout in the country’s history of democracy, and youth turnout, despite a spirited run-up to the election, was abysmal, also the lowest since Nigeria’s independence. In 36 states, less than half of the eligible population voted, and no state had a turnout above 40 percent.

In the three largest states based on voter registration — Lagos, Kano, and Rivers — less than a third of the eligible population voted. Rivers State turnout was 15.6 percent, the lowest in the country.

Overall, the national turnout was 29 percent. Of the 93.4 million registered voters, 87.2 million people collected their Permanent Voters Card, but the total number of actual voters on election day was 24.9 million.

So What Went Wrong?

Dada Emmanuel, 20, a university student, is an Obi supporter. He trekked more than 18 kilometers to his polling unit on February 25, 2023, to exercise his vote.

“I saw Peter Obi as the best of the three major candidates because he seemed to have more realistic aspirations for Nigeria, the ruling party failed us, and I think a change of government would have been nice for a better Nigeria,” said Emmanuel.

When Obi lost the election to Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who was considered aged and feeble, he felt disillusioned.

Obi was among the top 15 presidential contenders under the umbrella of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before he left the party in May 2022,  less than three days before the party’s primary on account of the internal imbroglio within the party, making Alhaji Atiku Abubakar the flag bearer.

The Emergence of the Labour Party or Should That Be the Emergence of Obi Party?

The Labour Party was formed in 2002 and registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC.

Compared with the All Progressive Congress (APC) and PDP, it was considered unpopular and, in the 2019 elections, recorded a dismal performance.

Samuel Ayomide, 18, knew this but still threw his weight behind Obi.

“Peter Obi was the only presidential aspirant without any corruption links. He is the only ex-governor that receives no pension from his state. Compare that with Tinubu, who collects (a pension) from Lagos every month,” he says.

Whatever the results, it is clear that Obi’s presence in the LP made a massive difference, and the party garnered 6,101,533, ranking third.

Obi and PDP’s Abubaker are among several petitioners who are being heard in the courts disputing the election, but the judgments will only be known months after Tinubu’s inauguration as president.

Obi has asked urged the court to nullify Tinubu’s victory and order a fresh poll.

Joseph Owan, a political analyst and Oyo State coordinator for World Largest Lesson, Nigeria, says he believes Nigerian youth are on the verge of changing the narrative because they followed the person and not the party.

“In everything involving elections, we all know that in the past, the election is always between the two top political parties (PDP & APC). With so little time, Obi came on board, (and) we all saw how he made waves based on the numbers of States he won during the presidential election.”

Owan maintained that there is a bright future for Obi in the next presidential election if he doesn’t win the case in court.

“By then, he will have established himself in terms of awareness, orientation, and advocacy in some key places like the Northern and Southwestern states,” he says, adding that his popularity will increase with time.

Nevertheless, the road to success is not an easy one in Nigeria, as there are many conflicting agendas at play.

Professor Pius Abioje of the Department of Religions at the University of Ilorin says Nigeria is not structured for equity, which resulted in the “survival of the fittest” among the politicians.

“There is a prevailing jungle law of survival of the fittest. Politicians use ethnicity, religion, and money to get patronage,” he told IPS.

Abioje further says that a detachment of religion from politics could be a solution – but there was a long way to go – with political support often divided along religious lines.

“These dwindling numbers highlight how Nigeria’s politics and state institutions continue to exclude rather than include,” an associate fellow of the Africa Programme at Chatham House London, Leena Hoffmann, was quoted as saying in Dataphyte.

Idayat Hassan, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), quoted in the Premium Times, called on INEC to improve its election management and embark on a voter register audit. “Nigeria doesn’t have a voter register audit, an audit that takes out those who have died and all other ineligible voters from the system.”

“The fact that a significant percentage of Nigerians fail to engage in elections is a concern and perhaps points to growing disillusionment with their ability to shape a more democratic society,” she said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Caura Hospital, in the east of Trinidad, was designated an acute care facility for patients with COVID-19 during the pandemic. Often developing countries are forced to wait for vaccines leaving their populations vulnerable. Credit: Jewel Fraser/IPS

By Jewel Fraser
Port of Spain, Trinidad, Jun 29 2023 (IPS)

The reasons that led to inequitable distribution of COVID vaccines during the pandemic have been inherent in the global pharmaceutical supply chain for decades and contributed to serious adverse consequences for global south countries, as was evident with HIV and Ebola. Further, those issues will likely contribute to inequities with regard to vital medicines in the future. This story by IPS Correspondent and IWMF Fellow Jewel Fraser highlights that the inequity issue is definitely not due just to the pandemic but an ongoing one.

Music for this podcast courtesy of Fesliyan Studios.

This report was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Global Health Reporting Initiative: Vaccines and Immunization in the Caribbean.

 

 

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A young girl holds a child as she makes her way to a mobile health clinic after their village was devasted by the floods in Pakistan. Credit: UNICEF/Shehzad Noorani

By Silvia Baur-Yazbeck
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 29 2023 (IPS)

There is a significant funding gap for climate adaptation – especially for women. Public financing will not be sufficient to close this gap, but it will be crucial for supporting the most vulnerable and facilitating private sector investments where funding and support is needed most.

Inclusive financial systems play an important role in channeling finance to the most vulnerable, including payment systems and last mile agent networks that enable access to social safety net payments, climate risk insurance products, savings for emergencies or affordable credit for investments in climate-resilient assets and more resilient livelihoods.

Development funders are thirsty for guidance and good practices to identify where they can be catalytic and crowd in the private sector for greater investment in climate adaptation.

Funding to support inclusive financial systems may be an entry point for funders with significant potential for climate adaptation impact and a clear role for private sector investment.

Where and how funders allocate funding is determined by their organizational strategies and priorities. Over the past two to three years, development funders and many impact investors have adopted strategies focused on addressing climate change and its impacts.

Women build barriers in Nepal to prevent the river from overflowing and flooding nearby villages. Credit: UNDP/Azza Aishath

More recently, especially after COP26, funders are seeking ways to allocate more funding toward climate adaptation goals. To better understand what funders are doing and whether financial inclusion is leveraged to achieve and accelerate progress toward those goals, CGAP conducted desk research and interviews over the last year (2022-2023).

Given the importance of gender equity goals and growing evidence that climate change and public and private sector responses to it are impacting women disproportionally, the research also examined how gender outcomes are embedded into climate strategies and projects.

This work covered a range of public and private development funders supporting financial inclusion and/or climate goals. For climate funding at large, the past decade has seen an exponential increase in climate finance from both public and private sources. Yet far too little of this funding has been dedicated to supporting climate adaptation and resilience.

Of the estimated USD 632 billion in climate finance that was committed in 2020, only about 7% was linked to adaptation benefits. And only around USD 83 billion was provided for climate action in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), meaning that those with the greatest need and fewest resources to adapt are excluded from global climate finance flows.

Public funders have made commitments to fill the financing gap and mobilize private finance by testing and de-risking investments in new business models, technologies, and climate-vulnerable sectors.

However, our research showed that many of these funders are still developing strategies and in the early stages of implementing projects and investments that support climate adaptation at scale.

We learned that an important barrier funders face in to putting to work their climate adaptation funding commitments is limited knowledge about impact pathways and effective leverage points for advancing climate adaptation and resilience for the most vulnerable.

There are four reasons why funders should consider inclusive finance as an opportunity for supporting climate adaptation:

We believe that inclusive finance can be an entry point for funders to fulfill their climate ambitions and support climate adaptation for the most vulnerable.

Below are four reasons why funders should consider inclusive finance as an opportunity for increasing public and private investments in climate adaptation.

Inclusive finance can enable the autonomous adaptation of households

Most climate adaptation projects and investments support planned adaptation strategies at the national level, such as climate-resilient infrastructure and technologies. While important, these programs fall short in supporting households that are already feeling the impact of climate change in reduced crop yields, damaged assets, reduced access to basic services and health-related issues.

These households need affordable credit and savings products to access new technologies and skills that enable them to grow more resilient to climate change. In addition, they need risk transfer solutions that protect their investments in case of damage or loss.

Inclusive finance can support women’s climate adaptation and resilience

Low-income women are significantly more vulnerable to climate change impacts and therefore in great need to access solutions that help them adapt and build resilience. Research shows that women who can access and use financial services are more likely to be resilient to shocks and stresses, access basic services and run successful businesses.

Funders are already including a gender lens in their climate strategies but seem to lack clarity around how they can address both goals simultaneously. Investments in women’s financial inclusion alongside programs for transfer of skills and technologies offer an opportunity for funders to achieve both objectives by empowering women to choose and lead their own adaptation strategies.

There is also good experience in the financial inclusion sector about the role of social norms and how to address them, which will be important to consider when designing financial and non-financial solutions for climate adaptation.

Inclusive finance can crowd in private sector finance

In 2021, private investors were the primary drivers of financial inclusion funding growth. There is huge interest among private investors in the financial sector and experience among public funders in crowding in more private capital. This opens an opportunity to facilitate existing financial sector investments toward climate adaptation projects.

However, this will require public funders to shift their focus (and that of their private peers) away from mitigation-linked projects, to instead demonstrate where there are viable business models and reduce the risk for private investments. Public funders can also help by sharing their data, risk modeling approaches, and learnings that demonstrate the financial and social benefits of investing in climate adaptation.

A focus on inclusive finance can enable an inclusive and just transition

There is a risk that the increased focus on greening the financial sector by introducing exclusion lists and requiring green credentials will exclude the most vulnerable from accessing affordable finance.

Poor households are in the greatest need to adopt more climate-friendly and resilient practices to maintain and improve their livelihoods. Imposing reporting or certification requirements or excluding them because they are risky clients will prevent them from accessing financial services and limit their ability to adapt and participate in the transition to a more climate-friendly economy.

To enable a just transition, there needs to be more awareness and caution to avoid potential financial and economic exclusion of the most vulnerable.

For funders to seize these opportunities and link financial inclusion, climate, and gender goals in their funding practices, they must adopt new processes and shift their internal incentives to take on more risk and work across sectors

Our interviews confirmed that funders are working hard to build their internal capacity and develop targets and metrics to track climate adaptation. However, they were also cognizant that these efforts do not translate into increased projects and funding for climate adaptation unless there are incentives, more concessional and risk-tolerant financial instruments, and an increased exchange of knowledge and good practices.

Many funders said that funding mitigation is much easier – there are many sample projects, lessons learned and clear metrics to measure their success against. Funding adaptation is less attractive for funders because it requires them to develop new results chains and metrics, take on risky endeavors that haven’t been tested and invest more in data collection and impact measurement as results are less visible and take time to realize.

An encouraging first step, though, is an increased focus on climate adaptation targets which will set milestones and can create incentives to invest more in adaptation projects. Some funders are also integrating climate focal points or creating working groups, including specifically for climate adaptation.

Over the next three years, CGAP will work with investors and financial service providers to identify and test successful approaches to providing financial services that support climate adaptation and resilience.

The objective is to share examples, lessons learned and practical guidance for financial services providers, funders and other important sector actors to provide the poor and vulnerable access to financial and non-financial services that support their climate adaptation and resilience.

We will convene funders for peer exchange and to jointly develop recommendations as to where public versus private funders may play a more critical role and what financing instruments are most effective in supporting climate adaptation.

To achieve our objectives for this work, we rely on our members and partners to engage and share their experiences. We hope you will join us in this effort. Please reach out or leave a comment below with reactions and suggestions.

Silvia Baur-Yazbeck is Financial Sector Specialist, CGAP

Source: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) is a global partnership of more than 30 leading development organizations that works to advance the lives of poor people, especially women, through financial inclusion.

 

 
IPS UN Bureau

 

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Inspired by seeing a bagpipe player in his youth, Chukwu Oba Kalu wanted more Nigerians to play.

Although both sides announced a ceasefire, fighting continues on one of Islam's holiest days.

Ayan (25) with her daughter Mushtaq (15 months) in the waiting area of the WFP funded Kabasa MAM Health Center. Credit: WFP/Samantha Reinders.

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Jun 28 2023 (IPS)

Four months pregnant, Ayan was close to dying of starvation when she arrived at the Kabasa camp in Dolow, on the border between Somalia and Ethiopia.

Her 18-month-old daughter, Mushtaq, was so severely malnourished that she weighed just 6.7 kilos.

Drought had forced the family to flee their home in Somalia.

Three years of drought have left more than 23 million people across parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing severe hunger, the WFP says. When the region’s long-awaited rains finally arrived in March, instead of bringing relief, the downpours were so extreme they caused flash floods that inundated homes and farmland and washed away livestock

Ayan’s husband died shortly after their arrival.

“We came here as we heard we would get some help,” Ayan said at a health centre funded by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

“We left our home because there was no water and our livestock had died.”

Thanks to nutritional therapy and fortified cereals provided by the WFP, Ayan and Mushtaq are still alive.

Many others do not make it.

Three years of drought have left more than 23 million people across parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing severe hunger, the WFP says.

When the region’s long-awaited rains finally arrived in March, instead of bringing relief, the downpours were so extreme they caused flash floods that inundated homes and farmland and washed away livestock.

Consecutive failed harvests and high transport costs have pushed food prices far beyond the reach of millions in the region, the WFP says, with a food basket in Eastern Africa costing 40% more in March 2023 than it did 12 months previously

The limited humanitarian resources are being further stretched by the conflict in Sudan, which has sent over 250,000 people fleeing into neighbouring countries such as Ethiopia and South Sudan, where food insecurity is already desperately high.

“Conflict and drought are devastating millions of Somalis. Children are paying the highest price of all,” said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain during a visit to Somalia in May. “Nearly 500,000 children are at risk of dying”.

The Horn of Africa is on the front line of the climate crisis.

A study released in April by World Weather Attribution (WWA) said that the drought in the Horn of Africa would probably not have happened without human-caused climate change.

“Climate change has made events like the current drought much stronger and more likely,” WWA said.

“A conservative estimate is that such droughts have become about 100 times more likely”.

The tragedy is also a massive injustice as poor countries like these are responsible for only a tiny part of the global emissions that have caused the climate crisis.

But they are feeling its effects most severely.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said the region is facing an “unprecedented disaster”.

“Many farming households have experienced several consecutive poor harvests and up to 100% losses, especially in the arid and semi-arid areas,” said Cyril Ferrand, the FAO’s Resilience Team Leader for East Africa.

“Some agropastoral communities lost all sources of food and income.

“In addition, 2.3 million people have been displaced across the region in search of basic services, water and food.

“And we know very well that when people are on the move, it is also an issue of security, violence, and gender-based violence, in particular.

“In short, the drought triggered a livelihood crisis that has grown into a multifaceted humanitarian disaster including displacement, health issues, malnutrition and security crisis that has long-term effects on people’s lives and livelihoods”

Ferrand said that pastoralists across the region lost over 13 million livestock between late 2020 and the end of 2022 due to lack of water and feed.

This is important because livestock are not only the main source of income for pastoralist households, but they are also a source of milk, which is vital for healthy diets, especially for children under five.

The loss of animals and the related deficit in milk production, therefore, is a big factor in the region’s high rate of malnutrition.

The WFP, meanwhile, says that it urgently needs US 810 million dollars over the next six months to fill a funding shortfall in order to keep life-saving assistance going and invest in long-term resilience in the Horn of Africa.

The UN agency was distributing food assistance to a record 4.7 million people a month in Somalia at the end of 2022.

But it was forced to reduce this to three million people in April and may have to further reduce the emergency food assistance caseload in Somalia to just 1.8 million by July.

This means almost three million people in need will not receive support.

“WFP’s rapid expansion of life-saving assistance helped prevent famine in Somalia in 2022,” said Michael Dunford, the WFP Regional Director for Eastern Africa.

“But despite the emergency being far from over, funding shortfalls are already forcing us to reduce assistance to those who still desperately need it.

“Without sustainable funding for both emergency and climate adaptation solutions, the next climate crisis could bring the region back to the brink of famine.”

 

Artificial intelligence is developing at a rapid rate and is transforming many aspects of life in Africa.

Zimbabwean women's informal savings clubs have been hit by high inflation and the low value of the country's currency. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Jun 28 2023 (IPS)

For years, self-employed and unemployed women in Zimbabwe formed neighbourhood “clubs” where they pooled money together for everything from buying bulk groceries to be shared at the end of the year to meeting funeral expenses.

But as inflation renders the local currency virtually worthless, with, for example, the price of a loaf of bread reaching ZWD4,000, women rights advocates say this has thrown local saving initiatives into a mind-numbing tailspin.

In recent weeks, the local dollar has been on a frenzied free fall against the greenback, and in one week alone, the parallel market rate went from USD1:ZWD2,000 to anything between USD1:ZWD3,000 and ZWD4,000.  Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency put Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rates at triple digits, with inflation rising 175.8% in June from 86.5% the previous month.

“We cannot buy foreign currency on the street to keep our savings club operating. You can’t plan anything with such an ever-changing exchange rate,” said Juliet Mbewe, a Bulawayo homemaker who sells snacks, sweets and other small items on a roadside not far from her township home.

“It was better when the country was using the USD as the official currency,” she said, referring to the period of the country’s government of national unity between 2009 and 2013.

That period is widely credited with taming  Zimbabwe’s economic turmoil and also helped make savings possible for women such as Mbewe.

Women’s savings clubs contributed monthly instalments of anything from as little as USD5, and from this pool, the club operated as an informal bank or microfinance lender where they issued loans at a small interest.

The accumulated savings were shared at the end of the year, while other such clubs bought groceries in bulk to be shared in time for Christmas.

And this was also a time when local banks encouraged women’s clubs to partner with registered financial institutions to incubate their savings and earn interest at the end of the year.

But with banks not being spared the decades-old economic turmoil, which has seen even banks close shop, financial institutions that remain are not known to offer ordinary account holders interest on their savings.

However, the return of rampant inflation is making the operation of women’s savings clubs increasingly difficult, says Mavis Dube, who formerly led a group of women’s clubs as their treasurer.

“It’s no longer easy because of the unstable currency. It now means having to raise more local dollars in order to buy foreign currency,” Dube said; as the authorities struggle to put breaks on a currency on free fall, these have been upended by inflation and an unsteady local currency.

For those who can afford that, the women are cushioning themselves from this by buying livestock which they say is guaranteed to store value.

International NGOs such as World Vision are assisting rural women navigate increasingly tough economic circumstances, supporting projects such as raising and selling poultry.

However, such projects have not been made available to more women in a country where self-help efforts face incredible odds as inflation gnaws into small enterprises.

While the Ministry of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development has made efforts to encourage women’s participation in the country’s economic development agenda, it has struggled to keep up with the increasing number of women seeking assistance to start their own businesses.

The ministry recently launched what it says are “Women Empowerment Clubs” with the aim to assist women access funding, but concerns remain that the red tape involved in accessing the loans only enables a cycle of poverty for women.

Rights advocates say the high unemployment rate among women has meant that women have no access to the formal banking sector, where they access loans.

“Most banks and lending institutions require collateral for them to release loans which most women do not have. Profits from the informal sector are so meagre and only allow women to feed from hand to mouth,” said Sithabile Dewa, executive director of the Women’s Academy for Leadership and Excellence.

“In order to address these challenges, the Government must put in place laws and policies that protect women in small businesses, such as discouraging lending institutions from putting too much interest or demanding collateral on women, something they know they do not have,” Dewa told IPS.

While women have attempted to keep up with the volatile exchange rate, it has exposed their vulnerability to poverty at a time when agencies such as UN Women lament that women’s economic empowerment in Zimbabwe has been “impeded by their dominance in the informal sector and vulnerable employment.”

While saving clubs served as a bulwark against such uncertainties, Dewa says contemporary economic circumstances have made it near impossible to run such schemes that hedged against poverty.

“The savings clubs are still there though they have been modernised to meet the changing times,” Dewa said.

“The problems facing these clubs are hyper-inflation, an unstable and unpredictable economy. Those which are still viable are the ones being done using USD, but how many women have access to the foreign currency,” she added.

For now, women such as Mbewe and Dune continue to live hand to mouth, their ambitions to save for a rainy day effectively on pause.

“It’s harder now than ever, and the pain is that there is no sign this will end anytime soon,” Mbewe said, the little she makes selling sweets barely enough to meet her daily needs.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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An Interfaith Moment of Prayer for Peace at UN Headquarters. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
 
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the gathering was taking place at a unique moment: on the last Friday of Ramadan, as Christians celebrate Easter, Jews mark the end of Passover, and Sikhs enjoy the festival of Vaisakhi. “Even the calendar is sending a message of unity,” he remarked. “Today, at this blessed moment of renewal across faiths, let us lift our hearts and voices for peace – our guiding star and our most precious goal.” April 2023

By Azza Karam
NEW YORK, Jun 28 2023 (IPS)

For the last 30 odd years, I have maintained that religions matter. I noted the reasons for why they matter, and always listed how they matter —as social service providers, as first responders in humanitarian crisis; as mediators in tensions and conflicts, as upholders of common good and the values of humanity; as protectors of children and of the most vulnerable; and even as political actors.

All to name but a few. I still feel amused when some of those I trained among the UN staff and the faith-based NGO community, quote something I said, in public – albeit without even being aware they are quoting (I am trying to be kind here) – such as: “we should not be talking about whether religions matter, but how they matter”.

In 2007, while at UNDP, I was told, more than once, “we do not do religion”. By the time I left the UN in 2020, after building two bodies – an Interagency Task Force on Religion and its Multi Faith Advisory Council – it was clear that almost all UN entities were competing to ‘do religion’. In fact, some UN entities are competing for religious funding.

While I have not lost that faith in faith itself, over the last years, I have grown increasingly incredulous of those who would speak in the name of ‘religion’. It is hard not to feel distinctly bemused, when versions of ‘if religious actors/leaders are not at the [policy] table, they will be on the menu]’, are being told in one gathering after another.

Often by the same kinds of speakers, among the same kinds of audiences, albeit meeting more and more frequently – and often more lavishly — in different cities around the world.

The reason for bemusement, is not disillusion with the unparalleled roles that various religious institutions and communities of faith play. Far from it. These roles are, in short, vast. In fact, they are as impossible to quantify, as they are implausible to assume full comprehension of.

After all, how do you accurately measure the pulse of our individual spiritualities – let alone our collective sense thereof? Religious leaders, religious institutions, faith-based and faith-inspired NGOs (FBOs) – let alone faith communities – are massive in number, and permeate all the world’s edifices, peoples and even languages. Faiths, and expressions of religiosity, are likely as numerous as the hairs on an average head (not counting those who may be lacking vigour in that department).

No, the reason for bemusement is disillusionment with the trend of commercialisation of religion, the business of ‘doing religion’. The emerging marketplace of “religion and [fill in the blanks – and anything is possible]” is reminiscent of not too many decades ago, when so many academics, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, worked on the business of democracy and/or good governance and/or human rights. Then, as now, projects, programmes, initiatives, meetings, and more meetings, were hosted.

A global emerging elite of ‘experts’ in the above (or variations thereof) permeated the four and five-star hotel meeting rooms, gave business to caterers and conference centres as they traipsed the ‘conference circuits’ from north to south, populated proposals to governments, philanthropists and various donor entities.

They defined the missions of for-profit consultancies claiming to enable the strategic capabilities, to inform the media presences, to refine the narratives, to provide the leadership coaching, to jointly express the common values, to uphold the good in public service… And so on.

We are not living in better democracies now, in spite of all that business. Will we have more faithful societies? Will people pray more, for one another and serve more selflessly now that ‘religion’ is in? Somehow, I doubt it.

By the time we realised the extent of the commercialisation of democracy and human rights, the commercial nature had corrupted much of the sagacity – and the necessary courage – there was. Even autocrats bought into the business of doing democracy and human rights, and used the narratives to enhance their respective agendas.

Few democratic actors worked together, and even fewer collaborated to serve – and save – the whole of humanity. As with any business venture, the motive of profit – and power – of some, dominated.

And rather than a consolidated civil society effort holding decision makers accountable for the sake of the most vulnerable, and collectively and successfully eliminating the tools of harm, we are living in the era where money, weapons – including nuclear ones – control over resources, and war (including war on this earth), dominate.

Today, some of the most authoritarian and self-serving regimes, and some of the most power-seeking individuals, and their retinues, are vested in the business of ‘religion’. And why not? It is among the most lucrative domains of financial, political and social influence.

Decades of study, however, point to some simple questions to ask, to distinguish the transactional nature of ‘religious affairs’ claiming to be for the good of all, from those actually serving the common good.

The questions include the following:

How many of those engaged in the work of religion (whether as religious or secular actors) actually give of or share, their varied resources, to/with one another (including those from other/different religions, entities, age groups, countries, races, etc.)?

How many different religious organisations plan and deliver, jointly, the same set of services to the same set of needs, in the same neighborhoods or in the same countries?

How many ‘religious actors’ actually partner with ‘secular’ civil society organisations to hold institutions of political and financial power equally accountable – if need be, at cost to their own welfare. In other words, how many stand on principle, irrespective of the cost?

And, my personal favourite: what are these religious actors’ respective positions on women’s rights, on gender equality and/or on women’s leadership?

The more diplomatic way to frame that is also one of the most powerful litmus tests: which human rights do these actors working on/with/for religion, value more? You see, those who are engaged in transactional practices wearing a religious garb, will invariably prioritise some rights, or some privileges, over others.

The answer to this question therefore, will indicate the difference between a coalition of religious fundamentalists (including secular power seekers and some religious and political leaders), and a multilateral alliance dedicated to serving the common good – for each and all, barring none, especially in the most challenging of times.

Azza Karam is a Professor of Religion and Development at the Vrij Universiteit of Amsterdam and served as a member of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The opposition has complained that the vote tallying was not transparent and have disputed the result.

In the United States and Canada, overdose deaths, predominantly driven by an epidemic of the non-medical use of fentanyl, continue to break records. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jun 27 2023 (IPS)

How come that in a world where technology is -or is about to be- able to detect an ant in a jungle, the traffickers of death continue to carry out their lucrative criminal activities everywhere and in all fields, from weapons to prostitution, enslavement and drugs, to deadly fake medicines, through oil, gas and poisoned food.

In the specific case of Asia, a specialised organisation reports the Asian ‘Golden Triangle’ is where historically opium was grown to produce heroin for export, but where, in recent years, the trade of “even deadlier and more profitable synthetic drugs have taken over.”

Transnational organised crime groups anticipate, adapt and try to circumvent what governments do, and in 2022 we saw them work around Thai borders in the Golden Triangle more than in the past

Jeremy Douglas, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific
In its June 2023 report, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) informs that East and Southeast Asian synthetic drug supply remains at ‘extreme levels’ and diversifies.

The report, “Synthetic Drugs in East and Southeast Asia: latest developments and challenges 2023”, confirms an expansion and diversification of synthetic drug production and trafficking in the region, while trafficking routes have shifted significantly.

“Thailand, Laos and Myanmar are at the frontlines of illicit trade in Asia dominated by transnational organised crime syndicates.”

 

Methamphetamine, ketamine…

‘High volumes’ of methamphetamine continue to be produced and trafficked in and from the region while the production of ketamine and other synthetic drugs has expanded.

“Transnational organised crime groups anticipate, adapt and try to circumvent what governments do, and in 2022 we saw them work around Thai borders in the Golden Triangle more than in the past,” said Jeremy Douglas, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

 

‘Unwanted’ to be seen

“Traffickers have continued to ship large volumes through Laos and northern Thailand, but at the same time they have pushed significant supply through central Myanmar to the Andaman Sea where it seems few were looking.”

Douglas added that criminal groups from across the region also started moving and reconnecting after lengthy pandemic border closures, with late 2022 and early 2023 patterns starting to look similar to 2019.

 

Hidden in “legal products”

Moreover, synthetic drugs containing a mixture of substances and sometimes “packaged alongside legal products” continue to be found throughout East and Southeast Asia, with serious health consequences for those who knowingly, or unknowingly, consume the products.

Moreover, the world drug problem is a complex issue that affects millions of people worldwide.

Many people who use drugs face stigma and discrimination, which can further harm their physical and mental health and prevent them from accessing the help they need, the UN warns on the occasion of the 2023 International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking (26 June).

 

“Unprecedented” increase

The increase in the production of synthetic drugs in recent years has been “unprecedented” according to the UNODC Regional Representative.

It is not just drugs which are being trafficked across the region: chemical precursors to manufacture synthetic drugs are being illegally transported into Myanmar in quantities far larger than the drugs that are trafficked out, UNODC further explains.

 

Trafficking also in people, wildlife, timber…

In fact, a myriad of cross-borders issues, including drug and precursor chemical trafficking, migrant smuggling, human trafficking, wildlife and forestry crime, and, in some locations, the movement of terrorist fighters alongside public health and pandemic-related matters.

 

The impact of legalising the use of cocaine

Cannabis legalisation in parts of the world appears to have accelerated daily use and related health impacts, according to the World Drug Report 2022, which also details record rises in the manufacturing of cocaine, the expansion of synthetic drugs to new markets, and continued gaps in the availability of drug treatments, especially for women.

According to the report, around 284 million people aged 15-64 used drugs worldwide in 2020, a 26% increase over the previous decade.

“In Africa and Latin America, people under 35 represent the majority of people being treated for drug use disorders.”

Globally, the report estimates that 11.2 million people worldwide were injecting drugs. Around half of this number were living with hepatitis C, 1.4 million were living with HIV, and 1.2 million were living with both.

Reacting to these findings, UNODC Executive Director, Ghada Waly stated: “Numbers for the manufacturing and seizures of many illicit drugs are hitting record highs, even as global emergencies are deepening vulnerabilities.”

At the same time, mis-perceptions regarding the magnitude of the problem and the associated harms are depriving people of care and treatment and driving young people towards harmful behaviour, said Waly.

 

Key trends by region

In many countries in Africa and South and Central America, the largest proportion of people in treatment for drug use disorders are there primarily for cannabis use disorders. In Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and in Central Asia, people are most often in treatment for opioid use disorders.

In the United States and Canada, overdose deaths, predominantly driven by an epidemic of the non-medical use of fentanyl, continue to break records. Preliminary estimates in the United States point to more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021, up from nearly 92,000 in 2020.

 

Conflict zones magnets for synthetic drug production

This year’s report also highlights that illicit drug economies can flourish in situations of conflict and where the rule of law is weak, and in turn can prolong or fuel conflict.

Information from the Middle East and South-East Asia suggest that conflict situations can act as a magnet for the manufacture of synthetic drugs, which can be produced anywhere. This effect may be greater when the conflict area is close to large consumer markets.

Historically, parties to conflict have used drugs to finance conflict and generate income. The 2022 World Drug Report also reveals that conflicts may also disrupt and shift drug trafficking routes, as has happened in the Balkans and more recently in Ukraine.

 

A possible growing capacity to manufacture amphetamine in Ukraine

According to the UNODC report, “there was a significant increase in the number of reported clandestine laboratories in Ukraine, skyrocketing from 17 dismantled laboratories in 2019 to 79 in 2020. 67 out of these laboratories were producing amphetamines, up from five in 2019 – the highest number of dismantled laboratories reported in any given country in 2020.”

 

Gender treatment gap

Women remain in the minority of drug users globally yet tend to increase their rate of drug consumption and progress to drug use disorders more rapidly than men do. Women now represent an estimated 45-49% of users of amphetamines and non-medical users of pharmaceutical stimulants, pharmaceutical opioids, sedatives, and tranquillisers.

The treatment gap remains large for women globally. Although women represent almost one in two amphetamine users, they constitute only one in five people in treatment for amphetamine use disorders.

The World Drug Report also spotlights the wide range of roles fulfilled by women in the global cocaine economy, including cultivating coca, transporting small quantities of drugs, selling to consumers, and smuggling into prisons.

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Anti-racism protesters in Brooklyn, New York, demonstrate demanding justice for the killing of African American, George Floyd. Credit: UN News/Shirin Yaseen

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jun 27 2023 (IPS)

A recent Justice Department report concluded that “systemic” racial bias in the Minneapolis Police Department “made what happened to George Floyd possible.”

During the three years since a white police officer brutally murdered Floyd, nationwide discussions of systemic racism have extended well beyond focusing on law enforcement to also assess a range of other government functions.

But such scrutiny comes to a halt at the water’s edge — stopping short of probing whether racism has been a factor in U.S. military interventions overseas.

Hidden in plain sight is the fact that virtually all the people killed by U.S. firepower in the “war on terror” for more than two decades have been people of color. This notable fact goes unnoted within a country where — in sharp contrast — racial aspects of domestic policies and outcomes are ongoing topics of public discourse.

Certainly, the U.S. does not attack a country because people of color live there. But when people of color live there, it is politically easier for U.S. leaders to subject them to warfare — because of institutional racism and often-unconscious prejudices that are common in the United States.

Racial inequities and injustice are painfully apparent in domestic contexts, from police and courts to legislative bodies, financial systems and economic structures. A nation so profoundly affected by individual and structural racism at home is apt to be affected by such racism in its approach to war.

Many Americans recognize that racism holds significant sway over their society and many of its institutions. Yet the extensive political debates and media coverage devoted to U.S. foreign policy and military affairs rarely even mention — let alone explore the implications of — the reality that the several hundred thousand civilians killed directly in America’s “war on terror” have been almost entirely people of color.

The flip side of biases that facilitate public acceptance of making war on non-white people came to the fore when Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. News coverage included reporting that the war’s victims “have blue eyes and blond hair” and “look like us,” Los Angeles Times television critic Lorraine Ali noted.

“Writers who’d previously addressed conflicts in the Gulf region, often with a focus on geopolitical strategy and employing moral abstractions, appeared to be empathizing for the first time with the plight of civilians.”

Such empathy, all too often, is skewed by the race and ethnicity of those being killed. The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association has deplored “the pervasive mentality in Western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Latin America. It dehumanizes and renders their experience with war as somehow normal and expected.”

Persisting today is a modern version of what W.E.B. Du Bois called, 120 years ago, “the problem of the color line — the relation of the darker to the lighter races.” Twenty-first century lineups of global power and geopolitical agendas have propelled the United States into seemingly endless warfare in countries where few white people live.

Racial, cultural and religious differences have made it far too easy for most Americans to think of the victims of U.S. war efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere as “the other.”

Their suffering is much more likely to be viewed as merely regrettable or inconsequential rather than heart-rending or unacceptable. What Du Bois called “the problem of the color line” keeps empathy to a minimum.

“The history of U.S. wars in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America has exuded a stench of white supremacy, discounting the value of lives at the other end of U.S. bullets, bombs and missiles,” I concluded in my new book War Made Invisible. “Yet racial factors in war-making decisions get very little mention in U.S. media and virtually none in the political world of officials in Washington.”

At the same time, on the surface, Washington’s foreign policy can seem to be a model of interracial connection. Like presidents before him, Joe Biden has reached out to foreign leaders of different races, religions and cultures — as when he fist-bumped Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at their summit a year ago, while discarding professed human-rights concerns in the process.

Overall, in America’s political and media realms, the people of color who’ve suffered from U.S. warfare abroad have been relegated to a kind of psychological apartheid — separate, unequal, and implicitly not of much importance.

And so, when the Pentagon’s forces kill them, systemic racism makes it less likely that Americans will actually care.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in June 2023 by The New Press.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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With the monsoon refugees in the cramped camps in Cox’s Bazar are expected to be impacted by an increase of dengue, which last year accounted for 1,283 cases in the Rohingya camps. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
DHAKA, Jun 27 2023 (IPS)

With the monsoon in Bangladesh, Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar have emerged as a dengue hotspot, with the mosquito-borne disease continuing to spread among the stateless refugees.

“A total of 1,066 dengue cases were reported in highly cramped refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar up to May 23 this year, while the case tally was only 426 among the local community there,” Dr Nazmul Islam, Director of Disease Control and Line of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), said.

However, the latest data of the DGHS revealed that 1,283 people were infected with and 26 people died of dengue in the Rohingya camps and surrounding host community in Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas of Cox’s Bazar from January 1 to June 6, 2023.

Nazmul said the dengue infection rate is highest in the Rohingya camps.

“Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar have the highest number of dengue patients. Last year, over 17,000 dengue patients were identified there. The number of dengue patients is so high this year, too,” he said.

Official data showed that dengue cases increased significantly in 2022 when the monsoon started. Experts fear the dengue situation will be more acute in the Rohingya camps during the monsoon this year.

Bangladesh witnessed its largest influx of Rohingya refugees in 2017 following a military crackdown in the Rakhine State of Myanmar. According to UNHCR, about 7,73,972 Rohingya people entered the country as refugees, totaling nearly 10 million with the previous influxes.

The forcibly displaced Rohingyas took shelter in overcrowded makeshift camps where they lacked access to civic amenities, including education, food, clean water, and proper sanitation, and also face natural disasters and infectious disease transmission.

“Most refugees have no adequate access to clean water, sanitary facilities, or healthcare. The monsoon season also poses a huge threat to thousands of Rohingya families living in makeshift shelters as dengue outbreak emerges in camps during the period,” said Ro Arfat, a Rohingya refugee.

Nazmul said Rohingya refugees live in a limited space in the camps where there is not enough scope to runoff rainwater, so stagnant water creates an enabling environment for the breeding Aedes mosquito, carrier of the dengue virus.

He said the risk of dengue infections climbs in densely populated areas. With the monsoon, the dengue situation could turn dangerous in the refugee camps.

Dr Iqbal Kabir, Professor and Director at the Climate Change and Health Promotion Unit, the Ministry of Health, Bangladesh, said in recent years, environmental changes have been markedly observed throughout the globe, and there is no exception in Bangladesh.

“The nature of the Aedes mosquito is that it must bite five humans to suck blood as per its demand, and an Aedes mosquito lays more than 200 eggs a time. Once they get suitable humidity and temperature, mosquito breeding occurs,” Kabir said.

He observed that dengue spreads very fast, but the authorities have not controlled dengue infections in the highly-crowded refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar.

During the monsoon, Bangladesh experiences spikes in dengue outbreaks. In 2022, 17 refugees died from dengue infections in Rohingya camps.

Despite having a high dengue infection rate in the camps, lack of awareness about the virus and the absence of prompt diagnosis of the disease make the Rohingya refugees more vulnerable.

“An Aedes mosquito can infect many within seconds, and keeping densely populated refugee camps safe from mosquitoes is really difficult. So there is a high possibility of a severe outbreak in the refugee camps,” said Mahbubur Rahman, Civil Surgeon, and Chief Health Officer for Cox’s Bazar.

Urgent Action Needed

The burden of dengue is related to the changes in rainfall patterns. The rainfall pattern has been changed. Pre-monsoon erratic rainfall is linked with the increase of vectors.

Unusual rainfall occurred in Cox’s Bazar area earlier this year, triggering dengue outbreaks in the camps.

Kabir said the dengue national guideline should be revisited to check dengue outbreaks across the country, including Rohingya camps.

He suggested launching a crash programme to prevent dengue infections in Rohingya camps; if clustering could be ensured, it would be easy to deal with the dengue situation there.

Golam Rabbani, head of BRAC’s Climate Bridge Fund, said the Bangladesh government should initiate research and increase the authorities’ capacity to tackle any future outbreak of dengue in the country.

He says the Department of Public Health and the DGHS should identify dengue as one of the most climate-sensitive diseases and improve their disease profile, suggesting the government initiate investment and policy interventions to address the dengue in Bangladesh.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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