Africa

A Kenyan government minister urges World Athletics not to ban the country from the sport following a string of doping violations.

The fight came during a parliamentary debate about proposed electoral reforms.

The TPLF spokesman says his group is ready to address political problems in a “peaceful” manner.

Discarded refrigerators. Scientists continue to stress the need for proper disposal of old fridges as some emit ozone-destroying chemicals. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Nov 24 2022 (IPS)

For countries across the globe, September 16th is a day to reflect on progress in protecting the ozone layer. The United Nations designated day for the preservation of the ozone layer is marked by speeches, and educational and social media campaigns.

For the Caribbean Island of Saint Lucia, one day is not sufficient to highlight the gains made or to celebrate the 1987 signing of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer, a landmark, universally ratified treaty.

For that country, Ozone ‘day’ caps a month-long observance, and ozone protection is a year-round effort.

“The National Ozone Unit was established in 1997 and is responsible for coordinating our activities and programmes to ensure that we meet our targets under the Montreal Protocol,” Sustainable Development and Environment Officer in Saint Lucia’s Department of Sustainable Development Kasha Jn Baptiste told IPS.

“Our main obligation is reporting on our progress with the phasing out of ozone-depleting substances and coordinating relevant projects. Other duties include education and awareness, technician training, implementation and enforcement of legislation, and coordinating partners to ensure that we meet our obligations under the convention. This is a year-round job.”

Following summer activities with youth aged 15-18, the Department of Sustainable Development held a month-long observance in September. Events included media appearances and updates on Saint Lucia’s progress toward achieving the model protocol. The Department has held awareness events at all school levels, with more activities scheduled for October.

It is part of a year-round effort to educate the public and put youth at the center of ozone protection.

“One of the most important ways to continue to highlight the ozone layer is through increased awareness. We started with ozone day and usually concentrated on education activities around that day, but we realised that we must have activities year-round. We are also encouraging the teaching of ozone issues as part of our science curriculum,” said Jn Baptiste, who is the Focal Point for the Montreal Protocol in Saint Lucia.

Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Sector

A major component of maintaining compliance with the Montreal Protocol involves stringent monitoring of the refrigeration and air conditioning sector. This includes refrigerants such as chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, a group of ozone-depleting chemicals that have been banned but remain in older fridge and air condition models.

In Saint Lucia, the Sustainable Development Department conducts year-round training for technicians.

“The refrigeration air conditioning sector is where we use the bulk of those products and technicians are the ones servicing these items. We want them to be aware of what is happening, how the sector is transitioning, and what new alternatives are available,” Jn Baptiste told IPS.

In a 2016 amendment to the Montreal Protocol, nations agreed to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which were being used as substitutes to CFCs. Known as the Kigali Amendment, its signatories agreed that these HFCs represent powerful greenhouses gases (hydrogen, fluorine, and carbon) and contribute to climate change.

“What is really important now is that countries like Saint Lucia have targets on the Montreal Protocol. We have been saying ‘HFC-free by 2030,’ so in October, Saint Lucia will launch phase two of our HPMP, the HFC Phase Out Management Plan. That will include activities needed to help us achieve that 2030 target. We will expand on what has been done in the past and include activities for training of technicians.”

Legislative changes

Officials are currently reviewing the country’s legislation to ensure compliance with Kigali Amendment targets.

“Our legislation needs to be updated to expand our licensing and quota system to include HFCs so that we can target these gases and control them under the Montreal Protocol,” Jn. Baptiste said.

“What is interesting is that the HFC phase-down can contribute to prevention of 0.4 degrees of warming by the end of the century. That’s important. 0.4 degrees is small, but we know that the Paris Agreement targets a 1.5 degree. The Kigali Amendment, if countries implement it, will be doing some of the work of the climate agreement. The Montreal Protocol started off with the goal of preserving the ozone layer, but it has evolved to address climate change issues – global warming issues.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

The world celebrates the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer once a year, but for Saint Lucia, the annual month-long observance highlights year-round work on ozone protection.

Figure 1: Overall Concentration Ratios: Top 5 Firms

By Simon Commander and Saul Estrin
LONDON, Nov 24 2022 (IPS)

In our recent book, “The Connections World: The Future of Asia”, published by Cambridge University Press in October 2022, we argue that mutually beneficial links between dynastic business houses and political elites have been important drivers behind Asia’s extraordinary renaissance. Yet, these close ties now threaten future economic growth.

That is because the ubiquitous Asian corporate structures of Business Groups systematically work with politicians in Asia to create excessive market power and overall concentration. They have proven remarkably adept at entrenching themselves.

Although, by concentrating resources in relatively few hands, this was quite an effective engine of growth in the past half century, the limitation of competition and brake on innovation threatens future progress.

The pervasive and highly resilient networks of connections running between businesses and politicians have provided a common backbone to Asian development and have cut across political systems. We characterize these networks as the Connections World.

That world comprises a web of interactions between businesses and politicians/political parties that are highly transactional and commonly contain significant degrees of reciprocity.

Thus, politicians look to firms to make campaign or personal contributions; pay bribes; provide jobs for family or associates whilst also providing reciprocal favours, such as creating jobs in regions or at moments that are politically advantageous.

At the same time, businesses look to politicians for protection from foreign or domestic competition; to supply subsidies, loans and/or public sector contracts. All parties benefit from these interactions, creating a stable political economy equilibrium.

These arrangements have served Asia well over the past half century, with Asia’s share of the world economy rising from 9% in the 1970s to nearly 40% now. However, the connections world will provide a less supportive foundation for growth in the future for a variety of reasons. Neither politicians nor business groups have sufficient interest in stimulating competition, whether through the entry of domestic or foreign multinational as competitors.

Moreover, because Asian business groups are often highly diversified, with the control of the oligarch or dynasty enhanced by cross-holdings and ownership pyramids, their economic consequences must be measured not only by the traditional measures of market power, but also by overall levels of concentration as, for example, indicated by the share of total revenues for the largest five firms relative to GDP.

To put this in context, while the market concentration ratio (CR5) of the largest US firms, mainly in tech sectors, is often high, the five-firm overall concentration ratio is only around 3%. The comparable figures across Asia in 2018 are much higher, as can be seen in Figure 1. The CR5 in South Korea exceeds 30% and even in very large economies – India and China – it exceeds 10%.

The findings are even starker when we consider the largest ten firms (CR10). In the US, this is only around 4% but in South Korea exceeds 40% and in India and China exceeds 15%.

Looking forward, the consequences of the connections world will be far less propitious, not least because growth will have to rely increasingly on innovation. The existing networks are, for the most part, ill-suited to promote innovation which thrives on an open ecosystem of science universities and business parks, capital funders, lawyers and entrepreneurs and a healthy willingness to risk and lose.

Moreover, the connections world crowds out new entrants, soaks up capital and skilled workers and managers and suppresses the competitive environment so essential for the trial-and-error process at the heart of much successful innovation. Even when the business groups themselves are innovative, there is relatively little innovation going on in the wider economy.

What should be the policies and other measures that could address the shortcomings of the connections world? Central to the policy menu for loosening the grip of entrenched business will have to be measures designed to induce the transformation of business groups into more transparent and better governed businesses, while also radically weakening the links between politicians and business.

This will not happen naturally because the mutual benefits from market entrenchment and political connections outweigh any gains to the current players from reform. The required policies will need to include changes to corporate governance that undercut pyramidal ownership structures, mergers and cross-holdings, that impose inheritance taxes and shift to new types of – and targets for – competition policy.

Some of those policies were successfully introduced in the USA under Roosevelt. More recently, Israel has adopted criteria in competition policy for overall, as well as specific market, concentration levels, while South Korea has placed high inheritance taxes at the heart of their raft of policies to weaken the vice-like grip of their gigantic business groups.

At the same time, measures need to be adopted aimed at limiting the discretionary scope and incentives for politicians to leverage their connections for personal or family benefit. Although hard to achieve, incremental improvements, such as through audited registers of interests, can start to affect behaviour.

In short, although many commentators have already declared the 21st century to be Asia’s, that is far from predetermined. Unless the sorts of policies that we propose are introduced to roll back the tentacles of the connections world, many Asian economies will in fact find themselves unfavourably placed to exploit their potential in the coming decades.

Simon Commander is Managing Partner of Altura Partners. He is also Visiting Professor of Economics at IE Business School in Madrid.
Saul ESTRIN is Professor of Managerial Economics at LSE and previously Professor of Economics and Associate Dean at London Business School.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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"Not one woman less, respect our lives” writes a Peruvian woman on the effigy of a woman in a park in front of the courthouse, before a demonstration in Lima over the lack of enforcement of laws against femicides and other forms of violence against women. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Nov 24 2022 (IPS)

Violence against women has failed to decline in the Latin American region after the sharp rise recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, while preventing the causes of such violence remains a major challenge.

This is what representatives of the United Nations, feminist organizations and women’s movements told IPS on the occasion of the commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25."We attack the problem but not its causes. I have been talking for 30 years about the importance of preventing violence against women by fostering major cultural changes so that girls and boys are raised in the knowledge that it is unacceptable in any form." -- Moni Pizani

This date, established in 1999 by the United Nations, was adopted in 1981 at the first Latin American and Caribbean feminist meeting held in Colombia to promote the struggle against violence against women in a region where it continues to be exacerbated by high levels of ‘machismo’ or sexism.

The day was chosen to pay tribute to Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal, three sisters from the Dominican Republic who were political activists and were killed on Nov. 25, 1960 by the repressive forces of the regime of dictator Rafael Trujillo.

The date launches 16 days of activism against gender violence, culminating on Dec. 10, Human Rights Day, because male violence against women and girls is the most widespread violation of human rights worldwide.

“It is not possible to confirm a decrease in gender violence in the region at this post-pandemic moment,” said Venezuelan lawyer Moni Pizani, one of the region’s leading experts on women’s rights. “I could say, from the information I have gathered and empirically, that the level has remained steady after the significant increase registered in the last two years.”

Pizani, who retired from the United Nations, currently supports the UN Women office in Guatemala after a fruitful career advocating for women’s rights. She was twice representative in Ecuador for UN Women and its predecessor Unifem, then worked for East and Southeast Asia and later opened the UN Women Office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Panama City as regional director.

“Before the pandemic we used to talk about three out of 10 women having suffered violence, today we say four out of 10. The other alarming fact is that the impact is throughout the entire life cycle of women, including the elderly,” she told IPS in a conversation in Tegucigalpa, Honduras during a Central American colloquium on the situation of women.

UN Women last year measured the “shadow pandemic” in 13 countries in all regions, a term used to describe violence against women during lockdowns due to COVID.

Seven out of 10 women were found to have experienced violence at some time during the pandemic, one in four felt unsafe at home due to increased family conflict, and seven out of 10 perceived partner abuse to be more frequent.

The study also revealed that four out of 10 women feel less safe in public spaces.

Pizani said the study showed that this violation of women’s human rights occurs in different age groups: 48 percent of those between 18 and 49 years old are affected, 42 percent of those between 50 and 59, and 34 percent of women aged 60 and over.

Venezuelan lawyer Moni Pizani, one of Latin America’s leading experts on gender issues, with a long career at UN Women and its predecessor Unifem, takes part in a Central American colloquium in Tegucigalpa on sustainable recovery with gender equality in the wake of the COVID pandemic. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

According to the same study, unemployed women are the most vulnerable: 52 percent of them experienced violence during the pandemic.

And with regard to mothers: one out of every two women with children also experienced a violation of their rights.

The expert highlighted the effort made by many countries to adopt measures during the pandemic with the expansion of services, telephone hotlines, use of new means of reporting through mobile applications, among others. But she regretted that the efforts fell short.

This year, the region is home to 662 million inhabitants, or eight percent of the world’s population, slightly more than half of whom are girls and women.

The level of violence against women is so severe that the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) cites it as one of the structural factors of gender inequality, together with gaps in employment, the concentration of care work and inequitable representation in public spaces.

Governments neither prevent nor address violence

Peru is an example of similar situations of gender violence in the region.

It was one of the countries with the strictest lockdowns, paralyzing government action against gender violence, which was gradually resumed in the second half of 2020 and which made it possible, for example, to receive complaints in the country’s provincial public prosecutors’ offices.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office Crime Observatory reported 1,081,851 complaints in 2021 – an average of 117 per hour. The frequency of complaints returned to pre-pandemic levels, which in 2020 stood at around 700,000, because women under lockdown found it harder to report cases due to the confinement and the fact that they were cooped up with the perpetrators.

Cynthia Silva, a Peruvian lawyer and director of the non-governmental feminist group Study for the Defense of Women’s Rights-Demus, told IPS that the government has failed to reactivate the different services and that the specialized national justice system needs to be fully implemented to protect victims and punish perpetrators.

Lawyer Cynthia Silva, director of the Peruvian feminist institution Demus, poses for a picture at the headquarters of the feminist organization in Lima. She stresses the need for government action against gender violence to include not only strategies for attending to the victims, but also for prevention in order to eradicate it. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

She stressed the importance of allocating resources both for addressing cases of violence and for prevention. “These are two strategies that should go hand in hand and we see that the State is not doing enough in relation to the latter,” she said.

Silva urged the government to take action in measures aimed at the populace to contribute to rethinking socio-cultural patterns and ‘machista’ habits that discriminate against women.

Based on an experience they are carrying out with girls and adolescents in the district of Carabayllo, in the extreme north of Lima, she said it’s a question of supporting “deconstruction processes” so that egalitarian relations between women and men are fostered from childhood.

On Nov. 26 they will march with various feminist movements and collectives against machista violence so that “the right to a life free of violence against women is guaranteed and so that not a single step backwards is taken with respect to the progress made, particularly in sexual and reproductive rights, which are threatened by conservative groups in Congress.”

Adolescent women and men in Lima, the Peruvian capital, wave a huge banner during the march for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25, 2019, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that exacerbated such violence in Latin America. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

An equally serious scenario

Argentina is another example of gender violence – including femicides – in Latin America, the region with the highest levels of aggression against women in the world, the result of extremely sexist societies.

This is in contrast to the fact that it is one of the regions with the best protection against such violence in national and even regional legislation, because since 1994 it has had the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women.

The problem is that these laws are seriously flawed in their implementation, especially in the interior of the countries, agree UN Women, regional organizations and national women’s rights groups.

Rosaura Andiñach, an Argentine university professor and head of community processes at the Ecumenical Regional Center for Counseling and Service (CREAS), said it is worrying that in her country there are still high rates of femicide, despite the progress made in terms of legislation.

Between January and October 2022, there were 212 femicides and 181 attempted gender-based homicides in the country of 46 million people, according to the civil society observatory “Ahora que sí nos ven” (Now that they do see us).

She said the government still owes a debt to women in this post-pandemic context, as it fails to guarantee women’s rights by not adequately addressing their complaints.

“We do not want the same thing to happen as with a recent case: Noelia Sosa, 30 years old, lived in Tucumán and reported her partner in a police station for gender violence. They ignored her and she committed suicide that afternoon because she did not know what else to do. We are very concerned because the outlook is still as serious as ever in terms of violence against women,” Andiñach said.

It was precisely in Argentina that the #NiunaMenos (Not one woman less) campaign emerged in 2015, which spread throughout the region as a movement against femicides and the ineffectiveness of the authorities in the enforcement of laws to prevent and punish gender-related murders, because femicides are surrounded by a very high level of impunity in Latin America.

Moni Pizani, from UN Women, stressed that the prevention of gender violence should no longer fall short in the region.

“We attack the problem but not its causes. I have been talking for 30 years about the importance of preventing violence against women by fostering major cultural changes so that girls and boys are raised in the knowledge that it is unacceptable in any form,” she underlined.

This strategy, she remarked, “involves investing in youth and children to ensure that the new generations are free from violence, harassment and discrimination, with respect for a life of dignity for all.”

Excerpt:

This article is part of IPS coverage of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25.

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In the armed services, African Americans make up 23 percent of enlisted soldiers, which is approaching nearly double their proportion of the U.S. population. Among officers, however, the percentage of African Americans is considerably lower at 11 percent. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Nov 23 2022 (IPS)

Countries worldwide, and as different as India, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Ireland, Israel and Italy, are struggling with the issue of how best to balance diversity and meritocracy across disparate ethnic, racial, caste, linguistic and religious subgroups in their populations.

In a growing number of areas, including politics, employment, careers, education, armed forces, immigration, the judicial system, entertainment and sports, countries are making far-reaching decisions regarding when to strive for diversity and when to stress meritocracy.

The rewards ascribed to meritocracy are often simply the result of privilege, legacy and entitlement. In addition, some have argued that the pursuit of meritocracy actually produces inequality, stifles social mobility and increases unhappiness

Some may consider the goals of diversity and meritocracy to be noncontradictory. In practice, however, the two goals are often difficult to reconcile, especially with imprecise definitions, differing concepts and lack of reliable measures.

Promoting diversity certainly poses a variety of challenges for societies. However, the pursuit of meritocracy also faces unrecognized risks and biases as well as discrimination behind efforts to reward merit.

The rewards ascribed to meritocracy are often simply the result of privilege, legacy and entitlement. In addition, some have argued that the pursuit of meritocracy actually produces inequality, stifles social mobility and increases unhappiness.

Admittedly, diversity and meritocracy across country populations are varied and differ considerably globally. Nevertheless, useful insight may be gained from considering the experience of a country that exemplifies a nation attempting to find the appropriate balance between diversity and meritocracy: the United States.

U.S laws prohibit discrimination on the basis of race. At the same, however, policies and practices, such as affirmative action, aim at countering discrimination against certain racial groups by increasing their chances for employment, promotion, higher education and other opportunities.

Since the first U.S. census in 1790, the U.S. Census Bureau has been tasked to gather information on the racial composition of America’s population. In the 1790 census an estimated 81 percent of the U.S. population was identified as white with the remaining 19 percent enumerated as black, with 92 percent of them being slaves.

The white proportion of the U.S. population rose to 90 percent in 1920, where it remained until 1950 when it began declining and reached 80 percent in 1990. At the start of the 21st century the proportion white declined further to approximately 75 percent where it has remained. The proportion white is projected to continue declining, reaching 68 percent of the U.S. population by 2060 (Figure 1).

 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

 

The methods employed by the Census Bureau to collect race data over the past 230 years have evolved, reflecting changes in American society. Based on the 1997 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards on race, the Census Bureau gathers self-identified responses to the race question, with respondents permitted to select more than one race.

OMB requires five minimum categories: White, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. Those categories reflect a social definition of race and do not define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically.

The race categories and their proportions of America’s 2021 population of 332 million are: White at 75.8 percent, Black or African American at 13.6 percent, Asian at 6.1 percent, American Indian or Alaska Native at 1.3 percent, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander at 0.3 percent, and two or more races at 2.9 percent (Figure 2).

 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

 

Reviewing a number of examples from different areas of life in the United States is useful in illustrating the various aspects of the country’s efforts to balance racial diversity and meritocracy.

In professional basketball African Americans represented 20 percent of league players in 1960. Today African Americans account for approximately 75 percent of basketball players in the National Basketball Association.

Among the country’s orchestras, in contrast, African Americans account for less than 2 percent of the players. Nearly a half century ago, the selection of musicians for orchestras was changed to blind auditions in which candidates performed behind a curtain. As blind auditions have not led to making orchestras more diverse, some have called for ending blind auditions and taking race into account so orchestras reflect the communities they serve.

In professional football African Americans represent 58 percent of the players. However, they account for 9 percent of the head coaches, or five head coaches in the 32-team league of the National Football League (NFL).

Nearly 20 years ago after accusations of discriminatory head coach hiring practices, the NFL team owners agreed to policy changes to address those accusations. Among those changes was the so-called Rooney Rule, which said, “Any club seeking to hire a head coach will interview one or more minority applicants for that position.”

In the armed services, African Americans make up 23 percent of enlisted soldiers, which is approaching nearly double their proportion of the U.S. population. Among officers, however, the percentage of African Americans is considerably lower at 11 percent.

The U.S. military has taken a number of initiatives to promote racial diversity at the higher ranks. The Army, for example, has removed photos of officers from personnel files so promotion boards are less aware of race and they have more minority officers choosing combat assignments, which is a critical stepping stone to high-star officer ranks.

With respect to higher education, the racially conscious admissions practices of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina are being challenged in cases currently before the Supreme Court. The court is being asked to consider the constitutionality of racial preference in college admissions of those two universities.

Asian Americans admissions to Harvard University and the University of North Carolina are 25 and 22 percent, respectively. Those percentages are approximately four times the proportion of Asian Americans in the U.S. population.

Nevertheless, the racially conscious admissions practices of those two universities are being considered by the court. After its initial hearing of the cases on 31 October, the Supreme Court appeared ready based on its questioning and comments to rule that the admissions programs of Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful.

Those admission practices, which allegedly discriminate against Asian Americans and effectively cap Asian matriculation numbers, have drawn comparison to the past efforts by Harvard and other elite universities to limit the enrollment of Jewish Americans. If only academics were considered, internal research by Harvard University suggests that Asian Americans would make up 43 percent of an admitted class.

In four Gallup polls from 2003 to 2016, at least two-thirds of Americans said college admissions should be solely on the basis of merit. A more recent national Washington Post survey in October found a majority of Americans, 63 percent, supported a ban on the consideration of race in college admissions. At the same time, however, a majority in that survey, 64 percent, endorsed programs to boost racial diversity on campuses.

Imbalances in achieving racial diversity are also reflected in the composition of America’s professions. For example, while Asian Americans represent 17 percent of active physicians, the proportion for African Americans is 5 percent.

Similarly in science and engineering occupations, the proportions for Asian Americans and African Americans are 21 and 5 percent, respectively. Among U.S. lawyers, the proportions are relatively low for both Asian Americans and African Americans at 2 and 5 percent, respectively.

The personal views of Americans concerning workplace diversity also reflect the difficulties in balancing racial diversity and meritocracy. One national PEW survey in 2019 found that a majority, 75 percent, value workplace diversity. However, a majority in that survey, 74 percent, also felt that only the qualifications and not an applicant’s race should be taken into account in hiring and promotions even if it results in less diversity.

The issue of how best to balance diversity and meritocracy remains a major challenge for America as well as for many other countries. That challenge has become more difficult in the United States. with the puzzling and prejudicial use of racial, ethnic, linguistic, ancestry and origin categories that increasingly make little sense.

In sum, with a growing world population of eight billion, the shifting demographic landscapes of national populations and the fundamental need to ensure human rights for all, the challenge of how to balance diversity and meritocracy can be expected to become even more critical and consequential for countries in the years ahead.

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

 

He welcomed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and hailed ties between the countries.

Croatia, runners-up four years ago, start their World Cup campaign with a goalless draw against a well-drilled Morocco at Al Bayt Stadium.

IPBES’ Assessment Report on Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature Report tells of the successful campaign by the Niyamgiri Movement. Credit: IPBES

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Nov 23 2022 (IPS)

The Dongria Kondhs say they are the descendants of Niramraja, a mythical god-king who is believed to have created the Niyamgiri range of hills in Odisha, an eastern Indian state on the Bay of Bengal.

This indigenous community has worshipped the Niyamgiri Mountain and lived in the region, which spans over 250 square kilometres through the Raygada and Kalahandi districts of Odisha. Their survival is closely linked to the ecosystem integrity of Niyamgiri Mountain.

But in 2003, a socio-economic conflict of values erupted over the mythical sacred kingdom when Vedanta Resources – a UK-based mining giant – began to acquire land towards constructing an Aluminum refinery at the foot of the Niyamgiri Mountain. This did not require forest clearance.

Protests erupted immediately and intensified when it was revealed that Vendata also planned to acquire Niyamgiri Mountain and mine bauxite, a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. In 2004, the company sought approval to clear forest for a mine. Environmentalists moved to court.

Such conflict over short-term profits and economic growth vis-a-vis values that affected communities ascribe to their land came into sharp focus in July 2022 when IPBES released the Assessment Report on Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature.

IPBES provides policymakers with objective scientific assessments about the state of knowledge regarding the planet’s biodiversity, ecosystems and the contributions they make to people, as well as options and actions to protect and sustainably use these vital natural assets.

In this regard, the Values Assessment responds to the need to support decision-makers in understanding and accounting for the wide range of nature’s values in policy decisions to address the current biodiversity crisis and to achieve the UN’s SDGs.

Approved by representatives of the 139 Member States of IPBES, the full report, released in October 2022, found a “dominant global focus on short-term profits and economic growth, often excluding the consideration of multiple values of nature in policy decisions” and that “decisions based on a narrow set of market values of nature underpin the global biodiversity crisis.”

A global biodiversity crisis is increasingly placing economies, food security and livelihoods of people in every corner of the world at greater risk. For instance, IPBES alerted the world that a million species, out of an overall eight million, of plants and animals, now face extinction, many within decades. Today, the world’s wildlife populations have declined by 69 percent since 1970.

According to IPBES, increased global gross domestic product drives increased use of natural resources, and “such extractive policies have created immediate loss of multiple nature values at different geographical and social scales, disproportionately affecting indigenous and local communities.”

The Niyamgiri case illustrates the power issues and value conflicts between economic development projects and indigenous peoples and local communities. Sixty-two tribal groups are found in Odisha, of which 13 are particularly vulnerable.

The Niramgiri Mountain contains approximately 75 million tonnes of bauxite. India is one of five countries that lead the production of bauxite in the global market, according to national data.

The Values Assessment report particularly highlights how the loss of nature’s values in pursuit of profits has led to a crossing of key planetary boundaries, accelerating the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. Such loss was imminent, and the Odisha state government entered a memorandum of understanding with Vendata Resources.

A mining project would set in motion activities to turn an indigenous sacred mountain and the ancestral home of the vulnerable Dongria Kondhs and Kutia Kondhs, among other vulnerable people, into bauxite.

Equally important, the community maintains the Sal Forest because the community honours a taboo against cutting trees on Niyamgiri’s summit. Approximately 90 percent of the 660-hectare mining lease area, agreed upon between the Odisha state government and the mining company, was considered to be Sal Forest.

Resistance against the planned assault on nature was first led by the community with support from professional activists; this led to the birth of the Niyamgiri Movement, a social movement against bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri mountains or indigenous sacred land.

In 2004, environmentalists petitioned India’s Supreme Court not to allow the mine permit, but the petition was unsuccessful. The decision was reversed in 2013 when the Court ordered that the Dongria Kondh’s right to worship their sacred mountain must be “protected and preserved”.

According to the court order, those with religious and cultural values associated with the area must be included in the decision-making process. A local referendum by affected villages unanimously rejected the mining project.

According to IPBES, “the Niyamgiri case includes a range of valuation approaches: the firm’s bottom-line considerations, cost-benefit analysis; focusing on instrumental values, portrayals of ecological (intrinsic) values, and evidence of (relational) cultural values of indigenous peoples.”

In this case, the power to make decisions influences which values were prioritised and which valuation methods were deemed appropriate. IPBES finds that the case also “exemplifies how different valuation logics succeed or fail in representing different life frames and sets of values.”

IPBES references the Life Framework of Values which links the richness of ways people experience and think of nature with the diverse ways nature matters. It shows why the natural world matters. People can live from, live in, live with or as nature.

Living ‘as’ nature characterises a oneness with nature and people. Living ‘with’ nature means living in accordance with nature and living ‘from’ nature prioritising benefits such as profits and economic growth from natural resources over the integrity of an ecosystem.

The first court decision largely prioritised economic development and emphasised industrialisation. A cost-benefit analysis focused on instrumental values such as employment income, infrastructure expenses, and profits in line with Vedanta’s interests.

Conservation activists, IPBES stresses, were grounded upon both the living ‘as’ and living ‘with’ nature frame. An intact Niyamgiri ecosystem is considered a core value, and activists highlighted the intersections between cultural and biodiversity values and the rights of local communities to define their livelihoods.

Overall, the activists managed to represent the cultural, spiritual and territorial values that were most important to local indigenous people and won the day in India’s Supreme Court. Today, the mythical kingdom of Niyamgiri Mountains remains under the control of the descendants of Niramraja, their god-king.

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The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25 November, followed by the global 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence, is a moment to reflect on, renew, amplify, and strategize to achieve commitments to eliminate violence against women by 2030. Ending violence against women is possible, but only if we act together, now, says the United Ntions.

By Jacqui Stevenson
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 23 2022 (IPS)

Violence against women is a global crisis, prevalent in every community and society around the world. Globally, estimates published by WHO indicate that about 1 in 3 (30%) of women worldwide have been subjected to either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. Yet, there is limited coordination and insufficient funding to truly address the scale of the issue.

This has catastrophic consequences for the individual women affected, who have their rights violated, bodily integrity and psychological wellbeing undermined and health harmed. It also has ramifications across society, including the costs of providing services to respond to violence and the financial impact of violence itself.

While these costs are borne across sectors, including health, policing, social services and education, among others, often efforts to reduce or prevent violence against women suffer from limited budgets and siloed funding streams. The invisible costs borne by women, and their children, families and communities, are also missing from many responses.

While nearly three out of four countries have policy infrastructure in place to support multisectoral action to address violence against women and girls, only 44 percent of countries report having a national budget line item to provide health services to address violence against women. Recent analysis indicates that foreign donors play a critical role in financing GBV interventions but funding is limited and uncertain, and fails to comply with human rights principles.

Bridging the gap between policy and implementation is critical if efforts to reduce violence against women are to meet the urgency and scale required.

Ending violence against women is an urgent legal, moral and ethical imperative. Effective interventions to reduce, prevent and respond to gender-based violence in all its forms must be a priority for all governments. In addition to ending the violation of women’s human rights and the perpetuation of gender inequality that violence against women represents, interventions to end gender-based violence contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals and more broadly to furthering the development of societies.

Effective coordinated investments are a key part of achieving this necessary aim, but it is important to underscore that the case for ending violence does not turn on return for investment.

Recognising the challenges introduced by siloed budgets, UNDP and UNU-IIGH collaborated on a project, with the support of the Republic of Korea, to produce new tools and evidence on “participatory planning and paying models”. These models engage diverse community stakeholders in defining their own solutions and establishing sustainable financing for local GBV action plans.

The approach prioritises the need to engage with diverse policymakers and stakeholders at the local level to generate effective solutions to address violence against women that are both contextually relevant and locally led. The pilots were implemented in Indonesia, Peru and the Republic of Moldova.

Findings from these pilot projects have been published to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Importantly, the models centre the participation and leadership of women and women’s civil society, embedding women’s rights activists in local structures that develop the plans and budgets to address gender-based violence.

The core idea underpinning the participatory planning and paying approach is simple: the benefits of reducing violence are shared by everyone, so the costs can also be shared. Different sectors stand to gain from the financial benefits of reducing violence against women, but are unlikely to adequately fund a comprehensive programme of prevention and response if each acts separately.

Instead, bringing these sectors together along with local communities and other stakeholders, the project facilitated the development of local action plans (LAPs) to address GBV, using participatory methods. Each LAP addressed locally defined priorities to prevent and respond to violence with targeted benefits across a range of health, economic and social sectors and issues.

The LAPs are costed, and, just as the plan itself is participatory, so too is paying for its implementation, with ‘payers’ identified across sectors, and budgets pooled to maximise impact. Rather than siloed budgets funding a mixture of interventions and services with no coherent structure, funding streams are pooled to support a coordinated plan. Through collaboration, shared expertise and decision-making, and local community accountability, the total is greater than the sum of its parts.

Implementing this innovative model is inherently challenging. Particularly in resource-constrained settings such as the settings for these pilots, there are competing demands for limited budgets, and multiple priorities that struggle for attention and funding.

Breaking down siloes to achieve shared financing is a political, contested process, and centring the voices, priorities and rights of women, especially those most marginalised, is a challenge. A key learning from the pilot projects is the need to ensure that senior decision-makers who have budget responsibilities in key sectors and government departments, are engaged early in the process of developing LAPs to gain their support.

Despite the challenges, the benefits of shared budgeting and resource mobilisation are clear. In Peru, UNDP undertook a ground-breaking study to estimate the costs associated with failing to prevent gender based violence. The “Cost of No Prevention” study estimated the annual costs of GBV in the Villa El Salvador community (where the project pilot was implemented) at nearly $72.9 million USD (in 2018 figures), including direct costs such as health care and indirect costs such as absence from work and loss of income, borne by affected women, their children and families, networks and wider communities.

Cost estimates for the participatory planning process to prevent and respond to GBV were estimated at $256,000 USD over 2.8 years (including the costs of project initiation and development of tools and products, so will reduce over subsequent years). This is a clear demonstration of the value for money of participatory approaches to planning and paying models to address gender-based violence.

Failure to adequately prevent and respond to violence places the costs squarely on women’s shoulders. The “Cost of No Prevention” study estimated that 45% of the costs of GBV are absorbed by the affected women themselves, including the costs of increased physical and mental health problems, out of pocket expenses and lower income.

A further 11% is subsidised by households and 44% by the community, including missed school days for children affected by violence in the home, and provision of emotional support, shelter and personal loans by others in the community. Inadequate funding, siloed budgets and limited resources only increase the costs for women, communities, and societies.

Participatory planning and paying models offer a blueprint to fund and provide the services and interventions women need, want and are entitled to. Ultimately, someone must pay the price of violence against women.

Dr Jacqui Stevenson is a research consultant, leading work to generate new evidence on the intersections of gender and health, including GBV and COVID-19, at the UN University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH).

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Constance Okollet Achom, chair and founder of Osukuru United Women Network (OWN), an organization fighting against domestic violence using climate change solutions in Uganda, during an exclusive interview with IPS at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 23 2022 (IPS)

Constance Okollet Achom, a Ugandan woman from Tororo, a rural village located in Eastern Uganda, has helped several dozens of her peers affected by domestic violence to address the issue by equipping victims with skillsets to manufacture eco-friendly biofuels from agro-forestry waste.

“There have been a growing number of women in my village who experienced intimate partner violence. But they have always accepted to continue bearing the brunt of suffering because of their inability to deal with their finances,” Okollet, who is the chair and founder of Osukuru United Women Network, told IPS. 

With the increasing levels of domestic violence in rural Uganda, Okollet is now championing using climate change solutions to curb its occurrence in this East African nation.

The latest estimates by the World Bank indicate that 51% of African women report that being beaten by their husbands is justified if they burn or refuse to prepare food. Yet acceptance is not uniform across countries. The report shows that the phenomenon appears deeply ingrained in some societies, with a 77% acceptance rate in Uganda.

Okollet’s organization currently empowers and educates women on how climate change affects their village resources. Most importantly, it provides resources for entrepreneurship and counseling to women affected by domestic violence and advocates for their emancipation by empowering them to be self-reliant by becoming green entrepreneurs.

With 2,000 members engaged in various climate solutions, including carbon farming, clean energies, and tree planting, the tradition of abuse has slowly started to fade in rural Uganda as many women who used to depend financially on their husbands have taken bold steps in investing in green projects.

“It has traditionally been regarded as shameful for the male members of a family if a female member works outside of the home and earns a living,” Okollet told IPS on the sidelines of the just concluded global climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

To amplify support for women to build climate resilience, the African Development Bank organized the session held during COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh under the theme, “Gender-sensitive and climate just finance mechanisms.”

The panelists said facilities tailored to supporting women, who are helping to build climate resilience, must be visible, simple, and easily accessible.

During the session, the former Irish president and an influential figure in global climate diplomacy, Mary Robinson, pointed out there is not currently an appropriately dedicated climate fund or a permanent climate fund to support women entrepreneurs in combating climate change.

Robinson gave the example of some women-led projects in Uganda which could do ten times more if they had access to targeted climate resources. “They had no prospects of getting the money that could be available for their sector – they didn’t even know who was getting the money or where it was going,” she told delegates.

So far, the bank has earmarked funding for ten capacity-building projects focusing on gender and climate through the Africa Climate Change Fund.

According to Kevin Kariuki, the bank’s Vice President Vice for Power, Energy, Climate, and Green Growth, the new funding mechanism has committed $100 million in loans to public and private sector projects to address gender and climate issues across the continent.

Apart from the new funding scheme launched on the sidelines of COP27, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), and the French Development Agency (AFD) in partnership with the Egyptian government also launched the Gender Equality in Climate Action Accelerator.

It is expected that the accelerator will support private sector companies improve the gender responsiveness of their corporate climate governance.

According to the officials, the initiative will help African governments promote gender-sensitive climate sector policies, thereby accelerating their green transition to meet Paris Agreement targets, the UNFCCC’s gender action plan, and key Sustainable Development Goals.

In the meanwhile, Okollet also said that in collaboration with local administrative authorities in her remote rural village in Uganda, she has already trained several hundred women on how to develop green projects so that they become financially independent and confident to face whatever difficulties they may face in life – including domestic violence.

According to her, most rural women in Uganda must wait for their husbands to decide on land management and access, leaving many women underemployed and without any control over productive resources and services.

“These income-generating projects from green initiatives are helping the majority of these women to develop self-sufficiency in their families and stand on their feet,” she said.
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