Africa

As Cape Town hosts Africa's first ever conference on clubfoot, the BBC witnesses a pioneering treatment in Senegal.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, chair of COP27, reads the nine-page Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan, the document that concluded the climate summit on Sunday Nov. 20, to an exhausted audience after tough and lengthy negotiations that finally reached an agreement to create a fund for loss and damage, a demand of the global South. CREDIT: Kiara Worth/UN

By Daniel Gutman
SHARM EL SHEIKh , Nov 20 2022 (IPS)

They were on the brink of shipwreck and did not leave happy, but did feel satisfied that they got the best they could. The countries of the global South achieved something decisive at COP27: the creation of a special fund to address the damage and loss caused by climate change in the most vulnerable nations.

The fund, according to the Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan, the official document approved at dawn on Sunday Nov. 20 in this Egyptian city, should enable “rehabilitation, recovery and reconstruction” following extreme weather events in these vulnerable countries.

Decisions on who will provide the money, which countries will benefit and how it will be disbursed were left pending for a special committee to define. But the fund was approved despite the fact that the issue was not even on the official agenda of the summit negotiations, although it was at the center of the public debate before the conference itself.

“We are satisfied that the developed countries have accepted the need to create the Fund. Of course, there is much to discuss for implementation, but it was difficult to ask for more at this COP,” Ulises Lovera, Paraguay’s climate change director, told IPS, weary from a longer-than-expected negotiation, early Sunday morning at the Sharm El Sheikh airport.

“This COP has taken an important step towards justice. I welcome the decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalize it in the coming period,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. He also described as an achievement that a “red line” was not crossed, that would take the rise in global temperature above the 1.5-degree limit.

More than 35,000 people from nearly 200 countries participated in the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) on Climate Change in Sharm El Sheikh, an Egyptian seaside resort on the Red Sea, where the critical dimension of global warming in the different regions of the world was on display, sometimes dramatically.

Practically everything that has to do with the future of the modes of production and life of humanity – starting with energy and food – was discussed at a mega-event that far exceeded the official delegations of the countries and the great leaders present, such as U.S. President Joe Biden and the Brazilian president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Hundreds of social organizations, international agencies and private sector stakeholders came here to showcase their work, seek funding, forge alliances, try to influence negotiations, defend their interests or simply be on a stage that seemed to provide a space for all kinds of initiatives and businesses.

At the gigantic Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center there was also a global fair with non-stop activities from morning to night in the various pavilions, in stands with auditoriums of between 20 and 200 seats, where there was a flurried program of presentations, lectures and debates, not to mention the more or less crowded demonstrations of activists outside the venue.

In addition, government delegates negotiated on the crux of the summit: how to move forward with the implementation of the Paris Agreement, which at COP21 in 2015 set global climate change mitigation and adaptation targets.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres (3rd-R) walks hurriedly through the Sharm El Sheikh Convention Center during the last intense hours of the COP27 negotiations, when there were moments when it seemed that there would be no agreement and the climate summit would end in failure. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

On the brink of failure

Once again, the nine-page Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan did not include in any of its pages a reference to the need to abandon fossil fuels, but only coal.

The document was the result of a negotiation that should have ended on Friday Nov. 18, but dragged on till Sunday, as usually happens at COPs. What was different on this occasion was a very tough discussion and threats of a walkout by some negotiators, including those of the European Union.

But in the end, the goal of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, established in the Paris Agreement, was maintained, although several countries tried to make it more flexible up to 2.0 degrees, which would have been a setback with dramatic effects for the planet and humanity, according to experts and climate activists.

“Rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions (are) required – lowering global net greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent by 2030 relative to the 2019 level – to limit global warming to 1.5°C target,” reads the text, although no mention is made of oil and gas, the fossil fuels most responsible for those emissions, in one of the usual COP compromises, since agreements are reached by consensus.

The Bolivian delegation in Sharm El Sheikh, which included officials as well as leaders of indigenous communities from the South American country, take part in a meeting with journalists at COP27 to demand more ambitious action. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The priorities of the South

Developing countries, however, focused throughout the COP on the Loss and Damage Fund and other financing mechanisms to address the impacts of rising temperatures and mitigation actions.

“We need financing because we cannot deal with the environmental crisis alone. That is why we are asking that, in order to solve the problem they have caused, the rich nations take responsibility,” Diego Pacheco, head of the Bolivian delegation to Sharm El Sheikh, told IPS.

Environmental organizations, which showed their power in Egypt with the presence of thousands of activists, also lobbied throughout COP27 for greater commitments, including mitigation actions.

“This conference cannot be considered an implementation conference because there is no implementation without phasing out all fossil fuels,” the main cause of the climate crisis, said Zeina Khalil Hajj of the international environmental organization 350.org.

“Together for implementation” was precisely the slogan of COP27, calling for a shift from commitments to action.

“A text that does not stop fossil fuel expansion, that does not provide progress from the already weak Glasgow Pact (from COP26) makes a mockery of the millions of people living with the impacts of climate change,” said Khalil Hajj, head of global campaigning at 350.org.

One of the demonstrations by climate activists at COP27 held in Egypt Nov. 6-20, demanding more ambitious climate action by governments, as well as greater justice and equity in tackling the climate crisis. CREDIT: Busani Bafana/IPS

The crises that came together

Humanity – as recognized by the States Parties in the final document – is living through a dramatic time.

It faces a number of overlapping crises: food, energy, geopolitical, financial and economic, combined with more frequent natural disasters due to climate change. And developing nations are hit especially hard.

The demand for financing voiced by countries of the global South thus takes on greater relevance.

Cecilia Nicolini, Argentina’s climate change secretary, told IPS that it is the industrialized countries, because of their greater responsibility for climate change, that should finance developing countries, and lamented that “the problem is that the rules are made by the powerful.”

However, 80 percent of the money now being spent worldwide on climate change action is invested in the developed world, according to the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the world’s largest funder of climate action, which has contributed 121 billion dollars to 163 countries over the past 30 years, according to its own figures.

In this context, the issue of Loss and Damage goes one step further than adaptation to climate change, because it involves reparations for the specific impacts of climate change that have already occurred, such as destruction caused by droughts, floods or forest fires.

“Those who are bearing the burden of climate change are the most vulnerable households and communities. That is why the Loss and Damage Fund must be established without delay, with new funds coming from developed countries,” said Javier Canal Albán, Colombia’s vice minister of environmental land planning.

“It is a moral and climate justice imperative,” added Canal Albán, who spoke at a press conference on behalf of AILAC, a negotiating bloc that brings together several Latin American and Caribbean countries.

But the text of the outcome document itself acknowledges that there is a widening gap between what developing countries need and what they actually receive.

The financing needs of these countries for climate action until 2030 were estimated at 5.6 trillion dollars, but developed countries – as the document recognized – have not even fulfilled their commitment to provide 100 billion dollars per year, committed since 2009, at COP15 in Copenhagen, and ratified in 2015, at COP21 which adopted the Paris Agreement.

It was the absence of any reference to the need to accelerate the move away from oil and natural gas that frustrated several of the leaders at the COP. “We believe that if we don’t phase out fossil fuels there will be no Fund that can pay for the loss and damage caused by climate change,” Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, who was at the two-week conference in Sharm El Sheikh held Nov. 6-20, told IPS.

“We have to put the victims first in order to make an orderly and just transition,” she said, expressing the sentiments of the governments and societies of the South at COP27.

Rich nations will pay climate damages, but the final deal does not cut fossil fuels further.

African qualifiers Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia head to the World Cup in Qatar with questions to be answered.

Climate change activists at COP27, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Negotiators which struggled to complete reach agreement on the critical loss and damage fund demanded by developing nations most affected by climate change. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 20 2022 (IPS)

After a tense impasse and many hours of negotiations, almost 200 countries struck a deal to set up a loss and damage fund to assist nations worst hit by climate change – a demand considered not-negotiable by the developing countries.

COP27 was extended by a day after negotiators couldn’t agree on the fund – leading to UN Secretary-General António Guterres saying on Friday, November 18, 2022, that the time for talking about loss and damage finance is over. He alluded to a growing breakdown of trust between developing and developed countries.

Guterres, early on Sunday, November 20, 2022, welcomed the fund saying: “I welcome the decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalize it in the coming period. Clearly, this will not be enough, but it is a much-needed political signal to rebuild broken trust.”

He added that the voices of those on the frontlines of the climate crisis must be heard.

Speaking in the closing plenary, COP President H.E. Sameh Shoukry said:

“The work that we’ve managed to do here in the past two weeks, and the results we have together achieved, are a testament to our collective will, as a community of nations, to voice a clear message that rings loudly today, here in this room and around the world: that multilateral diplomacy still works… despite the difficulties and challenges of our times, the divergence of views, level of ambition or apprehension, we remain committed to the fight against climate change… we rose to the occasion, upheld our responsibilities and undertook the important decisive political decisions that millions around the world expect from us.”

Shoukry noted: “This was not easy. We worked around the clock. Long days and nights. Strained and sometimes tense, but united and working for one aim, one higher purpose, one common goal that we all subscribe to and aspire to achieve. In the end, we delivered.”

Under the previous global climate summit, which took place in Glasgow, Scotland last year, parties agreed on the roadmap where developing countries, which did little to cause the climate crisis, arrived with a determination to win a commitment from rich nations to compensate them for this damage.

On several occasions during negotiations, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, also the COP27 President, stated that climate finance remains key for Africa since the continent contributes 4 percent to global emissions and is adversely affected to a much higher degree by global warming-relate events.

On losses and damages, some climate finance experts believe that ongoing climate talks on finance at COP27 are one of the most painful examples of the African proverb that when the elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled.

“Ongoing negotiations on loss and damage are the most recent iteration of this long-standing fight,” Sophia Murphy, the Executive Director of the US-based Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), told IPS.

Delegates debate climate finance on the sidelines of COP27 at Sharm El Sheikh. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

IATP is a think tank that analyses the interconnection between agriculture, trade, and climate in developing countries.

Since 2015, loss and damage have served as the main catalyser under the UNFCCC process, especially for enhancing financial support for adaptation to avert, minimise and address climate change impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

Murphy pointed out that the G77 includes a very wide range of countries and interests, and the climate crisis is not suffered equally across the South.

“Currently developing nations at COP27 are likely showing that everyone is responsible for the negative realities of climate change and loss and damage negotiations is the most recent iteration of this long-standing fight,” she said.

While many negotiators in Sharm El Sheikh believe that rich countries are lagging in measures to allocate loss and damage funding, there is a consensus that the current negotiations on climate finance did not go very well, particularly with respect to the expectations for COP27.

Dr Somorin Olufunso, Regional Principal Officer, Climate Change and Green Growth (East Africa) at the African Development Bank, told IPS that the finance negotiation is primarily a “trust” negotiation.

“Unfortunately, if the trust is broken, it may affect other issues being negotiated and ultimately affect our collective action of combatting climate change,” the senior financial expert said.

The bank published the 2022 African Economic Outlook report on the needs of African Countries for loss and damage in 2022-2030 at between USD 289.2 to USD 440.5 billion. The estimated adaptation finance needs are in a similar order of magnitude.

For many Africans, according to Olufunso, the negotiations were not aggressive enough in finding solutions urgently needed at both scale and speed.

Until the end of the summit, loss and damage fund remained a major sticking point.

“Negotiations are going well in some items and not well in other items (…) Rwanda and other vulnerable countries had much expectation in securing a decision of adopting the establishment of loss and damage fund,” Faustin Munyazikwiye, the Deputy Director General of Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA) and Rwanda’s Lead negotiator, told IPS in an interview.

According to him, this item [on loss and damage] did not go well.

African negotiators at COP27 prioritised filling gaps between present risks associated with climate change and financing for adaptation.

However, most developing countries prefer to ensure that finance for loss and damages is channelled through the private sector and is not necessarily a liability for rich countries.

But other experts believe that cost of repairing these damages is staggering and the countries which should pay are the ones who contributed to climate change in the first place.

While some climate finance experts observe that the commitment by rich nations to pay the developing world $100 billion cannot even compensate what Africa’s needs, others point out that COP27 must deliver a bold finance facility to pay for loss and damage to communities already impacted by climate change on the continent.

Kelly Dent, the Global Director of External Engagement at the UK-based World Animal Protection, told IPS most vulnerable countries, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa, are considering the climate emergency as a matter of life.

“Without a coherent and meaningful agreement on finance, COP27 will fall short of its mission and put millions of lives at risk,” she said.

From Dent’s perspective, a roadmap to track and deliver a doubling of adaptation finance is critical.

The 2022 UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report, released on the sidelines of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, indicates that the continent requires 7 to 15 billion US dollars annually to enhance adaptation to climate change besides the nearly 3 trillion dollars investment that is needed to implement nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and cap emissions in line with the Paris climate deal.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

 

Related Articles

• Food Systems Crucial for Pacific Islands at COP27
• COP27: Africa’s Agri-food Systems Losses Ignored in Global Climate Negotiations
• COP27: Climate Change’s Dire Consequences in the World’s Most Water-Scarce Region

The 80-year-old president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, has been in power for 43 years.

Nasa research engineer Berhanu Bulcha is working on locating the vital liquid under the lunar surface.

Lessons four years on from Ethiopia's ambitious, four-year, mass tree-planting initiative.

South Africa's government is acting to retrieve money lost to corruption, the justice minister says.

Hundreds of mangrove seedlings are growing in a small bay of an island south of Fiji's main island Viti Levu. The Pacific Island Countries are vulnerable to climate change and need resources to adapt. Credit: Tom Vierus/Climate Visuals

By Labanya Prakash Jena
Sharm El-Sheikh, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

The Pacific Island Countries (PICs) – 14 small island developing nations in the Pacific Ocean – comprise one of the most exposed and vulnerable regions to climate change and natural calamities. The region did not cause this climate crisis; the crisis stemmed from heavy carbon emissions by developed countries. Yet paradoxically, the countries in the region are also the least resourced to adapt to climate change.

The IMF estimates that the PICs need an additional investment of an average of 9% of GDP on developing climate-resilient infrastructure over the next ten years. Some countries’ climate-resilient infrastructure needs more than 10% of their GDP. However, this much capital mobilisation is impossible for the region with low per capita income, volatile economy, lack of fiscal space, and low saving rate. Besides, these countries have also committed to ambitious targets to decarbonize their economies.

In this scenario, international climate finance mobilisation is critical to make the region resilient and prosperous. The longer the delay in building the much-needed climate-resilient infrastructure, the higher the cost and greater the risk of exposing these countries to extreme events for a longer time.

Labanya Prakash Jena, Commonwealth Regional Climate Finance Adviser, Indo-Pacific Region, argues international climate finance mobilisation is critical to make Pacific Island Countries resilient and prosperous. Credit: Commonwealth

Tackling the bottlenecks

There are two primary bottlenecks to international climate flows: institutional structure and lack of capacity at various levels. The PIC region’s institutional structure is plagued by limited administrative and financial capabilities, inadequate program management and accountability, and an obscure audit system to mobilise international public climate finance.

In addition, these countries lack the capacity to design and structure projects and develop a robust and tangible climate adaptation project pipeline. Besides, the region is not strategically allocating available capital, including budgetary outlays, international climate finance, development aid, and private finance. The primary focus of international institutions must be to address these challenges quickly.

Options for international climate finance: Grants, debt, equity

The total GDP of the PIC region is only about USD10 billion, with an average per capita income of approximately USD4,000 and a gross capital formation rate of 20%, according to the World Bank. This translates to a maximum domestic capital mobilisation of USD 2 billion per year. Meanwhile, the IMF estimates that the region needs an additional capital of USD 1 billion per annum for climate resilience infrastructure investment.

International grant capital is the only option to fund climate adaptation projects in the region. The reason is that any form of debt capital, even if in the form of concessional debt capital over the long term, is not an economical one. The PIC region cannot pay back debt, and it is unlikely the region’s economic size will increase at a rapid rate in the future to pay back debt.

Although the region’s primary sources of international climate finance – the Green Climate Fund (GCF), World Bank, and Asian Development Bank (ADB) – provide grants, it is only for project preparation and capacity development. These financers mostly provide debt financing, albeit at a better rate than private financers.

However, the low debt servicing ability of the region arrests them, raising foreign debt capital. It is even more problematic if the debt capital is in foreign currency (e.g., USD) – the borrowers face huge foreign currency due to expected and unexpected devaluation in the local currency, and borrowers face currency risk.

Equity capital is not the best form of financing for climate adaptation projects. Unlike climate change mitigating projects, they do not generate clear cash flows as the beneficiaries are difficult to identify to monetize climate adaptation projects. Hence, equity capital is not an efficient source of capital for climate adaptation projects.

Strategic allocation of capital is key

Unlike developed and developing countries, the PIC region does not have a have strong domestic financial and banking sector, and it rarely attracted foreign capital for large-scale investment. So, it is futile to expect large-scale private financing flows to bridge the financing gaps for their climate actions.

Moreover, the public goods nature of climate adaptation projects does not attract private financers. Hence, public financing, including capital Government budgetary outlays, international climate finance, and other development aids must be spent judiciously.

The crux is strategically allocating the available capital and aligning projects’ needs with the mandates of the public finances. One of the most efficient ways is to carve out the climate financing as a separate portfolio and decide where and how the capital would be used in various climate adaptation projects.

In addition, the climate change divisions of these countries can work closely with the Ministry of finance to mainstream climate adaptation in national development plans and sector policies and bring climate change perspectives in economic decision-making. The countries can also need to identify the projects which offer dual benefits of climate migration and adaptation, which brings a lot of attention to global climate financers.

For example, nature-based carbon sequestration through ocean conservation, forestry, and wilding (wetland, grassland) sequestrates carbon, offers natural shields, and protects human life and properties in extreme weather events. The global impact investors will find these projects attractive as they help the region become climate-resilient and create a global public good, helping everyone, including the financer’s country.

Way forward

International institutions must support Pacific Island countries to strengthen administrative and financial structures for better transparency and accountability, which can help the PICs access global public capital. In addition, Governments in the region must strategically allocate climate finance, prioritise climate actions in decision-making, integrate adaptation projects with national climate action plans, and identify suitable projects offering dual climate mitigation and adaptation benefits.

The international institutions can also help the countries identify and design projects to develop pipeline projects for funding. There is a dire need to develop institutional and local capacity to meet the needs of climate change-related economic activities in the region. But if addressed, the region will be able to finally make headway in addressing the deep adaptation challenges they face due to climate change.

• Labanya Prakash Jena is the Commonwealth Regional Climate Finance Adviser for the Indo-Pacific Region.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

Yomira Cuadros faced motherhood at an early age, as well as the obstacles of a sexist society like Peru’s, regarding her reproductive decisions. In the apartment where she lives with her family in Lima, she expresses faith in the future, now that she has finally started attending university, after having two children as a result of unplanned pregnancies. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

No woman in Peru should have to die, have her physical or mental health affected, be treated as a criminal or have an unwanted pregnancy because she does not have access to abortion, said Dr. Rocío Gutiérrez, an obstetrician who is the deputy director of the Manuela Ramos Movement, a non-governmental feminist center that works for gender rights in this South American country.

In this Andean nation of 33 million people, abortion is illegal even in cases of rape or fetal malformation. It is only legal for two therapeutic reasons: to save the life of the pregnant woman or to prevent a serious and permanent health problem.

Peru thus goes against the current of the advances achieved by the “green wave”. Green is the color that symbolizes the changes that the women’s rights movement has achieved in the legislation of neighboring countries such as Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina and some states in Mexico, where early abortion has been decriminalized. These countries have joined the ranks of Cuba, where it has been legal for decades."I didn't tell my parents because they are very Catholic and would have forced me to go through with the pregnancy, they always instilled in me that abortion was a bad thing. But I started to think about how pregnancy would change my life and I didn't feel capable of raising a child at that moment." -- Fatima Guevara

But Latin America remains one of the most punitive regions in terms of abortion, with several countries that do not recognize women’s right to make decisions about their pregnancies under any circumstances. In El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Haiti it is illegal under all circumstances, and in some cases draconian penalties are handed down.

In the case of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Peru and Venezuela, meanwhile, abortion is allowed under very few conditions, while there are more circumstances under which it is legal in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador.

“In Peru an estimated 50,000 women a year are treated for abortion-related complications in public health facilities,” Dr. Gutiérrez told IPS. “This is not the total number of abortions in the country, but rather the number of women who reach public health services due to emergencies or complications.”

The obstetrician spoke to IPS from Buenos Aires, where she participated in the XV Regional Conference on Women, held Nov. 7-11 in the Argentine capital.

Gutiérrez explained that the cases attended are just the tip of the iceberg, because for every abortion complicated by hemorrhage or infection treated at a health center, at least seven have been performed that did not present difficulties.

Multiplying by seven the 50,000 cases treated due to complications provides the shocking figure of 350,000 unsafe clandestine abortions performed annually in Peru.

The doctor regretted the lack of official statistics about a phenomenon that affects the lives and rights of women “irreversibly, with damage to health, and death.”

Gutiérrez said that another of the major impacts is the criminalization of women who undergo abortions, due to mistreatment by health personnel who not only judge and blame them, but also report them to the police.

Obstetrician Rocío Gutiérrez (C), deputy director of the feminist Manuela Ramos Movement, stands with two fellow activists holding green scarves – representing the struggle for reproductive rights – during the XV Regional Conference on Women held this month in the city of Buenos Aires. CREDIT: Courtesy of Rocío Gutiérrez

Under article 30 of Peru’s General Health Law, No. 26842, a physician who attends a case of presumed illegal abortion is required to file a police report.

Gutiérrez also referred to the fact that unwanted pregnancies have numerous consequences for the lives of women, especially girls and adolescents, in a sexist country like Peru, where women often do not have the right to make decisions on their sexuality and reproductive health.

Healing the wounds of unwanted motherhood

By the age of 19, Yomira Cuadros was already the mother of two children. She did not plan either of the pregnancies and only went ahead with them because of pressure from her partner.

In 2020, according to official data, 8.3 percent of adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 were already mothers or had become pregnant in Peru.

Cuadros, whose parents are both physicians and who lives in a middle-class family, said she never imagined that her life would turn out so differently than what she had planned.

“The first time was because I didn’t know about contraceptives, I was 17 years old. The second time the birth control method failed and I thought about getting an abortion, but I couldn’t do it,” Cuadros told IPS.

At the time, she was in a relationship with an older boyfriend on whom she felt very emotionally dependent. “I had made a decision (to terminate the pregnancy), but he didn’t want to, he told me not to, the pressure was like blackmail and out of fear I went ahead with the pregnancy,” she said.

Making that decision under coercion hurt her mental health. Today, at the age of 26, she reflects on the importance of women being guaranteed the conditions to freely decide whether they want to be mothers or not.

Peruvian activists go topless to demand the right to legal abortion, during a demonstration in the streets of the capital on Mar. 8, 2018. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

In her case, although she had the support of her mother to get a safe abortion, the power of her then-partner over her was stronger.

“Becoming a mother when you haven’t planned to is a shock, you feel so alone, it is very difficult. I didn’t feel that motherhood was something beautiful and I didn’t want to experience the same thing with my second pregnancy, so I considered terminating it,” she said.

Finding herself in that unwanted situation, she fell into a deep depression and was on medication, and is still in therapy today.

“I went from being a teenager to an adult with responsibilities that I never imagined. It’s as if I have never really gone through the proper mourning process because of everything I had to take on, and I know that it will continue to affect me because I will never stop being a mother,” she said.

She clarified that “it’s not that I don’t want to be a mother or that I hate my children,” and added that “as I continue to learn to cope, I will get better, it’s just that it wasn’t the right time.”

She and her two children, ages nine and seven, live with her parents and brother in an apartment in the municipality of Pueblo Libre, in the Peruvian capital. She has enrolled at university to study psychology and accepts the fact that she will only see her dreams come true little by little.

“Things are not how I thought they would be, but it’s okay,” she remarked with a newfound confidence that she is proud of.

Gutiérrez said more than 60 percent of women in Peru have an unplanned pregnancy at some point in their lives, and argued that the government’s family planning policies fall far short.

The National Institute of Statistics and Informatics reported that the total fertility rate in Peru in 2021 would have been 1.3 children on average if all unwanted births had been prevented, compared to the actual rate of 2.0 children – almost 54 percent higher than the desired fertility rate.

“There are a set of factors that lead to unwanted pregnancies, such as the lack of comprehensive sex education in schools, and the lack of birth control methods and timely family planning for women in all their diversity, which worsened during the pandemic. And of course, the correlate is access to legal and safe abortion,” said Gutiérrez.

She lamented that little or no progress has been made in Peru in relation to the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights, including access to safe and free legal abortion, despite the struggle of feminist organizations and movements in the country that have been demanding decriminalization in cases of rape, artificial insemination without consent, non-consensual egg transfer, or malformations incompatible with life.

University student Fátima Guevara decided to terminate an unwanted pregnancy when she was 19 years old. Four years later, she is sure that it was the right decision, in terms of her plans for her life. The young woman told her story at a friend’s home, where she was able to talk about it openly, in Lima, Peru. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The obscurity of illegal abortion

The obscurity surrounding abortion led Fátima Guevara, when she faced an unwanted pregnancy at the age of 19, to decide to use Misoprostol, a safe medication that is included in the methods accepted by the World Health Organization for the termination of pregnancies.

“I didn’t tell my parents because they are very Catholic and would have forced me to go through with the pregnancy, they always instilled in me that abortion was a bad thing. But I started to think about how pregnancy would change my life and I didn’t feel capable of raising a child at that moment,” she told IPS in a meeting at a friend’s home in Lima.

She said that she and her partner lacked adequate information and obtained the medication through a third party, but that she used it incorrectly. She turned to her brother who took her to have an ultrasound first. “Hearing the fetal heartbeat shook me, it made me feel guilty, but I followed through with my decision,” she added.

After receiving proper instructions, she was able to complete the abortion. And today, at the age of 23, about to finish her psychology degree, she has no doubt that it was the right thing to do.

Priscilla Sitienei was set to sit her final exams next week, along with her 12-year-old classmates.

Tevin Tobun, is the CEO of GV Group. He turned $600 investment, into a successful food logistics company.

Meet a Senegalese's barrier breaker who became the first woman in her country to manage salt marshes.

Organisers of the Cape Town Marathon hope to create the greenest sporting event in the world and become the seventh major marathon.

The influencer has more than 400,000 subscribers on YouTube, but he still fears unemployment.

Karen Mapusua, SPC’s Director of the Land Resources Division, would like to see food high up on the loss and damage fund if it is agreed to. Credit Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

Food is everything to the culture and identity of the Pacific island countries.

Climate change impacts of rising sea levels and higher temperatures threaten islanders’ food security, which is largely dependent on fisheries and subsistence agriculture. Almost 70 percent of islanders rely on agriculture for their livelihood.

Pacific island countries at the COP27 summit, taking place at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, say agriculture is high on their agenda, with parties to the UNFCCC calling for a decision to protect food security through the mobilisation of climate finance for adaptation.

Activists at the COP27 summit demand food and agriculture remain on the negotiation’s agenda. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

At the COP negotiations, agriculture features on many levels, including during discussions on the ongoing Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA) – a formal process established to highlight the potential of food and agriculture in tackling climate change. However, there has been no progress in countries making commitments to placing agriculture and food systems in the final text.

The agriculture sector accounts for 37% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with land seen as a potential major carbon sink that can be considered for capturing emissions.

Could agriculture be off the menu?

“Not yet,” says Karen Mapusua, Pacific Community’s (SPC) Director of the Land Resources Division. “Unless the parties can come together and through their work demonstrate the value of the Koronivia work programme and a clear way forward for it, then that is a risk.”

She explains that it was critical to keep the Koronivia plan alive and secure a global strategy for agriculture and food systems to be considered solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation.

“Agriculture contributes 30 percent of emissions, and everybody has to eat, and if we do not take this seriously, then we are in trouble,” said Mapusua, who is also the President of IFOAM Organics International, a global organisation specialising in changing agricultural practices.

Pacific countries are very low emitters of harmful carbon emissions – except for a few high-input industries like sugar production in Fiji and the commercial production of exotic horticulture for export.

“We are losing productive land to sea level rise, inundation and desalination of soils near the coast,” she said. Farmers have experienced increased pests and diseases due to a change in temperatures and weather conditions. For example, the islands have been hit by an infestation of the coconut rhinoceros beetle, an invasive pest that can destroy coconut plantations.

Farmers are also experiencing changes in fruiting patterns for major crops. Farmers are relocating their vanilla plantations in Vanuatu because it no longer flowers in the area where it was once most productive.

Developing countries are also pushing for the establishment of a loss and damage facility where they can be compensated for damage caused by climate change, particularly to infrastructure. However, no decision has been reached on this demand.

“There will be a lot of competition on what goes in the loss and damage fund, but I am hopeful that because food is so essential, it will be higher up the priority list when it comes to accessing finance through such a facility, if it is agreed on,” Mapusua, told IPS.

Fish eaters but threatened fisheries

Islanders are also dependent on fisheries for food security. This sector has also been affected by rising sea levels and high temperatures, which have led to the bleaching of coral reefs, which are a key habitat for fish.

Scientific research projects a decline in coastal fisheries of up to 20 percent by 2050 in the western Pacific and up to 10 percent by 2050 in the eastern Pacific, which would impact heavily on the diet of islanders who, on average, consume 58 kg of fish annually.

Mapusua said the island countries were building aquaculture at a local level and poultry to compensate for the projected loss of fisheries.

In Vanuatu, the government was deploying fish aggregating devices (FADS), which are offshore floating objects to attract fish. The project has enabled farmers to harvest fish from the locations where the devices have been installed without travelling far from the coast to fish. In addition, a fishponds system has been promoted at the household level, encouraging families to build their own fishponds to harvest fish.

Nelson Kalo, a Senior Mitigation Officer in the Ministry of Climate Change in Vanuatu, adds there are other projects too.

“Vanuatu is also promoting climate resilience projects working with the United Nations Development Programme to replicate climate resilient root crops that communities when climate condition change.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Climate Change is No ‘Future Scenario’ for Pacific Island Nations; Climate Change is ‘Real’
• COP27: Cyclone Nearly Washed Away All My Dreams, says Vanuatu Youth Activist
• Pacific Islands: Climate Finance Action a Priority at COP27

Rwanda's Salima Mukansanga hopes being selected for the men's World Cup will help other aspiring officials.

By Matti Kohonen
LONDON, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

G20 leaders met in Indonesia in the midst of multiple crises, with 85 percent of the world population expected to face austerity measures and severe budget cuts next year that will impact the most vulnerable compounded by an insufficient response to the Covid-19 pandemic, with only 38 percent of relief funds going to social protection in global South countries.

The G20 summit motto was “Recovering Together, Recovering Stronger” yet the Joint Declaration failed to deliver any alternatives to the wave of austerity engulfing the world. It ignored the option of raising enough tax revenues from large corporations, taxing the wealthy and tacking illicit financial flows and tax abuses which alone accounts for over US$200 billion of tax revenue lost per year due to profit shifting in the global South.

For one, the summit blocked any progress towards the negotiations of a UN Tax Convention that would address the issues of corporate tax abuses and illicit financial flows, as denounced in an open letter from the Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).

In an open letter denouncing this inaction to tackle corporate tax abuses and IFFs, delivered to embassies of Indonesia, India and Brazil, Lidy Nacpil from the Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) said that the summit blocked “any progress towards the negotiations of a UN Tax Convention that would address the issues of corporate tax abuses and illicit financial flows,” but there was no reaction.

Making matters worse, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) failed to deliver on mandates to publish country-by-country reporting before the summit. This would have allowed to monitor the performance of mechanisms to prevent for example multinational companies shifting profits to tax havens and avoid paying taxes.

The data was only published on 17 November, a day after the summit, which was too late to hold the G20 leaders accountable. According to Alex Cobham, Director at the Tax Justice Network, “without the transparency data, neither the Tax Justice Network nor any other independent research can evaluate how much each government is losing to multinationals’ corporate tax abuse, or any progress made to curb tax losses in recent years.”

But that is not everything since the summit did not confront the hidden offshore wealth and kleptocracy problem. Maira Martini from Transparency International said that the G20 members “in recent years have dragged their feet, unable to agree on key measures and failing to implement even those to which they had already committed. In the meantime, the corrupt have consolidated wealth and power, allowing them to attack everything from sustainable development to global security to democracy.”

In an open letter released ahead of the Bali summit, Transparency International representatives from across G20 countries called on their governments to take immediate action against cross-border corruption. The Joint Declaration stated its support towards implementing Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations for improved financial transparency, but does not say that beneficial ownership registries should be public, a critical element to enable stakeholders and the authorities to uncover hidden assets.

Also the declaration included regional efforts related to signing of the Asia Initiative Declaration in July 2022 on tax and financial transparency in Asia. However, it did not specify whether this initiative would create a stronger standard than the current OECD transparency standard, or simply implement an OECD standard in the Asian regional context.

Positively, the Bali Joint Declaration made a link between increased beneficial ownership information and tackling natural resource crimes, but offered no specific proposals to address this issue. Indonesia loses an estimated US$4 billion in Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) each year due to illegal, unregulated and underreported (IUU) fishing alone, while Africa loses an estimated US$11.5 billion to this illicit activity. It would be vital that beneficial ownership information on all vessels and fishing companies is collected on a public registry, to hold those responsible for illicit fishing activities accountable.

Between 75 and 95 million people are expected to be thrown into extreme poverty this year as a result of the pandemic and the effects of rising inflation and the war in Ukraine, according to the UN. Many other are struggling to make a living and feed themselves as governments around the world are resorting to painful austerity measures.

The G20 had an opportunity to offer solutions to these crises and a lifeline to struggling nations. Unfortunately for all of us, they have failed.

Matti Kohonen is executive director, Financial Transparency Coalition.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

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