Africa

The abundance of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere once again reached a new record last year, with the annual rate of increase above the 2011-2020 average, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Credit: Bigstock

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Oct 29 2021 (IPS)

Another Year Another Record! The emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, the land and sea temperatures are higher than ever since there are records, and the ecosystems could fail their role as vital sinks absorbing carbon dioxide and as a buffer against larger temperature increases.

“The abundance of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere once again reached a new record last year, with the annual rate of increase above the 2011-2020 average. That trend has continued in 2021.”

This is how the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warns in the Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, released just five days ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) (31 October – 12 Novembre) in Glasgow. In it, the world organisation reports that the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) –the most important greenhouse gas– reached 413.2 parts per million in 2020 and is 149% of the pre-industrial level.

 

But what is carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries and in the ocean for even longer. The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3°C warmer and sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now

Carbon dioxide is the single most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, accounting for approximately 66% of the warming effect on the climate, mainly because of fossil fuel combustion and cement production.

As long as emissions continue, global temperature will continue to rise. Given the long life of CO2, the temperature level already observed will persist for several decades even if emissions are rapidly reduced to net zero, warns WMO.

 

And what is methane?

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas which remains in the atmosphere for about a decade, the world organisation explains.

Methane accounts for about 16% of the warming effect of long-lived greenhouse gases, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Approximately 40% of methane is emitted into the atmosphere by natural sources (for example, wetlands and termites), and about 60% comes from anthropogenic sources (for example, ruminants, rice agriculture, fossil fuel exploitation, landfills and biomass burning)

Methane (CH4) is 262% and nitrous oxide (N2O) is 123% of the levels in 1750 when human activities started disrupting Earth’s natural equilibrium.

 

What is nitrous oxide?

According to the World Meteorological Organisation, nitrous oxide is both a powerful greenhouse gas and ozone depleting chemical. It accounts for about 7% of the radiative forcing by long-lived greenhouse gases.
N2O is emitted into the atmosphere from both natural sources (approximately 60%) and anthropogenic sources (approximately 40%), including oceans, soils, biomass burning, fertilizer use, and various industrial processes.

 

Will ecosystems fail their role as sinks?

The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin flags concern that the ability of land ecosystems and oceans to act as “sinks” may become less effective in future, thus reducing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide and act as a buffer against larger temperature increases.

And it shows that from 1990 to 2020, radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – by long-lived greenhouse gases increased by 47%, with CO2 accounting for about 80% of this rise.

 

But what are carbon sinks?

See what the World Meteorological Organisation says:

— Roughly half of the CO2 emitted by human activities today remains in the atmosphere. The other half is taken up by oceans and land ecosystems. The part of CO2 which remains in the atmosphere, is an important indicator of the balance between sources and sinks. It changes from year to year due to natural variability.

— Land and ocean CO2 sinks have increased proportionally with the increasing emissions in the past 60 years. But these uptake processes are sensitive to climate and land-use changes. Changes in the effectiveness of carbon sinks would have strong implications for reaching the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement and will require adjustments in the timing and/or size of the emission reduction commitments.

— Ongoing climate change and related feedbacks, like more frequent droughts and the connected increased occurrence and intensification of wildfires might reduce CO2 uptake by land ecosystems. Such changes are already happening, and the Bulletin gives an example of the transition of the part of Amazonia from a carbon sink to a carbon source.

Ocean uptake might also be reduced due to higher sea surface temperatures, decreased pH due to CO2 uptake and slowing of the meridional ocean circulation due to increased melting of sea ice.

“The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin contains a stark, scientific message for climate change negotiators at COP26. At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

 

Off track

“Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries and in the ocean for even longer. The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3°C warmer and sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now. But there weren’t 7.8 billion people then,” said Taalas.

WMO concludes that, alongside rising temperatures, the world would witness more weather extremes including intense heat and rainfall, ice melt, sea-level rise and ocean acidification, accompanied by far-reaching socio-economic impacts.

Enough reasons to worry? And to act? Before judging, please know that Governments plan to double the production of energy from fossil fuels!

 

Credit: United Nations

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 29 2021 (IPS)

When world leaders gather in Scotland next week for the COP26 climate change conference, activists will be pushing for drastic action to end the world’s catastrophic reliance on fossil fuels.

Consciousness about the climate emergency has skyrocketed in recent years, while government responses remain meager. But one aspect of extreme climate jeopardy — “nuclear winter” — has hardly reached the stage of dim awareness.

Wishful thinking aside, the threat of nuclear war has not receded. In fact, the opposite is the case. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been moving the “Doomsday Clock” ever closer to cataclysmic midnight; the symbolic hands are now merely 100 seconds from midnight, in contrast to six minutes a decade ago.

A nuclear war would quickly bring cataclysmic climate change. A recent scientific paper, in sync with countless studies, concludes that — in the aftermath of nuclear weapons blasts in cities — “smoke would effectively block out sunlight, causing below-freezing temperatures to engulf the world.”

Researchers estimate such conditions would last for 10 years. The Federation of American Scientists predicts that “a nuclear winter would cause most humans and large animals to die from nuclear famine in a mass extinction event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.”

While there’s a widespread myth that the danger of nuclear war has diminished, this illusion is not the only reason why the climate movement has failed to include prevention of nuclear winter on its to-do list.

Notably, the movement’s organizations rarely even mention nuclear winter. Another factor is the view that — unlike climate change, which is already happening and could be exacerbated or mitigated by policies in the years ahead — nuclear war will either happen or it won’t.

That might seem like matter-of-fact realism, but it’s more like thinly disguised passivity wrapped up in fatalism.

In the concluding chapter of his 2017 book The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg warns: “The threat of full nuclear winter is posed by the possibility of all-out war between the United States and Russia. … The danger that either a false alarm or a terrorist attack on Washington or Moscow would lead to a preemptive attack derives almost entirely from the existence on both sides of land-based missile forces, each vulnerable to attack by the other: each, therefore, kept on a high state of alert, ready to launch within minutes of warning.”

And he adds that “the easiest and fastest way to reduce that risk — and indeed, the overall danger of nuclear war — is to dismantle entirely” the Minuteman III missile force of ICBMs comprising the land-based portion of U.S. nuclear weaponry.

The current issue of The Nation magazine includes an article that Dan Ellsberg and I wrote to emphasize the importance of shutting down all ICBMs. Here are some key points:

** “Four hundred ICBMs now dot the rural landscapes of Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming. Loaded in silos, those missiles are uniquely — and dangerously — on hair-trigger alert. Unlike the nuclear weapons on submarines or bombers, the land-based missiles are vulnerable to attack and could present the commander in chief with a sudden use-them-or-lose-them choice.”

** Former Defense Secretary William Perry wrote five years ago: “First and foremost, the United States can safely phase out its land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force, a key facet of Cold War nuclear policy. Retiring the ICBMs would save considerable costs, but it isn’t only budgets that would benefit. These missiles are some of the most dangerous weapons in the world. They could even trigger an accidental nuclear war.”

** “Contrary to uninformed assumptions, discarding all ICBMs could be accomplished unilaterally by the United States with no downsides. Even if Russia chose not to follow suit, dismantling the potentially cataclysmic land-based missiles would make the world safer for everyone on the planet.”

** Frank von Hippel, a former chairman of the Federation of American Scientists who is co-founder of Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security, wrote this year: “Strategic Command could get rid of launch on warning and the ICBMs at the same time. Eliminating launch on warning would significantly reduce the probability of blundering into a civilization-ending nuclear war by mistake. To err is human. To start a nuclear war would be unforgivable.”

** “Better sooner than later, members of Congress will need to face up to the horrendous realities about intercontinental ballistic missiles. They won’t do that unless peace, arms-control and disarmament groups go far beyond the current limits of congressional discourse — and start emphasizing, on Capitol Hill and at the grassroots, the crucial truth about ICBMs and the imperative of eliminating them all.”

At the same time that the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases have continued to increase, so have the dangers of nuclear war. No imperatives are more crucial than challenging the fossil fuel industry and the nuclear weapons industry as the terrible threats to the climate and humanity that they are.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

 

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It would be unethical to waste doses while thousands are dying with Covid daily, former world leaders say.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 29 2021 (IPS)

When over 100 political leaders meet in Scotland next week for the UN Climate Change Conference, the very future of our planet seems to hinge on the outcome of the summit which is scheduled to take place October 31-November 12.

The 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) meets amid wildly-changing weather patterns worldwide– including the devastation caused by wild fires in 13 states in the US, plus Siberia, Turkey and Greece, heavy rains and severe flooding in central China and Germany, droughts in Iran, Madagascar and southern Angola– all of them warning of a dire future unless there are dramatic changes in our life styles.

The United Nations says rich industrialised G20 nations account for 80% of global emissions—and their leadership is needed more than ever. The decisions they take now will determine whether the promises and pledges made in Paris in 2015 are kept or broken.

And at least four countries– China, Australia, Russia and India – have yet to make new pledges to cut their emissions. Australia, however, came up with an eleventh-hour announcement this week.

The impending hazards also threaten animal and plant species, coral reefs, ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica, and projects a sea-level rise that threatens the very existence of the world’s small island developing states (SIDS) which can be wiped off the face of the earth.

Will COP26 come up with concrete commitments? Or will the summit be another try in a lost cause?

Addressing a press conference October 26, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres predicted a “catastrophic global temperature”.

“Less than one week before COP26 in Glasgow, we are still on track for climate catastrophe even with the last announcements that were made. “

The 2021 Emissions Gap Report shows that with the present Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and other firm commitments of countries around the world, “we are indeed on track for a catastrophic global temperature rise of around 2.7 degrees Celsius.

Now, even if the announcements of the last few days will materialize, “we would still be on track to clearly more than 2 degrees Celsius. These announcements are essentially about 2050 so it is not clear how they will materialize but even if these recent announcements would materialize, we would still be clearly above 2 degrees Celsius.”

Everyone has the right to a healthy environment, free of pollution and its harmful consequences. Credit: WHO/Diego Rodriguez

As the title of this year’s report puts it: “The heat is on.” And as the contents of the report show — the leadership we need is off. Far off, he said.

“We know that humanity’s future depends on keeping global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030. And we also know that, so far, parties to the Paris Agreement are utterly failing to keep this target within reach.”

And the report also shows that countries are squandering a massive opportunity to invest COVID-19 fiscal and recovery resources in sustainable, cost-saving, planet-saving ways.

So far, the report estimates that only about 20 per cent of recovery investments will support the green economy.

As world leaders prepare for COP26, this report is another thundering wake-up call. How many more do we need? Guterres asked

Juan Pablo Osornio, Senior Portfolio Manager, Global Climate Politics, at Greenpeace International, told IPS: “The science is very clear, we need urgent, dramatic and constant emission reductions if we are to stay with the 1.5 oC limit.”

When governments come to Glasgow, he said, they will feel the pressure to act. Nations facing existential threats and a movement composed of Indigenous Peoples, front line communities and youth change the political cost equation and will make sure concrete commitments are made to reduce emissions.

“Glasgow is essentially about who the world belongs to and who we are as human beings”.

He pointed out that negotiations in Glasgow will be about drafting the rules to implement the Paris Agreement.

“The rules should protect the livelihoods of the communities that are most exposed to climate impacts, facing existential threats now and youth, not the bottom line of the industry that created the climate crisis in the first place”.

Rules agreed at Glasgow, he said, should send a clear message that the age of fossil fuels is over and set forward a path for governments to cooperate in the transformation needed to meet the Paris Agreement goals.

“Although worth mentioning that some governments like Gambia already have. We certainly expect political will to bend towards enhancing commitments that will get us closer to halving emissions by 2030 and set us on a path within the 1.5 oC limit.”

Glasgow will create momentum for governments to announce higher targets and follow-up at home with the necessary policies at home to implement them.

He said civil society will bear witness and call out any greenwashing from these announcements, messages that make those talking look responsible, while doing little to nothing to change their polluting ways.

Asked about the four countries – China, Australia, Russia and India – not making new pledges to cut emissions, he said: “Yes, it is very likely that we see these countries come up with new pledges, while China is likely to submit a new NDC, Australia will announce its anodyne net-zero target, followed by something similar from Russia and India”.

“Long-term pledges are not worth the paper they are written on, unless they are anchored on national policy, backed by enforcement, and motivated on action: on coal plants being shut down and wind farms being open; on no more internal combustion engine cars on the street, replaced with a safe, comfortable, fast and carbon free transportation system; and on abundant, lush and diverse ecosystems all over the world,” he declared.

Asked about the 1.5 degree pathway, Matthew Reading-Smith, Communications Coordinator at CIVICUS, based in Johannesburg, told IPS that it was highly unlikely.

Even in the most optimistic scenarios, the 1.5 degree target is increasingly out of reach. The current NDCs are a collective failure and do not meet the scale of the crisis we face.

At this stage, he said, the only country that has submitted a Nationally Determined Contribution consistent with the 1.5 degree goal is The Gambia.

“These negotiations need accountability, and there is an inherent power imbalance within the UN talks, between industrialised countries and countries in the global south. This has only been compounded by the health crisis, and the communities most affected by the climate crisis are also suffering an artificial shortage of vaccines,” said Reading-Smith.

These communities will largely be left out of the physical negotiations, which are critical in holding the high polluting member states to account.

A practical and critical area where industrialised nations need to be held to account is over their failed commitment to deliver US$100 billion a year to countries in the global south to help them adapt to climate change and mitigate further rises in temperature, he noted.

“Meeting this goal is an important litmus test in raising the trillions of dollars needed annually to halt global warming and bring net carbon emissions to zero”.

Like all COPs, there will be a flurry of far-in-the future pledges and declarations, including from countries that have yet to share updated carbon reduction targets.

Based on the 110+ national plans that have already been submitted, we can expect remaining pledges to be light on actionable detail and woefully insufficient in limiting global heating to 2C, he added.

As there has been a lack of public consultation in the design of these national roadmaps, any pending pledges from countries like China, Russia, Australia and India are more likely to reflect business interests rather than the advice and ambition from civil society groups, he declared.

Meanwhile, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said, on the eve of COP26: “It is time to put empty speeches, broken promises, and unfulfilled pledges behind us. We need laws to be passed, programmes to be implemented and investments to be swiftly and properly funded, without further delay.

Only urgent, priority action can mitigate or avert disasters that will have huge – and in some cases lethal – impacts on all of us, especially our children and grandchildren.

States attending the COP-26 meeting in Glasgow need to fulfil their existing climate finance commitments, and indeed increase them — not ignore them for a second year in a row. They need to immediately mobilize resources to mitigate and adapt to climate change, said Bachelet.

 

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The Madrid climate summit in 2019, COP25, left important pending issues that the conference in Glasgow, which begins on Sunday Oct. 31, will have to resolve. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 29 2021 (IPS)

The climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, the most important since 2015, may go down in history as a milestone or as another exercise in frustration, depending on whether or not it resolves the thorny pending issues standing in the way of curbing global warming.

If successful, it could be placed on a par with the 2010 Cancun meeting, which rescued the negotiations after the previous year’s failure in Copenhagen, and Paris, where an agreement was reached in 2015 which defined voluntary emission reductions and a limit to global warming.

But if the summit fails, it will be compared to Copenhagen (COP15), the 2009 conference, and Madrid (COP25), the 2019 summit, whose progress was considered more than insufficient by environmental organisations and academics.

Former Mexican climate negotiator Roberto Dondisch said it is difficult to predict success or failure at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which will take place in Glasgow in the northern UK Oct. 31 to Nov. 12.

“This time we are not seeking an agreement, but trying to work out unresolved issues. The same thing happened in Paris, but a space was created to solve it. The reports are not very promising in terms of where we are at and what we must do. The conditions are very complicated; the will is there, but not the results,” Dondisch, a distinguished fellow at the Washington, DC-based non-governmental Stimson Center, told IPS.

Climate governance has come a long way since the first COP.

Background

In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro on the 20th anniversary of the first U.N. Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, brought together political leaders, scientists, representatives of international organisations and civil society to address the impact of human activities on the environment.

One of the results of the so-called Earth Summit was the creation of the UNFCCC, at a time when there was already evidence of global warming caused by human activity.

In fact, as early as 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), created by the U.N. General Assembly in 1988 and composed of scientists from all over the world entrusted with the responsibility of assessing the existing scientific knowledge related to climate phenomena, released its first report.

Report after report, the IPCC has become a key part of the global climate framework for understanding and addressing the crisis of rising temperatures and their impacts.

Seven years later, in 1997, the member states of the UNFCCC negotiated the Kyoto Protocol (KP), signed in that Japanese city during COP3, which established mandatory emission reduction targets for 36 industrialised countries and the European Union as a bloc, listed in Annex II of the agreement.

In Kyoto, the nations of the developing South were exempted from this obligation in Annex I of the pact.

After the first compliance period (2008-2012), the parties agreed on another period for 2013-2020, which in practice never entered into force, until the protocol was replaced by the Paris Agreement.

The KP, which came into effect in 2005 – without the participation of key countries such as the United States and Russia – also has its own Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), which oversees its implementation and takes decisions to promote its effective implementation.

A view of the main venue for COP26 in Glasgow. Expectations are high for the outcome of the conference, but the two-week discussions and meetings must negotiate an obstacle course to reach concrete results in keeping with the severity of the climate emergency. CREDIT: UNFCCC

The relatively uneventful COP19 in Warsaw in 2013 served to testify to the birth of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts (WIM), whose rules of operation and financing will be central to the Glasgow discussions.

Climate policies will be the focus of COP26, co-chaired by the United Kingdom and Italy, which had to be postponed for a year due to covid-19 pandemic restrictions.

COP26 will address rules for carbon markets, climate finance for at least 100 billion dollars annually, gaps between emission reduction targets and necessary reductions, strategies for carbon neutrality by 2050, adaptation plans, and the local communities and indigenous peoples platform.

But missing from the agenda of the two weeks of discussions will be the goal of hundreds of billions of greenbacks per year, which has been postponed to 2023 – a sign that funding for mitigation and adaptation to climate change is the hot potato for the parties.

Complex architecture

The UNFCCC entered into force in 1994 and has been ratified by 196 parties, with the participation of the EU as a bloc, the Cook Islands and Niue – South Pacific island nations – in addition to the 193 U.N. member states.

The parties to the binding treaty subscribe to a universal convention that recognises the existence of climate change caused by human activities and assigns developed countries the main responsibility for combating the phenomenon.

The COPs, in which all states parties participate, govern the Convention and meet annually in global conferences where they make decisions to achieve the objectives of the climate fight, adopted unanimously or by consensus, especially after the KP failed to reach the negotiated goals.

In Paris, at COP21, member countries agreed on voluntary pollution reduction targets to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 degrees Celsius, considered the indispensable limit to contain disasters such as droughts and destructive storms, with high human and material costs.

These targets are embodied in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), in which countries set out their 2030 and 2050 goals. Only 13 nations have submitted a second version of their measures since they began submitting their actions to the UNFCCC Secretariat in Bonn, Germany, in 2016.

The Paris Agreement, in force since 2020 and so far ratified by 192 states parties, has its own Meeting of the Parties (MOP), which monitors compliance and takes decisions to promote compliance.

Each COP also draws thousands of business delegates, non-governmental organisations, international organisations, scientists and journalists.

In addition, a parallel alternative summit will bring together social movements from around the world, advocating an early phase-out of fossil fuels, rejecting so-called “false solutions” such as carbon markets, and calling for a just energy transition and reparations for damage and redistribution of funds to indigenous communities and countries of the global South.

Sandra Guzmán, director of the Climate Finance Programme at the non-governmental Climate Policy Initiative – with offices in five countries – foresees a complex summit, especially in terms of financing.

“No one knows for sure how loss and damage will be covered. Developed countries don’t want to talk about more funds. The scenario for political agreement is always difficult. The expectation is that the COP will move forward and establish a package of progress and build a good bridge to the next meeting,” she told IPS from London.

For 30 years, the parties to the UNFCCC have been doing the same thing, without achieving the desired reduction in emissions or control of global warming. If COP26 follows the same mechanics, the results are unlikely to change at the end of the two weeks of discussions and activities in which more than 25,000 people will participate.

A selection of the best photos from the African continent and beyond.

Ethiopia has been increasing its wheat production, but this is yet to catch up with growing wheat demand.

Meeting of the Working Group on the National Mental Health Strategic Plan, January 2020

By Saima Wazed and Nazish Arman
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Oct 28 2021 (IPS)

Mental health and treating mental health conditions involves not only treating an individual’s ability to manage their thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and interactions with others, but also ensuring that the social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental conditions are in place through effective national policies, social protections, adequate living standards, working conditions, community social support, and a tiered system of care through a robust network of health services. In Bangladesh, the Mental Health Act 2018 and the National Mental Health Policy 2021 were developed with the above in mind.

The Act and the Policy have also directed the development of the National Mental Health Strategic Plan for the country. The Strategic Plan document has been developed at the request of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s Department of Non-Communicable Diseases. This document has been prepared with funding from the Department for International Development, and technical support from the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for South-East Asia and the Shuchona Foundation. It is envisaged that the strategic plan will allow the incorporation of required priorities of the Government within the broader framework of the policy including appropriate resource allocation with an effective monitoring and evaluation mechanism.

The National Mental Health Strategy 2020-2030 embarks to establish a comprehensive, inter-sectorial, integrated, and responsive system to ensure access to and utilization of quality mental health and psychosocial wellbeing services and information. The mission of the strategic plan is to establish a sustainable, rights based, holistic, inclusive, multi-sectoral framework. This will ensure provision of information and quality services for promoting mental health and psychosocial wellbeing, prevention, treatment, as well as rehabilitation of mental health conditions throughout the life course of the people of Bangladesh.

The strategy development process included a series of reviews of program evaluation reports, literature search, evidence, strategy, and policy documents by consultants, focus group discussions with relevant professional societies, ministries and division, semi-structured interviews with experts, technical group meetings, field visits and stakeholder consultative workshops for consensus building on critical issues and finalization. The core values and principles in the strategic plan are guided by the National Mental Health Policy 2021 (currently pending final approval), the Mental Health Act 2018 and several global plans and charters including the WHO Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2020, UN Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and the Improvement of Mental Health Care, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which have been ratified by the Government of Bangladesh.

Snapshot of Stakeholder consultation with members of the Bangladesh Association of Psychiatrists, October 2020. Some stakeholder consultations were held virtually due to the pandemic.

Four general objectives have been envisioned in this strategic plan which are derived from the ‘WHO Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan 2013 – 2020’:

1) To strengthen effective leadership and governance for mental health.
2) To provide comprehensive, integrated, and responsive mental health and social care services in community-based settings.
3) To implement strategies for promotion and prevention in mental health.
4) To strengthen information systems, evidence, and research for mental health.

The Strategic Plan has been organized in a manner such that, there is a breakdown of specific objectives indicated against each of the General Objectives of WHO’s Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2020, along with global and Bangladesh’s country specific indicators and targets. The mental health strategic plan also outlines Core Responsibility, Collaborative Partners, Advised Activities, Resources, Output Indicators and Funding Allocation for each of the specific objectives.

The Strategic Plan also highlights the different factors across the lifespan that are associated with mental health and provides an overview on how they are linked. There is consistent evidence worldwide that there is a link between mental health and physical health and in fact, one can easily say that they coexist since many of the risk factors of poor physical health are also risk factors for poor mental health. The key factors highlighted in the Strategic Plan include noncommunicable diseases, poverty, nutrition, violence, childhood and adolescence, humanitarian crisis, substance abuse and suicide, amongst others.

In conclusion, it is clear that an effective strategy for mental health, requires a multi-sectoral approach with specific considerations for the needs of vulnerable groups of the population. In order for such a plan to be implementable, sustainable and relevant, it is imperative that stakeholders, especially those with lived experience, provide important insight from their point of view. The goal of the current plan, once approved, is to ensure that not only those living with mental health conditions receive timely and effective treatment, but that the treatment approaches are not further stigmatizing, harmful and threaten their basic human needs and rights. It is hoped that the strategy which has been developed can be easily implemented and will result in a plan of action that will enable greater understanding of mental health in the community and enable greater psychosocial well-being for the people of Bangladesh.

Saima Wazed, a licensed School Psychologist, is currently Clinical Instructor for the Department of School Psychology at Barry University. Additionally, she is Advisor to the Director General of WHO on Autism and Mental Health, Member of WHO’s Expert Advisory Panel on Mental Health, Chairperson of the National Advisory Committee on Autism and NDDs in Bangladesh, Thematic Ambassador for “Vulnerability” of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, and Chairperson of Shuchona Foundation.
Nazish Arman is Lead Content Developer of Shuchona Foundation.

Shuchona Foundation is a non-profit organization focusing on advocacy, research, and capacity-building, specialising in neurodevelopmental disabilities, and mental health. It aims to construct an effective bridge between national and international researchers, policy makers, service providers, persons with NDDs and their families, to promote inclusion nationally, regionally, and globally. The Foundation is a member of the UN ESCAP Working Group on disability as of May 2018, and holds special consultative status with UN ECOSOC since 2019.

Shuchona Foundation was the member of the Working Group on the National Mental Health Strategic Plan; and Saima Wazed was its Chief Advisor.

Excerpt:

[Second of a two-part article]

A statue of a cockerel has been handed back to Nigeria after being in the UK for over a century.

Namibia all-rounder JJ Smit believes the debutants are capable of reaching the semi-finals at the Men's T20 World Cup.

More than 6,000 plant species have been cultivated for food. Now, fewer than 200 make major contributions to food production globally, regionally or nationally. A sea of soy is seen near the city of Porto Nacional, on the right bank of the Tocantins River, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Oct 28 2021 (IPS)

Can yet another dispendious world gathering find a way to halt the ongoing suicidal war on Nature, which is leading to the destruction of all sources of life?

The answer appears to be a bold “no” in view of the business-oriented practices, which deplete biodiversity, pollute the oceans, rise sea levels, cause record temperatures, provoke deadly droughts and floods, and push millions to flee their homes as climate refugees, in addition to more millions of conflict and poverty displaced humans.

Our war with nature includes a food system that generates one third of all greenhouse gas emissions and is also responsible for up to 80 percent of biodiversity loss,
 António Guterres, UN Secretary General

The gathering is scheduled to take place between 31 October and 12 November 2021, in Glasgow, in the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), hosted by the United Kingdom in partnership with Italy.

Although the premises would sound good as the Conference presidency has proposed a Delivery Plan led by Germany and Canada, to mobilise 100 billion US dollars per year for climate finance, past experiences show that one thing is to promise and a totally different thing is to meet the promise.

Anyway, and regardless of whatever will come out –and be implemented– the scenario appears gloomy.

Take the case of the loss of the variety of life system–biodiversity as just one example.

 

Food system, responsible for 80% of biodiversity loss

‘“Our war with nature”, says the UN Secretary General  António Guterres, includes a food system that generates one third of all greenhouse gas emissions and is also responsible for up to 80 percent of biodiversity loss.

On this, the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (CGRFA) explains that thousands of species and their genetic variability make up the web of life and are indispensable to adapt to new conditions, including climate change.

It also explains that biodiversity for food and agriculture is the diversity of plants, animals and micro-organisms at genetic, species and ecosystem levels, present in and around crop, livestock, forest and aquatic production systems.

 

What is Biodiversity?

This year’s State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture assesses biodiversity for food and agriculture and its management worldwide.

It says that biodiversity includes the domesticated plants and animals that are part of crop, livestock, forest or aquaculture systems, harvested forest and aquatic species, the wild relatives of domesticated species, and other wild species harvested for food and other products.

Biological diversity also encompasses what is known as “associated biodiversity”, the vast range of organisms that live in and around food and agricultural production systems, sustaining them and contributing to their output.

And it supplies many vital ecosystem services, such as creating and maintaining healthy soils, pollinating plants, controlling pests and providing habitat for wildlife, including for fish and other species that are vital to food production and agricultural livelihoods.

Despite their vital importance for the survival of humankind, many key components of biodiversity for food and agriculture at genetic, species and ecosystem levels are in decline, warns The State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture.

State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture highlights a set of key facts:

— More than 6,000 plant species have been cultivated for food. Now, fewer than 200 make major contributions to food production globally, regionally or nationally. Out of these, only 9 account for 66 percent of total crop production.

— Overall, the diversity of crops present in farmers’ fields has declined and threats to crop diversity are growing.

— Nearly a third of fish stocks are overfished and a third of freshwater fish species assessed are considered threatened.

— The proportion of livestock breeds at risk of extinction is increasing.

— 7,745 local breeds of livestock are still in existence, but 26 percent of these are at risk of extinction.

While the sharp loss of biological diversity is caused in a high percentage by the dominating industrial mono-culture, agriculture and food system, there is a frequently under-reported link between this and the continuous looting of genetic resources.

Apart from State-owned genetic banks aimed at conserving genetic resources, this process is practiced by giant corporations which collect, mostly in poor countries, seeds and genes of plants, animals, forest and aquatic varieties to patent them as their own property and stock them in their so-called genetic resources banks.

 

What is the diversity of genetic resources?

The diversity of genetic resources for food and agriculture (i.e. plants/crops, animals, aquatic resources, forests, micro-organisms and invertebrates) plays a crucial role in meeting basic human food and nutritional needs, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture consist of a diversity of seeds and planting material of traditional varieties and modern cultivars, crop wild relatives and other wild plant species. These resources are used as food, feed for domestic animals, fibre, clothing, shelter and energy.

Forest genetic resources are the heritable materials maintained within and among tree and other woody plant species that are of actual or potential economic, environmental, scientific or societal value.

Trees are the foundation species of forest ecosystems and many of the world’s 60,000 tree species are also an important component in other ecosystems, such as savannas and agricultural landscapes.

Animal genetic resources for food and agriculture encompass the variability of genes, traits and breeds of the different animal species that play a role in food and agriculture.

Aquatic genetic resources for food and agriculture include DNA, genes, chromosomes, tissues, gametes, embryos and other early life history stages, individuals, strains, stocks, and communities of organisms of actual or potential value for food and agriculture.

This diversity allows organisms to reproduce and grow, adapt to natural and human-induced impacts such as climate change, resist diseases and parasites, and continue to evolve.

 

Mother Earth is self-organised

But perhaps a sound way to summarise the alarming loss of biodiversity, is what the well-known Prof. Vandana Shiva wrote in her recent Rewilding Food, Rewilding our Mind & Rewilding the Earth.

According to this physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers, Mother Earth is self-organised. Mother Earth has created and sustained Diversity.

“Colonialism transformed Mother Earth, Vasundhara, Pachmama, Terra Madre, into Terra Nullius, the empty earth. Our living, bountiful earth, rich in Biodiversity and Cultural Diversity was reduced to an empty earth.”

“The Biodiversity of the earth disappeared in the minds of men who reduced the earth to private property to be owned…”

 

South Africa's Quinton de Kock apologises after refusing to take a knee against the West Indies and says he is "not a racist".

By External Source
Kabul / New York, Oct 28 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Immediately following the first all-women UN mission to Afghanistan since takeover by the de facto authorities, Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait – the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises – appealed to donors to significantly increase financial support for a robust collective humanitarian-development nexus response. This includes urgent scaled up funding to UN agencies and NGO partners delivering life-saving education to vulnerable children and adolescents on the ground.

Amid an escalating health and nutrition crisis for children, with cold winter temperatures dropping quickly, a national economic meltdown, and the impacts of prolonged drought and years of conflict, the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that over half the population in Afghanistan – 23 million people – will struggle to put food on the table during the upcoming winter; the largest number ever recorded. Additionally, nearly 10 million girls and boys depend on humanitarian assistance to survive. All this against a backdrop of two decades of development programming severely impacted in the past two months.

“Salaries have not been paid for months, money and goods are no longer circulating in the country, entire communities and families have lost their livelihoods and struggle to make ends meet. Those who suffer the brunt of this acute crisis are the most innocent and vulnerable: girls, boys, adolescents and youth,” said Yasmine Sherif. “UN member states, donors and humanitarian organizations, as well as crisis-sensitive development organizations, must remain engaged and act together now to support children, teachers, educators and the Afghan people – with education at the center of the response – because education is their future and the future of the country. An estimated $1 billion dollars is urgently required by organizations working in the education sector.”

While the majority of schools were closed in Afghanistan during 2020-2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most primary schools for both girls and boys have reopened since the takeover of power in August. According to UN and NGO partners on the ground, with regards to secondary education, girls’ education has resumed in some provinces to date.

“For the millions of children living through the turmoil of today’s Afghanistan, education and learning is a lifeline that must be supported. Not only does it give girls and boys the tools to lead a healthy and productive life, but it also keeps them protected and safe,” said Alice Akunga, UNICEF’s Deputy Representative in Afghanistan. “We are asking the international community to come together to prevent the collapse of the education system and safeguard the gains made for children over the past two decades.”

During her three-day mission, Sherif met with the de facto authorities in Kabul, stressing the importance of increasing access to quality education for all children, with an emphasis on adolescent girls, throughout the country. Sherif also visited a girls’ school in Kabul and met with a wide range of education partners, including the UN-SRSG, UN agencies, international and national civil society organizations, and members of the education in emergency working group to take stock of the situation on the ground and identify additional opportunities to expand ECW emergency education investments and scaled up funding for UN and NGOs in the education sector.

Working with a direct execution modality through UN agencies and civil society organizations, ECW has been supporting the delivery of education programmes for the most vulnerable girls and boys in Afghanistan since 2018.

“Through community-based education and accelerated programmes, we have been able to operate in the most challenging contexts with tangible education results, including our focus on female teachers and girls’ education,” said Sherif. “Our partner UNICEF, other UN agencies, and national and international NGOs continue to operate in the country. They are ready to scale up and expand their work to new areas that have become accessible. But to do so, enormous financial resources are urgently needed.”

To date, ECW has invested US$45 million to support the education of girls, boys and adolescents in Afghanistan. This includes US$36 million for the first Multi-Year Resilience Programme (of which US$24 million has already been disbursed), previous First Emergency Response grants of US$4.6 million, and a recent First Emergency Response grant of US$4 million in response to the recent escalating needs.

These whole-of-child education approaches have proven effective and yielded promising results, including in areas not under the previous government’s control. According to ECW’s 2020 Annual Report, 58% of beneficiaries supported by ECW-funded interventions are girls, with programmes implemented in some of the hardest-to-reach provinces in Afghanistan such as Herat, Kunduz, Kandahar and Uruzgan.

Even before the most recent humanitarian crisis, 4.2 million children were not enrolled in school in Afghanistan; around 60 per cent of them are girls. Rural areas of the country, particularly, also lacked adequate infrastructure and educational materials – with conflict, large-scale population displacement, and inequalities of access to quality education exacerbating the situation, particularly for girls, children with disabilities and marginalized communities.

“With our UN and civil society partners, ECW has a proven model of delivering access to quality education in crisis-impacted countries around the world,” said Sherif. “I call on our strategic partners and donors to support ECW and our UN and NGO partners in sustaining and urgently scaling up our programmes for all girls and boys in Afghanistan. Education is their inherent human right and every girl’s right. We have a moral, legal and ethical obligation to not abandon them at this crucial time in their young lives, especially at this critical point in Afghanistan’s history. It is a test of our own humanity.”

 

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Climate Change is one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 13), but t’s becoming increasingly clear that climate change plays a role in many, if not all of the SDGs, and that achieving the 2030 Agenda will be impossible without making serious inroads into tackling the problem. Credit: United Nations

By Meena Raman
PENANG, Malaysia, Oct 28 2021 (IPS)

It is well-known that all the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) added together, even those that have been updated, will not help to place the world on a 1.5 degree C pathway.

The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the ‘Physical Science’ shows that for a 50% probability of limiting temperature rise to a 1.5 degree pathway, taking into account the historical and cumulative emissions, there is a remaining carbon budget of 500 gigatons of CO2 left and the world emits about 42 gigatons of CO2 per year.

Which means that within a decade, this budget would be exhausted, leading to difficulty in limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degree C.

Hence, it is important to recognise and acknowledge that the developed countries in particular, have not shown their leadership in taking on their fair share of the emission cuts needed.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and COP 16 in 2010 in Cancun, acknowledged that the largest share of historical global emissions of greenhouse gases originated in developed countries and that, owing to this historical responsibility, developed country Parties must take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof.

We do need to understand that under the UNFCC and the Paris Agreement, the principles of equity and ‘common-but-differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ (CBDRRC) are fundamental in understanding the differentiated obligations between developed and developing countries.

Moreover, developed countries have failed to reduce their emissions despite the decisions taken.

Failure by developed countries to deliver on promised emissions reductions

First commitment period (1CP) under the Kyoto Protocol from 2008 to 2012 only saw aggregate emissions of Annex 1 countries to be cut by 5% compared to 1990 levels. Despite this very low ambition, the United States (US) left the Protocol.

Promise in 2012 by developed countries in the 2nd commitment period to revisit their emission reduction targets by 2014 from 18 per cent by 2020 to at least 25-40 per cent was never realized.

The goal post shifted by developed countries calling all countries to plug the emissions gap –which turns the CBDR-RC principle on its head to ‘common and shared responsibilities’, with no reference to historical responsibility or equity between the North and South.

In fact, between 1990 and 2018, developed countries on aggregate achieved only 13% emissions reductions between 1990 and 2018.

Countries in Western Europe, United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have not managed to reduce their aggregate emissions between 1990 and 2020. Instead, their aggregate emissions slightly increased from 13,227.97 MTCO2eq in 1990 to 13,331.23 MTCO2eq in 2020.

So, instead of undertaking real deep emissions cuts to real zero by now, developed countries are announcing distant net-zero targets with 2050 as the target year, which again reflect reductions which are too little too late and that will exhaust the remaining carbon budget very soon.

Hence, we must demand real and rapid zero from developed countries, not distant targets. Moreover, net zero targets mean that there will be reliance on carbon-offsets, where developed countries will pay developing countries to do the emission removals, which will then go to the credit of developed countries.

This will mean that developing countries will have to do even more emissions cuts in their countries, as the offset credits sold to developed countries cannot be counted as part of their NDCs, as there cannot be double-counting and double-claiming of carbon credits.

There is no more room for offsetting, and what needs to happen urgently in the rich world is for very deep and rapid de-carbonisation.

Then, there is the much-needed finance and technology transfer that has to be delivered to developing countries to enable their transition to low-carbon pathways as soon as possible.

The USD 100 billion per year by 2020 which was promised by developed countries has fallen short and Glasgow has to see actual delivery and timelines for this goal to be realised.

Even this USD 100 billion per year target is a far cry from what is needed by developing countries, who have indicated the need for USD 5.8-5.9 trillion to implement their NDCs up to 2030.

As has been pointed out earlier, the G20 as a group is not recognised under the UNFCCC and the PA but what is recognised is developed and developing countries. It is not the leadership of the G20 that is needed but the leadership of the G7 — as per the Convention and the PA.

The developed and developing countries in the G20 cannot be viewed as having the same responsibility, leadership ability and capabilities. That will be contrary to the equity and CBDRRC principles of the UNFCCC and PA.

Actually, it is the decisions taken in Paris that have to be honoured and respected, and not a shifting of the goal posts by the developed world as pointed out above. It is true that developed countries in particular have to do their fair share of the emission cuts and also provide the finance and technology needed as payment of their climate debt.

Also, we have to remember that it is not only emissions reductions or mitigation that are important. Also critical is adaptation and addressing loss and damage (which goes beyond adaptation, as in for e.g. an extreme weather event that wipes out an economy of a country).

These are critical issues for developing countries, where real action on adaptation and loss and damage are enabled on the ground, including in scaling up finance in this regard.

China has announced a carbon-neutrality target of 2060. India is expected to announce an updated NDC. We cannot put China and India on the same footing as the developed world. China’s and India’s emissions are large due to their population. On a per capita basis, they are still much less than the developed countries.

We do not know about Australia and Russia. It is quite clear that these countries are not going to phase out from their dependence on fossil fuels anytime soon.

In fact, instead of the rich developed countries phasing out fossil fuels, what we see is the continued production and expansion of fossil fuels, as made clear by the UNEP Production Gap report.

This is indeed worrying, as the developed world has no excuse to delay action. It is their delayed action mainly that is responsible for the current global warming, as made clear by their historical overuse of the carbon budget, as shown by the AR 6 of the IPCC.

Meena Raman is Head of Programmes at Third World Network – headquartered in Penang, Malaysia.

 

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Agnes Wanjiru was allegedly murdered by a British soldier nearly 10 years ago.

To reduce hunger, food systems must be transformed to prevent 17 percent of total food production from being lost, as is currently the case. Credit: FAO

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, Oct 27 2021 (IPS)

During October, the World Food Month, there has been a huge increase in the number of qualified voices promoting new ways to transform food systems that would allow to reduce and eliminate hunger, of which more than 811 million people in the world are already victims.

Based on the conclusions of the Food Systems Summit, held virtually on September 23, as well as its “hybrid” preparatory phase that took place in Rome in July, with the physical presence of 540 delegates and virtual presence of more than 20,000 people around the world, a growing number of personalities continue to advance into these reflections.

Globally, about 14 percent of food produced is lost between harvest and retail sale, equivalent to a loss of $ 400 billion per year, while food waste is estimated to reach 17 percent of total production: 11 percent is wasted in homes, 5 percent in food service establishments, and 2 percent in retail trade

This should pave the way to new avenues paths that will fulfill the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) foreseen by the international community by 2030, for which the eradication of hunger and poverty are considered to be priorities.

The transformation of agri-food systems must begin with normal consumers and the decisions they make about the food they consume, where it is bought, how it is packaged, where it is discarded, on the basis that all this will have an impact on the future of the planet, so it is necessary to reduce food loss and waste.

Globally, about 14 percent of food produced is lost between harvest and retail sale, equivalent to a loss of $ 400 billion per year, while food waste is estimated to reach 17 percent of total production: 11 percent is wasted in homes, 5 percent in food service establishments, and 2 percent in retail trade.

Pope Francis, in his message addressed during World Food Day on October 16, recalled that “currently we observe a true paradox in terms of access to food: on the one hand, more than 3 billion people do not have access to a nutritious diet, while, on the other hand, almost 2 billion people are overweight or obese due to a poor diet and a sedentary life.”

“Our lifestyles and daily consumption practices influence global and environmental dynamics, but if we aspire to a real change, we must urge producers and consumers to make ethical and sustainable decisions, and educate younger generations on the important role they play to make a world without hunger a reality,” stated the pontiff.

And for that, he emphasized, we must begin “with our daily life and simplest gestures: knowing our common house, protecting it and being aware of its importance, which should be the first step to be custodians and promoters of the environment.”

According to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the way food is produced, consumed and wasted “is having a disastrous consequence for our planet”, and “this is putting historical pressure on our natural resources and the environment” and “it is costing us billions of dollars every year”, underlining that “the power of change is in our hands”.

The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu is convinced that efforts must be accelerated towards the achievement of the SDGs foreseen for 2030 “with a view to halving food waste in the world and reducing food losses in the production and supply chain, including post-harvest losses,” noting that “there are only nine seasons (harvests) left to do so.”

The Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Inger Andersen, recalled that food loss and waste “are the origin of 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions”, which means that “valuable land and water resources are being used for nothing.”

She added that reducing food loss and waste will slow “climate change, protect nature and increase food security at a time when we desperately need that to happen.”

Dr QU, FAO’s head, agreed and considered that “it is not possible to continue losing 75 billion cubic meters of water per year in the production of fruit and vegetables.”

Experts from FAO estimate that it will be necessary to invest between 40 and 50 billion dollars annually to end hunger by 2030.

In particular, they highlighted the implementation of low-cost and high-impact projects that can help hundreds of millions of people to better meet their food needs, mainly with research, as well as with development and digital innovation to achieve advanced technology agriculture.

These thoughts and initiatives are added to those already made by the Foreign Ministers of the Group of 20 (G20) in Matera, Italy, in June, and the G20 Ministers of Agriculture in Florence, Italy, in September.

In those meetings, they emphasized the value of creating coalitions of countries together with civil society organizations, the private sector, particularly agricultural producers, academics and scientists, as well as other actors to exchange ideas and solutions in this phase of Covid-19 pandemic.

And in turn, to project the post-Covid scenario that helps relaunch countries with sustainability and resilience in strategic areas such as agriculture and food.

Excerpt:

Mario Lubetkin is Assistant Director General at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait, is welcomed by a student at a girls’ primary school in Kabul, Afghanistan. Credit: Omid Fazel/ECW

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 27 2021 (IPS)

Education Cannot Wait Director Yasmine Sherif urged the world to support their efforts to provide education to children living in Afghanistan – in what she called the “biggest humanitarian crisis” on earth.

“Their education cannot wait. Action cannot wait across all sectors. Financing and funding cannot wait. And our own humanity cannot wait,” Sherif said at a press briefing from Islamabad Airport at the conclusion of an all-women UN delegation to Afghanistan to assess the educational needs in the country.

The ECW mission was a joint effort with UNICEF Afghanistan to assess the situation and the capacity for UN agencies and their partners based in the country to respond to issues.

Sherif stated that to support education efforts in Afghanistan, attention must also be given to the other crises within the country. Afghanistan was at risk of an “economic meltdown” and on the “brink of collapse” that would disproportionately impact its citizens. To add to their woes, they were about to go into a devastating winter, and so dire was the situation that teachers had not been paid.

“About 20 years of development and the gains we have made are about to be lost if we don’t take immediate action,” Sherif said. There is an urgency to provide aid and continue running the programmes that work directly with the affected populations, including communities in the hardest-to-reach regions.

She emphasized the need to increase funding for UN agencies, NGOs and regional partners to carry out their work. UN agencies such as UNICEF, UNHCR, and UNWOMEN can negotiate access for children, especially girls, to attend school across all education levels and even pay for teachers’ salaries. UN field agents based in Afghanistan already have the experience and awareness to navigate the systems that would allow them to negotiate access.

Yasmine Sherif is welcomed by teachers and students at a girls’ primary school in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Credit: Omid Fazel/ECW

The ECW has previously provided US$45 million to support education for boys and girls, including a first response emergency grant of US$4 million in the wake of changes in ruling authorities. Sherif stated that an estimated US$1 billion would be needed to cover the cost to run programmes by the UN agencies, including ECW. In addition to education, this would also be distributed to programmes targeting other areas, including but not limited to food security and water sanitation. In this regard, she stated that food insecurity and access to hygiene would influence citizens and impact their quality of life. It would also affect women and children and their access to specialized health.

Sherif urged that it was more important than ever to continue implementing the SDGs in the middle of the current humanitarian crisis. “Education sits at the heart of all the SDGs,” she said.

She advised that a “direct execution modality” approach that would send funds directly to the UN agencies and partners would be critical as it would ensure funding went directly to the agencies that worked with affected communities. Sherif said it was important to maintain an “apolitical approach” to reach the people affected by humanitarian crises.

Access to education in Afghanistan has been challenged due to pre-existing factors such as accessibility to schools, lack of infrastructure and particularly challenging topography, which mean that many live in hard to access rural areas. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic also posed an issue for schools and communities, forcing schools to close in 2020.

A study from UNICEF found that 3.7 million children in Afghanistan are out of school, 60% of which are girls. Sherif stated that shrinking this significant gap would require a collective effort from UN agencies on the field with civil society organizations, non-government organizations, the private sector, and local, regional, and national authorities.

Sherif revealed at the press briefing that some primary schools in Kabul and the northern and southern regions of Afghanistan had reopened to both boys and girls. Some high schools have also had mixed classes with both boys and girls. In rural areas, partner agencies such as UNICEF will continue to support the Community-Based Education (CBE) programmes, which help establish Community-Based Schools and other alternative pathways to learning for children and adolescents based in hard-to-reach regions.

Concerns over girls’ access to education were raised when the Taliban assumed power on August 15, 2021. While they established a channel for communication with foreign groups, they have sent conflicting messages regarding education. They declared that high schools would reopen for their male students but did not mention when girls would return. This was interpreted as an effective ban on girls’ right to school.

The ECW-UNICEF team met with the authorities to determine the steps needed to promote access to education for girls. The authorities have allegedly expressed an interest in preserving women’s rights and access to education. They have stated that they are formulating plans but would need time. Sherif expressed that she was “cautiously optimistic” about the Taliban’s openness to negotiation.

The extent of the reforms and actions needed to improve access to education will remain to be seen. What is more urgent at this stage, Sherif reiterated, is immediate action and funding to agencies and partners to address different issues before it is too late.

 

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• Education Cannot Wait for Refugee Children in Crisis, says Yasmine Sherif

Every day, dozens of migrants from Central America, Haiti and Venezuela come early in the morning to the offices of the governmental Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid in downtown Mexico City to apply for asylum. Mexico is overwhelmed by the influx of migrants, to whom it has begun to apply harsh restrictions. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 27 2021 (IPS)

In September, 31-year-old Yesenia decided to leave her home on the outskirts of the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula, driven out by violence and the lack of water.

“The maras (gangs) were threatening me, and it hadn’t rained, there was very little water. I had to leave, I had to go somewhere, anywhere. I want to stay wherever they let me,” the mother of a seven-year-old girl, who was a homemaker in one of the most violent cities in the world, told IPS.

It was the first time she had left her country. She reached the southern Mexican state of Chiapas (bordering Guatemala), and continued on by bus and hitchhiking. “We slept in the bushes, walked, went hungry, got rained on and sometimes froze,” she said, describing the journey she made with her daughter.

Yesenia, who is short and dark-haired with a round face, now lives in an area that she does not name for security reasons, and is applying for refugee status in the capital of Mexico, a country that has historically been a huge source of migrants to the United States as well as a transit route for people from other countries heading there as well. It has also become, over the last decade, a growing recipient of undocumented migrants.

Due to the large number of requests for asylum, which has stretched Mexico’s immigration and refugee system to the limit, it takes a long time for cases to be resolved. Although immigration advocacy organisations provide assistance in the form of money, food, lodging and clothing, these resources are limited and the aid eventually comes to an end.

Driven out by poverty, lack of basic services, violence and climate-related phenomena, millions of people leave their countries in Central America every year, heading mainly to the United States, to find work and to reunite with family.

But in the face of the increasing crackdown on immigration in the U.S. since 2016 under the administrations of Donald Trump (2016-January 2021) and current President Joe Biden, many undocumented migrants have opted to stay in places that were previously only transit points, such as Mexico.

The problem is that Mexico also tightened the screws, as part of the role it agreed with the U.S. to perform during the times of Trump, who successfully pressured the governments of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-December 2018) and current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to step up their own anti-immigration measures. And this has not changed since Biden took office.

Like the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, Mexico and the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) are highly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis. Drought and devastating hurricanes drive people from their homes to safer areas or across borders in search of better lives.

Honduras is one illustration of this phenomenon. Since 1970, more than 30 major tropical storms have hit the country, leaving a trail of deaths and billions of dollars in property damage. Hurricanes Eta and Iota struck in 2020. For this year, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) predicted 17 hurricanes on the Atlantic side before the official end of hurricane season on Nov. 30.

In early September, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández also declared a drought emergency, another increasingly recurrent and intense phenomenon in Central America.

The refugee club

Caribbean island nations such as Haiti are also suffering from the climate emergency. The country was hit by Hurricane Elsa in June and by Tropical Storm Fred and Hurricane Grace in August, on top of an Aug. 14 earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale that claimed thousands of lives.

In 2017, a particularly lethal year, hurricanes Harvey and Irma struck Haiti. As a result, Sadaam decided to leave, heading first to Chile that year and now to Mexico, where he has applied for humanitarian asylum.

“Things got very difficult. The hardware store where I worked had to close because of the rains and I couldn’t work. I can do any kind of job and that’s all I ask for: work,” the 30-year-old Haitian migrant told IPS.

Tall and lean, Sadaam, originally from Port-au-Prince, also arrived in Mexico in September, with his wife and his son, as well as his brother and sister-in-law and their daughter. They are living temporarily in a hotel, with support from humanitarian organisations.

On Oct. 6, the Mexican government deported 129 Haitians to Port-au-Prince on a chartered flight from Tapachula, a city in the southern state of Chiapas. The measure was criticised by social organisations, while the U.N. called for an evaluation of the need for protection of Haitians and the risks of returning them to their country. CREDIT: INM

Climate disaster = displacement

Recent studies and migration statistics show that the paths followed by migrants and climate disasters in the region are intertwined.

Between 2000 and 2019, Cuba, Mexico and Haiti were the hardest hit, by a total of 110 storms which caused 39 billion dollars in damage, affected 29 million people and left 5,000 dead, 85 percent of them in Haiti, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

In 2020, internal and external displacement due to disasters soared in El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras. But the international migratory framework has not yet accepted the official category of climate refugee, despite growing clamor for its inclusion.

Armelle Gouritin, an academic at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences-Mexico, told IPS that the scientific community has linked the sudden events to the climate emergency, whose influence on internal and external migration flows is growing.

“There is evidence that they are increasing. It is quite difficult to say to what extent the volume of migration is growing, because there is little quantitative data. It is hard to compare. It tends to be invisible, especially because of slow onset processes such as drought and desertification,” she explained.

In her 2021 book “The protection of internal climate migrants; a pending task in Mexico”, the expert described scenarios linked to migration, such as gradual-onset phenomena, sudden-onset disasters (hurricanes or violence generated by water shortages), relocations decided by the authorities, sea level rise and the impact of renewable energy megaprojects.

As Mexico has become a magnet for migration, measures against immigration have been stiffened. This year, through August alone, immigration authorities detained 148,903 people, almost twice as many as in all of 2020, when the total was 82,379.

Of the current total, according to official data, 67,847 came from Honduras, 44,712 from Guatemala, 12,010 from El Salvador and 7,172 from Haiti.

Deportations are also on the rise, as up to August, Mexico removed 65,799 undocumented migrants, compared to 60,315 in the whole of 2020. Of these, 25,660 were from Honduras, 25,660 from Guatemala, 2,583 from El Salvador and 223 from Haiti.

The Haitian influx was triggered after the United States announced in August that it would halt deportations of those already in the country because of the earthquake, which drew thousands of Haitians who were in Brazil and Chile, where they had migrated earlier and where policies against them had been tightened.

In Mexico, according to official figures refugee applications increased from 70,406 in all of 2019 to 90,314 this year up to and including September, of which 26,007 were filed by Haitian migrants. Migrants from Honduras, Haiti, Cuba, El Salvador, and Venezuela account for the largest number of applications.

Despite the large rise in applications, Mexico only approved 13,100 permanent refugees in September: 5,755 from Honduras, 1,454 from El Salvador, 733 from Haiti and 524 from Guatemala.

On the night of Oct. 7, a military checkpoint found 800 migrants from Central America in three truck trailers on a highway in the state of Tamaulipas in northeastern Mexico, bordering the United States, where they were headed. CREDIT: Elefante Blanco/Pie de Página

Fleeing the climate emergency

The World Bank study “Groundswell: Acting on Internal Climate Migration” warns that Mexico must prepare for the confluence of climate disasters and migration flows, and projects 86 million internal climate migrants in the world by 2050, including 17 million in Latin America.

The report, published on Sept. 13, estimates that the number of climate migrants will grow between 2020 and 2050, when between 1.4 and 2.1 million people will migrate in Mexico and Central America. Mexico’s central valley, where the capital city is located, and the western highlands of Guatemala will receive migrants, while people will flee arid, agricultural and low-lying coastal areas.

Although several international bodies link migration and the climate crisis, the concept of climate migrant or refugee does not exist in the international legal framework.

Gouritin understands the international reluctance to address the issue. “There are three narratives for mobility: responsibility, security and human rights. States are not willing to head towards the responsibility narrative. The security narrative predominates, we have seen it with the caravans from Central America (on the way to the United States through Mexico),” she said.

Few countries are prepared to address the climate dimension of migration, as is the case of Mexico. The general laws on Climate Change, of 2012, and on Forced Internal Displacement, of 2020, mention climate impacts but do not include measures or define people internally displaced by climate phenomena.

In the United States, undocumented Mexicans are experiencing the same thing, as deportations of Mexicans could well exceed the levels of all of 2020, since 184,402 people were deported that year compared to 148,584 as of last August alone.

Yesenia and Sadaam are two migrants who are suffering the statistics in the flesh, as victims of their own governments and the Mexican response.

“I’ll stay wherever I can get a job to support and educate my daughter,” said Yesenia. With refugee status, migrants can work freely.

Sadaam said: “I was offered a job as a cleaner in a hotel, but they asked me for a refugee card. The government told me that I have to wait for the call for the appointment. If I get a job, I will stay here.”

But above and beyond the detentions, deportations and refugee applications, migration will continue, as long as droughts, floods and storms devastate their places of origin.

Meeting of the Working Group on the National Mental Health Strategic Plan, April 2019

By Saima Wazed and Nazish Arman
DHAKA, Oct 27 2021 (IPS)

Mental health is a state of well-being when both your body and your mind are in balance, and you are able to deal with the difficulties and challenges that come your way and easily find joy, peace, and happiness once the challenge is overcome. For many people though, the challenges often remain for too long – the pain of losing someone you dearly loved, being diagnosed with a chronic disease like cancer or a heart condition, losing your family/home/job or feeling like you failed to meet expectations. All those things and more can trigger so much intense stress and maladjustment, that if it goes unchecked and untreated, it may lead to a chronic disease, a mental health disorder. WHO defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. The majority of people are able to cope and get back to life as normal, but for the many who cannot, they begin to experience intense detachment from reality (experiencing delusions, pervasive sadness, uncontrollable fears, intense anger and/or fantasies and hallucinations). For those individuals, there is limited help and treatment in every country in the world. Those who suffer from mental health disorders and the brave professionals who learn to treat them are chronically stigmatized, under-appreciated and under-paid.

Mental health conditions, substance use disorders, suicide, and neurological disorders like dementia affect more than a billion people annually, account for an estimated third of the global burden of disability and result in 14% of global deaths. (Vigo et al., 2016). There has been increasing global recognition of the importance of mental health and the significant global burden of mental health conditions in both developing and developed countries. More than 80% of people experiencing them are living without any form of quality, affordable health care. Due to negligence and ignorance, we have high levels of mortality through suicide and increased comorbid medical conditions. According to a study published in 2016, it is estimated that 14.3% of deaths worldwide, or approximately 8 million deaths per year are attributable to mental health disorders.

The 7th Five Year Plan (FYP) and Vision 2021 of the Government of Bangladesh recognized the urgency of addressing mental health and developed a comprehensive system of care that can be implemented within our well tiered health infrastructure. This plan emphasized that proper health is essential not only for physical well-being but also for economic livelihood. To realize the vision of the 7th FYP, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is implementing its 4th Health, Population and Nutrition Sector Programme (4th HPNSP) from January 2017 to June 2022. The 4th HPNSP’s objectives include strengthening governance, institutional efficiency, expanding access and improving quality within the universal health care system. To achieve the SDGs target, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has committed to ensuring that mental health is a priority in the 4th HPNSP.

Saima Wazed, Chief Advisor to the Working Group on the National Mental Health Strategic Plan, at its meeting in April 2019

It is important to note that Bangladesh is among the first few countries in the WHO South-East Asia Region to place mental health as one of its top 10 priority health conditions. Mental health programming in Bangladesh has undergone several phases of evolution. Bangladesh passed a new Mental Health Act in 2018; is working on finalizing a Mental Health Policy; and has developed a National Strategic Plan after conducting a thorough situation analysis involving both professionals and those with lived experiences. The focus of the Mental Health Act is to protect the dignity of citizens with mental health conditions, provide them with healthcare, ensure their right to property and rehabilitate them. The law has 31 sections and will oversee the direction, development, expansion, regulation, and coordination of mental health related issues and duties entrusted to the Government. The National Mental Health Policy 2021 which is currently under final approval, provides an overarching direction by establishing a broad framework for action and coordination, through common vision and values for programing and mental health service delivery. Although still under review, this policy document acknowledges the significance and importance of relevant and useful local knowledge and practices, and adheres to global and regional thinking, taking into perspective the Bangladesh context.

Across the globe in most nations, mental health treatment is underfunded and lack a well-designed system of care within the health system primarily due to a limited understanding of how to treat adequately, severe social stigma, and complication of the conditions. The situation is similar in Bangladesh, where mental health has been a low priority in both health services delivery and planning for many years now. To address these issues, developing a comprehensive and multi-sectoral National Mental Health Strategic Plan was the only way forward to ensure access to quality mental health care services across the nation.

Saima Wazed, a licensed School Psychologist, is currently Clinical Instructor for the Department of School Psychology at Barry University. Additionally, she is Advisor to the Director General of WHO on Autism and Mental Health, Member of WHO’s Expert Advisory Panel on Mental Health, Chairperson of the National Advisory Committee on Autism and NDDs in Bangladesh, Thematic Ambassador for “Vulnerability” of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, and Chairperson of Shuchona Foundation.

Nazish Arman is Lead Content Developer of Shuchona Foundation.

Shuchona Foundation is a non-profit organization focusing on advocacy, research, and capacity-building, specialising in neurodevelopmental disabilities, and mental health. It aims to construct an effective bridge between national and international researchers, policy makers, service providers, persons with NDDs and their families, to promote inclusion nationally, regionally, and globally. The Foundation is a member of the UN ESCAP Working Group on disability as of May 2018, and holds special consultative status with UN ECOSOC since 2019.

Shuchona Foundation was the member of the Working Group on the National Mental Health Strategic Plan; and Saima Wazed was its Chief Advisor.

 

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Excerpt:

[First of a two-part article]

Pressure mounts on the military to restore civilian rule as international bodies respond.