Africa

Armed militias in the two countries are said to be helping each other with weapons and intelligence.

Monika, a BRAC program participant in Bangladesh, operating a climate-adaptive livelihood based on floating agriculture. Credit: BRAC

By Julie Kedroske
NEW YORK, Oct 21 2021 (IPS)

As the United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, approaches (31 October -12 November in Glasgow, Scotland), climate action is more urgent than ever. Yes, we need climate change mitigation.

But for the people who are most marginalized, the impacts of climate change are already severe and worsening, necessitating an expansion of climate resilience interventions too.

Women, particularly in climate vulnerable countries in the Global South, are set to bear many of the worst impacts of the climate crisis. More than half of people displaced by climate change are women and girls, and climate shocks reduce women’s life expectancies more than men’s on average.

Poverty is increasing women’s climate vulnerability even further. Women are more likely to experience extreme poverty than men, and women in extreme poverty often lack the resources and tools to bounce back from the economic impacts of climate change, facing exclusion from social policies and programs.

Climate change will continue to exacerbate these inequalities, driving up to 132 million people into extreme poverty by 2030 due to rising food prices, health shocks, and natural disasters.

But these disasters are not “natural”. Climate change is human-made, and we as an international community can take the steps needed to support preparedness, mitigation, adaptation, and recovery efforts.

Countries can prevent the worst impacts of climate change on their most vulnerable populations through increased funding and focus on building climate resilience for those furthest behind in our current system, including women in extreme poverty.

But how can we make climate resilience policies and programs more inclusive and effective?

In our experience advising on interventions at the intersection of extreme poverty, gender inequality, and climate change at BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI), we have identified three key learnings.

First, policies and programs must actively seek to identify the most marginalized households to ensure their inclusion. To enable women in extreme poverty to build climate resilience, development actors must first reach them.

This population is often excluded from existing social protection programs, with 79 percent of the bottom quintile of earners in low-income countries receiving no social assistance whatsoever.

By specifically targeting people (predominantly women) in extreme poverty with a multi-step process tailored to local data, needs, and capacity, climate resilience programs can bring previously unreachable populations into government safety nets.

To empower marginalized households to build resilience specifically for climate shocks, interventions should factor in an analysis of which households are most climate vulnerable, combining this with other methods including an analysis of the enabling environment (including existing infrastructure, programs, policies, and social norms).

This is just one example of the ways development actors will need to consciously target excluded populations on the basis of both climate and socioeconomic vulnerabilities as climate shocks worsen.

Second, interventions must be adapted to local needs. For climate resilience interventions to have an impact on women in extreme poverty, they need to take into account local contexts, markets, and challenges.

For example, in drought-prone regions of Kenya, people in extreme poverty are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change as many rely on raising livestock. Their livelihoods are threatened by worsening droughts, especially women and youth.

Between 2016 and 2019, the Government of Kenya and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) partnered with BRAC, CARE Kenya, and The BOMA Project on a climate-adaptive Graduation program in Kitui and Samburu provinces to strengthen the resilience of women, youth, and their households to climate shocks.

The program encouraged participants to maintain multiple sources of income and to save for economic and climate shocks to minimise their risk of losing livelihoods. As a result, over 80 percent of households had at least two income sources at the end of the intervention.

Worsening droughts threaten the livelihoods of women in the rural, ASAL regions of Kenya. Credit: BRAC/BOMA 2018

In Kairouan, Tunisia, women in extreme poverty are especially vulnerable to climate risks such as increased frequency and severity of extreme weather, changes in temperature and precipitation, and increased soil erosion.

To address these risks, the Tunisian government has partnered with IFAD and BRAC on a Graduation program identifying climate-adaptive, gender-sensitive livelihoods for participants that are designed for the local context and providing training on saving, diversifying incomes, and withstanding climate shocks.

By taking into account local climate vulnerabilities and challenges for women in extreme poverty, climate resilience programs can empower them to not only withstand climate shocks, but also build long-term livelihoods and savings which enable them to create a path out of the poverty trap and prevent them from falling back into it.

Third, constant learning through evaluation and iteration is crucial to impact. To develop and scale effective approaches which combat climate-induced poverty, the international community needs to increase their support and commit significantly more resources to evidence-based interventions.

Development actors and their research partners should also take an iterative approach, evolving programs over time based on findings from internal and external evaluations in parallel. By regularly reevaluating program design and delivery, implementers can not only improve impact at scale, but also become more responsive to changes in the local context.

This is particularly crucial for interventions aimed at building climate resilience for marginalized populations, as it enables programs to constantly adapt to climate impacts on programming.

At BRAC UPGI, we see every day how worsening climate shocks have the greatest impact on the people who contribute the least to climate change and have the fewest resources to recover from them.

This COP26, international actors, including multilateral institutions, governments, and civil society, need to not only increase climate spending, but ensure climate adaptation funds are spent more equitably, going to countries and populations which are most impacted and least equipped to withstand shocks.

To advance toward the Sustainable Development Goals and uphold obligations to their people, they need to back policies and programs which protect the people who are most marginalized from the worst impacts of the climate crisis and enable them to build resilience to endure future shocks by designing programs that meet their multidimensional needs.

Julie Kedroske is Acting Director of Technical Assistance, BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative. Originally founded in 1972 as the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee and later known as the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, BRAC’s operations have grown globally and with that growth, the organization is now simply known as BRAC.

 

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Increased weather and climate variability is disrupting lives and economies in the continent;. Credit: Campbell Easton/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Oct 20 2021 (IPS)

While Africa reportedly causes just 4 percent of global emissions of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) —an acidic colourless gas with a density about 53% higher than that of dry air, causing climate change—, this vast continent, home to over 1.300 billion inhabitants in 52 countries, bears the heaviest brunt of 80 percent of the climate crisis destructive impacts.

See some of the most outstanding climate crisis negative consequences for Africa, as cited by a major multi-organisation report: The State of the Climate in Africa 2020, elaborated by World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the African Union Commission, the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) through the Africa Climate Policy Centre (ACPC), UN agencies, and international and regional scientific organisations and released on 19 October 2021:

An estimated 12 percent of all new population displacements worldwide occurred in the East and Horn of Africa region, with over 1.2 million new disaster-related displacements and almost 500,000 new conflict-related displacements

. Climate change contributed to mounting food insecurity, poverty and displacement in Africa last year;

. Climate indicators in Africa during 2020 were characterised by continued warming temperatures, accelerating sea-level rise, extreme weather, and climate events – such as floods, landslides and droughts;

. Increased weather and climate variability is disrupting lives and economies in the continent;

. By 2030, an estimated 118 million extremely poor people on the continent will be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat, which will hinder progress towards poverty alleviation and growth;

. In sub-Saharan Africa, climate change could further lower gross domestic product (GDP) by up to 3 percent, by 2050. This presents a serious challenge for climate adaptation and resilience actions because not only are physical conditions getting worse, but also the number of people being affected is increasing;

. Changing precipitation patterns, rising temperatures and more extreme weather contributed to mounting food insecurity, poverty and displacement in Africa in 2020, compounding the socio-economic and health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic;

. Another under-reported consequence is the rapid shrinking of the last remaining glaciers in Eastern Africa, which are expected to melt entirely in the near future, signals the threat of imminent and irreversible change to the Earth system.

In fact, only three mountains in Africa are covered by glaciers: the Mount Kenya massif, the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda, and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. “Currently, their retreat rates are higher than the global average, and “total deglaciation” could be possible by the 2040s, WMO warns.

Mount Kenya is expected to be deglaciated a decade sooner, it adds, which will make it one of the first entire mountain ranges to lose glacier cover due to human-induced climate change.

The report underlines a double-edge estimate: the investment in climate adaptation for sub-Saharan Africa would cost between 30 to 50 billion dollars… each year… over the next decade, or roughly two to three per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

By the way, and talking this figure: did you know that the world largest military powers have spent in 2020 around 2,000 billion dollars on killing machines and weapons of mass destruction?

 

More Facts and Figures:

. Temperatures: The 30-year warming trend for 1991–2020 was higher than for the 1961–1990 period in all African sub-regions and significantly higher than the trend for 1931–1960.

. Africa has warmed faster than the global average temperature over land and ocean combined. 2020 ranked between the third and eighth warmest year on record for Africa, depending on the dataset used.

. Sea level rise: The rates of sea-level rise along the tropical and South Atlantic coasts and Indian Ocean coast are higher than the global mean rate, at approximately 3.6 mm/yr and 4.1 mm/yr, respectively. Sea levels along the Mediterranean coasts are rising at a rate that is approximately 2.9 mm/yr lower than the global mean.

. Glaciers: Their current retreat rates are higher than the global average. If this continues, it will lead to total deglaciation by the 2040s. Mount Kenya is expected to be deglaciated a decade sooner, which will make it one of the first entire mountain ranges to lose glaciers due to human-induced climate change.

. Precipitation: Higher-than-normal precipitation – accompanied by flooding – predominated in the Sahel, the Rift Valley, the central Nile catchment and north-eastern Africa, the Kalahari basin and the lower course of the Congo River.

. High impact weather events: There was extensive flooding across many parts of East Africa. Countries reporting loss of life or significant displacement of populations included the Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Chad, Nigeria (which also experienced drought in the southern part), Niger, Benin, Togo, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Burkina Faso. Many lakes and rivers reached record high levels, including Lake Victoria (in May) and the Niger River at Niamey and the Blue Nile at Khartoum (in September).

. Food insecurity: The compounded effects of protracted conflicts, political instability, climate variability, pest outbreaks and economic crises, exacerbated by the impacts of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, were the key drivers of a significant increase in food insecurity. A  desert locust invasion of historic proportions, which began in 2019, continued to have a major impact in East and the Horn of Africa in 2020.

. Food insecurity increases by 5–20 percentage points with each flood or drought in sub-Saharan Africa. Associated deterioration in health and in children’s school attendance can worsen longer-term income and gender inequalities. In 2020, there was an almost 40 percent increase in population affected by food insecurity compared with the previous year.

. Displacement: An estimated 12 percent of all new population displacements worldwide occurred in the East and Horn of Africa region, with over 1.2 million new disaster-related displacements and almost 500,000 new conflict-related displacements. Floods and storms contributed the most to internal disaster-related displacement, followed by droughts.

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Questions are asked whether the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) agreement to force the world’s biggest companies to pay a fair share of tax will benefit the global South. Credit: Hugo Ramos/Unsplash

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Oct 20 2021 (IPS)

An agreement between 136 countries aimed at forcing the world’s biggest companies to pay a fair share of tax has been condemned by critics who say it will benefit richer states at the expense of the global South.

A deal agreed on October 8, and which covers around 90% of the global economy, includes plans for a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15%.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which led negotiations on the agreement, has said it will help end decades of countries undercutting each other on tax.

But independent organisations campaigning for fairer global taxes and financial transparency argue it will rob developing countries of revenues needed to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, ultimately pushing millions more people into poverty.

Matti Kohonen of the Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC) civil society group told IPS: “In principle, a global minimum corporate tax is a good idea, but only if the rate is right and implemented properly. Under this deal, the main beneficiaries are the OECD – which led the negotiations – and its largest members.”

Calls for a global minimum corporate tax rate have grown in recent decades amid increasing scrutiny on the tax practices of multinationals.

The OECD deal, which has an aspirational implementation date of 2023, is designed to set a floor on corporate taxation and stop companies shifting profits to countries with the lowest tax rates they can find.

The OECD says the minimum global rate would see countries collect around USD150 billion in new revenues annually, and that taxing rights on more than USD125 billion of profit will be moved to countries where big multinationals earn their income.

But independent groups say the agreement falls far short of what is needed for a fair global corporate taxation system and has ignored the needs and wishes of developing nations, which rely more heavily on corporate tax than richer states.

According to OECD research Corporate Tax Statistics: Third Edition (oecd.org), in 2018, African countries raised 19% of overall revenue from corporate taxation as opposed to 10% among OECD states.

Critics point out that the 15% floor agreed to is well below the average corporate tax rate in industrialised countries of around 23%, potentially creating a ‘race to the bottom’ as countries cut their existing corporate rates.

It is thought a number of developing states had wanted a higher minimum global rate.

Civil society groups critical of the agreement also have concerns over many exemptions in the deal – there is a ten-year grace period for companies on some aspects of the agreement, and some industries such as extractives and financial services, are exempt.

Meanwhile, they highlight, only 100 of the world’s largest companies would be affected by part of the agreement aimed at getting highly profitable multinationals to pay more taxes in countries where they earn profits. Moreover, the minimum global tax will only apply to companies with a turnover of more than 750 million USD, which would exclude 85-90% of the world’s multinationals.

The fact that countries will have to waive digital services taxation rights, which are important sources of revenue for some developing states, is also problematic. And there are concerns that in many cases extra tax paid by corporations ‘topping up’ their tax bill to 15% will go to countries where they are headquartered. In many cases, this will be in already rich nations such as the US, UK, and Europe.

Chenai Mukumba of the Tax Justice Network Africa advocacy group told IPS: “We have an opportunity to reform the global tax system to make it right for global south countries, but we are settling for so much less. This is a lost opportunity to balance the scales, to put fairness at the centre of the system.”

The deal could have a negative effect on African countries, in particular, she pointed out.

Nigeria and Kenya have not signed up for the fair tax deal. Credit: Muhammadtaha Ibrahim Ma’aji/Unsplash

Kenya and Nigeria are among four countries that have not signed up for the deal.

“A lot of African countries currently have corporate tax rates of 25-30%. If the minimum rate is 15%, there is a great incentive for companies to shift profits elsewhere,” Mukumba said.

“Kenya hasn’t signed up to the deal because it is trying to raise revenue from its digital services taxation rights. It may end up buckling to the pressure [to join the deal],” she added.

OECD impact assessment studies for the deal published in 2020 https://www.oecd.org/tax/beps/economic-impact-assessment-webinar-presentation-october-2020.pdf showed that developing nations would gain as much as 4% extra corporate tax revenue.

The organisation told IPS this month (OCT) that it is now expecting those extra revenues to be even higher because of changes to the agreement since last year.

However, studies Pillar 1 impact assessment – 04.10.21 FINAL (oxfamireland.org) by the global aid group Oxfam estimate that 52 developing countries would receive around only 0.025 percent of their collective GDP in additional annual tax revenue under the redistribution of taxing rights.

The group also says a 25% global minimum corporate tax rate would raise nearly USD 17 billion more for the world’s 38 poorest countries – which are home to almost 39% of the global population – as compared to a 15 percent rate.

Speaking just after the agreement between the 136 countries was reached, Oxfam said in a press release that the deal was “a mockery of fairness that robs pandemic-ravaged developing countries of badly needed revenue for hospitals and teachers and better jobs”.

It added: “The world is experiencing the largest increase in poverty in decades and a massive explosion in inequality, but this deal will do little or nothing to halt either.”

Despite the criticism, OECD officials are adamant that the agreement will benefit developing nations.

They point out that it does not affect any state’s national corporate tax rates, and that the 10-year grace period only applies to a very small amount of income – 5% of the carrying value of a firm’s tangible assets and payrolls in a jurisdiction.

Grace Perez Navarro, Deputy Director of the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, told IPS: “The global minimum tax is aimed at stopping tax competition that is causing a race to the bottom in corporate tax rates.

“It does not require countries that have higher rates than 15% to lower their corporate tax rate, it just ensures that those countries will be able to collect at least 15%, no matter what type of creative tax planning a multinational comes up with.

“It will also reduce the incentive of multinationals to artificially shift their profits to low tax jurisdictions because they will still have to pay a minimum of 15%.”

She added: “It will also relieve the pressure on developing countries to offer excessive, often wasteful tax incentives while providing a carve-out for low-taxed activities that have real substance. This means that developing countries can still offer effective incentives that attract genuine, substantive foreign direct investment.”

But Mukumba said the problem is not that the deal will not bring any extra revenue to developing nations, but that richer nations will get much more out of it.

“Developing nations want a global corporate tax minimum, they have pushed for it in the past. They will get revenue under this deal, yes, but nowhere near as much as richer nations will get out of it,” she said.

This is problematic at a time when many developing nations are struggling with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and need revenue.

“This [deal] will mainly support recovery efforts in the G7 countries instead of developing countries which have been most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and are more in debt, preventing them from generating enough revenues to recover from the crisis and ultimately throwing millions more people into extreme poverty,” said Kohonen.

 

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By Rosi Orozco
MEXICO CITY, Oct 20 2021 (IPS)

They call it the Tlaxcala-New York Route. Between one end and the other, there are 2547 miles. An infamous road that today is one of the most important channel for human trafficking gangs. And a route seemingly impossible to destroy because of its million-dollar profits.

Rosi Orozco

The victims traveling along this route from Mexico to the United States experience in their bones what experts call “the globalization of organized crime”, one of the biggest obstacles to ending this crime.

The route is longer than itself. Sometimes it starts in South America, where victims are lured with dream jobs or a love story in Mexico. And it has a stopover in Mexico’s smallest state, Tlaxcala, where human traffickers kidnap their victims to prepare them for their journey north to the United States.

The worst part is in the next 2547 miles, which includes several horror stops throughout Mexico. The victims will be raped on table dances, brothels, bars, even trailer boxes and roadside tents.

If they survive and show endurance, at least 500 of them will be forced to cross illegally into the United States every year.

In New York, the exploitative clients will be of all nationalities: Mexicans, Americans, Europeans, Asians, Africans… sex tourists who will take back home a piece of humanity as a souvenir.

They are even likely to record those rapes and the videos will end up on porn sites with untraceable IP addresses that profit from a $97 billion a year industry. And when the authorities want to rescue one of those victims, two questions will overwhelm them. Where do we start? What is the origin of all this?

Since the beginning of the 21st century, organized crime has demonstrated that they know how to go global and evade the isolated efforts of individual countries. Their modus operandi imposes a new vision: if traffickers think internationally, justice must think globally. The “10 Days of Anti-Trafficking Activism” event was dedicated to that task.

Between July 26 and August 6, survivors, activists, and decision-makers debated online and face-to-face in Washigton, Miami and Mexico City for more than 240 hours on how to face the new challenges that impose this old crime and how to stay one step ahead.

Jeremy Vallerand, Rescue Freedom CEO, reminded us that human trafficking is a social problem that is not natural but created by human beings, so it is up to us to end it.

The Executive Director of Global Sustainability Network (GSN), Asmita Satyarthi, called for a global count of victims — there are about 25 million people in human trafficking networks and 30% of them are children.

Héma Sibi, CAP International’s Advocacy Coordinator, asked that we all demand a change of laws at an international level. New laws that punishes exploitative clients, not people who are forced into prostitution.

Chancellor Minister Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, youth leaders such as Alina Luz —Miss Universo Argentina 2020, influencers such as Valentina de la Cuesta, magistrates, mayors, legislators, and more joined events and conferences that can be consulted at www.hojaenblanco.org and the conclusions indicate the way to effectively fight human trafficking.

It is urgent to create international laws that punish trafficking as a crime against humanity. To train police officers with the capacity to investigate this crime beyond national borders. To establish international agreements for financial intelligence units to return to the victims’ money obtained by traffickers, whatever country they are in.

Pivotal actions must go beyond prosecution. More and better prevention campaigns must be created to build bridges between rich and developing countries because that is where the exploiting clients and the exploited person are. National campaigns are no longer enough. The challenge is to build messages thinking about the origin and destination of the victims.

We need more determined participation of society to train new activists with a global perspective and place this topic on the world agenda with the same urgency as other problems faced by humanity, such as climate change or the equitable distribution of food.

Above all, there is an urgency to pass the megaphone to those who have a story that must be heard, because each victim in silence means the loss of a missing ally in the fight against this crime.

The “10 Days of Anti-Trafficking Activism” is one of those crucial events that help us begin to solve those questions that overwhelm us: Where do we start? What is the origin of all this? And by questioning ourselves, we will be able to find how to end those 2547 miles of suffering between Tlaxcala and New York.

So that one day, the seemingly impossible path to defeat will be a memory and the evidence that millions of dollars are not more powerful than millions of people fighting for a world without slavery.

The author is a human rights activist who opened the first shelter for girls and teenagers rescued from sexual commercial exploitation in Mexico. She has published five books on preventing human trafficking; she is the elected Representative of GSN Global Sustainability Network in Latin America.

 

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Fires in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. 2020. Credit: Silas Ismael / WWF-Brazil

By Fran Price
NEW JERSEY, USA, Oct 20 2021 (IPS)

Governments agree that saving the climate means saving forests – but ambition and action fall short of what’s required.

First the good news: one of the forest goals agreed by governments, businesses and civil society organizations has been met.

In 2014, the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) set out 10 goals for protecting and restoring the world’s forest. Its latest progress assessment focuses on Goal 7 – on making sure that reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation are part of a global climate agreement.

It’s one of the few goals that we can unequivocally say has been achieved. The Paris Agreement in 2015 enshrined the importance of forests in the international climate agenda. It also incorporated a mechanism to provide forest countries with financial incentives for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, supporting sustainable forest management and enhancing forest carbon stocks (REDD+).

So far, so good. But agreements are one thing – what counts is how they’re put into practice. And on that front, the news isn’t so good.

Fran Price, WWF Global Forest Practice Lead. Credit: WWF

When it comes to forests, emissions trends are heading in the wrong direction, with deforestation and forest degradation continuing on a massive scale. And we’re already seeing the devastating impacts of climate change with ever more extreme forest fires, from the Amazon to Siberia to the Mediterranean – fires which themselves release vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

As the NYDF progress assessment shows, we need to do far more to harness forests’ huge potential to help us mitigate and adapt to climate change. Encouragingly, most countries now recognize the potential of forests in their latest official climate action plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). But many don’t yet include quantified targets – and when they do, they are rarely ambitious enough.

Many tropical forest countries’ targets are conditional on receiving international climate finance – yet this isn’t happening on anything like the scale required. Although tropical forest countries have made strides in developing REDD+ programmes, payments for results have yet to materialize. Domestically and internationally, governments have committed about US$2.4 billion per year towards forest-related climate mitigation, which is around 0.5-5% of what’s needed – and is dwarfed by the subsidies that continue to flow into activities that cause deforestation.

A growing number of NDCs recognize the role of Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) as forest custodians, which is a sign of progress. But at least half of IPLCs’ customary lands worldwide aren’t yet legally recognized – and where IPLC rights are legally recognized, they are often not enforced.

Marisela Silva Parra, local community leader and ‘environmental promoter’ conducts an environmental survey of the forest. In the municipality of Calamar, Guaviare Department, WWF-Colombia is working with a group of local community leaders (known as ‘environmental promoters’) with the aim of stopping deforestation, protecting and restoring remaining forest, and helping provide alternative sustainable livelihoods to local people. Credit: Luis Barreto / WWF-UK

In fact, this is true of forest governance more generally. Many countries now have policies that look good on paper, but they aren’t implemented or enforced strongly enough. At least 69% of deforestation driven by agriculture in recent years was illegal – but happened anyway.

So how do we turn things around? The arguments for conserving and restoring forests are well known, with the COVID-19 pandemic only reinforcing the link between the health of humankind and the health of the planet. We know the solutions too.

We need greater cooperation across landscapes, sectors and supply chains. Businesses need to eliminate deforestation and habitat conversion from their supply chains. Governments need to implement supportive legislation and incentives – both in forest countries, and in countries that consume products that drive deforestation. The finance sector has to redirect financial flows from activities that drive deforestation and into forest-friendly enterprises. The rights of IPLCs must be recognized and upheld, while smallholders and communities should receive support to build sustainable livelihoods.

The growing climate crisis adds urgency to all these imperatives. Back in 2015, WWF and others campaigned hard to ensure that the role of forests was recognized in the Paris Agreement. Achieving that goal was a big win. But now we need to go further.

The upcoming COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow is the most important since Paris. It will set the agenda for the coming make-or-break decade. Governments at COP26 must commit to more ambitious action on forests. They must increase the level of forest climate finance by an order of magnitude. Most of all, they must turn words into deeds.

Fran Raymond Price has spent her career working to protect forests and improve forestry around the globe. She joined WWF in June 2020 after 18 years at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), where she helped guide the organization’s adoption and promotion of responsible forest management and certification. She holds a master’s degree in forestry from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and a B.A. in History and Government from Cornell University. She began her forestry career as a Peace Corps community forestry volunteer in the Dominican Republic.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States.

 

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Erratic water supplies mean women in urban Zimbabwean cities, like Bulawayo, need to fetch water from water points. Studies have shown that while water, sanitation and hygiene are a women’s domain, they are not involved in water management. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
Bulawayo, ZIMBABWE , Oct 19 2021 (IPS)

Each morning, Langelihle Tshuma checks her taps to confirm the water supply before preparing for the day ahead.

Despite living in the city, the married housewife and mother of four has become accustomed to what in most cities would be considered an essential service.

“We are used to it now,” she said, referring to water cuts in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo.

Water availability has become erratic in the city, with no clear schedule or fixed timetable to warn residents about when to expect dry faucets.

Tshuma joins scores of other residents to look for the nearest water point or the next house with a borehole in what is considered a middle-class suburb.

“It used to be kind of humiliating walking around the neighbourhood with buckets looking for water, but when you have young children, you learn humility to soldier on,” Tshuma told IPS.

While her experience is commonplace in this city of about 2 million people according to some estimates, it is but a microcosm of a global trend where women’s unpaid work includes fetching water, with women being left out in crucial decisions regarding water access, experts say.

There are concerns among researchers and experts that water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) issues have for years been regarded as a woman’s domain in developing countries, but that has not been reflected in the management of water resources.

A report launched last month by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) says women remain excluded from global water management despite women being primary water decision-makers at the household level.

According to the research findings in the report titled Advancing towards gender mainstreaming in water resources management, “when women are involved in the management of water resources, their communities achieve much better outcomes, improved water systems and economic and environmental benefits.”  The research canvassed 23 countries.

The GWP notes that while women’s role in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) was recognized three decades ago by the UN, there has been little progress as the sector remains male-dominated.

“Half of all countries reported limited or no achievement of gender objectives in their water management policies and plans,” said Darío Soto-Abril, Executive Secretary of Global Water Partnership (GWP).

“While some reasons for this low number might be a lack of robust data collection and monitoring tools, the number is still low enough for us to say: it’s past time for things to change,” Soto-Abril said.

As women such as Tshuma struggle to access and remain excluded from the decisions that bring water to their homes, experts note that gender mainstreaming is crucial to ensure commitment at the highest political levels for policy commitments is backed up by action.

“If there is good news, it is that there’s been a slight improvement compared to the baseline in 2017,” said Joakim Harlin, UNEP’s chief of Freshwater Ecosystems.

“The ability to integrate gender considerations in water policies is not related exclusively to levels of development – it’s also a question of having the political will to change cultural norms,” Harlin said.

Cultural norms have embedded the images of women and not men fetching water in urban municipalities of many developing countries.

“Women have been cast in roles as water carriers instead of water managers,” the GWP research notes.

“In many developing countries, women are the de facto water decision-makers in households. Research suggests that when women are involved in the management of water resources, their communities achieve better economic and environmental benefits. As the world’s population grows and climate change intensifies water scarcity, women are key to providing more sustainable access to this finite resource,” the report adds.

However, more still needs to be done along with increasing women’s participation in decision-making positions in line with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), says Liza Debevec, Senior Gender and Social Inclusion Specialist at the Global Water Partnership.

“It is not just about increasing women’s representation in councils and committees or coming up with a new general legal framework on gender protection, however important those actions are,” Debevec said.

“It is also about integrating gender issues in all policies in a cross-cutting manner, linking water to other relevant policy areas,” she said.

However, political will is seen as central to ensuring women are involved in policy-making decisions regarding water resources in line with the Integrated Water Resources Management Support Programme under Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6), which seeks clean water for all.

“Political will is urgent. At the top political level, we need a strong commitment to gender mainstreaming, or we’ll be swimming upstream,” Soto-Abril told IPS.

“Political will makes the practical actions successful. Some countries need more data, so they need to do a gender analysis. Others need to financially support the implementation of gender-sensitive practices and introduce accountability mechanisms,” she said.

 

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