Africa

Mr Hancock's appointment to the UN's economic commission for Africa was announced earlier this week.

Despite mass starvation in northern Ethiopia, aid officials are not calling the situation a famine.

Rising temperatures and desertification are forcing many Mauritanians to leave their ancestral homes in search of a better life.

The Benin bronze, known as an "okukor", was given to Jesus College in Cambridge in 1905.

Food table banking is turning the tables on the systematic and systemic financial exclusion of women. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Oct 15 2021 (IPS)

Pascaline Chemutai’s five acres of land located in the country’s breadbasket region of Rift Valley recently produced 115 bags of maize, each weighing 90 kilograms. She tells IPS that of these, 110 bags will be transported to traders in Nairobi and neighbouring Kiambu County at a negotiated price of $23 per bag.

In all, she will have pocketed about $2,500, a significant amount in the village. Not only will she have enough to feed her family of five, but to pay for their school fees and other basic needs. Besides maize farming, Chemutai sells milk to residents in town.

The 45-year-old farmer widowed eight years ago with five young children says that her life as a farmer was made possible and is sustained through table banking.

“My husband was in charge of our farm and handled all business related to the farm. I knew how to farm because I grew up cultivating land, but I had no money to buy seeds and fertilizer or knowledge on the business side of farming,” she says.

Fortunately, a year before the demise of her husband, Chemutai joined a table banking group under the Joyful Women Organization (JOYWO), a registered NGO focused on the economic empowerment of women.

As the name suggests, women place their savings on a table and immediately loan each other accumulated funds.
“Women knew of village saving groups where contributions were spent on household items such as cups, plates and even beddings. We were now learning about saving and borrowing,” she says.

Sharon Alice Anyango says that the simple concept of table banking, where a group of 10 to 35 members use the group-based strategy to fundraise by saving, placing their savings on a table, and borrowing immediately, has turned tables on the systematic and systemic financial exclusion of women.

“Table banking is addressing the primary challenges that women face when dealing with banks and other financial institutions. Where they needed collateral that they did not have to access bank loans, today, they successfully fundraise amongst themselves,” says Anyango, a project officer at the Ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender.

JOYWO, whose current patron is Rachael Ruto, the wife of Deputy President William Ruto, claims to have a revolving fund of at least $27 million in the hands of its estimated 200,000 members across 1,200 table banking groups in all parts of the country.

“Other estimates show that so popular is the table banking movement that cumulatively, table banking groups throughout the country circulate approximately $550,000 to $730,000,” Anyango says.

She explains that only women were involved at the start, but as they started to accumulate funds, men became interested.

“Men have seen the magic,” she says.

Now the table banking fraternity allows men to join, but the groups’ constitutions ensure that at least 70 percent of the members and all the leadership positions are women.

Chemutai says that their table banking group of 20 members currently has a revolving fund of $30,000. She has taken loans valued at $2,000 to fund various farming and animal husbandry ventures in the last year.

“Seeds, fertilizer, labour, tractors and veterinary services, salary for my farm boy and feeds for my cows cost a lot of money. I borrow from the group and repay, and this cycle repeats itself every year, and all my activities are running smoothly,” she tells IPS.

“Table banking has also linked me to a reliable market. We started interacting with other table banking groups from other parts of the country, and that is how I managed to find a market. I sell all my maize to other women in table banking groups within Nairobi and Kiambu counties. I would never have met these women if it was not for table banking,” she says.

Chemutai’s story is in line with research from the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition that points to “a high probability that any agricultural product that we buy has been produced by a woman. Women’s contribution is essential for the food security of entire communities and for the farming production of many developing and rural communities.”

The research further points to the many gender disparities that prevent women such as Chemutai from accessing financing. On paper, Chemutai does not own an asset to be used as collateral despite having access to five acres of land because the land is ‘ancestral’ land.

As per the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition and undoubtedly true for many women in agriculture, “when women are guaranteed the same access as men to community resources, services and economic opportunities, production increased, the economic and social benefits of the community improve, and malnutrition and poverty are reduced.”

Celebrated every October 16, as the global community marks yet another World Food Day under the theme “Our actions are our future. Better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life”, gender experts, such as Anyango, tell IPS that this is the level of access that women need to feed the global population.

Agriculture is still the largest employment sector for 60 percent of women in Sub-Saharan Africa. Women like Chemutai also make up two-thirds of the world’s 600 million small livestock managers, according to the U.N’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Despite their contribution to agriculture, financing is still largely not affordable, available, and accessible to women farmers. In this East African nation where the table banking movement is more concentrated in rural areas, women now have a lifeline to fund agricultural activities with loans taken under friendly terms and conditions.
Anyango asserts that women must be at the centre of World Food Day’s collective action across 150 countries to promote worldwide awareness of global hunger and the need to ensure healthy diets for all.

 

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Several Kenyan stars, including Julius Yego, pay tribute to the late Agnes Tirop, who was found dead on Wednesday.

Police had launched a massive manhunt for Masten Wanjala, who confessed to killing several children.

Street Library in Mayotte, July 2016. Credit: François Phliponeau/ATD Fourth World - Centre Joseph Wresinski

By Olivier De Schutter and Donald Lee
NEW YORK, Oct 15 2021 (IPS)

In September 2021, children in the northern hemisphere returned to school after the summer break. For some, the end of the holidays signaled a return to normalcy and to the joys of learning after facing months of school closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic. For the majority of children in the Global South, however, the return to reality looked grimmer.

Digital divide leaving billions behind

Many children have been unable to pursue their education due to school closures reported in over 188 countries. While governments have sought to implement solutions for children to continue learning from home using broadcast and Internet-based remote learning policies, nearly one third of children worldwide could not make use of these solutions. UNICEF notes that three quarters of these students either come from rural areas, belong to the poorest households, or both: these children have been left behind due to the digital divide. As a result, the organization estimates that more than one billion children are at risk of falling behind on education.

Furthermore, many parents who had lost their source of income due to the pandemic had no choice but to remove their children from school so that they could help their families. Sadly, child labor has risen for the first time in two decades: 160 million children are now estimated to be working, about 8 million more than in 2017, mainly in the agricultural sector; 9 million more at risk of doing so due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Inequality and the pandemic

While the pandemic has exacerbated the inequalities children suffer in schooling, such inequalities are not new. The World Bank estimates that while 96 percent of children complete their secondary education in OECD countries, that rate is only 35 percent in low-income countries. In 2018, an estimated 258 million children and youth – mainly from poor households – were out of school.

Whereas the number of children, adolescents and youth excluded from education fell steadily in the decade following 2000, progress has stalled since, especially for poor children in low-income countries: in 2014, only one quarter of the poorest children in these countries completed primary school. Indeed, in low and lower-middle income countries, the likelihood of enrollment in primary and secondary schools still depends on parental income and education levels to a significant extent.

Festival of Learning in Guatemala, November 2015. Credit: Sulma Flores/ATD Fourth World – Centre Joseph Wresinski

Financial barriers to opportunities

Several important mechanisms are at work. While nearly 90 percent of low-income countries officially provide free primary education, the hidden costs remain high: transportation costs, learning materials and school supplies may be prohibitive, preventing parents from sending their children to school. Moreover, more than 40 percent of low-income countries charge fees for lower-secondary education. This may discourage parents who live on low incomes to send their children to school, especially given the high opportunity costs involved where the alternative to high school education is to contribute to the family income by working. Lowering these financial barriers can significantly improve enrollment and attendance rates.

Even when children are enrolled in formal education, other obstacles prevent them from effectively learning. Children from poor households routinely face exclusion and discrimination. A participatory action research project led by ATD Fourth World in Belgium found that the shame experienced by children in poverty was one of the key obstacles to successful schooling. Shame, as well as fear of abuse, also prevents students from poor families and their parents from engaging with teachers.

Children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds also tend to be better prepared for formal education. As a result, across nearly all countries, the family background of a student (parental education, socioeconomic status, conditions at home) remains the single most important predictor of learning outcomes.

In France for example, the difference in outcomes on the tests of the Programme for International Student Assessment between the richest and poorest students amounted to 115 points in the science performance, the equivalent of about three years of schooling. A vicious cycle emerges: parents and children from low-income households may lose their motivation to prioritize schooling because they perceive their chances of performing well as low.

Children in Kenya who dropped out of school cited the difficulty of performing well, rather than costs, parental pressure, or other factors, as a major reason for leaving. This leads low-income households to underinvest in education, thus perpetuating poverty from one generation to the next and relegating equality of opportunities to a distant dream.

Public action is urgently needed

Increasing public budgets going to education is essential to break the cycles of poverty.

Educational systems must avoid, at all costs, reproducing inequalities that are inherited from childhood, especially for children from families living in poverty. There is a strong relationship between public investment in education and social mobility, especially for developing economies and in relation to primary education.

The Education 2030 Framework for Action provides that States should allocate at least 4 to 6 percent of their GDP, and/or at least 15 to 20 per cent of public expenditure, to education. Indeed, recent research, examining case studies from seven countries — from Brazil to Vietnam and from India to Namibia — demonstrates the benefits of public education and its potential for social transformation.

Fostering inclusive education

We need well-trained (and well-paid) teachers who are present and engage with children. We need schools that reduce the role of selection and assessment based on academic performance alone and instead that value each child for what they contribute to the classroom. We need schools that are fully accessible to everyone – regardless of age, gender, class or disability. And, we need more extracurricular opportunities after school hours that are open to all children at no additional charge, since children from poor households are far less likely to partake in afterschool activities, particularly in music and sports, than their peers from wealthier families.

A recent report presented to the United Nations General Assembly, underscores the urgent need for inclusive education. Schools must not be spaces of failure, but rather places where children can discover their talents and abilities, where they earn qualifications that enable them to keep learning or to find a job in which they can continue to develop. They must be places where collaboration – rather than competition – is nurtured and valued, and where otherness is accepted and cherished.

Inclusive education can also challenge stereotypes about the poor, and the associated discrimination they often suffer: in New Delhi, India, when elite schools catering to students from wealthy households were required to set aside 20 per cent of places to children from poorer families, pro-social behaviour among students increased, and prejudice against children from poor backgrounds diminished.

Schools have too often been seen as institutions that select, rank and exclude. They should instead empower, value and include. This will allow them to fully contribute to breaking the vicious cycles that perpetuate poverty, condemning children from low-income households to a life-long sentence for a crime they have not committed.

Olivier De Schutter is the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and Professor at UCLouvain and Sciences Po (Paris). On 20 October, he will present a report on the persistence of poverty to the UN General Assembly. Donald Lee is President of the International Movement ATD Fourth World and a former senior economist at the United Nations in New York.

 

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• FEATURED TRANSLATION – FRENCH

Ons Jabeur will become the first Arab tennis player to reach the top 10 in the world rankings after reaching the Indian Wells semi-finals.

Credit: wwww.imf.org

By Alexander Kozul-Wright
GENEVA, Oct 15 2021 (IPS)

The guardians of the global economy convened in Washington this week to discuss their latest global growth forecasts. The World Bank-IMF Board of Governors meetings have been squarely focused on the global response to COVID-19, with economists warning of slowing momentum in wealthy nations and grossly uneven recoveries across the developing world.

Still, since February 2020 governments around the world have deployed US$16 trillion in fiscal support measures to combat the pandemic. These vast sums have provided emergency lifelines to health care systems, businesses, and households.

High fiscal expenditure and low tax revenues raised government debt in 2020 to a record 97% of world GDP. It is projected to stabilise at 99% this year, according to the IMF’s latest Fiscal Monitor, published Wednesday. The report also contends that “exceptional policy responses triggered by the pandemic pose a challenge for discerning the best path forward for fiscal policy.”

Typically, governments deploy a two-pronged approach to fund spending: they can either borrow more or raise taxes (or both). Quantitative Easing (QE) represents another, unconventional policy choice that authorities have turned to in recent economic crises.

QE is shorthand for a set of unorthodox monetary policies in which a central bank purchases government debt (as well as other assets) to increase money supply and lower interest rates. It is designed to spur consumption and investment and, in turn, shore up GDP growth.

While central banks in advanced economies (AEs) have deployed QE since the 2008 financial crisis, constraints are more binding in emerging markets (EMs) economies.

EMs lack the deep financial markets observed in AEs, relying instead on foreign investors (attracted by high interest rates) to cover deficits. As such, measures designed to lower interest rates are seen to deter foreign investors and place downward pressure on domestic currencies.

What’s more, EM governments with access to central bank financing are, rightly or wrongly, thought to exercise less fiscal discipline than their AE counterparts. In turn, rampant quantitative easing risks undermining monetary policy credibility.

In large part, this concern underscores why EM policy makers attribute so much importance to central bank independence – a nebulous concept under normal circumstances, let alone in a crisis, but critical when thinking about the impact debt monetization can have.

First, the erosion between fiscal and monetary policy risks stoking runaway inflation by expanding the monetary base. And second, even if government bond yields are not immediately driven up by money creation, it could happen over the medium-term, raising the cost of future debt financing.

The trade-off between continuing to support economic activity and preserving fiscal space (room in the government budget for extra spending) is therefore thornier for EMs than AEs. “EM central banks are trying to find ways of financing their budgets without being accused of printing money”, says Yilmaz Akyuz, former chief economist at UNCTAD.

“Just as in 2009, the IMF is already talking about returning to ‘normal’ central bank policies”, he noted. Indeed, another IMF report published this week cast aspersions on EM quantitative easing, decrying a lack of policy experience and warning about the “threat of exiting these types of programs.”

But despite the Fund’s repeated exhortations, the central bank of Indonesia (BI) recently pledged to continue buying trillions of rupiah (billions in US$ equivalent) worth of government debt. The ‘burden-sharing’ agreement, unveiled in July 2020, was designed to help finance the 2020 fiscal deficit in the wake of Covid-19.

Last year, BI purchased long-dated government bonds in both primary and secondary markets, in addition to rebating interest payments for certain types of debt. Overall, BI financed roughly half of Indonesia’s 6.1% (of GDP) deficit in 2020, lowering debt repayment costs and providing greater scope to respond to the pandemic.

Back in 2020, the bond-purchasing scheme was deemed a “one-off”, and was widely expected to conclude this year. In August 2021, however, the central bank pledged to extend deficit financing into 2022.

Since August, the price of both government bonds and the rupiah have remained relatively stable. And so long as investors maintain their trust in BI independence and the government’s commitment to fiscal sustainability, Indonesia’s experiment with unorthodox economic policy looks set to continue.

Alexander Kozul-Wright is a consultant for the Third World Network (TWN)

 

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Can Africa-focussed tech giant Jumia deliver on its promises to a new generation of consumers?

Delivering vaccines around South Sudan is more expensive than the cost of the jab itself.

Record-breaking long-distance runner Agnes Tirop was found stabbed to death at her home on Wednesday.

One of the Argentine small farmer groups participating in the digital marketing project uses agroecological irrigation and tomato crushing techniques in the province of Mendoza. CREDIT: Nicolás Heredia/Alma Nativa

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 14 2021 (IPS)

“The biggest problem for family farmers has always been to market and sell what they produce, at a fair price,” says Natalia Manini, a member of the Union of Landless Rural Workers (UST), a small farmers organisation in Argentina that has been taking steps to forge direct ties with consumers.

The UST, which groups producers of fresh vegetables, preserves and honey, as well as goat and sheep breeders, from the western province of Mendoza, opened its own premises in April in the provincial capital of the same name.

In addition, it has just joined Alma Nativa (“native soul”), a network created to market and sell products from peasant and indigenous organisations, which brings together more than 4,300 producers grouped in 21 organisations, and now sells its products over the Internet.

“Selling wholesale to a distributor is simple, but the problem is that a large part of the income does not reach the producer,” Manini told IPS from the town of Lavalle in Mendoza province."The aim is to mobilise consumers to buy products from Latin American ecosystems that are made with respect for the environment, while small producers benefit from visibility and logistical support so that local products reach the entire country.” -- Guadalupe Marín

The rural leader argues that, due to cost considerations, farmers can only access fair trade through collective projects, which have received a boost from the acceleration of digital changes generated by the covid-19 pandemic.

Alma Nativa is a marketing and sales solution formally created in 2018 by two Argentine non-governmental organisations (NGOs) focused on socio-environmental issues: Fibo Social Impact and the Cultural Association for Integral Development (ACDI). Their approach was to go a step beyond the scheme of economic support for productive development projects.

“Back in 2014 we began to ask ourselves why small farmer and indigenous communities could not secure profitable prices for the food and handicrafts they produce, and to think about how to get farmers to stop depending on donations and subsidies from NGOs and the state,” Fibo director Gabriela Sbarra told IPS in an interview in Buenos Aires.

Sbarra was a regular participant in regional community product fairs, which prior to the restrictions put in place due to the pandemic were often organised in Argentina by the authorities, who financed the setting up of the stands, accommodation and travel costs from their communities for farmers and craftspeople.

It was only thanks to this economic aid that farmers and artisans were able to make a profit.

“The effort was geared towards finding a genuine market for these products, which could not be sold online because it is very difficult to generate traffic on the Internet and they cannot reach supermarkets either, because they have no production volume. Informality was leaving communities out of the market,” Sbarra explained.

Three cooperatives in the Chaco region, the great forested plain that Argentina shares with Bolivia and Paraguay, are dedicated to honey production and are part of the Alma Nativa project, through which they sell their products to consumers throughout the country via the Internet. CREDIT: Nicolás Heredia/Alma Nativa

E-commerce, the new market

So the founders of Alma Nativa knocked on the doors of Mercado Libre, an e-commerce giant born in Argentina that has expanded throughout most of Latin America. The company agreed not to charge commissions for sales by an online store of agroecological food produced by local communities.

Alma Nativa then set up a warehouse in the town of Villa Madero, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, where products arriving from rural communities throughout the country are labeled for distribution.

“The pandemic has created an opportunity, because it helped to open a debate about what we eat. Many people began to question how food is produced and even forced agribusiness companies to think about more sustainable production systems,” said Manini.

Norberto Gugliotta, manager of the Cosar Beekeeping Cooperative, emphasised that the pandemic not only accelerated the process of digitalisation of producers and consumers, but also fueled the search by a growing part of society for healthy food produced in a socially responsible manner.

“We were prepared to seize the opportunity, because our products were ready, so we joined Alma Nativa this year,” said the beekeeper from the town of Sauce Viejo. Gugliotta is the visible face of a cooperative made up of some 120 producers in the province of Santa Fe, in the centre of this South American country, who produce certified organic, fair trade honey.

Argentina, Latin America’s third largest economy, is an agricultural powerhouse, with a powerful agribusiness sector whose main products are soybeans, corn and soybean oil, which in 2020 generated 26.3 billion dollars in exports, according to official figures.

Behind the success lies a huge universe of family farmers and peasant and indigenous communities. According to the latest National Agricultural Census, carried out in 2018, more than 90 percent of the country’s 250,881 farms are family-run.

But the infrastructure and technological lag in rural areas is significant, as demonstrated by the fact that only 35 percent of farms have Internet access.

The deprivation is particularly acute in the Chaco, a neglected region in the north of the country, home to some 200,000 indigenous people belonging to nine groups whose economy is closely linked to natural resources, according to the non-governmental Fundapaz.

Indigenous artisans from the Pilagá community in the northern province of Formosa, within the Gran Chaco region, have begun selling their baskets online throughout Argentina. CREDIT: Rosario Bobbio/Alma Nativa

New platform for indigenous handicrafts

Communities from the Chaco, a vast region of low forests and savannas and rich biodiversity covering more than one million square km in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, which is home to a diversity of native peoples, also began to market their handicrafts over Mercado Libre in the last few weeks.

“This initiative originated in Brazil with the ‘Amazonia em Pé’ programme and today we are replicating it in Argentina, in the Gran Chaco area. It seeks to build bridges between local artisans and consumers throughout the country,” explained Guadalupe Marín, director of sustainability at Mercado Libre.

“The aim is to mobilise consumers to buy products from Latin American ecosystems that are made with respect for the environment, while small producers benefit from visibility and logistical support so that local products reach the entire country,” she told IPS in Buenos Aires.

On Sept. 27, Mercado Libre launched the campaign “From the Gran Chaco, for you”, which offers for sale more than 2,500 products in 200 categories, such as baskets, indigenous and local art, decorative elements made with natural fibers, honey, weavings and handmade games.

It includes not only Alma Nativa, but also Emprendedores por Naturaleza (“entrepreneurs by/for nature”), a programme launched by the environmental foundation Rewilding Argentina, which works for the conservation of the Chaco and now promotes the sale of products made by 60 families living in rural areas adjacent to the El Impenetrable national park, the largest protected area in the region.

“The idea for the project arose last year, after we conducted a socioeconomic survey among 250 families in the area that found that the only income of 98 percent of them comes from welfare,” said Fatima Hollmann, regional coordinator of the Rewilding Argentina Communities Programme.

She told IPS that “people raise livestock for subsistence and sometimes work on fencing a field or some other temporary task, but there are no steady sources of employment in El Impenetrable.”

“That is why we are trying to generate income for local residents,” Hollmann explained in an interview in Buenos Aires. “Our production lines are focused on ceramics, since most people have built their houses there with adobe. Many also know how to make bricks and we have held trainings to teach people to turn a brick into an artistic piece, inspired by native fauna, which transmits the importance of conserving the forest.”

According to the figures released by the expert during the first week of the programme “From the Gran Chaco, for you” in early October, 644 products were offered for sale, of which 382 were sold to buyers from more than 10 Argentine provinces, including 100 percent of the textiles available and 76 percent of the wooden handicrafts.

“The alternative is to cut down the native forests,” Hollmann says. “We are proposing a transition from an extractivist economy to a regenerative one, which contributes to the reconstruction of the ecosystem, and gives consumers in the cities the chance to contribute to that goal.”

Excerpt:

This article is part of IPS' coverage of World Food Day, celebrated Oct. 16, whose 2021 theme is: Grow, nourish, sustain. Together.

By External Source
Oct 14 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Our lives depend on the world’s agri-food system.

Every time we eat, we participate in the system.

A sustainable agri-food system is one in which sufficient, nutritious and safe foods are available to everyone.

This means nobody goes hungry or suffers from any form of malnutrition.

Today’s agri-food systems are exposing profound inequalities and injustices in our global society.

More than 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.

That’s 40% of the world’s population.

By contrast, 2 billion people are overweight or obese.

This is due to poor diets and sedentary lifestyles.

55% of the world’s population resides in cities.

By 2050, this number will increase to 68%.

Related health-care costs could exceed USD1.3 trillion per year by 2030.

The world’s agri-food system currently employs 1 billion people – more than any other sector.

But, smallholder farmers produce more than 33% of the world’s food…
…despite poverty, a lack of financing, training and technology.

So, food production often degrades or destroys natural habitats and contributes to species extinction.

The world’s food systems are responsible for more than 33% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

14% of the world’s food is lost due to inadequate harvesting, handling, transportation and storage.

17% of the world’s food is wasted on a consumer level.

Solutions do exist. Make #WorldFoodDay your day.

World Food Day 2021: Our Actions are our Future.

 

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Abu Musab al-Barnawi was the head of the West African branch of the Islamic State group.

Julius Yego, Kenya's former athletics captain, and world champion Hellen Obiri lead tributes to Agnes Tirop, who was found dead on Wednesday.

Unable to support her family with the earnings from her farm due to land degradation, Jennifer Kamba (on the right), a smallholder farmer in Machakos county of Kenya, now works as a part-time cook and caterer. Credit: IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India, Oct 14 2021 (IPS)

Jenifer Kamba, 33, has always loved farming – a love passed on to her by her late husband after they married 14 years ago. The young farmer duo grew maise, pepper and vegetables on their two-acre farm in Kivandini of Kenya’s Machakos county. Even after her husband died five years ago, Kamba didn’t stop farming.  However, of late, the soil looks dry, and her production has declined considerably.

“The land is not what it used to be,” she says, “Even a few years ago, my vegetables were beautiful. The pumpkins were big, juicy and my husband sometimes sold some into the local market. But now, they are small and crooked in shape. It feels as if something has sucked the life out of my land.”

Unable to feed herself and her two school-going children from the earnings of her farm, Kamba now takes up seasonal work such as cooking in her wealthier neighbours’ homes.

The ailing factor of Kamba’s land – increasing degradation due to extreme weather events such as droughts and below-average rainfall – is a challenge that farmers worldwide face today, linked to climate change.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), more than 2 billion hectares worldwide are currently affected by the decline in the quality or arability of land. In Africa, where the livelihood of 70% of the population depends on agriculture, 22 million hectares are degraded. This directly affects the yield, pushing farmers, especially those like Kamba who have small landholdings, into poverty.

Machakos, which lies 56 km east of the country’s capital Nairobi, has been identified by the National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) as one of the most drought-prone counties. In the past ten years, the county has witnessed at least four severe droughts that have caused significant damage to soil health.

“This is something we are taking very seriously,” says Dr Ruth Kattumuri, Senior Director for Economic, Youth and Sustainable Development at the Commonwealth Secretariat. “Land degradation is a two-sided challenge as it is both caused by climate change and contributes to it. Supporting our member countries with sustainable land management efforts is of utmost importance for us.”

Jenifer Kamba’s farm. The farm used to yield enough to support her family, but now she has had to turn to part-time employment to make ends meet. Credit: IPS

While climate change is worsening droughts and erratic rainfall, leading to desertification and soil erosion, Kattumuri adds that deforestation and unsustainable agricultural practices are also driving up emissions at the same time.

“Rural communities, smallholder farmers, and the poor are adversely affected,” she says.
According to a 2016 study by Kenya Livestock and Research Institute, 22 % of Kenyan land area has degraded between 1982 and 2006, including 31 % of croplands.
The Kenyan government has adopted various measures to fight land degradation and promote sustainable land management.

In September 2016, the government announced that it would restore 5.1 million hectares of degraded land. According to an estimate by the World Resource Institute, 65 million acres across the country were restorable for future use. In its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), submitted first in 2015, the government committed to creating a tree cover for at least 10% of its total land area to mitigate climate change. Together, the moves are expected to improve livelihoods, curb climate change, safeguard biodiversity and more.

But the problem, say some, is that implementation of these measures has been sporadic, and very few of the most severely affected people, especially women, are aware of them.

The story of subsistence farmers Ruth Mutinda, 41, and her sister Beth, 37, in Mwala village of Machakos is an example: the sisters who jointly own a small farm have seen a sharp decline in their yield of maise, beans and pigeon peas in the past six to seven years.

The village is near Kitui – another county affected by successive droughts, including one in the current year. According to the NDMA, the prevailing drought situation is mainly attributed to the delayed onset of the March to May long rains.

Mutinda sisters say that insufficient rain has increased the heat, which, in turn, has ‘stolen the moisture’ off the farm. In addition, the water level in their village river has also decreased due to the drought and random sand-mining activities, leaving them without an alternative means to water their land.

“There is a small river at the edge of our village. Earlier, we fetched water from there for our farms. But now we can only fetch few buckets for washing and cooking. So, if there is no water, how can the land be good again?” asks Beth.

Though the NDMA has mentioned several measures to support the drought-affected farmers across the nation, including Machakos and Kitui, the sister duo seems unaware of those. They have also not heard of any land restoration initiatives and think that regular irrigation is the only way to increase soil fertility.

The only external support Beth and Ruth ever received was a few fruiting tree saplings from the Rural Resource Center – a local NGO. But the dry soil of the farm couldn’t sustain their growth.

Landscape view of Mwala village in Machakos county. The Commonwealth Living Land’s Charter, which aims to get member countries to integrate sustainable land use management into their national climate action plans, focusing on nature-based solutions, could assist areas affected by climate change. Credit: IPS

The apparent “disconnect” between the policy and its intended beneficiaries is evident in degraded land restoration and climate action in general, says Leonida Odongo, Executive Director of the Nairobi-based NGO Haki Nawiri Afrika. Her organisation fights for marginalised communities’ rights to climate justice and food justice.

She maintains that climate change solutions often fail to envisage how many ways women on the frontline are affected.

“In Africa, the climate crisis means women are travelling longer distances in search of water; it means Gender-Based Violence in the household; it means conflict as communities fight over pasture and water; it means the emergence of Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. It means the death of people and animals and forced relocation. It’s time to act and avert his crisis,” says Odongo.

Ceciele Ndjebet, President of African Women’s Network for Community Management of Forests (REFACOF) in Cameroon, feels that women do not enjoy the benefits of climate action, including sustainable land management, because they do not have access to finance.
This especially applies to NGOs and community-based organisations that directly know women’s climate challenges and can bridge the gap between policies and communities but cannot provide solutions because of the uphill battle to access finance.

“I heard a lot about Green Climate Fund (GCF) and others, that there is funding available. But is that funding available to civil society organisations? I doubt. All the accreditation processes are complicated; we think we need political will for all those who want to recognise what the civil society has to say or the role to play. We need that political will from our government to recognise that we should be part of the solution,” says Ndjebet.

The Commonwealth Living Lands Charter could help address these concerns. The charter is a proposed initiative of the Commonwealth that aims to get its member countries to integrate sustainable land use management into their national climate action plans, focusing on nature-based solutions.

Under the proposed Commonwealth Call to Action on Living Lands, the Commonwealth Secretariat will support member states to access funding to scale up nature-based solutions in implementing their NDCs that address land degradation.

“We are conducting consultations with our member countries and regions. The aim is to bridge the gaps between climate change, nature and land degradation policies. We want to ensure that what we eventually propose to our heads of government for adoption can be a basis for inclusive, sustainable land management,” says Unnikrishnan Nair, Head of Climate Change at the Commonwealth Secretariat. “That includes women, rural communities and other vulnerable populations – we should not leave anyone behind.”

The Living Lands Charter, if adopted by Commonwealth leaders, will serve as an agreement among the 54 member countries to work towards climate-resilient and sustainable land management by integrating the targets of the three Rio Conventions — the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (UNCBD), the Land Degradation Neutrality targets (UNCCD), and the Paris Agreement (UNFCCC).

Focus areas to be explored include climate-resilient agriculture, soil and water conservation and management, sustainable green cover and biodiversity, and the active engagement of indigenous people.

The combined action is expected to propel the progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG 15 – Life on Lands.

Could this new initiative help the much needed financial and technological support trickle down to women in the climate change frontline communities, including Kamba and Mutinda sisters?

Time will tell.

Meantime, Jennifer Kamba isn’t giving up hope yet on her land: “I just hope when my children grow up, this land will still produce food for them,” she says, with a flicker of dreams for the future in her eyes.

 

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By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Oct 14 2021 (IPS)

“Now is the time for a stronger, more networked and inclusive multilateral system anchored in the United Nations,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his latest report “Our Common Agenda.” Indeed, there is a fork in the road: we can either choose to breakdown or to breakthrough.

Yasmine Sherif

Making this moral choice and adopting this legal imperative is more relevant today than ever. The estimated 75 million children and adolescents caught in emergencies and protracted crisis who suffer from disrupted education has now dramatically increased from 75 million to 128 million due to the pandemic. These vulnerable girls and boys are now the ones left furthest behind in some of the world’s toughest contexts, in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and South America.

The current education financing gap amounts to US$1.48 billion for low- and middle-income countries. A gap that is increasingly widening. In reviving the multilateralism that is so urgently needed, the UN Secretary-General will convene a crucial, timely summit on Transforming Education in 2022.

Despite all that we do, despite all our investments, we cannot win ‘the human race’ unless we invest in our fellow human beings, now. It is the children and young people impacted by armed conflicts, climate-crisis induced disasters, forced displacement and protracted crises who are in a sprint against time, with their lives and futures on the line.

We can no longer let “an entire generation facing irreversible losses be left behind in the ruins of armed conflicts, in protracted refuge, on a planet whose climate-change threatens us all,” as the UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of Education Cannot Wait’s High-Level Steering Group, The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown stated at the launch of Education Cannot Wait’s Annual Results Report: Winning the Human Race, on 5 October 2021.

Education is the foundation, the DNA and the absolute prerequisite for achieving all other Sustainable Human Development Goals and Universal Human Rights. Education means investments in the limitless possibilities of human potential: the workforce, governance, gender-equality, justice, peace and security.

“Access to quality education is key to addressing 21st century challenges, including accelerating the fight to end poverty and climate change,” says The LEGO Foundation’s new CEO, Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen, in this month’s ECW Newsletter high-level interview.

The time has come to connect the dots between individual human beings and our collective humanity and life on this planet. We are now investing more and more in Mother Earth through significant climate change financing. We must now also invest in the human beings populating the planet. The correlation between the positive impact of education upon on all aspects of life on the planet is indispensable and inescapable.

• Higher education levels lead to higher concern for the environment, and adaptation to climate change. If education progress is stalled, it could lead to a 20% increase in disaster-related fatalities per decade.
• Education is the one unique investment that can prevent conflict and forced displacement. High levels of secondary school enrollment have been shown to be associated with an increase a country’s level of stability and peace and reduce crime and violence.
• Every additional year of schooling reduces an adolescent boy’s risk of becoming involved in conflict by 20 percent. This effect reflects both education’s economic benefits and its role in social cohesion and national identity.
• Conversely, lack of education often leads to political disempowerment and regression to group allegiances. Across 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, sub-national regions with very low average education had a 50 per cent probability of experiencing the onset of conflict within 21 years, while the corresponding interval for regions with very high average education was 346 years.
• Education is also the most secure means of ending extreme poverty. For nations, each additional year of schooling can add up to 18 per cent to GDP per capita. For individuals, one more year of education brings a 10 per cent increase in personal income. If all children were to learn basic reading skills, the impact would be 171 million fewer people living in extreme poverty. *Footnotes below.

Education Cannot Wait is a multilateral global UN fund. Our Annual Results Report of 2020, Winning the Human Race, launched at the UN in Geneva this month, testifies to what we can achieve when we think and act multilaterally: when we connect the dots, become one, and act for all.

Through multilateralism, we reached more than 29 million crisis-affected girls and boys in 2020 alone through ECW’s COVID-19 emergency response, working with our strategic partners, including host governments, our 21 donors, UNICEF, UNHCR, UNESCO, UNDP, WFP, our civil society partners, such as INEE, Jesuit Refugee Service, AVSI, Save the Children, Plan International, Norwegian Refugee Council, International Rescue Committee and numerous local civil society organizations across 34 countries. Through joint programming, we were also able to jointly deliver quality education to more than 4.6 million children and youth, of whom 51% were girls and adolescent girls, 38% were refugees – all while we increased ECW allocations to children and youth with disabilities.

This is made possible because ODA governments, private sector and philanthropic partners are scaling up their support for the catalytic ECW global fund whereby their investments are part of multilateral efforts that work as closely as possible to those we serve, establishing links conducive to numerous, diverse SDGs and human rights. The full list of our 21 generous donor partners can be found at the end of this Newsletter.

In connection with the UNGA week this year, ECW strategic donors advancing multilateralism, such as Germany, the United States, the European Union/European Commission, France, The LEGO Foundation and Porticus took giant steps and committed $138.1 million to ECW, bringing the total resources mobilized thus far in 2021 alone to $156.1 million and the total since ECW’s inception to $1.85 billion ($827 million mobilized for the Trust Fund; and, over $1 billion worth of programmes aligned with ECW MYRPs, as leveraged by ECW with partners).

Furthermore, the Global Hub for Education in Emergencies celebrated its new collective space under the ECW umbrella in Geneva, thanks to Switzerland which is the second biggest UN capital for humanitarian and development actors after New York City. The Global Hub brings together NGOs, the UN, academia, foundations, and governments to inspire more commitment and resources to quality education for those left furthest behind in emergencies and protracted crisis.

Multilateralism through the United Nations works.

Still, this is just the start of a major global effort to work through the multilateral coordination system to reach those left furthest behind and bring education from the margins to the center. Based on empirical evidence, ECW calls for an additional $1 billion to contribute to an innovative model that has proven to work.

Political leaders, governments, private sector, UN and civil society – all part of ECW’s multilateral UN system – recognize that education is a precondition for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and Universal Human Rights. Together, we think long-term and act now. Together, we connect the dots and see things from afar and within. Together, we work on what the world needs most right now: A Common Agenda to Win the Human Race.

Yasmine Sherif is Director,
Education Cannot Wait
The UN Global Fund for Education in Emergencies and Protracted Crises

 

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