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Protest against the 30X30 conservation plan at IUCN World Conservation Congress, Marseille, France. Credit: Survival International

By Manipadma Jena
MARSEILLE, France, Sep 15 2021 (IPS)

One of the most hotly debated issues at the recently concluded IUCN Congress in Marseilles was about designating 30 percent of the planet’s land and water surface as protected areas by 2030.

This so-called ‘30X30’ debate is expected to escalate at the UN biodiversity conference in China next April. Indigenous People groups say the conservation has to recognise their rights to land, territories, coastal seas, and natural resources. Some activists argue that ‘fortress conservation’ was nothing but colonialism in another guise.

The world’s failure to achieve any of the global goals to protect, conserve and restore nature by 2020 has been sobering. In Kunming, China, 190 governments will gather in April 2022 after a virtual format in October this year, to finalise the UN Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

Ensuring legal land ownership of indigenous people is key to successful conservation. An indigenous community woman in eastern India happily holds out her land title.
Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

The draft Framework released this July aims to establish a ‘world living in harmony with nature’ by 2050 by protecting at least 30 percent of the planet and placing at least 20 percent under restoration by 2030.

The Marseille Manifesto, the outcome statement from the World Conservation Congress in Marseille from September 4 -10, 2021, gives higher visibility to indigenous people by “committing to an ambitious, interconnected and effective, site-based conservation network that represents all areas of importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services is crucial. Such a network must recognise the roles and custodianship of indigenous people and local communities.”

“The Congress implores governments to set ambitious protected areas and other area-based conservation measure targets by calling at least 30% of the planet to be protected by 2030. The targets must be based on the latest science and include rights – including Free Prior Informed Consent – as set out in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. IUCN must boost the agency of indigenous people and local communities,” the manifesto further urges. 

IUCN’s membership currently stands at 1 500 and includes 91 States, 212 governmental agencies, 1 213 NGOs, 23 Indigenous Peoples’ organisations and 52 affiliate members.

The indigenous people (IP) demand foremost of all “the secure recognition and respect for collective indigenous rights and governance of lands, territories, waters, coastal seas and natural resources.”

Strong demand for this came from IUCN’s indigenous people’s organisation members spanning six continents who banded together, developed the ‘global indigenous agenda’ and presented at their own summit – the first-ever event of its kind at any IUCN World Conservation Congress.

They aimed to unite the voices of indigenous peoples from around the world to raise awareness that ‘enhanced measures’ are required to protect the rights of indigenous peoples and their roles as stewards of nature.

Other activists take a more hard-line stand.

“The 30×30 plan is nothing but a massive land grab,” Sophie Grig, senior research and advocacy officer Survival International told IPS over the phone from the non-profit’s London headquarters.

“It’s no more than a sound bite, green lies. History has shown that promises are made but gradually, living for forest dwellers is made impossible till they are finally evicted from their generational homes of centuries. They are evicted for what? For animals and tourists. We see no real signs that this is going to change.”

Survival International and other activist entities organised the “Our Land Our Nature” congress a day before the IUCN congress began. They called for conservation to be ‘decolonised’.

“Fortress conservation violates human rights and fails to protect nature. The devastating impacts of fortress conservation on Indigenous Peoples, local communities, peasants, rural women, and rural youth has generated limited gains for nature,” said David R Boyd, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, in an August policy brief just before the IUCN Congress.

Ending the current biodiversity crisis will require a “transformative approach” to what conservation entails, who qualifies as a conservationist, and how conservation efforts are designed and implemented,” Boyd further said.

Studies have shown that indigenous peoples, who comprise just 5% of the world’s population, contribute significantly to its environmental diversity as more than 80 % of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found within their lands.

The debate on the issue was going global. In an online forum coinciding but separate from the IUCN indigenous people’s summit, indigenous women, many from Southeast Asia, emphasised that it is “not enough for outsiders to merely observe indigenous practices and then attempt to reapply them in other contexts.”

Native voices need to be at the “centre of the conversation, not consigned to the margins.”

Traditional ecological knowledge is not just a theoretical concept. It is a “native science”, an applied knowledge amassed by indigenous people over thousands of years and most effective to address climate change and biodiversity challenges because it is based on the acceptance that “all living organisms are interdependent,” they said.

The indigenous people’s Agenda at Marseille also calls upon the global community – from states to the private sector, NGO conservation community, conservation finance and academia – to engage in specific joint efforts with them, such as “co-designing initiatives and collaborating on investment opportunities.”

“Our global goals to protect the earth and conserve biodiversity cannot succeed without the leadership, support and partnership of Indigenous Peoples,” said Bruno Oberle, IUCN Director General at the start of the Congress.

“So will the investment in this doubling of conservation areas, or at least some of the monies, go directly to indigenous people?” asked protestors at the ‘decolonise conservation’ Congress.

“Not likely,” Survival’s Grig said, “Fortress conservation is the racist and colonial model of conservation promoted by governments, corporations and big conservation NGOs.”

“The 30X30 plan sounds like a simple and painless process, but it is not so for indigenous communities. It’s simply a plan that enables you in the global north to continue burning fossil fuel and consuming unsustainably,” Grig added.

The indigenous people were clear in their demands. Their Agenda and Action Plan demands: “As Indigenous Peoples around the world, we call for an equitable environment for the recognition of Indigenous Peoples to thrive as leaders, innovators and key contributors to nature conservation.”

It remains to be seen to what extent words and promises of international policy and funding bodies translate into action on this contentious and critical issue in 2022.

 

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Why is racial inequality perceivably so resistant to transformation? Some say it is because of a failure to acknowledge and confront white privilege. . Credit: Gerry Lauzon / Flickr Creative Commons CC BY 2.0.

By External Source
Sep 15 2021 (IPS)

A prestigious, private school in Pretoria, South Africa, recently became a site of protest. Black learners and parents accused Cornwall Hill College of rejecting calls to make its whites-only board more representative of its diverse learner body.

In response, a right wing South African youth group called Bittereinders (the Bitter Enders), held an anti-transformation protest.“Unhappy? build your own schools,” was the response from one member.

Why is racial inequality perceivably so resistant to transformation? Some say it is because of a failure to acknowledge and confront white privilege.

The police killing of George Floyd in the US city of Minneapolis in 2020 ignited a wave of protests across the globe and intense discussions of anti-black racism.

Focusing the discussion on the individual is especially effective for the purposes of anti-racist teaching and advocacy. Unpacking how whiteness operates to bestow privilege may allow us to understand how ‘others’ are systematically denied those same rights

From France to Colombia and South Africa, demonstrators used the term ‘white privilege’ as a means of challenging people to confront the racial disparities evident in their own countries.

Amid the demonstrations, a group of international scholars brought together at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in 2020 began discussing whether the concept of ‘white privilege’ is useful for addressing systemic racial inequalities across national contexts.

Although it is clear that the term has become popular across diverse contexts, some have argued against it. They say that the term ‘white privilege’ reinforces stereotypes, reifies conceptualisations of race, antagonises potential allies and creates even greater resistance to change.

As movements for racial justice have become more global in scope, the term has circulated across national boundaries. However, it does not always translate well to these new contexts.

 

A history

The term white privilege originated in the US in the 1980s, referring to both the obvious and the hidden advantages afforded to white people by systemic forms of racial injustice. Unlike terms such as “racial injustice” and “systemic racial bias”, the idea of privilege centres the discussion around individuals.

Focusing the discussion on the individual is especially effective for the purposes of anti-racist teaching and advocacy. Unpacking how whiteness operates to bestow privilege may allow us to understand how ‘others’ are systematically denied those same rights.

By the mid-2000s, the term white privilege had been adopted by many educators and activists in the US. They were seeking to call attention to the myriad ways in which whites, regardless of their class, benefit from white supremacy and are, therefore, implicated in maintaining the system. For whites in the US, where many live in racially homogeneous communities, the concept of white privilege could spark individual self-reflection and motivate individual political action.

While scholars in some other countries have recently used the term to elucidate systemic patterns of inequality in their own societies, in other countries scholars have been more dubious about the concept.

In South Africa, white privilege is the legacy of apartheid, which subjugated and devalued anyone whose skin colour was not white. Despite the political dismantling of apartheid, white privilege persists. Calls to transform racialised organisations are viewed as threats by white people who, correctly, hear demands for racial justice as an end to white privilege.

In France, use of the term white privilege is relatively recent, introduced in the late 2000s by social scientists. The concept is particularly accurate to describe the legacies of slavery and colonial politics. And it captures the experience of structural racism many inhabitants of France’s social-housing neighbourhoods have shared.

Yet, with growing acceptance of the concept, there has also been resistance. Some decry “white privilege” as creeping Americanisation, ill-fit to France’s liberal tradition and universalism.

Others, echoing critics in the US, argue that a sole focus on racial inequity may entrench, rather than repair, racial divisions in the country. For example, the use of ‘white privilege’ can backfire when it fails to resonate with whites disadvantaged by class, gender or religion. Consequently, the term can, at times, elicit defensive reactions and increased denial of racial disparities.

 

Race as a political category

Constructions of whiteness and its associated privileges are shaped by different – sometimes contradictory – histories of racial discrimination and racial justice activism. This is because understandings of race and racial categories, as socially constructed categories, remain inconsistent and unequally salient across space and time.

For example, a person from North Africa, from the Indian sub-continent or from Oceania could be considered ‘white’ – in spite of a dark complexion – in many contexts.

Race as a political category is loaded with the histories of racial extermination and racist politics in some places and less so in others. In France ‘white privilege’ could be perceived as provocative because it challenges the French universalist narrative and the modern conception of citizenship and a common will.

Thus, discussions of the material consequences of ‘race’ as a category may occur more openly outside of Western Europe, in Africa and the Americas where native populations were exterminated, enslaved and subjected to various forms of social and political exclusion.

Still, the question of who counts as ‘white’, ‘coloured’, ‘black’, or indigenous remains deeply contested across the globe. As do the explanations for the disparate outcomes and treatment of people in these socially, and sometimes legally, constructed categories. Hence whiteness, and the privileges associated with membership in such a category, remains contextually defined.

For example, an individual of European descent may be treated differently based on where they are in the world. But, this does not negate the fact that someone of Black African origin will often be treated worse than a similarly situated person of European origin in many countries. White privilege persists, even in the absence of any universal definition of “white”.

 

Toward a goal of racial justice

There have been countless moves to maintain the status quo, such as the Cornwall Hill College anti-transformation protest, You Silence We Amplify, and the U.S. capital insurgency.

Privilege is directly contingent on disfranchisement, measured in terms of who does and does not have access and opportunity. In countries with histories of white supremacy, the meaning of white privilege may seem self-evident to many. But for others there and in other countries, the term may prompt new questions and challenges.

Although the concept of ‘white privilege’ has proved valuable to people advocating for social change in different national contexts, there is also resistance in many countries to the notion that white people are uniquely ‘privileged’ by their race. Some critics seem unwilling to dismantle white supremacy whereas others point to the limitations of ‘white privilege’ to capture the full range of inequalities that shape people’s lives.

A transnational movement for racial justice requires a shared commitment to ending racial inequality across national boundaries. It also requires a sensitivity to the specific, local conditions in which race and racism touch the everyday lives of people.

The concept of ‘white privilege’ remains useful when presented in ways that both resonate with individuals and shed light on structural causes of racial inequality. Then, it has the potential to motivate those with advantages to combat injustices. It can undermine movements for racial justice, however, when it fails to raise awareness of the historical, structural, and political forces that confer some groups advantages over others based on skin colour, phenotype, hair texture and other physical characteristics attributed to ‘race.’

What is clear is that, as a tool for advocacy, ‘white privilege’ cannot be an end but rather a beginning, one of many concepts that can lead individuals toward a critique of systemic racism and global anti-blackness.

Nuraan Davids, Professor of Philosophy of Education, Stellenbosch University; Karolyn Tyson, Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Kevin Driscoll, Assistant Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia; Magali Della Sudda, Research scientist, Sciences Po Bordeaux; Veronica Terriquez, Associate professor, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and Vivian Zayas, Professor of Psychology, Cornell University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Sep 15 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Kabul 1990. I land in the capital of Afghanistan for my very first mission with the United Nations. Controlled by the government, Kabul was surrounded by the Mujahedeen. As a young female professional, living and working across the country, I felt protected by the Afghans, whether walking in the bustling cities or meeting with the Mujahedeen in the rural countryside. Afghanistan had already been at war for over ten years and we all worked with the hope that the fighting would come to an end soon.

Yasmine Sherif

In 2000, nearly ten years later, I returned to Afghanistan. I learnt of the secret underground schools run for girls; schools where girls, their families and their teachers were willing to risk their lives for the right to an education. There was a suffocating “peace,” but no justice: the rights of Afghan girls were being violated or under constant threat.

Today, 2021. The Afghans have suffered a brutal armed conflict for over 40 years. They have experienced the horrors of war and the injustice of gender-discrimination. They have lived through earthquakes, extreme poverty, droughts and a high rate of children and youth with disabilities – Afghanistan is one of most landmine-contaminated countries on Earth. Generation after generation suffers.

This cannot continue in the name of any religion, belief, honorability or humanity. Afghanistan deserves nothing less than to recover and rebuild. It will need 50% of its population – the girls and women – to help do so. We approach this imperative with both cautious optimism and our determination to stand up for humanity and for girls’ equal rights to an inclusive quality education.

Leaders across the UN and civil society are also stepping up the call for continued education in Afghanistan, especially for girls. “Now more than ever, Afghan children, women and men need the support and solidarity of the international community,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

Numerous UN agencies, civil society organizations and strategic donor partners are responding with utmost urgency. UNICEF deployed its Director of Emergencies to Kabul within days and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has also arrived in the country. As the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, Education Cannot Wait is also responding with speed, and we will stay and deliver, working closely with our in-country partners in Afghanistan.

With our established policy of “the urgency of now”, a call first made by Martin Luther King Jr., Education Cannot Wait will shortly release an emergency education funding allocation, focusing on displaced girls and boys as our immediate priority. Some 400,000 school-aged Afghan children have already been forcibly displaced since January 2021 – a number that has increased since 15 August 2021. Thanks to our biggest private sector strategic donor – The LEGO Foundation and KIRKBI – ECW is able to swiftly release its emergency response.

ECW is also cooperating with the UN’s coordination mechanisms and with strategic donor partners on the ground to continue our work for our second Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP) in Afghanistan. This MYRP continues to build on our achieved target of 60% girls and adolescent girls in ECW’s investments, to deliver on their right to education now, because their education simply cannot wait until Afghanistan has rebuilt. I appeal to all strategic donor partners, governments, private sector and foundations, to rally behind this ECW multi-year joint programme. We must scale up and move fast, and we need everyone on board to win this crucial race for girls’ education.

In addition to all the suffering they have endured, Afghan children and youth also live under the constant threat of COVID-19, as do so many millions of children and youth around the world. As the pandemic continues to disrupt our global economy – impacting both the safety and well-being of millions of girls and boys and our trajectory toward the Sustainable Development Goals – we must also continue to respond to this crisis.

The time has also come to bridge the digital divide, which is also a socio-economic divide. Anyone who has travelled by plane across Afghanistan at night knows when you have crossed the Afghan border: everything below goes pitch black. There is hardly any electricity across the entire nation, let alone Wifi or connectivity. The digital divide is growing not only in Afghanistan but around the world. This month we had the privilege of interviewing the CEO of Dubai Cares, H.E. Dr. Tariq Al Gurg, who calls for the world to think anew to close the divide.

Meanwhile, we are grappling with another disaster in Haiti, where 260,000 school-aged children and youth require urgent assistance. This week Education Cannot Wait is disbursing its investments to partners on the ground through another First Emergency Response, thanks again to the speedy support from The LEGO Foundation and KIRKBI. This will be followed by a sustainable, comprehensive Multi-Year Resilience Programme, which will also need generous support to turn the tide in Haiti.

Today, Education Cannot Wait has investments in 38 crisis affected countries around the world. We are no longer a start-up fund, but a proven model that delivers tangible results for crisis-affected girls and boys. While all ECW stakeholders have jointly managed to mobilize $1.7 billion in just a few years for both our Trust Fund and in-country First Emergency and Multi-Year investments, so much more need to be done. At times, the human suffering we see may seem endless. Yet, we must keep the light of hope shining for every one of these vulnerable children and young people.

Unless we invest in girls’ education now, unless we stay and deliver in Afghanistan, unless we place education at the heart of all the Sustainable Development Goals and across the full spectrum of human rights, it is difficult to see the logic of any other major investment, the Grand Bargain or local empowerment. Without an education, how will any of these worthy goals and crucial rights be materialized?

Through partnerships, speed, quality, generosity and moral courage, we can make it.

May the day come when education is recognized as the solid foundation, binding glue and guiding light for everything else we want to achieve. Or as I wrote in my diary in July 1990: “When the land far beyond the mountains, within the reach of the sky, is no longer pitch black.” That is the day when every girl is sitting in the light, studying for their exams.

Education Cannot Wait will – together with all its partners – stay and deliver until the light shines for every girl and boy in Afghanistan … until the light shines for every girl and boy whose education is denied in the darkest corners around the world.

 

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Excerpt:

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

One in six youth have had to stop working since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an ILO report released last year. Credit: Benjamin Suomela, International Organization for Migration (IOM)

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sep 15 2021 (IPS)

A pre-pandemic report published by the International Labor Organization, ILO, the Global Employment Trends for Youth 2020, offered a sober analysis on the job market prospects for youth.

“The labour force participation rate of young people (aged 15–24) has continued to decline. Between 1999 and 2019, despite the global youth population increasing from 1 billion to 1.3 billion, the total number of young people engaged in the labour force decreased from 568 million to 497 million”.

In addition, while youth are those who can adjust and adapt the most to the new technologies, they are also the ones who are at the most risk of seeing job opportunities earlier available now disappearing.

With the pandemic and the multiple and overlapping crises brought by it, the chances for a youth to get employed are even dimmer especially in developing and low middle-income economies.

While in these nations, a youth belonging to the upper-and-middle class families are likely to navigate the post pandemic successfully thanks to their skills but also thanks to their status and connections, vulnerable youth instead remain stuck in cycle of exclusion and lack of opportunities.

This is even truer if you are living with a disability, be it physical or developmental or a psychosocial condition that deters you from easily finding an employment.

Considering that the vast majority of youth living with a disability in a developing nation are starting their quest for a job at stark disadvantage in relation to their peers without disabilities due to lack of quality education and other opportunities offered by the society, the Covid-19 pandemic really risks furthering lowering their odds at a dignified livelihood.

A joint publication by ILO and the Asian Development Bank, ADB, Tackling the COVID-19 youth employment crisis in Asia and the Pacific, clearly depicts a grim future for millions of youth aspiring to enter the job market.

“Young people’s employment prospects in Asia and the Pacific are severely challenged as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Youth will be hit harder than adults in the immediate crisis and also will bear higher longer-term economic and social costs” shares the report.

A job for a youth with disabilities, not only in the Asia Pacific Region but elsewhere, is now even more distant possibility.

A reset that potentially could unleash a positive revolution in the global and national priorities, under the banner of “build forward better”, is what has been sought by experts from around the world.

Such drastic shifts to turbo-charge more sustainable economies can also help turn them into more inclusive ones, ensuring a quantum leap in job opportunities for those left behind before the pandemic.

For a youth living with disabilities, this implies stronger chances at finding a job together with better opportunities in the education system, a prerequisite for the former.

A change of prospective of this proportion would imply not only putting disabilities at the center of government’s actions but also a whole effort to reframe disabilities in the modern society.

Shifting mindsets on the role persons with disabilities can have is a sine qua non if we really want to create a level playing field.

Positively, in the last few years, there is no doubt that a lot of progress has been made towards more inclusive job markets but we are only at the beginning.

Despite positive signals, we need go deeper and wider and bolder.

The Return on Disability Group created by Canadian Rich Donovan, author of Unleash Different, has been a pioneer in pitching the business case of focusing on disabilities as an opportunity.

ILO is leading the efforts within the UN system by enabling the Global Business and Disability Network, a global consortium with major corporations willing to include accessibility and overall disability rights among their top priorities.

GSK, the mammoth pharma company has become a trailblazer in the field by setting up The Global Disability Confidence Council that is made up by its senior leaders.

“Disability Confidence describes the corporate best practice that ensures dignified and equitable access & inclusion for people with disabilities as valued colleagues, potential colleagues, customers, shareholders & fellow citizens” explains GSK.

Around the world there are other promising initiatives like The Valueable500, a global campaign whose members, all major corporations, commit to practical and game-changer initiatives to promote disability inclusion.

For example, Proctor and Gamble is conducting a global disability audit while Mahindra & Mahindra, the Indian car manufacturer, is working to enable a jobs portal to better target and include youth living with disabilities.

These are just few examples of what global conglomerates can do to change the status quo.

Yet, piecemeal approaches cannot work and that’s why we need a holistic, whole of the government impetus to drastically reframe how policy making works to fulfill the rights and needs of persons with disabilities.

Global business can play an essential role here as well.

First of all, it is an imperative that global corporate networks focused on disability talk and collaborate among each other.

Second, though what the most powerful multinationals are doing is relevant, is not nearly enough and our expectations in what multinationals can do, must be higher.

Surely, we need more of them to pledge new internal targets but one-off initiatives must become the springboard for much more holistic actions that include their global supply chains and global sales.

If Proctor and Gamble really wants to elevate disability to the next level, then resources need to be spent all across its massive operations, including the suppliers and contractors.

If Mahindra & Mahindra is serious about disability, then it should ensure that all its distributors around the world embrace the issue as well.

Together with this “total encompassing” approach, resources must be used for advocacy and lobbying. The latter word is often used with a negative connotation but we really need to lobby governments and policy makers to truly become serious on disability rights.

The job market, especially in developing and emerging countries, will become more inclusive only if the local business peoples and local politicians are forced to commit to disabilities.

This means not only accessible work places or even possible quotas in the job market but a rethinking of policy making starting from education and social security because without accessing to quality education, youth with disabilities will only continue to remain at the margins of our economies.

The global private sector can truly make a difference here because they have the prowess and capacities to be listened to and demand action.

The quest for a more inclusive job market does not entail just initiatives to make it more inclusive of persons with disabilities.

That’s why the 2nd edition of Global Disability Summit next year, must truly be focused on new partnerships with the private sector aimed at mainstreaming disabilities at the center of the economies and societies we want to re-imagine.

Working from the top and “retrofitting” the job market by making it more inclusive should lead to a whole society approach that leverages the skills and untapped potential of youth with disabilities.

Simone Galimberti is Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

 

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Local stakeholders engaged in participatory livelihoods planning in Champasack, Laos. Credit: A Barlis

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sep 14 2021 (IPS)

As incidents of drought and extreme rainfall increase, farmers in Southeast Asia are partnering with experts to develop targeted weather forecasts to work around the threats and, when adaptation becomes too costly, buy specially designed insurance to protect their livelihoods.

Climate impacts are increasing. In 2016, for example, the impact of what is known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) resulted in severe drought and saline intrusion in 11 out of 13 provinces in the Mekong River Delta. This affected 400,000 hectares of cropland, resulting in 200 million dollars in economic losses and food insecurity among farmers. Household incomes dropped 75 percent, pushing vulnerable farmers who had little savings and no insurance deeper into poverty.

Integrated risk management and risk transfer approaches (e.g. innovative insurance solutions) will be critically required for smallholder growers to manage the physical and financial impacts of climate.

A key component of the project, DeRisk Southeast Asia, is to develop a number of adaptation strategies, says Professor Shahbaz Mushtaq, the project’s insurance segment lead at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) one of three project partners. The others are the World Meteorological Organisation and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, part of the CGIAR.

ECOM facilitator leads the insurance literacy workshop with coffee farmers in Dak Lak. Credit: A Barlis

“So the project is working on improved climate forecasts, new irrigation systems and practices, and improving production systems,” says Mushtaq in an online interview. “The underlying premise is that the smallholder growers need to mitigate their risk as much as they can while developing and adopting suitable adaptation practices.”

“Then, the project also acknowledges that there’s a limit to adaptation,” he adds. “Not all risk is manageable. [It is] when it is no longer economically viable then you need to transfer the risk elsewhere, this is where insurance will play a major role”.

DeRisk, funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, operates in Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. For example, in a pilot led by the Alliance in one of the provinces in the Mekong River delta, the department of crop production (across levels), extension officers and farmers now sit down with weather forecasters (or meet virtually because of COVID-19 restrictions) to mould a general weather forecast into seasonal and 10-day advisories that target rice producers.

“We really emphasize co-development by multiple stakeholders, integrating information from the hydro-meteorological (‘hydro-met’) experts and the crop experts with the local knowledge of farmers,” says Nguyen Duy Nhiem, DeRISK Country Coordinator in Vietnam.

For example, the representatives will take a seasonal forecast, broken down by month, and generate guidance for specific crops such as: “the best planting date, the best variety to plant and if drought happens, what drought-resistant variety to use,” Nguyen tells IPS in an online interview.

That advice is packaged as a bulletin and delivered using a variety of media, including stationary loudspeakers in villages, paper bulletins or posters and on a smartphone app called Zalo.

The 10-day advisories zero in on daily conditions. “For example, if it’s going to rain on a certain day, farmers are told not to apply fertilizers or pesticides because they would leach into the soil,” explains Nguyen.

He’s happy with the project’s progress. The stakeholders from the hydro-met sector and agriculture sector “understand better each other’s languages,” says Nguyen. “For example, prior to project’s engagement when talking about ‘rainy days’, the agriculture stakeholders and farmers think that rain should be an amount that can be measured in a gauge while for the hydro-met sector that can be any amount above 0.0 mm. The definition of rainy days has been explained during discussions and clearly noted in bulletins.”

Seasonal agroclimatic bullet poster installed at District Agriculture Service Center in Mekong Delta. Credit: Dang Thanh Tai

In addition, Nguyen says the 20,000-plus farmers who have received the advisories in the past two cropping seasons have been very pleased because the information helped them avoid the impact of damaging weather and make more informed decisions better. If plans hold, other districts and provinces in the region will start developing the tailored forecasts in 2022.

Challenges, according to Nguyen, include the lack of capacity of staff in provincial weather offices to develop the tailored forecasts. Another is reaching more farmers. Although many farmers have access to smartphones, not all of them know how to use them to access the advisories in the Zalo group. Possible solutions, he says, include developing an app or partnering with a telecom company to send messages to all customers in project areas.

In neighbouring Laos, agro-climactic advisories are available for the whole country, in monthly and weekly forecasts, says DeRisk Country Coordinator Leo Kris Palao. The implementation of DeRISK in Laos was linked with existing efforts by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to further improve this system with national partners.

The system is automated, he explains in an email interview. Called the Laos Climate Services for Agriculture (LaCSA), the system analyses meteorological and agricultural data from national databases and field-level data collection by local partners. Offices of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry review advisories before being disseminated.

LaCSA can be accessed online through an app (Android/iOS), but for those who don’t use IT tools, the information, as in Vietnam, is also shared via loudspeakers, radio and TV, and community and school posters.

More than 21 000 farmers in Laos have adapted their activities after receiving an advisory. “We are happy with the progress made by the De-RISK project in Laos,” says Palao. “Based on our baseline assessment, most of the responses from farmers receiving the agro-climatic advisories indicated that change in planting dates, use of suitable varieties tailored to the climate condition of the season, and water and fertilizer management were among their adaptation practices.”

Mushtaq says that to further mitigate the ‘residual risk’, which can’t be managed economically through adaptation strategies, his team developed various indexed-based insurance products that are now being tested through a pilot insurance scheme – Coffee Climate Protection Insurance.

“We went to the field and interviewed several hundreds of smallholder coffee growers and industry.” The assessment for the insurance scheme included asking about the biggest risks faced by farmers, whether it be drought, disease, or extreme rainfall, among other hazards. “We wanted to develop products for those risks that are most impactful,” Mushtaq says.

The researcher of USQ adds that if an extreme weather event occurs and a farmer can’t immediately recover from losses, “his production would suffer, it would impact the supply chain, it would impact the roaster, and it would impact coffee production regions. But if farmers could get back on their feet very quickly, it would help the industry, it would the whole supply chain. That’s the underpinning driver for the supply chain industry to co-contribute insurance premiums.”

Mushtaq says he was impressed when coffee growers told him that drought and extreme rainfall are major risks but didn’t want drought insurance because they are able to cope through access to irrigation. “But if there’s extreme rainfall, we don’t have an option to manage that risk, so we want products to cater to it,” the farmers said.

The initial assessment found that farmers have a range of attitudes about insurance — some were willing to pay more than the suggested premium, others would not even consider purchasing, and the majority were in the middle, unsure.

Finally, most agreed on the product. What swayed the doubters was the credibility that USQ and its partners had developed over the years working with the coffee industry represented by the private sector and associations, says Mushtaq. “To me, the most important success factor was the presence of the industry itself. You need to have really solid leadership to drive this agenda. And we were very lucky that we got some really good partners in the coffee industry.”

In stages 1 and 2 of the pilot, farmers and coffee traders will split the costs of the premiums, but in later years, other actors in the supply chain, such as roasters, will have to contribute a portion; the exact division of costs still needs to be negotiated.

Currently, the ‘extreme rainfall’ insurance product is in operation, explains Mushtaq, meaning that if total rainfall exceeds the threshold for the two-month season, payments would be triggered. As the insurance is indexed, the payouts would reflect the amount of protection that farmers chose to purchase.

To get to this point, “we had to run several workshops, and gather a lot of information on how index-based insurance products works,” he says, adding that more needs to be done to increase awareness. Moving forward, the team considers running a campaign to address this, “Awareness is still a problem, and we do need to run a massive campaign.”

DeRISK aims to develop its climate services and insurance products further and work with national partners on policies and strategies supporting smallholder farmers in the region in response to climate risks.

 

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United Nations military personnel are the Blue Helmets on the ground. Today, they consist of over 70,000 troops contributed by national armies from across the globe and help keep the peace in military conflicts worldwide. Credit: United Nations

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Sep 14 2021 (IPS)

Last weekend, U.S. corporate media continued a 20-year repetition compulsion to evade the central role of the USA in causing vast carnage and misery due to the so-called War on Terror. But millions of Americans fervently oppose the military-industrial complex and its extremely immoral nonstop warfare.

CodePink and Massachusetts Peace Action hosted a national webinar to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11 — the day before Sunday’s launch of the Cut the Pentagon campaign — and the resulting video includes more than 20 speakers who directly challenged the lethal orthodoxy of the warfare state. As part of the mix, here’s the gist of what I had to say:

When we hear all the media coverage and retrospectives, we rarely hear — and certainly almost never in the mass media hear — that when people are killed, whether it’s intentional or predictable, those are atrocities that are being financed by U.S. taxpayers.

And so we hear about the evils of Al Qaeda and 9/11, and certainly those were evils, but we’re not hearing about the predictable as well as the intentional deaths: the tens of thousands of civilians killed by U.S. air strikes alone in the last two decades, and the injuries, and the terrorizing of people with drones and other U.S. weapons. We’re hearing very little about that.

Part of the role of activists is to make those realities heard, make them heard loud and clear, as forcefully and as emphatically and as powerfully as possible. Activist roles can sometimes get blurred in terms of becoming conflated with the roles of some of the best members of Congress.

When progressive legislators push for peace and social justice, they deserve our praise and our support. When they succumb to the foreign-policy “Blob” — when they start to be more a representative of the establishment to the movements rather than a representative of the movements to the establishment — we’ve got a problem.

It’s vital for progressive activists to be clear about what our goals are, and to be willing to challenge even our friends on Capitol Hill.

I’ll give you a very recent example. Two leaders of anti-war forces in the House of Representatives, a couple of weeks ago, circulated a “Dear Colleague” message encouraging members of the House to sign a letter urging the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, to stand firm behind President Biden’s 1.6 percent increase in the Pentagon budget, over the budget that Trump had gotten the year before.

The point of the letter was: Chairman Smith, we want you to defend the Biden budget’s increase of 1.6 percent, against the budget that has just been approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee with a 3.3 percent increase.

That kind of a letter moves the goal posts further and further to the liking of the military-industrial complex, to the liking of war profiteers, to the liking of the warfare state. And so, when people we admire and support, in this case Rep. Mark Pocan and Rep. Barbara Lee, circulate such a Dear Colleague letter, there’s a tendency for organizations to say: “Yeah, we’re going to get behind you,” we will respond affirmatively to the call to urge our members to urge their representatives in Congress to sign this letter.

And what that creates is a jumping-off point that moves the frame of reference farther and farther into the militarism that we’re trying to push back against. For that reason, my colleagues and I at RootsAction decided to decline an invitation to sign in support.

I bring up that episode because it’s indicative of the pathways and the crossroads that we face to create momentum for a stronger and more effective peace and social justice movement. And it’s replicated in many respects.

When we’re told it’s not practical on Capitol Hill to urge a cutoff of military funding and assistance to all countries that violate human rights — and when we’re told that Israel is off the table — it’s not our job to internalize those limits that have been internalized by almost everyone in Congress, except for the Squad and a precious few others.

It’s our job to speak not only truth to power but also about power. And to be clear and candid even when that means challenging some of our usual allies. And to organize.

At RootsAction, we’ve launched a site called Progressive Hub, as an activism tool to combine the need to know with the imperative to act.

It’s not easy, to put it mildly, to go against the powerful flood of megamedia, of big money in politics, of the ways that issues are constantly framed by powerful elites. But in the long run, peace activism is essential for overcoming militarism. And organizing is what makes that possible.

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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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 14 2021 (IPS)

Timely interventions by civil society, including concerned scientists, have prevented many likely abuses of next week’s UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS). The Secretary General (UNSG) must now prevent UN endorsement of what remains of its prime movers’ corporate agenda.

Summit threat
The narrative on food challenges has changed in recent years. Instead of the ‘right to food’, ‘food security’, ‘eliminating hunger and malnutrition’, ‘sustainable agriculture’, etc, neutral sounding ‘systems’ solutions are being touted. These will advance transnational corporations’ influence, interests and profits.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The call for the Summit supposedly came from the SG’s office. There was little, if any prior consultation with the Rome-based UN food agency leaders. However, this apparent ‘oversight’ was quickly addressed by the SG, which led to the preparatory commission in Rome last month.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was created by the UN-led post-Second World War multilateral system to address food challenges. Later, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) were also established in Rome under UN auspices.

President Donald Trump’s sovereigntist unilateralism accelerated earlier tendencies undermining UN-led multilateralism, especially after the US-led invasion of Iraq. A proliferation of ostensibly ‘multistakeholder’ initiatives – typically financed by transnational agribusinesses and philanthropic foundations – have also marginalised UN-led multilateralism and the Rome food agencies.

Thus far, the Summit process has resisted UN-led multilateral follow-up actions. To be sure, UN system marginalisation has been subtle, not ham-fisted. Besides the Rome trio, the UN Committee for World Food Security (CFS) and its High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) have been casualties.

The CFS has evolved in recent years to involve a broad range of food system stakeholders, including private business interests and civil society. The latter includes social movements – of farmers, other food producers and civil society stakeholders – largely bypassed by Summit processes.

Through the FSS, World Economic Forum (WEF) and other initiatives have been presented as from the UN. In fact, these have minimally involved UN system leaders, let alone Member States. Many refer to the Summit without the UN prefix to reject its legitimacy, as growing numbers cynically call it the ‘WEF-FSS’.

Science-policy nexus takeover
The proposal for a new science-policy interface – “either by extending the mandate of the Summit’s Scientific Group, or by establishing a permanent new panel or coordinating mechanism in its mould” – is of particular concern.

The FSS Scientific Group overwhelmingly comprises scientists and economists largely chosen by the Summit’s prime movers. Besides marginalising many other food system stakeholders, its biases are antithetical to UN values and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Their assessments barely consider the consequences of innovations for the vulnerable. Prioritising technical over social innovations, they have not been transparent, let alone publicly accountable.

Their pretentiously scientistic approach is patronising, and hence, unlikely to effectively address complex contemporary food system challenges involving multiple stakeholders.

Extending the Scientific Group’s remit beyond the Summit, or by otherwise making it permanent, would betray the commitment that the FSS would support and strengthen, not undermine the CFS. The CFS “should be where the Summit outcomes are ultimately discussed and assessed, using its inclusive participation mechanisms”.

Such a new body would directly undermine the HLPE’s established “role and remit” to provide scientific guidance to Member States through the CFS. In July, hundreds of scientists warned that a new science panel would undermine not only food system governance, but also the CFS itself.

Saving UN-led multilateralism
Just as Summit preparations have displaced CFS, the proposal science-policy interface would marginalise the HLPE, undermining the most successful UN system reform to date in meaningfully and productively advancing inclusive multi-stakeholderism.

After the 2007-2008 food price crisis, CFS was reformed in 2009 to provide “an inclusive platform to ensure legitimacy across a broad range of constituencies”, and to improve the coherence of various diverse food-related policies.

Like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the HLPE consults widely and openly with stakeholders on its research assessments and work priorities. Its reports are subject to extensive peer reviews to ensure they serve CFS constituents’ needs, remain policy relevant, and address diverse perspectives.

Last week, several crucial civil society leaders, working closely with the UN system, warned that Summit outcomes could further erode the UN’s public support and legitimacy, and the ability of the Rome bodies to guide needed food system reform.

The group includes UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri, his predecessor Olivier De Schutter, now UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, CFS chair Thanawat Tiensin and HLPE chair Martin Cole.

Their concerns reiterate those of hundreds of scientists, global governance experts, civil society groups, and the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), among many. The main worry is about “the threat it poses to the role of science and knowledge in food system decision-making”.

Mindful of the controversy around the FSS from the outset, the four urge the SG, “In the wake of the Summit, it will be imperative to restore faith in the UN system…A clear commitment to support and strengthen the HLPE and the CFS would therefore be invaluable”.

They stress, “there is much to be done to ensure that the HLPE of the CFS is equipped to continue playing its crucial role at the interface of food system science and policy”. After earlier setbacks, the UNSG must defend the progress CFS and HLPE represent for meaningful UN-led multilateralism and engagement with civil society.

 

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