Africa

By External Source
Aug 6 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Indigenous peoples live in all regions of the world.

They are distinct social and cultural groups and share collective ancestral ties to the land they live on.

They own, occupy or use some 22% of global land area.

But they safeguard 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity.

There are at least 370-500 million indigenous peoples in the world.

They represent the greater part of the world’s cultural diversity.

And they have created and speak the major share of the world’s almost 7000 languages.

Although they make up just 5 percent of the global population, they account for about 15 percent of the extreme poor.

Indigenous Peoples’ life expectancy is up to 20 years lower than that of non-indigenous people.

Much of the land occupied by Indigenous Peoples is under customary ownership.

Yet many governments recognize only a fraction of this land as belonging to Indigenous peoples.

The right to participate in decision-making is a key component in achieving reconciliation between Indigenous Peoples and States.

A new social contract must combat the legacy of marginalization affecting indigenous peoples.

One organization working towards this is NEFAS: the North East Slow Food and Agrobiodiversity Society.

NESFAS and its indigenous communities aim to defend, revive, and promote Indigenous Food Systems.

It values traditional and local knowledge holders for their ingenuity.

And it empowers indigenous youth to become beacons of hope.

International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples 2021: “Leaving no one behind: Indigenous peoples and the call for a new social contract.”

 

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The killing of rhinos by poachers has risen sharply since South Africa started easing COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Their horns are cut off and trafficked mostly to Asia. Credit: AWF wildlife archive

By Guy Dinmore
St David’s, Wales, Aug 6 2021 (IPS)

A recent seizure at Johannesburg’s international airport of a large consignment of rhino horns confirmed worst fears – illegal trafficking of wildlife and the plundering of treasured species is back with a vengeance after a Covid-19 lockdown lull.

Destined for Kuala Lumpur, the 32 pieces of rhino horns weighing a total of 160kg were intercepted by a sniffer dog on July 17.

Rhinos in South Africa were being killed by poachers at the rate of three a day in 2019. But with domestic and international travel restrictions imposed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the daily toll in 2020 fell to around one. However, a subsequent lockdown easing has given rise to “serious numbers” of rhino poaching incidents, according to WWF.

Carcases of rhinos left by poachers to bleed to death are unfortunately just one of the most visible images of the global illegal trafficking in wildlife – a multi-billion dollar industry often run by transnational syndicates, sometimes alongside trafficking in drugs, arms and people.

From the seas to the skies, the industrial-scale killing of animals, illegal logging of timber and the plundering of rare plants are driving many species to extinction.

Tigers – their bones and other body parts used in traditional medicine — are among the most threatened victims, with 97 percent of the wild tiger population estimated to have disappeared over the past century. Cheetahs are vanishing because of the demand for pets.

A quarter of shark species are now facing extinction, mostly due to illegal and unsustainable fishing. All seven remaining species of sea turtles are at risk. New species of orchids – there are about 28,000 known to science – have disappeared to collectors and thus become extinct in the wild before they are even recorded. Millions of birds are traded illegally each year. The list goes on and on.

The most trafficked mammal on earth is the pangolin, a scaly ant-eating creature. More than a million are estimated to have been poached from the wild in the last decade for their meat, skin and scales. All eight species are deemed at risk of extinction.

All eight species of pangolin, four in Asia and four in Africa, are threatened with extinction, mostly because of illegal poaching and trafficking. Credit: AWF wildlife archive

The Covid-19 pandemic has hammered home what scientists were long saying – that wildlife trafficking is also a serious threat to global security. Bats and pangolins are the focus of research into the evolutionary path of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 disease. A recent study by the Francis Crick Institute showed that SARS-CoV-2 could in theory have moved to humans from pangolins, after originating in a currently unknown bat coronavirus.

Three-quarters of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, transferred from animals to humans, facilitated by environmental destruction and wildlife crime.

These findings only further underscore efforts by the International Union for Conservation of Nature to shape humanity’s response to the planet’s conservation crises. The IUCN World Conservation Congress, initially delayed by the pandemic and now to be held from 3-11 September in Marseille, is the world’s leading conservation event where government, civil society and indigenous peoples’ organisations will join discussions, debate and vote on motions that will set priorities and drive conservation and sustainable development action.

Two key motions tackle illegal wildlife trafficking: Motion 50 on implementing international efforts to tackle the role of cybercrime, the internet and social media in enabling traffickers, and Motion 65 on engaging the private sector to combat wildlife trafficking.

Jose Louies, a specialist in wildlife crime prevention with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), a co-sponsor of Motion 50, says governments must make the illegal wildlife trade a top priority and set out clear guidelines on wildlife cybercrime. IT companies must also set policies to stop, control and monitor traffickers using their platforms.

Louies told IPS that WTI’s covert agents had been following pangolin traders online in recent months, connecting with suppliers and buyers from several countries.

Pangolin scales sold illegally through the internet by wildlife traffickers. The pangolin, sometimes called a scaly anteater, is the world’s most trafficked mammal. Credit: Jose Louies / Wildlife Trust of India.

“Most of these leads were picked up from a single social media platform where the buyers and sellers posted comments with email ids/ phone numbers to connect,” he added. ”We had 114 buyers and 69 sellers,” he said, naming the sample countries as Pakistan, Nepal, Iraq, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar and 17 states in India.

“The use of social media and messaging apps to build connections between suspects at various levels of trade is a serious matter of concern. Such fluidic and organic systems will enable a network to regenerate quicker than a conventional network.”

WTI sees IUCN as the leading global body to make recommendations and influence policies, regardless of political borders, and to act as an enabler for global conservation policies and practices. “Conservation is not an exclusive job of conservationists – it’s the collective efforts of everyone,” says Louies.

Among the various elements of Motion 50, IUCN members call on governments to strengthen legislation to tackle cyber-enabled wildlife trafficking; collaborate more in cross-border investigations; encourage and protect whistle-blowers; and encourage technology companies to step up efforts to stop online trafficking.

Known as Hatha Jodi, these dried penises of the monitor lizard were sold illegally by traffickers online. Credit: Jose Louies / Wildlife Trust of India.

The Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, launched in 2018, now brings together over 40 companies from across the world in partnership with wildlife experts at WWF, TRAFFIC, and IFAW for an industry-wide approach to shut down online marketplaces for wildlife traffickers

The latest companies to join are China’s Douyin, a popular short video social media platform, and Huya, a video game company.
As the Coalition admits, advances in technology and connectivity, combined with rising buying power and demand for illegal wildlife products, have increased the ease of exchange from poacher to consumer. ”A largely unregulated online market allows criminals to sell illegally obtained wildlife products across the globe. Purchasing elephant ivory, tiger cubs, and pangolin scales is as easy as click, pay, ship.”

But despite such coordinated efforts, including GLACY+ involving Interpol, trafficking is getting even bigger.

“In Africa, cybercrime is escalating on many platforms via the internet,” says Philip Muruthi, vice president of the African Wildlife Foundation, also a co-sponsor of Motion 50. “You just need to do a Google search and you will find someone trying to sell some wildlife product or wildlife… but the capacity to deal with wildlife cybercrime is very low across the board. This is something that we have noted across Africa – a growing silent problem – for which we have limited knowledge and capacity to turn around.”

AWF has a program to train and equip law enforcement officers to combat wildlife cybercrime, starting in Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but governments and other players could do much more, Muruthi tells IPS.

“What is agreed at these IUCN World Conservation Congresses often results in enhanced collective action. The issue of wildlife cybercrime may be elusive at a glance but deep analyses reveals it warrants local, regional and global attention,” Muruthi adds.

Stressing the importance of its unique structure spanning governments, NGOs, the private sector, individuals and indigenous peoples, AWF also benefits from being able to access more potential collaborators and span disciplines and themes.

Steven Galster, chair of Freeland which describes itself as a “lean, frontline international NGO with a team of law enforcement, development and communications specialists” fighting wildlife trafficking and human slavery, says traffickers are winning an unequal battle. Richer countries are not backing up their political promises with action, he says.

“I’m a big fan of IUCN. It’s an important body,” Galster tells IPS, praising IUCN’s Asia team. But he urges IUCN to shift priorities.

More broadly, Freeland, a co-sponsor of Motion 065, is calling on IUCN to go further and push for a global suspension of commercial trade in wild animals as a matter of urgency to save biodiversity and avoid another pandemic, rather than just trying to stamp out illegal wildlife trade as defined by CITES conventions.

“Legal trade also carries virus transmission risks. There remains so much unknown about the many viruses out there, and how they may mutate, that we should not be confining our containment to only some species of families of animals,” Galster says. ”The precautionary principle should be pushed harder than ever in wake of Covid-19.”

 

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Triple jumper Hugues Fabrice Zango will return home to Burkina Faso as a hero after a record-breaking eight months.

By External Source
Aug 6 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Awut Deng Acuil is the first female Minister of Education for South Sudan, and only the second person to serve as Minister of Education for her country – which became independent country in 2011. Prior to this role, Minister Acuil was the first woman to serve as the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. Recently, Minister Acuil made history as the first women to lead a South Sudan university when she was appointed head of council at the University of Bahr El-Ghazal.

Since 2005, Minister Acuil has served as Presidential Advisor on Gender and Human Rights, Minister of Labour, Public Service and Human Resource Development, Minister of Humanitarian and Disaster Management and Minister of Gender, Child and Social Welfare.

Her long and impressive history of public service began during a challenging time in her life. During the civil war in Sudan, she spent years as a refugee in Kenya with her children. Following the death of her husband, Minister Acuil went on to continue her education and become a fierce advocate for peace, gender equality and human rights.

Minister Acuil became active in a number of organizations, training others in conflict resolution and advocating for peace. She is a founding member of the Sudanese Women Association of Nairobi and the Sudanese Women Voice for Peace. These experiences, coupled with her degree in political science, led to her participation in eventual peace negotiations between the North and South. She gained international recognition for these efforts to promote peace and development in her war-torn nation when she was awarded the InterAction Humanitarian Award in 2002.

Awut Deng Acuil has been Minister of Education and Instruction for South Sudan since early 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on education globally and further exacerbated existing barriers to education in her country. Not one to balk in the face of challenge, Minister Acuil continues to champion for the rights, protection and education of young and future generations of South Sudan.

As the Minister of General Education and Instruction, Awut Deng Acuil is supporting new initiatives in education, including those with ECW, that aim to open the door to learning for children throughout South Sudan who have been too-often excluded – girls and boys affected by conflict, students with disabilities, and pastoralist children who herd livestock.

ECW: South Sudan has a young population with a median age of 18 years, which results in serious pressure on the education system. Can you describe the challenges faced by South Sudanese children and youth to access inclusive, quality education – especially for girls?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: A number of inhibiting factors affect school enrolment, retention and completion rates in South Sudan: lack of school infrastructure – including availability of WASH facilities, sex-segregated toilets, menstrual management and sanitation systems, etc. – conflict and insecurity, traditional norms and the high turnover of qualified teachers – particularly female teachers – which results in a lack of qualified teachers. These factors fall into three barrier categories: household and community level barriers; school-based barriers; and, policy/system-level barriers. They can occur simultaneously to limit children’s learning.

While access to education rates are very low for all children in South Sudan, they are even lower for certain groups of children such as girls, children with disabilities, children affected by conflict, and pastoralist children.

Nationally, there are more male students than female students in all school types.
One of the biggest gender gaps is in secondary schools where only 35% of the enrolled students are female.

Children with disabilities face even greater exclusion. 1,597 (1.4%) of children enrolled in ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP) supported primary schools are children with disabilities, while 50 (1.38%) learners enrolled in MYRP-supported secondary schools are children with disabilities.

Girls face a number of barriers to accessing education, including:

• Family and community: Among all of the out-of–school children in South Sudan, approximately two-thirds are girls and children with disabilities. Many parents prefer to prioritize boys’ education over girls’ – so, if a family cannot afford to send all of their children to school, the interests of boys‘ education are often favored. This leads to girls either being removed from school for early and forced marriage as they are seen as a source of income or expected to take care of siblings at home.

• School environment: Lack of girl-friendly infrastructure such as WASH facilities, menstrual hygiene management (MHM) issues, school-related gender based violence, gender-biased teaching, learning methods, language, etc.

• System and policy: secondary schools are not available throughout all of South Sudan. The majority are located in urban areas, leaving rural areas neglected. This leads to higher dropout rates in rural areas. Lack of infrastructure, under-qualified teachers, inconsistent teacher pay and scarcity of resources further limit the construction of, access to and continuous staffing of schools.

• Teacher performance at schools: according to Educational Management Information System (EMIS) 2018 data, only 17% of teachers currently teaching in primary schools, and 52% of teachers in secondary schools, have received recognized teacher trainings. Besides the need to train these teachers in education foundations and subject matter content, it is imperative that trainings incorporate gender-sensitive lenses in all aspects – from teaching and learning material to the language used by teachers to promote a gender-sensitive and responsive teaching and learning environment.

Existing Education Cannot Wait (ECW) programmes are addressing learning environment barriers through: the construction of girl and disability-friendly WASH facilities in schools, menstrual hygiene management (MHM), prevention of gender-based violence, etc. More still needs to be done to support the enrolment and retention of girls in school to complete their education cycle and transition to higher levels of learning.

ECW: What are the key priorities and strategies of South Sudan’s Ministry of Education to address these challenges and to fulfil the right to a quality education of every girl and boy in South Sudan?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: There are two levels of reform that are taking place in South Sudan with respect to the education system.

On a higher, more systemic level, the Government is attempting to prioritize education by creating strategic plans and bolstering the infrastructure required for an effective education sector.

In South Sudan, where 40% of girls are married before the age of 18, the Government has demonstrated its commitment to ending child marriage by prioritizing child protection and providing for gender equality and women’s empowerment in the Constitution, Child Act (2008) and ratifying related international and regional human rights instruments. The right to education is enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Sudan 2011, including in Article 17 on the rights of the child and Article 29 on the right to education.

The General Education Act 2012 outlines a regulatory framework and structure for education in the country, providing guidance on general education principles and goals as well as associated structures, systems, standards, financing and accountability for the sector. The General Education Strategic Plan (GESP) 2017–2022 is a national roadmap for implementation of the General Education Act and outlines strategies, monitoring and evaluation frameworks and financing of the sector. The GESP also includes education in emergencies and humanitarian activities that link to the medium-term development objectives.

The End Child Marriage in South Sudan, Strategic National Action Plan 2017-2030 and a National Gender Strategy, while not yet fully implemented, aim to address the early pregnancy and early marriage issues.

The Inclusive Education Policy in South Sudan was just launched on 27 July 2021. This national policy defines and identifies areas of need across the whole population. The comprehensive inclusive education policy framework will guide the work of all actors involved in the provision of inclusive education to ensure consistency and coordinated implementation. This policy is also important in the elimination of discrimination and enhancement of equity and equality for all learners, especially inclusion of learners with additional needs in the education system, including learners with disabilities.

On a deeper level, reforms have been made to the curriculum and teaching materials, attempting to improve the quality of education and promote peace in South Sudan.

With the help of development agencies and partners, South Sudan has developed a new national curriculum that “is designed to help young people learn about their shared national identity” and “supports key values for the country including justice, democracy, tolerance and respect”. The aims of this curriculum are aligned with the Constitution of South Sudan, the General Education Act and the South Sudan Vision 2040, which aspire “to build an educated and informed nation by 2040.”

Within the curriculum, there are seven goals for the broader education sector; one of the goals is to “promote national unity and cohesion”. While the formation of a national identity can help post-conflict countries overcome differences, nationalism can also be associated with exclusionary policies. How South Sudan moves forward in respecting its citizens’ ethnic diversity, acknowledging its history of conflict and teaching learners to actively engage and think critically will be a key feature of the education system.

ECW: In 2020, together with the Ministry of Education and other education partners, Education Cannot Wait rolled out a Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP) with the particular aim of getting more South Sudanese children enrolled. While these are still early days, how relevant and impactful has the programme been so far?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: Through the ECW Multi-Year Resilience Programme, 137,708 learners (54,408 girls and 83,300 boys) have been supported to enroll in school in ECD, primary, ALP, PEP and secondary schools across the six States and the back-to-school/learning campaigns are still ongoing to get more children back to school.

Analysis of enrollment trends indicate that many children who were formally in school before the COVID-19 pandemic have yet to return to school. The ECW MYRP has supported the safe reopening of schools and efforts to build back better through the creation of more learning spaces, improvement of WASH in schools and awareness-raising on COVID-19 preventive measures. One other key impact has been reducing the pupil-book ratio for secondary education to 1:1 in the six target States.

ECW’s MYRP is reaching over half of the country geographically, where the majority of the population of children in need are located. The Programme focuses on six States: the three States of the Greater Upper Nile (Jonglei, Upper Nile and Unity States), one State in the Greater Equatoria Region (Eastern Equatoria) and two States in the Greater Bahr el Ghazal Region (Lakes and Warrap). These six States of MYRP implementation are areas affected by different types of conflict and by different trends in terms of displacement.

Progress is being made on several components, for example:

• All MYRP target schools/learning centers have received handwashing facilities. Of the 50 boreholes that we committed to drill, so far, 36 have been completed. 6 boreholes have been repaired. Some partners and contractors hired for the work have faced the issue of flooding, so we are considering moving one/two boreholes and funding to other locations that are accessible and eligible. According to the data that we received at the beginning of this initiative, there are 156 schools in need of water sources. Due to budget limitations, we targeted 50 schools. For various reasons, we cannot access some locations and, with the approval of the MYRP Steering Committee, we can begin to consider other locations. During the selection of the 50 schools to receive boreholes, we coordinated with other stakeholders – including UNICEF and DG George Mogga – and used the data generated by GESS.

• 1.12 million textbooks have reached all targeted counties and, in most cases, reached the schools. Different partners joined the State and County Authorities in distributing textbooks to the schools and we have continuously followed up on the use of the books. The textbooks ratio is expected to be reduced to 1:1 for secondary and primary learners in the targeted six States across South Sudan and other 2 States included in this initiative. All enrolled learners have also been provided with learning kits and adolescent girls have been provided with MHM kits.

• With the exception of children with sight and hearing impairments, all children with physical disabilities have been provided with assistive devices. There is the tendency to focus on the children with visible disabilities and this is something that we must take into greater consideration during the next quarters. We need to make sure that children with “invisible” disabilities also get the support that they need.

• All supported schools have been provided with learning kits including chalk, manila papers, markers and pens.

Additionally, one of the important features of the ECW Multi-Year Resilience Programme in South Sudan is the robust in-country governance mechanism, which is led by the Ministry of Education with active participation of donors like the UK, USAID, SIDA and Canada, United Nations agencies like UNICEF and UNESCO, and civil society actors, like the National Education Coalition. The MYRP Secretariat providing the technical support is an important added value of the programme. This mechanism enhances the Programme’s effectiveness and alignment.

ECW: To reach all the out-of-school girls and boys targeted by this multi-year programme, an additional US$189 million must be urgently mobilised. What is the government’s strategy to ensure that the programme will be fully funded? How can public and private donors help and what message do you have for them?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: The focus on Internally Displaced People (IDPs), returnee and host community girls and boys aligns perfectly with the Ministry’s target and policy priorities. Multi-year design and catalytic seed funding are innovative approaches as lack of funding too often disrupts South Sudanese children’s continuity of learning.

The MYRP has always been seen as a government intervention, in line with the priorities and objectives identified as national priorities, and the Ministry of Education believes it must make a substantial contribution to its realization.

The Ministry of General Education and Instruction (MoGEI), together with implementing partners, stakeholders, donor groups, etc., has developed a solid fundraising strategy to bridge the significant financing gap, extend the project and include more girls and boys in the Programme.

In the context of South Sudan, the following donor groups have been targeted:
South Sudan Government (domestic resources); public donors (humanitarian and development donors); humanitarian funding envelopes (CERF funding, pooled funding, etc.); other UN pooled funding mechanisms (for example, the Peacebuilding Fund, if relevant); and, private sector donors and private foundations.

By conducting prospect research on potential new donors and existing supporters, MoGEI wants to maximize fundraising reach. And, by analysing these prospects, the Ministry hopes to discover new information that can help create better strategies for all future campaigns too.

ECW: COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on education everywhere. What are the repercussions of the pandemic in South Sudan and how has the Ministry of Education worked to ensure that children and youth are able to keep learning and developing themselves to their full potential?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: The outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019 led to the closure of schools in March 2020, when cases of the disease were detected in South Sudan. Numerous deaths and infections were recorded so, as part of precautionary measures, schools were closed and learning was suspended nationwide.

The closure of schools exacerbated the challenges facing education and puts in danger progress made. Data has shown an increase in pregnancies as a result of increased time out of school, which is leading girls to spend more time around men in their communities and at greater risk of sexual violence and exploitation (Save the Children et al., 2015, Children’s Ebola Recovery Assessment in Sierra Leone).

In crises, families may also resort to early marriage as a coping mechanism to either alleviate economic pressures on the household and/or to generate income through ‘bride price’.

Studies have also shown that poverty can drive parents to send their children to cattle camps when they are unable to provide them with food. Child labour in cattle camps is a basis of concern as it means that children are sent far away from home, more exposed to protection issues and inherently prevented from attending school (ILO, 2013, Child labour and Education in Pastoralist Communities in South Sudan).

To reduce negative consequences of school closures and to ensure learners are able to continue their education, MoGEI, with support from different partners, has adapted learning methods and provided alternative protection and support mechanisms. With support from UNESCO, through the Capacity Development for Education Programme, MoGEI launched ‘Education on Air’.

This programme aims to broadcast daily lessons to primary and secondary level learners, focusing on key topics such as English, science and mathematics. During these ‘on air’ lessons, teachers deliver classes and address questions from learners live. Several radio networks have provided such programmes, including City Radio FM, Eye Radio, South Sudan Radio and Miraya Radio. The Ministry of General Education and Instruction, with UNESCO, also introduced ‘Education on Line’, where learners could follow the science teachers while teaching. In October 2020, the MoGEI, with support from development partners, also opened schools for candidate classes all over the country. Necessary steps were taken to avoid putting children, teachers and their family members at risk of contracting the disease.

ECW: The situation in South Sudan has improved somewhat in recent months but the consequences of the multiple shocks and crises that the country has experienced in recent years are still felt. What can be done to further strengthen resilience, and to ensure that the education sector is better able to withstand these shocks and indeed bounce back?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: Only by planning for unforeseen conflicts and natural disasters, and by integrating disaster risk reduction, can the South Sudanese education system remain functional in the face of shocks.

In this context, South Sudan embarked in September 2015 on its second Education Sector Analysis (ESA). Representing much more than a simple update, the 2015 ESA is the first of its kind to incorporate crisis-sensitive analyses. Multiple education sector analyses, each of which constitutes a chapter of the report (i.e. on the global context, school enrolment and internal efficiency, cost and financing, as well as management and quality), were carried out using a crisis-sensitive lens. Equity analyses were also mainstreamed with a specific focus on gender and the regional state-level, reflecting the decentralized nature of the education sector. These permit a better understanding of education sector challenges, weaknesses and strengths.

ECW: Our readers would like to get to know you a bit better on a personal level and reading is a key component of education. Could you please share with us a book that has influenced you the most personally and/or professionally, and why you’d recommend it to other people to read?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: When I was a child, I loved Alice in Wonderland very much. Alice diverges from the gender norms by creating a completely new world that she explores while facing many hostilities with a very positive attitude. Alice is a prototype of a rebellious child who manages not only to survive this dangerous adventure but also to learn and become a woman with a new sense of her own subjectivity. A woman who refuses ideas of marriage and oppression and instead teaches us that “we can chase something interesting, barge in where we’re not invited, try new things, observe strange phenomena, ask too many questions, argue with authority figures, tell stories, and wander far from home without worrying how to get back.”

 

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A farmer near the town of Kisumu in Kenya tills his land. Credit: World Bank/Peter Kapuscinski

By Hans Wetzels
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 6 2021 (IPS)

Gilbert Bor manages a small farm in the western highlands of Kenya. Landscapes are hilly, village roads lined with pine trees, his cows mostly of the Friesian breed. He is up at 6:00am daily to lead his animals through the woods into the valley below.

Most farmers in and around his village in Kapseret grow maize or beans for subsistence. But that is set to change, says Mr. Bor.

East African regional authorities have started promoting cash crops like avocados and coffee to increase Kenyan exports to the European Union and China. At the same time, local farmers are getting organized as well, says Mr. Bor. His own community collectively invested in a milk tank to strengthen its position on regional dairy markets.

“For products like coffee, mangoes or peanuts, Europe is an important market,” Mr. Bor explains, enthusiastically. “Crops exported from Kenya are exempt from taxation in Europe. That also goes for exports to Europe from Ghana, Nigeria and the Francophone countries.”

The EU is a global agricultural powerhouse. The 27-country bloc feeds a steady stream of processed foods, grains, dairy and meats onto the world market while importing large quantities of raw commodities like soy, sugar cane or palm oil, tropical vegetables and fruits like avocados.

Keeping an eye on EU policies

Globalization is making markets better accessible to farmers like Mr. Bor. He says: “Almost all EU countries purchase Kenyan agricultural goods. Who stands to benefit most will depend on what countries like Germany or the Netherlands decide. African farmers must keep a closer eye on European policymakers.”

In particular, African farmers need to watch the evolution of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that was conceived in 1962 to provide affordable food for its population post-World War II.

Under CAP, the EU became so efficient that surpluses piled up. The authorities subsequently introduced export refunds—paying international traders the difference between the EU’s high internal prices and lower world market prices.

Those subsidies put pressure on food prices worldwide, leading to detrimental effects on African farming economies.

However, the EU abandoned its trade-distorting subsidies in 2017. A year later the EU-Parliament, for the first time ever, commissioned a study on the impact of the CAP around the globe.

“In recent years we have seen progress in better aligning agriculture with international development goals,” says Maria Blanco, head-author of the Technical University in Madrid, Spain.

However, simply increasing international trade in agricultural products would not automatically lead to better incomes for African farmers, experts say.

If unchecked, such trade could damage the environment, lead to the displacements of local peoples or human rights violations.

Ms. Blanco warns: “Importing sugarcane from outside Europe would create economic activity in the global south. But commodity imports from developing countries can also lead to land grabs or environmental pollution.”

Commodities are usually grown on large plantations. Once money starts pouring in the stakes, economically and politically, are raised, which put small farmers at risk. The shift to industrial-style agriculture usually puts tremendous pressure on the environment when it comes to chemical usage, deforestation or water pollution.

Pressure from exports

Research by the thinktank ARC2020 and the German NGO Heinrich Böll Stiftung finds that the EU agricultural policy creates ripple effects around the globe.

Trade arrangements with Honduras, for example, concentrated the banana trade in the hands of few multinationals while the demand for grain and soya in Europe encourages land control in Central Asia.

Despite the positive outlook, African farmers are under unrelenting pressure of EU exports. After markets inside Europe were awash with milk after the bloc abandoned its quota system in 2015, Dutch and German producers quickly sought out other export opportunities.

Global dairy players like Danone or FrieslandCampina have increased their processing capabilities in West Africa. The FrieslandCampina subsidiary WAMCO controls no less than 75 percent of the milk market in Nigeria.

In Ghana increased exports of frozen chicken, from 13,000 metric tons in 2003 to 175,000 in 2019, have affected local production.

Over 90 percent of chicken meats in supermarkets in Ghana are imported from the United States or the EU.

“Poultry has the highest turnover and its short cycle of production is for income generation for farmers in Ghana. But European exports of frozen chickens negatively affect our own meat industry,” worries poultry farmer Anthony Akunzule.

Africa’s free trade area

The newly established African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) could boost African farmers’ efforts to compete with the EU. The trade agreement, which eliminates tariffs between African countries by 90 per cent and tackles customs delays, could foster intra-African trade in agriculture.

Professor of European Agricultural Policy Alan Matthews of the Trinity College, Dublin, says attention is rightly shifting attention away from the notion that CAP alone is responsible for Africa’s agricultural woes.

Mr. Mathews says that African governments had failed to prioritize investment in rural areas, even as most experts now believe the AfCFTA will be a game changer for Africa’s development.

What Africa farmers need are favourable policies and actions in both Europe and Africa, says Mr. Bor. For now, he says that, “Opportunities are all around for small farmers like me, mostly in the organic niche.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

 

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Floods in Kenya's Turkana County, Lodwar town. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS.

By External Source
Aug 5 2021 (IPS)

On Aug. 9, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will release its most comprehensive report on the science of climate change since 2013. It will be the first of four reports released under the IPCC’s latest assessment cycle, with subsequent reports coming in 2022.

Over the past eight years, climate scientists have improved the methods they use to measure different aspects of climate and to model (or project) what might happen in the future. They’ve also been monitoring the changes that have developed right before our eyes.

This updated assessment comes three months before world leaders gather in Glasgow, Scotland, to find ways to avoid the worst effects of climate change and renew their commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. It also comes amid another year of severe heat waves, droughts, wildfires, flooding and storms.

The report will provide policy-makers with the best possible information regarding the physical science of climate change, which is essential for long-term planning in many sectors, from infrastructure to energy to social welfare. Here are five things to look for in the new report:

 

1. How sensitive is the climate to increasing carbon dioxide?

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are higher now than they have been in 800,000 years, reaching 419 parts per million (ppm) in May 2021. Average global temperature rises with each increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, but how much it rises depends on many factors.

Climate scientists use models to understand how much warming occurs when CO2 concentrations double from pre-industrial levels — from 260 ppm to 520 ppm — a concept called “climate sensitivity.” The more sensitive the climate, the faster greenhouse gas emissions must be curbed to stay below 2 C.

 

Equilibrium climate sensitivity from the last three major climate model intercomparisons. (Note: There was no ‘CMIP4’.)
(Data: IPCC, Graph: Alex Crawford)

Older climate models estimated that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would lead to a temperature increase of 2.1 C to 4.7 C. The latest set of climate models, called CMIP6, broadened the range to 1.8 C to 5.6 C, meaning the climate is at least as sensitive to doubling of carbon dioxide as previous models showed, but may, in fact, be even more sensitive.

The range is influenced by uncertainties in a number of climate factors, including water vapour and cloud cover, and how they will increase or decrease the effects of warming. Scientists are working to narrow the range in climate projections so that we know more about how quickly we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change and adapt to others.

 

2. What’s going on with clouds?

Clouds are a wild card in the climate change game. They create feedbacks to warming, meaning that warming changes cloud cover, but cloud cover can also speed up or slow down warming in different situations.

Clouds reflect about a quarter of incoming sunlight away from the Earth. So, if more warming leads to more clouds, we would expect more sunlight to be reflected, slowing warming. However, clouds also insulate the Earth, trapping the heat given off by the surface. So, increasing cloud cover (like during nighttime) could amplify warming.

Two main issues stand out: First, many factors, including cloud type, altitude and season, determine a cloud’s overall effect on warming. Second, clouds are incredibly difficult to model; how the models treat clouds is key to the range in climate sensitivity.

 

3. Did climate change fuel recent extreme weather?

Since the last IPCC report, our ability to assess global warming’s impact on extreme events has improved immensely. Chapter 11 of the latest report is devoted to this.

Global warming means stronger summer heat waves and more frequent tropical nights (temperatures above 20 C) are occurring in middle latitudes, like Canada and Europe.

Warmer air can hold more water. This can cause more evaporation from land, and lead to drought and wildfires. In addition, an atmosphere with more water can produce more precipitation and flooding.

Scientists projected decades ago that these changes to the water cycle would occur, but now it’s clear they’re already happening.

 

4. Have regional climate projections improved?

The climate models evaluated by the IPCC are global models. This is essential to capture the connections between tropics and poles or land and ocean. However, it comes at a cost — the models struggle to simulate many features smaller than 100 kilometres across, like small storms or islands.

Regional relationships can be complex: For example, extreme storms help break up summer Arctic sea ice, but reduced sea ice cover may also lead to stronger storms.

Since the last IPCC report, techniques for taking this large-scale information and refining it have shown how regional and local climate has changed and could change in the future. Other experiments target regional issues, like the impacts of Arctic sea ice loss on storms.

 

5. How will Antarctic ice sheets contribute to sea-level rise?

Global sea level is rising because water expands slightly when it warms up, and mountain glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet are melting and adding water to the ocean.

But the largest potential source of sea-level rise over the next century is Antarctica. Ice sheet models show that melting of Antarctic ice sheets will add between 14 and 114 centimetres to sea-level rise by 2100. That is a huge range, and it all depends on whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet remains relatively stable or begins a slow but unstoppable collapse.

How the IPCC communicates this scientific debate will impact how coastal communities plan for sea-level rise. Low-lying cities, like Lagos, Nigeria, could become uninhabitable by the end of the century due to sea-level rise, especially if the higher model estimates prove most prescient.

The IPCC report will give policy-makers a better understanding of how climate change is affecting us today. This will be especially helpful for putting short-term adaptation strategies in place.

But as the science has improved, the outlook on future change has become more sobering, and the large uncertainties that remain mean substantial future work for climate scientists.

Alex Crawford, Research Associate at the Centre for Earth Observation Science, Clayton H. Riddle Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources, University of Manitoba

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

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By Don Collins
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 5 2021 (IPS)

The scientific and other human accomplishments in my 90-year lifetime are not only amazing but also seem to have apparently made too many of us arrogant and feckless about our future human survival on Earth. Or, if not arrogant or feckless, at least largely or unknowingly ignoring the urgency of the onset of devastating environmental threats.

Those conditions have been exhaustively described in every possible medium. See Cowspiracy and Seaspiracy, two recent documentaries by credible scientists about human attacks on our fragile environment. Jeff Bezos’ comment after his near outer space flight was about seeing the need to protect our tiny orb.

I attended the first Earth Day in Chicago in 1970 and had earlier had the pleasure of meeting at lunch with Fairfield Osborn at the NY Zoological Society’s NY station on Long Island. What a delightful, caring and prescient man. Fair, as he was known to his friends, wrote “Our Plundered Planet”, a bestselling book in 1948, which marked the initiation of our modern environmental movement.

Still, as our most respected scientific observers tell us, the underlying solution for global problems requires us to reduce our human numbers substantially or we threaten the survival of us Homo sapiens.

The global population is now almost 8 billion humans, with 3 billion more projected before 2100. The population at my first was about 2 billion so it has expanded 4 times in my lifetime!

The process of reducing human numbers so that we don’t destroy what sustains us can be done starting now gently, humanely, and quite safely. Or we can continue to proceed as we are now arrogantly, stupidly, selfishly and violently to drive our lives on this finite planet to ends. Authors have long envisioned the fictional end of human life.

https://www.flavorwire.com/315584/the-10-best-end-of-the-world-novels

I discuss this issue in my new book, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion By 2100” now available on Amazon and other book web sites

This prioritization of population reduction is meant in any way to dismiss the urgent need for addressing climate issues as suggested by the UN.

In fact, many conservation efforts have been enormously effective, except when they haven’t been effective such as the continuing destruction of the Brazilian rain forests and other non-renewable resources. One of my cousins has been working there for the Nature Conservancy for many years, but we are losing the battle.

A recent suggestion that the UN form an Environmental Committee to draw action to this key issue. The link follows:

http://www.ipsnews.net/2021/07/time-create-un-political-body-climate-change/

In short, annual human overuse of Earth’s bounties has reached its limits as we now can see from worldwide events reported daily.

I was in attendance at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo as a Press representative for several NGOs with which I was affiliated, including the Population Institute.

At that time, the media reaction was significant, although in retrospect transitory, but of course some commentators used words like “historic” or to quote from the UN website, “Out of Cairo came no less than a revolution”, as “Barbara Crossette, a former UN Bureau Chief of The New York Times, told the thirty-seventh session of the Commission on Population and Development as she delivered a keynote address on the theme “Has the Cairo Consensus Lost Momentum: A Journalist’s View”.

Now at 90, and as one associated since 1965 with many family planning and “population explosion focused” NGOs, I can observe with sadness my continuing disappointment at the vast shortcomings of leadership over these years in making women’s rights and access to family planning universal.

We are all well aware of the role of some religions in slowing adoption of family planning, but also there was far less enthusiasm from those who sought woman’s rights but balked in those pre Roe vs Wade at gaining women’s right to choice abortion.

This was an issue which was a major part of my activities earlier in my life as I worked closely with funding for abortion facilities, for example, with Al Moran, Executive Director of PPNYC and helping Rei Ravenholt start Ipas, which focused internationally on helping women gain safe abortions.

A film entitled “Whose Choice” which I funded on the continuing lag in abortion services can be viewed free at www.churchandstate.org.uk.

Since then, I have made major efforts to add more tools to let women be served, beyond just saying they should have more tools. Talk is easy, service is hard. Politics are ruthless. Rei’s premature departure as head of family planning at US Aid was certainly related to his vigorous initiatives for abortion.

My boss then was a major Population Council donor in the late 1960’s. Her $2 million a year unrestricted grants ($17 million in today’s dollars) ceased when the Council declined to do abortion projects, saying its Catholic board member would object.

I specifically recall the voice at the 1994 Cairo conference of Joan Dunlap, who had been an aide to Population Council’s John D. Rockefeller III in New York city. She clearly backed women’s rights, but her illegal abortion earlier in life apparently affected her reluctance, which she expressed to me at a lunch in the late 1960’s, to get involved with my abortion projects then.

Her attitude apparently changed as her 2012 obituary reports. Not unique on people evolving in attitudes, as for example also in the early 1970’s the PPFA affiliate in my hometown refused to do abortions at that time, forcing a group of us to start a freestanding clinic which did thousands of early abortions in its first year.

World population at the time of the 1994 ICPD was 5.6 million, now almost 8 billion, having grown 4 times in my lifetime. And world leaders and the media still don’t give the issue proper priority.

Do we act or continue on this downward path unnecessarily? The evidence is now immutable but still not fully addressed because of failed global leadership.

Remember those end-of-the-world fiction writers used to be thought of as far out in fantasy, but not anymore by respected scientists and naturalists such as Sir David Attenborough or E.O Wilson. In short “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy no longer seems so far-fetched.

In reading their articles one can realize the obvious truth of the above POV.

Donald A. Collins is a former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist. He is also a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., who has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Population Institute, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International (mow FHI360) and Ipas. He is a Yale undergraduate with MBA from New York University. He can be reached at dcoll28416@aol.com

 

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Excerpt:

Currently, world population is almost 8 billion, with 3.0 billion more projected before 2100. The process of reducing human numbers so that “we don’t destroy what sustains us can be done starting now gently, humanely, and quite safely”.

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Meeting of the opening day of the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit, held at FAO headquarters in Rome from 26 to 28 July. Photo: Giuseppe Carotenuto /FAO

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, Aug 4 2021 (IPS)

The UN Food Systems Pre-Summit, held from 26 to 28 July in Rome, highlighted, as perhaps never before, that hunger can be defeated if we also manage to protect the environment, promote better nutrition and health. This new mentality and comprehensive approach consist of considering higher levels of economic investment to stimulate trade in agriculture and food and pursue a path towards a sustainable future.

At this meeting, it was agreed to establish forms of common interaction through thematic coalitions that allow joining efforts to achieve zero hunger, reduce food waste, guarantee school feeding, face deciding factors of agroecology, as well as the management of data in the agricultural and food area and different kinds of resilience, among other goals.

Current data continues to show a negative trend of a permanent increase in people facing hunger. Today, more than 810 million are hungry and there is the danger that this trend will continue to increase as a result of the pandemic’s impact on the world economy, which could lead to another 100 million people going hungry

For the first time in the era of COVID-19, the Pre-Summit allowed more than 500 representatives of governments, the private sector, civil society and science to physically gather at FAO headquarters in Rome, while thousands of senior government, private sector and civil society officials from more than 130 countries participated online.

Current data continues to show a negative trend of a permanent increase in people facing hunger. Today, more than 810 million are hungry and there is the danger that this trend will continue to increase as a result of the pandemic’s impact on the world economy, which could lead to another 100 million people going hungry.

As noted by many specialists, increasing levels of hunger have been compounded by increasing levels of obesity that now exceed 900 million people, of which 140 million are children, while about 3 billion cannot afford a healthy diet.

Hunger is a health issue, therefore, we must ensure that sustainable healthy diets are affordable and accessible to everyone.

The meeting also discussed how reducing food waste, which already exceeds an annual cost of 400 million dollars and reaches or exceeds a quarter of the global food production that would perfectly meet the needs of the world population, would improve the global food supply.

For this to happen, new economic investments should be adopted, as well as substantial improvements in the food production system itself, in the adaptation of infrastructure, in trade, and so on.

Innovation and technological development are key in the immediate future of this sector. In addition, social protection and respect for local cultures, especially indigenous, are other aspects to take into consideration for the transformation towards more sustainable food systems.

Advancing in this process to achieve no poverty (SDG1) and zero hunger (SDG2) by 2030 – two of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the global Agenda launched by more than 150 heads of State and of Government in September 2015 in New York – demands heavy investments. To reach the global goals in the next nine years, an estimated 14 billion in investments is necessary.

Based on this data, governments need to adjust their budgets, development banks need to play a more active role and private sector companies should assume a greater commitment in this delicate phase, thus also generating greater support for small and medium rural producers and to family farming.

Generating synergies and a coalition of countries, regions, public and private players was also the focus of attention at the meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of the Group of 20 (G20), which was held on 29 June in the Italian city of Matera, where they agreed to join efforts to advance in the building of an operational coalition that allows achieving zero hunger by 2030.

To have healthy food, we need a healthy environment, and must reverse the loss of biodiversity and land degradation, increase the efficiency of water use and promote the sustainable management of water resources to improve food quality.

The lives of more than 1 billion people are severely limited by water scarcity or restriction. Almost 1 billion hectares of pasture and arable land are severely affected by recurring droughts and more than 60 percent of irrigated arable land is subject to high or very high stress due to a lack of water.

In September, within the framework of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Summit on Food Systems will be held with the participation of Heads of State and Government. It will summarize the debates in Rome on how to address the transformation of the sector and discuss the way forward towards a phase of greater action to make up for lost time get back on track to achieving the SDGs by 2030.

Excerpt:

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

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For the construction of the suspended Yucatán Solar Park on the Yucatán peninsula in southeastern Mexico, the site was only partially cleared. Like most infrastructure projects involving Chinese companies and banks in Latin America, the plant lacks socio-environmental standards. CREDIT: Courtesy of Asamblea Múuch' Xíinbal

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Aug 4 2021 (IPS)

In southeast Mexico, work on the Yucatan Solar Park, owned by the Chinese company Jinko Solar, has been halted since 2020 for lack of proper consultation with indigenous communities, after affected local residents filed an injunction against the project.

In February 2019, residents of several Mayan indigenous villages in the municipalities of Cuncunul and Valladolid, in the state of Yucatan, demanded a halt to work on the park, run by Jinko Solar Investment Pte Ltd. Months later, a court ordered the suspension of the 71.5 million dollar project.

The conflict illustrates the need for Chinese corporations and banks to include socio-environmental safeguards in the financing, design, construction and operation of works in Latin America and the Caribbean, where there are at least 983 conflicts over mining, energy, transportation and communications projects, some of which are financed by Chinese firms.

Paulina Garzón from Ecuador, who is director of the non-governmental Latinoamerica Sustentable (LAS), said that although standards exist in China, they have not been internalised by the institutions.

“China has not included the economic cost in its developmentalist and extractivist vision, a cost that is paid in the long term by the affected populations and by the debtor countries. But these costs are not taken into account when the viability of granting the loan is assessed,” the head of LAS’ China-Latin America Sustainable Investments Initiative (CLASII), told IPS by telephone from Washington.

CLASII is about to publish research on the application of the environmental guidelines of the China Development Bank (CDB). These guidelines, established in 2004, are secret and there is no channel for denouncing the negative impacts of projects.

The organisation found eight Chinese guidelines for companies and investors, nine for financial institutions and seven sectoral guidelines for infrastructure, mining and forestry. The Chinese government will soon publish new regulations for the ministries of trade and environment on outbound investment.

In Argentina, the hydroelectric power plants under construction, named “Presidente Néstor Kirchner” and “Gobernador Jorge Cepernic”, with a combined capacity of 1,310 megawatts on the Santa Cruz River in Patagonia, in the south of the country, represent another emblematic case of the vicissitudes of projects that have Chinese financing.

In 2016 the Argentine Supreme Court halted work on the project, financed by the CDB and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), until a public hearing and a new environmental impact assessment were conducted. The project was thus suspended for two years.

Construction of two hydropower plants in the Patagonia region of southern Argentina, financed by the China Development Bank, was stalled between 2016 and 2018 due to an order by the country’s highest court for a new environmental impact assessment and other unmet requirements. China is stumbling over socio-environmental safeguards as it makes headway in Latin America. CREDIT: IEASA

In a 2016 letter, the BDC Corporation reminded the Argentine Ministry of Finance and Treasury of several force majeure clauses for approving the power plants and their dams, such as the necessary approval by the lender of any contractual modifications.

The parties signed the 4.7 billion dollar financing agreement in 2014 and linked it to a similar one in 2012 for the 2.1 billion dollar upgrading of the Belgrano Cargas railway, which runs across northern Argentina.

“We wish to insist that the ongoing and successful implementation of the project is not only mutually beneficial and a bilateral win-win, but will also lay the foundation for deeper future economic cooperation” between the parties, the 2016 letter states, while warning of the risk of cross-default, should Argentina default on the 2014 agreement for the dams.

Gradual adherence to multilateral guidelines

Although several Chinese financial institutions have signed up to various voluntary socio-environmental guidelines, in practice none of the ones with a significant presence in infrastructure projects in Latin America have adhered, with the exception of ICBC, the largest of its kind in China and with operations in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Panama and Peru.

The Yucatan Solar Park, owned by Chinese company Jinko Solar, has been on hold in Mexico since 2019 due to a lack of adequate consultation with local indigenous communities. The image shows the planned location of the power plant, in the middle of the jungle in the southeastern state of Yucatan and, top right, the city of Valladolid. CREDIT: Justice Atlas

Three Chinese institutions have adhered to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, a set of six socio-environmental safeguards.

Nine Chinese banks signed the Principles of Responsible Banking, with six other standards on environmental impact, sustainability, participation and transparency.

In addition, seven Chinese banks adopted the Equator Principles, a framework for defining, assessing and managing the socio-environmental risks of projects.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), founded in 2015 to finance the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), has only validated one project in Latin America out of 134 approved worldwide. However, the project, in Ecuador, does not involve infrastructure, but addresses the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although in 2019 several Chinese banks, such as the BDC and ICBC, signed the “Green Investment Principles” (GIP) to assess the potential social and environmental effects of BRI investments, there is still no evidence of their application by this initiative that emerged to promote a maritime and rail network from the Asian powerhouse to the western end of Europe and to Latin America.

For Enrique Dussel, director of the Centre for China-Mexico Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the debate on safeguards is a novel one in the Asian giant.

“Historically, Chinese companies have shown great political pragmatism, the banks are interested in doing business and it did not matter if it was in activities that could be questioned from an environmental standpoint. The question was to mark a presence and participate in the Latin American market. Chinese pragmatism in these aspects practically leaves the responsibility up to the counterpart,” Dussel told IPS.

A magnet

The region attracted 138 Chinese infrastructure projects worth 94.09 billion dollars for the 2005-2020 period, according to the “Monitor of Chinese Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean 2021“, drawn up by the Latin American and Caribbean Academic Network on China.

South America has been the biggest pole of attraction for Chinese investment, as Ecuador obtained 11 of the 40 infrastructure projects during the 2010-2014 period, while from 2015 to 2020 Argentina and Brazil accounted for 23 and 11 of the 92 projects in the region, respectively.

The projection of one of the two hydroelectric power plants financed by Chinese institutions in southern Patagonia, Argentina, whose construction generated tensions between Bejing and Buenos Aires due to intervention by the South American country’s justice system to verify compliance with socio-environmental requirements, which suspended the mega-projects for two years. CREDIT: Government of Argentina

Chile, Colombia and Mexico carried out infrastructure projects with Chinese companies and financing for the first time in the 2015-2020 period.

Energy, transportation, communications and telecommunications are among the main areas of Chinese involvement in the region. The incursion of the Asian giant has been based on public and some private companies, backed by funds from Chinese banks.

To shore up its foothold in Latin America, Beijing has created instruments into which it has injected multimillion-dollar funds, such as the Special Loan Programme for China-Latin America Infrastructure Project and the China-LAC Industrial Cooperation Investment Fund and bilateral cooperation funds.

That strategy is linked to the BRI, which several Latin American countries have joined, in an attempt to draw investment, and which is helping China fill the void left by the United States since 2016.

In December 2020, a group of international advisors to the BRI suggested that China adopt stricter environmental controls for its foreign investments.

According to this scheme, projects that could cause significant and irreversible environmental damage would be marked red, works of moderate and mitigable impact would be marked yellow, and projects without significant negative effects would be marked green.

Garzón and Dussel said there have been some changes.

“It is a process that we are going to see gradually. The institutions recognise the need to improve things and have taken a step to improve environmental behavior. The worrying thing is if this at some point becomes just a slogan that aims to improve the ability to approve projects and obtain a social license, rather than a serious practice,” said the head of CLASII.

Dussel noted, for his part, that “the AIIB is explicitly seeking to integrate environmental issues. There are many initiatives in this regard in China itself, to evaluate projects, attempting to compare the criteria for evaluation and implementation of Chinese infrastructure versus Western ones, specifically the World Bank’s. There is clearly a learning process.”

As the Chinese Infrastructure Monitor anticipates, infrastructure initiatives in the region will grow, with their attendant social and environmental fallout.

Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination answers questions from Patricia Soares, a guest at the launch of the ‘Don’t Forget Leprosy’ campaign. They are with Takahiro Nanri, Executive Director of the Sasakawa Health Foundation. Credit: Cecilia Russell

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, Aug 4 2021 (IPS)

A visit to a leprosy facility in Korea with his father, Ryoichi Sasakawa, spurred Yohei Sasakawa to dedicate his life to eliminating both the disease and discrimination of those affected.

He was speaking in an emotional pre-recorded address ahead of his 20th anniversary as WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination and at the launch of a 10-month ‘Don’t Forget Leprosy’ campaign by the Sasakawa Health Foundation Initiative.

Sasakawa said while he had achieved much in the 20 years, including getting the UN General Assembly to adopt the guidelines for eliminating discrimination of people affected by leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, the COVID-19 pandemic threatened the success of an international campaign to eradicate the disease.

In the past 18 months, while the world grappled with the pandemic, there was an estimated 30% to 50% decrease in detecting new leprosy cases. This could lead to increased transmission of the disease and more cases of disability, the webinar heard. In many communities, protocols, including lockdowns, had made it difficult to access treatment. This resulted in a loss of livelihoods and exacerbated discrimination that people affected by leprosy often face.

“Even amid the pandemic, it is very important that everyone involved in leprosy work continues what they are doing. We must not allow leprosy to be forgotten,” Sasakawa said.

Special guest Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO Regional Office for Southeast Asia, said the pandemic could undo decades of progress unless addressed.

“Let us be clear COVID-19 will be with us for some time. It is not enough to maintain minimal leprosy services. Rather such services must be restarted or expanded, with a focus on intensifying outreach activities to identify cases and begin treatment to all who need it,” Singh said.

However, as much as the pandemic was a threat, it had also allowed a focus on new technologies.

For many months now, “e-learning materials have helped community volunteers identify potential leprosy cases, and then refer them on to health workers,” Singh said. This was being extended to counselling and mental health support and should be harnessed in this campaign to fight both the disease and discrimination of those affected.

Sasakawa said in his 20 years as a goodwill ambassador, he had been on 200 trips to 100 countries. Here he spread the message of eliminating both disease and discrimination.

In his keynote address, he likened his campaign to a motorcycle with the front wheel symbolising the elimination of the disease and the back wheel eliminating discrimination.

“Both wheels must turn at the same time if we are to make progress toward a world without leprosy and its associated problems,” he told the webinar. This symbol is included in the campaign’s logo.

During an extensive question and answer session, Sasakawa said it was crucial that those affected return to work to support themselves. There were several initiatives, beyond just speaking to top politicians, that could be used.

These initiatives included reskilling but also included getting big businesses involved in the employment of people with disabilities. Sasakawa referred to the Valuable 500 project, launched in 2019 at World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This project, supported by the Nippon Foundation, called on the top 500 companies to promote the inclusion in business of people with disabilities.

Sasakawa said while he was a person who “believes the solution lies in the field”, the pandemic taught him it was now crucial to include new technology – webinars and social media – in the tool kit to end the disease and discrimination.

“Today, thanks to these technological tools, we are able to share the best practices that are happening in various countries and share with the world,” he said.

The Initiative is a strategic alliance between WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination Yohei Sasakawa, The Nippon Foundation and Sasakawa Health Foundation for achieving a world without leprosy and problems related to the disease. Since 1975, The Nippon Foundation and Sasakawa Health Foundation have supported the national leprosy programs of endemic countries through the WHO, with support totalling some US$200 million to date.

Leprosy is an infectious disease that mainly affects the skin and peripheral nerves. Around 200,000 cases are newly reported each year. Leprosy is curable with multidrug therapy but, left untreated, can result in permanent disability. An estimated 3 to 4 million people in the world today are thought to be living with some form of disability as a result of leprosy.

The campaign will feature a total of six webinars, online media briefings, TV and radio spots, social media messaging and videos featuring the Goodwill Ambassador. It will also incorporate other awareness-raising activities, including the annual Global Appeal to End Stigma and Discrimination against Persons Affected by Leprosy issued at the end of January.

 

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Kenya's defending champion Faith Kipyegon qualifies for 1500m final but disappointment for Julius Yego in the javelin on day 12 of the Tokyo Olympics.