Africa

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 31 2021 (IPS)

The pandemic is pushing back the world’s poorest countries with the least means to finance economic recovery and contagion containment efforts. Without international solidarity, economic gaps will grow again as COVID-19 threatens humanity for years to come.

Least developed
While bringing some concessions, the ‘least developed countries’ (LDCs) designation – introduced five decades ago – has not generated changes needed to accelerate sustainable development for all.

Anis Chowdhury

The United Nations (UN) General Assembly created the LDCs category for its Second Development Decade (1971-80). Its resolution sought support for its 25 poorest Member States, with Sikkim out after India’s 1975 annexation.

With many others joining, the LDCs list rose to 49 in 2001. Half a century later, with only seven having ‘graduated’ – after meeting income, ‘human assets’ and economic & environmental vulnerability criteria – the 44 remaining LDCs have 14% of the world’s people.

With more than two-thirds in Sub-Saharan Africa, LDCs have over half the world’s extreme poor, surviving on under US$1.9 daily. LDCs are 27% more vulnerable than other developing countries, where 12% are extreme poor.

LDC criteria differ from World Bank low-income country benchmarks for concessional loan eligibility. Some LDCs – especially the resource-rich – are middle-income countries (MICs) disqualified from graduation by other criteria.

Most LDCs have become greatly aid reliant. Despite grandiloquent pronouncements, only 6 of 29 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ‘development partners’ have kept promises to give at least 0.15% of their national incomes as aid to LDCs.

Chasing mirages?
The UN has organised conferences every decade since to review progress and action programmes for LDC governments and development partners. The first – in Paris – was in 1981, while the fifth will be in Doha in January 2022.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The 2011 Istanbul conference ambitiously sought to graduate at least half the LDCs by 2020. But only three – Samoa (2014), Equatorial Guinea (2017) and Vanuatu (2020) – have done so. Worse, most ex-LDCs have had difficulties sustaining development after graduating.

During the 1980s and 1990s, many developing countries implemented macroeconomic stabilisation and structural adjustment policies from the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

These imposed liberalisation, privatisation and austerity across the board, including many LDCs. Unsurprisingly, ‘lost decades’ followed for most of Africa and Latin America.

Midas curse
Botswana, the first graduate in 1994, is now an upper MIC. Its diamond boom enabled 13.5% average annual growth during 1968-90. Unsurprisingly, Botswana’s ‘good governance’, institutions and ‘prudent’ macroeconomic policies were hailed as parts of this “African success story”.

However, the accolades do not sit well. Mineral-rich Botswana remains vulnerable. Right after graduation, average growth fell sharply to 4.7% during 1995-2005, and has never exceeded 4.5% since 2008.

Manufacturing’s share of GDP fell to 5.2% in 2019, after rising from 5.6% in 2000 to 6.4% in 2010. Nearly 60% of its people have less than the Bank’s MIC poverty line of US$5.50 daily.

Botswana remains highly unequal. During 1986-2002, life expectancy fell 11 years, mainly due to HIV/AIDS. When the government embraced austerity, its already weak health system suffered a disastrous brain drain.

Policy independence crucial
Although they have not yet graduated, several LDCs have successfully begun diversifying their economies. Their policy initiatives offer important lessons for others.

Neither Bangladesh and Ethiopia would qualify as a ‘good governance’ model by criteria once so beloved by the Bank and OECD. Instead, they have successfully intervened to address critical development bottlenecks.

Once considered a ‘basket case’, Bangladesh is now a lower MIC. Diversifying deliberately, rather than pursuing Washington’s policies, it has become quite resilient, averaging 6% growth for over a decade, despite the 2008-09 global financial crisis and current pandemic.

Bangladesh saw the potential for exporting manpower to earn valuable foreign exchange and work experience. In 1976, it agreed to provide labour for Saudi Arabia’s oil-financed boom.

Similarly, as newly industrialised economies no longer qualified for privileged Multi-Fibre Arrangement market access, Dhaka worked with Seoul from 1978 to take over South Korean garment exports.

Bangladesh is also the only LDC to have taken advantage of the 1982 World Health Organization’s essential drugs policy. Its National Drug Policy blocks imports and sales of non-essential drugs. Thus, its now vibrant generic pharmaceutical industry has emerged.

Allow pragmatism
During 2004-19, Ethiopia’s growth averaged over 9%. Poverty declined from 46% in 1995 to 24% in 2016 as industry’s share of output rose from 9.4% in 2010 to 24.8% in 2019.

Avoiding ‘Washington Consensus’ policies, Ethiopian industrial policy drove structural change. Manufacturing grew by 10% yearly during 2005-10, and by 18% during 2015-17.

With improved governance, state-owned enterprises still dominate banks, utilities, airlines, chemical, sugar and other strategic industries. Ethiopia opened banks to domestic investors, keeping foreign ones out. Meanwhile, privatisation has been limited and gradual.

Instead of full exchange rate liberalisation, it adopted a ‘managed float’ system. While market prices were liberalised, critical prices – e.g., for petroleum products and fertilisers – have remained regulated.

Neither Bangladesh nor Ethiopia have embraced central bank independence or formal ‘inflation targeting frameworks’, once demanded by the IMF and others, ostensibly for macroeconomic stability and growth.

Both countries retain reformed specialised development banks to direct credit to policy priorities, while Bangladesh’s central bank has “remained proactive in its mandated developmental role”.

Policy is destiny
In development and structural transformation, ‘path dependency’ implies policy is destiny. LDCs’ current predicaments are largely due to policies from decades ago, pushed by international organisations and development partners.

Reform agendas now should avoid ambitious comprehensive efforts which will overwhelm LDCs with modest resources and capabilities. Also, there is no ‘magic bullet’ or ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy package for all LDCs.

Policies should be appropriate to country circumstances, considering their limited options and difficult trade-offs. They must be politically, economically and institutionally feasible, pragmatic, and target overcoming critical constraints.

OECD development partners must instead meet their commitments and support national development strategies. They must resist presuming to know what is best for LDCs, e.g., requiring them to ape Washington and OECD fads.

 

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The highly polluting fuel has contaminated the atmosphere, water and crops for nearly a century.

Modupe Osunkoya enrolled on her third post-graduate degree because she says there are no jobs at home.

A view of Explora's biodiesel plant on the outskirts of the city of Rosario, where most of the companies that process soybean oil in Argentina are concentrated. In recent years, biofuels have generated investments of more than three billion dollars in the country, in addition to more than one billion dollars a year in exports, before the collapse in demand caused by the COVID pandemic. CREDIT: Courtesy of Explora

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 30 2021 (IPS)

Argentina, historically an agricultural powerhouse, has become a major producer of biofuels in recent years. However, this South American country is now moving backwards in the use of this oil substitute in transportation, a decision in which economics weighed heavily and environmental concerns have been ignored.

On Jul. 15, with the support of the government of centre-left President Alberto Fernández, Congress passed a new Biofuels Regulatory Framework, which will be in force until 2030.

The new law published on Aug. 4 reduced from 10 to five percent the minimum mandatory blend of soybean oil biodiesel in diesel fuel, and gave the executive branch the option of lowering it to three percent if deemed necessary to cut fuel prices for consumers."To mitigate we need all the available tools. And in this case, perhaps the worst thing is the setback in an area in which the country has gained a great deal of know-how and capacity, making it one of the largest users of renewable energy in transportation worldwide." -- Luciano Caratori

With respect to gasoline, the law maintained the current 12 percent bioethanol – based on corn and sugar cane – blend, but gives the government the option of lowering it to nine percent.

“The mandatory blends of petroleum-derived fuels with biofuels came into effect in 2010 and since then have generated the largest reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Argentine history, at least until 2019,” energy consultant Luciano Caratori, a researcher at the Torcuato Di Tella Foundation, which focuses on environmental issues, and former undersecretary of energy planning, told IPS.

The expert mentioned 2019 because it was the first year that non-conventional renewable energies – basically wind and solar – represented a significant share of electricity generation in this Southern Cone country of 44.4 million people.

Today, according to official figures, they account for 9.7 percent of the electricity mix, in a country where 87 percent of the primary energy supply is based on fossil fuels: 54 percent natural gas, 31 percent oil, and the rest, coal.

Argentina, Latin America’s third largest economy, is a net exporter of oil, but due to its limited refining capacity it is also a net importer of gasoline and diesel.

Caratori said the reduction in biofuel use is inconsistent with the climate change mitigation commitments Argentina submitted in December 2020, in the update of its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement.

This country has committed to cutting GHG emissions by more than 20 percent by 2030 from the 2007 peak, and to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

One of the ways to reach these goals, according to the NDC, is to reduce emissions from transportation – a sector that accounted for 33 percent of total energy demand in 2019 – through the use of biofuels and hydrogen and electrification.

The Argentine Senate special public session in which the law reducing the mandatory percentage of biofuels in the blend with petroleum derivatives was approved. Most of the legislators voted remotely, due to COVID pandemic restrictions. CREDIT: Argentine Senate

“There don’t seem to be too many opportunities in Argentina to offset the emissions savings lost from reducing biofuel use, and 2030 is just around the corner,” said Caratori.

“To mitigate we need all the available tools,” he stressed. “And in this case, perhaps the worst thing is the setback in an area in which the country has gained a great deal of know-how and capacity, making it one of the largest users of renewable energy in transportation worldwide.”

In the Senate, the ruling party’s Rubén Uñac, chair of the energy commission, acknowledged that the biofuels industry made possible the creation of “new companies and thousands of jobs” over the last decade, through “more than three billion dollars in investments.” But he said the system was in need of “in-depth reform.”

In the opposition, the chair of the Senate commission on the environment and sustainable development, Senator Gladys González, denounced “fierce lobbying by the oil companies” and argued that the government “says one thing and does another,” because it expresses in public a deep commitment to the fight against climate change that does not translate into action.

A study published in July by Caratori and Jorge Hilbert, an expert with the government’s National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), points out that the current installed biodiesel and bioethanol production capacity could cover between 4.5 and 8.0 percent of Argentina’s international commitment to GHG emissions reduction.

“The decarbonisation opportunity offered by biofuels is considered to be very significant with minimal investment,” the paper underscores.

Pros and cons, depending on who is looking at it

In any case, the real environmental impact of biofuels is disputed. María Marta Di Paola, director of research at the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN), raised several reservations.

View of a soybean field in the province of Santa Fe, in western Argentina. Biodiesel is made from soybean oil in more than 50 plants near the city of Rosario, located in the south of the province. CREDIT: Confederaciones Rurales de Argentina

“We are concerned that they fuel the expansion of the agricultural frontier, compete with the use of crops for food and rely on agricultural production that is highly dependent on fossil fuels,” she told IPS.

“Consequently, although biofuels are presented as an alternative for the energy transition, it is very difficult to quantify their real contribution to the fight against climate change,” said the expert from FARN, one of the country’s most respected environmental institutions.

“In any case, the decision made by the government and Congress had to do with other issues, which clearly demonstrates that the priority given in Argentina to environmental debates is very low,” Di Paola asserted.

At any rate, the industry dismisses the misgivings that are raised.

“Less than five percent of Argentina’s arable land is involved in biofuel production,” Claudio Molina, executive director of the Argentine Biofuels and Hydrogen Association, which has been promoting biofuel production for 15 years, told IPS. “Only three percent of the total corn harvest is used to make bioethanol.”

In Argentina, biodiesel, produced by national and international private capital, received its first big boost through exports, which between 2012 and 2019 generated more than one billion dollars a year, according to official data.

However, the drop in demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic led to a sharp decline in 2020, when exports dropped to 468 million dollars.

The main market is the European Union, since the United States slapped high tariffs on Argentina’s biodiesel in 2017 to protect its soybean producers.

The pandemic’s impact on demand and a rise in the price of biodiesel put pressure on the government and left it with two alternatives that it wants to avoid: authorise an increase in consumer fuel prices or reduce the profit margin of the oil companies, especially the state-owned YPF.

This is included in the text of the new law, which states that the government reserves the right to further reduce the percentage of biofuels in the fuel blends when an increase in the prices of biodiesel or bioethanol inputs “could distort the price of fossil fuels at the pump.”

Axel Boerr is vice-president of Explora, a company with the capacity to produce 120,000 tons of biodiesel per year at its plant on the outskirts of the city of Rosario, an area he describes as “Argentina’s Kuwait”, due to the number of factories that generate energy from oil from the soybean fields that abound in the area.

In an interview with IPS, Boerr said biofuels were a way to add value to agricultural production and help Latin American countries become more than just exporters of primary products.

“In addition, this will aggravate our external dependence, because Argentina is an importer of gasoline and diesel and will have to buy more and more, since it has no more oil refining capacity,” he predicted.

The political negotiations ensured that the current six percent blend would remain in place for sugarcane bioethanol. This secured votes in Congress from legislators from the northwest provinces, which are sugarcane producers.

A possible reduction from six to three percent was left open in the case of corn bioethanol.

“We don’t believe in the argument that we have to take care of consumer fuel prices, because what determines them is oil, not biofuels,” Patrick Adam, executive director of the Corn Bioethanol Chamber, told IPS.

“Today we are working at 70 percent of our capacity and with these changes, which represent a step backwards in terms of the climate, we would drop to 40 percent. We were ready to grow and this law caught us off guard,” he concluded.

By Farhana Haque Rahman
TORONTO, Canada, Aug 30 2021 (IPS)

Whether desperately trying to get a place on the last evacuation flights out of Kabul or trekking to the borders with neighbouring Pakistan and Iran, tens of thousands of Afghans are fleeing their country once more.

Events are unfolding at speed. The Taliban are establishing a central government in the capital to fill the void of the collapsed western-backed administration, but they do not control all the country as the protracted civil war enters a new stage. The UN refugee agency UNHCR says that in its “worst case scenario” it is preparing for around 500,000 new refugees in the region by the end of this year. As with many past estimates that could prove optimistic.

Farhana Haque Rahman

Even before the Taliban’s rapid advances in August, conflict this year had displaced an estimated 390,000 people within Afghanistan, and some 14 million were seriously short of food, with prolonged drought across much of the country.

Since the Soviet invasion of late 1979, Afghanistan has seen millions of refugees exiting its borders in waves, creating diasporas near and far. In periods of relative calm many have returned.

But this latest exodus faces a far more hostile world. The tide of international opinion, often driven by rejectionist nationalism, has been turning against refugees in general. Only just recently some western countries were deporting Afghan refugees. Newly erected barriers – whether fences or walls – are becoming the international norm. Refugee quotas have been slashed.

Turkey, already sheltering some 3.7 million registered refugees, has warned Europe it will not become its “refugee warehouse” again after the deal negotiated in 2016 to accept Syrian refugees in exchange for aid. Pakistan and Iran, already host to an estimated total of some five million registered and unregistered Afghan refugees, do not want any more. Britain, with all its historic connections, is opening its doors to only 20,000 Afghans over the next five years. President Joe Biden has authorised $500 million in refugee spending but it is unclear how many refugees might find a home in the US itself. Ottawa pledged to resettle 20,000 Afghan refugees threatened by the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. “Offering refuge to the world’s most vulnerable speaks to who we are as Canadians, particularly in times of crisis,” said Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino.

Worldwide refugee numbers keep rising and are at their highest since the Second Wolrd War. UNHCR’s Refugee Population Statistics Database shows that by late June there were 82.4 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, of whom an estimated 35 million are children under the age of 18. Nearly 70 percent of the total are from five countries: Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar.

Yet it is the images and personal stories that carry so much more impact than the bare statistics. For Syria possibly the most devastating, and also far reaching in political terms, was the picture of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi lying lifeless on a Turkish beach, drowned trying to reach Europe with his family. Those pictures of Afghans packed into a US military transport plane have defined the chaos in Kabul, soon followed by the carnage of a suicide bombing.

But stories that do convey hope also make it seem possible to the public and donors that something can be done to help, even with relatively small amounts of money.

Naturally everyone displaced by conflict has his or her own story, although it must be recognized that some would rather not tell theirs for reasons to be respected. I have my own to share, briefly.

I first became aware of Afghanistan when, as a young child in the ‘60s in what was then East Pakistan I read in Bangla, Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Kabuliwalah”. The tale of the kind, compassionate man who periodically left his family behind to sell goods he carried in a large sack and make loans to Bengalis made a deep impression, as did his sense of humour and his attachment to a little girl Mini, clearly a cherished substitute for his own children back in Kabul. He was at first a rather frightening figure, giving her treats from his sack, but he slowly gained her and her father’s confidence and respect.

My next contact with Afghanistan was more direct, fraught with danger. While a student in an all-girls British run college in Lahore, Pakistan, my country of birth Bangladesh became independent. I fled what was then West Pakistan, avoiding camps and a protracted repatriation, to reach the newly independent country, taking a hazardous route by ‘tanga’ horse drawn carriages, trucks and buses across inhospitable terrain and mountain through Quetta and the border crossing of Chaman into Afghanistan. Along the way, in no man’s land, armed smugglers extorted more money from our group of about 40, some of them families with children, and one night we had to trek over mountains, exhausted to the point of hallucination. Fearing death but quite ignorant of the danger of rape, dressed in a white ‘burqa’ throughout the perilous journey, monitoring with piercing eyes the movement of those who were temporarily my guardian angels, I made it to the Indian embassy in Kabul after spending days in a dilapidated farmhouse in Kandahar, and, with Indian ID papers, we were flown to New Delhi then on to Kolkata by train, eventually making it to Dhaka after 23 harrowing days. I was fortunate to make it; the new country was still reeling from a war that cost millions of lives. Nearly 50 years later that is so often not the case.

“The resilience of the Afghan people has been pushed to the limit by prolonged conflict, high levels of displacement, the impact of COVID-19, recurrent natural disasters, including drought, and deepening poverty,” UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch told a briefing in Geneva on July 13.

As the Afghan conflict intensified earlier this year, more refugees set out on long and hazardous journeys through Pakistan, Iran and Turkey towards Europe, often paying gangs of exploitative smugglers and people traffickers. Turkey, where authorities estimate there are already some 300,000 registered and unregistered Afghan refugees, is strengthening its border network of walls and fences. Greece, which sees itself as Europe’s ‘front line’ is doing the same.

Reece Jones, a professor of political geography, has researched how in recent decades countries have become inter-connected through complex networks of transport and communication, but the purpose of borders has shifted to become the place where the movement of people is controlled.

“Border security and the construction of walls have increased dramatically in the supposedly borderless world of globalisation,” he says.

As walls and fences go up, so do the dramatic increases in migrant deaths. More than 2000 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe over the past year, according to the Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration.

Countries announcing new border barriers in recent years include Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the “beautiful wall” of former president Donald Trump on the US-Mexico border. Lithuania is the latest, with its parliament voting in August to erect a metal fence topped with razor wire to keep out migrants, many recently from Iraq, crossing into its territory from Belarus.

Prof. Jones says the borders of the EU are “by far the most deadly” with roughly two-thirds of all migration related deaths occurring there or on the way to the EU. The high death rate, he says, is a combination of an extremely dangerous border in the Mediterranean sea coupled with increased enforcement that drives people to use smugglers and take more risks, as tragically seen in the deaths of 39 Vietnamese found suffocated to death in a refrigerated trailer near a UK port in 2019.

Walls did not work in the past and only divert but do not prevent migrant flows, but they are powerfully effective symbols used by politicians to demonstrate they are addressing perceived economic, cultural and security threats from migrants.

The EU, says Daniel Trilling, author of Lights in the Distance: exile and refuge at the borders of Europe, has perhaps the world’s most complex system to deter unwanted migrants, spending billions of dollars on surveillance systems and patrols on land and sea.

In reality the EU tries to prevent even genuine asylum seekers from reaching its territory, as by cutting aid deals with Turkey. The Syrian refugee crisis of 2015, when one million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe, triggered bitter disputes over collective burden sharing that remain unresolved.

While the last US and other foreign troops fly out of Kabul this week, ending a two-decade military campaign, UN agencies are remaining. The World Food Programme says it is “committed to stay and deliver as long as conditions will allow” and needs $200 million to get through to the end of the year. In the first six months of this year, WFP delivered food and nutrition assistance to 5.5 million people, including those newly displaced by fighting.

UNHCR is maintaining staff in Afghanistan and says that at present it is able to access all provinces and continues to work with 18 local non-government partners. “We call on donors to remain steadfast in their support for humanitarian operations in Afghanistan and are also appealing for support,” the agency said, noting that UNHCR’s Supplementary Appeal for the Afghanistan Situation is “drastically underfunded at 43 per cent”.

Borders around the world are being sealed to migrants and refugees, but the international community cannot walk away from Afghanistan and close its eyes.

Farhana Haque Rahman is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. A journalist and communications expert, she is Executive Director, IPS Noram and Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service.

 

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Cattle farming in Jamica. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
KINGSTON, Aug 30 2021 (IPS)

Even as COVID-19 walloped Jamaica’s economy last year, the government overhauled its energy emissions milestones to create what many described as a post-pandemic recovery package, based on stronger carbon targets for the farming and forestry sectors.

According to the plan, the country would reduce emissions from both sectors by almost a third over the next decade, by optimising water and energy use and diversifying food production.

Released at a time when most countries around the globe struggled to manage their economies during the pandemic using measures that were expected to set back their sustainability goals, experts hailed the plan as a game changer for a country in a steep economic decline resulting from COVID-19.

With tens of thousands of jobs lost, the government turned to the island’s fast-expanding business process outsourcing (BPO) sector as a much-needed source of jobs, providing a level of diversification from the agrarian society of old. Initially focused on call centres, the sector has expanded to include to more specialised areas including accounting, human resources management, digital marketing, animation and software development.

Climate change expert Carlos Fuller said the new measures “will create new economic opportunities and generate employment for Jamaicans.”

Changes in land use, for development and increased agricultural activities, and reducing deforestation will cut emissions up to 28.5 per cent by 2030, according to the plan, which satisfies both local and international targets. Agriculture currently contributes about six per cent to Jamaica’s total emissions, while land use change and forestry account for 7.8 per cent.

Jamaica is one of the Caribbean’s small island developing states (SIDS). On Monday and Tuesday, representatives of the 38 SIDS worldwide, UN agencies and civil society will gather in person and online to discuss how they can kickstart their economies post-COVID-19 in order to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

The SIDS Solution Forum is organised by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in partnership with the UN International Telecommunications Union and co-hosted by the Government of Fiji.

Other current investments in Jamaica have made climate data collection, modelling and analysis priorities. Projects like the Climate Data and Information Management Project should help to improve the collection and analysis of climate data while strengthening early warning systems. The Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project is expected to enhance physical resilience to disasters.

Co-heads of the Climate Studies Group at the University of the West Indies, Dr Michael Taylor and Dr Tannecia Stephenson, recently deciphered the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in terms of what it could mean for the region.

“The intensity and frequency of heat extremes in the Caribbean are increasing and will continue to do so. It will impact energy use, demands for water, agricultural production among other things,” Dr Taylor said.

Jamaica’s emissions and development goals are tied together in the country’s Vision 2030 Development plan, an ambitious guide for this highly indebted nation’s development. Launched in 2014, the document aims to make “Jamaica the place of choice to live, work, raise families and do business.”

There have been tweaks, updates and a Road Map, but Vision 2030 remains grounded in four interrelated national goals: Jamaicans are empowered to achieve their fullest potential, society is secure, cohesive and just, the economy is prosperous, and the country has a healthy, natural environment.

In pursuit of the Vision 2030 aims the results have been mixed, said Wayne Henry, Director General of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), the agency tasked with tracking the implementation of the SDGs.

In his September 2020 overview of SDG implementation, Henry noted that Jamaica has recorded positives in the social sector, accountability and governance. For example, there is continued focus on gender equality and the empowerment of women. According to the International Labour Organization, 59.3 percent of managers in the country are women.

But Jamaica has struggled, Henry said, in the areas of security and safety, environmental sustainability and the rate of non-communicable diseases. The murder rate has hovered between 47 and 47.7 per 100,000 in recent years, diabetes and hypertension rates have climbed alarmingly in the 15-and-over age-group, and overall environmental performance has fallen.

Even as the systems for SDG implementation are woven into the national development strategies, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of economies like Jamaica’s. According to Henry, the pandemic shows “how quickly a development path can be challenged.”

COVID-19 brought the world to a standstill and in its wake upended the lives and livelihoods of thousands in the Caribbean, shuttering entire sectors that depend on tourism and according to the PIOJ, contracting the Jamaican economy by 10 percent.

With tens of thousands of jobs lost, the government turned to the island’s fast-expanding business process outsourcing (BPO) sector as a much-needed source of jobs, providing a level of diversification from the agrarian society of old. Initially focused on call centres, the sector has expanded to include to more specialised areas including accounting, human resources management, digital marketing, animation and software development.

But the sector’s employers are prone to COVID-19 outbreaks, and its dependence on the existing fossil fuel-based energy sector is a negative factor for a country keen on cutting emissions.

Still, Jamaica may well have captured the essence of the SDGs by balancing the temporary growth from the BPO sector with its commitment to reduce energy costs and diversify the fuel mix. It plans, for example, to increase the share of electricity generation from renewables from 9 percent in 2016 to 30 percent by 2030. And in 2019, the government commissioned a 36-megawatt wind farm, which is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 66,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year, equal to taking roughly 13,000 cars off the road.

Vaccine access negotiations are at critical juncture. While many countries support the intellectual property rights waiver, including the European parliament the European Union does not. Credit: PAHO/Karen González

By Lyndal Rowlands
Melbourne, Australia , Aug 30 2021 (IPS)

A committee that has spent almost a year negotiating the terms of a temporary intellectual property waiver for Covid-19 medicines will reconvene in September after pausing for the European Summer.

As new variants spread rapidly around the world, the deadlock in the World Trade Organization Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Committee has potentially further delayed access to vaccines and other medicines for billions of people in low- and middle-income countries.

The waiver, initially proposed by India and South Africa in October 2020 has attracted sponsorship and support from several other countries. After widespread campaigning, the United States added its support in May. Yet, while the European parliament also backs the proposal, the European Union does not, in part due to continued opposition from Germany, which is home to a substantial pharmaceutical industry.

The decreasing number of countries holding out from supporting the waiver continued to stall negotiations right up until they paused at the end of July. This is even though the waiver is only being put forward as a temporary measure until the pandemic is under control.

Leena Menghaney, the head of Médecins Sans Frontières Access Campaign in South Asia told IPS that the countries that proposed the waiver are asking for the right to produce their own medicines and vaccines.

“Many middle-income countries have the technical capacity to also produce Covid-19 medicines and vaccines,” said Menghaney, adding that opponents to the waiver are using arguments that ignore the technical capacity that many countries already have to produce generic medicines.

“It smacks of colonial baggage to say that you’re not ready for this,” says Menghaney. “What countries want is the right to produce these medicines and vaccines.”

This is not the first time that the strict TRIPS rules for medicines have come under the microscope.

The current intellectual property system has also added to the inequality in access to Tuberculosis medicines, contributing to the emergence of new multi-drug resistant variants that threaten to even further prolong one of the world’s most unequal epidemics.

“The intellectual property system doesn’t really distribute the outcomes of science very well. It’s not a system where people are equally able to access the outcomes of research”, said Menghaney. “Governments have been funding research, but the outcomes of research are not equitably distributed,” she added.

“Many times this research actually has its genesis in public labs, the riskiest part of research for HIV, Hepatitis C and now Covid-19 has happened in public labs.”

The strict barriers to intellectual property imposed by TRIPS have also been challenged before by South Africa when millions of people were dying because they could not afford expensive new treatments. Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, is one of many supporters of the TRIPS waiver alongside World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom.

“We cannot repeat the painful lessons from the early years of the AIDS response, when people in wealthier countries got back to health, while millions of people in developing countries were left behind,” Byanyima has said in support of the waiver.

To date, developing countries have found that their efforts to purchase vaccines have been plagued with difficulties, unfair prices and secretive deals. Anis Chowdhury former Director of Macroeconomic Policy and Development Division of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific told IPS that even sharing of the Astra Zeneca vaccine has not proven easy even though the researchers who developed the vaccine at Oxford University promised that they would not make a profit from the vaccine while the pandemic continued.

“The issue is all these agreements are very non-transparent. And in this case, the parent company dictates almost all the conditions including who could be the distributor of this drug or vaccine, what price you charge, and to which customer,” Chowdhury told IPS.

Both South Africa and India have found themselves tied up in complicated deals meaning they have little say over who they sell vaccines they make to or where they can buy their own supplies from. So far, European countries have been able to secure lower prices for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine than many low- and middle-income countries.

While vaccine waiver negotiations have languished, global efforts to address vaccine inequality have rested on the COVAX facility, convened by the WHO. Yet, Chowdhury, who is also Professor of Economics at Western Sydney University, told IPS that “from the start, COVAX was designed to fail.”

As Chowdhury told IPS, COVAX was put forward as an alternative by rich countries “because the pharmaceutical industries refused to join” C-TAP a WHO proposal to increase knowledge sharing of Covid-19 technologies between countries on the same day it was launched back in May.

Yet, although Dr Adhanom says that 11 billion doses are needed to end the pandemic, COVAX has only managed to put together a small proportion of its modest goal of two billion doses of vaccines, and even this small pool of vaccines is yet to reach countries that need it most since rich countries – Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK – have been buying up vaccines from COVAX as well. And COVAX is unlikely to attract enough donations, as even the World Health Organization continues to struggle to attract funding in the midst of the pandemic.

As Chowdhury points out “powerful countries” have been cutting the UN’s budget “right and left for so many years.”

 

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By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, Aug 30 2021 (IPS)

Some years ago, on a piece on the Afghan crisis I had written that Mullah Omar’s face bore no resemblance to that of the impossibly beautiful, albeit mythical, Helen of Troy. Yet it too had caused the launch of a thousand ships (airships to be more precise), just as Helen’s had done in Homer’s epic tale, the Iliad. Like Troy in that ancient narrative, Afghanistan of the present times was swarmed with invaders who could also be seen as the counterparts of those Greeks- the Americans and their NATO allies. This war lasted for double the time of the Trojan episode, twenty years instead of ten. At its end it led to a reverse situation, victory of the Trojans, in this case, of the Taliban. Though the Greeks destroyed Troy by the ruse of a gift of the Wooden Horse, eventually a Trojan warrior, Aeneid, sailed to southern Mediterranean and laid the foundation of the Rome and its empire. The Greek epoch ultimately yielded to the Roman age, and the annals of geopolitics of that time took a completely new turn. Will the impact of the Afghan war be the same? Shall we see a power transformation in a new paradigm from what we have at the present time? Will American predominance make way for a risen China, now or in the future?

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

There are no easy answers to the questions. It may be an unscientific notion that history repeats itself. However, it is a scientific and logical proposition that similar causes tend to produce similar results. The victory of the Taliban was owed to a number of factors .Among the principal ones were a fierce popular resistance to occupation, not necessarily unique to the Afghan ambience, the corruption and incompetence of an imposed government from outside, seen by many as akin to the Vichy or to the Manchukuo, the lack of any tangible development of the quality of life of the common man , and ,yes, also woman, and the spirit , commitment and ideological dedication of the Taliban fighters. The huge sums of money expended by the US and others, trillions of dollars, kept the developed economies going with minimal impact of the raising of living standards among the Afghan masses. The everyday violence had become unbearable. There was a stated governmental support to women’s empowerment, but very little to show for it in much of rural Afghanistan. The Taliban win has ended the war, and now the Afghans are longing for relief.

The world owes it to them. Yet, though the international community seem reluctant to bring the pains of the Afghans to a closure. The media in many countries is replete with stories that there is a burgeoning pushback to the victors, as if that would alter the results of the war. There are predictions of horrifying threats of Taliban reprisals, against collaborators, none of which has come to pass yet. Indeed, the truth is that violence has largely ceased in the country for the first time in two decades. The cities and the villages have become far safer for the men, women, boys, and girls than many in that young nation have known in their lifetime. True, there are thousands scrambling to get out at the Kabul airport. But far more are lured by the dreams, though not necessary by the prospects, of a better life in America and the West than the genuine fear of losing it in Taliban hands. Far from massacring the departing Afghans, the Taliban are seeking to queue them up in separate lines for departure for the US and the UK, in an effort to restore a modicum of order in the chaos. Indeed, incredibly it may appear given feelings of mutual hostility, the Taliban are cooperating with the erstwhile occupation troops at the airport.

This fact could mark the beginning of a silver lining in an otherwise dark horizon. If there is a will, there will eventually be a way. Doubtless, the Taliban must change, as some of their leaders seem to opine in public. It seems that some of them are persuaded that there must be a Taliban.02, different from the previous version. It cannot be impossible to bring interpretations of Islamic laws in consonance with those in many other Muslim-majority nations. Treatment of women is something that the world will closely watch. Some within the Taliban may not care, but many others will, and the latter must be encouraged by the global community. BRAC, a non-governmental organization from Bangladesh which was doing commendable work on girls’ education (a great success story in the predominantly Muslim Bangladesh), should be allowed to resume its activities. Afghanistan had a major contribution to the efflorescence of Islamic intellectual culture in the past. That spirit is most certainly imbued in the Afghan ethos and can and should be regenerated.

Mr. Joe Biden is a decent, elder American politician of the old school who thought, with a good reason that America should end the occupation and quit. When put on the carpet, as he has been so often by his critics in recent days for his decision, his legitimate query has been “If not now, then when?” None of the critics seems to be providing him that answer. In all fairness, he cannot be held accountable for the failure of his generals. He is withdrawing because his generals have lost the war, and the winners now want him out. It is as simple as that. Historically, when foreign occupiers have left, those who had served them during the period of occupation have felt insecure. In Western Europe after the German surrender during World War 11, for instance. That thirst for revenge does not seem to prevail at this point in time in post-Taliban victory Afghanistan. Surprisingly in a society where that could have been expected, as Afghans traditionally tend to conform to the three tribal values of honour, hospitality and revenge.

It would be a grave error of judgment to confuse the Taliban fighter with Florence Nightingale. He is made of sterner stuff. He did not get to where he is today by mollycoddling his opponent. But at the same time there is a palpable yearning in him for acceptability. That should be taken advantage of. Should the US want to be a positive force for the post-Afghan war world, it can help by trying to mainstream the Taliban-led Afghanistan into the global system. It will not be easy, as many Afghans including Taliban are unhappy with them and angry. But political realism is a great shaper of civic behavior, and there is not much reason to believe than the Taliban are any different. Those who wield some influence on them- for example, Pakistan, China, Russia, Iran, and Turkey should aid the process. Stability in Afghanistan will help them all. Sanctions that some, including a few members of the G 7, are pressurizing Mr. Biden to impose on the Afghans or freeze Afghan accounts will not advance this process. In fact, it will bring on more hostile and extremist reactions because of which many of the advocates of sanctions will suffer. Exacerbation of the miseries of the Afghans will do the world no good.

Afghanistan is a country that has been impoverished. But it is not poor. Its resources are abundant. It possesses enormous mineral wealth: Lithium, cobalt, nickel, neodymium, rare earths, and the like. These are said to be worth more than a trillion dollars. Extraction of some of these will need greater investment and technological knowhow. This will create opportunities for American and Chinese companies to cooperate. That is the turn of event in historical evolution that will redound to everyone’s benefit.

The US will need to watch out for friends that can inflict more harm than foes. Lord Ricketts, a UK politician, has said that Mr. Biden’s retreat was a “wake-up call to allies who had hopes of a return of the US to internationalism”. But surely a return to “internationalism” does not mean a return to military occupation. The Suez was a good lesson to British Conservatives in that respect. The errors of the British government of Sir Anthony Eden at the time, which the US had then pointed out, had led to an unhappy rift for a while between London and Washington.

Currently the US Vice President, Ms. Kamala Harris is in Singapore, visiting Southeast Asia. She may have already perceived the sense of the region that Asian countries largely are wary of taking sides in big power conflicts. Most are reluctant to be “one or the other’s stalking horse to advance negative agendas”. If this message is not picked up adequately, Asians may view American advances towards them just as the Trojan priest Laocoon saw the Wooden Horse left behind at the gates of Troy in the narrative with which this essay began. He had famously warned: “I fear the Greeks, even though they come bearing gifts”!

This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier.

 

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Afghans are a proud people with a rich cultural heritage. They have known generations of war and hardship. They deserve our full support. The following days will be pivotal. The world is watching. We cannot and must not abandon the people of Afghanistan-- UN Secretary-General António Guterres in remarks to the Security Council on Afghanistan, 16 August '21. Credit: IOM/Mohammed Muse

By Ben Phillips and Jonathan Glennie
ROME, Aug 30 2021 (IPS)

As the Western occupation of Afghanistan has come to an end, TV news is broadcasting harrowing scenes of death and destruction, citizens in fear, allies abandoned, and dreams dashed.

While the cynicism of key leaders has been exposed – exemplified by Afghan President Ghani sneaking out, reportedly with bags of cash – the end of the war is also a moment of reckoning for war’s idealists, those who believed in invasion and occupation as a route to development.

Those who believed that the war would bring a new dawn have made clear that they want to hold to account those who presided over its failure, and they want to ensure that such failure not be repeated again. They also want to know what it is that they can do to advance development and human rights.

It is right to hold leaders to account.

But the most important lesson from the occupation of Afghanistan is not principally that it was finished, or conducted, in the wrong way. The tough truth that war’s idealists need to face is this: those responsible for failure of the war are not those who ended it but those who initiated and maintained it, and the way to ensure that the next occupation of a country does not similarly fail is not to start it.

At the conclusion of twenty years of occupation and at a cost of one to two trillion dollars, Afghanistan has been left the poorest country per capita in Asia; the number of Afghans in poverty has doubled; half of the population is dependent on humanitarian assistance; half lack access to drinkable water; poppy cultivation has trebled and opium production is at its height.

Beyond the capital, Kabul, the reach of the formal structures of the created state was weak. The state that the Soviets built lasted three years; the state that the West constructed was so lacking in legitimacy and institutional depth that it collapsed within days.

Theories of “just war” have long recognised that to determine whether a war is just, one must necessarily consider not only what high intentions are declared, but also the likelihood of success.

The facts here are inconvenient: in Libya, it brought about the return of slave markets; in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, it facilitated the rise of ISIS; it did not dislodge Assad from Syria, and in Afghanistan a twenty-year occupation ended up replacing the Taliban with the Taliban.

There is a desperate attempt to rewrite history and pretend that one man, Joe Biden, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Whatever tactical mistakes and miscalculations the US has made in the last phase of this war, the fact is that it was lost long ago.

He just told the truth. Two successive US administrations of different parties admitted frankly that the US had lost. And at the point when the US drew down, the entire “Western” operation followed.

This is because whilst the US has been shown to be unable to win a war of occupation to remake a state, every other Western power has been shown to be unable even to attempt to do so.

The US spends about 780 billion dollars a year on its military; the UK, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and Italy together spend about 340 billion dollars per year. If the US cannot do this, no one can.

The West could have ended the Occupation much more honourably – for example by providing safe passage for all those who had become exposed by working with them – and can still make a difference by fully funding the massively underfunded international humanitarian aid operation. But the fact is the war could not be won.

Confronted by these realities, war’s idealists ask back, “well, are we just supposed to sit back and do nothing?” No. While occupation is not the tool, there is indeed a fundamental moral obligation, and an enlightened self-interest, to work to tackle poverty and advance human rights worldwide.

The most effective tools to advance those include supporting grassroots civil society organisations, integrating human rights and development into diplomacy, the provision of aid, addressing international bottle-necks to progress (from trade rules to debt and more), and working across nations to advance global public goods (like enabling the mass production of vaccines and other medicines, and limiting climate change).

Are those easy and fast? No, they are hard, but they work. To take one example, it used to be only a minority of kids in developing countries who finished primary school. As a result of grassroots advocacy, national leadership, joined up international engagement, debt cancellation, the deployment of domestic resources and assistance from aid, most children in developing countries now complete primary school.

But most do not yet complete secondary school. Ensuring that almost all children across the world finish secondary school is eminently achievable, in less than a decade, for much less than the cost of the war in Afghanistan.

To advance the full realisation of human rights worldwide, supporting civil society organisations (CSOs) and strengthening international institutions may seem like “weak” approaches compared to just replacing governments one doesn’t like with new governments in one’s own image, but the former approach has proven successful – slowly, and imperfectly – in improving the “soil” in which rights flourish, while the latter approach has been shown to enable nothing to be able to grow on its own.

Occupation forces of foreign soldiers with unaccountable power have not proven an effective starting point for building up good governance and human rights. In contrast, we have witnessed strong civic organising, and international solidarity, secure a return to Constitutional rule in Zambia; we have seen the decriminalisation of LGBT relationships in Angola.

We have also seen Sudan accept the authority of the International Criminal Court (something the US has not yet done); in Lebanon and Jordan, law reform has removed the ability of a rapist to avoid punishment by marrying his victim; in Sri Lanka, civil society organisations have secured court holds on the imposition of the death penalty; in the Maldives, women have joined the Supreme Court for the first time.

In Afghanistan, in contrast, the operating environment of occupation led many human rights organisations to be seen to be associated with it, unfairly, undercutting their ability to enable sustained progressive change – and placing many leaders at great risk – now the end has come.

And the end will always come.

Every empire tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires. But we must judge outcomes, not mission statements. In addressing the myriad injustices of the world, invading countries to remake them is a solution that is clear, simple and wrong.

There are people who hope to invade Iran, or Venezuela, or pick-a-country-with-a-problem, but next time, they insist, they’ll do it “better”. They must stop. They must be stopped.

Of course, what drives war is not only – or even principally – idealism. What US President Eisenhower (a Republican, and a great General) called the “Military-Industrial Complex” has only grown.

And the contractors, of course, keep winning, even as the occupations so demonstrably fail. But the maintenance of war depends on the idealists. War’s idealists must now accept defeat, and embrace better ways to change the world.

It’s no surprise that advocates for war as a strategy for development get so misty-eyed; a clear-eyed reading of the facts shows that occupation is not the answer.

Ben Phillips is the author of How to Fight Inequality; Jonathan Glennie is the author of The Future of Aid: Global Public Investment.

 

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Farming and agricultural production on Mangaia Island, Cook Islands. Photo credit: Ministry of Agriculture, Cook Islands

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia, Aug 29 2021 (IPS)

Finding ways to be smarter producers of food was a priority in small island developing states (SIDS) before the outbreak of Covid-19. Now the ideas of farmers and entrepreneurs, such as Piri Maao in the Cook Islands, are being avidly sought by governments and development bodies, which are keen to drive resilience and recovery as the pandemic moves into its second year.

Similar to other SIDS, the Cook Islands has limited arable land and finite water resources, while agricultural production has declined in recent decades and food imports increased.

In April this year, Maao was awarded a SMART AgriTech funding grant by the government of the Polynesian nation to establish a solar-powered hydroponics greenhouse to grow vegetables year round.

Considering the force and isolation of COVID-19, strengthening food production and distribution systems is key to fighting hunger and tackling the double burden of malnutrition. The development of aqua and hydroponics embraces all dimensions of food security

“Growing in a greenhouse eliminates any environmental issues, such as rain and wind, which I currently face in a soil-based system. There is a reduced use of pesticides; insect screens will help eliminate a lot of the larger insects, such as moths and beetles. Solar power to run the system ensures sustainability and low running costs,” Maao, an agricultural entrepreneur on the island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, told IPS.

The SMART AgriTech Scheme, which was launched in July 2020, is one way the Cook Islands government has responded to the pandemic with a long-term vision.

“Through the AgriTech grants, successful applicants were given the opportunity to pursue new ideas: ideas that can transform a business or the agriculture industry through innovation and productivity improvements, respond to opportunities that are driven by new ideas or meeting new market needs, facilitate better connections between producers, processors and marketers, and reduce farming’s environmental footprint through new technology and more efficient processes, mitigating the impacts of climate change,” Hon. Mark Brown, the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, told IPS.

Rarotonga is one of 15 islands that make up the Pacific Islands nation, which is located in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, south of Hawaii and southeast of Samoa. Its economy and population of about 17,500 people were, until last year, hugely dependent on the tourism industry, which contributed about 67 percent of GDP.

Today the closing of national borders and rapid decline of tourism in the wake of Covid-19 has triggered a decline in local incomes and livelihoods, and highlighted the country’s need to rely less on food imports and grow more locally. The average value of food production in the Cook Islands declined from 231 US dollars per person in 2002 to 43 dollars per person in 2018, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Meanwhile, food is the second largest expense for islanders, amounting to 22.5 percent of household spending in 2016.

Recently, “production has remained consistent, but, when our borders closed, sales of local products plummeted due to the reduction in our tourism sector. Food security and nutrition remains a priority for us, so we advocate to ensure we have sufficient food to feed our population before seeking export opportunities,” Mrs Temarama Anguna-Kamana, Head of the Cook Islands’ Ministry of Agriculture told IPS.

Maao began working on his concept for a greenhouse several years ago and undertook market research to prove there was significant local demand for his produce before going ahead with the business project.

Hydroponics is a form of horticulture where crops are grown in an indoor environment with their roots immersed in a nutrient-rich aqueous solution. Some benefits of this technique are that it doesn’t use soil and minimises the use of land and water. On Rarotonga, agriculture accounts for a major 40 percent of all water usage. Standalone hydroponic systems, which can also be developed at the household level, provide the consistent growing conditions to support uninterrupted production.

“Considering the force and isolation of COVID-19, strengthening food production and distribution systems is key to fighting hunger and tackling the double burden of malnutrition. The development of aqua and hydroponics embraces all dimensions of food security,” advocates the FAO.

Maao is developing a ‘drip fertigation hydroponics’ system, in which irrigation of plants inside the greenhouse from a tank containing a nutrient solution is automatically triggered at the most optimum times of the day. Initially he will be growing red, yellow and orange capsicum, although the entrepreneur plans to diversify with other crops in the near future. Maao’s greenhouse is currently in the construction phase. “We anticipate to have it completed and, weather dependent, fully operational by the end of next month,” he said.

Maao said his project is responding to the country’s food security needs by “increasing local production, the availability of healthy vegetables, locally and consistently, and reducing their importation.” And, with his partner and son working alongside him, he said he was also supporting wider youth and gender participation.

Promoting innovation in all aspects of the agricultural industry, from cultivation to processing, value adding and marketing stages, will be further discussed among the region’s leaders and growers at the SIDS Solutions Forum. The virtual international conference, which is co-hosted by the FAO and Fiji Government, convenes on 30-31 August. Participating countries include Antigua and Barbuda, Seychelles, Madagascar, Barbados, Fiji, Samoa, Cook Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu.

The event will bring together national leaders, development organizations, experts, the private sector and farmers from SIDS around the world to discuss ‘digitalization and innovation for sustainable agriculture, food, nutrition, environment and health.’

“In this, the year of the UN Food Systems Summit, the forum will demonstrate that diverse types of digital and non-digital solutions, many of them home grown and local, are available for the unique challenges of agri-food systems in the SIDS. Strategies for scaling up efficiently with targeted investments in infrastructure and by providing an enabling environment for women and youth entrepreneurs will be outlined,” Sridhar Dharmapuri, Senior Food Safety and Nutrition Officer at the FAO Regional Office for Asia Pacific in Bangkok, told IPS.

It is hoped that knowledge sharing at the forum about better outcomes in food production and nutrition in SIDS will help them to ‘leap frog’ their progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.

 

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In Anapolis, Brazil's North-South railway line, which took more than 30 years to complete, was unable to connect with the existing network due to the different width of its tracks and its southern section remained inactive for several years, until it was privatised in 2019. Precedents like this one create concern about the new planned railway lines, dedicated to the transportation of grains to the export ports. CREDIT: Mario Osava

By Mario Osava
RÍO DE JANEIRO, Aug 27 2021 (IPS)

The sea of soybeans that sprouts every November will spread even further in the state of Mato Grosso if three new railway lines that would boost soy production in central-western Brazil and growing parts of the Amazon rainforest are built.

The most controversial railway line, the EF-170, is better known by its nickname “Ferrogrão (grainrail)” because it is to be built for the export of grains from the mid-northern part of Mato Grosso, the area where most soybeans and corn are produced in Brazil, through Amazonian rivers and ports in the north of the country.

Mato Grosso already produces 70 million tons of grains per year, a total that will reach 120 million tons by 2030, said Minister of Infrastructure Tarcisio de Freitas, who described the Ferrogrão as “the most important logistics project in Brazil,” in a digital meeting with foreign correspondents in June.

It would lower freight rates in general, by creating competition in the transportation of the bulk of the national agricultural production, replacing thousands of trucks and expanding exports through the ports of northern Brazil, relieving pressure on ports in the south and southeast.

The government intended to auction the concession for the rail line this year, but is unlikely to do so in the face of environmental obstacles and economic uncertainties.

The railway would cause the deforestation of between 1,671 and 2,416 square kilometres by stimulating the expansion of the planted area in the state of Mato Grosso alone, according to a study by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), an international non-profit organisation with which the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro is associated.

The study does not take into account damage in the state of Pará, where two thirds of the 933 kilometres of the line would be built and where the port of Miritituba on the Tapajós River, the railway’s destination, is located.

In Brazil’s Amazon region, the EF-170 railroad, known as Ferrogrão, is a project of agricultural transnationals supported by the Brazilian government. The aim of the railway, construction of which has not yet begun, is to bolster soybean and corn exports through the ports of northern Brazil. Map: National Land Transport Agency of Brazil

At the port, grains are transferred to barges that travel about 1,000 kilometres on the Tapajós and Amazon rivers to reach the export ports where the large transatlantic ships dock.

In addition to underestimating the extent of the deforestation, the project would violate indigenous rights, threaten conservation areas and stimulate illegal land appropriation, says a group of 38 social organisations in an “extrajudicial notification” to banks that could finance the construction of the Ferrogrão.

“The most serious thing is that it does not evaluate alternative routes,” said Sergio Guimarães, coordinator of the Infrastructure and Social Justice Working Group, a coalition of 47 organisations that headed the notification pointing out nine flaws in the project. (The Working Group is one of the 38 social organisations that sent the notification.)

There are alternatives for transportation already in place or under way for soybeans in Mato Grosso, where 35.9 million tons were produced this year (26.5 percent of the country’s total), such as the BR-163 highway along the same route as the Ferrogrão, a railroad under construction and two others in the planning stage. They should all be assessed in order to find the best economic and environmental options, he told IPS by telephone from Brasilia.

“It is very difficult for the Ferrogrão to be competitive, considering that the BR-163 highway is already in place and there are other alternatives,” said economist Claudio Frischtak, president of the InterB International Business Consultancy.

“It’s a bad project,” he told IPS in a conversation in Rio de Janeiro. “It underestimates the investments and the time needed for implementation and runs the risk of having the same fate as two other railroads whose construction was interrupted in the last decade, leading to the loss of public resources.”

The state of Tocantins in central Brazil aims to repeat this century the soybean boom that transformed the neighbouring state of Mato Grosso, the country’s largest soy and corn producer, which has record exports. To do this, producers are demanding the extension of rail transport. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The economist compared the data from the government’s proposal with figures from the Midwest Integration Railway (Fico), a project under construction by the mining company Vale, which has years of experience in railways. Fico will link Agua Boa, a city in central-eastern Mato Grosso, and Mara Rosa, 383 kilometres to the east, in the state of Goiás.

Based on this comparison, Frischtak calculates that the actual cost of building the Ferrogrão would be 3.4 times the amount reported by the government: 5.45 billion dollars rather than 1.58 billion dollars.

The projected rate of return of 11.05 percent is also totally unrealistic, he said, as is the estimated construction time of nine years.

Frischtak projected that construction would actually take 21.9 years, or even longer given the complicated terrain where the Ferrogrão would be built.

The Fico does not reach the most productive soybean production area, which is around the city of Sinop, the planned starting point of the Ferrogrão. Instead, it connects with the North-South Railway that reaches the port of Itaqui, on the Atlantic coast of the northeastern state of Maranhão, which has the capacity to serve the largest ships.

The third new rail alternative for grains in Mato Grosso is the Ferronorte, a 730-kilometre stretch planned by Rumo, the largest national railroad transportation company, with access to the Port of Santos, the country’s biggest, after crossing the state of São Paulo, the most densely populated productive, agricultural and industrial state in Brazil.

The large warehouses next to the BR-163 highway, used by trucks to transport soybeans to the Amazon ports through which they are exported, have turned Lucas do Rio Verde into a hub of the agro-export economy of the state of Mato Grosso, in central-western Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Rumo’s rail network already reaches Rondonópolis, in the south of Mato Grosso. The idea would be to extend it to the mid-north of the state, where large quantities of soybeans are produced between October and February, and corn in the following months, on the same land. Agriculture in tropical climates has the competitive advantage of producing two harvests per year.

But the biggest competition for the Ferrogrão, according to Frischtak, would be the BR-163 highway, the paving of which was completed in 2019. Management of the highway was awarded to a private company this year. Overland trucking costs fell and continue to decline, which will hinder the financial viability of the new parallel rail line.

The economist argued that it would make more economic sense to upgrade existing infrastructure, such as widening the highway and improving the waterways that also serve agricultural exports through the north. “We must not continue to make the same mistakes,” he said.

But Tiago Stefanello Nogueira, coordinator of Agricultural Policy and Logistics of the Association of Soybean and Corn Producers of Mato Grosso (AprosojaMT), said there is no doubt about the viability and benefits of the Ferrogrão.

“There will be less pollution, because it will reduce the consumption of petroleum derivatives, greater transportation capacity, less carbon emissions and thousands of jobs created during construction, as well as demand for services; there are many benefits,” he asserted.

Railroads are mostly used for freight transport in Brazil, and passenger trains like this one on the Carajás line in Maranhão state often run at a loss, as compensation for the local populace from the companies that control the rail lines. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Only 11 percent of the land in Mato Grosso is dedicated to agriculture, according to Aprosoja, and this could expand to 40 percent, Nogueira estimates.

“To achieve this we need all modes of transportation, whether railways, highways and future waterways, and the paving and widening of roads,” he told IPS by telephone from Sorriso, a city located in a soybean-growing area in the north of the state.

But that’s the problem, according to Alexandre Sampaio, Policy and Programme coordinator of the International Accountability Project (IAP), an international organisation that works for human and environmental rights in development. He said Ferronorte would exacerbate the already unbalanced development model in its area of influence.

Of the 90.3 million hectares in Mato Grosso, 9.7 million are under agricultural production. That includes nine million hectares where soybeans are grown and then corn and cotton after the soybean harvest. The remaining 0.7 million hectares are dedicated to other agricultural activities, according to Aprosoja.

In other words, even though the state of Mato Grosso is known as a huge breadbasket, it produces abundant agricultural production for export but little food, which it has to buy from other regions. In fact, only 18 percent of the state´s population is rural.

Although it is intended to be used for export agriculture, “the railroad is a great investment that drives up the value of the land, boosts the economy and wealth, in addition to reducing traffic on the roads. In other words, it indirectly benefits family agriculture,” said Nilton Macedo, president of the Federation of Agricultural Workers of Mato Grosso.

“We have 148,000 members, 97,000 of whom were resettled as part of the agrarian reform programme,” he told IPS by telephone from Pontes e Lacerda, in the southeastern part of the state. The federation says it represents 500,000 workers, including wage-earning farmworkers and family farmers who work their own land.

In contrast, soybean and corn producers number only 7,300, according to Aprosoja, but they dominate the state’s economy.

A Dalit woman stands outside a dry toilet located in an upper caste villager’s home in Mainpuri, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. A caste-based profession, manual scavenging condemns mostly women, but also men, to clean human excreta out of dry latrines with their hands, and carry it on their heads to disposal dumps. Many also clean sewers, septic tanks and open drains with no protective gear. Credit: Shai Venkatraman/IPS

By External Source
Aug 27 2021 (IPS)

Manual scavenging is a caste-based profession that leads to discrimination and atrocities against those engaged in it. Generations of families from marginalised communities in India have been forced to continue in this profession because of social ostracism and a lack of alternatives.

Despite legislative and judicial interventions since 1993 and the enactment of a new law in 2013, manual scavenging continues in practice. People, especially women, engaged in this profession face systemic exclusion and find it difficult to access healthcare, education, welfare, and social security schemes. They work for negligible wages and accessing alternative livelihoods remains challenging for them, despite government schemes for this very purpose.

The Association of Rural Urban and Needy (ARUN), Centre for Equity Studies (CES), and WaterAid India jointly conducted a survey in four states (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh) to highlight these issues. The baseline survey had 1,686 respondents and the end of action survey covered 123 women manual scavengers (WMS) in six locations in two states—Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.

People, especially women, engaged in this profession face systemic exclusion and find it difficult to access healthcare, education, welfare, and social security schemes. They work for negligible wages and accessing alternative livelihoods remains challenging for them, despite government schemes for this very purpose

The findings of the end of action survey reaffirm the caste and gender-based nature of manual scavenging. It also draws attention to the level of awareness about the legal provisions for people engaged in this profession.

 

The link between caste, gender, and manual scavenging

All the survey respondents belonged to Dalit communities, such as Valmiki, Dom, Hari, and others.

According to the survey, 27.6 percent of the WMS were still engaged in cleaning dry latrines, coming in direct contact with human faeces. These women are informal workers, do not have fixed wages, and are not paid in a timely manner. This was evident as 20.3 percent of the surveyed WMS were unemployed and had no income. The average monthly salary of 64 percent of WMS ranged from INR 240 to INR 4,500.

This is despite the fact that the Minister of Labour and Employment has mandated basic wages for those employed in sweeping and cleaning activities to be INR 350 a day.

 

Difficulty in finding alternative livelihood options

Several respondents expressed that they had attempted to pursue other livelihood options to move away from manual scavenging, but to no avail. Some have managed to be employed as caretakers or cleaning staff in domestic, public, or institutional settings. Their work, however, still included cleaning toilets.

They were subjected to various forms of discrimination, which impacted their well-being. The localities where they lived often had no household piped water connection and they had limited access to stand posts that supply water.

They are commonly prohibited from eating with other people and have to use separate glasses and utensils in restaurants—in those instances where they are allowed to enter. Women involved in manual scavenging experienced triple oppression—as members of a caste involved in manual scavenging, as women, and as poor people with little or no formal education.

 

Access to services and schemes

All the respondents had Aadhaar cards, 99.18 percent had voter cards, and 90.24 percent had ration cards. Despite this, several of them reported not being enlisted as women who carry out manual scavenging activities under The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act (PEMSR Act).

Even with the required documents, many of them are yet to be enrolled as people who are employed as manual scavengers. As a result, they have been excluded from several commitments made under the PEMSR Act and Self-employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers (SRMS).

For instance, 9.76 percent of the respondents conveyed that their state government had not issued ration cards to eligible households to purchase subsidised food grains from the public distribution system. As several of the WMS did not have the required documents to meet the eligibility criteria, they could not access essential items such as wheat, rice, and sugar.

 

Awareness of legal provisions 

Majority of the respondents (93.93 percent) knew that manual scavenging is prohibited by law and many (77.06 percent) were cognisant of the rules and provisions of the PEMSR Act. Further, 62.88 percent were aware that their employment was illegal.

Only 27.77 percent of the respondents had any knowledge about government schemes specific to their communities, such as rehabilitation and scholarship opportunities. When asked about rehabilitation provisions under the PEMSR Act, respondents revealed that they had faced several challenges. As per the Act, authorities are expected to identify the number of people engaged in manual scavenging and take measures to ensure rehabilitation.

However, among the WMS surveyed, this has not happened. Close to 42.69 percent of them had filed an application or self-declaration to the local authority so they can be identified as a manual scavenger. Only 6.5 percent of the respondents were included in the official list of manual scavengers released by the Government of India. Additionally, 47.1 percent of the respondents had applied for a one-time cash assistance programme under the SRMS. Of this, only 2.4 percent received the sum.

 

Systemic measures to eliminate manual scavenging

The complete eradication of manual scavenging as a practice can only be achieved once its caste-based nature is acknowledged and systemic measures to rehabilitate and provide adequate compensation are implemented.

1. Improve the legal framework

The definition of manual scavenging in the PEMSR Act must be broadened. It must also recognise the caste-based and generational nature of the profession, and expand the criteria for people to be enrolled under the Act, with clear guidelines for implementers. Alongside this, the enforcement of the provisions of the Act are critical.

2. Better data collection, monitoring, and accountability mechanisms

The government must consistently collect reliable data on people engaged in manual scavenging. This will allow for better rehabilitation measures and enforcement of the PEMSR Act. While the Act mandates every state and union territory to have a State Commission for Safai Karamacharis, only eight of the 28 states have set these up. Thus, it is imperative that state- and district-level commissions be instituted for better monitoring of the PEMSR Act.

3. Provide adequate financing

The SRMS should have adequate budgetary allocation and utilisation by the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment. Departments such as labour, urban and rural development, health, education, and others should be given responsibilities to ensure the upliftment of communities engaged in this work.

4. Increase rehabilitation compensation

Currently, grants for the rehabilitation of WMS under the SRMS are capped at INR 40,000 per individual. However, this amount is insufficient to set up viable enterprises. The National Human Rights Commission has also recommended that this amount be revised to INR 1,00,000. A faster and more efficient process to clear applications and disburse one-time compensation and loans must also be instituted.

5. Normalise use of protective gear and technology

The central and state governments should promote and mandate the provision and use of personal protective equipment (PPE) for all sanitation work. They must also prioritise sustainable technology alternatives to eradicate all forms of manual scavenging. Increasing budget allocation for sewage treatment infrastructure or faecal sludge treatments will allow for mechanisation of toilet tank emptying, cleaning, and transportation.

6. Coordinate civil society action

Civil society organisations must make a coordinated effort to improve the health, safety, and dignity of WMS. Organisations working in the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector need to come together and work in conjunction with trade unions and the government to ensure that the livelihoods and human rights of people engaged in manual scavenging are protected.

 

Sharanya Menon is an editorial analyst at India Development Review. In addition to writing, editing, and sourcing content, she also supports the team with website management. Prior to this, Sharanya interned at The Institute of Chinese Studies and The YP Foundation. She recently graduated with an integrated masters in development studies from IIT Madras.

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

Zaman-Allah Mainassara Abdou, a maize scientist with CIMMYT demonstrating an UAV used in data collection at the CIMMYT Chiredzi research station, Zimbabwe. Credit, Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Aug 27 2021 (IPS)

Investing in digital technologies can help African small island developing states (SIDS), vulnerable to extreme weather events, cope with growing impacts of climate change, says the United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

Cape Verde, Comoros, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritius, Sao Tome and Principe and the Seychelles are the African members of the SIDS, a grouping of 38 countries located in the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Atlantic, Indian Ocean and South China Sea.

The increased risk of natural disasters, coupled with sea level rise, which accompanies climate change makes African SIDS particularly vulnerable because their economies are anchored on tourism and fisheries, according to Jean-Paul Adam, Director of Technology, Climate Change and Natural Resource Management at the ECA.

While African countries risk losing up to 15% of their GDP to climate change by 2030, a major climate disaster could completely wipe out the economies of African SIDS
Jean-Paul Adam, ECA

In an interview, Adam added that opportunities for economic diversification are limited for African SIDS due to their distance from markets and lack of economies of scale. Besides, access to development finance in the form of grants and loans from institutions like the World Bank and bilateral donors is challenging. This type of finance is determined by the GDP per capita — the amount of income generated by an average person in a given area in a specific year.

Owing to their small populations, Adam noted, SIDS are disadvantaged from accessing this funding because they are more likely to have a higher GDP per capita. One high net worth individual in such a small population can skew the overall result much more than in a large one.

While African countries risk losing up to 15 percent of their GDP to climate change by 2030, according to an analysis by the ECA’s African Climate Policy Centre, a major climate disaster could completely wipe out the economies of African SIDS, Adam said. “In the same way that in the face of Covid-19 no one is safe until all are safe, the same applies to the climate crisis. As such, SIDS illustrate the extreme vulnerability of all African countries to climate change.”

The UN, which recognised SIDS as a special case for environment and development at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, describes these countries as facing unique social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities. With a total population of just over 4 million, African SIDS are located in remote, low lying areas that are vulnerable to sea level rise and cyclones.

Climate change impacts and unmanageable high population growth means that African SIDS may not meet several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, according to the UN’s report on World Population Prospects 2019.

While climate change affects the development of all nations regardless of location or economy size, SIDS – which contribute only one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — are the most vulnerable to its devastating impacts, the UN Development Programme warned.

“Digital strategies are part of the means by which SDGs implementation can be accelerated,” said Adam.

“Digital strategies can facilitate efficiencies in terms of investing in resilience as well as efficiencies in terms of economic returns,” added Adam. He noted that artificial intelligence (AI) used in digital technologies for analysis of climate change data can help African SIDS better understand the impact of climate on key industries like fisheries, and to measure environmental impacts.

The ECA is supporting African countries, including SIDS, to improve their climate information services by tapping into potential digital technologies like remote-sensing AI to measure environmental impacts. This could be done through remotely deployed cameras and drones, according to Adam.

“Digitisation strategies can also improve the monitoring of environmental risks through the use of remote sensing equipment, and these strategies can also be deployed to improve investment in key sectors such as tourism, allowing more cost effective and targeted marketing, for example,” he added.

Adam said the ECA is supporting the establishment of a regional centre on AI in Brazzaville, Congo, to explore opportunities for the use of the technology to address environmental impacts.

 

Tourism is a key economic sector for Seychelles, a small island developing state vulnerable to climate change. Credit, Busani Bafana/IPS

 

Digital technologies are already being used extensively by countries like Seychelles and Mauritius to target their main tourism markets more effectively, he added.

African countries have a unique opportunity to use digital technologies to drive large scale transformation and competitiveness, according to the US policy research think tank, Brookings Institution. Brookings said that AI, which is projected to add 15.7 trillion dollars to global GDP by 2030, presents avenues for the public and private sectors to optimise solutions to the most crucial problems facing Africa today.

Beyond digital technologies, Adam said that by adapting economic strategies that prioritise climate resilience, African SIDS can be better placed to respond to climate change, and also create more jobs and value addition.

“Focusing on the blue economy approach, for example, can build long term economic multipliers in terms of improved yields from fisheries resources, and also build more inclusive value chains that bring more benefits to local populations,” he said.

A blue economy approach uses the principles of a green economy, the sustainable use of resources based on the ability to regenerate them, in an environment where the main resources are aquatic. For example, fisheries are managed based on the status of fish stocks, and measures are taken to protect areas critical for fish reproduction such as mangroves and coral reefs.

African SIDS have access to very limited land space but large ocean area, and the proper management of this space can yield numerous benefits,” Adam observed, including as sources of financing.

“Seychelles successfully raised a 30-million-dollar blue bond from the international market on the basis of sustainable management of its fisheries sector,” said Adam, adding “the sustainable management of oceanic spaces can also lead to opportunities for potential carbon pricing transactions although this is something at the early stages of exploration.”

Other possible financial innovations to mobilise funding, he added, include SDG-linked green or blue bonds and proposals for debt swaps — refinancing debt on better terms and investing the savings in climate resilience.

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