Africa

Navin Ramgoolam says the original agreement did not benefit his nation enough.

By CIVICUS
Dec 17 2024 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS speaks with Ramón Zamora, son of Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora, about restrictions on press freedom and the challenges of defending human rights in Guatemala.

Rubén Zamora is part of the CIVICUS Stand as My Witness campaign, which seeks the release of unjustly imprisoned human rights defenders. The veteran journalist, founder of Periódico Siglo 21 and renowned for his investigations into corruption, has been fighting unfounded accusations of money laundering for over two years. His legal situation took a turn for the worse recently when a court ordered his return to prison after a brief period of house arrest. As his family prepared to appeal, President Bernardo Arévalo denounced the court’s decision as an attack on freedom of expression.

Ramón Zamora

What was your father’s role in Guatemalan journalism and what led him to antagonise powerful forces?

My father comes from a family of journalists. His grandfather, Clemente Marroquín, was the founder of La Hora, one of the most important newspapers in Guatemalan history. In 1990, my father founded the media outlet Siglo 21. A transition to democracy was underway and he had understood that democracy couldn’t function without real freedom of expression, that is, when people aren’t able to express their ideas without fear. That’s why it was important to have a media outlet that, on top of providing information, also included a plurality of voices.

Siglo 21 opened up spaces for leftist thought, which earned it threats and attacks from sources linked to the army. In addition, from the outset it dealt with sensitive issues, which quickly put it in the crosshairs of many powerful figures. Threats and attacks soon followed for his investigations into corruption. In 1993, following a coup by then President Jorge Serrano Elías, who suspended the constitution and dissolved Congress, the presidential security service came looking for my father and the family was forced into hiding. However, my father continued to fight, publishing a banned edition of Siglo 21, which had been censored, and sharing information with international media.

After leaving Siglo 21, he founded El Periódico in 1996 and Nuestro Diario in 1998, always with the aim of continuing to investigate corruption. His investigations led to the jailing of several powerful people. Over the years he suffered arbitrary treatment, assassination attempts and kidnappings, but he continued his work, until 2022, when he was arbitrarily arrested and sentenced in retaliation for exposing corruption in the government of Alejandro Giammattei.

What were the charges that sent your father to prison?

He was accused of money laundering, extortion and influence peddling. It was alleged that he used the newspaper and his access to government sources to obtain privileged information to extort money from businesspeople and public officials. According to government officials, my father threatened to publish stories in the newspaper if they did not comply with his demands, and allegedly laundered the money from these extortions through the newspaper.

To understand the justification for his arrest, we need to consider the broader context of attacks on the newspaper. Since 2013, the newspaper has suffered economic pressure and threats from government officials, such as then Vice-president Roxana Baldetti, who called our clients to threaten them with investigations if they continued to support the newspaper with advertising. This reduced the paper’s income by more than half. To get around the pressure, my father finally started accepting donations from people who wanted to remain anonymous. This was one of the reasons he was accused of laundering undeclared money. My father was criminalised for defending freedom of expression and denouncing corruption.

How did your father experience these years of arbitrary detention?

At first it was very hard because he was held in a military prison, in a very small cell, completely isolated from other prisoners. In the same prison were people convicted of corruption thanks to the reporting he had published, which put him in great danger. He soon started receiving constant threats.

In the first few days, his cell was searched several times, and bedbugs found their way into his bed, causing severe bites all over his body. He was unable to sleep because of the constant noise, as there was construction going on next to his cell. It was all very stressful, both physically and emotionally. There were times when he thought he would never get out alive. To make matters worse, we were often denied authorisation to enter the prison or given ridiculous excuses, which kept him in a constant state of uncertainty.

He also suffered greatly during court hearings. There was one judge who went out of his way to prevent him having access to a proper defence. We had to change lawyers several times and many of them were persecuted for defending my father.

My brother and I worked to keep the newspaper afloat, even though several journalists were forced into exile. A few months ago we managed to get my father released to house arrest, but his case continued to be full of irregularities and a month later the benefit of house arrest was lifted. We are still waiting for the appeals court to review the decision, but it is likely he will have to return to prison this week or next. My father is still fighting for his freedom and a fair trial to prove his innocence.

How can the international community help?

The international community has played a very important role in the whole process. We were able to get my father out of prison in large part because of pressure from organisations such as Amnesty International, CIVICUS, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders and others who spoke out and mobilised.

As a family, we have always felt supported. We are now awaiting the resolution of the amparo appeal – a petition to protect constitutional rights, which could allow my father to continue his struggle from home. This would be ideal, although we are still awaiting a final decision.

The international community must continue to defend human rights and freedom of expression and support the media, particularly in countries where corruption and impunity prevail.

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See also
Guatemala: ‘Corrupt elites see defenders of justice as a threat to their interests and try to silence them’ Interview with Virginia Laparra 30.Aug.2024
Guatemala: ‘Disregard for the will of the people expressed at the ballot box is the greatest possible insult to democracy’ Interview with Jorge Santos 13.Jan.2023
Guatemala: ‘Our democracy is at risk in the hands of political-criminal networks’ Interview with Evelyn Recinos Contreras 04.Jul.2023

 

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The Mozambican authorities have called Chido "one of the most intense storms ever recorded".

Nigeria forward Ademola Lookman encourages the youth of Africa to "turn pain to power" after being named as the continent's best player.

England win their first women's Test since 2014 with a crushing 286-run victory over South Africa in Bloemfontein.

"Without concerted efforts, billions face a future marked by hunger, displacement, and economic decline." Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 17 2024 (IPS)

Planet Earth is drying up, relentlessly. Over three-quarters of all lands have become permanently drier in the last three decades. This is not jut a statistic but a stark scientific fact. But while such an ‘existential crisis’ affects nearly every region, guess where -and who- are the most hit? 

They are the 1.35 billion humans living in Asia’s drylands, that’s more than half the global total. And they are the 620 millions people who inhabit Africa’s drylands, e.g. nearly half of the continent’s population.

The above are some of the key findings of worldwide scientific research elaborated by the Bonn-based UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

 

A Human-Perpetrated Crime

The report by UNCCD Science-Policy Interface (SPI) — the UN body for assessing the science of land degradation and drought — points to human-caused climate change as the primary driver of this shift.

“Greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, transport, industry and land use changes warm the planet and other human activities warm the planet and affect rainfall, evaporation and plant life, creating the conditions that increase aridity.”

According to the world’s scientific community, aridity is considered one of the world’s five most important causes of land degradation (along with land erosion, salinization, organic carbon loss and vegetation degradation).

 

Drylands Expending at an Alarming Rate

The overarching trend, however, is clear: drylands are expanding, pushing ecosystems and societies to suffer from aridity’s life-threatening impacts.

The report names South Sudan and Tanzania as nations with the largest percentage of land transitioning to drylands, and China as the country experiencing the largest total area shifting from non-drylands into drylands.

 

Billions Living in Expanding Drylands

For the 2.3 billion people – well over 25% of the world’s population – living in the expanding drylands, this new normal requires lasting, adaptive solutions. Aridity-related land degradation, known as desertification, represents a dire threat to human well-being and ecological stability, warns the research.

“And as the planet continues to warm, report projections in the worst-case scenario suggest up to 5 billion people could live in drylands by the century’s end, grappling with depleted soils, dwindling water resources, and the diminishment or collapse of once-thriving ecosystems.”

 

A Billion Climate Forced Migrants

Nearly a decade ago, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that the number of climate migrants and refugees could be estimated to reach one billion in the coming decades.

Now, according to the scientific findings, forced migration is one of aridity’s most visible consequences.

“As land becomes uninhabitable, families and entire communities facing water scarcity and agricultural collapse often have no choice but to abandon their homes, leading to social and political challenges worldwide.”

From the Middle East to Africa and South Asia, millions are already on the move—a trend set to intensify in coming decades.

“Without concerted efforts, billions face a future marked by hunger, displacement, and economic decline,” warns Nichole Barger, Chair, UNCCD Science-Policy Interface.

 

Total Impunity for Polluters

According to the European Union (EU) the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) is a simple idea at the core of EU environmental policy: those responsible for environmental damage should pay to cover the costs.

“This applies to prevention of pollution, remediation, liability (criminal, civil and environmental liability) and the costs imposed on society of pollution that does happen.”

Such PPP has been too far away from being applied, rather: it has been systematically denied.

The most recent evidence of such denial is the outcome of the Baku, Azerbaijan’s climate summit (COP29).

 

A “Global Ponzi Scheme”

Perhaps one of the clearest evidence is what the world’s coalition to fight inequality: OXFAM International, stated at the end of the Baku meeting.

Responding to the COP29 climate finance agreement, in which rich countries agree to mobilize $300 billion a year to help Global South countries cope with warming temperatures and switch to renewable energy, Oxfam International’s Climate Change Policy Lead, Nafkote Dabi, said:

“The terrible verdict from the Baku climate talks shows that rich countries view the Global South as ultimately expendable, like pawns on a chessboard…

… The $300 billion so-called ‘deal’ that poorer countries have been bullied into accepting is unserious and dangerous —a soulless triumph for the rich, but a genuine disaster for our planet and communities who are being flooded, starved, and displaced today by climate breakdown….

And as for promises of future funding? They’re just as hollow as the deal itself.”

 

The real PPP: “The Poor Pays Principle”

“The money on the table is not only a pittance in comparison to what’s really needed –it’s not even real “money”, by and large, warns OXFAM.

“Rather, it’s a motley mix of loans and privatized investment –a global Ponzi scheme that the private equity vultures and public relations people will now exploit.”

The destruction of our planet is avoidable, but not with this shabby and dishonorable deal. The richest polluters need to wise up —and pay up.”

 

No way, rather…

Did you know that billionaires emit more carbon pollution in 90 minutes than the average person does in a lifetime.

And that superyachts and jets of Europe’s elite emit more carbon pollution in a week than the world’s poorest 1% emits in a lifetime

The scientific findings show that aridity impacts vast areas of the rich Western powers – those who most contaminate.

All the above goes far beyond semantics: when it comes to the polluters, they talk just about money. But when it comes to the polluted, it is about devastation, diseases… and death.

 

IPBES’ nexus assessment concludes that environmental, social, and economic crises—such as biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, health risks, and climate change—are all interconnected, and need interlinking solutions.

By Busani Bafana
WINDHOEK & BULAWAYO, Dec 17 2024 (IPS)

Biological diversity is on the decline worldwide, and current approaches to address its loss have been piecemeal and ineffective in tackling the crisis facing nature—this is despite estimates that over half of global GDP (USD 58 trillion of economic activity in 2023) is generated in sectors that are moderately to highly dependent on nature, a new report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) finds.

The Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages Among Biodiversity, Water, Food, and Health—known as the Nexus Report—finds that biodiversity, water, food, health, and climate change are connected crises.

Recognizing and leveraging the connections between biodiversity, water, food, health, and climate change is the way to go about solving the crises, says the report approved at the 11th session of the IPBES Plenary being held in Namibia this week.

IPBES is a global science-policy body providing science evidence to decision-makers for people and nature.

The report, a product of three years of work by 165 leading international experts from 57 countries, finds that existing actions to address these crises fail to tackle the complexity of interlinked problems and result in inconsistent governance.

The front cover of the IPBES Nexus assessment report. Credit: IPBES

Integrated Solutions Needed

Prof. Paula Harrison (United Kingdom), co-chair of the assessment with Prof. Pamela McElwee (USA), highlighted that policymakers should decide and act beyond single-issue silos.

“Our current approaches to dealing with these crises have tended to be fragmented or siloed, and that’s led to inefficiencies and has often been counterproductive,” she says.

“If we try to address climate change, for example, by planting trees, we have to be really aware about what trees we are planting (to ensure they) are not actually making problems for biodiversity,” Harrison says, citing an often-implemented solution to reduce greenhouse gases.

Prof. Paula Harrison (United Kingdom), co-chair of the assessment report. Credit Kiara Worth/IPBES

 

Prof. Pamela McElwee (USA), co-chair of the assessment report. Credit: Kiara Worth/IPBES

Instead, the report offers response options, actions, or policies that can help advance governance and sustainable management of one or more elements of the nexus.

“What the report also offers is this suite of solutions. It stresses that we have over 70 response options available now that different actors can use in different context-dependent situations.”

The assessment also highlighted the unintended consequences when issues of nature are addressed in isolation.

For example, when the bat population in the United States declined due to a fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome, farmers increased their use of pesticides. This caused unintended health impacts, with an 8 percent rise in infant mortality reported in affected areas.

However, where a problem is tackled holistically, it can have positive impacts, as in bilharzia, a parasitic disease that affects more than 200 million people worldwide but is especially prevalent in Africa.

“Treated only as a health challenge—usually through medication—the problem often recurs as people are reinfected. An innovative project in rural Senegal took a different approach—reducing water pollution and removing invasive water plants to reduce the habitat for the snails that host the parasitic worms that carry the disease—resulting in a 32 percent reduction in infections in children, improved access to freshwater, and new revenue for the local communities,” says McElwee.

“The best way to bridge single-issue silos is through integrated and adaptive decision-making. ‘Nexus approaches’ offer policies and actions that are more coherent and coordinated—moving us towards the transformative change needed to meet our development and sustainability goals.”

The High Cost of Inaction

Warning of the high economic costs of inaction and the significant cost of biodiversity loss and climate change impacts, the report highlighted that biodiversity has been the loser in the tradeoffs where short-term gains are implemented and often neglect long-term sustainability.

“Policies informed by Nexus principles can create “win-win” solutions across sectors,” the report says.

According to the report, unaccounted-for costs of current approaches to tackling the multiple crises of biodiversity, water, health, food, and climate change are at least USD 10–25 trillion per year.

McElwee stressed that unaccounted-for costs, alongside direct public subsidies to economic activities worth about USD 1,7 trillion a year, have negative impacts on biodiversity. These subsidies have enhanced annual private sector financial flows estimated at USD 5.3 trillion, which are directly damaging to biodiversity.

“Delayed action on biodiversity goals, for example, could as much as double costs—also increasing the probability of irreplaceable losses such as species extinction,” McElwee warned, emphasizing that delayed action on climate change adds at least USD 500 billion per year in additional costs for meeting policy targets.

The Nexus report, building on previous IPBES reports that identified the most important direct drivers of biodiversity loss, states that indirect socioeconomic factors such as increasing waste, overconsumption, and population growth have intensified the direct drivers of biodiversity loss.

“Efforts of governments and other stakeholders have often failed to take into account indirect drivers and their impact on interactions between nexus elements because they remain fragmented, with many institutions working in isolation—often resulting in conflicting objectives, inefficiencies, and negative incentives, leading to unintended consequences,” says Harrison.

The IPBES Nexus assessment has recommended a shift to more integrated, inclusive, equitable, coordinated, and adaptive approaches as a solution to biodiversity loss.

Tapping Opportunities

The Nexus Report recommends a shift from the ‘business as usual’ approach to direct and indirect drivers of change, spelling doom for biodiversity, water quality, and human health. Furthermore, it warns that maximizing the outcomes for only one part of the nexus in isolation will result in negative outcomes for other nexus elements.

For example, a ‘food first’ approach prioritizes food production with positive benefits for nutritional health, arising from unsustainable intensification of production and increased per capita consumption. But this has negative impacts on biodiversity, water, and climate change.

“Future scenarios do exist that have positive outcomes for people and nature by providing co-benefits across the nexus elements,” Harrison says. “The future scenarios with the widest nexus benefits are those with actions that focus on sustainable production and consumption in combination with conserving and restoring ecosystems, reducing pollution, and mitigating and adapting to climate change.”

Noting that current governance structures and approaches are not responsive enough to meet the interconnected challenges from the accelerated speed and scale of environmental change and rising inequalities, the report has recommended a shift to more integrated, inclusive, equitable, coordinated, and adaptive approaches.

The work of IPBES provides the science and evidence to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and the Paris Agreement on climate change, says Harrison.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), commented that the IPBES Nexus Assessment is the first comprehensive global assessment that looks at the interlinkages between crises and identifies solutions.

“Biodiversity is vital to the efforts to meet humanity’s growing need for food, feed, fiber, and fuel while protecting the planet for future generations,” Andersen says. “We need to produce more with less, through the Four Betters: better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life—leaving no one behind.”

While Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), added that actions to address global challenges affecting biodiversity, water, food, health, and the climate system are often taken without sufficient regard to the interlinkages between them. She says such actions result in shortcomings and adverse impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Damage of airstrikes on Beirut Southern area in the October escalation. Credit: UNICEF/ Dar al Mussawir - Ramzi Haidar

By Randa El Ozeir
TORONTO / BEIRUT , Dec 17 2024 (IPS)

Sixty-four days of unrelenting war machine by Israel against Lebanon put my entire beliefs and ethos to a painful test: my sincerity in promoting social justice, human rights, integrity, patriotism, spirituality and, philosophically speaking, universal human values of love, peace and non-violence.

Undergoing collective injustice, large-scale explosions targeting electronic portable devices, sophisticated weaponry attacks that disregard your homeland sovereignty and war crimes gives you the right to be angry. Intentional and malicious infringement entitles you to fight and militantly defend yourself and your country. Wouldn’t you have the right to avenge based on “eye-for-an-eye” response?

The answer is never straightforward, single dimensional or conclusive. A risk of cognitive dissonance is inevitable. An inner turmoil might emerge. How can we justify ourselves as anti-war and pro-peace while rooting for the “victory” of our assaulted homeland?

Killing in the battlefield is expected and commonly accepted. Since the dawn of human history, soldiers and fighters have been carrying out their duties towards their countries/nations when involved in power struggle, turf war, and land protection against invasion and amputation.

But murdering unarmed civilians and children is never justified under any given pretext, especially after humanity declared leaving back dark ages and medieval barbaric practices.

A Broken Moral Compass

Our today’s world is facing an ethical impasse that threatens our very unity and human cooperation. An entity like The United Nations is facing difficult existential questions. A universal broken moral compass brought a deep feeling of dislodged certainties, disappointment and helplessness.

In the midst of the war on Lebanon – some might argue it was simply an extension of the then ongoing armed conflict between Hezbollah and Israel that erupted on 8 October 2023 – I faced though emotions while trying to balance personal, ideals and peaceful views of the world and a dormant Lebanese identity overshadowed by a Canadian identity that carries its own problem whenever indigenous voices come out to remind us of colonial legacy.

Creation of Israel, as a colonial state, is a fresh memory due to continual war crimes against indigenous people, Palestinians in this case. What still unfolds in Gaza is no exception in practice, although it is exceeding by far anything the modern world has seen after World War II (WWII).

“The Israeli occupation is a moral crime, one that has been all but covered by the West”, writes the American author, journalist and activist, Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his recent book “The Message”.

Complexities of extreme alliances, divisions and political allegiance shifts across the Middle East throughout its long history are undeniable, and the region earned a reputation of uncertainty, volatility and animosity.

Our homeland lays on the intersection of being the absolute, tangible reality of our existence’s centre and symbolizing the aspiration and the transcendent ideation of belonging.

Hollow Words Facing Mass Destruction

During the last blood-shed and destructive offensive of Israel against Lebanon, patriotism took hold of my daily life. I adopted a tunnel vision, focused solely on that nightmarish crisis.

An incessant wave of agonising waiting and deep sadness engulfed my reality to the point of living an almost out-of-body experience. Words became hollow, fell short of describing the heart’s turmoil with the mass destruction and conceited attitude of the assaulting country.

Every waking hour was dedicated to following the news, hysterically checking on my family there, as assumingly was the Lebanese Diaspora’s state.

Patriotism could feel magnified when we are abroad. As much as I longed to be fully included in the situation, I was not there to live the real fear of the direct physical danger, the Israeli’s digital rights violations and the misleading and inadequate warnings for civilians.

Lebanese people know inside-out what war means. We recognize its ugly face. We lived through many episodes, dating back to 1860. We witnessed colonial, civil, proxy and resistance wars.

Resistance in Lebanon opposing Zionism and West imperialism has been deeply ingrained in the country’s core story with different names and players depending on the political and military circumstances. Hezbollah appeared as a resistance and military movement during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 that killed 14,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, stayed the course throughout the 18-year Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon that sustained significant human wounds – including the Qana Massacre in April 1996-, liberated the occupied land in 2000 and emerged triumphant from 2006 Israeli war.

Retracing the ascent of Hezbollah, its affiliation with Iran, the dominant role it has been playing on the Lebanese political stage and its regional size is beyond my scope of expertise. Fighting for the ousted Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad was its dramatic moral fall. However, it would be unfair to completely strip this party of its essential component, the national resistance.

Although I have never been ideologically close to Hezbollah, I was inundated with a poignant sorrow when Hassan Nasrallah, the party’s third secretary general, was assassinated in one of the heaviest Israeli airstrikes. He was loosely likened to Che Guevara in many Arab minds and embodied activism and identification with social justice. His assassination brought back vividly my adolescence and early adulthood opinions and political leanings.

Remnants of sectarian divisions and clashes surface at each unstable occasion, proving how religion impacts politics and making the country vulnerable to an imminent internal conflict. Not this time! Different Lebanese parties and religious sects endeavored to protect civil peace and defeated plan(s) to drive a wedge between the country’s components. Occasionally, as a journalist, it felt frustrating to see some national media outlets’ approach in adopting repeatedly implicit and explicit impure key messages.

Geography is destiny. Lebanon, the 10452 km2, will always have a border with Israel. We are very optimistic the 27-November-2004 ceasefire agreement, that ended a 13-months conflict, will hold in the face of the frequent Israeli violations until the UN Security Council resolution 1701 gets fully re-implemented.

Randa El Ozeir, is a Canadian-Lebanese journalist who writes on health issues, women’s rights and social justice.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Stolen files are said to include personal data belonging to ministries and top government officials.

Oxfam activists wearing masks of the leaders of the 2017 G7 summit. Credit: Picture Alliance/Pacific Press, Antonio Melita via Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES)
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In 2016, US President Barack Obama joined the Paris Agreement in a moment of seemingly decisive climate leadership. Barely a year later, President Trump withdrew, citing economic pressures and perceived disadvantages to American industry. As Trump’s re-election threatens to derail climate diplomacy once again, the Global South is done waiting for stable leadership from wealthier powers.

By Kamo Sende and Idasemiebi Idaminabo
ABERDEEN, Scotland, Dec 17 2024 (IPS)

The rhythmic swing of American climate policy has taken another dramatic turn. With Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency in mid-January next year, the international climate community will find itself bracing for what many fear will be another American exodus from the Paris Agreement.

This development, more than just another chapter in US political volatility, threatens to fundamentally reshape the global climate dialogue and potentially fracture an already fragile international consensus.

The story began hopefully in 2016 when the United States, under President Barack Obama, joined the Paris Agreement in a moment of seemingly decisive climate leadership. Yet, barely a year later, Trump withdrew, citing economic pressures and perceived disadvantages to American industry.

His successor, Joe Biden, made rejoining the agreement his first presidential act in 2021, attempting to restore American credibility in global climate efforts. Now, with Trump’s return to power, the international community watches with a mixture of resignation and concern as history appears poised to repeat itself.

For nations of the Global South, this pattern of engagement and disengagement reveals a stark truth about the climate conversation. What was once whispered in diplomatic corridors is now openly discussed in international forums: climate action for wealthy nations appears to be a luxury that can be discarded when economically inconvenient, while for developing nations it remains a matter of survival.

Why should a nation struggling to industrialise accept binding emissions targets when wealthy nations treat such commitments as optional?

In the bustling streets of Lagos, the flooded slums of Jakarta, and the drought-stricken farms of Honduras and Kenya, the American policy pendulum would predictably be viewed not just with frustration but with a deepening sense of betrayal.

These nations, contributing least to global emissions but suffering their worst effects, are watching as the world’s second-largest emitter treats climate commitments like reversible political decisions rather than existential imperatives.

If the pendulum were to swing again in January 2025, the impact on COP30 would be seismic, as conversations would inevitably tilt toward addressing this fundamental crisis of confidence. Developing nations, already sceptical of Western commitment to climate action, would have concrete evidence that even the most basic climate agreements can be subordinated to domestic political winds.

This reality would likely reshape negotiating positions fundamentally. After all, why should a nation struggling to industrialise accept binding emissions targets when wealthy nations treat such commitments as optional?

The economic argument that typically accompanies US withdrawal – that climate agreements disadvantage American workers and industry – rings particularly hollow in the Global South. These nations watch as their agricultural sectors collapse under changing weather patterns, their coastal cities face existential threats from rising seas, and their populations grapple with climate-induced displacement. For them, the economic costs of climate change aren’t future projections but present-day realities.

A turning point?

The looming reversal in American climate policy may well mark a turning point in global climate diplomacy, where COP30 risks becoming a parlour of academics rather than a forum for serious climate action. Developing nations are increasingly looking to forge their own path, seeking climate resilience strategies that don’t depend on the unreliable support of wealthy nations.

China’s growing influence in climate diplomacy, particularly in the Global South, gains additional momentum with each American reversal — all of this seems to rest on which way the Trump administration will go. The Trump presidency could decide the future of climate negotiations.

The international community now faces a critical question: how to build climate action frameworks that can withstand political volatility in key nations?

The answer may lie in decentralised cooperation, where cities, regions and non-state actors forge direct partnerships across borders. Already, networks of cities from both developed and developing nations are creating climate action partnerships that bypass national governments entirely.

The era of taking Western climate leadership for granted is over.

Yet, the fundamental issue remains unresolved. The original promise of the Paris Agreement was not just about emissions targets but about shared responsibility and trust between nations. The 2017 US withdrawal eroded this foundation, transforming what was meant to be a unified global response to climate change into an increasingly fractured and uncertain effort — if it happens again, this trust would be further eroded.

For the Global South, this pattern will confirm their deepest suspicions: that in the halls of power in developed nations, climate action remains fundamentally an economic conversation dressed in environmental rhetoric — indeed, echoing a pattern that has become visible since the General Agreement on Trade and Tariff (GATT) was established in 1947.

As climate impacts intensify and the window for effective action narrows, this reality threatens not just the future of climate cooperation but the very premise of global environmental governance.

The path forward remains uncertain, but one thing is clear: the era of taking Western climate leadership for granted is over. The Global South, faced with existential climate threats, can no longer afford to pin its hopes on the shifting political winds of wealthy nations.

The question now is not whether international climate action will continue, but what form it will take in a world where the most powerful nations’ commitments prove as changeable as the weather they’re supposedly trying to protect.

Kamo Sende is a Doctoral Researcher in Agri-Trade Law and Policy at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. His work focuses on the intersection of agriculture, trade policy and climate change. Idasemiebi Idaminabo is a Doctoral Researcher in Climate Change Laws and Human Rights at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Source: International Politics and Society is published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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COP16 in Riyadh launched a drought resilience initiative, which also saw contributions of over USD 12 billion for land restoration and drought resilience. Credit: IISD/ENB

By Stella Paul
RIYADH & HYDERABAD, Dec 17 2024 (IPS)

The 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP 16) concluded early hours of Saturday with a renewed focus on building drought resilience globally. However, the COP also failed to agree on bringing a legally binding drought protocol. Like the biodiversity and climate change COPs held earlier in the year, COP16 also failed to finish in time and ended by postponing several key decisions to COP17 scheduled to be held in 2026.

The COP started on December 2 in Riyadh, under the presidency of Saudi Arabia. On Saturday, in a press statement, Osama Faqeeha, Deputy Minister for Environment, Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture, and Advisor to the UNCCD COP16 Presidency, claimed that the conference was a resounding success because it had attracted the largest number of participants till date, representing diverse sectors.

“The Riyadh Action Agenda has already helped galvanize state and non-state actors around the world. However, COP16 in Riyadh is just the beginning of its impact, and Saudi Arabia’s UNCCD COP16 Presidency will continue to engage with everyone, from the investment community, NGOs and scientists to Indigenous Peoples and farmers, to maximize its lasting global legacy,” he said.

One of the biggest success stories scripted in Riyadh was the launch of a drought resilience initiative, which also saw contributions of over USD 12 billion for land restoration and drought resilience. Launching the initiative on the first day of the COP, Saudi Arabia announced it was contributing USD 150 million for its operationalization. The rest of the fund was pledged by the Arab Coordination Group, which has 22 member countries, including the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain. The initiative would aim to support 80 of the world’s most vulnerable countries to increase their capacity to combat the effects of drought and build their drought resilience.

“The Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership will work to deliver a transformative shift in how drought is tackled around the world. Harnessing the collective impact of major global institutions will move drought management beyond reactive crisis response through enhancing early warning systems, financing, vulnerability assessments, and drought risk mitigation. This stands to be a landmark moment for combating international drought, and we are calling on countries, companies, organizations, scientists, NGOs, financial institutions and communities to join this pivotal partnership,” Faqeeha said.

AI For Combating Drought

As part of the Riyadh Action Agenda, Saudi Arabia’ also launched the International Drought Resilience Observatory (IDRO). This is the first artificial intelligence-driven global platform that will help countries assess and improve their ability to cope with more severe droughts. This innovative tool is an initiative of the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA).

Saudi Arabia also announced the launch of an international sand and dust storm monitoring initiative. This effort, part of a regional early warning system, aims to complement existing efforts overseen by the World Meteorological Organization. Based in Jeddah, the Sand and Dust Storm Warning Advisory and Assessment System (SDS-WAS) increases the number of global World Meteorological Organization-affiliated nodes to four. Saudi Arabia also pledged $10 million in funding over the next five years to enhance early warning systems in countries currently unable to monitor for sand and dust storms.

However, despite their best efforts, the COP16 could not bring all negotiators to agree on its proposal of creating a legally binding treaty for action on drought. The protocol, if agreed upon, could have been a huge step forward, having the world’s first legally binding global treaty on drought, land degradation and desertification, equivalent to the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement and the Global Biodiversity Framework.

Paving Greater Participation of Youths and IPLCs

Among the other decisions taken at the COP16 is the creation of a Youth Caucus and an Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Caucus. Though a caucus within the COP has an advisory role without any voting power, it can help broaden the participation of the Indigenous people and provide an opportunity to them for lobbying for language concerning Indigenous issues in the future negotiation texts.

Reacting to the development, Jennifier Corpuz, leader of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), an umbrella organization of Indigenous Peoples and local communities from seven global regions, said that it was a decision that had been long overdue.

“The decision by the UNCCD to support the development of a Terms of Reference for an Indigenous Peoples Caucus and a local communities caucus is a great development for enhancing rights-holder engagement in the work of the UNCCD. It is the last Rio Convention to support the establishment of an IP Caucus and the first to explicitly support a specific local community Caucus, so it is about time, even long overdue. The hope is that the new UNCCD IP and LC caucuses learn from the nest practices and enhanced participation arrangements established in the other Rio Conventions and avoid the mistakes,” Corpuz told IPS News.

UN Warns Against Business-As-Usual Approach

Meanwhile, throughout COP16 in Riyadh, the UNCCD released several major publications highlighting the urgency of tackling land degradation, desertification and drought. The UNCCD’s financial risk assessment flagged that presently there is a $278 billion annual shortfall in funding for land restoration and drought resilience and emphasized the urgent need for private sector engagement.

The UNCCD also issued a landmark report into the growing global expansion of drylands, finding three-quarters of the Earth’s land became permanently drier over the last three decades. In addition, the rate of land degradation has rapidly increased. As a result, there are now 1.6 billion hectares of degraded land instead of 1 billion hectares in 2015. This means the convention’s flagship program, Land Degradation Neutrality, which aims to restore all degraded land by 2023, now also urgently needs a greater level of efforts as there is now half a billion more hectares to be restored. If this was to be achieved, the parties must shun their business-as-usual approach and put greater focus on land restoration, said Ibrahim Thiaw, the Executive Secretary of UNCCD.

“Land Degradation Neutrality is an ambition that was adopted in 2015 based on the science and it is still valid. If we manage to achieve it as it was conceived in 2015, that is a big step forward. Unfortunately, with more recent studies and data, we realized that we need to restore even more land by 2030 than it was envisaged in 2015. It doesn’t change or diminish the importance of the decision made in 2015. Because now we have updated science, we know that we need to restore 1.5 billion hectares of land instead of 1 billion hectares by 2030 in order to have equilibrium in the world. So basically, we have science to tell the decision-makers of the world that business as usual does not work,” Thiaw told IPS News.

The next UNCCD COP will be held in 2026 under the presidency of the Government of Mongolia. With the most ambitious of the decision—a global drought protocol—left unreached, onus is now on the UN to build a consensus among parties on a global drought agreement before they convene at COP17.

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 17 2024 (IPS)

The new geopolitics after the first Cold War undermines peace, sustainability, and human development. Hegemonic priorities continue to threaten humanity’s well-being and prospects for progress.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

End of first Cold War
The end of the first Cold War has been interpreted in various ways, most commonly as a US triumph. Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed the ‘end of history’ with the victory of capitalism and liberal democracy.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and allied regimes, the US seemed unchallenged and unchallengeable in the new ‘unipolar’ world. The influential US journal Foreign Affairs termed ensuing US foreign policy ‘sovereigntist’.

But the new order also triggered fresh discontent. Caricaturing cultural differences, Samuel Huntington blamed a ‘clash of civilisations’. His contrived cultural categories serve a new ‘divide-and-rule’ strategy.

Today’s geopolitics often associates geographic and cultural differences with supposed ideological, systemic and other political divides. Such purported fault lines have also fed ‘identity politics’.

The new Cold War is hot and bloody in parts of the world, sometimes spreading quickly. As bellicosity is increasingly normalised, hostilities have grown dangerously.

Economic liberalisation, including globalisation, has been unevenly reversed since the turn of the century. Meanwhile, financialization has undermined the real economy, especially industry.

The G20 finance ministers, representing the world’s twenty largest economies, including several from the Global South, began meeting after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

The G20 began meeting at the heads of government level following the 2008 global financial crisis, which was seen as a G7 failure. However, the G20’s relevance has declined again as the North reasserted G7 centrality with the new Cold War.

NATO rules
The ostensible raison d’être of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has gone with the end of the first Cold War and the Soviet Union.

The faces of Western powers have also changed. For example, the G5 grew to become the G7 in 1976. US infatuation with the post-Soviet Russia of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin even brought it into the G8 for some years!

Following the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the sovereigntist Wolfowitz doctrine of 2007 redefined its foreign policy priorities to strengthen NATO and start a new Cold War. NATO mobilisation of Europe – behind the US against Russia – now supports Israel targeting China, Iran and others.

Violating the UN Charter, the 2022 Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine united and strengthened NATO and Europe behind the US. Despite earlier tensions across the north Atlantic, Europe rallied behind Biden against Russia despite its high costs.

International law has also not stopped NATO expansion east to the Russian border. The US unilaterally defines new international norms, often ignoring others, even allies. But Trump’s re-election has raised ‘centrist’ European apprehensions.

Developing countries were often forced to take sides in the first Cold War, ostensibly waged on political and ideological grounds. With mixed economies now ubiquitous, the new Cold War is certainly not over capitalism.

Instead, rivalrous capitalist variants shape the new geoeconomics as state variations underlie geopolitics. Authoritarianism, communist parties and other liberal dirty words are often invoked for effect.

New Europe
Despite her controversial track record during her first term as the European Commission (EC) president, Ursula von der Leyen is now more powerful and belligerent in her second term.

She quickly replaced Joseph Borrell, her previous EC Vice President and High Representative in charge of international relations. Borrell described Europe as a garden that the Global South, the surrounding jungle, wants to invade.

For Borrell, Europe cannot wait for the jungle to invade. Instead, it must pre-emptively attack the jungle to contain the threat. Since the first Cold War, NATO has made more, mainly illegal military interventions, increasingly outside Europe!

The US, UK, German, French and Australian navies are now in the South China Sea despite the 1973 ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) commitment to a ZOPFAN (zone of peace, freedom and neutrality) and no request from any government in the region.

Cold War nostalgia
The first Cold War also saw bloody wars involving alleged ‘proxies’ in southwestern Africa, Central America, and elsewhere. Yet, despite often severe Cold War hostilities, there were also rare instances of cooperation.

In 1979, the Soviet Union challenged the US to eradicate smallpox within a decade. US President Jimmy Carter accepted the challenge. In less than ten years, smallpox was eradicated worldwide, underscoring the benefits of cooperation.

Official development assistance (ODA) currently amounts to around 0.3% of rich countries’ national incomes. This is less than half the 0.7% promised by wealthy nations at the UN in 1970.

The end of the first Cold War led to ODA cuts. Levels now are below those after Thatcher and Reagan were in power in the 1980s. Trump’s views and famed ‘transactional approach’ to international relations are expected to cut aid further.

The economic case against the second Cold War is clear. Instead of devoting more to sustainable development, scarce resources go to military spending and related ‘strategic’ priorities.

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The daughter of Angola's former president was described by the UK government as a "notorious kleptocrat".

Nigeria's Ademola Lookman and Zambia's Barbra Banda are crowned Africa's best footballers at the Caf Awards in Marrakesh.

By Anis Chowdhury
SYDNEY, Dec 16 2024 (IPS)

This piece is not about the crisis or the chaos that the country is now facing after successfully toppling the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina. Rather, it is about the crisis of confidence and social capital or trust — interlinked, nonetheless.

Anis Chowdhury

The thread that binds a nation together is trust or social capital. There could be many factors that contribute to social capital, but one that stands out is equity or fairness. Social capital or trust is low in a country where income and wealth gaps are high, and the general people feel unfairly treated or deprived.

The fallen autocratic regime prided itself on rapid economic growth, averaging approximately 6 per cent a year. However, the regime’s kleptocratic system of ruling by plunder and favour to its cronies has contributed to accelerated wealth and income gaps as well as relative deprivation; thus, it has caused fissures in the social fabric.

Rising relative deprivation

Income and wealth gaps have yawned wide, turning a reasonably equitable society at the time of independence into one of the most unequal societies. The Gini coefficient, a common measure of income inequality, has increased from 0.36 in 1973 to 0.499 in 2022, according to the latest (2022) Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.

The Gini coefficient was 0.39 in 1990–1991, marginally above the 1973 value (0.36), accelerating to 0.46 in 2010. Income inequality in Bangladesh has deepened since 2016. The 2022 survey reveals that about 30 per cent of the income generated in the country is concentrated within the top 5 per cent of household. This proportion was 27.82 per cent in the 2016 Household Income and Expenditure Survey.

Furthermore, the top 10 per cent of the wealthiest households in Bangladesh hold about 41 per cent of total income. This proportion was about 38 per cent in 2016. Concurrently, the income share for the bottom 50 per cent of households decreased to about 19 per cent in 2022 from 20.23 per cent in 2016.

Disturbingly, there has been a secular transfer of income from the lowest quintile of the households to the highest quintile. The average annual loss of the bottom 1st quintile’s share in the national income has been -0.71 per cent as opposed to the average annual gain of 0.46 per cent for the highest (top) quintile during 1973–2010. The middle-class also lost; income shares of 2nd, 3rd and 4th quintiles declined since 1973.

This does not augur well for our democracy. Nor can we celebrate this development in a country where one of the founding principles is socialism.

Suppression of democracy driving growing disparities

PROFESSOR MG Quibria of Morgan State University and ADB’s former Senior Advisor pointed out, ‘possession of political capital opens up myriad economic opportunities, including preferential access to finance and business, restructuring and loan default options, lucrative employment, access to privileged information, tax evasion or even outright corruption’.

The link between corruption and economic growth could be debated, but it is a method of plunder and primitive capital accumulation by the lumpen bourgeoisie that exacerbates inequality of wealth.

An environment conducive to unchecked corruption emerges when democracy is suppressed and the institutions that ensure accountability, transparency and the separation of powers between various branches of the government are weakened. Where democratic institutions are weak, political capital is a powerful instrument for advancing one’s economic and social position.

Unfortunately, suppression of democracy in Bangladesh began as soon as it emerged as an independent nation with the rigging of its first parliamentary elections in 1973. It is ironic that a country, where democracy is one of its founding principles, turned into a one-party state in 1975 within four years of its independence, shutting down most of the news media and allowing only state-run ones.

Sadly, instead of trust — built through accountability and transparency — election manipulations became the norm for all political parties to gain power and then retain it. Therefore, each successive government became more repressive, more lacking in accountability and more vigorous in election rigging.

However, such regimes suffer from legitimacy deficits — both legal and moral; they can only survive by allowing corruption and distributing favour. Thus, a vicious circle develops — a regime that resorts to more election manipulations becomes more beholden to its cronies, allowing them to plunder the state.

Undoubtedly, this process reached its zenith during Sheikh Hasina’s rule. Unchecked corruption, tax evasions and financial crimes such as defrauding bank loans enabled Bangladesh to become the global leader in wealth growth during 2010–2019. New York-based research firm Wealth-X, reported a remarkable 14.3 per cent annual increase in the number of individuals with a net worth exceeding $5 million, surpassing Vietnam, which ranked second with a 13.2 per cent growth rate.

Neoliberalism and the demise of democracy

BANGLADESH is not alone in witnessing widening income and wealth gaps and consequently democratic backslides. This is a global phenomenon coincided with the embrace of the neoliberal economic philosophy of privatisation, liberalisation, deregulation and globalisation dictated by the interests of the corporate power.

In the process of multinational corporations-driven globalisation, the civil society simply became apolitical NGOs, happy to receive crumbs from the donors to engage in so-called development activities. Citizens became ‘stake-holders’ together with the large corporations and donors, instead of ‘right-holders’.

Bereft of rights and no longer an end itself of development, citizens are now ‘human resources’, an epitaph cleverly designed to hide that they are simply fodder for the profit machines of corporations. In a deregulated economy, workers are dehumanised, constrained to socialise and participate in political activities.

Should one be surprised in the falling share of wages in the national income, stagnating or falling real wages and tragedies like the ‘Rana Plaza incident’?

Under the corporate globalisation, schools and universities — both public and private — are no longer places of learning where youths are transformed into enlightened citizens and agents of change, and where visionary future social-political leaders are produced. They are simply factories for mass-producing so-called ‘job-ready’ certificate or diploma holders, apathetic to social, economic and political issues.

An additional boost to accelerating inequality in Bangladesh comes from a three-stream education system (Bengali-medium national curriculum, traditional religious curriculum and English-medium overseas curriculum). It perpetuates inter-generational inequality.

Which way out?

ONE can get some cue in AK Sen’s observation that ‘a country becomes fit through democracy,’ and democracy versus development is a false dichotomy. Sen defines development as freedom — freedom from hunger and poverty; freedom from fear and persecution; and freedom to express, associate and participate. In sum, freedom to enhance one’s capabilities to attain one’s full potential as a human being.

Sen insists that political and civil rights are ends in themselves. Their denial cannot be acceptable even if it promotes economic growth and some well-being as such a development path is not sustainable. Suppression of political and civil rights results in growing income and wealth inequalities, where obnoxious, luxurious living by the few coexists with a large populous struggling to survive. This fuels a sense of relative deprivation contributing to violent social conflict.

Therefore, the first step is strengthening democratic institutions or consolidation of democracy. This requires the depoliticisation of administration and civic associations.

There exists a large volume of research findings showing that the politicisation of administration and the organisation of civic associations along party lines not only boost corruption but also accelerate social cleavage.

Civic associations where members hold different political views help build trust among political parties. They can agree on critical national issues while still disagreeing on details.

A depoliticised public administration serves a wider citizenry. In the process, the government, even though led by the winning party, governs for all and becomes inclusive, thus strengthening the trust between the state and the governed.

As for the political parties, they need to practise democracy themselves. That is, all party posts should be open for contest and there should be transparent rules for elections. As the primary organisational vehicles of electoral democracy, political parties are themselves judged in terms of their democratic character.

The most engaging models of internal party democracy are inclusive, participatory, deliberative and accountable and include fair distribution of power. It involves non-discriminatory open memberships and the inclusion of all party members in decision-making processes, leadership selection, policy formulation, as well as ensuring accountability of party leadership to its members. In short, internal rules of political parties should be guided by inclusiveness, clarity, transparency, accountability and independence. Their interaction with society should be based on dialogue, interdependence and cooperation.

In the economic arena, there is an urgency for reorienting to pursue strategies for growth with equity. This is an imperative if Bangladesh is serious about its state principle of socialism. The state has to recapture its lost leverage over the corporate sector to protect the interest of the wider community and to ensure decent jobs and a fair living wage.

It has to give priority to citizens’ well-being over balancing the budget and be bold enough to use its fiscal power to redistribute the growing wealth by using progressive taxation and widening public provisions of basic services, such as healthcare, education, housing and universal social protection. There is ample evidence of a close negative association between the tax-GDP ratio and inequality as well as between public social expenditure and inequality, clearly indicating the redistributive role of the government.

State actions are needed to smoothen the rough edges of the market forces that manifest in exclusion and inequality, which are found to fuel social and political unrest harming growth in the long run. Equity of access, opportunities and outcomes are fundamental aspects of socialism. They enhance both economic and political freedom, essential for rights-based development that empowers citizens and expands their capabilities.

Weakened democratic institutions and rising inequality create a vicious circle that leads to diminished trust — among citizens and between the state and citizens — which chips away social capital, the glue that binds society.

Bangladesh has to find the solution to its woes in its founding principles — a democratic polity and a socialist economic construct. Both are critical in rebuilding trust and social capital, needed to overcome the current national crisis.

Anis Chowdhury is emeritus professor, Western Sydney University, Australia. He held senior United Nations positions (economic and Social affairs) in New York and Bangkok.

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A scientist analyses a sapling in a lab.

By Ousmane Badiane
DAKAR, Senegal, Dec 16 2024 (IPS)

From increased pests and diseases to lower crop yields and extreme weather events, the adverse impacts of climate change on agriculture in Africa cannot be overstated.

Climate shocks will present major roadblocks to the continent’s rapidly growing population, especially if global temperatures remain on their upward trajectory. Urgent and effective action is therefore needed to mitigate these threats to food security and livelihoods.

Despite the growing stresses on Africa’s agrifood systems, the bioeconomy offers opportunities to improve food security, tackle climate change, and support development goals. The solution lies in sustainably leveraging Africa’s natural resources.

While the continent is highly vulnerable to climate change, its rich biodiversity offers tangible opportunities to address multiple challenges simultaneously. New evidence shows that Africa can leverage a much broader and more systemic approach to addressing the impacts of climate change on agrifood systems and beyond through its bioeconomy.

Characterized by sustainable production and use of biological resources to create innovative products, processes, and services for all economic sectors, bioeconomy involves the use of scientific knowledge to add social and economic value to biological resources in an environmentally sustainable way.

The latest ReSAKSS Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) makes a case for converging the two pressing agendas of climate change and the bioeconomy toward building resilient agrifood systems in Africa. Harnessing Africa’s ecological wealth and investing in the continent’s bioeconomy can yield multiple development benefits across various sectors while contributing to climate resilience, sustainable agriculture, and economic growth.

Science and technology offer a viable pathway for the development of bioeconomy solutions. African countries will benefit from establishing robust science, research, and technology systems to leverage opportunities offered by the bioeconomy. Research initiatives to develop climate-resilient tools for farmers can go a long way in protecting food security and livelihoods from climate shocks.

A successful example is the redesign of Uganda’s research system through the National Agricultural Advisory Services program. This program focused on rebuilding relationships across the country’s agrifood system value chain, from the farm level all the way to regional chiefs, district coordinators, and private or semi-private service delivery companies.

Through this approach, farmers defined demand and had their research and innovation needs addressed through a national coordination network combined with the private sector. This has improved the availability and quality of advisory services provided to farmers and promoted the adoption and use of modern production technologies and practices.

Furthermore, Africa’s bioeconomy can create rural and agriculture-adjacent jobs for its youthful population while enabling economic diversification and growth. Leveraging Africa’s vast untapped potential will open up new industries and value chains that can drive job creation and livelihoods across the continent, especially for rural youth and other marginalized groups.

Emerging innovations like biological waste conversion using black soldier flies (BSF), and earthworms have opened up new markets and, consequently, new job opportunities. At the same time, these circular solutions benefit natural ecosystems, in turn supporting better conditions for crop and livestock production systems.

Domestic and cross-border trade also plays a vital role in facilitating economic growth through the bioeconomy. Increasing food demand can drive specialization and intensification of the agrifood sector and bioeconomy, ultimately incentivizing productivity, supply, and income increases. Existing policy tools such as the AfCFTA can reduce trade barriers across the continent’s bioeconomy and deliver better economic outcomes.

Recent research argues for a nutrition-sensitive circular bioeconomy that can be adopted to drive food security and nutrition outcomes while tackling waste management. For example, converting biowaste to vermicompost, biofertilizers, and biopesticides can reduce the costs and environmental burdens of synthetic chemicals while simultaneously improving agricultural productivity and food availability.

Strengthening the bioscience environment across sectors is critical. Under the Advanced Agriculture and Food cluster, South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) aims to increase the output of high-value foods, cosmetics, nutraceuticals, and traditional African medical products. The Biomanufacturing Industry Development Centre (BIDC) has advanced over 100 bioproducts in cosmetics, nutrition, and biotechnology. A key success story from this case study is VIDA Pharmaceuticals, which produces accessible and affordable nutritious food products from baobab and maize.

In the wake of COP29, channeling more climate finance toward Africa’s bioeconomy is critical. Increasing investments in innovative financing models such as blended finance – which leverages concessional capital from public and philanthropic sources to de-risk private investments – can support climate goals in Africa’s agrifood systems.

There is political momentum for Africa’s converging climate change and bioeconomy agendas. South Africa was the first African country to develop a dedicated bioeconomy strategy in 2013, followed by Namibia, which published its national bioeconomy strategy in 2024. The East African Community (EAC) is the first regional economic bloc to develop a dedicated regional bioeconomy strategy in 2022.

The global shift toward sustainability and the green economy presents new opportunities for Africa to position itself as a leader in the bioeconomy. Policy action to embrace an African bioeconomy would entail the ability to deploy tailored and contextualized interventions to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity while advancing sustainable growth.

Increased investments in Africa’s resilience and green growth agendas from the continent’s leaders, private sectors, and other stakeholders are the first steps towards realizing this potential. The promise of a robust bioeconomy offers a viable growth and development pathway that can contribute to lower carbon emissions, better preservation of biodiversity, and greater prospects for decent jobs and livelihoods.

Dr. Ousmane Badiane, Executive Chairperson, AKADEMIYA2063

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Credit: Antonio Jaén Osuna

By Eric O'Flynn
DUBLIN, Ireland, Dec 16 2024 (IPS)

For decades, preventable deaths, lifelong disabilities, and disfigurements presented devastating consequences for over 90% of the population in Africa, where surgical care remains largely out of reach.

Simple, affordable procedures like skin grafts for burns, bone fracture repair, and hernia procedures routinely go untreated, causing needless suffering and often driving families into abject poverty due to loss of livelihood.

Consider a young man in his 20s in rural Zambia, electrocuted by a low-hanging power cable while riding on the back of a lorry, whose exposed skull and severely damaged scalp were repaired during a 16-hour procedure, allowing him to make a full recovery; a 19-year-old woman with a deep-seated tumor that caused her to lose her sight and whose surgery was made possible by a resourceful clinician using magnifying glasses in the absence of a microscope, removing the tumor in full and allowing her to regain her vision; a 32-year-old mother of two in rural Zambia, run over by a truck and left with devastating injuries who underwent eight months of intensive treatment and rehabilitation putting her on a path to recovery.

Cases like these are the everyday reality faced by surgeons Dr. Peter Mushenya from Zambia and Dr. Nathalie Umugwaneza from Rwanda, both recent graduates of the College of Surgeons of East, Central, and Southern Africa (COSECSA), which celebrates its 25th anniversary this December.

Since its founding, COSECSA has grown from graduating just six surgeons in 2010 to an impressive 152 in 2023. This growth reflects the organization’s commitment to equipping surgeons with the skills to meet the urgent needs of communities across the region. Over the course of their careers, COSECSA-trained surgeons are projected to perform nearly 9.5 million surgeries, a stunning demonstration of the impact of successful surgical training programmes.

Qualified just a year, Dr Mushenya is a specialist neurosurgeon working at Maxcare hospital in Lusaka, where patients often travel over 1000 kilometres to receive care from the only neurosurgical team in the country.

On average, he and his team perform 70 surgeries a month. He describes challenges such as a shortage of surgical supplies, long waiting lists and needless complications arising from untreated simple infections that worsen due to a delay in care. Common, he explains, are untreated coughs in children that escalate into meningitis and later abnormal swelling of the head due to excess fluid on the brain.

“Many patients are two years down the line without a CT scan and come to us in critical condition in need of urgent surgical attention. In many cases, we often have to use our own money to buy drills, sutures, shunts – not just the expensive equipment like microscopes, but even the little things are not there. Instead, we rely on well-wishers. A lot of the conditions we see are simple to treat, yet we don’t get the support we need,” says Dr Mushenya.

It is an all too familiar scene in Rwanda, according to Dr. Umugwaneza, who counts road traffic accidents and falls among her most common surgeries, “Patients often wait up to six months for surgeries that are not considered acute, resulting in improperly consolidated fractures that cause life-long disability.” She emphasizes the need to strengthen the entire surgical system, from training surgeons to strengthening entire surgical teams across a range of disciplines from nurses to anesthetists.

The situation experienced in Zambia and Rwanda matches the broader challenges faced in the region. In many countries of the Global South, the surgeon-to-patient ratio is alarmingly low, with just one trained surgeon for every 2.5 million people. This neglect persists even though surgically treatable conditions cause more deaths and disabilities than AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.

Despite a 2015 World Health Assembly (WHA) resolution urging the inclusion of global surgery within primary healthcare as a critical component of Universal Health Coverage (UHC), surgical care remains strikingly absent from policymakers’ agendas.

This lack of priority has contributed to minimal progress in strengthening emergency and essential surgical and anesthesia services. As a result, 16 million people worldwide die annually from conditions that could be treated surgically.

In response to the urgent demand for surgical care, COSECSA, supported by Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland has trained 910 surgeons through its intensive five-year programme, achieving this at an astonishingly low cost of just $600 per surgeon per year. Prof. Juan Carlos Puyana, Chair of Global Surgery at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dublin, has witnessed firsthand the impact of the programme and is a passionate advocate for further investment in global surgery.

An experienced surgeon himself, he worked for decades in low resource settings, and emphasises the scalability and cost-effectiveness of the initiative, underlining the importance of changing perceptions about surgical care: “There’s a misconception that surgical care is prohibitively expensive, but simple procedures don’t require large investments in infrastructure and expensive equipment.

Our approach is grounded in evidence that safe surgery is not an expense but a critical investment in health infrastructure and in promoting economic development.”

Dr Puyana’s views are echoed in the findings of the 2015 Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, which underscored that billions of people lack access to safe surgery. The report highlighted that investing in surgical services is not only affordable but essential to saving lives and securing safe health systems.

Closing the gap to ensure that surgical services are more readily accessible in lower- and middle-income countries, will not only save lives but also restore patients’ ability to work and lead productive lives, generating economic benefits that far outweigh their costs. The programme stands as a powerful testament to how targeted, cost-effective interventions can make a lasting impact.

In recent years, it has broadened its scope beyond surgical training. Recognizing that effective surgical care relies on multidisciplinary teams, it now supports the development of colleges in anesthesiology, obstetrics and gynecology, and nursing across the region.

This expansion builds on a proven model for rapidly scaling up training in the sub-Saharan context that involves a blend of virtual classrooms, mentorship, and a support network for isolated health workers. In some countries like Zambia, Tanzania and Malawi, particularly in rural hospitals, non-specialist and non-physician surgeons also play a key role in delivering essential procedures.

Further, at a time when trained health workers from the Global South are increasingly migrating to the Global North in search of better opportunities, the programme has proven to be a game-changer in stemming the exodus of health workers in the region.

A 2024 study reveals a significant shift, with an impressive 98.5% retention rate of specialist surgeons within Africa, addressing the chronic shortage of skilled health professionals. This shift represents not only a major achievement for the programme, but also an important step toward the sustainability of local healthcare systems.

Addressing the crisis in global surgery demands a fundamental shift in global health priorities: surgery is not a luxury intervention, but an essential component of any functioning health system. This requires policymakers to prioritize investments in training, infrastructure, and system-wide support, ensuring that surgical care is within reach for the millions who still don’t have access.

As the network of skilled practitioners expands, communities are themselves laying the groundwork for resilient health systems. In doing so, surgeons like Dr Mushenya and Dr Umugwaneza are safeguarding future generations from the preventable suffering that has long plagued the world’s poorest regions.

Eric O’Flynn is Programme Director — Education, Training and Advocacy, Institute of Global Surgery, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dublin.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The people walk to Saydnaya prison to search for the detainees. Credit: Abdul Karem al-Mohammad/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
IDLIB, Syria, Dec 16 2024 (IPS)

Detained without trial for over three years for trial for allegedly treating “terrorists” (as opponents of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were deemed), Alaa al-Khalil, a 33-year-old nurse from the Syrian city of Hama, recounts the agony of her time in a prison cell she shared with at least 35 women.

She was released from Aydnaya prison on December 8 after the fall of the Assad regime.

Following the fall of Assad’s regime and his escape to Moscow on December 8, armed opposition factions managed to open the doors of prisons, freeing hundreds of detainees who had endured the most horrific forms of torture for opposing Assad’s rule and demanding his removal from power. Many lost their lives within the prisons and were buried in mass graves, while the families of the detainees continue to search for their missing loved ones in the prisons of tyranny.

Years of Torture

“I was arrested at a security checkpoint belonging to the former Syrian regime and transferred to the Political Security Branch in Damascus—my hands were cuffed, and my eyes were blindfolded. In prison, we were 35 women in a small, cramped room with the toilet in the same room, without any privacy,” Khalil told IPS. “The marks of severe torture were clearly visible on some of the women. As for sleep, we would lie on the floor and take turns sleeping due to the very small size of the room. The most painful thing was that there were many pregnant women who gave birth to children who grew up inside the prison.”

The search for survivors in Sednaya prison. Credit: Abdul Karem al-Mohammad/IPS

During that time, she said the prisoners suffered from “hunger, cold, and all forms of torture, including beatings, burning with cigarettes, and nail pulling.”

Many of the female detainees were raped and exposed to sexual violence as a form of punishment. After midnight, the guards would come to the detainees’ room to select the most beautiful girls to take them to the officers’ rooms.

“We preferred torture and even death to rape. When a girl refused to have sex or confess to the charges against her during interrogation, she would be killed by the guards or interrogators, and her body would be thrown into the salt room, which was prepared in advance to preserve the bodies of the dead for as long as possible,” she said, tearfully remembering the daily trauma.

Khalil confirms that prisoners were not allowed to look at the guards, talk, or make any noise, even during torture. They were punished by being deprived of water or forced to sleep naked without covers in the freezing cold. The meals consisted of a few bites of spoilt food, and many people contracted serious infections, diseases, and mental disorders.

Now released, Khalil hopes to enjoy safety, stability, and peace in this country after years of oppression and injustice.

Adnan al-Ibrahim, 46, from the southern Syrian city of Daraa, was also released a few days ago from Adra prison on the outskirts of Damascus after spending over 10 years there on charges of defecting from Bashar al-Assad’s army and seeking asylum in Lebanon.

“I feel like I’m dreaming after being released from prison. They accused me of terrorism, subjected me to torture, and I was never brought before a court during my imprisonment. I’m still traumatized by what I endured,” Ibrahim says.

“We were subjected to the worst treatment imaginable in prisons. All we want now is the right to live a decent life, far from injustice, arbitrary arrests, and the ongoing killing in Syria.”

He is now emaciated and weak—his weight drastically reduced due to malnutrition and poor diet. Most of his fellow inmates suffered from life-threatening illnesses as a result of the torture they endured. Many inmates lost their memory due to being beaten on the head during interrogations, and the bodies of the dead remained for long periods before being removed. Many of these bodies were disposed of by burning.

Burdened by Psychological Prauma

Samah Barakat, a 33-year-old mental health specialist, says the survivors of Syrian detention centres will need help to overcome their traumas.

‘The experience of imprisonment and torture in prisons is painful and traumatic for survivors. Imprisonment is not limited to physical torture; the mental state is also affected. Prisoners were subjected to various forms of torture and oppression, leading to a significant deterioration in their mental health. These effects include a range of psychological disorders such as psychosis, memory loss, and speech impediments, in addition to the spread of diseases due to their deprivation of basic medical care.”

Barakat confirms that some detainees are likely to suffer from physical, psychological, and behavioural effects, accompanied by constant anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal.

She explains that survivors of detention need psychological support, which varies depending on the impact of the detention experience. Some need psychological counseling or therapy sessions with specialists, while others require medication prescribed by a psychiatrist due to depression or other mental illnesses.

An Unknown Fate

For some, the uncertainty of the fates of their loved ones means the trauma of the Asad regime lives on.

Alaa al-Omar, 52, from the northern Syrian city of Idlib, went to Saydnaya prison and the Palestine Branch in Damascus after the fall of the Assad regime, hoping to find his son, who had disappeared in the prison’s depths.

“I went to the prison with great longing, but I found no trace of my son. I think he died as a result of torture.”

Omar affirms that his son was arrested by the Assad regime forces in 2015 while studying at a university in Aleppo, accused of participating in demonstrations, carrying weapons, and joining the opposition factions.

Omar indicates he heard nothing from his son or about his son since his arrest, and his fate remains unknown even now.

Human Rights Violations

Human rights activist Salim Al-Najjar (41), from Aleppo, speaks about the suffering of survivors of detention and told IPS that the history of building prisons and expanding detention centers in Syria dated back to the rule of Hafez al-Assad, whose regime in the 1980s exercised excessive force against its opponents, turning the country into a “large slaughterhouse.”

“In the regime’s prisons, lives are as equal as stones in the hands of a sculptor, killed and discarded without regard or importance. In them, a person becomes a mere number, with their history, feelings, and even dreams that haunted them until the last moment of their lives ignored,” Najjar says.

Al-Najjar confirms the existence of many prisons in Syria, but the Saydnaya prison, located north of the Syrian capital Damascus, is known as the most prominent political detention center in Syria and was notorious for its horrific reputation as a site of torture and mass executions, especially after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011. Saydnaya prison was where Assad’s detained opponents or defectors from his army or those who rejected his “killing policy.”

He points out that few detainees were released through family connections or bribes, while the detainees were left to die from their untreated wounds and diseases in “dirty, overcrowded” cells.

He notes that many detainees emerged from behind bars suffering from a loss of their mental faculties, unable to remember their names or identify themselves, and due to the severe changes caused by malnutrition and brutal torture, their features had changed to the point that their families did not recognize them at first.

Najjar hopes to achieve justice for the victims by presenting evidence and documents to international courts and holding Assad and all perpetrators of violations in Syria accountable.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights said in a statement on December 11 that Assad is accused of killing at least 202,000 Syrian civilians, including 15,000 killed under torture, the disappearance of 96,000 others, and the forced displacement of nearly 13 million Syrian citizens, as well as other heinous violations, including the use of chemical weapons.

“Syrian detention centers and torture chambers symbolize the agony, oppression, and suffering that Syrians have endured for decades. Survivors of detention continue to heal their wounds and strive to return to their normal lives and reintegrate into society. Sadly, a significant number of them have perished under torture.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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