Africa

Ending the rebellion in the east dominates campaigning but fails to impress those fleeing fighting.

With the pledges and commitments made this year, has the summit been a success?

BBC Sport provides a guide to the format, schedule, venues and kick-off times at the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, including day-by-day fixtures.

It was an extraordinary COP Summit in a year characterized by record-breaking temperatures combined with El Niño, producing a climatic carnage in Africa—deaths from fatal floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, and Libya, where floods wiped out a quarter of a city. Deadly cyclones in Malawi, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe; a […]

A female orca splitting a herring bait ball while diving through it to get one. (Underwater Sea Scapes WINNER for 2023 Photo Competition The annual Photo Competition for UN World Oceans Day)

By Jean-Paul Adam
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Dec 13 2023 (IPS)

As an Islander from the Seychelles, Africa’s smallest country, I find that the ocean is intricately woven into my heritage. It not only defines my roots but also shapes the trajectory of my journey. When I think of the future, I can’t help but also look at the boundless possibilities reflected in the vast expanse of the ocean.

I am therefore encouraged that the growing trend of African leaders turning their attention to the ocean as a catalyst for achieving “climate positive growth”. This is the premise of the Nairobi Climate Action Summit, where African leaders emphasized that ‘Africa possesses both the potential and the ambition to be a vital component of the global solution to climate change’.

African leaders are emphasizing that ‘climate positive growth’ will be built by Africans, for Africans. Of course, support is needed – no one can achieve the scale of change needed without massive upscaling of investment.

Jean-Paul Adam

The Great Blue Wall is an initiative which aims to catalyze the promise of ‘climate positive growth’ into action. Under the Comoros Presidency, the African Union seeks, now more than ever, a ‘blue future’.

Spearheaded by African countries in the Western Indian Ocean, as outlined in the Moroni Declaration adopted in June 2023, the Great Blue Wall initiative aims to shield African countries from impacts of climate change and natural disasters uplifting and delivering economic empowerment to local coastal and island communities.

The existing industrialized fishing practices of distant nations is completely detached from the eco-system which supports the biomass and hence poses a threat. The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission has underlined overfishing of tuna species, especially the big-eye tuna and yellow-fin tuna.

At the same time, the warming ocean, increasing acidification of the water and consequent bleaching of coral reefs affects the availability of the prey species such as mackerel for the much-prized tunas.

Coastal African nations find themselves at risk, often reaping limited benefits from their marine resources, similar to challenges faced with mineral exports from the mainland. FAO and other UN agencies are working with African countries to allow them to reap more benefit from their marine resources.

The Great Blue Wall aims to conserve marine resources through Marine Protected Areas as well as empower local communities by boosting the sustainable fisheries value chain and establishing of additional economic opportunities through eco-tourism and related economic activities.

The 2022 Kunming-Montreal Framework on Biological Diversity delivered a global pledge to place 30% of the world’s oceans under protection-further reinforced by the 2023 adoption of an agreement on protecting marine biodiversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction.

A regenerative model also implies actively investing in the ocean for climate resilience. In this instance, mangroves in particular are nature’s best line of defense. Mangroves provide some of the most effective protections against coastal erosion, while they are also critical spawning grounds for numerous commercial fish species and crustaceans.

Marine-based eco-tourism is also one of the most valuable forms of economic activity to provide opportunities for local populations. These are some of the elements that underpin the transformation from ‘extraction’ to ‘regeneration’.

How does this fit into Africa’s drive for sustainable industrialization?

The Great Blue Wall not only offers a model for a ‘regenerative blue economy’ but also addresses broader challenges associated with Africa’s maritime space.

As Africa’s trade heavily relies on sea transport, ensuring climate-resistant port infrastructure becomes pivotal, most pressing is the development of Africa’s maritime corridors for trade to build on the promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

Reliable and affordable energy is a key enabler of sustainable value chains. Opportunities exist for offshore wind energy, for example, as being explored by Morocco. Meanwhile, floating solar is being tested in Seychelles, while using the ocean temperature differential for cooling purposes is being piloted in Mauritius.

Financing the vision

As the Great Blue Wall envisions climate resilience built on community-focused economic empowerment, financing is key. The gap in climate finance is glaring- all the while conflicts divert resources away from climate and development priorities. The climate finance gap highlighted by the High Level Expert Panel on Climate Finance co-chaired by Nick Stern and Vera Songwe showed that $2.4 trillion was required by 2030.

Large-scale climate finance availability would allow the Great Blue Wall initiative to mobilize quickly and at scale. Additionally, the Great Blue Wall also aims to generate income streams that support communities, reducing dependency and helps to boost domestic resource mobilization.

Among these opportunities including tapping into the potential of ‘blue carbon’ or issuing carbon credits based on the sequestration potential of oceanic resources. Successful small scale projects such as Mikoko Pamoja in Kenya have delivered high quality results for local communities through mangrove rehabilitation.

Recognizing increased debt burdens of African countries, the opportunity to use debt swap instruments to replace existing expensive debt with more affordable longer-term lending could potentially liberate fiscal space to be redeployed to finance some of the priorities of the Great Blue Wall. The Seychelles debt for climate swap of 2015 for example delivered new and predictable flows of finance for marine conservation.

Looking ahead: COP28 and beyond

The Great Blue Wall has high-level political backing and is a priority for the African Union and its partners. Efforts are underway to expand its adoption to other African countries, connecting the ambitions of the countries along the Indian Ocean to those along the Atlantic.

At COP28, the focus was on mobilizing seed financing for this ambitious project which not only provides climate adaptation, but also seeks to fundamentally transform the economic model for management of marine resources.

The Great Blue Wall captures the essence of the ‘climate positive growth’ we hope to see.

Jean-Paul Adam is the Director, Policy, Monitoring and Advocacy at the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa, UN Secretariat in New York

Source: Africa Renewal

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 13 2023 (IPS)

With the US Fed raising interest rates, the world economy is slowing as debt distress spreads across the global South, increasing poverty worldwide to pre-pandemic levels, with the poorest countries faring worst.

Extreme poverty continues to be high and is now worse than before the pandemic in low-income countries (LICs) and among those affected by fragility, violence and conflict. The promise of eradicating poverty worldwide by 2030 has become unachievable.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The Bretton Woods institutions’ (BWIs) annual meetings in Marrakech in October were only the second-ever in Africa. But the rich nations-dominated BWIs failed yet again to rise to the challenges of our times, setting Africa and the global South even further back.

Instead of fostering cooperation to address the causes and effects of the contemporary catastrophe, neither the International Monetary Fund nor the World Bank governors could agree on joint communiques due to the greater politicisation of multilateral fora.

Indebtedness immobilises governments
Indebtedness and restrictive creditor rules prevent governments from spending more counter-cyclically to overcome the many contractionary tendencies of recent times, besides preventing them from addressing looming social and environmental crises.

The G20’s largest twenty economies have urged strengthening “multilateral coordination by official bilateral and private creditors … to address the deteriorating debt situation and facilitate coordinated debt treatment for debt-distressed countries”.

But its Common Framework to restructure debt has been roundly criticised by civil society, think tanks and even the World Bank on many grounds, including the paltry concessional credit relief offered to a few of the very poorest countries.

In contrast, the G24 caucus of developing countries at the BWIs has emphasised the need for “durable debt resolution measures while collaborating on resolving the structural issues leading to such vulnerabilities.”

But all those advocating purported solutions are not even trying to ensure fiscal space and public spending capacity for counter-cyclical efforts, let alone achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and national development objectives.

Surcharges
The IMF currently imposes additional charges on countries that do not quickly clear their debts to the Fund. Besides the usual fees and interest, borrowing countries paid over $4 billion in such surcharges in 2020-22, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Surcharges will cost debt-distressed countries about $7.9 billion over six years. The G24 has emphasised that surcharges are pro-cyclical and regressive, especially with monetary tightening.

Governments have undertaken contractionary policies and cut imports for lack of foreign exchange. This deepens the problems of heavily indebted poor countries who cannot but count on the Fund for relief and solutions.

At Marrakech, the governing International Monetary and Financial Committee decided to “consider a review of surcharge policies”. The G24 called for “a suspension of surcharges while the review – which we hope will lead to substantial permanent reduction or complete elimination – is being conducted.”

Rich nations have been divided over surcharges. With Ukraine now among the top surcharge payers, following civil society criticisms, the Biden administration’s refusal to review surcharges in 2022 was heavily criticised by the US Congress.

Deepening austerity
IMF fiscal austerity measures of the 1980s returned with a vengeance after the 2008 global financial crisis, and then again during the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020. Most Fund loans require cutting the public sector wage bill (PSWB), the budget line to pay employees.

Most wage earners in many LICs, including nurses, teachers and other social service workers, work for the state, directly or indirectly. Although much needed, these employees have been more likely to be targeted by such budget cuts.

PSWB cuts may involve hiring or wage freezes, or limiting, or even cutting wages. These inevitably undermine government capacities and services. Fiscal consolidation has also involved raising more indirect, consumption taxes, and tax exemptions, e.g., for essential goods such as food.

In 38 countries with over a billion people, loan conditionalities during 2020-22, the three years of the Covid-19 pandemic, meant regressive tax reforms and public spending cuts. PSWB and fuel or electricity subsidy cuts are also common demands worsening economic contractions.

Austerity bound to fail
But the IMF’s own research suggests such austerity policies are generally ineffective in reducing debt, their ostensible purpose. The April 2023 IMF World Economic Outlook acknowledged austerity programmes and fiscal consolidations “do not reduce debt ratios, on average”. Yet, its Fiscal Monitor still demands “fiscal tightening” of most developing countries.

The new IMF-World Bank debt sustainability framework sets the LICs’ external debt-to-GDP ratio limit at 30% or 40%. It insists debt-distressed economies must have lower ratios than ‘strong’ countries, effectively further penalising the weak and vulnerable.

Instead of enabling consistently counter-cyclical macroeconomic frameworks, the IMF’s current short-termist approach is mainly preoccupied with annual, or worse, quarterly balances, mimicking corporate reporting practices.

Such short-termism further limits fiscal space, effectively preventing or deterring public sector investments requiring longer-term macroeconomic frameworks to realise benefits. This discourages ‘patient’ medium- to long-term investments required for national economic planning and transformation, essential for sustainable development.

Restrictive debt and fiscal targets have meant even less public investment. This is typically required of borrowing countries as a credit conditionality. Annual IMF Article IV consultations cause other countries to also accept similar constraints to avoid Fund disapproval.

While a few better-off economies enjoy full employment, most countries face further economic contraction, not least due to interest rate hikes led by the US Fed and their many effects. Instead of being part of the problem, the IMF should be part of the solution.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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29-year-old Proud Mugunhu, a popular Zimbabwean dancer, has mesmerized crowds and onlookers with his dancing skills at events as he gyrates to gather sanitary pads in order to give them to girls and women who are too poor to afford them. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
BULAWAYO, Dec 13 2023 (IPS)

At first, he danced for money, but later on, he realized the need to dance for sanitary pads in order to help poor girls and women. Now, 29-year-old Proud Mugunhu conducts dance tutorials that earn him 100 pads from each session.

Mugunhu started his commercial dancing in Zimbabwe’s Epworth informal settlement east of Harare, the country’s capital, where he said he grew up seeing poor girls and women making do without sanitary pads during menstruation.

Now, Mugunhu, who has turned into a popular dancer, has become famed for combating period poverty.

He (Mugunhu) does not only dance to please onlookers, but has now chosen to dance in order to be rewarded with sanitary pads to pass these on to the girls and women pounded by period poverty.

In and outside Zimbabwe, Mugunhu now dances at events where he has struck deals to receive sanitary pads as payment in his war against rampant poverty.

As a result, his dancing has seen many of the girls and women graduate from using rags to something that gives them dignity and confidence.

“I started dancing in 2015—dancing commercially at weddings. I only began dancing for sanitary pads last year, and I am gathering as many sanitary pads as I can in order to help,” Mugunhu told IPS.

“Growing up in Epworth, I saw a lot in terms of the ravages of poverty, especially on girls. So, what I do is that I conduct dance classes for ordinary people, and I choose to be paid using sanitary pads in order for me to then use these to donate to poor girls and women.”

He claims that he gets more than 100 pads per dancing class that he conducts.

“I just want to help those in need. I’m praying that I will be able to get more sanitary pads so that I will be able to give to many girls and women in need.”

The destitution Mugunhu witnessed as he grew up in Epworth compelled him to dance.

In 2019, Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister, Mthuli Ncube, made a surprise announcement that US$12.5 million had been allocated to acquire sanitary pads for poor rural girls in the country who had reached puberty.

Apparently, the news brought joy to Priscilla Misihairambwi-Mushonga, the then chairperson of Zimbabwe’s Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Primary and Secondary Education.

For many years, she (Misihairambwi) passionately lobbied for the provision of sanitary pads to schoolgirls, while she also made calls for a tax regime that made sanitary wear affordable to every woman in the country.

Whether or not the poor girls eventually received free sanitary pads from the government remains unclear to this day.

But a top government official in Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Women Affairs has claimed that next year they are set to provide sanitary pads free of charge to the country’s poor women and girls.

“Next year, we have plans to work with women who are into sewing to sew reusable sanitary pads, which they will give to girls and women at no cost,” the Chief Director of the Ministry of Women Affairs, Lilian Matsika, told IPS.

With period poverty the norm in poor communities, women’s rights activists like Bridget Mushayahanya called on the government to end the crisis.

“What we want is for our government to understand that menstruation is something that women don’t choose to have. If it were possible, Mushayahanya said, “I would like for our government to work with other regional governments that do ‘pink tanks,’ which means that all items needed by women during menstruation are available for very low prices or free of charge.

Chipo Chikomo, founder of an organization called Nhanga Trust, which manufactures reusable sanitary pads for girls, bemoaned poverty, which she blamed for forcing many to be absent from school during their menstruation.

“We see many girls walking long distances to school; this means that during their monthly menstrual cycles, they don’t then go to school because they won’t have pads to use when they are having menstruation,” she told IPS.

Yet many, like Chikomo, complained of persistent period poverty. For others, like Anna Sande and Sharon Bare, heroic individuals such as Mugunhu stand out as saviors for poor girls and women hammered by period poverty.

Following this year’s elections, at 23 years of age, Sande became Epworth’s youngest mayor, taking charge of a poor local authority where period poverty is common for many.

“I am so grateful for the help I have obtained from Proud Tatenda Mugunhu, who gathers sanitary pads using his dancing talent to help poor girls and women in my community during their monthly periods,” Sande said in an interview with IPS.

Even ordinary Epworth residents like Sharon Bare cannot hide their joy as Mugunhu thwarts period poverty in their midst.

“I really appreciate everything that Mugunhu is doing. I am so proud he is doing a good thing to help poor girls and women get sanitary pads during menstruation,” Bare said.

Peace Hungwe, who is the founder of Peace Hub Zimbabwe, an organization that handles mental health cases in Harare, also showered Mugunhu with praise for his initiative to help poor girls and women surmount period poverty.

“At first, I want to thank Proud. Like his name suggests, he should be proud of himself. There are very few people who do what he is doing. Menstruation is a hard time for many poor girls and women, which leads them into sex work to merely get sanitary pads to use during menstruation,” she told IPS.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Colombian President Gustavo Petro presented his environmental plans at COP28 in Dubai and added his country to the small group of nations that support the negotiation of a binding treaty to prevent the proliferation of fossil fuels, despite his country being an oil producer. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
DUBAI, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

One of the most heated debates at the annual climate summit coming to a conclusion in this United Arab Emirates city revolved around the phrasing of the final declaration, regarding the “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels within a given time frame.

This is an essential calculation on the decommissioning of refineries, pipelines, power plants and other infrastructure that, in some cases, have been in operation for years, as discussed at the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Experts who talked to IPS at the summit agreed on the magnitude of the bill, which for some Latin American nations could be unaffordable."Financial support will be needed. There must be a differentiated approach, differentiated timing, and developed countries must come up with the resources." -- Fernanda Carvalho

Fernanda Carvalho of Brazil, global leader for Energy and Climate Policy at the non-governmental World Wildlife Fund (WWF), referred to the amount without specifying a figure.

“Financial support will be needed. There must be a differentiated approach, differentiated timing, and developed countries must come up with the resources,” the expert, who was present at COP28, held at Expo City on the outskirts of Dubai, told IPS.

COP28 engaged in an acrimonious debate between phase-out and phase-down, with a definite date, of oil, gas and coal, which has already anticipated a disappointing end in Dubai, that in line with the tradition at these summits extended its negotiations one more day, to conclude on Wednesday, Dec. 13.

The “phase-down” concept has been in the climate-energy jargon for years, but it really took off at the 2021 COP26 in the Scottish city of Glasgow, whose Climate Pact alludes to the reduction of coal still being produced and the elimination of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.

Throughout the climate summits since 1995, developing countries have insisted on differentiated measures for them, in accordance with their own situation, the need for financing from developed nations and the transfer of technology, especially energy alternatives.

Enrique Maurtúa of Argentina, senior diplomacy advisor to the Independent Global Stocktake (iGST) – an umbrella data and advocacy initiative – said they hoped for a political signal to determine regulations or market measures regarding a phase-down or phase-out.

“If a target date is not set, there is no signal. If you set a phase-out for 2050, that is a pathway for the transition. With a deadline, the market can react. And then each country must evaluate its specific context,” the expert told IPS in the COP28 Green Zone, which hosted civil society organizations at the summit.

Available scientific knowledge indicates that the majority of proven hydrocarbon reserves must remain unextracted by 2030 to keep the planetary temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, the threshold agreed in the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement to avoid massive disasters.

On Sunday, Dec. 10 the non-governmental Climate Action Network (CAN) delivered at COP28 a dishonorable mention to the United States for its role in Israel’s carnage in Gaza, in the traditional Fossil of the Day award for “doing the most to achieve the least” in terms of progress on climate change at the summits. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

 

Failed attempts

In the Latin American region there are unsuccessful precedents of fossil fuel phase-outs.

In 2007, the then president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (2007-2017), launched the Yasuní-Ishpingo Tambococha Tiputini initiative, which sought the care of the Yasuní National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest, in exchange for funds from governments, foundations, companies and individuals of about 3.6 billion dollars by 2024 to leave the oil in the ground.

The aim was to leave 846 million barrels of oil untouched underground. But a special fund created by Ecuador and the United Nations Environment Fund only raised 13 million dollars, according to the Ecuadorian government. So Correa decided to cancel the initiative in 2013, at a time when renewable energies had not yet really taken off.

In a referendum held in August, Ecuadorians decided to halt oil extraction in a block in Yasuní that would provide 57,000 barrels per day in 2022 – the same result sought by Correa, but without foreign funds.

The result of the referendum is to be implemented within a year, although the position of the government of the current president, banana tycoon Daniel Noboa, who took office on Nov. 23, is still unclear.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, President Gustavo Petro has put the brakes on new oil and coal exploration contracts, a promise from his 2022 election campaign.

In addition, the president announced on Dec. 2 in Dubai that his country was joining nine other nations that are promoting the formal initiation of the negotiation of a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Colombia will thus become the first Latin American nation and the largest oil and coal producer to join the initiative that first emerged in 2015 when several Pacific Island leaders and NGOs raised the urgent need for an international mechanism to phase out fossil fuels.

For the undertaking of a just energy transition to cleaner fuels, Petro estimates an initial bill of 14 billion dollars, to come from governments of the developed North, multilateral organizations and international funds.

The latest summit of hope for the climate kicked off on Nov. 30 in this Arab city under the slogan “Unite. Act. Deliver” – the least successful in the history of COPs since the first one, held in Berlin in 1995.

The hopes included commitments and voluntary declarations on renewable energy and energy efficiency; agriculture, food and climate; health and climate; climate finance; refrigeration; and just transitions with a gender focus.

In addition, there were financial pledges of some 86 billion dollars, without specifying whether it is all new money, to be allocated to these issues.

Like many countries, the host of COP28, the United Arab Emirates, has had a pavilion in the so-called Green Zone, which hosts non-governmental organizations, companies and other institutions. The Emirati government bet a lot on the climate summit to deliver results, but without directly targeting the fossil fuels on which its economy depends. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

 

Billions

Given the production and exploration plans of the main hydrocarbon producing countries in the region, the magnitude of the challenge in the medium and long term is enormous.

In October, Brazil, the largest economy in the region and the 11th largest in the world, extracted 3.543 billion barrels of oil and 152 million cubic meters (m3) of gas per day.

This represented approximately two percent of the domestic economy that month.

Mexico, the region’s second largest economy, extracted 1.64 million barrels and 4.971 billion m3 of gas per day in October, equivalent to 52 million dollars in revenues.

Meanwhile, Colombia produced 780,487 barrels of oil in the first eight months of 2023 and 1,568 cubic feet per day of gas, equivalent to 12 percent of public revenues.

“We have to think about decarbonization measures. We want Latin America to be a clean energy powerhouse,” said Carvalho.

As of September, Brazil’s state-owned oil giant Petrobras was working on obtaining 9.571 billion barrels of oil equivalent, according to the Global Oil & Gas Exit List produced by the German non-governmental organization Urgewald.

This represents an excess of 94 percent above the limit set by the 2015 Paris Agreement to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s state-owned oil company Pemex is producing 1.444 billion barrels of oil equivalent, 56 percent above the threshold set by the Paris Agreement.

Finally, the public company Ecopetrol, mostly owned by the Colombian state, is working to obtain 447 million barrels, 98 percent above the Paris Agreement limit, according to Urgewald.

In addition, the cost of action against the climate crisis is far from affordable for any Latin American nation.

For example, Mexico estimated that the implementation of 35 measures, including in the power, gas and oil generation sector, would cost 137 billion dollars in 2030, but the benefits would total 295 billion dollars.

But Maurtúa says the budget question is only relative. “There is a lot of public money with which many things can be done,” complemented by international resources, he argued.

Credit: Ilmars Znotins/AFP via Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

Last month the Saeima, Latvia’s parliament, passed a package of eight laws recognising same-sex civil unions and associated rights. The new legislation came in response to a 2020 Constitutional Court ruling that established that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to the benefits and legal protections afforded to married opposite-sex couples.

Equal marriage rights are still a long way away, and civil unions are only a first step in the right direction. But in one of Europe’s most restrictive countries for LGBTQI+ rights, activists view it as a significant shift, achieved after numerous attempts over more than two decades. Anti-rights forces agree, and they’re not going to let it happen quietly. They’ve already responded with an attempt to stop the new law being adopted by campaigning for a referendum.

The breakthrough

The first registered partnership bill was submitted by the National Human Rights Office in 1999 but rejected by parliament’s Human Rights and Public Affairs Committee and never debated. Initiatives accelerated in the mid-2010s but were all rejected – the latest attempts coming in 2020 and 2022.

On 29 October 2020, a popular initiative calling for the passage of a civil union law that had gathered more than 10,000 signatures was voted down by parliament. Campaigners immediately started a new initiative for the ‘legal protection of all families’, which attracted over 23,000 signatures – but that too was rejected by parliament in December 2022.

Following the 2020 parliamentary vote, however, two court rulings catalysed change. In November 2020, the Constitutional Court found the labour law in violation of the constitution because it didn’t provide for parental leave to the non-biological parent in a same-sex relationship.

As the result of a 2006 anti-rights initiative to ban same-sex marriage, the Latvian Constitution defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The concept of family, however, isn’t explicitly defined in reference to marriage, and the court understood it more broadly as a stable relationship based on understanding and respect. It concluded that the constitution demanded protection for same-sex partners and gave parliament a deadline of 1 June 2022 to amend the law to provide a way for same-sex couples to register their relationship.

A year later, in December 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that if the deadline was missed, same-sex couples would be allowed to resort to the courts to have their relationship recognised.

Anti-rights backlash

The anti-rights reaction was quick in coming. Two months after the Constitutional Court ruling, parliament introduced a constitutional amendment that went further than ratifying the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, defining family as based on marriage.

To comply with the Constitutional Court’s ultimatum, in February 2022 the Ministry of Justice submitted a civil union bill and two months later, despite an attempted boycott to deny a quorum, parliament approved its first reading.

When it became apparent that the court’s deadline would be missed, same-sex couples started petitioning the courts for recognition as family units. The first of dozens of positive rulings was issued on 31 May 2022.

That same day a tight parliamentary vote resulted in the appointment of Latvia’s first out gay president. Momentum was building, and parliament finally passed a law to allow same-sex civil unions on 9 November 2023.

But conservative politicians managed to put the new law on hold as they seek to gather the signatures required to force a referendum that they hope will prevent its entry into force.

A long way to go

Even if it survives the challenge, the new law is no panacea. Ultimately, access to marriage is the only way to ensure LGBTQI+ couples have the same legal rights as heterosexual couples. Recognition of same-sex relationships is a step forward, but still leaves Latvia behind neighbouring Estonia, which legalised same-sex marriage in June.

If upheld, the new legislation will give registered same-sex couples some but not all the rights associated with marriage – they’ll have hospital visitation rights and tax and social security benefits, but not inheritance rights or the right to adopt children.

Beyond the legal sphere, the biggest challenge will come in influencing public attitudes, as signalled by Latvia’s scores on Equaldex’s Equality Index. This ranking combines a legal index that assesses key laws and a public opinion index that measures attitudes towards LGBTQI+ people. Latvia scores far lower for public opinion than for its laws. A 2019 Special Eurobarometer poll found that only 49 per cent of Latvians thought that LGBTQI+ people should have the same rights as heterosexuals.

The message is clear: changing laws and policies won’t be enough – and any legal victories will remain in peril unless social attitudes change.

Latvian LGBTQI+ organisations are fully aware of this, which is why they’ve worked on both fronts for many years. A centrepiece of their work to challenge prejudice is the annual Pride event, which Latvia pioneered for the Baltic region in 2005. As recounted by its organisers, Latvia’s Pride grew from 70 participants who faced 3,000 protesters in 2005 to 5,000 participants at EuroPride 2015, held in Latvia’s capital Riga, and 8,000 in the 2018 Baltic Pride, also held in Riga. Pride was repeatedly banned by Riga City Council, and it invariably faced hostile counter-protesters – but fewer each time, while the number of Pride participants has grown, boosting people’s self-confidence.

Global trends show progress towards the recognition of LGBTQI+ rights to be much stronger than regression. Latvian LGBTQI+ advocates will continue to push forward on both the policy and awareness-raising fronts. They’ll continue working to secure what they’ve already achieved while striving for more. They’re on the right course.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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Credit: UNICEF / Oleg-Popov

By Naureen Hossain
NEW YORK, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

Child poverty persists even in some of the world’s richest countries, new findings from a UNICEF report reveal.

UNICEF’s Office of Global Insight and Policy’s latest report details the prevalence of child poverty in 39 EU and OECD countries. It reveals the extent of child poverty in these countries and how these cases vary from middle-to-high-income countries. Titled Child Poverty in the Midst of Wealth, this report is the latest in the Innocenti Report Card series, which observes children’s well-being in high-income countries. Within these countries, over 69 million children were living in households earning less than 60 percent of the average national income level. Across these countries, there was a reported 8 percent decrease in poverty levels between 2014 and 2021. During this period of relative prosperity, countries took this as an opportunity to address child poverty, with varying levels of success.
Of the countries assessed for this report, Slovenia, Poland, Finland, and Denmark reported child poverty reduction rates that exceeded 30 percent. By contrast, higher-income countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and France reported a high percentage of child poverty and even saw these rates increase in recent years.

Determined by assessing and comparing child poverty rates through two metrics, the first was to compare the national income level and child poverty levels in the 39 countries. It was found that although the richer countries had higher national income levels, they did not have lower child poverty rates. This meant that a higher national income did not guarantee these countries’ ability to reduce child poverty. It only makes the contrast more striking when compared to countries such as Slovenia and Poland, which are not ranked among the wealthiest countries.

The second metric used to measure child poverty was what the report referred to as ‘non-monetary poverty’. This was determined through needs assessments where a person could not access certain services or through seeking the opinions of those living through poverty. Poverty was measured through material deprivation, the absence or lack of services and goods, or housing security.

Credit: UNICEF / Alexandru-Saru

Multiple factors could contribute to the high poverty risks in these countries. Poverty itself should be assessed from a multidimensional perspective. The report notes that since 2020, global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and disruptions in the global supply chain have upended our way of life. These global events left already-vulnerable communities, including children, at greater risk of living in poverty. Economic relief programs that were either introduced or expanded on during the early pandemic era are at risk of not being renewed or beyond their capacity to support the families that need them. The rise in living costs, from food to energy to housing, has put more pressure on low-to-middle-income families. For single-income families and particularly single-parent households, this poses a greater challenge if they live in high-income countries and if these families’ incomes are largely spent on these living costs.

It was observed that children experiencing persistent poverty, in that they have lived in poverty multiple times in their lives, are more likely to exhibit behavioral and learning difficulties. In the long term, they do not complete schooling or earn lower wages as adults.

The report also notes that certain inequalities present greater poverty risks. Children living in single-parent or one-adult households are at least three times more likely to experience poverty. It was also noted that children from minority communities were more likely to live in income poverty. These communities included racial and ethnic minorities, children whose families had migrated to their host country, indigenous and Roma children, and children with disabilities. In the EU, for instance, 37.2 percent of children whose parents were migrants lived in income poverty. This contrasts with the 15.6 percent of children whose parents were citizens of the country.

Credit: UNICEF / Ashley-Gilbertson

Among some groups, the higher risk of poverty is only one indication of the systematic disadvantages that they face, according to Gwyther Rees, Social and Economic Policy Manager at UNICEF Innocenti. Rees, who is one of the authors of the report, told IPS that the groups that need social protection are often not accessing them, in what is referred to as “non-take-up.”.

“Non-take-up of social protection affects all groups, but paradoxically, it is most prevalent among the most marginalized and, therefore, most in need of social protection,” he said. “There are multiple reasons for this, including, for example, a lack of financial inclusion (such as having a bank account), stigmatization, which discourages certain groups from accessing social protection benefits, and complex application procedures and hurdles, to name a few.”

Based on this report, it is clear that comprehensive changes need to be made in how countries tackle poverty reduction. The report recommends the broad measures that countries should take, including expanding social protections for children, improving access to essential services beyond financial support, expanding labor policies to ensure decent pay and working conditions for parents, and mitigating the inequalities in poverty risks. For children in minority groups, this will require ongoing action to make sure the barriers that prevent them from accessing these social protections are dealt with.

One noteworthy conclusion of the report is that children should be included in the discussion of poverty reduction. Children with lived experience would possess their own insights and perspectives. Just as children and adolescents have been proactive in environmental activism, there is hope that they will be encouraged to act similarly on the issue of poverty reduction. Rees told IPS that UNICEF Innocenti has been conducting consultations with children on their views on poverty in six countries, with plans to share their findings in 2024.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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How Napoli sensation Victor Osimhen went from humble beginnings in Nigeria to being crowned Africa's Footballer of the Year.

Lorenzo Díaz, son-in-law of José Antonio Casimiro, uses a solar oven to cook food. In the background, a windmill and a solar heater are other technologies in the clean energy mix that the family has installed at their Finca del Medio farm in central Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Luis Brizuela and Jorge Luis Baños
TAGUASCO, Cuba, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

The combined use of clean energies allows Finca del Medio, a farm in central Cuba, to practice a unique system of family farming production that guarantees self-sufficiency based on permaculture, agroecology and care of the environment.

For three decades, 65-year-old farmer José Antonio Casimiro and his family have been applying innovations to take advantage of the solar, wind, hydraulic and biomass potential on their 13-hectare farm in the municipality of Taguasco in the central Cuban province of Sancti Spíritus.

Casimiro and his wife Mileidy Rodríguez, also 65, settled in 1993 with their children Leidy and José Antonio – Chavely was born a year later – on their paternal grandparents’ farm and began working to reverse the deterioration of the infrastructure and soil erosion.

The family, who live on the farm except for the eldest daughter, is currently self-sufficient in rice, beans, tubers, vegetables, milk, eggs, honey, meat, fish and fruit. Of the basic foodstuffs, they only have to buy sugar and salt, and the surplus they produce is sold in surrounding areas.

They also promote education and awareness-raising on good agricultural and environmental practices, on the social networks.

At Finca del Medio, a number of daily processes are supported by clean sources such as electricity generation, lighting, water supply, irrigation and water heating, as well as cooking, dehydration and drying of foods, and baking and refrigeration of food.

The farmer commented that the farm produces the equivalent of about 20 kilowatt hours (kWh) from a combination of multiple technologies and innovations that utilize the potential of clean energy sources.

If only conventional electricity were used for their activities, it would cost them around 10,000 pesos (83 dollars) per month, he said.

Their 28 solar panels, which produce about 8 kWh, increased the power for water collection, irrigation and supply, while three solar heaters ensure hot water for domestic needs such as bathing.

The hydraulic ram uses the water pressure itself as the only energy to extract it from a dam with a capacity of 55,000 cubic meters, pipe it to a tank at the highest part of the farm, and from there the slope is used for irrigation by gravity, or to fill the animals’ water troughs.

Next to the kitchen, two fixed-dome biodigesters provide biogas, obtained from the anaerobic decomposition of animal manure, crop waste and even household sewage.

Due to a decrease in the amount of manure, only one of the biodigesters is operating, which provides about seven meters of biogas per day, enough for cooking, baking and dehydrating food.

The innovative family devised a mechanism to extract – without emptying the pond of water or stopping biogas production – from the bottom the solids used as biofertilizers, as well as hundreds of liters of effluent for fertigation (a combination of organic fertilizers and water) of the crops, by gravity.

The installation of the biodigesters, the solar panels and one of the solar heaters was supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Cosude) and the Indio Hatuey Experimental Station of Pastures and Forages through its Biomass-Cuba project, Casimiro said.

The agro-ecological innovator also highlighted the link with other scientific institutions such as the Integrated Center for Appropriate Technologies, in the central province of Camagüey, which is focused on offering solutions to the needs of water supply and environmental sanitation, and played an essential role in the installation of the hydraulic ram.

The family also has two windmills and an efficient stove that uses firewood, coconut shells and other waste to cook food, dehydrate fruits and spices, heat water and treat meats for preservation.

Casimiro is in favor of incorporating renewable energy sources into agricultural processes. But in his opinion, “More incentives, better policies and financial support are needed so that farming families have sufficient energy for their work and can improve the comfort of their homes and quality of life.”

Clean sources account for only five percent of electricity generation in this Caribbean archipelago of 11 million inhabitants.

The government considers it a matter of national security to modify the national energy mix, which is highly dependent on fossil fuel imports and hit by cyclical energy deficits.

A South African court rules the president failed to comply with the law when recognising the new king.

Zahara, known for her soulful voice and hit song Loliwe, was once named in a BBC 100 Women list.

Ivory Coast will use school children and volunteers to fill some stadiums during the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, which begins in January.

Jeffrey D. Sachs speaks at the ReWired Summit at COP28. Credit: X

By Joyce Chimbi
DUBAI, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

The United State’s contribution to the Loss and Damage Fund equals nine minutes of Pentagon spending, says Jeffrey D. Sachs, a world-renowned economist, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development.

While the Loss and Damage Fund promise was made at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, this was the first major milestone announced at COP28 in Dubai. So far, pledged contributions by various countries to the World Bank-hosted Loss and Damage Fund have reached USD 700 million. While this is a major step in the right direction, there are concerns that the fund is too small and that powerful nations are not doing enough to halt the pace and rate of climate change.

“The COP process is still a formalism, not a breakthrough.  Yes, there is a new losses and damages fund, but it is tiny—USD 700 million pledged—compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars of climate-related losses each year,” Sachs says.

Estimates are that by 2030, the total estimate of loss and damage for developing countries could be between USD 290 billion and USD 580 billion; another says it is USD 400 billion per year and rising.

Africa is on the frontlines of the devastating effects of climate change, despite accounting for the smallest share of global greenhouse gas emissions—3.8 percent.

“The US pledged a measly USD 17.5 million, which equals nine minutes of Pentagon spending. All other financing remains tiny compared to the real needs.  The US and Europe are engaged in war, not in climate financing.  The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are the only things of interest to US foreign policy,” Sachs told IPS. “John Kerry is powerless in reality.  He is there to give speeches.  He has no authority to deliver any real policies.”

He says it is crucial to stop the wars; once that is done, real diplomacy could start.

“On to COP29, in a rapidly warming world of great danger.  The first priority is to stop the wars, and that requires the world community to tell the US to stop the warmongering and to force Israel to stop the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza.  By stopping the wars, we could begin real climate diplomacy among the major fossil-fuel-producing countries.  The top three fossil-fuel-producing countries are China, the US, and Russia.  The three need to cooperate.  That depends on a fundamental change in US foreign policy.”

The Loss and Damage Fund refers to the economic, social, and cultural losses and damages caused by anthropogenic climate change to natural and human systems. It is a vehicle to deliver climate justice to communities disproportionately affected by climate change. The climate injustice lies in the fact that, despite a low carbon footprint, developing countries are facing the full force of climatic changes, slowly wiping out their biodiversity and destroying lives, livelihoods, and cultural heritage.

Climate change is the most serious threat facing culture today. Globally, World Heritage properties are bearing the brunt of climate change, from increasing ocean acidification, desertification, droughts, floods, and fires related to rising temperatures. Climate change is slowly eradicating the African coast and its cultural heritage; 20 percent of Africa’s heritage sites are in danger.

Communities uprooted by climate-induced disasters are losing their ways of life, including the preservation of traditions for future generations. This is the cultural cost of climate change for many vulnerable communities, particularly indigenous people, who are currently suffering greatly from severe and drastic changes in weather patterns.

Vulnerable developing nations face greater risk from climate change and lack the funds to recover from climate events that have become increasingly frequent and more severe. While some losses from climate-induced disasters are impossible to recover from, such as loss of life, the fund is expected to help build better infrastructure after a severe climatic event.

While there is wide applause for the loss and damage fund, there is also criticism that the fund’s contributions at COP28 thus far cover less than 0.2 percent of climate-induced losses in developing countries. Additionally, powerful nations are reluctant to address critical issues such as phasing out fossil fuels that could significantly slow down climate change, giving Africa and other vulnerable nations in the global South much-needed relief.

“The United States political class is not serious. China is more interested.  Only an end to the wars, followed by serious negotiations among the major fossil-fuel producers, will work. The top 10 fossil fuel producers are: China, US, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Australia, Canada, Iran, and Iraq. These 10 countries need to make serious, cooperative, and coordinated plans to phase out their production. They have not yet begun to hold such talks. In the meantime, funding for Africa is also seriously neglected,” Sachs says.

To reaffirm the 1.5°C-aligned energy transition, COP28 set out to firm up a number of ambitious goals, such as tripling global renewable energy generation capacity by 2030, doubling annual energy efficiency improvements by 2030, and an orderly decline in fossil fuel use demand by 2030, starting with no new coal plants.

The Summit further sought commitment from the oil and gas industry to align their strategies and investment portfolios with 1.5°C, with a focus on a 75 percent reduction in methane emissions by 2030. And financing mechanisms for a major scaling-up of clean energy investment in emerging and developing economies.

However, on Monday, December 11, 2023, the draft text of the agreement excluded the words “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels, instead only promising to reduce oil and gas, and several countries, including Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, and Japan, said they would not sign what would essentially be “death certificates for many small island states.”

The first-ever global stocktake, released in October 2023 ahead of the Dubai Summit, revealed that the world is not on track to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. It is the first time that a UN climate summit has surveyed progress towards achieving the goals agreed in 2015, following the landmark Paris COP.

The stocktake report is akin to an inventory, as it looked at everything related to where the world stands on climate action and support. It provides a critical turning point. At COP28, UN member states will negotiate their response to the stocktake’s findings, looking at the state of planet Earth, and chart the best course for the survival of both planet and humankind.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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In 2013, a new treaty, the Minamata Convention on Mercury, was adopted by a global community under the auspices of UNEP. The Convention is named after Minamata Bay in Japan to remember the lessons of the tragic health damage by industrial mercury pollution in the 1950s and 1960s. The aim of the treaty is to protect the environment and the human health from anthropogenic emissions and releases of the toxic heavy metal. It regulates the entire life cycle of mercury – its supply, trade, use, emissions, releases, storage, and the management of waste and contaminated sites.

By Charlie Brown
WASHINGTON, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

As it strives to be the prototype environmental treaty of this era, the Minamata Convention on Mercury continues its razor-like focus on ending all major uses of mercury. Emerging as the force leading the charge is the Global South, particularly the Africa Region, whose proposals led to hard-charging changes addressing dental amalgam, mercury-based skin creams, and fluorescent lights.

At the Fifth Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention (“COP5”), concluding in Geneva on 3 November, countries debated the African Amalgam Amendment, calling for the phase out of amalgam. The Africa region, led by Roger Baro, the Environment Minister of Burkina Faso, strategically built alliances beforehand, starting with the crucial 27-nation European Union.

Civil society was inspired watching one delegate after another rising to support the phase out of mercury in dentistry: from West Asia (Saudi Arabia, Jordan) to South Asia (Pakistan) and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Vietnam), from Oceania (Australia, Tuvalu) to South America (Argentina) and non-E.U. Europe (Norway, Switzerland).

But several dissenters, while agreeing action is needed, were not yet amenable to a phase out date. Emerging therefore was the worldwide consensus to take three giant leaps toward mercury-free dentistry:

• For the first time, the treaty recognizes that countries can phase out amalgam – and more and more have already succeeded!
• The nations amended the treaty to add a new requirement: those countries that have “not yet phased out dental amalgam” must submit an action plan or a report on their progress.
• Most exciting of all, the nations inserted into the treaty, in brackets, a phase-out date for amalgam – an action that is not legally binding but which automatically agendizes a debate and a vote, at COP6 in 2025, on whether and when to phase out amalgam.

The Africa Region led the movement to end the use of two other mercury products, gaining phase-out dates in the Minamata Convention for mercury in skin cream (UN Convention Agrees to Phase Mercury Out of Cosmetics by 2025 – Zero Mercury) and for all fluorescent light bulbs (https://www.clasp.ngo/updates/cop5-decision/).

Africans, both government and civil society, are grimly determined to protect its people from mercury exposure and not to let its continent be made a dumping ground for toxic products, including amalgam.

In the national capitals, the march to mercury-free dentistry continues unabated. In October, Gabon decided amalgam is no longer allowed – and huge credit here goes to Serge Molly of Libreville, a long-time leader at the Minamata Convention.

This month the European Parliament and the Council of Europe debate when—not if—to phase out amalgam in all 27 member states (a dozen already have). Other Parties are ending amalgam piecemeal . . . banning its use in children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers . . . or in the military . . . or in government programs.

No consumer or parent these days wants amalgam; no one with the power to choose accepts a mercury implant in the mouth. Where choice reigns—the private sector—amalgam use is ending.

Well-ensconced inside government bureaucracies, the mercury lobby imposes amalgam outrageously on powerless consumers—the indigenous, the poor, the racial minorities, the immigrants, the institutionalized, the privates in the army and the seamen in the navy.

Unchecked by their superiors, the condemnable chief dental officers of the U.S. and Canada (1) ignore their legal duty to comply with the Minamata Convention Children’s Amendment, (2) violate their Hippocratic Oath daily by outright defiance of the recommendations against use by both Health Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and (3) maintain mercury-toxic workplaces for dental workers while they sit protected from mercury exposure in their plush government bureaus.

The great Minamata Convention had its genesis from studies showing mercury in the Arctic, drifting there via air or waterways, was harming indigenous peoples. In stark defiance of the spirit of Minamata, Health Canada dentists fly planeloads of mercury fillings daily into the Arctic and sub-Arctic, leaving the dental mercury behind to pollute the Tribal Lands.

Equally ignominiously, the U.S. Indian Health Service has ignored for seven years the resolution from the National Congress of American Indians to cease amalgam use on Tribal Lands.

To the profound disappointment of the environmental community, Canada’s Environment & Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault MP—despite his superb résumé fighting toxins while an NGO leader—does nothing to reduce amalgam use by Health Canada, even though his ministry is the lead at Minamata.

It is time for Minister Guilbault to condemn this wholesale usage of mercury fillings that is poisoning tribal lands. Inaction by ECC Canada portends another Grassy Narrows scandal in the making.

Rather than apply President Biden’s splendid priority of environmental justice to the U.S. Public Health Service, Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine opts for physician-to-dentist professional courtesy—giving carte blanche to the pro-mercury chief dental officers to pollute Tribal lands, prisons, Army forts, Navy bases, and minority-dominated inner cities.

By the stroke of a pen, the 4-star Admiral could order the dentists under her command at the Public Health Service to end amalgam use—and the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry calls on her to do so now.

Dentists still implanting this colonial-era primitive device do so not because they need to; but because they want to. Inaction in Ottawa and Washington must end; these two federal governments are the major reason that North American oral health care remains two-tiered: choice for the middle class and mercury for the powerless.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is President, World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry

Liane Schalatek joins demonstrators at COP28. After the initial euphoria that accompanied the announcement, questions are being asked about how it will operate and how money will be disbursed. Credit: X

By Stella Paul
DUBAI, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

On November 30, the first day of COP28, the much-awaited Loss and Damage Fund—a landmark decision to compensate the world’s most climate-affected and climate-vulnerable people—was declared operational. Announcing the decision, COP28 President Dr Sultan Al Jaber said, ‘the fact that we have been able to achieve such a significant milestone on the first day of this COP is unprecedented. This is historic.”

Formed first at the 27th Conference of the Parties held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2022, the Loss and Damage Fund has been demanded for several years by climate action advocates and countries seeking financial compensation for people who are most adversely affected by climate change. Different contributors have so far pledged about $700 million to the fund.

The announcement by Al Jaber on November 30 was, as expected, overwhelmingly welcomed by parties and delegates. However, as the conference nears its conclusion, the focus has now shifted towards its implementation, and many participants are expressing their general lack of clarity on the exact next steps.

“We know that the World Bank is going to manage it, and there will be a board for basic assessment. But the money that has come in so far is very small. How this money then goes to small CSOs (civil society organizations) and women-led organizations is anyone’s guess,” says Dilruba Haider, who leads the Women’s Climate Change, Disaster Risk Reduction, and Humanitarian Portfolio in Bangladesh, one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world.

The Loss and Damage Fund: A Brief History

Loss and damage refer to the negative consequences that arise from the unavoidable risks of climate change, like rising sea levels, prolonged heatwaves, desertification, the acidification of the sea, and extreme events such as bushfires, species extinctions, and crop failures. As the climate crisis unfolds, these events will happen more and more frequently, and the consequences will become more severe.

For example, in 2022, Pakistan witnessed severe flooding, now known as the ‘super flood,’ which caused damage amounting to US$30 billion. But as a nation, Pakistan only emits less than 1 percent of global emissions. Combined with Bangladesh, another highly impacted country in South Asia, in 2022 alone, climate change caused losses worth approximately USD 36 billion and the displacement of about 50 million individuals.

The core thought behind the Loss and Damage Fund is that it is necessary to tackle the gaps that current climate finance institutions such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF) do not fill. The combined adaptation and mitigation finance flows in 2020 were USD 17 billion short of the total USD 100 billion pledged to developing countries. Despite the US’s current pledge of USD 1 billion, the need has since multiplied due to the rise in losses and damages brought on by numerous disasters, making USD 100 billion woefully insufficient.

Access Mechanism: What’s Clear, What’s Not

Liane Schalatek is the Associate Director of Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung in Washington, DC, where she spearheads the foundation’s work on climate finance. Schalatek has been tracking the flow of finance into the GCF for years and is also actively following the developments at the Loss and Damage Fund since its inception.

Schalatek, who has created an infographic to explain the basic facts and characteristics of the fund, says that, like the Green Climate Fund, contributions to the Loss and Damage Fund are also voluntary and without a strict timeline for fulfilling the pledges. The World Bank will be the main facilitator of the fund, but a 26-member board will be constituted to govern it. Of them, 14 members will be from developing countries, and the members will have a rotational tenure. The remaining 12 members will be from developed countries.

The first meeting of the board, according to the COP28 document, is expected to be held in January 2024, while three meetings of the board are expected to be held before the next COP.

It is also known that the Loss and Damage Fund will have multiple modalities, meaning that the funding will be given in different ways. For example, some money may be going through the organizations that are already accredited for managing climate finance; some money may be going to the national governments; and others, like NGOs, may also receive some. So far, the developing countries are demanding that the money be given to their governments, Schalatek says.

What Most-Affected Countries Want

Mirza Shawkat Ali is one of the most senior and experienced members of the Bangladesh delegation and has represented his country at multiple COPs. Ali says that while the concept of giving communities direct access to the fund is noble, from an operational perspective, it would be far easier if the funding was channeled through the national government. The reason, explains Ali, is that it could be extremely difficult to track the flow of the fund and also coordinate with various organizations in a timely manner unless detailed information is not shared in a timely manner.

“The biggest problem we could face is while reporting to the UN on the progress achieved with the fund that has been received. How can we do that if we don’t know the details of how and how much of the fund is coming and to whom it is coming?” Ali asks.

“For us, it would be both easier and more realistic if the government received the fund. We have the infrastructure that is needed to receive, disburse, and utilize the fund. We can also track and report back to the funder,” Ali says.

Haider of UN Women appears to agree with Ali: “I think the government could take some initiatives. If the government could access the funding, it could provide some budgeted support. And if the government then comes with some policies, some directives, selection criteria, and prioritization to support women-led initiatives, then that might be one way.”

María Elena Hermelinda Lezama Espinosa, Governor of Quintana Roo Province, Mexico, also supports the channeling of loss and damage funding through the government.

“We have already been implementing so many programs to help local communities overcome climate change impacts, especially in the areas of water and land. We will be happy to receive this fund to advance our work further,” she says.

From a different perspective, many civil society leaders are strongly advocating for direct access to the fund for extremely vulnerable and highly affected communities.

Anika Schroeder, Climate Policy Officer at Germany-based environmental organization Miseroer, who works with climate-affected communities globally, including Indonesia and Nepal, says that climate vulnerabilities are also about human rights, and giving climate-vulnerable groups and communities access to the Loss and Damage Fund is important to ensure their basic human rights.

A complex and time-consuming mechanism of accessing the fund could result in the already vulnerable people suffering more, which would then mean greater violations of their human rights, Schroeder argues.

“People think that giving one-time aid support to a disaster-hit community is enough, but that is not right; the same community will keep facing more disasters. And every time they are hit, they cannot go to school, they do not have a house, and they do not have water, so it’s about meeting their basic human rights. If this is not integrated while designing the funding access, then it will not be taken seriously,” Schroeder says.

The Devil Lies in the Details

However, Schalatek reminds us that although the fund mentions direct access for affected communities (such as neighborhood non-governmental organizations), the board will likely only approve a small portion of it. In fact, at present, the money that has been contributed is for the setting up of access mechanisms such as the formation of the board, the selection of the board members, deciding the location of the fund, and other infrastructural details.

“In the jubilations of the approval of the Loss and Damage Fund, people are forgetting that the contributions that have come so far are meant for operationalizing the fund, meaning getting the system and infrastructure in place, and not really for providing to the countries right away. For that, we need more pledges to be made and fulfilled,” Schalatek says. “Will the Loss and Damage Fund go directly to small community organizations? No, we don’t have those commitments right now because none of the windows and the substructures are set up yet; the board will decide on that,” she adds.

Developments on the Green Climate Fund

The first replenishment of the fund—$100 billion—is almost complete, except for the USD 1 billion from the United States that is yet to come. The 2nd replenishment has so far seen pledges of 12.8 billion, of which USD 3.3 billion was announced since the COP28 started, according to a press statement from the Green Climate Fund.

However, there is no fixed timeframe for these pledges to be fulfilled, and contributing countries can give their shares of the money anytime between January 2024 and the end of 2027. “A pledge is as good as a fulfilled commitment, so we will know more about the status of the new pledges once we see the signed contribution agreements from those who are pledging them,” Schalatek says.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Joshua Amponsem, co-director of the Youth Climate Justice Fund, believes trusting those in the frontlines of climate change with agency and decision-making is pivotal for climate justice. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Cecilia Russell
DUBAI, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

During his childhood, Joshua Amponsem spent a lot of time in his dry rural community collecting water from the streams. “It was normal,” the co-director of the Youth Climate Justice Fund says in an interview on the sidelines of COP28. “We didn’t talk about climate change.”

Later, as a student at a university in Ghana, it was his love of the sea—this massive expanse of water he never experienced as a child—that led him to environmental youth activism. He would walk on the beach in awe of the sea but also notice the sand mining, plastic pollution, and mangrove deforestation.

In the classroom, Amponsem had been absorbing a lot of theory about coastal zone management and ecosystem management but saw little application of these concepts outside the university.

“So, for me, this was a dilemma,” he says, commenting to his professor, ‘it seems that we have a lot of solutions. But yet, when I leave, when I look outside, the communities are really struggling, and there are all these issues’.”

The professor told me that it was his “responsibility as a tutor to give us the exposure, the insight, and the knowledge, and it is our role as students to then figure out all what to do with those insights and those pieces of information.”

For Amponsem, this was a turning point. That day, he mobilized a group of students and started the Green Africa Youth Organization.

Amponsem moved from grassroots activism to influencing policymaking in the climate change arena and acknowledges the difficulties.

“It’s difficult because, on one hand, I’m working with a population that needs jobs. They want their start-ups to thrive; they will need access to energy in abundance so they can do the things that they want to do,” he says, and again pointing to a dilemma, there is a need to get people access to energy quickly to break the cycle of poverty, yet sustainably, to not break the planet.

“If you look at the energy sector (you ask), do you go the efficient way in the short term, get people access to energy so they can run their company, their businesses get income, and get out of poverty, or do you go the sustainable route?” he says.

To take the sustainable route, he says he needs to go on the “international stage and really fight the good fight to get the funding that is needed to go to the sustainable route… I see it is trying to find that fine balance to the just transition.”

“For many communities, it is expensive to go the renewable, sustainable route. It’s expensive for some communities to even consider a solar rooftop, even when there are subsidies available. The community also may not benefit from the jobs in installing the systems; a foreign company may come in and install the systems.

“That’s not a just transition.”

Crucial Policy Conversation

“The policy conversation is really around trying to look at the long-term benefits of just transitioning. And how do we do it in a way that we can retain as much as possible benefit to our local communities, which means that it is not enough to just put solar on the roof of houses and have them have access to energy? It is not enough to just say, ‘Oh! We’ve increased our energy mix to 20 percent renewables.

“We need to go the extra mile to ask the question of who is doing those projects and who is being contracted to do this work. Who is being trained to do the maintenance? Who has been trained to really do this on the ground? And have those local people, who have been paid directly to do this, been trained to take this forward and scale it? That is super essential.”

Amponsem admits it’s a hard sell.

“You don’t necessarily have absolute control or the money to make a just transition. You have an agreement with a multilateral bank or development bank that sets conditions for how projects are supposed to roll out.”

On the other hand, as a developing country’s government, you want the money to come in, and you know that it would be better to do the development sustainably, but the money often comes with strings.

“Sometimes you hear the word ‘technical’ and the phrase ‘we need to build technical capacity,’ and they need ‘technical assistance.’ And it ends up just bringing in a bunch of people from somewhere to do the work that, actually, local people could be trained to do.”

“I think, as the youth movement, being able to constantly remind policymakers of the role of equity and justice in developments in the green transition is super important.”

Amponsem says he also works with the Climate Justice Fund. Philanthropic entities also “constantly need reminding on issues of equity and justice when providing support directly to governments.”

It shouldn’t be solely focused on reducing emissions.

“Putting money in the hands of local communities is one of the most powerful things that you can do. It builds trust and confidence and allows local companies to realize that they have the agency to actually drive their own growth. And I think that when that is not done, and when it is external entities coming in, you really disempower communities.”

Cyclone Kenneth hit the Macomia district in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, earlier in 2023. Credit: IPS/OCHA/Saviano Abreu

Weather-Resilient Housing

Amponsem refers back to remarks he made earlier in the conference during the Open Society Foundations-facilitated session on ‘Financing for Resilience: Overcoming Hurdles to Catalyze Regional Action and Locally-led Adaptation and Loss and Damage Finance,’ during which he questioned why weather-resilient housing in the Mozambican coastal region was not yet a reality.

Tropical cyclones have been battering this area with increasing ferocity, including Idai in 2019, which caused a humanitarian crisis in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi and left more than 1,500 people dead, and Cyclone Freddy more recently, which reportedly became the longest-lived tropical cyclone ever observed and made landfall three times.

He spent time interviewing people impacted by the cyclones in 2020, and the interviews were emotional.

“I was in tears. I spoke to teachers who had to take responsibility for the kids in their class. Trying to keep them keeping their energy up while their parents are lost and missing.”

There was one interviewee who built a classroom for the children after Cyclone Idai, and a year later it was destroyed again. Another person built a house, only to have it wrecked by flooding the next year. So, the question, says Amponsem, is: “How do we invest in “preparedness in a way that people do not have to suffer the losses?”

“We can’t stop the cycle (of climate change-induced weather) at the moment, but we can work on the exposure and the vulnerability that are attached to the hazard. But this is not being done!”

There are issues with accessibility—getting access to funding—and when it comes, it doesn’t flow to the grassroots level.

“That is what we try to do with the new Climate Justice Fund: work with micro-funders that can actually help those countries,” he says, explaining that in Mozambique, they’re very excited to work on adaptation projects dealing with building climate-resilient houses. The project is in its early stages, and they are consulting with architects and construction companies to ensure that once built, they can survive the storms.

Preparedness and Prevention

“We need to invest in preparedness and prevention because it does save lives,” he comments, saying that he admires the resilience of people.

“Every single year, the cyclone comes, and yet the community has hope that we can solve this crisis. They have hope that we can do this, and they are working with us to make sure that we really break those barriers of access to funding, access to decision-making spaces, and access to the required infrastructure that will allow them to be able to build the adaptive capacity and resilience towards these.”

Amponsem says he particularly admires the women in Africa.

“I always say that the real hustlers in this world are African women and mothers,” explaining the lengths his mother would go to ensure her family was fed and educated. Yet the funding for them isn’t there. Likewise with minorities and Indigenous people. He speaks about a disconnect in the climate debates and how, when we speak about climate finance, we often speak about climate indicators.

“This is where we have the challenge because we need to realize that we are living in a world where economics or social justice issues and environmental justice issues are just as important.”

Amponsem is clear; he says the climate conversation needs to include those feeling its impact.

“If we cannot trust the frontline communities with agency, with decision-making, and with resources, then I think we’ve gotten it wrong.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

Joshua Amponsem, co-director of the Youth Climate Justice Fund, believes it is time to ensure climate finance and social justice issues are elevated to the top of the agenda and negotiations at COP28.
 

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