Africa

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Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.

By Antonio Guterres
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 30 2023 (IPS)

Resolution 2712 was approved in a context of widespread death and wholesale destruction unleashed by the conflict in Gaza and Israel.

According to Israeli authorities, more than 1,200 people were killed — including 33 children — and thousands were injured in the abhorrent acts of terror by Hamas on 7 October. Some 250 people were also abducted, including 34 children.

There are also numerous accounts of sexual violence during the attacks that must be vigorously investigated and prosecuted. Gender-based violence must be condemned. Anytime. Anywhere.

According to the de facto authorities, more than 14,000 people have been killed since the start of the Israeli military operations in Gaza. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have also been injured, with many more missing. In Gaza, more than two-thirds of those killed are reported to be children and women.

In a matter of weeks, a far greater number of children have been killed by Israeli military operations in Gaza than the total number of children killed during any individual year, by any party to a conflict since I have been Secretary-General – as clearly indicated in the annual reports on Children and Armed Conflict that I have submitted to the Council.

Over the past few days, the people of the Occupied Palestine Territory and Israel have finally seen a glimmer of hope and humanity in so much darkness.
It is deeply moving to see civilians finally having a respite from the bombardments, families reunited, and lifesaving aid increasing.

Resolution 2712 “demands that all parties comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, notably with regard to the protection of civilians, especially children.”

It is clear that before the pause, we witnessed serious violations. Beyond the many civilians killed and wounded that I spoke of, eighty percent of Gaza’s people have now been forced from their homes.

This growing population is being pushed towards an ever-smaller area of southern Gaza. And, of course, nowhere is safe in Gaza. Meanwhile, an estimated 45 percent of all homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.

The nature and scale of death and destruction are characteristic of the use of wide-area explosive weapons in populated areas, with a significant impact on civilians.

At the same time, rocket attacks on population centres in Israel by Hamas and other groups have continued – along with allegations of the use of human shields This is also inconsistent with international humanitarian law obligations.

I want to stress the inviolability of United Nations facilities which today are sheltering more than one million civilians seeking protection under the UN flag.

UNRWA shares the coordinates of all its facilities across the Gaza Strip with all parties to the conflict. The agency has verified 104 incidents that have impacted 82 UNRWA installations – 24 of which happened since the adoption of the resolution.

A total of 218 internally displaced people sheltering in UNRWA schools have reportedly been killed and at least 894 injured. In addition, it is with immense sadness and pain that I report that since the beginning of the hostilities, 111 members of our UN family have been killed in Gaza.

This represents the largest loss of personnel in the history of our organization. Let me put it plainly: Civilians – including United Nations personnel – must be protected.

Civilian objects – including hospitals – must be protected.

UN facilities must not be hit. International humanitarian law must be respected by all parties to the conflict at all times.

Security Council resolution 2712 calls “for urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip …to enable …full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access.”

I welcome the arrangement reached by Israel and Hamas – with the assistance of the governments of Qatar, Egypt and the United States. We are working to maximize the positive potential of this arrangement on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

The pause has enabled us to enhance the delivery of aid into and across Gaza. For example, for the first time since 7 October, an inter-agency convoy delivered food, water, medical supplies, and shelter items to northern Gaza – specifically to four UNRWA shelters in Jabalia camp.

Prior to this, minimal or no assistance had reached these locations – even as tens of thousands of people had crowded there for shelter. Also, for the first time, supplies of cooking gas entered Gaza where people waited in lines that extended for two kilometres.

In the south, where the needs are dire, UN agencies and partners have increased both the amount of aid delivered, and the number of locations reached.

I express my appreciation to the Government of Egypt for their contribution in making this assistance possible. But the level of aid to Palestinians in Gaza remains completely inadequate to meet the huge needs of more than two million people.

And although the total volume of fuel allowed into Gaza has also increased, it remains utterly insufficient to sustain basic operations. Civilians in Gaza need a continuous flow of life-saving humanitarian aid and fuel into and across the area.

Safe and unimpeded humanitarian access to all those in need is critical. Humanitarian partners carried out several medical evacuations from north to south Gaza, including to transport dozens of premature babies as well as spinal and dialysis patients from Shifa and Al-Ahli Anglican hospitals.

Several critically ill patients have also been evacuated for treatment in Egypt. Hospitals across Gaza lack the basic supplies, staff and fuel to deliver primary health care at the scale needed, let alone safely treat urgent cases.

The medical system has broken down under the heavy caseload, acute shortages, and the impact of hostilities.

Security Council resolution 2712 calls for “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups.” The arrangement announced on 22 November has so far led to the release, over 5 days, of 60 hostages – 29 women, 31 children – held by Hamas and other groups since 7 October.

Outside the arrangement during the same period, another 21 hostages were released.
This is a welcome start. But as I have been saying from day one, all hostages must be released immediately and unconditionally.

Until then, they must be treated humanely and the International Committee of the Red Cross must be allowed to visit them. The arrangement also saw the release of 180 Palestinian prisoners and detainees from Israeli jails, mostly women and children.

Security Council resolution 2712 “calls on all parties to refrain from depriving the civilian population in the Gaza Strip of basic services and humanitarian assistance indispensable to their survival, consistent with international humanitarian law.”

Much, much more is required to begin to address human needs in Gaza. Water and electricity services must be fully restored. Food systems have collapsed and hunger is spreading, particularly in the north.

Sanitary conditions in shelters are appalling, with few toilets and sewage flooding, posing a serious threat to public health. Children, pregnant women, older people and those with weakened immune systems are at greatest risk.

Gaza needs an immediate and sustained increase in humanitarian aid including food, water, fuel, blankets, medicines and healthcare supplies. It is important to recognize that the Rafah border crossing does not have enough capacity, especially taking into account the slow pace of security procedures.

That is why we have been urging the opening of other crossings, including Kerem Shalom, and the streamlining of inspection mechanisms to allow for the necessary increase of lifesaving aid.

But humanitarian aid alone will not be sufficient. We also need the private sector to bring in critical basic commodities to replenish completely depleted shops in Gaza.

Finally, Security Council Resolution 2712 “underscores the importance of coordination, humanitarian notification, and deconfliction mechanisms, to protect all medical and humanitarian staff, vehicles, including ambulances, humanitarian sites, and critical infrastructure, including UN facilities.”

A humanitarian notification system is now in place, and is being constantly reviewed and enhanced, including through plans for additional civil-military experts to support coordination.

I welcome the adoption of resolution 2712 – but its implementation by the parties matters most. In accordance with the resolution, I will revert to the President of the Security Council with a set of options on effectively monitoring the implementation of the resolution.

I have already established a working group composed of the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, the Department of Peace Operations, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the Office of Legal Affairs to urgently prepare proposals in this regard.

So far it is clear that implementation has been only partial at best, and is woefully insufficient. Ultimately, we know that the measure of success will not be the number of trucks dispatched or the tons of supplies delivered – as important as these are.

Success will be measured in lives that are saved, suffering that is ended, and hope and dignity that is restored. The people of Gaza are in the midst of an epic humanitarian catastrophe before the eyes of the world.

We must not look away. Intense negotiations are taking place to prolong the truce – which we strongly welcome — but we believe we need a true humanitarian ceasefire.

And we must ensure the people of the region finally have a horizon of hope – by moving in a determined and irreversible way toward establishing a two-State solution, on the basis of United Nations resolutions and international law, with Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace and security.

Failure will condemn Palestinians, Israelis, the region and the world, to a never-ending cycle of death and destruction.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations
 
Remarks to the UN Security Council on the implementation of resolution 2712 on the Middle East, 29 November 2023

Luis Aviles, standing on a segment of the rock embankment that protects riverbank communities from the overflow of the Lempa River in southern El Salvador, points to the part of the river that makes a turn in its course and hits the levee hard, undermining it. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPSLuis Aviles, standing on a segment of the rock embankment that protects riverbank communities from the overflow of the Lempa River in southern El Salvador, points to the part of the river that makes a turn in its course and hits the levee hard, undermining it. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
TECOLUCA, El Salvador, Nov 30 2023 (IPS)

For decades, poor fishing and farming communities in southern El Salvador have paid the price for the electricity generated by one of the country’s five dams, as constant and sometimes extreme rains cause the reservoir to release water that ends up flooding the low-lying area where the families live.

"Certainly there is climate injustice: richer people or sectors of the country, who live in urban areas, benefit more from energy, while poor families, who live on the banks of the rivers, take the hit." -- Ricardo Navarro
Dozens of communities located in the Bajo Lempa area in southern El Salvador suffer year after year from flooding during the May to November rainy season, when the river overflows its banks and floods corn, beans, and other crops, as well as affecting fishing and other livelihoods.

The ecoregion is the lower stretch of the Lempa River basin, which runs through three Central American countries: it originates in Guatemala, crosses part of Honduras, and then enters El Salvador, where it meanders from the north until flowing into the Pacific Ocean in the south of the country.

The Lempa River basin covers 18,240 square kilometers, shared with Honduras (30 percent) and Guatemala (14 percent). In El Salvador, it stretches across slightly more than half of the territory of just over 21,000 square kilometers.

An estimated 5,000 families live in the 900-square-kilometer Bajo Lempa area. They are dedicated to subsistence farming and fishing and non-intensive cattle ranching, although there are also some families from other regions of the country, with more money, who have acquired land to grow sugar cane.

 

Celina Menjívar (R), a resident of San Bartolo, one of the ten settlements located in the Bajo Lempa area near the mouth of the river on the Pacific Ocean, participates in a neighborhood meeting. She makes the case that the Salvadoran government ought to reimburse local families for the crops they lost as a result of flooding from an upstream dam. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“In the 32 years that I have lived here, I have been affected just like the rest by many floods,” Celina Menjívar told IPS. She is a farmer in San Bartolo, one of the settlements or communities of Bajo Lempa.

“I plant corn, sesame, and cushaw squash (Cucurbita argyrosperma) on a small family plot, but when the floods come, everything is lost, and in the end we are left with nothing,” said Menjívar, 41.

In addition to subsistence farming, a group of some 50 families set up a cooperative for the organic production of cashew nuts, which they were able to export to the United States, France, and the United Kingdom after achieving certification as organic producers.

An aerial view of the state-owned 15 de Septiembre Hydroelectric Power Plant, the largest in El Salvador. The reservoir discharges when rainfall exceeds its storage capacity, causing the Lempa River to overflow and flood dozens of farming and fishing communities in the Bajo Lempa area. Credit: CEL

But rising production costs and competition from cheaper prices, especially from India, have hampered exports in the last two years. The cooperative is therefore looking to promote new products, such as pistachios and peanuts.

“We have made an effort to ensure that the farmers can at least sell their cashew seeds” on the domestic market, the cooperative’s administrative coordinator, Brenda Cerén, told IPS.

Impact on the Most Vulnerable

Most of the residents of Bajo Lempa were part of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas, who settled on the riverbanks after receiving land in the region as part of the demobilization process at the end of the civil war in 1992.

El Salvador’s bloody civil war (1980–1992) left some 75,000 people dead and 8,000 missing in a country that currently has 7.6 million inhabitants.

“Most of the flooding is not due to the rains per se, but to the discharges from the reservoir,” said Menjívar, referring to the state-owned 15 de Septiembre hydroelectric plant, the country’s largest, located upstream between the departments of San Vicente and Usulután, in central El Salvador.

 

Manuel Mejía is one of the former guerrilla fighters who received a hectare of land in Bajo Lempa in southern El Salvador, to settle there as part of the demobilization process of the rebel forces at the end of the 12-year Salvadoran civil war in 1992. Now, when the area is flooded by the overflowing river, he says everything is lost, even household goods. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Another resident of San Bartolo, Manuel Mejía, added: “When there are floods here, everything is lost: crops, livestock, even household goods, everything.”

Mejía, a 77-year-old former guerrilla fighter, told IPS that this year’s rainy season did not produce flooding because the storms began late, and this meant that the drainage channels, located along the road leading to the area, did not fill up and were able to handle the rainfall at the end of the rainy season in November.

Increasingly unpredictable and extreme rainfall periods, due to climate change, generate intense storms in short periods of time, and, as a consequence, the reservoir’s capacity is easily exceeded and water releases are authorized.

Hence, the poor families of Bajo Lempa pay the cost of the dam’s ability to generate electricity for other parts of the country, including those that generate the most income, such as industrial groups and real estate consortiums, whose business activities are among those that have the greatest impact on the environment.

 

Part of the levee that has been undermined by the force of the waters of the Lempa River, near the Rancho Grande community in the Bajo Lempa, a coastal ecoregion located in the municipality of Tecoluca in southern El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

This situation falls under the category of climate justice, or, actually, climate injustice: vulnerable groups are more heavily impacted by extreme weather events fomented by others, whether at the national or global level.

“Certainly there is climate injustice: richer people or sectors of the country, who live in urban areas, benefit more from energy, while poor families, who live on the banks of the rivers, take the hit,” environmentalist Ricardo Navarro, director of the Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology, told IPS.

The Center is a local affiliate of the international NGO Friends of the Earth.

A light rain that falls for two or three days generates releases from the dam and the overflowing of the Lempa River, which floods the settlements. But of course, the most tragic floods have been caused by tropical storms or hurricanes, such as Hurricane Mitch in October 1998.

 

The Lempa River flows through three Central American countries: it originates in Guatemala, crosses part of Honduras, and then enters El Salvador, where it meanders from the north until it flows into the Pacific Ocean in the south of the country. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Mitch, a category 5 hurricane, the most lethal, caused such heavy rains that the hydroelectric dam filled in a matter of 36 hours and went from discharging 500 cubic meters per second to 11,500 cubic meters per second, according to a study on flooding in the Lower Lempa.

“During Mitch, I lost 40 heads of cattle; they drowned,” Luis Avilés, a farmer from the Taura community, told IPS.

“Where we live is like living with a chronic illness; year after year we have this anxiety: wondering whether it will flood a lot this year, if I’ll lose my crops, not knowing whether to plant or not,” said Avilés, 53.

 

The Lempa River flows through three Central American countries: it originates in Guatemala, crosses part of Honduras, and then enters El Salvador, where it meanders from the north until it flows into the Pacific Ocean in the south of the country. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Embankment on the Verge of Collapse

A crucial issue in the impact of the floods is the damage that has been suffered over the years to the levee built with Japanese aid funds years ago and which has not been repaired since then, residents of Bajo Lempa told IPS.

The elevation made of different materials on the river bank to contain the overflowing waters runs 18 kilometers along the right bank of the river, from the Cañada Arenera community, in the municipality of San Nicolás Lempa, to the community of La Pita, near the river’s mouth.

“We are in the most vulnerable area of the riverbank, the one that receives the strongest impact of the Lempa, because up there it makes a turn and then it flows down with force,” said Avilés, standing on the damaged infrastructure: a wall of rocks tied together with wire, about four meters higher than the level of the river.

 

Drainage ditches can be seen alongside the road leading to Bajo Lempa in southern El Salvador, to drain the water that accumulates with the rains and floods that occur almost every year in this coastal region of El Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

This segment of the five-kilometer-long levee is indeed the most damaged; the flow of the river has been undermining the base of the wall more and more.

“This wall protects the communities of Santa Marta, San Bartolo, Rancho Grande, Taura, Puerto Nuevo, Naranjo, and La Pita, and if it were to collapse, it would be a great tragedy,” said Avilés, also a former guerrilla fighter.

The deterioration of the stone embankment is clearly visible along its five-kilometer length.

 

The production of cooking bananas is one of the most profitable in the coastal area known as Bajo Lempa, although floods frequently swamp crops and ruin the harvests on family farms. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The rest of the dike is not a stone wall but an earthen elevation about two meters high, and it is also damaged.

The repair and maintenance of the embankment is one of the main demands of the inhabitants of Bajo Lempa, but it has never been efficiently addressed by any of the past governments.

 

Brena Cerén, administration coordinator, shows part of the organic cashew nut production just out of the ovens of the cooperative set up in San Carlos Lempa, in the Salvadoran municipality of Tecoluca. Cashew nut production in the coastal area of the country has a growing market in the United States and European countries. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Compensation for Damage

Avilés said it is obvious that the country needs to generate electricity “because many sectors, factories, industry, and homes depend on it, but we should also consider the cost that we pay down here,” referring to the energy produced by the 15 de Septiembre power plant.

This dam and the other four in the country are managed by the state-owned Comisión Ejecutiva Hidroeléctrica del Río Lempa (CEL). For this reason, he and the other people interviewed argued that the government should take responsibility for the damage and losses caused to the families of Bajo Lempa and create an indemnity or compensation fund.

Avilés said that last year, when there was light flooding, he lost his crop of plantains or cooking bananas, which he had planted on a two-hectare plot. He went to claim compensation from CEL for the 15,000 dollars he had invested.

“They told me that they had nothing to do with it, that the dam was above us and the flooding was below,” he said.

 

Sugarcane monoculture, practiced by families that have invaded and grabbed land in the coastal area of Bajo Lempa, in southern El Salvador, has damaged the fragile ecosystem of the area as it encourages the intensive use of agrochemicals and the burning of sugarcane fields, which often reach the crops of riverbank communities. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Environmental activist Gabriel Labrador, of the NGO Salvadoran Ecological Unit (UES), told IPS that these families have every right to demand an economic compensation fund for losses and damage.

“It is an injustice—the discharges, the vulnerabilities to which people and territories are exposed—which is a systematic practice that is unjust and ends up burdening the most disadvantaged people with more damage and losses,” he said.

Meanwhile, the residents of Bajo Lempa, already accustomed to the floods, know that they have no choice but to continue fighting, despite the adversities.

“It would be fair for CEL to say, ‘We are going to help you, at least with 50 percent of what was lost’, but it doesn’t give anything. However, we have no choice but to keep working hard,” said Menjívar.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

For farmers in the valleys below the 15 de Septiembre hydroelectric plant in central El Salvador, the rains bring floods. Now that the rains are more unpredictable, the loss of crops and disruption of fishing are even more devastating as they deal with erratic climate-change-induced flooding.
 

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Aigerim Yelgeldy, a third-generation survivor, speaks at the panel during the screening of "I Want To Live On". Credit: Naureen Hossain

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 29 2023 (IPS)

This week in New York, nuclear arms and the efforts to abolish these weapons will reign paramount. Since its adoption in 2017 and its subsequent implementation in 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has been signed by over 90 Member States, 69 of whom have ratified or acceded to it.

This year commemorates the Second Meeting of State Parties, where the member states and NGOs will come together to revisit the Treaty, and the wider issues that emerge from the question of disarmament. The side events planned at the UN for this week will explore those issues in greater depth with the scope to examine the humanitarian impact of nuclear testing on civilians.

Ultimately, the true cost of these nuclear weapons are the lives that are irreparably affected by the tests and the subsequent radioactive emissions. Kazakhstan has stood as a champion for nuclear disarmament since its independence, citing its own peoples’ suffering due to nuclear testing that was conducted in the region half a century ago.

The premiere of a documentary film served as a stark reminder about the human cost of nuclear weapons testing. “I Want to Live On: The Untold Stories of the Polygon” was created by the Center for International Security and Policy (CISP), a Kazakh-based NGO with a focus on nuclear disarmament in the context of Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Created with the support of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), the documentary features interviews with people living in the region which once hosted the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing site. In these interviews, the audience is informed of the impact these tests had on the lives of the community at the time, and the subsequent challenges they and future generations have had to deal with.

The premiere event also featured a panel of speakers from CISP and SGI, which was coordinated by the Kazakhstan Mission to the UN and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Among the speakers present at this side event were Kazakh government representative Arman Baissunonav, SGI’s Director-General of Peace Affairs Hirotsugu Terasaki, and Director of CSIP Alimzhan Akmentov. Also present at the event was Algerim Yelgeldy, a third-generation survivor of nuclear testing, whose personal account provided the perspective into the lived experience of contending with the effects of nuclear testing on health, well-being, and the impact on day-to-day life.

In its short runtime of twenty minutes, the documentary packs more than a few key points. The health problems that people living in the area were afflicted with continue to bog them down, generations later. Yelgeldy, who has cancer, remarked that the number of cancer cases reported in the region is likely due to the nuclear testing conducted decades prior. Speaking at the panel, she added, “when I was diagnosed in 2015, there were [older] people who were affected. But in recent years, the disease has gotten younger.” Meaning, an increase of cancer diagnoses in younger people, the latest generation. Yelgeldy attested that many of the residents in the region today live with the consequences of nuclear testing, even if they were not alive to witness them being conducted. The interviewees in the documentary share accounts of losing loved ones due to health complications brought on by radiation, or personally living with them and having to adjust their lives accordingly.

Perhaps more harrowing were the institutional responses to this reality. The true nature of the military tests was not initially made aware to residents, according to the interviews. By the time the site was shut down in 1991, it’s been estimated that 1.5 million people were exposed to fallout, according to Baissuanov. Compensation to the victims was only granted one time in 1993, after the test site was closed down, but this did not account for future generations, and hyperinflation at the time meant that little of it amounted to much. Dmitry, a third-generation survivor, spoke on how, despite having a congenital genetic disorder that impacted his health, medical authorities did not recognize this as a disability until very recently.

Speaking at the panel, Akhmetov shared his hope that the film would “continue to leave an impact on people”. He added that for members of academia and international civil service discussing nuclear disarmament, the focus may lie on reports and findings to make the case. Yet it also runs the risk, he added, “…that we seem to forget that there are people behind [the findings]; human beings who have been impacted”.

Terasaki of SGI affirmed the documentary for its depiction of the “threat of nuclear testing and the reality of the damage”, which he hoped would bring focus to the “lived realities and experiences of people”. “It is vital that people everywhere raise their voices to challenge the assumptions that nuclear weapons are needed,” he said. “…The Soka Gakkai International (SGI) will continue to educate the public about the suffering of global hibakusha, and to promote victim assistance and environmental remediation as called for in Articles 6 and 7 of the TPNW. The voices of real people shared… will be invaluable in that effort.”

In an earlier interview, Terasaki called for the abolition of weapons, appealing to the humanitarian conscience. “So long as the risk of nuclear weapon use persists, we must never lose consciousness of the violent threat and affront to our humanity that these weapons pose. Together, let us send a resolute message to the world that we will not tolerate the existence of nuclear weapons, and let us continue to forge a path toward their abolition.”

The panelists and the documentary called for greater transparency on nuclear testing and their impact. That the case of Kazakhstan would stand as an example for countries to dissuade nuclear expansion. Kazakhstan stands as the modern example that the real price is far too steep to pay. It was put best by one of the interviewees, Bolatbek Baltabek: “I think that our suffering will probably turn into history. In history, nothing is forgotten.”

The documentary, I Want to Live On, is available to view on YouTube.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Yin Shao Loong
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 29 2023 (IPS)

Many in the wealthy West have misrepresented the causes of global warming, offering false solutions while claiming the high moral ground. This distracts attention from how they became wealthy while emitting greenhouse gases.

Tragedy or farce?
Growing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the industrial age have caused global warming, with their accumulation continuing to accelerate despite being close to exceeding 1.5°C warming and its associated tipping points.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

This is sometimes depicted as due to the failure to sustainably manage the atmosphere as a shared resource. The ‘tragedy of the commons’ refers to a community’s inability to manage a common resource sustainably.

One popular example is of individual herders benefiting by grazing more of their own animals on a limited piece of commonly shared land. Such selfish behaviour will eventually exhaust the grazing pasture, the shared common resource.

To address ‘tragedy of the commons’ claims, mainstream economists have advocated assigning property rights to more directly experience the negative ‘externalities’ or consequences due to excessive use of the limited resources owned.

Developed countries have long exhausted their ‘fair share’ of the world’s ‘carbon budget’. Climate scientists identified 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide as the upper limit to stabilise the climate to prevent disastrous climate change.

Apportioning this carbon budget as quotas among the world’s countries has been described as allocating emission ‘rights’. The global North used up this quota in 1969, then overshot its 1.5ºC quota in 1986, and 2.0ºC quota in 1995!

Such quotas refer to the maximum accumulated carbon emissions, fairly shared among all countries, to ensure world temperatures do not rise over the pre-industrial age average by more than 1.5°C or 2.0°C in 2100 respectively.

Yin Shao Loong

Even if the global North achieves ‘net-zero’, their cumulative emissions alone would still be thrice their 1.5°C ‘fair share’. By contrast, at ‘net-zero’, the global South’s accumulated emissions would only use half its 1.5°C fair share.

Hence, the claim that developing countries lack ‘ambition’, compared to the global North, by not pursuing the same climate policies – such as carbon pricing – is misleading.

The European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) makes such claims. It is not only onerous but also profoundly biased. The EU has been the world’s second-largest GHG emitter historically, long exceeding its ‘fair share’ of using the atmosphere as a carbon sink.

European solution, others pay
Likely free riding poses a related problem. If GHG emissions are sufficiently penalised, global warming mitigation costs can be passed to individual greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters.

The European Union (EU) has the world’s oldest and largest Emissions Trading System (ETS). It functions by capping carbon emissions and auctioning GHG emission quotas to companies, who can trade such emission ‘rights’ among themselves.

The ETS claims to be raising costs or penalties for GHG emissions to reduce them by 55% by 2030. Thus penalising emissions especially threatens energy-intensive industries which emit more GHGs.

In response, some industries threatened to move abroad to less environmentally regulated countries. The EU gave free quota allocations to GHG emissions-intensive industries to gain political acceptance by cutting the costs of such transitions.

This is partly why the ETS can only claim credit for a mere 0% to 1.5% in annual GHG emissions reductions, failing spectacularly to reduce emissions rapidly.

Can carbon taxes save us?
To reduce GHG emissions by 55% by 2030, the EU’s new CBAM policy package promises to gradually phase out free ETS allocations.

To protect the profits of the EU’s GHG-emitting industries, importers will be required to pay higher prices. These are supposed to incorporate carbon taxes, to deter high GHG-emitting imports, especially from developing nations.

Developing countries’ exporters are required to pay carbon prices on their exports at rates determined by importing countries. Such measures are said to be fair, ostensibly by ‘levelling the playing field’, but will actually mainly burden developing country exporters.

An UNCTAD study shows how CBAM discriminates against low- and middle-income countries. It found CBAM will only reduce worldwide carbon emissions by 0.1%!

The CBAM will thus get developing countries to pay EU members for their GHG-emitting exports. Such ‘carbon taxes’ may even be used to help finance the EU’s own green transition or for purposes unrelated to climate.

Ostensibly to address global warming, the new rules are very protectionist. The WTO dispute settlement tribunal may not approve them if it is allowed to function after years of being blocked by the US. But the outcome is uncertain as this would be the first time a climate measure would be so tested.

Freeriding?
Historically, rich nations have emitted much more GHGs. On a per capita basis, this is still the case today. Despite such huge differences in GHG emissions, and ignoring developing countries’ limited means, rich nations want to impose the same rules and requirements on them.

As Elinor Ostrom has shown, communities worldwide have avoided the ‘tragedy of the commons’ historically. They governed shared resources to meet current needs while sustaining them for future generations.

Many communities devised arrangements to prevent the exhaustion of common or shared resources. But many of these were subverted by colonialism to favour foreign powers at the expense of those ruled.

CBAM also contradicts the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ (CBDR). CBDR refers to the different responsibilities of developed and developing countries for causing the climate crisis and addressing it.

Recognising CBDR, the UNFCCC’s Kyoto Protocol put the primary burden for mitigation on developed countries. Rich nations rejected and undermined CBDR, delaying climate action by decades. Most Western nations made little effort to meet their obligations while accusing others of freeriding on them.

Of course, this ignores rich nations effectively freeriding on developing countries for centuries through colonialism, domination and exploitation. And the urgent action now needed to address the climate crisis has become the new pretext for rich nations to insist everyone must sacrifice equally.

Self-serving solutions
Most developing countries urgently seek – but cannot get – affordable climate financing. They prioritise climate adaptation, rather than mitigation which is what most of the limited climate finance resources from the global North is earmarked for.

To be sure, claims of ‘carbon leakage’ have been very moot. The transition anxieties of high-emission industries are best addressed by targeted policies to rapidly decarbonise these industrial processes.

Rich country subsidies have bypassed the distributional equity and political problems posed by carbon pricing or taxation. For instance, Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) subsidies promote renewable energy and electric vehicles by lowering their costs to consumers.

Surely, by now, the world has learnt how to better cooperate to save ourselves.

YIN Shao Loong is Deputy Director of Research at the Khazanah Research Institute where he focuses on climate change and industrial policy.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The so-called Kaunda suit is not part of a proper dress code, the Speaker of Parliament says.

Nordan Otzer during a cancer awareness event in a village in Ladakh, India. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
LADAKH, INDIA, Nov 29 2023 (IPS)

While working as a doctor in the initial months of his medical career in southern India, a telephone call from his home in the Ladakh Himalayas convinced Nordan Otzer to involve himself with cervical cancer awareness.

“While I was working in a hospital in rural Tamil Nadu (in 2007), one day I received a distressing call from my family informing me that my mother’s health had deteriorated and she urgently needed my presence back home,” says Otzer, an ENT surgeon who is now in his mid-40s and works as a medical practitioner and social worker in Ladakh, a cold desert in the Himalayan Plateau in India.

“When I saw my mother lying on the bed, she was hardly recognizable. It was only at that point that she disclosed to me that she had been experiencing persistent spotting and occasional abdominal pain that had worsened over time,” Otzer tells IPS.  “Unfortunately, she only sought medical assistance when her pain (because of cervical cancer) became intolerable.”

According to the WHO, a large majority of cervical cancers (more than 95%) are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), which is the most common viral infection of the reproductive tract.

“Although most HPV infections clear up on their own and most pre-cancerous lesions resolve spontaneously, there is a risk for all women that HPV infection may become chronic and pre-cancerous lesions progress to invasive cervical cancer,” reads a segment of a fact sheet about cervical cancer on the WHO website.

“When screening detects an HPV infection or pre-cancerous lesions, these can easily be treated, and cancer can be avoided. Screening can also detect cancer at an early stage where treatment has a high potential for cure,” the WHO fact sheet says and urges the countries that screening (of women for HPV infection) “should start from 30 years of age in the general population of women, with regular screening with a validated HPV test every 5 to 10 years, and from 25 years of age for women living with HIV.”

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women globally, with 90 percent of an estimated 604,000 new cases and deaths worldwide in 2020 occurring in low- and middle-income countries, according to the WHO.

Otzer says his mother was flown to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi for treatment, but her condition deteriorated, and she succumbed to the disease within days.

“Throughout the journey from my home to Delhi, she held my hand, perhaps also hoping that her doctor son would save her life. But unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything except watch helplessly while she slowly faded away,” Otzer recalls ruefully.

As someone who has studied medical sciences, says Otzer, “I knew my mother’s life could have been saved if she was aware of cervical cancer and its preventable measures.”

“My mother’s death due to cancer altered the course of my career, leading me to make the choice to remain and contribute to my own community.” Since those days, Otzer says that he started making efforts to launch an awareness campaign about cervical cancer and screening of women for HPV infection in Ladakh, a remote mountainous region more than 14,000 feet above sea level in the Tibetan Plateau, which remains cut off from the rest of the world in winters.

Since 2009, Otzer, with the help of his local supporter, Stanzin Dawa, and visiting doctors from Singapore led by Swee Chong Quek, has organized over 140 awareness and screening events for women across Ladakh, where villages are spread out across the terrain and not easily reachable.

“We have conducted screenings for 12,400 women thus far, among whom one out of every 10 women has precancerous lesions. This implies that without timely treatment, these lesions could progress into full-blown cancer,” Otzer says.

Besides the logistical challenges, such as travelling long distances and traversing tough terrain, other challenges, according to Otzer, included women being too shy and reticent.

“Women in Ladakh tend to be reticent about discussing women’s health matters openly, not even with their own family members. Therefore, when I initially launched a cervical cancer screening program, there was a noticeable reluctance among them to undergo checkups,” he says, adding that initially, women would avoid making eye contact and refrain from asking any questions.

“However, with the passage of time, they gradually became more receptive and started attending our screening camps for examinations.”

Cervical Cancer Awareness and India

In India, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women, and India contributes the largest proportion of the global cervical cancer burden. In December last year, the federal government in India urged the state governments to create awareness and take steps to prevent cervical cancer.

According to an article published by Lancet in March 2023, the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare plans to vaccinate 68 million girls across India against human papillomavirus (HPV) by the end of 2025, which will be followed by vaccination of a further 11,2 million girls aged 9 years and older each year.

Cervical cancer accounted for 9.4 percent of all cancers and 18.3 percent (123,907) of new cases in 2020 in India, says this December 2021 Springer study, adding that cervical cancer is still among the most common cancers in India and a leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women in low- and middle-income countries.

According to the Springer study, cervical cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths for females in 12 Indian states. “The situation is more alarming in rural areas where the majority of women are illiterate and ignorant about the hazards of cervical cancer and healthcare resources are scarce.

Research has established that awareness and the availability of medical infrastructure play a significant role in preventing cervical cancer. Results of a study published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention have confirmed that stages (of cervical cancer) “are strongly correlated with survival outcome, and early stages of the disease are associated with an exceptionally favourable prognosis provided they are adequately treated, whereas survival for stage III and IV cancers was dismally low.”

A study published by Lancet in October 2023 found heterogeneity in cervical cancer survival across India, with higher survival rates in urban areas where healthcare facilities are much better than predominantly rural and mountainous north and northeastern regions.

“The disparity in survival between the populations could explain the overall effectiveness of the health care system. This informs policymakers to identify and address inequities in the health care system,” the study says, emphasizing the “importance of promoting awareness, early detection, and improving the health care system.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The Red Sea's reef is one of the longest continuous living reefs in the world. Credit: Unsplash/Francesco Ungaro

By Julie Packard
MONTEREY BAY, California, Nov 29 2023 (IPS)

Just a few weeks ago, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres opened the Climate Ambition Summit with a warning that by failing to act on the climate crisis, he said “humanity has opened the gates of hell.” Could not say it more strongly. And he also said, as you may recall, we’re moving “toward a dangerous and unstable world.”

So, with COP28 negotiations starting at the end of the month (Nov 30-Dec 12), I wanted to share some thoughts about why it’s absolutely essential to place the ocean front and center in the climate conversation because healthy ocean can be one of our best defenses against climate change, and too often it’s not even part of the conversation. It can help us avert catastrophe and shape-adjust a sustainable world where both people and nature thrive.

So, the ocean’s the largest ecosystem on the planet, and really our first line of defense against the impacts of climate change. It’s absorbed 25 percent of the carbon dioxide that gets emitted, and also, it’s absorbed 90 percent of the excess heat we’ve put into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. So that is a huge service that it’s providing for us.

The good news is, it’s resilient. And when we act to restore the health of the ocean where it’s been damaged, it responds. And then it can, once again, begin to deliver the vital ocean services that enables life to exist here on the planet. But unfortunately, it’s not, “too big to fail.”

As land creatures, of course, we are probably not wired much to think about the ocean. We live here on land, we breath air, and we really don’t think much about how its cycles are tied to our lives and the ability for life to exist here on the planet, and most importantly, how our choices affect it. And selfishly, we really need to start doing that.

So, ocean marine life provides a fifth of the animal protein we eat, and that may be a low estimate. But it is a major piece of food security on the planet. Its waters carry more than 90 percent of the world’s trade, moving goods and raw materials more cost-effectively than by any other means. And its shores are home to nearly half the people on Earth.

The ocean is truly, as we think about it, the blue heart of the planet. It’s the heart of our planet system most importantly; its currents and winds circulate heat and moisture around the planet, and the weather patterns that we associate it with all the different places where we live are all due to ocean and the stability that we’ve had in our climate over all this time, which is now being disrupted, as we’ve been so reminded, especially as the years go by. And, climate change is now fundamentally disrupting these ocean processes that sustain life on Earth.

Of course, sea level rise is putting at risk tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of coastal people, and often in the most vulnerable communities where there’s no protection, no building zoning to enable people to survive severe weather. And, intensifying harms as we’ve seen every day are costing billions of dollars, not to mention endangering lives, including here in the U.S. and everywhere. So, it’s really – it’s time to recognize that human health is directly tied ocean health.

Really, when you think about it, when we protect the blue heart of the planet, we are protecting home to the greatest diversity of life on our planet, and in so doing we’re safeguarding ourselves.

Well, so what does protecting the ocean look like? For starters, it means reversing destruction of the coastal habitats, where of course people love to live; creating more global marine protected areas where ecosystems can be intact and have a better chance of surviving and enduring through all the changes happening.

And something the Monterey Bay Aquarium has been spending a lot of time and energy on in the past 25 years has been ending unsustainable fishing and aquaculture practices because fishing and our extraction of biomass and marine life from the ocean is kind of our most basic relationship with the ocean that is damaging its ecosystems, and it’s something we know how to fix; that’s the thing about it.

So, along with sustainability of fisheries and aquaculture, we need to start helping coastal communities prepare for the changes that are already underway and adapt to these impacts of extreme weather and sea level rise.

We need to invest in science, the bedrock of good decision-making, and this has been such an essential piece of moving toward effective fisheries management; when you don’t have data, you can’t make plans to get things on a good track, and the same is absolutely true for really most of the ocean, especially the deep sea, where we’ve had very, very little information.

And of course, we need to use the science along – that we’ve invested with to inform any future plans. Of course, front and center of late is the discussion of mining the sea floor, which is really a case where we just are flying blind.

We have so little information about what’s there and what disruption we would cause, and we need to hit a big pause, hit the pause button on that, on that front, so we don’t rush headlong into the mistakes we’ve made on resource extraction on land without understanding the consequences.

And of course, something else that the aquarium’s been very involved with that’s been in the news is the UN global plastic treaty. This has arisen in recent years and has a very fast timeline, and it is absolutely connected to solving the climate crisis. And it’s an important thing to do for many other reasons, and right now, as we speak, it’s being negotiated in Nairobi because plastic throughout its life cycle, it’s a significant contributor to the climate crisis.

At least 4 percent, probably more, of global oil production goes to producing plastic. So, it is significant. It may be a bigger number than that, even. And also, of course, plastic throughout its life cycle, it’s damaging to ocean health and ocean’s – the ocean’s ability to be resilient in the face of all these other changes.

Then of course, most dramatically, most importantly, we need to reduce our commitment – need to execute on our commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet those – meet the ambitions that we have set for COP28.

Also, I couldn’t be prouder of the leadership in my home state of California. We are advancing some very ambitious climate solutions and climate policies, moving toward a zero – net zero emission economy and going well. We have the science. We have the political support to be very aggressive on that.

And coastal cities everywhere now, as you know, they’re starting to factor climate change into their land use planning, which is absolutely essential, and building resilience into where development’s happening. And in California, we also created the nation’s first statewide integrated network of marine protected areas to protect ecosystem health in state waters.

And also, innovators in the private sector turning their creativity towards solutions like batteries that don’t require continued mining of rare earths on land and on the sea bed. So, that’s obviously a huge part of the solution, is that innovation. And then, of course, philanthropies are investing in the science and policy work.

Just a few big picture parting thoughts about the whole idea of nature-based climate solutions; and to really solve the climate change crisis, we’ve got to turn toward nature-based and community-driven solutions like restoring and protecting animals and habitats that make up healthy ocean ecosystems.

The thing is that safeguarding and strengthening these systems is going to help the ocean continue to buffer and protect us from all the damaging impacts of fossil fuel pollution that’s happening, and really protect us from the worst impacts.

Blue carbon habitats, mangroves, marshes, sea grass meadows, along with other ecosystems like kelp forests – they act as natural carbon sinks. And this is, again, something we’ve published research on the California coast showing how healthy ecosystem restoration improves the carbon sequestering abilities of these coastal habitats.

And along with it, you’re also improving water quality. We’re supporting sustainable small-scale fisheries. We’re protecting marine biodiversity all around. It’s a win-win-win.

And so, to maintain the ocean’s lifegiving function and to strengthen its ability to bounce back from climate impacts, we need commitments from our leaders, too, and we need to end unsustainable seafood production, treat plastic pollution as the global crisis that it is.

And when that’s part of the climate crisis and a grave threat to human health in terms of toxins in plastic along with the other issues around plastic that I mentioned, and in all of these arenas, the ocean is truly at the heart of solutions, and ocean action is critical to finding a path forward.

As a global society, we know what we need to do to get on a sustainable course and build a clean energy future. And we’re making progress faster than ever, and we have more tools to do the job than ever. So many of these tools were created in Silicon Valley. And, with my background, I’m an optimist around human ingenuity to solve problems, but also we need to be realistic and really bear down on making sure those solutions are well thought out.

I think others share my optimism. Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres, who directed the UN Climate Change efforts that culminated in the Paris Agreement – in her words, the world is “already on a journey of exponential transformation,” and so am I.”

We’ve got to bear down and work on positive results that demonstrate success. So, for nearly 40 years now – we’re celebrating our 40th Anniversary at the Monterey Bay Aquarium next year.

We have been a voice for the ocean, and we’ve been taking action to improve ocean health, mobilizing the public’s awareness around its role and what we need to do. We’ve been preparing the next generation of ocean conservation leaders who are ocean literate, diverse, ready to act on its behalf.

And working with governments, businesses, and NGOs, we’re forging solutions to the biggest threats to the ocean and pursuing a vision of sustainable seafood supply, a plastic free ocean, and ocean policies that are based on the best available science and technology.

So together, working across sectors and borders, I’m confident that we can realize our most ambitious vision which is a zero-emission global economy, and the fate and future of 7.5 billion people depend on it.

Julie Packard is executive director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which she helped found in the late 1970s. She is an international leader in the field of ocean conservation, and a leading voice for science-based policy reform in support of a healthy ocean.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Tamara was married at 12 and a mother at 13 - one of millions worldwide who marry before 18.

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