Africa

Stephen Wamukota came up with a hand-washing machine that helps prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Black Lives Matter protest in London May 31. Credit: Tara Carey / Equality Now

By Dr Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Jun 2 2020 (IPS)

The murder of George Floyd by a police officer in broad daylight came amid a high point in the continuing rampage of the coronavirus throughout the country, killing over 100,000 and infecting nearly 2 million while more than 45 million have lost their jobs.

The death of Floyd is no longer seen merely as an act of police brutality but the final crack in the dam, revealing the insidious socio-economic and healthcare malaise that continues to be inflicted disproportionately on the African American community.

A paper in the Annals of Epidemiology reports that while disproportionately black counties make up only 30 percent of the US population, they are the location of 56 percent of all COVID-19 deaths. According to NPR’s analysis, blacks are dying at higher rates relative to their total proportion of the population in 32 states plus Washington, DC.

Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, director of the Equity Research and Innovation Center at Yale School of Medicine, says “We know that these racial ethnic disparities in COVID-19 are the result of pre-pandemic realities. It’s a legacy of structural discrimination that has limited access to health and wealth for people of color.”

What made matters worse is Trump’s overt racism, the muted leadership of the Republican Party, and its antipathy toward the black community, all of which added fuel to the simmering fire of the centuries-long history of slavery, discrimination, and hopelessness.

They know that their plight will not allay any time soon, not as long as Trump is the president and his party follows him like sheep that blindly graze in the meadows of discontent while the country is unraveling at the seams. They have betrayed the country by putting the party’s interests above that of the nation.

We are now reaping the harvest of the seeds of racism and discrimination; the devaluation of black life in job opportunities, in buying and lending, in wages, positions, and treatment. The whole socio-economic and cultural system is lopsided, as it lacks the fundamentals of justice and equality.

The pandemic provided the wakeup call that pointed out the ugly tradition of subjugation of the black community, which sadly did not stop with the end of slavery, but continued in the wanton indifference to their pain and agony, our uncanny negligence, and our failure to understand what they are really experiencing.

Time is not our ally; neither concerned white nor black people should now be satisfied with words of sympathy toward the plight of African Americans. It is not merely changing the police culture and practices in the way they handle black versus white suspects.

What is needed is a fundamental change from our innate desire to apply slavery to black people as deserving nothing more than bare necessities.

Little has changed since the birth of the civil rights movement more than a half century ago. Although the majority of white Americans may not be white supremacists, they certainly hold onto their privileges in all walks of life as they view their relation with black people and other people of color as a zero-sum game, as if a black man’s gain invariably chips away from a white man’s privileges.

The insidious, learned biases pitting white against black Americans directly leads to the treating of black Americans as second-class citizens and suppression (whether conscious or unconscious) by white Americans—a necessary ingredient that satisfies their ego and elevates their self-worth.

The week-long demonstrations throughout the country suggest not only the obvious—that black lives matter, that inequality is rampant and must be addressed, that racism is consuming America from within, that injustice affects the perpetrators just as much as the victims, that enough is enough.

The demonstrations also reveal the deep sense of frustration with a president who fans the flame of racism, who sees the country as his own enterprise, who can do whatever serves his own interests. He is cruel, cunning, and careless about the pain and suffering of black America; he cannot count on their political support and hence his complete rejection of their outcry.

As has been widely observed, there have been instances of looting and destruction of property; much of it by opportunistic individuals trying to take advantage of the situation, and also by bad-faith actors attempting to delegitimize the protests.

These acts are succeeding in drawing the attention of the media away from the importance and relevance of the majority of demonstrations that have been peaceful.

This is exactly what Trump wants to see happening. He wants the country divided between us and them. He wants to blame the Democrats and the liberal minded people for the mayhem, while cowering in fear in the White House basement. He is refusing to address the nation, knowing that regardless of what he says, nothing will hide his demagoguery and disdain for people of color.

I wish to see tens of millions of Americans demonstrate peacefully day in and day out and send a clear message to this corrupt Trump administration that they will not rest until a fundamental change occurs. They must demand that bipartisan legislation passes that will address discrimination against all people of color under any circumstances; in particular in affordable housing, healthcare, job opportunities, and equal pay, and in anti-bias training for police and national bans on the use of force.

I also wish to see the Republican leadership wake up and halt their blind subservience to a president who has lost his way and dangerously degraded America here at home and abroad. If nothing else, the pandemic has demonstrated his utter ineptitude and the huge disparity between white versus black America, topped with his demonstrable racism in which he takes pleasure.

I am not naïve enough to assume that my wishes will come true. But it should serve as a warning to every Republican member of Congress that the murder of George Floyd and the horrifying injustice it confirmed is the poison they will have to swallow just before Election Day if they fail to act.

The post The Pandemic Underlines America’s Ingrained Racism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

The post The Pandemic Underlines America’s Ingrained Racism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Sipa USA Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS/Sip

By External Source
MELBOURNE, Australia, Jun 2 2020 (IPS)

Violence has erupted across several US cities after the death of a black man, George Floyd, who was shown on video gasping for breath as a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck. The unrest poses serious challenges for President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden as each man readies his campaign for the November 3 election.

If the coronavirus had not already posed a threat to civil discourse in the US, the latest flashpoint in American racial politics makes this presidential campaign potentially one of the most incendiary in history.

COVID-19 and Minneapolis may very well form the nexus within which the 2020 campaign will unfold. Trump’s critics have assailed his handling of both and questioned whether he can effectively lead the country in a moment of crisis.

And yet, he may not be any more vulnerable heading into the election.

 

A presidency in crisis?

As the incumbent, Trump certainly faces the most immediate challenges. Not since Franklin Roosevelt in the second world war has a US president presided over the deaths of so many Americans from a single cause.

The Axis powers and COVID-19 are not analogous, but any presidency is judged by its capacity to respond to enemies like these. With pandemic deaths now surpassing 100,000, Trump’s fortunes will be inexorably tied to this staggering (and still rising) figure.

Worse, the Minneapolis protests are showing how an already precarious social fabric has been frayed by the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Americans have not come together to fight the virus. Rather, they have allowed a public health disaster to deepen divisions along racial, economic, sectional and ideological lines.

Trump has, of course, often sought to gain from such divisions. But the magnitude and severity of the twin crises he is now facing will make this very difficult. By numerous measures, his is a presidency in crisis.

And yet.

Trump, a ferocious campaigner, will try to find ways to use both tragedies to his advantage and, importantly, makes things worse for his challenger.

For starters, Trump did not cause coronavirus. And he will continue to insist that his great geo-strategic adversary, the Chinese Communist Party, did.

And his is not the first presidency to be marked by the conflagration of several US cities.

Before Minneapolis, Detroit (1967), Los Angeles (1992) and Ferguson, Missouri (2014) were all the scenes of angry protests and riots over racial tensions that still haven’t healed.

And in the 19th century, 750,000 Americans were killed in a civil war that was fought over whether the enslavement of African-Americans was constitutional.

Trump may not have healed racial tensions in the US during his presidency. But, like coronavirus, he did not cause them.

 

How Trump can blame Democrats for Minneapolis

Not unhappily for Trump, Minneapolis is a largely Democratic city in a reliably blue state. He will campaign now on the failure of Democratic state leaders to answer the needs of black voters.

Trump will claim that decades of Democratic policies in Minnesota – including the eight years of the Obama administration – have caused Minneapolis to be one of the most racially unequal cities in the nation.

In 2016, Trump famously asked African-Americans whether Democratic leaders have done anything to improve their lives.

What do you have to lose by trying something new, like Trump?

He will repeat this mantra in the coming months.

It also certainly helps that his support among Republican voters has never wavered, no matter how shocking his behaviour.

He has enjoyed a stable 80% approval rating with GOP voters throughout the coronavirus crisis. This has helped keep his approval rating among all voters steady as the pandemic has worsened, hovering between 40 and 50%.

These are not terrible numbers. Yes, Trump’s leadership has contributed to a series of disasters. But if the polls are correct, he has so far avoided the kinds of catastrophe that could imperil his chances of re-election.

 

Why this moment is challenging for Biden

Biden should be able to make a good case to the American people at this moment that he is the more effective leader.

But this has not yet been reflected in polls, most of which continue to give the Democrat only a lukewarm advantage over Trump in the election.

The other problem is that the Democratic party remains discordant. And Biden has not yet shown a capacity to heal it.

Race has also long been a source of division within Biden’s party. Southern Democrats, for instance, were the key agents of slavery in the 19th century and the segregation that followed it into the 20th.

After the 1960s, Democrats sought to make themselves the natural home of African-American voters as the Republican party courted disaffected white Southern voters. The Democrats largely succeeded on that front – the party routinely gets around 85-90% of black votes in presidential elections.

The challenge for Biden now is how to retain African-American loyalty to his party, while evading responsibility for the socio-economic failures of Democratic policies in cities like Minneapolis.

He is also a white northerner (from Delaware). Between 1964 and 2008, only three Democrats were elected president. All of them were southerners.

To compensate, Biden has had to rely on racial politics to separate himself from his primary challenger – Bernie Sanders struggled to channel black aspirations – and from Republicans. And this has, at times, caused him to court controversy.

In 2012, he warned African-Americans that then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would put them “all back in chains”. And just over a week ago, he angered black voters by suggesting those who would support Trump in the election “ain’t black”.

Biden is far better than Trump on racial issues and should be able to use the current crises to present himself as a more natural “consoler-in-chief”, but instead, he has appeared somewhat flatfooted and derided for being racially patronising.

The opportunities COVID-19 and the Minneapolis unrest might afford his campaign remain elusive.

 

There is reason for hope

America enters the final months of the 2020 campaign in a state of despair and disrepair. The choice is between an opportunistic incumbent and a tin-eared challenger.

But the US has faced serious challenges before – and emerged stronger. Neither the civil war in the 19th century or the Spanish flu pandemic in the early 20th halted the extraordinary growth in power that followed both.

Moreover, the US constitution remains intact and federalism has undergone something of a rebirth since the start of the pandemic. And there is a new generation of younger, more diverse, national leaders being forged in the fire of crisis to help lead the recovery.

 

Timothy J. Lynch, Associate Professor in American Politics, University of Melbourne

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

The post As Minneapolis Burns, Trump’s Presidency is Sinking Deeper into Crisis. And yet, he may still be Re-elected appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Monalisa started boxing after her mother died as a result of domestic violence.

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Jun 2 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The film Haingosoa had barely made it onto screens in France when the government ordered a lockdown because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Theatres, cinemas, museums and other cultural institutions had to shutter their doors, leaving the arts world scrambling to salvage numerous projects.

A.D. McKenzie

While the lockdown rules have now been eased, cinemas remain closed and Haingosoa – like many other films – is moving online. It will be offered via e-cinema and VOD from June 9, and viewers will be able to participate in virtual debates with its French director Édouard Joubeaud.

Haingosoa is ostensibly the story of Haingo – a young, single mother from southern Madagascar who, unable to pay her daughter’s school fees, leaves her family and travels far to join a dance company in the country’s capital. Haingo has only a few days to learn a dance that is totally foreign to her, and viewers follow her ups and downs as she tries to make the move work.

Played by the engaging real-life Haingo, the main character readily gains empathy, and viewers will find themselves cheering her on. Yet, the real star of Haingosoa is the music of Madagascar, as the director mixes drama and documentary to highlight the country’s rich and diverse artistic traditions.

“I wanted to give a different viewpoint of Madagascar, by focusing both on the woman lead and on the country,” Joubeaud said in an interview. “I’ve always been interested in the music, and I wanted to show the range of stories as well as the culture.”

Haingosoa brings together several generations of revered Malagasy composers and musicians, such as Remanindry, Haingo’s father. A leading performer of the music of the Androy, the island’s southern, arid region, Remanindry basically plays himself – and his own music – in the film.

Meanwhile, the Randria Ernest Company of Antananarivo, which provides the fictional dance space for Haingo, represents “in its own way” the dance and music of the highlands of today, according to Joubeaud.

Additionally, one of the composers of the film’s soundtrack is Dadagaby, an icon of Malagasy music whom Joubeaud knew for 10 years. The creator of countless songs popular in Madagascar, Dadagaby died during the making of the film – which is dedicated to his memory.

The movie also features 13-year-old prodigy Voara, who performs two of her songs: Sahondra (accompanied in the film by her father on guitar) and Mananjary. We see Voara singing in a backyard, as Haingo goes for a walk. The scene comes across as being there just for the music, with Voara’s soaring, memorable voice.

There are segments as well showing young musicians casually playing instruments and singing as they sit on a wall, and dancers practising to traditional music – again just to spotlight the distinctive music and array of vocal styles.

So, what about the story, the plot? To be honest, this is fairly simple: Haingo goes away to try to earn enough to pay for her little girl’s education. The boss of the dance company she joins is harsh and puts her to work cooking and washing rather than dancing. But with the help of her friends, including the gifted dancer Dimison, Haingo is able to reveal her true talent.

That is the surface story. The backstory is that the film is based on Haingo’s own life. She had a child at age sixteen and experienced many of the difficulties covered in the movie, and she’s at her most affecting when pleading for her daughter to be able to continue attending school, despite falling behind on the fees.

“You can feel the real emotion here because this is something she really had to deal with,” said Joubeaud.

As a director, he faced a dilemma, however: how much of the film should be about Haingo’s actual life?

“It was a little bit tricky,” he admits. “I didn’t want to expose too much about her life. So, we used her story as the starting point of the film and made a lot of the rest fictional. We wrote it in consultation with her.”

This reticence comes across in the film and may be seen as a drawback. The drama never reaches the high point that viewers expect, and the finale is more of a fizzle than a flare.

The unsatisfactory ending is also due to budget constraints, Joubeaud said. After completing the first half of the film, he ran short of funds and had to make a decision: stop filming or continue?

He decided to continue, especially as part of the reason for the film was apparently to raise money for Haingo’s daughter to continue in school, and for the main character to see how she could move forward. (Now in a relationship, Haingo, 25 years old, is the mother of three children.)

As a French director, Joubeaud could have perhaps accessed more sponsorship by making the film in French, but he shot it fully in Malagasy. He says he has studied the language for many years, after first visiting the country in 1999. The work, however, is not eligible to apply for screening in some African film festivals because of Joubeaud’s nationality.

“I do recognize the limits of a French director going to Africa, and I don’t pretend to give anyone any lessons,” Joubeaud said. “I see this as a personal project, related to my life and to Haingo’s life. I think my responsibility is to respect her consent, to respect all the participants in the film and to avoid stereotypes.”

Regarding what he hopes viewers will take from the film, he added: “My first hope is that viewers will be enlightened by diving into the story of a Malagasy woman, by the richness of her context, and the richness of Madagascar’s diversity – in music, dance, culture.”

Some viewers will indeed feel that they have gained an insight into the diverseness of Malagasy culture and developed a new appreciation for the music, but others will wish that the film had gone further and delved more deeply – into the socioeconomic reasons for Haingo’s situation and into the legacy of French colonial rule on the island. –

Follow SWAN on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale

The post The Music of Madagascar Is Real Star of New Film appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The artist popular for hits in the 1980s and 1990s died in his sleep in New York, his manager said.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Jun 2 2020 (IPS)

Indonesia’s founding President Sukarno delivered his annual Independence or National Day address on 17 August 1964 anticipating the forthcoming year as Tahun vivere pericoloso, the ‘year of living dangerously’. 2020 may well be the world’s turn, and not only due to the obvious Covid-19 threat to the world.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

US as number one
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the US became the world’s sole superpower. Many argue that after abandoning its pre-Second World War isolationism to become the post-war hegemon, the US has needed threats to justify ever rising military spending for the US ‘military-industrial complex’, as President (General) Dwight D. Eisenhower warned.

The more recent rise of US President Donald Trump probably reflects these two seemingly contradictory claims, both the re-assertion of post-Cold War dominance as well as jingoist paranoia about American decline due to neoliberal globalization.

After George W Bush saw God in the eyes of Vladimir Putin, the Obama administration reinstated Russia as the main US enemy threat, not particularly credible after its collapse during Boris Yeltsin’s first presidency, reducing the economy by half and lowering life expectancy by more than five years in less than half a decade!

Nevertheless, in the last three years, the US Democratic Party establishment has tried, in vain, to use ‘Russiagate’ to discredit President Trump for trying to ‘normalize’ relations with Russia.

Making America great again?
Trump’s populist jingoism has multiple foreign enemies. Even though Japan, Korea, Germany, Canada and Mexico account for much of the large US trade deficit, it is easily blamed on China, the familiar source of most cheap consumer goods to the public.

The US trade deficit with China grew rapidly from the end of the 20th century, as US transnational corporations (TNCs) ‘off-shored’ production to China, reducing labour costs for more profits. With living costs thus lowered, consumers in the North did not really complain until job losses and lower real incomes eroded employees’ wellbeing and self-esteem.

Anis Chowdhury

The earlier US preoccupation with intellectual property probably accelerated China’s fast-growing technological capabilities, epitomized by Huawei’s 5G edge, recently the target of a largely unsuccessful Washington effort to mobilize allied support against its adoption.

US TNCs remain divided over Trump’s increasingly belligerent xenophobia against a wide range of security and economic threats from China, real and fictitious. Thus, Trump now blames China for Covid-19, despite praising its response in January after securing a favourable trade deal to reduce earlier US-China tensions following his moves against Huawei.

China’s emergence as the principal US threat is especially urgent as Trump seeks re-election after mishandling Covid-19 contagion. China’s increasing willingness to stand up to him may thus help Trump secure re-election, as will protests against African-American deaths at the hands of the police.

Presidential powers ripe for abuse
The Trump administration has been considering punitive measures, including outright confiscation of China’s assets in the US. The 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) gives POTUS the right to do almost anything with any property of a foreign country posing an “unusual and extraordinary threat”.

In the past 40 years, the US has invoked the Act 58 times for supposed emergencies, most lasting more than a decade. Currently, there are 31 ongoing IEEPA declarations, including the longest-running emergency, the Iran hostage crisis declared by President Carter in 1979.

Trump invoked the act last year to stop US companies from investing in China. On 1 May, Trump used the IEEPA to stop power-grid equipment imports from any ‘foreign adversary’.

Outright default on sovereign debt, including over a trillion dollars of US Treasury (T) bonds held by China, is not only prohibited by the US Constitution, but would also greatly disrupt the US$18 trillion US T-bonds market. This would be reckless as the US needs to borrow heavily after Trump’s huge post-election tax cuts.

While the US cannot simply refuse to pay all its debt, it could try to target China, e.g., by seizing or freezing its assets, or by stopping banks from paying to ostensibly Chinese government accounts.

China not helpless
China could circumvent attempts to make it pay by reneging on US debt obligations to China by selling T-bonds on the international market. China also has several other options for retaliation. For example, if the US does not respect the laws of other countries, or international law, why should China defer to US laws on commercial contracts, patents, brands or even nationalization?

Many US TNC production facilities are located in China, a preferred location for offshoring production until recently. Of course, POTUS could retaliate against Chinese assets in the US, but it is not clear who would be worse off following rounds of mutual retaliation.

Of course, no one, except the most naïve, should expect the US to ‘play fair’ regardless of its rhetoric. The US has already blacklisted Huawei and tried to coerce NATO and other allies to reject it.

This has, in turn, inadvertently adversely affected US semiconductor corporations selling chips to Huawei. Washington’s actions are seen by many TNCs, foreign and American, as disrupting global manufacturing supply chains and interdependence, enabled by previous administrations.

Foreign investments, technologies and training have undoubtedly helped enhance China’s industrial capacities. However, Chinese technological capabilities have also been developed by its own entrepreneurs, producing not only for export, but increasingly also for its own large consumer market.

After China was forced to appreciate its currency from around a decade and a half ago, and its labour surplus declined, its authorities greatly expanded its domestic market by enabling real wage rates and working conditions to improve significantly.

Success’ high costs
And if ‘weaponizing’ Chinese ownership of US government debt proves ‘successful’, others will be more cautious in buying US T-bonds, undermining the very market which has enabled easy and cheap US access to foreign savings. If the US Federal Reserve became the only purchaser of T-bonds, fiat money to finance the deficit could simply be printed, without issuing bonds.

Such weaponization may also affect general willingness to hold other US dollar-denominated assets, thus negatively impacting stock and other financial markets, and undermining the dollar’s role as world reserve currency, which would limit its ability to run trade and budget deficits by printing money.

If Trump decides to ‘up the ante’ against China, all the world will be at great risk. If he gets more politically desperate, he may view the adverse consequences of stepping up measures against China as a small price to pay for its political benefits.

The US-led encirclement of China, except on the Russian and Korean fronts, suggests that a conflict is more likely to be provoked in South or Southeast Asia. Although recent India-China hostilities have captured headlines, Pakistan’s long-time alignment to both the US and China suggest that Southeast Asia may become the next theatre for confrontation.

The post This Year of Living Dangerously appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Black Lives Matter protest in London May 31. Credit: Tara Carey / Equality Now

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 2 2020 (IPS)

The deadly coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed the lives of over 372,000 people worldwide, has reinforced the concept of “social distancing” which bars any gathering of over 10 or 20 people – whether at a social event, a wedding, a political rally or even a funeral.

In the US, guidelines laid down by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are loudly clear: “limit face-to-face contact, stay at least 6 feet (about 2 arms’ length) from other people. Do not gather in groups. And stay out of crowded places and avoid mass gatherings.”

But all those warnings have been unceremoniously jettisoned as hundreds and thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets in several cities, including in Hongkong, Argentina, Lebanon, Brazil, Israel, Ukraine and India, and most recently in the US and UK.

In the United States alone, where coronavirus deaths have exceeded 103,000, demonstrators in riot-torn cities in 31 States have openly defied edicts both from medical experts and city and State authorities resulting in curfews.

The defiant stand has triggered the question: is the fight for human rights and racial justice overriding coronavirus threats — even as thousands have participated in demonstrations violating stay-at-home orders and stoking fears of a sharp increase in infections upending virus control efforts?

The Mayor of the city of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, was quoted as saying: “If you were out protesting last night, you probably need to go get a COVID test this week. There is still a pandemic in America that’s killing black and brown people at higher numbers.”

Ironically, some of the protestors who set fire to police vehicles, gas stations, post offices, banks and electronic stories, were masked to avoid infections. But others were mostly mask-less.

A new study by the University of Manchester in the UK, released last week, has found that people are still willing to take part in protests in large numbers, despite the inherent dangers from the spreading coronavirus pandemic.

Dr. Olga Onuch, an Associate Professor in Politics [Senior Lecturer] at the University of Manchester and principal investigator and lead author of the study, told IPS: “My sense is that like in the US, Israel, Hong Kong, Brazil and beyond, large groups of people will continue to protest even when faced with infection. I think all the evidence points to more, not less protests,”

Asked if these demonstrators were risking their lives fighting for human rights and racial justice, Dr Onuch said: “I am not an epidemiologist but it would be my understanding, especially given the level of Covid-19 infections, I would expect that the risk of contracting the disease during mass gatherings like protests, is very high indeed.

“Yes, I believe they are risking their lives in participating in protests”.

“But it is my hypothesis that people’s patience is lower as a result of the pressures of confinement, and thus, people are actually more likely to get engaged when they see a clear violation of basic rights”, said Dr Onuch, who is also an Associate Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, at Oxford University.

The study said that in Argentina, which has seen several mass protests since the end of the dictatorship in 1983, readiness to protest is typically high.

But even by Argentine standards, the researchers were shocked to find that 45% of people were still happy to protest despite the country’s lockdown and rising rates of COVID-19 infections.

Black Lives Matter protest in London May 31. Credit: Tara Carey / Equality Now

Norman Solomon, executive director at the Washington-based, Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS that some people ignore social distancing health-protection guidelines while partying on beaches or congregating in bars and other venues.

“Other people ignore those guidelines while nonviolently protesting injustice. I’d certainly say that such protesters are quite admirable compared to those who violate the guidelines merely in order to have fun,” he added.

“That said, the guidelines exist for valid reasons and should be adhered to whenever possible; the risks endanger not only those who choose to ignore the guidelines but also those who are exposed due to the unfortunate choices of others”, declared Solomon.

The protests, which in some US cities extended through seven consecutive nights, virtually reached the steps of the White House last week as the Secret Service was forced to rush the US president into an underground bunker for his safety.

The New York Times reported on June 1, there are parallel plagues ravaging America: the coronavirus crisis and police killings of black men and women.

The initial demonstrations resulted from the brutal killing of an unarmed black man George Floyd by a white police officer in the city of Minneapolis which was caught on-camera and went viral on Facebook.

According to the Times, there were at least 600 Americans who reportedly died from Covid-19 on a single day – Sunday—when the demonstrations were in full swing.

Commenting on the growing protests, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at his daily briefing on Sunday: “You turn on the TV and you see these mass gatherings that could potentially be infecting hundreds and hundreds of people after everything that we have done. We have to take a minute and ask ourselves: ’What are we doing here?”

Tara Carey, senior media and content manager at Equality Now, who witnessed the London protests on Sunday, told IPS times of crisis exacerbate inequality, and this had been brutally exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionally affected disadvantaged and minority communities around the world.

“The widespread harm caused by coronavirus has compounded pre-existing discrimination and political unrest, creating a tinder box atmosphere in which many people feel passionately that the dangers posed by systems of oppression must be challenged on the streets, even if this involves the possibility of contracting a potentially deadly contagious disease”, she argued.

From the USA to Lebanon, the UK to Hong Kong, demonstrators have risked both infection and arrest to join together in demanding change, she noted.

“Participating in political protests often comes with personal risk and COVID-19 has added to this. The right to demonstrate against injustice and persecution is a fundamental human right and it is important for people to think about how to protest safely.”

“For those participating in street protests, they must weigh up the health risks to themselves and those around them. For those who think the risk is too high, there are other ways to confront oppression and stand in solidarity,” she noted.

“Speaking out in support, contacting political representatives and other duty bearers, and donating to organizations that provide support to those in need and campaign for change, all have an important role to play,” declared Carey.

Commenting on her University’s survey, Dr Onuch said: “Our findings suggest that we shouldn’t be surprised if we continue to see protests, and we shouldn’t assume that these are younger people who are less likely to fear contracting the virus.”

“More importantly, governments must not think that they have a free pass because of crisis. Not only do governments have to weigh the trade-offs between public health and the economy they also need to consider how to respect their citizens’ right to protest, even during a pandemic.”

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The post Is the Fight for Human Rights & Racial Justice Overriding the Coronavirus Risk? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Now is the time to take advantage of this opportunity to build a better world
 
Kristalina Georgieva is managing director of the IMF

By Kristalina Georgieva
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 2 2020 (IPS)

Looking back to the start of 2020, the world has changed almost beyond recognition. To protect public health, the global economy was put into stasis. Shops closed, factories were mothballed, and people’s freedom of movement was severely curtailed.

No country has escaped the health, economic, and social impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. Tragically, more than 260,000 people have died and millions have been infected. The IMF is projecting global economic activity to decline on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. It is truly a crisis like no other.

Kristalina Georgieva. Credit: IMF

Despite the bleak outlook, I am hopeful for the future. A crisis often brings the best out in people—I have seen it firsthand in countries hit by wars and natural disasters.

This is happening already in the fight against the pandemic as doctors and nurses around the world put saving lives of others ahead of their own lives. And governments are stepping up in an unprecedented manner. To fight the pandemic they have combined dramatic public health interventions with fiscal measures amounting to about $8.7 trillion. Central banks have undertaken massive liquidity injections, and richer countries have stepped up to support poorer nations.

Record speed

The IMF has responded at record speed. We doubled our emergency rapid-disbursing capacity to meet expected demand of about $100 billion—and by end-May the IMF had approved financing for 60 countries, a record. We also established a new short-term liquidity line, and we took steps to triple our concessional funding, targeting $17 billion in new loan resources for our Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust, which helps poorer economies.

To help vulnerable members through rapid debt-service relief on their IMF obligations we reformed our Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust. Working with the World Bank, we catalyzed suspension of official bilateral debt repayments for the poorest countries through the end of 2020.

While moving at speed, the IMF has consistently emphasized its collective commitment and steadfast support for its members in addressing governance vulnerabilities. Corruption drains resources away from priorities like public health, social protection, distance learning, and other essential services. Distorted spending priorities will undermine the recovery and long-term efforts to promote sustainable, inclusive growth, or raise productivity and living standards. Our message to governments is clear: do whatever you can, but make sure you keep the receipts. We don’t want accountability and transparency to take a back seat. In practice, this means support for countries in adopting a range of public financial management, anti-corruption, and anti-money-laundering measures.

During the crisis peak, governments have rightly been focused on saving lives and preserving livelihoods. In places where new infections and deaths are in decline, governments are considering how best to reopen the economy in a responsible fashion. In developing economies with large numbers of hand-to-mouth households, prolonged containment measures may not be a viable option and consideration needs to be given as to how to reopen safely given more limited health care capacity.

In the early phase at least, the recovery will be unusual as uncertainty remains about the path of the virus, potential vaccines, and therapeutics. This could hamper the rebound of investment and consumption, especially if infection rates climb back up as containment measures are eased.

Nonetheless, the recovery will share several features with previous episodes. Countries with stronger macroeconomic fundamentals, social cohesion, and safety nets are likely to experience faster and stronger recoveries. Existing vulnerabilities such as high sovereign debt; weak corporate, household, and bank balance sheets; and limited policy credibility will hinder the recovery. Governments will face the challenge of phasing out crisis-related policies. And more than ever, global cooperation will be vital, facilitated by international institutions, to coordinate actions, share data, protect supply chains, and support more vulnerable countries.

A green recovery

From a position nearing economic stasis there is nonetheless an opportunity to use policies to reshape how we live and to build a world that is greener, smarter, and fairer.

Greener: The current health crisis reminds us how vulnerable each person is in the face of the incredible power of nature. Yet just as scientists warned against the risk of a pandemic—a “black swan” event—they have also warned us of the terrible consequences of catastrophic climate change. We cannot turn back the COVID-19 clock, but we can invest in reducing emissions and adapting to new environmental conditions.

As economies stabilize, we have the chance to reorient them to prioritize sustainability and resilience alongside efficiency and profitability. The right policies will help allocate resources to investments that support public goods like clean air, flood defenses, resilient infrastructure, and renewable energy. Meanwhile, lower commodity prices can create the fiscal space to phase out regressive fuel subsidies that increase carbon emissions. The payoff would be considerable: in just the energy sector, a low-carbon transition could require $2.3 trillion in investment every year for a decade, bringing growth and jobs during the recovery phase.

Smarter: Through necessity many of us have been working remotely and using technology to remain productive. We have traveled less, consumed fewer resources, and introduced more agile business processes. While schools, businesses, and institutions will likely formalize some of the smarter ways of working that have proved successful, the crisis has thrown light on the importance of investing in robust digital infrastructure and policy frameworks.

In 2018, the IMF and the World Bank Group launched the Bali Fintech Agenda to help countries harness the benefits of rapid advances in financial technology while managing its risks. We are accelerating our work with members to broaden the digital transformation so that its benefits are shared even more widely. Well-managed fintech, for example, can help end financial exclusion for the 1.7 billion people in developing economies who have no access to banking.

Fairer: IMF research has also shown that lower income inequality is associated with stronger and more sustainable growth, yet many social disparities have become more pronounced during the Great Lockdown. For example, informal workers in unregulated sectors or outside the tax system are twice as likely to belong to poor households. These same workers typically have no access to sick leave or unemployment benefits, and their access to health benefits is often precarious.

As governments ramp up spending to support individuals, businesses, and communities, there is an opportunity to build fairer societies and economies by investing in people. That means spending more and spending better on schools, training, and reskilling. It means expanding social programs that are well targeted to reach the most vulnerable. And it means empowering women by reducing labor market discrimination. Such investment will need to be funded by more equitable taxation, especially given enhanced public debt levels stemming from the crisis.

A new spirt of solidarity

At a large and small scale we are helping each other. The staff of the IMF has made it possible for billions of dollars to support the world’s most vulnerable people. They also have cooked meals for the vulnerable in our own community and have looked after neighbors who are sick.

It is this solidarity that makes me hopeful for the future. The IMF has already shown its mettle as an economic first responder during this crisis. As we enter the next phase, I am determined that we will support our members however we can—through policy advice, financing, and capacity development. Together, we will take the chance to build a better world.

The post Beyond the Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Now is the time to take advantage of this opportunity to build a better world

 
Kristalina Georgieva is managing director of the IMF

The post Beyond the Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka helped set up university brotherhoods in the 1950s but never imagined what they would become.

By Daud Khan and Leila Yasmine Khan
AMSTERDAM/ROME, Jun 1 2020 (IPS)

As the COVID-19 virus spread rapidly around the globe, so did various theories about what caused the pandemic. According to the standard scientific theory, the virus probably originated in bats and then crossed over to humans, probably via another intermediate host. It then spread rapidly across the globe, piggybacking on the international travel network.

While the mainstream scientific theory sufficed for some, a large number of people saw the pandemic as the work of cold-hearted military or industrial strategists. An equally large number of people saw it as some kind of divine or natural retribution for an increasingly recalcrinant human race. It’s interesting to look at these various alternative theories. It is even more interesting to speculate why they have such a strong hold among the public.

In the first of this two part article, we will look at conspiracy theories; in the second part, at the apocalyptic theories.

Why are conspiracy theories so popular? Why do they persist despite statements by the scientific community that the virus has natural origins and was not humanly manufactured? Why do the President and the Secretary of State of the most powerful nation on earth, with the best universities and research capabilities, continue to maintain that the whole thing was a Chinese plot with connivance of the World Health Organization?

At the start of the pandemic, the most popular candidate for the villain was the USA. According to this set of conspiracy theories – I use the word “set” deliberately, as there were many variants – the CIA had developed and released the virus. It was an easy and low cost way to limit China’s growing economic and political clout. The theory gained support as the next hotspot was Iran – another problematic country for the USA.

However, as the COVID-19 virus spread to other countries, the blame spotlight turned on the Chinese. It was the Chinese who had developed and released the virus to bring the USA and Europe to its knees, and usher in the biggest recession of the century. One objective was to impact western economic and military presence around the globe.

Another was to undermine the soft power of these countries as their democratic systems of governance and their traditions of open debate would inevitably lead to squabbling between and within countries – something that would show the limitations of western democracy in today’s globalized world. At the same time, the fall in stock prices around the world allowed Chinese investors to buy massive quantities of shares in US and European markets with discounts of 30% to 50%. And if all this was not convincing enough, one only had to ask: who is the world’s largest importer of oil and gas? Who stands to benefit most from the collapse of petroleum prices? China!

Of course, there are other candidates for the role of the villain in the COVID saga, including Big Pharma and Big Finance. According to first of these, the big pharmaceutical companies not only developed the virus but already have a vaccine ready.

They are only waiting for sales of standard medicines and medical supplies to peak before announcing the vaccine. They would then sit back and watch the money pouring in. A sub-plot in the big-pharma narrative is that the illness can easily be avoided, or even cured, by low cost interventions such as lemon juice, honey, garlic, hot water or the Artemisia plant. However, these low cost cures are not in the interest of the pharmaceutical companies. Big Pharma is therefore working with the medical profession to discredit such low cost therapies.

According to the second theory, it the big pension funds and insurance companies whose projected earnings and valuations have been badly eroded by the progressive increase in life expectancy. By targeting the old and chronically ill, COVID-19 has been a silver bullet for them. So surely they must be behind it.

Most recently the conspiracy theorists have also found a new villain. Bill Gates, who in a video several years ago – at the time of the Ebola crisis – talked about the risks of a global pandemic. Apparently, his goal is to place a computer chip inside each of us so that we can be monitored at all times. Why in the world Bill Gates would want to do such a thing remains unexplained.

But why are conspiracy theories so popular? Why do they persist despite statements by the scientific community that the virus has natural origins and was not humanly manufactured? Why do the President and the Secretary of State of the most powerful nation on earth, with the best universities and research capabilities, continue to maintain that the whole thing was a Chinese plot with connivance of the World Health Organization?

There is certainly a personality type that would choose a good conspiracy theory over other explanations any day. It is a way of demonstrating that they know more than others and that they can see through the smoke screens and disinformation fed to the general public. It is a way of asserting inserting intellectual superiority.

But in the case of COVID-19, there is also a huge amount of collective anxiety that feeds on a primordial fear of the unknown, of death and of economic deprivation. This anxiety is like a virus that lives in our minds and is spread through millions of messages on Facebook and WhatsApp, by dramatic images on TV, and by graphs and statistics in the print media.

Although this fear is universal, it has a particularly strong hold in Europe and the USA where consistent improvements over the last 50 years in living standards, health care and life expectancy has created a feeling of invincibility which COVID-19 has badly shaken.

This collective anxiety is much placated through having a clear target on whom to pin blame. The assumption is that by unmasking the villains and by punishing them, the problem will likely go away. Clearly this is what is happening in the USA and why so many believe whatever untruths the President and his team is feeding them. There is also a huge risk that populist political parties in Europe, as well as Asia, Africa and Latin America will also find it expedient to take the same tack: give us a chance and we will take strong and determined action that will solve the problem. This is a time to beware!

 

Daud Khan is a former United Nations official who lives between Italy and Pakistan. He holds degrees in Economics from the London School of Economics and Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.

Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands. She has Master’s degrees in Philosophy and in Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric from the University of Amsterdam, as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of Rome (Roma Tre).

 

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The post COVID 19 – Conspiracy or Apocalypse? – Part I appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Morocco international Achraf Hakimi is one of several African sportsmen to show support for the late African-American George Floyd.

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Kenya's Matrimonial Property Act, which is discriminatory towards women and inconsistent with the country's constitution, means few married women own land. Less than five percent of all land title deeds in Kenya are held jointly by women and only one percent of land titles are held by women alone. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jun 1 2020 (IPS)

Ida Njeri was a civil servant with access to a Savings and Credit Cooperative Society (SACCO) through her employer, and her husband a private consultant in the information and communication sector, when she began taking low-interest loans from the cooperative so they could buy up land in Ruiru, Central Kenya. She’d willing done it. Part of their long-term plan together for having a family was that they would acquire land and eventually build their dream home. But little did Njeri realise that 12 years and three children later the law would stand against her right to owning the matrimonial property.

“As a private consultant, it was difficult for my husband to join a SACCO. People generally join SACCOs through their employer. This makes it easy to save and take loans because you need three people within your SACCO to guarantee the loan,” Njeri tells IPS.

“My husband had a savings bank account so we would combine my loans with his savings. By 2016, I had 45,000 dollars in loans. My husband would tell me the amount of money needed to purchase land and I would take out a loan,” she adds, explaining that her husband handled all the purchases.

By 2016 the couple had purchased 14 different pieces of land, each measuring an eighth of an acre. But last year, when the marriage fell apart, Njeri discovered that all their joint land was in her husband’s name.

“All along I just assumed that the land was in both our names. I never really thought about it because we were jointly building our family. Even worse, all land payment receipts and sale agreements are also in his name alone,” she says.

Worse still, there was little she can do about it within the current framework of the country’s laws.

Despite Article 45 (3) of the 2010 Constitution providing for equality during marriage and upon divorce, and despite the fact that  Njeri’s marriage was registered (effectively granting her a legal basis for land ownership under the Marriage Act 2014) there is another law in the country — the Matrimonial Property Act 2013 — which stands against her. 

More specifically, it is Section 7 of the act that states ownership of matrimonial property is dependent on the contributions of each spouse toward its acquisition.

• “Ownership of matrimonial property rests in the spouses according to the contribution of either spouses towards its acquisition, and shall be divided between the spouses if they divorce or their marriage is otherwise dissolved,” Section 7 states.  

Because Njeri had no proof of jointly purchasing the land, upon her divorce she is not entitled to it.

Hers is not an isolated case of married women struggling to ensure their land rights.

In 2018, the Kenya Land Alliance (KLA), an advocacy network dedicated to the realisation of constitutional provisions of women’s land rights as a means to eradicate poverty and hunger, and promote gender equality, in line with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), released an audit of land ownership after the disaggregation and analysis of approximately one third of the 3.2 million title deeds issued by the government between 2013 and 2017 — the highest number of title deeds issued in any regime.

Odenda Lumumba is a land rights activist and founder of KLA, which is a local partner for Deliver For Good, a global campaign that applies a gender lens to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and powered by global advocacy organisation Women Deliver. She explains that the data on land ownership is a pointer to the reality that gender disparities remain a concern, especially because of the intricate relationship between land tenure systems, livelihoods and poverty.

“There is very little progress towards women owning land. There are so many obstacles for them to overcome,” Lumumba tells IPS. 

• The KLA audit of land ownership found that only 103,043 titles or 10.3 percent of title deeds were issued to women compared to the 865,095 or 86.5 percent that went to men.

• Even greater gender disparities were found in terms of the actual land size. While men own 9,903,304 hectares in titled land, representing 97.76 percent of land, while women own 1.67 percent or 10,129,704 hectares of land during this five year period.
• Further, this audit found that men own 75 percent of land title deeds of all allocated land settlement schemes.

In 2018, the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) in Kenya petitioned Kenya’s High Court, arguing that Section 7 of the Matrimonial Property Act was discriminatory towards women and inconsistent and in contravention of Article 45 (3) of the Constitution.

The court dismissed the petition, ruling out a blanket equal sharing of marital property as it would “open the door for a party to get into marriage and walk out of it in the event of divorce with more than they deserve”.

Within this context, less than five percent of all land title deeds in Kenya are held jointly by women and only one percent of land titles are held by women alone who are in turn disadvantaged in the manner in which they use, own, manage and dispose land, says FIDA-Kenya.

But as gender experts are becoming alarmed by the rising numbers of female headed households — 32 percent out of 11 million households based on government estimates — securing women’s land rights is becoming more urgent.

“The Matrimonial Property Act gives women the capacity to register their property but a majority of women do not realise just how important this is. Later, they struggle to access their property because they did not ensure that they were registered as owners,” Janet Anyango, legal counsel at FIDA-Kenya’s Access to Justice Programme, tells IPS. FIDA-Kenya is a premier women rights organisation that, for 34 years, has offered free legal aid to at least three million women and children. It is also another Deliver For Good/Women Deliver partner organisation in Kenya.

Anyango says that in law “the meaning of ‘contribution’ was expanded to include non-monetary contributions but it is difficult to quantify contribution in the absence of tangible proof. In the 2016 lawsuit, we took issue with the fact that the law attributes marital liabilities equally but not assets”.

• In 2016 FIDA-Kenya sued the office of the Attorney General with regards to act, stating the same issues of discrimination against women. 

In addition to the Matrimonial Property Act, laws such as the Law of Succession Act seek to cushion both surviving male and female spouses but are still skewed in favour of men as widows lose their “lifetime interest” in property if the remarry. And where there is no surviving spouse or children, the deceased’s father is given priority over the mother. 

Women Deliver recognises that globally women and girls have unequal access to land tenure and land rights, creating a negative ripple effect on development and economic progress for all.

“When women have secure land rights, their earnings can increase significantly, improving their abilities to open bank accounts, save money, build credit, and make investments in themselves, their families and communities,” Susan Papp, Managing Director of Policy and Advocacy at Women Deliver, tells IPS.

She says that applying a gender lens to access “to resources is crucial to powering progress for and with all during the COVID-19 pandemic, even as the world continues to work towards the SGDs”.

And even though marriage services at the Attorney General’s office have been suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as have all services at the land registries, women like Njeri will continue to fight for what they rightfully own.

 

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The post For Love or Land – The Debate about Kenyan Women’s Rights to Matrimonial Property appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Less than five percent of all land title deeds in Kenya are held jointly by women and only one percent of land titles are held by women alone. IPS investigates.

The post For Love or Land – The Debate about Kenyan Women’s Rights to Matrimonial Property appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Shanghai Shenhua and Nigeria forward Odion Ighalo extends his loan deal at Manchester United until January 2021.

People were banned from buying it as part of efforts to combat the spread of coronavirus.

Kabili-Sepilok Forest Reserve, Sabah, Borneo. Copyright: Dr. Lindsay F. Banin

By Bruno de Pierro
SÃO PAULO, Brazil, Jun 1 2020 (IPS)

Tropical forests can develop resistance to a warmer climate, but 71 per cent will come under threat in the next decade if global average temperatures reach two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a new study warns.

Forest-dependent communities and the global climate will be affected if tropical forests are further degraded, experts say.

Led by scientists at the University of Leeds and published in Science, the study involved 226 researchers from around the world. The cohort analysed carbon stock data in 590 permanent forest plots in South America, Africa, Asia and Australia, with most in the Amazon region.

The Amazon rainforest acts as a huge carbon sink, absorbing and storing carbon dioxide (CO2) and helping to cool global temperatures. Even under high temperatures, trees remove CO2 — a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming — from the atmosphere.

However, the ability to store high levels of carbon drops dramatically if the forest is exposed to average temperatures above 32.2 degrees Celsius, the researchers found.

 

Researchers measured diameters of thousands of trees across 24 tropical countries. This one is in the Brazilian Amazon forest.
Image credit: Erika Berenguer.

 

Sustainable development in tropical regions will be directly impacted if the biodiversity of tropical forests is altered by rising temperatures and they lose their ability to absorb carbon, says Luiz Aragão, head of the remote sensing division at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research and a co-author of the study.

“Understanding how climate change impacts carbon absorption in tropical forests can help us identify the most vulnerable areas where biomass loss can interfere with local economies and human development,” he says.

Plínio Barbosa de Camargo, a researcher at the Centre of Nuclear Energy in Agriculture at University of São Paulo and a study co-author, has been monitoring permanent plots in Santarém, in Brazil’s Amazon, for 20 years. His team monitors the growth of about 20,000 trees and measures the forest’s biomass and carbon balance.

“Understanding how climate change impacts carbon absorption in tropical forests can help us identify the most vulnerable areas where biomass loss can interfere with local economies and human development.”

Luiz Aragão, National Institute for Space Research, Brazil.

“The region we monitor still has the capacity to absorb carbon and recover after prolonged periods of drought,” he says.

“This gives room for different societies to continue investing in the development of products and services from biodiversity.”

But, the resilience potential of forests can only be achieved with proper climate change mitigation and solutions for the conservation and restoration of native vegetation, the researchers say.

“The results suggest that intact forests can withstand heating to some extent,” but for this to happen it is vital that forests remain intact, agronomist and study co-author Simone Aparecida Vieira, from the Centre for Environmental Studies and Research at São Paulo’s University of Campinas (Unicamp), tells SciDev.Net.

This requires reducing deforestation rates and the frequent fires associated with forest clearing, as well as mining, illegal logging and intensive low-productivity livestock farming.

Yet, it is unclear whether cooler forests in Asia and Africa will respond to global heating in the same way as those in South America or whether they can adapt in time, says Lara Kueppers, associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s energy and resources group, who did not take part in the study.

“I don’t have confidence that forests are going to be able to adjust on the time scale they will need to,” she says in a related Science commentary.

But, the research offers a good starting point to deepen knowledge about forests’ abilities to adapt to climate change, says biologist Ricardo Ribeiro Rodrigues from the Luiz de Queiroz School of Agriculture at the University of São Paulo, who was not involved in the study.

“The findings presented in the survey are encouraging because they show that forests do indeed have a certain resilience to warming. And this has been shown based on robust mathematical modelling,” he says.

However, Rodrigues warns that more research is necessary to understand how rising temperatures impact different plant species.

“The study deals with forests as a whole, but we know that each species reacts differently to global warming,” he says.

“It is important, therefore, that we identify which species are most resistant so that more effective reforestation actions can be put into practice.”

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

The post Two-thirds of Tropical Forests ‘Under Threat in Next Decade’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UNDP, Ghana

By Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin Okyenhene
ACCRA Ghana, Jun 1 2020 (IPS)

The tragedy of the coronavirus pandemic and its associated challenges have thrown our world into chaos, with the virus destroying lives and livelihoods in its path.

The whole world is presently seized by the effects of the pandemic, but there is a silent crisis of equal measure that has long been ravaging lives, devastating livelihoods, destroying property and threatening the fate of our entire planet.

This is the global climate crisis.

Unlike COVID-19, climate change and its impacts are not novel processes. What is new is the severity, frequency and rapid rate of change laced with extreme events that are slowly becoming metaphors for human suffering and deprivation.

Incontrovertible evidence firmly anchored in science suggest that the climate crisis is reaching a tipping point, with huge and potentially irreversible damage to our planet, our economies and overall human security.

The World Meteorological Organisation states emphatically that the impact of climate change on our planet is ‘reaching a crescendo, with the past five years being the hottest on record’.

Our world cannot be in denial of the climate crisis any longer. COVID-19 is devastating thousands of lives and threatening millions, but the impacts of climate change are endangering the lives and livelihoods of billions of people.

The ongoing pandemic must be a wake-up call to our global community of the ultimate costs of inaction on the silent, but rapidly unfolding, catastrophic climate crisis.

The shock of the sudden onset coronavirus pandemic and the dreadful experience that the world is presently going through must laser-focus us all on the benefits of proactive action on climate change.

Against the lessons that the pandemic is painfully teaching us, it would be irresponsible to wait until the climate crisis reaches ‘pandemic’ levels for the world to act aggressively. We must take politics out of the climate crisis, embrace the evidence generated by science, and act decisively on climate change now.

Okyenhene Osagyefuo Amoatia Ofori Panin is the reigning king of Akyem Abuakwa, an ancient powerful kingdom in the Eastern region of Ghana. He is a Champion of the environment, taking a strong stance against environmental degradations.

As climate activist, Emily Atkins, aptly puts it ‘the pandemic is showing us that rejecting science doesn’t make the laws of nature go away’.

As with the coronavirus pandemic, climate change is a threat multiplier. It makes existing problems worse, creates new ones, makes a mockery of boundaries whilst striking with great force in rich and poor countries alike.

And crucially, dealing with the climate crisis now is in itself a mitigation action against future pandemics. Protecting the environment and addressing climate change is not about abstract emotionalism. It is about protecting people, saving lives and livelihoods and safeguarding our heritage.

As a traditional leader, I deem saving our heritage a non-negotiable goal, and I am determined to do exactly that.

The climate crisis is as much a global crisis as the on-going pandemic, and there are real parallels between the two. As the debilitating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are forcing changes in our ways of life and lifestyles, we must, with a sense of urgency, move from business as usual and confront the existential threat posed by the climate crisis head-on.

We must focus on, and accelerate actions on the necessary adjustments needed to safeguard our ecosystems, halt and reverse the effects of climate change, protect our planet and its future, as the Sustainable Development Goals enjoin us to do.

Although we have yet to win the war, our collective experience in fighting the coronavirus should serve as an inspiration and spur the needed changes and global actions.

The extraordinary cooperation in the global response to the pandemic, evidenced amongst others, in China sending critical supplies to the United States, the US donating ventilators to Europe, and Cuban doctors being sent to Italy to treat patients must serve as a shining example for global action on climate change.

It is manifestly clear that the effects of the virus, just as those of climate change, are not circumscribed to national boundaries, and that solidarity, whether in the context of a climate crisis or a health pandemic is about our shared humanity.

We must muster the same vigour, the equivalent political will and the bountiful energy that we are seeing in the battle against the pandemic to fight climate change.

As nations unveil trillions in stimulus packages to deal with the economic effects of the pandemic, environmental equity and environmental protection must be integral components to help build back better, and address the needs of millions of global citizens so vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Our aspirations and desires to address the climate crisis are right and those aspirations must be non-negotiable. But with the consequential lessons that the coronavirus pandemic is teaching us, we must be resolute in our resolve to move from aspirations to swift and robust actions.

We must pool and scale up our efforts to deal a mighty blow to climate change using all the worthy lessons that have emerged through the unfortunate and dreadful COVID-19 pandemic.

We must act now and do so with gusto, to protect the future of the planet and our shared humanity, as the cost of inaction to our common future, our joint heritage and our shared humanity is too dire to ponder.

The post The Consequential Effects of Covid-19 on the Climate Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin Okyenhene is King of Akyem Abuakwa, Ghana

The post The Consequential Effects of Covid-19 on the Climate Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Gen Haftar's forces have been beaten back from Tripoli but that does not mean peace is at hand.

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