Africa

Zekiya Louis (R) and Manuela Ramirez (L) handing out free water to protesters in Times Square, New York. Credit: James Reinl/IPS

By James Reinl
NEW YORK, Jun 4 2020 (IPS)

The United States has been a story of broken dreams and broken glass this past week.

Once again, an unarmed black man died at the hands of a white police officer, with George Floyd being pinned to the ground under a lawman’s knee in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as stunned passersby made cell-phone videos of the incident to post on social media.

Once again, local protests snowballed into nationwide rallies against police violence and racism that in some cases led to clashes, smashed windows, torched cars and looted stores — dashing hopes that America was making progress on race relations.

In New York City, Zekiya Louis, a 29-year-old beautician and entrepreneur, headed to Times Square to pass out free bottles of water at a Black Lives Matter protest aimed at prompting action from a Washington elite that has struggled with civil rights woes for decades.

“It’s becoming a problem now because nine out of ten times it’s black people who are the victims of police violence — and we’re tired of that,” Louis, who was born in the U.S. and has family in the Caribbean, told IPS. 

“I know that a lot of people are protesting and they’re angry and they’re breaking stuff. But you gotta understand we tried protesting peacefully, we tried holding hands and coming together, and what we got was more violence and tear gas.”

The U.S. has been convulsed by waves of protests and mayhem since Floyd, 46, died on May 25 in the state of Minnesota after police officer Derek Chauvin, 44, pinned his neck under a knee for nearly nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed face down in the street.

In videos, Chauvin appeared unphased as Floyd repeatedly gasped and said he could not breath, while onlookers urged officers to release the detainee, who had been accused by a deli worker of buying cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill.

Chauvin and three other officers involved in Floyd’s arrest were sacked soon after videos of the incident became a viral sensation and the latest example of police violence against an unarmed black man to send shockwaves across the U.S.

Chauvin has since been charged with second-degree murder and the other three former  officers — Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng — face counts of aiding and abetting murder.

The Floyd saga follows the high-profile cases of police killing unarmed black men, including  Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in New York, and others that also prompted waves of grief, demonstrations and soul-searching.

Within days, protests had spread from Minneapolis to dozens of cities across the U.S., including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Washington, some of which were accompanied with violence and looting. Police have made some 9,300 arrests. 

Protestors have been met with tear gas, flash grenades and, at times, excessive force by the authorities. Police have targeted journalists, including the arrest of CNN reporter Omar Jimenez as he was broadcasting live. Officers have also been injured.

President Donald Trump expressed his “sorrow” at the “horrible thing” that ended Floyd’s life, but also courted controversy by threatening to use soldiers and warning via Twitter that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”.

On Monday, Trump made headlines again, threatening to deploy the military on U.S. soil and posing for cameras while holding a bible in front of a damaged church shortly after police had used tear gas to disperse peaceful protesters from the scene.

On Wednesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, urged U.S. politicians to “condemn racism unequivocally” and “truly tackle inequalities” in a society in which whites are richer and healthier than blacks.

“The voices calling for an end to the killings of unarmed African Americans need to be heard,” Bachelet said in a statement.

“The voices calling for an end to police violence need to be heard. And the voices calling for an end to the endemic and structural racism that blights U.S. society need to be heard.” 

While many protesters demanded accountability for the officers involved in Floyd’s death, they also raised broader concerns about heavy-handed policing, systemic inequality between black and white Americans and the painful legacy of slavery.

At a briefing with journalists, veteran rights campaigner Rev Al Sharpton said that the Floyd case must lead to new federal laws, the BBC reported.

“If we come out of all this and do not have federal legislation where we can protect citizens from local policing … then all of this is drama to no end. Drama in the street must be geared to fundamental legal change,” said Sharpton. 

Back in Times Square, Manuela Ramirez, a 23 year-old Colombian student and waitress, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, called for big changes to how police officers perceive the citizens they are paid to protect and serve.

“I believe that there’s a lot of good cops and there’s a lot of bad cops killing people — and that’s what we shine the light on,” Ramirez told IPS. 

“It’s that mentality of these people who are just going to do bad things to us, and nobody should think like that.”

Related Articles

• ‘I Can’t Breathe!’ Australia Must Look in the Mirror to See our Own Deaths in Custody
• The Pandemic Underlines America’s Ingrained Racism
• As Minneapolis Burns, Trump’s Presidency is Sinking Deeper into Crisis. And yet, he may still be Re-elected

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WHO delivered medical supplies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Congo in April 2020. Credit: World Health Organization (WHO)

By Lawrence Surendra
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 4 2020 (IPS)

In the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic, the much-anticipated 73rd World Health Assembly (WHA) of the WHO concluded without any major controversies or disagreements.

The landmark WHA resolution to bring the world together to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, co-sponsored by more than 130 countries, and adopted by consensus, called for the intensification of efforts to control the pandemic, and for equitable access to and fair distribution of all essential health technologies and products to combat the virus.

Basically, a message that any vaccines produced should not be privatised by corporate capitalist greed.

Pandemics have been with us for a very long time. Medical science and public health focus on infectious diseases spanning the pre-antibiotic and post-antibiotic era, has tried to keep pace with the newer forms and zoonotic variations and shown us that reducing the emergence of a virus to a single source is futile.

The eminent flu epidemiologist, late Dr Louis Weinstein, commenting on the 1968 Hong Kong Flu epidemic that appeared simultaneously all over the world, observed that such epidemics do not spread from a single source. Humans have constantly battled with new infectious diseases.

Post COVID, anti-bacterial treatments for what are called ‘sick-car’ and ‘sick building’ syndromes are now flourishing. Though, however much we sanitise and keep our immediate environment clean, will that help in the fight against infections and infectious diseases?

Dr. Zinsser in , ‘Rats, Lice and History’, wrote in 1935, “ Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world … however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when neglect, poverty, famine or war lets down the defences….

About the only genuine sporting proposition that remains unimpaired by the relentless domestication of a once free-living human species is the war against these ferocious little fellow creatures which lurk in the dark corners and stalk us in the bodies of rats, mice and all kinds of domestic animals; which fly and crawl with the insects and waylay us in our food and drink and even in our love”.

His work was considered a classic with the NYTimes calling it, “one of the wisest and wittiest books that have come off the presses”.

Looking for the source of the viruses is a distraction in understanding the causes. The destruction of our natural environment, clearly, has been the major cause for the pandemics that humanity has faced.

COVID 19 forcefully brought this truth home; while forcing a lock down on the activities of humans, it allowed the natural world to breathe again.

Rene Dubos, the pioneer of Ecological Medicine, who was awarded a Pulitzer in 1969 for his classic work, ‘So Human an Animal: How We Are Shaped by Surroundings and Events’, brought to us long back the connection between the state of our natural environment and our pathologies.

Writing in the Scientific American (1955) an article titled, “Second Thoughts on the Germ Theory’, he wrote, “During the first phase of the germ theory the property of virulence was regarded as lying within the microbes themselves. Now virulence is coming to be thought of as ecological. Whether man lives in equilibrium with microbes or becomes their victim depend upon the circumstances under which he encounters them”.

He was the one who coined the expression, “think globally, act locally” which nowadays is used like a fashion statement, without knowing the origins or the deep philosophical significance Rene Dubos attached to an expression that he first coined. The current COVID world has forcefully shown the importance of “thinking globally and acting locally”.

Where do we go from here in managing this global public health crisis and repairing the relationship of humans to the planet and its sentient beings? The question ‘What now?” is posed as a query for action, for a road map, in the way, the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation Report ‘What Now: Another Development ‘
posed it in 1975.

Another Development: Approaches and Strategies was launched in 1976, as an independent contribution to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Development and International Cooperation. With a print run of 100,000 copies in six languages, the Report came to play a significant role in the development debate during the following years.

The ‘What Now Report’ was envisaged as a “tribute to the man, Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN Secretary-General 1953–1961 and one of the last century’s most remarkable international leaders, who more than any other, gave the United Nations the authority which the world (now) needs more than ever”.

The five principles of ‘Another Development’ in 1975 stated, “Need based – Development geared to meeting human needs, material and non-material; Endogenous – stemming from the heart of each society which defines in sovereignty its values and the vision of its future;

Self-reliant – implying that each society relies primarily on its own strength and resources in terms of its members’ energies and its natural and cultural environment;

Ecologically sound – utilising rationally the resources of the bio-sphere in full awareness of the potential of local ecosystems as well as the global and local outer limits imposed on present and future generations.

And based on Structural transformation – so as to realise the conditions required for self-management and participation in decision making by all those affected by it, from the rural or urban community to the world as a whole, without which the goals above could not be achieved.

These five principles are even more relevant today and could be the new Panchseel of a new commitment we should make for mutual co-existence between peoples and between humans and nature.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, delivering the prestigious Dag Hammarskjold Uppsala Lecture on Earth Day in 2018 and titled, ‘Twenty-first century challenges and the enduring wisdom of Dag Hammarskjöld’, stated that, “The problems of our time are global problems that can only be solved with global solutions”.

Pointing in his lecture that Hammarskjold, “was a man of culture”, Guterres said, “that allowed him to have a universal view, a universal perspective; to consider diversity as a richness; to be able to understand others; to promote tolerance; to promote dialogue and to find solutions for the most difficult and intricate diplomatic problems of his time”.

“This is what, indeed, is sometimes lacking today” and that, “the proof that this translated into a vision of the world that remains as accurate today as during his lifetime is very well captured” he said in what Hammarskjold had said then, ‘Our world of today [of course many decades ago] is more than ever before, one world. The weakness of one is the weakness of all, and the strength of one – not the military strength, but the real strength, the economic and social strength, the happiness of people – is the strength of all. Through various developments that are familiar to all, world solidarity has been forced upon us. This is no longer the choice of enlightened spirits, it’s something which those whose temperament leads them in the direction of isolationism have also to accept’.

Almost five decades later, organizations with the history, prestige and authority like the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation are uniquely placed to draw upon the wisdom of the past and cooperatively navigate Earth and humanity to a safe place.

Reviving the spirit of ‘What Now’ as the new Panchsheel that works beyond nation states and the strong men that lead these nations states lies the future.

The Foundation needs urgently to take initiatives, using the current crisis as an opportunity to create new global institutional platforms for solidarity based on the principle of ‘planetary citizens’ away from the hyper-nationalists of the present who in history, have “goose stepped” us into disasters.

New generations are looking for such answers. The world must move away from the strong-man politics of men who are also no ‘men of culture’.

Former US President Barack Obama in his Nelson Mandela speech in South Africa, commenting on strong man politics dominating the major large nations of the world, said, “Look around. Strongman politics are ascendant, suddenly, whereby elections and some pretence of democracy are maintained—the form of it—but those in power seek to undermine every institution or norm that gives democracy meaning”.

Fortunately, both in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern hemisphere we now have women in power who are bringing a different quality to national and global leadership.

From Asia, and in small countries like South Korea articulate women of such clarity and depth of experience in international leadership, like Madam Kang, Kyung-wha Korea’s Foreign Minister, are leading with such finesse the Foreign Policy of a nation wedged between big powers. These resources of leadership need to be harnessed for the global good.

The theme for World Environment Day (Friday June 5), is ‘Time for Nature’. Humanity has ‘Time for Nature. Nation states and strong men who lead them have no time for nature which is why we are in the mess we are in and why we need ‘Another Development’ led by this new generation of women leaders currently managing national and global affairs with such wisdom.

The post Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic: What Now? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Lawrence Surendra is a Chemical Engineer and Environmental Economist and has been a Scholar-in Residence at the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden

 
“Before there can be truth there must be a true man”-- Chuang-Tzu

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By Vladimir Popov and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
BERLIN and KUALA LUMPUR, Jun 4 2020 (IPS)

The world economic contraction so far this year is largely due to measures, especially at the national or local level, to contain or prevent Covid-19 contagion, particularly those restricting business operations, thus reducing economic activity, output, incomes and spending.

Vladimir Popov

Lower business and worker incomes have reduced spending, for both consumption and investment, and thus overall or aggregate demand. While there has indeed been much novel ‘financial folly’ in the last decade, responsible for its dreary ‘recovery’, and financial circumstances will retard recovery, the cruel public health dilemma posed by the viral pandemic is surely its immediate cause.

To be sure, recent economic performance in much of the world had been quite lacklustre, with no strong recovery since the 2008-09 global financial crisis and Great Recession despite the unexpected impact of ‘unconventional monetary measures’, especially in the north Atlantic economies.

Recessions and recessions
The recessions have been quite uneven, due to different circumstances and responses. Various aspects may bear some resemblance to other supply-side recessions, e.g., those caused or worsened by post-war conversion of armaments industries, oil price shocks (e.g., in 1973, 1979, 2007) and ‘shock therapy’-induced ‘transformational recessions’ in ‘post-communist’ and other economies in the 1990s.

A general recession typically involves declines in many, if not most industries, sectors and regions. Such output contraction typically implies underutilized production capacities, raising unemployment unevenly during a general recession.

In contrast, a structural recession refers to falling output in one or a few related industries, sectors or regions, not sufficiently offset by other rises. However, not all supply side recessions necessarily involve structural transformation, especially if not deliberately induced by government.

Really different this time?
A structural transformation – with unviable activities declining as more ‘competitive’ alternatives grow – may not involve overall economic contraction if resource transfers – from declining activities to rising ones – are easy, rapid and low cost.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Such resource transfers typically require ‘repurposing’ labour as well as plant, equipment and other ‘fixed capital’ stock. Typically, unplanned structural transformations result in supply-side recessions as resources are withdrawn without being redeployed for alternative productive ends.

Some examples include post-war recessions when converting military industries to peacetime non-military purposes after wars end. After the Second World War, US output declined for three years, and was 13% lower in 1947 compared to 1944.

The 1990s’ recessions in many post-communist economies were similarly due to poor management of structural transformations with declining agriculture and manufacturing, often despite more resource extraction, with some contractions deeper than the 1930s’ Great Depression.

In market economies, such adjustments typically increase unemployment as industries become unprofitable – e.g., due to cost spikes – and lay off workers. Growing unemployment lowers wages, while the conventional wisdom claims that cheaper labour costs will induce new investments.

Market resolution of such unexpected, massive disruptions is likely to be poorly coordinated, slow and painful, with high unemployment for years. Alternatively, governments can guide, facilitate and accelerate desired changes with appropriate relief and industrial policy measures.

Keynes needed, but not sufficient
Slumps in travel, tourism, mass entertainment, public events, sit-down eateries, hotels, hospitality, catering, classrooms, personal services and other such activities have been due to physical distancing and other containment requirements.

Such collapses will not be overcome with support, relief and stimulus measures as most such activities cannot fully resume soon, even in the medium term. Expansionary Keynesian fiscal and monetary policies to address collapses in aggregate demand have limited relevance in addressing government-mandated restrictions intended to contain contagion.

Furthermore, as Nobel economics laureate Paul Romer and Alan Garber note, “loan guarantees and direct cash transfers will stave off bankruptcy and default on debt, but these measures cannot restore the output that is lost when social distancing keeps people from producing goods and services”.

Of course, relief measures for those losing incomes can help mitigate the effects of the adverse supply and demand shocks involved, but much depends not only on direct, but also indirect, second or even third order effects, partly reflected in Keynes’ ‘multiplier’ muted by other government measures.

A necessary precondition for the multiplier to accelerate broader economic recovery is the prior existence of underutilized productive capacities. Otherwise, increasing demand will simply raise prices when output and efficiency cannot be quickly increased profitably.

One size does not fit all
Newly restructured economies will inevitably emerge from the pandemic, but some will do better than others. There is and will be greater need and demand for new as well as modified goods and services such as medical supplies, health facilities, care services, distance learning and web entertainment.

Economies trying to adjust to the new post-contagion context should use industrial policy or selective investment and technology promotion to expedite restructuring by directing scare resources from unviable, declining, sunset industries to more feasible, emerging, sunrise activities.

Enabling, incentivizing or even requiring needed resource reallocations can help overcome supply bottlenecks. China and other East Asian countries have already had some early successes in thus addressing their Covid-19 downturns.

All workplaces adversely affected by precautionary requirements will need to be safely reconfigured or repurposed accordingly. Structural unemployment problems, due to skill shortages not coinciding with available labour skill supplies, can be better addressed by appropriate government-employer coordination to appropriately identify and meet skill requirements.

Government policies, e.g., using official incentives, can thus encourage or induce adoption of desirable new practices, such as ‘clean investments’ for ‘green’ restructuring, e.g., by using renewable energy and energy saving technologies. Without such inducements, stimuli and support for desirable new investments, desired structural shifts may be much more difficult, painful and costly.

Thus, the ongoing Covid-19 crisis should be seen as an opportunity to make much needed, if not long overdue investments in desirable sunrise industries, services and enterprises, including personnel retraining and capability enhancement as well as workplace repurposing.

Vladimir Popov is a Research Director in the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute in Berlin and author of How to Deal with a Coronavirus Economic Recession?

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Credit: URDEE IMAGE/ZUMA WIRE/ALAMY LIVE NEWS

By Antoinette Sayeh and Ralph Chami
Jun 4 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic is crippling the economies of rich and poor countries alike. Yet for many low-income and fragile states, the economic shock will be magnified by the loss of remittances—money sent home by migrant and guest workers employed in foreign countries.

Remittance flows into low-income and fragile states represent a lifeline that supports households as well as provides much-needed tax revenue. As of 2018, remittance flows to these countries reached $350 billion, surpassing foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, and foreign aid as the single most important source of income from abroad (see Chart 1). A drop in remittance flows is likely to heighten economic, fiscal, and social pressures on governments of these countries already struggling to cope even in normal times.

Remittances are private income transfers that are countercyclical—that is, they flow from migrants into their source country when that country is experiencing a macroeconomic shock. In this way, they insure families back home against income shocks, supporting and smoothing their consumption. Remittances also finance trade balances and are a source of tax revenue for governments in these countries that rely on value-added tax, trade, and sales taxes (Abdih and others 2012).

In this pandemic, the downside effect of remittances drying up calls for an all-hands-on-deck response—not just for the sake of the poor countries, but for the rich ones as well. First, the global community must recognize the benefit of keeping migrants where they are, in their host countries, as much as possible. Retaining migrants helps host countries sustain and restart core services in their economies and allows remittances to recipient countries to keep flowing, even if at a much-reduced level. Second, donor countries and international financial institutions must also step in to help migrant-source countries not only fight the pandemic but also cushion the shock of losing these private income flows, just when these low-income and fragile countries need them most.

Transmission of shocks

Remittances are income flows that sync the business cycle of many recipient countries with those of sending countries. During good times, this relationship is a win-win, furnishing much-needed labor to fuel the economies of host countries and providing much-needed income to families in the migrants’ home countries. However, this close business cycle linkage between host and recipient countries has a downside risk. Shocks to the economies of migrant-host countries—just the sorts of shocks being caused by the coronavirus pandemic—can be transmitted to those of the remittance-recipient countries. For example, for a recipient country that receives remittances representing at least 10 percent of its annual GDP, a 1 percent decrease in the host country’s output gap (the difference between actual and potential growth) will tend to decrease the recipient country’s output gap by almost 1 percent (Barajas and others 2012). Remittances represent much more than 10 percent of GDP for many countries, led by Tajikistan and Bermuda, at more than 30 percent (see Chart 2).

The pandemic will deliver a blow to remittance flows that may be even worse than during the financial crisis of 2008, and it will come just as poor countries are grappling with the impact of COVID-19 on their own economies. Migrant workers who lose their employment are likely to reduce remittances to their families back home. Recipient countries will lose an important source of income and tax revenue just when they need it most (Abdih and others 2012). In fact, according to the World Bank, remittance flows are expected to drop by about $100 billion in 2020, which represents roughly a 20 percent drop from their 2019 level (see Chart 3). Fiscal and trade balances would be affected, and countries’ ability to finance and service their debt would be reduced.

Banks in migrant-source countries rely on remittance inflows as a cheap source of deposit funding since these flows are altruistically motivated. Unfortunately, these banks are now likely to see their cost of operations increase, and their ability to extend credit—whether to the private sector or to finance government deficits—will be greatly reduced (Barajas and others 2018). Furthermore, the typically credit-constrained private sector—mostly comprising self-employed people and small and medium-sized enterprises—is likely to lose remittance funding, in addition to dealing with even tighter credit conditions from banks. All this will come on top of lower demand for their services and products as a result of the crisis.

That’s not all. A prolonged crisis could worsen pressure in labor markets of rich countries, and out-of-work migrants could lose their resident status in host countries and be forced to return home. For example, in Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which rely on migrant labor from the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia, the drop in the price of oil and economic activity could result in migrants (some of whom are already infected with the virus) returning home. They are likely to join the jobless in their home countries—in labor markets already brimming with unemployed youth—as well as put more pressure on already fragile public health systems. This could heighten social pressure in countries already ill prepared to deal with the pandemic and possibly also fuel spillovers beyond their borders. People escaping tough situations in their own countries are likely to seek other shores, but richer countries, also in the midst of fighting the virus, may have very little desire to allow migrants in—potentially leading to an even greater refugee crisis.

Global threat

Compared with previous economic crises, this pandemic poses an even greater threat to countries that rely heavily on remittance income. The global nature of this crisis means that not only will recipient countries see remittance flows dry up, they will simultaneously experience outflows of private capital, and maybe a reduction in aid from struggling donors. Typically, when private capital flees a country because of a macroeconomic shock, whether climate related or because of a deterioration in the country’s terms of trade, remittance flows come in to lessen the impact of capital flight. By contrast, in this current crisis, poor countries can expect to experience both phenomena—capital flight as well as a drop in remittance flows.

With global demand likely to suffer, it would be hard for remittance-recipient countries to export their way out of this crisis. Currency depreciation cannot be expected to spur demand for their exports or attract tourism since this shock is systemic (Barajas and others 2010). Currency weakness will likely worsen the economic situation for many of these low-income and fragile states whose debt is in foreign currency, further depressing local demand and resulting in greater shrinkage of local economies.

What can be done?

The crisis has the unique effect of tightening fiscal constraints in low-income migrant-source countries just when there’s much more for the public sector to do, both in terms of protecting the population from the pandemic and supporting local economies in weathering huge negative shocks. The loss of tax revenue resulting from the drop in remittance- supported consumption will only make things worse for governments already strapped for funds and severely strain their ability to engage in countercyclical fiscal measures. This creates tremendous urgency for the international community to help, even when rich countries are themselves facing huge fiscal burdens.

It is in the best interest of rich countries for migrants not to go home as well as to provide resources for poor countries to fight the pandemic. Infection rates are much higher in rich countries and are especially high among migrant workers owing to their dismal working and housing conditions. Migrants who go home are at risk of taking the virus with them. If this happens, poor countries will provide a rich incubator for the virus that will boomerang as refugees seek new shores. Then it will take decades—and many lives—for the world to be rid of this virus.

Three key actions need to be taken now.

First, host countries need to stabilize the employment opportunities of the migrant workers in their economies. Relief packages that target employment protection for citizens in rich countries can also help migrant workers remain employed. Recognizing the need to protect and stabilize the welfare of migrant workers, the prime minister of Singapore recently assured migrant workers in his country that “we will look after your health, your welfare, and your livelihood. We will work with your employers to make sure that you get paid and you can send money home . . . This is our duty and responsibility to you and your families.” Action by host countries can help keep the remittance lifeline alive, as well as reduce the likelihood of migrants returning home.

Extending protection to migrants will also help advanced economies get back to full production sooner. If host countries send migrants back, it will take even longer to restore production in rich countries to former levels. In countries such as the United States that depend on seasonal labor, keeping migrants within their borders and enhancing testing for infection will bring a double benefit—ensuring the supply of fresh agricultural products for the host country and preserving remittances for migrants’ home countries.

Second, countries receiving returning migrants will need help to contain, mitigate, and reduce the escalation of outbreaks. Donor countries must help with the cost of virus mitigation, in an effort to lessen the severity of the crisis in local economies and stave off potential spillovers.

Returning migrants are likely to place further stress on the health care systems of migrant-source countries, which are struggling to contain local infections and avoid a shutdown of the local economy. Authorities in these countries will need enhanced testing as much as possible in urban areas, as well as support in implementing quarantine measures for returning migrants who may be infected. If the return of migrants is handled in this manner, there could be longer-term benefits for their home countries as well. Migrants who expect to be permanently repatriated may bring their savings with them, and their work skills could bring development benefits to their home countries.

Third, given that poor countries’ governments have limited room for maneuver, these countries will need the assistance of international financial institutions and the donor community. International financial institutions need to shore up fiscal and balance of payments assistance to these countries. This should include ensuring that these countries’ most vulnerable people—those most reliant on remittance inflows for their consumption and well-being—are able to access social insurance programs. And, perhaps now more than ever, the global effort to meet Sustainable Development Goal 10, reducing the high cost of remittances to 3 percent, could take center stage.

This crisis makes it clear that as a global community we, rich and poor countries, are all in this together. We can either lift all boats or, together, face the consequences of rising social inequality.

The post Lifelines in Danger appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Antoinette Sayeh is deputy managing director of the IMF, and Ralph Chami is assistant director of the IMF’s Institute for Capacity Development.

The post Lifelines in Danger appeared first on Inter Press Service.

FGM was outlawed by Sudan's new Sovereign Council, who have been in power since August 2019.

Kenyan journalist Larry Madowo writes about the racism he has experienced in the US.

Brendan Esposito/AAP

By External Source
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, Jun 3 2020 (IPS)

I can’t breathe, please! Let me up, please! I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!

These words are not the words of George Floyd or Eric Garner. They weren’t uttered on the streets of Minneapolis or New York. These are the final words of a 26-year-old Dunghutti man who died in a prison in south-eastern Sydney.

David Dungay Jr was killed when prison officers restrained him, including with handcuffs, and pushed him face down on his bed and on the floor. One officer pushed a knee into his back. All along, Dungay was screaming that he could not breathe and could be heard gasping for air.

Dungay’s death in custody occurred in Long Bay prison during the 2015 Christmas season. It happened a short drive from an elite university, next to affluent, waterside suburbs.

But his horrific death did little to pierce this white bubble of privilege. The media barely blinked. The politicians did not emerge from their holiday retreats. None of the officers involved were disciplined or called to account.

 

Australia’s glass house

It is comfortable for us in Australia to throw stones at racist police violence in the United States. It is comfortable because we do not see our own glass house.

This is evident in Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s comments to 2GB on Monday:

And so as upsetting and terrible is the murder that took place, and it is shocking … I just think to myself how wonderful a country is Australia.

It is “wonderful” because we do not see the horror inflicted by the criminal justice system on First Nations people.

It is “wonderful” because we do not ever call their deaths in custody “murder”, using instead the euphemisms of “accident” or “natural causes”.

It is “wonderful”, because we have so normalised the passing of First Nations people that we are never shocked when they are killed.

It is “wonderful”, because we have a vocabulary to defend police officers responsible for racist violence, including people doing an “extremely difficult job”.

The official response to the killing of Dungay has wide ripples in the white Australian community and the legal community. His family maintain that the killing of their son, brother and uncle, who was unarmed, was murder. No criminal charges have been brought and the coroner in November 2019 blamed Dungay’s pre-existing health conditions. His comments minimised the responsibility on the part of the officers:

it is most likely that the cause of David’s death was cardiac arrhythmia. It is noted that David had a number of comorbidities, both acute and chronic, which predisposed him to the risk of cardiac arrhythmia … However, the expert evidence also established that prone restraint, and any consequent hypoxia, was a contributing factor although it is not possible to quantify the extent or significance of its contribution.

 

First Nations people are the most incarcerated in the world

The deaths in custody of First Nations Australians are not hidden. As a nation, we are choosing not to look at them. In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody documented 99 deaths in custody.

Since then, 432 Indigenous Australians have died in custody, according to Guardian Australia’s Deaths Inside project.

First Nations people are the most incarcerated in the world, surpassing the rates of African American people in the United States. In 2019, for every 100,000 First Nations adults, 2,481 are in prisons, compared with 164 non-Indigenous people.

Despite comprising 2% of the general adult population, First Nations Australians are 28% of the prison population. For First Nations women, the rate is 33% and they are 21 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous women. This is a product of systemic racism that also contributes to disproportionate deaths in custody.

Yet the deaths are only the tip of the iceberg. Everyday occurrences of police brutality against First Nations people, frequently filmed and uploaded on social media platforms, have even less formal oversight. The casual complacency about the harm inflicted on First Nations people means we do not know the true extent of its occurrence.

On Tuesday, a NSW police officer was put on restricted duties after a video emerged on social media of him appearing to kick an Aboriginal teenager.

 

Protesting deaths in custody in our backyard

In the wake of Floyd’s death, Dungay’s nephew, Paul Silva pointed to the lack of response to First Nations deaths in Australia:

We don’t get the same big response in Australia as they do in the United States with the Black Lives Matter movement, but we have had many people, both First Nations and non-Indigenous people standing with us. We can build on that – we need many more to join us. We can take inspiration from the United States and get back out on the streets in our own backyard, where there is so much brutality against Black people too, that’s the only way to get justice.

While the spotlight has been shone on the protests in the United States, most Australians would be unaware that each year on the anniversary of Dungay’s killing, there has been a protest, mostly at Long Bay jail.

This week in cities around Australia, protests are planned in the name of First Nations people who have died in custody. The numbers of those who converge on the streets is a litmus test of national tolerance for racial violence against First Nations people in the criminal justice system.

 

Where does racial violence against First Nations people end?

Despite more than 500 First Nations deaths in custody since 1980, there has never been a successful homicide prosecution in the criminal courts. Indeed, only a handful have resulted in charges being laid in manslaughter or, less frequently, murder.

A police officer has been charged with murder following the shooting death of a 19-year-old Warlpiri man last year. The officer intends to plead not guilty.

The Victorian Coroner this April also referred the death of Yorta Yorta woman Tanya Day to prosecutors for further investigation.

Without accountability, justice will not flow for the families and the chain of racial violence will not be broken.

The danger of expressing outrage towards African American deaths in custody is that we deflect our own agency and responsibility. We legitimise the violence at our doorstep that is in our control.

It allows us to walk past racist police interventions on the false assumption that the problem is with the First Nations person rather than the police and Australian culture.

The only response to racism is resistance. This must take place not simply in passive solidarity with African Americans, but in our active support, protest and sacrifice for the lives of First Nations Australia.

 

Thalia Anthony, Professor of Law, University of Technology Sydney

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

The post ‘I Can’t Breathe!’ Australia Must Look in the Mirror to See our Own Deaths in Custody appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Commonwealth economic adviser, Tamara Mughogho
Jun 3 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Imagine a world without the internet and erase the last few decades of technological advancement. Then imagine how governments, schools and businesses would have dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the pandemic continues its relentless march around the globe, there have been debates about the effectiveness of response strategies such as social distancing and stay-at-home orders. Particularly, there is concern about the ability of countries with larger populations to enforce these measures.

There is no question that technology has played a major role in the world’s response to COVID-19. It has allowed children to continue their education, people to shop online and work from home and governments to continue to function. But are we maximising the full potential of technology to fight this global pandemic?

How technology can help

Innovation and best practices are emerging across the Commonwealth, with countries like Singapore, Kenya and the UK developing or using technology to continue economic activities or control the spread of the virus. For instance, mobile apps are used in Singapore to trace and track infected individuals and those with whom they have come into contact.

Mobile technologies are also used to determine if people are breaking lockdown regulations. Such innovations could provide avenues for countries struggling with containing the spread of COVID-19, particularly those with very large populations.

These strategies are especially useful for the Commonwealth, which includes some of the most highly and densely populated countries in the world, such as:

• India (1.3 billion people)
• Pakistan (220 million people)
• Nigeria (206 million people)
• Bangladesh (164 million people)

Some of these nations have faced major challenges in enforcing lockdown measures with strong opposition from parts of their populations. In some cases governments have resorted to using force, with deadly consequences.

On the other hand, there are countries with smaller populations, like New Zealand, effectively managing to control the spread of the outbreak. It is therefore worth examining the correlation between population size and the effectiveness of COVID-19 responses, and how technology can help.

Protecting trade

Another important consideration is how technology can protect business and trade. The World Trade Organization estimates that the pandemic will cause global trade to decline between 13 and 32 percent. This would amount to a trade slump surpassing those caused by the Global Financial Crisis and the 2003 SARS Pandemic.

A decline in global trade could have negative impacts on fiscal sustainability for already economically vulnerable countries, and leave small states, that are heavily reliant on trade, with decreased revenue. The COVID-19 pandemic has therefore necessitated a step-up in technology infrastructure to ensure the continued efficiency of financial transactions and to help countries keep trading.

It is clear that the world needs to act together to mitigate the economic fallout from the pandemic.

The post Blog: Making technology an effective weapon in the battle against COVID-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This blog is part of the seminar series on ‘The Economics of COVID-19’.

The post Blog: Making technology an effective weapon in the battle against COVID-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Eunice G. Kamwendo is an Economist and Strategic Advisor with UNDP Africa in New York. Chaltu Daniel Kalbessa is a UNDP Fellow and Strategic Analyst with UNDP Africa in New York.

By Eunice G. Kamwendo and Chaltu Daniel Kalbessa
NEW YORK, Jun 3 2020 (IPS)

With very weak health systems and overall capacity constraints to effectively respond to the deadly coronavirus disease, Africa’s fate against the invisible enemy, was going to be nothing short of catastrophic according to early predictions. Although Africa is yet to reach its peak, many countries are not seeing the exponential growth in case numbers, or in mortality rates as seen in other regions of the world. So far, the continent has the lowest mortality rates with higher recovery rates globally.

Eunice G. Kamwendo. Credit: UNDP South Africa

The slower than normal onset gives reason for some cautious optimism for Africa to weather this storm. What is working in Africa’s favor? Three key factors in our view which provide important lessons for the future.

Africa’s aggressive response:

First, is the swift and what seemed like an aggressive response to the pandemic by Africa as a whole. The continent reacted aggressively and proactively to COVID-19 as a preventative measure. By April 5, many African countries had imposed either localized, partial or full lockdowns of their countries, economies, schools, borders and large gatherings in an effort to contain the disease. Many of these measures were implemented long before any significant number of cases were recorded on the continent.

For a region that had only 99 confirmed cases by March 20, the above measures seemed extreme. Looking back, this was a bold response and rightly so. Stopping and containing the virus was not only a first line of defense for most, it constituted the main strategy between life and death given already overwhelmed and incapacitated health systems that have long struggled with responding to non-emergency cases. Such wholesale lockdown measures were complemented by community responses which for the African context have long proven to be effective in responding to similar disease outbreaks. The aggressive measures might be paying off.

Favourable population structure:

Africa’s demographic structure might be one of its mitigating features against Covid-19. The continent remains the most youthful globally, with more than 60.0 per cent of its population below the age of 25 compared to around 42.0 per cent globally. This trend is in stark contrast to developed regions where the proportion of aging populations are higher. The Covid-19 battle may be half won therefore given the continent’s demographic structure.

Available evidence corroborates with high risk population groups above, with age accounting for more deaths, without discounting other factors. In China, Europe and America for example more than 80% of Covid-19 related deaths are among the 65 years and above age group. All countries that have had the highest record of deaths are amongst the top ten countries with the largest share towards aging populations globally. Europe, America, and China have aging populations of about 20%, 16% and 12% respectively compared to less than 5% in Africa.

Chaltu Daniel Kalbessa. Credit: Zenanile Dlamini / UNDP, New York

Similar trends are observed in Africa with age accounting for most deaths in the 55 years and above age bracket. Granted, a much lower threshold than in developed regions but this is against a backdrop of low life expectancy pegged at 61 years for Sub Saharan Africa. Interestingly, countries that have higher proportions of adults over 65 years in Africa such as Tunisia (8%), Morocco (7.1%); Algeria (6.2%), South Africa (6%) and Egypt (5%) – account for up to two thirds of all Covid related deaths. This is quite instructive.

Exposure to a wide range of treatment regiments:

The continent shoulders the highest disease burden, with HIV, malaria and diarrhea amongst its top five killers. There were 25.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS and a little over 90% of those affected on antiretroviral drugs in 2018. Malaria is widespread just like the use Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccinations which are believed to offer broad protection against respiratory infections. What is less known however, is the interaction between the prevalence of other diseases on the continent, related treatments and SAR-Covid-2. The question remains, whether the combined treatments for all these diseases are contributing to the high recovery rates and relatively low Covid deaths in Africa.

In Senegal and Madagascar for example, COVID-19 patients on hydroxychloroquine and the herbal remedy Artemisia annua have been observed to recover faster from the disease with lower deaths. In both countries, even with rising cases, recovery rates from Covid19 are much higher – consistent with the observations in most malaria prone countries. Interestingly, malaria is not prevalent in Africa’s Covid-19 hotspots of South Africa and North Africa.

The fact that the World Health Organization (WHO) is conducting clinical trials on malaria drugs (chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine); HIV drugs (remdesivir, ritonavir/lopinavir and interferon-beta) is quite telling and holds a promise for the continent where the use of these drugs is already widespread. The jury is still out on this one.

A Reason for Hope:

The African story is yet to fully unfold. For now, caution needs to be applied even with the pressure to lift restrictions to avoid the socioeconomic fallout. How countries will emerge from this crisis will be important. Any missteps can easily tip the scales towards disaster if the theories above do not hold. Maintaining some of the measures that have proven effective, ramping up experimentation with existing and herbal remedies combined with an innovation drive will certainly help the African case. From Senegal’s affordable rapid testing kits and low-cost ventilator substitution; Ghana’s innovation pooling test, Ethiopia’s contactless soap dispensers, mobile tech solutions in Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda as well as the repurposing of industries to respond to the pandemic is deeply encouraging. The odds may be against the continent, but there is reason for hope.

The post The Curious Case of Covid-19 in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Eunice G. Kamwendo is an Economist and Strategic Advisor with UNDP Africa in New York. Chaltu Daniel Kalbessa is a UNDP Fellow and Strategic Analyst with UNDP Africa in New York.

The post The Curious Case of Covid-19 in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Latoya Mwoombola is juggling two careers at the same time, that of a doctor and of a rapper.

A displaced Yemeni woman stands outside a makeshift shelter that she shares with her extended family. Courtesy: IOM/O. Headon

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 3 2020 (IPS)

World leaders gathered on Tuesday to pledge $1.35 billion in aid for Yemen, which currently undergoing what many is the world’s “worst humanitarian crisis”, with Saudi Arabia announcing a contribution of $500 million. 

At the ceremony, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Peter Maurer said that reducing aid to Yemen at this time would be “catastrophic.” 

Those present at the ceremony repeatedly called for humanitarian access to be made accessible, without conditions, in the war-ravaged, famine-struck country where an estimated two million children are suffering from acute malnutrition. 

The pledge, the first of its kind to be held virtually, was organised jointly by the government of Saudi Arabia and the United Nations. Representatives from 125 member states, among other NGOs and civil society members, participated. 

The event was co-hosted by Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Saudia Arabia’s foreign affairs minister, and Mark Lowcock, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

Yemen has been embroiled in a five-year-long civil war, with Saudi-backed forces fighting the country’s Houthi rebels. 

On Tuesday, Secretary-General António Guterres warned about the crises being exacerbated by the current coronavirus pandemic. 

“The pandemic poses a terrifying threat to some of the most vulnerable people in the world, weakened by years of conflict, and with a health system that is already on the brink of collapse,” he said.    

“Public health measures are particularly challenging in a country where trust in the authorities is weak, and fifty percent of the population do not have access to clean water to wash their hands,” he added. 

He said in order for the current situation to be contained, it was the crucial that the war ended. This, Guterres said, would open up channels to respond to the country’s needs in the fields of health, humanitarian concerns and human development. 

He reiterated his calls for a global ceasefire, which he appealed for in March as countries around the world began their lockdowns to contain the spread of the coronavirus.     

His calls were further echoed by Maurer, president of the ICRC, who blasted the blocking of humanitarian aid to the Yemeni people. 

“People’s needs are enormous, yet neutral humanitarian work is routinely blocked or politicised by conditioning it to intractable political progress,” Maurer said. “Blackmailing people into misery is not an option.”  

He announced four call-to-action on behalf of ICRC:

• a political solution, as this is the only means for creating a “sustainable improvement” for the current situation;
• reminding all actors that they must comply by International Humanitarian Law’;
• allowing full humanitarian access; and
• urging donors to scale up their donations as the world plunges into an economic downturn. 

“Conditioning aid to political progress is taking the people of Yemen hostage,” he added. 

The United Kingdom, which pledged $197 million in aid for Yemen, also highlighted similar concerns. It demanded that all restrictions that currently stand as a barrier for Yemenis to receive aid should be “immediately and permanently removed.” 

Guterres welcomed the aid. “Today’s pledges will help our United Nations humanitarian agencies and their partners on the ground to continue providing a lifeline to millions of Yemenis.”

The post World Comes Together with $1.35 billion for Yemen appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Jun 3 2020 (IPS)

My name is Emma, I’m 10 years old, and I live in Canada. I am sharing this video with you, today, because I learned at school that my future – the future of all children – will be determined by what we do together today.

The life we lead – from the foods we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the climate that makes our planet a livable place – comes from nature. If we do not do our part to help it, everything we have in our lives will be lost.

We are at a point of “no return.”

World Environment Day is the most important day for environmental action. It has been celebrated every year on June 5th: working with governments, businesses, celebrities, and citizens to focus their efforts on a key environmental issue.

This year, the theme for the day is “Biodiversity.” It is the foundation that supports all life on land and below water. It affects every aspect of human health, providing clean air and water, nutritious foods, science and medicine, resistance to disease and helps with climate change. Changing, or removing, just one part of this delicately balanced system affects the entire life system – and the results are devastating.

According to IPBES, as many as one million species of living things are at risk of extinction. 75% of our land-based environments and two thirds of our marine environments have been changed by human actions. Urban areas have more than doubled since 1992. Plastic pollution has increased ten times since 1980, all long before I was born.

And now, COVID19 shows just how the destruction of biodiversity can harm the system that supports human life. The United Nations says that almost one billion cases of illness and millions of deaths happen every year from diseases caused by coronaviruses. About three quarters of all emerging infectious diseases in humans are passed on to people from animals. And what most people do not understand is that sustaining biodiversity on our planet protects us against pandemics.

IUCN has made it clear that governments have not done enough to stop the loss of biodiversity on our planet.
Much remains to be done.

Nature is sending us a message. So please listen for the sake of our future!

The post WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY 2020 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Momodou Lamin Sisay, 39, from The Gambia, was shot dead after a car chase in Georgia.

By Pragyan Deb, Davide Furceri, Jonathan D. Ostry and Nour Tawk
Jun 3 2020 (IPS)

Since the COVID-19 outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, China in late December 2019, the disease has spread to more than 200 countries and territories. In the absence of a vaccine or effective treatment, governments worldwide have responded by implementing unprecedented containment and mitigation measures—the Great Lockdown. This in turn has resulted in large short-term economic losses, and a decline in global economic activity not seen since the Great Depression. Did it work?

Our analysis, based on a global sample, suggests that containment measures, by reducing mobility, have been very effective in flattening the “pandemic curve.” For example, the stringent containment measures put in place in New Zealand—restrictions on gatherings and public events implemented when cases were in single digits, followed by school and workplace closings as well as stay-at-home orders just a few days later—are likely to have reduced the number of fatalities by over 90 percent relative to a baseline with no containment measures. In other words, the results suggest that, in a country like New Zealand, the number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths would have been at least ten times larger than in the absence of stringent containment measures.

Credit: International Monetary Fund

Early intervention and containment measured as the number of days it took a country to implement containment measures after a significant outbreak—public health response time in epidemiology lingo—played a significant role in flattening the curve. Countries such as Vietnam that were faster to put in place containment measures witnessed a reduction in the average number of infections and deaths of 95 and 98 percent respectively. This in turn has laid the foundation for growth in the medium term.

Credit: International Monetary Fund

The effect of containment measures also varied depending on variations in country and social characteristics. The impacts were stronger in countries where colder weather during the outbreak produced higher infection rates, and where the population was older and hence more vulnerable to infection. On the other hand, having a strong health system and lower population density enhanced the effectiveness of containment and mitigation strategies by making them easier to implement and enforce. How civil society responded to de jure restrictions mattered as well. Countries where lockdown measures resulted in less mobility, and therefore more social distancing, saw a greater reduction in the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths.

Credit: International Monetary Fund

Finally, we explored whether the effect of containment varies across types of measure. Many of these measures were introduced simultaneously as part of the country’s response to limit the spread of the virus, making it challenging to identify the most effective measure. Nevertheless, our results suggest that while all measures have contributed to significantly reduce the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, stay-at-home orders appear to have been relatively more effective.

Our empirical estimates provide a reasonable assessment of the causal effect of containment policies on infections and deaths, giving us comfort that the Great Lockdown, despite its enormous short-term economic costs, has saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Ultimately, the course of the global health crisis and the fate of the global economy are inseparably intertwined—fighting the pandemic is a necessity for the economy to rebound.

Pragyan Deb is an Economist in the IMF’s Strategy, Policy and Review Department. Davide Furceri is a Deputy Division Chief in the IMF’s Research Department. Jonathan D. Ostry is Deputy Director of the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department.

The post How the Great Lockdown Saved Lives appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Rules around funerals, informal workers and exercise were found to be unconnected to halting the virus.

Responding to Climate Change. Credit UNEP

By Dr Olukoya Obafemi
BRANDENBURG, Germany, Jun 3 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 insurgence has highlighted the need for multilateral cooperation among sustainability stakeholders. As the journey towards achieving Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is fraught with imminent global challenges, global environmental leaders agree that now is the time to act collectively for nature, leaving no one behind.

The shortage of sustainability knowledge in Africa is particularly appalling, and it seems the continent is oblivious to the world’s agenda. This is evident through the data-based analysis of Africa’s lack of progress towards achieving sustainability.

In response, Dr. Adenike Akinsemolu, educator, sustainability advocate, academic associate with SDSN, and a scientific committee member of the 2018 ICSD at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, swung into action.

She founded The Green Institute, a sustainability education organization in Nigeria, and authored an indigenous sustainability text, The Principles of Green and Sustainability Science (Springer, 2020).

The Green Institute confronted this challenge in Africa through the instrumentality of home-based solutions of education, innovation, and advocacy. One pertinent question arose and resonated with Dr. Akinsemolu all through her efforts towards bridging the knowledge gap of sustainability in Africa.

How can we bring the Agenda of Sustainability to indeed become the people’s Agenda in Nigeria and Africa? Having entered a new decade, unless Africa embraces a virtuous cycle of sustainability, she will decline in a vicious cycle of poverty, social injustice, and environmental degradation.

To change this, her organization went further by organizing a virtual summit aimed to mobilize sustainability leaders to share their expertise in the face of a global pandemic.

On June 5, 2020, the Green Institute, in collaboration with Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Qatar Foundation), will host Jeffrey Sachs (SDSN) and over 25 renowned sustainability experts from across the globe, at a virtual symposium Time #ForNature for World Environment Day, a United Nations awareness campaign for environmental protection, held annually since 1974.

The theme for World Environment Day 2020 is biodiversity.

Unsustainable agriculture practices are taking an incalculable toll on biodiversity. Credit: FAO/Giulio Napolitano

This hallmark event organized by a sustainability organization is a confluence of sustainability leaders in various fields endeavored at assembling individuals and organizations towards achieving sustainable development in Africa and beyond.

Armed with a plethora of speakers, the virtual symposium incorporates diverse fields of human endeavors ranging from sciences to arts, botany to engineering, health to et cetera.

The virtual symposium is also launching the indigenous sustainability text titled The Principles of Green and Sustainability Science, authored by Dr. Adenike Akinsemolu. “Everyday anthropogenic activities are responsible for the problems of our planet, and there is a need to salvage the situation through creativity, innovation, and critical thinking,” Dr. Akinsemolu stresses in her book.

She offers a detailed and step-by-step guide to understanding sustainability and discusses best practices to establish a more harmonious and balanced approach to living. In the words of Prof. Marc A. Rosen (Ontario Tech University), “The book enriches a global movement while highlighting efforts in Africa.”

Alongside the author is world-renowned sustainability leader Prof. Jeffrey Sachs who will be speaking on Building Resilient Health Structures to Combat Novel Diseases: A Case of COVID-19.

Sachs was twice named as Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders and was ranked by The Economist among the top three most influential living economists.

Among the topics discussed at the summit are biodiversity conservation, sustainable agriculture, sustainable building, urban innovation, minimal living, eco-feminism, waste management, renewable energy and others.

Over a century of civilization, humans have founded and established values that regulate human societal behaviors. With a new sustainable agenda spanning for the next decade, Dr. M. Evren Tok will explain the impacts of values and morality in sustainable development.

As the Associate Professor at the College of Islamic Studies (CIS) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Qatar Foundation), the Assistant Dean for Innovation and Community Development and Lead Project Investigator for a Qatar National Research Priorities Program on Localizing Entrepreneurship Education in Qatar, Dr. Tok has extensive experience in building disruptive mechanisms in education and learning in post-graduate studies.

He is the founder of the first MakerSpace in Qatar Foundation, built around the concept of Green Economies, Social Innovation, and Entrepreneurship.

The development of the world economy has consistently been at loggerheads with the environment. How can we simultaneously achieve economic growth and environmental wellbeing? Prof. Marc Rosen, Prof. Manfred Max Bergman (University of Basel), and Samson Ogbole (Farm Lab) strongly argue that both the environment and the economy could thrive simultaneously.

One of the essential directions for ensuring a shift in progress towards Agenda is education. The right to education is a fundamental human right that every nation aspires to fulfill. In an age of sustainability, what changes to our educational system are pivotal towards achieving sustainable development?

Ruba Hinnawi (Qatar Green Building Council) and Noah Martin (Georgetown University) will discuss the educational transformation that must occur if we are to transition towards sustainable development. The visual artist Data Oruwari will reveal the role that arts play towards achieving sustainability.

As the saying goes, “One is too small a number to achieve greatness.” The Green Institute has partnered with various international organizations that share the same commitment towards achieving sustainable development.

Organizations such as the Hamad Bin Khalifa University (a member of Qatar Foundation) and the Sustainable Solutions Development Network have been instrumental towards the success of The Green Institute.

The Nigerian organization behind the global summit believes that although SDG 17 is the last of the SDGs, it is by no means the least.

Ironically, it serves as an overarching framework for the successful implementation of the remaining 16 goals. To this end, The Green Institute continually extends its hand of partnership to collaborate with other organizations in achieving sustainable development.

The participating organizations include the UNEP, UNDP, Qatar Green Building Council, Qur’anic Botanic Garden, Farm Lab, Human Future, Springer Nature, Institute for Oil, Gas, Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development, University of Basel, the Open University UK, TerraCycle, Design Future(s) Initiative of Georgetown University, United Nations Development Program, and the Green Maasai Troupe Doha Qatar.

For more information, full schedule and registration: www.greeninstitute.ng/wed2020

The post How to Transform UN’s Environmental Goals into a People’s Agenda for Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr Olukoya Obafemi is a Researcher, Brandenburg Technical University, Institute of Graduate Research: Heritage Studies. He is also affiliated with The Green Institute, Ondo, Nigeria.

 
The UN will commemorate World Environment Day 2020 on Friday June 5

The post How to Transform UN’s Environmental Goals into a People’s Agenda for Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Ayaanle and Kahaa work online to help Somalis who have views that do not square with tradition.

A recreation of how New York's Times Square could be transformed as part of the ideas of reversible urbanism which experts are calling for in the wake of the pandemic. CREDIT: PaisajeTransversal.org

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 2 2020 (IPS)

The first priority in the COVID-19 pandemic was to save lives, in an effort to avoid even more devastating economic losses if strict lockdown and isolation were not put in place.

But that priority could be reversed in the wake of the crisis, and lessons that would open up paths for shaping better cities could be discarded.

“The pandemic served to raise awareness of the need to change the urban paradigm,” while at the same time awakening “spontaneous solidarity among networked citizens, many helping neighbours who they previously ignored,” said Carmen Santana, a Chilean city planner who splits her time between Paris and Barcelona, Spain.

Social inequality, already so widespread in Latin America, has been exacerbated now that this region is becoming the epicentre of the pandemic, and is taking its toll in lives."…[T]he greatest contagion has more to do with the flow and circulation of people than with density…Cities that attract many people from many countries, with large-scale global circulation, like London, New York and São Paulo, became hotspots for the pandemic." -- Raquel Rolnik

Also pushing up the death toll is the precarious state of health services, and poor nutrition reflected in undernourishment and in obesity, which was found to increase vulnerability to COVID-19.

The question remains as to whether cities, especially the large metropolises that have suffered the most brutal attack by the new coronavirus, will begin to focus their development on human needs or will continue to follow a dynamic dictated by economic interests that have given rise to dysfunctional systems, according to urban planners that IPS interviewed by phone in different cities.

It is too early to predict what urban transformations will arise, because they depend on how long the isolation and social distancing will last, said Nabil Bonduki, a professor at the University of São Paulo School of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU-USP).

If the epidemic loses momentum or is curbed by a vaccine or drugs in the short term, cities will return to normal with their previous contradictions, he said. But if the current rigid measures against gathering in crowded places in public, or in shows or businesses, are maintained, there will be changes that are still unpredictable, he warned.

“A strong increase in virtual activities is already inevitable, such as business meetings, which have proved to be very productive, remote work and distance learning,” the professor said from São Paulo.

Bonduki, who led the development of São Paulo’s Master Plan as a city councilman in 2013-2014, does not believe there will be a rollback in the search for denser cities, with “occupation of urban voids and underutilised areas, and perhaps larger apartments,” to include office space.

In any case, it is the political powers-that-be that will set the course, although strong pressure from society for greater investment in health and poverty reduction can be expected, he predicted.

His colleague at the FAU-USP, Raquel Rolnik, who served as U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing from 2008 to 2014, rejects the widespread belief in a correlation between urban density and the spread of coronavirus.

“Super-dense metropolises like Singapore, Hong Kong and Seoul have not suffered a catastrophe, but have had a relatively low number of victims. In New York, the district of Manhattan, which is very dense, had no more deaths than Staten Island, which is less densely populated,” she said.

A view of a favela in São Bernardo do Campo, an industrial city near the metropolis of São Paulo in southern Brazil. The idea was that shantytowns in Brazil and other countries of the developing South would be easy prey to the COVID-19 pandemic because of overcrowding, but this has not been the case. There are populous slums in Brazil and other countries that have had few cases .CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

She also pointed out that “in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, there are favelas (shantytowns) that have seen outbreaks of COVID-19 while others have not” – an argument that can help combat the stigma faced by these overcrowded neighbourhoods.

“In Brazil and around the world, you can see that the greatest contagion has more to do with the flow and circulation of people than with density,” Rolnik said from São Paulo.

“Cities that attract many people from many countries, with large-scale global circulation, like London, New York and São Paulo, became hotspots for the pandemic,” she said. To this list can be added Milan or Madrid, in the two countries that were epicentres of the pandemic in Europe.

The simplification of the issue is in the interest of groups that build, for example, high-end condominiums on the outskirts of cities, which try to tempt potential buyers with the benefits of living away from the crowded city and the possibility of telecommuting, she said.

These are the same financial interests that drive “non-resilient” cities, which accumulate problems such as “increasingly expensive and smaller housing” and air pollution from mushrooming numbers of cars, said Santana, who described herself as having “a Chilean soul, a French spirit and a Catalonian heart.”

“Real estate speculators” try to make a parallel between crowds that fuel contagion and urban density, which can actually be “healthy and sensitive”, with more humans and fewer cars, she said from Barcelona, capital of the region of Catalonia and Spain’s second largest city in terms of population.

Vehicles take up 50 to 60 percent of city space, she said.

Urban issues are complex and their solutions are not to be found in “pyramidal and linear thinking, but in circular thinking,” said Santana, a partner in the company Archikubik, which describes itself as an “ecosystem of architecture, urban planning and urban landscape”.

A crowd celebrates during Rio de Janeiro’s last carnival, in one of the last festive gatherings in the world before the coronavirus pandemic. No one knows whether carnival and other mass gatherings will be held in 2021 and the next few years. CREDIT: Fernando Maia | Riotur-Public Photos

Her proposals for redevelopment, which she hopes will be better received in the wake of the pandemic, include green public spaces, productive neighbourhoods that include urban agriculture, places of human dignity with housing and public toilets to serve refugees and the homeless, and the “renaturalisation” of cities.

“Animals reappeared in the cities when the cars stopped moving around, generating a new urban ecology and bringing people closer to nature,” she said.

The pandemic encourages reflection on how to reverse “the physical proximity and social distancing” of many in the city. “What is needed is a reasonable density, dense because of multifunctionality, with housing, work, commerce, recreation, culture, services, all in a local mix,” argued Carlos Moreno, a professor at the University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne.

Moreno, a Colombian-French urbanist and scientist and expert in intelligent cities, technological innovation and complex systems, prefers to describe “reasonable density” as “social intensity” with premises that combine economic, ecological and social dimensions.

We must promote the “urban-human encounter” in which people stop being “socially disconnected digital ghosts,” he said from Paris.

The possible increased use of cars would constitute a “triple blowback”, because they emit pollutants, like nitrogen dioxide and fine particles, which make COVID-19 more lethal. According to several studies, the air inside cars is stale and the vehicle subjects its users to “citizen anonymity,” Moreno said.

The urban space is one of coexistence, that generates bonds, but “the car generates neither economic activity nor social bonds,” reflects selfishness and today does not even represent social status, he asserted.

These are urban issues whose debate should intensify ahead of the 27th World Congress of Architects, which was postponed from this year to Jun. 18-22, 2021, due to the pandemic. It is expected to draw about 15,000 participants in Rio de Janeiro.

Postponing the meeting gives the International Union of Architects more time to organise it and to expand the debates, to include discussions of the effects of coronavirus in cities, said Sergio Magalhães, an architect and urban planner who chairs the Organising Committee.

Rio de Janeiro, named the World Capital of Architecture 2020 by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), will showcase its nearly five-century-old historic centre, and the impact of the pandemic in a tourist city.

Brazil will also stand out with cities that are badly treated by local and national governments, according to Magalhães, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who is renowned for his role in the upgrading of some 150 of the city’s favelas in the Favela-Bairro (favela-neighbourhood) project in the 1990s.

Brazilian cities are precarious because 80 percent of the homes were built by private individuals themselves, without any financing or support. From 1950 to 2010 about 60 million urban homes were built this way in the country, a popular feat.

Another 40 million will be built by 2030, although the population of the country will barely grow, because the birth rate has declined and families are shrinking, Magalhães explained.

One major problem is urban sprawl, with low density areas that make sanitation and urban services difficult to deliver. The area covered by Rio de Janeiro has grown three times more than the population since 1960, he said.

The post Prioritising Life or the Economy Will Determine the Post-Pandemic Focus in Urban Areas appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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.