Zimbabwe's Mashonaland East province. Perennial dry conditions have also seen Zimbabwe struggle with annual wild fires that have destroyed large tracts of land and damaged the soil, effectively providing the right conditions for turning parts of the country into mini deserts.Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS
By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Mar 27 2020 (IPS)
“I have never planted a tree in my life,” laughs Jairos Saunyama, a tobacco farmer, revelling at the absurdity of the question of whether he is involved in the country’s afforestation efforts. Sawunyama is one of thousands of farmers who are blamed by local conservationists for turning the country’s forests into deserts and dust bowls.
Tobacco farmers use firewood to cure their product but this has come at a price for the country’s commitments to such international agreements as the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
The country’s challenges with land degradation and desertification are not solely limited to small scale farmers. Wood fuel provides 61 percent of total energy supply, with 96 percent of the country’s rural households dependent on wood for fuel, according to a 2018 country report.
Perennial dry conditions have also seen Zimbabwe struggle with annual wild fires that have destroyed large tracts of land and damaged the soil, effectively providing the right conditions for turning parts of the country into mini deserts.
The UNCCD describes desertification as “land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors including climatic variation and human activity. It affects the livelihoods of rural people in drylands, particularly the poor, who depend on livestock, crops, limited water resources and fuel wood.”
The description summarises the dilemma Zimbabwe finds itself in as in recent years the country has experienced an escalation of problems that has given rise to the degradation of the environment.
In addition to the wild fires, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has also identified intensive cultivation and overgrazing as major causes of land degradation and desertification in Zimbabwe.
However, while it has appeared difficult to address these issues because of what FAO says is a “high proportion of the local communities depending on the land for their sustenance,” an ambitious afforestation programme could just be what will help Zimbabwe meet its multilateral obligations to address desertification and deforestation.
As part of the country’s broader efforts to address these challenges, the Sustainable Afforestation Association (SAA), formed by the country’s tobacco merchants in 2013, last year made commitments to plant at least 9 million eucalyptus trees annually after what was seen as the wanton destruction of woodlands by tobacco farmers and wild fires.
“Zimbabwe’s forest and woodland resources cover 45 percent down from 53 as at 2014 of the country’s total land area. Of the 45 percent, communal areas take 43 percent, resettlement and private land 24 percent and gazetted land including national parks 33 percent. Already this points to major deforestation,” Violet Makoto, the Forestry Commission spokesperson, tells IPS.
SAA says the initiative to plant 9 million eucalyptus trees and other drought-tolerant tree species is an attempt at conservation and “rejuvenating indigenous and commercial forests”.
“We have has selected varieties of eucalyptus which we believe are suitable for a particular area. Factors taken into account include climatic suitability, soils, disease resistance and growth rate,” Andrew Mills, SAA director tells IPS.
While Zimbabwe’s UNCCD focal point could not provide IPS with comment, Zimbabwe has made commitments to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN) by 2030 and also restore 10 percent or up to 4 million hectares of forests.
However, government officials in Zimbabwe concede that achieving this remains a tall order.
“The issue [of land degradation] is beyond the country’s desire to meet obligations under the various multilateral environment agreements but is now a serious national concern. Enforcement of the law needs to be up-scaled if we are to get anywhere,” says Washington Zhakata, a director in the lands, agriculture, water, climate and rural resettlement ministry’s climate change department, tells IPS.
Mills agrees.
“Part of the problem with deforestation is that there has been no serious attempt to combat it. The laws are there, but there has been no real effort to enforce the law,” Mills says.
SAA’s efforts complement the government’s own programmes, which include a national tree planting day each first Saturday of December — a day Saunyama says he has never heard of — as well as conducting “education and awareness raising for LDN for policy makers, legislators, land users and general public” and “linking land degradation neutrality to the country’s developmental, employment creation and poverty reduction strategies”.
But as World Desertification and Drought Day approaches this June, these commitments seem a tough ask as challenges mount against Zimbabwe’s undertaking to protect the environment.
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Normally bustling streets in cities across India were mostly deserted as the country observed the shutdown. Credit: UN India
By N Chandra Mohan
NEW DELHI, Mar 27 2020 (IPS)
The exigencies of combatting the coronavirus pandemic on a war-footing — Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a nationwide stay-at-home lockdown for 21 days to break the chain of transmission — has certainly deflected attention from equally pressing challenges confronting India. The nation’s capital witnessed horrific communal violence when the US President was visiting India, triggering international outrage, including from the South. The economy also deserves attention as growth has been decelerating since 2016-17. With the virus shock, the pace of expansion will contract as the economy shuts down and slides into recession.
This trinity of a public health problem, social disharmony and economic slowdown “may not only rupture the soul of India but also diminish our global standing as an economic and democratic power”, wrote former PM Dr Manmohan Singh in The Hindu. Many countries in the South looked up to India as a vibrant democracy with its unique diversity of peoples and cultures. Not any more as many voiced criticism over the riots, which left over 53 dead, mostly Muslims, hundreds of shops, businesses and livelihoods destroyed. Around 1,300 displaced Muslims sought refuge in a prayer ground located in north-east Delhi.
After winning a historic second term in May 2019, the NDA regime has prioritised policies that appeal to its majoritarian support base. The special status of Jammu and Kashmir was scrapped last August, followed by the detention of political leaders and a communications blockade. Farooq and Omar Abdullah were recently released. There are hopes that others will be let out soon. The Delhi violence was a culmination of nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act passed in Parliament in December. This legislation seeks to provide citizenship to persecuted religious minorities, barring Muslims, from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
The CAA sparked off misgivings among the 200 million Muslims who comprise 14% of the population together with the combination of the intended National Population Register and National Citizens Register, where documents are needed to prove citizenship. This made them uneasy that they would be disenfranchised. Faced with a backlash — that includes resolutions by many states that they will not implement NPR and NCR — the government has shown signs of relenting, even stating that NCR hasn’t been brought up in the union cabinet! Even as it tackles the virus pandemic, it is however unyielding on CAA.
The reemerging religious and sectarian fault lines in India’s polity not surprisingly occasioned scathing reactions from its allies in the South. For instance, Iran has been a steadfast partner, especially since the presidency of the reformist Mohammad Khatami in the 1990s. But after the Delhi riots, Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif condemned the
“wave of organized violence against Indian Muslims”. Shortly thereafter, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei strongly stated that “The government of India should confront extremist Hindus and stop the massacre of Muslims in order to prevent India’s isolation from the world of Islam.”
Elsewhere in the South, there were protests in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, especially in Medan and Jakarta. The CAA has also left Bangladesh and Afghanistan somewhat concerned over its implication that they persecute minorities in their countries! Matters have also not improved with one of the top NDA leaders referring to the immigrant influx from Bangladesh as “termites”! India sought to allay such concerns stating that CAA is only an internal matter. PM Modi was to visit Dhaka on March 17 but that trip was just as well cancelled due to the virus problem. If it had taken place, there would have been demonstrations.
But every crisis is also an opportunity. India’s heft in the South may have diminished, but dealing with the viral contagion provided PM Modi an opening to reach out to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation after a gap of several years. Due to problems with Pakistan, this grouping receded from his priorities in favour of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation. PM Modi’s video conference with SAARC leaders “is a courageous step as it brings this regional institution back into reckoning at a time of calamity” stated Professor Amita Batra of the Jawaharlal Nehru University to IPS.
Dealing with the virus outbreak is also a chance to tackle social disharmony to salvage the growth story. PM Modi must address the sense of alienation among Muslims, assuring them that NPR and NCR will be junked. As Dr Singh noted, every act of sectarian violence is a blemish on Mahatma Gandhi’s India; that social unrest only exacerbates the economic slowdown and complicates efforts to revive growth. So while the country is locked down for 21 days, the rediscovery of a sense of national resolve in fighting the virus must include all sections of the population to address the trinity of challenges. At stake is the idea of India.
(The writer is an economics and business commentator based in New Delhi)
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Credit: UN Population Fund (UNFPA)
By Helge Berger, Kenneth Kang, & Changyong Rhee, International Monetary Fund (IMF)
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 27 2020 (IPS)
The impact of the coronavirus is having a profound and serious impact on the global economy and has sent policymakers looking for ways to respond. China’s experience so far shows that the right policies make a difference in fighting the disease and mitigating its impact—but some of these policies come with difficult economic tradeoffs.
Success in containing the virus comes at the price of slowing economic activity, no matter whether social distancing and reduced mobility are voluntary or enforced.
In China’s case, policymakers implemented strict mobility constraints, both at the national and local level—for example, at the height of the outbreak, many cities enforced strict curfews on their citizens.
But the tradeoff was nowhere as devastating as in Hubei province, which, despite much help from the rest of China, suffered heavily while helping to slow down the spread of the disease across the nation.
This makes it clear that, as the pandemic takes hold across the world, those hit the hardest—within countries but also across countries—will need support to help contain the virus and delay its spread to others.
High costs
The outbreak brought terrible human suffering in China, as it is continuing to do elsewhere, along with significant economic costs. By all indications, China’s slowdown in the first quarter of 2020 will be significant and will leave a deep mark for the year.
What started as a series of sudden stops in economic activity, quickly cascaded through the economy and morphed into a full-blown shock simultaneously impeding supply and demand—as visible in the very weak January-February readings of industrial production and retail sales.
The coronavirus shock is severe even compared to the Great Financial Crisis in 2007–08, as it hit households, businesses, financial institutions, and markets all at the same time—first in China and now globally.
Quick action
Mitigating the impact of this severe shock requires providing support to the most vulnerable. Chinese policymakers have targeted vulnerable households and looked for new ways to reach smaller firms—for example, by waiving social security fees, utility bills, and channeling credit through fintech firms. Other policies can also help.
The authorities quickly arranged subsidized credit to support scaling up the production of health equipment and other critical activities involved in the outbreak response.
Safeguarding financial stability requires assertive and well-communicated action. The past weeks have shown how a health crisis, however temporary, can turn into an economic shock where liquidity shortages and market disruptions can amplify and perpetuate.
In China, the authorities stepped in early to backstop interbank markets and provide financial support to firms under pressure, while letting the renminbi adjust to external pressures.
Among other measures, this included guiding banks to work with borrowers affected by the outbreak; incentivizing banks to lend to smaller firms via special funding from China’s central bank; and providing targeted cuts to reserve requirements for banks.
Larger firms, including state-owned enterprises, enjoyed relatively stable credit access throughout—in large part because China’s large state banks continued to lend generously to them.
Of course, some of the relief tools come with their own problems. For example, allowing a broad range of debtors more time to meet their financial obligations can undermine financial soundness later on if it is not aimed at the problem at hand and time-limited; subsidized credit can be misallocated; and keeping already non-viable firms alive could hold back productivity growth later.
Clearly, wherever possible, using well-targeted instruments is the way to go.
Not over
While there are reassuring signs of economic normalization in China—most larger firms have reported reopening their doors and many local employees are back at their jobs—stark risks remain. This includes new infections rising again as national and international travel resumes.
Even in the absence of another outbreak in China, the ongoing pandemic is creating economic risks. For example, as more countries face outbreaks and global financial markets gyrate, consumers and firms may remain wary, depressing global demand for Chinese goods just as the economy is getting back to work.
Therefore, Chinese policymakers will have to be ready to support growth and financial stability if needed. Given the global nature of the outbreak, many of these efforts will be most effective if coordinated internationally.
IMF Blog is a forum for the views of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff and officials on pressing economic and policy issues of the day. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF and its Executive Board.
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Excerpt:
Helge Berger is the IMF's China mission chief, Kenneth Kang is a deputy director in the IMF's Asia & Pacific Department, and Changyong Rhee is director of IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department.
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Emergency room nurses wear face masks at Second People's Hospital of Shenzhen in China. Credit: Man Yi/ UN News
By Martin Jacques
LONDON, Mar 26 2020 (IPS)
During January the onslaught in the Western media, notably the US and the UK, against the Chinese government’s handling of the Covid-19 epidemic, was merciless. The Chinese government stood accused of an inhumane attitude towards its people, secrecy, a cover-up, and an overwhelming concern for its own survival above all other considerations.
The actual evidence was thin bordering at times on the threadbare but this made little difference to the venom and bile of the assault.
Certainly, it seems clear, there was a deliberate attempt to forestall and hinder the necessary timely action in Wuhan, and more widely in Hubei, but with the benefit of hindsight the time lost as a result proved relatively marginal compared with that lost in the West in their belief that it could not possibly happen to them, that China was to blame, and in their failure to learn from China’s experience.
To have used the tragedy of the coronavirus epidemic, with all the deaths, illness and suffering that ensued, as a stick with which to beat the Chinese government – and the Chinese people – was nothing short of a disgrace.
Martin Jacques
When the Chinese needed compassion, support and solidarity, they received ridicule, calumny and barely-concealed racism. One might ask why this was. Western prejudice against China is historically deeply-rooted and continues to influence contemporary Western attitudes.
Over the last few years, however, especially since around 2016, the incidence of China-bashing has become much more common. There has been a growing sense of resentment towards China’s rise, especially and predictably in the US, but elsewhere too, combined with a desire to reassert and restore the old global pecking order and the established economic, political and ethnic hierarchies.
The main subject of China-bashing has been its governing system. The coronavirus epidemic offered, on the surface at least, ideal ground on which to attack China’s governance: it was covering up, it didn’t care, its own survival came first.
How wrong and misconceived these West prejudices proved to be. After initial dithering, hesitation, and wrong-turns, once China grasped the nature and profound dangers that the virus posed for the Chinese people, its approach was nothing short of brilliant, an example and inspiration for all.
For China, we must never forget that it was an entirely new and mysterious challenge. All subsequent countries could learn from China’s experience. China did not even know what the virus was. It had to establish that it was entirely new and work out its genome and its characteristics, which it immediately shared with the world.
And it grasped with remarkable alacrity that the epidemic required the most dramatic measures, including the lockdown not just of Wuhan but all major cities and most of the country, and quarantining the population.
The government understood that life came before the economy. Its extraordinary and decisive leadership met with an equally extraordinary and proactive response from the people: it was a classic case of the government and the people as one.
The results are there for all to see. New cases have been reduced to a trickle. Slowly, step by step, the economy is being rekindled. Bit by bit China is returning to normal. For those wanting to avoid coronavirus, China is fast becoming the safest place on earth.
Indeed, China’s problem is fast becoming visiting foreign tourists suffering from the virus and reintroducing it into their country.
Meanwhile Europe and North America are facing a coronavirus tsunami: Italy is the worst case but others such as Spain, France, Germany and the UK are rapidly following in its slipstream.
Soon the whole of Europe will be engulfed in the epidemic. And America, far from being immune, as President Trump believed, has itself declared a state of emergency to deal with a virus which it dismissed and ignored as a ‘foreign virus’.
The West – and, above all, its people – are destined to pay a huge price for its hubris, its belief that coronavirus was a Chinese problem that could never become a Western problem. Too late, alas, having wasted all the time that China gave them, all the knowledge that China had acquired on how to tackle the virus, Western governments are now faced with a fearful challenge.
Back in January they accused the Chinese government of wasting a fortnight; now it is revealed to the world that Western governments wasted a minimum of two and a half months.
The tide has turned. In the greatest health crisis for one hundred years, China’s governance has risen to the challenge and delivered a mortal blow to coronavirus.
In contrast, Western governance has proven to be blinded by its own hubris, unable to learn from China until far too late, ill-equipped to grasp the kind of radical action that is required of it. Trump is still largely in denial, while the UK government is acting far too late.
I cannot think of any other example which so patently reveals the sheer competence and capacity of Chinese governance and the inferiority and infirmity of Western governance. In their hour of need, the latter has let their peoples down.
Meanwhile the Western criticism of China has fallen almost, but not quite entirely, silent. They have no alternative, as Italy shows, but to learn from China’s draconian measures.
What else can they do? China has succeeded. They have, in truth, nowhere else to turn. Learn from China they must. But for many it is a bitter pill to swallow.
The wheels of history are turning, irresistibly, towards China. And China must respond in humility by offering all the assistance and experience it can offer the West.
This story was originally published here
Martin Jacques is a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and Fudan University, Shanghai. Until recently, he was a Senior Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies, Cambridge University, and was previously a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at IDEAS, a centre for diplomacy and grand strategy at the London School of Economics. He was also a Fellow of the Transatlantic Academy, Washington DC.
Martin Jacques is the author of the global best-seller When China Rules the World: the End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order.
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Doctor Khalishwayo, a traditional healer in the Shiselweni Region, in southern Eswatini, distributes HIV Self-Test Kits to his clients to get more people to know their status. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS
By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Mar 26 2020 (IPS)
Doctor Khalishwayo is a traditional healer based in Nhlangano, a town in the Shiselweni Region, in southern Eswatini. His clients are people who consult him when they are suffering from different ailments. And he in turn diagnoses them using divine methods.
“But as a traditional healer, there are certain things that I can’t see,” Khalishwayo told IPS, adding, “I can’t tell whether a client is infected with HIV or TB.”
He is one of the eight traditional healers in the region who are distributing HIV Self-Test Kits to their clients to get more people to know their status.
This is an initiative by the NGO, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. Traditional healers were trained on the role they can play in curbing the spread of HIV and TB by encouraging their clients to get an HIV test.
Before the training,Khalishwayo did not encourage his clients to test for HIV because, he said, he felt that it was not his place.
“Besides, traditional healers were not involved in the response against HIV/AIDS,” said Khalishwayo. Each traditional healer received 50 kits to distribute within a period of six months.
Singaphi Mngomezulu, another traditional healer, said they learnt from the training that some people with AIDS-related illnesses and TB may present with symptoms of people who have been “bewitched”.
“Some people come to us with mental illnesses in such that makes one believe that they’re possessed with demons,” said Mngomezulu. “I learnt that AIDS and TB symptoms can affect the brain.”
In the past, he said, he did not have the knowledge and could not advise clients to also seek medical attention.
The involvement of traditional healers is one of the country’s efforts to accelerate the response against HIV/AIDS.
A few years ago, HIV incidence decreased by almost half – at 44 percent – among the age group of 18 to 49 years. These are results of the 2016/17 2nd Swaziland HIV Incidence Measurement Survey (SHIMS2).
Despite this progress, SHIMS2 found that HIV testing is generally low among men compared to women. Moreover, younger women are having sex with older men who infect them and, in turn, they pass on the virus to their peers.
“It is for that reason that we had to target the men because unfortunately don’t like to go to health facilities,” said Muhle Dlamini, the programme manager at Eswatini HIV Programme (SNAP).
Dlamini also said the government had introduced the kits to target hard-to-reach populations including those who are far from testing centres.
“Men fall under the hard-to-reach category because they don’t visit health facilities,” said Dlamini.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) head of mission to Eswatini, Dr Bernhard Kerschberger, says it is a good strategy to raise awareness of HIV testing by involving traditional healers. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS
MSF saw this as a good strategy to also raise awareness among traditional healers, said the head of mission to Eswatini, Dr. Bernhard Kerschberger. The kits though are not exclusively for men, and women were also given them if they want to be tested.
“As MSF we asked the Ministry of Health if we could include traditional healers in distributing the kits to clients who might benefit and they agreed,” said Kerschberger.
Each kit has easy-to-follow instructions and, if a person tests positive, a client is encouraged to visit a health facility for confirmation after which treatment can be initiated.
“There is no official link between the traditional healer and health facility but the kit is used to help in identifying clients who might need to go to the facility for HIV/TB services,” he said.
He said this is a research project that would establish if using traditional healers to reach people who are not accessible through the routine healthcare system is a viable option.
Within a period of six months, he said, a total of 80 kits were distributed and, of these, 14 percent were screened to be HIV-positive cases.
“The most important thing was that traditional healers appreciated that HIV cannot be cured by them and that they have to refer their clients to health facilities,” said Kerschberger.
He said one of the groups that the government utilised to distribute the kits were rural health motivators but men were not receptive because of the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS in the communities.
“That’s why we decided to involve the traditional healers because they are trusted by their clients and they approach them from a safe space. However, we discovered that women are almost half the people who see traditional healers,” he said.
This research could lead to a better working relationship between the Ministry of Health and traditional healers in the response against HIV/AIDS.
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