Africa

Liverpool forward Sadio Mane apologises for not stopping in Senegal after being crowned Caf's African Player of the Year.

Kenyan driver Raymond Juma says his passengers "are like my brothers and sisters".

Kenya's El-Molo people say there are not enough new young speakers learning from their elders.

Mercy Juma puts the Islamist militant group's attack on a US military base in Kenya into context.

The Barcelona forward wins the award for a record-matching fourth time.

Presidents Erdogan and Putin meet in Turkey, amid warnings of a Syria-style civil war in Libya.

A baby grow stuffed with banned cosmetics was being passed off as a baby travelling on a bus.

The Senegalese star is named CAF men's player of the year after twice being a runner-up.

A body was discovered after an Air France flight had arrived in Paris from Ivory Coast.

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, Jan 8 2020 (IPS)

As nature’s fury wreaked havoc across Australia, reducing to ashes all that came in its way – people, flora, fauna, picturesque historic towns and villages once popular with local and overseas tourists – it was unlike anything the country had witnessed before. The staggering scale and intensity of the devastation could best be summed up as apocalyptic.

Bushfires, not uncommon in Australia’s vast woodland, scrub or grassland areas, started early in September with summer still few months away (December – February), igniting a fresh debate on the country’s woeful record on climate change. 2019 was the country’s driest and hottest year on record with the temperature reaching 1.52 °C above the long-term average.

With temperatures soaring close to 50 °C, parched land, low humidity, strong winds fuelled the fires that since September have claimed 24 lives, including three volunteer firefighters, and razed more than 6.3 million hectares of land. Thousands have been rendered homeless and there has been a heavy toll on wildlife.

For Diana Plater, a writer, who grew up witnessing bushfires in the regional towns of New South Wales (NSW), the magnitude and persistence of the fires raging this southern summer was unimaginable. Two years ago, she trained to be a volunteer firefighter to help her small community in the scenic valley of Foxground, two-hour drive south of Sydney.

The NSW Rural Fire Service is one of the world’s largest volunteer-based emergency services with over 70,000 men and women volunteers, who have played a crucial role in helping affected communities. Plater told IPS, “I believe it is important to be physically and mentally strong and practical and you learn this as a firefighter. It is exhausting but the camaraderie and humour we share keeps us going.”

Scientists and environmentalists have been warning that global warming will increase the intensity and duration of fires and floods, mounting pressure on Australia to do more towards cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In 2019, 61 percent of Australians said “global warming is a serious and pressing problem”, about which “we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs”. This is a 25-point increase since 2012, according to the 2019 Lowy Institute poll findings on climate change.

Australia has set a target to cut emissions by 26 percent of 2005 levels by 2030. At the 25th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Madrid in December 2019, one of the major sticking points was Australia wanting to use an expired allocation of credits (often referred to as “carryover credits“) – which is an accounting measure where a country counts historical emissions reduction that exceeded old international goals against its current target.

According to Climate Council, Australia’s leading climate change communications organisation, “After successfully negotiating extraordinary low targets under the Kyoto Protocol (Australia’s 2020 target – 5 percent below 2000 levels), the Australian Government is planning to use these expired allocations from an entirely different agreement to undermine the Paris Agreement as well. The Australian Government’s use of disingenuous and dodgy accounting tricks to meet its woefully inadequate 2030 climate target is irresponsible because it masks genuine climate action”.

• Australia has one of the highest per capita emissions of carbon dioxide in the world. It contributes 1.3 percent to global emissions with a relatively small population of about 25 million people.
• Australia is also the world’s largest exporter of metallurgical coal, accounting for 17 percent of world production in 2018, and is the world’s second-largest thermal coal exporter, exporting 210 million tonnes in 2018-19 valued at AUD 26 million.

Environmental groups argue that it is feasible for Australia to move to a low carbon economy and the country has huge potential for solar power and wind energy.

Former Australian Greens Party leader and veteran environmental activist, Bob Brown told IPS, “We need leadership in a global climate crisis, beginning with no more coal mines or gas or oil wells, but transferring to renewable energy. This is the sunny country and we have fantastic solar technology. We have the ability to become world leaders in both the technology and its application and the export of that application to countries like India.”

The economic impact of the Australian bushfire crisis will be huge as so many properties have perished in the fires. “The insurance claims will be enormous, but so too will be the permanent climate change-related rise in insurance premiums going forward. The destruction and disruption of businesses in regional NSW and Victoria is ongoing for many months, again this cost is huge, but unquantifiable,” Tim Buckley, Director of Energy Finance Studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), told IPS.

The fires have been devastating for livestock, wildlife and their habitat. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Australia’s Senior Manager Land Clearing and Restoration, Dr Stuart Blanch told IPS, “Until the fires subside the full extent of damage will remain unknown. Many forests will take decades to recover and the fires are worsening Australia’s extinction crisis”.

Professor Chris Dickman from the University of Sydney estimates that 480 million native mammals, birds and reptiles have been affected by fires in NSW alone since September 2019. This includes the death of thousands of koalas, along with other iconic species such as kangaroos, wallabies, gliders, kookaburras, cockatoos and honeyeaters.

• The koala, an arboreal mammal endemic only to Australia, is highly susceptible to heat stress and dehydration. Images of burnt koalas being rescued have been heartwrenching.
• Deborah Tabart, chairman of the Australian Koala Foundation, had warned in May 2019 that the marsupial was “functionally extinct”.
• “We now stand even more firmly on that position. The heat, no water in river systems (which are so important to a healthy koala habitat), drought, mis-management of water and unsustainable use of the environment are all key players in this catastrophe. Bushfires have decimated koala’s natural habitat. We immediately need a Koala Protection Act,” she told IPS.

The acrid bushfire smoke blanketing cities and towns has exposed people to very high levels of air pollution over extended time periods.

Bruce Thompson, Dean of the School of Health Sciences at Swinburne University said, “The smoke generated by the current bush fires is a very serious health issue especially for those with respiratory conditions such as Asthma, Emphysema, Bronchitis and even upper respiratory conditions such as laryngitis. The central issue is not only the large particles that are inhaled but more importantly the very fine particles that are less than 2.5microns (pm2.5). These particles cause inflammation and get inhaled very deep into the lungs causing the lung to become inflamed. They also can cross over from the lung into the bloodstream and cause inflammation in areas such as the heart.”

• The bushfires have also impacted drinking water catchments. Professor Stuart Khan, Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of New South Wales said, “While rainfall is desperately needed to help extinguish fires and alleviate the drought, contaminated runoff to waterways will present a new wave of challenges regarding risks to drinking water quality.
• “Bushfire ash is largely composed or organic carbon, which will biodegrade in waterways, potentially leading to reduced oxygen concentrations and poor water quality. Ash also contains concentrated nutrients including nitrogen and phosphorous, which may stimulate the growth of algae and cyanobacteria in waterways”.

At the time of press more than 100 fires were still raging in south-eastern Australia.

The post Australia’s Bushfires Bring Mounting Pressure to Reduce Greenhouse Gases appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Annabelle Avril - Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF)

By Patricia Bohland
MADRID, Spain, Jan 8 2020 (IPS)

After nearly two weeks of negotiations at COP 25 climate negotiations in Madrid last month (2-13 December), governments will be adopting a new 5-year Gender Action Plan (GAP) that progressively builds upon the first GAP, and works to address many of the concerns raised by women and gender groups at the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including calls for greater focus on implementation and scaling up gender-just climate solutions.

The GAP has been unanimously agreed to by governments who are called to lead or contribute to actions to promote gender-equality in the UNFCCC process as well as support all activities. Crucially, this GAP takes into account human rights, ensuring a just transition, and the challenges Indigenous Peoples face while fighting for climate justice and protecting their communities.

“In comparison to the initial GAP, new activities provide the opportunity to meaningfully shift towards capacity building and enhanced implementation of gender-responsive climate action at all levels, including for example, the promotion of gender-responsive technology solutions and preserving local, indigenous and traditional knowledge and practices in different sectors” said Ndivile Mokoena, GenderCC – Women for Climate Justice Southern Africa.

The negotiations were not easy, with Parties failing to deliver a text for the closing of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) as expected, and the COP25 Presidency having to host high-level consultations in the final week to come to a consensus.

Delays in negotiations included initial process challenges to arrive at a basis for negotiating text, followed by disagreement on inclusion of previously agreed language on human rights and just transition, as well as over references to finance and means of implementation.

“While it was frustrating to witness delays in the negotiations, particularly challenges to agreed language on rights, the fact that we have achieved and adopted a 5 year gender action plan that includes many of the key demands of Parties as well as views of women and gender groups goes to show the critical importance to which countries have started to understand and value gender equality in climate action.”

“I think the political will shown by negotiators under this agenda to negotiate towards consensus and achieve a robust outcome could and should be modeled under all other items in this process. In particular, I want to highlight the incredibly strong leadership of the Government of Mexico in facilitating Parties to come to this agreement. It was inspiring to witness!” said Bridget Burns, WEDO, United States.

Political will was also built through the effective mobilization efforts of both the Women and Gender Constituency and other civil society allies who refused to see this COP stall progress on gender equality.

“Mobilization efforts via social media, letters to Ministers, including protests by civil society movements were critical to raising political awareness on GAP,” said Kavita Naidu, Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), Thailand.

However, there are concerns that the Gender Action Plan lacks clearly defined indicators and targets for measuring its progress, such as a progressive target on advancing women’s leadership in the process.

Credit: Annabelle Avril/ WECF

“While the GAP acknowledges intersectional identities that women hold, including indigenous women and women with disabilities, more work needs to be done to understand the multidimensional and non-binary social intersections that impact the ways in which people mitigate to and build resilience to climate impacts.”

“The adoption of the enhanced GAP does not mean our work is done. We will need to focus our work now at the national level to ensure the implementation of the GAP, as well as monitoring its implementation,” Nanna Birk, LIFE Education Sustainability Equality, Germany.

While Women and Gender Constituency applauds this outcome, it fully recognizes and maintains that no real action on gender equality can be achieved without progress from Parties to fully implement the Paris Agreement, including to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees.

“We know we are far from that reality. The GAP is a tool to advance progress on both gender equality and effective climate solutions, but gender equality does not live in the GAP. It is realized through just and bold climate action. We remain appalled by the lack of progress overall in these negotiations and move forward boldly to lift up women’s rights and the voices of women and gender advocates everywhere as we know that real climate action can only be achieved when these voices and leadership are centered and heeded.” added Burns.

Read the agreed outcome of the gender agenda item here.

The Women and Gender Constituency (WGC) is one of the nine stakeholder groups of the UNFCCC. Established in 2009, the WGC now consists of 29 women’s and environmental civil society organizations, who are working to ensure that women’s voices and their rights are embedded in all processes and results of the UNFCCC framework, for a sustainable and just future, so that gender equality and women’s human rights are central to the ongoing discussions.

http://womengenderclimate.org

The post Women’s Groups Applaud Gender Action Plan Following COP 25 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Around 310,000 cases have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo since early 2019.

Ten years on from the machine gun attack on Togo's national football team in Angola, former players tell their story of survival.

Liverpool's Sadio Mane is named the Confederation of African Football's (Caf) Player of the Year.

Courtesy: ESCAP

By Mia Mikic and James Gregory Gallagher
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jan 7 2020 (IPS)

Imagine going through the day without consuming or using some product, service, data, technology, personal contact, or payment which has not – at least in some part – crossed one or more national borders before reaching you.

We live in a globalized world where connections across borders are no longer just between governments or businesses but increasingly person to person. Many of us would have a hard time to adjust to life without these benefits from globalization.

Globalization, described as the spread of products, services, technology, information, and jobs across national borders, is often understood as the deepened interdependence of economies, cultures, and people.

The pace of globalization has been primarily driven by technological progress intertwined with the steady reduction of costs in international transactions coming from the policy side.

Mia Mikic

Fragmentation enabled the spread of production through global value chains integrating many developing countries into the global economy. Millions of new trade-related jobs were created in countries such as China, Viet Nam, and other South-East Asian economies with increased productivity, incomes, and reduced poverty [APTIR, 2015]. Women have especially benefited from the expansion of global value chains (GVCs) into developing countries.

But there is the other side to this story. The benefits of globalization have not been shared widely or equitably. While workers producing smartphones, cars, or other GVC products in a few developing countries were gaining, their gains were relatively less than high-skilled or capital owners locally and overseas.

Offshoring production has meant a loss of mostly lower-skilled jobs in the advanced economies. These changes gave rise to a denouncement of globalization in both developed and developing countries. The high-speed growth of GVCs in the late 1990s and early 2000s, might have contributed to a degradation of the environment and overuse of resources.

The spread of resentment against globalization was recognized in several economies through populist policies focusing on short-term gains for those assumed to be hurt by globalization. Such policies go directly against the rationale for having a global governance of trade.

James Gregory Gallagher

Unilateralism advances national interest at the expense of other countries and invites similar retaliatory policies and ultimately trade wars. ESCAP has estimated that the imposed tariffs could cause GDP losses of at least $400 billion worldwide (almost a loss of Thailand’s GDP) and $117 billion in Asia and the Pacific (100 million workers being paid a minimum monthly wage of $100 for a year).

Yet the loss is potentially much more significant. Trade tensions have spread from bilateral tit-for-tat tariffs, into the multilateral arena threatening the functioning of the global trade governance under the WTO. This system is not flawless and the calls for reform are justified. But that should not mean destruction before fixing it.

The global trade regime functions as a public good which is necessary to enable trade for delivering sustainable development. As demonstrated by ESCAP work, there are direct and indirect links between trade and the attainment of sustainable development. The channels are the following.

1. Trade facilitation and in particular digital trade facilitation reduces the cost of trade (by about 25%) and make its benefits accessible to many more, in particular women and SMEs.
2. Services are increasingly important for employment and value creation. They are closely linked to the process of digitalization of economies. The use of digital frontier technologies will allow for a new phase of globalization, unleashing the ability of professional services to be remotely provided across the globe. Asia’s advantage in offering varied professional services through digital technology are clear and would contribute to all three dimensions of sustainable development (prosperity, inclusivity, and environmental responsibility). Moreover, digitalization will offer more opportunities to countries and groups still excluded to participate in global markets.
3. As shown in APTIR 2019, the amount of NTMs has been increasing. The trade costs that come from NTMs are estimated to be more than double that of ordinary customs tariffs, with the economic costs of SPS and TBT measures estimated being up to 1.6% of global GDP, amounting to $1.4 trillion and the average trade costs of the Asia-Pacific region from NTMs is 15.3%. Yet NTMs often serve as a tool for the delivery of crucial public policies, such as the protection of human, animal, and plant health and protection of the environment. Can we keep NTMs but make them cheaper to use? Yes! By adopting new digital technologies and adjusting policies so that NTMs are aligned with international standards.

For these channels to remain open, there must be a functioning system of rules based on transparency, stability, predictability, and fairness. By working together, governments can improve the current WTO regime.

The opportunity comes up with the 12th Ministerial Conference in 2020 in Kazakhstan, and the ESCAP secretariat is already working with the Governments and other stakeholders towards ensuring that trade remains an effective means of implementation for sustainable development.

The post Let’s Give Trade a Chance appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Mia Mikic is Director, Trade, Investment and Innovation Division in ESCAP & James Gregory Gallagher is an Intern, Trade, Investment and Innovation Division

The post Let’s Give Trade a Chance appeared first on Inter Press Service.

England force a dramatic 189-run victory over South Africa late on day five of the second Test in Cape Town to level the series at 1-1.

Cardiff City release defender Armand Traore after his short-term contract expires.

The churches were packed as people prayed for a good start to the year, writes Elizabeth Ohene.

Twenty-six people were wounded in the blast on the Nigeria-Cameroon border, an official says.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 7 2020 (IPS)

The latest November 2019 UBS/PwC Billionaires Report counted 2,101 billionaires globally, or 589 more than five years before. Earlier, Farhad Manjoo had seriously recommended, ‘Abolish Billionaires’, presenting a moral case against the super-rich as they have and get far, far more than what they might reasonably claim to deserve.

Anis Chowdhury

Manjoo also argues that unless billionaires’ economic and political power is cut, and their legitimacy cast in doubt, they will continue to abuse power to further augment their fortunes and influence, in ways detrimental to the economic, social and public good.

Benign billionaires?
In defence of billionaires, Josef Stadler, head of ultra-high net worth at UBS Global Wealth Management, argued that their wealth “has also translated into their philanthropy, as billionaires seek new ways to engineer far-reaching environmental and social change.”

Philanthropic ethics expert Chiara Cordelli notes that philanthropy and donations have diverted social responsibility from governments, and created other problems by bypassing democratic political processes and accountability. “The philanthropist should not get to decide – in virtue of her or his disproportionate influence – which world we should live in”.

An ostensibly benign ‘billionaire effect’ cannot offset the adverse impacts of billionaires’ wealth accumulation, tax avoidance and abuse of power to corrupt political processes and policy making. Rather, ‘every billionaire should be regarded as a policy failure’. To create fairer societies, we need to end extreme wealth concentration and its problematic consequences.

Dubious sources
Robert Reich has shown that a significant share of billionaires’ wealth is undeserved and does not bear any reasonable connection to their ability, intelligence or contribution, as expected in a society supposedly based on meritocracy and fair competition.

Oxfam estimates that about a third of billionaire wealth is inherited. There is no real economic case for inherited wealth as it undermines social mobility, economic progress and meritocracy, the main basis of legitimation in modern society.

Other work finds that about 43 per cent of billionaire wealth comes from crony connections to governments and monopolies, e.g., when billionaires use such connections and corruption to secure government concessions and contracts.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

In developing countries, this share was even higher, 56 per cent, according to a 2015 Oxfam study. The Economist’s crony capitalism index also suggests that corruption and crony connections to governments are behind much billionaire wealth.

Another source of billionaire wealth is abuse of monopoly privileges granted by patent laws. While intellectual property has been justified as necessary for innovation, recent research, summarized by the The Economist, disputes the supposed link between patent rights and innovation, and deems the patent system a dysfunctional way to reward innovation or new ideas.

Since the 1980s, patent rights have been extended well beyond what may be considered necessary to incentivize innovation. For Richard Posner, a respected US judge, “such extensions offer almost no incentive for creating additional intellectual property”.

Insider trading – taking advantage of privileged information not yet made public – has been significantly abused for ‘unfair’ advantage in markets. The New York Times has found, “Some of the most prominent cases of illegal insider dealings have involved very wealthy people”.

Growing wealth concentration
A large and growing share of the global economy is controlled by a few large transnational corporations (TNCs). Decades of mergers, acquisitions and ineffectual anti-trust legislation have seen market power concentrated despite claims to the contrary.

Such TNCs, cartels, other monopolies and oligopolies extract lucrative rents, enabling them to secure super-profits, accelerating wealth accumulation and concentration at the expense of petty producers, workers and consumers.

The way wealth is used by the super-rich confirms their own ‘social disutility’. They accumulate more quickly by paying as little tax as possible, making good use of tax advisers and havens. A study found that the super-rich pay as much as 30% less tax than they should, denying governments billions in lost tax revenue.

The extremely wealthy also get the best investment and tax evasion advice, enabling billionaire wealth to increase by an average of 11% annually since 2009, far more than average investors and ordinary savers get.

‘Dark money’ corrupts societies
The secretive Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP), representing over 20,000 wealth managers, has successfully lobbied many governments to reduce taxes on the richest. STEP has spent billions to ‘buy’ legal impunity, politicians and the media to lower taxes on its clientele. Such lobbying has accelerated wealth concentration and accumulation.

Such ‘dark’ money is used to influence elections and public policy the world over. An Oxfam study has shown how politicians have been ‘bought’ by Latin America’s super-rich, e.g., with substantial financial backing for ethno-populist, racist and religiously intolerant leaders.

Over a century ago, monopoly power was seen as a major threat to the US economy and society. Anti-trust legislation and action, especially by President Theodore Roosevelt, broke up cartels and monopolies. Years later, his cousin, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned, “government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organised mob”.

Neoliberalism “oversold”
However, in recent decades, neoliberal economists have taken a much more benign view of oligopolies and monopolies, distinguishing them from classical liberal economists committed to market competition.

Conversely, insisting on competition in small developing economies has effectively prevented domestic firms from becoming internationally competitive by building on economies of scale and scope.

Significantly, even the International Monetary Fund, which imposed neoliberal policies for nearly four decades as a condition for credit support, now accepts that neoliberalism was “oversold”, while the World Bank acknowledges disappointing growth after neoliberal reform.

Deregulation, liberalization, privatization and globalization have strengthened the market power of corporations, reduced the progressivity of tax systems, reduced public provisioning, increased the frequency and intensity of financial crises, and slowed growth and development.

The post Billionaires Beware appeared first on Inter Press Service.