Africa

By External Source
MADRID, Dec 16 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The African Development Bank has urged the continent’s nations to stay the course on climate action, after a marathon session of talks at the twenty-fifth Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 25) in Madrid.

The conference was scheduled to run from 2 to 13 December, but only concluded business on Sunday, two days after the official programme ended. 

Meanwhile, back home, Africans were reminded of the all-too-real consequences if these talks fail to deliver results. Thousands of East Africans have been displaced in the wake of heavy rains that have battered the region since October, and more wet weather is expected due to an Indian Ocean Dipole attributed to the warming of the ocean.

Such extreme weather events should galvanise Africans; their governments are spending 2% of GDP on climate related disasters, said Anthony Nyong, Director for Climate Change and Green Growth at the African Development Bank. He encouraged the global community to remain steadfast in finding effective solutions to climate change.   The annual negotiations are now in their 25th year.

“The global community, and in particular Africa has a lot to offer in terms of solutions; what is evidently lacking is the global political will to turn potential into wealth to serve humanity and the planet,”” said Nyong, who led the Bank’s delegation to the UN conference.

At the conference, African delegates pushed for support for climate finance to build resilience against the impact of climate change and for special consideration for Africa around targets contained in the treaties under discussion.

The discussions at COP 25 centred around the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, which calls on countries to cut carbon emissions to ensure that global temperatures do not rise by more than 2°C by the end of this century, while attempting to contain it within 1.5°C.  The conference ended with a declaration on the “urgent need” to close the gap between existing emissions pledges and the temperature goals of the Paris agreement.

The African Development Bank attended the conference to lend strategic support to its regional member countries in the negotiations.

Nyong pointed out that Africa is committed; 51 of the 54 African countries have already ratified their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement signed at the landmark COP21 in Paris. The NDCs are specific climate change targets that each country must set.

Support for the Bank-funded Desert to Power project highlighted Africa’s determination to strive for a climate-friendly world, especially for its local populations, said Nyong. Desert to Power is a $20 billion initiative to deploy solar energy solutions across the entire Sahel region, generating 10,000 MW to provide 250 million people with clean electricity.

“The African Development Bank stands ready as ever to assist its regional member countries to build resilience against climate change, as indicated by the Bank’s decision to join the Alliance for Hydromet Development, announced at COP 25. The Alliance will assist developing countries to build resilience against the impact of natural disasters caused by extreme weather,” Nyong said.

The Bank will also continue to drive initiatives to strengthen the ability of regional member countries to advocate robustly at global forums such as COP 25, Nyong added. One example was the Bank’s participation at the annual African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) and support for the Africa Group of Negotiations (AGN). 

“We look forward to engaging further with regional member countries and other parties to ensure that the continent’s development agenda remains on track,” Nyong added.

Leaders and institutions from 196 nations plus the European Union, who have signed up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, attended the conference in Madrid.

Media contact: Gershwin Wanneburg, Communication and External Relations Department, African Development Bank email: g.wanneburg@afdb.org   

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The glaciers of the Andes Mountains are threatened by global warming. Credit: Julieta Sokolowicz/IPS

By Farhana Haque Rahman
ROME, Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

By any measure this has been a devastating year: fires across the Amazon, the Arctic and beyond; floods and drought in Africa; rising temperatures, carbon emissions and sea levels; accelerating loss of species, and mass forced migrations of people.

As seen through the eyes of IPS reporters and contributors around the world, 2019 will be remembered as the year the climate crisis shook us all, and hopefully also for the fight back manifested in the spread of mass protests and civic movements against governments and industries failing to respond.

Calls to combat the climate emergency were ringing in the ears of delegations from nearly 200 countries at the annual UN climate summit that opened in Madrid on December 2. Yet despite warnings that the planet is reaching critical tipping points, fears remained that the two weeks of negotiations would end in that familiar sense of disappointment and an opportunity missed.

“Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that buried its head in the sand, that fiddled while the planet burned?” declared U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

But the heads of government of the world’s biggest emitters were notably absent, including Donald Trump of the US, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who refused to host the meeting, also stayed away rather than face a hostile reception. Protests against the fires sweeping Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and the government’s encouragement of deforestation are spreading around the world, especially in Europe. Youth is the new face of activism as inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and others.

In one of many scientific surveys ringing alarm bells in 2019, a landmark report by IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, warned that more than one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades.

The climate crisis and species extinction are twin challenges with far-reaching consequences. IPS this year covered how drought in some areas of Africa is leading to re-runs of famine and migration.

The expanding Sahara desert is breaking up families and spreading conflict. The Sahel on the southern edge of the Sahara is the region where temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else on Earth. Projects such as the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification’s Land Degradation Neutrality project aimed at preventing and/or reversing land degradation are some of the interventions to stop the growing desert.

Farhana Haque Rahman

Relief workers warned in November that more than 50 million people across southern, eastern and central Africa were facing hunger crises because of extreme weather conditions made worse by poverty and conflict.

While much of the Horn of Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe are being ravaged by drought, small island states, especially in the Pacific, are sinking beneath rising sea levels or becoming more vulnerable to hurricanes and typhoons.

Irregular migration is on the rise, and has driven thousands to their deaths on hazardous journeys. The thousands drowned crossing the Mediterranean has led to projects like Migrants as Messengers in Guinea launched by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) which recruits returnees to raise awareness of the dangers.

People smugglers make money out of migrants with scant regard for their safety while other vulnerable people, especially women and girls, fall into the hands of exploitative human traffickers. As a major source of migrants heading towards the United States, Central America is an impoverished region rife with gang violence and human trafficking – the third largest crime industry in the world. Human trafficking has deep roots in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for decades and, as IPS has reported this year, it increasingly requires a concerted law enforcement effort by the region’s governments to dismantle trafficking networks and help women forced into sexual exploitation.

Over 40 million people are estimated to be enslaved around the world. Presenting her report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, UN expert Urmila Bhoola pointed out that servitude will likely increase as the world faces rapid changes in the workplace, environmental degradation, migration and demographic shifts.

Children from rural areas and disempowered homes are ideal targets for trafficking in India and elsewhere. Credit: Neeta Lal / IPS

Eradicating modern slavery by 2030, one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, would require the freeing of 10,000 people a day, Ms Bhoola reported, citing the NGO Walk Free.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR says more than 70 million people are currently displaced by conflict, the most since the Second World War. Among them are nearly 26 million who have fled their countries (over half under the age of 18). But the response of many countries has been to erect barriers and walls.

And the plight of some one million Muslim Rohingya refugees, driven out of Myanmar into Bangladesh, shows little sign of resolution. Paralysis at the U.N. Security Council, where veto-wielding China can protect its interests in Myanmar, has triggered interventions by both the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice which are expected to sit in judgment over the atrocities.

Bangladesh is already struggling with the impact of severe cyclones in November and, as recently reported by IPS, long-term projects are helping its own climate migrants achieve food security. Because of government interventions in agriculture, Bangladesh has already achieved sufficiency in food. According to the Food Sustainability Index 2018 of the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) many farmers have substantially reduced fertiliser use and increased yields.

The SDGs made a solemn promise to eradicate hunger and extreme poverty by 2030, and that cannot be achieved unless the world’s smallholder farmers can adapt to climate change.

But since 2016 global numbers of hungry people have been on the rise again. In September a welcome $650 million of funding reached CGIAR, a partnership of funders and international agricultural research centres and formerly known as the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research.

At the other extreme, April is Reducing Food Waste Month in the United States, as efforts mount to reduce food loss and waste, and deal with growing obesity. For the U.S. and 66 other countries BCFN has produced a food sustainability index profile that dives into all the relevant sectors, ranging from management of water resources, the impact on land of animal feed and biofuels, agricultural subsidies and diversification of agricultural system, to nutritional challenges, physical activity, diet and healthy life expectancy indicators.

The Global Commission on Adaptation Report, launched in October, says the number of people who may lack sufficient water, at least one month per year, will soar from 3.6 billion today to more than 5 billion by 2050. Climate change has a disproportionate impact on women and girls who bear the brunt of looking for water.

Nutrition is the best investment in developing Africa, experts say, with evident correlation between countries with high levels of children under five years of age who are stunted or wasted and the existence of political instability and/or frequent exposure to natural calamities. The nutritional situation is worrying in Africa, Busi Maziya-Dixon, a Senior Food and Nutrition Scientist at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), told IPS with research showing all forms of malnutrition, including stunting, wasting, and obesity, are growing. “We need to educate our governments to link nutrition to economic development and prioritize nutrition.”

Overall investment in Africa continued to gather pace in 2019, however. Amid IMF warnings of a “synchronised slowdown” in global economic growth, 19 sub-Saharan countries are among nearly 40 emerging markets and developing economies forecast to maintain GDP growth rates above 5 percent this year. Particularly encouraging for Africa is that its present growth leaders are richer in innovation than natural resources.

Small steps can bring big results by simply getting together. In September Manila hosted the first ever global forum for people with Hansen’s disease, commonly known as leprosy. Participants from 23 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean shared common challenges at the forum organised by The Nippon Foundation (TNF) and Sasakawa Health Foundation (SHF). Last week in Bangladesh, the country’s National Leprosy Programme, in collaboration with the TNF and SHF brought together hundreds of health workers, medical professionals and district officers to discuss the issue under the theme “Zero Leprosy Initiatives”. Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina who opened the Congress said, if special attention is given to its northern region and the Chittagong Hill Tracts, it is quite possible to declare Bangladesh a leprosy free country before 2030.

All in all however, the SDGs are in trouble, with the U.N. Secretary-General warning in July that a “much deeper, faster and more ambitious response is needed to unleash the social and economic transformation needed to achieve our 2030 goals”. A 478-page study by independent experts drove the message home.

Lastly, as 2019 draws to a close, let’s pay tribute to all those reporters around the world who have bravely covered these issues, spreading knowledge and defending press freedoms despite obvious dangers and more insidious campaigns of vilification.

The post 2019 – A Devastating Year in Review appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

The post 2019 – A Devastating Year in Review appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Kigali residents demand compensation as hundreds of houses vulnerable to flooding are knocked down.

Zimbabwe's Gen Constantino Chiwenga alleges Marry Mubaiwa interfered with his medical treatment.

Women farmers clearing farmland in Northern Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

Women in Asia and Africa hardest hit by climate change have a tough time adapting to the climate emergency, even with support from family or the state, finds a new study. The results raise questions for global agreements designed to help people adapt to the climate emergency, it adds.  

The findings are based on 25 case studies in three agro-ecological regions on the two continents: 14 in semi-arid locales, 6 in mountains and glacier-fed river basins (including one in Nepal) and 5 in deltas. The main livelihoods in these natural resource-dependent areas include agriculture, livestock rearing and fishing, supplemented by wage labour, petty trade and income from remittances.

Environmental risks include droughts, floods, rainfall variability, land erosion and landslides, glacial lake outburst floods, heat waves and cyclones, all of which negatively affect livelihoods. The study, A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Women’s Agency and Adaptive Capacity in Climate Change Hotspots in Asia and Africa was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

When households take steps to adapt to the impact of climate change, the result is that the strategies ‘place increasing responsibilities and burdens on women, especially those who are young, less educated and belonging to lower classes or marginal castes and ethnicities’

It found that when households take steps to adapt to the impact of climate change, the result is that the strategies ‘place increasing responsibilities and burdens on women, especially those who are young, less educated and belonging to lower classes or marginal castes and ethnicities’. This occurred even in cases where support appeared to be available in the form of families/communities or via the state.

Examples include when men migrate to find work because of climate change-induced impacts at home. While the money they earn can boost family incomes, when men are away women must shoulder a larger burden. As a result, most women ‘reported reduced leisure time, with negative consequences on their wellbeing, including the health and nutrition of themselves and their households,’ says the report.

In other cases, governments stepped in with support but during floods or droughts, for example, men dominated state-provided aid and relief facilities, making women rely on their male relatives to receive support.

‘In a sense, women do have voice and agency, yet this is not contributing to strengthening longer-term adaptive capacities,’ concludes the report.

But in three examples in the study, one in Nepal, women did adapt to the increased burdens delivered by climate change. In Chharghare of Nuwakot district, support from a well-established cooperative enabled many women — excluding Dailit women — to switch from raising buffalo and cattle to rearing goats, which adapted better to growing rain scarcity.

“By enhancing women’s agency, we need to understand that we are helping them to create an enabling environment where a women’s right to make decisions about her own life is recognised, where women are economically empowered and free from all forms of discrimination and violence,” said Anjal Prakash, who worked on the case study for the Integrated Centre for Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

Poverty is the main factor in the declining decision-making power of women in some hot spots, says the report, even when women share responsibilities in the family and work outside of the home. In semi-arid Kenya, for example, women of female-headed households sell alcohol to earn money to pay for children’s schooling, but this exposes them to health risks, such as engaging in sexual activities with their clients.

A 35-year-old woman told researchers, “Despite our efforts, there is a high level of malnutrition here. We can’t afford meat, we just eat rice and potatoes, but even for this, the quantity is not enough.”

The study notes that international agreements, such as the gender action plan of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) require information about what builds the adaptive capacity of women, and men, so that agreements can support sustainable, equitable and effective adaptation.

It suggests that effective social protection, like the universal public distribution system for cereals in India, or pensions and social grants in Namibia, could contribute to relieving immediate pressures on survival.

‘This however cannot always be done on the “cheap” — investments are needed to enable better and more sustainable management of resources. ‘Women’s self-help groups are often presented as solutions, yet they are confronted by the lack of resources, skills and capacity to help their members effectively meet the challenges they confront,’ the report adds.

 

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

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An eight-month-old boy is examined by a doctor in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Ifeanyi Nsofor and Shubha Nagesh
ABUJA, Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

Recently, Madhukar Pai, the Director of McGill University Global Health Program wrote about the inequity in global health research. He observed that researches are skewed in favor of the global north. We agree that this inequity exists. However, we also have found that global fellowships such as the Atlantic Fellowship, of which we are both Senior Fellows, are platforms to reverse this inequity, foster international partnerships and amplify voices of development practitioners from the global south. 

Shubha Nagesh is a medical doctor by training and thereafter specialised in Global Health from Karolinska Instituet, Sweden as an Erasmus Mundus Fellow. She presently works with children with developmental disabilities in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas.

Ifeanyi Nsofor is a Nigerian medical doctor and a graduate of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He is a Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and 2006 Ford Foundation International Fellow. Ifeanyi is a leading advocate for universal health coverage in Nigeria.

The world must realise that fostering a global village requires that different geographical locations do not attempt to solve problems alone. There must be a sense of community in all efforts to improve health

The Atlantic fellowship is funded by the Atlantic Institute and connects the seven Atlantic fellows programmes spread across six countries. The goal of the Atlantic Institute is to advance fairer, healthier societies. Fellows have diverse backgrounds and are united by their commitment to a more inclusive world.

As Senior Fellows of the Atlantic Fellowship for Health Equity at George Washington University, both authors have benefitted from an enriching fellowship year. This experience has led to convenings in the U.S., Rwanda and other locations and have been great learning opportunities to understand the local health systems and the benefits of international collaborations.

The mid-year convening at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda, allowed both authors to witness firsthand the partnership between the government of Rwanda and Partners in Health, which has led to significant improvements in mental health through the Mario Pagenel Fellowship in Global Mental Health Delivery. In previous opinion pieces, Shubha wrote about her Rwanda experience and Ifeanyi did the same.

From our combined experiences of benefiting Erasmus Mundus Fellowship, Ford Foundation International Fellowship, Aspen New Voices Fellowship and Atlantic Fellowship, there are four lessons that the global health community can learn to gradually reverse the inequity in global health workforce.

 

First, talent is universal, but opportunities are not. Opportunities for development experts from the global south are limited, especially those that demand leadership positions. Fellowships help create platforms for development experts from different countries to interact, get to know each other and learn about the capacities that everyone brings to the table.

For instance, the 2019 Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity at George Washington University comprises of 18 Fellows from 7 countries – Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, US, Philippines, India and Iraq. Over a period of one year, the Fellows exchanged ideas and supported each in pushing for health equity in their different countries.

 

Second, prioritise women in global health workforce appointments because women face more inequities than men. Out of the 18 Fellows mentioned above, 15 are females. This was intentional on the part of the organizers in order to ensure that the gap between men and women will gradually be reduced. While women form the bulk of the health workforce, . key decision makers in the health sector are usually men. The recent appointment of Winnie Byanyima as the Executive Director of UNAIDS, after serving a successful 6-year tenure as the Executive Director of Oxfam, should be replicated across more global health agencies.

 

Third, Fellowships can amplify global south voices on the global stage. This is the core aim of the Aspen Institute’s New Voices Fellowship. It has trained more than 100 senior fellows from many countries from the global south.

These fellows have written more than 1,000 opinion pieces published on different platforms and have been interviewed on radio, TV and other platforms sharing their ideas. Ifeanyi is a Senior New Voices Fellow and has within the past 2 years written and published 33 opinion pieces on platforms such as Devex, The Hill, Scientific American, Biomed Central, All Africa, Inter Press News Service etc.

Therefore, this opinion piece is another case of amplifying voices of Indian and Nigerian development experts on the global stage.

 

Fourth, collaborations are for life and reduce inequities. The agenda of most fellowships is to nurture collaboration and not competition. Collaboration beats competition, every single time. Mentorships created within the boundaries of Fellowships can be transformed to collaborations that could prove beneficial for a long time.

 

The world must realise that fostering a global village requires that different geographical locations do not attempt to solve problems alone. There must be a sense of community in all efforts to improve health. This African proverb captures our thoughts succinctly; “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

To be sure, Fellowships will not stamp out the global health workforce inequity overnight. However, fellowship should be used as platforms to systematically work to reverse the inequities articulated by Madhui Pai.

As Senior Fellows for health equity at the Atlantic Institute, we will collaboratively continue to advance fairer, healthier and more inclusive societies.

 

The post Four Lessons to Reverse Inequity in the Global Health Workforce appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Photographer Kerstin Hacker's images of Zambia.

By IPS World Desk
Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

2019 will be remembered as the year the climate crisis shook us all. Hopefully, it will also be remembered for the fight back manifested in the spread of mass protests and civic movements against governments and industries failing to respond.Calls to combat climate change rang in the ears of delegates from nearly 200 countries at the annual UN climate summit in Madrid. But the heads of government or state of the world’s largest polluters were notably absent, including the United States, China and Russia.

As planetary temperatures have risen, a landmark report by the IPBES warned that more than a million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction – many within decades. This twin challenge has far-reaching consequences and the ramifications of complacency have started to show.

 

 

The expanding Sahara Desert is breaking up families and spreading conflict. More than 50 million people across Southern, Eastern and Central Africa are facing a hunger crisis because of extreme weather conditions. And in the Pacific, small Island States are sinking beneath rising sea levels.

Irregular migration is rising and has driven thousands to their deaths. Human Traffickers are exploiting this exodus and are contributing to the second largest criminal economy on the planet, with an alarming 40 million people enslaved around the world. According to the UN Refugee Agency, 70 million people in the world are currently displaced by conflict, and the response of many countries has been to erect walls.

The SDG’s made a solemn promise to eradicate hunger and extreme poverty by 2030, and that cannot be achieved unless the world’s smallholder farmers can adapt to climate change. However, the SDG’s are in trouble and the UN’s Secretary General has issued a clear warning: a “much deeper, faster and more ambitious response is needed to unleash the social and economic transformation needed to achieve our 2030 goals.”

As inspired by Swedish Teenager Greta Thunberg and others, youth is the new face of global activism. It is imperative that we follow their lead to secure the future they will inherit, and pay heed to Secretary General Antonio Guterres warning: “Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that buried its head in the sand, that fiddled while the planet burned?”

 

The post 2019: A Year in Review appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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