Africa

Credit: Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Aug 13 2019 (IPS)

We live in different worlds. The ones of friends, family and work colleagues. Worlds which are overshadowed by other, much bigger ones. Global spheres of international finance, politics, climate change, etc., contexts that might threaten our smaller circle of relationships; our family, our income, our general wellbeing, in short – our entire existence. However, even at those levels there exist small circles of acquaintances and associates able to make decisions that affect the entire humankind. Let me take one example – the regimes of U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro, which are menacing our global natural habitat.

Ten years ago, I flew across the Amazon Jungle, amazed by its immensity though also alarmed by scares where thick greenery had been cleared away and substituted by dismal remains of dead trees, or dry cattle pastures and soy plantations. Logging and mining are the greatest dangers to Amazonia since its exposed soil is generally old, weathered, acidic, infertile, and subject to compaction from intense solar radiation.

Within the framework of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thousands of scientists and other experts write and review reports informing the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an endevour involving the governments of more than 120 countries. The IPCC, which in 2007 was rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize, was established in 1988. The U.S. Government was the main force for making the IPCC an autonomous intergovernmental body supporting a consensus between the participating nations.

At regular intervals, the IPCC presents comprehensive assessments on climate change and its impact on ecology, human society, and food production. In 2013, one of its reports declared that:

Climate change is occurring, it is caused largely by human activities and poses significant risks for – and in many cases is already affecting – a broad range of human and natural systems. […] Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Human influence on the climate system is clear. 1

Nevertheless, several influential world leaders and their sycophants refuse to accept unequivocal findings and warnings issued by the IPCC, among them the U.S. president, who continues to make badly informed, even mind-numbing statements, like:

My uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years, Dr. John Trump, and I didn’t talk to him about this particular subject [climate change], but I have a natural instinct for science, and I will say that you have scientists on both sides of the picture. […] Everything I want and everything I have is clean. Clean is very important — water, air. I want absolutely crystal clear water and I want the cleanest air on the planet and our air now is cleaner than it’s ever been. Very important to me. What I’m not willing to do is sacrifice the economic well-being of our country for something that nobody really knows. 2

While speaking about any scientific issue he does not know much about it is common that President Trump refers to ”Uncle John”, to whom he quite obviously did not speak about climate change, since Dr. Trump was a professor of engineering at a time when the phenomenon was hardly spoken of outside limited expert groups. 3 Donald Trump likes to refer to John Trump, who died in 1985, arguing that ”Dr John Trump at MIT, good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart”. The current U.S. president assumes he has superior genes as well:

I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain, my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff. […] I’m a gene believer. Do you believe in the gene thing? I mean I do. I have great genes and all that stuff, which I’m a believer in. 4

On 8 August this year, the IPCC launched a 1,200-page Special Report of Climate Change and Land, highlighting that human activities directly affect more than 70 percent of earth´s ice-free land. A quarter of this land is already severely degraded. Five hundred million people are currently living in areas experiencing desertification, while agriculture continous to use 70 percent of the earth´s freshwater. Our planet´s vegetation currently absorbs 30 percent of CO2 emissions, which contribute to global warming, but the ongoing clearing of forests increases average world temperature at an alarming speed, while access to freshwater is constantly decreasing. During the last decades, the average temperature has increased by 1,53 oC. 5 This critical situation could probably be reversed if agricultural and forestry methods are drastically changed from a present state of overexploitation, characterized by excessive use of pesticides, nitrogenous fertilizers, mechanization, wasteful irrigation and other harmful practicies favoured by large-scale agricultural producers.

Let me return to Jair Messias Bolsonaro and his acolytes. The world’s largest tropical rainforest is currently under a lethal threat from President Bolsonaro, a powerful supporter of large-scale agribusiness he is complaining about foreign pressure to safeguard Amazonia. Bolsonaro is following in Trump´s footsteps, for example by threatening to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. His Minister of Foreign Affairs has called global warming a plot by “cultural Marxists”, while Bolsonaro declares that ”Amazonas is ours and ours alone”, accusing ”foreign NGOs” of intending to steal natural resources of its rainforest from Brazil and hand it over to European exploiters. Furthermore, he accuses indigenous groups of keeping Amazonia away from the Brazilian people, trying to maintain it ”at a prehistoric level”. Accordingly, Bolsonaro has withdrawn governmental support to FUNAI, the National Indian Foundation, which up until now has carried out policies related to indigenous people. He has also eliminated the Climate Change Division of the Ministry of Environment, as well as two departments that dealt with climate change mitigation and deforestation.

On 6 August this year, the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) reported that 4,700 km2 of the jungle had been cleared since Bolsonaro´s inauguration on January 1st and in June alone, deforestation had been 278 percent more than for the same month in 2018. Bolsonaro immediately fired INPE´s director, Ricardo Galvao, accusing him of being in the service of ”some NGO´s” and that he himself would not fall victim to any ”environmental psychosis”. 6

Bolsonaro appears to belong to the same breed as President Trump. He behaves like a narcissist obsessed by his own worth and righteousness. Bolsonaro´s regime is already after half a year threatening not only Brazil with a moral and ecological meltdown, but the entire world as well. On March 28th The Economist described Bolsanero´s government as being in a state of monumental confusion. Apart from the economic team, it is a warring assortment of retired generals, mid-ranking politicians, evangelical Protestants and far right ideologues. “Nobody knows where he´s going, what´s the course he´s setting,” says Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former president, of Mr Bolsanaro. “He goes forward then back, all the time.” 7

Despots like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong have proved that a single man and his acolytes can bring death, hardship, and devastation to millions of people. Remembering men like those and learning about the views, aspirations, and actions of people like Trump and Bolsonaro make it imperative for all of us to become aware of the craziness of these two leaders and the fatal consequences of their actions. All humanity must now join forces to support national and global efforts to save our planet.

1 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
2 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/17read-transcript-of-aps-interview-with-president-trump.html
3 Davidson Sorkin, Amy (2016) ”Donald Trump´s Nuclear Uncle”, The New Yorker, April 8.
4 Collins, Eliza (2016) “Trump: I consult myself on foreign policy”, Politico, March 16, and Mortimer, Caroline (2016) “Donald Trump believes he has superior genes, biographer claims.” The Independent, September 30.
5 https://www.ipcc.ch/2019/08/08/land-is-a-critical-resource_srccl/
6 Gatinois, Claire (2019) ”Déforestation record au Brésil, le jeu dangereux de Jair Bolsonaro”, Le Monde, August 9.
7 Bello, Andrés (2019) ”Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil´s apprentice president”, The Economist, March 28.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

The post Are Jair Messias Bolsonaro and Donald John Trump a Menace to the Planet? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Hiring women as financial intermediaries can serve the dual purpose of increasing women’s usage of bank accounts, and their employment | Photo courtesy: Pixabay

By Renana Jhabvala, Sonal Sharma, and Soumya Kapoor Mehta
Aug 13 2019 (IPS)

Women comprise a very small proportion of the financial industry workforce, and this has implications on the way female clients use and benefit from financial services.

The Indian financial landscape is undergoing a dramatic change. India witnessed a surge in bank account ownership during the 2011-2017 period: 80 percent of Indians owned a bank account in 2017–an increase of 45 percentage points since 2011. This surge is primarily attributed to the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMDJY).

However, this push for financial inclusion has not achieved its true objective, which is to ensure that all citizens not only have access to bank accounts, but avail other facilities that come with it–formal credit, insurance, and overdraft, to name a few.

According to the Global Findex database released by the World Bank, roughly one out of two bank accounts in India remain inactive, about twice the average of other developing economies. Worse, the gender gap in these inactive accounts is notable: 54 percent of women account holders report not using their account, as opposed to 43 percent male account holders.

It is clear that hiring women as financial intermediaries can serve the dual purpose of increasing women’s usage of bank accounts on one hand, and their employment on the other


This gap needs to be considered against the more general narrative on outcomes for women in India, and progress therein. While there has been a big shift in girls’ education in the last decade or so–with more girls enrolling in higher secondary and college education–India’s abominably low female labour force participation rates mean that many girls, despite their aspirations, are passing out of schools with no employment prospects.

The debate on low female labour force participation and the reasons for it are intensive, and have sparked an entire research industry. However a study 1 we at SEWA commissioned as part of the World Bank’s Skill India Mission Operation (SIMO) focuses on the possible solutions, one of which is identifying work opportunities available for women in India’s financial sector.

Can the financial industry be a prospective employer for the many, now more educated women, seeking work outside their homes?

Why is this a matter of interest? Because evidence shows that women tend to use their bank accounts and save and borrow more if they are served by female bankers and financial intermediaries.

So, what did we find?

First, female staff comprise a very small proportion of the financial industry workforce. The Bharat Microfinance Report 2017 by Sa-Dhan reveals that the total microfinance workforce in 2017 stood at 89,785 workers. Women comprised only 12 percent of the total workforce and 11 percent of the total field staff.

Our primary study confirmed these dismal numbers on women’s employment in the financial sector. Most of the field agents and employees of the financial institutions we interviewed were male. Perhaps the most dramatic example was that of microfinance institutions where we found that while all the clients were women, all the officers in the field were male.

Second, SEWA’s own studies suggest that women tend to save and borrow more when they are served by female financial intermediaries.

A basic income pilot conducted by SEWA in the state of Madhya Pradesh in 2011-12 compared the extent of financial inclusion in villages where SEWA operated through its network of vitya saathis (female banking correspondents) and villages where SEWA was not present.

It was found that in non-SEWA villages where no basic income was transferred, women held only 24 percent of their savings in financial institutions such as banks and cooperatives (figure 1). In comparison, in SEWA villages, 64 percent of women’s savings were in formal financial institutions.

Other internal studies of SEWA in Bihar and Uttarakhand also show a positive impact of financial intermediaries on women’s savings, and livelihoods.

More women put savings in financial institutions in Madhya Pradesh when in touch with a female banking correspondent | Courtesy: SEWA

Putting these two facts together, it is clear that hiring women as financial intermediaries can serve the dual purpose of increasing women’s usage of bank accounts on one hand, and their employment on the other.

The job opportunity for financial intermediaries is tremendous

According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), of the nearly 460 million basic saving accounts opened in scheduled commercial banks between March 2010 and March 2018, nearly one in every two was opened through business correspondence agents or financial intermediaries. Such is the importance of these agents that the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) estimates 3.7 million incremental jobs for financial intermediaries between 2016 and 2022.

This leads to three important policy insights:

• Financial intermediaries are capable of carrying out financial functions and are perhaps better than a brick-and-mortar financial institution in reaching out to remote areas owing to their mobility.
• There is ample opportunity for mobile agents to act as representatives of financial institutions.
• The potential for hiring women as such agents is high.

Yet, a report by the Helix Institute of Digital Finance (2015) on the Indian financial agent network finds that of the 2,682 active financial agents surveyed across rural and urban locations, only about 10 percent were women.

If these levels were raised to 30 percent, then of the 3.7 million projected jobs, 1.1 million could be taken up by women financial intermediaries, benefitting women account holders in the process.

Women face barriers to entering the financial workforce

• Women are not aware of jobs in the financial sector. There are few counselling centres in schools and colleges that expose girls to jobs in this sector.
• Not many girls and women think of financial institutions as possible employers, and if they do, the government ones are the most coveted.
• Women also feel that they do not have the skills required to make a career in finance; some fear the pressure of targets.
• Constraints on mobility and security present further restrictions as does the hesitation of seeing no female peers among existing staff.
• A male culture in the sector also serves as a barrier, with male staff often socializing over a drink, late after office hours; bonding events that tend to exclude women.
• Managers, on their part, are reluctant to hire women. When asked why there were almost no female staff in his bank, a bank manager emphasised “daudne wala sales officer chahiye” (we need sales officers who are capable of running).

It is clear that most of the obstacles cited above seem to be related to the socially determined roles that women have been traditionally assigned. Both men and women view women’s abilities and aspirations through these lenses. This determines why women are either unaware of the opportunities, or are hesitant to enter the field. It also illuminates why managers fail to encourage women to apply, or when they do apply, only assign women back office jobs.

These barriers call for more awareness campaigns in communities about the importance of employment for women. Equally, some supply side shifts are needed.

They may include:

• Employing more female financial intermediaries
• Raising awareness about these jobs, knowledge building and career counselling
• Raising awareness among potential employers about the advantages of employing women and what they need to do to attract and retain them
• Providing financial support to buy laptops, point-of-sale machines, and two-wheeler vehicles for women who wish to become intermediaries
• Enabling access to technology
• Examining existing training modules and re-orienting them towards training women as financial intermediaries.

At the policy level it requires partnerships between organizations like the NSDC, the Sector Skill Councils and the Association of Banks to create an ecosystem that works towards employing more women as financial intermediaries.

It also requires collection of gender disaggregated data by financial institutions on employees, agents, banking correspondents, customer service providers and other financial intermediaries and making these figures publicly available to track gender discrepancies in the sector.

*Sanchita Mitra was a contributing author to the larger study that this article draws on.

1. Between August and September 2017, the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), India, which has been working for decades to empower women in the informal sector, commissioned a study as part of the World Bank’s Skill India Mission Operation (SIMO) to identify work opportunities available for women in India’s financial sector. The study drew on primary interviews with staff of financial institutions and technology service providers (TSPs) to banks as well as women themselves  across four states in India: Delhi, Bihar, Maharashtra and Punjab.  These were buttressed with desk reviews of other reports, and insights from many small areas studies that SEWA has been conducting on the obstacles women face to opening, using bank accounts and to accessing funds should they want to finance any entrepreneurial venture.

Renana Jhabvala is an economist, with a 40 year long association with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), known for her writings on informal women workers. She served as the Chancellor of Gandhigram Rural University from 2012-2017. She was a member of the UN Secretary General’s High-level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment, and has also been honoured with the FICCI Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1990, she was awarded a Padma Shri by the Government of India.

Sonal Sharma is an urban development practitioner who works on issues of informality, gender and land rights. She currently leads monitoring, evaluation, and learning for an urban land rights project for women workers in the informal economy at SEWA Bharat. Previously, she has worked with SEWA’s affordable housing finance company and researched on the issue of manual scavenging. She was an Urban Fellow at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, and has completed her MA in Development Studies from Ambedkar University.

Soumya Kapoor Mehta is a development economist who has been writing on issues of poverty, social inclusion, social protection, and female labour force participation for the past 15 years. Formerly with the World Bank, she has several articles, World Bank and UN reports, and two books to her credit including one on the potential of basic income as a policy for India. Soumya holds degrees in economics from the University of Cambridge and St Stephen’s College, Delhi.

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

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By Renata Avelar Giannini
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 13 2019 (IPS)

Every year, over 12,000 women are killed in Latin America. The region is plagued by extremely high levels of violence, and a vacuum of state power persists. Public face of this violence is caused by paramilitary, guerrilla, gangs and armed groups. 

But there is an interrelated side of domestic violence that plays out in the private domain. The relationship between these two are yet to be understood, as is the potential of the Women, Peace and Security agenda (WPS) as a fundamental ingredient to sustainable peace and a life free from violence and fear.

The WPS agenda is a United Nations invention. Amid the increasing recognition of women’s and girls’ rights since the creation of the organization in 1945, it was only in the year 2000 that the organization recognized that conflicts affect women and girls, men and boys differently.

Notwithstanding the considerable expansion of engagement with the agenda globally, there is a persistent gap in Latin America. The engagement of local women’s organizations has been limited, while governments are yet to fully grasp the central importance of the agenda in terms of promoting sustainable peace.

Women are systematically excluded from conversations concerning peace and security in the region, rarely included in peace negotiations and are the minority in police and military forces. The WPS agenda has an enormous potential do recognize and address some of these issues

Only six countries in the region launched National Action Plans (NAP) to implement the agenda, and with the exception of El Salvador and Guatemala, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay mostly focus on their missions carried out abroad.

Ultimately, the gruesome reality of local women living in areas dominated by organized crime, or those that have joined these groups is yet to be understood or recognized by local governments.

There is little evidence on how women’s lives are affected by the extremely high levels of violence that plagues the region. Not only data is limited, only few policies dedicated to addressing violence against women are evidence based.

To make matters worse, there is a normative gap when it comes to addressing these challenges. While NAPs do not recognize these challenges, national legislation focuses on domestic forms of violence. The interplay between private and public violence as well as the direct and indirect effects of organized violence on women in the region are mostly ignored.

To illustrate, 38% of the world’s homicides occur within the region, which makes up only 8% of the global population. 43 of the 50 most violent cities in the world are located in Latin America.

Urban violence has particularly impacted women, who are not only targeted by organized groups, but also at home, where gender-based violence has spiked. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean (ECLAC), 40% of women in the region have been victims of physical violence and another 60% suffered emotional violence at some point in their lives.

Women also consist the primary victims of human trafficking and are often caught up in the crossfire of armed groups, when they are not directly target due to their relationship to members of different groups or gangs.

Violence affects their ability to access formal education, achieve economic independence and even political participation. It also bears the brunt of indirect forms of violence that are rarely recognized, including caring for the injured, emotional trauma among many others.

In Brazil, literally thousands of mothers have lost their sons in marginalized communities, where they are murdered on a daily basis.

Throughout the Americas, women have also joined armed groups and organized crime, serving in various types of roles from combat to support. This is particularly apparent in Colombia, where women made up 44% of the fighting force for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP).

However, even when women take part in these groups, they are often in less powerful and more vulnerable positions. The increased incarceration of women in the region is strong evidence of that. And what is worst, organized crime is born within prison, and that is where we are putting them.

Women are systematically excluded from conversations concerning peace and security in the region, rarely included in peace negotiations and are the minority in police and military forces. The WPS agenda has an enormous potential do recognize and address some of these issues.

However, countries in the region must recognize their high levels of violence and implement NAPs that are adequate to the reality of women living within boundaries. In times where political turbulence may disrupt the women’s rights agenda in many parts of the world, it is increasingly important to build evidence to inform policies and strengthen civil society groups who are in a unique position to remind governments of their commitments to women’s rights and their physical integrity.

The post Promoting Women’s Safety in Latin America appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Renata Avelar Giannini is Public Security and Justice Coordinator at Instituto Igarape based in Brazil

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By Zhengian Huang and Daniel Jeong-Dae Lee
BANGKOK, Aug 13 2019 (IPS)

The Asia-Pacific region is at a crossroads. The traditional export-oriented, manufacturing-driven growth is facing headwinds from sluggish external demand and rising protectionist trade measures. 

New technologies have increased the likelihood of labour-intensive jobs in the region becoming automated. Meanwhile, many countries have witnessed widening income and opportunity inequalities. Rising environmental risks and climatic disasters add further burdens to the future development agenda.

There is an alternative scenario in which China pursues a holistic approach to structural reforms that achieves innovative, inclusive and sustainable development growth paths simultaneously

Now the questions that most developing countries in the region face are: Can they achieve economic convergence by following the traditional growth path? How can they balance economic growth with social inclusiveness and environmental sustainability?

This article addresses these questions by using China as an example.

China’s economic development is outstanding in terms of pace and scale. Over the last four decades, China’s economy has become the largest in the region, and has transformed from a predominantly agricultural one to an industrial powerhouse, and is now increasingly service-oriented.

However, strains from rapid structural changes have become clearer. Prominent among these are the country’s slowing population growth and labour force expansion, its decelerating productivity growth as available technologies approach the technological frontier, distributional tensions resulting from rising inequality and strains on the carrying capacity of the natural environment.

Economic simulations through 2030 suggest that under the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, GDP growth would hold up at a rate of around 6 per cent in the short-term but would experience a sharp drop by 2030 as economic efficiency declines. At the same time, urban-rural income gaps as well as inequality within urban and rural areas would remain wide, leaving pockets of poverty.

China’s energy consumption and carbon emissions would continue to rise, failing to meet its commitment to the Paris Agreement (see BAU scenario in figure A, B and C).

Figure: Alternative scenarios for China in 2030
Source: ESCAP, based on DRC-CGE model.
Note: BAU = baseline scenario; ING = innovative growth scenario; ICG = inclusive growth scenario; SSG = sustainable growth scenario; and ALL = innovative, inclusive and sustainable growth scenario.

However, there is an alternative scenario in which China pursues a holistic approach to structural reforms that achieves innovative, inclusive and sustainable development growth paths simultaneously.

Under this scenario, the country could maintain relatively high rates of economic growth, even as external demand remains sluggish, the labour force shrinks, and capital accumulation slows.

Accelerated urbanization, a rising “middle-class” population and increasing government transfers to optimize the social protection system could narrow rural and urban income disparities.

China’s total energy consumption and carbon emissions could peak in 2025, five years ahead of the timeline for the Paris Agreement, if a new carbon tax is implemented and non-fossil fuel energy assumes a greater share of the energy mix (see ALL scenario in figure A, B and C).

Recent policies and measures show that China is giving more weight to the quality of growth. First, China is pursuing supply-side reforms, focusing on technology and innovation. The country has established objectives to become an “international innovation leader” by 2030.

Second, actions are underway to improve the inclusiveness of economic growth. China has established objectives for eliminating absolute poverty by 2020.

Fiscal transfers to enhance social protection have been increased, while more funds have been deployed for rural infrastructure, agricultural subsidies and discounted loans.

Third, China has taken serious steps to curb pollution while speeding up the transition to clean energy. China aims to get 20 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2030. In late 2017, a carbon emissions trading system was launched in the country.

Such policies should be pursued in an integrated manner in order to reduce trade-offs and maximize synergies. In the Chinese example, policy priorities on technology and innovation could boost growth in GDP but might worsen income inequality, given technology’s effect of favouring capital over labour and favouring skilled over unskilled labour (BAU and ING scenarios in figure A and B).

Policies to reduce carbon emissions would be more effective if combined with new technologies and innovation which improves resource efficiency (SSG and ALL scenarios in figure C).

Scenarios on China’s potential policy paths towards a sustainable future shed some light for other developing countries. While a country’s economic growth may inevitably trend down as it matures, the quality of growth will differ significantly depending on the policy choices made.

It’s highly important and urgent for policymakers to switch their mindsets to prioritize policies that support people and the planet. This is not an easy process. Continuous policy efforts are required to balance development between the social, environmental and economic dimensions to ensure long-term prosperity.

This article is based on a recent ESCAP report China’s Economic Transformation: Impacts on Asia and the Pacific. Please click here to view it.

The post Towards a Sustainable Future: Case of China’s Economic Transformation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Zhenqian Huang is Associate Economics Affairs Officer, Macroeconomic Policy and Financing for Development Division, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP); Daniel Jeong-Dae Lee is Economics Affairs Officer, Macroeconomic Policy and Financing for Development Division, ESCAP

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Credit: UN

By Lakshi De Vass Gunawardena
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 12 2019 (IPS)

Being fluent in a world language is a desirable skill in modern day society. However, some languages are suffering and in danger of extinction — namely those of the indigenous peoples.

“There are between 6,000 and 7,000 world languages in the world today,” Brian Keane, rapporteur of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues said in his keynote speech last week, revealing that half of them are expected to go extinct by 2100. As a result, more than 50% of the worlds indigenous peoples are in danger of losing their language.

“You can’t preserve or protect or revitalize indigenous languages in a vacuum- they’re related to all of the other rights of indigenous peoples, principally the right to self-determination,” Keane told IPS, adding that the Permanent Forum tries to highlight all of these rights, citing several branches to assist indigenous rights.

Asked what role the Forum will play, he said: “Our role is trying to move countries forward when implementing rights and outlining declarations.” Keane said, stressing that only when indigenous peoples are able to practice self-determination, and be able to live on their ancestral territories, “can we truly protect the languages”.

The annual commemoration of World Indigenous Peoples Day took place August 9 and was organized by the Indigenous Peoples and Development Branch of the Secretariat of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The event  featured two panels, guest speakers, and performances.

Today, there are about 370 million indigenous peoples worldwide, making up about 5% of the population. However, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has predicted that, by the end of this century, between 50-90% of indigenous languages will perish.

Credit: UN

Indigenous language is fading as a result of land seizures, forced assimilation, conflicts, climate change, development projects, and a critical gap of the language being passed on to the next generation, attributed to a sense of fear or shame.

It has been noted that at least one indigenous language has been dying every 2 weeks and will continue to do so, if action is not taken.

It is an issue so concerning that it is reaching all corners of the world.

There are between 6,000 and 7,000 world languages in the world today, half of them are expected to go extinct by 2100. As a result, more than 50% of the worlds indigenous peoples are in danger of losing their language

Brian Keane, rapporteur of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

“We need to create reading materials, compile tales, stories and myths from the indigenous peoples.” María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, President of the UN General Assembly declared, adding that languages are alive “as long as we speak them”.

“With every language that disappears, the world loses a wealth of traditional knowledge and cultural heritage.”  UN Secretary General António Guterres declared in an official statement, adding that education has a pivotal role to play in ensuring that indigenous peoples can enjoy and preserve their culture and identity, and that intercultural and multi-lingual education will be necessary to prevent irreparable loss.

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada concluded in his official statement:  “On behalf of the Government of Canada, I encourage everyone to learn more about the cultures and languages of Indigenous peoples, here in Canada and around the world,”

However, there are several initiatives in place to help foster indigenous language, such as the use of digital technology.

“Over the last 5 or 6 years we’ve really seen a boom in seeing indigenous languages online,” Eddie Avila, Director of Rising Voices said in his keynote speech, highlighting Wikipedia, emoticons, and users tweeting on Twitter in their native tongue.

“It’s really a message of do it yourself,” he added, but pointed out that it is ultimately the young people behind the tools who are critical, as well as academic researchers and policymakers.

Avila described designated spaces for young indigenous peoples to gather and engage in discussions.

“I think the non- indigenous youth can kind of encourage their classmates and other friends who may speak an indigenous language that it is okay to be multilingual, bilingual” Avila told IPS.

He said things are slowly changing compared to the past where there was a sense of shame to speak an indigenous language. He also stressed the importance of celebrating those differences but also recognizing the value of maintaining those roots.

He went on to note that in a city like New York, it is very easy to see the diversity and celebrate that, but added it is not always that way around the world, again tracing back to the importance of using language online, such as Duolingo and social media.

“And I think Rising Voices, we’re trying to support communities of indigenous languages, and we want to leverage technology to encourage new speakers, to promote the language, and to show that it is very functional on something as modern as the Internet, Avila declared.

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Credit: UN

By Ian Williams
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 12 2019 (IPS)

An old adage passed on by veteran U.N. staff to younger recruits is, “Do nothing whenever possible. It’s safer.” For a junior officer that might indeed be career-enhancing. 

But—in the face of persistent hostility from the U.S. and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s friends around the world—for the secretary-general of the U.N., or even the commissioner general of UNRWA, it is a recipe for disaster.

And sometimes doing a little is even worse.

Antonio Guterres announced the appointment of Christian Saunders as deputy commissioner general of UNRWA but the U.N secretary-general failed to explain what had happened to Saunders’ predecessor,  Sandra Mitchell, let alone the chain of circumstances that led to her departure.

Saunders is experienced and well-respected, but making him deputy commissioner general while leaving Pierre Krähenbühl, the person primarily responsible for the scandal, as commissioner-general for UNRWA is like throwing a sardine into a school of sharks. It has, predictably, just whetted the appetites of UNWRA’s enemies—but has not provided sustenance for its friends.

The secretary-general is presumably aware that after Al Jazeera (and the Washington Report) began its investigation into the UNRWA Ethics Office’s report on Krähenbühl’s management (see Aug./Sept. 2019 Washington Report, p. 17), Krähenbühl in quick succession lost three senior staff members, including both his chef de cabinet and deputy commissioner.

Major donors, not least, Krähenbühl’s own Swiss government pulled their funding because of the Report, which called for his immediate dismissal.

All those countries have been loyal friends of the U.N. and of UNRWA, and their defunding shows clearly that the Ethics Office report made a compelling case to them. It is also clear that the governments concerned are trying to send signals to the U.N., whose response to the crisis has been a textbook case of complacent bureaucratic ineptitude.

After this writer’s report on UNWRA corruption came out in Al Jazeera, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki R. Haley wrote on Twitter, “This is Exactly [sic] why we stopped their funding.”

In fact, that was an outright lie. The Trump administration only did as Israel asked and pulled its contribution to UNRWA for malicious reasons having nothing to do with Commissioner General Krähenbüh’s love life or travel arrangements.

Credit: UN

Instead it was because UNRWA’s continuing existence is a persistent institutional reminder of U.S. complicity in Israel’s dispossession of some six million Palestinians. Admittedly, it was also because a particular subset of ambitious Republicans looks for large campaign donations from a coterie of very rich right-wing donors who consistently display their disdain for Palestinian rights by helping fund Jewish-only settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

There is no need for the secretary-general to take advice from countries whose oft-condemned actions created and perpetuated so many decades of misery for the Palestinians

However, knowing that both Washington and Tel Aviv entertain such sentiments makes the insouciance of both Secretary-General Guterres and Krähenbühl even more egregious.  The ethics report detailing the managerial failings and turpitude in UNRWA was delivered to the secretary-general’s office back in December 2018.

The UNRWA staff who had contributed to it fretted that no action was being taken after many of them had risked their livelihoods and pensions.

They were amazed that such a compelling dossier from the organization’s own Ethics Department would be ignored, and it was only after months had passed that some of them leaked it to me, in the hope that media inquiries about the report would prompt pre-emptive action by the U.N., and that the commissioner general would lance the boil before the pustulent Trump/Netanyahu axis began to fester on it.

Ambassadors and senior U.N. officials were approached to press the secretary-general’s office for the action necessary, but to no avail.

Faced with such a damning indictment from his own ethics office, Krähenbühl could have, and should have, resigned or stepped aside for the good of the organization.  The secretary-general could have suspended or fired him and announced a genuinely independent inquiry, enlisting donors and others concerned with the welfare of UNRWA and the Palestinians.

Predictably, the failures of the commissioner general and U.N. headquarters to take action—of any kind—has set off a feeding frenzy among the enemies of the Palestinians and UNRWA, who want to punish refugees for the ethical failings of bureaucrats foisted on them by an international community that oversaw their dispossession. 

An unannounced internal investigation by the U.N.’s own Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS)—whose reputation is far from stellar even inside the U.N.—is a politically disastrous course of action. It took repeated questioning before we even discovered the investigation was under way—at a time when the secretary-general’s office denied it had even seen the report.

It was conceivable that, without media publicity, the OIOS report could have been a bland procedural whitewash, as have been too many about recent scandals involving senior U.N. staff.

But the media exposure means that Krähenbühl has little or no support from his present and recent senior staff, and certainly not from the donors.  His rigor mortis-like grip on office is profoundly damaging to UNWRA, to the U.N., and to the more than five million Palestinians it serves.

In any case, confronted with such a manifest managerial failure, a traditional international civil servant should have accepted responsibility and resigned: by clinging to office Krähenbühl is giving succour to his agency’s enemies.

One could add that the scandal reflects an erosion of the concept of an ethical international service under a constant corrosive drip of short-term contracts and outsourcing urged by those experts who brought us the 2008 financial crisis.    

Even so, Secretary-General Guterres can still ameliorate the crisis—first, of course, by inviting Krähenbühl’s immediate departure, but then by a resounding public declaration of how essential UNRWA’s work is.

Persuading a senior diplomat or U.N. figure to take over from Krähenbühl is a bit like fitting someone for a crown of thorns, but there are people out there who care enough about the Palestinians and who are prepared to stand up to the barrage of bile from worldwide Friends of Likud.

Above all, there is no need for the secretary-general to take advice from countries whose oft-condemned actions created and perpetuated so many decades of misery for the Palestinians.

He would, however, do well to invite donors and other humanitarian organizations to examine the agency and recommend much needed managerial and structural reforms, without pandering to those whose solution to the refugee problem is to leave them homeless and hungry while declaring them no longer to be refugees.

The original story appeared in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. 

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Excerpt:

Ian Williams is a former President of the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA) and author of "UNtold: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 12 2019 (IPS)

The harmful effects of falling corporate tax rates have been acknowledged in a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) research paper. This trend, since the early 1980s, has been especially detrimental for developing countries, which rely on direct taxation much more than developed economies.

Acknowledging that existing international corporate tax rules are unfair, set by developed country governments scantly considering their effects on poor countries, IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, called for a new system earlier this year.

BWIs and corporate tax rates

However, neither the IMF research nor Lagarde say anything about why corporate tax rates have been falling across all country groups for over three decades.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The neo-liberal ‘counter-revolution’ against Keynesian and development economics saw the brief popularity of ‘supply side’ economics during the early 1980s. The Washington Consensus of the US Treasury Department and the two Washington-based Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) – the IMF and the World Bank (WB) – ensured its global impact.

All serious empirical research has discredited Chicago Professor Arthur Laffer’s claim that lowering corporate tax rates boosts investment and growth rates. Significantly, this included work by US President Ronald Reagan’s first Council of Economic Advisers chair, Martin Feldstein, and Doug Elmendorf, his Congressional Budget Office Director.

Instead, most growth during the Reagan era was due to expansionary monetary policy, as lower interest rates helped the economy rebound from the severe recession in 1982. Likewise, the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts also failed to spur growth, according to Andrew Samwick, chief economist to his Council of Economic Advisers.

All serious empirical research has discredited Chicago Professor Arthur Laffer’s claim that lowering corporate tax rates boosts investment and growth rates

Despite their dubious premises, the Laffer curve and similar claims have re-emerged under the Trump presidency, which has already brought corporate tax rates to new lows.

Beggar thy neighbour

To qualify for BWI support, developing country governments were expected to undertake tax reforms, by lowering typically progressive direct tax rates in favour of regressive indirect taxation, such as value-added taxation (VAT), often dubbed the goods and services tax (GST).

A review of IMF tax policy recommendations to Sub-Saharan African countries during 1998-2008 confirmed that in typical ‘one-size-fits-all’ fashion, they invariably included reducing corporate and even, personal income tax rates as well as both export and import taxation, besides introducing or expanding VAT.

As an IMF paper concluded about the ostensible justification for its advice, “The complete abolition of corporate income tax would be the most direct application of the theoretical result that small open economies should not tax capital income.”

Vito Tanzi and Howell Zee, of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, even recommended taxing labour, instead of capital. They argued that “small countries should not levy source-based taxes on capital income” because, compared to labour, capital was highly mobile and could escape such taxes.

The WB’s controversial Doing Business Report (DBR) argues likewise; paying taxes was one of 11 criteria DBR 2017 used to rank a country’s business environment although the WB’s enterprise survey found tax incentives not critical among factors affecting foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows.

Policy advocacy despite evidence

Thus, BWI advice, ostensibly to encourage investment, particularly FDI, led to the harmful competition that has lowered corporate tax rates since the 1980s. Earlier IMF research found that such ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ tax competition has caused unnecessary loss of revenue for many developing countries.

Anis Chowdhury

OECD research found that direct tax concessions barely diverted, let alone attracted international investment flows. The Economist also found the relationship between tax rates and investment as well as growth rates to be weak.

A G20 report noted, “Tax incentives generally rank low in investment climate surveys in low-income countries, and there are many examples in which … investment would have been undertaken even without them. And their fiscal cost can be high, reducing opportunities for much-needed public spending …, or requiring higher taxes on other activities.”

Regressive tax incidence

Corporate tax rate declines over recent decades have contributed to overall tax incidence becoming more regressive as direct taxes have declined, and indirect taxes, such as VAT, have risen. VAT adoption has been central to BWI tax policy advice to developing countries.

A study of IMF advice on tax matters in 54 IMF Article IV reports between 2005 and 2008 to 10 low-income countries and 10 middle-income countries found that, “VAT was recommended or endorsed by the IMF in 90 per cent of the overall sample…”

An IMF paper found that the BWIs presume that tax is distortionary, and the tax system should focus on raising revenue while minimizing associated distortions. This precluded using taxation for other purposes, e.g., progressive redistribution. Recent IMF research shows that reduced tax progressivity has contributed to growing inequality since the 1980s.

Quo vadis?

Recognition of taxation’s potential for both resource mobilization and reducing inequality can still bring about fundamental changes in BWI conditionalities, advice and technical assistance for developing countries. Greater developing country engagement in designing international reforms to reduce tax avoidance and evasion by transnational corporations will be crucial.

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The marginal farmer who depends solely on rain irrigation needs water, agricultural and energy innovations the most. Three farmer families help each other to plough their small farms and seed them as monsoon arrives in Warangal district in Andhra Pradesh. Credit: Manipadma Jena / IPS

By Manipadma Jena
NEW DELHI, Aug 12 2019 (IPS)

“The Perfect Storm” was a dire prediction that by 2030 food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources together with climate change would threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration from worst-affected regions.

It is a term coined a decade back in 2009 by Sir John Beddington, the United Kingdom’s then Chief Scientific Adviser. But in 2019 the prediction seems to be a real possibility—particularly for developing countries.

The current drive for a food- and nutrition-secure world, as well as the vision of feeding an estimated global population of 10 billion in 2050, is held hostage today by the unsustainable nexus between agriculture, water and energy. This is all further exacerbated by the climate emergency upon us.

“We have, over the years, tended to overuse both water and energy in agricultural operations, practices that are now at odds with the challenges due to the emerging changes in hydrology and the increasing global concentration of greenhouse gases,” says Ajay Mathur, Director General of The Energy and Resources Institute, India.

“Those of us who work on water issues in (the global) South understand that there have been decades of mismanagement of our land, water, energy and ecosystems due to poor policies, whose effects are now being compounded due to climate change,” adds Aditi Mukherji, Principal Researcher at the International Water Management Institute.

India’s alarming water shortages are now real as are the prolonged droughts in its central region and on-going apocalyptic flooding in several states. Each disaster leaves its own damaging impact on food production back to back.

Problems in each of the farm, water, and energy sectors are being addressed in India through policies, schemes and innovations but there is a need for greater focus on their interconnectedness to solve real world water, energy and food issues, according to Mukherji who is the coordinating lead author of the water chapter of the 6th Assessment Report team of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Policies for reducing water distress in agriculture, for example, have to focus on all fronts –ensuring that food procurement policies are revised to incentivise low water consuming crops, that agricultural energy policies are tweaked to provide smarter incentives for lower groundwater extraction, and that water policies encourage decentralised solutions like water harvesting and water efficient agriculture,” she says.

And again “solutions for groundwater overexploitation problems are often found in the regions’ energy policies, including in the ever-increasing potential of renewable energy,” Mukherji says.

In India and other middle and low income economies, women are stewards of family food security. Increasingly, off- grid solar power is helping them provide better. A tribal woman feeds a 2 horsepower miller run by rooftop solar at Male Mahadeshwara Hills in Southern Karnataka. Courtesy: SELCO India

Clean energy to the rescue of food producers 

Ravi Naik’s tiny two-acre farm is in Shattigerahalli village in the Western Ghats of India’s southern Karnataka State. If any of his relatives come to visit, they trek through two kilometres of dense forests. Come monsoon, they’d find a formidable hill stream in fierce flow, barring their way. Grid electricity has not reached this remoteness, and the 56-year-old small farmer had no choice but to grow the Areca nut which requires less water but also fetches low prices at market.

Naik wanted to grow the remunerative banana but there was no way he could afford the extra irrigation with his kerosene-fed pump which already cost him over seven dollars a month.

But one day he encountered a solar technician from SELCO India, a local solar energy enterprise in Karnataka, who was installing an inverter. Naik narrated his woe. SELCO scouted and found a perennial pond close enough for a small ½ horsepower solar-powered pump to sufficiently draw irrigation for Naik’s banana plants.

Not only did Naik’s income double, thus easing his pump loan payments, the nutritious fruit always grows in abundance and has become his three-year-old grandson’s favourite snack. 

His farm is self sufficient and “clean” now. He no longer dreads the fossil fuel price swings on the black market, where he previously was forced to purchase fuel from.

To break the nexus Mathur suggests, “the promotion of energy efficient solar pumps, together with the purchase of excess electricity by the grid (from mini-grids), provides an opportunity to install micro-irrigation facilities, to mitigate climate emissions and provides a revenue stream for farmers to invest further in technology …energy efficiency is the first-step in ensuring that solar-based electrification is cost effective”. Mathur was recently appointed to the new International Energy Agency’s Commission for Urgent Action on Energy Efficiency.

While science and innovation have much to offer for water, energy and food security, these must be backed by institutional policies and political leadership to identify pathways to overcome a plethora of inter-connected challenges, according to Mukherji.

A 10 mega watt solar power plant set atop irrigation canals in Vodadara, Gujarat provides clean energy to thousands of farmers in the western Indian state. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Dire consequences already on us 

The World Resources Institute‘s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas released last week clearly indicates that India’s policies are not geared for current challenges it is already facing. The Atlas ranks India 13 among 17 countries that are facing “extremely high” water stress, almost close to Day Zero conditions. The research warns that potentially dire consequences can be triggered more often in India even during short dry shocks when demand outstrips supply, owing to its population which is three times that of the remaining 16 countries on the stressed list.

“South Asia is one of the world’s most highly populated regions with high levels of poverty and malnutrition alongside its rapid economic development. It is also a global hotspot due to huge demands for food, water and energy in a context of severe climate change impacts,” says Jim Woodhill of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

“From experience we know that food (and water) insecurity can be a trigger to societal unrest and even revolution. In such a populous region (as South Asia) it is critical that socially just and environmentally sustainable solutions are found to the challenge that the water, food, energy and climate nexus presents,” says Woodhill, who is the Food Systems Advisor for South Asia Sustainable Development Investment Portfolio at DFAT. 

Woodhill’s stand on South Asia was backed by United Nations findings in 2014. The U.N. had warned the Indian sub-continent may face the brunt of the water crisis where India would be at the centre of this conflict due to its unique geographical position in South Asia. It indicated shared river basins in the region may pit India against Pakistan, China and Bangladesh over the issue of water sharing by 2050. Indus River, Ganges and Brahmaputra basins are crucial for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China.

Already river water sharing between several Indian States is seeing prolonged disputes both legal and political.

“Systems of weak governance are at the heart of the problem. A focus on generating and distributing wealth is no longer enough – we must add the dimension of how to respond to climate change. Science, new forms of decision making, and citizen engagement must go hand in hand,” says Woodhill adding, “Experience worldwide is showing how competition for land and water resources is intensifying, driven by increased demand from agriculture, the energy sector and industry. In South Asia the potential scale of the human tragedy of not moving fast enough down a path of sustainability and climate resilience, is immense.” 

Australia’s Crawford Fund annual conference in Canberra over Aug. 12-13 examines the available evidence as to whether the “storm” is still on track to happen. Or whether scientific, engineering and agricultural innovation the world over, and progress in the farmer’s field in India and in other vulnerable countries, have indeed lessened or delayed the impact of the unsustainable nexus between agriculture, water, energy and climate change.

• Burning Forests for Rain, and Other Climate Catastrophes
• Producing Clean Energy from Pigsties in Brazil

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