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World hunger in 2021 reached 828 million people, an increase of 46 million from 2020 and 150 million since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: FAO.

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, Jul 13 2022 (IPS)

The signs of the last few years indicate a continuous setback towards achieving food security. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) annual report, “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI)”, prepared together with other UN agencies and presented on July 6th leaves no doubt about the dangerous situation in which we find ourselves regarding the real possibilities of eliminating hunger and poverty by 2030, as solemnly proposed by the international community in October 2015 in New York.

According to the latest SOFI data, world hunger in 2021 reached 828 million people, an increase of 46 million from 2020 and 150 million since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, showing that hunger has skyrocketed in 2020, after five years of no change or slight improvements. In 2019, the global population suffering from hunger was 8% of the world population, in 2020 it was 9.3% and in 2021 it reached 9.8%.

In 2021, nearly 2.3 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure that is, 350 million more than those who suffered from it before COVID-19. Likewise, around 924 million people, representing 11.7% of the world's population, faced severe levels of food insecurity, a figure that increased by 207 million in just two years

Looking into the future, the report projects that at this rate, even with a global economic recovery, around 670 million people will go hungry, or 8% of the world’s population. This is the same percentage as in 2015 when more than 150 heads of state and government adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to eliminate hunger and poverty worldwide by 2030!

Experts remind us that, in 2021, nearly 2.3 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure that is, 350 million more than those who suffered from it before COVID-19.

Likewise, around 924 million people, representing 11.7% of the world’s population, faced severe levels of food insecurity, a figure that increased by 207 million in just two years. Moreover, the gender gap continued to widen, with women accounting for 31.9% of these dramatic figures, while men accounted for 27.6%.

In 2020, nearly 3.1 billion people could not afford to maintain a healthy diet, 112 million more than in 2019, reflecting the consumer consequences of the effects of food price inflation stemming from the economic implications of COVID-19.

This is without calculating the impact of the war in Ukraine involving two of the world’s main producers of basic grains, oilseeds and fertilizers, and other conflicts around the world.

Clearly, this is disrupting the international supply chains and driving up the price of grains, fertilizers and energy, as well as ready-to-eat therapeutic foods for the treatment of severe malnutrition in children.

An estimated 45 million children under the age of five suffer from wasting. This is one of the deadliest forms of malnutrition that increases the risk of child mortality 12-fold. Meanwhile, 149 million children of the same age suffer from stunted growth and development due to a chronic lack of nutrients necessary for a healthy diet, and another 39 million are overweight, all aspects that will undoubtedly affect the future development of our societies.

One way to contribute to economic recovery when faced with the danger of a global recession with its direct consequences on public income and spending, is to adapt the forms of support for food and agriculture, which between 2013 and 2018 was 630,000 million dollars, and allocate them to nutritious foods where per capita consumption still falls short of the recommended levels for a healthy diet.

The SOFI report suggests that if governments were to adapt the resources they are using to encourage the production, supply and consumption of nutritious food, they would contribute to making healthy diets less expensive, more affordable and equitable for all people.

FAO, through its Director-General Qu Dongyu, insists that, in this complex situation, aggravated by war and climatic factors, investment in countries affected by rising food prices should increase, especially by supporting local production of nutritious food.

Currently, only 8% of all food security funding under emergency aid goes to support agricultural production.

In addition, information tools must be improved to enable better analysis and decision-making on food security and nutrition, in particular by using the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC), which can be a key factor in global responses to hunger.

Specialists say that policies aimed at increasing the productivity, efficiency, resilience and inclusion of agrifood systems should be promoted.

For this to happen, a financial investment equivalent to 8% of the volume of the agrifood market would be advisable, and these investments should focus on value chain infrastructure, innovation, new technologies and inclusive digital infrastructure.

Reducing food loss and waste could feed an additional 1.26 billion people a year, including enough fruit and vegetables for everyone.

In parallel, it would be advisable to ensure a better and more efficient use of available fertilizers for a better adaptation to local agricultural systems, maintaining market transparency, using tools such as the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), which is important for building confidence in world markets, while seeking to stabilize prices, preserving the open world trade system.

The solutions exist, but we must act before it is too late.

Excerpt:

This is an op-ed by Mario Lubetkin, FAO Assistant Director-General and designated FAO Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean (1 August 2022)

BRAC celebrates 50 years and has reached over nine million people living in extreme poverty through its Ultra-Poor Graduation program, which introduces a set of sequenced and holistic interventions intended to guarantee sustained financial stability. Credit: BRAC

By Naureen Hossain
New York, Jul 13 2022 (IPS)

As part of the 2022 United Nations High-Level Political Forum, BRAC, with the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the United Nations, and the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Nations, hosted a side event this week to discuss development opportunities led by the Global South. The event highlighted the NGO’s achievements over the last five decades in alleviating and eradicating poverty and the interconnectedness between the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their initiatives.

As part of the 2022 United Nations High-Level Political Forum, BRAC and the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the United Nations hosted a side event this week to discuss development opportunities led by the Global South. The event highlighted the NGO’s achievements over the last five decades in alleviating and eradicating poverty and the interconnectedness between the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their initiatives.

The discussion was moderated by IPS Senior Vice Chair and Executive Director, IPS North America, Farhana Haque Rahman. Speakers included BRAC Executive Director Asif Saleh, Ambassador Rabab Fatima of Bangladesh; Robert Kayinamura, Deputy Permanent Representative of Rwanda Mission to the United Nations; Deputy Chief and Senior Programme Management Officer to the UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island States (UN-OHRLLS) Susanna Wolf; Oriana Bandiera, Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and Jaideep Prabhu, Director of the Center for India & Global Business, Cambridge University.

At the high-level discussion commemorating BRAC’s 50 years of eradicating poverty were BRAC Executive Director Asif Saleh; Ambassador Rabab Fatima of Bangladesh and Robert Kayinamura, Deputy Permanent Representative of Rwanda Mission to the United Nations. Credit: BRAC

The event was a commemoration of BRAC’s 50th anniversary. Founded in 1972 by Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, BRAC began as a humanitarian relief provider after Bangladesh’s war of independence ended in 1971. The NGO has since grown in scale and operations, the only one of its size to originate from the Global South. Its programs reach over 100 million people in 11 South Asia and African countries. It aims to provide the tools and strategies for people to graduate from poverty and into more financially stable, resilient lives. Over the last five decades, BRAC has worked to address the pressing socio-economic issues of the times through holistic, solutions-based approaches that have relied on local community involvement in multiple program planning and implementation avenues.

The success of BRAC and other NGOs has also come down to the close collaboration between them and the Bangladesh government. Bangladesh has been celebrated for its economic growth and development, achieving the highest GDP globally from 2010 to 2020. The World Bank has called it a “model for poverty reduction”. This has been possible, as Ambassador Rabab Fatima stated in her opening remarks, because of the government’s “tremendous commitment to achieving the UN SDGs, especially SDG 1: No Poverty – aligning national plans and policy documents with SDG targets and goals and working in close partnership with the NGO sector and other civil society members, including BRAC”.

The forum’s discussion also deliberated on the multi-faceted approach needed for poverty eradication.

BRAC Executive Director Asif Saleh noted that “critical to eradicating poverty is understanding that it is multidimensional.”

“Solutions must address not only income and livelihoods but also education, health, climate, and gender equality – the many interconnected drivers that trap people in the most extreme states of poverty, unable to escape without receiving a significant transfer of assets and tailored support…”

Saleh also remarked that BRAC’s social development and investment approach had been shaped by a “problems-driven approach, rather than a proposal-driven one” and is crucially defined by its founding and establishment in the Global South. The traditional approach to development, as designed and dictated by the Global North, has had the unintended consequence of excluding millions of people from traditional programs and market-led initiatives.

“What we’ve seen is that people in extreme poverty are being left behind in development discussions.”

Deputy Chief and Senior Programme Management Officer to UN-OHRLLS Susanna Wolf; Oriana Bandiera, Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Jaideep Prabhu, Director of the Center for India & Global Business, Cambridge University. Credit: BRAC

The high-level forum also covered how BRAC’s work and, in turn, Bangladesh’s growth and success demonstrate the SDGs’ interconnectedness, particularly regarding SDG1. Most notably, SDGs 4, 5, and 17 call for equitable and inclusive quality education for all, gender equality and revitalizing global partnerships for sustainable development.

In working with millions of people living in extreme poverty, the solutions put forward by BRAC have been borne from innovation through frugality for the sake of financial viability and social and environmental impact, as Professor Jaideep Prabhu noted.

“Indeed, Bangladesh has pioneered the idea of social business… but instead of returning these profits to investors and owners, you put this wealth back into scaling your social mission and broadening your social impact.”

Prabhu also noted that this approach to business and social development had been adopted worldwide, including publicly listed companies that take responsibility for their performance’s social and environmental impact.

BRAC reached over nine million people living in extreme poverty through its Ultra-Poor Graduation program, which introduces a set of sequenced and holistic interventions intended to guarantee sustained financial stability.

Among their efforts at poverty eradication, a key factor has been to empower women through education and economic independence.

Oriana Bandiera of the London School of Economics remarked: “It is not possible to achieve SDG1 [No Poverty] without advancing economic opportunities for women and their status in society.”

Studies from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) have shown that investing in women’s economic empowerment can have a meaningful impact on social and economic development. This can be observed in Bangladesh, where it has made significant strides in reducing gender divisions, closing 72 percent of the overall gender gap, and reducing the rates of child marriages, maternal mortality, and family violence.

As was discussed in the forum, this investment in women’s economic empowerment and the long-term impact on poverty eradication can be achieved through community engagement. This has been seen in BRAC’s education programs, first pioneered in 1985. Their model for community-based education programs recruits women, men, and other members of local communities in the most vulnerable areas to provide accessible schooling for boys and girls in one-classroom settings. Today, BRAC has become one of the world’s largest education providers.

Poverty is multidimensional and solutions should not only address income and livelihoods but also education, health, climate, and gender equality, a high-level discussion moderated by IPS Senior Vice Chair and Executive Director, IPS North America, Farhana Haque Rahman heard. Credit: BRAC

BRAC demonstrated the potential for countries in the Global South to proactively lead development initiatives in the region. Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of Rwanda to the UN Robert Kayinamura stated that middle-income countries should step up to corroborate and share their knowledge and lived experiences in shaping these initiatives, citing Rwanda’s growth in the development sector.

“We have tried to achieve within our means with the SDGs,” he said. “It has been partnerships, including BRAC, which has brought us to where we are.”

This sentiment and call for partnerships to achieve the SDGs was echoed by Susanna Wolf of UN-OHLLRS, who provided the perspective of international agencies.

“Strong emphasis on building resilience to various shocks from health emergencies to disasters and price shocks, which are all increasingly frequent and disproportionally affect LDCs (Least Developed Countries). To address the multidimensional nature of poverty, all partners are expected to step up their efforts. Social protection has an increasingly important role to play, and other LDCs can learn a lot from the innovative approaches spearheaded by BRAC.”

The systemic inequities that have resulted in and perpetuated extreme poverty have only come in sharper contrast in the wake of compounding global crises such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. The efforts of NGOs like BRAC and the frontline workers that continue to work through these crises to support the most vulnerable communities show their resilience. BRAC has championed people’s resilience, agency, and partnership for fifty years; may it continue for another fifty more.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Mumtaza Bano (centre), is ploughing the field along with other women in her village in south Kashmir. Farmers in the region have experienced a heat wave which has turned much of the area, known for lush green hills, into a dry wasteland. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
Srinagar, Indian Kashmir, Jul 13 2022 (IPS)

The soaring temperatures this year in India’s northern state of Kashmir are proving calamitous for the region’s farming community.  The place, otherwise known for its emerald streams, lush green hills, and ice sheets, is reeling under heat attributed to climate change this year. The heat wave of such intensity has left most of the water canals dead and dry, plunging the already conflict-torn region into a frightening agrarian crisis.

Perturbed and dismayed, Ghulam Mohammad Mir is trying to sow a paddy crop on his two-acre plot in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal area. Mir says his months of hard work would probably get wasted as the land has almost turned barren due to scorching heat and water scarcity.

“We are witnessing the temperatures spiking as high as 37 degrees Celsius. Such heat wave was otherwise alien to Kashmir. You can see the land looks barren, and if we sow any crop here, we fear it would turn into dry, dead twigs in the coming days. The scenes are scary to imagine. There is little water accumulated by the rain left in the fields,” Mir told IPS.

Ghulam Mohammad Mir is sowing a paddy crop on his two-acre land located in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal area. Mir says his months of hard work will probably get wasted as the land has almost turned barren in the unrelenting heat. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

The farmer, who is in his late 50s, says he has been in paddy cultivation since childhood but has never seen the drying of the land with such intensity.  Mir says the water canals were never as dry as they are today, and in the first three months after spring – from March to June, there was no rainfall, and then it rained heavily for four days, suddenly plummeting the temperatures to mere 15 degrees Celsius.

“And then, the mercury surged again, and within a mere one week, the temperatures surged to almost 37 degrees. Where will we get water to irrigate our fields now? The paddy will burn amid such scorching heat. This is disastrous to the core,” Mir said.

According to the research titled ‘Climate Change Projection in Kashmir Valley’ conducted by the region’s agriculture university, the states of Jammu and Kashmir are impacted by climate change. The state, claims the research, is expected to have a surge in the number of rainy days by 2030.

“Similarly, the annual temperature is likely to increase in the next century compared to the base period of 1970. An increasing trend in annual maximum and minimum temperature, as well as precipitation, has also been predicted for the region under Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES).”

Over the years, the valley has experienced irregular precipitation patterns. In the first five months of 2022, Kashmir saw a 38 percent decrease in rainfall, according to data from the Meteorological Department (MeT) in Srinagar. The data reveals that the Kashmir valley has experienced a significant lack of pre-monsoon precipitation over the years. From March 1 to May 31, 2022, the region got 99.5 mm of rain, a 70 percent down from the average. Comparably, between March and May of each of the following years—2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021—there was a deficit of 16, 28, 35, and 26%, respectively.

Mohammad Iqbal Choudhary, the Director of the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Kashmir, told IPS that most irrigation canals have turned dry in Kashmir. As a result, the majority of paddy fields have been left uncultivated.

Dr Arshid Jahangir, who teaches Environmental Studies at the University of Kashmir, said climate models indicate a pretty bleak outlook for the region.

In the future, Jahangir says extreme events will happen more frequently in the Himalayas, which includes Kashmir.

“The Kashmir region has had numerous extreme weather occurrences in the last ten years, including floods, frequent cloudbursts, heat waves, droughts, landslides, and early snowfalls. In Kashmir’s climate history, such occurrences were never typical. These extreme events won’t just keep happening; their frequency will also rise. Aside from the financial losses, everyone’s lives are in danger as a result of this,” he said.

For farmers like Mir, if the situation doesn’t improve, they will have no choice but to abandon farming forever.

“You see, our children do not want to do this work. They ask, ‘what is the fun of toiling so hard only to get losses in the end?’ We could sell this land off and do some other business,” Mir said.

Most Kashmiris are farmers, using various techniques adapted to the region’s environment. Rice is planted in May and harvested in September. The main summer crops are maize, sorghum, millet, pulses, tobacco, and cotton, and the main spring crop is barley.

In south Kashmir’s Pulwama area, Mumtaza Bano was busy ploughing her two-acre land with her husband. However, Bano seems pessimistic about having a profitable yield this year.

“The soil looks hard, and it is tough to plough it through. It is July, and we are without any irrigation facility here. The canals are running dry, and so are our hopes of a good yield. This entire village is considering abandoning farming now and doing some other work. It is just a waste of time now,” Bano said.

Kashmir’s renowned earth scientist Professor Shakil Ahmad Ramsoo, told IPS that action at the global level is needed to resolve the crises prevalent across the Himalayan region.

“Global climate change is a reality. There would be extended dry spells interspersed with high-intensity, long-duration downpours. There is a trend when we look over the past 30 to 50 years. Snowfall in the winter is currently below average. The autumn is becoming dryer. The rainy spring is drying up. This is why the crisis needs global attention so that we can mitigate it,” Ramsoo said.
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Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.
                                                    Michel de Montaigne

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Jul 13 2022 (IPS)

During the beginning of the pandemic, people wanted to learn more about COVID-19. Enclosed in their homes they watched with fear and fascination how the pandemic swept over the world, while comparing numbers of affected people and the death-toll in different countries. Watching COVID’s rampage became a kind of horror show. However, already after a few months with death-tolls rising and isolation not being over anytime soon, psychological fatigue set in. Judging from media coverage it now appears as if the pandemic finally is over, which is far from being the case.

A similar phenomenon seems to arise in relation to the war in Ukraine. Media coverage is decreasing, even if Russian troops are advancing while towns and villages continue to crumble under their heavy bombardment. The Ukrainian war came as a shock. Without provocation an independent nation was invaded by a military super-power. However, soon general interest was fading and the war in Ukraine is in the minds of many gradually being transformed into a “traditional” war. Affected by declining endurance and lack of commitment, as well as an audience-adapted media, people have a tendency to “normalise” protracted human suffering.

Relatively safe and comfortable, media audience is now returning to previous internet surfing and TV channel zapping, searching for entertainment and celebrity gossip. The U.S. author Norman Mailer often repeated his view of the “Western World” as a place where people out of convenience and inertia tend to gloss over all complexity, avoiding questions that take more than ten seconds to answer. To form an opinion, they require tangible and upsetting events, while more in-depth analyses tend to bore them.

Superficiality and lack of analysis are evident in emotionally charged and polarizing postings prevailing on social media networks, where propaganda and shallow information are delivered to millions of consumers, distracting them from important issues, while strengthening hatred and bigotry, eroding social trust, undermining serious journalism, fostering doubts about science and furthermore serving as covert surveillance of lives and opinions of individuals acceding the global web.

Young people tend to have significantly better computer skills than older newspaper- and book readers and are accordingly by elders accused of spending too much time within a digital world. Nevertheless, I assume most internet users, no matter their age, have a tendency to enter a limited, personal niche of specific information. Their approach to source criticism is to visit sites they are familiar with, judging such information to be more trustworthy than the one offered by other news outlets.

Social media might make sense of life, though the problem is that they generally deal with other people’s views and lives, seldom with our own. However, this cannot be exclusively blamed on social media. After all, young and old are alike when it comes to assessing an incessant avalanche of information. It is a common human trait that few of us have the time, courage, or interest, to dig deep into our own mind in search of whom we actually are, as well as the origin of our ideas and opinions. Something that might influence a reluctance to take decisions on our own, and if we do so – take responsibility and stand by them.

Nevertheless, there are a few brave women and men who are able to do just that. An example – in 1983, a Soviet duty officer, Stanislav Petrov, did on the early warning system detect intercontinental, nuclear missiles entering Soviet air space. He was supposed to report this to his superiors, who without doubt would have launched a nuclear counter-attack. However, Petrov used his personal reasoning and experience. The radar had only detected five missiles and there was no indication of the U.S. considering a nuclear onslaught. If it really was a nuclear attack, why use only five missiles and not stage an “all-out assault”? Petrov assumed a system failure was more likely than an actual nuclear attack. He decided not to alert anyone and thus saved the world.

With this example in mind, let me return to COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. Social networks are excellent tools for acquiring knowledge, though at the same time they nurture tribalism and intolerance, spreading damaging beliefs by convincing people to support a common, but bad cause, while avoiding personal, well-thought-out positions. Shared beliefs are the glue of community. In a bewildering and often hostile environment we are in need of a fixed place/position. A sense of belonging makes us feel safe and protected. We are herd animals and some of us consider the defence of rigid and shared beliefs as a matter of life or death, convictions that have to be kept alive and guarded from change, far beyond fact and reason.

Take the anti-vax movement. Due to strong beliefs in vaccines’ harmfulness people are willing to put their own lives, as well as those of others, in danger and even losing jobs and friends. This in spite of a global, scientific consensus that vaccines are safe and beneficent.

Anti-vaxers might be influenced by a lack of scientific knowledge, mistrust of public authorities, insufficient confidence in health care providers, general complacency, and/or misguiding religious/ideological beliefs. Fundamentalist Christians may believe that vaccinations are instigated by the Beast and a overture to the Apocalypse. Adherents to the Waldorf Movement can apply the founder’s opinion that their children’s spirits benefit from being “tempered in the fires of a good inflammation”, while Salafists might consider vaccination campaigns as a means of Infidels to pacify the zeal of the Righteous.

Delusions are fuelled by more than a thousand web sites spreading anti-vaccine misinformation, as well as a host of books and articles clogging social media with misinformation, hindering serious information to reach people already deceived by fake news.

Vaccination campaigns have eradicated smallpox, which once killed as many as one in seven children in Europe alone. With the exception of Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan they made polio disappear from earth. Half a million children were in 2000 dying from measles, ten years later these deaths were down by eighty percent, akin to similar reductions in mortality from diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus and bacterial meningitis.

There is a wealth of scientific proof that opposing vaccination campaigns has negative effects. An example – starting around 2008, Somali immigrants in Minneapolis were targeted by organized meetings warning for a “vaccine-autism link”, eight years later the Somali community was in the throes of a serious measles outbreak. The same happened in 2019, when the Orthodox Jewish community in New York was targeted by a campaign comparing vaccines to the Holocaust.

There is no link between vaccines and autism. In 1998, British scientist Andrew Wakefield published, in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, research results suggesting that measles-, mumps-, and rubella vaccines caused behavioural regression and developmental disorders in children. Even if Wakefield’s findings could not be reproduced and proven right, vaccination rates began to drop. After finding that research results had been falsified, The Lancet retracted Wakefield’s article. However, by then the vaccine-autism connection had gone viral on the web. Eventually, Wakefield was barred from practising medicine in the UK and it was found that his research had been funded by lawyers engaged by parents in lawsuits against vaccine-producing companies.

Even if there is no link between vaccines and autism, there is definitely one between plagues and war. The deadly influenza pandemic in 1918 was propelled by troop movements and population shifts. Typhus follows almost every war. Armed conflicts cause malnutrition, poor pest control, sanitation problems, soil and water contamination, and destruction of medical facilities, while vaccination and other mass-treatment programmes falter, or cease.

The current, armed conflict in Yemen has caused the largest cholera outbreak in history, while the disease was absent from this country before the war. Wars in Syria and Iraq led to a resurgence of measles and polio, and the same is occurring in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has severely damaged the health care infrastructure, preventing citizens from receiving medical help. Specialist services are disrupted – HIV treatment and tuberculosis control are impacted. COVID-19 is spreading, as physical distancing are difficult to maintain in underground shelters, while vaccination efforts have been disrupted. They were already low before the invasion, with only 35 percent of Ukraine residents fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The war has also halted a Government roll-out of polio vaccination.

Considering the intimate connection between war and epidemics, a holding on to the harmfulness of vaccine campaigns, or a justification of wars of aggression, appear to be both absurd and harmful. We need to learn to discern the “full picture”, to compare and listen to different voices/various
opinions and thus avoid to be entrenched in fake and harmful convictions.

Instead of being lured into bigotry, we ought to finally understand that everything is connected, not the least misinformation, war, and disease. This means we have to make a joint effort to refrain from spreading and clinging to fake news and instead try to save our planet from the actual perils threatening it. There is only one Earth and no spare.

Main source: Hotez, Peter J. (2021) Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti Science. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.
                                                    Michel de Montaigne

By External Source
Jul 12 2022 (IPS-Partners)

 
Isobel Coleman was sworn in as Deputy Administrator for Policy and Programming at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in November 2021.

As USAID’s Deputy Administrator, Isobel Coleman is responsible for program and policy oversight. She guides USAID’s crisis response, and she is also responsible for overseeing Agency efforts to prevent famine and future pandemics, strengthen education, health, democracy and economic growth, and improve responses to climate change.

Ambassador Coleman is a foreign policy and global development expert with more than 25 years of experience working in government, the private sector and non-profits.

ECW: When it comes to education aid funding, why is it important to prioritize the most vulnerable girls and boys – those whose lives are impacted by armed conflicts, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters – through organizations like Education Cannot Wait?

Isobel Coleman: At USAID, we know that to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 – equitable, inclusive quality education for all – we must prioritize the unique needs of the most vulnerable children and youth. Half of USAID’s basic and higher education funding is spent in regions experiencing conflict and crisis. But we are well aware that the scale of global need is growing due to crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, rising political instability and climate-induced disasters.

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) plays a vital role in addressing the educational needs of children and youth in acute and forgotten crises. As the only global fund dedicated to education in emergencies, ECW is uniquely positioned to coordinate among donors, the private sector, and humanitarian and development actors to meet the needs of the next generation. The work of ECW is helping ensure this growing population has the skills and abilities to sustain themselves while engaging as productive citizens in their communities.

ECW: Newsweek has named you one of the “150 Women Who Shake the World” and, in your current role at USAID, you are an inspiration to young and adolescent girls. With so many girls being left behind without access to education, why must – and how can we – best empower an entire generation of girls and young women to become the leaders of tomorrow?

Isobel Coleman: Research shows that education is certainly among the most powerful drivers of women and girls empowerment, and critical to achieving development and humanitarian outcomes. According to UNESCO, 15 million girls and 10 million boys worldwide will never set foot in a classroom; refugee girls are half as likely as their male counterparts to be in secondary school.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s decision this Spring not to reopen schools for girls above Grade 6 is a terrible blow to the gains in education that girls have been steadily making in that country. It is simply unacceptable that some three million school-aged Afghan girls are out of school due to economic, political and cultural barriers. USAID works to break down gender-related barriers to education so that all learners ¬– especially girls and women – have access to quality learning opportunities from pre-primary through higher education.

Educating girls and young women is an investment not only in them as individuals, but also in their future families, their communities and society at large. The evidence is clear – when a female head of household has an education, particularly a secondary school education, they can more sustainably escape a lifetime of poverty for themselves and their family, even in the face of conflict, crisis or other adversities.

In fiscal year 2020, the U.S. government provided more than 24 million primary and secondary students in 53 countries with opportunities to learn literacy, numeracy and other basic skills; distributed more than 31 million textbooks and other teaching and learning materials; and provided education to approximately 12 million women and girls. In Afghanistan, we are working hard to find ways to sustain access to education at all levels through support to Afghan-owned and operated community-based and private education.

At USAID, empowering women and girls through education is part of a broader approach to inclusion for all marginalized populations. We are working to better understand the root causes of marginalization and focusing our interventions on serving the most marginalized learners, including adolescent girls and those facing intersectional challenges such as disability, displacement and extreme poverty.

I want to emphasize the importance of supporting women to advance and succeed in leadership positions within education systems. Adolescent girls need role models and leaders in both the school and classroom, their communities and in public offices who will advocate for their specific needs with high levels of influence. When women are equitably represented in education leadership – whether at the international, national or even individual school-level – all learners, especially adolescent girls, benefit exponentially.

ECW: In your capacity as USAID Deputy Administrator for Policy and Programming, how do you see the role of multilateralism to steer the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals (in particular, SDG4, equitable, inclusive quality education for all) – particularly given ECW’s new data which shows there are now 222 million crisis-affected children and adolescents who need urgent education support?

Isobel Coleman: The United States has long championed international basic education. We are the largest bilateral funder of international basic education because we understand education is a foundational driver of development and is transformational for individuals and societies.

The U.S. will continue leading in international education through our bilateral and multilateral assistance. Working with all stakeholders, including our multilateral partners, builds resilient education systems, improves learning outcomes, and reaches the most marginalized children and youth. Through our support to multilateral partners, such as Education Cannot Wait, working in concert with our bilateral programs in basic and higher education, we maximize our ability to reach the greatest number of children and youth, and help deliver on SDG4.

A great example of our multilateral and bilateral assistance working together is in northern Mali. Last October, USAID contributed an additional $5 million to ECW’s programs in Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu to ensure continuity of learning opportunities, while USAID programming helped build resilient education systems for conflict-affected communities.

ECW: Why is investing in education in crisis-contexts like the Sahel, Yemen and beyond important for global social and economic security, and why is this important for the American people? Why should the private sector – including leading American companies – invest today in education in emergencies and protracted crises?

Isobel Coleman: Inclusive, quality education can reduce conflict and promote political and economic stability. But who delivers it – and what is taught – is crucial to promote democracy and prevent influence from malign actors. The private sector benefits from increased global stability, so it has not only a social responsibility, but some self-interest in joining international donors to address the educational needs of children and youth and help set them up for lifelong success.

Given the funding gap in education, we need EVERYONE to respond – donors, governments and the private sector. This is not an issue that any one entity can solve alone. The pandemic-related challenges that teachers and students continue to face globally have only expanded existing gaps and highlighted the need for new and non-traditional funding.

ECW: The climate crisis is an education crisis. How can we better connect education – especially for crisis-affected girls and boys – with climate action?

Isobel Coleman: Climate change poses challenges to education infrastructure and learning outcomes. It impacts marginalized populations disproportionately, worsening poverty and exacerbating non-climate stressors. However, strong education systems with emergency response capacity and plans can implement proactive measures to minimize damage and disruption due to climate events, such as droughts and hurricanes. Often after a natural disaster, the opening of schools signals the return to normalcy for both families and businesses, enabling early recovery. Therefore, investing in education during acute crises is also essential for children and the wider community.

Responding to the climate crisis is a USAID priority. USAID recently launched an ambitious 2022-2030 Climate Strategy to better support countries to adapt to climate change, leverage resources to mobilize both public and private climate finance, increase technical assistance to those most at risk of climate impacts, and cut the Agency’s carbon footprint. We are currently developing guidance to articulate how USAID’s programs can advance climate mitigation and adaptation across all levels of education, including by:

• Partnering with Ministries to integrate climate themes in curriculum and trainings
• Supporting education leaders to plan for climate resilience and green infrastructure
• Supporting youth to build skills for green jobs and engaging youth leaders to advocate for improved environmental practices and attitudes in their communities
• Leveraging the capacity of higher education systems to serve as climate action leaders and knowledge generators
• Improving risk management and capacity through training.

ECW: Our readers would like to know a little about you on a personal level and we know that reading is crucial to every child’s (and adult’s) growth and development. What are some of the books that have most influenced you and why would you recommend them to others?

Isobel Coleman: Reading absolutely is critical to personal growth and development! I was, and still am, an avid reader. I devour biographies, read mostly non-fiction, but also love fiction too. So many books have left indelible impressions on me – it’s a struggle to pick a few. But one that stands out is Strength in What Remains, a book by Tracy Kidder about the remarkable Deo who survived genocide and civil war in Burundi, made his way to America and through tremendous hard work, tenacity, perseverance and the kindness of strangers, became a doctor working with Partners in Health. It’s a truly inspirational journey. I’ve had the honor of getting to know Deo over the years and watched with awe and admiration as he’s devoted his life to helping others.

USAID recognizes the vital importance of ensuring that all children and youth have access to quality books in languages they understand to achieve literacy. Along with other donors and partners through the Global Book Alliance, USAID is proud to support the Global Digital Library, an open-source library maintained by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation that makes 6,000+ high-quality reading resources available in 83 languages, including under-published languages. The library breaks down physical barriers to accessing books and is accessible to those with disabilities.

More than 1.3 million people in Ontario, Canada, the most populous province in one of the world’s wealthiest countries, are food insecure. Credit: Ottawa Food Bank

By Juliet Morrison
Ottawa , Jul 12 2022 (IPS)

Lisa Argiropulos, a single mother of two teenage sons and a resident of Ottawa, Ontario, has been facing food insecurity since 2016, after an accident that left her with chronic pain and disabilities.

Unable to continue working, Argiropulos has been living off disability support and child benefits payments. Yet, her income is insufficient to provide for herself and her family, especially with today’s prices.

“With the prices going up, it’s astronomical. I was struggling before. Now it’s ten times worse. By the time I pay all my bills, my utilities, and any expenses, what’s left over for food is not nearly enough. It’s been really, really hard. You’re always having to look elsewhere for help, weekly, monthly,” Argiropulos said.

In Canada, the cost of food has risen 9.7 percent from April 2021 to April 2022. The high price of other necessities, like gas and housing, has also contributed to food insecurity; people have to spend more of their income on those expenses, which leaves less for food.

Food insecurity occurs when people do not have reliable access to enough nutritious food. Pre-pandemic, it affected approximately 1.3 million people in Ontario—the most populous province of one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

“That really shows how challenging it is for so many in Ontario. It is not everyone’s reality to be able to afford all your basic necessities in a month,” Amanda King, Director of Network and Government Relations at Feed Ontario, said.

Today, the total number living with food insecurity is likely to be bigger because inflation has put more people in precarious positions.

“Food insecurity is something that’s somewhat invisible. That is why it is really important to emphasize the data and statistics that we have. If you look at a classroom, you cannot immediately identify which child did not have breakfast that morning. Statistically, you know there are children in that classroom that have not had breakfast,” King said.

To get by, Argiropulos seeks additional support from her local food bank to stretch her food budget. For her, that is the Barrhaven Food Cupboard, where she’s allowed one visit a month. While she receives a package of food intended to last for seven days, it goes quickly in her family of three, with her growing sons.

Food banks are also feeling the current strain of inflation.

Usage of food banks has increased significantly in the past couple of months as more people are in need. According to CEO George Macdonald, the Barrhaven Food Cupboard has seen a usage increase of 130 percent since last year. Ottawa Food Bank CEO Rachael Wilson noted that they served 52,000 meals across their network in March. Last year, they served an average of 44,000 a month.”

Higher food and gas prices mean that it has become more expensive for food banks to operate. Before the pandemic, the Ottawa Food Bank spent 1.7 million Canadian dollars (about USD 1.31 million) annually on food. This year, Wilson told IPS they were preparing to spend over 4.5m CAD (USD 3.49m).

Though both Wilson and Macdonald were coping with the demand, they noted that further increases in food bank usage could affect their ability to serve their community.

“It’s very stressful. Knowing how we are going to get food on our shelves every day is just a day-to-day stress right now. So far, there hasn’t been an instance where we couldn’t provide the food that is needed. But I honestly don’t know how sustainable it is for us to continue to meet the needs at this level without major change,” Wilson said.

The Ottawa Food Bank, which supports 112 smaller food programs, relies primarily on charitable donations. It receives no regular funding from the provincial or federal government.

The current extent of food insecurity has prompted calls for change in how policymakers address the issue.

Government interventions on food insecurity have mostly been in helping support the operations of food banks.  Provincial relief for food insecurity during the pandemic came indirectly: over 1 billion CAD was allocated in Social Services Relief Funding (SSRF) (about USD 775m) to help municipalities and social service providers, including food banks.  ­­­­

While helpful for short-term relief, Tim Li, research coordinator at PROOF—a program from the University of Toronto working to identify policy solutions for hunger—explained that these interventions do little to address the causes of food insecurity.

“Hunger is not just about not having food. It’s about people’s financial circumstances. It’s about poverty, lack of income, and income security. We’re not seeing action that takes that approach as far as addressing income inadequacy to reduce food insecurity. It goes to show that the safety net is not as robust as we thought.”

Rather than increasing aid to food banks, PROOF advocates for income-based solutions, such as expanding social assistance and increasing the minimum wage. Such moves would require mostly provincial-level action, given the provinces are responsible for both areas.

“Our research really points to policymakers tackling minimum wage, social assistance, and all the other different policies that exist within their toolbox, whether that’s income tax, child benefits. There’s a lot that public policymakers can do. It’s just a matter of them doing it,” Li said.

More than 60 percent of people dependent on social assistance in Canada are food insecure, according to a 2018 study.

The total is presumed to be bigger today, given most social assistance programs are not indexed to inflation. This results in support payments being worth less and less each year as prices rise, potentially leading more people to slip into food insecurity.

Argiropulos is also asking for income-based solutions. Fully supporting herself and her family is simply out of reach in her current state, she told IPS.

Around a year ago, her doctor recommended she apply for a food allowance for those with dietary needs because of medical conditions. The allowance was part of Ontario’s Disability Support Program (ODSP), and Argiropulos qualified because she had type two diabetes.

She was shocked, however, upon realizing how much she was eligible to receive.

“He sent in [the paperwork], and it was only an additional 35 dollars per month for type two diabetes. I had gestational diabetes throughout both pregnancies with my children. So, I know. I’ve seen dieticians. I know how you’re supposed to eat. I know about carbohydrates. I know about all that stuff. Thirty-five dollars, it’s not even doable,” she said.

Argiropulos noted that the reality of living on social assistance and facing food insecurity needs to be emphasized.

“I worked my entire life, and I fell on bad times. And food, nobody should be denied food. We live in a country where we should not be denied food. When you are forced to rely on the system, struggling for food should not happen. It just shouldn’t.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Sandy Recinos Executive Secretary against Sexual Violence, Exploitation and Trafficking in Persons (SVET) from Guatemala - Former congresswoman Rosi Orozco from México - Ann Basham Chief Executive Officer at Ascend ConsultingUnited State.
Mobile Units for the Prevention of Sexual Violence, Exploitation and Human Trafficking “UNIVET”, which allows sharing information, preventing these crimes and also promoting the culture of reporting among its inhabitants. Credit: Rosi Orozco

By Rosi Orozco
MEXICO CITY, Jul 12 2022 (IPS)

This is an alert message: if nothing stops the wave of violence in Mexico, by the end of 2024 the country could exceed the figure of 150,000 missing persons.

Just on May 17, Mexico crossed a the ultimate horror border: officially there are more than 100,000 people who cannot be located. The equivalent of the evaporation of two and a half times the population of Monaco. Most of those people are victims of organized crime.

It is an old problem in Mexico, but it has taken a new turn in recent months: in its most recent report, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances recognized that since 2006 the phenomenon has been concentrated in men between 15 and 40 years, but the pandemic changed that profile. Now, the great national drama focuses on girls and boys from 12 to 35 years old.

The coronavirus opened gaps in inequality and poverty like no other natural phenomenon. Sexual violence, human trafficking, and femicides increased in Mexico, and forced disappearances became an effective means to hide those crimes. Criminals act with a perverse idea: without a body, there is no crime and therefore no punishment.

The problem is so severe that the Mexican government has recognized that the number of girls and women has skyrocketed in recent months to more than 24,600 women waiting to be located. Many of them are not even 10 years old.

One of the latest national sorrows is a young woman called Debanhi Susana Escobar Bazaldúa, 18 years old, who disappeared on April 8 in Nuevo León, México, on a highway that reaches Texas, United States.

Her search kept the country in suspense after a photograph was released where she appeared alone and at dawn waiting for a taxi to return home after attending a party. The image became a symbol of fear and hope.

Magistrate Delia Davila and Former Congresswoman Rosi Orozco after a meeting with specialized judges to deal with human trafficking. Credit: Rosi Orozco

But after 13 days of searching, his body was found at the bottom of a hotel cistern frequented by human traffickers. While she was wanted alive, five more missing women were found. The causes of Debanhi Susana Escobar’s death are still unclear, but the family points to a crime of a sexual nature.

The death of the young woman who dreamed of being a lawyer strucked a chord in a country numbed to the horrors of human trafficking. And amid a pain that seems to make no sense, her father demanded that the life of Debanhi Susana Escobar be a symbol against the wave of missing women.

The mourning of Debanhi Susana Escobar’s family comes at a crucial moment for Mexico if we want to avoid reaching 150,000 disappeared people in the next two years.

On one hand, the Mexican Senate president, Olga Sánchez Cordero, close to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is promoting a series of reforms to the national general law against human trafficking that prevents the sexual exploitation of women in prostitution.

Senator Sánchez Cordero’s intention also seeks to punish whoever maintains a house of prostitution, which includes its administration, lease, or financing. That measure would meant a heavy blow to the human trafficking networks that make girls and women disappear.

This initiative comes as Mexico celebrates 10 years of the general law against human trafficking, promulgated in 2012. This law has been praised by international experts —such as the Spanish prosecutor Beatriz Sanchez, who is already studying Mexican legislation as an inspiration to create a comprehensive law and abolitionist in her country.

There’s another international experience on the southern border in Mexico from which we can all learn: in Guatemala a successful experiment is being carried out to stop sexual and labor exploitation with a novel approach.

For example, leaders like Justice Delia Dávila have taken on the responsibility of training judges to specialize in investigating human trafficking. The judges issue sentences in favor of the victims and work together with civil society, such as the World Vision organization.

In addition, Guatemala has a vehicle project known as UNIVET, which reaches the most remote communities to carry out prevention and education work for vulnerable girls, adolescents, and women.

In this way, Guatemala is at the forefront in Latin America by creating a national strategy against human exploitation, giving it the priority that this crime deserves, which is the second most lucrative globally.

The efforts in Mexico, Spain, France, Guatemala and dozens of countries with an abolitionist approach make us believe that it is possible to achieve what cynical voices tell us will be impossible: stop the trend of violence that will lead us to 150,000 disappeared people.

We have to do it for Debanhi Susana Escobar. For his family and the legacy they want to leave this country. For each missing person, for each survivor, for each future girl. For Mexico.

This is an alert message: we still have time. Let’s be brave and push for the changes that the most vulnerable need.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Villagers living with a desert at their doorstep in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province are finding life more bountiful thanks to recent training on how to use their smartphones to buy, sell and gather information. Nadia Mujeeb, 30, who learned from the training how to access new makeup techniques from popular video websites, is now poised […]

Solar power stations in plain areas, wind turbines in the distance. Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, China. Credit: Africa Renewal, United Nations

By António Guterres
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 12 2022 (IPS)

Nero was famously accused of fiddling while Rome burned. Today, some leaders are doing worse. They are throwing fuel on the fire. Literally.

As the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ripples across the globe, the response of some nations to the growing energy crisis has been to double down on fossil fuels – pouring billions more dollars into the coal, oil and gas that are driving our deepening climate emergency.

Meanwhile all climate indicators continue to break records, forecasting a future of ferocious storms, floods, droughts, wildfires and unlivable temperatures in vast swathes of the planet.

Our world faces climate chaos. New funding for fossil fuel exploration and production infrastructure is delusional. Fossil fuels are not the answer, nor will they ever be.

We can see the damage we are doing to the planet and our societies. It is in the news every day, and no one is immune.

Fossil fuels are the cause of the climate crisis. Renewable energy is the answer – to limit climate disruption and boost energy security. Had we invested earlier and massively in renewable energy, we would not find ourselves once again at the mercy of unstable fossil fuel markets.

Renewables are the peace plan of the 21st century. But the battle for a rapid and just energy transition is not being fought on a level field. Investors are still backing fossil fuels, and governments still hand out billions in subsidies for coal, oil and gas – some US $11 million every minute.

Secretary-General António Guterres

There is a word for favouring short-term relief over long-term well-being. Addiction. We are still addicted to fossil fuels. For the health of our societies and planet, we need to quit. Now.

The only true path to energy security, stable power prices, prosperity and a livable planet lies in abandoning polluting fossil fuels and accelerating the renewables-based energy transition.

To that end, I have called on G20 governments to dismantle coal infrastructure, with a full phase-out by 2030 for OECD countries and 2040 for all others.

I have urged financial actors to abandon fossil fuel finance and invest in renewable energy. And I have proposed a five-point plan to boost renewable energy round the world.

Five-point plan

First, we must make renewable energy technology a global public good, including removing intellectual property barriers to technology transfer.

Second, we must improve global access to supply chains for renewable energy technologies components and raw materials.

In 2020, the world installed 5 gigawatts of battery storage. We need 600 gigawatts of storage capacity by 2030. Clearly, we need a global coalition to get there.

Shipping bottlenecks and supply-chain constraints, as well as higher costs for lithium and other battery metals, are hurting deployment of such technologies and materials just as we need them most.

Third, we must cut the red tape that holds up solar and wind projects. We need fast-track approvals and more effort to modernize electricity grids. In the European Union, it takes eight years to approve a wind farm, and 10 years in the United States. In the Republic of Korea, onshore wind projects need 22 permits from eight different ministries.

Fourth, the world must shift energy subsidies from fossil fuels to protect vulnerable people from energy shocks and invest in a just transition to sustainable future.

And fifth, we need to triple investments in renewables. This includes multilateral development banks and development finance institutions, as well as commercial banks. All must step up and dramatically boost investments in renewables.

We need more urgency from all global leaders. We are already perilously close to hitting the 1.5°C limit that science tells us is the maximum level of warming to avoid the worst climate impacts.

To keep 1.5 alive, we must reduce emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by mid-century. But current national commitments will lead to an increase of almost 14 per cent this decade. That spells catastrophe.

The answer lies in renewables – for climate action, for energy security, and for providing clean electricity to the hundreds of millions of people who currently lack it. Renewables are a triple win.

There is no excuse for anyone to reject a renewables revolution. While oil and gas prices have reached record price levels, renewables are getting cheaper all the time.

The cost of solar energy and batteries has plummeted 85 per cent over the past decade. The cost of wind power fell by 55 per cent. And investment in renewables creates three times more jobs than fossil fuels.

Of course, renewables are not the only answer to the climate crisis. Nature-based solutions, such as reversing deforestation and land degradation, are essential. So too are efforts to promote energy efficiency. But a rapid renewable energy transition must be our ambition.

As we wean ourselves off fossil fuels, the benefits will be vast, and not just to the climate. Energy prices will be lower and more predictable, with positive knock-on effects for food and economic security.

When energy prices rise, so do the costs of food and all the goods we rely on. So, let us all agree that a rapid renewables revolution is necessary and stop fiddling while our future burns.

Antonio Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, is the Secretary-General of the United Nations

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The only true path to energy security, stable power prices, prosperity and a livable planet lies in abandoning polluting fossil fuels and accelerating the renewables-based energy transition.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 12 2022 (IPS)

Long a means for powerful nations to influence developing countries, development finance has gained renewed significance in the new Cold War. Unlike during the US-Soviet Cold War, the rivalry now is between mixed market capitalist systems.

Development aid rivalry
After reneging repeatedly on development aid and climate finance promises, the G7 big rich nations dutifully lined up behind US President Biden’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) at their 2022 Summit in Schloss Elmau, Germany.

Anis Chowdhury

With a $200bn US commitment, the G7 promised to mobilize $600bn in public and private funds for infrastructure investments in developing countries to compete with China’s multitrillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The White House denounces BRI, claiming the PGII offers “values driven, high-quality, and sustainable infrastructure”. Hence, G7 funding is more likely to have strings attached, e.g., taking sides in the new Cold War.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman emphasized, “China continues to welcome all initiatives to promote global infrastructure development”, but insisted China is “opposed to pushing forward geopolitical calculations under the pretext of infrastructure construction or smearing the Belt and Road Initiative”.

US national security priority
At the 2021 G7 Summit, Biden had unveiled a similar Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative, insisting it would define the G7 alternative to China’s BRI. Based on his domestic Build Back Better (BBB) programme, B3W was soon ‘dead in the water’ when the Senate rejected BBB.

The White House’s claim that with the B3W, the “United States is rallying the world’s democracies to deliver for our people, meet the world’s biggest challenges, and demonstrate our shared values” has also been dropped from PGII.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

With few B3W details forthcoming, the European Union (EU) launched its own Global Gateway for developing countries in December 2021, promising €300bn in infrastructure investments by 2027.

At the EU-African Union Summit in February 2022, the EU announced €150bn financing for the Africa-Europe Investment Package, half the Global Gateway budget.

EU leaders have touted their Global Gateway, suggesting G7 initiatives should be not only complementary, but also mutually reinforcing. But the EU’s African priority is not necessarily shared by other G7 members.

EU funding of €135bn will be from the European Fund for Sustainable Development. The UK Clean Green Initiative, from the 2021 Glasgow Climate Summit, and Japan’s $65bn for regional connectivity may also not be additional.

Acknowledging scepticism about how much is new money, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged G7 members to present their pledges consistently to allay doubts about double-counting and the low grants share viz loans.

When the PGII was announced to replace the B3W, it “created significant confusion”. Making clear its purpose, the White House unequivocally asserted PGII will “advance U.S. national security”.

Far-fetched, risky, conditional
The G7 also urges using public money to leverage private sector funds. But such initiatives have previously failed to mobilize significant private funding – hardly inspiring hope of meeting the trillion-dollar financing gap.

The Economist has found blended finance – mixing public, charitable and private money – “starry-eyed” and “struggling to take off”. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank warn public-private partnerships (PPPs) incur contingent fiscal risks.

Worse, PPPs distort national priorities, favour private investors and worsen debt crises. They have also not improved equity of access, reduced poverty or enhanced sustainability.

Developing country debt crises typically involve commercial loans or private sector money. For example, the 1980s’ Latin American debt crises were triggered by US Fed interest rate hikes to kill inflation.

Private sector loans usually involve higher interest rates and shorter repayment periods than loans from governments and multilateral development banks. Unsurprisingly, they lack equitable restructuring or refinancing mechanisms.

Ignoring yet another UN resolution, powerful nations disregard developing countries’ appeals for fair and orderly multilateral sovereign debt restructuring arrangements. Similarly, the West refuses to fix unfair trade, tax and other rules disadvantaging poorer countries.

Trust deficit
Over half a century ago, rich nations promised 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI) as development aid. But total overseas development assistance (ODA) from rich Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) members has barely exceeded half the promised amount.

Worse, the share has actually declined from 0.54% in 1961, with only five nations consistently meeting their 0.7% commitment in many years. Oxfam estimated 50 years of unkept promises meant a $5.7 trillion aid shortfall by 2020!

At the 2005 Gleneagles Summit, G7 leaders pledged to double their aid by 2010, earmarking $50bn yearly for Africa. But actual delivery has been woefully short, with no transparent reporting or accountability.

Most development aid is neither transparent nor predictable. After some earlier progress in untying, aid is increasingly being ‘tied’ again – requiring recipients to implement donor projects or to buy from donor country suppliers – compromising effectiveness.

The US ranked lowest among the G7, giving only 0.18% in 2021. To make things worse, US aid effectiveness is worst among the world’s 27 wealthiest nations. Clearly, besides aid volume shortfalls, quality is also at issue.

The Syrian refugee crisis and Covid-19 pandemic have provided some recent pretexts to cut aid. Some powerful countries have turned to ‘creative accounting’, e.g., counting refugee settlement and ‘peace-keeping’ military operations costs as ODA.

Unsurprisingly, the UN Deputy Secretary-General is “deeply troubled over recent decisions and proposals to markedly cut” ODA to service Ukraine war impacts on refugees.

Controversies over what climate finance is ‘new and additional’ to ODA have not been resolved since the 1992 adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Rio Earth Summit.

G7 countries also fell far short of rich countries’ 2009 pledge to annually give $100bn in climate finance until 2020 to help developing countries adapt to and mitigate global warming.

The OECD’s reported $79.6bn in climate finance in 2019 was the highest ever. But OECD estimates are much disputed – e.g., for double counting and including non-concessional commercial loans, ‘rolled-over’ loans and private finance.

Cooperation, not conflict
Although China is new to development finance, it is now among the world’s biggest development financiers. Following broken promises and duplicity, even betrayal, China’s significance has increased as OECD donor funding declined relatively.

China is now a bigger player in international development finance than the world’s six major multilateral financial institutions together. Many developing countries have few options but to engage with, if not rely on, China.

Undoubtedly, there are justifiable concerns over China’s development finance and practices. These have included adverse environmental impacts, poor transparency and a high share of commercial loans – even if at concessional rates.

In 2019, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde suggested the new BRI phase would “benefit from increased transparency, open procurement with competitive bidding, and better risk assessment in project selection”.

Lagarde approved of China’s new debt sustainability framework and green investment principles to evaluate BRI projects. She expected “BRI 2.0 … will be guided by a spirit of collaboration, transparency, and a commitment to sustainability that will serve all of its members well, both today and tomorrow”.

The new Cold War may well spur more healthy and peaceful rivalry, inadvertently improving development aid and prospects for developing countries.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By External Source
Jul 12 2022 (IPS-Partners)

 
The way nature is valued in political and economic decisions is both a key driver of the global biodiversity crisis and a vital opportunity to address it, according to a four-year methodological assessment by 82 top scientists and experts from every region of the world.

Approved on Saturday, by representatives of the 139 member States of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature finds that there is a dominant global focus on short-term profits and economic growth, often excluding the consideration of multiple values of nature in policy decisions.

Economic and political decisions have predominantly prioritised certain values of nature, particularly market-based instrumental values of nature, such as those associated with food produced intensively. Although often privileged in policymaking, these market values do not adequately reflect how changes in nature affect people’s quality of life. Furthermore, policymaking overlooks the many non-market values associated with nature’s contributions to people, such as climate regulation and cultural identity.

“With more than 50 valuation methods and approaches, there is no shortage of ways and tools to make visible the values of nature,” said Prof. Unai Pascual (Spain/Switzerland), who co-chaired the Assessment with Prof. Patricia Balvanera (Mexico), Prof. Mike Christie (UK) and Dr. Brigitte Baptiste (Colombia). “Only 2% of the more than 1,000 studies reviewed consult stakeholders on valuation findings and only 1% of the studies involved stakeholders in every step of the process of valuing nature. What is in short supply is the use of valuation methods to tackle power asymmetries among stakeholders, and to transparently embed the diverse values of nature into policymaking.”

Deeply cross-disciplinary and, based on a large review conducted by experts in social science, economics and the humanities, the Values Assessment draws on more than 13,000 references – including scientific papers and information sources from indigenous and local knowledge. It also builds directly on the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment, which identified the role of economic growth as a key driver of nature loss, with 1 million species of plants and animals now at risk of extinction.

To help policymakers better understand the very different ways in which people conceive and value nature, the Report provides a novel and comprehensive typology of nature’s values. The typology highlights how different worldviews and knowledge systems influence the ways people interact with and value nature.

In order to make this typology useful for decision-making, the authors present four general perspectives. These are: living from, with, in and as nature. Living from nature emphasizes nature’s capacity to provide resources for sustaining livelihoods, needs and wants of people, such as food and material goods. Living with nature has a focus on life ‘other than human’ such as the intrinsic right of fish in a river to thrive independently of human needs. Living in nature refers to the importance of nature as the setting for people’s sense of place and identity. Living as nature sees the natural world as a physical, mental and spiritual part of oneself.

The Report finds that the number of studies that value nature has increased on average by more than 10% per year over the last four decades. The most prominent focus of recent (2010-2020) valuation studies has been on improving the condition of nature (65% of valuation studies reviewed) and on improving people’s quality of life (31%), with just 4% focused on improving issues around social justice. 74% of valuation studies focused on instrumental values, with 20% focused on intrinsic values, and just 6% focused on relational values.

“The Values Assessment provides decision-makers with concrete tools and methods to better understand the values that individuals and communities hold about nature,” said Prof. Balvanera. “For example, it highlights five iterative steps to design valuation to fit the needs of different decision-making contexts. The report also provides guidelines on how to enhance the quality of valuation by taking into account relevance, robustness and resource requirements of different valuation methods.”

“Different types of values can be measured using different valuation methods and indicators. For example, a development project can yield economic benefits and jobs, for which instrumental values of nature can assessed, but it can also lead to loss of species, associated with intrinsic values of nature, and the destruction of heritage sites important for cultural identity, thus affecting relational values of nature. The report provides guidance for combining these very diverse values.”

“Valuation is an explicit and intentional process,” said Prof. Christie. “The type and quality of information that valuation studies can produce largely depends on how, why and by whom valuation is designed and applied. This influences whose and which values of nature would be recognized in decisions, and how fairly the benefits and burdens of these decisions would be distributed.”

“Recognizing and respecting the worldviews, values and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities allows policies to be more inclusive, which also translates into better outcomes for people and nature”, said Dr. Baptiste. “Also, recognizing the role of women in the stewardship of nature and overcoming power asymmetries frequently related to gender status, can advance the inclusion of the diversity of values in decisions about nature.”

The Report finds that there are a number of deeply held values that can be aligned with sustainability, emphasizing principles like unity, responsibility, stewardship and justice, both towards other people and towards nature. “Shifting decision-making towards the multiple values of nature is a really important part of the system-wide transformative change needed to address the current global biodiversity crisis,” said Dr. Balvanera. “This entails redefining ‘development’ and ‘good quality of life’ and recognising the multiple ways people relate to each other and to the natural world.”

The authors identify four values-centred ‘leverage points’ that can help create the conditions for the transformative change necessary for more sustainable and just futures:

• Recognizing the diverse values of nature
• Embedding valuation into decision-making
• Reforming policies and regulations to internalize nature’s values
• Shifting underlying societal norms and goals to align with global sustainability and justice objectives

“Our analysis shows that various pathways can contribute to achieve just and sustainable futures. The report pays specific attention to future pathways related to ‘green economy’, ‘degrowth’, ‘Earth stewardship’, and ‘nature protection’. Although each pathway is underpinned by different values, they share principles aligned with sustainability,” added Prof. Pascual. “Pathways arising from diverse worldviews and knowledge systems, for instance those associated with living well and other philosophies of good living, can also lead towards sustainability.”

Among the other tools offered by the Report to strengthen the consideration of greater diversity of values of nature in decision-making are: an exploration of entry points for valuation across all parts of the policy cycle; six interrelated values-centred guidelines to promote sustainability pathways; an evaluation of the potential of different environmental policy instruments to support transformative change towards more sustainable and just futures by representing diverse values, and a detailed illustration of the required capacities of decision makers to foster the consideration and embedding of the diverse values of nature into decisions.

“Biodiversity is being lost and nature’s contributions to people are being degraded faster now that at any other point in human history,” said Ana María Hernández Salgar, Chair of IPBES. “This is largely because our current approach to political and economic decisions does not sufficiently account for the diversity of nature’s values. The IPBES Values Assessment is being released at an extremely important time – just in advance of the expected agreement later this year by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity on a new global biodiversity framework for the next decade. The information, analysis and tools offered by the Values Assessment make an invaluable contribution to that process, to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and to shifting all decisions towards better values-centred outcomes for people and the rest of nature.”

By the Numbers – Key Statistics and Facts from the Report

• 10%: increase in the average annual number of valuation studies undertaken over the last four decades

• 65%: valuation applications reviewed (2010-2020) in which the most prominent focus has been on improving the status of nature, followed by improving people’s quality of life (31%), and improving social justice (4%)

• 74%: valuation applications among those reviewed in which ‘instrumental values’ (e.g., nature as an economic asset) were elicited (as opposed to relational and intrinsic values)

• 50%: valuation applications among those reviewed in which value indicators of biophysical measures predominate, followed by monetary and socio-cultural indicators

• 72%: reported valuations performed at the sub-national rather than national or global scales (with very few studies dealing with cross-regional or cross-national protected areas, or with explicit reference to indigenous peoples and local communities’ territories)

• 25%: ecological contexts of reviewed valuations with emphasis given to the value of nature’s contributions to people that come from forests vs. cultivated areas (16%) and inland water bodies (11%)

• +/-48,000: studies out of 79,000 (61%) that provided explicit geo-referenced information

• 56%: reviewed valuations that did not attempt to bring different values together, but instead used distinct biophysical, monetary and socio-cultural indicators

• +/-50%: valuation studies reviewed that bring different values together apply methods allowing values to be directly compared; the other half compare bundles of values, or use relative weights based on participants’ or valuation experts’ rankings or deliberation

• <1%: valuation studies reviewed that keep values separate (i.e., treat them in parallel in a deliberative process) • 44%: valuation studies reviewed in which some stakeholder involvement was reported • 1%: valuation studies reviewed that included stakeholder consultation and their involvement in every step of the valuation process • 2%: valuation studies reviewed that reported consultations with stakeholders on findings • 0.6%: valuation studies reviewed that explicitly account for power issues in the valuation process • 5%: valuation studies reviewed that considered equity when aggregating impacts on individuals and social groups with diverse socio-economic conditions in valuation • 53%: of 460 future scenarios reviewed explicitly articulate values, 42% mention values but do not assess them explicitly and 53% perform some kind of valuation without reflecting on underpinning values

Excerpt:

More than 50 Methods & Approaches Exist to Make Visible the Diverse Values of Nature

By Osamu Kusumoto
TOKYO, Jul 11 2022 (IPS)

Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving Prime Minister of Japan, has died. It was a murder caused by a personal grudge rather than political terrorism. And it was not a direct grudge against Mr. Abe. A religious group had supported Mr. Abe, and a murderer with a grudge against the religious group killed him. Murders targeting politicians are often related to political messages or claims. This is a very unique case in that the murder was committed out of a personal grudge, not against the individual for what he did, but against the organization that supported the individual.

Osamu Kusumoto

In Japan, guns are strictly regulated and crimes involving guns are extremely rare. The gun used was a homemade gun, not one that is sold on the market. Therefore, it was an extremely difficult case to prevent through institutional efforts such as gun control. In many ways, we believe that a fairly in-depth analysis of the current state of Japanese society is required to understand how this could have happened.

As for Prime Minister Abe’s political achievements, he has just passed away, and I believe that there are many aspects of his life that we can only wait for history to judge.

Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, former prime minister of Japan, understood that Japan’s prewar population growth caused poverty and that poverty and population pressure were major factors in World War II. Together with General Draper, the U.S. Undersecretary of Defense, and others, he worked to stabilize the world’s population problem and established the first bipartisan parliamentary group, the Japan Parliamentarians Federation for Population (JPFP), to address the issue of the population to achieve world peace.

Abe’s father, former Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe, was also involved in population politics, serving as the third president of the JPFP. Late Shinzo Abe himself attended a meeting of the International Parliamentarians Meeting on Population and Social Development in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1995, when he had just become a member of Parliament, held in conjunction with the World Summit on Social Development.

I was involved in that conference as the Japanese secretariat and worked with Mr. Abe for about a week. I was impressed by Mr. Abe’s cheerful personality and proactive thinking. Mr. Abe is well known for his loving wife, and I saw this in Copenhagen, which made me smile.

As I said at the beginning, we will have to wait for history to judge Mr. Abe’s political achievements. However, in my close contact with him and watching his actions, I felt that he had inherited the political philosophy of his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, from his father, Shintaro Abe.

Japan was defeated in World War II and had to realize the reconstruction of its devastated land. One of those who took charge of this was my grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. For the politicians in charge of politics, the various political decisions of the time can only be said to be the result of the best decisions made under the conditions given at that time. It is the job of historians to weigh the pros and cons of such decisions, but I believe that Mr. Abe witnessed and understood the background of the political decisions that his grandfather and father were forced to make as they ran the country.

Seventy-seven years after its defeat in World War II, Japan has not yet escaped the effects of the war, as evidenced by the application of the UN’s “enemy clause. As a result, from the perspective of international common sense, I think there is room for debate as to whether Japan is in an adequate situation as a nation-state in the international community.

During his tenure as prime minister, Mr. Abe has focused on diplomacy. He actively engaged in what is known as “globe-trotting diplomacy,” traveling around the world and maintaining close contact with world leaders. Although Abe’s political beliefs were often described as right-wing, he also repeatedly communicated closely with the leaders of the former communist bloc.

What is clear from these actions of Mr. Abe is that he wanted to make termination of Japan’s postwar period situation. I understand that this is not a matter of left-wing and right-wing, and conservatism or liberalism, but rather a desire to remove the fetters of defeat and create a normal country.

I feel that he had a passionate desire to create a Japan that is respected by the world, as stipulated in the Constitution.

He lost his life at a very young age as a politician. I believe that he was a rare politician who was able to pursue his political ideals, including the environment in which he was blessed to grow up. I sincerely regret his death and pray for his soul.

Osamu Kusumoto, Ph.D Lecturer, Nihon University
Founder, Global Advisors for Sustainable Development (GAfSD)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The launch of the IPBES Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature. The report argues that because nature is poorly valued, this is driving biodiversity loss. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
Bulawayo, Jul 11 2022 (IPS)

Nature has diverse values for different people, but it is poorly evaluated, and this is driving the global biodiversity crisis, top scientists say in a new report.

Cover of IPBES Summary for Policymakers of Values Assessment. Credit: IPBES

The Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature found that the way nature is valued in political and economic decisions is a key driver of the global biodiversity crisis and, simultaneously, a vital opportunity to address this loss. Nature is valued for its contribution to food, medicines, energy, and cultural significance, among other benefits. Representatives of the 139-member states of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) approved the report on Saturday, July 9, 2022.

IPBES is a global science-policy body tasked with providing scientific evidence to decision-makers for people and nature.

Widening the values of nature

Conducted over four years, the Values Assessment by 82 top scientists and experts highlights a dominant global focus on short-term profits and economic growth, and nature’s often multiple values are ignored in policy decisions. The Values Assessment sought to improve the value of nature, the quality of life, and justice.

“Biodiversity is being lost, and nature’s contributions to people are being degraded faster now than at any other point in human history,” said Ana María Hernández Salgar, Chair of IPBES. “This is largely because our current approach to political and economic decisions does not sufficiently account for the diversity of nature’s values.

The authors note that the release of the IPBES Values Assessment was strategic ahead of the expected agreement in December 2022 by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on a new global biodiversity framework for the next decade. The Values Assessment is also expected to contribute to achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the future post-2020 global biodiversity framework, towards just and sustainable futures.

“Effective policy decisions about nature must be informed by the wide range of values and valuation methods, which makes the IPBES Values Assessment a vital scientific resource for policy and action for nature and human well-being,” Salgar said.

The Values Assessment provides decision-makers with tools and methods to understand the values individuals and communities hold about nature. Credit: IPBES

The Values Assessment flagged unsustainable use of nature, including persistent inequalities between and within countries, as a key driver of the global decline of biodiversity. This resulted from predominant political and economic decisions based on a narrow set of values, such as prioritizing nature’s values as traded in markets and macroeconomic indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The specific values of nature include nature as instrumental, intrinsic, and relational. The valuation was applied to habitats, mainly forests, cultivated areas, inland water bodies, and coastal areas.

Embedding values of nature into policymaking

The report notes that nature’s values and valuation approaches can be leveraged in policymaking, which presents opportunities to tackle the global biodiversity crisis.

The authors identified four values-centered ‘leverage points’ that can help create the conditions for the transformative change necessary for more sustainable development. These include recognizing the diverse values of nature, embedding valuation into decision-making, reforming policies and regulations to internalize nature’s values, and shifting underlying societal norms and goals to align with global sustainability and justice objectives.

Baptiste said values are behind our daily decisions and business opportunities and that assessment is helping locate the relations between those values and actions that the different actors in society can develop.

The report said that economic and political decisions have predominantly prioritized certain values of nature, particularly market-based instrumental values of nature, such as those associated with intensive food production.

“With more than 50 valuation methods and approaches, there is no shortage of ways and tools to make visible the values of nature,” said Professor Unai Pascual, Assessment Co-chair. For instance, only two percent of the more than 1,000 studies reviewed consulted stakeholders on valuation findings, and only one percent involved stakeholders in every step of the process of valuing nature.

“What is in short supply is the use of valuation methods to tackle power asymmetries among stakeholders and to transparently embed the diverse values of nature into policymaking,” Pascual urged.

The Value Assessment, which drew on more than 13,000 references – including scientific papers and information sources from indigenous and local knowledge – builds on the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment, which identified economic growth as a key driver of nature loss. More than 1 million plants and animals are at risk of extinction.

The report finds that the number of studies that value nature has increased on average by more than 10 percent per year over the last four decades, with the recent valuation studies focusing largely on improving the condition of nature and on improving people’s quality of life.

Co-chair Patricia Balvanera said the Values Assessment provides decision-makers with tools and methods to understand the values individuals and communities hold about nature.

The quality of valuation can be enhanced by considering the relevance, robustness, and resource requirements of different valuation methods. For example, a development project can yield economic benefits and jobs, for which instrumental values of nature can be assessed. However, the same project can also lead to the loss of species associated with intrinsic values of nature, and the destruction of heritage sites important for cultural identity, thus affecting relational values of nature.

Raising the quality of valuing nature

Another Co-chair of the Value Assessment, Mike Christi, said the valuation of nature is intentional. As a result, the type and quality of information that valuation studies can produce largely depends on how, why, and by whom valuation is designed and applied.

“Recognizing and respecting the worldviews, values, and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities allows policies to be more inclusive, which also translates into better outcomes for people and nature,” said Brigitte Baptiste, Co-chair.

“Also, recognizing the role of women in the stewardship of nature and overcoming power asymmetries frequently related to gender status can advance the inclusion of the diversity of values in decisions about nature.”

The report finds that a number of deeply held values can be aligned with sustainability, emphasizing principles like unity, responsibility, stewardship, and justice, both towards other people and towards nature.

“Shifting decision-making towards the multiple values of nature is a really important part of the system-wide transformative change needed to address the current global biodiversity crisis,” said Balvanera. “This entails redefining ‘development’ and ‘good quality of life’ and recognizing the multiple ways people relate to each other and to the natural world.”

The analysis shows that various pathways can contribute to just and sustainable futures through a green economy, degrowth, earth stewardship, and nature protection.

Commending the IPBES Assessment Report on the Values and Valuation of Nature, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Convention on Biological Diversity, Executive Secretary, noted that implementing the goals and targets in the Global Biodiversity Framework, which will complement the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, underpins the knowledge in different types of values of nature as demonstrated by the Values Assessment.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director, UN Environment Programme (UNEP), described the Values Assessment report as crucial because valuing nature was central to the successful post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework currently under negotiation.

“Nature, in all its diversity, is the greatest asset that humanity could ever ask for,” said Andersen. “Yet, its true value is often left out of decision making. Nature’s life support system has become an externality that doesn’t even make it onto the ledger sheet.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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School Opens in Weapons Free Zone East of UNMISS”. Credit: UN Photo/Amanda Voisard

By John Wilmoth
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2022 (IPS)

What does a young girl from Juba, in South Sudan, an 8-year-old boy living in the slums of Mumbai, in India, a young mother from the south of Lima, in Peru, and an 83-year-old man enjoying retirement in the suburbs of Stockholm, in Sweden, have in common?

Many things, perhaps, but here is one of the most important: they are all members of the human population, whose size will surpass 8 billion people in mid-November 2022. They are part of a common humanity that aspires to live peacefully and in dignity, that desires access to quality education, adequate living conditions and decent work, and that hopes to enjoy a long, healthy and fulfilling life.

Even though all of them are part of the same humanity, the challenges and opportunities that they face in their daily lives are drastically different.

In 2015, Member States of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. At the core of this agenda are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which constitute an ambitious call-for-action to end poverty and hunger, protect the planet and improve the current lives and future prospects of all people everywhere.

Reducing social and economic inequalities is at the heart of the 2030 Agenda. Yet many inequalities persist and are deepening, both within and across countries and regions. Today, the probability of living a long, healthy and fulfilling life, and the challenges and opportunities that people encounter every day, differ vastly around the world.

In countries where deaths outnumber births, the population is increasing very little, if at all. In some cases, it has already started to decline or will do so soon. In some of these countries, immigration helps to counter the population loss due to an excess of deaths over births.

In other countries, emigration is exacerbating the loss of population linked to a low birth rate. As the proportion of the population above age 65 continues to grow, the shifting population places additional fiscal pressure on social security, public pension and health-care systems.

In low-income countries, where economic growth may struggle to keep up with population growth, alleviating poverty and countering high levels of inequality is a major challenge. Lack of access to resources deprives individuals of opportunities and choices.

Inadequate access to family planning services perpetuates high levels of childbearing, often starting early in life, and contributes to rapid population growth. Such growth generates ever-larger cohorts of children and young adults, whose experiences early in life will shape their prospects for success.

A sustained drop in the fertility level can stabilize the number of children and youth in a population, facilitating increased investments per child in health care and education. With such changes, along with measures to ensure access to decent work, a large and youthful population presents an opportunity for accelerated social and economic development—a phenomenon known as demographic dividend.

Today, less than 16 per cent of the global population lives in high-income countries, a percentage that is expected to fall to 13 per cent by 2050. By contrast, low-income and lower-middle-income countries are home to more than half of the world’s population (9 and 43 per cent, respectively).

The proportion of the global population living in these two groups of countries is projected to grow to more than 60 per cent by 2050. Indeed, the future growth of world population will take place mostly in low-income and lower-middle-income countries.

Figure 1. Distribution of the world’s population by income group, 2022, 2030 and 2050
Note: numbers may not add up due to rounding.

The higher rate of population growth in low-income and lower-middle-income countries is fueled by declining mortality, with fertility remaining at comparatively high levels. If the population of these countries continues to grow at the current rate, their combined size will double in about 26 years.

Today, in low-income countries, a woman gives birth to 4.5 children on average over a lifetime. This figure is projected to drop just below 3 births per woman in 2050. By comparison, women in high-income countries currently bear, on average, 1.6 children.

Between 1990 and 2022, improvements in health-care services in low-income countries tripled the survival prospects for children under the age of 5. Nevertheless, a baby born today in a low-income country can expect to live almost 18 years less than a baby born in a high-income country.

Despite a slight convergence that is anticipated over the coming decades, these vast differences are expected to remain largely intact.

Unequal outcomes for people across the globe call for renewed action and investment. Countries and the international community need to redouble their efforts to advance the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and to ensure that no one is left behind. Whether a girl in Juba or a boy in Mumbai will enjoy a long, healthy and fulfilling life depends on the world’s commitment to ensuring that all 8 billion inhabitants of the planet will have genuine opportunities to find success.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Director, Population Division of the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Credit: Freepik

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2022 (IPS)

India and China, two Asian nuclear powers who are also longstanding rivals embroiled in the geo-politics of the Indian Ocean region, have remained two of the world’s most populous nations accounting for over a billion people each.

But as the world’s population reaches the 8.0 billion mark, come November, India is projected to surpass China.

The current numbers stand at 1.44 billion people in China and 1.39 billion in India. But the numbers are expected to change as India races ahead of China. The US ranks third with over 335 million people. By the end of last yar, the world’s total population was approximately 7.9 billion.

According to a report in the New York Times July 9, China is going through a “demographic crisis”. With abortion and reproductive health heavily centered on the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP now wants women to have multiple children abandoning the country’s longstanding one-child policy.

“With China’s birth rate at a historical low, officials have been doling out tax and housing credits, educational benefits and even cash incentives to encourage women to have more children”.

“Yet the perks are available only to married couples, a pre-requisite that is increasingly unappealing to independent women, who in some cases prefer to parent alone.” the Times said.

Currently, about 61 per cent of the global population lives in Asia (4.7 billion), 17 per cent in Africa (1.3 billion), 10 per cent in Europe (750 million), 8 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean (650 million), and the remaining 5 per cent in Northern America (370 million) and Oceania (43 million).

According to World Population Prospects 2022, released July 11, the global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, having fallen under 1.0 per cent in 2020.

The latest projections by the United Nations suggest that the world’s population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050. It is projected to reach a peak of around 10.4 billion people during the 2080s and to remain at that level until 2100.

More than half of the projected increase in the global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania, said the report released by the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).

And countries of sub-Saharan Africa are expected to contribute more than half of the increase anticipated through 2050.

John Wilmoth, Director, Population Division of the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, told IPS between 2022 and 2050, the population of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to almost double, surpassing 2 billion inhabitants by the late 2040s.

“Today, fertility in sub-Saharan Africa is still high, with 4.6 births per woman on average. By 2050, the average fertility level in the region is projected to remain close to 3 births per woman”.

Coupled with decreasing mortality rates, he said, this comparatively high level of fertility will fuel continuing population increase.

Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to account for more than half of the growth of the world’s population between 2022 and 2050.

In 2022, the population of this region was growing at a rate of 2.5 per cent per year, the highest among major regions and more than three times the global average of 0.8 per cent per year, declared Wilmoth.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said this year’s World Population Day falls during a milestone year, when we anticipate the birth of the Earth’s eight billionth inhabitant.

“This is an occasion to celebrate our diversity, recognize our common humanity, and marvel at advancements in health that have extended lifespans and dramatically reduced maternal and child mortality rates,” he added.

“At the same time, it is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our commitments to one another,” he added.

According to the UN, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected all three components of population change.

Global life expectancy at birth fell to 71.0 years in 2021. In some countries, successive waves of the pandemic may have produced short-term reductions in numbers of pregnancies and births, while for many other countries, there is little evidence of an impact on fertility levels or trends.

The pandemic severely restricted all forms of human mobility, including international migration while it also affected all three components of population change.

Global life expectancy at birth fell to 71.0 years in 2021. In some countries, successive waves of the pandemic may have produced short-term reductions in numbers of pregnancies and births, while for many other countries, there is little evidence of an impact on fertility levels or trends.

Asked about the impact of the three-year-long pandemic, Joseph Chamie, a consulting demographer and former director of the United Nations Population Division, told IPS: “Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted population growth by increased mortality, reduced fertility in many countries, and lower levels of international migration.

Nevertheless, he pointed out, world population is continuing to grow at close to 1.0 percent annually. Even with the pandemic, world population grew by nearly 80 million per year, he said.

Asked about the impact of the recent US supreme court decision to declare abortion illegal in the US, Chamie said: the Supreme Court decision, striking down the 50-year constitutional right of a women to have an abortion, will have an impact on the births for many women in the United States.

As a result of the court’s decision, the US has become a patchwork of abortion laws with a myriad of enforcement regulations, further legal challenges, and the large majority Americans objecting to the decision.

Despite the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, the US fertility rate, which was 1.64 births per woman in 2020, is likely to remain below the replacement level for the foreseeable future, said Chamie, author of numerous publications on population issues, including his book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters

Chamie also said the growth of world population during the 20th and 21st centuries is absolutely historic and unprecedented.

In less than a century, world population quadrupled, increasing from 2 billion in 1927 to 8 billion in 2022, a growth not likely to occur in the future.

The second half of the 20th century had world population’s highest rate of annual growth of 2.1 percent in the late 1960s and the highest annual increase of 93 million in the late 1980s.

In comparison, today’s growth rate is slightly less than 1 percent and the annual increase is nearly 80 million, he noted.

World population is expected to increase by 25 percent, an additional 2,000,000,000 people, reaching 10 billion by around midcentury.

He also warned that the growth of world population is seriously challenging efforts to address climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and pollution.

Whenever climate change is discussed, written about, or mentioned, the demographic growth of nations can no longer be ignored or dismissed by governments.

The planet with 8 billion humans and continuing to grow must be seriously addressed in climate change negotiations.

The stabilization of human populations is essential for limiting the ever-increasing demographic created demands for energy, water, food, land, resources, housing, heating/cooling, transportation, material goods, etc. (See IPS article: “Climate Change and 8 Billion Humans”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The IPBES Sustainable Use of Wild Species report was launched in Bonn, Germany. The report offers insights, analysis and tools to establish more sustainable use of wild species of plants, animals, fungi and algae worldwide. Credit: IISD Diego Noguera

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Jul 8 2022 (IPS)

Fifty thousand wild species meet the needs of billions of people worldwide, providing food, cosmetics, shelter, clothing, medicine and inspiration. But now, a million species of plants and animals face extinction with far-reaching consequences, including endangering economies, food security and livelihoods.

Against a backdrop of an ongoing global biodiversity crisis, a new report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) on July 8, 2022, offers insights, analysis and tools to establish more sustainable use of wild species of plants, animals, fungi and algae around the world.

The cover of IPBES Summary for Policymakers of Sustainable Use of Wild Species Assessment. Credit: IPBES

The IPBES Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species builds directly on the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which alerted the world that a million species of plants and animals face extinction, many within decades.

Approved this week by representatives of the 139 member States of IPBES in Bonn, Germany, the report is a result of four years of work by 85 leading experts from every region of the world to help decision-makers address the unsustainable use of wild species.

On the key findings, Professor John Donaldson from South Africa, who co-chaired the Assessment with Dr Jean-Marc Fromentin from France and Dr Marla R Emery (USA/Norway), said “at least 50,000 wild species are used through different practices, including more than 10,000 wild species harvested directly for human food. An estimated 70% of the world’s poor depend directly on wild species.

“One in five people rely on wild plants, algae and fungi for their food and income; 2.4 billion rely on fuel wood for cooking; and about 90% of the 120 million people working in capture fisheries are supported by small-scale fishing.”

The report found that rural people in developing countries are most at risk from unsustainable use, with a lack of complementary alternatives often forcing them to further exploit wild species already at risk.

Overall, wild tree species account for two-thirds of global industrial roundwood. Trade in wild plants, algae and fungi is a billion-dollar industry. Even non-extractive uses of wild species are big business.

Pre-COVID, tourism based on observing wild species was one of the main reasons that protected areas globally received eight billion visitors and generated US$600 billion yearly.

Ana Maria Hernandez Salgar, IPBES Chair, said the report harnesses different knowledge systems to the dialogue on sustainable use of wild species.

“We cannot talk of the intrinsic relationship between people and nature if we do not incorporate sustainable use of wild species as one of the greatest challenges we face. We have to reduce the overexploitation of wild species and their unsustainability,” Salgar says.

In providing the evidence and science needed to ensure sustainability, Fromentin said the report identifies five broad categories of practices in using wild species: fishing, gathering, logging, terrestrial animal harvesting, including hunting and finally, non-extractive practices.

Alongside each practice, the authors then examined specific uses such as food and feed, materials, medicine, energy and recreation, providing a detailed analysis of each trend over the past 20 years.

The examination reveals that, by and large, the use of wild species has increased, but the sustainability of use varies. For instance, global estimates confirm that about 34 percent of marine wild fish stocks are overfished and that 66 percent are fished within biologically sustainable levels.

The survival of an estimated 12 percent of wild tree species is threatened by unsustainable logging. Several plant groups, notably cacti, cycads and orchids, are threatened by mostly unsustainable gathering. Unsustainable hunting is a threat to 1,341 wild mammal species.

Further, Emery said that sustainable use of wild species has and can have an even more significant contribution to the realisation of UN’s SDGs. She singled out 12 SDGs, including ending hunger, sustainable life on the planet, and sustainable life on earth, terrestrial areas and underwater.

Emery highlighted what is currently recognized as the potential role of wild species in meeting SDGs and how it pales in comparison to the substantial contribution that remains untapped.

“Among environmental drivers, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species in particular impact the abundance and distribution of wild species and this, in turn, impacts their sustainability, and in turn their ability to contribute to human well-being,” Emery says.

The report finds that global trade in wild species increases substantially without effective regulation across supply chains – from local to international. Global trade of wild species generally increases pressures on wild species, leading to unsustainable use and sometimes to wild population collapses – such as the shark fin trade.

Illegal trade in wild species represents the third-largest class of all illicit trade, with estimated annual values of up to US$199 billion. Timber and fish make up the largest volumes and value of illegal trade in wild species.

To address a global biodiversity crisis that is growing urgent with every passing day, Fromentin said the report fronts seven key elements with the potential to significantly promote sustainable use of wild species. These include policy options that are inclusive and participatory, that recognize and support multiple forms of knowledge and policy instruments and tools that ensure fair and equitable distribution of costs and benefits.

It further stressed the need for context-specific policies monitoring wild species and practices. These policy instruments should be aligned at international, national, regional, and local levels and maintain coherence and consistency with international obligations while considering customary rules and norms. Robust institutions, including customary institutions, should support them.

In conclusion, the report’s authors examine a range of possible future scenarios for the use of wild species. Confirming that climate change, increasing demand and technological advances, making many extractive practices more efficient, are likely to present significant challenges to sustainable use in the future.

To address identified challenges, the report proposes actions aligned to the five broad practices in the use of wild species. Take fishing, for instance, recommended actions include reducing illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, suppressing harmful financial subsidies and supporting small-scale fisheries.

The timing of the report is crucial as world leaders move closer to agreeing on a new global biodiversity framework at the UN Biodiversity Conference in December 2022, fronted as the road to a bold new agreement for nature.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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• IPBES Shoring up Private Sector Support for Biodiversity Science
• Addressing the Global Biodiversity Crisis Requires Understanding and Prioritizing the Many Values of Nature

"When nearly a third of all women in developing countries are becoming mothers during adolescence, it is clear the world is failing adolescent girls,” said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem. Credit: Michael Duff/UNFPA

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jul 8 2022 (IPS)

While women and girls have been so far enjoying some of their due rights in Western high-income countries, the overwhelming majority of teenagers and adult women in the impoverished regions of the current world’s population of 8 billions continue to suffer all kinds of inequalities.

Such a harsh reality does not only impact their basic human rights, like equal treatment, same rights as men in decision-making, working conditions, payment, property, healthcare, staggering poverty and a very long etcetera, but also the pressing need to guarantee their right to protection against all sorts of gender violence, abuse, rape, and the consequences of unwanted, unintended pregnancies in particular among teenagers and child girls.

Almost one third of women in developing countries had their first baby while they were still in their teens, the report shows, with nearly half of those new mothers aged 17 and younger – still children themselves

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) released ahead of the 2022 World Population Day on 11 July, an extensive report titled the Gender and income inequalities driving teenage motherhood in developing countries.

Almost one third of women in developing countries had their first baby while they were still in their teens, the report shows, with nearly half of those new mothers aged 17 and younger – still children themselves.

 

Inequalities, entrenched

Gender-based and income inequalities, adds the report, are highlighted as key in fuelling teen pregnancies by increasing child marriage rates, keeping girls out of school, restricting their career aspirations, and limiting health care and information on safe, consensual sex.

Entrenching these inequalities are climate disasters, COVID-19 and conflict, which are all upending lives around the world, obliterating livelihoods and making it more difficult for girls to afford or even physically reach school and health services.

This leaves tens of millions yet more vulnerable to child marriage and early pregnancy, adds UNFPA.

“When nearly a third of all women in developing countries are becoming mothers during adolescence, it is clear the world is failing adolescent girls,” said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem.

“The repeat pregnancies we see among adolescent mothers are a glaring signpost that they desperately need sexual and reproductive health information and services.”

 

Adolescent motherhood

Most births among girls under the age of 18 in 54 developing countries are reported as taking place within a marriage or union. Although more than half of those pregnancies were classified as “intended”, young girls’ ability to decide whether to have children can be severely constrained.

Indeed, the report finds that adolescent pregnancy is often – albeit not always – driven by a lack of meaningful choice, limited agency, and even force or coercion. See, for example: Daughters of a Lesser God: 800 Million Girls Forced to Be Mothers.

Even in contexts where adolescent motherhood is considered acceptable and planned for, it can carry “serious and long-term repercussions, especially when health-care systems fail to ensure accessible sexual and reproductive care and information for this vulnerable age group.”

 

Complications, deaths

Complications in pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death among girls aged 15 to 19 years, who are also far more likely to suffer a litany of other violations of their human rights, from forced marriage and intimate partner violence to serious mental health impacts of bearing children before they are out of childhood themselves.

Girls who give birth in adolescence also often go on to have more than one baby in quick succession – which can be dangerous both physically and psychologically.

“Among those who first gave birth at age 14 or younger, nearly three quarters had a second baby before they turned 20, and a staggering 40% of those had a third before they left their teens.

 

Why is child motherhood so high?

Adolescent births now account for 16% of all births in the world, and the report shows women who began childbearing in adolescence had almost five births by the time they reached age 40, warns the report.

“With inequalities and humanitarian crises multiplying and intensifying, we know women and girls are bearing an unequal burden of the consequent physical, psychological and economic turmoil.”

 

Furthermore…

Also according to the report, in conflict as in climate disasters, schools and health facilities are frequently reduced to rubble and devoid of staff and equipment.

Insecurity and violence render it impossible for people to move around even for basic necessities, including contraception and other critical sexual and reproductive health care.

“Crises and displacement are also known to lead to spikes in gender-based and sexual violence, in turn causing more sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancies from rape, and rising rates of forced and child marriages as parents struggle to cope with financial hardship and aching hunger.”

Under these circumstances, access to employment, education and health services is disrupted or suspended entirely, pushing girls out of school, women out of the workforce and leading child marriages and unintended pregnancies to soar.

 

Seeing the Unseen

UNFPA’s State of World Population Report 2022: Seeing the Unseen highlights the alarming figure that almost half of all pregnancies in the world are unintended and explores the health, human right, humanitarian and socio-economic linkages of unintended pregnancies.

This is including the issue of gender-based violence, the increased barrier women face in accessing reproductive health services in conflict settings and the risks related to unsafe abortions.

In its report on World Population Day: “A world of 8 billion: Towards a resilient future for all – Harnessing opportunities and ensuring rights and choices for all,” for the first time in history, we are seeing extreme diversity in the mean age of countries and the fertility rates of populations.”

While the populations of a growing number of countries are ageing and about 60% of the world’s population live in countries with below-replacement fertility of 2.1 children per woman, other countries have huge youth populations and keep growing pace.

But focus should be on people, not population, highlights the United Nations Population Fund. Reducing people to numbers strips them of their humanity. Instead of making the numbers work for systems, make the systems work for the numbers by promoting the health and well-being of people.

 

The untold story

Back to the key issue of women and teenagers, UNFPA’s report: Motherhood in Childhood: The Untold Story, features the trends and provides a wide picture of such a shocking problem.

‘World is failing adolescent girls’ warns UNFPA chief, as report shows third of women in developing countries give birth in teen years.

Is this the world that human beings want?

 

Mexican workers harvest produce on a farm in the western U.S. state of California. The number of temporary agricultural workers from Mexico has increased in recent years in the United States and with it, human rights violations. CREDIT: Courtesy of Linnaea Mallette

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jul 8 2022 (IPS)

Eduardo Reyes, originally from Puebla in central Mexico, was offered a 40-hour workweek contract by his recruiter and his employer in the United States, but ended up performing hundreds of hours of unpaid work that was not authorized because his visa had expired, unbeknownst to him.

Hired by recruiter Vazquez Citrus & Hauling (VCH), Reyes and five other temporary workers reached the United States between May and September 2017, months before starting work for Four Star Greenhouse in the Midwest state of Michigan.

In 2018, they worked more than 60 hours per week, received bad checks, and never obtained a copy of their contract, even though U.S. laws require that they be given one.

When they complained to Four Star and to their recruiter about the exploitative conditions, the latter turned them over to immigration authorities for deportation in July of that year because their visas had expired, which they had not been informed of by their agent.

In December 2017, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) authorized the arrival of 145 workers to the Four Star facilities in Carleton, Michigan. They were to earn 12.75 dollars per hour for 36 hours a week between January and July 2018.

Reyes’ case is set forth in complaint 2:20-CV-11692, seen by IPS, filed in the Southern Division of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan by six Mexican workers against the company and its manager, whom they accuse of wage gouging, forced labor and workplace reprisals.

This story of exploitation has an aggravating factor that shows the shortcomings of the U.S. government’s H-2A temporary agricultural workers program, or H-2A visa program.

The United States created H-2 visas for unskilled temporary foreign workers in 1943 and in the 1980s established H-2A categories for rural workers and 2B for other labor, such as landscaping, construction, and hotel staff.

These visas allow Mexicans, mainly from rural areas, to migrate seasonally to the U.S. to work legally on farms included on a list, with the intermediation of recruiting companies.

In 2016, the US Department of Transportation fined VCH, based in the state of Florida, for 22,000 dollars for a bus accident in which six H-2A workers were killed while returning from Monroe, Michigan to Mexico.

Two years later, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division banned VCH and its owner for three years due to program violations in the state of North Carolina, such as failure to reimburse travel expenses and payroll and workday records. However, both continued to operate in the sector.

The workers’ odyssey begins in Mexico, where they are recruited by individual contractors -workers or former workers of a U.S. employer, colleagues, relatives or friends in their home communities – or by private U.S. agencies.

Structural problem

Reyes’ case illustrates the problems of labor exploitation, forced labor and the risk of human trafficking to which participants in the H-2A program are exposed, without intervention by Mexican or U.S. authorities to prevent human rights violations.

Advocates for the rights of the seasonal workers and experts pointed to worsening working conditions, warned of the threat of human trafficking and forced labor, and complained about the prevailing impunity.

According to Lilián López, representative in Mexico of the U.S.-based Polaris Project, the design and operation of the program result in a high risk of human trafficking and forced labor, due to factors such as the lack of supervision and interference by recruiters.

“Economic vulnerability puts migrants at risk, because many workers go into debt to get to the United States, and that gives the agencies a lot of power. They can set any kind of requirement for people to get the jobs. Sometimes recruiters make offers that look more attractive than they really are. That is fraud,” she told IPS in Mexico City.

The number of calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline operated by Polaris in the US reflects the apparent increase in abuses. Between 2015 and 2017, 800 people on temporary visas, 500 of which were H-2A, called the hotline, compared to 2,890 people between 2018 and 2020 – a 360 percent increase.

Evy Peña, spokesperson for Mexico’s Migrant Rights Center, said temporary labor systems are designed to benefit employers, who have all the control, along with the recruiters.

“From the moment the workers are recruited, there is no transparency. There is a lack of oversight by the DOL, there are parts of recruitment that should be overseen by the Mexican government. There are things that the Mexican government should work out at home,” she told IPS from the northern city of Monterrey.

She said the situation has worsened because of the pandemic.

The United States and Mexico have idealized the H-2A program because it solves the lack of employment in rural areas, foments remittances that provide financial oxygen to those areas, and meets a vital demand in food-producing centers that supply U.S. households.

But the humanitarian costs are high, as the cases reviewed attest. Mexico’s Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare has 369 labor placement agencies registered in 29 of Mexico’s 33 states. For overseas labor recruitment, seven operate – including four in Mexico City -, a small number compared to the thousands of visas issued in 2021.

For its part, the DOL reports 241 licensed recruiters in the US working for a handful of companies in that country.

The ones authorized in Mexico do not appear on the US list and vice versa, in another example of the scarce exchange of information between the two partners.

The number of H-2A visas for Mexican workers is on the rise, with the U.S. government authorizing 201,123 in 2020, a high number driven by the pandemic. That number grew 22 percent in 2021, to a total of 246,738.

In the first four months of the year, U.S. consulates in Mexico issued 121,516 such visas, 18 percent more than in the same period of 2021, when they granted 102,952.

In 2021, the states with the highest demand for Mexican labor were Florida, Georgia, California, Washington and North Carolina, in activities such as agriculture, the operation of farm equipment and construction.

The United States and Mexico agreed to issue another 150,000 visas for temporary workers in an attempt to mitigate forced migration from the south, which will also include Central American seasonal workers.

Details of the expansion of the program will be announced by Presidents Joe Biden and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at a meeting to be held on Jul. 12 at the White House, with migration as one of the main topics on the agenda.

Mexican farm workers wait to be tested for COVID-19 in 2020 in Immolakee, a town in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida. The pandemic hit H-2A visa holders, who are mainly engaged in temporary agricultural work, hard. CREDIT: Doctors Without Borders

Indifference

Lidia Muñoz, a doctoral student at the University of Oregon in the United States who has studied labor recruitment, stresses that there are no policies on the subject in Mexico, even though the government is aware of the problem.

“There are regulations for recruitment agencies that are not followed to the letter,” she told IPS from Portland, the largest city in the northwestern state of Oregon. “Most recruiters are not registered. The intermediaries are the ones who earn the most. There is no proper oversight.”

Article 28 of Mexico’s Federal Labor Law of 1970 regulates the provision of services by workers hired within Mexico for work abroad, but in practice it is not enforced.

This regulation requires the registration of contracts with the labor authorities and the posting of a bond to guarantee compliance, and makes the foreign contractor responsible for transportation to and from the country, food and immigration expenses, as well as full payment of wages, compensation for occupational hazards and access to adequate housing.

In addition, Mexican workers must be entitled to social security for foreigners in the country where they offer their services.

While the Mexican government could resort to this article to protect the rights of migrants, it has refused to apply it.

Between 2009 and 2019, the Ministry of Labor conducted 91 inspections of labor placement agencies in nine states and imposed 12 fines for about 153,000 dollars, but did not fine any recruiters of seasonal workers. Furthermore, the records of the Federal Court of Conciliation and Arbitration do not contain labor lawsuits for breach of that regulation.

Mexico is a party to the International Labor Organization (ILO) Fee-Charging Employment Agencies Convention, which it apparently violates in the case of temporary workers.

In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) does not know how many H-2A workers it has assisted through consular services. Likewise, it does not know how many complainants it has advised.

The Mexican consulate in Denver, Colorado received three labor complaints, dated Jul. 25, Aug. 12 and Oct. 28, 2021, which it referred to “specialized allies in the matter, who provided the relevant advice to the interested parties,” according to an SRE response to a request for information from IPS.

The consulate in Washington received “anonymous verbal reports” on labor issues, which it passed on to civil society organizations so that “the relevant support could be provided.”

Consular teams were active in some parts of the US in 2021. For example, Mexican officials visited eight corporations between May and September 2021 in Denver, Colorado.

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania they visited 12 companies between April and August, 2021. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin they visited 26 companies between June 2021 and April of this year, and in Washington, DC six workplaces were visited between August and October 2021. However, the results of these visits are unknown.

Mexico, meanwhile, is in non-compliance with the ILO’s “General principles and operational guidelines for fair recruitment” of 2016.

These guidelines stipulate that hiring must be done in accordance with human rights, through voluntary agreements, free from deception or coercion, and with specific, verifiable and understandable conditions of employment, with no attached charges or job immobility.

Ariel Ruiz, an analyst with the U.S.-based Migration Policy Institute, is concerned about the expansion of the H-2A visa program without improvements in rights.

“There are labour rights violations before the workers arrive in the US, in recruitment there are often illegal payments, and we keep hearing reports of employers intimidating workers,” he told IPS from Washington.

“There are also problems in access to health services and legal representation” in case of abuse, added the analyst from the non-governmental institute.

Judicialization

In the last decade, at least 12 lawsuits have been filed in US courts by program workers against employers.

Muñoz, the expert from Oregon, said the trials can help reform the system.

“There have been cases that have resulted in visas for trafficking victims. But it is difficult to see changes in the United States. They may be possible in oversight. Legal changes have arisen because of wage theft from workers,” she said.

López, of Polaris, said the lawsuits were a good thing, but clarified that they did not solve the systemic problems. “What is needed is a root-and-branch reform of the system,” she said.

The United States has made trade union freedom in Mexico a priority. Peña asked that it also address the H-2A visa situation.

“If they’re serious about improving labor rights, they can’t ignore the responsibility they have for migrant workers. It’s like creating a double standard,” she said.

With regard to the expansion of the temporary visa program to Central Americans, the experts consulted expressed concern that it would lead to an increase in abuses.

This article was produced with support from the organizations Dignificando el Trabajo and the Avina Foundation’s Arropa Initiative in Mexico.

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By Stefan Shweinfest
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 8 2022 (IPS)

This week marks the mid-way point to the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development and with it the release of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022.

While we would like to trumpet success stories and report that we are on track in eradicating poverty and hunger and improving health and education in this report, the reality is, we cannot.

Instead, the data show that cascading and intersecting global crises are creating spin-off impacts on food and nutrition, health, education, the environment, and peace and security, presenting existential threats to the planet, and have already undone some of the initial accomplishments towards the SDGs.

In fact, the results of the report reflect a deepening and impending climate catastrophe; a war that is sparking one of the largest refugee crises of modern time; shows the impacts of the pandemic through increased child labour, child marriage, and violence against women; as well as food supply disruptions that threaten global food security; and a health pandemic that has interrupted the education of millions of students.

The report sounds an alarm that people and the planet are in serious challenges, rather than reading as the successful story of progress that we would have hoped for when launching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.

The COVID-19 pandemic has halted or reversed years of development progress. As of end of 2021, nearly 15 million people worldwide had died directly or indirectly due to COVID-19. More than four years of progress in alleviating extreme poverty have been wiped out, and 150 million more people facing hunger in 2021 than in 2019.

An estimated 147 million children missed more than half of their in-person instruction over the past two years. The pandemic severely disrupted essential health services. Immunization coverage dropped for the first time in a decade and deaths from tuberculosis and malaria increased.

Stefan Schweinfest

As grim as the scenario sounds, we shall set a course for achieving the implementation of the 2030 Agenda through recovery and response: enact new ways of thinking and open up new possibilities.

During COVID-19, responses sped up the adoption of digital technologies and innovative approaches. There are some examples of positive trends coming out of the report: There has been a surge in the number of internet users due to the pandemic, increasing by 782 million people to reach 4.9 billion people in 2021, up from 4.1 billion in 2019.

Global manufacturing production grew by 7.2 per cent in 2021, surpassing its pre-pandemic level. Higher-technology manufacturing industries fared better than lower-tech industries during the pandemic, and therefore recovered faster.

In addition, before the pandemic, progress was being made in many important SDGs, such as reducing poverty, improving maternal and child health, increasing access to electricity, improving access to water and sanitation, and advancing gender equality.

War in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine is creating one of the largest refugee crises we have seen in modern time, which pushed the already record-high global refugee number even higher. As of May 2022, over 100 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced from their homes.

The crisis has caused food, fuel and fertilizer prices to skyrocket, further disrupted supply chains and global trade, roiled financial markets, and threatened global food security and aid flows.

Projected global economic growth for 2022 was cut by 0.9 percentage point, due to the war in Ukraine and potential new waves of the pandemic.

The world’s most vulnerable countries and population groups are disproportionately impacted by the multiple and interlinked crises. Developing countries are battling record inflation, rising interest rates and looming debt burdens.

With competing priorities and limited fiscal space, many are finding it harder than ever to recover economically. In least developed countries, economic growth remains sluggish and the unemployment rate is worsening.

Women have suffered a greater share of job losses combined with increased care work at home. Exiting evidence suggests that violence against women has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Anxiety and depression among adolescents and young people have increased significantly.

Climate Emergency

Low-carbon, resilient and inclusive development pathways will reduce carbon emissions, conserve natural resources, transform our food systems, create better jobs and advance the transition to a greener, more inclusive and just economy.

The world is on the verge of a climate catastrophe where billions of people are already feeling the consequences. Energy-related CO2 emissions for 2021 rose by 6 per cent, reaching their highest level ever and completely wiping out pandemic-related declines.

To avoid the worst effects of climate change, as set out in the Paris Agreement, global greenhouse gas emissions will need to peak before 2025 and then decline by 43 per cent by 2030 from 2010 level, falling to net zero by 2050.

Instead, under current voluntary national commitments to climate action, greenhouse gas emissions will rise by nearly 14 per cent by 2030.

A Road Map out of Crises

The road map laid out in establishing the Sustainable Development Goals has always been clear. Just as the impact of crises is compounded when they are linked, so are the solutions.

In taking action to strengthen social protection systems, improve public services and invest in clean energy, we address the root causes of increasing inequality, environmental degradation and climate change.

We have a valuable tool in the release of The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022 to understand our current state of affairs. What’s more, in order to understand where we are and where we are headed, significant investment in our data and information infrastructure is required.

Policies, programmes and resources aimed at protecting people during this most challenging time will inevitably fall short without the evidence needed to focus interventions.

Timely, high-quality and disaggregated data can help trigger more targeted responses, anticipate future needs, and hone the design of urgently needed actions. To emerge stronger from the crisis and prepare for unknown challenges ahead, funding statistical development must be a priority for national governments and the international community.

As the SDG Report 2022 underscores the severity and magnitude of the challenges before us, this requires accelerated global-scale action that is committed to and follows the SDG roadmap.

We know the solutions and we have the roadmap to guide us in weathering the storm and coming out stronger and better together.

Stefan Schweinfest is Director of the Statistics Division in the United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA). Under his leadership, the Division compiles and disseminates global statistical information, develops standards and norms for statistical activities including the integration of geospatial, statistical and other information, and supports countries’ efforts to strengthen their national statistical and geospatial systems.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Since the middle of the 20th century, the world has experienced unprecedented population growth. The world’s population more than tripled in size between 1950 and 2020.. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jul 7 2022 (IPS)

Far-right Brazilian president, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, was quoted a year ago or so as saying to a small group of indogenous people that they “now look a bit more like humans.”

Tragically, a vast majority of this year’s record world population of 8 millions is harshly neglected and seen as just disturbing numbers, if ever treated as such humans.

The world’s population has been growing too fast and, with it, the wave of staggering inequalities, human rights abuses and shockingly growing violence.

During the period from 2000 to 2020, even though the global population grew at an average annual rate of 1.2%, 48 countries or areas grew at least twice as fast: these included 33 countries or areas in Africa and 12 in Asia

The facts about such a high speed population growth speak for themselves: for instance, it took hundreds of thousands of years for the world population to grow to 1 billion – then in just another 200 years or so, it grew sevenfold.

According to 2022 World Population Day (July 11), in 2011, the global population reached the 7 billion mark, it stood at almost 7.9 billion in 2021, and it’s expected to grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 10.9 billion in 2100.

In short: the world’s population more than tripled in size in barely half a century, between 1950 and 2020.

This dramatic growth has been driven largely by increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age, and has been accompanied by major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanisation and accelerating migration, explains the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).

These trends will have far-reaching implications for generations to come.

A good number of demographers may marvel at the advancements in health that have extended lifespans, reduced maternal mortality and child mortality and given rise to vaccine development in record time.

Others will tout technological innovations that have eased our lives and connected us more than ever. Still others will herald gains in gender equality, says the UN.

 

Inequality, discrimination, harassment, violence…

“But progress is not universal, throwing inequality into razor-sharp relief.”

The same concerns and challenges raised 11 years ago remain or have worsened: climate change, violence, discrimination, warns the World Population Day.

“The world reached a particularly grim milestone in May: More than 100 million forcibly displaced worldwide.”

In an ideal world, 8 billion people means 8 billion opportunities for healthier societies empowered by rights and choices.

But the playing field is not and has never been even. Based on gender, ethnicity, class, religion, sexual orientation, disability and origin, among other factors, too many are still exposed to discrimination, harassment and violence, warns the United Nations.

 

The wider picture

In fact, world’s politicians and media, in particular those of the heavily industrialised countries, have long been ignoring the other side of the coin. See for example:

• The richest 1% pollutes more than the poorest 50%. In fact, the Group of 20 major economies (G20) accounts for 78% of global greenhouse gas emissions.In contrast, in the specific case of Africa –54 countries home to 1.4 billion humans– causes a negligible 2% to 3% of all global greenhouse emissions, however it falls victim to more than 80% of the world’s climate catastrophes;
• Five more planets earth urgently needed if the current depletion of natural resources continues as expected;
• The risk of turning Planet Earth into a giant desert
• At the same time, alongside the causes of climate emergency, such a voracious profit-making business has been also leading to a fast growing land degradation and desertification.

Who is behind the destruction of biodiversity? Obviously, those who have been making voracious profits by exploiting the essential infrastructure of all kinds of life on Earth, through their industrial intensive agriculture, the collection of genetic resources of flora and fauna to register them as their own “property”, the production of genetically modified food, and the over-use of chemicals.

They are also the big timber business destroying forests, inducing the waste of huge amounts of agriculture and livestock products to keep their prices the most profitable possible, and a long, very long etcetera.

Meanwhile, Big business depletes Nature and supplants it with synthetic food. In fact, the fast increasing impact of such depletion, alongside conflicts and climate crises, have pushed millions of humans to flee their homes and migrate.

But in addition to dying in their migration journeys, they also fall easy prey to human trafficking and smuggling. See for example: Slave Markets Open 24/7: Refugee Babies, Boys, Girls, Women, Men…

Simultaneously,nuclear-armed powers continue to squander $156.000 per minute on their MAD Policy

One consequence is that right now there are new world records: more weapons than ever. And a hunger crisis like no other

 

Fertility rates, life expectancy, urbanisation…

Now back to the issue of population growth. The recent past has seen enormous changes in fertility rates and life expectancy. In the early 1970s, women had on average 4.5 children each; by 2015, total fertility for the world had fallen to below 2.5 children per woman.

Meanwhile, average global life spans have risen, from 64.6 years in the early 1990s to 72.6 years in 2019, according to this year’s World Population Day.

In addition, the world is seeing high levels of urbanisation and accelerating migration. 2007 was the first year in which more people lived in urban areas than in rural areas, and by 2050 about 66% of the world population will be living in cities.”

These megatrends have far-reaching implications. They affect economic development, employment, income distribution, poverty and social protections. They also affect efforts to ensure universal access to health care, education, housing, sanitation, water, food and energy.

 

More facts and figures

On the occasion of World Population Day, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) reported the following:

• Since the middle of the 20th century, the world has experienced unprecedented population growth. The world’s population more than tripled in size between 1950 and 2020.
• The growth rate of the world’s population reached a peak between 1965 and 1970, when human numbers were increasing by an average of 2.1% per year.
• During the period from 2000 to 2020, even though the global population grew at an average annual rate of 1.2%, 48 countries or areas grew at least twice as fast: these included 33 countries or areas in Africa and 12 in Asia.
• The life span of adults in the developed world has increased since the middle of the 20th century – the number of people reaching the age of 100 years has never been greater than it is today.

Now that you have the two sides of today’s world before your eyes, please always consider the “human” face of the numbers.