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By External Source
GENEVA / NEW YORK, Oct 5 2021 (IPS-Partners)

On this World Teachers’ Day, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, announced it has reached more than 4.6 million children and adolescents (48% of whom are girls) with quality education in more than 30 of the worst humanitarian crises around the world.

The Fund’s new Annual Results Report ‘Winning the Human Race,’ stresses the importance of investing in the teaching force to support and promote quality learning outcomes for crisis-affected girls and boys. To date, ECW has recruited or financially supported close to 150,000 teachers (including over 41,000 women) and provided over 2.6 million children and adolescents with individual learning materials in emergency contexts and protracted crises.

ECW’s COVID-19 education in emergency response also helped an additional 29.2 million vulnerable girls and boys and 310,000 teachers living in crises and emergency settings. This included support to distance-learning solutions and various integrated messages and products to ensure continuing education and protect the health and wellbeing of children, teachers and their communities through the pandemic.

Despite these achievements, ECW’s report underlines that COVID-19 acted as a risk-multiplier, not only creating new challenges but also amplifying existing risks for the most vulnerable groups, particularly girls and children and adolescents with disabilities.

“For millions of marginalized children and adolescents already caught in armed conflicts, forced displacement, climate change-induced disasters and protracted crises, COVID-19 hit as a ‘crisis within an already ongoing crisis’,” said UN Special Envoy for Global Education, The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown. “An entire generation in emergencies and protracted crisis faces irreversible loss. Among them, an estimated 20 million displaced girls, particularly adolescent girls, are at risk. The Annual Results Report 2020 is a living testimony of how we can resist the threats and stand greater chances of winning the human race. World leaders must step up and ensure adequate financing for education dedicated to all girls, children and adolescents support by our collective mission.”

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the importance of education to the fore. Today more than ever, education is the key to unlocking opportunity for the next generation: it kick-starts economic recovery, innovation, and climate action, and provides a safety net and lifeline for children and adolescents living in crisis-affected areas.

At the same time, the pandemic also negatively affected both overseas development assistance (ODA) and humanitarian funding for education. Some donor countries have already started shifting their budgets away from aid to domestic priorities. Meanwhile funding requirements for education in humanitarian appeals have significantly increased – from $1 billion in 2019 to $1.4 billion in 2020 – further widening the funding gap for the sector.

“COVID-19 has compounded the effects of armed conflict, instability, climate-related disasters and forced displacement from Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, to the Sahel, Ethiopia and Venezuela – to name but a few of the crises where ECW is working with partners to fulfill the right of every girl and boy to a safe, quality education,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait. “We can win the human race provided that we are ready to invest in it and ensure that these children and adolescents access an inclusive 12 years of quality education. This is an investment in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, an investment in peace, an investment in our future, and an investment in our universal human rights and our shared humanity.”

Key Trends

While nearly all children worldwide have been affected by school closures due to COVID-19, those living in the poorest countries have been disproportionately so, according to the report. Since March 2020, schools in crisis-affected countries – where ECW prioritizes its investments to ensure that no child is left behind – have closed for an average of 32 days more than in other countries. Students in South Sudan, for example, lost 16% of their schooling over a lifetime, compared to 3% for students in countries of Europe and Central Asia.

The ECW report shows that this learning loss will only aggravate the pre-pandemic rate of learning inequalities, particularly affecting the 53% of children in low- and middle-income countries who, by the age of 10, cannot read or understand a simple text.

Aside from the COVID-19 pandemic, the report also underscores multiplying risks for crisis-impacted children and adolescents.

The global climate crisis is having a significant impact on the well-being and educational opportunities of children and adolescents, with weather-related hazards such as storms and floods, displacing over 30 million people in 2020. With scientific consensus that extreme weather events will increase in severity and frequency, even more children will be put at risk.

In times of disaster, children usually account for almost half of those affected. Globally, more than a half-billion children live in areas with an extremely high flood rate and 160 million live in high or extremely high drought severity zones.

Forced displacement of people, including children, due to conflicts increased significantly in 2020, with ten countries producing three-quarters of the world’s refugees. In addition, there were 40.5 million new internal displacements in 2020 – connected in part to conflict, climate change, poverty and insecurity – the highest number on record.

Schools continue to be targeted in attacks. Between 2017 and 2019, there were more than 11,000 reported attacks on schools, universities, students and education personnel.

A call to action

Since its inception in 2016, ECW has mobilized US$828.3 million through the ECW Trust Fund, and helped leverage with its partners US$1 billion worth of programmes aligned with ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programmes in 10 countries.

“Working together with our partners, the scope of our collective achievements is unequivocal: less than 5 years into existence, ECW has demonstrated its proof of concept through concrete results. I call on world leaders, the private sector and our global community to urgently and generously support Education Cannot Wait in reaching the millions of children that are at risk of falling through the cracks,” said Sherif.

#ECWResults
• Total reach: ECW’s investments in holistic education programmes for crisis-affected girls and boys have reached 4.6 million children and adolescents (48% of whom are girls), with a focus on those left furthest behind: refugees (38%), internally displaced children (16.4%), and of host community children and adolescents and other vulnerable populations (45.6%). In addition, shorter and more targeted COVID-19 interventions aimed at continuing education and keeping children and adolescents safe from the pandemic reached a total of 29.2 million girls and boys in 2020 alone.
• Increased access to education: 96% of ECW-supported programmes increased access to education for crisis-affected children and adolescents. In Uganda, for example, the gross enrolment ratio of refugee children grew steadily from 72% in 2017 to 79% in 2020.
• Strengthening equity and gender equality: 94% of ECW-supported programmes show improvement in gender parity in access to education. Girls represent 48% of all children reached through ECW’s investments since inception, and 40% of teachers recruited or financially supported through ECW’s funding in 2020 are women. The percentage of children with disabilities reached grew from 0.2% since inception to 1.3% in 2020 across ECW’s programme portfolio.
• Increased continuity and sustainability of education: By the end of 2020, ECW had cumulatively reached some 275,000 children (51% girls) with early-childhood or pre-primary education interventions since its inception. The share of children reached with secondary education across ECW’s programme portfolio increased from 9% in 2019 to 13% in 2020.
• Improved learning and skills: Since ECW’s inception nearly 70,000 teachers (48% female) have been trained through regular non-COVID-19 programming. A total of 2.6 million teaching and learning materials were provided to children and adolescents (47% to girls). Learning outcome measurement has also expanded to an increasing number of ECW grants.
• Safe and protective learning environment: In 2020, ECW’s partners increased access to water and sanitation facilities in 2,225 learning spaces and provided some 3,100 children with safe transportation mechanisms to and from school. In 2020 remote mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) interventions for children, teachers, and caregivers were undertaken, and more than 19,500 teachers (54% female) were trained on MHPSS. ECW investments supported children with school feeding programmes in Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Sahel region.

 

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Excerpt:

Building on its innovative model that has already reached +4.6 million children & adolescents in the world’s worst humanitarian crises, Education Cannot Wait calls for urgent, bold investments in education in emergency programmes to avoid irreversible loss for entire generations.

the EU, the U.S. (beginning under Biden) ) and others have been campaigning for governments to end their financing for new overseas coal-fired projects. Credit: Bigstock.

By Philippe Benoit
PARIS, Oct 5 2021 (IPS)

President Xi announced last month that China is stopping its financing for new coal-fired power plants overseas. With this announcement from Beijing, the governments of the world’s largest economies have now achieved a consensus to halt their overseas funding of coal plants in developing countries, thereby advancing global efforts to reduce future carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Energized by this success on climate, these governments should now turn their efforts to mobilizing the massive financing required to build the clean power projects that the developing world still needs to fight poverty.

Globally, nearly 30% of the energy sector’s CO2 emissions come from coal-fired power plants.  Even as various developed countries moved to reduce their own coal use to lower emissions domestically, new coal power plants were being proposed across the developing world, often with financing from China under its massive Belt and Road Initiative.

The EU, the U.S. (beginning under Biden) ) and others have been campaigning for governments to end their financing for new overseas coal-fired projects. China’s announcement last month, following on similar ones by South Korea and Japan (as well as the G-7) earlier this year, represents the culmination of a successful international campaign against this financing

As China, as well as notably Japan and South Korea, funded coal plants abroad (cumulatively providing 90% of overseas public sector financing), climate specialists raised the alarm that these new plants would threaten global emissions reduction efforts.

Given these concerns, the EU, the U.S. (beginning under Biden) ) and others have been campaigning for governments to end their financing for new overseas coal-fired projects. China’s announcement last month, following on similar ones by South Korea and Japan (as well as the G-7) earlier this year, represents the culmination of a successful international campaign against this financing.

Even though there are other sources of financing for coal power plants (by some estimates, substantially larger than China’s), the decisions by Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul, as well as the parallel international effort among private banks and other financial institutions, will significantly slow new coal power investments in the developing world.

For example, it has been estimated that China’s new commitment could impact 44 power projects in Asia and Africa, resulting in a cut of $50 billion in investment.  Moreover, the U.S. recently announced that it would oppose any new coal-based projects by multilateral development banks (MDBs), shutting off another source of potential financing.

And yet this success presents its own challenges, at least for poorer countries that were looking to benefit from the additional electricity these coal plants would provide.  For example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) foresees that Africa’s electricity generation will need to more than double over the next 20 years under a business-as-usual case, and more than triple under a high development scenario.

To achieve this high development scenario, Africa will need to add about 700 gigawatts in new plants, which is nearly three times the continent’s existing installed generating capacity.  Similarly, the IEA projects that the countries of the ASEAN region (such as Indonesia and Vietnam) will in the aggregate need to invest $350 billion in the power sector between 2025 and 2030 to further their economic development, a figure that rises to $490 billion under the Agency’s  low-carbon scenario.

But will poorer countries be able to mobilize the financing for these electricity investments, especially as overseas financing for new coal plants disappears?

The U.S. and China have both recently announced their intention to increase funding to help developing countries meet the climate challenge, with Biden looking to double the U.S.’s annual contribution to $11.4 billion and Xi coupling his decision to end overseas financing for coal plants with a pledge to step up China’s support for green and low-carbon investments in developing countries.

Unfortunately, there are concerns that poorer countries will nevertheless be left wanting, especially as previous pledges to provide them financing have failed to fully materialize, notably the $100 billion per year in climate finance that developed countries committed to mobilize by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries.

To avoid this outcome and enable poorer countries to obtain the additional electricity they need, the successful diplomatic efforts that have gone into eliminating public funding for overseas coal projects need to be matched, and even exceeded, by a drive to boost funding for clean power plants.

This should not only involve increasing flows from the large development finance institutions of the U.S., China, the EU, Japan, etc. and from their other overseas investment agencies, but also mobilizing more private sector investment in developing countries, both foreign and domestic.

Non-traditional funders (including private foundations) also have a role to play.   In addition, as the U.S. moves to block any coal projects and severely curtail other MDB investments in fossil fuel-based electricity, it and other wealthy nations should increase their shareholder contributions to these banks to increase lending to developing countries for clean electricity.

The rationale supporting these efforts is not only that the U.S., China, the EU, Japan, and South Korea are the world’s largest economies (representing over two thirds of global GDP), but also that they themselves continue to rely on coal plants to power their own economic growth.  These coal plants, in turn, are generating large amounts of emissions that are using up the common carbon budget and leaving less room for electricity-related emissions from poorer countries.

For example, in 2019, 65% of China’s electricity came from coal-fired power plants that generated 4.9 gigatons in CO2 emissions (GtCO2), while the U.S. emitted 1.0 GtCO2 and the EU 0.5 GtCO2 from these plants.  By comparison, all of Africa’s coal-fired power plants produced less than 0.3 GtCO2.

As a result, there are also important equity considerations which justify stronger action by these wealthier countries to support clean power investments in poorer ones.  While many also point to the need for wealthier nations to reduce their own domestic coal emissions, the focus of this article is not on how these countries choose to run their national power systems, but rather on what poorer countries need and how wealthier ones can help.

As President Biden has repeatedly remarked, “climate change poses an existential threat to our future.” Ending investment in new overseas coal-fired plants will help to address this danger, for the benefit of both rich and poor.  But poverty is also an existential threat, albeit one that does not imperil everyone. Rather it is a life-threatening menace principally aimed at the poor of the developing world. It is also one which wealthier countries can help to counter.

To fight poverty, the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America need a lot more electricity.  In the interest of climate, wealthy countries have succeeded in cutting off coal financing to these regions.  These wealthy countries now should build off this success by carrying out an even more ambitious poverty alleviation program funding clean power across the developing world.

 

Philippe Benoit has over 25 years of experience working in international energy affairs, including prior management positions at the World Bank and International Energy Agency. He is currently Managing Director-Energy and Sustainability at Global Infrastructure Advisory Services 2050.  

 

By Daud Khan and Leila Yasmine Khan
ROME and AMSTERDAM, Oct 5 2021 (IPS)

The USA and its allies have repeatedly stated that promoting women’s rights was one of the key reasons they were in Afghanistan. The US military top brass, in a letter to marines stated that they were in Afghanistan “for the liberty of young Afghan girls, women, boys, and men who want the same individual freedoms we enjoy as Americans”.

Daud Khan

Post-war, women’s rights are now among the conditions for improved relations. For example, it is a one of the conditions for release by the US of US$9 billion of Afghan assets. Similarly, the EU has made also women’s rights one of the conditions of engagement with the new Afghan Government.

There is also much talk in the western press of how the new Government is trampling or women’s rights – girls are not allowed to go to school, working women are being told to stay home, and demonstrations by women are put down brutally. There is also much discussion of the fact that there are no women in the new Government. The position of the US and its allies, and the apparent intransigence of the Taliban, seems to suggest a long stalemate which will bring additional misery to ordinary Afghans.

However, there is also a second narrative on women in Afghanistan that is emerging. The starting point for this alternative narrative is that the vast majority of Afghan women live in rural areas; and have seen their suffering increase many fold during the 20 years of the war. The bombings, the killings, the arbitrary violence by warlords, some of who were allied with US forces, were what defined their daily existence. These rural women saw few, if any, benefits of the efforts by donors and aid agencies to improve living conditions. Corruption siphoned off much of the money and what little did get to the rural areas did not make any significant improvement in public services such as health, education or water supplies. For these women the return of the Taliban means, above all, a cessation of violence and a return to a rule of law – however flawed it may be.

This alternative narrative also points out that the women “who want the same individual freedoms we enjoy as Americans” are a small minority living in Kabul. Moreover, the freedoms they had under US occupation – to wear jeans, play football or cricket – are alien to Afghan society and traditional values. Hence losing such “rights” are quite irrelevant to the much of the country.

Leila Yasmine Khan

The two narratives lead to different courses of action. For those who ascribe to the first, it provides a moral justification for using all possible leverage to get the Talban to reverse their current positions on women’s rights, as well as on many other aspects of government. Moreover, it justifies suspending development projects, minimizing humanitarian aid, and even freezing Afghan assets – money which belongs to the Afghan people.

For those to who the second narrative holds more appeal, the ceasing of conflict and the departure of the foreign troops were the most important events for Afghanistan. From here onwards, the Afghan people have to decide for themselves what social mores and traditions they want to follow.

And, if they want to change, it has to be at the speed and pace of their own choosing. The international community which has a large responsibility for the misery and mayhem of the last decades should focus on repairing and improving infrastructure such as roads and irrigation; ensuring supplies of essential goods and services including food, water, fuel, health services and electricity; and creating the institutional structure and the trained manpower for the administration of public services such as administration, justice and policing.

Both narratives, as well as the actions deriving from it, are flawed.

Whatever geopolitical or economic interests drove the war, it is disingenuous for the US and allies to say that they were in Afghanistan for 20 years to help the Afghans and in particular Afghan women. The war has cost the US taxpayer US$2 trillion most of which went to the defense contracts with some crumbs to the corrupt Afghan Government officials. Given an average Afghan family size of seven, the US$ 2 trillion spent on the war is equivalent to US$350,000 per family. If even a fraction of this if had been invested properly it would have transformed lives – but this never happened. Now after 20 years of war, to impose further pain on the Afghans in the name of women’s rights seems heartless. Particularly galling is the freezing of Afghan assets in western banks at the time when the country desperately needs this money.

A laissez faire approach towards the new Government is, however, is equally callous. Women’s rights are not just about dressing as one likes, about participating in sports or wearing a veil in public. It is also about giving the right to be educated; to aspire to any job or career they wish; to live without repression; and have to freedom to move, to think and to speak without fear or hindrance.

The fact that 80% of Afghan girls don’t have schools that they can go to, jobs to which they can aspire, or the time, energy or money for sports or recreation, does not negate the rights of the 20% who do have some of these opportunities.

The countries in the region with influence in Afghanistan – countries such as China, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and Turkey – must not turn a blind eye to women’s rights. On the contrary, they should use all the leverage they have with the Afghan Government to respect women’s rights be it for those who live in Kabul, be it for those who live in the most remote areas.

Daud Khan works as consultant and advisor for various Governments and international agencies. He has degrees in Economics from the LSE and Oxford – where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology. He lives partly in Italy and partly in Pakistan.

Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands. She has Master’s degrees in Philosophy of Cognition and one in Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric – both from the University of Amsterdam – as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of Rome (Roma Tre).

 

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Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait, visited a refugee site in the village of Modale, located 30 kms from Yakoma, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Courtesy: Education Cannot Wait

By Alison Kentish
NEW YORK/GENEVA, Oct 5 2021 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the face of education globally, but for children in emergencies and protracted crises, its blow has been particularly devastating.

Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund that brings teaching and learning to children and adolescents in emergencies and crises, has said that 2020 was ‘exceptionally challenging.’

ECW released its Annual Results Report, Winning the Human Race today, October 5, World Teachers’ Day.

“The pandemic acted as a risk multiplier, as it not only created new challenges but also amplified existing challenges and risks for the most vulnerable groups, especially girls and children and adolescents with disabilities,” the report stated.

“With COVID-19 upending entire societies and socio-economic systems, 2020 is remembered as a uniquely challenging year in modern history. While close to 90 percent of learners worldwide saw their education disrupted – with nearly one year lost in schooling for one billion children – those who were already marginalized and left furthest behind in crisis contexts are paying a heavier price,” said UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown.

“An entire generation faces irreversible loss. Among them, an estimated 20 million displaced girls, particularly adolescent girls, are at risk of permanently dropping out of school, not only losing the opportunity to learn, but also the protection that education offers against gender-based violence, child marriage, sexual exploitation, and human trafficking.”

For the past nearly 5 years, Education Cannot Wait has worked tirelessly to minimize disruption in learning for close to 5 million children in some of the world’s most dire emergency and crisis zones in countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, and Yemen.

“Without immediate additional significant financial investments to support education in emergencies and protracted crises, entire generations will be lost. COVID-19 has compounded the already existing devastation of conflicts, climate-related disasters, and forced displacement from Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, to the Sahel, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Venezuela – to name but a few of the 38 crises where ECW is working with partners to deliver on the right of every girl and boy to a safe, quality education,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait.

As the world honors teachers at a challenging time for education, the latest ECW report is confirming that the global fund has recruited close to 150,000 teachers to help fill the gaps in education for children in crucial crisis settings.

ECW ensures that the teachers have access to resources and receive training in education in emergencies and protracted crises (EiEPC). The educators are also trained in the provision of mental and psycho-social support, gender, and inclusion.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, ECW acted proactively and decisively. Soon after the World Health Organization’s March 11, 2020 pandemic declaration, ECW initiated 85 grant packages in 32 countries. According to the annual report, ‘US$23.0 million was mobilized from the First Emergency Response (FER) reserve within 21 days, and a further US$22.4 million was approved in July 2020 – a total of US$45.4 million.’

It was the fund’s most rapid disbursement of funds and a concerted effort to protect the world’s children furthest behind. Over 29 million children and adolescents benefitted, with girls making up 51 percent of that figure.

With Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong opportunities for all as a guide, ECW has pivoted through the pandemic; scaling up resources and support for distance-learning amid school closures, promoting COVID-19 protocols, and supplying health and hygiene products.

In some countries, like Afghanistan, home visits ensured that the pandemic did not derail children’s learning.

In Yemen, ECW partner UNICEF donated electronic learning materials to over 330,000 children.

In Iraq, ECW and its partners embraced technology and used applications such as WhatsApp and Viber to communicate, send lessons, and support over 5,000 students.

Children in protracted crises in Afghanistan, Chad, Palestine, and Uganda received health and hygiene lessons, while emergency funds supported a range of continuing education programs.

ECW credits its rapid response and impact during the pandemic to the flexibility of the fund, and the resilience of its partners, communities, and the children and adolescents its serves. However, interrupted education and learning in the face of armed conflicts, forced displacement and climate, and food crises, and a pandemic pushing millions more into poverty, financing will remain a major challenge.

“If we are going to advance in our quest for the human race, our global community must play a pivotal role in making the notion of our ‘shared humanity’ a reality. This means providing these children with at least 12 years of quality education. This is an investment in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, an investment in peace, an investment in our future, and an investment in our universal human rights,” Sherif said.

ECW’s vision is to bring quality and inclusive education to at least two-thirds of children in the world’s most acute and urgent crisis regions.

According to the report, ECW has raised US$828.3 million through the ECW Trust Fund, and with its partners, helped leverage US$1 billion worth of programs aligned with ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programmes in close to 18 countries.

The fund has been a lifeline for millions of children in the grips of war, displacement, humanitarian and emergency crises. The fund has proven that even in the world’s worst crisis-affected countries, children and adolescents do not have to be left behind. On the contrary, they should, according to ECW, be the first in line for empowerment and global support.

“Working together with our partners, the scope of our collective achievements is unequivocal: less than 5 years into existence, ECW has demonstrated its proof of concept through concrete results for crisis-affected children and youth. I call on world leaders, the private sector, and our global community to urgently and generously support Education Cannot Wait in reaching the millions of children that are already falling through the cracks,” said Sherif.

 

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By Raghav Gaiha and Shantanu Mathur
NEW DELHI, India, Oct 5 2021 (IPS)

There is broad consensus that realizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on climate change require a transformative agenda for agriculture and food systems. In this context, the importance of mobilizing more investments and aligning them to sustainable development and inclusive rural transformation objectives, is widely acknowledged.

The gaps in investment
Estimates of investment required for achieving these goals show that the financing needs are considerable although the appraisals of incremental financing requirements differ significantly.

Raghav Gaiha

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Program (WFP) estimate that US$265 billion per year is needed to reach “zero hunger” by 2030 (SAFIN, 2021).

In 2019, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimated total investment needs for food and agriculture at US$ 480 billion to achieve related SDGs in developing countries, with actual investment at US$220 billion, thus leaving a gap of US$260 billion.

These estimates suggest that transforming food systems to deliver healthy people, a healthy planet, and a healthy economy will require US$300 – US$350 billion extra per year over the next decade.

The swift and massive shock of the coronavirus pandemic has plunged the global economy into a severe contraction. The prospects of economic revival are highly uncertain and downside risks are predominant. Development finance gap is thus likely to worsen.

Towards meeting the financing gaps
To meet these needs, finance will be required from all sources to work in alignment with the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement. The extension of the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) through to the end of 2021 led by the World Bank – will help most developing countries to focus on domestic priorities including getting SDG delivery back on track.

A Common Framework for Debt Treatments beyond the DSSI is in the making, while some International Financial Institutions (IFI) are expecting historical highs in their replenishments (IFAD, IDA, AfDB). In addition, there is a call for a new general allocation of USD 650 billion (IMF Special Drawing Rights) to be channelled to benefit vulnerable countries.

Shantanu Mathur

A Role for Public Development Banks
Public Development Banks (PDBs) have considerable untapped potential here, as financial institutions with state capital have a mandate to pursue developmental goals, (as opposed to solely commercial objectives in their bank operations. PDBs are distinct from State-owned commercial banks; they also differ in their mandates and instruments (World Bank Group & World Federation of Development Financing Institutions, 2018, IFAD, 2020, SAFIN, 2021). Non-sector specific PDBs have significant portfolios in agriculture or in other activities within food systems (e.g. in financing rural infrastructure, agro- processing, or other).

Yet other PDBs have a primary focus on agriculture but their portfolio includes other sectors. This is based on the notion that supporting sustainable small-scale farming through inclusive agri-food value chain development is between two to three times more effective as a means to eradicate poverty than other sectors.

Some PDBs target small-scale enterprises including producers, while others focus their portfolios on larger agribusinesses or larger investments, for instance, in agricultural infrastructure and markets. This diversity is key to understanding the role of different types of PDBs in advancing the 2030 Agenda.

The overarching goal, however, is to address market failures, with counter-cyclical roles, and greater risk tolerance than what other financial institutions have. Given their public mandate and close proximity to public policy and governance institutions, PDBs can play a catalytic role supporting accessible, affordable and usable financial services for rural poor people socially, environmentally and economically sustainable outcomes across food systems.

PDBs (which are already responsible for over two-thirds of formal financing for agriculture), can facilitate a change of course across the financial ecosystem. This includes mobilizing sustainable and green finance, issuing investment products, structuring blended solutions and public-private financing schemes.

At the same time, adopting digital solutions across their business operations, and delivering a suite of financial services and products to different types of clients in food systems – including women, youth, SMEs and smallholders. It is known that private investment in agriculture and/or in other activities within food systems is often constrained by many risks associated with poor infrastructure and economic returns. PDBs are capable of increasing their capacity to crowd in, de-risk, and help align commercial finance to the SDGs and to climate-related goals such as those set in the Paris agreement.

Mobilizing catalytic investments
Stimulating responsible private investment and financial innovations – such as through blended finance – are required to improve food security and nutrition and inclusive rural transformation, and to address the post pandemic gap in ODA. UNCTAD has estimated that around 75 per cent of the gap could be financed, in principle, by the private sector – with the potential to mobilize US$195 billion annually. PDBs are actively engaged in platforms where private investors, businesses, philanthropists and other entities are investing to fund SDG aligned projects.

In their Communiqué (Matera, June 2021) the G20 Development Ministers have welcomed the establishment of a “Finance in Commons” Working Group on Financing Sustainable Food Systems, led by IFAD, that is meant to bring together PDBs, recognizing the critical role of the private sector to build upon public efforts to improve agri-food systems.

As a concrete action – emerging out of the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) is the advent of a Coalition for Action to launch a PDB global Platform, with focus on increasing investments in inclusive and sustainable food systems chains, for accelerated learning, innovation, mobilization and deployment of capital and services.

Going forward, closing the financing gap will require strong international cooperation and political will to enhance the fiscal space to ensure sustainable domestic financing. Multilateral Development Banks can work with PDBs and test/validate sustainability-related financial instruments, encompassing (sustainability/green) bonds, funds and other investment vehicles aimed at advancing sustainable development objectives. This will play an important role in mobilizing much-needed finance to reduce the SDG financing gaps in developing countries and become possible long-term financing instruments of international and national public financial institutions.

Raghav Gaiha is Research Affiliate, Population Aging Research Centre, University of Pennsylvania, USA, & (Hon.) Professorial Research Fellow, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK; Shantanu Mathur is Lead Adviser & Senior Partnership Officer, Global & Multilateral Engagement International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
(The views are personal)

 

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Prayer flags during the COVID-19 pandemic. Empowerment platform Fuzia is concerned with their audience's mental health. Credit: Ankita Gupta Pramanik

By Fairuz Ahmed
New York, Oct 5 2021 (IPS)

Telemedicine and health-related information have experienced a massive uptake since the COVID-19 pandemic began last year. While online health services are seen as a panacea for many ills, disinformation and fake news reports have tarnished their credibility.

The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2021 found that many consumers have rapidly adopted new digital behaviors during lockdowns. This has opened up new digital opportunities and highlighted the next set of challenges. Across countries, almost 73% of the population now access news via a smartphone, up from 69% in 2020. During the pandemic, governments worldwide have focused on these personal devices to communicate. Consumers now depend more and more on personal devices to read up on Government restrictions, report symptoms, book appointments for vaccines, and access news.

Research done in 12 countries indicates that 66 percent of users use one or more social networks or messaging apps for consuming, sharing, or discussing news. Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, Instagram, and WhatsApp are among the leading social media platform for user engagement and news sharing.

Nina Jain, who lives in Connecticut, USA, says she has used online health information extensively since the start of the pandemic.

“I was frantically looking from one portal to the next, trying to make sense of what is going on with the pandemic. Being a mother of five children and taking care of elderly in-laws, it was imperative to navigate well and stay prepared. Community health centers were closed in our areas, and getting appointments at the doctor’s offices was very difficult,” Jain said in an interview with IPS.

“Telephone helplines, nurses-on-call, and government sites were my go-to portals for credible health news and services online. It took me and my family a lot of convincing to make my parents, who reside in India, agree to use online portals to book appointments and get treated. As a caregiver, this was a breakthrough and much-needed adjustment.”

An article published in Fierce Healthcare says telemedicine demand is expected to grow annually by approximately 38% over the next five years. Worldwide, innovative telemedicine companies and social media platforms are stepping up to meet this trend and are increasing telemedicine’s reach and improving what it can do.

Throughout the pandemic, women empowerment platform Fuzia has been concerned about ensuring its readers have credible and up-to-date information.

Fuzia co-founder Riya Sinha says this aligns with the website’s ethos of empowerment, diversity, inclusion and supports good health and well-being in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.

“Through our community, we have begun to organize events and webinars and have tried to become a knowledge sharing and an experience-sharing platform, where real users express their concerns about menstruation, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), mental health, depression, stress, teen issues, and overall health factors,” Sinha says.

Fuzia’s co-founder Shraddha Varma agrees: “We do not want women to just be givers of care, but we also want them to be receivers of care. To actually take some time off and just listen to what the body is telling us, to not constantly feel like they deserve to suppress their voices.”

The site has more than 5 million followers. They have an active user base on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn and use its extensive global presence to create a safe and creative space for users.

Dedeepya Tatineni, a user of the platform, found herself suffering from mental health problems during the pandemic. She made use of the forum and its counselors.

“The counselors of Fuzia are really helpful. I do not feel depressed now, and I feel a lot better. Expressing myself on Fuzia has made me feel more confident and happier,” Tatineni said.

Empowerment platform Fuzia assists communities through outreach programs. Credit: Fuzia

Research has indicated that as the pandemic spread throughout the world, it caused considerable fears – the disruptions during lockdowns and its effects on livelihoods exacerbated the impact.

An article in Nature indicates that early results from studies on mental health suggest that during the pandemic, “young people rather than older young people, are most vulnerable to increased psychological distress, perhaps because their need for social interactions are stronger. Data also suggest that young women are more vulnerable than young men, and people with young children, or a previously diagnosed psychiatric disorder, are at particularly high risk for mental health problems.”

For many women around the world, wellness, in general, is perceived as a luxury. Men often get priority for healthcare. Topics like menstruation, pregnancies, female hygiene, teen and tween’s mental, physical, sexual, and emotional well-being, postpartum depression are overlooked or not discussed because they are taboo.

Women and girls too are affected by “period poverty,” where lack of access to sanitary products, menstrual hygiene education, toilets, handwashing facilities, and waste management students miss classes and stay indoors.

Menstrual health is not just a women’s issue. Globally, 2.3 billion people live without basic sanitation services, and in developing countries, only 27% of people have adequate handwashing facilities at home, according to UNICEF. Not using these facilities makes it harder for women and young girls to manage their periods safely and with dignity.

Varma and Sinha are determined that Fuzia remains committed to providing a judgment-free zone and prepared for difficult discussions about taboo topics.

• This article is a sponsored feature.

 

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President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (on screen) of Sri Lanka addresses the general debate of the General Assembly’s seventy-fifth session. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Neville de Silva
LONDON, Oct 5 2021 (IPS)

Addressing the UN General Assembly last month President Gotabaya Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka raised several concerns, two that had to do with health. One concerned the health of the human race; the other the health of Planet Earth on which man struggles increasingly to survive.

It is understandable for the President to draw the world’s attention to the current pandemic that plagues the people of Sri Lanka as it does the populations of most other nations that constitute the UN family that have struggled in the last two years to overcome COVID-19 which has brought some nations almost to their knees.

As we know some countries have dealt with the spreading virus more effectively and efficiently than others because they relied on the correct professional advice and had the right people in the places instead of dilettantes with inflated egos.

The immediacy of the pandemic with its daily effects on health care and peoples’ livelihoods is seen as urgent political and health issues unlike the dangers surrounding our planet which, to many, appear light miles away while still others treat it with large doses of scepticism.

Quite rightly President Rajapaksa pointed to the dangers ahead for the survival of the planet – as underscored in the recent report of the Inter-government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — due to human activity and said that Sri Lanka, among other measures, aims to increase its forest cover significantly in the future.

What really matters is whether those on the ground — like some of our politicians and their acolytes who seem to think that saving the planet is somebody else’s responsibility but denuding the forests and damaging our eco-systems for private gain is theirs — pay heed to the president’s alarm signals that should appropriately have been sounded at least a decade ago.

But what evoked a quick response was not the call for international action to save the people from the pandemic or the planet from climate change as President Rajapaksa told the UN but what he told the UN chief Antonio Guterres at their New York meeting.

While reiterating Sri Lanka’s stance that internal issues should be resolved through domestic mechanisms what aroused interest was the president’s sudden and unexpected readiness to invite the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora scattered across the Global North and in smaller numbers elsewhere, for discussions presumably on reconciliation, accountability and other outstanding matters.

One would have thought that there would be a gush of enthusiasm from some sections of the Tamil diaspora which had previously shown an interest in being involved in a dialogue with the Sri Lanka Government over a range of issues that concern the Tamil community.

But the few reactions that have been reported from a few Tamil organisations appear lukewarm. Yes, the Non-Resident Tamils of Sri Lanka (NRTSL), a UK-based group, welcomed the President’s announcement saying that “engagement with the diaspora is particularly important at the time when multiple challenges face Sri Lanka”.

However, there was a caveat. The NRTSL is supportive of “open, transparent and sincere engagement of the government of Sri Lanka,” the organisation’s president V. Sivalingam was quoted as saying.

The better-known Global Tamil Forum (GTF) called it a “progressive move” and welcomed it. But its spokesman Suren Surenderan questioned what he called President Rajapaksa’s “sudden change of mind”.

Surendiran said that in June President Rajapaksa was due to meet the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) but that meeting was put off without a new date been fixed.

“When requests are made by democratically elected representatives of Tamil people in Sri Lanka to meet with the President, they are “deferred with flimsy excuses”, {and} now from New York he has declared that he wants to engage with us, Tamil diaspora,” Surendiran said rather dismissively in a statement.

Though the Sri Lanka Tamil diaspora consists of many organisations and groups spread across several continents there has been a studied silence from most of them, a sign that many of them are sceptical about how genuine the gesture is.

In March this year, after the UN Human Rights Council passed a highly critical resolution on Sri Lanka, the Rajapaksa government proscribed several Tamil diaspora organisations and more than 300 individuals labelling them terrorist or terrorist linked. These included Tamil advocacy organisations such as the British Tamil Forum, Global Tamil Forum, Canadian Tamil Congress, Australian Tamil Congress and the World Tamil Coordinating Committee.

Precisely seven years earlier in March, the Mahinda Rajapaksa government banned 424 persons and 16 diaspora organisations.

The problem for the present administration is that if it is intent on inviting Tamil organisations to participate in talks it would have to lift the existing bans on individuals and groups without which they are unlikely to talk with the government.

As transpired before peace talks at various times between the government and the LTTE, the Tamil groups are most likely to insist on participation as legitimate organisations untainted by bans. That is sure to be one of the key conditions, if not the most important pre-condition.

It is also evident that the Tamil diaspora is not a homogenous entity. It consists of moderate organisations that are ready to resolve the pressing issues within a unitary Sri Lanka, to those at the other end of the spectrum still loyal to the LTTE ideology and demanding a separate state.

If the Government cherry-picks the participants-particularly the ones that are more likely to collaborate with the administration, it would be seen as an attempt to drive a huge wedge in the Tamil diaspora.

That could well lead to the excluded groups strengthening their existing links with political forces in their countries of domicile including politicians in government as one sees in the UK and Canada, for instance, and Tamil councillors in other elected bodies to increase pressure on Sri Lanka externally.

That is why some Tamil commentators already brand this as a “diversionary move” to lessen the international moves against Colombo.

What would be the reactions of powerful sections of the Buddhist monks and the ultranationalist Sinhala Buddhists who strongly supported a Gotabaya presidency?.

And across the Palk Strait there are the 80 million or so Tamils in Tamil Nadu and an Indian Government watching developments with a genuine interest and concern.

Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 5 2021 (IPS)

As finance ministers and central bank governors gather next week for the IMF-World Bank annual meetings in the US capital, the first shots of a new putsch against multilateralism have been fired. The target: Kristalina Georgieva, Fund Managing Director (MD) since 2019.

Georgieva’s sins
She has tried to enhance multilateral coherence by aligning the Fund with the United Nations, as envisaged by then US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Like predecessor Christine Lagarde, the former Bank environmental economist is committed to the Sustainable Development Goals and addressing global warming.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Despite Trump administration opposition, she supported issuing IMF special drawing rights (SDRs) to help members cope with the pandemic. She thus enhanced countries’ scarce foreign exchange resources and seeks to accelerate mass vaccination to enable recovery.

Following the change at the White House in January, new US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen agreed to issuing US$650 billion of SDRs. From Bulgaria, Georgieva is appreciated by many governments – especially those with little or no clout at the Fund – for expediting efforts to cope with the pandemic.

Gaming the business
The World Bank Group’s annual Doing Business Report (DBR) has long ranked countries by how ‘investment-friendly’ they seem, especially to foreign investors. Unsurprisingly, the DB index appreciates low corporate income tax rates and weak labour protection.

The DBR has long been considered problematic, attracting many criticisms, even from within the Group. But as its most widely read and influential annual publication, it was jealously defended by management for decades with promises of reform over many years.

Middle income country governments the world over now pay consultants well to help game their DB scores and ranking. They hope to thus attract more investments, especially from abroad. With financialisation, real economic criteria declined in significance as financial market indicators became more important.

Prosecution by innuendo
The WilmerHale law firm report about the DBR to the Bank executive board is cited by London’s right-wing Economist to demand Georgieva’s head. It covers improprieties involving the 2018 and 2020 DB indices for Azerbaijan, China and Saudi Arabia.

Her heinous crime: as the senior Bank executive responsible, Georgieva failed to lower China’s already low ranking. Instead, they insist she must resign for maintaining its 2017 rank of 78 in 2018! Her nefarious act was supposedly to get China’s support for the capital increase the Bank was seeking.

But China had long advocated such a capital increase, opposed by successive US administrations before Trump. In fact, while still at the US Treasury in 2018, current Bank President David Malpass had reversed US policy, recommending a capital increase.

The case falls apart
Reporting directly to Georgieva then, now retired Bank economist Shanta Devarajan – who led the Ease of Doing Business team – insists he was never pressured by her to change data or results.

“The changes to China’s score were either correcting coding errors or judgment calls on questions where judgment was required. I was comfortable that China’s score was comparable to previous years’ (and future years’) scores. At no point did I feel I was being pressured.”

“Georgieva’s direction was to verify the China numbers, making sure that China received credit for the reforms they undertook, without compromising the integrity of Doing Business. The Bank’s lawyers left out the latter phrase.” Instead, he complains of tendentious selective reporting of what he told WilmerHale.

Political bias
Former Bank Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has characterised using the report to attack Georgieva as a ‘hatchet job’. Like Stiglitz two decades before, Paul Romer received a Nobel laureate after being forced out as Bank Chief Economist. His sin: questioning DBR’s ‘integrity’.

Center for Global Development (CGD) research showed how supposed methodological tweaking improved Chile’s and India’s DB rankings to bolster rightwing regimes vis-à-vis their centrist rivals. Reacting angrily, another Bulgarian Simeon Djankov, DB index inventor, slandered the mainstream CGD as “reformed Marxist”.

A year after Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal murder in October 2018, the Bank announced Saudi Arabia’s DB rank had risen 30 places. Malpass cited this upgrade at a well-attended Riyadh investment conference. Unsurprisingly, the WilmerHale report concludes the Bank leadership’s innocence in achieving this stunning progress.

Suppressing China’s rising ranking
After Georgieva left the Bank in 2019, China’s ranking did not fall, but instead rose sharply. With Trump appointee Malpass at the helm from 2019, China rose from 78 in both 2017 and 2018, to 31 in 2019 for DBR 2020, and to 25 the following year!

Malpass himself tried to change DB methodology to suppress China’s ranking. Apparently alarmed by China’s rapidly rising ranking, he cancelled release of the next report. Thus, in August 2020, the Bank “paused” publication of DBR 2021!

Over a year later, on 16 September, the Bank cleverly killed two birds with one stone. Terminating its long controversial DBR, it secured a public relations victory with civil society organisations without acknowledging their longstanding criticisms.

New China syndrome
Influential US economist Jeffrey Sachs has suggested that growing US anti-China hysteria is behind the campaign. Three Republican Congressmen want Georgieva sacked for not being anti-Beijing enough. They blame China for the US$650bn SDR issue besides making other allegations reflecting rising US paranoia about China.

The trio claim that her alleged bias shows “how the Chinese Communist party, in pursuing its self-interest, undermines multilateral institutions such as the fund, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations”.

US political influence in the Bank is widely presumed, with Washington’s approval believed to be decisive. Hence, it surprises no one that US$5.3bn went to the last Afghan regime led by a former Bank employee.

The charges against Georgieva are seen by much of the rest of the world as hypocritical. Firing Georgieva as IMF MD would thus further set back multilateralism, already undermined for decades, ironically, especially since the end of the Cold War.

Washington rules
For many since the end of the Cold War, the US either dominates or opposes multilateralism. For ‘sovereigntists’, the US must either control multilateral organizations or undermine them. Thus, under Trump, the US left the Paris climate agreement, World Health Organization, UNESCO and UN Human Rights Council.

Prioritising its domestic political agenda in a divided and partisan US Congress, the White House prefers to avoid unnecessary conflicts with Republicans and anti-China Democrats. Thus, the anti-Georgieva forces still hope to force her ouster.

If the White House sacrifices Georgieva in a cynical gambit to secure political support for its domestic agenda, it will also lose the chance of regaining ‘soft power’, international trust and multilateral leadership.

 

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President Macron and Harrison Ford among speakers at the Congress Opening Ceremony. Credit: IUCN Ecodeo

By Guy Dinmore
St Davids, Wales, Oct 4 2021 (IPS)

The world’s most influential conservation congress, meeting for the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, has issued its starkest warning to date over the planet’s escalating climate and biodiversity emergencies.

“Humanity has reached a tipping point. Our window of opportunity to respond to these interlinked emergencies and share planetary resources equitably is narrowing quickly,” the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared in its Marseille Manifesto at the conclusion of its World Conservation Congress in the French port city.

“Our existing systems do not work. Economic ‘success’ can no longer come at nature’s expense. We urgently need systemic reform.”

The Congress, held every four years but delayed from 2020 by the pandemic, acts as a kind of global parliament on major conservation issues, bringing together a unique combination of states, governmental agencies, NGOs, Indigenous Peoples’ Organisations and affiliate members. Its resolutions and recommendations do not set policy but have shaped UN treaties and conventions in the past and will help set the agenda for three key upcoming UN summits – food systems security, climate change and biodiversity.

“The decisions taken here in Marseille will drive action to tackle the biodiversity and climate crises in the crucial decade to come,” said Dr Bruno Oberle, IUCN Director-General.

“Collectively, IUCN’s members are sending a powerful message to Glasgow and Kunming: the time for fundamental change is now,” he added, referring to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) to be hosted by the UK in November, and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 15) to be held in China in two parts, online next month and in person in April-May 2022.

The week-long IUCN Congress, attended in Marseille by nearly 6,000 delegates with over 3,500 more participating online, was opened by French President Emmanuel Macron who declared: “There is no vaccine for a sick planet.”

He urged world leaders to make financial commitments for conservation of nature equivalent to those for the climate, listing such tasks as ending plastic pollution, stopping the deforestation of rainforests by eradicating their raw materials in supply chains, and phasing out pesticides.

Congress participants during an Exhibition event of the Sixth Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. Credit: IUCN Ecodeo

China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang, said in a recorded message that protecting nature and tackling the climate crisis were “global not-traditional security issues”.

While noting that some scientists fear that the climate emergency is “now close to an irreversible tipping point”, the Marseille Manifesto also spoke of “reason to be optimistic”.

“We are perfectly capable of making transformative change and doing it swiftly… To invest in nature is to invest in our collective future.”

Major themes that dominated the IUCN Congress included: the post-2020 biodiversity conservation framework; the role of nature in the global recovery from the pandemic; the climate emergency; and the need to transform the global financial system and direct investments into projects that benefit nature.

Among the 148 resolutions and recommendations voted in Marseille and through pre-event online voting, the Congress called for 80 percent of the Amazon and 30 percent of Earth’s surface—land and sea—to be designated “protected areas” to halt and reverse the loss of wildlife.

Members also voted overwhelmingly to recommend a moratorium on deep-sea mining and reform the International Seabed Authority, an intergovernmental regulatory body.

“The resounding Yes in support for a global freeze on deep seabed mining is a clear signal that there is no social licence to open the deep seafloor to mining,” Jessica Battle, leader of the WWF’s Deep Sea Mining Initiative, said, quoted by AFP news agency.

The emergency motion calling for four-fifths of the Amazon basin to be declared a protected area by 2025 was submitted by COICA, an umbrella group representing more than two million indigenous peoples across nine South American nations. It passed with overwhelming support.

Representatives from COICA and Cuencas Sagradas present their bioregional plan for the Amazon during a press conference. Credit: IUCN Ecodeo

Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, general coordinator of COICA and a leader of the Curripaco people in Venezuela, said the proposal was a “plan for the salvation of indigenous peoples and the planet”.

The Amazon has lost some 10,000 square kilometres every year to deforestation over the past two decades. Brazil is not an IUCN member and thus could not take part in the vote which runs against President Jair Bolsonaro’s agenda.

The five-page Marseille Manifesto makes repeated references to indigenous peoples and local communities, noting “their central role in conservation, as leaders and custodians of biodiversity” and amongst those most vulnerable to the climate and nature emergencies.

“Around the world, those working to defend the environment are under attack,” the document recalled.

Global Witness, a campaign group, reported that at least 227 environmental and land rights activists were killed in 2020, the highest number documented for a second consecutive year. Indigenous peoples accounted for one-third of victims. Colombia had the highest recorded attacks.

The resolution calling for 30 percent of the planet’s land and ocean area to be given protected status by 2030, said selected zones must include “biodiversity hotspots”,  be rigorously monitored and enforced, and recognise the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands, territories and resources. The  ‘30 by 30’ target is meant as a message to the UN biodiversity summit which is tasked with delivering a treaty to protect nature by next May.

Many conservationists are campaigning for a more ambitious target of 50 percent.

However, the 30 by 30 initiative, already formally backed by France, the UK and Costa Rica, is of considerable concern to some indigenous peoples who have been frequently sidelined from environmental efforts and sometimes even removed from their land in the name of conservation.

The IUCN Congress also released its updated IUCN Red List. The Komodo dragon, the world’s largest lizard, was reclassified from ‘vulnerable’ status to ‘endangered’, while 37 percent of shark and ray species are now reported to be threatened with extinction. Four species of tuna are showing signs of recovery, however.

Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of IUCN’s Head of Red List Unit, said the current rate of species extinctions is running 100 to 1,000 times the ‘normal’ or ‘background’ rate, a warning that Earth is on the cusp of the sixth extinction event. The fifth, known as the Cretaceous mass extinction event, occurred 65 million years ago, killing an estimated 78 percent of species, including the remaining non-avian dinosaurs.

One of the more controversial motions adopted – on “synthetic biology” or genetic engineering – could actually promote the localised extinction of a species. The motion opens the way for more research and experimentation in technology called gene drive. This could be used to fight invasive species, such as rodents, snakes and mosquitos, which have wiped out other species, particularly birds, in island habitats.

It was left to Harrison Ford, a 79-year-old Hollywood actor and activist, to offer hope to the Congress by paying tribute to young environmentalists.

“Reinforcements are on the way,” he said. “They’re sitting in lecture halls now, venturing into the field for the very first time, writing their thesis, they’re leading marches, organising communities, are learning to turn passion into progress and potential into power…In a few years, they will be here.”

Andrea Athanas, senior director of the African Wildlife Foundation, affirmed there was a sense of optimism in the Marseille air, in recognition that solutions are at hand.

“Indigenous systems were lauded for demonstrating harmonious relationships between people and nature. Protected areas in some places have rebounded and are now teeming with wildlife. The finance industry has awoken to the risks businesses run from degraded environments and are calculating those risks into the price of capital.

“Crisis brings an opportunity for change, and the investments in a post COVID recovery present a chance to fundamentally reshape our relationship with nature, putting values for life and for each other at the centre of economic decision-making,” he told IPS.

View the complete Marseille Manifesto here.

 

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The definition of child labour on cocoa farms in West Africa is still in dispute Dr.Richard Asare/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

By External Source
Oct 4 2021 (IPS)

The evidence of child labour on cocoa farms in West Africa became public knowledge in the late 1990s. This followed press reports documenting the existence of hazardous child labour on cocoa farms. Pressure on the cocoa industry to end child labour has been growing ever since, particularly from civil society and more recently from both US and European regulators.

To meet consumer demand for more sustainable and ethical cocoa, the industry began using certification schemes in the late 2000s. Certification labels, such as Rainforest Alliance and FairTrade, aim, among other goals, to guarantee cocoa produced without the use of child labour.

The number of children under the age of 18 working on cocoa farms (certified or not) actually increased between 2013 and 2019, to reach an estimated 790,000. It’s believed that 97% of them are engaged in some of the most hazardous work, including clearing land, harvesting cocoa with a machete, or applying agrochemicals on cocoa farms

It is estimated that between one-third and one-half of the cocoa sold worldwide is currently certified.

In September 2001, by ratifying the Harkin-Engel Protocol, the cocoa industry committed to reduce the most hazardous forms of child labour by 70% by 2020. Yet, Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s largest cocoa producer, is still struggling with child labour on its cocoa farms.

Indeed, the number of children under the age of 18 working on cocoa farms (certified or not) actually increased between 2013 and 2019, to reach an estimated 790,000. It’s believed that 97% of them are engaged in some of the most hazardous work, including clearing land, harvesting cocoa with a machete, or applying agrochemicals on cocoa farms.

My new research paper focusing on certified cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire argues that the real number of child labourers is likely even higher, as measures of child labour may be biased. The results also suggest that certification is not working as intended when it comes to child labour.

 

Child labour in cocoa

I found that the prevalence of child labour is likely being underestimated by studies conducted by both researchers and the cocoa industry. This is due to a concept called social desirability bias which occurs when people are reluctant to provide completely truthful answers about sensitive topics out of fear of negative consequences.

In the case of child labour on Ivorian cocoa farms, certified farmers may lie about their reliance on child labour as any type of child labour is prohibited by the certification schemes they belong to. Hazardous labour is also prohibited by national legislation.

Fear of legal, social, or economic repercussions is likely leading certified farmers to under report their use of child labour. This is making it harder to accurately measure the scope of the problem and to enact effective policies to fight it.

 

Sensitive questions

My study relied on a list experiment survey method. It asks respondents about sensitive topics in a more indirect manner than standard surveys.

The prevalence of child labour use estimated using the indirect measure is twice as large as the one from direct questioning. Using list experiments, I find that between 21% and 25% of the surveyed cocoa farmers were relying on child labour during the past 12 months, depending on the type of work involved. This difference suggests that at least half of Ivorian cocoa farmers who use child labour on their certified farms are not willing to admit it.

 

Why the reliance on children

Main drivers include failures in labour markets, lack of school infrastructure and difficulties in monitoring the use of child labour by certified cocoa farmers, mainly because of the remoteness of the farms.

Cocoa production requires a significant amount of physical labour, as many tasks associated with cocoa farming are not mechanised. Additionally, as cocoa prices in Côte d’Ivoire are fixed seasonally, the only way for farmers to increase their cocoa-generated income is to increase their production. This requires increased labour.

At the same time, Ivorian cocoa farms tend to be clustered in cocoa-growing communities. This means that local adult labour is scarce because most able-bodied adults are employed on their own cocoa farms, and are not seeking labour on other farms.

This labour market failure —- more labourers are needed precisely where they are not available — results in more cocoa farmers relying on child labour. This phenomenon is even more important when cocoa farms are located in remote communities with difficult access to roads. The reliance on child labour by cocoa farmers is then partly due to adult labour shortages. This finding is further borne out by the fact that the presence of an additional adult in a cocoa-growing household reduced the likelihood of relying on child labour up to 4%.

I also found that the prevalence of child labour is higher on more remote farms, which can be explained by weaker law enforcement in these areas, fewer available adult labourers, and limited opportunity for children to attend school due to a lack of school infrastructure.

 

Conclusion

Taken together, these findings strongly suggest that child labour rates, and potentially other sensitive subjects, are not being measured accurately. In addition, they show that the issue of child labour remains rampant in Côte d’Ivoire, even on cocoa farms certified as child-labour-free.

Understanding the various reasons behind farmers’ continued use of child labour and reluctance to admit that use is an important first step in designing more effective policies. By taking the phenomenon of social desirability bias into account in future research, governments and development partners can lead to more accurate measures of the issue and inform more effective policymaking.

Marine Jouvin, PhD Candidate in development economics, Université de Bordeaux

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Oct 4 2021 (IPS)

Today we’re talking about the aftermath of the horrendous murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the protests that ensued. But first, this is the fourth episode of the show, and we’d really like to hear what you think of it. So could you please take a minute to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Thank you!

Welcome to Strive, a podcast by IPS News. My name is Marty Logan.

The brutal murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 horrified people around the world. The weeks of massive demonstrations that followed, and the often violent response by police, left many of us captivated and inspired others worldwide to take to the streets in solidarity.

Racial justice activist and organizer Larry Dean would normally have been leading people onto the streets of Chicago, as he had been doing for a decade—but this killing struck him to his core. Instead he went back to his family home to try to tune out the world.

Today, Dean looks back on those dark days and can identify some shafts of light in the movement for racial justice and equality in the United States. But are they bright enough to reveal a path to autonomy and freedom for Black people, one that can overcome a biased justice system, impoverished schools, police budgets that are still ballooning in many cities and many other barriers?

Listen now to my conversation with Larry Dean to find out.

 

 

“Our Common Agenda” report looks ahead to the next 25 years and represents the Secretary-General’s vision on the future of global cooperation and reinvigorating inclusive, networked, and effective multilateralism. The Secretary-General presented his report to the General Assembly in September 2021 before the end of the 75th session of the General Assembly. Credit: United Nations

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Oct 4 2021 (IPS)

There is no doubt that Secretary General Antonio Guterres is going big and bold with the recent release of an ambitious blueprint that could pave the way for a more inclusive, effective and networked international system centered on youth’s aspirations and needs.

Titled Our Common Agenda, the report is fundamentally a call for action, a manifesto for change with plenty of innovative ideas, an encompassing and holistic document that builds on the Declaration on the Commemoration of the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the United Nations that was signed last year on 21st of September.

The aim is really to start a reflection that leads to imagine a possible different and better future as there is the recognition that we have almost reached the breaking point and fundamental changes are urgent.

As stated in the document, Our Common Agenda “represents the Secretary General‘s vision on the future of global cooperation and reinvigorating an inclusive, networked, effective multilateralism” and there was no better way for the Secretary General to start his second mandate.

The challenges are so dire and multifaceted.

From the “triple planetary emergency” of climate change, biodiversity and pollution to envisioning a better, more equal education and health care systems while making a strong case on the centrality of social protection systems as the best shield to protect the most vulnerable in times of shocks, it is high time for a difference global governance.

Such new system can better reflect an approach to international relations based on cooperation and solidarity.

This is exactly what Guterres is trying to pitch with Our Common Agenda, concrete actions that might show the way to the international community on the directions global leaders must take if they want to ensure a better, more equal planet for the generations to come.

There are many proposals on the plate.

For example, the High-Level Summit on the Future will be a platform aiming to forge a new global consensus on what our future should look like and how we secure it”.

Clear on this agenda is an effort to bolster a new understanding on peace by reducing new threats, including those coming from cyber warfare and lethal autonomous weapons, including investing in new efforts to prevent new conflicts.

The proposal for a Global Digital Compact is another idea to create a global debate and consensus on ensuring that new technologies, including artificial intelligence, become a force for good rather than a tool of self-harm and destruction.

Retooling the global economy to the new challenges emerging from the climate emergency is another top priority for the Secretary General.

New sources of funding must be created and in an era of complex and “creative” financial derivatives and other tools that are enriching the global capitalist elite, ironically, we are running out of imagination and creativity.

Indeed, funding is one of the thorniest roadblocks to an agreement at the Cop 26 in Glasgow.
How can we secure a better, greener and less polluted world if there is still no agreement on 100 billion USD climate financing package that was agreed in Paris back in 2015?

In trying to answer some of daunting questions, Secretary General Guterres is proposing biennial summits to “tackle public and private financing for climate change, with the overriding aim of creating a more sustainable and resilient global economy.”

New metrics able to “value the life and the wellbeing of the many over short term profit for the few” might replace the GDP.

What it is noticeable is that the level of ambition found in Our Common Agenda aims to create momentum on a series of ideas and initiatives that have been for long occupying a space in the debate sphere but could never move forward for lack of buy in.

The World Social Summit in 2025, another of the proposals, is exactly designed to rally world leaders behind the concept of New Social Contract, a better deal between the people and the government.

In practice it means universal health care, stronger education system, more responsive public services and huge investments in social protections measures. Unless a global consensus will emerge from other world leaders, hardly any of these proposals can be implemented.

Yet it is worthy for the UN as a system to enable a global conversation on what needs to be changed if the humankind aspires to thrive for the next decades and beyond.

Perhaps the most important part of Our Common Agenda is the focus given on the youth.

I am not really talking about tokenistic measures like creating a new UN Youth Office that basically will integrate the neglected and overshadow office of the UN SG’s Envoy on Youth.
The Secretary General is absolutely right in bringing youth on the top of the agenda but how doing so will be key.

While it is important to lay the ground for a Declaration on Future Generations, another promised envisioned in the report that also include holding a Transforming Education Summit in 2022, what at the end will count is finding practical ways to enable youth to be active and engage in the society.

The UN should certainly play a big part in centering a new global agenda for change on the youth but the proposals envision to “retrofitting” the UN System for the future, also included in the report, risk just to be a smokescreen.

We truly need a more agile, more effective UN System but in order to achieve such shift, so much change in its offices around the world must first happen because they really need to be more people responsive, more open and less opaque.

This means going well beyond the “McKinsey or BCG for the good” caps that represent the business as usual at the UN, a style that also contributes to insulate its agencies and programs in a comfortable, almost luxurious balloon.

A different mindset and different attitudes are needed and this does not mean neglecting or going beyond the UN core mandate of working with the governments.

This is something extremely important but should not prevent more openness and more understatement and perhaps humbleness.

Therefore, besides the bold announcements contained in Our Common Agenda that are related to youth, UN agencies and programs should undertake a turnaround so that they can truly become more youth centric.

This implies also a rethinking of usual working approaches in order to embrace the freshness and enthusiasm of the youth.

From the ground to the top, the UN system can truly foster civic engagement, youth participation especially by better involving girls and young women through new grassroots programs in partnership with local governments and civil society and by also advising the UN Country Offices.

As Secretary General is in last mandate, Guterres is right at envisioning a better world order focused on a genuine multilateralism.

Yet in order to create opportunities for the youth to be able to participate in the decision making at global level, the home work start within the UN system locally.

It is here where the Secretary General can really have an impact and shows the world leaders how to model a youth centric future.

The Author is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

 

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By 2050, one in four people in the Asia Pacific region will be above the age of 60 years. Credit: UNFPA Bangladesh

By Bjorn Andersson
Oct 1 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Imagine it is the year 2050. In Asia Pacific, one in four people will be over the age of 60 years—three times the number of older people in 2010. With close to 1.3 billion senior citizens in less than 30 years from now, are countries in the region prepared to fully address the needs of their older populations, so that they age with dignity?

Let’s rewind.

Today, 72-year-old Ping sells three kilograms of sticky rice every day at her remote village in a Southeast Asian country, earning barely enough for a basic living. She’s been doing this for more than 10 years, ever since her husband passed away. Her son died two months ago, and her two daughters have married and moved to another province. Ping gets some consolation from the health insurance she is entitled to, as maintaining good health in her old age is her main concern.

Back in the day, Ping and other women in numerous countries across the Asia Pacific region might have been supported by their families and communities. But times are changing. Migration and urbanisation have shifted traditional support systems for the elderly, and more and more governments are grappling with increasing healthcare costs and a shrinking workforce. While less than a third of older persons in the region currently receive a pension of some sort, pension payments are increasing as the older populations grow, straining the governments further.

As the world observes the International Day of Older Persons today, there is an urgent need for policy reform in addressing population ageing now more than ever. This must be driven by a shift in mindset to convert the challenges into a demographic opportunity.

We must rethink population ageing, celebrating it as the triumph of development that it truly is. More and more people are living longer due to the result of successive advancements in healthcare, nutrition, and economic and social well-being. Along with longer life expectancy, couples are having fewer babies. This is due to a variety of reasons, such as the challenges couples face in striking a work-life balance, and not being able to afford having more children. However, low fertility and longer life expectancy are not the problem. The real problem is not being ready to face this rapidly changing demographic shift.

This is why governments must act now. Policymakers must work together with academics and civil society to incorporate rights-based ageing policies and systems into national development plans. While some countries in Asia Pacific have already taken such steps, implementation must be strengthened, particularly within the contexts of Covid-19 and the escalating humanitarian crises that increase vulnerabilities of older people.

Adapting a life-cycle approach with gender equality in focus

In Asia Pacific, with more than half of the older population being women, it is crucial to adopt a life-cycle approach to population ageing, grounded in gender equality and human rights.

Life-long gender discrimination leaves women even more disadvantaged in an ageing society. Older women are often more financially dependent than older men due to generally lower education levels and unpaid work, having often carried the burden of being the family caregiver. Investing in each stage of life, starting from before a girl is born, determines the path of her life course. When a woman is able to safely deliver her baby, this in turn improves the long-term health of both mother and child. When a girl has access to quality education, including comprehensive sex education, it helps her make informed decisions about life-changing matters as she transitions from childhood to adolescence, and on to adulthood.

When a woman has equal opportunity to contribute to the workforce and has bodily autonomy, she has the power to shape her own future. The decisions she makes, and is allowed to make, at every stage of her life paves the way towards a healthier and more financially secure silver age.

There is little time to lose

We need to take action now. The megatrend of rapid demographic shifts is altering Asia Pacific as well as the entire world. This is why the years 2021-2030 have been declared the UN Decade for Healthy Ageing, complementing the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (MIPAA), the 20th anniversary of which is next year, and will bring together governments in Asia Pacific and the world to review the progress made and make better plans for the challenges ahead.

While there is no single comprehensive policy that can address population ageing, we must invest in forward-thinking, rights-based and gender-sensitive policies that focus on the needs of people at every stage of their lives. In doing so, countries in the Asia Pacific region can aspire to and achieve a better future for all, where no one is left behind.

Björn Andersson is Asia Pacific regional director at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Oct 1 2021 (IPS)

The growing number and share of older persons in Asia and the Pacific represent success stories of declining fertility and increasing longevity; the result of advances in social and economic development. This demographic transition is taking place against the backdrop of the accelerating Fourth Industrial Revolution. But COVID-19, with its epicentre now in Asia and the Pacific, has exacerbated the suffering of older persons in vulnerable situations and demonstrated the fragility of this progress.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

Asia and the Pacific is home to the largest number of older persons in the world – and rapidly ageing. When the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted in 2015, 8 per cent of the region’s total population was 65 years or older. By 2030, when the Agenda comes to an end, it is projected that 12 per cent of the total population – one in eight people – will comprise older persons. Fifty-four per cent of all older persons in the region will be women, and their share will increase with age.

Asia and the Pacific has made much progress in connecting the region through information and communication technologies (ICTs). At the same time, it is still the most digitally divided region in the world. Approximately half of its population lacks Internet access. Women and older persons – especially older women – are the least likely to be digitally connected.

COVID-19 has demonstrated how technologies can help fight the spread of the virus, sustain daily life, support business continuity and keep people socially connected. It has also shown that those who are excluded from the digital transformation, including older persons, are at increased risk of being permanently left behind. Digital equity for all ages is, therefore, more important than ever.

The next few years provide an opportunity for Asia and the Pacific to build on its successes with regard to population ageing and rapid digital transformation, learn from the tragic consequences of the pandemic, and promote and strengthen the inclusion of older persons in the digital world. The 2022 Fourth Review and Appraisal of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing and the further elaboration of the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway will allow countries to develop policies and action plans to achieve digital equity for all ages.

Among those policies, it is particularly important to promote digital literacy and narrow digital skills gaps of older persons through tailored peer-to-peer or intergenerational training programmes. In the fast-changing digital environment, developing, strengthening and maintaining digital literacy requires a life-course approach.

Moreover, providing accessible, affordable and reliable Internet connectivity for persons of all ages must be a priority. Expanding digital infrastructure, geographical coverage and digital inclusion of older persons through targeted policies and programmes will improve access, enable greater social participation, empower older persons, and enhance their ability to live independently.

As highlighted in the Madrid Plan of Action, technology can reduce health risks and promote cost-efficient access to health care for older persons, for instance, through telemedicine or robotic surgery. Assistive technology devices and solutions can support more and safer mobility for older persons, especially those with disabilities or living alone. Social media platforms can promote social interaction and reduce social isolation and loneliness.

The ESCAP Guidebook on using Information Communication Technologies to address the health-care needs of older persons has documented good practices from around the region. It also includes policy recommendations and a checklist for policymakers to mainstream ICTs in policies affecting older persons.

While older persons are among the least digitally connected population groups, they are among the most vulnerable to cyberthreats. It is, therefore, critical to establish adequate safety measures, raise awareness, and teach older users to be cautious online.

As we commemorate the United Nations International Day of Older Persons 2021, let us remind ourselves that the risks and vulnerabilities experienced by older persons during the pandemic are not new. Many older persons in the region lack social protection such as access to universal health care and pensions.

The COVID-19 recovery is an opportunity to set the stage for a more inclusive, equitable and age-friendly society, anchored in human rights and guided by the promise of the 2030 Agenda to leave no one behind. Digital equity for all ages, highlighted in the 2030 Agenda, goes beyond national interests. Greater digital cooperation by governments and stakeholders is instrumental for both inclusive and sustainable development and building back better. At the regional and subregional levels, digital cooperation can be fruitfully leveraged to build consensus and share good practices, lessons learned, and policy recommendations. These, in turn, can supplement national level policy and decision-making for the benefit of all age groups.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

 

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A deactivated Minuteman II missile in its silo. Credit: U.S. National Park Service

By Daryl G. Kimball
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 1 2021 (IPS)

Most successful U.S. presidents have actively led efforts to advance arms control agreements and reduce the risk of nuclear war.

Although much has been achieved over the years, there are still 14,000 nuclear weapons and nine nuclear-armed states; progress on disarmament has stalled; and tensions between the United States and its main nuclear adversaries—Russia and China—are rising.

President Joe Biden clearly recognizes the problem and the value of diplomacy and nuclear restraint in solving it. His Interim National Security Strategic Guidance states that his administration will seek to “re-establish [its] credibility as a leader in arms control” and “take steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in [U.S.] national security strategy.”

In February, Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and negotiate further nuclear limits.

But it remains to be seen whether Biden’s recently launched Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) will lead to meaningful adjustments in the dangerous Cold War-era nuclear policies and costly nuclear modernization programs he inherited. Earlier this year, Biden blew the chance to meaningfully scale back his predecessor’s bloated $44 billion annual nuclear budget.

Going forward, Biden needs to play a more direct role in the NPR to ensure it reflects his priorities and does not reinforce the dangerous overreliance on nuclear weapons and exacerbate global nuclear competition.

As I and other experts recommended in a recent letter to the White House, the president should make important changes in several key areas.

First, the NPR should include a declaratory policy that substantially narrows the role of nuclear weapons, consistent with Biden’s stated views. In 2020, he wrote, “I believe that the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring—and, if necessary, retaliating against—a nuclear attack. As president, I will work to put that belief into practice.”

A “sole purpose” policy that rules out the use of nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike or in response to a nonnuclear attack on the United States or its allies would increase strategic stability, reduce the risk of nuclear war, and help operationalize the principle that Biden and Putin agreed to in July that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” The more options there are to use nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that they will be used.

Second, the NPR should revise outdated targeting requirements that are used to determine how many nuclear weapons are “enough.” Although Russia is modernizing its arsenal and China is rapidly increasing its smaller strategic retaliatory force, including systems to evade U.S. missile defenses, the current U.S. nuclear arsenal vastly exceeds what is and will be necessary to deter a nuclear attack.

President Barack Obama announced in 2013 that the United States could safely reduce its deployed strategic nuclear weapons by one-third below New START levels, to approximately 1,000 deployed strategic weapons, regardless of what Russia did. The case for such a reduction still holds.

Contrary to the Cold War logic of U.S. Strategic Command, having more bombs and more delivery options does not translate into more effective deterrence. It can fuel arms races and squander funds needed to address higher priority security needs.

The sobering reality is that it would take just a few hundred U.S. strategic nuclear weapons to destroy Russian and Chinese military capacity, kill hundreds of millions of innocent people, and produce a planetary climate catastrophe.

By signaling that the United States seeks a smaller, more appropriately sized nuclear force, Biden could help lower tensions, put a spotlight on other nuclear-armed states that are expanding their arsenals, and more credibly claim the United States is fulfilling its obligations under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Third, Biden’s NPR should examine options for scaling back the size and scope of the U.S. nuclear modernization plan and put into practice the “no new nuclear weapons” policy he said he would support during his presidential campaign.

He should reverse the decisions made by the Trump administration to field a new lower-yield W76-2 warhead variant and to develop a new nuclear sea-launched cruise missile. These weapons invite miscalculation in a crisis by lowering the threshold for nuclear use. New warhead projects, such as the W93 for U.S. and UK submarine-based missiles, are also unnecessary and costly and should be shelved.

In his inaugural address to the United Nations, Biden said, “[W]e stand…at an inflection point in history.” He is right. The actions that world leaders take in the next decade are critical to whether we address massive global threats and challenges, including the existential threat of nuclear war. Biden must do his part by implementing policies that reduce the salience of nuclear weapons and head off a new arms race.

The writer is the Executive Director of the Arms Control Association in Washington DC.

 

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A Dao family sharing a meal in Sa Pa, Lao Cai province, Vietnam. The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) support the Vietnam government’s Zero Hunger challenge. Credit: Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT - Trong Chinh

By Siri Jamieson
ROME, Italy, Oct 1 2021 (IPS)

Amidst the verdant hills and remote corners of Vietnam’s rural regions, the growth that has transformed the economy in this part of Southeast Asia in recent decades can be hard to see. Undernourishment among children still results in stunting – even in cities too where overweight/obesity is also on the rise.

UN data shows that almost 10% of the population in Vietnam live in poverty, and this is reflected in malnutrition rates and stunted growth. Smallholder farmers are usually considered the most at risk of poverty and food insecurity. But the outcome of Vietnam’s last COVID-19 lockdown was a staggering unemployment rate that might have pushed up to five million people into poverty – especially the many holding insecure jobs in the informal sector.

There’s been no lack of examples of civil society reacting to the lockdown emergencies. Vietnamese businessman Hoang Tuan Anh, local media reported, even created a network of rice ATMs for the poor who suffered from reduced household incomes during the pandemic, distributing thousands of tonnes of rice. Other private initiatives have sprouted among poor neighborhoods.

But while some initiatives made headlines, the broad issues of malnutrition can only be addressed on a much larger scale.

Food security, according to the FAO, comes “when all people at all times have physical, social and economic access to food, which is safe and consumed in sufficient quantity and quality to meet their dietary needs and food preferences and is supported by an environment of adequate sanitation, health services, and care, allowing for a healthy and active life”.  Adequate food is thus not only dependent on quantity but also the quality of nutrients.

Zero Hunger is expected to result in healthier diets and better nutrition to tackle both under- and over-nutrition. Here informal traders in Hanoi sell food on the streets. Credit: Georgina Smith, CIAT

In 2015 the Vietnamese government launched a national action program for the “Zero Hunger Challenge” and in 2018 the Prime Minister signed Decision No. 712 / QD-TTg on Zero Hunger National Action Plan aimed at tackling inadequate nutrition with the aim of achieving one of the most crucial UN Sustainable Development Goals by the 2030 target. The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) together with the National Institute of Nutrition, Vietnam Academy of Agriculture Sciences, and other national and international partners have supported the government in this long-term effort, providing research-based solutions to harness biodiversity and transform agriculture, food systems for healthier diets, according to its mandate.

Working with Vietnam Academy of Agriculture Sciences and Zero Hunger Office – the Ministry of Agriculture, National Institute of Nutrition – the Ministry of Health and liaising with private and public actors, it has provided technological expertise to the Nutrition sensitive agriculture project under the Zero Hunger. After several years of research and the identification of issues and socio-demographic factors, Zero Hunger is set to continue its pilot stage and prepare its implementation stage. Expectations are high for a transition to healthier diets and better nutrition destined to tackle both under- and over-nutrition.

As a member of CGIAR – a global partnership that unites international organizations engaged in food security research – the Alliance has played an active role in preparations for the UN Food Systems Summit. The focus of the Alliance will be to remind all representatives in the food industry and especially the large corporations and all stakeholders invited to the September 23 summit in New York that the best way to combat hunger is through diversity and sustainability. The key take-home message is that only increased conservation and agro-biodiversity can guarantee the kinds of food that are resilient to sudden change of climate, pandemics and a planet fit for life in general.

Malnutrition rates in Vietnam have decreased in recent years and waves of famine with strictly rationed food belong thankfully to the past. Yet the memories of what made lack of food ‘normal’ are still vivid. With climate patterns now disrupting the recent achievements and COVID-19 accelerating the crisis, there is increased political awareness that food systems have to undergo a dramatic overhaul.

Tuyen Huynh, country coordinator of CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health, says the Mekong River – the lifeblood for so much agriculture and transport – is among the key eco-systems most at risk. The river system is increasingly unstable.

“When the climate changes so unpredictably from what it used to be and events become more extreme, then it becomes more difficult to say ‘we’ll cultivate this because the weather is like this’,” she explained. Salination of the water, she added, is increasingly affecting rice cultivation, as it impoverishes the quality of soil and nutrients.

Research on food systems profiles demonstrated that strategies to address food insecurity should be implemented in urban settings as well as rural areas. All across the country, and especially in mountainous areas and in winter, some meats and vegetables are difficult to obtain for the poor.

The Alliance has focused on the link between agriculture and nutrition models and has made sure that farmers are able to communicate their points of view by technically supporting the government in surveys and guidelines using the different languages spoken across the country.

Rather than pushing for simply increasing the production of food as such, governments, farmers, and producers have to think of how to provide more diversified and healthy food as well as improve the quality of nutrients in food. It’s a transformation that is expected as a result of embracing a local perspective of agricultural systems. The challenge in Vietnam is getting healthy foods to both urban and rural settings.

Chemical fertilizers and pesticides can exacerbate the weaknesses of food systems, promoting mono-cropping, lack of adaptability, and lack of response. And the all-important link between food, people, and their culture also risks being severed.

“Rice is the main staple in Vietnam. We mainly export rice and fruit—these are not available in some remote mountains in certain seasons so in winter there is often not enough food,” said Truong Mai, vice director of the National Institute of Nutrition. “Water and sanitation are also a very big issue in remote areas,” she added, underlining how food security cannot be tackled in isolation.

 

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Sep 30 2021 (IPS)

I assume channel surfing and internet browsing contribute to a decrease in people’s attention span. I am not familiar with any scientific proof, though while working as a teacher I found that some students may be exhausted when five minutes of a lesson has passed and begin fingering on their smartphones. They might also complain if a text is longer than half a page, while finding it almost impossible to read a book.

Maybe we are all incapable of keeping a focus. For a while, Afghanistan overshadowed the media stream, though interest faded when the tragic scenes at the airport of Kabul were not there anymore. New catastrophes await the attention of world media.

Attention to Haiti comes and disappears in short flashes. Most recently, we were regaled with pictures of how US horse-mounted patrollers by the Mexican border were roping in Haitian immigrants, reminding us of how runaway slaves were caught 150 years ago. Three days later the US special envoy to Haiti resigned in protest of an ongoing large-scale, forced repatriation of Haitian migrants to a homeland wrecked by civil strife and natural disaster. Daniel Foote was appointed after the assassination of Haiti’s president. His letter of resignation reflects a deep concern for Washington’s disinterest in improving conditions in Haiti:

“I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs to daily life. Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.”

The deportation of Haitians is one of the swiftest, mass expulsions ever. The US is presently receiving thousands of Afghans while sending Haitians to a country which humanitarian crisis is intimately related to earlier US interventionist policies; military occupation and meddling in internal affairs, often through support to dictators. Haiti is reeling from the 7 July assassination of its president, facing an escalation in gang violence, while some 4.4 million people, or nearly 46 per cent of its population suffer acute food insecurity. On 14 August, an earthquake shock Haiti; at least 2,200 people were killed, more than 12,200 injured, at least 137,500 buildings were damaged or destroyed, and an estimated 650,000 people are currently in need of assistance. Three days after the catastrophe a tropical storms disrupted access to water, shelter, and other basic services, while flooding and mudslides worsened the situation for already vulnerable families.

Haiti is one of the most overpopulated countries on earth. The US has a population density of 70 persons per square mile, Cuba has 235, while Haiti’s population density is almost 600 people per square mile. Agriculture is not producing enough to feed a population harassed by political instability, connected with a small, but highly influential political and economic elite, often supported by foreign stakeholders. The international community, which historically has contemplated Haiti through a lens distorted by racism and disinterest, is not doing much to mitigate a worsening situation, triggering immigration movements towards countries like the US, which government apparently assume that a solution to the problem will be to send migrants back to their misery.

Investments have to be made in education and health, as well as in support of enterprises capable of providing sustainable income, while governmental institutions need to be strengthened to promote human development for all sectors of society. Emigration cannot be the only means to brake Haiti’s chain of down-spiraling events, but it helps – currently, 35 percent of Haiti’s GDP is constituted by the roughly 3.8 billion USD worth of remittances the diaspora provides every year.

The recently murdered president, Jovenel Moïse, was originally not a member of the traditional elite, but an entrepreneur acting outside the political sphere. He developed an agricultural project of organic banana production and partnered with Mulligan Water, a US based global water treatment company, to establish a water plant for distribution of drinkable water to Haiti’s northern departments. In 2017, Moïse participated in the general elections on a platform promoting universal education and health care, as well as energy reform, rule of law, sustainable jobs, and environmental protection. He won with a slight margin. Since then, numerous roads have been built, reconstructed and paved. Haiti’s second largest hydro-power plant and several agricultural water reservoirs have been constructed, producing electricity and water for increased agricultural production.

Protests against Moïse’s regime had been mounting, among accusations of widespread corruption and a continued negligence of damages caused by the 2010 earthquake, when more than 200,000 persons were killed and 1.5 million left homeless. This natural disaster was preceded by a hurricane which in 2008 wiped out 70 percent of Haiti’s crops. In 2016, hurricane Matthew was almost as devastating.

Dangers to Moïse’s government furthermore lurked among members of the wealthy, small and powerful elite and not the least – increasingly menacing crime syndicates. Foremost among them is the one controlled by former police officer Jimmy Chérizier, alias Barbecue, leader of G9 and Family, a criminal federation of nine of the strongest gangs in Haiti’s capital.

Chérizier has been known to support Moïse’s party, Tèt Kale, and being backed by corrupt members of the police force. After being behind several armed attacks on rivaling gangs and innocent individuals, who live in fear of extortion, arson, theft and rape committed by his thugs, Chérizier has disclaimed all political affiliations and called for a ”popular uprising”, marching with his men through the slums of La Saline, while openly brandishing sophisticated weaponry.

Even if Jovenel Moïse described criminal gangs as Haiti’s “own demons”, his government’s actions have been considered as negligible. Moïse declared: “We prioritize dialogue, even in our fight with bandits and gangs. I am the president of all Haitians, the good and the bad.”

So far, 44 individuals have been arrested in connection with the assassination of Moïse, on the run is a former official in the Justice Ministry’s anti-corruption unit. Haitian police states that the killing squad consisted of 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans. The Colombians were all former soldiers. Retired Colombian military personell are currently employed by security firms around the world, which value their training and fighting experience. Moïse’s killers were allegedly hired by an obscure, self-described doctor, Christian Sanon, through a US firm called Corporate Training Unlimited (CTU). No explanation has been given to how a man with a negligible income and 400,000 USD in debt could be the organizer of a complex and expensive plot to murder Haiti’s president. A further twist to the story is that Haiti’s interim Prime Minister, neurosurgeon and former Minister of Health, Ariel Henry, a few days ago sacked his Minister of Justice, since he supported a prosecutor who sought charges against Henry over the murder of Moïse. Everything remains shrouded in mystery.

Why Haitians turn up along the US-Mexican border is easier to explain. After the devastating earthquake in 2010, several Haitians arrived in Brazil, attracted by a building boom partly in connection with Brazil hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. When those jobs dried up, several construction workers ended up in other Latin American countries, especially Chile. Others crossed the border to the Dominican Republic, which currently host about 1 million Haitians. All over Latin America strict migration policies are now enforced, while Haitians move towards the US, fearing that misery awaits them if they return to their impoverished homeland. Some 19,000 undocumented migrants, mainly Haitians, are stuck in Colombia, trying to enter Panama and continue to Mexico, where approximately 12,000 migrants are waiting to be processed by US immigration agents, which most likely will refuse entry.

Historically speaking, the small island nation of Haiti has been important to the Americas. In 1804, it became after the US the first independent republic of the Americas. In spite of winning its war of liberation, Haiti was forced to compensate France, a debt paid until 1947. The French Saint-Domingue was one of the world’s most brutally efficient slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years and a policy of ”better buy than bread” kept the slave population young and limited. After liberation an export oriented mono-cultivation of mainly sugarcane was through a land reform changed into family based small holder subsistence farming and the population increased rapidly. With an unyielding black government Haiti suffered until the 1830s of European non-recognition and it was not until the late 1860s it was accepted as a nation by the US and other American countries, while continuously being depicted as barbaric and uncivilized.

In 1822, Haiti conquered the Spanish part of the island, abolishing slavery there. The president Boyer welcomed 6,000 US former slaves, as well as political exiles from the Americas. He supplied Simón Bolívar with 1,000 rifles, munitions, supplies, a printing press, and hundreds of Haitian soldiers to support him in his effort to” free Latin America” and abolish slavery. Between 1915 and 1935 the US occupied Haiti, resulting in several thousand Haitians killed and numerous human rights violations, including torture, summary executions and forced labour. The occupation was, as has been customary with most colonial and exploitative enterprises, defended as a “civilization process”.

Painting, sculpture, dance and music have always flourished in Haiti. It was the Creole culture emanating among exiled Haitians in New Orleans that influenced the creation of jazz, which since then have had such a great impact on American culture. And … while listening to the depressing news about Haitian suffering it might be advisable to enjoy the works of Haiti’s great authors, like Jacques Roumain, Stephen Alexis, and René Depestre, and not the least women writers like Marie Vieux-Chauvet and Edwige Danticat. An attention span well worth the effort, particularly since it increases our knowledge of the problems harassing Haiti. Hopefully would such reading bolster the international community’s realization of the gravity of the plight of the Haitian people and contribute to end its long sufferings.

 

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Rwanda's Gishwati Mukura rainforest is one of the most biodiverse places on the Congo Basin. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
NYABIHU, RWANDA, Sep 30 2021 (IPS)

Laurent Hategekimana, a villager from Nyabihu, a district from Western Rwanda, recalls the terrible condition of the Gishwati natural forest a few years ago when it was overrun by illegal loggers and invading farmers.

Many invaders of this natural reserve were local villagers, and Hategekimana, a farmer-turned environmental activist, faced a hard task changing their minds.

“Although many haven’t yet started getting tangible benefits, some people are engaging in beekeeping while others are trying to venture into tree planting, conservation farming and handcraft,” the father of six told IPS in an interview.

In these remote rural parts of Rwanda, tropical forest conservation is now creating new jobs for several thousand indigenous people who live especially near major rainforests in Western Rwanda thanks to the country’s new laws and policies encouraging community participation in environmental protection.

With a number of challenges facing this group who self-identify as having a link to surrounding natural resources, scientists recommend strategic solutions to resolve possible conflicts between people and the conservation of wildlife along this part of the Congo river basin.

Some scientists believe it is important to find out what kinds of activities communities want, need and could commit to and steward in a sustainable way, to come up with durable actions that address biodiversity conservation and climate change issues.

Thanks to several conservation mechanisms adopted recently by the Rwanda government and stakeholders, Hategekimana is among members of the indigenous community who have become actively involved in keeping guard of the Gishwati natural forest. They inform the local administrative authorities of illegal activities such as felling trees without a permit and burning charcoal.

“I now understand the importance of conserving the forest. That’s why I sacrifice my time to protect it,” Hategekimana said.

Over the last two decades, large parts of these natural reserves on the Rwandan side of the Congo rainforest were nearly depleted, largely due to resettlement and livestock farming.

When new forest conservation efforts were initiated in 2015, most local villagers felt they were depriving their main source of income. Some were initially engaged in illegal logging, timber, and charcoal business.

The natural reserve of Gishwati-Mukura, now a national park for conservation, is currently contributing to improving the livelihoods of the local communities living in the surrounding areas. This, in turn, offers the forest a better chance of regeneration.

This has pushed local residents to launch a local NGO focusing on the conservation of the newly created national park. Thanks to these initiatives, the size of the reserve increased from 886 to 1 484 hectares the number of chimpanzees grew from 13 to 30, the 600 hectares added to the core forest are naturally regenerating and chimpanzees started using this area over the last two decades

Professor Beth Kaplin, the Director of the Center of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resources Management of the University of Rwanda told IPS that there is a need to commit to really listening to the people who live next to this park and interact with it daily and develop strategies collaboratively to solve emerging problems.

“We need to take time to find out what kinds of activities communities want, need and could commit to and steward in a sustainable way (…) to come up with durable actions that address biodiversity conservation and climate change issues,” she said.

Gishwati Forest, a protected reserve in the north-western part of Rwanda, covers an area of about 1439 hectares and Mukura forest, with a total surface of 1987 hectares, has critical populations of endemic and endangered species such as golden monkeys, blue monkeys, and chimpanzees and over 130 different types of birds.

The reserve also boasts about 60 species of trees, including indigenous hardwoods and bamboo, according to Rwanda Development Board, a government agency responsible for Tourism and Conservation.

The Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA) estimates the forest reserves initially covered 250 000 hectares, but illegal mining, animal grazing, tree cutting, and other practices drastically reduced its size.

In 2014, Rwanda received $9.5 million from the Global Environment Facility through the World Bank to restore the forest and biodiversity in the Gishwati-Mukura forest.

The primary purpose of this funding was to support community-based activities. These included farm stays, handicrafts, beekeeping, and tourism activities such as tea plantation tours and the chance to learn from traditional healers, who use natural plants to support modern medicine and synthesised drugs.

The collective efforts of villagers, environmental, indigenous NGOs and local administrative entities to train and mobilise villagers on the importance of conserving the forest in this part of the Congo River Basin, which covers 33 percent of Rwanda, has been praised.

“These efforts have changed people’s mindsets and in turn save this natural forest from extinction,” said Jean Bosco Hakizimana, a senior local administrative leader in Arusha, a small forest village from Nyabihu, a mountainous district in North-Western Rwanda.

Delphine Uwajeneza, the deputy head of the African Initiative for Mankind Progress Organization, told IPS that the key to achieving the current natural forest conservation efforts would be to include indigenous people in decision-making and management of ecosystems. Her NGO advocates for the protection and promotion of the rights, welfare, and development of the historically marginalised people in Rwanda.

“Current conservation efforts will not allow rainforests to persist if they are completely closed off from use or other benefits by these communities … they are the first to preserve the environment,” Uwajeneza told IPS in an interview.

While the Rwandan Government and stakeholders are satisfied with current conservation efforts, some scientists and activists shake their heads in dismay and say it is not enough. They are adamant the communities living around those natural reserves need to benefit.

Dr Charles Karangwa, Head of the Regional Forests and Landscapes Programme for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Eastern and Southern Africa Region, told IPS the most important is to balance the need of these communities trying to make a living and trying to maintain and sustain their forests.

“Development actors need to engage these vulnerable communities in a win-win situation,” he said.

In 2011, Rwanda joined “The Bonn Challenge”, a global effort to bring 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2020. Rwanda has reached its 30% forest cover target, according to officials.

However, despite the good policy framework and efforts towards achieving this goal, experts stress the need for identifying ways that communities can benefit from the resources of the forest in sustainable ways.

“People who work here (in the traditional ceramic industry) earn their livelihood without entirely depending on forest resources,” says 55-year-old Giselle Uwimanaas as she chats with neighbours in the village a stone’s throw from a nearby rainforest reserve of Mukura in Rutsiro, Western Rwanda.

 

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A farmer works in a rice field in Bagré, Burkina Faso. Credit: FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

By Hugh Welsh
NEW JERSEY, USA, Sep 30 2021 (IPS)

In the days following the UN Food Systems Summit I have read a number or articles questioning whether there is a role for the private sector in transforming global food systems into something healthier, more sustainable and more equitable. Frankly, I don’t see how food systems transformation is possible without meaningful participation of the private sector.

The theme of each of these articles is that the ‘private sector created the food systems challenges and consequently has no role in discussing and executing potential solutions’.

In a world that is becoming more divisive every day, this type of exclusionary sentiment will not lead to the collaboration and cooperation we so desperately need if we are to collectively work towards results – not rhetoric.

The United Nations has projected that the world’s population is expected to swell to 9.8 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. According to The World Health Organization in 2020, it was estimated that a staggering 811 million people or approximately a tenth of the global population were undernourished.

Our existing food system is already under tremendous pressure and showing signs of distress from the effects of climate change on agricultural production and environmental degradation of the land and oceans. A new approach to providing healthy nutrition and tackling climate change is urgently needed.

So, what does food system transformation look like?

One such example is Africa Improved Foods (‘AIF’), a company that is a unique partnership between DSM* and quasi-public sector partners. In collaboration with the Government of Rwanda, AIF has become a trusted Africa-based producer of high-quality fortified porridge to address childhood stunting in Rwanda, have an African source of nutritious food for the WFP, and a product sold commercially in regional retail outlets.

The Kigali based operation provides good jobs, and sources key raw materials such as maize and soy from regional small holder farmers, the majority of which are women owned enterprises. Overall, AIF sources materials from over 130,000 farmers in Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi, DRC and Kenya. In Rwanda alone, AIF sources directly from 45,000 farmers.

This is not philanthropy, to be sustainable operations like AIF must be profitable. To be transformative, operations like AIF must focus on creating local jobs, helping local farmers, and producing high quality nutritious food for the local community. To be impactful, innovation like AIF must be scalable – and the AIF model is replicable throughout the world with the right public and private partners supporting.

This model offers a potential solution to the tragedy of malnutrition and food insecurity. It also, importantly, spurs local economic growth and social stability through the creation of a manufacturing base and jobs, improves the lives of small holder farmers by creating a predictable market for their crops and encourages the use of practices to address issues like aflatoxin. It also offers communities and aid organizations alike an opportunity to source from Africa for Africa, perpetuating a virtuous cycle of healthy development.

We also recognize the connection between climate change and nutrition, and the need to address both. While continuing to work on more sustainable and nutritious plant-based proteins, we recognize that demand for animal protein will only continue to grow as the global population grows and grows wealthier.

Extensive research has indicated that we will need to double production of animal protein to meet the anticipated demand, however, herein lies yet another challenge – according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, cattle are responsible for 65% of the livestock sector’s greenhouse emissions globally.

Methane is a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas with a warming effect 28 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. Ruminants, such as cattle, cows and sheep emit methane gases contributing to climate change. We need to make the production of animal protein more sustainable and a key will be private sector innovation.

One example is DSM’s Bovaer® feed additive which can reduce methane emissions from ruminants by up to 80%. This safe and effective feed additive can lead to the immediate reduction of enteric methane emissions at a time when we need meaningful, scalable and affordable solutions to the climate emergency NOW.

These are two simple examples of private sector contributions to food systems transformation. DSM has committed to reaching 800 million suffering from micronutrient deficiency, reaching 150 million people with plant-based proteins, helping 500 million improve their immunity through nutrition, reducing livestock emissions by double digits, and helping at least 500,000 small holder farmers enjoy a sustainable livelihood – all by 2030.

These are our Food System Commitments and we look forward to working with all stakeholders to achieve them. We ask the critics of the private sector– we hear what you say but what are you committed to do?

Hugh Welsh is President and General Counsel of DSM North America. DSM is no longer an acronym – it’s a stand alone.

 

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By External Source
Sep 29 2021 (IPS-Partners)

More than 2,000 young leaders and youth-led organisations from across the Commonwealth are urging governments to respect the needs and contributions of the world’s most vulnerable groups, in the lead up to global climate talks in Glasgow in November.

The Commonwealth Youth Statement on Climate Change, released today, appeals to governments to include youth, women, the elderly and people with disabilities in decision-making on climate change-related policies.

Noting that 1.5 billion people in the Commonwealth are under the age of 30, young people call on leaders to ensure additional, predictable finance for youth-led climate action, as well as adequate social protections for vulnerable groups to cope with the climate crisis.

“We demand an end to climate inaction. Our generation will have to deal with more frequent and severe climate impacts than ever, making us one of the groups most vulnerable to its impacts,” said the statement.

Seven key recommendations are put forward to feed into global discussions at the Youth4Climate Summit this week in Milan from 28 to 30 September.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland welcomed the proposals, saying: “Young people are the true heroes in the fight against climate change. They have demonstrated a tremendous capacity to grasp the reality of the climate crisis and mobilise crucial support for climate action across groups, sectors and nations.

“Without the contributions and innovations of young people from all Commonwealth regions, the world would not have achieved the progress it has today on climate action. We need them at the table so that their voices can be heard as discussions continue on the development of effective climate policies and strategies.”

Pan-Commonwealth coordinator of the Commonwealth Youth Climate Change Network (CYCN), Leneka Rhoden said: “Never in history have young people been empowered with the social and technological tools to effect change, as we are today. We are equipped with the platform to launch projects that can help to secure our environment, our people, and our future.

“The CYCN is proud to support the efforts of Youth4Climate as we prepare for COP26 by uniting youth to tackle climate change. Collectively, our voices and actions are amplified to achieve the equitable, sustainable and resilient future we seek.”

Commonwealth youth also propose capacity-building programmes to enhance youth-led ‘green’ and ‘blue’ enterprises, focusing on climate and ocean action, particularly in post-pandemic recovery efforts.

Highlighting the economic opportunities the ‘blue economy’ and renewable energy sector can offer local communities and youth, the statement calls for further commitments to ocean protection and an inclusive and equitable transition to clean energy.