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Combines harvesting durum wheat in Enchant, Alberta, Canada. GPS-programmed, they are already driverless except for going around corners, August 2021. Credit: Trevor Page

By Marwa Awad
OTTAWA, Canada, Sep 23 2021 (IPS)

Current food systems are no longer fit for the 21st century. Inequitable distribution, poor nutritional habits, and climate change are three issues breaking down our global food systems today, forcing us to look for solutions to transform them. Food aid – very much part of our global food systems – needs to be responsive to the challenges that lie ahead.

The World Bank estimates that the global food system is worth roughly $8 trillion – about one tenth of the entire world economy, yet this expensive system fails to provide proper nutrition and enough food. According to the World Food Programme, the problem lies in poor distribution of nutritious food. Although there is enough food in the world to feed every single person, close to one billion go to bed hungry each night, while 2 billion people are overweight.

“What we have today is a food system that doesn’t provide everyone with the nutrition they need. Yet it wreaks havoc on the environment and consequently is a huge contributor to today’s climate crisis,” said WFP’s Deputy Executive Director, Amir Abdulla.

According to FAO, in 2017, farming alone accounted for 68 per cent of rural income in Africa, and about half of rural income in South Asia. With the climate crisis already on us and Covid-19 pandemic disrupting all human activity across all sectors, transforming global food systems is paramount to withstanding these shocks.

Mal/nutrition

The diet culture and weight-loss industry are booming in many parts of the world. As much as this reflects the concentration of the global food supply in the hands of rich economies, it also points to the lack of nutritional quality and diversity in what people choose to eat.

According to the 2020 Global Nutrition Report, one in every nine people globally is either hungry or undernourished while one in every three people globally are either overweight or obese. In fact, overweight and obesity are increasing rapidly in nearly every country in the world, with no signs of slowing, the report says.

Meanwhile, almost a quarter of all children under 5 years of age are stunted. The disparities between the haves and the have nots are striking. While wealthier countries suffer from obesity and overweight rates five times higher than in poorer countries, underweight can be ten times higher than in the poorest countries than richer ones.

Collecting her WFP ration from an NGO centre in Bangladesh. Vulnerable group feeding, with development aspects progressively added, has provided a safety net for millions of poor, malnourished Bangladeshis for decades. Credit: Trevor Page

Reforming food and health systems globally is urgently needed to address inequalities in distributions by making healthy, nutritious foods the most affordable option for all.

The economic argument for this reform is compelling. The 2020 Global Nutrition Report states: “Malnutrition costs the world billions of dollars a year in lost opportunities for economic growth.” Ensuring equitable access will allow more than 800 million people to enter the labour market and support the economic development of their countries and around the world.

“We have to be able to continue levels of production, probably change what we are producing, where we are producing it and how we are producing it, and then find a set of systems that allow equitable distribution so that people have access to the nutritious food that they need,” said Abdulla.

The World Food Programme, the largest humanitarian organization in the world, understands fragile, broken, or distorted food systems, because it’s the core of the organization’s work. With an unparalleled six decades of experience repairing, sustaining, and improving food systems for the world’s most vulnerable and isolated communities, WFP is the best positioned food assistance agency with the knowledge and expertise to work with stakeholders to turn things around.

For food systems to work and provide answers to the challenges of the 21st century, they must be designed at the core to allow for equitable food distribution, which is not an easy task, says Abdulla: “This has potential social undertones which would worry some people, but you need to have series of mechanisms that permit equitable distribution.”

Food Aid and nourishing our world

If we already produce more than we need but we are not necessarily producing the right food in the right place, then how can we obtain food security in the interim while working on the vital paradigm shift. Increasing income, so that everyone at the household level can buy enough food to keep themselves fit and healthy is the key to food security.

At the national level, countries must either be able to produce all the food that their citizens need or buy it from those countries that produce a surplus. Until that happens, food assistance programmes in food insecure areas will remain a necessity.

Meanwhile, our capacity to feed ourselves has made immense progress over the past 50 years, yet viewed globally our food systems are inequitable, undermine public health, and have an enormous impact on our natural environment.

WFP estimates that the number of acutely food insecure people has increased by 80% – from 149 million pre-COVID, to more than 270 million today. The pandemic is placing significant stress on food systems, especially in lower-and-middle income countries, and fragile states where food systems are already flawed or disrupted.

In 2020, WFP reached 115.5 million vulnerable and food insecure people in 84 countries, delivering food and other assistance through a fleet of 30 ships, 100 planes and more than 5,000 trucks. Besides providing immediate relief, WFP has been paving the way for more equitable food systems through protecting the livelihoods of smallholder farmers around the world by helping them increase their agricultural productivity and reduce post-harvest losses, increase their access to agricultural inputs, assets, services, and markets while simultaneously improving their resilience to climate and other shocks.

WFP emergency relief supplies for the survivors of the massive 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami arriving at small ports on Indonesia’s Aceh coast. Credit: Trevor Page

As for food supply chains and markets, WFP utilizes its supply chain and procurement expertise to support governments and private sector stakeholders to strengthen markets, facilitate the movement of food and its availability. In the second half of 2020, WFP purchased over 550,000 MT of food from local food systems, that is over USD 268 million injected into those food systems. The volume of food purchased represents an increase of 33% when compared with the same period of 2019.

The world will not attain the goal of Zero Hunger by 2030, as the leaders of nation states and multilateral organizations have reluctantly accepted. Zero Hunger, along with the other SDGs that will not be attained by 2030 are all interconnected. While the SDGs must remain our goals, we need to find better ways of attaining them. Food is the most basic of our needs. Hopefully, we are on the verge of changing the existing food systems, so that progressively, fewer of us around the world will go to bed hungry.

Marwa Awad, a resident of Ottawa, Canada, works for the World Food Programme. She is the co-host of The WFP PEOPLE Show.

 

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By Agnes Kalibata
NEW YORK, Sep 23 2021 (IPS)

With the world still counting the social and economic costs of the Covid-19 pandemic, amid a fresh “code red” on the climate crisis, food may not seem like the most pressing threat to humanity.

Yet transforming entire food systems around the world offers the solution to the $12 trillion challenge many have not yet realised we are facing.

The existential threats that appear to be looming on the horizon are in fact already silently costing the world in poor health, environmental losses and stifled economic growth, a toll that could reach $16 trillion by 2050.

Rethinking the whole food systems value chain from the way food is produced to how it is marketed and sold, and how waste is processed, has the potential not only to save these hidden costs but to safeguard the very sustainability of people and planet.

The caveat is that this transformation at every point in the process, from sowing and harvesting to cooking and composting, will not be easy or straightforward. Choices made at the farm and business level to the technologies we advance in science and policies we make in governance come with trade-offs and risks.

But the rewards on offer – on every front and for every country worldwide – go beyond dollar figures to tangible improvements for lives, livelihoods and the natural world.

To start with, improving the productivity and efficiency of food systems can support a strong and equitable economic recovery from the pandemic, and lay the foundations for a more prosperous future.

In low-income countries, for example, the biggest losses currently come just after harvest, when farmers struggle to extend the shelf life of their crops and produce long enough to reach market for a lack refrigeration or appropriate storage.

Meanwhile, in high-income countries, food is more often wasted by consumers who buy more than they need.

Reducing these losses would cost an estimated $30 billion, according to the Food and Land Use Coalition, but the potential return could be as much as $455 billion in savings and new opportunities. It could also reduce eight per cent from current global emission levels.

Investments into stronger local value chains, allowing farmers to get more food to market and consumers to buy only what they need, can help improve livelihoods for those in agricultural sectors while also improving access to nutritious food, reducing the hidden cost of diet-related illnesses and educating consumers on the environmental cost of their choices.

Such efforts were among the outcomes of the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit at the end of July, when Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, announced a common position for Africa ahead of the Summit. At the heart of this shared agenda was a commitment to bolster local markets and supply chains and increase agricultural financing to 10 per cent of public expenditure.

Transforming food systems from production to consumption and disposal can also support the “Net-Zero” goals adopted by a growing number of countries.

With food systems collectively contributing around a third of emissions, wholesale nature-positive changes can help countries meet their Paris Agreement targets and reduce biodiversity loss.

And there are opportunities to invest in more sustainable food systems across the board, from innovations that reduce emissions associated with livestock through better health and nutrition, to using clean energy in food processing, transporting and packaging, which accounts for more than 20 per cent of food system emissions.

These solutions will be promoted by countries and partners leading global initiatives and coalitions that cut across the interconnected challenges of climate change and hunger to increase both resilience and sustainability.

Finally, investing in healthier and functional food systems would also unlock better public health, saving the global cost and burden of hunger, malnutrition and illnesses linked to poor diets, such as diabetes.

This starts with developing food systems that prioritise food safety and hygiene, including reducing the spread of foodborne illness, which alone costs low and middle-income countries an estimated $110 billion a year in lost productivity and medical expenses.

Such a shift would require investments on the supply side, to scale-up and incentivise production of adequate, accessible and healthy food, and investments into educating consumers to make better informed dietary choices.

The prize of successfully transforming global food systems is not just the $12 trillion saving in hidden costs, but the very survival of the world as we know it.

To date, the UN Food Systems Summit has generated dozens of game-changing initiatives to help countries realise the full potential of functional and sustainable food systems, and we have already seen almost 70 countries incorporate them into national pathways that address their unique circumstances and challenges with many more to come at the Summit.

We are fast approaching the crucial moment for more governments and their publics to throw their weight behind these solutions and commit to flagship initiatives that will bring to bear the promise of a healthier, inclusive and resilient future. We cannot afford to get this wrong.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit

Climate finance can be channeled to sustainable agriculture at large through small-scale investments. Finance can help profitable businesses that promote biodiversity and conservation, improve productivity, nutrition, and resilience, while also benefiting farmers and their communities. Credit: Priscilla Negreiros/CPI - Climate Policy Initiative

By Barbara Buchner
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Sep 22 2021 (IPS)

September 23, 2021 is the first-ever UN Food Systems Summit, convened to mobilize the highest-priority transformations needed to end hunger through the sustainable production and distribution of food. Transforming food systems to ensure food security for all has never been so urgent.

Ongoing waves of Covid-19 and extreme weather events have exposed and multiplied the vulnerability of food systems across the globe, increasing food prices and food insecurity in every country, but especially in countries least equipped to handle multiple, ongoing crises. One-in-four people globally – 1.9 billion – are moderately or severely food insecure. A statistic that is sadly, and unnecessarily, increasing. And by 2050 the world will need to feed an estimated 9.7 billion people, all while protecting natural resources and biodiversity.

Ending hunger by 2030 is a core challenge set by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but food system transformation is not always high on the list of public funders and private investors. We need to rethink this priority because the potential benefits—economic, social and environmental—are huge. Agriculture, while both a contributor to and a victim of climate change, must and can be part of the solution. Improved climate action in food systems can deliver 20 percent of the global total emissions reductions needed to meet the Paris Agreement targets by 2050, along with other sustainability and resilience benefits.

How does this translate in practical terms?

Barbara Buchner

This can range, for example, from increasing the efficiency of energy-consuming agricultural practices, reducing methane emissions, and using more renewable energy. Regenerative agriculture practices such as cover crops, tillage reduction, and improved grazing remove carbon from the atmosphere and put it back in the soil. Adaptation can mean converting to crops that are less resource intensive and more resilient. We must also support programs that reduce food waste and improve sustainability across the value chain, including changing consumer diet and purchasing patterns.

Climate finance can provide the means to accelerate this critical process, but the slow pace of climate finance is particularly true in the agricultural sector. Cumulative climate finance for agriculture, forestry, and land use represents only 3% of the total tracked global climate finance. This is a crisis, and a missed opportunity, but there are numerous next steps we can take to address these issues.

Use public finance wisely. Governments must make more effective use of public resources and policies targeting capacity building for climate-related finance and incentivizing conservation efforts, rather than on agriculture subsidies that support unsustainable crops and practices.

Channel climate finance to sustainable agriculture at large. We must enhance collaboration between the public and private sectors to mitigate the risk associated with investments in the agricultural sector. Blended finance mechanisms, including guarantees and first-loss tranches, can improve the risk-return profile of small-scale agriculture investments.

Invest with integrity. International and domestic climate flows should stimulate the transition of agri-businesses and its finance service providers towards low emission supply chains. Public, development, and private sectors must work together to further enhance their reporting of climate finance for sustainable foods systems under a common definition and set methodology.

By focusing on these priorities, we can finance profitable businesses that promote biodiversity and conservation, improve productivity, nutrition, and resilience, while also benefiting farmers and their communities.

The UN Food Systems Summit is a great opportunity to harness science, finance, and collaboration to make significant progress towards our 2030 food security goals.

Dr Barbara Buchner is an Austrian economist, with a doctorate in economics from the University of Graz. She specializes in climate finance, and is Global Managing Director of Climate Policy Initiative

 

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The Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley and Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern. Credit: Pictures in montage ©United Nations

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Sep 22 2021 (IPS)

On September 20, Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina accepted an award from the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network for her country’s ‘striking’ progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

That progress includes an adult literacy rate that jumped from 21 percent in 1981 to 75 percent in 2019 and a spike in access to electricity from 14 percent in 1991 to 92 percent today. The country has also drastically reduced the childhood mortality rate. Fifty years ago, 225 of every 1,000 children died before the age of five. By 2019, that figure was down to 31.

“Even though we are in the midst of a big crisis globally everywhere, we still want to celebrate Bangladesh’s achievements. When we analyze, as the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network does each year, countries’ progress toward the SDGs, Bangladesh came first in the world in most progress between 2015 and 2020,” said Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and Network President.

Sheikh Hasina has led Bangladesh for most of the award period. The four-time Prime Minister (1996-2001, 2009-2013, 2014-2018, 2018 to present) was honored for her commitment to sweeping education, healthcare, and social reform and her tireless focus on gender equity.

She credited her success with SDG progress to a vow to ‘leave no one behind.’

And it is that drive, along with her firm, decisive and science-driven approach to issues of sustainable development that has marked her leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Known as dynamic and visionary, Prime Minister Hasina is among women leaders whose stewardship of their countries during COVID-19 has been instructive and inspiring for the world.

Her administration issued a strict ‘no mask, no service’ policy in 2020. An early intervention saw students transitioning to online learning. They returned to the classroom last week, after 18 months. The government disbursed 26 stimulus packages totaling $14.6 billion to keep the economy afloat and expanded its social safety net programs to include 11 million people, most of them women and children.

Bangladesh has rolled out a massive, free vaccination campaign.

In June, Hasina told the country’s parliament that it aims to have 80 percent of the population vaccinated and promised to procure the vaccines ‘no matter how much’ it costs.

To date, just over 11 percent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated.

This year, the leader who usually uses her time at the United Nations General Assembly to advocate for climate financing and gender equity is adding vaccine equity to her mission.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has upset the world. It has taken countless lives and upset livelihoods. Millions of people worldwide have been reduced to poverty and hunger. Education is facing huge disruptions, especially of children,” she said.

“We want vaccines for everyone everywhere. There are many poor countries that cannot buy vaccines. Vaccines should be made available to them. Developed and rich countries can come forward.”

One day after Prime Minister Hasina addressed the 9th Annual International Conference on Sustainable Development, a fellow revered female leader, the Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley, made her case for support for vulnerable states.

Prime Minister Mottley has been hailed across the Caribbean and internationally as a well-spoken, forthright, and no-nonsense leader, providing the decisive leadership needed in a pandemic.

She is the first woman to lead the Caribbean country, and like Hasina, Mottley carries the weight of steering a climate-vulnerable country through a protracted crisis.

The worst pandemic in over 100 years has dealt a blow to her country’s, economy with a 17 percent decline in GDP in the last year. In April this year, a volcanic eruption on nearby St. Vincent doused Barbados in ash. It was the worst ash fall in over a century. Then in July, Elsa became the first hurricane to hit Barbados in 66 years.

Through it all, Mottley, the Caribbean’s only female Prime Minister, has remained resolute in steering her country through its multiple crises. Caribbean nationals regularly tune in to her national addresses – talks to her people that are tough when necessary, interspersed with light-hearted moments, but always clear and consistent messaging that has led many to refer to her as Prime Minister of the Caribbean.’

“You really inspire us. Your leadership is absolutely wonderful, and the power of your vision is just what we need,” Professor Sachs told the Barbados leader.

Mottley’s goal now is to ramp up vaccination numbers. According to the Barbados Government Information Service, about 36 percent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated, with the country recording just under 6,500 vaccinations weekly.

Mottley is aiming for 10,000 vaccinations a week,

“If we can do that, and we can maintain that each week for the next five weeks, then we will have the majority of those persons fully vaccinated before the end of November… We may, as a country, consider then the options of significant review and removal of restrictions that we have in place,” she said this week.

On a different island, this time in the South Pacific, another popular female leader assured her country that 90 percent vaccination coverage or higher would bring significant ease in restrictions.

“High vaccination raters will undoubtedly be a game-changer for New Zealand, but the key there is high,” said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Ardern’s administration has launched an ‘elimination’ strategy for COVID-19. According to the country’s health ministry, it is a targeted means of ‘finding the virus and stamping it out. It is hinged on vaccination as protection.

The leader, now in her second term in office, was a popular figure pre-COVID – a young mother, the country’s youngest female Prime Minister who gained international admiration for her poise, empathy, and stoic leadership through crises such as the March 2019 terror attacks and a volcanic eruption nine months later.

During the pandemic, Arden again grabbed global attention for stewardship in crisis.

A former communications major, her regular press appearances show a world leader taking clear, tough decisions based on science, justice and equity.

Like Prime Ministers Hasina and Mottley, Arden is exhibiting the best of female leadership even in the worst of times.

She continues to take early action against potential COVID-19 case surges – even when her decisions raise eyebrows. In August, New Zealand dominated international headlines when Ardern announced a swift, national lockdown over a single case of the Delta virus.

This week, she said that decision saved her country from a potential explosion in cases.

“With Delta, we knew we couldn’t take chances, and the immediate move to Level Four, initially to understand the breadth of the outbreak and then to get it under control, was the right move and has worked,” she told a September 19 post-cabinet press briefing.

“Modelers tell us that, had we waited just one more week to act, we would be sitting at around 5,000 cases by now,” she said.

According to UN Women, women are heads of state and government in only 21 countries, but they continue to be applauded for their more efficient management of the COVID-19 health crisis.

“They are being recognized for the rapidity of the response they are leading, which has not only included measures to ‘flatten the curve’––such as confinement measures, social distancing, and widespread testing––but also the transparent and compassionate communication of fact-based public health information.”

The leaders face their fair share of challenges.

Prime Minister Hasina has stated that COVID-19 is threatening her country’s ambitious plans to further accelerate health, education, and climate initiative, on the journey of successfully achieving the SDGs. Prime Minister Mottley is leading a small island state in a stubbornly vaccine-hesitant region, and Prime Minister Arden’s lockdown and elimination strategies have earned her some caustic criticism.

What the three have shown, however, is that women leaders have the resolve and strength to make hard decisions – along with the compassion, sensitivity, and empathy to help their countries survive the toughest of times.

 

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Leaders from BRICS nations participate in the 13th annual summit despite diplomatic tensions within the group (image: Alamy)

By Flávia Milhorance
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 22 2021 (IPS)

Amid scepticism and a lack of public interest, domestic crises and the backdrop of Covid-19, last week the BRICS countries delivered on their commitment to hold an annual summit without showing the signs of disunity that has beset the group in recent years.

So what still holds the bloc of so-called emerging nations together?

In a virtual event, the heads of state of host country India, Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa renewed the group’s pledge of cooperation for the thirteenth time, in an event that passed without incident, unlike the barbs of last year. It also failed to attract much public interest.

Internet searches for BRICS-related news during the summit fell to one of their lowest points levels in the group’s history, according to Google Trends. Online searches usually peak in popularity during the event but have rarely sparked as much interest as the 2014 summit, when the bloc launched the New Development Bank (NDB).

Today, not even one of the BRICS’ most enthusiastic supporters, the economist Jim O'Neill, who coined the group’s acronym two decades ago, seems impressed with the latest developments

Scepticism towards the progress of the bloc pervades. It launched in 2009 with industrialised nations in the grip of the financial crisis with great – perhaps too great – expectations over its potential to redefine global governance. Today, not even one of the BRICS’ most enthusiastic supporters, the economist Jim O’Neill, who coined the group’s acronym two decades ago, seems impressed with the latest developments.

“The bloc’s ongoing failure to develop substantive policies through its annual summitry has become increasingly glaring,” O’Neill wrote after the event.

 

BRICS’ first decade of success

O’Neill’s frustration derives from what he recalls the “roaring success” of the four founding BRICS nations first decade. South Africa joined the group in 2010.

In 2009, Russia hosted the first summit, seeking a more active voice on global economic affairs in response to the devastating financial crisis.

In its early years, “countries pushed for reforms of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and offered an alternative to the international financial order by creating the NDB,” said Karin Costa Vazquez, of the Center for BRICS Studies at Fudan University.

At that time, and excluding Russia, countries formed the BASIC group, offering an alternative voice in international climate negotiations after the “failure of developed countries to define a climate agenda” and the collapse [of COP15] in Copenhagen”, said Izabella Teixeira, who was Brazil’s environment minister from 2010 to 2016.

“The BRICS were an environment of important political dialogue,” Teixeira told Diálogo Chino. “It was a super interesting moment of confidence building. There was an informality in the conversation among the ministers.” The group’s diplomatic role, Teixeira added, “was absolutely important” in the negotiations that would later culminate in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

From then on, however, experts chart the emptying of the BRICS as a group, as economic and political crises burdened member countries. It witnessed recession in Russia, South Africa and Brazil, tensions between China and India and the belligerent anti-China rhetoric of Jair Bolsonaro, who became president in 2018 and began to deconstruct environmental policies and isolate himself diplomatically.

“The country has gone against the world,” Teixeira said.

 

BRICS retains relevance

Although the heyday may be behind it, BRICS is still relevant today, according to Costa Vazquez. “The BRICS is the only space that the largest emerging economies in the world have to coordinate positions and propose initiatives of common interest to the five members. This is no small thing when we are talking about more than 30% of world GDP,” she said.

Vazquez argues that in order to keep functioning, the multilateralism of the bloc has given way to more bilateral agreements. As such, it is more flexible, limiting cooperation when interests diverge and resuming and expanding it when they converge.

Since BRICS doesn’t function as an economic bloc, it does not have a formal statute of rules that dictate its behaviour. The cost of membership is low, and the diplomatic benefits are still significant, according to Oliver Stuenkel, from the Getulio Vargas Foundation.

Stronger diplomatic relations can also reflect booming bilateral trade. For example, trade between Brazil and China should hit a new record in 2021. Last year, bilateral trade topped US$100 billion for the first time and as of last month, it had already surpassed US$93 billion.

Unsurprisingly, Bolsonaro adopted a milder tone on China at the recent BRICS summit. Meanwhile, China’s President Xi Jinping said that, regardless of the difficulties, the BRICS will maintain solid and constant cooperation.

 

NDB offers hope

Despite few new articulations on historic areas of cooperation such as climate, the main product of the BRICS, the NDB, is gaining momentum. Paulo Nogueira Batista Júnior, and economist who was vice-president of the bank between 2015 and 2017, criticised the slowness of the NDB to produce results and fulfil its aspirations of becoming a global development bank.

Today, however, Batista Junior sees advances. “In the last two years, the bank seems to have moved a little more and achieved some results,” he said. “For example, it has approved projects, including support programs to combat Covid-19, continues to hire employees, built its headquarters, developed technically and opened the process of inaugurating new members.”

In early September, the NDB announced the addition of Uruguay, the United Arab Emirates and Bangladesh to its membership. In its six years of operation, the bank has approved some 80 projects, with investments totalling US$30 billion. The bank has also made US$10 billion available to BRICS member countries to combat Covid-19.

“The bank is already part of the landscape,” said Batista Junior. Can the same still be said of the BRICS bloc?

This article was originally published by ChinaDialogue

Processed, canned food lines the shelves at a Canadian supermarket. Credit: Trevor Page

By Trevor Page
LETHBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 22 2021 (IPS)

Food processing extends shelf-life and can transforms raw food into attractive, marketable products. It can also prevent contamination. The transformation can involve numerous physical and chemical processes such as mincing, cooking, canning, liquefaction, pickling, macerating, emulsification, irradiation and lyophilization. Frozen processed and raw food changes transport and storage requirements radically; while the packaging of food, both raw and processed, is an industry unto itself.

Adulteration is a serious problem, particularly in developing countries where regulatory bodies are weak. Food is considered adulterated when a substance is added that degrades its quality or turns it hazardous. That could be changing its colour to make it look better, or adding chemical preservatives. Adding sand particles, pebbles and other extraneous matter to grain and pulses to make up weight is also considered adulteration. So is mixing water with milk and oil with chemical derivatives or cheaper oils.

Many countries in the global South would benefit from assistance to help develop their food safety regulations as well as inspection measures and enforcement. Many of the food processing industries are small scale, cottage in size, and often start in backyards or dingy premises. They are reluctant to engage food technologists because that involves extra cost and they tend to be skeptical of regulating institutions.

Codex Alimentarius was established in the early 1960s by FAO and WHO. It is a collection of internationally recognized standards, codes of practice and guidelines relating to food and its production, labeling and safety. Although 189 countries were members of the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 2021, the body does not have regulatory authority. As with many UN endeavours and standards, Codex Alimentarius is a reference guide, not an enforceable standard on its own. Several countries, however, have adopted it as part of their own regulations. More need to do so. But not all are happy with Codex Alimentarius. Some respected critics, including Vandana Shiva, claim its codified policies are simply designed to serve the interests global agribusiness and undermine the rights of farmers and consumers.

CONSUMPTION

We eat when we’re hungry. Food is the fuel that gives us energy and keeps us fit and healthy. (Sadly, almost 1 billion of us don’t get enough food to eat and need food aid. Commentary on that will be in the next article in this series.)

Fast food, the diet of increasing numbers around the world. Credit: Trevor Page

Globally, food consumption has been rising for over 50 years. Richer countries consume most calories, but encouragingly, the biggest increase in calorie intake has been in low income countries. The two main reasons for increasing food consumption are economic development and our growing population. As people become wealthier, they can afford to eat more food. People in Belgium and the USA consume around 3800 calories a day, whereas those in Ethiopia and Haiti survive on around 2000 calories a day. A high level of food wastage occurs in rich countries because people buy more food than they need. Fast food and food advertising also increase food consumption in rich countries. As the global population continues to grow, there are more mouths to feed. By 2050, the UN expects the global population to be around 10 billion.

SUPPLY CHAIN

A food supply chain is the process between production on farms and our dining table. The food we eat reaches us in domino-like fashion from producer to consumer, while the money consumers pay for food goes to those who work at various stages along the chain in the reverse direction. When one part of the supply chain is affected, the whole chain is affected and can collapse like dominos. Covid-19 has disrupted supply chains around the world, both in terms of food availability and price. Extreme and erratic weather, as a result of climate change, will pose a major threat to food supply chains in future.

Supply chain. Container ship at Valparaiso, Chile. Credit Trevor Page

LOSS AND WASTE

Around one-third of all food produced globally for human consumption is lost or wasted. According to FAO, this amounts to about 1.3 billion metric tons per year. In addition to pre-harvest losses, 14% of all food produced is lost between harvest and retail and significant quantities are also wasted in retail and at the consumption level. In the case of fruit and vegetables, over 20% is estimated to be lost every year. The water used to grow the food that is lost represents 6% of total water withdrawals. According to the World Bank, without urgent action, global waste will increase by 70% on current levels by 2050. The East Asia and the Pacific region is responsible for generating close to a quarter of all waste. And by 2050, waste generation in Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to more than triple, while in South Asia waste will more than double. Plastics, say the World Bank, are especially problematic. “If not collected and managed properly, they will contaminate and affect waterways and ecosystems for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.”

Clearly, there’s a lot to be done to make this part of our food system more efficient and less harmful to human health, as well as to reducing loss and waste.

Trevor Page, resident in Lethbridge, Canada, is a former Emergencies Director of the World Food Programme. He also served with the UN Food & Agriculture Organization, FAO, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR and what is now the UN Department of Political and Peace Building Affairs.

 

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Food security experts have raised an alarm that with as many as 811 million people the world over or 10 percent of the global population going hungry, the world is off-track to ending hunger and malnutrition. More so, after a decade of steadily declining, the number of malnourished people grew by 161 million from 2019 […]

“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.

By Mandeep Tiwana
NEW YORK, Sep 22 2021 (IPS)

When the UN Charter was being drafted in the closing days of the Second World War in 1945, a debate ensued on what its opening words should be. Jan Smuts, representative of colonial South Africa, had originally suggested that the UN Charter begin with the words, ‘The High Contracting Parties.’

This would have clearly placed the very the people the UN was set up to serve out of the picture. Ultimately, an elegant and notably democratic solution was arrived at, to begin the UN Charter with the words, ‘We the Peoples of the United Nations’. The UN has never wavered from this aspiration in principle despite the political ebbs and flows.

In practice, however, it’s arguably another matter.

Although, people around the world generally hold positive opinions about the UN, its ability to respond to global crises remains constrained by state-centric bureaucratic impulses and the assertion of narrow interests by powerful countries.

This has worked to the detriment of people who seek the assistance of the international community to alleviate their suffering, including recently in Burundi, Libya, Myanmar, Palestine, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen and elsewhere.

The UN’s refugee agency estimates that there are at least 82.4 million forcibly displaced persons globally. Concerned citizens and civil society organisations have long argued that they need to have a greater stake in the UN’s functioning to enable it to better respond to violent conflict and human-induced disasters.

In 2020, the imperative to make the UN more inclusive in its engagement with relevant stakeholders was recognised in a rare show of unity by the UN General Assembly through the landmark Declaration to commemorate the UN’s 75th anniversary.

All heads of state and government affirmed that contemporary challenges require cooperation not only across borders but across the whole of society. They committed to upgrading the UN and tasked the UN’s Secretary-General to produce a report on how to respond to current and future challenges.

This 10 September, following extensive global consultations, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres did just that, releasing the much-awaited Our Common Agenda report, with substantial hope riding on it.

For thousands of civil society activists and organisations in all corners of the globe who dedicated significant time and effort in providing inputs, Our Common Agenda offers a critical pathway for increasing participation in the UN, with the aim of enhancing its effectiveness and getting it closer to its founding values.

Notably, the report emphasises the indivisibility of human rights even as personality cult-driven leaders and authoritarian regimes are undermining the universality of internationally agreed human rights norms and development principles by disingenuously urging accommodation for cultural values and national characteristics.

The report also highlights what it calls a global “infodemic” plaguing the world, in a veiled reference to state-run propaganda and manufacture of politically expedient ‘facts’ by polarising figures. It calls for a global code of conduct to promote integrity in public information.

Significantly, a new social contract between governments and their people is proposed to rebuild trust, foster gender equal participation and social protection.

A multitude of challenges facing the world, from the ravages of climate change to vaccine nationalism to dysfunctional multilateralism, are identified. In the light of these, the report calls for a fresh embrace of global solidarity and renewed focus on boosting partnerships.

The report rightly urges greater political voice for the world’s many young people in decisions that affect them and commits to upgrading the position of the UN Youth Envoy to a UN Office for Youth.

The role of civil society as an integral part of the UN ecosystem is recognised. To foster inclusion, all UN entities are urged to set up civil society focal points if they haven’t done so already.

But somewhat disappointingly, the key demand by scores of civil society organisations and over 50 states for a people’s champion or civil society envoy to drive participation across the UN is simply acknowledged and parked for future consideration.

This is a lost opportunity as there are far too many inconsistencies in how the UN’s sprawling infrastructure engages with active citizens and civil society organisations. A civil society envoy at the UN headquarters would play a vital role in supporting all UN forums, agencies and offices to develop good practices on participation and also act as liaison between civil society focal points across the UN.

With an eye on upgrading the UN, the report exercises remarkable foresight in proposing an Envoy for Future Generations. A ‘Summit for the Future’ is envisaged in two years’ time to forge global consensus. People’s involvement – beyond high level panels and speeches by powerful politicians and celebrated technocrats – will be crucial if this summit is to be meaningful.

To help the UN evolve and face the future, the Secretary-General could explore the establishment of a UN World Citizens’ Initiative. It’s an innovative idea whereby a critical mass of people could bring a petition for action on a matter of vital public importance by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council.

Significantly, the report makes a compelling case for ‘networked, inclusive and effective multilateralism,’ key components of which are described as cross-pillar coordination at the regional and international levels, space for all voices, including civil society as well as global south states, local governments, parliaments, international institutions and the private sector, and delivery of results through resource prioritisation and accountability for commitments.

These are ambitious objectives, and it is hard to see how they can be achieved without a serious rethink about how deliberations are carried out and decisions are made at the UN. Current processes are bureaucratic and heavily state centric, often screening the UN from the everyday struggles and demands of people, including victims of abuses.

There’s an acute need for more imaginative modes of direct people’s representation to make the UN fit for purpose for the 21st century and beyond. Innovative ideas to set up citizens’ panels and a UN parliamentary assembly exist but are still erroneously seen as being too ambitious.

The ambition of Our Common Agenda must now be followed by ambitious transformative actions. We mustn’t forget that the formation of the UN in 1945 was a revolutionary achievement. Since then, the UN has always been a work in progress. But with perseverance and foresight, we can put ‘We the Peoples’ at its heart.

Mandeep Tiwana is chief programmes officer at CIVICUS. He is based at CIVICUS’s UN liaison office in New York.

 

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The World Food Programme distributing food in El Salvador. The second of the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals is to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. Credit: WFP/David Fernandez

By Trish Cotter
MELBOURNE, Sep 21 2021 (IPS)

COVID-19 has exposed serious vulnerabilities in how people around the world access and consume food.

One of the more alarming trends is the significant increase in the consumption of foods that may be tasty and convenient, but harm our heath. These ultra-processed products include sugary drinks, snack foods, frozen meals, packaged breads and frozen desserts.

In the half century or so since they have been available, ultra-processed products have largely displaced traditional diets, pushing healthy food options off of store shelves. Ultra-processed products comprise more than half of diets in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom, and between one-fifth and one-third in Brazil, Mexico and Chile.

These low-nutrient foods, which are ready to eat or ready to heat, have become a dominant player in our food system and are now among the most aggressively promoted and marketed products in the world.

Ultra-processed products are booming globally. While sales are highest in Australia, the United States and Canada, they are increasing rapidly in middle-income countries including China, South Africa and Brazil. And worryingly, children and low-income people in communities with fewer healthy food choices, are often the primary targets of ultra-processed product marketing.

As public health and world leaders gather at the United Nations Food Systems Summit on September 23 to discuss how to make food systems healthy and sustainable, they must take a stand against profit-driven commercial influence, to help countries and consumers decrease their reliance on ultra-processed products.

During the U.N. Food Systems Pre-Summit in July, the food and beverage industry’s considerable resources were on full display. One of their tactics was to position themselves as part of the process to create a healthier food system.

Let’s be clear: The food and beverage industry is part of the food system, and while they need to be part of the solution, policymaking focused on a healthy food system cannot by muddied by commercial interests.

To attain healthier food systems, we must urgently address the proliferation of ultra-processed products. Their pervasive and growing accessibility has worried public health experts for years. Today, these ultra-processed products are a majority of what’s available in most people’s neighborhood at an affordable price.

But these foods and beverages—which are chemically or physically transformed using industrial processes that make the product hyper-palatable, more appealing and potentially addictive—come at a cost to consumers: they are known to drive obesity rates up and increase noncommunicable diseases including Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and even some cancers.

Powerful food corporations such as The Coca-Cola Co., Nestlé, Unilever and McDonald’s, invest many millions each year in formulating and marketing these products to be highly desirable.

While sales in high-income countries are beginning to level out, middle- and low-income countries are where “Big Food” sees its future and where sales are expected to significantly grow over the next decade.

COVID-19 exposed the vulnerabilities in our food system and added urgency for more effective global policies to combat food insecurity and promote access to safe and nutritious food.

The good news: decades of lessons learned and global best practices from countries leading the way can guide other governments in turning the tide against ultra-processed foods and beverages.

In many cases, this work is being led by countries across Africa and Latin America. Here are some key results from their efforts:

The gold standard: taxes on sugary drinks and junk food

Over 40 countries have now implemented taxes on sugary drinks. In the 12 months following the roll out of Mexico’s 10% soda tax in 2014, the country saw a decline in the purchases of taxed beverages and an increase in the purchase of water. Taxes work and do double duty—the revenue collected can support health programs.

Warnings about unhealthy food via clear front-of-package nutrient labeling

Several countries including Colombia, Ecuador, Iran and Peru have already implemented or have proposed to implement front-of-package labels on unhealthy foods to reduce the unsustainable burden of poor diets on individuals, government and society.

Chile’s comprehensive health regulations, which included the adoption of front-of-package labels, reduced purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages by nearly 25% in just 18 months. When warning label regulations were first rolled out, Chile was the world’s number one consumer of sugar-sweetened beverages per capita.

Restrictions on marketing and promoting healthy food polices in the public sector

Protecting future generations from the lifelong consequences of unhealthy eating habits is paramount. Children are extremely vulnerable to food marketing, which makes partial or voluntary regulations to restrict marketing ineffective.

In 2016, Chile implemented a ban on advertising ultra-processed products during child-targeted television programs. Following this regulation, preschoolers’ exposure to junk food advertising that featured child-directed appeals, such as cartoon characters, dropped by 35%.

The percentage of TV ads promoting unhealthy foods and drinks (i.e., products that failed to meet the policies’ nutrition criteria) decreased significantly from 42% pre-regulation to 15% post-regulation.

Governments must work alongside the public health community to transform the image of ultra-processed food and beverage products from glossy packaged, alluringly marketed, ready-to-eat, convenient and tasty products, to be seen as what they are: the vector for obesity and a risk factor for serious disease alongside tobacco, alcohol, and other unhealthy commodities.

Taxes, smart labeling, and marketing regulations work. At Vital Strategies, we believe everybody, everywhere has a right to healthy foods. When people are provided with the tools to understand the products that are harmful to their health, they are able to make better decisions.

With unhealthy diets responsible for an estimated 11 million preventable deaths each year, we cannot let the industry stand in the way or even set the rules.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated barriers to accessing affordable healthy foods, forcing many to rely on ultra-processed food and drink products and low-nutrient foods, which has resulted in poorer-quality diets.

Governments have the power to regulate these products and prevent the food industry from controlling our diets. The tools are out there. If we want to stave off the devastation to our food system—and our health—we can’t afford to wait.

Trish Cotter is the Senior Advisor, Global Lead, Food Policy Program at global health organization, Vital Strategies.

Footnote: The UN Food Systems Summit, scheduled to take place on Thursday, 23 September, will be a completely virtual event during the UN General Assembly High-level Week.

According to the UN, the Summit “will serve as a historic opportunity to empower all people to leverage the power of food systems to drive our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and get us back on track to achieve all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.”

 

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Oxen have been used to plough in agriculture for at least 3,000 years. They are still used today. Painting from the burial chamber of Sennudjem c, 1200 BC, Egypt. Credit: Trevor Page

By Trevor Page
LETHBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 21 2021 (IPS)

Why is the UN holding a Food Systems Summit? Two issues that need discussion at the international leadership level are: Long before the Covid crisis was upon us, the number of hungry people in the world was increasing. Why ? What is the cause of this disturbing trend? And, can a country really claim to be food secure, unless it produces or can buy enough food to feed its population and its people can access sufficient quantities to keep themselves fit and healthy? Disquietening questions as extreme weather begins to show the destructive power that climate change will have on the planet and its people.

A whole range of food system issues will be discussed at the summit, among them: production, processing, supply chain, consumption, nutrition, malnutrition, food aid and waste.

Food Production

Food, or the nutrients it contains, is fuel for the body. Agriculture and the production of food in an organized way is one of the earliest human endeavors. It started in the fertile crescent of the Middle East, some 10,000 BCE. While mechanization dominates the way food is produced today in the major food producing countries, animal traction is still important in many parts of the world.

Million dollar combines handle reaping, threshing, gathering and winnowing in a single operation on North American and European cereal fields today. GPS programmed, they are set to become driverless within a decade. Fruit and vegetables grown in vertical farms in cities using aquaponics are already springing up around the world. Aquaculture too can be moved to vertical farms, making fish much cheaper for urban dwellers. Vertical farms will greatly reduce labour costs and transportation requirements. Mechanization hugely reduces the number of people engaged in farming and consequently, the cost. Robotics and digital agriculture are already with us in some parts of the world. But where most people live in the world, traditional manual methods and animal traction are set to continue until the high investment needed for cutting-edge technology becomes doable.

Combines harvesting barley for the 2021 annual Canadian Food Grains Bank (CFGB) food drive, Alberta, Canada. The grain is auctioned and the proceeds matched 4:1 by the Canadian government and used by CFGB to promote agriculture in developing countries. Credit: Trevor Page

Wrestling with nature

Despite the advances in technology, drought can badly affect a crop. Cereal crops in western Canada and the United States have been seriously affected by drought this year. Climate change presents the greatest challenge yet to agriculture, and to the human species, generally.

Agriculture is the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses contributing to climate change. According to FAO, the rearing of livestock accounts for the highest proportion because of the methane produced from enteric fermentation as well as manure left on pastures. Also according to FAO, 44% of GHGs are emitted from Asia, 25% from the Americas, 15% from Africa, 12% from Europe and 4% from Oceania.

Is organic agriculture the answer to healthier food and also the way to go because it’s kinder to the planet? Studies have found that there are higher antioxidant levels in organically grown plant-based foods. There is also evidence that organic food has lower toxic, heavy metal levels and less pesticide residue, for instance organic eggs, meat and dairy products. Organic farms use less energy and have lower GHG emissions. They also reduce the pollution caused by the widespread use of nitrogen fertilizer on industrial farms, with the runoff causing the eutrophication of water bodies. Organic agriculture is based on nourishing the soil with composts, manure and regular rotations, keeping it covered with different crops throughout the year. That sequesters carbon, building healthier soil.

The problem is that organically grown food is more expensive that industrially produced food. On average, it retails around 25% more than food sold in supermarkets. Also, most organic farmers need to supplement their income from an additional occupation in order to make ends meet. So, despite the benefits to human health and to the planet, does organic farming have a future? The answer is a resounding “yes!”, both from producers and consumers. Although globally, only 1.5% of farmland is organic, in 16 countries 10% or more of all agricultural land is organic, and the proportions are growing. The countries with the largest organic share of their total farmland are Liechtenstein at 38.5 %, Samoa at 34.5% and Austria 24.7%, according to IFOAM Organics International. Today, organic food is more of a lifestyle choice, both by the producer and the consumer. But if its growth is an indicator of concern for our health and for that of the planet, and more and more people are willing and able to pay the extra cost involved, then organics can be seen as an indicator of wellbeing and a reduction of inequality, which is a major cause of conflict in the world today.

Healthy root formation on Mozart red potatoes on The Perry Farm in Taber, Canada. Regenerative agriculture is practiced on this farm. Credit: Trevor Page

Although humankind has grown up largely on a diet of just three cereals: wheat, corn and rice, potatoes are actually more nutritious. Furthermore, potatoes can be grown on marginal land and they require only one-third of the water needed to grow the world’s three main cereals. Five years ago, China moved to double its potato production and to add them to the diet of its growing population. Should Africa be following suit?

Conclusion

The Food Systems Summit kicks off in New York on September 23 during the UN General Assembly High-Level Week. World leaders will come together to find common ground and form alliances that accelerate our way to realizing the SDGs in this remaining decade of action before 2030 is upon us. Will we succeed in making Zero hunger a reality? If we are serious about this goal, the answer includes rethinking and redesigning our food systems to make them more sustainable.

Trevor Page, resident in Lethbridge, Canada, is a former Emergencies Director of the World Food Programme. He also served with the UN Food & Agriculture Organization, FAO, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR and what is now the UN Department of Political and Peace Building Affairs.

 

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Jamaica is increasingly cited as a model of meaningful youth engagement. Here Environment and Climate Change Minister Pearnel Charles Jr plants trees with a young environmentalist. Credit: NDC Partnership

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Sep 21 2021 (IPS)

When the NDC Partnership, the alliance which helps governments to determine and achieve their climate goals, held its first-ever Global Youth Engagement Forum in July, several segments were underpinned by Jamaica’s model of engaging young people and sustaining youth interest in climate initiatives.

The Caribbean country, a co-chair of the NDC Partnership, has committed to ensuring that youth have a say on national climate programs, through representation on boards such as the Climate Advisory Body and the NDC Partnership.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Pearnel Charles Jr told IPS that policymakers are committed to a well-defined and permanent space for young people in climate change decision-making.

He spoke to IPS on Jamaica’s blueprint for youth engagement, how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted plans for an on-the-ground campaign to meet youth at primary, secondary, and tertiary education institutions and why engagement must be universal and equitable.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): Why is it so important for you that space at the center of climate discussion and action is dedicated to young people?

Pearnel Charles Jr (PC): The best use of our time and energy and the best investment that we can make is in building the capacity of our young people. It’s a sensible, strategic decision based on the fact that they will very soon control the policy, legislation, and decisions of the country.

It is also the right decision as young people can have a wider impact than most because of their energy, creativity, innovation, and interest. We don’t have issues with having to inform the youth as much as we think. That is not the issue. They are informed and in large part involved, but they do not get enough avenues to shine or platforms to perform and be engaged. My responsibility is to create platforms for them to simply express themselves, learn more, and become more aware of how they can play a greater role and influence others around them.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Pearnel Charles Jr believes it’s important to create platforms for young people to interact with environmental issues. Credit: NDC Partnership

I have found in the several roles that I have had that whenever I have targeted the young, it has not been just because they are young. Once you get youth on board, they will not only influence the younger generation, but they become soldiers in their homes and communities. They speak to the elders, urge them to conserve, and suggest new methods for sustainable action.

It is also easier to change behavior at an early stage. Those of us who are over 35 are set in our ways, in a pattern of life. Science teaches that it is more difficult to change behavior after a certain time. So again, I think it is a sensible and sustainable decision and why I always get young people involved, engaged, and energized.

IPS: Jamaica is often highlighted for its youth engagement in climate change. How do you ensure that young people are part of decision-making?

PC: As it relates to the climate change portfolio, I have a climate change advisory board. It is led by a distinguished professor, the principal of the University of West Indies, but what I have ensured is that on that high-level board, we have strong youth representation. It is not one person, not token youth representation. I have about three or four young leaders on the board. I have also ensured that there is gender equity in addition to strong youth representation.

We also have youth who are always engaged in consultations taking place in our ministry. We keep connected and ask for their views on policy decisions and how best to execute in communities.

We have two representatives on the NDC Partnership Youth Taskforce, which is significant. They play a role in how that global partnership impacts the world and how we create an arena where young people can feel safe to speak up.

We make sure to include young people in everything. Sometimes they host events, other times they moderate panel discussions. They are leading the conversation, as opposed to being attached to the conversation.

We have the Jamaica Climate Change Youth Council, which is an affiliate of my advisory board. The Council raises awareness about climate change and its effects on young Jamaicans aged 15 to 35. The members drive advocacy in that regard.

We also have the Caribbean Youth Environment Council and we have environment and climate change clubs in schools which help to coordinate and get the message out to students.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Pearnel Charles Jr interacts with the Climate Change Youth Council. Credit: NDC Partnership

IPS: How has COVID-19 impacted your activities?

PC: COVID has handicapped the capacity to have in-person meetings and initially, I intended to go from school to school and university to university, to create forums and opportunities for the youth to be able to not just be engaged, but exposed to cutting edge climate change issues and also to share their solutions, whether they have invented something or researched an issue and have a hypothesis, but I have not been able to do that.

I do intend to once the circumstances change and if I am still in this position, to drive a robust campaign across all of our tertiary, secondary, and even primary institutions, to raise awareness and directly allow our youth and children to learn and be involved in climate action.

IPS:  In terms of success stories, are you buoyed by the climate discussions and initiatives of young people in Jamaica?

PC: You know, young people are bold. They are not afraid to be offensive in telling you what they think. It may not always be correct, but they will give you the truth, as opposed to saying, “yes, Minister,” so even outside of the public space where everybody’s watching, I always rely on the interrogation of young minds. I appreciate the criticism that they have.

We have created platforms where young people get an opportunity to not just speak, but to create solutions and that is one of the things that I am very happy for, that from the public or private sector, we have initiatives that allow them to display their skills in creating solutions, whether it is to reduce the carbon footprint or through entrepreneurship by cultivating some type of plant or whatever sustainable practice that we are trying to advance.

When we create an opportunity for them to do that, it not only raises awareness, but it provides them with a long-term avenue for participation and it is the best type of participation, as they are gaining profit from promoting sustainability.

I still stand as a youth representative for UNESCO although I am not in the youth category anymore. Recently, I had a meeting with one or two of my representatives on the UNESCO Ambassador Programme, an initiative I created where young people can become representatives of the sustainable development movement. We intend to use that group as an avenue to carry out online engagements, educate youth on climate change and environment issues and give them an opportunity to ask questions, share their thoughts and recommendations.

IPS:  The recently held Global Youth Engagement Forum was a landmark event for the NDC Partnership’s Steering Committee and its Youth Task Force. What do you think it achieved?

PC: It was a genuinely safe and open space for youth to participate, strengthen their commitment to being ambassadors for climate action, share best practices, and ultimately, build capacity.

What we have done with this engagement is build the ability of our youth to take charge of their actions and drive the participation of others around them in the policies that we have designed to advance sustainable development.

We have failed over the years to truly advance sustainable practices. It is the youth who will do it, they are doing it.

I do not have to call. I get calls from young people saying, “minister, we want to do a beach cleanup,” and I have to remind them that this is not possible during COVID. But it shows that they are not wasting time. They have organized beach cleanups, recycling drives, they are picking up plastics, they are designing climate-smart communities and we don’t have to beg them, we only need to provide a platform for them.

So, I think that the youth you know that engagement for all is critical. It is a critical roadmap of participation on a wide level for our youth and for them now to drive implementation of the policies and practices that we need across the country and region.

Also, it speaks to the level of consultation and dialogue that has to continue. It is not about having one engagement and feeling comfortable. The need for consistency in our communication to ensure that we continue to have meaningful youth engagement. The meaningful must come before the youth engagement it has to be designed to really know the youth inclusive approach, where you’re speaking to them, getting them involved, you have an opportunity to bend and shape policy.

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 21 2021 (IPS)

As developing countries struggle to cope with the pandemic, they risk being set back further by restrictive fiscal policies. These were imposed by rich countries who no longer practice them if they ever did. Instead, the global South urgently needs bold policies to ensure adequate relief, recovery and reform.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Bold fiscal responses needed
Governments must mobilise and deploy resources sustainably and fairly, consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With rich countries’ refusal to help more, adequate government financing is crucial.

Taxation is typically a more sustainable, effective and accountable way of raising government fiscal resources. But the pandemic has imposed extraordinary demands requiring massive urgent spending.

National authorities can generate fiscal resources in two main ways, by collecting revenue or borrowing. Government borrowing is generally needed as revenue has been hit by the slowdown.

Massive fiscal resource mobilization and appropriate spending are needed to contain the contagion and prevent temporary recessions – e.g., due to lockdowns – from becoming debilitating protracted depressions.

Fiscal policy involves both government resource generation and spending. But developing countries have been far more conservative in spending compared to the rich. The latter have introduced much bolder relief and recovery packages.

In the short, medium and long term, both government spending and taxation must be progressive. Much depends on how revenue is raised and spent. Hence, both taxation and expenditure need to be considered.

Taxes less progressive now
Governments must quickly develop progressive ways to finance massive spending needed to protect both lives and livelihoods. Over the last four decades, many governments reduced progressive direct taxation, instead embracing regressive indirect taxes.

Higher tax rates on the wealthy made direct taxation progressive. The regression was mainly due to lobbying by powerful elites, including foreign investors. The influential Washington-based Bretton Woods international financial institutions led such advocacy.

Incomes of the wealthy are mainly from assets, rather than wages, salaries or payments for goods or services. But tax rates on the highly paid, as well as property, inheritance and corporate incomes have declined in most countries.

Wealth is often untaxed, or only lightly taxed at lower rates. New rules now allow assets to be moved and hidden abroad. Depending on how one estimates, between US$8–35 trillion is held offshore, obscuring wealth concentration and inequality.

Taxation can reduce existing inequalities, but rarely does so despite the widespread presumption that taxes are progressive overall. Worse, most state spending is regressive, little mitigated by highly publicised social spending.

Difficult to measure, pandemic impacts on various inequalities vary considerably. Nevertheless, the vicious cycle connecting economic disadvantage with vulnerability has worsened disparities.

Ensure progressive taxation
To be equitable, taxation must be progressive. More equitable tax systems should get more revenue from those most able to pay while reducing the burden on the needy. Wealth taxes are the most progressive way to raise revenue while also reducing inequalities.

Direct taxes on wealth and incomes are potentially progressive. Progressively higher rates and exemptions for the poor can ensure this. Low rates on investment income and assets – such as property, wealth and inheritance – can be increased. Besides reducing inequalities, these can finance progressive spending.

Taxing windfall and excess profits is not only publicly acceptable, but can also raise considerable funds. Some corporations and individuals have benefited greatly during the pandemic, e.g., US billionaires have reportedly become over a trillion dollars richer over the last year and a half.

In the longer term, progressive taxation means less reliance on indirect taxes – such as sales or consumption taxes, including value-added, or goods and services tax – which burden those with lower incomes much more.

Tax evasion by the wealthy must also be deterred. Companies using tax havens to pay less can be penalised, e.g., by disqualifying them from all government and state-owned enterprise contracts. Tax systems can thus be made more progressive by improving design and with strict, equitable enforcement.

Equitable recovery?
Ensuring equitable recovery requires urgent systemic reforms. Although unlikely to yield much more revenue in the near term due to the economic slowdown, introducing such reforms now will be politically much easier.

Taxation can transfer fiscal resources from the wealthy to the needy. Those living precariously, including those now at risk due to the pandemic and its broad impacts, urgently need help. But financing relief and recovery provides liquidity, averting protracted economic contraction and stagnation.

Some pandemic relief spending in many countries has been ‘captured’ by the politically well-connected, as political elites and their cronies seize the lucrative new opportunities. These compromise not only relief and recovery, but also reform efforts.

When relief and recovery are treated as temporary ‘one-off’ measures, they are unlikely to address pre-pandemic problems, including inequities. Governments should instead use the crisis to advance SDG solutions for both the medium and long-term.

Multilateral cooperation needed
International cooperation can help, but the rich countries’ Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has long focused on addressing offshore tax evasion to secure more revenue for themselves.

A decade ago, it broadened its attention, but continued to insist on its own leadership at the expense of developing countries. It has thus effectively blocked multilateral tax cooperation for decades, ignoring the UN’s strong mandate from various Financing for Development and other summits.

Equitable international tax reforms remain urgent. But these have been undermined by earlier reforms encouraging cross-border flows of funds, enabling illicit financial flows from developing countries.

Although unlikely to yield much revenue for some time, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s global minimum corporate income tax proposal deserves strong qualified support.

Developing countries need to ensure that transnational companies are better taxed, instead of the current G7 proposal for a low rate. Revenue should be distributed according to where both production and consumption take place instead of just where sales occur.

Effectively checking tax abuses also requires access to financial information and common, equitable and transparent rules, not those imposed by the rich. But such outcomes can only be achieved through UN-led multilateralism with developing country governments participating as equals.

 

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By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Sep 20 2021 (IPS)

Last year, as the world grappled to survive the Covid-19 Pandemic, Megan Fernandas an accountant living in Toronto, was trying to face her biggest fear, not the COVID-19 virus, but missing her doctor’s appointment after surviving a rigorous fight against stage 2 breast cancer.

Meagan had just gotten back to her normal life when the news of the pandemic hit the world. “I live with my family here in the city and we were all at home, even now we barely go out, so we knew we could ensure not getting infected, but god forbid if I had a health escalation or a reaction to any medication, this was a very stressful time for me.

Dr. Monsura Haque

“We all know how difficult it is to get a doctor’s appointment, sometimes even if it’s an emergency, the wait period can take weeks, and only the lucky ones are able to find a personal physician. My fear was missing my monthly check-ups. This pandemic could ruin it all, just because we can’t get to a doctor on time. I just wish meeting a doctor was a simple and easy process,” says Fernandas.

Fast forward to September 2021, as Canada continues to fight the pandemic, come snap elections, parties have made several pledges to make sure Canada is prepared for the next pandemic – though experts warn “this could be trickier than politicians make it out to be”.

Earlier this month, Toronto-based research group ICES said that between August 29 and September 4, Peel, a region which has cases steadily rising, had the sixth highest positivity rate – 4.46 percent out of 34 public health regions in Ontario, which is Canada’s most populous province. The region has reported more than 114,000 cases since the pandemic began, with over 960 deaths.

The COVID-19 pandemic generated uneven experiences for millions of healthcare workers and physicians across the world. In Canada, with a health system battered by the pandemic, the country has reported more than 1.45 million cases and more than 26, 000 deaths since the pandemic began, according to John Hopkins University data.

What makes this worse is a report in 2019 stated that only 241 physicians per 100,ooo population were available in the country, indicating the sheer overburden on Canada’s health system through this global health crisis.

Dr. Joel Parungao

While there are a lot of discussion on making the integration of Internationally Trained Medical Doctors (ITMD) easier in Canada, Joel Parungao a trained physician from the Philippines with more than 5 years of experience in public health and hospital medicine managed to contribute his bit during the pandemic last year.

Despite experience and qualifications, Parungao joined the Ontario Ministry of Health as a Covid Case Manager.

“This job gave me an opportunity to “be in the frontline,” Parungao says. “A remote work-from-home job and we were deployed to a specific Public Health Unit conducting COVID case investigations and helping them deal with outbreaks. I was able to help the province and the country in fighting the pandemic,” Parungao says in an interview given to IPS News.

Parungao being amongst the very few who played a role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic is amongst the 13,000 ITMDs in Canada who despite qualifications and experience are yet to become licensed doctors in the country.

“I am still pursuing my dream to be a licensed doctor here in Canada. It’s difficult, given the amount of time and money you have to invest in just credentials verification, qualifying exams, and other required medical residency training,” says Parungao. “You have to be ready to work in ‘survival jobs’ that are completely out of the medical field at first and then find a way to move to an alternative health profession afterwards,” Parangao says.

One of the key challenges as reported here for ITMDs in Canada remains cost associated with licensing examinations, the CaRMS application process is often a barrier for newcomers. A report states that 47 % of foreign-educated health professionals are either unemployed or employed in non-health related positions that require only a high school diploma.

Dr. Monsura Haque, an international Medical Graduate from Bangladesh with almost 16 years of experience in medical practise says, “there is no doubt that Canada needs more doctors for all types of work, either clinical or alternative pathways. This pandemic reveals that need and the crisis in the healthcare system.”

While Dr. Monsura has no practical experience in clinical settings, with her speciality in Public Health, she volunteered in hospitals and University to gain more experience, while they were excellent opportunities for her, “those settings were really just using volunteers without any remuneration,” Haque says.

Health care systems across the world are undergoing massive challenges, strains and are not without faults. During the pandemic, access concerns, quality of care and the high costs of services which are not covered by insurance or by those who can’t afford it are few common traits across borders. For healthcare professionals the challenge has been access to PPE kits, long exhaustive hours, mental and physical trauma and these issues are further complicated in Canada by just the lack of the number of doctors available per person for COVID and non-COVID related cases.

The cost of healthcare is increasing, and Canada cannot afford to say it is going to focus on health care without including or evening mentioning the pool of ITMDs available and under utilized.

“Integration of ITMDs into the Canadian healthcare system requires a national strategy and approach by government policymakers and other regulatory bodies,” says Dr. Shafi Bhuiyan, ITMDs Canada Network (iCAN) Char and Global Health Expert.

“Canada has the opportunity to make these changes right now, I always say it will be a win-win situation for all. We have a pool of talented ITMDs who are under utilized or leaving their professionals due to such roadblocks. If these changes can be made, and we find a way to include ITMDs into our healthcare system, a lot can be achieved.” says Bhuiyan.

 

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Food experts have many and varied expectations of the UN Food System Summit. It's hoped decisions made here will help the world get back on track for the Sustainable Development Goals 2030. Credit: Alison Kentish

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Sep 20 2021 (IPS)

Dubbed ‘the People’s Summit, the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) hopes to put the world back on a path to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, through food systems overhauling. From the tempered to the extremely optimistic, experts in various food system sectors share their expectations of transformation.

The world has been lagging on ambitious climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals, but the UNFSS is hoping that commitments to transform global food systems will get the world back on track to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

The inaugural UNFSS will take place virtually during the UN General Assembly High-Level Week, under the leadership of UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

It promises to bring together the public and private sectors, non-governmental organisations, farmers groups, indigenous leaders, youth representatives and researchers to outline a clear path to ensure that the world’s food production and distribution are safe, healthy, sustainable and equitable.

Learning from the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, the summit also hopes to make food production and distribution more resilient to vulnerabilities, stress and shocks.

Experts in sustainability and various food system sectors have been speaking about their expectations and hopes for a summit that is built on solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues such as land degradation, inequality, rising hunger, and obesity.

Panellists at a Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) ‘Fixing the Business of Food’ webinar held on September 16, 2021, were asked how optimistic they were, on a scale of 1 to 10, of real food systems transformation in the next 12 months, triggered by the private sector.

“I am going to give a full 10,” said Viktoria de Bourbon de Parme, Head of Food Processing at the World Benchmarking Alliance. “I am super optimistic,” she added. “I think we are there. Momentum is there, and it is going to happen.”

Executive Director of Food and Nature at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development Diane Holdorf is similarly optimistic.

“I would say an 8 out of 10, but I do have to preface this by saying that systems change is complex. With individual leading companies demonstrating what is possible and bringing others along, we are going to see for sure actual system changes,” she said.

Not all experts are optimistic that the UNFSS will bring about the urgent changes required for food systems transformation.

IPS spoke with Million Belay, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) head, about his expectations for the summit.

Belay, who is also an advisory board member for BCFN and a food systems researcher, said that he and alliance members disagree with the summit’s agenda and structure. The alliance represents farmers, pastoralists, hunter/gatherers, faith-based organisations, indigenous peoples and women’s groups,

“The pre-summit has happened in Rome. During that presummit, we had our own summit, organised by civil society mechanisms, and it was clear that farmers, fisherfolk, indigenous people, local groups, and women’s organisations were all saying no, the UNFFS summit does not represent us. There is no reason to be part of that,” Belay said.

Belay believes that the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) should have been responsible for organising the Summit.

“This is a space where the civil society in general and the civil society mechanism and governments come together to negotiate about food-related issues, so the agenda should have been set there,” he said, adding that, “the UNFSS has set up a scientific body as part of the structure, but we already have a scientific body in the CFS, that is called the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition. It is a scientific body, and you can say that we need to beef up this body, but they have established a totally different scientific body.”

While expectations from the summit differ, the experts are unanimous in their view that the world is in urgent need of radical change in how food is grown, sold and distributed to tackle food insecurity, land degradation and rising poverty.

“(The Summit) is one step on a very, very long journey. Perhaps more than ever, as the UN General Assembly opens, we feel the weight and burdens of non-sustainability in the world,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

Sachs says the transformation to sustainable development will demand deep energy and fiscal policy change.

With land-use accounting for about 30 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and ensuing issues like deforestation and loss of habitat, he is calling for fundamental change in land-use policies across the globe, adding that current, unsustainable use is a ‘massive contributor to crises the board.’

Another aspect of the complex global food system that requires urgent attention is the need for healthy diets.

“About half the world does not have a healthy diet. Of the 8 billion people on the planet, roughly 1 billion live in extreme hunger. Another 2 billion live with one or more micronutrient deficiencies, anaemia, vitamin deficiencies or omega-three fatty acid deficiencies, which are absolutely debilitating for health. Another billion people are obese,” Sachs said.

This week’s UNFSS hopes to get commitments from governments, the private sector, farmers and indigenous groups to work together and change global food production and consumption.

By tackling the food crisis, organisers hope to address the climate, biodiversity, and hunger crises.

 

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A market vendor sells produce at Victoria Market in Port Victoria, Seychelles. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown

By Nick Nisbett, Lesli Hoey and Jose Graziano da Silva
BRIGHTON, UK, Sep 20 2021 (IPS)

COVID-19 has exposed numerous fractures in global food systems that leave millions at risk of food insecurity. Like the numerous political failures in dealing with COVID, the repercussions of food system failings are experienced by rich and poor countries alike, with the poorest and most marginalised paying the greatest price.

To be clear, while the numbers of those who are undernourished remain shamefully high, this is a food crisis that is not just about hunger or famine. There is also a silent and growing crisis of an estimated 38.9 million children worldwide affected by overweight and in too many cases, these children grow into adults facing unhealthy eating and chronic diseases associated with obesity (diabetes, heart disease and some cancers etc.).

Alongside these dual burdens of malnutrition, there is a third crisis – climate change – which the food and agriculture is a major contributor to as well as being vulnerable to its impacts, and therefore further threatening food security.

The United Nations (UN) Food Systems Summit on 23 September 2021 was conceived (in the jargon of the UN) to develop equitable, healthy and sustainable responses to ensure that “no one is left behind” as we “build back better” from COVID-19.

Forty one thousand people have taken part in Summit dialogues but the process has been marred by continual criticism, particularly for its inadequate attention to human rights, the sovereignty of indigenous peoples over their own food systems, and worker rights across the food system.

More than anything, criticism of the Summit has focused on its inclusion of ‘Big Food’, including names such as PepsiCo who were invited to ‘fireside chats’ as part of the Pre-Summit in Rome.

Of course, food companies are an essential part of the food system. Indeed, had the Summit engaged first in a root cause analysis of the problems that have contributed to the syndemic (synergistic epidemic) – of undernutrition, obesity and climate change – all issues the Summit portends to address – corporate concentration, negligence and unbridled power would have been identified as the primary cause of policy inertia.

There is no doubt that corporations will need to radically transform as part of the changes advocated by the Summit. But they won’t do that on their own and they certainly won’t do that as part of cosy fireside chats.

Yes, this will take dialogue, but the record on this to date is poor. In many global and national spaces, rather than be “part of the conversation”, there is widely documented academic evidence of big food companies trying to shape the outcomes in their interest: towards voluntary measures and empty promises, away from the regulation (such as front of packet labels) and taxation (such as soda taxes) which have been shown to be most effective in minimising the damage from unhealthy, highly and ultraprocessed foods.

Discussion of such issues, alongside such products’ environmental impacts, have been minimised as part of the Summit process. Was that to avoid Big Food’s’ discomfort at discussing the most unhealthy and unsustainable foods?

UN organisations and their staff are well aware of such issues but have been pressured to “come to the table” with companies they know are more interested in driving shareholder value than contributing to sustainability and public health.

Such companies have a history of unethical marketing of unhealthy foods to children, or persuading poor mothers not to breastfeed. Fortunately, there are conflict of interest rules and protocols that exist to protect the day to day work of UN organisations so that they can fulfil their public mandate without such unethical interference.

As part of our own contribution to the Summit planning and to help it overcome such criticisms, two of us led an ad-hoc committee focused on the Summit’s own ‘principles of engagement’. We also wrote to the UN Secretary General and the Summit leadership to suggest that the Summit simply follow the UN’s own conflict of interest rules and be transparent about who was involved in shaping Summit processes and why.

Our letter was initially signed by 100 individuals and international organisations across five continents, ranging from dietary disease activists in Ghana to organisations such as Save the Children and researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

The UN’s own Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food was an early supporter and 40 additional signatories were added recently when we re-opened the letter due to popular demand, including the American Heart Association and a co-author of this opinion article, the ex-Director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (now Director General of Brazil’s Zero Hunger Institute).

But from the leadership of the summit itself, nothing in reply.

You may ask who cares about these UN summits, really? We do and everyone else should too. Such summits set the scene for national action, they define future funding patterns for UN and bilateral aid organisations, they spawn decades of debate on the issues raised, and, if not well conceived, they provide nice sounding cover for the status-quo.

Behind the multiple fights that have raged in the privileged world of these global debates, there are real issues that will play out in multiple ways in every country faced with the global food and climate emergencies and the inequities that caused them, made all the more raw by the COVID pandemic.

What we have seen ahead of this week’s Summit is a lot of “nutri-washing” and thousands of proposals reflecting the voices of well-nourished people and little (if any) proposals for putting an end to hunger and other forms of malnourishment as a political priority by governments around the world.

The final speech by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres could be a turning point to change this, but not if he chooses to paper over the sensitivities when addressing contentious issues, as UN leaders are wont to do.

If you haven’t yet, get involved, even after the Summit on 23rd September. This battle will rage on including in your own country as it faces up to these multiple food and climate crises and as policy makers face numerous influences over policy directions in response.

All future UN processes should be governed by a simple set of rules set by the precedent of past UN organisations and international summits where conflicts of interest have been taken seriously. This will set the standard for national debates across the world, which is where the real work begins.

Nick Nisbett is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies; Lesli Hoey Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan; and Jose Graziano da Silva is former Director General of FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization) and Director General of the Zero Hunger Institute. Nick Nisbett is based in Brighton, UK, Lesli Hoey in Michigan, USA and Jose Graziano da Silva in Campinas, SP Brazil.

Footnote: The UN Food Systems Summit, scheduled to take place on Thursday 23 September , will be a completely virtual event during the UN General Assembly High-level Week.

According to the UN, the Summit “will serve as a historic opportunity to empower all people to leverage the power of food systems to drive our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and get us back on track to achieve all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.”

 

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The Chichipicas spring is one of the San Huitzizilapan indigenous community's water sources, in the Lerma municipality, in the state of Mexico -adjacent to Mexico City-, where several community systems manage the resource. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
LERMA/COYOTEPEC, Mexico, Sep 18 2021 (IPS)

In the San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan Otomí indigenous community, in the state of Mexico –adjacent to the country’s capital–, access to water has been based on collective work.

“Public services come from collective work. What we have done is based on tequio (free compulsory work in benefit of the community), cooperation. The community has always taken care of the forests and water,” Aurora Allende, a member of the sector’s Drinking Water System, told IPS.

In San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan, a town of 18,000 people in the municipality of Lerma – about 60 kilometres west of Mexico City – some 10 autonomous community water management groups are responsible for the water supply in their areas.

The first community system emerged in 1960 to meet local needs. “The water falls by gravity and we pipe it. The water runs through 200 drains that come from the hill, and there are two or three wells for the smaller neighbourhoods,” explained Allende, whose father started the first autonomous system in the community and who is a homemaker in addition to her community work.

The Drinking Water System serves some 150 families who pay about two dollars a month for the maintenance of the facilities.

Huitzizilapan, whose name means “river of hummingbirds” in Nahuatl and which owns about 4,000 hectares of land, half of it forests, is part of a strip of water factories that supply the Cutzamala System, the set of dams that supplies water to both the capital and the state of Mexico.

The Otomi people are one of Mexico’s 69 native groups, numbering some 17 million people, out of a total national population of 128 million. More than400 000 indigenous people belonging to five groups live in the state of Mexico.

Despite being guardians of the cultural and biological heritage of this Latin American country, they suffer discrimination and poverty. Almost 50 percent of the headwaters of Mexico’s watersheds are in areas inhabited by indigenous peoples and the regions with the highest rainfall are located in their territories.

The 1992 National Water Law does not recognise the rights of native inhabitants and allows the government’s National Water Commission (Conagua) to grant water permits throughout the country to anyone who applies for them. In 2012, a constitutional amendment recognised the human right to water. However, approval of a new law to implement the constitutional reform is still pending.

In addition, water faces the three horsemen of the apocalypse: the effects of the climate crisis, such as drought; overexploitation; and pollution.

Native peoples suffer from restrictions on new uses of water, put in place by Conagua with the argument that there are water shortages. Today, at least nine of these measures apply in eight of Mexico’s 31 states and the federal district of Mexico City.

Autonomous initiatives have become a mechanism for organising and defending access to water, despite the fact that they are not recognised by law, although they are not prohibited either. But there is no estimate of how many operate in the country nor has there been an assessment of how they function.

But for Conagua and the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission, these systems are a nuisance, because they fall outside the jurisdiction of the former and, for the latter, electricity to operate wells serves as a means of pressure to promote the municipalisation of the service, due to the costs paid by the independent systems.

Aurora Allende, seen here outside the gate of one of the local waster plants, is an autonomous water management system member in the San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan indigenous community, in central Mexico. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Struggles over water

The water issue is a reflection of how native groups are treated in Mexico, because Conagua has granted individuals, companies and municipalities more than 29,000 concessions for the use of water in their territories, covering about 35 billion cubic meters.

For that reason, water is a recurring source of political, social and environmental conflicts in this country with the second-largest population and economy in Latin America and the third largest area, as indicated by recent reports.

Mexico faces a high risk of water stress, surpassed in the region only by Chile, according to the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas developed by the Aqueduct Alliance, made up of governments, companies and foundations. In 2021, the country has been suffering from a severe drought that has had a major impact on agriculture, livestock and water availability in urban centres.

The 2015 report “Conflicts among Indigenous Peoples and Communities of Mexico” prepared by the official National Institute of Indigenous Peoples and seen by IPS, documents 246 disputes over agrarian issues, mining projects and violations of indigenous rights.

Of these, 16 involve water issues, such as the construction of thermoelectric plants, aqueducts and hydroelectric dams.

In the Coyotepec municipality, in the state of Mexico -adjacent to the capital of the country-, the official National Water Commission manages 11 wells to supply the resource on site. Community liquid management systems pose a challenge for the authorities to control the water. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

The 2019 “Report on Violations of the Human Rights to Drinking Water and Sanitation in Mexico,” drawn up by a collective of NGOs, provides a more detailed picture of conflicts over water, outlining 72 cases of violations of the right to water in 16 states.

The municipality of Coyotepec, also in the state of Mexico, illustrates like few others the struggle for water.

In June 2013, the municipal government tried unsuccessfully to take control of the water service, a move that was opposed by the public. The local water supply was managed by the autonomous Coyotepec Drinking Water Administration (AAPCOY), founded in 1963 to provide water to the town of about 41,000 people.

In May 2016, local residents prevented a municipal consultation because they considered it was rigged and aimed at approving the transfer of water to nearby real estate projects.

“The conflict persists. The state government saw that we were winning the battle and forcibly removed us. We oppose municipalisation, because it is the door to the privatisation of the service. They want to take control of our water,” a retired accountant who is a member of the June 9 Popular Front in Defence of Natural Resources of Coyotepec told IPS.

In Coyotepec, which means “place of coyotes” in Nahuatl, located about 40 kilometres north of Mexico City, AAPCOY serves some 12,000 members, who pay about 2.50 dollars a month, and is complemented by two other water systems. For its part, Conagua manages 11 wells and a pumping plant.

In San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan, Coyotepec and other localities with a majority indigenous population, there were violations of rights to water availability, physical and economic accessibility, water quality, as well as access to information and participation, accountability and justice, according to organisations that defend the right to water.

Seeking a remedy, indigenous peoples have sought legal protections that denounce the breach of the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007, which recognise native territory and the right to water.

Claudia Gómez, a non-governmental Lawyers Collective member, and Wilfrido Gómez, the head of Social Data Ibero at the private Iberoamerican University, agree that legal questions are at the root of the problem.

“There are not enough legal mechanisms to guarantee the protection of water as part of indigenous territory,” Claudia Gómez told IPS. “Neither the Water Law nor the constitution has adequately regulated water for the people. There is a battle to gain recognition for native practices and use of water.”

Wilfrido Gómez (no relation) said that “if water is available and if they meet certain legal requirements, companies are given concessions, but for the communities it is more complicated. Control over water is gained by whoever has the money to obtain permits. One implication is the widespread dispossession of land and water, which go together.”

Due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent need for clean water, the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs urged governments in its 2020 report “Indigenous Peoples and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Considerations” to improve access to and management of water and sanitation, especially for indigenous people in remote villages, and said this should include “relevant indigenous practices, such as watershed management.”

Despite this situation, Mexico’s National Indigenous Peoples Program 2018-2024 does not mention water once.

Community water rights advocate Sergio Velázquez is fighting for the continuity of an independent water management system in the municipality of Coyotepec, in central Mexico, which has brought him up against pressure from the city council for control of the resource in the municipality. Photo: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Caught between risks and promises

The solution seems to lie in a new water law, which has been held up in the Chamber of Deputies. The lower house of Congress has received at least six initiatives, including the first in the country developed by organisations defending the human right to water, indigenous peoples, agricultural producers and academics.

After seven years of forums and workshops, the citizens’ initiative was built on 12 consensuses.

These include respect for the water rights of local communities, a ban on water permits for toxic mining and fracking endeavours, an end to the hoarding of water permits, prevention of the privatisation of water services, a guarantee of full access to information and sufficient public funds for water supply.

Allende said “all they want is our water and our forests. There are projects for bottling plants and real estate developments in the highlands. They’re doing everything they can to have access to that area. There is a threat of urbanisation; we are afraid that they will enter our territory.” She lamented that they receive no compensation for taking care of the forest and the water.

Claudia Gómez and Wilfrido Gómez advocate the approval of the citizens’ initiative.

“We believe that the approval of a new law that recognises the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities is necessary. There should be conservation and care policies, so that there is no shortage of water in other regions. Therefore, we ask for consensual regional plans, which are achieved through planning by region or basin, and thus priorities are selected,” said the lawyer.

Wilfrido Gómez stressed that the citizens’ initiative provides tools for controlling water concessions. “Very soon there will come a time when there will be no access to water and there will be no guarantees for the right to it. Today, Conagua has no legal tools to deny or withdraw concessions,” he explained.

In Coyotepec, the solution lies in new elections to lead AAPCOY and “oust the usurpers”, in Velázquez’ words, although it is also necessary for the beneficiaries to pay on time for the service, one of the shortcomings of the system.

“Thus, we could return to representative management that guarantees the right to water,” said the activist.

The project for this report was the winner of the Journalistic Research Grants on community water management in Mexico, a Fundación Avina, Cántaro Azul and Fondo para la Paz initiative. But this resulting content is solely the responsibility of IPS.

"Resistance and Popular Rebellion" reads a banner held by demonstrators in San Salvador in a Wednesday, Sept. 15 protest against measures they consider authoritarian adopted by the government of President Nayib Bukele. The latest was the replacement of the constitutional court judges by the ruling party, which paves the way for Bukele to seek immediate reelection, banned up to now in El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Sep 17 2021 (IPS)

The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has been widely criticised for his authoritarian tendencies, but has said that the changes he plans will be long-term – which to his critics means a further undercutting of the weak democratic institutions that he has already begun to dismantle.

The president gave the commemoration of the bicentennial of Central America’s independence on Wednesday, Sept. 15, a symbolic touch and pledged that his government would not reverse the changes put into motion.

“This country has suffered so much that it cannot be transformed overnight; important changes, real and worthwhile changes, take time, they are not immediate, they are made step by step”, said Bukele, in a nationwide address broadcast on radio and television on Wednesday night.

The opposition, however, sees the changes as an attack on democracy in this Central American nation of 6.7 million people.

Bukele for president in 2024?

Perhaps the most abrupt change pushed through by the Bukele administration since it took office in June 2019 was the removal of the five judges in the Supreme Court’s constitutional chamber.

They were removed on May 1 when the new legislature, controlled by the lawmakers of Nuevas Ideas, Bukele’s party – who now hold 56 of the 84 seats – was installed.

The governing party’s majority allowed the president to appoint like-minded judges to the constitutional chamber, whose first move was to strike down the legal obstacle to consecutive presidential reelection."Apparently we are in democracy, but the president's actions run counter to democracy, he is dismantling the state's institutionality, and is thus attacking the rights of the entire population." -- Loyda Robles

That opened the door for the president to run again at the end of his current five-year term, in 2024, which was prohibited by the constitution until just two weeks ago.

Bukele, a 40-year-old of Palestinian descent from a wealthy business family, first emerged in politics as a popular mayor of San Salvador from 2015 to 2018. He is described by observers as a millennial populist who uses social media to communicate with the public, often announcing his decisions via Twitter.

The constitutional chamber ruled that the country’s president can serve two consecutive terms in office, whereas according to a 2014 ruling by the same court a president could only run for office again after two terms served by other leaders, based on an interpretation of article 152 of the constitution.

But the new constitutional court judges named by the legislature on May 1 reinterpreted this controversial and confusing article of the constitution and ruled on Sept. 3 that presidents can stand for a consecutive term if they step down six months before the election.

The legal ruling, which drew fire from the opposition and global rights watchdogs, thus makes it possible for Bukele to seek a second term in 2024.

President Nayib Bukele gave a carefully staged speech to the country on the night of Sept. 15, addressing public authorities, as well as civilian and military representatives. CREDIT: Presidency of El Salvador

Manual for Latin American authoritarianism

The Salvadoran president is apparently following, virtually letter by letter, the manual used by other Latin American populist presidents with an authoritarian bent, whether on the right or the left, who, by means of rulings handed down by judges under their control, have overturned laws and perpetuated themselves in power.

“If the people grant power, and the people demand these changes, it would be no less than a betrayal not to make them,” the president said in his speech before civilian and military leaders.

The president now controls the three branches of government, with no checks against his style of government where everything revolves around him, a millennial who usually wears a backwards baseball cap and is intolerant of criticism, whether from the media, international organisations, the U.S. government or other countries.

On the morning of Wednesday Sept. 15, thousands of people marched through the streets of the Salvadoran capital to protest the president’s increasing authoritarianism, in the most massive demonstration against Bukele since he came to power.

“I’m marching to defend our rights and to protest against President Bukele’s abuses,” a trans woman who preferred to remain anonymous told IPS.

Bukele won a landslide victory in February 2019 as an anti-establishment candidate riding the wave of voter frustration and disappointment with the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), in power from 1989 to 2009, and the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which governed from 2009 to 2019.

Holding a sign reading “This government turned out to be more fake than my eyelashes,” a young trans woman participates in the march called by social organisations on Sept. 15 to protest against President Nayib Bukele and his style of government that, since June 2019, has been dismantling democratic institutions in this Central American nation. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

His party then swept the legislative elections in May 2021 and now, having replaced the members of the constitutional court, Bukele pulls the strings of an important segment of the country’s justice system.

He also controls the Attorney General’s Office, after the governing party’s legislative majority removed then Attorney General Raúl Melara on May 1, replacing him with the pro-Bukele Rodolfo Delgado.

“Apparently we are in democracy, but the president’s actions run counter to democracy, he is dismantling the state’s institutionality, and is thus attacking the rights of the entire population,” lawyer Loyda Robles, of the Foundation for Studies for the Application of Law (FESPAD), told IPS.

She added that there were warning signs that El Salvador could be heading towards an even more authoritarian, dictatorial, Nicaragua-style regime.

The president of that country, Daniel Ortega, has already served three consecutive terms since his return to power in 2007, and is heading for a fourth term in 2022. To this end, the judiciary, under his control, has imprisoned almost a dozen opposition candidates who could challenge him at the polls.

Slippery slope of anti-democratic measures

Emboldened by his overwhelming triumph in the 2019 presidential elections, Bukele has taken a series of steps that have angered opposition sectors, because they believe that he intends to undermine all checks and balances and govern at will.

In addition to the removal of the constitutional court judges and the attorney general, the legislature passed a decree on Aug. 31 that forced some 200 judges to retire.

The government claims it is purging corrupt judges, who do exist. However, the process has not been based on investigations but on an across-the-board decision to make retirement mandatory for all judges over the age of 60 or who have worked for 30 years.

Some analysts have interpreted the move as a purge within the judicial system in order to later fill the vacuum with judges aligned with Bukelismo.

The government denies this charge and says the aim is to make way for young lawyers, arguing that judges in El Salvador do not hold lifetime positions.

But all of these moves have set off alarm bells both inside and outside El Salvador.

Demonstrators in Francisco Morazán square, in the historic center of San Salvador, who came out to protest on Sept. 15 against the increasingly authoritarian moves by Nayib Bukele’s government, in the most massive demonstration against the president since he came to power, called by social organisations on the country’s Independence Day. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

However, analyst Dagoberto Gutiérrez told IPS that the struggle between Bukele and his opponents is rooted in a silent struggle between two economic groups: the traditional oligarchy that has pulled the strings of the country’s politics, and new small, medium and even large businesspeople aligned with the president.

Gutiérrez, a former guerrilla commander now close to the president, said the opposition is demanding independence of powers that has actually never existed in the country, since the oligarchy always put in place officials who would maintain the status quo.

That “democracy” touted by the oligarchy, with its fallacies and abuses, is being taken up by another political project, that of Bukele, who stressed that the extent of the transformations he has planned “is yet to be seen.”

For the time being, according to the constitutional court’s recent ruling, Bukele can, if he wishes, seek reelection at the end of his current term. But he would not be able to run for a third consecutive term.

However, lawyer Tahnya Pastor remarked to IPS: “Who can assure us that in the future, by means of another legal precedent, they won’t pull another reelection out of their sleeve? This doubt remains, obviously.”

She added that when all the warning signs are analysed, “we can conclude that we are heading towards the ultimate concentration of power, and history has shown that no concentration of power is good.”

But like Gutiérrez, Pastor criticised the opposition because in the past they have also manipulated, for their own political interests, the same institutions over which they are now crying foul.

“The constitution has indeed been reformed in the past depending on the makeup of the constitutional court, and the jurisprudence has responded to partisan political interests,” she said.

Bukele seems to be confident that, despite the criticism, his policies and vision are welcomed by the majority of Salvadorans, who continue to support him.

According to a survey by the José Simeón Caña Central American University carried out in June, during Bukele’s second year in office, nine out of 10 respondents said the president represented a positive change for the country.

He obtained an overall high score of 8.1, and those surveyed identified the government’s good management of the Covid-19 pandemic as its main achievement.

Not everyone shares this enthusiasm for Bukele, obviously, nor does all the criticism come from academic, political or activist circles.

“It’s not good for someone to govern as he pleases, that’s how things were done when there were kings, but we are no longer in those times,” Hernán Campos, a farmer from the Cangrejera canton in the municipality and department of La Libertad, in the central part of the country, told IPS.

FAO is working to urgently raise $ 36 million to accelerate support for Afghan farmers. The support aims to ensure that they do not lose their crops, wheat and other winter grains, which could otherwise result in a food emergency that would deepen the crisis in the Asian country. Credit: FAO

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, Sep 17 2021 (IPS)

The traumatic events that occurred in recent weeks in Afghanistan have once again placed this Asian country at the center of the world’s attention with high-impact coverage and analysis in the media.

Perhaps one of the arguments least addressed in the current situation is the state of agriculture and food in the country and the possible effects on these sectors that, if not addressed in time, could intensify an already very delicate situation.

Failure to face the critical autumn that is approaching, the anticipated drought, the economic crisis, the instability and the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to a devastating scenario of hunger and migratory flows, both internally and abroad

In an extraordinary ministerial meeting held on Monday, 13 September, convened by the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, to discuss the urgent measures to be taken to alleviate the critical humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, the potential issue of hunger, especially suffered by girls and boys, arose in several interventions carried out by numerous countries, donors and international organizations.

Failure to face the critical autumn that is approaching, the anticipated drought, the economic crisis, the instability and the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to a devastating scenario of hunger and migratory flows, both internally and abroad.

The drought threatens the subsistence of seven million Afghans if the support for the season’s harvest does not arrive in time.

In Afghanistan, 70 percent of its population (around 36 million people) live in rural areas, and agriculture guarantees the survival of 80 percent of the population.

The Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, requested an urgent contribution of $36 million dollars to immediately address the agricultural and food situation in Afghanistan, in order to provide relief to 3.5 million people.

FAO currently supports more than 1.5 million people in 28 of the 31 Afghan provinces. Assistance in this sector must consist of technical aid, seed donation, training and small financial aid to guarantee basic nutritional needs.

The projected drought this year will reduce plantations by 20 percent and require an increase in cereal needs of 30 percent, while three million head of cattle will be at risk.

Advances in technology and information technology enable many catastrophes to be anticipated before they take place and cause human suffering increase threats to food security and rural livelihoods in countries in severe crises, like in the case of Afghanistan. Such advances require a massive intensification of these digital instruments.

The Director of Emergencies and Resilience of FAO, Rein Paulsen, considers that given the complexity, frequency and intensity of new countries that add to dramatic food crises, it is not possible to continue resorting to strategies of the past. It is necessary to advance in innovation and more efficient and wiser investments.

In this context, immediate action in Afghanistan must be based on previous experiences and adapted to have better immediate results with lower costs.

In the last five years, the number of people in the world affected by a food crisis has risen to 155 million in 2020 in 55 countries, while another 41 million face emergencies due to food insecurity, thus running the risk of suffering from famine or similar conditions unless they receive immediate assistance to survive.

More than 811 million people go hungry around the world, a trend that has been increasing in recent years.

The increase in humanitarian funding for the food sector – from $ 6.2 billion to nearly $ 8 billion between 2016 and 2019 – has been significant, although it is still not enough to provide basic emergency relief.

In the case of Afghanistan, multiple countries have listened to the request of the United Nations to undertake urgent cooperation with the country, multiplying the humanitarian emergency contributions in a country where half of the national budget depended on the international contribution.

Increasing contributions promptly and using them effectively will reduce costs.

In its new reality, the situation in Afghanistan is a challenge for the entire international community. Resolving it positively will demonstrate that it is possible to reverse negative trends in global food security. Let us be reminded there are less than 10 years to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, the second of which is the eradication of world hunger, set forth in the 2030 Agenda.

Excerpt:

Mario Lubetkin is Assistant Director General at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Women produce more than 50 percent of the food in the world but are disadvantaged when it comes to access to resources such as land and financial services. Credit: Busani Bafana, IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Sep 17 2021 (IPS)

Women, key contributors to agriculture production, are missing at the decision table, with alarming consequences, says Food Tank President Danielle Nierenberg in an exclusive interview with IPS.

Giving women a seat at the policymaking table could accelerate Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and keep the world fed and nourished. This necessitates a transformation of the currently lopsided global food system, she says.

Food Tank President Danielle Nierenberg.

Nierenberg, a top researcher and advocate on food systems and agriculture, acknowledges that women are the most affected during environmental or health crises. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global food production, affecting women farmers and food producers who were already excluded from full participation in agricultural development.

“We still have a long way to go in making sure that policies are not gender blind and include the needs of women at the forefront when mass disasters occur,“ Nierenberg told IPS, adding that policymakers need to understand the needs of farmers and fisherfolk involved in food systems.

“I think it is time we need more people who are involved with agriculture to run for political office because they understand its challenges,” she said. “If we had more farmers in governments around the world, imagine what that would look like. If we had women farmers running municipalities, towns and even countries, that is where change would really happen.”

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), women contribute more than 50 percent of food produced globally and make up over 40 percent of the agricultural labour force. But while women keep families fed and nourished, they are disadvantaged in accessing critical resources for food production compared to men. They lack access to land, inputs, extension, banking and financial services.

“Until we end the discrimination of women around the globe, I doubt these things will change even though women are in the largest part of the world’s food producers,” said Nierenberg, who co-founded and now heads the global food systems think tank, Food Tank.

Arguing that COVID-19 and the climate crisis were not going to be the last global shocks to affect the world, Nierenberg said women and girls had been impacted disproportionately; hence the need to act now and change the food system. Women have experienced the loss of jobs and income, reduced food production and nutrition and more girls are now out of school.

“It is not enough for me to speak for women around the globe. Women who are actually doing the work need to speak for themselves; they need to be included in these conversations,” Nierenberg said.

“What happens is that in conferences, there are a lot of white men in suits talking on behalf of the rest of the world. But we need the rest of the world, and women included, to be in the room.”

A food system is a complex network of all activities involving the growing, processing, distribution and consumption of food. It also includes the governance, ecological sustainability and health impact of food.

Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted invisible issues, like the interconnectedness of our food systems, she said it was urgent to invest in regional and localized food systems that included women and youth. Food Tank and the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) work collaboratively to investigate and set the agenda for concrete solutions for resetting the food system.

Divine Ntiokam, Food Systems Champion and Founder and Managing Director, Climate Smart Agriculture Youth Network Global (GCSAYN), agrees. While youth are ready to engage in promoting a just and inclusive transformation of rural areas, it was unfortunate they were rarely involved in decision-making, she said. They are excluded from the household level to larger political institutions and companies and need better prospects of financial security to remain in the farming sector.

“Young men and women need to be given special attention in formulating legislation to purchase land and receive proper land rights,” Ntiokam told IPS.

“International donors and governments need to invest in youth, particularly young women and girls, for their meaningful participation along with the food systems value network,” he said.

“Youth need to have a ‘seat at the table’, as they have at the Summit, in terms of decision-making on where governments and international donors invest their resources to make agriculture and food a viable, productive and profitable career.”

Researchers say current food systems are unfair, unhealthy, and inequitable, underscoring the urgency to transform the global food system. According to the FAO, more than 800 million people went to bed hungry in 2020, and scores of others are malnourished.

Jemimah Njuki, Director for Africa at IFPRI and Custodian for the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Lever of the UN Food Systems Summit.

For food systems to be just, there is an urgency to close the gender resource gap, says Jemimah Njuki, Director for Africa at IFPRI and Custodian for the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Lever of the UN Food Systems Summit.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will, on September 23, 2021 host the UN Food Systems Summit during the UN General Assembly High-Level Week. The Summit is billed as a platform to push for solid support in changing the world food systems to help the world recover from the COVID-19 pandemic while spurring the achievement of the SDG by 2030.

The Summit, the UN says will “culminate in an inclusive global process, offering a catalytic moment for public mobilization and actionable commitments by heads of state and government and other constituency leaders to take the food system agenda forward”.

“They (food systems) must also transform in ways that are just and equitable, and that meaningfully engage and benefit women and girls,” Njuki told IPS. She added that harmful social and gender norms creating barriers for women and girls by defining what women and girls can or cannot eat, what they can or cannot own, where they can go or not go should be removed.

“This transformation has to be driven from all levels and all sectors in our food systems: global to local, public to private, large scale producers to smallholder farmers and individual consumers,” Njuki said.

Leaders should enact policies that directly address injustices – such as ensuring women’s access to credit, markets, and land rights, Njuki said, noting that individual women and men need to confront social norms and legal prejudices and demand changes.

Njuki believes that current food systems have contributed to wide disparities among rich and poor.

“These negative outcomes are intimately linked with many of the biggest challenges facing humanity right now – justice and equality, climate change, human rights – and these challenges cannot be addressed without transforming how our food systems work,” Njuki told IPS.

“We are at a pivotal moment on the last decade before the deadline for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This must be the decade of action for food systems to end hunger.”

 

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Millets, which grow well in rain-fed regions such as Chhattisgarh, used to be a mainstay for household cultivation and consumption. Credit: Picture courtesy - Neeraja Kudrimoti.

By External Source
Sep 17 2021 (IPS)

Chhattisgarh was one of the first few states in the country to universalise the public distribution system (PDS) and provide ‘Right to Food’ to its people. In order to ensure access to quality foodgrains for its vulnerable population, the state introduced the Food Security Act in 2012. The state has been providing support—35 kg of rice at INR 1 and INR 2 per kg; 1 kg of iodised salt and 1 kg refined oil at no cost; 2 kg of grams at INR 5 per kg—to each eligible family (as defined in the act).

Despite these efforts and others by the state, the statistics on nutrition for children and women in Chhattisgarh, almost a decade since the act, look grim. According to the latest data released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 40 percent of children below the age of five are underweight and 41.6 percent of girls and women are anemic.

Promoting millet cultivation and consumption can be one way to improve nutritional outcomes. The focus on millets stems from the history and significance of millet cultivation in the region, the crop’s nutritional value, its ability to grow well in Chhattisgarh’s climate, and its impact on improved agro-biodiversity

While several factors—access to quality food and health care, livelihood opportunities, and context-specific vulnerabilities—impact health and nutrition outcomes, this piece specifically looks at how promoting millet cultivation and consumption can be one way to improve nutritional outcomes. The focus on millets stems from the history and significance of millet cultivation in the region, the crop’s nutritional value, its ability to grow well in Chhattisgarh’s climate, and its impact on improved agro-biodiversity.

 

A brief background on cultivation practices in Chhattisgarh

Eighty percent of Chhattisgarh is largely dependent on agriculture, which is mainly rain-fed. Additionally, there is a widespread culture of monocropping—growing a single crop every year after year, on the same land. The state is known as the rice bowl of India, as it mainly grows paddy (or rice) under monocropping.

This wasn’t always the case. Over the years, there has been a marked shift towards the cultivation of rice. The Green Revolution, which introduced the use of high-yield seed varieties and chemical fertilisers to boost the production of wheat and rice, played a big role here.

Since then, there has been a push to expand the areas under cultivation through the use of hybrid paddy seeds, and to invest in research and development around the cultivation of paddy. And in 2019, the Government of Chhattisgarh promised its farmers a minimum support price of INR 2,500 per quintal of paddy, thereby encouraging them to focus on rice. The PDS becoming predominantly rice-oriented has also contributed to farmers shifting towards growing paddy. Over time, monocropping has damaged the soil’s nutrient diversity and has led to increased crop vulnerability and dependency.

Prior to the Green Revolution, rice, millets, sorghum, wheat, maize, and barley were the major crops produced. The production of rice and millets was higher than the production of wheat, barley, and maize combined. Many of the indigenous varieties used for cultivation, especially for millets, have been lost. The traditional farming and dietary practices were more aligned with the climate conditions of the region. Millets in particular, which grow well in rain-fed regions such as Chhattisgarh, used to be a mainstay for household cultivation and consumption.

 

Why millets?

Nutritionally, millets are high in protein, vitamins, and minerals. They are one of the highest sources of natural calcium. Older generations of tribal households talk about how a drink made from millets, called ragi pega—ragi cooked in hot water—was especially helpful. The drink kept them full and energised for long periods of time, especially when they had to spend hours, sometimes days, in the forest collecting produce.

Additionally, diets that heavily rely on cereals (such as rice) and pulses—which are heavily subsidised by the government under the current system—can lead to deficiencies in micronutrients such as iron, zinc, calcium, vitamins, and more.1 Therefore, promoting millet cultivation and consumption in the region can help combat issues of malnutrition, especially micro-nutrient deficiencies among children and women in the state.

Cultivating millets is also useful because they are better for the environment. They have a lower water footprint, are climate-smart crops, and are climate-resilient. Moreover, they are ‘farmer-friendly’ because they require a very low input cost. In Chhattisgarh, 21 out of 28 districts are water-scarce. This, coupled with climate change, erratic rainfall, and continued cultivation of water-intensive crops will eventually affect productivity and production, which in turn will affect food availability and price variations. In the long run, this will have an adverse impact on food security in the region.

 

Where are millets now?

Today, tribal households cultivate small quantities of millets, mainly for household consumption, using home-preserved seeds and traditional cultivation methods. Culturally as well, millets are used as offerings to deities or to hang millet cobs in homes on auspicious occasions. Despite the benefits of millets to both farmers and the environment, the crop has not been commercially produced since it has almost no supporting policies or markets.

Today, the area under paddy cultivation is 27 lakh hectares, almost 27 times more than the area under millet cultivation (1 lakh hectares). The Government of Chhattisgarh procured a record-breaking volume of paddy, worth INR 20,000 crore, at the minimum support price (MSP) in FY 2020-21. On the other hand, millets—which are far more nutritious, farmer-friendly, and planet-friendly smart crops—were not procured at all.

Although the state has made some efforts to increase millet cultivation, there was a shortage of seeds under various government schemes for the cultivation of millets. Further, local or indigenous seed varieties have been excluded from these schemes. Given that dietary staples may typically constitute 70 percent of a meal, and are often eaten three times a day, diversifying these staples can have a huge impact on health and nutrition. It would also address the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation, as well as the socioeconomic and political factors that influence food patterns, choices, and access.

 

What needs to be done?

1. Develop an integrated ecosystem
The government of Chhattisgarh has declared procurement at MSP for ragi and kodo and kutki (little millet). However, there is also a need to adopt a comprehensive and integrated ecosystem involving multiple stakeholders—farmers, middlemen, households, markets, government, community-based organisations, and nonprofits. This would entail government support on several fronts—increasing production, promoting household consumption, developing a decentralised processing infrastructure, and developing the local market for millets. The government must also include millets in the PDS, by making them available at local Fair Price Shops.2 This will ensure that there’s diversity in the staples available—currently, only rice and chana (bengal gram) are supported.

2. Land reforms
Ragi, kodo, and kutki should also be integrated into land reforms aimed at shifting to a multi-cropping system, in a traditionally rice-growing state.

3. Processing, infrastructure, and transportation support
Millet cultivation is mostly undertaken by indigenous groups who are scattered across the Bastar region of south Chhattisgarh, and the Sarguja area in north Chhattisgarh. Processes that aid drudgery reduction, produce aggregation, and shortening the local value chain should be encouraged. Such support, especially for small and marginal farmers, communities that benefit directly from the Forests Rights Act (FRA), and Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, will help them bring their produce to procurement or aggregation centers.

4. Strengthen insurance for farmers cultivating millets
Insurance products should also be linked to millet production to provide a safety net, especially at the beginning of the production cycle. This will ensure that farmers are protected against losses during the initial shifting of cultivation to millets, and until production stabilises.

5. Increase consumption of millets
There is a need for formal linkages to welfare schemes, specifically those related to supplementary nutrition. For example, linkages to local fair price shops in PDS, Anganwadis under Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), schools under the Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDM), and tribal hostels under Integrated Tribal Development Agency Business, among others. Such linkages can help secure acceptance and behaviour change in the direction towards the consumption of millets.

6. Invest in research on millets
Investing in research on markets, consumption patterns, transportation and infrastructure support, and traditional crop varieties is essential. This will help build important knowledge around nutrition, quality food, access, capacity, and viability of millets in Chhattisgarh.

7. Capacity building
Building on farmers’ knowledge, strengthening capacity for crop planning, using suitable agronomic practices, and increasing access to tools, subsidies, and registration support for government procurement is crucial. Further, it is mainly women—who are not widely recognised as farmers—who currently cultivate and manage production. Therefore, it is important to develop sustainable livelihood and social support for them such as better access to land, information, capital, and so on.
8. Seed production and preservation techniques

Lastly, another gap that needs to be addressed is the lack of available agro-climatically suitable seeds in Chhattisgarh. Awareness programmes that target seed preservation techniques among the tribals and promote the cultivation of local varieties of millets should be introduced. This will address issues of agricultural biodiversity, climate change, and nutritional concerns.

—

Footnotes:

1. National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB). Prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies. Technical report No.22, National Institute of Nutrition, ICMR; 2003.
2. Fair Price Shops are operated by the government under the public distribution system. They offer daily food and ration products—such as rice, oil, sugar, wheat, matchbox, soap, and so on—for a lower price than the market price.

 

Neeraja Kudrimoti worked as the state program officer for NITI Aayog’s Aspirational Districts Programme in Chhattisgarh. She was a Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellow in Bijapur district, Chhattisgarh. Neeraja advises public sector enterprises as a member of the National Corporate Social Responsibility Hub at Tata Institute Social Sciences. She has worked with state and district administrations on health, nutrition, agriculture, gender, and rural development in conflict-areas of Chhattisgarh. Neeraja holds a MSc in Public Policy from University College, London.

 

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