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Venezuelan refugees make their way to the Colombian border town of La Guajira. Credit: PAHO/Karen González Abril

By Sandra Weiss
MEXICO CITY, Sep 17 2021 (IPS)

This is the third serious attempt to inject some momentum in the negotiations between the Venezuelan government and opposition. Negotiations have been taking place in Mexico since last Friday, with Norway acting as mediator.

The failure of the previous attempts at negotiation ended up strengthening Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, who tightened the screws on each occasion. Expectations are correspondingly low this time, especially among the Venezuelan population.

They also have other concerns: Covid-19 has led to hospitals that were already in a desperate state collapsing completely and the vaccination rate of eleven per cent (fully vaccinated) is one of the lowest on the continent, along with Haiti and Nicaragua.

The supply of medicines and food is precarious and inflation, power cuts, and petrol shortages add to the already existing problems. More than six million of the 28 million inhabitants have left their country, shrinking the opposition’s base. Those left behind struggle to survive and many have withdrawn from political life in disappointment.

Economic handcuffs

According to polls, Maduro’s support stands at 21 per cent — which is roughly the number of government employees and military officers directly dependant on the regime. The majority of Venezuelans are in favour of political change. Paradoxically, the opposition proves incapable of capitalising on the societal mood.

Little is left of the euphoria when Juan Guaidó proclaimed himself as president in January 2019, making life difficult for ‘the usurper Maduro’ with mass protests, a military mini-rebellion, and broad international recognition.

Back then, 80 per cent supported him; today, according to a poll by the Meganalisis Institute, only four per cent of the population still back him.This means that he is no longer a direct threat in Maduro’s eyes. Now the head of state wants to free himself from the straitjacket that Guaidó and the opposition have put together thanks to their international backing.

During the last general election in 2020, only 15 to 30 per cent went to the polls.

Venezuela is struggling economically. What still functions, apart from the (ailing) oil sector, is a flourishing underground economy consisting of racketeering, gold, arms, human and drug smuggling.

Criminal groups from all over the world are involved and control large parts of the country, protected by a network of corrupt military and parastate militias. The productive apparatus lies in ruins and cannot be kickstarted again without foreign investment.

But even Maduro’s allies like Russia and China are now keeping their wallets closed, despite their geostrategic interest. The Western embargo, which shrunk the country’s gross domestic product by 80 per cent, has made doing business with Venezuela more difficult and more expensive. And the rampant corruption makes investments seem like a financial bottomless pit.

All this has recently eroded Maduro’s legitimacy. During the last general election in 2020, only 15 to 30 per cent went to the polls. ‘This is a sign of weakness and makes Maduro more dependent on alliances with the military and other not necessarily trustworthy partners’, says political scientist Colette Capriles.

A change of tides

Maduro’s options are therefore limited: Either a flight forward, into ever more authoritarian measures, similar to the development in socialist brother countries such as Nicaragua and Cuba. Or a, at least partial, democratic opening and concessions to ease sanctions, stabilise the economy, and gain legitimacy.

Maduro has opted for the latter. In the face of internal resistance, he recently even made half-hearted concessions to the opposition. And two critics of the government now sit on the five-member electoral council. Opposition leader Freddy Guevara was released, and the opposition alliance MUD, which had handed the ruling party PSUV a bitter defeat in the 2016 parliamentary elections, was also admitted to the regional elections in autumn.

While two similarly strong opponents faced off in the last negotiations in 2019, this time, the opposition is in a weaker position. The 38-year-old Guaidó has lost support within the opposition alliance because of his own mistakes, but also thanks to a clever politics of division, propaganda, and targeted repression by the regime.

Moderate opposition leaders such as Henrique Capriles criticised Guaidó’s unfortunate entanglements in military adventures such as the failed mercenary invasion in May 2020. Guaidó also made unrealistic demands, such as Maduro’s resignation, a condition for negotiations. Capriles’ demand for a gradual strategy recently gained support in the business association as well as in the Foro Civico, the most important civil society movement.

Despite its perceived weakness, the opposition also holds some trumps. One is the support of the US and Europe for a return to a democratic rule. Recovering from Trump’s ultimately empty military threats, the transatlantic bridge seems to have been repaired.

The US has leverage in the form of sanctions. Without the consent of US diplomacy, Maduro will therefore not achieve his goal.

The second trump is timing. The elections in autumn, in which the opposition now wants to take part as one body, offer an unrivalled opportunity to gain power. The cadres of the ruling socialist party PSUV are unpopular. If the opposition succeeds in finding common candidates rooted in the people and in defeating voter apathy, this would be an important step in building a solid base.

Admittedly, Maduro controls the campaign machinery, the electoral council, and the entire logistics of the ballot. But if he wants to achieve an easing of sanctions, he will not be able to play these cards openly.

Enhanced experience

The mediators have also learned lessons from the failure of the previous negotiations, keeping the negotiations secret; none of the parties are allowed to leak content to the press. Both sides have agreed to also accept parts of the agreement, provided they have been sufficiently discussed and their implementation is urgent — even if the rest of the agenda is still open.

This opens the possibility of humanitarian aid deliveries, a release of all political prisoners or a gradual re-institutionalisation of the country and important key bodies such as the electoral council.

The Cubans have enormous influence on Maduro and will therefore sit indirectly at the negotiating table.

The talks are being led by the experienced Danish diplomat Dag Nylander, who has already brought the complicated peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas to a happy conclusion.

This experience inspired new ideas for negotiation points, such as the right of victims to compensation and the inclusion of civil society to place an agreement on a broader foundation of legitimacy.

Russia and the Netherlands are acting as observers. Phil Gunson of the International Crisis Group sees the fact that Russia could be brought on board as positive: ‘Up until now, Russia has tried to prevent strategic advantages for the US and its allies. But an agreement that preserves Russia’s economic interests in Venezuela would also benefit Moscow’.

The negotiations will neither be easy nor move along at speed. It is also not certain that the opposition can maintain its unity nor is it certain that Maduro will be strong enough to push through substantial concessions vis-à-vishis allies, especially in regards to those who are entangled in organised crime and have little interest in a solution.

Another player in the shadows is Cuba. The Caribbean Island is in the midst of its worst economic and legitimacy crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1990s. The deals with Venezuela are one of the last life boats. The Cubans have enormous influence on Maduro and will therefore sit indirectly at the negotiating table.

Nevertheless, there is justified hope. If the last negotiations in 2019 were about ‘all or nothing’, this time politics has returned to the negotiating table as the art of compromise and moderation. The possibility of a transitional government in which both camps share power is at least on the horizon, albeit still a very distant one.

Sandra Weiss is a political scientist and a former diplomat. Until 1999 she worked as editor for the news agency AFP. A freelance journalist, Sandra wrote articles about Latin America for several German newspapers, among others Die Zeit and Die Welt.

Source: International Politics and Society

 

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A new report, Fixing the Business of Food, advocates the aligning of business practices to the SDGs. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Alison Kentish
Sep 16 2021 (IPS)

In the backdrop of rising hunger, half of the world’s population living on unhealthy diets, a third of agricultural produce lost to postharvest events, and waste, poverty in farming communities, a pandemic that laid bare the vulnerability of food systems to external shocks and unsustainable food production, the Barilla Foundation for Food and Nutrition has published a report which introduces guidelines for the private sector to fulfil its role in transforming global food systems.

The Fixing Food Report was released September 16, 2021, one week before the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), the largest and most urgent forum to date, which brings together representatives in every sector of the food system to make food production, packaging and distribution more sustainable.

The report acknowledges that food companies are a part of a larger, complex system. However, while they cannot solve the food systems crisis alone, these businesses have an important role in food choices, reducing food loss and waste, sustainable food production and poverty elimination.

It adds that they can contribute to food systems transformation by integrating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) into their business practices through a 4-pillar framework. The framework includes beneficial products and strategies, sustainable business operations and internal processes, sustainable supply and value chains and good corporate citizenship.

“Integrating sustainability principles within business goals and activities is not easy. It requires a rethinking of corporate purpose, management systems, performance measurements, and reporting systems,” the report states.

As part of its release, BCFN officials hosted a webinar on fixing the business of food. It brought together some of the world’s leading research institutions and food experts, including the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) at Columbia University, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN SDSN) and the Santa Chiara Lab (SCL) of the University of Siena.

“To build back better, now is the time for a great reset, and in order to achieve that, we need to reset the agendas of the food industry and the finance sector to help the agri-food sector to become a game-changer for positive impact on the ecosystem and society as a whole,” said Guido Barilla, Chairman of the Barilla Group and the foundation the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN).

According to the report, while food businesses are now recognizing the magnitude of the global food crisis, many governments seem oblivious to this reality. It adds that the UNFSS aims to change this view “with all due urgency.”

“Companies should look inside and align themselves with sustainable practices, including the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity, should report on such behaviours, in detail, should adjust internal management systems, promotion systems, compensation systems, evaluation systems, to ensure not just rhetorical alignment in an annual report, but operational alignment in business practices,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

In addition to the 4-pillar framework, the Fixing the Business of Food report also lists 21 standards for more sustainable food systems. Those guidelines include measures for sustainable business operations and accountability.

Managing Director for Food and Nature at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Diane Holdorf, has encouraged food companies to commit to ambitious action on food systems transformation.

The CEO-led Council, which consists of 200 businesses working towards sustainable food systems, has challenged members to sign a business declaration towards this goal.

“For example, business leaders have committed to helping meet food system transformation by implementing actions in their companies, value chains, and the different parts of the sectors that are so important across food and agriculture. To, for example, scale science-based solutions, to provide investments into research and innovation that support the transformation that we need to see.”

Holdorf elaborated that the transformation included every part of the process, “from seeds to fertilizers, farming, processing, selling and trading, transportation, consumption, nutrition and ensuring access for farmers and others across the chain that leads into actions around contributing to improving livelihoods.”

The report makes a case for technical, financial, and other support for small and medium-sized enterprises.

International and European Affairs of the Food, Beverages and Catering Union head Peter Schmidt says this support is essential for the private sector’s successful alignment to the SDGs.

“Most of these initiatives are driven by the multinationals, and that’s okay, that’s great, and we appreciate it very much that is practice. I fully support them, but at the same time, we have real problems explaining SMEs. What does it mean when we talk about the problem of sustainability?” he asked.

“I invited several people from the business sector and asked one CEO from a corporate team, producing organic cheese, ‘Do you know something about the SDGs? The UN Agenda 2030? Do you know about the Code of Conduct that was launched within the Frankfurt strategy from the European Commission?’ and the answer was: not really. I think that shows how important it is that we go deeper in this level. That is the backbone of the food industry, of the processing sector. If we do not take them on board, I’m not sure whether we can have success in the transformation process,” he said.

For over ten years, the Barilla Foundation for Food and Nutrition has engaged in state-of-the-art research, hosted high-level think tanks, and contributed to discussion – and action – on food systems transformation.

Foundation representatives say during that time, they have witnessed a shift in the concept of sustainability, including steps by industry leaders to align with SDGs, but a lot more work is needed to achieve food systems transformation.

“Food is more than a commodity. It is a public good at the heart of our societies, our cultures, and our lives. Food actors can and must play a role in delivering this change,” said Barilla.

 

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Credit: Global Policy Forum

By Jens Martens
BONN, Germany, Sep 16 2021 (IPS)

Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis have exacerbated rather than reduced global inequalities. On the one hand, the net wealth of billionaires has risen to record levels since the outbreak of the pandemic (increasing by more than US$ 5 trillion to US$ 13.1 trillion from 2020 to 2021), on the other hand, the number of people living in extreme poverty has also increased massively (by approx. 100 million to 732 million in 2020).

These contrasts alone show that something is fundamentally wrong in the world.

In response to the disastrous effects of the pandemic, there was much talk of solidarity with regard to health support, including access to vaccines. But the brutal national competition for vaccines shows that solidarity is embraced by many world leaders merely as a rhetorical flourish.

The World Health Organization (WHO) made an early appeal to countries to agree on a coordinated distribution of vaccines, with available doses distributed fairly according to the size of each country’s population. This has not happened.

By the end of August 2021, more than 60 percent of the people in high-income countries had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, but less than 2 percent have done so in low-income countries.

The European Commission, the USA, the UK, and numerous other countries have signed bilateral COVID-19 Vaccine Agreements with pharmaceutical producers to secure vaccine quotas. By the end of August 2021, more than 400 agreements were concluded, securing over 18 billion doses of vaccine.

The European Commission has so far negotiated supply agreements for 4.3 billion doses of vaccine, equivalent to 8 vaccine doses per capita of the EU population. The UK could vaccinate its population 9 times with the contracted doses, the USA 10 times and Canada as many as 16 times.

Exacerbating the problem for many countries in the global South is the enormous cost of vaccines. The producers do not charge standard prices, but vary their prices depending on the quantity purchased and the bargaining power of the purchaser.

Occasionally, they grant preferential terms to rich countries, while countries in the global South sometimes have to pay higher prices. For example, the European Commission received a batch of AstraZeneca vaccine for US$ 2.19, while Argentina had to pay US$ 4.00 and the Philippines US$ 5.00. Botswana had to pay US$ 14.44 million for 500,000 doses of Moderna vaccine, or US$ 28.88 per dose, while the USA got Moderna’s vaccine at almost half the price (US$ 15.00).

While the vaccine pharmaceutical oligopoly makes exorbitant profits, countries of the global South are confronted with falling government revenues and rising debt burdens. The situation will worsen as regular vaccine boosters become necessary in the coming years.

What is tantamount to a license to print money for the pharmaceutical companies is a massive burden on public budgets. In view of this dramatic disparity, the promise to “leave no one behind” of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development remains an empty slogan.

Insufficient responses to the global health crisis

As an immediate response to the global health crisis, the People’s Vaccine Alliance has formulated “5 steps to end vaccine apartheid“. These are in line with the demands derived from the analyses in the Spotlight Report 2021.

Increasing global vaccine production capacity, lowering market prices, and substantially increasing public financial support are vital, especially for the poor and disadvantaged people in the global South.

One way to overcome the vaccine shortage is to accelerate technology transfer. In May 2020, WHO established the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), designed to pool voluntary licenses, research and regulatory data. But most countries with large vaccine production capacity, such as the USA, Germany, China and India, do not support the initiative. Thus, it has so far remained without any noticeable impact.

Faced with scarce global production capacity, India, South Africa, Kenya and Eswatini applied for a waiver under the TRIPS Agreement of the WTO to temporarily remove patent protection for COVID-19-related vaccines, medicines and devices.

The TRIPS waiver is intended to enable manufacturers in the global South in particular to produce medicines and vaccines more quickly and at lower cost. More than 100 countries support this initiative, including the USA as of May 2021.

The EU, the UK, Switzerland and the pharmaceutical companies and lobby groups based in these countries are particularly opposed and have so far blocked an agreement.

In this context, the more fundamental question arises as to whether medicines vital to realize the human right to health should be patented at all. Should they not in principle be considered global public goods, especially when, as in the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, billions of dollars of public money have gone into research and development?

In another initiative, the WHO and several partners—including France, the EU and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation –launched the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator and its COVAX initiative.

This has shifted the centre of the global COVID-19 response from WHO to a multi-stakeholder initiative with its own governance and decision-making structure, thereby further weakening WHO’s role in the global health architecture.

But with the unilateral approach of the rich countries to vaccine procurement, COVAX has failed in its claim to serve a global coordination function. Its primary task is now to provide COVID-19 vaccines to 92 low- and middle-income countries with the objective to provide at least 2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses by the end of 2021.

By 14 September 2021, just 270 million doses have been delivered. To date, COVAX has received pledges of US$ 9.825 billion, nowhere near enough to provide sufficient vaccines for about 4 billion people in the 92 countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic has painfully demonstrated the absence of a functioning global health system. This reality has led to the proposal to create a Pandemic Treaty – a legally binding framework and improved global governance structures for pandemic preparedness and response.

Whether it can actually overcome structural weaknesses of the global health architecture, such as the underfunding of the WHO, is very unclear. Depending on its design, it could lead to an actual strengthening of the WHO, or to its further weakening by outsourcing pandemic preparedness and response to multi-stakeholder bodies with limited public accountability.

More transformational steps are needed

Beyond responding to the global health crisis, far more fundamental transformational steps are needed.

An essential aspect of an agenda for change is the shift toward a rights-based economy and a concept of human rights that forms the basis of our vision of economic justice.

To make this systemic shift happen, the trend towards privatization, outsourcing and systematic dismantling of public services must be reversed.

To combat rising inequality and build a socially just, inclusive post-COVID world, everyone must have equitable access to public services, which must be reclaimed as public goods and run in the common interest, not for profit.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has repeatedly emphasized that human rights must guide all COVID-19 response and recovery measures. This should also mean strengthening the rights of those on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis.

First and foremost, that means the millions of workers in the healthcare sector, 70 percent of them women. Most of them experience poor work conditions, low wages and job insecurity.

The situation is similar in the education sector. Research by Education International shows that even before the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers’ workloads have steadily worsened, while salaries have remained the same or even decreased.

The situation has continued to deteriorate as a result of the pandemic. The global teacher shortage, which the UN estimated at 69 million even before the pandemic, will continue to grow so long as teaching remains to be “an overworked, undervalued, and underpaid profession”.

A basic precondition for the adequate provision of public goods and services is that States have sufficient resources. To prevent the COVID-19 pandemic being followed by a global debt and austerity pandemic, governments must be enabled to expand their fiscal space and to implement alternatives to neoliberal austerity policies.

This includes implementing a progressive tax reform, which prioritizes taxes on wealth and high earners.

Over the past year, many UN officials, human rights activists and civil society groups (like in the Spotlight Report 2020) have demanded that the resources of the COVID-19 recovery and economic stimulus packages should be used proactively to promote human rights and the implementation of the SDGs.

During that time, initial studies show that this is rarely the case. A report of the Financial Transparency Coalition that tracked fiscal and social protection recovery measures in nine countries of the global South found that in eight of them a total of 63 percent of announced COVID-19 funds went to large corporations, rather than small and medium enterprises or social protection measures.

Particularly poorer countries, some of which were already facing massive budget shortfalls before the pandemic, need substantial external support to finance additional healthcare and social spending and measures to overcome the economic recession.

In this regard, the general allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) equivalent to US$ 650 billion in August 2021 – the largest distribution ever made by the IMF – has been heralded as a major achievement. However, its distribution will not benefit the countries most in need without rechanneling measures and again illustrates existing imbalances in the global economic architecture.

Only if the world collectively embarks on the path toward transformational policies is there a chance to reduce global inequalities, protect our shared planet and make the proclaimed goal of solidarity a political and institutional reality.

Jens Martens is Director, Global Policy Forum, Bonn, Germany

The Spotlight Report is published by the Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND), the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), Global Policy Forum (GPF), Public Services International (PSI), Social Watch, Society for International Development (SID), and Third World Network (TWN), supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

 

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Masked staffers at voting time at the General Assembly last year. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 16 2021 (IPS)

When hundreds of delegates and diplomats arrive in New York city next week for the new 76th session of the UN General Assembly, they will be pinned down with pandemic restrictions in a city where Delta variant infections have been skyrocketing.

Under strict mandatory restrictions that came into force September 13, no one, not even diplomats, will be able to enter restaurants, bars, Broadway shows, or participate in any other indoor activities in New York city — if they are not vaccinated and cannot produce their vaccination cards.

But the United Nations will be an exception: while the nearly 3,000 staffers in New York will have to produce their vaccination cards to enter the UN cafeteria and wear masks inside the building, diplomats and visiting delegates will have free access both to the café, delegate’s lounge and the delegate’s dining room.

Asked whether vaccination certificates will be mandatory for visiting delegates, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, said: “As you know, the Secretary General’s authority over delegates is one that is limited, at best.”

Under longstanding diplomatic protocol, the Secretary-General is subservient to the UN’s 193 member states who reign supreme inside the Secretariat building.

Asked if the same rules apply in Geneva, the second largest UN city, Prisca Chaoui, President of the 3,500-strong Geneva staff union, told IPS “in Geneva the same rules apply to everybody, be it staff or delegate.”

“We believe that this is the right way to do, as it would be useless to ask staff to wear masks if other visitors, including delegates, are being allowed to take them off,” she noted.

As for dining places, she said, it was only last week the Geneva authorities decided to impose a green pass which has been in force since Monday 13.

“Our management hasn’t taken a decision yet on this issue. We expect that they will be aligned to the host country rules, which has been the case since the beginning of the pandemic. This avoids any unnecessary misunderstanding and tension between staff and management,” she added.

A limited number of world leaders and delegates will be at the high-level meeting of the General Assembly, come September 21. Credit: United Nations

Dujarric told reporters on September 13: “We’re taking efforts to reduce the on site footprint from the Secretariat staff. Member States have agreed to limit their number of delegates that will enter the General Assembly Hall. All persons will be required to attest as a condition of entry that they have not had symptoms or been diagnosed with COVID or close contact with anyone”.

He said it was also important that visiting delegates will be subjected to the Host Country’s travelling and entry requirements, and everyone… “I mean, all delegates that are coming in have also been reminded that basically, to do anything in New York City, you need to be vaccinated, whether it’s to take public transportation, though I don’t want to prejudge anything; not sure they would take public transportation, but to enter restaurants, stores, any sort of activity … you need to show a vaccination”.

“In addition, as we’ve said, the staff that needs to be in the building during the General Assembly high level week, is mandated to be vaccinated. So, that’s where we are”.

And to sit in at the 4th Floor restaurant in the UN building you have to show proof of vaccination. “Yes, like in any other restaurant in New York City,” he noted.

As a gesture of goodwill, however, New York city Mayor Bill di Blasio said on September 15 the city will be opening “a pop-up testing and vaccination site at UN headquarters next week and provide free COVID-19 tests, as well as the single-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccines”.

“As we prepare for High-Level week, New York City stands ready to support our partners at the United Nations with testing and vaccine resources,” he said.

“We are proud to join in the ongoing efforts to keep all UNGA attendees and our fellow New Yorkers safe during the pandemic,” he added.

In a joint statement with International Affairs Commissioner Penny Abeywardena, he thanked the General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid of the Maldives for taking the critical step of requiring proof of vaccination for those entering the Assembly hall during next week’s High-Level meeting.

Ian Richards, the former President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations (CCISUA), told IPS Switzerland leaves it to employers to decide their mask policy, and in the Palais des Nations in Geneva, masks are required in common spaces but not at the desk.

Regarding restaurants, he said, the Covid pass is not currently required in workplace cafeterias, although it is in normal restaurants.

“Of course, whatever rules are decided whether in Geneva or New York, they should be same for staff and delegates. Both can transmit Covid in the same way,” declared Richards.

Guy Candusso, a former First Vice President of the UN Staff Union in New York, told IPS the Secretary-General is responsible for the health and safety of all individuals, including diplomats, within the UN complex.

“Unless he is expressly overridden by the General Assembly, I believe he can institute protective measures if the situation requires it,” he said.

Meanwhile, in a letter to UN staffers last month, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said all staff at UNHQ, in consideration of the need to protect one another, will be required to report their vaccination status including through EarthMed with immediate effect.

In addition, any personnel who has been on site and has a positive COVID-19 or Antigen test result must report the results immediately to the Division of Healthcare Management and Occupational Safety and Health through the confidential self-reporting portal (medical.un.org) in order to ensure effective risk mitigation at the workplace.

“I continue to be very grateful to those staff who have been working on premises throughout the pandemic, either because their functions could not be performed remotely or when remote work would have impacted their effectiveness and efficiency,” Guterres said.

“I particularly commend those who did so when we did not have the protection of vaccination. As the presence of unvaccinated staff potentially increases the risk for other staff members, whether vaccinated or not, vaccinations will be mandated for staff performing certain tasks and/or certain occupational groups at UNHQ whose functions do not allow sufficient management of exposure.”

This mandate may be waived where a recognized medical condition prevents vaccination.

Those staff members who will be required to be vaccinated must receive the final dose of a vaccine no later than 19 September 2021.

Any COVID-19 vaccine that is recognized by the WHO, or under routine approved-use by a Member State’s national health authority, is accepted. Affected staff will be notified by their respective offices during the week of 16 August.

“As personnel serving in New York, we are privileged to have access to effective vaccines through local vaccination programmes. In addition to requiring certain staff to be vaccinated, I strongly encourage all personnel who have not already done so to take advantage of this opportunity to be vaccinated to promote your safety and health and all those around you.”

“The situation continues to be monitored and the possibility of additional measures announced will remain under consideration and will be reviewed and adapted as needed,” said Guterres.

 

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Protest against the 30X30 conservation plan at IUCN World Conservation Congress, Marseille, France. Credit: Survival International

By Manipadma Jena
MARSEILLE, France, Sep 15 2021 (IPS)

One of the most hotly debated issues at the recently concluded IUCN Congress in Marseilles was about designating 30 percent of the planet’s land and water surface as protected areas by 2030.

This so-called ‘30X30’ debate is expected to escalate at the UN biodiversity conference in China next April. Indigenous People groups say the conservation has to recognise their rights to land, territories, coastal seas, and natural resources. Some activists argue that ‘fortress conservation’ was nothing but colonialism in another guise.

The world’s failure to achieve any of the global goals to protect, conserve and restore nature by 2020 has been sobering. In Kunming, China, 190 governments will gather in April 2022 after a virtual format in October this year, to finalise the UN Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

Ensuring legal land ownership of indigenous people is key to successful conservation. An indigenous community woman in eastern India happily holds out her land title.
Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

The draft Framework released this July aims to establish a ‘world living in harmony with nature’ by 2050 by protecting at least 30 percent of the planet and placing at least 20 percent under restoration by 2030.

The Marseille Manifesto, the outcome statement from the World Conservation Congress in Marseille from September 4 -10, 2021, gives higher visibility to indigenous people by “committing to an ambitious, interconnected and effective, site-based conservation network that represents all areas of importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services is crucial. Such a network must recognise the roles and custodianship of indigenous people and local communities.”

“The Congress implores governments to set ambitious protected areas and other area-based conservation measure targets by calling at least 30% of the planet to be protected by 2030. The targets must be based on the latest science and include rights – including Free Prior Informed Consent – as set out in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. IUCN must boost the agency of indigenous people and local communities,” the manifesto further urges. 

IUCN’s membership currently stands at 1 500 and includes 91 States, 212 governmental agencies, 1 213 NGOs, 23 Indigenous Peoples’ organisations and 52 affiliate members.

The indigenous people (IP) demand foremost of all “the secure recognition and respect for collective indigenous rights and governance of lands, territories, waters, coastal seas and natural resources.”

Strong demand for this came from IUCN’s indigenous people’s organisation members spanning six continents who banded together, developed the ‘global indigenous agenda’ and presented at their own summit – the first-ever event of its kind at any IUCN World Conservation Congress.

They aimed to unite the voices of indigenous peoples from around the world to raise awareness that ‘enhanced measures’ are required to protect the rights of indigenous peoples and their roles as stewards of nature.

Other activists take a more hard-line stand.

“The 30×30 plan is nothing but a massive land grab,” Sophie Grig, senior research and advocacy officer Survival International told IPS over the phone from the non-profit’s London headquarters.

“It’s no more than a sound bite, green lies. History has shown that promises are made but gradually, living for forest dwellers is made impossible till they are finally evicted from their generational homes of centuries. They are evicted for what? For animals and tourists. We see no real signs that this is going to change.”

Survival International and other activist entities organised the “Our Land Our Nature” congress a day before the IUCN congress began. They called for conservation to be ‘decolonised’.

“Fortress conservation violates human rights and fails to protect nature. The devastating impacts of fortress conservation on Indigenous Peoples, local communities, peasants, rural women, and rural youth has generated limited gains for nature,” said David R Boyd, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, in an August policy brief just before the IUCN Congress.

Ending the current biodiversity crisis will require a “transformative approach” to what conservation entails, who qualifies as a conservationist, and how conservation efforts are designed and implemented,” Boyd further said.

Studies have shown that indigenous peoples, who comprise just 5% of the world’s population, contribute significantly to its environmental diversity as more than 80 % of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found within their lands.

The debate on the issue was going global. In an online forum coinciding but separate from the IUCN indigenous people’s summit, indigenous women, many from Southeast Asia, emphasised that it is “not enough for outsiders to merely observe indigenous practices and then attempt to reapply them in other contexts.”

Native voices need to be at the “centre of the conversation, not consigned to the margins.”

Traditional ecological knowledge is not just a theoretical concept. It is a “native science”, an applied knowledge amassed by indigenous people over thousands of years and most effective to address climate change and biodiversity challenges because it is based on the acceptance that “all living organisms are interdependent,” they said.

The indigenous people’s Agenda at Marseille also calls upon the global community – from states to the private sector, NGO conservation community, conservation finance and academia – to engage in specific joint efforts with them, such as “co-designing initiatives and collaborating on investment opportunities.”

“Our global goals to protect the earth and conserve biodiversity cannot succeed without the leadership, support and partnership of Indigenous Peoples,” said Bruno Oberle, IUCN Director General at the start of the Congress.

“So will the investment in this doubling of conservation areas, or at least some of the monies, go directly to indigenous people?” asked protestors at the ‘decolonise conservation’ Congress.

“Not likely,” Survival’s Grig said, “Fortress conservation is the racist and colonial model of conservation promoted by governments, corporations and big conservation NGOs.”

“The 30X30 plan sounds like a simple and painless process, but it is not so for indigenous communities. It’s simply a plan that enables you in the global north to continue burning fossil fuel and consuming unsustainably,” Grig added.

The indigenous people were clear in their demands. Their Agenda and Action Plan demands: “As Indigenous Peoples around the world, we call for an equitable environment for the recognition of Indigenous Peoples to thrive as leaders, innovators and key contributors to nature conservation.”

It remains to be seen to what extent words and promises of international policy and funding bodies translate into action on this contentious and critical issue in 2022.

 

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Why is racial inequality perceivably so resistant to transformation? Some say it is because of a failure to acknowledge and confront white privilege. . Credit: Gerry Lauzon / Flickr Creative Commons CC BY 2.0.

By External Source
Sep 15 2021 (IPS)

A prestigious, private school in Pretoria, South Africa, recently became a site of protest. Black learners and parents accused Cornwall Hill College of rejecting calls to make its whites-only board more representative of its diverse learner body.

In response, a right wing South African youth group called Bittereinders (the Bitter Enders), held an anti-transformation protest.“Unhappy? build your own schools,” was the response from one member.

Why is racial inequality perceivably so resistant to transformation? Some say it is because of a failure to acknowledge and confront white privilege.

The police killing of George Floyd in the US city of Minneapolis in 2020 ignited a wave of protests across the globe and intense discussions of anti-black racism.

Focusing the discussion on the individual is especially effective for the purposes of anti-racist teaching and advocacy. Unpacking how whiteness operates to bestow privilege may allow us to understand how ‘others’ are systematically denied those same rights

From France to Colombia and South Africa, demonstrators used the term ‘white privilege’ as a means of challenging people to confront the racial disparities evident in their own countries.

Amid the demonstrations, a group of international scholars brought together at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in 2020 began discussing whether the concept of ‘white privilege’ is useful for addressing systemic racial inequalities across national contexts.

Although it is clear that the term has become popular across diverse contexts, some have argued against it. They say that the term ‘white privilege’ reinforces stereotypes, reifies conceptualisations of race, antagonises potential allies and creates even greater resistance to change.

As movements for racial justice have become more global in scope, the term has circulated across national boundaries. However, it does not always translate well to these new contexts.

 

A history

The term white privilege originated in the US in the 1980s, referring to both the obvious and the hidden advantages afforded to white people by systemic forms of racial injustice. Unlike terms such as “racial injustice” and “systemic racial bias”, the idea of privilege centres the discussion around individuals.

Focusing the discussion on the individual is especially effective for the purposes of anti-racist teaching and advocacy. Unpacking how whiteness operates to bestow privilege may allow us to understand how ‘others’ are systematically denied those same rights.

By the mid-2000s, the term white privilege had been adopted by many educators and activists in the US. They were seeking to call attention to the myriad ways in which whites, regardless of their class, benefit from white supremacy and are, therefore, implicated in maintaining the system. For whites in the US, where many live in racially homogeneous communities, the concept of white privilege could spark individual self-reflection and motivate individual political action.

While scholars in some other countries have recently used the term to elucidate systemic patterns of inequality in their own societies, in other countries scholars have been more dubious about the concept.

In South Africa, white privilege is the legacy of apartheid, which subjugated and devalued anyone whose skin colour was not white. Despite the political dismantling of apartheid, white privilege persists. Calls to transform racialised organisations are viewed as threats by white people who, correctly, hear demands for racial justice as an end to white privilege.

In France, use of the term white privilege is relatively recent, introduced in the late 2000s by social scientists. The concept is particularly accurate to describe the legacies of slavery and colonial politics. And it captures the experience of structural racism many inhabitants of France’s social-housing neighbourhoods have shared.

Yet, with growing acceptance of the concept, there has also been resistance. Some decry “white privilege” as creeping Americanisation, ill-fit to France’s liberal tradition and universalism.

Others, echoing critics in the US, argue that a sole focus on racial inequity may entrench, rather than repair, racial divisions in the country. For example, the use of ‘white privilege’ can backfire when it fails to resonate with whites disadvantaged by class, gender or religion. Consequently, the term can, at times, elicit defensive reactions and increased denial of racial disparities.

 

Race as a political category

Constructions of whiteness and its associated privileges are shaped by different – sometimes contradictory – histories of racial discrimination and racial justice activism. This is because understandings of race and racial categories, as socially constructed categories, remain inconsistent and unequally salient across space and time.

For example, a person from North Africa, from the Indian sub-continent or from Oceania could be considered ‘white’ – in spite of a dark complexion – in many contexts.

Race as a political category is loaded with the histories of racial extermination and racist politics in some places and less so in others. In France ‘white privilege’ could be perceived as provocative because it challenges the French universalist narrative and the modern conception of citizenship and a common will.

Thus, discussions of the material consequences of ‘race’ as a category may occur more openly outside of Western Europe, in Africa and the Americas where native populations were exterminated, enslaved and subjected to various forms of social and political exclusion.

Still, the question of who counts as ‘white’, ‘coloured’, ‘black’, or indigenous remains deeply contested across the globe. As do the explanations for the disparate outcomes and treatment of people in these socially, and sometimes legally, constructed categories. Hence whiteness, and the privileges associated with membership in such a category, remains contextually defined.

For example, an individual of European descent may be treated differently based on where they are in the world. But, this does not negate the fact that someone of Black African origin will often be treated worse than a similarly situated person of European origin in many countries. White privilege persists, even in the absence of any universal definition of “white”.

 

Toward a goal of racial justice

There have been countless moves to maintain the status quo, such as the Cornwall Hill College anti-transformation protest, You Silence We Amplify, and the U.S. capital insurgency.

Privilege is directly contingent on disfranchisement, measured in terms of who does and does not have access and opportunity. In countries with histories of white supremacy, the meaning of white privilege may seem self-evident to many. But for others there and in other countries, the term may prompt new questions and challenges.

Although the concept of ‘white privilege’ has proved valuable to people advocating for social change in different national contexts, there is also resistance in many countries to the notion that white people are uniquely ‘privileged’ by their race. Some critics seem unwilling to dismantle white supremacy whereas others point to the limitations of ‘white privilege’ to capture the full range of inequalities that shape people’s lives.

A transnational movement for racial justice requires a shared commitment to ending racial inequality across national boundaries. It also requires a sensitivity to the specific, local conditions in which race and racism touch the everyday lives of people.

The concept of ‘white privilege’ remains useful when presented in ways that both resonate with individuals and shed light on structural causes of racial inequality. Then, it has the potential to motivate those with advantages to combat injustices. It can undermine movements for racial justice, however, when it fails to raise awareness of the historical, structural, and political forces that confer some groups advantages over others based on skin colour, phenotype, hair texture and other physical characteristics attributed to ‘race.’

What is clear is that, as a tool for advocacy, ‘white privilege’ cannot be an end but rather a beginning, one of many concepts that can lead individuals toward a critique of systemic racism and global anti-blackness.

Nuraan Davids, Professor of Philosophy of Education, Stellenbosch University; Karolyn Tyson, Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Kevin Driscoll, Assistant Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia; Magali Della Sudda, Research scientist, Sciences Po Bordeaux; Veronica Terriquez, Associate professor, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and Vivian Zayas, Professor of Psychology, Cornell University

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

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Sep 15 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Kabul 1990. I land in the capital of Afghanistan for my very first mission with the United Nations. Controlled by the government, Kabul was surrounded by the Mujahedeen. As a young female professional, living and working across the country, I felt protected by the Afghans, whether walking in the bustling cities or meeting with the Mujahedeen in the rural countryside. Afghanistan had already been at war for over ten years and we all worked with the hope that the fighting would come to an end soon.

Yasmine Sherif

In 2000, nearly ten years later, I returned to Afghanistan. I learnt of the secret underground schools run for girls; schools where girls, their families and their teachers were willing to risk their lives for the right to an education. There was a suffocating “peace,” but no justice: the rights of Afghan girls were being violated or under constant threat.

Today, 2021. The Afghans have suffered a brutal armed conflict for over 40 years. They have experienced the horrors of war and the injustice of gender-discrimination. They have lived through earthquakes, extreme poverty, droughts and a high rate of children and youth with disabilities – Afghanistan is one of most landmine-contaminated countries on Earth. Generation after generation suffers.

This cannot continue in the name of any religion, belief, honorability or humanity. Afghanistan deserves nothing less than to recover and rebuild. It will need 50% of its population – the girls and women – to help do so. We approach this imperative with both cautious optimism and our determination to stand up for humanity and for girls’ equal rights to an inclusive quality education.

Leaders across the UN and civil society are also stepping up the call for continued education in Afghanistan, especially for girls. “Now more than ever, Afghan children, women and men need the support and solidarity of the international community,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

Numerous UN agencies, civil society organizations and strategic donor partners are responding with utmost urgency. UNICEF deployed its Director of Emergencies to Kabul within days and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has also arrived in the country. As the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, Education Cannot Wait is also responding with speed, and we will stay and deliver, working closely with our in-country partners in Afghanistan.

With our established policy of “the urgency of now”, a call first made by Martin Luther King Jr., Education Cannot Wait will shortly release an emergency education funding allocation, focusing on displaced girls and boys as our immediate priority. Some 400,000 school-aged Afghan children have already been forcibly displaced since January 2021 – a number that has increased since 15 August 2021. Thanks to our biggest private sector strategic donor – The LEGO Foundation and KIRKBI – ECW is able to swiftly release its emergency response.

ECW is also cooperating with the UN’s coordination mechanisms and with strategic donor partners on the ground to continue our work for our second Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP) in Afghanistan. This MYRP continues to build on our achieved target of 60% girls and adolescent girls in ECW’s investments, to deliver on their right to education now, because their education simply cannot wait until Afghanistan has rebuilt. I appeal to all strategic donor partners, governments, private sector and foundations, to rally behind this ECW multi-year joint programme. We must scale up and move fast, and we need everyone on board to win this crucial race for girls’ education.

In addition to all the suffering they have endured, Afghan children and youth also live under the constant threat of COVID-19, as do so many millions of children and youth around the world. As the pandemic continues to disrupt our global economy – impacting both the safety and well-being of millions of girls and boys and our trajectory toward the Sustainable Development Goals – we must also continue to respond to this crisis.

The time has also come to bridge the digital divide, which is also a socio-economic divide. Anyone who has travelled by plane across Afghanistan at night knows when you have crossed the Afghan border: everything below goes pitch black. There is hardly any electricity across the entire nation, let alone Wifi or connectivity. The digital divide is growing not only in Afghanistan but around the world. This month we had the privilege of interviewing the CEO of Dubai Cares, H.E. Dr. Tariq Al Gurg, who calls for the world to think anew to close the divide.

Meanwhile, we are grappling with another disaster in Haiti, where 260,000 school-aged children and youth require urgent assistance. This week Education Cannot Wait is disbursing its investments to partners on the ground through another First Emergency Response, thanks again to the speedy support from The LEGO Foundation and KIRKBI. This will be followed by a sustainable, comprehensive Multi-Year Resilience Programme, which will also need generous support to turn the tide in Haiti.

Today, Education Cannot Wait has investments in 38 crisis affected countries around the world. We are no longer a start-up fund, but a proven model that delivers tangible results for crisis-affected girls and boys. While all ECW stakeholders have jointly managed to mobilize $1.7 billion in just a few years for both our Trust Fund and in-country First Emergency and Multi-Year investments, so much more need to be done. At times, the human suffering we see may seem endless. Yet, we must keep the light of hope shining for every one of these vulnerable children and young people.

Unless we invest in girls’ education now, unless we stay and deliver in Afghanistan, unless we place education at the heart of all the Sustainable Development Goals and across the full spectrum of human rights, it is difficult to see the logic of any other major investment, the Grand Bargain or local empowerment. Without an education, how will any of these worthy goals and crucial rights be materialized?

Through partnerships, speed, quality, generosity and moral courage, we can make it.

May the day come when education is recognized as the solid foundation, binding glue and guiding light for everything else we want to achieve. Or as I wrote in my diary in July 1990: “When the land far beyond the mountains, within the reach of the sky, is no longer pitch black.” That is the day when every girl is sitting in the light, studying for their exams.

Education Cannot Wait will – together with all its partners – stay and deliver until the light shines for every girl and boy in Afghanistan … until the light shines for every girl and boy whose education is denied in the darkest corners around the world.

 

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Excerpt:

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

One in six youth have had to stop working since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an ILO report released last year. Credit: Benjamin Suomela, International Organization for Migration (IOM)

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sep 15 2021 (IPS)

A pre-pandemic report published by the International Labor Organization, ILO, the Global Employment Trends for Youth 2020, offered a sober analysis on the job market prospects for youth.

“The labour force participation rate of young people (aged 15–24) has continued to decline. Between 1999 and 2019, despite the global youth population increasing from 1 billion to 1.3 billion, the total number of young people engaged in the labour force decreased from 568 million to 497 million”.

In addition, while youth are those who can adjust and adapt the most to the new technologies, they are also the ones who are at the most risk of seeing job opportunities earlier available now disappearing.

With the pandemic and the multiple and overlapping crises brought by it, the chances for a youth to get employed are even dimmer especially in developing and low middle-income economies.

While in these nations, a youth belonging to the upper-and-middle class families are likely to navigate the post pandemic successfully thanks to their skills but also thanks to their status and connections, vulnerable youth instead remain stuck in cycle of exclusion and lack of opportunities.

This is even truer if you are living with a disability, be it physical or developmental or a psychosocial condition that deters you from easily finding an employment.

Considering that the vast majority of youth living with a disability in a developing nation are starting their quest for a job at stark disadvantage in relation to their peers without disabilities due to lack of quality education and other opportunities offered by the society, the Covid-19 pandemic really risks furthering lowering their odds at a dignified livelihood.

A joint publication by ILO and the Asian Development Bank, ADB, Tackling the COVID-19 youth employment crisis in Asia and the Pacific, clearly depicts a grim future for millions of youth aspiring to enter the job market.

“Young people’s employment prospects in Asia and the Pacific are severely challenged as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Youth will be hit harder than adults in the immediate crisis and also will bear higher longer-term economic and social costs” shares the report.

A job for a youth with disabilities, not only in the Asia Pacific Region but elsewhere, is now even more distant possibility.

A reset that potentially could unleash a positive revolution in the global and national priorities, under the banner of “build forward better”, is what has been sought by experts from around the world.

Such drastic shifts to turbo-charge more sustainable economies can also help turn them into more inclusive ones, ensuring a quantum leap in job opportunities for those left behind before the pandemic.

For a youth living with disabilities, this implies stronger chances at finding a job together with better opportunities in the education system, a prerequisite for the former.

A change of prospective of this proportion would imply not only putting disabilities at the center of government’s actions but also a whole effort to reframe disabilities in the modern society.

Shifting mindsets on the role persons with disabilities can have is a sine qua non if we really want to create a level playing field.

Positively, in the last few years, there is no doubt that a lot of progress has been made towards more inclusive job markets but we are only at the beginning.

Despite positive signals, we need go deeper and wider and bolder.

The Return on Disability Group created by Canadian Rich Donovan, author of Unleash Different, has been a pioneer in pitching the business case of focusing on disabilities as an opportunity.

ILO is leading the efforts within the UN system by enabling the Global Business and Disability Network, a global consortium with major corporations willing to include accessibility and overall disability rights among their top priorities.

GSK, the mammoth pharma company has become a trailblazer in the field by setting up The Global Disability Confidence Council that is made up by its senior leaders.

“Disability Confidence describes the corporate best practice that ensures dignified and equitable access & inclusion for people with disabilities as valued colleagues, potential colleagues, customers, shareholders & fellow citizens” explains GSK.

Around the world there are other promising initiatives like The Valueable500, a global campaign whose members, all major corporations, commit to practical and game-changer initiatives to promote disability inclusion.

For example, Proctor and Gamble is conducting a global disability audit while Mahindra & Mahindra, the Indian car manufacturer, is working to enable a jobs portal to better target and include youth living with disabilities.

These are just few examples of what global conglomerates can do to change the status quo.

Yet, piecemeal approaches cannot work and that’s why we need a holistic, whole of the government impetus to drastically reframe how policy making works to fulfill the rights and needs of persons with disabilities.

Global business can play an essential role here as well.

First of all, it is an imperative that global corporate networks focused on disability talk and collaborate among each other.

Second, though what the most powerful multinationals are doing is relevant, is not nearly enough and our expectations in what multinationals can do, must be higher.

Surely, we need more of them to pledge new internal targets but one-off initiatives must become the springboard for much more holistic actions that include their global supply chains and global sales.

If Proctor and Gamble really wants to elevate disability to the next level, then resources need to be spent all across its massive operations, including the suppliers and contractors.

If Mahindra & Mahindra is serious about disability, then it should ensure that all its distributors around the world embrace the issue as well.

Together with this “total encompassing” approach, resources must be used for advocacy and lobbying. The latter word is often used with a negative connotation but we really need to lobby governments and policy makers to truly become serious on disability rights.

The job market, especially in developing and emerging countries, will become more inclusive only if the local business peoples and local politicians are forced to commit to disabilities.

This means not only accessible work places or even possible quotas in the job market but a rethinking of policy making starting from education and social security because without accessing to quality education, youth with disabilities will only continue to remain at the margins of our economies.

The global private sector can truly make a difference here because they have the prowess and capacities to be listened to and demand action.

The quest for a more inclusive job market does not entail just initiatives to make it more inclusive of persons with disabilities.

That’s why the 2nd edition of Global Disability Summit next year, must truly be focused on new partnerships with the private sector aimed at mainstreaming disabilities at the center of the economies and societies we want to re-imagine.

Working from the top and “retrofitting” the job market by making it more inclusive should lead to a whole society approach that leverages the skills and untapped potential of youth with disabilities.

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

 

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Local stakeholders engaged in participatory livelihoods planning in Champasack, Laos. Credit: A Barlis

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sep 14 2021 (IPS)

As incidents of drought and extreme rainfall increase, farmers in Southeast Asia are partnering with experts to develop targeted weather forecasts to work around the threats and, when adaptation becomes too costly, buy specially designed insurance to protect their livelihoods.

Climate impacts are increasing. In 2016, for example, the impact of what is known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) resulted in severe drought and saline intrusion in 11 out of 13 provinces in the Mekong River Delta. This affected 400,000 hectares of cropland, resulting in 200 million dollars in economic losses and food insecurity among farmers. Household incomes dropped 75 percent, pushing vulnerable farmers who had little savings and no insurance deeper into poverty.

Integrated risk management and risk transfer approaches (e.g. innovative insurance solutions) will be critically required for smallholder growers to manage the physical and financial impacts of climate.

A key component of the project, DeRisk Southeast Asia, is to develop a number of adaptation strategies, says Professor Shahbaz Mushtaq, the project’s insurance segment lead at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) one of three project partners. The others are the World Meteorological Organisation and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, part of the CGIAR.

ECOM facilitator leads the insurance literacy workshop with coffee farmers in Dak Lak. Credit: A Barlis

“So the project is working on improved climate forecasts, new irrigation systems and practices, and improving production systems,” says Mushtaq in an online interview. “The underlying premise is that the smallholder growers need to mitigate their risk as much as they can while developing and adopting suitable adaptation practices.”

“Then, the project also acknowledges that there’s a limit to adaptation,” he adds. “Not all risk is manageable. [It is] when it is no longer economically viable then you need to transfer the risk elsewhere, this is where insurance will play a major role”.

DeRisk, funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, operates in Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. For example, in a pilot led by the Alliance in one of the provinces in the Mekong River delta, the department of crop production (across levels), extension officers and farmers now sit down with weather forecasters (or meet virtually because of COVID-19 restrictions) to mould a general weather forecast into seasonal and 10-day advisories that target rice producers.

“We really emphasize co-development by multiple stakeholders, integrating information from the hydro-meteorological (‘hydro-met’) experts and the crop experts with the local knowledge of farmers,” says Nguyen Duy Nhiem, DeRISK Country Coordinator in Vietnam.

For example, the representatives will take a seasonal forecast, broken down by month, and generate guidance for specific crops such as: “the best planting date, the best variety to plant and if drought happens, what drought-resistant variety to use,” Nguyen tells IPS in an online interview.

That advice is packaged as a bulletin and delivered using a variety of media, including stationary loudspeakers in villages, paper bulletins or posters and on a smartphone app called Zalo.

The 10-day advisories zero in on daily conditions. “For example, if it’s going to rain on a certain day, farmers are told not to apply fertilizers or pesticides because they would leach into the soil,” explains Nguyen.

He’s happy with the project’s progress. The stakeholders from the hydro-met sector and agriculture sector “understand better each other’s languages,” says Nguyen. “For example, prior to project’s engagement when talking about ‘rainy days’, the agriculture stakeholders and farmers think that rain should be an amount that can be measured in a gauge while for the hydro-met sector that can be any amount above 0.0 mm. The definition of rainy days has been explained during discussions and clearly noted in bulletins.”

Seasonal agroclimatic bullet poster installed at District Agriculture Service Center in Mekong Delta. Credit: Dang Thanh Tai

In addition, Nguyen says the 20,000-plus farmers who have received the advisories in the past two cropping seasons have been very pleased because the information helped them avoid the impact of damaging weather and make more informed decisions better. If plans hold, other districts and provinces in the region will start developing the tailored forecasts in 2022.

Challenges, according to Nguyen, include the lack of capacity of staff in provincial weather offices to develop the tailored forecasts. Another is reaching more farmers. Although many farmers have access to smartphones, not all of them know how to use them to access the advisories in the Zalo group. Possible solutions, he says, include developing an app or partnering with a telecom company to send messages to all customers in project areas.

In neighbouring Laos, agro-climactic advisories are available for the whole country, in monthly and weekly forecasts, says DeRisk Country Coordinator Leo Kris Palao. The implementation of DeRISK in Laos was linked with existing efforts by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to further improve this system with national partners.

The system is automated, he explains in an email interview. Called the Laos Climate Services for Agriculture (LaCSA), the system analyses meteorological and agricultural data from national databases and field-level data collection by local partners. Offices of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry review advisories before being disseminated.

LaCSA can be accessed online through an app (Android/iOS), but for those who don’t use IT tools, the information, as in Vietnam, is also shared via loudspeakers, radio and TV, and community and school posters.

More than 21 000 farmers in Laos have adapted their activities after receiving an advisory. “We are happy with the progress made by the De-RISK project in Laos,” says Palao. “Based on our baseline assessment, most of the responses from farmers receiving the agro-climatic advisories indicated that change in planting dates, use of suitable varieties tailored to the climate condition of the season, and water and fertilizer management were among their adaptation practices.”

Mushtaq says that to further mitigate the ‘residual risk’, which can’t be managed economically through adaptation strategies, his team developed various indexed-based insurance products that are now being tested through a pilot insurance scheme – Coffee Climate Protection Insurance.

“We went to the field and interviewed several hundreds of smallholder coffee growers and industry.” The assessment for the insurance scheme included asking about the biggest risks faced by farmers, whether it be drought, disease, or extreme rainfall, among other hazards. “We wanted to develop products for those risks that are most impactful,” Mushtaq says.

The researcher of USQ adds that if an extreme weather event occurs and a farmer can’t immediately recover from losses, “his production would suffer, it would impact the supply chain, it would impact the roaster, and it would impact coffee production regions. But if farmers could get back on their feet very quickly, it would help the industry, it would the whole supply chain. That’s the underpinning driver for the supply chain industry to co-contribute insurance premiums.”

Mushtaq says he was impressed when coffee growers told him that drought and extreme rainfall are major risks but didn’t want drought insurance because they are able to cope through access to irrigation. “But if there’s extreme rainfall, we don’t have an option to manage that risk, so we want products to cater to it,” the farmers said.

The initial assessment found that farmers have a range of attitudes about insurance — some were willing to pay more than the suggested premium, others would not even consider purchasing, and the majority were in the middle, unsure.

Finally, most agreed on the product. What swayed the doubters was the credibility that USQ and its partners had developed over the years working with the coffee industry represented by the private sector and associations, says Mushtaq. “To me, the most important success factor was the presence of the industry itself. You need to have really solid leadership to drive this agenda. And we were very lucky that we got some really good partners in the coffee industry.”

In stages 1 and 2 of the pilot, farmers and coffee traders will split the costs of the premiums, but in later years, other actors in the supply chain, such as roasters, will have to contribute a portion; the exact division of costs still needs to be negotiated.

Currently, the ‘extreme rainfall’ insurance product is in operation, explains Mushtaq, meaning that if total rainfall exceeds the threshold for the two-month season, payments would be triggered. As the insurance is indexed, the payouts would reflect the amount of protection that farmers chose to purchase.

To get to this point, “we had to run several workshops, and gather a lot of information on how index-based insurance products works,” he says, adding that more needs to be done to increase awareness. Moving forward, the team considers running a campaign to address this, “Awareness is still a problem, and we do need to run a massive campaign.”

DeRISK aims to develop its climate services and insurance products further and work with national partners on policies and strategies supporting smallholder farmers in the region in response to climate risks.

 

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United Nations military personnel are the Blue Helmets on the ground. Today, they consist of over 70,000 troops contributed by national armies from across the globe and help keep the peace in military conflicts worldwide. Credit: United Nations

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Sep 14 2021 (IPS)

Last weekend, U.S. corporate media continued a 20-year repetition compulsion to evade the central role of the USA in causing vast carnage and misery due to the so-called War on Terror. But millions of Americans fervently oppose the military-industrial complex and its extremely immoral nonstop warfare.

CodePink and Massachusetts Peace Action hosted a national webinar to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11 — the day before Sunday’s launch of the Cut the Pentagon campaign — and the resulting video includes more than 20 speakers who directly challenged the lethal orthodoxy of the warfare state. As part of the mix, here’s the gist of what I had to say:

When we hear all the media coverage and retrospectives, we rarely hear — and certainly almost never in the mass media hear — that when people are killed, whether it’s intentional or predictable, those are atrocities that are being financed by U.S. taxpayers.

And so we hear about the evils of Al Qaeda and 9/11, and certainly those were evils, but we’re not hearing about the predictable as well as the intentional deaths: the tens of thousands of civilians killed by U.S. air strikes alone in the last two decades, and the injuries, and the terrorizing of people with drones and other U.S. weapons. We’re hearing very little about that.

Part of the role of activists is to make those realities heard, make them heard loud and clear, as forcefully and as emphatically and as powerfully as possible. Activist roles can sometimes get blurred in terms of becoming conflated with the roles of some of the best members of Congress.

When progressive legislators push for peace and social justice, they deserve our praise and our support. When they succumb to the foreign-policy “Blob” — when they start to be more a representative of the establishment to the movements rather than a representative of the movements to the establishment — we’ve got a problem.

It’s vital for progressive activists to be clear about what our goals are, and to be willing to challenge even our friends on Capitol Hill.

I’ll give you a very recent example. Two leaders of anti-war forces in the House of Representatives, a couple of weeks ago, circulated a “Dear Colleague” message encouraging members of the House to sign a letter urging the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, to stand firm behind President Biden’s 1.6 percent increase in the Pentagon budget, over the budget that Trump had gotten the year before.

The point of the letter was: Chairman Smith, we want you to defend the Biden budget’s increase of 1.6 percent, against the budget that has just been approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee with a 3.3 percent increase.

That kind of a letter moves the goal posts further and further to the liking of the military-industrial complex, to the liking of war profiteers, to the liking of the warfare state. And so, when people we admire and support, in this case Rep. Mark Pocan and Rep. Barbara Lee, circulate such a Dear Colleague letter, there’s a tendency for organizations to say: “Yeah, we’re going to get behind you,” we will respond affirmatively to the call to urge our members to urge their representatives in Congress to sign this letter.

And what that creates is a jumping-off point that moves the frame of reference farther and farther into the militarism that we’re trying to push back against. For that reason, my colleagues and I at RootsAction decided to decline an invitation to sign in support.

I bring up that episode because it’s indicative of the pathways and the crossroads that we face to create momentum for a stronger and more effective peace and social justice movement. And it’s replicated in many respects.

When we’re told it’s not practical on Capitol Hill to urge a cutoff of military funding and assistance to all countries that violate human rights — and when we’re told that Israel is off the table — it’s not our job to internalize those limits that have been internalized by almost everyone in Congress, except for the Squad and a precious few others.

It’s our job to speak not only truth to power but also about power. And to be clear and candid even when that means challenging some of our usual allies. And to organize.

At RootsAction, we’ve launched a site called Progressive Hub, as an activism tool to combine the need to know with the imperative to act.

It’s not easy, to put it mildly, to go against the powerful flood of megamedia, of big money in politics, of the ways that issues are constantly framed by powerful elites. But in the long run, peace activism is essential for overcoming militarism. And organizing is what makes that possible.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 14 2021 (IPS)

Timely interventions by civil society, including concerned scientists, have prevented many likely abuses of next week’s UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS). The Secretary General (UNSG) must now prevent UN endorsement of what remains of its prime movers’ corporate agenda.

Summit threat
The narrative on food challenges has changed in recent years. Instead of the ‘right to food’, ‘food security’, ‘eliminating hunger and malnutrition’, ‘sustainable agriculture’, etc, neutral sounding ‘systems’ solutions are being touted. These will advance transnational corporations’ influence, interests and profits.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The call for the Summit supposedly came from the SG’s office. There was little, if any prior consultation with the Rome-based UN food agency leaders. However, this apparent ‘oversight’ was quickly addressed by the SG, which led to the preparatory commission in Rome last month.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was created by the UN-led post-Second World War multilateral system to address food challenges. Later, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) were also established in Rome under UN auspices.

President Donald Trump’s sovereigntist unilateralism accelerated earlier tendencies undermining UN-led multilateralism, especially after the US-led invasion of Iraq. A proliferation of ostensibly ‘multistakeholder’ initiatives – typically financed by transnational agribusinesses and philanthropic foundations – have also marginalised UN-led multilateralism and the Rome food agencies.

Thus far, the Summit process has resisted UN-led multilateral follow-up actions. To be sure, UN system marginalisation has been subtle, not ham-fisted. Besides the Rome trio, the UN Committee for World Food Security (CFS) and its High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) have been casualties.

The CFS has evolved in recent years to involve a broad range of food system stakeholders, including private business interests and civil society. The latter includes social movements – of farmers, other food producers and civil society stakeholders – largely bypassed by Summit processes.

Through the FSS, World Economic Forum (WEF) and other initiatives have been presented as from the UN. In fact, these have minimally involved UN system leaders, let alone Member States. Many refer to the Summit without the UN prefix to reject its legitimacy, as growing numbers cynically call it the ‘WEF-FSS’.

Science-policy nexus takeover
The proposal for a new science-policy interface – “either by extending the mandate of the Summit’s Scientific Group, or by establishing a permanent new panel or coordinating mechanism in its mould” – is of particular concern.

The FSS Scientific Group overwhelmingly comprises scientists and economists largely chosen by the Summit’s prime movers. Besides marginalising many other food system stakeholders, its biases are antithetical to UN values and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Their assessments barely consider the consequences of innovations for the vulnerable. Prioritising technical over social innovations, they have not been transparent, let alone publicly accountable.

Their pretentiously scientistic approach is patronising, and hence, unlikely to effectively address complex contemporary food system challenges involving multiple stakeholders.

Extending the Scientific Group’s remit beyond the Summit, or by otherwise making it permanent, would betray the commitment that the FSS would support and strengthen, not undermine the CFS. The CFS “should be where the Summit outcomes are ultimately discussed and assessed, using its inclusive participation mechanisms”.

Such a new body would directly undermine the HLPE’s established “role and remit” to provide scientific guidance to Member States through the CFS. In July, hundreds of scientists warned that a new science panel would undermine not only food system governance, but also the CFS itself.

Saving UN-led multilateralism
Just as Summit preparations have displaced CFS, the proposal science-policy interface would marginalise the HLPE, undermining the most successful UN system reform to date in meaningfully and productively advancing inclusive multi-stakeholderism.

After the 2007-2008 food price crisis, CFS was reformed in 2009 to provide “an inclusive platform to ensure legitimacy across a broad range of constituencies”, and to improve the coherence of various diverse food-related policies.

Like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the HLPE consults widely and openly with stakeholders on its research assessments and work priorities. Its reports are subject to extensive peer reviews to ensure they serve CFS constituents’ needs, remain policy relevant, and address diverse perspectives.

Last week, several crucial civil society leaders, working closely with the UN system, warned that Summit outcomes could further erode the UN’s public support and legitimacy, and the ability of the Rome bodies to guide needed food system reform.

The group includes UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri, his predecessor Olivier De Schutter, now UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, CFS chair Thanawat Tiensin and HLPE chair Martin Cole.

Their concerns reiterate those of hundreds of scientists, global governance experts, civil society groups, and the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), among many. The main worry is about “the threat it poses to the role of science and knowledge in food system decision-making”.

Mindful of the controversy around the FSS from the outset, the four urge the SG, “In the wake of the Summit, it will be imperative to restore faith in the UN system…A clear commitment to support and strengthen the HLPE and the CFS would therefore be invaluable”.

They stress, “there is much to be done to ensure that the HLPE of the CFS is equipped to continue playing its crucial role at the interface of food system science and policy”. After earlier setbacks, the UNSG must defend the progress CFS and HLPE represent for meaningful UN-led multilateralism and engagement with civil society.

 

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Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland tours the Coral Vita coral restoration facility in Freeport, Grand Bahama, with co-founder Sam Teicher.

By External Source
Sep 13 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland called for urgent action to ensure improved climate resilience of small states and promised to amplify the concerns of small and other vulnerable states around climate change at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow this November.

During visit to The Bahamas this week, the Secretary-General said: “Without a doubt, we are living through a global climate crisis which is unfolding with disturbing speed and intensity across the Commonwealth, and the world. The unequivocal evidence contained in the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has only reinforced what small island nations on the frontlines of climate change have been experiencing and advocating for a long time.

“Urgent, decisive and sustained climate action is needed, and the international community must not miss the window to make a real difference at the upcoming COP26 summit. This includes mobilising the financial support needed for vulnerable nations to cope with the impacts of climate change and build long-lasting resilience.

“The Commonwealth Secretariat has dedicated a number of programmes to support member countries to access finance, such as the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub, the Disaster Risk Finance Portal and the Commonwealth Blue Charter Ocean Funders Database, but more must be done multilaterally to target the needs of small states, which face an existential threat from climate change.”

The Secretary-General last visited The Bahamas in 2019, in a show of solidarity with the country and region after it was devastated by Category 5 Hurricane Dorian.

On a tour of the Coral Vita coral restoration facility in Freeport, Grand Bahama, yesterday she added: “While they have contributed the least to the climate crisis, small states are most affected by it. But they are also leading the charge in advocating for transformative climate action on a global scale, in addition to developing local solutions, including new innovations as well those drawn from indigenous knowledge.”

The Secretary-General will lead a delegation to the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 to advocate the interests of Commonwealth countries, exchange knowledge and best practices around climate action, strengthen partnerships and mobilise resources to support Commonwealth programmes.

Thirty-two Commonwealth countries – more than half of the membership – are classified as ‘small states’, including 25 small island developing nations.

Seniors in conversation at Jongmyo Park, in downtown Seoul, Republic of Korea. UN Photo/Kibae Park

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, US, Sep 13 2021 (IPS)

Raise retirement ages! That’s the simple, clear and unavoidable message that economics and demographics are sending to governments around the world.

The rapidly rising costs of national pension systems are challenging the solvency and long-term sustainability of those retirement programs. The continuing aging of human populations with the relative size of work forces shrinking, growing proportions of retirees, and increasing longevity are the inescapable realities of the modern demographic era that governments are being compelled to address.

The sooner policymakers begin the necessary process of raising official retirement ages, the better it will be for pension funds, current workers, and retired persons. Postponing decisions on raising retirement ages creates financial difficulties for governments, economic uncertainties for financial markets and investors, and worrisome anxieties for workers and families.

Raising the statutory retirement age bolsters government pension programs by reducing the total outlay of benefits and encouraging men and women to work longer. It also increases the size of country’s labor force and reduces the size of the retired population.

Moreover, working longer enhances a person’s potential retirement finances by generating more retirement savings and reduces the number of years spent in retirement. It also plays an important role keeping elderly persons active, mentally engaged and contributes to slowing down the rate of cognitive decline in old age.

The age at retirement for both women and men should be gradually raised to 70 years, without early retirement at reduced benefits. At age 70 the average number of expected years of remaining life for the world has increased from slightly less than 9 years in 1950 to nearly 14 years today and is projected to be close to 16 years by midcentury.

 

Source: United Nations Population Division.

 

In many countries the expected years of remaining life at age 70 have increased considerably over the recent past and are projected to reach even higher levels over the coming years. By 2050, for example, the number of expected years of remaining life at age 70 is projected to be approximately 20 years in many developed countries, including Canada, France, Italy, Japan and the United States, and to be more than 15 years for many developing countries, including Brazil and China.

It is important to recall that the statutory retirement ages of the earliest national pension programs were typically greater than life expectancies at birth. Germany, which was the first nation to adopt an old-age insurance program in 1889, lowered the retirement age from 70 years to 65 years in 1916, well beyond the life expectancy at birth at that time.

For most countries the costs of national pension systems are rising and challenging the solvency and sustainability of those programs. At the same time, the relative sizes of work forces are shrinking, populations are ageing, and the proportions of retirees are increasing with people living longer

Also, when the United States adopted the Social Security Act in 1935, the statutory retirement age of 65 years was several years beyond average life expectancy at birth in the mid 1930s. Similarly, when China set its retirement ages in the early 1950s, people were expected to live slightly more than four decades, which was years less than official retirement ages.

Raising retirement ages is by and large an unpopular measure. In contrast to most bureaucratic changes and administrative adjustments to government programs and policies, revising the retirement age upward is reviled by much of the public.

Rather than raising retirement ages, alternative suggestions have been offered to deal with the raising costs and projected insolvency of pension systems. Those suggestions include increasing taxes on workers and the wealthy, reducing pension benefits and readjusting national government budgets. However, those proposals are typically eschewed by policymakers and opposed by various sectors of society.

As has been observed in the past in many countries, including Australia, Belgium, France, Croatia, Greece, Iran, Russia and the United Kingdom, vocal parts of the public can be expected to object, protest and even strike against even relatively small increases in the statutory age of retirement. However, those objections, protests and demonstrations should not deter policymakers from gradually raising the statutory retirement age to 70 years.

While the official ages of retirement are creeping upward slowly in various countries, the average age when people actually retire is often lower than the statutory retirement age. In many European countries as well as in Australia, Canada and the United States, the average age at retirement is no less than several years earlier than the official retirement age.

Also, it is generally the case that women live longer than men, by approximately five years on average. However, despite the female life expectancy advantage, the statutory retirement age for women is lower than that for men in many countries, including Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Chile, China, Iran, Israel, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and Viet Nam. In China, for example, the retirement age in China currently is 60 for men and 55 for female civil servants and 50 for female workers.

At typical retirement ages, considerable variation exists across countries in the proportion of the population remaining in the labor force. For example, some countries have a sizeable percentage of their populations aged 65 years and older in the labor force, such as South Korea (35 percent), Iceland (32 percent) and Japan (25 percent). In contrast, many countries, especially in Europe, have relatively small percentages of their elderly population remaining in the labor force, including Spain (3 percent), France (3 percent) and Italy (5 percent).

 

Source: OECD.

 

Raising retirement ages from approximately 60 years to 70 years would increase the proportion of the population who would remain in the labor force as well as reduce the proportion of those who would be eligible for retirement benefits. Whereas 13 percent of the world is aged 60 years and older, the proportion aged 70 years and older is half that level, or about 6 percent.

 

Source: United Nations Population Division.

 

In many countries, the percentage of the population aged 70 years and over is also about half of the percentage for those 60 years and older. For example, in 2020 the proportions of the populations aged 70 years and older and 60 years and older are 17 and 7 percent in China, 23 and 11 percent in the United States, and 29 and 16 percent in Germany.

In brief, simply raising the retirement age from around 60 years to 70 years would not only increase the size of the labor force, but it would also substantially reduce the size of the retired population receiving government sponsored benefits. In addition, raising the retirement age will avoid reducing benefits to retirees. Many retired people, especially at lower income levels, are dependent on government pension benefits to meet their basic living expenses.

Political rhetoric, public protests and fairness arguments against raising retirement ages will not alter the fundamental economic, demographic and historical facts surrounding government sponsored retirement programs. For most countries the costs of national pension systems are rising and challenging the solvency and sustainability of those programs. At the same time, the relative sizes of work forces are shrinking, populations are ageing, and the proportions of retirees are increasing with people living longer.

The responsible response to today’s economic and demographic realities is for governments to raise retirement ages gradually to age 70, and the sooner the better.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

 

By Shamsad Mortuza
Sep 13 2021 (IPS-Partners)

In September 2001, soon after the attack on the Twin Towers, the Bangladesh government issued a public announcement to contact the America & Pacific wing of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the whereabouts of Bangladeshi residents. The director concerned was travelling from Barishal to Dhaka that evening; he remained ignorant of the horrible incident that had taken place that day. He came directly from Sadarghat to his office and started receiving a flurry of phone calls from worried relatives. He called in his associate, my wife, and asked: “What’s the deal with the Twin Towers?” My wife briefed him, but he was in utter disbelief. “What do you mean the towers have collapsed? How could that even happen?” he exclaimed. My wife used two pencils and an eraser to demonstrate the incident, only to confuse the man even further. He rested his chin against his hand, and said: “Thank God, I took a photo in front of those buildings during my last visit.”

The emotional turnabout from denial to acceptance can be explained through the Kübler-Ross model of grief management. The same stages can be detected in the American attitude towards 9/11 if we think of the calamitous military withdrawal from Afghanistan as a form of acceptance. Once the anger phase following the initial denial was subdued, there was a series of bargains and depressions that characterise the American response in the last 20 years.

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The disbelief that a terror attack could occur in the American heartland led the Americans to believe that the worldwide War on Terror was needed for the protection of the free world. President George W Bush vowed that they would bring the war to the terrorists, dividing the world into the “us” and “them” camps.

I vividly remember when the first air raid took place; CNN showed pictures of Afghan fighters riding horses, with the commentator saying: “This is the war between the 21st century and the 11th century.” The war exposed the clash of civilisations, as American political scientist Samuel Huntington theorised, and spread to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan, among other places. Following 9/11, the US narrative started painting the Muslim world with the brush with which their indigenous population was once portrayed: the noble savage and the bloodthirsty savage. Individuals such as Malala would therefore become the good Muslims, while the Taliban were the bad ones. Crediting some Muslims as innocent till proven guilty was the bargain that the US was ready to offer, which justified its trade deals with oil-rich countries.

Then the rise of the number of soldiers in body bags and the trillions of dollars from the taxpayers’ money spent to restore democracy or fix rogue states caused nationwide depression, leading to the endgame officiated by the Biden administration. The Taliban returned to power on the heels of an agreement they had signed with the US in Qatar last year, and the suicide attack at Kabul airport shows that Afghanistan still remains a safe haven for al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Does it mean, after 20 years, we are back to the denial-anger-bargain-depression-acceptance cycle all over again?

Then again, it would be a fallacy to think that these emotional categories exist in watertight compartments. Is it possible for the anger to burn out so easily when so many lives are lost and the national pride is hurt? We have already seen how the slow-burning anger can morph into xenophobia and Islamophobia that allowed President Donald Trump’s illiberalism to flourish.

How has 9/11 changed the world? For brown people like me, with Islam written as the religion on my passport, being routinely pulled out for random checks or getting extra Thai massage at the airport security line has become more frequent than ever. To be honest, such racial profiling does not make me angry anymore. I know many of my friends who live in the US had to change their names to avoid backlash soon after the tragic incident. Now we live in a post-9/11 world where we have accepted such nuisance as normal, just like we have learned to live with surveillance in a Big Brother state.

In defining who the enemy is, America has defined itself too. The arrows and olive branch held by the American icon, a bald eagle, used to traditionally determine the hawkish and dovish foreign policies of different administrations—9/11 changed all that. America no longer wants the puritan belief of being an exclusive indispensable role model for the world. In unleashing its Global War on Terror, America had to change some of its essential values. It started violating its own laws. Illegal confinement and interrogation outside its territories and ghost flights suspending its habeas corpus is a case in point. The post-9/11 America saw most of the global challenges around the world through the lenses of Islamic terrorism and the crusade dictum. Exuberant spending on the War on Terror allowed certain groups to become richer and more influential than ever. The extra funding created mercenary militia and innovative weaponry. The surveillance system became more sophisticated than ever to encroach upon the liberty of every civilian. The system became corrupt. And what’s dangerous is that the US model is being replicated by governments across the world.

Police forces now behave like the military. And the radical terrorists see the reflection of their enemies in totalitarian and dictatorial states. The ground zero has shifted so much that it is no longer possible to pin down on the centre of terrorism or to identify the cocoons of terror. The connect-the-dots investigative journalism of Michael Moore’s documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” argued that the inner circle of the Bush administration used media to cash in on the fearmongering and benefit from the wars. Whether such paranoia is true or not is for the American people to decide.

The US had the world’s sympathy for 9/11. The attacks did characterise the assault on the heart and soul of every freedom-loving soul. When the US went after the perpetrators of 9/11 in the mountainous terrains of Afghanistan, the sympathy remained intact. The democratic changes and the nation-building process in Afghanistan were heart-warming to see. The retreat from Kabul, however, tells a different story. It takes us back to the question: Why did the Twin Towers fall? How did it change not only the US but also the whole world? There are people who would still like to hold on to the image of a pre-9/11 America with its signature skyline.

Shamsad Mortuza is acting vice-chancellor of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), and a professor of English at Dhaka University (on leave).

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

Credit: United Nations

By Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury
NEW YORK, Sep 13 2021 (IPS)

Today, on 13 September 2021, the UN Declaration and Programme of Action adopted by the General Assembly in 1999 will be turning 22.

You would recall that the 20th anniversary of The Culture of Peace of its adoption by the world’s highest multilateral body in 2019 was observed by the United Nations in an appropriate and befitting manner, as called for by the Assembly. It was an occasion for reiteration and recommitment by us all to create the culture of peace in our world, beginning with each one of us.

After the UN Charter, this is the only major document of the UN which focuses on peace in a most comprehensive manner. We need to pay increasingly more attention to this landmark document for its full and effective implementation.

Last week another integrally-connected milestone gathering – the 2021 UN High Level Forum on The Culture of Peace – took place at the UN General Assembly convened by its President of the 75th session.

This day-long event organized on 7 September 2021 attained a special profile and attention as it was the 10th anniversary of the annual UN high level forums which was first initiated in 2012 during the 66th session of the Assembly by its then President, Ambassador Nassir Al-Nasser of Qatar.

His objective was to create a new platform for the culture of peace at the UN to be held on an annual basis for an opportunity to exchange ideas between the Member States and civil society organizations.

I happened to be his senior special advisor involved in conceptualizing and organizing that very first forum on 14 September, the day after the 11th anniversary of The Culture of Peace.

Ambassador Anwarul K Chowdhury

This year’s Forum was held in a hybrid format, both in-person and virtual platforms. With its focus on the theme “The Transformative Role of The Culture of Peace: Promoting Resilience and Inclusion in Post-Covid Recovery”, the Forum provided the opportunity to the participants and all stakeholders to exchange ideas and make suggestions on how to utilize the values of culture of peace in post-Covid recovery efforts, especially to ensure that the recovery, which unfortunately is yet to happen, is durable, resilient and inclusive.

The President of the General Assembly Volkan Bozkir of Turkey, under whose leadership the 2021 Forum took place, earned the grateful tribute of all stakeholders for his guidance, initiative and encouragement in convening and holding this 10th anniversary forum under extremely challenging circumstances very successfully. The Panel Discussion was a fitting conclusion to this remarkable gathering.

As I was preparing for the Panel Discussion, I ran into the historical perspective that this year will reach the quarter century mark of my close association with and advocacy for the culture of peace at the United Nations. In 1997, I took the lead in proposing along with some other Ambassadors in a letter to the newly-elected UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to include a specific, self-standing agenda item of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on The Culture of Peace.

A new agenda item was thus agreed upon after considerable negotiating hurdles and the new item was allocated to the plenary of the General Assembly for discussion on an annual basis. That is the basis for the annual resolutions on The Culture of Peace by the General Assembly from that year.

Under this item, UNGA adopted in 1997 a resolution to declare the year 2000 the “International Year for The Culture of Peace”, and in 1998, a resolution to declare the period from 2001 to 2010 as the “International Decade for The Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World”.

In the year after that the United Nations adopted its Declaration and Programme of Action on The Culture of Peace, a monumental document that transcends boundaries, cultures, societies and nations. It was an honor for me to Chair the nine-month long negotiations that led to the adoption of this historic norm-setting document by consensus.

As I mentioned Secretary-General Kofi Annan earlier, let me quote his thoughts on the culture of peace – I cite this quote often: “Over the years we have come to realize that it is not enough to send peacekeeping forces to separate warring parties. It is not enough to engage in peace-building efforts after societies have been ravaged by conflict. It is not enough to conduct preventive diplomacy. All of this is essential work, but we want enduring results. We need, in short, the culture of peace.”

Absolutely right – we need “enduring results” and for that we need “The Culture of Peace”. The Culture of Peace is not a hollow phrase – or an empty sentiment. It has a transformational opportunity for humanity – it has the energy and enthusiasm of many of us individually and collectively around the world.

These annual forums are very special in their involvement of civil society. These are the only High-Level Forums in the UN which are fully 50-50 gender balanced in their panel compositions. I am proud to say that this was possible as the Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP) which is the civil society partner in supporting the Forum has been very diligent in upholding these values.

The concept note of this year’s Forum forcefully reiterated that “…it is an imperative to inculcate the values of The Culture of Peace among nations, societies and communities, with particular attention to the younger generation, through promotion of compassion, tolerance, inclusion, global citizenship and empowerment of all people.”

The theme focusing on the transformative role of the culture of peace in relation to Covid recovery provided a platform to explore and discuss multiple ways and means for empowering all segments of the society, towards a resilient recovery, including by ensuring vaccine equity, asserting universal vaccination as a public good, bridging digital divide, ensuring centrality of women’s equality and empowerment, harnessing the power of youth and highlighting education, health and overall wellbeing of children.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dr. AK Abdul Momen in his pre-recorded video presentation at the Forum articulated succinctly that “We must recognize that rebuilding from the COVID pandemic necessitates a renewed commitment and partnership of all stakeholders. Our efforts should be undergirded by the values of “The Culture of Peace’ as instilling these values contribute to building a resilient, inclusive and peaceful society.”

This year’s Forum heard the inspirational keynote speech by Dr. Beatrice Fihn, the Executive Director of 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winning organization ICAN, International Coalition for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, by calling on all that “On this 10th anniversary of the culture of peace, I am urging you all to continue and strengthen your work to promote education, sustainable and economic developments, human rights, gender equality, democratic participation and international peace and security.

She is the sixth Nobel Peace Prize laureate as the keynote speaker at The Culture of Peace Forums, which also make us proud that all of them are distinguished women Nobel Peace laureates. Complimenting Dr. Fihn for her keynote, I underlined that the essence of her keynote message has now become more pertinent in the midst of the ever-increasing militarism and militarization that is destroying both our planet and our people.

Video message by the activist and globally respected Mayor Kazumi Matsui of Hiroshima, the city which along with Nagasaki bear the scars of nuclear destruction and yearn for global peace, highlighted a major engagement of his world-wide peace organization announcing that “On the 7th of July this year, Mayors for Peace, which I preside over, adopted our new Vision, a set of concrete action guidelines, titled: “Vision for Peaceful Transformation to a Sustainable World.”

One of the objectives set forth by the new Vision is to ‘promote a culture of peace’.” Informing that the foundation of this policy change rests in the ability to build a consensus in favor of the abolition of nuclear weapons, he asserted that “To do this, first cultivating a culture of peace－a culture in which the everyday actions of each person are grounded in thinking about peace－is essential.

It is our belief, that this “bottom-up” approach is the most viable approach to peace, and is in line with the values which prompted the efforts of Ambassador Chowdhury and those in attendance.”

The Mayor’s passionate message included in the Peace Declaration, which he delivered in Hiroshima on 6th of August this year, advocated forcefully that “When like-minded people who seek peace unite for the same purpose, we can bring about a significant change in the world.”

Mayor Matsui encouraged the Forum by informing that “Mayors for Peace consists of over 8,000 member cities in 165 countries and regions around the world. With support from member mayors for our aforementioned cause, we will work to promote a culture of peace by expanding our membership and reaching out to a wider public.”

Often, I am asked how I assess the progress made so far since the Assembly adopted the Programme of Action in 1999. At this year’s High-Level Forum, as the Chair-Moderator of its Panel Discussion, I repeated my concern that lamentably, The Culture of Peace has yet to attain its worth and its due recognition at global and national levels as a universal mandate for the humanity to attain sustainable peace in the true sense.

When people wonder what are my plans to advance the concept in the UN system, my response verges on my advocacy message in general. The Declaration and Programme of Action on Culture of Peace adopted without any reservation is a landmark document of United Nations.

The Organization should, therefore, own it and internalize its implementation throughout the UN system. There seems to be lethargy in that direction because, I believe, the Secretary-General needs to make the culture of peace a part of his leadership agenda.

We should get that attention and engagement from him. Also, the UN entities, at least most of them, are preoccupied with what is known as “active agenda” which is a kind of daily problem-solving or problem-shelving.

That means no opportunities to focus on longer term, farsighted objective of sustainable peace with a workable tool that UN possess in the culture of peace programme adopted by its own apex body, the General Assembly. It is like a person who needs a car to go to work and has a car… but with a minimal interest in knowing how to drive it.

Many treat peace and culture of peace synonymously. There is a subtle difference between peace as generally understood and the culture of peace. Actually, when we speak of peace we expect others namely politicians, diplomats or other practitioners to take the initiative while when we speak of The Culture of Peace, we know that initial action begins with each one of us.

For more than two decades, my focus has been on advancing The Culture of Peace which aims at making peace and non-violence a part of our own self, our own personality – a part of our existence as a human being.

I believe The Culture of Peace is not a quick-fix. It is a movement, not a revolution!

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is Founder of The Global Movement of The Culture of Peace (GMCoP); former Under-Secretary-General of the UN and the Chair of the negotiations which resulted in the consensus adoption of the UN Declaration and Programme of Action on The Culture of Peace in 1999. He was the Chair and Moderator of the virtual Panel Discussion at 2021 UN High Level Forum on The Culture of Peace on 7 September 2021.

 

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The UN General Assembly. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 13 2021 (IPS)

When the high-level segment of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly opens September 21, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is unlikely to occupy a much-coveted seat in the world body.

But still, it is expected to eventually wind its way to the Assembly Hall, perhaps later this year or sometime next year– provided it has the blessings of the UN’s nine-member Credentials Committee and the 193-member General Assembly.

And more importantly, the Biden administration has to establish diplomatic relations with the Taliban government, whose officials may be on a US sanctions list which bars them from entering the United States.

If the Taliban delegation is denied a US visa, the Biden administration will be in violation of the 1947 UN-US headquarters agreement under which Washington was expected to facilitate — not hinder– the smooth functioning of the world body.

But the agreement does not cover any extremist insurgent groups seeking to enter the UN.

When Yassir Arafat was denied a US visa to visit New York to address the United Nations back in 1988, the General Assembly defied the United States by temporarily moving the UN’s highest policy making body to Geneva– perhaps for the first time in UN history– providing a less-hostile political environment for the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

But as of now, a guessing game is on at the United Nations: Will the Taliban government make it to the General Assembly thereby gaining international recognition and legitimacy?

If it does, it will be one of the first UN member states – or perhaps the only one — which is headed by an extremist insurgent group once designated as a “terrorist organization” by the United States.

Thomas G. Weiss, Distinguished Fellow, Global Governance, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and Presidential Professor of Political Science, told IPS that immense uncertainty will surround the Taliban government’s assuming the Afghanistan seat at the United Nations.

Unlike a new member state that requires a Security Council approval, a change in government is normally automatic with the Credentials Committee approving, and then the General Assembly rubber stamping, said Weiss who has written extensively on the politics of the United Nations.

In the case of the Taliban, he pointed out, time is short and, of course, the change was not the product of an election. Given the Taliban’s past and current behaviour, many member states are likely to object, he predicted.

Still, there has to be an alternative government to object, and so it is crucial to see whether (former Afghan President) Ashraf Ghani (who fled to the United Arab Emirates) will come out of hiding and object.

“That is unlikely, but if he does, I think that the historical precedent would resemble Cambodia/Kampuchea and Sihanouk/Khmer Rouge rather than the ongoing discussions about Myanmar”, said Weiss, Director Emeritus, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center.

Laying down her country’s demands, Ambassador Barbara Woodward of the UK, a permanent member of the Security Council, said last week the UK will calibrate its approach to the Taliban based on the choices and actions they now take – namely on safe passage, terrorism, humanitarian access, human rights and inclusive government.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN told IPS: “I think the Afghan situation is somewhat more complicated.”

The Taliban government has not been recognised yet by many states– normally a change in government does not need recognition. Also, the new Taliban government has not appointed a Permanent Representative to the UN or asked the UN to accept his credentials, he noted.

There are a number of functional things which need to be sorted out and followed before the Credentials Committee (CC) considers the matter.

“I think the CC would take its time to consider the credentials of the new Afghan representative to the UN and subsequently of its delegation to the 76th session. I am sure UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs is fully seized with the matter and would advise the CC, if asked on behalf of the Secretary-General.’

But much however depends on how the US and other Western countries would like to address the question, Ambassador Chowdhury declared.

Meanwhile, the Credentials Committee may seek an easy way out by deferring any immediate action on the recognition of the Taliban government– as it has done with the military junta in Myanmar which has, so far, unsuccessfully sought the UN seat held by the former democratic government.

Asked about the status of Taliban’s UN membership, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters last Friday: “The recognition of governments is not done by the Secretariat of the United Nations, as you know; it is done by Member States, and is done by the bodies of the UN. But we are permanently engaging with the Taliban, and we believe that a dialogue with the Taliban is absolutely essential at the present moment. “

Asked whether UN Security Council should lift the sanctions on members of the Taliban, some of whom are now representing the interim government, he said: “First of all, I think that what would be positive is to have simultaneously the formation in Afghanistan of an inclusive government — the fact that the government respects international commitments made by the Afghan State, and that a number of the concerns that we have expressed about terrorism, human rights, etc., are taken into account”.

These, he said would lead to a normalisation of the relations of the international community with Afghanistan.

“The Security Council, of course, will have to ponder its decisions, and I think that members of the Security Council will be also looking into how the situation evolves in Afghanistan in order to make their decisions,” said Guterres.

Weiss, author of the “Would the World Be Better without the UN? (2018), pointed out that there will be a new Credentials Committee later this week.

“As merely a majority vote in the General Assembly is required, I would have thought that it would be difficult not to seat the Taliban, especially as China seems to be courting the new government, undoubtedly dangling investment and recognition in exchange for the commitment to steer clear of supporting the Uyghurs”.

If China insists and calls upon its other clients, there will be the required 50 percent. US and Western “silence” (not assent) could probably be secured for guarantees about safe transit for the remaining citizens and supporters trapped in Afghanistan.

Continue leverage will result from the requirement to issue visas to individuals on the list of terrorists, Weiss declared.

Addressing a press briefing in Qatar last week, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said while the Taliban badly wants or professes to want international legitimacy and support, that legitimacy and support has to be earned by their actions.

“And in our judgment, it cannot be earned quickly, it cannot be earned by words alone, or even by some positive first steps, welcome as those may be. It really has to be demonstrated over time”, he noted.

“Needless to say, the names in the caretaker government do not inspire confidence in that last regard. We’ll have to see what emerges in a more permanent government,” he added.

Blinken also clearly laid out the US position last week when he told reporters: “The Taliban says it seeks international legitimacy and international support. And that will depend entirely on what it does, not just on what it says. And the trajectory of its relationship with us and with the rest of the world will depend on its actions”.

Now, the Taliban has made a series of commitments, publicly and privately, including with regard to freedom of travel, with regard to combatting terrorism and not allowing Afghanistan to be used a launching point for terrorism directed at us or at anyone else, including as well upholding the basic rights of the Afghan people, to include women and girls and minorities, to have some inclusivity in government, to avoid reprisals.

And these are very important commitments, he added.

The international community has also set clear expectations of the Taliban-led government. More than 100 countries signed onto a statement that the US initiated on those very commitments. The United Nations Security Council has made clear its expectations.

“And so, for us – and not just for us, for many countries around the world – the nature of the relationship with the government going forward will depend on the actions it takes,” said
Blinken.

 

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Vineil Narayan on Vio Island in Lautoka. Narayan is climate finance expert who talks about how the CommonSensing project is assisting small island states with finance and tools to mitigate climate change and its devastating effects.

By Neena Bhandari
Sydney, Australia, Sep 10 2021 (IPS)

The UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme (IPP) CommonSensing is led by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) through its Operational Satellite Applications programme (UNOSAT), which is working with selected partners including the Commonwealth Secretariat, to improve resilience to the effects of climate change in Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

Vineil Narayan, Climate Finance Specialist and Head of Climate Change and International Cooperation Division, Ministry of Economy, Fiji, talks about the use of CommonSensing data in climate change adaptation and mitigation; and its potential in accessing the much-needed climate finance.

Neena Bhandari: How easy or difficult has it been for Fiji to access climate finance?

Vineil Narayan: Climate finance is a broad term, which includes public and private sectors. For Small Island Developing States (SIDS), particularly in the Pacific, one of the key issues is to be able to attract appropriate financing for climate-centric projects and development programmes.

There’s a massive mismatch between climate finance mobilised and climate finance needs of the region. In the public sector space, it has been relatively less difficult for us to attract climate finance that’s coming through bilateral support from countries or the Green Climate Fund (GCF). But we have been struggling to attract climate finance at an appropriate scale from the private sector. It is because we’re competing against larger economies with greater returns and potential for investors.

CommonSensing tracks Cyclone Harold through the Pacific Islands using data from satellites. The severe tropical cyclone caused widespread destruction in the Solomon Islands, Vanautu, Fiji and Tonga in 2020. Credit: CommonSensing

NB: Why time is of the essence for accessing climate finance for Fiji and other Pacific Island countries, which are facing immediate impacts of climate change and are more vulnerable to its consequences?

VN: In countries such as the United States and Australia, the impacts of climate change, for example, frequency and intensity of bushfires, are only being felt now and people are recognising that climate change is actually happening. But for us in the Pacific, climate change has been a fundamental development challenge for decades. It has already stifled our development progress over a long period of time. The urgency for climate action is not new for us in the region. ‘Time is of the essence’ is something that we’ve been saying to the world for so many years.

When The Paris Agreement was being discussed, the Pacific countries particularly demanded limiting temperature target to 1.5 degrees Celsius to reduce climate impacts. We have villages blown off the map due to storms. We have communities that are disappearing due to sea-level rise. It is posing a significant threat to our low-lying atoll neighbours like Kiribati and Tuvalu. They will disappear within the next few decades if we are not able to curtail rising sea levels expedited by climate change.

Climate change is an immediate existential threat for us. It underscores the need for immediate action and for that we need to increase and expedite the mobilisation of climate finance at a significant amount for adaptation and mitigation.

CommonSensing uses satellite remote sensing capabilities to support the Governments of Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu in their efforts to build resilience to the devastating impacts of climate change and improve access to climate finance. Credit: CommonSensing

NB: How are you using the CommonSensing tools for climate change relocation and disaster risk reduction and response?

VN: Information is power. When adaptation projects and programmes from SIDS go to the GCF, we are asked: What’s the adaptation rationale? It baffles me because the impacts of climate change and the need for adaptation is clearly reflected in the national development priorities, particularly those of the Pacific Island countries. So, for us to be asked to rationalise it is like a slap on the face.

To develop that climate rationale, one of the key things is to have appropriate access to data and information, which are crucial for mobilising finance. The CommonSensing Project helps us to provide that evidence-based rationale to access greater climate finance.

The CommonSensing team, working with United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), has been instrumental in helping to map out both disaster response measures and needs. For example, mapping out what would be the level of disaster impact based on the trajectory of a cyclone – number of households in that area, population, number of bridges, water facilities and other infrastructure information, as well as identifying what’s the level of damage and coverage that would be needed for disaster risk reduction and response. This is something that the CommonSensing Project has actually helped the National Disaster Management Office with, doing post-disaster mapping of areas impacted by three major cyclones that have hit Fiji over the past 14 months.

With regards to relocation, it is important that when you relocate a community from point A to B, you are able to take into account the geospatial dynamics and hazards. In the past, a relocation happened where a coastal community was moved, but torrential rainfall and limited geospatial knowledge of that area resulted in landslides.

The CommonSensing Project helps us to better understand, for example, the safe elevation level of a particular area where we want to relocate a community; how far away it is from the school, the electricity grid, the road? This geospatial information and hazard mapping is very powerful for us to be able to make informed policy decisions on whether and how to relocate a community.

In addition to that, the Fijian Government has developed the Planned Relocation Guidelines, which helps government agencies better understand what roles and responsibilities they have when it comes to relocating a community. We need to consider not only the infrastructure movement but also socio-economic livelihood transition and customary obligations to ensure that the community being relocated is accepted by the community, where they are being relocated.

We are also developing a standard operating procedure – a step-by-step process of how a community will be relocated. As part of the standard operating procedures, one of the fundamental things is to do a Climate Vulnerability Assessment of a particular community. And within that risk assessment, one of the key steps is to use CommonSensing data to be able to ascertain whether that community or that area in which the community is from, is actually facing geospatial hazards.

The geospatial CommonSensing data helps to identify whether sea-level rise would be an issue; what would be the appropriate vegetation around a particular area so we are able to better understand what would be the livelihoods of that community. For example, if we move a coastal community, which is dependent on fishing, inland then there will be a need for capacity building and livelihood assistance for them to transition from being a fishing community to an agricultural community.

This robust CommonSensing data helps in informed decision making when it comes to relocation work and post-disaster needs assessments.

NB: What is the potential of this satellite-based Earth Observation data for accessing climate finance?

VN: Currently, we are not using this data to access climate finance, but that is our ultimate aim. We would like to weave this information into our future climate finance applications to make them bankable. We’re not only working on doing that, but as part of the CommonSensing Project, we are also receiving support from the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub.

For four weeks, we’re currently getting together 19 teams of stakeholders in workshops to develop project proposals by using CommonSensing data. These project proposals will feed into the project pipeline for the Fijian Government that we want to submit to the GCF for funding

 

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By External Source
Sep 10 2021 (IPS-Partners)

H.E. Dr. Tariq Al Gurg was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Cares in 2009 and as Vice-Chairman in July 2021.

Al Gurg has been a primary driver behind the organization’s success. He has enabled Dubai Cares to contribute to the evidence-base in education, leverage funding and invest in strategic relationships and programs that support the global education agenda. His focus has been to develop Dubai Cares as a recognized best-case practitioner and a global leader in education program design and innovation that is grounded in a philosophy of continuous monitoring and evaluation and rigorous research.

Globally, Al Gurg has been a key champion of Education in Emergencies, as well as a vocal advocate for an increased focus on youth empowerment. He is a founding member of the High-Level Steering Group of ‘Education Cannot Wait’ – the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies, as well as Generation Unlimited, UNICEF’s flagship youth initiative, where he also sits on its Board of Trustees and Global Leadership Council. Al Gurg is also a high-level Champion of the World Economic Forum’s Reskilling Revolution, a member of the advisory board of UNESCO’s Futures of Education Commission, as well as the Regional Champion of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) in the Middle East. Locally, Al Gurg is a Co-chair of the Global Council on SDG 4, a board member at the Digital School initiative, the Commissioner General of the Dubai Cares pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai and a member of the UAE Committee for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid headed by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MoFAIC).

Since 2009, Al Gurg has been instrumental in a number of key task forces and leadership circles in the global education sector with his contributions having a far-reaching impact. His efforts have been commended by a number of key entities during this period. He was recognized in 2019 as a “Change-maker” by Save the Children during the celebration of their centennial anniversary. In the same year, Al Gurg was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) Degree from Mangalayatan University in Aligarh, India. Al Gurg was also recognized by UNESCO in 2017 and by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM) in 2016.

Al Gurg’s past experience includes 12 years at various senior management positions within the consumer and corporate banking at National Bank of Dubai (Currently known as Emirates NBD). He is a Founding Board Member and Deputy Chairman of the UAE Genetic Diseases Association (UAE GDA). He was also a member of the UAE’s National Anti-Money Laundering Committee, chaired by the Governor of the UAE Central Bank.

ECW: At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, close to 90% of all learners around the world were affected by school closures, causing unprecedented loss in terms of learning outcomes. Yet, crisis can be an opportunity for change, and for some, COVID-19 was the occasion to roll out online digital learning solutions at record speed. What lessons do you draw from this unique, global experience?

Dr. Tariq Al Gurg: The COVID-19 pandemic forced 1.6 billion children out of school and put 24 million children at risk of never receiving an education. In light of this, countries around the world scrambled to adopt new technologies for remote learning, with some quickly getting online education up and running while others suffered due to lack of access to meaningful connectivity and limited remote teaching and learning resources, which prevented children in these countries from making a successful transition to remote learning.

In my opinion, one of the biggest lessons to have emerged from the pandemic is that digital connectivity cannot be a privilege that is reserved for only certain segments of the society in certain parts of the world. Just like access to quality education, digital connectivity needs to be a universal right that – together with quality relevant content and access to devices – enables every child on this planet to learn, grow and build a better future for themselves, wherever they are. Without connectivity, exclusion becomes a big concern, resulting in access to fewer learning resources and limited opportunities for the most vulnerable children and youth to fulfill their potential.

ECW: What do you see as the lasting impacts of COVID-19 on education for children and youth caught in emergencies and protracted crises? As a co-founder of Education Cannot Wait and a solid and unwavering supporter of ECW throughout, how is Dubai Cares working with ECW and other strategic partners to address them?

Dr. Tariq Al Gurg: Children and youth living in crisis settings already face a host of complex challenges that prevent them from living a life of dignity and equal opportunity. When a pandemic like COVID-19 is added to the equation, the negative outcomes are amplified even more, particularly for girls.

Dubai Cares has always believed that education in emergencies and protracted crisis settings is one of the most effective ways to provide stability, security and hope to children in these circumstances where nothing else appears to be in their control. Access to education can bring them a sense of normality as they turn to their classrooms, classmates and teachers to learn essential life skills in peaceful settings in an otherwise unsettling environment. Teachers and trainers are also able to offer these children and youth psychosocial support, which becomes crucial for their recovery from the trauma they face.

Our work with Education Cannot Wait and other strategic partners allows us to maximize the impact of our education in emergencies funding as we know that we are contributing to a coherent, coordinated and prioritized approach targeting those most vulnerable and left furthest behind.

Working in partnership with Education Cannot Wait during the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed Dubai Cares to gain in-depth insights into the different educational interventions that will best address their challenges. Equipped with this knowledge, we are then able to tap into our network to deploy the most effective solutions across our portfolio of grants.

ECW: Dubai Cares has been a sector-leading foundation for global education, showing strong support to ECW amongst other partners. ECW is about to embark on its next round of funding requests, urgently seeking millions in new resources to ensure children in the world’s most complex crises can access quality education. What is your message to public and private sector donors, including those who are not yet part of the ECW movement and who may be considering a contribution at the RewirEd 2021 Summit?

Dr. Tariq Al Gurg: COVID-19 has reemphasized the role of education financing in safeguarding the future of our communities. Without sustained and significant investments in education today, an entire generation of children will grow up uneducated and fail to play their role as contributors of economic growth and development. Nowhere is this more true than in countries affected by crisis and conflict.

Dubai Cares’ message to the global education community is clear: Join us at the RewirEd Summit taking place from 12-14 December during Expo 2020 Dubai to raise the alarm on the education financing crisis facing us today, but also to explore ways to collaborate more effectively across actors and sectors in order to drive better and more sustainable impact for the education of children and youth everywhere. This cannot be achieved without focusing on those most marginalized and the most unstable settings, and these children – girls, refugees, IDPs, children with disabilities in places like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, CAR and South Sudan – these are the children and youth that Education Cannot Wait serves. The RewirEd Summit will feature close to 20 separate sessions focusing on education in emergencies across the three days, including an opportunity to make early commitments to the new Case for Investment that Education Cannot Wait will launch. It is an excellent opportunity for new donors to join and make their commitments heard!

ECW: How can we, as a sector, crowd in more resources to support the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4 on equitable, inclusive, quality education for every child? In particular, what role can the private sector, high-net worth individuals and foundations play in our efforts to get all children in school and learning?

Dr. Tariq Al Gurg: It is now clear that COVID-19 has further amplified the learning crisis that existed before the pandemic. It has put to risk years of progress that we had painstakingly achieved in the education sector. That said, it has also shined a light on the opportunity for the global education community to join forces under one shared mission to address the challenges through a collective commitment.

Alongside prioritizing funding from national governments and the international community, more can and should be done to engage with new private sector actors through global advocacy, to earmark and mobilize additional funding for education. Dubai Cares is working together with the Global Business Coalition for Education on a strategic engagement framework for global business taking action for education at the RewirEd Summit. Whilst financing is imperative, it is not the only way for businesses to contribute.

Beyond financing, private sector are the largest employers globally and as such should engage with the education sector at large and contribute to informing the design of education systems that will help meet the ever-changing job market needs. Another example is the opportunity that telecoms, big tech and ed-tech companies have to support the connectivity crisis through innovation and new business models.

These are, in fact, some of the key themes and topics that will take center stage at the RewirEd Summit later this year and we are delighted that alongside Education Cannot Wait, we are also working with the World Economic Forum, UNICEF, UNESCO, Global Partnership for Education, the World Bank, World Food Programme, UNHCR, the office of the UN Special Envoy on Education and the OECD as our strategic partners for the Summit. The participation and engagement of all these organizations and many more from across sector and actors will enable us to catalyze meaningful action for the future of education and SDG4.

ECW: Taking place on 12-14 December, the RewirEd 2021 Summit comes as the global community is laying the ground of a post-COVID world. How can the RewirEd Summit help shift the global narrative on education from the impossible to the possible? Can you give us a sneak peek into any of the exciting initiatives you have planned or are working on?

Dr. Tariq Al Gurg: The need of the hour is for all players – from governments to the private sector – to think long and hard about the lessons from the pandemic and leverage them to build the path ahead. Together, we need to place education financing at the top of global agendas through an integrated approach. We must also mobilize additional resources and leverage them in ways that will help us garner more support for education financing. Innovation also plays an integral part, not only when it comes to making an impact in education, but also when it comes to how we develop education models as an interconnected system, delivering pioneering funding models, and innovative partnerships locally, regionally and globally.

Through the RewirEd Summit, we look forward to unlocking new solutions and innovation for the future of education by fostering collaboration between new and unlikely allies, whilst bringing together existing platforms and partnerships to amplify their impact.

Discussions at the Summit will span three key themes namely: Youth, Skills and the Future of Work, Innovation in Education and Education Training. For the first time at a global educational conference, climate change and sustainability will take center stage with a high-level panel dedicated only to this topic, and a number of side events looking at education through this lens. Amongst other things, we will explore new ways of working in the areas of future skills, alternative pathways to secondary and tertiary education, and the opportunities that more holistic locally rooted learning ecosystems can bring. Through a series of high-level plenaries, TED-style talks, workshops, masterclasses and panels, we look forward to encouraging disruptive dialogue that will help us reclaim the foundational role of education in building a sustainable, equitable and prosperous future for all.

ECW: If you had one message for gathering leaders at the RewirEd Summit and Expo 2020 Dubai on the importance of connectivity in education for children caught in emergencies and protracted crises, what would it be?

Dr. Tariq Al Gurg: Meaningful connectivity for learning represents one of the most robust and effective ways to bring access to quality education to children affected by emergencies. As a platform committed to rethinking and rewiring the future of education, RewirEd will put the spotlight on the need for increased investments in connectivity through its second theme: Education Financing.

Dubai Cares had long identified connectivity as a critical enabling factor to ensure learning can continue – even in times of crisis and school closures. To achieve this, Dubai Cares has been working closely with UNESCO and UNICEF since the beginning of the global lockdown in March 2020, to launch a Global Declaration on Connectivity during the RewirEd Summit. The aim of the RewirEd Declaration is to build consensus and commitments through collective collaboration between key stakeholders, address key barriers to connectivity and highlight the need for an ecosystem for meaningful connectivity. By bringing together new and unlikely allies, the Summit seeks to mobilize support from public and private sectors for this Global Declaration that will be a historic step in our efforts to close the digital divide, with an emphasis on those most marginalized.

 

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Excerpt:

Building momentum to the RewirEd Summit, leading education advocate explores new ways to bridge the digital divide and respond to COVID-19.

Students of the Lira Integrated Fish Farm in Uganda, a South-South Cooperation Facility for Agriculture and Food Security, eat their lunch. Credit: FAO/Isaac Kasamani

By Adel Abdellatif
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 10 2021 (IPS)

The 2021 high-level commemoration of the United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation, organized ahead of the opening of the seventy-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly, provided an opportunity to discuss Southern solidarity in support of a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future while effectively responding to the global COVID-19 crisis across the global South.

The 2021 United Nations Day for South-South cooperation presented the opportunity for stakeholders to highlight concrete follow-up to the twentieth session of the High-level Committee on South-South Cooperation (HLC), which took place from 1 to 4 June 2021 in New York.

“South-South and triangular cooperation must have a central place in our preparations for a strong recovery”, says Secretary-General António Guterres, reminding us that “we will need the full contributions and cooperation of the global South to build more resilient economies and societies and implement the Sustainable Development Goals”.

The General Assembly High-level Committee (HLC) on South-South Cooperation met in June to review progress made in implementing the Buenos Aires Action Plan (BAPA+40) and other other key decisions on South-South cooperation.

This HLC session considered follow-up actions arising from previous sessions and hosted a thematic discussion on “Accelerating the achievement of the SDGs through effective implementation of the BAPA+40 outcome document while responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and similar global crises”.

The HLC hosted 75 member states – including a Head of State and Ministers from around the world – as well as 23 intergovernmental organizations, 25 UN entities, civil society and the private sector. More than 400 people participated during side events which HLC Bureau Members took the lead in organizing on issues of importance to the South.

Deliberations focused on actions arising from the Report of the Secretary-General to the nineteenth session, which proposed concrete ways to enhance the role and impact of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, as well as the key measures taken to improve the coordination and coherence of UN support to South-South cooperation.

In terms of important messages and statements, Member States highlighted that COVID-19 has taught the world that South-South development cooperation is critical to an effective response to emergencies.

South-South cooperation was strongly reaffirmed as the means to support countries’ national development priorities, alignment with the SDGs, and the acceleration of achievement toward the 2030 Agenda.

South-South cooperation was also recognized as an effective approach to accelerate and deepen the efforts to build back better, healthier, safer, more resilient and sustainable.

It was emphasized that over the past decade, the world has witnessed the increase in the scale, scope, and diversity of approaches of South-South and triangular cooperation.

Countries of the Global South have strengthened institutional capacities for cooperation by formulating and implementing national development policies, strategies, and agencies, and by developing information and performance management systems for data gathering, expertise and technology mapping, and impact assessment.

With the strengthening of national capacities on South-South and triangular cooperation there is opportunity to collect and exchange evidence of how much South-South and triangular cooperation is being done, how it benefits people, and how to create institutional mechanisms to help countries align South-South collaboration with their national and regional agendas.

As the world fights the COVID-19 pandemic and strives to build back better, international development organizations must offer innovative, timely responses to remain relevant. This includes new forms of coordination based on more “coherent” and “integrated support” capable of unleashing change on the ground.

Traditionally, South-South and triangular cooperation has taken place among governments on bilateral terms. As development becomes more dynamic in nature and unprecedented in scale, South-South and triangular cooperation is now used to source innovation from wherever it is.

Also highlighted was that South-South and triangular cooperation is increasingly recognized as an important complement to North-South cooperation in financing for sustainable development.

UNOSSC will continue to promote, coordinate and support South-South and triangular cooperation globally and within the UN system. It will also continue to support governments and the UN system to analyse and articulate evolving and emerging trends, dynamics and opportunities in South-South cooperation.

Adel Abdellatif. Credit: FAO/Isaac Kasamani

In response to Member States requests, UNOSSC consistently demonstrates strong convening power across the UN system and serves as secretariat of UN Conferences including BAPA+40. UNOSSC has developed research networks at the global level, compiling evidence of good practices in South-South cooperation toward achievement of the SDGs, and created a global network of think tanks on South-South and triangular cooperation. UNOSSC also offers the South-South Galaxy platform for sharing knowledge and brokering partnership. The Office also manages a number of South-South cooperation trust funds and programmes.

Given UNOSSC’s mandate to support South-South and triangular cooperation globally and within the UN system, the Secretary-General requested UNOSSC to coordinate the preparation and launch of the UN System-wide Strategy on South-South and Triangulation Cooperation for Sustainable Development with the engagement of the UN Inter-Agency Mechanism for South-South and Triangular Cooperation, and other stakeholders.

The Strategy’s objective is to provide a system-wide policy orientation to UN entities in order to galvanize a coordinated and coherent approach to policy, programmatic and partnership support on South-South and triangular cooperation and increase impact across UN activities at all levels: national, regional and global. Implementation is governed by each entity individually, based on its own mandate and programme of work.

UNOSSC is also currently developing its 2022-2025 Strategic Framework. It is an opportunity for the Office to catalyze the use of South-South and triangular cooperation to accelerate the speed and scale of action towards achieving the SDGs.

For example, the Office aims to offer a platform whereby: (i) countries of the Global South can exchange knowledge, develop capacities, and transfer technologies to address their own development priorities as well as coordinate and co-design solutions to shared development challenges; (ii) UN agencies, programs, and funds can strengthen their support to SSTC at the global, regional and country levels.

No country is too poor to contribute to South-South cooperation for development, and no country is too rich to lean from the South. All partners have important elements to contribute. So, it follows that triangular cooperation is an important element of our work.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare severe and systemic inequalities.

The pandemic has also highlighted the importance of the digital revolution. Building institutional capacity in sub-Saharan Africa and LDCs through South-South and triangular cooperation is essential for countries to fully harness digital transformation and recovery.

Triangular cooperation is a flexible platform where partners can mobilize different funding capacities in support of developing countries’ priorities.

Triangular cooperation demands horizontality and shared governance approved by all parties. It is based on a clear respect for national sovereignty and the seeking of mutual benefit in equal partnerships.

Recovery from pandemic requires additional support, innovative development solutions and arrangements between public and private sectors. We must facilitate opportunities to expand development cooperation and its processes and to improve the effectiveness of multilateral cooperation. Fostering multi-dimensionality and multi-stakeholders approaches is the way forward to enhance development impact.

During the June HLC Member States highlighted that in the COVID and post-COVID era, the below priority areas for triangular cooperation could be considered: 1) health, 2) data infrastructure, 3) manufacturing capacity and supply chain for relevant medical material and equipment, as well as treatment; 4) solar energy and reducing carbon footprint; 5) a coalition for disaster resilient initiatives; and 6) currency swap arrangements from international financial institutions.

Adel Abdellatif is the Director, a.i., of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation. Before joining UNOSSC, he served as Deputy Director, a.i., and Senior Strategic Adviser in the Regional Bureau for Arab States of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). He came to UNDP following a two-decade career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Egypt.

 

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Central banks in Latin America, such as the Bank of Brazil, whose headquarters is pictured here, should create measures to address the climate crisis, such as a catalog of polluting activities that should not be financed and the magnitude of exposure to climate risks, so that financial institutions in the countries stop financing fossil fuels. CREDIT: BCB

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Sep 10 2021 (IPS)

Despite the impact that their policies have with regard to the climate emergency, Latin America’s central banks continue to avoid applying guidelines in measures that affect the operation of credit institutions, which distances them from compliance with the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Ilan Zugman, director in Latin America of the international non-governmental organisation 350.org, which promotes an energy transition that eliminates the use of fossil fuels, pointed out that central banks have the power to regulate financial institutions to stop providing resources for polluting activities.

Central banks “can tell banks that they can’t make loans to companies that further aggravate the climate crisis. There is a lot of room for a stronger role,” he told IPS from the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba."Industries don't want to leave their activities behind. They put a lot of pressure on governments and bank executives. We need to show more clearly what is happening in terms of climate risks, the losses that governments and central banks could suffer if we don't stop the climate crisis." -- Ilan Zugman

“But so far, that hasn´t been happening in many places, there are very few examples around the world. In Latin America there is nothing like that. They are lagging behind, we see more words than actions,” he argued.

The climate crisis poses challenges for financial bond issuers, investors, insurers, lenders and banking and financial regulators, which means these entities must analyse and provide information about how it affects their business and how their business impacts society and the environment, and in particular the climate.

Latin America is a region highly vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, such as more intense storms, floods, droughts and rising sea levels, and the cost of failing to take measures is extremely high, as scientists and international organisations have warned.

In this region, only the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) has made some progress – although without yet creating a comprehensive set of rules in this regard – by applying its first regulation on risk management and socio-environmental responsibility, established in 2014.

It launched three public consultations this year on requirements for risk management, reporting and policy on social, environmental and climate responsibility, which were completed in June. The standard will take effect on Jan. 1.

The BCB will implement the disclosure requirements this year, in a first phase addressing qualitative aspects of governance, strategy and risk management, and a second on quantitative facets, such as metrics and targets.

But no Latin American central bank has reported its exposure to the consequences of the climate crisis.

Amaury Oliva, director of Sustainability, Financial Citizenship, Consumer Relations and Self-Regulation at the private Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febraban), said the sector recognises “its role and responsibility” in expanding the financing of activities that contribute to the reduction of polluting emissions and mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

“It is important to continuously improve processes to manage and mitigate the risks associated with climate issues in banks’ activities and in their business with clients, in order to maintain the stability and resilience of the financial sector in this transition process,” he told IPS from São Paulo.

In the view of Oliva, whose federation represents 119 banks, “institutions must work to inform how they are incorporating climate issues into their risk management strategies and processes.”

Over the past three years, central banks around the world have carried out analyses on the need for climate guidelines, acknowledging that the phenomenon can undermine the very stability of the financial system.

In 2020, out of Febraban’s portfolio of legal entities and companies, 51 percent represented a threat to the climate and 44 percent to the environment, according to the green taxonomy used in institutional credit balances. This was an improvement compared to 2012, when 62 percent represented climate and 50 percent environmental threats.

Hurricanes such as Nora, which was intensified by the climate crisis and hit Mexico’s northern Pacific region at the end of August, are leaving heavy economic losses, and central banks could intervene to encourage financing for sustainable activities that do not fuel climate change. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPSHurricanes such as Nora, which was intensified by the climate crisis and hit Mexico’s northern Pacific region at the end of August, are leaving heavy economic losses, and central banks could intervene to encourage financing for sustainable activities that do not fuel climate change. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

In May 2020, the central Bank of Mexico (Banxico) released the results of a survey in which the country’s banks recognised the importance of the issue and the adoption of some measures. But neither Banxico nor the private Association of Banks of Mexico have disclosed their relation to climate risks.

In July, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), which brings together financial and banking authorities from around the world, published a roadmap that focuses on addressing the financial risks of the climate crisis through corporate disclosure of such information, data, vulnerability analysis, and regulatory and oversight tools.

In April, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) of the Bank for International Settlements, a Geneva-based institution that groups central banks from around the world, published two reports on climate risk drivers and their transmission channels to the banking system, as well as financial risks and banking practices in the face of these risks.

In this region, only the central banks of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru belong to the BCBS.

In “Climate-related financial risks: a survey on current initiatives”, carried out in April 2020 and to which only Argentina, Brazil and Mexico responded from this region, the majority of Basel Committee members considered it appropriate to address climate risks.

Most of the central banks that responded stated that they had conducted research to measure these threats but less than half had established guidelines in this regard or were in the process of doing so, without calculating their mitigation in bank capital requirements.

The Basel Committee includes 45 members from 28 jurisdictions, including central banks and industry regulators. It also has nine observers.

In addition, the Financial Stability Board, which brings together financiers, insurers, large non-financial corporations, accounting and consulting firms, as well as credit rating agencies, has created a Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).

This group aims to make recommendations that promote informed investment, credit and underwriting decisions, as well as to help stakeholders better understand the concentration of carbon-footprint assets in the financial sector and the system’s exposure to climate risks.

It has issued recommendations on governance, strategies, risk management, metrics and targets, and plotted four scenarios based on a rapid energy transition, a two degree Celsius global temperature rise and a path of climate inaction, estimating transition and physical risks, respectively.

The Paris Agreement was signed in the French capital in December 2015 at the conclusion of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and its core objective is to keep global temperatures from increasing more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

This goal is considered to be the minimum necessary to avoid irreversible climatic and, consequently, human catastrophes.

But to achieve this, greenhouse gas emissions must be cut by 50 percent by 2030, and to reach this goal it is essential to curb the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

Against this backdrop, at least four global voluntary standards initiatives on sustainable finance are underway. The most recent is the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, launched in April, which includes 53 banks from 27 countries whose total assets amount to 37 trillion dollars, almost a quarter of global banking assets.

But the banking and financial system continues to provide funds to the fossil fuel sector, especially gas, whose methane makes it even more polluting than carbon dioxide (CO2).

For Zugman, the solution is clear: outlining a classification of activities that excludes fossil fuels from financing.

“We have only seen some promises and agreements, but for 2022 or later. There are no timelines, clear goals or transparency that would enable us to monitor this. There are many mechanisms that need to be improved,” he said.

“Industries don’t want to leave their activities behind. They put a lot of pressure on governments and bank executives. We need to show more clearly what is happening in terms of climate risks, the losses that governments and central banks could suffer if we don’t curb the climate crisis,” he said.

The activist lamented that banks continue to lend to fuel the climate crisis and insisted that they should no longer do so.

However, he pointed out that there are multilateral entities, such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, that have incorporated climate risks in their assessments of global financial stability and in their credit lines.

From 2022, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which groups the world’s richest economies, will use a tool to monitor climate and transitional financial risks towards a low-carbon economy, as well as their potential impact on financial performance, natural capital and sustainable growth.

The question is when these tools will translate into concrete measures to stop the financing of polluting activities, while the climate emergency continues to wreak havoc in the region.

The central banks of Latin American countries should decisively join these policies to work from the financial sector to contain the climate crisis, said Zugman.

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