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The UNFSS hopes to transform how food is produced, packaged, and distributed to tackle food insecurity and wastage. Credit: Alison Kentish

By Alison Kentish
Roseau, Dominica, Aug 10 2021 (IPS)

The world has been put on notice that there is no time to waste in achieving the goal of food systems transformation.

Through Pre-Summit and national dialogues, scientists, policymakers, farmers, NGOs, private sector representatives and youth groups have been building momentum ahead of the United Nations Food Systems Summit in September. The goal is to ensure that the world produces food with greater attention to climate change, poverty, equity, sustainability and waste reduction.

The Global Alliance for the Future of Food is one of the partners addressing the urgency of food systems transformation for food security, equity, the global economy and COVID-19 recovery. Since 2012, the alliance of philanthropic foundations has engaged in global discussions, supported and led global food transformation research and advanced initiatives in climate, health and agroecology.

The Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) collaborates with the Alliance to share ideas and knowledge to design projects capable of guaranteeing a more sustainable food system for future generations.

IPS spoke to the Alliance’s Senior Director of Programmes, Lauren Baker, about the urgent need to overhaul food systems, the impact of COVID-19 on those systems and why true cost accounting is essential to the international effort to revamp the production, sale and distribution of food.

Dr Lauren Baker

Inter Press Service (IPS): The Global Alliance for the Future of Food has been on a mission to make food systems more sustainable and equitable. The UN Food Systems Summit has the same goal. What do you want to see the Summit achieve?

Lauren Baker (LB): Through the summit process, we have been committed to engaging a network of champions in food systems. We are championing systems thinking, transparency and accountability. We uphold the need for diverse evidence and inclusive representation throughout the process.

Our goal has been to bring the focus of research on one issue, which we think is a significant lever for food systems transformation, and this is being echoed by many in the summit process. This is the issue of true cost accounting.

Over and over across the action tracks, we have heard people emphasize the need for measurable and transparent approaches like true cost accounting to move us forward. What true cost accounting is: we look at the negative externalities of food systems that are not fit for purpose. The industrial food system has several significant impacts on human health and the environment. We need to take these into account, use that information to think differently and make different decisions that advance and uphold the true value of food and bring the alternatives to light.

There are many food systems initiatives proliferating around the world that are healthy, equitable, diverse, inclusive, renewable and resilient. How do we shine a light on those integrated benefits of food systems when they’re managed properly, and they’re not extractive?

(IPS): What are some of the food systems lessons you think we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic?

(LB): I think the Summit comes at this time when everyone’s awareness of food systems issues is heightened, and this makes the work of the Summit even more critical.

One of the key lessons has been just how vulnerable equity-deserving groups are in the context of this kind of global emergency. If you extend that into future emergencies that will come our way because of climate change, then we need to address those issues of equity and the social systems that lift people instead of making them more vulnerable in the context of something like a pandemic.

We have seen essential workers continue to be stressed. We have seen the impact of COVID on migrant workers, farmers and supply chain resilience. We have seen that the global supply chain through COVID, on the one hand, has been very vulnerable. On the other hand, it’s been durable, but there has been increasing interest because of COVID on resilient local and regional supply chains. Throughout the Pre-summit, I heard government officials and other actors emphasizing the importance of building and strengthening local and regional supply chains.

I think it’s just highlighted resilience overall – the idea of resilience and how food systems are connected to our other crises, like our crisis of inequality globally, our climate crisis and our biodiversity crisis. We now see that those things are intimately connected, and the solutions will have to be interrelated as well.

(IPS): How important is indigenous knowledge to this mission of food systems transformation?

(LB): In our work on true cost accounting, I think indigenous knowledge is very undervalued if you consider the true value of food systems.

Indigenous people historically have managed and stewarded their food systems and have knowledge that they can offer to the world. Their knowledge is very place-based, and I heard throughout the summit process about how important place-based science knowledge innovation is. That type of knowledge provides a grounded perspective, a different worldview that connects us to the places we live in different ways than we are connected presently.

(IPS): Food systems experts also continue to push for agroecology to be at the centre of these discussions. What is your take on this?

(LB): For me, when you look across the food system, agroecology is a systemic solution that brings forward all of these values that I was talking about in a really clear way.

Agroecology can improve livelihoods in terms of shifting from a system that has negative impacts to positive benefits. It is creative and knowledge-intensive. It is also placed based and ecological. It is diverse, so we need to uphold the importance of agricultural biodiversity and agriculture as connected to, wild landscapes too. Agroecology connects in a nice way to our wild spaces, to agroforestry, where biodiversity and habitat can be preserved and enhanced.

We’re doing some great work right now to assess using a true cost accounting framework, all of these agro-ecological initiatives around the world to look at their positive impacts on the environment, socio-cultural impacts on human health and their economic impacts.

We are excited to be launching that work at that the food system summit in September. We think it’s an important way to hold up agroecology, indigenous knowledge and the creativity in urban communities that we see around food systems.

(IPS): What do you think is the key message ahead of the Food Systems Summit?

(LB): One key message for me is just the importance of transparency in all of this.

How do we ensure that our global leaders act boldly right now and embrace measurable transparent approaches, systemic approaches, that actually can facilitate inclusive transformation as quickly as possible? We just can’t afford to wait!

 

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By External Source
Aug 10 2021 (IPS-Partners)

In the latest edition of The Interview, Indian-American astronaut Sirisha Bandla speaks to Hindustan Times and talks about the gender bias that she thinks exists in the aeronautical field. She talks about stars, describes how she gradually fell for the space environment and how space exploration became a passion for her. On July 12, the 34-year-old aeronautical engineer became the third Indian-American woman to fly into space when she joined British billionaire Richard Branson on Virgin Galactic’s first fully-crewed successful suborbital test flight from the US state of New Mexico. Watch the full video for more.

Source: Hindustan Times

With most of its land only a few feet above sea level, Kiribati is seeing growing damage from storms and flooding. But even under a zero carbon emissions scenario, sea level rises would continue for centuries, causing massive human displacement and loss of livelihoods for billions of people. Credit: UNICEF/Vlad Sokhin

By Adam Day
NEW YORK, Aug 10 2021 (IPS)

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its starkest report yet, expressing a clear consensus on the rapid changes to global temperatures.

While this has been called a “code red” moment and a “wake-up call” for action, the report builds on what the scientific community has been saying for decades: climate change is irrefutably being caused by human activity and it is having system-wide impacts on every aspect of our lives today.

As Greta Thunberg points out, the IPCC report only summarizes the science, it does not tell us what to do. Unless we take a transformational approach to climate change, we will continue to collectively hit the snooze button long after the last alarm bell has rung.

A transformational approach recognizes that we are already beyond any of the best-case scenarios, views climate change as central to our collective security, and demands a new understanding of growth.

We are already beyond the 1.5 degree threshold

For the first time, the IPCC report lays out what would happen if we ceased all carbon emissions today. Global temperatures would stabilize in a few decades, reversing some of most pernicious effects of climate change.

But even under a zero carbon emissions scenario, sea level rises would continue for centuries, causing massive human displacement and loss of livelihoods for billions of people. And that is under a highly improbable scenario of a total end of carbon emissions right now – the reality is going to be much worse.

While the 1.5 degree goal is a useful tool to encourage emissions reductions and greater funding, realistically we need to start planning for some of the worst scenarios laid out by the IPCC and others. We need the kind of global disaster preparedness that was clearly lacking when the pandemic broke out.

The twenty-sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26) to the UNFCCC will take place in November 2021 in Glasgow. Credit: United Nations

Climate is fundamental to our security

As our recent research has shown, climate change is acting as a risk multiplier for conflict and insecurity across the world, often causing risks indirectly through displacement, economic shocks, natural disasters, and rapid changes in livelihoods.

From climate wars to farmer herder conflicts, rising global temperatures are contributing to instability. This points to the need to move climate change from a marginal issue to a central one across all major areas of government: security, health, infrastructure, education, and development.

The Biden Administration’s decision to make climate change part of the US national security strategy is the right step. We will need to tackle climate holistically across all government functions rather than treating it as an isolated, standalone issue.

A transformational approach to growth

Estimates of what is required to cope with climate change runs into the trillions per year, already far outstripping the pledges made under the Paris Agreement. As global populations and urbanization increase together, the cost of climate change is not only rising dramatically, it constitutes an existential risk to our model of human development.

Mobilizing resources is part of the story, but if we pour those resources back into the same kind of energy consumption – or worse, if the pandemic response bypasses the safeguards put in place to protect the environment in a rush to build back better – it will be like putting a band-aid on an amputated limb.

What is needed is a more fundamental shift in how we view development and prosperity: rather than being measured solely in terms of Gross Domestic Product, we need to value and measure our collective wellbeing, the sustainability of our actions, the ability of our production to contribute to a cycle rather than an endless output of carbon.

While continuing to mobilize funds, the COP26 agenda needs to also push this more transformational agenda, to think of development as a symbiosis with our environment rather than a parasitic or predatory relationship between humans and the Earth.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Director of Programmes at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research

By Mary Suma Cardosa, Chan Chee Khoon, Chee Heng Leng and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
PENANG and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 10 2021 (IPS)

To achieve universal health coverage, a country needs a healthcare system that provides equitable access to high quality health care requiring sustainable financing over the long term. Publicly provided healthcare should be on the basis of need, a citizen’s entitlement for all regardless of means.

Mary Suma Cardosa

Health inequalities growing
But recent decades have seen health care trending towards a two-tier system – a perceived higher quality private sector, and lower quality public services. One typical consequence is medical doctors, especially specialists, leaving public service for much more lucrative private practice.

This ‘brain drain’ has led to longer waiting times and complaints of deteriorating public service quality, as more people with means turn to private facilities. As costs in private hospitals are high and increasing, this causes those who can afford private health insurance to turn to it to hedge their bets.

If these trends are not checked, the gap between private and public health sectors in terms of charges and quality will grow, increasing polarisation in access to quality health care between haves and have-nots.

Health care financing
Financing arrangements are key to developing an equitable healthcare system that is financially sustainable in the long run. For universal coverage and equitable access, health financing should be based on social solidarity through cross-subsidisation, with the healthy financing the ill, and the rich subsidising the poor.

Experience the world over shows health markets functioning poorly, both in financing and providing healthcare. Furthermore, heavy reliance on market solutions has contributed to spiralling costs and constrained healthcare access.

Private health insurance
A voluntary private health insurance (PHI) scheme cannot be financially viable in the long term as individuals with lower health risks are less likely to buy insurance from a scheme which they see as primarily benefiting others less healthy.

Chan Chee Khoon

Since voluntary schemes are usually based on PHI, government support for such schemes would strengthen these companies. There are good reasons to be wary of the growing influence of PHI interests in healthcare financing discussions.

Premiums for PHI are risk-rated, meaning that individuals with pre-existing conditions and higher risks – such as the elderly, or those with family histories of illness – will face un-affordably high premiums or be denied coverage.

‘Moral hazard’ and ‘supplier-induced demand’ in a ‘fee-for-service’ reimbursement system encourage unnecessary investigations and over-treatment, or costly monitoring to limit such abuse. Hence, PHI companies use ‘managed healthcare’ services to contain costs by limiting investigations and treatments.

Voluntary PHI schemes charge high premiums while fee-for-service payments escalate costs which inevitably raise premiums. Thus, the US spends the most on health in the world, but with surprisingly modest health outcomes to show for it.

Much public expenditure is needed to insure the poor, especially those with prior health conditions. Achieving UHC would require costly public subsidisation of such profitable arrangements. This would not be cost-effective, let alone equitable.

Government support for PHI companies would strengthen their growing presence and influence, typically involving transnational insurance conglomerates. PHI companies are likely to try to undermine others threatening their interests.

Social health insurance
Unlike VHI, social health insurance (SHI) is usually mandatory to cover the entire population. Although often proposed and promoted with the best of intentions, the limitations and problems of SHI are also important to consider.

Chee Heng Leng

SHI would effectively require collecting an additional ‘payroll tax’ from the public. This could be designed with various distributional consequences, e.g., if flat, it would be regressive. As an additional tax would reduce take-home incomes, SHI schemes have been difficult to introduce.

Like PHI, SHI also has inherent tendencies for over-treatment and cost escalation due to ‘moral hazard’ and ‘supply-induced demand’. These require costly, strong and typically bureaucratic administrative controls.

Surviving SHI schemes owe their ‘success’ to specific reasons, e.g., Germany’s evolved from its long history of union-provided health insurance. But most working people in developing countries are not in formal employment, let alone unionised. Hence, SHI would have difficulty gaining broad acceptance.

In any case, Germany and other countries with successful SHI in the past have been moving to greater revenue funding of healthcare as formal employment and unionisation decline with changing labour arrangements.

With SHI, government revenue would still have to cover the indigent and poor. It is difficult to collect premiums from the self-employed, or the casual and informal workers not on regular payrolls. But universal coverage would not be achieved without including them.

Revenue financed healthcare
Inherited revenue-based healthcare financing is basically sound and should not be replaced due to other healthcare system problems. In most societies, revenue-sourced healthcare financing can be retained, reinforced and improved by:

o increasing government health care allocations.
o reducing ‘leakages’ by eliminating waste, corruption, ‘cronyism’, etc.
o promoting ‘developmental governance’, competitive bidding, etc.
o raising government revenue, especially from more progressive taxation, e.g., wealth, ‘windfall’ and ‘sin’ taxes, especially on activities worsening health risks such as tobacco and sugar consumption.

Revenue financing better
Revenue-financing avoids many administrative costs incurred by PHI and SHI. It has no need for an elaborate parallel system, costly mechanisms and more staff to register, track and pay SHI contributors and beneficiaries, and to deter selfish opportunistic behaviour.

Compared to PHI, SHI seems like a step forward for countries with weak or non-existent public healthcare systems. But moving from revenue-financing to SHI would be a step backwards in terms of both equity and cost-effectiveness.

SHI requires additional layers of health care system administration – to enrol, collect, ascertain coverage, determine benefits and make payments – which incurs unnecessary costs compared to revenue-financing.

Hence, such insurance systems involve much more per capita health spending, raising it by 3-4%. Despite being much more costly than revenue financed systems, they do not have better health outcomes.

As SHI effectively imposes a payroll tax, it discourages employers from hiring employees with ‘proper’ labour contracts. Hence, SHI was estimated to reduce formal contracts by 8-10% and total employment by 5-6% in rich countries.

International evidence clearly shows progressive tax-funded public health systems are more equitable, cost-effective and beneficial than SHI. Public health programmes needing popular participation, e.g., breast or cervical cancer screening, have worse outcomes with SHI compared to revenue-financing.

This can be best achieved by improving or developing a revenue-funded healthcare system, with additional resources deployed to expand and enhance primary health care, and better service conditions for medical personnel.

Strengthening public healthcare services can do much, not only to improve staff work conditions, but also morale and pride in their work.

Mary Suma CARDOSA is a medical doctor specializing in pain management and past President of the Malaysian Medical Association. CHAN Chee Khoon, ScD, is a health systems and health policy analyst with postgraduate training in epidemiology. CHEE Heng Leng, PhD, is an academic researcher working in the area of health and health care policy. All are members of the Citizens Health Initiative.

 

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Following bereavement, children experience grief, distress, and other emotional and behavioral difficulties which must be addressed. | Picture courtesy: Vicky Roy/Save the Children-India

By External Source
Aug 9 2021 (IPS)

The second wave of COVID-19 brought with it unimaginable grief, agony, and frustration. India saw a sharp increase in the number of deaths, especially among younger people, which meant that many children lost one or both parents. Reports of people seeking help for orphaned children as well as requests to ‘adopt’ these children emerged on social media.

Data collected and presented by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights in the Supreme Court as of June 8th, 2021 revealed that COVID-19 left 3,621 children orphaned. Additionally, more than 26,000 children lost one of their parents and 274 children were abandoned. These numbers, which are likely to be higher, indicate grave protection-related issues for children.

In the absence of proper documentation—such as a death certificate indicating death due to COVID-19 or as a result of other COVID-19 related issues such as mucormycosis—many eligible children may not be able to access the benefits of these schemes

To address this emerging child rights issue, the central government and various state governments announced social protection packages for children orphaned due to COVID-19. These packages mainly include cash transfers (different governments have designed various modalities) and concessions with a preference for the education of children who have been orphaned.

Some packages also include health insurance and employment assurance upon completion of education. Though timely, there is a conscious need to design, allocate, and implement these schemes using a child-sensitive lens that responds to gender and age-appropriate needs.

 

Design better schemes

In most state government packages, an orphaned child will receive monthly cash transfers ranging from INR 2,000 to 5,000. Like various other programmes, the basis for allocating these amounts isn’t clear and lacks consistency across states. The targeting and eligibility criteria also vary from state to state. For example, the Andhra Pradesh government will provide benefits to orphans from families living below the poverty line.

However, we know that measuring income in India is a complex process and many poor people are unable to access the benefits of welfare programmes that are designed on the basis of income criteria. The monthly cash transfers for children who have been orphaned are primarily provided to promote foster or kinship care (where a family that is already known to the child becomes responsible for their care).

And so it is not clear whether the government will assess the economic situation of the family in which a child lost their parent, or that of the foster care or kinship family, or both. Evidence shows there are higher chances of exclusion errors due to this type of condition.

On May 29th, 2021, the central government announced a package for children who have lost their parents due to COVID-19. It provides financial support for education, health insurance, and a fixed deposit or corpus of INR 10 lakh in the name of the child. Once a child turns 18, they will be given monthly support for five years for their higher education and when they turn 23, they will have access to the corpus amount.

While the central government package focuses more on educational needs, the state governments’ announcements focus on immediate financial needs. Holistically, they complement each other. However, it is not clear whether orphaned children are eligible to avail benefits of both the state and central government schemes. Further, children may find it difficult to access these cash transfers in times of need, as they will be controlled by their caregivers until they are 18 years old.

Another challenge is that the schemes that have been announced do not make any mention of monitoring systems. It has been found that in the absence of some mechanism to monitor such schemes, they do not perform well.

 

Simplify access to schemes

The second wave also highlighted that COVID-19 related deaths were under-reported. This too will pose a challenge in the implementation of government schemes that target orphaned children. In the absence of proper documentation—such as a death certificate indicating death due to COVID-19 or as a result of other COVID-19 related issues such as mucormycosis—many eligible children may not be able to access the benefits of these schemes.

Save the Children has found that most vulnerable children and their families lack identity proof and bank accounts, which will make it impossible for them to access these packages. Further, children who have been abandoned or lost one parent due to COVID-19 have been totally excluded from these schemes. These children are equally vulnerable as those who have lost both parents and are also at risk of child labour and trafficking.

Keeping these issues in mind, we recommend simplifying the conditions to include children who have been abandoned or lost one parent due to COVID-19 as well. Governments must also notify a date for the implementation of these schemes which will help simplify the process of identifying beneficiaries as well as reduce the chances of exclusion by error.

 

What about psychosocial needs?

While the schemes that have been announced appear to fulfill education and financial needs, they have neglected the immediate and long-term psychosocial and emotional care required by children. They have missed acknowledging the importance of building an emotional connection between children and kinship caregivers. Moreover, these schemes have missed highlighting the specific early childcare requirements of children in the age group of 0-6 years.

Following bereavement, children experience grief, distress, and other emotional and behavioural difficulties which must be addressed too. Evidence shows that in the absence of responsive care and parenting as an integral part of these schemes, cash transfers may not be able to achieve the desired result of promoting foster and kinship care.

We also know that children who have been orphaned and their caregivers both need sustained support to adjust and adapt to the new situation. In absence of social workers or frontline workers who can deal with child protection issues under the Integrated Child Protection Scheme, providing this much-needed support poses another challenge—the announced packages have not recognised the need for it.

It is critical to translate these well-appreciated announcements into child-sensitive schemes to ensure every child who is vulnerable and at-risk as a result of the pandemic is protected. Child-sensitive social protection schemes are designed in a specific manner.

They need to provide equal opportunity, address age-specific needs, prioritise children’s needs of care, protection and psychosocial well-being, and be integrated with other government programmes. More importantly, the targeting criteria and conditionalities need to be simple and inclusive, rather than designed to promote exclusion.

Think tanks such as NITI Aayog must come forward to provide policy directives or frameworks that governments can use to design an integrated child-sensitive social protection scheme. State governments can also reach out to civil society and child rights organisations to seek support in designing and implementing these schemes. The pandemic and its growing impact on children is a timely reminder to invest adequately in children in an integrated manner.

 

Anisha Ghosh is a development sector professional with more than 10 years of experience, specialising in child rights. She currently works with Save the Children-India as Assistant Manager, Policy and Advocacy (poverty & inclusion) focusing on child poverty, gender, resilience & climate change, and urban issues. She is a postgraduate in journalism and a graduate in sociology. She is a passionate advocate for social justice and human rights.

Pranab Kumar Chanda works with Save the Children-India as Head of Child Poverty. Pranab’s work integrates child sensitivity in governments’ social protection, livelihoods, and skill building programmes. An alumna of International School of Social Sciences, The Hague and XISS, Ranchi, Pranab has more than 17 years of experience in livelihoods, social protection, skill-building, and resilience building. His key interest areas include dynamics of (child) poverty, social protection, youth employment, and their linkages with child rights and well-being.

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

 

Secretary-General António Guterres (left) discusses the State of the Planet with Professor Maureen Raymo at Columbia University in New York City. December 2020. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 9 2021 (IPS)

A landmark report on the hazards of climate change predicts a devastating future for the world at large.

Authored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and released August 9, the study is being described by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as “code red for humanity”— a rallying cry before an impending global disaster.

“The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible,” warns Guterres.

He says the internationally agreed threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius is perilously close. “We are at imminent risk of hitting 1.5 degrees in the near term. The only way to prevent exceeding this threshold is by urgently stepping up our efforts, and pursuing the most ambitious path. We must act decisively now to keep 1.5 alive.”

The recent changing weather patterns worldwide– including the devastation caused by wild fires in 13 states in the US, plus Siberia, Turkey and Greece, heavy rains and severe flooding in central China and Germany, droughts in Iran, Madagascar and southern Angola– warn of a dire future unless there are dramatic changes in our life styles.

The impending hazards also threaten animal and plant species, coral reefs, ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica, and projects a sea-level rise that threatens the very existence of the world’s small island developing states (SIDS) which can be wiped off the face of the earth.

The 10 biggest emitters of greenhouse gases include China, the US, the 27-member European Union (EU), India, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran and Canada.

The study predicts that average global temperatures are likely to rise 1.5 degree Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit and will continue to warm for another 10 years. At that point, nearly one billion people worldwide could face life-threatening heat waves at least once every five years.

Rescuers pull villagers from flood waters in Xingyang city in China’s Henan Province. Credit: WMO

Against the backdrop of a rapidly changing global climate, water-related hazards top the list of natural disasters with the highest human losses in the past 50 years, according to a new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released July 20.

According to a report in Cable News Network (CNN), scientists say the only way to keep from reaching this point of no return and to prevent even more catastrophic damage is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero.

As many as 260 million people in the US are expected “to experience high temperatures at least 90 degrees by the end of the week as a new heat wave settles over parts of the country.”

Nafkote Dabi, Climate Policy Lead at Oxfam, warms of the climate change repercussions amid “a world in parts burning, in parts drowning and in parts starving”.

The report is “the most compelling wake-up call yet for global industry to switch from oil, gas and coal to renewables. Governments must use law to compel this urgent change. Citizens must use their own political power and behaviors to push big polluting corporations and governments in the right direction. There is no Plan B’.

Asked whether the UN was on the right track in its fight against the hazards of climate change, Dr Shilpi Srivastava, Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) , told IPS: “The UN needs to strongly urge the rich countries to contribute substantively towards climate finance, in particular towards adaptation and addressing loss and damage.”

She said the world body should encourage its member countries to ensure that policies for adaptation and mitigation, including achieving net zero emissions, are just and inclusive, and do not bring undue harm to those on the frontline of climate change.

She also pointed out that the report comes amidst another year of severe heatwaves, droughts, flooding, forest fires and extreme events which are impacting communities across the globe.

“The findings should serve as a reminder that we need to urgently prioritise support for those who are most disadvantaged and already experiencing the worst impacts of climate change”.

“We need transformative climate justice for people across the globe who’ve been marginalised and excluded from decision-making on impacts and interventions. We need to talk about loss and damage for vulnerable communities and must hold governments accountable to deliver programmes that bring meaningful and positive change in the lives of those most affected by climate change.”

She said leaders meeting at COP26 (in Glasgow in November) need to listen to science and take decisive actions to keep fossil fuels in the grounds. In parallel, they must ensure that policies for mitigation and adaptation are just and inclusive.

“Technical fixes will not take us very far, and can perpetuate the systems of inequity and injustice in the form of displacement and land grabs, something we are already witnessing in the name of ‘green’ solutions,” she warned .

“Policymakers need to recognise the place-based realities of people living in the planet’s most vulnerable places and ensure that their lived-in experiences, voice and knowledge (s) count in decision making. Our global biodiversity and climate crisis requires action, but action that addresses the root drivers of the crises – poverty, inequity and marginalization,” she declared.

Refugees in Minawao, in northeastern Cameroon, plant trees in a region which has been deforested due to climate change and human activity. Credit: UNHCR/Xavier Bourgois

Meanwhile, Guterres said 2021, “must be the year for action”, as he called for a number of “concrete advances”, before countries gather for COP26 – the 26th session of Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

“Countries need to submit ambitious new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that were designed by the Paris Agreement. Their climate plans for the next 10 years must be much more efficient.”

“We are already at 1.2 degrees and rising. Warming has accelerated in recent decades. Every fraction of a degree counts. Greenhouse gas concentrations are at record levels. Extreme weather and climate disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity. That is why this year’s United Nations climate conference in Glasgow is so important,” he noted.

Guterres also pointed out that “the viability of our societies depends on leaders from government, business and civil society uniting behind policies, actions and investments that will limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. We owe this to the entire human family, especially the poorest and most vulnerable communities and nations that are the hardest hit despite being least responsible for today’s climate emergency”.

The solutions are clear, he argued, “Inclusive and green economies, prosperity, cleaner air and better health are possible for all if we respond to this crisis with solidarity and courage.”

All nations, especially the G20 and other major emitters, need to join the net zero emissions coalition and reinforce their commitments with credible, concrete and enhanced Nationally Determined Contributions and policies before COP26 in Glasgow.

The G20 comprises Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus the 27-member European Union (EU) .

Oxfam’s Dabi said in recent years, with 1°C of global heating, there have been deadly cyclones in Asia and Central America, floods in Europe and the UK, huge locust swarms across Africa, and unprecedented heatwaves and wildfires across the US and Australia ―all turbo-charged by climate change.

Over the past 10 years, more people have been forced from their homes by extreme weather-related disasters than for any other single reason ―20 million a year, or one person every two seconds.

She pointed out the number of climate-related disasters has tripled in 30 years. Since 2000, the UN estimates that 1.23 million people have died and 4.2 billion have been affected by droughts, floods and wildfires.

“The richest one percent of people in the world, approximately 63 million people, are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity,” said Dabi.

The people with money and power will be able to buy some protection against the effects of global warming for longer than people without those privileges and resources ―but not forever. No one is safe. “This report is clear that we are at the stage now when self-preservation is either a collective process or a failed one,” she added.

She said very few nations ―and none of the world’s wealthy nations― have submitted climate plans consistent with keeping warming below 2°C, let alone 1.5°C. If global emissions continue to increase, the 1.5°C threshold could be breached as early as the next decade.

The IPCC report must spur governments to act together and build a fairer and greener global economy to ensure the world stays within 1.5°C of warming. They must cement this in Glasgow.

Rich country governments must meet their $100 billion-a-year promise to help the poorest countries grapple with the climate crisis ―according to Oxfam, not only have they failed to deliver on their promise, but over-inflated reports of their contributions by as much as three times, she declared.

The IPCC comprises experts and scientists from around the world and its report was compiled by more than 200 scientists from 195 countries.

 

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Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Aug 9 2021 (IPS)

The first time I visited South Sudan in 2004 – prior to its independence – I travelled across the entire the country which was then a region devastated by man’s inhumanity to man. Although South Sudan is slightly larger than France, I could find only one concrete school building in Rumbek.

Yasmine Sherif

Millions were impacted by the twenty-year civil war and decades of marginalization, and far too many children and their families were internally displaced or had fled the country as refugees to Kenya. Conflict, extreme poverty and a near total absence of infrastructure had left virtually every girl, boy and the youth furthest behind. I will never forget this sight of unspeakable injustice.

Reading and reflecting on ECW’s interview in this month’s Newsletter with the Honourable Awut Deng Acuil, Minister of General Education and Instruction for South Sudan, both deepened my indignation against any injustice – especially against girls and the forcibly displaced – and also gave me immense hope in learning more about such a resilient, experienced and educated female leader – a veteran in education, gender and human rights.

The Honourable Awut Deng Acuil reminds us all of the importance of local ownership, leadership and knowledge, as well as our absolute moral obligation to focus on girls’ and refugees’ education. Her strength, perseverance and dedication – exemplified by her many accomplishments in life – are astonishing and inspiring.

She describes the national context, her own struggles and Education Cannot Wait’s investments in the children of South Sudan in an authentic, genuine way, fully understanding the challenges faced by girls, refugees and children and youth enduring conflict, forced displacement, climate change induced disasters, not to mention COVID-19.

Under her guidance, ECW has worked closely with the government of South Sudan to deliver a $189 million multi-year humanitarian-development-peace nexus education investment. During our first year alone, we reached 116,240 crisis-affected girls and boys in 181 schools with $20 million in seed funds. But these results do not do justice to either their needs, nor to her leadership.

We now call on all our strategic donor partners, governments, private sector and foundations to urgently help close the $169 million funding gap. Under the leadership of an inspiring female leader – the Honorable Awut Den Acuil is South Sudan’s first-ever female Minister of Education – the children and youth of South Sudan now have a chance to have a better future. We cannot afford to look the other way. Our concerted commitment to girls’ education could not be in better hands.

When learning more about the Honorable Awut Den Acuil, and after reading her profound reflection on one of her favorite books, Alice in Wonderland, my thoughts turn to Jeanne d’Arc, who once said: “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”

Let us not be afraid. Let us learn from those we serve. Or, as the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, once said: “Who are you to teach, and who am I to learn?” This is what localization and real empowerment is all about. This is the Grand Bargain in its essence. Let us invest now in South Sudan – the girls, children with disabilities, forcibly displaced children and all the other children and youth left furthest behind for decades.

With an overall investment of at least $400 million in Education Cannot Wait towards equitable, inclusive, quality education for crisis-affected children and youth around the world, we can help overcome the challenges already being tackled by such extraordinary female leadership in the education sector.

Together, we can drive global commitment for girls’ education and for all those left furthest behind, making a real difference in all their lives. Join us … we were born to do this!

 

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Excerpt:

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

A 76-year-old man shows his vaccination card after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine in Kasoa, Ghana. Credit: UNICEF/Francis Kokoroko

By Jeremy Allouche
BRIGHTON, UK, Aug 9 2021 (IPS)

An article published in April 2020 by the World Economic Forum warning that Africa was facing a Covid-19 time bomb was widely shared among the humanitarian sector, with increasing alarm.

Some anticipated a perfect storm in terms of violence against children while others talked about the potential for a hunger pandemic in the Sahel. But none of these catastrophic scenarios have been borne out in either the first or second waves of the pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa.

There are current concerns regarding an increase of third wave cases, but so far the continent has recorded a far lower fatality rate than Europe.

Yet, despite the many innovations developed by Africans during the pandemic, there has been no acknowledgment that African agency played a part in keeping the numbers of dead and dying from Covid-19 in check.

Instead, this lower fatality rate was attributed to fate, the natural setting or demographics. It is another example of the humanitarian sector acting as a willing accomplice to racial stereotyping.

Instead of challenging an over simplified or “single story” narrative (to use Chimamanda Adichie’s words), it opted to share on a disempowering, attention grabbing headline to describe how Covid-19 had impacted Sub Saharan Africa.

It points to the glaring gap in stories relating to African ingenuity and innovation – despite the number of examples that exist. These were highlighted in the range of responses to Covid-19 seen across the continent.

For example, an ongoing project on African resilience found that , villagers in Côte d’Ivoire dealt with the heavy impact of the pandemic on crop production and trading by borrowing money from micro-finance institutions, leveraged by trading on their personal connection and reputation.

By mobilising their social capital, villagers were able to foreground trust and hope as bankable commodities in rural agriculture.

This innovation challenges the traditional relationship between micro-finance institutions and villagers, and continues to redefine lending procedures even after lockdown. But this type of social innovation and community resilience is barely reported by the media and the humanitarian world.

For too long the humanitarian sector were part of reinforcing a vision of Africa as a rural continent plagued by civil war, state corruption, and suffering from the effects of climate change.

This narrative does not allow for any recognition of how the continent is changing driven by trends including, high population growth and urbanisation, digitisation and economic advancement.

The emergence of a middle class in countries including Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania illustrate the continent’s potential for growth and economic innovation. The failure of the humanitarian sector in general to acknowledge such trends has significant ramifications to the type and nature of work undertaken.

The importance of recognising and dealing with African agency and diversity are fundamental questions for the humanitarian sector, especially at a time where localisation and the humanitarian-development nexus are put forward as the main paradigm and policies to address the sectors’ effectiveness and legitimacy.

The dominance of localization in humanitarian work relies on a simplified understanding of what ‘the local’ is and who ‘the locals’ are, which can result in problematic backlash.

Other research on humanitarian protection in DRC showed that many organisations working in Eastern DRC would categorise Lingala-speaking people from Kinshasa (2400km away) as locals and hire them as local experts, even when they do not speak Swahili and have little understanding of the local context.

Those that are hired have to ‘to speak in the northern way’, that is, to use the jargon and standards developed by international organisations (Sphere, Core Humanitarian Standards), or guidelines and processes (cluster mechanisms, response cycles and Humanitarian Response Plans, Humanitarian Needs Overviews).

As a result, participation of ‘affected communities’ are superficially sought as an ‘add on’ rather than essential to better understanding of local contexts.

The challenges for the sector are to go beyond creating single story narratives and prioritise instead space for African agency and diversity. Of course, funding and political barriers complicate things.

Justifying aid expenditure to domestic audiences means that donors have a low tolerance for financial and reputational risk. As such, aid continues to be provided on the basis of what agencies and donors want to give rather than on what people say they need and want.

In such a supply-driven relationship, paternalistic attitudes that donors know best, make a mockery out of any attempts to enable localisation.

We need a better way forward, focusing on transdisciplinary, decoloniality and reinforce the partnerships between humanitarians and researchers on the one hand, and the collaboration amongst Global North and practitioners and researchers on the other.

To move away from a narrow, single-story narrative of Africa, humanitarian and research relations must at their most fundamental level change from functional and ad hoc collaborations to more equitable partnerships.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and co-director of the Humanitarian Learning Centre, Brighton, UK.

UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka addresses the Secretary-General's Townhall. Calling the townhall-style meeting an opportunity to build the relationship between the Organization’s leadership and civil society, she said it is “part and parcel of our movement to work with you in different parts of the world.” Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 9 2021 (IPS)

The United Nations has long preached the wisdom of transparency and accountability to the outside world, but has failed to practice the same principles in its own backyard – or even on the 39th floor of the Secretary-General’s office in the UN Secretariat.

The opaqueness, ironically, is visible in most of the high-ranking appointments in the UN system, two of which—the posts of executive directors at UN Women and UNICEF—fall vacant soon.

Antonia Kirkland, the Global Lead on Equality Now’s programmes for Legal Equality and Access to Justice, told IPS: “We are concerned that the process for the selection of the third head of UN Women has been quite non-transparent”

She said the current Executive Director of UN Women has worked well with both civil society and governments “to advance our joint agenda for gender equality, culminating in over $40 billion of commitments at the Generation Equality Forum”.

“We know that to successfully achieve equality for women and girls, UN Women must be led by someone who has impeccable credentials in the field of women’s rights and significant experience in driving inter-governmental processes with excellent bridge-building and negotiating skills”.

So far, she lamented, “we have not had any transparency around the criteria used in interviews and the process being used to make the decision, which has caused apprehension and calls for accountability.”

Purnima Mane, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS appointments of senior leadership in UN organizations have always been an issue of interest and concern for civil society.

“The UN is seen by civil society as a key body which influences the issues it cares about deeply and in which it wants to have a larger say. Women’s rights are one such issue, making the appointment of the UN Women executive director of deep interest,” she argued.

She pointed out that the UN has always handled appointments of senior positions in a highly confidential manner and as a matter determined by Member States to a large extent.

Most partners of the UN are cognizant of the negotiations that happen behind the scenes between countries in the case of high-level UN appointments to ensure that their desired candidate is appointed.

“But civil society is now increasingly acknowledged as having a key role to play in implementing the UN’s agenda and monitoring how Member states perform on their commitments made in the UN,” she noted.

“It is not surprising, therefore that civil society is asking for more openness in senior appointments to ensure that its voice is heard. It also wants to ensure that a public vision statement makes the agenda of a potential candidate, transparent and to which he/she/they can be held accountable,” she said.

The major intention, Mane argued, is to see that the candidate with the best record and abilities is appointed and that the incoming executive director espouses a strong, rights- and evidence-based agenda of action, and respects the voice of civil society.

Last week, a coalition of some 380 civil society organizations (CSOs), along with 746 individuals, public figures and feminists, have expressed their “concerns with the process to recruit a new UN Women Executive Director.”

The joint letter to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reads: “Because of the importance of UN Women to our work for women’s rights globally, many of us have signed two prior letters to you emphasizing the importance of a transparent process informed by civil society.”

“As this process unfolds, we have not seen those principles upheld,” says the letter.

When he introduced the report of the High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity back in February 2021, Guterres said the panel provided a vision of a better system that works for all — as well as “recommendations for building more robust systems for accountability, transparency and integrity”.

Speaking of corruption as the ultimate betrayal of public trust, Guterres said back in 2017: “Together, we must create more robust systems for accountability, transparency and integrity without delay. “

But regrettably, all three elements are missing in most of the high-ranking and senior appointments at the UN.

Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders, told IPS the legitimacy of the next Executive Director of UN Women relies on an open, transparent and competitive selection process.

He said it is necessary to see vision statements of the candidates and for civil society to participate in public hearings and interviews.

“This should be in the best interest of the UN itself as it impacts the future effectiveness of UN Women. By now this should really be a standard procedure for all top leadership positions at the UN,” Bummel declared.

Mane, who is also a former President and Chief Executive Officer of Pathfinder International, a global leader in sexual and reproductive health, said it is likely that many of the demands in the coalition letter will not be well-received by UN Member States.

The proposed process for the UN Women appointment, which is different from the UN selection process, is likely to be seen as setting a precedent for all senior appointments in future, leading to reluctance to bring in other players in the selection process.

“This is especially true in the case of civil society which some Member States regretfully see as their adversary and not ally,” she noted.

Moreover, deeper involvement of civil society and more transparency overall in appointments would in fact be the right step to take if the UN has to be respected by all its partners and stakeholders.

It would also send out a message from the UN that it acknowledges the key role which civil society plays, along with national governments, in translating the UN’s agenda into action, she added.

Mane also argued that NGO involvement in the interview panel is perhaps the most radical request included in the letter. Member States are unlikely to alter the process to include civil society more formally in the selection committee, as proposed.

“But asking for the ideal, is the right thing to do, even if it may seem difficult. A town hall, where candidates can engage in a dialogue with civil society is definitely doable and merits serious consideration”.

Such exchanges with potential candidates have in fact, been organized informally by civil society in the past and help to root for the best candidate as seen by civil society, even if it is not formally represented in the selection process, she noted.

“The UN needs to evolve in order to be relevant to the times, and inclusion and transparency are key to this evolution,” Mane declared.

According to PassBlue, a job advertisement has been released, and the deadline of June 28 has been extended, which suggests more applications are wanted.

Although the list of applicants is not public, so far, the current UN Women deputy heads, Asa Regner of Sweden and Anita Bhatia of India, are believed to have applied for the job.

Other candidates who are rumored to have submitted their names, PassBlue reported, are former UN Under-Secretary-General Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka, Kang Kyung-wha of South Korea and Mereseini Rakuita Vuniwaqa of Fiji.

And candidates from the Arab region include Zineb Touimi-Benjelloun of Morocco and Sima Sami Bahous of Jordan, according to PassBlue, an independent, women-led digital publication covering the United Nations.

The UN is strongly encouraging young people to apply. Of the known list, Vuniwaqa, 47, is the only one under 50 years old. All the applicants have impressive leadership experience in the UN, their governments or both.

Meanwhile, in its letter, the coalition emphasizes the importance of the following:

● The list of candidates to the UN Women Executive Director position should be made public. This selection process should follow the precedent of the selection process for other United Nations leadership roles such as the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Secretary General by releasing the names. While confidentiality is vital in ordinary recruitment, the names of candidates in this and all UN agency searches should be made public.
● Candidates should have a public motivation or vision statement. It is important that all candidates provide a motivation or vision statement so that civil society can understand what they hope to achieve as the head of UN Women.
● A virtual candidates town hall should be held for civil society. Because the Executive Director must be able to interact effectively with civil society, all stakeholders should have a vested interest in seeing the candidates in a live virtual format. The town hall should happen prior to the interview panel so that the event can feed into the information collected for the interview process.
● Civil society should be properly represented on the interview panel. Ideally, half of the members of the selection panel should consist of representatives of civil society organizations. At a minimum we must have one representative from the Global North and one representative from the Global South.

The next Executive Director of UN Women is of vital importance to feminist civil society and other stakeholders globally. It is critical that this is a transparent and inclusive process.

“As feminist civil society organizations that routinely engage with UN Women, we look forward to seeing our requests adequately reflected in the process, and we are ready and willing to work directly with the search committee or appointed representatives to meet this aim”, the letter adds.

Thalif Deen, Senior Editor and Director at the UN Bureau of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, is the author of a newly-released book on the United Nations titled “No Comment -– and Don’t Quote Me on That.” Peppered with scores of anecdotes-– from the serious to the hilarious-– the book is available on Amazon worldwide. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

 

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Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

By Elena L. Pasquini
ROME, Aug 6 2021 (IPS)

“We have buried twenty-eight people. I have seen them with my own eyes. We also found three bodies in the fields and buried them too. I can show them to you. It’s not far from here. We buried them there.” The man points to the hills. He doesn’t want to show his face or say his name, but he agrees that his voice can be recorded, so that his words don’t get lost. The camera can’t shoot him; it can only look at the tall grass or at the forest towards the countryside where it is no longer possible to cultivate food. The man talks while music from Lengabo’s catholic church marks the time of truce and hope.

Voices in the villages of Ituri, a northeastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the heart of Africa’s Great Lake region, often remain unnamed, like the victims. A pair of blue plastic flip-flops on the floor of an earthen house is the only possible portrait of another man who leads a group of villages between the Ugandan border and the North Kivu. He is the chief of a once-large community—over 120,000 people—that is now a land of empty houses. He still lives where men who do not wear uniforms lead ordinary lives during the day, but burn houses and slaughter other men like animals during the night.

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

Towards Uganda is the territory of Djugu. To the South, one finds Irumu, ravaged by local militias and the ferocity of the Forces démocratiques alliée, an Islamist armed group active in Beni. Since 1998, the region has been a theater of conflict that flares up in waves, the last one in 2017. More than by mountains, rivers, and lakes, the geography of Ituri is formed by armed groups that strike terror and target civilians through their areas of influence, their fleeting alliances or fights. Their acronyms—Codeco, FPIC, Zaire, ADF, and others— give the face of reason to blind violence. It is a map of horror, of charred bodies, gutted men and women, their internal organs exposed; of mothers killed with children in their wombs, opened so that their babies can be mutilated. This is what refugees describe, what images document, and what the United Nations reports. The attacks reach up to a few kilometers from Bunia, the provincial capital, where those whom the war has displaced look for shelter.

Sometimes and in some places, the conflict holds its breath. Then, some among those who fled their homes try to return to the villages. Approximately 800,000 people went back in 2020, although 1.7 million remain internally displaced and many have left the country. Those who return know that war can break out again suddenly, in a few days, weeks or months. Yet today is Sunday and Mass is being celebrated. The music plays and the corn dries in the sun at Dele and Lengabo. And at Tchunga, not far from Bunia, the village it is not a place of horror, but a place of welcoming.

To leave Bunia in the direction of Irumu, along the road leading to North Kivu, is to leave behind a safe place—as safe as a city in the middle of a war can be. Early in the morning, the sun is pale pink and the trees are not yet green, but black. The earth is not yet red. It’s a pale pink that reflects itself in the puddles of dirt roads where one can easily get bogged down, stuck between two walls of forest.

In the small town of Dele, in front of the village chief’s house, the children work: a hoe in their hands, two chickens in their arms. A group of men chat. It is Sunday and the hypnotic rhythm of the Congolese music comes from the church square across the street. “We ask for help because life has recently become too difficult. We do some rural activities to survive,” Yoshua Businiliri explains. He looks at the red, fleshy flowers that dominate the fields, whose green hue is so intense that not even the fragile sun of dawn can soften it. Land abounds in Ituri, but it does not produce enough: It can be cultivated only near the houses; no one risks going to the hills where the road thatcrosses Dele leads.

Those hills hide Lake Albert, the seventh-largest African lake, whose name recalls the time when Europe got its hands on Africa: Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. It was the British Samuel Baker who made the lake known to the continent that would decide the future of Congo. However, until 1997, the lake—“Nyanza” in the local language—bore the name of Mobutu Sese Seko, the man who, by forming a dictatorship, destroyed the dream of democracy born from independence from Belgium. Before that, the lake was known as Mwitanzige: There is a legend that says that locusts – ezige – die when they cross the lake. Today, perhaps, oil could change its fate and maybe its name—the oil discovered beneath the lake’s surface and credited with being among the causes of the new wave of violence.

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

People arrive slowly from the village center and the countryside as the sun rises and makes the tin roofs on the damp hills iridescent. The church is small for everyone; worshippers sit outdoors on wooden benches or low, three-legged stools in front of the stone-decorated facade. The children wait silently, leaning on three poles: a football goal on a huge field of wild grass crossed by a small path. The women wear colored dresses and fabrics, almost starched, and their hair is wrapped in scarfs or skillfully styled. It is a feast day, like a summer Sunday in any small town of rural Italy, and perhaps more.

The priests wear the bright green that is worn at this time of the year. The little dancers are dressed in white. A cross is carried in the procession; hands move and hips swing. Today, the Gospel tells of the miracle of the healing of a leper. Here, where the Covid pandemic finds almost nothing to contain it and where Ebola, with its deaths and the stigma that weighs on survivors, is not yet a memory, people know that it is not only war that kills: “Children suffer from diseases but lack medicines. Especially malaria affects them the most. For this reason, we ask for help: a mosquito net because mosquitoes are too many in the villages of the territory of Dele. We need money for medical treatments,” Yoshua explains.

There is calm in Dele. The war seems far away. Here, too, those fleeing home take refuge. “The displaced need help because they sleep in the bush due to lack of security and shelter. Others stay in the schools, in the church, and elsewhere. They have lost almost everything,” he adds.

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

It is a moment for the sun to rise, as well as a moment for it to set: The equator passes less than two hundred kilometers from here. In Lengabo, along the road that leads from Bunia to Irumu and then to Beni, the Mass is ceelbrated by the White Fathers, the Missionaries of Africa, a religious order established in Algeria at the end of the nineteenth century and that moved to the heart of the continent. Today, they have a center for vulnerable children, the School of Peace, in Bunia. Every Sunday, the fathers join the devotees in the villages.

The altar with its simple white cloth, the light of an incandescent bulb hanging from a wire above it, high wooden vaults: The church is packed here, too. People dance while the choirmaster, wearing a long green cassock edged in white, guides voices and drums. Outside, the empty and dilapidated houses offer a reminder that a fierce conflict is going on and that Lengabo has counted its deaths.

“Most of them were innocent people,” the man who hides his name and face says. “They were among the displaced. We had welcomed them here. We didn’t know they were militiamen. They had hidden their intentions. They were the ones who started fighting the loyalist army.”

He adds: “Some bodies were armed and others were tied up … We could not distinguish who they were. Even the militiamen were in civilian clothes. Most of them were civilians. There were also soldiers among the deaths, and they were buried somewhere here. Because when there is war, there are deaths on both sides.”

Even in the village led by the man in blue sandals, there is a respite, yet there are areas where he no longer dares to go or where he stops for only a few hours. “The militia has changed strategy, it is not in the bush. It is scattered among the population. Here is where it operates: It operates and then returns among the people. This is the danger,” he explains.

The same is likely to have happened in Lengabo when the village was “sealed off” by a police cordon at the beginning of the year to hunt down militiamen. The arrests were followed by violence and deaths. Esperance Mujaganyi, a thirty-eight-year-old farmer, fled. She produces corn, which becomes flour or mandro, a fermented drink.

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

A child walks to the church alone. He is five or six years old: long, brown pants and a T-shirt resembling those of English schools, with blue, white, and red bands, and a small crest. Not far away, Esperance sits in front of her house and of what is still just the reed skeleton of a building. Her long brown skirt blends into the ground and into the walls made of earth. Her ears bear two points of gold. “We are slowly resuming the life we had before the war,” she says. But she doesn’t want to talk about that day. She jumps up when asked about the fights.

Every time there is an attack, people leave the villages “because when there is war, the bullets fall and the metal sheets get punctured,” the man explains. They know that everything will be destroyed and stolen, and they will have to start over, every time, once they return. Death can knock on the door any day and militiamen do not even need an AK-47: A match is enough to set a house of dry grass on fire. “You leave your home and all your belongings, and life gets harder and harder on the move to save yourself from war. If you have money with you, you spend that money with no other input and it’s very complicated,”Esperance says.

At least one thousand sixty-seven summary executions and arbitrary killings were committed in Ituri in 2021, as well as all kinds of human rights violations from rape to torture, according to the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office. And this is just one corner of Congo, where the most underreported crisis across the world takes place. Data probably underestimate the scale of the tragedy because the victims often remain silent for fear of being stigmatized. Verifying the facts and documenting what happens in the villages is difficult even for international organizations that often do not reach the most remote areas of the province. Congolese soldiers have been deployed in Dele and Lengabo but people don’t trust them. The soldiers ask for money at checkpoints, like bandits, they say. They are responsible for abuses and violence too, according to the United Nations.

However, villages are more than just places to flee; they can also be safe places to live. Tchunga is not far from Bunia. A rough but busy road leads there. Things are going well now, explains the village chief, Jean-Paul Risisa. Wearing a gray suit and immaculate shirt while standing with his deputy and secretary, he says that welcoming those who have been displaced is not always easy: “There are almost three thousand people just in our locality, and they are many. We welcome the displaced very well, but we do not have the means to build (enough houses) for them.” Behind him, Tchunga is an open-air construction site. “There are many people here and many are starting to build: Tchunga has become like a city,” he adds.

Life centers on a well. Yellow, pink, and blue plastic cans wait in an orderly row to be filled amid the laughter and splashes of children. The well was built by humanitarian organizations—the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and AIDES—because water, in this country that seems to float on it, is as precious as the gold in which the subsoil is rich. However, it breaks backs, especially those of women and children. Until the well was dug, the people of Tchunga had to walk at least five kilometers to get water, and they washed their clothes in the river. Today, water is essential for a community that is growing under the pressure of a humanitarian emergency. Protecting the well is key, as it, too, can become a target of violence. The community takes care of it, just as it takes care of the displaced.

“When your neighbor has a problem, you can’t deny him (help). We help them by giving space in our homes to some people,” Daniel Bakanoba, secretary of Tchunga, explains. “Others live for free in our courtyards and there is a minority who rent a house. But we are not able to respond to every need because when you leave your home, your field, your possessions or when you have children, your needs are enormous.” The houses, he says, are not all “beautiful.” “We’re doing our best.” As is Didi, a local driver. Two women live in his house; each has seven children. They arrived on foot from Bokela a few days ago, their clothes torn and their lives needing to be rebuilt. A pagne—the fabric that women wear around their waists—is always around their hips. Their beds are covered by mosquito nets attached to the walls. The semi-darkness keeps the rooms cool; a little light filters through an antique pink metal window. They were farmers and are now on the brink of starving.

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

It is a dejavù that seems destined to be lived a thousand times in the villages of Ituri. Rumors, still without evidence, say that it all started in Djugu in 2017 with the mysterious death of a priest—a murder, according to some voices, never proved. It would have rekindled ancient hatred between the Lendu and Hema tribes. But the truth is much more complex: It is hidden in the folds of Ituri’s recent history and in the heart of a land that seems to be too rich to live in peace.

This feature was first published by Degrees of Latitude
Akilimali Saleh Chomachoma as producer and Sahwili interpreter

 

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By External Source
Aug 6 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Indigenous peoples live in all regions of the world.

They are distinct social and cultural groups and share collective ancestral ties to the land they live on.

They own, occupy or use some 22% of global land area.

But they safeguard 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity.

There are at least 370-500 million indigenous peoples in the world.

They represent the greater part of the world’s cultural diversity.

And they have created and speak the major share of the world’s almost 7000 languages.

Although they make up just 5 percent of the global population, they account for about 15 percent of the extreme poor.

Indigenous Peoples’ life expectancy is up to 20 years lower than that of non-indigenous people.

Much of the land occupied by Indigenous Peoples is under customary ownership.

Yet many governments recognize only a fraction of this land as belonging to Indigenous peoples.

The right to participate in decision-making is a key component in achieving reconciliation between Indigenous Peoples and States.

A new social contract must combat the legacy of marginalization affecting indigenous peoples.

One organization working towards this is NEFAS: the North East Slow Food and Agrobiodiversity Society.

NESFAS and its indigenous communities aim to defend, revive, and promote Indigenous Food Systems.

It values traditional and local knowledge holders for their ingenuity.

And it empowers indigenous youth to become beacons of hope.

International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples 2021: “Leaving no one behind: Indigenous peoples and the call for a new social contract.”

 

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The killing of rhinos by poachers has risen sharply since South Africa started easing COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Their horns are cut off and trafficked mostly to Asia. Credit: AWF wildlife archive

By Guy Dinmore
St David’s, Wales, Aug 6 2021 (IPS)

A recent seizure at Johannesburg’s international airport of a large consignment of rhino horns confirmed worst fears – illegal trafficking of wildlife and the plundering of treasured species is back with a vengeance after a Covid-19 lockdown lull.

Destined for Kuala Lumpur, the 32 pieces of rhino horns weighing a total of 160kg were intercepted by a sniffer dog on July 17.

Rhinos in South Africa were being killed by poachers at the rate of three a day in 2019. But with domestic and international travel restrictions imposed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the daily toll in 2020 fell to around one. However, a subsequent lockdown easing has given rise to “serious numbers” of rhino poaching incidents, according to WWF.

Carcases of rhinos left by poachers to bleed to death are unfortunately just one of the most visible images of the global illegal trafficking in wildlife – a multi-billion dollar industry often run by transnational syndicates, sometimes alongside trafficking in drugs, arms and people.

From the seas to the skies, the industrial-scale killing of animals, illegal logging of timber and the plundering of rare plants are driving many species to extinction.

Tigers – their bones and other body parts used in traditional medicine — are among the most threatened victims, with 97 percent of the wild tiger population estimated to have disappeared over the past century. Cheetahs are vanishing because of the demand for pets.

A quarter of shark species are now facing extinction, mostly due to illegal and unsustainable fishing. All seven remaining species of sea turtles are at risk. New species of orchids – there are about 28,000 known to science – have disappeared to collectors and thus become extinct in the wild before they are even recorded. Millions of birds are traded illegally each year. The list goes on and on.

The most trafficked mammal on earth is the pangolin, a scaly ant-eating creature. More than a million are estimated to have been poached from the wild in the last decade for their meat, skin and scales. All eight species are deemed at risk of extinction.

All eight species of pangolin, four in Asia and four in Africa, are threatened with extinction, mostly because of illegal poaching and trafficking. Credit: AWF wildlife archive

The Covid-19 pandemic has hammered home what scientists were long saying – that wildlife trafficking is also a serious threat to global security. Bats and pangolins are the focus of research into the evolutionary path of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 disease. A recent study by the Francis Crick Institute showed that SARS-CoV-2 could in theory have moved to humans from pangolins, after originating in a currently unknown bat coronavirus.

Three-quarters of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, transferred from animals to humans, facilitated by environmental destruction and wildlife crime.

These findings only further underscore efforts by the International Union for Conservation of Nature to shape humanity’s response to the planet’s conservation crises. The IUCN World Conservation Congress, initially delayed by the pandemic and now to be held from 3-11 September in Marseille, is the world’s leading conservation event where government, civil society and indigenous peoples’ organisations will join discussions, debate and vote on motions that will set priorities and drive conservation and sustainable development action.

Two key motions tackle illegal wildlife trafficking: Motion 50 on implementing international efforts to tackle the role of cybercrime, the internet and social media in enabling traffickers, and Motion 65 on engaging the private sector to combat wildlife trafficking.

Jose Louies, a specialist in wildlife crime prevention with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), a co-sponsor of Motion 50, says governments must make the illegal wildlife trade a top priority and set out clear guidelines on wildlife cybercrime. IT companies must also set policies to stop, control and monitor traffickers using their platforms.

Louies told IPS that WTI’s covert agents had been following pangolin traders online in recent months, connecting with suppliers and buyers from several countries.

Pangolin scales sold illegally through the internet by wildlife traffickers. The pangolin, sometimes called a scaly anteater, is the world’s most trafficked mammal. Credit: Jose Louies / Wildlife Trust of India.

“Most of these leads were picked up from a single social media platform where the buyers and sellers posted comments with email ids/ phone numbers to connect,” he added. ”We had 114 buyers and 69 sellers,” he said, naming the sample countries as Pakistan, Nepal, Iraq, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar and 17 states in India.

“The use of social media and messaging apps to build connections between suspects at various levels of trade is a serious matter of concern. Such fluidic and organic systems will enable a network to regenerate quicker than a conventional network.”

WTI sees IUCN as the leading global body to make recommendations and influence policies, regardless of political borders, and to act as an enabler for global conservation policies and practices. “Conservation is not an exclusive job of conservationists – it’s the collective efforts of everyone,” says Louies.

Among the various elements of Motion 50, IUCN members call on governments to strengthen legislation to tackle cyber-enabled wildlife trafficking; collaborate more in cross-border investigations; encourage and protect whistle-blowers; and encourage technology companies to step up efforts to stop online trafficking.

Known as Hatha Jodi, these dried penises of the monitor lizard were sold illegally by traffickers online. Credit: Jose Louies / Wildlife Trust of India.

The Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, launched in 2018, now brings together over 40 companies from across the world in partnership with wildlife experts at WWF, TRAFFIC, and IFAW for an industry-wide approach to shut down online marketplaces for wildlife traffickers

The latest companies to join are China’s Douyin, a popular short video social media platform, and Huya, a video game company.
As the Coalition admits, advances in technology and connectivity, combined with rising buying power and demand for illegal wildlife products, have increased the ease of exchange from poacher to consumer. ”A largely unregulated online market allows criminals to sell illegally obtained wildlife products across the globe. Purchasing elephant ivory, tiger cubs, and pangolin scales is as easy as click, pay, ship.”

But despite such coordinated efforts, including GLACY+ involving Interpol, trafficking is getting even bigger.

“In Africa, cybercrime is escalating on many platforms via the internet,” says Philip Muruthi, vice president of the African Wildlife Foundation, also a co-sponsor of Motion 50. “You just need to do a Google search and you will find someone trying to sell some wildlife product or wildlife… but the capacity to deal with wildlife cybercrime is very low across the board. This is something that we have noted across Africa – a growing silent problem – for which we have limited knowledge and capacity to turn around.”

AWF has a program to train and equip law enforcement officers to combat wildlife cybercrime, starting in Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but governments and other players could do much more, Muruthi tells IPS.

“What is agreed at these IUCN World Conservation Congresses often results in enhanced collective action. The issue of wildlife cybercrime may be elusive at a glance but deep analyses reveals it warrants local, regional and global attention,” Muruthi adds.

Stressing the importance of its unique structure spanning governments, NGOs, the private sector, individuals and indigenous peoples, AWF also benefits from being able to access more potential collaborators and span disciplines and themes.

Steven Galster, chair of Freeland which describes itself as a “lean, frontline international NGO with a team of law enforcement, development and communications specialists” fighting wildlife trafficking and human slavery, says traffickers are winning an unequal battle. Richer countries are not backing up their political promises with action, he says.

“I’m a big fan of IUCN. It’s an important body,” Galster tells IPS, praising IUCN’s Asia team. But he urges IUCN to shift priorities.

More broadly, Freeland, a co-sponsor of Motion 065, is calling on IUCN to go further and push for a global suspension of commercial trade in wild animals as a matter of urgency to save biodiversity and avoid another pandemic, rather than just trying to stamp out illegal wildlife trade as defined by CITES conventions.

“Legal trade also carries virus transmission risks. There remains so much unknown about the many viruses out there, and how they may mutate, that we should not be confining our containment to only some species of families of animals,” Galster says. ”The precautionary principle should be pushed harder than ever in wake of Covid-19.”

 

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By External Source
Aug 6 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Awut Deng Acuil is the first female Minister of Education for South Sudan, and only the second person to serve as Minister of Education for her country – which became independent country in 2011. Prior to this role, Minister Acuil was the first woman to serve as the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. Recently, Minister Acuil made history as the first women to lead a South Sudan university when she was appointed head of council at the University of Bahr El-Ghazal.

Since 2005, Minister Acuil has served as Presidential Advisor on Gender and Human Rights, Minister of Labour, Public Service and Human Resource Development, Minister of Humanitarian and Disaster Management and Minister of Gender, Child and Social Welfare.

Her long and impressive history of public service began during a challenging time in her life. During the civil war in Sudan, she spent years as a refugee in Kenya with her children. Following the death of her husband, Minister Acuil went on to continue her education and become a fierce advocate for peace, gender equality and human rights.

Minister Acuil became active in a number of organizations, training others in conflict resolution and advocating for peace. She is a founding member of the Sudanese Women Association of Nairobi and the Sudanese Women Voice for Peace. These experiences, coupled with her degree in political science, led to her participation in eventual peace negotiations between the North and South. She gained international recognition for these efforts to promote peace and development in her war-torn nation when she was awarded the InterAction Humanitarian Award in 2002.

Awut Deng Acuil has been Minister of Education and Instruction for South Sudan since early 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on education globally and further exacerbated existing barriers to education in her country. Not one to balk in the face of challenge, Minister Acuil continues to champion for the rights, protection and education of young and future generations of South Sudan.

As the Minister of General Education and Instruction, Awut Deng Acuil is supporting new initiatives in education, including those with ECW, that aim to open the door to learning for children throughout South Sudan who have been too-often excluded – girls and boys affected by conflict, students with disabilities, and pastoralist children who herd livestock.

ECW: South Sudan has a young population with a median age of 18 years, which results in serious pressure on the education system. Can you describe the challenges faced by South Sudanese children and youth to access inclusive, quality education – especially for girls?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: A number of inhibiting factors affect school enrolment, retention and completion rates in South Sudan: lack of school infrastructure – including availability of WASH facilities, sex-segregated toilets, menstrual management and sanitation systems, etc. – conflict and insecurity, traditional norms and the high turnover of qualified teachers – particularly female teachers – which results in a lack of qualified teachers. These factors fall into three barrier categories: household and community level barriers; school-based barriers; and, policy/system-level barriers. They can occur simultaneously to limit children’s learning.

While access to education rates are very low for all children in South Sudan, they are even lower for certain groups of children such as girls, children with disabilities, children affected by conflict, and pastoralist children.

Nationally, there are more male students than female students in all school types.
One of the biggest gender gaps is in secondary schools where only 35% of the enrolled students are female.

Children with disabilities face even greater exclusion. 1,597 (1.4%) of children enrolled in ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP) supported primary schools are children with disabilities, while 50 (1.38%) learners enrolled in MYRP-supported secondary schools are children with disabilities.

Girls face a number of barriers to accessing education, including:

• Family and community: Among all of the out-of–school children in South Sudan, approximately two-thirds are girls and children with disabilities. Many parents prefer to prioritize boys’ education over girls’ – so, if a family cannot afford to send all of their children to school, the interests of boys‘ education are often favored. This leads to girls either being removed from school for early and forced marriage as they are seen as a source of income or expected to take care of siblings at home.

• School environment: Lack of girl-friendly infrastructure such as WASH facilities, menstrual hygiene management (MHM) issues, school-related gender based violence, gender-biased teaching, learning methods, language, etc.

• System and policy: secondary schools are not available throughout all of South Sudan. The majority are located in urban areas, leaving rural areas neglected. This leads to higher dropout rates in rural areas. Lack of infrastructure, under-qualified teachers, inconsistent teacher pay and scarcity of resources further limit the construction of, access to and continuous staffing of schools.

• Teacher performance at schools: according to Educational Management Information System (EMIS) 2018 data, only 17% of teachers currently teaching in primary schools, and 52% of teachers in secondary schools, have received recognized teacher trainings. Besides the need to train these teachers in education foundations and subject matter content, it is imperative that trainings incorporate gender-sensitive lenses in all aspects – from teaching and learning material to the language used by teachers to promote a gender-sensitive and responsive teaching and learning environment.

Existing Education Cannot Wait (ECW) programmes are addressing learning environment barriers through: the construction of girl and disability-friendly WASH facilities in schools, menstrual hygiene management (MHM), prevention of gender-based violence, etc. More still needs to be done to support the enrolment and retention of girls in school to complete their education cycle and transition to higher levels of learning.

ECW: What are the key priorities and strategies of South Sudan’s Ministry of Education to address these challenges and to fulfil the right to a quality education of every girl and boy in South Sudan?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: There are two levels of reform that are taking place in South Sudan with respect to the education system.

On a higher, more systemic level, the Government is attempting to prioritize education by creating strategic plans and bolstering the infrastructure required for an effective education sector.

In South Sudan, where 40% of girls are married before the age of 18, the Government has demonstrated its commitment to ending child marriage by prioritizing child protection and providing for gender equality and women’s empowerment in the Constitution, Child Act (2008) and ratifying related international and regional human rights instruments. The right to education is enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Sudan 2011, including in Article 17 on the rights of the child and Article 29 on the right to education.

The General Education Act 2012 outlines a regulatory framework and structure for education in the country, providing guidance on general education principles and goals as well as associated structures, systems, standards, financing and accountability for the sector. The General Education Strategic Plan (GESP) 2017–2022 is a national roadmap for implementation of the General Education Act and outlines strategies, monitoring and evaluation frameworks and financing of the sector. The GESP also includes education in emergencies and humanitarian activities that link to the medium-term development objectives.

The End Child Marriage in South Sudan, Strategic National Action Plan 2017-2030 and a National Gender Strategy, while not yet fully implemented, aim to address the early pregnancy and early marriage issues.

The Inclusive Education Policy in South Sudan was just launched on 27 July 2021. This national policy defines and identifies areas of need across the whole population. The comprehensive inclusive education policy framework will guide the work of all actors involved in the provision of inclusive education to ensure consistency and coordinated implementation. This policy is also important in the elimination of discrimination and enhancement of equity and equality for all learners, especially inclusion of learners with additional needs in the education system, including learners with disabilities.

On a deeper level, reforms have been made to the curriculum and teaching materials, attempting to improve the quality of education and promote peace in South Sudan.

With the help of development agencies and partners, South Sudan has developed a new national curriculum that “is designed to help young people learn about their shared national identity” and “supports key values for the country including justice, democracy, tolerance and respect”. The aims of this curriculum are aligned with the Constitution of South Sudan, the General Education Act and the South Sudan Vision 2040, which aspire “to build an educated and informed nation by 2040.”

Within the curriculum, there are seven goals for the broader education sector; one of the goals is to “promote national unity and cohesion”. While the formation of a national identity can help post-conflict countries overcome differences, nationalism can also be associated with exclusionary policies. How South Sudan moves forward in respecting its citizens’ ethnic diversity, acknowledging its history of conflict and teaching learners to actively engage and think critically will be a key feature of the education system.

ECW: In 2020, together with the Ministry of Education and other education partners, Education Cannot Wait rolled out a Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP) with the particular aim of getting more South Sudanese children enrolled. While these are still early days, how relevant and impactful has the programme been so far?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: Through the ECW Multi-Year Resilience Programme, 137,708 learners (54,408 girls and 83,300 boys) have been supported to enroll in school in ECD, primary, ALP, PEP and secondary schools across the six States and the back-to-school/learning campaigns are still ongoing to get more children back to school.

Analysis of enrollment trends indicate that many children who were formally in school before the COVID-19 pandemic have yet to return to school. The ECW MYRP has supported the safe reopening of schools and efforts to build back better through the creation of more learning spaces, improvement of WASH in schools and awareness-raising on COVID-19 preventive measures. One other key impact has been reducing the pupil-book ratio for secondary education to 1:1 in the six target States.

ECW’s MYRP is reaching over half of the country geographically, where the majority of the population of children in need are located. The Programme focuses on six States: the three States of the Greater Upper Nile (Jonglei, Upper Nile and Unity States), one State in the Greater Equatoria Region (Eastern Equatoria) and two States in the Greater Bahr el Ghazal Region (Lakes and Warrap). These six States of MYRP implementation are areas affected by different types of conflict and by different trends in terms of displacement.

Progress is being made on several components, for example:

• All MYRP target schools/learning centers have received handwashing facilities. Of the 50 boreholes that we committed to drill, so far, 36 have been completed. 6 boreholes have been repaired. Some partners and contractors hired for the work have faced the issue of flooding, so we are considering moving one/two boreholes and funding to other locations that are accessible and eligible. According to the data that we received at the beginning of this initiative, there are 156 schools in need of water sources. Due to budget limitations, we targeted 50 schools. For various reasons, we cannot access some locations and, with the approval of the MYRP Steering Committee, we can begin to consider other locations. During the selection of the 50 schools to receive boreholes, we coordinated with other stakeholders – including UNICEF and DG George Mogga – and used the data generated by GESS.

• 1.12 million textbooks have reached all targeted counties and, in most cases, reached the schools. Different partners joined the State and County Authorities in distributing textbooks to the schools and we have continuously followed up on the use of the books. The textbooks ratio is expected to be reduced to 1:1 for secondary and primary learners in the targeted six States across South Sudan and other 2 States included in this initiative. All enrolled learners have also been provided with learning kits and adolescent girls have been provided with MHM kits.

• With the exception of children with sight and hearing impairments, all children with physical disabilities have been provided with assistive devices. There is the tendency to focus on the children with visible disabilities and this is something that we must take into greater consideration during the next quarters. We need to make sure that children with “invisible” disabilities also get the support that they need.

• All supported schools have been provided with learning kits including chalk, manila papers, markers and pens.

Additionally, one of the important features of the ECW Multi-Year Resilience Programme in South Sudan is the robust in-country governance mechanism, which is led by the Ministry of Education with active participation of donors like the UK, USAID, SIDA and Canada, United Nations agencies like UNICEF and UNESCO, and civil society actors, like the National Education Coalition. The MYRP Secretariat providing the technical support is an important added value of the programme. This mechanism enhances the Programme’s effectiveness and alignment.

ECW: To reach all the out-of-school girls and boys targeted by this multi-year programme, an additional US$189 million must be urgently mobilised. What is the government’s strategy to ensure that the programme will be fully funded? How can public and private donors help and what message do you have for them?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: The focus on Internally Displaced People (IDPs), returnee and host community girls and boys aligns perfectly with the Ministry’s target and policy priorities. Multi-year design and catalytic seed funding are innovative approaches as lack of funding too often disrupts South Sudanese children’s continuity of learning.

The MYRP has always been seen as a government intervention, in line with the priorities and objectives identified as national priorities, and the Ministry of Education believes it must make a substantial contribution to its realization.

The Ministry of General Education and Instruction (MoGEI), together with implementing partners, stakeholders, donor groups, etc., has developed a solid fundraising strategy to bridge the significant financing gap, extend the project and include more girls and boys in the Programme.

In the context of South Sudan, the following donor groups have been targeted:
South Sudan Government (domestic resources); public donors (humanitarian and development donors); humanitarian funding envelopes (CERF funding, pooled funding, etc.); other UN pooled funding mechanisms (for example, the Peacebuilding Fund, if relevant); and, private sector donors and private foundations.

By conducting prospect research on potential new donors and existing supporters, MoGEI wants to maximize fundraising reach. And, by analysing these prospects, the Ministry hopes to discover new information that can help create better strategies for all future campaigns too.

ECW: COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on education everywhere. What are the repercussions of the pandemic in South Sudan and how has the Ministry of Education worked to ensure that children and youth are able to keep learning and developing themselves to their full potential?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: The outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019 led to the closure of schools in March 2020, when cases of the disease were detected in South Sudan. Numerous deaths and infections were recorded so, as part of precautionary measures, schools were closed and learning was suspended nationwide.

The closure of schools exacerbated the challenges facing education and puts in danger progress made. Data has shown an increase in pregnancies as a result of increased time out of school, which is leading girls to spend more time around men in their communities and at greater risk of sexual violence and exploitation (Save the Children et al., 2015, Children’s Ebola Recovery Assessment in Sierra Leone).

In crises, families may also resort to early marriage as a coping mechanism to either alleviate economic pressures on the household and/or to generate income through ‘bride price’.

Studies have also shown that poverty can drive parents to send their children to cattle camps when they are unable to provide them with food. Child labour in cattle camps is a basis of concern as it means that children are sent far away from home, more exposed to protection issues and inherently prevented from attending school (ILO, 2013, Child labour and Education in Pastoralist Communities in South Sudan).

To reduce negative consequences of school closures and to ensure learners are able to continue their education, MoGEI, with support from different partners, has adapted learning methods and provided alternative protection and support mechanisms. With support from UNESCO, through the Capacity Development for Education Programme, MoGEI launched ‘Education on Air’.

This programme aims to broadcast daily lessons to primary and secondary level learners, focusing on key topics such as English, science and mathematics. During these ‘on air’ lessons, teachers deliver classes and address questions from learners live. Several radio networks have provided such programmes, including City Radio FM, Eye Radio, South Sudan Radio and Miraya Radio. The Ministry of General Education and Instruction, with UNESCO, also introduced ‘Education on Line’, where learners could follow the science teachers while teaching. In October 2020, the MoGEI, with support from development partners, also opened schools for candidate classes all over the country. Necessary steps were taken to avoid putting children, teachers and their family members at risk of contracting the disease.

ECW: The situation in South Sudan has improved somewhat in recent months but the consequences of the multiple shocks and crises that the country has experienced in recent years are still felt. What can be done to further strengthen resilience, and to ensure that the education sector is better able to withstand these shocks and indeed bounce back?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: Only by planning for unforeseen conflicts and natural disasters, and by integrating disaster risk reduction, can the South Sudanese education system remain functional in the face of shocks.

In this context, South Sudan embarked in September 2015 on its second Education Sector Analysis (ESA). Representing much more than a simple update, the 2015 ESA is the first of its kind to incorporate crisis-sensitive analyses. Multiple education sector analyses, each of which constitutes a chapter of the report (i.e. on the global context, school enrolment and internal efficiency, cost and financing, as well as management and quality), were carried out using a crisis-sensitive lens. Equity analyses were also mainstreamed with a specific focus on gender and the regional state-level, reflecting the decentralized nature of the education sector. These permit a better understanding of education sector challenges, weaknesses and strengths.

ECW: Our readers would like to get to know you a bit better on a personal level and reading is a key component of education. Could you please share with us a book that has influenced you the most personally and/or professionally, and why you’d recommend it to other people to read?

Minister Awut Deng Acuil: When I was a child, I loved Alice in Wonderland very much. Alice diverges from the gender norms by creating a completely new world that she explores while facing many hostilities with a very positive attitude. Alice is a prototype of a rebellious child who manages not only to survive this dangerous adventure but also to learn and become a woman with a new sense of her own subjectivity. A woman who refuses ideas of marriage and oppression and instead teaches us that “we can chase something interesting, barge in where we’re not invited, try new things, observe strange phenomena, ask too many questions, argue with authority figures, tell stories, and wander far from home without worrying how to get back.”

 

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A farmer near the town of Kisumu in Kenya tills his land. Credit: World Bank/Peter Kapuscinski

By Hans Wetzels
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 6 2021 (IPS)

Gilbert Bor manages a small farm in the western highlands of Kenya. Landscapes are hilly, village roads lined with pine trees, his cows mostly of the Friesian breed. He is up at 6:00am daily to lead his animals through the woods into the valley below.

Most farmers in and around his village in Kapseret grow maize or beans for subsistence. But that is set to change, says Mr. Bor.

East African regional authorities have started promoting cash crops like avocados and coffee to increase Kenyan exports to the European Union and China. At the same time, local farmers are getting organized as well, says Mr. Bor. His own community collectively invested in a milk tank to strengthen its position on regional dairy markets.

“For products like coffee, mangoes or peanuts, Europe is an important market,” Mr. Bor explains, enthusiastically. “Crops exported from Kenya are exempt from taxation in Europe. That also goes for exports to Europe from Ghana, Nigeria and the Francophone countries.”

The EU is a global agricultural powerhouse. The 27-country bloc feeds a steady stream of processed foods, grains, dairy and meats onto the world market while importing large quantities of raw commodities like soy, sugar cane or palm oil, tropical vegetables and fruits like avocados.

Keeping an eye on EU policies

Globalization is making markets better accessible to farmers like Mr. Bor. He says: “Almost all EU countries purchase Kenyan agricultural goods. Who stands to benefit most will depend on what countries like Germany or the Netherlands decide. African farmers must keep a closer eye on European policymakers.”

In particular, African farmers need to watch the evolution of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that was conceived in 1962 to provide affordable food for its population post-World War II.

Under CAP, the EU became so efficient that surpluses piled up. The authorities subsequently introduced export refunds—paying international traders the difference between the EU’s high internal prices and lower world market prices.

Those subsidies put pressure on food prices worldwide, leading to detrimental effects on African farming economies.

However, the EU abandoned its trade-distorting subsidies in 2017. A year later the EU-Parliament, for the first time ever, commissioned a study on the impact of the CAP around the globe.

“In recent years we have seen progress in better aligning agriculture with international development goals,” says Maria Blanco, head-author of the Technical University in Madrid, Spain.

However, simply increasing international trade in agricultural products would not automatically lead to better incomes for African farmers, experts say.

If unchecked, such trade could damage the environment, lead to the displacements of local peoples or human rights violations.

Ms. Blanco warns: “Importing sugarcane from outside Europe would create economic activity in the global south. But commodity imports from developing countries can also lead to land grabs or environmental pollution.”

Commodities are usually grown on large plantations. Once money starts pouring in the stakes, economically and politically, are raised, which put small farmers at risk. The shift to industrial-style agriculture usually puts tremendous pressure on the environment when it comes to chemical usage, deforestation or water pollution.

Pressure from exports

Research by the thinktank ARC2020 and the German NGO Heinrich Böll Stiftung finds that the EU agricultural policy creates ripple effects around the globe.

Trade arrangements with Honduras, for example, concentrated the banana trade in the hands of few multinationals while the demand for grain and soya in Europe encourages land control in Central Asia.

Despite the positive outlook, African farmers are under unrelenting pressure of EU exports. After markets inside Europe were awash with milk after the bloc abandoned its quota system in 2015, Dutch and German producers quickly sought out other export opportunities.

Global dairy players like Danone or FrieslandCampina have increased their processing capabilities in West Africa. The FrieslandCampina subsidiary WAMCO controls no less than 75 percent of the milk market in Nigeria.

In Ghana increased exports of frozen chicken, from 13,000 metric tons in 2003 to 175,000 in 2019, have affected local production.

Over 90 percent of chicken meats in supermarkets in Ghana are imported from the United States or the EU.

“Poultry has the highest turnover and its short cycle of production is for income generation for farmers in Ghana. But European exports of frozen chickens negatively affect our own meat industry,” worries poultry farmer Anthony Akunzule.

Africa’s free trade area

The newly established African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) could boost African farmers’ efforts to compete with the EU. The trade agreement, which eliminates tariffs between African countries by 90 per cent and tackles customs delays, could foster intra-African trade in agriculture.

Professor of European Agricultural Policy Alan Matthews of the Trinity College, Dublin, says attention is rightly shifting attention away from the notion that CAP alone is responsible for Africa’s agricultural woes.

Mr. Mathews says that African governments had failed to prioritize investment in rural areas, even as most experts now believe the AfCFTA will be a game changer for Africa’s development.

What Africa farmers need are favourable policies and actions in both Europe and Africa, says Mr. Bor. For now, he says that, “Opportunities are all around for small farmers like me, mostly in the organic niche.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

 

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Floods in Kenya's Turkana County, Lodwar town. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS.

By External Source
Aug 5 2021 (IPS)

On Aug. 9, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will release its most comprehensive report on the science of climate change since 2013. It will be the first of four reports released under the IPCC’s latest assessment cycle, with subsequent reports coming in 2022.

Over the past eight years, climate scientists have improved the methods they use to measure different aspects of climate and to model (or project) what might happen in the future. They’ve also been monitoring the changes that have developed right before our eyes.

This updated assessment comes three months before world leaders gather in Glasgow, Scotland, to find ways to avoid the worst effects of climate change and renew their commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. It also comes amid another year of severe heat waves, droughts, wildfires, flooding and storms.

The report will provide policy-makers with the best possible information regarding the physical science of climate change, which is essential for long-term planning in many sectors, from infrastructure to energy to social welfare. Here are five things to look for in the new report:

 

1. How sensitive is the climate to increasing carbon dioxide?

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are higher now than they have been in 800,000 years, reaching 419 parts per million (ppm) in May 2021. Average global temperature rises with each increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, but how much it rises depends on many factors.

Climate scientists use models to understand how much warming occurs when CO2 concentrations double from pre-industrial levels — from 260 ppm to 520 ppm — a concept called “climate sensitivity.” The more sensitive the climate, the faster greenhouse gas emissions must be curbed to stay below 2 C.

 

Equilibrium climate sensitivity from the last three major climate model intercomparisons. (Note: There was no ‘CMIP4’.)
(Data: IPCC, Graph: Alex Crawford)

Older climate models estimated that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would lead to a temperature increase of 2.1 C to 4.7 C. The latest set of climate models, called CMIP6, broadened the range to 1.8 C to 5.6 C, meaning the climate is at least as sensitive to doubling of carbon dioxide as previous models showed, but may, in fact, be even more sensitive.

The range is influenced by uncertainties in a number of climate factors, including water vapour and cloud cover, and how they will increase or decrease the effects of warming. Scientists are working to narrow the range in climate projections so that we know more about how quickly we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change and adapt to others.

 

2. What’s going on with clouds?

Clouds are a wild card in the climate change game. They create feedbacks to warming, meaning that warming changes cloud cover, but cloud cover can also speed up or slow down warming in different situations.

Clouds reflect about a quarter of incoming sunlight away from the Earth. So, if more warming leads to more clouds, we would expect more sunlight to be reflected, slowing warming. However, clouds also insulate the Earth, trapping the heat given off by the surface. So, increasing cloud cover (like during nighttime) could amplify warming.

Two main issues stand out: First, many factors, including cloud type, altitude and season, determine a cloud’s overall effect on warming. Second, clouds are incredibly difficult to model; how the models treat clouds is key to the range in climate sensitivity.

 

3. Did climate change fuel recent extreme weather?

Since the last IPCC report, our ability to assess global warming’s impact on extreme events has improved immensely. Chapter 11 of the latest report is devoted to this.

Global warming means stronger summer heat waves and more frequent tropical nights (temperatures above 20 C) are occurring in middle latitudes, like Canada and Europe.

Warmer air can hold more water. This can cause more evaporation from land, and lead to drought and wildfires. In addition, an atmosphere with more water can produce more precipitation and flooding.

Scientists projected decades ago that these changes to the water cycle would occur, but now it’s clear they’re already happening.

 

4. Have regional climate projections improved?

The climate models evaluated by the IPCC are global models. This is essential to capture the connections between tropics and poles or land and ocean. However, it comes at a cost — the models struggle to simulate many features smaller than 100 kilometres across, like small storms or islands.

Regional relationships can be complex: For example, extreme storms help break up summer Arctic sea ice, but reduced sea ice cover may also lead to stronger storms.

Since the last IPCC report, techniques for taking this large-scale information and refining it have shown how regional and local climate has changed and could change in the future. Other experiments target regional issues, like the impacts of Arctic sea ice loss on storms.

 

5. How will Antarctic ice sheets contribute to sea-level rise?

Global sea level is rising because water expands slightly when it warms up, and mountain glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet are melting and adding water to the ocean.

But the largest potential source of sea-level rise over the next century is Antarctica. Ice sheet models show that melting of Antarctic ice sheets will add between 14 and 114 centimetres to sea-level rise by 2100. That is a huge range, and it all depends on whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet remains relatively stable or begins a slow but unstoppable collapse.

How the IPCC communicates this scientific debate will impact how coastal communities plan for sea-level rise. Low-lying cities, like Lagos, Nigeria, could become uninhabitable by the end of the century due to sea-level rise, especially if the higher model estimates prove most prescient.

The IPCC report will give policy-makers a better understanding of how climate change is affecting us today. This will be especially helpful for putting short-term adaptation strategies in place.

But as the science has improved, the outlook on future change has become more sobering, and the large uncertainties that remain mean substantial future work for climate scientists.

Alex Crawford, Research Associate at the Centre for Earth Observation Science, Clayton H. Riddle Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources, University of Manitoba

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

Bassey Etim Ironbar is a rare example of an Olympian that transformed from an athlete to a volunteer who does menial jobs like sweeping the streets and clearing debris from open sewers. Ironbar, a Nigerian weightlifter, was competing in the men’s Super Heavyweight event at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles when a leg […]

Portrait of Pardhi tribal community members, Maharashtra, India. Credit: UNICEF/Sri Kolari

By Don Collins
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 5 2021 (IPS)

The scientific and other human accomplishments in my 90-year lifetime are not only amazing but also seem to have apparently made too many of us arrogant and feckless about our future human survival on Earth. Or, if not arrogant or feckless, at least largely or unknowingly ignoring the urgency of the onset of devastating environmental threats.

Those conditions have been exhaustively described in every possible medium. See Cowspiracy and Seaspiracy, two recent documentaries by credible scientists about human attacks on our fragile environment. Jeff Bezos’ comment after his near outer space flight was about seeing the need to protect our tiny orb.

I attended the first Earth Day in Chicago in 1970 and had earlier had the pleasure of meeting at lunch with Fairfield Osborn at the NY Zoological Society’s NY station on Long Island. What a delightful, caring and prescient man. Fair, as he was known to his friends, wrote “Our Plundered Planet”, a bestselling book in 1948, which marked the initiation of our modern environmental movement.

Still, as our most respected scientific observers tell us, the underlying solution for global problems requires us to reduce our human numbers substantially or we threaten the survival of us Homo sapiens.

The global population is now almost 8 billion humans, with 3 billion more projected before 2100. The population at my first was about 2 billion so it has expanded 4 times in my lifetime!

The process of reducing human numbers so that we don’t destroy what sustains us can be done starting now gently, humanely, and quite safely. Or we can continue to proceed as we are now arrogantly, stupidly, selfishly and violently to drive our lives on this finite planet to ends. Authors have long envisioned the fictional end of human life.

https://www.flavorwire.com/315584/the-10-best-end-of-the-world-novels

I discuss this issue in my new book, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion By 2100” now available on Amazon and other book web sites

This prioritization of population reduction is meant in any way to dismiss the urgent need for addressing climate issues as suggested by the UN.

In fact, many conservation efforts have been enormously effective, except when they haven’t been effective such as the continuing destruction of the Brazilian rain forests and other non-renewable resources. One of my cousins has been working there for the Nature Conservancy for many years, but we are losing the battle.

A recent suggestion that the UN form an Environmental Committee to draw action to this key issue. The link follows:

http://www.ipsnews.net/2021/07/time-create-un-political-body-climate-change/

In short, annual human overuse of Earth’s bounties has reached its limits as we now can see from worldwide events reported daily.

I was in attendance at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo as a Press representative for several NGOs with which I was affiliated, including the Population Institute.

At that time, the media reaction was significant, although in retrospect transitory, but of course some commentators used words like “historic” or to quote from the UN website, “Out of Cairo came no less than a revolution”, as “Barbara Crossette, a former UN Bureau Chief of The New York Times, told the thirty-seventh session of the Commission on Population and Development as she delivered a keynote address on the theme “Has the Cairo Consensus Lost Momentum: A Journalist’s View”.

Now at 90, and as one associated since 1965 with many family planning and “population explosion focused” NGOs, I can observe with sadness my continuing disappointment at the vast shortcomings of leadership over these years in making women’s rights and access to family planning universal.

We are all well aware of the role of some religions in slowing adoption of family planning, but also there was far less enthusiasm from those who sought woman’s rights but balked in those pre Roe vs Wade at gaining women’s right to choice abortion.

This was an issue which was a major part of my activities earlier in my life as I worked closely with funding for abortion facilities, for example, with Al Moran, Executive Director of PPNYC and helping Rei Ravenholt start Ipas, which focused internationally on helping women gain safe abortions.

A film entitled “Whose Choice” which I funded on the continuing lag in abortion services can be viewed free at www.churchandstate.org.uk.

Since then, I have made major efforts to add more tools to let women be served, beyond just saying they should have more tools. Talk is easy, service is hard. Politics are ruthless. Rei’s premature departure as head of family planning at US Aid was certainly related to his vigorous initiatives for abortion.

My boss then was a major Population Council donor in the late 1960’s. Her $2 million a year unrestricted grants ($17 million in today’s dollars) ceased when the Council declined to do abortion projects, saying its Catholic board member would object.

I specifically recall the voice at the 1994 Cairo conference of Joan Dunlap, who had been an aide to Population Council’s John D. Rockefeller III in New York city. She clearly backed women’s rights, but her illegal abortion earlier in life apparently affected her reluctance, which she expressed to me at a lunch in the late 1960’s, to get involved with my abortion projects then.

Her attitude apparently changed as her 2012 obituary reports. Not unique on people evolving in attitudes, as for example also in the early 1970’s the PPFA affiliate in my hometown refused to do abortions at that time, forcing a group of us to start a freestanding clinic which did thousands of early abortions in its first year.

World population at the time of the 1994 ICPD was 5.6 million, now almost 8 billion, having grown 4 times in my lifetime. And world leaders and the media still don’t give the issue proper priority.

Do we act or continue on this downward path unnecessarily? The evidence is now immutable but still not fully addressed because of failed global leadership.

Remember those end-of-the-world fiction writers used to be thought of as far out in fantasy, but not anymore by respected scientists and naturalists such as Sir David Attenborough or E.O Wilson. In short “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy no longer seems so far-fetched.

In reading their articles one can realize the obvious truth of the above POV.

Donald A. Collins is a former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist. He is also a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., who has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Population Institute, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International (mow FHI360) and Ipas. He is a Yale undergraduate with MBA from New York University. He can be reached at dcoll28416@aol.com

 

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Excerpt:

Currently, world population is almost 8 billion, with 3.0 billion more projected before 2100. The process of reducing human numbers so that “we don’t destroy what sustains us can be done starting now gently, humanely, and quite safely”.

Meeting of the opening day of the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit, held at FAO headquarters in Rome from 26 to 28 July. Photo: Giuseppe Carotenuto /FAO

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, Aug 4 2021 (IPS)

The UN Food Systems Pre-Summit, held from 26 to 28 July in Rome, highlighted, as perhaps never before, that hunger can be defeated if we also manage to protect the environment, promote better nutrition and health. This new mentality and comprehensive approach consist of considering higher levels of economic investment to stimulate trade in agriculture and food and pursue a path towards a sustainable future.

At this meeting, it was agreed to establish forms of common interaction through thematic coalitions that allow joining efforts to achieve zero hunger, reduce food waste, guarantee school feeding, face deciding factors of agroecology, as well as the management of data in the agricultural and food area and different kinds of resilience, among other goals.

Current data continues to show a negative trend of a permanent increase in people facing hunger. Today, more than 810 million are hungry and there is the danger that this trend will continue to increase as a result of the pandemic’s impact on the world economy, which could lead to another 100 million people going hungry

For the first time in the era of COVID-19, the Pre-Summit allowed more than 500 representatives of governments, the private sector, civil society and science to physically gather at FAO headquarters in Rome, while thousands of senior government, private sector and civil society officials from more than 130 countries participated online.

Current data continues to show a negative trend of a permanent increase in people facing hunger. Today, more than 810 million are hungry and there is the danger that this trend will continue to increase as a result of the pandemic’s impact on the world economy, which could lead to another 100 million people going hungry.

As noted by many specialists, increasing levels of hunger have been compounded by increasing levels of obesity that now exceed 900 million people, of which 140 million are children, while about 3 billion cannot afford a healthy diet.

Hunger is a health issue, therefore, we must ensure that sustainable healthy diets are affordable and accessible to everyone.

The meeting also discussed how reducing food waste, which already exceeds an annual cost of 400 million dollars and reaches or exceeds a quarter of the global food production that would perfectly meet the needs of the world population, would improve the global food supply.

For this to happen, new economic investments should be adopted, as well as substantial improvements in the food production system itself, in the adaptation of infrastructure, in trade, and so on.

Innovation and technological development are key in the immediate future of this sector. In addition, social protection and respect for local cultures, especially indigenous, are other aspects to take into consideration for the transformation towards more sustainable food systems.

Advancing in this process to achieve no poverty (SDG1) and zero hunger (SDG2) by 2030 – two of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the global Agenda launched by more than 150 heads of State and of Government in September 2015 in New York – demands heavy investments. To reach the global goals in the next nine years, an estimated 14 billion in investments is necessary.

Based on this data, governments need to adjust their budgets, development banks need to play a more active role and private sector companies should assume a greater commitment in this delicate phase, thus also generating greater support for small and medium rural producers and to family farming.

Generating synergies and a coalition of countries, regions, public and private players was also the focus of attention at the meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of the Group of 20 (G20), which was held on 29 June in the Italian city of Matera, where they agreed to join efforts to advance in the building of an operational coalition that allows achieving zero hunger by 2030.

To have healthy food, we need a healthy environment, and must reverse the loss of biodiversity and land degradation, increase the efficiency of water use and promote the sustainable management of water resources to improve food quality.

The lives of more than 1 billion people are severely limited by water scarcity or restriction. Almost 1 billion hectares of pasture and arable land are severely affected by recurring droughts and more than 60 percent of irrigated arable land is subject to high or very high stress due to a lack of water.

In September, within the framework of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Summit on Food Systems will be held with the participation of Heads of State and Government. It will summarize the debates in Rome on how to address the transformation of the sector and discuss the way forward towards a phase of greater action to make up for lost time get back on track to achieving the SDGs by 2030.

Excerpt:

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

For the construction of the suspended Yucatán Solar Park on the Yucatán peninsula in southeastern Mexico, the site was only partially cleared. Like most infrastructure projects involving Chinese companies and banks in Latin America, the plant lacks socio-environmental standards. CREDIT: Courtesy of Asamblea Múuch' Xíinbal

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Aug 4 2021 (IPS)

In southeast Mexico, work on the Yucatan Solar Park, owned by the Chinese company Jinko Solar, has been halted since 2020 for lack of proper consultation with indigenous communities, after affected local residents filed an injunction against the project.

In February 2019, residents of several Mayan indigenous villages in the municipalities of Cuncunul and Valladolid, in the state of Yucatan, demanded a halt to work on the park, run by Jinko Solar Investment Pte Ltd. Months later, a court ordered the suspension of the 71.5 million dollar project.

The conflict illustrates the need for Chinese corporations and banks to include socio-environmental safeguards in the financing, design, construction and operation of works in Latin America and the Caribbean, where there are at least 983 conflicts over mining, energy, transportation and communications projects, some of which are financed by Chinese firms.

Paulina Garzón from Ecuador, who is director of the non-governmental Latinoamerica Sustentable (LAS), said that although standards exist in China, they have not been internalised by the institutions.

“China has not included the economic cost in its developmentalist and extractivist vision, a cost that is paid in the long term by the affected populations and by the debtor countries. But these costs are not taken into account when the viability of granting the loan is assessed,” the head of LAS’ China-Latin America Sustainable Investments Initiative (CLASII), told IPS by telephone from Washington.

CLASII is about to publish research on the application of the environmental guidelines of the China Development Bank (CDB). These guidelines, established in 2004, are secret and there is no channel for denouncing the negative impacts of projects.

The organisation found eight Chinese guidelines for companies and investors, nine for financial institutions and seven sectoral guidelines for infrastructure, mining and forestry. The Chinese government will soon publish new regulations for the ministries of trade and environment on outbound investment.

In Argentina, the hydroelectric power plants under construction, named “Presidente Néstor Kirchner” and “Gobernador Jorge Cepernic”, with a combined capacity of 1,310 megawatts on the Santa Cruz River in Patagonia, in the south of the country, represent another emblematic case of the vicissitudes of projects that have Chinese financing.

In 2016 the Argentine Supreme Court halted work on the project, financed by the CDB and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), until a public hearing and a new environmental impact assessment were conducted. The project was thus suspended for two years.

Construction of two hydropower plants in the Patagonia region of southern Argentina, financed by the China Development Bank, was stalled between 2016 and 2018 due to an order by the country’s highest court for a new environmental impact assessment and other unmet requirements. China is stumbling over socio-environmental safeguards as it makes headway in Latin America. CREDIT: IEASA

In a 2016 letter, the BDC Corporation reminded the Argentine Ministry of Finance and Treasury of several force majeure clauses for approving the power plants and their dams, such as the necessary approval by the lender of any contractual modifications.

The parties signed the 4.7 billion dollar financing agreement in 2014 and linked it to a similar one in 2012 for the 2.1 billion dollar upgrading of the Belgrano Cargas railway, which runs across northern Argentina.

“We wish to insist that the ongoing and successful implementation of the project is not only mutually beneficial and a bilateral win-win, but will also lay the foundation for deeper future economic cooperation” between the parties, the 2016 letter states, while warning of the risk of cross-default, should Argentina default on the 2014 agreement for the dams.

Gradual adherence to multilateral guidelines

Although several Chinese financial institutions have signed up to various voluntary socio-environmental guidelines, in practice none of the ones with a significant presence in infrastructure projects in Latin America have adhered, with the exception of ICBC, the largest of its kind in China and with operations in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Panama and Peru.

The Yucatan Solar Park, owned by Chinese company Jinko Solar, has been on hold in Mexico since 2019 due to a lack of adequate consultation with local indigenous communities. The image shows the planned location of the power plant, in the middle of the jungle in the southeastern state of Yucatan and, top right, the city of Valladolid. CREDIT: Justice Atlas

Three Chinese institutions have adhered to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, a set of six socio-environmental safeguards.

Nine Chinese banks signed the Principles of Responsible Banking, with six other standards on environmental impact, sustainability, participation and transparency.

In addition, seven Chinese banks adopted the Equator Principles, a framework for defining, assessing and managing the socio-environmental risks of projects.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), founded in 2015 to finance the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), has only validated one project in Latin America out of 134 approved worldwide. However, the project, in Ecuador, does not involve infrastructure, but addresses the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although in 2019 several Chinese banks, such as the BDC and ICBC, signed the “Green Investment Principles” (GIP) to assess the potential social and environmental effects of BRI investments, there is still no evidence of their application by this initiative that emerged to promote a maritime and rail network from the Asian powerhouse to the western end of Europe and to Latin America.

For Enrique Dussel, director of the Centre for China-Mexico Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the debate on safeguards is a novel one in the Asian giant.

“Historically, Chinese companies have shown great political pragmatism, the banks are interested in doing business and it did not matter if it was in activities that could be questioned from an environmental standpoint. The question was to mark a presence and participate in the Latin American market. Chinese pragmatism in these aspects practically leaves the responsibility up to the counterpart,” Dussel told IPS.

A magnet

The region attracted 138 Chinese infrastructure projects worth 94.09 billion dollars for the 2005-2020 period, according to the “Monitor of Chinese Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean 2021“, drawn up by the Latin American and Caribbean Academic Network on China.

South America has been the biggest pole of attraction for Chinese investment, as Ecuador obtained 11 of the 40 infrastructure projects during the 2010-2014 period, while from 2015 to 2020 Argentina and Brazil accounted for 23 and 11 of the 92 projects in the region, respectively.

The projection of one of the two hydroelectric power plants financed by Chinese institutions in southern Patagonia, Argentina, whose construction generated tensions between Bejing and Buenos Aires due to intervention by the South American country’s justice system to verify compliance with socio-environmental requirements, which suspended the mega-projects for two years. CREDIT: Government of Argentina

Chile, Colombia and Mexico carried out infrastructure projects with Chinese companies and financing for the first time in the 2015-2020 period.

Energy, transportation, communications and telecommunications are among the main areas of Chinese involvement in the region. The incursion of the Asian giant has been based on public and some private companies, backed by funds from Chinese banks.

To shore up its foothold in Latin America, Beijing has created instruments into which it has injected multimillion-dollar funds, such as the Special Loan Programme for China-Latin America Infrastructure Project and the China-LAC Industrial Cooperation Investment Fund and bilateral cooperation funds.

That strategy is linked to the BRI, which several Latin American countries have joined, in an attempt to draw investment, and which is helping China fill the void left by the United States since 2016.

In December 2020, a group of international advisors to the BRI suggested that China adopt stricter environmental controls for its foreign investments.

According to this scheme, projects that could cause significant and irreversible environmental damage would be marked red, works of moderate and mitigable impact would be marked yellow, and projects without significant negative effects would be marked green.

Garzón and Dussel said there have been some changes.

“It is a process that we are going to see gradually. The institutions recognise the need to improve things and have taken a step to improve environmental behavior. The worrying thing is if this at some point becomes just a slogan that aims to improve the ability to approve projects and obtain a social license, rather than a serious practice,” said the head of CLASII.

Dussel noted, for his part, that “the AIIB is explicitly seeking to integrate environmental issues. There are many initiatives in this regard in China itself, to evaluate projects, attempting to compare the criteria for evaluation and implementation of Chinese infrastructure versus Western ones, specifically the World Bank’s. There is clearly a learning process.”

As the Chinese Infrastructure Monitor anticipates, infrastructure initiatives in the region will grow, with their attendant social and environmental fallout.

Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination answers questions from Patricia Soares, a guest at the launch of the ‘Don’t Forget Leprosy’ campaign. They are with Takahiro Nanri, Executive Director of the Sasakawa Health Foundation. Credit: Cecilia Russell

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, Aug 4 2021 (IPS)

A visit to a leprosy facility in Korea with his father, Ryoichi Sasakawa, spurred Yohei Sasakawa to dedicate his life to eliminating both the disease and discrimination of those affected.

He was speaking in an emotional pre-recorded address ahead of his 20th anniversary as WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination and at the launch of a 10-month ‘Don’t Forget Leprosy’ campaign by the Sasakawa Health Foundation Initiative.

Sasakawa said while he had achieved much in the 20 years, including getting the UN General Assembly to adopt the guidelines for eliminating discrimination of people affected by leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, the COVID-19 pandemic threatened the success of an international campaign to eradicate the disease.

In the past 18 months, while the world grappled with the pandemic, there was an estimated 30% to 50% decrease in detecting new leprosy cases. This could lead to increased transmission of the disease and more cases of disability, the webinar heard. In many communities, protocols, including lockdowns, had made it difficult to access treatment. This resulted in a loss of livelihoods and exacerbated discrimination that people affected by leprosy often face.

“Even amid the pandemic, it is very important that everyone involved in leprosy work continues what they are doing. We must not allow leprosy to be forgotten,” Sasakawa said.

Special guest Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO Regional Office for Southeast Asia, said the pandemic could undo decades of progress unless addressed.

“Let us be clear COVID-19 will be with us for some time. It is not enough to maintain minimal leprosy services. Rather such services must be restarted or expanded, with a focus on intensifying outreach activities to identify cases and begin treatment to all who need it,” Singh said.

However, as much as the pandemic was a threat, it had also allowed a focus on new technologies.

For many months now, “e-learning materials have helped community volunteers identify potential leprosy cases, and then refer them on to health workers,” Singh said. This was being extended to counselling and mental health support and should be harnessed in this campaign to fight both the disease and discrimination of those affected.

Sasakawa said in his 20 years as a goodwill ambassador, he had been on 200 trips to 100 countries. Here he spread the message of eliminating both disease and discrimination.

In his keynote address, he likened his campaign to a motorcycle with the front wheel symbolising the elimination of the disease and the back wheel eliminating discrimination.

“Both wheels must turn at the same time if we are to make progress toward a world without leprosy and its associated problems,” he told the webinar. This symbol is included in the campaign’s logo.

During an extensive question and answer session, Sasakawa said it was crucial that those affected return to work to support themselves. There were several initiatives, beyond just speaking to top politicians, that could be used.

These initiatives included reskilling but also included getting big businesses involved in the employment of people with disabilities. Sasakawa referred to the Valuable 500 project, launched in 2019 at World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This project, supported by the Nippon Foundation, called on the top 500 companies to promote the inclusion in business of people with disabilities.

Sasakawa said while he was a person who “believes the solution lies in the field”, the pandemic taught him it was now crucial to include new technology – webinars and social media – in the tool kit to end the disease and discrimination.

“Today, thanks to these technological tools, we are able to share the best practices that are happening in various countries and share with the world,” he said.

The Initiative is a strategic alliance between WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination Yohei Sasakawa, The Nippon Foundation and Sasakawa Health Foundation for achieving a world without leprosy and problems related to the disease. Since 1975, The Nippon Foundation and Sasakawa Health Foundation have supported the national leprosy programs of endemic countries through the WHO, with support totalling some US$200 million to date.

Leprosy is an infectious disease that mainly affects the skin and peripheral nerves. Around 200,000 cases are newly reported each year. Leprosy is curable with multidrug therapy but, left untreated, can result in permanent disability. An estimated 3 to 4 million people in the world today are thought to be living with some form of disability as a result of leprosy.

The campaign will feature a total of six webinars, online media briefings, TV and radio spots, social media messaging and videos featuring the Goodwill Ambassador. It will also incorporate other awareness-raising activities, including the annual Global Appeal to End Stigma and Discrimination against Persons Affected by Leprosy issued at the end of January.

 

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