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Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait, is welcomed by teachers and students at a girls’ primary school in Kabul, Afghanistan. Credit: Omid Fazel/ECW

By Alison Kentish
New York, Nov 5 2021 (IPS)

After leading a landmark, first-ever all-women mission to Afghanistan last week, Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait, the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, says that schools must reopen for all children and that girls, in particular, must be able to return to secondary school classrooms.

Sherif visited a girls’ school in Kabul and spoke to students, female teachers, and administrators as part of her Afghan mission. She also met with the de facto education authorities at the Ministry of Education to advocate the right of all children to quality education. The ECW mission comes less than a month after ECW launched a US$4 million First Emergency Response grant to provide ‘quality, flexible learning and psychosocial support for children and adolescents caught in the escalating crisis.

“We need to act fast. When you are in the midst of a humanitarian emergency like Afghanistan, where there is no money in circulation, starvation is a very real fact and poverty is extreme,” Sherif told IPS. “Schools need to continue to reopen and education must be sustained. Not only at primary school levels but through secondary schools – and girls have to go back to secondary schools.”

Sherif, a human rights lawyer, worked in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. She was part of a mission to the country after the first Taliban takeover in 1999 and has visited the country periodically over the last 20 years. She spoke to IPS about her observations from this ground-breaking mission to Kabul a few days ago – the first of its kind since the Taliban take-over in August.

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait, meets with de facto education authorities in Afghanistan.
Credit: Omid Fazel/ECW

“There are more women on the streets of Kabul today. I even saw women demonstrating for health care. I visited a girls’ primary school whose teachers and administration were all women,” Sherif said.

“The school’s headmaster is a woman, the school’s doctor is a woman, administrators and teachers are women. There are educated, strong women who are working, but they do not get salaries, because there are no salaries for basic services as a result of the funding freeze to Afghanistan.”

The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Union are just a few of the international bodies that have cut off Afghanistan’s access to financing. According to the World Bank, the country relies on grant funding for more than 75 percent of public spending, with expenditure of US$411 billion and government revenue of US$2.5 billion.

With that grant funding frozen, the country is on the brink of economic collapse.

Sherif is appealing for direct funding through UN agencies like ECW and UNICEF, which has the proven mechanisms in place to ensure that funds are used to support teachers and students.

“Teachers are not being paid. UNICEF has a very strong process on the ground. If money were to be given today or tomorrow to pay all teacher salaries, UNICEF has capacities in place to deliver on that funding, even if this would typically have been done through the World Bank or other development actors, but now we are in humanitarian crisis so you cannot use regular development aid approaches,” Sherif told IPS.

“The same goes for all UN agencies like the World Food Programme and UNHCR, the UN Refugees agency. Funding can be channeled through them directly to implement aid programmes. Nothing needs to, nor will go through, the de facto authorities.”

The ECW Director is cautiously optimistic following her meeting with the de facto education authorities, to whom she appealed for a return to secondary school for girls.

UNICEF Deputy Representative Alice Akunha and Chief of Education Jeannette Vogelaar greet the Education Cannot Wait all-women delegation to Afghanistan, led by Director Yasmine Sherif and her colleagues, Michelle May and Anouk Desgroseilliers.
Credit: Omid Fazel/ECW

“Primary schools have opened for girls’ education and for girls’ secondary education, the de facto authorities told us that they are developing a plan. I stressed that the girls have no time to lose and that the benefits of educating girls are crucial to the future of the country,” she said.

The ECW Director has commended international and national civil society organizations that now work with religious scholars as they negotiate the resumption of secondary school education at the grassroots level. “By bringing an Islamic scholar with them, these NGOs have actually managed to build trust. So secondary schools have opened in some provinces, a few in the north and a few in the south. It is important to stand firm on human rights and girls’ rights, but you must also have the ability to build trust as well,” she said.

ECW is already prepared to swiftly scale up its support and adapt its programming in Afghanistan. New challenges and more children in need of help demand pivoting and quick response. Sherif says ECW was created for crises like these.

“As the UN’s global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, we are agile, quick, and flexible. We use decades of lessons learned across the UN system to respond to crises. Traditional development aid modalities that are not crisis-sensitive are not going to work; not in this situation,” she said.

Sherif says that an estimated $1 billion is urgently required for United Nations agencies and international and local NGOs to meet the pressing education needs across the country.

“It’s about how can we save the Afghan population from a humanitarian catastrophe. How can we ensure that every Afghan girl and boy in the country can go to primary and secondary school? It’s about how we can ensure that teachers receive their salaries, so they are able to continue to teach. It is about providing teaching and learning materials and safe learning environments. It is about ensuring that the rights of adolescent girls to access education are fulfilled. That is why it was important for us to do an all-women mission to Afghanistan and to make clear where we stand on girls’ education.”

Sherif is hoping that the visit can give the world an open window view into life in Afghanistan and provide concrete recommendations for international aid to be immediately scaled up and invested to support quality education for both girls and boys.

“Afghanistan cannot wait. The girls of Afghanistan cannot wait. Education cannot wait.”

 

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In Serbia, EBRD supported privately financed wind farms at Cibuk – the biggest in the Western Balkans region – and Kovačica, helping Serbia reduce its dependence on ageing coal-fired plants running on polluting lignite. Credit: EBRD

By Vanora Bennett
LONDON, Nov 5 2021 (IPS)

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has announced its intention to double the mobilisation of private sector climate financing by 2025.

The way to achieve this target was set out in an Action Plan on Mobilising Private Capital for Climate Finance, unveiled at COP26, the global climate summit. With this plan the EBRD will support the transition to a low carbon economy in its countries of operations.

The EBRD’s plan spans the full range of activities to stimulate investment from green and sustainability-linked bonds through innovative financing mechanisms for industrial decarbonisation to targeted loans to support for the circular economy.

At the heart is a focus on policy activities to develop a regulatory environment that makes low-carbon investments commercially viable.

These activities, from the implementation of renewable energy auctions to the design of low-carbon sector pathways, are intended to trigger sustainable demand for climate-friendly investment and in turn for private capital.

“Globally, there is a significant increase in private capital committed to green finance. The EBRD will help direct that money to its countries of operations. Its ability to do so rests not on a single approach or instrument, but on a broad range of bespoke interventions. Some seek to increase the supply of private capital to EBRD countries of operations,” said EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso.

“However, the key focus of the Bank’s work is to increase the demand for this capital: the supply of bankable investment projects that attract financial flows seeking a return. This requires approaches that respond to the specific situations of markets and clients.”

Together with other multilateral development banks (MDBs), the Bank plays a leading role in helping to decarbonise economies and enable the transition to a more sustainable future, with a focus on involving the private sector in tackling climate change.

A major challenge in emerging economies and developing countries is a shortage of bankable climate projects. Several factors limit the supply of such projects. The most fundamental is the lack of either an implicit or an explicit carbon price. Without a carbon price, many green investments are not commercially viable.

The 2021 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference is key to delivering climate action, with countries making more ambitious climate pledges to move closer to the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C, with the aim of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.

Financiers, including MBDs like the EBRD, are preparing to deliver more support to realise those plans.

The EBRD is supporting these goals not only with investments in green energy, energy efficiency and energy savings. The Bank is also supporting especially exposed countries like Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan to develop roadmaps to low or zero carbon economies and it is addressing the need for a ‘just transition’ with recent investments, for instance in North Macedonia.

The EBRD brings two recent commitments of its own on enhancing its climate action. One is to increase the proportion of its green investments to more than 50 per cent of the total by 2025. The second is by 2023 to align all its operations with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The EBRD supports the green transition in the 38 economies in Europe, Asia and Africa where it currently invests.

Vanora Bennett is EBRD green spokeswoman

 

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In the face of substantial international offers of funding for indigenous lands and forests at COP26, indigenous peoples are calling for specific schemes for their participation. Shuar leader Katan Kontiak (left) of Ecuador and Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim of Chad took part in a Nov. 2 forum on the indigenous peoples and local communities platform. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
GLASGOW, Nov 4 2021 (IPS)

“For my people, the effects of climate change are a daily reality. The rainy season is shorter and when it rains, there are floods. And we have suffered from drought,” said Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a member of the Wodaabe or Mbororo pastoral people of Chad.

For the founder of the non-governmental Association of Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad, one pernicious effect is the violence generated, because “when resources are lost, people fight for them – for water, for example,” she told IPS after a forum on the progress made by native groups at the climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

Around the world, indigenous peoples face the ambiguity of protecting ecosystems, such as forests or coastal zones, while at the same time suffering the onslaught of climate fury unleashed by humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels, like droughts, destructive storms and rising sea levels.

For decades, native peoples have insisted that their traditional knowledge can contribute to the fight against climate change. The emergence of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 reaffirmed the results of treating nature as just another commodity.

Although in the last decade, indigenous representatives have gained a place at environmental summits, such as the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which began on Sunday Oct. 31 in this city in the UK, now they want to be more than just token participants.

“We hope that the summit takes indigenous communities into account. We need funds that go directly to indigenous peoples,” Graciela Coy, an indigenous woman from Ak’Tenamit (our people, in the Q’eqchi’ language), a non-governmental organisation that works in northern Guatemala, told IPS.

Representatives of indigenous organisations have gained a place in every part of the COP. They participate as observers in the official sessions where the agreements are debated, in the parallel summit of social movements and in all the other forums held during the two weeks of the climate conference.

One of the expectations this year among indigenous people is the approval of the three-year working plan of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform that emerged at COP21, which approved the Paris Agreement in 2015.

The proposal must be approved by the Facilitative Working Group, composed of seven indigenous and seven government representatives and endorsed at COP24, held in the Polish city of Katowice in 2018. It must then be ratified by the plenary of the 196 Parties to the COP and is to include capacity building activities for indigenous groups, the mapping of measures for their participation in the UNFCCC and financing.

Between 2019 and 2021, the group conducted 11 activities, with no physical sessions due to the pandemic.

Climate policies are the focus of COP26, which ends Nov. 12, after being postponed for a year as a result of the covid-19 pandemic.

Government delegates at COP26 are addressing carbon market rules, climate finance of at least 100 billion dollars per year, gaps between emission reduction targets and necessary reductions, strategies for carbon neutrality by 2050, adaptation plans and the working programme for the local communities and indigenous peoples platform.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, an indigenous activist from the Kankana-ey Igorot people of the Philippines, said the inclusion of human rights in the financing of emission reductions and adaptation to the effects of the climate crisis, as well as in the creation of carbon markets, is fundamental.

“Indigenous peoples also suffer from climate solutions, such as renewable energy projects. There must be effective safeguards that allow for the protection of indigenous peoples’ rights” in climate policies, the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples between 2014 and 2020 told IPS.

This respect has become urgent in areas such as the Amazon, the main jungle in Latin America shared by eight countries and a French territory, whose indigenous inhabitants have suffered the deterioration caused by the inroads made by agribusiness, livestock, soybean, hydrocarbon and mining companies, as well as the construction of dams, railroads, highways and river ports.

For this reason, Tuntiak Katan, a member of the indigenous Shuar people of Ecuador and general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC), told IPS that the removal of extractive activities from this ecosystem is a fundamental condition for making progress in protection of the climate.

“Indigenous peoples already protect 950 million hectares of land worldwide. What we are asking for is the protection of 80 percent of the Amazon by 2025. We are the voice of the women, children and elders” who suffer the impacts on the territories, said Katan, vice-coordinator of the non-governmental Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon River Basin (Coica).

The most recent scientific evidence shows that native peoples are the most effective protectors of tropical forests, which is why greater efforts are required for their conservation in the face of growing threats.

Q’eqchí’ indigenous activist Graciela Coy (R) from Guatemala called during the Glasgow climate summit for the promised international funds to go directly to indigenous peoples. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

More than empty promises

In the face of the abundant offers made during the first week of COP26 activities to promote indigenous land tenure and reforestation, indigenous peoples were skeptical and demanded direct participation in these schemes.

Oumarou Ibrahim and Coy agreed on the need to define mechanisms to ensure that the resources provided reach the territories directly.

World leaders “must be our partners. Funding must be tailored to the needs of the people. The question is how the resources are going to reach indigenous peoples directly,” said Oumarou Ibrahim.

In Coy’s opinion, the fight against climate change requires the allocation of funds, which should be transferred “to indigenous peoples, as there is a lot of international aid” that does not always materialise in local communities.

In an acceptance of what native peoples have been demanding for years, the governments of Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States and 17 private funders announced on Nov. 1 the provision of 1.7 billion dollars to help indigenous and local communities preserve tropical forests between 2021 and 2025.

It is estimated that each year only 270 million dollars are allocated to forest care and just 46 million dollars go to the direct guardians of the forest: their ancestral inhabitants.

Direct multilateral funding to aboriginal populations has been a recurring barrier to efforts to protect natural resources.

For example, the Green Climate Fund (GCF), created at COP16 in Cancun in 2010, has financed 121 community livelihood projects and delivered a total of 1.4 billion dollars.

For a total of 190 projects, it has disbursed two billion dollars and another six billion are in the pipeline. In addition, it has committed another 10 billion for projects. It has also registered 113 institutions to receive funds, but none of them are indigenous.

Furthermore, on Nov. 2, more than 105 nations signed up to the “Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use” which sets the target of zero deforestation by 2030.

Indigenous peoples are also demanding to be included in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the voluntary commitments adopted by each country for 2030 and 2050 in order to comply with the Paris Agreement and on which the goal of containing global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is based.

“We just need a push,” said Katan. “We are sure of what we do and that is why it is good that they are offering financing. But what needs to be done is to abandon extractivism and get the oil, mining and agribusiness companies out of our territories, and apply a holistic vision, combined with the vision of the indigenous peoples.”

Even if COP26 does not produce the results desired by indigenous peoples, they will continue to care for natural resources and to demand climate justice.

IPS produced this article with the support of Iniciativa Climática in Mexico and the European Climate Foundation.

COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions meant that many informal sector traders lost their jobs. Not eligible for compensation, some have turned to sex work. Credit: Marko Phiri/IPS

By Marko Phiri
Bulawayo, ZIMBABWE , Nov 4 2021 (IPS)

Thirty-six-year-old Thandiwe Mtshali* watched helplessly as her informal cross-border trading (ICBT) enterprise came to a grinding halt when the Zimbabwean authorities closed the border with South Africa as part of global efforts to stem the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus.

“That was last year, and I had no idea what to do next,” Mtshali told IPS.

Before the lockdown, she made up to four trips each month to Musina and Johannesburg in neighbouring South Africa to buy goods ranging from clothes to electrical appliances for resale in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city.

And by her account, the money was good.

“I could rent a full house in the suburbs, and my long term plans have always been to build my own home,” she said.

After months of being idle in Bulawayo, a colleague tipped her about what appeared to be an easy route out of her money troubles: truckers had not been banned from transporting goods between South Africa and Zimbabwe.

As truckers got stuck at the Beitbridge border post for weeks waiting to get their consignments processed by port authorities, it presented a new venture for informal cross-border traders such as Mtshali: sex work.

Today, Mtshali, who has two young children back in Bulawayo, rents a small shack in the border town where she “entertains” truckers and other men willing to pay for sex.

Commercial sex work is illegal in Zimbabwe, but COVID-19 has turned the sector into a necessity for many women who were made redundant by lockdown measures imposed by the government because of public health concerns.

“I do not want to do this, but it is better than sitting and waiting,” Mtshali said.

“My kids are with my mother, and all they know is that I am working in Beitbridge. As long as I send them money and groceries, they don’t need to know anything else,” she told IPS.

Local residents, however, complain that despite the lockdown restrictions that banned travel across cities, there appeared to be an influx of sex workers to the border town, each seeking to make a living.

“We have always had a problem here with sex workers, young and old competing for clients. But now we see even more after borders closed,” said Dumisani Tlou, a resident and taxi driver.

“Every tenant knows they can rent any available backroom to the women who entertain truckers and other illegal dealers, but no one seems to be doing anything about it,” he told IPS.

While the Zimbabwean authorities have made efforts to provide bailout stipends for informal traders, this has been criticised for being too little to improve the lives of millions on the fringes of official economic activity.

Many more, like Mtshali, missed out on the bailouts because they are not registered with any informal traders’ association.

“There is a need to consider special exemptions that will allow cross-border traders to import goods during the lockdown and border closures,” said Fadzai Nyamande-Pangeti, International Organisation for Migration – Zimbabwe spokesperson.

“It is also important for women cross-border traders to formalise their businesses, to make them less likely to be impacted by shocks caused by the pandemic,” she told IPS.

However, for many here at the border town, sex work comes with challenges.

While borders were closed in line with public health safety measures, this has exposed sex workers to concerns about HIV/Aids.

“These women have no social protection or insurance or any other mitigation measures to cushion them in times of disasters such as the current pandemic,” said Mary Mulenga, a representative of the Southern Africa Cross-border Traders Association (SACBTA).

In a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Health ahead of the UN General Assembly in October, the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (GNSWP), which brings together sex worker-led organisations across ninety-six countries, says, “during the pandemic, there has been a (global) drop in the availability of HIV treatment services due to the prioritisation of treating and stopping the spread of COVID-19.”

“As a result, sex workers living with HIV have experienced even greater challenges in accessing HIV treatments, further endangering their health and ability to work,” the network says in its brief to the UN.

Truckers have for years been identified as an HIV/Aids high-risk group in southern Africa, raising concerns among campaigners, such as the GNSWP, that while resources are being directed toward addressing the spread of COVID-19, both old and new entrants into the sex trade such as Mtshali are being left out.

According to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM), informal cross-border trade accounts for up to 40 percent of southern Africa’s intra-trade estimated USD17 billion annually. Still, border closures have upended this due to COVID-19.

Despite these disruptions brought by the novel coronavirus, the once-thriving informal cross-border trade could present more public health concerns: an increase in those living with HIV/Aids.

In recent months, Zimbabwe’s First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa launched countrywide self-sufficiency projects for sex workers. Still, with the industry continuing to take in new entrants such as Mtshali, it could be a race against daunting odds as global health experts see no easy end to COVID-19.

• The Pulitzer Centre supported this story.
• Name changed to protect identity.

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By Zoltán Kálmán
Gödöllő, Hungary, Nov 4 2021 (IPS)

UNSG Antonio Guterres convened the first-ever UN Food Systems Summit which took place on 23-24 September. The Summit preparation had a well-designed structure with remarkable and appreciated leadership of Amina Mohammed, UN DSG. Due to the hard work of the UN Special Envoy, Agnes Kalibata, and her whole Team, the organisation and logistics of the Summit was excellent.

The Summit’s main outcome is the Secretary-General’s Chair Summary and Statement of Action, “calling on the world to keep its promises for a better future through food systems that work for people, planet and prosperity”. This Statement was not negotiated in an inter-governmental process and it is not legally binding. Still, it has a series of powerful messages trying to orient stakeholders in their policy decisions.

In order to involve the broader public and to bring together a diversity of stakeholders, Food Systems Summit Dialogues were proposed. National Dialogues were organized by governments, but also regional and global dialogues were held in order to align with global events on major issues like climate, environment, health, economies and jobs, humanitarian aid and water. The Synthesis Reports analyse the outcomes of 850+ Dialogues, in which 100,000 people from around the world participated.

In spite of its virtual setting, the Summit gathered 37,000 registered delegates and was viewed by more than 50,000 people from 193 countries. 165 Member States delivered statements, 78 of which were delivered by Heads of State or Government, clearly confirming that the Summit was very much timely and relevant. To share an overview of the engagement process and the richness of findings, knowledge generated in the lead up to the Summit, a Food Systems Summit Compendium was posted online.

Considering these impressive figures, the Summit seems to be a huge success. In fact, it had a number of positive outcomes, but the most important achievement is that the Summit took place and generated a lot of insightful discussions at local, national and global level.

Was the Summit a real success? Was it a Breakthrough or a Missed Opportunity? It was undoubtedly a success from the above perspective, but looking at some details below, the picture is more complex and nuanced.

1. The Summit was not sufficiently inclusive, important stakeholders were not around the table, such as organisations representing hundreds of millions of the rural poor, including smallholders, family farmers, indigenous peoples’ groups and many others. The Summit had a “Top-down” start and the whole process remained influenced by powerful groups’ interests.

2. A Scientific Group was created with a number of outstanding professionals to provide inputs and advice to the Summit process by channelling in a wide range of relevant scientific knowledge. It was unfortunate that the composition of the Scientific Group was unbalanced with mainly natural/technological scientists and economists and almost completely missing social scientists.

3. The Summit has not clearly identified and adequately addressed the root causes. For example poverty and inequalities, along with the rights-based approach, have not received sufficient attention during the Summit process.

4. As a matter of fact, corporations control an increasing share of resources and use their power to influence policy decisions. (Although Jeffrey Sachs eloquently said at the Pre-Summit: “…behave, pay your taxes, and follow the rules. That’s what businesses should do.”…). This conflict of interest, and the existing power imbalances in favour of multinationals, are major obstacles to transformation. Still, this has not been addressed at all at the Summit.

5. The most important missing element is the absence of a call for an overall sustainability assessment, based on evidence and neutral science. These assessments, following the principle of True Costs Accounting, could cover all positive and negative externalities of all food systems and quantify them. Results of these assessments should be given due considerations by policy makers while preparing appropriate incentives for sustainable solutions and for repurposing subsidies (currently provided mainly to unsustainable models).

6. As a great achievement, a series of local and national commitments and various coalitions of action have been launched, but the Summit has eventually failed to provide global guidance. Even if a single corporation wished to transform its food systems to become sustainable, it will not put at the risk its competitiveness.

7. In the follow-up FAO, IFAD and WFP should have a prominent role, but food systems transformation is a much broader issue than their areas of competence. The UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) was created exactly for that kind of purpose. It is the foremost inclusive, multistakeholder body, providing possibilities also for UNEP, WHO, ILO along with the private sector, civil society and academia to discuss the way forward and to report to FAO and to ECOSOC. Furthermore, the CFS HLPE is there to provide neutral, science-based analysis, assessments and reporting. Instead of creating new science-policy interface.

All in all, the Summit was a success, but definitely not the desired breakthrough. Rather, this Summit proved to be a Missed Opportunity, due to the lack of global policy guidance and due to ignoring some key issues. It can only be hoped that a more inclusive follow-up will help bring the process back to the right track.

Zoltán Kálmán
Retired Ambassador, Former Permanent Representative of Hungary to FAO, IFAD, WFP. Member of the UNFSS Advisory Committee (2020-2021)

 

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Illegal fishing is not just about stealing livelihood; it is about forcing someone into crime. Coast Guard interdicts lancha crews illegally fishing in US waters. Credit: Creative Commons

By Geetika Chandwani and Purnaka L. de Silva
NEW YORK, Nov 4 2021 (IPS)

“Working together means we widen the number of like-minded actors towards a common good” –Dr. Azza Karam, Secretary-General of Religions for Peace International.

As global leaders and civil society actors participate in COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing is a significant problem that must be tackled.

In this regard, collaboration among the 55 member states of the African Union (AU) is crucial to successfully accomplishing a common goal to combat the problem of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the African continent’s coastal waters – overcoming a raft of complex and politically sensitive issues.

IUU fishing is an unprecedented problem in the time of climate change that decimates the livelihoods of local fishing communities. The AU must demonstrate strong leadership and present a united front for such collaboration to work, so that the establishment of the proposed Combined Exclusive Maritime Zone for Africa (CEMZA) can achieve impactful results and not be just a paper tiger.

African voices and indigenous expertise in producing scientific knowledge and policies have been marginalized since colonial times including vis-à-vis marine fisheries.

Africa continues to be at a disadvantage on account of the historical processes through which individual countries were integrated into the world’s economic and financial system – often driven by former colonizing powers – e.g., France, U.K.

Therefore, the needs and concerns of local African fishing communities were historically unseen and unheard in national and international deliberations over fisheries. The “new” scramble for African resources, brought a new player to the fore, namely the People’s Republic of China – triggering rapid expansion of Chinese investments, trade, development cooperation and loans aimed at exploiting Africa’s resources.

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing predominantly by Chinese, and European trawlers, endanger marine ecosystems, biodiversity, food security, and thus the survival of local African fishing communities. IUU fishing affects those countries that cannot effectively monitor and control their maritime waters and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs).

An increasing number of organizations are exploring AI, data analytics, and blockchain to combat the threat of IUU fishing – as noted by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (2020) in “How Data and Technology Can Help Address Corruption in IUU fishing” – https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/tnrc-blog-how-data-and-technology-can-help-address-corruption-in-iuu-fishing.

The arrangements in place are often abused and thus fall short in fighting the impediment of IUU fishing. It is to tackle these significant problems at the operational level that Africa’s Integrated Maritime Strategy proposes to establish the Combined Exclusive Maritime Zone for Africa (CEMZA) – as noted by Vishal Surbun (February 2021) in “Africa’s combined exclusive maritime zone concept” in Institute for Security Studies, Africa Report 32 – https://issafrica.org/research/africa-report/africas-combined-exclusive-maritime-zone-concept.

CEMZA is a future project that remains on paper only for the time being, which needs to be implemented in full to facilitate economic and security benefits for target African countries.

A consequence of the inability of individual African states to maintain law and order, to varying degrees, opened the door to the possibility of some level of continental federalization in the form of CEMZA or combining other zones falling within the African Maritime Domain (AMD).

West Africa presents coastal countries where the problems are particularly felt. The area has attracted industrial fishing boats from all over the world, particularly from China, while controls have remained entirely inadequate in the last decade.

A series of non-transparent practices often make governmental checks and control difficult. Frequent changes of the shipowner, flag country, registration, low maintenance of databases, and navigation records represent a significant challenge for state authorities and non-governmental organizations (e.g., Sea Shepherd Global, Environmental Justice Foundation) concerned with fishing rights in Africa.

There are irregularities in the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and the non-use or improper use of the satellite-based vessel monitoring system (VMS). On July 22, 2021, the Defense Innovation Unit and Global Fishing Watch, a non-profit that uses satellites to view global fishing activities, announced a new AI challenge to combat IUU fishing to tackle this transnational crime.

Likewise, an international program to track illegal fishing from space has been launched by the Canadian government – as noted by Rosie Frost (January 2021) in “What are illegal ‘dark vessels’ and why are satellites spying on them?” in Euronews – https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/02/25/what-are-illegal-dark-vessels-and-why-are-satellites-spying-on-them. It can use environmental conditions, including the temperature of the water and chlorophyll levels, to work out where the fish will be.

With the fish comes the fishermen and fisherwomen who help narrow down the areas that governmental authorities need to fully concentrate on, thereby helping them locate, identify and interdict illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Such information must be shared with the central body of the combined EEZ not only to gather pieces of evidence but also to assist local fishing communities in earning their livelihood. The current focus on environmental concerns worldwide has drawn attention to the global crisis in fisheries and aquaculture, and the need to manage these industries in environmentally sustainable ways.

Indigenous communities have become vital partners to international climate, environmental and development missions seeking global sustainability. In many West African countries, fishing continues to be carried out through artisanal means often by poor fisherwomen.

An example is the wooden pirogues mainly in use in West Africa from Mauritania to Senegal, on which a crew composed of less than ten people usually embark and stays at sea for a few days. Canoes, gillnets, and handlines are used widely throughout Africa, while the use of indigenous industrial fishing vessels is still few, numerically.

The activities connected to the fisheries sector, characterized by high labor-intensity and low capital, employs millions of people throughout West Africa. In today’s world many people look to information and communications technology to go about their daily business. Fisherfolk in Africa also need access to technological solutions.

Having a combined EEZ and working with international partners and using technology enables them to maintain indigenous standards. Sustainable developments can be achieved only by working with local communities to create employment opportunities in an environment of trust.

In short, unity is needed for the survival of local fishing communities. Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs) in Africa are shared by 33 coastal countries and 600 million people. Illegal fishing amounts to more than US $2 billion in lost profits annually – as noted by Vishal Surbun (February 2021) in “Africa’s combined exclusive maritime zone concept” in Institute for Security Studies, Africa Report 32 – https://issafrica.org/research/africa-report/africas-combined-exclusive-maritime-zone-concept.

On November 10, 2020, a new App was launched called DASE (which means “evidence” in the Fante dialect of Ghana) by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) – as noted by EJF Staff (November 10, 2020) in “New Phone App is Effective Weapon in Ghana’s Fight Against Illegal Fishing” in Environmental Justice Foundation –https://ejfoundation.org/news-media/new-phone-app-is-effective-weapon-in-ghanas-fight-against-illegal-fishing.

Communities in Ghana and Liberia can use this to gather evidence against illegal vessels, mostly industrial trawlers under foreign flags. When a vessel is spotted illegally fishing or damaging canoes, the user takes a photo of the boat through the app with its name/identification number and records the geo-satellite position.

The app uploads the report to a central database where the government can use the evidence to catch and sanction the perpetrators. A similar app must be introduced in Ajami, an Arabic script, in West Africa. Ajami is a form of literacy that remains widespread across West Africa with little or no government support. In East Africa and the Horn of Africa Swahili should be used. The idea is to find a medium to connect with local peoples to combat Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Fishing is not simply a livelihood it is a culture and a way of life. Collaborative management and decision-making can help indigenous people maintain vocational skills and pride in their culture. Organizations are formed to promote peace, values, and well-being of citizens.

Coordinating efforts to restore the economy, manage risks and remove barriers helps reduce costs and create a larger market for local fishing communities. While there are several challenges mentioned in operationalizing the Combined Exclusive Maritime Zone for Africa (CEMZA) in terms of sovereignty and maritime rights, a more significant challenge is the food insecurity and poverty that arises from increased transnational organized crime, and illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing by countries like China.

In addition, there are environmental crimes, marine environmental degradation, disappearing biodiversity, and the dire effects of climate change and global warming. However, establishing CEMZA and using multiple technologies is absolutely, critical in developing and maintaining pan-African collaboration that brings about substantive change and protection for vulnerable local fishing communities. Africa needs CEMZA to be a tiger with teeth and claws.

Geetika Chandwani is finishing her M.A. at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, where Professor Purnaka L. de Silva lectures in the M.A. program.

 

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Globally around 21% of young women were married before their 18th birthday - 650,000,000 girls and women alive today were married as children. Credit: United Nations.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 3 2021 (IPS)

Imagine your child, your daughter, being genitally mutilated and, further on, sold or even handed over for free to an older man who will force her to become a child mother, when her body is still far from being formed and thus able to bear with a so early pregnancy.

Well, it has been happening and it still happens right now. The victims are as many as a conservative 800 million child-girls.

And this is happening while rich societies are holding intensive debates about the right of adolescents and youngsters to enjoy their freedom of gathering in thousands and get drunk in massive parties in streets and squares without observing any of the most basic measures to prevent COVID19 contagion.

Across the globe, levels of child marriage are highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where around 4 in 10 young women were married before age 18, followed by South Asia, where 3 in 10 were married before age 18.

Lower levels of child marriage are found in Latin America and Caribbean (25%), the Middle East and North Africa (17%), and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (11%)

Such a brutal violence is widely practiced both in poor Muslim majority societies, and also among Muslim minorities particularly in Africa and several Asian states.

And it is carried out in the name of religious or cultural traditions.

These millions of girls under the age of 18 who fall victim to these harmful practices come mostly from impoverished families, which find themselves forced to sell their children and often also to ‘give’ them for free in the hope of keeping them alive in exchange for shelter and food.

UNICEF reports that many factors interact to place a girl at risk of marriage, including poverty, the perception that marriage will provide ‘protection’, family honour, social norms, customary or religious laws that condone the practice, and an inadequate legislative framework.

That said, “child marriage often compromises a girl’s development by resulting in early pregnancy and social isolation, interrupting her schooling, limiting her opportunities for career and vocational advancement and placing her at increased risk of domestic violence. Child marriage also affects boys, but to a lesser degree than girls.”

The case of the so-called co-habitation –when a couple lives ‘in union’, as if married– also raises the same human rights concerns as marriage, UNICEF explains, adding that when a girl lives with a man and takes on the role of his caregiver, the assumption is often that she has become an adult, even if she has not yet reached the age of 18.

Additional concerns due to the informality of the relationship –in terms of inheritance, citizenship and social recognition, for example– may make girls in informal unions vulnerable in different ways than girls who are married.

 

Stark inequality

The two world bodies also warn that child marriage is often the result of entrenched gender inequality, making girls disproportionately affected by the practice. Globally, the prevalence of child marriage among boys is just one-fifth of that among girls.

Moreover, child marriage robs girls of their childhood and threatens their lives and health.

And girls who marry before 18 have worse economic and health outcomes than their unmarried peers, which are eventually passed down to their own children, further straining a country’s capacity to provide quality health and education services.

Child brides often become pregnant during adolescence, when the risk of complications during pregnancy and childbirth increases – for themselves and their infants.

The practice can also isolate girls from family and friends and exclude them from participating in their communities, taking a heavy toll on their physical and psychological well-being, continue UNICEF and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).

 

The facts…

The following facts and figures, which have been compiled by the two main world specialised bodies -UNICEF and UN Population Fund (UNFPA), should suffice to unveil such a flagrant human rights violation.

— Child marriage refers to any formal marriage or informal union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child.

While the prevalence of child marriage has decreased worldwide – from one in four girls married a decade ago to approximately one in five today – the practice remains widespread.

— Child marriage can lead to a lifetime of suffering. Girls who marry before they turn 18 are less likely to remain in school and more likely to experience domestic violence.

— Young teenage girls are more likely to die due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth than women in their 20s, and their children are more likely to be stillborn or die in the first month of life.

— Infants born to teenage mothers are also more likely to be stillborn or die in the first month of life.

— Wherever they occur, harmful practices rob girls of their childhood, deny them the chance to determine their own future and threaten the well-being of individuals, families and societies.

 

… And the figures

— Globally around 21% (over 1 in 5) of young women were married before their 18th birthday.

— 650,000,000 girls and women alive today were married as children.

— 12,000,000 girls under 18 are married each year. And more than 150 million additional girls will marry before their 18th birthday by 2030.

 

Where most?

UNICEF and UNFPA also report that, across the globe, levels of child marriage are highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where around 4 in 10 young women were married before age 18, followed by South Asia, where 3 in 10 were married before age 18.

Lower levels of child marriage are found in Latin America and Caribbean (25%), the Middle East and North Africa (17%), and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (11%).

Back in 2016, UNICEF and UNFPA, launched a global programme to tackle child marriage in 12 of the most high-prevalence or high-burden countries: Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Yemen and Zambia. (See UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to Accelerate Action to End Child Marriage).

Just add to all the above the bloodcurdling story of over 300,000 unaccompanied refugee and migrant children who are just a small part of millions of children that are innocent, easy prey for smugglers and human traffickers worldwide.

Among a raft of alarming statistics, a UN report has just found that children account for around 28 percent of trafficking victims globally. And that Sub-Saharan Africa and Central America and the Caribbean have the highest share of children among detected trafficking victims, at the rates of 64 and 62 percent, respectively.

Let alone that girls are forced by traffickers and smugglers to sexual exploitation. “Sexual tourism has a child face. No country is untouched and no child is immune.”

In view of all the above, until when such violence will continue to be committed against millions and millions of child girls who are born-equals to yours, with two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs and the same biological system. And they are the mothers of the coming generations.

 

By External Source
SEOUL, South Korea, Nov 3 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) has announced the appointment of Ms. Helena McLeod, Cardno International Development Group’s Team Leader of UK Aid’s Cities, Infrastructure and Growth Program (Uganda) and former Director of KPMG International Development Advisory Services (IDAS) Africa, as the incoming Deputy Director-General and Head of Green Growth Planning & Implementation (GGP&I). Ms. McLeod will succeed Ms. Hyoeun Jenny Kim, who was named Ambassador and Deputy Minister for Climate Change in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea on July 31, 2021.

Ms. McLeod will lead the GGP&I division based in the organization’s Seoul headquarters and formally assume her duties, serving a three-year term beginning on January 10, 2022.

Dr. Frank Rijsberman, GGGI’s Director General commented “We are delighted to welcome Ms. Helena McLeod to our vibrant and cohesive organization with a strong commitment to help countries make a transition to a model of economic growth that is environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive. In this role, Ms. McLeod will be responsible for managing our growing network of country offices, currently in 30 countries, where about three quarters of our 400 staff members work, embedded in the offices of our government members and partners.”

“As GGGI is going through a period of rapid growth to scale up its program and deliver more impact to green the recovery from the pandemic while accelerating climate action, this is a critical role for the organization. I am confident that Ms. McLeod’s many years living and working in developing countries, particularly in Africa, in both government and the private sector, have given her abundant experience and contacts that we can’t wait to put to work to support the green transition the world so urgently needs.”

“I am excited to join GGGI at this important point in the organization’s journey. With my experience spanning across Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, I am looking forward to leveraging my network of contacts on the ground to enhance and strengthen relationships with government stakeholders and private sector actors to help contribute to making a transformational impact in countries where GGGI has operations – especially at a time when country presence is growing rapidly in size and scale,” said Ms. McLeod.

Ms. McLeod, a British national living in South Africa, brings a wealth of 25 years of experience leading large and dynamic teams and managing innovative climate and development programs – including grant and blended finance funds – worth over GBP 1 billion, which helped to benefit millions of people.

As Head of CIG Uganda, she is responsible for managing a team of 30 multidisciplinary and multi-national experts. She is also leading diverse workstreams, including targeting mobilization of GBP1billion of finance for climate smart flagship infrastructure projects, assisting the Kampala Capital City Authority with the development and implementation of its Five-Year Strategic Plan, assisting COVID Economic Recovery Planning and action, innovative green urban planning and working on solid waste management reform.

Prior to joining Cardno, Ms. McLeod was Director for the Resilience, Renewable Energy and Climate Change Sector at the KPMG IDAS Africa Practice. In this position, she significantly scaled the portfolio to a managed grant portfolio of USD 400 million, across Africa and Asia. With specialty in management of philanthropic, government and private sector grant funds focused on climate outcomes, among her key responsibilities included designing innovative grant and blended finance funds, developing project pipeline for equity and debt finance, rapid mobilization of global programs, funds, and teams, winning and executing new business and setting strategic direction of the practice.

Her technical thematic experience covers off-grid and on-grid clean energy, urban climate resilience, infrastructure project preparation and financing, solid waste management, climate smart agriculture, sustainable transport, energy efficiency, sustainable timber trade and forestry preservation.

She also held numerous senior positions at KPMG IDAS Africa, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, DFID Africa Regional, and DFID Southern Africa. Early in her career, she worked as an economist at DFID South Africa, DFID’s London Office, and the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission in Fiji.

She holds an MSc degree in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics (with distinction) from the University College London and a BSc degree in Economics from the London School of Economics.

About the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)
GGGI was established as an international intergovernmental organization in 2012 at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Its vision is “a low-carbon, resilient world of strong, inclusive, and sustainable growth” and its mission “to support Members in the transformation of their economies into a green growth economic model”. GGGI does this through technical assistance to: reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement; create green jobs; increase access to sustainable services (such as clean affordable energy, sustainable waste management); improve air quality; sustain natural capital for adequate supply of ecosystem services; and enhance adaptation to climate change.

Agriculture accounts for over 25 percent of Africa’s GDP while employing over 70 percent of people that live in rural communities. Credit: Miriam Gahtigah/IPS

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, Nov 3 2021 (IPS)

Local, national and world leaders, and committed climate change activists are in Glasgow for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) to share the progress they’ve made since the COP21 in Paris six years ago and to discuss what comes next. One of the issues that must be on the table at COP26 is the worrying impact of climate change on agriculture in Africa.

Agriculture accounts for over 25 percent of Africa’s GDP while employing over 70 percent of people that live in rural communities. When agriculture is impacted, women, who work in the agricultural sector suffer the consequences. The entire agriculture value chain is threatened by climate change. According to a recent World Bank Report, unless urgent actions are taken, climate change could force millions of Africans to migrate to new areas.

At the production level, climate change is impacting agriculture via drought and flooding events. In 2020, flooding in East Africa impacted over six million people. In 2021, flooding has affected 669,000 people in West and Central Africa, over 700,000 people in Sudan and South Sudan and over 100,000 people in Nigeria.

At the foundation of climate-resilient agriculture is the need for smallholder farmers to have access to dependable and year round sources of water to support agriculture. At the moment African agriculture is dependent on rain-fed agriculture and because of climate change rains are no longer dependable

It is also having an impact through invasive and transboundary plant-eating insect pests such as the fall armyworm and the desert locust. Invasive insect pests cost the African continent U.S. $1 billion every year. Impacted the most are vulnerable groups that include African small holder farmers, women and girls, children, disabled and elderly people.

Without a climate-resilient agricultural sector, even the most ambitious climate initiatives will bear minimal returns. It is imperative for countries participating in the COP26 meeting to finance agriculture initiatives.

Looking at many developed countries, it is evident that it is possible to build climate resilient agriculture. This is particularly possible when several interlinked short-term and long-term strategies are put in place. At the foundation of climate-resilient agriculture is the need for smallholder farmers to have access to dependable and year round sources of water to support agriculture. At the moment African agriculture is dependent on rain-fed agriculture and because of climate change rains are no longer dependable.

Complementing access to water for agriculture are other important tools including access to most recent and improved agricultural technologies and resources. From improved and climate-smart seeds to drought, flooding, insects and plant disease-tolerant crops varieties to recent knowledge of agricultural practices and access to markets and financial help.

Important is the need for African countries to strengthen their early warning systems. These can only be achieved through strengthening African countries abilities to tap on big data and use it as a tool to stay ahead of all the climate linked disasters. Accompanying early warning systems is the need to lay out comprehensive climate adaptation initiatives.

At the center of all actions and strategies is the need to put the people on the ground and African countries at the center of climate action. As a founder to a startup, Oyeska Greens that is working with farmers at the Kenyan Coast I have seen firsthand the value of putting farmers at the forefront.  Putting them at the forefront ensures that the strategies and initiatives that are laid out are relevant and meeting the current challenges that small holder farmers and other vulnerable groups are facing as it relates to climate change. Without including the very people whom we are serving, we risk unsustainable and irrelevant solutions.

Climate change is the most urgent crisis of our times. While talk and meetings such as COP26 are important, in the end it is the initiatives and actual projects being implemented in African countries, particularly in the agricultural sector that will help move the needle and address the escalating climate change crisis.

All countries must work together and take action in the fight against climate change to avert many crises that are projected to happen if we fail to act.  Lives of vulnerable citizens including women, elderly and people with disabilities are at stake. Now is the time to ACT

 

Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a Senior Food Security Fellow with the Aspen Institute, New Voices.

Celia Umenza Velasco at the UN Security Council Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security. Credit: United Nations

By Celia Umenza Velasco
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 3 2021 (IPS)

On 21 October, I had the honor of addressing the UN Security Council at the annual open debate on Women, Peace and Security. I spoke as a member of Cxhab Wala Kiwe, which means “Great People’s Territory” in the Nasa Yuwe language, also known as ACIN—Association of Indigenous Councils of the North of Cauca—in Colombia.

I am an Indigenous activist dedicated to my people, our territory, the environment and the cause of peace.

I spoke on behalf of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, and as a representative of Indigenous women and women in all their diversity—campesinas, Afro-descendant women, LGBTQI+ persons, refugee and migrant women, women with disabilities and women from countries around the world who suffer from war, poverty and discrimination.

As I said in my remarks, I continue to affirm my solidarity with the women and LGBTQI+ people of Afghanistan who continue to risk their lives fighting for their rights and equal place in Afghan society. We stand with you.

Colombia remains one of the world’s most dangerous countries for defenders of human rights and of land and territorial rights. Attacks on human rights defenders, especially women, LGBTQI+, campesino, Afro-descendant and Indigenous leaders have continued, including in response to the recent protests in Colombia against extreme inequality, violence and scant implementation of the Peace Accord.

On average, at least one Indigenous defender is killed every week. In my territory of Cauca, three Indigenous women leaders whom I worked with were killed in 2020. Their brutal murders illustrate how women often pay a terrible price for their leadership.

For an Indigenous person, land means everything to us. We are nourished by it, and it is a part of our identity and our history. Indigenous communities oppose logging, mining, agribusiness and other large-scale extractive and infrastructure projects—many of which are actively supported by the Government of Colombia—because they threaten the environment and deplete our natural resources.

Indigenous defenders in Colombia are viewed as a threat because we challenge powerful economic interests. My people are killed for protecting our waterways and forests, our flowers and fauna, when their courage and dedication should be held up as a model in the non-violent struggle for territorial rights.

Celia Umenza Velasco

Violence against our communities also demonstrates the devastating impact of militarized responses to social crises. Indigenous communities in Colombia have been calling for demilitarization for decades. Much of the war was waged on our land, and much of the violence continues in our territories today.

Although we have peace in name, lack of implementation of the Peace Accord has refueled conflict. At one point in the war, an Indigenous person was killed every 72 hours, most often caught in the crossfire between armed actors.

Today, the state continues to use militarized force through its security apparatus, particularly in rural areas. The only state presence we see in our territories is the military and the police, who often appear to protect the economic interests of powerful sectors, rather than the rights of local populations.

This represents a failure to comply with the provisions of the Peace Accord. Furthermore, during the recent national protests, police used excessive force against peaceful demonstrators across the country, particularly in Cali where a greater percentage of the population is Afro-descendant and where our Indigenous guard was attacked.

State forces have committed sexual and gender-based violence. Peaceful protestors have been subject to torture, illegal detention, disappearances and killings, echoing the violence that has marked over five decades of war. The gravity of this situation led the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to call for the overall demilitarization of the police in Colombia.

The Peace Accord, with 130 provisions on gender equality and women’s rights, was achieved due to the determined struggle of Colombian feminist movements. On paper, the Peace Accord provides the foundation for a democratic country.

However, five years since its adoption, implementation is at a standstill, especially of its gender provisions and the Ethnic Chapter. The Special Forum of Women and the High Level Forum for Ethnic Peoples are both underfunded and lack political support, and members of the Special Forum of Women have been threatened and attacked.

Implementation is most delayed in provisions for Comprehensive Rural Reform, which would give women access to land and enable them to chart a path to inclusive and holistic development for their communities.

This has allowed the expansion of extractive activities that exploit natural resources, violate territorial rights, exacerbate conflict, and increase violence against human rights defenders, especially those who defend their land.

Colombia’s Peace Accord may be unprecedented in its incorporation of international standards of gender equality—but what good are agreements and promises if they are not kept?

Threats faced by women peacebuilders and human rights defenders in one community are a threat to women everywhere. Despite ten resolutions and repeated affirmations of the value of civil society, the issue of women human rights defenders remains a critical gap in the Security Council’s implementation of the women, peace and security agenda.

Colombia is no different—although Security Council members have regularly condemned the targeting of human rights defenders and social leaders, they have not done enough to turn words into action.

Ending attacks against women human rights defenders, not only in Colombia, but in all conflicts on its agenda, and ensuring the full, equal and meaningful participation and leadership of women in all their diversity, is essential for sustainable peace.

I urged the Security Council to call on the Colombian Government to:

• Fully implement and resource the Peace Accord, in particular the Ethnic Chapter and gender provisions. This includes ensuring regular consultations with, as well as resources and technical assistance for, the High-Level Forum for Ethnic Peoples and the Special Forum of Women, as well as for campesino, Afro-descendant, Indigenous and women’s organizations to monitor the Peace Accord’s implementation.

• Adhere to free, prior and informed consent processes with campesino, Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, including regularly consulting with their authorities and community organizations, with regards to economic development in their territories, and ensure that development processes comply with international human rights principles and law, and with the Peace Accord.

• Address the crisis of violence against human rights defenders, including by ensuring: accountability of perpetrators when such attacks occur, and full resourcing for the development of collective and territorial self-protection measures for Indigenous, campesino and Afro-descendant communities, as well as support for their permanent presence in fora where protection policies are discussed, especially the National Commission for Security Guarantees and the Intersectoral Commission for Guarantees for Women Leaders and Human Rights Defenders.

• Immediately demilitarize the police force by moving the National Police out of the Ministry of Defense, dismantle the Mobile Antiriot Squad of the National Police (ESMAD) and redirect funding to support social investment.

• Ensure the full, equal and meaningful participation of women leaders in the implementation of the Peace Accord and in negotiations with other armed actors in Colombia.

Peace is more than the absence of war. To Indigenous women, it means an end to discrimination, respect for human rights, justice, economic equality, and transformative change with human life at its center.

As the primary international body responsible for peace and security, I urged the Security Council not to allow this year’s open debate to be yet another occasion where they listen to women civil society, but fail to act on our concerns.

The plight of Afghan women illustrates all too clearly the cost of doing so. Women around the world show daily that they have courage and the conviction to fight for peace. We call on the Security Council, and leaders at all levels, to fight for us all.

 

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A wind farm in Port Victoria on the main island of Mahe in the Seychelles is contributing to the renewable energy transition of the small island state located east of the African continent. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia , Nov 3 2021 (IPS)

Breaking the world’s reliance on fossil fuels and accelerating the global uptake of renewable energy will play a decisive role in diminishing the threat of global warming to the survival of life on earth, according to experts. But turning the vision into reality will demand unwavering political will and, critically, massive investment, which can no longer be shouldered solely by aid and development partners.

It is a challenge that the Commonwealth Secretariat, the inter-governmental organisation representing 54 Commonwealth nations, has taken on. Now it is launching an initiative at the United Nations COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow to propel the ability of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to attract major investors with sound compelling business cases.

The summit will be a key setting to leverage “the toolkit into different partner working platforms, such as the Climate Investment Platform, increase collaboration among partners and drive joint action with SIDS on energy transition ahead of other key milestones in 2022 and beyond, including the Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) Forum in Rwanda and Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) to be held in 2022 and COP27 to be held in Africa,” Alache Fisho, the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Legal Adviser on Natural Resources in London told IPS.

The SIDS Toolkit, a digital tool for governments, developed by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the international development organisation, SEforALL, is currently being trialled in the Seychelles, an archipelago nation of 99,000 people, located in the Somali Sea east of the African continent.

Converting the country’s energy system to renewables is imperative for future stability and prosperity, as climate change threatens development gains. “The livelihood of the islanders is being threatened here with sea-level rise. What we are seeing is greater coastal erosion, increased temperature rises and coral bleaching. We are also getting an increasing frequency of cyclones in the region,” Tony Imaduwa, CEO of the Seychelles Energy Commission in the capital, Victoria, told IPS.

The Commonwealth Secretary-General, Rt Hon Patricia Scotland QC, made an official visit to the Seychelles in June 2018. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

In Caribbean and Pacific Island nations, as well, air temperatures are becoming hotter, weather patterns more unpredictable, while sea-level rise is eroding finite land, destroying crops and contaminating freshwater resources.

Last year, an overwhelming 80 percent of the global energy supply was still generated by fossil fuels and only 12 percent by renewables. This puts the world on track toward a devastating temperature increase of 2.6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, claims the International Energy Agency (IEA).

And the bill for importing oil, which comprises 95 percent of primary energy in the Seychelles, is an enormous fiscal burden on the government and its development goals. “It is a drain on our foreign exchange reserves, our earnings, and there is the whole volatile nature of the price. When the price goes up, you get the costs going up, the cost of food goes up, services go up, the electricity cost goes up, transportation goes up. There is the risk associated with the supply, too,” Imaduwa told IPS.

The Seychelles has a human development ranking of 67 out of 189 countries, the second-highest in the African region, and all citizens have access to electricity. But many other SIDS bear much higher levels of energy poverty. In the Pacific Islands, about 70 percent of households lack access to power.

It is, therefore, no surprise that clean energy, which will be more affordable to islanders, is a national priority. The majority of SIDS are committed to achieving 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.

Renewables, ideal for standalone systems, are a good fit for island nations where populations are often scattered across numerous islands separated by vast areas of the ocean. And weather conditions are a great advantage, especially for wind and solar energy. Despite clean energy only comprising 5 percent of the energy mix in the Seychelles, the momentum has begun. The first wind farm was established near the nation’s capital, Victoria, in 2013, and increasingly homes and businesses are installing rooftop solar panels.

But there are challenges to securing the large capital investment needed for complete conversion. In many cases, the lack of strong institutions, enabling regulatory frameworks and small energy markets limit the appeal of the energy sector in SIDS to the private sector and international financiers.

The Seychelles is developing its clean energy sector and blue economy with the support of the Commonwealth and other partners. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

“The Seychelles is no longer considered a Least Developed Country; it is an emerging economy now. So, there is a slight concern from the government that it will not be able to access concessionary loans anymore from multilateral development banks and also that there will be fewer countries that are providing overseas development assistance to the country,” Dr Kai Kim Chiang, the Commonwealth Secretariat’s National Climate Finance Adviser in the Seychelles, told IPS. “The Seychelles is a small country, so they do have challenges in attracting investors because it is a really small market here, and so then the potential for the return of investment is potentially quite small.”

Yet, about US$4 trillion will have to be injected into clean energy growth by 2030, if the global temperature rise is to be restricted to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, reports the IEA. And 70 percent of this will need to be spent in developing and emerging countries.

To this end, the SIDS Toolkit empowers governments to draft investment-grade business cases. First, key data about the economic and energy status of the Seychelles, for example, about employment, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), utility electricity cost and carbon emissions, is entered into the digital application. The toolkit then analyses the data to provide a detailed cost-benefit analysis of development and transition scenarios and identifies the state’s key investment strengths. It also pinpoints where reforms are needed to boost investor confidence, such as deficiencies in legal and institutional capacity.

“It will assist in terms of formulating strategies to unlocking investment in the energy sector in the Seychelles, and that is something that is missing for us. We are focussing on a lot of plans and policies and implementation, but sometimes we struggle on how to bring these together and create a platform that allows us to say, OK, we have a plan, yes, we want to invest in this area, but how do we do it,” Imaduwa said.

The SIDS Toolkit is designed with a broad range of potential investors in mind, including multilateral and private sector financial institutions. However, Fisho emphasised that private sector involvement is “very important”, especially as many renewable energy technologies entail large capital expenditure. “Moreover, the renewable energy technologies are fast evolving. The private sector can bring the required finance and expertise in the deployment of modern technologies,” she said.

Despite the detrimental economic impact of the pandemic worldwide over the past two years, Fisho makes a strong case for the priority of spending on the energy transition. “The pandemic has highlighted the need to transition towards clean energy in SIDS to increase energy security and economic resilience. Investment in renewable energy is consistent with supporting recover better and more resilient economic development, thereby creating more sustainable green jobs and decent income opportunities for current and future generations,” she declared.

 

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Francisco Montes shows the cement tank where he collects rainwater in El Impenetrable. Scarce rainfall in the last two years has created serious trouble for the inhabitants of this four-million-hectare ecoregion, who are scattered around the Chaco region of northern Argentina. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
GENERAL GÜEMES, Argentina , Nov 2 2021 (IPS)

Next to the brick or adobe houses of El Impenetrable, a wild area of forest and grasslands in northern Argentina, loom huge plastic barrels where rainwater collected from the corrugated iron roofs of the houses is stored. However, the barrels are empty, because it has hardly rained for two years, local residents complain.

“Things have been very bad recently. It rained one day in September, but very little,” said Francisco Montes, who has lived for 35 years in a house in a large open area in the middle of a monotonous landscape of trees and bushes, several kilometres from his nearest neighbours.

On the dirt road leading to his house, it is rare to run into a person or a vehicle, but it is easy to come across cows, goats, horses and even pigs, since domestic animals are raised loose in this area, to roam freely in their arduous search for green pastures.

Located in the Argentine portion of the Chaco – the great sparsely forested plain covering more than one million square kilometres, shared with Paraguay and Bolivia – El Impenetrable was so named not only because of the thick brush and the scarcity of roads.

The ecosystem covering some four million hectares also owes its name precisely to the lack of water, which turns most of the vegetation a yellowish hue and is made more dramatic by the combination with temperatures that can be suffocating.

From droughts to floods

Rainfall in the area usually comes in just three months, during the southern hemisphere summer. And rains have been scarce for as long as anyone can remember in this part of the Chaco.

But for two years now the situation has been worse than usual, because the drought has been especially bad, after severe flooding in 2018 and 2019 that wrought havoc among local residents and their livestock, when it rained three times the historical average.

In the absence of piped water, Montes, who lives on his remote property with his wife, is one of the best equipped in the area to deal with the complex scenario, because in his field he not only has a large cement tank with a capacity to store thousands of litres of rainwater, which lately has been of little use. He also has an 11-metre deep well that allows them to extract groundwater.

But this is not enough either. “The water is very brackish. You would have to go at least 20 metres down to get good water,” he told IPS.

Montes, however, at the age of 73, has the resignation of someone who has lived a lifetime knowing that water is a scarce commodity. “Back then we used to take water directly from the river or from a well, when it was available,” he recalled.

He was referring to one of the branches of the Bermejo, one of the biggest rivers in the La Plata basin, which originates in Bolivia and passes about 500 metres from his field. The Bermejito – or “little Bermejo”, as the branch is known locally – is one of the few rivers in El Impenetrable, and the vegetation on its banks is a deep green colour that is not usual in this region.

Goats cross a dirt road in El Impenetrable, an ecosystem of four million hectares, where livestock is raised loose, to roam the area in search of pasture. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

A few kilometres from Montes’ home, near the entrance to the El Impenetrable National Park -a 128,000-hectare protected area created in 2014 – there is a 160 square metre rainwater collector sheet metal roof facility with two tanks that can store up to 40,000 litres.

It was built in 2019 to supply local residents, as part of the “Native Forests and Community” programme.

This Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development programme was supported by a 58.7-million-dollar loan from the World Bank and 2.5 million dollars from the national government and seeks to generate community roots in areas where there are no sources of employment.

Native Forests and Community benefits vulnerable rural communities, both indigenous and non-indigenous, through infrastructure works and training for the sustainable management of natural resources.

One of the programme’s priorities is to promote the use of renewable energies, and it has installed solar panels for electricity generation and solar stoves in areas where the most commonly used fuel is firewood.

According to official figures, the initiative has so far benefited 1,200 families from 60 communities in different provinces of the country, most of them in El Chaco and the rest of northern Argentina.

A community solar panel and rainwater harvesting roof installation near the El Impenetrable National Park in northern Argentina was built in 2019 by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, with support from the World Bank. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Esteban Argañaraz lives only 100 metres from the rainwater collector. Sometimes he goes to fetch water from the community tanks, although he cannot get enough there either, so he resorts to buying drinking water in the nearest town, Miraflores, which is 60 kilometres from his home down a dusty dirt road.

“This year I brought an 8,000-litre water tank. It cost 700 pesos (about seven dollars), but the complicated part was transporting it, which cost 4,000 pesos (40 dollars),” Argañaraz explained to IPS, while showing the well that was dug in front of his house to accumulate water for the animals and irrigation, which is completely dry.

Argañaraz, 60, and his wife have a garden at home to grow vegetables and fruits. But they have had to practically abandon it since 2020, due to the lack of water. Skinny cows and goats are another reflection of the severe drought.

The inhabitants of El Impenetrable rarely manage to sell any animals and almost everyone survives on social assistance. This ecosystem – environmentally degraded by the extractive economy – is part of Argentina’s Northeast region, which has the highest poverty rates in the country, with 45.4 percent of the population living in poverty.

But the situation is complicated in urban areas as well. In fact, the provincial capital Resistencia, with a population of 300,000, has the highest poverty rate in Argentina, at 51.9 percent.

Unpredictability is the rule

“The main characteristic of rainfall in (Argentina’s Chaco province) is its high variability: there are cycles of dry, normal and wet years. The other important aspect is that most of it is concentrated in one part of the year: in the case of El Impenetrable, the rainy season lasts only three months,” water resources engineer Hugo Rohrmann, former president of the Chaco Provincial Water Administration, told IPS.

Jorge Luna, a family farmer raising cows, goats and pigs in El Impenetrable in northern Argentina, stands next to plastic barrels where he collects rainwater and a solar panel that provides electricity. Rainwater harvesting is a very limited solution for families in the El Impenetrable ecoregion due to the lack of rain. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The expert pointed to another important fact: rainfall in El Impenetrable is usually between 600 and 800 millimetres per year, but evaporation, due to heat that can reach 50 degrees C in summer, is much higher – up to 1,100 millimetres.

“That is why neither wetlands nor aquifers with the capacity to supply a population are formed and there is no other choice but to collect rainwater, which is also scarce. The lack of water is becoming more and more evident and makes life more and more difficult for the local population,” Rohrmann added from Resistencia.

Constanza Mozzoni, a biologist from Buenos Aires who has been living in El Impenetrable for two years doing social work, has a categorical answer when asked what life is like for the local population, both indigenous and non-indigenous people: “Everything revolves around how to get water,” she told IPS.

Mozzoni works for the Rewilding Argentina Foundation, an environmental conservation organisation that works in and around the El Impenetrable National Park, and lives in a prefabricated house that also has a rainwater harvesting roof.

The foundation, however, provides all its staff with bottled water that is brought from the town of Miraflores, along the only safe road in El Impenetrable.

By SWAN
PARIS, Nov 2 2021 (IPS)

Claude McKay is having something of a rebirth in France, thanks to independent publishers and to translators such as Jean-Baptiste Naudy.

Naudy is the French translator of McKay’s novel Amiable with Big Teeth (Les Brebis noires de Dieu), one of two translations that have hit bookstores in 2021, generating renewed interest in the work of the Jamaican-born writer (1890-1948). McKay was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a “cultural nomad” who spent time in Europe during the 1920s and 30s, and the author of the famous poem “If We Must Die”.

The first of the two recent translations – Romance in Marseille (Héliotropismes) – was published under its English title last spring, while Naudy’s Les Brebis Noires de Dieu came out at the end of summer during the so called rentrée, the return to routine after the holidays.

A third McKay novel, Home to Harlem (Retour à Harlem, Nada Éditions), has meanwhile been newly translated and is scheduled for publication in early 2022.

This feast of McKay’s work has resulted in profiles of the writer in French newspapers such as Libération, with Naudy’s expert translation receiving particular attention because of the intriguing story behind Amiable with Big Teeth.

The celebrated “forgotten” work – a “colourful, dramatic novel” that “centres on the efforts by Harlem intelligentsia to organize support for the liberation of fascist-controlled Ethiopia,” as Penguin Books describes it – was discovered only in 2009 by then graduate student Jean-Christophe Cloutier while doing research. His discovery came 40 years after McKay had completed the manuscript.

Cloutier and his advisor Brent Hayes Edwards went on to confirm the authenticity of the work, and it was published by Penguin in 2017. Fully aware of this history, Naudy said it was “mind-blowing” to translate the novel, and he drew upon his own background for the rendering into French.

Born in Paris, Naudy studied Francophone literature at the Sorbonne University and design at the Jan van Eyck Academy in the Netherlands. He describes himself as a publisher, translator and “text experimentalist”, and he coordinates “Déborder”, a book series published by independent publishing house Nouvelles Éditions Place. Within this series, he has translated African Journey by Eslanda Goode Robeson (2020) and now the McKay novel.

As a writer, Naudy, under the name of Société Réaliste, has himself published two books, in addition to essays and experimental texts in journals and reviews; and as an artist he has exhibited work in both solo and group shows internationally. One can find examples of his public art pieces around Paris.

 

Jean-Baptiste Naudy in Paris (photo by AM)

 

The following edited interview with Naudy, conducted by email and in person, is part of SWAN’s series about translators of Caribbean literature, done in collaboration with the Caribbean Translation Project.

SWAN: How did the translating of Aimable with Big Teeth come about?

Jean-Baptiste Naudy: In 2019, Sarah Frioux-Salgas and I were invited by Cyrille Zola-Place, director of Nouvelles Éditions Place in Paris, to curate a book series dealing with unclassifiable texts, overreaching genres, intertwining topics. Our common interest for the internationalisation of political and poetical scopes in the 20th century, via the publication of books largely ignored by the classical Western frame of reference, gave birth to this book series, entitled Déborder (To overflow).

The first book to be included was a reprint of Negro Anthology, edited by Nancy Cunard in 1934, a massive collection of poetry, fiction and essays about the Black Atlantic, for which she collaborated with paramount artists and scholars of those years, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, George Padmore and dozens of others.

Since then, we have published five more books in this frame, like the first French translation of Eslanda Robeson’s African Journey, or Sismographie des luttes (Seismography of Struggles), a kind of world history of anticolonial journals, amazingly edited by art historian and writer Zahia Rahmani.

At the beginning of 2020, Sarah told me the story of a newfound book by Claude McKay, Amiable with Big Teeth, edited by Brent Hayes Edwards and Jean-Christophe Cloutier for Penguin Books in 2017.

Searching the archives of a rather obscure New York publisher, Cloutier had found the complete and ready-to-be-published manuscript of a completely unknown novel by McKay. The very fact that such a story was possible – to find out of the blue a full book by a major writer of the 20th century – was unfathomable to me. Nouvelles Éditions Place immediately agreed to the idea of publishing the book in French.

SWAN: Including your translation, there will be three novels by McKay published in French this year and next. Can you explain this surge of international interest in his work?

JBN: The renewed interest in Claude McKay’s oeuvre is global for sure, but also at times pretty local. The critical deconstruction of the Western ideological frame of thought has called for the exposure of another cultural grounding, a counter-narrative of modernity, other stories and histories encompassing the plurality and complexity of dominated voices, visions, sensibilities, positions on their path to liberation.

What was interesting for me was to try to understand or feel what the colonial condition was doing to the language itself. How writing or expressing oneself in a foreign language, an imperial language imposed upon a great variety of cultures, was transforming the language in return

To that extent, McKay is an immense writer, whose very life was bound to this intertwining. Like most of the key figures of the Black Atlantic, he has been largely ignored or under-appreciated by the 20th century literary canon. More than ever, he is a lighthouse for those interested in the interwoven problematics of race, gender, sexuality, and class.

But he is as well a singular figure of displacement, a critically productive internationalist, being at first a Jamaican in New York, then a Caribbean from Harlem in Europe, then a Black writer from France in Morocco, and finally back to the United States, a Black Atlantic wanderer.

Which is also the point of his renewed presence in the French contemporary cultural landscape. The very fact that one of the most preeminent actors of the Harlem Renaissance was, first, a Jamaican, and second, writing from France about the Americas and the global Black diaspora is irresistibly intriguing.

Another important factor is the crucial influence that McKay’s writings had on a number of Francophone literary figures of the 1930s, including the founders of the Négritude movement, the Nardal sisters, Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, Léon Gontran Damas, René Ménil, and many others.

In a nutshell, I would argue that McKay captivates nowadays for all those reasons at the same time. He epitomizes the Black international radical current that rose in the 1920s and 1930s, his critical scope is extremely contemporary, and he is representative of a certain blend of political and cultural cosmopolitanism that happened to exist in the French imperial metropole during the interwar years.

It is interesting to notice that the three books being published now in France deal with different periods of his life: Home to Harlem, his 1928 bestseller (translated Retour à Harlem in the new French translation to be published by Nada Éditions) is a luxurious portrait of Harlem in the 1920s, written while he was in France. Romance in Marseille, released last April by Héliotropismes, another previously unpublished novel from the early 1930s, revolves around the central themes of his most famous novel also set in Marseilles, Banjo. And thus, Amiable with Big Teeth, dating from 1941, being his last fiction and only novel ever written in the United States.

SWAN: In addition to your native French, you speak English and Spanish. Where and how did you begin learning other languages?

JBN: Where I grew up, English and Spanish were mandatory at school. So, I grasped some elements there, quite poorly. Then I had to travel. So, I learned most of my English with Ukrainian artists in Lisbon and bits of Spanish with Brazilian anarchists in Athens. How romantic…

SWAN: How did your interest in translation start?

JBN: My first encounter with the need to translate something happened I guess when I went to London for the first time, in 1997. Following a totally random move – because I liked his name – I bought a washed-out copy of Kamau Brathwaite’s Middle Passages. I had never read anything like that. For sure it sounded like street music to me, half a drunkard rant, half an esoteric psalmody, but the polyphony at work in this single text, the sound and visual poetics of patwa mesmerized me.

So, for the last 25 years, I have been trying to translate exactly that, the very sensation I had in front of this palimpsest of languages. A rant that would be a psalmody, at times unintelligible, at times neat as a scalpel slice. How language can be haunted by the spectre of the past while echoing potentially emancipated futures. What Rimbaud called “the long, immense, rational derangement of the senses”, inscribed on a page where words are sounds are signs are ciphers are colours are noises are tastes are notes and nevertheless, never more than words.

SWAN: Can you tell us more about other works that you’ve translated and how you selected these?

JBN: Last year, I translated African Journey by Eslanda Goode Robeson, and it was a delight. I have an intense admiration for Eslanda Robeson, an amazing transnational feminist networker and anticolonial advocate.

This book was a great success in the USA when it was published in 1945, the first popular book about Africa written by an African American writer. It is a travel diary, at the same time complex and honest, but I particularly liked how Robeson used this genre to create commonality between Africans and Americans.

For the anecdote, Eslanda Robeson and Claude McKay really disliked each other, their writing styles are almost opposite, as well as their social backgrounds and cultural framings; however, I think they were aiming at the same liberation and I love them both!

SWAN: How important is translation for today’s world, especially for publishing underrepresented communities? In the Caribbean, as in other regions, it sometimes feels as if countries are divided by language. How can people in the literary and education spheres help to bridge these linguistic “borders”?

JBN: When I was a student, I had the opportunity to study what we call in my country “Francophone literature”, so literature written by former and present subjects of the French colonial project. Or raised in the postcolonial remains of the French empire.

What was interesting for me was to try to understand or feel what the colonial condition was doing to the language itself. How writing or expressing oneself in a foreign language, an imperial language imposed upon a great variety of cultures, was transforming the language in return.

At its core, Francophone literature has a poetical abundance and a political tumult that always seemed to me in synchronization with the modern condition. Whatever be the scale and the observation point. What people from my neighbourhood in Paris, coming from all corners of the world, were doing via the vernacular popular French slang we were talking every day, the “Francophone” writers were doing the same to literature itself.

Upgrading it to a world-scale. As any other imperial language, French does not belong to French people, fortunately, and that is the main source of its current literary potency as well as the only sound reason to continue to use it.

The political side effects of this linguistic colonial and then postcolonial condition astonished me as well: how this shared imperial language allowed Caribbean peoples, Arabs, Africans, Indochinese, Indians, Guyanese, to relate and elaborate a common ground.

This tremendous poetic force and its radical cosmopolitan perspective bound me to translation, especially when I experimentally realized that the situation was exactly the same with all the other imperial languages, English, Spanish, etc. Suzanne Césaire was maybe one of the first poets to see the Caribbean not so much as separated islands (divided by bodies of water, empires, languages, political status) but as an archipelago, an extremely complex panorama whose unity is undersea and underseen. I consider that my task as a literary translator working on the Atlantic world is to help languages undersee each other. I aim to be a pidginizer.

SWAN: What are your next projects?

JBN: I am working on several translation projects. First of all, an amazingly powerful collection of short stories by South African wonder writer Stacy Hardy. Then, a beautiful and crucial book by Annette Joseph-Gabriel, Reimagining Liberation, dealing with the key role played by Black women in the decolonization of the French empire.

Finally, I will work on the first French translation of The Practice of Diaspora, an essential book by Brent Hayes Edwards, focusing on Paris as a node of the Black Atlantic culture in the interwar years. Its subtitle says it all: Literature, translation and the rise of Black internationalism. This masterwork constructs an analytical frame to relate together René Maran, Alain Locke, Paulette Nardal, Claude McKay, Lamine Senghor, George Padmore, Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, C.L.R. James, Tiemoko Garan Kouyaté, and so many more. As you can easily imagine, it is a mind-blowing book, and I am extremely proud to work on it. – AM /SWAN

 

Credit: Laura Berman, Global Alliance for the Future of Food, 2020

By Ruth Richardson
TORONTO, Canada, Nov 2 2021 (IPS)

Unless food systems transformation is put at the center of climate action, commitments governments have already made, and could make at COP26, will be jeopardized.

Today’s industrialized food system — which includes the growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, and disposal of food and food-related items — makes us ill, doesn’t meet the needs of the global population, and has adverse effects on climate change.

Almost a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food systems. The industrialized practices — from chemical pesticide use to mono-culture crops — at the heart of the dominant global food system have also destroyed 66% of biodiversity, 61% of commercial fish stocks, and 33% of soils.

Then there’s food wastage which equates to 1.3 billion tonnes a per year and produces enough GHG emissions that, should it be a country, it would be the third-largest source of GHG emissions.

We know that waste and loss occur throughout the food supply-chain and mostly involve the waste of edible food by consumers in medium- and high-income countries and loss during harvest, storage, and transport in lower-income countries.

Both food waste and the resulting GHG emissions raise major equity and ethical considerations.

Of course, those detrimental climate impacts then come back to roost in a variety of ways, affecting weather patterns and the very land or seas that are heavily relied upon for crops, fish, and other food.

Ruth Richardson

The resulting lack of ability to grow or access food then becomes a major driver in malnutrition (in all its forms) within communities, with the impacts felt worst by the most vulnerable in our societies — smallholder farmers, the poor, and women.

The 2021 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World estimates that around a tenth of the global population – up to 811 million people – were undernourished last year. Do we really need any other signals that the industrialized food system is simply no longer fit for purpose?

The globalized food system must be overhauled so that food production can be delivered in a way that works with, rather than destroys, our natural resources and pushes planetary boundaries.

It is precisely action on food that is critical to restoring planetary health, radically reducing carbon emissions, protecting nature and biodiversity, and also delivering on all Sustainable Development Goals, from zero hunger to good health and wellbeing for all.

Despite a diversity of evidence making this need for transformation abundantly clear — from scientific reports and peer-reviewed literature to lived experience, oral histories, and ways of knowing — the action we need is still not where it should be on the political agenda: at the top.

The risk to climate commitments

There is hardly any mention of food systems in the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDCs) plans — the non-binding national plans that highlight countries’ actions to tackle climate change — that we’ve assessed to date.

The Global Alliance for the Future of Food is a strategic alliance of philanthropic foundations working to transform global food systems. Out of eight assessments of countries’ NDCs we have done so far, none fully account for emissions associated with food imports, particularly those related to deforestation.

Research shows that, in the average European diet, a sixth of the carbon footprint comes from deforestation emissions. Meat and dairy production already use 30% of the Earth’s land surface, driving unsustainable land-use as land is cleared to produce more and more livestock and the crops that feed them.

Only Germany provides a clear commitment to move away from harmful subsidies and to promote sustainable food consumption, and, just Colombia and Kenya have put forward ambitious measures around agroecology and regenerative agriculture.

These concepts promote sustainable farming approaches that compliment nature’s systems rather than diminish them and respect human rights.

Action to be taken

Unless others follow suit, all climate efforts will be undermined and any commitments negotiated in Glasgow that lack a systemic and global approach to food systems transformation will simply be inadequate given the vast mitigation and adaptation potential that the sector holds.

Governments worldwide must look at food systems through the lens of climate action and find new and restorative ways of feeding communities, without pushing the planet to the limits. Fortunately, approaching climate adaptation and mitigation in the context of food systems broadens the range of opportunities to achieve climate goals and facilitates the consideration of systems level effects and interactions.

A food systems perspective also enables engagement of the full range of stakeholders that should be involved in food systems transformation such as those from other sectors as well as local and Indigenous groups that have knowledge of the issues.

Such a perspective is critical to addressing climate change and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, which are all linked by food as the golden thread.

Tried and tested methods of agroecology and regenerative agriculture already exist for others to roll out and replicate. For example, in India, chemical-free farming has been used by the 600,000 farmers involved in the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming programme to tackle soil degradation — which includes erosion, desertification, and other changes in soil that reduce its capacity to provide ecosystem services — and produce more variety of crops.

Research shows that farming without the addition of synthetic fertilizer or pesticides is leading to incredible reductions in pollution and emissions, and better wages and earnings for farmers.

Meanwhile, while in Africa, in the Luangwa Valley of Zambia, COMACO — the social enterprise promoting agroforestry — is retraining poachers to be farmers, tackling deforestation, reporting significant impacts in carbon offset, and putting an end to wildlife killing.

Alongside these ‘beacons of hope’ governments could also promote nutritious, sustainable, whole-food diets adapted to local ecosystems and socio-cultural contexts, acting on the interconnections between food and climate.

There’s a growing body of research that shows that dietary change can help tackle climate change. For example, increased GHG emissions have been associated with diets higher in animal products.

Yet, historically, this has received less consideration in climate policy than, say, the energy and transport sectors. Policymakers have it in their power to catalyze initiatives that enable and create positive food environments that provide equitable access and dietary guidance.

There are steps governments can immediately take, ready-made policies they can adopt, partnerships they can forge. We have the evidence, we have the science, we have the urgency.

What we need now is to see the political will and climate finance moving alongside bravery and connected action from our leaders so that we can all live better, as well as sustainably, on this one Earth of ours.

Ruth Richardson is Executive Director, Global Alliance for the Future of Food

 

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Dr Ijaz Ali has spent the last 11 years persuading the authorities to use genetically engineered mosquitoes to fight dengue fever. The health department, however, is concerned about unforeseen circumstances that could arise from this method.

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Karachi , Nov 2 2021 (IPS)

Twenty-three-year-old Sarah Tajammal felt a sense of “impending doom” as she fought high fever, nausea, bouts of vomiting and extreme fatigue after being diagnosed with dengue two weeks back.

Living in Lahore’s DHA area, which has reported the most dengue cases “because of the damp green environment”, she may have caught it at home, or when she went on a tree plantation drive organized by her office, she told IPS over the phone from the eastern city in the Punjab province.

In Punjab, the number has crossed 11,000 and new cases continue to rise. With two and three patients occupying a hospital bed, according to news reports, many are forced to lay on stretchers in corridors.

Tajammal was lucky. Her condition did not reach that critical level. Her fever subsided in three days though nausea and vomiting continued to hound her for a week.

Two weeks later, she feels almost new and is gaining back her strength.

Pakistan has seen a rise in the number of dengue fever cases, genetically engineered mosquito has been mooted as a solution.

But if there is one lesson she has learnt, it is never to underestimate the power of the diminutive flying fly. “I’d avoid going outdoors till it gets cold enough for the mosquito to die,” she said.

It was back in 1994 when dengue was first reported in Pakistan, but it was not until 2005 when the first epidemic occurred in Karachi. Since 2010, Pakistan has been experiencing an epidemic-like situation in three provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Punjab and Sindh.

While Lahore continues to battle the dengue virus, things are not looking too good in the port city of Karachi either.

“We are seeing loads of dengue cases. It seems to have replaced Covid-19,” admitted Dr Naseem Salahuddin, heading the infectious diseases department at Karachi’s The Indus Hospital. Those with mild or moderate dengue are sent home with instructions to show up for a follow-up,” she added.

The spread of dengue from Karachi to Lahore and from Lahore to different parts of the Punjab and then to relatively temperate zones of KP in recent years indicate that Aedes mosquitoes have gone through “adaptation to relatively temperate zones”, explained Dr Erum Khan, professor of microbiology at the department of pathology and laboratory medicine at the Aga Khan University, in Karachi. She said climate change, along with a runway population, urbanization and increase in travel and transportation, is stoking it further.

“The severity of the disease has increased, but the government’s input is inconsistent and without any long term disease control strategy,” lamented Khan.

While mortality is high among patients who come in late in the course of the infection, Salahuddin said it was important to keep a close eye on the patient while keeping a “balance” between giving just enough fluid but “not overloading” them with it.

At the same time, while hospitals in Karachi can manage treatment, she feared in future, “cases are going to get more and more severe and bigger and bigger numbers and a time may come when hospitals may become overburdened”.

That is why healthcare professionals like her cannot emphasize enough for the city administration to clean up the city of garbage and pools of water from rain or overflowing gutters and broken pipelines.

Otherwise, warned Salahuddin, there is going to be another health disaster for the public. “Cleaning of the city is our only chance,” she pointed out.

“Given that majority of the population do not know about whether they were ever infected before, the situation in Pakistan can worsen in future outbreaks,” warned Dr Ijaz Ali, a virologist at Islamabad’s Comsats University.

Bad governance, the inability to understand the mosquito’s behaviour or habitat, and refusal to allow research or use established scientific methods in other countries were some of the barriers to controlling the Aedes mosquito population in Pakistan, said Ali.

“Sporadic recurrence of dengue each year and emergence of chikungunya and zika point towards the failure of existing strategies, if any, to control the vector population,” he pointed out.

The government, for its part, continues to spray insecticide across the cities and has, over the years, got better at strengthening treatment and diagnostics.

Pupa of the Aedes mosquito developing into an adult. Pakistan has seen a rise in dengue fever caused by the mosquito and the control of the disease continues to be problematic.

But said Ali, the use of insecticides has led to insecticide resistance. He particularly finds the open-air fumigation drives mere “cosmetic” and a “least effective” measure. As for treatment and diagnostics, he said it still did not address tackling the “source” of the dengue infection, the mosquito itself.

He believes a combination of chemical (insecticide spraying), mechanical (mosquito traps placed near and inside hubs of transportation such as airports and bus stations) and biological (with biological a major component) strategies would be best in combating vector-borne diseases in the long run.

For the last 11 years, he has been trying to convince both the provincial and central governments of making “billions of mosquitoes in labs”, which when released in the wild, could reduce the spread of dengue virus, but with little luck.

The released genetically engineered male (only) mosquitoes, when they mate with Aedes females (also the carrier of the virus), would produce offspring that would die while still at larvae or pupae stage, explained Ali, the only Pakistani with a doctorate in genetically modified mosquitoes. In addition, genetic modifications, he said, can also shorten the life span, cause sterility and even death of the transformed Aedes species.

However, those who can decide have dawdled for too long with the result that the virus has gone out of control, he remarked. He has been trying to draw attention but with little success. “They [government officials] tell me if word gets out the government was fighting the virus by letting loose even more mosquitoes, they will have to confront the wrath of the public!”

“Any biological intervention altering environmental ecosystem has to be very carefully weighed for its pros and cons,” said Dr Rana Safdar, director-general, health, Pakistan. “Unforeseen consequences of releasing GM mosquitoes cannot be ruled out outright,” he added warily.

“Field trials of genetically modified mosquitoes have successfully been carried out in various countries including Malaysia, French Polynesia, Brazil, Australia, Vietnam and Singapore,” said Ali adding the methods have not had any “significant impact on human and animal health or the ecosystem”.

But Safdar remains unconvinced. “Not only can genetic engineering alter the mosquito’s targeted characteristic but can go beyond.” This tampering with nature could potentially enhance the risk of other mosquito-borne diseases or become a source of another nuisance.

“Moreover, interaction of new species with pre-existing vectors in an area of intervention may lead to some new environmental challenges,” that the country may not be ready to battle with.

“I can understand the frustration of the researcher,” said Khan, but since Pakistan is a signatory to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity, it has to keep in mind the “biosafety concerns” on the environment and human health. “There are no clear guidelines so far. Therefore, I believe the government is reluctant,” she said.

While Khan conceded, “replacing GM mosquitoes to reduce disease was a tangible solution”, she remained wary.

“For now, I would recommend more experiments under controlled environment to be carried out to assess the impact on biodiversity before releasing GM mosquitoes in the wild, and because the study is a complex one, it should have a team comprising environmentalists, social scientists and biotechnologist working together as one health concept to get a complete picture,” she said.

But if absolutely nothing is done and the mosquito continues to live on, Ali predicted Pakistan might experience epidemics of yellow fever in the years to come.

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 2 2021 (IPS)

Current climate mitigation plans will result in a catastrophic 2.7°C world temperature rise. US$1.6–3.8 trillion is needed annually to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5°C.

Creative accounting
Rich countries have long broken their 2009 Copenhagen COP16 pledge to mobilize “US$100 billion per year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries”. The pandemic has worsened the situation, reducing available finance. Poor countries – many already caught in debt traps – struggle to cope.

Anis Chowdhury

While minuscule compared to the finance needed to adequately address climate change, it was considered a good start. The number includes both public and private finance, with sources – public/private, grants/loans, etc. – unspecified.

Such ambiguity has enabled double-counting, poor transparency and creative accounting, noted the UN Independent Expert Group on Climate Finance. Thus, the rich countries’ Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported US$80bn in climate finance for developing countries in 2019.

Fudging numbers
But OECD climate finance numbers include non-concessional commercial loans, ‘rolled-over’ loans and private finance. Some donor governments count most development aid, even when not primarily for ‘climate action’.

Also, the dispute over which funds are to be considered ‘new and additional’ has not been resolved since the 1992 adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Rio Earth Summit.

Official development assistance redesignated as climate finance should be categorized as ‘reallocated’, rather than ‘additional’ funding. Consequently, poor countries are losing aid for education, health and other public goods.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

India has disputed the OECD claim of US$57bn climate finance in 2013-14, suggesting a paltry US$2.2bn instead! Other developing countries have also challenged such creative accounting and ‘greenwashing’.

Climate finance anarchy
Developing countries expected the promised US$100bn yearly to be largely public grants disbursed via the then new UNFCCC Green Climate Fund. Oxfam estimates public climate financing at only US$19–22.5bn in 2017-18, with little effective coordination of public finance.

Developing countries believed their representatives would help decide disbursement, ensuring equity, efficacy and efficiency. But little is actually managed by developing countries themselves. Instead, climate finance is disbursed via many channels, including rich countries’ aid and export promotion agencies, private banks, equity funds and multilateral institutions’ loans and grants.

Several UN programmes also support climate action, including the UN Environment Programme, UN Development Programme and Global Environment Facility. But all are underfunded, requiring frequent replenishment. Uncertain financing and developing countries’ lack of meaningful involvement in disbursements make planning all the more difficult.

Financialization has meant that climate funding increasingly involves private financial interests. Claims of private climate finance from rich to poor countries are much contested. Even the OECD estimate has not been rising steadily, instead fluctuating directionless from US$16.7bn in 2014 to US$10.1bn in 2016 and US$14.6bn in 2018.

The actual role and impact of private finance are also much disputed. Unsurprisingly, private funding is unlikely to help countries most in need, address policy priorities, or compensate for damages beyond repair. Instead, ‘blended finance’ often uses public finance to ‘de-risk’ private investments.

Putting profits first
The poorest countries desperately need to rebuild resilience and adapt human environments and livelihoods. Adaptation funds are required to better cope with the new circumstances created by global warming.

Needed ‘adaptation’ – such as improving drainage, water catchment and infrastructure – is costly, but nonetheless desperately necessary.

But ‘donors’ prefer publicizable ‘easy wins’ from climate mitigation, especially as they increasingly gave loans, rather than grants. Thus, although the Paris COP21 Agreement sought to balance mitigation with adaptation, most climate finance still seeks to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

As climate adaptation is rarely lucrative, it is of less interest to private investors. Rather, private finance favours mitigation investments generating higher returns. Thus, only US$20bn was for adaptation in 2019 – less than half the sum for mitigation. Unsurprisingly, the OECD report acknowledges only 3% of private climate finance has been for adaptation.

Chasing profits, most climate finance goes to middle-income countries, not the poorest or most vulnerable. Only US$5.9bn – less than a fifth of total adaptation finance – has gone to the UN’s 46 ‘least developed countries’ (LDCs) during 2014-18! This is “less than 3% of [poorly] estimated LDCs annual adaptation finance needs between 2020-2030”.

Cruel ironies
The International Monetary Fund recognizes the “unequal burden of rising temperatures”. It is indeed a “cruel irony” that those far less responsible for global warming bear the brunt of its costs. Meanwhile, providing climate finance via loans is pushing poor countries deeper into debt.

Increasingly frequent extreme weather disasters are often followed by much more borrowing due to poor countries’ limited fiscal space. But loans for low-income countries (LICs) cost much more than for high-income ones. Hence, LICs spend five times more on debt than on coping with climate change and cutting GHG emissions.

Four-fifths of the most damaging disasters since 2000 have been due to tropical storms. The worst disasters have raised government debt in 90% of cases within two years – with no prospect of debt relief.

As many LICs are already heavily indebted, climate disasters have been truly catastrophic – as in Belize, Grenada and Mozambique. Little has trickled down to the worst affected, and other vulnerable, needy and poor communities.

Funding gap
Based on countries’ own long-term goals for mitigation and adaptation, the UNFCCC’s Standing Committee on Finance estimated that developing countries need US$5.8-5.9 trillion in all until 2030. The UN estimates developing countries currently need US$70bn yearly for adaptation, rising to US$140–300bn by 2030.

In July, the ‘V20’ of finance ministers from 48 climate-vulnerable countries urged delivery of the 2009 US$100bn vow to affirm a commitment to improve climate finance. This should include increased funds, more in grants, and with at least half for adaptation – but the UNFCCC chief has noted lack of progress since.

Only strong enforcement of rigorous climate finance criteria can stop rich countries abusing currently ambiguous reporting requirements. Currently fragmented climate financing urgently needs more coherence and strategic prioritization of support to those most distressed and vulnerable.

This month’s UNFCCC COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, can and must set things right before it is too late. Will the new Cold War drive the North to do the unexpected to win the rest of the world to its side instead of further militarizing tensions?

 

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

As the leaders of Asia and the Pacific prepare to head to Glasgow for the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), they can be sure that our region will be in the spotlight: many of the most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change are located here; the seven G20 members from this region are responsible for over half of global GHG emissions; and five of the 10 top countries with the greatest historic responsibility for emissions since the beginning of the twentieth century are from Asia.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

There is an urgent need to raise ambitions

The starting point is not encouraging, however. A joint study by ESCAP, UNEP and UN Women shows that the Asia-Pacific region is falling even further behind in its efforts: greenhouse gas emissions are projected to increase by 34 per cent by 2030 compared to 2010 levels. Getting the 30 Asian and Pacific countries that have so far updated their NDCs to drastically raise ambitions and securing adequate NDCs from the other 19 who have yet to submit will determine if the region — indeed the world — can maintain any hope of keeping the temperature increase well below two degrees.

Momentum for climate action is building

There is some reason for hope. Leaders have been lining up to make their carbon neutrality pledges, shrinking the gap from commitment to action across the sectors that drive the region’s development. With major players moving away from foreign investments in coal, momentum is building for a transition to cleaner energy sources. There is a growing share of renewables in the energy mix, and going forward we should support increasing subregional and regional energy connectivity to enable the integration of higher shares of renewable energy. However more support to exporters is needed to wean them off lucrative coal and fossil fuel reserves, supported by long-term low emissions development strategies (LT-LEDS).

The shift to sustainable transport has been slow but the EV-mobility is growing. Countries are also emphasizing low-carbon mobility in a new regional action plan under negotiation ahead of a ministerial conference on transport later this year. Local government commitments to carbon neutrality also support the greening of our cities.

The ESCAP Climate-smart Trade and Investment Index (SMARTII) and carbon-border adjustment mechanisms shows that Asian and Pacific economies have significant room to make their trade and investment more climate-smart. A growing number of countries include climate and environment-related provisions in trade agreements. More are requiring energy efficiency labelling and standards on imports. Digitalization of existing trade processes also helps reduce CO2 emissions per transaction and should be accelerated, including through the regional UN treaty on cross-border paperless trade facilitation.

The ESCAP Sustainable Business Network is crafting an Asia-Pacific Green Business Deal in pursuit of a “green” competitive advantage, while companies are responding to greater shareholder and consumer pressure for science-based targets that align businesses with climate aspirations. Entrepreneurs, SMEs and large industries in the region could adopt this new paradigm, which would also enable countries to meet their commitments for sustainable development.

Supporting ambition with the power of finance

Such ambitious climate action will require a realignment of finance and investment towards the green industries and jobs of tomorrow. Innovative financial instruments and the implementation of debt-for-climate swaps can help to mobilize this additional funding. Putting a price on carbon and applying carbon pricing instruments will create liquidity to drive economic activity up and emissions down. Mandatory climate-related financial disclosure will help investors direct their investments towards climate action solutions that will help manage risks associated with climate-related problems.

People-centred action, focusing on groups in vulnerable situations

It is clear from the science and the frequency of disasters in the region that time is not on our side. The combination of disasters, pandemic and climate change is expanding the number of people in vulnerable situations and raising the “riskscape”. Countries are ill-prepared for complex overlapping crises; the intersection of COVID-19 with natural hazards and climate change remains poorly understood and gives rise to hotspots of emerging and intensifying risks. Building resilience must combine climate mitigation efforts and investments in nature-based climate solutions. Moreover, it also requires increasing investments in universal social protection systems that provide adequate benefits over the lifecycle to people and households. The active engagement of women and girls is critical to ensuring inclusive climate action and sustainable outcomes.

The Way Forward

Without concerted action, carbon neutrality is not within the reach of the Asia-Pacific region by 2050. All stakeholders need to collaborate and build a strong case for decisive climate action. Our leaders simply cannot afford to go to Glasgow with insufficient ambition and return empty handed. Since it was founded nearly 75 years ago, ESCAP has supported the formation of strategic alliances that have lifted millions out of poverty and guided the region to enabling a better standard of life. The time is right for such an alliance of governments, the private sector and financial institutions to help turn the full power of the region’s ingenuity and dynamism into the net zero development pathway that our future depends on.

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

 

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Sun sets in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. Credit: WMO/Ali Alhawas

By Lany Harijanti
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands, Nov 1 2021 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly caused the largest economic and societal shock the world has experienced this century. Yet it was not unforeseen.

As far back as 2006, the annual Global Risks Report from the World Economic Forum warned that a pandemic was an ‘acute threat’ across all industries globally. This year’s WEF report expands into new dimensions of risk, such as the consequences of digital inequality and cybersecurity failure.

Meanwhile, the 2021 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sounded a ‘code red for humanity’ – setting out in the starkest terms that the risks of inaction on climate change are now irrefutable.

What all of these risks have in common is that they threaten or disrupt not only economies but, more importantly, the wellbeing and sustainability of humanity and the planet. It’s logical, therefore, to conclude that they are challenges that demand global cooperation and societal cohesion to overcome.

Getting to grips with sustainability impacts

At the corporate-level, effective, pre-emptive, and dynamic enterprise risk management is more relevant than ever. That is why the role of risk manager is no longer confined to traditional financial risks and regulatory expectations but progressively is contributing more into how to support a sustainable business model.

The GRI Standards – the world’s most widely used and comprehensive sustainability reporting standards – enable organizations to assess and communicate their impacts, which is increasingly relevant from the perspective of risk management.

The revised Universal Standards – launched this month – re-emphasized the scope of impact needs to be inclusive of potential risk.

Credit: United Nations

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) describes sustainability risks as uncertain social or environmental conditions that could cause significant negative impacts on the company.

As the pandemic has proven, these risks can pose existential threats to companies. Or, as former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice put it: “sustainability is a multiplier of risk”, exponentially increasing volatility and uncertainty.

What this means is that, to be successful over the long-term, businesses must not lose sight of their sustainability risks. Against this backdrop, a recent GRI webinar, Aligning Sustainability and Risk Management, explored the ways that the integration of sustainability was shaping the role of risk managers, increasingly their relevance to the organizational transformation process.

Here we share some of the insights from the session, which was the second in our Building Leadership for Sustainable Business Expert Series.

Incentivizing risk analysis

Constant Van Aerschot, Director of WBCSD Asia Pacific, pointed out that many companies tend to treat sustainability issues separately from risk issues.

A recent WBCSD report on integrating sustainability and enterprise risk revealed that companies recognize that the material topics in their sustainability reports have a financial impact – yet these same companies often fail to address ESG-related risks in their annual risk filings.

Priya Bellino, Ernst and Young’s ASEAN Head of Sustainability and ESG for Financial Services Consulting, emphasized the role of financial institutions in encouraging companies to manage sustainability risks. The example she shared was in the real estate sector.

Climate change and extreme weather events are exposing physical assets to a much higher risk, which affects the value of real estate portfolios. As a consequence, we are seeing more incentivization through green building financing and the adoption of green certifications.

To access new opportunities, companies need to measure and monitor “investment-grade sustainability performance”. That cannot be achieved without reliable and comparable disclosure – with Priya acknowledging that GRI reporting helps the company to deliver the required ESG data.

Yet – as Tony Rooke, Director of Climate Transition Risk at Willis Towers Watson, set out – determining the right ESG data points is a crucial step on the journey to understanding risks and achieving sustainable business outcomes.

Tony went on to share that, for companies to begin to understand their role in tackling global risks, such as climate change, the market needs to further develop or create a reward system for those who transition to zero carbon business models.

The future of risk management

According to the 2020 State of Risk Oversight report, from the Enterprise Risk Management Initiative, 54% of large organizations and 58% of public companies have appointed a Chief Risk Officer (CRO). With the growth of the role, we have also seen increases in scope – helping organizations identify, analyze and mitigate their risk exposure.

So, it is clear that many organizations are recognizing effective risk management as a key ingredient to the long-term wellbeing of the business.

Where the CRO evolution can and must deepen is in the correlation between enterprise risk and sustainability risk. Having a CRO that leads on sustainability is a good sign that a company is resolute in its sustainability commitment.

The CRO does not have to be a know-it-all; more important is that they have the competencies to lead and build a team, collaborate with external stakeholders such as investors and regulators, bringing the ESG and conventional risks strands together into a single, meaningful narrative.

As Ricardo Nicanor N. Jacinto, Trustee of the Institute of Corporate Directors Philippines, articulated, the CRO is fast becoming “both the risk culture custodian and champion”. That is increasingly significant as the challenges of COVID-19 underline that we live in a volatile, uncertain and complex world.

Therefore, whatever is up next on the risk forecast – be it this pandemic, the climate crisis or a yet to be defined new threat – having the expertise to assess the multiple and concurrent sustainability risks facing the business is more essential than ever before.

Lany Harijanti is the Regional Program Manager of the GRI ASEAN Hub. She has been with GRI since 2018 and has a remit to build the capacity of sustainability reporting among first-time reporters and SMEs in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. Lany has worked in international development for the last 20 years, including previous roles with the UN Development Program (UNDP) and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is the independent, international organization that helps businesses and other organizations take responsibility for their impacts, by providing the global common language to report those impacts. The GRI Standards, which are provided as a free public good, are the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting standards.

 

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Excerpt:

The Middle East Green Initiative launched in Saudi Arabia last month was hailed by the UN’s deputy chief as a valuable commitment and strategic vision, to transition regional economies away from unsustainable development, to a model “fit for the challenges of the 21st century”

The UN delegate’s lounge, usually a hive of activity, has remained largely dead due to the pandemic lockdown—except during the high-level segment of the General Assembly last September. Credit: Inter Press Service (IPS)

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 1 2021 (IPS)

The United Nations, which suffered a pandemic lockdown over the last 20 months– with most staffers tele-working from their homes– is expected to return to near-normal, come November 15.

In a letter to New York-based staffers, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says that “in the light of improved conditions” relating to the spread of corona virus infections, “the exception, which currently allows staff members to telework up to four days per week, will be discontinued, beginning November 15.”

As of that date, he says, requests for telecommuting may be authorized by managers in line with the policy on Flexible Working Arrangements, ST/SGB/2019/3, and subject to the nature of the functions being performed, as well as to work exigencies.

“Managers are encouraged to afford flexibility to staff members in line with the lessons learned over the past 20 months regarding adaptability and flexibility in our working methods. Furthermore, the requirement for core working hours will remain suspended”, the letter adds.

Last month, New York city Mayor Bill de Blasio mandated vaccinations for thousands of City employees, including police, fire fighters, sanitation workers, hospital staff and municipal employees who will be put on “no pay leave” if they are not vaccinated – either for medical, personal, political or religious reasons.

But, so far, the UN has not placed any such penalties on un-vaccinated staffers—even though some private sector employers in the US have told their employees: “Get Vaccinated or Get Fired.”

The Secretary-General’s authority, as the UN’s chief administrative officer, applies primarily to staffers, not to hundreds of diplomats, who are subject to restrictions only by the 193-member General Assembly, the UN’s highest policy-making body.

UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters late October “the vaccination rate for UN staff … is about 87.08 per cent that are fully vaccinated, staff in total”.

The empty racks on the UN’s third floor, home to several news organizations. Credit: IPS

In a letter to UN-accredited journalists last month, Tal Mekel, Chief, Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit (MALU) in the Department of Global Communications, was more specific.

“As the transition continues from Phase 2 to Next Normal – gradual return to the workplace at UN Headquarters– additional precautionary measures will be taken in an effort to ensure a safe work environment for everyone.”

“As you may know, COVID-19 vaccinations are now mandated for UN staff performing certain tasks and/or certain occupational groups at UNHQ whose functions do not allow sufficient management of exposure.”

All journalists were requested by MALU to send information relating to date of vaccination, location of vaccination (city) and proof of vaccination (as attachment).

Asked about the status of the un-vaccinated, Mekel told IPS: “Access is suspended until vaccination status is confirmed.”

Guy Candusso, a former First Vice President of the UN Staff Union in New York told IPS: “I believe the policy before COVID was to allow telecommuting for up to 3 days per week. But in any case, it should depend on the nature of the work.”

Asked whether it is wise to get staff back into the building when infection rates are still relatively high in New York city—and while about 13 percent of UN staff remain unvaccinated– he said: “there will never be 100% of staff vaccinated for various reasons. But of more concern is how many diplomats, consultants, office cleaners and cafeteria workers have been vaccinated.”

“Only when you look at the whole picture can you make an informed decision,” he added.

The Secretary-General’s circular says “the overwhelming majority of staff have reported that they have been fully vaccinated.”

Still, says the circular, the UN will take precautions compelling all personnel to continue to wear masks in common areas, such as corridors, elevators, and restrooms.

Masks are also mandatory in enclosed meeting spaces where the vaccination status of all participants has not been confirmed.

However, vaccinated personnel are no longer required to wear masks while working at their individual workstations. Personnel who are not vaccinated will continue to be required, at all times, to wear masks throughout UN premises and to observe physical distancing wherever it is possible to do so, he added.

Prisca Chaoui, President of the 3,500-strong staff coordinating council in Geneva, which is home to multiple UN agencies, told IPS that at the UN Office in Geneva (UNOG) “ we conducted a survey that showed that more than half of those who took part in it wanted to have the COVID pass imposed to get access to the compound.”

”But our management decided not to”.

“Other international organizations in Geneva such as WTO, WIPO, ITU and WMO are gradually imposing the pass to access the premises or a negative test within the last 48 hours.”

She said UNOG staff are required, as of 3 November, to be back in office for two days a week.

“This is a welcome step as we need to be physically back to office even though staff have never stopped to work since March 2020, but we wish it were possible to get more safety measures such as the proof of vaccination or a negative test result”.

Still, she said, some staff are concerned about the return to office without these measures being imposed.

“I believe there should be a harmonized approach as each organization is currently taking its own decision, depending on the duty station, which is normal in a way, as the epidemiological situation is different from one place to another.”

But in locations where staff have access to vaccination, such as Geneva, this shouldn’t be the case. In Geneva, which is host of many international organizations, there is a disparity in the measures adopted, which shouldn’t have been the case.

“I believe that safety measures, including the COVID pass, are important for a safe return to office.

In his circular Guterres says one of the reasons to return to near normal conditions is that conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City have continued to improve and stabilize, and the host country is further opening for international travel starting on 8 November 2021.

In addition, the overwhelming majority of UN staff have reported that they have been fully vaccinated.

“I want to once again thank all colleagues for your efforts during this unprecedented period. You have helped ensure the uninterrupted work of the Organization and support for Member States as needed.”

Ian Richards, former President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations (CCISUA) told IPS that in a survey carried out at the UN in Geneva, staff said it wanted administration to request either proof of vaccination, recovery or a negative test to enter the building and cafeteria, like at the WTO and WMO.

Many said it would make them feel safer returning to their offices, especially as infection rates in Geneva have been shooting up, much of the building is open space and authorities are recommending teleworking, he added.

“Administration refused staff’s safety request saying that it would prevent delegates attending meetings. While we understand that there are political considerations, we don’t quite buy this argument”, said Richards.

He also pointed out that Geneva-based diplomats have all been able to get vaccinated and those travelling in from abroad will have a PCR with them or can easily get one.

“We hope the administration will reconsider its decision so we can help our offices get back to business in the safest way possible.”

 

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Patricia Scotland

By External Source
Oct 30 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland has called for all countries to deliver an ambitious and transformative outcome at the imminent UN Climate Change Conference COP26, while appealing for increased support for the smallest and most vulnerable nations.

The Secretary-General will lead a delegation to the summit, to advocate for the interests of the 54 member countries, including 32 small states, and raise awareness about key Commonwealth actions to address the climate crisis.

Days ahead of the summit, the Secretary-General said:

“I urge leaders to come to the table with the highest possible ambition and a reinvigorated determination to do all we can to keep a 1.5 degree cap on global warming. The science is clear – failing on this mission will cost us a viable, sustainable future for our children and grandchildren. We must not squander this opportunity to build back on a more sustainable path.

“I call on governments to align their COVID-19 recovery planning to the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The developed world needs to keep its promise to deliver US$100 billion every year through to 2025 to support developing countries as they try to cope with the damaging impacts of this climate crisis. Additional financial support is also needed to address loss and damage, particularly for the most vulnerable.”

The Commonwealth Secretariat will be hosting a pavilion at the COP26 venue for the first time, with a wide range of in-person and hybrid events planned over two weeks from 1 – 12 November. An online hub containing event information, live online broadcasts and other resources is now available.

The Secretariat will also be launching a number of key initiatives at COP26, in the area of climate finance, sustainable land management, energy transition, natural resource management and ocean action.

• The Commonwealth Secretary-General and relevant spokespeople will be available for media interviews around COP26 and climate change. For media requests, please see contact information below.

• View the Commonwealth Pavilion event schedule

• Visit https://climate.thecommonwealth.org to watch events live and find more information about Commonwealth Secretariat activities at COP26