Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

From left to right: Augustine Njamnshi an environmental legal expert, Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, a negotiator from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mohammed Nasr, the the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) Chair. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MADRID, Dec 11 2019 (IPS)

As the 25th session of climate negotiations draw to an end this week, the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) have been calling on the world to consider the continent as a special case in terms of implementation of the Paris Agreement and climate finance.

• The Paris Agreement is an agreement reached at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) in Paris, France, where the world’s nations undertook a determined course to reduce climate change. Among the commitments was to reduce the increase in global temperatures.

“We have been pushing for Africa to be given special considerations given the climate-related calamities already bedevilling the continent vis-à-vis the negligible amount of greenhouse gases emitted,” Ambassador Mohamed Nasr, the AGN chair and the Head of Environmental Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Egypt, told journalists at COP25 in Madrid.

He said that that the Paris Agreement, which was passed in 2015, had little understanding or acknowledgement for Africa’s special circumstances.

• The argument is that the African continent emits a mere 4 percent of the total greenhouse gases emitted globally, yet climate-related impacts are enormous, and science has shown that the situation is only going to worsen in the near future.

“This discussion has taken some time from 2015 until last year when it became clear that the issue has to be taken forward in a more constructive approach,” said Nasr.

Natural disasters

• In 2011, for example, the Horn of Africa region experienced a severe drought that claimed over 260,000 lives, making it one of the worst mass atrocities ever experienced in the region, according to the United Nations Dispatch.
• Another drought followed five years later in 2017, and in the first six months of 2019 there was another devastating drought in the region affecting more than 15.3 million people according to the United Nations.

Immediately after the drought, the Horn of Africa region expected a short rainy season, which usually begins in April. But this didn’t occur and instead the entire region is currently experiencing heavy downpours, which meteorological experts say is due to the warming of the Indian Ocean.

• So far, the region has had more than 300 percent above average rainfall, and this has resulted in floods, mudslides, and the collapse of buildings – which has caused the deaths to hundreds of people, while displacing thousands of households in the region.
• And when the floods eventually end, the region is expected to become a hotspot of waterborne diseases and other climate-related diseases such as malaria.
• At the same time the southern part of the continent is experiencing what farmers say is the worst drought they can remember.
• And earlier this year, Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, whose intensity and occurrence was attributed to  climate change, swept through Southern Africa affecting more than 2.2 million people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

“Science has already warned that Africa was going to be the most impacted by climate change, and some of the disasters we are witnessing are just but a tip of the iceberg,” Augustine Njamnshi, a Cameroonian environmental legal expert, told IPS.

“We need funds to help our people develop resilience to these disasters, we need to give them appropriate technologies to enable them adapt, and we also need to consider that some of the problems they are experiencing are not their own making, and therefore it is injustice for them,” Njamnshi said.

A U.N. report indicates that African countries are paying between 2 to 9 percent of their GDP on adapting to climate change, a phenomenon caused by the developed world and Asian Tigers. And according to Dr James Murombedzi, a policy expert at the U.N., most of these expenditures are never budgeted for.

Climate Science

According to Nasr, AGN recognises last year’s scientific report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which warned that on average Africa will be impacted at least 2° Celsius more than the rest of the world.

“This means that if the global temperatures rise by 1.5° Celsius, then Africa will experience 3.5, and this is a clear reason why the continent must never be treated the same way as the rest of the world,” said Nasr.

Africa Commitment to Paris Agreement

Nasr points out that despite the calamities, Africa has been at the forefront of combatting climate change, noting that African countries have submitted some of the most ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

• Under the Paris Agreement, all parties were supposed to submit their NDCs, which are a set of interventions prepared by countries to contribute to the reduction of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

“We need special financial and technical support and motivation so as to implement the NDCs in a more sustainable manner,” he said.

Africa’s Natural Resources dilemma

The experts noted that Africa is endowed with natural resources in relation to oil, gas, coal among other minerals.

“We know that the mining is one of the highly emitting industries. But at the same time we know that oil and gas are very important resources for wealth. Yet, there is a call from the international community that we should not invest in such resources,” said Nasr.

“This puts Africa in a huge dilemma because as much as we are ambitious, the socio economic indicator on the continent is very low, hence the need for special supports so as to develop in a sustainable manner,” he said.

According to Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, a senior negotiator for the Democratic Republic of Congo, it becomes an emotional issue because the continent is suffering the impacts of climate change, which it has not contributed to, and yet it has natural resources which countries are being asked not to use.

“But it is important that we put our emotions aside and instead use objective tools, and those tools are what science says. All we need is to receive means of implementation such as financial resources, technology transfer and capacity building – which are contained in the convection,” said Mpanu Mpanu, the former AGN chair.

Recommendations from last week’s technical sessions are already being presented to high-level government decision makers. Once approved, they will form a basis for climate action for the continent.

Related Articles

• African Politicians Asked to Develop Legal Instruments to Fight Climate Change
• Climate Summit Kicks Off, Caught Between Realism and Hope

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A Rohingya woman and her child at a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Credit: Kamrul Hasan/IPS

By IPS UN Bureau
NEW YORK, Dec 11 2019 (IPS)

Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has arrived at the Hague to defend Myanmar at the International Court of Justice, against charges of genocide of the Rohingya people, as brought on by the Gambia.

Gambia’s Minister of Justice Abubacarr Tambadou on Tuesday said in his opening remarks: “All that the Gambia asks is that you tell Myanmar to stop these senseless killings.”

As the world awaits Suu Kyi’s moment of facing ICJ on Wednesday to “defend the national interest” of Myanmar, IPS’ exclusive reporting over the past several months from the frontlines of one of the gravest genocides of the decade is available here:

• 1.

Rohingyas: Lurching from Crisis to Crisis

• Rohingya refugees aren’t just suffering from effects of the violence, but also health implications that the crisis has led them to

2. Q&A: An Uncertain Future Ahead for Rohingya in Bangladesh
Masud Bin Momen, permanent representative of Bangladesh to the U.N. talks about challenges of addressing the Rohingya refugee crisis in the host country

3. Marooned in Bangladesh, Rohingya Face Uncertain Future
Women face the gravest brunt of the crisis, with their maternal and reproductive health facing issues, and many trafficked into sex-work

4. Myanmar Rohingya Face “Textbook Example of Ethnic Cleansing”
Rohingya refugees share accounts of horrific violence they faced that experts say are hallmarks of a genocide, and should be addressed accoridnlgy

5. Refugee Camps “bursting at the seams” in Bangladesh
As the crisis unfolded, authorities struggled to place the refugees in proper homes, and many lived in makeshift camps

6. Rohingya Crisis Stokes Fears of Myanmar’s Muslims
How the Rohingya Muslims live their lives in Myanmar, and are often failed by authorities there when facing racial discrimination

The reporting has been made possible with the support of UNESCO.

Rohingya women line up for aid. Credit: Sohara Mehroze Shachi/IPS

A Rohingya refugee woman carries relief supplies to her makeshift shelter. Credit: Umer Aiman Khan/IPS

Girls taking religious education lessons at a Madrasah in the camps. Credit: Kamrul Hasan/IPS

A group of Rohingya children emerge from a nearby religious school in Kutupalong camp. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

Rohingya people alight from a boat as they arrive at Shahparir Dip in Teknaf, Bangladesh. Credit: IPS

The post A Reflect on Why the Current Case Against Myanmar in ICJ Is Crucial appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Kaveh Zahedi and Van Nguyen
BANGKOK, Thailand, Dec 10 2019 (IPS)

“The 2030 Agenda is coming to life”, declared the Secretary General at the opening of the first SDG Summit, a quadrennial event for the follow up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. As leaders from Asia – Pacific took the floor, they highlighted country progress of SDG implementation and reaffirmed commitment to achieve the 2030 Agenda. Statements reflected different approaches across the region. Yet all converged on one priority: accelerated actions and transformative pathways.

Kaveh Zahedi

Because we are not on track.

Earlier this year, our Asia Pacific SDG Progress Report emphasized the region will not achieve any of the 17 SDGs by 2030 at the current pace of progress. While less people in Asia and the Pacific are living in extreme poverty (Goal 1), the poorest are harder to reach. They are more vulnerable to stresses and shocks as progress in reducing inequality has stagnated (Goal 10). Our region’s stubborn reliance on fossil fuels (Goal 7) continues to anchor countries to the grey economy of the past, shroud crowded cities with smog (Goal 11), and put millions of lives at risk (Goal 3). Communities living in low lying coastal areas are seeing their homes being swept away by rising sea levels (Goal 11) as climate actions have yet to take effect (Goal 13).

Business as usual is simply not an option.

Accelerating progress is essentially not about advancing on a single or a cluster of goals. Transformations are needed in the underlying systems behind the 17 Goals. Six entry points identified in the Global Sustainable Development Report 2019 offer a clear pathway to trigger change and multiply the impacts of our actions.

They resonate greatly with the development challenges of Asia – Pacific.

Investing in human well-being and capabilities such as increased public spending in Asia – Pacific to match the global average in the area of education, health and social protection, can lift over 328 million out of extreme poverty by 2030. It will also allow us to build resilience of the most vulnerable populations against external shocks, as revealed in ESCAP’s 2018 Social Outlook for Asia Pacific.

Increased investment to achieve energy decarbonization and universal access to energy would allow our region to reduce energy-related carbon dioxide emission by almost 30%; and avoid nearly 2 million premature deaths by 2030, as shown in ESCAP’s Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2019.

The entry point of promoting sustainable urban and peri-urban development is ever more critical as our region became majority urban for the first time in human history in 2019. The Future of Asian & Pacific cities Report 2019 shows that 1.2 billion new residents will move to Asian-Pacific cities by 2050. They will all need decent jobs, affordable housing, transportation, and clean water and sanitation.

Van Nguyen

We have the tools to support this transformation, with the four levers identified in the Global Sustainable Development Report 2019.

Governance, particularly effective, transparent, accessible and inclusive institutions, is fundamental to drive the implementation of the Goals. Countries gathering at the 6th Asia-Pacific Forum for Sustainable Development declared that the delivery of the SDGs relies on the whole-of-society approach.

Multi-stakeholder partnerships and participation are key success factors.

Sound economic policies and finance are key to fast track progress. ESCAP’s Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2019 estimates that the annual additional investment of 1.5 trillion to achieve the SDGs by 2030 in Asia-Pacific is affordable if countries develop sound tax policy, efficient public spending and private sector engagement.

Empowerment and inclusion, the epicenter of individual and collective action, was found to contribute to reducing inequality and accelerating the progress towards a broad array of the SDGs, according to the 2019 research Accelerating progress: An empowered, inclusive and equal Asia Pacific.

Emerging technologies and innovations have the potential to change lives on an unprecedented scale. One such example is the use of big data applications in forecasting and early warning of extreme weather events, such as during the super typhoon Mangkhut in 2018, documented in the ESCAP’s Asia-Pacific Disaster Report 2019. Such good practices need to be scaled up.

The SDG Summit concluded with a political declaration which calls for a “decade of action and delivery for sustainable development”. Since then, we have seen over twenty commitments for actions for Asia-Pacific by Governments, civil society organisations and the private sector across the 17 Goals registered on the SDG Acceleration Platform. This has given us hope as we move into the year of 2020. The region is arriving at this critical juncture in the path towards sustainable development. We know where we want to be. It is time to deliver on our pledge.

Kaveh Zahedi, Deputy Executive Secretary for Sustainable Development, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

Van Nguyen, Sustainable Development Officer, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

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Credit: WaterAid

By Andrés Hueso
LONDON, Dec 10 2019 (IPS)

This year’s Human Rights Day advocates for everyone to stand up for their rights and those of others.

Yet this will feel like a distant reality for the millions of sanitation workers in developing countries who are forced to work in conditions that endanger their health and even their lives.

“The human rights of millions of sanitation workers, in particular informal workers, have been violated for a long time, despite the critical importance of their role,” Léo Heller, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, said in his World Toilet Day statement last month.

“Amid stigma, low pay, informality and hazardous working conditions, many of them lose their lives while they are at work and very often, it is the omission of governments to comply with their human rights obligations that gives room for those unacceptable situations.”

There is particular concern over the discrimination against manual scavengers, people that are socially (and sometimes institutionally) designated to do sanitation work because they belong to the lowest rungs of the caste hierarchies in South Asian countries.

They clean latrines, empty septic tanks and unblock sewers by hand, and sometimes have to immerse themselves in human waste. In India, despite the fact that manual scavenging was outlawed in 1993, hundreds of thousands of families are still trapped in it.

Meenadevi, a woman from the state of Bihar, started working as a manual scavenger 25 years ago with her mother-in-law, who died on the job. “Initially, I used to feel nauseated, but now I am used to the foul smells,” she says. “Poverty leaves you no option.”

The stigma and risks facing sanitation workers is also prevalent in many parts of the world, as a recent report by International Labour Organisation, WaterAid, World Bank and World Health Organisation shows.

Few developing countries have policies, guidelines and enforcement mechanisms to protect the health, safety and dignity of sanitation workers; especially when their work is informal, they lack recognition and social protection.

In Burkina Faso in West Africa, where only 22.6 per cent of the population have access to basic sanitation, there is little regulation, particularly for the manual emptiers, who use ropes to lower themselves into pits and septic tanks, usually with no protective equipment, and are exposed to deadly asphyxiating gases.

Wendgoundi Sawadogo works as a manual emptier in the capital city, Ouagadougou, for local households who contact him directly for his services.

“You have no paper to show that this is your profession,” he says. “When you die, you die. You go with your bucket and your hoe without recognition, without leaving a trace anywhere or a document that shows your offspring that you have practised such a job. When I think of that, I’m sad. I do not wish any of my children to do this work I do.”

Credit: WaterAid

Sanitation and decent work are both human rights, and one human right cannot come at the expense of another. In the push towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 and bringing sanitation services to everyone by 2030, we cannot neglect Sustainable Development Goal 8, which requires decent conditions for all workers, including sanitation workers.

They are central to solving the sanitation puzzle and protecting their rights is not just a moral imperative, but also the only way to build up a workforce that is able to deliver sanitation services at the scale required.

National and municipal governments need to take decisive action and put in place urgent measures to protect the human rights of sanitation workers, including laws and regulation to eliminate manual scavenging, recognise sanitation work and gradually formalise it, increasing the protection of the workers.

For example, municipalities can increase the use of machines and protective equipment so that workers are not directly exposed to human waste, ensure that subcontractors keep similar standards, and celebrate their contribution to society.

It is also important that the workers access training and support to organise themselves so that they are able to claim their rights in a balance dialogue with authorities.

Finally, every citizen has some degree of responsibility over other citizens’ rights. The plight of sanitation workers is in large part due to the fact that many consider them second-class citizens, and many others ‘flush and forget’ what happens down the (sewer) line.

We all need to both acknowledge and feel outraged by the injustice committed against sanitation workers – and hold to account those with the power to address it.

The post Human Rights? But Not for Sanitation Workers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Andrés Hueso is Senior Policy Analyst – Sanitation, WaterAid.

The post Human Rights? But Not for Sanitation Workers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, Dec 10 2019 (IPS-Partners)

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights“: the words of the first Article of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights are perhaps the most resonant and cited of all international agreements ever signed. Year after year, we commemorate the Human Rights Day, celebrating human rights, insisting that they are inalienable entitlements to all people, not gender nor age-specific, not particular to any ethnic or religious group. And yet, the Geneva Centre’s Chairman Ambassador Ghazi Jomaa underlines, the international community is still confronted with its chronic problems and human rights abuses, oftentimes aggravated by protracted conflicts, expanding poverty, accelerating climate change impacts and beyond. Furthermore, he observes that ideologies anchored in hate and prejudice continue to undermine human rights worldwide and attack our shared humanity. In such times, it has become vital to promote mutual understanding, tolerance and compassion, leading to empathy and celebration of diversity, which are the true gateways to lasting peace.

The theme of this year’s Human Rights Day is Youth Standing Up for Human Rights, a tribute to the 30th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of a Child – and a further occasion to defend all these boys and girls that keep falling victims of conflicts and wars, forced labour and trafficking, homicide and abuse. The Geneva Centre’s Chairman insists: violations of children’s rights and human rights are more than personal tragedies. They are alarm bells warning of a much bigger crisis, a crisis that threatens the future of the world’s largest ever seen generation of children and adolescents.

In this regard, the Geneva Centre continues to stress the need to empower children and youth, to ensure equal access to education, to justice, to employment opportunities and, above all, to full participation in society, with the young voices being heard at all levels. In the recent panel debate “Enhancing Access to Justice for Children” held by the Centre in September 2019 at the UN, it was reiterated that if young age is no barrier to experiencing the worst disregards of human rights, then young age should never be seen as an obstacle for obtaining justice and reparation.

Chairman Ghazi Jomaa reaffirms that as adults, we imperatively need to listen to youth with due respect, value their experiences, encourage them to fully participate in the various domains of society. For, inevitably, it will be in their trajectory to see human progress over the next years rise or fall.

As it was observed during the World Conference “Religions, Creeds and Value Systems: Joining Forces to Enhance Equal Citizenship Rights” organized by the Geneva Centre on 25 June 2018 at the UN in Geneva, youth have to be empowered to shape their own futures and mitigate a perceived sense of powerlessness, to fill the vacuity in their lives wherever it exits.

The Geneva Centre is proud to announce the upcoming launch of an eponymous two-volume publication on the World Conference, which compiles the words of wisdom of 35 eminent personalities, including world religious leaders, visionary statesmen and prominent academic experts. Moreover, in his message to the World Conference, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres appealed to the participants “let us defend our common humanity. Let us unite for equal rights for all without discrimination”. On this Human Rights Day, the Geneva Centre’s Chairman echoes these inspiring words, and underlines that the continuous work towards respect for all human rights should always involve the young generation. After all, youth is the hope and the key to a more just and peaceful world.

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In Ecuador, indigenous-led protests compelled the government to reconsider an austerity package agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that included public sector wage cuts and fuel price hikes. Credit: Conaie.

By Ignacio Saiz
NEW YORK, Dec 10 2019 (IPS)

Human rights advocates should be as concerned with the economic injustices giving rise to recent worldwide demonstrations as with the repressive responses to them. 

In recent weeks, an extraordinary wave of mass protests has swept the globe. While their specific causes and contexts vary, many can be seen as part of a worldwide revolt against extreme inequality and the unjust economic and political systems driving it.

A common weave running through many of the protests is widespread indignation against austerity – the package of debt-reduction policies that scores of governments are now implementing.

In Ecuador, indigenous-led protests compelled the government to reconsider an austerity package agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that included public sector wage cuts and fuel price hikes.

Chile has seen million-strong protests against low wages, costly social services and the most extreme levels of economic inequality of any OECD country.

In Lebanon, a third of the population is estimated to have taken to the streets since the latest round of austerity; while Iraq has been rocked by mass protests against high unemployment, ailing public services and economic mismanagement.

These events follow large-scale demonstrations earlier this year against austerity in countries including Argentina, Honduras, Egypt, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

What has often begun as a spontaneous stand against fiscal injustice has burgeoned into a mass mobilization against the structural inequities underpinning it: political systems seen as corrupt, captured and unaccountable, and economic systems seen as generating inequality by privileging private profit over the public good

Many of the protests have been triggered by a specific fiscal measure–a tax on messaging apps in Lebanon or an increase in Santiago metro fares–perceived as emblematic of attempts by governing elites to foist the burden of national belt-tightening on ordinary working people and the already disadvantaged.

But what has often begun as a spontaneous stand against fiscal injustice has burgeoned into a mass mobilization against the structural inequities underpinning it: political systems seen as corrupt, captured and unaccountable, and economic systems seen as generating inequality by privileging private profit over the public good.

Demonstrations in Chile and Lebanon, for example, have continued far beyond the repeal of the offending measures or even the resignation of senior government figures, insisting on a more fundamental economic and political overhaul.

Another alarmingly common feature has been the repressive response of the authorities, who in most cases have addressed the protests as a threat to public security rather than a clamor for social justice.

From Quito to Cairo and from Santiago to Baghdad, security forces stand accused of excessive use of force, killings, ill-treatment and arbitrary arrest of demonstrators.

It is somewhat understandable, then, that where prominent international human rights actors have spoken up about these protests, it has largely been with respect to these abuses. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, for example, has sent a team to Chile to investigate breaches of international standards related to the use of force by security personnel.

A recently-concluded Inter-American Commission on Human Rights mission has gathered numerous testimonies of similar alleged abuses in Ecuador. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have done important work documenting excessive force against protestors in Baghdad, Beirut and elsewhere.

Abuses by the security forces have also been the primary if not sole focus of investigations by national human rights institutions such as the Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos in Chile or the Ecuadorian Defensoría del Pueblo.

Each of these organizations has, to different degrees, acknowledged that the protestors’ socio-economic grievances are also human rights concerns. But the economic and social rights dimensions of these crises have generally been relegated to the background and are yet to meaningfully inform their analysis and recommendations.

While the acute repression of civil and political rights in the wake of these protests clearly merits urgent scrutiny, the chronic denial of social and economic rights motivating them must also be addressed as a central human rights concern.

International human rights standards apply equally to governments’ use of fiscal policy as to their use of force.  Where austerity policies result in widening gender or racial disparities, push people into poverty or lead to avoidable backsliding in access to health or housing, they also breach international legal obligations on economic, social and cultural rights.

To relegate these violations to the margins of human rights concerns serves only to perpetuate the lack of accountability that has brought millions out on the streets.

The mass mobilizations against extreme inequality, like those against the closely-related crisis of climate change, beg a holistic approach to the human rights claims underpinning them. They should also prompt human rights actors to rethink their traditional agnosticism with regard to economic systems, and adopt a more frontal critique of neoliberal economic orthodoxy.

The protests demand that we call out the ravages of neoliberalism as human rights deprivations, challenge the fallacies sustaining this ideology and envision rights-centered alternatives.

Recent developments have consolidated the normative and methodological foundations for such a critique. For example, earlier this year the UN Human Rights Council adopted Guiding Principles for Human Rights Impact Assessments for Economic Reform Policies, which set out the human rights standards that should anchor economic policymaking, including fiscal adjustment.

These are informed by the practical experience of civil society organizations such as CESR in assessing austerity and its human rights impacts in numerous countries, as well the work of progressive economists bringing a human rights lens to challenge dominant economic paradigms.

Such efforts have focused on fiscal policy as a critical entry point for addressing structural injustice, as reducing inequality and fulfilling human rights are simply not possible without a radical redistribution of resources, wealth and power.

Systemic approaches to economic and social rights accountability are also targeting the responsibilities of international financial institutions and corporate actors in maintaining the unjust economic status quo. CESR’s efforts have been aimed at the IMF, whose complicity in prescribing austerity has fanned the flames of crises in many of the countries where protests have erupted.

For example, just last month the IMF pressed Lebanon to apply even more regressive adjustment measures, minimizing concerns about the potential for social tensions. Ongoing initiatives to codify the binding human rights obligations of business actors and overhaul the rules of international corporate taxation are equally critical fronts for systemically hard-wiring corporate accountability.

Of course, a truly “eco-systemic” human rights practice needs to go beyond normative elaboration and international policy reform. A challenge for those working internationally is to build stronger links between norm development, policy critique, context-specific advocacy and movement building, supporting the efforts of national human rights activists who are drawing attention to the structural and social rights dimensions of the crises.

We can likely expect more protests of this kind in 2020, as fiscal contraction spikes, the global economy slackens, and traditional spaces for civic engagement shrink.

There is a clear message emerging from the streets that human rights actors should get behind: there can be no democracy without economic and social justice. For this reason, any durable resolution to the current unrest must have economic and social rights accountability at its core.

The post Human Rights and the Global Protests: Addressing Systems as Well as Symptoms appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ignacio Saiz is Executive Director, The Center for Economic and Social Rights

The post Human Rights and the Global Protests: Addressing Systems as Well as Symptoms appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Vladimir Popov and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
BERLIN and KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 10 2019 (IPS)

China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 14%. Since then, its growth rate has declined by more than half to 6.6% in 2018. The five-year moving average growth rate is at its lowest since reforms began in 1978, although annual growth briefly fell lower during 1979, the year of the Tian An Men incident.

China’s growth slowdown
Economists have suggested various factors slowing China’s growth, including its lower population growth and ageing population. These demographic factors are real, but their significance has been exaggerated.

Vladimir Popov

The working age population and employment both grew at 2% annually at the end of the 20th century, but such growth started to decline early this century before ceasing in 2014. These factors can only explain up to two percentage points of its annual GDP growth rate decline.

Also, the advantages of economic backwardness have been exhausted: it is easier to catch up from a low base, while growth tends to slow in fast-growing economies approaching the technological frontier, especially as cutting-edge innovation is more difficult and costly than copying existing technologies, whether for free, or even by buying patents and copyrights.

Is rapid growth sustainable?
Developed economies rarely grew for extended periods at the pace of the East Asian ‘miracle’ economies ‘catching up’. After all, only five economies have successfully gone from ‘developing’ (i.e., less than a fifth of US per capita income) to ‘developed’ (over half the US level) status.

These were Japan and the first-generation newly industrialized economies (NIEs) during the 1950s-1980s, namely South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong (HK) and Singapore, although HK’s limited industrialization is moot and clearly past.

Marked growth slowdowns have only occurred in Japan and HK, after their per capita incomes were over half the US level, whereas the other ‘tigers’ have continued to grow, eluding the supposed ‘middle-income trap’.

As China’s per capita GDP (at purchasing power parity, i.e., even in comparable prices) is still under a quarter of the US level, a similar growth slowdown in China may still be a couple of decades away.

Exchange rate competitiveness
China’s growth slowdown also appears to be due to political choices. Many argue that its growth for four decades has been due to deliberate exchange rate depreciation, promoting exports and discouraging imports, thus rapidly accumulating foreign exchange (forex) reserves.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

China’s exchange rate competitiveness may thus have been an unexpected outcome of efforts to achieve currency stability by informally pegging the renminbi (RMB) to the US dollar, following the example of the Hongkong dollar from 1983. This was deemed especially necessary following the Tian An Men incident and the failure of various earlier multiple exchange rate arrangements.

But as China’s rapid export-oriented growth with low wages was also due to rapid forex accumulation, keeping its exchange rate low, and raising exports, savings and investment. From around 2005, however, China gave in to US-led international pressures to let the RMB appreciate.

The real exchange rate of China’s RMB – the ratio of Chinese to international prices, as measured by the ratio of its dollar GDP at the official exchange rate to its purchasing power parity GDP – rose during 2003-2013, especially in 2006-2011, except for a brief re-peg right after the 2008 financial crisis started.

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) tried in August 2015 to move towards a floating exchange rate regime, precipitating a 3% fall in three days against the US dollar. China’s central bank quickly abandoned the attempt, spending over a trillion dollars of forex reserves over the next two years alone to prop up the RMB.

Ironically, the August 2019 PBoC decision to let its currency sink below the RMB7/USD ‘psychological threshold’, consistent with greater exchange rate flexibility, has been portrayed by the Trump administration as currency manipulation although it does not meet US Treasury criteria.

Real exchange rate of Chinese renminbi, 1990-2017 (%)

Source: World Development Indicators

Improving wellbeing, not growth
The US – long dominant in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the G7 and the G20 – accused China of ‘currency manipulation’ to gain ‘unfair’ advantage in international trade, causing ‘global imbalances’, including the huge US current account deficit with China.

China’s exports as a share of GDP peaked at 35% in 2005, before beginning to fall. The 2008-2009 Great Recession saw RMB appreciation suspended briefly as China opted for a large domestic stimulus package, which accelerated the transition to greater domestic consumption and lower savings as wages rose with high employment and labour force utilization rates.

As the world experienced strong contractionary tendencies, China’s growth slowed from 14% in 2007 to a still high 9% in 2009. As domestic consumption rose, savings, investments and growth inevitably declined. The investment share of GDP peaked at 45% in 2013, before declining.

China also slowed forex accumulation, before stopping completely in 2010, resuming RMB appreciation. Its real exchange rate appreciated fastest during 2006-2011, ‘over-shooting’ and causing RMB over-valuation until its recent depreciation in response to US trade belligerence.

Hence, China has stopped relying on exchange rate competitiveness and low real wages for rapid export-oriented growth for well over a decade, resulting in rising real wages, higher domestic consumption, and perhaps slower growth.

This article draws upon: Slowdown of growth in China: Circumstances or choice? published by the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute, Berlin.

The post Why Is Growth Slowing in China? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UNOSSC

By Jorge Chediek
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 10 2019 (IPS)

Climate change is the defining challenge of our time, and developing countries are recognized as hotspots for climatic risks. Through solidarity, peer-to-peer learning and collective self-reliance, developing countries are collaborating among themselves to address the threat.

Good practices in South-South cooperation are viable pathways to accelerate progress on the SDGs. Developing countries can benefit significantly from Southern solutions that can address both climate change as well as multiple other crosscutting development challenges through South-South collaboration.

At stake, if we don’t act together, are recent gains in the fights against poverty, hunger and disease, and the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in the global South.

Despite international commitment to climate action, there is much work to do. Achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and related frameworks such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change will require engagement from all stakeholders, at all levels and in all countries, leveraging their diverse and unique advantages.

“We need more concrete plans, more ambition from more countries and more businesses,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said during the 2019 Climate Action Summit in September. “We need all financial institutions, public and private, to choose, once and for all, the green economy.”

The Secretary-General took the opportunity of the Buenos Aires High-Level Conference on South-South Cooperation to emphasize that crosscutting South-South collaboration is central to implementing the Paris Agreement.

Southern populations, including those in the least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, and small island developing States, have been those most intensely affected by a changing climate. As such, adaptation and mitigation are not new practices in the South.

Jorge Chediek – Credit: UNOSSC

The International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation – working together with China and the Netherlands – is fostering the industrial use of low-emission climate-resilient bamboo in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. India has been leading the world in its pursuit of enhanced solar energy capacity through the International Solar Alliance.

BioInnovate Africa is developing a gel fuel from local organic fruit waste as an affordable and low-carbon emission alternative to firewood and charcoal. In Latin America, cities are working closely together – Santiago´s resilience office is working with its Mexico City counterpart to prepare risk maps for their respective communities.

Scaling up of South-South and triangular cooperation, as a complement to North-South cooperation, is vital for impactful climate action.

Increasingly the countries of the South are looking to the United Nations system for support to expand and capitalize upon the potential of their successes. Over 20 UN entities, including UNOSSC, are collaborating with China to ensure the sustainability, the ‘greening’, of the Belt and Road Initiative.

The India-UN Development Partnership Fund, among 40+ projects, is supporting 7 Pacific island countries to develop climate early warning systems, together with relevant UN counterparts.

UNOSSC is leading and coordinating the implementation of the South-South Cooperation Action Plan of the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Change Engagement Strategy.

In this context, UNOSSC has created the South-South Galaxy global knowledge sharing and partnership-brokering platform, enabling sharing of home grown, contextually appropriate solutions in the spirit of mutual respect and understanding.

I look forward to co-hosting the annual High-Level Forum on South-South Cooperation on Climate Change during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Madrid on 11 December and call on all development partners to join forces for advancing this important agenda together.

At the Forum we will showcase how bioeconomy and successful South-South and triangular cooperation contribute to the achievement of Nationally Determined Contribution targets in developing countries; we will discuss bamboo as substitute for plastics; and we will scale-up city-to-city partnerships to share evidence-based demand-driven good practices.

It is now time for the global community to move from ambition to action. The United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation stands ready to engage with all partners to ensure that South-South and triangular partnerships are supported towards building an equitable and sustainable future.

https://www.unsouthsouth.org/climate/

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Excerpt:

Jorge Chediek is Director of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) and Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General on South-South Cooperation

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Tropical Cyclone Idai made landfall on Mar. 14 and 15, destroying some 90 percent of Beria, the capital of Sofala province, Mozambique, according to reports. A majority of those affected are living in makeshift camps as they try to rebuild. A Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO) 2020 report claimed climate change, “unexpected spread of infectious disease” and regional conflicts were the main reasons pushing millions of people into spaces for humanitarian needs, and why the numbers of those in need was “unprecedented”.  Credit: Andre Catuera/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 10 2019 (IPS)

The world had an unexpected number of people in crisis this year, which exceeded projected numbers the United Nations had expected, with climate change being one of the key crises that led to “needs to unprecedented levels” according to a new report. 

The observations were made in Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO) 2020, which was released last week by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). According to the report, at the time of the GHO 2019 launch, 93.6 million people were targeted for assistance, despite 131.7 million being in need. By November 2019, the 117.4 million were targeted as opposed to the 166.5 million in need.   

The report claimed climate change, “unexpected spread of infectious disease” and regional conflicts were the main reasons pushing millions of people into spaces for humanitarian needs, and why the numbers of those in need was “unprecedented”.  

“Climatic shocks, the unexpected spread of infectious disease, and the impact of protracted and often intensifying conflicts have combined to drive needs to unprecedented levels this year,” Zoe Paxton, with the Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told IPS. 

“The current state of geopolitics means conflicts are becoming more protracted and intense. Combatants display growing disregard for international humanitarian law,” said Paxton, adding that a combination of issues affecting those caught in conflict situations: displacement, hunger, psychosocial trauma, and loss of their livelihoods, education facilities and health services. 

“That’s in addition to the direct impact of fighting, bombing and other violence affecting their physical safety and security,” she said. 

Perhaps one of the crucial ones remains the issue of climate change, with more frequent drought, floods, and tropical cyclones. Paxton says these concerns disproportionately affect already poor and vulnerable populations.

“Eleven of the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change have appealed for humanitarian aid in each of the past seven years,” she told IPS. “We need to do better in prioritising climate change adaptation as part of humanitarian response.”

Paxton added that other factors that contribute to climate concerns are slow economic growth and debts of countries.  In 2019, she said, almost 60 million people in need of humanitarian assistance were from 12 of the 33 countries “in, or at risk of, debt distress,” she said. 

Mental health concerns 

One of the other pressing issues that appeared in the report is the mental health concern of those in need. The report says one in five people in conflict areas have some kind of a mental health condition. 

An increase in “highly violent conflicts” — from 36 last year to 41 this year — is leading to humanitarian concerns such as loss of livelihoods, sexual violence, hunger, while exacerbating mental health concerns.  According to a World Health Organisation report from June, of people who have lived in conflict for the past 10 years, about 11% are expected to have moderate or severe mental conditions. 

While mental health is mentioned in the report, it remains underreported or under-documented in some regions. For example, in Afghanistan, the report noted that “at least 11 percent of the population is estimated to have a physical disability, while an unknown number of people are suffering from mental health issues as a result of their constant exposure to conflict”.

Meanwhile, children are likely to bear the brunt of it the most. The report estimates that 24 million children currently living in some kind of conflict will experience some variation of a mental health condition which would require support. However, challenges remain in addressing this need. 

“Though there is increasing focus on mental health, the vast majority of survivors do not have access to care,” Dr. Mark van Ommeren, who authored an analysis of mental disorders in conflict settings, told IPS. “Whether or not support is made available is often dependent on the interest of individuals within donor agencies or individuals within agencies on the ground.”

In his foreword, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock acknowledged the importance of addressing mental trauma as an issue. “We increasingly understand the need to deal with mental trauma as well as people’s physical health,” he wrote. “We are getting ahead of more crises by taking anticipatory action.”

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One of the continuous protests staged at the Social Summit for Climate Action, meeting Dec. 7-13 parallel to the official 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25) on climate change. The Summit, hosted by the Complutense University of Madrid, is tackling issues such as the controversial trading of carbon credits, human rights in the climate struggle and opposition to the growing production of hydrocarbons. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MADRID, Dec 9 2019 (IPS)

As the COP25 deliberations enter the decisive final week, representatives of environmental and social organisations gathered in a parallel summit are pressing the governments to adopt stronger commitments in the face of a worsening climate emergency.

In the debates in the week-long Social Summit for Climate Action, which began Dec. 7 parallel to the Dec. 2-13 United Nations 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25) on climate change taking place in Madrid, skepticism has been expressed with respect to the results to come out of the official meeting.

“Nothing good is going to come out of it for Central America, only proposals that are going to make it more vulnerable. The damage is going to become more serious,” Carolina Amaya, representative of the Salvadoran Ecological Unit, told IPS, pointing out that the region is one of the most exposed to the climate crisis, facing persistent droughts, intense storms, rising sea levels and climate migrants.

The social summit is taking place at the public Complutense University, in the west of the Spanish capital, about 15 km from the IFEMA fairgrounds which are hosting COP25 after Chile pulled out on Oct. 30 from holding the event due to massive anti-government protests and social unrest.

The alternative activities, which also end on Friday Dec. 13, include a varied menu of issues, such as free trade and its socioenvironmental impacts, oil drilling in indigenous territories, the protection of forests, and opposition to trading reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which cause global warming.

They are also discussing the monetisation of environmental services, increased funding for the most vulnerable nations, climate justice and attacks against land rights activists.

The Madrid Social Summit is also holding sessions in Santiago de Chile, under the same slogan, “Beyond COP25: People for Climate”, although there are fewer representatives of organised civil society than at previous COPs because of the last minute change of venue.

Civil society groups are also organising activities at their green pavilion within the official COP25 compound of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where their participation is more formal and ceremonious.

The demands of civil society gained visibility thanks to the mass demonstration held in Madrid on Friday Dec. 6, with the participation of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, the reluctant star of the official conference and social summit.

COP25 is the third consecutive COP held in Europe, this time under the motto “Time to act”.

The deliberations, which enter the crucial phase of the adoption of agreements Tuesday Dec. 10, are focusing on financing national climate policies, rules for emission reduction markets, and the preparation of the update of emissions reductions and funding of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, designed to assist regions particularly affected by climate change.

COP25 is the climate summit that directly precedes the 2020 entrance into effect of the historic Paris Agreement on climate change, adopted in the French capital in 2015, which left key areas to be hashed out at the current conference, such as the controversial emissions market.

In their statement to the COP, the organisations criticise the economic model based on the extraction of natural resources and mass consumption, blaming it for the climate crisis, and complaining about the lack of results in the UNFCCC meetings.

“The scientific diagnosis is clear regarding the seriousness and urgency of the moment. Economic growth happens at the expense of the most vulnerable people,” says the statement, which defends climate justice “as the backbone of the social fights of our time” and “the broadest umbrella that exists to protect all the diversity of struggles for another possible world.”

At the social summit, the first “Latin American Climate Manifesto was presented on Monday Dec. 9, which lashes out at carbon credit trading, the role of corporations in climate change and the increase in production of hydrocarbons, while expressing support for the growth of agroecology, the defence of human rights and the demand for climate justice.

In addition, indigenous peoples are holding their own meeting, the “indigenous Minga“, with the message “Traditional knowledge at the service of humanity in the face of climate change.” They are demanding respect for their rights, participation in the negotiations and recognition of their role as guardians of ecosystems such as forests.

“We are here to raise our voices and offer our contribution to fight” against the climate emergency, Jozileia Kaingang, a chief of the Kaingang people and a representative of the non-governmental Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, told IPS.

Brazilian indigenous groups are in conflict with the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro because of its attempts to undermine their rights and encourage the commercial exploitation of their territories. In fact, the Brazilian government delegation does not include a single indigenous member – unprecedented in the recent history of the COPs.

Faced with this dispute and the critical situation of the Amazon jungle, Brazil’s indigenous people have sent representatives to Madrid to speak out and seek solidarity.

The murder of two leaders of the Guajajara people in northeastern Brazil on Saturday Dec. 7 shook the indigenous delegation. Two murders had already occurred in that native community in the last two months.

In 2017, the States Parties to the UNFCCC adopted at COP23 the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform for the exchange of experiences and best practices, thereby ensuring the participation of these groups in the negotiations of the convention.

The Platform’s facilitative working group, composed of delegates from seven States Parties and seven indigenous peoples, is currently developing its plan for the period 2020-2021.

Martín Vilela, a representative of the Bolivian Platform for Climate Change umbrella group of local organisations, questioned the effectiveness of the climate summits.

“The agreements are only paper. Emissions continue to rise and countries’ voluntary targets are insufficient. The countries have to be more ambitious if they really want to avoid major disasters,” he told IPS.

Social organizations fear that the Paris Agreement, when it replaces the Kyoto Protocol next year, will be stillborn, because countries are failing to keep their promises, even though scientists are warning that the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is insufficient.

The Agreement sets mandatory emission reduction targets for industrialised countries and voluntary targets for developing countries in the South.

“The countries need to know that we’re monitoring them. We, the organisations, must prepare ourselves to demand better action,” said Amaya from El Salvador.

For her part, Brazil’s Kaingang argued that the climate struggle would only be effective if it includes indigenous peoples.

COP26 will be hosted by Glasgow, Scotland in November 2020, after pre-conference meetings in Germany and Italy.

This article was supported by the COP25 Latin American Journalistic Coverage Programme.

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Karim Hussein (Senior International Development Specialist and Strategic Advisor)

David Suttie (International Fund for Agricultural Development)

By Karim Hussein and David Suttie
ROME and ACCRA, Dec 9 2019 (IPS)

As urbanization continues apace, coupled with rapid population growth and rural to urban migration, the challenges for inclusive rural transformation continue, and the importance of fostering improved rural-urban linkages for better food systems becomes increasingly important.. According to the UN, by 2050 some 66% of the world’s population of 9 billion is expected to live in urban areas. Such rapid urbanization is increasingly shaping the rural space and rural livelihoods (through markets, demand for agricultural goods and labour, migration, and through the provision of services to rural areas). It is therefore critical for the increasing emphasis on urban development to take into account the importance of rural development.

Karim Hussein

Given the major transitions this rapid urbanization entails, the roles that rural economies and societies will play in creating sustainable and inclusive food systems require more attention in the years ahead. Rural-based populations are increasingly connected to urban areas and markets, but many are primarily engaged in informal sector economic activities – – mostly agriculture, mainly smallholder farming – with lack of access to basic service impacting productivity levels. The incentives for people in rural areas and for those engaged in agriculture to migrate to towns, cities and abroad in search of better jobs and income earning opportunities are very powerful, particularly for young people.

We were delighted to speak at the first International Forum on Rural Urban Linkages, held in Lishui City, Zhejiang Province, China from November 11 to 13th, 2019. Our contributions drew on work we have led in IFAD and GFRAS on sustainable urbanization, rural-urban transformations and food systems [see, the IFAD Research Paper on ‘Rural-urban linkages and food systems in sub-Saharan Africa’].

The theme of the forum was “Rural Revitalization through Innovations and Valorisation”.

The forum probed topics of rural architecture, innovations in tourism, agriculture culture and heritage, rural economic development, among others, focusing on systems thinking and innovative practices of rural revitalization in the context of ecological conservation.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda highlight the need to “leave no one and no place behind”. This includes promoting the inclusive transformation of rural areas, allowing rural and urban areas alike to simultaneously share the fruits of development..

In the session on ‘Innovation in Agriculture; Culture and Heritage’, Karim Hussein discussed the importance of agricultural innovation and fostering mutually beneficial rural–urban linkages to contribute to a more sustainable urbanization process, strengthened food systems and ultimately the achievement of the 2030 Development Agenda.

David Suttie

The role of agriculture and agricultural innovation is even more important in the context of global population growth. To feed the expected population of 9 billion people in 2050, agricultural production and productivity will have to increase dramatically. Innovation in agriculture is the only way to meet this challenge. Innovation – in science, technology, institutions, farming practices and policies – is essential to address the challenges faced in food systems at the global, regional and national/local levels, particularly in low and middle income countries, thus particularly for sub-Saharan Africa whose economies remain highly dependent on agriculture. Experience has demonstrated that effective dissemination and sharing of agricultural innovations requires the engagement of and partnerships between research, advisory services, public and private sector players (e.g. GFRAS).

The pace of innovation needs to increase to overcome the challenges faced by agriculture in the 21st century. The negative effects of climate change on agriculture, food and productivity have become increasingly visible and demand to be addressed address as a priority, particularly in the regions that will be affected the most – arid and semi-arid countries, such as those in Africa.

Innovation is fundamental to revitalising rural areas, creating attractive job opportunities and bringing prosperity to communities. Innovation is central to lifting smallholder and family farmers out of poverty, tackling unemployment for youth and rural women, and helping the world to achieve food security and the Sustainable Development Goals. Key innovations since the 1960s that have contributed to the transformation of food, agriculture and rural development issues have been summarised elsewhere (e.g. see Hussein 2019, ‘Key changes in international agriculture and rural development issues: priorities for tropical agriculture professionals’ in Ag4Dev 37 (Summer))

The potential of digital approaches to agricultural and rural development and ICTs, and the increased productivity, incomes and sustainability possible through their application have raised much interest. This is a frontier area through which urban and rural areas and people are increasingly connected. Digital approaches that enable automation, e-agriculture and ‘smart farming’, are increasingly using for example robotics, drones, self-driving machinery, sensors, digital imagery of fields and better weather and soil analysis to undertake precision farming must now be integrated into work on tropical agriculture at all levels from research through to extension and advisory services. Nonetheless, there are opportunities, challenges and risks that digital transformations bring to agriculture and rural areas that need to be constantly examined, particularly whether poor smallholders will be able to access such innovations and equally benefit from their application.

Strengthening demand driven approaches and empowering producer organisations have proven vital in all efforts to foster effective innovation development, dissemination and sharing, and uptake of innovations by producers – particularly smallholders and family farmers that constitute the vast majority of rural producers. The roles of social entrepreneurs, social and institutional innovation and public-private-producer partnerships to foster innovation are also key.

In the side event on “Innovation in the Rural Economy”, David Suttie highlighted IFAD’s work with rural youth to help them promote innovation and dynamism in rural economies. IFAD’s Youth Action Plan, commits to ensuring that 50% of future projects demonstrate benefits for young people, particularly developing youth capacities through vocational and technical training and business development services. For example: the Songhai Centre in Porto Novo, Benin, in partnership with IFAD carries out training, production and research by combining traditional and modern learning methods.

The Songhai model is based on an integrated system of production where agriculture, animal husbandry and fish farming interact with agroindustry and services, such as extension and advisory services. Young trainees learn about the importance of key values such as creativity, innovation taking initiative, competitiveness and building organizational capacity.

Social innovation is also important. For example: promoting women’s empowerment though the use of household methodologies; addressing land access and tenure issues in rural communities based on a better understanding of local institutions and customary systems of tenure; and the need to work in partnership with indigenous peoples and their communities.

One of the most effective means to ensure inclusive outcomes from growth and transformation processes is to create decent jobs that are accessible to groups who are often overrepresented among the poor, particularly rural people, women, young unemployed, migrants and disable people. This need is particularly pressing in SSA, where it has been projected that by 2025, 25 million young people will enter the labour force annually.

In conclusion, the goal of sustainable urbanization requires us to maximise the potential of agriculture and food systems as a normal part of a balanced development process.

Development policies need to systematically take into account urban-rural interdependencies. Cities, towns and other urban centres have key roles in stimulating rural development, but the connectivity of these cities and towns to their rural hinterlands and surrounding areas is often weak. Given urban dependence on rural areas and the roles of rural development in the broader process of economic transformation, development policies need to systematically integrate the rural dimensions of urbanization.

The multi-stakeholder approach and process of IFURL is timely and will prove to be of critical importance to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda over the long term in order to leave no-one, and no place, behind. We look forward to the next IFURL, planned for 2 years’ time!

The post Fostering Sustainable Urbanization and Mutually Beneficial Rural-Urban Linkages for Inclusive and Sustainable Development in Rural and Urban Areas appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Karim Hussein (Senior International Development Specialist and Strategic Advisor)

David Suttie (International Fund for Agricultural Development)

The post Fostering Sustainable Urbanization and Mutually Beneficial Rural-Urban Linkages for Inclusive and Sustainable Development in Rural and Urban Areas appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UNHCR

By Miles Young
MADRID, Spain, Dec 9 2019 (IPS)

The term “environmental refugee” has gained prominence in recent years as climate change and desertification have threatened the livelihoods of millions of people, causing many to re-locate.

Despite the growing use of the term, there is no universally accepted definition for “environmental refugee”.

The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) uses the term to describe people forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption that jeopardizes their existence and / or seriously effects their quality of life”.

A problem for those who fall within the UNEP definition is that it does not bring them within the definition of a “refugee” as articulated in the 1951 Refugee Convention, and therefore does not qualify them for the rights and protections that a refugee has under international law.

A case in point is Mr Ioane Teitiota from Kiribati who in 2013 applied for asylum in New Zealand on the basis that he was a climate refugee. The High Court of New Zealand rejected this argument and relied on the definition of “refugee” as set out in the Refugee Convention in its judgment.

There have been at least 10 other cases where people have tried to claim refugee status in New Zealand, based on climate change, with all failing.

The Refugee Convention defines a refugee as “Any person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his/her nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country.”

Those who come within this definition are afforded certain rights under international law, such as the right to safe asylum, the same rights and basic help as any other foreigner who is a legal resident in the country, including freedom of thought, of movement, and freedom from torture and degrading treatment, as well as economic and social rights like the right to access to medical care and schooling and the right to work.

At this time, there has been no compelling case made for the international community to accept that persons forced to leave their countries because of environmental reasons fall within the Convention’s definition of a refugee.

Credit: UNHCR

Under the current legal framework, those forced to leave their countries because of climate change would only be able to legally enter and settle in another country if they satisfy immigration laws which are often themselves narrow and restrictive.

Given the status quo, it is very much within the legal rights of countries to turn away environmental refugees at the border, or deport them (as in the case of Mr Teitiota) or confine them in camps within their jurisdictions, with extremely limited legal rights.

Thankfully, there is an appreciation amongst Pacific Island Countries that climate change is a common threat which must be addressed collectively. In 2017, for example, Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama announced that he would allow the populations of Kiribati and Tuvalu to settle in his country, should they be forced to re-locate due to climate change.

Because of this lack of legal protection for climate refugees, former Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sopoaga prepared a draft United Nations General Assembly resolution on developing a legal regime to protect people displaced by climate change.

However, this initiative appears to have stalled after Mr Sopoaga losing the prime ministership in September 2019. Further, the discussion around climate change in the Pacific has shifted away from re-location and refugee status and focused more on adaption.

This reflects the desire of Pacific peoples to avoid association with refugee status – which is linked to images of homeless, stateless people forced give up their land, and eventually culture – and to remain in their countries.

In Kiribati, for example, the current government has pushed back on the concept of “migration with dignity” which an earlier government had promoted.

Nonetheless, given the alarming increases in sea levels, displacement is a real possibility for Pacific Island Countries and remains at the forefront of many working in the climate change space, even if the term “climate refugee” has lost favour in public discourse.

The New Zealand Government, for example, has supporting Pacific Islands Countries to avert and delay climate-related displacement as its immediate aims, and the absorption of their peoples as a medium to longer term aim, including through a climate change humanitarian visa scheme.

The prospect of a nation of people having to move to another country raises complex questions around self-determination, governance and statehood, including their ongoing rights with respect to the ownership and exploitation of resources within the maritime boundaries of their physically abandoned country.

Culture and identity are at risk if people with intimate ties to their lands move to another area or country. And there is always the possibility of violence when communities are moved on a large scale into already crowded areas or areas with different cultures.

The post Climate Refugees Refused UN Protection & Denied Rights Under International Law appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Miles Young is Director of the Social Development Program, Pacific Community (SPC)

The post Climate Refugees Refused UN Protection & Denied Rights Under International Law appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By Nayema Nusrat
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 9 2019 (IPS)

Filomena (15), a fisherman’s daughter from a village in Nampula Province, Mozambique was married to a 21-year-old from the same village.

Although her father, Antonio (50) felt that she was still too young to marry, it was very difficult for him to pass up what was offered in exchange for his daughter: 2000 Mozambican Metical (31.2 USD) and a promise to let Filomena continue her education after marriage.

Antonio had been in the fishing business since 1985; profit from his business started to decline dramatically as climate changes started to become more apparent.

In a report published by The Guardian he said “ We see that it’s too hot. We talk about that and we all agree that it’s difficult to catch enough fish because of these high temperatures.” “In the areas where we used to go, the sea level is rising, and the waves are much stronger”.

Besides Filomena, Antonio has five other kids to take care of and she firmly believes that her father would not agree on her early marriage if his fishing business was running well.

Child marriage is a global phenomenon happening for many socioeconomic reasons, but in this particular case it is evident that the already existing global trend of child marriage is further exacerbated because of climate change.

Climate change leads to rising temperature, shifting precipitation patterns and increasing extreme events; people whose livelihoods are intrinsically connected specially to natural resources, livestock, fisheries and agriculture suffer without attention to adaptation.

In Zimbabwe for example, extreme drought is one of the most common phenomena inflicted by climate change; “drought left Emmanuel struggling to feed his family. He agreed to a dowry of a few goats for his 15-year-old daughter.

It meant one less mouth to feed, and food and livestock for the family” – stated in a report by UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) , which explored different ways that climate change endangers the lives and futures of our children and how we must integrate climate risks into various policies and services.

Similarly, in Kenya, a dramatic rise in child marriage is seen due to severe droughts, diminishing the number of cattle at an alarming rate and child marriage is enforced in exchange of goats.

Roughly 82 percent of Afghan girls drop out of school before the sixth grade, partly due to early child marriages. Credit: Najibullah Musafer/Killid

Workers from AMREF Health Africa (African Medical and Research Foundation), the largest Africa based healthcare non-profit organization aim to convince parents to stop child marriages and send them to secondary school -“when she is done with schooling, she will get a job and she will be able to buy you more than four goats”.

Meanwhile in poverty-stricken South Sudan, the majority of parents are marrying their daughters off in exchange for livestock using the bidding process, “Whoever bids with the highest number of cows will take the girl” said Dorcas Acen, a gender protection expert at CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere).

In South Asian countries, families who face financial difficulties from the likelihood of natural disasters like floods, droughts, river erosion, and storms resort to marry off their daughters.

Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch (HRW) told IPS that climate change is one of the reasons that is pushing girls in South Asian countries into getting married before the age of 18.

Barr shares her view about climate change and unpredictable natural disasters seen in Bangladesh and their linkage to early marriage, “Drawing a link between natural disasters and climate change is complex, of course, but we know that Bangladesh—and other countries in South Asia—are among those most affected by climate change. This is qualitative research, not quantitative, but the links were striking”.

HRW interviewed families who had been affected by three types of disasters— flooding, cyclones, and river erosion. Many of the families they interviewed had been barely surviving dealing with inadequate nutrition even before the disaster strikes; and one coping mechanism is that when a disaster pushed them from barely surviving to at risk of not surviving, they reduced their family size by arranging marriages for young daughters.

Barr says, “We saw this link most clearly in the families dealing with river erosion, and it seemed to be the combination of river erosion being both predictable and cataclysmic that created that link” adding, “Flooding was predictable and devastating but not cataclysmic”.

The families HRW interviewed were very accustomed to having to replant their crops. “Cyclones were cataclysmic but not predictable”—so families had to respond afterwards but had very little ability to plan beforehand.

“With river erosion, however, families would see the fields and homes of their neighbors closer to the river be washed away and those families permanently displaced, and they would know that within two or three or five years the river was coming for them. One of the ways they coped with the fact that they knew they would be displaced was by trying to find a marriage for their daughter that they hoped would ensure her safety and that would reduce their family size”.

Recent UNICEF data shows that 59% of girls in Bangladesh are married by 18 and 22% are married by 15. This is one of the highest rates in the world, and the highest in Asia. Globally a girl is married almost every 2 seconds, among which 21% of girls marry before 18 and 5% before 15.

However, the UNICEF report also shows that the custom of child marriage has decreased globally in the past decade. The most progress has been observed in South Asia where a girl’s risk of marrying in childhood has dropped from approximately 50% to 30%. The practice is more common among girls than boys, 4% of boys in Bangladesh marry before age 18.

Child marriage is still widespread across the globe where the total number of girls married in their childhood accounts for 12 million per year. One of the targets set in United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 5.3) is to end child marriage by 2030, but without increasing the rate of progress “more than 150 million additional girls will marry before their 18th birthday by 2030”.

Barr told IPS that child marriage issue in regards to climate change and natural disaster should be addressed by governments by ensuring the agencies responsible for addressing climate change and natural disasters participate in developing and implementing the national action plan to end child marriage by 2030.

And the plan plays specific attention to how climate change and natural disasters (and other disasters such as conflict, displacement) can increase the risk of child marriage and includes steps to mitigate that risk; she also asks for the governments to “Integrate child marriage prevention into all government planning in relation to disaster risk reduction and climate change mitigation”.

“Taking baby steps like boosting the sense of awareness among the individuals and community to exercise the common best practices to preserve the environment might dramatically increase the progress of the bigger change we want to see at the global level.”

An inspiring story from UNICEF is about a Bangladeshi young woman Smriti (19) from Barisal district, who is working with YouthNet for Climate Justice, a UNICEF-supported network, spreading awareness about global warming to her community discusses about climate change and its connection to the increased rates of child marriage.

Smriti says “It is hard to gather people to talk about this, but so often, I’ll stop in a tea shop, or stop a group of people, and engage them that way”.

While talking to IPS about child bride issue from a broad perspective regardless of the effect of climate change, Barr stressed that in terms of every other country where child marriage continues, one of the most fundamental driver of child marriage is gender inequality and valuing girls less than boys.

Research shows, secondary education for girls must continue to be encouraged; it opens up doors for their future careers with vocational advancement, making them highly likely to achieve economic empowerment; and as a result they are able to pull themselves and their family out of poverty, as well as act as an encouragement for their next generation to continue to narrow the gender inequality gap which in turn will create fewer child brides.

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Farmers planting sweet potato seedlings at the Seed Savers Bene Bank. Credit: Seed Savers.

By Nout van der Vaart
Rotterdam/The Hague, Dec 9 2019 (IPS)

People have a right to define their own food system. This includes which seeds they use. Last week, farmers in Nakuru County, Kenya, celebrated the launch of “Ten rich, underutilized crops,” a publication and documentary that capture their efforts to promote and sustain the varieties they grow.

 

Farmers’ diminishing access to seeds

Access to seeds for smallholder farmers has become an issue of concern in Eastern Africa. Mirroring the trend in which control of global food production is falling into ever fewer private hands, it’s getting increasingly difficult for farmers to use and exchange their own, farm-saved seeds. Eighty percent of seeds used by smallholder farmers are sourced through farmer-managed seed systems. But these systems are largely ignored by governments whose agricultural budgets are mostly used to promote hybrid or improved seeds through the commercial or formal seed system.

African governments are also pressured by regional, international and bilateral trade agreements to adopt discriminatory policy and legal frameworks that are very unfavorable to smallholder farmers. These seed laws protect exclusive ownership rights – like patents and breeders’ rights – while overlooking farmers’ rights. The resulting privatization of seeds greatly restricts the majority of smallholder farmers, who depend on the free and open use, reuse, saving, and exchange of (farmer-managed) seeds.

 

Food security, climate resilience, biodiversity – and seeds

There are three reasons why farmer-managed seeds help solve problems like food scarcity, climate change and loss of plant species.

1. In the face of a rapidly worsening climate crisis, smallholder farmers need seeds that are resilient to changing and unpredictable weather conditions, like prolonged periods of drought or heavy rains. Free seed exchange increases resilient sorts of seeds, and therefore farmer’s own resilience to climate change.
2. Farmer-managed seed systems provide the majority of food produced in sub-Saharan Africa. Smallholder farmers as such play a considerable role in keeping themselves and their communities food secure.
3. By growing, breeding, and fostering farmer varieties (“underutilized varieties”), farmers greatly help preserve agricultural biodiversity in their countries.

 

Delicacies made from the 10 rich, underutilized crops. Credit: Seed Savers.

 

Documenting and registering farmer seed varieties

The Kenyan Seed Savers network, with support from Hivos and our Sustainable Diets for All partners, has documented and characterized 60 underutilized varieties grown by smallholder farmers in Nakuru county. Ten of these varieties are described in the publication “Ten rich, underutilized crops.” They are considered most promising in terms of nutritional value, climate resilience, and popular taste. The next step is for them to be produced and marketed on a larger and more commercial scale by the farmers themselves.

As put by Francis Ngiri, a farmer in Nakuru involved in the documentation project, “These varieties will allow us to grow and diversify our production and eat more healthy.”

Hivos and Seed Savers’ booklet demonstrates the rich diversity that grows in farmers’ fields in Kenya. More importantly though, it’s part of a direct appeal to Kenyan authorities to recognize that these varieties exist, that they belong to farmers, and hence should never be subject to private control.

There is an urgent need for countries like Kenya to adopt legal frameworks on seed and intellectual property rights that allow farmers’ varieties to be registered as such, protecting them from privatization. One way to avoid corporate control of seeds is to have them  registered as open source, which would grant them the status of protected commons. This would not only safeguard national agrobiodiversity, farmers’ own food security and ensure their ability to adapt to climate change, but would clearly recognize farmers’ own vital contributions to these efforts.

The time for Open Source Seeds has come!

 

 

This opinion piece was originally published here

The post Saved Seeds are Seeds of Resilience appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Nout van der Vaart is advocacy officer for sustainable food at Hivos

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Credit: The Pacific Community – Sustainable Pacific Development Through Science, Knowledge & Innovation

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 9 2019 (IPS)

When UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressed the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) last month, he pointed out the dramatic impact of climate change triggering natural disasters around the world— from glaciers that melt, ice caps that disappear and corals that bleach.

But more and more, he said, the devastating impacts are on the life of the people and in the health of people around the world.

According to the results of a report published in Nature Communications, sea-level is rising much faster than what was expected and forecasted in the past.

“If we are not able to defeat climate change”, Guterres warned “we will have in 2050 an impact of the sea-level rise on over 300 million people”.

Of these 300 million people, 70% are in countries in the Asia-Pacific region where coastal cities could be “wiped out” if there aren’t enough sea defences in place.

The most vulnerable include the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs), plus eight Asian countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Japan, according to the report.

Dr Benjamin Straus, president and CEO of Climate Central, who along with Scott Kulp, co-authored the report, was quoted by Cable News Network (CNN) as saying: “The results indicate that, yes, a great deal more people are on vulnerable land than we thought.”

And they need to take immediate action to avoid the impending “economic and humanitarian catastrophe.”

As the sea-level continues to rise, the world’s low-lying countries, mostly in the Pacific, will be the worst affected by the climate crisis, which is not of their own creation.

At the ongoing COP25 climate change conference in Madrid, which is expected to conclude December 13, the future of the “Blue Planet, where water covers around 75 percent of the earth’s surface, will be a major part of the discussion.

In an interview with IPS, Andrew Jones, Director, Geoscience, Energy and Maritime Division at the Pacific Community (SPC), a principal scientific and technical organization in the Pacific region, provided a worst-case scenario for Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs).

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: The countries singled out as the most vulnerable to climate change are the 57 small island developing states (SIDS)—some of whom like the Maldives, Tuvalu and Kiribati, may be wiped off the face of the earth due to sea level rise and natural disasters. Do you think the international community is adequately responding to these dangers with concrete actions on climate resilience and funding for adaptation?

JONES: An important point in there is that the countries most vulnerable to climate change are the atoll nations, of which there are four: Maldives, Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu.

These countries are mere meters above sea level and have no higher ground to which they can retreat (unlike other countries which have populated atoll islands but also volcanic islands, or which are territories of another country).

Another important point is that these countries will become uninhabitable long before they are “wiped off the face of the earth” by sea level rise and disasters.

The picture of seas rising like a bathtub, so that we can wait until the high ground goes under, is too simplistic (and dangerous thinking).

Even relatively small increases in sea level will lead to more wave flooding (raising up the ‘base level’ of the natural wave variation in the Pacific) and this wave flooding will poison fresh water supplies and crops.

Safeguarding the World’s Largest Tuna Fishery. Credit: Siosifa Fukofuka (SPC)

IPS: Is the UN’s Decade for Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) a step in the right direction?

JONES: The UN Decade is definitely a step in the right direction, because the more detailed, rigorous scientific data that we have, the more certainty we will have in forward models, and the better we will be able to inform mitigation and adaptation decision making.”

However not enough is being done to respond to the climate change crisis facing our Pacific Island Nations (the Leaders used the term ‘crisis’ at the last Forum Meeting).

Ambitious adaptation actions are needed within PICTs to prevent them from becoming uninhabitable. For example, countries like the Marshall Islands may look to build higher islands.

However, the future of the Pacific depends on the international focus remaining on mitigation; the international community must commit to progressing the Paris Agreement.

In this context, the UN Decade for Ocean Science is also not enough. PICTs cannot wait ten years to build a better database before commencing ambitious adaptation measures.

A large factor is that we currently have a window in which the Pacific needs to focus on adaptation while the international community needs to focus on mitigation. If in the future the international focus shifts, then much less adaptation funding will be available for the Pacific.

IPS: What are the specific threats facing PICTs?

JONES: The Pacific is heavily reliant on the ocean as a source of protein, but the changing climate is impacting fisheries and opening new debates on what is considered international waters- and what is not.

Firstly, what is considered international waters – Pacific’s position on this is very clear – the sovereignty of their nations is not in question regardless of geographic changes that may occur due to changing climate.

Pacific Leaders have stated that once maritime boundaries are de-limited they cannot be challenged or reduced as a result of sea-level rise and climate change. The Pacific has stated that anything which is currently sovereign waters will remain that way and will not become international waters in the future.

However, the international legal instrument through which these maritime boundaries are defined (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) is not clear on this point.

Therefore, SPC is undertaking a regional technical study to understand which ‘base points’ (the points of land from which the maritime boundaries are defined) are vulnerable to change through sea level rise.

At the same time, the Office of the Pacific Ocean Commissioner (OPOC) is looking at international legal instruments to understand which avenues will be open to PICTs to ensure they retain their sovereign rights into the future.

IPS: What’s the future of coastal fisheries? How will they be impacted by climate change?

JONES: In terms of fisheries, it’s probably worth noting that the coastal fisheries which are a primary source of protein for PICTs may be impacted by climate change but these are separate from any debate over international waters.

Oceanic fisheries are the transboundary resource most likely to be affected by any climate change in this context, and while they are a source of protein they are also cornerstone of Pacific export economies.

The latest scientific modelling suggests that the geographic distribution of tuna populations may change in the future, which may result in decreasing tuna stocks in the exclusive economic zones of some countries and may also result in an increase in the relative proportion of the tuna resource within international waters (as defined by current maritime boundaries).

This could have significant implications for the narrow and fragile economies of some PICTs, and therefore all aspects of development, although FFA are working with PICTs to reassess how they distribute rights to the tuna resource under future climate scenarios.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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By Joseph Chamie
NEW YORK, Dec 6 2019 (IPS)

In addition to its unprecedented rapid rate of demographic growth during the past 75 years, world population’s distribution across the planet has changed significantly over the past seven decades. The momentous global changes in humanity’s geographic distribution pose serious social, economic, political and environmental challenges and disquieting implications for the future. 

The proportion of world population living in more developed regions is half its 1950 level, 16 versus 32 percent, and is expected to decline further to 13 percent by 2050. This transition is the result of substantial differences in the rates of population growth among the major regions of the world.

The relative demographic standing of Europe’s population has changed substantially during the recent past, falling from 22 percent of world population in 1950 to 10 percent today and projected to decline further to 7 percent by midcentury. In the opposite direction, Africa’s population has nearly doubled its share of world population during this period, increasing from 9 percent in 1950 to 17 percent in 2020.

As the sizable differences in the demographic growth rates of those two continents are expected to persist well into the future, Africa’s population is expected to be more than triple the size of Europe’s population by midcentury. And by the close of the 21st century, Africa’s population is projected to be nearly seven times as large as Europe’s population, 4.3 billion versus 0.63 billion, respectively.

Differing rates of demographic growth have also resulted in significant changes in the ranking of countries by population size. Among the top ten largest populations, for example, the number of more developed countries has decreased from six in 1950 to two today and is expected to decline to one country, the United States, by 2050 (Table 1).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Again, African countries, which were not among the top ten largest populations in 1950, have experienced the most relative gains in demographic ranking during the recent past. Consequently, by 2050 three African countries, Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are expected to be among the world’s top ten largest populations.

Another momentous change in the distribution of the world’s population is its rural/urban composition. During the past seven decades a literal revolution in urban living has occurred worldwide. The proportion of world population residing in urban areas has increased from a minority of 30 percent in 1950 to a majority of 56 percent today and is expected to increase further to nearly 70 percent by 2050 (Figure 1).

 

 

Source: United Nations.

 

While the growth of the urban population has occurred worldwide, it has been more substantial for less developed regions. The proportion of the populations residing in urban centers in less developed regions has nearly tripled, jumping from 18 percent in 1950 to 52 percent today.

The far-reaching urban transition continues to be well underway. By midcentury two-thirds of the population of less developed regions, some 5.8 billion inhabitants, is expected to be living in urban centers.

In addition to increased levels of urbanization, the population sizes of urban agglomerations have increased significantly over the past 70 years. In 1950 there was a single city megacity, New York, with a population of 10 million or more inhabitants. Today there are 33 megacities and that number is projected to increase to 43 by 2030.

Some of the most rapid population growth of megacities during the past few decades occurred in Africa and Asia. Since 1990, the populations of no less than ten megacities, including Delhi, Shanghai, Dhaka, Lahore and Lagos, have tripled in size (Figure 2).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Rapid population growth is expected to continue over the coming decade for many of the megacities in less developed regions. The population of Kinshasa, for example, which grew from 3.8 million in 1990 to 13.2 million in 2018, is projected to reach 22 million by 2030, making it the world’s tenth largest megacity at that time.

It is widely recognized that urbanization offers a large variety of social, economic and cultural benefits, opportunities and freedoms. In addition to employment and career development, urban residents have ready access to education, health care, social services, cultural institutions, recreation and government agencies.

It is also acknowledged, however, that urbanization places stresses on social services, infrastructure and the physical environment that can make urban living difficult, especially for low income groups. This is particularly evident in the cities of less developed regions.

The increasing proportions the world’s population residing in the rapidly growing urban centers of less developed countries pose serious developmental challenges for local and national governments. The basic needs of daily living for those growing urban populations, including food, water, housing, electricity, employment, education, health care, transportation, security, telecommunications, sanitation and waste management, are not meeting increased demands and desired goals.

Most recently, the populations of many large cities are facing the effects of climate change. In addition to having to deal with flooding, rising sea levels, droughts, fires and higher temperatures, many cities, especially those in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan, are now confronting air pollution. In addition to the increased risks of morbidity and mortality, ambient air pollution has enormous economic and social costs, with cities in low- and middle-income countries suffering the biggest burden from this environmental challenge.

The failure to adequately meet the fundamental needs and aspirations of urban populations is having serious consequences, particularly in the less developed countries. In addition to rising poverty levels, shortages of water, food and energy and worsening environmental conditions, those consequences include social unrest, political instability, civil violence and armed conflict.

Furthermore, those consequences will not remain confined within national borders, but will have international repercussions for neighboring countries as well as distant countries in more developed regions. Among the likely repercussions are calls for increased development assistance, requests for emergency/humanitarian relief services, rising numbers of internally displaced persons and asylum seekers, and substantially more men, women and children actively seeking to migrate to wealthier nations by both legal and illegal means.

The development and improvement of urban living is among the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. Goal 11 of the SDGs aims to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, including emphasis on housing, health, energy, public transportation, environment, cultural heritage, employment and business opportunities.

While some developmental progress has been achieved in a number of cities in the recent past, governments are by and large falling behind in their efforts and commitments to the SDGs. The lack of progress is most evident among cities in less developed countries, which have experienced rapid demographic growth.

In brief, increasing proportions of a growing world population are located in less developed regions with rising concentrations living in their urban centers. By 2030 about 4 billion people, or about half of the world’s population, will be living in the cities of less developed regions.

Government authorities of those cities in cooperation with national leaders need to take urgent action now, including formulating appropriate polices, undertaking comprehensive planning and establishing effective programs. To do otherwise not only greatly handicaps the achievement of desired development goals, but it also undermines the provision of essential basic services and fundamental infrastructure required by the world’s growing urban populations in less developed regions.

*Joseph Chamie, a former director of the United Nations Population Division, is currently an independent consulting demographer. 

 

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Dec 6 2019 (IPS)

While opening a newspaper or watching a TV program we are every day made aware of the plights of irregular migrants. Some recent examples among many – on 24 October, 39 Chinese nationals were found dead in a lorry trailer in Essex. They had apparently frozen to death within a refrigerator container with temperatures as low as -25C (-13F). This while tragedies occur almost daily on the Mediterranean Sea. On 26 November, a rescue vessel found a boat almost completely sunken. It had three dead bodies aboard. Fifty-five migrants were saved. Three of them were in a critical condition, and one died after reaching Melilla in Spain, where the migrants were brought in. Three children were among the survivors, though a further ten individuals were reported missing. Nowadays, such news items pass by almost imperceptibly. Every day, thousands of unfortunate human beings are trafficked all over the world to suffer underpaid, hazardous work, or prostitution.

The general image of global migration tends to be gloomy. Populist parties convey the impression of an avalanche of unwanted foreigners inundating our beloved homelands. If I discuss policy issues with colleagues, friends, and relatives, negative perceptions of immigration tend to make their appearance. Polarized political and media debates on migration seldom allow much space for evidence, knowledge, strategic implications and historical insights.

It is easy to ignore that international migration is a complex phenomenon touching on a multiplicity of economic, social and security aspects. It is associated with geopolitics, trade and cultural exchange. Accordingly, migration provides opportunities for businesses and communities. In countries of origin and destination migration has improved people’s lives. However, acknowledging this does not imply that all migration takes place under positive circumstances. In recent years an increase in displacement has occurred, due to conflict, persecution, environmental degradation, and lack of human security and opportunity. The UN refugee agency UNHCR currently estimates that there are 25.9 million refugees worldwide, of which 80 percent live in places neigbouring their countries of origin.1

In 2019, the global number of international migrants reached an estimated 272 million, comprising 3.5 percent of the global population. 2 Actually a small minority since an overwhelming majority of people remain within their country of birth.

It cannot be denied that migration may generate benefits for migrants, their families, and countries of origin. Wages earned abroad tend to be considerably higher than those for similar jobs at home and migration tends to have a positive impact on human development, particularly in areas such as education and health. According to a World Bank report from 2016 migrants from the poorest countries, on average, experienced a 15-fold increase in income, a doubling of school enrolment rates, and a 16-fold reduction in child mortality after moving to a developed country.3

Globally, remittances are now more than three times the amount of official development assistance, at the same time as migration result in the transfer of skills, knowledge, and technology and thus foster economic and social development in origin countries.

Migration also generates economic and other benefits for destination countries. Among other results, immigration can have positive effects through an increased labour supply in sectors and occupations suffering from shortages of workers, not only evident in high-skilled sectors, but also in lower-skilled occupations. The immigration of young workers might also ease pressure on pension systems of high-income countries with rapidly aging populations.4 Contrary to popular perceptions, an OECD study found that the difference between the taxes migrants pay and the benefits and government services they receive generally is quite small and in most of the analyzed OECD countries immigrants paid more in taxes than they received through benefits.5

Accordingly, stories about hapless or deceitful migrants, ruthless human traffickers, and constant tragedies are not constituting the entire truth about international migration. Trafficking is a crime that has to be deterred and penalized. The United Nations defines human traficking as:

the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.6

I recently obtained an insight into immigration when I in Rome met a successful migrant who told me his life story. A tale of hard toil, stubborn determination and lifelong planning, with a happy ending.

Through a good friend of mine I had ended up as dinner guest with a man of a Bangladeshi origin and his family. He was proud owner of a car repair workshop. A steady income made it possible for him to support his family, invest in his business, afford a nice apartment and a car. He was even able to invest some of his income and support relatives back in Bangladesh. Over a sumptuous meal in a modern apartment, my generous host told me his life story.

He had been born to poor parents in Dhaka and orphaned already at the age of seven. His wife was also an orphan from a poor background. They married very early and had stayed true to one another ever since. Early on he judged that the only possible advance in life for a poor boy like him was to join the army. For twenty years he served in the armed forces and learned to be a driver and car mechanic. Experiences he later used after having been recruited as a migrant worker to the Gulf States, and most successfully in Singapore, where he finally had been able to save the money needed for realizing his ultimate goal – to migrate to Europe, make a living there and bring his family over for a better, more secure life.

In the neighbourhood of his home in Dhaka he had for many years been in contact with a ”travel- and job organizer” who had told him he would be able to bring him to Italy and that it would cost him approximately 30,000 euros. This became the driving force for all of my host´s endeavours. He experienced many setbacks, but never lost hope. Several years ago he was finally prepared to leave for Europe, putting all his trust in the men working for the ”travel organizer”. I asked him:

– How could you bring your entire life´s savings into the hands of this man? You could easily have been lost or killed along the perilous trail through Asia and Europe. What was the guarantee that you would be able to make a living in Europe? And … who was this guy? A human trafficker?

– No, he was not a Mafiosi. He was a businessman, well known by his clients. I knew he could not afford taking the risk of losing a client like me. If he had been a crook. If he had fooled his clients on their way to Europe and pocketed their money. If he had not planned and paid for every step of the journey and guaranteed the safe transfer of a client of his, he would have been lost. Everyone in my neighbourhood knew him and his business. He could neither overcharge me, nor lose me. It is an extremely risky business.

– Nevertheless, many are fooled, lost and killed.

– Quite true, but such unfortunate victims are generally desperate people. They have not planned and worked for the venture during so many years as I had. They had not inquired enough, neither about the risks involved, nor about the men they put their trust in.

It took more than half a year to reach Rome. We traveled by busses, lorries and on foot. Through India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, and Slovenia. It was worrisome and I was often scared, nervous and impatient. We were captured in Ukraine and it took almost three months to get us out of that country and we also encountered problems in Moldova. However, these mishaps had been taken into consideration beforehand and true to our original agreement the travel arranger succeeded in keeping his word.

I did not know anyone in Rome. The arrangement was that I began selling things in the street. Gradually, I advanced to selling fruits and finally found work in an auto repair shop. I am a skilled mechanic, my work was appreciated and words about my expertise spread among the customers. After some years I could open my own business. From then on life changed for the better. I could bring over my family. We found suitable husbands for my two daughters and finally a son was born to me. I´m a fortunate man.

It may be stated that my Bangladeshi acquaintance had been ”trafficked” since he migrated to Italy through irregular means provided by people who made a profit. However, he denied that he had been exploited. He assured me that he had made a carefully calculated business deal with people who guaranteed him passage to Italy and to a certain degree acclimatization to that country. It had been a win-win deal for the people who took him to Italy, for himself, his family, his country of origin and Italy as well.

1 https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html
2 https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/migrationreport/docs/MigrationStock2019_TenKeyFindings.pdf
3 Ratha, Dilip, Caglar Ozden and Sonia Plaza (2019) ”Migration and Development: A Role for the World Bank” https://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove/migration-and-development-role-world-bank-group
4 International Organization for Migration (IOM) (2017) World Migration Report 2018. Geneva: IOM, pp. 3-4.
5 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2013). “The fiscal impact of immigration in OECD countries,” in International Migration Outlook 2013. OECD: Paris.
6 https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/what-is-human-trafficking.html

 
Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

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By Yasmine Sherif
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 6 2019 (IPS)

Genesis smiles and holds her hand up proudly to answer questions in class. She claps her hands in support of her classmates when they answer the teachers’ questions correctly. “I miss my cousins and aunts in Venezuela, she says.” Her smile fades and her lips tighten. She struggles to hold back her tears. “I can’t return. I want to stay here in my school, with my new friends.” Her smile returns, as she resolutely states: “I want to become a lawyer, so I can help solve problems.”

Genesis is too serious for her 12 years of age. Like millions of displaced children, she suffers from being uprooted and she dreams of solving problems that no one that young should ever experience. Genesis is at a crossroads.

We can ensure she takes the road of a continued quality education that offers her a pathway towards achieving her dream. Without our support, she will be forced the other way, risking to succumb to the very problems she wants to resolve: conflict, violence and abject poverty.

Genesis is one of the millions of forcibly displaced children around the globe. She attends class at the ‘Centro Etnoeducativa Indigena’ school in Maicao, in northern Colombia. The school is supported by World Vision through Education Cannot Wait’s First Emergency Response investment implemented by Save the Children, PLAN, IRC and World Vision.

As we leave Genesis, we are acutely aware of the urgent need for funding to allow her to continue her education. Education Cannot Wait’s US$7 million emergency support to the region – without which Genesis would not have gone to school – will come to an end in June 2020.

The urgency for continued funding prompted ECW, UNICEF, Save the Children and INEE to conduct a joint mission to Colombia and Ecuador. These are two of the countries at the heart of the Venezuelan regional crisis, which is projected to be the world’s largest forced displacement crisis in 2020 – exceeding the Syrian crisis.

The mission concluded that Education Cannot Wait must seek to extend its support through a multi-year investment for quality education. Today, the ECW Executive Committee approved this recommendation. Now, ECW and partners have to mobilize the resources.

The Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan for 2020 calls for US$1.35 billion, of which US$57.1 million (4 per cent of the total appeal) is required to deliver quality education to 244,000 children, only 17 per cent of the actual number of children in need.

Yet, how do we mobilize this amount for one crisis for one year, alone? And how do we explain a failure to respond to those minimum requirements to Genesis?

Globally, a total of 68.5 million people are forcibly displaced, of whom over half are children in need of an adequate education. Of this number, 25.9 million are refugees, including some 13 million children.

The majority of refugee children struggle with disrupted or poor education, 75 per cent of adolescents do not attend secondary school and 3.7 million refugee children are completely out-of-school.

Beyond the Venezuelan regional crisis, forcible displacement continues to grow in the Sahel region of Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria and Ethiopia, just to mention a few.

In the Arab region, despite representing just 5 per cent of the global population, the Arab states account for 32 per cent of the global refugee population and 38 per cent of the internally displaced global population.

In the same vein, the number of people across the globe who need humanitarian assistance is rapidly escalating with a total of 168 million people (of whom over half are children). The total financial requirements for one year alone amount to nearly US$29 billion, according to the just launched Global Humanitarian Overview 2020.

168 million people on our globe are dependent on humanitarian aid! How is this possible in the 21st century? What have we done to our world? What are we leaving to the next generation as our legacy? It is time to act. If not now, when?

In two weeks, the world will gather in Geneva for the Global Refugee Forum. Will this be an opportunity to turn the tide, at least for the millions of refugee children and youth forced to flee, yet holding on to a dream?

Let us hope that the Global Refugee Forum becomes a turning point for action. That leaders see things from afar and within, and recognize the relation between themselves, those in need and universal values.

These are values grounded in international law and manifested in political will to action. Because in resolving problems of human suffering in the face of conflict and forced displacement one has to translate values into action. This means comprehensive action matched by financing to produce sustainable outcomes.

Together with our partners in the United Nations, host-governments, strategic donors, civil society and private sector, Education Cannot Wait has just reached close to 2 million girls and boys. Another 7 million children and youth must be reached by 2021.

In Uganda, the government just announced that the Education Cannot Wait investment in the Response Plan for Refugees and Host Communities for South Sudanese refugees is a success-story. Still, another $80 million will be required in 2020 for Uganda alone to prevent disruption of this positive model.

Indeed, much more needs to be done. To deliver on the Education Cannot Wait target of quality education to 9 million children and youth in forced displacement and protracted crisis by 2021, US$1.8 billion is required.

Is it possible? Yes, provided that we are driven by the same intense desire as Genesis: that all we want to do is to solve problems, alleviate human suffering and empower the next generation.

The Global Refugee Forum may be the test.

The post Forced to Flee. Displaced with a Dream. Time for Action. appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Yasmine Sherif is Director, Education Cannot Wait

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Dr Mithika Mwenda of PACJA (right) and Professor Seth Osafo (left), one of the negotiators at the climate talks currently being held in Spain. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MADRID, Dec 6 2019 (IPS)

African legislators have been challenged to come up with legal frameworks for climate change to enable countries avoid catastrophes and reactionary emergencies that eat up their budgets.

“African countries are spending up to 3.9 percent of their GDPs on climate emergencies, which in many cases have not been budgeted for,” said Dr. James Murombedzi, the head of the Africa Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

During an event on the sidelines of the ongoing 25th Conference Of The Parties (COP25), the U.N. climate negotiations in Madrid, Spain, climate experts, civil society organisations and U.N. representatives observed that legislators in African countries should mainstream climate change in all their national development plans as a way of adapting to the phenomena.

This comes at a time when the East African region is experiencing unprecedented floods due to the 300 percent above average, heavy downpour that is occurring during what is supposed to be a short rainy season. Over the past two weeks, floods have killed more than 100 people in Kenya alone, displacing hundreds of households, breaking river banks, dams and even houses.

• According to meteorological scientists, this is due to the irregular oscillation or variation of Sea Surface Temperatures – a climate-related phenomenon known as Indian Ocean Dipole.
• The floods in East Africa are occurring just months after Cyclones Idai and Kenneth swept through the Southern Africa region affecting more than 2.2 million people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.
• In general, analysis from Save the Children show that in 2019 alone, over 1,200 people died as the result of cyclones, floods and landslides in Mozambique, Somalia, Kenya, Sudan and Malawi, leaving at least 33 million people at emergency levels of food insecurity or worse. This has had a huge financial implication on countries, humanitarian agencies and individual families running into millions of dollars.

“What are we going to tell our people?” asked Roger Nkodo Dang, the President for the Pan Africa Parliament during an event at COP25. “As African legislators, we need to play our role, and then speak with one voice to call for funding so as to develop resilience,” he said.

In Africa, climate change has caused drought, change in distribution of rainfall, the drying-up of rivers. Intense flooding causes landslides and in Kenya, residents of West Pokot County are currently grappling with with the deaths of 50 people who were last week buried alive by landslides following heavy rainfall that continues to pound the East African region. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

According to Gareth Phillips, the manager for Climate and Environmental Finance at the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), African politicians can take advantage of low-hanging fruit in terms of climate action, but only if there are sound legislative frameworks in place.

“We can start by enacting legislation that; encourages renewable energy targets and non-fossil fuel obligations, the removal of fossil fuel subsidies, while at the same time providing subsidies for renewable energy, and observes the energy efficiency standards, building standards and performance,” said Philips.

He urged them to focus on adaptation instead of mitigation, and take advantage of the Adaptation Benefits Mechanism – a new mechanism being developed by the AfDB that is designed to facilitate payments to project developers for the delivery of certified adaptation benefits.

The delegates were reviewing the role of African parliamentarians in implementing the Paris Agreement, with focus on challenges and prospects.

• Under the agreement, all parties were supposed to submit their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are a set of interventions prepared by countries to contribute to the reduction of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

However, according to preliminary findings of an ongoing study commissioned by the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) in eight selected countries — Botswana, Ethiopia, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia — there is still a long way to go for African countries to implement their suggested NDCs.

“It is clear that many countries do not have legal frameworks on climate change, which should be the main vehicle for implementation of the Paris Agreement,” Dr Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Secretary at PACJA, told IPS.

Countries like Kenya, which has its National Climate Change Framework Policy in place, were seen to be progressing better than those without.

“With this policy, we have been able to mainstream climate change in all national development plans, and this makes it easy to allocate budgetary funds to specific activities directly related to climate change,” Dr Charles Mutai, the Director of Climate Change at the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources in Kenya, told IPS.

Based on national legislation, county governments have followed suit, where six of them have already enacted county-specific climate change legislations, and this has enabled them to directly allocate funds to adaptation and related activities.

However, according to the new U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) report, unless GHG emissions fall by 7.6 percent each year between 2020 and 2030, the world will miss the opportunity to get on track towards the 1.5°C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, and this is a pointer to even more devastating climate related disasters that what is being experienced at the moment.

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