Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Villagers grow rain-fed rice in Beung Kiat Ngong wetlands, Lao People's Democratic Republic. Credit: FAO/Xavier Bouan

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 22 2019 (IPS)

When a coalition of international donors pledged more than $650 million to provide assistance to over 300 million smallholder farmers in developing countries, the primary aim was to help increase agricultural and livestock production besieged by droughts, floods and other natural disasters triggered by climate change– mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The pledges– which came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, UK, the Netherlands, the European Commission, Switzerland, Sweden and Germany– followed the UN’s Climate Action Summit last September

Asked if the ultimate aim is to help eradicate extreme hunger by 2030, as spelled out in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Sonja Vermeulen, Director of Programs, CGIAR System Organization, told IPS that hunger is very highly concentrated – with higher per capita in Africa and South Asia, and in rural areas.

She said hungry people are largely dependent on rural economies, especially agriculture, to improve their welfare and nutrition.

That’s why investments in targeted agricultural research to benefit these exact people can go much further than alternatives, she noted.

SDG2 on ending hunger has five targets.

She said CGIAR, described as the world’s largest global agricultural innovation network, is actively working towards all of these targets: bringing people over the minimum calorie line, improving micronutrient nutrition, getting agriculture back within environmental limits, doubling smallholders’ productivity and incomes, and maintaining ex-situ genetic diversity of crops, livestock, fish and their wild relatives.

“Given the complexity of the problem, it’s a massive challenge to get there by 2030. But, with partners, it’s a challenge we want to rise to.”

CGIAR, which is the recipient of the $650 million funding, and formerly known as the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, has an annual research portfolio of just over $900 million with 11,000 staff working in more than 70 countries around the world.

“The global Sustainable Development Goals made a solemn promise to eradicate hunger and extreme poverty by 2030, and that simply cannot be achieved unless the world’s smallholder farmers can adapt to climate change,” said Elwyn Grainger-Jones, Executive Director of the CGIAR System Organization.

The new investments, he said, “are a recognition that we have just 11 growing seasons between now and 2030 and farmers need a host of new innovations to overcome a growing array of climate threats. This new funding is an important start towards a global effort to substantially increase support for CGIAR activities.”

A beneficiary of a groundnut upscaling project in Mali. Credit: CGIAR

According to CGIAR, it’s climate-focused innovations include:

• Dozens of new varieties of drought-tolerant maize for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa that are increasing farmers’ yields by 20-30 percent. In Zimbabwe, maize farmers already are harvesting an additional 600 kilos or more than 1,300 pounds per hectare. Further adoption across the region will benefit 30-40 million people in 13 countries and provide added grain worth US $160-200 million per year in drought-affected areas, generating up to $1.5 billion in benefits for producers and consumers.

• Climate change-ready rice, including new “scuba rice” varieties that survive underwater for up to 17 days could benefit 18 million farming households and save millions more from hunger. In Bangladesh and India alone, rice lost to flooding each year could feed 30 million people.

• In Nigeria, improved varieties of cassava developed by CGIAR scientists already have helped 1.8 million farmers escape poverty. CGIAR breeders are now developing even better varieties of this naturally hardy crop that offer disease-resistance and higher levels of Vitamin A, a nutrient especially critical to childhood development.

• New varieties of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes developed to match a host of different farming conditions are rapidly gaining popularity in sub-Saharan Africa. They also offer high levels of Vitamin A and can survive climate stress that kills other crops. CGIAR is delivering a host of other climate-smart crop varieties, including heat- and drought-tolerant beans and improved varieties of neglected grains like pearl millet and sorghum.

• CGIAR experts are developing solar-powered irrigation pumps for large-scale distribution in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The pumps are to be deployed alongside advanced information systems to ensure they can help farmers sustainably adapt to increasingly unreliable rains, but without stressing available water resources.

Asked how devastating are climate-related threats to agriculture and food security, CGIAR’s Vermeulen told IPS: “Climate threats are already massive – and with current increases in emissions, only going to get worse”.

Also problematic, she said is that “we are not very good yet at forecasting what will happen – tipping points etc. What we do know is that uncertainty will increase (e.g. year-on-year variability in rainfall) making farming a much tougher business.”

She pointed out that CGIAR’s critical work in this area includes a step change in the availability of diverse, climate-resilient crop, livestock and fish varieties for farmers (with public sector research and distribution working hand-in-hand with private sector).

It also includes harnessing inexpensive information technologies to get real-time data and advice into the hands of farmers, and improved institutional solutions for climate-affected farmers – such as cooperative-run solar irrigation systems, community-based underground water storage, affordable index-based crop insurance schemes, and management systems for human health threats like Aflatoxin, which infection level increases with climate change in staple crops like maize and groundnuts.

“These threats are global – but hurt low-income rural farming communities the most – because they don’t have the capital to invest in adaptation, and are most dependent on rainfed farming at the mercy of the climate. These are CGIAR’s clients.”

IPS: The UN says hunger– far from declining– is on the rise, primarily due to two factors: military conflicts and natural disasters triggered by climate change. Is this a fair assessment of the current state of affairs?

Vermeulen: Yes, global numbers of hungry people have been on the rise again since 2016. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction reports that low income countries face losses equivalent to 20-60% of their annual social expenditure through natural disasters annually.

For food and agriculture, droughts are the most important disaster – and are on the increase. Fire, storms, floods too are devastating. They can send poor farmers into downward spirals of under-investment and failure to recover.

IPS: With a predicted rise in population, from the current 7.5 billion to 10 billion in 2050, will the world be able to meet the demand for food as we move forward? What would be CGIAR’s contribution in this field?

Vermeulen: We know now, from reports like EAT-Lancet and others, that it is possible to feed 10 billion people healthily in 2050. CGIAR’s research covers the whole package of how to get there – from the perspective of poorer people, communities and countries.

This means three big areas: improving the diets of the poorest people (including more animal products, of which they consume tiny amounts, as well as a diversity of plant foods including (non-GMO) biofortified crops to help with specific micro-nutrient deficiencies), improving food production efficiency on farms – more crop / more milk / more fish per unit of water / fertilizer / energy / land, and managing post-harvest losses and waste (for human health as well as environmental benefits).

The post A 650 Million Dollar Pledge Aimed at Eradicating Extreme Hunger by 2030 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Philanthropists who are genuine givers are not able to explain clearly why they don’t fund ‘activist-y’ work | Photo courtesy: Pexels

By Anurag Behar
Nov 22 2019 (IPS)

Since philanthropists are unlikely to fund anything that destabilises their businesses, building independent institutions can be an effective approach to create lasting impact.

The vibrancy of a democracy, and the health of a society, is significantly influenced by civil society. It comprises an entire spectrum from community-based collectives and voluntary organisations to NGOs and nonprofits of other sorts. Philanthropy plays a critical role in supporting that space, building it, keeping it alive, and growing it.

 

What is the role of civil society?

What is civil society’s specific contribution? One part of it is keeping the market and state honest. It is a counterbalance to the market and the state, and it must act as one.

Civil society is the champion of the social and public good. On the other side, civil society also tries to work with the market and the state to make them more effective and useful to society. Both functions co-exist—not as a dichotomy but as a spectrum.

Philanthropy can play a specific role in this spectrum, by taking the kinds of risks that the state system finds hard to take because of operational reasons, and by helping develop civil society institutions.

To keep the state and market balanced, civil society should—and it doesn’t do enough of it right now—build institutions. This has to be supported by philanthropy. India doesn’t have enough civil society driven institutions, but if it did, they would play a very important role in balancing the market and the state

For instance, the state is likely to find it difficult to recruit good, highly-capable people at the beginning of an initiative, or when something is at an experimental stage, because of the its large systems, which have their internal logic. To help solve for this, the state can collaborate with civil society.

If you look at many sectors—health, education, environment—we’ve seen that very often civil society leads in motivating people to take risks and/or championing the public good. Once proven, accepted or established, that gets taken up by the government in some sense or the other.

This is because civil society by its very nature is focused on the public good (or should be). It can be more flexible and can engage people in a way that the state cannot. It’s not a lacuna on part of the government system; it’s just the way the system is structured.

To keep the state and market balanced,  civil society should—and it doesn’t do enough of it right now—build institutions. This has to be supported by philanthropy. India doesn’t have enough civil society driven institutions, but if it did, they would play a very important role in balancing the market and the state.

 

Philanthropy in India isn’t playing an adequate enough role

There is certainly some philanthropy happening in India, we know that; people are giving money–some are giving a lot, and some are giving smaller amounts, but it’s still a significant percentage of their wealth. And all this is good.

But it is clearly not at the scale that the country needs, or comparable to that in some other countries or what the wealthy of India could be giving.

Consider an example from the USA: If you look at the strength of the American higher education system, not just as a teaching powerhouse but also as a place of intellectual ferment and knowledge creation, that keeps society on a certain path, it has been significantly funded by philanthropy.

We don’t have anything like that in India. One can count on one’s fingertips the significant universities or research institutions that have been funded by Indian philanthropy.

One big reason is that they just don’t want to do it. It’s not merely a question of needing large amounts of money to support higher education; it certainly can be done with smaller amounts of money, in interesting ways like setting up a research chair at a university or funding a research program. But all this presumes that someone actually and genuinely wants to give for such matters. Those who do, find ways of doing it.

Today, when people do give, they prefer to give money for tangible things like scholarships, grants for buildings, donations to hospitals, because they believe that they can see the direct benefit. It seems simple and clear. Funding institutions, on the other hand, takes more patience, understanding, and perspective. And not many philanthropists seem interested in going down that path.

India hasn’t always been like this. We’ve had remarkable philanthropists in the first several decades of the 20th century—the Tatas, Birlas, Sarabhais, people like Jamnalal Bajaj, and other lesser known names—who built institutions, and helped build the nation with their social capital and a version of Gandhian trusteeship.

When you compare what they did to what today’s wealthy are doing—from the perspective of the wealth that they have generated in the past 20-30 years—are they giving enough? And are they supporting development of institutions? If you take corporate social responsibility (CSR) out of the equation—because CSR is not philanthropy—the answer is probably no.

 

Business money is likely to be risk-averse

Business money of any sort—including money that has created wealth for individuals—is likely to be risk-averse. This is sensible, and the wealth owners cannot be faulted for this.

To put it simply, business money will find it hard to fund ‘activist-y’ things. This is because activist-driven work by its very nature destabilises the socio-political status-quo. And business money will not want to do that.

That is just the nature of the beast. There were perhaps unusual times, as during the Indian independence movement, when this general principle did not hold true—but those were exceptions.

Since business money will not fund activist-driven work, the alternative is for institutions to do this. When you help create an institution and you let go—because you have to let go—it becomes an important player in civil society, and over time, not in one generation but in the next generation and for generations to come, it truly becomes an independent voice and force that can question, or contribute to upending the status-quo.

Therefore, one of the most powerful routes to complement markets and state in any society is through building institutions.

The Tatas are a good example of this. Early on, they built many institutions. Today, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and other smaller institutions are not bound by the commitments that any individual, or organisation that has business money, would otherwise be.

They will do whatever it takes to fund innovation, cutting edge research, and so on. This is our own live history that clearly demonstrates what institution building can help achieve versus the ‘project funding’ approaches that are currently generally supported by philanthropists.

It’s illogical and unfair to expect philanthropists to fund any sharp forms of activism. Why would they fund anything that destabilises their existing business and its social fabric? The question they need to ponder over is why aren’t they funding and building institutions.

It will not happen in their generation, but there will come a time in 20-30 years when such institutions will be separated from any business interests and will become very important players in civil society. And that’s what philanthropists today aren’t doing enough.

Today, the philanthropists who are genuine givers—and there are many of them—are not able to explain clearly why they don’t fund ‘activist-y’ work. They get defensive. But the rationale is clear. They should do what is right for them, and for the source of the money (their business), which is what allows them to be philanthropic. Nonetheless they should also fund institutions that outlive them and support the range of roles that civil society must play.

This article has been written based on an interview conducted by IDR with Anurag Behar.

 

Anurag Behar is CEO of Azim Premji Foundation and the founding Vice Chancellor of the Azim Premji University. He has been a vocal advocate for the critical importance of public systems, in particular the public education system. Anurag is also closely involved with Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives, a grant-making organization supporting not-for-profit organizations working on certain specific issues in the social sector.

The post We Shouldn’t Expect Philanthropists to Fund Activism appeared first on Inter Press Service.

According to the study, the Philippines had the highest inactivity levels among boys, at 93 per cent, while in South Korea, researchers found that 97 per cent of girls failed to do enough exercise. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 22 2019 (IPS)

An alarming lack of exercise among adolescents across the world risks seriously compromising their health into adulthood, the UN said on Thursday.

In the first study of its kind on global and regional trends among 11 to 17-year-olds, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that around 80 percent of them do less than 60 minutes of activity per day – the minimum daily recommendation.

 

Philippines boys and South Korean girls ‘least active’

According to the study, the Philippines had the highest inactivity levels among boys, at 93 per cent, while in South Korea, researchers found that 97 percent of girls failed to do enough exercise.

In gender terms on average, 85 per of girls failed to do enough globally, only slightly worse than boys (78 percent).

“From 2001 to 2016 we found that there’s been no improvement in patterns of activity in this age group…one hour out of their lives each day to be physically active and to get a health benefit from being physically active”...“That can be made up of different small chunks of their time, anything that adds up to 60 minutes.”

Dr. Leanne Riley, WHO study co-author

“From 2001 to 2016 we found that there’s been no improvement in patterns of activity in this age group…one hour out of their lives each day to be physically active and to get a health benefit from being physically active,” said the WHO study co-author Dr. Leanne Riley. “That can be made up of different small chunks of their time, anything that adds up to 60 minutes.”

 

No need to push it to get health benefits

Insisting that physical activity needn’t be overly strenuous or vigorous for it to be beneficial, Dr. Riley explained that jogging, walking, cycling or “just trying to be active” can all make a positive difference.

In the long-term, failing to do enough exercise leaves people vulnerable to a range of non-communicable and preventable illnesses, WHO has repeatedly warned.

These non-communicable diseases include heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, breast and colon cancer.

 

Healthier body – and mind – from exercise

An additional benefit of physical activity is improved mental health, Dr. Riley insisted, highlighting that exercise also promotes learning, delays the onset of dementia and can help maintain a healthy weight.

“If they do it…they’re likely to be healthier adults too,” said the WHO study lead co-author Dr. Regina Guthold, insisting on the importance of establishing healthy habits early on.

According to the study of 1.6 million school-going students from 146 countries, girls were less active than boys in all but four of them: Tonga, Samoa, Afghanistan and Zambia.

The difference between the amount of exercise between boys and girls was greater than 10 per cent in almost a third of countries in 2016, and this trend became more pronounced in almost three-quarters of nations surveyed between 2001 and 2016.

 

Bangladesh, Singapore, Thailand – most improvements

The countries showing the most improvement in activity levels among boys were Bangladesh (from 73 percent to 63 percent), Singapore and Thailand (78 to 70), Benin (79 to 71) and the U.S. and Ireland (71 to 64).

In the case of the US, the study authors noted the likely positive impact of national sports promotion initiatives, although these appeared to have had more success with boys than girls, they said.

Among girls in general the changes in activity levels were small over the review period, the WHO study found, ranging from a two percent increase in Singapore – from 85 percent to 83 percent – to a one percent increase in Afghanistan (87 percent to 88 percent).

Under the 2030 Global Goals Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted in  2015 by the international community, Governments agreed to a 15 per cent improvement in activity levels by 2030.

“We are off-track; this target will not be met if these trends continue,” Dr. Guthold insisted.

 

This story was originally published by UN News

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IBUKU have helped create pioneering bamboo buildings such as the ‘Heart of School’ at Green School. Credit: INBAR

By Charlotte King
BEIJING, China, Nov 21 2019 (IPS)

How Indonesian craftsmanship is undergoing a revival at the world’s first ‘bamboo university’.

It’s fast-growing, flexible and strong. Standing underneath a bamboo canopy, it is easy to understand why people have been using this grass plant for years, in the construction of houses, bridges and scaffolding.

Bamboo has several advantages in construction, including its height, light weight, excellent tensile strength and flexibility. Critically, bamboo is also abundantly available and low cost, making it a traditional choice of housing material for many poorer communities.

Despite its many advantages, for years bamboo has been regarded as ‘poor man’s timber’: a cheaper, less resilient form of construction material. According to Orin Hardy, founder of bamboo training course Bamboo U, “There was a time when nobody would want to be seen to live in a bamboo house.”

One bamboo design company is working hard to change this perception. In the heart of the Balinese jungle, IBUKU’s fairytale headquarters offer a window into the future of bamboo construction: multi-storey, open-air housing with electricity, water and modern amenities.

IBUKU have helped create pioneering bamboo buildings such as the ‘Heart of School’ at Green School. Credit: INBAR

Founded in 2010, IBUKU’s team of designers, architects and Balinese bamboo craftsmen have created hundreds of structures, many of which are now famous as part of the iconic Green School and Green Village.

For the last few years, IBUKU has teamed up with Bamboo U, to provide courses in bamboo construction. Bamboo U is based next to IBUKU headquarters, and offers multi-day ‘build and design’ workshops. People on the courses work with a range of architects, designers and engineers to learn more about bamboo’s properties and potential, and to help build their own bamboo structures. IBUKU provides a number of experts for each course, and invites all trainees to visit their headquarters and bamboo warehouse.

Bamboo U participants learn a lot from the IBUKU team about bamboo’s technical aspects. Although the strong, sturdy dendrocalamus asper is the bamboo of choice for much construction in Bali, IBUKU also use other species for secondary structures, or for decorative use: the wavy, irregular bambusa blumeana, for example, provides a playful addition to balcony railings. It is this willingness to work with nature which Orin hopes to inspire in Bamboo U: “It’s about creating an understanding of the place you’re in… The built environment has become so important. We need nature to be in the built environment. We’ve sacrificed all of that spontaneity and creativity in the name of function.”

No hand tools in sight: an introduction to traditional bamboo joinery with IBUKU’s craftsmen. Credit: INBAR

As with all parts of IBUKU’s work, Balinese bamboo carpenters have a central role to play in the selection of bamboo materials: they know which poles to pick, and how to use them. On Bamboo U courses, these craftsmen also teach participants about traditional bamboo joinery and assembly methods, using hand tools and techniques which they have used from a young age. For Orin, it’s these bamboo carpenters who “really make the magic happen”, and their interaction with course participants “is an essential part of our Bamboo U ethos.”

For Defit Wijaya, senior architect at IBUKU, Bamboo U’s work is an extension of IBUKU’s own aims: to show that bamboo housing is possible. He acknowledges that many people are skeptical about the safety of bamboo structures, and that only a small number of countries have bamboo construction codes. “We need to take more risks to show what bamboo can do. Here [in Bali] we have the luxury of trying this out.”

The team at Bamboo U are not the only ones to inspire people with bamboo construction. The International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation (INBAR), an intergovernmental organisation, coordinates research and demonstration projects to promote bamboo housing among its Member States.

Students are encouraged to build their own designs from scratch. Credit: INBAR

In recent years, their work has helped to push down some of the barriers facing bamboo construction: INBAR has helped create new international standards for bamboo construction design and testing, and has formed a Construction Task Force made up of experts from around the world. Most importantly, INBAR has helped to bust the myths about bamboo construction across its network of Member States: last year, Ecuador confirmed it would integrate bamboo into its huge ‘A House for All’ programme, and in 2017, the government of Nepal approved the first design for an earthquake-resilient bamboo school.

According to Charlotte King, from INBAR, “The role of bamboo construction has never been more important. We know that around 70 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from infrastructure construction and operations. Future development risks locking the world into a high-carbon pathway for hundreds of years.

“As bamboo grows throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia and the Americas, it could provide us with a natural, renewable material for infrastructure in developing countries.”

Students are encouraged to build their own designs from scratch. Credit: INBAR

Find out more about Bamboo U training opportunities here, and about IBUKU’s work here.

Established in 1997, the International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation (INBAR) is an intergovernmental development organisation that promotes environmentally sustainable development using bamboo and rattan. It is currently made up of 45 Member States. In addition to its Secretariat Headquarters in China, INBAR has five Regional Offices in Cameroon, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana and India. Find out more about INBAR here.

Charlotte King is a communications specialist in climate change and sustainable development. She works at the International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation (INBAR).

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By GGGI / OECS Joint Media Release
Nov 21 2019 (IPS-Partners)

Today, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) became the 34th Member of the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) after formally submitting its Instrument of Accession. The OECS is also the first regional integration organisation to become a member of GGGI.

Since the establishment of the GGGI Caribbean office in 2019, located within OECS Commission headquarters in Saint Lucia, the two entities have worked together to pursue a joint programme of activities in support of capacity building and development of green growth options in OECS countries.

The joint programme includes activities at both the regional and national levels to support the small island countries in the Eastern Caribbean transition their economies toward low-carbon, climate-resilient sustainable growth. Because the OECS is a regional organisation, membership in GGGI means that the OECS Commission, as well as the OECS Member States, will have access to GGGI membership benefits. GGGI is already working with the OECS Commission, as well as directly with the governments of OECS Member States, to support the transition to more sustainable energy systems and accelerate the flow of climate finance in the region.

“GGGI is delighted to welcome the OECS as its newest member and looks forward to working together to accelerate the process of resource mobilisation for green growth initiatives in the OECS Member States.”

“The membership of the OECS into GGGI takes this collaborative effort one step further to expand on their support for the Caribbean region,” said Dr. Frank Rijsberman, Director General of GGGI.

Director General of the OECS, Dr. Didacus Jules, wholeheartedly welcomed the opportunity to bring the unique integration movement that is the OECS to the GGGI, noting that this is the first time that a regional organisation has joined the pioneering institution.

“We are a unique integration project because six of our Member States are independent and six are non-independent, with three of these being French territories.”

“In common with many Small Island Developing States, we are at the frontline of climate change disasters and we bear the brunt of the escalating devastation from sudden onslaught climatic events, such as coastal erosion and sea level rise, marine pollution and every other manifestation of a planet in terminal crisis.”

“We have become members of the GGGI because we need to have our voices heard in every significant global forum and we are extending the hand of solidarity and common purpose to everyone who understands the urgency of a new development paradigm that is green, blue, inclusive and regenerative.”

Dr. Kristin Deason, GGGI’s Caribbean Representative added that “OECS’s accession as a member of GGGI showcases the importance that Eastern Caribbean countries are placing on sustainability, resilience, and green growth. It is clear that the OECS Member States are serious about transforming their energy sectors into more sustainable, resilient systems, and we are excited to help support that transition.”

The threats of the climate emergency have severely affected Caribbean states with rising sea levels, destruction of the local environment, food insecurity due to lower yields in agriculture production, and strengthened natural disasters such as hurricanes and tropical storms. Given the severity of these issues, the combined work of the OECS Commission and GGGI helps to identify and develop projects that support countries with the adoption of green growth policies, gaining access to climate finance, and promoting sustainability in the region, particularly in the areas of renewable energy and sustainable transportation.

One of the first events to come out of the organisations’ collaboration was the Virtual Island Summit, an all-online event bringing together experts from the Caribbean and Pacific to share information on sustainable practices and discuss the most pressing issues for island communities worldwide. As part of the event, a joint panel provided the opportunity to explore initiatives in both regions that support implementation and enhancement of countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Climate Agreement.

Also, in 2019, OECS and GGGI worked jointly to review insurance mechanisms for solar PV installations, and to investigate incorporating standards for rooftop PV into the OECS building code. Currently, both organisations are working with the governments of Saint Lucia, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, and the Commonwealth of Dominica to implement and enhance their NDCs and increase climate financing.

“As GGGI’s very first regional member, OECS is paving the way with a new program format at GGGI, and I look forward to seeing our joint programme develop into a strong example of regional coordination and support for green growth,” explained Dr. Kristin Deason, GGGI’s Caribbean Representative.

To get updates on the joint OECS/GGGI program, follow @GGGICaribbean on Twitter and GGGI Caribbean on Facebook.

About the Global Green Growth Institute:

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) is a treaty-based international, inter-governmental organisation dedicated to supporting and promoting strong, inclusive and sustainable economic growth in developing countries and emerging economies. It has operations in over 30 developing countries, including Saint Lucia in the Caribbean and Fiji, Vanuatu, Kiribati, and Papua New Guinea in the Pacific.

About the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States:

The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) is an international organisation dedicated to economic harmonisation and integration, protection of human and legal rights, and the encouragement of good governance among independent and non-independent countries in the Eastern Caribbean comprising Antigua and Barbuda, Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Martinique and Guadeloupe.

(GGGI Caribbean Office)
Kristin Deason
GGGI Caribbean Country Representative
+1 758 726 2949
kristin.deason@gggi.org

(GGGI Seoul HQ)
HeeKyung Son, Communications Specialist
+82 70-7117-9957
H.Son@GGGI.org

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“Over our dead bodies.” Villagers in Beragama, Sri Lanka protest to prevent government surveyors from carrying out mapping due to fears of losing their land. Credit: Sanjana Hattotuwa/IPS

By Alan Keenan
BRUSSELS, Nov 21 2019 (IPS)

On 16 November, Gotabaya Rajapaksa – who served as defence secretary during the final phase of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war – won a decisive victory in Sri Lanka’s presidential election.

Although Rajapaksa’s victory was not a surprise, the margin of his win exceeded expectations among many analysts. The candidate of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and brother of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, Gotabaya (who, like Mahinda, is widely known by his first name) captured 52.25 per cent of the vote. His main rival, Sajith Premadasa, candidate of the ruling United National Party (UNP), came in second with 42 per cent.

Gotabaya, who has been linked to atrocities committed at the end of the war, is a polarising figure in Sri Lanka, and Saturday’s vote revealed sharp divisions in the electorate along ethnic lines.

Although both candidates were from the ethnic majority Sinhalese community, Rajapaksa, who ran a strongly Sinhala nationalist campaign, was the outsize winner among the Sinhalese, securing such a huge majority that he needed few if any votes from ethnic Tamil or Muslim voters.

By contrast, overwhelming majorities of Muslim and Tamil voters – who together make up roughly a quarter of the population – cast their ballots for Premadasa.

Of the record 35 candidates on the ballot, two who seemed positioned to command enough votes to affect the outcome did less well than expected. Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of the left-wing Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, won only 3.16 per cent of the vote, and former army commander Mahesh Senanayake, running as the candidate of a new, civil society-backed political party, won less than half a per cent.

The presidential campaign was one of Sri Lanka’s most peaceful, with only a handful of violent incidents. One concern highlighted by Election Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya was the unprecedented amount of “fake news” spread on social media and in mainstream media outlets as well.

Most of the disinformation targeted Premadasa’s campaign, including a particularly damaging story reported by pro-Rajapaksa outlets during the final days claiming Premadasa had signed a secret pact with the main Tamil party, the Tamil National Alliance, in exchange for its support.

What accounts for Gotabaya’s decisive victory?

Voters’ security concerns, Sinhalese ethno-nationalism, Sri Lanka’s economic straits, the current government’s infighting and the SLPP’s organisational strength were the main factors driving Gotabaya’s victory.

Although Premadasa had a credible shot at winning, Gotabaya was widely seen as the front runner from the start. Backed by his brother Mahinda, who remains popular among Sinhalese voters but was constitutionally prevented from running for another term, Gotabaya faced in Premadasa an opponent who was a senior minister in an unpopular, divided and ineffective government.

Tapping into widespread feelings of anger and vulnerability stemming from the government’s failure to prevent the devastating ISIS-inspired Easter Sunday attacks on Christian churches and hotels – notwithstanding advance warnings from the Indian government – Gotabaya put a promise to deliver “security” and “eradicate terrorism” at the centre of his campaign.

The combination of Gotabaya’s pledge to prioritise security and his ethno-nationalist message resonated especially with the many Sinhala voters who remember the key role he played as defence secretary in the 2009 military victory over the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers.

Gotabaya enjoyed the active support of influential Buddhist monks who have long promoted the idea that Tamils and Muslims threaten Sri Lanka’s Sinhala Buddhist character – a sentiment that has increased among Sinhalese since the Easter bombings.

Given the Rajapaksa family’s popularity among Sinhalese voters, Premadasa needed overwhelming support from Muslims and Tamils to have any chance at victory, a reality that led the SLPP to argue that a Premadasa presidency would be hostage to minority interests.

The governing UNP’s unpopularity also gave Gotabaya a big boost. With economic growth rates weak and debt repayment obligations high, the UNP government has had little revenue with which to deliver significant benefits to poor and middle-income Sri Lankans. The sharp fall in tourism following the Easter bombings added to the difficulty that large numbers of Sri Lankans have had making ends meet.

Moreover, under the UNP, government policymaking, including on economic issues, was confused and often contradictory. The increasingly toxic relationship between President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe exacerbated the government’s ineffectiveness.

In October 2018, Sirisena attempted to remove Wickremesinghe as prime minister and replace him with Mahinda Rajapaksa, a move that courts ruled unconstitutional but that helped cement an impression of chaos in the country’s governing ranks. Premadasa proved unable to separate himself clearly enough from the government’s unpopularity.

The SLPP’s strong island-wide organisation also benefited Gotabaya. The Rajapaksas and their supporters built up the party methodically since forming it in 2016 to be the political vehicle for the Rajapaksa family’s return to power.

Big wins in the February 2018 local government elections strengthened the party at the grassroots level. Unlike Gotabaya, who had carefully laid the foundation of his campaign over the previous two years, Premadasa was named the UNP candidate just days before the campaign began, after a bitter struggle with party leader and prime minister Wickremesinghe.

From that point on, the Premadasa campaign was playing catch-up while holding a weaker hand than Gotabaya, with flimsier party organisation and less funding and media support (most private media are owned by Rajapaksa allies and backed Gotabaya strongly, and more than a few outlets spread disinformation on his behalf).

What is the Rajapaksa family’s return to power likely to mean for Sri Lanka’s longstanding ethnic tensions?

The strongly Sinhala nationalist character of Gotabaya’s campaign, his reliance for the win almost entirely on votes from Sinhalese, and his brother’s policies during his ten years in office (2005-2015) all suggest that persistent ethnic and religious tensions – which increased following the Easter bombings – could dangerously sharpen under Gotabaya’s presidency.

Many fear that the new political landscape will bring renewed energy to the long-running campaign of anti-Muslim hate speech, violence and economic boycotts led by militant groups claiming to defend Buddhism.

These groups first flourished under the Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency in 2013 and 2014, when they received support from the police and military intelligence, then under Gotabaya’s control as defence secretary.

Anti-Muslim campaigning waned in the first year after the Rajapaksas left office in early 2015 but ultimately grew even more violent, with eyewitness and video evidence indicating the involvement of members of their SLPP party in attacks on mosques and Muslim businesses and homes in March 2018 and in the aftermath of the Easter bombings in May 2019.

Gotabaya has always denied any support for militant Buddhist groups, but he is widely seen by Muslims as hostile to their community’s economic and social well-being. The strong support that Muslim voters and political leadership gave Premadasa leads many to worry that the community will now be targeted for its perceived disloyalty.

Post-election attacks on a mosque in the southern city of Galle and a surge in anti-Muslim hate speech on social media since the results were announced have already bolstered these concerns.

Gotabaya has indicated little interest in helping heal the bitter ethnic divisions that endure in the wake of the country’s devastating 26-year civil war, which pitted the government against an insurgency led by the Tamil Tigers and left 100,000-150,000 people dead.

Grievances and political marginalisation of Tamils gave rise to decades of inter-ethnic violence that included abuses and rights violations by both government and Tamil Tiger forces. Throughout the war and in its aftermath, Gotabaya has opposed reforms that would address Tamil concerns, including ones that would decentralise power and give the Tamils greater control over their own affairs.

Both he and the SLPP denounced efforts by the outgoing UNP-led government to draft a new constitution that would move in this direction by, among other things, expanding the powers of the provinces, arguing that such changes threaten national security and the Buddhist and unitary nature of the state.

The risk of renewed Tamil militancy is very low, however, given the destruction of the Tamil Tigers and their support base and the enormous number of troops still stationed in the north, where the Tamil population is concentrated, ten years after the end of the war. Surveillance of northern Tamils is extensive, with military intelligence informers reportedly placed in every village.

The Rajapaksas and the SLPP have denounced even the modest reduction in the military’s footprint in the north that occurred since the change of government in 2015, claiming that it endangers national security; and they are unlikely to relax further the military’s presence in Tamil-majority areas.

Tensions are likely to simmer nonetheless. The presidential election coincided with the 1,000th day of continuous protests by Tamil widows and family members seeking information about the fate of loved ones who disappeared during the war, many of them after surrendering to the army.

What are likely to be Gotabaya’s first political moves as president?

Gotabaya has stated publicly that the popular Mahinda will soon join the country’s leadership as prime minister. UNP leader Wickremesinghe remains in the post for now, but his ability to hold on to the parliamentary majority needed to remain in office is eroding.

Within hours of the final voting results’ release, key UNP ministers announced their resignation. The UNP may decide to support parliament’s dissolution in the coming days or weeks, which would set the stage for a general election, in order to avoid large numbers of its parliamentarians crossing over to the SLPP and backing Mahinda as prime minister.

Under the constitution, the president himself cannot dissolve parliament until it has sat for four and a half years, a threshold that will be reached in mid-February.

Gotabaya may also try to strengthen presidential powers. Just hours after Gotabaya was declared the winner, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who serves in parliament and is head of the SLPP, issued a statement criticising the constitution’s Nineteenth Amendment, which the Sri Lankan parliament passed just after Mahinda lost the presidency in 2015 and that reduced the powers of the office.

The amendment strengthened the prime minister’s role, re-established a two-term limit on the presidency, and reinforced independent commissions on human rights, police, the judiciary and civil services. Many welcomed the end of the all-powerful executive presidency.

Others have argued that the Nineteenth Amendment, by dividing executive powers between the president and prime minister, produced weak and confused government. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s statement hinted strongly that the SLPP would push for parliament to revoke the amendment and re-concentrate powers in the presidency.

Should a strong presidential system be re-established, there will be reason to worry that it will come at the expense of the margin of independence that the judiciary and police have gained since 2015.

Even in the absence of constitutional changes, there is little chance of progress in the numerous criminal cases pending in the courts against Gotabaya and other members of the Rajapaksa family and their close associates.

Mahinda has sought to delegitimise these as politically-motivated “persecution and harassment”. The dozens of high-profile cases of political assassinations, abductions, disappearances and attacks on journalists that took place under the earlier Rajapaksa administration, which the police have been investigating with relative vigour since 2015, are certain to go nowhere or be dropped.

What are the implications of Gotabaya’s presidency for relations with international institutions and countries with which it has key economic and security ties?

The Rajapaksa family’s return to power and their strongly Sinhala nationalist agenda pose major challenges to efforts by certain countries and international bodies to support post-war reconciliation and accountability. These are goals that the outgoing UNP government notionally supported but for which it failed to build a strong domestic constituency.

For his part, Gotabaya has made it clear that his government will turn its back on commitments that Sri Lanka previously made in relation to the UN Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) 2015 resolution on reconciliation and accountability, which the UNP-led government co-sponsored.

The resolution called for numerous reforms designed to address Sri Lanka’s violent past, including the establishment of four transitional justice institutions. The UNP government viewed two of these – a truth-seeking commission and a special court to investigate and prosecute alleged international crimes during the war – as too controversial to establish.

The two institutions that did get off the ground – the Office of Missing Persons and the Office of Reparations – are likely to be weakened or even dismantled under Gotabaya. It is unclear whether the new government will encourage the passage of a new resolution at the UNHRC repudiating the 2015 resolution, or wait for the current resolution to expire in March 2021 and seek to block any efforts to renew it.

Either way, UNHRC member states that have been part of the push for reconciliation and accountability should work to keep the council engaged on the core concerns addressed in the 2015 resolution and to maintain close oversight of Sri Lanka’s human rights record.

India, Japan and Western governments will all be concerned at the prospect that the Rajapaksas will strengthen relations with China, which during the election made clear of its preference for Gotabaya and the SLPP. Economic and political ties between Sri Lanka and China grew during Mahinda’s presidency; the Chinese-built and now Chinese-leased port in Hambantota is a flagship example.

China’s competitors’ worries that the port could eventually be used for Chinese military purposes are certain to increase now that the Rajapaksas are back in power. Gotabaya’s government should not be expected to move quickly or decisively in that direction, however, preferring instead to maintain balanced relations with all of Sri Lanka’s donors and trading partners.

The Rajapaksas are probably hoping that they can use their closer ties with Beijing to leverage continued economic support from other governments fearful of “losing” Sri Lanka to China.

The post Sri Lanka’s Presidential Election Brings Back a Polarising Wartime Figure appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Alan Keenan is Senior Analyst and Sri Lanka Project Director International Crisis Group (ICG)

The post Sri Lanka’s Presidential Election Brings Back a Polarising Wartime Figure appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Two Afghan women walk near an ancient Mosque in western Herat province. On Tuesday Afghanistan’s first female ambassador to the United Nations launched a women’s group that aims to “protect and safeguard” the work that’s been done in the advancement of women’s rights in the last 18 years. Courtesy UNAMA / Fraidoon Poya.

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 2019 (IPS)

Afghanistan’s first female ambassador to the United Nations this week launched a U.N. group that aims to put women at the centre of peace initiatives in Afghanistan. 

“There is a new story, there is a new Afghanistan. And part of that new Afghanistan is the women in Afghanistan,” Ambassador Adela Raz said at the launch of Friends of Afghan Women on Tuesday.

The purpose, Raz said, is to “protect and safeguard” the work that’s been done in the advancement of women’s rights in the last 18 years, and to ensure that Afghan women are no longer “recognised by victimhood, but rather than as a partners”.

Women’s rights and gender-based violence continues to remain a glaring issue in Afghanistan, with Ministry of Women’s Affairs of Afghanistan reporting an escalation in Amnesty International’s 2017-18 report.

According to the Amnesty International report, Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission documented thousands of accounts of gender violence cases, ranging from beatings, murders, to acid attacks. 

It remains a “frightening moment” for Afghan women, says Heather Barr, a former Afghan researcher and current acting director of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch. 

“There is every reason to believe that were theTaliban to regain power through a deal they would make it a priority to restrict women’s rights dramatically,” Barr told IPS. 

Concerns about the Taliban’s prisoner swap with the United States and Australia, which also took place on Tuesday, came up at the launch as well, when Raz candidly responded, “Look, peace is not easy. The process is painful. It needs patience.”

Last week, Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani agreed to “conditionally” release the prisoners in an effort “to pave the way” for further peace talks. 

“The Afghan government has often done the wrong thing on women’s rights, but things could still get much much worse,” said Barr, who has been doing research on Afghanistan since 2007 and lived in Kabul for six years. “All of these fears have been exacerbated by how peace discussions have played out so far.”

At the launch on Tuesday, Raz assured that the group is looking into the complex layers of addressing women’s rights caught in the conflict. 

“I absolutely can tell you it was not an easy decision for the government of Afghanistan, especially for the people of Afghanistan, to be fine with that,” Raz said, adding that they’re hopeful that the message is sent to the Taliban that they’re serious about peace. 

United Kingdom Permanent Representative Karen Pierce, who is co-chairing the group, pointed out that Afghan women were granted the right to vote before American women did, and said the purpose of the group was to put women at the centre of the peace process. 

“It’s got this very central role of wanting to put women right at the heart of the peace process, not so that they have to be invited, but so that they are an integral part from the word ‘go,’” she said. 

Afghan women, meanwhile, continue to remain on the ground to fight these injustices, says Omar Waraich, Deputy Director of South Asia at Amnesty International. An Asia Foundation 2018 report stated that women’s rights in Afghanistan are improving, albeit slowly. 

The report further claimed women’s access to justice has significantly improved, with a survey showing more women were bringing domestic disputes to court than men. It attributed this change to the work by grassroots organising by civil society, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, as well as the police which has established a special support unit for women reporting violence. 

Beyond that, Afghan women in everyday lives are continuing to fight. 

“Afghan women are among the bravest people the world has seen. Despite more than four decades of conflict, they have made remarkable strides,” Waraich told IPS. “They have defied the restrictions imposed on them by hardline religious groups. They have raised their voices against injustice in the face of grave threats.”

Barr echoed this thought, and said Afghan women have fought for years “to convince the Afghan government to include them in talks as part of the government’s delegation, with limited success.”

“Under U.N. Security Council resolution 1325 Afghan women have a right to be full participants on any talks about their country’s future,” she told IPS. “They have been waiting much too long for that right to be respected.”

Waraich reiterated the importance of keeping the advancement of Afghan women’s rights at the core of the narrative. 

“These gains did not come easy, they were the result of long and tough battle – and they must not be allowed to be reversed,” he said. “The women of Afghanistan have been among the loudest voices for peace. But for any peace process to be worthy of its name, it must put Afghan women and their concerns at its heart. They must be heard not ignored or silenced.”

The group currently has 20 members, including the U.S., Qatar, and France, as well as support from international unions such as the African Union. 

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Kohler and International Development Enterprises (iDE) have partnered to provide safe sanitation solutions to communities in Ghana since 2016. Photo Cred: iDE

By Ratish Namboothiry
KOHLER, Wisconsin, Nov 21 2019 (IPS)

Each year, World Toilet Day* raises awareness of the crucial role that sanitation plays in reducing disease and creating healthier communities.

At Kohler, we’re committed to finding solutions for universal sanitation access by leveraging our design & innovation competencies and partnering with like-minded organizations to bring meaningful innovations to those communities most in need.

It’s time to shine a brighter light on a sad and heartbreaking truth: each day people are dying because of a lack of basic sanitation solutions.

According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, 1 in 3 people lack access to a toilet, open defecation still exists for 10% of the population, and women and girls spend 266 million hours a day trying to find a safe and discrete place to go. The result? Hygiene-related diseases, like diarrhea, that account for 1 million deaths annually. This has to end.

Partners like Water Mission and iDE are making a meaningful impact and changing the story for so many.

In January 2017, Water Mission initiated a Healthy LatrinesTM program to provide safe sanitation to families in in western Honduras. Enter the KOHLER Pour Flush Toilet – an affordable seated toilet that flushes when water is poured in by the user.

To date, Water Mission has impacted over 6,300 people by building Healthy LatrinesTM that include a Kohler pour flush toilet. Additional installations are currently under construction as part of a program to reach 5,000 families in five years.

The organization provides the toilet to the families, who in turn, are asked to help build the Healthy Latrines.

[The Water Mission® organization is a Christian engineering nonprofit that designs, builds, and implements safe Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) solutions for people in developing countries and disaster areas.

Since 2001, Water Mission has used innovative technology and engineering expertise to provide access to safe water for more than four million people in 55 countries. Water Mission has 350 staff members working around the world in permanent country programs located in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.]

“We like the Kohler toilet because it is designed to be practical in its installation,” remarked Hector Chacon, Water Mission’s County Director in Honduras. Moreover, individuals take great pride in the aspirational design and working to improve general sanitation issues.

In addition to its longstanding partnership with Water Mission, Kohler has also worked closely with iDE – a social enterprise organization that developed its own self-enclosed toilet.

As part of an overall effort in Ghana (a country where just 67% of the population lives without access to a toilet), iDE’s brand Sama Sama chose the KOHLER pour flush toilet as an option for those individuals requiring a sitting model, such as families with older members or those with special needs.

Sama Sama Managing Director Osei Agyeman-Buahin said the goal is to consistently innovate to diversify its offering for a diverse customer base.

Our goal is to provide safe sanitation solutions for all and to continue to push ourselves to innovate, iterate and improve upon the solutions we provide. Innovation for Good is Kohler’s internal incubator designed to find new business opportunities that have a social purpose aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

At Kohler, we lean into our water and sanitation innovation expertise to create products and solutions that can provide meaningful change.

If we’re going to put an end to the sanitation crisis, the time for real action and strong partnership is now. A better world awaits.

*The theme of World Toilet Day this year was: Leaving no One Behind. According to the United Nations, close to half of the world’s population- or to be exact, 4.2 billion people — are still living without safely managed sanitation. This is not without consequences and it is estimated that inadequate sanitation causes over 400,000 diarrheal deaths every year. The UN’s Sustainable Goal 6 calls for sanitation for all, by 2030. World Toilet Day was commemorated on November 19.

The post More Than just a Toilet: Fusing innovation & Partnerships for a Better World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Rotish Namboothiry is Associate Director-Innovation for Good at Kohler Co.

The post More Than just a Toilet: Fusing innovation & Partnerships for a Better World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Nov 20 2019 (IPS)

To be president in a country like Bolivia might be like a precarious act performed by a tightrope-dancer between “the Devil and the deep blue sea”. After 23 years as Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales finally lost his foothold and ended up as political refugee in Mexico, adding his name to a long list of previous revolutionary exiles, like Augusto Sandino, Fidel Castro, and most prominently – Leon Trotsky. The last one was murdered, though the others came back, something Evo Morales has promised to do:

• “Sisters and brothers, I leave for Mexico, grateful for the generosity of the government of that kindred people who gave us asylum to defend our lives. It hurts to leave the country for political reasons, but I will remain vigilant. Soon I will return with greater strength and energy.”

1

Morales balance act was performed between an urban, social elite, a hostile U.S. government, suspicious neighbouring countries, big landowners, industrialists, the Army, coca growers, corrupt, political allies, alleged mistresses, regional leaders, environmentalists and not the least dissatisfaction amidst loyal supporters among poor and indigenous communities, suffering inevitable frustrations over his adminstration´s inability to provide everything they hoped for.

Nevertheless, a galloping inflation was checked under Morales´s regime. Foreign currency reserves grew steadily, while millions were spent on subsidies and infrastructure. Contrary to many other Latin American populists, Morales is also a pragmatist who instead of outright nationalizing companies and institutions, while throwing out foreign investors, cut better deals for the State and embraced market-friendly policies.

If he had groomed a successor and accepted power transition Morales, who was born to a poor peasant family in the desolate and isolated Aymara village of Iasallawi, could have been remembered as one of the great political leaders of Latin America. Though as most leaders within a volatile, prejudiced and highly combative political environment he made self-interested moves and occasionally stabbed opponents in the back.

In spite of being known as a “modest person with little interest in material possessions”, who when he became president reduced both his own salary and those of his ministers by 57 percent to USD 1,800 a month, he soon became a brand of vitality and infallibility. One example was his regular, predawn workout in a gym, when he in front of an audience displayed stamina and strength. Later in the day he used to visit a couple of cities or villages, where his image was stamped on murals in subsidized housing complexes, on airport billboards and even on taxis and buses.

I first became acquainted with Evo Morales’s mounting presence when I on behalf of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency in 2000 began visiting Bolivian universities. When I first arrived in Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest city, it had recently suffered violent clashes between protesters and army troops. Riots erupted after President Hugo Banzer signed a contract with a private consortium to control the city’s water resources. This was part of a privatization policy initiated by his predecessor, Sánchez de Lozada, meaning that more than 50 percent of former state-owned businesses and enterprises were transferred to private investors. In Cochabamba, the price for water tripled, leading to wide-spread rioting among those who no longer could afford clean water.

My hosts at the San Simon University told me protests were organized by radicalized coca growers from Chapare, a district which population between 1992 and 2016 had doubled from 132,000 to 262,000,2 mainly due to an influx of former miners and smallholders, migrating from the highlands, which since the beginning of the 1980s suffered from an economic crisis shutting down mining enterprises and destroying markets for poor farmers. The majority of the migrants were Quechua and Aymara speaking indigenous people. Among the newcomers had been nineteen-years-old Evo Morales, whose family had left the highlands since violent storms had destroyed their small farm.

Several migrants were former union leaders hardened by decades of work in the mines and had no agricultural experience before their arrival, something that proved to be of great importance. The coca plant is autochthonous to the Chapare region, but had so far not been exploited, since its high concentration of alkaloids makes it unsuitable for akulliku (mastication), the common use of coca at higher altitudes. Nevertheless, Chapare coca was well suited for cocaine production and did not need much care from inexperienced farmers. It could be harvested four times a year and was highly profitable, satisfying an expanding, global market.

When I visited Chapare, roads entering the district were guarded by control stations making me remember the ones I passed while entering East Germany in the 1980s. They were guarded by armed personell from the Bolivian Army and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), controlling in- and outcoming traffic. Inside the district, towns and villages made me think of towns in Western movies – haphazardly constructed buildings, bars and even brothels, but no communal squares. Stores were filled with the latest electronic equipment, refrigerators, air conditioners, computers, motorbikes, etc.

The San Simon University supported experimental plantations for various crops to stimulate farmers to quit coca production. Apart from such plantations I visited coca fields where growers told me that international support to drug eradication had actually made coca growing even more profitable – new roads improved buyers´ access, subsidies for alternative crops were gratefully received, while the coca purchasers offered improved plants with higher alkaloid content occupying less space and being suitable for interplantation with other crops. They considered DEA agents as enemies, as well as a Government, which according to them served a wealthy, urban elite bowing to U.S. pressure to persecute coca growers, of which several wore t-shirts with slogans like Coca no es cocaina, ”coca is not cocaine” and Causachun coca. Wañuchun yanquis, ”Long live coca. Death to the Yankees.”

Their hero was Evo Morales, who had organized the Cocalero Union and now headed the country’s second biggest political party. Adorned with a garland of coca leaves Morales gave arousing speeches presenting coca as an emblem of an Andean culture threatened by U.S. imperialist oppression. He was right about inept politicians and the open meddling of the U.S. in Bolivian politics, as well as coca being an integrated, even religiously important part of Andean culture, though he failed to mention that this was not at all the case of Chapare-produced coca. He was also right about the marginalized position of indigenous people, though he failed to mention progress made after the 1952/53 revolution when indigenous people had risen against a corrupt regime in an uprising that lead to extensive land reforms, universal suffrage, strengthened labour unions and efforts to integrate indigenous people in the ruling of a country where roughly 65 percent of the population identify themselves as ”indigenous people”. In short, to me Morales appeared to be a populist who slightly twisted reality to make it serve his political career.

However, Morales proved to be an able politician transforming his pro-coca and pro-indigenous stance to an effective political agenda that eventually changed Bolivia. Already a few months after Morales assumed the presidency in 2006 the State increased its control of the hydrocarbon industry. Corporations had up until then paid 18 percent of their profits to the State – now the new regime reversed the situation by decreeing that 82 percent of the profits would be passed on to the State. Oil companies threatened to cease all its Bolivian operations, but remained anyway. In 2002 the Bolivian State received USD 173 million from hydrocarbon extraction, but already in 2006 it obtained USD 1.3 billion.3

The increased revenue resulting from this and similar measures was invested in efforts to expand the welfare state. Prices of gas and many foodstuffs were controlled. Local food producers were motivated to sell their produce in the local market, rather than exporting it and the economy grew. Stronger public finances brought economic stability and inflation was curbed. Upon Morales’ election, Bolivia’s illiteracy rate was at 16 percent, the highest in South America. A literacy campaign was introduced and in 2009 UNESCO considered Bolivia to be free from illiteracy.4 By 2014, twenty hospitals had been established and basic medical coverage was guaranteed up to the age of 25, while low-income citizens over 60 received a monthly contribution of USD 344. Cash transfer programs were introduced to keep children of low-income parents in school. The legal minimum wage was in 2006 increased by 50 percent and pension age have successively been lowered from 65 to 58 years.

Nevertheless, Morales’s conservative critics have claimed that too much revenue was wasted on unnecessary projects like football fields and communal auditoriums, warning that projects implemented to ensure continued support for the Government would sooner or later end in a catastrophe, like the one in Venezuela.

Morales’s worst nemesis was his promise to support regional autonomy for Bolivia’s departments. When the country’s more affluent eastern departments tried to implement such policies, Morales backtracked, declaring it as an attempt of the bourgeoisie to preserve its wealth. He has also been accused of “hollow populism”, exemplified by the fact that he during his first presidential term gave ministerial posts to self-declared indigenous persons, though they were gradually replaced by middle-class politicians. Already by 2012 only 3 of the 20 cabinet minsters identified themselves as “indigenous”. Similarly, during his second term Morales’s cabinet contained more than 50 percent women, though the number soon dropped to a third. And the coca? He expulsed DEA and introduced fix quotas for coca production, trying to foment alternative crops. However, alkaloid rich coca is still grown in Chapare and there are conflicting information about whether cocaine production has decreased, or not.

The ultimate nail in Morales’s coffin was his decision to run for a fourth term and his various machinations to realize his intention. In spite of the fact that he lost a 2016 referendum that would allow him to pursue the presidency, he nevertheless participated in the 2019 election and declared himself victorious, though after several voting irregularities had been revealed and triggered off violent protests Evo Morales acknowledged defeat and fled Bolivia. The question is whether his legacy will be judged sympathetically, or if he will join the ranks of other former Latin American dictators and presidents whose vanity and clinging to power eventually obscured all their achievements.

1 Collyns, Dan and Julian Borger (2019) ”Bolivia´s Evo Moarles flies to Mexico, but vows to return with ´strength and energy´,” The Guardian, 12 November.
2 INE, Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, 1992 and 2016.
3 Lasa Aresti, Lisa (2016) Oil and Gas Revenue Sharing in Bolivia. New York: National Resource Governance Institute
4 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37117243

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.

The post Evo Morales: Hero or Villain? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

The 2019 Global Gender Summit will be held from 25-27 November 2019 in Kigali Rwanda.

 

The Global Gender Summit is organized by the African Development Bank with other multilateral development bank partners. The biennial event brings together leaders from government, development institutions, private sector, civil society and academia.

With the theme “Unpacking constraints to gender equality”, the summit will consider three dimensions in which gender equality and women’s empowerment can be achieved: scaling up innovative financing; enabling legal, regulatory and institutional environments; and securing women’s participation and voices.

The main objective of the summit is to share best practices and catalyze investment to accelerate progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment in Africa and around the world.

 

 

The post The 2019 Global Gender Summit appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By PRESS RELEASE
PARIS, Nov 19 2019 (IPS-Partners)

UNESCO has presented three reports concerning media issues to Member States meeting at the Organization’s Headquarters for the 40th session of its General Conference. The three reports, available online in English are:

Intensified Attacks, New Defences: Developments in the Fight to Protect Journalists and End Impunity assesses trends in safety of journalists around the world over five years (2014-2018) and flags an 18% increase in the killing of journalists compared to the previous five-year period (495 killings compared to 418 from 2009 through 2013). The report shows that 88% of killings recorded since 2006 remain unpunished. The study also examines the evolution of threats against the profession, notably online attacks and harassment, which disproportionally affects women journalists, undermining freedom of expression. Nevertheless, the report also highlights a growing commitment to protect the media through the establishment or strengthening of mechanisms to monitor, prevent and prosecute attacks on journalists and protect those facing threats. Coalitions seeking to improve the safety of journalists are forming worldwide with the participation of governments, academia, civil society organizations, regional and intergovernmental bodies.

Access to Information: A New Promise for Sustainable Development explores recent legislative developments and their effect in the field, as well as evolving international standards and practices concerning access to information, recognized in Sustainable Development Goal 16.10 which urges governments to “ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements.” The report furthermore examines models for implementation bodies, new digital challenges and opportunities for access to information. In order to understand the drivers of change, the Report examines trendsetting activities within UNESCO, the Sustainable Development Agenda, the Universal Periodic Review, the Open Government Partnership, and the standard-setting work of regional intergovernmental organizations and national oversight bodies. The research also draws on unique UNESCO surveys and analysis of Voluntary National Reports presented at the United Nations’ High-level Political Forum in July this year. The surge of ATI laws reflects growing awareness of the impact of access to information on human rights, development, democracy and people’s private lives.

Elections and Media in Digital Times highlights three converging trends affecting the media and elections in the digital age: the rise of disinformation, intensifying attacks on journalists, and disruptions linked to the use of information and communications technology in the election process. Offering possible responses to the challenges at hand, the study is a tool for governments, election officials, media organizations, journalists, civil society, the private sector, academia and individuals. It also proposes possible responses to safeguard media freedom and integrity while strengthening news coverage of elections in a digital environment.

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Media contact: Roni Amelan, UNESCO Press Service, r.amelan@unesco.org , +330)145681650

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Rohingya refugee children wade through flood waters surrounding their families' shelters following an intense pre-monsoon storm in Shamlapur makeshift settlement in Cox's Bazar district, Bangladesh. Credit: UNICEF/UN0213967/Sokol

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

The 15-member UN Security Council (UNSC) stands virtually paralyzed in the face of genocide charges against the government of Myanmar where over 730,000 to one million Rohingya Muslims have been forced to flee to neighboring Bangladesh since a 2016 crackdown by Myanmar’s military.

A team of U.N. investigators has declared that the crackdown was carried out with “genocidal intent”.

The paralysis at the UNSC, attributed to inaction by two of its veto-wielding members, namely China and Russia, has now triggered interventions by both the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which are expected to sit in judgment over the atrocities.

Although judges at the ICC last week agreed to authorise a full-scale investigation into allegations of mass persecution and crimes against humanity, Myanmar is not a party to the Rome statute that established the ICC.

Asked how effective any ruling would be against Myanmar as a non-party, Param-Preet Singh, Associate Director, International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, told IPS: “Any action by the ICC would be against individual defendants, not the state”.

“If your question is whether Myanmar would surrender any suspects to face justice in The Hague, based on its current position with respect to the ICC, it would be easy to say that the authorities would never cooperate.”

But the same was said about Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Slobodan Milosevic – each of whom fell from positions of power and eventually found themselves in the dock at the Yugoslav tribunal, she pointed out.

“Of course, it was a long and complex process to get those defendants before the court, and that’s exactly why it’s difficult to speculate about the success of any ICC efforts to hold individuals to account”, she declared.

Dr Tawanda Hondora, Executive Director of World Federalist Movement – Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP), the organisation that houses and coordinates the work of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), told IPS

“While Myanmar disputes that genocide has taken place, it has done very little to prevent and stop the persecution, deportation, forced displacement, killing and torture of the Rohingya community, which acts may amount to genocide.”

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Credit: Anurup Titu/IPS

“We hope that the ICJ will reaffirm the legal principle that any States Parties to the Genocide Convention have legal standing to sue another States Party, which has failed to take steps to prevent and punish acts of genocide.”

“A declaration by the ICJ that Myanmar has failed to prevent and punish those responsible for these heinous acts will help to address the plight of the Rohingya community.”

This case, he pointed out, is a wake-up call for the United Nations Security Council, which continues to shirk its responsibility to maintain international peace and security and has so far failed to protect the Rohingya community.

The formal submission to the ICJ, accusing Myanmar of genocide through the murder, rape and destruction, was made on November 11 by the Republic of the Gambia, on behalf of the 57-member Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Meanwhile, in a statement released November 14, ICC Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said: “I welcome the decision by ICC judges to “authorise my request to open an investigation into the situation in the People’s Republic of Bangladesh/Republic of the Union of Myanmar.”

She said the ICC judges have “accepted my analysis that there is a reasonable basis to believe that coercive acts that could qualify as the crimes against humanity of deportation and persecution on grounds of ethnicity and/or religion may have been committed against the Rohingya population”.

With that decision, a formal investigation has been authorised, for crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court, allegedly committed on or after 1 June 2010, at least in part on the territory of Bangladesh, or on the territory of other state parties, as described in the decision.

This is a significant development, sending a positive signal to the victims of atrocity crimes in Myanmar and elsewhere, she declared.

After a reported military-led crackdown, widespread killings, rape and village burnings, nearly three-quarters of a million Rohingya fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state to settle in crowded refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh, according to an ICC press release.

Asked what the next step would be if Myanmar refuses to abide by the decisions of the two international courts of justice, HRW’s Singh said: “I think it’s important to discuss both cases as proceedings, since final decisions in both courts are a long way off”.

She said the fact that Myanmar’s actions are being scrutinized by two judicial mechanisms – through the separate but complementary lenses of state and individual responsibility – challenges Myanmar’s empty denials of its role in atrocities and raises the political cost of ongoing abuses, both for Myanmar and the countries that would rather ignore its dismal human rights record.

Asked if the intervention by the two courts also send an implicit message to the UN Security Council which has so far refused to impose sanctions or take punitive action against Myanmar, Singh said: “The actions by Gambia and the ICC prosecutor to find a measure of justice for the Rohingya contrast sharply with and further expose the UN Security Council’s paralysis on the crisis in Myanmar”.

“And with that exposure, there is a rising political cost for its refusal to discharge its responsibility to address concerns about international peace and security in the region,” she noted.

Asked for a reaction from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters November 14: ‘No, it is not for us to comment on procedures going on in the judicial end of the UN system. I think the Secretary General has spoken out very clearly and very forcefully on the need to address the situation of the Rohingyas and for the Government of Myanmar to put in place a number of actions and for justice to be done, but we have no specific comment on that case.’

Meanwhile, back in October 2018, Marzuki Darusman, chair of the fact-finding mission of the Human Rights Council (HRC), briefed the Security Council on the mission’s report.

Among its findings was that Myanmar security forces had committed what amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity in their treatment of several ethnic and religious minorities in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States.

He also said there was sufficient information regarding the treatment of the Rohingya ethnic group in Rakhine State for senior officials in the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s military) to be investigated to determine their liability for genocide, according to the Security Council Report, a NGO publication monitoring the activities of the UNSC.

Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, told IPS that it is worth keeping in mind that Bangladesh is a member of ICC. Any indictment from the ICC would mean that some of Myanmar’s senior generals, who are responsible for atrocities, would not be able to travel outside Myanmar without the fear of being arrested and possibly ending up in a prison cell in The Hague.

Symbolically, it may also result in Aung San Suu Kyi‘s final ignoble transition from Nobel Peace Prize winner to indicted suspected perpetrator of Crimes Against Humanity.

He also pointed out that the ICC is about individual criminal responsibility and the ICJ is about state responsibility. But ICC indictments and a condemning judgement from the ICJ would puncture the Myanmar authorities’ culture of denial, exposing them in front of the entire world as a government responsible for genocide, the crime of crimes.

“Both of these international courts, which are sometimes criticized as being distant, bureaucratic and slow-moving, have done more to address the issue of the genocide against the Rohingya than the UN Security Council. More than two years have passed since the genocide began in northern Rakhine State. The UN Security Council needs to name the crime and hold the perpetrators accountable. Anything less is a total abdication of their historic responsibility,” Dr Adams declared.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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Credit: UN Women

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

If I could have one wish granted, it might well be a total end to rape. That means a significant weapon of war gone from the arsenal of conflict, the absence of a daily risk assessment for girls and women in public and private spaces, the removal of a violent assertion of power, and a far-reaching shift for our societies.

Rape isn’t an isolated brief act. It damages flesh and reverberates in memory. It can have life changing, unchosen results—a pregnancy or a transmitted disease. Its long-lasting, devastating effects reach others: family, friends, partners and colleagues.

In both conflict and in peace it shapes women’s decisions to move from communities through fear of attack or the stigma for survivors. Women and girls fleeing their homes as refugees also risk unsafe transport and insecure living conditions that can lack locked doors, adequate lighting and proper sanitation facilities.

Girls married as children in search of increased security at home or in refugee camps can get caught up in legitimized conditions of rape, with little recourse for those wishing to escape, such as shelter and safe accommodation.

In the vast majority of countries, adolescent girls are most at risk of sexual violence from a current or former husband, partner or boyfriend. As we know from our work on other forms of violence, home is not a safe place for millions of women and girls.

Almost universally, most perpetrators of rape go unreported or unpunished. For women to report in the first place requires a great deal of resilience to re-live the attack, a certain amount of knowledge of where to go, and a degree of confidence in the responsiveness of the services sought – if indeed there are services available to go to.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Credit: UN Women

In many countries, women know that they are overwhelmingly more likely to be blamed than believed when they report sexual assault, and they have to cope with an unwarranted sense of shame. The result of these aspects is a stifling of women’s voices around rape, significant under-reporting and continuing impunity for perpetrators.

Research shows that only a small fraction of adolescent girls who experience forced sex seek professional help. And less than 10 per cent of women who did seek help after experiencing violence contacted the police.

One positive step to increase accountability is to make rape universally illegal. Currently more than half of all countries do not yet have laws that explicitly criminalize marital rape or that are based on the principle of consent.

Along with criminalizing rape, we need to get much, much better at putting the victim at the centre of response and holding rapists to account. This means strengthening the capacity of law enforcement officials to investigate these crimes and supporting survivors through the criminal justice process, with access to legal aid, police and justice services as well as health and social services, especially for women who are most marginalized.

Having more women in police forces and training them adequately is a crucial first step in ensuring that survivors begin to trust again and feel that their complaint is being taken seriously at every stage of what can be a complex process.

Progress also requires that we successfully tackle the many institutional and structural barriers, patriarchal systems and negative stereotyping around gender that exist in security, police and judicial institutions, as they do in other institutions.

Those who use rape as a weapon know just how powerfully it traumatizes and how it suppresses voice and agency. This is an intolerable cost to society. No further generations must struggle to cope with a legacy of violation.

We are Generation Equality and we will end rape!

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Excerpt:

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is Executive Director UN Women

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By Vladimir Popov and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
BERLIN and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

Any balanced assessment of the so-called Chinese economic miracle will recognize that it was extremely successful, not only during the reform period from 1979, but also since Liberation in 1949 despite the setbacks of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

The Chinese economy grew at about 5% on average during 1949-1979 and at almost 10% in 1979-2019. Five percent growth was impressive, higher than in most countries of the world at that time, but ten percent growth over the last four decades is quite unprecedented.

Vladimir Popov

Miracle of economic liberalization?
The conventional explanation of this miracle is liberalization, or more accurately, the marketization reforms started in 1979 by Deng Xiaoping. But in other regions of the world, economic liberalization has had rather different outcomes.

In Latin America, the so-called Washington Consensus, implemented after the debt crises of the early 1980s, led to economic stagnation, the ‘lost decade’ of the 1980s. Sub-Saharan Africa lost a quarter century to such policies, while the former Soviet Union and much of Eastern Europe lost real and potential output in the 1990s on a scale greater than in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Why did economic liberalization seem to work in China, but not in other regions? Reforms needed to accelerate growth depend on historical and other conditions, which are necessarily varied at different times for countries with various backgrounds.

Growth acceleration conditional
Rapid economic growth can only materialize if enough minimal conditions are met. Growth acceleration is complicated, requiring several crucial inputs—which may include infrastructure, human resources, enabling state institutions, and economic stimuli, among other things.

Without some crucial necessary ingredients, a growth acceleration may not start, or cannot be sustained. Some economists invoke ‘growth diagnostics’ to identify ‘binding constraints’ holding back economic growth.

In some cases, these constraints may be due to lack of market liberalization, e.g., when inappropriate regulation or state interventions deter productive investments and technological progress. In others, inappropriate liberalization may frustrate and block such progress.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Likewise, other factors, such as particular state capacities or capabilities, human resource deficits or infrastructure may be the key constraint. One size does not fit all. There is no universal formula which is not sensitive to conditions, historical and others.

Liberation and developmental governance
So, why did liberalization work in China, but not in Africa and Latin America? In China, the pre-conditions for the last four decades were mostly created in the preceding 1949-1979 period.

Without the progress and achievements of the Mao era, the market-oriented reforms since 1979 would not have had the same impressive results. Needed ingredients, most importantly, people or human resources, had already been prepared in the previous period.

Market reforms from 1979 accelerated economic growth because China already had capable governance created by the state, including the ruling communist party, after Liberation in 1949; the country had lacked such developmental governance for centuries.

Through party structures at all levels, including every village, China’s communist party-led government has been able to enforce rules and regulations all over the country more efficiently than any emperor, not to mention the infamously corrupt Kuomintang (KMT) regime of 1912-1949.

In the late nineteenth century, central government revenues were equivalent to only 3 percent of GDP compared to 12 percent in Japan right after the Meiji Restoration. Under the KMT government, this increased to only 5 percent of GDP.

Mao’s economic legacy
The Mao government left the Deng reform regime with revenues equivalent to a fifth of GDP. China’s crime rate in the 1970s was among the lowest in the world; a Chinese black market or shadow economy was virtually non-existent, and corruption was estimated by Transparency International to be the lowest in the developing world in 1985.

Literacy rates in China increased from 28 percent in 1949 to 65 percent at the end of the 1970s (compared to 41 percent in India). Chinese life expectancy almost doubled to 65 years in the mid-1970s from 35 years in 1950 while India’s rose from 35 to 52 years over the same period.

In short, without the foundations established during the Mao period following Liberation seven decades ago, the selective economic liberalization of the last four decades could well have been ruinous. Liberation also allowed the Chinese authorities to chart their own course without being subject to policy conditionalities imposed by foreign powers.

Vladimir Popov is Research Director at the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute in Berlin and author of Mixed Fortunes: An Economic History of China, Russia and the West. Oxford University Press, New York, 2014.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007.

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A view of India Gate, a war memorial located in New Delhi, covered by a thick layer of smog. Credit: Malav Goswami/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
NEW DELHI , Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

Ankita Gupta, a housewife from south Delhi, is anxious about whether she should send her 4-year-old daughter to kindergarten. Outside visibility is poor as smog — a combination of emissions from factories, vehicle exhausts, coal plants and chemicals reacting with sunlight — has settled over the city, surpassing dangerous levels.

Gupta knows that sending her daughter to school is akin to forcefully taking her inside a chemical factory and filling the toddler’s lungs with toxic and lethal smoke.

“Why should I endanger her life by letting her travel through the roads, which are infested with the toxic air? Everything comes later. It is her health which for me is supreme,” she told IPS.

Last week, New Delhi, India’s capital with a population of 11 million, shut down schools for the second time in two weeks, 17 flights were diverted and several delayed due to poor visibility and construction across the city was halted as the Air Quality Index (AQI) measured 447. The AQI works on a scale of 0 to 500, where 0 measures good air quality and 500 measures hazardous.

The government responded declaring a public health emergency.

Children at risk from high levels of air pollution

Gupta is not the lone parent here who has been plunged into anxiety by the city’s worsening air quality.

Bijay Kumar, a mid-level employee in Delhi government, has similar concerns.

Last week, Kumar’s 14-year-old daughter, Ruchi, returned home from school with chest pains and sudden breathlessness. Her family rushed her to hospital where they were told that the ongoing high pollution was a cause of Ruchi’s illness. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), air pollution is linked to cases of pneumonia, stroke and ischaemic heart disease (characterised by reduced blood supply to the heart).

Courtesy: World Health Organisation (WHO)

Ruchi was admitted to hospital for two days.

“I even fret to imagine what if something bad had happened to my daughter. This toxic smoke is killing us all silently,” Kumar told IPS.

According to Sanjeev Verma, an environmental activist, air pollution in Delhi is becoming a silent killer, brutally murdering newborns, pregnant women and the elderly.

“Various studies have revealed that air pollution in Delhi is responsible for approximately 10,000 to 30,000 annual deaths. It is more than the people getting killed by the terror attacks on the country evert year. We are in a dire need to take drastic measures to put lid over the crises or else, the situation will turn catastrophic very very soon,” Verma told IPS. 

System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR), an air quality information service in India, also issued an advisory, asking people to reduce prolonged or heavy exertion.

“Take more breaks and do less intense activities. Asthmatics, keep medicine ready if symptoms of coughing or shortness of breath occur. Heart patients, see doctor, if get palpitations, shortness of breath, or unusual fatigue,” it said.

Too many private cars on the roads

But the heart of the pollution problem lies with the city’s overburdened roads, according to Samiya Noor, a research scholar in environment studies. Noor told IPS that the lakhs of public and private vehicles driving on Delhi roads every day contribute to nearly 72 percent of the city’s worsening air quality.

According to a 2019 economic survey, there are more than 10 million vehicles on the city’s roads very day, emitting toxic gases that play a major factor in worsening the air quality of country’s capital.  

Noor told IPS that in addition to vehicular pollution, domestic pollution, industrial emission, road dust, construction and the burning of garbage also contributes to Delhi’s total pollution load.

There has also been an 18.35 percent increase in industries operational  in Delhi in the last decade.

“In many of the industries, installed air pollution control devices are found in idle conditions which lead to the emission of pollutants directly into the atmosphere without any filtration. Construction of short chimneys also restricts the polluting gases from escaping into the upper layers of the atmosphere. This all, in unison, is wreaking havoc,” Noor said.

• The government is already restricting the number of vehicles on the roads. Known as the odd-even vehicle rule, private cars with old and even numbers on their licence plates are only allowed on the roads on alternating days.
• It was first implemented in 2016 and subsequently stopped in 2017. However, it was implemented again this month as smog levels rose but stopped last week.
• The government has also attributed, in part, the declining air quality to the burning of crop residue in north India.   

Humayun’s Tomb, a UNESCO Heritage site built in 1570, in New Delhi last week. Air pollution in New Delhi hit hazardous levels, forcing government to shut down schools and declare a public health emergency. Credit: Malav Goswami/IPS

A government response but is it enough?

This July, India formally joined the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), becoming the 65th country to join the partnership. The announcement underlined the country’s commitment to combat air pollution with a solutions-oriented approach.  

India also announced that it will work with coalition countries to adopt cleaner energy producation and management practices to promote clean air.

The BBC also reported that municipal authorities were also “converting vehicles to cleaner fuel, restricting vehicle use at specific times, banning the use of polluting industrial fuel, prohibiting the entry of the dirtiest vehicles into the city and closing some power stations”. 

But Rajesh Bhatia, a social activist based in New Delhi, said government efforts were not enough and the active participation of people is required to reduce the ongoing pollution in the county’s capital.

According to Bhatia, the use of public transport needs to be promoted and  an adequate number of feeder buses for Metro stations had to be provided. 

“There have been various researchers who have shown how frequent checking of Pollution Under Control Certificates [a certificate issued after a test on a vehicle’s emission levels] needs to be undertaken by the civic authorities in order to ensure that vehicles are emitting gases within permissible norms. People need to be educated to switch-off their vehicles when waiting at traffic intersections,” Bhatia told IPS. 

But as the country’s parliament convenes for the second day of its winter session in Delhi, pollution in the capital is expected to top the agenda. 

Prakash Javadekar, Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, told reporters outside parliament yesterday that the government was slowly switching to electric vehicles but urged people to use public transport rather than their private vehicles.  

But for Sanjeev Sharma, a retired government school teacher, it is time to bid adieu to New Delhi — where he has lived for a quarter of a century. 

Along with his ailing wife, who is suffering from chronic bronchitis, Sharma is moving to Bangalore a southern India state where his son is working as a network engineer.

Sharma told IPS that in the very beginning of November, his wife’s health began to deteriorate and suffocation became a constant complaint. “She is on constant oxygen support but the medicos attending attending her told us that her condition is only worsening instead of getting any better in spite of increasing the  daily drug dose,” Sharma told IPS. 

While the capital is currently experiencing reduced levels of pollution, these are expected to rise dramatically by Thursday, according to SAFAR.

“Delhi is no longer a place to live during the winters. The air is getting thinker with toxic smoke with each passing day.

“Gone are the days when you used to find the place green and clean.”

 

** Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams in Johannesburg.

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Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating. Credit: UN

By Farhana Haque Rahman
ROME, Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

Mottled and reddish, the Lake Oku puddle frog has made its tragic debut on the Red List, a rapidly expanding roll call of threatened species. It was once abundant in the Kilum-Ijim rainforest of Cameroon but has not been seen since 2010 and is now listed as critically endangered and possibly extinct.

Researchers attribute its demise to a deadly fungal disease caused by the chytrid fungus. As noted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the skin fungus has devastated amphibian populations globally and holds the distinction of being the world’s most invasive killer, responsible for the decline of at least 500 amphibian species, including 90 presumed extinctions.

The IUCN’s Red List has expanded to cover more than 105,000 species of plants and animals, and its most recent update in July found that 27 percent of those assessed were at risk of extinction. No species on the list was deemed to have improved its status enough since 2018 to be placed in a lower threat category.

Human exploitation is often responsible, as with the now endangered red-capped mangabey monkey hunted for bushmeat while its forest habitat in West Africa is destroyed for agriculture; or the East African pancake tortoise critically endangered because of the global pet trade. Thousands of tree species now make the list too.

Farhana Haque Rahman

In its multi-faceted approach towards combating species loss, the IUCN has launched its First Line of Defence against Illegal Wildlife Trade program in eastern and southern Africa, engaging rural communities as key partners in tackling wildlife crime. But this is just a small part of a much wider challenge.

As Grethel Aguilar, IUCN acting director general, noted: “We must wake up to the fact that conserving nature’s diversity is in our interest, and is absolutely fundamental to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. States, businesses and civil society must urgently act to halt the overexploitation of nature, and must respect and support local communities and Indigenous Peoples in strengthening sustainable livelihoods.”

Jane Smart, global director of the IUCN Biodiversity Conservation Group, said the Red List update confirms the findings of the recent IPBES Global Biodiversity Assessment: “Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history.”

More than one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, “unless action is taken to reduce the intensity of drivers of bio-diversity loss”, according to a landmark report by IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

It bleakly warns that the global rate of species extinction is already at least tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years, and the rate will accelerate if action is not taken.

A summary was released in May and the full report is expected to be approved soon, assessing changes over the past 50 years and offering possible future scenarios.

Frightening statistics detail how 32 million hectares of primary or recovering forest were lost across much of the highly biodiverse tropics between 2010 and 2015 alone. Put in perspective that totals an area nearly the size of all Germany.

“Ecosystems, species, wild populations, local varieties and breeds of domesticated plants and animals are shrinking, deteriorating or vanishing. The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed,” said Professor Josef Settele, co-chair of the report. “This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world.”

Crucially, for the first time on such a scale of evidence, the report’s more than 400 authors rank the five main drivers of this global disaster. In descending order they are listed as: (1) changes in land and sea use; (2) direct exploitation of organisms; (3) climate change; (4) pollution and (5) invasive alien species.

Clearly such challenges are interwoven and cannot be tackled in isolation. Some species are affected by all of these main drivers, or a deadly combination. Researchers into the fungal diseases wiping out amphibians like the Lake Oku puddle frog believe the most important factor in the spread of the pathogens is the global trade in wildlife. Some have also suggested that local changes in climate have also enabled the chytrid fungus to flourish in new habitats.

That governments are failing to address these warnings comes as little surprise, however.

“Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, with few exceptions, we have generally conducted business as usual and have largely failed to address this predicament,” declared 11,258 scientists grouped under the Alliance of World Scientists in a recent report, warning that the climate crisis is accelerating faster than most of them had expected and could reach potential irreversible climate tipping points, making large areas of Earth uninhabitable.

The UN Climate Change Conference, COP25, is to be held in Madrid from 2-13 December amidst severe signs of leadership stress. Brazil was to have hosted the summit but President Jair Bolsonaro ruled that out on his election and in the first nine months under his government over 7,600 sq km of rainforest were felled. The baton was then passed to Chile which pulled out because of ant-government unrest. And then this month President Donald Trump formally launched the process to withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris Agreement.

COP25 has unfinished business from COP24, held in Poland’s coal-mining area of Katowice, namely negotiating the final elements of the Paris Agreement ‘rulebook’. Work must also start on future emissions targets ahead of the crunch 2020 conference next November in Glasgow, in the knowledge that commitments submitted by governments and current greenhouse gas emission trajectories fall far short of what is needed to achieve the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement.

“Loss of species and climate change are the two great challenges facing humanity this century,” warns Lee Hannah, senior scientist in climate change biology at Conservation International. “The results are clear, we must act now on both…”

The post Climate Change and Loss of Species: Our Greatest Challenges appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

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A Dalit woman stands outside a dry toilet located in an upper caste villager’s home in Mainpuri, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Credit: Shai Venkatraman/IPS

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 18 2019 (IPS)

Ending the practice of defecating in the open, rather than in a toilet, will have “transformational benefits” for some of the world’s most vulnerable people, says the UN’s partner sanitation body, the WSSCC (Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council).

Ahead of World Toilet Day, which is marked annually on 19 November, WSSCC’s acting Executive Director, Sue Coates, has been speaking to UN News about how to end open defecation.

 

What is open defecation and where is it mostly practiced?

Open defecation is when people defecate in the open – for example, in fields, forests, bushes, lakes and rivers – rather than using a toilet. Globally, the practice is decreasing steadily, however its elimination by 2030, one of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires a substantial acceleration in toilet use particularly in Central and Southern Asia, Eastern and Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Poor sanitation and hygiene practices (for example, not handwashing with soap after defecation and before eating) contribute to over 800,000 deaths from diarrhoea annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)

UN agencies report that of the 673 million people practicing open defecation, 91 per cent live in rural areas. An increase in population in countries including Nigeria, Tanzania, Madagascar and Niger, but also in some Oceania states, is leading to localized growth in open defecation.

 

Why is open defecation such a serious problem?

Open defecation is an affront to the dignity, health and well-being, especially of girls and women. For example, hundreds of millions of girls and women around the world lack privacy when they are menstruating. Open defecation also risks exposing them to increased sexual exploitation and personal safety and is a risk to public health.

According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), one gram of faeces can contain 10 million viruses, one million bacteria and one thousand parasite cysts. Poor sanitation and hygiene practices (for example, not handwashing with soap after defecation and before eating) contribute to over 800,000 deaths from diarrhoea annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO): that’s more people than who die from malaria.

 

Why has it been so difficult to stop it?

Open defecation has been practiced for centuries; it is an ingrained cultural norm in some societies. Stopping it requires a sustained shift in the behaviour of whole communities so that a new norm, toilet use by all, is created and accepted. Ending open defecation requires an ongoing investment in the construction, maintenance and use of latrines, and other basic services.

 

How are people’s lives improved once they have a toilet to use?

On a day-to-day basis, the ability to use a toilet – at home and work, and in public places such as schools, health centres and markets – is a basic human right. Sanitation has transformational benefits supporting aspects of quality of life, equity and dignity for all people.

 

To what extent is sanitation a central part of overall development?

A lack of at least basic sanitation and hygiene services, including a lack of informed choice about menstrual health and hygiene, is a violation of the human rights to water and sanitation, as well as the rights to health, work, adequate standard of living, non-discrimination, human dignity, protection, information, and participation.

WHO and UNICEF report that in 2016, 21 per cent of healthcare facilities globally had no sanitation service, directly impacting more than 1.5 billion people, and over 620 million children worldwide lacked basic sanitation services at their school.

WHO estimates that every $1 invested in water and toilets returns an average of US $4 in saved medical costs, averted deaths and increased productivity. Hygiene promotion is also ranked as one of the most cost-effective public health interventions. Conversely, a lack of sanitation holds back economic growth.

 

How is the UN contributing to ending open defecation?

Member States and UN agencies are committed to ending open defecation and have urged the provision of financial resources, capacity-building and technology transfer to help developing countries, to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all.

Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6), on clean water and sanitation, requires access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all, and an end to open defecation, with special attention paid to the needs of women and girls, and those in vulnerable situations.

Increasingly, governments and their UN agency partners have roadmaps to tackle the issue, and WSSCC has been providing grants for community-based solutions for a decade. However, the SDG target is not on track.

It’s estimated that the global annual cost for providing even basic sanitation services is   $19.5 billion, but right now not enough funding is forthcoming. The UN Sustainable Development Goals Report in 2019 warns that while progress is being made in many SDG areas, the collective global response is not enough, leaving the most vulnerable people and countries to suffer the most.

This story was originally published by UN News

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Credit: MONIKA DEUPALA/SONIA AWALE

By Sonia Awale
KATHMANDU, Nov 18 2019 (IPS)

For those who think that Nepal is too underdeveloped to make full use of artificial intelligence (AI), think again. That is exactly what they used to say about computers and mobile phones in the 1990s.

It may come as a surprise to many that Nepal has been gaining ground in AI, developing not only software using machine learning algorithms but producing world-class engineers. One company at the forefront is Fusemachines Nepal, which has started using industry experts to train AI students with cutting-edge technology to deliver intelligent solutions.

“I wanted to see if I can contribute in bringing the best AI education to Nepal and make Nepal known around the world as one of the best sources of AI talent,” says the Nepali founder of Fusemachines, Sameer Maskey, a professor at Columbia University.

This is the age of surveillance capitalism, where algorithms determine election outcomes, Siri knows what you want before you do, wearables correctly deduce the state of the heart and Facebook recognises friends.

 

 

AI simply imitates human thinking by recognising patterns in data, so that repetitive everyday work can be done by machines that learn as they go along.

Coming to terms with AI

Artificial Intelligence: Ability of computer systems or machines to make a decision like humans, or the ability to perform tasks requiring human intelligence

Machine Learning: A subset of artificial intelligence that provides a system with the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed, relying on patterns generated from data

Deep Learning: Machine learning that is applied on a large set of data, also known as deep neural learning that uses deep neural networks to model complicated data

Natural Language Processing: Interaction between computers and human languages, deals with programming computers to process and analyse natural (human) language, this field of AI processes, analyses, interprets and distills information from human languages

Computer Vision: Enables computers to see, identify and process images in the same way that human vision does

Image Processing: Part of computer vision that entails analysis and manipulation to find insights from a digitised image

Big Data: Extremely large data sets on which AI is applied to reveal patterns, trends and associations and make decisions
Nepal missed the bus on natural resource processing, manufacturing and information technology. But experts say that training a critical mass of engineers in AI can allow the country’s economy to leapfrog and become globally competitive.

Fusemachines Director of Academic Affairs Bülent Uyaniker, who was in Nepal recently, rejects the notion that Nepal is not ready for artificial intelligence applications. “It is happening already, it is inevitable. If there can be 8.5 million Facebook users in Nepal, then it has the special conditions for AI.”

Proof of this is the increasing number of software companies in Nepal using local engineering talent to work on software solutions for customers in North America or Europe. However, most of the engineers and recent graduates need training in AI to keep up with customer requirements. America alone will need 200,000 data scientists in the next five years, and most of these will come from the UK, Finland, Canada, Singapore, China and India.

Which is why Fusemachines Nepal is also emphasising education. Says the head of its global operations and strategy, Sumana Shrestha: “You cannot learn AI in a one-day bootcamp, it needs intelligent mathematics, but there is a huge demand versus supply gap for engineers proficient in machine learning or other AI components everywhere.”

Nepal established itself as a sought after destination in the past 20 years for outsourcing services such as software and app development, website design and big data management to overseas clients, mostly due to the country’s inexpensive English-speaking workforce.

This move from IT to AI will not just create jobs in Nepal, but also allow the country to increase efficiency and productivity in the workplace. General practitioners in rural hospitals will be able to make diagnoses faster so they can spend more time with patients, high-risk individuals can be identified with cancer screening, and targeted advertising and customised itineraries will lure potential tourists during Visit Nepal 2020.

Recently, a group of engineering students developed a model to help poultry entrepreneurs understand fowl behaviour and the state of their animals’ health, helping them to raise the farm’s business profile.

“With precision livestock farming we can generate patterns to help farmers recognise symptoms before an outbreak of a disease by implementing AI components such as image processing and deep learning,” explained engineering student Sajil Awale at Pulchok Engineering Campus. “This allows for timely intervention to prevent mass deaths and reduce losses.”

Computer vision (which enables computers to see and process images as humans would) can also help identify rotten fruit swiftly, and prevent misuse of pesticides by identifying areas on the farm that require chemicals, and the amounts needed. AI can also estimate future harvests, allowing farmers time to find markets for produce.

Engineers at Fusemachines Nepal are working on Nepal’s first optical character recognition (OCR) system so forms filled out with Nepali handwriting can be digitised and translated into English. This will have huge scope in Nepal’s banking, hospital and government sectors, where pen and paper continues to be the norm.

Sixit Bhatta, CEO of ride-sharing startup Tootle, says Nepal is ripe for AI applications: “Our efforts now should be on preparing for a world in which machines perform skills-oriented tasks and for humans to take on the roles that require creativity and empathy. But before that, the government should design policies that allow AI to grow, and not restrict it.”

Sumana Shrestha at Fusemachines Nepal says that as long as salaries for clerical staff are low, there is less potential for AI to flourish. But she adds: “The curse of cheap labour means companies will prefer to employ people to do repetitive work. But sooner or later, AI will be here. Nepal needs to develop despite government. And the private sector needs to prepare itself for disruption.”

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

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The Ocean at sunset seen from SPC headquarters in Noumea. Credit: Cameron Diver

By Cameron Diver
NOUMEA, New Caledonia, Nov 18 2019 (IPS)

In just under a month, countries around the world will gather for UNFCCC COP 25. The hashtag for this year’s “Blue COP” is yet another reminder to us all that it is “Time For Action”. We can no longer afford to wait as the effects of the climate crisis become ever more present. Vulnerable populations, whether from Small Island States, the rural heartland or the world’s megacities, are becoming ever more vulnerable, and the wellbeing of people and planet continues to face its most existential threat.

At the Pacific Community (SPC), we are confronted every day by the striking dichotomy between the extreme vulnerability of our small island/large ocean Member States and the remarkable resilience and climate ambition of their peoples. We are also challenged by a new reality: under the effects of climate change, the islands and peoples of the Blue Pacific continent are both sustained and threatened by the ocean.

Responding to this reality, in 2018 Pacific Leaders adopted an expanded definition of human security to include the implications of climate change and environmental degradation, and, in the 2019 Kainaki II Declaration, they called for “urgent, transformational global climate change action” to limit global warming to 1.5°C, transition out of fossil fuels, achieve net zero carbon by 2050, increase global climate finance and invest in science-based initiatives to improve our collective understanding of risk and vulnerability, while providing a robust evidence-base for informed policy making. The Kainaki II Declaration is also a milestone in its express recognition of the ocean-climate nexus and its appeal to “all parties attending COP 25 to welcome the focus on oceans, consider developing a work programme on oceans within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process and convene a workshop on the climate-ocean nexus in 2020”.

Cameron Diver

But it is not only for the island Nations of the Pacific that the nexus between climate change and our ocean is critical. It is just as vital for other Small Island Developing States and, whether they realise it or not, for countries and peoples around the globe, from the coastline to the highest mountains and the farthest reaches of the planet’s great continental landmasses. The recent IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) highlighted that “It is virtually certain that the global ocean has warmed unabated since 1970 and has taken up more than 90% of the excess heat in the climate system” with observed negative impacts on ecosystems, people and ecosystem services. The SROCC underscored the risks this creates for, among others, biodiversity, water use and access, vulnerability to extreme weather events, changes in the distribution of natural resources and “intrinsic values important for human identity”.

In this context, where ocean change is driven by climate change and each, in turn, compounds the negative impact of the other, we cannot ignore the science and we should not ignore the crosscutting benefits of combined ocean/climate action. And SPC is already bringing its capacity and partnerships to bear to take action.

As a partner of the Because the Ocean Initiative and the Ocean Pathway Partnership, SPC supported the third regional workshop on the integration of the ocean into NDCs under the Paris Agreement, together with a special ocean-climate negotiators symposium in May 2019. Over past years, SPC’s teams have implemented significant programmes of work on the restoration of ecosystem services and adaptation to climate change, contributed to the Pacific Marine Climate Change Report Card, led and published research on the vulnerability of tropical Pacific fisheries and aquaculture to climate change and, with our partners, developed projections for the future geographic distribution of tuna stocks under the effects of a warming ocean. And through platforms such as the Pacific Community Centre for Ocean Science (PCCOS), we will convene partnerships, facilitate knowledge exchange and action to strengthen the collaborative contribution ocean science can bring to climate action, as one of our key initiatives under the upcoming United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

A view of Majuro, Marshall Islands. Credit: Cameron Diver

From 2 to 13 December in Madrid, under the incoming Chilean presidency, SPC fully intends to leverage the opportunity provided by the “Blue COP” and mobilise its partnerships to highlight the powerful synergies between ocean action and climate action. We will be convening several events presenting a Pacific perspective on the SROCC, highlighting the impact of climate change on maritime boundaries, emphasising the contribution of ocean science for climate action and outlining a 2030-2050 vision for resilient, green and clean ports in the Pacific islands region. At SPC, we are convinced that to deliver on the promise of the Paris Agreement, we need a healthy and sustainably managed ocean. As such, we are also working actively with our Member States and partners like the Green Climate Fund, the European Union, the Agence Française de Développement and others to integrate the ocean into projects that will strengthen action for climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience in the Pacific.

The celebrated Pacific author Epeli Hau’ofa wrote “the sea is our pathway to each other and to everyone else, the sea is our endless saga, the sea is our most powerful metaphor, the ocean is in us”. That eloquent statement of a fundamental ocean identity comes from the heart of Oceania, from the strength of the cultures and traditions of the Blue Pacific. Imagine how powerful it would be if we collectively harnessed “the ocean in us” as a driving force for increased climate ambition and enhanced climate action. COP 25 is our chance to do just that! It is our chance to ensure the ocean is recognised as part of the climate solution. And it is our chance to embed the nexus between climate change and the ocean into our thinking, our cooperation and, above all, our action.

The post The Ocean in Us: Ocean Action for Climate Ambition appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Cameron Diver is Deputy Director-General, the Pacific Community (SPC)

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By External Source
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Nov 18 2019 (IPS)

The Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana and Prime Minister Agostinho do Rosario of Mozambique engaged in a discussion titled, Invest in Africa’s Space: Conversation with African Heads of State, moderated by Dr. Victor Oladokun, African Development Bank Group Director of External Relations and Communications, at the Africa Investment Forum, Johannesburg, 11 November 2019.

 

 

President Cyril Ramaphosa identified infrastructure, energy, manufacturing and tourism as the sectors where the most investment opportunities exist in South Africa.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagama said his country has created a conducive investment environment through good governance systems and security, and according to the World Bank, it is the second easiest African country with which to do business.

For Ghana’s President. Nana Akufo-Addo, the Africa Continental Free Trade Area remains a priority. He says his government is working to strengthen the country’s macro-economy. The country’s current priorities are infrastructure, agriculture and mineral resources.

Prime Minister Agostinho do Rosario representing the President of Mozambique, said his government is open to investment, fighting corruption and has improved transparency.

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