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By Vandana Shiva
NEW DELHI, Sep 23 2019 (IPS)

The Earth is living, and also creates life. Over 4 billion years the Earth has evolved a rich biodiversity — an abundance of different living organisms and ecosystems — that can meet all our needs and sustain life.

Through biodiversity and the living functions of the biosphere, the Earth regulates temperature and climate, and has created the conditions for our species to evolve. This is what NASA scientist James Lovelock found in working with Lynn Margulis, who was studying the processes by which living organisms produce and remove gases from the atmosphere. The Earth is a self-regulating living organism, and life on Earth creates conditions for life to be maintained and evolve.

The Gaia Hypothesis, born in the 1970s, was a scientific reawakening to the Living Earth. The Earth fossilized some living carbon, and transformed it into dead carbon, storing it underground. That is where we should have left it.

All the coal, petroleum and natural gas we are burning and extracting to run our contemporary oil-based economy was formed over 600 million years. We are burning up millions of years of nature’s work annually. This is why the carbon cycle is broken.

A few centuries of fossil fuel-based civilization have brought our very survival under threat by rupturing the Earth’s carbon cycle, disrupting key climate systems and self-regulatory capacity, and pushing diverse species to extinction at 1000 times the normal rate. The connection between biodiversity and climate change is intimate.

While using 75 percent of the total land that is being used for agriculture, industrial agriculture based on fossil fuel-intensive, chemical-intensive monocultures produce only 30 percent of the food we eat, while small, biodiverse farms using 25 percent of the land provide 70 percent of the food

Extinction is a certainty if we continue a little longer on the fossil fuel path. A shift to a biodiversity-based civilization is now a survival imperative.

Take the example of food and agriculture systems. The Earth has roughly 300,000 edible plant species, but the contemporary global human community eats only 200 of them. And, according to the New Scientist, “half our plant-sourced protein and calories come from just three: maize, rice and wheat.” Meanwhile, only 10 percent of the soy that is grown is used as food for humans. The rest goes to produce biofuels and animal feed.

Our agriculture system is not primarily a food system, it is an industrial system, and it is not sustainable.

The Amazon rainforests are home to 10 percent of the Earth’s biodiversity. Now, the rich forests are being burned for the expansion of GMO soy crops.

The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on land and climate highlights how the climate problem begins with what we do on land.

We have been repeatedly told that monocultures of crops with intensive chemical inputs of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides are necessary for feeding the world.

While using 75 percent of the total land that is being used for agriculture, industrial agriculture based on fossil fuel-intensive, chemical-intensive monocultures produce only 30 percent of the food we eat, while small, biodiverse farms using 25 percent of the land provide 70 percent of the food. Industrial agriculture is responsible for 75 percent of the destruction of soil, water and biodiversity of the planet. At this rate, if the share of fossil fuel-based industrial agriculture and industrial food in our diet is increased to 40 percent, we will have a dead planet. There will be no life, no food, on a dead planet.

Besides the carbon dioxide directly emitted from fossil fuel agriculture, nitrous oxide is emitted from nitrogen fertilizers based on fossil fuels, and methane is emitted from factory farms and food waste.

The manufacture of synthetic fertilizer is highly energy-intensive. One kilogram of nitrogen fertilizer requires the energy equivalent of 2 liters of diesel. Energy used during fertilizer manufacture was equivalent to 191 billion liters of diesel in 2000 and is projected to rise to 277 billion in 2030. This is a major contributor to climate change, yet largely ignored. One kilogram of phosphate fertilizer requires half a liter of diesel.

Nitrous oxide is 300 times more disruptive for the climate than carbon dioxide. Nitrogen fertilizers are destabilizing the climate, creating dead zones in the oceans and desertifying the soils. In the planetary context, the erosion of biodiversity and the transgression of the nitrogen boundary are serious, though often-overlooked, crises.

Thus, regenerating the planet through biodiversity-based ecological processes has become a survival imperative for the human species and all beings. Central to the transition is a shift from fossil fuels and dead carbon, to living processes based on growing and recycling living carbon renewed and grown as biodiversity.

 

Smallholder farmers in Isiolo, Kenya sorting beans before sending them to the market in Nairobi. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

 

Organic farming — working with nature — takes excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, where it doesn’t belong, and puts it back in the soil where it belongs, through photosynthesis. It also increases the water-holding capacity of soil, contributing to resilience in times of more frequent droughts, floods and other climate extremes. Organic farming has the potential of sequestering 52 gigatons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the amount needed to be removed from the atmosphere to keep atmospheric carbon below 350 parts per million, and the average temperature increase of 2 degrees centigrade. We can bridge the emissions gap through ecological biodiversity-intensive agriculture, working with nature.

And the more biodiversity and biomass we grow, the more the plants sequester atmospheric carbon and nitrogen, and reduce both emissions and the stocks of pollutants in the air. Carbon is returned to the soil through plants.

The more we grow biodiversity and biomass on forests and farms, the more organic matter is available to return to the soil, thus reversing the trends toward desertification, which is already a major reason for the displacement and uprooting of people and the creation of refugees in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

Biodiversity-based agriculture is not just a climate solution, it is also a solution to hunger. Approximately 1 billion people are permanently hungry. Biodiversity-intensive, fossil-fuel-free, chemical-free systems produce more nutrition per acre and can feed more people using less land.

To repair the broken carbon cycle, we need to turn to seeds, to the soil and to the sun to increase the living carbon in the plants and in the soil. We need to remember that living carbon gives life, and dead fossil carbon is disrupting living processes. With our care and consciousness we can increase living carbon on the planet, and increase the well-being of all. On the other hand, the more we exploit and use dead carbon, and the more pollution we create, the less we have for the future. Dead carbon must be left underground. This is an ethical obligation and ecological imperative.

This is why the term “decarbonization,” which fails to make a distinction between living and dead carbon, is scientifically and ecologically inappropriate. If we decarbonized the economy, we would have no plants, which are living carbon. We would have no life on earth, which creates and is sustained by living carbon. A decarbonized planet would be a dead planet.

We need to recarbonize the world with biodiversity and living carbon. We need to leave dead carbon in the ground. We need to move from oil to soil. We need to urgently move from a fossil fuel-based system to a biodiversity-based ecological civilization. We can plant the seeds of hope, the seeds of the future.

 

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco feminist. She has fought for changes in the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food, and assisted grassroots organizations of the Green movement in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria with campaigns against genetic engineering. In 1982, she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, which led to the creation of Navdanya in 1991, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade. She is author of numerous books including,Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The hijacking of the Global food supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and the Third World Network. She has received numerous awards, including 1993 Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.

 

This story originally appeared in Truthout . It is republished here as part of IPS Inter Press Service’s partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

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Excerpt:

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco feminist

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Inequality out in the open. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By Blerim Mustafa
GENEVA, Sep 23 2019 (IPS)

Increasing economic inequality is a defining challenge of our time. In recent years, it has triggered analysis and reflection by many scholars, politicians and others on its causes and consequences on economic growth and efficiency, politics and democracy, human rights, individual behaviors, access to health, social cohesion and environmental degradation. The perception that the top 1% of income earners are gaining at the expense of the other 99% has resulted in widespread public debates in many countries on the social and political repercussions of inequality.

Inequalities in income and wealth are often blamed for the deepening anxieties of the middle class in many developed economies. Market power among business elites and multinational companies – in pursuit of higher profits – are one of the key drivers to inequality as access to resources remain in the hands of powerful business groups, and not in the hands of the people and their elected representatives. Serious doubts are therefore raised on the claims that globalization, technological developments and the “invisible hand” of capitalism and economic liberalism have liberated humans from disease, poverty and inequality.

It has long been assumed that GDP growth would address income inequality and lift people out of poverty. But economic growth can often be disproportionate and unequal, adversely affecting marginalized and disadvantaged groups in society. If economic growth does not lead to an equitable spread of its benefits, most citizens specifically the collar workers, the hard-working middle class and rural dwellers will not enjoy commensurate improvements of their living standards. In many countries, this has contributed to the rise of a crisis of legitimacy of governments and a crisis of democracy that has facilitated the surge of populism as well as the return of exclusionary forms of nationalism.

However, with the global financial and economic crisis that swept the world in 2007-2008, inequality has risen in all world regions. 1 In response to the adverse impact of the crisis, governments worldwide introduced fiscal austerity programs to reduce public at the expense of ballooning levels of sovereign debt that strangle economic growth. As highlighted in the latest report of the UN’s “World Social Situation” 2, popular dissent is increasing while trust in governments is plummeting “as people believe they are bearing the brunt of crises for which they have no responsibility and feel increasingly disenfranchised.” It is estimated that national governments have spent an astonishing USD 117 trillion to save the financial system and to bail out banks that were on the brink of bankruptcy but precious little to support the youth. No surprise that people took to the streets in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Greece and Cyprus to protest against draconian austerity measures imposed by governments to cover up for the failures of the banks and the financial system.

In this regard, it is foreseen that the adverse impact of austerity measures could further impact socio-economic living conditions in Europe; Oxfam estimates that an additional 15-25 million people in Europe could live in poverty by 2025. Professor Stiglitz has likewise suggested that “austerity has only crippled Europe’s growth, with improvements in fiscal positions that are always disappointing. Worse, it is contributing to inequality that will make economic weakness longer-lived, and needlessly contributes to the suffering of the jobless and the poor for many years.”

It is evident that economic inequality has had adverse economic, social and political impacts for social stability and cohesion, political participation, poverty reduction, as well as the enjoyment of human rights. In addition, economic inequalities impede the enjoyment of social, cultural and economic rights, thus contributing to persistent socio-economic disadvantages among social groups. As states are in need of fiscal stability to secure the provision of welfare benefits and redistributive fiscal policies to maintain social security, the dwindling of public resources impedes their ability to deliver basic public services. For instance, in the case of Greece, more than two million people – equivalent to 20% of the population – did not have access to adequate health insurance as underlined by former UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order Professor Alfred de Zayas. Tackling global income and wealth inequality therefore requires important shifts in addressing its root causes

In the outcome document of the 2012 Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development entitled “The Future We Want,” decision-makers committed themselves to achieve sustainable development by promoting “sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth”, creating greater opportunities for all social segments of society so as to reduce inequalities. Social inclusion was likewise a key outcome. In this connection, it was emphasized that “sustainable development must be inclusive and people-centred and recognized that broad public participation was essential to promoting sustainable development goals.” Appropriate measures to address the rise of economic inequality could include resource mobilization for social investment, distribution of income and wealth through targeted social transfers, progressive income taxation as well as the extension of social protection and decent work standards.

Governments are therefore required to address income and wealth inequality, and to prevent its further deterioration. They must build on a human rights and a people-centered approach that enables states to ensure the full enjoyment of human rights on a non-discriminatory and equal basis – among its citizens – in line with the provisions set forth in the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Agenda.

Blerim Mustafa, Project and communications officer, the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue. Postgraduate researcher (Ph.D. candidate) at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester (UK).

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The backlash against globalization can no longer be ignored

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Airton Kunz, head of Research at Embrapa Pigs and Poultry, explains to visitors the Effluent Treatment System of the São Roque Pig Farm, part of which can be seen behind him, in Videira, in the southern state of Santa Catarina, Brazil's largest producer and exporter of pork. Biogas, bioelectricity and biomethane are by-products arising from the need to dispose of pork manure in an environmentally friendly manner. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
CHAPECÓ/CONCORDIA, Brazil, Sep 23 2019 (IPS)

The state of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil is the largest national producer and exporter of pork and this year it also leads in exports of chicken, of which it is the second-biggest producer in the country.

Economic and productive success, as is often the case, brought serious environmental impacts, with manure polluting water and soil. In the beginning, pigsties were installed on the banks of rivers to dispose of waste effortlessly, the old pig farmers recall.

The expansion of the sector later led to the need for strict sanitary and environmental measures, such as manure storage areas, after the adoption of a ban on dumping it into rivers. But even when the manure is kept in covered storage areas, it continues to emit greenhouse gases.

Biogas production then emerged as an alternative, but it doesn’t completely solve the problem, said Rodrigo Nicoloso, an agronomist and researcher with the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) Pigs and Fowl, based in Concordia, a municipality of 74,000 people that is a leader in pig farming.

Embrapa is a state entity linked to the Agriculture Ministry, made up of 43 specialised centres that have promoted agricultural development and know-how in Brazil since its foundation in 1973.

“The production of biogas requires only the carbon in the organic material,” which is why biodigestion leaves a large volume of waste known as digestate, Nicoloso told IPS, which he said is a semi-liquid by-product, rich in organic and mineral matter but difficult to manage.

This waste product, which no longer stinks, is a biofertiliser that contains the nutrients most used in agriculture: phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium. But in general pig and poultry farmers do not have enough land to absorb so much fertiliser.

The west of Santa Catarina is a mountainous area populated by small farmers and ranchers, and many farmers don’t even have land on which to use the byproduct of the biodigesters, said the researcher.

Selling it is not viable because of the cost of transporting the biofertiliser, because it is semi-liquid sludge, he said.

A truck, part of the fleet of vehicles that use biogas and biomethane as fuel in Chapecó, the western capital of the state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil, where there are a large number of pig and poultry farms and slaughterhouses. The meat industry has boosted the prosperity of the region, which will benefit further from energy by-products derived from pig and poultry farming. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

On the large farms which are numerous in west-central Brazil, this is not a problem because in general the fertiliser derived from biodigestion is used directly on the farm’s crops.

But in Santa Catarina disposing of the waste is becoming increasingly difficult as the excess waste is growing due to the steady concentration of pig farming – and, as a result, biogas production – on larger farms.

There are currently about 5,500 pig farms in Santa Catarina, half of what there were some 15 years ago, and just 2.2 percent have biodigesters, according to the survey presented by Nicoloso. There are now 135 farms with more than 5,000 pigs, compared to 50 before.

The Master Group, with seven farms and 1,000 employees, is an example of a large pig farming company. It also has an animal feed factory, a slaughterhouse and plants to produce everything from pig embryos to the final product.

Its São Roque Farm, in Videira, a municipality of 53,000 people, has 10,000 pigs, which made possible a biogas and electricity generation project with good returns, local manager Moisés Schlosser told IPS.

A group of speakers, researchers, businessmen and university professors who participated in the Southern Brazil Forum on Biogas and Biomethane. The challenges and potential of the sector were the themes of the three-day meeting in Chapecó, the main city in the west of Santa Catarina, where pig farming and the meat industry dominate the local economy. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Embrapa Pigs and Birds provides orientation for the Swine Effluent Treatment System on the São Roque Farm, which serves the farm and at the same time the development of techniques for the entire sector.

A novel experience is that it will use the bodies of pigs that die natural deaths in the biodigesters, rather than incinerate or bury them. They will be crushed and added to the solidified manure in a special biodigester, suitable for processing coarser waste. This will increase the production of biogas and reduce health risks.

“Animal health is the greatest asset of animal husbandry. But it can also be a guillotine, leading to the closure of a farm or a slaughterhouse,” Airton Kunz, head of Embrapa Pigs and Poultry research, told IPS.

Inserting biogas into the production chain, from the nursery to the slaughterhouse, energy, equipment industry, logistics and services such as technical assistance, it is necessary to avoid the mistakes made in the past.

Many producers still suffer from a bad experience with biodigestors donated by agribusiness companies interested in obtaining credits from the Clean Development Mechanism, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and created with funds from multilateral climate agencies.

A miniplant for refining biogas to supply vehicles with biomethane, designed for pig and poultry farms and ranches, which can become autonomous in terms of fuel, producing biogas for their fleet and for other energy needs. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The farmers did not know how to use the equipment and could derive no benefits from it. “They saw the biogas burning, while they had to use firewood in their stoves,” recalled Paulo Oliveira, another Embrapa researcher.

Now there is a lot of know-how, “and universities, other research centres and associations participate, and there is a culture of innovation and cooperation” to guide the projects, said Kunz.

But each plant is a new challenge, it has its peculiarities and risks, he said. And there are a variety of biological inputs.

In any case, biogas is beginning to stand out as a new agricultural product, especially for the generation of electricity, in addition to the traditional use as a source of thermal energy in kitchens and in factories, in the west of Santa Catarina, where pig farming has been concentrated.

Between 2015 and 2018, the number of biogas plants in Brazil climbed from 127 to 276, almost half of which are in southern Brazil. Production rose 130 percent, from 1.3 million cubic metres per day to 3.1 million cubic metres, destined for electric, thermal or mechanical energy generation.

Several initiatives already produce biomethane, purified biogas, which replaces natural gas and oil derivatives as fuel for trucks and other vehicles.

The potential and challenges of these products were the themes of the Southern Brazil Biogas and Biomethane Forum, which gathered around 250 participants in Chapecó, a city of 220,000 inhabitants which is the capital of Santa Catarina’s western region, Sept. 4-6.

One way to make the digestate trade viable is to remove the liquid part and enrich it with chemical elements to turn it into organo-mineral fertiliser, said Vinicius Benites, head of research at Embrapa Soils, based in Rio de Janeiro.

This would make it easier to transport and better prices could be fetched by adding other nutrients to the usual nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK) formula, he said. This enriched fertiliser provides greater productivity, Benites told IPS.

Composting and drying, reducing the volume by extracting water, also cut the cost of the logistics required to make commercialising the product viable, Nicoloso added.

He said that a scale of production of at least 5,000 pigs is essential to undertaking the risk of investing in generating electricity.

Technologies and solutions must be developed to incorporate small breeders into the biogas economy, said Clovis Reichert, coordinator of the Forum.

But the consensus is that the potential of biogas, whether from livestock, agricultural waste, garbage or urban sanitation, is immense.

Hydrogen production, already being researched in other countries, is part of its future, said Suelen Paesi, a professor at the University of Caxias do Sul, a city in the neighboring state of Rio Grande do Sul, which together with Santa Catarina and Paraná make up Brazil’s southern region, where livestock biogas is most advanced.

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 23 2019 (IPS)

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres describes the ongoing crisis as a “climate emergency”– as the world continues its hard fought battle against devastating droughts, floods, hurricanes and rising sea levels that threaten the very existence of small island developing states located in low-lying areas.

The heat wave in Europe last summer was a scorcher – one of the worst ever, according to reports from several European nations.

According to Cable News Network (CNN), that heatwave also threatened Greenland, home to the world’s second largest ice sheet. And in a single month, Greenland’s ice sheet lost 160 billion tons of ice, the equivalent of 64 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Addressing an economic conference in Riyadh years ago, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde warned that if the international community does not seriously address the dangers of climate change, “we will be toasted, roasted and grilled.”

But the worst affected by climate change are the world’s poorer nations where droughts and hurricanes have devastated agricultural land triggering an increase in both poverty and hunger.

Conscious of the growing hazards of global warming, the UN’s climate action summit got off the ground on September 23 against the backdrop of a landmark Global Assessment (GA) report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), released last May, which concluded that around one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction while three-quarters of the land-based environment and about 66% of the marine environment have been significantly altered by human actions.

“Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world.”

Addressing the international day of peace September 20, Guterres said even if governments are still lacking “political will” to make full peace with nature, there is a huge hope in what the youth is doing, as millions of students took to the streets worldwide to demand action against climate change.

Asked whether the current state affairs was due to lack of political will or decline in development aid, Dr. Pamela McElwee, Associate Professor, Department of Human Ecology School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University, told IPS the Global Assessment points out that political will for biodiversity is needed at multiple scales.

“Certainly, international meetings and conventions are important, but so too are the local everyday actions of millions of consumers, voters and citizens.”

She said international aid is part of the answer, “as we know that our biodiversity agreements and policies are constantly underfunded as compared to other economic development investments, but aid alone will not solve the problem.”

All too often, there are insufficient incentives for people to do the right thing with regard to biodiversity. “This applies to politicians too; we have seen countries make great progress on issues like slowing deforestation, only to backtrack when a new political party or leader comes into office”.

What is going on with Brazil right now, and the fires in the Amazon, is an example of that need for political will and leadership, as is the Trump administration’s decision to try to gut the US Endangered Species Act. Those are steps backwards.

Ensuring that nature is considered in every political decision, not just the ones explicitly labelled as ‘environmental,’ is needed to move forward, said Dr McElwee, a former consultant for the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program and other agencies.

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: How would you respond to the landmark IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which has been described as the most comprehensive study on the current state of nature —“declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history”? Is this a wake-up call to the international community? And what next?

Dr McElwee: The Global Assessment (GA) is really the first global report since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005 to try to identify trends in nature and ecosystems, so in terms of content it is a much-needed update, and certainly a wake-up call as you put it.

In terms of process, the IPBES report is also the first *intergovernmental* report on biodiversity, meaning that it was jointly produced between scientists and governments to lend an added weight to the findings.

Each of the 130-plus governments who are members of IPBES were able to assess, review and weigh in on the summary for policymakers that was eventually adopted. I’m hopeful that this buy-in, as well as the seriousness and urgency of the actual report findings, together will move the international community to use the GA to make important changes in how we manage the Earth.

Certainly, the amount of media, government and citizen attention the report has gotten since it was released in May gives me a lot of optimism. President Macron for example highlighted the GA findings at the G7 meeting he recently hosted in France, and has been pushing governments to commit to a charter on biodiversity.

IPS: One of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 15) is devoted to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”. Is this goal achievable by the 2030 deadline? If not, what are the roadblocks to its implementation?30adline? If not, what are the roadblocks to its implementation?

Dr. McElwee: One of the specific chapters of the GA (Chapter 3) tackles precisely this question: how are we doing on global targets and goals, specifically on the SDGs and on the Aichi Targets of the Convention for Biological Diversity? This answer is: not well.

We are going to miss most of the targets for SDG 15. We are making progress towards achieving the Aichi target 11 to ensure 17% coverage of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems in protected areas, which will help us meet some of the SDG 15 targets.

However, coverage of key biodiversity hotspots and some ecologically representative zones are missing in that overall protected figure, and connectivity between protected areas is generally insufficient.

Outside of these protected areas, we continue to lose forests and wetlands in particular, and the GA report notes that of the 18 different types of Nature’s Contributions to People assessed, ranging from water provisioning to habitat creation, all but four are in decline.

Continued roadblocks to better ecosystem management and protection include vested interests who want to continue to exploit our lands and seas for their own economic self-interest; a number of environmentally harmful subsidies that countries have used to prop up domestic constituencies from fishing fleets to energy extraction; overconsumption by many developed countries leading to unsustainable harvesting and land conversion; and underfunded international biodiversity conventions, which all contribute to the problem.

IPS: How devastating is the impact of climate change, including extreme weather, melting ice and sea level rise, on all regions of the world, particularly developing nations. Are the world’s small island developing states (SIDS) really in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth as a result of climate change?

Dr. McElwee : One of the tasks of the GA was to identify the main drivers of biodiversity decline and ecosystem loss. Evaluating the evidence, the report concluded that climate change is the third most important driver of ecosystem change, behind land use change and direct exploitation of nature (e.g. fishing or wildlife hunting).

It’s mostly the job of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess the climate impacts on development, and last fall’s IPCC report focused on how to keep climate change to 1.5 degrees C indicated there are significant risks to SIDS states if we fail to meet that goal.

Our GA report complemented the 1.5 report by identifying what the losses to biodiversity specifically would be, but also pointed out that some climate mitigation solutions to keep us to 1.5 degrees, such as biofuels, can have very negative impacts on biodiversity because they may entail land use change (conversion of biodiverse forests to monocrop biomass plantations).

Therefore, we need to make smart and urgent choices now about reducing emissions to avoid those tradeoffs with biodiversity later, and to minimize the serious consequences of failing to tackle climate change for SIDS and other poorer countries.

IPS: And what impact does climate change have on the world’s indigenous communities? The UN says indigenous peoples are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change, due to their dependence upon, and close relationship, with the environment and its resources. But their role in combating climate change is rarely considered in public discourses on climate change. Is this a fair assessment?

Dr. McElwee: Again, the IPCC reports are really the gold standard for climate impacts, and the next special report of the IPCC will be due next week looking at Oceans and the Cryosphere.

Many indigenous peoples live in or use these areas, and will be increasingly and disproportionately impacted by forced relocations caused by melting permafrost or rising sea levels, so I urge people to look out for that report’s release soon.

Certainly the GA specifically looked at the impact of *biodiversity loss* on indigenous peoples, and our message was that both the quantity and quality of nature’s supply for food, health, spiritual wellbeing, and other traditional practices are in decline, caused by extractive industries, intensive agriculture, unsustainable fishing, environmental pollution, the spread of invasive species, and other environmental harms.

But indigenous peoples can play a huge role in the solutions to these problems; in fact, biodiversity is generally declining more slowly on lands that are managed by indigenous and local communities, indicating that their involvement in biodiversity management is crucial, and that they have solutions the rest of us can learn from.

IPS: Projecting into the future, what are your expectations of the 2020 Biodiversity Conference which is expected to adopt a new global framework to safeguard nature and its contributions to human well-being.? What is the current status of the negotiations which are expected to be continued in China in February 2020 and in Colombia in July 2020? Are you hopeful of a positive outcome?

Dr. McElwee: The post-2020 negotiations are ongoing, and several important meetings have just been held recently to start the ball rolling to ensure a positive outcome at the Kunming meeting in late fall 2020.

China’s leadership here will be important, and they are rightly proud of some of what they have been able to achieve nationally, and are hoping to push the international community to follow their lead in terms of protected areas coverage, payments for ecological services, and other policies.

For me, one of the most important outcomes will be to take an honest and hard look at why we failed to meet so many of the Aichi Targets that were set out in in the strategic plan for biodiversity from 2011-2020. It’s not enough to just set new, high achieving targets.

We need to get serious about why we didn’t meet the previous ones and go about fixing those impediments as best we can, while still being ambitious in new pledges. I also think we will see a better integration of climate and biodiversity in the post-2020 agenda, as there is a lot of current talk and research about ideas like nature-based climate solutions and ecosystem-based adaptation that can drive new targets and goals.

I think there is attention to these issues at never-before seen levels, driven in part by youth and indigenous peoples’ movements to raise awareness of them, so that makes me optimistic for a positive outcome.

*Dr. Pamela McElwee is affiliated to the graduate faculty: Department of Anthropology, Department of Geography, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Before arriving at Rutgers in 2011, Dr McElwee spent 5 years at Arizona State University as an Assistant Professor of Global Studies. She was trained as an environmental scientist, anthropologist and geographer at Yale University (Ph.D. in Forestry & Environmental Studies and Anthropology), Oxford University (M.Sc. in Forestry) and the University of Kansas (B.A. in Political Science). Before becoming an academic, she worked at the US Senate for Al Gore, in the Clinton White House on environmental policy, and at the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Persian Gulf Task Force. She is also one of the IPCC’s Lead Authors on Climate Change and Land.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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By Kaveh Zahedi
BANGKOK, Thailand, Sep 23 2019 (IPS)

In less than ten days world leaders will be gathering at the United Nations in New York for the Climate Action Summit. Their goal is simple; to increase ambition and accelerate action in the face of a mounting climate emergency.

For many this means ambition and action that enables countries to decarbonize their economies by the middle of the century. But that is only half the equation. Equally ambitious plans are also needed to build the resilience of vulnerable sectors and communities being battered by climate related disasters of increasing frequency, intensity and unpredictability.

Kaveh Zahedi

Nowhere is this reality starker than in the Asia Pacific region which has suffered another punishing year of devastation due to extreme events linked to climate change. Last year Kerala state in India had its worst floods in a century. The floods in Iran in April this year were unprecedented. Floods and heatwaves in quick succession in Japan caused widespread destruction and loss of life. In several South Asian countries, immediately following a period of drought, weeks of heavy monsoon rains this month unleashed floods and landslides. Across North-east and South Asia, record high temperatures have been set.

The latest research from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific has shown that intense heatwaves and drought are becoming more frequent; unusual tropical cyclones originate from beyond the traditional risk zones and follow tracks that have not been seen before; and unprecedented floods and occurring throughout the region. The science tells us that the impacts are only going to increase in severity and frequency as greenhouse gas emissions concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise.

The poor and vulnerable are taking the biggest hit. Disasters cost lives and damage livelihood and assets. Increases in disaster exposure are increasing child malnutrition and mortality and forcing poor families to take children out of school – entrenching inter-generational poverty. And they perpetuate inequalities within and between countries. A person in the Pacific small island developing states is 3 to 5 times more at risk of disasters than a person elsewhere in our disaster-prone region. Vanuatu has faced annual losses of over 20% of its GDP. In Southeast Asia, Lao, Cambodia and Viet Nam have all faced losses of more than 5% of their GDP. In short, disasters are slowing down and often reversing poverty reduction and widening inequality.

But amidst this cycle of disaster and vulnerability lies a golden opportunity for careful and forward-looking investment. The Global Commission on Adaptation recently found that there would be over $7 trillion in total net benefits between now and 2030 from investing in early warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, improved dryland agriculture, mangrove protection, and in making water resources more resilient could generate.

So where could countries in the Asia Pacific region make a start? First, by providing people with the means to overcome shocks. Increasing social protection is a good start. Currently developing countries in Asia and the Pacific only spend about 3.7 per cent of GDP on social protection, compared to the world average of 11.2 per cent, leaving people vulnerable in case they get sick, lose their jobs, become old or are hit by a disaster. In the aftermath of Typhoon Hyan in the Philippines we saw effectiveness of social protection, especially cash transfers, but these were only possible because the government could use the conditional cash transfer system and mechanism already in place for poor and vulnerable people.

Second by lifting the financial burden off the poor. Disaster risk finance and insurance can cover poor and vulnerable people from climate shocks and help them recover from disaster, such as Mongolia’s index-based insurance scheme to deal with the increased frequency of “dzuds” where combination of droughts and shortage of pasture lead to massive livestock deaths. Disaster risk finance can also help countries pool the risks as is happening through the emerging ASEAN Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance programme.

Third by increasing investment in new technologies and big data. Artificial Intelligence driven risk analytics as well as fast combination of sensor and geospatial data, can strengthen early warning systems. Big data, including from mobile phones, can help identify and locate vulnerable populations in risk hotspots who have been the hardest to reach so far, ensuring faster more targeted help after disasters. Experience around the region has already shown the potential. In India, a combination of automated risk analytics, geospatial data and the digital identity system (the so called AADHARR system) have helped to identify and deliver assistance to millions of drought-affected subsistence farmers. But much more investment in needed to make technology an integral part of disaster risk response and resilience building.

Climate related disasters are likely to increase in Asia Pacific. This is our new climate reality. The Summit provides the perfect platform to make the commitments needed for helping communities and people to adapt to this reality before decades of hard-won development gains are washed away.

Kaveh Zahedi is Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

The post Confronting the New Climate Reality in Asia and the Pacific appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Standing left to Right are: 1. Siddharth Chatterjee UN Resident Coordinator Kenya. 2. Ms Christine Heenan, Senior VP Rockerfellar Foundation. 3. Cabinet Secretary Joseph Mucheru EGH, Ministry of Information and Communications, Kenya. 4. Ms Carson Christiano, Executive Director, CEGA, UC Berkley. At the signing of the joint communique on 21 September 2019. Photo Credit: Rockerfellar Foundation.

By PRESS RELEASE
NEW YORK, Sep 21 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The Government of Kenya today signed a Communique with the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) at the University of California, Berkeley, along with The Rockefeller Foundation, and the United Nations to inspire future action and support for the delivery of Kenya’s Big Four agenda. The agreement brings together strategic partnerships work with the Government of Kenya to build SDG focused partnerships to drive financing and innovations that help tackle complex development goals.

The Government of Kenya also announced the launch of a co-created SDG Accelerator Lab, that will leverage on the recently initiated UNDP Accelerator Lab Network, as a strategic development platform for Kenya that will bring together the government, private sector, civil society, philanthropy, academia, and young people to reimagine development for the 21st century.

Speaking during the signing event, Hon. Joseph Mucheru, Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of ICT, Kenya stated that “As a government, we recognize that innovation and technology will be at the heart of job creation, the manufacturing industry, guaranteeing food security for the country and ensuring universal healthcare. As a country, we have always taken pride in the space that we have provided to tech start-up communities, who have gone ahead to build some of the most amazing apps and systems. The partnerships signed today will harness the ongoing initiatives in our tech community to accelerate the actualization of our National Development goals. We are thankful for our partnerships with the UN SDG Partnership Platform, UNDP Accelerator Labs Network, Berkeley University CEGA, and the Rockefeller Foundation. We call upon all our partners to join efforts in making the SDG Accelerator Lab a ground-breaking success for leapfrogging the attainment of Kenya’s development priorities”.

At the heart of the Lab is to re-imagine how development work is done, promoting a culture of innovation and experimentation. The capacity to adapt in a rapidly changing environment will become key for the UN to stay relevant and provide effective support to Kenya to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“The Rockefeller Foundation has a long history of working with the Government of Kenya to improve the lives and prospects of its citizens. Today we reaffirm our continued commitment and partnership with this communique. We are excited to be part of this journey, and look forward to advancing Kenya’s strategies and partnerships to achieve the Kenya Big Four Agenda,” said Christine Heenan, Senior Vice President for Global Policy and Advocacy, The Rockefeller Foundation.

Tapping into the UNDP Accelerator Labs network, the Kenya SDGs Accelerator Lab aims to leverage and advance knowledge and learning from others through the global network and enrich developmental thinking and implementation through exploration and experimentation of multiple possible ideas and find contextualised solutions that can be deployed rapidly and sustainably.

“Today’s development challenges are complex, and the speed at which they evolve requires agility, innovation, creativity and urgency. How development actors respond to the fast-changing realities of the 21 Century will be based on the ability to harness homegrown solutions and formation of strategic partnerships from global to grassroots levels, that guarantee endless possibilities of ideas and multiplicity of solutions. UNDP Accelerator Labs initiative is one such vehicle that can potentially help to align strategic partnerships with emerging innovations.” Ms Ahunna Eziakonwa, UNDP Assistant Administrator and Regional Director for Africa

In collaboration with local actors including the Private Sector and the Academia, the SDGs Accelerator Lab will endeavour in identifying and harnessing homegrown solutions that have proof of concept, with the aim of bringing them to scale, while creating an enabling environment for young innovators to conceptualise, test and deliver interventions that best work for their communities .

“We are delighted by this opportunity to inspire positive social change in Kenya by supporting the Lab with rigorous research and connecting partners to our Silicon Valley enterprise ecosystem,” said Carson Christiano, Executive Director, Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), University of California, Berkeley

Together with the Government of Kenya through the Ministry of ICT, the SDGs Accelerator will build on and complement government led initiatives such as the Ajira Program, Digitalent Innovation Program, the Whitebox Platform and harness the power of tech-innovation to empower youth in becoming solution oriented and employment creators; focusing on women, youth, vulnerable and marginalized groups, underpinning the ambition of the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda.

UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya Siddharth Chatterjee noted “as the UN in Kenya we strongly believe in the power of partnerships and stand ready to deliver as one our finest support to making the SDG Accelerator Lab a ground-breaking success.”

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For more information contact:
Bernard Muthaka bernard.muthaka@one.un.org
Media and Communications Specialist, United Nations Resident Coordinator’s Office

Notes for the editors:

Kenyan Government Focus on Innovation
Kenya’s Vision 2030, Kenya’s Long-Term Development Blueprint aims to create a globally competitive and prosperous nation, transforming Kenya into a newly industrialising, middle-income country providing a high quality of life to all its citizens by 2030 in a clean and secure environment. ICT is identified as enabler or foundation for socio economic transformation. The Vision recognises the role of Science, Technology and Innovation in modern economy in which new knowledge plays a central role in boosting wealth creation, social welfare and international competitiveness. Kenya’s National ICT policy commits to create incentives, provide funding support for research and innovation.

The Government has created a number of frameworks to drive innovation, such as the recently launched Digital Economy blueprint for Africa and Emerging Digital Technologies for Kenya Report. In developing the frameworks, Kenya recognizes that technologies and innovations are rapidly changing and need supportive ecosystem. Kenya Ministry of ICT has developed a multi-tiered innovation agenda including various strategic initiatives for example: the Ajira program, The Digitalent Innovation Program, The Whitebox platform (which targets innovation on Kenya’s Big Four Agenda), and The Konza Technopolis and Konza Innovation Ecosystem Initiative. All these initiatives support job creation and transformation of Kenya to become an industrialised information society and knowledge economy.

For more information contact: Manwa Magoma manwa.magoma@ict.go.ke,
Media and Communications Advisor, Ministry of ICT, Kenya

About the Kenya SDG Partnership Platform
Under the leadership of the Government of Kenya, the UN System helped to spearhead in 2017 the SDG Partnership Platform in collaboration with development partners, private sector, philanthropy, academia and civil society. The Platform has become a flagship initiative under Kenya’s new UN Development Assistance Framework 2018-2022 for the optimization of SDG Partnerships, Financing and Innovations in support of Government Development Priorities as framed within Kenya’s Big Four Agenda. For more information: www.ke.one.un.org/content/unct/kenya/en/home/publications.html

About the Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation advances new frontiers of science, data, policy, and innovation to solve global challenges related to health, food, power and the expansion of US economic opportunities. As a science-driven philanthropy focused on building collaborative relationships with partners and grantees, the Foundation seeks to inspire and foster large-scale human impact that promotes the well-being of humanity throughout the world by identifying and accelerating breakthrough solutions, ideas and conversations. For more information: https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org

About the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), University of California, Berkley
Headquartered at the University of California, Berkeley, CEGA’s large, interdisciplinary network–including a growing number of scholars from low- and middle-income countries–identifies and tests innovations designed to reduce poverty and promote development. Our researchers use rigorous methods as well as novel measurement tools–including wireless sensors, mobile data, and analytics–to evaluate complex programs, even when randomization is not feasible. Through careful matchmaking, competitive grantmaking, and research dissemination activities, CEGA ensures that the research we produce is relevant, timely, and actionable to policymakers. For more information: www.cega.berkeley.edu

About the UNDP Accelerator Lab
The Accelerator Labs are UNDP’s new way of working in development. Together with our core partners, the State of Qatar and the Federal Republic of Germany, 60 labs serving 78 countries will work together with national and global partners to find radically new approaches that fit the complexity of current development challenges. The labs will transform our collective approach by introducing new services, backed by evidence and practice, and by accelerating the testing and dissemination of solutions within and across countries. Sense-making, collective intelligence, solutions mapping and experimentation will be part of the new offer from UNDP to governments. The Labs will identify grassroots solutions together with local actors and validate their potential to accelerate development. Solutions can come in many different forms, from a farmer discovering a new way to prevent floods to a nonprofit that is especially impactful. The labs will also harness the potential of real time data and people’s energy to respond to rapidly evolving challenges that impact development. Building on these locally-sourced solutions, the labs will rapid test and iterate new ideas to learn which ones work, which ones can grow, and which ones don’t, bringing experimentation to the core of our work. For more information: https://acceleratorlabs.undp.org

The post Kenya Plans to Leverage on Strategic Partnerships to Advance the “silicon Savannah” and Fast-track the Attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Katja Iversen
Sep 20 2019 (IPS-Partners)

Women Deliver President/CEO Katja Iversen discusses women in leadership and links between sexual and reproductive health and rights and Universal Health Coverage (UHC) to advance gender equality with the first female President of Ethiopia, Sahle-Work Zewde.

Katja Iversen: You have had a remarkable career, breaking down barriers as the first woman to hold several leadership positions across the UN and now as President of Ethiopia. How did you find the strength, the power, and the resilience to pursue this pathway to change?

President Sahle-Work Zewde: For me strength, resilience and power are all learned and accumulated over time. The more you know about yourself, excel at the work you do and understand the world you live in, the more you realize how nothing worthwhile in life comes without a fight and a lot of patience. When I look back at my life that is what I observe – my resilience and determination grew with every challenge life threw my way. With each opportunity and new position, I had the fortune of holding, I always made sure to be humble enough to learn what I did not know and confident enough to never forget my self-worth. That self belief made me aspire for more while discharging my duties to the best of my abilities.

Through all this, it is important to recognize the role of the many people who believed in me, trusted me with positions of power at a young age in the world of diplomacy and much later in life as well. Because, we are who we are through our connections and the people around us. And I have been so blessed to work with and be recognized by many remarkable people who have opened doors of opportunities to me.

Katja Iversen: You are the first female President in Ethiopia and currently the only female Head of State in Africa. This creates a critical opportunity for you to influence policies and priorities that advance gender equality not just nationally but also across the continent. Given Ethiopia’s standing on the continent and your expertise from your recent role as the UN special representative to the African Union, how will you – and Ethiopia more broadly – use your power to encourage other leaders across Africa to prioritize the health and rights of girls and women and to accelerate action toward gender equality across the continent?

President Sahle-Work Zewde: As the President of Ethiopia I hope to do my part and use my position in two ways. The first one is by pushing for the implementation of laws and policies that Ethiopia has in place, including regional human rights instruments. By implementation I mean going beyond the rhetoric and transforming social norms and strengthening the systems and structures in place and monitoring the progress regularly. This can be done in three ways:

• Individual empowerment – Investing in young women students and women entrepreneurs. Recognizing, celebrating and uplifting seasoned role models for young people and high achieving students. Building connections between them through my Gender Transformative Universities Project.
• Social norm transformation – I will work to shine a light on positive indigenous social norms to magnify and highlight the ones that are harmful and need changing. I will push for National Gender Audits to be conducted and undertake sustained dialogue on Gender Equality. This is especially important in higher education institutions since these are perfect entry points into the different regions in our country and a give us the perfect setting for learning and growing.
• Structural intervention – by bringing different stakeholders with structural power together to push for meaningful reforms. What is currently missing is alignment and collaboration. Good ideas and efforts are everywhere. I will use my power to create all the platforms necessary for these connections to happen.

There is a lot we can learn from one another at a continental level on how to build an inclusive and just society. We are ready to exchange with our African sisters and brothers to move our continent forward.

Katja Iversen: Around the world, we are seeing more governments commit to advance gender equality and promote women in leadership. How can we – as individuals, communities, and organizations – hold governments accountable to these commitments, to realize equal rights and opportunities for all girls and women? Please give an example and concrete suggestions.

President Sahle-Work Zewde: I think when we speak of accountability we should also think of sustainability.

How can we not only set goals, make plans and meet once in a while to see how things are going, but also make sure these accountability mechanisms are internal, sustained and predictable?

The best way to make this happen is to strengthen civil society organizations within member states. As our governments do their very best to keep their promises and deliver on Gender Equality and all other SDGs, we should remember that the best way to keep them and us on our toes is to have local committed advocates who are strong and well established to push the cause of Gender Equality and keep the standard of delivery high. These should be grassroots groups who properly understand the lives of our people and their needs.

In addition to this, all of us need to take our role seriously and use every opportunity we get to put women and girls on the agenda as a central issue and not as an after thought. I made that public commitment on the first day I took office and have not relented ever since.

Katja Iversen: You recently joined us at the Women Deliver 2019 Conference where we, alongside more than 8,000 advocates and leaders from around the world, discussed power, and how it can drive – or hinder – progress and change. This is a topic you have also written about, highlighting the need to redistribute power and close gender pay gaps. In addition to these key issues, how will you prioritize gender equality during your administration? Please share the specific areas you will focus on.

President Sahle-Work Zewde: As I said on the day I took office, I will be focusing on Gender Equality and advocate for Women’s Rights. Gender Equality is a complex problem. It is something that we have to tackle from multiple sides and using varying approaches. With this understanding in mind and the need to focus and conduct impactful work I will be focusing on the following major areas and designing projects within that framework.

The first one is in the education sector – supporting female university students. This is intended to make sure we are nurturing the female leaders of tomorrow and that the small percentage of female students that enter our universities excel and graduate with a chance to become a young leader. The improvement of access to education is directly linked to health outcomes for women – specially on reproductive health issues.

My second area of focus is women’s economic empowerment. I would like to facilitate the establishment of a network of women’s organizations working on women’s economic empowerment and create much needed platforms so that more attention and investment is given to women entrepreneurs.

A national program for the advocacy and policy discussions on gender equality is my third area of focus. This is one of the many areas of partnership with our Federal Ministry of Women, Youth and Children’s Affairs. The goal is to change the depth and focus of the national women’s day celebration by providing more time and engaging several line ministries to make sure that gender equality is not merely a one day a year rhetoric.

And finally an initiative that brings all the other projects together with a long term impact is my work on the National Gender Road Map. This effort will bring together multiple stakeholders and will strive to provide a clear and strategic framework for the advancement of gender equality nation wide.

Katja Iversen: This month, during the UN General Assembly (UNGA), world leaders will meet for the first High Level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Ethiopia has made tremendous progress toward ensuring all Ethiopian people have access to quality health services without facing financial hardship. I was happy to see your country renew its commitment to UHC earlier this year, and thrilled to be at the opening of the state of the art St. Paul Center for Fertility and Reproductive Medicine in Addis Ababa in February. How is Ethiopia prioritizing the health of girls and women, including their sexual and reproductive health and rights, within broader efforts to achieve UHC and why do you think this is important to Ethiopia’s development?

President Sahle-Work Zewde: The health of girls and women is directly linked to and imperative to achieving our development goals. This understanding is changing the priorities of many countries including Ethiopia. The impact of health and especially reproductive health on the productivity of our citizens, the health and nutrition of the family and the future of our children is very critical.

That is why our Ministry of Health is working more than ever to improve the reproductive health of women by reaching out to the most rural parts of the country through health workers who understand the community more than anyone else. This is also why we have been working on a national road map to end child marriage and FGM that was launched a few weeks ago.

These efforts are all the result of a firm belief in the importance of UHC and the sexual and reproductive health of girls and women. This is not a women’s issue, this is a national issue and it is being treated as such.

Katja Iversen: At the Women Deliver 2019 Conference, you spoke about the ability of girls and women in rural communities to identify and execute solutions that lift up economies, shift gender norms, and power progress for all. Unfortunately, we know girls and women are often left out of these critical conversation – this is something you are uniquely positioned to change. How can leaders – including yourself – give girls and women a seat and a voice at the table to make decisions about programs, policies, and financial investments that affect their lives? Please be specific and share examples based on your leadership.

President Sahle-Work Zewde: I will say two things on this. In order to include women and girls in the decisions that impact their lives we ought to do two things. The first one is recognize that this is an absolutely fundamental thing to building sustainable solutions and systems that are truly gender transformative. It is often done as an after thought to silence critiques. It should be the first thing that comes to mind at the start of any project, discussion or policy design. All of the rooms we are in should reflect the real world we live in and women are 51% of the population. But this will require patience and persistence.

Secondly, we need to realize that we all have gender biases that affect the way we look at women and girls. As people raised in a largely patriarchal culture both women and men struggle with this. That means even when we think we are not discriminating based on gender we might actually be perpetuating sexist practices. Therefore, we need to recognize that changing our board rooms, work places and nations starts with changing how we ourselves, even those of us who are gender equality champions, see women’s place in the world and express that in our decisions.

As a way forward, I would urge my fellow leaders, specially those in Africa, to empower the women in their country, trust their work, value their opinions and allow them to flourish. The most critical step in this effort is to stop holding women to an unfairly high standard and subject them to needless scrutiny that does not apply to men whenever they are given a certain position or responsibility.

Trust women, that is the first step in making room for them.

Because you don’t elevate those you don’t consider trustworthy. I would like to emphasize that this access to leadership and participation is not a favor we do for women; this is their Human Right. Respecting their rights to equal access and participation will transform our nations.

Katja Iversen: Your position as President is an inspiration to young girls and women across Ethiopia and around the world. What advice would you offer to these girls and women as they strive to become leaders in their families, communities, countries and on the global stage?

President Sahle-Work Zewde: To the women and girls reading this I would like to say please know that you are strong and can be leaders in the spaces that you already occupy. Specially to the young women, know that leadership is not about being in a high level position, getting some title or a political office. Some of the best leaders in the world never had formal titles and offices. They took risks and did what needed to be done. Leadership is an attitude and starts with paying attention to your environment and having a sense of responsibility. You can nurture this wherever you are. To the women out there building careers, leading households, serving their communities and countries – the world owes you a debt of gratitude. There is so much that you do, that often goes unnoticed. To change that, we ought to shine a light on each other’s work and lift up the young women around us. We really are each others keepers.

This story was originally published by Deliver for Good

The post Women In Leadership: A Q&A with President Sahle-Work Zewde appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Bigstock.

By Daisy Simmons
Sep 20 2019 (IPS)

Food may be a universal language – but in these record-breaking hot days, so too is climate change. With July clocking in as the hottest month on Earth in recorded history and extreme weather ramping up globally, farmers are facing the brunt of climate change in croplands and pastures around the world.

Here in the U.S., for instance, climate impacts like more downpours make it harder to avert flooding and erosion on farms across the Midwest. California farmers, on the other hand, must find ways to stay productive despite increasing drought and wildfire risks.

It all amounts to far more than anecdotal inconvenience: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth National Climate Assessment report projects that warming temperatures, severe heat, drought, wildfire, and major storms will “increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity,” threatening not only farmers’ livelihoods but also food security, quality, and price stability.

If these anticipated effects sound extreme, so too are the causes.

 

Five climate impacts affecting food production now

Climate change poses not just one but a whole slew of challenges to farmers – and to the larger communities that depend on them for food. From erratic precipitation to changing seasons, consider just these five key climatic changes and how they stand to affect food availability now and in the future:

1) More extreme weather can harm livestock and crops. Major storms have always devastated farms, whether from damaging winds during a storm, or erosion and landslides that can rear up even as the storm subsides. But now they’re becoming even more common. In spring 2018, for example, unusually heavy rain and snow storms caused massive flooding across the U.S. Midwest, leaving some areas 10 feet deep in sand. In Nebraska alone, farmers lost an estimated $440 million of cattle. As a result of these flooding conditions, many farmers had to delay spring planting. Delays in commodity crops like corn and soybeans aren’t just stressful for farmers, either – they could lead to food price volatility and even potential food insecurity.

2) Water scarcity across the U.S. Southwest makes it more expensive and difficult to sustain crops and livestock. Drought is in the long-term outlook across the U.S. West, with declining snowpack making it more challenging to keep reservoirs full through summer. Lack of adequate water can easily damage or destroy crops, dry up soil, and threaten livelihoods. Between 2014-2016, for example, California endured an estimated $3.8 billion of direct statewide economic losses to agriculture as a result of drought.

3) Seasons aren’t what they used to be. Growing seasons are starting earlier and getting hotter in a warming climate. A longer growing season, over time, could theoretically have some advantages, but it also presents more obstacles in the short term, such as an uptick in pest populations is possible, with more generations possible per year. Early spring onset can also cause crops to grow before the soil holds enough water and nutrients, or to ruin fruit crops that bud early and then experience later spring frost. Plus, warmer winters can affect other farming practices like grain storage.

4) Wildfire can devastate farms – even when the flames don’t actually reach them. Ranchers across the West have recently seen major losses as a result of worsening fire seasons, from outright loss of life to charred grazing lands and decimated hay stocks. What’s more, “secondary impacts” abound, from a smoky taint that can ruin wine, to the ordeal of keeping a farm operational when fires are raging nearby and evacuation orders seem just around the corner. All this also causes costs to mount given that the respiratory dangers of laboring in smoky, excessively hot conditions can force farms to send workers home in the height of harvest season.

5) Warmer weather and rising CO2 levels adversely affect food supply, safety and quality. According to a 2019 IPCC land use report, between 25 and 30 percent of the food produced worldwide is wasted, not all of it for the same reasons. In developed countries, for instance, consumers, sometimes seemingly with abandon, simply discard what they see as “excess” or “surplus” food. In developing countries, much of the waste is brought about by a lack of refrigeration as products go bad between producers and consumers. The IPCC report estimates that food waste costs about $1 trillion per year and accounts for about 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from food systems. Meanwhile, some two-billion humans worldwide are overweight or obese even as nearly one billion are undernourished, highlighting the inefficiencies and inequities in food distribution.

In addition, rising temperatures can alter exposures to some pathogens and toxins. Consider: Salmonella, Campylobacter, Vibrio parahaemolyticus in raw oysters, and mycotoxigenic fungi, which can all potentially thrive in warmer environments. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere also can decrease dietary iron, zinc, protein, and other macro- and micronutrients in certain crops.

Now for the elephant still in the room: Food production isn’t just being affected by climate change – it’s actively contributing to climate change, too. According to IPCC’s land use report, agriculture and other land uses comprise more than one-fifth of global CO2 emissions, creating a vicious cycle.

 

Credit: Bigstock.

 

Growing solutions to the climate crisis

The July IPCC report cited above lists various adaptation and mitigation measures that could help reduce the adverse impacts of food and dietary preferences on climate change. The suggestions address more sustainable food production and diets (more plant-based, less meat-based); improved forestry management (including reducing deforestation and increasing reforestation); agricultural carbon sequestration, including no-till farming practices; and reducing food waste.

And it warns that delaying action will be costly:

Deferral of [greenhouse gas] emissions reductions from all sectors implies trade-offs including irreversible loss in land ecosystem functions and services required for food, health, habitable settlements and production, leading to increasingly significant economic impacts on many countries in many regions of the world.

So, what can individuals do to help avert some of the worsening impacts of climate on food supply? There in fact are a number of ways to help support climate-friendlier food production.

Improving soil health, on a large-scale, is one key way forward. Nutrient-rich soil stores carbon better than degraded, overworked soil. Plus, healthy soil helps farms stay productive – a win-win. Consumers can boost these efforts, by supporting farmers and ranchers who engage in sustainable practices like cover cropping and composting.

Reducing meat consumption is another way to reduce the climate impact of food production, given that a livestock farm is like a methane factory, contributing an estimated 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Meatless Mondays, “flexitarian” diets, and the rise of faux-meat brands are all testimony to the growing efforts aimed at reducing meat consumption.

In addition to consumer actions, there are interesting new ways forward on the industry side. Manure digesters, for one, can convert methane from manure into electricity. And seaweed is gaining scientific interest for its potential in making cattle burp less often. (Yes, you read that right.)

Policy efforts will likely be key also. California for its part has goals to direct some cap-and-trade funding to build compost facilities, and incentivize methane reduction in dairies.

The challenges ahead are steep. But so too are the opportunities to adapt to new realities and reduce assorted diverse impacts. According to Project Drawdown, three of the top 10 best climate solutions have something to do with food, from reducing food waste (3) and choosing a plant-rich diet (4) to silvopasturing (9), which integrates trees and pasture into a single ecosystem.

It isn’t always easy to make such changes. What is getting easier, though, is to see that the world’s collective appetite for fossil fuels is having a negative impact on real food and on dietary options.

And the option of inaction on something so fundamental? Through their food-purchasing and dietary preferences, Americans increasingly, albeit perhaps only gradually, are showing that they are increasingly wary about swallowing that one.

 

This story originally appeared in Yale Climate Connections . It is republished here as part of IPS Inter Press Service’s partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

 

The post A Brief Guide to the Impacts of Climate Change on Food Production appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Crystal Orderson
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Sep 20 2019 (IPS)

From Nigeria, to Kenya to the Democratic Republic of Congo, to South Africa, thousands of African climate campaigners have taken to the streets joining millions around the world for the global Climate Strike ahead of the United Nations Climate Action Summit 2019, which starts in New York next week.

In Cape Town, learners from around 50 schools across the city mobilised by the African Climate Alliance made their voices heard. Over the past year, young people from around the world have been taking Friday off from school in protest of the inaction by decision makers when it comes to climate change.

IPS correspondent Crystal Orderson joined the strike and filed this report.

 

The post ‘I Want my Kids to Know What a Rhino and Turtle Are’ – #ClimateStrike Kids Say appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS Correspondent Crystal Oderson took to the streets in Cape Town, South Africa and chatted to children about the #ClimateStrike.

The post ‘I Want my Kids to Know What a Rhino and Turtle Are’ – #ClimateStrike Kids Say appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Courtesy: United Nations

By Meera Shenoy
HYDERABAD, TELANGANA, India, Sep 20 2019 (IPS)

As companies begin to focus on hiring people with disabilities, we need to shape how they think and act on this interest.

In the first decade of this century, Andhra Pradesh had several self-help groups (SHGs)–women who were saving, borrowing, and generating livelihood opportunities for themselves as well as their communities.

As these groups grew, the government began to notice that the aspirations of children were different from their SHG-member mothers, who were mostly marginal farmers or weavers. The state felt that they needed to do something to fulfil these aspirations and from this was born the Employment Generation and Marketing Mission (EGMM)–a skilling mission under the Department of Rural Development in undivided Andhra Pradesh.

EGMM started in 2004 with a pilot–a Rural Retail Academy was set up in Warangal for youth who were 10th and 12th standard dropouts; local school teachers were taught to train them on customer-facing skills, and after six months they were ready to be placed.

Higher efficiencies, near-zero errors in an industry where margins are small–opened up almost 50,000 cashiering jobs for disabled youth in the retail sector.

Kishore Biyani of the Future Group was the first one to hire these young people, and him doing so changed the way India looked at rural youth. It made people realise that: a) you didn’t need graduates with degrees for customer service, and b) rural youth, if skilled right, could get formal private sector jobs.

Prior to the establishment of the EGMM, government skilling programmes didn’t think of job placement as something they were responsible for. All of them did skilling for skilling’s sake. Now placement has become the norm in every skilling programme offered by either the government or the private sector.

EGMM was also able to demonstrate innovation at scale. However, it’s relatively easy to achieve scale when you are sitting inside the government. When I thought of what to focus on after rural youth, it was important for me to enter a space where there wasn’t an existing model for scale, and to prove that it could be done outside of the government as well. Disability was that space.

 

Moving to disability

The statistics around disability are alarming–80 percent of the world’s disability population is in developing countries like India. Despite this, a decade ago, little was being done about it.

Cities with a booming IT industry like Bangalore and Delhi, had organisations training and placing disabled people in jobs, but this was limited to 30 people a year at best. And, most of them were urban and educated. However, 69 percent of the disabled youth in India live in the villages–and at the time, in 2012, nobody was focusing on less-educated rural youth with disability. 

 

There were many challenges

When we went to the villages, we faced several obstacles:

• Getting youth to join: Disabled youth who lived in rural areas were doubly disadvantaged: they were cut off from the job market because of their rural location, and they (and their families) didn’t believe that they could ever get a job.
• Finding trainers: We were also faced with a shortage of people who could train these youth. Disability is one word but within that word there are different kinds of disability–speech impaired, visually challenged, physical disabilities, and so on–and each one of them has different needs. Even when we did find trainers who could work with disabled youth–sign language instructors, for example–they were ill-equipped to train in the short-term training formats that we had developed.
• Providing them job opportunities: Companies came with a lot of mindsets. They would ask us “Can you give us youth who look like you and me? Will it be expensive to hire and manage them? Will my other employees have a problem if I hire your youth?”

 

There is a gap in the urban disabled space as well

As we started working with the corporates, some multinational companies started asking us, “Where are the youth with English, the ones who are educated?” The perception is that if the disabled youth are educated, they will perhaps get jobs on their own.

However, in most cases, educated youth with disability have low skill levels. They qualify as engineers, have an engineering certificate and so their aspirations are to get into the well-known global and Indian tech companies. However, their technical knowledge is poor since colleges don’t have special educators to guide them.

 

The perception is that if the disabled youth are educated, they will perhaps get jobs on their own. However, in most cases, educated youth with disability have low skill levels. Picture courtesy: Rawpixel

 

The market is beginning to think about disability more actively

We are hearing companies talk about focusing on disability. So, while the timing is right, we need to shape how companies think and act on their interest.

Here are a few approaches that skilling organisations that work with disabled youth can adopt to ensure that larger numbers of corporates hire and retain these young people and that they do it in the right manner.

 

1. Try to place youth with disability in customer-facing roles

When they have to interact with customers, awareness about the issue of disability goes up automatically; you don’t have to work on that separately. We piloted this hypothesis by placing a speech- and hearing-impaired individual in a cashier’s job, with some simple workplace adaptations.

Three months later the retailer ran a survey to ask their customers for feedback and 95 percent of the respondents said that having ‘silent’ cashier had led to faster service. This insight–higher efficiencies, near-zero errors in an industry where margins are small–opened up almost 50,000 cashiering jobs for disabled youth in the retail sector.

 

2. Create a sensitive ecosphere

Hiring youth with disabilities is not just about matching profiles to jobs. We do sensitisation workshops, low cost adaptations, accessibility audits, going as far as to sync companies’ existing software to ensure that hired youth are productive. Otherwise, it merely reiterates the myth that youth with disabilities cannot work.

 

3. Build up jobs sector by sector

We did this with the automotive industry. We started with one company–Valeo–and hardwired all our best practices over there. More importantly, their HR director and I started talking about these innovations and the value provided by these youth at conferences and forums. As a result, 15 more auto companies started hiring disabled youth.

 

4. Teach portable skills and not specific job skills

Typically, skilling organisations give youth job-specific training–like say a three-day training in folding clothes. However, the danger with this approach is that if the folding clothes process stops, so does their job. It is important therefore, irrespective of the sector, to teach English, communications, and life skills–skills that they can take across jobs. This allows them to be mobile across jobs and capitalise on the opportunities available.

 

5. Encourage companies to measure impact

An executive from a multinational company that we at Youth4Jobs work with said that our alumni manage 75 forms a day versus their average of 45-50. Once companies experience the business case and see the results, their senior executives become champions for the programmes.

 

6. Prepare companies to be ready for changes in the law

It is likely that one day, a particular state might suddenly decide to make hiring of disabled youth mandatory in sync with the Right to PwD Act 2016 which speaks to the right of disabled to education and employment. And if that happens, other states will follow. It is important that companies are ready for it when it happens.

 

Meera Shenoy is the founder of Youth4Jobs, where she works on skilling young people with disabilities. She has been at the forefront of job-linked skilling for rural youth, tribal youth, and now youth with disabilities, at a scalable level. She was previously Executive Director, Employment Generation and Marketing Mission (EGMM), the first state government skilling mission. Meera has also consulted with the World Bank and the UNDP.

 

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

 

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By Blerim Mustafa
GENEVA, Sep 20 2019 (IPS)

The proliferation of political crises and armed conflicts in every corner of the world does not exclude religious groups, which unfortunately also contribute to animosities, intolerance and hatred. The Middle East has been on the hit-list of violet extremist groups for decades. One telling example is Syria where clashes have on occasion taken religious or denominational overtones, fracturing Syrian society for decades to come. They have given rise to sectarian divisions along ethnic and religious lines in a country where inter-religious harmony once prevailed. We observe a similar situation in Iraq. In Myanmar, government security forces unleased a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing and hatred against the Muslim Rohingya population. The military crackdown on the Rohingya community has significantly aggravated inter-communal violence in the country. And in the Central African Republic, armed militant groups sloganizing misrepresentations of Islam and Christianity, commit abuses and human rights violations on each other on a daily basis.

The conclusion that can be drawn is that the proliferation of political crises and armed conflicts indiscriminately target communities and societies regardless of religious beliefs or denominations. Violent extremism cannot be ascribed to one religion or region of the world. The recent appalling violent extremist attacks in Christchurch, Oslo and Colombo illustrate that violent extremism targets societies and communities blindly and where we least expect it to happen.

In a time where racism, racial discrimination intolerance and the fear of the other is on the rise, defusing inter-religious conflicts and enhancing understanding for religious diversity is needed more than ever.

In this spirit, inter-faith dialogue and cooperation remains an essential vehicle for religious believers to know, understand, and respect one another. Interreligious and religious-secular dialogues have the power to promote lasting change through a dialogue that fosters mutual coexistence, tolerance and empathy. This entails sharing a relationship of respect and mutual confidence as well as to identifying commonalities among religions, creeds and value systems in promoting multidimensional equalities, accepting diversity between human beings and promoting empathy. As His Holiness Pope Francis reminded us in Sarajevo in 2015 during his visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina:

“We need to communicate with each other, to discover the gifts of each person, to promote that which unites us, and to regard our differences as an opportunity to grow in mutual respect.”

This is a telling reminder that interreligious dialogues can serve as a vector to help break down the walls of ignorance that characterize many societies around the world. There is a need to build alliances between all religions and faiths to address the surge of racial discrimination, intolerance and prejudice. The visit of Pope Francis to the United Arab Emirates in February this year, for instance, and the historical signing of the joint document on “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” between the Pope and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb are eloquent examples of endeavours made by religious leaders to promulgate a vision of unity in diversity.

It is likewise one of the greatest paradoxes of the contemporary world that major world faiths and creeds are being perverted by violent extremist groups to justify hatred and exclusion. All major world religions advocate peace and justice. The religious teachings of many traditions recognise that prevention of conflict in society by acceptance of the other is rooted in the dignity endowed to the human being. It is through unity — not division — that humanity can promote a world living in peace and harmony. All religions can play an important role.

Let me cite some examples.

Islam, for instance, puts strong emphasis on equality, proclaiming that all human beings are borne free and equal. During the era of Prophet Muhammed (PBUH), he said to his followers:

“An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over a black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action.”

In Judaism, equality before the law plays a strong role in the enhancement of human dignity, human conduct and responsibility towards one another. Sanhedrin 4:5 teaches us that “(…) none should say, (my) Father is greater than yours,” for we are all descendants of the same ancestor.

In Christianity, we are taught in Galatians 3:28 that equality must guide our actions. “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

The right to equality is also emphasised in Hinduism. The Vedas – the sacred scriptures of Hinduism – observe: “No one is superior or inferior. All are brothers and all should strive for the interest of all and progress collectively.” So too in Budhism, as indeed Buddha taught a social message of love, equality and fraternity which underpin equal citizenship rights.

In Confucianism, the notion of “datong” or ‘Great Community’ symbolizes a world in peace and unity in which all people live in harmony with each other, collective and individual human rights being affirmed and closely interwoven.

These examples illustrate that religions and faiths themselves are not the source of hatred and intolerance, but only their distorted instrumentalization for vested interests by violent extremist groups. One must therefore harness the collective energy of all religions and faiths in the pursuit of peaceful and inclusive societies as stipulated in Sustainable Development Goal 16 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. There is no reason for religious communities to fear one another as our commonalities clearly exceed our differences.

Blerim Mustafa, Project and communications officer, the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue. Postgraduate researcher (Ph.D. candidate) at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester (UK).

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By Andrew Norton
LONDON, Sep 20 2019 (IPS)

In an alarming imbalance struggling families in rural Bangladesh spend almost US$2 billion a year on preventing climate-related disasters or repairing damage caused by climate change ― far more than either the Bangladesh government or international bodies.

In the first report to measure household spending on climate change in any country compared to public climate finance, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) reveals that rural families in Bangladesh, many of whom are living in poverty, are spending double the amount of the government, and nearly 12 times the amount Bangladesh receives in multilateral international climate financing in absolute terms, according to the latest data.

Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world and is among the most vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events. The majority of its population, roughly two-thirds, lives in rural areas.

It is unacceptable that the most vulnerable people in the country are shouldering the burden of spending for adapting to climate change. Far too little support is being directed to the communities that are being most affected.

Much more needs to be done to make sure more public climate finance from the government and international community reaches the women, children and men who need it most.

‘Bearing the climate burden: how households in Bangladesh are spending too much’ shows that even though the Bangladesh government’s annual budget for addressing climate change in rural areas increased to US$1.46 billion (123.18 billion taka) in 2018-19 from US$884 million (74.32 billion taka) in 2014-15, it is still less than the amount rural households are spending due to climate change.

Rural households received an estimated total of US$154 million a year in international climate and disaster finance ― or US$6.42 (533 taka) for each rural household per year.

As a result of this disparity, households living in poverty are diverting money away from many of the basic necessities they need to live in order to address the effects of climate change, such as repairing damage to their homes, spending on ruined crops and building defences against damage.

This includes money they need to send their children to school, for healthcare and to put food on the table. As a result, we found that these families are having to turn to informal lenders who charge high interest rates, which is pushing them deeper into poverty. Low-cost loans from formal financial institutions and microfinance NGOs need to be made more widely available.

‘Bearing the climate burden’ also found that female-headed households spend three times more money as a share of their income than households headed by men. This important revelation shows that addressing the impacts of climate change is more of a priority for women, so it is crucial that extra support is directed to female-headed households.

Climate finance is a fundamental building block for tackling the emergency the world is facing. The high costs of climate change that developing countries face are largely as a result of other countries’ actions.

Recognising this in 2010, developed countries meeting in Cancun, Mexico committed to mobilise US$100 billion a year by 2020 to help address developing countries’ needs in tackling climate change. We are now just one year from this key deadline.

It is clear that, not only are governments falling short of this goal, but previous IIED research shows that less than US$1 in US$10 of international climate finance is being directed to the local level.

Plus, 93% of it is not transparent enough to track how it is being used. Because of a lack of transparency, often it is not possible to identify exactly what donor countries are investing their climate finance in. Reporting methods are hard for many to understand and often they are obscure, and the information provided too limited.

As a result, local priorities and the flexibility to respond both to rapidly changing needs and new opportunities are not being met. Changing this and making sure money reaches where it matters most is crucial for developing countries to be able to achieve the Paris Agreement’s targets for keeping temperature rise below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. It is vital that more climate finance is directed to the local level and that local people are included in designing programmes to ensure their priorities are met.

On 23 September, leaders from around the world will meet at the United Nations in New York for the Climate Action Summit. This is an opportunity for all governments to raise their commitments to tackle climate change. For the richer countries responsible for the bulk of historic emissions, this must include both meaningful commitments to deliver cuts in emissions, and a renewed determination to deliver support to those who need it most.

 

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. 

The post Rural Bangladesh Families Spend 2.0 Billion Dollars on Climate Change ― Dwarfing Government & International Finance appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Andrew Norton is Director of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

The post Rural Bangladesh Families Spend 2.0 Billion Dollars on Climate Change ― Dwarfing Government & International Finance appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Mario Osava
ENTRE RIOS DO OESTE, Brasil, Sep 20 2019 (IPS)

Biogas has the potential to provide 36 percent of the electricity consumed in Brazil or replace 70 percent of diesel if purified as biomethane, according to the Brazilian Association of Biogas and Biomethane (Abiogas).

This new source of energy is only recently gaining a foothold in this country, especially in the agricultural south. Its future is promising in an agro-diverse Brazil, which is the world’s largest producer or exporter of sugar, coffee, meat and soybeans.

Its expansion also serves environmental purposes, reducing soil and water pollution from livestock excrement and waste and urban sewage.

Entre Rios do Oeste, a small town of 4,400 people and 155,000 pigs in the western part of the state of Paraná, inaugurated a mini biogas thermoelectric plant on Jul. 24.

 

 

It is the product of a pioneering agreement promoted by the International Centre for Renewable Energies-Biogas (CIBiogas), which involves the municipal government, 18 pig farmers and the Paraná Energy Company (Copel).

With a capacity of 480 kilowatts, the plant will enable the municipal government to save what it used to spend on electricity for its 72 buildings, including offices, schools and other services.

The 18 pig farms, with around 39,000 hogs, will produce the biogas that, through a 20-km network of pipes, will reach the plant.

Copel financed the project with 17 million reais (about 4.5 million dollars) and receives the electricity generated, with which the municipality pays its energy bill.

The project took 11 years to crystallise from the initial idea. It harnessed an earlier experiment – the Agroenergy Family Farming Condominium of the Ajuricaba River Basin, in the municipality of Cândido Rondon, 34 km northeast of Entre Rios.

The west of Paraná, where pig and poultry farming is intense, is experiencing a biogas production boom driven by CIBiogás, an association of international and national institutions founded in 2013 at the Technology Park of Itaipu, the giant hydroelectric plant shared by Brazil and Paraguay.

The Haacke Farm in the nearby municipality of Santa Helena uses chicken manure and devotes part of its biogas to produce biomethane, which it sells to Itaipu as fuel for the hydropower plant’s vehicles.

Several companies already use biogas to generate their own electricity, such as Cerámica Stein, from Entre Rios.

BioKohler, a biodigester factory in the municipality of Cândido Rondon, is an example of the small industry and services that make up the local biogas economy. The Kohler family has also just installed its mini biogas thermoelectric plant, in partnership with a German company in the sector, Mele.

 

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The post Not Enough Good Information About Africa’s Climate for Climate Adaptation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

In this edition of Voices from the Global South Dr James Kinyangi head of the African Development Bank's climate and development Africa special fund, and fellow climate scientist Laban Ogallo, a Professor of Meteorology at the University of Nairobi and an author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, chat to IPS correspondent Isaiah Esipisu about local solutions that can help the fight against climate change.

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“We were so close you couldn’t put one finger between one person and the next, we were like razorblades in a pack”. Illustration @2019 John Holmes for Human Rights Watch.

By Jo Becker
Sep 19 2019 (IPS)

“Khadija” was just 8 years old when Boko Haram fighters attacked her village in northeast Nigeria and took her by force to their camp. Her abductors tried to marry her and other captives to members of the armed Islamist group, she told me. When the captives refused, they were locked in a room.  

They managed to escape a month later, but Khadija’s ordeal didn’t end there. Nigerian soldiers found her. But instead of returning her to her family, they detained her in a military prison for two years as a suspected Boko Haram member.

Boko Haram’s crimes in northeast Nigeria are notorious: abductions, forced marriage, suicide bombings, and attacks on schools perceived as providing “Western education.” But the victims of the insurgency also include thousands of children imprisoned by Nigerian authorities for suspected Boko Haram involvement, often with little or no evidence.

Since 2012, the United States has spent over US$100 million to help Nigerian authorities try to defeat Boko Haram. As part of its counter-insurgency efforts, Nigeria’s military has detained thousands of suspected Boko Haram members. Those detained since 2013 have included at least 3,600 children, the UN says.

In 20 years of human rights work, I’ve never come across conditions as bad as the children described at Giwa barracks, the main military detention facility in northeast Nigeria

In June I interviewed some of these children, including one 10-year-old boy who was detained when he was only 5 years old. What became clear is that most of these children were victims of Boko Haram. The government’s detention policies simply add another layer to their suffering.

One boy I met said he was detained for two-and-a-half years for allegedly selling yams to Boko Haram members. Other children told us soldiers arrested and detained them after they fled Boko Haram attacks on their villages, sometimes singling out adolescent boys perceived as being of fighting age. Several children said that soldiers accused them of being Boko Haram because they hadn’t left their villages soon enough after Boko Haram attacks. Girls who were abducted and forced to become Boko Haram wives have also been detained.

The vast majority of these children are never charged with a crime. Most are held for months and often years with no contact with the outside world. Their families often presume they are dead. Of the 32 children a colleague and I interviewed, none said they were ever taken before a judge or appeared in court. Only one said he saw someone who he believed might have been a lawyer.

In 20 years of human rights work, I’ve never come across conditions as bad as the children described at Giwa barracks, the main military detention facility in northeast Nigeria. They described cells so crowded that they were forced to sleep on their sides, packed tightly together in rows. “We were so close you couldn’t put one finger between one person and the next,” said one. “We were like razorblades in a pack,” said another.

They described beatings, overwhelming heat, and an overpowering stench from hundreds of detainees sharing a single open toilet. Many spoke of frequent hunger or thirst. Deaths were common, and many of the children said they saw soldiers carry bodies out of the cells.

Many of the children I met felt doubly victimized, first by Boko Haram for abducting them or attacking their village, and then by the government for detaining them. Many felt frustrated that the military did not adequately investigate their claims that they were not part of Boko Haram. “My years were wasted in suffering,” said one bitterly.

 

Illustration @ 2019 John Holmes for Human Rights Watch.

 

Several of Nigeria’s neighbors, including Chad, Niger, and Mali, have signed “handover protocols” with the United Nations to ensure that children detained by soldiers are swiftly transferred to child protection authorities for rehabilitation, family reunification, and community reintegration. Nigeria should do the same, and immediately release children in military custody to national child welfare authorities. The US, as a major supporter of Nigeria’s counter-insurgency operations, should urge Nigeria to take these steps.

Boko Haram has caused untold suffering for millions, and it’s possible some children may have committed serious crimes. If Nigerian authorities have credible evidence of criminal offenses by children, they should transfer them to civilian authorities for treatment in accordance with international juvenile justice standards.

Locking up children based on speculation or dubious evidence is not an effective way to counter Boko Haram’s violence. The former child detainees I met had no sympathy for Boko Haram or interest in fighting. They want to go to school or find work to support themselves. Instead of putting them in prison, Nigerian authorities should help them build their future.

 

Jo Becker is the children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch and author of “They Didn’t Know if I was Alive of Dead”: Military Detention of Children for Suspected Boko Haram Involvement in Northeast Nigeria. Follow her on Twitter at @jobeckerhrw.

 

The post Boko Haram’s Youngest Victims appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Jo Becker is the children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch

The post Boko Haram’s Youngest Victims appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Protestors rallied outside a library building in Manhattan on Wednesday, carrying placards about Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen and referencing the “bone saw” that was reportedly used to dismember Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Saudi prince Mohammad bin Salman. Credit: James Reinl/IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 19 2019 (IPS)

A New York library appeared to bow to pressure this week when it canceled an event that was being co-hosted by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, who is accused of a range of human rights abuses.

On Wednesday, the New York Public Library (NYPL) said it was scrapping the so-called Misk-OSGEY Youth Forum, a workshop on Sept. 23 that was being co-hosted by bin Salman’s Misk Foundation and U.N. youth envoy Jayathma Wickramanayake. 

The event had been blasted by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other campaign groups, who said it served to whitewash bin Salman’s reputation after the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October last year — reportedly on the crown prince’s orders. 

Evan Chesler, chairman of the NYPL board, said that dropping the workshop was the “appropriate thing to do” after weeks of protests and an online petition that had garnered more than 7,000 signatures.

In a statement, the library said it had cancelled the “space rental” amid “concerns about possible disruption to library operations as well as the safety of our patrons” amid “public concern around the event and one of its sponsors”. 

It remains unclear whether the Misk Foundation will seek an alternative venue for the workshop at short notice. A U.N. spokesman told IPS it was “up to Misk to provide information on whether the event will take place elsewhere or not”.

Saudi Arabia’s mission to the U.N. and the Misk Foundation declined to comment on the controversy.

Protestors rallied outside a library building in Manhattan on Wednesday, carrying placards about Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen and referencing the “bone saw” that was reportedly used to dismember Khashoggi, a prominent critic of bin Salman. 

“This week’s protests show that the public will not keep quiet while the leadership of the NYPL, a treasured repository of civilisation, hires our library out to the butcherer of Khashoggi,” Matthew Zadrozny, president of the Committee to Save the New York Public Library, told IPS.

“The NYPL leadership must explain to the public it serves who signed the deal with bin Salman’s foundation and why.”

Kenneth Roth, director of HRW, blasted the “repression-whitewashing event” on Twitter and asked U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres to scrap the partnership between his youth envoy, Wickramanayake, and the crown prince’s charity. 

 

Now that the New York Public Library has withdrawn as a venue for the Saudi crown prince’s repression-whitewashing event https://t.co/JvGG6cyLd2 will UN chief @AntonioGuterres withdraw his youth envoy’s sponsorship before a replacement venue is found? https://t.co/ZA1Ctd8iIO

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) 19 September 2019

 

Suzanne Nossel, CEO of rights group PEN America, said the library had made the “right choice”, addiing bin Salman’s government had “orchestrated the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi”.

“Hosting this event just days before the anniversary of Jamal’s killing would have been particularly appalling not just for his family, friends, and colleagues, but also for those currently being persecuted in the kingdom.”

Nossel also noted that the library “is the crown jewel of the literary community in New York” and it stands for “free exchange of ideas and free expression, qualities that the crown prince has repeatedly disdained in both words and actions”.

The NYPL event was set to see some 300 budding young entrepreneurs learn about green themes, corporate responsibility and other parts of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda.

Khashoggi, a U.S.-based journalist who frequently criticised the Saudi government, was killed and dismembered on Oct. 2 last year after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he collecting documents for his wedding.

The CIA assessed that bin Salman had ordered Khashoggi’s killing. U.N. expert Agnes Callamard has described the death as a “premeditated execution,” and called for bin Salman and other high-ranking Saudis to be investigated.

Officials in Riyadh, who initially said Khashoggi had left the premises unharmed, now say the journalist was killed by a rogue hit squad that did not involve bin Salman. Activists have since pushed for accountability over the killing.

Related Articles

• U.N. Criticised for Link-up with Saudi Prince MBS
• Petition and Critics of Khashoggi Killing Heap Pressure on U.N.-Saudi Event

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CANOPY COVER: Nepal’s midhills have seen the greatest increase in forest cover over the past 25 years. Outmigration from villages and the success of community forests like this one in Chitlang of Makwanpur district have contributed to the regrowth. Photos: KUNDA DIXIT.

By Peter Gill
KATHMANDU, Sep 19 2019 (IPS)

New analysis of historical satellite imagery indicates that Nepal’s forest area has nearly doubled, from 26% of land area in 1992 to 45% in 2016. The midhills have experienced the strongest resurgence, although forests have also expanded in the Tarai and in the mountains. This makes Nepal an exception to the global trend of deforestation in developing countries.

These findings may come as a surprise to readers who regularly hear about deforestation. Indeed, recent infrastructure expansion projects seem to pit development against nature. Protesters have pushed back against the felling of trees for the Ring Road expansion project in Kathmandu, as well as the plan to cut down 8,000ha of jungle in Bara district for a proposed airport in Nijgad.

But the new research, conducted by a NASA-funded team whose members are based in the US, Switzerland and Nepal, does not indicate that Nepal has been free from deforestation in recent decades. Rather, the data show that on average, more new forests have grown up than have been cut down. As a result, there has been net forest gain.

Unlike government officials, local communities were seen to have a vested interest in preserving forest resources for long-term, sustainable use. They also were better positioned to monitor forests and enforce rules for harvesting forest products.

Jefferson Fox, a geographer at the East-West Center in Honolulu who is the project’s principal investigator, thinks it is important to acknowledge Nepal’s forest successes, even if localised deforestation remains a problem in parts of the country.

“When I did my dissertation work in the early 1980s, Nepal was all over the international press for deforestation,” he says. “Now that Nepal has turned it around, it can’t get any attention!”

From 1950 to 1980, Nepal lost much of its forest cover. Deforestation was due in part to a growing rural population that cut trees to harvest timber and convert land to agriculture. Nepal had nationalised all forests in the 1950s, but the government was often ill-equipped to oversee them. Bureaucrats were frequently unaware, or turned a blind eye, when villagers cut trees for household use, and sometimes they colluded with commercial loggers to illegally exploit timber.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the government began handing over what eventually amounted to 1.8 million hectares of national forest land to communities to manage. Unlike government officials, local communities were seen to have a vested interest in preserving forest resources for long-term, sustainable use. They also were better positioned to monitor forests and enforce rules for harvesting forest products.

Fox’s research team found that areas with high rates of community forest membership experienced the most forest recovery, implying that decentralised forest management has played a key role in Nepal’s reforestation.

Demographic changes have also been important to forest recovery. Although Nepali villagers have migrated to India for seasonal and military work for centuries, migration to Gulf countries, Southeast Asia and beyond has exploded since the 1990s.

Migrants’ families often abandon marginal farmland because they lack the manpower to use it, allowing forests to naturally regenerate. Likewise, the families often harvest fewer forest products, like firewood, because they have more money to purchase alternatives, such as LPG. Fox’s team found that areas of Nepal where people receive the most remittances have also experienced greatest reforestation.

The data also indicate that Nepal’s forest gains have been concentrated in the midhills. This is not surprising, because community forests are widespread in this region and outmigration and agricultural land abandonment are increasingly common. The data also show that forests have expanded in the Tarai, despite greater population growth, fewer community forests and more conflicts over resources there. However, gains in the Tarai — and in the mountains — have been smaller than in the midhills.

Importantly, forest extent is not the same thing as ecological value, which can vary greatly from forest to forest. For example, young, dry, and isolated forests do not provide as good wildlife habitat as old-growth and riverine forests, or forests located along wildlife corridors. Similarly, a forest on a steep slope helps reduce soil erosion, giving it conservation value that a forest in a flat area may not have.

Fox’s team is not the first to analyse Nepal’s forest cover change using satellite imagery. A group at the University of Maryland (GlobalForestWatch.org) has monitored forest change globally since 2000. In Nepal, its data show there has been forest loss — the opposite of Fox’s team’s findings. This data has been cited by numerous academic studies and the media, including this newspaper.

Both the old and new data were generated using computer algorithms that look at historical satellite images to determine — based on the colour and shade of pixels in each photograph — what is forest and what is not. Forests are considered to be any area with at least 50% canopy cover — meaning that, looking from the air, at least half of the ground is obscured by trees. (This may not sound like much, but the FAO standard is only 10%.)

While the Maryland team used algorithms designed for application around the world, Fox’s team have created algorithms specifically tailored for Nepal. Alex Smith, a member of Fox’s team who is also a PhD candidate at Oregon State University and a current Fulbright-Hays scholar in Kathmandu, says that image-analysis algorithms designed for worldwide use can be inaccurate in Nepal because of the mountainous terrain.

 

 

By contrast, his team’s algorithms use topographic correction techniques to compensate for shade and other visual distortions caused by steep slopes. Furthermore, they ensure their algorithms are accurate by cross-analysing results with other high-resolution photographs of the same areas — a process known as ‘ground truthing’.  For these reasons, the results are probably far more accurate for Nepal than the University of Maryland data.

Some would argue that because Nepal nearly doubled its forest area since 1992, it can spare a few thousand hectares here or there for infrastructure projects like Nijgad. But according to Smith, this is not the upshot of his team’s research.

“Our study provides a big-picture view about what is happening, but the decision to convert any specific forest should be taken after considering local factors as well,” he says.

These might include the potential benefits of the infrastructure project weighed against the value of the forest as wildlife habitat and as a source of resources, cultural values and aesthetics for local people.

Infrastructure aside, some people argue Nepal should allow more timber harvesting, which has hitherto been tightly regulated, as long as it is accompanied by sustainable forest management. Proponents of this approach say that forest-based industries could boost the economy without leading to deforestation, because trees would be replanted once cut.

Sceptics counter that ensuring long-term sustainability would be difficult, given pervasive problems with corruption and short-term thinking among leadership.

The new research by Fox’s team does not provide conclusive evidence for one side or the other. Decisions about how much, and where, to harvest will inevitably involve balancing conservation and development objectives.

However, the research does highlight the continued importance of community forestry. “Local communities have put in a huge amount of effort conserving these forests,” says Smith. “Whatever happens next, you want to keep people invested.”  

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

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Sven Lilienström is Founder of the Faces of Democracy initiative & Faces of Peace initiative

By Sven Lilienström
STOCKHOLM, Sep 19 2019 (IPS)

In an interview with Dan Smith, Director of the renowned Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Professor of Peace and Conflict at the University of Manchester. The native Londoner, he has been researching conflicts and peace for decades and served in the UN Peacebuilding Fund Advisory Group, which he chaired for two years.

SIPRI Director Dan Smith. Credit: SIPRI

Lilienström: What does “peace” mean for you personally?

Smith: Peace is the situation in which it is possible to pursue conflicts and disagreements – between states, between individuals and at every level in between – without damage to those involved in the conflict, to others, or to others’ ability to live in peace with each other.

Lilienström: After the demise of the INF Treaty, the USA has announced that it intends to deploy intermediate-range missiles in the Indo-Pacific region. The Chinese government is responding with threats of its own. How dangerous are the power games with China?

Smith: The difficult US-China relationship holds many risks including the trade war and confrontations at sea as well as a potential arms rivalry.

Lilienström: China was never part of the INF Treaty. As a result, the People’s Republic is now believed to have 2,000 ballistic missiles. Do we need a new treaty that includes the Chinese?

Smith: There are various estimates of how many missiles China has of the ranges covered by the INF Treaty (500-5500 km); the highest estimate is about 1,700, plus a maximum estimate of some 300 cruise missiles. The total includes both nuclear and conventional warheads. In total, China is widely estimate to have about 300 nuclear warheads. The US and Russia have over 6,000 nuclear warheads each.

A new treaty that includes China would be a positive development!

Accordingly, including China in a future arms control treaty would probably exert a downward pressure on US and Russian warhead numbers, as it is hard to see why China would otherwise agree to sign up. A new treaty that includes China would therefore be a positive development. It is, however, unclear whether China will find the proposal of joining a new treaty credible when the old has just been abandoned.

Lilienström: The Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for international trade, has become the stage for an international conflict. What do you think of a US-led mission to protect oil tankers in the Persian Gulf?

Smith: Safe passage by sea should be secured by agreement, subject to international law; neither a US-led military mission nor any other military deployment will contribute this aim.

Lilienström: Cyber-attacks, propaganda, and disinformation are means of conducting a hybrid conflict. How vulnerable are Germany, the EU and the NATO countries to becoming targets of hybrid threats and campaigns?

Smith: All European countries are already subject to cyber incidents of various scales from a wide variety of sources. What is called “hybrid warfare” normally also involves the use of armed force; currently, NATO and EU countries face a relatively low risk of experiencing that kind of conflict.

Lilienström: Regarding climate conflicts: The drought in the region around the drying Lake Chad demonstrates the effects of global warming. Is climate change a global security risk?

Smith: Climate change leads to violent conflict in a context of poor governance. Unfortunately, many areas that will face the strongest direct impact of global warming lack the structures and capacities in government needed to adapt to it. In these locations there are and will be severe climate-related security risks.

Lilienström: Mr. Smith, our seventh question is always the same: What three trouble spots are in your opinion currently the most dangerous and what measures do you suggest to de-escalate conflict and stabilize peace?

Dan Smith: Northeast Asia, the Gulf, the wider Sahel. The great need is for dialogue, respect for the rule of international law and a clear recognition that international cooperation is required to solve any and all of the world’s severest problems.

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Sven Lilienström is Founder of the Faces of Democracy initiative & Faces of Peace initiative

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Contaminated flood waters in Beira, Mozambique after Cyclone Idai hit presented a significant risk for water-borne diseases like cholera. Credit: Sergio Zimba/Oxfam

By Abby Maxman
BOSTON, USA, Sep 19 2019 (IPS)

As the UN General Assembly begins, we are once again ringing the alarm on the urgent issues of climate and development that demand our global attention and action. And I worry yet again leaders will not heed the warnings and not act with the clarity and at the scale the issues we’re here to tackle demand.

This year the global meetings open with the electrifying cry of young people demanding our attention and our action on climate. I hope this will push us to refocus and deliver on the promises we have made to the world’s most vulnerable people—and to future generations to whom we are bequeathing a planetary disaster.

When we’re talking about the climate crisis and the profound problems the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to address, we cannot stress enough just how high the stakes are. These high-level meetings are the perfect platform for nations to step up and take action – and we hope to see that, but initial signs from countries have been discouraging.

If not now, then when can we expect to see these actions taken?

We can’t keep pushing pledges and actions to a future date – we are in crisis now. Oxfam believes that multilateral approaches are key, and will continue pressing for action on these issues, holding the powerful to account to ensure the voices and needs of the world’s most vulnerable – who these meetings are designed to serve – are addressed.

The unprecedented and remarkable activism led by young people must be heeded and translated into concrete action. Intent to act is not enough – we need to see every nation, especially the wealthy and high-emitting ones, committing to combat this crisis together with urgent and drastic steps.

Abby Maxman, President and CEO of Oxfam America

The science is telling us that we’re running out of time to avert climate change’s worst impacts. Some world leaders have gotten the message, but there is more work to be done, and Oxfam is joining urgent calls for politicians, businesses, and individuals to take ambitious and urgent action to save our planet.

Particularly in making good on wealthy nations’ climate finance commitments which are continuing to fall short of what is needed to protect the world’s poor from the devastating impacts of climate change.

We welcome any commitments made, but we don’t expect to hear enough of those to show leaders are taking this seriously. Too many are delaying, and we are still lacking leadership from the world’s major players and polluters. If anything, we are seeing potentially devastating rollbacks on climate issues in countries like the United States, when we have no time to waste.

Politicians need to go further and faster and to listen and act on the leadership of the students and strikers on the streets, the indigenous peoples and communities on the frontline of climate change, and to the constituencies that they represent. Oxfam is working with our partners to ensure that climate solutions don’t come at the expense of vulnerable communities.

The climate crisis is a defining issue of our day, and it is inextricably linked with other challenges we must face together like the growing global economic equality – the fact that too many still live in poverty and without the basic services and resources to live a healthy, safe and happy life. The SDG’s aim to address these issues and more, but they are far off track.

Two successive cyclones hit southern Africa within 6 weeks of each other, and Oxfam has been responding with clean water, sanitation, and hygiene support to avert cholera and other water-borne diseases.

Oxfam is disappointed by the lack of progress made on the SDGs – the latest Secretary General report shows that the world will not meet the SDGs by 2030. The lack of proper financing, growing inequality, gender injustice, and closing civic space are fundamental constraints to the achievement of the SDGs.

Oxfam is highly concerned that the world is not coming together to make the right political choices and fulfill previous commitments on development finance, which is key for reaching any of the SDGs. We need healthy national fiscal and monetary policies, and people-centered multilateralism with new rules and institutions that seek a more human economy.

At high-level meetings on the SDGs, civil society is provided with very limited time and opportunities to engage in the political process and outcome documents. This year, the outcome document for the SDG Summit was finalized before the actual proceedings of the events in both July and September, which is a clear signal these moments aren’t open for dialogue.

We need to have an open and inclusive process, with more concrete and aggressive actions to address the urgent and interrelated issues the SDGs tackle. We can only achieve the SDGs if we collectively strengthen global and national movements for human economics, accountable capitalism, and a new generation of public and private institutions and norms.

These are massive and complex issues that need sweeping yet specific actions. We must see countries step up and commit to making those now. This work at the UNGA is an opportunity to bring the voices, priorities, challenges and solutions to the table.

I hope we leave this General Debate, Climate Action and SDG Summits with a feeling of momentum – that we are not letting down our young people and the people facing the harsh realities of the climate crisis. Oxfam works with the world’s most vulnerable communities impacted by climate change, disasters, and poverty every day—and we are committed to being a part of the solution that addresses the crisis they feel so acutely.

*Prior to joining Oxfam in 2017, Abby Maxman served as Deputy Secretary General of CARE International in Geneva, providing leadership across the CARE confederation. She previously served as Vice President of International Programs and Operations for CAREUSA, and in other country and regional leadership roles in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. Before CARE, Maxman had assignments with the U.S. Peace Corps, German Agency for Technical Cooperation, UN World Food Programme, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Abby Maxman is President, Oxfam America

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