Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Jens Martens
BONN, Jul 8 2019 (IPS)

When UN Member States adopted the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs in September 2015, they signalled with the title Transforming our World that ‘business as usual’ is no longer an option and fundamental changes in politics and society are necessary.

Four years later they have to admit that they are off-track to achieve the SDGs. The global civil society report Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2019 shows that in many areas there is no progress at all, and in some even regression.

Destructive production and consumption patterns have further accelerated global warming, increased the number of extreme weather events, created plastic waste dumps even in the most isolated places of the planet, and dramatically increased the loss of biodiversity.

Fiscal and regulatory policies (or the lack of) have not prevented the accelerated accumulation and concentration of wealth but have only made them possible, and thus exacerbated social and economic inequalities.

Systemic discrimination keeps women out of positions of power, disproportionately burdens them with domestic and care-giving labour and remunerates their formal employment less than it does that of men.

Total global military expenditure reached the historic high of US$ 1.822 trillion in 2018. In contrast, net ODA by members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) was only US$ 153.0 billion in 2018, thus less than one tenth of global military spending.

Most governments have failed to turn the proclaimed transformational vision of the 2030 Agenda into real transformational policies. Even worse, national chauvinism and authoritarianism are on the rise in a growing number of countries, seriously undermining the social fabric, and the spirit and goals of the 2030 Agenda.

… but there are signs of change

Despite these gloomy perspectives, there are signs of push-back. In response to the failure or inaction of governments, social movements have emerged worldwide, many with young people and women in the lead.

They do not just challenge bad or inefficient government policies. What they have in common is their fundamental critic of underlying social structures, power relations and governance arrangements.

Thus, the implementation of the 2030 Agenda is not just a matter of better policies. The current problems of growing inequalities and unsustainable production and consumption patterns are deeply connected with power hierarchies, institutions, culture and politics. Hence, policy reform is necessary but not sufficient. Meaningfully, tackling the obstacles and contradictions in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs requires more holistic and more sweeping shifts in how and where power is vested, including through institutional, legal, social, economic and political commitments to realizing human rights.

In other words, a simple software update (of policies, norms and standards) is not enough – we have to revisit and reshape the hardware of sustainable development (i.e. governance and institutions at all levels).

Strengthening bottom-up governance

Re-visiting the hardware of sustainable development has to start at the local and national level. While most governance discourses emphasize the democratic deficit, gaps and fragmentation in global governance, the major challenge for more effective governance at the global level is the lack of coherence at the national level. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen bottom-up governance.

Bottom-up governance refers not only to the direction of influence from the local to the global. It also calls for more governance space to be retained at local and sub-national levels.

It enables, for instance, indigenous peoples, small farmers and peasant communities to exercise their rights in retaining their seeds, growing nutritious foods without genetically modified organisms, and accessing medicines without paying unaffordable prices set by transnational companies and protected by intellectual property rights.

The same is true for universal access rights to social protection. Social protection needs to be owned and governed by sub-national and national governments with fiscal space created in national budgets.

Universal, free access to essential public services are the foundation blocks of the SDGs and at the core of local governments’ commitment to the 2030 Agenda.

However, the privatization of public infrastructure and services and various forms of public-private partnerships (PPPs) often have had devastating impacts on service accessibility, quality and affordability.

Responding to these experiences, counter-movements emerged in many parts of the world. Over the past 15 years there has been a significant rise in the number of cities and communities that have taken privatized services back into public hands.

Achieving the SDGs will not happen without an enabling environment at international level. But what we often see is a disabling environment that makes it difficult to raise the urgently needed domestic resources.

Local and national (fiscal) policy space is often limited by external interventions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) plays a central role in this regard. In many countries, for instance Egypt and Brazil, IMF recommendations and loan conditionalities have led to deepening of social and economic inequalities and threats to human rights.

No policy coherence without governance coherence

In endorsing the 2030 Agenda governments committed to enhancing policy coherence for sustainable development (SDG target 17.14) and to respect each country’s policy space (SDG target 17.15).

The achievement of these targets is constantly undermined by the inherently asymmetric nature of the global governance system with the IMF and World Bank dominating discourse and policies. Thus, policy coherence will not be possible without overcoming governance incoherence.

The current system of global (economic) governance is marked by systematic asymmetry. The most striking example is the asymmetry between human rights and investor rights.

Today’s trade and investment agreements give transnational corporations far-reaching special rights and access to a parallel justice system to enforce them, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system.

Removing the ability of investors to sue States in the ISDS system and similar rules in investment and trade agreements would be a first step in reducing the systematic asymmetry in global governance. It would also be a step towards governance coherence for sustainable development.

Overcoming the weakness of the HLPF

Enhancing governance coherence also means that the relevant UN bodies, particularly the High-level Political Forum (HLPF), must be strengthened and no longer de facto be subordinated to the international financial institutions and informal clubs like the G20.

Governments established the HLPF as a universal body and gave it a central role in overseeing a network of follow-up and review processes at the global level.

But compared to other policy arenas, such as the Security Council or the Human Rights Council, the HLPF remained weak.

The SDG Summit in September 2019 and the HLPF review process to take place in 2019-2020 are opportunities to reposition the HLPF more firmly in the General Assembly machinery, similar to the direction taken by the Member States for the Human Rights Council (HRC) in 2005.

With an agenda of equal importance and intimately connected to those of the HRC, the General Assembly should transform the HLPF to a Sustainable Development Council, supported with complementary machinery at regional and thematic levels.

But the claim to make the UN system ‘fit for purpose’ requires more than upgrading the HLPF and its related fora.

Democratic governance requires democratic funding

Adequate funding at all levels is a fundamental prerequisite to improve the governance of SDG implementation. At the global level this requires the provision of predictable and reliable funding to the UN system.

Governments should reverse the trend towards voluntary, non-core and earmarked contributions as well as the increasing reliance on philanthropic funding. Democratic governance requires democratic funding instead of unpredictable support from private foundations of wealthy individuals.

Parallel to the global level the widening of the public governance space requires, among other things, changes in fiscal policies at national level. This includes, for example, taxing the extraction and consumption of non-renewable resources, and adopting forms of progressive taxation that prioritize the rights and welfare of poor and low-income people (e.g., by emphasizing taxation of wealth and assets).

Fiscal policy space can be further broadened by the elimination of corporate tax incentives and the phasing out of harmful subsidies, particularly in the areas of industrial agriculture and fishing, fossil fuel and nuclear energy.

Instead of engaging in a new arms race, governments should reduce military spending and reallocate the resource savings, inter alia, for civil conflict prevention and peacebuilding.

But as the massive protests by the yellow vests movement in France against rising fuel prices just recently demonstrated, interdependencies between environmental and social policy goals and targets require particular attention. Many environmental policy instruments have regressive effects on income distribution.

But if priorities are properly defined and interdependencies effectively anticipated, fiscal policies can become a powerful instrument to reduce socioeconomic inequalities, eliminate discrimination and promote the transition to sustainable production and consumption patterns.

Revitalizing global norm-setting – rejecting corporate voluntarism

Enhancing governance coherence requires providing the institutions responsible for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs not only with the necessary financial resources but also with effective political and legal instruments.

At global level this requires changing the current course of relying on non-binding instruments and corporate voluntarism. This is particularly relevant in areas where significant governance and regulatory gaps exist.

The currently discussed post-2020 global biodiversity framework should include binding targets and implementation commitments for State Parties, in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

With regard to the governance of the oceans, there is currently no mechanism that coordinates the different legal frameworks, making it difficult to effectively address conflicts of interest. This is particularly relevant with regard to deep sea mining. To overcome these governance gaps may require even a new UN body on Oceans.

There is also a need for a legally binding agreement to tackle plastic pollution. Many civil society organizations and legal experts call for a new global Convention on Plastic Pollution with a mandate to manage the lifecycle of plastics, including production and waste prevention.

Governance and regulatory gaps exist as well in the global digital economy. Self-regulation of internet companies will not work, and regulation through e-commerce trade agreements will not work either.

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) of the UN has the potential to advance in this arena, but it lacks authority and does not have the mandate to make any rules.

Corporate social responsibility initiatives, such as the UN Global Compact, and voluntary guidelines, such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) have particularly failed to hold corporations systematically and effectively accountable for human rights violations.

The Human Rights Council took a milestone decision in establishing an intergovernmental working group to elaborate a legally binding instrument (or ‘treaty’) to regulate the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.

This ‘treaty process’ offers the historic opportunity for governments to demonstrate that they put human rights over the interests of big business.

UN2020 – democratic global governance at the crossroads

Scientists warn that the world is moving fast towards tipping points with regard to climate change and the loss of biodiversity, that is, thresholds that when exceeded can lead to irreversible changes in the state of the global ecosystem.

Similarly, the system of global governance is facing tipping points that, when transgressed, lead to irreversible changes. Multilateralism is in crisis.

But, as medical doctors tell us, a crisis points to a moment during a serious illness when there is the possibility of suddenly getting either worse or better.

There is still the danger of exacerbating authoritarianism and national chauvinism, and of not only shrinking but vanishing space for civil society organizations in many countries.

But there is also a rapidly growing global movement for change, a movement that takes the commitment of the 2030 Agenda to “work in a spirit of global solidarity” seriously.

The year 2020 with its official occasions, particularly the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, provides an important opportunity to translate the calls of the emerging global movements for social and environmental justice into political steps towards a new democratic multilateralism.

The post Sustainable Development Needs a Hardware Update appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Jens Martens is executive director of Global Policy Forum (New York/Bonn) and has been the director of Global Policy Forum Europe since its foundation in 2004. Since 2011 he has also coordinated the international Civil Society Reflection Group on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The post Sustainable Development Needs a Hardware Update appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Volunteers install a solar water heater, made from recycled materials, with a 90-litre tank on the roof of a modest home in the Argentine municipality of Pilar, 50 km north of Buenos Aires. This unique thermal generation system was designed by Brazilian engineer José Alano, who did not patent it in order to facilitate its free use. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
PILAR, Argentina, Jul 8 2019 (IPS)

“This is the best thing ever invented for the poor,” says Emanuel del Monte, pointing to a tank covered in black tarps protruding from the roof of his house. It forms part of a system built mostly from waste materials, which heats water through solar energy and is improving lives in Argentina.

Thanks to him, hundreds of families in three poor neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the Argentine capital now have hot water for bathing. They used to heat water in pots but had abandoned the practice in recent years because of the high costs of cooking gas.

Del Monte, 32, his wife and five children live in an unpainted cinder-block house with a half-built brick perimeter wall in the neighborhood of Pinazo, Pilar municipality, about 50 km north of Buenos Aires."When they first tell you about it, you don't understand what they're talking about. Then you realize it's an opportunity you can't miss out on because it changes your life.” – Verónica González

Pinazo is a community of about 5,000 people that reflects the social deterioration in the 24 municipalities surrounding Buenos Aires, which together with the capital account for more than 13 million of the country’s 44 million inhabitants.

Neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the capital are home to 130,000 of the 200,000 people who lost their jobs in 2018 in this South American country, where the economy is in a deep crisis and poverty has climbed to 36 percent of the population, according to official figures.

The paved streets of Pinazo are lined with houses with roof tiles and gardens, run-down but clearly middle-class.

But if you turn down the dirt side streets, many of the homes are shacks made of boards, corrugated metal and even pieces of tarp, between empty dirt lots where cats, dogs and chickens wander about.

On some Saturdays, however, things get busy on several of the empty lots: dozens of volunteers, mostly young people, work for hours building solar heaters, together with many local residents.

The volunteers gather early on one side of the freeway from Buenos Aires and come to the neighbourhood together, in cars and trucks loaded with huge bags full of plastic bottles, cans, cardboard boxes, old mattresses and tarps.

Mariana Alio and her husband, Emanuel del Monte, stand in front of their house in Pinazo, a poor neighbourhood in the municipality of Pilar, in Greater Buenos Aires. On the roof they have a solar water heater, covered with mattresses and tarps that keep it warm, which provides them with hot water for bathing – a luxury their family had to do without because of the high cost of the cooking gas they used to heat water in pots. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

In addition, local residents at the site gather useful waste products, which they used to burn or throw into the polluted stream that gives its name to the neighborhood, since there is no garbage collection system.

Convened by the non-governmental organisation Sumando Energías, the volunteers say their goodbyes just before sunset, after building and installing on the roofs of up to four houses solar energy collectors and 90-litre thermal tanks, which keep the water warm because they are covered with mattresses and tarps.

“Each collector is made with 264 plastic bottles, 180 cans and 110 cardboard boxes. Most of the materials we use are reused,” Pablo Castaño, 32, who founded Sumando Energías in 2014, tells IPS as he walks around, supervising the work of the volunteers.

“I am convinced that sustainability is the only way to improve things for the poor. Social and economic solutions go hand in hand with environmental solutions,” says Castaño.

The head of Sumando Energías says he came into contact with the conditions in low-income areas while volunteering for another NGO, Techo (Roofs), dedicated to providing decent housing in slums, and became interested in renewable energy while studying to become an industrial engineer.

Castaño was born and raised in the southern province of Río Negro, near Vaca Muerta, the giant unconventional oil and gas field that the government is counting on to give a boost to Argentina’s declining economy. But he argues that “it is not the burning of fossil fuels that is going to save us.”

The solar collectors consist of 12 parallel two-metre-long PVC tubes covered with cans that absorb heat from the sun and heat the water inside the pipe. They are then wrapped in plastic bottles and cardboard.

Young volunteers from Sumando Energías build solar collectors in the Pinazo neighborhood. The NGO trains them in the development of clean energies that provide social, environmental and economic solutions in poor neighbourhoods in Argentina. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“That’s how we generate the greenhouse effect that keeps the temperature up. The next step is to set up a closed circuit between the pipes and the tank, which is placed on top, as hot water becomes dense and tends to rise. After about 60 round-trip cycles, the water is hot, between 40 and 65 degrees (Celsius),” says Lucía López Alonso, one of the volunteers.

“What is generated is not electricity, but solar thermal energy,” she tells IPS.

Emanuel del Monte’s wife, Mariana Alio, who works at a greengrocer’s, says their family used to heat up water in pots using cooking gas, for bathing, but economic difficulties forced them to only use gas for cooking.

“Some people in the neighbourhood still think I’m crazy when I tell them that I now have hot water from a system built using waste products,” says Del Monte, who recently lost his job as a maintenance worker in Escobar, a municipality near Pilar, and today does odd jobs, mowing lawns or as a handyman.

In both Pilar and Escobar, slums exist side by side with summer homes and gated communities – some of them wealthy and all of them surrounded by walls and fences and protected by private security guards – where slum-dwellers can find casual work.

“(José) Alano didn’t patent it in order for his design to be used freely. We also follow his philosophy and uploaded the solar collector manual to our Facebook page, so anyone can access it,” Castaño explains.

In four years, Sumando Energías has built and installed 174 solar collectors in neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

In the poor neighbourhood of Pinazo, on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, young volunteers cover a 90-litre thermal tank with a layer of foam recycled from old mattresses, which helps keep water heated by a solar collector – also made with old plastic bottles and cans – warm. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Castaño explains that the system for making solar collectors with reused materials was designed in 2002 in Brazil by retired mechanic José Alano, who promoted it in the south of his country.

The activist says the units have a useful life of 10 years or more, but points out that they last longer because they do not have mechanical parts. In addition, the plastic bottles can be easily replaced when they eventually darken and no longer perform their function of maintaining heat.

The aim of the initiative is not only to provide a solution for poor families but also to pass on know-how about renewable energy to the volunteers, who donate 1,500 pesos (about 33 dollars), which are used to cover the cost of the materials.

“We also receive some donations from companies, but we don’t accept any from companies linked to the fossil fuel business,” says Castaño.

Sumando Energías is now working on prototypes of solar cookers that will allow families like those living in the Pinazo neighbourhood, most of whom depend on the informal labour market, to cut their dependence on cooking gas cylinders, which cost 10 dollars to refill.

“Many of us here have had 25-litre electric water heaters, but they tend to burn out because the electric power source is unreliable,” says Verónica González, a 34-year-old local resident who lives with her mother, three daughters and a niece, as she cuts plastic bottles alongside the volunteers.

Her family is among the latest to benefit from the solar heaters designed by Alano. “When they first tell you about it, you don’t understand what they’re talking about. Then you realize it’s an opportunity you can’t miss out on because it changes your life,” she tells IPS.

Related Articles

• Solar Energy Provides Hope for Poor Neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires
• Access to Water Is a Daily Battle in Poor Neighborhoods in Buenos Aires
• Buenos Aires Shantytowns, Caught Between Exclusion and Hope

The post Solar Collectors and Solidarity Change Lives in Argentina appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By Ulrika Modeer and Susanna Moorehead
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 5 2019 (IPS)

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, universally adopted in 2015, is a plan to create a better and more sustainable future for all in just 15 years, through 17 Sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs). It sounds implausible.

And yet, when we work together, across international borders, and social boundaries, we are capable of extraordinary progress. But that progress is by no-means guaranteed.

Success will depend on more equal and trusting partnerships between aid donors and recipients; the ‘development partners’ and ‘partner countries’ in the jargon of the sector.

How we go about achieving these is one of the key issues for discussion at a senior meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, the GPEDC, in New York on 13-14 July.

Development progress and challenges

Take sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1990, maternal mortality has halved; and the mortality rate for children under five has fallen by more than half. In South Asia the risk of child marriage for girls has almost halved. In the poorest countries, the share of the population with access to electricity has more than doubled. Each of these numbers is life-changing, and life-saving, for millions of people.

But the pace of change is still too slow, and too many people are being left behind. A recent special edition of the UN Secretary-General’s report on ‘Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals’ identifies some of the challenges: hunger is rising, due to conflict and climate change; more than half of the world lacks access to managed sanitation facilities, increasing the risks of disease; and more than a million species are facing extinction.

A call for principled collective action

Investing in our common future demands urgent action. The SDGs provide a clear and measurable vision of what we want to achieve. And the Financing for Development process provides a good understanding of what this vision needs.

Now is the time for a concerted effort to work out how we work together: focusing on results and inclusive partnerships; and based on country ownership, mutual accountability and transparency.

These four ‘principles of effectiveness’ were agreed by 161 nations and 56 international organisations in Busan, the Republic of Korea, in 2011. They are the basis of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation – a voluntary alliance of governments, civil society, trade unions, the private sector and other development partners, committed to making development more effective.

They agreed that if we invest in partnerships that are more responsive, inclusive, and transparent – more equal – we will achieve more sustainable development results.

Making development cooperation more effective

During 2018, a record 86 countries and territories that receive aid took part in an exercise (along with hundreds of civil society organisations, private sector representatives, foundations, trade unions, parliamentarians and local governments) to monitor the extent to which all partners are walking the talk in terms of promises made on development effectiveness.

There’s good news and bad. Relationships between development partners are increasingly based on mutual trust. Development planning, led by recipient governments, has improved in quality and in scope.

International development actors are increasingly using local procurement systems, meaning more of the resources intended to support development overseas are staying where they are most needed.

But donor reluctance to fund government activities means that fewer resources are available for the public sector in partner countries. Recipients of aid find that it is now less predictable and long term, undermining countries’ efforts to plan.

In some places, state-civil society relations have worsened and space for civil society actors is shrinking. These findings demonstrate that while progress has been made, there is much more to be done.

Particularly so against a backdrop of falling levels of official development assistance (ODA) from major donors from 2017 to 2018: a decline of 3% to the group of least developed countries, and a drop of 4% to Africa.

Looking to the future

To achieve the SDGs, our collective development efforts need to be as effective as possible. We need to protect the space for different development actors to make their contributions, to invest in national capacity to measure progress, to use country systems in ways that can build trust, and to make sure all actors are living up to their commitments under the 2030 Agenda.

These are some of the messages we hope will stick in the minds of decision-makers, as they leave the senior level meeting of the Global Partnership in New York this month. That how we do things matters; that working together on a more equal footing, can lead to better, more sustainable outcomes for us all; and that committed international action can make even the implausible a reality.

*Ulrika Modeer also represents the UN Sustainable Development Group on the Steering Committee of the Global Partnership. Prior to this, she served as the State Secretary for International Development Cooperation and Climate at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. She has undertaken assignments across Latin America and Africa.

*Susanna Moorehead also represents the DAC on the Steering Committee of the Global Partnership. She has previously served as British Ambassador to Ethiopia, Djibouti, and the African Union, and as an Executive Director at the World Bank.

About the Global Partnership:

The Global Partnership is led by four Co-Chairs, currently: Mustafa Kamal, Minister of Finance, the People’s Republic of Bangladesh; Norbert Barthle, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Federal Republic of Germany; Matia Kasaija, Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Republic of Uganda; and Vitalice Meja, Executive Director of the CSO Reality of Aid Africa.

Twice a year they convene a 23-member Steering Committee, which includes representatives of civil society, trade unions, the private sector, parliamentarians, local government, civic foundations, international financial institutions and the international multilateral system. The Steering Committee guides the work of the Global Partnership, including the biennial development effectiveness monitoring exercise, with support from the OECD and from UNDP.

More information on the Global Partnership and the up-coming Senior-Level Meeting can be found here.

The post We Can Get the 2030 Agenda Back on Track – With More Empowered, Inclusive, & Equal Partnerships appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ulrika Modeer* is Director of UN Development Programme’s Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy & Susanna Moorehead* is Chair of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

The post We Can Get the 2030 Agenda Back on Track – With More Empowered, Inclusive, & Equal Partnerships appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Fishing trade in the village of Orimedu, Lagos State, Nigeria. Credit: Arne Hoel/World Bank

By Mattias Sköld
UPPSALA, Sweden, Jul 5 2019 (IPS)

When Africa’s free trade area launches on 7 July, a key player will be missing. However, Victor Adetula, head of research at Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) in Sweden, predicts that Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria, will gradually open up and join the project.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is meant to create a tariff-free continent that can grow local businesses, boost intra-African trade and create jobs. The AfCFTA initially requires members to remove tariffs from 90 percent of items, allowing free access to commodities and services across the continent.

When the agreement’s operational phase is launched on 7 July at an African Union summit in Niger, 52 of the continent’s 55 countries will be on board. Only Benin, Eritrea and Nigeria have yet to join the project. Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy, making it the most notable non-signatory to the AfCFTA deal.

“If Nigeria is not playing along, it is going to affect the progress of the free trade area. Nigeria is needed”, says Adetula, who is himself Nigerian.

Nigerian government representatives have claimed they need to consult with domestic economic stakeholders before making a decision. The president of Nigeria’s largest labour union Nigeria Labour Congress, Ayuba Wabba, has described the AfCFTA as “an extremely dangerous and radioactive neo-liberal policy initiative… that seeks to open our seaports, airports and other businesses to unbridled foreign interference never before witnessed in the history of the country”.

Adetula says that while Nigeria and the whole continent are likely to gain from the creation of the free trade area, some of the country’s nascent industries could be damaged as European, Asian and US products enter the market through other arrangements, such as the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union (EU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Victor Adetula. Credit: Mattias Sköld

“Africa’s industries can’t compete with Europe’s. For instance, virtually all the industries are small, and generally vulnerable. Africa’s comparative advantage is still in the production of primary resources, not in manufacturing goods”, Adetula says.

“If their industries are not well protected and secured against all unregulated external influence and risks, uncontrolled trade liberalisation by the African countries will merely open their markets for others to take advantage of. It will kill rather than stimulate industrialisation in Africa. Look at what happened to the textile industry, for example – it is almost dead in African countries due to globalisation.”

Adetula says that while some might argue that Nigeria’s position amounts to nothing but protectionism, African countries have good reason to be careful and protective of their economies. He points out that even the EU countries are operating with certain degrees of guarantees of protection for their local industries as part of their national interests.

“Is there any country that is not protecting its own industry? There is none!”

Adetula says that Nigeria’s position can partially be explained by history. Since the 1960s, the West African nation has always acted carefully before entering regional cooperation deals.

“Nigeria is already operating a trade liberalisation policy within the framework of the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme. Already there are concerns within the ECOWAS region and other similar sub-regional integration arrangements that the EU-led EPA will result in multiple trade liberalisation schemes on the continent.

The AfCFTA will likely introduce a new trade liberalisation arrangement. Managing multiple trade liberalisation schemes requires that Nigeria be more careful”, Adetula says.

Another concern is about the structure of the economies of African countries. Take, for instance, the structure of their industrial sectors. They do not complement one another perfectly to enhance complementary cooperation between industries on the continent, according to Adetula.

“Also, if you consider the structure of African trade, many countries are producing the same items. So, how then are they going to trade and with what products? It is not just ‘Let there be trade and there will be trade’ – what do you trade in? How industry and trade are integrated with each other is a question that needs to be addressed.”

Adetula takes the case of West Africa.

“Nigeria is producing cocoa, Ghana is producing cocoa, Côte d’Ivoire is producing cocoa – so who is going to trade with what?” Adetula says it is a positive indicator of global development when the right of a country to say yes or no to a proposal for international cooperation is respected.

“For example, Sweden is a member of the EU but does not subscribe to the common European currency. Similarly, Nigeria might find it favourable to join some parts of the AfCFTA but not others. It is a possibility.”

Adetula predicts that Nigeria will opt to become a member of the free trade area through a gradual transition process.

He compares the situation with the development of the EU, which started with a small group of countries, with UK joining in 1973 and eastern European countries much later.

“Nigeria’s position is not a definite ‘no’, but Nigeria will not be rushed by anyone. Generally, Nigeria’s policy on external trade can promote international trade and development while supporting regional initiatives towards increased intra-African trade.

Nigeria has persistently cautioned against rushing the agenda of the AfCFTA without extensive consultation with all the stakeholders. Nigeria needs to take into consideration some peculiarities of its political economy, as well as some lessons learned from the EU’s recent experience.”

The post Africa’s Free Trade Area Misses Nigeria appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Marian Starkey
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 4 2019 (IPS)

Knowledge is power, but with the caveat that said knowledge is based in fact. Otherwise, it’s misinformation.

I appreciate the journalism of IPS. Similarly, I respect and spend much of my time advocating for Americans to demand that the United States support the work of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Therefore, I was disappointed by two elements of an IPS interview with Dr. Benoit Kalasa about efforts to address population and development challenges as they pertain to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Demographic Dividend

Dr. Kalasa, Director of the Technical Division at UNFPA, says that the addition of two billion people in the next 30 years will pose challenges, but will also bring “tremendous opportunity” in the form of a demographic dividend.

The demographic dividend, however, is not predicated on future population growth, but on fertility decline that follows rapid population growth. The benefits come from a changing age structure that increases the ratio of the working-age population to the youth population.

This shrinking of the base of a country’s population pyramid allows economies to develop rapidly, if the right investments are made in health, education, and employment. That’s because, during a period when a large number of adults are economically productive, a smaller proportion of young people require their support.

In addition, when fertility declines, investments in each child tend to increase, preparing a healthier, better educated generation of future workers to be more productive per capita than their parents’ generation.

The demographic dividend is typically considered a one-generation “bonus” period, but the benefits of smaller families extend far beyond that relatively short window.

Many of today’s upper middle-income countries started this century as lower middle-income or lower-income countries — mainly those in Latin America. It’s no coincidence that the total fertility rate of the Latin America and Caribbean region nearly halved, from 3.9 to 2.0, between the early 1980s and today.

Giving readers the impression that population growth can be the silver bullet that helps an economy grow — when the population is growing most rapidly in the poorest, least developed countries — is what economists in high-income countries are known for doing.

They often tout the shortsighted Ponzi scheme of population growth for continued economic gains through an increasing consumer base, with no regard for the limits of the planet to absorb that population growth.

Zero Population Growth vs. Population Control

More troubling than the faulty description of the demographic dividend was the handling of what could have been an interesting conversation about population stabilization efforts around the world by countries that signed on to the 1994 Programme of Action at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, and by the international donor and NGO communities.

Credit: UNFPA

Dr. Kalasa responded to a question about the “1960s concept of Zero Population Growth (ZPG)” with a reassurance that UNFPA rejects “population control” and only supports voluntary, rights-based family planning.

Population control and ZPG are not synonymous. Zero population growth is the demographic term for a population that is growing by zero percent — neither increasing nor decreasing in size. Population control is a strategy for achieving zero population growth that is outdated and condemned by all credible groups.

It’s understandable that UNFPA would want to make absolutely clear that its mission and programs steer clear of population control. All rights-based population groups, including Population Connection (which was founded under the name “Zero Population Growth”), engage in the same reassurances.

Every Republican president in the United States since Ronald Reagan (including Donald Trump) has denied funding to UNFPA based on a fallacious interpretation of the Kemp-Kasten Amendment.

The interpretation goes like this: China has engaged in decades of coercive abortion and sterilization of its citizens. UNFPA has a program in China. Therefore, UNFPA is engaged in coercive abortion and sterilization in China.

Never mind that UNFPA’s program in China is aimed at demonstrating that rights-based family planning programs work at least as well as coercive ones. Still, because of these erroneous accusations, it makes sense that UNFPA would want to reiterate at every opportunity possible that it does not condone or tolerate population control.

Striving for zero population growth via voluntary fertility decline, however, has nothing to do with population control. Family planning programs that expand access to modern contraceptive education, services, and supplies operate for the benefit of the individuals who may choose to participate — or not — at their own discretion.

There are an estimated 214 million women in the developing world who have an unmet need for family planning: They do not want to become pregnant in the next two years, but they are not using modern contraception.

Their reasons for nonuse range from fear of side effects to living too far from a clinic to having unsupportive partners. These barriers, and more, can be address through education about myths regarding side effects; offering a full range of contraceptive options so that women can find the methods that work best for them; mobile outreach units that travel to rural areas; and partner education (and when that fails, through methods that are discreet and less likely to be detected by an unsupportive partner).

None of these strategies falls under population control, and yet they all bring us closer to zero population growth.

The post Zero Population Growth vs Population Control appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Marian Starkey is Senior Director of Publications at Population Connection. She has an MSc in Population and Development from the London School of Economics.

The post Zero Population Growth vs Population Control appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Charlotte Munns
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 4 2019 (IPS)

As the focus of Australian politics shifts away from refugee and asylum-seeker policies, the government avoids accountability for inhumane actions.

Despite clear concerns that Australia’s offshore processing facilities for asylum seekers in Nauru and Manus Island are violating basic human rights, public scrutiny seems to have waned. Recent federal elections saw little emphasis on refugee policy, followed by an apparent disinterest in critiquing the policy.

This is not in spite of recent concerns. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the “right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”, Dainius Puras, issued a report on April 2nd outlining major concerns.

“Many suffer from physical and mental conditions, which seem to have been caused and exacerbated by their prolonged and indefinite confinement,” he wrote, “there are multiple reports of self-harm and suicide attempts.”

Puras also noted reports of mal-aligned bones that had not been treated, poor access to health care, a lack of specialists, and cessation of torture and trauma counselling services in the offshore facilities.

This report followed years of scrutiny from international organisations like the United Nations and Amnesty International.

On July 19th 2013, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that from that day forward no asylum seeker arriving in Australia without a visa would ever be settled in the country.

Under the policy, later named ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’, all asylum seekers would be placed in detention centres on Manus Island or Nauru, and details of boat arrivals would not be made public.

This hardline policy was prompted by a marked increase in the number of boat arrivals in the country. In 2008 Australia had 161 individuals arrive. By 2012 this had increased to 17,202.

The Australian Government adopted the slogan “Stop the Boats” as part of its campaign to promote domestically and overseas that it would not resettle asylum seekers within its borders.

Simon Kurian, cinematographer and director of the documentary ‘Stop the Boats’, told IPS, “thus began the demonising of people seeking asylum in Australia, especially by sea.”

“From that time on the gross misrepresentation of people seeking asylum began; beneath the sentiment was a thick underbelly of racism which the politicians used to their advantage,” Kurian said.

Over time, both major parties adopted the “Stop the Boats” rhetoric as the policy became a political move for votes. The hardline approach has enjoyed significant public support since its conception.

In 2014, 42% of the Australian voting public were in support of the policy. In 2017, 48% agreed, according to the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank.

Furthermore, the policy has been successful in stopping boat arrivals. While asylum seekers are still attempting to reach Australia, albeit far fewer than in past years, none have been processed in offshore facilities. Just over 50 individuals arrived in 2017, however all were returned to their country of origin.

“Offshore processing as currently enacted by the Australian Government may have served its national interests better than the current international protection system, but is still in violation of the Convention to which Australia is a signatory,” the Lowy Institute said.

While the policy has been successful in achieving its goals and responding to public opinion, the conditions under which it has been carried out have been heavily scrutinised.

Many organisations have drawn attention to the policy’s violation of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, to which Australia is a signatory.

“Every fundamental principle that underpins the Convention to which Australia is a founding signatory is contravened by the Stop the Boats and Operation Sovereign Borders policies,” Kurian said, “all of this knowingly, with intent, without compunction and with no real reprisal or consequence.”

In 2013, the Office of the UN High Commissioner criticised offshore detention centres as “below international standards for the reception and treatment of asylum seekers.”

The Guardian newspaper released in 2016 ‘The Nauru Files’ detailing over 2,000 incident reports from the detention centre. They detailed incidents of self-harm, sexual assault, abuse and injury.

While the actual operations of the detention centres have been shrouded in secrecy by the Australian government, the sheer number of alarming reports raises concern.

The Australian Government has severely limited public knowledge of boat arrivals, refused media entry to offshore detention facilities and disallowed interviews with asylum seekers. In order to get footage for his documentary, Kurian was forced to film secretly.

The Australian Government has repeatedly claimed it is the responsibility of Nauru and Papua New Guinea governments to regulate the conditions in the centres.

Despite clear concerns, and alarming secrecy, domestic and international public scrutiny has waned. While fewer boats have attempted to reach the country’s shores, there still remain hundreds of men in detention centres on Manus Island.

With the majority of women and children moved to community processing facilities on the mainland, the emotional appeal of the campaign to shut down detention centres, or at least improve conditions has weakened.

As a result, refugee policy took a peripheral role in recent federal elections. “Climate change, housing, taxation all became the focus of discussion before and during the campaign season. Neither party touched the refugee policy,” Kurian said.

By shifting the election focus, the Australian government has managed to avoid accountability for violating the UN Refugee Convention, evaded proper investigation into reports of human rights abuses, and stemmed public criticism.

“The 600 men who remain on Manus are forgotten,” Kurian said.

The post Australia’s Forgotten Asylum Seekers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

African migrants in Libya. Libya is one of the main departure points for African migrants, fleeing poverty and war, to try to reach Italy by boat. Some 3,800 migrants and refugees are held in government-run detention centres in Tripoli and elsewhere in Libya in what human rights groups and the U.N. say are often inhuman conditions. A military strike on a detention centre for migrants in Libya claimed dozens of lives on Tuesday. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 4 2019 (IPS)

A military strike on a detention centre for migrants in Libya that claimed dozens of lives on Tuesday Jul. 2 has reignited a debate over the poor treatment of the mainly African people who transit through the turbulent country.

The United Nations has called for an investigation into the strike on Tajoura detention centre, which held some 600 people in a suburb of the Libyan capital Tripoli — part of a global chorus condemning the attack, which killed at least 44 people and injured 130 others.

But the strike followed repeated warnings about the vulnerability of migrants in guardhouses near Libya’s hotspots, and raises tough questions about whether it was necessary to lock them up in the first place.

“This is not the first time that migrants and refugees have been caught in the crossfire, with multiple airstrikes on or near detention centres across Tripoli since the conflict started in the city,” said Prince Alfani, a coordinator for the humanitarian medical group Médecins Sans Frontières.

“What is needed now is not empty condemnation but the urgent and immediate evacuation of all refugees and migrants held in detention centres out of Libya.”

By one estimate, some 3,800 migrants and refugees are held in government-run detention centres in Tripoli and elsewhere in Libya in what human rights groups and the U.N. say are often inhuman conditions.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called for a war crimes probe into the strike, while condemning the “overcrowding” in Libya’s lockups for migrants and the rape and other violations that occur inside them.

“I also repeat my call for the release of detained migrants and refugees as a matter of urgency, and for their access to humanitarian protection, collective shelters or other safe places, well away from areas that are likely to be affected by the hostilities,” said Bachelet.

Libya is one of the main departure points for African migrants, fleeing poverty and war, trying to reach Italy by boat. But many are picked up and brought back by the Libyan coastguard, in a scheme backed by the European Union.

Two U.N. agencies — the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNHCR, the U.N.’s Refugee Agency — said they had relocated 1,500 refugees from lockups in Libya’s hotspots to safer areas in recent months.

“Including those victims at Tajoura, some 3,300 migrants and refugees remain arbitrarily detained inside and around Tripoli,” the two agencies said in a statement. “Moreover, migrants and refugees face increasing risks as clashes intensify nearby. These centres must be closed.”

In May, UNHCR had already called for the Tajoura centre to be evacuated after a projectile landed some 100 metres away, injuring two migrants. Shrapnel from that blast tore through the lockup’s roof and almost hit a child.

This week’s strike was the highest publicly reported toll from an air strike or shelling since eastern forces under Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive three months ago to take Tripoli, the base of Libya’s internationally-recognised government.

The U.N. Security Council was expected to condemn the attack late Wednesday,  Jul. 3, though it remained unclear whether it was the fault of Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) force, the U.N.-backed Tripoli-based government’s forces or another group.

Haftar’s LNA, allied to a parallel government based in eastern Libya, has seen its advance on Tripoli held up by robust defences on the outskirts of the capital, and said it would start heavy air strikes after “traditional means” of war had been exhausted.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres was “outraged” by the “horrendous incident” and called for an “independent investigation” to prosecute those responsible for what many onlookers call a war crime, said his spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

“This incident underscores the urgency to provide all refugees and migrants with safe shelter until their asylum claims can be processed or they can be safely repatriated,” Dujarric told reporters Wednesday.

Haftar’s bid to capture Tripoli has derailed U.N. efforts to broker an end to the mayhem that has ravaged the hydrocarbon-producing North African country since the brutal, NATO-backed overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

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The post Libya Tragedy: Why Lock up Migrants in the First Place? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Smoking fish in kilns in Ggaba, Uganda. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimated that brick-making kilns were burning 52,000 trees every year. Credit: Pius Sawa/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 4 2019 (IPS)

Environmental and humanitarian action is often understood as two different sectors. However, the lack of awareness regarding its intersections could lead to further long-term devastation.

With the growing number of crises around the world, humanitarian actors are essential. They are often the first responders during and after a crisis, providing urgent, life-saving assistance.

However, there is an increasing need for such actors to pay attention to long-term implications of operations, particularly with regards to the environment.

“[The environment] is not integrated into humanitarian programming…while we are very clear that the humanitarian focus is life-saving assistance, we also understand that this cannot be done if you are compromising of the lives of future generations or even the current generation in the long-term,” head of the Joint Environment Unit (JEU) of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Emilia Wahlstrom, told IPS.

“Environmental degradation is causing humanitarian crises, and humanitarian crises are exacerbating areas that are already under a lot of strain.”

World Agroforestry Centre’s head of programme development Cathy Watson echoed similar sentiments to IPS, stating: “There is a paradigm that in emergencies you are saving lives and you don’t have time to think about these other things. The problem with that paradigm is pretty soon it settles down and then you really have to think about what sustains their lives and that is usually the natural environment. So if that’s not taken care of, you can end up having an even worse situation.”

“Environmental degradation is causing humanitarian crises, and humanitarian crises are exacerbating areas that are already under a lot of strain,” she added.

According to a 2014 study by JEU, Sudan’s humanitarian crisis was closely linked with deforestation and desertification due to humanitarian operations.

Such deforestation was caused by the need for firewood for cooking and dry bricks for construction, and humanitarian operations exacerbated the problem as there was an unprecedented demand for construction. 

The UNEP estimated that brick-making kilns were burning 52,000 trees every year.

Such activities reduce soil fertility, decrease water supplies, and destroy valuable agricultural land, impacting the already fragile livelihoods of millions affected and displaced by conflict.

Already, worsening land degradation caused by human activities as a whole is undermining the well-being of two-fifths of the world’s population.

According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), 60 percent of all ecosystem services are degraded. Reduced ecosystem functions makes regions more prone to extreme weather events such as flood and landslides as well as further conflict and insecurity.

Approximately 40 percent of all intrastate conflicts in the past 60 years are linked to natural resources.

Most recently, the influx of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh has put a strain on environmental resources. According to the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), over 4,000 acres of hills and forests were cut down to make temporary shelters, facilities, and cooking fuel in Ukhia and Teknaf of Cox’s Bazaar for the 1.5 million refugee population.

Such deforestation has increased the risk of landslides and tensions between host and refugee communities are escalating.

However, refugees shouldn’t be to blame, Watson noted.

“Refugees are just doing what they have to do to get by but we can take a much more ecological approach and really think about how we’re going to maintain the ecosystems that sustains these refugees, provide water, provide fertile soil,  and wood to cook,” she said.

Since the average time a refugee remains displaced can now be up to 26 years, the need for a more ecological approach is necessary.

“There’s plenty of time to really build up the environmental well being of the area so that people can also feel good, live well, have shade, have fruit, have clean water….you’re not going to grow food for very long if you cut all the trees down,” Watson told IPS.

Both Watson and Wahlstrom highlighted the importance for humanitarian actors to use available guidelines, tools, and resources ensure their operations aid populations in the long-term.

For instance, the Sphere Handbook, first piloted in 1998, provides minimum standards for humanitarian response including the need to integrate environmental impact assessments in all shelter and settlement planning, restore the ecological value of settlements during and after use, and opt for sustainable materials and techniques that do not deplete natural resources.

“We know what to do, everyone knows what to do. But we are not doing it…the leaders and decision makers should change the way we do our business,” Wahlstrom said.

Watson made similar comments, stating: “There are so many good guidelines, but theres not been a lot of enforcement or awareness of ecological thinking…if you really think about how to manage the landscape and map it out and work out where you’re going to get fuel from, what areas must be protected because of water—you can build areas that are much more resilient and productive.”

While some humanitarian agencies have already begun to address environmental concerns, Wahlstrom pointed to the need for both environmental and humanitarian actors to also work together.

“Because of the life-saving mandate and the very urgent elements of [the humanitarian sector’s] work, environmental actors and development actors are a bit wary to get involved because they feel like it is not their place,” she told IPS.

“The planet is burning, and environmental actors—we no longer have the privilege of sitting in our scientific community and working on our reports. We have to go out there and we have to spread the message,” Wahlstrom added.

The Environmental and Humanitarian Action Network (EHA) hopes to do just that. Though it is an informal network, the EHA brings together humanitarian and environmental experts to share guidance, good practices, and policies to mitigate the environmental impacts of humanitarian operations.

“Time is running out. We really cannot afford to not collaborate…we are stronger together and together we can have a better response and be better prepared,” Wahlstrom said.

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The post Why Environmental and Humanitarian Action Must Be Linked appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The principal of the Samo Alto rural school, Omar Santander, shows organic tomatoes in the greenhouse built by teachers, students and their families, who raise the crops irrigated with rainwater or recycled water in Coquimbo, a region of northern Chile where rainfall is scarce. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
OVALLE, Chile, Jul 4 2019 (IPS)

Children from the neighboring municipalities of Ovalle and Río Hurtado in northern Chile are harvesting rain and recycling greywater in their schools to irrigate fruit trees and vegetable gardens, in an initiative aimed at combating the shortage of water in this semi-arid region.

And other youngsters who are completing their education at a local polytechnic high school built a filter that will optimise the reuse and harvesting of water.

“The care of water has to start with the children,” Alejandra Rodríguez, who has a son who attends the school in Samo Alto, a rural village on the slopes of the Andes Mountains in Río Hurtado, a small municipality of about 4,000 inhabitants in the Coquimbo region, told IPS.

“My son brought me a tomato he harvested, to use the seeds. For them, the harvest is the prize. He planted his garden next to the house and it was very exciting,” said Maritza Vega, a teacher at the school, which has 77 students ranging in age from four to 15.

The principal of the school, Omar Santander, told IPS during a tour of rural schools in the area involved in the project that “the Hurtado River (which gives the municipality its name) was traditionally generous, but today it only has enough water for us to alternate the crops that are irrigated, every few days. People fight over watering rights.”

The Samo Alto school collects rainwater and recycles water after different uses. “The water is then sent to a double filter,” he explained, pointing out that they have a pond that holds 5,000 liters.

The monthly water bill is much lower, but Santander believes that the most important thing “is the awareness it has generated in the children.”

“There used to be water here, and the adults’ habits come from back then. The students help raise awareness in their families. We want the environmental dimension to be a tool for life,” he said.

For Admalén Flores, a 13-year-old student, “the tomatoes you harvest are tastier and better,” while Alexandra Honores, also 13, said “my grandfather now reuses water.”

El Guindo primary school, located 10 kilometers from the city of Ovalle, the municipal seat, in a town known as a hotspot for drug sales, performed poorly in tests until three years ago.

At that time, the principal, Patricio Bórquez, and the science teacher, Gisela Jaime, launched a process of greywater recovery. They also planted trees and native species of plants to adapt to the dry environment of the municipality of 111,000 inhabitants, located about 400 kilometers north of Santiago.

Four students, ages 13 and 14, talk to IPS about how the water reuse project has made them aware of the importance of taking care of water in the semi-arid territory where they live, in a classroom at the rural school of El Guindo, in the municipality of Ovalle, Chile. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

“The project was born because there was no vegetation,” said the teacher. Today they recover 8,000 litres of water a month. “Teaching care for the environment provides a life skill,” said Bórquez.

“Our school had the stigma of being in a place rife with drug addiction. Today in Ovalle we are known as the school with the most programs. We placed third in science,” she said.

Jaime described the experience as “gratifying” because it has offered “tools to grow and create awareness among children and the entire community about the importance of caring for water and other resources.”

Geographer Nicolás Schneider, founder of the “Un Alto en el Desierto” Foundation, told IPS that his non-governmental organisation estimates that one million litres of greywater have been recovered after eight years of work with rural schools in Ovalle.

In this arid municipality with variable rainfall, “only 37.6 mm of rainwater fell in 2018 – well below the normal average for the 1981-2010 period of 105.9 mm,” Catalina Cortés, an expert with Chile’s meteorology institute, told IPS from Santiago.

Schneider describes the water situation as critical in the Coquimbo region, which is on the southern border of the Atacama Desert and where 90 percent of the territory is eroded and degraded.

“Due to climate change, it is raining less and less and when it does, the rainfall is very concentrated. Both the lack of rain and the concentration of rainfall cause serious damage to the local population,” she said.

Innovative recycling filter

With guidance from their teachers, students at the Ovalle polytechnic high school built a filtration system devised by Eduardo Leiva, a professor of chemistry and pharmacy at the Catholic University. The filter seeks to raise the technical standard with which greywater is purified.

Duan Urqueta, 17, a fourth-year electronics student at the Ovalle polytechnic high school, describes the award-winning greywater filter he helped to build. Initially, units will be installed in eight rural schools in this municipality in northern Chile. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The prototype recycles the greywater from the bathrooms used by the 1,200 students at the polytechnic high school. This water is used to irrigate three areas with 48 different species of trees. Similar filters will be installed in eight rural schools in Ovalle.

The quality of the recovered water will improve due to the filter built thanks to a project by the Innovation Fund for Competitiveness of the regional government of Coquimbo, with the participation of the Catholic University, the “Un Alto en el Desierto” Foundation, and the Ovalle polytechnic high school.

The prototype was built by 18 students and eight teachers of mechanics, industrial assembly, electronics, electricity and technical drawing, and includes two 1,000-litre ponds.

The primary pond holds water piped from the bathroom sinks by gravity which is then pumped to a filter consisting of three columns measuring 0.35 meters high and 0.40 meters in diameter.

“The filter material in each column…can be activated charcoal, sand or gravel,” said Hernán Toro, the head teacher of industrial assembly.

Toro told IPS that “the prototype has a column with zeolite and two columns of activated charcoal. The columns are mounted on a metal structure 2.60 meters high.”

View of the water cleaning filter designed at the Ovalle polytechnic high school and built by a group of teachers and students with funding from the government of the region of Coquimbo, in northern Chile. Each unit costs 2,170 dollars and it will promote water recycling in the schools in the semi-arid municipality. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The water is pumped from the pond to the filter’s highest column, passes through the filter material and by gravity runs sequentially through the other columns. Finally, the water is piped into the secondary pond and by means of another electric pump it reaches the irrigation system.

Duan Urqueta, a 17-year-old electronics student, told IPS that they took soil and water samples in seven towns in Ovalle and “we used the worst water to test the filter that is made here at the high school with recyclable materials.”

In 2018, “we won first place with the filter at the Science Fair in La Serena, the capital of the region of Coquimbo,” he said proudly.

Pablo Cortés, a 17-year-old student of industrial assembly, said the project “changed me as a person.”

Toro said the experience “has been enriching and has had a strong social impact. We are sowing the seeds of ecological awareness in the students.”

“It’s a programme that offers learning, service, and assistance to the community. Everyone learns. We have seen people moved to the point of tears in their local communities,” the teacher said.

Now they are going to include solar panels in the project, which will cut energy costs, while they already have an automation system to discharge water, which legally can only be stored for a short time.

Eight schools, including the ones in Samo Alto and El Guindo, are waiting for the new filters, which cost 2,170 dollars per unit.

Schneider believes, however, that at the macro level “water recycling is insufficient” to combat the lack of water in this semi-arid zone. And he goes further, saying “there is an absence of instruments for territorial planning or management of watersheds.”

“Under the current water regulatory framework, the export agribusiness, mainly of fruit, has taken over the valleys, concentrating water use…and the government turns a blind eye,” he complained.

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The post Chilean Schools Recycle Greywater to Combat Drought appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Edgardo Ayala
USPANTÁN, Guatemala, Jul 3 2019 (IPS)

Because the government has never provided them with electricity, indigenous communities in the mountains of northwest Guatemala had no choice but to generate their own energy.

Now electricity lights up their nights and, most importantly, fuels small businesses that provide extra income to some of the 1,000 families who benefit from the community energy projects.

These community projects have been implemented in four indigenous villages located in the Zona Reina eco-region, in Uspantán municipality in the northwestern department of Quiché.

The miracle of having light initially occurred more than 10 years ago in 31 de Mayo, a Maya indigenous village.

 

 

Thanks to financial cooperation from organisations in Spain and Norway, the hard work of the community and support from the environmental group MadreSelva, the first mini-hydroelectric plant began to operate there, harnessing the waters of the Putul River.

Given the success of the first community hydropower plant, other villages also decided to generate their own electric power: El Lirio, in May 2015; La Taña, in September 2016; and La Gloria, in November 2017.

And these four villages share their electricity with five neighbouring communities.

Life has changed today in these villages, local resident Zaiada Gamarro told IPS. She stressed the importance of electricity for women, who can now cook and perform other household tasks at night, for children, who can now do their homework after dark, and for businesses like small bakeries or shops that can now sell refrigerated products.

A similar plan is under way to build mini-dams in eight other indigenous villages in the neighbouring region of Los Copones. They will also share their electricity with 11 communities in the surrounding area, in a project for which the German development aid agency has contributed 1.25 million dollars.

For further information, read the IPS article: Against All Odds, Indigenous Villages Generate Their Own Energy in Guatemala.

 

The post Indigenous Communities Head Towards Energy Self-Sufficiency in Guatemala appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Emily Thampoe
NEW YORK, Jul 3 2019 (IPS)

Sri Lanka continues to be on a security alert long after the devastation caused by a string of bombings on Easter Sunday this year.

Raisa Wickrematunge, Editor of Groundviews, told IPS: “There has been a tightening of security. There are now security checks being carried out outside hotels and shopping malls – either through scanners or bag and body searches”.

“At the St Anthony’s Church, where the first blast occurred, there are bag and body searches conducted before worshippers can go inside, and bags are left outside the Church premises. Many churches and some schools have also increased their security.”

Curfews were put into place and a social media ban was enacted temporarily, in order to prevent the graphic nature of the tragedies from being broadcast publicly. There has been much damage of the emotional and physical varieties in the once war ridden nation.

For one thing, this attack was not expected by the Christian minority in Sri Lanka. Despite this, they have persevered.

Father Rohan Dominic of the Claretian NGO told IPS: “For quite some time, there were attacks on the Muslim and Christian minorities by extremist Buddhists. In places, where the Buddhists were the majority, Christians lived in fear.”

However, in a turn of events that left many in shock, one of the minority groups seemed to be the ones that initiated the attacks that occurred on Easter.

All seven of the perpetrators allegedly belonged to a local Islamist group, National Thowheeth Jama’ath, according to government officials from the country.

In response to this, there have been bans put in place for burqas and niqabs, traditional facial coverings worn by Muslims and people have been denied entrance into establishments, even while wearing hijabs.

There were smaller bombings in Dematagoda and Dehiwala later on that same day. With a death toll of 290 people and 500 injured, domestic measures to protect the citizens were taken.

After its 26 year long civil war between the Tamil and Sinhalese ethnic groups came to an end in 2009, conditions in Sri Lanka were mostly calm.

However, on 21 April, 2019, the country erupted into violence. Three churches in the cities of Negombo, Batticaloa and Colombo, along with three hotels in the city of Colombo, were targeted in bombings by a group of seven Sri Lankan citizens.

The churches were St. Sebastian’s Church, Shrine of St. Anthony Church and Zion Church and the hotels were Cinnamon Grand, Kingsbury Hotel and Shangri-La Hotel.

Sri Lanka is a country that is primarily Buddhist with a large Hindu population and Christian and Muslim minorities.

Father Dominic said that, “The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka was able to recover from the attack quickly and aided the survivors and the families of the victims by consoling and caring for them. The Church also has guided the Christian community at moments of anger and frustration in controlling their emotions and not to blame the Muslims. This position of the Church has helped to prevent violence and created common understanding and religious harmony.”

According to Wickrematunge, there has been much help in helping the community adjust to life after the attacks and in restoring what has been lost.

Other efforts have been led by organisations such as the Red Cross, Kind-hearted Lankans, the Archbishop of Colombo and the Church of the American Ceylon Mission in Batticaloa. There have also been crowdfunding efforts on popular websites like GoFundMe.

Since the attacks have affected lives in a physical and emotional way, the state has given financial support to the affected as of 21 June.

There has also been a trust fund set up for children who have lost family members to the attacks.

Some of the industries affected, such as tourism, have been offered subsidized loans in order to help with paying employees. Psychological support and educational resources are being provided to citizens as well.

While it has only been three months since the attacks affected the lives of many, steps towards rebuilding have been made and the future appears to be promising.

The post Sri Lanka on Security Alert Long After Easter Bombings appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Lakshi De Vass Gunawardena
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 3 2019 (IPS)

How effective is the global war on drugs?

The latest statistics released by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) are staggering: 35 million people across the globe currently have a substance use disorder, and as of 2017, 585,000 people have died worldwide as a result of drug use.

According to a recently-released UNODC report, the lack of proficient drug treatment and facilities for those that need it is impacting mortality rates at alarming levels.

Hence, it stands to reason that treatment and prevention are immensely falling short of the mark on a global scale.

Prisons are also no exception to these shortcomings. In fact, the Report unmasked that those incarcerated for drugs are more likely to continue being exposed to drugs.

The Report also highlighted that out of the 149 countries that were surveyed, about 1 in 3 people reported that they consumed drugs in prison at least once while incarcerated, and 1 in 5 people who are currently incarcerated reported that they have used drugs within the past month.

“In terms of data, we did some data collection, always trying to get as much as possible, in terms of socio-economic characteristics, we would have this type of data, I imagine, and this is also something that will run throughout the new report, and is being discussed now.” Chloé Carpentier, Chief of the Drug Research Section told IPS.

The issue between drugs and human rights is on Secretary General António Guterres’ radar as well.

“Together, we must honour the unanimous commitments made to reduce drug abuse, illicit trafficking and the harm that drugs cause, and to ensure that our approach promotes equality, human rights, sustainable development, and greater peace and security.” Secretary General António Guterres stated on the International Day Against Drug Use and Illicit Trafficking.

“We will make sure that no one with a drug problem is left behind” Dr. Miwa Kato assured, during the official launch of the Report on June 26.

Dr. Kato continued to push this message throughout her speech and cited that “Health and justice need to work hand in hand.”

Beyond the UN, this is a topic of interest for the academia world as well, since young people are heavily susceptible to a substance use disorder.

“It is important that we say people— not user or addicts, that language itself is stigmatizing.” Dr. Danielle Ompad, Associate Professor, College of Global Public Health and Deputy Director, Center for Drug Use and HIV Research at New York University (NYU) told IPS.

Dr. Ompad highlighted the importance of person-first language, citing that “It is important how we refer to people, and view them as humans, and not just the behavior (the substance use).

In terms of the World Drug Report, she noted that “The war on drugs, if you look at it, hasn’t really been an effective war”, and elaborated that the focus should not be supply- side intervention, because in the long run, drugs are going to be produced and sold no matter what, which leads to mass incarceration, which doesn’t benefit any party.

It is also important to recognize that “not everyone needs treatment, and those that do should absolutely have access to it. But just because you use marijuana does not mean you are an addict”.

She went on to suggest a harm- reduction approach. The harm-reduction approach blends a plethora of strategies from safer use to managed use to abstinence- it meets the need of the person.

www.HarmReduction.org

Meanwhile, tracing back to the issue of treatment, the Report affirmed that over 80% of the world’s population lack access to adequate treatment with only 1 out of 7 people with a substance use disorder receiving treatment each year.

The Report showcased that women cited a strong sense of fear that kept them from seeking the help that they needed for a variety of reasons that ranged from possible legal issues to the lack of childcare while in treatment.

Another issue is several countries, particularly in Asia, is the death penalty for any person found guilty of a drug ‘offense.’

Last month, Sri Lanka’s President, Maithripala Sirisena signed death warrants for four convicts- thus pushing the notion that those who have a substance use disorder are ‘dirty’ and should be disposed of.

Similarly, in a 2014 study conducted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, it was shown that drug addiction was viewed more negatively than mental illness. Ironically, however, the two are all but intertwined.

This is also evidenced by the Report- about half of the world’s population that develop a mental disorder will also experience a substance use disorder in their lifetime.

However, it is to be noted, that despite all of the above, the Report only cited the “lack of effective treatment interventions based on scientific evidence and in line with human rights obligations.” but made no further elaborations on the what’s and how’s and was only discussed briefly at the official Report launch.

That said, the issue of ensuring those that do have a substance use disorder are provided for while figuring out more beneficial and healthier initiatives to reduce drug rates across the globe are currently being discussed among the United Nations (UN) and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Dr Omad said for better and or worse, licit and illicit drug use is part of our world.

“Focus a little bit more on harm reduction,” Dr. Ompad stated, and above all “We need to stop the war on the people who use drugs,” she declared.

The post Are We Fighting a Losing Battle in the War Against Drugs? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Silvia Morimoto
ASUNCION, Paraguay, Jul 2 2019 (IPS)

The statistics are alarming. By 2050, the world will require an estimated 60 percent growth in agricultural production to meet the food demand of a population of close to 9 billion people.

While we ramp up production to ensure food security, it is crucial that this increase has minimal impact on the environment and forests. This is vital to preserve tropical forests and to meet the climate objectives of the Paris Agreement.

The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Science and Policy on Biodiversity and Ecosystems (IPBES) reports that between 1980 and 2000 more than 100 million hectares of tropical forests were devastated globally. More than 40 percent of this loss occurred in Latin America mainly due to the expansion of livestock.

So, what we do in one sector will without a doubt affect another. About 24 percent of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions are now are caused by agriculture and deforestation, and about 33 percent of efforts to mitigate climate change depend on forest conservation and ecosystem restoration.

Paraguay is at the heart of this story. It is home to large swaths of wetlands and forests. The country is the world’s fourth largest exporter of soy and the eight largest exporter of beef. Both sectors contribute to more than 30 percent of Paraguay’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Silvia Morimoto

Now, in an effort to confront those challenges, Paraguay is leading the way in the region to address the causes of deforestation. It is convening a “Forests for Sustainable Growth” strategy, and it is promoting new alternatives for the sustainable production of soy and beef that have been designed jointly with stakeholders.

The overarching goal is to help achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) 12 Responsible Consumption and Production, and Goal 15 Life on Land. To make headway on this front, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (known as MADES) has been implementing since 2015 the Green Production Landscapes Project.

The project is in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through its Green Commodities Programme and aims to protect the Atlantic Forest of Alto Parana in the Oriental Region of the country by promoting sustainability in the soy and beef commodities supply chain.

This initiative funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), co-financed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, the National Forestry Institute, the Sustainable Finance Roundtable, ADM Paraguay SRL, Louis Dreyfus Company, and Cargill, is aimed at supporting farmers like Juan Antonio Secchia.

In 1990, Secchia received 600 hectares of land from his grandfather in Caazapa, a department located in the Oriental Region, where the Atlantic Forest of Alto Paraná is allocated.

When Secchia started farming on his San Isidro ranch, he had about 300 head of cattle that produced milk. In 2012 in an effort to increase productivity, Juan Antonio decided to innovate, to optimize the use of his land by investing in the silvopastoral system. This alternative production system combines trees, pasture, and animals, to preserve the environment.

Credit: UNDP Paraguay

In 2018, the private sector and the National Government supported him so he could expand the silvopastoral system, to another 40 hectares of his farm. Now, he has doubled his cattle herd from 300 to 600, increasing milk production by 100 liters a day.

Besides Secchia, other 3 farms have received support to adopt the silvopastoral system. More than 133,000 seedlings were donated to plant trees, to protect the soil, and to provide a better environment for raising cattle.

The success of the system has led to a new goal: to double the area of silvopasture to 400 hectares, this year, to advance the conservation of natural resources, and improve beef production.

The government along with UNDP has created a National Platform for Sustainable Commodities, a space for dialogue that reunites stakeholders for the first time to discuss needs and actions to achieve sustainability in the commodities supply chain and to protect the environment.

Such efforts were expanded to the Occidental Region through the Green Chaco Project. The Chaco is the second-largest forest ecosystem in Latin America, with rich biodiversity, that accounts for about 60 percent of Paraguayan territory, where less than three percent of the population lives. Yet, it is home to 45 percent of the national dairy production, and a vast portion of the nation’s cattle farms.

These initiatives have led to the dissemination of best practices, and discussions on the platform are resulting in new ideas. Suggestions for concrete solutions are going to be included in a National Action Plan for sustainable soy and a Regional Action Plan for Sustainable Beef.

For the Paraguayan Government, addressing deforestation promises multiple wins for climate change, for inclusive sustainable development, for economic growth, and for farmers. But success will come only if we all act together, now.

The post Paraguay Moves Towards Sustainable Commodities appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Silvia Morimoto is UNDP Resident Representative in Paraguay

The post Paraguay Moves Towards Sustainable Commodities appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Michael Lim Mah Hui
KUALA LUMPUR and PENANG, Jul 2 2019 (IPS)

The relationship between finance and the real economy is arguably at the root of the contemporary economic malaise. Unlike earlier acceptance of simple linear causation, recent recognition of a curvilinear relationship between finance and economic growth, implying ‘diminishing returns’, has important implications.

Undermining the real economy
Financialization undermines the real economy in the following ways. While finance may promote growth of the real economy ‘in the early stages’, ‘too much finance’ is bad for growth. The rise of market finance promises higher returns, i.e., more financial rents.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

With finance increasingly used for speculation, debt-financed share buybacks, as well as both ‘brownfield’ direct and ‘portfolio’ investments, purchasing existing assets means not creating new economic capacities. Financialization has thus accelerated the ‘slow retreat’ from providing credit for productive investments to fund speculation for short term gain from unproductive investments. Meanwhile, smaller enterprises face higher interest rates and more difficult access to finance.

Second, ‘impatient’ capital increases asset prices and financial volatility. Surging capital inflows – driven by banks or asset managers seeking quick yields – raise the prices of securities, derivatives and other assets, to the delight of their owners.

Reversals of capital inflows trigger sharp drops in asset prices, typically triggering systemic problems, sometimes destabilizing the real economy via violent price fluctuations, or worse, cataclysmic financial crises that may take years to recover from.

Third, the overblown financial sector sucks financial resources and human talent away from the real economy. Nobel laureate James Tobin lamented that the US was drawing its best human resources into finance with remuneration unrelated to social productivity. On the eve of the 2008 financial crisis, almost 70% of Harvard seniors chose to work on Wall Street upon graduation.

Banking before financialization
Before financialization, finance was dominated by banks engaged in both short-term and long-term lending. The former mainly funded working capital and trade while the latter financed capital investments and projects – what Hyman Minsky called ‘hedged financing’.

Michael Lim Mah Hui

Hedged financing, mainly by banks, funded productive investments, with borrowers servicing both interest and principal repayment. Cross-border financial activity was constrained by the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates and effective capital controls.

Besides bank-based financing, capital markets – mainly for securities, primarily equities and bonds – financed the long-term capital needs of corporations. Corporations issued securities to finance long-term capital investments, typically purchased by patient investors, such as insurance companies and pension funds.

Development banking needed
Investment banks, or ‘merchant banks’ in the erstwhile British empire, were the main financial intermediaries in capital markets. But commercial banks were often averse to financing the risky innovations necessary to accelerate economic and technological progress.

In response, governments in many countries stepped in to provide development banking. Most countries which have successfully industrialized – US, France, Japan, Korea, China, India, Brazil – have relied on public development banking as a critical tool.

Development banking has enabled states to provide subsidized long-term loans to ‘strategic’ industrial sectors to promote the international competitiveness of local firms, in turn enhancing what is termed national economic competitiveness.

With financial liberalization, international financial institutions have encouraged the development of market finance in many countries to reduce reliance on bank financing.

Capital markets key
Financial systems based on capital markets are more prone to financialization. It is easier, faster and more lucrative for speculative investors to ‘chase yield’ in such market-based financial systems.

The key is ensuring liquid secondary markets, especially with poorly regulated ‘repo’ arrangements generating profits from movements in the prices of securities, either by owning them, or by taking derivative positions on market price movements.

Market-making financial intermediaries quote prices at which they are prepared to buy – or sell – a security, securing profits from the buy-ask spread. Market makers meet demand for securities in secondary markets by either buying or borrowing them, using deregulated wholesale repo funding and derivative markets.

Central banks reluctantly foster liquidity illusion
The sine qua non of securities market-making is liquidity – the ability to buy and sell, in order to profit. For Keynes, the liquidity fetish is the most anti-social maxim of orthodox finance; as he warned, liquidity is only relevant to individual investors, not to the financial system as a whole.

This illusion of liquidity in securities-based financial systems became clear during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis when the money market – the most liquid of markets – froze when no party was willing to take on credit and counterparty risks.

The bond markets of many emerging market economies rely on foreign investors to move the prices of securities. They prefer liquid securities markets offering easy entry and exit, and demand market infrastructures conducive to short-term positions. These typically include liberalized ‘repo’ and derivative markets, to more easily finance and ‘short’ securities.

Despite central bank concerns about the illusory nature of securities market liquidity as such liquidity can easily disappear when the foreign investors pull out, most authorities in these countries have nonetheless catered to their demands by creating the desired market infrastructures.

When large highly leveraged financial institutions in these markets collapse, e.g., Lehman Brothers in September 2008, central banks are forced to step in to salvage the financial system. Thus, many central banks have little choice but to become securities market makers of last resort, providing safety nets for financialized universal banks and shadow banks.

The post Financialization Undermines Real Economy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Ndomi Magareth, sows bean seeds on her small piece of land in Njombe a small town in the coastal Littoral Region of Cameroon. Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance is a consortium of 30 bean-producing countries in Africa and its improved bean varieties has helped transition the legume from a subsistence crop to a modern commodity. Credit: Monde Kingsley Nfor/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2019 (IPS)

As the weather continues to change and land becomes degraded, the socio-economic security implications are vast. In an effort to tackle these issues, climate-smart agriculture is quickly gaining traction around the world.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), 12 million hectares of productive land become barren every year due to desertification and drought alone representing a loss of production of 20 million tons of grain.

Not only is this an economic blow to almost 80 percent of the world’s poor people who rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, but hunger levels are also already rising globally.

Such challenges will only be compounded as we must increased food production by 70 percent by 2050 in order to feed the entire world population.

The need for sustainable, climate-smart agriculture is thus clear.

One practice that is gaining momentum is the development of improved, resilient crop varieties which help ensure both food and economic security.

“In light of changing rainfall patterns where the old varieties which are drought-susceptible can no longer be produced under drought conditions, the new varieties which are developed for resilience have made a complete difference by bringing more beans on the table for food security as well as more beans for the market to bring income to the farmers,” one of Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA)’s bean breeders Rowland Chirwa told IPS.

Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture’s Senior Scientific Advisor Vivienne Anthony spoke of the importance of connecting science to the realities on the ground.

“The community of scientists need to connect with the entrepreneurs and people that are investing in the future here in Africa and to work together to improve crops, create jobs, create markets and not sit back as scientists. They need to engage with the business,” she said.

From Theory to Practice

In collaboration with the University of Bern, the Syngenta Foundation has been working to improve Eragrostis tef, commonly known as teff—one of the most important cereals in Ethiopia where over 80 percent of the population live in rural areas.

The seeds have high protein levels and are much better adapted to drought conditions which is an increasingly common experience in the East African nation.

However, the teff plant produces low yields and harvests are not keeping pace with Ethiopia’s increasing population.

With modern genetics and improved farming methods, the project aims to increase yields, putting money into farmers’ pockets.

Demand and access to markets is also essential, Anthony noted.

“Designing a new variety is no different to designing anything somebody is going to buy. It involves understanding the marketplace, and who wants to grow it, use it, eat it,” she told IPS.

“The way to address some of the problems and challenges of agricultural sustainability in Africa is about encouraging markets to flourish that drive opportunity, innovation and entrepreneurship.  We fundamentally believe in market-based approaches as a way of trying to meet the Sustainable Goals, finding a business rationale where everybody wins and it keeps going,” Anthony added.

Similarly, PABRA is a consortium of 30 bean-producing countries in Africa and its improved bean varieties has helped transition the legume from a subsistence crop to a modern commodity.

Beans are among the most consumed and widely grown legume in Africa, taking up over 6 million hectares of land. Eastern Africa sees the highest consumption of beans with people eating as much as 50-60 kilograms every year.

However, one study found that without any adaptation strategies, the yields and nutritional value of common beans will dramatically decline by 2050.

“We have been following more of a preemptive breeding approach where we know the climate is changing and at the same time the needs of the people we are trying to provide products with are also changing,” bean breeder Clare Mugisha Mukankusi told IPS.

Chirwa echoed similar sentiments, stating: “We look at regionally in Africa and see which are the major market classes we can focus on and look at the capacity of our national partners…and develop varieties that are responsive to the environmental needs, human consumption needs, and market demand needs using a Demand Led Breeding (DLB) approach.”

In Rwanda, improved bean varieties increased yields by 53 percent and household revenue by 50 dollars. Without the improved beans, 16 percent more households would have been food-insecure, PABRA found.

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), which coordinates PABRA, also helped develop drought-resistant beans which were provided to South Sudanese refugees in order to reduce their reliance on food aid and increase self-sufficiency.

From Sustainable Farms to Table

In addition to designing nutritional legumes that are heat-tolerant and disease-resistant, Mukankusi also highlighted the need to address the entire value chain to ensure there is productivity at the farm level.

This means promoting sustainable crop management practices such as intercropping, which involves growing two or more crops alongside each other, and crop rotation which can help increase soil fertility.

Anthony pointed to the importance of education in demand-led approaches and the business of plant breeding as the Syngenta Foundation in partnership with the Australian Centre for International Agriculture and the Crawford Fund work closely with African Centre for Crop Improvement in Ghana, South Africa, Kenya and Uganda so that local scientists can take the lead.

“Now we have a community of breeders who are trying to do this to really make an impact,” she said.

In light of environmental challenges, the world has already started to see a shift in consumption patterns as plant-based foods gain popularity. Crop breeding may therefore be more essential than ever.

“If we are going to sustain the supply, we cannot sit back but we have to keep pace with the changes. The breeding has to be there and responsive to current and future demands,” Chirwa said.

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The post Food From Thought appeared first on Inter Press Service.

United Nations staff hold signs with photos of children stating they are not targets. The U.N. has struck a deal with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to stop using child soldiers and to release all youngsters from their ranks. Courtesy: UN Women/Ryan Brown

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2019 (IPS)

The United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have struck a deal with the United Nations to stop using child soldiers across swathes of eastern Syria under their control and to release all youngsters from their ranks, the U.N. announced Monday.

General Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the SDF, an alliance of armed groups that includes the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG), signed an accord over the weekend to halt recruitment of children under 18 years and to punish any officers who break the new rules.

The YPG has been identified as a recruiter of child soldiers in the U.N.’s annual “list of shame” since 2014. In its most recent annual study, the world body confirmed 224 cases of minors being recruited by the group in 2017.

“It is an important day for the protection of children in Syria and it marks the beginning of a process as it demonstrates a significant commitment by the SDF to ensure that no child is recruited and used by any entity operating under its umbrella,” said the U.N. Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba.

The deal was the result of months of talks between the U.N. and the SDF, which must now identify any boys and girls among its force and send them back to their families. The group must also discipline officers who break the new rules.

Conditions for children in Syria are among the “direst” on her agenda, Gamba said. In 2017, she confirmed at least 6,000 violations had been committed against youngsters by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Worse still, the patchwork of rebels, terrorists and other armed militias fighting in Syria’s chaotic civil war committed more than 15,000 violations against children — ranging from recruitment to rapes, killings, maimings and the bombing of schools.

In addition to the YPG, the U.N. has named and shamed Syrian government forces, the rebel Free Syrian Army, the Islamic State (IS), the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham group, Jaish al-Islam and Tahrir al-Sham, the latest iteration of al-Qaeda’s former affiliate the al-Nusra Front.

After releasing all child soldiers and fulfilling the terms of its deal with the U.N. — known as an “action plan” — an armed group can be removed from the U.N.’s list of shame, as has happened with militias in Congo, Chad and Ivory Coast in recent years.

“Action plans represent an opportunity for parties to change their attitude and behaviour so that grave violations against children stop and are prevented to durably improve the protection of children affected by armed conflict,” Gamba said.

The SDF controls the quarter of Syria east of the Euphrates river after driving back IS in a series of advances from 2015 that culminated in March with the group’s defeat at its last holdout in Baghouz, near the Iraqi border.

Washington’s support for the SDF has been problematic, as Turkey views the Kurdish-led force as a branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a domestic independence group that Ankara sees as a terrorist organisation.

Children are among the victims of a recent spike in fighting in Syria’s Idlib Province, the last remaining bastion for anti-government rebels and where a shaky truce brokered by Russia and Turkey appears to be falling apart.

Thousands of pregnant women, vulnerable infants and young children are among the estimated 330,000 people fleeing conflict in the northwestern area, the Christian aid group World Vision said in a statement Monday. 

“It’s hard to imagine the trauma, distress and physical toll that the flight from air strikes and bombs has on families in Idlib. And it’s even worse for pregnant women and those with babies and young children,” said Mays Nawayseh, a World Vision aid worker.

The war in Syria, now in its 9th year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions since it started with the violent repression of anti-government protests in March 2011.

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By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2019 (IPS)

Refugee and migrant women often face inescapable violence in the home. And the potential for intimate forms of violence is exacerbated by humanitarian crises and job insecurity.

On June 25th, UN Women released its report on the Progress of the World’s Women 2019-2020: Families in a Changing World, which focuses on women in the family.

According to the report, one factor that contributes to increased violence in the home is decreased opportunities in work, especially for migrants.

The report states that in Cambodia, when “men struggled to find work, [this] was linked to increased prevalence of violence against women by intimate partners.”

Not only do migrant women face increased violence at home, they are often unable to escape this violence. Women who rely on their male counter-parts to remain in a country do not have the independence afforded to their companions.

This is “particularly dangerous when women are facing, for example, violence against them, domestic violence, in the family,” Shahra Razavi, the Chief of Research and Data at UN Women, told IPS during a press briefing on June 25.

“So, it’s very important that they have the right to stay independent of that particular relationship,” she added.

The report recommends, among others, that there should be a focus on policies and regulations which support migrant families and women’s rights within those families.

The report also points out that “states can make regulatory and policy choices that strengthen women’s bargaining power.”

This can take various forms. Women registered separately from men in their household, or granted residency independent of the men they migrate with through marriage or family ties are less likely to remain in violent relationships in order to remain in a country.

Making Progress

The report cites Indonesia’s recent policies as a step forward in protections for migrant women.

In 2017, the government of Indonesia passed legislation which states that “for the first time, guaranteed some basic rights to workers migrating through official channels,” according to the report.

The new law adds protections like social security programs, protections against trafficking and violence, and gender equality.

Of around 9 million estimated Indonesians working abroad in 2016, about half were women.

Migrant Care, an organization cooperating with UN Women, added that 10 countries (Brunei Darussalam, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Republic of Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, the Republic of the Philippines, the Republic of Singapore, the Kingdom of Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam) across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) added protections to migrant workers through the signing of the Consensus on the protection and Promotion of the Rights of migrant Workers (2017).

One of the principles in the consensus aims to “Uphold fair treatment with respect to gender and nationality, and protect and promote the rights of migrant workers, particularly women.”

But progress has not been seen everywhere.

Dr. Nicole Behnam, Senior Technical Director at the Violence Prevention and Response Unit of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) told IPS that “rates of gender-based violence (GBV) are shockingly high in all contexts,” but that this “increases during and because of crisis.”

According to a report on child brides from the IRC, in Lebanon, 41% of young displaced Syrian women are married before 18.

In Syrian refugee communities in Jordan, rates of child marriages nearly tripled between 2011 and 2014, going from 12% to 32%.

Scenes from Zaatari Refugee Camp, Jordan” Al Mafraq, Jordan, 27 March 2016, UN Archives

This happens despite laws being in place to protect women in the home.

In Jordan, it is illegal to marry before 18, but the IRC states that “the complex process to register a marriage, and the fact that many refugees lack official identification, means that girls who can’t prove their age are even more vulnerable.”

Another concern for many countries comes with the rapid repeals of protections for women in families.

While the UN Women’s report aims at establishing policies not even seen in many developed countries, like paid parental leave, Razavi told IPS of her worries in sliding backwards.

“I think that some of the issues obviously are going to be different for the developed countries,” Razavi said.

But it appears that these differences are in scale, and not in kind.

“Many countries where some of these systems have been built up, at the moment, since 2008, in the context of austerity, these policies are being rolled back,” Razavi said.

She specified that “In particular, violence against women services have had to be cut back in some countries.”

Behnam thinks that for both developing and developed countries, there needs to be “clear acknowledgement of how serious and pervasive the problem is and a matched urgency to both preventing and responding to GBV.”

The IRC sees the need for: continued and increased participation of women’s organizations to address local issues, improving in tracking and reporting of investments for increased transparency in funding to combat GBV, and increasing the number of specialists focused on GBV.

Behnam sees these improvements as necessary for women in migrant and refugee families, but also for women in all contexts.

“Violence is pervasive in women’s lives – it’s the reality of their every day – and it is not just strangers who commit violence against women. Often, it is the people who they should be able to trust the most – their family members,” Behnam said.

She added that “We cannot ignore violence because it happens out of view; in fact, that is the violence we must fight most to name and respond to because it is so hidden.”

The post Unseen and Unsafe: Violence Against Women within Migrant Families appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jul 1 2019 (IPS)

Agriculture is the bedrock of sedentary human civilization, without it we would have no governments or nations. It was food surplus generated by agriculture that enabled people to live in cities and form regimes able to organize food production in such a manner that some community members could engage in other activities than direct food production and thus give rise to the ideologies, techniques and goods which now constitute and govern our existence.

China’s agricultural output is currently the largest in the world and for thousands of years the intimate connection between nature and agriculture has been an outstanding feature of its culture. A worthy example is the poetry of Du Fu (712 – 770 CE) who wrote about the toils of farming:

Long hoe, long hoe, handle of white wood,
I trust my life to you – you must save me now! 1

Like any other peasant today Du Fu was acutely aware of nature´s capriciousness and the disasters brought about through drought and famine.

Heaven has long withheld its thunder,
is this not a most perverse heavenly command?
No rain moistens the living things,
fertile fields rise into clouds of yellow dust.
Soaring birds die from searing heat,
fish dry up as ponds turn to mud.
A myriad of people wander about, destitute and homeless.
Lifting up one´s eyes reveals a plethora of weeds. 2

Much of Chinese history is characterized by huge efforts to mitigate and harness the forces of nature. Myths tell how agricultural tools and implements were invented, how plants and animals were domesticated. They speak of irrigation, the digging of wells, and the establishment of farmers´ markets. Heroes and emperors are hailed as initiators of such endeavours and often became deified and worshipped as gods, like the legendary Yu, son of Gun, who became the fertility god Shénnóng (神農) The Divine Farmer.3

Even in modern times mortal men have been worshipped as all-knowing, almost divine creatures – like Mao Zedong, whose 1958 Great Leap Forward put land use under closer Government control, causing a catastrophic situation when ecologicallly disastrous campaigns, as the extermination of sparrows, were paired with a ban on private food production and the introduction of harmful agricultural practices, such as widespread deforestation, deep plowing and close cropping, as well as the misuse of poisons and pesticides, resulted in a famine that killed an estimated 14 million individuals.4

However, China learned from such disastrous politics and gradually moved away from a Maoist ”command economy”, which did not allow farmers to determine their economic activities according to the laws of supply and demand. In 1984, about 99 percent of the farming communes had been dismantled and agricultural production returned to individual households. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) now produces one fourth of the world’s grain and with less than 10 percent of world arable land it feeds one fifth of the world’s population. China ranks first in the world in terms of the production of cereals, cotton, fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry, eggs and fishery products. However, China´s population is steadily increasing, while the amount of arable land is declining. The population of PRC is approaching 1,5 billion, the equivalent of almost 20 percent of the earth´s inhabitants. Agriculture employs over 300 million Chinese farmers, while 40 percent of PRC´s citizens live in rural areas. Young people are in a steady stream migrating from rural to urban areas. Mechanization rates are rapidly rising to fill agricultural labour shortage, but even with increased mechanization China will need young farmers to replace those who are aging.5

Acordingly, to feed its incresing population Chinese rulers have realized that apart from increasing their nation´s food poduction, investments have to be made in global agriculture, not the least in Africa. Trade between PRC and Africa did in the 1990s increase by 700 percent and PRC has become Africa’s largest trading partner, supporting agricultural production and food exports in a vast range of developing countries. China is currently building up agricultural exchange and cooperation relations with international agricultural and financing organizations, and is actively involved in agricutural development in more than 140 countries.

This push for international cooperation may be one reason for PRC´s growing interest in the United Nations. When PRC in 1971 replaced Taiwan (the Republic of China) as the Chinese representative to the UN, it did at first keep a low profile. However, after Xi Jinping became China´s main leader PRC has steadily become more visible within the UN system.

In a speech delivered at the UN Office in Geneva, Xi Jinping declared that he did not consider trade protectionism and self-isolation to be beneficient. He described the Paris Agreement as ”a milestone in the history of climate governance” and declared that ”we must ensure this endeavour is not derailed.” Furthermore, he emphasized that the UN is ”at the core of the international system.” 6 Xi Jinping´s speech may be compared to a speech Donald J. Trump gave at the UN General Assembly:

America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism. Around the world, responsible nations must defend themselves against threats to sovereignty not just from the global governance, but also from other, new forms of coercion and domination.7

The United States remains the largest financial contributor to the UN, providing 22 percent of its budget. However, US support is declining. Already in 2011, the US stopped paying dues to the UNESCO and in October 2017 it officially quit the Organisation. In 2018, the US withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council and ended all funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The Trump administration is currently trying to decrease US funding to several UN agencies. Meanwhile, the People´s Republic of China recently surpassed Japan as the second largest national, economic contributor to the UN. So far, Japan has every year contributed with 10 percent, while PRC now is contributing with 10.8 percent and plans to increase its financial support. 8

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is in charge of international efforts to improve agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, intending to ensure food security for all and it is thus natural that its activites are of great interest to the biggest food producer of the world. On the 23rd of June, Qu Dongyu was elected Director General of the FAO, becoming the second Chinese citizen to head a UN agency.9 In a recent speech, Qu Dongyu who at that time still was PRC’s vice minister for agriculture and rural affairs, stated that if he became FAO´s Director General he would try to continue the Organisation´s efforts to foment sustainable agriculture, particularly by supporting value chains, tropical agriculture, dryland farming, water management and innovative ITC (Information and Communications Technology). Qu Dongyu stressed that this can only be achieved by the farmers themselves, emphasizing that rural women and youth have to be mobilized, supported and included in all decision making. The last promise may indicate that Qu Dongyu intends to avoid becoming the kind of demi-god that rulers of big organisations often tend to consider themselves to be. Qu Dongyu´s speech might be perceived as the high-flown oratory of any incoming head of a big organization. However, I found one section of his speech particularly reassuring – when he stated that the future of agriculture depends on the experience of the elderly and the capacity of the young:

When I was a child, my Grandma always took me to pick mushrooms in the neighbouring hills. She told me that we should leave the old mushrooms to spread spores and the young, small ones to grow. This is the only way to ensure that we could have a constant supply of mushrooms within the season. With a strong scientific background, I have always stood by the principle of carefulness, truth-seeking, inclusiveness, and collaboration. 10

The future belongs to the young and we have to prepare and safeguard our world for them. The Swedish environment activist Greta Thunberg became known after she in May 2018 won second-prize in a contest for middle school pupils. They had been asked to write about environmental degradation. Greta called her essay We know – and we can do something now, in it she wrote:

When you think about the future today, you do not think further than 2050. Then, at best, I have not even lived half my life. What happens next? […] If I become a hundred years old, I will be alive in the year 2103. If I by that time have children and grandchildren they would probably celebrate that day together with me. Maybe we would talk about how things were when I was a child. I would presumably talk about you then. How would you like to be remembered? 11

One answer to Greta´s question could be that eighty-four years ago the election of a new Director General for FAO helped reverse our short-sighted and ruthless exploitation of the Earth and thus contributed to a sustainable management of natural resources, making it possible for her and her grandchildren to enjoy food security and live in harmony with nature.

1 Du Fu (2002) The Selected Poems by Du Fu, translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, p. 71.
2 Summer Sigh quoted in Zhang, Yunhua (2018) Insights Into Chinese Agriculture. Singapore: Springer, p. 97.
3 Cf. Yuan Kee (1993) Dragons and Dynasties: An Introduction to Chinese Mythology. London: Penguin Books.
4 Some scholarly estimates are as high as 20 to 43 millions, cf. Dikötter, Frank (2011) Mao´s Great Famine: The History of China´s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962. London: Bloomsbury.
5 http://www.fao.org/china/fao-in-china/china-at-a-glance/en/
6 Xi Jinping (2017) Work Together to Build a Community of Shared Future for Mankind. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-01/19/c_135994707.htm
7 UN Affairs (2018) US President Trump rejects globalism in speech to UN General Assembly’s annual debate. https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/09/1020472
8 Okano-Heijmans, Maaike and van der Putten, Frans-Paul (2018) A United Nations with Chinese characteristics? The Hague: Clingendael Institute.
9 Li Yong is since 2013 heading United Nations Industrial Devolpment Organization (UNIDO).
10 Dongyu, Qu (2019) Building a Dynamic FAO for a Better World. http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/chinese-dg-lead-fao-4-years-1-aug-2019/
11 Thunberg, Greta (2018) ”Greta Thunberg: ´Vi vet – och vi kan göra något nu´,” Svenska Dagbladet, 30 May.

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

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By Kelsey Davenport and Daryl G. Kimball
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 1 2019 (IPS)

Iran’s announcement that it may soon breach the 300-kilogram limit on low-enriched uranium set by the 2015 nuclear deal is an expected but troubling response to the Trump administration’s reckless and ill-conceived pressure campaign to kill the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

It is critical that President Donald Trump does not overreact to this breach and further escalate tensions. Any violation of the deal is a serious concern but, in and of itself, an increase in Iran’s low-enriched uranium stockpile above the 300-kilogram limit of 3.67 percent enriched uranium does not pose a near-term proliferation risk.

Iran would need to produce roughly 1,050 kilograms of uranium enriched at that level, further enrich it to weapons grade (greater than 90 percent uranium-235), and then weaponize it. Intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections would provide early warning of any further moves by Iran to violate the deal.

Tehran is not racing toward the bomb but rather, Iran’s leaders are seeking leverage to counter the U.S. pressure campaign, which has systematically denied Iran any benefits of complying with the deal.

Despite Iran’s understandable frustration with the U.S. re-imposition of sanctions, it remains in Tehran’s interest to fully comply with the agreement’s limits and refrain from further actions that violate the accord.

If Iran follows through on its threat to resume higher levels of enrichment July 7, that would pose a more serious proliferation risk. Stockpiling uranium enriched to a higher level would shorten the time it would take Iran to produce enough nuclear material for a bomb–a timeline that currently stands at 12 months as a result of the nuclear deal’s restrictions.

The Trump administration’s failed Iran policy is on the brink of manufacturing a new nuclear crisis, but there is still a window to salvage the deal and deescalate tensions.

The Joint Commission, which is comprised of the parties to the deal (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Iran) and oversees implementation of JCPOA, met on June 28. The meeting was a critical opportunity for the state parties to press Iran to fully comply with the nuclear deal and commit to redouble efforts to deliver on sanctions-relief obligations.

For its part, the White House needs to avoid steps that further escalate tensions with Iran. Trump must cease making vague military threats and refrain from taking actions such as revoking waivers for key nuclear cooperation projects that actually benefit U.S. nonproliferation priorities.

If Trump does not change course, he risks collapsing the nuclear deal and igniting a conflict in the region.

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Excerpt:

Kelsey Davenport is director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association
and Daryl G. Kimball is executive director

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Researchers have found that television viewing of soap operas has an effect equal to 1.6 years of additional education. | Picture courtesy: PxHere. This image is licensed under CC BY 2.0

By Archna Vyas
NEW DELHI, Jul 1 2019 (IPS)

Consistent exposure to TV series with strong characters has the power to influence mental models in society and shift social norms.

Does what you view impact your behaviour? Albert Bandura, an influential pioneer in social cognitive theory, showed that it did. Back in the late 1970s, his studies showed that children who viewed violent images on television also demonstrated more aggressive behaviour than those who viewed neutral content. The work of other noted scholars such as Christina Bicchieri, has shown that individuals learn from watching others and that these observations become behaviours and social norms that are deeply embedded in the collective community mindset.

Does the content on these multiple screens influence how individuals, families, and communities think and behave, and if so, how can it be leveraged to have a positive impact?

Now imagine the implications of these findings in an era where screen time has overtaken face time. The Broadcast India 2018 survey finds that in urban areas, the average time spent watching television per day is about 4 hours, while in rural India, it is 3 hours and 27 minutes. According to the survey, TV homes in the country have seen a 7.5 percent jump, outpacing the growth of homes in India at 4.5 percent. India boasts of 298 million homes, of which 197 million have a TV set. This creates the opportunity to add 100 million more TV homes. In addition to television, mobile phones, first known as the ‘second screen’ have become the device of choice to consume content.

We are therefore inclined to ask: does the content on these multiple screens influence how individuals, families, and communities think and behave, and if so, how can it be leveraged to have a positive impact? Entertainment education (EE) — which is entertainment media that incorporates an educational message to the audience to increase their knowledge about an issue, and create favourable attitudes that can change overt behaviour — is showing us that it does. In fact, researchers have found that television viewing of soap operas has an effect equal to 1.6 years of additional education. So, can we leverage content on screens to educate and create positive change through repeated messaging, powerful storytelling, and strong characters?

 

Characters change the narrative and our mindsets

There are some fundamental reasons why long-format and character-based content, notably, soap operas, are effective in changing behaviours. Firstly, unlike commercials and campaigns, soap operas are multi-episode series that are viewed over a long duration. Second, these scripts are built around a relatable but powerful character.  These characters, in turn, have an impact on us as viewers. Indeed, the journey of a strong character takes viewers into a world where they start seeing themselves in the character. As these characters transition — taking tough calls, overcoming situations, challenging social norms, and succeeding — viewers’ mindsets about issues also begin to change. New role models, frames of references and their decisions become acceptable and possible.

Take for example, Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon (I, A Woman, Can Achieve Anything), a TV series made by Population Foundation of India, and funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where I work. The plot is built around a strong-willed female lead character Dr Sneha Mathur, a young doctor who leaves behind a lucrative career in Mumbai to work in a small town. The series was scripted to influence social norms and behaviours on sex-selection, child marriage, spacing between pregnancies, quality of healthcare, and domestic violence — largely difficult and taboo subjects to deal with. An Interactive Voice Response Service (IVRS) accompanies the TV series, providing a discussion forum for 1.7 million viewers as well as a platform to share feedback. Research by Dr H. Wang and Dr A. Singhal has demonstrated how an open, democratic, audio-centric platform can shed light on audience discourse that is triggered by content. The IVRS provided an avenue for user-generated discussion, saw participation from men, women, and youth, and spurred pro-social actions that were inspired by the story line and characters. This is telling of post-viewing impact and engagement possibilities.

 

Right messaging can trigger reflection and behaviour change at scale

Broadcasting soaps and other forms of entertainment education via mass media is an opportunity to influence not only the mental models of individual viewers but also the mental models that are accepted by the wider society, creating possibilities for large-scale change. Since our decisions are impacted by family and community, it benefits individuals when others view similar messages. Interestingly, BARC India data finds that India is a country that is driven by family viewing, and this shows in the increase in the number of TV households. Such collective viewing habits indicate that an entire household’s mindset can be changed together. This is particularly noteworthy in India, where decision-making rights are often vested in the family and not in the individual.

For example, women and girls typically do not have the agency to influence decisions about their bodies and their health. The teledrama AdhaFULL or ‘Half-full’ — produced by BBC Media Action in collaboration with UNICEF – addresses issues such as underage marriage, sex-selective abortion, and sexual health of adolescents, to generate critical conversations among young Indian viewers and their parents. This initiative and others have demonstrated that messages provided in the context of everyday life can change a listener’s expectations about the possibilities of adopting new practices. Entertainment education can serve as a social mobiliser, an advocate, or an agenda setter by encouraging difficult, but important conversations.

Academics have demonstrated that there is a link between what we see and how we behave. Data tells us that we are spending more time on our screens. Together these facts are full of caution and promise, for content creators and scriptwriters to take note for the type of content they produce, and leverage the power of screens to promote positive attitudes on key social issues. And indeed, while more studies to chronicle the impact of viewing on socials norms are needed, there is now enough evidence available to suggest that consistent exposure to media can bring sustained change.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are personal.

Archna Vyas is the Country Deputy Director for Communications at the India Country Office of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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

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