Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Lujio Jaran took up fishing as an alternative source of livelihood but receding waters in Lake Turkana is affecting the quality of fish and fishing activities; sometimes fishermen go home empty handed after even after hours of fishing. Photo: Amunga Eshuchi/UNDP Kenya

By Ngele Ali
NAIROBI, Jan 24 2019 (IPS)

It’s estimated that 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. Unfortunately, our water resources are under serious threats attributable to uncontrolled human activities that are severely impacting livelihoods and the ecosystem.

For instance, every year, more than 8 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean, a large percentage of it having been washed into the oceans through rivers as a result of poor waste management and dumping upstream.

Against this backdrop, in late November 2018, Kenya together with Canada and Japan hosted 18,000 delegates from 184 countries, including several Heads of state, top government officials, the private sector, civil society, academia, scientists and private citizens in Nairobi.

Ngele Ali, Head of Communications, UNDP Kenya

Under the auspice of the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference, the three-day gathering pursued conversations on productivity and protection of the blue economy; with a call to rethink utilisation and promotion of water resources, as a base for new economies (fisheries, tourism, aquaculture, maritime transportation and renewable energy) to advance socio-economic development and environmental sustainability.

Being the first international gathering of its kind – that looked at all water resources – the outcomes of the conference are expected to act as a launching pad that will progressively stimulate global discourses and influence how countries make the Blue Economy more advantageous for all.

The Blue Economy is not entirely a new concept as communities have always relied on water resources directly or indirectly, for their socio-economic interests. Through the SDGs, communities are urged to ‘conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.’

Therefore in line with this vision, the conference created a unique space for the exploration of ideas that will responsibly spur sustainable economic growth and build resilient communities. Although the potential of the blue economy is evident, barriers that hinder communities from benefitting to the maximum need to be addressed.

"The blue economy can only succeed if it guarantees that the needs of communities are put into consideration and safeguarded now and in the future"

Ahuna Eziakonwa, UNDP Regional Director for Africa

As we move forward after successful discussions that unpacked the blue economy as a viable economic driver, it’s now time to take stock and pragmatically create a shift that will convert theorised concepts into tangible and result oriented actions.

First, to address the declining access and quality of water, formulation of adequate environmental governance policies must be put in place; to help tackle issues of climate change and uncontrolled human activities.

Specifically, countries need prioritise investing in solutions that involve communities to address encroachment of riparian lands, destruction of water towers, pollution, poor management of waste and disposal which continue to choke our dwindling resources and the ecosystem.

Second, for the blue economy to be more lucrative and beneficial for all, strategic partnerships that will lay essential foundations need to be established to facilitate inclusive and accountable implementation of ideas.

Governments, environmental institutions, the private sector, communities and all other stakeholders need to work in concert to drive an agenda that will support innovative ideas that respond contextually to communities’ needs and ambition.

Third, if the intention is to advance this sector, to significantly contribute to building communities’ resilience and lifting people out of poverty; communities must be at the heart of proposed ideas and actions.

As Ahuna Eziakonwa, UNDP Regional Director for Africa emphasised, the blue economy can only succeed if it guarantees that the needs of communities are put into consideration and safeguarded now and in the future.

Fourth, the decline of the water resources is alarming as it negatively impacts on communities’ wellbeing, fuels competition for the scarce resources and contributes to community conflicts. Any conceivable ideas must, therefore, reflect the vision of the 2030 agenda of sustainable development.

As the blue economy opens new development opportunities, all players in the sector should foster partnerships that ensure equitable access and utilisation of available resources for inclusive economic growth.

Fifth, besides commitments by countries to mobilise of funds that will advance the sector, there is the need for political will intentionally promote interventions that discourage further destruction and depletion of the blue economy resources.

Since communities have been custodians of water resources for centuries, advancing home-grown conservation ideas will ensure their buy-in and guarantee that no one is left behind by this new realm of economic trajectory.

Further, rather than reinvent the wheel, countries need to make deliberate efforts to create opportunities to learn from each other, open access to information and data, build knowledge and capacity; as these will go a long way to deliver a stronger and inclusive water-based economy innovatively.

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Excerpt:

Ngele Ali is Head of Communications, UNDP Kenya

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 2019 (IPS)

The widespread innovations in modern digital technology have a devastating downside to it: the accumulation of over 50 million tonnes of electronics waste (e-waste) globally every year.

And that’s greater in weight than all of the world’s commercial airliners ever made, or enough Eiffel Towers to fill the borough of Manhattan in New York city, warns a new report released at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, January 24.

Currently only 20% of e-waste—including desktop computers, cell phones, laptops, television sets, printers and a wide variety of household electrical appliances– is formally recycled.

If nothing changes, the United Nations University (UNU), one of the authors of the report, predicts e-waste could nearly triple to nearly 120 million tonnes by 2050.

The study says it is difficult to gauge how many electrical goods are produced annually, but just taking account of devices connected to the internet, they now number many more than humans, whose total world population now stands at over 7.7 billion.

The joint report, titled “A New Circular Vision for Electronics – Time for a Global Reboot“, and backed by seven UN agencies, points out that rapid innovation and lowering costs have dramatically increased access to electronic products and digital technology, with many benefits.

This has led to an increase in the use of electronic devices and equipment. And the unintended consequence of this is a ballooning of electronic and electrical waste.

The study says e-waste is now the fastest-growing waste stream in the world. Some forms of it have been growing exponentially.

Asked how feasible is it for countries to have mandatory legislation on recycling e-waste, Dr. Ruediger Kuehr, co-author of the report and Director, UNU-ViE SCYCLE, Sustainable Cycles Programme, told IPS mandatory e-waste recycling legislations are in place, for example, in the European Union (EU).

As per such, 85% all e-waste generated in the EU must be recycled in 2019. However, this target is not going to be reached at all, he noted.

Collection is the biggest challenge and recent attempts to substantially increase it by forcing, for example, retailers to accept obsolete e-products have not substantially increased collections.

Hence, he said, e-waste recycling legislations must come together with innovative and rewarding collection systems; consumer awareness (for example, not for storing obsolete equipment at home, but returning it early on) but also new systems to consume electronics such as dematerialization — purchasing the service instead of the product.

This will ease collection, because the ownership of the product would remain with the producer, he added.

He also said such systems are necessary in the long-run, because extend-collection systems by returning equipment with retailers; recycling points or collection bins have proved to be key, but do not provide the necessary breakthrough.

‘In consequence, the pure e-waste legislation will not change things, especially also because in many countries their enforcement is lacking,” Dr Kuehr warned.

In terms of material value, says the study, e-waste presents an opportunity worth over 62.5 billion dollars per year, more than the GDP of most countries and three times the output of the world’s silver mines.

There is 100 times more gold in a tonne of e-waste than a tonne of gold ore, according to the report.

The study calls for a new vision for electronics based on the circular economy and the need for collaboration with major brands, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), academia, trade unions, civil society and associations, in a deliberative process to change the system

The joint report supports the work of the E-waste Coalition, which includes: the International Labour Organization (ILO); the International Telecommunication Union (ITU); the UN Environment Programme (UN Environment); the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO); the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR); the UN University (UNU), and the Secretariats of the Basel and Stockholm Conventions.

The Coalition is supported by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the World Economic Forum and coordinated by the Secretariat of the Environment Management Group (EMG).

Asked if the issue of e-waste should be on the agenda of the UN General Assembly in order to motivate firm commitments from the 193 member states, Dr Kuehr told IPS that some stakeholders in politics and industry are of the standpoint that the e-waste issue is sustainably solved, though all numbers speak a different language and are alarming.

And though e-waste has moved up on the political agenda, also within the UN, it is still regarded as a niche issue. International and globally harmonized attempts, partly revolutionary, are required for sustainable solutions, he argued.

“And the UN General Assembly could play an important role in taking the discussion to the next level, also illustrating the urgency for regional and national action.”

“But we must also take further attempts in greening the blue, by also re-considering our UN internal consumption of electrical and electronic equipment”.

Seeing the UN as a large consumer, he said, “we can have a say in what products and services we want from the producer. But so far, it is hardly reflected.”

However, national governments, companies and other stakeholders must do substantially better in researching the e-waste challenge and coming up with sustainable solutions, declared Dr Kuehr.

Meanwhile the study cites several concrete examples in the battle against e-waste in a “circular economy”.

The Nigerian government, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and UNEP have jointly announced a $2.0 million dollar investment to kick off the formal e-waste recycling industry in Nigeria. The new investment will leverage over $13 million dollars in additional financing from the private sector.

According to the ILO, upto 100,000 people in Nigeria work in the informal e-waste sector.

This investment is expected to help create a system which formalizes these workers, giving them safe and decent employment while capturing the latent value in Nigeria’s 500,000 tonnes of e-waste.

UNIDO is collaborating with a large number of organizations on e-waste projects, including UNU, ILO, ITU, and WHO, as well as various other partners, such as Dell and the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA).

In Latin America and the Caribbean, a UNIDO e-waste project, co-funded by GEF, seeks to support sustainable economic and social growth in 13 countries.

From upgrading e-waste recycling facilities, to helping to establish national e-waste management strategies, the initiative adopts a circular economy approach, whilst enhancing regional cooperation.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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Bangladesh should align its many different plans and goals related to climate change for a greater impact. PHOTO: REUTERS

By Saleemul Huq
Jan 23 2019 (The Daily Star, Bangladesh)

Bangladesh has a long tradition of national development planning under the aegis of the General Economics Division (GED) of the Planning Commission, through the seven Five Year Plans prepared since we became an independent country. Recently, there have been a number of additional types of planning which will need to be well-aligned if we wish to achieve our goal of becoming a climate-resilient country by 2030. Some of these require examination and we need to discuss ways to ensure their mutual alignment going forward.

The first and longest-term one is the recently approved Delta Plan that has a time horizon up to 2100. Only the Netherlands has drawn up such a long-term plan and Bangladesh is the second country in the world to do so. It is more of an aspirational evolution towards our future development rather than a detailed plan, as the normal five-year plans will still remain the overriding planning vehicle, with the next one being the 8th Five Year Plan (8FYP)—which will start from 2021 onwards.

The second vehicle is to the year 2041 which is a perspective plan that is supposed to earn Bangladesh the middle-income status over the next few decades. This will also need to be translated into five-year segments to feed into the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th Five Year Plans to be implemented over that time period.

Then we have a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which have a time horizon of 2030 to be achieved. These goals are global goals agreed at the level of the United Nations for all countries to implement at the national level, using common metrics to measure progress towards each of the 17 goals. In case of Bangladesh, all 17 SDGs have been mapped onto different lead ministries and support ministries for each goal by the Planning Commission. In addition, a high-powered monitoring unit has been set up at the prime minister’s office to track progress by each ministry for each of the 17 SDGs.

In addition to these development-oriented goals, there is also a goal on disaster risk reduction under the global Sendai Framework which each country is supposed to try to achieve disaster resilience by 2030. In case of Bangladesh, the lead for this is assigned to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief (DMDR). There are also civil society and military allies and actors that are involved in the implementation of this plan.

Finally, there are two climate change related goals agreed globally under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change to be achieved by 2030. The first goal—which is about mitigation—is to reduce emissions of Greenhouse Gases that cause climate change so that global temperatures are kept below 1.5 Degrees Centigrade by achieving 100 percent reliance on renewable energy in every country by 2050. The second goal is to achieve transformational adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change in every country in order to make them climate-resilient by 2030. In case of Bangladesh, we have a number of planning documents under the aegis of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC).

The first is the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP), first prepared in 2009 and now being updated to take it to 2030. There is another called the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) that every country has to prepare to show how it will achieve the mitigation goal of the Paris Agreement. The Bangladesh NDC has pledged to reduce the national emissions of Greenhouse Gases by 5 percent by 2030, and if we get additional funding and technology, then we can reduce them by up to 15 percent. Finally, we are about to develop the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) which every developing country has to prepare to chart its objective of becoming climate-resilient by 2030.

In addition to these plans and goals, there are also others in different sectors, such as health, energy, agriculture, and water development, which are being developed by the respective ministries and departments.

It is clear from the above discussion that there is a lot of potential overlaps and lack of synergies unless these are addressed from the very beginning to ensure that each plan is well-aligned and linked, where necessary, to the other relevant plan(s). Also, it is imperative that the Five Year Plans should be the main vehicles into which all the others will be mainstreamed, starting with 8FYP which we will have to start developing very soon.

There are three overarching ways in which we can ensure that such synergies and mainstreaming is effectively achieved over the coming decades.

The first is to ensure that all the plans are aligned with each other while the 8FYP is started and developed. This is the responsibility of each ministry to liaise with the General Economics Division in the Planning Commission to ensure that the 8FYP receives inputs from all the other plans and goals. It is up to the GED to lead this process.

The second major action that has to take place is a very robust monitoring system for all the plans and goals cutting across the different sectors. This has already been put in place by the prime minister under her own direction with a well-respected former civil servant in charge. This is indeed a very good development. In this connection, it will also be useful to add a section of academics and researchers so that in addition to simply monitoring progress, we also have genuine learning-by-doing to inform and improve future Five Year Plans after 8FYP.

Finally, it is important to recognise that one of the biggest differences between the past and the future of the country is the shift from public sources of investment to private sources and also for the private sector to implement most of the plans. Hence, the country will have to become better at ensuring a whole-of-society approach rather than just a whole-of-government one with regard to both the planning and implementation of all these tasks. Bangladesh would do well to ensure that we find synergies and alignments among all the different plans.

Saleemul Huq is Director, International Centre for Climate Change and Development, Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB).
Email: Saleem.icccad@iub.edu.bd

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Credit: Getty Images

By Chandra Bhushan
NEW DELHI, Jan 23 2019 (IPS)

As I was attending the 24th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—to create a rulebook to operationalise the Paris Agreement—in Katowice, Poland, it dawned on me, like never before, that the negotiations were taking place in a make-believe world.

There was a stark disconnect between what is required to contain the impacts of climate change and what representatives of 197 parties were trying to achieve.

The world is reeling under the effects of climate disasters. From Kerala to California, extreme weather events are killing people, destroying properties and businesses.

This, when the global temperature has only increased by 1.0°C from preindustrial levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C makes it clear that the impacts are going to be substantially higher at 1.5°C warming and catastrophic at 2.0°C.

The worst part is that most countries, including the US and the European Union, were not even on track to meet their meagre commitments to curb emissions.

So why is it that three years after the “historic” Paris Agreement was signed, the global collective effort is in tatters? The reason is the architecture of the Paris Agreement itself.

The Paris Agreement is a voluntary agreement in which countries are free to choose their own climate targets, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Developed countries and rich developing countries were expected to take higher emission reduction targets than poor developing countries.

But if a rich country doesn’t commit to a higher emissions cut, no one can demand a revision of targets. Worse, if a country fails to meet its NDCs, there is no penalty. The agreement, therefore, based on the goodwill of countries.
Herein lies the catch.

Since the beginning, climate negotiations have been viewed as an economic negotiation and not as an environmental negotiation. So, instead of cooperation, competition is the foundation of these negotiations. Worst still, the negotiations are viewed as a zero-sum game.

For instance, Donald Trump believes that reducing emissions will hurt the US economy and benefit China, so he has walked out of the Paris Agreement. China too believes in this viewpoint, and despite being the world’s largest polluter today, it has not yet committed to any absolute emissions cut.

The fact is every country is looking for its own narrow interest and not the larger interest of the whole world. They are, therefore, committing to as little climate targets as possible.

This is the Achilles heel of the Paris Agreement. This is the reason why the Paris Agreement will not be able meet its own goal of limiting global warming well below 2°C. The negotiations, however, are devoid of this realisation.

We need to understand that the interest of countries and the interest of the world are two sides of the same coin. Climate change demands countries cooperate and work together to reduce emissions.

But this can only happen if the climate change negotiations move from being a zero-sum game to a positive-sum game. Today, it is possible to make this changeover because reducing emissions and increasing economic growth are no more incompatible to each other.

Costs of technologies such as batteries, super-efficient appliances and smart grids are falling so rapidly that they are already competitive with fossil fuel technologies.

So the reason for countries to compete with each other for carbon budget is becoming immaterial. If countries cooperate, the cost of low and no-carbon technologies can be reduced at a much faster pace, which will benefit everyone.

The bottom line is negotiations cannot continue in a business-as-usual fashion. The time has come to devise new mechanisms for a meaningful international collaboration to fight climate change.

The link to the original article:
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/climate-change/cop24-sum-and-substance-of-climate-diplomacy-62483

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Joy Daniels now works at a Fair Trade travel company in Cape Town. Credit: Ida Karlsson/IPS

By Ida Karlsson
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Jan 23 2019 (IPS)

Long before Joy Daniels became the manager of a travel company she was cleaning rooms at a guesthouse. But after joining a Fair Trade-certified business, a place that valued its staff, in a few years she was soon promoted to manager. 

A Fair Trade certification is one of several initiatives in South Africa aimed at developing tourism in a responsible way.

“The way they were running that guesthouse and the way they were dealing with staff was totally different from what I experienced later on. I tried to help out here and there but I was kept back. I was just a cleaner and that was it,” she says of her previous company.

But after joining a Fair Trade-certified business she got the opportunity to develop new skills. There was a position available as manager and people encouraged her to apply.

“I have not studied management. Everything I learnt was day-to-day stealing with the eye. And I had never worked on my own without supervisor. I was very scared, but I realised I had nothing to lose.”

She was offered the job and she says the experience made her grow both personally and professionally.

“I used to be very shy. It built up my self-esteem. And when you run a company you think differently in other parts of life as well. There is a lot of things that I learnt, how to manage my life and my time, to make sure that my personal life is also in order,” Daniels says.

The impact on her life was enormous. The single mum was soon able to move from Mitchell’s Plain—a former apartheid suburb for people of colour that is still troubled by gang violence—to Sea Point, a trendy residential area on the edge of the Atlantic ocean in Cape Town.

Beneath the slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town, another Fair Trade Tourism accredited business, a backpacking hostel started in 1990, welcomes travellers from all over the world.

Lee Harris at the hostel in Cape Town. She hopes that in the future responsible tourism is nothing unusual. Credit: Ida Karlsson/IPS

“Me and my best friend Toni wanted to make a difference right from the start and our very first brochures were printed on recycled paper. Unheard of in those days, in fact it was a little difficult to get the paper,” Lee Harris, co-owner, told IPS.

Harris and Toni Shina have invested heavily in the well-being and professional development of the staff members. There is a staff bursary fund, which supports the education of employees and their children with up to 15,000 Rands (around 1,000 dollars) per year. The bursary means a chance for families to put their children in good schools.

The owners pay the school fees directly to the school so they get it timeously. While schooling is free in all South African government schools, some former “whites-only” government schools (which are now open to all races by law) are administered by school boards that charge minimal fees for the maintenance of the schools and provisions of extra murals etc.

One of the security guards used the bursary to pay for studies to become a pastor. Another employee used it for studies in tourism. They also have a provident fund, which is a retirement fund that the staff pay towards.

“It is like an enforced saving which is theirs when they either leave or retire,” Harris says.

They also make sure the staff members can see a doctor four times a year and that people are treated well if they become seriously ill. One of the staff members suffered from tuberculosis.

“We never get rid of people if they are sick, we try to work around it instead,” Harris explains.

The hostel has also implemented a number of eco-friendly practices; recycling, worm farms, water-wise shower, tap heads and solar panels.

“We have a company that comes every Monday to recycle our waste. The table scraps are put in a bin and used by a city farm nearby,”  Harris says.

They only buy vegetables and fruits in season. Leftovers are packed and handed out to people in the street. The hostel is also actively involved in a range of social initiatives.

At the hostel they let the staff decide on the rules of the workplace, which are integrated into the employment contract.

The staff members travel long distances to work as they cannot afford to live in the city.

“It costs about 1,000 Rands (around 70 dollars) a month to get to work and the government basic salary is 3,200 Rands (around 200 dollars) so what can you do with that? Our entry level salary is 2.6 times the basic wage – 8,500 Rand (around 590 dollars), ” Harris says.

Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa, FTTSA, started initially as a project of IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But later a separate local non-profit organisation was formed. FTTSA has six guiding principles – fair share, fair say, respect, reliability, transparency and sustainability.

“There are 230 certification criteria. Businesses struggle with the administration involved to pass the audit. We do a lot of consulting to get them through the process,” Jane Edge, Managing Director, FTTSA, tells IPS.

The Fair Trade Tourism standard is directly applicable in four other countries – Malawi, Zambia, Uganda and Zimbabwe – and through mutual recognition agreements in additional five countries.

Edge says there are plans for expansion.

“In a year or so we want to be active in 12-13 African countries,” she tells IPS.

Meanwhile, Harris says: “I hope that in the future responsible tourism is nothing unusual.”

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Credit: Dinh Manh Tai

By Rebecca Ricks
CAMBRIDGE, MA, USA, Jan 23 2019 (IPS)

On December 6, the Australian parliament rushed to pass a bill that could weaken security on the phones and software people rely on every day, in Australia and worldwide. The sweeping law could force tech companies to take vaguely described actions to access encrypted data.

For example, authorities could order Apple and WhatsApp to send secretly altered software updates that would undermine the encryption they use to protect our data and communications.

At a time when governments across the globe are engaging in increasingly invasive surveillance, unfettered public access to encryption protects our basic rights to privacy and freedom of expression. Users should call on their governments to promote strong encryption, not undercut efforts to protect our safety and rights.

Encryption ensures that our information stays private, whether we are browsing the web, buying things, chatting online, or sending an email. We may not always know it, but the security of our networks relies on encryption, which scrambles our data so no one else can see what we’ve written or said unless we want to share it with them.

The Australian law passed despite strong opposition by cybersecurity experts, human rights groups, and some members of parliament. It is modelled on the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act, which similarly requires companies to potentially break encryption and hack into their own systems

Strong encryption also ensures our safety in other critical ways. It protects our communications networks, our power grids, our hospitals, and our transportation systems.

Encryption is especially important for the most vulnerable among us. Access to encrypted tools is critical to maintaining the safety of people who are disproportionately subjected to surveillance and scrutiny, whether victims of domestic abuse or minorities and other marginalized members of society. Political dissidents, journalists, and activists are vulnerable to retaliation for expressing their views or exposing wrongdoing. By encrypting our devices and our messages by default, we–along with the companies that build these tools–are taking steps to ensure that we can speak out without endangering ourselves.

Encryption also helps protect us in our personal lives, keeping us safe from online harassers, abusive partners, or other malicious people. The market for commercial spyware products has skyrocketed, and there is mounting evidence that these tools are being used to monitor, abuse, intimidate, and victimize people, especially intimate partners. When our tools use encryption by default, we have more control over our information from people in our lives who might want to hurt us.

As companies and nongovernmental organizations have taken steps to secure communications by using encryption, many governments have complained that it is hampering their ability to investigate criminals and conduct surveillance. In recent years, some governments have called for building intentional weaknesses, or backdoors, into encrypted technologies.

The Australian law passed despite strong opposition by cybersecurity experts, human rights groups, and some members of parliament. It is modelled on the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act, which similarly requires companies to potentially break encryption and hack into their own systems. In the US, law enforcement officials continue to call for anti-encryption legislation, even though they have been criticized for overstating the problem encryption poses to investigations.

Cybersecurity experts have repeatedly explained that laws addressing the challenges raised by encryption misunderstand how the technology  works. There is no plausible way to build tools to undermine encryption without eroding everyone’s security.  People with technical expertise and bad intentions will figure out how to manipulate such tools. By weakening encrypted technologies for government agencies, we weaken it for everyone.

The issue is so important that UN human rights experts have warned governments that weakening encryption could have a devastating impact on human rights.  Governments should be seeking to strengthen, not weaken, encryption.

Digital security is about tradeoffs: There will always be risks when you use the internet. Encryption simply helps us manage those risks and make sure that we are taking steps toward securing our communications. Human Rights Watch has created a new interactive game about digital security to help people understand why encryption is needed to protect us.

The Australian government promised to consider amendments to the anti-encryption law next year in response to opposition. We hope the public will use the game to understand just how much their security could be put at risk if the law isn’t substantially revised to prevent encryption backdoors.

We all pay a price when the tools we rely on every day to keep us secure are compromised.

 

Rebecca Ricks was the 2017-2018 Ford-Mozilla Open Web Fellow at Human Rights Watch. She now works as an independent researcher.

 

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Educo Education in Emergencies specialist reviews damage at a school caused by Typhoon Usman in the Philippines. Educo has been working in the Philippines since 2005. January 2019. Credit: Educo

By José María Faura
BARCELONA, Jan 23 2019 (IPS)

Children´s education is in a state of emergency when it comes to protracted crises. 75 million school-aged children and young people are in desperate need of educational support, are either in danger of or are already missing out on their education in countries facing war and violence (1*).

Yet education has traditionally been the most underfunded area regarding humanitarian aid, coming in at less than 3% of total global funding (2*).

This year not only marks the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but the world´s first International Day of Education. As an organization focused on child rights, Educo welcomes this UNESCO marker.

We share the conviction that while education is an end in itself, it is also the ideal means for guaranteeing the exercise of rights, the enjoyment of wellbeing and a life of dignity.

Education in emergencies has historically not been a priority for governments, international institutions or donors. This is despite schooling being what children want the most when faced with a crisis (3*).

On average, conflicts last 20 years. A childhood lasts 18, if a child survives an emergency of course. With little access to education, a child´s recovery from a crisis is much more difficult. For generations of children caught up in conflicts, this lack of opportunity all too often leads to a cycle of poverty alongside societal and political instability.

A child´s right to quality education regardless of where or who they are is being ignored; this cannot continue. Children out of school are exposed to increased risks of sexual and gender-based violence, violent extremism, forced marriage, early pregnancy, child labor and recruitment by armed groups.

A school is used as an emergency shelter following the Mayon Volcano eruption in the Philippines. Educo has been working in the Philippines since 2005. January 2018. Credit: Educo

Protracted conflicts heighten children’s vulnerability and weaken often already under-resourced education systems. Added to this are the increased attacks on educational facilities, making teachers and students vulnerable (4). Overall, we are seeing a growing trend of violent attacks on education for political, military and ideological reasons, among others.

Though governments signed up to the UN´s Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, which include educational targets, there has been little to no tangible progress since. Education must be at the center of humanitarian action otherwise governments today will continue to fail the most vulnerable of children for generations to come.

Educo’s humanitarian mandate is to protect, help and assist the most vulnerable people, especially children, in their right to life and security, with dignity and comprehensive coverage of rights and needs in the face of risk situations and of humanitarian crises. Defending the right to education in humanitarian disasters is the backbone to its mandate.

The right to education cannot be put on pause due to emergencies or crises, no matter how challenging.

Almost half of primary school age refugees are not in school. These children, as well as those on the move, should be guaranteed quality education on an equal footing to national children (5).

With funding so low, however, hundreds of thousands more children could miss out on an education because they are unable to be in their home or more usual setting. Providing funding and specific measures for these children to access education, be they migrants or refugees, must be a global priority.

Educo is a global development and humanitarian NGO with over 25 years’ experience working to defend children and their rights. As part of ChildFund Alliance, we are working in more than 60 countries around the world.

The Alliance helps over 14 million children and their families to overcome poverty and create sustainable solutions that protect and advance their rights and well-being.

In El Salvador, for example, Educo runs a project in six areas of the country where there is prolonged violence. It aims to protect children from forced displacement due to the protracted crisis there – one that is largely forgotten on the international stage.

The project provides assistance and protection to children and their families, supporting them with housing, food and hygiene as well as psychosocial assistance. All of this work runs alongside the focus of the project, which is to ensure children do not fall out of education and if they have, to re-integrate them.

It is heartening to see some governments and institutions finally recognizing the need to focus on education in emergencies. The EU Commission’s aim of improving joint planning, coordination and response is timely.

This collaboration within the Commission, with EU Member States and among other donors and partners is fundamental if we are to reach the millions of children at risk of becoming a lost generation.

Boosting the Commission’s allocation of humanitarian assistance to 10% for education in emergencies and protracted crises is also a great step, but as we have seen before, governments fall short of meeting their commitments.

If the countries that agreed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals really want to meet them, and stay on top of the Education 2030 Agenda, pressure on governments is also required.

We cannot have any more children ending up in the emergency room rather than the classroom.

Sources:
1. ODI Education cannot wait. Proposing a fund for education in emergencies, p. 7
2. http://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/news/Communication_on_Education_in_Emergencies_and_Protracted_Crises.pdf
3. https://www.savethechildren.org/content/dam/global/reports/education-and-child-protection/what-children-want.pdf
4. https://www.savethechildren.net/malala-day
5. https://www.childrenonthemove.org/our-recommendations/

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Excerpt:

José María Faura is the Executive Director of Educo, a global development and humanitarian action NGO with over 25 years’ experience working to defend children and their rights, and especially the right to an equitable and quality education.

The post World’s First International Day of Education Could Not Come Soon Enough appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Solar panels can be seen on three buildings in the Morro de Santa Marta favela in Rio de Janeiro. In the middle is the CEPAC daycare center, with a green terrace and two sets of photovoltaic panels, which reduced its expenses by 80 percent thanks to solar energy. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RÍO DE JANEIRO, Jan 22 2019 (IPS)

“We can’t work just to pay the electric bill,” complained José Hilario dos Santos, president of the Residents Association of Morro de Santa Marta, a favela or shantytown embedded in Botafogo, a traditional middle-class neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro.

The high cost of electricity in the favela is due to consumption estimates made by Light, the local electricity distributor, based on telemetry, without reading the meters in each home, Santos believes.

“The bill is high even when you’re not home, when you’re traveling,” he lamented.

The steady years-long rise in electricity has turned solar energy into a general desire, especially among the poor in the favelas, who account for nearly a quarter of the 6.6 million inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro proper, because the electric bill absorbs a large proportion of their income.

 

 

At least 15 public institutions in Santa Marta already have solar installations that lower their energy costs, thanks to Insolar, a “social business” company active in the neighborhood since 2015.

Four daycare centres, churches, the Residents Association, a music school and the local samba school now have solar power systems, with the support of Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell.

Now the idea is to extend the initiative to 30 businesses on the “morro” or hill where the Santa Marta favela is located. In addition, Insolar is seeking funding to install pilot systems in 14 other favelas in Rio de Janeiro, to expand solar energy, for which there is growing demand in these areas, said Henrique Drumond, the company’s founder.

“Our goal is to democratise solar energy,” he explained. “We are doing it together with the local residents, involving them in the whole process, training local labour,” he told IPS, which made several tours of Santa Marta and other favelas to talk with residents about the arrival of solar power in their lives and their economies.

For further information read Solar Energy Drives Social Development in Brazil’s Favelas

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President Omar al-Bashir waves to supporters during a rally in Khartoum on January 9. Sudanese authorities have revoked the credentials of at least six journalists working for international outlets. (Reuters/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah)

By Staff Correspondent
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 22 2019 (CPJ)

Sudanese authorities yesterday revoked the credentials of at least six journalists working for international news outlets, including Qatar-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera, according to news reports. The outlets have been covering demonstrations against President Omar al-Bashir. Bashir is due to travel to Qatar today for his first international trip since the protests began in December, according to reports.

“Sudan’s move against the international media is another desperate attempt to muzzle the press during this period of unrest,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour. “It is particularly ironic that Al-Jazeera journalists are denied their right to report as Bashir travels to Qatar.”

Sudanese security officials yesterday revoked the credentials of Al-Jazeera correspondents Osama Ahmed and Ahmed Alrehaid and camera operator Badawi Bashir; and Al Arabiya correspondent Saad el-Din Hassan, the journalists’ outletsreported. The same day, authorities revoked the credentials of Turkish Anatolia Agency correspondent Bahram Abdel Moneim and photographer Mahmoud Hajjaj, according to the local press freedom group Sudanese Journalists Network. In a statement, Al-Jazeera denounced Sudan’s “arbitrary decision” and called on authorities to reinstate the accreditation.

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY & KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 22 2019 (IPS)

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, and substantial opposition from community groups, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are still being promoted to deliver sustainable development.

Public-private hospital partnerships are supposed to ensure that the private sector will offer much needed efficiency in healthcare provision.

Anis Chowdhury

However, any government considering healthcare PPPs should be aware of the Australian experience, especially after what has happened with the Northern Beaches Hospital, a PPP between the New South Wales government and Healthscope.

The A$600m facility was officially opened with much fanfare on 19 November 2018. With a A$2.2 billion 20-year contract, it was billed as the flagship project for the NSW government to hand over to the private sector delivery of a wide range of public services from prisons to technical education to health.

Profits before patients
The chief executive officer resigned two days after the official opening amidst claims of critical shortages of staff, medicines and supplies since it opened to its first patients on 30 October. Anaesthetists at the hospital have threatened to stop performing elective surgery until critical problems are addressed, leading to a crisis atmosphere.

The government and hospital authority describe the staffing and supply shortages as ‘hiccups’ and ‘teething problems’. But these are not trivial, often involving life and death issues. In one particular case, a new mother’s life was put in danger after undergoing a caesarean section at the hospital. Her attending doctors and nurses had to frantically try to source blood and equipment to operate safely. Thankfully, that episode did not end in any tragedies.

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported on complaints that the hospital has been forced to cancel elective surgery perhaps due to lack of staff. The facility suffers from a lack of basic supplies including syringes, intravenous lines, medical swabs, saline bags, needles, wash cloths, rubbing alcohol and maternity pads. It also reported inadequate nursing staff and a large number of locum nurses.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The Australian doctors’ union has warned the head of NSW Health that junior medical officers were required to do ‘unsafe work hours’. For instance, one intern was assigned 60 patients while junior medical officers were expected to work up to six hours of overtime daily, usually unpaid. One doctor reported working 110 hours in a week.

Costing taxpayers more
This latest healthcare PPP is also costing taxpayers more than what the government announced before. For example, before the 2015 state election, the former health minister said that the hospital would cost only A$1 billion. However, the true cost to taxpayers was A$2.14 billion.

This is not the only instance of healthcare PPPs going wrong. In the early 1990s, the NSW government opened the privately-operated Port Macquarie Base Hospital. The authorities announced savings by ignoring additional administrative and legal costs; it ended up costing about A$6 million more than a public hospital of an equivalent size. The Auditor-General’s report concluded, “The government is, in effect, paying for the hospital twice and giving it away”.

Yet, the ‘teething problems’ had not gone away 13 years after it was privatised by the Conservative Government. Before its 20-year contract period ended, the Labour Government felt compelled to buy back the hospital for A$80 million.

Similarly, after years of losses, the South Australian government was forced to buy back a privately run hospital opened by Healthscope in 1995 at a cost of A$17.5 million to the taxpayer. The Victorian government bought back Latrobe Regional Hospital, opened in 1998 under a similar agreement, two years later, after suffering A$8.9 million worth of losses. Years later, the Victorian government announced plans to buy back Mildura Base Hospital, the last remaining privately run hospital in the state.

Private operators not more efficient
Despite these spectacular failures, governments do not seem to learn from past mistakes, instead continuing with more PPPs. Therefore, a dogmatic belief that the market will provide healthcare more efficiently must be behind the push for these partnerships.

The Australian Productivity Commission’s 2009 report found that, on average, the efficiency of public and private hospitals is similar nationwide. Public hospitals in NSW and Victoria were more efficient than their private counterparts by more than 3% and 4% respectively despite operating far more in rural areas (generally much more costly), and their high-cost responsibility to provide accident and emergency services.

More recently, the independent McKell Institute reported similar findings, and noted a disconcerting trend of private operators only picking the most profitable services to run, leaving the public sector with the more costly, less profitable and onerous work. This allows private operators to capture more profits while leaving the government, and taxpayers, with more risks and costs.

Health rights undermined
Health is a right, and society (and therefore government) has a responsibility to ensure that everyone has access to health services. But with PPPs, the state becomes health service purchaser, instead of provider. Under PPPs, private operators, previously earning patient fees and health insurance payments, can profitably earn public funds meant to finance patient services.

Profit-seeking is ‘distorting’ patient-health service provider relations. As noted by the New England Journal of Medicine, “Our main objection to investor-owned care is not that it wastes taxpayers’ money, nor even that it causes modest decrements in quality. The most serious problem with such care is that it embodies a new value system that severs the communal roots and Samaritan traditions of hospitals, makes doctors and nurses the instruments of investors, and views patients as commodities.’’

Anis Chowdhury, Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University & University of New South Wales (Australia), held senior United Nations positions in New York and Bangkok.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development, Food and Agriculture Organization, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007.

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A young boy runs with his tyre past buildings damaged by airstrikes in Saada Old Town. Credit: Giles Clarke/OCHA

By Martin Scott
NORWICH, UK, Jan 22 2019 (IPS)

According to a recent poll of aid agencies by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the most under-reported crisis of 2018 was the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, commented that, ‘the brutality of the conflict is shocking, the national and international neglect outrageous… I have seldom witnessed such a gap between needs and assistance’.

Other ‘forgotten crises’, according to the agencies polled, include the Central African Republic, Lake Chad Basin, Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Burundi, Nigeria and, for the first time, Venezuela.

Highlighting such ‘reporting gaps’ is important because international news coverage plays a key role in raising awareness of and drawing attention to humanitarian crises, in order to secure the funding needed to help.

The 2018 U.N. funding appeal for the Democratic Republic of the Congo was less than 50 percent funded. Such under-funding is linked, albeit indirectly, to a lack of public awareness. In the UK, for example, a recent survey, commissioned by Human Appeal, showed that two thirds of adults were not aware of the recent violence in the DRC.

In response, it is not enough to simply urge news organisations to do more. We need to understand the main causes of this acute lack of coverage of humanitarian affairs, in order to know what can be done about it.

Dr Martin Scott

This is the aim of an ongoing academic research project into Humanitarian Journalism and was the focus of a report I published late last year entitled The State of Humanitarian Journalism with Dr Kate Wright at the University of Edinburgh and Dr Mel Bunce from City, University of London.

 

Humanitarian journalism in crisis

The research makes clear that humanitarian journalism is itself in crisis.

Our survey of over 1500 individuals involved in the aid sector, revealed widespread dissatisfaction with the quantity and quality of mainstream news coverage of humanitarian affairs. 73% of respondents agreed that mainstream news media does not produce enough coverage of humanitarian issues. News coverage was also criticised for being selective, sporadic, simplistic and partial.

It is not enough to simply urge news organisations to do more. We need to understand the main causes of this acute lack of coverage of humanitarian affairs, in order to know what can be done about it.
We also examined coverage of over 20,000 news outlets to find out how many were regularly reporting on humanitarian affairs. Only 12 covered the four humanitarian events we analysed. These events included the ongoing crisis in South Sudan, the 2016 Aceh earthquake, the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit and the 2017 UN appeal for humanitarian funding.

The 12 news organisations which did cover all four of these events included Al Jazeera English, the Guardian Global Development site, IRIN News, the Thomson Reuters Foundation and Voice of America.

Our analysis of their coverage showed that they do a better job than most at reporting humanitarian crises. These particular news organisations generally offer sustained and detailed coverage, regularly producing features, analysis pieces and even some campaigning reports.

Furthermore, while journalists are often accused of telling very similar stories about disasters, we find that these particular news outlets actually varied significantly in how they covered such crises.

For instance, we found that Thomson Reuters focused on stories about dramatic and timely events, while the specialist humanitarian news outlet IRIN wrote thematic pieces and analysis, targeted at global audiences.

 

The challenges of funding humanitarian news

The main reason why few news organisations, and particularly commercial news outlets, regularly produce original coverage of humanitarian affairs is the very high costs involved.

It is very expensive to fund on-the-ground reporters and the kinds of time-consuming research and travel necessary to explain the complex causes of humanitarian crises.

In fact, we find that almost all international news outlets regularly covering humanitarian affairs rely on support from either states or private foundations. There are issues with both sources of funding.

Foundation funding alone rarely offers journalists long-term financial sustainability. Professor Rodney Benson, in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, at New York University, explains that, ‘most major foundations see themselves as providing… short-term start-up support with the expectation that non-profits will eventually achieve commercial sustainability’.

In addition, there just isn’t enough donor money to go around. Very few foundations are active in this area; often because of their objectives don’t align with those of journalists or because of the difficulty of measuring the impact of their investments.

This is why specialist non-profit news outlets reporting on humanitarian issues struggle to survive.

For example, despite featuring in our list as one of just 12 news outlets regularly covering humanitarian affairs, the news non-profit Humanosphere closed down in 2017 due to a loss of funding.

Other foundation-dependent news organisations in this area that have either closed or dramatically downsized in recent months include News Deeply and the International Reporting Project.

Support from Western governments can also subsidise the high costs of producing regular, original coverage of humanitarian affairs for radio stations like the BBC World Service and Voice of America (VoA).

For instance, we found that humanitarian issues were mentioned in nearly one in five (19%) items on the news bulletins of the BBC World Service.

However, there are important questions to be asked about the ways in which humanitarian news might be affected when governments support journalism as part of their foreign policy objectives – and to achieve ‘soft power’.

We found no evidence that government officials directly interfered in editorial output of either World Service or VoA. However, a key problem, at both organisations, was the way in which journalists’ ability to cover humanitarian issues in particular geographic regions waxed and waned in relation to governments’ strategic and funding priorities.

Such problems were even more acute at international news outlets, based outside the West and funded by state money. Journalists at Al Jazeera English, for example, faced considerable ethical dilemmas about how to cover events in areas where Qatar was involved militarily, or had diplomatic interests. This includes Yemen, Syria, Sudan and South Sudan.

 

Paying for humanitarian reporting

Given the inherent costs and challenges associated with funding humanitarian news, there are no easy answers to the question of how to increase coverage of under-reported crises.

However, there is also some cause for optimism. In the Aid Attitudes Tracker, a largescale survey of audiences in the UK, France, Germany and the US, more people claimed to follow news about “humanitarian disasters” (59%) either “closely” or “fairly closely” than any other type of international news (see Clarke et al 2018).

Perhaps audiences are more interested in humanitarian journalism than many journalists think. Some may even be willing to pay for it.

An audience survey for IRIN recently found that a majority (57%) would consider signing up to some form of paid subscription model.

Encouraging audiences to pay directly for journalism they trust and value may ultimately be the only sustainable solution to the crisis facing humanitarian news.

* https://people.uea.ac.uk/en/persons/martin-scott

 

The State of Humanitarian Journalism report is the latest publication from the ongoing Humanitarian Journalism Research Project by Dr Martin Scott, Dr Kate Wright and Dr Mel Bunce. This AHRC-supported research has involved interviews with nearly 200 journalists and media funders; as well as surveys and extensive newsroom observations. More information about this project can be found here.

The post Why Are so Many Humanitarian Crises Under-reported? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr Martin Scott* is a Senior Lecturer in Media and International Development at the University of East Anglia, UK.

The post Why Are so Many Humanitarian Crises Under-reported? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A protester in the Slovak capital, Bratislava holds up a picture of murdered journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jan 22 2019 (IPS)

“I’ve never known a time when it was as bad as it is now,” says Beata Balogova, the Vice-Chair of the International Press Institute (IPI) and Editor in Chief of the Slovak Spectator Sme. “In terms of what’s going on with journalists, we’re in a very unique period,” she adds.

Balogova explains during a break from editing the paper at its headquarters in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, how growing animosity towards journalists in Slovakia and other parts of Europe, is being increasingly violently expressed.

“It’s more intense now, there are verbal attacks, threats and the internet discussions on stories are much more aggressive [than before],” she tells IPS.

She says she is just finishing filing legal action against an anonymous person after she received online threats, including calls for a massacre at her newspaper—specifically a repeat of the 2015 one at French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo where two brothers opened fire in the newsroom and killed 12.

It is just under a year since the murder of Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak, who had been investigating links between the Slovak government and the Italian mafia, and Balogova says journalists are having to take all threats more seriously.

“What’s changed over the course of the last year is that in the past a lot of journalists didn’t pay much attention to anonymous threats or aggressions, but as they are seeing now, this kind of hate is being expressed in physical attacks on journalists,” she says.

The murder of Kuciak and his fiancee last February made headlines around the world and led to the resignation of the Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. It also raised questions about press freedom and the safety of journalists in the country and focused international attention on apparent serious shortfalls in press freedom in other countries in the region.

This month a new special investigative journalism centre has been set up in Slovakia in memory of Kuciak—the Jan Kuciak Investigative Centre—and is the first such centre in Slovakia.

But while its founders believe it can become an important investigative journalism hub facilitating cross-border investigations into global organised crime, it opens at a time when Slovakia continues to struggle with eroding press freedom, as well as growing and very serious concerns about not just declining press freedom in Eastern Europe, but a complete lack of it in some places, even in European Union (EU) member states.

Romania has taken over the EU presidency this month at the same time it has been criticised for serious shortcomings in press freedom. In Hungary, critics say Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz have virtually liquidated all opposition media, and the Polish ruling party is, according to critics, systematically doing the same.

There remain concerns about the Czech media being controlled by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and his business associates, as well as the President’s openly hostile attitude to reporters. There have also been massive protests in the last few weeks in Serbia against President Aleksander Vucic and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party, in part over a lack of press freedom.

Meanwhile, just last week a court in Montenegro sentenced investigative journalist Jovo Martinovic to 18 months in prison on charges of drug trafficking and criminal associations. He maintains his contacts with criminals were part of his investigative work and that the case against him was politically motivated and press freedom advocates said his sentence had been handed down as a warning to other journalists in the region.

“The ruling will have a chilling effect on other journalists in the region – they will think that if they infiltrate the mafia and work with them, they need to fear not just the mafia but the government of their own country too,” Pauline Ades-Mevel of media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told IPS.

Media watchdogs like RSF as well as international organisations such as the European Commission, have highlighted declining press freedom across the region in recent years.

Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Serbia have all fallen significantly in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom rankings in the last few years amid concerns over authoritarian governments’ use of legislation, taxes, takeovers, forced closures and, some believe, even security service surveillance, to try and silence critical news outlets.

Meanwhile, public denigration of individual journalists and media by politicians have helped fuel what some describe as a “hostile environment” for journalists and encouraged verbal and physical attacks on them.

“The rhetoric from certain politicians has certainly played its part in the [increased] number of attacks on journalists,” Slovak journalist and founder of the Jan Kuciak Investigative Centre, Arpad Soltesz, told IPS.

One of the latest cases of violence against a journalist was an attempt to break into the apartment of investigative reporter Milan Jovanovic on Dec. 30—just weeks after his home in Belgrade, Serbia, had been burnt down after someone threw a Molotov cocktail into it. His requests for police protection after the first attack had not been answered.

The response of Vucic—who dismissed the attack as ‘just a burglary’—and the court ruling in Montenegro is typical, said Ades-Mevel, of governments only paying lip-service to international bodies over media freedom commitments. Both countries are pursuing accession negotiations with the EU.

“These are examples of how politicians can pretend to the EU that there are improvements to the rule of law and press freedom, but that the reality is different,” she said.

But while the situation looks grim in many countries, their relations with Brussels could provide a way of effecting change and improving the environment for journalists and media.

“It is important that the governments in Serbia and Montenegro understand they are under scrutiny. Pressure needs to come from outside for governments to clear up from the inside,” said Ades-Mevel.

She added that if action were taken against existing EU members over dwindling press freedom, it would send a strong signal to those hoping to join the bloc.

Earlier this month, the European Parliament (MEPs), agreed to back proposed measures to cut funding for member states where the rule of law, including press freedom, was seen to be undermined. They will come into force if backed by EU member states.

But governments, such as those in Poland and Hungary, have brushed off concerns over media freedom in the past, pointing out examples of critical news outlets as evidence of healthy media plurality.

“Orban has often used the argument that ‘look, there is media plurality, there are over 300 media outlets that can be described as opposition’. But these are normally small and don’t have a national reach,” says Balogova.

“What [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orban and his oligarch friends have actually done is ….. changed the public service media into an extended branch of the cabinet office. There is coordinated news production, there are weekly meetings where bosses of the pro-Orban media meet and set the news agenda. It is the worst nightmare version of what the communists tried, and failed, to do, and now Orban has done it to perfection,” she adds.

Jelena Kleut, Assistant Professor at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Novi Sad, in Serbia, told IPS: “We may be already past the point of no return here. So much has been done to weaken press freedom in Serbia, not just the attacks on journalists but the ruling party gaining control of the media, so I’m not sure if even EU pressure could really change anything.”

Other journalists believe that third-sector organisations hold the key to creating a less hostile environment for journalists to work in.

Pavla Holcova, a prominent Czech investigative journalist, told IPS: “Politicians have been involved in creating a hostile environment for journalists [but] we, as journalists, can’t do very much to stop them [verbally attacking journalists]. We need civil society to stand up and do that for us, to try and get politicians to change.”

However, few people are expecting the environment for journalists to change anytime soon in the region, and some are fearing the worst.

“It was just pure luck that Milan Jovanovic was not in his house at the time it was set on fire. I hope no journalist gets killed but with the frequency of attacks we are seeing now it is something that could happen,” said Kleut.

Related Articles

• Getting Away with Murder in Slovakia
• Media Watchdogs Fear a Chill in Slovakia

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Drone visual of the area in Upper East Region, Ghana prior to restoration taken in 2015. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), inaction on land degradation in Africa costs 286 billion dollars annually as 280 million tons of cereal crops are lost each year. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 22 2019 (IPS)

One month on since the Global Compact for Migration was approved, civil society has highlighted the need to turn words into action, supporting those who have been displaced or forced to migrate as a result of environmental degradation.

In December, over 160 countries adopted the landmark Global Compact for Migration (GCM) which recognised environmental degradation and climate change as drivers of migration. It is the first time a major migration policy has specifically addressed such issues.

While there have been some hiccups along the way, including the withdrawals by the United States and most recently Brazil, the next steps are even more uncertain.

“Now we have the recognition in the GCM, now we need to move from text to action,” Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) Senior Advisor on Disaster Displacement and Climate Change Nina Birkeland said to IPS.

“Because people are moving, we can’t pretend that it is not happening,” she added.

According to the Global Humanitarian Forum, approximately 135 million people may be displaced by 2045 as a result of land degradation and desertification.

A study by the University of Oxford estimates that up to 200 million may be displaced due to climate change by 2050.

But this is not simply a phenomenon that will happen in the future—it is already a reality for some.

As migrant caravans from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador continue to make their way towards the U.S., many have pointed to climate change and years of crop failure as the main drivers.

Lesser known is the role of deforestation and land degradation in prompting such movements.

Between 1990 and 2005, almost 20 percent of Guatemala’s rainforests were cut down for palm oil plantations and cattle ranches. This has since lead to soil degradation and eroded land in a country where one-third of the population is employed by the agricultural industry.

Across Africa, agriculture accounts for 80 percent of employment but land degradation is leaving families and young people without food or income security and thus forcing them to search for greener pastures.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), inaction on land degradation in Africa costs 286 billion dollars annually as 280 million tons of cereal crops are lost each year.

“If land is degrading and the productive capacity of the land is degrading and there are no income opportunities anymore, there is no reason for people, young people in particular, to stay in the village,” World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Sustainable Land Management Specialist Chris Reij told IPS.

“The general lesson is: fight land degradation, improve living conditions and more young people will stay rather than leave,” he added.

According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), restoring just 12 percent of degraded agricultural land could boost smallholders’ incomes by 35-40 billion dollars per year.

Reij pointed to the case of Burkina Faso which saw promising results after villages invested in sustainable land management practices.

According to a study by Reij and his team, Burkina Faso’s Ranawa village saw a decline in land productivity, prompting almost a quarter of its population to leave between 1975 and 1985.

Once the village began improving soil and water conservation techniques, there was no recorded outmigration and some families even returned due to restored productivity. 

Comparing villages that implemented sustainable land management and those that did not, the study found that rural poverty decreased as much as 50 percent in the former while poverty increased in the latter.

‘‘In 1980 only two families had cattle, now all families have cattle. Almost no one had a roof of corrugated iron…just look around you and you’ll notice that almost every family has such roofs…the land where we stand used to be barren, but now it has become productive again,” one farmer from Ranawa told Reij’s team.

In 2016, UNCCD implemented a similar project known as the 3S initiative which aims to restore 10 million hectares of land in areas most impacted by land degradation in Africa. It also hopes to provide 2 million green jobs to the 11 million young Africans who enter the job market each year.

Though it is not the silver bullet and migration will of course still continue to some capacity, investing in land restoration and providing economic opportunities is certainly a part of the solution.

While many countries focus on border security as part of their migration policy, Birkeland urged governments to look at reduction and prevention of displacement.

“We need to look at where this is actually happening and why it is happening. Before you even start to talk about border control, you need to look at how you can try to reduce displacement,” she said.

This includes investments into projects in developing countries, especially with climate change or environmental degradation-induced displacement in mind, and increased protections for those who are forced or choose to leave. 

While it is an enormous challenge, Reij highlighted the need for donors and governments to focus action on improving livelihoods and economic well-being as well as supporting land restoration.

“If you look at the most extreme scenario, unless the economic perspectives of young people can be improved in the next decade, what choice do they have? They can migrate to cities and maybe continue subsequently to Europe, or they can join Boko Haram and similar groups,” he told IPS.

“I think donors and governments have an interest in supporting the scaling of existing restoration success so that millions of smallholders will be able to improve their lives and livelihoods, and that will help reduce migration….we know what to do, we know how to do it. We now need to do it,” Reij concluded.

Related Articles

• Eat Plants, Save the Planet
• Poverty-Stricken Communities in Ghana are Restoring Once-Barren Land
• Land Degradation: A Triple Threat in Africa

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Tackling Development Challenges through Structural Transformation and Trade

By Andrzej Bolesta
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jan 21 2019 (IPS)

Structural economic transformation and the expansion of international trade are among the most pressing issues to be addressed, if Asia’s landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) are to overcome the development challenges related to their geographical locations.

The situation is worrying. The share of LLDCs in global merchandise exports has decreased in recent years. Among Asia’s LLDCs, it is lower than among the least developed countries (LDCs) and landlocked developing countries in general.

At the same time, exports remain highly concentrated in a few commodities and has not changed significantly since 2000.

In Asia, export concentration remains consistently higher than in LLDCs as a whole (see figure below). The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) lists Azerbaijan, as the economy with the highest product concentration in the group.

Crude petroleum, petroleum gas and refined petroleum constituted 88 per cent of export revenue in 2016. A high level of concentration, due to the reliance on exports of minerals is also recorded by Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Mongolia and Uzbekistan.

Andrzej Bolesta

According to an ESCAP study, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have captured more than 87 per cent of the Asian LLDC group’s total exports. As a result, the overall share of the manufacturing sector in LLDCs has been stagnant at around 13-14 per cent of GDP since 2000.

High trade and transit costs due to the landlocked-ness do not help, making imported inputs expensive and manufacturing exports uncompetitive.

While growth based on resource-intensive industries has managed to accelerate development in some of the landlocked developing economies, such growth is highly vulnerable to external shocks and fluctuations in the global economy.

In contrast, growth based on more diversified exports is more sustainable. The importance of expanding the manufacturing sector as a source of productivity gains cannot be underestimated and LLDCs should therefore increase efforts to structurally transform their economies.

Naturally, these are not the only predicaments to the transformation from being “landlocked” to being “land-linked”. LLDCs also face institutional and physical challenges which undermine their participation in the global economy, such as non-tariff barriers and inadequate infrastructure.

Source: UNCTAD

For example, there are missing links in the Trans-Asian Railway network, which account for around 1,400 km in Central Asia and some transit countries, 3,400 km in Northeast Asia and 340 km in Caucasus.

Vienna Programme of Action to the Rescue

The plethora of challenges – transit policies, infrastructure, trade, regional integration and cooperation, structural transformation and means of implementation – are listed as priorities of the Vienna Programme of Action (VPoA) for Landlocked Developing Countries 2014-2024.

The VPoA is the international community’s primary action plan to “to address the special development needs and challenges of landlocked developing countries arising from landlocked-ness, remoteness and geographical constraints in a more coherent manner and thus contribute to an enhanced rate of sustainable and inclusive growth, which can contribute to the eradication of poverty by moving towards the goal of ending extreme poverty”.

ESCAP assists landlocked developing countries in overcoming their development challenges in various ways. At a recent capacity building workshop for government experts, the conclusions were clear.

In addressing development predicaments, efforts should be focused on LLDCs’ structural economic transformation and greater participation in the global economy. Sectoral strategies should, however, be well thought through and aligned with overall national developmental objectives.

For example, value addition can be created through activities linked to regional and global value chains. Asia’s LLDCs should identify higher-productivity sectors to support and promote. For this, they need to channel the inflows of FDI accordingly, so that investment generates productive jobs and allow for technological advancements.

Asia’s LLDCs have been increasingly resorting to industrial policies to facilitate structural transformation, explicitly targeting industrial sectors for development. Perhaps this should be seen as part of the solution.

Indeed, all the available means and instruments must be used to address the challenges of landlocked-ness. To facilitate further progress, ESCAP is hosting the Euro-Asia Regional Midterm Review of the Vienna Programme of Action on 11 and 12 February 2019.

With the participation of landlocked developing countries, transit countries, international organisations and donor states, the event will be crucial in assessing achievements and determine future actions.

The post Asia’s Landlocked appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Andrzej Bolesta is Economic Affairs Officer, Macroeconomic Policy and Financing for Development Division at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

The post Asia’s Landlocked appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A man walks down the street.
It's a street in a strange world.
Maybe it's the Third World.
Maybe it's his first time around.
He doesn't speak the language.
He holds no currency.
He is a foreign man.
He is surrounded by the sound.
The sound!
Cattle in the marketplace,
scatterlings and orphanages.
He looks around, around.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jan 21 2019 (IPS)

I thought about this song by Paul Simon while I in 2011 spent a few weeks in Kinshasa. I was a foreign man in a strange world, surrounded by sights and sounds, completely dependent on my new-found Congolese friends. When our taxi got stuck in a traffic jam and we had to walk to our destination I was stopped by a group of heavily armed youngsters, lead by a man who claimed to be a policeman, charging me with an exaggerated high fine for taking photos within a restricted area.

Zaída Catalán and Michael Sharp. Credit: TT News Agency/AFP/Getty Images and Human Rights Watch

From my first day there I had found that in this impoverished nation a person like me was considered to be a walking wallet, incessantly confronted with phrases like: “I helped you, will you not help me?” “Monsieur, only something small.” I had to give some Congolese Francs to soldiers and policemen and US dollars to bureaucrats, the price depended on their status and position. The “policeman” who had stopped me was particularily threatening and I did not like the sight of Kalashnikovs in the hands of his companions. However, my friends were well connected. Since they were Congolese citizens responsible for the wellbeing of a UN official, they found the situation embarrassing. I did not carry a camera and could accordingly not have taken any photo. My Congolese friends spent more than half an hour trying to convince the threatening “policeman” to leave me alone. Finally one of them called a high positioned politician and handed the mobile to my adversary. Listening to the phone voice the self-proclaimed law enforcer became visibly scared and quickly disappeared.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a dangerous place. In 1997, Larent-Désiré Kabila became President after the kleptocrat Sese Seko Mobuto had fled to Morocco. Tensions between Kabila and interfering neighbouring countries caused the so called Second Congo War, involving the armies of nine African countries and at least twenty other armed groups. When Kabila was assassinated in 2001 he was succeeded by his son Joseph, who still rules the country. By 2008 the Second Congo War had caused 5.4 million deaths, the deadliest conflict since World War II.

In 2003, foreign armies had pulled out of Congo, though ethnic rivalries had become endemic while warring fractions try to control the gold, diamonds and cobalt mining, as well as oil drilling. Within such a panorama of violence, death and suffering, my encounter with false law enforcement was insignificant, though I was reminded of how vulnerable an outsider can be within a corrupt and violent environment where s/he does not speak the local language and furthermore is ignorant of hidden dangers, behavioural codes and power constellations.

On 12 March 2017, Zaida Catalán and Michael Sharp were killed close to the village of Bunkonde in Central Congo.1 On 24 April, a video of the murder was presented by the Congolese Government to the international press corps. It showed how Catalán and Sharp were shot and beheaded by men wearing the red bandannas of Kanuina Nsapu rebels.

The UN experts were investigating mass murders suspected to have been committed by Government troops. They spoke only English and French and had arrived at their fatal meeting on local motorbike taxis. On the video, the perpetrators spoke Tshilub, the language of Kanuina Nsapu rebels, though they made several linguistic errors. Orders were given by an invisible person, speaking French and Lingala (the language commonly spoken by Government troops), while one of the murderers in Tshiluba declared: “We belong to Kamuina Nsapu. When you come and force us to behave in an evil manner you die!” The sharp and detached video recording gives the impression of a staged incident.

The day before her death, Catalán had on her mobile phone registered a meeting with a member of Kamuina Nsapu. In Tshiluba he advised the UN observers to postpone the meeting, the Bunkonde area was extremely dangerous for people like them. The interpreters falsely translated the man´s warning as a statement that it was perfectly safe to attend the meeting. The interpreters were later exposed as Government agents. This and several other details (diary entries, phone records, testimonies) scrutinized by both local and international experts seem to indicate that the murders were instigated by the Congolese Government.

At the time, negotiations for an extension of UN support to the DRC was in a critical stage. Due to recent criticism of its appalling human rights record the Congolese Government feared it could lose UN support. However, three days after the bodies of Catalán and Sharp had been found, a new deal had been negotiated and the Security Council approved a renewed mandate, defined as “the protection of civilians, humanitarian personnel and human rights defenders under imminent threat of physical violence and to support the Government of the DRC in its stabilization and peace consolidation efforts.”2

In November 2018, Gregory B. Starr, former UN Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security, presented a 47-page report on the murder of Catalán and Sharp. Contrary to documentation available to the UN and leaked to the international press, Sharp´s report did not mention any indication of Governmental involvement. Instead it criticized Catalán´s and Sharp’s decision to use motorbike taxis, stating it allowed the murder to take place.

However, Starr had during his contacts with the victims´ parents declared: “We know who killed them, they look like Kamuina Nsapu. I’m not saying ´the Army´ or something like that, because we want the Congolese to continue to work with us on this.” Gregory Sharp was unaware that his statement had been recorded.3

Michael Sharp had a BA in history from Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg USA and a MA in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution at Philipps-Universität, Marburg, Germany. From 2012 to 2015, he served as Eastern Congo Coordinator for The Mennonite Central Committee. In 2015 he began contract employment with the UN Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Zaída Catalán was a vegan, animal rights activist, and feminist. She had a BA in law from Stockholm University, Sweden. She had been vice president of the youth organisation of The Swedish Green Party, but left politics to support vulnerable groups in conflict areas. After working for EUPOL (The European Union Police and Rule of Law) in Afghanistan, the West Bank and the DRC she became an expert of humanitarian issues within the same UN Group as Michael Sharp.

Catalán and Sharp remind me of other young idealists I have met, who by bilateral and international organisations quite irresponsibly have been sent on extremely dangerous missions. They were unescorted brought to their death on motorbike taxis, probably due to the fact that they assumed it would be easier for witnesses to testify about the massacre they were investigating if there were no UN soldiers present, as they were presumed to cooperate with the Government. The UN experts were lured into a deadly trap, something that might happen to any stranger investigating crimes within a context s/he is not entirely familiar with. What is particularily worrisome in this case is that a former Director of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service and former UN Under-Secretary-General blamed the death of two young idealists working for the UN on their own carelessness, while he for political reasons neglected ample evidence of the Congolese Government´s involvement in a gruesome crime.

1 They were members of a group of experts focusing its activities on areas of the DRC “affected by regional and international networks providing support to illegal armed groups, criminal networks and perpetrators of serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses”. The group was established in accordance with The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1533 (2004) (available at https://web.archive.org/web/20150917125926/http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1533/index.shtml).
2 https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/monusco
3 Swedish Television, 28 November 2018. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/ug/familjen-spelade-in-utredaren-i-hemlighet-har-undanhaller-han-information-om-mordet-pa-zaida-catal-n

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

The post Strangers in the Land: A Congolese Murder Case appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

A man walks down the street.
It's a street in a strange world.
Maybe it's the Third World.
Maybe it's his first time around.
He doesn't speak the language.
He holds no currency.
He is a foreign man.
He is surrounded by the sound.
The sound!
Cattle in the marketplace,
scatterlings and orphanages.
He looks around, around.

The post Strangers in the Land: A Congolese Murder Case appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Photo courtesy: Shelter Associates

By Pratima Joshi
PUNE, India , Jan 21 2019 (IPS)

One of the most laudable initiatives of the current government’s regime is the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) that was launched on Oct 2, 2014, with a larger vision of a clean India. The critical aspect of the mission was that—unlike many of the movements that preceded it—this had a measurable outcome (making India open defecation free) and a firm timeline (by 2019).

Having a mandate like this from the government gave nonprofits already working in the field of urban sanitation a major impetus, since prior to this it was a space largely neglected by policy makers. Even corporates, foundations, and public trusts started looking at the sanitation space and began aligning their vision with the Government of India’s by channelling their funds towards the same.

Over the last four years, there is a lot that the SBM has achieved. Through the gaps in the programme, however, there are important lessons that we can learn on what work needs to be done to help meet the mission of a cleaner India, and how best we should go ahead with that work.

 

What SBM (Urban) has achieved so far

With the deadline of Oct 2, 2019 fast approaching, it is important to take a holistic view of the positive outcomes of SBM.

Communities have been mere witnesses through this process of making India Open Defecation Free. They have not been made a part of the process which should ideally have been a prerequisite, in order to make it sustainable.

The core programme focuses on ensuring the building and usage of toilets to reach a national Open Defecation Free (ODF) status. Since October 2014, according to the central government, SBM (U) has equipped over 5,219,604* households with toilets, and 417,496* community and public toilets have been delivered. A whopping 3,362* cities have been declared ODF, which accounts for 94 percent of the targeted cities.

There are still gaps that need to be filled
If we have to reach the target of an ODF India in less than a year, we need to study some of the gaps in the SBM, and identify certain key action and policy recommendations.

 

1. There is a lack of granular data

One of the major drawbacks has been the absence of use of granular spatial data to make informed decisions and plan targeted interventions. Unavailability of evidence-based data has been a lacuna of the SBM model—which, combined with the preconceived notion that the urban poor will not have space for a household toilet—has resulted in urban local bodies (ULBs) continuing to provide community toilets instead of individual household ones.

Since the authorities possess very little or no concrete data about certain areas of the cities—particularly slums—there is no solid means of monitoring the progress of the ongoing as well as completed work. Lack of critical data on existing infrastructure and household level data often leads to skewed delivery, where households have toilets with no drainage networks or lines to connect to and vice versa.

 

2. Outputs have been measured, not outcomes

The measurability of the campaign has been largely focused on the construction of and access to toilets—the actual need assessment and behaviour change has not been measured with the same exuberance.

This happened because communities have been mere witnesses through this process of making India ODF. They have not been made a part of the process which should ideally have been a prerequisite, in order to make it sustainable.

 

3. The focus has been limited to toilet construction

To make India ODF, just the construction of toilets is not enough. Areas such as behaviour change, monitoring and tracking, and faecal sludge management are some of the other parameters that need attention.

a) Behaviour change communication: Education around, and promotion of the usage of toilets are key to creating a truly Swachh Bharat. The key parameters around building awareness and changing behaviour are as follows:

• Show a strong linkage between health and sanitation
• Generate a demand for toilets
• Encourage solid waste management systems

b) Monitoring and tracking: The process of monitoring and tracking the programme has not been given due attention. For example, the current SBM model provides funding support to people in instalments—one given prior to the toilet being built, and the other after it is completed.

However, as this Policy Review Paper (commissioned by Shelter Associates) points out, because this process has not been rigorously tracked, there have been some unintended outcomes. It has led to either abuse of funds by families or delays in releasing instalments by ULBs (resulting in families swamped by debt even though their toilet stands completed). What’s more, there have been several instances where families who built a toilet had no drainage networks to connect to, thereby wasting premium space in their homes occupied by these toilets.

c) Faecal sludge management: Owing to sanitation being just one of the vital components of a larger value chain, the subsequent component of faecal sludge management should also be taken into account, and end-to-end solutions should be propagated.

 

4. Toilet instalment models need re-evaluation

The SBM model offers delivery of the toilets in two ways:

• Instalment model: Where the ULB transfers money into the bank accounts of the people served in two or three instalments for construction of toilets.
• Contractor model: Contractors are appointed and paid for by the local municipal corporation to provide material and construct toilets in households. This is a fully subsidised model where people get a free toilet.

However, as evident by the work done by both models (in Maharashtra), each of them has significant gaps that need to be addressed.

In the instalment model, there can be significant delays in the release of funds resulting in financial hardship for the family. On the other hand, families may utilise the first instalment—which is given before construction starts—for purposes other than building a toilet, for which, the ULB has no recovery mechanism in place. Overall, as a model, this is time consuming and tedious for the ULB.

The contractor model, while faster, gives the people served no control over the quality of work that is executed, as it is free. This often leads to dissatisfaction as people get shoddy toilets which start falling apart very soon.

One solution can be to draw upon CSR funds to deliver household toilets on a cost sharing basis. CSR money can be used to buy the material, which is then delivered at the doorstep of the individual, who then constructs it at their own cost. Only those houses that have access to a network are prioritised. The remaining houses get toilets as and when the ULB lays the networks. This is a model that we at Shelter Associates have tried.

 

5. Greater community involvement is needed

The last area of improvement would be to create a larger role for the community, civic body organisations, and nonprofits in the entire process, right from awareness building to the actual delivery of the product.

The national political leadership has certainly succeeded in sustaining the impetus to achieve ODF status by giving it visibility over the last four years. While a lot remains to be achieved, it took foresight to put toilets on the national agenda.

 

*Figures sourced from the website of Swachh Bharat Urban—Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India (as of Dec 10th)

 

Pratima Joshi has worked in the area of affordable housing and sanitation for the urban poor for nearly 25 years. Having completed her Masters in Architecture (Building Design for Developing Countries) from Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, University College (London), she is widely recognised as a leading planner and designer of slum infrastructure. She is one of the co-founders of Shelter Associates (SA), which aims to convert slums into housing societies for the poor by giving access to basic services like water, sanitation, and electricity, which urban slums often lack. Pratima is an Aga Khan scholar, Ashoka fellow, and Google Earth Hero (the only Indian to have received it).

 

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

 

The post Moving Beyond Just Building Toilets appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A plantain farm on the outskirts of Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. Current food production is among the largest sources of environmental degradation across the world. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 21 2019 (IPS)

While the modern agricultural system has helped stave off famines and feed the world’s 7 billion residents, the way we eat and produce food is posing a threat to future populations’ food security.

With an expected increase in population to 10 billion in 2050, ensuring food security is more important than ever.

However, current food production is among the largest sources of environmental degradation across the world.

If such production and consumption patterns continue, we will soon exceed our planetary boundaries such climate change and land use needed to survive and thrive.

“It was quite dramatic to see how much those planetary boundaries would be exceeded if we don’t do anything,” said Marco Springmann, one of the authors of a report examining the impact of the food system on the environment.

“The food system puts pressure on land management, in particular deforestation. If you knock down too many forests, you basically really mess up the regulating system of the ecosystem because forests store carbon dioxide but they also are habitats for wild species and biodiversity reservoirs,” he added.

Over 40 percent of the world’s land has been converted or set aside for agriculture alone. This has resulted in the loss of more than half of the world’s forests.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) notes that commercial agriculture is a key driver, especially the production of beef, soy beans, and palm oil.

This can be seen in the Amazon where trees have been cut down and land converted to make way for agricultural activities such as cattle ranching and soy cultivation, much of which is used as animal feed rather than for human consumption.

In fact, half of the planet’s usable land surface is devoted to livestock or the growing of feed for those animals, an area equivalent to North and South America combined.

The intensive use of fertilisers has further diminished land productivity, leading to degradation and even desertification.

Moreover, such actions have contributed significantly to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).

According to the “Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits” report, published in the Nature journal, the food system emitted over 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2010 alone.

The study also estimates that the environmental effects of the food system could increase by 50-90 percent without any targeted measures, beyond the “safe operating space for humanity.”

Springmann pointed to three ambitious measures that are necessary in order to stay within environmental limits including technological improvements which can increase sustainable food production and thus decrease the demand for more cropland.

Another measure seems to be even more daunting: shifting to a plant-based diet.

“If you go even more plant-based that would be even better for greenhouse gas emissions, and also it is more well-balanced and better for your health….the estimates are such that we would reduce the pressure on land use if we changed our diets,” Springmann told IPS.

The Nature report found that dietary changes towards healthier diets could help reduce GHG emissions and other environmental impacts by almost 30 percent.

A new report from the EAT-Lancet Commission also highlighted the need for dietary changes for environmental sustainability and public health.

“The food we eat and how we produce it determines the health of people and the planet, and we are currently getting this seriously wrong,” says one of the commission authors Tim Lang.

“We need a significant overhaul, changing the global food system on a scale not seen before in ways appropriate to each country’s circumstances. While this is unchartered policy territory and these problems are not easily fixed, this goal is within reach.…the scientific targets we have devised for a healthy, sustainable diet are an important foundation which will underpin and drive this change,” he added.

EAT-Lancet Commission’s recommended planetary health diet requires the consumption of red meat to be cut by half, while vegetables, fruit, and nuts must double.

North America has one of the highest meat consumption rates in the world. In 2018, American meat consumption hit a record high as the average consumer ate over 222 pounds of red meat and poultry.

If they are to follow the planetary health guidelines, North Americas would have to cut their consumption of red meat by 84 percent and eat six times more beans and lentils.

While plant-based diets have gained popularity in the region, seen through the success of the Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger companies, Springmann noted that information alone may not be enough to promote dietary changes.

“Of course everyone can change their diet and it would be great if they can do that. But if it is not made easy for the average consumer to do that then many people won’t do it,” he said.

Springmann suggested changing the prices of food products to include health and environmental impacts.

Beef for example would need to cost 40 percent more on average due to its contribution to GHG emissions.

This provides governments with potential revenue to invest in other areas such as the subsidisation of healthier products.

In addition to dietary changes, the EAT-Lancet Commission state that zero loss biodiversity, net zero expansion of agricultural land into natural ecosystems, and improvements in fertiliser and water use efficient are needed.

“The transformation that this Commission calls for is not superficial or simple, and requires a focus on complex systems, incentives, and regulations, with communities and governments at multiple levels having a part to play in redefining how we eat,” said The Lancet’s Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton.

“Our connection with nature holds the answer, and if we can eat in a way that works for our planet as well as our bodies, the natural balance of the planet’s resources will be restored. The very nature that is disappearing holds the key to human and planetary survival,” he added.

Related Articles

• Poverty-Stricken Communities in Ghana are Restoring Once-Barren Land
• Q&A: 17 Percent of the Problem, but 30 Percent of the Solution
• Land Degradation: A Triple Threat in Africa

The post Eat Plants, Save the Planet appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The work culture in South Korea is different and managers here often say that they are used to the rigid hierarchy at work.

By Ahn Mi Young
SEOUL, Jan 21 2019 (IPS)

Despite the international rise of South Korean businesses like Samsung, Hyundai and LG as global powerhouses, the corporate culture in this East Asian nation is often known to have a vertically rigid command line.

“When you have a good idea, you’d rather wait until you earn trust from your boss,” says Kim Chull-Soo, 42, who works at a Seoul-based finance business. “Trying to stand out in a crowd by explicitly speaking is not a good idea in Korean corporate culture,” Kim adds.

Diverse and global organisation that goes against the grain

But the Seoul-based Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) has been initiating a corporate culture that is very different from this mainstream. From encouraging staff to be transformational without being afraid of sticking out, to having open plan offices which go against the traditional hierarchical structure of having individual offices, this international organisation is pushing boundaries as its fulfils its mandate to achieve resilient, sustainable growth.

“We are building a united cultural front to strengthen our core values to be bold, excellent, inclusive and act with integrity,” Christel Adamou, head of human resources, tells IPS from GGGI’s head office. She adds that the organisational culture here is unique because it “is younger, more dynamic”.

GGGI, an inter-governmental organisation committed to developing green economies through supporting its 30 member states, lists 60 operational projects in 28 countries. This includes projects that involve the development of: green cities, water and sanitation projects, sustainable landscapes, sustainable energy projects and cross-cutting strategies for financing mechanisms.

And while the organisation has 453 employees, this includes staff who are not only based in Seoul but also those based in member countries across the world including countries such as Mongolia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mexico and the island nation of Vanuatu.

In fact, among international organisations, GGGI is one of the smallest so it has had to expand its capacity to meet its global mission. “We at GGGI need a much greater capacity to help member states in their transition to sustainable development and also adapt to climate changes,” Ban Ki-Moon, former Secretary-General of the United Nations the new president and chair of GGGI, said in 2018.

Hierarchical structure is the norm in most South Korean businesses

The work culture in South Korea is different. And managers at most South Korean firms often say that they are used to the rigid hierarchy at work. Creating and implementing new ideas is usually made by the boss of the organisation, explains Park Jae-Min, 43, who works at a Seoul-based business group.

“When we start something new, we are trying to listen and find out what our boss wants before we talk,” Park says.

Lee Jong-Min, 38, who works for a Korean-British joint venture business in Seoul, agrees. “Oddly, I usually feel comfortable with my Korean boss who makes a quick decision by himself and commands me to [implement it]. I sometimes feel embarrassed when my British boss asks my opinion before he makes an opinion.”

Practicing core values

But if core values tend to be hierarchal in South Korean businesses, at GGGI head office the values of inclusivity, boldness and transformation are clearly visible.

Adamou describes the organisation’s essence quite clearly from her first impression. “When I first came here in 2017, I felt the air of  dynamism and enthusiasm in GGGI here I didn’t find before in bigger organisations.” She joined GGGI after her stint as chief human resources officer for the United Nations peace-keeping mission in Haiti and as legal advisor to the U.N. Dispute Tribunal in Nairobi. She also worked at other U.N. organisations and has been based in Switzerland, Liberia and at the U.N.’s New York headquarters.

In South Korea, your job title also usually determines where you sit at work.

But GGGI’s office space itself has an air of interaction and youth. In the open plan office, there is a lively and communicative air among the staff who are mostly in their 30s or 40s. At the office centre there is an open plaza where people relax over coffee, talk and brainstorm.

“So there is a circle of staff, brainstorming, thinking together, designing the framework, how we would like to frame our values at GGGI. Decisions would usually be made top down, but for the culture-building initiatives, most was made in a bottom up way. [This way], there was more ownership, and of course the result was always better when you involve as many stake holders as possible,” Adamou explains.

Holding on to some South Korean practices

Meanwhile GGGI embraces the South Korean business culture of being competitive with integrity.

Acting with integrity is essential for GGGI to communicate as a neutral, trusty partner, explains Adamou, “because the in-country projects are embedded into diverse entities like government, finance, environment and health”.

Being based in-country also means that GGGI aids its staff in developing geographical mobility by increasing their exposure to internationally diverse settings. This, Adamou says, also fosters neutrality in the organisation’s work.

“A head programmer in Seoul may become a country representative in Cambodia. Or an analyst in Ethiopia may be programming in Columbia. Otherwise, if you stay too long in one location, it may develop too much of a relationship with one government and it can hinder [their mission] to be neutral. We work for GGGI not for personal relationships [with a particular entity],” Adamou adds.

Related Articles

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• Helping Ethiopia Achieve Green Growth and Avoid Industrialised Nations’ Environmental Mistakes

The post Moving Beyond South Korea’s Hierarchal Business Structure for Sustainable Green Growth appeared first on Inter Press Service.

One of the street markets where fresh produce is sold in Buenos Aires. The predominance of an agro-export model based on transgenic crops and the massive use of agrochemicals makes things difficult for those who produce food for local consumption in a sustainable manner. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jan 21 2019 (IPS)

“Our philosophy is based on two principles: zero tolerance of pesticides or bosses,” says Leandro Ladrú, while he puts tomatoes and carrots in the ecological bag held by a customer, in a large market in the Argentine capital, located between warehouses and rusty old railroad cars.

Leandro and Malena Vecellio are a young couple who come every Saturday to the Galpón de la Mutual Sentimiento, a wooden building with a sheet metal roof used by farmers and social organisations for products to be sold in the “social economy,” located in the Chacarita neighborhood, on the grounds of one of Buenos Aires’ main railway stations.

In the Galpón, family farmers sell their organic, pesticide-free products four times a week, with a share of their sales being discounted to pay the rent."We hand-pick everything. It's a lot of work and takes patience. A broccoli plant with agrochemicals is ready in a month, ours take several months to grow. But we know it's worth it.” -- Enrique García

In a country that in the last 20 years has devoted itself practically entirely to a model of agricultural production based on transgenic crops for export, with massive use of agrochemicals, this couple’s project, named Semillero de Estrellas (Seedbed of Stars), is an act of resistance.

Transgenic products, which began to be planted in this agricultural powerhouse in 1996, cover about 25 million hectares in the country – three-quarters of the total area devoted to crops.

Today, almost 100 percent of the main crops – soybeans and corn – are genetically modified, and most of the cotton is also transgenic.

The industrial agriculture model is taking stronger hold, and in late 2018, the government approved the commercialisation of a new genetically modified food product, fully developed in Argentina: the first transgenic potato resistant to the PVY virus.

In Argentina, transgenic agriculture is associated with a high level of agrochemical use. In fact, the use of herbicides, insecticides and fertilisers grew 850 percent between 2003 and 2012, the last year in which statistics were published.

“In the area where we live, most of the small farmers walk around with a backpack in which they carry the agrochemicals that they spray on the vegetables. We do something else: we let the plants grow at their own pace,” Vecellio told IPS.

The low level of sustainability of Argentine agriculture is reflected in the Food Sustainability Index, drawn up by the Italian foundation Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition and the Intelligence Unit of the British magazine The Economist.

The ranking classifies 67 countries according to the average obtained in three categories: food and water loss and waste, sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges.

Malena Vecellio and Leandro Ladrú, at their organic vegetable stand in the Chacarita railway station in Buenos Aires, where they arrive every Saturday from Florencio Varela, one of the poorest areas on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, with fresh produce they and their neighbors have grown. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Argentina ranks 13th in the ranking (ahead of the other three Latin American nations included: Brazil, Colombia and Mexico), but its score is very low in both sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges. Poor performance in these two areas is offset by good food and water waste ratings.

Initiatives such as Semillero de Estrellas try to offset these two deficits. They farm on half a hectare of land in Florencio Varela, a municipality just 30 kilometers south of the capital, one of the poorest in Greater Buenos Aires.

About four years ago, Ladrú and Veceillo began selling their organic products in the Galpón de la Mutual Sentimiento.

First they traveled by train with their backpacks loaded with vegetables and fruit, and now they make the trip in their own vehicle, also carrying the organic pesticide-free vegetables produced by neighbors.

Agrochemicals are generally associated with transgenic crops – most of which were designed to tolerate glyphosate and other herbicides – but they are also used in the production of fruit and vegetables by family farmers in Greater Buenos Aires.

In this South American country of 44 million people, where agribusiness has grown exponentially in recent decades, agriculture accounts for 20 percent of GDP, including direct and indirect contributions.

In addition, in the first half of 2018, soybean and corn exports alone contributed 9.7 billion dollars, or 32 percent of the total, according to official figures.

The challenges of family farming

But family farmers are hanging on, and play a decisive role in the local diet. And they are the battering ram for more sustainable agriculture and more responsible food consumption.

According to data from the 2002 Agricultural Census, there are 250,000 family farms that produce 40 percent of the vegetables consumed in the country and employ five million people – about 11 percent of the country’s population.

Enrique García grows vegetables ecologically on a four-hectare plot near Buenos Aires, and sells his produce in a social economy market that is shared by various social cooperatives in Argentina’s capital. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

One of the flashpoints is the sale of products in the market. Ladrú explains that small farms are often worked by tenant farmers.

“Tenant farmers work land that is not theirs. Then they give their harvest to the owner, who takes it to the Central Market and gives them half of what he earns,” Ladrú told IPS.

“The problem is that when the owner can’t sell the vegetables, he ends up using them to feed the pigs and the tenant farmer doesn’t get any money,” he added.

Access to land and credit is a huge obstacle for small farmers, despite the fact that in December 2014 Law 27.118, on the Historical Repair of Family Farming for the Construction of a New Rurality in Argentina, was passed, declaring the sector to be of public interest.

That law created a land bank composed of public property to be awarded to peasant farmers and indigenous families, which was never implemented.

State neglect has to do with the ideology that prevails in the government of center-right President Mauricio Macri, as noted in September by Turkey’s Hilal Elver, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, during a visit to Argentina.

“During interviews with officials at the Ministry of Agroindustry, I observed a tendency of support geared towards the industrial agricultural model with the Family Agriculture sector facing severe cuts in support, personnel and their budget, including the lay-off of almost 500 workers and experts,” she wrote in her report.

Elver urged the government to promote a balance between industrial and family farming. “Achieving this balance is the only way to reach a sustainable and just solution for the people of Argentina,” she said.

Family farmers, in that context, are looking for ways to subsist. In the Palermo neighborhood, in an old municipal market with sheet metal roofing, various cooperatives that emerged after Argentina’s severe 2001-2002 crisis sell their products in the Bonpland Solidarity Market.

“Our basic principle is that we are consumers of our own products. There is no slave labor, there is no resale, and everything is agro-ecological,” Mario Brizuela, of the La Asamblearia cooperative, which brings together some 150 families that produce everything from vegetables to honey and preserves, told IPS.

Another of those selling in the market is Enrique García, who arrives at the Palermo neighborhood with his truck loaded with vegetables from the Pereyra Iraola Park, an area of great biodiversity covering more than 10,000 hectares, some 40 kilometers south of Buenos Aires.

“We have about four hectares that we share with my brother and all of us who work in the fields are relatives,” he told IPS as he showed a stem of green onions several times larger than the ones usually found in the greengrocers’ shops in Buenos Aires.

Garcia added, “We hand-pick everything. It’s a lot of work and takes patience. A broccoli plant with agrochemicals is ready in a month, ours take several months to grow. But we know it’s worth it.”

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