Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Genevieve Donnellon-May
AUSTRALIA, Jan 10 2022 (IPS)

For the first time since 1990, China has (re)opened an embassy in Managua, Nicaragua, less than a month after Nicaragua cut ties with Taiwan. The (re)opening of the embassy on January 1, 2022 comes amidst the backdrop of US-China tensions, particularly over trade and Taiwan, as well as worsening Cross-Straits relations.

Genevieve Donnellon-May

China and Nicaragua officially (re)established diplomatic relations last month. On December 10, Asia time, diplomatic relations between China and Nicaragua were officially established. The official “Joint Communiqué on the Resumption of Diplomatic Relations Between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Nicaragua” was signed in Tianjin, China, by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu and Laureano Ortega, an advisor for investment, trade, and international cooperation to Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega – and, more importantly, the president’s son. As per the Joint Communiqué, Nicaragua recognises that Taiwan is part of China’s territory.

In response, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) responded by stating that Taiwan “deeply regrets” that President Daniel Ortega has disregarded the long-standing friendship between the two countries. MOFA noted that it has worked with the Central American country for many years to promote cooperation that “is beneficial to the people’s livelihood and assists the overall development of the country,” according to a MOFA press release. MOFA also reiterated that “Taiwan is not a part of the People’s Republic of China, and that the PRC has never governed Taiwan. The Taiwanese people will not bow to pressure from China.”

Days after the (re)establishment of China-Nicaragua relations, China sent 200,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccines to Nicaragua as part of its vaccine diplomacy. The 2000,000 doses, which were the first of 1 million, were accompanied by a Nicaraguan delegation led by President Ortega’s son, Laureano Ortega Murillo. The Nicaraguan foreign minister, Denis Moncada, thanked China for its vaccine donation and noted that was an “ideological affinity” between the two countries.

China and Nicaragua originally established formal relations almost forty years ago. In 1985, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega established relations with China. After he lost the election in 1990, the president Violeta Chamorro recognised Taiwan. In 2007, however, Ortega returned to power and was re-elected in November 2021 for a fourth term. A month after his re-election, Nicaragua cut ties with Taiwan, following months of worsening relations between Ortega and U.S. President Biden’s administration.

In addition, Nicaragua’s decision to establish formal relations with Beijing means that the number of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies has decreased to 14, down from 22 when President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016. Previously, China and Taiwan had observed a so-called “diplomatic truce” in place during the previous Ma Ying-jeou administration and the Kuomintang (KMT) wherein China did not diplomatic overtures to Taiwan’s diplomatic partners.

As a result of the change in recognition and China’s inroads in Central America, Taiwan appears to be increasingly isolated on the international stage. Most countries switched to Beijing by the end of the 1970s, after Taiwan (as the Republic of China or ROC) lost its seat in the United Nations in 1971 to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Aside from Nicaragua, recent transfers of recognition from Taipei to Beijing have been undertaken by the following countries: Solomon Islands (2019), Kiribati (2019), El Salvador (2018), Dominican Republic (2018), Panama (2017), Gambia (2016), and Sao Tome and Principe (2016).

After Nicaragua, many eyes are now on Honduras, a small Central American country, and its newly elected president, Xiomara Castro. In November 2021, the outgoing Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez began a three-day surprise visit to Taiwan. The visit came amidst concerns from Taiwanese officials in Honduras that the next Honduran president may sever ties with Taipei and establish formal diplomatic ties with Beijing.

Establishing ties with Beijing was one of the pledges made by Castro during her presidential campaign in 2021. A switch in relations from Taipei to Beijing, she declared, would give Honduras access to economic opportunities as well as Chinese-made Covid-19 vaccines and low-cost medicine. Although Castro will not be sworn in as president until later this month, her pledge may put Honduras in the middle of an intensifying diplomatic tug-of-war between Taiwan and China and becoming the new front against intensifying global showdown between the two superpowers. These geopolitical tensions combined with the financial needs of Central American governments, the resurgence of populist leaders in the region, and China’s growing economic importance, combined with China’s vaccine diplomacy and the absence of a truce between Taipei and Beijing, all influence Central America’s relations with both the U.S. and China. And currently, they are the driving factors in pushing Central American countries “away from the US and towards China”, as noted by Evan Ellis, a professor at the US Army War College who researches Latin America’s relationships with China.

At the same time, a move to establishing diplomatic relations with China could be partly motivated by a desire to counter American hegemony in the country and the region. Washington has long dominated Central America both economically and politically, viewing it as its strategic backyard. Before the presidential election, China accused the US of “arm-twisting and bullying behaviour” after Washington reiterated that it wanted Honduras to maintain its longstanding diplomatic relations with Taiwan. However, the U.S. holds considerable sway over Honduras. In particular, remittances, mainly from people living in the U.S., make up more than 20% of Honduras’ gross domestic product, according to the Brookings Institute. This economic reality, combined with significant U.S. aid to Honduras, also means that Washington does have influence over local politics.

However, in recent years, Honduras has seen rapid increases in inequality, corruption, violence, and poverty have further driven migration to the US. Unemployment has risen above 10% while major hurricanes devastated northern Honduras in 2020. Honduras is now the third poorest country in the Americas: over 66% of the population live in poverty. According to the World Bank, the pandemic considerably impacted the country’s economy, with the national GDP expected to have contracted by 9% in 2020.

Nonetheless, China’s influence in Honduras continues to grow. In 2020, Chinese state-owned companies finished the construction of 105MW hydropower dam in the country. Also, more external debt is owed to China than to the U.S. According to World Bank data, 4% of Honduras’ outstanding external debt is owed to China, while only 0.01% to the US. Further, China already accounting for as much as a fifth of Honduran imports. In this way, any potential financial benefits, such as loans and investments from establishing formal ties with China, or even playing Washington and Beijing off each other, may be considered too important to ignore.

Genevieve Donnellon-May is a research assistant with the Institute of Water Policy (IWP) at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include China, Africa, transboundary governance, and the food-energy-water nexus. Genevieve’s work has been published by The Diplomat and the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum.

 

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A waste collection bin awaiting the city council's collection. Markets are one of the places the SADC hygiene strategy is targeting. The picture was taken around 5 am as people gathered for the market day. It is a stone’s throw away from the health centre featured in the story. ​Credit: Charles Mpaka​/IPS​​

By Charles Mpaka
Blantyre, Malawi, Jan 10 2022 (IPS)

The toilets in the maternity wing of Namatapa Health Centre in the populous Bangwe Township in Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial city, fell into disrepair a few years ago. So, pregnant women who come to deliver their babies and their guardians use two pit latrines.

The faulty facilities also serve as bathrooms.

Visiting the bathrooms and toilets is an act of courage, says Thokozani Paulo, who spent four days at the centre in November 2021, during the birth of her first child.

“When you want to bath or relieve yourself, the image is dreadful because half the time, there is a mess, and the stench is terrible,” she tells IPS.

At night, there is no light, and the rooms are swarming with mosquitoes.

In addition, there is not much dignity and privacy for users either. There are no doors, so women improvise using their wraps for privacy.

“So, you are bathing, and someone comes in looking to relieve themselves,” says the 23-year-old in an interview with IPS at her home. Her month-old baby girl is sleeping peacefully on her lap.

Workers at the facility clean the two toilets – but without detergent and only once every day in the morning. One day, the women in the ward and their guardians pleaded with the workers to clean the toilets at least twice a day.
“They shouted at us saying we were not the ones paying their salaries and that we should just focus on what we had gone to the health centre for,” Paulo says.

The only basin for handwashing in the ward was never supplied with soap in the four days she was at the health centre.

In November, this experience, and the experiences of many others like Paulo were top of the agenda at a meeting of health ministers from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe.
At that meeting, among other things, the ministers endorsed the SADC Hygiene Strategy (2021-2025).

According to the strategy developed by the SADC Secretariat, analysis of national blueprints in the region on health, water, sanitation, environmental health, and nutrition indicates there is “an enabling environment” for implementation of hygiene practices.

However, there are still considerable gaps in most of the 16 member states.

“There is still need to mainstream and integrate hygiene in most of the national policies in order to broaden the enabling environment base for effective and sustainable promotion of hygiene practices,” it reads.

The framework, therefore, challenges SADC governments to increase hygiene coverage and behaviour change across all settings. These settings include health care facilities, schools and day-care centres, workplaces and commercial buildings, prisons, markets and food establishments, transport centres and places of worship.

The key hygiene behaviours include handwashing with soap, safe drinking water management, faecal disposal, food hygiene, menstrual hygiene, and waste management.

In the case of health care centres, these need to have a safe and accessible water supply, clean and safe sanitation conveniences, hand hygiene amenities at points of care and toilets, appropriate waste disposal systems and environmental cleaning.

According to the strategy, infrastructure that supports hygiene and healthcare waste management practices helps prevent the spread of diseases within the health service facilities and in the surrounding community.
The strategy was developed with the support of UNICEF and WaterAid Southern Africa.

Maureen Nkandu, Regional Communications Manager for WaterAid Southern Africa, says the policy underlines the need for leadership, commitment, and accountability “to create a culture of hygienic behaviour and practices across all levels of society and to enable hygiene services, behaviour change and promote basic sanitation”.

“For these objectives to be effective, there will be a requirement for strong planning, financial resourcing, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation systems in each of the SADC countries,” Nkandu tells IPS.

She says WaterAid has rallied key partners, including WASH-oriented civil society and development agencies, to demand adequate resources to implement the strategy effectively.

Further, achieving sustainable hygiene behaviour across generations needs innovative behaviour change programmes of scale. This can be realised through adequate financing, coordination of relevant sectors and political leadership, Nkandu says.

For Malawi, the strategy presents an opportunity for the country to push harder towards attaining Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) targets related to hygiene, says Maziko Matemba, a community health ambassador appointed by the Ministry of Health.

Matemba corroborates Paulo’s experience, observing that many healthcare facilities in Malawi are a source of infection for patients, guardians, and visitors because of poor hygiene.

“Sanitation and hygiene in most of our public health facilities is a serious concern. People go to hospitals to get treated, but we have cases where patients and guardians have returned home with new health conditions contracted due to poor hygiene,” he says, citing washrooms as hotspots.

Matemba argues that healthcare facilities could promote good hygiene in Malawi and SADC.

“People gather in these facilities to seek services. That’s a huge advantage to drive home awareness messages and demonstrate by own standards how people can promote good hygiene in their homes,” says Matemba, who is also Executive Director for Health and Rights Education Programme (HREP), a local organisation.

But in all this, funding is a major factor, he observes.

“Hospital administrators tell us that if they have no money for a primary commodity like drugs, hence these perennial drug shortages we see, how can mops, handwashing materials and chemicals to clean toilets with become a priority?”

Matemba tells IPS that although civil society organisations have been campaigning for ages for the government to address the critical shortage of funding to hospitals, not much has changed.

“Development budget is always inadequate. Recurrent expenditures, already less than required, are further cut, and the little that remains hardly goes to the facilities in time. Treasury always says the resource envelope is limited,” says Matemba.

He says the strategy challenges Malawi as SADC Chair to lead the way for member states to improve the hygiene situation in the region by fixing their own.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, Adrian Chikumbe, tells IPS that the SADC strategy is an important approach in minimising transmission of infection in health facilities and communities.

According to Chikumbe, a recent assessment by the ministry reveals that almost a third of Malawi’s health care facilities lack running water and 80 percent of patient latrines had no associated hand washing facility.

The assessment also found that environmental cleanliness was generally below average, characterised by poor waste management practices.

He says most of the lower-level facilities in the country lack resources to maintain functional WASH infrastructure.

“The Government recognises that it cannot do everything alone. It, therefore, has plans to mobilise partner support led by district authorities to plan and prioritise water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure in all health facilities,” he says.

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Regions with higher than average university attainment in the 1960s continue to have higher university attainment rates today.

By External Source
Jan 10 2022 (IPS)

Many newly independent African countries in the 1960s inherited regional and ethnic inequalities in formal educational attainment. These new states bound together sub-national regions of diverse ethnic and religious communities. The regions differed in their exposure to missionary activity – the main vector in the spread of formal western education in the colonial era.

Inequalities in educational access increased the higher up the educational ladder one climbed. Access to university education was both extremely limited and highly skewed.

As access to higher education determined which people would come to hold some of the most important positions in society, politicians cared a great deal about how higher education spread. Given this context, how did regional inequalities in university access evolve after independence?

While several recent papers have highlighted considerable social inequalities in access to higher education in African countries today, there’s little work that looks at how and why such inequalities have changed over time.

In a recent paper I therefore traced the regional origins of university graduates since the 1960s in seven African countries: Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. I constructed a measure of regional inequality for each country and examined some of the factors that influenced this inequality trend.

The results show that regional inequality fell in the first two decades of independence. However, from the 1980s regional inequality remained stagnant or grew across this group of countries. Inequality grew primarily because the main urban metropolises have been pulling ahead, leading to a growing urban bias in university access.

I used recent census data which contains information about where people were born and what level of education they attained. I grouped these people by their district or province of birth, depending on the administrative structure of the country. In Ghana for instance, people were grouped into the country’s ten regions, while in Kenya they were grouped into the country’s 47 current counties.

By grouping people by age bracket, and assuming that most people who attend university do so around age 20, I could then trace how the regional distribution of university education changed over time.

 

Slow start

University education was slow to develop across these former British colonies. The share of the population attending university in the late colonial era was extremely low.

 

Gross university enrolment rates. Rebecca Simson

 

Around the time of independence, Kenya had roughly 400 university students (1961), while Tanzania and Zambia had 300 students each (1963). The distribution of these scarce educational opportunities was regionally skewed. University attendance tended to be highest among those growing up in the main cities and in the regions with the most economic production (particularly cash crops and mining).

This historical legacy has been long lasting. On average, the regions with higher than average university attainment in the 1960s continue to have higher university attainment rates today.

 

Trends in access

But the picture is not all bleak. In the first decades of independence there was some catching-up by some of the lower performing regions within each country. The regional inequality trend for each of the seven countries shows that inequality fell in most countries in the 1960s and 1970s. In this period the number of university students was growing quite rapidly. Bursaries for students were generous and governments made some efforts to ensure regional balance.

In the 1980s many African countries ran into financial difficulties. Governments struggled to finance their largely public university systems. During this period, the rate of university expansion reduced. University access became increasingly competitive. This ended the period of regional convergence in university enrolment. Regional inequalities in university access began to grow again.

My analysis found that those best placed to access the highly competitive university system were increasingly those students born in the main cities where incomes were higher and parents more educated. Measures of regional inequality with the exclusion of the capital cities show there was no or very little growth in regional inequality since the 1980s. This shows that most of the inequality rise was driven by the capital city region.

In the 1990s many African countries reformed their university systems again by introducing or raising fees. They also allowed more private universities to establish themselves. This increased the number of students that could be educated and led to the rapid rise in university enrolment. But from the available data it seems that regional inequalities in university access have remained high or risen further.

 

Concentrated in cities

There are many reasons for this continued growth in inequality in access. The most important factor is one that’s difficult for policymakers to address. The census data shows that the focus countries have a considerable rate of rural-urban migration. These migrants are a small share of the university educated. As a result, university graduates are increasingly concentrated in the cities. University students tend to be the children of the highly educated – they’re in turn more likely to gain higher education. This perpetuates the concentration of the highly skilled.

The slightly better news is that because cities tend to be ethnically mixed, the growing urban bias does not seem to have resulted in a sharp increase in ethnic inequality in university education. In three countries (Ghana, Malawi and Uganda) the censuses also asked respondents to state their ethnicity. Using these self-reported ethnicities, I measured ethnic inequality by cohort. I found much less inequality growth on an ethnic compared to a regional basis.

Since migration is a major driver of this regional differentiation, this trend will probably continue unless there’s more economic development and more job creation outside the main urban centres. This implies that the face of Africa’s educational high-achievers is changing. From a slim educational elite of the 1970s, where most university-educated people had rural or small-town roots, the highest educated ranks are increasingly dominated by people born and raised in the main, multi-ethnic urban centres.

Rebecca Simson, Research Fellow in Economic History, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Whale sharks, the largest of living sharks, filter-feed on plankton and other small marine creatures, which they suck into their open mouths as they swim. Credit: Enric Sala, National Geographic Pristine Seas

By Enric Sala
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 10 2022 (IPS)

There is no other place in the world like Costa Rica’s Cocos Island National Park. The waters surrounding the island–covered with tropical forests–are a playground to countless shivers, or schools, of sharks, including hammerhead sharks, whitetip reef sharks and whale sharks.

Also boasting rays, turtles, whales and dolphins, It’s one of the world’s most biodiverse waterways. In recent years, however, industrial fishing activity has encroached on the area, threatening this unparalleled marine life.

Fortunately, Costa Rica took decisive action this month by expanding the protected waters by 27 times. They also protected an additional marine area–the Bicentennial Marine Managed Area, which is twice the size of the expanded Cocos Island National Park. The area includes no take zones and will closely monitor fishing activity.

Stories like this one are all too rare. In the last century alone, we have removed over 90% of the ocean’s large fish, yet less than 8% of the ocean is under some kind of protection. We’re still learning about the collateral damage from destructive fishing activities, like bottom trawling, which scrape up the ocean floor—the world’s largest carbon storehouse.

It’s clear that commercial fishing, global warming and pollution have decimated the ocean. Few corners of the vast ocean are safe. As a result, the seas are losing their ability to safeguard biodiversity, provide food and store carbon—all of which are critical to maintaining a livable planet, which was under intense discussion at the climate talks in Glasgow late last year.

But it is possible to restore the ocean’s benefits to people and the planet. All we must do is rewild the sea. The only catch is that we can’t wait. We have less than a decade to act.

Since 2018, I have worked around the clock and around the world with a team of scientists to identify which areas of the ocean we must protect first. We have discovered through our research and countless expeditions the trade-offs among the ocean’s benefits.

To support our work, we developed a framework that could help us maximize the benefits that humanity obtains from the ocean. We found that if we were to give equal importance to biodiversity, food and carbon, it is imperative to protect 45% of the ocean – the “right” 45%.

Even if we decided that biodiversity is not so important, we would need to protect 30%–the minimum area needed to preserve marine life and all of the benefits it provides to people.

Costa Rica is part of a growing group of world leaders that understand the benefits of protecting marine areas. At the Glasgow climate talks, Costa Rica, together with Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama, announced their commitment to create more marine reserves in the Eastern Tropical Pacific.

Establishing no-take areas along an “ocean highway” for migratory species such as tuna will actually increase fish supplies in the surrounding areas. As a result, biodiversity and economies benefit.

Earlier this month, the government of Portugal expanded a marine protected area around the Selvagens Islands, located midway between Madeira and Canary Islands. At 3,677 square kilometers, the area is now the largest fully protected marine reserve in Europe.

Countries worldwide must establish more of these protected areas by 2030 if we are to ensure that the ocean can continue to provide us with its benefits. Protections must be strong. Marine protected areas can only work their magic if all fishing and other damaging human activities are banned—and these rules are enforced.

So far, 77 countries have agreed to champion a global goal to protect 30% of the ocean—and well as land—by 2030. They are pushing to ensure that the 30×30 target is enshrined in a global UN biodiversity agreement, under negotiation now and expected to be signed in 2022.

But the world doesn’t have to wait for the ink to dry on the agreement to establish more marine protected areas. Too much is at stake. I have seen with my own eyes how nature recovers in marine reserves. More importantly, I have seen how this return of nature has helped people gain better lives.

Enric Sala is an Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society, the founder of Pristine Seas, and the recipient of this year’s Prince Albert I Grand Medal for his work to protect the ocean. Pristine Seas has helped to establish 24 marine protected areas, covering a total area of more than 6.5 million square kilometers — more than twice the size of India.

 

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Community support workers are key in raising awareness about TB and promoting diagnosis and treatment. Credit, Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jan 7 2022 (IPS)

Global efforts to end tuberculosis (TB) are futile without dedicated investment in research into the debilitating disease that is killing 4000 people a day, Stop TB Partnership warns.

“TB is a disease that is not a darling of donors and investors,” Lucica Ditiu, the Executive Director of the Stop TB Partnership, told IPS in an interview from Geneva.

“We do not have a Bill Gates that can support TB research, yet TB remains a disease of concern with deaths increasing for the first time in over a decade,” she added.

TB, a bacterial disease mainly affecting the lungs, has been around for over millennia and remains one of the top killer diseases globally. But it is preventable and curable with the right investment in diagnosis and treatment.

Ditiu attributed the rise in TB incidents to several factors; many people diagnosed and on treatment for TB have defaulted owing to the disruption of health services in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and global lockdown. Furthermore, many people remain undiagnosed because they have not been reached.

Dr Lucica Ditiu, Executive Director of the Stop TB Partnership. Credit: Stop TB Partnership

“Southern Africa has done a good job in respect of Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa as well as Rwanda in trying to disrupt as little as possible the treatment and diagnosis of people with TB,” Ditiu said. She commended awareness programmes in the media and community door-to-door campaigns to promote diagnosis and treatment.

Countries need to invest more in finding people with TB and putting them on treatment. Until you find people, you cannot put them on treatment, and this is where we are very much lagging, she said.

Ditiu fears the worst should the world fail to change the current TB transmission trend. An estimated 5.8 million people received treatment for TB in 2020; a drop of 21 percent from 2019, and more than 4 million people worldwide remain untreated. According to Stop TB Partnership, half of those untreated are likely to die from the disease.

Admitting that funding for TB has always been insufficient, Ditiu said TB was the poor cousin compared to the deep pockets for HIV and AIDS.

“In general, we have available only 30 percent of the funding needed globally. We have places that have done well in preventing TB in people living with HIV. Prevention of TB in people living with HIV is going well, especially in African countries because HIV has resources.”

According to the Stop TB Partnership, a network of international organisations established in 1998 to help end TB as a public health problem, funding for TB research and development (R&D) has remained flat since 2018.

Global funding for tuberculosis (TB) research totalled 915 million US dollars in 2020 – less than half the goal of 2 billion US dollars set forth by participating country governments at the 2018 United Nations High-Level Meeting on TB.

In 2021, TB had a funding gap of 13 billion US dollars globally, with only 5,3 billion US dollars available for its programmes. It experienced a drop in funding amounting to 500 000 US dollars in 2020 as many countries took money away from TB to respond to COVID-19.

A new report, Tuberculosis Research Funding Trends, 2005–2020 by Treatment Action Group (TAG) and the Stop TB Partnership, found that TB received less than 1 percent of the amount invested in COVID-19 Research and Development over the first 11 months of the pandemic.

“The mobilisation of over 100 billion US dollars for COVID-19 research and development in the first 11 months of the pandemic shows us just how powerful a coordinated effort against a disease can be,” noted Ditiu.

While the pandemic has shown that effective vaccines can save lives, the world is still banking on a 100-year-old vaccine, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin or BCG. However, a more effective vaccine could have higher efficacy rates, especially for adults. Why has it taken so long to develop a new, more effective TB vaccine when the health burden of TB is increasing?

“This is the drama,” Ditiu commented. “We have a vaccine for a hundred years that we know for the last 40 years does not work (effectively) except for newly-born babies, and yet we have not done much about it.”

While ongoing research on new vaccines had been slow because of poor funding, Ditiu said several potential vaccines were in the pipeline, and a vaccine could be expected by 2027.

“It takes a long time to get a vaccine. But because of COVID (we realised), it is possible to have a vaccine much quicker, and we hope to use the learnings from COVID-19 to get a TB vaccine,” Ditiu told IPS.

Tuberculosis vaccine research has been slowed by chronic underfunding with only one moderately effective century-old TB vaccine, compared to over 20 COVID-19 vaccines.

“What’s enabled the development of dozens of COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year has essentially been money,” noted Austin Aurinze Obiefuna, Executive Director of the Afro Global Health Alliance and incoming Vice-Chair of the Stop TB Partnership Board.

“I think that the same enormous amount of funding should be applied with equal vigour to the development of TB vaccines. But that simply doesn’t seem to be happening.”

According to the Stop TB Partnership, making much-needed progress against TB demands investment that matches the threat of the disease around the world. This includes a commitment to rectify the inadequate funding of the past. Over the next two years, 10 billion US dollars are needed to close the tuberculosis R&D funding gap.

“Wealthy countries need to step up and put more money into correcting global health inequalities, which COVID-19 vaccine allocation inequities laid bare,” urged Mark Harrington, Executive Director of TAG, an independent activist, and community-based research and policy think tank.

“COVID-19 made more people around the world aware of the importance of R&D spending than ever before. Now is the time to finally start making investments ambitious enough to end TB for good.”

 

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Protest sign, London. Credit: People’s Vaccine Alliance

By Ben Phillips
ROME, Jan 7 2022 (IPS)

As the Omicron surge overwhelms the world, it is clear to people everywhere that the actions which leaders so far have taken in response to the Covid-19 crisis have not been sufficient to overcome it.

We are not beating Covid. It looks rather like Covid is beating us. What is to be done?

Crucially, they are two key dimensions to what is needed now which, though related, are distinct. The first dimension is what policies are required to get us out of the crisis. The second dimension is how to get those policies put into place.

In other words, the first key question is “what do leaders need to do?”, and the second key question is “how do we make them do it?”

On the first question, the world is fortunate that we are not short of excellent public health expertise. Whilst there are no quick fixes, the contours of the policies required are not a mystery, and have been set out, to leaders and to media, repeatedly, by the World Health Organisation, by leading academics, and by health practitioners.

They come down essentially to this: in a pandemic emergency, leaders need to deploy the whole range of tools that have been shown to help. The key here is the whole range.

Importantly, in terms of how these approaches can be realized, this requires that they are realized for the whole world. Until they do, none of us will get out of the crisis. When Desmond Tutu said that “I am because you are, I am because we are”, that was not only true ethically, but, it turns out, true epidemiologically too.

The approaches required include vaccines, treatments, and also, as the WHO’s Peter Singer has noted, “public health measures that encourage spending time outdoors, physical distancing, wearing masks, rapid testing, limiting gatherings and staying home when sick”.

None of these alone is enough. Any approach that only does one of these, however well, would fail – all of them are needed, together.

It requires the application of the whole range of policy tools. For example, rich countries, and Foundations based in rich countries, have emphasized the importance of sharing doses as a solution (even whilst they have comprehensively failed to deliver on their promises to do so).

In contrast, developing countries, the World Health Organisation and civil society have all highlighted that sharing doses alone cannot ensure enough for everyone, and that it is essential also to share the technology so that multiple producers across the world can simultaneously manufacture enough to vaccinate the world.

This requires rapid agreement and implementation of the TRIPS Waiver proposed by South Africa and India at the WTO, and it also requires that rich country governments use their huge leverage (as procurers, investors and regulators) over the companies they host to make them share knowledge, know-how and material. Furthermore, this requirement to share Covid technologies needs to apply to vaccines, medicines and diagnostics.

As public health professors Madhukar Pai of McGill and Manu Prakash of Stanford have noted, “Science has delivered many tools that work against Covid-19. But equitable distribution of these tools is where we are failing.

If we can find a way to share effective tools equitably and increase their production across the world, then we have a real shot at ending this pandemic.

If we hoard these tools, block TRIPS waiver, and think we can boost our way out of this pandemic in the global North, we will begin 2023 by playing whack-a-mole with the rho, sigma, tau or Omega variants.”

The challenge then, is not that we don’t know what leaders need to do. The challenge is that they are not doing it. We like to believe that our leaders are led by the evidence. But evidence alone is not enough.

The brilliant and essential reports of scientists will not be enough to shift the much harsher world of political interests. Getting leaders to do what is needed to overcome the Covid-19 crisis – in particular getting leaders to force the big pharmaceutical companies to share the rights and recipes for the vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics so the world can produce the billions needed – will depend on pressure from ordinary people.

This is not a new lesson. We saw it in the late 1990s and early 2000s with antiretrovirals for HIV. Then, as now, a monopoly hold on production was preventing people in developing countries from accessing life-saving help.

Then, as now, the big pharmaceutical companies worked aggressively to block other producers from manufacturing what would save millions of lives. Then, as now, rich country governments sided with the big pharmaceutical companies. Twelve million people died. Finally, massive global public pressure, together with assertive action by developing countries, ensured that production was opened up and lives could be saved.

It was not a coincidence that when the Covid-19 crisis erupted the first groups to call for the sharing of medical technologies, and to start to organise for it, were groups of people living with HIV. They are the heart of the movement for a People’s Vaccine because, from painful experience, they know what it takes. Health, like justice, is never given; it is only ever won.

Some people are inspired by activism. Others, understandably, just want to get on with their lives. Activism feels like another burden. They’re ready to do their part by wearing a mask when available and getting vaccinated when offered. But they want to leave the leadership to our leaders.

The thing is, that’s not enough. Our leaders are not leading. They are not doing all they can to end the crisis. They are not forcing the big pharmaceutical companies to share technologies so that enough can be produced. They are not ensuring access to health care as right. They are not protecting the vulnerable from the shock of the crisis.

The past two years can best be summed up like this: the science is working, but the politics is failing.

It is only through bold action by political leaders that the Covid-19 crisis will be ended. It is only through people’s organising that we’ll make leaders take that bold action. As the great novelist Alice Walker once put it so powerfully, “activism is the rent we pay for living on the planet”.

Ben Phillips is the author of ‘How to Fight Inequality’ and an advisor to the United Nations, governments and civil society organisations (CSOs).

 

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By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jan 6 2022 (IPS)

There are more under-reported consequences of human activities unmatching the rhythm of Mother Nature. Such is the case, among many others, of the growing salinisation and ‘plastification’ of the world’s soils.

In fact, currently it is estimated that there are more than 833 million hectares of salt-affected soils around the globe (8.7% of the planet). This implies the loss of soil’s capacity to grow food and also increasing impacts on water and the ability to filter pollution.

Unsustainable human activities are exacerbating soil salinity. Excessive tillage, the over-use of fertilisers, inappropriate irrigation methods and use of poor-quality water, deforestation or the overexploitation of groundwater are the main drivers of human-induced soil salinisation

Soil salinisation and sodification are major soil degradation processes threatening ecosystems and are recognised as being among the most important problems at a global level for agricultural production, food security and sustainability in arid and semi-arid regions, says the UN on occasion of the 2021 World Soil Day.

Not only: salt-affected soils have serious consequences on soil functions, such as in the decrease in agricultural productivity, water quality, soil biodiversity, and soil erosion and have a decreased ability to act as a buffer and filter against pollutants.

Salt-affected soils reduce both the ability of crops to take up water and the availability of micronutrients, and they also concentrate ions that are toxic to plants and may degrade the soil structure.

 

A threat to global pantry

Soil salinity is a naturally occurring phenomenon in arid environments, such as deserts, where intense evaporation and a chronic lack of water often turn the earth overly saline. Soils like these are less fertile because salt hampers plants’ natural ability to take up water from the ground, explains the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“But unsustainable human activities are exacerbating soil salinity. Excessive tillage, the over-use of fertilisers, inappropriate irrigation methods and use of poor-quality water, deforestation or the overexploitation of groundwater are the main drivers of human-induced soil salinisation.”

The World Soil Day 2021 and its campaign “Halt soil salinisation, boost soil productivity” aimed to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being by addressing the growing challenges in soil management, fighting soil salinisation, increasing soil awareness and encouraging societies to improve soil health.

According to FAO, these are, among others, the impacts of salt-affected soils:

Salt-affected soils have serious impacts on some of the ecosystem services soils usually provide, which are critical for supporting human life and biodiversity leading to an array of consequences including:

• decreased agricultural productivity, water quality, soil biodiversity, and increased soil erosion;
• decreased ability to act as a buffer and filter against contaminants;
• degraded soil structure;
• decreased functions of ecological systems such as the hydrological and nutrient cycles;
• reduced ability of crops to take up water
• reduced soil fertility and availability of micronutrients.

 

Half of Uzbekistan’s soils covered by salt

The Central Asian country is doubly land-locked – meaning it is surrounded by countries that are themselves landlocked – and more than half of Uzbekistan’s soils are salt-affected, making it extra hard to farm productively, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reports as an example.

 

Not only salt… also plastic

A December 2021 new report by FAO suggests that the land human beings use to grow food is contaminated with “far larger quantities of plastic pollution,” posing an even greater threat to food security, people’s health, and the environment.

The report – “Assessment of agricultural plastics and their sustainability: a call for action” – is the first global report of its kind by FAO and contains some startling numbers.

According to data collated by the UN agency’s experts:

– Agricultural value chains each year use 12.5 million tonnes of plastic products.

– A further 37.3 million tonnes are used in food packaging. The crop production and livestock sectors were found to be the largest users, accounting for 10.2 million tonnes per year collectively, followed by fisheries and aquaculture with 2.1 million tonnes, and forestry with 0.2 million tonnes.

– Asia was estimated to be the largest user of plastics in agricultural production, accounting for almost half of global usage. In the absence of viable alternatives, demand for plastic in agriculture is only set to increase.

– According to industry experts, for instance, global demand for greenhouse, mulching and silage films will increase by 50 percent, from 6.1 million tonnes in 2018 to 9.5 million tonnes in 2030.

– Such trends make it essential to balance the costs and benefits of plastic. Of increasing concern are microplastics, which have the potential of adversely affecting human health. While there are gaps in the data, they shouldn’t be used as an excuse not to act, FAO warned.

“This report serves as a loud call to coordinated and decisive action to facilitate good management practices and curb the disastrous use of plastics across the agricultural sectors,” FAO Deputy Director-General Maria Helena Semedo said in the report’s foreword.

The report was presented today at a virtual event in conjunction with World Soil Day marked each year on 5 December.

 

Ubiquitous

“Plastics have become ubiquitous since their widespread introduction in the 1950s, and it is difficult today to envisage life without them.

In agriculture, plastic products greatly help productivity, according to the report.

“Mulch films, for instance, are used to cover the soil to reduce weed growth, the need for pesticides, fertiliser and irrigation; tunnel and greenhouse films and nets protect and boost plant growth, and extend cropping seasons and increase yields.”

This is also the case of “coatings on fertilisers, pesticides and seeds control the rate of release of chemicals or improve germination; tree guards protect young seedlings and saplings against damage by animals and provide a microclimate that enhances growth.”

Meanwhile, plastic products help reduce food losses and waste, and maintain its nutritional qualities throughout a myriad of value chains, thereby improving food security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the report explains.

 

Billions of tonnes of plastic not properly disposed

Of the estimated 6.3 billion tonnes of plastics produced up to 2015, almost 80% has not been disposed of properly, says FAO.

Once in the natural environment, plastics can cause harm in several ways. The effects of large plastic items on marine fauna have been well documented.

However, as these plastics begin to disintegrate and degrade, their impacts begin to be exerted at the cellular level, affecting not only individual organisms but also, potentially, entire ecosystems.

Microplastics (plastics less than 5 mm in size) are thought to present specific risks to animal health, but recent studies have detected traces of microplastic particles in human faeces and placentas. There is also evidence of mother-to-foetus transmission of much smaller nanoplastics in rats.

While most scientific research on plastics pollution has been directed at aquatic ecosystems, especially oceans, FAO experts found that agricultural soils are thought to receive far greater quantities of microplastics.

Since 93% of global agricultural activities take place on land, there is an obvious need for further investigation in this area, concludes the report.

 

Need to know more?

Very little of the plastic we discard every day is recycled or incinerated in waste-to-energy facilities. Much of it ends up in landfills, where it may take up to 1,000 years to decompose, leaching potentially toxic substances into the soil and water, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which warns that one third of all plastic waste ends up in soils or freshwater.

Furthermore: over 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced globally each year. It is estimated that one third of all plastic waste ends up in soils or freshwaters, according to Researchers from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB).

 

More than marine pollution

Most of this plastic disintegrates into particles smaller than five millimetres, referred to as microplastics, and breaks down further into nanoparticles, which are less than 0.1 micrometre in size.

“In fact, terrestrial microplastic pollution is much higher than marine microplastic pollution – an estimate of four to 23 times more, depending on the environment. Sewage, for example, is an important factor in the distribution of microplastics.”

Also that “80% to 90% of the particles contained in sewage, such as from garment fibres, persist in the sludge. Sewage sludge is then often applied to fields as fertiliser, meaning that several thousand tonnes of microplastics end up in our soils each year.”

US President Donald Trump addresses the seventy-third session of the United Nations General Assembly. September 2018. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Jan 6 2022 (IPS)

Unless the Republicans and Democrats put the nation above their party and personal interests, our democracy will face the gravest danger in more than a hundred years.

Authoritarianism will creep in, leading to the collapse of American political institutions and the demise of our democracy as we know it.

Righting the Wrong

On January 6, Trump was planning to hold a press conference during which he was expected to repeat lies for the hundredth time that the election in 2020 was stolen, that the insurrection a year ago was actually peaceful, and that he – not Biden – is the duly-elected president.

He canceled the press conference at the urging of the GOP and now is expected to instead spread these lies at his Arizona rally next week. He will, needless to say, remain true to himself and deny any wrongdoing and blame the Democrats for persistently undermining his presidency as well as for all the ills that face America today.

Trump is uniquely dangerous; he wants to solidify his absolute control over the Republican Party, rouse his followers, instill hatred of the Democrats, and of course raise enough money for his re-election campaign should he decide to run again.

Moreover, the Arizona rally will be his first foray into the mid-term elections designed to rouse the rank-and-file of the Republican Party to recapture the House and the Senate as the forerunner to the 2024 election.

The tragic aspect of the Trump phenomenon is that the elected leaders of the Republican Party continue to follow him religiously, regardless of the fact that he is corrupt, was defeated in re-election as an incumbent, was impeached twice, and faces several criminal charges.

Indeed, no former president in American history has been able to maintain his grip on his party the way Trump has. And no Republican Party has abdicated its moral and constitutional responsibilities and willingly succumbed to a deranged egomaniac, misogynist, and habitual liar. How could this happen, and why? The answer is Trump’s and the Republicans’ voracious lust for power.

The Republican Party has become a minority party and there is no circumstance under which the party can win nationally in a free and fair election. Demographically, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, and other minorities currently represent more than 40 percent of the American population, and it is estimated that by 2045 they will become the majority, who largely vote for Democrats.

Collectively, even at the present they can deny the Republican Party from ever capturing the White House again if they go out and vote en masse.

The Republican Party faces two choices: one is to adapt to the changing demographic reality and develop socio-economic programs that respond to the needs of people of color (POC) without sacrificing much of their conservative ideology.

This includes lowering taxes, particularly for those who earn less than $200,000 a year, immigration reform, which the Republican Party has long-acknowledged needs addressing and will help in outreach especially to Hispanic voters, and supporting minority small business owners with tax breaks and other financial incentives, which won’t incur further government spending.

The second choice is to prevent or make it extremely difficult for POC to exercise their right to vote through a variety of deplorable measures. One state after another is passing discriminatory rules, including gerrymandering districts on racial lines, restricting early voting, which disproportionately affects Black Americans who are more likely than any other ethnic or racial group to cast early ballots (whether in-person or by mail and absentee ballots), enacting voter ID laws even though voter impersonation fraud is exceedingly rare and those who don’t have valid ID are disproportionately POC, and empower state legislators to invert their own elections and manipulate the electoral college to their advantage.

Sadly, if not tragically, the Republican Party went for the latter option. Many Republicans simply believe that POC are illegitimate citizens and should not be able to vote and have the power, as they fear accurately or otherwise, to enact laws against whites, the way whites have enacted discriminatory laws against POC. America, from their perspective, was founded by white people, and the thought that the US is becoming browner every passing day scares them to the core.

They needed a leader who is a bigot, shameless, and crude, with no scruples and no morals, but audacious—a performer with the ability to sway large audiences with his lies and sneering face. The Republicans need him to promote their agenda without fear of public repercussions, and he needs the party to satisfy his ego in order to exercise raw power, and also grant him its full support should he decide to run again.

We are still reeling from the violent storming of the Capitol on January 6 to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Trump, who incited his followers to attack the Capitol, was ready to shatter our democracy only to bask in his authoritarian impulse.

What does that say about the Republican Party, which largely ignored or downplayed the insurrection in its determination to seize power and chose chaos and violence over voting, even at the expense of tearing our democratic institutions apart? How ironic and deeply troubling that 52 percent of Republicans say that the insurrectionists were trying to protect democracy.

The most ominous note that must be repeated loud and clear is that the party under the leadership of Trump will incite violence should they fail to win the 2022 election, as anyone who carefully listens to the many utterances spewed by reckless Republicans leaders can discern with clarity.

In that context, although Trump during his rally will not openly encourage his followers to resort to violence to undo the result of the election, the message to them will be loud and clear.

It is hard to exaggerate the transformation of the Republican Party since the rise of Trump in 2016, from a patriotic party that stood for democracy to a white supremacist party willing to destroy it only to stay in power.

Many thousands of Republican leaders should follow the footsteps of Representative Liz Cheney, who stood up against Trump and in favor of the truth, and still rescue our democracy by accepting reality and being truthful with their followers.

The election of Biden gave the country hope of preserving our democracy and attending to the political and social malaise that swept the nation, especially during Trump’s tenure in the White House. But to address these ills, the Democrats must spare no effort to hold onto the House and Senate in the 2022 mid-term election, as these will be the most consequential in more than a century.

Indeed, should the Republicans manage to recapture both chambers of Congress, our democracy will slide toward the precipice of disintegration while authoritarianism creeps in, and Biden’s agenda will be shattered.

The Democrats have their work cut out for them. They must rise in unison, which is bitterly still missing, stop short of nothing to strengthen voting rights, prevent the appointment of partisans to subvert the election, fight political corruption at every level, make political power decreasingly dependent on money, get out the vote, and eliminate the filibuster to pass the voting rights bill.

Furthermore, they must hold accountable the traitors behind the insurrection on January 6, including Trump.

Democrats and the millions of law-abiding Republicans should sound the alarm before it’s too late, and never waver to preserve and protect America’s 244-year-old democracy that served as a beacon of hope and freedom to the global community.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies for over 20 years.

 

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In India, five out of six people in multidimensional poverty were from lower castes. Credit: UNDP India/Dhiraj Singh

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 6 2022 (IPS)

The UN’s highly-ambitious goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030 has been severely undermined by a rash of problems worldwide, including an escalating coronavirus pandemic, continued widespread military conflicts and the devastating impact of climate change.

According to published estimates, more than 700 million people have been living in poverty around the world, surviving on less than $1.90 a day.

But the fast-spreading pandemic, whose origins go back to December 2019, has been singled out as the primary reason for a rise in global poverty– for the first time in 20 years.

A World Bank report, which was updated last October, says about 100 million additional people are now living in poverty as a direct result of the pandemic.

For almost 25 years, extreme poverty — the first of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — was steadily declining. Now, for the first time in a generation, the quest to end poverty has suffered a setback, says the report.

Sir Richard Jolly, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, UK, told IPS at least the World Bank is emphasizing that world poverty has been rising — after many years where in countries with positive economic per capita growth, it suggested that poverty had fallen, or soon would.

Admitting he was “a fan” of the UNDP’s annual Human Development Report (HDR), he said: “So, for me, multi- dimensional poverty is a more realistic and relevant indicator”.

“I want to know what’s been happening to life expectancy, access to education and incomes of the poorer sections of society, those below a poverty measure or median income”

For instance, the numbers and percentages of the population below $10,000 in many countries, lower for some, especially in Africa. Even if by income measures poverty is rising, a multi-dimensional measure is much better, he said.

“What are those in UNDP’s HDR office saying about recent poverty trends?” asked Sir Richard, who was a former Trustee of Oxfam and chairman of the UN Association of the UK.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the pandemic has “laid bare” challenges –such as structural inequalities, inadequate healthcare, and the lack of universal social protection – and the heavy price societies are paying as a result.

Ending poverty sits at the heart of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and is the first of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite this, poverty and hunger, Guterres said, are on the rise, following decades of progress.

In his New Year message last week, he said the world welcomes 2022 “with our hopes for the future being tested”: by deepening poverty and worsening inequality, by an unequal distribution of COVID vaccines, by climate commitments that fall short of their goals and by ongoing conflicts, divisions, and misinformation.

“These are not just policy tests. These are moral and real-life tests. And they are tests humanity can pass — if we commit to making 2022 a year of recovery for everyone,” he declared.

In an interview with IPS, Roberto Bissio, Coordinator of Social Watch, an international network of citizen organizations that monitor how governments meet internationally-agreed commitments, pointed out that the World Bank once again underestimates poverty by measuring it with the extremely low benchmark of $1.90 a day.

Further, by assuming that the tide lifts all boats equally it claims that the Covid-induced poverty “tsunami” of 2020 is being turned around by economic growth in 2021.

“This ignores the conclusion of the World Inequality Report 2022 (launched December 7, 2021 and available here: https://wid.world/news-article/world-inequality-report-2022/ ), showing that inequalities have been exacerbated, particularly in the South, where states don’t have deep pockets to fund emergency social protection”.

The Bank is right that SDG1 on reducing poverty won’t be achieved by 2030 without major policy changes, but neither will SDG10 on reducing inequalities, said Bissio, who was also a former member of the Civil Society Advisory Committee to the Administrator of the UN Development Programme, and has covered development issues as a journalist since 1973.

“And it shamefully ignores that World Bank promoted policies of privatization and deregulation make the inequalities worse,” he argued.

“Instead, the policies recommended by the infamous and now discontinued “Doing Business” report of the World Bank, are still part of the conditions imposed on countries to receive emergency from the Bank”.

The institution that claims to have poverty reduction as its main mandate is part of the problem, not of the solution, said Bissio, who is also international representative of the Uruguay-based Third World Institute.

Vicente Paolo Yu, Senior Legal Adviser at the Third World Network, told IPS the setback in 2020 to the fight against global poverty due to the Covid pandemic exacerbates the impact of other crises such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and the development gap on the global poor, particularly those in developing countries.

“Global poverty and inequality among and in all countries, climate change, biodiversity loss, and unequal pandemic responses are among the present-day results of historical injustices on the
Global South committed in the name of Western civilization and globalization,” he said.

“The past is part of our present that shapes our future. These crises are linked and cannot be fought effectively through piecemeal efforts or in silos.”

Global poverty and inequality exist not because people are not hard working in their own homes and communities but because the way that the global economic, financial, and trade system is set up makes it difficult for poor peoples and countries to get out of poverty, he argued.

Developing countries that have recently managed to succeed in cutting poverty have been those that have implemented diverse development policies, said Yu, who is a former Deputy Executive Director of the South Centre in Geneva.

Hence, poverty and inequality are not natural phenomena but are borne out of the actions and decisions taken by human societies. They can also be reversed by human decisions, he noted.

“Failing to act together as a common human community on all fronts on poverty and inequality and their various manifestations in the root causes and impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pandemic responses leads to the denial of human choices and opportunities, violations of human rights, and increased human insecurity, powerlessness, and exclusion for peoples, their communities, and their countries,” declared Yu.

Fighting these must be through a broad and systemic effort across the world founded on a deep sense of urgency and understanding of equity and justice as public goods in undertaking interlinked actions in the economic, social, and environmental fields. It is about choosing to create the conditions for human dignity and a decent life for all rather hoping for charity from the wealthy, he added.

“The continued existence of deep poverty and inequality for many peoples across the globe, compounded by the climate, biodiversity and pandemic crises, is injustice writ large — particularly when seen against the technological and industrial advances and capital accumulation of a relative few”.

“It is against the tenets of all faiths and human goodwill to refuse to act against the injustice of poverty. We should not simply look away and call for charity. We need to act with courage and conviction to correct injustice, redress wrongs, and achieve liberation from poverty and inequality.”

The year 2022, he predicted, should be the year when all peoples come together to set each other free from the shackles of global poverty and inequality.

 

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By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Jan 5 2022 (IPS)

In the final months of 2021 you likely saw countless media reports of migrant men, women and children getting blocked at borders trying to enter various countries. Two flashpoints were the Mexico-US border and the border between Poland and Belarus, but there were many others.

What you likely didn’t learn from the media was what happened to tens of millions of people who left home, often as a last option, because of conflicts or an environmental emergency but who relocated—at least temporarily—to another part of their own country. Nearly 40 million people in 149 countries made such moves in 2020, an astounding 75% of them for climate or environmental hazards. (The others were displaced by conflict). Today we’re speaking about this with Diogo Serraglio of the South American Network for Environmental Migration, or RESAMA.

Here in Nepal the annual monsoon usually spawns destructive and deadly floods and landslides that shatter the lives of hundreds, even thousands, of people. Many of them rig up temporary homes almost immediately or are housed in emergency shelters nearby until they can rebuild on their land. But in some cases the displaced simply give up and leave, hoping to recreate their lives in a new place. Eventually, if things go well, they will be absorbed into the neighbourhood and the larger community.

Diogo tells me this is a normal scenario globally—people who migrate to a new place within a country find themselves on their own to construct a new life. But, work IS happening to create international frameworks to provide direction on how displaced people should be treated; the challenge is to translate those peerless promises into hot meals and housing where people actually end up. Covid-19 has made that much more difficult, explains Diogo.

One note before we start—Diogo refers to the UNFCCC. That is the acronym of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the body that hosted COP26 last November and the 25 previous meetings.

Please listen now to my conversation with Diogo Serraglio.

 

 

Desperate for work Kamikazi put her faith in ‘agents’ to find her a job. Instead, she found herself working without pay as a domestic worker in Kuwait. Photo: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Rwanda, Jan 5 2022 (IPS)

When Kamikazi * from Gisagara, a district in Southern Rwanda, was forced to quit her job due to COVID-19 last year, she desperately sought other employment.

A former co-worker in the food processing firm where Kamikazi once worked introduced her to “agents”. They assured her she would find decent employment in the Middle East, but little did she know her co-worker had delivered her into the arms of human traffickers.

The following day, with her passport in hand, the 22-year-old approached the agent, who told her to pay about 300 US dollars as a facilitation fee.

“One day, I received a call from the agent who told me that I had to travel to Kenya where I would secure my visa to Kuwait,” Kamikazi told IPS.

At the border between Tanzania and Kenya, the young woman met other members of the human trafficking syndicate who helped her to cross into Kenya unnoticed before travelling by road to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

In Nairobi, she and the ‘agents’ hid residential house with several other young women of different African nationalities. Driven by fear and desperation, she continued with the ruse until the group finally boarded a plane to Kuwait.

“I was told that domestic workers from our region (East Africa) were more highly valued in Kuwait than those from other countries,” she says.

Kamikazi recalls her arrival. The traffickers took their passports and held her and some other young women prisoner in an apartment.

“We believed them because my hope was that the new opportunity would help change my life for the better,” she told IPS.

However, her hopes for a better future were soon dashed.

She was “hired’ by a family – but found herself locked up and unpaid. And if it suited them, her employers would swap the domestic workers between themselves.

“I didn’t have any valid travel document, and I was treated like an animal being traded by one family to another,” she said. To make matters worse, she realised that her ex-colleague, whom she considered a close friend, was responsible for her situation.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in most countries in the Middle East, domestic workers are excluded from labour law, which means they have no social, health or legal protection.

Domestic workers suffer from particularly arduous conditions, and their situation is all the more vulnerable because most countries have no laws governing their employment, the report said. Because they are excluded from labour law provisions, written employment contracts are not required.

Victims of human traffickers often become sexually exploited, forced into labour, slavery and can become victims of organ removal and sale.

Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) has warned that thousands of people fall prey to traffickers who portray themselves as recruitment agents. Vulnerable young women seeking greener pastures fall prey to these traffickers.

Latest estimates by UN Women indicate that while it’s challenging to get exact numbers of victims, the vast majority of detected trafficking victims are women and girls, and three out of four are trafficked for sexual exploitation.

Recent cases of maids being mistreated and assaulted by their employers in the Middle East have shone a light on domestic workers’ hidden and unregulated conditions.

In many cases, these women work illegally, which means they have little protection if their employers abuse them.

With tears in her eyes, Kamikazi remembers her first hours with her new employee.

“After confiscating my passport, I was told to stay at home (…) I was like in a cage,” Kamikazi said.

A typical working day started as early as 4 am and ended at midnight or later. There were no days off, and there was no going out unless to accompany the family somewhere.

“I had to take care of the house pets in addition to cooking, cleaning, washing clothes (…) I wanted to escape because I was abused by my employer but had no idea where to turn,” she said.

Whereas Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) findings indicate that the majority of the victims are intercepted at the point of exit – either at the airport or the different border points of the country – evidence shows there are cases where young women are trafficked to neighbouring countries as a transit for commercial sexual exploitation in the Gulf countries.

An investigation by law enforcement institutions in Rwanda found at least 47 local-based syndicate members were trafficking women from Rwanda to work abroad. As a result, 49 individuals, including company owners, were arrested and prosecuted in courts of law in 2018, according to judicial reports.

The trend shows an upward trajectory, with 131 trafficking victims identified in 2020, compared with 96 victims in 2019.

Like Kamikazi, most human trafficking victims are enticed from villages and towns with false promises of gainful employment abroad.

Studies have proven that when families are economically unstable, the vulnerability of children increases. Traffickers prey on such families by making false promises of a new job, augmented income, better living conditions and financial support abroad.

Even though Rwanda has a strict anti-trafficking law that penalises sex and labour trafficking with up to 15 years of imprisonment, the RIB Secretary-General, Jeannot Ruhunga, is convinced that trafficking, especially women and children, continues to be a serious challenge faced by the international community.

Speaking during the workshop ‘Law enforcement officers & Criminal Justice practitioners’ workshop under the theme: Combating Trafficking in Human Beings with a Multi-stakeholders’ approach for Central and East Africa, the senior Rwandan police investigator noted that organised trafficking in persons is transboundary. It’s a global problem but seriously affects Central and East Africa.

“The most important is about how countries work together to address challenges encountered during the investigation and prosecution of this transboundary offence and to strengthen cooperation and mutual assistance,” Ruhunga said.

According to data from the Rwanda Directorate General of Immigration and Emigration, the majority of suspected human trafficking victims identified in Rwanda were from Burundi (62.7%), followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (15%) and Rwanda (13.6%).

Case data by the National Public Prosecution Authority reveal between 2016 and 2018, most perpetrators were male (63%), with females still comprising a substantial percentage of traffickers (37%).

The 2019 study conducted by Rwandan NGO Never Again Rwanda stresses that the effective management of national borders constitutes a critical component of inhibiting human trafficking because it functions to deter criminals and identify victims.

The research found that the primary transit countries for trafficking in East Africa are Uganda, Kenya, and, to a lesser extent, Tanzania. Uganda ranks first, followed by Kenya and Tanzania as destinations for trafficking.

Dr Joseph Ryarasa Nkurunziza, Executive Director of Never Again Rwanda, told IPS that awareness and education are key to beating human trafficking in Rwanda.

“Awareness is important considering that the pandemic has worsened the situation for many vulnerable groups which are now more prone to human trafficking,” Nkurunziza said.

For Kamikazi, her ordeal has come to an end. After being forced to work night and day and kept prisoner in her employer’s home, she was rescued after asking assistance from a businesswoman in Kuwait.

Her rescuer contacted the Rwandan Embassy in Dubai.

“It seemed like my employer didn’t want to give back my passport, but the Kuwait Police told them to give it to me.”

*Kamikazi’s name has been changed to protect her identity.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN )  is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

 

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Governments and the public need to recognize, understand and respond to the ageing of human populations in the 21st century, which is the inescapable demographic future of nations worldwide. Credit: Maricel Sequeira/IPS

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Jan 5 2022 (IPS)

The ageing of human populations is an inescapable demographic future. That evolving and universal future is increasingly challenging governments and the public, who are by and large ill prepared for that certain future.

Whereas the 20th century was one of record setting rapid population growth with world population nearly quadrupling, the 21st century is one of unprecedented population ageing with its economic, social and political consequences reverberating across countries worldwide.

Whereas the 20th century was one of record setting rapid population growth with world population nearly quadrupling, the 21st century is one of unprecedented population ageing with its economic, social and political consequences reverberating across countries worldwide

In addition to influencing the existing world order, population ageing is affecting fundamental aspects of human societies. Among those aspects are economic activities, investments, taxes, budgets, labor forces, politics, defense, education, housing, household structures, transportation, recreation, retirement, pensions, disabilities and healthcare.

Population ageing, which is taking place at a much faster pace than in the past, is basically the result of lower birth rates and increased longevity. While in the 1960s the world’s total fertility rate and life expectancy at birth were 5 births per woman and 50 years, current levels are 2.4 births per woman and 73 years for average life expectancy at birth.

Due to the fundamental changes in the levels of fertility and mortality, the age structure of the world’s population has aged significantly. In the 1960s, for example, the median age of world population was 22 years and the proportion aged 65 years and older was 5 percent; today the median age has increased to 32 years and the elderly are 10 percent of world population.

In addition, the proportion of the elderly aged 80 years and older has tripled since 1960, increasing from about 0.6 to 2 percent and is expected to double to 4 percent by 2050. Increased longevity has also resulted in significantly more centenarians. The number of centenarians is expected to more than quintuple over the coming thirty years, growing from approximately 600 thousand today to 3.2 million by mid-century.

Worldwide the current number of persons aged 65 years and older worldwide is approximately 750 million. That number is expected to more than double over the next three decades, reaching 1.5 billion older persons by 2050. As a result, the world’s proportion of older persons is projected to increase from 10 to 16 percent, or about one of every six people in the world will be in the age group 65 years and older.

At the national level, nearly all the G20 countries, which together account for more than 80 percent of world GDP, 75 percent of global trade and 60 percent of world population, are expected to have no less than one-quarter of their populations aged 65 years and older by 2100. And eight of those countries, including Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the Republic of Korea, are expected to have one-third or more of their population aged 65 years and older by the close of the century (Figure 1).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Due to the increasing elderly retired population coupled with the relative decline of workers paying taxes and contributing to pension retirement systems, many countries are confronting difficult choices. Governments are being challenged by budgetary allocations, taxation levels, retirement benefits and provision of social and health services, especially for the growing numbers of those aged 65 years and older.

Aiming to avoid controversial budgetary reforms and unpopular tax increases, some governments are reducing expenditures and entitlements for the elderly and shifting more of the costs for support, care giving and health services to the individual and their families. In many instances, however, most households are unable or reluctant to take on the time-consuming responsibilities and considerable costs involved in caring for elderly family members.

The proportion of older persons who live alone has grown steadily over the recent past. Also, those 65 years and older are in the age group that is most likely to live alone. The average proportion of older persons living alone among OECD countries is about 33 percent, with highs of more than 40 percent among some countries, such as Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania and Sweden (Figure 2).

 

Source: OECD.

 

Like the influenza pandemic in the early part of the 20th century, the current COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in declines in life expectancy and significant increases in the numbers of deaths, especially among the elderly and those with health problems.

Although it is difficult to say precisely when the current pandemic will end, international population projections generally expect mortality levels to continue their declines in the coming years resulting in higher life expectancies during the 21st century.

The ageing of populations, especially among the militarily powerful nations, may possibly contribute to efforts to secure world peace. As governments face growing numbers and proportions of their citizens aged 65 years and older, the needs, concerns and perspectives of the elderly men and women may lead to reductions in military expenditures and increased spending on benefits, assistance and care for those in old age.

Given the population ageing of nations, governments need to adopt policies and establish programs to address the growing consequences of population ageing. In doing so, it is important to note that immigration is not a solution to population ageing.

Immigration can certainly increase the size of labor force and significant proportions of the labor forces in many countries are immigrants. However, immigration is not a solution to population ageing because the immigrants also age over time and eventually add their numbers to the retired elderly population.

In contrast, raising the retirement age for government benefits is an effective policy to address population ageing. Raising the retirement age to 70 years would increase the size of the labor force. At the same time, a higher retirement age would also reduce the number of recipients receiving government pension benefits.

The use of robots, artificial intelligence and advanced technology to assist and provide services, information and companionship to the growing numbers of older persons should also be expanded. Such an expansion would that reduce labor demands and costs of providing such care and assistance. Also, it would be more efficient and effective in addressing common health conditions of people in old age.

Public programs are also needed to educate and provide information to people about the need for life-long learning and preparing for retirement, especially developing a savings plan to meet their needs in old age. Such programs should also promote healthy ageing and encourage older persons to keep active and physically fit and remain socially engaged with others.

In sum, governments and the public need to recognize, understand and respond to the ageing of human populations in the 21st century, which is the inescapable demographic future of nations worldwide.

 

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

 

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Jan 5 2022 (IPS)

A brutal drama is unfolding in Ethiopia and it is difficult to find straightforward accounts of what is happening there. However, this does not prevent people from taking a unilateral stand for either of the factions involved in the disaster.

Since November 2020, a ruthless civil war has caused immense misery, especially in the northern parts of the country. Tens of thousands have been killed, about 2 million persons are left homeless, while famine affects 9 million. It has been extremely difficult for journalists to enter the affected areas and the outside world has to rely on information from the warring parties. As is the case of any armed conflict – propaganda, dubious reporting and outright lies are prevalent.

During World War I, the US Senator Hiram Johnson stated that “The first casualty when war comes, is truth” and any armed conflict seems to prove this fact with recent examples from the Gulf War, the conflict between NATO and Serbia over Kosovo, as well as the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Government manipulation is supported by media complicity, as evidenced by the embedding of reporters in military units and an uncritical, openly patriotic coverage of conflicts.

In his history of war journalism, The First Casualty, the Australian author Phillip Knightley stated that ”the age of the war correspondent as hero, appears to be over.” Even if global networks are becoming ever more efficient, making their presence felt all over the world, it is nevertheless extremely difficult to discern what is true or false. Too many vested interests are at stake, though no one can deny that every war is a disaster.

While ingesting scanty news from Ethiopia I am reminded of an interview I in 1997 did with Guatemala’s Archbishop Juan José Gerardi Condera. He was an open-minded and jocular man in charge of a project called Recovering Historic Memory, REHMI, which documented violence against civilians during Guatemala’s 36 years of civil war, in particular the ruthless killing of members of the country’s indigenous population.

One year after our meeting, Bishop Gerardi presented a report entitled Nunca Más, Never Again, which was notably damning to the Guatemalan military. Two days after the release of the report, Gerardi was found bludgeoned to death in the garage of his villa. His skull and face were crushed and it was only through his episcopal ring that he could be identified.

During our talk Bishop Gerardi had told me:

I do not know if we were right or wrong when we began preaching a gospel highlighting human rights. We intended to preach not only through words, but through deeds as well. With the support of the local, rural population we organized development committees which constructed schools, clinics and community centres. I assure you that as soon as you try to improve the physical and psychological well-being of your neighbour, especially our most poor, vulnerable and humble sisters and brothers, you become defenselessly entangled in the nets of politics and are thus destined to make powerful enemies. We started a wildfire. Soon our catechists were being murdered. No respect and mercy whatsoever were shown to the clergy. They called us Communists and several of us were executed. The severed head of one of my priests was found on the steps to his church. If someone takes up arms … violence and injustice cannot be avoided. It does not matter whether murderous measures are considered to be fair or not. The result is always the same – death and misery for all involved, and especially for the wretched ones who happen to be innocent.

On 2 April 2018, Abiy Ahmed was by the Ethiopian parliament sworn in as Prime Minster of Ethiopia. His accession was greeted with cheers and a sense of relief. After three years of massive protests, the ruling political constellation EPRDF, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, had begun to crack. The head of government resigned and the old guard sought a replacement whom they assumed they could be able control. However, Abiy Ahmed surprised everyone when he signaled resolute action and initiated sweeping reforms. During his first months in power, Abiy’s popularity was tremendous, especially in the capital Addis Ababa. His inspirational speeches were applauded, while his picture could be seen almost everywhere; in shop windows, on restaurant walls, and taped to cars and lorries. Large crowds marched along the main streets, chanting his name, declaring that Ethiopia now had been redeemed after decades of oppression.

Abiy Ahmed appointed a new government with 50 percent women ministers. Thousands of political prisoners were released. The country’s anti-terrorism law, widely perceived as a tool of political repression, was amended. Opposition groups, including those who had fled the country, were welcomed to discuss Ethiopia’s future. A female president was appointed, while democratic elections and a new constitution were promised. The border between Ethiopia and Eritrea was opened and air services between the capitals were resumed.

However, by the beginning of 2020, the cheers had subsided. Pictures of the Prime Minister had been torn down and replaced by others that depicted ancient rulers; like the mythical hero emperor Tewodros, the last emperor Haile Selassie and, strangely enough, the blood-stained dictator Mengistu. What had happened?

During his acceptance speech, Abiy had promised political reforms and an active promotion of unity among the peoples of Ethiopia. He soon reached out to the Eritrean government to resolve the ongoing Eritrean–Ethiopian border conflict, a protracted strife that frequently had exploded in fierce warfare. A free press became permitted, while State monopolies in the telecommunications, aviation, electricity, and logistics sectors were being dismantled and industries were opened up to private sector competition.

Abiy’s attempts at comprehensive reforms was a risky balancing act. Ethiopia is not really a nation-state, it is more of a conglomerate of ethnic entities. Among the country’s 115 million inhabitants, 80 million consider themselves to belong to different ethnic groups. Members of the Amharic population group have, along with the closely related Tigrayans, since the establishment of the medieval kingdom of Abyssinia been state leaders. Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group – the Oromos – was incorporated into Abyssinia in the 16th century. Abiy Ahmed bridged ethnicities and religions. His father is Oromo and Muslim, his mother Amhara and Orthodox Christian, while he himself is member of The Ethiopian Full Gospel Believers’ Church, a Pentecostal Movement. He has a Master in Business Administration and a PhD in Peace and Security Studies.

Abiy was initially focused on dialogue between different ethnicities and political fractions, but in step with his reform attempts difficulties arose almost everywhere. Worst has been the situation in the Tigray region, situated along the border with Eritrea. Leaders from that area had for almost 30 years through a superior military power, authoritarian rule, censorship and a tight political system, which nevertheless allowed for a certain ethnical/linguistical autonomy, succeeded in stimulating economic growth and an expanding infrastructure. However after the death of Prime Minister Meles Zenaw in 2012, corruption increased and opposition grew stronger.

Abiy’s economic reforms, the release of political prisoners and limitations to censorship worried many of his Tigranian colleagues and some of them were directly affected by a crackdown on corruption. Realizing that Abiy could not be controlled, some Tigranian politicians began moving north to their home region, instead of awaiting trial in Addis Ababa. The Tigrayan suspicion of Abiy increased and the region’s leading party Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) refused to join Abiy’s Prosperity Coalition, accusing him of discriminating against Tigrayans and claiming that the agreement with Eritrea was a ”largely unimplemented” scam. When elections scheduled for August 2020 were postponed with reference to a menacing COVID situation, TPLF organized a regional election in Tigray, where they won a landslide victory.

On the night of November 4, 2020, TPLF forces broke into several military bases in Tigray urging soldiers and officers to join TPLF. Those who refused were overpowered, or killed. Weapon stockpiles were looted, among them long-range missiles. The federal government declared that TPLF had committed high treason and ordered the army to go on the offensive. Since then Ethiopia has been devoured by a cruel civil war.

Due to restrictions and censorship, evidence-based information barely seeps out, while a rich flora of rumors is dominating social media and the international press. It has become difficult to distinguish between factual information and abundant exaggerations and distortions. Nevertheless, it is evident that war crimes have been committed by both warring fractions.

The Ethiopian government has lost the information war. Communication to the international media has been scarce, with an emphasis on military success, while civilian abuses are blamed on the TPLF and Eritrean intervention is denied. This while TPLF during its years in government was able to build up a wide network of sympathizers around the world, which has been mobilized during the war, influencing foreign politicians and international media.

TLPF forces were close to reaching Addis Ababa, but in mid-December last year, the Government gained the upper hand, after deploying heavy weapons, including drones, provided by China, Russia and Turkey. On December 19, the TLPF declared itself ready to withdraw its forces to Tigray, hopes for peace negotiations are growing, together with wishes that the suffering of the Ethiopian people finally will come to an end.

I assume my summarized description of Abiy´s reform attempts and the war they resulted in is as flawed as most reporting coming out of Ethiopia, based as it is on media, my own perceptions and especially writings and reports by a friend whose knowledge and insights I esteem. Let us hope that peace is achieved and that the thorny issues that internally harass Ethiopia, as well as this nation’s relations with other countries might find a nonviolent solution.

 

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By Barbara Jimenez-Santiago
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 5 2022 (IPS)

Across Latin America and the Caribbean there is a culture of impunity for perpetrators of sexual violence. Crimes against women and girls often go unpunished and under-reported due to societal misconceptions about victimhood and the nature of sex crimes.

The stigmatization of survivors and the permissive attitude toward abusers is reinforced by discriminatory laws that perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes.

Equality Now recently undertook an analysis of rape laws across the Americas region and what we found were woefully insufficient laws that failed to adequately prevent sexual violence and ensure justice for women and girls who have been violated. One of the most common yet insidious forms of legal loopholes that we found in Latin America specifically were so-called “estupro provisions.”

Estupro provisions, which provide for a lesser penalty for adults who rape adolescents above the legal age of consent than for children or adult women, are based on the idea that adolescents seduce and tempt older men into assaulting them or that older men seduce impressionable and naive teenagers into sexual acts.

This interpretation suggests a notion of a hierarchy of rape where some perpetrators are deemed less guilty than others for effectively the same crime and some victims are implied to be less harmed by the experience and so less deserving of justice.

These laws are rooted in outdated perceptions about chastity, morality, and female sexuality and enable prosecutors to argue that adolescent victims manipulated their aggressor into abusing them. Estupro laws and provisions perpetuate the idea that a victim is, at least partially, responsible for the crimes committed against her.

Estupro is often wrongly defined on the internet as “statutory rape,” but these two charges are not the same. Statutory rape, used commonly in penal codes of the United States of America, refers to what would otherwise be considered consensual sex, except that it involves a minor whose young age means that the law deems her or him incapable of being able to consent.

The penalty for statutory rape is often higher than for other categories of rape, whereas for estupro there is a lesser penalty.

For our report on rape laws in the Americas, Failure to Protect: How Discriminatory Sexual Violence Laws and Practices are Hurting, Women, Girls and Adolescents in the Americas, we interviewed Doña Petita, a woman whose daughter Paola was raped by a school vice principal in Ecuador.

Paola tragically killed herself after she became pregnant and was pressured by her abuser to have an abortion. Her femicide followed sustained abuse and grooming by an adult man who manipulated his position of power and her trust in him.

Doña Petita was unable to get support following the tragic death of her adolescent daughter. Not from the school, not from law enforcement, and not from the courts. Paola’s rapist was a very powerful man in the community who had access to lawyers, resources, and political connections that Doña Petita did not.

Additionally, Paola’s community did not perceive her as the victim that she was, but as an equally culpable actor in the abuse that she suffered. As Doña Petita told us: “Paola was a girl and he was a man in his 60s but people blamed my daughter, saying that she must have seduced him. They didn’t understand that he was an old man manipulating her and not the other way around. She was the victim.”

Estupro laws reinforce the concept of victim-blaming, thus it is not surprising that Ecuador is one of the 17 jurisdictions found in our report to have such provisions. In practice, estupro provisions are often used to circumvent application of the rape offense, thus minimizing the crime and implying that the sex act was not an act of violence.

By applying estupro provisions, prosecutors and judges perpetuate the myth that it is adolescent girls who are treacherously seductive and manipulative, preying on helpless adult men. As demonstrated by the case of Paola, these harmful myths and gender stereotypes have far-reaching impacts.

Justice was elusive for Doña Petita in her home country of Ecuador. She pursued three different courses of legal action, but in each instance her case was dismissed. Her daughter’s abuser fled the country and was never held accountable for his crimes.

Thanks to Doña Petita’s ceaseless determination and the efforts of the non-profit organizations Centro Ecuatoriano para la Promoción y Acción de la Mujer (CEPAM-Guayaquil) and the Center for Reproductive Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights held Ecuador responsible for failing to protect Paola and violating her rights to life, personal integrity, private life and dignity; her right to enjoy special protection from the State as a child; her right to equality and non-discrimination; her right to education; and her right to live free from gender violence.

The Court’s ruling is a victory not just for Paola and Doña Petita, but for girls throughout the region. However, Doña Petita should not have had to wait 18 years for justice – she should have been able to rely on national laws to protect her daughter and hold her daughter’s abuser to account. so that.

If that had happened, Paola would have been recognized for the exploitation she suffered and offered support services and she might still be alive today. But sexual violence laws across the region, like the ones that Paola encountered, are failing women, girls, and adolescents resulting in tragic outcomes.

Discriminatory laws, like estupro provisions, not only deny victims justice but they legitimize the practice of victim-blaming by suggesting that an adult perpetrator could be seduced or tricked into have sex with a minor. Latin American governments must act now to repeal any existing estupro provisions.

This reform must be complemented by a complete overhaul of sexual violence laws, including adopting consent-based definitions of rape, to ensure that adolescent girls and all survivors are protected from sexual violence in all circumstances.

Reforming sexual violence laws will both allow survivors of sexual violence access to dignified justice but will play a critical role in shaping the way that society understands sexual and gender-based violence.

Barbara Jimenez-Santiago is Latin American Regional Representative for Equality Now

 

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Zimbabwean pineapple smallholder farmers now can sell their organically-produced pineapples on the European markets. Farmers are hopeful this will bring wealth to a region recently devastated by Cyclone Idai. Credit: Tonderayi Mukeredzi/IPS

By Tonderayi Mukeredzi
Harare, Zimbabwe , Jan 4 2022 (IPS)

In her wildest dreams, smallholder farmer Sarudzai Sithole never imagined that her pineapples could someday stock the produce section of Europe’s finest supermarkets.

Now, the 34-year-old mother of five is part of a group of 45 farmers in Rusitu Valley in Chipinge, a district in Zimbabwean eastern province of Manicaland, who from December 2021 would be exporting nearly 50 tonnes of their pineapples to the Netherlands.

“This is the best experience I have heard in the fourteen years that I have been growing pineapples. I have been selling my pineapples locally to buyers from Mutare, Harare and Bulawayo during this period, but it has been for a small profit.

“I will be selling two tonnes, and at the price of 70 cents that we have been promised, the exported crop will greatly improve my life and that of my family,” an excited Sithole tells IPS.

She says pineapple farming has enabled her to build a house, buy various household goods and send children to school. She is increasing her crop hectarage, hoping that the rewards from the exported crop will empower her to electrify the family home, among other major home improvements.

When growing the pineapples, Sithole says they do not apply fertilisers or chemicals but manure only.

Dudzai Ndiadzo, the Rusitu Fruit Growers and Marketing Trust administrator, says the farmers’ dream to export their produce to Europe became a reality in August (2021). Their pineapples got organic certification from Ecocert Organic Standard, a French quality control body whose certification allows the farmers to send their organic products to international markets. The 45 villagers belong to the trust.

Farmers in Chipinge and most of Zimbabwe’s prime farming areas incur heavy post-harvest losses because their produce often rots by the roadside as they struggle to secure markets or transport their produce to the markets.
Chipinge farmers formed Rusitu Fruit Growers and Marketing Trust to market their crops. It represents over 1 300 farmers.

The farmers were victims of Cyclone Idai. This tropical cyclone hit their home area of Chipinge and Chimanimani in 2019, killing over 180 people, destroying 7,000 households and infrastructure and leaving 4,000 people food insecure, but their pineapple crop was not destroyed.

Ndiadzo said most farmers have been growing pineapples but not on a commercial scale because the market for pineapples wasn’t that good.

“We are excited to be exporting because the local market for pineapples is poor. The money from the export market is better – it is double or more what we would have gotten here,” he tells IPS.

Confronted with market access challenges, Rusitu Fruit Growers and Marketing Trust engaged the country’s export promotion body, Zimtrade, which offered training and technical expertise to the farmers on how to grow pineapples organically.

In 2017, the farmers started working with Zimtrade to get organic certification and have been supported in the certification and export quest by organisations such as COLEACP, Embassy of Netherlands in Zimbabwe, and Netherlands based PUM and RVO International.

Zimtrade has a long-standing partnership with PUM, where experts offer technical interventions to Zimbabwean exporters in different sectors to improve their quality and production processes for export. Through the collaboration with PUM, Zimtrade developed links with food companies in the Netherlands that have made it possible for smallholders to export their crops.

Admire Jongwe, Zimtrade’s manager for Eastern Region, says the organic certification is a critical milestone in reaching the lucrative organic fruit market, especially in the United States of America, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany and other emerging markets such as the United Arab Emirates.

“The organic certification will enable the farmers to fetch as much as 30 percent premium on their produce in most supermarkets in Europe. This will improve their returns as well as boost their livelihoods from producing the pineapple,” he tells IPS.

Jongwe says with organic standards, the smallholder pineapple farmers will access the global pineapple market, which has grown from US$2,3 billion in 2011 to US$2,5 billion in 2020, according to Trade Map.

Zimbabwe averages US$18 million per year in the total trade value of fruit and vegetable exports. Figures from Zimtrade shows that during the first half of 2021, Zimbabwe’s horticulture exports topped US$30 million with tea, macadamia nuts, fresh flowers, leguminous vegetables, largely contributing to the revenue.

The country used to be one of Africa’s biggest exporters of horticulture, but horticulture exports have been tumbling over the years. Europe is currently the largest export market for the Zimbabwean horticulture sector, with the Netherlands and the United Kingdom leading the pack.

 

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Journalists in Zambia protest against attacks on the media. Credit: Kelvin Kachingwe/IPS

By Gypsy Guillén Kaiser
NEW YORK, Jan 4 2022 (IPS)

This past year, uncertainty blanketed our world. The COVID-19 pandemic, the rapidly advancing climate crisis, the pervasive nature of new technologies, and encroaching authoritarianism have all shown that our world is changing fast and in ways that fundamentally affect how we live.

As conspiracy theories laced with facts have spread to the general public, it is clear that we need reliable, independent information. We need journalists — the kind who hold the powerful to account and whose reporting serves as a bedrock for democracy. Yet, such journalists often face relentless, targeted attacks.

For 40 years, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has assessed the state of press freedom worldwide and in 2021, the data speaks for itself. A record number of journalists were imprisoned: at least 293. CPJ also found that at least 24 journalists were killed in 2021 because of their coverage.

Eighteen more died in circumstances too murky to determine whether they were specifically targeted for their journalism. In tandem with expert partners, brave journalists, and allied public officials, we are pushing the boundaries of change for a free and fearless media.

Our #FreeThePress campaign, which is ever more vital, will be revamped in 2022 to push for a stop to these jailings. You can preview the at RiskLegal Network for Journalists, launching fully early next year to protect independent media from the lethal blows that deplete news organizations’ finances and stymie critical reporting.

We know it is possible to win when we fight together. Last year, CPJ helped win the release of 101 imprisoned journalists, the most we have ever helped free. This includes nearly 40 journalists released from prison in the Middle East and North Africa and 21 freed in Europe and Central Asia — specifically, in Turkey.

Part of our work is getting to the truth about journalist killings and advancing justice. In response to persistent impunity, together with partner groups we embarked on the first ever People’s Tribunal on the Murder of Journalists, a means of alternative justice to hold governments and perpetrators to account.

In 2022, we look forward to case hearings and six investigations into cold cases that can open a path toward justice. We need a Safer World for the Truth, as our project is called. Watch this short documentary to learn why it matters.

Among the victories that give us hope are the steps taken to halt the unfettered use of spyware to target journalists and others. Shortly after CPJ briefed the U.S. State Department on this threat, the administration placed export controls on several purveyors.

The EU also adopted a regulation on the export of dual-use surveillance technology by EU-based companies to prevent the undue targeting of journalists and others. We will continue advocating to stop the weaponization of tech across the world.

The historic crisis in Afghanistan required the collective effort of everyone at CPJ. We knocked on every door and strived to win the support of diplomats the world over, sometimes to our deep disappointment.

Yet, we are gratified by the successful evacuation of many journalists and our continuous work to keep the remaining Afghan press corps safe. Our experience with the Afghanistan crisis holds valuable lessons for our future advocacy.

A year that began with journalists viciously attacked at the Capitol riots in Washington, D.C. on January 6, culminated in a celebration of two journalists CPJ has long defended and cherished — Dmitry Muratov and Maria Ressa — who were honored with the Nobel Peace Prize.

Change takes time but it is essential. We are grounded in gratitude and hope.
In a polarized and frightened world, solid journalism — journalism that helps us to make informed decisions and to choose leaders who best represent our interests — shall prevail.

Thank you for standing with journalists and working alongside us to protect and uphold our vital freedoms.

Gypsy Guillén Kaiser is Advocacy and Communications Director at Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

 

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Twelve-year-old boy in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, sorts through hazardous plastic waste without any protection, working to support his family amidst the lockdown. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last year that the pandemic has “laid bare” challenges –such as structural inequalities, inadequate healthcare, and the lack of universal social protection – and the heavy price societies are paying as a result. Ending poverty sits at the heart of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and is the first of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite this, poverty and hunger, the UN chief reminded delegates, are on the rise, following decades of progress. Credit: UNICEF/Parvez Ahmad

By Purnima Mane
NEW YORK, Jan 4 2022 (IPS)

The Corona-19 pandemic has had an unparalleled and relentless toll on the world in areas beyond health alone. The World Bank’s latest report on global poverty raises concerns as to the severity of the impact of the pandemic on efforts to fight poverty (SDG 1) and hunger (SDG 2).

We also have evidence that other facets of development in addition to poverty and hunger are (and will continue to be) negatively impacted by the pandemic which is surging once again in populations around the world, definitely putting the overall development agenda at risk

In 2015, the United Nations ambitiously adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030 which cover a range of areas of development in which a global, concerted push to ensure progress was seen as imperative.

We have witnessed some of these areas getting more attention since the SDGs were established but even before the goals were set, the world was slowly but surely moving in the right direction in some areas like poverty.

The World Bank reports show that global, extreme poverty had fallen by 1 percent per year between 1990 and 2015 but the decline slowed down after 2015. The World Bank attributes some of the slowing down to the increase in violent conflict in the Middle East and North Africa after 2015 and climate change but with the advent of the pandemic in 2020, the evidence points to this progress not just being slowed down and eroded but wiped out in some instances.

Extreme poverty between 2019-2020 is now larger than the entire period when the World Bank began to track poverty consistently, and new challenges are emerging which require concerted efforts and shifts in policies and programmes.

Data indicate that the poorest are most impacted by Covid which might not come as a surprise, but what is new is the finding that populations relatively spared from poverty earlier, are suffering disproportionately post-Covid.

The WB Report shows that “the new poor” are often more urban and educated and more likely to be engaged in informal services and manufacturing and less in agriculture. In addition, Covid-19 is impacting middle income and conflict-ridden countries disproportionately. These developments add to the complexities of addressing the pandemic and threaten progress in attainment of the SDG goals as a whole.

The areas of coverage by the SDGs were always recognized as extensive and ambitious but imperative. Their wide-reaching scope meant that a global push on key areas affecting development could in fact create synergy and momentum for progress.

This of course suggests that a downturn in the progress towards any of these goals could also impact the other goals negatively. Since the pandemic, resources have been diverted from some of the SDGs more than others and goals suffering previously due to limited allocation of resources are now facing further erosion of resources and attention.

Clearly the range of SDGs that are going to be impacted adversely will go beyond Poverty SDG1, Health SDG3, and Hunger SDG2. Emerging data already indicate the negative impact of the pandemic on education (SDG 4), reduction of inequalities (SDG 10) and gender inequality (SDG 5 ) in particular.

With the end of the pandemic nowhere in sight, our actions to counter the trend need to acknowledge that all the SDG goals, and sustainable development as a whole, are at risk.

The WB report argues that global coordination and cooperation in terms of solutions to the challenges posed by the pandemic are imperative but equally important is the development of action plans that pay heed to the gamut of the areas of development and their inter-linkages.

The response to the pandemic needs to take into consideration the linkages between the different elements of development, epitomized in the comprehensive SDG agenda, and how they impact each other, and needs to ensure continued and requisite investment and attention to these elements, if we are to address the fall-out of the pandemic effectively.

Dr. Purnima Mane is an internationally recognized expert on gender, population and development, and public health who has devoted her career to advocating for population and development issues and working on sexual and reproductive health. Most recently, Dr. Mane was President and CEO of Pathfinder International, prior to which she was Deputy Executive Director (Program) of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UN Assistant-Secretary-General (ASG). She has served in senior level positions in several international organizations such as UNAIDS, World Health Organization, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the Population Council.

 

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Nina has found peace after being rescued from human traffickers and pimps in Goa, India. Credit: Mehru Jaffer/IPS

By Mehru Jaffer
Goa, India, Jan 3 2022 (IPS)

For over two decades, Nina tossed around like a leaf in a storm. While a teenager, she was lured into the sex trade, and pimps kept a huge chunk of the money that she earned as a sex slave. Nina was often bruised. Once, she refused sex with a man who did not want to use a condom. He beat her so severely that she had found it difficult to breathe.

One day the police raided the premises where Nina and other girls were kept as prisoners and arrested the pimps. The girls were taken to a protective home run by the local government. She like many other trafficked women abused alcohol and smoked to drown her sorrows.

Nina is now in her thirties and cured of her addictions. Her life is comfortable compared with her twenties when she was forced to live in the company of traffickers and pimps.

Lisa Pires of the Presentation Sisters Order told IPS that she had first met Nina in 2019. However, Pires declined to share Nina’s name and whereabouts. Today both government officials and social activists jealously guard the identity of all trafficking survivors who struggle to lead normal lives.

The survivors need help to deal with post-rescue trauma, and the experience they go through during identification interviews and legal proceedings is painful. Some face re-victimisation and are punished for crimes traffickers force them to commit. Others are stigmatised and don’t have a support system.

“We are happy to share stories of victims without revealing their exact identity as society needs to listen and to learn from those who have survived trafficking,” adds Amala Kulandaisamy, 40, social activist and administrative head at the Nagoa centre.

The Presentation Sisters have been working in Goa since 1967.

Amala Kulandaisamy and Lisa Pires from the Nagoa Centre for the rehabilitation of trafficked persons in Goa. The centre is run by the Order of the Presentation Sisters. Credit: Mehru Jaffer/IPS

The Nagoa Centre opened in 2001 in the ancestral home of Pires. Her parents gifted the 110-year-old house to the Order of the Presentation Sisters.

Pires joined the order in 1958 and shares her concerns about what is happening to young women today.

Nina’s story is similar to that of countless Indian women from poverty-stricken parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP) trafficked to Goa for commercial sexual exploitation, Pires says.

Surrounded by half a dozen starving siblings, a mother with mental health issues and an alcoholic father, Nina had fled her village when she was barely 15 years old. Soon after, a gang of boys picked up the vulnerable Nina. They promised her a job in Goa.

Goa is considered a significant destination in India for human trafficking and related commercial sexual work. Girls and women are trafficked to Goa from most states in India, including the countryside near Goa. They are also trafficked from Nepal, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Russia, and Thailand. While fewer women are trafficked from Nepal, the number of those sold and bought from Bangladesh increased.

The sex work is primarily concentrated in the coastal belt of North Goa, with maximum rescue operations by the police taking place around the stunningly beautiful beaches of Calangute and Arjuna. Now commercial sex work is said to be spreading from the tourist areas of the coastal belt of North Goa to the mainland and away from tourist hubs.

Throughout last year, Pires worked to reduce trafficking. The theme for 2021 was Victims’ Voices Lead the Way, with social activists spending time with human trafficking survivors counselling them. The survivors are seen as key in the fight against human trafficking. The theme focused on preventing the crime, identifying, and rescuing survivors, and supporting them on the road to rehabilitation.

Local people are encouraged to check the background of those wanting to rent accommodation and ensure that tenants are not part of any human trafficking activity.

The Presentation Sisters are diligent in their work against the trafficking of women and children and sensitive to their sexual exploitation. They provide alternative employment opportunities to survivors and constantly raise awareness against this organised crime.

A vital exercise today is to document the experience of survivors without revealing their identities.

The idea is to turn the suggestions of survivors into concrete action – a more survivor-centred approach to combat human trafficking and encourage lawmakers to pass legislation that will better protect citizens vulnerable to sexual exploitation and ensure they receive justice.

They say that there is a need for stricter regulation of massage parlours and dance bars where sexual exploitation of the vulnerable is high.

ARZ, based in Vasco, Goa that recommends women engaged in commercial sexual activities be rescued and not arrested by the police. It recommends, among other things, the speedy trial of offences under the Immoral Prevention Act and the establishment of a special court that will convict offenders – who generally get away unpunished.

ARZ is the publisher of Beautiful Women, a book about ten inspiring stories of women who survived the sex trade and some of whom are employed at Swift Wash, a laundry founded by the organisation.

Nina is fortunate. She survived the exploitation and has recently visited Potta, a well-known temple town in Kerala. Here she experienced spiritual calm and has returned to Goa to find a regular job as a caretaker in a private home.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

 

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By Genevieve Donnellon-May and Mark Wang
AUSTRALIA, Jan 3 2022 (IPS)

The new Yangtze River Protection Law (YRPL), which came into effect on March 1, 2021, is China’s first legislation on a specific river basin. The Yangtze River is China’s longest and largest river system, stretching over 6,300 kilometres and has over 700 tributaries. With a drainage basin covering more than 1.8 million square kilometres, approximately one-fifth of China’s total land area, the river basin is home to over 40% of the country’s population.

Genevieve Donnellon-May

The new law suggests that the Chinese Central government is shifting its priorities when it comes to rivers and ecological conservation. The YRPL demonstrates a major milestone in the CCP’s legislation on ecological protection and restoration: it seeks to strengthen oversight as well as the prevention and control of water pollution in the river basin by addressing the inability of current institutions to carry out the river’s protection through 96 provisions across nine chapters. The overall aim of the YRPL is to protect China’s longest river by strengthening its ecological protection and restoration as well as promoting the efficient use of its water resources.

Why is the YRPL necessary?

The YRPL is necessary for four main reasons:

1) To protect China’s mother river: Both Yellow and Yangtze rivers are often referred to in Chinese as the “mother rivers”. As “cradles of Chinese civilisation” of Chinese civilization, both rivers have played significant roles in China’s history, demonstrating their cultural and historical value to China and Chinese people.

2) To safeguard China’s driving economic force: the Yangtze River holds great socio-economic value for China. Notably, the river forms an integral part of the Yangtze River Economic Belt which plays a key role to national energy and food security as well as global supply chains. Covering 21% of China’s total land area, the Yangtze River Economic Belt is made up of nine provinces (Anhui, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Zhejiang), two municipalities (Chongqing and Shanghai), and many of China’s free trade zones. The region is believed to account for 45% of the national gross domestic product (GDP), making it one of China’s economic centre, and a major agricultural region, making the area one of the most intensive farming regions in the world and an integral part of China’s ability to safeguard food security. The area plays an important role in China’s rapid development as well as in the national green development push, agricultural green development, and various other development policies.

Mark Wang

3) To protect China’s resource basket: the Yangtze River basin is rich in mineral and water resources, and as an important national ecological asset, it is also rich in biodiversity, providing habitat to over 400 species of fish. As the main source of drinking water for over 400 million people living near the Yangtze River basin, the Yangtze River provides drinking water for more than 35% of the country’s population or more than 5% of the world’s total population. The Yangtze River also forms an integral part of China’s hydropower accounting for 73% of China’s total hydro-capacity.

In addition, the Yangtze River plays an enormous role in the South-North Water Transfer Project. The South-North Water Transfer Project diverts water from southern China to secure water supply to Beijing and other major cities in the North China Plain for drinking and non-drinking purposes. Along with the Hai River, Yellow River, and Huai River, the four rivers form the so-called ‘four horizontal and three vertical’ “sanzhong siheng” (三纵四横) water security network in China.

4) To maintain sustainable development: the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt has come at the cost of serious impact on the sustainable development of both the economy and society. Consequences include severe pollution, overfishing, and industrialisation as well as sand dredging and dam-building which harm the river’s water quality and biodiversity, as well as environmental and human health. This consequently affects more than 580 million people who live along the 2 million square-kilometre land area of the YREB.

The consequences of lax environmental standards have resulted in the main drinking water supply source of around 400 million people, or a third of China’s population, being threatened. The dangerous levels of heavy metals (e.g., arsenic and lead), linked to the development and smelting of mineral resources, and which threaten the environment and ecology as well as human health, food security, and food safety. The river’s high rates of pollution have been further linked to China’s “cancer villages” (癌症村).

Although the central Chinese government has acknowledged these concerns in reports and environmental policies (e.g., “ecological red lines” policy to balance environmental and ecological protection and economic growth) and regulations (e.g., fishing ban), they are generally subject to poor coordination, application, and enforcement. In 2016, Chinese president Xi Jinping highlighted the necessity of protecting the Yangtze River as a key long-term task through basin-wide coordination at the Yangtze River Economic Belt Development Forum, where he called for “joint effort to protect, not develop”. President Xi additionally emphasised that the economic belt’s future development should prioritise “green development” and ecology as per China’s national “ecological civilisation” (生态文明).

The YRPL offers many opportunities. Aiming to addressing water resources management and the sustainable development of the Yangtze River basin by cutting across, the YRPL can strengthen China’s “ecological civilisation” and green development policies. However, the YRPL presents many challenges. How can the Chinese central government implement and enforce the YRPL at a local level? What kind of legal infrastructure or mechanisms are necessary to create a supporting environment to ensure the law’s success? In addition, will local interests try to overpower the basin-wide protection law? Many of the factories accused of polluting the Yangtze River contribute significant amounts of money to the gross domestic products (GDPs) of provinces. Will this, combined with socio-economic disparity between provinces, influence the YRPL’s implementation and effectiveness? Nonetheless, if successful, the YRPL may lead to the universal implementation of similar protection laws for other rivers in China.

Genevieve Donnellon-May is a research assistant with the Institute of Water Policy (IWP) at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include China, Africa, transboundary governance, and the food-energy-water nexus. Genevieve’s work has been published by The Diplomat and the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum.

Mark Wang is a human geographer specializing in development and environmental issues in China. He is a professor in School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and also the director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne.

 

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Up to four billion people – over half the population of the planet – are already facing severe water stress for at least one month of the year, while half a billion suffer from permanent water stress. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 23 2021 (IPS)

Now it comes to the scary water crises, as it is estimated that, globally, over two billion people live in countries that experience high water stress.

On this, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) also reports that ”other estimates are even more pessimistic, with up to four billion people – over half the population of the planet – already facing severe water stress for at least one month of the year while half a billion suffer from permanent water stress.”

About 71% of the world’s irrigated area and 47% of major cities are to experience at least periodic water shortages. If this trend continues, the scarcity and associated water quality problems will lead to competition and conflicts among water users

This means that about 71% of the world’s irrigated area and 47% of major cities are to experience at least periodic water shortages. If this trend continues, the scarcity and associated water quality problems will lead to competition and conflicts among water users, it adds.

 

Climate crisis aggravates the risk

“Climate change will increase the odds of worsening drought and water scarcity in many parts of the world. Drought ranks among the most damaging of all natural hazards. While droughts affect every climate zone, drylands are particularly susceptible to drought and its impacts.”

Currently, most countries, regions and communities use reactive and crisis-driven approaches to manage drought risk. To address this issue, healthy land is a natural storage for fresh water. If it is degraded, it cannot perform that function. Managing land better and massively scaling up land rehabilitation are essential for building drought resilience and water security, explains UNCCD.

“Land restoration is the cheapest and most effective solution to improved water storage, mitigating impacts of drought and addressing biodiversity loss.”

 

Not enough rain? Too much rain?

Meanwhile, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification explains that communities all over the world have suffered some of the most brutal effects of drought and flooding this year.

“Flash floods in Western Europe, Eastern and Central Asia and Southern Africa. And catastrophic drought in Australia, southern Africa, southern Asia, much of Latin America, Western North America and Siberia are cases in point. The impacts extend well beyond the individual events.”

For example, the rise in food insecurity in the Southern African region and unprecedented wildfires in North America, Europe and Central Asia.

 

What is going on?

This is much more than bad weather in some cases, and is increasingly so, adds the UN Convention.

“Extreme events, including both droughts and floods are on the rise. With more land projected to get drier and more and more people living in drylands in the future, the discussions centred on the shift more than 60 countries are making from “reactive” response to droughts and floods to “proactive” planning and risk management designed to build resilience.”

 

Production systems, so constrained

For its part, the report The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture warns that production systems where the land and water resources supporting agricultural production are constrained to a point where their capacity to meet current and future needs is seriously jeopardised.

Constraints may be further exacerbated by unsustainable agricultural practices, social and economic pressures and the impact of climate change.

Land and water resources are central to agriculture and rural development and are intrinsically linked to global challenges of food insecurity and poverty, climate change adaptation and mitigation, as well as degradation and depletion of natural resources that affect the livelihoods of millions of rural people across the world, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s report.

 

Food demand to surge

Current projections cited in the report indicate that the world population will increase from 6.9 billion people today to 9.1 billion in 2050. In addition, economic progress, notably in the emerging countries, translates into increased demand for food and diversified diets.

World food demand will surge as a result, and it is projected that food production will increase by 70% in the world and by 100% in developing countries.

“Yet both land and water resources, the basis of our food production, are finite and already under heavy stress, and future agricultural production will need to be more productive and more sustainable at the same time.”

 

Increased competition for land and water

And there are warning signs. Rates of growth in agricultural production have been slowing, and are only half the 3 percent annual rate of growth seen in developing countries in the past, says the report.

In 2007 and 2008, any complacency was jolted by food price shocks, as grain prices soared. Since then, the growing competition for land and water is now thrown into stark relief as sovereign and commercial investors begin to acquire tracts of farmland in developing countries. Production of feedstock stability of land and water resources.

“Deeper structural problems have also become apparent in the natural resource base. Water scarcity is growing. Salinisation and pollution of water courses and bodies, and degradation of water-related ecosystems are rising.”

 

Waters are shrinking

In many large rivers, only 5% of former water volumes remain in-stream, and some rivers such as the Huang He no longer reach the sea year-round.

Large lakes and inland seas have shrunk, and half the wetlands of Europe and North America no longer exist. Runoff from eroding soils is filling reservoirs, reducing hydropower and water supply, it explains.

 

Groundwater, over-pumped

Groundwater is being pumped intensively and aquifers are becoming increasingly polluted and salinised in some coastal areas.

Large parts of all continents are experiencing high rates of ecosystem impairment, particularly reduced soil quality, biodiversity loss, and harm to amenity and cultural heritage values, the report continues.

 

Agriculture, a major contributor to greenhouse emissions

Agriculture is now a major contributor to greenhouse gases, accounting for 13.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC, 2007). At the same time, climate change brings an increase in risk and unpredictability for farmers – from warming and related aridity, from shifts in rainfall patterns, and from the growing incidence of extreme weather events.

“Poor farmers in low-income countries are the most vulnerable and the least able to adapt to these changes.”

 

Also aquaculture

The steady increase in inland aquaculture also contributes to the competition for land and water resources: the average annual per capita supply of food fish from aquaculture for human consumption has increased at an average rate of 6.6 percent per year between 1970 and 2008, leading to increasing demand in feed, water and land for the construction of fish ponds.

The deteriorating trends in the capacities of ecosystems to provide vital goods and services are already affecting the production potential of important food-producing zones, according to FAO.

“If these continue, impacts on food security will be greatest in developing countries, where both water and soil nutrients are least abundant.”

“On present trends, a series of major land and water systems and the food outputs they produce are at risk.”