Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, May 31 2021 (IPS)

Four women, two motorbikes, 64 districts and a journey of a lifetime, this is the story of Dr. Sakia Haque from Bangladesh. In November 2016, Dr Haque co-founded “Travelettes of Bangladesh – Bhromon Konya,” a women’s only group, with the motto of “empowering women through travelling.” This platform is not just an ordinary online travel group, but it is a platform of connection, sisterhood and networking of almost 60,000 girls and women in Bangladesh that empowers them by teaching them to raise their voices and encourages them to step out of their comfort zones and to “go see the world”.

Dr. Sakia Haque

“I believe motorcycles give us freedom, you have amazing views, you can stop whenever you want to and you get to see so much beauty around you,” says Dr. Sakia in an interview to me. “We wanted to prove that women can do it, they can step out of their comfort zones and travel, also because everyone was against it, our families and our society. Have you ever seen a girl ride a bike? They would say this to keep us dependent. It was a rare site, no doubt about that, but now, a lot of women ride scooters and motorcycles.”

When Dr. Sakia is not traveling, she works as a Medical officer, Disease control, Civil surgeon office, at Cox’s Bazar, one of the largest refugee camps in the world. Dr Sakia likes to call herself a full time doctor and a part time traveller. Using her knowledge of medicine and her passion for the outdoors, Dr. Sakia took her travelling as an opportunity to connect with young girls she would meet on the way and engage them in open discussions on their rights, sexual and reproductive health, particularly about menstruation, which is often considered a taboo topic in the country.

“We wanted to go to the root level, talk to women, understand what they are facing and interact with them. What we realized is, it is hard to pour water in a cup which is already full, and that was the reason behind choosing school going girls because we felt we could motivate them more. They were much more open minded towards grasping the idea of empowerment, so that became our goal.”

Dr. Sakia has spent over two years on the road, through highways, small towns, villages, muddy rural roads, including sandy river-chars, stopping at one school in each district/ area they visited. However the road and this journey has not always been an easy one, Dr. Sakia and her fellow volunteers have faced multiple challenges and a lot of criticism for their work. They have been harassed on the roads, eve-teased while riding through cities and even questioned, what and why they were doing what they were doing.

“Women on bikes and traveling alone is not something people were used to seeing, atleast not five-six years ago. But now, women don’t even need Travelettes of Bangladesh to go anywhere, and this is what we wanted, we didn’t want women to depend or rely on any organizations. We wanted them to go on their own, travel on their own, so this has been a major change in the country,” says Dr. Haque.

In Spite of this significant achievement for women in the country, Bangladeshi women and girls continue to face violence in all facets of their lives. In a report published by the Humans Rights Watch, titled, “‘I Sleep in My Own Deathbed’: Violence against Women and Girls in Bangladesh,” draws on 50 interviews to document the obstacles and challenges women face in the country. Human Rights Watch found that “despite some important advances, the government’s response remains deeply inadequate, barriers to reporting assault or seeking legal recourse are frequently insurmountable, and services for survivors are in short supply.”

In an interview given to me earlier by Shireen Huq, a women’s rights activist and founder of Naripokko, a non-profit organization that has been working on women’s rights and impact of sexual violence in Bangladesh since 1983, said “ There is a culture of impunity in the country and when it comes to accessing justice, corruption continues to be a major obstacle. Violence, male dominance and male aggression have existed for years, the tendency to glorify that these things didn’t happen in the past, and that it’s only happening now in our lifetime, is not true. Misogyny has been part of our culture, politics and society for centuries, especially across South Asia.

“At the root of sexual violence there is a culture of misogyny and toxic masculinity that drives it. Looking at the gang rapes that happened in 2020 which sparked off a huge movement in Bangladesh in October, they were all committed by the student wing or the youth wing of the ruling party.”, Shireen said.

According to Ain O Salish Kendra, a Bangladeshi human rights organization, 975 women were raped in the first nine months of 2020, 43 women were killed after being raped and 204 women were attempted to be raped by men in Bangladesh.

Despite a number of major strides made by women in Bangladesh over the past decades, which includes right to vote since 1947, electing its first female Prime Minister in 1991, Bangladesh has the eight lowest gender gap in political empowerment in the world, partially due to the fact that it has had a female head of government for longer than any other country in the world. The proportion of seats held by women in the national parliament doubled from 10 percent in 1990 to 20 percent in 2011.

Bangladesh could be a textbook example of “what is possible when women are involved in decision-making positions”, however unless the Bangladeshi government doesnt take concrete actions, works on making structural reforms against sexual violence and domestic violence against women, and remove obstacles to reporting violence and obtaining justice, no progress can be made in the country.

“The Bangladeshi justice system is failing women and girls with devastating consequences,” says Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should seize this pivotal moment to implement real reform that could save lives and promote the equal society it envisions,” Ganguly said.

The challenge not only lies in the lack of acknowledgement in government structures, but also in the need to create and put in place gender responsive policies that would pave the way for a more equitable environment.

While Dr. Sakia has managed to shatter a big glass ceiling in the country, making solo female travellers a more common sight than what it was before, she has also challenged the notions of what a woman can or cannot do, including riding a motorbike – with or without the street harassment and violence.

“What women also need to do now is know their value and worth, and believe in whatever they want to achieve. Collective workshops are not enough, we have to instill the idea that a woman can be empowered, because she is equal to a man, not just physically, but this equality comes from the mind and her belief system, that’s the change we need,” says Dr. Sakia.

The author is a journalist and filmmaker based out of New Delhi. She hosts a weekly online show called The Sania Farooqui Show where Muslim women from around the world are invited to share their views.

 

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The Meghna River Basin is significant to both Bangladesh and India as it supports the livelihoods of almost 50 million people. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
DHAKA, May 31 2021 (IPS)

Kajol Miah is a rice farmer from the Bangladesh side of the Meghna River Basin. And in towns on the Indian side of the river basin, Bangladeshi rice is in great demand.

The example is a simple one that highlights the concept of benefit sharing between riparian countries. Benefit sharing goes beyond the mere sharing of water resources. It includes equitably dividing the goods, products and services connected to the watercourse.

According to Raquibul Amin, country representative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Bangladesh, benefit sharing can provide a solution to conserve water resources and ensure integrated and cooperative management of the Meghna River Basin.

“Negotiations on benefit sharing are based on the principles of the International Water Law, such as reasonable and equitable utilisation of the shared water resources, not inflicting harm, and achieving win-win outcomes for multiple stakeholders,” Amin told IPS, adding that governance based on benefit sharing was more holistic than traditional governance, which has historically been about allocating water.

One example of traditional water governance is the 1996 Ganges Water Treaty between India and Bangladesh, which is based on sharing volumes of water.

But, according to Amin, parties negotiating a benefit sharing agreement are usually not interested in the water itself, but rather in the economic opportunities and ecosystem services that can be obtained and enhanced through the joint management of a river basin.

The Meghna River Basin is significant to both Bangladesh and India as it supports the livelihoods of almost 50 million people.

The area is also considerably large — almost twice the size of Switzerland — with 47,000 km2 of the basin located in India and 35,000 km2 located downstream in Bangladesh.

A rice paddy in the haor region of Bangladesh. Benefit sharing goes beyond the mere sharing of water resources. It includes equitably dividing the goods, products and services connected to the watercourse. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

Close to 90 percent of the forest or watershed of the Meghna river basin is located in India and is the source of river water flowing downstream into Bangladesh. For example, the Meghalaya plateau in India is rich in forests and is the source of many transboundary tributaries of the Meghna river system, such as the Umngot and the Myntdu, flowing from Jaintia hills into the haor region of Bangladesh, known for numerous wetlands of considerable areal extent representing important sites for fish breeding. 

Tanguar haor and Hakaluki haor are examples of wetland ecosystems rich in aquatic diversity and a roosting place for many migratory species of birds. Both are Ramsar sites, and Hakaluki haor holds the designation of Bangladesh’s largest inland waterbody.

But what happens upstream, affects downstream. This can be seen in the nearly 6 million tonnes of sediment that flows from the Indian side of the basin, down to Bangladesh’s haor region which creates problems for the management of these wetlands. 

“The benefit sharing approach to water dialogue will allow the two countries to engage in joint management of the forest and wetlands. The natural infrastructure of the Meghna Basin is critical for the maintenance of its hydrology,” Amin said.    

Amin noted that Bangladesh and India can discuss ways to jointly manage the forest of the basin for improving flood and silt management — two main challenges that affect the productivity of the fisheries and agriculture sector in the Surma-Kushiyara region in the Upper Meghna Basin in Bangladesh.

Miah, who is a resident from Kalmakanda in the Netrakona District, has also experienced recurring floods.         

“We, the haor [wetland ecosystem] dwellers, are dependent on Boro [rice] paddy as there is no alternative to cultivating other crops in haors. But, flash floods frequently damage our lone crop for lack of proper flood forecast, putting our life in trouble,” he told IPS.

The fortunes of rice farmers of the haor also impacts Bangladesh’s food security as their rice production constitutes 20 percent of the country’s total rice production.

The dialogue of benefit sharing for the Meghna River Basin is part of a larger project by IUCN called Building River Dialogue and Governance in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river basins (BRIDGE GBM), funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) through the Oxfam Transboundary Rivers of South Asia (TROSA) programme.

The Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna or GBM delta is a transboundary river system that traverses the five countries of Nepal, India, China, Bangladesh, and Bhutan.

“IUCN is providing a neutral platform for facilitating transboundary dialogues and joint research among the relevant stakeholders from Bangladesh and India. These have documented a variety of ecosystem benefits provided by the Meghna River Basin, and identified priority areas, such as joint management of forest for flood and erosion control, development of transboundary navigation and ecotourism circuits where the two countries can work jointly to enhance these benefits from the basin,” Vishwa Ranjan Sinha, Programme Officer, Natural Resources Group, IUCN Asia Regional Office, told IPS. 

IUCN developed a six-step process to support the development of benefit sharing agreements in a shared river basin:

• identifying benefits provided by the basin,
• identifying stakeholders and potential equity issues,
• identifying and building benefit-enhancing scenarios,
• assessing and distributing benefits and costs,
• negotiating a benefit sharing agreement, and
• strengthening the institutional arrangement for the implementation of the agreement.

IUCN also facilitated joint research and data sharing on land use and socio-economic changes across the Meghna River Basin to create data and evidence for the bilateral dialogue. Institutions conducting research include the Dhaka-based think-tank Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) and the Asian Centre for Development as well as India’s Northeast Hill University and the Institute of Economic Growth. 

Dr. Malik Fida A Khan, executive director of CEGIS, is optimistic of the advantages of benefit sharing. If done well, he told IPS, local communities of both countries will come forward to support the joint management of the basin because it provides for their livelihoods. He said their mutual benefit could also lead to data sharing for each other’s benefits.

Freshwater Conservation is one of the themes of the IUCN World Conservation Congress, which will be held from Sept.3-11,  2021 in Marseille. One of the Congress sessions will specifically focus on nature-based solutions that have been used as a tool to strengthen inclusive governance in the BRIDGE GBM project.

** Writing with Nalisha Adams in BONN, Germany

 

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Credit: Maricel Sequeira/IPS

By Joel E. Cohen and Joseph Chamie
NEW YORK, May 31 2021 (IPS)

Results from the 2020 population censuses in the United States and China recently made headlines. But rather than recognizing the social, economic and environmental benefits of slower rates of population growth for the U.S., China and the planet, much of the media stressed the downsides of slower growth and wrote about population collapse, baby bust and demographic decline.

The U.S. population increase of 7.4 percent from 2010 to 2020 was the second lowest rate of growth since the country’s first census in 1790, and half typical growth rates since 1790. Only during the Great Depression of the 1930s did U.S. population grow more slowly, by 7.3 percent. However, even slower rates of U.S population growth are expected in the coming decades (Figure 1).

 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

 

The populations of 55 countries or areas will decrease by 1% or more between 2020 and 2050. China's population is projected to fall by almost 3%, Italy by 10% and Japan by 16%. By contrast, the population of the United States, currently at 333 million, is projected to grow by nearly 14%

China’s population grew 5.3 percent in the decade ending in 2020, the lowest decadal growth rate since the catastrophic famine of the late 1950s. India projects for 2011-2021 its lowest decadal rate of population growth, 12.5 percent, since its independence.

Lopsided lamentations have focused on the downsides of slower population growth. For example, some commentators who favor more rapid U.S. population growth contend that Americans desire to have more children than they are presently having.

However, while some Americans want more children than they are having, some want fewer. In 2011 (the latest available year), of the 6.1 million pregnancies in the United States, 1.6 million (27 percent) were mistimed and 1.1 million (18 percent) were unwanted at any time. Of all 2011 U.S. pregnancies, 45 percent were not intended.

Some public handwringers maintain that a large population size aids the United States’ competition for economic and geopolitical dominance with China. But the mercantilist view that there is strength in numbers alone is obsolete by centuries. A large or rapidly growing population is hardly necessary or sufficient for prosperity.

Finland, ranked the happiest country in the world, has an average number of children per woman per lifetime of 1.4, compared to the U.S. rate of 1.6 children per woman, South Korea’s 0.8, Singapore’s 1.1, Italy’s 1.3, Japan’s 1.4, Norway’s 1.5 and Denmark’s 1.7. China currently has an average 1.3 children per woman per lifetime, markedly fewer than the United States (Figure 2).

 

Source: National Statistical Offices.

 

Some advocates of more rapid population growth argue that it would permit more people who want to move to the U.S. to do so. About 158 million adults in other countries would like to settle permanently in the U.S., according to the Gallup poll in 2018. Would the U.S. willingly accept many or most of these would-be migrants?

More rapid population growth, especially through increased immigration of working-age adults, would temporarily ease the pressures on pay-as-you-go public programs for the elderly, particularly Social Security and Medicare, by broadening the country’s tax base.

But there’s a catch: in the future those additional workers would retire, requiring additional workers to broaden the tax base again for the retiring workers. This demographic expansion would need to continue indefinitely.

Public discussion has largely ignored the notable social, economic and environmental upsides of slower American population growth. Slower population growth increases economic opportunities for women and minority groups, and exerts upward pressures on wages, especially for unskilled labor.

For a given rate of capital investment, slower population growth also raises capital per person, raising productivity. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grows more slowly, but GDP per person grows faster.

All else equal, slower population growth lessens America’s contributions to climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and pollution from commercial, industrial, agricultural, and domestic activities such as heating and cooling buildings and fueling transport. Slower population growth makes it easier for governments, schools, and civic and religious organizations to adapt to increasing demands of more people.

Worries about impending demographic doom for the U.S. seem decidedly misplaced. The United Nations projects that the populations of 55 countries or areas will decrease by 1 percent or more between 2020 and 2050. China’s population is projected to fall by almost 3 percent, Italy by 10 percent and Japan by 16 percent (Figure 3). By contrast, the population of the United States, currently at 333 million, is projected to grow by nearly 14 percent, largely through immigration, to 379 million by 2050.

 

Source: United Nations Population Division.

 

The world’s population growth rate peaked in the 1960s and is falling in most regions except sub-Saharan Africa. Whereas the U.S. population increased nearly four-fold during the 20th century, it is expected to increase by roughly 50 percent in the 21st century.

The United States and many other countries, including China, face real population challenges, but not principally slower population growth or even gradual population decline. The problems include rapid population aging, managing cities and economies in recognition of climate change, regulating and responding to migration, and enabling people to have the children they want through reproductive health care and child-care support.

As COVID-19 has clearly demonstrated worldwide, real population challenges include protecting people against present and future pandemics, maintaining competitive technological change with better investments in education and worker training, and raising the value placed on today’s children, who are tomorrow’s future problem solvers. In 2021, 22 percent of all children under age 5 years are stunted from chronic undernutrition, despite record cereal production globally.

The global slowdown in population growth rates is not a transitory demographic phenomenon. It signals important durable successes. Couples are having smaller numbers of children in an increasingly urbanized world while men and women pursue education, employment and careers and live longer than ever before.

It is time to recognize that slower population growth benefits America, China, and the Earth.

 

Joel E. Cohen is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Populations at The Rockefeller University and Columbia University in New York and author of “How Many People Can the Earth Support?”.

Joseph Chamie is a former Director of the United Nations Population Division, New York, former research director of the Center for Migration Studies and editor of International Migration Review, now an independent demographer and author of “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters”.

 

A 14th century painting depicts two leprosy patients denied entrance to town. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By Yohei Sasakawa
May 31 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The 74th World Health Assembly (WHA) takes place from May 24 to June 1. This year’s gathering is likely to be dominated by Covid-19, but here I want to talk about a different disease—leprosy—and a resolution that was adopted at the WHA exactly 30 years ago.

This resolution called for the elimination of leprosy as a public health problem at the global level by the year 2000, with elimination defined as a prevalence rate of less than 1 case per 10,000 population. It was a landmark resolution for the time.

Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, is a chronic infectious disease caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium leprae. It mainly affects the skin and peripheral nerves and is said to be one of the oldest diseases in human history.

Today an effective treatment exists in the form of multidrug therapy (MDT) and with early detection and treatment, the disease is completely curable. But if treatment is delayed, leprosy can cause impairments to the skin, nerves, face, hands and feet, and lead to permanent disability. Together with deep-seated fears and misperceptions about the disease, this has subjected persons affected by leprosy as well as their family members to severe discrimination, which regrettably continues to this day.

And, amid the coronavirus pandemic, we can see parallels between the discrimination and hostility toward Covid-19 patients, their families and health personnel that has been reported in different parts of the world and society’s attitudes toward leprosy.

Following the 1991 WHA resolution, elimination of leprosy as a public health problem was successfully achieved at the global level by the end of 2000, and almost all countries, including Bangladesh, have replicated that success at the national level. Unfortunately, this does not mean that leprosy has disappeared.

Each year, around 200,000 new cases of leprosy are reported to the WHO, with Bangladesh accounting for over 3,600 cases in 2019, the fifth highest total.

There are still endemic areas and scattered hot spots of leprosy in many countries and there are some 3-4 million people living with visible impairments or deformities due to leprosy. Meanwhile, the persistence of stigma and discrimination can inhibit people from seeking treatment.

Since becoming the World Health Organization (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination in 2001, I have visited some 120 countries and observed the situation on the ground for myself. This has led me to think of leprosy in terms of a motorcycle: the front wheel symbolises curing the disease, and the back wheel represents eliminating discrimination. Unless both wheels are turning together, we will not reach our ultimate goal of zero leprosy.

As regards the front wheel, the WHO recently published its new Global Leprosy Strategy 2021-2030, which includes the ambitious targets of zero leprosy patients in 120 countries and a 70 percent decrease in new cases detected globally by 2030. In order to achieve these targets, there will need to be commitments and financial support from governments; this is not something the WHO can achieve on its own.

Concerning the rear wheel, I have worked hard to have leprosy recognised internationally as a human rights issue since the early 2000s when I first approached the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. One result has been the resolution on elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2010. But the real measure of success will be when principles and guidelines accompanying the resolution are fully implemented.

Over the past half-century, the dedication of a great many people has brought us a step closer to a world without leprosy, but our work is not yet done. In Bangladesh, the government has committed to achieving zero disability, zero discrimination and zero disease due to leprosy by 2030, following a National Leprosy Conference held in 2019, attended by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Especially now, during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is important that we do not lose sight of leprosy and that we continue to build on the progress we have made. Recalling how countries decided 30 years ago to unite in a fight against leprosy, let’s redouble our efforts to vanquish a disease that has been a common enemy of humankind for millennia.

Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, May 31 2021 (IPS)

I hear about casualties and numbers, but cannot perceive the faces, the human beings behind them. A week ago, eleven days of havoc ended after at least 243 people, including more than 100 women and children, had been killed in the Gaza Strip and 12 people, including two children, in Israel. An open, gravely infected wound which continuous to bleed, causing never ending human suffering.

The issue of Palestine and Israel generates strong emotions and quite often aggressiveness, making it difficult to nuance opinions and causes, an endeavour that may be likened to stepping out on a minefield. The reasons for the catastrophe is quite correctly considered to be a question about politics, religion, and ethnicity, though the dimension of personal suffering is easily forgotten.

Judaism (Yahadut) is a religion, while “Jews” are not a race. All Jews are not adherent to Judaism, though most Jews identify themselves as belonging to an ethnic group, others consider them all to be both a “race” and adherents to Judaism. In world politics, Israel is generally characterized as a “democratic Jewish state”, a notion that has been criticized as an anomaly. Generally speaking, a democratic nation ought to adhere to a principle meaning that every citizen is considered to be equal and it is difficult to reconcile such a perception with constructs like “Christian nations” or “Islamic Republics”. Nevertheless, as late as in 2014, Israel’s cabinet advanced a bill that would define Israel as “the nation-state of the Jewish people”, declaring that Jewish law would be a “source of inspiration” for its Parliament.

The existence of Israel as a “Jewish state” is less than a hundred years old. In 1917, the so called Balfour Declaration was announced by the British government, stating its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. Why should the British in 1917 care about the fate of the Jews? The answer is that the British Empire was at war with the Ottoman Empire and needed support from Jews and Arabs who were subjects to Turkish rulers, allied with Britain’s enemies – Germany and Austria-Hungary.

In 1920, leading men of the victorious powers met in the Italian seaside resort San Remo to divide the defeated Ottoman Empire. It was decided that Great Britain would receive a governing mandate for Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine. A prerequisite for the British temporary rule over Palestine was that they were supposed to prepare the creation of a “Jewish homeland”. After the horrors of World War II, when six million Jews had been deliberately and systematically exterminated within a Nazi-dominated Europe, the United Nations did in 1947 approve of the so called Resolution 181, which recommended a partition of the former British mandate of Palestine into “a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem.”

At that time, 1,181,000 Muslims, 630,000 Jews and 143,000 Christians lived in Palestine. Most Muslims opposed an “ethnic” partition of their homeland. According to the UN plan, the majority of the land (56 percent) would go to a “Jewish state”, at that stage Jews legally owned only seven percent of the area supposed to be designated to them, while the territories proposed to end up within an “Arab state” contained much land deemed to be unfit for agriculture. When the British Mandate expired on the 14th of May 1948, the Jewish People’s Council, which had accepted the UN partition, declared “the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.” The day after, war broke out between Israel and surrounding Arab States, which had not accepted the partition of Palestine. However, since they suspected that the Arab States did not intend to support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, few Palestinian Arabs joined the Arab Liberation Army.

The war ended in 1949 with an armistice which meant that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) were occupied by Egypt and Transjordan respectively. This First Arab-Israel War was followed by a second one in 1956, and in 1967 the so called Six Day War was waged from June 5 to June 10 between Israel and Jordan, Syria and Egypt. The Israeli army captured the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. The Six Day War was in 1973 followed by the October War, but Israel was able to hold on to its occupied territories.

Partly as a result of these wars, more than 850,000 Jews left Muslim dominated nations and entered Israel, often due to persecution, anti-Semitism and outright expulsion. However, Palestinians who fled, or were evicted, from Israel, were often not welcomed in other nations. As of 2020, more than 5.6 million Palestinians were still registered with The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) as refugees, of which more than 1.5 million continue to live in UNRWA-run camps.

On the 7th of June 2021, Israeli has occupied the West Bank for 53 years. An 8 metres high wall now separates Israel from its conquered territory, which has been split into 167 Palestinian “islands”, under partial Palestinian National Authority civil rule, while 230 Israeli “settlements” has been established inside the area. Israel maintains complete “security control” for over 60 percent of the West Bank territory.

After the Six Day War, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which established the categorical prohibition under international law to acquire territory by force. The Oslo Accords, which in 1993 were signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), established that a negotiation process would aim at achieving a peace treaty based on the UN resolution 242 and the “right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.” However, these aims seem to be lost in a dim future, while Israel continues to support “Jewish settlements” on the West Bank, treating their residents under Israeli law.

In 1982, as a result of the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and in 2005 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip were dismantled and Israeli troops left the area. Nevertheless, Israel retained its control of airspace, territorial waters, border crossings, currency and trade. After local elections in June 2007, Hamas took control of Gaza and after rocket attacks on Israel the Gaza Strip was by Israel declared as “enemy territory”. Israeli retaliation attacks have so far killed approximately 3,450 Palestinians in Gaza, while Israeli causalities have been estimated at 200, of whom 33 have died during rockets attacks.

Approximately 2 million people live in the Gaza strip. With the excuse that terrorists use Gaza as a base, the area has been blocked by both Israel and Egypt. It is not only the smuggling of weapons that is affected by this blockade – import of vital building materials, medicine and food is also obstructed. Along the Israeli border, Gaza is separated by a six metres high wall, supplemented by an underground barrier several metres in depth and equipped with sensors that can detect tunnel construction. A six metres high wall has also been constructed along the Gaza-Egypt border, as well as an underground steel barrier extending 18 meters into the ground.

Getting accustomed to the senseless killing and destruction in Gaza world opinion seems to have become numb to the suffering. People have been turned into abstractions, politically determined numbers. This is completely opposed to the teaching of two Jewish philosophers, Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, who as many Jews had been scared by the exterminations during World War II.

Even if Martin Buber (1878-1965) was a deeply religious Jew, he was opposed to the establishment of a “Jewish state”. He wanted Palestine to be an exemplary society without a Jewish domination over Arabs, hoping and believing that the two groups one day would live in peace within a shared nation. According to Buber, some persons live on the basis of their essence, trying to adapt themselves to their inner sense of being, while others live according to imagery, determined to adapt to the opinions of others and thus turn human existence into an abstraction. Authenticity depends on how we relate to others, or ability to meet and talk casually and unconditionally. To live is to be listened to and be seen, as well as listening, seeing and feeling.

Buber’s most important book was called I and Thou and Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995) developed Buber’s thoughts further. Levinas taught that we “must welcome the other”, recognize other persons as “fellow beings”. The face-to-face encounter with “the other” is the primal moment from which all language and communication spring. The face of the other demands that we care for her/him because it establishes the basic I-Thou relationship. Recognition of and care for the other is the basis for resistance to the merciless callousness of genocides, which arise from a reduction of human beings to the status of commodities. To look into the face of the other is to hear the injunction not to kill.

This may sound banal, but it was written by persons who knew what suffering was. Such voices need to be listened to and it is now high time that the international community unities to amend all this animosity, suffering and bloodshed. Human rights have to be assured and respected, the UN resolutions must be followed, otherwise the misery will be endless. This is far from utopian thinking, it is a necessity.

Buber, Martin (2000) I and Thou. New York: Scribner. Levinas, Emmanuel (1989) The Levinas Reader. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell.

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

Excerpt:

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.                                                                       Friedrich Nietzsche

Greenpeace Brazil activists have joined forces with Munduruku Indigenous leaders to protest the Brazilian government's plans to build a mega dam on the Tapajós river, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest in the Pará state. Credit: Rogério Assis / Greenpeace

By Savio Carvalho
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands, May 31 2021 (IPS)

Our natural earth is dying. It is on the brink of collapse.

Due to human impacts the planet is losing species – its biodiversity – at a rate so alarming it’s said to be comparable to the 5th mass extinction 65 million years ago, bringing the era of the dinosaurs to an end. Just 15% of the world’s forests remain intact, and only 3% of the world’s oceans are free from human pressures.

Intertwined with the biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis exacerbates species loss and social inequality, threatening the safety of our communities and our planet. Governments must work fast to stop the climate crisis in its tracks, and work with Indigeneous peoples and local communities to protect and restore nature.

Business-as-usual backed by polluted politics and corporate greed is holding us all to ransom. The same destructive systems that are stripping our forests and oceans of life are killing environmental defenders and pushing people into peril.

To balance our relationship with nature, we need governments to push back corporate interests and place people’s needs at the centre of future policies. This needs systemic changes in the way we relate to nature: a shift in how we produce and consume and how we operate our economies.

Savio Carvalho

This year’s meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) offers an opportunity for governments to help humanity balance it’s relationship with nature. To live in “harmony with nature”, as the CBD vision states, we must listen to those communities who have been depending on it for generations. Indigenous Peoples and other local communities must be heard and supported, their rights fully respected and protected.

11-24 October 2021, in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China.

We’ve seen over and over how local communities are instrumental in protecting our planet against corporate greed. In Mexico’s Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park, local communities secured legal protection and are reviving marine life and livelihoods. Studies from Brazil show that the most effective way to safeguard forest and biodiversity in the Amazon is to provide Indigenous people with the legal rights and instruments to defend their territories from encroachment, invasion and exploitation.

It’s time to move beyond “fortress conservation” – an antiquated and colonial approach to nature protection that has led to the eviction of Indigenous peoples and local communities of their ancestral lands, human rights violations, and outright atrocities.

Instead, Greenpeace is calling for an ambitious plan to protect and restore nature – a commitment to bold targets that protect at least 30% of our lands and oceans by 2030 – made in partnership with not against local and Indigenous communities.

For the CBD to succeed rights-based conservation must be an indispensable prerequisite, enshrined in it’s post-2020 global biodiversity framework. They must ensure local and Indigenous rights to land, and leadership in planning and managing protected areas. And provide robust legal instruments to defend these rights.

Deforested area Amazon. Credit: Daniel Beltrá / Greenpeace

Governments must also cut out dirty industries such as fossil fuel, forestry, and big agricultural companies from attempts to co-opt nature protection as a substitute for real emission reductions. Known as ‘offsetting, this approach is not only bad for our climate, but also puts a massive burden on those marginalised communities most affected by climate change.

As part of such offset schemes frontline communities often lose access to forests which are deeply connected to their lives and culture. They also provide them with food, medicine and income from non-timber forest products, getting a ridiculous amount of money in return.

In other cases, they lose access to land they rely on for food production, as it is being occupied by large corporations for planting monoculture tree plantations. All that for an often bogus and always uncertain reduction in emissions from land use, or increased sink capacities from ecosystem restoration.

We need widespread vigilance against insidious greenwashing tactics, and an unwavering commitment to cut emissions at their source, enforced by strict regulation. Partial measures to solve the climate crisis only serve as tactics that block necessary progress towards the protection of biodiversity and the 1.5oC Paris goal.

It’s imperative that governments protect nature and people and not let the fossil fuel industry hijack the agenda via their dirty lobbying and advertising tricks. Governments also need to ensure that COVID recovery must in no way cause more harm by investing or expanding in fossil fuel companies.

The worst-case outcome of land protection targets would be a rush for offset or other greenwashing projects that allow states and corporations with large greenhouse gas emissions to retain their unsustainable business model by investing in top-down managed protected areas.

This would further exacerbate social injustice, infringe rights, and undermine dignity and avenues for prosperity for local and Indigenous communities. This neo-colonialism must not be allowed to happen.

It’s time to act. Governments must recognise the urgency of the interconnected crises of climate and biodiversity and promote a shift of power that restores justice, and acknowledges and enables local communities to continue as the guardians of nature.

If nature disappears, our planet, our health, wellbeing and even our lives will disappear with it. Protecting nature is the only way to protect ourselves.

 

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The writer is Global Campaign Lead, Food and Forests, Greenpeace International
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The following Oped is part of a series of articles to commemorate World Environment Day June 5

A covid vaccination center in Mexico City. Given the economic impact of the pandemic in Latin America, mass immunization is considered the indispensable step to the recovery of productive activities. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 29 2021 (IPS)

Hit by the pandemic’s socioeconomic and health impacts, Latin America is facing the challenge of financing an economic recovery based on a sustainable energy sector and a transition to clean sources of energy.

Most of the region have embarked on disbursements to alleviate these consequences, but these resources seem to be insufficient and are aimed at rescuing the hydrocarbon industry, in spite of its environmental connotations.

During his participation this Friday 28th in the XXX La Jolla Energy Conference, the Uruguayan Alfonso Blanco, Latin American Energy Organization’s (Olade) executive secretary, reminded that the region was already in a precarious financial position due to the weakness of its fiscal revenues.

The region is debating between contracting more foreign debt and levying more taxes, but cases such as the failed tax reform in Colombia, which sparked protests at the end of April, exemplify the consequences of changes that punish the middle and lower classes and ignore big capital

The meeting was held virtually, due to covid-19, between May 7 and Friday 28, organized by the non-governmental Institute of the Americas (IA), based in the coastal city of La Jolla, California.

“In the recovery, the role of energy transition is important to create more and better jobs in the region. Accelerating the energy transition will have a major impact on the economic situation, it is the role of green recovery in the immediate future. The transition is part of the decarbonization strategy to achieve the environmental objectives of the international negotiations,” Blanco told IPS.

Following the outbreak of the pandemic in the region, Olade initiated a dialogue with energy ministers and other multilateral agencies to support governments for a post-pandemic recovery.

With more than half a million deaths and an economic contraction of 7.4 percent in 2020, the region has been the hardest hit in the world by covid, which has had repercussions not only on health, but also on employment, infrastructure and the economy as a whole, as highlighted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In some countries, the blow was more severe, due to the decline in revenues from the production and export of hydrocarbons, such as oil and gas, due to the paralysis of global activities and the consequent drop in consumption.

And although the regional economy is already showing a rebound in 2021, the after-effects of the crisis will have a prolonged outcome, such as an increase in poverty.

The region is debating between contracting more foreign debt and levying more taxes, but cases such as the failed tax reform in Colombia, which sparked protests at the end of April, exemplify the consequences of changes that punish the middle and lower classes and ignore big capital.

Regional governments recognized the importance of sustainable recovery as early as October 2020, during the 38th session, also digital, of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). But this strategy is far from the measures implemented.

 

Looking for money

José Luis Manzano, the private fund Integra Capital’s director, said during the last day of the XXX Conference that “the tools the world has are multinationals, multilateral organizations and national development agencies. Money will come to the region, but we have to create competition.

The Argentine businessman suggested “turning to” Joe Biden’s government in the United States so that its policy of billionaire public investment “Build Back Better” expands to the south, beyond its borders, in an action that would have mutual benefits, and in a region in dispute with China -which in the last decade has sent public and private companies to invest in the area-.

In recent years, Latin America has made progress with wind and solar alternatives, but faces the challenge of reducing the burning of fossil fuels in the industry, transportation and improving energy efficiency.

This transition has come to a halt in countries such as Argentina and Mexico, which favor support for hydrocarbons, and Brazil, which promotes the gas industry.

In fact, data from the intergovernmental Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the non-governmental International Institute for Sustainable Development agree that energy measures are far from sustainable.

Countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Peru apply unsustainable policies. In a recent episode, state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) announced on May 24th the purchase of 50 percent-stake of the Deer Park refinery, in the U.S. state of Texas, from the Anglo-Dutch firm Shell for 600 million dollars, to assume its total ownership.

The benefits of sustainable recovery and pursuing zero net emissions by 2050 are impressive, particularly in the context of the pandemic.

The region could achieve annual savings of 621 billion dollars by 2050 if the region’s energy and transport sectors achieve net zero emissions, which would also create 7.7 million new permanent jobs, according to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

In this regard, Stéphane Hallegatte, lead economist of the World Bank’s Climate Change Group, highlighted the building of resilience to covid-19 and assured that it is still “early” to say whether the recommendations will be implemented.

“All the mechanisms that have been applied can help in the future if we maintain them. We can get out of the crisis that way and build resilience,” he told IPS during the “Innovate for Climate” virtual meeting.

“Governments can play a role in helping to create jobs and public investment,” Hallegatte stressed, during the meeting sponsored by the multilateral institution and which analyzed climate actions between Tuesday, May 25th, and Thursday, May 27th.

 

Green options

Innovative though still under-deployed, green bonds can serve for a partial recovery financing.

“There has been a lot of progress in green bonds. There is a lot of interest in Chile and some national development banks,” said Gema Sacristan, head of investments at Invest IDB, the IDB’s private financing arm, during the XXX La Jolla Energy Conference.

Green bonds are instruments to obtain exclusive financing for projects such as renewable energy, sustainable construction, energy efficiency, clean transportation, water, waste management and agriculture.

Between 2014 and 2021, the region sold more than 20 billion dollars in green bonds, led by Brazil and Mexico, with most sales occurring in the last two years.

From Olade’s headquarters in Quito, Blanco expressed his optimism regarding the economic recovery and job creation, but stressed that “better and more modern regulations are needed, focused on sustainable recovery. We have to incorporate new technologies and energies”.

 

In Brazil, the main agricultural products responsible for deforestation are beef and soybeans. Copyright: Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil, under Creative Commons 3.0

By Washington Castilhos
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 28 2021 (IPS)

Deforestation in Latin America and the Caribbean accounts for 44 per cent of the global loss of tropical forests, with most of the conversion to agricultural land being carried out illegally, concludes a study by the non-profit organisation Forest Trends.

According to the report, the planet lost 77 million hectares of tropical forests between 2013 and 2019 in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa, of which 60 per cent — 46.1 million hectares — was driven by commercial agriculture. At least 69 per cent of this “agro-conversion — forest clearing for agricultural purposes — was carried out in violation of national laws and regulations, it says.

Unlawful clearing for the production of commodities such as beef, soybeans and palm oil accounted for the destruction of at least 31.7 million hectares of the world’s rainforests during the last seven years, the report says.

Ecologist Arthur Blundell, lead co-author of the report, said: “We don’t need to clear more forests in order to grow food. People need to understand the role of commercial agriculture in driving illegal deforestation, and how important tropical forests are.”

“We don’t need to clear more forests in order to grow food. People need to understand the role of commercial agriculture in driving illegal deforestation, and how important tropical forests are”
Arthur Blundell
Based on data from 23 countries, the study estimates that deforestation in Latin America and the Caribbean represents 44 per cent of all forest loss across the tropics, with 77 per cent of this loss resulting from commercial agriculture.

In Asia, forest losses represented 31 per cent of the total, 76 per cent of which was caused by agribusiness.

Africa’s tropical forest loss represented 25 per cent of the global total, but commercial agriculture only accounted for 10 per cent of illegal deforestation, with subsistence agriculture being the main driver.

Many countries, however, fail to report data about illegal deforestation, and reliable country data is scarce, researchers noted.

 

Economic drivers

Geographer Eraldo Matricardi, associate professor at the University of Brasilia (UnB), who did not take part in the study, said: “Unfortunately, the forest is not yet considered as something viable, hence the interest in deforesting to make it productive. Agribusiness, in turn, has economic viability and high incentives from a financial point of view.”

Researchers accept that some deforestation for both commercial and subsistence agriculture is necessary for social and economic reasons.

However, Matricardi, an expert in land use changes, explains that while legal deforestation follows set limits and technical criteria, “for illegal deforestation there is a lack of criteria”.

The degree of unlawful deforestation varied widely between regions. In Latin America, 88 per cent of agro-conversion was conducted in violation of national laws and regulations, while in Africa the figure was 66 per cent, and in Asia, 41 per cent.

According to the report, 81 per cent of clearing for Indonesia’s palm oil — the country’s main export commodity — is estimated to be illegal.

In Brazil, where the major agricultural commodities responsible for deforestation are beef and soy, pasture for cattle grazing drove 74 per cent of forest loss while soy drove 20 per cent, the report says.

Besides soy, palm oil, and cattle products (beef and leather), other commodities, such as cocoa, rubber, coffee, and maize, are also cited as leading causes of illegal deforestation.

Researchers highlight the responsibility of consumers in the United States, China and EU, the main importers of these commodities.

“Producers of agricultural commodities need to reinforce their laws and stop illegal deforestation, but consumers internationally also have a role,” said Blundell. “They need to make sure that what they buy is not linked to forest loss. If you’re buying something from Brazil, for example, there is so much evidence it may be coming from deforestation.”

 

Climate change and corruption

The authors point out, however, that illegality goes hand in hand with corrupt government systems, especially in Brazil and Indonesia.

In Brazil, illegality includes “impunity for deforestation in legal reserves and areas of permanent preservation, amnesty for land seizures, and the accelerated dismantling of environmental protections, since Jair Bolsonaro came to power”, the report states.

Looking at the role forest clearing had in climate change, the report shows that emissions from illegal agro-conversion account for more than 2.7 gigatons of CO2 per year — more than India’s emissions from fossil fuels in 2018.

“We cannot address climate change unless we address illegal deforestation, and we cannot address illegal deforestation without addressing commercial food,” concluded Blundell.

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

Major Steplyne Buyaki Nyaboga of Kenya was named the UN 2020 Military Gender Advocate of the Year.

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2021 (IPS)

Major Steplyne Buyaki Nyaboga of Kenya singles out the establishment of gender-responsive military patrols in farming communities in Central Darfur, Sudan as one of the proudest moments of her two-year mission with the African Union–United Nations Hybrid Operation (UNAMID).

Before these patrols, displaced women farmers expressed crippling safety concerns over getting to their farms, which hindered their ability to provide for their families.

The patrols brought security and peace to the women – hallmarks of the UN Security Council’s resolution 1325 of 2000, which recognises the unique impact of armed conflict on women and girls.

They also represent the type of action for which Nyaboga has been named the UN 2020 Military Gender Advocate of the Year.

The award, bestowed annually since 2016, recognises the “dedication and effort of an individual peacekeeper in promoting the principles of women, peace and security”.

In a video message, she said she was receiving the prestigious accolade with “great humility and unprecedented joy.”

“With this award, I receive a high commendation to continue championing the ideals of the women, peace and security agenda, as anchored in the United Nations Security Council resolution 1325,” Nyaboga said.

She is the first Kenyan peacekeeper to receive the UN award.

Representatives of her country’s Defence Ministry congratulated her on her achievement, stating that “she performed in an exemplary manner” making all Kenyans, particularly women, proud.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres commended Nyaboga for her commitment to making life better for women who suffered greatly during Sudan’s armed conflict. He told the virtual award ceremony on May 27 that women who endured forced displacement, sexual violence and political marginalisation found their voices and an advocate in the Kenyan Peacekeeper.

“Through her efforts, Major Nyaboga introduced new perspectives and increased awareness of crucial issues affecting women and children across the Mission and helped strengthen our engagement with local communities,” he said, adding that “she organised campaigns and workshops aimed at addressing issues that affect Darfuri women.”

Nyaboga was also recognised for training the mission’s military contingent on issues such as sexual and gender-based violence.

“This helped our peacekeepers better understand the needs of women, men, girls and boys, and strengthened the mission’s bond with local communities. Her enthusiastic hands-on approach made a profound difference for her colleagues and for the people of Darfur. Her efforts, commitment and passion represent an example for us all,” the Secretary-General said.

The award ceremony is held annually on May 27th, the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers. It is also the day when peacekeepers who lost their lives the previous year, are recognised for their service to the organisation. 

This year, 129 military, police and civilian peacekeepers were awarded posthumously with the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal. They came from 44 countries and died while serving the UN in 2020 and January 2021. The award is named after a former UN Secretary-General, who also died in service. He was involved in a plane crash during peace negotiations in the Congo.

According to the UN, some of the 129 fallen peacekeepers honoured this week died as a result of malicious acts, others in accidents, while some succumbed to illness – including COVID-19.

Their deaths bring to 4,000, the number of women and men who have lost their lives since 1948 while serving the UN.

Secretary-General Guterres told the ceremony that peacekeepers continue to face ‘immense’ challenges and threats.

“They work hard every day to protect some of the world’s most vulnerable, while facing the dual threats of violence and a global pandemic,” he said.

“Despite COVID-19, across all our missions, peacekeepers have not only been adapting to continue to deliver their core tasks, they are also assisting national and community efforts to fight the virus. I am proud of the work they have done.”

UN Peacekeeper’s Day was observed this year under the theme “The road to a lasting peace: Leveraging the power of youth for peace and security.” 

It focuses on the importance of youth contribution to the UN agenda and the important role of young people in peace efforts, globally.

“From CAR to DRC to Lebanon, our peacekeepers work with youth to reduce violence and sustain peace, including through Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration and Community violence reduction programs,” the Secretary-General said.

As the international organisation honours the men and women of its peacekeeping missions, the UN Chief said the world must remember them and be grateful for their bravery, commitment, service and sacrifice.

 

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Major Steplyne Buyaki Nyaboga of Kenya has been named the UN 2020 Military Gender Advocate of the Year. Bestowed annually since 2016, the award recognises an outstanding peacekeeper whose work contributed to the promotion of women, peace and security.

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2021 (IPS)

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks.

The original article was published on April 28 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated deforestation pressures and heightened the urgency of action to support sustainable forest management. The pandemic has the brought the importance of forests to global well-being into sharp focus. Pictured here forest in the Dominican Republic. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 28 2021 (IPS) – A new global report on forests says that while the COVID-19 pandemic is the latest threat to achieving ambitious forest protection goals, it has brought the importance of forests to global well-being into sharp focus, and that this recognition must now be met with collection action.

The inaugural Global Forest Goals Report was launched on Apr. 26, as part of the 16th United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) session which runs until the end of this week. It is based on data and information submitted by 52 member states, representing 75 percent of the world’s forests.

The report concluded that while countries have taken action to protect their forests, those efforts must be accelerated to achieve ambitious global goals.

It tracks the progress of countries in meeting the ambitious goals set out in the UN Strategic Plan for Forests 2030. Under that plan, countries vowed to accelerate the pace of forest protection by upgrading an initial focus on achieving net-zero deforestation to increasing global forest area by three percent by 2030 and eradicating extreme poverty for all forest-dependent people.

While it acknowledged the work done by countries in areas such as poverty reduction for forest-dependent people, initiatives to increase forest financing and cooperation on sustainable forest management, it stated that there is a lot more to be done. Noting that Africa and South America lost forest cover during the reporting period, the publication stated that forests remain under threat.

“Every year, seven million hectares of natural forests are converted to other land uses such as large-scale commercial agriculture and other economic activities. And although the global rate of deforestation has slowed over the past decade, we continue to lose forests in the tropics – largely due to human and natural causes,” it stated.

United National Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed said the report is being launched at a crucial time for the world’s forests.

The report cites growing concern by some countries that the economic fallout from the pandemic will lead to reduced donor funding for forests. It states that Africa, the Asia-Pacific Region and some countries in Latin America are facing dwindling forest financing, as scarce public funds are being prioritised on immediate public health needs.

Mohammed said while the COVID-19 crisis has dealt a blow to poverty alleviation and sustainable development goals, it is presenting an opportunity to make peace with nature through a green recovery, with healthy forests as a solid foundation.

“We are at a make or break moment. 2021 provides us a unique opportunity to halt the rapid loss of biodiversity and ecosystem degradation, while addressing the climate emergency and desertification and making our food systems more sustainable, with the sustainable development goals as our guide,” the deputy UN chief said.

UNFF Secretariat’s Officer-in-Charge Alexander Trepelkov presented a note on COVID-19’s impact on forests and the forest sector. It concluded that the pandemic has aggravated hardships for forest-dependent people and exposed systemic gaps and vulnerabilities.

It called for the integration of forest-based solutions into pandemic recovery, accelerated implementation of international forest-related targets and adequate resources for forestry.

Meanwhile, on the fringes of the event, a group of 15 international organisations launched a joint statement on the challenges and opportunities involved in halting deforestation. The Collaborative Partnership on Forests event was chaired by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

Director of the FAO’s Forestry Division Mette Wilkie told IPS that as ecosystems that are home to the vast majority of land biodiversity and 75 percent of freshwater, without forests, climate goals cannot be met.

“Forests also provide numerous products for everyday life – from the traditional use of wood to the masks, gloves and hand sanitisers that we all use during the current COVID-19 pandemic. They provide more than 86 million green jobs and support the livelihoods of many more people worldwide,” Wilkie said.

“As we increasingly encroach on forests and wildlife habitats to expand agricultural production, settlements and infrastructure, the risk of diseases spilling over from animals to people rises exponentially. It is evident that we cannot achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the future we want unless we halt deforestation and forest degradation and increase our efforts to protect, manage and restore our forests.”

Wilkie, who chairs the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, told IPS that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated deforestation pressures and heightened the urgency of action to support sustainable forest management.

“Lockdowns have led to disruptions in markets and supply chains and caused job losses, triggering reverse migration into rural areas and increasing pressure on forests to provide subsistence livelihoods,” she said, adding that, “on the other hand, investing in forest restoration and the sustainable management of forests can create green jobs and livelihoods, and at the same time create habits for biodiversity and mitigate – and adapt to – climate change.”

 

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A health worker prepares to administer the COVID-19 vaccine to her colleague at a hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia.In a video message on May 24 to the World Health Assembly , the decision-making body of UN agency WHO, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned against the dangers of “a two-speed global response”, a concern he has frequently expressed. “Sadly, unless we act now, we face a situation in which rich countries vaccinate the majority of their people and open their economies, while the virus continues to cause deep suffering by circling and mutating in the poorest countries,” he said. Credit: UNICEF/Ismail Taxta

By Sunil J. Wimalawansa
NEW JERSEY, USA, May 28 2021 (IPS)

Despite claims by the industry and some politicians, there are no clinically meaningful differences among the variety of vaccines approved under emergency use authorisation (EUA).

There are no significant differences in effectiveness between individual vaccines of different types: mRNA vaccines (e.g., Pfizer and Moderna), adenovirus vector vaccines (e.g., AZN, J&J, and Sputnik V) and inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus vaccines (e.g., Sinovac and Valneva) in preventing severe complications and deaths.

If there is no contra-indication or a fundamental reason or belief for not vaccinating, considering the urgency, individuals should take the vaccine provided to them.

Efficacy of COVID vaccines:

As per global data, the COVID-19-related complication among the adult population needing hospitalisation is approximately 14%. As defined by preventing hospitalisation and deaths, the reported efficacy of mRNA vaccines is ~94%.

Therefore, the average efficacy of all COVID vaccines is approximately 90% (0.86/0.94 x 100). Nevertheless, none of these vaccines entirely prevents infection, transmission, lasting harm, or death.

The rate of complications can be significantly reduced by vitamin D supplementation before infection or at the time of hospitalisation (Mercola 2020; Wimalawansa, 2020) [vitamin D3 and ivermectin; latter also increases serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentration].

Most hospitalised COVID-19 patients have 25(OH)D levels less than 20 ng/mL, whilst the vast majority who died from COVID had levels below 10 ng/mL. It is noteworthy that over 50 ng/mL is required for the proper operation of autocrine (inside each cell) and paracrine (nearby cells) signalling and functions of immune cells.

These are required for rapid and well-regulated immune responses to combat pathogens. In the absence, people develop complications.

Types of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines:

mRNA vaccines for other diseases have never deployed for humans outside clinical trials. SARS-CoV-2 produces intense immune responses because the insertions within the micro-lipid particles allow generating large amounts of a portion of the viral spike protein. The human immune system attacks and eliminates these foreign proteins.

Spike proteins have a high affinity for ACE2 receptor protein located on human epithelial cell membranes in the lungs, gastrointestinal tract, blood vessels, etc. Due to sequence similarities of ACE2 and ACE2-SARS.CoV-2 complexes, antibodies generated against spike proteins could harm normal cells in the presence of an incompetent immune system.

Why are some developing complications, others are not?

Following natural infection and vaccination, different types of antibodies produced by immune cells. Some of these could cross-react with the ACE2 receptor protein. Vitamin D is critical for the proper functioning of the immune system. Vitamin D deficiency weakens innate and adaptive responses and allows harmful hyper-inflammatory (cytokine-storm) responses.

Therefore, people with weakened immune systems have a higher risk of antigenic cross-reactivity, generating autoimmune reactions, and auto-antibodies formation, increasing the risks of complications from SARS.CoV-2 (e.g., cytokine-storm and deaths).

Inactivated viral vaccines are used less in Western nations, despite the advantages of generating broader immune responses against the nucleocapsid protein and the spike protein. In contrast, the mRNA and adenoviral vector vaccines present only a portion of the spike proteins antigen to the immune system.

Therefore, antibodies generated by mRNA vaccines have a narrow specificity, which could be a disadvantage in the long run.

The efficacy of the groups of vaccines cannot be compared:

The conditions and the timing of the vaccine trials conducted were vastly different. No head-to-head comparative RCTs performed to compare mRNA or adenovirus vector vaccines against traditional inactivated viral vaccines, whose safety is better understood.

Heavy promotion, particularly by big investors and governments, of mRNA and viral vector vaccines companies are driven by the patents-based, higher profits of novel mechanisms. Despite claims by companies, pundits, and mass media, the efficacy of mRNA and viral vector vaccines cannot be assumed to be superior to those of traditional inactivated virus vaccines.

Vaccine RCTs conducted under differing conditions:

Obtaining approval for the mRNA vaccines for RCTs and EUA were straightforward. These RCTs were conducted in the USA during the summer and fall of 2020, before the emergence of COVID-19 variants. A few of these variants evolved mutant spike proteins with much greater affinity for the ACE2 receptor to facilitate their entrance into our cells.

As the vaccination program expands, variants continue to evolve, including double (e.g., Indian variant) and multi-mutants to evade immunity. Mutations generate differing spike-proteins sequences (A) to overcome recognition by antibodies and killer cells, and (B) to increase the infectiousness. The risks of such mutations are higher following mRNA and viral vector vaccines.

mRNA vaccine trials during summer and fall involved people having higher average vitamin D concentrations with fewer severe symptoms. In contrast, the viral vector vaccines and inactivated viral vaccines took longer to obtain EUAs due to complexities requiring multiple approvals.

These RCTs mainly were conducted outside the USA during fall and winter, after the emergence of multiple variants and when COVID-19 prevalence rose again.

Efficacy vs. adverse effects of vaccines:

There is no question about the benefits of COVID-vaccines in adults. Given the different nature of the RCTs and rushed deployments, there is insufficient comparable data to conclude that one vaccine is more effective than another.

Besides, incomplete reports and analysis of adverse reactions are a concern, especially potential longer-term adverse effects. For those who have mild to moderate risk of harm from COVID-19, such as children, these poorly characterised risks must be considered more carefully in the context of limited individual benefits of vaccination.

Ill-effects of vaccines are the subject of ongoing research and controversy, and therefore, dialogue should be allowed with the freedom of speech. Instead, such discussions are suppressed and maligned: administrators remove posts from social media sites on the pretext of reducing public confidence in COVID-19 vaccines.

People should be provided facts: they have the right to know the pros and cons and make their own decision. In addition to vitamin D deficiency, emerging data suggest ill-effects are specific to a particular vaccine group and, perhaps, underlying vulnerability and individual characteristics, such as sex and age.

Uncertainties of vaccines and duration of effectiveness:

Despite unfounded assertions by vaccine manufacturers and certain administrators in higher positions, claims of up to five-year duration of immunity after vaccination, are sheer speculation.

The duration of immunity from natural infection and COVID vaccines is uncertain. However, by extrapolating from the SARS experience, post-vaccination immunity may last no more than 18 months, which will impede developing global herd immunity.

Vitamin D sufficiency synergises vaccines benefits:

The most beneficial aspect of vaccines and vitamin D sufficiency is preventing hospitalisation, complications needing oxygen and ICU use, and deaths. Therefore, as with vitamin D sufficiency, vaccinations should also prevent the post-COVID syndrome, also known as ‘long COVID,’ which is a misnomer.

Post-COVID-19 syndrome primarily arises in the central nervous system or other locations where the SARS-CoV-2 virus can escape from incomplete immune responses, especially in those with severe vitamin D deficiency and, thus, having a less robust immune system.

Vitamin D sufficiency prevents post-COVID syndrome. Whether vaccines prevent post-COVID-19 syndrome remains to be seen, but it is optimistic.

*Sunil J. Wimalawansa, MD, PhD, MBA, DSc, is Professor of Medicine, Endocrinology & Nutrition, Director CardioMetabolic Institute, USA suniljw@hotmail.com

 

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Credit: Guillermo Flores/IPS

By Felix Dodds and Chris Spence
NEW YORK, May 27 2021 (IPS)

The past few weeks brought a burst of optimism on the climate front. It began on April 18 with the US-China announcement on climate cooperation. This was followed in quick succession by the EU Parliament’s vote to cut emissions 55% by 2030, the UK’s promise of a 78% cut by 2035, Japan nearly doubling their commitment from 26% to 46% based on 2013 levels and US President Biden’s pledge of a 50-52% reduction, also by 2030 (compared with 2005 levels).

Since such cuts offer a clear pathway to limit temperature growth, only the most ardent cynic would deny it has been a great start to the run up to Glasgow. Not to mention the announcement by a court in the Netherlands as we wrote this article (26th of May) that Shell will need to reduce its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 on 2019 levels this could result in a wave of court action against fossil fuel companies.

The Glasgow Summit will be judged, in part at least, on how it acts as a catalyst not only for greater ambition in emissions reductions, but in ensuring they are being consistently measured. Some countries, especially developing countries, will need significant financial support for such actions, and this should be another outcome from Glasgow

An important question now is how do we use the Glasgow Climate Summit to build on governments’ good intentions?

As we noted in a recent article published in IPS, the limitations on in-person meetings in a Covid-hit world are a particular problem for such a complex, high-stakes process. The Bureau managing the preparatory process for Glasgow recently announced its intention to hold virtual “informal meetings” starting next week. While we welcome the resumption of such discussions under the UN umbrella and can see a benefit to online discussions, these will only get us so far.

We hope diplomats, key stakeholders and journalists will be able to meet in person prior to the formal start of the Glasgow Summit, perhaps in October under a negotiating ‘bubble’ in Italy (which is hosting the G20 on the 30th and 31st of October) and the UK (which is hosting the Summit from November 1-12).

The current work being undertaken on COVID vaccine passports should make such in-person gatherings quite feasible, with the EU advancing plans in recent days to introduce them as early as July Furthermore, the UK’s offer to provide vaccinations to developing country delegations is a welcome move and should be expanded to other stakeholders.

 

National stakeholder climate alliances

What else could help advance progress in the lead-up to Glasgow? We would advocate that stakeholder coalitions at the national level could play a significant role.

Such coalitions have already shown their value. In 2017, Michael Bloomberg and former California Governor Jerry Brown launched America’s Pledge and the America is All In coalition in response to President Trump’s announcement that the United States would pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

The America is All In coalition has now grown to 147 cities, 1157 businesses, 3 states, 2 tribal nations, and almost 500 universities, faith groups, cultural institutions, and healthcare organizations. This is a powerful—and still growing—coalition committed to helping deliver at least a 50% reduction of 2005 emissions levels by 2030.

Meanwhile, Accelerating America’s Pledge—a report published by Bloomberg Philanthropies in 2020—identifies not only areas where work needs to be done but also progress to date. This work has helped build a strong base for President Biden’s recent announcement of a US Nationally Determined Contribution at a reduction of 52% in 2030 on 2005 levels.

Such partnerships and pledges are also happening internationally. In 2019, the Climate Ambition Alliance of Cities, Regions and Business, reported commitments to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

This Alliance, which includes 992 businesses, 449 cities, 21 regions, 505 universities and 38 of the biggest investors, has made a significant pledge because it represents economic stakeholders covering a quarter of the global carbon emissions. This type of coalition helped pointed the way for national governments and others to take on similar goals.

Such coalitions can also be a model for how stakeholders could act in the lead-up to Glasgow. The welcome promises of many governments can be supported and held more accountable by a coalition of key national stakeholders.

For instance, imagine what national coalitions of stakeholders in perhaps the 20 world’s largest emitting countries might do when it comes to ensuring governments follow up on their pledges with clear, actionable policies and financing to achieve the promised cuts.

Furthermore, national stakeholder coalitions could encourage governments to submit new, more ambitious pledges, the so-called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), in the lead-up to Glasgow.

Where a government may be lagging, such national coalitions can help maintain the pressure by taking on their own commitments for their city, region, or business sector.

Such coalitions have also received strong support from the United Nations. “All countries, companies, cities and financial institutions must commit to net zero, with clear and credible plans to achieve this, starting today,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged in March.

 

Independent monitoring and verification

One specific area stakeholder coalitions can play a role—both domestically and on the international scene—is in pushing for consistent monitoring, measuring, and reporting of emissions. This is an area that was not resolved by the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and yet is critical if we are to ensure full transparency and accountability in meeting government pledges.

The Glasgow Summit will be judged, in part at least, on how it acts as a catalyst not only for greater ambition in emissions reductions, but in ensuring they are being consistently measured. Some countries, especially developing countries, will need significant financial support for such actions, and this should be another outcome from Glasgow.

The UN-supported Race to Zero campaign is playing a useful role in this area. The largest alliance of non-state actors committing to achieving net zero emissions before 2050, Race to Zero recently published a report setting out criteria for how stakeholders can set, measure, and report on net zero commitments.

Interestingly, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a group of 160 financial institutions with a collective US$70 trillion in assets, is taking a similar approach.

Mark Carney, UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance and Prime Minister Johnson’s Climate Finance Advisor for COP26, is chairing this new grouping.

If these national coalitions are to be taken seriously, there may need to be a national as well as international independent monitoring and verification. Reporting and verification should happen annually.

 

Collaboration in our cities may be the key to unlocking Glasgow’s potential

Cities could be critical to Glasgow’s success. “Cities use a large proportion of the world’s energy supply and are responsible for around 70 per cent of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions which trap heat and result in the warming of Earth,” UN-Habitat Executive Director, Maimunah Mohd Sharif, said in 2019.

Starting in the cities of the 20 top emitters might be a good first step in aligning national stakeholders to the Paris Climate Agreement. Cities have the potential not only to be a powerful engine for change; they can also keep the world moving forward even if national political leadership in a country is lacking or is affected by a change in direction following an election.

The recent positive announcements by some governments for stronger NDCs is to be commended. However, only when all stakeholders are engaged and included will we be able to create a sustainable way to live together on this ‘Only One Earth’ we have.

 

Felix Dodds is a sustainable development advocate and writer. His new book Tomorrow’s People and New Technologies: Changing the Way we Live Our Lives will be out in September. He is coauthor of Only One Earth with Maurice Strong and Michael Strauss and Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals with Ambassador David Donoghue and Jimena Leiva Roesch.

Chris Spence is an environmental consultant, writer and author of the book, Global Warming: Personal Solutions for a Healthy Planet. He is a veteran of many COPs and other UNFCCC negotiations over the past three decades.

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, May 27 2021 (IPS)

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks.

The original article was published on April 23 2021

The United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, Jayathma Wickramanayake, told IPS that the Summit achieved an important goal of bringing institutions and political conversations closer to young people. Clockwise from top left: Jayathma Wickramanayake, Swetha Stotra Bhashyam, Emmanuel Sindikubwabo, Diana Garlytska. Courtesy: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 23 2021 (IPS) – Following almost two weeks of talks on issues such as climate change, innovation, marine conservation and social justice, thousands of young people from across the globe concluded the first-ever International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) One Nature One Future Global Youth Summit with a list of demands for action on nature.

Under three umbrella themes of diversity, accessibility and intersectionality, they are calling on countries and corporations to invest the required resources to redress environmental racism and climate injustice, create green jobs, engage communities for biodiversity protection, safeguard the ocean, realise gender equality for climate change mitigation and empower underrepresented voices in environmental policymaking.

“Young people talk about these key demands that they have and most of the time, they are criticised for always saying ‘I want this,’ and are told ‘but you’re not even sure you know what you can do,’” Global South Focal Point for the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN) Swetha Stotra Bhashyam told IPS. “So we linked our demands to our own actions through our ‘Your Promise, Our Future’ campaign and are showing world leaders what we are doing for the world and then asking them what they are going to do for us and our future.”

Bhashyam is one of the young people dedicated to climate and conservation action. A zoologist who once studied rare species from the field in India, she told IPS that while she hoped to someday return to wildlife studies and research, her skills in advocacy and rallying young people are urgently needed. Through her work with GYBN, the youth constituency recognised under the Convention on Biological Diversity, she stated proudly that the network has truly become ‘grassroots,’ with 46 national chapters. She said the IUCN Global Youth Summit, which took place from Apr. 5 to 16, gave youth networks like hers an unprecedented platform to reach tens of thousands of the world’s youth.

“The Summit was able to create spaces for young people to voice their opinions. We in the biodiversity space have these spaces, but cannot reach the numbers that IUCN can. IUCN not only reached a larger subset of youth, but gave us an open space to talk about critical issues,” she said. “They even let us write a blog about it on their main IUCN page. It’s called IUCN Crossroads. They tried to ensure that the voice of young people was really mainstream in those two weeks.”

The United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, Jayathma Wickramanayake, told IPS that the Summit achieved an important goal of bringing institutions and political conversations closer to young people. During her tenure, Wickramanayake has advocated for a common set of principles for youth engagement within the UN system, based on rights, safety and adequate financing. She said it is important for institutions to open their doors to meaningful engagement with young people.

“I remember in 8th or 9th grade in one of our biology classes, we were taught about endangered animal species. We learned about this organisation called IUCN, which works on biodiversity. In my head, this was a big organisation that was out of my reach as a young person.

“But having the opportunity to attend the IUCN Summit, even virtually, engage with its officials and engage with other young people, really gave me and perhaps gave other young people a sense of belonging and a sense of taking us closer to institutions trying to achieve the same goals as we are as youth advocates.”

The Youth Envoy said the Summit was timely for young people, allowing them to meet virtually following a particularly difficult year and during a pandemic that has cost them jobs, education opportunities and raised anxieties.

“Youth activists felt that the momentum we had created from years of campaigning, protesting and striking school would be diluted because of this uncertainty and postponement of big negotiations. In order to keep the momentum high and maintain the pressure on institutions and governments, summits like this one are extremely important,” Wickramanayake said.

Global Youth Summit speakers during live sessions and intergenerational dialogues. Courtesy: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

Other outcomes of the Global Youth Summit included calls to:

• advance food sovereignty for marginalised communities, which included recommendations to promote climate-smart farming techniques through direct access to funding for marginalised communities most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and extreme events,
• motivate creative responses to the climate emergency, and
• engineer sustainable futures through citizen science, which included recommendations to develop accessible education materials that promote the idea that everyone can participate in data collection and scientific knowledge creation.

The event was billed as not just a summit, but an experience. There were a number of sessions live streamed over the two weeks, including on youth engagement in conservation governance, a live story slam event, yoga as well as a session on how to start up and scale up a sustainable lifestyle business. There were also various networking sessions.

Diana Garlytska of Lithuania represented Coalition WILD, as the co-chair of the youth-led organisation, which works to create lasting youth leadership for the planet.

She told IPS the Summit was a “very powerful and immersive experience”.

“I am impressed at how knowledgeable the young people of different ages were. Many spoke about recycling projects and entrepreneurship activities from their own experiences. Others shared ideas on how to use different art forms for communicating climate emergencies. Somehow, the conversation I most vividly remember was on how to disclose environmental issues in theatrical performances. I’m taking that with me as food for thought,” Garlytska said.

For Emmanuel Sindikubwabo of Rwanda’s reforestation and youth environmental education organisation We Do GREEN, the Summit provided excellent networking opportunities.

“I truly believe that youth around the world are better connected because of the Summit. It’s scary because so much is going wrong because of the pandemic, but exciting because there was this invitation to collaborate. There is a lot of youth action taking place already. We need to do better at showcasing and supporting it,” he told IPS.

Sindikubwabo said he is ready to implement what he learned at the Summit.

“The IUCN Global Youth Summit has provided my team and I at We Do GREEN new insight and perspective from the global youth community that will be useful to redefine our programming in Rwanda….as the world faces the triple-crises; climate, nature and poverty, we made a lot of new connections that will make a significant positive change in our communities and nation in the near future.”

The Global Youth Summit took place less than six months before the IUCN World Conservation Congress, scheduled forSep. 3 to 11. Its outcomes will be presented at the Congress.

Reflecting on the just-concluded event, the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth is hoping to see more of these events.

“I would like to see that this becomes the norm. This was IUCN’s first youth summit, which is great and I hope that it will not be the last, that it will just be a beginning of a longer conversation and more sustainable conversation with young people on IUCN… its work, its strategies, policies and negotiations,” Wickramanayake said.

 

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Aichata, 15, listens to a lesson on her solar-powered radio as she studies at her home in Ségou, Mali. Credit: UNICEF/UN0430949/Keïta

By Fatou Diagne
SÉGOU REGION, Mali, May 27 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Persistent insecurity in central and northern Mali has helped fuel a protracted humanitarian crisis, disrupting access to education, health and other services, and displacing more than 300,000 people – more than half of them children.

COVID-19 has compounded the problem. Before the pandemic, direct threats and attacks on education had forced the closure of around 1,300 schools in the central and northern regions of the country. Pandemic-related measures shuttered schools across the country for most of 2020, leaving many of the most vulnerable children and youth unable to access education.

With financing from the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), UNICEF has been distributing solar-powered radios in conflict-affected areas to vulnerable households and listening groups.

As many as 15 young people can make use of the same radio. The devices provide an educational lifeline for those who might otherwise be cut off from classes and complement the efforts of temporary learning spaces that have been established at sites for internally displaced persons to ensure that children can continue to learn in safety.

Aichata (second from right) gathers around a radio with some friends from the neighbourhood to study. Credit: UNICEF/UN0430950/Keïta

Aichata

Aichata, 15, used to attend school in Diabaly, a rural town in the south-central region of Ségou. A few months after Aichata’s school closed, her father decided the family should move to the town of Ségou, where she was enrolled at the Adama Dagnon school. The school provided her with a solar-powered radio to allow her to continue learning out of regular school hours and make up for lost time.

“I could attend classes with this radio. It helped me catch up with my studies,” says Aichata.

Makono, 13, studies at home during a visit by a UNICEF education officer in Ségou, Mali. Credit: UNICEF/UN0430944/Keïta

Makono

Makono, 13, also attends the Adama Dagnon school. His parents left the southern region of Koulikoro, about 200 kilometres away, after armed attacks forced them to seek refuge in Ségou.

“I’m the eldest, so every Wednesday and Thursday evening I ask my sisters to come and study with me and we listen to the lessons on the radio,” Makono says.

Makono and his sisters listen to a radio as they study at their home. Credit: UNICEF/UN0430946/Keïta

Tuning in Together

The educational programmes that are broadcast are used not only by children who aren’t able to attend classes in person, but also those in school as an after-hours study resource.

Aichata says she tunes in every Wednesday and Thursday evening with her friends so they can study together.

“Before, I didn’t like grammar because I didn’t understand it and I found it difficult. But now I manage to get quite good marks,” she says. “One time I got 8 out of 10 – I was really proud of myself!”

Credit: UNICEF

Localized Action

Educo, a UNICEF partner in the central regions of Ségou and Mopti, is responsible for identifying households that could benefit from a radio, working closely with school management committees to distribute the radios and then monitoring the results.

“We make home visits to ensure that the children are using the radios, but also to see how their schooling is progressing,” says Dioukou Konate, head of Educo’s humanitarian project for the Ségou region during a follow-up visit with Aichata.

In the Ségou region alone, around 1,500 households have benefited from the solar-powered radios. These efforts are being amplified by listening groups supported by a community relay, typically a retired teacher, who can help keep students’ learning on track.

Credit: UNICEF

Integrating into Schools

Makono and Aichata say they now feel well-integrated into their new schools – and both are doing well with their classes. In fact, Makono wants to become a teacher when he leaves school.

“My parents didn’t go to school, so sometimes when I don’t understand my lessons, I have to ask other people,” he says. “But I know that if I work hard in school, my parents can rely on me.”

Aichata hopes to eventually become a school principal so that she can help other children attend school.

“I know it’s ambitious to say that every child in Mali will go to school, but I’m sure that one day my dream will come true,” says Aichata.

Education Cannot Wait’s ‘Stories from the Field’ series features the voices of our implementing partners, children, youth and the communities we support. These stories have only been lightly edited to reflect the authentic voice of these frontline partners on the ground. The views expressed in the Stories from the Field series do not necessarily reflect those of Education Cannot Wait, our Secretariat, donors or UN Member States.

 

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Excerpt:

Solar-powered radios are helping conflict-affected and displaced children follow lessons outside of the classroom.

Sarah and Doris ride to school on their bicycles because they live several kilometres away. Ghana’s education sector was one of the hardest affected by the pandemic and for many girls, particularly those in rural areas, the consequences of school closures means many will never return to their schooling. Credit: Jamila Akweley Okertchiri/IPS

By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri
ACCRA/WA EAST DISTRICT, Ghana, May 27 2021 (IPS)

Seventeen-year-old Muniratu Adams, a form two student of the Jeyiri D/A Junior High School at Funsi in the Wa East District of the Upper West Region of Ghana, is fortunate to have returned to school this January after the long COVID-19 shutdown.

Ghana’s education sector was one of the hardest affected by the pandemic and for many girls, particularly those in rural areas, the consequences of school closures means many will never return to their schooling.

“It was difficult for me to come back to school,” she tells IPS. “When I was home, I did not think I will be able to return to school.”

Adams was like many girls here who had to take on more responsibilities at home during the lockdown.

“I had little time to study my books because I had more household chores to do and I also had to help my family farm for food which we survive on,” she explains. “When I get to learn, I don’t get the help I need,” she adds.

Last March, Ghana closed schools in the wake of rising COVID-19 infections across the country.

Approximately 9.2 million learners from Kindergarten to High School and about 500,000 tertiary learners were affected until schools opened in mid-January, according to a report by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

However, the prolonged absence of teaching and learning activities in a structured setting disrupted the academic calendar affecting the gains made in education and negatively impacting low performing students.

For many children from vulnerable groups, including children with disabilities, the prolonged school closures have put a premature end to their education.

Prior to the pandemic, UNICEF data for Ghana showed that 16.9 percent of children aged 5 to 11 years, 50.9 percent of children aged 12 to 14 years, and 83.3 percent of children aged 15 to 17 years were either not attending school, two or more years behind in school, or have not achieved the correct level of schooling for their grade. 

The pandemic’s impacts on children’s access and quality of education were most severely felt through the tracking closure of schools without adequate alternative education services accessible by all children, nation-wide.

This exacerbated existing inequities in education in the short and long- terms and worsened existing barriers to access as urban/rural disparities are significant, with children in rural areas, as well as in the Northern and Upper West regions faring far worse.

Adams says initially she was unable to continue with her studies at home during the closure of schools as she did not have the tools to facilitate her studies.

“My parents did not have a television or a radio at home so I read only my notes ,which I had before our school was closed,” she says.  “But later I got a mobile device which helped me to learn through the remote learning system.”

Remote Learning Impact

Ghana’s government, with funding from the World Bank, introduced a $15 million, one-year remote learning system as part of the COVID-19 response for continued learning, recovery and resilience for basic education. 

It included developing accessible and inclusive learning modules through TV and radio, distributing printed teaching and learning materials, distributing pre-loaded content devices to vulnerable groups who lack access to technology, and in-service teacher training to ensure teachers can effectively deliver lessons through innovative platforms.

Despite the remote learning platforms, Adams says she and some students in her community still faced a lot of challenges in ensuring equitable access to these services, because “we do not have access to online learning devices or the internet at home”.

“A large number of us in my community lack technology such as TV sets, computers, smart phones and other online devices, as well as stable internet connectivity,” Adams says.

Chief Director of the Ministry of Education, Benjamin Kofi Gyasi, who is also the COVID-19 focal person for education, tells IPS that while remote learning strategies aim to ensure continual learning for all children, “we know that the most marginalised children, including those in the most rural, hard-to-reach and poorest communities and girls, may not be able to access these opportunities.”

He adds that the ministry is prioritising the learning of most vulnerable children through the provision of learning devices/equipment and connectivity, where possible, adding that the initiative has reached more than half of targeted learners.

Executive Director of the African Education Watch, Kofi Asare, tells IPS that more children have been left behind as a result of the pandemic. He believes the government can do more to ensure that vulnerable children especially those in the remote and poorest communities of the country have the tools needed to access quality education.

‘Now the children are back to the classrooms but I can confidently say that we have lost a significant number due to the long period schools were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” he asserts.

His statement is confirmed by Adams, who says some girls in her class are yet to return more than five months after schools reopened.

“I have not seen some of my friends since we started school in January, I do not know if they will be coming or not,” she tells IPS. “My friend, Hassana Yakubu who came to school here from another community has still not returned.”

 

This feature was made possible by a donation from Farida Sultana Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Farida Sultana passed away in December 2020 after battling COVID-19 for two weeks. 

 

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Migrants arrive daily at New Delhi railway stations from across India. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

By External Source
MUMBAI, May 27 2021 (IPS)

“There’s no other option but to return,” said Chitrasen in January 2021, when asked if he would migrate back to the city. The previous year’s pandemic-induced lockdown had left migrant workers stranded in cities and stripped of all their savings. An entire year later, as the second wave of COVID-19 engulfs India, many migrant workers find themselves confronted by a similar situation.

Chitrasen Sethi lives in the village of Paramanandapur, Ganjam district, Odisha. Every year he spends more than six months outside his home state, working in Surat’s cotton mills. When the 2020 lockdown was announced, he had already returned home and was able to stay safe with his family.

Migration in itself is not the issue; the exploitation of workers in cities needs to be addressed instead. Welfare schemes need to remove domiciliary barriers and labour laws need to formalise rights to wages, healthcare, and even justice systems
Rajiv Khandelwal, Aajeevika Bureau

However, the respite that came with being in his village wore off soon due to limited livelihood opportunities in Paramanandapur. He emphasised that in order to provide for his family, he had no choice but to return to Surat as soon as COVID-19 restrictions eased. By February 2021, he was back in Surat, working in the mill with unchanged working conditions.

As lockdowns and restrictions are being rapidly imposed across states, Chitrasen has no plans to return to his village. With work still continuing and wages being paid every 15 days, he reasons that it will be more economical to stay on in Surat for at least six months to make up for the savings he lost during the past year.

 

History repeats itself

In April 2020, images of migrant workers walking hundreds of kilometres to return to their homes increased the pressure on the state to recognise the rights of migrant workers. However, in April 2021, familiar visuals of migrant workers crowding Anand Vihar station, New Delhi and train stations in Mumbai re-emerged. This raises the question of why, after a whole year, nothing appears to have changed.

To understand the drivers of migration and workers’ experiences of social policy responses after the 2020 lockdown, PRADAN conducted a study with 250 workers before the lockdown and 272 workers stranded during the lockdown.

Fifty percent of the workers interviewed pre-lockdown said that they migrated to cities due to the lack of well-paying opportunities locally. All workers interviewed post-lockdown said they would eventually return to cities once restrictions were eased.

The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) explains that the increase in agricultural jobs in 2021 was not due to an intentional urban to rural migration, but the result of migrant workers leaving cities due to the fear of new lockdowns.

Post-lockdown policymaking has especially been focused on improving access to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and introducing new rural employment schemes, particularly for migrant workers, such as Garib Kalyan Rozgar Yojana. However, the high numbers of enrolment in these programmes did not translate into jobs for many workers.

Only 20 percent of the workers surveyed by Gaon Connection found jobs under NREGA. While rural employment schemes, such as NREGA, are crucial as short-term poverty alleviation measures for workers, in their current form, they are inadequate long-term solutions for economic revival. Their primary drawbacks remain that once workers manage to enrol in the scheme, they are still unable to access fair wages or employment opportunities that match their skills.

In June 2020, Uttar Pradesh announced plans to record and map the skills of migrant workers re-entering the state in order to allocate employment. However, the large numbers of returning migrant workers once again raise questions about how effective these programmes were. Additionally, across states, one can only assume that dynamic records of migrant workers are not being maintained, with the central government finally revealing that there was no data on migrant workers as of September 14th, 2020.

The COVID-19 crisis has revealed that migrant workers rely on urban migration to access better opportunities and higher incomes, which is why they returned to cities shortly after the first lockdown ended. This highlights two key gaps in the existing economic and political framework: the lack of rural infrastructure to prevent distress migration; and the lack of social protection in urban areas that provides security for migrants in cities.

 

Claiming rights as citizens

Migration was traditionally undertaken with the hope of earning better wages. When agricultural work didn’t pay high enough wages, people started moving to the urban areas for their livelihoods.

In the case of Mumbai, for example, people were given the space and opportunity to settle, and lone migrants were able to get their families to the city after years of working. Post-lockdown last year, family migration was replaced by single male migration; they left their families behind due to the fear of uncertainty in cities.

Migration means different things for different people—a short-term income source, decades of movement to educate children, to earn enough to build a house back home, or aspirations for different livelihoods. However, now migrants have increasingly become ‘men with no land’, crushed between the village and city.

These men with no land were left especially vulnerable during the 2020 lockdown, as social policies of destination states became the key variable shaping experiences of work, being stranded, and returning home for migrant workers.

Unable to access basic entitlements such as state insurance schemes (which still have domiciliary requirements), migrant workers are forced to abandon essential rights as they cross state borders. With the new COVID-19 restrictions across states, issues of social security for migrant workers have been reduced to decisions by states in the form of short-term schemes, rather than uniform access to rights across cities.

Schemes that offer free foodgrains or cooked meals address the basic, immediate needs of stranded migrant workers. However, they are unable to offer a wider range of rights to them. The PRADAN study emphasises the need for ‘transformative’ social protection—schemes that provide workers with rights and guarantees such as decent wages and proper housing (rather than rations or ‘preventive’ social protection such as compensations for accidents).

The first step towards transformative social protection would be building a database of migrant workers. Sanjeev Routray, lecturer at the University of British Columbia and a scholar of urban studies, emphasises the importance of numerical citizenship for the urban poor to gain visibility.

Migrant workers still struggle to be recognised and counted before they can claim rights from the state. Accompanying the lack of data on migrant workers is the absence of their voices from policymaking. Schemes such as the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHC)—which offers urban rental housing for workers—lack participation from communities themselves. Instead, they favour the interests of private actors like developers and contractors.

Rajiv Khandelwal, the co-founder of the labour rights organisation Aajeevika Bureau, explains that migration in itself is not the issue; the exploitation of workers in cities needs to be addressed instead. Welfare schemes need to remove domiciliary barriers and labour laws need to formalise rights to wages, healthcare, and even justice systems.

Having safety nets in both, origin and destination states empower migrant workers. Rather than being seen as handouts, they should be accessible as basic rights of employment and movement guaranteed in the Constitution.

Ishita Patil is a Mumbai-based researcher, with a keen interest in labour and migration studies. 

Ayesha Pattnaik is a research associate in the research wing of Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN).

 

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

A woman is vaccinated against COVID-19 in the indigenous community of Concordia, Colombia. Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres repeated his call for the G20 to establish a Task Force “able to deal with the pharmaceutical companies and other key stakeholders”, which would address equitable vaccine distribution through the COVAX global initiative. Credit: WHO/Nadege Mazars

By Winnie Byanyima
GENEVA, May 27 2021 (IPS)

In this time of intersecting crises – the Covid crisis, the HIV crisis, the inequality crisis, and more – progress on all these crises is being blocked by another crisis: finance.

Right now, most of the world’s countries are facing brutal financial constraints, during a raging pandemic, and during the biggest crisis since World War II. The majority of countries look set to slash investment in essential public services. Such austerity would be literally fatal.

As world leaders exchange proposals for joint financial action for recovery in the build-up to the series of G7 and G20 meetings fast approaching, they need to break free from the discredited and damaging financing model that is choking social and economic recovery.

It’s important to acknowledge, of course, the vital initial steps towards recovery that world leaders, including the G20 finance ministers, and the IMF council, have taken, including at the recent Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF. But the scale of the financial measures taken is dwarfed by the scale of need.

Put simply, if leaders do not go much further, fast, to find and allocate the finances required, the effects will include the return of levels of deprivation that we had thought we had defeated, and spiraling social and political catastrophe.

To be clear, this is not a counsel of despair, but a call to leaders to make a wiser choice, and to the public to press them to do so. The really good news is this: if the will is there, we can find the money.

On debt, leaders have agreed to extend the Debt Suspension Initiative; but they have done so only until the end of this year, and private creditors have again been merely invited to collaborate.

As a result, repayments over $30bn are set to flow from the poorest nations to banks, investments funds, Governments and multilateral banks in 2021. Only the IMF among those has announced debt relief to 28 countries.

Cancelling debt repayments of the poorest nations is essential, and vulnerable middle-income countries need approaches that allow for cancellation too.

No debt service payments should be made or asked for until the investments necessary for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal on health are secured.

Indebted poor countries must not be pushed into new debts to pay for vaccine imports, but should rather be allowed to produce their own at much lower cost.

The very welcome statements from key leaders on a patent waiver need to be turned into a formal decision urgently, reinforced by technology sharing by companies through the WHO.

Cervical cancer is the most common cancer among women living with HIV. The likelihood that a woman living with HIV will develop invasive cervical cancer is up to five times higher than for a woman who is not living with HIV. The overall risk of HIV acquisition among women is doubled when they have had a human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. Credit: UNAIDS

On aid by traditional donors, OECD figures report a small increase overall of barely $10 billion, a drop in the ocean compared to the $17 trillion that rich countries have used to support themselves.

No agreement has been reached on expanding ODA now when it is most needed. All developed countries should honour the pledge of at least 0.7%. A pandemic is the most damaging time to back away.

Emerging countries with a strong financial capacity must step up too with their own upgraded contributions.

On Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), the IMF currency, a historical issuance of the equivalent of $650bn has been reached. But only 3.3% of those resources, $22bn, are set to flow to Sub Saharan Africa, the region most in need. Indeed, the amounts that low-income countries are set to receive through the SDR issuance are smaller than the unsuspended external debt repayments scheduled for 2021.

There is an active discussion about rich countries reallocating perhaps 10% or so of their own share of SDRs. But a strong case has been made that rich countries should reallocate the majority of their own SDRs to low and low middle-income countries.

That would indeed represent the largest ever financing for development operation; but that scale of action is what our current scale of crisis requires.

Of course, what countries most need is to grow their own domestic resourcing. Right now, we lose a nurse’s yearly salary to tax havens every second.

World leaders’ dialogue on tax evasion has been rightly acknowledged as historic, with proposals to establish a minimum global corporate tax, something that would enable billions in public investment across countries, seriously reducing extreme inequality.

An agreement will be under discussion soon at the G20 and with the OECD. Leaders need urgently to move from discussion to agreement and action.

We need a compact that includes taxation on excess profits, wealth, and negative climate impacts, invested to fund the scrapping of user fees and the expansion of health and education so that they are finally experienced as universal rights.

Global pandemic preparedness, stability and prosperity all require us to fight inequality.

Gordon Brown´s proposal for G7 countries to immediately share the burden of the $60 billion needed in funding for vaccines and vital medical supplies, diagnostics and medical oxygen is both essential and achievable – now.

It would kickstart recovery for every country and could help set the world on a pathway to a new approach to global financing.

Now is the moment to consign to the dustbin old worn-out ideas that we can’t afford to overcome our crises. The reality is that we can’t afford not to.

The Covid-19 crisis has seen a transfer of wealth from workers to billionaires of almost $4 trillion. This moment could, like other crises before, become a moment for rebuilding a fairer world – but only if we seize it.

Achieving a more equal world is essential for our health. The financing solutions are there. The principal challenge is not technical, it is courage.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Social distancing in a Macau Hospital waiting room. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said censorship of the Chinese media made the COVID-19 situation worse. Photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, May 26 2021 (IPS)

China is one of the worst places in the world for media freedom, according to the global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) which ranked the country 177 out of 180 in its latest World Press Freedom Index. In the report, the group warned that Beijing is taking “internet censorship,  surveillance and propaganda to unprecedented level,” and had “taken advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to enhance its control over online information even more”. China is also the world’s biggest jailers of journalists with more than 120 journalists and what the group calls “defenders of press freedom” currently detained.

IPS spoke to Cedric Alviani, East Asia Bureau Head at RSF, about what effect China’s media restrictions had in the early days of the country’s Covid-19 outbreak over a year ago, how foreign journalists are facing unprecedented pressures in the country, and what Beijing is doing to try and create a New World Media Order to spread its propaganda around the globe.

Interpress Service (IPS): Media freedom watchdogs, and many doctors, have pointed to how restrictions on media during the Covid-19 pandemic may have cost lives. Some members of RSF have even gone as far as to say that had China had a freer press, the Covid-19 pandemic may not have needed to happen. Would you agree with that?

Cedric Alviani (CA): What we are saying is that had there been a freer press in China, information about the first infections would have been made public much sooner, and authorities in China, and elsewhere, may have been able to better control the spread. The pandemic may not have been so severe. But we are not in any way blaming China for the pandemic as there are so many other factors involved in any pandemic.

However, censorship made the situation worse. Viruses do not recognise borders, nor censorship. Compare what happened in China with regard to open reporting on the virus, and Taiwan, where the authorities were very open right from the start with information about Covid and disseminating it to the public. That way the public were fully informed and could make decisions to protect themselves.

We still do not have the information to fully see the current situation with Covid in China because of censorship. Have there been any outbreaks? Would we know, be told about them? We cannot have a clear picture.

What this pandemic has shown is the very reason we need a free press and independent journalism so that the facts and full information can be got out. This is not just in the case of a pandemic, but in any situation in which getting full information out to people can help save lives.

In a world where media is completely controlled by the state, can you imagine how many epidemics there would be? You cannot censor, or hide, a virus. They could spread overnight. There would be no full information, doctors would be afraid to speak.

IPS: In RSF’s latest press freedom index, China is ranked the fourth worst country in the world for media freedom and the report accompanying the index said that China continues to take internet censorship, surveillance, and propaganda to “unprecedented levels”. What kind of media restrictions do Chinese journalists face and what happens to journalists who defy those restrictions and report freely, or critically of the government?

CA: China is the world’s worst enemy of free press. Our fear is that in 20 years there will be no journalism, only state propaganda. The censorship authorities in the country are providing lists to media of what they can and cannot talk about. The lists are getting longer all the time.

IPS: Is this the same in Hong Kong, where there have been increasing curbs on general freedoms in the last few years?

CA: In Hong Kong, the Chinese government has entered ownership of most Chinese language media and through economic pressure has also managed to deprive other media of funds. The situation is getting worse with direct attacks being used to impose Beijing’s media rules and censorship on local media.

IPS: Last year, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, news about the situation in China leaked out to the rest of the world through many so-called ‘citizen-journalists’. Some of these people later reportedly disappeared or there were claims they had been forced into silence by the authorities and were living in fear of arrest, or worse. Has the regime essentially shutdown any and all citizen journalism now, and what does this mean for freedom of information in the country?

CA: We use the term ‘non-professional journalist’ rather than citizen journalist as these are people who are imparting facts, as professional journalists do – to their readers or audience. What has happened to these non-professional journalists is that since Chinese leader Xi Jinping came to power, professional journalists have been increasingly under pressure, and some people in society have stepped in to replace them and do the role professional journalists have found increasingly difficult to perform by getting information out there that is not being seen by people, for instance information about various social movements in China, which is not being disseminated. Obviously, non-professional journalists have also come under pressure in recent times – some bloggers have been jailed for years for writing about subjects such as corruption of officials – but there will always be people out there who will want to get hold of, and spread, information about what is going on.

IPS: What is the situation like for foreign journalists in China?

CA: Unlike local journalists, their families can’t be threatened so they can do freer reporting than domestic journalists. But now they are coming under pressure from the regime. A lot are moving to Taiwan, which is a safe haven for journalists, but it makes it more difficult to report on mainland China and get an accurate picture of events there. The world needs foreign correspondents in mainland China so we know what is happening there.

In the last year, the Chinese government has expelled 18 foreign correspondents. So many being expelled is unheard of here. Foreign journalists are starting to worry they may be taken hostage in political disputes between China and other countries. They have also complained of pressure being put on their sources, so they are left with no one to speak to for their stories as those sources are too scared to speak on record or too scared to speak at all.

IPS: Can you see a time in the future where foreign journalists will not be able to work at all in China, or not without their work being censored or approved in some way by authorities in Beijing?

CA: Unfortunately, it is looking more and more likely that this could happen. Twenty years ago, China needed foreign correspondents to promote the country and its story to the world. In recent years though it has developed a system of propaganda so the regime can reach the people it wants to directly, and therefore no longer needs foreign correspondents. There may come a time when foreign correspondents do not want to work in China.

IPS: RSF has previously spoken about what it claims is China’s pursuit of a New World Media Order to expand its ideological influence beyond its borders, which poses a threat to free journalism and democracy. Could you explain what this New World Media Order is and how exactly China is pursuing it?

CA: The New World Media Order is simple to explain – China’s aim is to make journalism a synonym for propaganda. It wants to remove any counterforce or opposition to the regime in power. Investigative journalism is necessary for democracy and accountability, and what China wants is to have ‘journalists’ who are patriotic people who present propaganda. The regime is trying to change and control the narrative of itself and China. It is using international TV broadcasting, as well as buying up advertising space in international media and even working its way into foreign media, as part of its aim to create this new order.

IPS: Do you think the countries in which China is trying to infiltrate foreign media and gain influence are aware that this is what Beijing is doing?

CA: Everyone is aware of what China is doing with this New World Media Order and trying to infiltrate media, but they have closed their eyes to it because countries want to do trade with China. There has been this engagement and stated aims of trying to change and improve the human rights situation in China, but it has been shown that nothing has changed. What is going to happen is that citizens in these other countries, in democracies, are going to soon realise that their governments have been selling their countries’ souls for decades.

IPS: Beijing could argue that by setting up Chinese language TV stations and media outlets in other countries it is doing nothing different to what the BBC, CNN, or other similar foreign broadcasters do, or have done, in China. What would your counter argument be for that?

CA: There is a huge difference between public media, i.e. media which is essentially owned by the public, and state media. It is important for any public to have access to information which is independent, and which acts as a reference media for the public. For example, the BBC is a public media, it is now owned or run by the state authorities, it has its own board, and is responsible for its own decisions, and it is impossible for the government to make it publish or broadcast something which it does not want to. It is independent. But something like China’s CCTV has to promote the Chinese communist party’s propaganda. The two entities are entirely different in their nature and it is incorrect to even compare them in any way.

IPS: Are other regimes copying China’s example of gaining influence and peddling propaganda in foreign media to pursue their own ideological and political aims?

CA: China’s model of media turning into state propaganda is being exported all over the world. Dictators now know that if they can control the media, they can keep getting re-elected because there is only one message getting to the people – that they have a glorious leader.

IPS: What can, or should, countries which claim to support freedom of information and free media, such as many Western democracies, be doing to counter China’s pursuit of a New World Media Order?

What they have to do is to remain democracies and open and not arbitrarily get rid or ban any media. But they also have to have a system in place which protects free, independent media and makes sure competition is fair, and that any media operating on that market do so by adhering to free and open journalism and not to propaganda.

IPS: What are the prospects for media freedom in China in the medium and long-term future?

CA: As long as Xi Jinping is in power it is hard to see any positive change in the state of media freedom in China any time soon, and in fact it is more likely to just get worse. The only hope is that political forces eventually emerge within China which will open up the possibility of a freer media and give the Chinese people what they want, which is freedom of information. We saw how angry Chinese people were online when they realised that the authorities had lied to them over Covid-19. The government has powerful technological tools at their disposal and have been successful in stopping people accessing information, but the demand from the people for real and accurate information will win out in the end, even though that does not appear to be something likely to happen any time very soon.

 

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By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, May 26 2021 (IPS)

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks.

The original article was published on April 7 2021

Ngadirejo residents have been converting their organic waste into compost and are selling this to inorganic waste to private companies. They are also planting vegetables in their backyards and on unused land as part of the community’s urban farming activity and climate change adaptation and mitigation measures.
Courtesy: Serono Arief Wijaya, ProKlim Ngadirejo

JAKARTA, Apr 7 2021 (IPS) – Residents of Ngadirejo village in Sukaharjo regency, Central Java province, had often found themselves helpless when their wells dried up or water flooded through their homes. But thanks to a national campaign called Program Kampung Iklim, known by its acronym ProKlim, they now have solutions to this flooding that generally occurs because of a lack of adequate water catchments.

“We started planting biopore holes and erecting infiltration wells in early 2016 to harvest rainwater and wastewater. The results have been almost instantaneous – our wells have never run out of water and floods never visited us again since 2017,” Serono Arief Wijaya told IPS from Ngadirejo, which lies around one-hour flight east of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta.

As climate change hits home, Indonesia has frequently experienced drought and heavy rainfall, with reports of water scarcity, floods, landslides, and crop failures becoming common. In 2012, the government introduced Program Kampung Iklim, which literally means Climate Village Programme, to raise public awareness towards global warming and to assist people at grassroots level to draw up adaptation and mitigation plans.

While attending a seminar organised by the local office of Environment and Forestry Department in December 2015, leaders of Ngadirejo, according to Wijaya, heard the word global warming and ProKlim for the first time. The following year community leaders decided to plant biopore holes along Ngadirejo’s drainage network and build infiltration wells throughout the neighbourhood in adaptation and mitigation efforts.

“We now have around 600 biopore holes, each measuring one meter deep and eight centimetres wide, and 50 infiltration wells measuring one meter deep and three meters wide each,” said Wijaya, who heads Ngadirejo’s ProKlim campaign.

“Many residents who had access to piped water previously now harvest groundwater instead for their daily needs,” he added.

Up until 2016, only between 10 to 15 percent of Ngadirejo residents had access to piped water, with the remainder reliant on artesian wells only. According to 2020 figures, the village has some 3,000 families – slightly over 10,000 people.

Aside from harvesting rainwater, Ngadirejo residents have also been converting their organic waste into compost and are selling this to private companies. They are also planting vegetables in their backyards and on unused land as part of the community’s urban farming activity.

They also use LED light bulbs and automatic sensors to switch lights on or off when needed and have planted trees with the slogan “one-house-one-big-tree”.

“We have also designated a section of our village as a tourist destination and training centre where we explain our ProKlim actions to visitors or conduct training on how to make biopore holes, infiltration wells, fertiliser, or anything related to adaptation and mitigation actions,” Wijaya said.

Residents sell their organic and inorganic waste at a waste bank in Ngadirejo village, Sukoharjo regency, Central Java province. Courtesy Serono Arief Wijaya, ProKlim Ngadirejo

Hardi Buhairat, a 50-year-old resident of Poleonro in Bone regency, South Sulawesi province — a three hour flight east of Jakarta — expressed a similar sentiment when talking about the ProKlim programme being implemented in his village.

“ProKlim has brought the Lita River back to life and we are very happy about that. The river is our only source of water for household consumption and farming but there were times it could no longer irrigate our field. Its water debit has returned and is stable throughout the year,” Buhairat, who is head of Poleonro’s ProKlim programme, told IPS.

The village started implementing ProKlim solutions in 2015, kicking it off with series of meetings with residents where they discussed climate change and the actions community members could take to avert its adverse impacts.

“The first things we did was issuing a village ordinance banning the residents from cutting trees and harvesting woods in and around Lita River’s spring. Soon after that, we planted thousands of trees in deforested areas around the spring,” said Buhairat, who is also Poleonro’s chief.

Poleonro’s village leaders also issued two other ordinances; one banning residents from burning rice straw and farms after harvest.

The 2019 Pollution and Health Metrics: Global, Regional and Country Analysis report from the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) ranks Indonesia as 4th in the world in terms of annual premature pollution-related deaths, after the populous nations of India, China and Nigeria.

The second ordinance requires residents to replace any tree they cut down in customary forests.

“The latter ordinance allows them to harvest trees in their customary forests but also orders them to plant new trees to replace the ones they cut. To ensure that they comply the rule, we inspect their forests regularly,” Buhairat said.

The residents also planted biopore holes to store rainwater underground, built wells to filter household wastewater before it goes into the river, and treated waste, converting organic waste into compost.

“Since 2015, we encouraged the residents to have indoor toilets. We are glad all households now have their own toilets indoors,” Buhairat said.

Buhairat said Poleonro villagers have also begun to diversify their food crops as part of their food security action.

“Our farmers planted organic red rice for the first time in 2018. We are now looking for buyers before going on a large-scale production. We want organic red rice to be our specialty commodity,” he said.

Since ProKlim’s launch in 2012, over 2,700 villages in 33 provinces have been registered as climate villages, according to Sri Tantri Arundhati, Director of Climate Change Adaptation of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. In 2020, six of those villages, including Ngadirejo and Poleonro, received the ProKlim Lestari Trophy, the highest accolade for a climate village programme, from the ministry.

Arundhati said the government now aims to establish 20,000 climate villages, which constitute roughly 25 percent of the country’s 83,000 villages, by 2024.

“We will cooperate with other stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations and the private sector, and improve coordination with local governments and related departments. We will also work to improve the capacity of local governments and people at the grassroots level,” she told IPS.

Arundhati said her ministry has also asked registered climate villages to promote ProKlim and help other communities design their adaptation and mitigation actions.

Wijaya confirmed Ngadirejo village has been encouraged to help other communities implement ProKlim.

“We are now helping 44 villages in Central Java where we explain about global warming and help residents there identify adaptation and mitigation actions they could take to deal with climate change-related problems in their community,” Wijaya said.

Buhairat said Poleonro is now guiding 15 villages in South Sulawesi to become climate villages.

Rizaldi Boer of the state-owned Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) said ProKlim could help the government achieve the country’s nationally determined contribution (NDCs) agreed according to the Paris Agreement.

“The programme can help a lot in dealing with climate change as it encourages active participation of people at grassroots level,” said Boer, who is also director of the Centre for Climate Risk and Opportunity Management in Southeast Asia and Pacific.

“However, the government should establish a standardised report mechanism on ProKlim actions, particularly how to calculate its contribution to greenhouse gas emission reduction,” Boer told IPS.

Under the country’s NDCs, Indonesia has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 29 percent with its own initiatives and 41 percent with external financial and technical assistance by 2030.

Boer also praised the government’s ambitious target of establishing 20,000 climate villages by 2024.

“It’s a tall order but it is not impossible. However, it requires participation of governments at all levels and all stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations and the private sector,” he said.

 

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Credit: CIVICUS, global civil society alliance

By Mandeep Tiwana
NEW YORK, May 26 2021 (IPS)

It has been one year since the police murder of George Floyd, an outrage that resonated around the world. The killing forced people to the streets, in the USA and on every inhabited continent, to demand respect for Black lives and Black rights, proving that protest was essential even during the pandemic.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations are the latest in a great global wave of protests that started with the Arab Spring 10 years ago and continue today, seen in the brave civil disobedience people are mounting against Myanmar’s military coup and the protests against Israeli violence in Palestine, with people taking to the streets around the world to show solidarity and demand an end to the killing.

Millions of people are protesting because they can see that protests lead to change – the trial of the officer responsible for George Floyd’s killing was an incredibly rare event that would likely not have happened without protest pressure – and because mass mobilisations often offer the only means of resistance to repressive governments.

CIVICUS’s just-published 2021 State of Civil Society Report describes how decentralised movements for racial justice and gender equality are challenging exclusion and demanding a radical reckoning with systemic racism and patriarchy.

Threats posed by economic inequality and climate change are enabling people to connect across cultures, spurring mobilisations in many different countries. Today, not only in Myanmar and Palestine, but in Colombia, Lebanon and Thailand among many others, people are demanding economic opportunity, a real say in how they are governed, and an end to discrimination.

Much blood is being spilt in unwarranted violence against protesters by repressive security apparatuses acting on the behest of vested interests. Inarguably, the right to mobilise is being sharply contested because of its potential to redistribute power to the excluded.

Major political transformations in modern history have been catalysed through largely peaceful protests. Sustained mass mobilisations have resulted in significant rights victories including expansion of women’s right to vote, passing of essential civil rights laws, dismantling of military dictatorships, ending apartheid, and legalisation of same-sex marriage.

In the past year, despite the disruptions of COVID-19, populist demagogues have faced stiff resistance from people driven by a hunger for justice and democracy. In Brazil, thousands came out to the streets to protest against horrendous bungling by the Bolsonaro administration in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic which has resulted in a monumental loss of lives.

In India, thousands of farmers remain steadfastly defiant in camps outside Delhi to protest against hurriedly drawn-up laws designed to undermine their livelihoods and benefit big business supporters of Prime Minister Modi’s autocratic government.

In Russia, pro-democracy protests in several cities against the grand corruption of strongman President Putin have so alarmed him that he engineered the imprisonment of his most prominent political opponent. In Uganda, political opposition led protests have inspired people from all walks of life to stand up against President Museveni who’s been in power for 35 years.

In Belarus, protests by ordinary people displaying extraordinary courage helped bring international attention to an election stolen by Alexander Lukashenko, the first and only president the country has known since the present constitution was established in 1994.

Credit: CIVICUS

In the United States, the decentralised Black Lives Matter movement is spurring action on racial justice and the unprecedented prosecution of police officers engaged in racist acts of violence against Black people.

The movement not only helped dispatch a race-baiting disruptive president at the polls, it also had a deep impact beyond the United States by spotlighting racism in places as diverse as Colombia, the Netherlands, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Notably, women-led movements are challenging gender stereotypes, exposing patterns of exclusion, and forging breakthroughs to lay the groundwork for fairer societies. Concerted street protests by women in Chile helped win a historic commitment to develop a new justice-oriented constitution by a gender-balanced constitutional assembly that will also include Indigenous people’s representation.

In Argentina, legislation to legalise abortion and protect women’s sexual and reproductive rights followed years of public mobilisations by the feminist movement.

Our research finds that, in country after country, young people are at the forefront of protest. Young people have taken ownership of climate change to make it a decisive issue of our time. The Fridays for Future movement which began with a picket in front of the Swedish parliament on school days now has supporters organising regular events to demand urgent political action on the climate crisis on all continents.

Present day movements are deriving strength by taking the shape of networks rather than pyramids, with multiple locally active leaders. Hong Kong’s ‘Water Revolution’ may have been repressed by China’s authoritarian might, but the metaphor of behaving like water – shapeless, mobile, adaptable – holds true for many contemporary movements.

Unsurprisingly, powerful people’s mobilisations are inviting sharp backlash. Protest leaders and organisers are often the first to be vilified through official propaganda and subjected to politically motivated prosecutions.

Many of the rights violations that CIVICUS has documented in recent years are in relation to suppression of protests. Persecution of dissenters, censorship and surveillance to stymie public mobilisations remains rife.

They are all part of a tussle between people joining together in numbers to demand transformative change, and forces determined to stop them. Yet, the principled courage of protesters who mobilise undeterred by repression continues to inspire.

Protests are about challenging and renegotiating power. To succeed they need solidarity and allies across the board. The responsibility to safeguard the right to peaceful assembly enshrined in the constitutions of most countries and in the international human rights framework rests with all of us. History shows us that when people come together as civil society great things are possible.

Mandeep Tiwana is Chief Programmes Officer at global civil society alliance CIVICUS.
The State of Civil Society Report 2021 can be found online here.

 

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