Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Dec 19 2019 (IPS)

Around 3 pm on 16 October 2017, Daphne Caruana Aruna Galizia was returning home when her Peugeot suddenly exploded 80 metres from her house outside of Bidnjia, a small town 15 km from Malta´s capital Valletta. Her son Matthew heard the violent blast and rushed out to find the smoldering wreck of the car on a field by the road: “I looked down and there were my mother’s body parts all around me”. Her scattered body had hit the ground 10 metres from the demolished vehicle.1

Ever Since she in 1990 became a regular columnist in Malta´s two biggest newspapers, Daphne and her family had lived under a constant threat, being harassed by phone calls, letters, and e-mails, as well as notes pinned to the front door of their house, which furthermore had suffered two arson attacks. Their neighbour´s car had been set on fire, probably mistaken for being Daphne´s. Rufus, their collie, had been shot, a terrier called Zulu poisoned and when the dog they bought to replace them was found lying outside the main entrance with its throat slit, they did not acquire any more dogs.

At the time of her death, Daphne was facing 48 libel suits. Conditions had worsened considerably after Daphne in March 2008 began a blog called Running Commentary, which included commentaries on current affairs and public figures, providing information far too controversial for Malta´s established media outlets. The blog occasionally attracted over 400,000 views, more than the combined circulation of the country’s newspapers.2

During 2016 and 2017, Daphne divulged sensitive information related to the Panama Papers Scandal. This concerned 11.5 million documents detailing financial and attorney-client information for more than 214,488 offshore corporate service entities, created by and taken from a Panamanian law firm.3 The leaked documents contained financial information about wealthy individuals and public officials that hitherto had been kept outside the public view.

In 2016, Daphne´s Running Commentary reported that Malta´s tourism minister Konrad Mizzi was involved in shady businesses and he was compelled to reveal the existence of a New Zealand-registered trust, which he claimed was set up to manage his family’s assets. However, the affair continued to be unraveled and Daphne´s further revelations forced Prime Minister Joseph Muscat´s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, to admit that he owned a similar trust in New Zealand, which in turn held a Panama company.

The cat was out of the bag. Daphne intensified her reporting on Government corruption, nepotism, patronage, allegations of money laundering, links between Malta’s online gambling industry and organized crime, surreptitious payments to politicians from the government of Azerbaijan and skullduggery connected with Malta’s citizenship-by-investment scheme. Her accusations came dangerously close to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat when she alleged that Egrant, a Panama company related to the scheme involving Mizzi and Schembri, was owned by Muscat´s wife Michelle. However, the threatening scandal sizzled out after Joseph Muscat had called for and obtained support for an early general election that resulted in the consolidation of his Labour Party.

Sometime during the summer of 2017 at the posh bar Busy Bee, a hang-out for yacht owners in Valletta´s Msida Marina, the taxi driver and cocaine dealer Melvin Theuma met with three shady characters. Theuma was a well-known “errand-boy” for the prominent businessman Yorgen Fenech. This extremely wealthy man controls casinos and hotels in Valletta, is the director of the Maltese-Azerbaijan-German company Electrogas and owner of the Dubai-registered company 17 Black, which facilitated Mizzi´s and Schembri´s contacts with economic hiding places and money-laundering facilities in New Zealand and Panama. According to one of the men who met with Theuma, Vincent Muscat, he and the two brothers Alfred and George De Giorgio were offered 30 thousand euros in advance for planning the death of Daphne Caruana and an additional payment of 120 thousand euros ten days after a successfully committed murder. Vincent Muscat and the Giorgio brothers were referred to the Sicilian Mafia to obtain high precision guns and planned shooting Daphne from a building opposite her workplace, where she occasionally approached a window to improve her make up. However, it was difficult to get a clean shot and they abandoned the plan as being too risky. Instead, they used material and technique provided by the Sicilians to blow up her car. Vincent Muscat´s confession was confined to police reports but leaked to Reuters and the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, though it was suppressed by the Maltese Government, which instead of having the three murderers convicted kept them in custody, with DVDs, computer games and dinners provided by restaurants outside of the jail, awaiting that the 20 months custody time would expire.4

Several Maltese citizens have been extremely upset by the murder of Daphne Caruana, though people are generally reluctant to talk about politics and Prime Minister Muscat seems to be generally appreciated. He has been in office since 2013 and few imagined his tenure would be ending anytime soon. Muscat´s Labour Party has been praised for eliminating Malta’s national deficit, decreasing unemployment to historic lows, and presiding over an unprecedented period of economic growth. The island´s annual growth rates have for several years been between 6 and 7 percent. Large-scale changes to welfare have taken place, accompanied by increases in minimum wages and the introduction of a successful private sector involvement in healthcare. At the same time online casinos, financial service providers and real estate developers have been unencumbered by strict regulations and overzealous government officials.

Already two years ago, a European Commission observed a blatant shortage of personnel responsible for investigating white-collar crimes, while politicians all-too-frequently interfered with the judiciary and the police. During his six years tenure, Joseph Muscat has suddenly replaced the chief of police no less than five times and he frequently replaces judges and public prosecutors. He has also personally appointed the members of a Permanent Commission against Corruption. Sale of passports to wealthy clients has become one of the country’s most important sources of income. Since Muscat in 2013 approved such passport sales it is estimated that Malta has earned 2.5 billion euros from the practice. Buyers are frequently Russian oligarchs, Arab sheiks or Chinese businessmen, eager to attain the advantages of an EU citizenship.5

On 11 February 2019, the European Parliament’s Special Committee on Financial Crimes, Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance (TAX 3) conducted a public hearing on alleged financial crimes in Malta, while linking them to the assassination of Daphne Caruana and highlighting a lack of cooperation between Maltese security institutions and the judiciary system.6 On 28 November, EU´s Democracy, Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights Monitoring Group received an update from Europol regarding ”clarity and justice in the Daphne Caruana murder case”. Pressured by the EU, Maltese police had finally reacted and arrested Melvin Theuma, intermediary between executors and originators of the Carauna murder. The Prime Minister provided Theuma with a presidential pardon in exchange for information and the ”errand-boy” began to talk. The day after Theuma’s arrest, Yorgen Fenech attempted to leave Malta on his private yacht, but the Armed Forces of Malta boarded the boat and arrested him.

In a court statement, Fenech accused Keith Schembri as being the mastermind behind Daphne´s murder. Schembri resigned from his post as Joseph Muscat´s Chief of Staff and was subsequently questioned by the police. His confessions have so far not been made public. However, Schembri apparently admitted that he shortly after the assassination of Daphne Caruana provided Melvin Theuma with a government job through which he was paid regularly without doing any work. During court proceedings Yorgen Fenech stated that Shembri had warned him that his phone was tapped and kept him informed of progress in the Caruana murder investigation. After being interrogated, Schembri was released on police bail. His present whereabouts are unknown.

As a reaction to the alarming 28 November report the EU sent an ”ad hoc” delegation to Malta, which between the 3rd and 4th of December ”took stock of the situation on the ground”. The delegation concluded that Prime Minister Muscat’s failure to resign immediately constituted a serious risk for the murder investigation and that connected probes would be compromised, adding that the murder investigation had arrived at a crucial point and any risk of political or other interference must be categorically excluded.7

These days when political leaders implicate that investigative journalism is “fake news” and journalists are murdered on behalf of criminals and corrupt politicians, the courageous efforts of Daphne Caruana prove how important an independent press is and thus underscores our obligation to safeguard free speech around the world.

1 “Murder in paradise:The death of a crusading journalist rocks Malta.” The Economist, October 21, 2017
2 In October 2019 Malta´s population was approximated at 493,560.
3 https://www.webcitation.org/6gVXG3LvI?url=https://www.occrp.org/en/panamapapers/overview/intro/
4 Bonini, Carlo (2019) “I masnadieri di Malta,” La Repubblica, November 29
5 Hornung, Frank and Juan Moreno (2019) ”Die Mafia-Insel,” Der Spiegel, December 6.
6 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/162000/TAX3%20Newsletter_Issue%203.pdf
7 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20191204IPR68278/malta-meps-conclude-fact-finding-visit-to-assess-caruana-galizia-murder-inquiry and https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/take-a-stance-on-malta-european-parliament-president-urges-eu-leaders.756580?fbclid=IwAR0936r0_mS-bbZVFmJI4_De1d9LwZpi-ci0TxtkcSaTd1FDHOX-clZlpRM

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

The post The Death of a Courageous Journalist Reveals Malta as a ”Mafia Island” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By Antonio Guterres
ROME, Dec 19 2019 (IPS)

As we prepare to bid farewell to 2019, we must take a clearsighted look at the global situation and the new challenges we face.

Our world is undergoing a shift. It is no longer bipolar or unipolar. But it is not yet truly multipolar. Balances of power are changing, creating new and dangerous risks.

Around the globe – and just a few hundred kilometres from here – national and regional tensions are spreading.

The Sahel, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan – these conflicts are causing terrible suffering and uprooting millions of people.

Rather than wars between sovereign States, we now see asymmetric conflicts between States and non-State groups. With the growing interference of third parties, these conflicts rapidly take on a regional dimension and are linked to new forms of global instability and terrorism.

The impact of the Libyan conflict on the Sahel and the Lake Chad regions shows how national conflicts can draw in neighbouring states and global powers, creating regional insecurity with implications across continents.

It is particularly worrying to see that the Security council has declared an arms embargo and that we have several member states providing weapons.

In the background to these conflicts is the renewed threat of nuclear proliferation, which is making a worrying comeback.

If we hope to make our world more peaceful and secure, we must start by addressing the underlying causes of tension and conflict.

Prevention is more essential than ever; and prevention on the scale we need is only possible through multilateralism.

That is why all the work of the United Nations is based on crisis prevention and mediation; combating violent extremism and strengthening peace and security; advancing sustainable, inclusive development; and protecting the human rights and dignity of all people, everywhere.

We are pursuing all these efforts in cooperation with regional organizations, including the European Union, a long-standing and essential partner.

I want to focus on five areas in which we face new risks and widening fault lines – and suggest some ways of solutions.

The first area is a failure of global solidarity with the most vulnerable.

I arrived in Rome from Geneva, where I attended the Global Refugee Forum. This forum aims to turn the Global Compact on Refugees, agreed by governments last year, into action, by sharing responsibility for refugees between members of the international community.

I commend the openness, care and compassion the Italians have shown towards tens of thousands of refugees who have arrived on your shores in recent years.

It is deeply troubling that refugees and migrants continue to die as they cross seas and deserts. We must do everything we can to prevent it, by taking action in countries of origin, transit countries and countries of destination.

Above all, we need collective responses, including development programmes that target young people with opportunities and jobs in regions of origin. We must investigate and prosecute the human traffickers and criminal networks that profit from people’s misery.

We must strengthen regular pathways for migration and the resettlement of refugees.

And honour the integrity of the international refugee protection regime, not just in words, but in deeds.

European Mediterranean countries that receive refugees and migrants like Greece and Italy are entitled to solidarity and support from their European partners. Unfortunately, until now, we have not seen that solidarity and support fully materialized.

It is unacceptable that people who fear for their lives are being blamed for societies’ problems. We must all support each other.

We are seeing a troubling pushback against human rights around the world, including rising misogyny, xenophobia, discrimination, racism and hate speech of all kinds.

Populists try to exploit discontent and division to win and keep power.

We must challenge them with leadership and political courage, based on reason and facts. That is why I have initiated two new strategies at the United Nations: to safeguard religious sites, and to combat hate speech in all its forms.

Diversity is not a threat but an asset. But it requires investment in social cohesion, so that every community feels that its identity is respected, and every person can participate fully in society as a whole.

The second troubling disconnect is between people and planet.
The climate crisis is no longer a long-term problem. It is here. And it is now.

It is a dangerous reality for many people, especially those living in some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries in the world. While they contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions, they are suffering most.

I saw this myself last year when I visited the Caribbean and Mozambique in the aftermath of devastating storms. And I have to say, you madame president have spoken about that. My first trip when I got married was to Italy.

And I was so deeply shocked when seeing on television the dramatic impact of climate change and that wonderful pearl of European civilization. I want to express my deep solidarity with Venice and with Italy.

We have fooled ourselves into thinking we can fool nature. But nature is fighting back, with a vengeance.

The last few years have been the hottest ever recorded. Sea levels are the highest in human history. Icecaps are receding and deserts are expanding. Our ecosystems are facing unprecedented threats.

Climate-related natural disasters are becoming more frequent, more deadly and more destructive, with growing human and financial costs.

Drought in some parts of the world is progressing at alarming rates, endangering food security, triggering conflicts, and forcing people from their homes.

Every year, air pollution associated with climate change kills seven million people. The climate crisis is a dramatic threat to human health and human security. And this is just the beginning.

If we fail to act now, history will record that we had all the tools needed to change – but we chose not to. Our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we sacrifice their future for fake short-term profit.

The emperor Nero is still remembered, rightly or wrongly, for fiddling while Rome burned. Do we want to be remembered as the generation that fiddled while our planet burned?

I am disappointed, as I said in the aftermath of the meeting, with the results of the climate talks, COP25, in Madrid.

The international community missed an opportunity to show increased ambition in mitigation, adaptation and finance in order to be able to tackle the climate crisis.

But as I also said, we will not give up. It was clear at the talks that most countries are still determined to advance more ambitious climate action, and that businesses and financial institutions are moving ahead.

The science is clear: we must reduce greenhouse emissions by 45 per cent by 2030; achieve carbon neutrality by 2050; and limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

Even if the Paris commitments are fully respected, they will not be enough to set us on that path. But many countries are not even meeting those commitments. Greenhouse gas emissions are still growing at an alarming rate.

We are currently on target to produce nearly three times as much coal as is safe for our planet and for our future. But having said so, my message remains one of hope, not of despair.

The scientific community tells us that the roadmap to stay below 1.5 degrees is still within reach – if we act now.

The technologies needed are already available. And the signs of hope are multiplying. More and more cities, financial institutions and businesses, civil societies entities are committing to the 1.5 degree pathway.

The most important sign of hope is that young people are mobilizing and taking the lead everywhere – including in Europe. But we need more political will.

It is time to put a price on carbon and stop subsidizing fossil fuels with taxpayers’ money. We must stop rewarding pollution that is killing people and tax carbon rather than income. The polluters – not the people – must pay.

We must stop building coal power plants in the world from 2020 onwards. And stop digging and drilling and take advantage of the vast possibilities offered by renewable energy and nature-based solutions.

The world’s largest emitters must pull their weight. Without them, our goal is unreachable. I welcome the EU’s recent commitment to become carbon neutral by 2050 and to work on a European Green Deal, including a more ambitious mitigation target for 2030, and funds for a just transition to a green economy.

Next year’s conference, COP26, hosted by the United Kingdom in partnership with Italy, will be a defining moment. In the 12 months ahead, we must keep climate ambition at the top of the international agenda.

We must secure more ambitious national commitments – particularly from the countries with the highest emissions – to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions immediately, consistent with reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.

We must also meet the expectations of developing countries for resources and support towards adaptation and mitigation, disaster response and recovery.

We cannot ignore the social dimensions of the transition in energy. National commitments must include a just transition for people whose jobs and livelihoods are affected.

We have no time to waste and we fully trust italy’s leadership in the preparations of COP26. The global solidarity gap and the climate crisis are linked with three other widening fault lines that should concern us all.

First is the risk of an economic, technological and geostrategic fault line dividing the world in two.

The two largest economies, the U.S. and China, could create two separate and competing areas of influence, each with its own dominant currency, trade and financial rules, and military strategies. Each would have its own internet and its own forms of artificial intelligence.

This would dramatically increase the risk of confrontation. We must do everything possible to avert this Great Fracture and preserve a global system: a universal economy with respect for international law; a multipolar world with solid multilateral institutions.

For this, we need a strong Europe, as a fundamental pillar of a multilateral order based on the rule of law and respect for fundamental freedoms. This is not always easy. But successful multilateralism depends on a united and ambitious European Union.

At the national level, we see another widening fault line in the social contract. People feel that economies are not working for them.

We are witnessing a wave of protests across the world. Each situation is unique, but they have two features in common: a growing deficit of trust between people and political establishments, coupled with the negative effects of globalisation and technological progress.

People are suffering and want to be heard. They want equality, social and economic systems that work for everybody. They want their human rights and fundamental freedoms to be respected. And they want to have a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

Governments have a duty to listen to their people, and to respect freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Everyone must exercise restraint and prioritize dialogue in some of the dramatic crises we are facing today in different parts of the world.

Many of these protests are being led by young people, in particular young women. They are making the links between climate injustice, inequalities and insecurity; and calling for new ways of organizing our political, economic and social systems.

The response to this deep and widespread discontent should be based on a new social contract that is inclusive and fair, for our new age of globalization and hyper-connectivity.

All people should be able to live in dignity. Women should have the same prospects for success as men. People with disabilities should have equal opportunities to realise their potential. The sick and the vulnerable should be protected.

The 2030 Agenda adopted by the General Assembly, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, offers exactly that kind of social contract: sustainable, equitable and inclusive development that works for people and planet.

The 2030 Agenda should be at the heart of our thinking on new models for governance. A peaceful and stable society is only possible when there are equal opportunities for all and respect for the rights and freedoms of all.

Finally, these inequalities and fault lines are exacerbated by a growing technological divide.

New technologies hold enormous promise. They are opening up a new world as tools for peace and sustainable development. But at the same time, they pose risks, and they can be misused for nefarious purposes.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution could eradicate entire sectors of the labour market. And while it will also create new opportunities, they might require completely different skills.

This could increase divisions and add to exclusion and inequality. Let’s not forget that half the world is not even connected to the internet.

We must therefore put in place long-term education strategies that integrate lifelong learning of new technologies. It is no longer enough to learn; everyone must learn how to learn to enable people to train for the jobs of the future and that no one is left behind.
At the same time, we need a new generation of social protection with innovative safety nets for those facing the bigger risks.

Technology must be a tool for peace, for social progress and reducing inequalities. And we must also address the misuse of technology to commit crimes, spread hate speech, manipulate information, oppress people or invade their privacy.

We already know the results of these activities. Disinformation campaigns based on lies reach the furthest parts of the globe. Many countries have access to sophisticated cyber capabilities that can paralyze entire nations or companies – but what about those countries and people that cannot defend themselves in cyberspace?

Traditional, rigid regulation, it is true, are no longer possible. Digital technology requires new, multi-stakeholder regulation frameworks that are faster and more flexible. And we must also come together to decide on some limits.

I believe one of these limits should be a total ban on lethal autonomous weapons with the power and discretion to kill without human intervention. They are politically unacceptable and morally despicable.

The United Nations can play the role of a convening platform here. It should be the place where governments, companies, researchers, civil society and others meet, to establish protocols to define red lines and best practices together.

Last year, I convened a High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation co-chaired by Melinda Gates and Jack Ma. Its recommendations show how this multi-stakeholder vision can guide our joint efforts to accelerate global internet connectivity, build capacity, and improve digital governance.

I am encouraged that this report has won support from technology companies, governments and civil society. The European Union has already set an example through the General Data Protection Regulation, inspiring similar measures elsewhere. I urge the EU and its Member States to continue to lead to shape the digital age and to be at the forefront of technological innovation and regulation.

I have set out our response to these five fault lines and gaps, based on strong multilateral institutions, solidarity and mutual respect.

But multilateralism itself needs to adapt to the challenges of today and tomorrow. Governments alone cannot achieve the 2030 Agenda or the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. They call for social and economic transformations that will only be brought about with the inclusion and full participation of all those involved: civil society, including young people, the private sector, academia and more.

Women must be at the forefront. We cannot reduce poverty and inequality without addressing the world’s most pervasive form of discrimination that affects half of humanity: women and girls.

Gender inequality is first and foremost a question of power, and let’s be frank, we still live in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture. We will shift the balance when we truly see women’s rights as our common goal.

And this is why immediately after assuming the leadership of the United Nations, I put a strategy in place to achieve gender parity well before 2030.

That goal has already been reached in the areas directly under my control: the Senior Management Group and the leaders of our teams around the world have full parity.

I will not rest until we have reached gender parity at all levels of the United Nations – and full equality for women and girls around the world.

Today’s multilateralism must be networked and inclusive, closer to the people we serve. We need to work hand in hand with regional organisations, international financial institutions, development banks and specialised agencies.

And our cooperation cannot be limited to inter-governmental approaches and official institutions; I am happy to see members of civil society and young people here today.

Legislators have a crucial role to play. As a former parliamentarian, first of all, I feel very much at home here. But I also know very much that your contribution is critical in advancing shared progress.

Parliaments can be defenders of democracy and agents of accountability, bringing the concerns of ordinary people into the international arena.

Today, we need you more than ever as a link between local actions and urgent global priorities. The challenges we face are interlinked and long-term; so must be our response.

Fighting the climate crisis means advancing peace and social cohesion. Expanding access to technology means taking action for gender equality.

Preventing crises means investing in inclusive and sustainable development. Next year, 2020, we will mark the 75th anniversary of the United Nations by convening a global conversation about the future we want and the UN we need. It will be open to all, to gather ideas and encourage collective action.

The results will be presented to world leaders at the seventy-fifth session of the General Assembly next September. I invite all to participate in this dialogue. We want to use this anniversary to shape our future.

As we look ahead, let’s remember that just as all our challenges have been created by humankind, they can be solved by us.

We have proven in the past that we are able to come together. Let’s rise to the occasion and build a better future for all.

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Excerpt:

Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, in an address to the Italian Senate

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Mombasa, April 2019, transfer of Kamaz trucks to WFP. Credit: Russian embassy in Kenya

By Dmitry Maksimychev
NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 19 2019 (IPS)

Food security holds a special place among Russia’s priorities in its efforts to achieve sustainable development globally. We believe that this task, which is reflected in Sustainable Development Goal 1, requires a comprehensive and multidimensional approach.

First of all, we believe that it has to be addressed at the level of supplying to the world enough high-quality food to stabilize international markets and make it more accessible and affordable for a maximum number of people. To that end, over the last twenty years, Russia has been steadily and consistently increasing its own production and export of food – grain, cereals, pulses, meats, poultry, oils, milk and dairy products, etc. Russia has become one of the world’s largest exporters of food. As of today, its food export is worth US$26 billion, and by 2024, it is expected to reach US$45 billion.

What is important is that under Russian law, all foods produced in Russia are GMO-free, which makes them more sustainable. The production of organic foods also grows continuously to meet the ever-growing demand of the international markets.

At the same time, the Zero Hunger goal must be addressed as a matter of urgency for those countries that are food insecure (for different reasons), because people need food every day to survive, and in the XXI century no humans should die because of starvation or malnutrition. Apart from our bilateral efforts in that area, since 2001, Russia has embarked upon a long-term strategic partnership with the United Nations system, primarily, the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) that have established themselves as effective and reliable partners.

In 2018-2019, Russia has contributed around US$80 million for the implementation of food aid projects by the above agencies. Apart from direct food aid, we also fund projects aimed at ensuring long-term solutions to sustainability of agriculture, post-conflict rehabilitation of the agricultural sector, and development of school feeding systems.

Since 2003, Russia’s total regular voluntary contributions to WFP have reached US$400 million. In 2019 alone, Russia has contributed to WFP US$36.9 million.

Mombasa, April 2019, transfer of Kamaz trucks to WFP. Credit: Russian embassy in Kenya

In 2010, Russia in partnership with WFP launched the first pilot school feeding project in Armenia. Since then, its positive results were replicated and scaled up in the Middle East (Jordan, Tunisia, and Morocco) and in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan). In total, US$95.1 million have been allocated for this work for 2010-2023. We pay so much attention to school feeding because our experience shows that this type of interventions is absolutely unique in addressing not only educational and nutritional problems but a wide range of social and economic development issues.

As an important input into WFP’s humanitarian operations, Russia donated 355 KAMAZ trucks (KAMAZ is among the largest and best producers of trucks in Russia) together with the necessary parts, equipment, technical support and training for the drivers and mechanics. 258 trucks were transferred in 2011 and 97 – in 2019. The Russian trucks are being effectively used in key WFP operations in Africa and Afghanistan.

What makes the Russian support to WFP special is the regularity and predictability of our voluntary contributions. As of now, they consist of two annual payments – US$20 million as regular contribution, and US$10 million as additional funding. This year, Kenya became one of the recipients of such an additional contribution (US$1million). Starting from 2020, the additional contribution will double to reach US$20 million annually with US$10 million being reserved exclusively for Africa. It is the first time that Russia assigns a geographic priority for its voluntary contribution to WFP.

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Mental health concerns for Bangladeshi garment workers — especially females — has always been of concern, even before the collapse of Rana Plaza. Credit: Obaidul Arif/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 19 2019 (IPS)

Nearly seven years ago, garment workers in Bangladesh were victims of one of the gravest man-made disasters in history — a factory collapse that left more than 1,100 workers dead, and rendered thousands with injuries — in many cases lifelong ones. 

For many of the workers from Rana Plaza, the trauma remains real even to this day.

Bangladesh relies heavily on its garment industry for its rising status in the global economy, with textile being its biggest export revenue. Yet its garment workers remain often poorly treated, and continue working in unsafe conditions for minimum pay. Many survivors of Rana Plaza are still reeling from the physical and mental health trauma they suffered in the incident and the aftermath. According to ActionAid, a locally-based NGO, a large number of workers say they can’t return to work owing to their physical and mental health conditions. 

But mental health concerns for Bangladeshi garment workers — especially females — has always been of concern, even before the collapse. 2017 research shows that female garment workers, often driven to the workforce owing to their financial status, have thoughts of suicide and suffer from “stress, anxiety, restlessness” because of their long hours at work while being away from their family, especially their children. 

A recent initiative might change that. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exports Association (BGMEA) recently launched the “first ever” mental health initiative in the country for the workers. The project recently held a session with workers of one factory, and will be piloted across 50 factories. It’s working with Moner Bondhu, a mental health service provider in Bangladesh. Tawhida Shiropa, founder and CEO of Moner Bondhu, shared her thoughts with IPS. 

Inter Press Service: What is Moner Bondhu’s role in this initiative? 

Tawhida Shiropa: Moner Bondhu is providing mental health group counselling to garment factory workers. Our counsellors conduct sessions at the factories to address the emotional well-being of the workers so that they can be more peaceful in their personal and professional lives. We work on mind healing, stress management, empathy, being respectful towards others, how to get relief from fatigue and be more productive at the workplace and also on how to be happy at work and in their family life. Our sessions include breathing exercises, stress relief exercises and mindfulness meditation.

What do you hope will be achieved through this initiative?

Through this initiative we aim to help the workers lead a happier and peaceful life so that they can achieve a better work-life balance, be more productive at work while playing a more involved role in their families. In this way they can contribute more to their and as a result the economy of the country will advance.

How do you believe mental health of RMG workers is related to their livelihood, if at all?

We believe mental health is related to everyone’s livelihood. By taking care of their mental health, workers will become more resilient to all the challenges of life. At work, they can be more mindful of their co-workers and together they can create a more harmonious work environment.   

What kind of response did you get from your first session?

Our first session was very lively and exciting for all participants. The event was a huge success. All the workers and the factory administration said that they felt very relaxed and calm after the session, especially after the exercises and meditation. They also said that they have never had a session like ours. Many of them came up to our counsellors to thank them personally. They also asked how to stay in touch with us and we share our contact details with them, so that they can access our help in future if they need to.

What’s ahead for the initiative? 

We see this initiative as a milestone for mental healthcare. Before now, there was no big scale initiative for mental healthcare of factory workers, so BGMEA’s concern for their workers is highly admirable as they are concerned for the overall well-being of the workers.  

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Fenella Aouane, Principal Green Finance Specialist, Investment and Policy Solutions Division, Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)

By Fenella Aouane
SEOUL, South Korea, Dec 18 2019 (IPS)

One of the main discussions at the COP25 climate change talks was Article 6, which is designed to provide financial support to emerging economies and developing countries to help them reduce emissions by using global carbon markets. Carbon pricing is an essential piece of the puzzle to curb emissions. Without a value on carbon, there is less incentive to make positive changes, especially in the private sector. The most efficient way to carry this forward is to allow trading of carbon both nationally and internationally, which will ensure the lowest cost of mitigation for participants globally.

Fenella Aouane

The COP25 negotiations in Madrid have largely been dominated by Article 6 negotiations on potential carbon markets as they are perceived by many, including businesses, as a way to generate financial flows to emerging economies and developing countries, and to reduce emissions at the lowest possible cost. Thus, it’s crucial to adopt decisions on Article 6 as rules need to be set to show how such markets will operate – this is the guidance the Article 6 rulebook will create. The sooner the better, overall mitigation in global emissions (OMGE) will be possible under the Paris Agreement through international carbon trading with aspects such as corresponding adjustments, which were lacking under the Kyoto Protocol. Carbon markets are a way to not only manage mitigation emissions cuts, but help to find the lowest cost and therefore a strong motivator for implementing international efforts.

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), a Seoul-based treaty-based international, inter-governmental organization that supports emerging economies and developing country governments transition to a model of economic growth that is environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive, is already involved in several programs, funded by developed country governments such as Norway and Sweden. GGGI is working with the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment on wider policy approaches, which have been made possible under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement through cooperative approaches. This program looks at helping its member and partner governments to identify areas above their Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) targets, where emissions reductions directly resulting from policy interventions are quantified and transacted. This creates a flow of carbon finance, in exchange for the transfer of the resultant internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs). These programs will not only create ITMO transactions but also set up the lasting infrastructure needed for countries to be able to govern and properly account for future transfers, ensuring environmental integrity and transparency.

GGGI has a key role to play. A further good example is GGGI’s recent collaboration with the Swedish Energy Agency (SEA). The two organizations will work together to catalyze international trading of mitigation outcomes in support of the increased climate ambitions needed under the Paris Agreement. Through a joint cooperation, SEA and GGGI will identify and structure mitigation activities and support the establishment of governance frameworks within host countries as required under the developing rulebook of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, with the goal of completing ITMO transactions.

Although specific rules related to cooperative approaches under Article 6 have yet to be codified, Article 6 aims at supporting the authorization of international emissions trades while avoiding double counting and ensuring environmental integrity, permitting the movement of the related emission reductions between registries, and better linking national emission trading schemes, project-level transactions, and cooperative approaches.

What next? Carbon markets can and should be seen as an opportunity to lower the cost of cutting greenhouse gas emissions and enabling countries to commit to more ambitious targets. At next year’s Glasgow climate change conference, countries need to come forward with more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions. GGGI’s work on pioneering designs for international carbon transactions over 2020 will help shape how the carbon markets can contribute to this increased ambition. It has also made the 2020 NDCs a priority in support of its Members and will ensure that there is strong support to deliver this next year. We need to come to Glasgow with concrete plans and steps. However, tackling climate change cannot be solved by one government alone. There needs to be high-level political commitment and collective action – these are a must.

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Excerpt:

Fenella Aouane, Principal Green Finance Specialist, Investment and Policy Solutions Division, Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)

The post Carbon Markets Can Provide a Crucial Part of the Solution to the Climate Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UWC

By Jens Waltermann
LONDON, Dec 18 2019 (IPS)

We saw a hugely diverse selection of world leaders – from civil society, politics and business – seeking positive change at the UN General Assembly in New York in September. But the global reality is a political and economic environment that is increasingly divided. Boycotts. Protests. Narratives of hate.

The newly launched Davos manifesto on the universal purpose of a company in the fourth industrial revolution and the Business Roundtable in August call for leaders and companies to shift their attention from solely focusing on shareholders to including stakeholders.

Yet, we have spent the past five years discussing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). And now we only have a decade to reach them.

Whether it is the need to increasingly work together across industries, sectors and borders or to broaden the role of business as a contributor in society, it is clear that tomorrow’s leaders need to be educated differently.

The world needs citizens who are empowered to act, who see that they have a role to play in reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Students from very different backgrounds, who have lived, studied and solved problems together.

We need students who will become entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs and leaders. We need to educate responsible leaders.

Education is the tool to create constructive change and here are three reflections on how:

Education needs to focus on the questions that will start conversations

Students can ask many thoughtful questions, wherever they are empowered to do so. Questions that challenge and expose inaccurate assumptions and all too easy answers, questions that create serendipitous learning, and questions that lay the foundations for difficult conversations.

Jens Waltermann – Credit: UWC

Education is uniquely placed to instill the right mindset for this and create places for meaningful conversations between students from different backgrounds. In our divided world of black and white perceptions and statements, we can teach students to think critically, to appreciate diversity and to build bridges across differences.

By encouraging students to ask questions and ask why, they will challenge what is around them. With the transition to the circular economy, we need to not only pick plastics from the beach, but teach students to ask why the plastic got there in the first place.

What is wrong with the current system? How can the products not only be reused and recycled, but designed so that the materials never leave the cycle? By asking questions like this, I am certain that we as educators will spark creative thinking amongst our students, and create change makers for the future. Perhaps even social entrepreneurs today.

Education must engage students outside the classroom

Boycotts and sanctions in the political and economic space must not affect the education of our children. As much as conflicts may arise in politics and business, education needs to lay the foundations for tomorrow’s peace building.

And classroom education is only one part of the puzzle: what happens when you create an environment where students help elderly people at the local nursing home, support slum children to attend school in India or even carry a paralyzed fellow student to the top of the mountain on the school’s annual hike?

Credit: UWC

Or when social entrepreneurship is encouraged and the students invent a method to recycle plastics from the ocean? This sort of education holds the fabric of society together. We must not let that fabric tear, but rather strengthen it by weaving creativity, action and service into education.

Education must embrace cultures and celebrate diversity. Every day.

By asking questions to a student from another country, studying history next to a refugee or enjoying each other’s music, you learn the true value of being different. In a world of soundbites, slogans and superficial statements, we need time together to converse, question and understand. We need to put faces to abstract questions and events around the globe.

I see students graduate from our schools, go on to university and later take on jobs in governments, businesses or in civil society. With the challenges that we are facing we need public private partnerships, people who can work together, not just because they have to, but because they know the value of bringing very different people around one table.

So, as children that were initially portrayed as apathetic continue to march in the streets, speak at the UN and put pressure on the world’s leaders to act, we must ensure that we continue to foster their efforts with a shift in education that arms them with a strong sense of purpose and the skills to facilitate constructive change.

That will equip them as better citizens and as the responsible leaders we need as we enter into the next decade. The last decade to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The post Education for Constructive Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Jens Waltermann is Executive Director, United World Colleges (UWC) International.

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At the Global Youth Forum in Egypt thousands of youth attend a session on Artificial Intelligence and to hear Sophia — a humanoid robot capable of displaying humanlike expressions and interacting with people. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
SHARM-EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, Dec 18 2019 (IPS)

On late Monday morning, a motley group of more than a thousand youth gathered in a hall in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to listen to Sophia — a humanoid robot capable of displaying humanlike expressions and interacting with people. Yahya Elghobashy, a computer science engineering student from Cairo, sat excitedly in the audience. A few meters away from him, also in the audience, was Abdel Fattah el-Sisi — the President of Egypt.

As Sophia and a panel of scientists on the stage spoke about Artificial Intelligence (AI), El-Sisi was seen listening attentively and taking notes while the young crowd around him squealed and took photos.

“It was very exciting that I was going to see and hear the world’s best humanoid robot and that the president himself was there,” Elghobashy revealed, a big smile on his face.

Since 2017, Egyptian president El-Sisi has been seen here at the World Youth Forum each year. The event is now the Arab world’s largest youth gathering, focusing on peace, culture and development.

The 3-day forum, which ended yesterday, Dec.17, drew nearly 8,000 people including 64 speakers and several hundred youth leaders from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. There was also a large contingent of government officials and ministers in attendance, which has been happening under the direct patronage of the president. The core theme of the event is “Egypt: where civilisations meet” – an effort to highlight the cultural diversity of the country to the world.

Technology and innovation in the spotlight

But the dominating subject of discussions at the forum this year was technology and innovation. Of the 20 sessions, half were centred around technology and artificial intelligence (AI), cyber security, industrial innovation and blockchain technologies and applications.

On Monday, Dec. 16, at the session on AI, youths were seen loudly cheering as Sophia the robot spoke. Designed by Hanson Robotics of Hong Kong, Sophia described herself as a robot who is here to assist in the fields of research, education, and entertainment, and help promote public discussion about AI.  At the session, a panel of youth experts also talked passionately about ethics and the future of robotics. “You can build robots that are energy-efficient and also run on renewable energy,” said the humanoid robot to the cheering young crowd.

“This is very progressive that we are discussing advanced technology like AI here. As an engineering student, I think it especially encourages us to talk about what is most relevant to our life, our country and our future,” Elghobashy told IPS.

At a press conference later, El-Sisi assured people that the government was indeed paying attention to the developments at World Youth Forum and planned to bring cutting-edge technologies to the country’s youth for a better future.

“We will be launching a series of new universities teaching all relevant digital age sciences. We will also seek partnerships with international institutions to guarantee a high level of quality education,” El-Sisi said.

New technologies, risks and challenges

Besides the excitement of ground-breaking technologies, the forum also threw light on the risks and challenges of new technologies such as  blockchain – a decentralised, distributed ledger that records the provenance of a digital asset. Cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, is a perfect example of blockchain technology.

Challenges faced by various countries regarding blockchain due to the lack of national legislation in countries other than China and the United States was also a prominent talking point. This includes possible threats like blockchain being misused by terrorist organisations to sell oil, purchase weapons, and exchange digital currencies.

The missing technologies

Samia Khamis is a student of international relations in Amman, Jordan who traveled to the forum for the first time. “I came via Cairo, which is only an hour away from Jordan, but the moment I stepped out of the airport I could feel that the air pollution level is much higher than my country,” she told IPS.

Cairo is one of the world’s most polluted cities.  According to NUMBEO – an air quality data monitor, residents of Cairo breathe in polluted air, with levels reaching as high as 85 percent.

According to Khamis, Egypt needs to develop technologies that could clear its sky which is “dark” because of pollution. “It is good that we are brining so many technologies on display here, but we need technologies that can make our environment better and our air clearer,” she said.

The forum’s closing ceremony took place on Tuesday night.

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"No to lithium" reads a sign erected in Salinas Grandes by local indigenous communities, who depend on the salt flats for tourism and to harvest salt, in the northwest of Argentina. In February 2019 they blocked the nearest highway, which runs to Chile, for nearly two weeks, halting exploration for lithium by a mining company. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
OLAROZ, Argentina , Dec 18 2019 (IPS)

The intense white brightness of the salt flats interrupts the arid monotony of the Puna in northwest Argentina, resembling postcards from the moon. Beneath its surface are concealed the world’s largest reserves of lithium, the key mineral in the transition to clean energy, the mining of which has triggered controversy.

The debate is not only about the environmental impact but also about how real are the benefits for the local communities of this region located more than 4,000 metres above sea level, where people unaccustomed to the Andes highlands have a hard time breathing.

“I have no doubt that our province is destined to play a key role in the coming years, which will be marked by the abandonment of fossil fuels,” Carlos Oehler, president of the Jujuy Energy and Mining State Society (Jemse), told IPS.

“It’s an opportunity for development. And the people who only emphasise the environmental impact do so out of ignorance,” he argued, at the company’s headquarters in Salvador, the capital of the province of Jujuy.

Jemse, which is owned by the province – bordering Bolivia and Chile – has been producing lithium since 2014 in the Olaroz salt flats, through Sales de Jujuy, a public-private partnership with Australia’s Orocobre and Japan’s Toyota Tsusho.

The participation of Toyota Tsusho – part of the Toyota conglomerate – is a reflection of the international interest in lithium for the production of batteries for electric vehicles, a market expected to boom in the coming years in industrialised countries.

The impact of lithium mining in the Puna region of Jujuy is limited for now and differs depending on the area, IPS saw first-hand during a several-day tour through the scattered towns and villages of this rugged Andes plateau region.

Several of these communities, mostly populated by indigenous Kolla people, became Solar Villages this year – a provincial project that harnesses the abundant sunlight of the Puna region to bring electricity to remote villages.

A few km from the Salar de Olaroz salt flats is the village of the same name, made up of a few dozen adobe houses and reached by a desolate dirt road.

A street in Olaroz, the village near the salt flats of the same name in the northwest Argentine province of Jujuy, where lithium mining provides stable work for some of the local inhabitants, in an area where communities have traditionally raised llamas and sheep for a living. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

A few “pros”…

Last year, the town’s first secondary school opened its doors. It is a vocational-technical institution with an orientation in chemistry, which aims precisely to train young people about lithium.

In addition, lithium has brought stable jobs to a poor region, where a majority of the population depends on llama and sheep farming. Mirta Irades, principal of the Olaroz primary school, told IPS: “Everyone here wants to work at the mining company, even if it’s just washing the dishes.”

The real benefits, however, are modest. According to a report presented by the national and provincial governments in November, only 162 people, or 42 percent of those working in the Sales de Jujuy company, come from local communities.

In total, the document says, direct mining employment in Jujuy increased from 1,287 jobs in 2006 to 2,244 in 2018, with lithium mining accounting for three-quarters of the growth. That is just 3.5 percent of registered employment in the province, although wages are more than double the overall average.

The timeframes involved in lithium production are another hurdle.

Sales de Jujuy is the only company in the province that is commercially mining lithium. There are dozens of other companies working, but exploration, pilot tests, the installation of processing plants and other previous tasks can take up to 10 years.

Two men from indigenous communities near Salinas Grandes pick up bags of salt harvested by members of the local cooperative. Villages around Salinas Grandes have blocked attempts to mine lithium in the area. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

There is only one other company already mining lithium in the entire northwest of Argentina, which is also made up of the provinces of Salta and Catamarca.

This is the area that, along with northern Chile and southern Bolivia, comprises the so-called Lithium Triangle, which concentrates 67 percent of the world’s proven reserves of the mineral, with Argentina at the head, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

…and several “cons”

But those who are skeptical about lithium’s potential for the region point out that South American countries are once again falling into the role of mere producers of primary products, as in the case of agricultural and livestock exports.

This is crudely reflected in Olaroz, one of the Solar Villages that is supplied with electricity by a small local solar park, which like the others in the programme runs 24 hours a day thanks to lithium batteries.

But the batteries are imported from China, since neither Argentina nor the rest of South America has the technology to manufacture them.

When you walk through communities in Jujuy’s Puna region, there are places where people don’t even want to hear lithium mentioned.

In Salinas Grandes, another giant white sea of salt, located about 100 km from Olaroz, no mining company has been able to gain a foothold due to opposition from the 33 indigenous communities in the area.

Two indigenous women wait for customers at a craft stand in Salinas Grandes, in the Puna highlands region in northwestern Argentina. The tourist routes through the immense salt flats that break up the arid landscape here are an alternative created by the local indigenous communities to boost their income. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“This is our territory, we decided that lithium will not be mined here, and they are going to have to respect us,” Verónica Chávez told IPS, while participating in an assembly of some 100 members of indigenous communities in the middle of the salt flats.

Chávez lives in the village of Santuario Tres Pozos, home to some 30 families, and she is a member of the local cooperative that brings together indigenous families who work harvesting salt, using the same techniques their ancestors used for centuries.

“All the promises they make to us with the arrival of the lithium companies are lies. Lithium is food for today and hunger for tomorrow,” adds Chávez.

Local alternatives

Four years ago the communities in Salinas Grandes embarked on another activity: guided tours and the sale of handicrafts to Argentine and foreign tourists attracted by the seemingly endless white landscape that glitters in the sunlight.

Alicia Chalabe, a lawyer for the indigenous populations of Salinas Grandes, says no economic offer will manage to modify the situation. “The communities live close to the salt flats and use the territory, which for them has a very important historical, cultural and patrimonial value,” she told IPS.

“In the Olaroz area, the situation is different because the communities never used the salt flats,” she adds.

A sign marks the entrance to Sales de Jujuy, one of the only two companies that mines and sells lithium in Argentina, the country with the largest proven reserves. It operates in the Olaroz salt flats and is made up of the Australian company Orocobre, Japan’s Toyota and a public enterprise from the province of Jujuy, in the northwest of Argentina. Credit Daniel Gutman/IPS

In February, the communities of Salinas Grandes staged a nearly two-week roadblock on national highway 52, which connects Argentina with Chile, successfully bringing to a halt the exploration work that a lithium mining company had begun in the area without the approval of the local indigenous population.

The resistance in Salinas Grandes is based in part on studies by Marcelo Sticco, a hydrogeologist at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), who points out that lithium extraction puts community water sources at risk in a desert area where rain is a very sporadic luxury.

“The studies we carried out are conclusive,” Sticco told IPS from the Argentine capital. “Lithium is separated through the evaporation of enormous quantities of water, which fuels the salinisation of the groundwater used for consumption in the region.”

The government of Jujuy has a project to add value to lithium in the province: it partnered with the Italian electronics group SERI, which could locally install a battery assembly plant, with the aim of moving towards electric urban public transport.

This initiative, if implemented, could modify a scenario that for now does not offer significant concrete benefits, even though many in Argentina are already counting on the wealth that the so-called “white gold” will bring.

But although Argentina’s lithium exports have been growing, they reached just 251 million dollars in 2018, a mere 6.5 percent of the country’s mining exports.

However, Oehler, the president of Jemse, believes that the peak in international demand for lithium has not yet arrived: “It will peak between 2025 and 2030 and we have to take advantage of it to grow and to improve the lives of our communities,” he said.

But some experts fear the consequences of staking too much on this mineral, which could soon be outdated by a new technology that reduces or eliminates its current attraction.

Lithium has many uses, but it is most coveted as a heat conductor in rechargeable batteries.

These are used in cell phones, in the storage of different renewable energies, especially solar power, and in electric vehicles, the use of which is projected to steadily increase, especially in public transport, as they push aside fossil-fuel vehicles as part of the effort to curb global warming.

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By Anis Chowdhury
SYDNEY, Dec 17 2019 (IPS)

The social utility of billionaires’ existence has come under increased scrutiny, especially during the Democratic Party primaries for the 2020 US Presidential election. Leading newspapers, such as The New York Times, published opinion pieces arguing to abolish billionaires and reflecting on why billionaires engage in illegal insider trading.

The arguments for abolishing billionaires range from moral grounds to dubious, or outright illegal/criminal sources of their wealth. The billionaires own more than what is needed even for a most lavish life style, and far more than what might reasonably be claimed deserving. Billionaires are seen as manifestations of policy failures as they gain through, inheritance, abusing state-granted patent monopoly power, insider trading, lobbying, tax evasions and corrupting democratic and progressive policy making processes.

But could billionaires also pose existential threats to humanity?

Some prominent scientists and futurologists think so, based on the impacts of billionaires’ carbon-intensive lifestyles and potential control of technological advances, such as genetic engineering (GE) and artificial intelligence (AI).

Money to burn
According to an Oxfam report, the richest 10% of people produce half of earth’s climate-harming fossil-fuel emissions, while the poorest half contribute a mere 10%. The average carbon footprint of someone in the world’s richest 1% could be 175 times that of someone in the poorest 10%.

A recent CNN report tells that rich people do not just have bigger bank balances, they also have bigger carbon footprints as they own more stuff, and burn more fossil fuel globe-trotting in private jets, travelling in luxury cars and cooling/heating mansions. The jet-setting habits of celebrities produce an astonishing 10,000 times more carbon emissions from flying than an average person.

A study, published in Ecological Economics, shows that as the rich get richer, CO2 emission rises. Another study, published in Environment and Behavior, finds that rich people emit more carbon, even when they recycle and buy canvas tote bags full of organic veggies.

Furthermore, the political clout and economic power of the wealthiest individuals prevent regulations on carbon emissions. What matters is not inequality as such, but income concentration at the top end of the distribution.

Soon there will be space tourism, a novel but green-house-gas intensive activity restricted to the super-rich for US$250,000. The potential for luxury emissions is growing as the number of millionaires worldwide is projected to increase to 63 million in 2024.

Therefore, the prestigious science journal, Nature Climate Change, argued recently to shift the focus of emissions mitigating efforts from world’s poorest people to people at the opposite end of the social ladder — the super-rich.

Hijacking Darwin

Jamie Metzl claims in Hacking Darwin, “From this point onward, our mutation will not be random. It will be self-designed. From this point onward, our selection will not be natural. It will be self-directed.” While society might overcome diseases by tweaking individual genomes, GE may also give rise to ‘superhumans’, “optimised for certain characteristics (like intelligence or looks) and exacerbate inequalities in society.” Metzl thinks, new GEs are at once wonderous and terrifying.

In his posthumously published book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Stephen Hawking warned that genetically-enhanced elite could become a dominant overclass that could eventually wipe out the genetic have-nots of a future civilization.

No doubt, the ultra-rich will become the first superhumans. After all, who can afford the newest, ground-breaking technology? The people who can afford everything else.

The appearance of superhumans is no longer a science fiction. The Fortune magazine recently predicted that designer babies are coming in 20 to 30 years, and “when baby genes are for sale, the rich will pay”. In-vitro-fertilization pioneer Lord Winston has warned that a growing market for fertility treatments could “threaten our humanity”, including if the rich were able to pay for so-called “designer babies”.

Mark Thiessen in his The Washington Post opinion piece, wrote, “Only the wealthy would be able to afford made-to-order babies. This means the privileged few would be able to eliminate imperfections and improve the talent, beauty, stature and IQ of their offspring — thus locking in their privilege for generations. Those at the bottom would not.”

Thus, Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society warned, “Genome editing for human embryos is an unnecessary threat to society.” David King, a molecular biologist and founder of Human Genetics Alert, cautioned, “Hijacked by the free market, human gene editing will lead to greater social inequality by heading where the money is: designer babies… Once you start creating a society in which rich people’s children get biological advantages over other children, basic notions of human equality go out the window. Instead, what you get is social inequality written into DNA.”

Stephen Hawking’s warning is ominous, “Once such superhumans appear, there are going to be significant political problems with the unimproved humans, who won’t be able to compete. Presumably, they will die out, or become unimportant. Instead, there will be a race of self-designing beings who are improving themselves at an ever-increasing rate.”

Jamie Metzl warns, the goal of improving the human population by GEs can get extremely dangerous. Horrible crimes against humanity were committed in the name of different considerations of “improvement”. In 1925, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker”. Claiming superiority of race, the colonialists wiped away the indigenous people of Americas and Australia.

End of human

The optimist AI expert and author of Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Jerry Kaplan admits, “The benefits of automation naturally accrue to those who can invest in the new systems, and that’s the people with the money.”

Robots will enable capital accumulation without labour. With robotic capital and equipped with an infinite supply of workerless wealth, the super-rich could seal themselves off in a gated paradise, leaving the unemployed sub-humans to rot.

Peter Frase speculates in Four Futures that the economically redundant hordes “outside the gates” will only be tolerated as long as they are needed. “What happens if the masses are dangerous but are no longer a working class, and hence of no value to the rulers?”, he wonders. “Someone will eventually get the idea that it would be better to get rid of them.”

In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond described how gaps in power and technology, even without genetic superiority, determined the fates of human societies during the past 13,000 years. Now with ‘designer genetic superiority’ and weaponised AI – enabled by concentration of wealth and power – it would be a world defined by the “genocidal war of the rich against the poor”.

A longer version of this piece appeared in The Financial Express (Dhaka, 13 Dec. 2019). Anis Chowdhury, Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University and the University of New South Wales (Australia); held senior United Nations positions in New York and Bangkok.

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Wan Manan Muda and Tan Zhai Gen
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 17 2019 (IPS)

Malnutrition remains a formidable challenge in most societies, with less than a tenth of countries in the world not experiencing at least one major malnutrition problem.

In relatively more food secure countries, where almost everyone has enough to eat, and few live in fear of a sudden loss of access to food, micronutrient deficiencies and diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) often still loom large.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

One such country is Malaysia where rice is, by and large, available and affordable to almost everyone. However, what else Malaysians eat is quite problematic, causing to undernutrition in terms of micronutrients and other food-related health problems.

Malaysia has long been a melting pot of different cultures, resulting in various traditional foods and food customs coming together and changing with new technological, demographic, environmental, market and other behavioural influences.

Like most other societies, Malaysia has not been exempt from global trends, with greater food consumption away from home, and the growing popularity of ‘convenience foods’, deep-frying as well as sugared food and beverages.

Diets must improve
Undernutrition, or nutrient deficiencies, remains high, even though hunger, or dietary energy undernourishment, has greatly declined. However, stunting among children under 5 increased from 17.2% in 2006 to 20.7% in 2016, as the share of underweight children rose from 12.9% to 13.7%.

Public health efforts should ensure adequate micronutrient absorption in daily food consumption as deficiencies causing serious problems are largely ignored. For instance, median Malaysian calcium intake was less than half the recommended level in 2014.

Meanwhile, 4.9 million Malaysians were anaemic, around half women of reproductive age. Temporary supplementation for pregnant women is desperately needed, but anaemia in the general population deserves far more attention.

Wan Manan Muda

Overweight and obesity increase the risks of many NCDs such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancers. Alarmingly, NCDs are now the leading cause of premature death and disability. Malaysia is now among the ‘heaviest’ societies in Asia, with 17.7% of adults obese, and a further 30.0% overweight in 2015.

In less than two decades, the prevalence of diabetes increased from 6.9% in 1996 to 17.5% in 2015. NCDs reduce productivity and quality of life, and unnecessarily raise health costs, both private and public, with 10–19% of national healthcare spending in 2018 obesity-related.

While dietary energy consumption, mainly of carbohydrates, initially rises with income, further increases in food spending tend to increase dietary diversity.

But without nutrition awareness, changing food behaviours are typically influenced by new cultural norms, e.g., convenience considerations, peer influence, advertising and fads.

Overweight and obesity are also subject to genetics, behaviour, food consumption, physical activity, illness and globalization, e.g., more ‘food processing’ and ‘convenience foods’. Tackling these factors will improve health and use of scarce healthcare resources.

Improving policies
Like others, Malaysia’s nutrition programmes and policies have evolved. Post-independence nutrition programmes initially focused on improving living conditions among rural populations who constituted over two-thirds of its population in the late 1960s.

These efforts have included school feeding programmes, especially for poor children. But such programmes have been undermined by poor intersectoral, multi-stakeholder coordination, inadequate financing, limited human resource capacities and capabilities as well as poor monitoring and evaluation.

A well-organized, government-financed universal school lunch programme can not only improve nutrition for children, but also farmer incomes and food safety. These have successfully inculcated good habits in children, such as better nutrition, health awareness, physical development, learning, academic performance and cooperation.

In countries ranging from Brazil to China, procurement for such programmes has improved food production, increased incomes for farmers and others, parental participation in ensuring food safety and quality, instead of merely enriching transnational food giants.

Better food for all
Marketing of ‘junk’ and other unhealthy foods causing malnutrition needs to be restricted, especially to children, e.g., with stricter regulation of food and beverages sold in school canteens.

Food safety will also need to be improved, e.g., by reducing the overuse of antibiotics for animal, including fish breeding, and of pesticides, most of which also harm humans.

The recent California court decision deeming a popular herbicide carcinogenic raises questions about ‘no-till’ agriculture promotion, ostensibly to increase carbon sequestration in farm top soil, to mitigate greenhouse gas contributions to global warming from agriculture.

‘All-of-government’ nutrition strategies are needed to effectively and comprehensively tackle national malnutrition challenges. Sustainable food systems are needed to promote healthy diets, while public nutrition education is badly needed for both children and adults.

Like other middle-income countries, Malaysia has considerably improved food availability, affordability and stability. What remains is to improve nutrition, health and wellbeing, especially by tackling micronutrient deficiencies and diet-related NCDs.

Addressing Malnutrition in Malaysia by the three authors, all associated with the Khazanah Research Institute, is available at: www.krinstitute.org

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COP25 ended in Madrid without a clear deal on how to finance losses and damage associated with climate change impacts as proposed by the developing countries. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
MADRID, Dec 17 2019 (IPS)

Millions of people, particularly in Africa, who lose their property, homes, and even die due to climate-related disasters will have to wait at least another year for the international community to agree on a means of supporting them.

This became clear when the 25th round of negotiations on climate change came to an end in Madrid, Spain on Dec.15 without a clear deal on how to finance losses and damage associated with climate change impacts as proposed by the developing countries.

“We expected a review of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage for it to have a clear means of implementation, especially for emergency response in Africa,” Prof Seth Osafo, the Legal adviser of the President of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) told IPS.

The Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts was established in 2013 during the 19th round of climate negotiations in Warsaw, Poland under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to assist developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

“The common person in Africa is suffering and this is an urgent call for international support,” said Michael Arunga, the Emergency Communication Specialist for World Vision’s Mali Response office.

In Mali alone, says Arunga, 5.7 million people are in dire need of humanitarian support, among them 21.8 million children, given the climate crisis and political conflicts in the country.

Mali’s population mainly relies on agriculture as their main source of livelihood. But Arunga notes that the ever-expanding Sahara Desert, frequent droughts and floods have caused the displacement of thousands of families, especially in the northern parts of the West African nation.

Less than two months ago, 42 people died after they were buried alive by landslides in Western Cameroon following heavy rainfall in the Central African Nation.

• In East Africa, more than 130 people in Kenya lost their lives in the past two months as a result of flooding and landslides due to unexpected heavy rains pounding the region. Experts say that the heavy rains are caused by the warming up of the Indian Ocean.
• According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, 330,000 people are in need of humanitarian support in the country, while at least 17,000 have been displaced in the past two months.
• “Children’s lives have been interrupted by the ongoing rains and floods in Kenya, with many of them losing their homes, schools and access to health care,” Maniza Zaman, the UNICEF Kenya Representative said in a statement released on Dec. 4.
• In Tizert Village, in the Taroudant region, southern Morocco, people are yet to forget a flash flood that swept across a soccer field on Aug.18, killing at least seven people who were watching a local match.
• Earlier this year, Southern Africa suffered Cyclone Idai and Kenneth, which led to losses of property and lives. A few months later, some countries in the region are currently experiencing extreme droughts, which experts say are as a result of climate change.

“It is evident everywhere that millions of people have been forced to migrate from their homes due to unfavourable climatic conditions and related disasters, people have lost property worth trillions of dollars, and millions more have died across Africa as a result of climate related disasters,” said Robert Muthami, a climate change expert from Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung based in Kenya.

Scientists have already warned that the situation can only worsen in the coming years, and therefore, there is need for urgent climate action.

Ambassador Muhammed Nasr, the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) told journalists said progress was slow on getting developed nations to commit to scaling up finance for losses and damage associated with climate change impacts. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

According to the African negotiators, most negotiators from developed nations were non-committal on scaling up finance. “We have been discussing to very late hours, sometimes up to 3.00am in the morning, but the progress was very slow,” Ambassador Muhammed Nasr, the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) told journalists on Friday.

According to Ambassador Seyni Nafo, the former AGN Chair, the team was forced to push some of the most important issues to the next Conference of Parties (COP26), which will be held in Glasgow in 2020.

“It is better to leave Madrid without having decisions on some key issues [rather] than having bad decisions,” said Nafo.

The negotiators said they were avoiding what they referred to as the ‘Kyoto Disease,’ where there is an agreement with rules and procedures, but without any benefit to Africa.

“It is unfortunate that industrialised countries chose to follow the unproductive path, focusing on nitty-gritty and postponing firm commitments,” said Dr Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Secretary for the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA). “It was disappointing that they consistently avoided or sidelined any discussion related to providing support, notably finance,” he told IPS.

Studies have shown that Africa emits only four percent of greenhouse gases, which are responsible for global warming, but the continent is the most impacted by climate change.

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Credit: United Nations

By Lasse Juhl Morthorst
COPENHAGEN, Dec 17 2019 (IPS)

According to political scientist Zaki Laïdi’s La tyrannie de l’urgence (The tyranny of emergency) from 1999, crisis and emergency situations leave no time for analysis, prevention or forecasting. As an immediate protective reflex, they prevent long-term solutions and pose a serious risk of jeopardising the future.

In emergency situations, participants lack perspective, and durable solutions to human problems are treated according to the logic of immediate results and expectations of direct outcomes.

The effects of globalisation’s deepening and fragmenting landscape highlights how governance with short-term efficiency has become normative when dealing with contemporary challenges.

The so-called European refugee crisis from late 2014 and, if we buy its premise, its aftermath have come to symbolise such an emergency situation.

Contemporary political responses expose the electorate and the parties, who respectively gain and lose in the processes of globalisation.

This socio-political cleavage has allowed centre-right parties to take advantage of nationalistic values, with migration viewed through the lens of security – limitation of migration flows and the fight against terrorist groups – law and order, while the centre-left have had to bridge the working class’s fear of cheap labour and economic competition with the middle-class’s liberal socio-cultural preferences.

The European Union’s reaction towards the crisis and its aftermath cannot be seen as a political crisis reaction per se, since the solutions it initiated to manage migration built on existing legislation and practices, helping to consolidate these as routinising emergency in order to naturalise migration politics.

There is a clear political red line between addressing so-called root causes and managing migration by securing external borders and preventing movement of third-country nationals.

This is anchored in the European Commission’s comprehensive approach in the 1994 Communication to the Council, reconfirmed through the integrated approach at the 1999 European Council meeting in Tampere, and developed at the 2002 Seville meeting, where combating illegal migration and addressing root causes were top of the agenda.

What we are witnessing is rather a political crisis, which has lasted for more than a quarter of a century.

Lasse Juhl Morthorst

How did we get here?

As a result of a sceptical post-1973 oil crisis scenario, addressing root causes of migration emerged in the 1980s, with the aim of improving socio-economic conditions in the countries of migrants’ origin, to prevent unwanted migration towards Europe.

When the European Community was developing the single market, with the fluidity of the EU’s internal national borders to facilitate free internal mobility as an outcome, the fear of losing control of external migration became an increasing concern for member states.

The EU’s migration policies have, with their primary focus on securitisation, come to symbolise a harmful politicisation of humanitarianism, which seems to persist into the new Commission’s 2019-2024 period and very like beyond.

In the following years, little progress was made towards a unified European migration policy. As a result, the Commission proposed the idea of a comprehensive approach to migration in 1994.

This consisted of a threefold focus: action on migration pressure through third-country cooperation, controlling immigration to make it manageable and optimisation of integration policies for legal migrants.

The root cause approach was to be seen as a long-term humanitarian development solution to the migration ‘problem’. The ideas of cooperation and addressing root causes have become the popular political take on the EU’s migration challenges, which rhetorically attempt to circumvent the negative connotations of strict migration control and hostility.

Credit: United Nations

During the last decades, the EU has been searching for a new strategic rationalist raison d’être for its common asylum policy, through harmonisation of the EU asylum legal acts, the Common European Asylum System and attempting to solve the stalemate between member states and intra-institutionally, regarding the Dublin system’s tightening Gordian knot.

The EU has failed to solve the structural and systemic impasse in approaching migration flows, which will not end by continuing harshened border controls and security measures, earmarked development aid, externalisation processes or dubious bilateral agreements.

The EU’s migration policies have, with their primary focus on securitisation, come to symbolise a harmful politicisation of humanitarianism, which seems to persist into the new Commission’s 2019-2024 period and very like beyond.

Nothing new from Brussels?

Ursula von der Leyen’s new Commission is taking office in a situation shaped by vast global challenges of geopolitical turbulence and internal fragmentation, towards which she has proposed a rather pragmatic and strategic approach.

Through her manifesto and mission letters to the designated Commissioners, von der Leyen’s new ‘geopolitical Commission’ will focus on making the EU an outward-looking politically influential global powerhouse, which must protect the Union from omnipresent geopolitical and external value-based challenges.

She has proposed ‘a fresh start’ on European migration policy, via a new pact on migration and asylum, a relaunch of the Dublin reform and a new way of burden sharing (the Achilles heel of the Dublin reform).

In charge of this agenda will be Commission Vice-President for Promoting the European Way of Life Margaritis Schinas (Greece), who will work closely with Ylva Johansson (Sweden), the Commissioner for Home Affairs, and Development Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen (Finland).

There are clear tensions and ambiguity in von der Leyen’s agenda towards migration and development, which has toxically been coined with security politics, as it has to find a ‘common ground on migration by working towards a genuine European security union’.

The external dimensions of migration management are explicitly present in the mission letters to both Schinas and Johansson. In these letters, they are instructed to cooperate with the new High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (Josep Borrell, Spain), to develop a ‘stronger cooperation with countries of origin and transit’ in the case of Johansson and ensure ‘the coherence of the external and internal dimensions of migration’ for Schinas.

The EU’s interaction with third countries and partnerships of border control are narrow and ultimately self-eroding.

Beyond the initial internal focus against the backdrop of the eurozone and financial crises, this aligns closely with the Juncker Commission’s focus on the external dimensions of migration.

In 2015, the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa was founded to intensify cooperation with third countries. Migration is also, beyond the Trust Fund, a central element in EU foreign policy and it has further come to divide views in the debate regarding development policy.

It appears that the Union is proposing to work even more closely with partner countries to tackle human trafficking, secure borders, optimise effective returns and tackle root causes of migration through development initiatives. Schinas confirmed this at his hearing on 3 October 2019.

A reminder from the ‘field’

The collaboration with third countries regarding externalisation of borders is vastly problematic, since in some cases, as a trade-off through the funding of development aid earmarked for increased border control, it comes to support militias and authoritarian and hybrid governments.

A large amount of the support often ends up in quasi security organs of rebel groups, which have been seen continuously abusing human rights.

This can presently be witnessed in nations in the Sahel, Maghreb and MENA regions – where tight border control has led to the diversification of pre-colonial circular and reciprocal migrant routes into increasingly perilous areas and methods, along with the risk of promoting economic stagnation, recession and militia isolation.

The diversification of migration routes ultimately creates a favourable environment for the human smugglers that the Union is trying to eliminate.

The EU’s interaction with third countries and partnerships of border control are narrow and ultimately self-eroding. These policies do not tackle any root causes of migration; by aiding regional security units and military forces, they risk limiting democratic accountability and aggravating repression – some of the actual root causes of migration.

Agreements of principles and statements of intention do not compensate for the deflection of focus of an international community’s failure to get to grips with the need of today’s migrants for protection and recognition.

Von der Leyen’s agenda seems like an anachronistic reverberation of the unsuccessful policies introduced more than three decades ago, despite the opportunity to begin abolishing the tyranny of emergency.

*This article first appeared in International Politics and Society (IPS) published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

The post EU Policies Don’t Tackle Root Causes of Migration – They Risk Aggravating Them appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Lasse Juhl Morthorst* is a freelance writer and researcher. He mainly works on international politics, development, refugee- and human rights issues.

The post EU Policies Don’t Tackle Root Causes of Migration – They Risk Aggravating Them appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The post How to Recognise Nigeria’s Trafficked Kids appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

In this edition of Voices from the Global South, IPS correspondent Tobore Ovuorie takes to the streets of Lagos to find out what Nigerians know about human and child trafficking.

The post How to Recognise Nigeria’s Trafficked Kids appeared first on Inter Press Service.

"They're the ideal duo," because the combination of solar and biogas sources makes it possible to provide electricity around the clock, one during the day and the other at night, says Anelio Thomazzoni, a pig farmer who has become a producer of clean energy in southwestern Brazil.

By Mario Osava
VARGEÃO, Brazil, Dec 17 2019 (IPS)

“They’re the ideal duo,” because the combination of solar and biogas sources makes it possible to provide electricity around the clock, one during the day and the other at night, says Anelio Thomazzoni, a pig farmer who has become a producer of clean energy in southwestern Brazil.

Thomazzoni, who owns a farm in Vargeão, a small municipality of 3,500 people in the west of the state of Santa Catarina, where he raises and fattens 38,000 hogs, uses the manure to extract biogas and generate 280,000 KW-hours per month.

The generation of energy will increase 46 percent when the solar panels that he is installing on 6,000 square metres of his 100-hectare farm begin to operate. And it will rise further when his largest biodigester, currently under construction, is completed, because it will provide more biogas for his three electric generators.

 

 

A new farm, with 30,000 pigs, will represent more meat and more biogas that can be converted into electricity or biomethane, the purified gas used as fuel for trucks, tractors and passenger vehicles.

The enthusiasm of the 60-year-old Thomazzoni is fueled by the promising new business he has been developing over the past four years, which already generates significant additional income.

He also saves on energy costs by consuming a small part of the electricity generated.

And what is left of the manure after the gas is extracted is converted into fertiliser for growing hay and for a eucalyptus plantation used for firewood. “I have an integrated production system,” he tells IPS proudly at his farm.

With solar energy, he believes he will achieve a perfect combination, using biogas to generate electricity when there is no sunlight.

Biogas power plants, which are just beginning to take on an important role in Brazil’s energy mix, help provide stability to the electric grid affected by the expansion of solar and wind sources, whose intermittency must be offset by a “storable” source to ensure distribution without fluctuations or blackouts.

Biogas also contributes to mitigating global warming, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and helps keep the environment clean by making use of garbage and urban sewage, agricultural waste and manure that would otherwise contaminate the water and soil.

For all of these reasons Thomazzoni has become an activist advocating this alternative source of energy. He heads a national association of pig farmers who produce biogas, which seeks to foment the production of this alternative fuel through agreements that entail mutual benefits, such as market expansion and the exchange of incipient technologies that require adaptation to local conditions.

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By External Source
MADRID, Dec 16 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The African Development Bank has urged the continent’s nations to stay the course on climate action, after a marathon session of talks at the twenty-fifth Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 25) in Madrid.

The conference was scheduled to run from 2 to 13 December, but only concluded business on Sunday, two days after the official programme ended. 

Meanwhile, back home, Africans were reminded of the all-too-real consequences if these talks fail to deliver results. Thousands of East Africans have been displaced in the wake of heavy rains that have battered the region since October, and more wet weather is expected due to an Indian Ocean Dipole attributed to the warming of the ocean.

Such extreme weather events should galvanise Africans; their governments are spending 2% of GDP on climate related disasters, said Anthony Nyong, Director for Climate Change and Green Growth at the African Development Bank. He encouraged the global community to remain steadfast in finding effective solutions to climate change.   The annual negotiations are now in their 25th year.

“The global community, and in particular Africa has a lot to offer in terms of solutions; what is evidently lacking is the global political will to turn potential into wealth to serve humanity and the planet,”” said Nyong, who led the Bank’s delegation to the UN conference.

At the conference, African delegates pushed for support for climate finance to build resilience against the impact of climate change and for special consideration for Africa around targets contained in the treaties under discussion.

The discussions at COP 25 centred around the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, which calls on countries to cut carbon emissions to ensure that global temperatures do not rise by more than 2°C by the end of this century, while attempting to contain it within 1.5°C.  The conference ended with a declaration on the “urgent need” to close the gap between existing emissions pledges and the temperature goals of the Paris agreement.

The African Development Bank attended the conference to lend strategic support to its regional member countries in the negotiations.

Nyong pointed out that Africa is committed; 51 of the 54 African countries have already ratified their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement signed at the landmark COP21 in Paris. The NDCs are specific climate change targets that each country must set.

Support for the Bank-funded Desert to Power project highlighted Africa’s determination to strive for a climate-friendly world, especially for its local populations, said Nyong. Desert to Power is a $20 billion initiative to deploy solar energy solutions across the entire Sahel region, generating 10,000 MW to provide 250 million people with clean electricity.

“The African Development Bank stands ready as ever to assist its regional member countries to build resilience against climate change, as indicated by the Bank’s decision to join the Alliance for Hydromet Development, announced at COP 25. The Alliance will assist developing countries to build resilience against the impact of natural disasters caused by extreme weather,” Nyong said.

The Bank will also continue to drive initiatives to strengthen the ability of regional member countries to advocate robustly at global forums such as COP 25, Nyong added. One example was the Bank’s participation at the annual African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) and support for the Africa Group of Negotiations (AGN). 

“We look forward to engaging further with regional member countries and other parties to ensure that the continent’s development agenda remains on track,” Nyong added.

Leaders and institutions from 196 nations plus the European Union, who have signed up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, attended the conference in Madrid.

Media contact: Gershwin Wanneburg, Communication and External Relations Department, African Development Bank email: g.wanneburg@afdb.org   

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The glaciers of the Andes Mountains are threatened by global warming. Credit: Julieta Sokolowicz/IPS

By Farhana Haque Rahman
ROME, Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

By any measure this has been a devastating year: fires across the Amazon, the Arctic and beyond; floods and drought in Africa; rising temperatures, carbon emissions and sea levels; accelerating loss of species, and mass forced migrations of people.

As seen through the eyes of IPS reporters and contributors around the world, 2019 will be remembered as the year the climate crisis shook us all, and hopefully also for the fight back manifested in the spread of mass protests and civic movements against governments and industries failing to respond.

Calls to combat the climate emergency were ringing in the ears of delegations from nearly 200 countries at the annual UN climate summit that opened in Madrid on December 2. Yet despite warnings that the planet is reaching critical tipping points, fears remained that the two weeks of negotiations would end in that familiar sense of disappointment and an opportunity missed.

“Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that buried its head in the sand, that fiddled while the planet burned?” declared U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

But the heads of government of the world’s biggest emitters were notably absent, including Donald Trump of the US, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who refused to host the meeting, also stayed away rather than face a hostile reception. Protests against the fires sweeping Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and the government’s encouragement of deforestation are spreading around the world, especially in Europe. Youth is the new face of activism as inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and others.

In one of many scientific surveys ringing alarm bells in 2019, a landmark report by IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, warned that more than one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades.

The climate crisis and species extinction are twin challenges with far-reaching consequences. IPS this year covered how drought in some areas of Africa is leading to re-runs of famine and migration.

The expanding Sahara desert is breaking up families and spreading conflict. The Sahel on the southern edge of the Sahara is the region where temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else on Earth. Projects such as the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification’s Land Degradation Neutrality project aimed at preventing and/or reversing land degradation are some of the interventions to stop the growing desert.

Farhana Haque Rahman

Relief workers warned in November that more than 50 million people across southern, eastern and central Africa were facing hunger crises because of extreme weather conditions made worse by poverty and conflict.

While much of the Horn of Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe are being ravaged by drought, small island states, especially in the Pacific, are sinking beneath rising sea levels or becoming more vulnerable to hurricanes and typhoons.

Irregular migration is on the rise, and has driven thousands to their deaths on hazardous journeys. The thousands drowned crossing the Mediterranean has led to projects like Migrants as Messengers in Guinea launched by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) which recruits returnees to raise awareness of the dangers.

People smugglers make money out of migrants with scant regard for their safety while other vulnerable people, especially women and girls, fall into the hands of exploitative human traffickers. As a major source of migrants heading towards the United States, Central America is an impoverished region rife with gang violence and human trafficking – the third largest crime industry in the world. Human trafficking has deep roots in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for decades and, as IPS has reported this year, it increasingly requires a concerted law enforcement effort by the region’s governments to dismantle trafficking networks and help women forced into sexual exploitation.

Over 40 million people are estimated to be enslaved around the world. Presenting her report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, UN expert Urmila Bhoola pointed out that servitude will likely increase as the world faces rapid changes in the workplace, environmental degradation, migration and demographic shifts.

Children from rural areas and disempowered homes are ideal targets for trafficking in India and elsewhere. Credit: Neeta Lal / IPS

Eradicating modern slavery by 2030, one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, would require the freeing of 10,000 people a day, Ms Bhoola reported, citing the NGO Walk Free.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR says more than 70 million people are currently displaced by conflict, the most since the Second World War. Among them are nearly 26 million who have fled their countries (over half under the age of 18). But the response of many countries has been to erect barriers and walls.

And the plight of some one million Muslim Rohingya refugees, driven out of Myanmar into Bangladesh, shows little sign of resolution. Paralysis at the U.N. Security Council, where veto-wielding China can protect its interests in Myanmar, has triggered interventions by both the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice which are expected to sit in judgment over the atrocities.

Bangladesh is already struggling with the impact of severe cyclones in November and, as recently reported by IPS, long-term projects are helping its own climate migrants achieve food security. Because of government interventions in agriculture, Bangladesh has already achieved sufficiency in food. According to the Food Sustainability Index 2018 of the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) many farmers have substantially reduced fertiliser use and increased yields.

The SDGs made a solemn promise to eradicate hunger and extreme poverty by 2030, and that cannot be achieved unless the world’s smallholder farmers can adapt to climate change.

But since 2016 global numbers of hungry people have been on the rise again. In September a welcome $650 million of funding reached CGIAR, a partnership of funders and international agricultural research centres and formerly known as the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research.

At the other extreme, April is Reducing Food Waste Month in the United States, as efforts mount to reduce food loss and waste, and deal with growing obesity. For the U.S. and 66 other countries BCFN has produced a food sustainability index profile that dives into all the relevant sectors, ranging from management of water resources, the impact on land of animal feed and biofuels, agricultural subsidies and diversification of agricultural system, to nutritional challenges, physical activity, diet and healthy life expectancy indicators.

The Global Commission on Adaptation Report, launched in October, says the number of people who may lack sufficient water, at least one month per year, will soar from 3.6 billion today to more than 5 billion by 2050. Climate change has a disproportionate impact on women and girls who bear the brunt of looking for water.

Nutrition is the best investment in developing Africa, experts say, with evident correlation between countries with high levels of children under five years of age who are stunted or wasted and the existence of political instability and/or frequent exposure to natural calamities. The nutritional situation is worrying in Africa, Busi Maziya-Dixon, a Senior Food and Nutrition Scientist at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), told IPS with research showing all forms of malnutrition, including stunting, wasting, and obesity, are growing. “We need to educate our governments to link nutrition to economic development and prioritize nutrition.”

Overall investment in Africa continued to gather pace in 2019, however. Amid IMF warnings of a “synchronised slowdown” in global economic growth, 19 sub-Saharan countries are among nearly 40 emerging markets and developing economies forecast to maintain GDP growth rates above 5 percent this year. Particularly encouraging for Africa is that its present growth leaders are richer in innovation than natural resources.

Small steps can bring big results by simply getting together. In September Manila hosted the first ever global forum for people with Hansen’s disease, commonly known as leprosy. Participants from 23 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean shared common challenges at the forum organised by The Nippon Foundation (TNF) and Sasakawa Health Foundation (SHF). Last week in Bangladesh, the country’s National Leprosy Programme, in collaboration with the TNF and SHF brought together hundreds of health workers, medical professionals and district officers to discuss the issue under the theme “Zero Leprosy Initiatives”. Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina who opened the Congress said, if special attention is given to its northern region and the Chittagong Hill Tracts, it is quite possible to declare Bangladesh a leprosy free country before 2030.

All in all however, the SDGs are in trouble, with the U.N. Secretary-General warning in July that a “much deeper, faster and more ambitious response is needed to unleash the social and economic transformation needed to achieve our 2030 goals”. A 478-page study by independent experts drove the message home.

Lastly, as 2019 draws to a close, let’s pay tribute to all those reporters around the world who have bravely covered these issues, spreading knowledge and defending press freedoms despite obvious dangers and more insidious campaigns of vilification.

The post 2019 – A Devastating Year in Review appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

The post 2019 – A Devastating Year in Review appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Women farmers clearing farmland in Northern Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

Women in Asia and Africa hardest hit by climate change have a tough time adapting to the climate emergency, even with support from family or the state, finds a new study. The results raise questions for global agreements designed to help people adapt to the climate emergency, it adds.  

The findings are based on 25 case studies in three agro-ecological regions on the two continents: 14 in semi-arid locales, 6 in mountains and glacier-fed river basins (including one in Nepal) and 5 in deltas. The main livelihoods in these natural resource-dependent areas include agriculture, livestock rearing and fishing, supplemented by wage labour, petty trade and income from remittances.

Environmental risks include droughts, floods, rainfall variability, land erosion and landslides, glacial lake outburst floods, heat waves and cyclones, all of which negatively affect livelihoods. The study, A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Women’s Agency and Adaptive Capacity in Climate Change Hotspots in Asia and Africa was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

When households take steps to adapt to the impact of climate change, the result is that the strategies ‘place increasing responsibilities and burdens on women, especially those who are young, less educated and belonging to lower classes or marginal castes and ethnicities’

It found that when households take steps to adapt to the impact of climate change, the result is that the strategies ‘place increasing responsibilities and burdens on women, especially those who are young, less educated and belonging to lower classes or marginal castes and ethnicities’. This occurred even in cases where support appeared to be available in the form of families/communities or via the state.

Examples include when men migrate to find work because of climate change-induced impacts at home. While the money they earn can boost family incomes, when men are away women must shoulder a larger burden. As a result, most women ‘reported reduced leisure time, with negative consequences on their wellbeing, including the health and nutrition of themselves and their households,’ says the report.

In other cases, governments stepped in with support but during floods or droughts, for example, men dominated state-provided aid and relief facilities, making women rely on their male relatives to receive support.

‘In a sense, women do have voice and agency, yet this is not contributing to strengthening longer-term adaptive capacities,’ concludes the report.

But in three examples in the study, one in Nepal, women did adapt to the increased burdens delivered by climate change. In Chharghare of Nuwakot district, support from a well-established cooperative enabled many women — excluding Dailit women — to switch from raising buffalo and cattle to rearing goats, which adapted better to growing rain scarcity.

“By enhancing women’s agency, we need to understand that we are helping them to create an enabling environment where a women’s right to make decisions about her own life is recognised, where women are economically empowered and free from all forms of discrimination and violence,” said Anjal Prakash, who worked on the case study for the Integrated Centre for Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

Poverty is the main factor in the declining decision-making power of women in some hot spots, says the report, even when women share responsibilities in the family and work outside of the home. In semi-arid Kenya, for example, women of female-headed households sell alcohol to earn money to pay for children’s schooling, but this exposes them to health risks, such as engaging in sexual activities with their clients.

A 35-year-old woman told researchers, “Despite our efforts, there is a high level of malnutrition here. We can’t afford meat, we just eat rice and potatoes, but even for this, the quantity is not enough.”

The study notes that international agreements, such as the gender action plan of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) require information about what builds the adaptive capacity of women, and men, so that agreements can support sustainable, equitable and effective adaptation.

It suggests that effective social protection, like the universal public distribution system for cereals in India, or pensions and social grants in Namibia, could contribute to relieving immediate pressures on survival.

‘This however cannot always be done on the “cheap” — investments are needed to enable better and more sustainable management of resources. ‘Women’s self-help groups are often presented as solutions, yet they are confronted by the lack of resources, skills and capacity to help their members effectively meet the challenges they confront,’ the report adds.

 

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

The post Women in Climate Hot Spots Face Challenges Adapting appeared first on Inter Press Service.

An eight-month-old boy is examined by a doctor in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Ifeanyi Nsofor and Shubha Nagesh
ABUJA, Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

Recently, Madhukar Pai, the Director of McGill University Global Health Program wrote about the inequity in global health research. He observed that researches are skewed in favor of the global north. We agree that this inequity exists. However, we also have found that global fellowships such as the Atlantic Fellowship, of which we are both Senior Fellows, are platforms to reverse this inequity, foster international partnerships and amplify voices of development practitioners from the global south. 

Shubha Nagesh is a medical doctor by training and thereafter specialised in Global Health from Karolinska Instituet, Sweden as an Erasmus Mundus Fellow. She presently works with children with developmental disabilities in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas.

Ifeanyi Nsofor is a Nigerian medical doctor and a graduate of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He is a Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and 2006 Ford Foundation International Fellow. Ifeanyi is a leading advocate for universal health coverage in Nigeria.

The world must realise that fostering a global village requires that different geographical locations do not attempt to solve problems alone. There must be a sense of community in all efforts to improve health

The Atlantic fellowship is funded by the Atlantic Institute and connects the seven Atlantic fellows programmes spread across six countries. The goal of the Atlantic Institute is to advance fairer, healthier societies. Fellows have diverse backgrounds and are united by their commitment to a more inclusive world.

As Senior Fellows of the Atlantic Fellowship for Health Equity at George Washington University, both authors have benefitted from an enriching fellowship year. This experience has led to convenings in the U.S., Rwanda and other locations and have been great learning opportunities to understand the local health systems and the benefits of international collaborations.

The mid-year convening at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda, allowed both authors to witness firsthand the partnership between the government of Rwanda and Partners in Health, which has led to significant improvements in mental health through the Mario Pagenel Fellowship in Global Mental Health Delivery. In previous opinion pieces, Shubha wrote about her Rwanda experience and Ifeanyi did the same.

From our combined experiences of benefiting Erasmus Mundus Fellowship, Ford Foundation International Fellowship, Aspen New Voices Fellowship and Atlantic Fellowship, there are four lessons that the global health community can learn to gradually reverse the inequity in global health workforce.

 

First, talent is universal, but opportunities are not. Opportunities for development experts from the global south are limited, especially those that demand leadership positions. Fellowships help create platforms for development experts from different countries to interact, get to know each other and learn about the capacities that everyone brings to the table.

For instance, the 2019 Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity at George Washington University comprises of 18 Fellows from 7 countries – Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, US, Philippines, India and Iraq. Over a period of one year, the Fellows exchanged ideas and supported each in pushing for health equity in their different countries.

 

Second, prioritise women in global health workforce appointments because women face more inequities than men. Out of the 18 Fellows mentioned above, 15 are females. This was intentional on the part of the organizers in order to ensure that the gap between men and women will gradually be reduced. While women form the bulk of the health workforce, . key decision makers in the health sector are usually men. The recent appointment of Winnie Byanyima as the Executive Director of UNAIDS, after serving a successful 6-year tenure as the Executive Director of Oxfam, should be replicated across more global health agencies.

 

Third, Fellowships can amplify global south voices on the global stage. This is the core aim of the Aspen Institute’s New Voices Fellowship. It has trained more than 100 senior fellows from many countries from the global south.

These fellows have written more than 1,000 opinion pieces published on different platforms and have been interviewed on radio, TV and other platforms sharing their ideas. Ifeanyi is a Senior New Voices Fellow and has within the past 2 years written and published 33 opinion pieces on platforms such as Devex, The Hill, Scientific American, Biomed Central, All Africa, Inter Press News Service etc.

Therefore, this opinion piece is another case of amplifying voices of Indian and Nigerian development experts on the global stage.

 

Fourth, collaborations are for life and reduce inequities. The agenda of most fellowships is to nurture collaboration and not competition. Collaboration beats competition, every single time. Mentorships created within the boundaries of Fellowships can be transformed to collaborations that could prove beneficial for a long time.

 

The world must realise that fostering a global village requires that different geographical locations do not attempt to solve problems alone. There must be a sense of community in all efforts to improve health. This African proverb captures our thoughts succinctly; “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

To be sure, Fellowships will not stamp out the global health workforce inequity overnight. However, fellowship should be used as platforms to systematically work to reverse the inequities articulated by Madhui Pai.

As Senior Fellows for health equity at the Atlantic Institute, we will collaboratively continue to advance fairer, healthier and more inclusive societies.

 

The post Four Lessons to Reverse Inequity in the Global Health Workforce appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By IPS World Desk
Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

2019 will be remembered as the year the climate crisis shook us all. Hopefully, it will also be remembered for the fight back manifested in the spread of mass protests and civic movements against governments and industries failing to respond.Calls to combat climate change rang in the ears of delegates from nearly 200 countries at the annual UN climate summit in Madrid. But the heads of government or state of the world’s largest polluters were notably absent, including the United States, China and Russia.

As planetary temperatures have risen, a landmark report by the IPBES warned that more than a million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction – many within decades. This twin challenge has far-reaching consequences and the ramifications of complacency have started to show.

 

 

The expanding Sahara Desert is breaking up families and spreading conflict. More than 50 million people across Southern, Eastern and Central Africa are facing a hunger crisis because of extreme weather conditions. And in the Pacific, small Island States are sinking beneath rising sea levels.

Irregular migration is rising and has driven thousands to their deaths. Human Traffickers are exploiting this exodus and are contributing to the second largest criminal economy on the planet, with an alarming 40 million people enslaved around the world. According to the UN Refugee Agency, 70 million people in the world are currently displaced by conflict, and the response of many countries has been to erect walls.

The SDG’s made a solemn promise to eradicate hunger and extreme poverty by 2030, and that cannot be achieved unless the world’s smallholder farmers can adapt to climate change. However, the SDG’s are in trouble and the UN’s Secretary General has issued a clear warning: a “much deeper, faster and more ambitious response is needed to unleash the social and economic transformation needed to achieve our 2030 goals.”

As inspired by Swedish Teenager Greta Thunberg and others, youth is the new face of global activism. It is imperative that we follow their lead to secure the future they will inherit, and pay heed to Secretary General Antonio Guterres warning: “Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that buried its head in the sand, that fiddled while the planet burned?”

 

The post 2019: A Year in Review appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
MADRID, Dec 13 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The African Development Bank has joined forces with 11 other international organizations to assist developing countries to build resilience against the impact of natural disasters caused by extreme weather.

Following a series of deadly weather events that have caused widespread destruction, especially in Africa, the institutions came together at the COP 25 climate change conference in Madrid on Tuesday to launch the Alliance for Hydromet Development.

“The science is clear: the global average temperature has increased by 1.1°C since the pre-industrial period, and by 0.2°C compared to 2011-2015,” said Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization.

“Ambitious climate action requires countries to be equipped with the most reliable warning systems and best available climate information services. Many developing countries are facing capacity constraints to provide these services. The Alliance is the vehicle to collectively scale up our support to the most vulnerable.”

The members of the Alliance have committed to ramping up action that strengthens the capacity of developing countries to deliver high-quality weather forecasts, early warning systems, hydrological and climate services. Known for short as “hydromet” services, these underpin resilient development by protecting lives, property and livelihoods.

“The African Development Bank joins the Alliance in recognizing the gap in the limited capacity of African countries to address vulnerability to extreme climate shocks,” said Anthony Nyong, Director for Climate Change and Green Growth at the African Development Bank.

“Through the Hydromet Alliance, we are committed to doubling our climate finance support to African countries and will work with them to transition from dealing with disaster emergencies to building resilience against the impacts of extreme weather events.”

The founding members of the Alliance for Hydromet Development are the Adaptation Fund, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Global Environment Facility, Green Climate Fund, the Islamic Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank, the World Food Programme and the World Meteorological Organization.

Members of the Alliance have committed to unite their efforts in four areas: by strengthening capacity to operate observational systems and seeking innovative ways to finance observations; by boosting capacity for science-based mitigation and adaptation planning; thirdly, by strengthening early warning systems, for improved disaster risk management (this would involve developing multi-hazard national warning systems, comprising better risk information, forecasting capabilities, warning dissemination, and anticipatory response). The members also agreed to boost investments for better effectiveness and sustainability.  This would include systematically strengthening the World Meteorological Organization integrated global, regional and national operational hydromet system.

The actions of the Alliance to close the hydromet capacity gap are guided by the principles of UN agreements, including the Sustainable Development Goals , the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.

The Alliance is open for membership to all public international development, humanitarian, and financial institutions that assist the hydromet capacity of developing countries.

Media contacts: 

African Development Bank: Gershwin Wanneburg, email: g.wanneburg@afdb.org

World Meteorological Organization: Clare Nullis, email cnullis@wmo.int

The post African Development Bank joins forces with international organisations to help developing countries build resilience to extreme weather appeared first on Inter Press Service.