Africa - 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
ABUJA, Nov 7 2019 (IPS)

Free movement of people and goods across Africa increases the risk of transmission of infectious diseases. The continent must realise that it is no longer a question of if disease outbreaks will occur, but instead, of when, and how fast.

The U.S. Centres for Disease Control says that within 36 hours, a disease outbreak can spread from a remote village to major urban cities of the world.

According to preventepidemics.org, a website which ranks countries’ levels of epidemic preparedness, no country in Africa is ready for the next epidemic. The African Union must act now to increase the capacity of member countries to detect, respond and manage disease outbreaks. Managing disease outbreaks is not cheap but it is cost-effective.

There cannot be global health security if there are still poor underserved communities where people do not have access to healthcare or are unable to pay for the healthcare they need

The current Ebola and measles outbreaks in DRC have killed 2185 and more than 3,000 respectively. In Nigeria, recent weekly epidemiological reports by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control show there are suspected cases of Lassa fever, cerebrospinal meningitis and yellow fever. In Zimbabwe, there is fear of another cholera outbreak. The 2018 cholera outbreak killed 26 people.

In this context, the recent increment in the capital base of the African Development Bank by $125 billion to $208 billion, should be commended as it could support improved health security across the continent.

It is also timely with the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement going into effect this year as AfCFTA requires a coordinated effort to put a stop to the frequent outbreaks of infectious diseases on the continent. Funds from the Bank can help.

Specifically, with its increased capital base, these are four ways the African Development Bank can support a more secure Africa.

 

First, provide grants to the Africa Centre for Disease Control and national public health institutes to increase laboratory diagnostic capacities. The first step to detecting any outbreak is knowing the cause as fast as possible, but laboratory equipment is expensive.

So, the Bank should give grants to national public health institutes to procure diagnostic equipment and upgrade laboratories. A way to achieve this is to partner with laboratory equipment manufacturers to reduce cost and work out favorable payment plans.

For instance, during the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak across West Africa, an Ebola screening machine, which reduced specimen turn-around times in Sierra Leone, was brought from Nigeria. However, it was donated by the European Union. Africa must begin to take leadership in such areas, without depending on international donors for support.

 

Second, work in partnership with the African Union to train the local health workforce and increase local African capacity to prevent, detect, respond to and manage disease outbreaks.

The African Union’s deployment of more than 800 African volunteers to support the 2014-2015 Ebola intervention in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone was instrumental in managing that outbreak and restoring health systems across the region.

I was a co-lead of the EpiAFRIC team which evaluated the African Union’s intervention. Traveling with my colleagues across the three countries and interviewing community members, volunteers, international partners and national ministries of health, it was apparent that it needed local expertise to stem the outbreak.

 

Third, improve infection infectious disease detection between borders. All African counties have ratified AfCFTA. When fully implemented, it would come with increased movement of Africans across borders.

The continent must be ready to prevent cross-border spread of infections. The ease with which Mr. Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian who brought Ebola from Liberia to Nigeria, threatened the health security of the continent, led to deaths of 8 health workers and Nigeria’s loss of $186 million in GDP.

To achieve this, the Bank should work with national public health institutes and ministries of health to ramp up epidemic preparedness at land, sea and air international borders.

 

Fourth, work with national governments and support their efforts for universal health coverage. Too many Africans pay out-of-pocket for healthcare.

This is not equitable and sustainable. According to the Director-General of the World Health Organization, universal health coverage and health security are two sides of the same coin.

Ultimately, there cannot be global health security if there are still poor underserved communities where people do not have access to healthcare or are unable to pay for the healthcare they need.

Needs are infinite and resources are limited. So, the African Development Bank should prioritize the health security of Africa, because a healthy continent would be more prosperous and then attractive to investors.

 

The post Four Ways the African Development Bank Can Support a More Secure Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor is a medical doctor, the CEO of EpiAFRIC, Director of Policy and Advocacy for Nigeria Health Watch

The post Four Ways the African Development Bank Can Support a More Secure Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Aral Sea Basin, defined in red, straddles six countries in Central Asia. See detailed map in full at http://bit.ly/2BQPpRm. Credit: UNU-INWEH

By Stefanos Xenarios, Iskandar Abdullaev and Vladimir Smakhtin
NUR-SULTAN CITY, Kazakhstan, Nov 7 2019 (IPS)

The water resources in Central Asia’s Aral Sea Basin support the lives and livelihoods of about 70 million people — a population greater than Thailand, France, or South Africa.

And unless well-funded and coordinated joint efforts are stepped up, with competition replaced by cooperation, ongoing over-withdrawals compounded by climate change will cause dangerous water shortages in this huge, highly complex watershed spanning six nations: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

That’s the key message of a new book co-authored by 57 regional and international experts from 14 countries and the United Nations, who spent years examining a suite of challenges in the Aral Sea Basin.

The new book assembles the views of nearly all major regional and international experts on the great challenges faced in the Aral Sea Basin. They include three co-authors from the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, in Hamilton, Canada.

And almost half of the authors are based in Central Asia, creating a unique blend of regional and international voices and expertise on these critical issues.

The Basin’s two major rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, discharge now only about 10% of what flowed into the Aral Sea until the 1960s, shrinking the sea by more than 80 percent — “one of the world’s most severe and emblematic environmental disasters.”

Freshwater is key to food, energy, environmental security and social stability among the six Aral Basin countries. And given the countries’ prospective economic and population growth, reliance on water resources will increase, compelling cooperation in sharing benefits and reducing costs.

Intensive, wasteful irrigated farming when the nations were part of the Soviet Union was the main cause of the Aral Sea drying up and irrigation continues to consume about 90 percent of the total water withdrawal in the Basin, with agriculture contributing from 10 to 45 percent of GDP, and 20 to 50 percent of rural employment.

Most irrigation, hydropower and other water-related infrastructural systems and facilities are in transition, a blend today of past and present. Unfortunately, the existing observational meteorological and hydrological networks in the Basin, which declined in the 1990s when the Soviet period ended, are insufficient to support informed water management, and regional water data sharing is suboptimal.

Degradation of land and water are among the major hindrances to sustainable development in the region, with land degradation alone estimated to cost about US$3 billion of losses in ecosystem services annually.

There has been uneven progress across the countries on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and particularly Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), with contrasting progress also between urban and rural populations within each nation, most particularly Afghanistan.

The new book suggests a number of interventions and initiatives to end and reverse deterioration of the Aral Basin. For example, if existing large hydropower projects were managed in a collaborative manner, they can bring all countries multiple benefits, including improved reliability of supply and availability of water for agriculture, domestic use and electricity generation.

Monitoring of snow and glaciers in high altitude mountain areas, as well as permafrost, is essential for sound estimates of water availability and water-related hazards. Such systems need to be re-installed.

Also needed: institutions for decentralized management of natural resources, such as water user associations to promote cooperative, sustainable, intra-regional management between upstream and downstream countries and integrated rural development approaches.

Existing regional frameworks must either be reformed or replaced by new mechanisms of cooperation in order to successfully translate political will into highly effective, integrated regional water management.

Reforming the water sector, however, goes well beyond new policies and initiatives, updating the legislative framework, and building new institutions. A key challenge is to achieve continuous, strong, high-level political engagement throughout the Basin countries, the active participation of stakeholders, and technical and financial support.

The Aral Basin’s many water-related issues must be addressed jointly by all involved states within the concept that water, energy, and food issues represent a critical, interlinked nexus of needs.

Major geopolitical and economic development interests are placing increasing pressure on countries of the Basin to end resource competition and find a way to closer cooperation and effective pursuit of their shared interests.

The post Urgent Need to Replace Competition with Cooperation in the Aral Sea Basin appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Stefanos Xenarios is a Professor at Nazarbaev University, Kazakhstan and co-editor-in-chief of the Central Asian Journal of Water Research; Iskandar Abdullaev is Deputy Director, CAREC Institute, China and Vladimir Smakhtin is Director, UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Canada and series editor of the Routledge publishers' Earthscan Series on Major River Basins of the World, in which the Aral Sea Basin Book is the latest addition.

The post Urgent Need to Replace Competition with Cooperation in the Aral Sea Basin appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Eric Reguly
ROME, Nov 6 2019 (IPS)

On a warm Saturday morning in late October, the silver-green leaves of the 200 productive olive trees on a rolling country property in Umbria, in central Italy, sparkled in the brilliant sun. Fausto Venturi, a local farmer who devotes autumn weekends to making olive oil, could not have been happier.

The weather was perfect for harvesting the Moraiolo olives. The small, round green fruit is indigenous to Umbria and Tuscany, prized by olive growers for its high yield and among connoisseurs for the oil’s gorgeous emerald-green colour and fruity aroma, with hints of artichokes and herbs. Better yet, the trees were in near full bloom, signalling a rare bumper crop. Climate change, bug infestations and disease, notably the horrific Xylella fastidiosa bacterium that is killing millions of olive trees in southern Italy, has made life somewhere between difficult and miserable – depending on the region – for Italy’s crucial olive-oil industry in recent years.

The European Commission’s website calls Xylella “one of the most dangerous plant bacteria worldwide, causing a variety of diseases, with huge economic impact for agriculture, public gardens and the environment.” It can also attack stone fruits such as cherries, almonds and plums.

The bacterium is terrorizing olive-orchard owners in Puglia, in the heel of the Italian boot. Puglia and Calabria – the toe – account for more than two-thirds of Italian olive-oil production (Umbria provides only 2 per cent). If those two regions were to get wiped out, the enormous industry – supplied by about 250 million trees on 700,000 olive farms covering 1.1 million hectares – would be moribund. That scenario is not out of the question. The bacterium arrived in southern Puglia, near the baroque city of Lecce, in 2013. The source is thought to be an infected ornamental coffee plant imported from Costa Rica. It has acted as a wrecking machine, infecting about 21 million trees, according to Coldiretti, Italy’s agriculture association.

Industry estimates put Italian olive-oil production in the disastrous 2016-17 harvest at only 200,000 tonnes, down by more than half from the previous year, owing to a particularly nasty combination of extreme weather events, a fruit-fly attack and Xylella. Olive-orchard owners such as Mr. Venturi say “normal” harvest years are becoming rarer.

The disease is carried by a tiny insect known by various names, including the spittlebug. The bacteria spread by the bugs latches onto xylem tubes, the trees’ water-and-nutrient-transportation system, producing what the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calls an “internal drought.” The weakened branches, leaves and fruit die, then the whole tree withers away, producing eerie ghost orchards. The infected trees are difficult to quarantine quickly; the long incubation period means visible symptoms often don’t arise until seven months to a year after the infection sets in. “There is no cure for it,” said Shoki Al-Dobai, FAO’s transboundary plant pests and diseases team leader in Rome. “It’s possible that it could keep spreading north. That would be a disaster.”

Infected trees and those around them have to be destroyed, sometimes in the presence of weeping farmers. Many of the olive trees in Puglia are hundreds of years old, and at least one is 3,000 – it was ancient before Jesus was born. There are stories of farmers chaining themselves to their cherished trees to try to spare them from the chainsaw. But the Puglia tree cull, which was way too slow at first, continues and is being monitored closely by agriculture officials at the European Commission.

Arrigo Peri, an orthodontist in Rome, lives in fear because his family owns an organic 1,000-tree olive orchard near the coastal city of Bari, about 80 kilometres northwest of Puglia’s infected zones. He’s had a string of bad harvests owing to extreme weather, including drought and frost (which cut his normal yield by 80 per cent last year) and severe olive-fly infestations that may be the result of climate change. And now the threat of Xylella. “My last good yield was three years ago,” he said. “Yes, we are getting worried about Xylella. It’s the last thing we need.”

The disease hasn’t hit Umbria yet, but a subspecies has been spotted right next door in Tuscany and a few other parts of Southern Europe, including Corsica and Spain’s Balearic Islands. Mr. Venturi and other olive-oil makers are terrified that Xylella will plow through his region at some point. “We are praying it doesn’t arrive, but it could,” he said.

In a recent report, Martin Godefroid of the French National Institute for Agriculture Research, said that generally warmer temperatures are making life easier for Xylella, which is a tropical disease. He said that “climate change may strongly impact [the bacterium’s] distribution.”

Consumers in Italy and other countries who cherish healthy and flavoursome extra-virgin olive oil – which is made by pressing the olives, rather than using heat or chemicals to help extract the oil – are paying the price. Retail prices are rising as weather-related shortages develop, and the quality among cheaper brands is falling as blends of foreign or low-quality bulk oils make it onto supermarket shelves. “The oil you now buy in supermarkets won’t be 100-per-cent Italian,” Mr. Venturi said. “It might be mixed with Tunisian and Moroccan oils.”

Italy is Europe’s second-largest olive-oil producer, after Spain, and accounts for a quarter of the continent’s olive harvest. The industry is worth billions of euros a year. In most of the world, families make do with cheap, mass-produced oils made from palm, canola, corn and other vegetable plants for their intake of fats. But in the Mediterranean countries, where the vast majority of the world’s olives are grown, meals devoid of virgin olive oil are virtually unthinkable.

Mr. Venturi, 49, said an entirely unexpected deep freeze last spring in Umbria sent yields tumbling. The trees on this particular property, located about a 20-minute drive from Spoleto, a medieval gem of a city and UNESCO heritage site, produced only about 85 litres of oil in the fall; this year, he expects 320. The oil will sell for about €12 ($17.50) a litre in the local market (he kicks back about 10 per cent, in the form of oil, to the owners of the property).

After he and his colleague covered the ground with enormous fine-mesh nets, used to catch the harvested olives, they fired up a small diesel generator to power an air compressor, which in turn powered the thrashing mechanical rakes that shake the branches and comb off the olives. “Watch out for vipers here,” he warned. “They’re poisonous.”

The biggest, healthiest trees let drop 15 kilograms to 20 kilograms of olives. After a couple of hours of exhausting work, they filled two large containers. Harvesting all of the property’s trees would take two men three or four days, from dawn to dusk.

The olives were transported by tractor to the local frantoio (olive press), in this case a private business called Frantoio Filippi that presses olives from its own 1,000-tree farm and those from nearby farms.

Two years ago, the Filippi family installed a new pressing system, an array of tubes, belts, crushers, mixers, centrifuges and filters that transforms raw olives into oil within two hours. The olives, many with leaves still attached, are dumped into a hopper. Leaf removal and olive washing are the next stages, followed by the grinding of the olives by both disks and hammers. The result is a thick slurry that looks like green pasta sauce and is, in fact, called an olive pasta. It’s pumped into a centrifuge that separates the water from the oil.

After passing through filters, the final product is a dazzling, almost fluorescent, emerald oil that emerged from the spigot carrying the faint smell of apples. “Every terrain produces olives with a different smell, depending on the soil, light and other conditions,” said Federico Caporali, 43, co-owner of Frantoio Filippi.

He said this season was much better than some of the previous years, when extreme temperatures and too much rain sent production plummeting. “But we hope Xylella doesn’t come here,” he said.

This story was originally published by The Globe and Mail, Canada

The post Italy’s Olive-Oil Industry Sees Simmering Threats from Climate Change and Nasty Bacteria appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Poor weather and disease have killed millions of trees and decimated yields in Italy’s olive country, and consumers can taste the difference

The post Italy’s Olive-Oil Industry Sees Simmering Threats from Climate Change and Nasty Bacteria appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A zone of Baobab reforestation in Burkina Faso. The Sahel is experiencing an overall decrease in rainfall, but also a depletion of soils due to agricultural overexploitation and progressive deforestation of the original savannahs. Courtesy: Ollivier Girard/CIFOR

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
OUAGADOUGOU, Nov 6 2019 (IPS)

Ibrahim Harouna and his neighbours sit under a tree at his uncle’s house, playing chess and chatting amid the simmering heat of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

This is how he has been spending most of his time in the year and a half since he lost his job. Harouna worked as farm labourer. But the seasonal small-scale farmer he worked for in northern Burkina Faso let him and two other workers go because their services were no longer needed amid dwindling harvests.

Production had begun failing as desertification and drought took their toll on the land — which had become severely degraded, with half of the farmland soil turning to sand.

The economy in this Sahelian nation of 20.5 million people, located in the hinterland and within the confines of the Sahara, depends heavily on agriculture, forestry and livestock farming.

The sector is dominated by small-scale farms of less than five hectares and its main products are sorghum, millet and maize (the most produced in terms of volume), according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Cotton exports are still dominant and represent about 60 percent of total agricultural exports, according to the World Bank.

In “Dégradation des sols en agriculture minière au Burkina Faso”, S.B. Taonda, R. Bertrand, J. Dickey, J.L. Morel and K. Sanon explained that after five to 10 years of cultivation, the soil is no longer able to ensure the mineral and water supply of the main food crop (sorghum), leading to yields collapse.

A visibly stressed Harouna seems to agree, telling IPS: “We have been working on that land for nine years, doing the same thing year in and year out.”

Despite the country’s Sahelian zone in the north receiving less than 600mm average annual rainfall, Harouna says that the previous had been productive: sales were good, money was coming in, and wages were regularly paid.

But nothing lasts forever. Desertification became more prevalent and the honeymoon came to an abrupt end. He recounts: “As time went by, we noticed that temperatures kept unusually rising and the sun became harsher and the rain disappeared. The crops became stunted while others dried out, as the land started to turn into something like sand.”

Confines of the Sahara

Land degradation poses a serious threat to the sustainable development of Burkina Faso. One-third of its national territory, over nine million hectares of productive land, is degraded. This is estimated to expand at an average of 360,000 hectares per year, according to the FAO.

The Sahel is experiencing an overall decrease in rainfall, but also a depletion of soils due to agricultural overexploitation and progressive deforestation of the original savannahs by cutting firewood, bush fires and stray animals, the NGO SOS Enfants explains.

“Climate changes are evident throughout Burkina Faso. The eastern and southwestern parts of the country, which generally have more favourable weather, are increasingly hit by high temperatures and pockets of drought,” the U.N. Development Programme says on Adaptation-undp.org.

From employing 90 percent of the country’s almost 7-million strong workforce in 2012, as per FAO figures, the agriculture sector now provides 80 percent of all jobs, still accounting for a third of the country’s GDP. However, more than 3.5 million people are food insecure, according to a USAID report.

Farmers in Burkina Faso, and especially those living in the Sahelian areas of this country, are now facing a serious problem of food security and growing impoverishment, SOS Enfants has pointed out. Conflicts over land use and massive migrations are persistent.

Conflict lingers

Armed conflict and terrorism have exacerbated food insecurity, with regular attacks being perpetrated against security forces and civilians by unknown gunmen. Nearly 600 civilians have been killed, and scores wounded in recent years, according to independent figures.

Nearly half a million people were forced from their homes as increased insecurity resulted in a deepening and unprecedented humanitarian situation.

With an urbanisation rate of 5.29 percent – according to Index Mundi figures – Burkina Faso seems to be experiencing one of the highest urbanisation rates in Africa and in the world, as women, children and elderly people flock to the cities, fleeing from climate change challenges, lingering poverty and armed conflict.

“In Burkina, the problem is not the functioning of the democratic system. The crisis is the spread of jihadist violence. [Former President Blaise] Compaoré used to come to understandings with armed groups in Mali, and in return, they left Burkina alone. That did not help Mali, of course,” Paul Melly, Chatham House Africa consultant, tells IPS. The U.N. has stated that some 300,000 people have fled jihadist violence that spilled over from Mali.

“But the present Burkina administration does not cut these sorts of deals, and this leaves the country more exposed,” he points out.

“Moreover,” he says, “Burkina’s security systems used to be strongly oriented towards loyalty towards Compaoré, so his departure left these structures weakened and the current government now had to rebuild them in a way that is compatible with the democratic system. That is a slow and difficult process.”

Climate migrants

After Harouna and his colleagues lost their job, they headed to Ouaga (short for Ouagadougou) to stay with their respective families. With nothing much to do, they believe their only option is to leave the country, adding their names to a growing list of people pushed out of their homes by the devastating impacts of climate change.

“My former colleagues have already left the country, one is in Morocco as we speak, looking for a way to cross over to Spain and the other one is in Benin, where he intends to take the boat to get either to Equatorial Guinea or Gabon,” Harouna says.

More than 143 million people are set to become climate migrants by 2050 in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, escaping crop failure, water scarcity, and sea-level rise, according to the World Bank projections.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the main U.N. authority on climate science, has reiterated that the changes brought on by the climate crisis will influence migration patterns.

“As for me, God-willing next week I’m heading to Niger to try to reach Algeria where my friends live and work in the construction sector,” says Harouna.

Future degradation of land used for agriculture and farming, the disruption of fragile ecosystems and the depletion of precious natural resources like fresh water will directly impact people’s lives and homes, according to Dina Ionesco, head of Migration, Environment and Climate Change Division at the U.N. International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Former FAO Director General José Graziano da Silva said back in February 2018 that the rehabilitation of degraded land was a priority for Burkina Faso.

The U.N. agency and other partners have been tasked to implement the Action Against Desertification (AAD), a programme meant to bring land restoration to scale.

• AAD supports local communities, governments and civil society in six African countries – Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Gambia, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal – as well as in Fiji and Haiti, to sustainably manage and restore their drylands and fragile ecosystems affected by desertification, land degradation and drought.
• This initiative contributes to the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel (GGW), to U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) national action plans, and promotes south-south cooperation in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific countries.
• In Burkina Faso, AAD supports land restoration in the provinces of Soum and Séno in Sahel region, using the specialised Delfino plough for land preparation in a view to bring restoration to scale.

But all of these interventions have come just a little too late for young men like Harouna.

“Put yourself in these young men’s shoes,” Harouna’s uncle, who asked not to be named, contributes to the conversation for the first time since the interview started. “What would you do if something like this happens to you? There are no jobs in this country, no peace, no opportunity for the youth and not even good politicians.”

“Just look around us now, the climate is challenging our land, the only source of our livelihoods. Terrorists are ruining our lives and our children’s future, and the only way out of this mess is to go elsewhere to look for a better life,” the uncle, who is sponsoring Harouna’s irregular migration to Algeria, tells IPS.

 

Related Articles

• Africa’s Youth make Land Restoration their Business
• Displaced by the Desert: An expanding Sahara leaves Broken Families and Violence in its Wake
• Burning Forests for Rain, and Other Climate Catastrophes

The post Burkina Faso: Climate Change Triggers Rural Exodus appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UNDP

By Delara Burkhardt
KIEL, Germany, Nov 6 2019 (IPS)

Global temperatures are set to rise by a catastrophic 3°C by the end of the century unless we take major action. The next 10 years in particular are crucial.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body for assessing the science related to climate change, has pointed this out over and over again. Steps to restrict global warming to 1.5°C must be taken within this time frame. In short, we need huge efforts to achieve the seemingly impossible: to make our continent climate-neutral within a generation.

This is a global challenge that takes more than fine words. Instead, it must be tackled head-on by politicians from local councils to the international stage – and, of course, in the European Union. The EU is supposed to be climate-neutral by no later than 2050. That, at least, is the will of the European Parliament and the social democratic faction.

As first deputy to new Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, Dutch social democrat Frans Timmermans will be responsible for the European Green Deal. It’s intended to become the new Commission’s ‘hallmark’ initiative.

The full details of this deal are not yet known. However, in his hearing by the European Parliament before taking office, Timmermans explained several key points and initiatives. These suggest that there will be new ambition in European environmental and climate policy, as called for by the social democrats in the European Parliament. European environmental and climate policymakers certainly won’t be bored over the next five years.

Delara Burkhardt

Enshrining climate protection into law

At the core of the Green Deal is a European Climate Law that’s supposed to enshrine in European law the goal of making Europe climate-neutral by 2050. Timmermans aims to submit a legislative proposal for this in his first 100 days in office.

This means that the EU is also raising its medium-term climate targets for 2030 from the current greenhouse gas reduction level of 40 per cent. The social democratic group is pushing for this figure to be raised to 55 per cent.

Although environmental associations and the majority of the European Parliament welcome these initiatives, their success is by no means guaranteed. Poland, Hungary and Slovakia are opposed to the goal of climate neutrality by 2050. Only eight EU member states have clearly committed themselves to the target of 55 per cent by 2030: France, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Latvia and Luxembourg.

Public money must be used solely for public goods – such as protecting the climate and the environment.

The progressive parties in the European Parliament and civil society have a lot of work to do to convert these ambitious announcements into actual policy. This is particularly the case for Germany, which will assume the presidency of the European Council in the second half of 2020 and therefore represent all national governments of the EU in negotiations with the European Parliament and the European Commission.

Green investments

But as well as setting higher targets, ensuring greater climate protection means instigating specific measures or tightening existing rules. For instance, increasing medium- and long-term climate targets would require the revision of all EU climate legislation.

The European Emissions Trading System (ETS), which currently provides for a CO2 price per tonne for the energy and heat supply sectors and heavy industry in an auction process, should be extended to road traffic.

Air traffic should also feature more prominently than at present. A CO2 tariff at the external borders of the EU should ensure fair pricing of products’ carbon footprint that are imported from outside the EU and originate from countries where climate regulations are less strict. This could ensure that European industry can compete with the global market on fair terms.

Moreover, the Sustainable Europe Investment Plan should mobilise a trillion euros over the next decade. For this, the European Investment Bank shall be transformed into a European Climate Bank to channel 50 per cent of its investment into fighting the climate crisis.

Furthermore, a European standard for green bonds should be devised. I expect both the ‘Green’ and the ‘Deal’ elements of the European Green Deal to be taken seriously here: the EU budget must be rigorously geared towards protecting the climate and the environment. Public money must be used solely for public goods – such as protecting the climate and the environment.

A social deal

Frans Timmermans sees climate policy from more than just an environmental perspective. He’s also aware of the social dimension, which has always been a particular concern of European social democrats. A new Just Transition Fund is supposed to help coal-mining regions with phasing out the extraction of the fossil fuel and its conversion into electricity.

A training initiative should give workers the skills for new, clean production processes and equip them for new branches of industry in the climate-friendly economy. New programmes for making homes and public institutions more energy-efficient could create local jobs and reduce private energy costs.

This can be a way of tackling the huge problem of energy poverty in Europe: one in 10 of all Europeans – some 50 million people – cannot afford to keep their home warm enough in winter.

National governments must also become more active in financing and investment, and in reducing subsidies for fossil fuels.

Furthermore, the European Green Deal is not just aimed at combating the climate crisis. It also sets out measures to protect biodiversity, reduce air, water and soil pollution, protect and restore forests, reform European agricultural policy from an environmental perspective and advance the circular economy.

The deal therefore provides the opportunity to create momentum for ambitious environmental and social change. This would also be in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, to which the EU and the whole international community have signed up.

They define sustainable development as a combination of economic development, social progress and environmental protection. Sustainability can only be achieved with a fair approach.

The EU’s limitations

However, the European Union is not omnipotent. Its institutions establish the parameters and set the targets, while national governments are largely responsible for actual implementation.

They must introduce additional measures in tandem with European climate policy in order to cushion the social consequences – as social policy is still mainly the preserve of the member states.

Strong welfare states with robust social systems are essential in the fight against the climate crisis. They enable equal opportunities, access to the labour market, fair working conditions, social security and inclusion in times of rapid change in the (employment) world.

This is the key to shaping a socially just transition to a climate-neutral future. In this way, the social aspect triggers a more ambitious approach to the environment – rather than delay and hesitation on climate policy, as centre-right parties often pursue it.

National governments must also become more active in financing and investment, and in reducing subsidies for fossil fuels. No great miracles can be expected here from the EU budget, which accounts for just 2 per cent of total public spending in Europe.

In view of this, the German federal government’s recently adopted climate package can be seen as merely a start. More needs to be done.

It’s too late for big speeches. ‘Business as usual’ is not an option. It’s time for decisive action. We will work on this in the European Parliament, spurred on by the clear signal from citizens in the European elections and the weekly climate strikes.

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

The post Europe’s Green Deal is Turning Red appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Delara Burkhardt is deputy federal chairman of Germany's Young Socialists (JUSOS) and a Member of the European Parliament since 2019.

The post Europe’s Green Deal is Turning Red appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Alaa Salah
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 2019 (IPS)

My name is Alaa Salah. I am 22 years old and I grew up in Khartoum. Before the revolution, I was a student of architectural engineering. I did not grow up around politics, but in an ordinary middle-class family—my mother is a designer and my father owns a construction company.

But, as I would walk to University every day and see my fellow citizens around me, struggling to get food and medicine, half of the country living in poverty, how could one not become political?

In December last year, our fight for bread became a fight for our freedom. I stand before you today to tell you my story, which is one shared by the thousands of ordinary women and men of Sudan who left their homes, their schools and their daily work to take to the streets, to face bullets and teargas, who risked their lives and their livelihoods to demand an end to dictatorship.

My journey to you was forged by a long line of Sudanese women who have fought for peace and justice in our communities for decades, well before we arrived at this important moment in the future of Sudan. I wouldn’t be here without them.

I address you as a member of MANSAM, a coalition of Sudanese women’s civil and political groups, and on behalf of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security**.

My statement will focus on two key issues: (1) Women’s meaningful participation and protection of women’s rights; and (2) Accountability and disarmament. Women have played an important role in Sudan at pivotal moments in our history—in opposing colonial rule, fighting for the right to vote, as well as in recent struggles against the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir.

It has also taken extraordinary courage to fight for basic rights—to wear trousers, to leave their hair uncovered, to voice their opinions on social media without fear, or to share a meal with male friends—all of which were criminalized by the former regime’s public order laws.

These laws were designed to quash dissent and also to target women, particularly from the most marginalized and working-class communities, such as tea and food sellers, whose working tools could be confiscated without explanation, who faced penalties, and who could be jailed.

Women and young people were at the forefront of the recent protests, often outnumbering men and accounting for 70% of protestors. I was one of many women chanting, singing and walking with my fellow citizens through the streets.

Women led resistance committees and sit-ins, planned protest routes, and disobeyed curfews, even in the midst of a declared state of emergency that left them vulnerable to security forces. Many were teargassed, threatened, assaulted, and thrown in jail without any charge or due process.

Both women and men also faced sexual harassment and were raped. Women also faced retaliation from their own families for participating in the protests. Women served as key members of the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) and helped shape the Declaration of Freedom and Change— a roadmap for Sudan’s transition from military to civilian rule.

However, despite this visible role, despite their courage and their leadership, women have been side-lined in the formal political process in the months following the revolution.

Even in the past, when we have achieved a seat at the table—women represented 31% of parliamentarians in 2018—they were often without real influence and left out of decision-making circles.

Despite women standing ready to actively contribute to the political negotiations that began in April this year between the military council and the Forces of Freedom and Change, only one woman participated in the talks, that too, only after strong advocacy by women’s groups.

Now, unsurprisingly, women’s representation in the current governance structure falls far below our demand of 50% parity and we are skeptical that the 40% quota of the still-to-be formed legislative council will be met.

For the last 30 years, women’s bodies and our rights have been policed; backlash has been swift and violent when patriarchal norms have been challenged. Women activists, politicians, human rights defenders, and peacebuilders continue to be, systematically attacked and targeted, including through sexual violence, which has forced many out of the country entirely.

Additionally, women’s organizations are at the front line of meeting basic needs and protecting rights in conflict-affected areas, but security restrictions and obstructive administrative requirements prevent critical work from being carried out in areas such as Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains.

In particular, humanitarian access to Jebel Marrah, a conflict area in Darfur notorious for the routine use of mass rape by security forces to terrorize women and girls, continues to be a major challenge in the provision of life-saving services for those communities.

Given women’s pivotal role in working towards peace and development, in the promotion of human rights, and in providing humanitarian assistance to communities in need, there is no excuse for us not to have an equal seat at every single table.

If we are not represented at the peace table, and if we don’t have a meaningful voice in parliament, our rights will not be guaranteed.

After decades of struggle and all that we risked to peacefully end Bashir’s dictatorship—gender inequality is not and will never be acceptable to the women and girls of Sudan. I hope it is equally unacceptable to the members of this Chamber. Sudan is one of the most heavily militarized countries in the world.

We do not need more firearms, yet many governments, continue to sell weapons that directly contribute to and perpetuate conflict, ongoing violations of human rights and forced displacement. The widespread availability of weapons in my country is one of the factors fueling violence and insecurity for all people, including women and girls.

As this body well knows, accountability and access to justice have been all but absent in my country. The existing discrimination and inequality women face, coupled with conflict and violence over decades, has resulted in women being subjected to a wide range of human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence on an epic scale.

These crimes contributed to the indictment of our ousted President for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. But violence against women did not end with the end of Al Bashir’s reign. As recent as early September, seven women living in the Shangil Tobaya displaced persons camp in Darfur were raped by armed men.

These women join the thousands of women and girls who have borne the brunt of the violence carried out across the country. Now women are saying “enough”. It is time for accountability and justice for all crimes committed before, during, and after the revolution.

This is the least that can be done to honor those who have been killed or who suffered atrocities. The strength of the revolution came from the representation of diverse voices from across the country—this inclusion is now integral to the legitimacy of the transition process.

Unless the political process reflects and embraces the diversity of our society, women groups, civil society, resistance groups, ethnic and religious minorities, those who have been displaced, and people with disabilities—no agreement will reflect our collective aspirations.

In conclusion, we urge the Security Council and the international community to:

● Press the transitional government, Forces of Freedom and Change, and armed groups to support the full, equal and meaningful participation of women.

We call for at least 50% representation of Sudanese women across all peace processes, in the current negotiations, and at all levels of the government and urge you, the international community, to support our demand in all your engagement with the transitional government.

● Actively monitor the situation in Darfur and halt the drawdown of the peacekeeping mission until the security situation stabilizes; protection of civilians, including those in internally displaced camps, can be ensured; and conditions for safe and voluntary returns are met.

● Support accountability and end impunity. The transitional government must fully support an independent, international fact-finding mission, to investigate and hold all perpetrators of human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence, accountable.

Omar al-Bashir must immediately be transferred to the International Criminal Court. The transitional government must ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women without any reservations.

● Support civil society and ensure women human rights defenders are able to carry out their work unhindered and without fear of reprisals. End the use of lethal and excessive force against protestors.

● Stop fueling conflict.

Finally, we implore all countries to stop the export of arms to my country when there is a risk that they will be used in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, including to perpetrate sexual and gender-based violence, in line with the Arms Trade Treaty.

In conclusion, I would like to leave you with a slogan that grew loud with our recent protests—freedom, peace and justice, revolution is the people’s choice.

Footnote:

**The NGOWG on Women, Peace and Security** advocates for the equal and full participation of women in all efforts to create and maintain international peace and security. www.womenpeacesecurity.org

Formed in 2000 following the adoption of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000), the NGOWG now focuses on implementation of all Security Council resolutions that address this issue. The NGOWG serves as a bridge between women’s human rights defenders working in conflict-affected situations and policymakers at UN Headquarters.

NGOWG members include: Amnesty International; CARE International; Center for Reproductive Rights; Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights; Cordaid; Global Justice Center; Global Network of Women Peacebuilders; Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict; Human Rights Watch; International Alert; MADRE; Nobel Women’s Initiative; OutRight Action International; Oxfam; Plan International; Refugees International; Saferworld; Women’s Refugee Commission; and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

*Excerpts from a speech, during the UN Security Council Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security 29 October 2019, on behalf of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security.

The post The Fight for Bread Became a Fight for Freedom appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Alaa Salah is a student activist and a member of MANSAM, a coalition of Sudanese women’s civil and political groups*

The post The Fight for Bread Became a Fight for Freedom appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Nov 5 2019 (IPS)

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO), all dominated by rich countries, have long promoted trade liberalization as a ‘win-win’ solution for “all people—rich and poor—and all countries—developed and developing countries”, arguing that “the gains are large enough to enable compensation to be provided to the losers”.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Yet, the IMF’s 2016 World Economic Outlook has warned that free trade is increasingly seen as only or mainly benefiting the well-off. The help and compensation needed by those disadvantaged by trade liberalization has rarely if ever been forthcoming, even in most developed economies.

Dubious claims
In 2001, World Bank research papers claimed a strong positive effect of trade for growth, arguing that globalization would accelerate growth and poverty reduction in poor countries. Similarly, a November 2001 IMF brief noted, “Integration into the world economy has proven a powerful means for countries to promote economic growth, development, and poverty reduction”.

Earlier, its 1997 World Economic Outlook claimed, “Policies toward foreign trade are … promoting economic growth and convergence in developing countries.” A host of Fund research papers likewise advocated trade liberalization.

However, surveying a large body of influential early research, Rodriguez and Rodrik concluded, “we are skeptical that there is a strong negative relationship in the data between trade barriers and economic growth…”

Likewise, the historical record since 1870 offers no support for claiming a positive growth-openness relationship before the 1970s – the correlation was, in fact, negative during 1920-1940.

Similarly, during 1990-2003, growth was not significantly correlated with any measure of national trade openness. After all, the effects of any national trade policy also depend on the trade policies of others, especially existing and potential trading partners.

Baldwin observed that general policy advice of openness should not imply “that no government interventions, such as selective production subsidies or controls on short-term capital movements, are appropriate at certain stages of development.” He cautioned, “we must be careful in attributing … lowering of trade barriers as being a sufficient government action for accelerating the rate of economic growth.”

Trump backlash
With US President Donald Trump attacking trade liberalization, the nature of the debate has changed. For him, trade liberalization mainly benefits large corporations which profit from producing abroad, depriving American workers of jobs and decent remuneration.

Anis Chowdhury

Trump’s trade restrictions have reversed decades of uneven trade liberalization. By insisting on bilateral over plurilateral and especially multilateral free trade agreements (FTAs), he has undermined trade liberalization’s advocates and their claims. With Trump, the US, erstwhile champion of freer trade, has become its nemesis.

This policy U-turn has not only strengthened earlier doubts about the ostensible benefits of trade liberalization, not only for American workers, but also for developing countries, who have long insisted that international trade gains and costs are unequally distributed among nations.

Trade liberalizers strike back
Growing scepticism about trade liberalization, even before Trump’s election in late 2016, had rekindled the IMF-World Bank-WTO advocacy, e.g., in Making Trade an Engine of Growth for All, despite its acknowledgement that “trade is leaving too many individuals and communities behind, notably also in advanced economies.”

Reinvigorating Trade and Inclusive Growth is also unpersuasive, with poorly substantiated patronizing assertions, as if preaching to the converted. For the trio, the backlash is due to ignorance and failure to better advertise the benefits of free trade. Their touching faith remained unshaken despite considerable evidence, including their own, qualifying their advocacy claims.

Instead of more nuanced, and credible advocacy of multilateral trade liberalization, unencumbered by intellectual property, investment and other non-trade agreements, they can only recommend targeted ‘safety-nets’ and pro-active ‘labour market programmes’ (e.g., retraining).

UNCTAD dissent
By contrast, UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Report 2018 focused, inter alia, on the ‘Free Trade Delusion’. The World Input-Output Database suggests trade liberalization has favoured capital at the expense of labour.

Capital’s share of export value added in manufacturing global value chains (GVCs) rose from 44.8% in 2000 to 47.8% in 2014. Exceptionally, China’s labour share rose from 43.0% to 50.4%, underscoring how government policy can influence distributional outcomes.

Besides exporting primary commodities, by participating in GVCs, some developing countries now produce intermediate manufactures, typically with imported inputs and equipment. Meanwhile, South-South trade has also increased.

From the 1980s, much of international trade growth was contributed by East, including Southeast Asia, accounting for growing shares of world output and manufactured exports. By 2016, East Asia accounted for over two-thirds of manufactured exports by developing countries.

“Asia alone accounted for about 88 per cent of developing country gross exports of manufactures…, and for 93 per cent of South–South trade in manufactures, while East Asia alone accounted for 72 per cent of both.”

Services: great new hope
UNCTAD’s report acknowledges that services, particularly those enabled by digital technologies, offers new opportunities for development. However, while the trio claim that opening up e-commerce would generally lift living standards, ostensibly because medium and small enterprises would benefit, UNCTAD notes e-commerce is dominated by a few giant transnationals.

The advantages conferred by intellectual property monopolies, incumbency, resources, name recognition and ‘network effects’ favour ‘winner-takes-all’ outcomes, strengthening domination of e-commerce, software, payments and others by a few large corporations. In 2014, for example, the top 1% of exporting firms accounted for 57% of exports (besides oil, gas and services), the top 5% for more than 80%, and the top quarter for almost all.

‘Big data’, secured by providing services to users, have been very profitably used by ‘free’ digital service providers. By 2015, 17 digital giants accounted for a quarter of the market capitalization of the top 100 transnational corporations.

The UNCTAD report suggests three policy measures to address digital service providers’ profitable abuse of ‘big data’. First, privacy laws must require ‘informed consent’ before collecting and using data from digital users.

Second, appropriate ‘anti-trust’ and competition policy measures should minimize ‘restrictive practices’ and other such abuses by monopolies and oligopolies. Third, effective digital policies involving data localization, data management flows, technology transfer, custom duties on electronic transmissions and other such measures can help increase gains.

Development, not liberalization
Trade liberalization has undoubtedly had varied consequences, and may well undermine a country’s development prospects, food security and more. With trade liberalization, the main benefits often chiefly accrue to powerful transnational corporations and their business partners.

Meanwhile, employment generated in developing countries has often been seen as being at the expense of rich country workers displaced by the internationalization of GVCs. In the face of such challenges, appropriate and pragmatic government interventions have helped increase gains, reduce costs and develop economies.

As UNCTAD highlights, “Developing countries will need to preserve, and possibly expand, their available policy space to implement an industrialization strategy”. But such options for development diminish as economies liberalize indiscriminately, praying for the best.

The post Trade Liberalization for Development? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Young students take part in Tsunami evacuation drills in Bali, Indonesia. Credit: UNDP Asia-Pacific

By Asako Okai
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 2019 (IPS)

Once considered rare in their occurrence, in the last 10 years tsunamis have struck nearly every year: from Samoa to Chile, and from Iceland to New Zealand.

Usually triggered by a massive earthquake which is impossible to predict, there is often very little time to respond to a tsunami warning. Yet, if the warning is clear and people know what to do, thousands of lives can be saved.

As we mark World Tsunami Awareness Day November 5, I’d like to express my appreciation to the Government of Japan for supporting the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in raising tsunami awareness among school children in disaster prone countries in Asia and the Pacific.

In Japan, every school child knows what a tsunami is, and how to respond to it. Now, through this initiative, Japan’s good practice and experience is helping school children in the region learn and improve their preparedness.

Under the three-year partnership until mid-2020, at least 10-12 schools each in 23 tsunami prone countries would have updated their preparedness plans and tested them through drills.

To date, we have already trained over 100,000 students and teachers from about 250 schools in 19 countries. Preparedness plans have been updated, School Committees have been set up, evacuation routes have been identified – and in some instances newly built – and safe evacuation zones have been designated.

What started off as strengthening school preparedness has gone beyond expectations in many countries. I’d like to elaborate by sharing four country examples.

In Indonesia, one of the most tsunami prone countries in the world, we held our very first drills under this initiative. The drill was in a school in Bali, right in the middle of a highly urbanized locality.

Since the latest risk assessment had shown that the school premises would get inundated in the event of a tsunami, students were made to evacuate and move to higher ground – in this case to the roof of a six-storey hotel.

The drill resulted in creating awareness on the need for providing a safe evacuation area and led eight hotels in the locality to sign agreements with the local government offering their space for safety to the local school children and neighbouring communities.

In the Pacific Ocean, the terrain in Gizo, Solomon Islands looks quite different from Bali, with the sea on one side and steep hills on the other. Fifty two children and adults had lost their lives in the 2007 tsunami that had hit the island.

The school drills exposed the lack of preparedness and new evacuation routes were constructed to help students safely escape to higher ground. The National Disaster Management Organisation is now committed to scaling up drills in other vulnerable islands.

The reality in the Maldives is yet again unique. The 2004 tsunami swept over nearly all the atolls. Unlike other countries, there were no waves, rather it was as if the low-lying islands were sinking.

Survivors do not wish to recall the devastating memories and most of the young people have little or no knowledge of a tsunami. The safest evacuation is by boat and by moving to higher ground – in this case a building that may not be higher than two-storeys. Most islands have only one school, so our preparedness initiative helped to educate the entire community.

Typhoons and storm surges hit the Philippines, often creating tsunami like waves with very little warning. While earthquake drills are regularly conducted, our tsunami preparedness initiative has spurred the government to combine earthquake with tsunami drills.

Together with Government agencies and local partners, we’ve held several drills in disaster prone provinces reaching 60,000 students and teachers in the country.

Based on the positive feedback of the preparedness initiative from students, teachers and communities in various countries and our own experiences, we have developed a regional guide for schools to help them to be prepared so that we can scale up awareness and preparedness in more at risk schools.

With new students entering school every year, strengthening school preparedness helps us to build resilient generations.

The post Prepare to Win: Tsunami Awareness and Preparedness appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Asako Okai is UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of UNDP’s Crisis Bureau

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Freedom House president Mike Abramowitz warned of online propaganda and disinformation spreading ahead of elections in 24 countries this past year. Credit: Erick Kabendera/IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 2019 (IPS)

Using armies of online fans, trolls and, automated ‘bots’, the world’s authoritarians and populists are increasingly using the web to drown out opponents and swing public opinion and elections their way, a new study says.

The Freedom on the Net report, compiled annually by Freedom House, a United States government-funded research group, confirms the fears of many online activists and paints a bleak portrait of how the internet is straining democracies.

The 32-page document, released Tuesday and titled “The Crisis of Social Media” found that more than half of the world’s 3.8 billion web users live in countries that censor the internet and use pro-government trolls to manipulate the online realm.

Freedom House president Mike Abramowitz warned of online propaganda and disinformation spreading ahead of elections in 24 countries this past year. The group assesses web freedom in 65 countries that host 87 percent of the world’s web-users.

“Governments are finding that on social media, propaganda works better than censorship,” Abramowitz said in a statement. 

“Authoritarians and populists around the globe are exploiting both human nature and computer algorithms to conquer the ballot box, running roughshod over rules designed to ensure free and fair elections.”

Researchers found that officials had worked with celebrity yes-men, business titans and semi-autonomous “online mobs” to spread clickbait, conspiracy theories and misleading memes from “marginal echo chambers to the political mainstream”.

The report spotlights Brazil, where Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential election win in October 2018 was preceded by misleading news, anti-gay rumours and doctored images being spread by the right-winger’s fans via YouTube and WhatsApp, researchers said.

In Egypt, the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi blocked some 34,000 websites to stifle debates about whether el-Sisi should be allowed to hold power until the end of 2030 ahead of an April referendum, the report said.

Hundreds of thousands of online trolls spread fake news to swing voters behind two main parties in April-May elections in India this year, it added. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “NaMo” app was reportedly relaying users’ data to a private analytics firm.

The world’s two biggest economies — the United States and China — come in for special scrutiny.

In the U.S., much like in the 2016 presidential election that brought Donald Trump to power, online trolls spread “disinformation” during the November 2018 mid-term vote and during the confirmation process for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. 

Meanwhile, U.S. immigration officials are increasingly demanding access to the mobile phones and laptops of visitors and snooping on immigrants’ social media feeds, operating with “little oversight or transparency”, the report says.

China remains the “world’s worst abuser of internet freedom” — a title it has held for four consecutive years, and where a phalanx of online commentators known as the 50 Cent Army pushes government messages online.

Beijing clamped down harder on web users ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on Apr. 15 and got tighter still in the face of ongoing anti-government protests in Hong Kong, the report says.

Adrian Shahbaz, the group’s research director for technology and democracy, warned that even governments of smaller economies can now afford large-scale “advanced social media surveillance programs”.

Last month, Facebook sued NSO Group, an Israeli surveillance firm, for using the WhatsApp messaging service to hack the phones of some 1,400 dissidents, journalists, diplomats, officials and others for their clients, understood to be governments and spy agencies.

“Once reserved for the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies, big-data spying tools are making their way around the world,” said Shahbaz. “Even in countries with considerable safeguards for fundamental freedoms, there are already reports of abuse.”

Researchers noted that officials in 47 countries, armed with such sophisticated web-snooping tools, had arrested web users between June 2018 and May 2019 for posting political, social or religious messages online.

“The future of internet freedom rests on our ability to fix social media,” said Shahbaz. 

“Since these are mainly American platforms, the U.S. must be a leader in promoting transparency and accountability in the digital age. This is the only way to stop the internet from becoming a Trojan horse for tyranny and oppression.”

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Zimbabwean smallholder farmer relies on weather information via his mobile phone to aid his cropping activities. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Gareth Willmer
Nov 4 2019 (IPS)

People living in Africa are charged an average of 7.1 per cent of their monthly salary for a gigabyte (GB) of mobile data, more than 3.5 times the threshold considered affordable.

That’s according to a report by the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), which classifies the affordable rate as 2 per cent of monthly income. It finds that progress towards competition is stalling across low- and middle-income countries amid consolidation between mobile and internet operators.

The trend threatens to jeopardise the push towards affordable internet access for all, with half the world’s population still unable to connect. Even though the 50 per cent mark was reached at the end of last year, that’s still far short of the UN’s goal of universal access.

The trend threatens to jeopardise the push towards affordable internet access for all, with half the world’s population still unable to connect. Even though the 50 per cent mark was reached at the end of last year, that’s still far short of the UN’s goal of universal access

The 2019 Affordability Report, published on 22 October, estimates that people in countries with low levels of mobile and internet competition pay about US$3.42 per gigabyte (GB) of data more than those in competitive ones. This premium, says A4AI, is “unaffordable” for many people in low-income countries.

A4AI estimates that 1GB of data costs $7.33 more in a country with a monopoly market than one with two mobile operators — with an estimated 260 million people worldwide having access to just one operator, and 589 million living in low-competition countries.

The impact of limited competition is substantial in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where that price equates to about 5.8 per cent of average monthly income.

In a range of countries that A4AI tracked for affordability between April and June 2019, African nations made up the bottom 13, with the price for a gigabyte in those countries at 10 per cent of average monthly income or more. The figure was as high as 26 per cent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and more than 20 per cent in the Central African Republic and Chad.

 

Lack of competition

Less than half (65 out of 136) of the low- and middle-income countries studied in the report have fully competitive markets, says A4AI. “This trend underlines the urgency of promoting competition to support healthy markets that provide affordable internet access,” it adds. “Policymakers and regulators must work to encourage competition and support new entrants.”

Dhanaraj Thakur, research director at the World Wide Web Foundation, which runs A4AI, believes competition must be boosted through regulation to encourage new entrants, more options for public internet access and joint initiatives between the public and private sector, and municipally owned or community networks.

Villages or groups of villages can set up their own not-for-profit networks with services that are relevant to them, Thakur suggests, pointing to examples such as the Zenzeleni community-owned network in rural South Africa.

“Access to broadband internet is still too expensive,” he says. “One of the ways to help reduce costs is through greater competition and a greater mix of solutions… We believe not enough is being done in that regard.” This requires a concerted push from governments, he adds.

 

Moving forward

Although progress is slow, Thakur says governments are gradually adopting policies and affordability is improving. The report names Cameroon and Mali among countries that have helped boost affordability with new national broadband plans.

Fekitamoeloa Katoa ‘Utoikamanu at the UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States says the world has seen “tremendous advances” in digital technology, but that millions of people are being “left behind”.

 She calls for support for the world’s poorest countries to form policies, regulations and projects to foster internet access and adoption. “We know all too well that internet access and use significantly shape human, social and economic conditions,” she said.

Claire Melamed, CEO of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, says it is vital that “technological advancement doesn’t reinforce disadvantage”.

“Giving people visibility and opportunities to connect with others and make their voice heard are an important part of human and economic progress,” she said. “It’s not easy for overstretched governments to grapple with complex regulatory environments, but coordinated policies and approaches are needed to make a reality of the push to ‘leave no one behind’.”

 

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

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By Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations*
BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov 4 2019 (IPS)

We are facing tense and turbulent times around the globe. Rising inequality is a danger everywhere. Trade and technology tensions are building. Growth forecasts are being revised down. Unease and uncertainty are going up. This is a global phenomenon. No region is immune.

As I said at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, I see another concern emerging on the horizon, the possibility of a Great Fracture – with the two world’s largest economies splitting the globe into two – each with its own dominant currency, trade and financial rules, its own internet and artificial intelligence capacities, and its own zero sum geopolitical and military strategies.

We must do everything possible to avert this Great Fracture and maintain a universal system – a universal economy with universal respect for international law; a multipolar world with strong multilateral institutions.

I firmly believe the nations of ASEAN are well-positioned to play a key role in the solution of this question. I fully appreciate ASEAN’s steadfast support for multilateralism and a rules-based international order.

We are also grateful for the collective contribution of more than 5,000 peacekeepers to UN operations, including a growing number of women.

Strong economic development in ASEAN countries has improved lives and lifted millions out of poverty. But it is important to recognize that there are still people being left behind.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is our shared blueprint for a fair globalization. Yet our world is far off track in meeting the Goals. Together, we have identified many complementarities between ASEAN’s Vision 2025 and the 2030 Agenda.

The United Nations stands ready to support ASEAN to urgently accelerate progress across all the SDGs, in particular through our collective efforts on peace and justice, decent work and climate action.

I know you also keenly understand the interconnections of the climate crisis with sustainable development, peace and human security. Indeed, the climate emergency is the defining issue of our time.

Four of the ten countries most affected by climate change are ASEAN Member States. This region is highly vulnerable, particularly to rising sea-levels, with catastrophic consequences for low-lying communities, as recently published research illustrated.

Seventy percent of global population that will be more affected by rising sea-levels are in countries both within ASEAN and countries that will be represented at summits later this week.

I thank you for your important contributions to September Climate Action Summit. If our world is to avoid climate catastrophe, far more is needed by all to heed the call of science and cut greenhouse emissions by 45 percent by 2030; reach carbon neutrality by 2050; and limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century.

I have been strongly advocating for more progress on carbon pricing, ensuring no new coal plants by 2020, and ending the allocation of trillions of dollars of taxpayers’ money for fossil fuel subsidies that serve only to boost hurricanes, spread tropical diseases and heighten conflict.

I am particularly worried about the future impact of the high number of new coal power plants still projected in some parts of the world, including several countries in East, South and South East Asia.

At the same time, developed countries must fulfil their commitment to provide $100 billion a year from public and private sources by 2020 for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.

I count on your leadership to undertake the concrete actions necessary to confront the world’s climate emergency. We are closely following the work of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights as well as ASEAN’s Commission on the Rights of Women and Children, that have our full support.

The United Nations will continue to work with ASEAN in key human rights areas such as freedom of expression, the right to a healthy environment and conducting business in a way that fully respects human rights – a very important initiative by Thailand recently.

We look forward to ASEAN’s further efforts to deepen trust in the region towards sustainable peace, security, and complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

I remain deeply concerned about the situation in Myanmar, including Rakhine State, and the plight of the massive number of refugees still living increasingly in difficult conditions.

It remains, of course, Myanmar’s responsibility to address the root causes and ensure a conducive environment for the safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable repatriation of refugees to Rakhine State, in accordance with international norms and standards.

To facilitate dialogue with refugees and pursue confidence building measures.
To ensure humanitarian actors have full and unfettered access to areas of return, as well as communities in need;

To approve without delay Quick Impact Projects focused on livelihoods, infrastructure, basic services and protection; to allow for a rapid solution for those still internally displaced in the country.

All these steps are in line with the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State which needs urgent follow-up in its entirety. I welcome ASEAN’s recent engagement with Myanmar and encourage its continued efforts.

In the broader region, I am encouraged by ASEAN Member States and China’s ongoing efforts to conclude a Code of Conduct on the South China Sea.

The United Nations has consistently called on all parties to resolve disputes through peaceful dialogue, in accordance with international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Finally, the United Nations will also continue to provide technical support for ASEAN’s comprehensive strategies for counter-terrorism and preventing violent extremism, including by involving women, youth and civil society.

Let me conclude by once again expressing my great appreciation for our Comprehensive Partnership.

Together, let us keep building on this vital partnership to ensure dignity and opportunity for the people of the ASEAN region and beyond.

*Excerpts from an address to the ASEAN Summit on ‘Advancing Partnership for Sustainability’ in Bangkok, Thailand last week.

The post No Region is Immune from Rising Inequalities, Trade Tensions & Declining Growth Rates appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 2 2019 (IPS)

“Without journalists able to do their jobs in safety, we face the prospect of a world of confusion and disinformation”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned in a statement released ahead of the International Day to End Impunity Against Journalists, which falls on 2 November.

“When journalists are targeted, societies as a whole pay a price”, added the UN chief. “Without the ability to protect journalists, our ability to remain informed and contribute to decision-making, is severely hampered”.

 

Killings and attacks on the rise

A new study from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, underscores the risks that journalists face, showing that almost 90 per cent of those found responsible for the deaths of more than 1,100 of them, between 2006 and 2018, have not been convicted.

The deadliest countries for journalists, according to the statistics, are Arab States, where almost a third of the killings took place. The Latin American and Caribbean region (26 per cent), and Asian and Pacific States (24 per cent) are the next most dangerous.

The report, “Intensified Attacks, New Defences”, also notes that killings of journalists have risen by some 18 per cent in the past five years (2014-2018), compared to the previous five-year period.

The deadliest countries for journalists, according to the statistics, are Arab States, where almost a third of the killings took place. The Latin American and Caribbean region (26 per cent), and Asian and Pacific States (24 per cent) are the next most dangerous.

Journalists are ofen murdered for their reporting on politics, crime and corruption, and this is reflected in the study, which reveals that, in the past two years (2017-2018), more than half of journalist fatalities were in non-conflict zones.

In his statement, the Secretary-General noted the rise in the scale and number of attacks on journalists and media workers, as well as incidents that make their work much harder, including “threats of prosecution, arrest, imprisonment, denial of journalistic access and failures to investigate and prosecute crimes against them”.

A high-profile example is the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017. The case is being followed by independent UN human rights expert Agnès Callamard, among others, who has suggested that too little has been done by the Maltese authorities to investigate the killing.

On Friday, as Haiti continued to face a protracted, violent crisis that has led to the deaths of some 42 people, and 86 injured, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet called on all of those involved in the violence to refrain from targeting journalists, and respect the freedom of the media to do its job: at least one journalist is among those killed, and nine other reporters have been injured, according to Ms. Bachelet’s Office (OHCHR).

 

Keep Truth Alive

This year UNESCO has launched the #KeepTruthAlive social media campaign, which draws attention to the dangers faced by journalists close to their homes, highlighting the fact that 93% of those killed work locally, and featuring an interactive map created for the campaign, which provides a vivid demonstration of the scale and breadth of the dangers faced by journalists worldwide.

The Day is being commemorated with a flagship event in Mexico City next week on 7 November – an international seminar entitled “Strengthening regional cooperation to end impunity for crimes and attacks against journalists in Latin America” – and events are also taking place in 15 other countries, including an exhibition of press cartoons, under the headline: “Draw so as not to write them off”, at UN HQ in New York, which honours the memories of French journalists Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon, murdered in Mali on 2 November 2013.

This story was originally published by UN News

The post ‘When Journalists are Targeted, Societies as a Whole, Pay a Price’: UN Chief appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Maged Srour
ROME, Nov 2 2019 (IPS)

Each year 100 journalists are killed in the course of their work. Nine out of 10 cases remain unresolved.
On Nov. 2 the United Nations recognises the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists.

The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is concerned that impunity damages societies by covering up serious human rights abuses, corruption, and crime.

The post #KeepthetruthAlive appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Drone visual of the area in Upper East Region, Ghana prior to restoration taken in 2015. Experts say that Africa’s youth need to become involved in land restoration projects. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

By Diana Wanyonyi and Nalisha Adams
ACCRA, Ghana/JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Nov 1 2019 (IPS)

The last time Siyabulela Sokomani ran a marathon he did so with a tree strapped to his back. A native wild olive sapling to be exact. It affected his race time for sure, with the seasoned runner completing the 42.2 km race in 4.42 hours rather than his usual 3.37 hours.

But the entrepreneur, who is co-owner of the ethical South African nursery Shoots and Roots, which uses controlled release fertilisers, which are less harmful to the environment, and 70 percent less pesticides, was doing it for a good cause.

The #runningtreecampaign — a fundraising effort by the non-profit Township Farmers which Sokomani started with children’s rights activist Ondela Manjezi — was raising funds to plant some 2,000 indigenous trees in the former apartheid black housing area of Khayelitsha. In addition to planting trees, Township Farmers also educates school kids about gardening their own vegetables and how to plant and take care of trees.

Sokomani grew up in Khayelitsha an area known for the distinctive white, beach sand — in which you can still find seashells — which serves as soil. It’s an environment in which only indigenous plants can flourish.

Under apartheid these areas received little or no services, and had no green spaces. And many still lack this. It was only thanks to a teacher who taught him and his classmates about the importance of the environment, recycling and growing your own food that Sokomani pursued studies and eventually a career in horticulture.

“There was nothing. There was not even a culture of planting trees. The main thing that people strived for was to get a job and to feed their families,” he tells IPS.

So Sokomani and his friends and colleagues hit the pavement, completed the Cape Town marathon and raised the money for the indigenous trees. They have already started planting them in schools in Khayelitsha — starting with Sokomani’s alma mater, Zola Senior Secondary School.

Dotted around the schools are now wild olive, sand olive and silver oak trees, among others.

In September, horticulturalist and entrepreneur Siyabulela Sokomani (right) and friends ran the Cape Town marathon with wild olive saplings trapped to their backs to raise funding for 2,000 indigenous trees which planted in the disadvantaged township of Kayaltishea, South Africa. Courtesy: Siyabulela Sokomani

Making a business out of land restoration

The 34-year-old Sokomani, who was elected as a youth ambassador leading restoration initiatives by the 4th African Forest Landscape Restoration (AFR100), has just returned from Ghana’s capital, Accra, where the annual meeting concluded this week.

His attendance at AFR100, a project where African countries have committed to restore over 111 million hectares of degraded land by 2030, was important. As an entrepreneur Sokomani was there to show other African youth how to create viable business opportunities within the land restoration space.

Shoots and Roots has a number large clients in South Africa, regularly providing 150,000 to 200,000 indigenous trees to single clients in one order, and with a capacity to grow one million trees.

“We are missing something. We are missing the youth being actively involved in the management side of things,” Sokomani pointed out.

The AFR100 Secretariat at the African Union’s development agency, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), coordinates restoration activities on the continent, with support from the initiative’s technical partners, including the Center for International Forestry Research, United Nations Environment and World Resources Institute (WRI), among others.

Land degradation remains a threat to global security, according to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, with two-thirds of Africa comprising desert or drylands. UNCCD figures show that in 2019 some 45 million people across Africa, mostly from East and Southern Africa, are food insecure.

Aside from restored land providing food security, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released in August states that better land management can help combat global warming and limit the release of greenhouse gases. The report authors recommended vigorous action to halt soil damage and desertification.

Engaging the energy and innovation of Africa’s youth

But many believe that without engaging the youth in these activities, success may not be possible.

“We have to engage young people meaningfully, invest in them. We need to harness their energy or get out of the way. Are we ready for these young people?” Wanjira Mathai, co-chair of the World Resources Institute’s Global Restoration Council and the current Chair of of the Wangari Maathai Foundation, told the meeting. Mathai’s mother was the late Wangari Maathai — the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 and an environmentalist and human rights activist.

Speaking to IPS, Mathai said that youth were an “incredibly important demographic in this restoration movement” as they were Africa’s largest demographic. Some 60 percent of Africa’s population is under the age of 25.

“If you don’t work with youth, who are you working with because they are after all the majority.

“Restoration and many environmental initiatives are very slow and deep because they take time, it takes 30 years for some trees to mature and that is fast in our tropics, it could be even longer — 90 years in Scandinavia. The generation that is actually going to deliver a lot of these ambitions and ambitious commitments that are being made today are the youth,” Mathai told IPS.

She said young people “want to be involved in entrepreneurship ventures many of them are environmentalists but we have not created spaces for them, we only often think they are too young”.

Mathai said that it was not obvious to many nations that the youth should be involved in land restoration and environmental efforts and that new and innovative ways needed to be explored to support youth engagement.

“What we know for sure is that if we leave them out, we leave them out at our own peril because they are energetic, they think differently and they are operating on a completely different level of consciousness that is needed especially for this decade that 2013 is end of a lot of different ambitious targets,” Mathai told IPS.

According to the African Development Bank, 420 million of the continent’s youth aged 15 to 35 are unemployed.

Creating jobs by financing entrepreneurs

This challenge can be solved if the youth venture into agroforestry, says Honorine Uwase Hirwa, founder Rwanda’s Youth Forest Landscape Restoration initiative, which has trained more than 15,000 young Rwandans to plant trees.

“There’s an opportunity especially on this restoration movement, one can establish a tree nursery, one can plant fruit trees and sell the fruit, there is a lot of opportunity when it comes to restoration it’s a matters of empowering them with knowledge and making it easy for them to access the finance,” she told IPS.

Sokomani agrees.

As a South African in the Western Cape province, where only 4,9 percent of agricultural land is owned by the black population, for Sokomani it was particularly hard to succeed in a business that requires land.

But Sokomani has not received bank or grant funding for his business and instead was able to make a success of the business, thanks to the involvement of a business partner and former client, Carl Pretorius.

But he tells IPS, “you won’t get anywhere unless you have a passion for trees…it’s all about the passion and what you do”.

Land restoration more than planting trees

“Forest landscape restoration is more than just planting trees,” Mamadou Diakhite, Sustainable Land and Water Management (SLWM) team leader at NEPAD, told the meeting.

Later, he told IPS why this had to be differentiated: “We had to  make this statement loud and clear because there are some papers now including scientific papers that are being written and disseminated that portray and show AFR100 initiative as only planning trees, fencing them and preventing communities and people to access it which is the exact opposite, that’s is why we say that restoration is beyond only tree planting. It is more about agro forestry and agro ecology systems.”

Mathai concurred: “Sometimes there are agro forestry which are food production and trees and sometimes they are purely for food production. It is about understanding the landscape, the mosaic of the landscape and then maintaining the integrity of the landscape as a whole. The reason you hear us mentioning that all the time is to remind ourselves that landscapes occur in mosaics.”

Horticulture — a business opportunity right in front of you

For Sokomani, the type of trees planted remains important. He said that while we often hear about large, bold initiatives of forests of trees being planted in a single day, he questioned the types of trees planted.

“If we don’t create entrepreneurial opportunities through the establishment of nurseries that are growing [indigenous] trees and, in some areas, [indigenous] grasslands and bulbs and plants that actually thrive in those areas, we are really going to be messing up,” the horticulturist said.

He said he heard of land restoration efforts where the Chinese Popular, a non-indigenous tree, was being used. “You can’t restore degraded land with exotic species.”

He said indigenous trees should also be grown and propagated among local communities and the resultant horticultural enterprises could also prevent migration of local populations to larger cities.

“For the youth out there in Africa, Asia and South Africa, I always say it is very easy to start a horticulture business because your initial inputs are right in front of you. You can get seeds from a tree, from your block or from a forest, you can do division, you can do many other propagation techniques that you actually just start your business,” he said.

Sokomani said that if someone didn’t study horticulture like he did it would require a little bit of effort to learn the techniques, but he insisted that he didn’t believe in the myth of “green fingers” and anyone could learn to propagate and grown plants.

This weekend the horticulturist/marathon runner will slip into on running shoes and participate in one of South Africa’s well-known races – the Soweto marathon. This time though, he will be doing it without a tree strapped to his back.

“Let’s start today, because we really don’t have time when it comes to mitigating climate change.”

Related Articles

• Desertification a Frontline Against Climate Change: IPCC
• Desertification Costs World Economy up to 15 trillion dollars – U.N.
• Displaced by the Desert: An expanding Sahara leaves Broken Families and Violence in its Wake

The post Africa’s Youth make Land Restoration their Business appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Protests in Egypt. Credit: @oxfamNovib

By Ine Van Severen
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 1 2019 (IPS)

2019 has been a year of protest. From Algeria, to Chile, to Hong Kong, ordinary people have taken to the streets to voice their dissatisfaction with governance systems. Their causes are as diverse as the people pouring into the streets.

Public grievances range from corruption, anti-austerity measures, and electoral irregularities. The reasons for the mass mobilisations may differ, but the response by those in power are becoming alarmingly similar.

In far too many countries, the response has been to shut down the space for people to organise and to persecute those calling for change.

The new civic space watchlist by the CIVICUS Monitor shines a spotlight on Hong Kong, Colombia, Egypt, Guinea and Kazakhstan where there are escalating rights violations against activists, journalists and civil society groups.

In particular, this shortlist profiles a sample of countries where there are serious and ongoing attacks against the freedoms of peaceful assembly, expression and association.

In Hong Kong, there has been a continued deterioration of civic space since millions of people took to the streets on 9th June 2019 to protest against a proposed extradition bill, which would allow individuals, including foreigners, to be sent to mainland China to face trial in courts controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

In response to weekly protests, human rights groups have documented excessive and unlawful force by security forces against protesters with impunity, including the use of truncheons, pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets. Journalists have also been targeted.

More than 1,300 people have been arrested in the context of the mass protest and some activists have also been attacked by pro Beijing mobs.

In Egypt, recent anti-government protests resulted in mass arrests and the use of excessive force by the authorities. Thousands of people have been arrested since the protests started in September, including journalists, human rights lawyers and activists. Many of those arrested have been charged on dubious grounds of using social media to spread false news, aiding terrorist groups and for participating in unauthorised protests.

The crackdown has also expanded to target the political opposition and anyone deemed to be connected to protests dating all the way back to 2011.

In Guinea, tensions have been on the rise since Guinea’s ruling party made a public call to change the constitution, which could abolish presidential term limits. The West African country is set for 2020 presidential elections and the current president, Alpha Condé, is not eligible under the current 2010 constitution.

During three days of protests in October against the proposed constitutional changes, at least nine people were killed and several protesters and protest leaders arrested. According to human rights organisations in Guinea, the plans for a new Constitution may destabilise the country and lead to renewed violence.

Since presidential elections this past June in Kazakhstan, human rights abuses have hit a new high in the former Soviet state. Post-election protests have seen police and special forces detain several thousand peaceful protesters, often with excessive force.

In addition, the authorities have obstructed the work of journalists and electoral observers, as well as periodically blocking access to social media and messenger applications. The repression has cast a shadow on the elections and the beginning of Tokayev’s period in office.

Colombia is the fifth country on the Monitor Watchlist, which remains one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a human rights defender. Dozens of community leaders have been killed this year as well as 7 political candidates running for local office in an election campaign marked by violence. Impunity for such crimes has been the rule.

The country is further backsliding into violence as post-conflict communities are left vulnerable to dissident armed groups and commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announce their intentions to take up arms again, nearly three years after the historic peace accord with the Colombian government was signed.

While protests flare in all regions of the world, it is of utmost importance that people are able to freely express dissent without authorities using excessive force against them. Instead of using violence against protesters and restricting fundamental freedoms, governments should seek solutions by listening to the grievances of ordinary citizens and dissenting voices.

The post The Rapid Decline in Civic Freedoms: 5 Countries to Keep an Eye on appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ine Van Severen is Civic Space Researcher at CIVICUS

The post The Rapid Decline in Civic Freedoms: 5 Countries to Keep an Eye on appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By African Development Bank
Oct 31 2019 (IPS-Partners)

• Bank’s capital base more than doubles. Jumps from $93 billion to $208 billion
• Largest capital increase in the Bank’s history signals a united front by shareholders

Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 31 October, 2019 – At an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting today in Abidjan, Governors of the African Development Bank, representing shareholders from 80 countries, approved a landmark $115 billion increase in capital for the continent’s foremost financial institution.

The capital increase, the largest in the history of the African Development Bank since its establishment in 1964, is a remarkable show of confidence by shareholders.

With the approved increase, the capital of the Bank will more than double from $93 billion to $208 billion. This solidifies the Bank’s leadership on development financing for the continent.

The boost in capital ensures that the Bank will continue to maintain a sterling AAA rating, all stable, from the top rating agencies.

The African Development Bank launched discussions on the request for a general capital increase two years ago, to help fast track the delivery of its High 5 development strategies, the sustainable development goals and the Africa Union’s Agenda 2063.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, the President of Ivory Coast, Alassane Ouattara said: “the integration of the continent’s priorities into the High 5s indicates that the African Development Bank group is a strategic partner for African governments.”

In the past four years, the Bank’s High 5 priorities have delivered impressive results on the ground, including helping to connect 16 million people to electricity, 70 million people provided with agricultural technologies to boost food security; 9 million people given access to finance through private sector investee companies; 55 million people provided improved access to transport services; and 31 million people with access to water and sanitation.

According to African Development Bank President, Akinwumi Adesina,  “We have achieved a lot, yet there is still a long way to go. Our responsibility is to very quickly help improve the quality of life for the people of Africa. This general capital increase represents a very strong commitment of all our shareholders to see better quality projects that will significantly have an impact on the lives of the people in Africa –  in cities, in rural communities, and for millions of youth and women.”

With the new general capital increase, the Bank plans to do more, with the following expected results: 105 million people to have access to new or improved electricity connections; 244 million people to benefit from improvements in agriculture; 15 million people to benefit from investee projects; 252 million people to benefit from improved access to transport; and 128 million people to benefit from improved access to water and sanitation.

Adesina noted that “the Bank will continue its leadership role on infrastructure development, strengthening regional integration, helping to realize the ambitions of the African Continental Free Trade Area, supporting fragile states to build resilience, ensuring sustainable debt management, addressing climate change and boosting private sector investments. We will do a lot more. This is a historic moment.”

He added: “I applaud the shareholders for their strong confidence in the Bank and for boosting support for Africa’s development”.

President Adesina, Bank senior vice-president Charles Boamah and vice president for Finance and African Development Bank Chief Finance Officer Bajabulile Swazi Tshabalala, will be available for interviews and further comment about the increase.

Contact: Victor Oladokun, Director, Communications and External Relations Department, African Development Bank, email: v.oladokun@afdb.org

 

 

The post African Development Bank Shareholders approve landmark $115 billion capital increase, signalling strong support appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Child labour is a cancer in Nigeria, with children engaged in domestic labour, forced begging, quarrying gravel and armed conflict. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

By Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe
LAGOS, Nigeria, Oct 31 2019 (IPS)

“Human trafficking is when someone is taken from Nigeria to another country to be a prostitute. Or, to do other illegal jobs that are not good for humanity,” said Kingsley Chidiebere, a commercial motorcycle rider in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.

He is one of the over 27 Nigerians interviewed so far by IPS who thinks human trafficking is when a “lady goes to Europe to prostitute herself”.

Though a father himself, Chidiebere, like others interviewed, does not know that children are trafficked to other countries and within Nigeria as well.

Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) April to September 2018 report indicates females are the overwhelming majority of identified victims in Nigeria. According to the report, most rescued victims are now from Kano State, closely followed by Edo State. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), founded in 2003 in response to the country’s high rate of human trafficking, said while most of the victims of trafficking here are women, children and men now make up a significant portion of trafficked victims compared to a decade ago.

• In a 2014 report,  NAPTIP said children comprised 28 percent of detected victims, and men, 21 percent. 
• NAPTIP said that the two most-reported human trafficking cases here include cases where women are prostituted internationally and the employment of children as domestic workers. In many cases these child labourers also suffer physical abuse. 

Human trafficking and modern day slavery involve the illegal trade of people for exploitation or commercial gain and is a $150 billion global industry.

Two thirds of this figure — $99 billion — is generated from commercial sexual exploitation, while another $51 billion results from forced economic exploitation, including domestic work, agriculture and other economic activities. 

Nigeria remains a source, transit and destination country when it comes to human trafficking. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its 2016 Global Report On Trafficking In Persons says globally more than 500 different trafficking flows were detected between 2012 and 2014.

• In Nigeria, 42 percent of detected victims between 2012 and 2014 were adults, with the remaining numbers accounting for children.
• The UNODC reports 69 countries reported to have detected 21,251 victims from Sub-Saharan Africa between 2012 and 2014. Nigeria had 1,030 detected trafficking victims. Of these, 322 were adults (61 males, 261 females) and 708 were children (458 boys, 250 girls).
• “More recently, reports have surfaced that children in northern Nigeria are being forced by the terrorist group Boko Haram to carry out suicide attacks, the ultimate form of exploitation.
• “Earlier this year, UNICEF reported that suicide attacks by Boko Haram rose 11-fold from 2014 to 2015, and that 20 percent of the attacks were committed by children as young as eight,” the report stated.

Barrister Julie Okah-Donli, the Director General of NAPTIP said parents who give their children away to work as domestics are endangering them. She warned that these kids end up in the hands of human traffickers. 

The 2018 Global Slavery Index Report reveals Nigeria ranks 32/167 of the countries with the highest number of slaves. The report indicates Nigeria produces no fewer than 1,38m slaves. According to Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), the average age of trafficked children in Nigeria, is 15. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

Nigeria’s government agency responsible for tackling trafficking reported in 2016 that 75 percent of children trafficked within the country are trafficked across states, while 23 percent of the kids are trafficked within states. Only two percent of those who are trafficked are trafficked outside the country. The boys in the yellow and pink shirts are pictured transporting goods from the market during school hours. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

In 2006, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) report indicated child trafficking was the third-most common crime in Nigeria after drug trafficking and economic fraud. UNESCO highlighted Nigeria’s gross poverty, corruption, conflict, climate change/resulting migration and Western consumerism as factors which increase vulnerability to being trafficked in the country. The boys in the yellow and pink shirts are pictured transporting items they had begged for from the market during school hours. Like most trafficked children they don’t understand or speak English. These boys spend their days begging for money and food. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

In January, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a report stating that the number of modern day child slaves constitute almost one-third of all global victims. A young boy works at a shop during school hours selling palm oil from morning to night for the ‘madam’ he works for. He said she brought him to Lagos from a village and away from his family. Where the village from where he comes is, he doesn’t recall. When asked by IPS, he said he did not know his age. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

 

A report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) reveals shocking statistics: 99 percent of the 4.8 million victims of commercial sexual exploitation in 2016 were women and girls, with one in five being children. The young girl pictured here has never been to school and has marks from flogging over her hand. She timidly tells IPS that rice fell on her hand, but the signs of beating are clear. She lives with the person for whom she sells rice for and does not know her age. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

The Global Slavery Index reveals women and girls represented 84 percent of the 15.4 million people in forced marriages, and 59 percent of those in private, forced labour. The Index maintains that modern day slavery is most prevalent in Africa with Nigeria being one of the leading countries where the practice thrives. Africa, has no fewer than 9.24 million modern day slaves with an average vulnerability score of 62/100. When young women and children are trafficked to Lagos from Northern Nigeria, mostly Kano and Kaduna state, they have no where they sleep. Often their traffickers make them sleep in the streets and beg for money which they hand over to the person who trafficked them. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

—————————————–

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

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

Related Articles

• Why Prosecuting Human Traffickers in Nigeria is Nothing More than a Mirage
• Beaten and Tortured for a Ransom, Lured by the Promise of a Livelihood
• Human Trafficking – It Came Disguised as the Opportunity of a Lifetime

The post Locked Out – Nigeria’s Trafficked Children Have Never been to School appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

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

The post Locked Out – Nigeria’s Trafficked Children Have Never been to School appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Providencia Solar company inaugurated in 2017 is the first photovoltaic power plant in El Salvador, in the central department of La Paz. With 320,000 solar panels, it is one of the largest solar installations in Central America, whose countries are making efforts to transition their energy mixes to renewable sources. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Luis Felipe López-Calva
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 31 2019 (IPS)

The UN Climate Action Summit 2019, which took place in the days leading up to the 74th UN General Assembly, delivered new pathways and practical actions for governments and private sector to intensify climate action.

Among these, it recognized that the path towards protecting our planet requires a fundamental change in terms of how households, and the society as a whole, produce and consume electricity.

Despite important efforts, we are still not moving slowly in terms of investments in clean energy. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2018 alone global energy-related CO2 emissions rose 1.7 percent to a historic high, driven by higher energy demand.

This #GraphForThought looks at how Latin America and the Caribbean generates and consumes energy, and outlines some elements of the way forward for LAC energy markets.

It highlights that while LAC is a region whose contribution to global carbon emission from energy generation has been relatively low (contributing to less than 8% of total emissions worldwide), it has contributed significantly to the solution by moving firmly into more renewable sources of energy.

Luis Felipe López-Calva

Energy needs to be transformed in order to be useful. Primary sources of energy – those found in nature such as coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear fuels, the sun, wind or rivers – need to be transformed into electricity (a so-called secondary source) to be used by industry, households, services and transportation, among other things.

Additionally, electricity cannot yet be stored at a large scale: it is either used or lost. The process of electricity generation produces a series of effects that inevitably have an impact on people and the environment, albeit some more than others.

That is, social and environmental impacts differ if electricity is generated by burning coal, inundating a valley, or building a wind farm, with effects varying from greenhouse gas emissions, displacement of local populations, and disturbances to local ecosystems (i.e. wind farms threaten flying wildlife).

The goal in energy planning is to balance benefits and costs, aiming ideally to find mechanism that internalize the environmental impact (either through markets or through regulation, both of which require effective governance: clear, stable and credibly enforced rules).

So, how does LAC fare in terms of its energy use? According to a widely used index, the “energy intensity indicator”, LAC is the most efficient region in the world when it comes to energy use.

This index captures the amount of energy needed to generate one dollar of product or service. LAC is also becoming more efficient over time, with the index falling in past years, suggesting that the region is doing relatively more with less energy.

To a large extent due to the presence of large hydroelectric power generators, 52% of LAC’s energy came from renewable sources (by 2013). This is almost three times higher than the global average of 22% and has been increasing steadily over the past two decades

This involves clearly many challenges ahead. Among the most pressing is related precisely to the impact of climate change on renewable energy generation: hydropower may be a highly efficient renewable energy system, but it is becoming less reliable due to changing weather patterns.

This has been exacerbated by the effect of the El Niño and La Niña phenomena, which strongly influence rain levels in the region. In parts of South America, these lead to reduced rains and to droughts that hinder the capacity to generate electricity from hydro sources, resulting in a need to increase the generation of electricity based on fossil fuels to be able to meet growing demands.

In other parts of the region, namely the deepest southern end of the continent, these phenomena produce extreme increases in rain, resulting in an unprecedented increase of water levels that affect families and lead to high vulnerability for the populations.

It is also crucial to understand the distributional impacts of continuing the transition towards renewable sources of energy in LAC. Energy transitions will have unequal distribution of their costs and benefits, particularly for communities that depend on traditional energy infrastructure for their livelihoods.

Rising fuel prices can also trigger protests, as we have seen in various countries in the region including Brazil, Mexico, and most recently Ecuador (although, in this case, the rise in price was not explicitly due to a transition to renewable sources but its was clearly related to “pricing the carbon right”, by the phasing out of fuel subsidies).

Inclusiveness and affordability, as well as a comprehensive understanding of winners, losers, and potential instruments for compensation and mitigation, will be critical components for a sustainable transition.

So, what is the future of energy in LAC? While hydropower will continue to be the largest energy source in the region for a while, exploiting its complementarities with other renewable energy sources will be key to ensure sustainability.

This change is facilitated by the fact that technological advances have allowed for a reduction in cost and improvement in efficiency of using these renewable sources (solar and wind, for example). Countries addressing diversification efforts are working to create the enabling policy and regulatory environments for other renewable sources –such as wind and solar– to flourish.

For example, recent auctions in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Peru have helped to accelerate the deployment of thousands of megawatts of wind and solar energy in the region. Opportunities for investments are vast.

Promoting the use of clean energy in efficient ways is a critical objective in our fight against climate change. LAC has been at the forefront in the use of renewable sources, being a relatively low carbon emitter.

However, there are challenges ahead, with the regional demand for energy expected to keep growing as countries develop and poverty levels fall. Investments and changes in the policy environment will be needed to continue to transition towards sustainable renewable sources of energy.

As Nick Stern has stated recently: if we get it right, clean energy –and climate action in general– is the inclusive growth story of the twenty first century.

The post Going with the Wind: Transition to Clean Energy in Latin America & the Caribbean appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Luis Felipe López-Calva is UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean

The post Going with the Wind: Transition to Clean Energy in Latin America & the Caribbean appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Pacific island is one of the countries worst affected by sea-level rise. Credit: UNICEF

By Farhana Haque Rahman
ROME, Oct 31 2019 (IPS)

Barely a week passes without alarming news of the most recent scientific research into the global climate crisis compounding a growing sense of urgency, particularly the impact on small island states from rising sea levels and extreme weather.

Latest findings suggest that several hundred million more people than previously thought are at risk of coastal flooding due to climate change. Climate Central, a non-profit research and news organisation, found data used in past calculations overstated the elevation of many low-lying coastal communities.

And for the people of the Bahamas who had just endured Hurricane Dorian, the most intense tropical cyclone on record to hit their islands, it came as little surprise when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) soon after released its landmark special report on the planet’s oceans and frozen regions, warning of “multiple climate-related hazards” for coastal regions.

“The ocean is warmer, more acidic and less productive,” the IPCC report stated.

The “Blue Pacific” concept sees the island states establishing themselves as “large ocean states” and guardians of the region rather than “small island states”

Oceans are absorbing heat twice as fast as just two decades ago, with hundreds of billions of tonnes of melting ice raising sea levels at an average rate of 3.6 millimetres a year, more than twice as fast as during the last century.

If greenhouse gas emissions “continue to increase strongly”, the IPCC report said, then levels could rise more than a metre by 2100.

Some island states in the Pacific face becoming uninhabitable. As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres noted while visiting Tuvalu, the sea level rise in some Pacific countries is four times greater than the world average, posing “an existential threat” to several island states.

Against this background the UN COP25 climate change summit scheduled to be held in Santiago in December had been dubbed the Blue COP, with expectations of a focus on the oceans and commitments of aid to poorer nations most at risk. So it comes as a serious blow that President Sebastian Pinera has just announced that Chile is calling off its hosting of COP25 because of mass anti-government protests rocking the country.

While the UN anxiously looks for an alternative venue (and Santiago had been the second choice after Brazil’s newly elected president, Jair Bolsonaro, pulled out of hosting it), the small island states of the Pacific will be making their voices heard as they seek to confirm themselves in the role of custodians of the world’s largest region.

It is an existential struggle but it is not a blame game however.

Farhana Haque Rahman

As Micronesia’s President David Panuelo declared last week in The Diplomat: “Rather than point fingers, we must all point the way toward solutions.”

“No single country created this problem, and certainly a small country like ours is bearing far greater responsibility for the solution than we ever contributed to the crisis in the first place. But we sit shoulder to shoulder in a coalition which has set a goal of growing economies while achieving 30 percent marine protection globally,” he wrote in a plea for action to save the oceans.

“Everyone must do more when garbage patches larger than entire countries float in the Pacific, and rising carbon dioxide levels increase ocean acidity and devastate coral reefs and marine life.”

The Pacific Community, the principal scientific and technical organisation in the region and founded as the SPC in 1947, counts 22 Pacific island countries and territories among its members who see themselves as the “tip of the spear” in terms of the impacts of climate change and their efforts to adapt.

SPC has recently established the Pacific Community Centre for Ocean Science (PCCOS) to provide the framework to “focus its scientific and technical assistance on providing solutions that will build, sustain, and drive blue economies in Pacific Island countries and territories” and support SDG 14 of conserving and sustainably using oceans and marine resources.

The SPC’s new and growing Pacific Data Hub is a public resource of data and publications on the Pacific across key sectors, from education and human rights to oceans and geoscience.

Such initiatives reflect how Pacific Island states have grown more assertive in their diplomacy, becoming more active in global multilateral forums and using their voices and votes for increased leverage rather than the old reliance on support from Australia and New Zealand.

The “Blue Pacific” concept sees the island states establishing themselves as “large ocean states” and guardians of the region rather than “small island states”. As stewards of the Pacific with their cultural identity shaped by the ocean, the Blue Pacific framework seeks to establish leadership on issues, with smart policies backed by scientific expertise and data.

As Micronesia’s president has reminded us, the climate crisis is neither abstract nor “tomorrow’s faraway challenge”. It is happening now and as the IPCC’s special report on the oceans and cryosphere warned in September the crisis is gathering speed, as seen in the recent acceleration of sea level rise.

In Antarctica the rate of ice loss tripled in the decade 2007-2016. May and August in 2019 were the warmest on record for the Arctic while this year saw the summer minimum extent of sea ice reaching a joint-second lowest in 40 years of satellite records.

As summarised by Carbon Brief, the IPCC warns that this accelerating ice loss, and the more rapid sea level rises it causes, will continue to gather pace over this century regardless of whether greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. The “likely” maximum rise of 1.1 metres by 2100 is some 10cm above the top-end estimate from its previous estimate, while a rise of 2 metres cannot be ruled out.

Such warnings were intended to provide input at COP25 for world leaders who face mounting calls to adopt more ambitious goals for carbon emission cuts. Those negotiations will not be happening in December in Santiago after all. An alternative must be found urgently.

The post Red Alert for Blue Planet and Small Island States 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 Red Alert for Blue Planet and Small Island States appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Old taxi Park in Uganda's Capital Kampala. Credit Wambi Michael/IPS

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 31 2019 (IPS)

Over half of the world’s population now live in cities, with numbers expected to double by 2050, but while urbanization poses serious challenges, cities can also be powerhouses for sustainable development; something the UN is spotlighting on World Cities Day, marked 31 October. 

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) will host a celebration at its Paris Headquarters on Thursday, convening representatives from all corners of the world for discussions on how cities can combat the climate crisis, create more inclusive urban spaces, and contribute to technical innovation.

Cities provide a wealth of opportunities, jobs included, and generate over 80 per cent of gross national product across the globe, according to UN estimates. Urban areas also account for between 60 and 80 per cent of all energy consumption, despite only occupying three per cent of the planet’s surface and are responsible for three quarters of all greenhouse gas emissions

 Cities provide a wealth of opportunities, jobs included, and generate over 80 per cent of gross national product across the globe, according to UN estimates. Urban areas also account for between 60 and 80 per cent of all energy consumption, despite only occupying three per cent of the planet’s surface and are responsible for three quarters of all greenhouse gas emissions.

In addressing these pros and cons, the Organisation has advocated for a “people-centred” development model, and aims to “re-humanise cities” in the face of trends impacting them, from population growth, demographic shifts, and increasing the risk of disasters induced by climate change.

This year’s theme: “Changing the world: innovations and better life for future generations” spotlights the role of technology and young people in building sustainable cities. To do so, Thursday’s commemorative event will be organized along four key discussion themes: ‘Cities 4 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’, ‘Cities 4 Climate Action’, ‘Cities 4 Communities’, and ‘Cities 4 the Future’.

In line with its multidisciplinary mandate, UNESCO’s 2004 Creative Cities Network continues to harness the various ways cities spanning the globe are placing creativity and cultural industries at the heart of their development plans.

From gastronomy in Tucson, Arizona, to design in Nagoya, Japan, the network engages 180 cities in total, which integrate creative approaches in their development plans. See the complete list of cities, and their creative undertakings here.

For World Cities Day this year, UNESCO is partnering with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), UN-Habitat, and refugee agency (UNHCR) to amplify the concerted action of the United Nations for cities alongside their planners and other urban players.

The UN-proclaimed World Day serves as a call for States, municipalities and city dwellers to work together for transformative change and sustainable strategies for cities, as urbanisation continues to swell.

 

This story was originally published by UN News

The post As Urbanisation Grows, Cities Unveil Sustainable Development Solutions appeared first on Inter Press Service.