Wind turbines overlooking Vyas Chhatri, traditional architecture of Jasalmer district in Rajasthan. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS
by Athar Parvaiz (new delhi)
Inter Press Service
NEW DELHI, Nov 04 (IPS) – While India continues to rely heavily on coal, the south Asian economic giant is also aggressively pushing renewable energy production, especially after the costs of renewable energy production have fallen drastically in recent years around the world.
But experts say that India—the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs)—has to face many headwinds for achieving its net zero target by 2070 and before that, reaching the target of a 45 percent reduction in GHG emission intensity by 2030 from 2005 levels.
According to the experts, addressing the gaps in policies and strategies are some of the main measures India needs to take for a rapid transition to renewable energy sources. But most of them believe phasing out fossil fuels such as coal appears to be a daunting task for India given its huge reliance on them. India ratified the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2016, committing to limit the global average temperature rise to below 2°C by the end of the century.
As part of its first Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), India had pledged to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity of its economy by 33–35 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels. In August 2022, the Indian government revised its NDCs, raising its ambition to a 45% reduction in GHG emission intensity by 2030 from 2005 levels.
The south Asian country has also pledged to become carbon-neutral or achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2070, an announcement made by the Indian government in 2021 during CoP 26 in UK. According to the UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, Simon Stiell, Decarbonisation is the biggest transformation of the global economy of this century.
Coal to Stay ‘For India’s Development’
Presently, the contribution of coal for India’s energy generation is 72 percent and accounts for 65 percent of its fossil fuel CO2 emissions. The contribution of coal for energy generation in India, say the experts, is not going to change anytime soon.
“Coal cannot be removed from India’s energy mix in the next 20 years. We require coal because we need a development-led transition, not a transition-led development,” said Amit Garg, a professor at Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad-Gujarat. “We can adopt new technologies and try new ways, but we in India cannot eradicate coal just yet.”
Anjan Kumar Sinha, an energy expert who is the technical director of Intertek, told IPS that energy security in India is currently dependent on coal and would take time for its phasing out given how the country is yet to be ready for a rapid phase-out of coal, which is currently extremely important for India’s energy security.
“In phasing it out, we have to improve flexible operations of coal-based plants for electricity dispatch, especially with increasing levels of renewable energy,” he said.
According to Sinha, coal being an important energy resource which India has, “we need to wash its sins” with a continuous increase in production of renewables. India, Sinha said, “has to save itself… it can’t leave it to the rest of the world.”
India has been hailed for the progress the country has achieved in its clean energy transition in recent years. The Indian government aims to increase non-fossil fuel capacity to 500 GW and source 50 percent of its energy from renewables by 2030.
” progress seems encouraging on several fronts. Today, India stands fourth globally in total renewable capacity, demonstrating a 400 percent growth over the last decade,” notes an article published by researchers of the Bharti Institute of Public Policy at the Indian School of Business.
But, despite this progress, the authors say that India faces a lot of challenges as it still remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
India’s Growth and Green Journey
With India’s economy expected to expand rapidly in the coming years, there will be an increase in demand for resources, and the environmental footprints will also increase. According to the latest World Energy Outlook report of the International Energy Agency (IEA), India’s energy consumption will increase by 30 percent by 2030 and 90 percent by 2050, with carbon emissions from energy use rising by 32 percent and 72 percent in the same period.
If successful in meeting its climate commitments over the next seven years, India could offer a developmental model wherein a country continues to grow and prosper without significantly increasing its energy or carbon footprint. But the path ahead for India’s energy transition is full of significant challenges.
“This is one of the most challenging times for India. We have the challenge of growth, jobs and energy consumption, which we have to balance with environmental considerations,” B V R Subrahmanyam, the CEO of NITI Ayog, India’s top official think tank, was quoted as saying by India’s national daily, The Times of India, on September 11, 2024.
But he has emphasized that fossil fuels will continue to drive the country’s growth. “It is no longer about growth or sustainability, but growth and sustainability,” he was quoted as saying.
Experts also believe that there are hurdles along the road as the country seeks to phase out polluting energy sources.
According to this article published in Outlook magazine on October 30, uncertainties such as low renewable energy (RE) investments in recent years, land availability, high intermittency of renewables, higher costs of panels due to import duties and distribution companies that are tied up in long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) not buying new RE power are some of the major concerns.
“While there has been progress on deployment of electric vehicles in the country, upfront costs and a lack of reliable charging infrastructure pose challenges in scaling up the initiatives… for the industrial sector, fossilized manufacturing capacities will create decarbonisation challenges,” the article says.
Raghav Pachouri, associate director, Low Carbon Pathways and Modelling, Vasudha Foundation, highlighted how storage can play an important role in making energy transition successful.
“The success of the energy transition to renewable energy lies with the integration of storage. Current capacities are limited, and the quantum of requirements is huge.”
Moreover, Pachouri says, infrastructure for electric vehicles remains inadequate, with fewer than 2,000 public charging stations as of 2023.
Residents pose behind the sprinkler that irrigates an alfalfa field thanks to the energy generated by a photovoltaic panel installed on Fanny Lastra’s property in Mirador de Bío Bío, Chile. Credit: Courtesy of Fresia Lastra
by Orlando Milesi (santiago)
Inter Press Service
SANTIAGO, Oct 29 (IPS) – The production of solar energy by means of panels installed on small farmers’ properties or on the roofs of community organisations is starting to directly benefit more and more farmers in Chile.
This energy enables technified irrigation systems, pumping water and lowering farmers’ bills by supporting their business. It also enables farmers’ cooperatives to share the fruits of their surpluses.
The huge solar and wind energy potential of this elongated country of 19.5 million people is the basis for a shift that is beginning to benefit not only large generators.
The potential capacity of solar and wind power generation is estimated at 2,400 gigawatts, which is 80 times more than the total capacity of the current Chilean energy matrix.
The mayor of Las Cabras, Juan Pablo Flores, first on the left, on the roof of the building of his Municipality along with employees who installed the photovoltaic panels that will allow energy savings of more than US$ 10,000 per year. Credit: Courtesy of Municipality of Las Cabras
Two farming families
Fanny Lastra, 55, was born in the municipality of Mulchén, 550 kilometres south of Santiago, located in the centre of the country in the Bío Bío region. She has lived in the rural sector of Mirador del Bío Bío in the town since she was 8.
“We won a grant of 12 million pesos (US$12,600) to install a photovoltaic system with sprinklers to make better use of the little water we have on our five-hectare farm and have good alfalfa crops to feed the animals,” she told IPS from her home town.
She refers to the resources provided to applicants who are selected on the basis of their background and the situation of their farms by two government bodies, mostly through grants: the National Irrigation Commission (CNR) and the Institute for Agricultural Development (Indap).
“Before we had to irrigate all night, we didn’t sleep, and now we can optimise irrigation. The panel gives us the energy to expel the water through sprinklers. In the future we plan to apply for another photovoltaic panel to draw water and fill a storage pool,” Lastra said.
The area has received abundant rainfall this year, but a larger pond would allow to store water for dry periods, which are increasingly recurrent.
“We have water shares (rights), but there are so many of us small farmers that we have to schedule. In my case, every nine days I have 28 hours of water. That’s why we applied for another project,” she said.
Lastra works with her children on the plot, which is mainly dedicated to livestock.
The conversion of agricultural land like hers into plots for second homes, which is rampant in many regions of Chile, has also reached Bío Bío and caused Lastra problems. For example, dogs abandoned by their owners have killed 50 of her lambs in recent times.
That is why she will gradually switch to raising larger livestock to continue with Granny’s Tradition, as she christened her production of fresh, mature cheeses and dulce de leche.
Marisol Pérez, 53, produces vegetables in greenhouses and outdoors on her half-hectare plot in the town of San Ramón, within the municipality of Quillón, 448 kilometres south of Santiago, also in the Bío Bío region.
In February 2023 she was affected by a huge fire. “Two greenhouses, a warehouse with motor cultivators, fumigators and all the machinery burnt down. And a poultry house with 200 birds that cost 4500 pesos (US$ 4.7) each. Thank God we saved part of the house and the photovoltaic panel,” She told IPS from his home town.
Pérez has been working the land with her sister and their husbands for 11 years.
“We started with irrigation and a solar panel. After the fire we reapplied to the CNR. As the panel didn’t burn, they helped us with the greenhouse. The government gives us a certain amount and we have to put in at least 10%,” she explained.
The first subsidy was the equivalent of US$1,053 and the second, after the fire, was US$842. With both she was able to reinstall the drip system and rebuild the greenhouse, now made of metal.
“Having a solar panel allows us to save a lot. Before, we were paying almost 200,000 pesos (US$210) a month. With what we saved with the panel, we now pay 6,000 pesos (US$6.3)”, she explained with satisfaction.
In her opinion, “the solar panel is a very good thing. If I don’t use water for the greenhouses, I use it for my house. We live off what we harvest and plant. That’s our life. And I am happy like that,” she said.
Ignacio Mena, Coopeumo network administrator, in front of the warehouse where photovoltaic panels were installed. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS
The cases of one cooperative and two municipalities
The proliferation of solar panels is also due to the drop in their price. Solarity, a Chilean solar power company, reported that prices are at historic lows.
In 2021 its value per kilowatt (kWp) was 292 dollars. It increased to 300 in 2022, then dropped to 202 and reached 128 dollars in 2024.
In 2021 the Cooperativa Intercomunal Peumo (Coopeumo) commissioned the first community photovoltaic plant in Chile. Today it has 54.2 kWp installed in two plants, with about 120 panels in total.
The energy generated is used in some of its own facilities and the surplus is injected into the Compañía General de Electricidad (CGE), a private distributor, which pays its contribution every month.
This amount contributes to improving support for its 350 members, all farmers in the area, including technical assistance, the sale of agricultural inputs, grain marketing and tax consultancy.
Coopeumo’s goals also include reducing carbon dioxide (C02) emissions into the atmosphere and benefiting its members.
It also benefits the municipalities of Pichidegua and Las Cabras, located 167 and 152 kilometres south of Santiago, as well as school, health and neighbourhood establishments.
“The energy savings in a typical month, like August 2024, was 492,266 pesos (US$518),” said Ignacio Mena, 37, and a computer engineer who works as a network administrator for Coopeumo, based in the municipality of Peumo, in the O’Higgins region, which borders the Santiago Metropolitan Region to the south.
Interviewed by IPS at his office in Pichidegua, he said the construction of the first plant cost the equivalent of US$42,105, contributed equally by Coopeumo and the private foundation Agencia de Sostenibilidad Energética.
Constanza López, 35, a risk prevention engineer and head of the environmental unit of the Las Cabras municipality, appreciates the contribution of the panels installed on the roof of the municipal building. They have an output of 54 kilowatts and have been in operation since 2023.
“We awarded them through the Energy Sustainability Agency. They funded 30 percent and we funded the rest,” she told IPS at the municipal offices. “This year is the first that the programme is fully operational and we should reach maximum production,” she said.
In the case of the municipality of Las Cabras, the estimated annual savings is about US$10,605.
An expert explains to a group of small farmers at Mirador de Bío Bío the benefits and operation of solar panels. Credit: Courtesy of Fresia Lastra
Panels and family farming, a virtuous cycle
There is a virtuous cycle between the use of panels and savings for small farmers. The Ministry of Energy estimates this saving at around 15% for small farms.
“The use of solar technology for self-consumption is a viable alternative for users in the agricultural sector. More and more systems are being installed, which make it possible to lower customers‘ electricity bills,” the ministry said in a written response.
Since 2015, successive governments have promoted the use of renewable energy, particularly photovoltaic systems for self-consumption, within the agricultural sector.
“There has been a steady growth in the number of projects using renewable energy for self-consumption. In total, 1,741 irrigation projects have been carried out with a capacity of 13,852 kW and a total investment of 59,951 million pesos (US$63.1 million),” the ministry said.
The CNR told IPS that so far in 2024 it has subsidised more than 1,000 projects, submitted by farmers across Chile.
“This is an investment close to 78 billion pesos (US$82.1 million), taking into account subsidies close to 62 billion pesos (US$65.2) plus the contribution of irrigators,” it said.
Of these projects, at least 270 incorporate non-conventional renewable energies, “such as photovoltaic systems associated with irrigation works”, it added.
According to the National Electricity Coordinator, the autonomous technical body that coordinates the entire Chilean electricity system, between September 2023 and August 2024, combined wind and solar generation in Chile amounted to 28,489 gigawatt hours.
In the first quarter of 2024, non-conventional renewable energies, such as solar and wind among others, accounted for 41% of electricity generation in Chile, according to figures from the same technical body.
Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 22 (IPS) – New institutional economics (NIE) has received another so-called Nobel prize, ostensibly for again claiming that good institutions and democratic governance ensure growth, development, equity and democracy.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson (AJR) are well known for their influential cliometric work. AJR have elaborated earlier laureate Douglass North‘s claim that property rights have been crucial to growth and development.
But the trio ignore North’s more nuanced later arguments. For AJR, ‘good institutions’ were transplanted by Anglophone European (‘Anglo’) settler colonialism. While perhaps methodologically novel, their approach to economic history is reductionist, skewed and misleading.
NIE caricatures
AJR fetishises property rights as crucial for economic inclusion, growth and democracy. They ignore and even negate the very different economic analyses of John Stuart Mill, Dadabhai Naoroji, John Hobson and John Maynard Keynes, among other liberals.
Historians and anthropologists are very aware of various claims and rights to economic assets, such as cultivable land, e.g., usufruct. Even property rights are far more varied and complex.
The legal creation of ‘intellectual property rights’ confers monopoly rights by denying other claims. However, NIE’s Anglo-American notion of property rights ignores the history of ideas, sociology of knowledge, and economic history.
More subtle understandings of property, imperialism and globalisation in history are conflated. AJR barely differentiates among various types of capital accumulation via trade, credit, resource extraction and various modes of production, including slavery, serfdom, peonage, indenture and wage labour.
John Locke, Wikipedia’s ‘father of liberalism‘, also drafted the constitutions of the two Carolinas, both American slave states. AJR’s treatment of culture, creed and ethnicity is reminiscent of Samuel Huntington’s contrived clashing civilisations. Most sociologists and anthropologists would cringe.
Colonial and postcolonial subjects remain passive, incapable of making their own histories. Postcolonial states are treated similarly and regarded as incapable of successfully deploying investment, technology, industrial and developmental policies.
Thorstein Veblen and Karl Polanyi, among others, have long debated institutions in political economy. But instead of advancing institutional economics, NIE’s methodological opportunism and simplifications set it back.
Another NIE Nobel
For AJR, property rights generated and distributed wealth in Anglo-settler colonies, including the US and Britain’s dominions. Their advantage was allegedly due to ‘inclusive’ economic and political institutions due to Anglo property rights.
Variations in economic performance are attributed to successful transplantation and settler political domination of colonies. More land was available in the thinly populated temperate zone, especially after indigenous populations shrank due to genocide, ethnic cleansing and displacement.
These were far less densely populated for millennia due to poorer ‘carrying capacity’. Land abundance enabled widespread ownership, deemed necessary for economic and political inclusion. Thus, Anglo-settler colonies ‘succeeded’ in instituting such property rights in land-abundant temperate environments.
Such colonial settlement was far less feasible in the tropics, which had long supported much denser indigenous populations. Tropical disease also deterred new settlers from temperate areas. Thus, settler life expectancy became both cause and effect of institutional transplantation.
The difference between the ‘good institutions‘ of the ‘West’ – including Anglo-settler colonies – and the ‘bad institutions’ of the ‘Rest’ is central to AJR’s analysis. White settlers’ lower life expectancy and higher morbidity in the tropics are then blamed on the inability to establish good institutions.
Anglo-settler privilege
However, correct interpretation of statistical findings is crucial. Sanjay Reddy offers a very different understanding of AJR’s econometric analysis.
The greater success of Anglo settlers could also be due to colonial ethnic bias in their favour rather than better institutions. Unsurprisingly, imperial racist Winston Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoplescelebrates such Anglophone Europeans.
AJR’s evidence, criticised as misleading on other counts, does not necessarily support the idea that institutional quality (equated with property rights enforcement) really matters for growth, development and equality.
Reddy notes that international economic circumstances favouring Anglos have shaped growth and development. British Imperial Preference favoured such settlers over tropical colonies subjected to extractivist exploitation. Settler colonies also received most British investments abroad.
For Reddy, enforcing Anglo-American private property rights has been neither necessary nor sufficient to sustain economic growth. For instance, East Asian economies have pragmatically used alternative institutional arrangements to incentivise catching up.
He notes that “the authors’ inverted approach to concepts” has confused “the property rights-entrenching economies that they favor as ‘inclusive’, by way of contrast to resource-centered ‘extractive’ economies.”
Property vs popular rights
AJR’s claim that property rights ensure an ‘inclusive’ economy is also far from self-evident. Reddy notes that a Rawlsian property-owning democracy with widespread ownership contrasts sharply with a plutocratic oligarchy.
Nor does AJR persuasively explain how property rights ensured political inclusion. Protected by the law, colonial settlers often violently defended their acquired land against ‘hostile’ indigenes, denying indigenous land rights and claiming their property.
‘Inclusive’ political concessions in the British Empire were mainly limited to the settler-colonial dominions. In other colonies, self-governance and popular franchises were only grudgingly conceded under pressure.
Prior exclusion of indigenous rights and claims enabled such inclusion, especially when surviving ‘natives’ were no longer deemed threatening. Traditional autochthonous rights were circumscribed, if not eliminated, by settler colonists.
Entrenching property rights has also consolidated injustice and inefficiency. Many such rights proponents oppose democracy and other inclusive and participatory political institutions that have often helped mitigate conflicts.
The Nobel committee is supporting NIE’s legitimisation of property/wealth inequality and unequal development. Rewarding AJR also seeks to re-legitimise the neoliberal project at a time when it is being rejected more widely than ever before.
Opinion by Danielle Nierenberg (baltimore, maryland usa)
Inter Press Service
BALTIMORE, Maryland USA, Oct 14 (IPS) – World Food Day 2024
World Food Day seems like it should be a time to celebrate. A day to eat delicious meals and enjoy the rich traditions and cultures of food around the globe.
But it’s difficult to celebrate when conflict, the climate crisis, and our biodiversity loss crisis leave at least 733 million people hungry around the world. Dr. Evan Fraser from the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph calls these cascading crises. And the results are dire.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in 2023, one in 11 people worldwide faced hunger last year. And one in five people in Africa experience hunger.
If current trends continue, more than 582 million people will be chronically undernourished in 2030, with half of these folks living on the continent of Africa, according to FAO and four additional United Agencies. That’s less than 6 years away, which means we have a lot of work to do.
Fortunately, we already know what works. The theme of this year’s World Food Day is Right to Foods for a Better Life and a Better Future. Everyone deserves healthy, nutrient rich, safe, and delicious food.
And the United Nations says, “A greater diversity of nutritious foods should be available in our fields, in our markets, and on our tables, for the benefit of all.” I would add that we also need a diversity of people, practices and thought to help feed the world.
This year the prestigious World Food Prize will be awarded to the Special Envoy for Food Security, Dr. Cary Fowler, and agricultural scientist Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin. These two individuals, according to the World Food Prize Foundation, are being awarded for “their extraordinary leadership in preserving and protecting the world’s heritage of crop biodiversity and mobilizing this critical resource to defend against threats to global food security.”
And Dr. Fowler is working to encourage farmers and governments to grow “opportunity crops” like cowpea, millet, sorghum, and other ancient and resilient foods. These crops have often been overlooked in favor of maize, rice, and other so-called staples, but they have, again, the opportunity to solve a multitude of problems. They build soil health and if storage and processing can improve in places like sub-Saharan Africa, they can be profitable.
Another solution—and it should be obvious—is empowering women and girls. We are systematically underutilizing at least 50 percent of the world’s population. Equal rights for women are not only an ethical and moral imperative, but can help solve the hunger crisis.
According to FAO, if women had the same access to resources as men—education, access to credit and financial services, extension, and respect—they could lift as many as 100 million people out of hunger. And equal rights are good for the economy. And according to Betty Chinyamunyamu of the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi, “gender integration makes good business sense.”
In addition, women are often growing the foods that are actually nutritious—including those opportunity crops, but also fruits and vegetables that contribute to agrobiodiversity. “Women’s empowerment has a positive impact on agricultural production, food security, diets and child nutrition,” states FAO’s Status of Women in Agrifood Systems. Making sure that women are empowered in all aspects of their lives just makes common sense.
Moreover, farmers—small, medium, and large—literally need a seat at the table, from in person input at international dialogues like COP29, the U.N. Climate Change Conference, to co-creating technologies with scientists and entrepreneurs that will actually solve the problems that farmers are experiencing in fields and ranches.
Good Nature Agro in Zambia, for example, is developing with farmers ways to prevent post-harvest losses and more sustainably manage their farmland. And the organization Global Alliance of Latinos in Agriculture aims to create a world where farmers and ranchers thrive globally—and they plan to bring hundreds of producers to COP30 in Belem, Brazil next year.
This World Food Day (October 16), the Arrell Food Institute is bringing together agri-food leaders and experts dive into solutions like diversity, empowering women, and putting farmers in the drivers’ seat to create a more safe and sustainable global food system. A food system that works for everyone.
Hopefully, in the not-so-distant future, World Food Day will actually be a day to celebrate.
Danielle Nierenberg is President and Founder, Food Tank, which describes itself as a global community that inspires, motivates, and activates positive transformation in how we produce and consume food.
The iconic Chinese fishing nets along the Kerala coast offer a picturesque scene that draws tourists from around the world. However, the fishworkers that have used them for centuries livelihoods are in peril. Credit: Aishwarya Bajpai/IPS
Opinion by Aishwarya Bajpai (kochi, india)
Inter Press Service
KOCHI, India, Oct 10 (IPS) – Fishworkers are often invisible in discussions about climate change, yet they are at the heart of food security, feeding millions while struggling to feed their own families. Their fight for survival is not just about tradition or livelihood—it’s about justice. Shouldn’t their futures be at the forefront of climate justice debates?Every morning before dawn, fishworkers along the shores of Kochi, Kerala, head out to sea, casting their nets in the shadow of the iconic Cheenavala—the Chinese fishing nets that have become a symbol of their community. I witnessed this time-honored tradition, once a reliable means of survival, now a daily gamble, a fight against unpredictable seas and shrinking fish populations.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed how vulnerable they are; despite being classified as essential workers, they were left without the protections they needed.
And now, as climate change tightens its grip, these fishworkers find themselves on the front lines of a new crisis. Rising sea temperatures, erratic weather, and depleting fish stocks have pushed them further into despair, forcing them to navigate a future as uncertain as the waters they depend on.
Martin, a fishworker from Kochi, Kerala, who smiled and invited me on his boat, has been fishing for over 25 years, reflecting on the mounting hardships. After a while explaining to me about the huge boat and the process of fishing, he said, “In these difficult times, when the government should be supporting us after generations of families have relied on fishing, we are left with nothing and are desperate for help. We purchase our tools and equipment for fishing, yet there’s no assistance from the government for education or healthcare.”
Fishworkers face uncertain future due to climate change and a lack of support from government. Credit: Aishwarya Bajpai/IPS
Martin continued, “Five to six people work on a boat, and money has to be given to the owner as well. We have started to rely on tourism now, where we invite tourists, especially foreigners, onto our boats (private property) to explain our craft and fishing process, for which we sometimes get compensated. Some are generous, and some are not! This used to be the only way of earning in the rough season (Monsoon Fishing Ban), but now, after the climate change, this has become the only source of income for us.”
Kochi, once known as Cochin, was a major global trading hub. It drew merchants from Arabia and China in the 1400s, and later the Portuguese established Cochin as their protectorate, making it the first capital of Portuguese India in 1530.
Today, the city’s rich architectural heritage, along with the iconic Cheenavala (Chinese fishing nets), are major tourist attractions. Fishermen here use these Chinese fishing nets as a traditional method of fishing.
Believed to have been introduced by the Chinese explorer Zheng He from the court of Kublai Khan, these iconic nets became a part of Kochi’s landscape between 1350 and 1450 AD. The technique, which is quite impressive to witness, involves large, shore-based nets that are suspended in the air by bamboo/teakwood supports and lowered into the water to catch fish without the need to venture out to sea. The entire structure is counterbalanced by heavy stones, making it an eco-friendly practice that preserves marine life and vegetation, relying solely on natural materials without harmful gadgets.
Once a vital tool for sustaining the livelihoods of Kochi’s fishworkers, the traditional Cheenavala fishing nets have now become a symbol of a deepening crisis. Climate change, particularly the warming of the Arabian Sea, has drastically reduced fish populations.
Ironically, the government profits from promoting this iconic symbol even as the seafood industry faces closures, with four export-oriented fish processing units shutting down in Kerela in recent months due to the shortage of fish. This stark contrast highlights the growing disconnect between tradition and survival in the face of climate change.
The walls of Kerala are adorned with graffiti advocating for fishworkers and marine biodiversity. In Kochi, a mural reads, “Save the largest fish on Earth,” calling attention to the need for conservation. Credit: Aishwarya Bajpai/IPS
Despite the Chinese fishing nets being a major tourist attraction, the government has shown little or no interest in preserving them. The process started in 2014 when a Chinese delegation, led by Hao Jia, a senior official of the Chinese embassy in India, met with Kochi’s then-mayor, Tony Chammany, to help renovate the nets and proposed constructing a pavement along Fort Kochi beach.
KJ Sohan, former mayor of Kochi and president of the Chinese Fishing Net Owners’ Association, expressed his support for the Chinese initiative to preserve the traditional fishing nets. He emphasized that such large nets, rooted in ancient techniques, are unique to this region. However, he also highlighted the significant governmental neglect of these nets. Insurance companies refuse to cover them, and they need to be replaced twice a year, which incurs substantial costs.
The Tourism Department later instructed the Kerala Industrial and Technology Consultancy Organisation (KITCO) to refurbish 11 of these nets and allotted 2.4 crore rupees (24 million), along with teakwood and Malabar for the repairs.
The authorities had initially refused to release funds directly, requiring the owners to start the refurbishment first, with promises of staggered payments. It has recently come to light that the boat owners, many of whom took out high-interest loans to begin the renovation, are now in financial distress as they have yet to receive the promised government funds, despite completing the work over a year ago.
A Chinese fishing net on the coast of Kochi, Kerala (India). Credit: Aishwarya Bajpai/IPS
Many took out loans and installed new coconut timber stumps, but even after nearly finishing the work, they are still waiting for the funds. This has left the fishworkers in debt while authorities cite GST-related issues for the delay. The owners argue they are exempt from the tax.
Fishworkers, both men and women, are often invisible in discussions about climate change, yet they are at the heart of food security, feeding millions while struggling to feed their own families. Their fight for survival is not just about tradition or livelihood—it’s about justice. If the government continues to turn a blind eye, Kerala’s fishworkers may have no choice but to seek support elsewhere, from international bodies, non-governmental organizations, or global climate finance mechanisms. Their struggles must be recognized, and their voices amplified in the push for climate justice.
Kerala’s fishworkers are not just battling the seas—they are fighting for their future. Without immediate action and meaningful support, we risk losing not only their livelihoods but an entire way of life. If the government cannot rise to the occasion, the world must step in to ensure that these communities do not slip into obscurity.
NEW YORK, Oct 04 (IPS) – Khalid Saifullah, Fellow, Save Bangladesh USA Inc.The commonly used Bangla phrase for siphoning off money out of the country – “taka pachar” – is rather misleading. Because taka, the Bangladeshi currency, is never taken out of Bangladesh. It’s not useful anywhere else. What goes out is its equivalence in foreign currencies, especially, US dollars. The technical term for such criminal act is Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs). Mistakenly, sometimes IFFs are referred to as money laundering – a processing of criminal proceeds to disguise their illegal origin.
Money laundering and illicit transfers of funds
Although there are some links between money laundering and IFFs, they are not the same activity. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime defines money laundering as “the conversion or transfer of property, knowing that such property is derived from any offense(s), for the purpose of concealing or disguising the illicit origin of the property or of assisting any person who is involved in such offense(s) to evade the legal consequences of his actions”.
On the other hand, Illicit financial flows (IFFs) refer to illegal movements or transfers of money or capital from one country to another. However, sources of such funds may not be illegal (e.g., corruption, smuggling).
In practice, IFFs can also involve ill-gotten money – the worst case as in Bangladesh. The billions of dollars that were taken out of the country were mostly obtained through corruption and stealing of public funds.
How do illegal fund transfers happen?
Nearly US$3.15 billion flows out illicitly from Bangladesh annually. If a common person wants to travel abroad with a few hundred of thousand dollars, they can simply slip it in their pocket and catch a flight which is perfectly legal if that amount is within the legal limit of a country. For example, one can legally take out a maximum of AUD10,000 out of Australia (or bring in) without having to make declaration. For Bangladesh, it is only USD5,000.
But cronies of the Hasina’s kleptocratic regime robbed and transferred millions and billions of dollars. According to a recent report, close to US$150 billion was siphoned off the country during 15 years of kleptocratic Hasina regime’s mis-rule. So, they must have carried out these very illegal activities through legal channels. How did it work though?
Well, it’s very difficult to know for sure, but it is believed that most IFFs happen through trade mis-invoicing or trade-based money laundering. Let’s try to understand the design with an example.
Let’s say, you want to launder one million dollars. Either you or your accomplice have an export-import business. Let’s say you need to import 10,000 units of a product each costing $50. But instead of $50, you declare that their unit value was $150. By “securing” assistance from some key people within the authorities, you get Bangladesh Bank to transmit one and half million dollars as the payment for your grossly over-declared imports to a foreign company you set up for this purpose. You pay the exporter half a million dollars for your legitimate imports, and in the process, you have succeeded in laundering the one million dollars you wanted to get out of Bangladesh. The same can be done for exports but in reverse. This is of course a simplistic example and there can be many creative variations of this menace.
There are reasons to believe that this happened a lot in the case of Bangladesh. Why? Well, to begin with, Bangladesh does have a vibrant export-import sector which can make trade-based money laundering accessible and difficult to trace. Secondly, many of Hasina’s cronies themselves were involved in international trading. Thirdly – and I don’t think many people know this – Bangladesh stopped sharing detailed international trade data with the UN after 2015. There can of course be other explanations for this, but the timing nevertheless raises questions. UN Comtrade, world’s largest source of international trade data, has data on most countries in the world but not Bangladesh, world’s eighth largest population and thirty-fifth largest economy.
We need detailed trade data
International trade data has the special characteristic that it’s a two-sided account. Bangladesh’s export of cotton T-shirts to US is also US’ import of cotton T-shirts from Bangladesh. In practice, there are some other factors at play but overall, this is how it is. Users can easily compare international trade data and any glaring disparities become immediately apparent.
One could argue that this still could be done since Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), Exports Promotion Bureau (EPB) and Bangladesh Bank (BB) all publish external trade data. It would seem so but that’s not really the case. Without going into much details, the data published by these agencies lack the necessary details to be comparable. Their data is at an aggregated level and not disseminated in a comparable manner. EPB doesn’t even publish imports data (it’s probably not in their mandate).
Then, there’s the issue of accuracy. Weeks before Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, BB revised exports data stating that EPB’s figure was 10 billion USD higher than actual exports. The Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus in his most recent address to the public promised to publish accurate trade data. It is a very necessary and welcome step. However, it is not sufficient. We need the necessary details in the data to allow for comparison with our trading partner countries’ data. In particular, we need:
Data by calendar year (Jan-Dec) and not only fiscal year.
Data by monthly frequency.
Breakdown by commodity codes up to at least HS (Harmonized System) 6-digits level. There are around 6,000 HS 6-digits codes available from the World Customs Organization (WCO). These codes can specify a commodity with sufficient details.
Commodity descriptions.
Breakdown by trading partner (ISO codes for country of origin for imports, country of last known destination for exports).
Breakdown by country of consignment (ISO codes for any third country the commodities may have passed through).
Mode of transport (sea, air, road, rail, etc.).
Breakdown by customs procedure codes (for what purpose the commodity was imported or exported).
Breakdown by trade flow (exports, imports, re-exports, etc.)
Value (free-on-board basis for exports; cost, insurance, and freight basis for imports), net weight and quantity.
Towards modernization and automation of financial intelligence
Accurate, timely and detailed trade data is important for analyses of possible trade mis-invoicing but it’s not sufficient in preventing money laundering altogether. What we need is an overhaul and automation of financial intelligence itself.
The backbone of such an automated system should be a Business Register (BR). A BR is exactly what it sounds like – it’s a register of all businesses in a country. A key component of the BR is the unique identifier. Each business or enterprise is assigned a unique ID. Once set up, businesses must be required to use this ID in all types of activities, from setting up bank accounts to trading.
The BR can contain many other information on the businesses including size, sector, economic activities and so on. Thanks to the unique identifier, BR can be used to link data from different domains, e.g., linking trade data with businesses and their banking activities.
Given the treasure trove of linked data available from customs declarations, banks and other sources – much of which cannot be published for public use due to confidentiality- the information can nevertheless be used to build very intelligent and sophisticated systems thanks to statistical modelling, machine learning and artificial intelligence which can flag any suspicious activities in real time. I mean, something has to be “off” in a transaction involving money laundering and the technology is out there to detect it.
The existence of such a system itself could lessen the problem of money laundering to a great extent because it will serve as a strong deterrent. Building this level of data capacity will of course take investment. But looking at the estimated 150 billion dollars laundered by Sheikh Hasina’s kleptocratic regime, it seems the return on investment is very enticing.
Khalid Saifullah is a trained statistician with 14 years of experience working in international organizations.
Achieving the goal of tripling renewables generation capacity by 2030, and more broadly decarbonizing the global electricity system, requires active SPCU involvement. Credit: Bigstock.
Opinion by Leonardo Beltran, Philippe Benoit (washington dc)
Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON DC, Sep 25 (IPS) – The climate community, meeting this week once again on the margins of the UN General Assembly, is continuing to explore ways to triple the world’s installed renewable generation capacity by 2030, a target agreed at last year’s COP 28 international climate negotiations. Much of this discussion has been about mobilizing finance and otherwise getting the private sector, with its massive resources and competence, to step up to the challenge … and what government policies and incentives are needed to spur more investment.
Significantly, most EMDE governments favor state ownership and control over the strategic electricity sector. When this EMDE preference is coupled with the projected dominance of these countries in the future growth of global electricity demand (85% of the expected worldwide increase from 2022 to 2026), the already substantiial weight of government-owned power assets within the global electricity system can be expected to increase over time.
Why are these elements significant? They point to the need for SPCU action in any effort to triple installed renewables capacity globally by 2030.
How can this be accomplished? There are several key ways.
SPCU action should also target joint ventures with private investors. This could take various forms, such as co-investments in new renewables capacity or new government-owned plants operated by the private sector.
SPCUs are in many systems the purchasers of electricity produced by private independent power producers (IPPs). So even if it doesn’t own the power plant, an SPCU can help to promote new renewables generation by providing prospective private investors with a commercially reliable counterparty to buy the IPP’s electricity, as well as supporting robust and transparent competitive bidding processes and other tools to encourage private investment in clean energy.
SPCUs can provide critical complementary/associated infrastructure and systems to back private sector investment in the plants themselves. This might include building a dedicated transmission line to connect a large but remotely situated renewables IPP to the grid. It should also include, at a much smaller scale, SPCU support to households interested in rooftop solar systems which are frequently managed in cooperation with a local publicly-owned utility.
Increasing generation capacity, however, is just a means to an end. Rather, the key is translating additional generation capacity into clean electrons flowing through to users. And here, SPCUs have a critical role to play in two additional dimensions.
First, activating additional renewables capacity requires massive investments in the grid to link that new production to actual consumers. In order to transform investments in renewables generation into a greener electricity system, grid investments need to double by 2030 to over $600 billion.
This was a lesson learned in part from the experience in China where new renewables generation outpaced network expansion, a shortcoming that required investment in specifically the grid to overcome. Because in many, if not most, countries worldwide, the grid is government-owned, SPCUs will be key to expanding the electricity network to enable the integration of larger amounts of renewables generation.
A second dimension often overlooked is that usually even in power systems where there is significant renewables generation, there are also fossil fuel plants. The decision as to which plants are called upon at any moment to produce electricity is often made by a grid system operator.
In many countries — from Mexico to China and more — that entity is once again government-owned and controlled. Ensuring that additional renewables capacity actually translates into a decarbonized electricity supply will require complementary and supportive action by the government-owned grid operator to dispatch that renewable power into the network to serve customers.
For all these reasons, achieving the goal of tripling renewables generation capacity by 2030, and more broadly decarbonizing the global electricity system, requires active SPCU involvement.
This is particularly true in emerging economies and other developing countries whose electricity sector emissions are projected to grow absent robust decarbonization actions. But it is also true in the United States and other advanced economies. More attention needs to be given to SPCUs, key players in achieving global climate goals.
Philippe Benoit is managing director for Global Infrastructure Advisory Services 2050. He previously held management positions at the International Energy Agency and World Bank, and worked as adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University-SIPA’s Center on Global Energy Policy and an investment banker. He is currently a visiting professor at the University of SciencesPo-Paris.
Leonardo Beltran is a senior advisor at Iniciativa Climática de México. He was Mexico´s Deputy Secretary of Energy in charge of the Energy Transition (2012- 2018), and member of the board of directors of Pemex and CFE. He currently holds fellowships at the Institute of the Americas and the School of Public Policy of the University of Calgary.
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 19 (IPS) – In early September, Typhoon Yagi, a deadly tropical cyclone, hit Southeast Asia and Southern China, causing widespread destruction. According to the United Nations (UN), wind speeds, reaching 213 kilometers per hour, as well as heavy flooding and severe landslides, have devastated affected areas. Yagi is the strongest natural disaster to hit the South China Sea in three decades, leaving over 500 people killed, 38 missing, and 1,900 injured.
Officials estimate that 292 people have been killed in Vietnam and over 100 have been killed in Myanmar. A spokesperson for The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), stated that the death toll could be even higher than what was previously reported and that the typhoon has affected over 631,000 people.
The typhoon and subsequent flooding caused considerable damage to critical infrastructures, such as water purification systems, making way for a host of waterborne diseases and widespread water insecurity. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that approximately 400,000 households have been left without access to clean water.
Currently, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF are on the frontlines of affected areas distributing clean water and water-purification tablets. “Clean water is critical to help prevent food and waterborne disease, and for maintaining safe care and operations at health care facilities, whether it is for people injured in the typhoon and or those needing urgent routine health care”, stated Dr. Angela Pratt, WHO representative for Vietnam.
Additionally, Yagi has caused significant damage to thousands of homes across Southeast Asia. WHO estimates that approximately 130,000 houses have been destroyed as a result of severe flooding. Hundreds of healthcare facilities and schools have been damaged or destroyed as well, with approximately 2 million children in Vietnam alone facing elongated disruptions to their education.
Myanmar, particularly, has seen widespread displacement as a result of this. Myanma Alinn, the government-run newspaper of Myanmar, reports that 438 temporary relief camps have been opened to support the 240,000 people that have been internally displaced.
The Myanmar state disaster response agency informed reporters that extensive flooding has led to road blockages, compromised bridges, and fallen electricity lines, all of which have greatly impeded relief efforts and telecommunications between districts.
Yagi has also caused a great deal of damage to the agricultural systems of the affected regions. The latest reports from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development state that the typhoon had besieged over 97,735 hectares of rice fields. In addition, over 11,746 hectares of vegetables and 6,902 hectares of fruit trees have been damaged. This has overwhelmed Asian farmers, putting them in a state of critical financial jeopardy.
Experts predict that Southeast Asia’s pre-existing concerns of food insecurity are to be greatly exacerbated. Sheela Matthew, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) representative in Myanmar, described the typhoon’s impact on hunger and malnutrition in affected areas as “nothing less than devastating”.
Furthermore, the economy of affected areas have seen significant losses as a result of the typhoon. Strong winds and heavy floods tore into Vietnam’s highly arable Red River Delta, damaging critical manufacturing hubs. According to an initial government assessment, it is estimated that Vietnam has seen losses of up to 1.6 billion dollars.
Currently, the UN and their affiliated organizations are distributing food, drinking water, and hygiene supplies to families in areas that have been hit the hardest. They are also monitoring levels of waterborne diseases for the coming weeks and months. The UN predicts that approximately 994 million dollars will be needed for response efforts. As of now, only 252 million dollars have been raised.
Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 11 (IPS) – Marginalised and dominated economically by the Global North, developing countries must urgently cooperate to better strive for their shared interests in achieving world peace and sustainable development.
Jomo Kwame SundaramCold War rivalry
During the first Cold War between the US, NATO, and other allies, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union and its allies, the former prided itself on sustaining economic growth, especially during the post-war Golden Age.
Since the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC), successive governments – led by Obama, Trump and Biden – have all strived to sustain full employment in the US. However, real wages and working conditions for most have suffered.
Exceptionally among monetary authorities, the US Fed’s mandate includes ensuring full employment. However, without the US-Soviet rivalry of the first Cold War, Washington no longer seeks a buoyant, growing world economy.
This has affected US relations with its NATO and other allies, most of which have been hit by worldwide economic stagnation since the GFC. Instead of ensuring worldwide recovery, ‘unconventional monetary policies’ addressing the ensuing Great Recession have enabled further financialisation.
Interest rate hikes slow growth
Since early 2022, the US has raised interest rates unnecessarily. Stanley Fischer, later IMF Deputy Managing Director and US Federal Reserve Bank Vice Chair, and colleague Rudiger Dornbusch found low double-digit inflation acceptable, even desirable for growth.
Before the fetishisation of the 2% inflation target, other mainstream economists reached similar conclusions in the late 20th century. Since then, the US Fed and most other Western central banks have been fixated on inflation targeting, which has no theoretical or empirical justification.
Fiscal austerity policies have complemented such monetary priorities, compounding contractionary macroeconomic policy pressures. Many governments are being ‘persuaded’ that fiscal policy is too important to be left to finance ministers.
Instead, independent fiscal boards are setting acceptable public debt and deficit levels. Hence, macroeconomic policies are inducing stagnation everywhere.
While Europe has primarily embraced such policies, Japan has not subscribed to them. Nevertheless, this new Western policy dogma invokes economic theory and policy experience when, in fact, neither supports it.
The US Fed’s raising interest rates since early 2022 has triggered capital flight from developing economies, leaving the poorest countries worse off. Earlier financial inflows into low-income countries have since left in great haste.
New Cold War contractionary
The new Cold War has worsened the macroeconomic situation, further depressing the world economy. Meanwhile, geopolitical considerations increasingly trump developmental and other priorities.
The growing imposition of illegal sanctions has reduced investment and technology flows to the Global South. Meanwhile, the weaponisation of economic policy is fast spreading and becoming normalised.
After the Iraq invasion fiasco, the US, NATO and others often do not seek UN Security Council to endorse sanctions. Hence, their sanctions contravene the UN Charter and international law. Nonetheless, such illegal sanctions have been imposed with impunity.
With most of Europe now in NATO, the OECD, G7 and other US-led Western institutions have increasingly undermined UN-led multilateralism, which they had set up and still dominate but no longer control.
Inconvenient international law provisions are ignored or only invoked when useful. The first Cold War ended with a unipolar moment, but this did not stop new challenges to US power, typically in response to its assertions of authority.
Such unilateral sanctions have compounded other supply-side disruptions, such as the pandemic, and exacerbated recent contractionary and inflationary pressures.
In response, Western powers raised interest rates in concert, worsening the ongoing economic stagnation by reducing demand without effectively addressing supply-side inflation.
The internationally agreed sustainable development and climate targets have thus become more unattainable. Poverty, inequality and precariousness have worsened, especially for the most needy and vulnerable.
Limited options for South
Due to its diversity, the Global South faces various constraints. The problems faced by the poorest low-income countries are quite different from those in East Asia, where foreign exchange constraints are less of a problem.
IMF First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath has argued that developing countries should not be aligned in the new Cold War.
This suggests that even those walking the corridors of power in Washington recognise the new Cold War is exacerbating the protracted stagnation since the 2008 global financial crisis.
Josep Borrell – the second most important European Commission official, in charge of international affairs – sees Europe as a garden facing invasion by the surrounding jungle. To protect itself, he wants Europe to attack the jungle first.
Meanwhile, many – including some foreign ministers of leading non-aligned nations – argue that non-alignment is irrelevant after the end of the first Cold War.
Non-alignment of the old type – a la Bandung in 1955 and Belgrade in 1961 – may be less relevant, but a new non-alignment is needed for our times. Today’s non-alignment should include firm commitments to sustainable development and peace.
BRICS’s origins are quite different, excluding less economically significant developing countries. Although not representative of the Global South, it has quickly become important.
Meanwhile, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) remains marginalised. The Global South urgently needs to get its act together despite the limited options available to it.
ROME, Aug 23 (IPS) – The student movement in Bangladesh demanding reform of the quota system for public jobs was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The Awami League (AL) government led by Sheikh Hasina, in power continuously since 2008, collapsed on 5th August 2024. With Sheikh Hasina fleeing to India and leaving the country in disarray, her authoritarian rule of 15 years just melted away.
Saifullah SyedPrior to this sudden and dramatic turn of events, during her rule, the country was mired by institutional and financial corruption, crony capitalism, authoritarian administration, and forced disappearance of opponents. In addition, the AL government of Sheikh Hasina monopolised all lucrative appointments and commercial privileges for people belonging to her party, banning political discourse and dissent.
She developed the personality cult of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led the country to independence in 1971 and who was brutally murdered on 15th of August 1975. The personality cult was so perverse that liberation of the country was attributed to Sheikh Mujib alone and all the other stalwarts of the liberation war and her party were ignored. Everything of significance happening in the country was attributed to his wisdom and foresight alone and were often named after him. Every Institution, including schools across the country and embassies around the world were obliged to host a “Mujib corner” to display his photo, and books about him only.
Yet, no political party, including the leading opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP) succeeded in mobilising an uprising against Hasina’s regime. This was partly due her ability to project AL and her government as the sole guarantor of independence, sovereignty and secularism. Everyone else was cast as a supporter of anti-liberation forces, being communal, and accused of being motivated to turn the country into a hotbed of Islamic extremism. BNP was also accused of committing crimes and corruption when it was in power.
The founder of BNP is linked to the cruel murder of Sheikh Mujib and the members of her family, and the current leader of BNP is accused of masterminding the grenade attack aimed at killing Sheikh Hasina at an AL rally on 21st August 2004. Hasina survived the attack, but it killed 24 people and injured about 200.
Why did the student movement succeed ?
Like most historical events there are several factors, but the ultimate ones were that (i) the students were willing to die and (ii) the Military displayed patriotism and wisdom by refusing to kill. The students came from all walks of life, transcending party lines and economic background. Hence, attempts to cast them as anti-liberation did not succeed. The army refused to kill to protect a despotic ruler. Bangladeshis have always overthrown dictatorial rulers.
Why the students were ready to die and the army refused to kill are important issues for analysis but the critical question right now is: what next and where do we go from here ?
What Next for Bangladesh ?
The students have shown support for the formation of an interim government with leading intellectuals, scholars and elite liberal professionals and civil society actors under the leadership of Dr Younus, the founder of the Grameen Bank and a Nobel Laureate. These people were previously silenced and harassed during Hasina’s 15 year rule.
Many people remain sceptical, however. Many fear collapse of law and order and communal disturbances in the short run, which may lead to the emergence of another dictatorial rule. Neighbouring India, which supported Hasina’s government, is concerned about the rights of minorities in Bangladesh, although they showed scant concern for the minorities in India in the recent past.
Political and geo-political analysts are busy analysing the geo-political implications and the role of key players in mobilising the students to overthrow Hasina. This is raising questions about who engineered the Regime Change.
Fortunately for Bangladesh and the Bangladeshis, things can get only better. None of the short-term concerns have materialised. No major collapse of law and order nor oppression of minorities have taken place, barring a few localised incidents. Regarding the long run, things can only get better: it is extremely unlikely that another leader can emerge with reasons to substantiate a “moral right to rule”, disdain political discourse and project a personality cult – the basic ingredients of a dictatorial regime.
Hasina embodied several factors which were intrinsically associated with who she was. It is unlikely that anyone else with a similar background will emerge again. She started as a champion of democracy by seeking to overthrow the military rule that followed the murder of her father, then as a champion of justice by seeking justice for the killing of her father. Over time, however, she became a despot and a vengeful leader. Even if AL manages to regroup and come to power, it will be obliged to have a pluralistic attitude and not identify with Sheikh Mujib alone. All the stalwarts of the party have to be recognised, as only by recognising the forgotten popular figures of the party can it re-emerge.
Regarding the wider geo-political play by bigger powers, it may be important but cannot take away the fact that the majority of people are in favour of the change and are happy about it. It could be similar to gaining independence in 1971. India helped Bangladesh to gain independence because of its own geo-political strategic objective, but it has not reduced the taste of independence. If Bangladeshis’ desire coincides with the objective of others’ then so be it. It is win-win for both.
Eventually, Bangladesh will emerge with robust basic requirements for the protection of the institutions to safeguard democracy, such as independent judiciaries, a functioning parliamentary system with effective opposition parties, vibrant media and civil society organisations. It will become a country that will recognise the collective conscience of the leading citizens and intellectuals and establish good governance and social justice. The economy may go through some fluctuations due to troubles in the financial sector and export market, but a robust agriculture sector, vibrant domestic real estate market and remittances will keep it afloat.
The author is a former UN official who was Chief of Policy Assistance Branch for Asia and the Pacific of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Aug 16 (IPS) – During the first half of the 20th century, antisemitism was endemic in Europe and eventually burst out in full force when Nazi-Germany and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945 systematically (and well-documented) murdered six million Jews across German-occupied Europe.
In an environment mined by hostile public opinion, the Zionist Nahum Sokolow popularized the Hebrew term Hasbara. The word has no real equivalent in English, but might be translated as “explaining”, indicating a strategy seeking to explain actions, regardless whether or not they are justified.
As a skilled diplomat, Sokolow based his widely publicized opinions on in-depth research of actual events, though he presented his findings in a manner that favoured his cause.
David Alfaro Siqueiros: Echo of a Scream. 1937
The State of Israel has often used hasbara, now generally described as public diplomacy, meaning that policies and actions have not been denied, but at the same time has any criticism of such facts been presented as biased and/or tinged by “antisemitism”.
To avoid being labelled as antisemitic the following article is mainly based on two books by Ilan Pappé – The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
Pappé is considered to be a member of the New historians, a loosely defined group of Israeli historians who challenge the official version of Israel’s role in the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians. An event which among Palestinians is called Nakba, the Catastrophe.
In 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, about half of the former British controlled Mandatory Palestine’s predominantly Arab population, fled from their homes.
At first they were attacked by Zionist paramilitaries and after the establishment of the State of Israel by its regular army, acting on direct orders from the newly founded nation’s leaders.
Dozens of massacres targeted the Arab population and between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned and properties looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning.
The New historians debunked several myths. For example, that the British Government tried to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state – it was actually against the founding of a Palestine state.
The official version states that Palestinians fled their homes on their own free will, instigated to do so by surrounding Arab states. However, the majority of them were actually expelled, and/or fled out of a well-founded fear of the Israeli army.
Furthermore, general opinion has been that the surrounding Arab nations at the time were united and more powerful than the newly established State of Israel – as a matter of fact, Israel had the advantage both in manpower and arms, while the Arab nations were divided by internal strife and did not have a coordinated plan to destroy Israel.
The recurrent praise that the Israelis made the desert bloom and took over a land without a people for a people without a land, are according to Pappé unfounded clichés. Before the ethnic cleansing the vast majority of agricultural land was being cultivated by Palestinians. It is estimated that on the eve of the 1948 war, around 739,750 acres of agriculturally apt land were being cultivated by Palestinians, actually greater than the physical area which was under cultivation in Israel almost thirty years later.
The appropriation of Palestinian land occurred in conjunction with a Land Acquisitions Law allowing for a mass transfer of the entire Palestinian economy to the Israeli state. Practically overnight, the State gained control of a vast amount of fertile land, 73,000 houses, and 7,800 workshops. This dropped the average cost of settling a Jewish family in Palestine from 8,000 USD to 1,500 USD.
Furthermore, the whole issue whether Palestine belongs to “Jews” or “Arabs” is somewhat spurious. It is a myth that any region constitutes a closed environment. Trade, immigration, invasion and intermarriage are part of any nation’s history.
Across the millennia, additions and losses have befallen people living in Palestina (it was the Romans who in 131 CE changed the denomination “Judea” into “Syria Palaestina”). Conquerors, like those of the Muslim faith, seldom replaced an entire native population, they only added to it.
Many of the Palestinians of today are the Jews of yesteryears. Palestinian Arabs did not suddenly appear from the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century to settle in Palestine, most of those “Arabs” living there now are descendants of indigenous peoples who lived there before. People who, like most others, over time have changed their beliefs and traditions. For example, Sardinians eventually became Italians, but no one would suggest that Sardinians were kicked out and replaced by a foreign Italian people.
We ought to separate political nationalist identities from the actual reality of a human being. Nationalism is a relatively modern concept, especially in the Middle East.
Likewise, the Jewish diaspora was not the result of a sudden expulsion of Jews from their Holy land. It was, just as current migration, a result of various factors, including refugees from war and repression, forced labour, deportation, overpopulation, indebtedness, military recruitment, and not the least opportunities in business, commerce, and agriculture.
Before the Romans in 70 CE destroyed Jerusalem and its temple and in 131 forbade Jews to settle there, large and prosperous Jewish communities existed in provinces like Egypt, Crete, Cyrenaica, Syria, Asia, Mesopotamia, and in Rome itself.
However, the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem motivated many Jews to formulate a new self-definition and adjust their existence to the prospect of an indefinite period of displacement, that eventually would culminate in a return to a mostly imaginary realm of Israel. In 1948, this religious dream became a reality through the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel.
A development that by most the U.S. and European politicians was considered to strengthen a “Western” strategic, economic, and political presence in the Middle East, at the same time as the establishment of Israel could ease the burden of a bad conscience for not having done enough to hinder the extermination of Jews, combined with easing the pressure to resettle and compensate the victims.
Nowadays, the Sate of Israel does not only control the land granted to it by the British, but also territories inhabited by also areas like the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Gaza strip. In Gaza, Israel maintains control of its airspace, its territorial waters, no-go zones within the strip, and the population registry. Pappé has stated that
“the tale of Palestine from the beginning until today is a simple story of colonialism and dispossession, yet the world treats it as a multifaceted and complex story – hard to understand and even harder to solve. Indeed, the story of Palestine has been told before: European settlers coming to a foreign land, settling there, and either committing genocide against or expelling the indigenous people. The Zionists have not invented anything new in this respect. But Israel succeeded nonetheless, with the help of its allies everywhere, in building a multilayered explanation that is so complex that only Israel can understand it. Any interference from the outside world is immediately castigated as naïve at best or anti-Semitic at worst.”
On October 11th 2023, Hamas-led fighters breached the Gaza-Israel barrier, attacking military bases and massacring civilians in 21 communities, killing 1,139 people, including 695 Israeli civilians, among them 38 children, 71 foreign nationals, and 373 members of the Israeli security forces, while taking about 250 Israelis as hostages. Incidents of great brutality and rape were witnessed and reported.
Israeli repercussion was swift and merciless. Israel has ravaged the Gaza Strip. Apartment buildings, mosques, schools, hospitals, and universities have been reduced to rubble.
During their hunt for Hamas fighters Israel has deliberately targeted and destroyed civilian structures where civilians have sought refuge. On May 21st 2024, Israeli government offered its first estimate of the operation’s death toll, claiming its troops had killed 14,000 terrorists and 16,000 civilians. A week earlier the U.N. reported that approximately 35,000 individuals had died during the conflict, including 7,797 minors, 4,959 women and 1,924 elderly, the latter three groups with confirmed identities. Among the victims were 103 journalists and 196 humanitarian workers.
At almost the same time, Save the Children reported that more than 13,000 children had been killed, while WHO stated that at least 1,000 children have had one or both legs amputated. On the 11th of August the death toll was estimated to be approximately 39,000 people.
The killing is continuing unabated, worsened by starvation. WFP recently reported that 1.1 million Gaza inhabitants are facing catastrophic hunger.
In northern Gaza, one in three children under two years of age suffer from acute malnutrition. According to estimates by UNICEF, people’s daily nutritional intake is down to 245 calories, i.e. less than a can of beans. This is mostly attributable to an Israeli blockade that according to UNICEF since March 1 has stopped 30 percent of aid missions, letting in a daily average of only 159 of the required 500 aid trucks.
Even before October 11th people of Gaza had an intolerable existence, lacking sufficient access to electricity, potable water, food, and medical equipment. Unemployment rate was more than forty per cent, while children grew up in a world of intermittent war and persistent trauma, of barbed wire and surveillance. Israeli attacks continue while remains of Hamas’ military branch has become a drastically diminished insurgent force, which fighters pop up from the rubble to shoot at Israeli soldiers.
An entire population has been severely punished for the presence of a fanatical, political party, which according to polls conducted in September 2023 by the majority of Gazans was considered to be repressive and corrupt, but which they were frightened to criticize. Hamas’s support was estimated to be between 27 and 31 percent, though since many Gazans are unable to perceive a viable solution to Israel’s iron grip on their confined strip of land, they consider armed resistance to be the only way out.
In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu’s two decades long regime has tried to sabotage a two-state-solution by weakening the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, allowing for vast amounts of mainly Qatari money to reach Hamas, in exchange for maintaining a ceasefire and sowing division within Al-Fatah, the party governing the West Bank.
Part of this policy has also been the increased support to 144 Israeli settlements within the West Bank, including 12 in East Jerusalem, and a discreet sustenance to over 100 “Israeli outposts”, i.e. settlements not authorized by the Israeli government. Over 450,000 Israeli settlers reside in the West Bank, with an additional 220,000 in East Jerusalem. Living in a settlement is made attractive through lower costs of housing compared to living in Israel proper. Government spending per citizen in settlements is double, in some cases triple, than what is spent per Israeli citizen in Israel proper.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that Israeli settlements on occupied territory is, according to international laws, illegal and established that Israel has “an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities and to evacuate all settlers from the occupied territories”. The Court is talking to deaf ears.
A current expansion of settlements has involved the confiscation of Palestinian land and resources, leading to displacement of Palestinian communities while creating a source of tension and conflict. The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that from 1 January to 19 September 2023, Israeli settlers killed 189 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and wounded 8,192. The violence increased after October 3rd, after that date 460 Palestinians have so far been murdered by settlers. On average, there are every day three cases of settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, resulting in the killing and injuring of Palestinians, harming their property, and preventing them from reaching their land, workplace, family, and friends.
International ramifications are continuously unfolding – armed exchanges between Israel and Iran, between Israel and Hezbollah, Iran supported Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, followed by Israeli counterattacks on Yemen, waves of pro-Palestine demonstrations across Europe, the U.S., and Arab capitals, combined with increased antisemitism. All this could for Israel mean its worst defeat ever, while at the same time it may for Palestinians prove to be more deadly and devastating than the Nakba.
Ships await their turn to cross the Panama Canal from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
by Emilio Godoy (panama)
Inter Press Service
PANAMA, Aug 09 (IPS) – In 2021, the Panama Canal welcomed a French experimental ship on a world tour, the Energy Observer, the first electric vessel powered by a combination of renewable energies and a hydrogen production system based on seawater.
The vessel exemplifies Panama’s aspiration to become a regional hub for hydrogen, the most abundant gas on the planet, but faces the existential decision of whether to generate it from renewable energy or fossil gas.
For Juan Lucero, coordinator of the Ministry of the Environment’s National Climate Transparency Platform, green hydrogen would be the best option, given its renewable energy, strategic position and the influence of international policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in sea transport.
“Panama has natural gas, and companies are interested in taking part in this business, in this case blue hydrogen. If Panama wants to be a hub, then blue is a good option,” he told IPS.
He stressed that “for Panama, it has always been a priority to provide services, to be an energy hub. We have tradition, experience, history, as a hub for supplying bunker (a petroleum distillate) ships. The idea is to achieve that transition.”
The production of hydrogen, which the fossil fuel industry has been using for decades, has now been transformed into a coloured palette, depending on its origin.
Thus, “grey” comes from gas and depends on adapting pipelines to transport it.
By comparison, “blue” has the same origin, but the carbon dioxide (CO2) emanating from it is captured by plants. Production is based on steam methane reforming, which involves mixing the first gas with the second and heating it to obtain a synthesis gas. However, this releases CO2, the main GHG responsible for global warming.
Meanwhile, “green” hydrogen is obtained through electrolysis, separating it from the oxygen in water by means of an electric current.
The latter type joins the range of clean sources to drive energy transition away from fossil fuels and thus develop a low-carbon economy. Today, however, hydrogen is still largely derived from fossil fuels.
In its different colours, Panama joins Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay in having national hydrogen policies.
Penonomé wind farm, located in the central Panamanian province of Coclé. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
Ambition
In 2022, the Panamanian government created the High Level Green Hydrogen and Green Hydrogen Technical committees to drive the roadmap in that direction.
But it has not made progress in the creation of free zones for trade and storage of green hydrogen and derivatives; updating regulations; and encouraging port activities to use electric vehicles, install decentralised solar systems, introduce energy efficiency and generate heat through solar thermal energy.
The green hydrogen strategy approved in 2023 includes eight targets and 30 lines of action, foreseeing the annual production of 500,000 tonnes of this energy and derivatives, to cover 5% of the shipping fuel supply by 2030.
In 20 years, the estimate rises to the supply of 40% of shipping fuels.
But this potential would require 67 gigawatts (Gw) of installed renewable capacity, which is a substantial deployment in a country whose economy is highly dependent on the activity of the inter-oceanic canal between the Pacific and the Atlantic, inaugurated in 1914 and expanded a century later, in a project that doubled its capacity and came into operation in 2016.
In 2023, the Panamanian energy mix relied on hydropower, gas, wind, bunker, solar and diesel, with an installed capacity of 3.47 Gw at the start of 2024. Panama currently has at least 31 photovoltaic plants and three wind farms.
Electricity generation accounted for some 24 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2021, with the largest contributors being energy (70%) and agriculture (20%).
But in 2023, the country declared itself carbon neutral, i.e. its forests capture the pollution released into the atmosphere, having a negative balance in GHG emissions.
The national strategy includes the construction of a 160 megawatt (MW) solar plant and an 18 MW wind power farm in the centre-south of the country, as well as a second 290 MW photovoltaic plant in the northern province of Colón.
In this province, a green ammonia production plant is planned to supply the future demand for shipping fuel, with an annual production of 65,000 tonnes and an investment of US$ 500 million.
The global shipping sector considers hydrogen, ammonia and its derivative, methanol, to be viable. The latter, which is also used to make fertilisers, explosives and other commodities, can be obtained from green hydrogen.
A demand of up to 280,000 tonnes of green ammonia per year is projected by 2040, which would require the installation of 4.2 Gw of electrolysis.
Leonardo Beltrán, a non-resident researcher at the non-governmental Institute of the Americas, told IPS about the process of building strategies, institutional vision, and short, medium and long-term goals.
“They have taken giant steps in a relatively short period of time. They already have the infrastructure, the canal. If that demand is met, it could be a game changer. If you can connect the canal to other ports, to the United States or Europe, they could very well have that (green) corridor that would anchor a relevant demand. That would boost on-site and also regional generation,” he said from Mexico City.
With support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Panama is developing pre-feasibility projects on the production of green hydrogen, its conversion to ammonia and the installation of an ammonia dispatch station as a clean shipping fuel, and on the production of green aviation paraffin.
The roadmap found to be more feasible the production of hydrogen in Panama, the import of green ammonia and the processing of green shipping fuel.
Panama aspires to become a regional hub for green hydrogen, obtained from water and renewable energy sources, including gas and ammonia production plants. Infographic: National Energy Board
Also, the country is considering manufacturing green paraffin for aviation, given that it hosts an air transport hub in the region, although testing is in its infancy and involves a much longer process than in the case of shipping.
Harmonisation
The hydrogen strategy is a function of Panama’s logistical, energy and climate change needs.
Panama currently has 10 tax-free fossil fuel areas, with storage capacity of more than 30 million barrels (159 litre) equivalent and one liquefied fossil gas area, which are tax exempt and could be the model for future hydrogen generation areas.
In 2021, the country shipped 42.79 million tonnes of fuel to more than 44,000 vessels, a figure that will grow by 2030. By comparison, hydrogen passing through the canal would total 81.84 million tonnes in 2030 and 190.96 million in 2050.
In its voluntary climate contributions under the Paris Agreement, Panama pledged to reduce total emissions from the energy sector by at least 11.5% in 2030, from its 2019 level, and by 24% in 2050.
The autonomous Panama Canal Authority’s plan includes the introduction of electric vehicles, tugboats and boats using alternative fuels; the replacement of fossil electricity with photovoltaics and the use of hydropower, to become carbon neutral by 2030, with an investment of some US$8.5 billion over the next five years.
The canal reduces some 16 million tonnes of CO2 each year.
Tolls and shipping services are its biggest sources of revenue, and thus the importance of developing shipping fuels based on clean hydrogen.
In the first nine months of 2023, 210.73 million long tons (1,016 kilograms) went through the interoceanic infrastructure, down from 218.44 million in the same period in 2022.
Of the total cargoes, one third are fossil fuels. Container, chemical, gas and bulk carriers are the main transports.
Lucero said the country is looking for investments in renewable energy, particularly green hydrogen.
“This market has to be developed in an orderly way. Demand has to be driven; otherwise, the investment will not be profitable. There are uncertainties, but the line that has been taken is that hydrogen is the future and we want to break away from being followers to become leaders, to seize the moment to develop and be prepared when the boom arrives,” he stressed.
For expert Beltrán, if the government that took office on 1 July follows this route, it would send a strong signal to the sector and thus pull the shipping sector toward energy transition.
“Replacing imports with local product is more convenient, and the way would be with the available, renewable resource. That would impact local development and contribute to the energy transition agenda,” he said.
Michelle Mokone (Left) & Morongwe Mokone (right). Credit: UN magazine
Opinion by Mkhululi Chimoio (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 16 (IPS) – What started as a pastime desire to sell crafts at local markets, deeply rooted in the South African culture, has since blossomed to become an international business entity for two local women.
Two entrepreneurs take traditional African designs and sustainable materials and turn them into international success.
It took the Mokone sisters, Morongwe “Mo” (37) and Michelle (34), three years only to turn around their home decor business into an international business venture by leveraging on the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
AGOA allows entrepreneurs from Africa duty-free access to the US market. Approved by the US Congress in May 2000, the legislation sought to help improve the economies of these sub-Saharan African countries, as well as to improve economic relations between the US and participating countries on the African continent.
Africa Renewal* caught up with the two Mokone sisters who are beneficiaries of AGOA to hear how the initiative has changed their lives.
Morongwe and Michelle were raised in Mabopane, Pretoria. In 2016, they started their business ‘Mo’s Crib’ that produces hand-woven baskets, place mats, trays, and other homeware accessories, and selling them in at a local market. In 2019, they decided to pursue the business full-time.
Since then, their business has grown and currently has 12 full-time and 86 part-time employees.
Mo’s Crib uses African traditional designs and sustainable materials to make high-end decorative and homeware pieces inspired by nature. Their arty designs simple, yet modern and sophisticated, with many of their products having multiple purposes that prioritize functionality.
Mo’s Crib uses African traditional designs and sustainable materials to make high-end decorative and homeware pieces inspired by nature.
Green products
Most importantly, the business values sustainability – emphasizing on reusing, recycling and reducing waste, as well as using local talent and material to create employment opportunities. From their locally-sourced impala palm leaves to the material of their shipping boxes – the Mokone sisters promote sustainability and a greener society.
“Our business is deeply linked to our upbringing in South Africa, we draw inspiration from the African culture, nature, and our commitment to the local community,” Michelle told Africa Renewal.
Michelle, who is Mo’s Crib director of operations and supply chain added: “We transitioned our craft into entrepreneurship when we noticed the increased demand of our products at local markets. It was the passion for art and the desire to make a positive impact that propelled us to where we are today. We also saw an opportunity in retail as we wanted our products to be accessible, so we decided to partner with retailers to increase sales volumes and sell in bulk.”
The two sisters quit their jobs: Morongwe was an executive HR specialist while Michelle worked as an agricultural economist, to follow their dream and both credit their father, who was an entrepreneur himself, for the inspiration.
“Our father was an entrepreneur himself. Our drive to build a business of this kind with a sustainable imprint stem from our commitment to creating sustainable and ethical products. We are motivated by the opportunity to provide economic and educational opportunities to our employees whom we refer to as our team members, while at the same time promoting environmentally conscious practices. Our dedication to sustainability and empowering local communities has been the driving force behind our business,” said Michelle.
She explained how they finally made a breakthrough into the international market.
“In 2019, Mo’s Crib made its debut in international markets in France and the USA. It was an opportunity for Africa to showcase its products, promoting sustainable practices and potentially opening new revenue streams for the continent. Our breakthrough demonstrates that Africa can contribute to the global market while preserving its cultural heritage and promoting environmentally friendly products,” said Michelle.
She added: “We are still doing well in the local markets, but we always wanted that international breakthrough. AGOA provided us that platform. As it is, we are no longer just selling to local markets in Pretoria, Johannesburg or in South Africa alone; we are literally reaching the US and international platforms.”
Highlighting that through local businesses like Mo’s Cribs, age-old African crafts are given new life, and in doing so, preserve their heritage, Michelle, however, is urging businesswomen to carefully identify products that resonate with the international market.
“To benefit from AGOA, one must identify products that are in demand in the US and establish sustainable distribution channels. They must also partner with knowledgeable forwarding agents to maximize AGOA benefits,” she said.
“Since 2021, we have shipped a total of eight containers to the US. We are on track to ship two more containers soon. We also regularly ship a container to fulfill our orders for our online store, which is fulfilled through our warehouse in New Jersey, US.
“Although shipping is relatively expensive, especially for a small business that is 100% self-funded, we have benefited from the AGOA through significant market access. Currently, US orders constitute 60% of our overall revenue,” she added.
Mos Crib Products
AGOA renewal
According to South Africa’s minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Ebrahim Patel, the US recently reached a preliminary 10-year agreement with African countries to extend their preferential trade access by another decade, pending approval by Congress.
“We reached a broad agreement on the need to extend AGOA for another 10 years,” Mr. Patel told a business forum in Johannesburg recently, adding that they were able to engage with policymakers from more than 30 sub-Saharan African countries and the US to enable African countries to continue exporting goods to the American market duty-free.
South Africa hosted the 20th AGOA Forum in Johannesburg from in November 2023 where Mr. Patel said South Africa was seeking to renew its AGOA membership which he said has been instrumental in improving the livelihoods of many entrepreneurs in the country.
The forum brought together over 5,000 participants comprising African ministers of trade, senior government officials, the US government delegation led by US Trade Representative (USTR) Ambassador Katherine Tai, US Congressional staffers, the private sector, the civil society, exhibitors in the ‘Made in Africa’ exhibition, procurers and investors.
“AGOA has helped South Africa and other sub-Saharan countries progressively. It has played a pivotal role in job creation in South Africa and the entire region,” he added.
At the same time, South Africa’s ministry of Small Business Development spokesperson, Cornelius Monama, said AGOA presents a great opportunity to promote emerging entrepreneurs and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMMEs).
Trade under AGOA accounted for approximately 21% of South Africa’s total exports to the US in 2022. South African exports to the US under AGOA increased in value from US$2.0 billion in 2021 to US$3.0 billion in 2022,” he said.
Meanwhile, for Morongwe and Michelle, they are working on creating more opportunities and make a meaningful impact in their society. In addition to safeguarding the natural environment, the Mokone sisters are also committed to empowering the people in their community.
“We would like to grow our footprint beyond the USA. We want to enter new markets such as Europe and the United Arab Emirates. We plan to create 20 new jobs within the next two to three years,” concludes Michelle.
Source: Africa Renewal* which is published by the UN’s Department of Global Communications (DGC).
A police officer walks after using tear gas to disperse protesters during a demonstration over police killings of people protesting against Kenya’s proposed finance bill in Nairobi, June 27, 2024. Credit: Voice of America (VoA)
Opinion by Danny Bradlow (pretoria, south africa)
Inter Press Service
PRETORIA, South Africa, Jul 05 (IPS) – The recent Kenyan protests are a warning that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is failing. The public does not think it is helping its member countries manage their economic and financial problems, which are being exacerbated by a rapidly changing global political economy.
To be sure, the IMF is not the only cause of Kenya’s problems with raising the funds to meet its substantial debt obligations and deal with its budget deficit. Other causes include the failure of the governing class to deal with corruption, to spend public finances responsibly and to manage an economy that produces jobs and improves the living standards of Kenya’s young population.
The country has also been hammered by drought, floods and locust infestations in recent years. In addition, its creditors are demanding that it continue servicing its large external debts despite its domestic challenges and a difficult international financial and economic environment.
Danny Bradlow
The IMF has provided financial support to Kenya. But the financing is subject to tough conditions which suggest that debt obligations matter more than the needs of long-suffering citizens. This is despite the IMF claiming that its mandate now includes helping states deal with issues like climate, digitalisation, gender, governance and inequality.
Unfortunately, Kenya is not an isolated case. Twenty-one African countries are receiving IMF support. In Africa, debt service, on average, exceeds the combined amounts governments are spending on health, education, climate and social services.
The tough conditions attached to IMF financing have led the citizens of Kenya and other African countries to conclude that a too powerful IMF is the cause of their problems. However, my research into the law, politics and history of the international financial institutions suggests the opposite: the real problem is the IMF’s decline in authority and efficacy.
Some history will help explain this and indicate a partial solution.
The history
When the treaty establishing the IMF was negotiated 80 years ago, it was expected to have resources equal to roughly 3% of global GDP. This was to help deal with the monetary and balance of payments problems of 44 countries. Today, the IMF is expected to help its 191 member countries deal with fiscal, monetary, financial and foreign exchange problems and with “new” issues like climate, gender and inequality.
To fulfil these responsibilities, its member states have provided the IMF with resources equal to only about 1% of global GDP.
The decline in its resources relative to the size of the global economy and of its membership has at least two pernicious effects.
The first is that it is providing its member states with less financial support than they require if they are to meet the needs of their citizens and comply with their legal commitments to creditors and citizens. The result is that the IMF remains a purveyor of austerity policies. It requires a country to make deeper spending cuts than would be needed if the IMF had adequate resources.
The second effect of declining resources is that it weakens the IMF’s bargaining position in managing sovereign debt crises. This is important because the IMF plays a critical role in such crises. It helps determine when a country needs debt relief or forgiveness, how big the gap between the country’s financial obligations and available resources is, how much the IMF will contribute to filling this gap and how much its other creditors must contribute.
When Mexico announced that it could not meet its debt obligations in 1982, the IMF stated that it would provide about a third of the money that Mexico needed to meet its obligations, provided its commercial creditors contributed the remaining funds. It was able to push the creditors to reach agreement with Mexico within months. It had sufficient resources to repeat the exercise in other developing countries in Latin America and eastern Europe.
The conditions that the IMF imposed on Mexico and the other debtor countries in return for this financial support created serious problems for these countries. Still, the IMF was an effective actor in the 1980s debt crisis.
Today, the IMF is unable to play such a decisive role. For example, it has provided Zambia with less than 10% of its financing needs. It has been four years since Zambia defaulted on its debt and, even with IMF support, it has not yet concluded restructuring agreements with all its creditors.
What is to be done?
The solution to this problem requires the rich countries to provide sufficient finances for the IMF to carry out its mandate. They must also surrender some control and make the organisation more democratic and accountable.
In the short term, the IMF can take two actions.
First, it must set out detailed policies and procedures that explain to its own staff, to its member states and to the inhabitants of these states what it can and will do. These policies should clarify the criteria that the IMF will use to determine when and how to incorporate climate, gender, inequality and other social issues into IMF operations.
They should also describe with whom it will consult, how external actors can engage with the IMF and the process it will follow in designing and implementing its operations. In fact, there are international norms and standards that the IMF can use to develop policies and procedures that are principled and transparent.
Second, the IMF must acknowledge that the issues raised by its expanded mandate are complex and that the risk of mistakes is high.
Consequently, the IMF needs a mechanism that can help it identify its mistakes, address their adverse impacts in a timely manner and avoid repeating them.
Currently, the IMF is the only multilateral financial institution without such a mechanism. It therefore lacks the means for identifying unanticipated problems in its operations when they can still be corrected and for learning about the impact of its operations on the communities and people it is supposed to be helping.
Danny Bradlow is Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria
Seayeen Aum promotes ecotourism in the remote province of Ratanakiri, in Cambodia’s northeast. Credit: Kris Janssens/ IPS
by Kris Janssens (phnom penh)
Inter Press Service
PHNOM PENH, Jun 28 (IPS) – Modernity is arriving rapidly in Cambodia, observes journalist Kris Janssens (48), who has lived and worked in the country since 2016. The predominantly young population is eager to move forward, embracing technology over traditional agriculture or fishing. Can Cambodians unite their country’s authentic soul with their aspirations for progress?
Enormous changes throughout the years
I arrived in Cambodia in the winter of 2015, on January 7 to be precise. At the time, I was unaware of the significance of this date in Cambodian history, marking the official end of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979. To be honest, I knew very little about Cambodia.
I planned to stay here briefly before returning to India, where I had just finished a series of radio reports. The unique Cambodian spirit changed my decision and my life course. This country immediately felt so familiar to me that I decided to move here permanently, about eighteen months later, in the fall of 2016. I’m still very happy that I can live in this magical kingdom.
But throughout the years, Cambodia has changed enormously. In the capital city of Phnom Penh, small shops and cozy coffee bars make way for tall bank buildings. And the picturesque airport will soon be replaced by a huge terminal, further away from the city center, and out of proportion compared to the human-scaled city that I love so much.
I have the feeling that the country is losing a part of its soul, and I want to try to capture and document this authentic spirit before it is too late.
Very young population
The fact that Cambodia is at a tipping point is primarily due to demography and history. More than one and a half million Cambodians died during the brutal Khmer Rouge era in the 1970s. The Pol Pot era was followed by a power vacuum and it took until the 1990s before peace and stability could return.
According to demographic forecasts, Phnom Penh will have more than 3 million inhabitants by 2035. More and more young Cambodians want to study in the city and switch from agriculture or fishing to technology or tourism.
Harsh economic reality
This shift is clearly visible in Kampong Khleang, a stilt village on the shore of the great Tonle Sap Lake, close to Siem Reap and the famous temples of Angkor Wat. Early in the morning, a rickety canoe takes me out to the open water, heading towards the rising sun. But what appears idyllic to me represents a harsh economic reality for the fishermen here. The catch is meager, and life is difficult.
“My son is going to work in the city, away from the water,” says Borei. It is the end of a tradition because his ancestors have lived as fishermen for generations. “But living along the water has become difficult, there are too many fishermen.” His shy ten-year-old son gazes ahead quietly. I ask him where he would like to work. After some hesitation, he responds “with the police”.
“That is a typical answer,” says Chhay Doeb. He is the Executive director of Cambodia Rural Students Trust, an NGO that provides scholarships to students from impoverished rural families.
“When young people arrive in the city, they want to become police officers, soldiers, doctors or teachers,” he says. “But they gradually discover that they can also work in the real estate sector or as a lawyer, for example.”
Noticeable distrust among parents
Doeb believes that the Cambodian economy will evolve and diversify even further. “But the economic level of neighboring countries like Thailand or Vietnam is not yet within reach,” he says.
At its founding in 2011, the organization had to go to villages and convince students of the NGO’s good intentions. Today, there are almost a thousand applications for twenty new places every year. The money for the scholarships comes from Australia.
Doeb still notices distrust among parents, wondering what their offspring is doing in the city.
I also experience this suspicion in Kratie, a small town on the bank of the Mekong River in the rural interior of Cambodia. The typical rural villagers look like characters sculpted from clay, with heads weathered by the sun and bodies wrinkled from hard work.
I meet Proum Veasna, who is about to take his cows back to the stable at dusk. During our conversation, his close neighbor passes by on his moped. He teasingly squeezes Veasna’s bare stomach. “We are friends, we all know each other here,” he says. His son works as a construction worker in Phnom Penh, but he has never been there himself. “It’s polluted, I would immediately get sick.”
Veasna has always worked as a farmer. “I had no choice because I have no education.” He wants a different future for his four children. “My daughter is learning English and Chinese.” The girl cycles by as we talk about her. “She can grow up to be whatever she wants, she is so smart,” says the proud dad.
Boosting economy
Upstream the Mekong River, in the neighboring province of Stung Treng, I meet Teap Chueng and Kom Leang, a retired couple living in a lonely house in a vast wooded landscape. “Covid never happened here”, they tell me with a big smile, “because we are never in touch with city dwellers”.
They do not need to go to the nearby town, as they are completely self-sufficient. “We have four hectares of land”, says Teap Chueng, while his wife proudly shows home-grown winter melon, a mild-tasting fruit related to the cucumber.
The region is also known for cashew nuts. “As we speak, new factories are being built, so the farmers will be able to scale up the production”. Although they realize that industrialization will change the landscape of their beloved home, the couple can’t wait for this development to happen. “It will boost our economy, which will benefit our children and grandchildren”.
A country with a lot of energy
Seayeen Aum is a typical example of someone who managed to work his way up. As a child, he learned how to survive in nature. “We didn’t always have enough money”, he says. “But if you know and understand the forest, you will always find something to eat.”
Today he promotes ecotourism in the remote province of Ratanakiri, in Cambodia’s northeast. And with success. During our trek through the jungle, he constantly receives calls and orders on one of his two mobile phones. “We are a country with a lot of energy,” he says, laughing.
This entrepreneur succeeded in marketing this region, with traditional ethnic minority groups, in a respectful manner to a Western audience. Authenticity and progress do go hand in hand here for the time being.
This is a country with a lot of challenges, providing all these graduating students with satisfying employment, to say the least. The drive for stability is important to Cambodians, but I also see ambitious people like Seayeen, who have a plan and are progressively working towards the result. In another five to eight years from now, this country will look completely different.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Jun 18 (IPS) – Today Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and the environmental threats they confront require our urgent attention —and the global spotlight needs to be trained deliberately and maintained consistently on their concerns, in particular, climate change, marine biological diversity loss and sustainable development goals (SDGs).
A world in which other pressing matters compete for attention, this challenge could easily be neglected.
There is a significant community of small island states in the world. The United Nations recognizes 39 of them. The aggregate population of all the SIDS is 65 million, slightly less than 1% of the world’s population but nevertheless a population that requires our attention.
They share similar sustainable development challenges, including small populations, limited local resources, including land, remoteness, susceptibility to frequent natural disasters, easy vulnerability to external shocks, excessive dependence on external trade and almost all are highly threatened by climate change.
SIDS were recognized as a special case both for their environment and development challenges at the?1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development? in Rio de Janeiro.?
High import and export costs will continue to be a factor in their economies, while their dependence on external markets due to the narrow resource bases make them particularly vulnerable. Since they control sea areas (in particularly the Exclusive Economic Zones),on average 28 times the size of their land mass, much of their natural resources come from the seas and oceans that surround them.
Therefore, the seas and oceans are critical from their perspective. Vulnerability to exogenous economic shocks and fragile land and marine ecosystems make SIDS particularly susceptible to biodiversity loss and climate change.
The Blue Economy, defined by World Bank as the “sustainable use of ocean resources to benefit economies, livelihoods and ocean ecosystem health” becomes particularly relevant to SIDS.
Over 40 percent of SIDS are affected by, or are on the edge of, unsustainable levels of debt, severely constraining their ability to invest in resilience, climate action and sustainable development. This is why they have been recognised as a special group that requires concentrated assistance.
The four main geographical regions in which SIDS are concentrated are the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean.?
4th International Conference on SIDS, 27 – 30 May, 2004
In his opening address as the President of the 4th International Conference on SIDS, Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, forcefully underlined the importance of its theme — “Charting the Course Toward Resilient Prosperity”.
Stressing that such States are “on the front lines of a battlefield of a confluence of crises — none of which they have caused or created” — he said that the small size of such States, limited financial resources and constrained human capital, place them at a marked disadvantage on the global stage. Further, their journey towards development has been repeatedly disrupted by monumental crises, among them the financial meltdown of 2008 and the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.
Reflecting the sentiments of many, he called for urgent, multilateral solutions, and he observed that those present are gathered “not only to reiterate challenges, but also to demand and enact solutions”. The Global North, in particular, must honour its commitments — including providing $1 billion in climate financing to assist with adaptation and mitigation.
Gaston Browne identified a clear gap in the oft expressed pious sentiments of the international community and actual action taken to implement these.
SIDS Dependency on the Seas and Oceans
Traditionally most small island states, surrounded by the seas and oceans, have been dependent on the oceans far more than bigger states for most of their needs. The seas provide a significant part of their food, including, fish, crustaceans, sea weed, etc, energy needs are imported across the seas, introduced and imported food, tourism which plays a considerable economic role, daily essentials and exports.
Sea food is a critical source of protein for SIDs. Today lobsters, prawns, scallops, mussels, etc are also a major income source for fishermen and a critical foreign exchange earner.
The income and protein source provided by the seas and oceans is threatened in some areas by overfishing, pollution, predatory and unregulated fishing by distant water fishers and, critically, by the impacts of climate change. The warming of the oceans is already having a devastating impact on coral reefs, so important as spawning grounds for myriads of fish and other economically important species.
Warming seas are likely to cause some fish species to migrate away from their traditional habitats and others to become extinct. Tuna migration habits in the Pacific Ocean, for example, are changing due to the heating of the ocean. This could have an enormous impact on Pacific small island states whose food supplies and economies depend on the tuna catch, and could cause an estimated $140 million loss in average government revenue per year.
Given the importance of the marine environment to small island states, it is vital that the exploitation of the resource takes place sustainably. Once a vital resource of this nature is lost, it is unlikely that it will recover in a short time, if ever. International agreements and arrangements in place at present with need to implemented with vigour and other arrangements may have to be put in place.
International Action and Options for SIDS
With their small economies, SIDS are at the mercy of the elements and with limited fall back options. A single hurricane could wipe out the economies of some small island states. Despite their minimal historical greenhouse gas emissions, SIDS face some of the most severe impacts of climate change, with serious loss and damage in the form of destroyed infrastructure, economic and cultural loss, loss of lives and livelihoods, loss of biodiversity and forced displacement.
It is now widely acknowledged that the depletion of the resource of the seas and oceans will result in numerable and unpredictable consequences including, massive unemployment, increased poverty, malnutrition, overall negative economic impacts, economic migration which will have repercussions for neighboring countries and possible community unrest.
Some international initiatives offer adaptation options to the SIDS.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Regional Seas Programme in 1974. (The Programme now administers this regional mechanism for the conservation of the marine and coastal environment to address the accelerating marine pollution). 18 regions participate in the Programme, of which 14 Regional Seas programmes are underpinned by legally binding conventions. The participating regions include, South Asian Seas, South-East Pacific, Western Africa and the Wider Caribbean where many of the SIDS are located.
Following the adoption of Agenda 2030, the Regional Seas Programme seeks to assist Member States in achieving the ocean-related SDGs by coordinating national actions at the regional level. SIDS stand to benefit considerably from these programmes. Thus the Regional Seas programmes set the Regional Seas Strategic Directions (2017-2020) and decided to:
1. Reduce marine pollution of all kinds in line with the SDG Goal 14.1.
2. Create increased resilience of people, marine and coastal ecosystems, and their health and productivity, in line with the SDG Goal 13 and decisions made at the UNFCCC COP21.
3. Develop integrated, ecosystem-based regional ocean policies and strategies for sustainable use of marine and coastal resources, paying close attention to blue growth.
4. Enhance effectiveness of Regional Seas Conventions and Action Plans as regional platforms for supporting integrated ocean policies and management.
Under the Paris Accords of 2015, developed country Parties to the Accords agreed to provide financial resources to assist highly vulnerable country Parties with regard to both mitigation and adaptation consistent with their existing obligations under the Convention.
The UNEP Adaptation Finance GAP Report estimates that adaptation finance needs in developing countries will reach $140 billion – $300 billion per year by 2030, and $280 billion to $500 billion per year by 2050. SIDS, if they are proactive in the search for funding, are expected to be a major beneficiary under this commitment.
It is recalled that under the Paris Accords, developed countries reaffirmed the commitment to mobilize $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020, and agreed to continue mobilising finance at this level until 2025. This commitment included finance for the Green Climate Fund, which is a part of the UNFCCC, and also for a variety of other public and private programmes. This amount has not been reached at all.
The Paris Accords also recognize loss and damage. Loss and damage can stem from extreme weather events, or from slow-onset events such as the loss of land to sea level rise for low-lying islands and the warming of the seas. Tuna migration habits in the Pacific Ocean, for example, are changing due to the heating of the ocean.
The push to address loss and damage as a distinct issue in the Paris Agreement came from the Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries, whose economies and livelihoods are most vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change.
At Cop 27 in 2022 countries agreed to establish a Loss and Damage Fund, which would provide financial assistance to climate-vulnerable countries. The fund was officially operationalized at Cop 28 in November 2023. The major beneficiaries can be the SIDS.
In 2021, Tuvalu in the Pacific and Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean established a Commission for Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law. The intention is to take claims for loss and damage to international judicial tribunals.
Vanuatu is also leading a campaign to ask the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on climate change. This initiative had its beginnings in2014 under the sponsorship of Mauritius.
Now we have an additional development which should make us think deeper.
June 2023, the United Nations adopted a new treaty under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (‘BBNJ’). Today, this is also known as the High Seas Biodiversity Treaty.
During the negotiations on this treaty, while the developed North focused more on Marine Protected Areas, and these are important, the South was equally interested in the equitable sharing of the benefits of exploiting the mega genetic pool of the oceans.
Properly managed, implemented in the right spirit, the sharing of benefits under this treaty could bring considerable material rewards to SIDS. They will benefit considerably if the sharing of benefits of the exploitation of BBNJ works well. It has been said that a single bucket of sea water could contain more genetic material than hectares of dry land.
Already major pharmaceutical companies are producing drugs developed from genetic material recovered from the high seas.
Dr Palitha Kohona is former Sri Lanka Ambassador to China and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN and one-time Co-Chair of the UN ad hoc committee on BBNJ.
The distinctive boats used by fishworkers in Andhra Pradesh, India. Their unique design, with a curvy end and flat middle, enables stability in the waters of Andhra Pradesh, reflecting the ingenuity of local fishermen. Credit: Aishwarya Bajpai/IPS
by Aishwarya Bajpai (new delhi)
Inter Press Service
The coastal ecosystem protects us, feeds us, and could be the solution to mitigating climate change. In this explainer, published on World Ocean Day, IPS, looks at blue carbon and why it is so crucial.
NEW DELHI, Jun 08 (IPS) – The area where land meets the sea, known as coastal ecosystems, could be the key to reducing the effects of climate change.
What is blue carbon?
Blue carbon refers to the carbon dioxide (CO2) stored within marine or coastal ecosystems worldwide. These ecosystems include coastal plants such as mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes, which trap CO2 in their seabeds.
Why is it important?
The coastal ecosystem provides a protective shield, safeguarding communities from the adverse effects of natural disasters and climate change by maintaining cooler temperatures, even in summer.
How do we know this?
Research indicates that, despite covering less than 5 percent of the global land area and less than 2 percent of the ocean, coastal ecosystems store approximately 50 percent of all carbon buried in ocean sediments. Remarkably, they can store 5–10 times more carbon than land-based forest patches. These carbon stores can extend up to 6 meters deep, with layers dating back thousands of years. As the largest carbon sink (the ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere), they play a crucial role in reducing the effects of climate change by absorbing 90 percent of excess heat and 23 percent of man-made CO2 emissions.
What else do coastal ecosystems do?
Coastal ecosystems serve as a barrier against natural disasters like floods and storms and contribute to climate regulation in coastal regions. They provide habitat for coastal animals and support communities dependent on coastal resources for food and livelihoods, particularly ocean people and fishworkers globally.
In the Indian state of Goa, women traditionally perform the early morning ritual of drying fish. Credit: Aishwarya Bajpai/IPS
What happens if coastal ecosystems deteriorate?
More than one-third of the world’s population or about 1.4 million people resides in coastal areas and small islands, comprising a mere 4 percent of the Earth’s total land area. For example, mangrove loss has soared to 40 percent since 1970, while coral reefs have witnessed a 50 percent decline since 1870.
At the same time, the global coastal population has surged, from approximately 2 billion in 1990 to 2.2 billion by 1995, encompassing four out of every ten people on the planet.
What does the sea tell us about global warming?
Over the past five decades, more than 90 percent of the Earth’s warming has been observed in the ocean. Recent research suggests that approximately 63 percent of the total increase in stored heat within the climate system from 1971 to 2010 can be attributed to the warming of the upper oceans, while warming from depths of 700 meters to the ocean floor contributes an additional 30 percent.
What are the impacts of this global warming?
Specifically in the Indian context, between 1950 and 2020, the Indian Ocean experienced a temperature rise of 1.2°C. This warming trend has led to the rapid intensification of cyclones, with projections indicating a tenfold increase in cyclone formation, from the current average of 20 days per year to an estimated 220–250 days per year.
So, how can blue carbon combat climate change?
Blue carbon ecosystems are crucial to combating climate change because they are an effective carbon sink. For example, mangroves, renowned as one of the most carbon-rich forests in the tropics, boast an average annual carbon sequestration rate ranging from 6 to 8 Mg CO?e/ha, surpassing global rates observed in mature tropical forests.
Can we revive our coastal ecosystems?
Yes, there are several ways to do so, including carbon capture technologies and strategies like phytoplankton blooms, where fertilizing the ocean with nutrients can enhance carbon uptake. We could also use wave pumps to transport carbon-saturated surface waters down into the deep ocean, aiding carbon sequestration. Another method includes adding pulverized minerals to the ocean, which can absorb greater amounts of carbon dioxide, contributing to carbon capture efforts.
We should also ensure our policy frameworks reduce carbon footprints, including actions to conserve natural systems and reduce emissions.
There should be ongoing research and training for skilled carbon capture system experts.
Therefore, countries around the world can protect their future, biodiversity, and the planet by encouraging conservation of coastal ecosystems.
This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.
Opinion by Carolina Galvani, Monique Mikhail (washington dc)
Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON DC, May 29 (IPS) – Last week, the World Bank Group released a new report that highlights the urgent need to drastically reduce GHG emissions to address the climate crisis and calls on countries to act. However, while the World Bank’s acknowledgment of the damaging climate impacts of industrial agriculture is a crucial step forward, it’s simply not enough.
To address the climate emergency, the World Bank must walk the talk and take action on its own portfolio – which currently has billions invested in livestock production – by halting all financing for the global expansion of factory farming.
First, the climate consequences of industrial livestock are staggering. As the World Bank’s report points out, the global agrifood system accounts for approximately one-third of all global greenhouse gas emissions, and industrial livestock production accounts for the lion’s share of these.
Research has shown that livestock production alone will consume nearly half of the world’s 1.5°C emissions budget by 2030 and a staggering 80% by 2050. The World Bank’s report aptly states that “the system that feeds us is also feeding the planet’s climate crisis.”
The World Bank cannot effectively tackle the climate crisis without a significant shift in lending away from high-polluting industrial livestock and toward a more sustainable food system.
Second, the World Bank’s continued financing for industrial livestock starkly contradicts its own commitments, spanning from the Paris Agreement targets to the Sustainable Development Goals to the Bank’s biodiversity policies, and even its own mission statement.
The World Bank itself says that “the world cannot achieve the Paris Agreement targets without achieving net zero emissions in the agrifood system.” Yet, the Bank continues to finance the expansion of industrial livestock – putting the Bank’s financing at odds with its commitment to align its strategies, activities, and investments with the climate goals of the Paris Agreement.
The Bank’s financial support for industrial livestock goes against other obligations as well, including the Bank’s commitment to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
A 2019 report from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development highlights the adverse human health and environmental impacts of industrial agriculture, including livestock and feed production, and the ways in which it undermines several SDGs, including poverty eradication (1), zero hunger (2), good health (3), clean water (6), decent work (8), responsible consumption and production (12), and climate action (13).
Adding to this, despite the World Bank’s claim that it is “putting nature at the core of development efforts”, the Bank is continuing to undermine biodiversity by supporting the expansion of industrial livestock production when this sector, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), is the primary threat to over 85% of the 28,000 species at risk of extinction.
Beyond global commitments, financing industrial livestock is also at odds with the World Bank’s own mission statement. World Bank President Ajay Banga took the reins at the World Bank a year ago with a mandate to help countries mitigate the climate crisis.
As part of that mandate, the World Bank updated its mission statement, stating it will work “to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet.” To achieve this mission, the World Bank must reassess its investments and immediately cease financing the expansion of industrial livestock.
Finally, like all development institutions, the World Bank has limited resources and must carefully choose the best projects to achieve its overall mission. In practice, this means that every dollar spent on industrial livestock is a dollar not invested in what the World Bank itself has acknowledged is the necessary just transition to a sustainable agrifood system. The Bank must redirect its support toward transitioning to a just and sustainable global food system.
As the Bank rightly points out in its recent report, “he world has avoided confronting agrifood system emissions for as long as it could because of the scope and complexity of the task…now is the time to put agriculture and food at the top of the mitigation agenda. If not, the world will be unable to ensure a livable planet for future generations.”
It’s past time for the Bank to heed its own warning.
The World Bank must immediately cease its support for industrial livestock — a primary driver of climate change, biodiversity loss, public health crises, and food insecurity — and direct the Bank’s resources and considerable influence toward reforming and reshaping agriculture and food systems.
Our future on a livable planet depends on it.
Carolina Galvani is the executive director of Sinergia Animal, an international animal protection organization working in the Global South to end the worst practices of industrial animal agriculture. Monique Mikhail is the Agriculture and Climate Finance Campaigns Director at Friends of the Earth U.S. Sinergia Animal and Friends of the Earth are members of the Stop Financing Factory Farming coalition.
Opinion by Achim Steiner, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, May 22 (IPS) – Small island developing states (SIDS) are scattered across the globe, dotting the Pacific Ocean, the Caribbean, the west and east coasts of Africa and the Indian Ocean.
These low-lying highly indebted countries are on the frontlines of climate change and natural resource scarcity, already facing the extremes of sea level rise, unpredictable weather events, and environmental degradation that millions more will face tomorrow.
Yet they also are pioneers, innovating and demonstrating what is possible in a shift to a nature-positive future. Emerging technologies and solutions are re-setting economic and societal priorities to value and optimize natural resources and setting forth a path of thriving resilience.
In three decades of working together supporting small islands states, these are the three critical success factors we see emerging from these trailblazing island states as the world looks to transition to a nature-positive future.
One: Nature sits at the heart of this effort.
Nature is the most effective solution to our interconnected planetary crisis and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. It can unlock new and quickly felt benefits of sustainable development.
Ecosystem services underpin key economic sectors in all vulnerable small island states, from fisheries to agriculture to tourism, but these same sectors have historically imposed serious environmental costs. Transitioning these sectors from ‘highly damaging’ to ‘sustainable’, in ways that are investable and profitable while benefiting communities, sits at the heart of our work together.
The new Blue and Green Islands Programme, for example, mainstreams the central role of nature and scales nature-based solutions to address environmental degradation across three target sectors—urban, food, and tourism—for nature-positive shifts in fifteen island states.
Small islands are especially well positioned to benefit from nature-positive economies, counting among them some of the most diverse and unique ecosystems in the world. For them, a nature-positive economy is important not just to stabilize the security of their natural resources and ensure resilient and thriving futures; it assures their role as irreplaceable hosts to many of the world’s migratory and endemic species that make up our global planetary safety net.
Two: Successful solutions touch all aspects of life and livelihoods.
Tackling sea level rise isn’t separate from restoring protective coastal ecosystems, which isn’t separate from rapidly expanding new opportunities in sustainable tourism and sustainable fishing. These expanding opportunities drive sustainable development, bringing jobs, economic prosperity, and resilience.
‘Whole of island’ approaches are now tackling the conservation of land, water, and ocean resources as interconnected issues. These approaches are championing decarbonization and sustainable livelihoods, increasing access to sustainable energy, increasing the ability of communities to adapt to unpredictable or extreme weather, creating jobs, improving opportunities and wellbeing, and achieving sustainable development goals.
The logic of integrated approaches is clear: our lives are deeply interconnected with our environment and our opportunities the world over. The challenge is adapting and shifting systemic norms that are out of step and out of date for the collective future we want. Whole of island issues demands ‘whole-of-society’ inclusion and coordination, across ministries and sectors, building on locally owned and existing structures and initiatives, and seeking private sector engagement and community empowerment at every level.
Today, all our projects undertaken with island states promote integration and inclusion and are designed to ensure that multiple challenges can be addressed at scale and pace simultaneously.
Successful projects demonstrate the disproportionate importance of innovation to turn our most urgent challenges into opportunities for sustainable development. Representing nearly 20% of the world’s exclusive economic zones, many of these islands are incubating new and investable nature-based solutions that can be scaled up to support successful transitions to nature-positive economic sectors and centres of excellence, both in the islands themselves and to the benefit of countries beyond.
For example, with UNDP and GEF support, Seychelles issued the world’s first ‘blue bond’; Cuba mainstreamed nature into policies and practices to reverse degradation of the Sabana-Camagüey ecosystem driven by agriculture, livestock, fisheries, and tourism; and the GEF’s Small Grants Programme supported local communities to ban single-use plastics in the Maldives.
New initiatives with innovative partners such as the Global Fund for Coral Reefs also seek to attract and de-risk private sector investment into local businesses to protect and restore important coral reef ecosystems. These initiatives offer opportunities for integration that are now inspiring similar examples across other islands.
Nothing without partnerships.
A broad and inclusive coalition of government, private sector, civil society, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and other partners is critical to further accelerate nature-positive transformation and increase impact.
New partnerships with the private sector to identify and deploy new business models and instruments to support nature-positive outcomes are also a major part of this effort.
Small Island Developing States have in front of them an opportunity to scale and replicate their successes and make outsized contributions to the implementation of environmental conventions including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (The Biodiversity Plan), the Paris Agreement and the UNCCD Strategic Framework, as well as progress towards their sustainable development goals.
In responding to the most pressing development needs of small island states, the nature-positive economic transitions that are emerging, sector by sector, taking an integrated, innovative and community-informed approach, offer answers to development challenges with applications far beyond their precarious and precious coastlines.
Achim Steiner is Administrator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); Carlos Manuel Rodriguez is CEO and Chairperson, Global Environment Facility (GEF)
During its G20 presidential year, South Africa will host a summit of heads of state and government. It will also be responsible for organising and chairing about 200 meetings of ministers and officials. These will come from the G20 members, invited countries and international organisations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The meetings will focus on issues such as the challenges facing the global economy and whether the current arrangements for global economic governance are able to respond effectively.
The G20 presidency, therefore, presents South Africa with an opportunity to promote reforms in global economic governance. But there are constraints. It will inherit an agenda from Brazil, the current G20 chair. And it will have to respond to developments in the current dynamic and complex global environment.
Danny Bradlow
The IMF/World Bank spring meetings held in April in the US suggest some achievable objectives for the G20 next year. There was a great deal of discussion about the inability of current arrangements to adequately address global challenges like climate, public health, inequality, poverty and digitalisation.
There’s not necessarily agreement on how to prioritise these challenges. And, unfortunately, the views of the rich states, which prioritise issues like carbon emissions, dominate the discussions. For example, the World Bank highlighted the fact that, in the 2023 financial year, it increased the funds loaned for climate-related purposes by more than 20%, allocating 41% of all its lending to climate.
But its own survey of its borrower countries shows that climate ranks number 11 on the list of priorities of its borrower states. Health, education, agriculture and food security, and water and sanitation rank much higher. Nevertheless, at least two gaps became evident in the discussions.
The first relates to IMF reform. The second concerns the relationship between international organisations and their member states.
South Africa should aim to fill these gaps. It should encourage the G20 to commission two studies on the scale and scope of the challenges that the international community faces, and propose some responses. Ideally, it should convince the G20 to commission these studies in 2024 so that it can begin discussing policy responses in 2025.
This kind of approach has been effective. Over the last few years, the multilateral development banks have been the subject of G20-commissioned studies. This has led to proposals designed to make them “bigger and better”.
These changes are being made in an opaque and unpredictable way, however. The IMF has not made publicly available the principles and procedures it uses when deciding what aspects of these “new” issues to take on.
It can’t accurately assess the full impacts of these issues unless it understands how communities, workers, businesses and civil society organisations will respond to the social and environmental impacts of specific policy and fiscal initiatives with macroeconomic implications. It cannot gain this information without consulting these groups.
This means it must engage more with a broader range of stakeholders than it did when it focused exclusively on more traditional macroeconomic and financial stability concerns. These new issues, therefore, raise questions about the appropriate form for the relationship between the IMF and its member states.
This is an important and creative idea. But the proposal raises difficult questions about state sovereignty and about the design of the institutions of global governance.
What’s needed
While multilateral development banks have been the subject of G20-commissioned studies, the IMF has not undergone a similar examination.
South Africa should commission a group of experts to study how the IMF should change to take on these new issues. The study should look at IMF governance, operational policies and practices, and its financial needs. The purpose would be to identify the current shortcomings in structures and functions.
Experts should also think of ways to make the IMF more responsive to the needs and priorities of all its member states and their citizens.
Second, South Africa should call for a study of how best to divide responsibility between states and the international financial institutions. This is particularly important when it comes to the environmental and social impacts of operations.
The purpose would be to understand how the roles and functions of these institutions are evolving and how this is affecting their relations with their member states. The study could propose ways to ensure that the structure and functions of institutions are both respectful of state sovereignty and appropriate for the responsibilities that the institutions are assuming.
Raising a global wealth tax for developmental purposes could be one example used in this study.
Danny Bradlow is a Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria. In addition to his position at the University of Pretoria, he is also a Compliance Officer in the Social and Environmental Compliance Unit of the UNDP and Co-Chair of the Academic Circle on the Right to Development, which advises the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development.
Source: The Conversation– a nonprofit, independent news organization dedicated to unlocking the knowledge of experts for the public good. The University of Pretoria provides funding as a partner of The Conversation AFRICA.
