ABUJA, Nigeria, Jan 02 (IPS) – In 2022 alone, flooding killed at least 662 people, injured 3,174, displaced about 2.5 million, and destroyed 200,000 houses individuals.
As far back as 2012, the World Bank reported that erosion was affecting over 6,000 square kilometres of land in the country, with about 3,400 square kilometres highly exposed.
Under the NEWMAP, the country began working with the World Bank to rehabilitate degraded lands and reduce erosion and climate vulnerability in 23 states. The project had four work streams:
1. Investing in erosion and watershed management infrastructure to reduce land degradation,
2. Developing information services to strengthen erosion and watershed monitoring and disaster risk management,
3. Strengthening Nigeria’s strategic framework for climate action to promote low carbon development, and
4. Supporting project management at federal and state levels with financial, social and environmental safeguards and oversight, outreach, and project monitoring and evaluation.
The outcomes reported in 2021 were positive: the project benefitted 35,000 people directly and more than 100,000 indirectly through small grants to community interest groups. The team trained 185,058 persons, 42 percent of them women.
On the first work stream, the project more than doubled the land under sustainable management, completed nearly five dozen participatory surface water management plans and reduced gully erosion considerably.
On the second, it made drafted environmental impact assessment guidelines and launched over a hundred automated hydrology and meteorology and flood early warning systems in the region.
The government is restoring lands in the northern states of Bauchi, Jigawa and Sokoto by planting thousands of tree seeds and seedlings.
On the third, the country issued green bonds to spark private investment in climate smart projects, such as distributing fuel-efficient cookstoves and developing solar-based electricity generators for rural health centers.
On the fourth, the team tested the use of remote sensing, geographic information system techniques, and 360-degree cameras and drones for remote supervision and grievance resolution.
Overall, NEWMAP showed Nigeria’s appetite for action and results.
Calls for accelerated action
Currently, about 178 local government areas (LGAs) in 32 of 36 states in Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory fall within the highly probable flood risk areas, according to the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA). Another 224 of the country’s 744 LGAs fall within moderately probable flood risk areas, and 372 fall within probable flood risk areas.
Nigeria’s more than 830 kilometres of coastline are increasingly threatened by floods, erosion, water and air pollution. Communities in the Niger Delta states bordering the Atlantic Ocean have lost or fear losing their homes and farmlands due to the eroding bedrock shielding the shoreline.
Forests are disappearing because of desertification. According to Action Against Desertification, only half the forests that existed in 2007 remain in the area where it operates.
Suleiman Hussein Adamu, minister of water resources through May 2023, had warned that floods would take a high toll on life and livelihoods, agriculture, livestock, infrastructure and the environment.
The frequency of natural disasters in the country links to climate change, according to Alhaji Musa Zakari, director of human resource management at the National Emergency Management Agency, responsible for managing disasters in Nigeria.
“Nigeria may need to re-examine some fundamentally new and more efficient approach to disaster management,” Mr. Zakari said in an interview.
New approaches
In August, Nigeria’s National Defence College (NDC) presented the government with its research findings, “Building Climate Resilience for Enhanced National Security: Strategic Options for Nigeria by 2035.” It recommended adopting strategies to achieve the short-, medium- and long-term objectives in climate adaptation programmes.
Vice President Kashim Shettima said the current administration was prioritizing climate change interventions to address desertification, coastal erosion and flooding by collaborating with relevant individuals and institutions.
The government shares the “concerns for the security implications of underestimating the devastations of climate change,” he said, while receiving the NDC report.
Part of the government’s strategy is to inform the public of preventive measures that save lives and reduce damage to property and infrastructure.
In addition, through the Great Green Wall initiative, which aims to increase the size of arable land in the Sahel, the government is restoring lands in the northern states of Bauchi, Jigawa and Sokoto by planting thousands of tree seeds and seedlings.
Said Vice President Shettima, “It is heartening to witness the alignment between findings and our government’s policy objectives, reinforcing our belief that a holistic and comprehensive approach is essential to tackling these challenges effectively.”
Source: Africa Renewal, a United Nations digital magazine that covers Africa’s economic, social and political developments.
Opinion by Daud Khan, Leila Yasmine Khan (rome and amsterdam)
Inter Press Service
ROME and AMSTERDAM, Jan 02 (IPS) – The recent elections in the Netherlands signals the increasing power of the far right in Europe. The populist party of Geert Wilders, the Party for Freedom, won a decisive, albeit unexpected, victory taking 37 seats out the 150 seat in parliament. Wilders will likely be the head of the next Government. His policies include stopping all immigration into the Netherlands, holding a referendum on leaving the EU, and banning mosques and the Quran.
Daud Khan
Welder’s victory is part of a general shift to the far-right in Europe. It follows that of Giorgia Meloni in Italy who has been heading a coalition, headed by the strongly anti-immigrant Brother of Italy, for over a year. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been increasing its power at both national and regional level. In France there is already talk of the far-right, anti-immigrant leader, Marie Le Pen being the next president.
So what explains the success of far-right, anti-immigrant parties in countries that have a long history of being relatively liberal and inclusive. And, more importantly what will happen now that they are in power, or are increasingly influential.
A key factor in their rise to power is their ability to peddle the narrative that the problems of the Common People are largely due to immigrants, and to an ill-defined political and economic Elite that is only interested in maintaining their power and profits.
According to the populist right, Europe is being overrun by people of a different skin color, with different language or accents, and with a different culture or religion. These foreign people are taking our jobs and businesses, depriving us of housing and acting as a drain on the welfare system. They are also responsible for most of the crimes, in particular theft, drugs and violence against women.
This narrative had strong appeal in economically deprived areas, among the lesser educated, and among workers who have lost jobs due to globalization, automation and outsourcing. These people form the core support group of the right wing populist parties. However, their recent successes have been largely due to their appeal to the middle classes that makes up the bulk of the population in Europe.
Leila Yasmine Khan
This middle class is increasingly fearful and apprehensive with regard to the future. The reasons include growing inequality and stagnant real wages; economic difficulties due to rising prices and high interest rates; anxieties about the impact of climate change, automation and AI; and uncertainties about the future due to rising international tensions and the fragmentation of global supply chains that had brought trillions of dollars of cheap consumer good into Europe. Many people in Europe now believe that the next generation may have a lower standard than this one.
This middle class has been disillusioned with the traditional parties of the left and of the right. They see little real difference between the two and are looking for what they consider real change. Initially the choice fell to parties that were new, but not too radical – parties such as Emmanuelle Macron’s En Marche! Party, or the Five Star Movement in Italy. However, as perceived problems deepened, the choice has shifted to the more radical right.
But now that the far-right parties have power and influence, what should one expect they will do particularly with regard to immigration which was a major aspect of their appeal. Will they really try to fulfill their election promises to stop or reduce immigration. The scope for maneuver is limited.
Due to slower population growth, there are fewer people of working age in most of Europe. Moreover, they tend to avoid jobs that imply long hours and hard physical effort, such as unskilled and semi-skilled jobs in agriculture, industry, construction and logistics. There is also little interest in jobs that require unsocial hours, such as home help, cleaning, care for the elderly and nursing. Immigrants are essential to fill these gaps.
In addition, immigrants are increasingly propping up the welfare state in most western European countries. Notwithstanding the rhetoric about “scroungers” on the welfare state, immigrants are net contributors to state coffers – they generally pay more in taxes than they draw in benefits. And, as low reproductive rates continue and populations continue to age, Governments expenditures on pensions and health care will rise. The tax contribution of immigrants will be critical to fund this.
For these reasons it is simply not possible to stop immigration or to send immigrants back. Given the limited space for maneuver, anti-immigrant parties will most likely not make any serious attempt to get rid of immigrants or even to reduce immigration. They may soften or even backtrack on their positions on immigration. Maybe they will come up with qualifiers such as “we are only against illegal immigrants; only immigrants involved in criminal activities will be expelled; and actually, all honest, hardworking immigrants are welcome”.
However, explicitly backtracking may be politically risky. It is more likely that these right wing parties will continue with their anti-immigrant rhetoric. This would serve several purposes. It will instill uncertainty and fear in the minds of immigrants; ensure that they do not organize and ask for higher wages or benefits; and that they stay in the shadows and not try to occupy political space.
These actions will very much appeal to unemployed workers and the apprehensive middle classes who voted in the right wing parties. More critically, it will also appeal to “big business” who are now caught between a tight domestic labor markets and rising costs.
If correct, does this mean that the swing to the far-right in Europe is here to stay? It would be such a pity as it would mean that one of the bastions of liberal values will transform into a classist society with a low wage sub-proletariat who have few rights and privileges.
Daud Khan a retired UN staff based in Rome. He has degrees in economics from the LSE and Oxford – where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.
Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands. She has Master’s degrees in Philosophy and in Argumentation and Rhetoric from the University of Amsterdam, as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of Rome (Roma Tre). She assisted in the preparation on this article.
For years I’ve enjoyed one-off murder mysteries that friends recommended, but the genre hadn’t really gotten its hooks in me. I’ve simply never been the kind of reader who actively tries to solve the case. My friends who champion these books tend to care deeply about tracking red herrings and attempting to out-sleuth the author. I’m just as content to know whodunit from the very start, as long as the novel itself has enjoyable pacing and character writing.
All this is to say I’ve lived three decades without reading anything by the “queen of mystery” Agatha Christie, despite her being one of the best-selling authors of all time. But after burning through tons of romances this year and looking for other books with brisk pacing and a consistent ending, I gave in. I ended up getting so sucked in that I started a passion project of reading every one of Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries in order of publication. It helped me find commonalities in some of my favorite books, shows, and movies, and ultimately led me down a wormhole of so many others. I love to collect hobbies. In 2023, murder mysteries became my latest.
I started with the books friends most passionately recommended: And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express. They both thrilled me — the former with its macabre and perfectly calibrated deaths, themed to each of the invitees, building and breaking suspense. I understood, immediately, why And Then There Were None is considered one of her best. But Murder on the Orient Express stuck in my mind even longer, specifically because of its bombastic murder reveal at the end — and also because of the detective at the heart of the story, whose illustrious mustaches stole the show. This is, of course, the beloved Belgian mastermind Hercule Poirot.
In Orient Express, I got an immediate sense of his memorably peculiar habits: his need for order, his taste in clothes, and his sense of pomp (that he never owns up to). But I was struck especially by Poirot’s morality; his decision not to turn these people over to the police after having solved the crime, because the victim was himself a heinous murderer. Here was a train quite literally full of murderers, confronted by a master detective, and yet all of them walked away unscathed. Poirot, I immediately understood, was in this for the joy of using his little gray cells to solve the case. Is he in more of her books? I wondered, like a spring chicken. I was immediately rewarded.
Photo: Nicole Clark/Polygon
Since July, my Libby app has been a long string of Poirot mystery holds. I made a list of the books in order so that I could strike them off with my handy highlighter. 20 books later, my hunger for them has only grown. I’m extremely fond of Poirot’s eccentricities: his continued attempts at retiring and growing vegetable marrows, his tendency to meddle when he can help two people find love, and his insistence on never explaining what he’s doing to his lovably dimwitted friend Hastings (the narrator of the early books in the series). Even if the murder mystery isn’t always resolved in my favorite way, I cherish passing time with Poirot so much it hardly matters. Luckily, Christie was masterful at plotting out her mysteries, and never seems to run out of inventive set-ups and solutions.
Reading through Hercule Poirot’s foibles has also been like opening up a skylight in my mind. Very early on, Poirot helped me realize I loved a locked-room mystery, and so I spent a month spiraling into other reading lists. Some of my favorites from Edgar Allan Poe belong in this legacy — which gave color to my memories of being the weird kid who carried around her dad’s battered Poe omnibus plastered in sticky notes. From there, I added tons of Dorothy L. Sayers to my library hold list, before getting into a pocket of Japanese Honkaku mysteries (Shimada Soji, Seishi Yokomizo). Impulsively, I looked for contemporary American authors who write locked-room mystery but for the Instagram era, and landed on Lucy Foley’s The Guest List. I don’t know that I would have found these authors otherwise, and enjoyed each of their unique approaches to my new favorite tropes.
I’ve also gotten distracted by hoovering up contemporary movies and shows that play with some of Christie’s most famous set-ups. Like a detective with red yarn and thumbtacks, I’ve taken notes while rewatching much of Rian Johnson’s recent work: Knives Out and Poker Face. I’ve honed a particular love for a pairs of colluding con artists like the husband and wife in Death on the Nile, in which a man marries a woman for her wealth and then works with his true beloved to murder said wife and share the newly inherited money. In Poker Face, I delighted at episode five, which similarly showcased a scheming pair — but in the form of two former activists in a retirement home committing a murder together.
Ironically, it’s the direct adaptations that I haven’t deeply engaged with. I haven’t yet watched any of the Kenneth Branagh movies, nor have I watched the beloved show Agatha Christie’s Poirot. Since Orient Express is what got me into Poirot, the one adaptation I have watched is the 1974 movie directed by Sidney Lumet, with an outrageous cast that includes Sean Connery, Anthony Perkins, Ingrid Bergman, and Lauren Bacall. It’s wonderful as a historical object, and as a film, it holds up as having a distinct perspective, with its memorably climactic stabbing scene, well-performed monologues, and beautiful establishing shots of the train chugging along. It feels distinctly like something that could not exist in the streaming era, where IP is increasingly recycled, and adapted so faithfully it seems to squish a director’s attempts at interpretation.
As I’ve read deeper into Christie, I’ve consistently found modern stories that pay homage to her work are more fun than those that approach it as straight adaptation. Why reproduce a facsimile of Christie’s work when her style and inventiveness leave so much room for play? She wrote in the 1920s through the ’70s — the world is so different now, and rife with opportunity for lighthearted sleuthing. I’m eager for the new stories her work will lead me toward as I keep reading into the new year. For now, though, I can be grateful for all the newly beloved stories my journey with Poirot has brought me — from Christie or those she directly inspired.
CLEVELAND — Before Joe Flacco ever threw his first pass in a Browns jersey, tight ends coach T.C. McCartney tried warning them.
Nobody knew what to expect from a 38-year-old quarterback who looked like his best days in football were 10 years and three teams ago, but McCartney still believed. He spent the 2019 season as Flacco’s quarterbacks coach in Denver and knew the old man could still spin it.
Then Flacco walked onto the practice field to run the scout team and quickly scored a touchdown against the Browns’ league-leading defense. Then he did it again. And again. And again.
Depending on who you ask, Flacco tore up the defense for five or six touchdowns running the scout team. Or maybe it was seven or eight. Flacco’s brief time running the scout team is already legendary, just like the rest of his six weeks here. It immediately got the attention of everyone in the building.
The Cleveland Browns are going back to the playoffs because they beat the Jets 37-20 Thursday night and because Joe Flacco is the best story in the NFL this year. He’s the Comeback Player of the Year. He’s Cleveland’s Man of the Year. He could run for office and get a dome stadium built here, too, if he stuck around long enough.
GO DEEPER
Browns clinch playoff berth as Flacco dominates Jets
Flacco was marvelous Thursday against his old team, cooking the Jets for 296 yards and three touchdowns in the first half. He stands in the pocket and rips darts like the all-time quarterback in a schoolyard pickup game.
The Browns were without leading receiver Amari Cooper. They lost No. 2 threat Elijah Moore to a possible concussion. Flacco just keeps spinning it. He’s turned David Njoku into an elite tight end over the past month.
He has played five games now in a Browns uniform and he already ranks 33rd on the team’s career passing list. They’ve had 37 quarterbacks since returning to the league in 1999. He ranks 18th out of those guys, by the way, and he’s within 59 yards of passing Browns legend Johnny Manziel.
He has surpassed 300 yards now in four consecutive games, the first time in his career that’s ever happened. I walked around the locker room in a daze after the game trying to find an offensive player to explain all of this to me like I’m a third-grader. How is this guy, at this age, coming off his couch after not playing well for years and putting up these kinds of numbers?
I got back a lot of blank stares and shoulder shrugs. No one knows how to properly describe this because there is no logical explanation. Aaron Rodgers won the league’s MVP award at 38 but he had been elite for more than a decade. Tom Brady threw for 4,700 yards in his age-38 season but he’s the greatest of all time and played at an elite level into his mid-40s.
Flacco’s last great season was 2014. His last good year was 2017. He was irrelevant and at times dreadful during his three seasons in New York. Now this.
His 13 touchdown passes already equal or exceed the total for five NFL teams this season — the Jets, Steelers, Titans, Panthers and Giants. His 13 touchdown passes equal the Steelers’ Kenny Pickett’s career total. It ranks Flacco 22nd on the Browns’ career list — one behind Deshaun Watson, actually.
Flacco is doing things that aren’t supposed to be done by 38-year-olds who were sitting on the couch six weeks ago. So I had to ask him.
When Cincinnati quarterback Jake Browning came off the bench to unexpectedly throw for 300 yards after Joe Burrow went down, he posted on Instagram that the league tagged him for a drug test. It’s all supposed to be random, but it’s also become a bit of a punchline around the league: Do something out of the ordinary for long enough and the random somehow seems to find you.
So as Flacco sat at his locker and began to strip off his uniform late Thursday night, I asked him if the league had drug-tested him yet. He cracked up.
Usually, those tests for PEDs and street drugs are done to all players during training camp, but since he wasn’t in camp with any team and didn’t sign anywhere until November, Flacco said he was tested for PEDs and other drugs as soon as he signed with the Browns. He hasn’t gotten flagged by the league since.
“I’m sure it’ll be coming,” he laughed.
Flacco’s best season in Baltimore came with Gary Kubiak as his offensive coordinator, and Kubiak spent a season with Kevin Stefanski in Minnesota. But Flacco and Stefanski never really had a relationship before six weeks ago.
When Watson went down with a broken shoulder, the Browns needed another quarterback. They thought Flacco was the best of the veterans remaining so they brought him in for a workout and paired him with some receivers he’d never thrown to before. Immediately, the Browns’ coaches and execs were mesmerized by his arm strength. McCartney was right. The old man could still spin it. They didn’t bother working out anyone else. They had their guy.
Sadly, Manziel’s spot in Browns history might be safe.
The Browns still have a chance to win their division if Baltimore loses out and a few more things break Cleveland’s way. But if the Ravens win at Miami on Sunday, they’ll clinch the division and the Browns will have nothing left to play for Week 18 at Cincinnati. It makes a lot of sense to rest Flacco and several other veterans such as Cooper and Joel Bitonio, who could use the time off.
Cleveland fans celebrate after the Browns defeated the New York Jets on Thursday night to clinch a playoff berth. (Ken Blaze / USA Today)
If this is it for Flacco’s regular season, it’s the type of tear that may never be duplicated. He breathed life into a franchise and city that looked despondent when Watson’s season ended. How could the Browns compete with a rookie quarterback in Dorian Thompson-Robinson and a washed-up veteran who nobody else in the league wanted?
This is how. The sold-out crowd serenaded their new quarterback to chants of “FLAAAAACCO, FLAAAAACCO” throughout the night. This city, forever a Browns town, has been captivated by a team that never quits and the quarterback they never knew they needed.
After the game, Flacco lingered on the field with his children, all dressed in his jersey, standing by his side. He smiled and chatted with fans, many of whom have waited their whole lives for this. The stadium was mostly vacant when the Browns went to the playoffs in 2020. Prior to that, their last playoff season was 2002.
Baltimore will always have Joe Flacco’s heart, but Cleveland is proving to everyone he can find love again. The feeling is mutual.
The 2023 rally for stocks in the U.S. accelerated as more investors bought the idea that the Federal Reserve succeeded in its effort to bring inflation to heel.
The S&P 500 SPX
ended Friday with a 24.2% gain for 2023, following a 19.4% decline in 2022. (All price changes in this article exclude dividends). Among the 500 stocks, 65% were up for 2023. Below is a list of the year’s 20 best performers in the benchmark index.
This article focuses on large-cap stocks. MarketWatch Editor in Chief Mark DeCambre took a broader look at all U.S. stocks of companies with market capitalizations of at least $1 billion, to list 10 with gains ranging from 412% to 1,924%.
The Fed began raising short-term interest rates and pushing long-term rates higher in March 2022 by allowing its bond portfolio to run off. That explains the poor performance for stocks in 2022, as bonds and even bank accounts because more attractive to investors.
Investors are anticipating the return to a low-rate environment by scooping up 10-year U.S. Treasury notes BX:TMUBMUSD10Y,
whose yield ended the year at 3.88%, down from 4.84% on Oct. 27 — the day of the S&P 500’s low for the second half of 2023.
Before looking at the list of best-performing stocks of 2023, here’s a summary of how the 11 sectors of the S&P 500 performed, with the full index and three more broad indexes at the bottom:
A look at 2023 price action really needs to encompass what took place in 2022 for context. The broad indexes haven’t moved much from their levels at the end of 2022 (again, excluding dividends). We have included current forward price-to-earnings ratios along with those at the end of 2021 and 2022. These valuations have declined a bit, which may provide some comfort for investors wondering how likely it is for stocks to continue to rally in 2024.
Biggest price increases among the S&P 500
Here are the 20 stocks in the S&P 500 whose prices rose the most in 2023:
BEREA, Ohio — Nobody is going to feel sorry for Joe Flacco. He’s won a Super Bowl MVP and made more than $175 million in his career. He’s winning at life.
And yet …
There’s just something about Flacco’s 16 years in the NFL that has been gnawing at me while watching this incredible last-chapter renaissance. He was always good, always consistent in his prime, but never quite elite.
He never received a single MVP vote but Carson Wentz, Derek Carr and Tony Romo did.
He never even appeared in a Pro Bowl. He was invited once but passed because his wife was due with their third child.
He was beloved — still is — by a large portion of the fan base in Baltimore, yet he was always overshadowed by Hall of Famers like Ray Lewis and Ed Reed. That Ravens defense still typically gets the bulk of the credit for his Super Bowl ring.
That’s why what’s happening here is so absurd, no script writer in the NFL or Hollywood could have made it sound plausible. A quarterback that hasn’t been good in a decade going on this type of heater? Throwing for more than 300 yards in three consecutive games for the first time in his career, leading the league in passing yards since becoming the Browns’ starter in Week 13 and tying for the league lead in touchdown passes during that time, too?
Drug tests for everyone.
Flacco is getting all of the credit now just weeks shy of his 39th birthday. He has quickly captured the attention and admiration of a city that was once divided by the Deshaun Watson trade.
He is again surrounded by an excellent defense, but no one here outside of Myles Garrett is on a gold jacket track at this point. Here, Flacco is the same as he’s always been. He’s the adult, the professional who just quietly goes about his business. There’s no drama, no cloud of controversy. He just shows up, does his job and meets his obligations every day.
Now in the twilight of his career, in a town that detests all things associated with the Baltimore Ravens, Flacco has stolen the heart of a city desperate for someone to love. This is Rocky being cheered in Russia or Jeter receiving a standing ovation in Boston.
“The city’s been unbelievable. I can’t say enough about how welcoming everybody has been,” Flacco said Tuesday. “Just coming from Baltimore for most of my career … It’s definitely been a little bit surreal in terms of how people have treated me around here.”
If this is his career victory lap, Flacco should take his time getting around the track. Embrace it all. Regardless of how this ends, he has already done enough to always be a Cleveland folk hero. He will be welcomed back and cheered here the way the crowd roars for Channing Frye and Richard Jefferson at Cavs games and for Rajai Davis at Guardians games. Without even playing in a postseason game, he has exceeded expectations in part because there were none when he arrived. His three wins in four games here match the total from his last four years as an NFL starter.
Since leaving Baltimore, Flacco was 3-14 in 17 NFL starts in Denver and New York. He’s 3-1 in Cleveland.
Make it make sense.
With the Jets coming to town Thursday night, and with as well as Flacco has played in Cleveland, obviously, New York executives would probably like a mulligan on how they handled this season after Aaron Rodgers’ torn Achilles. The Jets and Browns began the year with similar rosters and expectations. Both were playoff contenders in a crowded AFC and both lost their quarterbacks early. The Jets collapsed, and the Browns have thrived.
When they signed Flacco, I thought rookie Dorian Thompson-Robinson should remain the starter. Based on his record and numbers since leaving Baltimore, and the fact no team called him for the first 12 weeks of the season, Flacco looked like nothing more than the emergency option for a team that has been on the phone with 911 quite a bit this season.
Then Thompson-Robinson suffered a concussion at Denver and Flacco immediately began exceeding everyone’s expectations to the point now he has done too good of a job. It’s difficult to see how the Browns could bring him back next year. Do they really want to commit three spots on the 53-man roster to quarterbacks? Do they want to give Flacco a few million in salary when every dollar counts on their cap?
This is Watson’s team. His ironclad contract makes it so, and thankfully, after a few bumpy stretches, the last memory we have was him going 14-for-14 in the second half (with a broken shoulder) to beat a Ravens team that looks like the best in the league today. Watson remains the last quarterback to beat Baltimore and he did it on the road.
Thompson-Robinson was drafted to be the long-term backup behind Watson. None of that has changed. Flacco’s presence here next year could only risk dividing a locker room the first time Watson struggles. For a quarterback this close to 40, it just isn’t worth it. The sequel is never better than the original. Whether Flacco wants to play again next year or not is for him to decide, but it can’t be in Cleveland.
So enjoy this for what it is: A remarkable story, the best in the NFL right now. And a highly respected veteran receiving his due.
The Browns have caught a hurricane in a handbasket. Hold on tight and enjoy the ride wherever it blows.
TORONTO, Canada, Dec 22 (IPS) – The year 2023 has brought so much tragedy, with incomprehensible loss of lives, whether from wars or devastating ‘natural’ disasters, while our planet has seen yet more records broken as our climate catastrophe worsens.
Farhana Haque RahmanAnd so as the clock ticks towards the (mostly western) New Year, readers are traditionally subjected by media outlets like ours to the ‘yearender’ – usually a roundup of main events over the previous 12 months, one horror often overshadowed by the next.
So forgive us if for 2023 IPS takes a somewhat different approach, highlighting how humanity can do better, and how the big depressing picture should not obscure the myriad small but positive steps being taken out there.
COP28, the global climate conference held this month in Dubai, could neatly fit the ‘big depressing’ category. Hosted by a petrostate with nearly 100,000 people registered to attend, many of them lobbyists for fossil fuels and other polluters, it would be natural to address its outcomes with scepticism.
However, while Yamide Dagnet, Director for Climate Justice at the Open Society Foundations, described COP28 as “imperfect”, she said it also marked “an important and unprecedented step forward in our ‘course correction’ for a just transition towards resilient and greener economies.”
UN climate chief Simon Stiell acknowledged shortcomings in the compromise resolutions on fossil fuels and the level of funding for the Loss and Damages Fund. But the outcome, he said, was also the “beginning of the end” for the fossil fuel era.
Imperfect as it was and still based on old structures, COP28 hinted at the possible: a planetary approach to governance where common interests spanning climate, biodiversity and the whole health of Earth outweigh and supersede the current dominant global system of rule by nation states.
As we have tragically witnessed in 2023, the existing system – as vividly reflected in the repetitive stalemate among the five veto-bearing members of the UN Security Council – is failing to find resolution to the major conflicts of this year, Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza. Not to mention older and half-forgotten conflicts in places like Myanmar (18.6 million people in need of humanitarian aid) and in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (seven million displaced).
The unrestrained destruction of Gaza and the disproportionate killings of over 17,000, (now the death toll is “at least 20,000 people” according to Palestinian officials) mostly civilians– in retaliation for 1,200 killings by Hamas and 120 hostages in captivity– have left the Palestinians in a state of deep isolation and weighed down by a feeling of being deserted by the world at large.
The United Nations and the international community have remained helpless– with UN resolutions having no impact– while American pleas for restrained aerial bombings continue to be ignored by the Israelis in an act of defiance, wrote IPS senior journalist Thalif Deen.
The hegemony of the nation-state system is surely not going to disappear soon but – without wanting to sound too idealistic — its foundations are being chipped away by civil society where interdependence prevails over the divide and rule of the existing order. And so for a few examples encountered in our reporting:
CIVICUS Lens, standing for social justice and rooted in the global south, offers analysis of major events from a civil society perspective, such as its report on the security crisis gripping Haiti casting doubt over the viability of an international plan to dispatch a Kenya-led police contingent.
Education Cannot Wait, a global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, lobbied at COP28 for a $150 million appeal to support school-aged children facing climate shocks, such as the devastating drought in Somalia and Ethiopia, and floods in Pakistan where many of the 26,000 schools hit in 2022 remain closed.
Leprosy, an ancient but curable disease, had been pegged back in terms of new case numbers but the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 made it harder for patients to get treatment and for new cases to be reported. Groups such as the Sasakawa Health Foundation are redoubling efforts to promote early detection and treatment.
With 80 percent of the world’s poorest living closer to the epicenters of climate-induced disasters, civil society is hammering at the doors of global institutions to address the challenges of adaptation and mitigation.
Lobbying on the sidelines of COP28 in Dubai was activist Joshua Amponsem, co-director of the Youth Climate Justice Fund who questioned why weather-resilient housing was not yet a reality in Mozambique’s coastal regions despite the increasing ferocity of tropical cyclones.
“My key message is really simple. The clock is ticking,” Dr Simeon Ehui told IPS as the newly appointed Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture which works with partners across sub-Saharan Africa to tackle hunger, poverty and natural resource degradation.
Dr Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which has received record-breaking pledges in support of its largest ever replenishment, warns that under current trends 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030.
“Hunger remains a political issue, mostly caused by poverty, inequality, conflict, corruption and overall lack of access to food and resources. In a world of plenty, which produces enough food to feed everyone, how can there be hundreds of millions going hungry?” he asked.
Empowering communities in a bid to protect and rejuvenate the ecosystems of Pacific communities is the aim of the Unlocking Blue Pacific Prosperity conservation effort launched at COP28 by Palau’s President Surangel Whipps who noted that the world was not on track to meet any of the 17 sustainable development goals or climate goals by 2030.
“We really have reached planetary limits and I think interest in oceans is rising because we have very dramatically reached the limits of land,” says Dr Obura, “What the world needs to understand is how strongly nature and natural systems, even when highly altered such as agricultural systems, support people and economies very tangibly. It’s the same with the ocean.”
An ocean-first approach to the fight against climate change is also the pillar of a Dalhousie University research program, Transforming Climate Action, launched last May and funded by the Canadian government. Traditional knowledges of Indigenous People will be a focus.
As Max Roser, an economist making academic research accessible to all, reminds us: for more people to devote their energy to making progress tackling large global problems, we should ensure that more people know that it is possible.
Focusing on the efforts of civil society and projecting hope amidst all the heartbreak of 2023 might come across as futile and wasted, but in its coverage IPS will continue to highlight efforts and successes, big and small, that deserve to be celebrated.
Farhana Haque Rahman is the Executive Director of IPS Inter Press Service Noram and Senior Vice President of IPS; she served as the elected Director General of IPS from 2015 to 2019. A journalist and communications expert who lived and worked in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development IFAD.
NEW YORK, Dec 22 (IPS) – Benjamin Netanyahu must go. Under the guise of judicial reform, Netanyahu has undermined the rule of law and divided the country. He is toxic to Arab states, even those which have signed the Abraham Accords. Netanyahu has become an impediment to Israel’s democratic development and regional relations.
Israel needs a new government committed to peace and a cabinet that champions reconciliation. Perpetual war plays into the hands of Hamas. It placates Jewish hardliners who oppose the national aspirations of Palestinians. War also serves Netanyahu by distracting voters and delaying accountability for his government’s intelligence failures on October 7.
It took up to ten hours for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to react to Hamas’ invasion. Known for its security and intelligence services, Israel was caught flat-footed. Panicked residents of kibbutzim cowered in safe rooms, while 1,200 Israelis were killed, butchered in their homes and on the grounds of the Nova Music Festival. Hundreds were taken hostage by Hamas, gang-raped and turned into sexual slaves. One hundred and thirty remain in captivity.
It is impossible to reconcile Israel’s objectives. Israel cannot eradicate Hamas and free hostages captive in the subterranean world of Gaza’s tunnel network. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin just visited Jerusalem to discuss priorities and scaling back Israel’s offensive.
In the fog of war, the IDF killed three Israeli hostages last week displaying a white flag and speaking in Hebrew. Shooting people, even Hamas members who surrender, violates the laws of war and Israel’s military code. Exhausted and trigger happy, the incident is under investigation. The Israeli army chief of staff and the intelligence chief issued apologies. Netanyahu prevaricated, delaying his meeting with hostage families.
The incident caused outrage across Israel, raising questions about Israel’s conduct of the war. The Hamas Ministry of Health claims that 20,000 Palestinian civilians have died as a result of IDF activities. Hostage families are demanding an investigation.
There is a growing clamor to bring the hostages home. Hostage families are also demanding a plan to end the war. They have generally been supportive of Netanyahu’s response, but they are wavering. They believe that continued action in Gaza risks the lives of the remaining 130 hostages. The bungled operation has brought Israeli institutions – the IDF, Shin Bet and Mossad – into disrepute.
Even President Joe Biden, Israel’s biggest backer, criticized the IDF for its “indiscriminate bombing.” France, Germany and Britain are also fed up and have demanded a “sustainable ceasefire.”
Netanyahu said there will be a time and place for an inquiry into the Hamas attack and Israel’s response. He believes that the longer it takes for an inquiry, the more the passions of hostage families will be mollified.
Israel’s slow grinding war with Hamas must stop. Israel was justified in launching a reprisal after October 7, especially as details of the brutality came to light. Two months later, the IDF seems to be flailing about. Israel has been characterized as the aggressor and has lost the moral high ground. For sure, Israel has every right to defend itself. But what started as calculated counterterrorism now seems more like rage and revenge.
Can Hamas even be defeated? Hamas is more than an organization. It is a movement. For every Hamas terrorist that Israel kills, more Palestinian militants are waiting in the wings.
It’s time for a new approach. An interim government overseen by the Palestinian Authority should be established and make plans for an eventual Palestinian state living side-by-side at peace with Israel.
Indiscriminate bombing is counterproductive. A more surgical approach would differentiate between Hamas and Gazans, addressing claims of collective punishment.
Internationally mediated talks would ensue when the hostages are freed. Palestinians need a national horizon to separate themselves from the clutches of Hamas.
Israeli elections would likely repudiate Netanyahu and lead to the creation of a peace cabinet, putting Israel back on track as a democracy that respects minority rights and values good neighborly relations.
It is unimaginable that Netanyahu can survive his putrid performance. Prosecutors are waiting to charge Netanyahu with corruption. Israelis can debate the details of government formation for months, but polling suggests that regime change is something that Israelis agree on now.
David Phillips is an Adjunct Professor at the Security Studies Program of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
Opinion by Alice Wolfle, Tanja Sejersen (bangkok, thailand)
Inter Press Service
BANGKOK, Thailand, Dec 21 (IPS) – Have you ever tried to register a birth, a death or maybe your own marriage? Unfortunately, many of these vital events in Asia and the Pacific remain unregistered often with dire consequences for individuals, families and communities.
Civil registration can be a labyrinth to navigate, comprising of multiple stages with many bureaucratic hurdles. Such complex systems discourage individuals from either commencing or completing the arduous registration process.
But what if the process of registering a birth or death could be made less stressful for a new parent or a grieving relative? As an implementing partner of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative, ESCAP has been working with selected countries in the region to improve their Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) systems using the CRVS Systems Improvement Framework.
This framework provides the tools for a participatory approach to identify bottlenecks and solutions to streamline registration processes. The framework has now been used in Niue, Maldives, Nauru, Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, and Turkmenistan.
In many cases, people are not aware of the legal timeframes for registering vital events, leading to late registration of births often at school enrolment age, which often means having to pay additional late registration fees or the submission of additional documentation.
People living overseas may be unaware of the need to notify a vital event in their home country or are unable to visit a civil registration office to register the event. Lack of systems for recording overseas vital events in many countries means that events are either not captured, or in some cases may be double counted.
So, why is registering a vital event so complex?
In many countries, notification of a birth or death occurs at a health facility, but an individual must then register the event at a civil registration office. This multi-stage process means several trips to different offices for family members, which can be expensive and time-consuming, especially for those in remote areas.
Additionally, births or deaths occurring outside of health facilities frequently remain unregistered.
Civil registration processes are not only cumbersome for people attempting to register an event, but also for staff engaged in the process. Paper-based registration forms slow down the transfer of information between health facilities and civil registration offices and sometimes staff must (re)enter personal information by hand.
Where digital civil registration systems are used, staff often encounter obstacles in leveraging the potential benefits due to outdated ICT hardware and software, as well as limited internet connectivity. This ‘system’ may be something as simple as a spreadsheet or an MS Access database.
It is hardly surprising that this process is time-consuming for already understaffed facilities, often resulting in long queues at registration offices, not to mention the increased scope for errors or misplaced forms. In many countries, replacing lost forms or changing a mistake is akin to reaching a dead end in the registration labyrinth!
The lack of training and inconsistent forms for coding causes of death in line with the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is also an issue. This means that accurate statistics on causes of death cannot be utilized by government agencies for future planning. Additionally, in many countries, the sharing of data may not be possible among government agencies due to regulations or the absence of integrated digital data systems. This means important data is not utilized to its full potential.
Once the main obstacles for registering a birth or death have been identified, stakeholders are able to develop redesigned civil registration processes. Although CRVS Business Process Improvement aims to encourage longer-term sustainable solutions to strengthen CRVS systems, (e.g., changing legislation, developing digitized platforms, improving interoperability, integrity and efficiency), ‘quick win’ solutions also constitute an important outcome of this work.
These facilitate immediate improvements that require minimal investment (e.g. amending a field on a registration form) to minimize the burden on families and combat the lack of awareness about the importance of registering vital events. ‘Quick win’ solutions may be used as an advocacy tool for increasing future resources for CRVS system improvements.
Examples of longer-term sustainable solutions have included the development of online registration forms, appointment booking systems, SMS mobile messaging communications and development of standard operating procedures for civil registry staff.
The process of implementing a simplified CRVS system is iterative, monitoring progress until complete and timely civil registration is achieved in the Asia and Pacific region as outlined in the Ministerial Declaration to “Get every one in the picture’ in Asia and the Pacific. A smooth experience encourages people to register events, increasing registration completeness alongside accuracy and timeliness of vital statistics, supporting the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development where no one is left behind.
Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 20 (IPS) – The World Bank insists commercial finance is necessary for achieving economic recovery and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but does little to ensure profit-hungry commercial finance serves the public interest.
By failing to address pressing challenges within their purview, the second-ever Bretton Woods institutions’ (BWIs) annual meetings on the African continent, in Marrakech in October 2023, set the developing world even further back.
Jomo Kwame SundaramThe International Monetary and Financial Committee, which oversees the International Monetary Fund (IMF), could not agree, by consensus, on the usual end-of-meeting ministerial communique for ‘geopolitical’ reasons. The Development Committee, which governs the World Bank Group, fared little better.
New World Bank playbook
Little was achieved on crucial outstanding issues of governance reform and sovereign debt. Implicitly acknowledging past failure, World Bank Governors endorsed a “new vision to create a world free of poverty on a livable planet”.
After all, even the World Bank now acknowledges recent increases in global poverty have been the worst since the Second World War as economic stagnation, debt distress and inflation spread across the developing world.
The Bank’s new Evolution Roadmap proposes a just energy transition plan to mobilise private capital to scale up, secure and deploy climate finance. This is mainly for mitigation, rather than adaptation, let alone losses and damages.
The blueprint wants international financial institutions to help developing country governments de-risk private investments. For Muchhala, this reflects “the failure of the Bank’s wealthy shareholders to help ensure a more equitable multilateral system that is truly fit for purpose to meet the challenges of the 21st century”.
Blending finance for private profits
The strategy proposes ‘de-risking’ foreign investment with various types of ‘blended finance’ – such as co-financing, loan guarantees, political risk insurance or public equity co-investments – as well as complementary legal and other reforms.
The Bank and its allies have been promoting ‘blended finance’ for development, the environment and global warming since before the 2008 global financial crisis. Their main recommendation has been to induce profit-seeking private capital to fill growing financing gaps.
Undoubtedly, most poor developing countries have limited public resources to make needed social and environmental, including climate investments. In such arrangements, public funds are used to ‘de-risk’ or otherwise subsidise commercial finance, ostensibly to serve public policy priorities.
However, private commercial involvement in public services and infrastructure is costly and risky for the public sector and citizens, by deploying limited public resources for private gain. Civil society and other critics have already expressed grave concerns about the new Roadmap.
The World Bank Group also set up a Private Sector Investment Lab to scale up private finance in developing economies. It claims to be creating a “business enabling environment that unleashes private financing”.
Billions to trillions
The World Bank’s ‘billions to trillions’ slogan has been the pretext for privileging commercial finance as supposedly necessary to achieve the SDGs. But it has done little to ensure that such profit-seeking private investments will help achieve the SDGs or otherwise serve the public purpose.
The Bank does not consider that profit-seeking private investments expecting attractive returns may not serve the public interest and priorities. Nor do they necessarily support desirable transformations. Worse, their economic, social and environmental consequences may be for the worse.
The privatisation of previously public social services and infrastructure has worsened development and distribution. Unequal access to public services – increasingly linked to affordability and ability to pay – threatens hundreds of millions.
Such blended finance arrangements have also contributed to the debt explosion in the Global South – exacerbating, rather than alleviating developmental, environmental and humanitarian crises.
Debt distress spreading
Developing countries are in their worst-ever debt crises, with debt service obligations higher than ever before. Current debt-to-GDP ratios are more than twice those of LICs before the 1996 HIPCs’ debt relief came into effect, and even higher than for Latin American nations before the 1989 Brady plan.
Unlike the 1980s’ sovereign debt crises, market finance is now more important. Much more government debt from commercial sources involves relying on bond markets, rather than commercial bank borrowings.
With official credit much less important, commercial finance has become much more important compared to the 1980s. Unlike official creditors, most private creditors typically refuse to participate in debt restructuring negotiations, making resolution impossible.
Debt servicing costs equal the combined expenditure for education, health, social protection and climate. In Africa, debt servicing has risen by half. Debt service levels of the 139 World Bank borrowers are higher than during the heavily indebted poor countries’ (HIPCs) and Latin American debt crises peaks.
Debt service is absorbing 38% of budget revenue and 30% of spending on average by developing country governments. In Africa, the levels are much higher, at 54% of revenue and 40% of spending!
The BWIs’ joint debt sustainability framework insists debt-distressed economies must have lower debt-to-GDP ratios than other countries, limiting this LICs’ external ratio to 30% or 40%. This BWI policy effectively penalises the poorer and more vulnerable nations.
In 38 countries with over a billion people, loan conditionalities during 2020-22 resulted in regressive tax reforms and public spending cuts. Less expenditure has hit fuel or electricity subsidies and public wage bills, deepening economic stagnation.
Despite severe debt distress in many developing countries, no meaningful debt relief has been available for most. The most recent debt restructuring deals have left debt service levels averaging at least 48% of revenue over the next three to five years.
Debt distress limits government spending capacity, desperately needed to address social and environmental crises. Hence, overcoming stagnation and achieving the SDGs will require much more debt cancellation, relief and borrowing cost cuts.
The recent rise of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools has inspired growing anxiety on college campuses while fueling a national conversation about faculty attempts to thwart students from using the tools to cheat.
But that prevalent narrative around AI and cheating is overshadowing the technology’s true potential: Artificial intelligence holds great promise for dramatically enhancing the reach and impact of postsecondary institutions and improving outcomes for all students.
Last month, President Biden issued a sweeping executive order aimed at better mitigating the risks and harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, while also arguing for the need to “shape AI’s potential to transform education by creating resources to support educators deploying AI-enabled educational tools.”
Biden’s call to action could not have been more timely.
The question now is not whether generative AI can positively transform educational access and attainment, but whether higher education is ready to truly democratize and personalize learning with these tools.
AI’s transformational potential is perhaps greatest at community colleges, minority-serving institutions and open-access universities. These schools’ diversity necessitates a broader set of supports. Dedicated faculty and staff not only serve a very broad range of students — including first-generation and low-income learners, returning adults, those for whom English is a second language and those balancing academic pursuits with family and work responsibilities — but they do so with fewer resources than instructors at elite and flagship institutions. Generative AI tools can augment critically needed services such as advisers, tutors and coaches.
Exploring the possibilities of AI is not cheap, however. While some low-cost or free tools can make a difference, the largest impacts will be achieved through more advanced — and costly — tools that are developed with specific learner populations in mind and blend academic material with students’ sociocultural and language contexts rather than providing generic solutions.
Challenges around cost and availability could further disenfranchise the very learners who could gain the most from AI tools by denying them access to the experts, resources and development opportunities they need to benefit from them. Institutions may struggle to bring the true power of AI to bear on addressing their students’ needs.
Similarly, too often, the datasets and algorithms behind AI tools reflect historical inaccuracies and intrinsic biases that only further disenfranchise learners. This will continue to be the case until we collectively confront the inequitable ways that AI systems are designed and resources are distributed.
That’s why we need to think about AI differently, shifting our focus from debates about academic integrity and concerns about cheating to how we can leverage artificial intelligence in equitable ways that will boost college completion for all students.
Let’s focus on how AI advances could provide all learners with the kinds of high-touch support already offered to students who attend wealthier institutions. AI tools could have a transformative effect on access, progression and completion for learners who were previously constrained by limitations of time, space and resources.
Imagine if generative AI tutors could provide 24/7 individualized support, along with AI-powered virtual reality tools that would widen access to experiential learning opportunities. What about having adaptive learning tools enabling students to learn at a pace that best suits their level of preparation? And personalized learning materials that reflect their backgrounds and lived experiences?
A technology that has incredible potential to help expand access to the many benefits of higher education should not become a mechanism through which inequity is exacerbated.
Such steps could augment engagement and outreach efforts to lower the barriers that prevent students from underserved communities from earning degrees.
This is not a speculative vision of a not-too-distant future, but an emerging reality on some campuses. Arizona State University, for example, has assembled a team of engineers and data scientists to develop AI tools to enhance learning and improve student outcomes.
For now, such experimentation is limited to colleges and universities with the resources for scaling the benefits of the technology and developing the guardrails necessary for mitigating risks to learners.
According to a new report from the Brookings Institution, many of the nation’s most selective and affluent colleges and universities are clustered in the same coastal metro areas long home to Big Tech — and now to AI innovation and job growth.
That’s unfortunate. Access to new technology — and the ability to play a role in shaping its design — should not be limited by geography or institutional type. A technology that has incredible potential to help expand access to the many benefits of higher education should not become a mechanism through which inequity is exacerbated.
That’s why the newly convened Complete College America Council on Equitable AI plans to bring together organizations representing over 1,000 access-focused two-year and four-year colleges and universities in January. We hope to influence and initiate policies and practices to encourage equitable engagement of AI technologies.
We hope that college leaders, policymakers and technologists will join us to make sure that AI helps to realize, rather than hinder, higher education’s promise as an engine of equity, prosperity and hope.
Yolanda Watson Spiva is president of Complete College America.
Vistasp M. Karbhari is a professor of engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he also served as president from 2013 to 2020, and is a fellow and board member of Complete College America.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
The longstanding methods of fundraising by African NGOs are shaped by unique challenges, often rooted in economic, political, and cultural factors as well as vestiges of colonialism.
Opinion by Angela Umoru David, Tafadzwa Munyaka (new york / washington dc)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK / WASHINGTON DC, Dec 19 (IPS) – Across Africa, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) bearing different monikers such as community-based organisations (CBOs), civil society organisations (CSOs) and nonprofits have long borne the duty of designing and implementing developmental interventions to address varying challenges.
The World Association of Non-governmental Organizations (WANGO) lists 4912 of such entities operating in the Continent, which is safe to say is only a fraction of the true number since many may not be registered on that platform. These non-state actors often rely on the goodwill of volunteers, individual donors, local grant-making bodies, international philanthropy and humanitarian aid to fund and facilitate their operations.
As lofty as their mission or magnanimous as their benefactors might be, the sheer number begs the question of how sustainable their funding methods truly are.
As practitioners in the African development space, we have observed over the years that the longstanding methods of fundraising by African NGOs are shaped by unique challenges, often rooted in economic, political, and cultural factors as well as vestiges of colonialism. These factors breed an over-reliance on funding from outside the continent, mainly from Western donor countries and international development organisations.
Overview of the Current Funding Landscape
Philanthropy and humanitarian aid from the Global North constitute a large chunk of the funding that African NGOs depend on each year. More often than not, such funding comes with ‘strings attached’ like specifying the issues that the local organisations should focus on, the proportion of the funding that should go to areas of concern and rigorous reporting demands.
It is quite common for funding to be unceremoniously withdrawn when an organisation is termed non-compliant to donor requirements.
“The global flow of aid resources hinders the effectiveness and sustainability of local NGOs, as well as their ability to scale and build capacity”, writes Carlos Mureithi, Kenyan journalist. In addition, funding is usually routed through larger international non-profits while local ones only serve as ‘implementing partners’.
With such intermediaries in the picture, local NGOs are forced to work within the confines of their funding partner’s stipulations. While there have been recent calls for localisation and shifting agency to Africa-based organisations, the reverberations are yet to be felt across the NGO landscape in Africa.
Similarly, smaller nonprofit organisations are completely cut off from international funding because they lack the social credibility and popularity. This creates a cycle where only the most ‘visible’ local non-profits continually receive funding. The ‘invisible’ nonprofits are inadvertently dependent on local grant-making bodies (which are often implementing partners of international funders), individual donors in the communities they serve, self-funding and crowdfunding platforms.
A classic scenario is a case in the South-Eastern part of Zimbabwe. A particular district had been grappling with pervasive issues of child marriages, an alarming rate of teen pregnancies, and school dropouts. In 2019, this plight of vulnerable youths caught the attention of a UN agency who reached out to offer a helping hand.
However, there were differences of opinion on what the agency was willing to support and what the District termed to be the true need. Historically, the District had been marked by severe economic challenges stemming from periods of political instability and other socio-economic issues.
These challenges had created poverty and youth restiveness that left communities to grapple with the effects presenting themselves as students dropping out, child marriages and teen pregnancies exacerbated by inadequacies in healthcare and poor education systems. To the District leadership, tackling these effects was most urgent but the international donor agency wanted to fund birth registrations instead, which according to District records, were already at a 95% coverage and success rate.
While birth registration is crucial, the highlighted issues called for a more comprehensive and holistic approach. Therefore, local needs, while pressing, may be overshadowed by the specific preferences and guidelines set by external funders.
Of a truth, the historical dependence on external funding has been both a blessing and a curse. While it provides necessary resources, it sometimes restricts the flexibility of communities to address their challenges autonomously and radically.
Why the Existing Fundraising Model is not Sustainable
1 – Agenda-setting: The landscape of international funding for community development is often a double-edged sword. While financial support from international donors can be a lifeline for communities facing various drawbacks, the attached conditions for such funding sometimes lead to clashes of values.
This poses a significant problem to the existing model of fundraising, as communities may find themselves at a crossroads between meeting immediate needs through the funding provided and adhering to their core values and principles. The model also perpetuates an imbalance of power between international donors and local communities.
The power dynamics can hinder genuine, bi-lateral collaboration and may result in decisions that prioritise the donor’s interests over the community’s needs. The Big Brother syndrome is real. Furthermore, like in the story above, international donors may have specific agendas driven by global concerns, political leanings or their organisational mandates. These may not always align with the grassroots objectives of communities. For example, a donor might prioritise teaching people their rights, while the community seeks expansion of its immunisation program.
2 – Poverty: The fundraising status quo does little to transform systems, creates an over-dependence on foreign aid and perpetuates a cycle of poverty. On the flipside, small NGOs who are not on the radar of foreign donors rely on individual giving or are self-funded and this means that the resources only trickle in.
This limits the impact of projects and forces the staff to live on the barest minimum. In Nigeria, an ongoing jab at development workers is that the NGO staff’s standard of living is so below par that they should also be beneficiaries of their own projects (especially in livelihood and economic empowerment projects).
This is due to the high poverty and unemployment rates in most African cities. Even though the Continent has a long and rich history of local organising, most community members simply cannot afford to spare the little they have for altruistic purposes.
In the same vein, the high poverty levels breeds discontent towards the government and does not inspire many Africans to support the initiatives of local NGOs. It is a widespread notion that the citizens are already doing too much by spearheading the provision of basic amenities like electricity, pipe-borne water and roads. Therefore, the questions are, “Why should we keep doing so much? Why are NGOs forced to do the work that the government should be doing?” This high poverty rate and disillusionment often stops people from donating to NGOs around them.
How Can We Improve Fundraising in Africa?
Nonprofit fundraising in Africa has been marred by economic disparities, external dependencies, and changing political landscapes. In the pursuit of sustainable development, we propose a shift that makes us look inwards at diaspora investments, local organising, and planned giving (including endowments) to provide African NGOs with the tools to navigate the historical challenges while securing long-term financial stability.
1 – Planned giving: Also known as legacy or deferred giving, it is a unique and strategic approach to fundraising that focuses on securing long-term financial support for NGOs. It comprises several key components including bequests, charitable gift annuities, life insurance, or retirement plans.
Unlike traditional donations, planned giving involves arrangements made during a donor’s lifetime that will take effect at a future date. This form of philanthropy allows individuals to leave a lasting legacy, ensuring that their contributions continue to support a cause dear to their hearts even beyond their lifetime.
The well-heeled in our African communities can be encouraged to seriously consider planned giving as not only a strategic avenue for them as donors to create a lasting impact on the causes they care about but to leave a meaningful legacy that reflects their values and commitment to positive change.
We recognize that planned giving decisions are highly personal and influenced by individual circumstances. Nonetheless, in the dynamic landscape of African fundraising, securing sustainable funding is a perpetual challenge.
Planned giving, with its focus on long-term philanthropy, presents an impactful solution for these nonprofits if they began creating educative campaigns to draw attention to this form of philanthropy. We believe that this piece also creates an opportunity for the well-to-do to explore this possibility.
In the same vein, another beacon of financial stability and long-term sustainability for NGOs in Africa are endowments. An endowment in the context of nonprofit fundraising refers to a dedicated fund established by an organisation, typically through donations or other financial contributions, with the intention of maintaining and growing the principal amount over time.
In the context of the African Union Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want and achieving the mantra ‘African solutions to African problems’, endowments offer a strategic avenue for securing a reliable source of income, fostering autonomy and resilience. Endowments, just like planned giving initiatives, offer opportunities for sustained funding, allowing organisations to plan for the future and achieve lasting impact.
The continent boasts of a large array of individuals who have the capacity to provide endowments to causes that align with their interests. In an age of social status and obscene wealth being flaunted on social media, we ask, “How might this wealth be harnessed for long-term benefits in addressing community challenges?”
The continent also boasts of a large diaspora community that can be invited to partner with local organisations through endowments in service of pressing social and community needs.
2 – Diaspora investment: The United Nations reports that in 2022 diaspora remittances reached $100 billion, surpassing funds received through Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Official Development Assistance (ODA).
This whopping sum is largely due to high poverty levels in the continent that compels family members who live abroad to send money back home but it shows two things– the resources collectively owned by Africans in the diaspora can make a huge difference and a strong culture of giving back already exists, so it could be structured and leveraged for a greater good.
We acknowledge that diaspora remittances are private (sent directly by immigrants to their families in Africa for personal/family use) but it still presents an exciting possibility of sustainable fundraising for local NGOs.
A Nigerian non-profit, Jela’s Development Initiatives employs this tactic through personal connections to Nigerians living abroad, and requests for recurring donations of $20 or £20, depending on the donor’s country of residence.
In Zimbabwe, Sisonke ZW Family Trust has some of their board members who live in the diaspora contributing varying amounts monthly with a minimum of $100 to support the organisation’s activities. While these have not yet yielded large scale results, with targeted campaigns and narrative change on giving, diaspora investment presents a unique way of channelling resources directly to the organisations that need them the most.
3 – Local organising: By nature, Africans are largely communal and this has resulted in many community members banding together to address societal injustice and developing local solutions.
This trait is one that can be organised and explored to fundraise for local non-profits. For example, in North-Central Nigeria, Vaccine Network for Disease Control mobilises female small business owners to ‘adopt’ a primary healthcare centre, where she makes a donation towards the facility, takes on responsibility to support the monitoring of that facility and holds it accountable in its service delivery.
The donations are not cumbersome to the women and it creates a local networked system of accountability and ownership. A similar initiative exists in Zimbabwe where the Citizen Initiative saw the construction of classroom blocks and ablution facilities in rural areas with citizens financing the projects.
These examples show that local organising works, even if it is on a small scale. However, if more grassroot NGOs adopted this methodology, involving community members in the identification of problems and design of local solutions, they would be more than willing to co-execute and monitor the success of such initiatives towards desired outcomes.
Too often, local NGOs are more concerned with catching the attention of the international funders that they neglect the advantage Africans have as a communal society and the power within that to secure lasting change.
Conclusion
Addressing the existing fundraising system in Africa and its linked challenges requires a multifaceted approach. By empowering local organisations, promoting cultural sensitivity, and advocating for supportive policies, we can pave the way for sustainable development that originates from within communities themselves.
While international funding undoubtedly plays a crucial role in community development and we are not advocating for throwing the baby with the bath water, we maintain that addressing the clash of values and power imbalance is paramount for the success and sustainability of projects.
We also recognize the effort of pan-African philanthropic organisations like the African Visionary Fund to democratise the funding space and abide by game-changing principles like multi-year funding and institutional capacity development but one organisation is definitely not enough to serve the needs of the Continent.
Such visionary approaches need to be duplicated by other indigenous philanthropic organisations. Thus, it is through collaborative efforts that we can build a more resilient and self-reliant future for Africa’s community-based initiatives. Ultimately, it is time to look inward and restructure how we give. The time is now.
Angela Umoru-David is a creative social impact advocate whose experience cuts across journalism, program design and corporate/development communications, and aims to capture a plurality of views that positively influence the African narrative.
Tafadzwa Munyaka is a nonprofit/social change professional with crosscutting expertise in fundraising, program management, and child rights advocacy.
Azzawieh Market in Gaza City lies in ruins. Credit: UNICEF/Omar Al-Qattaa
Opinion by Mouin Rabbani (montreal, canada)
Inter Press Service
MONTREAL, Canada, Dec 18 (IPS) – The political significance of US-Israeli differences is easily exaggerated.
It is certainly true that tensions in the relationship exist. Israel is currently committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The US would like Israel to reduce – not cease, but reduce – its slaughter Palestinian civilians,
Israel has stated its intention to indefinitely maintain a military presence within at least parts of the Gaza Strip, and rejects any role for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the governance of the Gaza Strip. The US has indicated it would like to see Israel withdraw to the 1967 boundary and supports replacing Hamas rule with that of the PA, which it believes to be in Israel’s best interest.
Washington would like to resume bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under US supervision, and has paid lip service to a two-state settlement. Israel has repeatedly and emphatically rejected both proposals.
Neither these nor other disagreements resulting from the current crisis have resulted in any reduction of US military, political, or diplomatic support for Israel, which remains total and unconditional. In other words, US-Israeli tensions have the political significance of a loving couple deciding whether to dine on steak or sushi for their next date.
It has been widely reported, for years, that Biden and his key lieutenants detest Netanyahu, and intensely so. If so, the Israeli prime minister must be thinking: “With enemies like these, who needs friends?”.
On December 12, the 193-member UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on “Protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations” during the 45th plenary meeting of the resumed 10th Emergency Special Session. Member States adopted a resolution, demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”, the unconditional release of all hostages as well as a call for “ensuring humanitarian access”. It was passed with a majority of 153 in favour and 10 against, with 23 abstentions. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe
The US is not only complicit in Israel’s genocide, it is a full and active partner. For it to propose a “humanitarian pause” under present conditions, which in addition to the continuous, relentless bombing include measures intended to produce starvation, dehydration, and epidemic disease is tantamount to advocating for a Khmer Rouge coffee break.
A meaningless and diversionary charade if ever there was one.
If the Biden administration does take action to enforce international law during the current crisis it won’t be against Israel, but rather against Yemen for interfering with global shipping. Israeli impunity might as well be incorporated into the US constitution.
The performance of the UN Secretariat also leaves much to be desired. It has been extremely slow off the mark, hesitant to a fault, and excessively deferential to the US and Israel. It’s head of Political and Peacekeeping Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, has been enveloped in an impenetrable invisibility cloak.
For his part Secretary-General Guterres has been condemning Hamas in the strongest possible terms on an almost daily basis since 7 October but has yet to explicitly condemn Israel for anything.
Candidates for Guterres’s censure would include the mass killings of thousands of children; a medieval siege designed to produce widespread starvation, dehydration, and epidemic disease; an unprecedented campaign to destroy an entire territory’s health sector; the bombing of UN facilities sheltering civilians fleeing hostilities, and a record number of UN staff killed in a conflict, often together with their families.
Among senior officials only Martin Griffiths, the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, the World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus, and to a lesser extent Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, have defied the echo chamber and been more explicit in framing the atrocities in the Gaza Strip.
To his credit, Guterres on 6 December invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, thereby identifying the crisis as not only a humanitarian emergency but also a threat to the maintenance of international peace and security.
Its significance notwithstanding, history will question why Guterres dithered for two months when it came to calling out Israel for its ferocious onslaught on Gaza before suddenly reaching for his heaviest weapon.
Rather than using the stature and authority of his office during the crucial months of October and November to call for an immediate and comprehensive cessation of hostilities and accountability for all who have violated the laws of war or international humanitarian law, he instead chose to advocate for a vaguely-defined “humanitarian ceasefire”.
For Guterres, the Gaza Crisis constitutes a low point in an already unremarkable and frankly mediocre tenure. There’s a reason morale at the UN is disintegrating.
One does not require the benefit of hindsight to conclude that Guterres would have done better to align himself with the overwhelming majority of UN member states, who on 12 December, in numerous speeches from the floor, once again spoke out against the horrors of this war and called for it to end forthwith.
Since the introduction of ChatGPT, educators have been considering the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) on education. Different approaches to AI codes of conduct are emerging, based on geography, school size and administrators’ willingness to embrace new technology.
With ChatGPT barely one year old and generative AI developing rapidly, a universally accepted approach to integrating AI has not yet emerged.
Still, the rise of GAI is offering a rare glimpse of hope and promise amid K-12’s historic achievement lows and unprecedented teacher shortages. That’s why many educators are contemplating how to manage and monitor student AI use. You can see a wide range of opinions, including some who would like to see AI tools outright banned.
There is a fine line between “using AI as a tool” and “using AI to cheat,” and many educators are still determining where that line is.
In my view, banning tech that will become a critical part of everyday life is not the answer. AI tools can be valuable classroom companions, and educators should write their codes of conduct in a way that encourages learners to adapt.
Administrators should respect teachers’ hesitation about adopting AI, but also create policies that allow tech-forward educators and students to experiment.
A number of districts have publicly discussed their approaches to AI. Early policies seem to fall into three camps:
Zero Tolerance: Some schools have instructed their students that use of AI tools will not be tolerated. For example, Oklahoma’s Tomball ISD updated its code of conduct to include a brief sentence on AI-enhanced work, stating that any work submitted by a student that has been completed using AI “will be considered plagiarism” and penalized as such.
Active Encouragement: Some schools encourage teachers to use AI tools in their classrooms. Michigan’s Hemlock Public School District provides its teachers with a list of AI tools and suggests that teachers explore which tools work best with their existing curriculum and lessons.
Wait-and-See: Many schools are taking a wait-and-see approach to drafting policies. In the meantime, they are allowing teachers and students to freely explore the capabilities and applications of the current crop of tools and providing guidance as issues and questions arise. They will use the data collected during this time to inform policies drafted in the future.
A recent Brookings report highlighted the confusion around policies for these new tools. For example, Los Angeles Public Schools blocked ChatGPT from all school computers while simultaneously rolling out an AI companion for parents. Because there isn’t yet clear guidance on how AI tools should be used, educators are receiving conflicting advice on both how to use AI themselves and how to guide their students’ use.
New York City public schools banned ChatGPT, then rolled back the ban, noting that their initial decision was hasty, based on “knee-jerk fear,” and didn’t take into account the good that AI tools could do in supporting teachers and students. They also noted that students will need to function and work in a world in which AI tools are a part of daily life and banning them outright could be doing students a disservice. They’ve since vowed to provide educators with “resources and real-life examples” of how AI tools have been successfully implemented in schools to support a variety of tasks across the spectrum of planning, instruction and analysis.
AI codes of conduct that encourage both smart and responsible use of these tools will be in the best interest of teachers and students.
This response is a good indication that the “Zero Tolerance” approach is waning in larger districts as notable guiding bodies, such asISTE, actively promote AI exploration.
In addition, the federal government’sOffice of Educational Technology is working on policies to ensure safe and effective AI use, noting that “Everyone in education has a responsibility to harness the good to serve educational priorities” while safeguarding against potential risks.
Educators must understand how to use these tools, and how they can help students be better equipped to navigate both the digital and real world.
Already, teachers and entrepreneurs are experimenting with ways that GAI can make an impact on teacher practice and training, from lesson planning and instructional coaching to personalized feedback.
District leaders must consider that AI can assist teachers in crafting activity-specific handouts, customizing reading materials and formulating assessment, assignment and in-class discussion questions. They should also note how AI can deter cheating by generating unique assessments for each test-taker.
As with many educational innovations, it’s fair to assume that the emergence of student conduct cases within higher education will help guide the development of GAI use policy generally.
All this underscores both the importance and the complication of drafting such GAI policies, leading districts to ask, “Should we create guidelines just for students or for students and teachers?”
Earlier this year, Stanford’s Board on Conduct Affairs addressed the issue and its policies, clarifying that generative AI cannot be used to “substantially” complete an assignment and that its use must be disclosed.
But Stanford also gave individual instructors the latitude to provide guidelines on the acceptable use of GAI in their coursework. Given the relative murkiness of that policy, I predict clearer guidelines are still to come and will have an impact on those being drafted for K-12 districts.
Ultimately, AI codes of conduct that encourage both smart and responsible use of these tools will be in the best interest of teachers and students.
It will, however, not be enough for schools just to write codes of conduct for AI tools. They’ll need to think through how the presence of AI technology changes the way students are assessed, use problem-solving skills and develop competencies.
Questions like “How did you creatively leverage this new technology?” can become part of the rubric.
Their exploration will help identify best practices and debunk myths, championing AI’s responsible use. Developing AI policies for K-12 schools is an ongoing conversation.
Embracing experimentation, raising awareness and reforming assessments can help schools ensure that GAI becomes a positive force in supporting student learning responsibly.
Ted Mo Chen is vice president of globalization for the education technology company ClassIn.
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The stocks of long-neglected small companies are finally showing signs of life as the market rally broadens. But these tiny companies still remain vastly undervalued. So, they are one of the best buys in the stock market right now.
Small- and medium-cap companies, or smidcaps, have not been this cheap since the Great Financial Crisis 15 years ago. “Smidcaps relative to large caps look very attractive,” says says portfolio manager Aram Green, at the ClearBridge Select Fund LBFIX, which specializes in this space. “Over the long term you will be rewarded.”
Green is worth listening to because he is one of the better fund managers in the smidcap arena. ClearBridge Select beats both its midcap growth category and Morningstar U.S. midcap growth index over the past five- and 10 years, says Morningstar Direct. This is no easy feat, in a mutual fund world where so many funds lag their benchmarks.
The timing for smidcap outperformance seems about right, since these stocks do well coming out of recessions. Technically, we have not recently had a recession. But there was an economic slowdown in the first half of the year, and the U.S. did have an earnings recession earlier this year. So that may count.
To get smidcap exposure, consider the funds of outperforming managers like Green, and if you want to throw in some individual stocks, Green is a great guide on how to find the best names in this space.
I recently caught up with him to see what we can learn about analyzing smidcaps. Below are four tactics that contribute to his fund’s outperformance, with nine company examples to consider.
1. Look for an entrepreneurial mindset: Green’s background gives him an edge in investing. He’s an entrepreneur who co-founded a software company called iCollege in 1997. It was bought out by BlackBoard in 2001. He knows how to understand innovative trends, identify a good idea, secure capital and quickly ramp up a business. This experience gives him a “private market mindset” that helps him pick stocks to this day.
“Founder-run companies regularly outperform.”
Green looks for managers with an entrepreneurial mindset. You can glean this from company calls and filings, but it helps a lot to meet management — something most individual investors cannot do. But Green offers a shortcut, one which I regularly use, as well. Look for companies that are run by founders. This will give you exposure to managers with entrepreneurial spirit.
Here, Green cites the marketing software company HubSpot HUBS, +0.79%,
a 1.9% fund position as of the end of the third quarter. It was founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology college buddies Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. They’re on the company’s board, and Shah is chief technology officer.
Academic studies confirm founder-run companies regularly outperform. My guess is this is because many founders never lose the entrepreneurial spirit, no matter how easy it would be to quit and sip Mai Tai’s on a beach after making a bundle.
In the private market, Green cites Databricks, a data management and analytics company with an AI angle. This competitor of Snowflake SNOW, -0.92%
is likely to go public in 2024. If you feel like an outsider because you lack access to private market investing, note that Green says he typically buys more exposure to private companies on the initial public offering (IPO), and then in the market. “We like to spend time with them when they are private so we can pounce when they are public,” Green says.
2. Look for organic growth: When companies make acquisitions their stocks often decline, and for good reason. Managers make mistakes in acquisitions because they overestimate “synergies.” Or they get wrapped up in ego-enhancing empire building.
“We favor entrepreneurial management teams that do not make a lot of acquisitions to grow, but use their resources to develop new products to keep extending the runway,” says Green.
Here, he cites ServiceNow NOW, +2.62%,
which has grown by “extending the runway” with new offerings developed internally. It started off supporting information technology service desks, and has expanded into operations management of servers and security, onboarding employees, data analytics, and software that powers 911 emergency call systems. Green obviously thinks there is a lot more upside to come, given that this is an overweight position, at 4.6% of the portfolio (the fund’s biggest holding).
Green also puts the “Amazon.com of Latin America” MercadoLibre MELI, +0.17%
in this category, because it continues to expand geographically and in areas such as logistics and payment systems. “They have really morphed into a fintech company,” Green says. He puts HubSpot and the marketing software company Klaviyo KVYO, -5.73%
in this category, too.
3. Look for differentiated business models: Green likes companies with offerings that are special and different. That means they’ll take market share, and face minimal competition. They’ll also enjoy pricing power. “This leads to high margins. You don’t have someone beating you up on price,” he says.
Green cites the decking company Trex TREX, +0.10%,
which offers composite decking and railing made from recycled materials. This gives it an eco-friendly allure. Compared to wood, composite material lasts longer and requires less maintenance. It costs more up front but less over the long term. Says Green: “The alternative decking market has taken about 20% of the market and that can get to 50%.”
Of course, entrepreneurs notice success, and try to imitate it. That’s a risk here. But Trex has an edge in its understanding of how to make the composite material. It has a strong brand. And it is building relationships with big-box retailers Home Depot and Lowe’s. These qualities may keep competitors at bay.
4. Put some ballast in your portfolio: Green likes to keep the fund’s portfolio balanced by sector, size, and business dynamic. So the portfolio includes the food distributor Performance Food Group PFGC, -1.69%.
The company is posting mid-single digit sale growth, expanding market share and paying down debt. Energy drinks company Monster MNST, -0.85%
also offers ballast. Monster’s popular product line up helps the company to take share and enjoy pricing power, Green says.
It’s admittedly unusual to see a food companies in a portfolio loaded with high-growth tech innovators. But for Green, it’s all part of the game plan. “Rapid growth, disrupting businesses are not going to work year in year out. There are times they fall out of favor, like 2022. So, having that balance is important because it keeps you invested in the equity market.”
In other words, keeping some ballast means you’re less likely to get shaken out by sharp declines in high-growth and high-beta tech innovators when trouble strikes the market.
Michael Brush is a columnist for MarketWatch. At the time of publication, he owned AMZN, TSLA and MELI. Brush has suggested AMZN, TSLA, NOW, MELI, HD and LOW in his stock newsletter, Brush Up on Stocks. Follow him on X @mbrushstocks
For the past week, I’ve been watching Goodreads drama happen in what feels like slow motion. Debut author Cait Corrain admitted to fabricating at least six Goodreads user accounts, and leaving negative reviews (including one-star ratings) of other debut authors’ books — many of whom were authors of color. On Monday, her publisher dropped her book Crown of Starlight, and Corrain posted a mea culpa on X (formerly Twitter).
The coordinated efforts of fans and authors helped expose Corrain’s review bombing. Last week, Iron Widow author Xiran Jay Zhao tweeted a thread noting a series of one-star reviews on debut science fiction and fantasy authors’ Goodreads accounts, without naming any names. They also shared a 31-page document of unknown origin (which Polygon reviewed) that contained screenshots of accounts that added Crown of Starlight to a number of most-anticipated lists, and left one-star reviews on forthcoming books by Kamilah Cole, Frances White, Bethany Baptiste, Molly X. Chang, R.M. Virtues, K.M. Enright, and others.
This once again brings Goodreads’ moderation issues to the fore. When reached for comment, a Goodreads spokesperson sent Polygon a statement: “Goodreads takes the responsibility of maintaining the authenticity and integrity of ratings and protecting our community of readers and authors very seriously. We have clear reviews and community guidelines, and we remove reviews and/or accounts that violate these guidelines.” The company added, regarding Corrain’s one-star reviews, “The reviews in question have been removed.” Goodreads community guidelines state that members should not “misrepresent [their] identity or create accounts to harass other members” and that “artificially inflating or deflating a book’s ratings or reputation violates our rules.” But it doesn’t explain how those guidelines are enforced.
Goodreads also pointed Polygon to an Oct. 30 post about “authenticity of ratings and reviews,” which said the company “strengthened account verification to block potential spammers,” expanded its customer service team, and added more ways for members to report “problematic content.” The company addressed review bombing and “launched the ability to temporarily limit submission of ratings and reviews on a book during times of unusual activity that violate our guidelines.”
Ostensibly, these measures were put in place after several especially high-profile instances of review bombing on the platform this year. But these new tools did not prevent Corrain from review bombing authors in November and December. The guidelines, including the October one, ask users to “report” content that “breaks our rules,” seemingly shifting responsibility onto the user base. It’s past time for Goodreads, which is owned by Amazon, to consider implementing more comprehensive in-house moderation — or at least more sophisticated internal tools — if not for the sake of its users, then for the sake of authors who are at the mercy of the platform.
Goodreads is extremely influential. There are over 150 million members on the platform, 7 million of whom participated in this year’s Reading Challenge. The platform also has few barriers against these sorts of review-bombing campaigns, as any user in good standing can post a review to the platform, including before the book has been published. Pre-publish reviews are part of the marketing cycle, and they are expressly allowed on Goodreads. Publishers encourage authors to get reviews on the Goodreads pages for their forthcoming books, including during the lead-up period to release. Readers can access advance copies of books through official channels like NetGalley, or by receiving an advance reader copy from the publisher, but there’s no way to know whether a reviewer on Goodreads has actually obtained an advance copy or not. (Though Goodreads review guidelines require readers to disclose if they received a free copy, not all users follow those rules — basically, you can post your review regardless.)
This is obviously not an issue that’s novel to Goodreads, but many other platforms require some form of verification before reviewing. Etsy allows users to review a product after they purchase it. Steam only allows users to write reviews of products in their Steam library, and includes “hours played” in the review. The closest comparison to Goodreads I can think of is Yelp, which allows people to leave reviews of restaurants and other establishments, and which also has to handle waves of negative reviews — often involving complaints about things that are entirely out of that business’s control. As far as fan-review platforms for entertainment go, there’s Letterboxd, a platform where users can track and review films. But it doesn’t hold a candle to the cultural chokehold of Rotten Tomatoes, a platform that aggregates review scores from professionally published critics (while it also aggregates audience scores, those are listed separately). Rotten Tomatoes has its own issues, but its system does mean reviews don’t tend to come from people who have not even consumed the media in question.
As a casual peruser on Goodreads, looking for a book to read, how do you know if a reviewer actually read the book? I guess the answer, at least right now, is: You can’t. And as fans have become more sophisticated and coordinated on the internet, it’s become even harder to take the platform’s reviews and ratings seriously. In July, Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert pulled her forthcoming book The Snow Forest — which was set in Russia — after some 500 users, who had not read the book, left one-star reviews. Gilbert is much more established and better resourced than the debut authors Corrain targeted. She nonetheless made the decision to pull her book.
These debut authors didn’t have the same power or cachet, and it’s painful to imagine how Corrain’s negative reviews could have impacted those authors’ book sales — and subsequently their opportunity to write any more books — had Corrain’s actions gone unnoticed. Publishing is full of enough hurdles as it is, especially for authors of color, without this huge one so close to the finish line.
If we are ranking the worst renditions of “O Canada” ever performed in the United States, what John deCausmeaker did on Thursday night in St. Paul doesn’t top the list.
In deCausmeaker’s case, he simply got the lyrics wrong and repeated the phrase “from far and wide” twice in the span of 10 seconds ahead of the Wild-Flames game at Xcel Energy Center.
The remarkable thing is that deCausmeaker’s rendition wasn’t even the worst performance of the Canadian anthem at an NHL game this week. That distinction goes to Sholanty Taylor’s version of “O Canada” from Monday at UBS Arena on Long Island.
Taylor’s accelerated and sloppy 59-second version of “O Canada” ahead of the Maple Leafs–Islanders game was regrettable at best.
At one point Kramer sang, “O Canada, we stand our eyes.”
So after four botched Canadian anthems at NHL games in 2023, it’s time to question the practice of performing the anthems ahead of every single sporting event in North America.
Maybe it’s time we saved the anthem for the games and moments that really matter.
The first documented case of an anthem being played prior to a sporting event dates all the way back to May of 1862, when “The Star Spangled Banner” was played prior to a baseball game in Brooklyn, N.Y. The practice then occurred sporadically over the next several decades, with the national anthem being played prior to significant sporting events such as the World Series.
Playing the anthem then gained traction during the Second World War.
As North American professional sports leagues carried on playing during the conflict overseas, teams started playing the national anthem as a symbol of wartime support and patriotism. As the Second World War concluded, NFL commissioner Elmer Layden staunchly believed the tradition should continue.
“The playing of the national anthem should be as much a part of every game as the kickoff,” Layden said. “We must not drop it simply because the war is over. We should never forget what it stands for.”
However, in 1969, Canadian resistance toward American involvement in the Vietnam War opened the door for the NHL to allow the Maple Leafs and Canadiens to only play “O Canada” before their home games — opting to skip the “Star Spangled Banner.” A vintage CBC broadcast shows a game between Toronto and Boston from Maple Leaf Gardens in November of 1970, in which only an instrumental version of “O Canada” is played prior to the game. The same thing occurs a few weeks later in a game between the Bruins and Canadiens at the Montreal Forum.
But by 1987, the NHL had made it mandatory for both anthems to be played in games involving a Canadian team against an American opponent. In Buffalo, they actually play both the Canadian and American anthem, regardless of the Sabres’ opponent.
This is a uniquely North American phenomenon.
In Europe, national anthems are reserved for major international competitions, or when an urgent or important national situation arises.
Earlier this year, for example, the Premier Leagueasked its clubs to play the UK national anthem before matches to mark the coronation of King Charles III.
When national anthems are played infrequently and saved for special occasions — as the practice is carried out elsewhere in the world — they carry more weight and meaning.
In North America, we’ve diluted the tradition to the point where the anthems are played thousands of times each year, creating awkward and disrespectful moments like the ones outlined above.
The national anthem should be played sparingly and reserved for moments that evoke genuine feelings of national pride.
In 2014, all of Canada was shaken by the death of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, who was killed by a gunman at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. Days later, fans in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa simultaneously sang the national anthem in a coordinated show of national unity. It was moving, genuine and profound.
And we should never lose the ability to experience these heartfelt moments.
But when you shoehorn in anthem singers who don’t even know the lyrics so you can hit your quota of 82 games per year, it makes the whole practice feel disingenuous and performative.
Save the playing of the national anthem for opening night, home games in the Stanley Cup playoffs, international competition (whenever we return to a best-on-best format), and special occasions when warranted.
The best and most stirring rendition of a national anthem ahead of an NHL event arguably took place in January of 1991. Against the backdrop of the Gulf War, Wayne Messmer sang “The Star Spangled Banner” with a raucous crowd at Chicago Stadium ahead of the NHL All-Star Game. It was a goosebump-inducing moment.
Whitney Houston’s version of “The Star Spangled Banner” the following week at the Super Bowl might be the greatest anthem performance of all time.
Those moments felt genuine, emotional and powerful. It was a confluence of world events and big sporting moments.
That same magic simply won’t exist when the Florida Panthers visit Edmonton this weekend. Or when the Canucks are in Chicago. In these instances, the playing of the national anthem becomes staid and monotonous. And it’s almost an invitation for something to go awry.
In 2021, Dallas Mavericks fans and media went 13 games before realizing the club had ceased playing the national anthem before their home games. It was tangible proof that anthems aren’t as intrinsically woven into North American sports as we may think.
So would hockey fans really notice — or care — if NHL teams followed the same approach on a full-time basis in the future?
(Photo of Sholanty Taylor singing the U.S. national anthem before a New York Islanders game earlier this month: Jay Anderson / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Prince of Potomac Yard spoke of water.
“When I first came to this site,” Ted Leonsis said Wednesday, “and stood on top of the roof of the building next door, and looked over, we forget the power of having two rivers flow right into this community. And, iconic real estate is incredibly important. We have access — you can see the Washington Monument from here, Washington, D.C., the border’s one-and-a-half miles from here.”
That must be cool! So nice that the billionaire owner of the Wizards and Capitals will have a swank view of the Potomac and Anacostia confluence from his soon-to-be floor-wide offices in Alexandria, where he will center his entertainment and sports empire. It would be unfair to say he literally will be looking down upon the people who are financing his JerryWorld, his BallmerVille, in Crystal City, or National Landing, or whatever name they prefer for their community across the river. But it will be a swell view.
It is, nonetheless, a view for one, for an audience of one. Which, in the end, is how anyone who cares about and loves the District of Columbia should view this seemingly imminent departure of the Wizards and Capitals for Virginia.
Some of us are old enough to remember the “done deal” between Jack Kent Cooke and Virginia state representatives from a generation ago on that very same property for a new football stadium that came apart like cotton candy. So, maybe, the Virginia General Assembly will raise objections to this new project that will be too great to overcome. Maybe NIMBYs in Alexandria will make their voices loud and annoying enough to force reconsideration.
But, I doubt it.
“Hold me accountable,” Leonsis said Wednesday. OK.
This is about one man’s grandiosity, and readiness to leave when the city that has provided him so much over the last decades needed someone with his voice and influence to say, post-COVID, and post-Jan. 6, and which is grappling with crime outbursts throughout the city that have so many ill at ease, “You know what? Some things may be bad here right now. But I’m blessed enough to be financially secure enough to ride it out with you. I want to be part of the solution. So, I’ll be slightly less rich. I’m staying.”
Don’t tell me rich men don’t do this. That’s precisely what Abe Pollin did, when he built what is now called Capital One Arena downtown, transforming the city, in 1997 — mostly with his own money.
By contrast, Leonsis went for the bucks. Which, as I’ve said and written dozens of times over the years, owners of pro sports teams are perfectly within their rights to do. They can play wherever they want their teams to play. They can make whatever deals line their pockets, and allow them to create the kind of multi-use “entertainment districts” that will bring the well-heeled and well-connected to their new playgrounds. No one doubts that Virginia will build Leonsis a state-ahead-of-the-art arena to be envied and admired.
But, it will be hard to take at face value any future talk from Leonsis about his love of the District.
Because he knows how the Wizards, no matter their current lot, mean to generations of basketball fans in D.C. I am well aware that the Wizards were once the Bullets, who once played in Baltimore — and, before that, Chicago. I am well aware of the history of franchise roulette, in many cities, with many teams. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, deeply, when your team leaves town. When the Senators left, first, for Minnesota — and then, when the team that replaced them left for Texas, it hurt this city, badly. Some of us then followed the Orioles, because they were the closest team. We did not love them.
And when the then-Redskins left for Landover, Md. even though it was just a few miles from the D.C. line, it felt awful. It still does.
Add this to the ledger.
Because Leonsis knows, more than anyone, that the crowds who come to Wizards games, and have come to them for the last 25 years, are among the most diverse in the NBA – racially, economically, socially. Maybe Atlanta has similar types of crowds for Hawks games. Most of the league’s buildings, these days, are again full, post-COVID. But, in the main, their fan bases are very White and very rich. That hasn’t been the case here since I started covering the team, then playing at Capital Centre in Landover, in the late ’80s. Wizards crowds look like the District — at least how it used to look. They will not do so when the team moves across the river.
(I’m not mentioning the Capitals’ crowds because the Caps regularly sold out Capital One. Caps fans have represented for nearly two decades. I can’t then imagine they won’t continue to do so in Virginia.)
Every owner swears that his or her fanbase will follow the team “just down the road” to the new place. The Warriors swore that light rail and express transportation would mean most of their middle-class fans would come from Oakland, across San Francisco Bay, and follow the team to the new Chase Center in downtown San Francisco.
They did not.
To be sure, Chase is full — but not with the people who filled what is now called Oakland Arena for three decades. You have to pay for a $2 billion arena; you don’t do so with $15 tickets. You do it with six-figure suites and five-figure courtside seats. As John Salley, who won four championships back in the day playing for the Pistons, Bulls and Lakers, noted when the Pistons moved from downtown Detroit 31 miles north to the Palace of Auburn Hills in the late ’80s: “We used to play in front of the auto workers. Now we play in front of the executives.”
It will be impossible to forget what now feels like appropriation of the city’s culture, by nicknaming Washington’s G-League team the Capital City Go-Go, and centering D.C. at every opportunity – plastering “For the District” and “The District of Columbia” on your Twitter feeds and the jerseys of Wizards players, or hawking this year’s alternate jerseys with breathless history about the city’s Boundary Stones, or slapping “D.C.” on caps and garments — only to walk away from all of that, for the sweetheart deal across the river, your Braves New World.
And if there is any truth to the reporting that Leonsis was irritated by teenage kids performing … Go-Go music, outside of Capital One? Well, it’s hard to know how to process that. Buskers?That’s an issue?? Good Lord.
(After this was initially published, I was informed that Leonsis’ issue is not with the street musicians who perform in front of Capital One on event nights, but there’s a concern about one person in particular who has been aggressive with passersby, both in front of the arena and other businesses nearby.)
If you’re not from here, you may not understand why a Wizards/Capitals move to Virginia is especially difficult for D.C. residents to accept. It’s just four miles away from Capital One, Leonsis said Wednesday.
It feels like the Grand Canyon, psychically.
First, traffic. The dance of putting a 20,000-seat arena, practice facility, and new restaurants/entertainment venues into an area surrounded by Reagan National Airport, Amazon II and a large, busy mall, with many incoming and surrounding roads that are currently one- or two-laners, is daunting. Sources involved with the discussions said Wednesday that significant improvements to the roads surrounding the proposed site, along with increased light- and heavy-rail services, are part of the deal. It will be, nonetheless, a much longer commute for many — if they opt to come.
Will fans who’ve taken a 30-45-minute Metro ride from the Maryland suburbs to Gallery Place downtown be willing to add another 20-30 minutes of riding time round trip to get to and from Alexandria? For 7 p.m. starts for Wizards or Caps games?
Second … well, put it like this. The way that many Virginia residents feel about coming into the District for a night out, when they have One Loudoun or Reston Town Center available, closer-in? District residents feel the same way about going out to Alexandria for a night out, when we have Penn Quarter or Columbia Heights or NoMa to patronize. You don’t feel safe coming up here? Many of us don’t feel safe going out there. You have your reasons. We have ours.
It just feels like, again, the District’s been kicked in the stomach – blamed, because COVID cut the number of offices operating downtown down like a scythe, leaving restaurants and bars with fewer patrons for lunch or dinner. Make no mistake, though: Mayor Muriel Bowser takes a Big L here. Her job was to prevent something like this from happening, because you can’t replace the Caps and Wizards, and the energy they’ve brought to downtown. I know it was difficult to find the kind of money needed to keep Leonsis from wanderlust. That, however, is the job. They cannot leave on your watch. They are leaving on hers.
I don’t doubt that the decision was difficult, maybe even painful, for Leonsis. It would have been thus helpful to him to express what he was feeling Wednesday to reporters who asked to speak with him after the press conference, rather than rebuff them. And he and his team have ideas for how to transform Capital One, now freed from having to cross off dozens of potential days on the calendar every year for Wizards and Capitals games, to keep the building busy more often than not. Ice shows. Concerts. Activities in tandem with the D.C. Convention Center, and/or Events D.C. The return of the Mystics to Capital One, after playing at the Entertainment and Sports Arena in Southeast. (Speaking of which: what exactly does Leonsis plan to do, now, with ESA, about which he spoke so grandly, just a few years ago?)
But, nothing replaces a sports team in a city’s soul. Nothing.
You know one of the big reasons I came to The Athletic in 2018? I was in San Francisco in the spring of that year, watching the Capitals play the Penguins in the Eastern Conference semifinals, in my hotel room, while covering the Warriors and Rockets. If you’re from D.C., you knew, whether you Rocked the Red on the regular or not, how big a pain in the butt the Penguins were to the Caps for a decade, how desperately Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Bäckström wanted, needed, to beat Sidney Crosby and the Pens. It was Town Business.
So when Evgeny Kuznetsov scored on that breakaway overtime goal to seal the series over the Penguins, and the broadcast cut to the cheering crowds outside of Capital One, in Penn Quarter, deliriously happy, and young, and diverse, having finally slain the beast, it did something to me. I said to myself, in that hotel room, “look at how happy the city is. That is awesome. I’d like to be a part of chronicling that.”
And I was, as I witnessed first-hand the Nationals winning the World Series, and the Mystics winning the WNBA title behind “Playoff Emma,” within weeks of one another in 2019. And the joy that those franchises brought to my hometown was immeasurable, and forever.
I love this city, my city. And my city was wounded, grievously so, Wednesday morning, when men and women on the other side of the river toasted their good fortune, their deal well done, and didn’t seem to give a damn about the pain left behind.
(Photo of Ted Leonsis and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin: Win McNamee / Getty Images)
Opinion by Mathias Schluep (st. gallen, switzerland)
Inter Press Service
ST. GALLEN, Switzerland, Dec 15 (IPS) – While the COP28 presidency celebrated an “historic deal” to transition away from fossil fuels, we must remind ourselves that the future wellbeing of human societies in a livable planet depends on more than that.
The resounding consensus of the recent World Resources Forum Conference: in order to achieve wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries, humanity needs to rethink how it values resources.
Keeping fossil fuels in the ground is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. To achieve the ultimate goal, we need to fundamentally rethink the value of natural resources and reassess their link to long-term human wellbeing.
Having a world climate conference with a tunnel vision on fossil fuels does not help us in that.
At stake is the long-term ability of human societies to provide for wellbeing, especially in light of a growing global population and widening inequalities. Over the past decades, resource use has significantly improved living standards for many, particularly in high-income countries, but this now comes at an unprecedented cost to the environment and human health.
According to the UN International Resource Panel, today resource extraction and processing are responsible for 90% of biodiversity loss and water stress, 50% of carbon emissions and 1/3 of air pollution health impacts.
The use of resources has more than tripled since 1970 and, if current trends continue, global material consumption is predicted to double again by 2060. This growth is especially prominent for metals and non-metallic minerals, which are the backbone of major industries and the enablers of the energy and digital transitions.
The International Energy Agency forecasts that global demand for critical raw materials will quadruple by 2040 – in the case of lithium, demand is expected to increase by a factor of 42.
Resources are the bridge between economic productivity and ecological balance. A bridge that, in most policy and governance frameworks, has often remained invisible. The main reason for this lies in an economic model not valuing natural resources.
Economists have severely downplayed the dependence of economic activity on resources and the natural systems that generate them. This has contributed to overexploitation, environmental degradation and the exacerbation of global challenges, such as climate change and biodiversity loss.
Distorted economic incentives and market signals are now ubiquitous, such as in the well-known cases of the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest or the depletion of fish stocks due to overfishing. Others are less discussed, especially in relation to the mining sector, which will become the engine of the global economy.
If not responsibly managed, mining activities can lead to soil erosion, habitat destruction and contamination of water sources, impacting the local ecosystems and nearby communities who depend on those ecosystems.
A prominent example is the handling of mining waste and mining tailings, the residue remaining after mineral processing. Recent research reveals that a third of the world’s mine tailings facilities are located within or near protected areas, posing a significant threat to biodiversity and ecosystem integrity in the event of facility failures or accidents.
Unfortunately, these accidents are not as uncommon as one may think. The disaster of the Brumadinho (Brazil) tailings storage facility in 2019 unleashed a toxic tidal wave of around 12 million cubic meters, which killed 270 people and destroyed a significant area of the Atlantic forest and a protected area downstream.
Economic models are human-made and can be changed. If we are serious about sustainability and long-term human wellbeing, they must be transformed to better account for the unreplaceable value that natural resources provide.
This shift, advocated for by participants at the World Resources Forum 2023, requires acknowledging the interconnectedness of economic, ecological and social systems, underpinning the need for new accounting models to integrate ecological and social indicators.
Profound changes need to permeate climate negotiations and international policies, if future COPs are to play a meaningful role in preserving life on this planet. This year we witnessed once again how climate change discussions tend to overlook the central role played by the excessive and irresponsible use of resources, and apply a tunnel vision focused on CO2 emissions which are a key aspect to tackle, but essentially a symptom of a more profound ill.
The cure goes through integrating natural resource management in the institutional fabric and extending the relevant policy options beyond the prevailing energy supply. Ecological health and human wellbeing are interlinked objectives which call for reassessing our values and rethinking how we use natural resources.
Mathias Schluep is Managing Director World Resources Forum
ASTANA, Kazakhstan, Dec 14 (IPS) – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is addressing the issue of youth entrepreneurship and employment in Central Asia by launching a seven-year €200 million (US$ 218 million) Youth in Business (YiB) programme.
The programme is designed to provide better access to finance and relevant training to young entrepreneurs in the region, where up to one third of the population is aged between 18 and 34 years.
The Youth in Business programme in Central Asia (YiB CA) will target micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) led or owned by young individuals under the age of 35.
It will consist of up to €200 million for on-lending to up to 20 partner financial institutions in Central Asia and Mongolia; targeted non-financial services for eligible small businesses will be provided by the Bank’s Advice for Small Businesses programme to help develop their entrepreneurial skills through training, advisory services and networking opportunities.
The EBRD’s investment will be complemented by a package of up to €30 million consisting of grants and concessional co-financing to stimulate inclusive lending and youth entrepreneurship.
It is expected that the first loan agreements under the YiB CA will include: a loan of up to US$ 10 million to Uzbekistan’s largest private bank Hamkorbank, a loan of up to US$ 8 million to Shinhan Bank Kazakhstan, a loan of up to US$ 4 million to Mongolia’s leading micro lender Transcapital, and a loan of up to US$ 2 million to Kazakhstan-based microfinancial organisation Arnur Credit.
A market assessment conducted by the EBRD in the region reveals that while many young people across Central Asia have a strong entrepreneurial mindset, very few have access to equal economic opportunities. Only around 10 per cent of them have access to necessary training and professional expertise.
This is very important for Central Asia, where MSMEs account for almost half of total employment and contribute to almost 40 per cent of regional GDP.
Grant support and concessional finance to the programme is provided by the government of Kazakhstan, the Small Business Impact Fund and the European Union.
The EBRD is a leading institutional investor in Central Asia. It has to date provided close to €19 billion through more than 1,000 projects.
Anton Usov is EBRD Chief Spokesman for Central Asia and Mongolia
