Opinion by Osamu Kusumoto, Sotaro Kusumoto (tokyo, japan)
Inter Press Service
TOKYO, Japan, Sep 12 (IPS) –
1. SDGs and global governance
Sustainable development is the challenge of how to build a society in which humanity can live with dignity in this global environment. The SDGs set 17 goals and 169 targets to achieve sustainable development. Goals 16 and 17 are aimed precisely at building global governance through the formation of global rules. Goal 16 lists 10 specific targets, while Goal 17 lists 19 targets.
Sotaro KusumotoWhen a society functions with common values, it can be governed by non-verbal rules such as norms, but when the planet Earth, which is made up of diverse values, is regarded as a single society, it becomes necessary to govern it in the form of rules of law by explicit laws as common rules for the management of society. This is the condition for global governance by so-called global rules. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is little research on the nature of these global rules and how they should be constructed.
In order to answer this question, it is necessary to analyse the relationship between the legitimacy that defines the rules of governance in each country and the governance structure in the first place, and based on this analysis, identify issues and make proposals that can overcome these issues.
2. Laws of respective country and legitimacy
In modern societies, national laws are legislated under national constitutions. For example, the pros and cons of the death penalty are debated, but the essential reason why this is controversial is whether the fundamental question of on what grounds a person can deny the life of another person, even if he or she uses the institution of law, exists there. This question becomes clearer in the case of democracy. The epistemological question becomes whether the people, as sovereigns who constitute the sovereignty of the state, can take the lives of sovereigns on the basis of law, even if the law is legislated by parliamentarians elected through the system of elections.
In fact, the institution of the state is the only institution that can legally kill. International law recognises war as the final solution measures to international disputes. It is also regarded as a means of settling disputes over the sovereignty of states, recognised by international law, in the absence of any superior power.
Osamu KusumotoWhat is clear here is that the sovereignty of a state goes beyond the usual logical arguments and forms a value for the people, and the law of each country is founded on the fact that this value is not in question.
And the legitimacy of this rule is, surprisingly, provided for in the preamble of each country’s constitution. Even if there is no such statement in the preamble of the constitution, it is stipulated in the more fundamental texts of the fundamental law of each country, in the case of the UK in the Magna Carta, in the case of the US in the Declaration of Independence, and in the case of France in the Declaration of Human Rights.
The international order to date has made the values of the hegemonic powers, such as Pax Romana and Pax Britannica, the de facto rule. However, in an international community where diverse cultures and values exist, it is not possible to conduct global governance with the values of any one country as the global rules.
3. Possibility of global rules
Even though it is a difficult question how to set values, the legal conditions under which global rules can be established are relatively clear. Fairness, rationality, transparency, stability and predictability are required. A rule of law is established when people understand that the rule has validity.
The question is how to construct transcendental values that correspond to the sovereignty of people’s belief systems as values in the law of each country. The sociology of religion and the sociology of domination shows that the legitimacy of the transcendent rule of law, which forms the basis of the values of each country, is formed from the fact that the survival of the group is possible.
When we consider that humanity is an inhabitant of this fragile planet and that the idea of humanity as a community is at the root of the SDGs, and that our lives and the lives of others have equal value as the very basis of human rights, the legitimacy of global societal domination in the era of the SDGs must be based on sustainability, this means that the legitimacy of global society’s domination in the era of the SDGs must lie in sustainability.
Despite criticisms of idealism, the only logical solution to global governance is to create the conditions for its realisation.
Sotaro Kusumoto, Staff, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan Osamu Kusumoto, Secretary General, Forum on Future Vison
KAMPALA/LUSAKA/HARARE, Sep 12 (IPS) – Almost 30 years ago in 1994, the world witnessed a historic event as 179 nations convened on African soil, in Cairo, for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).
In an unprecedented moment of collective action, Heads of State adopted a revolutionary Programme of Action and called for women’s reproductive health and rights to take center stage in national and global development efforts.
This summer, in another first, the Women Deliver Conference had its annual meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. As the largest conference on gender equality in the world with 6,000 in-person delegates and a further 200,000 remote participants, the event was a welcome symbol of Africa’s commitment to the rights of women and girls.
Despite this, it was frustrating to witness echoes of the global pushback currently plaguing the reproductive justice movement and how decades of progress on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) continue to face assault.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, the Hungarian President drew controversy for championing her ‘pro-family’ ideals in sharp contrast to the purpose that had united many of the delegates present.
President Katalin Novák, a key player in the movement opposing women’s and girls’ rights, notably access to safe and legal abortion, has publicly asserted that Hungarian women “should not compete with men” or expect to earn equal pay. She publicly envisioned her teenage daughter being empowered to choose a path of mothering a substantial number of children, “even 10 children if she chooses to”.
As part of a 40-women delegation from the Women in Global Health network, we experienced the clash firsthand. Three decades since Cairo, and the struggle for women’s and girls’ rights continues, but as African health professionals and agents of change in the systems we deliver, so does our determination to sustain progress on the continent.
We have much to be proud of. In November 2021, Benin’s Parliament voted to legalize abortion in most circumstances. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the first country in Francophone Africa to do so, expanded access to abortion care, and endorsed guidelines to implement the directives of the African Protocol on the Rights of Women (the Maputo Protocol).
In July 2022, Sierra Leone took steps to modernize outdated abortion laws following decades of advocacy by the women’s movement and government officials.
Despite these advances, women and adolescent girls in Africa continue to have some of the world’s highest maternal death and morbidity rates. With low access to modern contraceptive methods and quality, safe and legal abortion, stalling progress means life and death for many women and girls.
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the failure of many governments to integrate a gender-responsive approach in national health systems on SRHR. During the emergency response, SRHR services were not always deemed essential and sidelined, resulting in a surge of gender-based violence, unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions.
Access to modern contraception and reproductive health, fundamental to determining whether and how many children to have, when and with whom, remains inaccessible for many adolescent girls and women. Quality, safe abortion care is a right. Restrictions on abortion do not eliminate abortion; they only eliminate safe abortions, resulting in women’s deaths.
According to global estimates up to 10 million more girls will be at risk of becoming child brides in the next decade as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reports also indicate that though all women and girls globally face discrimination in laws, social norms and practices, women and girls in Africa bear the highest share of discrimination in terms of intra-household dynamics and caregiving roles, working environments including harmful practices such as domestic violence and female genital mutilation.
Women health workers are grossly underrepresented in health leadership and this is a key factor in the current push back on SRHR. Women comprise the majority of the health workforce, given they are 70 percent of the overall workforce globally and 90 percent of frontline staff, yet they occupy just 25 percent of leadership roles.
For lower- and middle-income regions such as Africa, the percentage of women in leadership is as low as five percent. As the majority of frontline health professionals, women health workers have a deeper understanding of the health needs of their communities including SRHR needs. This power imbalance at decision-making tables excludes their valuable experiences and expertise to shape policies and programs that adequately address the health needs of women and girls.
Compounding this, 70% of women in Africa are said to be excluded financially, with an estimated gap of $42 billion between men and women. Around six million women work unpaid and underpaid in core health systems roles, effectively subsidizing global health.
Health and care are essential employment sectors for women and have the potential to unlock gender transformative lessons for the rest of the economy by addressing systemic biases that hinder women’s empowerment. Investing in the health workforce, the majority of whom are women, is a sound investment with potential gains for health systems, social change, and economic growth.
The role of women health workers delivering SRHR services in health systems cannot be overestimated. Women health workers typically counsel and support women and girls in accessing a range of modern contraceptives and in dealing with high-risk or unwanted pregnancy.
They brave violence and harassment from anti-rights protestors at quality, safe abortion facilities. They face online abuse and threats when expressing views in favor of SRHR, especially safe abortion.
As a platform, the Women Deliver Conference provided an opportunity for gender advocates and Civil Society Organizations to amplify efforts towards promoting a gender-responsive agenda among policy players and government leaders. While several countries have ratified human rights declarations over the years, not enough has been done to live up to the promise of making gender equality a reality.
Women’s movements and their allies are pivotal for mobilizing the necessary political will needed to drive progress on SRHR. As members of Women in Global Health, a movement challenging power and privilege for gender equity in health, we are calling on political and global health leaders to establish the following:
1. Gender responsive UHC that ensures all people have access to the services they need, when they need them including access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for women and girls.
2. Gender Equal and diverse leadership in Global Health based on Gender Transformative Leadership. This offers equal opportunities for women to lead in health and contribute to shaping health systems and health policies that are gender responsive. This is critical if we are to achieve health for all.
3. Gender equity in emergency preparedness and response. We are calling for continuation of essential health services, including SRHR, and the protection of health workers to be central in these political agreements.
Movements such as ours are pivotal in building allyship between health workers and national leaders in the delivery of SRHR while also safeguarding health outcomes for future generations. Across Africa, reducing health inequities and maternal mortalities is of paramount concern.
African countries have the opportunity to secure the foundation for just societies and health for all, what we need now is to hold firm against the global pushback on reproductive rights and deliver on the promises made to women and girls.
This article was authored by Members of the African Women in Global Health network: Dorothy Akongo, Research and Advocacy Manager, Busoga Health Forum and Coordinator, Uganda Chapter; Flata Mwale, Global Health Professional and Deputy Country Lead, Zambia Chapter; Vivian Mugarisi, Public Health Communications Specialist, Zimbabwe Chapter.
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Sep 12 (IPS) – While climate change is relentlessly progressing, threatening life on earth, world leaders continue to meet while planning for a future where this immense menace to human existence remains a minor item on the agenda.
Investors in index funds have been well rewarded by a high concentration in the largest technology companies over the past decade. But there are also continuing warnings about the risk of such heavy concentrations, even in index funds that track the S&P 500. Solutions are offered to limit this risk, but if you expect Big Tech to continue to drive the broad market returns over the coming years, why not make an even more focused bet?
Comparisons of three index-fund approaches highlight how successful concentration in the “Magnificent Seven” has been.
GOOG, -0.32%,
Tesla Inc. TSLA, +9.37%
and Meta Platforms Inc. META, +1.67%.
We have listed them in the order of their concentration within the Invesco S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY,
which tracks the S&P 500 SPX.
The U.S. benchmark index is weighted by market capitalization, as is the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP
and the Russell indexes.
SPY is 27.6% concentrated in the Magnificent Seven. One way to play the same group of 500 stocks but eliminate concentration risk is to take an equal-weighted approach to the index, which has worked well for certain long periods. But here, we’re focusing on how well the concentrated strategy has worked.
Let’s take a look at the group’s concentration in three popular index approaches, then look at long-term performance and consider what happened in 2022 as rising interest rates helped crush the tech sector.
Here are the portfolio weightings for the Magnificent Seven in SPY, along with those of the Invesco QQQ Trust QQQ,
which tracks the Nasdaq-100 Index NDX
and the Invesco S&P 500 Top 50 ETF XLG
:
The same group of seven companies (eight stocks with two common share classes for Alphabet) is at the top of each exchange-traded fund’s portfolio, although the top seven for QQQ aren’t in the same order as those for SPY and XLG. QQQ’s weighting was changed recently as the underlying Nasdaq-100 underwent a “special rebalancing” last month.
Here’s a five-year chart comparing the performance of the three approaches. All returns in this article include reinvested dividends.
FactSet
QQQ has been the clear winner for five years, but it is also worth noting how well XLG has performed when compared with SPY. This “top 50” approach to the S&P 500 incorporates many stocks that aren’t listed on the Nasdaq and therefore cannot be included in QQQ, which itself is made up of the largest 100 nonfinancial companies in the full Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.45%.
Examples of stocks held by XLG that aren’t held by QQQ include such non-tech stalwarts as Berkshire Hathaway Inc. BRK.B, +0.77%,
Johnson & Johnson JNJ, +0.79%,
Procter & Gamble Co. PG, +0.94%,
Home Depot Inc. HD, -0.12%
and Nike Inc. NKE, -0.42%.
Now let’s go deeper into long-term performance. First, here are the total returns for various time periods:
There is no 20-year return for XLG because this ETF was established in 2005.
For five years and longer, QQQ has been the runaway leader, but for 5, 10 and 15 years, XLG has also beaten SPY handily, with broader industry exposure.
Something else to consider is that during 2022, when SPY was down 18.2%, XLG fell 24.3% and QQQ dropped 32.6%.
For disciplined long-term investors, the tech pain of 2022 may not seem to have been a small price to pay for outperformance. And it may have been easier to take the pounding when holding SPY or even XLG that year.
Here’s a look at the average annual returns for the three ETFs:
So the question remains — do you believe that the largest technology companies will continue to lead the stock market for the next decade at least? If so, a more concentrated index approach may be for you, provided you can withstand the urge to sell into a declining market, such as the one we experienced last year.
Here is something else to keep in mind. In a note to clients on Monday, Doug Peta, the chief U.S. investment strategist at BCA, made a fascinating point: “The only novel development is that all the heaviest hitters now hail from Tech and Tech-adjacent sectors and are therefore more prone to move together than they were at the end of 2004, when the seven largest stocks came from six different sectors. “
Nothing lasts forever. Peta continued by suggesting that investors who are tired of big tech taking all the glory “need only wait.”
“[I]f history is any guide, their time at the top of the capitalization scale will be short,” he wrote.
The time is ripe to transform American agriculture from monoculture heavy farming and food systems to diversified cropping and food systems with a variety of crops including specialty crops. Credit: Bigstock.
Opinion by Esther Ngumbi (urbana, illinois, usa)
Inter Press Service
URBANA, Illinois, USA, Sep 08 (IPS) – A few weeks ago, my husband and I drove from Illinois to Iowa to visit a friend. I was excited about my over 5 hours’ drive. Sadly, 60 minutes into the drive, my excitement fiddled out. I was bored. Field after field, as far as my eyes could see, all I saw was either corn or soybean. I also noticed that the field margins were empty-with no sight of wildflowers.
Unfortunately, growing singular crop species, also known as monocropping, in which, all plants are genetically similar or identical over vast acres of land, is prevalent across the U.S. Midwest and North America because of current problematic policies that incentivizes the overproduction of crops such as corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat.
Not only has this system resulted into the overproduction of a few crop species, it has also resulted in a biodiversity loss including a reduction in insect diversity.
In addition, monoculture cropping systems have led to increases of many unsustainable and environmental damaging practices by farmers including the use of pesticides and fertilizers. Furthermore, monocropping contributes to pollinators death and reduces the biodiversity of soil dwelling microorganisms, including beneficial soil microbes that underpin soil and crop health while harming the U.S. waterways. Undoubtedly, the current monocropping agricultural system prevalent in North America is unsustainable.
There are several strategies including incorporating diverse crop rotations, intercropping, cover cropping, and agroforestry.
Indeed, the time is ripe to transform American agriculture from monoculture heavy farming and food systems to diversified cropping and food systems with a variety of crops including specialty crops. The time is ripe to consider planting pollinator strips and filling the field margins with wildflowers. There are many benefits that can emerge if American agriculture were to diversify.
First, there is long-term evidence that shows that diversifying crop systems can increase agricultural resilience to the extremities and disturbances that come along with a changing climate including drought, heat waves, insect pest outbreaks and flooding.
Third, diversified agroecosystems will also become home to biologically diversified species including insect species that predate on insect pests. This will ultimately become a strategy to reduce the usage of harmful pesticides and support sustainable insect control.
According to SARE, for example, diversifying cropping systems can lead to many benefits including spreading farmers economic risks, exploiting profitable niche markets and creating new industries based on agriculture that can make communities competitive while strengthening and enhancing quality of life, and ultimately, aid the domestic economy.
These datasets that also showcase diversification as a pathway to more sustainable agricultural production serve as a resource for researchers, farmers, and practitioners since they pinpoint where diversified systems have effectively contributed to sustainable food production outcomes without compromising the economic returns.
Of course, to facilitate the shift in paradigm from monocropping to diversified cropping systems, we must confront the barriers to cropping system diversification including lack of equipment to facilitate farming of other crops and lack of a niche market for alternative crops.
At the root of this wave of change is the need to change the agricultural policies to promote diversified farming. Removing commodity crop subsides and reallocating the money to farms that practice diversified farming is one strategy that can accomplish this.
Changing these systems will take everyone including farmers, legislators, scientists, and advocates.
Diversifying America’s cropping and food systems is critical to meeting American food security needs and strengthening it in the face of climate change. Diversifying American agriculture will also help in keeping America as a model country to be emulated. It is a win-win for everyone.
A partial view of the exterior of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, that was destroyed by a truck bomb on August 19, 2003. Credit: UN Photo/Timothy Sopp
Opinion by Khaled Mansour (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Sep 08 (IPS) – Twenty years ago this month, a colleague saved me from a likely gruesome death. He insisted I stay in his Baghdad office of the World Food Programme (WFP) for a hot drink. “You can’t leave us without trying the tea I made for you! The best in Iraq.”
I drove back to my office half an hour later than scheduled. Near the grim building of the Canal Hotel, the UN headquarters in the Iraqi capital, I caught sight of a column of smoke and a grey cloud forming on the horizon.
A tragedy was unfolding. People were shouting and crying, while dust, sweat and the scent of molten iron irritated my eyes and nostrils. An American soldier stopped me, brandishing his weapon. He and his unit usually stood idly by their armoured vehicle, leaving the main entrance under the care of local security men. “Let me through, this is my office, I work here!!”
The soldiers didn’t speak or argue; they were tense and firm as they held their weapons in a ready position. What happened while I was away? Why couldn’t I get into my office? I felt an urge to force my passage through the soldiers, to enter the apocalyptic grounds.
Khaled Mansour
The gate at the back of the compound was open.
Inside, survivors were scattered, their faces pale and covered with a film of dust, sweat and blood. Many were sitting on the grass scorched by the summer heat in the spacious garden or on the grounds of the parking lot, staring into nothingness, while others trembled in tears as they embraced each other.
“Sérgio is dying,” cried a colleague before collapsing into my arms.
I slipped through a small back door and onto my office on the second floor. The broken glass of shattered windows crushed under my feet as I cautiously took one step after another in dim dusty corridors. I passed over doors torn off their hinges by the force of the blast, thrown onto the ground or leaning against the wall. Desks, drawers, shelves and paper littered the corridors.
My laptop was there but many keys had popped out due to the force of the explosion. Large, sharp glass fragments had lodged in the back of my chair. Had I been there, any of them could have pierced my back.
I walked in darkness until a soldier stopped me at the office of Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the head of the UN mission in Iraq. De Mello had been sent there a few weeks earlier by the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. His mission was to help the invading Americans reach a political way out and hand over power to Iraqis, after the military and political foundations of Saddam Hussein’s regime had been destroyed earlier that year in an ill-conceived and illegal war that had not even been sanctioned by the UN Security Council.
I asked the soldier to let me through. With a vacant look in his eyes, he said, “There’s no ‘through’. There is nothing there; that part of the building is vaporised. If you stepped behind that door, you’d fall several stories onto rubble, iron rods, and concrete blocks.”
A partial view of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad that was destroyed by a truck bomb on 19 August 2003. Credit: UN Photo/Timothy Sopp
I entered the adjacent office where a colleague and I used to smoke whenever we had the chance. Her cigarettes and lighter were on her desk covered by a thin layer of dust that enveloped everything in the room. She was among the missing, and I would later learn that she died in the explosion.
What I had missed
It took hours for us to piece the initial story together. Around 4:30pm on 19th August, 2003, a suicide bomber drove a truck heavily loaded with explosives into the UN compound. His deadly cargo detonated upon impact, destroying a whole corner of the building, burying those inside it under the collapsed floors. The attack killed 22 people, most of whom were UN staff members.
I spent the evening that day in a UN vehicle with colleagues moving from one hospital and medical centre to another, checking on the wounded and searching for some missing UN staff. We ferried some walking wounded back to their hotels.
For a few days, we worked all our waking hours, surrendering ourselves to an immense flow of adrenaline, meetings, calls, and emails.
There was no time to be angry about the UN failure to anticipate the attack or better protect its staff. There was no time to be angry at the mindless, murderous terrorists, or to contemplate the role of the US invasion and the disastrous de-Ba’athification policy, and the emerging Baath/jihadi coalitions which created a wave of terror that haunts the region today. There would be time for that, later.
I remained oblivious to how the attack impacted me psychologically for several weeks until the long-delayed recognition of the enormity of this horror finally arrived after I returned home to New York. I began tough journey of recovery, where I had to deal with survivor’s guilt and disturbing flashbacks, not to mention what happens usually in such circumstances when upsetting memories swept under the rug of the unconscious creep up and pull you down to very dark caves.
I was very fortunate (and the UN was probably very worried about liability and litigation) to be able to have a fully paid year of leave during which I underwent intensive psychotherapy, also paid for by my health insurance. Millions of Iraqis, including UN contractors, were not that lucky.
It took years to fully integrate this harrowing experience and move on. I now accept, rather than avoid, the waves of sadness—and sometimes anger—this memory brings. I know now how not to inflict my suffering on others. This required hard, personal work, and the support and love of friends, family members, and professionals.
I managed to return to work, including in conflict zones, after about a year.
Who was accountable?
The direct responsibility for this horrific attack rested with the terrorist Al-Qaeda group. For them the UN was a proxy target, easier to hit than the US military, which was then their nemesis, but had been an ally of their jihadi ideological fathers in Afghanistan in the 1980s. A wave of propaganda relying on a grain of truth that the UN was whitewashing the American invasion dominated Iraqi and even wider Arab conversations about the international organisation. Al-Qaeda recruiters exploited it cleverly to convince volunteers and followers that the UN was a legitimate target.
In a few months, the UN completed a detailed investigation and pointed the internal fingers of blame at dysfunctional security systems and officials. It shied away from directly blaming the decision-making process for hasty deployment of such political and humanitarian aid missions to danger zones without adequate planning, especially when such decisions were pushed by interested influential capitals.
I remember long discussions among senior UN officials and colleagues before and after the attack on how humanitarian aid had become too politicised and how this had turned us, aid workers, into a soft target for attacks which had been increasingly aimed at civilians and civilian infrastructure.
The day of the attack
On 19th August, 2003, a few hours before the attack, a colleague was trying to park our car inside the UN compound after passing through extensive security checks. As I got out of the car, I noticed a woman and a child behind a side unguarded gate. The child had managed to insert himself in the slight opening of the gate held together by a rusty chain and an old padlock. His slim figure was almost inside the compound when he noticed me. We exchanged conspiratorial smiles. Before he could fully push his body through, his mother grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
I thought I should inform the UN security officer, who was walking towards me, about what had just happened. They had excessive security measures at the main entrance while leaving that side gate easily passable for a small person. Before I could utter a word, the security officer shouted, “Move your car from here, these spots are reserved for the mission leadership!”
We exchanged some terse words. I pointed towards the gate. The woman and the child had already left. I said that this was a serious security lapse. He got angrier and shouted, “This is my job, don’t teach me my job, move your car now!”
A few hours later, the explosives truck drove into this rickety side gate dislodging it.
Undoubtedly, there was a clear failure and negligence on the part of security personnel and systems. Some of them faced subsequent administrative sanctions. However, understanding how the flawed security system allowed the terrorists to easily carry out the attack does not help us understand why they considered and planned such an attack against the UN in the first place.
How the UN became a target
Over the past 30 years, many people, especially in societies that receive aid or are affected by the UN resolutions and interventions, have increasingly viewed the organisation as a part of a scheme to maintain a western-dominated international order. From jihadists and armed militias to aid-receiving governments and communities, the UN has increasingly been perceived as subservient to neoliberal ideologies and western capitalist interests. My colleagues and I have heard this from government officials in Khartoum and Kabul, militia men in Darfur and Faizabad, and from refugees and displaced people in Palestine and Lebanon. Those who receive UN assistance always appreciated the help but often complained that aid had not addressed the root causes of their misery. They sometimes raised doubts about the motives of big aid agencies.
In the face of complex and unresolved conflicts, it is easier to adopt a superficial and simplistic view of how the UN works and claim that its myriad of organisations and programmes are mere tools of western foreign policy. And there is probably a grain of truth to such claims, especially since the end of the Cold War. Western capitals provide over 75 per cent of the funding for humanitarian organisations, they dominate their governance systems, and monopolise the top positions in the most important global humanitarian organisations, namely Unicef, WFP and the UNHCR. The first two have almost always been led by Americans, some of whom had served in senior political positions in their governments.
During the 20th century, the aid enterprise became increasingly intertwined with transnational politics. In addition to altruistic motivations and legal underpinnings, it was also increasingly influenced by realpolitik considerations to ensure that conflicts, poverty, and natural disasters did not undermine the stability of strategically important interests or region.
With the evaporation of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s, disintegrating states and armed non-state actors emerged as the main threat to the international world order championed by the west. Al-Qaeda, though a former ally of the US in its global anti-Soviet campaigns, attacked the US on the home front. The murderous terrorist carnage on 11th September led to a massive and excessive response by the US and its allies in Afghanistan in 2001 and then in Iraq in 2003. The humanitarian enterprise played a large, albeit secondary, role to mitigate the impact of these wars on civilians. This role was largely shaped and funded by the US and its allies.
Since then, ideologically driven armed militias, remnants of the hard Stalinist left, and also some liberal and realist circles, started to perceive UN organisations as largely dominated by western capitals, and as a part of their toolbox in global undertakings, whether peaceful or military.
These are factual elements that fed the conspiratorial world view which enabled the bombing of Baghdad UN offices 20 years ago.
Modern humanitarian aid has not been free from political prerogatives since its formal evolution in the early 20th century. It became one of the Cold War battlegrounds after World War II. Then it metamorphosed again in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the dominant powers tried to subject it to their national priorities. This was evident in several conflict areas in the 1990s. For example, in the Balkans, the UN created safe havens to partly prevent the flow of refugees to western Europe. While food and shelter were provided, protection was not available, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Bosnians in places like Srebrenica.
Humanitarian organisations operate in a hyper-political environment while striving to adhere to principles of neutrality, independence, and impartiality. It is true, however, that UN senior leaders and staff on the ground can sometimes take inappropriate decisions and carry out their work in ways that are inconsistent with UN values. Such actions taint the entire UN and contributes to blanket perceptions such as “the UN is corrupt”.
None of this is to excuse, much less justify, a vicious strategy by armed groups involved in acts of terror that target international aid groups. It is to try to understand the environment in which these groups recruit and operate. It is also to show how innocent people can be crushed between the political machinations of the international community and the armed groups (or states) that control their lives.
How the train of politics twisted the tracks of humanitarian work
The politicisation of humanitarian aid was evident when I joined the UN in 1999 in Afghanistan, where the Taliban on the ground and donors in Washington and other capitals held many of the levers for the allocation and delivery of aid.
After 11th September, meetings with USAid in Islamabad focused on trying to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan after the US invasion. Afghanistan was already suffering from cyclical droughts, poor social services and a crumbling economy after being dominated by armed conflict for decades. They did not want to allow the Taliban to use the humanitarian cost of the war against them. The UN flooded the country with flour, oil and essential food items, and the feared famine never materialised.
Aid politicisation went into a higher gear of integration in 2002, during the months leading up to the Iraq War. The then US Secretary of State Colin Powell believed that foreign aid provided political incentives, supported free market democracy, and helped counter disorganised transnational migration.
In the autumn of 2002, humanitarian plans by UN organisations were shared with Washington. Before the war broke out organisations sought firm financial commitments from the US to start pre-positioning supplies.
Predictably, the shift in Middle Eastern and South Asian public opinion against the UN and aid agencies continued with rising allegations of bias and subservience to western interests. The complexity of functions, the competition for funding and a perception of clashing roles and priorities within UN organisations further complicated efforts to counter these allegations.
For example, the UN Security Council has at various stages imposed sanctions on Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Syria—measures that have severely affected the civilian populations rather than the targeted regimes and their proxies. Meanwhile, UN aid organisations like Unicef, the UNHCR, and the WFP continued to spend hundreds of millions of dollars (the total global budget of these organisations in 2022 exceeded $26bn) on millions of refugees, internally displaced persons and those harmed by the war and by these very sanctions.
Some of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, notably Russia and the US, have been implicated in strikes on medical and health facilities during conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, launching drone attacks against enemy targets killing many civilians in the process (what they call collateral damage), assassination attempts against opponents and arbitrary detentions. At the same time, they joined other western countries and Japan in providing the largest share of humanitarian needs (over $20bn in 2022 ), sometimes in the same places where they carry out or support seemingly endless military conflicts, such as in Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan.
These examples illustrate the complexity of behaviours of states and international organisations driven by often clashing motives and considerations.
However, in an era of dis- and misinformation and the quest for the ultimate sound bite, it becomes easier to view the UN as a failed international humanitarian conglomerate serving western political interests, incapable of leading the world to achieve just peace, enhance sustainable development or better protect human rights. (These were the three main pillars of the UN when its charter was put together after World War II.)
On the other hand, the authorities in recipient countries influence decisions about aid distribution: who receives assistance and who gets local contracts. A well-documented report in 2022 about aid operation in Syria revealed transactions involving tens of millions of dollars between UN organisations and private sector companies, some of which were owned or controlled by security agencies or senior Syrian officials who had been subject to western sanctions. These companies received around 47 per cent of the total UN contracts in 2019 and 2020.
Until the bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq in 2003, humanitarian workers took simple and logical security precautions—most notably, the display of their insignias on their offices, homes, and vehicles. The message that we, the UN, were neutral and impartial largely worked.
This started to change in the 1990s and early 2000s with new concepts such as the Responsibility to Protect, which started to give the UN a role that could be seen as interventionist. The reputation of UN organisations started to suffer. Many people, especially in recipient communities, increasingly perceived the UN as a western agent or a weak, subservient actor. Those who work with the UN have consequently become easier targets for criticism and, tragically, attacks.
In 2000 and 2001, I rode in rundown yellow taxis to go to the market in Kabul, where Taliban soldiers roamed the streets. I drove my own car bearing UN license plates to tribal areas in Pakistan, where jihadist groups, drug gangs, and arms dealers were present.
A few years later, during my missions in conflict zones, I needed security clearances to be able to leave my well-fortified offices. I wore a bulletproof vest and used two cars, one of them armoured, to attend meetings.
Relief workers started to be separated from people they were meant to assist, not merely by protective helmets and vests, but they also stayed inside homes and offices surrounded by sandbags and shock-absorbing barriers. These buildings became isolated behind barbed wires and high-security systems in locations far removed from the communities they were meant to serve. The walls around UN offices grew taller, and most of those working in conflict zones moved to live within fortified sanctuaries. International organisations also sent fewer international staff to unsafe areas.
All these changes help explain the decrease in casualties among foreign relief workers.
In 2003, a total of 117 local relief workers were killed, injured, or abducted, compared to 26 of their international colleagues. By 2022, the number of casualties among local workers had risen to 421, while the number of foreign relief worker casualties had decreased to 23. It is evident that the risks have increased, but their distribution has radically reversed, with local workers bearing much more of the burden.
Why I returned
My actual return to work in 2005 did not mean that I returned to who I was on the morning of 19th August, 2003, before the Baghdad attack occurred. In addition to my emotional and psychological shifts, I have also become more aware of limitations of humanitarian interventions and the urgent need for reforms in the international aid system.
By the time I decided to leave the UN in 2013, I had voiced almost all my concerns about the aid industry while working within the system.
Now, on the anniversary of the Baghdad explosion that I survived, I think a lot about the person I was 20 years ago when I lost 22 of my colleagues. I reflect on the price I paid and how much I have changed. I cherish the memory of friends and colleagues who lost their lives, were wounded or abducted over the past two decades—around 6,000 of them. The most recent was my late colleague, Moayad Hameidi, the head of the World Food Programme office in Taiz, Yemen, who was gunned down in late July. He survived Iraq but not Yemen.
The senseless Baghdad explosion compelled me to change, hopefully for the better, but the UN has been much slower in reforming itself while fully adhering to the principles on which it was founded—most importantly, humanity. Overhauling massive institutions might be much harder than healing and changing individuals. Perhaps our only choice here is to continue to work patiently to advance reforms step by step, programme after programme, until the UN better embodies the spirit of its charter, signed in San Francisco nearly 80 years ago.
Khaled Mansour is a writer, consultant and an adjunct professor on humanitarian aid, human rights and peacekeeping. He spent 13 years working for the United Nations, including for Unicef, peacekeeping missions and the World Food Programme
Opinion by Vanessa Steinmayer, Simon Graham (bangkok, thailand)
Inter Press Service
BANGKOK, Thailand, Sep 08 (IPS) – In Asia and the Pacific, migration is again on the rise. In 2020, almost 109 million people lived in a country other than that of their birth. They represented 2.3 per cent of the region’s population in 2020 and almost 38 per cent of the world’s international migrants.
If managed properly, migration can benefit migrants, their families, as well as both the countries they come from and go to.
Growth in the international migrant stock in Asia and the Pacific and by subregion, 1990—2020
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2020). International Migrant Stock 2020.
Migration is largely a result of disparities
Development disparities are a key driver of international migration. Poverty, limited job opportunities, recently exacerbated by rising food and energy prices, and the prospect for higher wages abroad are main contributors to the decision to migrate.
Migrants work in jobs of all skill levels: construction and domestic workers, nurses, accountants, computer scientists, teachers and many others. Women are particularly engaged in domestic and care work.
Migration primarily occurs within the region. People often prefer to migrate to countries with geographic and cultural proximity. The region features distinct migration corridors, such as from Central Asia to the Russian Federation, from Pacific islands to Australia or within South East Asia.
Temporary labour migration from Asia and the Pacific to the Middle East is significant too, with Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines as the main countries of origin. Overall, Asia and the Pacific is a hub for international migration; many countries are simultaneously countries of origin, destination and transit.
Millions of young people from the Asia-Pacific region also migrate to study abroad. After completing their degrees many of them gain work visas and employment in their country of destination, such as Australia or New Zealand.
Migration without choice
Other people have no choice but to migrate. They flee their countries due to war and conflict. In 2022, there were 31.6 million refugees from Asia and the Pacific under the mandate of UNHCR and 27.5 million of them were living in the region.
A total of 53 per cent of refugees from Asia-Pacific countries are female and 43 per cent are under 18 years old. Countries such as Bangladesh, Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan, and Türkiye are among the largest host countries of refugees in the world for refugees from neighbouring countries in conflict. An increasing number of people migrate for environmental reasons and climate change because they see their livelihoods being destroyed.
Migration comes with a high cost for migrants
Despite the gains, migration comes at a high cost for migrants. Recruitment costs to private recruiters remain high. Some pay with their lives: Since 2014, every year, an estimated 4,000 deaths have been recorded worldwide on migration routes.
Each year, thousands of men and women fall prey to traffickers and smugglers, often for forced labour and sexual exploitation. Access to social services and protection, as well as rights, in destination countries often remain limited, particularly for workers classified as low skilled, including domestic workers. Women migrants are at higher risk of being abused and find limited access to sexual and reproductive health services.
Migrants are agents of development
Migrants typically send back cash or goods to support their families in their country of origin, known as remittances. In 2022, a total of $311 billion was sent to Asia and the Pacific as remittances, which support better housing, nutrition and better education for children. In countries of destination, migrants perform jobs that often could not be filled otherwise. Migrant workers are essential to many sectors in the economy, particularly in ageing societies.
Migration is an irreversible trend in the Asia-Pacific region. To harness the benefits, safe and low-cost pathways for regular migration are needed. There is also a need to address development disparities, conflict and environmental degradation to ensure that migration is people’s individual choice. Regional dialogue and cooperation on international migration is crucial to this end.
The Seventh Asian and Pacific Population Conference, organized by ESCAP and UNFPA, in Bangkok from 15 to 17 November 2023, will provide opportunities for policymakers, civil society organizations and other stakeholders to discuss key population and development issues.
The meeting’s outcome will provide the regional input to the global review of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) at the 57th session of the Commission on Population and Development, in 2024.
Vanessa Steinmayer is Population Affairs Officer, Social Development Division, ESCAP and Simon Graham is UNFPA Fellow on Population and Development.
Karipbek Kuyukov is an armless painter from Kazakhstan, and global anti–nuclear weapon testing & nonproliferation activist. Credit: Jibek Joly TV Channel
Opinion by Katsuhiro Asagiri, Kunsaya Kurmet-Rakhimova (astana, kazakhstan)
Inter Press Service
ASTANA, Kazakhstan, Sep 07 (IPS) – Exactly 32 years ago, on September 29, 1991, Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union, made a historic decision that would alter its fate. On that day, Kazakhstan permanently closed the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site, defying the central government in Moscow. This marked the start of Kazakhstan’s transformation from a nuclear-armed state, possessing the fourth-largest nuclear arsenal at the time, to a non-nuclear-weapon state. Kazakhstan’s audacious move to eliminate its nuclear weapons was rooted in a profound commitment to global disarmament, setting an inspiring precedent.
Eighteen years later, in 2009, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution, led by Kazakhstan, designating August 29 as the International Day Against Nuclear Tests. This day serves as a solemn reminder of the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons and underscores the urgent imperative for disarmament.
In a world where the threat of nuclear weapons being used again remains a grim reality, a pivotal question looms: Can we genuinely aspire to a world free of nuclear arms? To delve deeper into this pressing concern and comprehend the menace posed by nuclear weapons testing and deployment, we interviewed Karipbek Kuyukov and participants of the “Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons and the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone” regional conference. This conference, organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan in partnership with the Center for International Security and Policy (CISP), Soka Gakkai International (SGI), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), took place in Astana, Kazakhstan to commemorate this year’s International Day Against Nuclear Tests.
Karipbek Kuyukov is an armless painter from Kazakhstan, and global anti–nuclear weapon testing & nonproliferation activist. Credit: Jibek Joly TV Channel
One of the most poignant moments during the conference came from Dmitriy Vesselov, a third-generation survivor of nuclear testing. He provided a heartfelt testimony about the profound human toll exacted by nuclear testings on his family and the broader community. The nuclear tests conducted at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site over four decades unleashed explosions 2,500 times more potent than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The repercussions of these tests have echoed through generations, inflicting severe health problems and untold suffering.
Kuyukov, a renowned Kazakh artist born without hands due to radiation exposure in his mother’s womb, has devoted his life to raising awareness about the horrors of nuclear testing. His powerful artwork, created using his lips or toes, depicts the survivors of nuclear tests and serves as a poignant tribute to those who perished. Kuyukov’s unwavering commitment reflects the indomitable human spirit in the face of unimaginable adversity.
Dmitriy Vesselov’s testimony shed light on the ongoing challenges faced by survivors. He candidly shared his struggles with health issues, including acromioclavicular dysostosis, a condition severely limiting his physical capabilities. Vesselov expressed his deep concern about the potential transmission of these health problems to future generations. Consequently, he has chosen not to have children. The conference underscored the imperative of averting the repetition of history by delving into the past tragedies inflicted by nuclear weapons testings.
Hirotsugu Terasaki, Director General of Peace and Global Issues of SGI, commenting on the event said “I believe that this regional conference is a new milestone, a starting point for representatives from five countries of Central Asia to discuss how we can advance the process toward a nuclear-weapon-free world, given the ever-increasing threat of nuclear weapons.”
Terasaki observed that the international community is actively deliberating Articles 6 and 7 of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), mandating state parties to provide support to victims and address environmental remediation. He accentuated Kazakhstan’s pivotal role as a co-chair of the working group central to these discussions.
Kazakhstan does provide special medical insurance and benefits to victims of nuclear tests. However, these benefits are predominantly extended to individuals officially certified as disabled or a family member of those who succumbed to radiation-related illnesses. Numerous victims, like Vesselov, who do not fall within these categories, remain ineligible for assistance.
Despite his daunting challenges, Mr. Vesselov maintains an unwavering sense of hope. He hopes that his testimony will serve as a stark reminder of the perils of nuclear weapons and awaken global consciousness regarding the dangers posed by even small tactical nuclear weapons and the specter of limited nuclear conflicts. Ultimately, his deepest aspiration, shared by all victims of nuclear weapons, is that the world will never bear witness to such a devastating tragedy again.
As Kazakhstan assumes its role as President-designate of the third Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW, it reaffirms its steadfast commitment to global peace and disarmament. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s resolute words resonate with the sentiment of a nation that has borne the scars of nuclear testing: “Such a tragedy should not happen again. Our country will unwaveringly uphold the principles of nuclear security.”
At the conference, member states of the Treaty of Semipalatinsk were encouraged to support Kazakhstan in this endeavor, and in its efforts to represent the Central Asian region’s contribution to nuclear disarmament, through attending the second Meeting of States Parties of the TPNW, at least as observers, which will take place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York between 27 November and 1 December this year, and by signing and ratifying the TPNW at the earliest opportunity.
In a world still grappling with the looming specter of nuclear devastation, Kazakhstan’s journey from a nuclear test site to a leading advocate for disarmament serves as a beacon of hope. Kazakhstan’s unwavering commitment to peace stands as a testament to the enduring legacy of a nation that once bore the weight of nuclear tests and now champions a safer, more secure world for all.
Katsuhiro Asagiri is President of INPS Japan and Kunsaya Kurmet-Rakhimova is a reporter of Jibek Joly(Silk Way) TV Channel.
“Super apps” have never truly existed in the United States, and it is apparent at this point that they never will.
That isn’t stopping some executives and investment analysts from still dreaming of becoming one-stop shops for their users’ needs, something only a small handful of apps in Asia have managed to do. The most prominent is Elon Musk, the Tesla Inc. TSLAchief executive who purchased Twitter last year and has proclaimed that he will turn it into an “everything app” called X that resembles super apps in China.
KlimaSeniorinnen (Climate Seniors) Visit in Athens, Greece. The KlimaSeniorinnen on their visit to Athens, Greece (24-27 of January). They spoke with volunteers and organizations including Greenpeace about the importance of a strong climate movement, its close relation to human rights and how to make the movement stronger.
Opinion by Mads Flarup Christensen (amsterdam)
Inter Press Service
AMSTERDAM, Sep 07 (IPS) – Super-charging efforts and setting a fresh direction for the next phase of climate policymaking is what’s urgently needed and on offer this month during the 78th UN General Assembly in New York, as mass heat waves, devastating wildfires, fatal floods, and withering droughts continue to wreak havoc across continents.
These extreme weather events, alongside geopolitical tensions, expose how fundamental it is for the world to have solutions inexplicably based on climate justice, collaboration and international cooperation to address ongoing impacts and to prevent future polycrises.
If we are to live up to the theme of this year’s UNGA debate of “Rebuilding trust and reigniting global solidarity”, we need to stop pitting the urgent fossil fuel phaseout against who should pay for climate impacts around the world. It’s a false choice as we need both, and we need to act for the global common good.
Climate justice means both the end of the era of fossil fuels, through a green just transition, and holding country and corporate polluters responsible, legally and financially, for the harm caused by climate change.
Climate Justice Camp in Lebanon. Led by climate groups across the Middle East and North Africa, youth organisers and mobilisers from almost 100 countries attended the week-long Climate Justice Camp in Lebanon.
The climate justice bill can start to be settled by rich countries making good on their long standing $100 billion per year climate finance promise, and committing to scale up further.
Also, by governments introducing taxes to ensure the fossil fuel industry, and other major polluters, pay for the destruction and harm they have caused. The ‘big five’ oil and gas companies, for a start, had 2022 profits of $200bn.
This more accurate meaning of climate justice is essential and global since climate impacts don’t respect borders. Take the devastating wildfires in Canada in June, when New Yorkers all over the state were enveloped in smog and more than 50 million people were put under air quality alerts across the US.
Or how India, the world’s largest rice exporter, brought in a ban in July on the staple, which dozens of countries especially in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa rely on, furthering food insecurity, hunger and discord.
Political leaders need to look past their country lines and their next election cycle, and act in the interests of the next generation and people on the frontlines of the climate crisis today, instead of the big multinational fossil fuel companies.
Oil, coal and gas are the largest contributors to global climate change and they are undeniably killing us. Recent studies show that nearly 9 million people a year die from inhaling particulates produced by burning fossil fuels.
The toxic politics around the G20 summit are not shaping up to deliver anything useful on climate. This cannot set the tone of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Climate Ambition Summit on September 20th.
Masses of people will be mobilising across the planet, and on the streets of New York, calling for climate justice and solutions that work for us all in the present day, and not untested tech fixes of the faraway.
A straight up climate justice action leaders could take from is how 58% of Ecuadorians voted to keep new oil in the ground in the Amazonian Yasuní National Park, a home to Indigenous communities and highly biodiverse regions. As part of the result, the state-owned Petroecuador has one year to close up shop there.
Who will be the climate justice leaders at the Climate Ambition Summit remains to be seen, but it is clear to civil society that young people are leading the charge. The end of August saw one of the largest climate justice camps take place in the mountains of Lebanon, where 450 young leaders from the world’s most climate-affected regions co-created strategies and demands that call on leaders to put climate justice at the core of climate policy. They know the science is crystal clear and they demand a livable future.
The moment is upon decision-makers now, especially of the biggest polluting countries, to become climate justice leaders by delivering a fast and fair fossil fuel phase out that is funded and makes polluters pay.
It is the time for the political and corporate elite to act justly, cooperatively and collaboratively to stop us all from boiling.
Mads Flarup Christensen is interim Executive Director of Greenpeace International.
The poorest people in some of the least responsible regions for climate change or emissions – like East Africa – are losing their lives and livelihoods to human-induced climate change. Credit: Charles Karis/IPS
Opinion by Amitabh Behar, Fati NZi Hassane (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Sep 06 (IPS) – From 2017, Shamso Isac has helplessly witnessed the demise of all her sources of income. Failed rain seasons and dried-up water sources meant a lack of pasture, which led to the death of her livestock. Widespread hunger exacerbated by rising food costs forced her to relocate to Burlhedi internally displaced persons camp in Baidoa in the Southwest state of Somalia. She recalls walking for weeks seeking a place she could get food for her family. When her child asks for something to eat or drink, she has nothing to offer; all she can do is cry, overwhelmed by the utter hopelessness she feels.
Shamso’s story mirrors that of millions across East Africa and many other parts of the world. Despite contributing a mere 0.1% of global emission, millions are bearing the harshest impact of climate change with over 31.5 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and South Sudan experiencing the worst episode of climate-induced extreme weather, which is fuelling an alarming hunger crisis.
The devastating droughts and floods in these four East African countries have also costed the region an estimated $30 billion losses from 2021 to the end of 2023 with Oxfam calculating that approximately $7.4 billion worth of livestock have perished, pushing farmers and pastoralists deeper into poverty.
Climate change has resulted in the rise of the global temperature by up to 1.2° Celsius making the severity of East Africa’s drought 100 times more likely. The poorest people in some of the least responsible regions for climate change or emissions – like East Africa – are losing their lives and livelihoods to human-induced climate change. Rich industrial countries are responsible for 92% of excess emissions.
Yet, it is the people like those in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan that are facing a multitude of detrimental social, economic and health impacts that are exacerbated by climate change. Small island nations are losing their land to rising oceans and if this trajectory persists, entire countries could disappear under rising sea levels. The climate crisis is a human tragedy and is making existing inequalities and injustices a whole lot worse.
Climate justice demands that those responsible for causing the crisis must be held accountable, and those most affected must get adequate support to adapt to the problems and mitigate them. Why does this matter? It matters because it compels the global community and those primarily responsible for the climate crisis to work with and support those who bear the heaviest burden.
It matters because it addresses a more systemic problem that is the fundamental cause of this crisis and many others. The problem is an economic model that is fossil-dependent and designed to benefit a select few, the super-rich, and that’s causing a planetary crisis and aggravating social injustices around the world.
A fundamental shift is needed to effectively tackle this injustice, without which, extreme weather conditions will recur more frequently and with increasing intensity leading to more hunger and human suffering in the future in countries where people have done the least to contribute to climate change.
As a crucial starting point, the governments of industrialized countries must pay their fair share of climate finance and honour their commitment to provide 0.7% of their Gross National Income to the Global South countries including the $8.74 billion needed to support for the humanitarian response in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan in order to save lives and livelihoods.
To fill this gap, governments in the affluent and in the industrialised nations must ensure companies and the rich are paying their fair share of taxes, not least those profiting from harming the planet. This will enable these countries and communities at the frontline to start building back and build resilience for the next climate shock.
Secondly, the top polluting countries must pay their fair share of the climate finance to East Africa to help its governments scale up their climate mitigation and adaptation so they can help the most impacted communities to recover from climatic shocks. These funds should no longer be in the form of loans but as grants.
Finally, industrialized polluting countries should commit to paying their fair share of the losses and damage suffered by East Africa countries. Estimates show that these polluters owe $8.7 trillion to developing countries, including in Africa. This finance will be crucial to support communities and countries to adapt to climate change, recover from damage and loss and to transition to clean development.
We need to embrace a fundamental, systemic change. Even as we’re saving lives through the humanitarian response, we must also focus on the root causes of the climate change crisis and food insecurity.
Hunger is unacceptable in the 21st century. To witness millions suffering from lack of food in a world of plenty and in a world where billionaire wealth has exploded, is an abomination. The hope side of this doom-and-gloom scenario is that we have the resources in the world to address these challenges. The right leadership and political choices can end hunger. The time to act is now.
Fati N’Zi-Hassane is the Oxfam in Africa Director at Oxfam International. Amitabh Behar is the Interim Executive Director at Oxfam International
Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 06 (IPS) – After decades of resistance by rich nations, African governments successfully pushed for the United Nations to lead on international tax cooperation. All developing countries and fair-minded governments must rally behind this initiative.
All countries must now work to ensure progress on financing to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate justice after major setbacks due to the pandemic, war and illegal sanctions.
Jomo Kwame SundaramRich countries had blocked an earlier tax cooperation initiative at the Addis Ababa Financing for Development (FfD) summit in mid-2015. With grossly inadequate funding, the SDGs were condemned to a still birth.
The SGR on options to strengthen international tax cooperation is, arguably, the most important recent proposal – remarkably, from a beleaguered and much ignored UN – to enhance FfD for SDG progress.
It proposes three options: a multilateral tax convention, an international tax cooperation framework convention, and an international tax cooperation framework. The first two would be legally binding, while the third would be voluntary in nature.
Eurodad proposal
In response, the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) has made a proposal – supported by the Global Alliance for Tax Justice (GATJ) – noting: “It is time for governments to deliver … … cooperate internationally to put an end to tax havens and ensure that tax systems become fair and effective.
“International tax dodging is costing public budgets hundreds of billions of Euros in lost tax income every year, and we need an urgent, ambitious and truly international response to stop this devastating problem.
“We believe the right instrument for the job is a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation and we call on all governments to support this option…
“For the last half century, the OECD has been leading the international decision-making on international tax rules and the result is an international tax system that is deeply ineffective, complex and full of loopholes, as well as biased in the interest of richer countries and tax havens.
“Furthermore, the OECD process has never been international. Developing countries have not been able to participate on an equal footing, and the negotiations have been deeply opaque and closed to the public.
“We need international tax negotiations to be transparent, fair and lead by a body where all countries participate as equals. The UN is the only place that can deliver that.”
A big step forward?
Strengthening international tax cooperation is expected to be the major issue at the one-day UN High-level FfD Dialogue on 20 September 2023.
A UN resolution on international tax cooperation – for General Assembly debate after September 2023 – should plan a UN-led inter-governmental process. After all, developing such solutions is a key purpose of the multilateral UN.
The Africa Group at the UN had appealed for a Convention on Tax in 2019, to help curb illicit financial outflows. After all, such tax-related flows are international problems, requiring multilateral solutions.
International tax cooperation should be inclusive, effective and fair. The EURODAD-GATJ proposals deserve consideration by all Member States negotiating a UN tax convention. The outcome should include: • Create an inclusive international tax body. The Convention should create international tax governance arrangements, using a Conference of Parties (CoP) approach, with all countries participating as equals. Currently, international tax rules are decided in various bodies where developing countries never participate as equals. • Enable an incremental approach to achieve other intergovernmental agreements. The outcome should be a framework convention, with basic structures, commitments and agreements enabling further updating and improvements later. • Incorporate developing countries’ interests, concerns and needs to achieve tax justice. The Convention should address developing countries’ interests, concerns and needs, replacing current tax standards and rules favouring wealthier nations. • Enhance international coherence. The Convention should develop a coherent system for all nations, including developing countries. It should eventually replace the plethora of existing bilateral and plurilateral tax treaties and agreements with a coherent overall framework. This should improve effectiveness and cut tax dodging. • Strengthen international efforts against illicit financial flows, especially involving tax avoidance and evasion, with simpler, more coherent and straightforward rules and standards to improve transparency and cooperation among governments. • Eliminate transfer pricing. The Convention should eliminate transfer pricing by replacing existing rules enabling such abusive practices. • Tax transnational corporations globally. Transnational corporations’ consolidated profits should be taxed on a global basis. Tax revenue should be distributed among governments with a minimum effective corporate income tax rate based on a fair and principled agreed formula recognizing developing countries’ contributions as producers. • End coerced acceptance of biased dispute resolution processes. The Convention should not require countries to accept biased processes, such as binding arbitration, favouring those who can afford costly legal resources. Effective dispute prevention would reduce the need for dispute resolution. Alternative mechanisms for resolving disputes could also be negotiated – using inclusive and transparent decision-making processes – under the Convention. • Enhance sustainable development and justice. The Convention should promote progressive taxation at national and international levels. It should ensure improved international tax governance supports government commitments and duties, especially relating to the UN Charter and Sustainable Development Goals. • Improve government accountability. The Convention should ensure transparent and participatory tax decision-making, with governments held accountable to national publics. • Ensure transparency. The Eurodad proposal emphasizes the ‘ABC of tax transparency’, i.e., Automatic Information Exchange, Beneficial Ownership Transparency, and Country-by-Country reporting.
Actual progress will not come easily, especially after the strong-arm tactics – used by the G-7 group of the biggest rich economies and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – to impose its tax proposals at the expense of developing countries.
Opinion by Marianne Buenaventura Goldman, Reitumetse Nkoti Mabula (cape town, south africa)
Inter Press Service
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Sep 05 (IPS) – The Role of the New Development Bank in Monitoring Project Impacts on Communities
The 15th BRICS Summit held in Johannesburg, South Africa this month has once again put the spotlight on the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) as a shining example of multilateralism and the New Development Bank’s (NDB)commitment to financing sustainable development projects within BRICS countries and other developing countries. During the 2023 BRICS Summit, the New Development Bank and the Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority (TCTA) signed a 3.2 billion Rands loan agreement for the implementation of Phase Two of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) in Lesotho. This funding complements contributions by other financiers, notably the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA).
LHWP is a multi-phased water infrastructure project which involves construction of a number of dams in Lesotho to transfer water to South Africa, while generating hydropower for Lesotho. The entity that is responsible for implementation of LHWP in Lesotho is the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA). The TCTA, a state-owned entity charged with financing bulk raw water infrastructure in South Africa, is responsible for financing and building the LHWP.
News of the signing of this agreement was received with some interest and enthusiasm in many quarters in Lesotho, partly because of the participation of Prime Minister Matekane during the Summit, as an observer, and largely due to the perceived benefits of this loan for Basotho. On the other hand, the news was also viewed with skepticism by civil society organisations working with communities directly affected by LHWP in light of the adverse social, economic, environmental and gender impact which communities continue to experience daily. The truth is, whilst it is laudable and important for both Lesotho and South Africa that the NDB provided this crucial financing for socio-economic development of their peoples, it is equality imperative that this development should not come at a cost to vulnerable and marginalised communities who have been forced to host this project.
The benefits for communities in South Africa are straightforward; according to the media release issued by the NDB on the 21st of August 2023, LHWP Phase II will increase the water yield of the Vaal River Basin by almost 15%, supporting economic growth and livelihoods of approximately 15 million people living in Gauteng Province, including communities in three other provinces which also stand to benefit from increased water supply. However, these benefits are not guaranteed for thousands of people and communities directly affected by this project in Lesotho.
LHWP Phase II has garnered its fair share of criticism and controversy recently, for its operations and impact on the people of Polihali, Mokhotlong. These include heavy handed police intervention against people who rightfully express dissent and protest to some aspects of the project or how it is implemented. There are also complaints about the project’s implementing authority, the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA)’s compensation policy. These include unfair compensation amounts to communities which were based on unilaterally determined compensation rates and periods, non-payment of communal compensation which has prevented communities from developing income generating projects, and lack of developments such as provision of water and sanitation for communities.
Implementation of LHWP requires acquisition of land from local communities; it is estimated that 5,000 hectares of land will be flooded by the Polihali Dam.1 This acquisition of land will result in significant negative impacts on the livelihoods and socio-economic status of the local populations. Communities are going to lose arable land, grazing ranges for livestock which is the main store of wealth for communities in the area, medicinal plants, useful grasses and wild vegetables which form the basis of livelihoods for communities.
Another challenge of the construction of this Dam is the required resettlement and / or relocation of communities. It is currently estimated that 270 households and 21 business enterprises will need to be relocated, mainly due to the impoundment of Polihali reservoir.2 About 12 communities will be relocated, and an additional 5 communities will be required to resettle entirely, a process that will have great economic and socio-economic and cultural implications for generations to come. Regrettably, there is no livelihood restoration strategy that has been developed by the LHDA to ameliorate the plight of these communities or at least no such strategy has been shared and/or discussed with communities and their representatives.
Negative gender impacts have also been noted; women within LHWP Phase II project area are already marginalised because of cultural stereotypes and practices which prevent them from owning land. The LHWP Phase II Compensation Policy has only served to solidify and exacerbate the problem of gender inequality through its gender biased payout of compensation procedure which deprives women of compensation for land previously managed or shared. This increases their economic vulnerability and susceptibility to gender-based violence. In fact, there have been concerning news reports in recent months, of increasing number of gender-based violence cases including teenage pregnancies and girl-child school dropouts, sex work/transactional sex, sexual violation especially of young girls, and increased HIV infection prevalence. These have been linked directly to the influx of immigrant contractors and labour workers who have come to work on the LHWP, continuing a trend which was first observed during implementation of the previous phases of this project. It is worrying to note, that at this point in the of implementation LHWP Phase II, there is still no gender policy, and the implementing authority still insists on turning a blind eye to the vulnerability of women as a result of this project.
The news of the NDB providing a loan for Phase 2 of the LHWP, totaling an amount of 3.2 billion Rands (US $ 171.5 million) raises further questions on the NDB’s policies and practices concerning transparency, accountability and its environmental and social safeguards, including gender. The NDB has indicated its plans to further strengthen gender mainstreaming in all its projects in its second five year General Strategy (2022-2027). As called by BRICS civil society organisations since the start of NDB operations, the NDB needs to urgently put in place a gender policy, with support of gender specialists at the NDB to oversee that gender is integrated in all aspects of its projects, in strong partnerships with its clients such as the TCTA and the LHDA.
All eyes are on the former Brazil President, Dilma Rousseff, new President of the NDB on her ability to transform the NDB from a multilateral development bank whose track record appears to be gender neutral towards one can proactively empower women and delivering on gender equality as part of New General Strategy and operations. In a recent statement, Rousseff explained that a priority of the NDB will be to “…promote social inclusion at every opportunity we have. The NDB needs to support projects that help to reduce inequalities and that improve the standard of living of the vast communities of the poor and excluded in our countries.”
The NDB has now grown beyond the BRICS countries, and recently included new member countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh, Egypt and Uruguay and has greater aspirations to add many more countries. Given the NDB’s expansion, it is critical that the NDB begin to live its vision of being an accountable institution for the South, by the South. The NDB should urgently put into practice its policies such as on Information Disclosure. By doing so, the NDB will enable communities to access information on projects that directly affect their lives and livelihoods. The NDB also needs to work more closely with its clients to follow through on the NDB guidelines provided in its Environmental and Social Framework. The Civil Society Forum of the NDB (South Africa / Africa), including Lesotho community-based organisations calls on the NDB to learn from past mistakes experienced during the implementation of Phase 1 of the LHWP. During Phase II of the project, the NDB and other development finance institutions such as the DBSA and AfDB should ensure that the LHDA convenes effective and timely community consultations, provide basic services such as clean water, and ensure adequate and fair compensation to all affected communities – especially women who have in the past been left behind.
During the 2023 BRICS Summit, which took place on 22-24 August, Minister Naledi Pandor of South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation underscored the need for the NDB to do outreach at the local level in terms of sharing information on the projects the NDB funds, including vital project information, including the $3 billion the NDB plans to invest in South Africa. All eyes are now on South Africa and Brazil with leadership from NDB President Rousseff and Minister Pandor to push for stronger and more inclusive development outcomes of the NDB, with women front and centre of all future NDB projects.
The LHWP Phase II is an example of the challenges faced by communities affected by large infrastructure projects with funding from Public Development Banks (PDBs) such as the NDB, AfDB and the DBSA. As the hundreds of PDBs convene at the 4th Finance in Common Summit (FICS) in Cartegena, Colombia on 4-6 September to join forces to transform the financial system towards climate and sustainability, it will be important that PDBs transform their models to be more effective in promoting positive development outcomes for communities. PDBs have been advocating to increase volumes of finance for development. Civil society across the globe are in solidarity, making their voices heard at the FICS expressing concerns that limited attention is being given to the need to shift the quality of that finance to ensure it does not exacerbate the current crises and to ensure it shifts the power in decision making. Such attention is even more needed as the current financial architecture hinders the ability of governments to protect people and the planet.
Marianne Buenaventura Goldman is co-Chair, Civil Society Forum of the NDB (Africa) & Project Coordinator, Forus Reitumetse Nkoti Mabula is Executive Director, Seinoli Legal Centre
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 05 (IPS) – When a continent with 65% of the world’s arable land struggles to feed its 1.4 billion people, we know something is wrong. The African and global food systems need a rethink. The urgent and pressing need to address a more productive, transparent, equitable food system, poverty and the far-reaching effects of climate change requires us to forge alliances among diverse stakeholders and sectors.
In this case, our collective efforts spanning agriculture, poverty alleviation, and the environment is a powerful force to drive lasting change and support thriving communities. Together, we are dedicated to strengthening the continent’s food producers to cultivate a more resilient and sustainable food system.
Africa can lead a global movement toward food system transformation, but challenges like extreme climate impacts, limited access to resources, and power imbalances thwart its effort.
The role of agriculture in poverty alleviation is indisputable; it impacts employment, GDP, food security, and countless livelihoods. To harness this potential, we need a holistic food systems approach that transforms lives while confronting the climate crisis. With global support, Africa can build a food system that enhances food security, prosperity, and ecological equilibrium.
A significant asset on this journey is Africa’s youth, comprising nearly 60% of the continent’s population. By empowering young farmers through training, entrepreneurship, and technology, Africa can tap into their potential for innovative, climate-sensitive agriculture.
These young leaders are already making strides in sustainable agriculture, but they require support to flourish. With secure land rights, financial backing, and proper training, Africa can unleash the full potential of its “agripreneurs”, securing a sustainable agricultural future.
Urbanization, often seen as a challenge, can be turned into an opportunity. As cities grow, so does the demand for locally produced food. Connecting farmers and agribusinesses to urban markets can create thriving agricultural value chains benefiting both producers and consumers.
Investing in agricultural research and technology is paramount. Innovation, digital solutions, and research-driven practices can optimize productivity, resource efficiency, and market insights. This includes precision agriculture, improved seeds, water management, pest control, climate-smart strategies, and supportive policies.
Research, adapted to local contexts, plays a pivotal role in refining and disseminating these strategies, enhancing productivity, sustainability, and resilience. Furthermore, climate-resilient agricultural practices are essential. Blending indigenous knowledge with modern technologies can optimize productivity while reducing the environmental footprint.
Africa’s journey toward agricultural leadership requires support from the global community. International organizations can provide funding, expertise, and knowledge exchange to promote sustainable agriculture and climate resilience.
Collaboration is the cornerstone of success. Through collective action, Africa can tap into its unity and address complex issues more effectively. Organizations like ONE.org, The Environmental Defense Fund, and the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU) actively collaborate to advocate for policy changes, knowledge sharing, and support for sustainable and resilient food systems.
Policy reforms are imperative to create an enabling environment for agricultural development. Governments must incentivize climate-smart practices, support value addition, and promote sustainable investments. The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), for example, offers a roadmap for policy reforms, coordination, and transparent resource allocation.
Despite challenges, Africa’s agricultural potential is boundless. To overcome obstacles, we must attract financing, harness the innovative spirit of the youth, promote climate-resistant practices, invest in research and technology, and collaborate across sectors.
Climate change is a defining factor in Africa’s ability to feed itself and the world. It demands investments in infrastructure, innovation, and a new generation of climate-sensitive farmers and agripreneurs. This journey requires multi-sector partnerships and collaborative efforts, fueled by various forms of funding, from philanthropy to commercial investments.
Africa’s future, in fact the world’s future, marked by sustainability, inclusivity, and prosperity, is within reach, and it beckons us to act now.
Angela Churie Kallhauge is the Executive Vice President, Impact at the Environmental Defense Fund (HQ in DC); Ishmael Sunga is the Chief Executive Officer of the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (South Africa); and Serah Makka is ONE’s Executive Director for Africa (South Africa).
CARTAGENA, Colombia, Sep 04 (IPS) – In the midst of a complex web of crises, spanning climate change, biodiversity depletion, constraints on civic space and mounting debt burdens, civil society organizations and human rights defenders from over 50 countries have united their voices to call for immediate and impactful action from Public Development Banks (PDBs).
The global coalition’s message is clear: when it comes to financing for development, principles of rights, justice, sustainability, transparency, accountability and dignity for all cannot remain mere slogans. They must form the core of all projects undertaken by all Public Development Banks.
The Finance in Common Summit has become a pivotal platform for Public Development Banks from around the world. The fact that this year’s summit is taking place in Cartagena, Colombia, the deadliest country in the world in 2022 for human rights, envrionmental and indigenous activists, development banks must acknowledge and integrate the protection of human rights into their projects.
“Development banks are advocating to play an even bigger role in the global economy. But are they truly fit for this purpose? Unfortunately, the stories of communities around the world show us that development banks are failing to address the root causes of the very problems they claim to solve. We need to hold them accountable for this,” says Ivahanna Larrosa, Regional Coordinator for Latin America at the Coalition for Human Rights in Development.
“When PDB projects cause harm to people and the environment, PDBs must remedy these harms. All PDBs should implement an effective accountability mechanism to address concerns with projects and should commit to preventing and fully remediating any harm to communities,” adds Stephanie Amoako, Senior Policy Associate at Accountability Counsel.
The ongoing crises demand a transformation in the quality of financing and a power shift to include the voices of communities. The existing financial architecture not only impedes governments’ ability to safeguard both their citizens and the environment but also contributes to the escalating issue of chronic indebtedness. Policy-based lending and conditionalities enforced by International Financial Institutions have steered countries toward privatization of essential services, reduced social spending and preferential treatment for the private sector. This burdens the population with higher taxes, inflation, and weakened social safety nets.
“The same multinational companies that have polluted and violated human rights in Latin America are now obtaining financing from development banks for energy transition projects. Another example is the development of the green hydrogen industry in Chile, which carries a very high environmental and social risk,” says Maia Seeger, director of the Chilean civil society organization Sustentarse.
Addressing these issues requires a comprehensive and sustainable transformation of the financial architecture as well as holistic reforms and synergies with civil society and communities. Environmental and neo-colonial debts need to be a thing of the past and equitable reforms the thing of the present.
Global civil society, in response to these challenges, demands bold and decisive actions in a collective declaration signed by over 100 organisations. The demands are the result of a 4-year process in which a coalition of civil society organisations has come together to call on all PDBs at the Finance in Common Summit to embrace tangible actions that genuinely prioritize and protect people.
Just last month we have seen that change is possible when communities are involved, as the people of Ecuador voted to ban oil drilling in one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, the Yasuní National Park in the Amazon rainforest.
“The global financial system needs not just a rethink but a surgical operation, and that requires bold action. Governments and institutions such as the Public Development Banks must cancel the debt of the countries that require it and put in place concrete and immediate measures to put an end to public financing of fossil fuels, to have financing based on subsidies so as not to fall into the debt trap once again. It is time for the rich countries, the biggest polluters and creditors, to offer real solutions to the multiple crises we are currently experiencing,” says Gaïa Febvre, International Policy Coordinator at Réseau Action climat France.
“Public and Multilateral Development Banks must divest from funding false climate solutions and projects that harm forests, biodiversity and communities. Instead, they should redirect finance to support gender just, rights based and ecosystems approaches that contribute to transformative changes leading to real solutions that address climate change, loss of biodiversity and create sustainable livelihoods for Indigenous Peoples, women in all their diversities and local communities. Public funds must support community governed agroecological practices, small scale farming and traditional animal rearing practices instead of large scale agri-business which perpetuates highly polluting and emitting industrial agriculture and unsustainable livestock production, the root cause for deforestation and food insecurity,” adds Souparna Lahiri, Senior Climate and Biodiversity Policy Advisor at the Global Forest Coalition (GFC).
The call to action emphasizes that achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), effective climate action aligned with the Paris Agreement and successful implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework require Public Development Banks to pivot from a top-down profit-driven approach to one that prioritizes community-led involvement and human rights-based approaches.
“It is important that civil society participation be strengthened at the Finance in Common Summit (FICS). In previous years, civil society has been sidelined. Clearly, there is still some room for improvement for civil society participation to become truly meaningful. The lack of civil society representative on the opening panel this year is just one example of that. PDBs should promote and support an enabling environment for civil society and systematically incorporate civic space, human rights and gender analysis. This year, we are working towards ensuring that civil society voices, including those from communities are heard at the FICS. In collaboration with the FICS Secretariat, Forus seeks to establish a formal mechanism between civil society and PDBs and to ensure that civil society is recognised as an official engagement group,” says Marianne Buenaventura Goldman, Project Coordinator, Finance for Development at the global civil society network Forus.
Looking to spend your entertainment dollars wisely in September? Watch Hulu and read a book or two.
That pretty much sums up a hugely underwhelming lineup from streaming services, which burned through their best shows in the spring and have little to offer for the start of the traditional fall TV season. That’s not to say there aren’t a handful of promising shows — there are — but is one decent new show per service worth the price of multiple monthly subscriptions? Almost certainly not.
If production decreases due to El Niño, there will be less food availability, and the income of the most vulnerable households that live and eat on what they produce will be reduced. Credit: Ligia Calderón / FAO
Opinion by Mario Lubetkin (santiago)
Inter Press Service
SANTIAGO, Sep 01 (IPS) – Mario Lubetkin is FAO Assistant Director-General and FAO Regional Representative for Latin America and the CaribbeanThe climatic phenomenon known as “El Niño” is intensifying its presence worldwide. Projections are not favorable for the countries of the Latin America region. Below-normal rainfall is expected in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, northern Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, inland Peru, Guyana, and Suriname.
In addition, above-normal precipitation is projected for the northern coast of Peru and Ecuador associated with the “El Niño Costero” phenomenon.
If production decreases due to El Niño, there will be less food availability, and the income of the most vulnerable households that live and eat on what they produce will be reduced.
In case of rainfall deficit, food security will be affected, reducing the cultivated area, with effects on harvests and increased death, malnutrition, and diseases in livestock.
On the other hand, excess rainfall associated with El Niño will also lead to crop failure. It will also deteriorate soils, cause death and disease in animals, and damage key infrastructure.
It is critical to act now to reduce potential humanitarian needs. Protecting agriculture will directly impact food security and help prevent the escalation of food crises in the region.
Meeting this challenge requires a robust strategy that addresses risks in the broader context of global climate change.
FAO is implementing proactive actions to reduce potential humanitarian hardship in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador in the Dry Corridor in Central America.
These actions include support for water management, storage, and harvesting; micro-irrigation systems; safe seed storage systems; use of resistant varieties; prophylaxis and livestock feed, among others. In this way, we have protected the 2023 post-harvest agricultural season. A similar program will soon be initiated in Bolivia, Venezuela and Colombia.
In Ecuador, we will be supporting the implementation of drains and mechanisms to evacuate excess water from crops and prevent landslides, as well as providing equipment for seed and crop conservation, conservation of artisanal fishing production, and facilitating vaccination for livestock to mitigate the effects of El Niño Costero.
FAO recently launched a response plan to raise US$36.9 million to assist vulnerable communities in Latin America. The initiative, announced as part of Humanitarian Assistance Month, aims to support 1.16 million people in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela.
Without these efforts to reduce risk and act early, there will be a perpetual need for urgent humanitarian action and a growing risk of deterioration into new emergencies.
With a more coordinated effort by international organizations, governments, the private sector, regional organizations, civil society, and communities, we can cope with events like El Niño and better protect livelihoods and food security, leaving no one behind.
Flooding in Trinidad’s capital of Port of Spain. Climate justice calls for a fair and equitable response to climate change, recognizing the interconnectedness of our world and the shared responsibility we have in protecting it. Credit: Peter Richards/IPS
Opinion by Kibo Ngowi (johannesburg)
Inter Press Service
JOHANNESBURG, Sep 01 (IPS) – If you’ve never seen a landslide before, it’s a terrifying force of nature. Those who have found themselves in the thick of this phenomenon say the earth beneath your feet suddenly begins to give way, the ground cracks open, and large masses of soil, rocks, and debris come crashing down. It is as if the very ground you stand on is rebelling against the changing climate and its impact on the delicate balance of the environment.
Hari Maya Parajuli, a farmer in Nepal, was unfortunate enough to have a farm in the destructive path of just such a landslide. All her crops and tomato tunnels were destroyed in an instant – a devastating loss for her household. Extreme weather events of this kind are becoming increasingly common. Over the past three decades, the frequency and intensity of hurricanes, floods, droughts, landslides and heatwaves, have increased by 45%, posing severe threats to vulnerable communities and ecosystems worldwide.
At 43 years of age, Hari lives with her husband’s parents in the Nepali village of Ghatichhina. Her husband and three children left years ago to find work abroad and her parents-in-law are elderly, leaving her with no choice but to take on the labor of maintaining their farm by herself. After the devastating landslide, Hari began going to the Village Development Committee and the local office of the Agricultural Department continuously seeking some form of assistance. But it was in vain.
Hari continues to grow vegetables such as cauliflower, rice and maize and tends to her livestock consisting of one buffalo, one calf and four goats but adverse weather conditions persist in sabotaging her efforts. “It is especially risky during the Monsoon season,” she explains. “Our farm is at the river basin so we are exposed to floods from above and below. The rain has become so erratic that we experience periods of heavy rainfall which cause flooding and other periods of drought which make the land dry and difficult to farm.”
Around 65% of Nepal’s population relies on agriculture as their primary source of income but these extreme weather events contribute to 90% of the country’s crop loss. The UN estimates that climate change could push an additional 130 million people into extreme poverty by 2030 and the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate predicts that failure to address climate change could cost the global economy $23 trillion by 2050.
“It has been around 17 years since my husband went abroad,” Hari says. “He couldn’t find employment in Nepal and we needed money to educate our children and maintain our household. This year I have somehow managed but I don’t think I can continue farming next year. I am not healthy and neither are others in the family. If and when my husband returns, I am planning to open a homestay.”
Hari’s story is just one example of how climate change disproportionately affects the most vulnerable communities, including low-income populations, indigenous peoples, communities of color, and women and children, who contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions but bear the brunt of its consequences.
This is why we need climate justice – the fair and equitable treatment of all individuals and communities, particularly the most vulnerable and marginalized, in the context of addressing and responding to climate change. Climate justice recognizes that the impacts of climate change are not distributed equally and that the groups that are the most severely affected by the consequences of climate change contribute the least to the underlying causes of the problem.
The Climate Inclusion Fellowship
Starting in 2022, Accountability Lab (AL) Nepal hosted a Climate Inclusion Fellowship in which they recruited 12 young Nepali women interested in climate justice to reach out to different communities affected by climate change and to amplify the concerns and personal experiences of these communities through creative storytelling methods and mediums.
“Our goal was to build a network of young people who would not only identify the most pressing impacts of climate change, but would also be there to collaboratively uncover solutions to these problems with the people most affected,” explains Prekkshya Bimali, a Program Officer at AL Nepal who managed the fellowship. “We also wanted to take it a step further and connect these communities with the local authorities who have the power to implement these solutions at scale.”
The Climate Inclusion Fellows produced a short film around Hari Maya Parajuli’s experiences to highlight how climate change is deepening gender inequality in rural Nepal. Thousands of Nepali citizens, mostly men, have been forced to migrate in search of better work opportunities largely because climate change has had a devastating effect on male-dominated sectors such as agriculture. This has left scores of women overburdened with the task of maintaining households and raising children while also trying to earn an income.
Another important story the fellows uncovered was that of the Jalari community, an indigenous community in the city of Pokhara whose livelihood is dependent on fishing and has been heavily impacted by climate change. The water level in the lakes of Pokhara Valley has been decreasing for years, which has reduced the number of fish in the lake and forced the Jalari to introduce exotic species to counter the extinction of local species. Additionally, floods and landslides have led to the sedimentation of the lake, which further reduces the water level and pollutes the water itself.
“We don’t talk often enough about the differential impacts brought about by climate change to women, indigenous communities and other minorities,” says Climate Inclusion Fellow Urusha Lamsal. “So it was essential to reach out to these communities to understand the consequences of climate change from their perspective and how they are directly affected.”
Prekkshya explains that the goal of producing the short films on these issues was to amplify the voices of the affected communities and to also create dialogue between these communities and local authorities. “We have started doing public screenings where we also create space for local officials to engage with community members on these issues,” she says. “We have already screened the films in the very places where these issues are being experienced and we’re trying to reach out to as many as many people as we can.”
“These films will serve as an important advocacy tool as we continue to engage with the government on how these issues can be addressed in a way that is conscious of the needs and input of communities such as the Jalari. We are hopeful that these discussions will lead to meaningful change in the lives of the people most affected by climate change.”
Green Accountability
“It’s essential that we elevate communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis, especially indigenous communities, in shaping climate finance and solutions, because we won’t be successful without them,” says Grace Sinaga, Communications and Knowledge Management team lead at the World Bank’s Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA). “This is something we at the GPSA like to call green accountability.” Accountability Lab is partnering with the GPSA on a new initiative to drive green accountability globally.
Grace goes on to highlight how in Australia, whenever bushfires occur, disaster management experts have found that community led action is more sustainable and effective in the long run. The indigenous people honor their land and understand that the eucalyptus trees need fire in order to reproduce.
Australia’s indigenous peoples have been managing and controlling bushfires in ways that are effective and safe for both their communities and forests such as through cultural burning techniques for centuries. Today, the value of traditional ecological knowledge through indigenous land management experts is recognized by the Australian government and even included in school curricula.
“Unfortunately, indigenous knowledge receives only 1% of climate finance globally, despite safeguarding 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity, and less than 10% of climate funding has been prioritized for local activities,” explains Grace.
“We need to support indigenous peoples and local communities by creating systemic ways for people to have a voice and role in the climate decisions that most impact their lives. Green accountability places citizens and civil society at the heart of climate finance to direct funding, implement solutions and hold decision makers accountable for effective and equitable climate, finance and action.”
Ben Bakalovic, an Operations and Strategy Analyst at the GPSA, warns that we have to be careful because climate finance is a rapidly growing field that everybody wants a stake in, even if they’re not genuinely contributing to the solutions. “For instance, you see a lot of cases of international corporations taking land away from indigenous communities and rich countries claiming they are giving out climate finance when in reality, they’re financing chocolate and ice cream stores across Asia,” he explains.
This is why it’s crucial to have transparency measures that clearly map out what climate finance is, where it is going, who is implementing it, and what kind of impact it is meant to create. These measures would enable the most severely affected communities to better be able to track where climate finance is actually flowing.
“These people must logically be the ones that will be developing and implementing the solutions because local communities have a lot of knowledge that can be used for more effective climate action, both in mitigation and also in adaptation,” says Bakalovic.
“And then lastly, on accountability, it’s just about having governance measures in place that are used for avoiding corruption, have real oversight allowed for monitoring, tracking for effectiveness measurements. And this also really depends on the state and on the global and national levels.”
Justice for all
Climate justice is not just an abstract concept; it is a pressing need for humanity’s survival and well-being. The stories of individuals like Hari Maya Parajuli and communities like the Jalari show us how climate change disproportionately affects the most vulnerable among us. As extreme weather events become more frequent and intense, it is crucial to recognize that those who contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions are often the ones who bear the heaviest burden.
Efforts like the Climate Inclusion Fellowship and green accountability initiative are steps in the right direction, empowering communities to be part of the solution and ensuring that climate finance reaches those who need it the most. We must continue to amplify the voices of the affected, engage with local authorities, and foster dialogue to bring about meaningful change.
Climate justice calls for a fair and equitable response to climate change, recognizing the interconnectedness of our world and the shared responsibility we have in protecting it. By prioritizing the needs and perspectives of the most vulnerable, we can build a more sustainable and resilient future for all. It is time for action, compassion, and solidarity in the pursuit of climate justice, so that no one is left behind in the face of this global challenge. Let us work together to safeguard our planet and ensure a just and livable world for generations to come.
Floods in Kenya’s Turkana County, Lodwar town. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS.
Opinion by Kennedy Mugochi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Sep 01 (IPS) – Kennedy Mugochi is Director of Hivos East AfricaAs an African, I have seen first-hand the devastating effects of climate change. I have met communities displaced by floods in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. I have spoken to farmers from Northern Kenya who have lost their crops to drought. These experiences have made me acutely aware of how urgent it is to address the climate crisis.
In fact, the world stands perilously close to breaching the threshold of a 1.5C degree temperature rise, beyond which unimaginably catastrophic and irreversible climate impacts will ravage Africa and the world. Yet, the rich countries that caused this crisis are still refusing to give up their addiction to fossil fuels and are still short-changing the Global South on the funding needed for climate action.
A crucial opportunity to tackle these challenges
Next week, African leaders have a crucial opportunity to tackle these challenges. The Africa Climate Summit, hosted by the government of Kenya from September 4 to 6, will bring together heads of state and ministers, as well as representatives from civil society and the private sector.
The summit is the moment for African leaders and civil society to agree on a strong action platform, not only for pan-African measures but also for global decisions due to be taken at the UN global climate summit (COP28) this November.
Achieving a robust common agenda depends on three key factors:
A people-centered approach: The summit must put the needs of the people at the heart of its deliberations. The voices and needs of women, youth, Indigenous people, and others most vulnerable to climate impacts must be given priority over those of foreign companies and donors.
A justice approach: This means making sure that the benefits and costs of climate action are equitably distributed. Both within countries, so that women, informal workers, Indigenous people, and other vulnerable groups don’t lose out. And between countries, so that rich countries, which have done most to cause the crisis, shoulder more of the burden than developing countries. These two principles of justice should underpin the summit’s outcomes.
A collaborative approach: The summit must be a genuine collaborative effort between governments, civil society, and the progressive private sector. Only by working together can we achieve the necessary changes. Too much influence by particular interest groups will likely compromise the summit’s outcomes.
However daunting as it may appear, I appeal to African leaders to take a united approach during the summit that will benefit the people of Africa in the long run.
Three vital areas for the summit to produce clear outcomes:
Firstly, Africa and the world must rapidly transition away from fossil fuels. African governments and foreign donors and investors must put an immediate stop to the expansion of the fossil fuel industry and ensure that no new fossil fuel projects are financed, licensed, or constructed. Foreign partners must help finance a managed and just phase-out of existing fossil capacity.
Secondly, divert investments and subsidies from fossil fuels to Africa’s vast renewable energy potential. But the priority should be to spur inclusive, gender-transformative and sustainable development within Africa, not to satisfy the appetites of foreign countries and companies. As Hivos has demonstrated in its ENERGIA program, decentralized, community-owned, renewable energy solutions are key to create opportunities and jobs for women, small and micro businesses, youth, farmers and other economically marginalized groups.
Lastly, the summit must loudly redouble Africa’s calls for a transformation of the global climate finance system. Africa needs massively increased, non-debt creating finance for adaptation and loss and damage, as well as for the energy and food transitions. And we need more democratic and inclusive institutions to govern climate finance. This means not only giving governments of developing countries a fair say, but also bringing most-affected communities to the table. A portion of global and national funding should be set aside for local communities to directly access and manage.
The African Climate Summit is a critical opportunity for African leaders to take action on climate change. I urge them to seize this opportunity and make bold commitments to protect the planet and its people.
Together, we can build a fairer, more sustainable future for Africa and the world.
