The U.S. capital is tiny compared to many of the world’s largest cities, a new report on urbanization around the globe shows.
Tokyo has lost its status as the world’s largest city, with another sprawling Asian capital, the Indonesian metropolis of Jakarta, knocking it off the top spot, according to a report from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
According to the U.N. report, nine of the 10 most populous cities in the world are in Asia.
Jakarta, with 41.9 million residents, is the largest. Dhaka, Bangladesh, follows with almost 36.5 million people. The Japanese capital, Tokyo, has fallen from the top spot to third, with 33.4 million people. The Indian capital, New Delhi, is fourth with just over 30.2 million people.
Urban U.S.
For the U.S., these findings offer important insights into future urbanization trends, infrastructure challenges and global economic shifts.
As the rate of population growth in Asian cities outpaces that in the U.S., cities in the United States and the rest of the Americas are falling down the ranking of the world’s largest.
The figures are also a reminder of just how small Washington, D.C., is in comparison with Asian metropolises.
The U.N. measures population within an urbanized area, often beyond a city’s administrative limits. It puts the population of Washington, D.C., at 3.27 million.
The U.S. Census Bureau, basing its calculation on a smaller city area excluding urban sprawl, says there are just over 702,000 people in the capital.
The biggest U.S. city is New York with 13.9 million people in 2025, according to the U.N. data, making it the 22nd biggest city in the world—down from 15th place in 2000.
Los Angeles has a population of 12.7 million, according to the U.N. calculations, making it the world’s 27th largest city—down from 17th in 2000.
Sao Paulo, Brazil, is the biggest city in the Americas with a population of 18.9 million in 2025, making it the world’s 13th biggest city—down from 10th in 2000, according to the U.N. data.
Mexico City is the second-biggest city in the Americas with 17.7 million people in 2025, making it the world’s 15th biggest city—down from the 8th largest in 2000, according to the U.N. data.
Buenos Aires, Argentina, ranks third in the Americas for population and 21st in the world with 14.2 million people, one spot ahead of New York. Its position is down from 16th in 2000.
Chicago is the U.S.’s third-biggest city with 2.723 million people, according to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2024. Then comes Houston (2.39 million), Phoenix (1.67 million), Philadelphia (1.57 million), San Antonio (1.52 million), San Diego (1.4 million), Dallas (1.32 million) and Jacksonville (1 million).
The other mega cities in the world’s top 10, according to U.N. data, are China’s Shanghai (29.5 million) and Guangzhou (27.5 million); Cairo, Egypt’s capital and the only non-Asian city in the top 10, with 25.5 million; the Philippine capital, Manila (24.7 million); India’s Kolkata (22.5 million); and the South Korean capital, Seoul (22.4 million).
BEIRUT — When Pope Leo XIV visits the Middle East this week, he comes to a conflict-weary region struggling to find peace even as the specter of war stalks it once again.
In his first international trip since assuming the papacy in May, the Chicago-born pope will travel Thursday to Turkey, where he will celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, where the Nicene Creed — a foundational declaration of Christian belief and unity — was written in AD 325.
But perhaps the real test of Leo’s international debut lies in Lebanon. His coming fulfills a promise to visit the country made by his boldly charismatic predecessor Pope Francis, who raised the papacy’s international profile with dozens visits abroad and a propensity for frankness in his commentary that endeared him to the faithful, especially in the Middle East.
But Christians — estimated to be about 30% of Lebanon’s population — are not the only ones looking forward to Leo’s arrival.
A view of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, which Pope Leo XIV will see during his visit to Turkey, which begins Nov. 27, 2025.
(Arif Hudaverdi Yaman / Anadolu / Getty Images)
Many here hope his visit will be a portent for peace, bringing attention to this tiny Mediterranean nation as it contends with a Job-like succession of crises: First the economy, which crashed in 2019, tanking the banking system and the currency with it; then the port explosion in 2020; and the war between the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah and Israel, which flared in 2023 before intensifying late last year and left thousands dead and wide swaths of Lebanon’s south and east pulverized.
Despite a ceasefire brokered last November, Israel has launched near-daily attacks on its northern neighbor, justifying its strikes as a bid to stop Hezbollah from reconstituting itself, even as the United Nations tallied more than 10,000 air and ground violations in Lebanese territory and 127 civilians killed in the year since the ceasefire took effect.
Israel’s attacks have also paralyzed reconstruction efforts, meaning most residents of Lebanese border towns — whether dominated by Christians, Muslims or Druze — have been unable to piece back their prewar lives. The U.N.’s human rights office says around 64,000 Lebanese remain displaced.
The Israeli army launched more than 10 airstrikes on the town of al-Musaylih in southern Lebanon, causing extensive damage, on Oct. 11.
(Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Safety concerns for the pope have been paramount in people’s minds for months. In October, in what appeared to be a hot mic moment, Jordan’s Queen Rania asked the pope during a photo-op at the Vatican whether it was safe to go to Lebanon. “Well, we’re going,” Leo gruffly replied.
Alarms were raised again over the weekend when Israel bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs, barely two miles away from where the pope would be landing on Sunday. The attack, the first one in months near the capital, killed Hezbollah’s most senior military commander and coincided with a general uptick in Israeli strikes and drone activity in recent weeks — all indicators, observers say, of an impending all-out assault.
Nevertheless, the trip is still on, Lebanese officials say.
For Oumayma Farah, development director of the Order of Malta Lebanon, which aids communities of all religions and nationalities through humanitarian projects, that’s a “sign of courage and resilience to the Lebanese population and Christians in the region as a whole.”
“Whatever happens, the pope will come,” Farah said.
“The Church teaches us to not be afraid, so he’s the first example.”
A woman walks her dog past a billboard in Beirut touting Pope Leo’s upcoming visit to Lebanon.
(Anwar Amro / AFP/Getty Images)
Like most of the countries where Christianity first took hold, wars and economic lethargy — not to mention a relatively easier path to emigration — have dwindled Lebanon’s Christian population over the decades.
Across the Middle East, the number of Christians has gone from 20% of the population to a mere 5%; Lebanon remains the Arab country with the highest proportion, with Christians making up about 30% of the population, according to estimates from various research groups and the U.S. State Department.
The pope’s insistence on coming to Lebanon, Farah said, was “re-centering the importance of this country” and a “wake-up call” for its politicians. After spending three days in Turkey, the pope will arrive in Lebanon on Sunday and depart Tuesday.
In the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and other areas on the pope’s itinerary, signs abound of furious logistical activity and preparations: Police and security personnel have intensified their presence. A two-day holiday was announced to allow participation in public prayer events, even as parishes and schools across the country have been involved in bringing the faithful to attend Mass near the site of the Beirut port blast, which was deemed an accident caused by negligence, and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, roadworks and maintenance, all but abrogated in recent years due to the government’s financial woes, have been in full swing. The joke around town is that people want another papal visit if only so the government finishes repaving all the country’s pothole-stricken streets. A bitter corollary is another joke that the refurbished roads will last only till the pope leaves — because they’ll be destroyed in a new Israeli campaign.
Along with visiting the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, Pope Leo will travel to the Turkish city of Iznik, ancient Nicaea, to mark the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea.
(Arif Hudaverdi Yaman / Anadolu / Getty Images)
The gallows humor reflects the uncertainty of the moment, with the U.S. and Israel pushing the Lebanese army to fully disarm Hezbollah, even as the group insists it will disarm only in the country’s south.
Lebanon’s government, in turn, says that it cannot persuade Hezbollah to give up its arms so long as Israel keeps occupying Lebanese territory, and that doing so by force would lead to civil war.
The hope is that the pontiff can help break the logjam. But though few expect change to come so quickly, the visit is still important, said a Maronite parish priest, Father Tony Elias, from Rmeish, a village located just across the border from Israel.
“When the pope visits a country that has been in pain for so long, this is truly enough to lift that pain,” Elias said.
Rmeish, which maintained a resolutely neutral stance during the war, is relatively unscathed, an exception in the wasteland that has become Lebanon’s border area after years of Israeli bombardment.
Elias said he would have wanted the pope to visit the south, but he wasn’t disappointed, as he and about 200 others from the village would travel to Beirut and join the pontiff.
“If he can’t come to the south, we can come to him,” Elias said.
Tokyo has lost its status as the world’s largest city, with another sprawling Asian metropolis, Indonesia’s vast capital, knocking it off the top spot.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, follows close behind with almost 40 million, while Tokyo’s population stands at 33 million, putting it in third place.
Cairo remains the only non-Asian city among the top 10.
According to the report, released by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, urbanization has reshaped the global population landscape.
Cities now house 45 percent of the world’s 8.2 billion people, up from just 20 percent in 1950.
The study found a quadrupling in the number of megacities—urban areas with 10 million or more inhabitants—from eight in 1975 to 33 in 2025, with 19 of those in Asia.
The report points to significant growth for cities like Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Hajipur (India), and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), all projected to surpass the 10 million threshold by 2050, when the number of megacities worldwide is expected to reach 37.
While megacities draw most of the attention, small and medium-sized cities—defined as those with under 1 million residents—continue to outnumber and outpace megacities in population and growth, especially in Africa and Asia.
Of the 12,000 cities analyzed, 96 percent have fewer than 1 million inhabitants.
What People Are Saying
United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Li Junhua said: “Urbanization is a defining force of our time. When managed inclusively and strategically, it can unlock transformative pathways for climate action, economic growth, and social equity.” He added, “To achieve balanced territorial development, countries must adopt integrated national policies that align housing, land use, mobility, and public services across urban and rural areas.”
What Happens Next
Globally, the number of cities is projected to exceed 15,000 by 2050, with most having populations below 250,000.
While rural communities continue to shrink except in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, small and medium-sized cities are expected to drive the next wave of global urbanization, spurring both opportunities and challenges in infrastructure, housing, and climate adaptation.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan has called population decline the country’s “biggest problem” and set out an action plan for her ministers to follow in hopes of tackling the issue.
Why It Matters
These demographic trends have hollowed out rural communities, driven up the dependency ratio—the number of working people supporting those outside the labor force—and placed growing strain on social safety nets, threatening the long-term growth of Asia’s second-largest economy.
Japan, like many high- and middle-income countries, has struggled to stabilize its declining birth rate amid the rising cost of living, stagnating wages, and shifting attitudes among younger generations toward work-life balance and parenthood.
The impact is especially pronounced in Japan, which the United Nations has classified as a “super-aged” society—meaning at least 20 percent of the population is over 65. In Japan, that figure is close to 30 percent.
Newsweek reached out by email to Japan‘s Foreign Ministry with a request for comment.
What To Know
“Recognizing that the greatest challenge facing our country is population decline, we have established the Population Strategy Headquarters to comprehensively promote countermeasures,” Takaichi said Tuesday at the inaugural meeting of the body, which she created as one of her first acts since taking office last month.
“These include maintaining essential social security services in local areas, advancing measures to address the declining birth rate, creating living environments in rural areas where people—especially young people and women—can live and work with peace of mind, building new regional economies that generate added value, and promoting coexistence with foreign talent,” she said.
The prime minister outlined a series of initiatives for her Cabinet to implement, such as support for child rearing and other measures to address the population decline. She called for ministers to present a “comprehensive strategy” on revitalizing local economies in depopulated areas and to promote social security reform, including a review of how benefits and burdens are balanced.
Takaichi also directed Kimi Onoda, who leads the newly established immigration office, to follow up on earlier Cabinet instructions and “establish a proper framework for basic research and policy development regarding the acceptance of foreign nationals.”
Japan’s population declined for the 16th straight year in 2024, with just 686,061 births—the lowest since records began, according to Health Ministry data. The country’s total fertility rate, which measures the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, fell to 1.15, down from 1.20 the previous year.
What People Are Saying
Takumi Fujinami, a senior researcher at the Japan Research Institute, said in an August interview with the Asahi Shimbun newspaper: “These numbers were expected, so there’s no major surprise. The main cause of the declining birth rate is the shrinking population of young people. We’re unlikely to see a dramatic improvement any time soon. I view these figures as ‘indicators’ that reflect the condition of our society.”
Fumio Kishida, former prime minister of Japan, said in 2023: “The youth population will start decreasing drastically in the 2030s. The period of time until then is our last chance to reverse the trend of dwindling births.’
What Happens Next
Japan has already committed significant resources to incentives, ranging from per-child cash allowances and subsidized fertility treatments to some of the world’s most generous parental leave.
Starting in fiscal 2026, the 3.6 trillion Japanese yen ($22.3 billion) in annual spending pledged under former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s “unprecedented” child and family policy package is set to take effect. It remains to be seen whether this new wave of investment can meaningfully impact the country’s demographic woes.
California wildlife officials have confirmed there’s a new wolf pack in the northern part of the state, as the population of the endangered canids — and the number of livestock they have preyed on — continues to rise.
The freshly minted Grizzly pack is roaming southern Plumas County and consists of at least two adults and a pup, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reported this week.
The pack consists of a male wolf that came over from Oregon and a female from the state’s Lassen pack. Recently, state wildlife officials also got photos of a wolf pup believed to be theirs.
The news comes on the heels of the Beyem Seyo pack’s demise last month, when the Fish and Wildlife Department euthanized four wolves that had killed a large number of cattle in the Sierra Valley — marking the first time in about a century that state officials had taken lethal action against the animals.
“As difficult of a decision as that was to make, from a conservation point of view, the population data that we’re getting does continue to suggest that the population is growing and is robust,” said Axel Hunnicutt, gray wolf coordinator for the agency. The action was taken after a months-long campaign of using nonlethal deterrents, he said.
The Beyem Seyo pack shifted to a new area in October, and new wolves quickly moved into their old stomping ground, one sign that the population is strong, he said.
With one pack gained and one pack lost, the state’s total remains at 10.
It’s estimated that there are about 50 to 70 wolves in the Golden State. Although it’s a relatively small number, it represents a stunning recovery for the apex predators, which were hunted and trapped into extinction in the 1920s. Wolves began recolonizing California only 14 years ago.
New reports from the Fish and Wildlife Department suggest more wolves are on the way.
There are two areas where wolf activity indicates packs are likely to form, Hunnicutt said. There were also at least 31 pups born this year to packs in California, though some have died, and mortality in general is high during the first year of life. The Whaleback pack, in eastern Siskiyou County, had 10 pups this year — tying a record for the species, Hunnicutt said. Another breeding season will arrive in spring.
Many of the current packs consist of just two wolves that are fairly young, which means they may not breed the first year. That creates “a lag,” he explained.
“So what I suspect is that this year we might not see a massive amount of growth, or it might just be steady,” he said. But in a year or two, “probably the vast majority of these groups will be breeding and producing anywhere between six and 10 pups.”
Wolves’ recovery is celebrated by conservationists who want to see the native animals thrive. The growing number of wolves, however, has rattled ranchers who lose cattle to them.
The Beyem Seyo pack was responsible for 88 livestock kills or injuries, which Hunnicutt called an “unprecedented” number. Not all wolves in the state go after cows, though. There are several packs in the state that aren’t near livestock, he noted.
“California wolf recovery is proceeding on a pretty good trajectory, population-wise,” Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, said.
The fact that things get “shaken up,” with wolves dispersing and packs changing, is a good thing, she said.
“You want to see that dynamism continuing in an evolving population,” she said.
Weiss sees wolves’ recovery as a testament to their protection under both the California and federal Endangered Species acts.
There are three bills pending in the U.S. Congress, however, that would claw back federal protections, including one that would delist wolves as endangered nationwide, she said.
In 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted most wolves in the Lower 48. Weiss’ organization sued, and the following year a federal district court in California overturned the delisting. In September 2024, the federal wildlife agency appealed the decision.
If wolves were to be federally delisted, they would retain their state protections.
Nilfar Nazarova used to work as an accountant in her native Uzbekistan but for the past four summers she has been cleaning hotel rooms in the Bulgarian Black Sea resort of Albena.
“The first year, there were very few Uzbeks. Today, around 100 of us come every season, attracted by the stable and regular salaries,” Nazarova, who is in her forties and from the city of Bukhara, told AFP.
“We feel welcomed like family.”
While workers from Central Asia and further afield have been arriving for years in Central and Eastern Europe, many locals of working age have been seeking their fortunes elsewhere since the fall of Communism.
Bulgaria’s population has shrunk by almost a third since 1990 and the country’s tourism sector — which accounts for almost seven percent of the economy — now relies on foreign workers.
Tens of thousands of positions in the sector remained unfilled at the start of the season, the hotel owners association said.
And a recent survey of companies found that eight out of 10 employers were facing labour shortages, most saying they were willing to hire workers from countries outside the European Union.
– Demographic impact –
About 20,000 Uzbeks, including seasonal workers, ply their trade in the Balkan nation, according to former government official Philip Gounev.
“At this rate, they could become a significant minority within five or six years,” said Gounev, a former deputy interior minister who now runs a migrant labour employment agency.
That would potentially change the demographic makeup of Bulgaria, the EU’s poorest country, he said.
Demand had surged in recent years, he added.
In Albena, popular with visitors from across the continent, workers from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia and other countries have taken up jobs in hotels, kitchens and bars.
The resort, which was once the pride of the Communist regime and hosted Cuba’s Fidel Castro, has escaped the real estate frenzy that has transformed much of Bulgaria’s Black Sea coastline.
“The work is hard but the people are kind,” Uzbek student Gulraykhan Muxanbetovna said as she bustled around the crowded restaurant of a four-star hotel overlooking the Black Sea.
The 20-year-old’s Instagram posts about her life in Albena have garnered her a loyal following of thousands on the social media platform.
“It’s interesting for people in my country. They want to come too,” she said.
– ‘Matter of survival’ –
Resort manager Krasimira Stoyanova said workers from abroad received food, accommodation and “a salary several times higher than what they would earn in Uzbekistan”.
“That’s what motivates them… There, they earn $100 to $150 a month. Here, salaries start at $600 and can reach $800 or more,” she said.
Many Uzbeks also speak Russian, an advantage in Bulgaria, which has historically had close ties with Moscow.
The government recognises the importance of attracting migrant workers and has made it easier for them to get visas, Gounev said — even if bureaucracy can still be “cumbersome” and corruption can put off some people.
“It’s a matter of survival for Bulgarian businesses,” he said.
And not only for businesses.
Bulgaria has one of the world’s fastest shrinking populations.
Most Bulgarians who leave the country do not return and nearly a quarter of the population is now over 65 years old.
Delegates from the Forum of Arab Parliamentarians on Population and Development and the Asian Population and Development Association met in Cairo to discuss support for people with disabilities and the elderly. Credit: APDA
by Hisham Allam (cairo)
Inter Press Service
CAIRO, Oct 24 (IPS) – In a significant move to address the challenges faced by people with disabilities and the elderly, six Egyptian parliamentary committees met in Cairo on October 12 to discuss national strategies and legislative efforts.
The Forum of Arab Parliamentarians on Population and Development and the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA), with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Government of Japan, organized the meeting with the focus of aligning Egypt’s policies with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Roughly 1.2 million people with disabilities currently receive state assistance, while Egypt’s elderly population continues to grow. According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), 10.64 percent of Egyptians have a disability, and the elderly population reached 9.3 million in 2024, representing 8.8 percent of the total population—4.6 million men (8.5 percent) and 4.7 million women (9.2 percent). The parliamentary committees convened to enhance support for these vulnerable groups.
Dr. Abdelhadi Al-Qasabi, Chairman of the Committee on Social Solidarity, Family, and People with Disabilities, emphasized recent legislative developments. He pointed out that Egypt has passed important legislation, such as the Elderly Care Law in 2024 and the Law on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2018, to safeguard these vulnerable groups. He underlined that these laws show the state’s adherence to the Egyptian Constitution, which upholds everyone’s right to a dignified life free from discrimination.
“Egypt has made significant strides by adopting policies and laws that protect and empower people with disabilities and the elderly,” stated Al-Qasabi. “We aim to ensure they are not only recipients of support but contributors to the nation’s progress.”
The “Karama” program of the Egyptian government, which offers financial aid to those with impairments, was the focus of the gathering. Egypt’s Minister of Social Solidarity, Dr. Maya Morsy, noted that the program, which has an annual budget of about 10 billion Egyptian pounds, currently serves 1.2 million people with 1.3 million integrated services cards distributed to make access to social services and healthcare easier.
“We are committed to ensuring that people with disabilities receive their integrated services cards within 30 days, enhancing their access to vital resources.”
Morsy emphasized the Elderly Care Law, which assures those over 65 have better access to social, economic, and healthcare services. “We aim to create an environment where the elderly can live independently, free from abuse or exploitation, while continuing to contribute to society,” she told the audience.
Dr. Hala Youssef, UNFPA Advisor, emphasized the need for international cooperation in meeting the SDGs and ensuring that no one falls behind.
Discussion at a conference under the auspices of the Forum of Arab Parliamentarians on Population and Development and the Asian Population and Development Association discussed the empowerment of people with disabilities and the elderly. Credit: APDA
“Parliamentarians play a strategic role in creating a legislative framework that addresses the needs of the most vulnerable,” Youssef added. “Innovation and technology can be powerful tools for inclusion, providing people with disabilities access to education, employment, and social participation on an equal footing.”
Youssef went on to emphasize disturbing global figures, stating that 46 percent of seniors over 60 have some type of handicap and that persons with disabilities were among the hardest struck during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Children with disabilities are four times more likely to experience violence than their peers, while adults with disabilities face higher risks of abuse and exploitation,” Youssef said, urging a stronger commitment to protecting their rights.
Dr. Sami Hashim, head of the Committee on Education and Scientific Research, stressed the integration of individuals with disabilities in the educational system. He emphasized that, especially in the age of artificial intelligence, education must be adaptable, inclusive, and forward-thinking.
“Our education system must not only teach knowledge but prepare individuals for success in an increasingly technological world,” said Hashim. “This is particularly important for students with disabilities, who should have access to the tools and opportunities that will allow them to thrive.”
The forum emphasized the critical need for national and international collaboration to build inclusive, egalitarian communities, given that 80% of the one billion persons with disabilities worldwide live in developing nations and that the number of older people in need of assistance is rising.
Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, at a press conference in which she discusses her findings on prostitution. Credit: Naureen Hossain/IPS
by Naureen Hossain (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 03 (IPS) – Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, calls prostitution a “system of violence” that does not benefit society at all, especially the women and girls forced into this system.
Alsalem spoke at the Roosevelt Public Policy House in New York on Wednesday, October 2, to discuss her special report in which she posits that prostitution is a form of violence against women and girls. The report was first made public in June 2024, where it was presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Over 60 member states endorsed the report and its findings, including but not limited to Ghana, South Africa, Egypt, Norway, Sweden, Colombia, France, Bangladesh, India, and Nigeria.
Alsalem received over 300 submissions for the report from multiple stakeholders, including civil society groups, academia, experts, policymakers, and, importantly, women from around the world with lived experience.
Across the world, the exploitation of women and girls through prostitution and sex trafficking is a pervasive issue that threatens their safety and rights. Alsalem remarked that many systems of prostitution are built on patriarchal norms that position the abuse of power at the hands of mostly men, who are largely the ‘buyers’ or the profiteers in the sex trade. Deeper economic inequalities and the complexities of emergency humanitarian situations have only further displaced women and girls from systems that would have protected and empowered them.
Alsalem remarked that efforts to normalize or recognize prostitution as a form of labor, such as referring to it as “sex work,” do more harm by gaslighting the women who have experienced it, and it fails to consider the serious human rights violations that can occur within the system, such as the physical and psychological harm they experience under this umbrella of “labor.”
Pornography should also be classified as a form of prostitution and violence against women at large, according to Alsalem. She noted that its proliferation has only normalized acts of violence and harmful attitudes towards women and girls. Alsalem told IPS that the online platforms that host pornographic material only further incentivize and promote these acts and other forms of coercive and nonconsensual sexual acts.
Regardless of the platform, how it is branded or how one enters the trade, the system of prostitution is based on the commodification of the body to undergo physical activity and under that there cannot be consent, Alsalem argues.
“Trying to pretend that there is somehow consent in prostitution, that women want to do this, is actually meaningless in context like prostitution because the concept of consent is actually not relevant when there are systems of exploitation and violence,” she said. “And when the term of consent is being weaponized while we fully know that whatever notions of agreement that women may have—or at least some of them—is extorted through physical coercion, manipulation, and violence.”
When it comes to the legal frameworks around prostitution, this also reveals the contradictions within countries on the letter of the law versus its regulation in practice. The report indicates that under certain approaches, little is actually done to de-incentivize “buyers” or “organizers” in engaging in prostitution systems.
Criminalizing prostitution is more likely to punish the prostituted persons through persecution and incarceration, social ostracization, and even further abuse at the hands of law enforcement. In fact, under this approach, it is rare that the ‘buyers’ are punished or that the third parties are held accountable. Under the regulation approach, legal prostitution ensures control to the state through commercial establishments and federal or national laws, including tax laws that they profit from, often at the expense of the sex workers. Decriminalizing prostitution allows for all parties to operate without the fear of persecution; however, this has also resulted in an increased demand, and it does not stop exploitative parties from profiting off vulnerable women and girls and leading them into the sex trade.
The report speaks in favor of the abolition approach, otherwise known as the “Equality model” or the “Nordic model.” Under this model, third parties (the ‘organizers’) and the buyers are criminalized for engaging in the buying and promotion of sex, while the sex workers do not face criminal persecution. Instead, more investments are made in exit pathways for sex workers to ensure alternative work, economic stability, housing, and support to address trauma and even substance abuse where needed. In the report, Alsalem notes that the Nordic model maintains the international standard on sexual exploitation and trafficking in persons by criminalizing third parties, and that it recognizes the majority of prostitutes are women and girls.
This approach could have its limitations, however, as one report from the London School of Economics (LSE) notes that sex trade legislation still varies across the different countries that implement this model, the safety of sex workers remains uncertain and they still face the risk of policing. For migrant sex workers, their status prevents them from accessing social protections, and under immigration laws, prostitution can be grounds for deportation.
The issues present in the current legal models for prostitution reflect some of the institutional structures that maintain the status quo where sex workers are exploited and left unprotected. At the same time, they also reflect a wider cultural issue on how prostitution, and more broadly, sex, is discussed and perceived.
“In addition to being a human rights violation that needs legal solutions, what is mentioned very clearly in the report is that we are dealing with a cultural issue,” said Taina Bien-Aimé, Executive Director of Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. She added that other acts of violence against women, such as intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and harassment, are now recognized as forms of abuse.
“But for some reason, because money is exchanged in prostitution, somehow it is seen outside of the context of male violence and discrimination, particularly against women and girls.”
In her report, Alsalem offers recommendations to governments on how they can reshape their legislation and policies on prostitution towards a direction that is more conscionable of human rights and that centers the experiences of the women and girls who are forced to participate. Governments also need to take measures to address the root causes behind prostitution and the factors that leave women and girls at a higher risk of it.
“The importance of this report is in its recommendations as well, where the Special Rapporteur is asking jurisdictions and member states around the world to find legislative and policy solutions to this egregious human rights violation,” said Bien-Aimé.
When asked to elaborate on the steps that need to be taken by international actors like the United Nations, Alsalem referred to the recommendation that UN agencies should also adopt a rights-based approach to prostitution. Alsalem commented that she had reached out to several UN agencies. In particular, she is having “continuous conversations” with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), on her recommendation for these agencies to conduct studies into the wider impacts of prostitution on survivors within their focus of health and labor.
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Frontline Women’s Fund, and local civil society groups play an important role in spotlighting the issue. Alsalem told IPS that they need to come together to listen to the survivors of prostitution, as well as engage with all actors working on the matter.
“We see that in decision-making places, including governments, parliaments, whenever the issue is discussed, the law is being prepared or the policy is being revised, some have privileged access to these decision-making places, and that can be those that are advocating for full legalization of all aspects. Whereas those that are advocating for the abolition model… cannot get the same access, and that includes survivors.”
Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, has several populist policies, one of which has been to grow Hungary’s native population.
But early successes appear to be running out of steam in Hungary, as its birth rate is still falling despite huge incentives being offered to new parents.
Populations across Western Europe are struggling with falling birth rates, which threaten long-term economic growth and could create a healthcare crisis as fewer young people are forced to care for and subsidize an increasingly older population.
However, financial barriers, such as rising accommodation prices, are a major obstacle to childbearing, which has been compounded by the cost of living crisis. Changing workplace dynamics, with more women enjoying meaningful careers, also push back the average age for couples to have their first child.
Immigration is regarded as the most realistic way of maintaining an optimal average population age, but that has become highly politically contentious since the global financial crash.
Hungary’s fight to increase childbirth
Hungary is particularly sensitive to immigration, which Orbán has repeatedly argued would harm the country’s cultural fabric. From 2025, immigrants from non-EU countries will have to pass a Hungarian history and culture test to become residents of the country.
Instead, it is championing the classic populist policy of increased childbirth among natives.
“We do not need numbers, but Hungarian children,” Orbán said in his State of the Nation address in 2019 as he rolled out childbirth incentives.
To do so, Hungary is offering weighty financial incentives to up appearances in its hospital’s midwifery units.
In 2019, Hungary offered parents a €30,000 interest-free loan to spend on anything they wanted. The loan would be forgiven if they had three children.
Mothers of four children or more are exempt from paying income taxes under Orbán’s policy, which could be extended to those with fewer children.
Hungary’s birth rate rose through the 2010s, rising from a record low of 1.25 in 2011 to 1.61 in 2021. But in recent years, growth has halted. In June, Hungary registered a record-low number of 6,000 births.
Wolfgang Lutz, founding director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital in Vienna, told the Financial Timesthat the policies had merely pushed forward births among women who had intended to have children at some stage in their lives anyway.
Those on lower incomes complained to the publication that the subsidies weren’t adequate to incentivize having more children, which became increasingly expensive to manage more children. The removal of income tax does little for self-employed workers, for example.
Permeating the debate has been an encouragement for the growth of “traditional,” heterosexual family units.
Hungary’s policies are focused on incentives for new mothers, while in 2021 the country introduced laws that banned LGBT content from being shown in schools, something the U.S. and EU labeled as “discriminatory.”
Populist swing
Increasing childbirth has long been a critical policy anchor of right-leaning populist governments, allowing them to solidify their stance as self-proclaimed protectors of traditional family values while offering them an anti-immigration platform.
While Orbán’s birthing policy looks to be on the ropes, the playbook does have one high profile proponent: U.S. Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance.
Vance suggested in 2021 that Americans with children should get more votes than their childless peers. While on the campaign trail at the same time, Vance also hailed Orbán’s push for more births.
“Viktor Orbán, who is, of course, the bugaboo of nearly every liberal in the mainstream American media, has implemented a couple of policies that I think are really interesting.
“They offer loans to new married couples that are forgiven at some point later if those couples eventually stay together and have children. Why can’t we do that here? Why can’t we actually promote family formation here in our country?”
Vance recently walked back his comments on giving more votes to parents, describing them as a “thought experiment” amid heavy backlash.
An igapó, a flood-prone wooded area on the Vuelta Grande of the Xingu River, with fruit on the dry ground. This is where the piracema, or fish reproduction, was supposed to take place, frustrated by the scarcity of water released by the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant on this stretch of the river in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. The fruits are lost and stop feeding the fish by falling on the ground and not in the water. Credit: Mati / VGX
by Mario Osava (belÉm, brazil)
Inter Press Service
BELÉM, Brazil, Jul 28 (IPS) – The decade-and-a-half-long battle for life in the so-called Volta Grande (Big Bend) of the Xingu river, a stretch of the river dewatered by the Belo Monte hydroelectric power plant in the Brazilian Amazon, has a possible solution, albeit a partial one.
The mega power project divided the waters of the Xingu. It has taken up most of the river and emptied the now 130-kilometre U-shaped Reduced Flow Stretch (TVR, in Portuguese), whose banks are home to two indigenous groups and a community, all affected by the depletion of fish, the basis of their livelihood.
A proposal drawn up by these villagers and scientific researchers makes it possible to recover the minimum conditions for the reproduction of fish, which have declined since the plant began operations in 2016. The goal is to mitigate the project’s negative impacts on the people living in the area.
But Norte Energía, the concessionaire of Belo Monte, estimates that this alternative would cost it a 39% reduction in its electricity generation. The dilemma pits the vital needs of the riverside population against the company’s economic feasibility.
Belo Monte, 700 kilometres southwest of Belém, is one of major power and logistics projects that abounded in Latin America in the first two decades of this century. It is the third largest hydroelectric plant in the world, with a capacity of 11,233 megawatts and an expected effective generation of only 40% on average.
Josiel Juruna, speaking at a July meeting of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science, in the city of Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS
The Xingu river in the eastern Amazon region attracted energy interest because of its average flow of 7,966 cubic metres per second and the gradient that allowed Belo Monte to have its main power plant with a water fall of 87 metres.
But its flow has excessive variations, with floods 20 times higher than its low water level. With less than 1,000 cubic metres per second in low water, it lowers the plant’s average annual generation.
To prevent the flooding of the Volta Grande of the Xingu (VGX) and, within it, of the two indigenous lands of the Juruna and Arara peoples, a canal was built to connect the two points of the curve, diverting about 70% of the river’s waters and draining the life out of the curved section.
A sarobal, an island of stones and sand, prone to flooding in the Vuelta Grande of Xingu, in Brazil’s eastern Amazon. It used to be a fish breeding site, but lost that function due to the water shortage caused by the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, which diverted 70% of the river’s water into a channel used for power generation. Credit: Mati / VGX
The power plant and the ecosystem’s disruption
In addition to taking away water, the project disrupted the environment, especially water cycles, and thus human, animal and plant life. “We have become illiterate about the river, and the fish. We no longer know how to read what is happening in the river,” said a river dweller at a hearing organised by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in August 2022.
Piracema, the upstream migration of shoals of fish during spawning, is vital to sustain livelihoods in the VGX, stresses Josiel Juruna, local coordinator of the Independent Territorial Environmental Monitoring (Mati).
Belo Monte deteriorated the quality of life of river dwellers by making piracema unviable.
That is why Mati, led by some 30 university scientists and local researchers, prioritised the monitoring and recovery of the piracema, understood as a site for procreation, apart from monitoring and measuring other ecological aspects in the stretch most affected by the hydroelectric plant.
An Independent Environmental and Territorial Monitoring team observes critical points in the low-flow section of the Xingu river, whose waters have been diverted to the canal that feeds the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant in the Brazilian Amazon. Credit: Courtesy of Juarez Pezzuti
As a result of their participatory research, launched in 2014 by the Juruna people and the non-governmental Instituto Socioambiental, in 2022 Mati presented to environmental authorities the Piracema Hydrograph, which indicates the flow necessary for the reproduction of fish in the VGX.
This is an alternative to hydrographs A and B, which govern the flow of water that Belo Monte releases to the VGX, in defined quantities for each month, to meet the conditions agreed for the operation of the hydroelectric plant. They are also called Consensus hydrographs, applied according to different pluviometric conditions.
These flows were defined in the environmental impact studies carried out by specialised companies, but paid for by Norte Energía, to obtain the license for the construction and operation of the plant.
A sample of the hydrographs that should govern the amount of water destined each month to the Vuelta Grande of the Xingu river to sustain its ecological functions. In purple and with flow figures for each month, the hydrograph proposed by indigenous people, riverside dwellers and scientific researchers to recover the lower and more productive piracemas. Credit: Mati / VGX
Piracema, key to river life
Indigenous people have always disagreed with these hydrographs because they do not ensure the necessary flow for maintaining the ecosystem, which is indispensable for the fish, the basis of their diet and the income they obtain from the sale of surplus fish.
It releases insufficient water at inappropriate times, ignoring the dynamics of the piracema, according to Juruna.
“The Belo Monte hydrograph only allows flooding in April, but the piracema requires lots of water between January and March, so that it fills the sarobal and igapós, where the female fish arrive to spawn and then the males for fertilisation,” he told IPS in Belém.
The word sarobal in Brazil defines an island of stone and sand, flooded and with vegetation of grasses and shrubs that provide food for the fish. Igapó is also a flooded area of banks and small waterways, with trees and vegetation that produce fruit and other foodstuffs.
Without water, the fish do not have access to their breeding grounds or to the fruits, which fall on the dry ground. Juruna often shows a video of a curimatá, a fish abundant in the Xingu, with dried eggs in its belly. It “couldn’t spawn” because there was no water in the piracema at the right time, he explained.
Apart from more water, the Piracema Hydrograph requires bringing forward the release of more water for the Vuelta Grande by at least three months. And maintaining the flood for a few months is also indispensable to feed the fish with the fruits falling in the water and not on the ground.
In fact, it is necessary to increase the flow of the VGX with ‘new water’ from November onwards, so that the fish start to migrate. “Without the right amount of water at the right time, there is no piracema”, the basis of river life, stresses a Mati report.
Fish killed by a fall in water flow in the Xingu river’s Vuelta Grande. Credit: Mati / VGX
Irrecoverable way of life
The Piracema Hydrograph will not restore the former way of life in the Vuelta Grande. That would require restoring past conditions, without the hydroelectric plant, admitted Juruna. His goal is to rehabilitate “the lower piracemas”, i.e. the sarobals and the floodable igapós with a little more water than what Belo Monte releases.
“The higher piracemas will no longer exist,” he lamented.
There will be no fish as before, the Juruna have already become farmers and mainly cultivate cocoa. A recovery of the piracemas will allow them to fish for their own food, but hardly for sale and income, he said.
Community life has declined among the indigenous people, who increasingly feed themselves on ‘city products’ and move more and more to Altamira, a city 50 kilometres away from the indigenous land of Paquiçamba, where the Jurunas live.
With Belo Monte, a road to the city was built and motorbikes have multiplied in the indigenous village, Juruna observed. Their way of life has been profoundly altered, but the indigenous people are resisting the death of their river and the Mati have added their traditional knowledge to scientific research.
Biologist Juarez Pezzuti, a professor at the Federal University of Pará, based in Belém, and a member of Mati, believes it necessary to dispel the idea of Belo Monte and other hydroelectric plants, especially those in the Amazon, as sources of sustainable energy.
“They emit greenhouse gases in a similar proportion to fossil-fuel thermoelectric plants,” he told IPS. In addition to flooding vegetation when the reservoir is formed, they continue to do so afterwards, because as their waters recede, the vegetation that will later be flooded is renewed.
Their downstream impacts are only now beginning to be studied. In the Amazon, they dry up the igapós, as has already been seen in the Balbina power plant near Manaus, capital of the neighbouring state of Amazonas.
It is a technology in decline, whose social, environmental and climatic costs tend to be better recognised and call into question its benefits, he concluded.
Downtown Detroit is buzzing with new businesses, lofts, and entertainment, but the city’s neighborhoods continue to struggle.
You may have woken up Thursday to the good news that Detroit’s population is rising for the first time since 1957, a time when white people began flocking to the suburbs.
Between July 1, 2022, and July 1, 2023, Detroit gained 1,852 residents, putting the city’s population at 633,366, according to U.S. Census estimates released Monday morning.
Detroit is now ranked as the 26th most populated city in the U.S., leapfrogging Memphis, Louisville, and Portland.
While population gains are a positive sign for any city, the growth in Detroit is far more nuanced and complicated than a single estimate can reveal.
Between 2000 and 2020, Detroit lost about 295,000 Black residents, or 37.4% of its African American population. No other city has lost more Black residents.
Meanwhile, Detroit’s white population grew by more than 5,100 between 2010 and 2020.
Black people now account for 77.2% of the city’s overall population, compared to 82.2% in 2010, when Detroit had the highest percentage of Black residents in the country.
You can see the growth in the pricey lofts and condos that are cropping up in Midtown, downtown, Corktown, Brush Park, the Cass Corridor and the riverfront.
At the same time, a disproportionate number of Black residents are living in neighborhoods dominated by blight, abandonment, and crime. The number of middle-class neighborhoods in Detroit shrunk from 22 in 2010 to 11 in 2020, leaving longtime residents with fewer options to find a decent place to live.
While the latest census information doesn’t break down data by race, it’s difficult to imagine that the Black population suddenly began to rise.
As part of a series Metro Times published last year about the growing racial and economic disparities in Detroit, we talked to Black residents who fled the city and asked them why they left. Overwhelmingly, they said they couldn’t find decent-paying jobs in the city. By contrast, white newcomers are disproportionately getting employed by high-paying businesses.
Over the last decade, the median income of white Detroiters rose 60%. For Black Detroiters, the increase was 8%, according to Detroit Future City, a think tank that develops strategies for a more equitable city.
The average income of a white Detroiter is $46,650, compared to $32,290 for a Black resident. The unemployment rate for Black Detroiters is 1.5 times higher than white residents.
In a recent report, Detroit Future City found that metro Detroit’s fastest-growing, well-paying jobs are disproportionately going to white workers. About 16% of Black workers in the region are in so-called growth occupations, compared to 26% of white workers.
Jobs are considered growth occupations if they are growing at the same or higher rate than the region as a whole, pay at least a middle-class salary, have increased wages between 2014 and 2019, and employ at least 300 people. Most of the jobs pay more than $73,000 a year.
“What we’re seeing pretty consistently unfortunately is that the highest growth for Detoiters in terms of workforce is lower-wage jobs, which means the jobs that you would think of as middle wage or higher wage are not being occupied by Detroiters,” Anika Goss, CEO of Detroit Future City, told Metro Times in May 2023. “The jobs are either going to people who are moving here from other places or suburbanites. They are not Detroiters.”
Black Detroiters are also more likely to be denied mortgages, regardless of their income level. Higher-income Black residents, for example, were denied a loan at a higher rate than moderate-income white applicants.
“We have known for some time that Detroit’s population has been growing, but this is the first time the U.S. Census Bureau has confirmed it in its official estimate,” Duggan said Thursday. “This day is for the Detroiters who stayed and for everyone who has put in the hard work to make Detroit a great place to live.”
Despite the good news about Detroit’s overall population growth, much work still needs to be done to address a future for Black residents.
As a result of the inequities, many Black children are facing long odds of succeeding later in life. More than half of the city’s Black children live in poverty. About 20% of young adults who grow up in poverty end up poor in their 20s, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty.
Detroit’s Black population grew exponentially in the early and mid-1900s, lured by the bustling auto industry. But those fleeing Jim Crow laws in the U.S. south found themselves in similar situations in Detroit, largely relegated to substandard homes in segregated, overpopulated neighborhoods.
In the 1950s, when Detroit’s population peaked at nearly 2 million, Mayor Albert Cobo campaigned on a platform of “Negro removal” — a pledge to force Black people out of predominantly white neighborhoods and deny federal funding for Black housing projects.
In the mid-1950s, the construction of highways decimated the city’s historic Black communities, Black Bottom and Paradise Valley.
By the time federal civil rights laws banned racial discrimination in the 1960s, white people were fleeing the city for the suburbs, and the jobs followed, leaving behind a majority-Black population that lacked the resources to thrive.
Now that white flight is reversing, it’s up to city leaders and wealthy landowners to ensure that Black residents have a fair shake this time.
California’s population rose last year for the first time since 2020, according to new state data.
The state’s population increased by 0.17% — or more than 67,000 people — between Jan. 1, 2023, and Jan. 1, 2024, when California was home to 39,128,162 people, according to new population estimates released Tuesday by the California Department of Finance.
“The brief period of California’s population decline is over,” H.D. Palmer, a department spokesman, said in a phone interview. “We’re back, and we’re returning to a rate of steady, stable growth.”
That resumption of growth, Palmer said, was driven by a number of factors: Deaths, which rose during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, have fallen nearly to pre-pandemic levels. Restrictive foreign immigration policies imposed during the Trump administration have been loosened under President Biden. Domestic migration patterns between states also have changed, boosting the state’s population.
In 2021, as the pandemic raged, more than 319,000 people died in California and fewer than 420,000 were born, the data show. Last year, about 281,000 died in the state, while nearly 399,000 were born.
And while California saw a net loss of nearly 3,900 people to international immigration in 2020 — when many countries’ borders were closed due to the pandemic — the state saw a net gain of more than 114,000 international immigrants last year, according to state data. That’s close to pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, California notched a net increase of about 119,000 international immigrants.
Shifting domestic migration trends — which were the subject of the much-ballyhooed “California exodus” during the pandemic, when remote workers moved to other states where they could live for a fraction of the cost of cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco — also played a key role.
In 2021, about 692,000 people left California for other states, while fewer than 337,000 moved into the Golden State from other states.
Last year, about 414,000 people moved here from other states, while more than 505,000 left for other states. That means California saw a net loss of about 264,500 fewer people to other states last year than in 2021, according to the new state data.
Los Angeles and Orange counties grew last year, though not by much; the former saw a population rise of just 0.05% — or nearly 4,800 people — while the latter notched up 0.31% — or nearly 9,800 people.
For both jurisdictions, that’s a reversal from 2022, when L.A. County saw a net loss of nearly 42,200 residents and Orange County lost about 17,000 residents. The city of Los Angeles saw its population rise 0.3% last year, the data show.
California also saw a net increase of about 116,000 housing units — including single-family homes, multi-family dwellings and accessory dwelling units, or ADUs — in 2023. Palmer described that growth as an “encouraging” sign amid the state’s housing crisis.
That rise, which is a relative drop in the bucket compared with the state’s more than 14.8 million housing units, was led by the city of Los Angeles, which saw a gain of more than 21,000 housing units, followed by an increase of about 5,700 units in San Diego, according to the state data.
While California’s resumption of population growth is a boon for boosters who reject the storyline of the state’s decline, there is no indication that the Golden State will be returning to the massive boom in residents it underwent generations ago.
“For the foreseeable future, we’re looking at steady, more predictable growth that’s slower than those go-go years of the 1970s and 1980s,” Palmer said. “Obviously, there are things that we can’t forecast that could have an impact on our population. For instance, another pandemic.”
Southern California’s rivers and creeks once teemed with large, silvery fish that arrived from the ocean and swam upstream to spawn. But today, these fish are seldom seen.
Southern California steelhead trout have been pushed to the brink of extinction as their river habitats have been altered by development and fragmented by barriers and dams.
Their numbers have been declining for decades, and last week California’s Fish and Game Commission voted to list Southern California steelhead trout as endangered.
Conservation advocates said they hope the designation will accelerate efforts to save the fish and the aquatic ecosystems on which they depend.
“Historically, tens of thousands of these fish swam in Southern California rivers and streams,” said Sandra Jacobson, director of the South Coast region for California Trout, an organization that advocated for the listing.
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“Their numbers have dipped dangerously low due to impacts from habitat loss, fragmentation and urbanization,” Jacobson said. “This landmark decision provides critically important protections for this iconic species.”
The distinct Southern California population is one of eight varieties of steelhead trout in the state. They live in coastal waters and rivers from southern San Luis Obispo County to around the U.S.-Mexico border.
Steelheads typically grow to 2 or 3 feet and sometimes larger.
An adult steelhead trout in San Luis Rey River in northern San Diego County.
(California Department of Fish and Game)
The fish migrate upstream when winter and spring rains send high flows coursing through rivers and creeks. They travel to spawning habitats as far as 30 miles inland — as long as they don’t encounter a barrier along the way.
Unlike salmon, which are part of the same family, steelheads often spawn multiple times before they die.
Southern California steelheads were once caught by Indigenous people. In the early 20th century, anglers found that the fish were abundant in the Ventura and other rivers.
But over the past century, the Los Angeles River and other waterways were lined with concrete. Coastal marshes were hemmed in by development, and barriers and dams fragmented streams.
The Southern California steelhead population was declared endangered by the federal government in 1997. Reviews by federal and state agencies have found that the population has continued to suffer since then.
“The negative trend toward extinction has not reversed,” Jacobson said.
In a 2020 study, researchers found that there had been only 177 documented sightings of Southern California steelhead in the previous 25 years.
California Trout submitted a petition in 2021 urging the state to list the steelhead population as endangered.
Small numbers of fish continue to return to the Santa Clara and Santa Ynez rivers, as well as Malibu Creek, Topanga Creek and other streams from Santa Barbara to San Diego County.
Jacobson and other conservationists have been advocating for accelerating plans to remove obsolete dams that block fish, including Matilija Dam in the Ventura River watershed and Rindge Dam in the Malibu Creek canyon. They’ve also been seeking to expedite the removal of barriers on Trabuco Creek and the Santa Margarita River.
Other efforts to help steelhead trout include removing non-native species, reducing water diversions and groundwater pumping to ensure sufficient flows in streams and restoring watersheds’ natural ecosystems, Jacobson said.
“Southern steelhead are crucial indicators of watershed health,” Jacobson said.
She said restoring the “aquatic highways” the fish use to reach their spawning habitats will also bring benefits for people, including safeguarding sources of clean drinking water.
“I am hopeful for steelhead recovery,” Jacobson said. California’s classification of the population as endangered, she said, will help advance a state conservation plan and add urgency to the work of removing barriers in rivers.
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The steelhead trout that remain in Southern California face other threats, including warmer waters and more intense droughts and wildfires as a result of climate change.
“These are populations that are experiencing the warmest conditions, really on the leading edge of climate change effects. And then you layer on top of that just how densely populated Southern California is,” said Andrew Rypel, a professor of fish ecology and director of UC Davis’ Center for Watershed Sciences. “All of these steelhead streams in Southern California are extremely impacted.”
He said that with so many factors weighing against the steelhead trout, the additional protections could make a significant difference.
“It’s like the most challenging fish conservation issue I can imagine,” Rypel said. “How do you manage a whole landscape for fish conservation in the middle of one of the biggest urban areas in the world? It’s very challenging.”
This population of steelhead, he said, is effectively “up against the clock.”
Removal of barriers to spawning areas is key, he said.
“It’s a really cool fish. It’s a Southern California fish, and it’s up to the people of that region to watch out for it and to ensure that future generations are going to be able to watch this cool fish and protect it — and by way of doing that, protect the ecosystem.”
UN Live’s CEO Katja Iversen at the launch of ‘Sounds Right’. Credit: Naureen Hossain/IPS
by Naureen Hossain (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Apr 22 (IPS) – UN Live’s CEO, Katja Iversen, says the way to engage people in the environment is through popular culture—film, music, gaming, sports, food, and fashion. She is excited about the Sounds Right project, which puts the sounds of nature—bird songs, waves, wind, and rainfall—at the center of a campaign to support those involved in climate action.
In an exclusive interview with IPS, Iversen shares the motivation behind this innovative project.
The Sounds Right initiative was officially launched on April 18. It established NATURE as an official artist, eligible to earn royalties. Music fans were invited to support nature conservation by listening to NATURE’s recordings or tracks with musicians. This initiative was developed and delivered by the Museum for the United Nations (UN Live) and a broad range of partners in the music and environmental sectors.
IPS: How was the Sounds Right initiative conceived? What is the significance of recognizing NATURE in the same way that we recognize and reward musical artists through royalties?
Katja Iversen: The “Sounds Right” initiative was conceived as a global music movement to prompt conversations about the value of nature, raise innovative financing for conservation, and inspire millions of fans to take action.
The original idea came out of a project called VozTerra in Colombia, which the Museum for the United Nations—UN Live helped initiate. The initiative, as it looks today, has been developed by UN Live in close partnership with musicians, creatives, and nature sound recordists, as well as environmental, campaigning, and global advocacy organizations and VozTerra.
The significance of the initiative is that it treats NATURE as the artist she truly is and nature’s sounds—such as bird songs, waves, wind, and rainfall—as artistic works deserving of royalty payment. It leverages the power of music to connect fans with nature by having artists feature natural sounds in new and existing tracks.
It is going to be really big. To test things out, NATURE was discretely established as an official artist two weeks ago on various streaming platforms, including with some pure nature sounds. As of today, on Spotify alone, NATURE is in the top 10 percent of artists, with over 500k monthly listeners and almost 5 million streams—even before the initiative is officially launched and a playlist with artists featuring nature tracks goes online.
IPS: How was the Museum for the UN—UN Live able to bring together artists, music executives, and environmental groups for this initiative?
Iversen: The Museum for the UN—UN Live, together with EarthPercent, has organized the collaboration between artists, music executives, and environmental groups by leveraging our unique position at the intersection of culture, sustainable development, and diplomacy. We, at UN Live, have a track record of engaging very diverse communities in innovative cultural programmes, and we were able to draw on our extensive networks and entrepreneurial skills to bring together a broad variety of groups around a great idea.
It is a truly unique coalition of partners, including EarthPercent, AKQA, Hempel Foundation, Dalberg, Count Us In, VozTerra, Axum, Music Declares Emergency, Earthrise, Eleutheria Group, The Listening Planet, Biophonica, Community Arts Network, Limbo Music, LD Communications, No. 29, and Rare. We developed the initiative in consultation with the UN Department of Global Communications, and we’ve also joined forces with The Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, APCO, Riky Rick Foundation, AWorld x ActNow and others to reach the many millions of people.
Sounds Right poster.
IPS: How do you foresee artists and environmental groups from developing countries connecting with this initiative now and in the future?Iversen: We are very serious about this not being a Global North undertaking. Recognizing that the global majority is often at the forefront of experiencing the impacts of loss of biodiversity and climate change while living in some of the world’s most important ecosystems, this is also where the solutions and the most important voices are found—both the voices of humans and nature. Of the first group of 16 artists on the first Feat Nature playlist, there are musicians from Venezuela, Colombia, Kenya, India, and Indonesia. And on future compilations, more will come.
Just imagine that as NATURE the artist grows and grows, more and more musicians will want to collaborate and feature nature in their music. We are looking forward to working with musicians from across the globe and will, in time, potentially also develop special releases focused on certain geographies, issues, or groups.
The funds raised will be distributed under the guidance of the Sounds Right Expert Advisory Panel, a group of world-leading biologists, environmental activists, representatives of Indigenous Peoples, and experts in conservation funding. The majority of the experts are from the global majority.
IPS: How does ‘Sounds Right’ go toward serving the SDGs?
Iversen: Well, we are the Museum for the United Nations, and we are here to rally the world around the work, values, and goals of the United Nations, so naturally Sounds Right is also aligned with the SDGs.
More particularly, it aligns with the goals related to life on land (SDG 15) and underwater (SDG 14) by funding conservation projects through royalties collected from nature-based recordings. Additionally, by raising awareness and fostering an appreciation for the environment through music, the initiative supports SDG 13 (climate action) and SDG 17 (partnerships for the goals) and also justice.
Importantly, Sounds Right is an example of the power of popular culture and exemplifies how creative industries and popular culture platforms can contribute to achieving the SDGs, including by merging artistic expression with environmental activism.
IPS: How does the Museum for the UN—UN Live leverage culture to promote the SDGs?
Iversen: If we could solve the world’s problems and achieve the SDGs with data, facts, figures, and reports alone, it would have been done. What we also need is to work with culture, norms, opinions, feelings, and hearts. We know that popular culture—film, music, gaming, sports, food, fashion—affects people’s opinions, norms, and actions. So if we really want to change and if we want to reach the many, we go to where the many are. It’s in their earbuds, it’s on their phones, it’s on their screens, and it’s on their sports fields. That’s where you hit both the head and the heart.
That’s what we need, in addition to the facts and the figures. U.N. Live worked with popular culture, unleashed the power of popular culture to reach many people—millions and billions of people—because they use popular culture. So we have to go where the people are with the messages they can understand and the actions they want to take.
What are the top 20 happiest countries in the world? How do mental health and well-being trends look in the United States and Canada? The 2024 World Happiness Report is in!
The World Happiness Report is a research initiative to compare happiness levels between different countries.
The project first launched in 2012, surveying more than 350,000 people in 95 countries asking them to rate their happiness on a 10-point scale.
Each year they release a new report and the 2024 full report was just published a few weeks ago. There are some interesting findings in it that are worth highlighting.
First let’s look at the happiness rankings by country.
Top 20 Happiest Countries
Here are the top 20 happiest countries in 2024 according to the report.
The scores are on a scale of 1-10. Each participant was asked to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a “10” and the worst possible life being a “0.” They were then asked to rate their current lives. The final rankings are the average score for each country.
(By the way, this simple test for measuring subjective well-being is known as the “Cantril Ladder,” it’s a common tool used in public polling especially the Gallup World Poll.)
The results:
1. Finland (7.741) 2. Denmark (7.538) 3. Iceland (7.525) 4. Sweden (7.344) 5. Israel (7.341) 6. Netherlands (7.319) 7. Norway (7.302) 8. Luxembourg (7.122) 9. Switzerland (7.060) 10. Australia (7.057) 11. New Zealand (7.029) 12. Costa Rica (6.955) 13. Kuwait (6.951) 14. Austria (6.905) 15. Canada (6.900) 16. Belgium (6.894) 17. Ireland (6.838) 18. Czechia (6.822) 19. Lithuania (6.818) 20. United Kingdom (6.749)
The top 10 countries have remained stable over the years. As of March 2024, Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world seven times in a row.
There was more movement in the top 20 rankings. Most notably, this is the first year that the United States dropped out of the top 20 (from rank 15 to 23 – an 8 place drop).
More alarming are the age gaps in happiness reports. In both the U.S. and Canada, those above the age of 60 report significantly higher rates of happiness than those below 30.
Above age 60, the U.S. ranks 10 overall on the world happiness rankings. Below age 30, the U.S. falls to rank 62, just beating out Peru, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
Could this be a sign of a continuing downward trend in places like the U.S. and Canada?
Potential Factors Behind Life Evaluation
How to measure happiness is always a controversial topic.
To this day, psychologists and social scientists don’t really have a reliable way to determine happiness besides simply asking someone, “How happy are you?”
However, the World Happiness Report attempts to take the above findings and break them down into six main factors that contribute to overall life evaluation on a societal level.
These factors don’t influence the final rankings, they are just a way to make sense of the results:
GDP per capita – A general measure of a country’s overall wealth.
Life expectancy – A general measure of a country’s overall health.
Generosity – The level of a country’s trust and kindness through charity and volunteering.
Social support – The level of a country’s social cohesion and community.
Freedom – The level of a country’s freedom to live life as a person sees fit.
Corruption – A general measure of government competence and political accountability.
Each factor helps explain the differences in overall happiness between countries, with some countries performing better in certain areas over others.
One benefit of this model is that it looks beyond GDP (or “Gross Domestic Product”) which has long been the overall benchmark for comparing countries in the social sciences. The U.S. has the highest GDP in the world and frequently ranks in the top 10 per capita, but the happiness rankings show there is more to the picture.
Conclusion
The World Happiness Report is a good guideline for comparing happiness and well-being between different countries. How does your country rank? It will be interesting to see how these rankings change over the next few years, do you have any predictions?
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Older women and women with disabilities are underrepresented in global data on violence against women. Credit: WHO/Kiana Hayeri
by Naureen Hossain (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 29 (IPS) – Older women and women with disabilities experience abuse that is unique to their demographics, yet they are underrepresented in national and global databases, according to findings shared by the World Health Organization (WHO).
On Wednesday, WHO and UN-Women released two new briefs, the first in a series that will discuss neglected forms of violence, including gender-based violence. The two briefs, titled Measuring violence against older women and Measuring violence against women with disability, investigate the types of violence that these groups face through the data available. Through reviewing existing studies into violence against women, the research team was able to synthesize the information available on this topic and its scope across different countries.
As was noted by Dr. Lynnmarie Sardinha, Technical Officer at WHO and the UN Special Programme on Human Reproduction (HRP) for Violence against Women Data and Measurement, and author of the briefs. The limited data on older women and women with disabilities undermines the ability of programmes to meet their needs. “Understanding how diverse women and girls are differently affected, and if and how they are accessing services, is critical to ending violence in all its forms.”
One in three women is affected by gender-based violence in these forms. For older women—aged 60 years and over—and women with disabilities, they are also subjected to other forms of abuse and neglect, usually at the hands of caregivers, family members, or healthcare institutions such as nursing homes. Examples of this include controlling behaviors such as withholding medicine and assistive devices, and financial abuse. Though these forms of neglect and abuse have been observed, the studies that the briefs reviewed seemed to focus more on intimate partner violence through physical and sexual abuse. The briefs acknowledge, however, that violence against women should not only be exemplified by intimate partner violence. The prevalence of this example hints at further nuances that are not sufficiently captured in the studies due to their limitations.
Violence against older women can manifest in other ways as they and their partners/perpetrators age. Although women aged 15–49 are at higher risk of intimate partner and sexual violence, older women are still likely to experience it, and this can shift towards other forms of abuse, such as neglect, economic abuse, and psychological abuse. The brief on older women reveals, however, that there is limited data to definitively state its prevalence. This is particularly the case for low- and middle-income countries; the data that was compiled for this brief comes largely from high-income countries, a gap that the reports are aware of. Older women are represented in only ten percent of the data on violence against women.
Only 6 percent of the studies reviewed for women with disabilities included measures of violence specific to this group. The lack of questions specific to this demographic indicates that they are, perhaps unconsciously, unaccounted for when measuring the scale of violence against women. Data collection procedures may not be designed to accommodate women with disabilities or prevent them from self-reporting, such as deaf or hard-of-hearing women who are unable to participate in surveys conducted through the telephone.
The briefs also suggest that women who live with lifelong disrespect and neglect may not recognize the specific forms of violence, which could account for fewer instances being reported. This could also apply to older women, where surveying and reporting mechanisms are geared towards women of reproductive age, especially in low- and middle-income countries.
This may also speak of socio-cultural attitudes towards violence against older women that are steeped in ageism, harmful stereotypes, and discriminatory cultural norms that prevent them from sharing their experiences.
The WHO briefs make several recommendations to address the evidence gaps. Among them are extending the age limit for survey participation and incorporating questions that relate to different types of violence. Data collection should also account for cultural-specific contexts of violence and abuse across different countries. Women with disabilities should be consulted in research at every stage when designing surveys targeted at them, which will allow for a broader spectrum of disabilities to be accounted for.
A view of part of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s second most populated city and main port, which is now dominated by violence as a hub for shipping drugs out of the country to the United States and Europe. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS
by Carolina Loza (guayaquil, ecuador)
Inter Press Service
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador, Feb 12 2024 (IPS) – “For a couple of years now we’ve been seeing the violence growing so fast,” said José, who asked not to give his last name for fear of reprisals he may face in Monte Sinai, a low-income neighborhood in Ecuador’s most populous city, Guayaquil.
José, a 45-year-old Venezuelan, came here looking for a better life in 2019. “You could scrape by, barely, but you could make a living,” he said.
For José, Ecuador offered an opportunity for a peaceful life that allowed him to cover his expenses and raise his three children, something he could no longer do in his native Venezuela. He first moved to a shantytown in this part of western Guayaquil, which is also the country’s main port and one of its two economic hubs, along with Quito, the capital.
José paused before telling IPS: “In the last two years, the violence has accelerated, it’s impossible to live.”
This South American country has recently become one of the most violent in Latin America and the world. And José’s anxious observations coincide with the analysis of different organizations and experts.
Ecuador’s geographic position between two cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, make it a strategic location for drug distribution across the Pacific Ocean.
The demand for drug trafficking, the gradual economic devastation and the weakening of the country’s political system exacerbated in 2023 with the dissolution of the legislature and a call for early elections, helped strengthen criminal gangs, which began to take root in Ecuador as part of the chain of trafficking of cocaine and other drugs.
Growing institutional corruption enabled the gangs to infiltrate the police and the prison system, making it easier for imprisoned criminal leaders to turn prison facilities, intended for rehabilitation, into their centers of operations and expansion.
In the gangs’ struggle to gain control, in 2021, the first large-scale massacre inside a prison in Ecuador occurred, something that became routine as the violence escalated.
For years in Ecuador, criminal organizations have been coordinating their actions against the State, according to Renato Rivera-Rhon, an organized crime and security analyst. “Prisons are an environment of opportunity for organized crime in Ecuador,” he said in an interview with InSightCrime, an organization that focuses on criminal activities.
Rivera-Rhon mentioned that networks within prisons facilitate dialogue, and gang leaders have lawyers within the network, indicating the existence of a web of a certain level of agreements between organized crime gangs.
Police officers prepare to patrol the streets in Guayaquil, on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, days after the declaration of a state of emergency as the government tries to combat the drug gangs that have turned Ecuador into one of the world’s most violent countries. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS
José told IPS how he went from being a street vendor outside schools in Guayaquil without any complications to becoming a victim of extortion, forced to make “protection payments” known locally as “vacunas” or vaccines.
Monte Sinai was one of the first areas in Guayaquil where residents and business owners became the victims of criminal gangs who began demanding “vacunas”, although none of the residents consulted by IPS would identify the group that controls the area, and they never refer to it by name.
The extortion method varies depending on the business and the payment can be demanded weekly, monthly or, as in José’s case, daily. “One of them (a gang member) would hang around when I was selling outside the schools, and would keep track of how much I sold and charge me a third of what I earned that day,” José said.
“You can’t live like this. They don’t let you do anything, you can’t survive,” he complained.
One of José’s three sons was also a victim of extortion when he set up a fast food business selling mainly hamburgers.
Friends of José told him that when they rode on public transportation buses, people would get on and ask for “a little donation,” which was actually another form of extortion. The charge was one dollar, which they had to plan for on top of the 0.35 cent fare.
“You prefer not to ride the bus, because you don’t have the money to pay a dollar for each trip,” said a friend of José’s who preferred not to be identified.
Monte Sinai is a rapidly growing neighborhood, a city within a city as some demographers call it, where a large number of people make a living in the informal economy.
The growth of gangs in Ecuador took hold gradually, in poor areas such as Monte Sinai, and their presence and control boomed during the last two years. Bomb threats, sporadic detonations, leaflets in which gangs threaten individuals or groups such as immigrants, and an increase in robberies are reflections of the violent control exercised by these groups.
The activity of the gangs has spread throughout the country, in an escalation that has reached the point of total chaos at times, such as on Jan. 9.
That day, a television station was taken over by a gang in Guayaquil, there were bomb threats in several cities and shootings near judicial entities, which led the government to declare a state of emergency.
The state of emergency allowed for joint military and police action in the streets and prisons, under the premise that the State is in conflict with armed criminal groups.
Lorenzo and his teenage son Carlos are photographed on one of the unpaved streets of Monte Sinai, a low-income neighborhood in northwest Guayaquil, which they had to flee because of threats and extortion by criminal gangs in the area. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS
Rivera-Rhon stressed that on Jan. 9, the alliances and ties between criminal gangs were demonstrated by the scope and coordination of the chaos in the country and the fear provoked among the public.
He said that “if you look at things from the point of view of someone in the capital, law enforcement has a monopoly of force, but this is not the case in rural areas, where there is total abandonment by the State.”
The expert on crime mentioned how in localities on the border with Colombia, there was already a social order imposed by armed groups that “generated a contagion to other areas of the country” and wondered whether the State had control over the exercise of force in other parts of the country and neighborhoods in cities such as Guayaquil.
Carlos Carrión, secretary of the Fundación Desaparecidos en Ecuador (Foundation for Missing People), said abandonment by the State has been going on for decades. A resident of Jaramijó, a fishing village near the port city of Manta, for years he has led petitions for the repatriation of fishermen imprisoned in the United States for transporting drugs.
Carrión pointed to the lack of response at the State level and the growing control of drug trafficking networks that recruit fishermen, without any control by the armed forces. “Nobody seems to have cared for years, and look where we’ve ended up,” Carrión told IPS by telephone from Jaramijó, some 190 kilometers north of Guayaquil.
Lorenzo, 46, said the Jan. 9 violence was nothing new. In 2023 he had to move from Guayaquil to the port of Posorja, after he became the victim of robberies and closed down his small business.
“Outside the store there were four guys on a motorcycle. From far away, one of them pulled a gun on me and I didn’t know how to get away. I had a backpack, where I carried my phone. I also had my watch and money that I always carry, about 20 or 40 dollars. They took everything,” said Lorenzo, who had worked hard to open a small store selling food and other products in Monte Sinai.
He told IPS that “they said to me: ‘get out of here.’ They left quickly, after going around the same street twice.” It was the last episode of violence and extortion he put up with in Guayaquil and the one that led him to decide to close his shop and look for work in Posorja, a small fishing port 113 kilometers away.
“I used to live here, but now we’re doing better. I had my monthly income from the store, but I had to leave the house in Monte Sinai to rent in Posorja,” he said during one of his last Sunday visits to the neighborhood to see friends and check on his now empty house.
One of his sons, teenager Carlos, was with him on the Sunday he was interviewed by IPS in Monte Sinai. His two older sons have also moved out of the neighborhood.
Businesses are closed in a small shopping center on Delta Avenue, near the main university in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, due to people’s fear of going out in certain areas of the port city. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS
Lorenzo’s biggest fear before leaving Monte Sinai was that something would happen to his children. He even considered emigrating in 2022, crossing the Darien Gap, after hearing about people who had made it through that dangerous stretch of Panamanian jungle to the United States.
Both José and Lorenzo lived in fear of the impact that the violence and increased insecurity could have on their families.
According to José, violence during 2023 in the area “increased by 70 percent.” And so far, according to his former neighbors, the armed forces have not yet arrived in Monte Sinaí, despite the fact that a state of emergency has been declared and that the area is notorious for the violence suffered by local residents.
José stays in contact with his former neighbors, a community that welcomed him with solidarity and to which he will always be grateful.
“I love Ecuador, I was welcomed here, but the situation had become unlivable,” he said from Quito, the capital, where he now sells candy at stop lights. At the end of January, José decided to move to Quito and check out the possibility of settling in this city, where he feels safer.
With most of Monte Sinai’s schools closed due to the violence, José had no alternative when he was left without a source of income and became subject to constant threats, he told IPS during a second meeting in Quito, 430 kilometers from his old life.
His eldest son sold the supplies for his fast food business and returned to Venezuela, while his two teenagers are still in Guayaquil, waiting for their father to get everything ready in Quito.
Lorenzo is no longer returning to Monte Sinai, he told IPS by telephone from Pasorj a few days after the interview there, because both he and his son Carlos received new threats. He is looking for alternatives to move to the coastal province of Manabí, which is also affected by violence, although to a lesser degree than Guayas province, of which Guayaquil is the capital.
José finds some consolation in living in Quito and being able to go out on the street with a little more peace of mind. He quotes a friend who stayed in Guayaquil: “Back there, the only thing they don’t charge us for is breathing.”
Opinion by Marta Perez Cuso, Yihan Zhao (bangkok, thailand)
Inter Press Service
BANGKOK, Thailand, Feb 02 (IPS) – Selyn, a women-led handloom business, offers flexible employment and valuable income opportunities to about 1,000 women artisans and persons from marginalized groups in rural Sri Lanka. Selyn develops and exports high-value craft products in global markets.
The bigger revenue margins of quality products translate into better incomes for women artisans. Thanks to its pioneering use of blockchain in the supply chain – consumers can track how their purchases translate into earnings for women in the informal economy.
The Small Organic Farmers Association (SOFA) of Sri Lanka, produces and exports organic food while creating a sustainable and equitable environment for smallholder farmers. It facilitates fair trade certification for smallholders and links more than 3,600 organic farmers to export markets.
WindForce, the largest renewable energy developer in Sri Lanka, owns, develops and operates renewable energy power plants that provide clean energy access to businesses, communities and industries. WindForce allocates a portion of the profits into community development projects to support the welfare of local communities including livelihood support, education and childhood development, environmental conservation and health care.
These are a few examples of inclusive and sustainable businesses that go beyond the usual “profit-first” market approach to provide affordable goods, services and livelihoods to low-income people and to support environmental sustainability in Sri Lanka.
With ambitious reforms taking centre-stage towards rebuilding Sri Lanka into a resilient and sustainable economy, the Government of Sri Lanka is exploring opportunities to harness the potential of the private sector in fostering inclusive and sustainable growth.
On 31 January, a groundbreaking Strategy to Promote Inclusive and Sustainable Businesses to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals was officially launched by the Government of Sri Lanka. Designed by the Sustainable Development Council of Sri Lanka in collaboration with the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and United Nations Sri Lanka, this strategic roadmap envisions a strong and dynamic ecosystem where inclusive and sustainable businesses like Selyn, SOFA and WindForce can not only emerge but thrive.
Inclusive and sustainable businesses are purpose-driven enterprises that deliberately seek positive change in communities and the environment. These impact businesses can play a crucial role to achieve national social development and environment sustainability goals. Inclusive and sustainable businesses use market-based approaches to achieve positive social and environmental impacts, while ensuring their own commercial sustainability.
The Strategy seeks to put in place regulations that encourage and recognise inclusive and sustainable businesses, provide training and services that help businesses pivot towards more inclusive and sustainable practices, and improve access to finance for businesses.
It builds on and brings together for the first time the collaborative and cross-sectoral efforts of government agencies, private sector organizations and development partners, to shape an inclusive, sustainable and resilient economy.
Actions will cover five core areas:
1) Setting the direction for Sri Lanka to become an inclusive and sustainable export and investment hub;
2) Raising awareness on the economic and social value that impact businesses bring and recognizing local success stories, through award and formal accreditation;
3) Building the capacities of businesses and governments to develop and to promote inclusive and sustainable businesses;
4) Supporting impact measuring and reporting; and
5) Enhancing access to finance for impact businesses.
Sri Lanka’s commitment to this Strategy is a testament to its aspiration for a sustainable and inclusive future where businesses are not just economic entities but forces for positive change.
Marta Perez Cuso is Economic Affairs Officer, UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP); Yihan Zhao is Associate Economic Affairs Officer, ESCAP.
CARACAS, Jan 31 (IPS) – Rural life in Latin America and the Caribbean continues to be marked by poverty and inequality compared to the towns and cities where the vast majority of the population lives. A new focus on rural life in the region could help reveal and address the challenges and neglect faced by people in the countryside.
“Many people in our countryside simply no longer have a way to live, without services or incentives comparable to those in the cities, producing less and for less pay, under the threat of more disease and poverty,” Venezuelan coffee producer Vicente Pérez told IPS.
The project’s director, Ramón Padilla, told IPS from Mexico City that “we need a new narrative about rural Latin America that goes beyond the traditional static and dichotomous vision, and that sees rural areas not as backward places, but as territories with great potential for development and connections.”
Building a new narrative “is important for a better visualization, treatment and reduction of inequalities in income, infrastructure, education, health, gender, etc.,” added Padilla, head of ECLAC’s Economic Development Unit in Mexico.
“Those who have access to electricity, drinking water, communications and transport to work or school in a big city are at a great distance from life in many depressed rural areas,” said Pérez, executive director of the Venezuelan Confederation of Agricultural Producers (Fedeagro).
Entrenched rural poverty
Hilda, the head of her household in Los Rufinos, a village of 40 families in the middle of a sandy dry forest in the northwestern department of Piura, Peru, told visitors from the Argentina-based Latfem regional feminist communication network what it is like to live without electricity and drinking water, to cook with firewood and, among other hardships, to get her granddaughters the schooling she did not have.
In their dirt-floored houses with fences and walls made of logs, plastic and tin sheeting, the women in Los Rufinos cook in the early hours of the morning for the men of the village who go to work in the agro-exporting fruit plants in Piura, the departmental capital.
“When there is no moon, the night is really dark, you can’t see a thing. It’s not like in the city, where there is so much light,” Hilda commented to the Latfem representatives.
In Peru, a country of 33.5 million inhabitants (80 percent urban and 20 percent rural), 9.2 million people are poor, according to the government statistics institute. Poverty measured by income affects 24 percent of the urban population and 41 percent of the rural population, while extreme poverty affects 2.6 percent of the urban population and 16.6 percent of the rural population.
Farther north, in a rural area of the department of Cundinamarca in central Colombia, Edilsa Alarcón showed on the television program “En los zapatos de” (In the Shoes of), on the Caracol network, how she goes every day to two small fields near her home to milk four cows, her family’s livelihood.
She carries 18 liters of milk on the back of a donkey every morning, which she sells for 14 dollars, barely enough to live on. She owns no land and her biggest expense is renting pastureland for 860 dollars a year.
Colombia’s rural areas are home to 12.2 million people (51.8 percent men and 48.2 percent women), 46 percent of whom live in poverty, according to ECLAC.
“Gente de Guate”, produced by Guatemalan Youtubers , collects and delivers food, household goods and even cash for families in the countryside who barely scrape by in houses with four walls made of corrugated metal sheeting, boards and logs, wood stoves and a few chickens running around among corn and cooking banana plants.
Of Guatemala’s 17.2 million inhabitants, 60 percent live in poverty and between 15 and 20 percent in extreme poverty, according to figures from official entities and universities. Half of the population lives in rural areas, where poverty affects two thirds of the overall population – and 80 percent of indigenous people – and extreme poverty affects nearly one-third of the total population.
Regional data
Some 676 million people live in Latin America and the Caribbean, of whom 183 million are poor (29 percent), and 72 million are in extreme poverty (11.4 percent), according to ECLAC data for 2022 and 2023.
While 553 million people (81.8 percent) live in towns and cities, 123 million (18.2 percent) live in rural areas. And while in urban areas poverty stands at 26.2 percent and extreme poverty at 9.3 percent, in rural areas 41 percent of the inhabitants are poor and 19.5 percent are extremely poor.
Gender inequality also persists, stubbornly. One figure that reflects it is that only 30 percent of rural women (58 million) have access to some form of land ownership, their jobs are often more precarious and less well paid, and at the same time they spend more time on household and family care tasks.
Time to migrate from the countryside
Latin America has experienced a massive exodus from rural to urban areas in the 20th century and so far in the 21st. “In 1960, less than half of the region’s population lived in cities. By 2016 that proportion had risen to over 80 percent,” wrote Matías Busso, a researcher at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
This process, driven by the search for better employment opportunities and living conditions, first fueled the expansion of the region’s major cities – to form megalopolises such as São Paulo and Mexico City – and more recently migration to foreign destinations, such as the United States.
The largest migratory phenomenon abroad that the region has known, the exodus of more than seven million Venezuelans in the last decade, has involved numerous urban and suburban inhabitants, but also people from many rural areas.
Pérez said that, in addition, in countries like Venezuela there is now a tendency to move from the countryside to urban areas, “but not to the big cities, like Caracas or Maracaibo, but to nearby towns or small cities, maintaining their ties to the plot of land where the family has crops or a few animals.”
“New shantytowns form in small towns next to agricultural areas, such as coffee plantations in the Andes (southwest) or grain fields in the (central) Llanos, and people work for a few days in some urban job and then return to the countryside at the weekend. A sort of double life,” said Pérez.
Seeking a new narrative
New realities such as these prompted the ECLAC-IFAD initiative to “overcome the traditional view that contrasts rural and urban areas, recognizing the existence of different degrees of rurality in the territories and greater interaction between them,” according to its advocates.
“The project seeks to replace the dominant narrative – which is reductionist and marginalizing – of rural areas as static and backwards, with one that recognizes the challenges and opportunities of today’s new rural societies,” said Peruvian economist Rossana Polastri, regional director of IFAD.
The basis of the initiative is that between what is defined as rural and urban – the limit in countries such as Mexico is to consider urban areas as those with more than 2,500 inhabitants and rural areas as those below that level – there is a variety, degree and wealth of possibilities and opportunities to address issues of equity and development.
Padilla from Mexico said that a first element of the work they propose is to collaborate with the public bodies in charge of designing and implementing policies for rural areas, since “technical work, well grounded in concepts and theories, has to go hand in hand with a dialogue with the public sector.”
“A second element is continuous dialogue with the communities. The new understanding has to be translated into participatory solutions, in which each community and each territory creates a new vision, a renewed plan for sustainable development,” said the head of the project to build a new approach to rural life in Latin America.
Transforming food systems is key to solving food insecurity on the African continent. A powerful and unified effort is needed to ensure food systems are transformed to be robust enough to support the population. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Jan 16 (IPS) – As hunger and food insecurity deepen, Africa is confronting an unprecedented food crisis. Estimates show that nearly 282 million people on the continent, or 20 percent of the population, are undernourished. Numerous challenges across the African continent threaten the race to achieve food security; research and innovative strategies are urgently needed to transform current systems as they are inadequate to address the food crisis.
Transforming food systems is key. A powerful and unified effort is needed to equip food systems to advance human and planetary health to their full potential. This was the message as CGIAR entered a new era under the leadership of Dr Ismahane Elouafi, the Executive Managing Director. Named one of the most influential Africans of 2023, she continues to stress the need to use science and innovation to unlock Africa’s potential to meet its food needs.
Dr Ismahane Elouafi, the CGIAR’s newly appointed Executive Managing Director. Credit: FAO
During her inaugural field visit to an IITA center in Ibadan, Nigeria, alongside Dr Simeon Ehui, IITA’s Director General and CGIAR Regional Director for Continental Africa, she oversaw extensive discussions on transforming food systems and leveraging science and technology.
“At COP28 in Dubai, UAE, there was high-level recognition and a wonderful spotlight on science and innovation. CGIAR has an opportunity to represent science and innovation at large, representing the whole community at large. We can cut down poverty and stop malnutrition, and we have the tools—we just need to bring them to the farmers,” she said.
CGIAR continues to create linkages between agricultural and tech stakeholders, emphasizing digital innovation for agricultural development. CGIAR-IITA explores leveraging ICTs to tackle agricultural challenges, boost productivity, ensure sustainability, and enhance food security, featuring presentations, discussions, workshops, and networking across sectors.
There was a significant focus on the CGIAR TAAT model as a tool to use technology to address Africa’s worsening food crisis. TAAT Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) is a key flagship programme of the African Development Bank’s Feed Africa strategy for 2016 to 2025.
“We have the technology, and all hands are on deck to ensure that no one sleeps hungry. There are severe food insecurities on the continent today, deepening rural poverty and malnutrition. We have the capacity to achieve food security,” Ehui emphasized.
IITA’s Dr Kenton Dashiell spoke about TAAT in the context of strategic discussions around policy and government engagement. Emphasizing the need for the government, private sector, and other key stakeholders to create effective and efficient food systems transformation paths. As a major continent-wide initiative designed to boost agricultural productivity across the continent by rapidly delivering proven technologies to millions of farmers, TAAT can deliver a food-secure continent.
Elouafi stressed the need to ensure that technology is in the hands of farmers. in line with TAAT, which aims to double crop, livestock, and fish productivity by expanding access to productivity-increasing technologies to more than 40 million smallholder farmers across Africa by 2025. In addition, TAAT seeks to generate an additional 120 million metric tons.
IITA’s Bernard Vanlauwe spoke about sustainable intensification with the aim of increasing production and improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Farmers are increasingly dealing with higher temperatures and shorter rainy seasons, affecting the production of staple foods such as maize. Further stressing the need for improved crop varieties to meet Africa’s pressing food insecurities.
Elouafi stressed that the needs are great, in particular, eliminating extreme poverty, ending hunger and malnutrition, turning Africa into a net food exporter, and positioning Africa at the top of the agricultural value chains. She emphasized the need to leverage progress made thus far, building on the commitments of Dakar 1, the 1st Summit of the World’s Regions on Food Security held in Dakar in January 2010, where representatives and associations of regional governments from the five continents noted that the commitments made at the World Food Summit in 2002 had had little effect and that the food crisis had only worsened.
Elouafi said the UN Food System Summit in 2021 and the 2023 Dakar 2 Summit, with an emphasis on building sustainable food systems and aligning government resources, development partners, and private sector financing to unleash Africa’s food production potential, were important meetings to build on. The commitments made at these high-level meetings had already created a pathway towards ending hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition and transforming food systems to meet the most pressing food needs today.
It is estimated that Africa’s agricultural output could increase from USD 280 billion per year to USD 1 trillion by 2030. The visit and ensuing discussions highlighted how investing in raising agricultural productivity, supporting infrastructure, and climate-smart agricultural systems, with private sector investments, government support, and resources from multinational financial institutions, all along the food value chain, can help turn Africa into a breadbasket for the world. Private sector actors will be particularly urged to commit to the development of critical value chains.
