A Latin American rural family. Credit: Santiago Billy / FAO
Opinion by Marco Knowles (rome)
Inter Press Service
Marco Knowles leads the FAO’s Social Protection Team
ROME, Sep 03 (IPS) – Urgent climate action is key to eradicating hunger and poverty, but climate mitigation policies can inadvertently exacerbate these issues in rural areas. Countries must design climate strategies that account for the impacts on the rural poor and that include social protection measures.
Last July, we were confronted with alarming statistics: 733 million people experienced hunger in 2023, equivalent to one in eleven people globally. In Africa it was even higher, with one in five people going hungry. Climate change is a significant driver of this crisis.
Gradual changes in temperatures and rainfall patterns reduce returns to farming, on which poor people largely depend, and sudden events like floods and droughts devastate their crops and livestock. According to the World Bank, climate change could push as many as 135 million more people into poverty by 2030. Urgent action to curb climate change is therefore essential to the fight against poverty and hunger.
However, if we are not careful, climate mitigation efforts can undermine progress on eradicating poverty and hunger. A recent example is the European Union´s Regulation on Deforestation-free products that was introduced in June 2023. This regulation is intended to ensure that products bought and consumed in Europe do not contribute to deforestation through the expansion of agricultural land for the production of cattle, wood, cocoa, soy, palm oil or coffee.
But on the other hand, the costs of these policies fall disproportionately on rural poor people that do not have the resources and capacities to comply, including those that currently rely on clearing new lands for their livelihoods – estimated to account for about a third of deforestation.
As governments of 17 countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia had forewarned, the EU’s Regulation is already having severe negative impacts among poorer people in poorer countries, in particular small-scale farmers.
Without support, they face huge challenges in complying with the complex, new procedures, and at the same time they often lack the capacities and resources to maintain or increase their agricultural production without expanding the land area under cultivation – this is even more true in a context of a changing climate change that reduces farming yields.
While progress on the climate agenda must continue at pace, the socio-economic trade-offs of climate policies for different population groups – especially the most vulnerable – need to be considered from the outset. Countries, especially those in which poverty and hunger are concentrated, need to be supported and encouraged to couple green policies with measures that enable smallholder farmers to meet new conditions or to transition to new and dignified livelihoods.
Social protection – which includes policies and programmes aimed at addressing poverty and vulnerability – can play a key role in easing these transitions. In the short-term, by providing regular cash income in compensation for any adverse social impacts of climate policies and, in the longer-term, by combining these payments with technical support, skills training and livelihood interventions that can help people to adjust to and thrive under new policy regimes.
This approach is already being implemented in several countries.
In China, a forest protection act affected approximately one million public forestry workers and 120 million rural households by reducing access to forest resources. To mitigate these impacts, public employees received assistance, such as job placement services, unemployment benefits and pension plans. As a result, two-thirds of the affected employees were either transferred to alternative jobs or retired, while 124 million households benefited from an income transfer.
In Brazil and Paraguay, social protection and complementary agricultural programmes are supporting rural households to adopt more sustainable and profitable farming practices. Paraguay’s Poverty, Reforestation, Energy and Climate Change (PROEZA) programme, provides households participating in the country’s flagship social protection scheme, Tekoporã, with technical support and additional cash. Thanks to this, small-scale farmers are adapting their agricultural practices to be more resilient to ever more frequent droughts while also increasing their production of native crops such as yerba mate.
Similarly, in Brazil, the Bolsa Verde programme provides cash payments to beneficiaries of the national social cash transfer programme, Bolsa Familia, in exchange for maintaining or restoring forests, protecting water sources, and promoting sustainable agriculture.
Governments should be encouraged and supported in introducing and scaling-up social protection measures to ensure the poorest and most vulnerable do not bear the burden of addressing the climate crisis and greening the consumption of people in wealthier parts of the world.
We must therefore prioritize an approach that pays close attention to the social as well as the environmental consequences of policies to address climate change. Social protection programmes have a critical role to play building a future that is mutually beneficial to People and Planet.
Marco Knowles leads the FAO´s Social Protection Team. His areas of expertise include increasing access to social protection in rural areas and in leveraging on social protection for climate action. He also has substantive experience in providing evidence-based food security policy assistance and capacity development support.
In 2023, the United Nations released a report revealing that extreme weather disasters had incurred economic losses totaling $4 trillion, with significant impacts felt across various sectors, notably agriculture. Credit: Miriet Abrego / IPS
Opinion by Esther Ngumbi (urbana, illinois, us)
Inter Press Service
Additionally, the report highlighted the economic losses and other impacts extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, and tropical cyclones have on agriculture.
Indeed, globally, and in the United States, record-breaking, extreme weather disaster events, such as flooding, storms, and droughts, have become extremely costly and excessively too common.
In Asia, Africa, and many other continents, the agricultural sector is equally important, and further serves as a source of employment, and thus a poverty-reducing sector. According to UN FAO, agriculture accounts for over 35 percent of Africa’s GDP.
Emerging, therefore is the need for multipronged efforts to help to mitigate the impacts these climate change associated disasters have on agriculture.
First. Inform agricultural sector stakeholders including farmers about newly launched technologies and most recent science-backed climate solutions.
Researchers, entrepreneurs, and innovators continue to bring to life novel technologies, climate solutions, and innovations that can be deployed to help to mitigate climate change impacts.
From artificial intelligence powered prediction models that can reliably forecast when disasters are going to happen, prompting stakeholders to act, to climate resilient crops, to regenerative agricultural practices such as cover cropping, mulching, and digging trenches that can help mitigate the impacts of drought and flooding to indoor agriculture that cushions agricultural crops from weather, pests and water and space limitations.
To make sure that this information is available, governments or innovators could keep a tab or have an inventory of all recent climate solutions. This can be a one stop database that carries the most recent info. It could be in the form of a climate solutions dashboard.
Complementing information is the need to create incentives to accelerate the adoption of these newer climate solutions, technologies, and strategies. Monetary incentives, for example, could go a long way in facilitating the rapid adoption of research backed climate solutions for agriculture. For example, in Illinois, farmers who are practicing regenerative practices such as cover cropping are eligible for a three-year contract payment of $50 per acre.
Moreover, there is a need to actively engage the next generation of farmers. Programs such as the recently launched US Department of Agriculture climate corps, a program that will mobilize over 100 young people to help advance sustainable agriculture, is a move in the right direction.
Second. Continue to invest in research, entrepreneurs, agencies, and programs dedicated to climate research.
Research continues to be central in helping to generate new solutions. As such, there is need to keep funding researchers that are actively engaged in research aimed at generating newer solutions or understanding the direct and indirect impacts of climate change associated disasters.
Third.Take good data before, during, and after climate disasters.
Good data can be leveraged to help address climate change impacts to agriculture including being used in machine learning, to help to create predictive models that are continuing to revolutionize our ability to predict disaster events and act. Moreover, data can be used to introduce real-time solutions while helping to accurately capture solutions that are working.
Certainly, data driven solutions will continue to be important now and in the future and should continue to be leveraged.
At the core of preventing direct impacts of weather events on the agricultural sector should be a respect for nature and biodiversity.
Indeed, we live in a biodiverse world, that has other creatures in our ecosystem. For example, the soil matrix is home to earthworms and microbes that underpin agricultural productivity. As such, strategies, solutions, and interventions rolled out should also protect these invisible friends.
In dealing with record-breaking extreme weather events that directly and indirectly impact the agricultural sector, we must choose to launch multipronged solutions that leverage data, incorporate newly available climate solutions and innovations, and create incentives to amplify the adoptions of these solutions. A functioning agricultural sector will continue to be important as we strive to meet our food and nutrition security needs.
Esther Ngumbi, PhD is Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, African American Studies Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Kaposi’s sarcoma virus. The World Health Organization predicts a 60% rise in global cancer cases over the next two decades, with an 81% increase expected in low- and middle-income countries. Credit: Shutterstock.
Opinion by Nicholas Okumu (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Apr 02 (IPS) – Despite global childhood cancer mortality rates dropping by half over the past 50 years, these promising statistics do not extend to Africa and the Global South, where limited resources mean that most cancers are diagnosed at advanced stages.
Consequently, the region reports survival rates of as low as 15% for musculoskeletal sarcomas, a group of cancers that develop in the bones and soft tissues of the body, when it has spread to other areas of the body from the original location.
Worse still, the World Health Organization predicts a 60% rise in global cancer cases over the next two decades, with an 81% increase expected in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). As a doctor specialising in the treatment of cancer, I am confronted daily with the realities of cancer care disparities.
Consider, additionally, that LMICs have historically concentrated their limited healthcare resources on combating infectious diseases and improving maternal and child health, which formed the bulk of the disease burden. This focus has left healthcare systems unprepared to confront the growing burden of cancer.
The infrastructure gap is undeniable. In 2019, over 90% of high-income countries reported comprehensive cancer treatment services readily available in their public health systems, compared to a mere 15% in low-income countries. This underscores the need for solutions that bridge the gap in cancer care quality.
Each patient’s story is a vivid illustration of the profound inequities in our global healthcare system.
Endowment funds offer a sustainable way to radically enhance cancer care in under-resourced regions. These funds are an investment portfolio that draws its initial capital from donations and thereafterwhen managed effectivelybecomes interminable.
The aim is to create a financial foundation that supports a wide array of initiatives, including research, treatment, training, and infrastructural development, making equitable, high-quality care a reality for all.
Examples can be drawn from the Aga Khan University Faculty of Health Sciences Endowment and the more famous Harvard Endowment. A large corpus of capital is invested, and the returns generated from that investment are then used to fund initiatives the endowment supports perpetually.
The Aga Khan endowment, valued at approximately USD 63 million (PKR 1,151,195,960), supports academic posts, student scholarships, research, and patient welfare, ensuring long-term financial security for the university.
Unlike project-based funding, endowment funds provide a steady income stream, ensuring long-term support for crucial healthcare initiatives.
This financial stability empowers healthcare institutions to develop a resilient healthcare ecosystem, addressing immediate needs such as awareness campaigns and long-term goals, including specialist training programs.
Additionally, endowment funds shift control from donor preferences to a targeted approach, as every dollar invested is directed towards initiatives with the most significant potential; therefore maximising the impact.
Furthermore, through careful investment strategies, the corpus of the fund can grow over time, creating a perpetual source of funding for sarcoma care.
This financial sustainability is particularly important for a chronic disease like sarcoma, where the need for funding is constant.
The Kenya Cancer Policy 2019-2030 outlines a comprehensive strategy to address cancer control in Kenya.
However, a significant funding gap of USD 399,991,000 over the next five years poses a challenge. Sarcomas represent approximately 5% of this funding requirement.
Therefore, a Kenya Sarcoma Trust is envisaged to fill the staggering funding gap, estimated at $19.9 million over the next five years or 3.9 million dollars annually.
By establishing an endowment fund of 39.4 million US dollars dedicated explicitly to sarcoma care and research, the trust aims to bridge the gap in sarcoma care experienced in Kenya.
This model can be a precedent for how niche healthcare areas can be sustainably funded, empowering healthcare institutions to enact systemic changes and improve patient outcomes. Endowment funds can be diversified to support a broader range of healthcare initiatives in the future, but for now, tackling the significant burden of sarcoma is a crucial first step.
Endowment funds represent a powerful form of innovative financing for healthcare in LMICs. They attract private sector investment and create a sustainable funding stream, aligning with recommendations from organisations urging increased private sector participation in health financing for these countries.
This will form a considerable part of their corporate social responsibility/shared value and provide a new avenue for funding development as traditional donors grapple with dwindling resources.
While endowment funds offer a promising solution, some concerns merit discussion. Establishing a large endowment fund requires a significant upfront investment.
However, alternative fundraising strategies can be explored, such as phased approaches or targeted campaigns for wealthy individuals and organisations. Additionally, concerns about management expertise can be addressed by partnering with experienced financial institutions with a proven track record in managing endowment funds.
The long-term nature of endowment funds shouldn’t overshadow their potential for immediate impact. Strategic allocation of initial investment returns and securing bridge funding through other means can address current needs.
Finally, ethical considerations regarding a focus on specific diseases can be mitigated by using a similar model for other neglected diseases.
Endowment funds can be diversified to support a broader range of healthcare initiatives.
Transparency and accountability in managing the endowment fund are crucial to ensure public trust and continued support. Regulatory frameworks in developing countries must be adapted to facilitate the creation and management of endowment funds.
A collaborative effort is essential to bridge the cancer care gap. Governments, private sector leaders, philanthropic organisations, and high-net-worth individuals must unite to support the creation of well-managed, transparent endowment funds dedicated to cancer care in LMICs.
This innovative financing approach promises to make quality cancer treatment accessible to all, irrespective of geography, marking a step towards making hope a universal reality in the battle against cancer.
Dr. Nicholas Okumu is an orthopedic surgeon heading the orthopedic oncology unit at the Kenyatta National Hospital and formerly the head of the department of orthopedics at the same institution. He is the CEO of Stratus Medical Imaging Solutions, a private health care provider in Nairobi. He is a 2024 Global Surgery Advocacy fellow.
It is critical that African scientists tackle African problems, and the reasons extend beyond access. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS.
Opinion by Khisi Mdluli (boston, us)
Inter Press Service
BOSTON, US, Mar 15 (IPS) – I was born in Brakpan, Johannesburg, South Africa, and grew up in eSwatini (known then as Swaziland). People in these two countries share one predominantfear: unemployment. Other worries in these countries and others in the region include unwanted pregnancies, low income and food safety. The diseases that are dreaded the most are cancer and diabetes. Feared infectious diseases include HIV-AIDS, COVID and cholera.
Even though South Africa and eSwatini are among the more than two dozen African countries with a high burden of either tuberculosis (TB), drug-resistant TB or HIV/TB co-infections, TB is not feared in the same way, even though it is the disease that haunts my people the most.
So many are affected on the African continent by TB, which hits the young and vibrant the hardest in our region and in the world. Eswatini joins the seven most populous sub-Saharan African countries — Ethiopia, DR Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Tanzania — where TB hits the 25-34 and 35-44 age brackets especially hard.
It is not just the years of life that this disease takes away from us, but also the future leadership and economic productivity of our countries. I see this even within my own family, with one niece currently being treated for TB and another niece having survived drug-resistant TB a few years back.
World TB Day is March 24, a day when we will hear about ending TB by 2030 — even though it is a disease that has been with us forever. With only six years left, that goal seems too distant. To achieve this goal, we need better awareness, yes. But we also need Africans to be fully engaged with the rest of the world, which includes conducting drug discovery and development research for TB in Africa.
Most of the current TB drugs, like the drugs for most diseases that affect Africans, are developed by companies in high-income countries. We saw what that meant in the delayed rate at which lifesaving COVID vaccines reached African countries; the high-income countries that helped develop the vaccines received them much faster.
This is why, for the Gates Medical Research Institute’s trials testing investigational treatments or vaccine candidates, the relationships that we establish with the trial sites in Africa and elsewhere are meant to support those facilities when they eventually take the lead on future trials.
It is critical that African scientists tackle African problems, and the reasons extend beyond access. Local scientists have a better understanding of the social fabric and context threatened by diseases like TB; they understand which solutions could be adopted and embraced and which will remain on the shelf.
In September 2023, the United Nations held a High-Level Meeting where member states agreed to boost the amount of funding for TB research by a fivefold increase by 2027 — but no guidelines on geography were placed on this pledge.
More than 90% of current funding for TB R&D currently comes from North America and Europe, and most of those funds stay in the high-income countries, and train and develop and indeed employ scientists in the high-income countries. Of the high-burden countries, only India has an investment in the field large enough to be noted — at 1.9% of the total global funding.
Funding specifically earmarked for TB (and antimicrobial resistance) research in Africa would ensure that more of it takes place on African soil. Funding is needed to build appropriately equipped research and production infrastructure, much like the new mRNA vaccine facility being built in Rwanda.
Such facilities would be staffed with African scientists, who would get opportunities to expand their basic and applied research skills. The H3D Research Centre at the University of Cape Town, led by Dr. Kelly Chibale, is one example of how successful African ingenuity can be, with four patents already filed.
Together with the much-needed funding from Africa’s better-resourced foreign partners in high-income countries, African governments should incentivize African businesses, African foundations and charities, and high-net-worth Africans to build African Research Institutes to train, develop and employ African scientists.
Developing medicines for diseases like TB that are killing African youth and stunting Africa’s economic growth should be everyone’s priority, in Africa and the world.
It is critically important that such efforts are not tied to immediate profits, as this leads to disappointment and ends with dwindling funds for research.
Drug discovery is a “long and winding road” that begins with building talent and infrastructure and expanding the critical mass of well-trained drug developers. Investment in biomedical research should be for the sake of expanding biomedical knowledge and training young scientists; the discoveries and the profits will follow.
The timing couldn’t be more appropriate than now as new futuristic technologies — including artificial intelligence, machine learning and high-speed connectivity — are entering the drug development arena.
We can now see a point when the health profile and the life expectancy of people in Africa could be comparable to the rest of the world. Africa and the world should be guided by the belief that all lives have equal value and that health equality is ensured for everyone, on all continents.
Khisimuzi (Khisi) Mdluli, PhD, is a TB Drug Scientist and a Discovery Project Leader at the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute (Gates MRI).
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.
Opinion by Unnikrishnan Divakaran Nair, Nirupama Vinayan (london)
Inter Press Service
LONDON, Jan 31 (IPS) – The 28th Conference of Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) marked a pivotal moment in the global efforts to combat climate change. Held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) with the participation of delegates from around the world, COP28 showcased a commitment to drive genuine strides in climate action, bringing optimism and progress to the forefront. Here we explore the implications of COP28 outcomes for small and other vulnerable Commonwealth countries and identify the gaps that still need attention. Additionally, it will discuss concrete expectations for COP29, focusing on critical discussions held at COP28.
Unnikrishnan Divakaran Nair
COP28 Highlights
COP28 was distinctive in its comprehensive approach, covering a diverse range of topics crucial for addressing the climate crisis. Notable discussions included the First Global Stocktake, the Operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund, the Business and Philanthropy Climate Forum, the UAE Leaders’ Declaration on the Global Climate Finance Framework, and the UAE Climate and Health Declaration.
First Global Stocktake
The First Global Stocktake at COP28 provided a comprehensive assessment of collective progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement. It involved a thorough review of individual countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and their efforts to limit global temperature rise. This mechanism served as a vital tool for accountability and transparency, fostering a sense of shared responsibility among nations.
For the Commonwealth countries, the Global Stocktake offers an opportunity to showcase their commitment to climate action and demonstrate tangible progress. However, challenges persist in ensuring that the Stocktake remains fair and inclusive, addressing the diverse circumstances of the Commonwealth nations, including those that are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Operationalization of Loss and Damage Fund
Addressing loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change is a critical aspect of climate action. COP28 saw discussions on the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund, aiming to provide financial and technical assistance to countries facing the most severe consequences. For the Commonwealth nations, particularly those in low-lying regions, this initiative is crucial for building resilience and adapting to climate-induced challenges.
Nirupama Vinayan
Despite positive strides, gaps remain in determining the fund’s scale and ensuring swift disbursement to affected countries. COP29 must prioritize finalizing the operational details of the Loss and Damage Fund to ensure its effectiveness and responsiveness in times of need.
Business and Philanthropy Climate Forum
The Business and Philanthropy Climate Forum at COP28 facilitated crucial discussions on the role of private sector engagement and philanthropy in climate action. Commonwealth countries, with their diverse economies, can leverage partnerships with businesses and philanthropic organizations to accelerate sustainable initiatives.
However, challenges persist in ensuring that such collaborations align with the principles of climate justice and contribute to the overall well-being of communities. COP29 should focus on refining frameworks for private sector involvement, emphasizing transparency, accountability, and the alignment of business practices with climate goals.
UAE Leaders’ Declaration on the Global Climate Finance Framework
The UAE Leaders’ Declaration at COP28 outlined a framework for global climate finance, acknowledging the need for increased financial support to developing countries. For Commonwealth nations, many of which are developing economies, this declaration holds promise for accessing the necessary funds to implement ambitious climate actions.
Nevertheless, a significant gap exists in defining the specifics of the finance framework, including the sources of funding and the mechanisms for distribution. COP29 should prioritize establishing a clear and robust climate finance framework to ensure that developing Commonwealth countries receive the support needed for sustainable development.
UAE Climate and Health Declaration
The UAE Climate and Health Declaration emphasized the interconnectedness of climate change and public health. Commonwealth countries, facing diverse health challenges exacerbated by climate impacts, can benefit from a holistic approach that integrates climate and health policies.
While the declaration at COP28 recognized the importance of this intersection, concrete steps for implementation and resource allocation are crucial. COP29 should prioritize the development of strategies that integrate climate and health considerations, ensuring the well-being of Commonwealth populations in the face of a changing climate.
Shaping Expectations for COP29
COP28 concluded on a note of optimism and progress, with participants committing to genuine strides in climate action. However, acknowledging the herculean task ahead is essential. COP29, set to be held in Azerbaijan, becomes a crucial milestone for the international community.
Concrete expectations for COP29 include deciding on a new climate finance goal and framing new and ambitious NDCs. The Commonwealth, as a collective voice for equitable and sustainable growth, is expected to play a more prominent role in the global climate action scene. Ensuring that all parties move as one entity with a clear vision is imperative for deriving the desired outcomes and addressing the gaps highlighted at COP28.
Looking ahead, the international community anticipates decisive actions at COP29, setting the stage for framing new NDCs at COP30, hosted by Brazil. The Commonwealth’s involvement will be pivotal in achieving a sustainable and resilient future, fostering global cooperation and ensuring that no nation is left behind in the pursuit of a climate-safe world.
Unnikrishnan Divakaran Nair is the Head of Climate Change at the Commonwealth Secretariat covering 56 small and other vulnerable Commonwealth countries.
Nirupama Vinayan is an intern at the Commonwealth Secretariat working in the area of climate finance for the small and other vulnerable member countries of the Commonwealth.
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.
Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 20 (IPS) – The World Bank insists commercial finance is necessary for achieving economic recovery and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but does little to ensure profit-hungry commercial finance serves the public interest.
By failing to address pressing challenges within their purview, the second-ever Bretton Woods institutions’ (BWIs) annual meetings on the African continent, in Marrakech in October 2023, set the developing world even further back.
Jomo Kwame SundaramThe International Monetary and Financial Committee, which oversees the International Monetary Fund (IMF), could not agree, by consensus, on the usual end-of-meeting ministerial communique for ‘geopolitical’ reasons. The Development Committee, which governs the World Bank Group, fared little better.
New World Bank playbook
Little was achieved on crucial outstanding issues of governance reform and sovereign debt. Implicitly acknowledging past failure, World Bank Governors endorsed a “new vision to create a world free of poverty on a livable planet”.
After all, even the World Bank now acknowledges recent increases in global poverty have been the worst since the Second World War as economic stagnation, debt distress and inflation spread across the developing world.
The Bank’s new Evolution Roadmap proposes a just energy transition plan to mobilise private capital to scale up, secure and deploy climate finance. This is mainly for mitigation, rather than adaptation, let alone losses and damages.
The blueprint wants international financial institutions to help developing country governments de-risk private investments. For Muchhala, this reflects “the failure of the Bank’s wealthy shareholders to help ensure a more equitable multilateral system that is truly fit for purpose to meet the challenges of the 21st century”.
Blending finance for private profits
The strategy proposes ‘de-risking’ foreign investment with various types of ‘blended finance’ – such as co-financing, loan guarantees, political risk insurance or public equity co-investments – as well as complementary legal and other reforms.
The Bank and its allies have been promoting ‘blended finance’ for development, the environment and global warming since before the 2008 global financial crisis. Their main recommendation has been to induce profit-seeking private capital to fill growing financing gaps.
Undoubtedly, most poor developing countries have limited public resources to make needed social and environmental, including climate investments. In such arrangements, public funds are used to ‘de-risk’ or otherwise subsidise commercial finance, ostensibly to serve public policy priorities.
However, private commercial involvement in public services and infrastructure is costly and risky for the public sector and citizens, by deploying limited public resources for private gain. Civil society and other critics have already expressed grave concerns about the new Roadmap.
The World Bank Group also set up a Private Sector Investment Lab to scale up private finance in developing economies. It claims to be creating a “business enabling environment that unleashes private financing”.
Billions to trillions
The World Bank’s ‘billions to trillions’ slogan has been the pretext for privileging commercial finance as supposedly necessary to achieve the SDGs. But it has done little to ensure that such profit-seeking private investments will help achieve the SDGs or otherwise serve the public purpose.
The Bank does not consider that profit-seeking private investments expecting attractive returns may not serve the public interest and priorities. Nor do they necessarily support desirable transformations. Worse, their economic, social and environmental consequences may be for the worse.
The privatisation of previously public social services and infrastructure has worsened development and distribution. Unequal access to public services – increasingly linked to affordability and ability to pay – threatens hundreds of millions.
Such blended finance arrangements have also contributed to the debt explosion in the Global South – exacerbating, rather than alleviating developmental, environmental and humanitarian crises.
Debt distress spreading
Developing countries are in their worst-ever debt crises, with debt service obligations higher than ever before. Current debt-to-GDP ratios are more than twice those of LICs before the 1996 HIPCs’ debt relief came into effect, and even higher than for Latin American nations before the 1989 Brady plan.
Unlike the 1980s’ sovereign debt crises, market finance is now more important. Much more government debt from commercial sources involves relying on bond markets, rather than commercial bank borrowings.
With official credit much less important, commercial finance has become much more important compared to the 1980s. Unlike official creditors, most private creditors typically refuse to participate in debt restructuring negotiations, making resolution impossible.
Debt servicing costs equal the combined expenditure for education, health, social protection and climate. In Africa, debt servicing has risen by half. Debt service levels of the 139 World Bank borrowers are higher than during the heavily indebted poor countries’ (HIPCs) and Latin American debt crises peaks.
Debt service is absorbing 38% of budget revenue and 30% of spending on average by developing country governments. In Africa, the levels are much higher, at 54% of revenue and 40% of spending!
The BWIs’ joint debt sustainability framework insists debt-distressed economies must have lower debt-to-GDP ratios than other countries, limiting this LICs’ external ratio to 30% or 40%. This BWI policy effectively penalises the poorer and more vulnerable nations.
In 38 countries with over a billion people, loan conditionalities during 2020-22 resulted in regressive tax reforms and public spending cuts. Less expenditure has hit fuel or electricity subsidies and public wage bills, deepening economic stagnation.
Despite severe debt distress in many developing countries, no meaningful debt relief has been available for most. The most recent debt restructuring deals have left debt service levels averaging at least 48% of revenue over the next three to five years.
Debt distress limits government spending capacity, desperately needed to address social and environmental crises. Hence, overcoming stagnation and achieving the SDGs will require much more debt cancellation, relief and borrowing cost cuts.
Women and children in Afghan cities endure hours-long queues for a vital resource—water. Credit: Learning Together
Inter Press Service
Dec 14 (IPS) – The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasonsAccording to United Nations statistics, nearly 80 percent of Afghan families lack access to sufficient water for their daily needs. Afghanistan, a landlocked country with limited water resources, is grappling with an exacerbated drought fueled by climate change, affecting the entire region.
In the western parts of Kabul, residents must endure lengthy queues, waiting for hours to secure the water they need.
The situation has reached a critical point, exemplified by the district of Dasht-e-Barchi running out of water as temperatures rise. This crisis has persisted for months.
In the 13th district of Kabul city, the water company has suspended the water supply. Muhammad Ali and Juma, who have been living in the district for more than seven years, describe their plight as the worst they’ve experienced, emphasizing the absence of water and any communication from officials.
To obtain drinking water, residents must travel considerable distances, enduring hours of waiting only to bring home a few barrels. Families designate someone to stand in line constantly, yet they still experience several days and nights without water.
A private company that used to distribute water to people in exchange for money does not do it anymore. Residents say that there is no government water supply system in this area.
People can’t afford to dig their own wells. Therefore, they must wait for hours to get water from mosques and public distribution centers.
Groundwater levels in Kabul have dwindled significantly. In the Pole Khushk area, western Kabul, people wait from morning to evening for just one barrel of water, highlighting the severe impact of poverty and water scarcity on the city’s residents.
Water scarcity compounds the hardships of life in the Afghan capital, Kabul, adding to the misery of its residents. Credit: Learning Together
The Ministry of Energy and Water has plans to manage groundwater. The head of water program coordination, Rafiullah Stanakzai, says that there are several ongoing projects: the Kabul-Panjshir water canal project as well as the Shah Tut and the Shah Arous projects that supply water to Kabul. The work on these projects will begin after the technical team has reviewed them.
Officials attribute the decline in groundwater levels to population growth and excessive groundwater usage, underscoring the urgency of resolving the water crisis.
The water crisis needs a quick resolution. The Taliban government lacks a comprehensive plan to address the population’s needs for drinking water and essential necessities, casting a dark and hopeless shadow over the country plagued by drought.
Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 13 (IPS) – With the US Fed raising interest rates, the world economy is slowing as debt distress spreads across the global South, increasing poverty worldwide to pre-pandemic levels, with the poorest countries faring worst.
Extreme poverty continues to be high and is now worse than before the pandemic in low-income countries (LICs) and among those affected by fragility, violence and conflict. The promise of eradicating poverty worldwide by 2030 has become unachievable.
Jomo Kwame SundaramThe Bretton Woods institutions’ (BWIs) annual meetings in Marrakech in October were only the second-ever in Africa. But the rich nations-dominated BWIs failed yet again to rise to the challenges of our times, setting Africa and the global South even further back.
Instead of fostering cooperation to address the causes and effects of the contemporary catastrophe, neither the International Monetary Fund nor the World Bank governors could agree on joint communiques due to the greater politicisation of multilateral fora.
Indebtedness immobilises governments
Indebtedness and restrictive creditor rules prevent governments from spending more counter-cyclically to overcome the many contractionary tendencies of recent times, besides preventing them from addressing looming social and environmental crises.
The G20’s largest twenty economies have urged strengthening “multilateral coordination by official bilateral and private creditors … to address the deteriorating debt situation and facilitate coordinated debt treatment for debt-distressed countries”.
But its Common Framework to restructure debt has been roundly criticised by civil society, think tanks and even the World Bank on many grounds, including the paltry concessional credit relief offered to a few of the very poorest countries.
In contrast, the G24 caucus of developing countries at the BWIs has emphasised the need for “durable debt resolution measures while collaborating on resolving the structural issues leading to such vulnerabilities.”
But all those advocating purported solutions are not even trying to ensure fiscal space and public spending capacity for counter-cyclical efforts, let alone achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and national development objectives.
Surcharges
The IMF currently imposes additional charges on countries that do not quickly clear their debts to the Fund. Besides the usual fees and interest, borrowing countries paid over $4 billion in such surcharges in 2020-22, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Surcharges will cost debt-distressed countries about $7.9 billion over six years. The G24 has emphasised that surcharges are pro-cyclical and regressive, especially with monetary tightening.
Governments have undertaken contractionary policies and cut imports for lack of foreign exchange. This deepens the problems of heavily indebted poor countries who cannot but count on the Fund for relief and solutions.
At Marrakech, the governing International Monetary and Financial Committee decided to “consider a review of surcharge policies”. The G24 called for “a suspension of surcharges while the review – which we hope will lead to substantial permanent reduction or complete elimination – is being conducted.”
Rich nations have been divided over surcharges. With Ukraine now among the top surcharge payers, following civil society criticisms, the Biden administration’s refusal to review surcharges in 2022 was heavily criticised by the US Congress.
Deepening austerity
IMF fiscal austerity measures of the 1980s returned with a vengeance after the 2008 global financial crisis, and then again during the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020. Most Fund loans require cutting the public sector wage bill (PSWB), the budget line to pay employees.
Most wage earners in many LICs, including nurses, teachers and other social service workers, work for the state, directly or indirectly. Although much needed, these employees have been more likely to be targeted by such budget cuts.
PSWB cuts may involve hiring or wage freezes, or limiting, or even cutting wages. These inevitably undermine government capacities and services. Fiscal consolidation has also involved raising more indirect, consumption taxes, and tax exemptions, e.g., for essential goods such as food.
In 38 countries with over a billion people, loan conditionalities during 2020-22, the three years of the Covid-19 pandemic, meant regressive tax reforms and public spending cuts. PSWB and fuel or electricity subsidy cuts are also common demands worsening economic contractions.
Austerity bound to fail
But the IMF’s own research suggests such austerity policies are generally ineffective in reducing debt, their ostensible purpose. The April 2023 IMF World Economic Outlook acknowledged austerity programmes and fiscal consolidations “do not reduce debt ratios, on average”. Yet, its Fiscal Monitor still demands “fiscal tightening” of most developing countries.
The new IMF-World Bank debt sustainability framework sets the LICs’ external debt-to-GDP ratio limit at 30% or 40%. It insists debt-distressed economies must have lower ratios than ‘strong’ countries, effectively further penalising the weak and vulnerable.
Instead of enabling consistently counter-cyclical macroeconomic frameworks, the IMF’s current short-termist approach is mainly preoccupied with annual, or worse, quarterly balances, mimicking corporate reporting practices.
Such short-termism further limits fiscal space, effectively preventing or deterring public sector investments requiring longer-term macroeconomic frameworks to realise benefits. This discourages ‘patient’ medium- to long-term investments required for national economic planning and transformation, essential for sustainable development.
Restrictive debt and fiscal targets have meant even less public investment. This is typically required of borrowing countries as a credit conditionality. Annual IMF Article IV consultations cause other countries to also accept similar constraints to avoid Fund disapproval.
While a few better-off economies enjoy full employment, most countries face further economic contraction, not least due to interest rate hikes led by the US Fed and their many effects. Instead of being part of the problem, the IMF should be part of the solution.
The land at St Denis Libolina primary, a school for physically challenged has been transformed into food forests and gardens using agroecology and feed the children, teachers. They have now sent a challenge to the community to do the same. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS
by Isaiah Esipisu (dubai)
Inter Press Service
DUBAI, Dec 02 (IPS) – Students of St Denis Libolina Primary have used agroecology farming techniques to transform the entire school garden and any free space into food forests and gardens for different vegetable varieties, legumes, and herbs.
Now the students, who are physically challenged, have challenged their parents, villagers, and farmers in the outskirts of Myanga Township, in Kenya’s Bungoma County, in the Western region, to do the same.
“Barely one year ago, teachers had to contribute money to buy green vegetables to be used by staff members,” said Gladys Orlando, the school head teacher, told IPS during a recent media visit. “But today, there are always more than enough vegetables, not just for the teachers but for all students in our boarding facility.”
With rainwater harvested from classroom rooftops, several trenches dug on the school garden, and the use of cover crops, the school has managed to sustainably trap water and soil moisture to support farming of diverse crops, not limited to vegetables, cereals, fruits, tuber crops such as cassava, sweet potatoes, and arrowroots, among others.
“I have never known that this area can be this productive,” said Naomi Sitati, a parent at the school and a smallholder farmer who has always cultivated maize and beans. “I have since been coming here to learn alongside the pupils, and now I have established my own agroecology unit on a half-acre piece of land at home.”
According to experts at the ongoing climate negotiations (COP 28) in Dubai, UAE, such agroecological farming techniques are key to the continent’s food systems because they optimize the use of local resources such as manure and local water sources for irrigation, thereby minimizing the ecological footprint and enhancing the sustainability of agricultural practices.
“Techniques such as rainwater harvesting, use of cover crops, and drought-resistant crops help conserve water,” said Dr Million Belay, the General Coordinator for the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa.
“This is especially vital as climate change is expected to make water sources more unpredictable and scarce,” he said during an event on the sidelines of the 28th round of climate negotiations in Dubai.
According to Xavier Emodo, the teacher in charge of the farming project at St Denis Libolina School, all organic waste in the school and rubbish collected under tree sheds are all used to make compost manure to keep the soils nourished.
“We have particular students who are always dedicated to the management of compost manure in this school; others are dedicated to pest control and crop management; and we even have a treasurer who takes record of any income generated from the surplus,” said Emondo. “These students are very passionate about whatever they are doing, given that our new teaching system, also known as competency-based curriculum, calls for such practical lessons as part of the syllabus.”
Each and every block at the school has small vegetable gardens in front of classes. Each garden is managed by learners from those particular classes. “Students from these classes are always competing to outdo each other,” said Emodo.
So far, the school has acquired two dairy cows, whose cow dung is instrumental in composting the manure, and they provide milk for the learners.
“We have found that by leveraging traditional knowledge and practices, agroecology empowers communities (such as St Denis Libolina School) to be stewards of their own land and resources, fostering local innovation and self-reliance in the face of climate change,” said Belay, who is now pushing for agroecology to be included in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) future negotiations agenda.
“We are calling for agroecology’s diversified cropping systems to be recommended for climate resilience because the techniques reduce the risk of total crop failure, providing a safety net for food production systems,” he said.
During last year’s climate negotiation (COP 27) in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, the “Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security” was adopted by all parties. The four-year joint work includes implementation of the outcomes of the Koronivia joint work on agriculture and previous activities addressing issues related to agriculture, as well as future topics, recognising that solutions are context-specific and take into account national circumstances.
One of the objectives for the joint work was to promote a holistic approach to addressing issues related to agriculture and food security, taking into consideration regional, national and local circumstances, in order to deliver a range of multiple benefits, where applicable, such as adaptation, adaptation co-benefits and mitigation, recognising that adaptation is a priority for vulnerable groups, including women, indigenous peoples and smallholder farmers
Evidence-based studies have demonstrated that diversification inherent in agroecology provides farmers with multiple income sources, such as different kinds of crops, livestock, and value-added products, thereby reducing economic vulnerability to climate-related shocks.
“It integrates food production’s ecological, economic, and social aspects, thereby promoting sustainable and equitable systems while also addressing farm-level production and socio-economic processes like markets and distribution,” said Belay.
So far, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has repeatedly recommended the use of agroecological principles and practices, among other approaches that work with natural processes to support food security, nutrition, health and well-being, livelihoods and biodiversity, sustainability, and ecosystem services in adaptation to climate change.
Suicide rates doubled in Venezuela during the harshest years of its humanitarian crisis. Males between the ages of 30 and 50, a productive age when it is very hard to be left without employment and income, are a group particularly vulnerable to self-inflicted violence. CREDIT: Ihpi
by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
Inter Press Service
CARACAS, Nov 28 (IPS) – In the wee hours of one morning in early November, Ernesto, 50, swallowed several glasses of a cocktail of drugs and alcohol in the apartment where he lived alone in the Venezuelan capital, ending a life tormented by declining health and lack of resources to cope as he would have liked.
In the last message to his relatives, which they showed to IPS, he wrote that “I can’t stand what’s happening to my eyes, I can’t afford an ophthalmologist, my molars are falling out, it hurts to eat, I can’t afford a dentist after years of being able to pay my expenses, now my dreams, plans, goals are disappearing…”
Years ago Ernesto, a fictitious name at the request of his family, was a successful salesman in various fields, a breadwinner for family members, a supporter of causes he found just. In his last note, he scribbled rather than wrote: “I did what I could, for my family and my country, but I will not continue being dead in life.”
The cascade of crises that have placed Venezuela in a complex humanitarian emergency have given rise to many complicated cases like Ernesto’s, reflected in an increase in suicides, especially in the sectors most vulnerable to lack of resources and to uncertainty and hopelessness.
The suicide rate “doubled between 2018 and 2022 compared to 2015, and it is very likely that the complex humanitarian emergency has been a determining factor in the increase,” demographer Gustavo Páez, of the non-governmental Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), told IPS.
This country of just over 28 million people went from a rate of 3.8 suicides per 100,000 people to 9.3 in 2018, with slight declines to 8.2 in 2019 and 7.7 in 2022, according to the OVV.
The annual average number of cases registered in the last four years is 2,260.
Rossana García Mujica, a clinical psychologist and professor at the public Central University of Venezuela, told IPS that these rates, although lower than the world average of 10.5 per 100,000 inhabitants and low in relation to other countries in the region, may nevertheless conceal underreporting.
The expert pointed out that “added to our complex humanitarian crisis, the last official yearbook (on the issue) came out in 2014,” and said that the decrease in the rate “could be due to the apparent economic improvement, but 2023 has been a difficult year and most probably these figures will not remain steady.”
A man carries a few items in his market bag in Caracas. The situation of poverty, of being unemployed and without the possibility of bringing home enough food and other products is recognized as a determining cause of crises leading to suicide. CREDIT: Provea
Humanitarian emergency
The HumVenezuela platform, made up of dozens of civil society organizations, says the crisis in the country classifies as a complex humanitarian emergency due to the combined erosion of the economic, institutional and social structures that guarantee the life, security, liberties and well-being of the population.
Starting in 2013 Venezuela suffered eight consecutive years of deep recession that cost four-fifths of its GDP, more than two years of hyperinflation, and collapsed local currency and wages, health and basic services in much of the country.
The multidimensional crisis also triggered the migration of more than seven million Venezuelans, according to United Nations figures.
In 2021 and 2022 there was a slight recovery in the economy, especially in consumption, partly due to the influx of remittances from hundreds of thousands of migrants, which came to a standstill this year.
The suicide rate “fluctuates at the pace of the complex humanitarian emergency,” said Paez, because “as the macro economy deteriorates, so does the family’s ability to access food, services, recreation and medicine. This leads to mental disorders associated with suicidal behavior.”
R. was an impoverished young woman who recorded a video that she posted on the social networks. She lived in the interior of the country, coming every month to Caracas to seek chemotherapy treatment in medicine banks provided by the government. She said that the last time, like other times, “they sent me from one end of the city to the other.”
“They were providing chemo until three in the afternoon. I arrived 15 minutes late. They refused to give it to me. I went to sleep at a relative’s house. I climbed about 200 steps (the steep hills in Caracas are crowded with poor neighborhoods). I’m so tired, my legs hurt, I give up, I don’t want to fight anymore,” she said in a quiet voice.
Paez said that another reason that may influence frustration and depression leading to self-harming behaviors is the grief in families due to migration, associated with the humanitarian emergency and impacting millions of families.
Clinical psychologists observe an increase in anxiety and depression disorders associated with suicidal behavior in adults. Among young people, self-injury and eating disorders are frequent. CREDIT: The Conversation
Ages and networks
In Venezuela “the economic issue, for those over 30 and especially for men between 40 and 50, is a determining factor,” psychologist Yorelis Acosta, who works with groups and individuals vulnerable to depression and fear, told IPS.
Acosta, who also teaches at UCV, said that “self-harm or the decision to take one’s life is closely related to ‘I don’t have a job’, ‘I’m out of work’, or ‘I have a disease and I can’t afford my treatment’.”
“During economic crises, suicides go up,” she said.
García Mujica said that “when we stop to look at which are our most vulnerable groups, men between 30 and 64 years old and young people between 15 and 24 lead the way.”
“In my practice I have observed a subjective increase in anxiety disorders and depression in adults, both closely associated with suicide and self-injury in young people, along with eating disorders,” said García Mujica.
Along with suicide, “self-harm is a way of coping with emotional pain, sadness, anger and stress that could have to do with intolerance of frustration and the immediacy associated with social networks,” said the expert.
“In my opinion, apart from our complex humanitarian crisis, we do not escape the problems also inherent to globalization and we have a very severe problem at the family level of face-to-face communication,” she added.
In this regard, she said that “it seems that family life takes place more on the phone than live, leaving the field open for adolescents to be nourished more by social networks than by real interactions.”
Between 2019 and 2022, of the cases of suicides reported in the media, 81 percent involved men and 19 percent women, according to the OVV; between 50 and 57 percent were adults between 30 and 64 years of age.
Teen suicide, meanwhile, has increased: there were 20 cases in 2020, 34 in 2021 and 49 in 2022. And 17 of the victims were under the age of 12.
View of an elevated viaduct (bridge) linking two parts of the Andean state of Merida. Authorities protect its sides with metal nets, to prevent it from being used by people to commit suicide, a phenomenon in which this mountainous region stands out since the beginning of the century. CREDIT: Government of Merida
Suicide in the mountains
One particularity is that Mérida, one of Venezuela’s 23 states, located in the Andes highlands in the southwest of the country, which has abundant agriculture and is home to some 900,000 people, has had the highest suicide rates for 20 years, reaching a peak of 22 per 100,000 in 2018.
“One of the reasons may be the character of the Merideños, especially in rural areas. They are introverted, quiet Andean people, who have a hard time letting things out, they bottle up a lot of negative feelings and thoughts or family conflicts,” said Paez.
Paez, coordinator of the OVV in Merida, also mentioned as a probable cause the widespread consumption of alcohol, and “in this state specialized in agriculture, the easy access to agrochemicals, often used to commit suicide.”
In the country 86 percent of the suicides registered last year by the OVV were carried out by hanging, poisoning or shooting.
Mérida continues to have the highest rate, 8.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by the Capital District (west of Caracas) with 7.6, and Táchira, another Andean state, with 6.9.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are at least 700,000 suicide deaths per year worldwide, with the most affected territories being the Danish island of Greenland (53.3 per 100,000 inhabitants), Lesotho in southern Africa (42.2) and Guyana on the northern tip of South America (32.6)
In the Americas, the countries with the highest rates, after Guyana, are Suriname (24.1), Uruguay (21.2), Cuba (14.5), the United States (14.1), Canada (10.7), Haiti (9.6), Chile (9.0) and Argentina (8.4); and the lowest rates are in the small Caribbean island states of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and Grenada (0.4 to 0.7 per 100,000 inhabitants).
Another aspect of the multidimensional crisis in Venezuela is the severe lack of face-to-face and family communication. According to some specialists, it seems that family life takes place more on the phone than live, leaving the field open for teenagers to feed more on social networks than on real interactions. CREDIT: The Conversation
Waiting for the government to take action
The experts consulted agree that in order to curb the rise in suicides, it is necessary to strengthen public health systems – “they are in crisis, if you call to make an appointment, you have to wait several months,” said Acosta – develop prevention programs and identify vulnerable groups or individuals with greater precision.
Paez added the need for the government to produce and maintain “updated and relevant statistics, disaggregated nationally and regionally by age, sex and other data that identify vulnerable groups and areas,” and more education “so that the issue is no longer stigmatized and taboo.”
García Mujica pointed out that “we need to direct our resources towards rescuing family values and preventing domestic violence in order to protect one of the most vulnerable groups, which are young people.”
“It is vital to take into account any comments regarding taking one’s own life and refer them to a specialist. In addition, we need to train more people in psychological first aid, so that the public is aware of the early signs of suicidal behavior,” added García Mujica.
These early signs may be followed by what become farewell messages received too late, a piece of paper or a video, traces of a humanitarian crisis.
Climate migrants tend to move to cities in their own countries where they often end up in urban slums characterized by sub-standard housing. Credit: Donatas Dabravolskas/Shutterstock
Opinion by Jin-ho Chung (oxford, england)
Inter Press Service
OXFORD, England, Nov 24 (IPS) – The impacts of climate change on human mobility have yet to be fully understood and addressed on a global scale, even though some 3.3 to 3.6 billion people are highly vulnerable to climate change.
Contrary to popular perceptions, most climate migrants move internally to cities within their own countries, attracted by the perceived employment, education, and healthcare opportunities that urban areas offer.
As these numbers increase, urban areas across the Global South face mounting pressures to provide sufficient housing, jobs, and public services to serve their growing populations.
Those moving due to climate extremes and environmental degradation will most likely find themselves living in urban slums, exposed to unhygienic conditions and forced to live in sub-standard housing.
They could also face highly competitive job markets for which they may lack qualifications or experience, and limited access to healthcare and public services due to citizenship restrictions.
Urban authorities across the Global South will be nervously anticipating an influx of new arrivals as the climate crisis intensifies, grappling with the challenge of integrating these newcomers without increasing pressure on already stretched urban infrastructure and services.
For inspiration they might look at other urban areas that have made significant progress in recent years to enhance their resilience and sustainability.
During the course of my research, I have also wondered whether urban authorities could view the climate migration challenge as an opportunity – to not only alleviate pressures but also to simultaneously pursue development objectives, stimulate economies, and ensure safe and secure living conditions for all residents?
Enhancing urban development
A strategic policy response could help mitigate challenges while preparing cities for the future. City governments will need to play a pivotal role in transforming urban migration into an effective climate change adaptation strategy that benefits both climate-vulnerable rural communities and the cities they settle in.
By doing so, city governments can proactively manage the challenges posed by climate migrants while also harnessing their potential contributions to a city’s economic growth and resilience.
Migrants, acting as agents of change, often support their home communities through remittances. Dynamic labour markets, enabling the geographic mobility of workers, are essential to supply labour precisely where and when it’s needed.
Urban authorities will need to examine mobility patterns and trends, identifying and prioritizing urban areas and infrastructure that require support. Additional legal measures may also be required, including labour laws that strengthen the rights of migrant workers, ensure safe working environments, and provide protection from exploitation.
Migrants’ social inclusion can be secured through education and training, which enhance their employment prospects, and access to healthcare and affordable and suitable housing.
The role of city governments, however, will depend on national governments granting urban authorities more influence in critical policy domains. Policy collaboration across different levels of governance is also key to supporting migrants and enhancing climate-compatible development in both places of origin and destination through circular mobility initiatives.
Accelerating a climate-resilient urban renaissance
COPs have historically made progress in advancing policies, funding, and recommendations to support climate-related migrants and cities in their adaptation efforts. It is imperative that COP28 fulfil its promise to increase climate funding for developing countries, including cities.
Urban areas are not only home to more than half of the world’s population, but also serve as the primary engines of the global economy and job creation. Funds targeting cities can help accelerate the global green transition.
However, COP28 will need to address a critical shortage in available funding, laid bare by the UN Environment Programme’s recent Adaptation Gap report which estimates that developing countries will need between $215 and $387 billion in public adaptation finance per year this decade.
The trend of decreasing adaptation funds – only $21 billion was available in 2021, $4 billion less than the previous year – needs to be urgently addressed.
COP28, just a few weeks away, is an opportunity to emphasize the need for long-term policy support aimed at tackling the challenges associated with climate-induced migration to urban areas.
The decision to dedicate a day at the summit to ‘multilateral action, urbanization, and the built environment’ underscores the central role that cities will play in our transition to more resilient and sustainable societies. Anticipating and responding strategically to climate migration will support an urban renaissance that is able to cope with climate change while delivering secure housing, improved services, and decent jobs for all.
Jin-ho Chung is Research Fellow at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR)
We face a critical time where action needs to be scaled-up dramatically if we are to avoid the worst outcomes from the climate threat. Credit: Guillermo Flores/IPS
Opinion by Felix Dodds, Chris Spence (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Nov 22 (IPS) – Climate change has been a source of concern among the international community since the 1970s. Yet, almost fifty years since the issue was first raised in international diplomatic circles by prominent scientists, the situation continues to deteriorate, with rises in temperatures and extreme weather causing ever-magnifying problems around the world.
What has the global community done to date to deal with what many consider an existential threat to humanity’s future? And what needs to happen next in the UN negotiations as diplomats and other key stakeholders head to Dubai for COP28? This briefing provides a short history of global cooperation to date, then looks towards Dubai and beyond for what needs to happen next.
We argue that, although much more has been done to date than many give the UN and global community credit for, we face a critical time where action needs to be scaled-up dramatically if we are to avoid the worst outcomes from the climate threat.
A Brief History of the International Community’s Response to Climate Change
The United Nations first began to set out the case for action on climate change in the late 1970s, with the First World Climate Conference in 1979. Sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), it brought together scientists from various disciplines to explore the issue.
This led in 1988 to the establishment by the WMO and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which took scientific consideration of climate change to a new level. The research-based warnings presented by the IPCC strengthened the case for action (and continue to do so today).
Initially, a Second World Climate Conference was held in 1990 and this set the agenda for negotiations on a global treaty. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was agreed by the UN General Assembly in time for the June 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The agreement entered into force in March 1994 when 50 countries had ratified the convention through their legislatures. It now has 198 Parties.
The UNFCCC is sometimes criticized for being weak or ineffective. However, as a “framework” convention, it should really be considered a foundation or starting-point for further agreements that build upon it. In this respect, it models earlier agreements, including the ones that have so successfully tackled the ozone crisis.
The Vienna Convention, which was the first treaty on ozone, was itself quite limited. However, subsequent agreements, including the Montreal Protocol, built a strong and ultimately successful structure upon this early foundation.
Furthermore, the UNFCCC does include some strong and important concepts and commitments, including the need to limit climate change caused by humans to a level that is not dangerous. It also recognizes that some countries are better placed than others to do this work, and that many, such as those in the Global South, will need support and assistance.
The UNFCCC led rapidly to the Kyoto Protocol, which was agreed in December 1997. It, too, recognized the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” between different groups of countries, with developed countries to take the lead and carry the most responsibility for emissions in the atmosphere.
The Kyoto Protocol was innovative in several ways.
First, it included specific targets for many countries from the Global North. While not all governments took these as seriously as they might, in many countries it started an ongoing and detailed policy response from governments, including greater investment in renewable energy and other policy shifts to begin to decouple economic growth from the growth in fossil fuel emissions.
These efforts have enjoyed some success, and per capita emissions have dropped in many industrialized countries even as rising populations and economic growth elsewhere mean global emissions have continued to increase overall.
What’s more, the Kyoto Protocol provided a catalyst for private sector engagement. Government policies that encouraged corporate investment in new technologies, emissions trading, and other innovations began to make the climate response look more like a “whole-of-society” effort than one involving sequestered government departments.
However, as the economies of the Global South grew and prospered in the 2000s, it was clear that Kyoto, with its focus squarely on actions in the Global North, would not be enough.
Hopes were high that the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009 would replace the Kyoto Protocol with a more ambitious approach that would come into effect from 2012.
Ultimately, it failed in its immediate goal of securing a new, legally binding agreement. However, as we note in our book, Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy (Routledge, 2022), although the meeting did not secure a new deal, President Obama did manage to float some new concepts in a weakened outcome known as the Copenhagen Accord. The ideas it contained included a $100 billion climate fund to help the Global South and, even more significantly, a need for all countries to be a part of the solution to climate change.
In 2015, the seeds sown at the disappointing meeting in Copenhagen finally bore fruit. The Paris Agreement took on the ambitious aim of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. It requires countries to take on targets and to report back to the UN on progress.
While some criticized these targets for being voluntary rather than mandatory (as was the case with Kyoto), many praised the fact that the commitments were to be taken on by all countries. What’s more, the Paris Agreement provided flexibility so countries could take on what was best fitted to their particular circumstances and level of economic development. This made it possible for all countries to agree on the way forward, since it continued to respect nations’ sovereignty rather than trying to impose specific emissions targets on them.
One sign that Paris has had a positive impact has been forecasts for future global temperature rise by the end of the century. Before 2015, various predictions based on emissions trends suggested rises of upwards of 4, 5, and 6 Celsius, or even higher.
This would be utterly catastrophic for humanity. Today, forecasts trend somewhere between 1.8C-3C, depending on the assumptions in the model. To be clear, these are still very bleak numbers. They signify likely outcomes that are highly dangerous and may even be calamitous. But it does show an encouraging trend.
One of the family photos taken after the laborious end of the 26th climate summit in Glasgow, which closed a day later than scheduled with a Climate Pact described as falling short by even the most optimistic, lacking important decisions to combat the crisis and without directly confronting fossil fuels, the cause of the emergency. CREDIT: UNFCCC
The next significant UN climate conference was COP26 in Glasgow. Held in 2021 as the world was still reeling from the COVID pandemic, the outcome from COP26 included the Glasgow Climate Pact, which sought to promote the reduced use of coal and other sources of emissions.
Glasgow also witnessed the first review of countries’ voluntary commitments under Paris (known in UN-speak as “Nationally Determined Contributions”). Glasgow also promoted the idea of ‘coalitions of the willing’ to advance ideas that might not have enough support to find consensus among all 198 countries that belonged to the UNFCCC, but that were nevertheless considered by some to be worth pursuing.
In spite of some skepticism at the time, some of these coalitions do promise positive results. For instance, the Methane Pledge now has 111 countries committing to a 30% reduction in methane on 2020 levels by 2030. If countries honor their promises, this could bring down climate projections by 0.2C by 2050.
Another coalition of the willing was the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), which brought commitments from over 650 global financial institutions from banking, asset owners and managers, insurers and financial service providers committing to support the transition to net zero. Again, promises only matter if they are kept. However, if they are honored, then the impact of GFANZ will be significant.
In 2022, the UN Climate Conference, COP27, was held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. There, the major breakthrough was the agreement on the need for a fund to help developing countries suffering loss and damage caused by climate change. Such a fund has long been a rallying cry for negotiators from the Global South, as well as their allies.
For a meeting billed as the “implementation COP” where climate action was taken to another level, the news on mitigation and finance was therefore disappointing. Credit: Shutterstock
What Next? Looking towards COP28 in Dubai
COP28 is being held against a complicated global backdrop. With conflict and turmoil in Europe and the Middle East, tension among the great powers and economic uncertainty around the world, how realistic can our ambitions be for COP28 and what does it need to deliver for us to consider it a success?
Progress on Loss and Damage
The run-up to COP28 in Dubai has seen significant work by a transitional committee deliberating on the infrastructure of a future Loss and Damage Fund. It was meant to have three meetings between the COPs and ultimately needed more before a compromise was found on where such a fund might be situated. In the end, the agreement was for the World Bank to act as an “interim” host for four years.
The decision to set up a similar governance structure to the Green Climate Fund has perhaps given it a heavy bureaucracy, which might be a problem in the future. However, the forward momentum and growing certainty on how it will be organized has encouraged a number of countries to put funds into the nascent Loss and Damage Fund. This includes the European Union, which is pledging “substantial” contributions. Meanwhile, the host country, UAE, is looking at making a contribution, The US has also said it would put “several millions into the fund”. While modest in size, it is at least a start.
A key issue in Dubai will be who will get the money. The agreement at COP27 was to assist “developing nations, especially those that are particularly vulnerable”.
The EU is suggesting this means the least developed countries and small island developing states. Developing countries have so far resisted reducing it to those groups. Some point to situations such as the terrible floods in Pakistan before COP27 as an example of how funds might be allocated. Pakistan is neither a least developed country nor an island state. Does that mean it would not have been eligible had such a fund existed at the time, in spite of its clear and obvious need?
In spite of these kind of uncertainties, COP28 is expected to advance work on the Loss and Damage Fund. Failure to do so would be judged harshly, given recent momentum.
Beyond Loss and Damage – Boosting Funding
The commitment proposed back in Copenhagen in 2009 for US$100 billion a year for climate finance by 2020 was not achieved until 2022. In part, the blame for this can be placed on COVID 19, which caused disruption in aid and climate budgets, among many other problems.
While the $100 billion goal has now been attained, it is important to remember that this was intended as a floor and not a ceiling. Furthermore, much of the money is being distributed as loans rather than grants. As a consequence, it has actually had a negative impact on the indebtedness of some least developed countries.
The reality is that we need trillions, not billions, to address climate change and that government aid will not be enough. As a reference point, Official Development Assistance (ODA) reached a new high of US$204 billion in 2022. While welcome, this is wholly inadequate for the climate crisis, for which funding should be additional to ODA in any case.
COP28 marks a staging post on the path to developing a new collective quantified goal on climate finance, which is slated to be agreed in 2024. In Dubai there will be a High-Level Ministerial Dialogue on 3 December. This discussion should send a strong signal that any new goal in 2024 will be ambitious, innovative, and at a much higher level than in the past. Anything less will invite criticisms that COP28 was a missed opportunity.
Looking Back to Leap Forward?
A major component of the talks at COP28 will be what insiders call the “global stocktake”. Held every five years, it presents delegates with an opportunity to assess their collective progress in delivering on the Paris Agreement. How has the world performed in terms of climate mitigation, adaptation, and implementation?
Participants in this year’s stocktake have before them the worrying fact that the world is already nudging close to the 1.5C warming limit governments pledged to stay within. Optimists are hoping COP28 catalyzes the beginning of more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions in the next two years, and a strong collective undertaking by governments to redouble their efforts.
The signs so far are not positive. Since COP27, only 20 countries have increased their pledges, including Egypt, Mexico, Norway, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates.
While this should be welcomed, none of the major emitters has stepped forward. Recently, the head of the UN’s climate office, Simon Stiell, labeled efforts as “baby steps” rather than the “bold strides” that are needed. If COP28 does not yield a satisfactory outcome on this topic, many are likely to see it as a missed opportunity, or even as a failure. At the very least, major emitters should step up at COP28 and indicate that they will be announcing much more ambitious goals sooner than later.
A Host of Problems?
In recent months, there has been considerable criticism of the incoming UAE Presidency. Many media commentators have asked why an OPEC member should be hosting a climate COP? Does this not send a bad signal, they ask?
Many of these talking heads may not be aware that UN Climate Summits are rotated around the five UN regions, and that this was Asia’s turn to host. Furthermore, there was little appetite from other governments in the region to host it.
Critics have also pointed out that the President of COP28 will be Sultan Al Jaber, who has a history in the fossil-fuel industry. The counter-argument is that he has also been prominent in promoting the UAE’s work on renewable energy. He was the founding CEO and is the current Chair of Masdar, a UAE-owned renewable energy company. As we write this article, the United Arab Emirates has launched the Al Dhafra solar farm. It is now the world’s largest single-site solar farm, powering 200,000 homes.
Rather than engaging in these debates, we would argue that the host government should be judged on whether COP28 is a success. The UAE Presidency has identified its own priorities where they will push for major progress: mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, innovating the UN process by engaging more with the private sector, and pushing for greater inclusion, accountability and transparency.
These are worthy goals and it should therefore be possible to judge them based on these topics once the meeting ends. If they deliver, it will show that a fossil fuel producer is capable of promoting progress on climate change. If it does not, then the UAE will certainly come in for criticism.
It is also worth noting that, although the UAE is a prominent fossil fuel producer, many previous hosts have also been in the same camp, even if some are less well known for this. For instance, Poland, South Africa, India, and Indonesia have all hosted COPs in the past (Poland has actually hosted three), and yet all four of these countries line up among the world’s top ten coal producing countries.
Meanwhile, Qatar, another former host, is a major oil and gas producer. Should they not have hosted the COPs? Again, we feel hosts should be judged by the results they achieve.
Ramping Up the Carbon Market
The Paris Agreement included use of carbon markets to reach our emissions targets. A rulebook for this was largely completed at Glasgow in 2021. This should open the door to many billions of dollars of investments (in 2021 it was $2 billion). The rules set at Glasgow should help ensure that offsets are of high “quality” (meaning they genuinely help reduce and offset emissions).
COP28 will provide an opportunity to assess early progress as we move into an implementation phase. Are the markets ramping up? Who is using them, and how can we encourage them to grow? COP28 needs to address these issues.
Global Goal on Adaptation
The world is so far down the climate change path that adapting to its impact is already happening and will be unavoidable in future. A review under what is known as the Glasgow–Sharm el-Sheikh work programme (GlaSS) will be presented at COP28, and clear targets, indicators, and financing options are expected by COP29.
There was also a commitment in Glasgow to double adaptation funding by 2025. If this happened, it would raise the amount to US$40 billion annually. Again, COP28 provides an opportunity to give some early signals this goal will be achieved.
Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero
Outside the government negotiations, observers at COP28 will also be looking for progress by other stakeholders. For instance, the Glasgow Finance Alliance for Net Zero referred to earlier represents two-fifths of the world’s financial assets, $130 trillion, under the management of banks, insurers and pension funds that have signed up to 2050 net-zero goals, including limiting global warming to 1.5C. The potential of such a group is enormous.
At COP28, this group should report back on progress, and other stakeholders should be ready to hold it to account to ensure these goals are real and are being actively pursued, rather than just being empty promises.
Judging Dubai
COP28 has a number of key outcomes it needs to deliver, as well as being an important stepping stone to further COPs that will also have to deliver specific outcomes that are ambitious and commensurate with the scale of the challenge we face.
If delegates in Dubai are to declare success, they will need to finalize the Loss and Damage Fund, advance the Goal Global on Adaptation, and pack a real punch with the Global Stocktake, with concrete outcomes to help us limit global temperature rise. Do this, and COP28 stands a good chance of being hailed a success. Fail to deliver and observers will view it rightly as a missed opportunity not just for diplomacy, but in guiding us towards a more sustainable future.
Felix Dodds and Chris Spence are co-editors of the recent book, Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage (Routledge Press, 2022). It includes chapters on the climate negotiations held in Kyoto (1997), Copenhagen (2009) and Paris (2015). Felix is also Director, Multilateral Affairs. Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Service (RMWSSS) at Arizona State University
References
UNFCCC (2023) Nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. Synthesis report by the secretariathttps://unfccc.int/documents/632334
Marking World Toilet Day on November 19th, the global community faces a pressing sanitation crisis affecting 3.5 billion people. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS
Opinion by Thokozani Dlamini (pretoria, south africa)
Inter Press Service
PRETORIA, South Africa, Nov 19 (IPS) – World Toilet Day 2023, on 19 November, focusing on ‘Accelerating Change’ – Toilets are a foundation stone of public health and play a critical role in protecting the environment”Celebrated annually on the 19th of November, World Toilet Day aims to inspire concerted efforts in addressing the pressing global sanitation crisis, which currently leaves approximately 3.5 billion people without access to safely managed sanitation.
Even today, a staggering 3.5 billion individuals lack safely managed sanitation, and an appalling 419 million people continue to use ‘open defecation’, a condition that encourages the spread of diseases and claims the lives of 1,000 children under the age of five daily. This sanitation crisis, a hazard to human health and the environment, disproportionately affects women, girls, and other vulnerable groups.
Given the fact that only seven years remain to attain the 2030 target for Sustainable Development Goal 6 – ensuring safe water for all – the global community needs to accelerate its efforts to ensure that the 2030 agenda is realized.
Our current pace, coupled with insufficient funds, escalating demand, deteriorating water quality, and the inadequacies of existing governance frameworks, gravely threatens the realization of this goal.
In alignment with this year’s theme – ‘Accelerating Change’ – it’s imperative that we expedite our global efforts to achieve the UN’s 2030 target. Governments and major institutions must synergistically operate, take accountability for their promises, and timely deliver on them. Actually, every individual, regardless of their contributions’ scale, has a role in accelerating this progress.
Implications of poor sanitation
The implications of poor water and sanitation are widespread and deleterious, gravely affecting individuals who are forced to use unsanitary toilet facilities or consume and utilize contaminated water. Diseases linked to sanitation, like diarrheal diseases, cholera, typhoid fever, hepatitis A, and various parasitic infections, pose significant public health risks.
These illnesses can result in extensive sickness, hospitalizations, and even fatalities, particularly in areas with sparse access to clean water and adequate sanitation facilities. Enhancements of sanitation infrastructure can decrease these disease burdens and elevate public health globally.
Benefits of good sanitation
Absolutely, having good sanitation facilities indeed has numerous benefits. They go beyond the improvement of public health. Proper sanitation infrastructure can reduce healthcare costs as there are fewer cases of sanitation-related diseases. It can also increase productivity as individuals are healthier and can devote more time to work. studies, or other activities.
This results in a better quality of life for individuals and their communities. Furthermore, good sanitation infrastructure contributes to environmental sustainability. It aids in reducing pollution since waste is properly managed and does not end up contaminating water bodies and other natural environments. A safe and clean environment, in turn, helps protect vital natural resources, including clean water sources.
Collaborative efforts
Governments, donors, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations all play significant roles in advancing sanitation infrastructure. They need to cooperate and work cohesively towards delivering water and sanitation services effectively. Furthermore, research institutions can contribute by providing the necessary scientific understanding and technological innovations. This joint endeavour will not just help in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, specifically Goal 6, but also improve public health and well-being on a global scale.
SADC-GMI’s efforts
SADC-GMI has made commendable efforts by implementing various projects in SADC Member States to ensure everyone has access to water and sanitation as per the United Nations Agenda 2030. These initiatives have positively impacted local communities by ensuring a continuous water supply which ultimately leads to better hygiene. Beyond hygiene, these water supply projects have also brought about improved economic benefits for the communities. Indeed, the projects are transformative, aiding communities in gaining access to dependable water supply for both domestic and economic uses.
These projects, despite the complications posed by climate change, continue to thrive and be sustainable. This resilience greatly benefits communities, offering steady water for various needs. This ties into reaching the sanitation goals defined by the United Nations Agenda 2030.
Yes, with the 2030 deadline of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals approaching, fast progress is needed to ensure everyone has access to basic sanitation facilities and clean water. Sanitation and drinking water are human rights, and access to these services is crucial for people’s health and the integrity of the environment. To this end, cooperation between different sectors – governments, donors, the private sector, research institutions, and civil society will be critical in facilitating this progression.
Thokozani Dlamini is SADC-GMI Communication and Knowledge Management Specialist
6.5% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean suffers from hunger, or 43.2 million people. Credit: FAO
Opinion by Mario Lubetkin (santiago)
Inter Press Service
SANTIAGO, Nov 10 (IPS) – Mario Lubetkin is FAO Assistant Director-General and FAO Regional Representative for Latin America and the CaribbeanThe figures published by the latest Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2023 are cause for great concern. The document is clear: hunger continues to significantly affect Latin America and the Caribbean.
The reasons are varied; consequences of the pandemic, armed conflicts, climate crisis, economic slowdown, rising food inflation, and income inequality have all generated a difficult scenario that requires immediate action.
Our region has an opportunity that we must not miss. Only with stability and peace will it be possible to achieve development and resolve food insecurity.
According to the Regional Overview 2023, although Latin America and the Caribbean registers a slight drop of 0.5% in hunger levels when compared to the previous measurement, it is essential to remember that, despite this progress, we are still 0.9 percentage points above the hunger levels of 2019, prior to the outbreak of COVID-19.
But hunger does not affect the region uniformly. In South America, there was a reduction of 3.5 million hungry people between 2021 and 2022, but there are still 6 million additional undernourished people compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. In Mesoamerica, the prevalence of hunger has barely changed, affecting 9.1 million people in 2022, representing 5.1%.
The situation is worrisome in the Caribbean, where 7.2 million people experienced hunger in 2022, with an alarming prevalence of 16.3% of the population. Between 2021 and 2022, hunger increased by 700,000 people, and compared to 2019, the increase was 1 million people, with Haiti being one of the most affected countries.
While hunger figures continue to concern us, overweight in children under five years of age continues to rise, exceeding the global estimate, and a quarter of the adult population lives with obesity.
FAO recognizes the urgency of addressing this issue and is committed to updating the CELAC FNS Plan for food and nutritional security. The recent Buenos Aires Declaration of the VII CELAC Summit reaffirmed the commitment of the 33 member states to food security, agriculture, and sustainable development.
This declaration emphasized the importance of updating the plan in accordance with the new international context and the challenges facing the region, with the technical assistance of global organizations like FAO and regional organizations such as ECLAC, IICA, and ALADI, to achieve a comprehensive solution.
The update of the food plan takes into account national commitments related to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, evidence-based policies and good practices in the region, providing a mechanism that contributes to the eradication of poverty, hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition.
Eradicating hunger is a shared responsibility, and together we must redouble our efforts to ensure that no citizen of Latin America and the Caribbean goes hungry. Food security is essential for the well-being of our communities and the sustainable development of the region, and we must continue to work together, leaving no one behind. FAO is fully committed to this challenge.
ACAPULCO, Mexico, Nov 02 (IPS) – Acapulco is a paradise. A port of golden sunsets, toasted sand, and deep blue sea. Its dream beaches captivated the hearts of Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor. US President John F. Kennedy chose its shores to spend his honeymoon with Jackie Kennedy. Its luxury hotels and the untamed sea made it the most famous tourist destination in Mexico.
Rosi OrozcoToday, Acapulco is devastated. A Category 5 hurricane—the deadliest possible rating—called “Otis” hit the beach on October 25 with incomparable force. No one anticipated it. Hours before it made landfall, it was just an inconvenient storm. Suddenly it became a deadly cyclone. Most of the hotels are destroyed, the sea swallowed people, houses were blown away, and dozens of people are dead.
In the last century, its beauty attracted the world’s most influential celebrities. Its tranquil mornings and lively nightlife attracted actresses, singers, politicians, aristocratic musicians, and families who wanted to spend their summers by the sea. I myself spent my youth at the family timeshare apartment in Acapulco, and it was there that I met my husband Alejandro, with whom I’ve been married for 40 years. My life is permanently connected to Acapulco.
Luxury businessmen, millionaire athletes, and Michelin-starred chefs arrived. Also drug dealers, money launderers, and men looking for girls and boys to rape in exchange for food or a few dollars for their parents who lived in the city’s poor areas.
Because there are two Acapulcos. They both share an airport and roads, so all roads lead to that pair of versions of the same city. There is a “diamond Acapulco” where the rich vacation with all the amenities at their disposal. And there is a “traditional Acapulco,” where the poor live who work for wealthy tourists.
The people who inhabit “diamond Acapulco” and “traditional Acapulco” do not usually cross paths. They live in the same city, but they are separated by golf courses and exclusive shopping malls. Only rich foreigners and wealthy nationals cross to the poor side when they feel a repugnant urge: to make their plans for child sex tourism a reality with girls and boys as young as 3 years old.
Acapulco is one of the most unequal tourist destinations in the world. In Mexico, it is the most unequal municipality of all: more than 60% of its 900,000 inhabitants live in extreme poverty, which means they do not know what they will eat today or tomorrow. They are the workers who serve plates of fresh seafood, who sweep marble floors, who fill the wine glasses of tourists.
For years, journalists and human rights organizations have told horrific stories that combine poverty, inequality, and sex tourism: a 6-year-old boy rented out to be photographed naked in exchange for milk and eggs; a 9-year-old girl sold to a Canadian tourist to be his wife for a month; homeless teenagers invited to sex parties on lavish yachts in exchange for food; parents and mothers waiting outside hotels for their children to be raped for a price paid in dollars per hour.
Those pedophiles and child molesters turned Acapulco into the country’s primary destination for child sexual tourism. They also led Mexico to the disgraceful second position in the production of child pornography, only surpassed by Thailand, according to data from the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Today, Acapulco is a different place. Little remains of the port that enchanted singers Agustín Lara and Luis Miguel. There are thousands of poor families without homes, hundreds of workers who lost their jobs, and dozens of fishermen without boats to go out to sea to find sustenance. The destruction is so extensive that complete economic recovery is estimated to take decades, not years.
Under these conditions, childhood is at very high risk. Many families have lost so much that their bodies are the only currency they have left. And in the dirty business of forced prostitution, child bodies are the most sought after.
Amid this unprecedented crisis in Mexico, the Chamber of Deputies approved amendments to the general law against human trafficking. These changes aim to broaden the scope of the law enacted in 2012 and update it to address new technologies that traffickers and organized crime engaged in sexual exploitation can use. The wording has some issues that we are still analyzing, but it also includes positive aspects.
For example, it introduces new protections for individuals with injuries, intellectual disabilities, and Afro-Mexican towns and communities. The latter represent 6.5% of the total population in Guerrero and 4% of the residents in Acapulco, according to the National Population Council.
Civil society organizations are monitoring these changes and hope that the deputies will honor their commitment to protecting the victims.
Meanwhile, it is the responsibility of all, not just in Mexico, to help Acapulco back on its feet, a place that has given so much to both nationals and foreigners. It won’t be easy or quick, but every day we delay puts the vulnerable children at risk due to the magnitude of sexual tourism in that beautiful port.
After Hurricane Otis, Acapulco will be different. Its reconstruction is an opportunity to build a new city on the ruins of depravity, one with values and respect for human dignity. I long for the day to see it standing and for its coastline, beach, and air to remain a paradise, especially for children like me who grew up happily by the sea.
Cattle carcass in Kenya’s Kitengela Maasai rangelands in the great drought of 2009. A new report shows that major river basis in Africa have become sources of conflict due to drying up thanks to climate change and environmental degradation. Credit: ILRI
by Maina Waruru (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Oct 24 (IPS) – Almost all major river basins in Africa have become the epicentres for conflicts over the last 20 years, and agricultural yields on the continent could drop by up to 50 percent in the coming years owing to the drying up of ‘traditional’ water sources, thanks in part to effects climate change and degradation of the environment, the inaugural edition of the State of Africa’s Environment Report 2023 released in Nairobi finds.
At the same time, environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity affect the continent the most, with a loss of 4 million hectares of forest cover each year, double the global average rate.
This, in part, has contributed to over 50 million people migrating from the degraded areas of sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe by 2020, according to the report compiled by India’s Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) released in Nairobi on October 13, 2023.
It finds that all the critical water basins on the continent were experiencing distress and turbulence due to, among other reasons, unsustainable use of resources besides climate, becoming hotspots for competition over water.
The basins include Lake Chad, shared by Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger, the river Nile shared by Egypt, Uganda, Sudan and Ethiopia; Lake Victoria, Shared by Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania; and the river Niger used by communities in Niger, Mali and Nigeria.
Also on the list is the river Congo basin, a joint resource used by Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, and the Lake Malawi basin shared by Tanzania and Malawi. Also on the list is the Lake Turkana basin in Kenya and Ethiopia.
Examples show that the Lake Chad basin disputes started in 1980, and the water body has diminished by 90 percent since the 1960s due to overuse and climate change effects.
“For years, the lake has supported drinking water, irrigation, fishing, livestock and economic activity for over 30 million people; it is vital for indigenous, pastoral and farming communities in one of the world’s poorest countries. However, climate change has fueled massive environmental and humanitarian crises in the region,” the report notes.
It notes that international actors and regional governments have long ignored the interplay between climate change, community violence and the forced displacement of civilians.
“Conflict between herders and farmers have become common as livelihoods are lost, and families dependent on the lake are migrating to other areas in search of water,” the report says.
“In the Congo basin, disputes started in 1960. The basin witnesses multifaceted crises, including forced displacement, violent conflicts, political instability, and climate change impacts,” it concludes.
On the other hand, it traces conflicts in the Niger basin to 1980, blaming climate change for disagreements over “damage to farmland and restricted access to water, while in the Nile, disagreements began around 2011 stemming from the construction of the Grand Renaissance dam by Ethiopia, which Egypt fears will impact water flow.
Conflicts over Lake Turkana resources are fairly recent, traced to 2016 when it was observed that with 90 percent of its water from the Omo River in Ethiopia, rising temperatures and reduced rainfall have contributed to the lake’s ‘retreat’ into Kenya.
To survive, the Ethiopian herder tribes began following the water, resulting in inter-tribal conflict with their Kenyan counterparts. The construction of Ethiopia’s Gilgel Gibe III Dam on the river worsened matters.
It notes that in 2020, between 75 and 250 million people on the continent were projected to be “exposed to increased water stress” due to climate change, warning that in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could drop up to 50 percent due to drying up of traditional water sources including lakes, rivers, and wells.
“How Africa manages its water resources will define how water-secure the world would be. Africa’s aquifers hold 0.66 million KM3 of water. This is more than 100 times the annual renewable freshwater resources stored in dams and rivers.”
Take Ethiopia, for instance. Known as the continent’s water tower, the country is confronting huge challenges of disappearing lakes and rivers, it explains.
Africa, the world’s second-largest and second-most-populous continent, hosts a quarter of the planet’s animal and plant species, but the species extinction and general biodiversity loss rate in the continent are higher than in the rest of the world.
As a result, total deaths from extreme weather, climate or water stress in the world in the last 50 years, 35 percent of them were in Africa. Predictably, Africa will account for 40 percent of the world’s migration due to climate change.
“While the Global South will bear the maximum burden of internal migration, the reasons might vary from region to region, depending on climate change-related issues like water scarcity or rising sea levels. However, water scarcity will be the main driving force of the total migration, the report explains.
Citing the example of chimpanzees, the SOE 2023 reports that there are only 1.050 million to 2.050 million of the species on the continent, limited to Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon, with populations having disappeared in Gambia, Burkina Faso, Benin, and Togo.
On the brighter side, it says that African countries have some pioneering conservation models that, among other things, put communities at the centre of conservation efforts, noting that if Africa protects its biodiversity, the whole world will also gain.
Protected areas in Africa, if sustainably used, can eradicate poverty and bring peace, it asserts.
South Africa will be worst impacted by extreme weather events, making some areas inhospitable because of weather events, where already people are being forced to migrate within their own countries or regions in search of more hospitable and better living conditions, said Sunita Narain, CSE Director General.
Explaining the rationale behind the report, Narain said: “We can read and get the immediate story today, but often we do not get the big picture. The report will help us get that big picture. It will enable us to understand the different aspects of the environment by putting together a comprehensive picture that makes the links clearer between the environment and development. Environment and development are two sides of the same coin.”
She added that the report, produced with input from scientists and Africa-based journalists, also helped people appreciate the link between development and the environment.
According to Mamo Boru Mamo, director of Kenya’s National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), the issues raised in the report are important and pertinent to the environment in Africa.
Among other things, the SOE 2023 had captured the plight of East Africa’s agro-pastoral communities whose migration from arid and semi-arid areas of Africa to urban centres and out of the continent has risen over the recent years, thanks in part to accelerated degradation of the environment.
“The continent has a collective responsibility to manage the environment sustainably while giving direction on the position Africa should take in the upcoming UN’s COP28 in Dubai,” he said.
Citing the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), “Provisional State of the Global Climate 2022”, it finds that in East Africa, rainfall has been below average for four consecutive wet seasons, the most extended sequence in 40 years.
The region recorded five consecutive deficit rainy seasons by the end of 2022, with the rainy season of March to May 2022 being the driest in over 70 years for Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, partly due to the destruction of the environment and climate change.
Overall, the report confirms that the climate crisis in Africa was an existential problem facing millions of people who have endured the wrath of nature for years.
Over 100 journalists, researchers and experts from across Africa have contributed to the preparation of this annual publication.
On residential streets of Caracas with little traffic it is possible to see cars that have been abandoned by their owners for years. They probably migrated from Venezuela or cannot afford to repair and sell their vehicles. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS
by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
Inter Press Service
CARACAS, Oct 23 (IPS) – Diego has just enrolled to study journalism at a university in the Venezuelan capital and, with 2,000 dollars that his family members managed to gather, has bought his first car, a small 2007 Ford that can take him to class from his home in the neighboring Caribbean port city of La Guaira.
Tomás, an experienced physiotherapist who sold Diego the car, is leaving for Spain where a job awaits him without delay, “so I’m quickly selling off things that will give me money to settle there, such as furniture, household goods and appliances, but for now I sold only one of my two cars,” he told IPS.
“This Ford Fiesta was my first car, I loved it very much, but it doesn’t make sense for me to hold on to two vehicles. I’m keeping a 2011 pickup truck that is in good condition, just in case I don’t do well and I have to return,” added the professional who, like other sources who spoke to IPS, asked not to disclose his last name “for safety reasons.”
The migration of almost eight million Venezuelans in the last 10 years, and the general impoverishment of the population, have led to the deterioration of what was once a shiny fleet of vehicles, with one out of every four vehicles left standing now due to lack of maintenance and leaving much of the rest aging and on the way to the junkyards.
In the basements of parking lots, and in the streets of towns and cities, thousands and thousands of vehicles are permanently parked under layers of dust and oblivion, because their owners have left or because they do not have the money to buy spare parts and pay the costs of repairs.
Along the streets of any Venezuelan city can be seen old rundown vehicles with no sign that the necessary repairs will be made. The impoverishment of the population is at the root of this decline. CREDIT: RrSs
Aging vehicle fleet
Omar Bautista, president of the Chamber of Venezuelan Automotive Manufacturers, told IPS that “the vehicle fleet in Venezuela – a country that now has 28 million inhabitants – is about 4.1 million vehicles, with an average age of 22 years, and 25 percent of them are out of service.”
“The loss of purchasing power of the owners has caused most of them to delay the maintenance of their vehicles and the replacement of the spare parts that suffer wear and tear, such as tires, brakes, shock absorbers and oil,” Bautista said.
Moreover, in contrast to the immense oil wealth in its subsoil, gasoline in Venezuela is scarce and, after more than half a century being the cheapest in the world, it is now sold at half a dollar per liter, a cost difficult to afford for most owners of private vehicles or public transportation.
The country needs some 300,000 barrels of fuel per day and for several years it has had less than 160,000 barrels, according to oil economist Rafael Quiroz, who added that interruptions in the work of Venezuela’s refineries are frequent.
There is almost no residential building that does not have at least one vehicle in storage waiting for its owners to return from abroad. They are part of the 1.5 million vehicles that are permanently parked in the country. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS
Not enough money
The minimum wage in Venezuela is four dollars a month. Most workers receive up to 50 dollars in non-wage compensation for food, and the average income according to consulting firms is around 130 dollars a month.
Luisa Hernández, a retired teacher, earns a little more giving private English classes, but “the situation at home is very difficult. I can’t afford to pay for the repair of my Toyota Corolla, but a mechanic friend agreed to do the work, and I can pay him in installments,” she told IPS.
Mechanics have their finger on the pulse of the situation. “People leave and the cars often sit idle for years, and then the owners end up selling them, from abroad. Quite a few of those I have gone to pick up and have fixed them, to sell them,” Daniel, who runs a garage in the capital’s middle-class east side, told IPS.
He said that “many people do not sell their cars before leaving the country, thinking that they’re just going abroad to ‘see how it goes’. But they stay there and then decide to sell their vehicle before it further deteriorates and depreciates.”
Another mechanic, Eduardo González, told IPS that “There are people who go away and leave their cars in storage and from abroad they contact us so that from time to time we can check them and do some maintenance. Or they entrust their vehicle to a relative. There are people who travel and come back, but most of them end up selling.”
This situation “has favored buyers, who can get cars at a low price. But the problems come later, because that very used car will require spare parts and maintenance, and that is expensive and often the parts are difficult to get,” added González.
The same difficulty is also a concern for owners of cabs, buses and private vans that transport passengers, as well as cargo trucks.
“At least half of the truck fleet in the region is affected by the shortage and scarcity of spare parts,” said Jonathan Durrelle, president of the Chamber of Cargo Transportation of Carabobo, an industrial state in the center of the country.
Large and small buses for passenger transport in Venezuelan cities, including Caracas, as well as cargo vehicles, also suffer from the lack of sufficient revenue, as well as spare parts, to keep them in proper working condition. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS
Industries have closed down
Elías Besis, from the Chamber of Spare Parts Importers, attributed this to the closure of companies that “years ago manufactured 62 percent of the spare parts needed in the country, and now that production has plunged to two percent.”
Thousands of manufacturing companies closed down in Venezuela during the eight years (2013-2020) in which the country was in deep recession, suffering a loss of four-fifths of its GDP according to economic consulting firms.
Financial and banking activity has also declined, as has the vehicle loan portfolio, which peaked at 2.3 billion dollars in 2008 and plummeted to just 227,000 dollars by late 2022, according to economist Manuel Sutherland.
Vehicle assembly plants, of which there were a dozen until recently, also closed their doors. In addition to selling to hundreds of dealerships, they used to export vehicles to the Andean and Caribbean markets.
Their production peaks were recorded in 1978, with 182,000 new vehicles – Venezuela then had 14 million inhabitants and 2.5 million vehicles – and in 2007, when 172,000 cars were assembled.
In 2022 only 75 vehicles – trucks and buses – were assembled, and in the first six months of this year just 22.
Newer vans and cars drive through middle and upper class neighborhoods, but are part of the “bubble,” the small segment of the population less impacted by the deep economic crisis that Venezuela has suffered over the last decade. CREDIT: Motorpasión
Farewell to the bonanza
The result of this scenario is the aging and non-renewal of the vehicles circulating on Venezuela’s roads.
The new ones, Daniel pointed out, “are SUVs, crossovers and off-road vehicles that cost a lot of money and can only be bought by those who live in the bubble,” the term popularly used to refer to the segment of high-level officials and businesspersons whose finances are still booming in the midst of the crisis.
In addition, in view of the almost total closure of automotive plants, individuals are opting to import new vehicles directly from the United States, favored by the elimination of tariffs for the importation of most models.
For that reason, said Bautista, “there is no shortage of new vehicles, what there is is a shortage of consumers with the necessary purchasing power and conditions to buy new vehicles.”
These consumers were part of the hard-hit middle class – nine out of 10 families in that socioeconomic category had fallen below the middle class by 2020 according to the consulting firm Anova – and they no longer buy new or newer cars because they have swelled the legion of migrants, selling or leaving behind their main assets.
Since the days of the oil boom (1950-1980), Venezuelans developed a sort of sentimental relationship with their vehicles, associating them with comfort and enjoyment that favored cheap gasoline and a network of paved roads that made it easier to travel to places of recreation.
In middle class and even lower middle class families, it was quite common to change cars every two years and to give one to their children when they turned 18. They were helped by credit facilities, and were encouraged to buy cars in cities where public transportation has always fallen short.
They have had to say goodbye to their easy past on wheels, like migrants have said farewell to their country and homeland. Or at least “see you later”.
Clinical psychologists observe an increase in anxiety and depression disorders associated with suicidal behavior in adults. Among young people, self-injury and eating disorders are frequent. CREDIT: The Conversation
Another aspect of the multidimensional crisis in Venezuela is the severe lack of face-to-face and family communication. According to some specialists, it seems that family life takes place more on the phone than live, leaving the field open for teenagers to feed more on social networks than on real interactions. CREDIT: The Conversation
