Multinational companies bribing their way into foreign markets go largely unpunished, and victims’ compensation is rare, according to new report. Credit: Ashwath Hedge/Wikimedia Commons
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Dec 06 (IPS) – In these times when all sorts of human rights violations have been ‘normalised,’ a crime which continues to be perpetrated everywhere but punished nowhere: corruption is also seen as a business as usual. A business, by the way, that relies on the wide complicity of official authorities.
“Corruption attacks the foundation of democratic institutions by distorting electoral processes, perverting the rule of law and creating bureaucratic quagmires whose only reason for existing is the solicitation of bribes.”
Such a shockingly perpetrated practice –which is rightly defined as a “crime”, — not only follows conflict but is also frequently one of its root causes.
“It fuels conflict and inhibits peace processes by undermining the rule of law, worsening poverty, facilitating the illicit use of resources, and providing financing for armed conflict,” as highlighted on the occasion of this year’s World Day.
Corruption fuels wars
Corruption has negative impacts on every aspect of society and is profoundly intertwined with conflict and instability jeopardising social and economic development and undermining democratic institutions and the rule of law, the UN warns.
Indeed, “economic development is stunted because foreign direct investment is discouraged and small businesses within the country often find it impossible to overcome the “start-up costs” required because of corruption.”
Imposed by private business
It is perhaps useless to say that corruption is a practice widely committed by all sectors of private businesses.
In fact, in several industrialised countries, every now and then, some news shows the facades of zero-equipped hospitals and schools being inaugurated by politicians ahead of their electoral campaigns.
Shockingly, too many involved politicians get proportionally punished, if anytime, after extremely lengthy and mostly unfruitful legal processing.
Disproportionate impact
For its part, the World Bank considers corruption a major challenge to the twin goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity for the poorest 40 percent of people in developing countries.
“Corruption has a disproportionate impact on the poor and most vulnerable, increasing costs and reducing access to services, including health, education and justice.”
The World Bank explains that corruption in the procurement of drugs and medical equipment drives up costs and can lead to sub-standard or harmful products.
“The human costs of counterfeit drugs and vaccinations on health outcomes and the life-long impacts on children far exceed the financial costs. Unofficial payments for services can have a particularly pernicious effect on poor people.”
Bribery exported
A global movement working in over 100 countries to end the injustice of corruption: Transparency International, which focuses on issues with the greatest impact on people’s lives and holds the powerful to account for the common good, reveals additional findings.
Its report: Exporting Corruption 2022: Top Trading Countries Doing Even Less than Before to Stop Foreign Bribery, warns that despite a few breakthroughs, “multinational companies bribing their way into foreign markets go largely unpunished, and victims’ compensation is rare.”
“Our globalised world means companies can do business across borders – often to societies’ benefit. But what if the expensive new bridge in your city has been built by an unqualified foreign company that cuts corners?
“Or if your electricity bill is criminally inflated thanks to a backroom business deal? The chances of this are higher if you live in a country with high levels of government corruption.”
Public officials who demand or accept bribes from foreign companies are not the only culprits of the corruption equation. Multinational companies – often headquartered in countries with low levels of public sector corruption – are equally responsible.”
Twenty-five years ago, the international community agreed that trading countries have an obligation to punish companies that bribe foreign public officials to win government contracts, mining licences and other deals – in other words, engage in foreign bribery. Yet few countries have kept up with their commitments, it adds.
Everybody is complicit
“Much of the world’s costliest forms of corruption could not happen without institutions in wealthy nations: the private sector firms that give large bribes, the financial institutions that accept corrupt proceeds, and the lawyers, bankers, and accountants who facilitate corrupt transactions,” warns the World Bank.
Data on international financial flows shows that money is moving from poor to wealthy countries in ways that fundamentally undermine development, the world’s financial institution reports.
Worse than ever before…
Transparency International’s report, Exporting Corruption 2022, rates the performance of 47 leading global exporters, including 43 countries that are signatories to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Anti-Bribery Convention, in cracking down on foreign bribery by companies from their countries.
Trains and trucks move cargo in the port of Veracruz, in southeastern Mexico, on August 30, 2022. Through that infrastructure, the second largest in the country for freight received, pass hydrocarbons, cars, electronic appliances and food, for internal and external consumption. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
by Emilio Godoy (veracruz, mexico)
Inter Press Service
VERACRUZ, Mexico, Dec 05 (IPS) – Mexico has more than 11,000 square kilometers of continental coastline and intense maritime traffic. This Latin American country received 12 045 vessels as of July, compared to 11 971 on that date in 2021.
In Veracruz, in southeast Mexico, maritime traffic expanded 5% in July, receiving 1 254 vessels in 2022 compared to 1 192 in 2021.
But the country lacks measurements of pollution emitted by the shipping industry into the atmosphere and the water.
Globally, the shipping industry accounts for about 3 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, comparable to the total emissions from aviation. If it were its own country, shipping would rank around sixth in the world for its contributions to climate change. The current international target is to reduce GHG emissions from this sector by at least 50% by 2050.
In 2020, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) mandated that ships limit the sulfur content in fuels to 0.50% m/m (mass by mass) – a significant reduction from the previous limit of 3.5%.
However, Mexico does not have roadmaps for its reduction or concrete plans to produce marine fuels with lower sulfur content, an element harmful to human health and the environment.
Therefore, Mexico faces challenges to achieve IMO’s objectives that aim to reduce GHG emissions generated by human activities that have warmed the planet.
IMO will review their plan next year to endorse a new one, which it will check every five years, because it is estimated that GHG emissions from shipping grew from 977 million tons of CO2 in 2012 to 1 076 million in 2018 – an expansion of 9,6% – and could increase 90%-130% by 2050. Its overall level went from 2,76% to 2,89% in that period.
Emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) from the burning of high-sulfur fuels, derived as a residue from crude oil distillation, lead to sulfurous particles in the air, which can trigger asthma and worsen heart and lung diseases, as well as threaten marine and land ecosystems, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In water, hydrocarbons block the entry of light and limit the photosynthesis of algae and other plants, and in fauna they can cause poisoning, alterations of reproductive cycles and intoxication, EPA adds.
SO2, which isn’t a GHG but is highly polluting, lasts only a few days in the atmosphere, but when dissolved in water it generates acids that lend its dangerous nature to human health.
Meanwhile, the emissions of nitrous dioxide (NOx), derived also from hydrocarbon consumption, stream into smog, when mixed with ground-level ozone. NOx remains 114 years in the atmosphere, according to several scientific studies.
Maritime pollution in Mexico. Infographic: Johana Claudio / IPS
Underestimated issue
IPS confirmed the impacts of this type of pollution, analyzing the data obtained through 30 public information requests to various government agencies and the consultation of satellite images of oil spills from ships that occurred in several areas of the country between 2019 and 2022.
As part of an exclusive collaboration with the Spanish company Orbital EOS (Earth Observation Solutions) – specialized in finding this type of pollution on the high seas –IPS identified through satellite images four discharges in Mexican marine areas that occurred between 2019 and 2021.
On December 14, 2021, an unidentified vessel spilled 3,14 cubic meters of a substance suspected of being a hydrocarbon, in an area of almost 79 km2, 147 kilometers off the Mexican coast, off Acapulco, in the southern state of Guerrero, according to an image taken by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite.
Another oil accident monitored by the Sentinel-2 satellite happened on April 14, 2019, when a ferry dumped between 0,81 and 6,08 m3 of light fuel (distillate fuels, like diesel) and between 17,65 and 176,6 m3 of thick fuel (heavy oil), 35 kilometers off the Sinaloa state coast, in the Sea of Cortez – an area of great biodiversity which is threatened by real estate development and overfishing.
The light hydrocarbon covered 20,26 km2 and the rest, 3,53 km2, according to Orbital EOS analysis.
The ship was built in 2001, and changed its name and navigation flag in May 2019, weeks after the spill. Its last location was reported in a port in central Italy.
Sentinel-1 detected another spill on December 8, 2021, when an unidentified ship spilled 1,15 m3 of probable hydrocarbon over 28,6 km2, 180 kilometers off the Veracruz coast.
In addition, this satellite recorded on September 27, 2021, another spill of 0,28 m3 of probable hydrocarbon in 7,1 km2, 390 kilometers from the coast, in the Gulf of Mexico.
The most recent accident occurred on August 21, 2022, when a private yacht sank and leaked fuel in Balandra, in Southern Baja California, an area afforded special protection for its biodiversity.
Moreover, the US non-governmental SkyTruth, devoted mainly to tracking spills, recorded 11 discharges of oily wastewater into Mexican waters between July 2020 and December 2021.
Ian McDonald, a Department of Terrestrial, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences researcher at the Florida State University (United States), underlined the presence of oil in the water due to the operation of hydrocarbon platforms and wells for decades; oil leaks from natural fractures in the seafloor and maritime shipping in Mexican marine areas.
“Preventive maintenance (of the facilities) has been lacking. The problem is the cumulative impact on an area. Ship activities, such as dredging and waste generation, have a significant footprint on marine ecosystems. The potential impact can be very large,” he told IPS from Miami.
The “Chronic Oiling in Global Oceans” research, which McDonald co-authored and was released last June, found that 97% of oil slicks come from vessels and land discharges and 3% from seafloor fumes off the Aztec coast.
An IMO spokesperson said to IPS it cannot comment on a country’s situation and informed that it will run a review on Mexico in 2024. Meanwhile, the Mexican shipping industry association declined to comment for this reportage and the navy, Semar, didn’t answer a comment request.
Hydrocarbon pollution on the high seas depends on the volume and where it happens, and chronic contamination has long-term effects.
“Any spill is going to have an impact. Where it is less direct is in open waters, because there’s more dilution, but it tends to accumulate in the depth of the ocean and affect some organisms. The impact is bigger when the spill reaches the beaches, because it has less movement there,” explained Adolfo Gracia, researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Institute of Sea Sciences and Limnology.
Speaking from Mexico City, he highlighted a key element: the analysis of chronic pollution, coming from industries, agriculture and shipping, as a growing threat that marine flora and fauna are exposed to.
An oil accident, monitored by the Sentinel-2 satellite, happened on April 14, 2019, when a ferry dumped light and heavy fuels –the blue color identifies the former–, 35 km off the coast, in the Sea of Cortez – an area of great biodiversity which is threatened by many factors, in the northeastern Mexican state of Sinaloa. The vessel got away with it and it’s missing from public records.Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
Worrisome sample
Of the 819 incidents that Semar has tracked since 2017, only 16 are classified as marine pollution; of these, two consisted of oil spills and one of “serious damage to the environment”, without specifying their cause, according to data obtained through public information requests. Semar only sanctioned in two cases but did not specify what the penalty consisted of.
Of the total, a hydrocarbon spill and a pollution incident occurred in Veracruz.
Semar also registered 42 fires on boats and 13 sunk ships that may pose a pollution risk.
“There is legislation (Law on Dumping in Mexican Marine Zones), but there is no enforcement. There is no accurate measurement. Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) is not investigating the issue,” Rodolfo Navarro, the non-governmental organization Comunicar para Conservar director, told IPS.
Semar said it doesn’t have registries of violations to this law.
Navarro, whose organization focuses on environmental issues, works in the Cozumel area, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo which is one of the world’s largest cruise ship recipients, and is witness to the impact of shipping on ecosystems.
Semar, responsible for the administration of the ports since 2017 – including pollution control –, the Ministry of the Environment (Semarnat), the state-owned Pemex and the port administrations of the facilities located in the Gulf of Mexico, all lack pollution records in port areas.
As noted earlier, they also lack roadmaps to achieve the objectives of the Initial Strategy adopted in 2018 by the IMO to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by at least 40% by 2030, for all international shipping, and to aim for a reduction of 70% by 2050 compared to 2008 levels.
In ports like Veracruz, in southeastern Mexico, the daily movement of ships and freight is constant, which generates pollution. But the Mexican government lacks measurements of contamination emitted by the shipping industry into the atmosphere and the water, as well as policies to control it, for complying with international agreements.Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
A decisive convention
The International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), in force since 1978, is one of the vital tools to meet the IMO goals and which is composed of Annex I on the prevention of oil pollution, II on harmful liquid substances transported in bulk and III on those transported in packages.
It also consists of Annex IV on sewage, V on garbage and VI on atmospheric pollution from shipping. Mexico is a signatory to annexes I, II and IV, but not to III, V, and VI.
From 2020, the IMO applies regulations limiting the sulfur content used in cargo ships to 0,5%, from a previous rate of 3,5%. Thus, the body seeks its abatement by 77%, equivalent to 8,5 million tons of SO2.
The omission on the management of hydrocarbon pollution constitutes a violation of Annex I. By belonging to IMO, the country must achieve its goals.
In addition, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (T-Mec) Chapter 24 on the environment, in force since 2020 and which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), stipulates the control of the production, consumption and trade of substances that damage the ozone layer, as well as the reduction of air pollution.
This section stipulates air quality priorities, including the reduction of emissions from maritime traffic.
But Mexico lacks regulations to limit shipping emissions and also did not sign last November during the Glasgow climate summit the “Clydebank Declaration for Green Maritime Corridors”, which was signed only by 24 countries and which aims to create at least six low-emission routes by 2025.
The omission in pollution control implies the difficulty of achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 13 and 14, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015 to be achieved by 2030.
The number 13, of 17 SDGs, deals with fighting the climate crisis and its effects, while the 14 focuses on the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
Merchant vessels wait for docking at the port of Veracruz, in southeastern Mexico, on August 30, 2022. The International Maritime Organization has established mid-and-long term pollution reduction goals, so that the global shipping industry has cleaner operations, but this Latin American country lacks plans for achieving those goals. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
Busy docks
The Aztec port system handled 169,77 million tons of cargo as of last July, a growth of 3% compared to the same period in 2021, according to Semar figures.
Export cargo totaled 66,4 million tons, 2,6% lower than the 2021 level – 68,19 million – while imports grew 8,8% – from 66,51 million to 72,36. In the Port of Veracruz, which has 17 docks, this has been on the rise since 2008. Off the coast you can see the row of boats waiting to head to port. A line of red and green headlights and buoys points the route to the harbor.
Inside the port area, the hustle and bustle does not stop. Vehicles, trucks, trains and cranes come and go to remove and put the cargo, on which the economic activity of the region and partially of the second economy in Latin America depends.
In their bowels, these vessels move fuel, goods, vehicles or raw materials, and also carry an environmental threat, of which there is evidence.
In 2020, the seaport managed 26,2 million tons, an amount that increased 22% the following year – 32 million. As of last July, it mobilized 19,97 million, 7,6% higher than the same period of 2021. The maritime industry represents 5% of the Mexican GDP.
Annex VI, in force since 1997, is relevant for Mexico, since, by addressing the control of emissions of SO2, NOx and particulate matter (PM), it implies the creation of an emission control area (ECA) in its maritime zone.
The ECA involves the adoption of mandatory special technological methods for the prevention of marine pollution of ships, by oil, wastewater or garbage, such as low sulfur fuel oil, on-board incinerator for sludge and a cleaning system for emitted gas from combustion, according to the oceanographic and ecological conditions of the area and the peculiarities of maritime traffic.
Semarnat and the U.S. EPA argue that an ECA creation would have positive effects on public health and the environment, without exorbitant costs for Mexico.
Between 2009 and 2018, the US and Mexico, with the support of the CEC – instituted by NAFTA – collaborated, so that this Latin American country adhered to Annex VI and created the ECA.
But Enrique Peña Nieto’s government (2012-2018) did not send that request to the Senate for approval nor does the current administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador seem interested in doing so. Between 2010 and 2019, the Mexican Senate sent six exhortations to the Executive to vote on the incorporation of Annex VI.
At the 2016 North American Leaders’ Summit, then-U.S. President Barack Obama; Peña Nieto, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agreed to work together to finalize the design of the Mexican ECA and send it to the IMO, which never happened.
Navarro, the Cozumel expert, emphasized that Mexico is not on track to reach global goals. “It could do it, but there is not the slightest will. And in international waters nobody watches anything,” he denounced.
McDonald urged attention to the problem. “The government must address it. Mexico has enormous marine resources, and it is a pity that it does not protect them. There are economic benefits to the conservation of marine ecosystems. Ships are good for governments because they represent revenue, but the environmental damage can be substantial,” he said.
Gracia questions the efficacy of high seas surveillance. “It depends on everybody’s good conscience. It’s a little bit complicated. In Mexico, the sole control exists when a ship enters into port. There isn’t a general surveillance plan,” he said.
Before an unconcerned Mexico, the boats will continue with their arrival and their trail of pollution.
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 05 (IPS) – A head of state who presided over an authoritarian regime in Southeast Asia, was once asked about rigged elections in his country.
“I promised I will give you the right to vote” he said, “but I didn’t say anything about counting those votes.”
That infamous quote, perhaps uttered half-jokingly, was rightly described as an unholy combination of despotism and democracy.
In a report released last week, the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) said half of the democratic governments around the world are in decline, undermined by problems ranging from restrictions on freedom of expression to distrust in the legitimacy of elections.
The number of backsliding countries –-those with the most severe erosion of democracy– is at its peak, and includes the established democracy of the United States, which still faces problems of political polarization, institutional disfunction, and threats to civil liberties.
Globally, the number of countries moving toward authoritarianism is more than double the number moving toward democracy.
“This decline comes as elected leaders face unprecedented challenges from Russia’s war in Ukraine, cost of living crises, a looming global recession and climate change”.
These are some of the key findings in the report titled “The Global State of Democracy Report 2022 – Forging Social Contracts in a Time of Discontent” – published by International IDEA.
Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders, told IPS the new assessment is alarming as it confirms that democracy continues to stagnate or decline in most countries.
In addition, non-democratic regimes are becoming more repressive, he added.
“It is clear that stronger efforts are needed to counter these trends. People all over the world actually want democracy”.
And current protests in China and Iran are a testament to this, to name just two examples. International IDEA refers to surveys that indicate a growing sentiment in favor of authoritarian leaders.
But there are other surveys, too, that show consistently high popular support for democracy as a principle of government, he argued.
“Lack of confidence mainly relates to the actual performance of democratic governments. Most importantly, they must do more to ensure that their policies benefit the majority of people in a tangible way”.
They need to fight corruption and lobbyism in their own ranks and beyond, he noted. Innovations are needed so people have more opportunities to be heard.
‘Democracy Without Borders’ suggests that convening a transnational citizens’ assembly should be considered that looks into common root causes of democratic decline and how they can be addressed. Democracies need to collaborate better and step up internationally, too.
“They need to help strengthen democratic representation and participation of citizens at the UN. Another proposal we are currently looking into is establishing the mandate of a UN Special Rapporteur on Democracy”, declared Bummel.
Meanwhile, the 193-member United Nations was no better– where buying and selling votes were a common practice during UN elections mostly in a bygone era.
When UN member states compete for the presidency of the General Assembly or membership in the Security Council or in various UN bodies, the voting was largely tainted by bribery, cheque-book diplomacy and offers of luxury cruises in Europe– while promises of increased aid to the world’s poorer nations came mostly with heavy strings attached.
Back in the 1940s and 50s, voting was by a show of hands, particularly in committee rooms. But in later years, a more sophisticated electronic board, high up in the General Assembly Hall, tallied the votes or in the case of elections to the Security Council or the International Court of Justice, the voting was by secret ballot.
In one of the hard-fought elections many moons ago, there were rumors that an oil-soaked Middle Eastern country was doling out high-end, Swiss-made wrist watches and also stocks in the former Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO), one of the world’s largest oil companies, to UN diplomats as a trade-off for their votes.
So, when hands went up at voting time in the Committee room, the largest number of hands raised in favor of the oil-blessed candidate sported Swiss watches.
As anecdotes go, it symbolized the corruption that prevails in voting in inter-governmental organizations, including the United Nations — perhaps much like most national elections the world over.
Just ahead of an election for membership in the Security Council, one Western European country offered free Mediterranean luxury cruises in return for votes while another country dished out — openly in the General Assembly hall— boxes of gift-wrapped expensive Swiss chocolates.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to boost democracy worldwide, the US hosted its first ‘Summit for Democracy’ in December 2021.
And on November 29, the Biden administrations announced that the governments of Costa Rica, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of Zambia, and the United States will co-host the second ‘Summit for Democracy’ on March 29-30, 2023.
Building on the first Summit, the upcoming gathering is expected to demonstrate “how democracies deliver for their citizens– and are best equipped to address the world’s most pressing challenges.”
“We are living through an era defined by challenges to accountable and transparent governance. From wars of aggression to changes in climate, societal mistrust and technological transformation, it could not be clearer that all around the world, democracy needs champions at all levels”.
Together with other invitees to the second Summit, “we look forward to taking up this call, and demonstrating how transparent, accountable governance remains the best way to deliver lasting prosperity, peace, and justice”, said a statement from the US State Department.
Meanwhile, the Secretary-General of International IDEA, Kevin Casas-Zamora, says the world faces a multitude of crises, from the cost of living to risks of nuclear confrontation and the acceleration of the climate crisis.
“At the same time, we see global democracy in decline. It is a toxic mix. “Never has there been such an urgency for democracies to respond, to show their citizens that they can forge new, innovative social contracts that bind people together rather than divide them.”
Regionally, the findings, according to the report, are as follows:
ASIA AND THE PACIFIC# Democracy is receding in Asia and the Pacific, while authoritarianism solidifies. Only 54 per cent of people in the region live in a democracy, and almost 85 per cent of those live in one that is weak or backsliding. Even high- and mid-performing democracies such as Australia, Japan and Taiwan are suffering democratic erosion.
AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST
# Despite myriad challenges, Africa remains resilient in the face of instability. Countries including The Gambia, Niger and Zambia are improving in democratic quality. Overcoming a restricted civic space, civic action in several countries has created opportunities to renegotiate the social contract; outcomes have varied by country.
In Western Asia, more than a decade after the Arab Spring, protest movements continue to be motivated by government failures in service delivery and economic opportunities—key aspects of social contracts.
THE AMERICAS
# Three out of seven backsliding democracies are in the Americas, pointing to weakening institutions even in longstanding democracies.
# Democracies are struggling to effectively bring balance to environments marked by instability and anxiety, and populists continue to gain ground as democratic innovation and growth stagnate or decline.
# In the US, threats to democracy persist after the Trump presidency, illustrated by Congress’s political paralysis, counter-majoritarianism and the rolling back of long-established rights.
EUROPE
# Although democracy remains the dominant form of government in Europe, the quality of democracy has been stagnant or in decline across many countries.
# Nearly half of the democracies—a total of 17 countries—in Europe have suffered erosion in the last five years. These declines affect 46 per cent of the high-performing democracies.
This article contains excerpts from a recently-released book on the UN titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote me on That.” Available at Amazon, the book is a satire peppered with scores of political anecdotes—from the sublime to the hilarious. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Dec 02 (IPS) – As 2022 draws to a close, we are confronted with an unprecedented collision of global risks, interacting and reinforcing each other in dangerous new ways.
The impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are still rippling outwards, colliding and combining like waves on a sea. The heightened threat of nuclear conflict, the global energy crisis, the rising cost of food, deepening poverty and inequality: these consequences are interacting with the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of climate change.
This confluence of global risks has led to unwelcome new terms entering the dictionary, such as ‘polycrisis’ and ‘multicrisis.’
In the face of such complex challenges, it’s easy to feel helpless and paralyzed. And yet, if this year has shown us anything, it’s that we need an urgent upgrade of our systems of cooperation to tackle them.
It starts with making sure we have the right knowledge. Climate scientist Johan Rockström, a board member of our foundation, has written powerfully on the need for an international consortium of scientists to provide shared insights on the emerging interactions between risks.
At the Global Challenges Foundation, we’ve just released our annual review of global catastrophic risks, risks that threaten the survival of more than ten per cent of humanity. This year’s report shows how, more than ever, our systems and structures for preventing and managing these risks are both outdated and inadequate.
Whether it’s climate change, environmental breakdown, nuclear conflict, pandemics or artificial intelligence, we have a systemic problem with processing and acting on the complex challenges that lie in the intersections.
Of course, there is no one magic solution, given the multilateral system that we inhabit. However, there are many existing proposals to improve the mechanics of global governance that could be immediately fast tracked.
For example, there are several important proposals in the United Nations Secretary-General’s 2021 report, Our Common Agenda. These include the idea for an Emergency Platform that would be triggered by a major crisis such as the use of a nuclear weapon and coordinate the global response.
The report also proposes reviving the UN’s Trusteeship Council, inactive for many years, as a multi-stakeholder body to tackle emerging challenges and to act to preserve the global commons on behalf of future generations.
The failure of the COP27 climate talks in Egypt to agree strong measures to curb fossil fuel production has demonstrated how intergovernmental negotiations are not producing rapid enough action on climate change.
On top of this, the global energy crisis has led to some countries slowing or shelving their green agendas, in a year of extreme temperatures and climate-related crises.
We urgently need to find alternative ways of collaborating to prevent catastrophic climate change. One key proposal is a carbon tax – administered at both global and national levels – with the proceeds going to the communities who are most affected.
The International Monetary Fund concluded that, of all the various recognised strategies to reduce fossil fuel emissions, implementing a carbon tax would be the most powerful and efficient.
Of course, this may not be the easiest ‘sell’ politically during a cost-of-living crisis but evidence from countries like Canada shows that it can be done gradually and sensitively.
The spread of COVID-19 around the world since 2020 has highlighted the linkages between environmental destruction and pandemics. COVID-19 is unlikely to be the last pandemic that humanity faces.
As renowned epidemiologist and public health expert Professor David Heymann writes in his pandemics chapter in our report, as well as tackling the root causes of new pathogens coming into contact with humans, we need to upgrade the international frameworks that govern how countries report on new disease outbreaks.
This means enacting a stronger enforcement mechanism to the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations, and a Pandemic Treaty.
When it comes to nuclear risk, looming ever larger over Ukraine, it’s now more likely than ever that nuclear weapons will be used in either military actions, miscalculation or by accident than at any time since the beginning of the nuclear age.
The international community must treat all threats to use nuclear weapons very seriously. Even ‘small’ or ‘tactical’ weapons can cause terrible damage and their use would undermine the nuclear taboo in place since their use at the end of the Second World War.
Nuclear expert, and contributor to our report, Kennette Benedict says there is still much more we can do to prevent a nuclear disaster. IAEA Director General Raffael Grossi and his colleagues are doing heroic work to prevent nuclear plant disasters in Ukraine.
The international community must continue to support the agency and provide more funding for IAEA’s work. Explicit protection of nuclear plants in violent conflicts and war should be codified in international law.
Only with a clear understanding of each of the greatest risks facing humanity can we move forward to rethink how we could better manage them. And only with new kinds of global cooperation can we deal with today’s complex web of interlocking and reinforcing global risks to ensure a habitable, safe and peaceful future.
As we say goodbye to this year of global risks, this should be top of our ‘to do’ list for 2023.
Children working and travelling on India’s vast rail network need to be educated about the perils of trafficking. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS
by Umar Manzoor Shah (karnataka, india)
Inter Press Service
Karnataka, India, Dec 02 (IPS) – Deeepti Rani (13) lives with her mother in a dilapidated dwelling near a railway track in India’s southern state of Karnataka. The mother-daughter duo sells paperbacks on trains for a living.
Four months ago, a man in his mid-fifties visited them. Masquerading as a businessman hailing from India’s capital, Delhi, he first expressed dismay over the family’s dismal conditions. Then he offered help. The man asked Deepti if she wanted to accompany him to Delhi, where he could find her a decent job as a sales clerk or a housemaid. He also told Deepti’s mother that if allowed to go to Delhi, her daughter would be able to earn no less than 15 to 20 000 rupees a month—about 200-300 USD.
The money, Deepti’s mother, reasoned, would be enough to lift the family out of abject poverty and deprivation, enough to plan Deepti’s wedding and bid farewell to the arduous job of selling paperbacks on moving trains.
On the scheduled day, when the man was about to take Deepti, a labourer whose family lives adjacent to her hut informed the police about the possible case of trafficking. The labourer had become suspicious after observing the agent’s frequent visits to the mother-daughter.
When police reached the spot and detained the agent, it was discovered during questioning that he was planning to sell the little girl to a brothel in Delhi.
Ramesh, a 14-year-old boy from the same state, shared a similar predicament. He narrates how a man, probably in his late 40s, offered his parents a handsome sum of money so that he could be adopted and taken good care of.
“My parents, who work as labourers, readily agreed. I was set to go with a man – who we had met a few days before. I was told that I would get a good education, a good life, and loving parents. I wondered how an unknown man could offer us such things at such a fast pace. I told my parents that I smelled something suspicious,” Ramesh recalls.
The next day, as the man arrived to take the boy, the locals, including Ramesh’s parents, questioned him. “We called the government helpline number, and the team arrived after some 20 minutes. When interrogated, the man spilt the beans. He was about to sell the boy in some Middle East country and get a huge sum for himself. We could have lost our child forever,” says Ramesh’s father.
According to government data, every eight minutes, a child vanishes in India.
As many as 11,000 of the 44,000 youngsters reported missing each year are still missing. In many cases, children and their low-income parents who are promised “greener pastures” in urban houses of the wealthy wind up being grossly underpaid, mistreated, and occasionally sexually molested.
Human trafficking is forbidden in India as a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution, but it is nonetheless an organised crime. Human trafficking is a covert crime that is typically not reported to the police, and experts believe that it requires significant policy changes to stop it and help victims recover.
Activists and members associated with the Belgaum Diocesan Social Service Society (BDSSS) run various child protection programs for children from poor backgrounds.
One such program is ‘Childline 1098 Collab’. A dedicated helpline has been established to help out children in need. The helpline number is widely circulated across the city so that if anyone comes across any violation of child rights, they can dial the number.
A rescue team will be dispatched and provide immediate help to the victim.
Fr Peter Asheervadappa, the director of a social service called Belgaum Diocesan Social Service Society, provides emergency relief and rescue services for children at high risk. Children and other citizens can dial toll-free 1098, and the team reaches within 60 minutes to rescue the children.
“The cases handled are of varied nature: Sexual abuse, physical abuse, child labour, marriages, and any other abuse that affects children’s well-being,” Asheervadappa told IPS.
He adds that India’s railway network, one of the largest in the world, is made up of 7,321 stations, 123,542 kilometres of track, and 9,143 daily trains, carrying over 23 million people.
“The vast network, crucial to the country’s survival, is frequently used for trafficking children. For this reason, our organisation, and others like it, have argued that key train stops require specialised programs and attention. Such transit hubs serve as important outreach locations for finding and helping children when they are most in need,” he said.
But not only have the trafficking cases emerged at these locations. There are child marriages, too, that concern the activists.
Rashmi, a 13-year-old, was nearly sold to a middle-aged businessman from a nearby city. In return, the wealthy man would take good care of the poverty-stricken family and attend to their daily needs. All they had to do was to give them their daughter. They agreed. “Everyone wants a good life, but that doesn’t mean you barter your child’s life for that greed. It is immoral, unethical, and illegal,” says an activist Abhinav Prasad* associated with the Child Protection Program.
He says many people in India are on the lookout for child brides. They often galvanise their efforts in slums and areas where poor people live. It is there that they find people in need, and they take advantage of their desperation for money.
While Rashmi was about to tie the nuptial knot with a man almost four times her age (50), some neighbours called the child rescue group and informed them. The team rushed to the spot and called in the police to stop the ceremony from happening.
“Child marriages are rampant in India, but we must do our bit. It is by virtue of these small efforts that we can stop the menace from spreading its dreadful wings and consuming our children,” said Prasad.
HAMILTON, Canada, Dec 01 (IPS) – Last year’s climate COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, was billed as the most important conference in the history of humanity. But it failed to deliver. If anything, that failure added urgency for global climate action at COP 27 in Egypt last month.
Now that it this year’s COP is over, it is useful to reflect on a few excerpts from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s opening day remarks:
• “These climate conferences remind us that the answer is in our hands and the clock is ticking.”
• “We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing.”
• “Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing, global temperatures keep rising…and our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.”
• “We are getting dangerously close to the point of no return. And to avoid that dire fate all countries must accelerate their transition now, in this decade.”
• “Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish.”
• “It is either a climate solidarity pact, or it is a collective suicide pact.”
Credit: UN Photo/Albert González Farran
Sadly, COP27’s outcomes make very clear that the world signed on to the one the global fossil fuel sector wanted: the suicide pact.
COP 27 did not deliver. In fact, it has been labelled by many as the worst COP ever.
What happened in Egypt puts a whole new spin on the term COP-out. But how could it have been otherwise?
COP 27 was held in a country aligned with surrounding petrostates ruled by a ruthless dictatorship and was sponsored by one of the world’s largest plastic polluters: Coca-Cola.
It did not seem to register with organizers that the company’s relentless bottled water production is widely held in the global water science and policy community as a triumph of marketing over common sense.
Did the organizers not see that Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of COP 27 was an open invitation to blatant global greenwashing?
The obvious should not be missed here: Capitalism is not out of control, capitalism is in control – and COP 27 offers clear proof of that truth.
As society’s reliance on petroleum grew and our energy demands expanded, the global fossil fuel cartel quietly evolved into a superpower unto itself. There were more than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists at COP 27. What, one might reasonably ask, could possibly go wrong? Lots, evidently.
The oil and gas lobby completely corrupted the COP process. The proceedings and outcomes of COP 27 make it clear that the fossil fuel sector now owns the COP agenda. The sole aim of their presence there was to prevent, not promote, progress on dealing with the global climate threat. And they succeeded.
None of the agreements negotiated in Egypt are binding. Like the national emissions reductions target put forward by UN Member States under the Paris Climate Accord, the commitments made at COP 27 are all merely aspirational.
There is no penalty for failing to achieve them. There have been 27 COPs since 1995 and still no formal binding agreement on cutting fossil fuel burning.
Except for a small blip during the pandemic, fossil fuel burning globally continues to rise, not fall.
As one participant pointed out, the aspirational scheme agreed upon in Sharm el Sheikh is a down payment on disaster. No one expects anyone to actually compensate developing countries that contribute little to the climate threat for the catastrophic impacts climate breakdown is now having on them.
With COP 28 scheduled to be held next year in the United Arab Emirates – one of the most notorious petrostates of them all – the only thing COP 27 accomplished was to expose what the COP summit process has become – a pointless travelling circus set up once a year out of which little but platitudes emerge.
The entire COP process is no longer fit for purpose. It is a bloated, corrupted process too moribund to come up with any measures effective enough, and binding enough, to bring about the changes we need to make to avoid climate catastrophe.
Voices calling for change get louder and louder. The COP process must be replaced with something more efficient that does its work largely hidden from the glare of the media.
It can no longer be allowed to be contaminated by corporate sponsorship. The process can no longer be allowed to be owned and corrupted by the global fossil fuel cartel and oil and gas sector lobbyists.
One suggested way of doing this is to establish an IPCC-like structure of smaller bodies, each addressing key issues, notably energy transition, restorative agriculture, transportation and issues related to damage and loss.
Each such body would be made up of representatives of majority-world countries empowered to negotiate legally binding agreements that are workable and achievable, whether it be halting and reversing deforestation, cutting carbon dioxide and methane emissions, drawing down coal use and addressing other threats to our future such as ocean acidification and deoxygenation.
These agreements can then be signed off by world leaders without the need for the hype, grandstanding and false hope now associated with COP process pronouncements.
We are witnessing a great bonfire of our heritage. Things are being lost that have not yet been found. We need to find them before they, and we, are gone.
Robert Sandford holds the Global Water Futures Chair in Water and Climate Security at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, based at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
The United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD) require the governments to remove all barriers to information access – including those faced by Deaf persons. Credit: UNCRPD
Opinion by Timothy Egwelu (kampala)
Inter Press Service
KAMPALA, Nov 30 (IPS) – Since the onset of the Covid19 pandemic, at least two deaf people were shot and killed in Uganda by state law enforcement officers. Their ‘crime’ was being deaf and uneducated. Their inability to hear or comprehend Covid19 containment measures communicated in English led to their death.
This is despite the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD) and its reporting mechanisms requiring the governments to remove all barriers to information access – including those faced by Deaf persons. Deaf people are a linguistic minority – with sign language being their primary language of communication. In Uganda, 1 in 30 people are deaf.
Kenya and Uganda have both taken initial steps to legally recognize sign language in the Constitution and have begun to include sign language in official communications. Kenya, for example, has expanded healthcare services by providing interpreters in hospitals. But the fact that deaf people and their issues are still regarded a minority and neglected is all the proof we need to show that we have a long way to go.
Countries in the East African community must redouble their efforts to implement their inclusion laws, and legally recognize their sign languages in all sectors. Additionally, they must take on the costs of sign language interpretation in public sectors. This will be a big step towards building the inclusive East African community that we all seek. Until then, we in the Deaf community, continue to suffer discrimination.
As a first step, we must ensure that sign language interpreters play an essential part in economic, social and political events, so that deaf persons can actively and meaningfully participate public life. Many people assume that all deaf persons understand advanced written grammar. This is not the case, as English (or any other language) and Sign Language grammar are distinct.
To aid deaf persons in deciphering spoken and written language, sign language interpreters are needed. Nonetheless, their services are expensive, costing an average of $40 daily for these services. Consider this alongside the fact that 41% of Ugandans live on less than $1.90 a day. These services are indeed out of reach for majority of the deaf and hard of hearing community in the country.
We’re seeing some progress. In Uganda, there have been sustained television campaigns on the need to expand access to information and services through sign language. It is envisaged that through this campaign, more Ugandans will be aware of their rights and that it will in turn move political decision makers to speed up the approval of the Draft Guidelines to Television Access by the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance. These will provide structures towards implementation.
The other EAC countries are yet to officially recognize their sign languages. This results in the perpetuation of human rights exclusions and abuses of deaf persons. These countries must therefore fulfill their obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which promotes the full integration of persons with disabilities in societies.
While it could be argued that there are indeed legal and policy frameworks in Uganda and the EAC countries that ensure access to information; this largely remains on paper and is not in practice, particularly for deaf persons. Consider that healthcare facilities, educational institutions and government offices have inaccessible formats of information and a lack of sign language interpreters. Additionally, television – both for information and entertainment purposes, is largely exclusive to the hearing world.
Additionally, consider the value and importance of Sign language interpretation of court proceedings to an accused Deaf person. Certainly, interpretation is the only means of ensuring proper understanding and participation in the trial, yet it is not always readily available. Access to justice has been denied to many deaf persons in many unreported cases. Deaf persons are therefore largely sidelined and suffer widespread injustices.
Countries in the EAC should therefore urgently shift towards implementation of their national and international laws on inclusion. They must legally recognize their sign languages and mainstream them into all sectors. Additionally, they must take on the costs of sign language interpretation in public sectors. This will be a big step towards building the inclusive East African community that we all seek. Until then, we in the Deaf community, continue to suffer discrimination.
Timothy is a Deaf lawyer and a disability inclusion specialist in Uganda. He is an Aspen New Voices 2022 Fellow and founder of Stein Law and Advocacy for the Deaf.
Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Timothy A. Wise (boston and kuala lumpur)
Inter Press Service
BOSTON and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 29 (IPS) – Despite its dismal record, the Gates Foundation-sponsored Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) announced a new five-year strategy in September after rebranding itself by dropping ‘Green Revolution’ from its name.
Rebranding, not reform
Instead of learning from experience and changing its approach accordingly, AGRA’s new strategy promises more of the same. Ignoring evidence, criticisms and civil society pleas and demands, the Gates Foundation has committed another $200 million to its new five-year plan, bringing its total contribution to around $900 million.
Timothy A. WiseMore than two-thirds of AGRA’s funding has come from Gates, with African governments providing much more – as much as a billion dollars yearly – in subsidies for Green Revolution seeds and fertilizers.
Stung by criticism of its poor results, AGRA delayed announcing its new strategy by a year, while its chief executive shepherded the controversial UN Food Systems Summit of 2021. Following this, AGRA has been using more UN Sustainable Development Goals rhetoric.
Hence, AGRA’s new slogan – ‘Sustainably Growing Africa’s Food Systems’. Likewise, the new plan claims to “lay the foundation for a sustainable food systems-led inclusive agricultural transformation”. But beyond such lip service, there is little evidence of any meaningful commitment to sustainable agriculture in the $550 million plan for 2023–27.
Despite heavy government subsidies, AGRA promotion of commercial seeds and fertilizers for just a few cereal crops failed to significantly increase productivity, incomes or even food security. But instead of addressing past shortcomings, the new plan still relies heavily on more of the same despite its failure to “catalyze” a productivity revolution among African farmers.
Jomo Kwame SundaramThe supposedly new strategy dashes any hopes that AGRA or the Gates Foundation would acknowledge the harmful social and environmental effects of Green Revolutions in India, Africa and elsewhere. AGRA offered no explanation for why it dropped ‘Green Revolution’ from its name.
The name change suggests the 16-year-old AGRA wants to dissociate itself from past failures, but without acknowledging its own flawed approach. Recently, much higher fertilizer prices – following sanctions against Russia and Belarus after the Ukraine invasion – have worsened the lot of farmers relying on AGRA recommended inputs.
It is time to change course, with policies promoting ecological farming by reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizers as appropriate. But despite its new slogan, AGRA’s new strategy intends otherwise.
Last month, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa rejected the strategy and name change as “cosmetic”, “an admission of failure” of the Green Revolution project, and “a cynical distraction” from the urgent need to change course.
Productivity gains and losses
Despite spending well over a billion dollars, AGRA’s productivity gains have been modest, and only for a few more heavily subsidized crops such as maize and rice. And from 2015 to 2020, cereal yields have not risen at all.
Meanwhile, traditional food crop production has declined under AGRA, with millet falling over a fifth. Yields actually also fell for cassava, groundnuts and root crops such as sweet potato. Across a basket of staple crops, yields rose only 18% in 12 years.
Farmer incomes have not risen, especially after increased production costs are taken into account. As for halving hunger, which Gates and AGRA originally promised, the number of ‘severely undernourished’ people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries increased by 31%!
A donor-commissioned evaluation confirmed many adverse farmer outcomes. It found the minority of farmers who benefited were mainly better-off men, not smallholder women the programme was ostensibly meant for.
That did not deter the Gates Foundation from committing more to AGRA despite its dismal track record, failed strategy, and poor monitoring to track progress. Judging by the new five-year plan, we can expect even less accountability.
The new plan does not even set measurable goals for yields, incomes or food security. As the saying goes, what you don’t measure you don’t value. Apparently, AGRA does not value agricultural productivity, even though it is still at the core of the organization’s strategy.
Last month, the Rockefeller Foundation, AGRA’s other founding donor and a leader of the first Green Revolution from the 1950s, announced a reduction in its grant to AGRA and a decisive step back from the Green Revolution approach.
Its grant to AGRA supports school feeding initiatives and “alternatives to fossil-fuel derived fertilisers and pesticides through the promotion of regenerative agricultural practices such as cultivation of nitrogen-fixing beans”.
Business in charge
AGRA’s new strategy is built on a series of “business lines”, e.g., the “sustainable farming business line” will coordinate with the “Seed Systems business line” to sell inputs. Private Village Based Advisors are meant to provide training and planting advice in this privatized, commercial reincarnation of the government or quasi-government extension services of an earlier era.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization successfully promoted peer-learning of agro-ecological practices via Farmer Field Schools after successfully field-testing them. This came about after research showed ‘brown hoppers’ thrived in Asian rice farms after Green Revolution pesticides eliminated the insect’s natural predators.
China lost a fifth of its 2007-08 paddy harvest to the pest, triggering a price spike in the thinly traded world rice market. Seeking help from the International Rice Research Institute, located in the Philippines, a Chinese delegation found its Entomology Department had lost most of its former capacity due to under-funding.
Earlier international agricultural research collaboration associated with the first Green Revolution – especially in wheat, maize and rice – seems to have collapsed, surrendering to corporate and philanthropic interests. This bitter experience encouraged China to step up its agronomic research efforts with a greater agro-ecological emphasis.
Empty promises?
The new strategy promises “AGRA will promote increased crop diversification at the farm level”. But its advisers cum salespeople have a vested interest in selling their wares, rather than good local seeds which do not require repeat purchases every planting season.
AGRA is not strengthening resilience by promoting agroecology or reducing farmer reliance on costly inputs such as fossil fuel fertilizers and other, often toxic, agrochemicals. Despite many proven African agroecological initiatives, support for them remains modest.
The new strategy stresses irrigation, key to most other Green Revolutions, but conspicuously absent from Africa’s Green Revolution. But the plan is deafeningly silent on how fiscally strapped governments are to provide such crucial infrastructure, especially in the face of growing water, fiscal and debt stress, worsened by global warming.
It is often said stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Perhaps this is due to the technophile conceit that some favoured innovation is superior to everything else, including scientific knowledge, processes and agro-ecological solutions.
Around 7,500 litres of water are used to make a single pair of jeans, equivalent to the amount of water the average person drinks over seven years. Credit: pexels
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Nov 25 (IPS) – Please take a quick look at this short report before rushing to shop on a Black Friday, Christmas sales and all those long chains of big discounts and wholesales, most of them are fake, as often denounced by consumers organisations that report that the business usually inflates prices before launching such deals.
Just a couple of figures to start with: the fashion industry is responsible for more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
Consequently, it is widely believed that this business is the second major producer of greenhouse gases, just after the other industries using fossil fuels.
And it is a big business, which is estimated as valued at upward of 3 trillion dollars.
Did you know all this?
Now back to its worrying impacts. According to the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and other UN agencies, and non-governmental organisations worldwide:
Wastewater: The fashion industry is responsible for producing 20% of global wastewater and 10% of the global carbon emissions – more than the emissions of all international flights and maritime shipping combined,
Seven years of needed drinking water for an average person are consumed for producing just one single pair of blue jeans: 7.500 litres,
Enough water to quench the thirst of five million. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), some 93 billion cubic metres of water, is used by the fashion industry annually,
Around half a million tons of microfibre, which is the equivalent of 3 million barrels of oil, is now being dumped into the ocean every year, polluting the oceans, the wastewater, and toxic dyes,
Plastic microfibres: The textiles industry has recently been identified as a major polluter, with estimates of around half a million tonnes of plastic microfibers ending up in the world’s oceans as polyester, nylon or acrylic are washed each year,
A truckload of abandoned textiles is dumped in landfill or incinerated every second, according to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, partner of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). This means that of the total fibre input used for clothing, 87% is incinerated or sent to landfill.
Dangerous working conditions: Fashion is often a synonym for dangerous working conditions, unsafe processes and hazardous substances used in production, with continued cruel abuses of modern slavery and child labour, and the exploitation of underpaid workers.
Fast fashion, fast money, fast destruction
The business of fashion years ago ‘invented’ what is known as ‘fast fashion,’ i.e, nice-looking clothing and footwear at low-price.
In fact, the dominant business model in the sector is that of “fast fashion”, whereby consumers are offered constantly changing collections at low prices and encouraged to frequently buy and discard clothes.
Many experts, including the UN, believe the trend is responsible for a plethora of negative social, economic and environmental impacts and, with clothing production doubling between 2000 and 2014, it is crucially important to ensure that clothes are produced as ethically and sustainably as possible.
The consequence is that it is estimated that people are buying 60% more clothes and wearing them for half as long.
“New season, new styles, buy more, buy cheap, move on, throw away waste, and emissions of fast fashion are fueling the triple planetary crisis,” UNEP warned on 24 November, just one day before the usual ‘Black Friday.’
According to the world’s leading environmental organisation, the annual Black Friday sales on 25 November are a reminder of the need to rethink what is bought, what is thrown away, and what it costs the planet.
In a bid to halt the fashion industry’s environmentally and socially destructive practices, and harness the catwalk as a driver to improve the world’s ecosystems, 10 different UN organisations established the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, which was launched during the 2019 UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi
Elisa Tonda, Head of the Consumption and Production Unit at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), one of the 10 UN bodies involved in the Alliance, explained the urgency behind its formation:
“The global production of clothing and footwear generates 8% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and, with manufacturing concentrated in Asia, the industry is mainly reliant on hard coal and natural gas to generate electricity and heat.”
“If we carry on with a business-as-usual approach, the greenhouse gas emissions from the industry are expected to rise by almost 50% by 2030.”
After days of intense negotiations that stretched into early Sunday morning in Sharm el-Sheikh, countries at the latest UN Climate Change Conference, COP27, reached agreement on an outcome that established a funding mechanism to compensate vulnerable nations for ‘loss and damage’ from climate-induced disasters.
Opinion by Felix Dodds, Chris Spence (sharm el sheikh, egypt)
Inter Press Service
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 24 (IPS) – COP 27 was both better and worse than expected, say Prof. Felix Dodds and Chris SpenceIt’s finally over. After the anticipation and build-up to COP27, the biggest climate meeting of the year is now in our rear-view mirror. The crowds of delegates that thronged the Sharm el-Sheikh international convention center for two long weeks have all headed home to recover. Many will be fatigued from long hours and sleepless nights as negotiators tried to seal a deal that would move the world forwards. Did all this hard work pay off? In our opinion, COP 27 was both better and worse than we’d hoped.
Failing to Follow the Science
First, the bad news. COP 27 failed to deliver what the science tells us was needed. With the window of opportunity closing fast on our goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C or less, COP 27 did far too little on the all-important issue of mitigation—that is, cutting emissions.
The case for urgent action keeps getting stronger. The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) make for grim reading about what to expect if we let temperatures rise too much. Nowadays, though, we just need to read the newspapers to catch a glimpse of the future.
The head of the key negotiating Group of 77 – 134 developing countries – was Pakistan which has been dealing with the worst floods in its history, leaving 1717 people dead and dealing an estimated $US40 billion in damage. In 2022 in the USA, there were 15 climate-related disasters which each exceeded $1 billion in costs.
Meanwhile, in Africa, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis of disaster records, “extreme weather events have killed at least 4,000 people and affected a further 19 million since the start of 2022.”
Since this COP was billed by some as the “Africa COP”, one could expect a strong response to such news.
The pressure was therefore on at COP 27 to respond to such disasters. Attending COP27 were 112 world leaders and over 300 government ministers: not as many as at COP 26, but still a good number. Something like 27,000 people from governments, intergovernmental, stakeholders, and journalists also attended the COP. This was to the backdrop of the UN Secretary General warning us that we needed to “cooperate or perish,” to take urgent action to take us off “a highway to climate hell”.
Messing up on mitigation: And yet progress on mitigation was modest, at best. While some delegations pushed hard for stronger commitments on cutting emissions, the appetite in some quarters just didn’t seem to be there. After being pressured to do more in Paris and Glasgow, China, India, and some of the oil-producing countries appeared reluctant to take much more in Sharm el-Sheikh.
They feel developed countries, which are historically responsible for the bulk of emissions, should be doing more themselves, rather than coercing others. The result was a negotiated outcome with little more on the table than we had in Glasgow. For instance, delegates could not agree to ramp up their language on fossil fuels, much to many people’s disappointment.
Finance: Likewise, there was not too much to report on the issue of climate finance. The $US100 billion annual support for developing countries initially promoted by Hilary Clinton at the 2009 Copenhagen COP and enshrined in the Paris COP in 2015 will be reviewed in 2024 with a new figure being hopefully agreed then for 2025 implementation.
The Global South has been talking of this new sum numbering in the trillions to help adapt and mitigate against climate change. And yet there were few signs of movement towards anything of that magnitude.
Given that the North has still not met its pledge of US$100 billion by 2020, it’s clear a lot of movement is needed in the next couple of years. Yet news from outside the conference, such as the US House of Representatives now having a Republican majority, does not bode well.
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.
Just prior to the start of COP27 the lead negotiator for Egypt Mohamed Nasr underscored: “science reports were telling us that yes, planning is not up to expectations, but it was implementation on the ground that was really lagging behind.”
For a meeting billed as the “implementation COP” where climate action was taken to another level, the news on mitigation and finance was disappointing. Credit: Shutterstock
Exceeding Expectations—the Loss and Damage Fund
There were some bright spots, however.
Perhaps most surprising was the agreement to create a ‘Loss and Damage’ fund to help the most vulnerable countries. This has been a key issue for almost 30 years, particularly for small island developing countries.
In Glasgow this looked very unlikely to be resolved in the Sharm COP, but with a late change of heart by the Europeans and eventually by the USA and others in the OECD, this is perhaps the most significant and surprising outcome from COP 27. Even as recently as October, the signs were that OECD countries were not on board with calls for a new fund. However, at COP 27 the “trickle” of earlier action in this area turned into a flood.
Interestingly, it was Scotland at COP 26 that started things off, with a modest, voluntary contribution. More recently, Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Belgium had also financial commitments to loss and damage, now amounting to $US244.5 million. Mia Mottley Barbados’ Prime Minister has called for a 10% windfall tax on oil companies to fund loss and damage caused by climate change, which could raise around $US31 billion if it had been introduced for 2022. Still, the signs a fund would be agreed at COP 27 had not been good.
This makes the final outcome all the more welcome. The idea, the door is now open for the most vulnerable countries to receive more support. A goal has now been set to fully operationalize the fund at COP 28 in a year’s time. For the most vulnerable nations, this cannot come quickly enough.
Global Goal on Adaptation: Another positive development, albeit on a more modest scale, was in the area of the ‘Global Goal on Adaptation’. Here, delegates agreed to “initiate the development of a framework” to be available for adoption next year.
A lot of work will need to be done at the intersessional meeting of the UN Climate Convention’s subsidiary bodies in Bonn in June next year to prepare for this, including how to measure progress towards this Goal. An approach similar to the development of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 might be appropriate, perhaps?
Article 6: Another of the Glasgow breakthroughs was that on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement on carbon markets and international cooperation. COP 27 saw some solid work undertaken on how to operationalize this both in market and non-market approaches.
There are still a lot of sceptics on this will have a genuine impact and how to ensure not double counting or even that any offsets are real. An approach that is more ecosystem-based than just trees is gaining momentum. Such a change, if it happens, also offers a real chance to link the two major UN conventions on climate and biodiversity.
Agriculture: The work on the Koronivia Work Programme on Agriculture went down to the wire. The outcome was a four-year open-ended working group reporting at COP31 (2026). Some controversy on the term ‘food systems’ may see its first workshop address this issue.
It will also look at how we can better integrate the programme’s work into other constituted bodies such as the financial mechanisms of the convention. The Green Climate Fund has given only $US1.1 billion for adaptation on agriculture. It says one of the major reasons for this is the:
“Lack of integrated agricultural development planning and capacities that consider maladaptation risks and investment needs across the agricultural sector, climate information services and supply chains.”
While these outcomes on agriculture, adaptation and Article 6 may seem modest, they should be welcomed as steps in the right direction.
Coalitions of the Willing: One of the outcomes from the Glasgow COP was the launch of ‘Coalitions of the Willing’; groups of countries and stakeholders wanting to move quicker on an issue than they might under the official UN negotiations, which are consensus-driven and involve more than 190 countries. In Sharm el-Sheikh we saw a number of countries join the Methane Pledge, including Australia and Egypt. China joined the meeting on the Pledge and committed to its own national methane strategy.
In Glasgow, 137 countries had taken a landmark step forward by committing to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. With the imminent return to leadership in Brazil of President-elect Lula da Silva, there is renewed hope that real action on the Amazon forests is possible again. Lula committed Brazil to reaching zero deforestation and was hailed as a hero by many when he turned up at COP 27 during the second week.
Meanwhile, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ)—the global coalition of leading financial institutions—committed to accelerating the decarbonization of the economy. GFANZ, which includes over 550 of the world’s leading financial institutions, has committed to reduce their financed emissions in line with 1.5 degrees C.
With $US150 trillion of combined balance sheets, the accountability mechanism announced of a new Net-Zero Data Public Utility is yet to prove if it is effective in holding the finance sector to their commitments. However, if it can deliver on its potential, this could be a game changer.
There was plenty more activity at COP 27 where the results are harder to measure. Most people at these large UN climate summits are not negotiators and COP 27 was full of “side events” and government and stakeholder pavilions each with its own set of events and agendas.
Country pavilions provided a venue to talk about their challenges, issue pavilions on oceans, food, water, health, education, and resilience highlighted their issues and how they fit into the climate agenda. These enable critical issues to be discussed in a more open way than could be undertaken in negotiations.
Ideas were shared, connections made, and partnerships for further action shared. The upshot of all of this activity is hard to measure, but probably considerable. The thematic days organized by the Egyptian Presidency also gave space to these issues and helped bring together ideas that may ultimately find their way into future UN decisions. In this respect, too, the quality of the side events and pavilions at COP 27 exceeded our expectations.
On to Dubai and COP28
Was COP27 a success or failure? When it comes to keeping up with the science, the answer can hardly be positive. The call to “keep 1.5 alive” hangs in the balance and is still on “life support”. In that sense, COP 27 had very little impact on our current trajectory, which is a likely warming of 2.4-2.8 C by the end of the century.
On the other hand, the promise of a loss and damage fund, as well as modest successes on adaptation, Article 6, agriculture, and actions outside the official negotiations, mean COP 27 delivered some bright spots of success.
Looking ahead to next year, COP 28 will be important as it marks the first “global stocktake” to judge where things now stand. We hope this will focus world leaders to increase their pledges (or “nationally determined contributions”) significantly. It will be interesting to see how the United Arab Emirates, as COP 28 host, performs. As a major oil producer, it faces some serious challenges in transitioning to a net zero world.
At COP 27, there were rumours the UAE was ramping up its team and bringing in additional external expertise ahead of next year. This is certainly a good sign if COP 28 is to deliver the kind of groundbreaking outcomes the science now demands.
Felix Dodds and Chris Spence are co-editors of the new 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).
Children from marginalised ethnic, language and religious groups, from 22 low and middle-income countries which were analysed, lag far behind their peers in reading skills. Credit: Brian Moonga/IPS
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Nov 21 (IPS) – An indisputable truth is that no child has ever chosen where to be born, which colour of skin to have, which ethnic community to belong to, what religion to practice and language to speak, or how safe or dangerous the context to grow up in. A child is the most innocent and defenceless human being.
Nevertheless, children fall easy prey to all kinds of brutalities, everywhere and every single day. See how.
Racism and discrimination against children based on their ethnicity, language and religion, are rife in countries across the world, stated the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) ahead of this year’s World Children’s Day on 20 November.
In its report: Rights denied: The impact of discrimination on children, the world’s largest body defending the rights of children, reveals the staggering impact of discrimination on children and the extent to which racism and discrimination affect their education, health, access to a registered birth, and to a fair and equal justice system.
It also highlights widespread disparities among minority and ethnic groups.
A lifetime of pain: “Systemic racism and discrimination put children at risk of deprivation and exclusion that can last a lifetime,” said UNICEF Executive Director, Catherine Russell. “This hurts us all.”
Ethnicity, language, religion: The report shows that children from marginalised ethnic, language and religious groups, from 22 low and middle-income countries which were analysed, lag far behind their peers in reading skills.
Lagging behind: On average, students aged seven to 14 from the most advantaged group are more than twice as likely to have foundational reading skills than those from the least advantaged group.
A UNICEF analysis of data on the level of children registered at birth – a prerequisite for access to basic rights – found significant disparities among children of different religious and ethnic groups.
“The unresolved legacies of trade and trafficking in enslaved Africans, as well as colonialism, post-colonial apartheid and segregation, continue to harm these children today.”
Deprivation: Discrimination and exclusion deepen inter-generational deprivation and poverty, and result in poorer health, nutrition and learning outcomes for children, a higher likelihood of incarceration, higher rates of pregnancy among adolescent girls, and lower employment rates and earnings in adulthood.
“People are stereotyped and discriminated against purely because they are poor. This is frankly sickening and a stain on our society.”
No Need to add that children are among the most hurt by impoverishment, humiliation and stigmatisation.
No immunisation: While COVID-19 exposed deep injustices and discrimination across the world, and the impacts of climate change and conflict continue to reveal inequities in many countries, UNICEF highlights how discrimination and exclusion have long persisted for millions of children from ethnic and minority groups, including access to immunisation, water and sanitation services,
In addition to all the already reported brutalities committed against the most innocent and defenceless humans–the children, many more crimes continue to be perpetrated amidst worldwide impunity.
The following are just some tragic examples.
One billion children experience some form of emotional, physical or sexual violence every single year.
One child dies from violence… every seven minutes.
Millions of children are displaced by armed conflict. These children are at a high risk of grave violations in and around camps, and other areas of refuge.
Drowned, abandoned, stranded: Children are often forced to migrate with their parents to flee armed conflicts, severe droughts, floods and landslides they have not caused. In their voyage to hell, children are drowned, and those who survive are often separated from their families and abandoned at borders.
Violence without frontiers: violence against children knows no boundaries of culture, class or education. It takes place against children in institutions, in schools, and at home. Peer violence is also a concern, as is the growth in cyberbullying.
Isolation, loneliness, fear: Children exposed to violence live in isolation, loneliness and fear, not knowing where to turn for help, especially when the perpetrator is someone close.
Hunted in refugee camps: Criminal groups trading with the lives of the weakest humans go to refugee camps to hunt defenceless children and youth for trafficking, smuggling, enslavement, and making money from selling their organs.
Slavery: Millions of children are pushed into forced labour, carrying out extremely hazardous work. And 70% of boys and girls living in rural areas are workers.
Impunity
All these crimes against innocent children are being committed. And go unpunished.
No wonder, the world is so busy talking about weapons, wars, oil, gas, carbon, the concentration of food markets, more technology, and how to further expand the digitalisation of all aspects of life.
Opinion by Jaime Atienza, Charles Birungi (geneva)
Inter Press Service
GENEVA, Nov 21 (IPS) – In this moment of profound challenge in international relations, it was understandable that the conclusion of the G20 meeting left leaders feeling relieved that the meeting took place without a breakdown. Leaders were justifiably proud too of important steps forward they made including the launch of the new pandemics fund.
But G20 leaders did not manage to resolve the fiscal crisis that threatens many low-and middle-income countries, and which risks undermining global health security because it is driving countries to slash investments in essential health services.
As the world approaches the end of 2022, no resolution mechanism to properly resolve the debt crisis has been established by either the IMF or the G20. In 24 months, the “G20 common framework” has delivered a debt relief agreement for just one country, Chad.
UNAIDS report “A pandemic triad” shows how growing debt burdens across developing countries are impairing their ability to fight and end AIDS and COVID, and their readiness for future pandemics. Half of the low-income countries in Africa are already in debt distress or at high risk of being so.
Across the world, the 73 countries which are eligible for the Debt Service Suspension Initiative have been recorded as spending on average four times as much on debt servicing as they have been able to invest in the health of their people. Only 43 of those countries have seen even a temporary suspension – totalling less than 10% the money they continued to pay back.
Two thirds of people living with HIV are in countries that received absolutely no support from the Debt Service Suspension Initiative at all during the critical 2020-2021 period. The seven Debt Service Suspension Initiative eligible countries with the largest population of people living with HIV – Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia – saw their public debt levels grow from 29% in 2011 to 74% in 2020.
According to the World Bank, “interest payments will constrain the capacity of low-income countries to spend on health, on average by 7%, and in lower middle-income countries by 10%, in 2027.”
110 out of 177 countries will see a drop or stagnation in their health spending capacity and are not set to be able to achieve pre-COVID spending levels by 2027.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, deficits increased worldwide, and debt accumulated much faster than they did in the early years of other recessions including the Great Depression and the Global Financial Crisis. The scale is comparable only to the twentieth century’s two world wars.
Government expenditure cuts are expected to take place across 139 countries in the coming years. In the case of the 73 countries that were eligible to the Debt Service Suspension Initiative, primary expenditures are expected to decline an average of 2.8% of GDP between 2020 and 2026.
This comes at a moment when economic forecasts have been downgraded by the IMF for a fourth time in a year. Austerity will mean dangerous reductions in health expenditure. To even restrain the damage will require a systemic reprioritization of public resources towards health systems.
There is a direct correlation between deepening fiscal problems and worsening health outcomes.
The COVID-19 crisis is dragging on. The impacts of the war in Ukraine on the global economy are making things worse. The HIV response is in danger, with the promise to end AIDS by 2030 under threat.
The world is not prepared today for the pandemics of to come. The international response to resolve the health financing crisis is nowhere close enough. Even as developing countries struggle with the debt crisis, the Ukraine war has led several donors to cut aid.
But there is a way out. With bold action, the health and development financing crisis can be overcome. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s Bridgetown Agenda for action on debt, expansion of multilateral finance and effective SDR reallocation sets out the order of magnitude of response required.
There is an urgent need for debt cancellation for countries in fiscal distress, and for an effective and fast mechanism to deal with debt restructuring at scale. Health and education must be central considerations in debt negotiations.
Vital too is an expansion of the use of existing Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) from high income countries for investments in lower income countries of at least twice the 100 billion committed.
The G20 leaders’ work has not ended in Bali. The consequences of an unresolved debt crisis, and the lack of additional resources, would be disastrous for lives, livelihoods and health security. We don’t have time. No one is safe until everyone is safe.
Jaime Atienza is the Director of Equitable Financing at UNAIDS. Charles Birungi is the Senior HIV Economics, Finance and Policy Advisor.
The G20 summit motto was “Recovering Together, Recovering Stronger” yet the Joint Declaration failed to deliver any alternatives to the wave of austerity engulfing the world. It ignored the option of raising enough tax revenues from large corporations, taxing the wealthy and tacking illicit financial flows and tax abuses which alone accounts for over US$200 billion of tax revenue lost per year due to profit shifting in the global South.
For one, the summit blocked any progress towards the negotiations of a UN Tax Convention that would address the issues of corporate tax abuses and illicit financial flows, as denounced in an open letter from the Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).
In an open letter denouncing this inaction to tackle corporate tax abuses and IFFs, delivered to embassies of Indonesia, India and Brazil, Lidy Nacpil from the Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) said that the summit blocked “any progress towards the negotiations of a UN Tax Convention that would address the issues of corporate tax abuses and illicit financial flows,” but there was no reaction.
Making matters worse, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) failed to deliver on mandates to publish country-by-country reporting before the summit. This would have allowed to monitor the performance of mechanisms to prevent for example multinational companies shifting profits to tax havens and avoid paying taxes.
The data was only published on 17 November, a day after the summit, which was too late to hold the G20 leaders accountable. According to Alex Cobham, Director at the Tax Justice Network, “without the transparency data, neither the Tax Justice Network nor any other independent research can evaluate how much each government is losing to multinationals’ corporate tax abuse, or any progress made to curb tax losses in recent years.”
But that is not everything since the summit did not confront the hidden offshore wealth and kleptocracy problem. Maira Martini from Transparency International said that the G20 members “in recent years have dragged their feet, unable to agree on key measures and failing to implement even those to which they had already committed. In the meantime, the corrupt have consolidated wealth and power, allowing them to attack everything from sustainable development to global security to democracy.”
In an open letter released ahead of the Bali summit, Transparency International representatives from across G20 countries called on their governments to take immediate action against cross-border corruption. The Joint Declaration stated its support towards implementing Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations for improved financial transparency, but does not say that beneficial ownership registries should be public, a critical element to enable stakeholders and the authorities to uncover hidden assets.
Also the declaration included regional efforts related to signing of the Asia Initiative Declaration in July 2022 on tax and financial transparency in Asia. However, it did not specify whether this initiative would create a stronger standard than the current OECD transparency standard, or simply implement an OECD standard in the Asian regional context.
Between 75 and 95 million people are expected to be thrown into extreme poverty this year as a result of the pandemic and the effects of rising inflation and the war in Ukraine, according to the UN. Many other are struggling to make a living and feed themselves as governments around the world are resorting to painful austerity measures.
The G20 had an opportunity to offer solutions to these crises and a lifeline to struggling nations. Unfortunately for all of us, they have failed.
Matti Kohonen is executive director, Financial Transparency Coalition.
A new analysis of the “investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 3 million tonnes a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.” Credit: WA
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Nov 17 (IPS) – As much as wars –or even more–, climate disaster represents a great business opportunity, so don’t bother those who pour their fortunes into fueling them with talks about stopping it.
See what happens.
Investing in wars
A couple of dozens of companies involved in manufacturing the most inhuman weapons of mass destruction– the nuclear warheads, have been supported by over 150 big banks by lending them money or underwriting bonds, according to the Nobel Peace Laureate International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
Its Don’t Bank on the Bomb report also shows that another 186 institutions seek to profit from holding shares or bonds. And that altogether 338 financial institutions have made more than 685 billion US dollars available to the nuclear weapon industry since 2019.
This exercise –and the huge ‘investments’ by the world’s top rich corporations- has proved to be highly efficient.
In fact, in its report “Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,” ICAN reveals that in 2021 –the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine– nine nuclear-armed states spent 82.4 billion US dollars on these weapons of mass destruction, that’s more than 156,000 US dollars… per minute!
Another prestigious investigation centre: the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently revealed that, right now, of the total inventory of an estimated 12.705 warheads at the start of 2022, about 9.440 were in military stockpiles for potential use.
Of those, an estimated 3.732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2.000 —nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA— were kept in a state of “high operational alert,” SIPRI adds in its Yearbook 2022.
Investing in climate catastrophes
But there is another highly lucrative business: climate change.
“The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments,” reveals a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice–OXFAM International.
“A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person.”
Its recent major study: Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people, reports that a new analysis of the “investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 3 million tonnes a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.”
The study also finds billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement are double the average for the Standard & Poor 500 group of companies.
“Billionaires hold extensive stakes in many of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, which gives them the power to influence the way these companies act.”
Once destroyed, business set to make more money
In either case, wars and climate catastrophes cause vast destruction, let alone unspeakable human suffering, and death.
Both of them further sharpen the world’s unprecedented food crisis.
Also here, market lords continue to make high profits.
In fact, a ”small number of corporations exercise a high degree of influence over the global industrial food system, powered by mergers and acquisitions of one another to form giant mega-corporations, which enable further concentration horizontally and vertically, as well as influence over policy-making and governance nationally and globally,” as already reported by IPS.
On the current energy crisis, the UN chief António Guterres in mid-September 2022, stated that it is “absolutely unacceptable to see that, when people are suffering so much in different parts of the world and, namely, because of the high costs of energy and high costs of fuel, to see fossil fuel companies having the largest profits ever or at least in the recent past.”
Then comes the great business of reconstructing all that the money-making business has been greatly contributing. Buildings, highways, bridges, hospitals, schools, universities, etcetera, let alone in further synthetic food.. all of these are to be paid for by the victims.
But there are more business opportunities, like continue buying vast fertile lands for monoculture and intensive agriculture, a money-making practice that by the way further opens the door for high technology corporations to digitalise more and more food production, among so many others.
A production that, also, by the way, is being greatly disrupted due to both wars and climate disaster.
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 (IPS) – The global population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, signalling major improvements in public health that have lowered the risk of dying and increased life expectancy. But the moment is also a clarion call for humanity to look beyond the numbers and meet its shared responsibility to protect people and the planet, starting with the most vulnerable.
“Unless we bridge the yawning chasm between the global haves and have-nots, we are setting ourselves up for an 8-billion-strong world filled with tensions and mistrust, crisis and conflict,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
A more demographically diverse world than ever before
While the world’s population will continue to grow to around 10.4 billion in the 2080s, the overall rate of growth is slowing down. The world is more demographically diverse than ever before, with countries facing starkly different population trends ranging from growth to decline.
Today, two-thirds of the global population lives in a low fertility context, where the lifetime fertility is below 2.1 births per woman. At the same time, population growth has become increasingly concentrated among the world’s poorest countries, most of which are in sub-Saharan Africa.
Against this backdrop, the global community must ensure that all countries, regardless of whether their populations are growing or shrinking, are equipped to provide a good quality of life for their populations and can lift up and empower their most marginalised people.
“A world of 8 billion is a milestone for humanity – the result of longer lifespans, reductions in poverty, and declining maternal and childhood mortality. Yet, focusing on numbers alone distracts us from the real challenge we face: securing a world in which progress can be enjoyed equally and sustainably,” said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem. “We cannot rely on one-size-fits-all solutions in a world in which the median age is 41 in Europe compared to 17 in sub-Saharan Africa. To succeed, all population policies must have reproductive rights at their core, invest in people and planet, and be based on solid data.”
Complex linkages between population, sustainable development and climate change
While the Day of 8 Billion represents a success story for humanity, it also raises concerns about links between population growth, poverty, climate change and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The relationship between population growth and sustainable development is complex.
Rapid population growth makes eradicating poverty, combatting hunger and malnutrition, and increasing the coverage of health and education systems more difficult. Conversely, achieving the SDGs, especially those related to health, education and gender equality, will contribute to slowing global population growth.
Relatedly, although slower population growth–if maintained over several decades–could help to mitigate environmental degradation, conflating population growth with a rise in greenhouse gas emissions ignores that countries with the highest consumption and emissions rates are those where population growth is already slow or even negative.
Meanwhile, the majority of the world’s population growth is concentrated among the poorest countries, which have significantly lower emissions rates but are likely to suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change.
“We must accelerate our efforts to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement as well as achieve the SDGs,” said Li Junhua, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. “We need a rapid decoupling of economic activity from the current over-reliance on fossil-fuel energy, as well as greater efficiency in the use of those resources, and we need to make this a just and inclusive transition that supports those left furthest behind.”
The need for a sustainable future built on rights and choices
In order to usher in a world in which all 8 billion people can thrive, we must look to proven and effective solutions to mitigate our world’s challenges and achieve the SDGs, while prioritising human rights. In order to pursue these solutions, increased investment from member states and donor governments is needed in policies and programmes that work to make the world safer, more sustainable and more inclusive.
Key facts and figures at a glance
? It took about 12 years for the world population to grow from 7 to 8 billion, but the next billion is expected to take approx 14.5 years (2037), reflecting the slowdown in global growth. World population is projected to reach a peak of around 10.4 billion people during the 2080s and to remain at that level until 2100.
? For the increase from 7 to 8 billion, around 70 per cent of the added population was in low-income and lower-middle-income countries. For the increase from 8 to 9 billion, these two groups of countries are expected to account for more than 90 per cent of global growth.
? Between now and 2050, the global increase in the population under age 65 will occur entirely in low income and lower-middle-income countries, since population growth in high-income and upper-middle income countries will occur only among those aged 65 years or over.
A Dalit woman stands outside a dry toilet located in an upper caste villager’s home in Mainpuri, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Credit: Shai Venkatraman/IPS
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Nov 14 (IPS) – For those who have it, a toilet is that ‘thing’ in the bathroom, next to the bidet, the hand-washing sink with hot and cold water faucets, and the bathtub.
Given their ‘unprestigious’ function, some billionaires, in particular in the Gulf oil-producer kingdoms, fancy to pose their buttocks on a solid-gold toilet. Once they are there, why not also solid-gold faucets?
Many others prefer a more comfortable use of their toilets, thus endowing them with both automatic heating and flushing. And anyway, being given-for-granted, nobody would give a thought to the high importance of all these ‘things’.
The other side of the coin shows an entirely different picture. A shocking one by the way.
Billions of humans without one
And it is a fact that close to 4 billion people –or about half of the world’s total population of 8 billion– still live without access to a safe toilet and other sanitation facilities.
Nearly a full decade ago, the international community, represented in the United Nations General Assembly, decided to declare 19 November every single year, as a world day to address such a staggering problem.
And year after year, the UN continues to behave ‘politically correct’ by saying that progress and achievements were anyway made, however much would still be to do.
Despite such ‘correctness,’ the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, stated on the Day that the world is “seriously off track to keep our promise of safe toilets for all by 2030 – a crucial indicator in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Investment in sanitation systems is too low and progress remains too slow.”
Death of the children: Every day, over 800 children under age five years old die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene.
Poor sanitation is linked to the transmission of diarrhoeal diseases such as cholera and dysentery, as well as typhoid, intestinal worm infections and polio. It exacerbates stunting and contributes to the spread of antimicrobial resistance.
Globally, 1 in 3 schools do not have adequate toilets, and 23% of schools have no toilets at all. Schools without toilets can cause girls to miss out on their education. Without proper sanitation facilities, many are forced to miss school when they are on their period.
Open defecation: about 900 million people worldwide practice open defecation, meaning they go outside – on the side of the road, in bushes or rubbish heaps. It’s often a matter of where they live: 90% of people who practice open defecation live in rural areas.
Of these, 494 million still defecate in the open, for example in street gutters, behind bushes or into open bodies of water.
Moreover, the lack of sanitation services, just in the year 2020, stood behind the fact that 45% of the household wastewater generated globally was discharged without safe treatment.
Consequently, at least 10% of the world’s population is thought to consume food irrigated by wastewater.
Safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS
The impact on underground water
Should all this not be enough, the 2022 World Toilet Day focuses on another invisible fact: the grave impacts of such a sanitation crisis on groundwater, which is the source of up to 99% of the world’s fresh water.
The 2022 campaign ‘Making the invisible visible’ explores how inadequate sanitation systems spread human waste into rivers, lakes and soil, polluting underground water resources.
However, this problem seems to be invisible. Invisible because it happens underground. Invisible because it happens in the poorest and most marginalised communities.
Groundwater is the world’s most abundant source of freshwater. It supports drinking water supplies, sanitation systems, farming, industry and ecosystems. As climate change worsens and populations grow, groundwater is vital for human survival.
The invisible dangers
The central message of World Toilet Day 2022 is that safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution.
See why:
Safe sanitation protects groundwater. Toilets that are properly located and connected to safely managed sanitation systems, collect, treat and dispose of human waste, and help prevent human waste from spreading into groundwater.
Sanitation must withstand climate change. Toilets and sanitation systems must be built or adapted to cope with extreme weather events, so that services always function and groundwater is protected.
The above shows how those ‘things’ in the bathroom can be life-saving.
Moreover, for those who are obsessed with measuring human suffering in purely money-making terms, it should be enough to know that providing adequate sanitation is a good business: each 1 US dollar invested in it means 5 US dollars saved in health services.
A local resident of the Sitio el Zapotal community in El Zapote canton, El Salvador, turns on the tap to fill his sink to collect the water he will need for the day. A total of 10,000 people have benefited from the five solar-powered community water projects in El Salvador since 2010. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
by Edgardo Ayala (suchitoto, el salvador)
Inter Press Service
SUCHITOTO, El Salvador, Nov 11 (IPS) – Several community-run water projects powered by solar energy have improved the quality of life of thousands of rural families in areas that were the scene of heavy fighting during El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s.
The families now have running water, thanks to a collective effort launched when the war ended in 1992, after they returned to their former homes, which they had fled years earlier because of the intense fighting.
The largest of these community water systems driven by solar power is located in the canton of El Zapote, Suchitoto municipality, in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán.
“The first step was to come together and buy this place to drill the well, do tests and build the tank, and we had a lot of help from other organizations that supported us,” Ángela Pineda, president of the Zapote-Platanares Community-Rural Association for Water, Health and the Environment, told IPS.
The association is a “junta de agua” or water board, which are community organizations that bring water to remote areas of El Salvador where the government does not have the capacity to supply it, such as the one installed in the canton of El Zapote.
There are an estimated 2,500 water boards in the country, providing service to 25 percent of the population, or some 1.6 million people. The vast majority of them operate with energy from the national power grid.
But five of the boards, located in the vicinity of Suchitoto, obtained financial support from organizations such as Companion Communities Development Alternatives (CoCoDA), based in Indianapolis, Indiana, for taking a technological leap towards operating with solar energy.
“The advantage is that the systems are powered by clean, renewable energies that do not pollute the environment,” Karilyn Vides, director of operations in El Salvador for the U.S.-based CoCoDA, told IPS.
Four previous projects of this type, supported since 2010 by CoCoDA, were small, with less than 10 solar panels. But the one mounted in the canton of El Zapote was planned to be equipped with 96 panels, when it was conceived in 2021.
It was inaugurated in June 2022, although it had been operating since 2004, with hydropower from the national grid.
This effort benefits more than 2,500 families settled around Suchitoto and on the slopes of Guazapa mountain which during the 12-year civil war was a stronghold of the then guerrilla Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party that governed the country between 2009 and 2019.
However, when including the four other small solar water projects, plus five that continue to operate with electricity from the national grid, all financially supported by CoCoDA after the end of the war, the total number of beneficiaries climbs to 10,000 people.
El Salvador’s bloody armed conflict left some 75,000 people dead and more than 8,000 missing. between 1980 and 1992.
In each of the three global food crises studied, financial speculation has caused steep increases in prices, making food inaccessible to hundreds of millions of people. Credit: Bigstock
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Nov 11 (IPS) – While grain exports continue to regularly flow to world’s markets since the July 2022 Turkey-brokered agreement between Russia and Ukraine to resume cereals and fertilisers shipments from both countries, food prices are still skyrocketing everywhere. How come?
The handiest answer by establishment politicians and media is that it’s all about the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February.
Another argument they use is that it is Russia who interrupted its gas and oil exports, omitting the fact that it is West US-led sanctions that have drastically cut this flow to mostly European markets, causing a steady rise in energy costs, food transportation, etcetera.
Nonetheless, such answers clearly ignore other structural causes: the dominant markets’ shocking speculations.
In his report to the United Nations Security Council, the Special Rapporteur stated that hunger and famine, like conflicts, are always the result of “political failures.”
Specifically, explains Michael Fakhri, “Markets are amplifying shocks and not absorbing them… food prices are soaring not because of a problem with supply and demand as such; it is because of price speculation in commodity futures markets.”
Blocking the solutions
The current food crisis is caused by “international failures,” he said, while providing two points in conclusion:
– For over two years, people and civil society organisations around the world have been raising the alarm about the food crisis. For over two years, they have been calling for an international coordinated response to the food crisis.
– And yet Member States have refused to mobilise the Rome-based agencies and other UN organisations to respond to the food crisis in a coordinated way.
According to Michael Fakhri, some Member States and civil society organisations tried to get the CFS to pass a resolution last October in order for it to be the place to enable global policy coordination around the food crisis.
“And yet some powerful countries – some members of the P5 – actively blocked that initiative. This undermined the world’s ability to respond to the food crisis.”
Food “nationalism”
Meanwhile, in a 7 November 2022 dossier by Focus on the Global South, Shalmali Guttal warned that a perfect storm is brewing in the global food system, pushing food prices to record high levels, and expanding hunger.
“As international institutions struggle to respond, some governments have resorted to knee-jerk ‘food nationalism’ by placing export bans to preserve their own food supplies and stabilise prices….”
In its dossier, researchers from Focus on the Global South write about various aspects of the current crisis, its causes, and how it is impacting countries in Asia.
Corporations fuelling the crisis
These include regional analysis, case studies from Sri Lanka, Philippines and India, “the role of corporations in fuelling the crisis and the flawed responses of international institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Bretton Woods Institutions and United Nations agencies.”
The recently released State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World 2022 (SOFI 2022) report presents a sobering picture of the failure of global efforts to end hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity. According to SOFI 21, “even before the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020, world hunger levels were abysmally high.”
Governments, and multilateral and international agencies are by and large apportioning the lion’s share of the blame for the current world food crisis to global supply shortages arising from the war on Ukraine, ignoring the persisting impacts in low- and middle-income countries of “the market forces of concentration and speculation, of globally determined macroeconomic processes, and the collapse of livelihood opportunities affecting these countries in the post-Covid world.”
World food system dominated by markets
Central to recurring food price volatility, food crises and the entrenchment of hunger and food insecurity are “market structures, regulations, and trade and finance arrangements that bolster a global corporate-dominated industrial food system, and enable market concentration and financial speculation in commodity markets.”
“Multilevel market concentration and financial speculation on commodity markets have played pivotal roles in past and the present food crises and present grave threats to the realisation of the Right to Food.”
In addition, a historical examination of food crises over the past 50 years by professor Jennifer Clapp shows that the global industrial food system has been rendered more prone to price volatility and more susceptible to crises because of three interrelated manifestations of corporate concentration:
– First, the global industrial food system relies on a small number of staple grains produced using highly industrialised farming methods, making the system susceptible to events that affect just a handful of crops and to rising costs of industrial farm inputs.
– Second, a small number of countries specialise in the production of staple grains for export, on which many other countries depend, including many of the poorest and most food-insecure countries.
– And third, the global grain trade is dominated by a small number of firms in highly financialized commodity markets that are prone to volatility (IPES-Food 2022; FAO 2022; OECD and FAO 2020).”
Mega corporations
On this, Jennifer Clapp, professor and Canada Research Chair, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, explains that “a small number of corporations exercise a high degree of influence over the global industrial food system, powered by mergers and acquisitions of one another to form giant mega-corporations, which enable further concentration horizontally and vertically, as well as influence over policy-making and governance nationally and globally.”
According to Clapp, “four grain trading corporations– Archer-Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus, called the ‘ABCD’– control 70-90 % of the grain trade.”
As “cross-sectoral value chain managers” these grain trading giants are able to compile large amounts of market data, but are under no obligation to disclose this information and can hold stocks until prices have peaked, explains the expert.
“And in each of the three global food crises studied, financial speculation has caused steep increases in prices, making food inaccessible to hundreds of millions of people.”
WASHINGTON DC, Nov 11 (IPS) – Global population is about to reach 8 billion, a mere 11 years after it reached 7 billion. The official Day of 8 Billion is observed by the UN November 15, though it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when we pass the actual milestone.
With hashtags like #8billionstrong, the discourse around adding another billion people to the world’s population since 2011 seems heavy on positive spin. Some economists and pundits argue population growth (or “superabundance” as one new book frames it) is a good thing for the economy and innovation.
UN Secretary General António Guterres called it “an occasion to celebrate diversity and advancement.” UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem said, “People are the solution, not the problem….A resilient world of 8 billion…offers infinite possibilities.”
But it’s more complicated than that.
While reaching 8 billion doesn’t mean we are fated to keep adding a billion people to the population every decade — UN projections indicate population growth will level off later in this century – continued population growth is not without its challenges.
Optimistic media takes on the 8 billion milestone tend to gloss over how continued growth could adversely affect people and the planet, including the climate and environment, food security, water, health, civil conflict, refugees, displacement, and widening global inequity.
Kathleen MogelgaardFor a more complete picture of how this might play out, it’s important keep six fundamental points in mind:
1. Global population growth will continue but it’s slowing down
We’re currently adding about 70 million people to the population annually (about 0.9 percent). According to its medium growth scenario, the UN projects we’ll reach 9.7 billion by 2050. By that time annual growth is expected to have slowed to around 40 million per year (less than 0.5 percent). By the 2080s it’s expected to level off, with the population reaching 10.4 billion, then staying stable through 2100.
2. No, covid is not a big factor
According to the UN projections, it doesn’t appear likely that the covid-19 pandemic will have much impact on global population trends this century. While many people died from covid earlier than they would have otherwise, that effect is a blip on the screen – it won’t significantly change long-term global mortality and life expectancy. And despite talk of a covid baby boom last year, UN demographers found this year that covid’s impact on longer term fertility rates (the number of births per women of reproductive age) are mixed and highly uncertain.
3. Growth won’t be uniform; some places will experience much more than others
Demographically speaking, the world is becoming increasingly polarized. In some countries, especially wealthier ones, population growth rates are already low and will fall fast. For example, according to UN projections, over 30 countries in Europe and parts of Asia will reach a median age of 46 or older by 2040. That would lead to further declines in birth rates.
Future population growth will be more and more concentrated in other countries with higher fertility rates and more youthful age structures. The UN projects sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia will retain their young demographics in 2040, with more than half of their populations under the age of 25.
That will drive higher population growth in certain areas, for example in the Sahel region of Africa, the Philippines, and among marginalized communities across the globe.
This is a deep equity issue. Younger age structures, higher fertility rates, and more population growth profoundly impact societies, economies, and governments, and limits their capacity to meet people’s needs.
4. Early child-bearing raises fertility rates
Average family size is shrinking globally, but in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and southern Asia, lifetime fertility rates have stalled or are declining very slowly, portending larger families. In many places, this is a function of early child-bearing. For example, in Niger where the average lifetime fertility rate is about seven births per woman, more than three quarters of girls are married before age 18. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, each year more than 10% of adolescent females bear a child.
5. Youthful age structures will drive growth in the first half of this century
A “youth bulge” or large proportion of young people in a national population today creates momentum which all but guarantees the number people of reproductive age will grow through 2050. UN demographers project that this will drive about two-thirds of global population growth over the next two decades.
6. Projections are not predictions
None of this is set in stone. UN projections do not account for many variables that could affect the population growth curve, from wealth to warfare. What governments and the international donor community choose to invest in may change variables that could profoundly influence outcomes.
Suppose they focus on countries and regions with high population growth, and invest in programs which help girls stay in school, ensure greater access to family planning services, and help women exercise their rights and reproductive autonomy.
Not only are these important objectives in their own right, we also know from experience they encourage delayed childbirth, smaller families, and lower fertility rates, which would drive population growth down.
By itself, population growth won’t determine whether we can achieve a sustainable future. But it will be a significant factor, and it’s one we can influence positively. In that sense, the population passing 8 billion is an opportunity.
It’s a chance to finish the work of upholding rights and reproductive autonomy for women and girls, and reduce the stresses higher growth would place on our climate, environment, health, food, water, and security.
It illustrates the need to shift disproportionate impacts of high growth on poor countries toward greater equity, helping stabilize some of the world’s most precarious places, which in turn strengthens global stability.
If we determine to do these things now, then the Day of 8 Billion could be cause for celebration.
Kathleen Mogelgaard is the president and CEO of the Population Institute. On November 15 she will participate in “Toward Peak Population” a free online dialog on population growth with experts and officials from around the world, hosted by Foreign Policy Magazine.
Decision-making power is still held at the national and international level, often failing to (financially) enable local actors to lead climate action. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
Opinion by Anne Jellema (capetown, south africa)
Inter Press Service
CAPETOWN, South Africa, Nov 09 (IPS) – Anne Jellema is CEO of HivosImagine a world where the people hit hardest by climate crisis have a say in how to stop it. Imagine that youth, Indigenous Peoples, women, and others most affected by global warming have the resources to implement their own climate solutions. Solutions that are highly effective because they meet local needs, suit the local context, and create sustainable economic opportunities for local people. This world would be one where people have a much better chance of surviving, and even thriving, despite the massive upheavals of the climate crisis.
Climate finance remains a pipe dream at local level
At the global level, to achieve the key commitments made in Paris, climate investment should count in trillions rather than billions. The 100 billion per year climate financing target from 2020 onwards has already been missed. Industrialized countries have overwhelmingly failed to provide anything close to the scale of climate financing needed – let alone the specific demand for a loss and damage financing facility.
And at the local level, although ever more governments and stakeholders understand the importance of shifting resources, leadership and agency to the local level, the world pictured above is still far from reach
There are many reasons why climate finance doesn’t end up at the local level.
Some are related to complex rules and requirements in accessing international funding, which local actors often lack the knowledge, network, skills and/or scale to comply with.
Decision-making power is still held at the national and international level, often failing to (financially) enable local actors to lead climate action. Even at national level, those most affected by climate change often have the least say in setting priorities for climate policy and funding.
What needs to happen
Recently, Hivos – as part of the Voices for Just Climate Action alliance – studied a handful of promising alternative finance delivery mechanisms. While some have performed better than others, they share the potential for downward accountability and effective participation of different voices as an integral part of the funding mechanism. Based on the study, we put forth the following recommendations which governments, international intermediaries, and global banks and funds should give serious consideration to at the upcoming COP27.
Firstly, create mechanisms for participatory funding and oversight structures to ensure that local actors drive decision making. This includes addressing structural inequalities faced by women, youth, children, Indigenous people, and other marginalized groups, and fully integrating these groups in the design and implementation of adaptation and mitigation actions.
Secondly, routinely set concrete targets for funds that need to reach climate solutions driven by local actors. Provide grants instead of loans, and use long-term, patient and flexible programmatic funding instead of short-term, ad hoc project funding. At COP27 the rich countries must deliver robust action to scale up grant-based climate finance to the developing world.
Thirdly, ensure easy access for local actors by simplifying fund application processes.
Lastly, decisive steps must be taken to use national, not international financing mechanisms and structures for channeling finance. The International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) designed a climate finance delivery mechanism that bypasses international intermediaries. Here, money flows directly to local civil society, national and local governments, and/or the private sector.
Hivos joins hands with its partners and climate movements in demanding that concrete, gender-responsive targets are set to get climate funding into the hands of local actors, and new funding mechanisms are developed by and with climate-affected communities to make climate finance work for them.
To conclude…commitments are vital, but focus must shift
The COP Presidency, this year in the hands of Egypt, has called for significant progress on commitments and pledges, especially on the delivery of the annual USD 100 billion from developed countries to developing countries. Failure to keep to this commitment has often been a breaking point in climate negotiations and has damaged trust between countries.
Equally important, however, is shifting our focus from the volume of climate finance to its effectiveness. Only then will a world governed by climate justice be within reach.
